A Game of Thrones: The Board Game - Digital Edition - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

I’ve never really been into A Song Of Ice And Fire. Even before the internet collectively turned on the telly show in its final act, I couldn’t have told you what a Targaryen is. Even so, A Game Of Thrones: The Board Game is one of the best tabletop games I’ve ever played, its cardboard kingdoms a beloved backstabbing battleground during my uni days. Today, developers Dire Wolf Digital brought Fantasy Flight’s stellar tabletop tactics to PC – an adaptation of everything but the dagger held behind your best friend’s back.

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The Solitaire Conspiracy - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

Let the cards fall as they may? Not if you have any say in the matter. Today sees the release of The Solitaire Conspiracy, the latest short from Thomas Was Alone and John Wick Hex devs Bithell Games, and you’re a tactical genius weilding the power of C.A.R.D.S to take down a megalomanic supervillain. Let’s hope all those hours spent on Windows Solitaire weren’t wasted, eh?

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Katharine Castle)

A photo of the Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD.

Samsung’s 980 Pro NVMe SSD

is the company’s first foray into the world of PCIe Gen 4, the new super fast storage standard that’s set to become the baseline for all modern gaming PCs going forward. It’s still relatively early days for PCIe 4.0 at the moment, though, and you do need a compatible motherboard to get the most from it. As a result, the 980 Pro’s appeal may be rather limited at this point, especially if you’re not planning on upgrading your PC any time soon.

However, as a sign of things to come, the Samsung 980 Pro sets a high bar, offering best in class random read and write speeds compared to its other PCIe 4.0 rivals, and best of all, it doesn’t require a chunky heatsink to get the most from it, either.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Katharine Castle)

CPU deals of the week

With AMD’s new 4th Gen Ryzen CPUs due to be announced on Thursday, now is quite a good time to pick up one of their existing 3rd Gen chips on the cheap. Indeed, Newegg have an excellent CPU deal on the Ryzen 5 3600XT at the moment, making it a better buy than the regular (not to mention more expensive) 3600X. There have been some good drops on Intel’s new 10th Gen CPUs, too, including the coveted Core i5-10600K. So, to help you get the best CPU deal around, I’ve rounded up all the lowest prices from around the web in both the UK and the US, covering all of our top gaming CPU picks. Whatever type of PC you’re looking to build, here are the best 9th and 10th Gen Intel CPU prices and best AMD Ryzen CPU deals going on this week.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

Yes, Everything Is Garbage. But garbage can be used to make turnips. Turnips can be sold or fed to cows or sheep, whose sweaters can feed the people who were born from trees and books and yet more turnips. So goes this delightfully simple supply chain builder from the folks behind Genital Jousting, a game where a continent of trash can become an obelisk to start-up culture.

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Baldur's Gate 3 - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Matthew Castle)

A screenshot of Laezel the githyanki from Baldur's Gate 3, a fierce looking warrior with pale green skin and a small, thin, high nose, not unlike a Who from Dr. Seuss's books. Except Laezel looks very cross.

Baldur’s Gate III

early access is a devil’s bargain: a cure for impatience, but at what cost? You can say that of any ‘pre-release’ release, but it feels apt here, given that act one of Larian’s epic RPG and Dungeons & Dragons revival is a trip through temptation country. There’s a Mind Flayer tadpole burrowing into your skull and an assorted cast of druids, healers, zealots and demons all promising to kiss and make it better. Many will make it worse – oh god, so> much worse – but what’s early access for if not discovering what works and what doesn’t? The aim is to un-bug your brain as Larian debugs the game.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Graham Smith)

A screenshot of Genshin Impact's main character, with a beautiful countryside sprawling behind them.

Genshin Impact

has a lot in common with Breath Of The Wild, including the ability to climb any surface, a pocket hang glider, the design of its enemies, and the need to stuff your pockets with cooking ingredients. But rather than criticise it for being derivative, I want to celebrate it for what it gets right – and what it adds – to the formula of its most obvious inspiration.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Lady Jessica and Paul Atreides posing in a frame from the new Dune movie.

On the occasion of the new Dune movie being delayed by almost a year, RPS asks: who would you want to make a Dune video game? Frank Herbert’s sci-fantasy novel about spacelords, spacedrugs, spaceprophecy, and giant murderworms has been the subject of several games, the best-known being the RTS precursor to Command & Conquer from Westwood Studios. But as the films (and attempted films, lookin’ at you Jodorowsky’s Dune) have shown, Dune can become all sorts of things in different hands. So what would you like to see, reader dear?

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice Bell)

A screenshot from a cutscene at the end of the mission to make Big Ben bong in Watch Dogs: Legion. It shows said clocktower at night, from a distance, as triumphant fireworks shoot off from all around Westminster.Watch Dogs Legion

, aka Watch Dogs London, is nearly upon us. See its release, there, squatting at the end of October 2020 like a big cockernee pumpkin smoking a cigar. I am broadly looking forward to Ubisoft’s hacktion adventure where you can play as anyone by recruiting any NPC you see into your gang of hacktivists with undercuts, because from the hands on previews I’ve done, Ubisoft seem to have made a pretty good London.

But, at the most recent preview I played a couple of weeks ago, something happened which could not pass without comment, and that is that I, honest to God, did a mission to make Big Ben bong again.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

I cannot forgive Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout for making me write that headline. With Season 2 of Mediatonic’s bean-stumbling battle royale just around the corner, the devs have announced another randomly-appearing obstacle designed to pop out of nowhere and ruin your day, following up on last season’s giant hammer with a massive new spike-covered roller. There’s just, well, something about the name.

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