Valve have added new options to filter obscenity and slurs from chat on Steam and in some games, letting you level up without getting cussed out. With the new Steam Chat Filtering enabled, words caught in the filters are replaced with “***” or “♥♥♥”. The new options are pretty deep, letting you upload and download your own lists of banned words, see foul language from your friends but no one else, and more. Or, if you want, you can just leave it off and see the same chat as ever.

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The nimble A-wing is one of the Republic’s deadliest ships in Star Wars: Squadrons, thanks to its agility and damage potential. Most Republic players I’ve come across tend to use A-wings in both Dogfight and Fleet Battles, but I rarely see anyone doing it right>. Below I’ll walk you through my best A-wing loadout for Squadrons, along with an explanation of how to play it and why exactly it works so well against pretty much any enemy in the Empire’s fleet.

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Supergiant’s games all have pretty wonderful soundtracks, and their new Ancient Greek roguelike Hades is no exception. We have composer Darren Korb to thank for that, and this weekend he released a video tutorial teaching how to play one of Hades’ delightful tunes. It’s not one of the heavy intense tracks from your battles in Tartarus, however. Instead it’s one of the soothing melodies you hear when you come across Eurydice in Asphodel.

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My opinion of Star Wars: Squadrons is all over the place. I was excited when it was announced, as I’d been yearning for a proper Star Wars flight sim for years. But then I reined in my expectations, because my bland triple-A release sense was tingling. I played a few hours of Squadrons as soon as it launched, and finished my session feeling a bit nonplussed.

But since then, it has become obvious that this game is very good indeed. The central experience – of being a pilot in a Star Wars – is masterfully crafted, and I can’t find much to fault with it. Squadrons is probably the most fun I’ve had with any piece of Star Wars media since my teens, in fact, and it frequently invokes a joy I haven’t felt since playing TIE Fighter in 1995. But that’s the problem. Because it’s good enough to make me think hard about how it could have been perfect>. And when you start doing that, you really start to see the holes in something.

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You’d think that the arrival of Nvidia’s [cms-block] and the imminent announcement of AMD’s [cms-block] GPUs would result in a spate of great graphics card deals from retailers looking shift old stock, but alas, you’d be wrong. Indeed, with prices either staying the same or going up, now is not a great time to be buying a new graphics card.

Still, if you simply cannot wait and are in desperate need of a new GPU, then I’ve gathered together all the cheapest graphics card deals from around the web right now so you can see exactly how they stack up against the competition. I’ll also tell you exactly what each card is capable of when it comes to gaming performance, and how much prices have changed week-on-week. As I said, you should almost certainly wait a few weeks before you buy a new GPU if you can help it (or at least see what [cms-block] might bring next week), but here’s how things currently stand for those who need one right this second.

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Larian Studios launched Baldur’s Gate 3 into early access last night, and were quite clear that the fantasy RPG might have a few issues needing fixing. And yup, it does. Multiplayer has particularly been a problem for some folks, with several issues causing crashes. The developers, Larian Studios say they’re working to release a hotfix patch for pressing problems “as soon as possible” but, for now, they warn of what not to do.

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It’s been a real blast over the last few weeks watching my pals and peers pick up Hades. The excellent mythological roguelike left early access last month, and seeing everyone post screenshots of their first clears and fastest times has been lovely. To any of you who think you’ve gotten good at the game with those cheeky 20-minute runs, however, I’m here to ruin your day. While we’re all scraping by the final boss clutching onto our final Death Defiances, speedrunners are already breezing their way through Hades in under eight minutes.

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Ahead of next weekend’s PC multiplayer open beta for Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, the devs have announced times for pre-loading, the system requirements, and other such important numbers. This seems to be one of those ‘betas’ that is a time-limited demo more than an actual test, and all the marketing deals around it mean we won’t have long to play it on PC. But hey, we’ll get a few days to check out some multiplayer murders.

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My mate Greg is one of those people who’s phenomenally gentle and kind-hearted, but has a surprisingly brutal taste in media. He introduced me to a big chunk of the metal bands I listen to, and loves films with plenty of fights. I remember as teenagers, we spent an impossibly hot summer’s day watching Gangs Of New York, then roaring Daniel Day Lewis quotes at each other through mouthfuls of doner kebab afterwards. Absolutely cracking bloke.

Anyway, he’s been prodding me for ages to play a game called Sea Salt, and his patience has paid off at last, because I had a go at the weekend. So, Greg, this is for you: Sea Salt is really fun.

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Today’s episode of the Spelunky daily includes spoilers for the game’s first four worlds. Yes, this is my humble brag way of saying I got to world four on the daily challenge.

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