“Right then,” snarls a puce-faced ogre of a man, after drinking the last crumbs from a bag of roast beef Monster Munch, “the dog or the spoon?”. And sure enough, there in front of him, on the battered plasterer’s table that serves as his desk, is a blurrily-painted porcelain dog statuette, and a bent tablespoon. If you give the big man a quid, he’ll throw them into a bin, and replace them from a big cardboard box of slightly less upsetting boot-fair detritus. But you’ve only got 50p, so you choose the dog.

That counts as a Beast, right?> you think to yourself, anxiously, as a faceless figure in riot gear bursts into the shipping container you’re obliged to refer to as “the shop”, and hauls you back out into the sunlight. You are, in the same metaphorical fashion as in this post from last week, playing Hearthstone‘s Battlegrounds mode.

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Console generations haven’t troubled PC folk in recent years. The very nature of our hardware means we’re not defined by a single machine for a set period of time, and it’s us who get to choose when and what to upgrade our rigs with. But when the current graphics card inside my PC is both less powerful and costs more than Microsoft’s new Xbox Series X (and came in a box larger than the Xbox itself), even I felt the need to venture into console land.

In my eyes, the arrival of both the Series X and PlayStation 5 this week mark a watershed moment for PC gaming. In some ways they are more cutting edge than what’s currently plugged into our monitors. Their ray tracing-capable AMD RDNA 2 graphics architecture, completely PCIe 4.0-based ecosystem and supercharged storage tech are all coming to PC, of course (some sooner than others), but having spent a couple of weeks with Microsoft’s new console box, there’s no denying it’s an impressive machine for its size and price. The Series X may be more dense than consoles past, but it would take an even larger, beefier PC to achieve what the Xbox Series X does with its promises of 4K 60fps gaming, and you certainly won’t find the same kind of power on a similar budget. But is it worth considering as a second machine? Yes and no.

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A few of us are having a grand old time in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which I am now informed is the 22nd entry in Ubisoft’s flagship series about exploring different historical settings, meeting interesting people, and brutally murdering them for your own gain.

Valhalla is Viking flavoured, set during the invasion of England known as The Great Heathen Army (great band name). Though you spend a lot of time pillaging and raiding, you also do a lot of open exploration, discovering strange standing stones, hallucinogenic mushrooms and odd quests involving nudists and betrayal mysteries. That, in fact, is my favourite thing about Valhalla: the freedom and trust that it gives you.

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This week, dear listeners, the Electronic Wireless Show podcast urges you to think small, as we take a look at our favourite little details in games that don’t need to be there, and yet are. The strange Easter eggs, the loving little inclusions, the proverbial mint popped on the digipillow of your entertainment. Matthew talks about Red Dead Redemption 2, obviously, the big mass entertainment-liker.

Diversions this week include the fact that Nate imagines game characters are whatever size they appear on his screen, conspiracy theories about Avril Lavigne (side note: totally forgot she was married to Chad Kroeger for a while there, and also that Chad Kroeger cut his hair), and an extended series of in-jokes that will sort the TRUFANS of EWS, the Shergar’s Heart Squad, from the fake haters.

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With the launch of the Oculus Quest 2 last month, I’ve been rediscovering a lot of great VR games lately, including the surprisingly gory The Walking Dead: Saints And Sinners, the thrilling spy puzzles of RPS favourite I Expect You To Die and loads more. There are still lots more holes that need plugging in my VR library, though, and happily Humble have rounded up a bunch of them in their new Fall VR Bundle. Saints And Sinners and I Expect You To Die both feature, as do Survios’ Raw Data, and Tripwire Interactive’s Killing Floor Incursion to name just a few. Here’s how it works.

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Bugsnax

– everyone’s talkin’ bout them, y’know? After giving us all earworms back at its not-E3 reveal, we’re finally free to chow down on Young Horses’ absurd menagerie of bugs wot happen to also be snacks. The bug-hunting, problem-solving expedition sets sail for the Epic Games Store today – just mind you don’t spoil your appetite on Strabbies before dinner.

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I was today years old when I learned that the “oof” noise I hear in so many memes and videos is, in fact, the Roblox death noise. The famous sound clip has hit headlines over the last few days because it managed to get caught up in a copyright dispute.

Turns out that specific “oof” belongs to a sound designer who originally created the noise for the noughties game Messiah. Now, the Roblox Corporation plan on charging for the noise. Oof.

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Ever since Sony released their PlayStation 5 teardown video last month showing the inner workings of their latest console box, I’ve been asking myself one question: why don’t more PCs have PS5-style dust catcher holes for easy vacuuming? I know a lot of PC cases have detachable dust filters and the like these days for helping to keep our machines dust-free, but as anyone who’s ever tried to clean their PC recently will know, these plastic meshes still end up shooting gunge everywhere as soon as you try and remove it, and are generally a right pain in the arse. The PS5’s dust catchers, however, seem like the dream solution. Stick your vacuum next to the dust catcher, and bosh. Job done. More of this on PC please!

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The HDR has always been our pick for the best sniper rifle in Warzone, closely followed by the slightly nippier AX-50. And the reason for this is just how much you can crank up the bullet velocity of the HDR with the right attachments. Our best HDR loadout in Warzone makes use of these attachments to give you an extremely powerful, virtually hitscan sniper rifle that can easily down an enemy with a single shot.

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The long-awaited return of Zombies mode in Call of Duty Cold War has a lot of fans excited. It’s been a while since we’ve had a proper Zombies mode, since the closest we had in Modern Warfare and Warzone was Zombie Royale. This time though, we’re back on the classic zombie hype, so here’s our guide on Zombies in Call of Duty Cold War.

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