Drop.com, the website formerly known as Massdrop, has taken on Amazon with its own Prime Week of deals. There are around 30 discounted items in all, including headsets and headphones, amps, mechanical keyboards and accessories, with some nice savings on a range of high-end PC gear. Here are some highlights from the sale that might be worth knowing about!
Minecraft genuinely never ceases to amaze me, nor do the people modding it. The texture pack called Brixel by modder Wabbabrick is, in fact, amazing. This recently-released resource pack turns Minecraft's blocks into Lego-inspired creations with a wild level of detail. It looks like it would hurt my eyes and feet in equal measure but gosh I can just imagine what touching its bumpy dirt blocks feels like. Take a look at it in all its glory complete with shaders.
Rise and shine, digital farmers, and circle November 22 on your calendar. That's the day that Farming Simulator 22 is headed out into the field. The next iteration of digital farming has just announced its release date with a heartstring-pulling new trailer and some extra details on new crops to check out. You can spot both right down here.
I'm not gonna be smug about it.
Wait, screw that. Yes I am. Play Wildermyth, you cowards.
Wildermyth was already one of the best games I'd ever played when I wrote about it during a week off in 2019. There was never any pressure to do this. I just had to. I had so many stories. It was doing so many things so well that I couldn't stand waiting any longer to show it to people. Wildermyth does that to you. It brings you joy and drama, and it makes you want to share your stories. Oh and for the record, when I said "If this game doesn't take off like it deserves to in 2020 I will eat my own face", there was an implicit understanding there, see, between reader and writer that... look, I'm not doing it on a technicality.
The year of Sonic celebration continues with more presents and cameos and remasters for the blue blur. If your idea of a swell 30th celebration is more lawn concert than Olympics tie-in, hey there's one of those too. For his official birthday today, Sega have pulled together a big virtual 30th anniversary orchestral concert chock full of Sonic tunes with some other special musical guest appearances too. You can watch it live here below when it kicks off at 8pm BST.
Naughty people are reportedly hiding malware in Steam profile images, so go careful what you download from Valve's gaming platform. Named SteamHide, the malware isn't the picture itself, but is tucked away in its metadata, waiting to be activated by a separate malware downloader. It's not something to worry about if you're using Steam normally - you'd need to be clicking on dodgy emails or visiting dubious websites to even get the extra necessary malware to activate the Steam stuff - but it's worth keeping an eye on, just in case.
I might have to return to Astroneer. I played it a lot when it was first released, but drifted away like George Clooney in the movie Gravity. What’s grabbing my attention now, a whole two years after the initial release? They just added hoverboards in a new update. I will now return to it, also like George Clooney in the movie Gravity, but without the terrible twist.
Out of nowhere, I've recently binged YouTube videos called "What Are People in London Wearing?". In each episode, the host Kofi roams the streets in search of folks dressed in a pleasing manner. He then asks them where they got their various threads from, and even as someone who isn't really into fashion, per se, I find it fascinating.
These videos appeal to my nosiness. Through Kofi, I get to see all the people behind their cool threads. I wish we had a Kofi equivalent in Call Of Duty: Warzone. I need to know who's behind some of the player weapons I've picked up. Why that camo? Why those attachments? Seriously, who are you?
Season Three of Sea Of Thieves, that most piratical of online PvPvE adventures, kicked off last night with some new enemy types and cosmetics and such. The headline feature, though, is a bunch of Pirates Of The Caribbean crossover stuff, hence why the current season is subtitled A Pirate's Life. Yer PotC bits are primarily showing up in the Tall Tale story quests, and last night I played the first two. Through a combination of the game being a bit janky off the back of a big update, us being a bit stupid, and some utter, utter cheese grater sinking our ship, it took us six hours.
The extent of our piratical ineptitude was not suprising. What is, though, is that the Pirates Of The Caribbean stuff in the first two Tall Tales is a relatively small feature, and that the Pirates characters in particular end up being kinda annoying. Rare have adapted Pirates' vibe> more than anything else, and while the rest of the changes are rad, especially the new enemies, you'd better be ready to spend time playing what feels a bit like a non-copyright infringing amusement park called Buccanneers Of The Central Americas.
You are a "child of the state" in this big-eyed action RPG that mixes stylish, speedy combat with slow manga storyboarding to drip-feed a tale of conspiracy, war, and weirdness. A child soldier with special telekinetic powers and a bunch of fellow superhero child friends who fight off alien creatures that plague the world. You will hack, slash, and take your mates out to an inexplicably normal restaurant to discuss the latest drama. "You know what these teenagers need?" said the suspiciously overbearing government of Scarlet Nexus, as they pump another round of kids full of medicine. "More hormones."