As the nights grow colder and we seek the warm, sweaty embrace of a VR headset to while away our evenings with, HTC have kicked off their Black Friday deals early this year with a whole week of deals on their various Vive headsets. There are savings of up to £250 to be had here across all of their Vive headsets, including the full Vive Cosmos and Cosmos Elite kits, and their eye-tracking Vive Pro Eye.
Within 60 seconds I was dead and laughing. Halo Infinite's multiplayer is a finely tuned mechanism for delivering explosions and dopamine. Developers 343 Industries did whatever the opposite of a jumpscare is this week, delighting deathmatch dilly-dalliers with a surprise release of their classical arena shooter. It's a beta, they insist. But we all know it's the proper game because they've had their betas already (excuse me, "flights").
Also, look, this thing is impeccable. Clean, powerful shots trace across immaculate skyboxes, straight into the shining dome of your armoured clunkperson, with a frightening thud that is satisfying even in death. There are problems, of course, but most reside outside the actual shootouts, which are frenetic, zappy confrontations longtime Halo players will savour.
During Battlefield 2042's week of early access for people who paid extra, players were more forgiving of bugs and wonk with the expectation that it would be fixed by a launch patch. Well, the game is out today, the launch patch has hit, and the game is still in a bit of a state. 78% of the 5500-odd player reviews on Steam are negative right now, with many complaining about crashes, poor performance, and more. Dice have said they plan to launch two patches in the next month.
Back when Black Friday was only just revving up its deals engines, I asked you – the lovely RPS readership – to tell us about your hardware. And it turns out that just like in 2019, your collective favourite gaming mouse is the Logitech G502. Truly, a timeless classic of clicks and scrolls.
Of course, the G502 has come in a few different flavours, but you can now get one of the most recent models at the lowest price it’s ever been (at least in the UK). Amazon has the Logitech G502 SE Hero for £34: an entire pound less than the standard G502 Hero has ever dipped to, most recently during Prime Day 2021.
US denizens aren’t missing out either, as the G502 SE Hero is $33 at Best Buy in their own Black Friday sale. That’s not quite as cheap as its all-time low of $28, but its still a very good price on a very good mouse. The G502 SE Hero is essentially the classic G502 Hero with some white go-faster stripes – there’s been no funny business making adverse changes to keep the costs down.
Microsoft's Phil Spencer says he is "evaluating all aspects of our relationship with Activision Blizzard and making ongoing proactive adjustments" in the wake of the Wall Street Journal's report on alleged misconduct and criminal behaviour within the publisher. Spencer made the comments in an email sent to Microsoft staff and seen by Bloomberg.
Heaven's Vault is a puzzle game about translating a fictional, ancient language, but it's also a rich narrative game. If you want to spend more time in its world, with its story and characters but without the puzzles (or space-sailing), then good news: Heaven's Vault is now available as a two volume novel from Jon Ingold, the original game's narrative director.
I had my first eggnog latte of the year yesterday, which means that like Black Friday, the actual> holiday season is officially upon us. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules. For many of us, me included, that means stuffing our faces with delicious treats like we’re in training for Fat Bear Week. What's your favourite? Mine's the lebkuchen hearts with apricot filling, plus anything with marzipan.
The point I’m trying to get to is that this isn’t really a slim and sexy time of year for me. More of a fat and cuddly (but still sexy) season. On the other hand, this Alienware m15 R4 gaming laptop is both slim and sexy, as well as a full $500 off in Dell's early Black Friday sales.
It's been a few weeks since I came down on the side of basically liking Age Of Empires 4. Lukewarm praise, perhaps, but it seems to be doing well, and that makes me glad. We've needed an RTS revival for ages, right? And this one is good, if a bit safe.
For the last few weeks I've been puzzling over the lingering feeling that it could have been more ambitious. Why> do I think it could have pushed the trireme out further? Is it possible to make a modern RTS that captures the best of the classics without simply rehashing them? Has it even been done already and gone unrecognised?
I can't remember why I picked this theme, but for this episode of The Electronic Wireless Show podcast I wanted to talk about AI characters - as in, characters that are, in game, an artificial intelligence of some kind. This definition does cause some trouble. After all, is not every character in a game that isn't player controlled an AI character, fn fn fn?
No, because you all know what I mean and so does Nate. Matthew doesn't, know, and had prepared a list of just, companion characters. Don't worry, he actually pulls out some really good examples. We talk about a lot of games this week, not least because I didn't prepare a Cavern Of Lies again. Sorry. There is also a lot of talk about clones, and what Matthew would do with clones of himself (e.g. shove them out of an airlock).
Supercars are boring. That one on Forza Horizon 5’s front cover? Don’t care how fast it goes, mate. Oh, goes from 1 to 60 in 2.7 seconds does it? Yeah, well, that's how long it takes to prepare this knuckle sandwich. No, but seriously, they’re all the same to me: just wedges of carbon fibre with wheels. I’m sure the engineering is marvelous and the innovation groundbreaking. But let’s be honest, in videogames they’re virtually all the same.
My Forza Horizon 5 fantasy doesn’t involve Lamborghinis or Ferraris. In fact, it’s the complete opposite of opulence. Mexico’s roads are for me and my mundane companions. The Volvo Estate, the Ford Focus, the Honda Civic. The everyday vehicles that make up for their lack of speed with heaps of character. I just wish there were more to choose from.