I recently spent a couple of weeks with the Roccat Pyro as my main work and gaming keyboard, and it was a lovely bit of kit for the price; full-size mechanical keyboards rarely cost under £100, yet here was one that started at £90 and had everything a typical PC gamerist could ask for. Now, what with it being Black Friday and all, it’s hit a new lowest price of £60 – a 33% saving.
For such anti-riches I can’t recommend any other tenkey-equipped, fully mechanical keyboard more; indeed, it held the ‘best cheap mechanical gaming keyboard’ title on our best keyboards list well before this discount revealed itself. The only thing missing here is USB pass-through, but N-key rollover, a volume dial, a detachable wrist rest, macro recording and RGB backlighting are all part of the deal.
Sadly I haven’t found such a drastic saving for US buyers, though Amazon has sliced off a few dollars to bring it down to $75.
Black Friday is here. There are only deals. Deals on games. Deals on monitors. Deals on graphics cards, in the sense that they’re slightly less of a rip-off. The deals converge, parting the clouds and blackening the sky until but one shines through: £110 off the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X. Hey. That’s pretty good.
The Apocalypse came, and it was a shambles. The angels, you see, the divine powers, they did not anticipate that the world had changed, and instead of a hundred million people still impressed by hot food, they had to deal with 8 billion who had long since invented the AK47, and when the holy fires came, humanity tooled up.
This is how the Sin Collector Colon Repentless starts. I am enjoying it a great deal.
With hundreds of games and more added monthly, the Xbox Game Pass is an incredibly worthwhile purchase for anyone who wants to fill their library with as many PC games as possible – for as little cash as possible. It hasn’t been left out of the Black Friday deals party, as Argos are offering a three-month subscription at a discounted price.
Keyboards are one of, if not the most, integral part of a PC set up. Second only to the monitor. Therefore, finding a good one is imperative - especially for anyone spending long stints gaming while using said keyboard. Within the stellar range of gaming keyboards on offer, there are a few different types: ones with lights, mechanical, compact, wireless - I could go on. The beauty of Fnatic's offering is that it covers most bases, so you really can't go wrong with it.
Katharine and I went hands-on with Babylon’s Fall last week, that online action RPG by PlatinumGames which falls in and out of memory as the years tick by. Still, when an invitation to the third phase of its ongoing closed beta test arrived, I couldn’t help but get excited. These are the folks behind NieR: Automata and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, after all, and now they’re making a live-service, co-op slasher. Sign. Me. Up.
As it stands, the closed beta only showed a very small, very early build of the game, but we’ve got some thoughts. Combat, exploration, and co-op were all on offer here, and there’s a fair amount to unpack. Look beyond the early build jank and there’s definitely potential.
This week, based almost entirely on the fact that we have been enjoying Rio Tropicale (other fizzy drinks are available) the Electronic Wireless Show podcast is doing an episode all about our favourite drinks in games! We didn't think we'd manage to get a whole show out of it, but boy did we.
Also tune in to learn about Matthew's new (and extremely one-sided) rivalry with an Olympic swimmer, a cavern of lies featuring bar tender Ed Harris, and a digression so self-indulgent we talk about how self-indulgent we are, and decide that it is a good thing>.
Recently, I’ve moved out of the city and into a little village in the middle of nowhere. Look outside the window and I see trees, maybe a little house nestled atop a hill. I walk past sheep and hope they don’t shuffle away from me this time, as it could mean we’re finally mates. At night it gets really dark, darker than you think is possible. An owl screeches and it scares the bejeezus out of me.
Yeah, it’s nice out here. But getting into the village by car is a challenge. The roads are wobbly and narrow, with little patience for noisy machines. This means I’ve had to stop and let other cars pass a lot>. At first it was irritating, but now I’ve come to enjoy it. Getting a wave or a flash of the lights warms the heart and can turn a bad day into a good one. It strikes me that multiplayer games lack this fleeting comradery, which is a shame.
Don’t let Let’s Build A Zoo's appearance fool you. It has the gorgeous pixel art and presentation of a classic tycoon game, as well as all the simulation aspects you’d ever want. But buried under that business management exterior is a game equally interested in exploring moral choices, and one that leaves me thankful it pauses before I have to make a decision.
Anyone who’s seen our guide to the best early Black Friday SSD deals will know there are serious savings to be had on the WD Blue SN550. Now, though, the newer and even faster WD Blue SN570 has been throughly Black Friday’d as well, hitting new price lows in both the UK and US.