The studio co-founded by former Valve writer Chet Faliszek and former Riot designer Kimberly Voll have released The Anacrusis into early access today, a Left 4 Dead-like set in 70s space. Much like its undead predecessor, this is a game where four players team up and pew pew through waves of alien nasties. But it’s not as despairing as its zombified brethren. This is upbeat and colourful and at times, really quite silly.

Yes, it's still pretty similar to Left 4 Dead, but is home to a few things that help separate it from its zombified brethren. To test this stuff out, we had a full team of four in our hands-on preview session at the very end of last year – myself, Imogen (RPS in peace), Katharine, and Chet himself, who steered us through encounters with supreme patience. All in all, we sampled a ‘full run’, so a total of four levels, each with lots of, “Oh god, oh no,” moments. And it’s safe to say we had a lot of fun with it.

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Valorant Episode 4 has kicked off, bringing with it new agent Neon who - like that famous blue hedgehog - goes fast. They're able to sprint and slide around maps at blistering speeds, which might seem at odds with the game's tactical pace, but they fit into the roster nicely. Thing is, you've got to be brave enough to get the most out of their move set, which rewards ballsy plays over careful corner turns. It's safe to say I struggled to break out of my tentative shell, but when I did? Hoo boy, what a thrill.

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Fatherly axe-‘em-up God of War is out on PC this week, and I’ve been dragging my disappointing son around the Nine Realms to see how it copes with the jump from PlayStation to Windows. The answer: pretty well! Like previous marquee Sony port Horizon Zero Dawn, this is a game that already looked lovely on console, and the extra muscle of even a modest PC rig can deliver sizeable boosts to both visual quality and frames-per-second.

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Much has been made of how long games take to complete this week. After Dying Light 2 developers Techland boasted that it would take 500 hours to fully complete the game over the weekend, the internet's collective groan over the revelation was reportedly heard from the far reaches of space. Personally, I think it's a preposterous figure for a single-player game, but as someone who also maintains an active spreadsheet of all my various playtime stats (yes, really), it also got me thinking. Is 500 hours really so nonsensical in the grand scheme of things? I asked the team what their most played game on Steam is to find out.

And as it turns out, Dying Light 2's 500 hour completion time ain't got nothing on some of our favourite time hogs...

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Wordle has engrossed me for a couple of weeks, along with much of the rest of the internet. It's also a free, simple word game, meaning it's relatively easy to recreate. Naturally, other developers are building their own twists on its core.

Among them, Absurdle is my favourite, an "adversarial version" of the game where the winning word changes as you guess. I'm also fond of Sweardle, however, a version designed for four-letter words.

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Microsoft don't intend to do away with selling individual games anytime soon. That's the takeaway from Xbox head Phil Spencer's recent interview with the New York Times. "The retail market continues to be very strong and grow. So let’s make sure we offer our customers choice between subscriptions and transactions," says Spencer.

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We know a little of what season two of Hitman 3 will contain, including the PC debut of VR, something called Elusive Target Arcade, and the arrival of one Mr. Ray Tracing. All of this will be revealed in earnest in just two days time though, with a "reveal stream" on January 13th.

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Ever since Alice Bee first played Strange Horticulture, she's raved about the mysteries and merchandising of running a weird plant shop. Lots of studying and cataloguing plants, serving customers, and feeling proud of your wee business. Plus solving mysteries in ways only an occult plant shop owner can. Not long to wait now, as the makers announced today that the game will launch on the 21st of January.

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The director of Moon and Warcraft is still dreaming of making a movie version of Full Throttle, the classic LucasArts adventure game about rough 'n' tough bikers and lovers. A year ago Duncan Jones released a tentative script he banged out in a fit of procrastination, and in 2022 he's still thinking of the smell of asphalt. In a cheeky wee tweet over the weekend, he asked fans to bug LucasOwners Disney to let him do it.

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As we’ve already seen from the demo, the PC version of Monster Hunter Rise spruces itself up considerably from the Nintendo Switch original. It’s not a match for Monster Hunter World on overall visual fidelity and detail, but the upside is that it’s easy to go a-huntin’ at high frame rates even if you’re on low end hardware. To whit, Monster Hunter Rise’s PC requirements go even lower than World’s, only asking for a GT 1030 or Radeon RX 550 at minimum.

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