Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Nostalgic yet unknown is perhaps a good way to describe OU upon first glance. It’s a game clearly designed to mimic the picture book imagination of childhood with its hand-drawn visuals and the innocent silent presence of its protagonist, a young boy named OU and his opossum friend. Even its music is reminiscent of some lost, unknown childhood as we’re lulled into the strange world of U-Chronia with the smooth instrumentation of a single guitar and its occasional percussion. Yet it’s clear with the presence of beasts that threaten your safety and a shadowy clone that this isn’t some peaceful retreat into childhood.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Being told "You have to power through the boring bit until it livens up" often makes me go find something else, but it's worth it with Chorus. The singleplayer spaceship shooter hit Game Pass in June, and all you need to know is: once you power through the boring bit, you get to play as a spacewitch pilot who fights with guns and magic while weaving through the innards of battleships and megastructures. It's one of those good 7/10 games.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This week on The Electronic Wireless Show podcast we give thanks to listener Tom Fakelastname, who emailed in to ask us about the moral quandaries in video games that we feel are the most meaningful. Matthew isn't here this week, which means we are very well behaved. I talk about BioWare games a normal amount, and Nate tries (and, in fairness, succeeds) to find a way to make moral choices a thing that you can apply to the sort of games he likes. Not Age Of Empires II this time, though.

Because there's no Matthew, I change the Cavern Of Lies into a cavern of moral judgement for Nate, and make him run a gauntlet of some of the most important choices in Dragon Age Inquisition with no context. He turns out to be both authoritarian and kind of wholesome as an Inquisitor.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Revealed at Gamescom Opening Night Live, Atlas Fallen is an upcoming action RPG being developed by Deck 13 Interactive, the folks behind The Surge games. It's eschewing the robotic antics of its predecessor in favour of a Middle Eastern-inspired semi-open world filled with towering blocks of sand, rolling dunes, and mahoosive beasties.

I managed to see a brief 30-minute presentation of the game here at Gamescom, which gave off the impression that it's shaping up to satisfy those craving a AA title to plonk on their shelf. I've got to say that in action that combat really looks good, too.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

"The thing we're doing with The Dark Pictures is exploring different sub genres of horror," explains game director Tom Heaton. The Dark Pictures Anthology is, well, a horror anthology, each a compact standalone scary game where you explore and deal with QTEs and hazardous choices, in the vein of Supermassive's smash hit Until Dawn. The idea, says Heaton, is that each one takes one or two horror sub-genres and mines them, maybe subverting the tropes here and there. Up next is The Devil In Me, inspired by the infamous Chicago serial killer H. H. Holmes.

"What I think we decided with The Dark Pictures games early on was that the next game in the series would be very different from the last game, because we want to keep it fresh, we want to give the audience new," Heaton explains. So, after a zombie ghost ship in Man Of Medan, the psychological witch hauntings in Little Hope, and military squad vs. vampire aliens in House Of Ashes, Heaton pitches The Devil In Me as kind of Saw meets The Shining. It's a serial killer slasher in a weirdo hotel, and it has a true crime element. And I have to say, it's probably the most excited I've been for a Dark Pictures entry.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A slice-of-life game about a demon punk rock band having a quarter-life crisis? Dead Pets Unleashed looks exactly like my cup of tea, or rather, a fizzling concoction of Red Bull, battery acid, and popping candy. After launching a Kickstarter campaign, developers Triple Topping have released a Dead Pets Unleashed demo, so players can get a taste of the highs and lows of band life and, after playing the demo myself, it’s definitely worth checking out. You'll wanna turn your speakers up for this one.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Feeling proud is a nice sensation isn't it? I've felt proud a number of times at this year's Gamescom so far, marked first by an excellent McDonald's choice (honey crisp chicken and bacon) on the first evening, followed by a doner kebab that put it to shame. And in a non-savoury twist, today it was being a member of the first squad to complete the Warhammer 40K: Darktide demo mission – the sweetest feeling of them all, and a perfect team-bonding exercise.

The bonus emotions? Surprise and... not being so surprised. Surprise that we'd accomplished such a feat, but not so much surprise in the game itself. It was, as expected, a good co-op FPS time! But a very familiar one.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Unnervingly tall gaming monitors aren’t Samsung’s only hardware to get a Gamescom showing. Last night also saw the reveal of the Samsung 990 Pro SSD, a premium designed-for-gaming drive with read speeds up to 7450MB/s – nudging the theoretical limits of its PCIe 4.0 interface. If it actually reaches such speeds in the wild, once it launches in October, that would make it the fastest consumer PCIe 4.0 drive yet. And write speeds aren’t far behind either, at up to 6900MB/s.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I'm a sucker for a pretty mechanical keyboard, but usually the keebs I'm most enamoured with have price tags to match - think £100 to £200 minimum, and think the upper end of that scale if you want a keyboard that looks like a giant ice cube or weighs a solid 2.3kg. Happily though, there are also now a range of much more affordable keyboards that still include the unusual colour schemes, high-quality components and brilliant typing experiences that make mechanical keyboards so fascinating to me. One of the best makers in this space is Akko, and today a range of their best full-size and compact keyboards are on sale at Amazon UK.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

240Hz monitors offer a noticeable increase in motion clarity for fast-paced gaming, and today is a great day to pick one up at a discounted price. We've got two models to show you this time, one 1440p 240Hz model at the higher end and one 1080p 240Hz model that costs less.

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