I went into my High On Life hands-on session with one expectation: its talking alien guns will annoy the heck out of me. But in a surprising turn of events, I left thinking the game was a real highlight of my time in Cologne's multi-hall maze of excellent people and overpriced schnitzel.

And most importantly, the guns didn't annoy me at all! In fact, their craic contributed a great deal to my enjoyment of the strangest FPS I've played in a while - one where I was forever grinning at the screen like an idiot. If you're a fan of Rick And Morty from before it got weird to be a fan of Rick And Morty (or Squanch Games' back catalogue, or general bizarro laughs), this is one for the wishlist.

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The Crucial P2 is a great value NVMe SSD, and now the 2TB model is down to £117 at Amazon UK - an incredibly low price for a drive that can hit 2400MB/s. The 1TB model has also been discounted in the same sale, from £86 to £63, making it cheaper than many SATA SSDs of the same size.

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Amazon is running one of its periodic Warehouse sales, offering a further 20% off the listed price at the checkout on a wide range of used items. This has historically been a great time to pick up PC components and peripherals in like new condition for much lower than new prices, so let's see what we can find, shall we?

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While mooching around Samsung’s Gamescom booth, waiting for their 990 Pro SSD reveal, I took the opportunity to play with an altogether more unusual addition to their hardware catalogue. The Samsung Odyssey Ark, for the unfamiliar, is a kind of all-in-one entertainment screen: a mammoth 55in Mini LED panel that can act as a desktop gaming monitor or living room TV, complete with honking great speakers and built-in support for all the big game streaming services so you can play on it without a PC or console. Unlike other monitors of this magnitude, it can also rotate into portrait mode, leaving the top curve towering over you like an unsympathetic Victorian headmaster.

I actually enjoy a touch of design madness creeping into the occasional piece of PC gear, regardless of whether it can hang with the best gaming monitors that sensible people might buy. What I experienced with the Odyssey Ark, however, was a device that too often veered onto the wrong side of senseless – when it was even working properly.

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New World is getting its first major expansion in the form of Brimstone Sands, an arid endgame location for players to contest that comes bundled with a bunch of early game streamlining, and a brand-new weapon, too. I got hands-on with the expansion's first hour or so and had a chat with the game's creative director about it all. One year on, is it everything the game needs to satisfy long-time fans and attract newcomers? Yes! Well. Maybe...?

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I'm going to level with you: I'm not a GSG player. I play strategy, sure, but grand> strategy has always been a bit beyond me. I'm a fundamentally un-grand person; I spend most days dressed like a 14-year-old fan of Tony Hawk, I do not like olives or scallops, and I'm unable to predict the consequences of actions if they exist outside of, say, a 12 month timeframe. A game like Victoria 3, where the whole point is making decisions that have country-wide effects and outcomes years in the future, is essentially operating in a different language to any I understand.

I'm trying to learn new languages, though, so it's not an unwelcome challenge. The problem is that previewing Victoria 3 is quite an advanced level to dive in, the Paradox GSG equivalent of being a live translator for a UN summit when you're only just about able to read the French version of The Famous Five. In a presentation before I and others were let loose on the better part of a week with the game, it was claimed that Victoria 3 is the best yet for onboarding newcomers, with a deep and detailed tutorial system. And to that I say: kinda. Luckily, the AI in Victoria 3 is so advanced it's better at playing the game than I am.

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Of all the games I saw at this year's Gamescom, sci-fi team-based shooter Hyenas easily claims the title of "Most Confusing Overall Experience". Bouncing between appointments in this sea of booths and lanyards was jarring, but I'd eventually settle in after a few minutes of reconfiguring my brain to whatever presentation or control scheme was placed in front of me. Hyenas never gave me a chance.

I sat in a 20-minute presentation of the game and tried my level best to understand SEGA's stab at a live-service FPS. Instead, I exited the booth with whiplash... and a sense of curiosity. Somewhere inside the game's insufferable tone is a kernel of cleverness, I just need to get my mitts on it to confirm my suspicions. Otherwise, it's very difficult to really> understand whether it can survive in such a saturated space.

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Hallo! Monday is a bank holiday for us here in the UK, so we'll leave you with Alice Bee until the rest of us return on Tuesday (well, aside from those of us taking more time). This is the last big holiday weekend of summer, a traditional time to get out in the countryside or down to the seaside. Could use a little heat and joy with the terrible, terrible winter to come. Anyway! What are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!

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Not since the cruelly overlooked Blast-off has a game so accurately pressed the faster!> button in my brain.

Neodash is a type of racing game that pops up relatively often; a time trial crossed with an obstacle course and a little of what I suppose is the endless runner. Picture Trackmania but with the courses condensed into short bursts of high speed dodging and you're basically there. They're often very throwaway and don't really hold my interest for long. Neodash grabs hold immediately.

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The WD Black SN770 is a good middle-of-the-road PCIe 4.0 SSD, outperforming PCIe 3.0 SSDs while costing less than the very fastest PCIe 4.0 models. It launched at £125 for a 1TB size earlier this year, but now it's down to £84 where it's rather more fetching. The 2TB size has also been reduced and is even better value at £152. Here's why we rate these SSDs - and where to find them at the lowest price.

Let's do the 'where to find them' bit first. It's quite simple: WD's UK store is offering the 1TB at the best price right now, while Ebuyer is the place to go if you'd prefer the larger 2TB model.

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