Last time, you decided that a really big unreal place is better than going undercover. Good. Very good. Great deciding, reader dear. I'm wholly impartial, of course, but I am glad you haven't forced me to come up with some contrived reason to jam a really big unreal place back into the running. We can continue. This week, it's a question of jarring vs. juicy. What's better: physics freakouts or beautiful food?
The Hitman games are often good and usually fun, it’s fair to say, particularly the recent World Of Assassination trilogy. Ian Hitman’s turn in the two films released about his adventures has been rougher to recommend, though. That’s why it’s simultaneously disappointing and awesome to learn that Guardians Of The Galaxy, The Suicide Squad and – shudder – Slither director James Gunn narrowly missed his target when he pitched a Hitman movie.
Third person skater shooter Rollerdrome has some really cool weapons, but what is it that makes them so special? I mean, there’s only four of them, and you’re forced to constantly perform tricks to regain ammo, which doesn't make them easy to use. I think it’s because of their more literal significance in the game. Rollerdrome threatens you with multiple enemy types called Houseplayers, all formidable, especially in the heat of battle when they combine their efforts. Luckily, the four distinct weapons you’re equipped with act as an equaliser; each weapon is a solution for a particular enemy. Developers Roll7 could have easily added a bunch of copied and pasted guns from every generic shooter, but instead they were more intentional about the weapons they included, with each weapon complimenting the gunplay and the game as a whole.
The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 is a cheaper, better-value version of the Ryzen 5600X - the CPU took the world by storm when Ryzen 5000 launched back in 2020. With six cores and 12 threads to access, you get good performance in modern game engines, while the higher single-core speeds introduced with this generation of AMD processors allows for better performance in single-core-limited (often older) games. It's a potent combination that makes the 5600X - and the 5600 - the best value AMD CPUs for gaming out there.
Normally the 5600 retails for £173, in comparison to £185 for the 5600X, but today it's down to £150 on Amazon, coming within £10 of the best price we've ever seen on this model.
During the first wave of RTX 3080 reviews, when we had no idea of the graphics card supply shortage to come, I remember being really impressed by the Asus Tuf Gaming model. It didn't look particularly special on the outside, but it consistently beat even more expensive models in terms of thermals and performance. I resolved to get one for myself, but things went mad and I only eventually managed to get one through my work. Now though, you can get the upgraded version of that high-performer at a more reasonable price: £650 for the Tuf Gaming OC V2, an overclocked model offering excellent performance for £400 below this model's UK RRP.
Playing settlement-building survival game Farthest Frontier has me planning a lot. I'm planning outposts to mine distant resources. I'm planning road and neighbourhood layouts to optimise movement and happiness. I'm planning defences to fend off bandits. But most of my thought is going on farming, planning my crop rotations to optimise fertility and yields. Finally, I have a use for everything school taught me about the three-field system and the nitrogen cycle.
As PC setups are carefully packed away and booths are dismantled, the curtain closes on another PAX West and it's time to say goodbye to Seattle (for now anyway). After four packed days of demos, panels, interviews, and lots of fruit smoothies, Liam and I are completely PAXed out, but we're not done quite yet.
Below you'll find something a little different from our usual daily round-ups. For our last day at PAX, we've done a super, uber, mega round-up on the entire event. We list off our favourite panel moments, the best game demos we played, and our general opinion on how the overall convention went. Click play below to see one of our last videos from the event:
The Elgato Stream Deck MK.2 is a kind of funny thing, a little plastic box with 15 plastic buttons. Each button has a tiny screen behind it, and when pressed can do any number of things - launching a program, changing to a new scene in a stream, adjusting your media volume, muting a microphone or sending out an alert. It's ideal for automation, giving you an easy way to trigger scripts or shortcuts that speed up the dreary parts of your job or your favourite game, and of course for game streamers it's invaluable. The MK.2 model normally costs £139, but today at Currys you can pick one up for £97 using the code GAMING30.
The Samsung 980 Pro is one of the fastest NVMe SSDs on the market, making excellent use of the PCIe 4.0 spec, and today a 2TB model has been reduced to £184 on Amazon UK. The usual price for this model is £252, making this a sweet 27% reduction.
A truly dynamic story is a goal game designers have strived toward for decades. Worldwalker Games' Wildermyth gets closer to that goal than most. In this spellbinding RPG, players guide bands of heroes through a lifetime of adventure, embarking on dozens of short, whimsical quests wherein they grow, age, and quite literally evolve, with the potential to transform into walking trees, celestial beings, and anthropomorphised crows.
Wildermyth is an inspired example of narrative design, with some nifty tactical combat to boot. But when Nate Austin, his wife Annie, and his brother Doug began developing the game around eight years ago, the weight of emphasis between storytelling and combat was very much the other way around.