When we last saw Amicia and Hugo de Rune at the end of A Plague Tale: Innocence back in 2019, things were looking up for the orphaned rat wranglers. They'd escaped the clutches of the French Inquisition and the hordes of plague rats following in their wake, and the pair were hopeful about finding a cure for the cursed macula flowing through Hugo's veins.

Alas, when I pick up their journey in chapter six of Asobo's upcoming sequel, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Amicia is having a particularly terrible time of it. Not only is she suffering from an open head wound, leaving her unsteady on her feet, but rumours are flying in the nearby pilgrim camp about something bad having gone down in the last city they passed through. Exactly what is hard to say with five chapters' worth of context missing from my preview build, but the pack of guards who are hot on the siblings' trail quickly make it plain: several men died back in that city, and they're pointing the finger squarely at Amicia's knife, slingshot and crossbow.

Read more

Razer's Viper Ultimate is one of my all-time favourite gaming mice - and now it's a massive 72% off at Amazon UK. That brings it to £48, an incredible deal for an ultralight mouse with optical switches, an ambidextrous design and HyperSpeed wireless. You even get a free wireless charging dock with it - what's not to like?

Read more

Humble Bundle remains an excellent place to pick up video game collections at rock-bottom prices, and today's 2K Megahits bundle is a doozy. It contains $660 worth of games from the publisher, including series like Borderlands, XCOM, Civilization and Bioshock, for $16 (or the equivalent in your local currency, this is a local sale). That's a reasonable price for even one of these games, let alone the 18 games included in this bundle.

Read more

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?

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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:

Read more