Let's be clear about one thing: whatever else I say today doesn't deny that building games are in a great state right now. Within just the last few years, we've not only had many releases, but an impressive proportion of well-designed, enjoyable games made with obvious care and enthusiasm. Things, in a word, are good. And yet I keep coming back to Ostriv, and Workers & Resources. Neither are out of early access yet. But they've had me contemplating the nature of a settlement, and the complex relationships between people, leaders, and the land itself, where so many of their peers feel like a dispassionate excercise in placing tokens.

Building games are doing well. But they could be doing more>.

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Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 isn't even out yet and there's already a rumour circulating that, to celebrate the series' 20th anniversary, the game's going to receive a paid "Greatest Hits" map pack featuring a bunch of the classic maps from across the series. We're talking favourites from Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, and Treyarch, all rolled into one mega-bundle.

Of course, it's only a rumour, which means it could be debunked at any moment. But it did get Hayden and I – the resident codders of the RPS Treehouse – thinking. If this rumour turns out to be true, which maps would we like to see return for Modern Warfare 2?

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We're back with a bang, a villainous laugh, and a dose of coronavirus I've brought back from somewhere in Tenerife. The two week drought is broken with a shower of Electronic Wireless Show podcast rain, were we discuss the best villainous breakdowns we've enjoyed in video games. Matthew is sadly away this week because, while my coronavirus dose is mild, like the tingle of delicious Rio Tropical on your tongue, Matthew's is wild and aggressive, like a super-charged Electricity Cop.

In his absence, Nate and I talk about some proper good villains, and even discuss some sensible things like evil cartoon monsters vs. villains you can sort of sympathise with. Handsome Jack? GLaDOS? LeChuck? Andrew Ryan? That's one hell of an awkward dinner party. Plus stick around for a Cavern Of Lies that proves Warhammer 40k is essentially the same as Tumblr.

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Over at Eurogamer, I kind of have a thing for LG's Fast IPS screens. This tech combines the best feature of TN panels - their incredibly fast pixel response times - with the traditional advantages of an IPS screen, namely gorgeous colours and wide viewing angles. These screens pop up in LG's 27GL850 and 27GL83A monitors, but are also used in Dell's even better S2721DGFA - and it's this monitor that's on sale today. With a code available here, you can take an extra £30 off a model that's already seen an £80 discount, dropping the price from £380 to £268 - an incredible deal for a monitor of this specification. I used the code $6ZZXZWLF0WV7D, but your code is likely to be different!

So what is this specification? Well, the S2721DGFA exists right at the sweet spot for gaming monitors too, with a 27-inch screen size, 2560x1440 resolution and 165Hz refresh rate. This spec is good because it's not too hard to drive, even with a mid-range gaming PC, but you still get a noticeable increase in clarity and fluidity compared to your standard 1080p 60Hz monitors. And with the Fast IPS screen that I was talking about earlier, you have a monitor that's equally well-suited to fast-paced, competitive shooters as it is slower-paced and more atmospheric games from a wide range of genres.

I have gone on about the Dell S2721DGFA a few times now, so I'll link to those previous posts so you can find out a little bit more about this monitor - and see how much it used to cost too! Suffice it to say, if you have a look at some reviews you'll see that I'm far from the only fan of this model, so I hope this deal is useful to you! Thanks for joining me once again and I'll see you tomorrow for more deals.

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The Crucial X6 is one of the best portable SSDs on the market, and a ginormous 2TB model is currently discounted to £129 at Amazon, from its normal price of £150. This makes it the cheapest 2TB portable SSD by a significant margin, with alternatives like the Samsung T7 and SanDisk Extreme 2TB costing £191 or more - and an excellent value for a drive of this calibre.

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Last time, you decided that ridiculous spell animations are better than the mangled hands of Ethan Winters. I would've been happy for that one to go either way, so I'm glad that the outcome was closer than I expected. This week, it's a question of whether you leave a place with a song on your lips or your pockets bulging. What's better: an end credits song, or utterly rinsing a place?

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Somewhere at the edges of the galaxy in No Man's Sky lies a large, verdant planet with an abandoned, but functioning, starter ship on it. I left it there in 2016 after discovering a larger ship out in the wilds, but it's a decision that still haunts me to this very day. You see, I was so taken with my new set of wings that I failed to notice it didn't have a functioning hyperdrive attached, which is needed to punch through the atmosphere to visit another solar system. It also turned out that this particular planet didn't have any of the necessary resources to craft a new one either, leaving my only form of escape back in my tiny little starter ship – which, of course, was now nowhere to be seen. I spent hours looking for that little ship, but the planet was so vast that I never saw it again.

Upcoming aerial survival game Forever Skies doesn't have lots of large planets to lose your only means of transportation in, thankfully. In its Steam Next Fest demo at least, the only things I was able to land my makeshift aircraft on were tiny, rusty platforms perched atop decaying skyscrapers on an Earth ruined by disease and an ecological apocalypse. But that fear of getting stranded somewhere I shouldn't be has never left me, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a teensy bit scared of jumping down from my ship and finding I wasn't able to get back up to it again.

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Last month, Rachel and I made the long pilgrammage to Seattle in order to attend PAX West 2022. While we were there we ran around the show floor with a bag full of loose camera equipment, stopping frequently to enthuse about cool video games we'd discovered or to interview someone interesting. At the time, all of these videos were only accessible to our premium supporters. However, as 30 days have passed since we originally shared them, we're now making them free for everyone to enjoy. Surprise!

From an interview with the voice cast of Team Fortress 2 to a comprehensive tour of the show floor, there's something for everyone in this bundle of audio-visual delights. Scroll down to see what we got up to, and remember, if you like what you see please do consider funding content like this via our supporters programme. It truly means an awful lot.

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I love Steam Next Fest season, because you can go from "Oh this is from those devs who did that thing? Huh. Hadn't heard of this," to "holy video game, Batman, this is the absolute business" in the space of a free demo. This is what I experienced with Flat Eye, a story-heavy management sim where you're in charge of a super-advanced gas station, where you harvest personal data from the port-a-loos, and feed the biological matter from those same toilets into your high-tech vending machine. Mmmmm. Flat Eye, the Next Fest demo for which you can download and play right now, is from Night Call devs Monkey Moon. I liked Night Call fine, but I really love the Flat Eye demo.

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The WD Black SN850 is one of our favourite gaming SSDs, and today it's available for just over £100 at Ebay when you use the code SPEND15 to knock 15% off the price. This a good price for one of the fastest SSDs on the market, especially given that it's a PCIe 4.0 model that comes with a heatsink - very useful for PCs and it even meets Sony's strict requirements for the PS5.

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