For the last six months, I've been slowly picking my way through Company Of Heroes 2 for the first time. I'm about halfway through its campaign at the moment, but the rhythm of calling up replacements and reinforcing my squads hasn't quite been engrained into my hotkey fingers yet. I keep making the mistake of thinking I can just push through with my remaining forces, but as any COH stalwart will know, that kind of road only ever leads to total disaster.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I came to preview the latest build of Company Of Heroes 3's dynamic, Total War-style Italian campaign and seemed to be, you know, actually making some pretty steady progress as I pushed up its mission maps. I was, admittedly, only playing the opening levels of this particular campaign, and I also had the aid of a handy M4A1 Sherman tank providing some welcome backup muscle. But during my four hours with it, I felt more in control of the battlefield than I've ever done while playing COH2. I was making excellent use of its reinforcement options, and heck, I was even remembering to tell units to retreat back to the nearest aid post so I didn’t lose the buffs they'd earned through their new EXP-driven promotions and veterancy bonuses. Then I played a mission from its more linear North African campaign, and had a very rude awakening indeed. Why, hello, frantic pressure and torrents of death bullets from Company Of Heroes 2 again, it's been a while.

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We've all worn the rose-coloured glasses when it comes to old games. It's a real hazard of the job when you started out covering stuff from the 90s. It's less common though, to fall afoul of whatever its opposite is. The uh, yellow-tinted glasses, maybe? My point is that I did you all a disservice when I described Emperor Of The Fading Suns as "an intriguing, ambitious, crap mega 4X" last year. It was a remarkable game, and more remarkably still, its developers Holistic Design Inc. recently updated it with a major patch, 25 years after its original release.

It's a lot better than I remember. And only some of that is down to the patch.

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Some games are just December games. When the air turns biting, I hear their siren song in my bones. They Are Billions. Frostpunk. Phoenix Point. Factorio. None of them are exactly what you would call a Christmas-y game. In fact, they're all pretty bleak and threatening in tone. But they're also amazingly comforting.

Just imagine: sitting down in your favourite chair, electric heat pad on your back, cat on your lap, mug of hot chocolate or coffee by your side. Legions of undead roiling at the gates, trying to break through your cosy little town's defences. Ahhhhh. It's Christmas.

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I knew the hulking Ogryn would be my class in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide as soon as I shot his starting gun: a shotgun which holds a single shell the size of a can of beans. Sounds excessive, but that's the kind of firepower you need when four outcasts face thousands of cultists, mutants, and demons. The follow-up to Vermintide is once again a Left 4 Dead-style cooperative first-person shooter with a fair whack of melee and, having played a lot of the beta and a little after launch, it's a joyously grubby brawl with a great cast of weirdos.

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The RPS Advent Calendar is upon us, but as we open the first door of our end of year countdown, I get the feeling something terrible is waiting on the other side. I can hear the clanking of metal boots in the distance, accompanied by laser fire and the gurgle of orc laughter rubbed raw by some nasty disease. Dare we enter and embrace the chaos lying within?

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*Deep breath* "It's CHRIIIIIIIIISSSSSTMAAAAAAAAAAS>!" We emerged, blinking, into 2022 and, whaddaya know? It was a good year for games. We're feeling extra festive and are raring to count down our games of the year in traditional style. Tear back the little windows and stuff your face with The RPS Advent Calendar 2022!

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Half-Life 2 was the first game I ever played in VR. Back in the primordial days of 2013, I was lucky enough to get my ungainly sausage-mitts on an Oculus Developer's Kit – the prototype headset that eventually led to the Oculus Rift. Understandably given the name, there were not games for the developers kit outside of a few incredibly basic demos. But there was Half-Life 2, for which Valve had implemented a hacky VR mode that you could activate with some console tomfoolery.

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I'd argue that Azeroth's unending expansion has taken the shine off a world that used to positively sparkle. Still, no matter what I think about World Of Warcraft today, it still holds a special place in my heart as an important formative experience.

Even the time capsule that's Classic WoW probably couldn't capture the same buzz of the past, mainly because I, as a being of flesh and bone, am not a teenager anymore. But I'd argue there's one place that still captures the essence of WoW more than WoW itself nowadays: YouTube. Or to be more specific, channels which provide hour-long music and ambience from some of the game's most memorable zones.

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Last time, you decided that dakka is better than overwatch (not Overwatch). It wasn't the most overwhelming victory of this scientific process so far, but it certainly was the loudest. More dakka indeed. This week, I ask you to pick between a cool form of human movement and some cool human speech. What's better: mantling or cool swearing?

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The Crucial P5 Plus is the best value 'second-gen' PCIe 4.0 drive, with sequential speeds up to 6600MB/s that make it ideal for anything from mid-range to high-end gaming rigs or the PS5. Its TLC NAND and DRAM cache also mean that performance remains high even in sustained write scenarios, unlike cheaper QLC/no-DRAM drives.

The Crucial P5 Plus normally costs £100+, but today it's down to £92.51 on Amazon UK - one of the best prices we've seen for this model although not quite the best ever.

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