Last night at The Game Awards, we learned that not only will there be a Hades 2, but it will be making the absolutely correct choice of letting Zagreus step aside to make way for a new protagonist. This time around we'll be playing as Melinoë, modelled after the Greek goddess of nightmares and madness. She's also Zag's half-sister — yet another of the dozens of children, step-children, and foster-children of Hades knocking about the place — which brings me to my main take-away from the newly-confirmed existence of a Hades sequel: the title character is a really bad dad.

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Roll three dice and get all 3s! Yeah! Worm eyes! That must mean it's day 9 of the RPS Advent Calendar. But wait a second. There's something funny about your dice. You cheatin' me? Oh, hang on, they're just pizza dice. Well in that> case.

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It's been a full year since ex-BioWare boss Aaryn Flynn and his new studio Inflexion announced Nightingale at The Game Awards. In case you've forgotten, Nightingale is a PvE crafting survival game with a strong Victoriana vibe, but since our chat with them back at Summer Games Fest in June, and an early access delay into the first half of 2023 to accommodate the switch to Unreal Engine 5, we haven't heard too much about the game.

I got to natter with Flynn, director of production Leah Summers, and art director Neil Thompson earlier this week, ahead of the debut of a new trailer for Nightingale at The Game Awards this evening. They filled me in on how the game's blend of fairies and reality-hopping realmwalkers has progressed over the past year - and it turns out that players have had a lot to do with it.

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The makers of Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun and Desperados 3 have been thinking a lot about real-time tactics recently. Not just because they’re knee-deep in making their next tactics game at the moment, currently known as Codename Süßkartoffel (the word for "Sweet Potato" in their native German), but because they feel the genre as a whole doesn’t quite convey what’s so special about their catalogue of excellent stealth ‘em ups anymore. It’s a fair cop – despite appearing in our best strategy games list for many years, even I’ve struggled to come up with a succinct way of describing them. Thus, it’s time for a change, say the studio.

In a blog post published today on Mimimi Games’ website, the studio announced they’re going to be referring to their work as “Stealth Strategy” games going forward, and they’re hoping this new genre label will help prospective players better understand their special blend of silent assassination tactics. This kind of shift isn’t without its challenges, though, so I caught up with the team at Mimimi to talk more about this newfound shift, and how it’s going to lay the foundations for what’s to come in Codename Süßkartoffel.

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Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is easily one of the best games I've played this year. Alas, I couldn't vote for its rightful spot in the RPS Advent calendar because it's only on Nintendo Switch, and would out me as somehow who quite enjoys the way anime south Londoners replace rude words with "sparking" or "snuffing". Still, I will write about the game here! Sorry supporters.

Anyway, what I want to talk about is Xenoblade 3 – so far, at least – never losing sight of its inner tutorial. I've been hit with new, sometimes dizzying tutorials, tens of hours into the game's story. Rather than being bummed out by this, I'm ecstatic. In fact, I'd argue it's what makes the experience so special.

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Since release last Friday, The Callisto Protocol devs at Striking Distance Studio have been, I can only imagine, catastrophically hard at work on the PC build. The game was almost unplayable on PC because shader compilation was causing stuttering whenever anything new happened for the first time, which is not ideal in any game, but especially not an atmospheric horror game with jump scares. It's hard to be terrified by something if the game pauses for over a second when it happens.

Anyway>, the point is that a patch was released over the weekend, and another yesterday. I'm out of town right now, so I haven't been able to install the second, but I did play test the first one, and whaddaya know? The Callisto Protocol ran smooth for me, using a PC with the recommended specs.

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I know it's day eight of the RPS Advent Calendar, but there's no time for that. A serial killer is stalking the streets of Kamurocho, and you're the only detective who can solve the case!

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The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is one of AMD's fastest gaming CPUs - and the only one on that list that runs on cheap, widely available AM4 motherboards with better value DDR4 RAM. That's probably why the 5800X3D is reportedly AMD's most popular CPU by sales - and it's also why this deal is coming to the fore. Right now, you can pick up this fast AF CPU for $300 thanks to an Ebay code (JOLLY15), a hefty reduction from its launch price of $450.

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The Crucial P5 Plus is one of those drives that turn up in these deals articles a lot. That's because it's designed to undercut the likes of the WD SN850, Seagate Firecuda 530 and Samsung 980 Pro, offering slightly slower sequential speeds at a lower price point. That tradeoff is one that I'd make in almost every situation, as you'll definitely notice the extra money in your wallet more than you'll notice a fractional difference in game load times!

The P5 Plus's 1TB model is the one discounted today, with a drop to £90.86 - that's the lowest price we've ever recorded for this model and a good value for a high-end SSD suitable for PC and PS5.

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Christmas is, somehow, just over two weeks away. I haven't bought anything for anyone yet, but Team Fortress 2 has already started handing out Stuffed Stockings containing christmas-ey gear for anyone who logs in before January 7th. If cosmetics aren't enough to get you in a festive mode, the Smissmass 2022 update also adds five new community maps.

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