Jan 15, 2023
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Sundays are for angling your umbrella so the wind doesn't turn it inside out. Before you duck, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).
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Sundays are for angling your umbrella so the wind doesn't turn it inside out. Before you duck, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).
The weekend is here. Let's give it a cheer! In the thread of WAWAPTWs we're ready to start chatting with you. So what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!
AMD's cheapest eight-core Ryzen 5000 processor has hit a new price low at Amazon UK, making it a great time to grab the Ryzen 7 5700X to upgrade your machine from an older Ryzen model - or build a shiny new one. The CPU is now £185, a 44% drop from its £329 RRP and even cheaper than it was yesterday.
Logitech's G435 Lightspeed headset is down to $30 on Amazon, which is an awesome deal for a model that I've tested and recommended at its original price of $80 (over at RPS sister site Eurogamer). To recap, this headset launched in late 2021, comes with 2.4GHz "Lightspeed" wireless and> Bluetooth, with a lightweight design and in a range of colours - so $30 is an incredible price.
When The Anacrusis launched into early access in January 2022, its retrofuturist take on the co-op FPS instantly delivered on funky sci-fi fun. Yet it was also tempered fun: a brutal AI Director could easily tip manageable chaos into a fatiguing onslaught of fishy alien minibosses, and I still remember my will to persevere being sapped by connectivity issues and a general lack of weight to the otherwise enticing pew-pew gunplay.
Happily, following a year of tweaks and additions, The Anacrusis is in a much better place. Even if that place is still turtleneck-deep in extraterrestrial viscera. Ahead of the game’s first anniversary, I poked developers Stray Bombay for a chat on how their early access approach is working out, the impact of long-awaited mod tools, and what’s next for this most stylish of space shooters.
What makes a good platformer? Christ, I don't know. Why would you open an article with that. Calling Kandria a platformer feels a little reductive, so there's a need to clarify why it works. You play as an android revived several decades after an apocalypse, by a tiny camp of survivors who inevitably need your help. A lot of this help involves, well, platforming. To the point of having nonsensical areas of pure platforming in between you and a destination or secret area. You'll climb, jump, do the little dash thing that recharges when you touch the ground or pick up a hovering lamp thingy. You'll land on a lot of thorny instakill spikes.
So yeh, lots of the old platforming, but it feels more like an exploration and scavenging game, with a side order of light-light-heavy-dodge combat too. And a plot with varied dialogue options and mysteries about the world and its history. It's immediately and consistently fun, but I'm not sure exactly how to recommend it. Hmm.
I've learned to love Apex Legends, having bounced off it hard multiple times. The pace is high, the movement tricky, the guns have like, 18 bullets in a clip and it's really easy to buzz them all into thin-air. But once a few friends held my hand and taught me to be patient and position myself properly, rather than charge into battle at any given opportunity, the game began to click. And what a battle royale it is.
Writing up our big guide on all the upcoming PC games of 2023, I was introduced to a number of smaller games in development I hadn't heard about before. One of them was Broken Roads, an isometric RPG set in a post-apocalypse Australia. The gorgeous artwork was enough for me to click on the Steam page and read more, and while scrolling through the screenshots something strange caught my eye.
It was a screenshot of a fairly traditional RPG dialogue scene, with a panel at the bottom displaying all the possible dialogue options for the player. But what caught my eye was an unusual radial graphic on the right-hand side of the options. Reading on, I discovered that Broken Roads uses a rather unique Moral Compass, one which plots your overall moral stance towards the world and its people with a golden arc. Different decisions may rotate the arc, expand it, contract it, lengthen it, or shorten it. And in so doing, you'll unlock various traits dotted about the Compass, which only remain in effect for as long as that golden arc covers those traits within the wheel.
I can see a dozen different ways in which this Moral Compass may end up being a bad idea in practice. But I don't care. I adore it. And I'm going to play Broken Roads solely so I can see the consequences of my actions in satisfying radial form.
Back in my day, we had to pay hundreds of dollars for a high-end gaming display - but nowadays, you youngsters get them for almost nothing! Look at this $280 Acer Nitro gaming monitor on Newegg. It came out at $600 - and not even that long ago! And now it's $320 off, for a 27-in 1440p 240Hz monitor. It's got a cool curved screen, a VA panel for great contrast, absolutely incredible. When I were a lad, we'd have killed for a display with more than sixteen colours!
The official Valve Steam Deck Docking Station looks great, with DisplayPort and HDMI, ethernet, three USB ports and a design that perfectly fits the Steam Deck for £79. However, delivery times are 1-2 weeks, and you can now get a functionally identical alternative for half the price.
It's the iVoler Steam Deck Dock, which normally costs £49.99/$55.99 but is now down to £37.59 in the UK or $44.99 in the US. I've been testing this model for the past few days; here's why I rate it.