After two hours of XDefiant, I came away with a rather different thought in my mind than I expected. More than anything, I was impressed at just how good we have it in the multiplayer FPS genre at the moment. Apex Legends, Warzone 2, Overwatch 2, Valorant, Rainbow Six Siege. That's some unbelievably tough competition. XDefiant has to either give players something completely different, or absolutely nail> the basics. It's opted for the second path, and having played several matches against a medley of press people and content creators, I'm not convinced Ubisoft's new arena shooter is up to the challenge.

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The weirdest, wonderfullest ultralight gaming mouse, Cooler Master's MM720, is down to $16.99 at Amazon compared to a launch price of $52.99. This is an awesome pickup at almost any price, but at $17 you need> to consider this - even if you've never tried an ultralight mouse before - or if you've already got a full collection.

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When Immortals Of Aveum was first revealed in December last year, there wasn't a lot to know. After a hands-off preview last week, I can tell you it's a singleplayer first-person shooter but with magic, which would sound a lot like Forspoken if I described it without context, and it actually looks pretty cool. Mainly, though, I can tell you that I'm never going to forget whose idea this game was.

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I entered a sterile biodome with nothing but myself present and nothing to do but cry, spit, and piss. This is what science looks like. From these scant three verbs, you can create a whole world in The Barnacle Goose Experiment, combining substances to spontaneously generate whole other forms of matter, life, landscapes, and oddities. Made by Everest Pipkin, it's part idle game, part clicker, and wholly fascinating. Best of all, you can play for free in your browser.

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After debuting at £320, the Core i5 13600K has remained resolutely at that price thanks to limited supply and high demand. Now, the 13600K has seen its first major discount, dipping to around the £300 mark at Amazon UK. Meanwhile, the same CPU without integrated graphics, the 13600KF, is down to £281.

These are solid deals for a great-performing 14-core, 20-thread CPUs that excel in gaming and content creation - especially given that you can pick up a motherboard that allows you to carry over the DDR4 memory in your existing build to keep costs down.

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Last week it was revealed that after literal years of pushing, American McGee is officially not getting a third Alice game. We at the Electronic Wireless Show podcast take a look at the history of Alice: Asylum, the game that would never be, as well as the game design bible that was, it seems, the last great hope for the project. We also give American McGee friend of the show status, as consolation.

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One of my favourite Steam Deck accessories is £10 off today, bringing it to an all-time low price and more than justifying the article you're reading right now. The item in question is Jsaux's excellent now-£30 Docking Station, which holds your Steam Deck at a comfy angle while charging it and providing a ton of extra ports.

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At PAX West in Seattle last year, I had the pleasure of interviewing the voice cast of Team Fortress 2. I chatted to John Patrick Lowrie (The Sniper), Gary Schwartz (The Heavy, The Demoman), Robin Atkin Downes (The Medic) and Ellen McLain (The Administrator) about the game's fifteen year long legacy, the process of finding their character's voices as well as their favourite quotes. It was a riot of an interview and, to be honest, a bit of a career highlight. It also did really well on TikTok, which I have mixed feelings about.

Fifteen minutes after the gang left the grimy conference room in which the interview took place (I had immediately crawled onto the floor in an attempt to ease the anxiety from having conducted said interview), I got a Twitter notification. Robin had posted a video. Following our chat, the group had attempted to order a sandwich from a cafe in-character>, leaving the staff completely bemused as a result. Understandably the video did numbers, and over the last six months, the gang have been releasing new episodes in what is now known as "The Sandvich Saga" on a regular basis.

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Last time, you decided that bioluminescence is better than dark darkness. You want not just light but eerie, near-magical light, and I can understand that. We're doing science here, we can't go groping about in the dark. This week, I ask you to choose between a reward for caution and a dare to be reckless. What's better: unit veterancy, or rerolling dice?

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Frogwares are in a bit of a tight spot at the moment, being as they are a Ukranian studio. If I was trying to make video games in a warzone and: a) my last game was a big sexy prequel to my long running Sherlock Holmes series; b) the one before that was a Lovecraftian detective game with pretty recent assets; and c) my back catalogue contained a Lovecraft-themed Sherlock Holmes mystery, then I'd probably do what they've done with Sherlock Holmes The Awakened. Which is to remake the old Lovecraft-themed Sherlock Holmes game, but with new assets.

It's also got new puzzles and areas, and a slightly rewritten story to account for this being a sequel to Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One. It's a smaller, less ambitious game than Chapter One with some jank knocking around, and I wouldn't recommend it if you're not a fan of the series, but you know what? I think there's a glimmer of greatness in the very fact of its constraints.

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