AMD's Radeon RX 6800 graphics card is one of the firm's best mid-range to high-end options, with excellent 1080p and 1440p performance that saw it get a warm write-up here at RPS. Now, MSI's RX 6800 Gaming Z Trio is down to £480 at Ebuyer here in the UK, a good price for a GPU of this calibre - if not quite as good value as the new RTX 4070.
I first played co-op third-person shooter Glitch Busters: Stuck On You at Summer Games Fest last year, and came away really impressed. I played with couch co-op with two members of developers Toy Logic, which was lighthearted, slightly chaotic fun; everything couch co-op should be, right?
So, I thought I'd give the game a whirl but as a solo player. How would a game built for up to four players cope when there's just one person taking the reins? Well, sort of fine for a bit, then quite agonising, actually. That's not to say it can't be a fun time, but bots definitely aren't a substitute for real people.
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday (or Tuesday, after a holiday weekend like this), I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by weird musical contraptions, a quiet moment on the balcony with a cup of coffee, chill building, frozen sledding, and the ability to skip a game's tutorial so hard that it sinks to the bottom of the sea. Come admire all these interesting and attractive indies with me!
In the incredibly rare circumstance that you might have had a Kinder Egg as a kid, was the toy ever your favourite part? It sure wasn’t for me. I was all about the chocolate. Sure, I’d crack open the yellow canister inside, let out some variation of, “Oh, an elephant!”, and promptly toss it in the bin and walk away, its destiny consigned to landfill. In the landfill of my brain, I’m currently carving out new space for Street Fighter 6’s World Tour mode. It's available to try now in demo form on PC and consoles, but I've been able to play a larger build of it that covered the first two chapters. Sadly, I can't say it left much of impression.
In case you're equally bemused by what SF6's World Tour actually is, this is a new, open world, RPG-style mode in which you make a custom fighter, run around small areas of Metro City and other locations around the globe, and level up. There are moves to learn, side quests to complete, and you can even do mini-game activities such as making pizza. Between all of that, you fight people. Other fighters, unruly gang members, random folk making their way to work in the morning. You can punch almost all of ‘em! There’s a glimpse of the Street Fighter you know and love here with its side-on 1v1 bouts, but everything else around it is unnecessary fluff. In other words, World Tour is the token toy inside the more delicious Street Fighter chocolate.
Sundays are for cheersing the air with a beverage of your choice. Before you raise a glass to yourself, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).
We're having another long weekend, thanks to the May Day bank holiday on Monday, so we'll not be properly back until Tuesday. I trust, reader dear, that you will pinch and punch yourself on my behalf for the first of the month. And even if you do think "yes returns", you'll only have youself to pinch and punch in retaliation. But what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!
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The Star Wars Jedi: Survivor experience on PC is, at least here on release day, a generally pleasurable Far Far Away fantasy marred by some ugly performance issues. After a few hours' worth of attempts to get it running on the Steam Deck, I can now – with a face similar to that of Ewan McGregor cry-laughing over child murder – report that Jedi: Survivor is in even worse condition on the handheld. It’s unplayable.
Hargh blargh games are bad, roguelikes are worse, whinge moan complain. It is that time once again. You know whether my complaints will bother you, so consider this a massive recommendation if they dont: Shardtide Verminp... Punktide Verminsha... Shardpunk... goddamn it. Hang on.
Shardpunk Verminfall is, as Graham reported, an excellent mash-up of several familiar games and concepts, yet doesn't feel like a knockoff of any, or lack its own identity. I would resent it a lot less if it wasn't also a roguelike. Even with its standard mono-save system and unlocking things and "repeating the whole thing from scratch ad infinitum" though, I can't pretend I don't enjoy it anyway.
The RPS Game Club returns for its second liveblog session, this time about the weird and wonderful Betrayal At Club Low. Join us from 4pm BST today, April 28th, where we'll be chatting all things pizza and our best disco moves. Lots of the RPS Treehouse have had a great time with Club Low this month, and we hope you've been playing along too. So why not come and join in the discussion with us? See you at 4pm, folks!
I quite enjoy the vwing-vwing lighstabering at the heart of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which is why it now pains me to have an extended moan about the PC version's technical troubles.
Despite the odd glimmer of joy, like better-than-expected performance on its lowest system requirements, much about playing Jedi: Survivor on Windows suggests it could have used a little more time in the bacta tank. Sluggishness and stuttering are problems on higher-end graphics cards, even before adding the strain of ray tracing effects, and FSR upscaling often fails to deliver a significant performance boost.