Immortals of Aveum is making me wonder whether there’s some kind of gigantic hidden market for floaty magic shooters with overcooked YA dialogue and exceedingly high PC hardware demands. After this and Forspoken releasing within a few months of each other, I’m half expecting Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to open with Captain Price shooting GPU-smelting laser beams out of his 'tache.

Indeed, this first person sorcery adventure will be hell on your hardware, even if you’ve tooled up with a high-grade graphics card and CPU. This is somewhat more understandable than with the other low-performing PC games we’ve seen this year, as Immortals of Aveum is one of the first Unreal Engine 5.1 games, and makes extensive use of its sparkly new lighting and VFX tech. Sadly, it also aims so high that the only way to get playable performance on lower-end and older mid-range kit it to gut the quality settings.

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Innocn isn't a brand that most people have heard of, but this Chinese firm has been pumping out surprisingly well-reviewed monitors for some time now, often hitting niches more well-known companies haven't reached while being extremely aggressive on price. That's a winning combination for models backed by positive critical reviews, and today we spotted a deal on perhaps their best monitor yet - the Innocn 27M2V, a 27-inch 4K 160Hz monitor with a Mini LED backlight and HDMI 2.1 ports, providing an extremely good HDR experience and full compatibility with PS5, Xbox Series X and PC.

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Be Quiet's top-rated PC case, the Pure Base 500DX, is down to $99.90 at Amazon USA today following a $15 drop. This is the best price that this mid tower case has ever reached, and a great deal for a case that includes a mesh front, glass side panel, three Pure Wings 2 fans and RGB lighting.

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I don't know anything about VTubers, aside from the fact they're virtual… YouTubers...? What I do know, is there's a Vampire Survivors-like called HoloCure: Save The Fans that's entirely fan made, entirely free, and revolves around Hololive, a VTuber agency replete with catgirls. I am taken aback by how good it is.

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When listing off my favourite games, I'm shamefully likely to neglect to mention Firewatch. This is probably because Firewatch isn't a game that had some huge formative impact on me, or reframed my entire relationship with gaming, or became an enduring obsession of my hyperfixation-prone brain. Firewatch is, quite simply, a very lovely game, and one that I happily revisit on a fairly regular basis.

I think the main draw of Firewatch, for me, is the forest. I am one of those people who's often happiest on a day-long hike into the middle of nowhere; and when life doesn't provide me with the opportunity to do something as often as I'd like, I'll turn to thematically appropriate video games to tide me over.

Don't get me wrong: Firewatch's central story of Henry and Delilah is a good one, and the marvellous Cissy Jones deservedly picked up a BAFTA for her performance as the latter. But the free-roam mode is, to my mind, just as important for ensuring Firewatch's enduring appeal.

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Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by a good deal of wetness, sailing over a post-apocalyptic sea, walking going under a post-Apocalyptic sea, and ogling a waterfall. Check out these interesting indie games and so many more in our latest highlights!

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Sundays are for rolling a critical success. Before you reach toss the dice, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

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My landlord has finally given permission to get a cat and reader dear, I cannot think of anything else. I've not had a cat in years and I miss sharing my home with a cute little weirdo. Now I just need to find a cat. I've always got kittens from family or friends and was not prepared to have my heart broken over and over looking at online listings then falling in love with kittens only to be told oh, it found a home with someone else yesterday. Gutting. But what are you playing this weekend? (Playing with a kitten?) Here's what we're clicking on!

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AMD's RX 6800 is one of the best value high-end graphics cards on the market - and today you can pick up this GPU with Starfield Premium Edition for just $430 at Amazon US, down from $490.

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Intel's A750 and A770 graphics cards tend to be great value, but have a few gaping holes when it comes to performance in older graphics APIs like DirectX 9 and DirectX 11. That's slowly changing though - in fact, the company announced significant frame-rate improvements in DX11 titles today - while price drops continue to bring these GPUs into an even more favourable price/performance window. One case is the Arc A770 16GB, which is now available from Newegg for just $300, down from their regular US MSRP of $330.

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