AMD will finally plug a yawning great hole in the middle of their RDNA 3 graphics card lineup, with both the Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7800 XT set to launch in September. Intended as RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070 botherers, you can expect these GPUs to put in a shift at high-quality 1440p, with a view towards FSR 3 making up for their lack of Nvidia DLSS 3 support.
Where Winds Meet struck me as hugely ambitious action adventure romp set in vast, Ten Kingdom-inspired China. And it was hilariously impossible to summarise in the space of a short, sharp 30-minute appointment. While the elevator pitch started off fairly naturally, there came a point where the elevator rocketed up into the atmosphere and spiralled out of control. I won’t pretend to completely understand what the exact measure of the game is, but I'm both excited to see more and a tad worried it could end up being a disjointed, overstretched mash of things that don't form a cohesive whole.
Far bet it from me to complain about Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot: The London Case introducing more incongruous eye candy, after my previous conniptions over Hot Hipster Poirot with his ankle-grazer trousers and his sexy egg-shaped head, but tick tock, it's himbo Hastings o'clock. Released on Steam this week, The London Case takes young Poirot to, err, London, charged with protecting a famous painting along with a representative of the insurance firm. Naturellement, the painting is stolen from an apparently locked room under everyone's silly noses, and thus begins Poirot and Hastings' first puzzle caper together (for who else is our insurance representative?).
Technically, of course, they met in The Mysterious Affair At Styles, when Captain Arthur Hastings was on leave from the front during WW1, but one of the things I like about this series is how it takes what it wants and gently buffs away the rest. If you're going to adapt, then adapt>! Like The First Cases, which came out in 2021, the game itself is largely a process of pointing and clicking through crime scenes to find clues, and then joining them in a big mind map akin to what you'd find in a Frogwares Sherlock Holmes game. But having Hastings along does make it a bit more fun, because his role is to be a bit of an idiot.
The Opening Night Live trailer for 'comedy slapformer' Thank Goodness You're Here! was a joyous balm in a sea of shoulder shrugs last week. Its bright, cartoon visuals instantly stood out against the grey, ultra-realistic grizzle beards of everything else Geoff had to offer in his Gamescom mega show last Tuesday, and even now I still find myself whistling its jaunty little song around the house. But what exactly is> Thank Goodness You're Here!? Well, having played through one of its 15 minute missions now, I can tell you it's a bit like Untitled Goose Game, in that you have a village you can wander about in causing chaos, but it's also much more structured than that, with specific quests and people to help as you guide your tiny travelling salesman through its surreal neighbourhood. Here's what I learned.
AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D is a screaming-fast processor for gaming, and one that I've recommended on many occasions at RPS and beyond. Last week I noted that the CPU had dropped to $385, but now the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is even cheaper: it's just $354 at Walmart, with the unit being sold and shipped by Newegg.
Solidigm's P44 Pro is one of the most underrated PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market, offering similar performance to the WD SN850x and Samsung 990 Pro while costing significantly less. I've been using this drive for months, and now it's down to $104.99 for a 2TB model at Newegg - from an original price of $170. For context, the last time we saw a deal on this model was $117 back in June.
Apologies to Geoffey K and his GTA 6-loving stage invader, but for me, the torquiest head-turner of Gamescom 2023 was not a game but AMD FSR 3. The Radeon gang’s long awaited answer to DLSS 3 finally got a proper reveal, showcasing how its frame generation feature – called Fluid Motion Frames – could triple performance in supported games. And, while it was revealed alongside two new GPUs – the Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT – AMD general manager Scott Herkelman suggested that FSR 3 will work "on any> graphics card" once it launches.
"What's better than gazing at the Milky Way?", asks Bethesda. The answer? "Savouring it as well." That's right folks, I may not have laid my hands on big Todd's mega RPG Starfield, but I've actually tasted> its universe, in the form of a promotional drink handed out at Gamescom. It’s composed of cinnamon and stardust, with the boundless expanse of space taking on the form of a grey liquid goop. I’ve got to admit, I think it makes for an excellent beverage, and could perhaps have elicited more excitement from me than the game itself will on release.
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How do you condense the vast, far-reaching tendrils of Paradox's open world Sims-killer Life By You into 20 minutes? The short answer is you can't, really, but while most of my brief, guided Gamescom demo covered very similar ground to what I saw back in March when it was first announced, there was one little detail that really grabbed my attention - and that's how everyone has eyes like a hawk in this game. They're almost constantly aware of everything that you're doing. So much so, that they can even get a little bit creepy about it, as was made plain in my hands-off demo session.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink has been on my most anticipated games list for two-years, with all of my anticipation based purely off bitty trailers that haven't revealed anything other than its flashy action RPG combat and deeply anime towns. So, I was rather excited when I had a chance to play it for all of ten minutes in one demo, then around 40 minutes at this year's Gamescom.
Blazing fast mental arithmetic puts my total time with the game at around 50 minutes... with a catch. The two demos were identical, though, so all of my time was dedicated to smashing the same large skeleton and large rock man. I got to know them and it's battle system intimately, I suppose, so while I can't speak for the quests, but the fights? Gloriously chaotic.