"Consider yourself warned! This book contains scenes of graphic violence!" These are the words that adorn the Doom comic book, which was originally released for promotional purposes during 1996's E3 by GT Interactive and Marvel Comics. "Knee-deep in the dead!" is the next bit of text below the logo, referencing the name of the first shareware Doom episode and beautifully describing the blood-soaked cover illustration by Tom Grindberg, who was apparently tickled enough at the thought of drawing this monstrosity to take time away from working on 2000 AD.

The cover is an accurate peek at the gore and demonic entrails that lie within this epic work of sequential storytelling, which required the writing skills of not one, but two gentlemen - Steve "Body Bag" Behling and Michael "Splatter" Stewart. Both Behling and Stewart have a decent body of work between them at Marvel, where they've penned more civilised fare starring the likes of Ant-Man and The Hulk. The Doom comic, in comparison, seems to have been a thing that was written in a fever dream, and DoomWorld, which lovingly hosts scans of this brisk read to this day, describes it appropriately: "Some time in 1996 a couple of guys got together and smoked what was apparently a large amount of crack and then injected pure heroin into their eyes and then proceeded to create what is now known only as 'the Doom comic.'"

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Legendary-tier monster cards on the table time: I do not like video game loot. I think that the popularity of "looting", an English word itself looted from Hindi during the time of the East India Company, is one of the worst aspects of the modern games industry and especially of the blockbuster live service game, which strives to keep its audience coming back by means of fresh loot injections at regular intervals.

I distrust how the randomisation element of much video game looting flirts with actual gambling mechanics. I hate that structuring games around the acquisition of loot creates a framework and an appetite for microtransactions and arguably, NFTs. But I am kind of fascinated by the art of designing loot, and especially when it comes to action RPGs such as Diablo 4 and Path Of Exile 2, because it seems to trade on some irresolvable contradictions.

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Want a titanic 45-inch gaming monitor? Of course you do - and this 5120x1440 super-ultrawide model is down to £699 at Currys in the UK following a rare £100 price drop. That's a great price for a 165Hz gaming monitor with DisplayHDR 400 certification, HDMI 2.1 support and even a KVM switch.

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It's awesome that you can get a great high refresh rate gaming monitor for not much over $100 these days. Take this Acer Nitro XF243Y M3bmiiprx - it's a 24-inch 1080p 180Hz display, yours for a very reasonable $100 after a $90 discount at Best Buy in the US.

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Of course I was going to insert myself into the recent Tribes 3: Rivals alpha playtest – as a Tribes: Ascend player who’s mourned its demise for years, the reveal of a new, heavily Ascend-inspired ski-shooter was like seeing a long deceased pet rabbit miraculously come back to life. Cured, judging from Rivals’ more palatable monetisation plans, of the myxomatosis that killed it in the first place.

From what I played, Tribes 3 can definitely bring back happy memories of zipping around, nicking flags and copping Spinfuser blasts, and the finished article may well have the chops to create some new ones. At the same time, the playtest build was conspicuously short on much of what makes Tribes really feel> like Tribes.

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You'll need to limber up and do some warm-up stretches before attempting to open today's door on the RPS Advent Calendar, otherwise you'll risk getting an instant KO from the burly brawlers waiting inside.

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The party poppers are out, the finger food is ready and waiting to be served, and the guest list for Doom's 30th birthday party is well and truly set. Well, it would be if Doomguy ever lowered the drawbridge to his flying space castle high above the Earth's orbit. I did try and get a radio signal out earlier, but the grumpy sod never responded. Probably too busy organising his trophy case in his man cave, to be honest. But let's face it. Doomguy wouldn't be much fun at a birthday party anyway. He'd be too busy ripping and tearing into his presents to give anyone the time of day, let alone a polite thank you, and then he'd be working on ripping and tearing apart said presents in a display of strength and machismo.

So Doom's hellspawn have got together to throw their own party for the occasion, and let me tell you, they're having a riotous good time all by themselves. Well, most of them are, anyway, as there are some demons here that wouldn't know how to have fun even if was seared across their skulls with the beam of a BFG9000. Here's every classic Doom enemy ranked on a scale of the most miserable wallflowers to the life and (undead) soul of the party.

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Banishers: Ghosts Of New Eden is a game of twos. It has two protagonists and two broad ways of playing, leading to two broad narrative outcomes, and is created by a company who, as Don’t Nod’s lead narrative designer Elise Galmard explained to me at a preview event, feel like they make games for two different audiences - fans of noodly narrative intrigues on the one hand, and of fantasy combat games on the other. Among the game's challenges, of course, is to blend these halves convincingly.

A spiritual (hah) follow-up of sorts to 2018’s fairly well-received Vampyr, it takes place in the alt-historical realm of New Eden, which is kind of 17th century colonial North America through the lens of Dragon Age: Inquisition with a pinch of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. The titular Banishers are a ghost-hunting couple, the Scotsman Red MacRaith and the Cuban Antea Duarte. Antea is killed at the very beginning of the game, during a battle with an especially noxious spook, but she soon returns as a spirit, and your overall story objective is to either resurrect her body or help her "Ascend" to the afterlife.

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AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D is the best value gaming CPU by a wide margin, as it manages to overpower the Intel Core i9 14900K regularly while costing nearly half the price. Perhaps it's unsurprising then that a major German PC retailer recorded the 7800X3D as massively outselling any other processor on the market as of late.

As of today, the best prices available in the UK and US are at Overclockers (£330) and Amazon ($358). Both retailers offer the CPU with a free copy of the truly stunning Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora game.

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Dell's Alienware m17 gaming laptop is normally quite a pricey proposition, especially when you want one with an RTX 3070 Ti 8GB graphics card and Ryzen 6800H processor, but today you can get a machine with these specs - and a 17.3-inch 4K 120Hz screen - for just £1069 at Dell UK using the code VOUCHERCODES7, versus the recently-discounted price of £1149.

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