As the release of the (deep breath) Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Starring Lara Croft approaches (yes, that is its full and official Steam title) on February 14th, developers Aspyr have detailed some of the game's new features over on the PlayStation Blog, and how they've approached bringing the art, controls and effects up to date for 2023. Personally, I'm extremely pleased to see they've added a photo mode, for example, as I spent inordinate> amounts of time making Lara do creepy side-eye smiles during inappropriate Shadow Of The Tomb Raider scenes. But I'm also heartened to see they've kept in the original tank controls as an optional extra, alongside a more modern control scheme to make them more approachable.
Dave The Diver was one of last year's surprise hits, but though some called it an indie game, it was actually the work of Mintrocket, a subsidiary of Korean publisher Nexon. Now Mintrocket have announced their next game and it seems less likely to cause such confusion. It's called Wakerunners, and it's a team-based "battle action game" about heroes smashing at each other.
It'll have a demo in Steam Next Fest next month and there's a teaser trailer below.
Prison Architect 2 was announced earlier this evening and will switch the carceral management sim to 3D when it releases on March 26th.
It'll also have robust mod support, with "a mod editor built-in for PC players", according to game director Gaz Wright.
Top Spin is returning. The 2K Sports tennis series last received an entry back in 2011, which didn't come to PC, but while there's no confirmed platforms for Top Spin 2K25, I choose to live in hope. You'll find a teaser trailer below.
Against The Storm left early access late last year, but has just now received its first major post-release patch. Update 1.1 "isn’t as spectacular" as its developers had first hoped, but it does buff the roguelite citybuilder with som new art, UI improvements and quality-of-life tweaks, as well as new orders to make early stage settlement building "a little more interesting."
Arctic does a really nice line of CPU coolers, including this 240mm AiO that's discounted by 23% on Amazon US today. That brings it down to $75, a great price for the renowned Liquid Freezer II 240, one of the best-performing all-in-one liquid coolers on the market and a fine complement to any high-end or mid-range gaming CPU. To get this deal, just tick the 23% off coupon on the product page.
Asus' Zephyrus G14 is one of the nicest gaming laptop designs I've ever tested, and now this high-end RTX 4070 and Ryzen 9 7940HS equipped model is $450 off at Best Buy in the US. This spec also includes 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD, making for a powerful machine that is still portable thanks to its 14-inch frame with a 2560x1600 165Hz IPS display.
AMD's flagship RDNA 2 graphics card, the RX 6900 XT, continues to drop in price over in the US. Right now you can pick this once-fastest-ever Radeon GPU for just $500 when you buy an open box model from Newegg. That's outstanding, given that this card cost twice as much when it debuted in 2020.
This is the fancy AsRock Phantom Gaming D model too, which brings a snazzy design and a faster 2340MHz boost clock (versus 2250MHz on the vanilla spec).
Good news, everyone! One of the best PC gaming handhelds, the Asus ROG Ally, is done to just £599 at Currys in the UK for the higher-powered Z1 Extreme edition. This represents a £100 discount over its launch price and is a good value for a premium handheld that outperforms the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED while having a higher-res and higher refresh rate 1080p 120Hz display.
Back in December, Creative Assembly posted a lengthy apology to players for their recent handling of the Total War strategy series, in particular Total War: Warhammer 3 and Total War: Pharoah. Seeking to smooth down feathers ruffled by overpricing and buggy launches, to pick out two of the biggest fan complaints, the developers offered to - amongst other things - make Pharoah’s first paid DLC pack a free update.
That free update is now upon us, miladies and milords. Available January 25th, it's called High Tides, and introduces two new playable factions with their own units and gods and some additional campaign mechanics. Here’s a trailer.