Earlier this week I reported on a great deal for the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 240, a 240mm AiO with excellent reviews, over on Amazon US. Today I'm back with a confusingly similar deal: an all-time low price on the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 280, a 280mm AiO with excellent reviews, over on Amazon UK. It's down to £70 following a 26% reduction, a great price for an AiO that regularly beats less powerful 360mm alternatives.
Last Epoch is gunning for the action-RPG crown long held by Diablo (and recently contested by the likes of Path of Exile and Grim Dawn). With the power of time travel - and a flash-looking launch trailer - on its side, the indie hopeful certainly looks set to put up a decent fight when it exits Early Access in just over a month.
Genshin Impact’s next update, version 4.4, will drop on January 31st. As well as bringing back the game’s Lantern Festival with rewards including a new outfit, Vibrant Harriers Aloft in Spring Breeze will bring the usual additions of new characters, quests and a boss. There’ll also be a new area showcased with some shiny new visual tech, that you’ll be able to explore by transforming into a flying fish.
For a game that's been repeatedly described as "Pokémon with machineguns", the first thing that strikes me about Palworld is just how un>-Pokémon-like it actually is. To its credit, it does do quite a good Pokémon Legends: Arceus impression when you first step out on its big, Breath Of The Wild-style hilltop and take in the open world vista of its monster-stuffed starting continent. But if the opening moments of washing up on the island in nothing but your very scantily clad undies hadn't already given it away (seriously, why do shipwrecks always destroy the clothes you had on, but not your smalls underneath?), then the ream of tutorial prompts about punching trees to get more wood, building bases, putting pals to work on said bases, and the endless parade of crafting technologies you'll need to unlock to actually do anything on this godforsaken rock will quickly pull the wool clear away from your hopeful little face.
For underneath the cute round eyes of its cover stars, Palworld is really a survival game wearing the dead skin suits of Game Freak's catch 'em all monster friends. In a lot of cases, those skin suits are quite literal, such are the blatant palette swaps and so-close-to-copyright-infringement-I-can't-believe-Nintendo's-lawyers-haven't-shut-this-down-years-ago rip-off creatures on display here. For that reason alone, Palworld can feel about as soulless and cynical as it comes. But that's not the worst of it. Even aside from all the survival gubbins, base building and sweatshop automation practices shoved down your throat, Palworld is just an awful example of monster-catching games in general. If it's a Pokémon game on PC you're after, go and play Cassette Beasts. Go and play Coromon, TemTem, or Monster Sanctuary. Anything> but this.
Palworld was obviously destined for success the moment a million games journalists and Twitter users wrote “Pokémon with machine guns”. (Acceptable alternate nicknames include “Eevees with uzis” and “Abras who’ll stab-ya”.) Having finally launched into Early Access on Steam and Game Pass this week, that prophecy has rung true as the monster-catching survival game has caught (ha, ha) so many players that its servers are struggling to handle the load.
It always breaks my heart a bit when a game I've been looking forward to for a while absolutely biffs it on arrival. Having quite enjoyed Golf Club Wasteland a few years ago (now called Golf Club Nostalgia for, I don't know, reasons), I was quite pumped when developers Demagog Studios announced not one, but two further games set in the same post-apocalyptic universe. The first to come out (albeit only on Netflix at the moment) was the turn-based strategy game Highwater (also a bit of a dud, based on the early Steam demo I played last year), but it's the second game, The Cub (out today on Steam) that has prompted this current moment of teeth-sucking sadness.
I've been playing a bit of it over the last week, and oh man, it's trying so, so hard to be like Limbo and Inside, but just... doing quite a terrible job of it all. I was looking forward to any excuse I could get to have the soothing sounds of Golf Club's dystopian Radio Nostalgia From Mars show back in my ear drums, but alas. I simply cannot hear it over the sound of my own screams of frustration.
We've known about Moonlighter devs' upcoming RTS tower defence hybrid Cataclismo for a little while now. But now we know a couple more> things. It's set to release in Q2 of this year, and there's a demo on Steam right now if you'd like to give it a try. Expect to make nice fortresses out of Lego-style bricks, then defend them from hordes of horrors. I'd say that's a recipe for a good time.
A "third-person cyberpunk fighting MOBA". A villainous esports team owner. A horde of teenagers Naruto-running through a convention centre. Even as a keen viewer of Leverage: Redemption, I was leery of the heist-o-rama tackling esports. And sure, its fake video game is baffling, but I was surprised by how many notes the esports episode hit right. With an Illumatrons team overworked to breaking point by an egotistical owner hawking dangerous supplements, it'll take a con, a frame, fisticuffs, and powerful cheat software to save the day.
I disliked turn-based RPG Kingsvein at first. Quite a bit, in fact. An earlier version of this review would have been a very negative on, filled mostly with complaints and annoyances about opaque and frustrating systems, most of which I've since got over as the intent behind its design has become more clear.
It could definitely explain some things better, and its inscrutably tiny graphics remain a minor nuisance. But it's grown on me a lot, and though it may not be quite the kind of turn-based RPG I get on with best, it's an enjoyable one with a refreshing lack of bloat and timewasting, and with a class and combat system that will be pure catnip to a particular kind of player.
The phrase "best foot forwards" implies the second foot will never be as good as the first, and that's unfortunately the case with Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned For Danger. It has a 10/10 pun name and introduces/strengthens concepts that I expect will become series mainstays as we continue with this project, but this is definitely in "difficult second album" territory. I don't hate it! But it's no Secrets Can Kill, and I think that's in part down to increased ambition, as our Nance is called upon to solve a poison pen puzzle at a TV studio.