When it launched last year, DLSS 3 support and Radeon-beating ray tracing capabilities propelled the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti to the top of our 1440p graphics card estimations. Only its high price remains an ongoing concern, though the Amazon Spring Deal Days sale (that’s the Amazon Big Spring Sale to US folk) can at least take some of the sting out of upgrading. There are, while they last, cut-price RTX 4060 Ti models up for grabs on both sides of the pond.

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One of the most controversial and often-cited criticisms of modern AI systems is that they’re built from, and dependent on, the stolen work of other people. It’s far from the only criticism people have of this new technology, which might make us wonder exactly why anyone wants it in the first place. Today, I’d like to talk about some of the brighter futures that might come out of generative AI for us, as well as why the path toward them might be a tricky one to walk cleanly.

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My time with Dragon's Dogma 2 for review was neat, mainly because it's a good video game and an anecdote generator. But it reinforced one thing for me that I've increasingly come to realise about myself: I actually can't cope with character creators that let you like, tweak the finest details. I do not want to define the curls of each individual nose hair or adjust the angle of the mole on one's forehead. I'm far too indecisive for any of this! Let me roll the dice, please.

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While there are minor thrills to be had finding the very latest PC hardware in the Amazon Spring Deal Days sale, don’t underestimate the draw of an older favourite emerging with a new, knockdown price. So it is with the Intel Core i5-12400F: this was a great-value midranger when it was new, and now you get it at a true budget-tier price of £108.

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Dragon's Dogma 2 is an RPG of many admirable qualities. I’m especially attached to my Arisen’s current pair of Pawns, one of whom speaks with the wonderfully stretched intonations of a pitch-shifted Matt Berry. Sadly, none of its achievements pertain to technical> fidelity. While decent-looking, Dragon’s Dogma 2 takes some serious hardware to maintain consistently smooth performance, with lowered quality settings lending only the most limp-wristed of helping hands.

DLSS and FSR 3 upscaling are more effective, but this is one game where powering through the worst of its stuttering and framerate drops will take more than a musclebound graphics card. Not for the first time with an RE Engine game, Dragon’s Dogma 2 appears severely CPU-limited, so it really does demand a fully-upgraded rig to ward off sluggishness – especially at higher resolutions.

Improving performance isn’t a completely hopeless endeavour, but besides the FPS wobbles, there are some settings oddities that need navigating as well. I’ll cover all that and more in this guide; even if we can’t fix Dragon’s Dogma 2 ourselves, at least we can better understand its strangeness.

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You know when you remember a game really fondly and instead of ageing alongside you, it becomes more modern in memory? The Dragon's Dogma 2 experience is, essentially, how I remember its predecessor Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. To me, DD2 feels like a remaster of the first, except it looks nicer, is more expansive, and features some rejigs to things like your AI pals.

Not that any of this is a bad thing! In fact, DD2's closeness to the original makes it just as much of a joy as the first, where your grand adventure isn't only grander, it's still at the whims of a world governed by chaotic physics and the passage of time. Quirks remain, for good and bad, but ultimately this is an RPG where you make travel plans and the game does it best to dash them. It never gets old.

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It's deeply frustrating and disappointing when games get pulled from store shelves due to licenses expiring, and too few ever return. So it's great news that almost four years after Sega stopped selling Obsidian's fascinating spy thriller RPG Alpha Protocol on Steam due to music rights expiring, it has returned to sale on GOG. I'm always surprised that Alpha Protocol hasn't reached serious cult classic status because, as much as parts are distinctly wonky, the globetrotting sneak-o-shooter fizzes with ideas for intense dialogue, branching plot, and reputation systems with consequences. You do feel like a spy going up against the world, backed up only by shifty allies and a ridiculous pair of giant sunglasses.

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There could well be more to come, but right now, my top pick of the Amazon Spring Deal Days PC storage offers is this nicely affordable Crucial P3 SSD. It’s the 2TB model, sliced down to £86, which is the cheapest this particular drive has been since last year’s Black Friday. Not to mention about the same price as a 1TB WD Black SN850X, while providing twice as much room.

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In what's quite the shake up for Overwatch 2, Blizzard have announced that starting with Season 10, all of its heroes will be unlocked for all players. And this includes all new heroes going forwards, too, so the next hero Venture will unlock immediately for everyone when the latest season drops. Otherwise, there's changes to unlocking premium skins, earning premium coins, and some tidbits on what we can expect from Season 11.

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Amazon’s big sale events, as overfrequent as they are, do at least reliably provide the discerning Steam Deck owner with good opportunities to grab a new microSD card. Case in point, Amazon Spring Deal Days – which launched today – has some alluringly low prices on the me-approved Samsung Evo Select. That’s on both the 256GB and the (also me-approved) 512GB models.

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