Welcome to another edition of Should You Bother With, where the useless and the utilitarian of PC gaming hardware are sorted into two satisfyingly neat piles. And after the hard science demanded by SYBW’s previous look at Hall effect keyboards, I’m pleased to say that the concept behind this week’s focus can be summed in with as few words as "faster Internet." It’s Wi-Fi 7 – or 802.11be, to its friends.
Amazon's Gaming Week sale has lots of deals on gaming accessories and hardware, including a decent discount on the heatsink version of the 2TB WD Black SN850X SSD, which is still the best SSD for gaming you can get.
As reported by Chinese outlet Campfire Camp, spotted by GamesRadar, and machine translated by Ian Games of the Ian Games Network, and then delivered fresh to your eyeballs by me, Nic Reuben of Reuben Paper Shotgun dot com, Elden Ring expansion Shadow Of The Erdtree will be the only DLC released for the world stomping rpg game. That’s according to FromSoftware's sadistic DM and notable swamp troll Hidetaka Miyazaka, although it doesn’t sound like he’s trolling this time.
Medieval city builder Manor Lords was Steam's most-wishlisted game prior to release, and has now managed the feat of transmuting that anticipation into broad enthusiasm and very healthy sales. Not too shabby, considering that it's mostly the work of just one person, Grzegorz Styczeń of Slavic Magic, who has hopefully found time to sleep now and then between fielding bug reports and preparing the game's first patches.
Styczeń understandably doesn't have much time for interviews right now - those troublesome archers aren't going to balance themselves - but yesterday I spoke to Tim Bender, CEO of Manor Lords publisher Hooded Horse, about how Styczeń is getting on. The answer, apparently, is: pretty good, because Styczeń has a healthy approach to early access development in keeping players close, without quite handing them the wheel.
Remember that bit in that Guy Ritchie film where Dexter Fletcher shoot a guy and then throws a glowing jar over his soldier that summons a bunch of skeletons to help him out? Me too! Must have been the direct influence for Sea Of Thieves' new Season 12, which launched earlier this week with a bang - from two smoking barrels! Among the additions in this season of the ever popular salty sea-dog open-world adventure are double barrel pistols. They deal less damage per shot but have higher rate of fire, and you can charge them up to fire both barrels at once.
On the other end of the weapon scale are new throwing knives, capable of sneak attacks, light slashes, or, you know, throwing. You can nab any throwing knives you see lying around, too, which is fun. But honestly, the Bone Caller tool (the aforementioned jar of skeletons, which has a great Jason and The Argonauts vibe) and the Horn Of Fair Winds are are probably more useful. The winds from said horn can make your ship go faster, but can also put out fires or crowd control enemies, or for some reason make you swim faster? I don't think that makes sense, to be honest, but the horn has limited uses so as not to make you an unstoppable wind machine.
I haven't ever raided in an MMORPG like World Of Warcraft for several reasons, one of which is the time commitment. I've never put in the many, many hours needed to earn the requisite gear nor partied up with the many, many people necessary to slay a big dragon. If only raiding was possible without these things… well, my saviour seems to have arrived in a form I wasn't expecting: 2D anime bunny girls. Rabbit And Steel is a co-op action roguelike that's raiding without the pre-grind and it looks rather wonderful.
I don't tend to do a lot of videogame discount posts because I have a mortal fear of enriching my backlog, but when I see the entire Mass Effect trilogy and all of its expansions for around the price of a slightly aristocratic sandwich, I am compelled to share. The Legendary Edition of BioWare's ravishing sci-fi RPG series is 90% off on Steam until 13th May. That translates to 6€, $6 or £5 for all three main games and 40 DLC packs, plus bells and whistles such as 4K Ultra HD and beefed-up character models. If you haven't played a Mass Effect game before, this is a pretty good place to start.
Roll7, developers of bright skateboarding games OlliOlli World and dual-wielding bloodsport Rollerdrome, are being closed down as part of large scale layoffs by parent corp Take-Two Interactive, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. The British studio has been responsible for some great stuff over the years but the report says they'll be following the fate of Kerbal Space Program 2 developers in being laid off.
Starfield’s biggest update since the Bethesda space game came out last year (remember that?) is arriving in a couple of weeks - with its Steam beta already live now, if you’re interested in poking around. The chunky patch finally tidies up the game’s oft-complained about surface maps to make them easier to navigate, as well as introducing new difficulty options, a decoration mode for the inside of ships and a bunch of other tweaks and fixes.
Good news! There’s a new Batman: Arkham game on the way that’s not Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. (Potentially) not-so-good news! It’s a virtual reality game that you’ll only be able to play if you own a Meta Quest 3. Hmm.