In his irregular newsletter, Culture: An Owner's Manual, W. David Marx wrote about the age of the double sell-out. His argument is that, by the end of the 20th century, it was deemed acceptable for artists to sell-out because commercial activities were understood to pay for creative work, but now culture's most successful creators sell-out simply to sell-out further.
Here, take a look at this very pleasing fossilised instant coffee. Doesn't that just make you want to start your weekend off right? It was presented to me on Tuesday like a ceremonial offering, and since then I've kept it on my window sill and just turn my head to look at it every once in a while. There's something powerful but also mournful about it, like it's holding itself together through sheer force of will, long after its time is due. Puts me in mind of crumbling castle battlements under siege. It's maintaining its shape well so far. I'm excited to see what the next week brings.
So that's my weekend largely sorted; but what are you all up to? Here's what we're clicking on this weekend!
Who can say what made Ubisoft change their minds on Steam Deck support for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the pretty good samurai stealther that previously stated an intention to go without. Perhaps a high-ranking executive, visiting family to invite them to a trip on his spare yacht, had his frozen heart melted by the sight of a Naoe-cosplaying granddaughter clutching a Steam Deck OLED in her clearly-too-small-for-it hands. Perhaps.
It works, is the main thing. And works well – remarkably well, actually, considering not just the previous denial and 11th hour U-turn, but the game’s high PC system requirements and at least partially mandatory ray tracing. This does come at the cost of a severely stripped-down quality settings menu, and you’ll still need to sign into a Ubisoft Connect account even if you own Shadows on Steam, but there’s no doubt that its Steam Deck Verified status is deserved.
I have recently immersed myself in the pleasantly numb Monster Hunter Wilds loop of smashing Arkvelds to bits. They are, as far as I can tell, the most profitable creature to bully, and I now find myself skinny dipping in the gulf of meaning that lies between the regal, resentful, mildly sassy chains hanging from the creature's armour set, and the deeply sad and laboured motions with which it swings its bodily inspiration for those chains.
I get the sense that the series' solution to the uncomfortable implications of its lizard bashing has been, over the last few entries, to evil-fy its creature design to the point where it engenders less easy empathy. There's a lot of ugly, bugly bastards in Wilds, is what I'm saying. Less deep, sad lizard eyes and more chittering chitin and fuck-you dragon stares. The Arkveld's design is so threatening that it invites nothing if not: look mate, if four of us manage to take you down with scissors whittled from Original Recipe Chatacabra marrow, it's your own fault here, ya bish.
In Remedy’s Control spin-off FBC: Firebreak, trios of gadget-toting humans from the Federal Bureau of Control descend to the shapeshifting halls of the Oldest House, fighting eldritch Hiss invaders and possessed objects such as swarming Post-It notes. Where Control cast you as the FBC’s newly appointed director, equipped with executive perks such as telekinesis, the folks who make up the Firebreak initiative are regular office shmucks brandishing comparatively straightforward guns and bludgeoning implements. They’re here years after Control’s denouement to do some clean-up, with the Oldest House still under lockdown while the FBC seek a proper, lasting solution to the Hiss menace.
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I want a good gaming monitor for cheap, and this KTC 27-inch QHD gaming monitor is ticking all the right boxes. Amazon just dropped the price to $99.99 when you stack a $40 coupon with the promo code "05DMKTC38", making this one of the best budget gaming monitor deals I’ve seen in a long time.
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I don’t usually get this excited about a CPU, but the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is something special. It has been impossible to find for weeks, and now it’s back for $479 at Amazon (and at Amazon UK). That’s the official launch price, which is great because I refuse to pay a penny over it.
Even though the Assassin’s Creed series has become something of a hooded, shifty-eyed poster child for AAA bloat and excess, its more recent editions have understood the need to keep the hardware side accessible, never over-gorging on fancy effects to the detriment of performance. That Assassin’s Creed Shadows adds mandatory ray tracing to its already hyper-detailed rendition of feudal Japan might, therefore, make it look like it’s going rogue.
Half Life 2 RTX, the Nvidia-backed graphical overhaul mod for Valve’s seminal FPS, has a Steam demo out today. It covers both the Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt chapters, for an extended look at how much ray-slash-path tracing, RTX Remix asset remastering, and DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation is being packed into the decades-old shooter.
Two years since the first gaming-focused PCIe 5.0 SSDs showed up, there are some encouraging signs that these drives might eventually develop something approaching a point. Consider the Crucial T700, one of the first 5.0 SSDs to escape the data centre and make a break for our PCs: more expensive than the best PCIe 4.0 models, and slower than them at loading games. Useless. Now, though, we have drives like the PNY CS2150 bringing down the entry fee, as well as the new Samsung 9100 Pro to finally – finally> – deliver a performance improvement.
Still, there’s a way to go before PCIe 5.0 storage becomes the new standard, and honestly, that could take another two years or more. For all the CS2150’s cost-cutting and the all the 9100 Pro’s speed, neither make for compelling all-rounders like their 4.0 cousins do.
