I like to think I’m immune to sales like this, then Fanatical drops its Level Up Sale and my wishlist instantly turns into a shopping cart. And it's not just filler, either. These are standout games, including recent releases, with discounts deep enough to make me forget (briefly) about my backlog.
I want fewer cables in my life: Fewer plugs, fewer dongles, and definitely fewer moments spent wondering why something isn't charging. That's why I own the ASUS ROG 65W Charger Dock. And for thirty big ones, it can also save you from the cable spaghetti and gives your ROG Ally X or Steam Deck some actual desktop or TV stand respect. It's down to $29.99 at Best Buy, or £39.99 at Amazon in the UK.
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! While cleaning under my bed recently, I once again discovered my copy of the smallest physical book I have ever owned. It's a tiny handheld edition of the I Ching. What a wonderful thing. I mean, I haven't actually read it, but wisdom is owning at least one very small book, is what I assume the gist is.
Sundays are for ousting your editor from his throne while he's on holiday. Here's a roundup of some good writing from the internet last week.
This list of Games Writing Words I Hate by Riley MacLeod at Aftermath sets out some words games journalists would do well to avoid. I wrote a similar list over ten years ago, and it's interesting to see many of the examples ("immersive", "IP", "franchise") are still used by enough writers to merit continuing complaints from professional editors like MacLeod.
Lots of good newsies this week from Triple-I, weren't there? Catching up on it all after the fact, I was making lots of appreciative rumbles. Makes me wanna, I don't know, play games or somesuch.
Here's what we're all clicking on this weekend!
SanDisk has one of the best offers going right now if you're looking for a massive storage upgrade on your handheld gaming device. There's already a discount on these memory cards, but if you buy two 1.5TB SanDisk Ultra microSDs directly from SanDisk today, you'll get an extra 20% off at checkout. That drops the price to just £74.45/$90 per card (2 for £148.90, or $179.98) which is wild considering these were going for a whole lot more during Amazon's Spring Sale a couple of weeks back.
Sifu and Absolver team Sloclap stuck a release date on their multiplayer footie game Rematch today - June 19th. Meanwhile, we've been shouting at each other in joy and defeat - sometimes both in the same six seconds - in the >open beta>. I'm leaving the article name open to sequels in case James and I ever kick a different thing together. >
I’ve been keeping an eye on the Alienware Area-51 reboot ever since Dell teased it at CES. It looked sharp, had decent specs, but for a while, your only GPU option was the RTX 5080. That changed, and honestly, it changed for the better. You can now get it with an RTX 5090 paired with Intel's new Core Ultra 9 285K, and yes, the starting price is $5,499.99. It's not cheap, but if you’re aiming for a high-end rig without spending weeks chasing down parts or dealing with shipping delays, it’s one of the more straightforward options out there.
The legend goes that in the 12th century, King Canute plonked his throne down on the seashore and commanded the tide to go out, thereby empirically demonstrating to all the toadies at court that he was not, in fact, God Almighty. You don’t need to order the ocean to piss off in Endless Legend 2: it’s already in headlong retreat. But not from you.
I think this is the best deal I've seen on a PC controller in a long time. Lenovo just dropped official Xbox wireless controllers (Series X|S variants) to Black Friday equivalent prices. Pulse Red and Shock Blue are going for $34.99 with the code SPRINGGAMES, while other colors like Carbon Black and Astral Purple are $39.99 with SPRINGBACK. These are some of the best gamepads for gaming on PC, and honestly, for a first-party controller that doesn't feel like it was pulled from a bargain bin, it's an absurdly good price as well.