.jpg?width=1920&height=1920&fit=bounds&quality=70&format=jpg&auto=webp){kind=tracking}
Storage, screens, rigs and chairs, I've found the whole loadout today. There's speedy microSD cards for your Steamdeck and ROG Ally, some slick upgrades for your battlestation, and a few big names slashing prices on premium gear. From a beastly gaming PC to the comfiest chairs in the game, these deals are full in Independence Day deals material. Let's get into
Y’know what, I think we’ve lived long enough in the post-Steam Deck world that it bears weighing up what the current best handheld PCs are. A few years ago this would have just been a vaguely-ranked list of whatever portables were available, but after Valve demonstrated that the palm-resting format could not just work, but actually be good>, handhelds have arguably become the most interesting and rapidly-changing thing in all of PC hardware. Even Microsoft are having a go, slapping their branding on the upcoming Asus ROG Xbox Ally – though here, I’m sticking strictly to the finest handhelds that I’ve tested and that you can buy.
Microsoft have reportedly set in motion the wave of layoffs the company were said to be gearing up for last week - the fourth round of major job cuts to hit Xbox in 18 months.
It’s the Fourth of July this week, and that means there are deals to be had on the other side of the pond.
.jpg?width=1920&height=1920&fit=bounds&quality=70&format=jpg&auto=webp){kind=tracking}
Alienware’s Black Friday in July sale just dropped a wave of serious gaming hardware deals. Desktop beasts with RTX 5090s are now hundreds off, and the latest Area-51 and Aurora systems are pushing 4K frame rates with ease. On the portable side, Alienware’s newest 16- and 18-inch laptops are loaded with 4080s and 4090s, making high refresh 1440p gaming look effortless. There are deep M.2 drive discounts too, including a Crucial T500 1TB with heatsink for under $85. And over at Green Man Gaming, the entire Final Fantasy series is up to 70% off, with big cuts on Rebirth, Remake, and classic bundles. Let's get into it:
I love it when a machine whirrs and clunks and bzzts in just the right way. Kaizen: A Factory Story is the next mechanical puzzler from the people who made Opus Magnum and Exapunks. A demo hit Steam a few weeks ago, but it fell down the wrong side of a conveyor belt here at RPS and we all forgot about it until it jammed up our meticulous assembly line of articles and I had to jimmy it out with a big salad fork. "Ah," I said, "there's yer problem. Nobody has played this excellent developer's new game yet."
Let's solve that problem.
Playside are pitching Game Of Thrones: War For Westeros as an RTS for Age of Empires lovers, but it may also hook your fancy if you’re into vicious bastard boardgames. Speaking to me shortly after the new strategy project’s announcement at this year’s Summer Game Fest, game director Ryan McMahon explored how the requisite filthy traitor element of this latest George R.R. Martin adaptation will percolate through the project’s main “sandbox” mode, in which four players vie for supremacy over the Seven Kingdoms.
_ZQfGBtz.jpg?width=1920&height=1920&fit=bounds&quality=70&format=jpg&auto=webp){kind=tracking}
I've found some great deals on gaming laptops and prebuilt desktops for todays daily deals. Everything from brand new high-end Alienware laptops that mimick their higher end cousins without the sticker shock to HP Omen beasts with cracking discounts. There's even deals on Windows handhelds from Lenovo and MSI. There’s a good mix of laptops, desktops, and portable rigs, and most of them come with pretty aggressive discounts or promo codes. Nice and simple, right? Let's get into it:
While I have not one but two Windows gaming rigs for testing and writing, they’re both desktops. For working on the go, I use a MacBook Air (boo, hiss), but these HP Omen laptop deals have me considering a swap.
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! We're doing tabletop designers now, firstly because I think tabletop is cool and secondly…nope, that's it. Every week we stray further from videogames, and every week we regain feeling in body parts we'd forgotten we had. Ten> toes, you say? Marvellous.