I promise this isn’t a "gAmErS aRe MaD" story – there’s actual testing and advice and stuff here, honest – but it must begin that way, as I wouldn’t have guessed that birdlike soulslike Wuchang: Fallen Feathers would launch with PC performance issues without a cacophony of (currently 'Mostly Negative') Steam reviews saying so. Not after those easygoing system requirements, surely?

Surely yes, it turns out, though maybe not to the extent that a page of 7,000 thumbs-down symbols might suggest. It’s not good>. It runs slowly on max settings. There’s stuttering. DLSS 4 frame generation is either broken, or implemented in a uniquely vexing way. But you can smooth things out considerably with a few choice settings adjustments, including on lower-end graphics cards.

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If you're partial to a bit of sticking a thing on top of another thing, then having little people live in those things while you lord over them as an omnipotent and potentially wrathful god that's busy listening to yoga class music, pay attention. Pile Up!, which is about strategically building cities on little islands, has just emerged from early access and gotten a bunch of new additions.

One of these fresh things comes with an insistence from Turkish developers Remoob that you "try fearmongering". Bold of them to assume I'm not already covertly steering the world around me towards a state of rabid paranoia.

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You don't use the mouse in S.p.l.i.t, but you won't miss it. Games are sometimes described as 'clunky', but what's more satisfying than good clunk? Each key clank here hits like a heart thud. Axel and two associates are scrambling for root access to launch a malware attack on "the facility" - as in "death is the least of my worries. Being dragged into the facility is what scares me".

S.p.l.i.t is about an hour long and describes its own dingy skeuomorphism as a "diegetic & immersive UI" and it is that, except when it's alienating; esoteric; repellent. The game starts and I enter the group chat as Axel. A flashing line prompts me to speak but it doesn't matter what keys I press, Axel types what he wants. Inhabit. Dissociate. It feels like having an out of body experience with a body that doesn't belong to me in the first place. There is an unnervingly subtle lag to it all. Axel feels exactly one key slower than me.

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The last patch is never the last patch. CD Projekt have been teaching us that lesson for about a year with Cyberpunk 2077, and now Hades 2 is the latest game to have its devs go 'no, wait, one more'. To be fair to Supergiant, they did specify that the roguelike's previous update would "likely" be the last one before full release.

It wasn't. An eleventh early access patch has hit the underworld, but the devs swear it'll be the last one for realsies this time.

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Say what you like about Valve, they make the trains run on time. Eventually. Half-Life 2 got a small surprise update yesterday which changed the speed of a train in the 2004 shooter's driving sequence (the level called "Highway 17"). This change will let you once again beat said train in a game of chicken that it has been winning against most players for nearly two decades.

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Ahead of Battlefield 6's reveal trailer later today, July 24th, the camo-clad shooter's release date appears to have been shot out into the universe by a leaker.

This isn't the first time EA's latest instalment of putting bullets in faces while someone shouts orders in your ear has been subject to some leaks. This time it's Dealabs' Billbil-kun, who'se got a strong track record when it comes to pulling back the covers on details about games and hardware prior to official reveals.

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The exact difference between a cool, fun sci-fi reference and a tiresome, please get out of my house and into the sea sci-fi reference will remain a mystery to me, but I haven't seen anyone try and do Milliways from Hitchhiker's Guide as a management sim yet, so sure, I'll bite.

Things do start off firmly in Mos Eisley territory though. You recycle industrial trash heaps to clear space for dining rooms, where the shanky lookin' clientele sit on rusted barrels and order a soup made from canonically repulsive beans. The advisor informs me the beans taste so awful that they used to be illegal. This implies the existence of some sort of rough-edged intergalactic bean squad. See if you can spot them in the trailer below.

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Thousands of creators today found their Itch.io projects missing from the online storefront - effectively delisted to anyone searching or browsing the site. Others still are reporting actual takedowns "with no notice", halted payouts, and those who have previously purchased their games being unable to download them.

Going by one image posted on the Itch Discord and shared on Bluesky by game developer Daffodil, filtering by the site's 'NSFW' category previously showed 28,114 results. It now shows 7,008.

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Right, here we go, this is gonna have to be be quicker than the tempo of your average Motorhead thrashathon. Brütal Legend, the heavy metal action-adventure Double Fine put out on console back in 2009 (before coming to their senses and doing a PC port in 2013), is free to grab as I write this, but won't be for much longer.

Following the death of Black Sabbath frontman and general face of the metal Ozzy Osbourne earlier this week, the studio have decided to give out the game in which he talks to a roadie voiced by Jack Black for zilch. However, it's a deal that kicked off in the dead of the night UK time, and isn't set to run for much longer.

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It looks like discounts are back on the menu (I need to watch the Lord of the Rings again). Alienware’s top-tier laptops are seeing price drops up to $1,200, with RTX 5090 and 4080 options going for less than you’d expect. Looking for a cracking desktop deal instead? The iBUYPOWER Element Pro is still one of the best 4K‑ready desktop deals around, and we’ve pulled in a couple of high-capacity Anker power banks for anyone lugging around their Steam Decks and ROG Allys (Allies?). On top of that, we’ve got some of the best GPU deals going right now — including PNY’s 5060 Ti and other fresh drops still in stock. Let's get into it:

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