What pressure! As I mentioned last week, this is my last ever Sunday Papers as I'm leaving Rock Paper Shotgun (and Gamer Network) this coming Wednesday. I'm not sure how to meaningfully summarise twelve years on this site or twenty years in the field, but after several aborted essays I rediscovered the columnist's crutch: bullet points.

You'll have to forgive the indulgence, because I present here just some of the values - and the personal taste, clearly - that I've tried to express through the site during my time here. Many of the values were instilled in me by my excellent colleagues (particularly the unimpeachable Alice O), and I only hope I lived by them more often than not.

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Graham doesn’t want a big fuss about his last WAWAPTW, which is just as well, because I’m writing this at 4pm on a Friday and don’t have the energy to make one. Let’s save the goodbyes for a few days more, and in the meantime, simply share what we’re all playing this weekend.

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Alienware’s Aurora mid‑range x16 laptop deal is the highlight today, coming in at the same price as the entry‑level model but with a stronger CPU. It’s effectively a free upgrade for anyone shopping smart. To round things out we’ve pulled together some of the best gaming keyboards and mice currently discounted and ready for headshots. Let's get into it.

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"You OK babe? You've barely touched your boost?" mentions a helpful fish in the trailer for roguelike racer Reality Drift, thus setting the new standard for all reminder pop-ups going forward. I tabbed this one because the phrase "racing game where your choices matter" intrigued me. I was unaware of the helpful fish at this point. Or the road signs that offer you a choice between 'space' 'cat land', and 'hell'. Here's a visual compilation of suchlike images, with added movement.

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Microsoft have published a memo recently sent to staff by CEO Sayta Nadella, which addresses the strange fact of Microsoft reporting net income in the ultrabillions while laying off thousands of supposedly "treasured colleagues". Most of the blog is a gusty, jargony paean to generative AI technology, in which Microsoft have made vast investments, and how it is going to "empower everyone to create their own tools" and create a "local surplus" of Ability To Do Stuff in Microsoft dominions worldwide.

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Whimsy, grimdark, and> gambling? And a roguelike to boot?! In my> 2025 indie game? Eh, go on then. It looks neat. The trailer below features a desolate, hellish area called "The Pläins öf Päin" (umlauts mine) inhabited by lone egg idiot named 'eggo'. A curse on the egg idiot and his cracked shell, and a curse on the world for allowing this kind of tomfoolery to proliferate unchallenged.

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Assassin's Creed Shadows will get a New Game+ mode on 29th July, Ubisoft have announced in a video about their summer plans for the feudal Japanese open world stab-me-do. They're also working on a free Assassin's Creed Shadows update that lets you fast-forward the time of day, an ability that would certainly serve me well right now, as I contemplate the seven grim hours of video game journalism that separate me from the weekend.

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Alienware’s laptop range this year includes the Alienware Aurora 16 and its more impressive Aurora 16X. Both are great laptops, but as you may have guessed from the ‘X’ in the title, the latter is the more impressive version.

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Today’s deals cover a full range of Alienware desktops, with discounts across RTX 4060 Ti up to RTX 5090 configurations. The Aurora line gives you clean, efficient builds for 1080p and 1440p gaming, while the Area 51 range steps things up for 4K and heavier workloads. You’ll find variations with faster RAM, higher wattage PSUs, and better cooling depending on what you need.

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Battlefield 6 has been revealed, all official-like, after months of leaks. And what a reveal it was, with a trailer featuring enough explosions to satisfy Michael Bay for at least two hours - though without a release date to accompany it.

Yep, we'll have to wait a bit longer to see if the October date recently cited by a prominent leaker is on target, as for now all we got was a tease of the campaign that ended in promo for a multiplayer reveal next week. Which, to be fair, is a chef's kiss way to have done things if EA's aim was to be totally on brand for today's big shooters.

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