Rock Paper Shotgun – PC Game Reviews, Previews, Subjectivity

This whimsical little seaside town builder is another project by Oskar Stålberg whose tiny planet and city builder projects RPS have marveled at in the past. Unlike his prior browser-based experiments, Townscaper is being treated to some extra polish and plans for a paid release. It's been on my mental wishlist since before it had a name, but now there's a handy page on the Steam store to help me not forget. Check out the trailer below for some extremely satisfying pips and pops as the rainbow cities spring from the sea.

We’ve got a lot of time for WD’s Blue line of SATA SSDs - it is, after all, the RPS SSD of choice for our current £1000 RPS Rig build - and the good news is you can currently grab one on the cheap over at Best Buy, where the 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities are all on offer.

If your reaction to the release of Intel’s new set of 10th Gen Comet Lake CPUs is to celebrate the lower prices now available on 8th and 9th Gen Coffee Lake models, then this pair of Z390 motherboard deals from CCL might well be for you. One comes with a free SSD, while the other gets you some fairly generous cashback if you buy a CPU at the same time.

You'd have thought people would have escaped from Tarkov by now, but they're still at it. Escape From Tarkov is a brutal, sandbox-ey shooter about scavenging for loot in a warzone where everyone has better guns than you - except for right now! A big update to the current early access build has brought a load of changes, but one of the most significant parts is the character wipe. Tarkov's central appeal lies in looting, and now (not for the first time) all your loot has gone. My friends say they're happy about this, and I still do not understand them.

After teasing their new VR cybergoggles earlier this year, HP have now fully unveiled their new Reverb G2 headset, and it looks an awful lot like the Valve Index. That's probably because it's been designed in collaboration with Valve, and uses the same lenses and speakers that they created for the Index. However, HP's Reverb G2 takes things even further with a higher resolution display and even more tracking cameras. And the best thing about it is that it's not going to cost the earth to buy, either.

It's been a little too easy to write off People Can Fly's upcoming "RPG shooter" Outriders. A particularly beefy Destiny 2, from what's been teased so far. The loot-shooter that's willing to show some heads exploding. But today saw the devs post their first in-depth look at Outriders in what intends to be a series of monthly broadcasts - and there's some fascinating depth behind all the exploding goons and burst heads.

Localisation is a tough task, even when not considering languages English has tried its hardest to stamp out over the centuries. But today's 1.8 update for Dicey Dungeons brings developer Terry Cavanagh's dice-roller a little closer to home by adding full Irish language support, alongside proper gamepad controls, balance overhauls and two new baddies who've been waiting on the sidelines since launch.

Break out the party poppers - Prey and Dishonored developers Arkane Studios turns 20 years old this year. Well, sort of. The studio may have been founded in '99, but who am I to ruin a party? To celebrate two decades of sneaking, stabbing, and all-round immersive sim'ing, Arkane are dusting off the oldest book on their shelf by giving away free copies of the studio's 2002 fantasy debut Arx Fatalis.

So long, Civilization. The latest freebie over on the Epic Games Store is Borderlands: The Handsome Collection, a rather handsome pairing of two Borderlands games to blast your way through without dropping a penny. But Epic's feeling generous this week - today also marks the surprise release of grimy graffiti sandbox Sludge Life, and this filthy bonus is going free for quite a bit longer than a week.

In the grim darkness of the near future, there is only De_dust2. But look further ahead and- oh! There it is! Only war. Now look back to the present and find the two have come together in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, with new Warhammer 40,000 stickers now sold to slap on your virtual guns. CS's stickers have always been a bit 'teenager bunkbed' so frankly I can't think of a better match. It's only weird that AK-47's haven't had "WAAAGH!" stickers all along.

It's been a rough start for GeForce Now. Since leaving beta back in February, we've watched publisher after publisher remove their games from Nvidia's fledgeling streaming service. In an attempt to bring a bit of stability back to their shelves, Nvidia are now asking developers to opt-in before adding GeForce Now support - making their catalogue a little more reliable by only offering streaming support to games that actually want it.

Infants have long known the joys of shaking a bottle to watch its contents slosh and bubble, and now Half-Life: Alyx players can experience that joy too. Valve last night updated the VR explore-o-shooter with fancy new mock bottle fluids, and even as someone whose body wholly rejects VR I am captivated watching players play with bottles of booze. It's like a real beer, but it's not even there! Our Katharine hit the bar to shake and spin bottles like a virtual Tom Cruise, and enjoy what is perhaps the closest any of us can get to a quiet drink in the pub. Come watch!

The Dune-esque psychic warriors of RimWorld's Royalty expansion are great, but what if you want your spacewizards to not be dukes and lords but rather monks, hippies, or goths? The latest update has you covered. It revamps psychics by making them mediate to charge their wizardbrains, and different types of character will use different focuses. Sure, lords will still love their thrones and that, but maybe you'll have a tribal lot who love a big psychic Avatar tree, a spooky wizard who mediates around graves, or other weird wizzes.

There's a new Windows 10 update out, which instils a tiny bit of fear into me because these updates tend to break at least one random piece of software on my PC. But, there are at least a few things to look forward to. Windows are rolling out the new DirectX 12 Ultimate, which will should help some of those lovely video games have nicer graphics. There's also a bunch of accessibility changes being introduced, and those quirky lil' kaomojis are now much easier to use ♪(^∇^*).

Would your PC benefit from a shot in the PCI-e slot? For mid-range gaming PCs, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super is arguably the best Nvidia graphics card you can buy for 1080p gaming at the moment, and the good news is that it's currently back down at its launch price of £220 over at Currys in the UK and $230 over in the US, which is the lowest price we've seen for this card in quite some time.

Roll up, roll up, The Butcher's Circus is (about to be) in town. Merciless RPG Darkest Dungeon is set to launch its PVP mode later today, letting you pit your band of stressed out adventurers against those of a stressed out person in the real world. The new mode is completely separate to the singleplayer campaign, and comes with new trinkets and reworked Heroes.

The Dungeon's first free trial weekend also kicks off today, so you can get all cross without spending a penny.

After growing a little threadbear over the years, Volibear now has a spiffy new look in League Of Legends and some new abilities. He's here, he's hairy, and he's crackling with lightning. If you go down to the jungle today, you're sure of a big surprise - not just because of what bears usually do in the woods.

The newest Sea Of Thieves update docked yesterday, and though it hasn't got quite as much big new stuff as last month's, Lost Treasures is bringing a whole heap of mini-events to earn bonus loot for your pirates. More importantly, there are also tons of quality of life changes being introduced, the first of which are the long-awaited checkpoints for Tall Tales.