Amazon’s latest Prime Big Deal Days has entered its final day – of deals – so capacity-deprived gaming handheld owners still have a few hours to grab themselves a cheap microSD card upgrade. And if space is the sole concern, it’s hard to get more substantial than the 1.5TB SanDisk Ultra. Never mind how the header pic shows a 64GB card, the much more desirable 1.5TB version is down from £149 to £100 on Amazon UK and from $150 to $89 on Amazon US. Both of those are very fine bargains indeed, for a card that dwarfs even the biggest SSD options of the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally families.
Why, Hawthorne, must you put in me a position where I have to balance my love of woodland fantasy against my complete exhaustion with chopping things down to build other things? There are two scurrying mammals wearing robes inside of me, and they both love Redwall, Mice And Mystics, and Mouse Guard, but might spontaneously combust if they have to craft another hatchet. A trailer, eh? Is…is that a mouse and an otter dancing on top of a table, each grasping a mug of ale of their tiny paws and dancing to fiddle music? Fine! Fine! I’m not happy about this, but Fine!
Ah, this makes for sore reading. Spanish developers Tequila Works have cancelled a game and made a “small” number of layoffs in the face of financial difficulties.
If you’re not militant about meeting all the latest hardware standards, but do need an upgrade in the CPU department, the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D is close to perfect. Despite releasing this year, it’s designed to fit the last-gen AM4 motherboard socket – which sounds strange, because it is, but then the 5700X3D is also the cheapest Ryzen chip to feature AMD’s extremely game-friendly 3D V-Cache tech. The result is a very sprightly processor that’s available for relative chump change, especially now that Prime Big Deal Days has sliced it down to £161 in the UK.
I noticed that an awful lot of you read last Monday’s spotlight on the Ugreen Docking Station for Steam Deck, by our new deals tsar Robert. An awful lot. Way more than anything I wrote that week. No, it’s fine. I’m FINE. I hope you’ll be very happy together. But not as happy as someone who needs a swanky new Steam Deck dock yet missed that sale, as now they have another chance, with Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days knocking it down to £26 / $30 once more.
One of the games industry’s worst-kept secrets, the PC version of Red Dead Redemption, is a worst-kept secret no longer. After an unconscionable period of leakage, Rockstar have at last confirmed the open world port, together with a PC version of its Undead Nightmare expansion – they’re coming to Rockstar Store, Steam and the Epic Games Store on October 29th 2024. Picture craggy old John Marston riding into town at sunset, whooping and firing six-shooters at the clouds. Actually, don’t picture anything – that’s what videos are for! Find the announcement trailer below.
Paradox Interactive have not had a rosy couple of years. While the company’s core business in grand strategy remains prosperous, their approach to games outside this niche has been mired by delays, cancelations, closures and layoffs. Let’s run through the big setbacks: The Lamplighters League, which we overall liked, was a $22 million financial flop – Paradox have now parted ways with creators Harebrained Studios. Cities Skylines 2 should have been a victory lap, after the success of the first game, but it launched with severe bugs and performance issues. Prison Architect 2, another follow-up to a hit game, has been delayed indefinitely, and Paradox have split from developers Double Eleven. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is borderline vapourware: originally announced in 2019 with Hardsuit Labs at the helm, it’s currently in the hands of The Chinese Room, and was recently delayed for the umpteenth time into 2025.
And then there’s the abrupt cancellation of Life By You, a life management sim designed to compete directly with The Sims 4, and the closure of its creators Paradox Tectonic. Writing-down the development of Life By You cost Paradox around 208 million krona, or $19.2 million. It was the primary contributor to a 90% decrease in the company’s operating profit for the second quarter of 2024, versus the same quarter in 2023.
It’s a stubborn little beggar, but the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti’s pricing has been dragged down enough in recent months that it’s now a far tastier prospect than it was at launch. Now, the Amazon Prime Big Deal Days sale has a twin-fan Asus model down to £340 in the UK – the lowest this particular graphics card has ever been, and as far as I can tell, the least you’d have to pay for a brand-new RTX 4060 Ti in the current market.
Traveller’s Hymn is a top-down, grid-based, open-world adventure game (and breathe), set in a dark fantasy land. The tileset is lovely, as are the little dialogue boxes and menus and the gentle bob of your backpack-ridden character as they walk. Basically, it looks like it’s worth everyone’s time, particularly because there’s one big twist here – it’s entirely free.
One of the more compelling arguments for gaming graphics degrowth is that all those extreme-fidelity moss textures and Master Chief helmet dents are producing some horrifically engorged installation sizes. That’s a recipe for an SSD upgrade, and if it’s space you’re after, then Amazon Prime Big Deal Days has the 4TB Crucial P3 Plus on some big discounts. It’s down from £250 to just £192 in the UK, and down from $360 to $210 in the US.
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