Echo Point Nova is an open world FPS with hoverboards, floating islands and sledgehammers

If you’ve been dreaming of a hyper-agile FPS set on the sky islands from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Echo Point Nova could be your jam. It casts you as a space pilot who crashlands on a floating archipelago planet during a research expedition. I’m not sure what you’re researching, exactly, but going by your character’s loadout, it’s the Science of Sick Moves.

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Ultrafast shooter Tribes 3: Rivals gets a Steam Next Fest demo, is out in early access “soon”

The latest haul of Steam Next Fest demos is so vast that I initially missed Tribes 3: Rivals, a game I’ve been cautiously coveting, among them. While this high-speed FPS has been playable in a number of semi-open alpha tests already, trying it out is now as easy as sliding into its Steam page and hitting the big green demo download button.

The demo launch is accompanied by a shiny new trailer, showing more of Rivals’ skiing shenanigans, aurally satisfying airshots, and flag-throwing tricks that I will never, ever be able to successfully pull off in a real match. Also, a confirmation that it’s launching into early access, though there’s no date beyond “soon.”

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Great deal alert: $2500 58-inch Samsung monitor now $1800

I don’t expect anyone to buy this monitor – but I’m absolutely entranced by a $700 discount on a gaming monitor that brings it down to “just” $1800. To be fair, this is essentially two 32-inch 4K 240Hz monitors without the gap in the middle, with a Mini LED backlight that delivers 1000-nit HDR highlights, an absolute beast of a monitor… but I’m guessing that most people that can drop nearly $2000 on a monitor aren’t waiting for a deals post on Rock Paper Shotgun to do so.

Still, I can dream, and this monitor is pretty cool, so let’s take a closer look at this absolute bargain.

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Intel’s best value gaming CPU is down to £125 at Amazon UK

One of Intel’s best value CPUs for gaming is even better value than usual this week, as the Core i5 12400F is down to just £125 at Amazon. That’s more than £75 cheaper than the 13th and 14th-gen equivalents, which add on only meagre levels of performance, and a great price for a CPU that can use the same DDR4 or DDR5 motherboards with PCIe 5.0 support. If you’re building an Intel-based gaming PC, I’d argue that this is the best budget option going!

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If Inscryption was a fantasy-themed roguelike dungeon crawler, it might look a lot like this

Apologies if I’m starting to sound like a broken record these days, but here I am, back with another edition of “Have you heard about this cool new roguelike deckbuilder?” I swear I’ll find a new/another niche one of these days, but listen, Pyrene is very cool indeed, and I lost a good hour to its free demo last week on Steam. On the surface, this might look like your typical fantasy dungeon crawler, but Pyrene has some neat tricks of its own, combining its own blend of resource gathering and roguelike citybuilding with Inscryption‘s number-crunching battles and a dash of Foretales‘ card-based exploration. And it has a lovely piano soundtrack to boot, too.

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This roguelike has you batter mutants with ricocheting footballs

I’ve never been a true “Football Enjoyer”. I’ll weirdly get into it at certain times, like when the World Cup is on and I get suckered into the belief that, “It’s actually coming home this time”. But maybe I could be a football enjoyer, now that there’s a roguelike out there that combines football skills with room-clearing. I’d give Footgun Underground‘s demo at least 90 minutes of your time.

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Apex Legends Season 20’s skill trees see the battle royale take a surprising MOBA turn

I’ve played Apex Legends Season 20, and it might be the fastest and fiercest that the battle royale FPS has ever been – while also being the richest in tactical opportunities and metagame theorycrafting. It’s all thanks to a drastically expanded Evo experience system, one that now not only boosts your shield capacity, but unlocks the branches of a MOBA-style skill tree that permanently buffs your character for the duration of a match. Even for a season with no new playable Legend to headline, it’s an update that feels exciting and genuinely game-changing – if a little scary at the same time.

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Naughty Dog have a Last Of Us Part 3 “concept” and it’s not the previously revealed “small story” about Tommy

Naughty Dog’s grand panjandrum (co-president) Neil Druckmann has a concept in mind for The Last Of Us: Part 3, following on from the original PlayStation 3 action-adventure’s tale of parental love and the PS4 game’s theme of “justice at any cost”. This isn’t confirmation that a third single player Last Of Us game is in development, with Druckmann reiterating comments from this time last year that Naughty Dog feel no obligation to continue the tale. Nonetheless, “it does feel like there’s probably one more chapter to this story.” Will we ever really see the last of The Last Of Us?

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Screenshot Saturday Mondays: Flushing the urinal and kiting the rat ball

Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. We’re a bit short this week because of the rolling technical disaster that is modern Twitter, but I’ve still enjoyed ogling everything from a must-have immersive sim feature and a very unpleasant nighttime drive to lovely simulated water and strange spaceship shenanigans. Check out all these attractive and interesting indie games!

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