Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

When the Ryzen 9 5950X debuted in 2020, it was a staggeringly strong productivity and gaming CPU, with 16 cores and 32 threads of Zen 3 power for a princely £750. A little over three years later and next-gen Zen 4 CPUs are firmly here, but the 5950X remains the most powerful productivity CPU for the venerable AM4 platform.

That makes the 5950X a tempting upgrade option for anyone using an older Ryzen processor that wants to keep using their existing motherboard and RAM, and today this CPU has breached a new low-water mark: £360 on Amazon UK, 52% off its original recommended retail price. (It’s also a nearly-as-good 50% off at the US.)

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Acts! It used to be just those old-timey theatre productions that had them, but as in many respects, videogames have nipped through a stage exit and stolen theatre’s underpants. One act isn’t the same as another, however: take the third act of Baldur’s Gate 3, which many players feel isn’t a patch, or indeed a hotfix changelog, on the thunderously well-received RPG‘s first two acts. According to senior RPG designer Anna Guxens, Larian have been following the reaction and are thinking about how they can handle act three’s “drastic” tone shift better in future releases. It’s a timely observation, because in separate news, Larian’s CEO Swen Vincke has posted that he’s “figured out” the first act of Larian’s next unannounced project.

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It’s been a good handful of years for fans of secret-ridden games. The sort of secrets that make the game world feel huge and unknowable and transform the post-game into a scavenger hunt more akin to ARGs than classic secret endings. After 2021’s meta deckbuilder Inscryption, and enigmatic Zeldalike Tunic a year later, 2023 brought us Cocoon. Set in a cryptic world of insect-like aliens and their impossible machines, Cocoon is a puzzle game all about mystery.

What best sells the mystery is a minority of puzzles that are so well-hidden, that a lot players might never know they exist. Those are the optional challenges that guard the way to Cocoon’s secret ending. Any given player might stumble on one or two clues for those puzzles, before shrugging and finding their way back to the main story. But as the game goes on and the clues remain unresolved, those players will wonder what other secrets are hidden around them. I talked to Jeppe Carlsen and Edwin Kho from developer Geometric Interactive, to learn why those puzzles were made, and how it feels to watch a community track them down in real time.

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I have a sneaking affection for slightly jarring genre hybrids – games like the relatively recent Disintegration and the much older Battlezone 2, which smush action mechanics together with real-time strategy, or the rather more elegant Puzzle Quest, in which you roll around a parchment landscape fighting wizards using the power of match-3. New open world RPG Archaelund, which launched in early access this week, and was brought to my attention by RPS supporter cpt_freakout, has something of that curious enchantment to it.

You’ll explore its landscape in first-person, roving sandy plateaus and frontier towns that remind me of Morrowind, at times. Bump into a foe, however, and your first-person perspective undergoes a fission reaction, splitting into a full group of warriors who are controlled in top down.

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The quest to appease the immortal share price continues as game engine provider Unity announce that they’re laying off another 1,800 people, or around 25% of their current workforce, in a bid to “position” the company “for long-term and profitable growth”.

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MSI are the latest gaming gear makers to unveil a Steam Deck-alike, announcing the Claw as part of their CES 2024 showcase. The Claw – great name, by the way – actually looks and sounds closer to the Asus ROG Ally than Valve’s handheld, being a Windows 11-based device without any flashy hardware tricks like the Lenovo Legion Go’s detachable controllers. All the same, it’s aiming to stand out among these portable PCs through two means: its engorged 53Whr battery, and the industry-first use of a 14th-gen Intel Core Ultra chip as its APU.

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Among the slew of reveals for Final Fantasy XIV during Fan Fest Tokyo last weekend was a new town players will visit during upcoming expansion Dawntrail. While a new corner of Eorzea to explore is exciting by itself, the cyberpunk city has added to my hope that the MMO is set to shower a bit more love on the best Final Fantasy game. That’s right: Final Fantasy IX.

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If you’re like me, you probably have at least one treasured memory of being allowed to play an edutainment game at school under the guise of learning. What a blast, getting to play video games at school! For me, it was a floppy disk with a bizarre Pac-Man clone where you had to answer maths questions every time you ran into an enemy or obstacle. I’m sure for others it might be unforgiving classic Oregon Trail or globetrotting trivia quiz Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

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Seemingly not content with swallowing up Animal Crossing and spitting out its own farm-and-craft minigame, Final Fantasy 14 has apparently now guzzled down Starfield and is readying to unleash its own way to sink dozens of hours into galactic wandering.

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Danish audio brand Epos is getting out of the gaming space, so its (actually great) headsets are going cheap right now. The H6Pro, a closed-back gaming headset with a neutral sound signature, robust design and wired connectivity is down to $67 at both Best Buy and Amazon US, from an original MSRP of $180.

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