Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

AMD and Bethesda have unveiled a limited-edition Starfield-themed Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU and Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU at Quakecon 2023. Both are decorated according to the forthcoming open world space-me-do’s “NASApunk” aesthetic, a blend of cool whites, blues and yellows which I will admit to finding rather attractive, as somebody who generally finds gaming hardware aesthetics an absolute turn-off. It’s certainly better-looking than Nvidia’s lurid Cyberpunk 2077 GPU from 2020, but if you’re similarly beguiled, there’s an unfortunate catch: only 500 of these GPU/CPU sets are being made, and they’re exclusively available as part of a Quakecon giveaway.

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Overwatch 2 has launched on Steam and well, Activision Blizzard are probably regretting that right now. At the time of writing, the game has attracted 22,619 reviews, many written by people who’ve already been playing for a while on Battle.net, of which just 15% give the game a thumbs-up, making for an “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating. Tucked in amongst the usual troll reviews, cheeky links to Team Fortress 2 and dubious ASCII jokes there are some rather extensive essays on the game’s direction and faults.

Many players still have axes to grind about Overwatch 2’s switch to a free-to-play battle pass model – check out our launch-day Overwatch 2 review for the nitty gritty – which introduced levelling for new characters and cosmetics to a game that once handed you its entire roster almost without caveats, and encouraged you to experiment freely. Others are angry about Overwatch 2’s story-driven PVE modes, the supposed focus of the sequel – announced as a full-blown Hero Missions mode with skill trees and levelling, then dramatically stripped back to a series of separately sold seasonal co-op missions, much as with Halloween events in the first Overwatch. There are complaints about Blizzard’s recent handling of the Overwatch League, and more subjective quibbles about the switch to a 5v5 team format and the precise ratio of DPS to Support heroes. A few reviews touch on Activision-Blizzard’s alleged culture of sexual harassment and claims of unfair labour practices, which make Overwatch’s emphasis on team spirit ring rather hollow.

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What comes with free Gunnar blue light glasses and a copy of Starfield? Yup, it’s the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D when you buy it from Scan, and no I didn’t expect that either. Still, these freebies are on top of the lowest price we’ve ever seen for the fastest gaming CPU on the market, making this a deal that’s well worth your time if you’re considering a new gaming rig.

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It’s possible you’ve already played some of Baldur’s Gate 3, with Larian Studios having had their massive fantasy RPG in a successful early access for just under three years. It’s very good. But if you’re one of the many who haven’t, the premise is thus: an ancient evil has, as ancient evil is wont to do, arisen once more to threaten the great walled city of Baldur’s Gate, and by extension the surrounds, and by further extension the world and all the deep gnomes, elves and sexy demon wizards therein. Through happenstance and literal brainworms, you and the band of strange adventurers you meet in the first act are the only ones who can save the day. Don’t worry, you don’t need to remember or have played Baldur’s Gate 1 or 2. So. Off you go, then.

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Had you asked me yesterday about the best Baldur’s Gate 3 class, I might have picked Bard – versatile, swish, a solid support both in and out of combat – but that was before I discovered the ancient and honourable Larian discipline of barrelmancy. As the name suggests, it’s all about doing mildly game-breaking things with barrels, crates and other heavy containers, by taking advantage of high strength, the Throw command, and the fact that Larian RPG characters can somehow fit items as big as they are into their inventories, without bursting apart like rotten haggis.

A straightforward tactic: consider lugging a few oil barrels into a throne room, and dropping them all around the resident big cheese before you confront him. Given reasonably careful distribution, it’s possible to finish a whole battle this way in a single turn. Fortunately, while Baldur’s Gate NPCs can be eagle-eyed when it comes to sneaking rogues, they’re perfectly indifferent to people surrounding them with heavy explosives.

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Welcome once again to The Electronic Wireless Show podcast. We’re discussing current things about old things this week, as Bayonetta man Hideki Kamiya reveals he’s not super fond of the term ‘retro’ when applied to games. We discuss his comments, and what retro even means anyway, as well as what kind of games count as retro. Who even knows? Definitions are a jail, man.

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Look, I could justify this month’s Reality Bytes in any number of ways. I could say the VR launch cupboard is a little bare at the moment, with Steam’s New Releases list offering up a lot of dour military shooters, dubious Early Access projects, and fantasy dismemberment porn. I could say that The Room VR: A Dark Matter has just received a PSVR2 release, so now seems an opportune moment to revisit this acclaimed spin-off puzzler. I could say that The Room VR is the only entry in the series RPS hasn’t covered yet. But to be perfectly honest, I just fancied playing The Room VR. So there.

Oh all right, there was a slightly more specific reason why I wanted to revisit a game that came out just three days after Half-Life: Alyx. Upon its launch, there wasn’t much else like The Room on VR devices, a dedicated puzzler with high production values that didn’t feel the need to throw in a gun to shoot or a melon to chop. Now, there are bunch of fantastic VR brain-ticklers swimming in the pond, such as the time-travelling epic Wanderer, the perspective-bending A Fisherman’s Tale series, and the ingenious automation extravaganza The Last Clockwinder.

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It’s been a while since I picked a game that irritated me quite so much. I quit playing Frank And Drake twice before even meeting its second protagonist, but something about it kept pulling me back.

It’s partly the style. Some gorgeous rotoscoping gives its few characters a sense of constant motion that’s unreal and very lifelike at once, and it’s sometimes pushed further by having them decelerate to a blurred freeze frame when you stop walking. The backgrounds are static but interactable things shimmer a bit, like in old cartoons where you could always tell what was background and what was going to do something. More than that, though, it had me intrigued.

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The Cerebral Puzzle Showcase is back again on Steam, offering heavy discounts for over 200 puzzlers and over 40 demos for upcoming headscratchers. That’s quite a lot of puzzle games, so let’s stretch those dusty noggins with some good old recommendations.

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The Phantom Thieves are taking their stylish fits and supernatural powers onto a turn-based grid with Persona 5 Tactica. Set sometime during the events of Persona 5 Royal, the strategy game’s latest trailer shows our chibi heroes leading a revolution against vaguely French demons and a newly unveiled big bad. Akechi and Kisume stans might notice they aren’t in the shenanigans below, but that’s because both characters have been sadly paywalled behind day-one DLC. For now, check out the new trailer.

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