Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Space survival explorathons can usually be pretty stressful affairs since, y’know, breathable air can be a finite resource in these environments, and being chomped up by an indescribable horror is never off the table. That’s why Astroneer won me over with its more chilled take on the not-so-chill genre. But for those who enjoy the scary parts of space, Astroneer can now be turned into that hardcore survival experience. Or anything else you want. That’s thanks to the expansive Custom Games Mode update which launched last week – I’ve been working in Interstellar’s timezone, sorry!

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Lisa: The Painful has been described to me as Undertale before Undertale. Or Earthbound after Earthbound (so, uh, Mother 3?). In other words, Lisa was a bit of a cult classic thanks to its freaky world, absurd humour, and brutal consequences. And when I say brutal consequences, I mean your party members can permanently lose limbs or turn into mounds of saggy flesh. How’s that for a debuff? Its Definitive Edition is out now, though, so maybe its “cult” status will finally blossom into mainstream appeal. Lisa: Definitive Edition bundles in the original game and its expansion, Lisa The Joyful, as well as new enemies, bosses, stories and endings, and an easier “Painless” mode.

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Diablo 4‘s latest patch is out now and it’s a doozy, introducing new unique items, fixing dozens of bugs, and re-balancing every class with stat increases and decreases. These changes come just a couple of days before the launch of the action-RPGs first season and battle pass.

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Counter-Strike 2 is in closed beta while Valve test its new features, revised maps and upgraded engine. That limited test has just been updated to swap out two maps, Nuke and Office, with two others, Vertigo and a hugely overhauled Overpass, as well as to add the two-on-two Wingman mode.

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We’ve just passed the middle of the month (and the year?), which means it’s time for another wave of Game Pass games to come. For starters, we have a tasty indie trio coming to the service today. Then to cap off July, one of the best platformers in recent memory Celeste rejoins the fun, while Marvel’s Avengers waves goodbye.

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Good news, everyone! Newegg is doing a heck of a deal on an Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop, which packs in some impressive components for a price some distance below $1000. Right now, you can pick up this configuration with an RTX 3070 Ti graphics card, Ryzen 7 6800H CPU, 16GB of DDR5 memory and 1TB NVMe SSD for $969.99, a solid $130 below its usual price.

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Following the dizzying superhero speeds of Megaton Rainfall, developers Pentadimensional Games are now making something even weirder. In Tenebris Pictura, you play as a psychic investigator (both the psychic-powered and psychic-investigating type) who’s searching for a missing person in the Victorian era. The investigation soon takes you to a remote island engulfed in paranormal goings-on and, well, things take a strange turn. You better look for yourself below.

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How many Stardew Valley farms is too much for one person? Well, developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone is daring me to start yet another one as he recently teased some of the new additions coming in the game’s 1.6 update. Barone tweeted today that a new festival, new items, more dialogue, more secrets, and an even more nebulous “???” are coming with Stardew Valley’s next major update. Yep, that’ll do it – my new farm is already watered and I’m ready to fight/fish/romance whatever “???” is.

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When I think back on most of the cinematic platformers I’ve played recently, it’s not the latter part of their genre title I remember most, but the former. The lush camera pans of your Planet Of Lanas, the haunting backdrops of your Somervilles and the gooey, malleable monstrosities of your Insides. These dramatic moments linger in the memory much longer than their respective running and jumping, and if it’s a proper platforming challenge I’m after, I usually look elsewhere, swapping cinema for action with your Raymans, Trines and Oris.

Full Void, on the other hand, is a cinematic run and jumper that manages to strike a good balance between both parts of its personality. Following in the Another World school of gorgeous pixel art meets one-foot-wrong-and-you’re-dead-style platforming (albeit with much more generous checkpointing than its 1991 source material), there’s a real athleticism in your teen hero’s journey to bring down a despotic AI, making its intricate leaps and bounds just as memorable as its down-to-the-wire set pieces.

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Do you want a PC case for $40 plus shipping? So $53? Yeah, no, yeah? Well, anyway, Fractal Design’s Focus 2 RGB is selling for that much on Newegg, when it normally costs like twice that, plus shipping, so like $93. That’s $40 less, remember.

It’s a pretty cool case too, that supports full-size ATX motherboards, comes with two 140mm RGB fans up front, fits up to 360mm/280mm radiators and looks pretty neat as well. Let me tell you a bit more about it?

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