Diablo IV PC performance, system requirements, and the best settings to use

If there’s a single upside to the collapsing standards of technical competence among big-budget PC games, it’s that when something like Diablo 4 comes along and simply performs well, there’s an almost pleasant relief to it. Like your bus arriving on time, a minute after watching the previous, late-arriving one flip onto its roof attempting a handbrake turn.

It’s not perfect, but Diablo IV does run smoothly for the most part (also sorry Google, but I’m going back to Roman numberals), and its system requirements on PC are as likely to involve museum pieces as they are the latest and priciest graphics cards. I’ve put some hours into the early access build and have come up with a best settings guide, but in truth, this will likely just optimise your framerates – Diablo IV’s higher quality settings rarely trouble it, especially at 1080p.

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Steam starts showing EU citizens a game’s lowest price from the last 30 days to comply with new law

For those in the UK, the latest “here’s what you could have won” bit of helpful EU regulation just dropped. Valve are now required to show Steam users in EU countries a game’s lowest price over the past 30 days, which means sellers can’t display deceptively high discounts by bumping the base price before a sale. Valve made the change in order to comply with the ominously named “Omnibus Directive”, which applies to all online stores.

Steam already enforces limits on manipulating prices around sales, but it’s nice that some people get to have a little extra peace of mind.

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Screenshot Saturday Mondays: Eerie moods and good vibes

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. This week, we’re even heavier on vibes and moods than usual, and with only one retro-styled FPS for once! The vibes are plentiful and they are powerful and I hope you enjoy this latest selection of interesting and attractive indie games.

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These are your 25 favourite space games of all time

Earlier this month, we asked you to vote for your favourite space games of all time, and man alive did you lot come out swinging for this. Hundreds and hundreds of votes have been beamed in over the last few weeks, resulting in an overwhelming favourite that was (no word of a lie) several thousand points ahead of its nearest rival. Not hundreds. Thousands. When you see it, you’ll probably go, ‘Of course, of course that’s number one!’ but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Come and find out what other games made the cut as we count down your 25 favourite space games of all time.

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This cool 50s noir game lets you do the job of a hotel cleaner (aka: solve a mystery)

You know who you shouldn’t trust? Hotel cleaners. Not in real life, I should add – where they are hardworking and one time one helped me catch and kill cockroach even though we didn’t speak the same language – but in the game This Bed We Made, a third person mystery set in a slightly grimy 1950s hotel. The reason why you shouldn’t trust this particular cleaner because it is, in fact, you, in the kitten heels of Sophie here, as you rifle through their belongings and ogle at their undies. There’s a demo of one such room on Steam now, and it plops you right in medias of some juicy res.

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Chill fishing sim Catch & Cook looks a lot like Dredge without the spooky undercurrents

Take one good look at the upcoming Catch & Cook: Fishing Adventure and you might just mistake it for 2023’s other third-person cartoony fishing sim: Dredge. The big-toothed mutants and otherworldly horrors in Dredge can get quite overwhelming though, especially when they start to chomp at your ship beneath the surface. After playing Catch & Cook’s recently released demo, I’m happy to report that it’s the ideal fishing sim for people who find Dredge’s spooky undercurrents, erm, too spooky. Just a very chill, very good time.

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Episodic adventure Tell Me Why is free to keep for all of Pride Month

Continuing their annual tradition, developer Don’t Nod have announced that all three episodes of Tell Me Why will be free to keep for the rest of June. Rather than spending money on the game, the team asks that you might consider donating that money to “trans creators, trans-inclusive charities local to you, and trans people in need,” in honour of Pride Month. Regardless, the supernatural mystery is one of the best recent adventure games and is well worth the time.

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