I don’t like being mean about games, but I do like being honest about games, and, yeesh, is The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum putting me between a rock and a hard place. The bottom line here, folks, is that Gollum is not good. Just as the ring corrupted Sméagol, playing Gollum has made me a husk of a human being, a twisted and bitter shadow of what I used to be. Playing it for more than 30-minutes at a time would make me feel unsettled, prompting some kind of feral need to scoop my brain out of my skull.
Alan Wake 2 would arrive in October, said a voice actor earlier this week. They were not wrong. Developers Remedy confirmed the news via a lengthy new trailer shown during tonight’s PlayStation Showcase, and embedded below.
Ghostrunner’s mix of wall-running and ninja-slashing made enough of a splash to warrant a sequel. Ghostrunner 2 was first teased two years ago, but tonight’s PlayStation Showcase gave us our first proper look at the follow-up. It has all the slicing, dodging, and parkour that you would expect from a sequel about a cyberpunk ninja, but this time some speedy vehicles join the party too.
Tonight is Sony’s PlayStation Showcase stream, an event that promises to have plenty of cool news and announcements as only a big, early NotE3 presentation can. While I’m sure the majority of tonight’s announcements won’t have an immediate and direct impact on us over in PC town, it’s well known that Sony have been stepping up their PC game recently, and so a lot of what you see here will probably make the jump eventually, even if it’s several years down the line. So come and join us for an early glimpse of PC’s possible future. I’ll be liveblogging tonight’s proceedings, which kick off at 9pm BST / 1pm PDT. See you there!
Small form factor (SFF) PCs are definitely in right now. I’ve built my fair share over the past few years, but new models continue to come into the market offering impressive looks, thermals, buildability for their size. One recent release is the Asus AP201, a Micro ATX case that offers excellent cooling potential, a stylish, unshowy appearance and a very reasonable price – especially today, as the black and white versions of this SFF case have dropped to $70 on Newegg following a $15 discount.
This month, Amazon were already giving away 15 games to all Amazon Prime subscribers, but they’ve now sweetened the pot with 8 more, including some real good indies up for keeps. The new additions are available to claim starting today, up until June 26th – giving you a little over a month to grab the lineup below.
I’ve lost countless seconds, minutes, maybe even hours to those TikTok videos showing off ludicrous marble runs. Strangers decorate their houses with mini slopes and sliding paths, they record their marbles rolling down these elaborate courses, and then they’re posted online for strangers like me to mindlessly enjoy. I’ve now spent the last few nights building my own marble runs – not in real life, because I’m too lazy for the cleanup after – in Zen Marbles, a free playable prototype, out now.
I’m sure you’re all bored of reading about how about how expensive RTX 40 series graphics cards are; I’m certainly bored of writing about it. Thank the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti for its mercy, then – assuming you can find one at RRP, it’s the first of its family not to plonk a price premium over the last-gen equivalent. And even though it’s only moderately faster than the RTX 3060 Ti in most games, its efficiency improvements and DLSS 3 support ensure the RTX 4060 Ti keeps some crowd pleasing potential.
I always knew I would one day be tempted to return to Destiny 2. After three years and several thousands hours of playtime, last February I hit my limit on the garbage MMO that this phenomenal FPS is trapped inside and uninstalled. But I still adore parts, including its striking sci-fi landscapes. So when I heard the latest season was returning to the alien ocean moon of Titan, one of my favourite spots, I was tempted. Oh I was tempted! But now Season Of The Deep started yesterday and Titan is here and no, it’s not enough.
Swedish developers The Bearded Ladies certainly have a type. If you’ve played the memorably odd Mutant Year Zero or the largely forgettable Corruption 2029, you’ll know it by now – a blend of real-time stealth and turn-based tactics, where you quietly pick off stragglers from enemy squads before confronting the rest in a team scrap. Now here’s Miasma Chronicles, the Ladies’ third effort, and let’s just say they’re clearly happy to stick with what they know.
While the patterns of play are to a great extent the same, though, Miasma Chronicles is a more ambitious project. Addressing criticisms that those earlier games weren’t substantial enough, it’s a broader, denser beast, in which you could easily spend twice as long – 30 hours or so – seeing all the sights and shooting the nasties that populate them. That means there’s a lot more space available for this game to coax out varied strategies and introduce more elements, which is great. But it also means the weaker elements of the formula are left more exposed, which isn’t.
