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Valve have released a revamped Steam store menu in beta, so folks can give a number of changes a whirl and offer feedback ahead of the full rollout.
As the pipe-themed company wrote in a news post about the menu emerging from the labs for this testing, the main goal of its changes is to offer “easier access to the places Steam users most frequently visit”. Insert joke about the sorts of weird stuff one can have lurking in their Steam library here.
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Alienware’s Aurora mid‑range x16 laptop deal is the highlight today, coming in at the same price as the entry‑level model but with a stronger CPU. It’s effectively a free upgrade for anyone shopping smart. To round things out we’ve pulled together some of the best gaming keyboards and mice currently discounted and ready for headshots. Let’s get into it.
In Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, you play one of the hazmat-sporting goons at a government checkpoint during a zombie apocalypse. Your job is to let refugees through the gate one by one, and appraise them for evidence of infection. You know the kind of thing: hidden bite marks, weird heartbeats, high temperatures, people ripping your face off without showing appropriate documentation, etcetera.
“You OK babe? You’ve barely touched your boost?” mentions a helpful fish in the trailer for roguelike racer Reality Drift, thus setting the new standard for all reminder pop-ups going forward. I tabbed this one because the phrase “racing game where your choices matter” intrigued me. I was unaware of the helpful fish at this point. Or the road signs that offer you a choice between ‘space’ ‘cat land’, and ‘hell’. Here’s a visual compilation of suchlike images, with added movement.
Whimsy, grimdark, and gambling? And a roguelike to boot?! In my 2025 indie game? Eh, go on then. It looks neat. The trailer below features a desolate, hellish area called “The Pläins öf Päin” (umlauts mine) inhabited by lone egg idiot named ‘eggo’. A curse on the egg idiot and his cracked shell, and a curse on the world for allowing this kind of tomfoolery to proliferate unchallenged.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will get a New Game+ mode on 29th July, Ubisoft have announced in a video about their summer plans for the feudal Japanese open world stab-me-do. They’re also working on a free Assassin’s Creed Shadows update that lets you fast-forward the time of day, an ability that would certainly serve me well right now, as I contemplate the seven grim hours of video game journalism that separate me from the weekend.
Alienware’s laptop range this year includes the Alienware Aurora 16 and its more impressive Aurora 16X. Both are great laptops, but as you may have guessed from the ‘X’ in the title, the latter is the more impressive version.
Battlefield 6 has been revealed, all official-like, after months of leaks. And what a reveal it was, with a trailer featuring enough explosions to satisfy Michael Bay for at least two hours – though without a release date to accompany it.
Yep, we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see if the October date recently cited by a prominent leaker is on target, as for now all we got was a tease of the campaign that ended in promo for a multiplayer reveal next week. Which, to be fair, is a chef’s kiss way to have done things if EA’s aim was to be totally on brand for today’s big shooters.
I promise this isn’t a “gAmErS aRe MaD” story – there’s actual testing and advice and stuff here, honest – but it must begin that way, as I wouldn’t have guessed that birdlike soulslike Wuchang: Fallen Feathers would launch with PC performance issues without a cacophony of (currently ‘Mostly Negative’) Steam reviews saying so. Not after those easygoing system requirements, surely?
Surely yes, it turns out, though maybe not to the extent that a page of 7,000 thumbs-down symbols might suggest. It’s not good. It runs slowly on max settings. There’s stuttering. DLSS 4 frame generation is either broken, or implemented in a uniquely vexing way. But you can smooth things out considerably with a few choice settings adjustments, including on lower-end graphics cards.
You don’t use the mouse in S.p.l.i.t, but you won’t miss it. Games are sometimes described as ‘clunky’, but what’s more satisfying than good clunk? Each key clank here hits like a heart thud. Axel and two associates are scrambling for root access to launch a malware attack on “the facility” – as in “death is the least of my worries. Being dragged into the facility is what scares me”.
S.p.l.i.t is about an hour long and describes its own dingy skeuomorphism as a “diegetic & immersive UI” and it is that, except when it’s alienating; esoteric; repellent. The game starts and I enter the group chat as Axel. A flashing line prompts me to speak but it doesn’t matter what keys I press, Axel types what he wants. Inhabit. Dissociate. It feels like having an out of body experience with a body that doesn’t belong to me in the first place. There is an unnervingly subtle lag to it all. Axel feels exactly one key slower than me.
