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The RTX 4090 sure is expensive, huh? Wouldn't it be a shame if there was a graphics card that cost one eighth as much and offered the same basic technologies? Well, good news chums, EVGA's RTX 2060 SC Gaming model is available for £212 - and despite costing 12.5% the price of the RTX 4090, it delivers at least 25% of the performance - nice. That's like, double the value!

The Samsung Odyssey G7 is one of the best gaming monitors in the world - or at least, that's what I keep telling myself after buying one last year. This is a 32-inch model, offering a 2560x1440 resolution, a 240Hz refresh rate and a DisplayHDR 600 certification that means it actually delivers impactful HDR - a rarity at this price point. Anyway, it's down to £499 today after a £100 discount, so listen up - here's why I rate this monitor so highly.

Open-world hoverbike 'n' climbing game Sable is due to leave PC Game Pass on Sunday, and I only started playing today. I will not finish in time. That's fine. Honestly, I haven't finished half the games I've bought, and I've long since stopped thinking about 'The Backlog' as if I ever will. But I might enjoy this one week of exploring a gorgeous desert, climbing and gliding and hoverbiking, and you might too.

Last time, you decided that utterly rinsing a place is better than an end credits song. This was a pretty close one, with rinsing taking 54% of the vote. Good. Onwards! This week, you must choose between two things which add fleeting novelty and surprise. What's better: temporarily piloting an enemy, or a game within the game just for funsies?

I've long been excited about the possibilities offered by upcoming tidying things up nicely game A Little To The Left, and back in May this year Alice0 (one of us is RPS's Mirror Universe Alice, but nobody knows which) finally had a crack at it. The way she wanted to organise keys wasn't what the game thought was the right way, and her article examined this frustration; she described the canonical correct solution as being that of a "domestic Joker".

The developers at Max Inferno Studios read this article and decided that, you know what? Alice0 was on to something. They contacted us to let us know that her piece was the inspiration for adding a feature called Let It Be, a skip puzzle function that you can access at any time. Anne Macmillan, who's a co-founder of Max Inferno Studios as well as artist and animator for A Little To The Left, was kind enough to talk to me about it.

Friends, let me admit something up top. I am the most tedious of Dead Rising apologists. I love its in-game timer. I adore its linear mission structure that is completely at odds with the expansive semi-open world shopping mall in which it takes place. Hell, I even like its severely stripped down Wii port. I firmly believe that Dead Rising is an all-time great, but also understand why folks have (reasonably) cooled on the game’s particular quirks.

Update: It looks like the UK's 512GB deal and the US's 1TB deal are no longer available. Boo, but also, the 400GB model is now on sale, so I've replaced the former with this mid-sized card in the lists below. I've also updated the 256GB SanDisk Ultra's price, as it's dropped slightly further. The otherwise original version of the article is as follows...

In case you missed the mega-guide that went up earlier, today marks the start of Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale: a two-day buffet of discounts that’s exclusive to Prime members. That includes loads on PC gaming hardware, though my eyes were most immediately caught by something not very desktop-grade at all. The SanDisk Ultra, one of the best microSD cards for the Steam Deck, is on sale across a choice of capacities – with the 1TB model getting especially juicy >50% savings in both the UK and US.

Hello, yes, it’s me, once again banging on about the WD Blue SN570. I just think it’s neat: a highly affordable yet remarkably quick M.2 SSD, with multiple capacities to choose from and regular sales making it even cheaper. Speaking of, today is the last day of the Amazon Prime Early Access Sale, which has the 1TB Blue SN570 down to £65.

That’s not quite its lowest price ever, but it does match its flash sale pricing during Prime Day back in July. And is an utter pittance for a 1TB NVMe SSD, let alone one that’s actually quite speedy. Amazon UK also have the 2TB version on sale for £128, just £1 more than its lowest dip on record (Prime Day 2022 again, as it happens). These prices are only available to Prime members, but the Blue SN570 ranks highly among the best SSDs for gaming, so they're well deserving of your cash if you’re in need of PC storage improvements.

Games. So many, many games. Each and every week the game pile grows higher, forming the walls of a virtually impenetrable digital structure known only as the ‘backlog’. As the games multiply, thickening the increasingly cell-like walls of our den of entertainment, we can only gaze on and hope it doesn’t one day become our tomb. On that light note, it’s nice to see that SteamDB now has a section showing what games are coming out on Steam every week.

If there's one thing that brings stability to my life, it's the escapism of reality TV. Below Deck: Mediterranean had me covered last winter (alongside its Sailing Yacht spin-off), as I watched super yacht crew toil to meet the demands of the wealthy and unhinged. Then Love Island stepped up to fill a large portion of my summer with curated chaos. One guy confessed "I licked her tit or whatever," in a shock revelation to his betrothed.

What's on the reality TV menu for winter? Ainori Love Wagon: Asian Journey, baby. It's on Netflix and I'm convinced it shares great parallels with some of my favourite RPGs of all time.

Defining boomer shooter Doom, like Skyrim, is one of those games that’ll eventually be ported to everything. Microwaves. Checkouts. Voight-Kampff machines maybe, in the years to come. Right dang today though, you can (almost) play Doom in Notepad, or DOOMpad as its creator Samperson calls it. Catch a glimpse of the ripping and tearing in action by watching the video below.

Cultic has really good headshots. I mean, it also has a lot of other things going for it, but it feels rude not to highlight this right at the very top because I think it’s important. Cultic’s headshots are sensational. Enemy noggins pop with a squelchy crack that tickles a very unnerving part of my brain, the resulting blood fountain spraying so high it causes the ceiling to drip with human juice long after your hopeless adversary has slumped to the floor. It’s gross. But. You know. It’s also kind of great.

When there’s a Prime Day, Black Friday, or any other big dealspalooza involving games hardware, it never takes long to find a SteelSeries headset with a money-off sticker slapped across an earcup. This time, on the second and final day of Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale, it’s also one of SteelSeries’ best headsets so far: the Arctis 7 wireless model.

You probably already knew if you were willing and able to buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 after seeing its price announcement, so here’s a short version of the following review: Yes, on pure performance it’s the best graphics card for 4K you can get. Yes, DLSS 3 is the real deal. And no, neither of those make the RTX 4090 good value for money, even if it makes a compelling argument for Nvidia's latest upscaling tech.

I first made the RPS treehouse aware of Kevin Costner's Waterworld The Game over a week ago, when I dumped this tweet in our work chat. At the time it was swiftly shot down as an obvious joke, and I was shamed, but now the freeware game based on a ten-second joke in a 1997 episode of The Simpsons is out. So who's laughing now, eh? Play it for yourself via creator Macaw45's itch.

Imagine making all the incredible effort to get a spacecraft to another star system, only to crash it into a wild and unexplored world. That’s the gist of Stranded: Alien Dawn, a futuristic survival sim from the devs behind Surviving Mars that launches into early access today. The game puts you in charge of four survivors who’ll be up against the basic demands of continuing to exist, and facing dangerous alien creatures.

Call Of Duty fans are getting worked up about whether there’ll be a new game in the military shooter series next year, as a yearly instalment has been tradition since 2005. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has waded in to allege that, while there will be some fresh COD in the offing, it’ll be in the form of something like a paid expansion for the upcoming Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 instead of a full game. A Modern Warfare 2.5, if you will.

The Saints Row reboot sees its first major update next month, but don’t expect any new stuff in Santo Ileso to play around with. Devs Volition insist this one’s just concentrating on hunting down and squashing the game’s many bugs. As we noted when it was released in August, Saints Row has rather a few technical issues. While Volition say this means they’re not at the stage where they can be “talking about roadmaps and expansions”, they are at least releasing a free cosmetic pack this week that includes some boots that look like bananas.

Welcome, prospective hardware acquirers, to the second and final day of the Amazon Prime Early Access Sale. Like Prime Day, this sale requires a Prime membership to access all the best deals, but so far those have included some tempting savings on some quality PC gaming kit. It therefore marks a good chance to replace any worn-out peripherals or make a component upgrade, especially if it can't wait until Black Friday 2022. I’ve rounded up a few dozen of the choicest deals, from Amazon UK and Amazon US, below.

Gaming monitors don't have to be expensive. Right now you can pick up Dell's excellent G2722HS 27-in 1080p 165Hz monitor for just £129 after a massive £110 discount, courtesy of a HUKD discount code. That code is HUKDG2722HS, so just enter it at the checkout to get this monitor for an unbelievable price.

New Blood Interactive have made a name with various flavours of retro first-person shooter, including Dusk, Amid Evil and Gloomwood. They're branching out into nostalgic throwbacks for other genres, however. To mark the 25th anniversary of the orignal Fallout, CEO Dave Oshry showed new footage from their unnamed, unannounced CRPG.

Meta have announced their much-teased new VR headset, the Meta Quest Pro. It promises a swankier virtual reality experience over the Meta Quest 2, with higher resolution displays, a lighter headset, and new Quest Touch Pro controllers included. It's also launching imminently, on October 25th, with pre-orders open now.

The downside: it'll cost you £1500/$1500 versus the Quest 2's £400, with Meta saying the headset is designed for business and not gaming.

2K Games have confirmed that personal data was stolen during a security breach last month. The game publisher had previously announced that their support services had been hacked and asked users not to open any links received from them via email. They're now contacting users whose information was accessed and made available for sale by the hackers.

EA have released the teaser trailer for their first golf game since 2015, EA Sports PGA Tour. It will reportedly feature all four major golfing championships, as well as several of the world's most famous courses. You can find the thirty seconds of footage of grass and sandpits below.

I picked up the Romancelvania demo at Steam Next Fest on Alice Bee's recommendation, and she was quite correct when she described it as "extremely relevant to [my] interests". So relevant, in fact, that I'm starting to wonder if this wasn't an attempt at psychological sabotage disguised as a friendly gesture. (You wouldn't do that to me, would you, Alice?)

Romancelvania is exactly what it sounds like: dating sim meets Castlevania. No idea how I missed it during my own perusal of the demo list, because unsurprisingly it's immediately become my favourite thing I've ever played at a Steam Next Fest. I was so drawn in, in fact, that I've been having a tough time putting it down, even when I really need to — hence my suspicion that this was some sort of test on Alice's part. No idea if I've succeeded or failed.

The demo starts on a promising note, awakening you in the persona of a comically brooding and exaggeratedly shirtless hunky Dracula. (The final game will include the option to play as a Lady Drac, if you prefer, who will not be shirtless, but not by a large margin.)

I was underwhelmed by Prime Day’s lack of compelling desktop RAM deals, and Amazon’s follow-up – the Prime Early Access Sale – is also pretty quiet for good memory discounts. However, there are some intriguing offers on DDR5 RAM, which is perfect timing: AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs have just launched, and unlike their Intel 13th Gen/Raptor Lake rivals, won’t be compatible with older DDR4 at all.

Oh my word, I'd forgotten about Sharkey's 3D Pool. What a grand old game. Apparently it was quite technically impressive for its time, as one of the very first 3D pool or snooker games. I wouldn't have known anything about that as an eight-year-old playing games after school. Much like I knew absolutely nothing about how to play pool well. I mainly just liked the noise it made when a ball was potted. Whether it was my ball or my opponent's ball: that was just extraneous detail.

Not keen on the snazzy driving effects in recently announced racer Need For Speed Unbound? That’s okay, because devs Criterion Games have confirmed that you don’t have to play the game with great big puffs of colourful smoke dredging up from your car’s wheels, or cartoon wings popping out when you drive up a ramp and get some air. I’m into the effects myself, but it’s good to know you have the option to turn them off if you’re not.

We’ve never ran a full review of the Logitech G915 Lightspeed Wireless TKL keyboard – my bad – but all you really need to know is that it’s the G915 Lightspeed Wireless, one of the best gaming keyboards ever, without the number pad. That, and it’s currently a lot cheaper than usual in the Amazon Prime Early Access Sale, which runs until midnight tomorrow (October 12th).

Coral Island self-describes as a "reimagining of farming games", but if we're being real it doesn't reimagine the Stardew Valley template totally differently. The titular island, and your overgrown plot of farmland on it, has almost the same layout as Stardew Valley, and the tasks you do - growing stuff, keeping animals, making friends with locals, exploring a mine five levels at a time, and appeasing local spirits by giving them bundles of different crops - will also be very familiar to any DewHeads (that's what we call ourselves).

That's not to say Coral Island isn't good. It's all in very beautiful bouncy 3D, for one thing, and I found the island setting (which impacts the flora, fauna, and architecture in general) made everything feel less like work. Combined with a thread of environmentalism weaving through the game, and the fact that Coral Island is slightly easier than Stardew Valley, and you feel like you're doing more progress in less time. If you loved the vibe of ConcernedApe's smash hit, but found the need to hand-write your own almanac a bit intimidating, this is the game for you.