Destiny 2 news, updates and DLC

Update: Following some rather critical player feedback, Destiny 2 developer Bungie has announced that it's going to be making some changes to the game over the coming months. The changes were detailed in a long blog post in which the game's designer and director acknowledged the need to be more transparent and communicative with players.

A big issue that has risen with the game recently is that players were being misled with regards to the number of experience points they were earning. This was fixed with a hasty patch over the Thanksgiving period. However, it was just another problem for players who had already been reporting issues with a lack of variety in the game and PS4 exclusive content.

Many of the changes Bungie announced in its blog post will be coming as soon as December when the Curse of Osiris DLC is released, but others won't appear until 2018. 

The first changes, Bungie has said, will mainly make quality-of-life improvements to the game by giving players more rewards and more opportunities to spend their Legendary Shards. When 2018 rolls around further improvements will see better rewards for Prestige activities, Adventures and Lost Sectors, and private matches will come to the Crucible.

The full list of improvements is extensive and can be found on the official blog post. 

Original article continues below...

Destiny 2 has arrived on all platforms but though the game has finally been released that doesn't mean the news and updates are going to stop – this is a game that's only going to grow over time. 

With that in mind, we've created a one stop shop for all of your Destiny 2 update needs. Here you'll find the latest news on what's being added to the game and when updates are coming.

It is, however, still early days so in the meantime why not take a look at our definitive Destiny 2 review to get an idea of whether or not this is the game for you. Convinced it is? Then you might be interested in our tips and tricks for getting started. Whether you're completely new to the Destiny universe or just need to brush up on all that jargon, this guide will ease you in. 

Read on below for our pre-release coverage of the game. 

Cut to the chase

• What is it? The highly-anticipated follow up to MMO shooter Destiny
• When it is out? September 6, 2017 on console and October 24 on PC
• What can I play it on? PS4, Xbox One and PC
• Destiny 2 developers: Bungie and High Moon Studios
• Destiny 2 publisher: Activision Blizzard

DLC

Expansion I: The Curse Of Osiris

Not long at all after its release on consoles Destiny 2's first DLC was confirmed as The Curse of Osiris.

The DLC was first reported by Kotaku and subsequently spotted in an Xbox Store listing where it says the expansion will take the player to the planet Mercury and something called the Infinite Forest to continue their "Guardian's journey with all-new story missions and adventures." 

In the game they'll ”Journey through time and space to learn the secrets of Osiris, avert a dark future, and rebuild the ties between the legendary Warlock and his greatest student—Ikora Rey.“

According to this listing there's also going to be new story missions, themes weapons, armor and gear, new cooperative activities, new competitive multiplayer arenas and more besides. 

The DLC was later confirmed at Sony's Paris Games Week showcase where the release date was announced to be December 5. This DLC will mark the first appearance of the legendary Warlock via a brand new storyline.

It was also announced there'll be new raid content, a new Mercury patrol area and the return of Destiny 1's lighthouse as a third social space.

PlayStation owners will have exclusive access to a Crucible map, set in Titan's New Pacific Arcology. 

You can watch the trailer below:

Pre-release information

Destiny 2 trailers and screenshots

At Gamescom 2017 in Cologne we were treated to a launch trailer. With a mix of CGI and in-game footage this trailer sets up the high-octane excitement we've come to expect from Destiny very well. You can watch it for yourself below: 

Destiny 2 got a brand-new trailer at Sony's E3 2017 Keynote on Monday, June 12 that shows the three new classes in action and re-affirming the game's September 6, 2017 release date.

We also learned that gamers that buy the game on Sony systems will receive an exclusive strike, ship, weapon and PVP maps. 

That's a compelling reason for guardians to go for PS4 over the other systems, although PC gamers will be the only platform with 4K. 

Is that enough to persuade gamers to Sony's systems? Check out the trailer and decide for yourself.

Destiny 2 PC

Bungie confirmed a PC release on the day it released the game's debut trailer and now there's no looking back. Only forward to its October 24 release. Bungie has said, however, it won't be available on Steam. 

This is a very good thing considering that PC gamers are clamoring for Destiny 2 – and it's a perfect fit for the platform, which has long been the spiritual home of the MMO. It will also give Bungie access to a huge new audience.

And if that news wasn't good enough, Bungie is going to reward to the PC faithful by making the PC version of the game 4K compatible. Yep, your favorite shooter is now going to have a 3840 × 2160 resolution.

Here's images of the game in 4K to whet your appetite. 

But its resolution isn't the only unique thing about the game's PC launch.

We've also learned recently that the game is going to be exclusive to Battle.net when it does come to PC ... which, as it turns out, might be a few weeks after the console version is released. Destiny will be the first non-Blizzard game to be made available on Battle.net, however, so that's quite an honor.  

In terms of additional features, Activision has confirmed that the game will support text-chat on PC and will feature HDR graphics; plus Nvidia announced at Gamescom 2017 that it will support SLI, if you are a fan of using more than one video card, and 21:9 aspect ratio for if you like using more than one monitor.

PC hands on preview impressions

As Destiny 2 is the franchise’s debut on PC, I was excited to get hands on with the game at this year’s E3 to get even a small sense of how the massive multiplayer first-person online so popular on consoles would feel with a mouse and keyboard.

I got the chance to try out the very first mission of Destiny 2’s single-player campaign mode. Called Homecoming, the mission throws players right into the action of the invasion of The Last City lead by Cabal Red Legion commander Dominus Ghaul. 

I might as well make it clear right now, I am absolutely not a PC gamer. Though I had played the original Destiny on console, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from the game on PC as keyboard and mouse controls are utterly unfamiliar to me. 

Keyboard is key

It’s to Destiny 2 on PC’s credit, then, that I found the keyboard controls very intuitive and clearly laid out. Nothing is lost by using keyboard and mouse, and gunplay felt as sharp smooth and satisfying as it does on console. 

In fact, with the game running in 4K at a speedy 60 frames per second it might have been even better.

Something that was enjoyable about the game’s first mission was that despite it being a single-player mode in a game that’s more focused on multiplayer experiences, I didn’t feel abandoned and lonely when playing.

The planets are alive with the sound of NPCs

This is because Bungie has integrated its NPC characters into the campaign; characters like Ikora and Cayde-6 are there fighting alongside you and being an active and vocal part of the action. Not to mention the cutscenes. 

In the short mission I played, the game’s environments were rich and detailed with an exciting sense of scale and life. The foreground of the action puts you in a crumbling almost completely destroyed city that feels like it’s coming down on top of you. Look past this though and you’ll see an expansive horizon filled with enemy ships.

Basically, this was a much more cinematic experience than anything the original Destiny offered and it made playing alone more exciting as a result.

Cinematic campaign

It’s worth going back to the fact that we noted the mission was short, though. I’m not sure if it was for demo purposes but I was surprised by how quickly I managed to make my way through it so we hope other sections of the campaign run slightly longer if only just to allow us to savor the experience.

Though we’ve only experienced a small part of it, we feel like it’s safe to say Destiny 2 is going to feel as fun and at home on PC as it does on console, if not more so with the extra effort Bungie has put in with its tailored PC version. 

If the rest of the campaign looks and feels as good as the part we played, and the multiplayer is up to shape we don’t doubt fans will love it and newcomers will flock to it.

The PC version may be coming later but from what we can see, it'll be worth the wait. 

Destiny 2 features

Clans

Improving on Groups from the original Destiny, Clans will be an important feature in Destiny 2 that will allow players to team up and organize games for online multiplayer.

The structure of Clans in Destiny 2 will be similar to that of Groups: they'll be capped at 100 members and those with Destiny 2 accounts will be able to be a member of one Clan per platform. The way they'll differ, however, is in their new abilities and features. The biggest change is Guided Games, a new matchmaking system for Raids and Nightfall Strikes. With this system existing Clans that perhaps don't have enough members for a higher-level missions will be able to seek another player outside their Clan in order to have a full party. This benefits high-level players who aren't members of Clans as well as the Clans themselves. 

Clan members can also invite other players to join their Clan from within the game and all members of a Clan will receive rewards for each others' successes. What these rewards are is still unclear. 

Bungie is making it possible for players to transfer their Groups from Destiny into Clans in Destiny 2 before the game's release which should mean a thriving online multiplayer community as soon as the game is released.

Clan leaders are now able to visit Bungie.net and decide whether or not they want to move their Group over to Destiny 2. They'll be able to transfer their title and permissions to another member if they feel they'll need a better and more committed leader for the new game. 

According to Bungie, this migration period will last for one month, after which the Clan creation service will go live on Bungie.net.

A cinematic story

Gamers will be glad to hear that the developers are placing more emphasis on the story and characters this time around. "The cornerstone...is a great cinematic story," Activision exec Eric Hirshberg said earlier this year. "That's been a real focus with a great cast of memorable, relatable characters.” 

In our short hands on with game's first campaign mission we definitely think Bungie have been successful here. We got a much greater sense of scale, spectacle and life here than we did in the original Destiny.

Goodbye Grimoire

As part of putting more emphasis on story and characters, Destiny 2 will drop Grimoire cards. Those who played the original Destiny game will know that Grimoire cards were cards unlocked for completing tasks in the game. 

Unfortunately, they were only accessibly on the web, not in the actual game itself, which basically meant much of the game's core lore and story was inaccessible while playing. 

World design lead, Steve Cotton told Forbes that this time around there will be no Grimoire cards as the team want to keep most of the lore in the game itself and tell the story through the missions, characters and scannables.

Lots of expansions

This is hardly unexpected given the success of Destiny’s myriad updates and add-ons, but Activision has confirmed that it has “follow-on content plans” for Destiny 2. That likely means the team will be listening to players and tailoring the future experience – expect fresh content, gameplay changes, and cosmetic add-ons. 

More accessible for “casual players”

‘Casual’ has become a bit of a dirty word in some gaming circles, but Activision and Bungie are clear about their intention to make their game more open to all. "We've made it more accessible to someone who just wants to have a great more casual first-person action experience... without losing anything that our core players love,” Hirschberg said. What that means in practice is not clear, but we hope it means a game with less grinding and more varied gameplay.

Character continuity with the first game (to some extent)

We don’t know how Destiny 2 will handle player’s Guardians from the first game (more on that in the rumours section below), but we know there will be some continuity. “That idea is that the Guardian you have created is something you can bring along with you on that adventure,” Community Manager David Dague told IGN in 2014. “If you take a look at the way people have played other games for a long period of time, they’ve had a relationship with the same character for a very long time.” Intriguing.

November 30, 2017 at 04:46PM
Samuel Horti,Emma Boyle

PlayStation Plus December 2017: all the free PS4 games you can get this month

Mozilla’s new open source model aims to revolutionize voice recognition

You may have noticed the steady and sure progress of voice recognition tech in recent times – all the big tech firms want to make strides in this arena if only to improve their digital assistants, from Cortana to Siri – but Mozilla wants to push harder, and more broadly, on this front with the release of an open source speech recognition model.

The initial release of this Automatic Speech Recognition engine has just been unleashed, based on work carried out by the Machine Learning team at Mozilla. The engine is modelled on ‘Deep Speech’ papers published by Baidu, which detail a trainable multi-layered deep neural network.

Mozilla says that its project initially had a goal of hitting a ‘word error rate’ of less than 10%. However, the firm says the engine’s word error rate on LibriSpeech’s test-clean set is now 6.5%, clearly beating this goal, and achieving close to the Holy Grail of human-level performance (which occurs at around 5.8%, according to the Deep Speech 2 paper).

Mozilla has worked hard to train the speech recognition model using ‘supervised learning’ and a huge dataset of thousands of hours of labeled audio, drawn from all manner of sources including free (TED-LIUM and LibriSpeech) and paid (Fisher and Switchboard) speech corpora.

Further labeled speech data was pulled from the likes of language study departments in universities, and public TV and radio stations, all of which was more fuel to the fire for honing the speech recognition engine.

And of course the huge strength of this project, its open source nature, means that this honed technology is now open to anyone to use in their speech recognition projects.

Streamlined speech

Mozilla further notes that the plan for the future is to release a model that’s light and fast enough to run on a smartphone or single-board computer like the Raspberry Pi.

The company has also unleashed its Common Voice initiative, which is an open and publicly available voice dataset containing some 400,000 recordings from 20,000 different speakers – that represents around 500 hours of speech.

As Mozilla puts it, the idea here is to “build a speech corpus that's free, open source, and big enough to create meaningful products with”, running in parallel with the new speech recognition model.

Microsoft is also making big strides on the voice recognition front, having achieved a word error rate of 5.1% in the Switchboard speech recognition benchmark, as announced back in the summer.

• We’ve picked out the best voice recognition software of 2017

November 29, 2017 at 11:00PM
Darren Allan

Nintendo Switch: the latest news, tips and accessories

Here are the best games of 2017 (so far)

Update: We've added our November picks for the best games of this year.

2016 is done and dusted from a gaming perspective, but don’t fret -  there are enough great titles coming out in 2017 to put your New Year’s resolution of getting outside more or spending less on games in some serious jeopardy.

That being said, we've gone through and compiled the list of the best games coming next year as well as collected the best ones that have already come out (Gravity Rush 2 anyone?). 

The reason for this list is two-fold: First and foremost we want to give you a look ahead at the new year of gorgeous games – powered in large part by powerful hardware like the PS4 Pro and Xbox One S. Then, once we start collecting more games that deserve to be called "the best of 2017" we'll group them together by month for your perusing pleasure. Combined, this list should give you a pretty complete overview of where you should spend your free-time next year.  

Oh, and in case you missed it, and are interested the best gaming moments of last year, be sure to check out our 2016 Game of the Year Awards. 

Looking for the best of all-time lists? We have ones for the best Xbox One games, the best PS4 games, the best Nintendo 3DS games, the best PC games, the best indie games, the best iPhone games and the best Android games.

OK, we've spent time enough living in the past. Our first eagerly-anticipated release is less than a month away, so let's not waste any more time.

Resident Evil 7

What system(s) is it on? PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

The latest entry in Capcom’s survival horror series is a wild departure from its past few predecessors, but in the end that only made it better. Foregoing the guns-blazing action mentality that had come to define the series for better or worse in the past few years, Resident Evil VII came at us with a much more subdued scare tactic. A first-person horror adventure trapped in a musty, rotted house with a family of musty, rotted maniacs? If that doesn't scream nostalgia, I'm not sure what does. Resident Evil 7 was a great return to form for the series and one that's well worth your time.

Read our full Resident Evil 7 review

Gravity Rush 2

What system(s) is it on? PS4

Gravity Rush 2 was a huge sleeper hit this month. The original – while definitely unique in its premise and art style – didn't reach critical acclaim, but that's a whole different story here. New gravity powers and styles make combat feel fresh and the expanded relationships give us something more to latch onto. There are still a few control problems here, as you might obviously expect from a game that involves manipulating gravity, but overall its charm and beauty far outweigh any lingering issues we might've had. 

Yakuza 0

What system(s) is it on? PS4

Yakuza 0 is a game you didn't know you wanted from a series you might've only heard but it's downright amazing. Imagine Grand Theft Auto minus the ludicrous amount of ammunitions and adding in tons of hysterical side quests.

To that end, Yakuza 0 is a deadly serious game about some really adult material that never takes itself too seriously. You'll have just as much fun pummeling people for cash as you will playing any number of the wacky and wonderful mini games you can find throughout the massive game world. Gravity Rush 2 was this month's sleeper pick, but Yakuza 0 is this month's somehow even sleepier sleeper pick. 

Horizon: Zero Dawn

What system(s) is it on? PlayStation 4

The newest project from Killzone series developer Guerrilla Games, Horizon: Zero Dawn’s concept is far more unique and engrossing than the forgettable mashup of words that make up its title. (Seriously, we challenge you to leave us a more generic-sounding title in the comments below.) 

Thankfully, Horizon's premise was far more original. 

An action adventure set in a world overrun with robotic fauna, Horizon casts you as a human hunter named Aloy who uses a mix of stealth, ranged combat, and a little improvisation to fell inorganic beasts and survive in the mecha-wilderness. Not just a unique take on an open world, Horizon pushes what the PS4’s hardware can do from a graphical level. That said, we feel this game deserves a spot in any gamer's PS4 library. 

You can read our full review here.

Halo Wars 2

What system(s) is it on? Xbox One, PC 

Despite it being eight years since the last game, Halo Wars 2 doesn’t feel like a large step from the original. It looks better and it takes into account everything that’s happened in the Halo story since the first game, but mechanically it is much the same as its predecessor. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. Everything considered, Halo Wars 2 is enjoyable – if not that innovative.

Read our full review here.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

What system(s) is it on? Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo Switch

As we expected, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was the Nintendo Switch's big launch title and it's certainly done well for itself. With good reviews pretty much across the board it's a must-have title and a great way to start off your relationship with the new Switch console. 

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild takes the adventuring shenanigans of Link and blows it up onto a sprawling open world where players can explore at their leisure and daring. Even the series’ trademark dungeons can be played in whatever order the player wants, making Breath of the Wild a game that is just as much about maintaining the series' status quo as it is breaking it. 

While previous entries in the Legend of Zelda series like Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker have played with the concept of a large explorable map, Breath of the Wild is taking things to ambitious new heights. 

Read our full review here.

Mass Effect Andromeda

What system(s) is it on? PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

Given how the original Mass Effect trilogy wrapped up the epic tale of Commander Shepard’s battle for all sentient life with a nice lil’ bow, the next installment in BioWare’s sci-fi series had us intrigued. With essentially a blank slate to tell a new story, Andromeda is set far in the future, 600 years after the events of Mass Effects 1 through 3. 

In an expansive, semi open-world environment, players are tasked with exploring new planets with the aid of your own ship, the Tempest, and a customizable six-wheeled space whip called the Nomad. Of course, things don't always go according to plan in the more roguish parts of the galaxy, so you'll also be bringing your allies, laser weaponry, biotic powers, and other abilities both familiar and new to Mass Effect fans along for the ride.

Though it's the latest game in the Mass Effect franchise we're not so sure it's the greatest and you can find out why in our full review.

Yooka Laylee

What system(s) is it on? PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, PC

Sometimes it takes a genre coming back with a vengeance to remind you just how long it's been since you've seen one of its kind. That was the overwhelming feeling playing Yooka-Laylee, the Kickstarted spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie from a group of ex-Rare developers, left us with. 

The recent absence of the cartoon platformer is what initially makes Yooka-Laylee such a novel game. You play as Yooka, and Laylee sits on your shoulders, allowing you to perform special moves and providing a second character to bounce witty dialogue off. It's a formula we haven't seen in some time, but it's one we're all the more excited to come back to all these years later.

Prey

What system(s) is it on? PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

From the ashes of the cancelled-before-its-time Prey 2, Arkane Studio’s revival of the Prey franchise is, well, some interesting branding. With little direct resemblance to the original Prey to be a reboot, nor anything really to do with its scrapped sequel, Prey is more of a re-imagining of the series’s original concept - though we question what constitutes a series when only one entry ever saw the light of day, but we digress. What now stands in Prey 2’s place is something wild, intriguing, and plenty ambitious enough to be whatever it wants to call itself. 

Aboard a research vessel floating in space to study a mysterious alien life form, players will have to use their wits and resources to survive as a breach puts them - and possibly the entire Earth - in danger. 

We've given the game a "play it now" recommendation in our full review, praising its often surprisingly deep story, incredible atmosphere and open-ended approach which offers something to both casual and hardcore gamers. 

Read our full review of Prey here. 

Injustice 2

What system(s) is it on? PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Marvel ain’t the only superhero property throwing down this coming year. NetherRealm Studios’ 2013 brawler Injustice: Gods Among Us is getting a sequel in 2017, returning to the DC Comics universe to knock some serious heads. With classic standbys like Batman, The Flash, and Wonder Woman going toe-to-toe with new additions like Gorilla Grodd and Blue Beetle, Injustice 2 is looking to be a from-the-pages slugfest both fighting game fans and comic aficionados alike can really enjoy. 

To that end, Injustice 2’s tagline of “Every Battle Defines You” isn’t just a dramatic piece of marketing text. Each time you step into the ring with one of the DC’s finest, that character walks away with new loot that enhances their skills, traits, or overall ability until you have a suped-up Superman tuned exactly to your tastes. 

Read our tips and tricks guide to give yourself a fighting chance in Injustice 2.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

What system(s) is it on? PlayStation 4

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is the game we've waited over 20 years to play – it's the not-quite-remastered remake of the game many of us loved growing up. It wasn't something we ever thought would happen considering that the game's original development studio, Naughty Dog, is deep in development of The Last of Us Part 2 and Uncharted 4 DLC, so we're thankful another developer, Vicarious Visions, was there to pick up the slack. Call us suckers for PlayStation-era nostalgia (guilty as charged) but with a year like 2016 in the recent past, it'll be nice to have something to bring us back to the good ol' days.

We think Crash Bandicoot is an example of how classic games should be redone.

Tekken 7

What system(s) can I play it on? PS4, Xbox One and PC

Tekken is up there as one of the best fighting game franchises out there and Tekken 7 is a worthy addition to the series. As ever you'll find an exciting roster of fighters and incredible depth when it comes to controls and tactics.

One problem wth Tekken 7 is that it can be somewhat inaccessible if you're new to the series. Bearing that in mind, we've put together a tips and tricks guide to help you get started.

Arms

What system(s) can I play it on? Nintendo Switch

Tekken 7 isn't the only worthwhile fighting game to have come out in June 2017. While Xbox One and PS4 got the latest Tekken, Nintendo kept itself in the fight by releasing the new and Nintendo Switch exclusive Arms.

Arms is a single and online multiplayer fighting game that's quite unlike anything else on the market right now thanks to its colorful characters with telescopic (and interchangeable) 'arms'.

As you'd expect, a new IP means learning new skills and we've got a tips and tricks guide to get you off to a good start. 

Splatoon 2

What system(s) can I play it on? Nintendo Switch

Being Nintendo's first real stab at an online shooter, the original Splatoon was a bit of a surprise hit for the Wii U. This time around, however, we were ready and waiting for the sequel on the Nintendo Switch.

Splatoon 2 didn't disappoint, improving on the original in nearly every way while bringing more of the same paint-based fun. Nintendo has really pushed Splatoon 2's online play through competitions at various shows such as E3. If you want to be capable of a stage-worthy performance, you definitely need our tips and tricks guide. 

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

What system(s) can I play it on? PlayStation 4

And they thought it was all over! Yes, we thought the Uncharted series had come to an end after Naughty Dog told us that Nathan Drake's story had been told but we have to admit we were glad we were wrong. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is a standalone spin-off starring the Nadine and Chloe from the main series.

It runs a little shorter than a core Uncharted game and Nathan Drake is nowhere to be found but it's an excellent game that captures the spirit of the franchise perfectly. After playing it for ourselves, we said it was like an extra verse being added to your favorite song.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

What system(s) can I play it on? Nintendo Switch

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle took us by surprise but it's absolutely a stand out game from August 2017.   

Nintendo's Mario and Ubisoft's Rabbid rabbits doesn't seem like a combination that should work but we promise it really does.

This is a turn-based tactical game and it's incredibly fun to play thanks to gameplay that's satisfyingly complex and deep without being overly difficult. It's a lovely game to look at with fantastic level and character design – overall it's just a charming experience. 

With this partnership, Nintendo has managed to secure another successful exclusive for the Switch. With our tips and tricks guide you can ensure your first foray into the game is equally as successful. 

Destiny 2

What system(s) can I play it on? PS4, Xbox One and PC

Destiny 2 is the hotly anticipated sequel to the massively successful online multiplayer shooter Destiny. Created by Bungie, this game improves upon the original with an excellent single-player campaign and a much improved sense of accessibility. 

We said you should play it now in our review and if you decide that's exactly what you're going to do, we have a tips and tricks guide that's perfect for easing you in. 

FIFA 18

What can I play it on? PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC

It comes around every year and every year we look forward to it. Yes, it's the football sim FIFA. As per the historical trend, the latest installment of FIFA brings in some incremental performance and graphics improvements. It also brings the second season of the series' cinematic story mode The Journey, suggesting it was a game mode experiment that EA considers a success. 

We said it was a "Play it Now" title in our FIFA 18 review and if that's advice you've decided to follow, you can play it well with the guidance of our tips and tricks guide. 

Super Mario Odyssey

What system(s) can I play it on? Nintendo Switch

Super Mario Odyssey was one of the most highly-anticipated games for the Nintendo Switch this year and it hasn't disappointed. Receiving widespread critical acclaim, this game is a sandbox 3D adventure that puts the super into Super Mario. 

We called it one of Mario's finest adventures to date in our review and recommended that you play it now. If that's something you decide to do, you can also check out our tips and tricks guide.

Assassin's Creed Origins

What system(s) can I play it on? Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC

After a year away, Assassin's Creed returned refreshed and rejuvenated with Origins. This is different to any Assassin's Creed game we've seen before thanks to its addition of RPG mechanics and a new combat system. Far from ruining the series, it's reinvigorated it and this is one of the best releases we've seen in recent memory. Plus, running around ancient Egypt is massive amounts of fun.

In our review we recommended that you play it now.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

What system(s) can I play it on? PS4, Xbox One and PC

The third Wolfenstein may have created some controversy with its, perhaps unintentional, timely topic but it's emerged as one of the strongest games of 2017 and one of the best first-person shooters of this generation.

With tight mechanics, a story with heart and some genuine humor behind it, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to this alternate America.  In our review we called it "superb in every sense" and you can read it in full here. 

Call of Duty WW2

What system(s) can I play it on?  PS4, Xbox One and PC 

Call of Duty has returned and this time it's gone back to its roots. A more historical approach worked for Battlefield 1 and it's almost done as well here. 

After Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare disappointed fans and Activision Call of Duty WW2 needed to do something different. Rather than a revolution, though, we've seen more of a refinement.  

Across its campaign, online multiplayer and co-op modes the new Call of Duty offers historical thrills and an enjoyable game play experience. Though it's not the balanced game we hoped for, it's the best the franchise has looked in a while and it'll be particularly strong when the online server issues are ironed out. 

Make sure you read our full Call of Duty WW2 review. 

Star Wars Battlefront 2 

What system(s) can I play it on? PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC

November appears to be the month of controversial games. After the issues Call of Duty faced with its servers, the Star Wars world was rocked by a microtransactions scandal. Calling out Battlefront 2 for unfair practices in its loot boxes, fans rebelled, essentially forcing EA to remove them from the game.

It's put something of a dampener on the release of what was one of the most highly-anticipated games of the year. So, why is it in this list? Well, under the controversy and unfair practices there's a great Star Wars game here. 

With its more varied online modes and single-player campaign, EA DICE created a game that is in some ways a big improvement on the original and has addressed many of the problems fans had with it. It's just a shame it created so many more for itself. 

Read our full Star Wars Battlefront 2 review.

Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon

What system(s) can I play it on? Nintendo 3DS/2DS

The swan song for the Pokemon series on the 3DS platform, it was likely that Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were going to be good titles. Particularly as they were simply building on the already excellent world that had been established in Sun and Moon last year. 

In these games which are a cross between sequels and enhancements, players return to Alola to play a new story, catch new Pokemon and even enter new dimensions. 

All in all, these games make small but appreciated improvements to Sun and Moon resulting in an adventure that any Pokemon fan is likely to enjoy. 

November 29, 2017 at 09:13PM
Nick Pino,Parker Wilhelm,Emma Boyle

PC market to slump in 2018 but hybrids like Microsoft Surface remain a bright spot

A major analyst firm is predicting that sales of PCs will drop by 2.7% for 2017 (compared to the previous year), and things are set to get worse with shipments slumping by 4% year-on-year in 2018.

After some brighter forecasts this year, this is back to the traditional doom and gloom with IDC’s latest report which is for the shipments of ‘personal computing devices’, meaning traditional desktop PCs, laptops and workstations, as well as tablets.

Looking further ahead to 2021, shipment volumes are expected to drop to 394 million units from 423 million units this year, which represents a decrease of around 7% in terms of pure volume.

Most of that predicted decline will come from weakness in the traditional desktop PC and also tablet markets, while laptops, workstations and detachable tablets (hybrids like Microsoft’s Surface devices) will actually make some positive gains according to IDC.

Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC's Quarterly Mobile Device Trackers, highlighted detachables as a particular strong point, with most of these being Windows devices.

Reith noted: “Detachable tablets are expected to see double-digit growth from 2018 through 2021. Windows-based detachables already count for close to 50% of the volume in this category and this isn't expected to change much over the duration of the forecast. Apple's iPad Pro line-up will remain at 30-35% of the category with the remainder going to Google-based devices.”

Unfortunately, detachable hybrids are still not a massive part of the overall PC market, representing 5% of shipment volume this year, although that will grow to a healthy 9.4% in 2021.

Short on supply

IDC further observed that the traditional PC market did actually outperform expectations this year, despite problems such as component shortages, including issues with the supply levels of SSDs which we highlighted back in the spring.

Jay Chou, research manager with IDC's Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, commented: "IDC believes the shortage issues should ease as we head toward 2018. Despite shrinking demand overall, IDC remain optimistic the market can expect continued growth in emerging form factors such as convertibles and ultraslim notebooks, which when combined will form the dominant notebook form factor by 2019.”

• We’ve picked out the best business laptops right here

November 29, 2017 at 05:01PM
Darren Allan

Windows 10 'Sets' bring the browser tabbing experience to desktop apps

Image credit: Microsoft

Tabs are fantastic for browsing content online: so fantastic, in fact, that I've got 23 open in front of me right now. 

In hindsight, it's a bit of a shock that it took Microsoft so long to extend the same concept to apps, but that's about to change with the introduction of a new Windows 10 organizational feature it's calling "Sets."

The concept for Sets (which is just a temporary name that may change) barely differs from what you'll find while using a browser like Microsoft's own Edge. 

So, what would this look like practice? Let's say you're working on a project in a Word document and you want to easily copy the information you're writing into a PowerPoint presentation. All you'd need to do is look at the title bar of the Word document, click the new button with a "plus" icon much as you would to open a new tab in Edge. 

You'd then see a splash page with all of your most recently used apps, along with a search bar in case you don't see what you need. Click on the app you want (so, PowerPoint), and it pops up in a new tab in the same window as the original app — in this case, Word. 

You can then add even more if you want - like, say, to open a tab for a browser for research. This way you can minimize the whole project if you want in order to work on something else, while opening another "Set" for another project or entertainment.

Keepin' tabs

It's not entirely a new concept. After all, Chromebooks have operated under the same principle for years, as all of the apps found on them are essentially little more than glorified webpages and plugins. Still, it could drastically change the way we use Windows, which remains one of the world's most widely used operating systems.

Despite the feature's seeming obviousness, Microsoft is treating "Sets" as an experimental feature for now. You'll only be able to use with with some specific Windows apps like Mail and Calendar at first, but eventually Microsoft will extend its range to more complex programs like Adobe Photoshop and the humble Notepad. 

Microsoft is also sticking to a trial rollout over the coming weeks that's limited to only a few people. Currently you only have a chance to see if Sets you're a member of Microsoft's Insider Program, and even then you might end up waiting a while before they show up in your operating system.  Microsoft has been burned for unpopular feature overhauls in the past, and now it seems eager to make sure everyone likes Sets before fully unleashing it on the world.

Also, the feature will be optional. Much as with a regular browser tab, you won't need to use Sets if you don't want to.

• These are the best laptops of 2017

November 29, 2017 at 04:38AM
Leif Johnson

HP ‘spyware’ could be slowing down your laptop or PC

HP has been accused of stealthily installing a piece of software on its users’ PCs which hoovers up data on that machine, effectively acting as spyware, and it seems it is slowing systems down considerably, as well.

This worrying development was reported by Computerworld, and the software in question is called the HP Touchpoint Analytics Client. According to HP’s description itself, the client “harvests telemetry information that is used by HP Touchpoint’s analytical services”.

Telemetry information could potentially be anything related to the hardware, software or usage of your machine.

Unsurprisingly, there’s been a lot of anger online concerning the unsolicited installation of this client, which appears to have popped up on desktop PCs and laptops without asking or notifying the user.

Although at this point, it isn’t clear whether the software was delivered via an HP update, or an update courtesy of Microsoft. There has been plenty written about this across the net in various forums and tech sites, some of which observes that the process was put in place following the latest batch of Windows updates.

System slowdown

The other major pain point here is not only the surveillance aspect of this client, but also the fact that it appears to weigh heavily on system resources.

A poster on Reddit tells us: “So today all of a sudden, I'm experiencing a considerable slowdown in my laptop (Pavilion P3V59PA). Once I look for the problem in Task Manager, I found out that the program called HP Touchpoint Analytics Client (and its subsequent follow up) constantly jumping the memory usage.

“I don't remember ever installing this program whatsoever, and in control panel, I found that for some reason this program was silently installed today, without my consent.”

Another post on an HP support forum observes: “I noticed my mouse lagging significantly on Chrome, went to Programs & Features in Control Panel on my Windows 7 HP desktop and saw this ‘HP Touchpoint Analytics Client’ was installed on my PC without my permission on 11-17-17.”

Thus far, HP hasn’t commented on the matter, but we’ve been in touch with the company to clear up some of the confusion regarding this client, and we’ll update this story with any response.

In the meantime, if you want to be rid of this particular little pest, removal is easy enough as outlined by Martin Brinkmann over at Ghacks.net.

It hasn’t been a great year for HP on the suspect software front, when you consider that back in the spring, some HP laptops were found to be hit by a keylogger (capable of monitoring and recording keystrokes) which was buried in an audio driver.

• We've picked out all the best laptops right here

November 28, 2017 at 11:13PM
Darren Allan

Best PlayStation VR games: the best PSVR games around

Update: Ready for a return to icy tundras and dark, dank dungeons? The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim makes the jump to our list of best PSVR games as it's ported as a PlayStation VR exclusive. It's far from perfect, but in terms of its sheer scale, there's nothing quite like it in virtual reality on any platform.

Original article continues below...

Sony's PlayStation VR has now been in stores for more than a year, bringing virtual reality gaming to consoles for the first time. It's been a solid start for Sony's VR ambitions, with a flow of top-notch VR titles reaching Sony's accessible virtual reality system.

We've seen comic book dreams realised with Batman: Arkham VR, a classic game remastered in VR with Rez: Infinite, and geeked out in the cockpit of an X-Wing star fighter with Star Wars Battlefront. Resident Evil 7 took the horror genre to heights it's never reached before, while Farpoint introduced the AIM controller – a slick lightgun peripheral upping the immersion factor for shooters.

So far, so good. Sony seems committed to the system, announcing a load of new content coming in the coming months at October 2017's Paris Games Week. It proved that what we've we've seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

But what should you be playing right now, today? Click through the gallery for our top picks of the best games for PSVR.

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios

Price: £49.99, $49.99

Does it require Move controllers? No. DualShock controllers give a more comfortable, familiar control system for what's quite a complex game. But Move motion controllers let you swing a sword, and there's no arguing that that's not cool.

You've played Skyrim, right? The benchmark for open world gaming for so long, it's been hard to ignore, a cultural phenomenon of sorts. The RPG has now been reworked for Sony's PSVR headset, and, while not perfect, it's well worth experiencing.

There's nothing quite like the scale of Skyrim in VR, with 100s of hours of RPG gaming, letting you explore a huge map filled with secrets, quests and dragons to fell. Whether standing at the foot of a mountain or going toe-to-toe with a troll, the presence VR adds to the world is superb. Even if you've played through the game multiple times, it's still something quite special to actually be standing in Solitude, or climbing the steps of Bleak Falls Barrow with your own two feet.

However, while the world remains superb, the transition to VR hasn't been perfect. Move-controller sword swinging feels clumsy, menu navigation is a chore, locomotion can be tricky to master and many visual compromises have been made to meet the demands of VR visuals. For anyone that's played a more recent remaster of Skyrim, it'll feel a bit more rough and ready than you're used to. Leave your expectations at the door though, and it's a unique return to Bethesda's still-excellent core game, with some new bells and whistles thrown in.

Developer: Polyphony Digital

Price: £44.99, $69.99

Does it require Move controllers? No, but getting a racing wheel elevates the experience

It's the daddy of racing sims, so it's fitting that Gran Turismo Sport, the franchise's first foray on the PS4, should embrace that most immersive of console peripherals – the PlayStation VR headset.

You'll get in the cockpit of a huge selection of beautifully realised vehicles, each modelled exactly as they appear in real life, before taking them out onto the circuit for head-to-head races.

A side-helping to the brilliant main Gran Turismo Sport game, the VR mode has still been obviously meticulously crafted, with a discreet in-game HUD, useful mirrors and some fine-stitched racing gloves sitting over your digital hands. It makes an already drool-worthy racer extra tempting, and is a must-have for PSVR owners. 

Developer: SIEA/Impulse Gear

Price: £49.99, $49.99 / £74.99, $79.99 with PS VR Aim

Does it require Move controllers? No, but it's better with the PS VR Aim add-on

Like sci-fi? Love shooters? Laugh in the face of super-gross giant space spiders? Then PlayStation VR's Farpoint is for you. 

The PS VR exclusive sees you shooting your way through alien environments in glorious VR, and makes use of Sony's new gun controller to let you realistically aim at your extra-terrestrial foes. You can dodge and duck behind cover to avoid incoming fire, and while the game follows a fairly linear path, you're free to explore the levels at your leisure. Despite giving you free control over the movement of your character, Farpoint somehow manages to avoid the motion sickness issues that have plagued similar titles.

We had a blast with Farpoint. Though short at 6-or-so hours of single player story mode to complete, its multiplayer mode gives it some extra replayability, as does the pinpoint-accuracy of its visceral gunplay. For more on the game, read our Farpoint verdict here.

Developer: Capcom
Price: $60/£50
Does it require Move controllers? No

Resident Evil 7 is a bit of an anomaly on this list. The next entry in the long-running horror series takes the experience into first person for the first time, but, more impressively, can be played in its 18 hour entirety in VR. 

This means that the game is one of the longest VR experiences available right now, but you'll need a lot of courage to make it through the game this way, since by all accounts Resident Evil 7 is one scary game - especially in virtual reality. 

But if you're able to stomach the scares you'll be rewarded with one of the finest horror games of this generation, and a true return to form for the Resident Evil series.  

Developer: Criterion / DICE
Price: Free (if you own Battlefront)
Does it require Move controllers? No

It may only last 20 minutes, but what a fantastic third of an hour it is. Star Wars Battlefront's X-Wing VR mission, even as an extended tech demo, is a perfect example of what VR is capable of. Putting you right in the cockpit of a lovingly modelled X-Wing fighter, it transports you directly into a key element of the Star Wars universe.

Handling like a dream as you dart between asteroids and take on a fleet of Tie Fighters, you'll get all the feels when John Williams' iconic score begins to swell.

Statik, by Little Nightmare developers Tarsier Studios, is one of the cleverest VR games out there. 

It sounds simple enough. Each level sees you play as a research participant who wakes up with their hands trapped inside various different contraptions. 

Each button on the controller seems to do something on the device, but it's never really clear what. You'll have to experiment with trial and error to escape from each of these contraptions, and the puzzles get fiendishly difficult. 

But what's really impressive is how the game plays into the constraints of the PlayStation VR when used with a DualShock controller. It's camera isn't good at tracking over large distances, so the game has you sitting in a chair. The fact that you're using a controller makes you feel as though your hands really are trapped inside a box, even if you can move your hands freely in the real world. 

Statik is a game that's great at showing off the simpler pleasures of VR, and it's easy to get completely absorbed in its puzzles. 

Developer: Monstars + Enhance Games
Price: $30/£25
Does it require Move controllers? No

Who’d have guessed that a 15 year old Dreamcast game would turn out to be one of the killer apps for Sony’s PlayStation VR headset? The second time that the classic shooter has been updated, Rez Infinite adds VR head tracking into the mix, putting you at the center of its Tron-like wireframe soundscapes.

It’s always been a game that lets you “get in the zone”, but with VR head tracking, Rez Infinite becomes almost hypnotic. With an ace, pulsing trance soundtrack that builds to a thumping crescendo as you shoot down polygonal enemies, you find yourself fully immersed in the futuristic landscape as it zips past your floating avatar.

With an insane sense of speed and spot on head-tracking enemy targeting, it’s easy to completely lose track of reality whilst playing Rez Infinite, and it’ll be hard to stop yourself dancing along to the grooves your shots produce. Packing in all the additional content of the earlier HD re-release of Rez, it’s still a relatively short VR experience at just around an hour long. 

But, like a good album, it’s something you’ll want to dive into again and again. Just be careful that you don’t do a “Jeff Bridges in Tron” and find yourself so hooked that you’ll never want to leave.

Developer: Rocksteady Studios
Price: $20/£16
Does it require Move controllers? Yes

Batman: Arkham VR is probably the best introduction to PlayStation VR as a platform. While there isn’t a ton of gameplay in the traditional sense, it’s an amazing visual showcase that demonstrates the power of the platform. 

The opening sequence of the game draws you into in by leading you from the top floor of Wayne Manor down to the basement wherein you suit up as the Batman for the first time. 

What you’re paying for here are the vistas and the incredible level of immersion as you solve crimes throughout Gotham and come face-to-horrifying-face with Batman’s greatest adversaries. 

There’s few things scarier than looking the Joker in his beady bright green eyes or standing mere inches away from Killer Croc, and Batman: Arkham VR is one of the only experiences in the world that offer just that.

Developer: London Studio
Price: $40/£30
Does it require Move controllers? Yes

There’s a vast majority of gamers out there who are going to get PlayStation VR Worlds without ever heading to the store to pick it up. Sony’s decision to include it in the PlayStation VR Launch Day Bundle was, in many ways, one of the most brilliant decisions the company made with its VR headset. On the disc you’ll find a number of short, self-contained experiences that demo polished game ideas that could one day be expanded into full titles. The standout titles include Danger Ball, The London Heist and Scavengers Odyssey, but the remaining games – Ocean Descent and VR Luge – aren’t all that bad, either. 

There’s a reason Sony picked PlayStation VR Worlds to be packaged with every Launch Day bundle – it’s probably the best title to use to ease friends and family into virtual reality rather than tossing them into the deep-end with a game like Thumper. The demos here can be a bit overwhelming at times – I’m looking in your direction, VR Luge – but if they’re feeling the motion sickness you can always bring them back to something like Danger Ball or Ocean Descent to get them back on their feet.

Developer: Rebellion
Price: $50/£50
Does it require Move controllers? No

Chances are, the original Battlezone might have passed you by if you're under 40 – Atari's 1980 arcade game doesn't quite hold the same iconic status as Pong. However, it's generally considered to be the very first VR game, which is why British developer Rebellion bought the rights from Atari so that it could remake it for modern VR headsets. 

The result is one of the best VR experiences we've had to date. The gameplay is fun (think a futuristic take on World of Tanks), but it's the striking-but-simple graphics that are the key to the overall enjoyment. There’s two main modes here – offline campaign and online multiplayer. While we didn’t have time to try it with a bunch of buddies online, the offline campaign mode feels pretty well fleshed out. There’s quite a number of tanks to pick from and unlock and while gameplay can err on the repetitive side, it’s enough to lock you in for a few hours at a time.

While a lot of VR games try to go as realistic as possible, Battlezone's Tron-like game world is incredibly absorbing, and better yet it’s one of the few titles on the platform you'll be able to enjoy alongside your friends thanks to the game's inclusion of co-operative play.

Developer: Sony
Price: Free
Does it require Move controllers? No

Even the coldest of hearts will be melted by The Playroom. The game’s cast is comprised of little robots who are tossed into peculiar, fun and even Mario-esque situations for your amusement. If I’m being totally honest, the whole game looks and plays like a Mario Party game and is perfect for larger crowds. 

In one mini-game, the player with the VR headset is a monster, while four players using a TV and DualShock 4 controllers try to avoid the debris he throws at them. In another, one player wearing the headset is tasked with sucking up ghosts from a haunted house while players outside of virtual reality locate the spectres and shout directions on where to shoot. There are also toybox demos where you just look into a miniature house and observe the droids as they go to the gym, go swimming, watch TV and so forth. 

But honestly the best part of Sony’s The Playroom VR is its price – it’s free to download, which makes it one of the best bargains anywhere on the PlayStation Store.

Developer: kokoromi
Price: $30
Does it require Move controllers? No

SUPERHYPERCUBE is a legitimately fun game, like not “by VR’s standard’s” fun, but real honest fun. The goal here is to rotate blocks to get them to fit through an opening of a certain size and shape. Sneak the piece through and you’re rewarded with another block that will then create the next puzzle a bit harder. If you can’t, the blocks that can’t fit through the opening jettison off your cube and you start from square one. 

Where SUPERHYPERCUBE went right is that it didn’t try to do anything complex – like Tetris, Candy Crush and Breakout! the idea here is simple: don’t mess up. But the simple idea is enhanced by the perspective provided by VR – by allowing you to look at your floating cube from every angle you appreciate the times you solve the puzzle and simply laugh when it doesn’t work out. 

The only things SUPERHYPERCUBE is missing are a killer soundtrack and a few more modes to pad out the solve-it-or-start-over gameplay. A mode where you start with a cube comprised of 40 blocks or shaped like various mundane objects would’ve gone a long way to making it feel like a more complete, robust experience. Still, all that aside, it’s worth picking up.

Developer: Uber Entertainment
Price: $20/£15
Does it require Move controllers? Yes

If you’ve been looking for PlayStation VR’s sleeper hit, Wayward Sky is it. An isometric puzzle game that’s aimed at younger gamers, Wayward Sky has you solving puzzles to reunite a young female pilot with her father. At times heartfelt and funny, other times heart-achingly sad, Wayward Sky is a rather emotional journey. 

Setting emotions aside for a minute, the game may not do the best of jobs leveraging virtual reality’s new perspective, but the few times it does – usually when operating a piece of machinery – are effective at making you feel more immersed.

That said, it can be tough to tell who the game is targeting. While kids would make the most sense given the game’s lighter atmosphere and sometimes overly simple puzzle mechanics, Sony doesn’t recommend children under the age of 12 use its virtual reality headset. So unless you’re willing to fly in the face of Sony’s warning – or embark on the journey yourself while a little one watches along on the TV – you might need to skip past this patch of sky. 

Developer: Steel Crate Games
Price: $15/£12
Does it require Move controllers? No

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes doesn’t sound like much fun on paper. While one person puts on a headset to look at an overly detailed bomb in a nondescript room, the other player uses the TV screen to read a dense direction manual on how which wires to cut and buttons to push to make sure you get to the next level. But underneath its seemingly boring exterior lies a tremendously fun exercise in teamwork, communication and sometimes sheer dumb luck as you make last-minute decisions to stop a bomb from going off.  

Levels that start off easy – usually with two or three puzzles to solve and a few minutes to solve them – but escalate quickly. Part of the game’s charm is that whenever you start feeling good about your skills as either a decoder or disarmer, something else comes up that ruins your day. In that way it’s fun trying to stay calm under pressure and getting a laugh when it all, inevitably, blows up in your face.

Developer: Drool
Price: $20/£16
Does it require Move controllers? No

Never have the words “Rhythm Hell” been a more apt description for a game. Thumper pushes you by sending wave after wave of obstacles your way that require button combinations set to a certain beat. If the flashing lightshow isn’t enough, the game’s aesthetics and boss battles are like something set out of Dante’s Inferno: hellish visages of what life in the afterlife for all the naughtiest gamers. 

While the music in Thumper is never totally recognizable, it’s instantly catchy causing you to bob your head to the beat and curse loudly when the game sets aside all care for your emotions and just throws everything and the kitchen sink at you all at once.

Thumper is, admittedly, a bit on the intense side visually – so it’s probably not the best thing to show off to mom and dad or little ones. But if you’ve gone through Rez Infinite and you’re looking for a musically inspired hellscape, Thumper should be the game on your list.

Developer: Supermassive Games
Price: $20/£15
Does it require Move controllers? Yes

One of our favorite aspects of PlayStation VR is just how many different genres of games it has. DriveClub in VR will satiate racing game fans' need for speed, while GNOG will put fans of puzzle games face-to-face with a dozens of colorful enigmas to solve. 

Unlike either of those, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood will join Resident Evil 7 in being PlayStation VR's first foray into the horror genre that will strap you into a carnival-esque rollercoaster and send you hurtling through of funhouse of horrors. 

While the controls are fairly limited – basically shoot anything and everything that moves – the real "fun" to be had in Rush of Blood comes from tumbling from one jump scare to the next with a deathgrip on both the controller and your bladder. 

Trust me kids, nothing is scarier than almost peeing your pants in a room full of your friends.

Developer: Double Fine Productions
Price: $20/£15
Does it require Move controllers? No

If you're looking for a laugh while play testing your new PSVR, check out Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, a game written by the weird, twisted mind of Tim Schafer. While we've always loved the stuff Schafer has done, Rhombus of Ruin takes his writing to a new dimension. (Get it? Fine. We're not funny.) 

What you'll find here behind the clever jokes and Schafer's lovably strange humor is a straightforward puzzle game that can be played in just over an hour. The puzzles aren't exactly mind melting and the experience might be a bit too short for the price of entry, but if you can't wait another minute for Psychonauts 2 or want a more laid-back experience while you're still learning the ropes of virtual reality, this is a trip to the inner psyche worth taking.

Developer: Sony London Studio

Release window: 2018

Will it require Move controllers? Yes

After rocking the PlayStation VR launch with VR Worlds and its standout cockney-shooting gallery mode The Heist, Sony London Studio is following it up with a full-length dive into London's underworld.

In Blood and Truth you'll play as a former special forces operative exploring the murky world of London's criminal elite on a mission to save his family. Taking its cues from big-budget action movies, it wants to make you feel like the hero of your own film.

From the demo we've seen so far, Sony London Studio again nails its VR gunplay, but it's the little details that look set to make the game shine. As good looking as any game that's yet hit the PlayStation VR headset, Sony London Studio offers an intuitive world where partaking action movie tropes (like shooting at the feet of a tight-lipped informant unwilling to spill the beans), are rewarded just as you'd expect them to be. If you've got a PSVR headset, it should be top of your wishlist.

Developer: Ployarc

Release window: February 2018

Will it require Move controllers? No

A family-friendly VR adventure, Moss offers the immersion of a virtual reality experience with the fun of a platformer and sense of wonder of a Zelda game. 

Developed by a team made up in part of former Bungie employees, you'll direct an intrepid, sword wielding rodent through forests and ruins, guiding him through enemy filled rooms while taking direct control of environmental elements to solve puzzles.

It's the perfect use of VR from a third-person perspective, giving you dual control over a hero avatar and as an omnipotent influence on his surroundings. It makes great use of perspective too, with a 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids' look at a world from a mouse's scale. Definitely one to watch.

November 28, 2017 at 09:48PM
Jon Porter,Nick Pino,Gerald Lynch

Best laptop games: 10 top low-spec titles that won't melt your machine

If you've just recently bought a laptop and fancy playing a few games, then this list of the best laptop games is just what you need.

You don't need to have bought an expensive gaming laptop to play these games, instead pretty much any half-decent laptop made in the last five years can actually play an amazing library of games without even needing a dedicated GPU.

We're here to show you the amazing low-demand recent games that you don't want to miss, as well as some AAA smashes that work surprisingly well on low-end hardware. So, no matter what laptop you've got, these games should play brilliantly on them.

• Once you're looking for something meatier, check out our best PC games

• CPU: 2 GHz
• RAM: 4 GB
• GPU: Intel HD 3000 or better

Whether he’s at LucasArts, Double-Fine or here and now in a new indie studio, veteran developer Ron Gilbert is also sure to serve up a slice of veritable gaming gold. 

That tradition of impeccable output continues with Thimbleweed Park, a pixel art point ‘n’ click adventure that harks back to the glory days of Maniac Mansion while weaving it together with a very modern eye for creativity.

It’s effectively a murder mystery graphic adventure, where FBI agents Reyes and Ray - who in now way resemble another famous pair of fictional, UFO-chasing member of the Bureau - arrive in a quiet town to investigate a murder most horrid. 

The way it weaves together a genuinely clever story and a cast of peculiar yet instantly memorable characters is something most games with far larger budgets miss entirely.

• CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E8400, 3.0GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+, 3.0GHz or higher
• RAM: 2 GB
• GPU: Geforce 9600 GT or AMD HD 3870 512MB

You can gauge just how good a game might be when several severe delays, and a release amid the biggest titles of the year, fails to dampen the quality of its reviews. 

Cuphead is so consistently enjoyable, those delays were a good thing. If Studio MDHR needed that time then so be it, because the end result is an art style like no other (one that perfectly recreates the early heyday of 1930s animation) and a run and gun set of mechanics that punishes you and rewards you with equal measure.

As you guide the titular hero and pal Mugman towards the Devil himself, you’ll bask in the glorious jazz soundtrack and the incredible variety of bosses. You’ll slip and you’ll die many times, but you’ll love every damn second of it.

• CPU: 2 Ghz
• RAM: 2 GB
• GPU: 256 mb video memory, shader model 3.0+

If you love farming sims (and, judging by how well the likes of Farming Simulator and Harvest Moon sell, there’s quite a few of you out there), then few games are going to get you jumping for agricultural joy more than the bewitching busywork of Stardew Valley. 

Taking many a cue from the Harvest Moon games, Stardew Valley's top-down POV and cutesy characters feel meld together perfectly.

It’s a dull sounding core concept to be sure - tend your fields, grow produce, raising livestock, etc - but that’s the beauty of it. There’s a moreish peace to the mundanity of SV’s minutia as you expand your farm, fish down at the river and even head into the village to strike up friendships (and maybe something more *wink wink*) with a cast of NPCs. Farming has never been so much fun.

• CPU: Intel i5 Quad-Core
• RAM: 4 GB
• GPU: Intel HD 4000

Describing Night In The Woods as Life Is Strange meets the animal kingdom might seem a little pretentious, but that’s probably the most accurate way to sum it up to someone who’s never heard of this little indie wonder. 

It’s a poignant tale, one that tackles the idea of innocence lost, mental health and the rigors of becoming an adult - it just happens to it with a town full anthropomorphic characters.

Much like Life Is Strange, the decisions you make in dialogue and throughout your hometown of Possum Springs will determine how the story plays out. It’s a game that, refreshingly, lets the narrative flow take centre stage as you attempt to unravel the strange goings on around you (and in your own mind). 

The 2D art style and the beguiling soundtrack are great too, proving you don’t need triple-A budgets and overfed specs to create a memorable piece of interactive art.

• CPU: 1.2GHz
• RAM: 512 MB
• GPU: DirectX 8-compatible graphics card with at least 32MB of video memory

You’d wonder whether Hotline Miami’s neon-drenched ultraviolence would exist if the film Drive had never been made, and while it’s hard to miss just how vigorously it doffs its bloody mask at the Gosling classic, the end result is an utterly brilliant little indie title.

With a pixel art style evoking the top-down look of Grand Theft Auto’s retro years, Hotline Miami revels in its almost psychedelic violence. The concept is simple: adorn a mask (each one is styled on an animal and adds its own buffs, debuffs and unique abilities), enter a level and paint the walls with your enemies gore. 

Add in buckets of neon, a synth soundtrack that’ll have you sewing a scorpion onto the back of a white jacket in no time and one messed up storyline and you’ve got a classic in its own right.

• CPU: Intel Core i3-2100T @ 2.50 GHz / AMD Phenom II X3 B73
• RAM: 4 GB
• GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4850 or NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT

Although it's relatively new at only two years old, that doesn’t mean Pillars Of Eternity is going to break your machine with its vast world of role-playing shenanigans. 

And you’ll be thanking the RPG gods that it’ll play on your low spec PC/laptop, because POE offers one of the most deeply rewarding experiences you’ll ever play, regardless of how powerful your computer claims to be.

Most of the backgrounds in this huge gameworld are rendered in 2D, making them a) beautiful to look at and b) very easy to load. 

Most of the action occurs in real-time but with a tactical pause feature that enables you to stop the action and re-order your party to suit the changing battle unfolding around you. 

It’s made by Obsidian - one of the premier RPG developers out there - so you know you’re getting a premium experience at a lower spec.

• CPU: 1.5 GHz Core2Duo
• RAM: 2 GB
• GPU: OpenGL 1.4 or better

If someone told you a game about working in a border control office would be one of the most addictive games ever, we’d imagine you’d scoff and walk off shaking your head. 

That is unless you’ve played a little indie gem by the name of Papers, Please. Set in a fictional take on the Eastern Bloc, you’re an immigration clerk tasked with processing refugees from an unfriendly neighbouring nation.

The core concept is simple: check each person’s documents against a clear set of rules, process those who meet the requirements and detain those with false papers. 

The game’s designed to test your attention to detail, but also the strength of your moral compass. Sometimes you’ll have to decide if certain sympathetic characters should be granted asylum, even if it goes against the rules. 

The twist is good performance effectively feeds you family, while mistakes put their lives in danger. It’s dark, but engrossingly so.

• CPU: Intel Pentium 3 1Ghz or AMD Athlon 1GHz
• RAM: 256
• GPU: 32 MB with Hardware T&L

Come on, do we really need to convince you to go out and own a copy of Knights Of The Old Republic? Arguably the greatest Star Wars game ever made (yes, even better than Dark Forces II and Rogue Squadron), KOTOR proved that the most recognisable lore ever could feel fresh and exciting again outside of the silver screen.

Coming from Bioware, the Canadian studio that would go on to create the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, KOTOR offers compelling characters, intense action that mixes real-time tactics with turn-based mechanics a galaxy of stories that felt tangible and real. Sure, it’s technically not canon anymore, but it still remains one of the greatest games ever coded. Get this in your collection now.

• CPU: 2GHz+
• RAM: 3 GB
• GPU: 512MB

Part role-playing game, part bullet hell shooter, Undertale is a game like no other. The fact that this amazing game is the work of one man is astounding, considering the depth of consequence developer Toby Fox has built into Undertale’s world.

In the diminutive boots of a child who’s fallen into a monster-filled world beneath the earth, you’ll encounter vicious bosses where only the quick thinking survive.

The fact you can befriend bosses as well as fight them changes the fabric of the story, and proves it’s not just NPCs that offer vital moments of dialogue. It’s a game of empathetic reflection, where your actions dictate how a boss or monster reacts to you. 

Aggression leads to more powerful attacks against you, while avoiding retaliation will soften the blows. Strange and seductive in its own special way, Undertale is a curio definitely worth chasing.

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64X2
• RAM: 2 GB
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 100 series (512 Mb) or Radeon HD 3xxx or better

When it comes to CCGs (collectible card games), Hearthstone does a pretty great job of keeping you and your deck of animated cards entertained throughout - but what happens when you want something a little less innocuous? You give a CCG with a unique spin such as Chronicle: RuneScape Legends a gander.

Based on the classic lore of Runescape, Chronicle combines card-dealing with the 3D setup of a RPG. Cards represent real characters and enemies that appear across a 3D-rendered pop-up books. 

Cards are played sequentially, with player characters facing each one (ranging from foes to curses to stat buffs), before facing off against one another at the end. It’s bizarre, brilliant and absolutely worth your time. 

Hey, it’s even got new single-player content when you don’t want to test your mettle against other users. Not bad for a low-spec CCG.

• CPU: 2GHz
• RAM: 1GB
• GPU: Card with 128MB+ dedicated memory

FTL sounds like an ultra-hardcore game when you describe it: a real-time strategic space roguelike. A roguelike is a game that makes you start from scratch when you die. However, FTL is actually well-suited to pretty casual laptop gaming. You can even get it for iPad, after all.

You tool up your star ship, recruit your crew and do your best not to get destroyed as you take an important message from one end of the galaxy to the other. Screenshots don't really to FTL justice, as all you just see is a blocky graphic of your ship, not really its spacey surroundings.

However, it's the perfect game for public play: nothing on-screen to make you feel too embarrassed. Or keep fellow passengers glued to your screen if you play on train journeys.

• CPU: dual-core 2GHz
• RAM: 2GB
• GPU: DirectX 9 compatible

Few games stay relevant as long as Skyrim. It should feel ancient, but a mod scene has kept it vital for the past half-decade. Being so old has also meant humble hardware has been able to catch up with its real-life spec requirements.

It'll run pretty well on Intel Core-series processors from the last 2-3 years, and even plays pretty well on some recent Atom/Pentium CPUs on its lowest settings. If you have a real dog of a laptop, there's also a mod that'll cut down the settings even further than the game itself allows, called Ultra Low Graphics Mod. Imaginative naming.

In case you've been locked in a cupboard for the past five years, Skyrim is a massive open-world RPG that won countless 'game of the year' awards when it was released back in 2011.

• CPU: 1.7GHz dual-core
• RAM: 2GB
• GPU: Intel HD 3000 or newer

Remember the game that earned millions and millions of dollars of funding on Kickstarter back when such things were unheard-of? That's Broken Age, the point 'n' click platform made by one of the people who came up with Monkey Island back in the 90s.

While it didn't single-handedly revive the genre, it is a fun tale that is nowhere near as frustrating as most of the early 90s adventures, most of which are best viewed through a pair of rose-tinted nostalgia specs. From a distance.

You play as both male and female characters, skipping between chapters in their respective stories to make sure the narrative doesn't get stale. We're steering clear of spoilers, so we'll leave it at that.

• CPU: 1.7GHz
• RAM: 512MB
• GPU: DX 8.1 compatible card

You might head straight for 2D games when you think of games that'll work with pretty modest hardware. However, some once-fancy 3D games work very well with non-gaming laptops. Valve's Source engine is particularly good at working with lesser GPUs, making classics like Half-life 2 play well on modern integrated graphics hardware.

If you're not up for a thinking person's FPS like Half-Life 2, you might want to check out fantastic first-person puzzler Portal 2 instead. It is also based on the Source engine. Portal 2 takes the portal gun from Half-Life 2, which makes teleporting holes in walls, and makes a whole game out of it. Possible one of the best games of all time, actually.

• CPU: Intel Pentium D
• RAM: 2GB
• GPU: Intel HD

It's easy to think of Minecraft as retro in some way, but it's far more innovative than some of the nay-saying haters would have you believe. It is not just for kids. Try it, you might just like it.

This world-building classic was never out to wow audiences with its Crysis-style graphics, but its highly scalable visuals let you tweak Minecraft to suit any machine. As well being able to fiddle with the draw distance and the few visual effects the game uses, you can change the field of view too.

Minecraft is also well-suited to laptop gaming because you don't need to be super accurate with your cursor, which is handy if you're using a trackpad rather than a mouse.

• CPU: 1.6GHz
• RAM: 1GB
• GPU: x1950 Pro, 7900 gt

Take 90s platform stylings, add a roguelike twist, a thoroughly modern random level generator and a few RPG sprinkles and you have Rogue Legacy. It's one of the most addictive indie games of the last decade.

You play as a knight type, leaping right into a castle full of nasties. When you die, and you will die, you return as one of that warrior's descendants. The castle will be different, as will the class of your character. While you have to start from scratch each time, you can unlock bonuses by collecting gold from chests in the castle.

This is the bit that makes it more accessible than a true roguelike game, where you really have to start from square one when you die.

• CPU: 2GHz
• RAM: 1GB
• GPU: Nvidia HD 4450

Don't Starve is a cracking little game where you wander around in a slightly twisted nightmarish world, exploring and picking up supplies to try to survive, day by day. When the sun goes down, awful creatures start prowling around the shadows. If you don't build a fire, you're a goner.

You have to eat to keep yourself healthy, and even your mental health deteriorates if you don't find out ways to pep yourself up.

There are some nice visual effects in don't starve, but as a predominantly 2D near-top-down game, it's happy to work with all but the most basic laptops.

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo
• RAM: 2GB
• GPU: Intel HD 1000

If you don't mind a real risk of addiction in your laptop gaming, Hearthstone is a title not to miss. It is a little like nerd classic card battler game (and also video game) Magic: The Gathering, but much better-suited to quick, casual play.

Like so many modern casual games, though, you'll probably end up playing it for a lot longer than five minutes. And it feels even more "right" on a laptop than a hulking desktop.

It's a Valve game and, like most Valve titles, fares incredibly well on lower-end hardware. It officially supports the Intel HD 1000 integrated GPU, from way back in the Sandy Bridge generation half a decade ago.

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo
• RAM: 2GB
• GPU: Intel HD

Is Civilisation the ultimate "PC" game? Many of us have spent a fistful of full days working through Civilization's virtual recap of the ages of man, whether it was back in the 90s, or just last week. Civilization V has more of the casual vibe that previous Civ games, but that makes it more palatable if you're looking for something to kill 30 mins, rather than 3 hours.

It'll work on almost any Intel Core series laptop from the past five years, but if you find yours still isn't up to the task, don't forget Civilization IV. Despite being ancient, it still works fine on Windows 10 through Steam.

• CPU: Core 2 Duo
• RAM: 2GB
• GPU: Intel HD 3000

EA gets a lot of flak. It was rated as the most hated company in America two years in a row, after all. However, it doesn't half know how to court a big audience. And that means making sure games like The Sims 4 work on just about everything.

This infamous lifestyle sim even has a "laptop" mode designed for systems that can barely make it through the title screen of The Witcher 3. The game itself is very much business as usual: you slog through a virtual life, making bucks and designing living rooms. Or doing your best to torture some poor virtual peon by locking them in an inescapable toilet.

Other less casual EA games that work amazingly well on most laptops include Dead Space 1-3 and Dragon Age: Origins.

November 28, 2017 at 09:11PM
Andrew Williams,Dom Reseigh-Lincoln

The PS4 Pro is now at its lowest price ever

Black Friday was a lifetime ago - and Cyber Monday is already starting to fade in your memory - but that’s not stopping Amazon from continuing to offer some pretty competitive discounts.

Amazon has now discounted the price of the PlayStation 4 Pro to £259.99, the lowest it’s ever been. The discount applies only to the black 1TB version of the console and it doesn’t include any games or accessories bundled in. 

But if you’re satisfied with your game library and you’ve been waiting for a good deal on just the console... this is it. 

How low can Pro go?

If, however, you’re after a great bundle there are still some to be had. You can, for example, still pick up the PS4 Pro with a copy of FIFA 18 on Amazon for just £299. 

But with the right discount and this lower price point it’s possible to pick up the game you want and the console separately and keep the price under £300, making the 4K console just under £200 cheaper than Microsoft’s Xbox One X which is a massive price difference. 

Not only that, but this drop brings the price of the Pro under that of the significantly less powerful Nintendo Switch, another big console success this year. 

Such a low price point could very well be an edge for the PS4 Pro to be the big seller this Christmas.

• Looking for some ideas about what games to buy? Take a look at our picks of the best PS4 games.  

November 28, 2017 at 08:12PM
Emma Boyle

The best Nintendo Wii U deals in November 2017

This could be the last time we'll be talking about cheap Wii U deals. Nintendo recently confirmed production on the Wii U is ending as the Japanese giant moves focus to the Nintendo Switch. So grab a deal while you can as you may only be able to find preowned consoles soon.

On this page you will find all of the best Wii U deals on standalone consoles and bundles, actually most of the items in the comparison chart below come bundled with a game once you click through. 

The Wii U might be unable to compete with the Xbox One and PS4 in raw power, but it's a console packed with some unique features and good ideas. So if you don't fancy the hardcore gaming experiences of those other two consoles, the fun and light-hearted orientation of the Wii U experience could be for you. There are some strong games in its lineup right now, but considering the still-high costs, you may want to consider a Nintendo Switch bundle instead.

Wii U game deals

The Wii U hasn't enjoyed the same success as the original Wii console, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of incredible exclusives to enjoy. We've rounded up some of the best ones in a comparison chart below. So if you decide to add a Wii U to your console collection, be sure to take a look at these games while you can. It's looking like the new Nintendo Switch won't have a disc drive, so don't expect it to be backwards compatible.

November 28, 2017 at 07:01AM
Brendan Griffiths

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds coming to smartphones

Can't get enough of that sweet PUBG chicken dinner? Then you'll be pleased to hear that smash-hit multiplayer shooter PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is coming to smartphone devices.

But there's a catch – it's (for the time being at least) only headed to China. It's being ported by Tencent, who had previously announced it would be working on the localised version of the main game for the Chinese market.

It's interesting to see that this is coming, especially seeing as there has recently been speculation that PUBG is going to be banned in its entirety in China.

Promising an "authentic" port of the core battle royale gameplay, it's not yet clear how well the keyboard-and-mouse gameplay will translate to mobile screens.  But it seems like we won't have to wait long to see it, with Tencent announcing "very good progress" is being made.

Cross-platform chicken dinner

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (known as 'PUBG' to its fans) has been the surprise hit of the year, coming out as an early access title and amassing 21 million fans. It's often the most-played game on Steam among PC gamers, despite it technically being a work in progress.

As such, though it's provisionally being launched for mobiles in China only, it seems unlikely to remain tied to that single locale for long. With multiple PUBG clones already proving popular on mobile, the potential for an official PUBG mobile title globally is huge. Expect to see it spread its wings before long.

And it's not just mobile getting the PUBG love – Xbox One owners will soon be able to play the game, with a dedicated port coming to the console in the near future.

• PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds: tips and tricks

November 28, 2017 at 04:59PM
Gerald Lynch