I grew up in a town with nearly no public transportation, so for most of my childhood I walked, skateboarded, and biked to get around, but freedom—true freedom—was only gained as a teenager when I got my first car. It was a hand-me-down from my grandfather, so it wasn't sporty or cool, but it was the only real escape from the drudgery of school, the oppression (real or imagined) of parents, and the growing panic that adulthood, which meant a job, the military, or more damn school, was waiting at the end of the summer.

Keep Driving is a turn-based road trip RPG that perfectly captures the freedom and possibilities of being young and having a beat-up old car, just enough money to fill it with gas and snacks, and only the vaguest of destinations in mind. Just like in real life, road trips in Keep Driving feel like a carefree summertime journey where you blast some tunes, eat junk food, and watch your troubles shrink in the rearview mirror—until that check engine light starts blinking, your tank is almost empty, and you realize there's something a bit odd about that hitchhiker you picked up.

Map quest

The game begins with the perfect excuse for a road trip: an old friend who lives all the way across the map has invited you to a music festival. With three months of summer stretching out before you, grab a few supplies from your house, open the map to pick a route, and start driving. Your car is your inventory: store useful stuff in the glove box, extra supplies in the trunk, and eventually people (and maybe the occasional dog) in the empty seats.

As you travel between any two map locations in Keep Driving, you encounter a handful of obstacles, called road events, that slow you down: mud puddles and potholes, traffic jams and biker gangs, and situations every driver has encountered at some point like "vague lanes" or a bug that flew in the window and can't find its way out. These road events are Keep Driving's version of turn-based combat, as each turn threatens to damage four different attributes: gasoline, cash, the car's durability, and your energy levels. To dispel them, you need to match the threats with pips on your skill cards or items in your glove box.

It's a simple combat system that's easy to grasp within a few tries, and while it never really gets any more complex, it requires a lot of preparation to survive. Most skill cards have only a few uses before they need to be replenished by sleeping in a town, and glove box items (like duct tape, which protects durability, and cigarettes, which prevents loss of energy) have limited uses before you'll need to buy more at gas stations and convenience stores.

If an event depletes you enough, by emptying your gas or totaling your engine, it doesn't mean the end of your run. You can call a tow truck (if you have the cash) to take you to the previous town, or spend energy walking to the closest gas station, or in the most dire of circumstances, do the unthinkable: call your parents and tell them you need help. I had to do it in one of my runs, and it brought back the shame of doing it (way more than once) in real life. Thankfully, Keep Driving spares you the actual lecture from Dad.

Need a lift?

And then there are the hitchhikers. As you cross the map you'll encounter solo travelers making their own way through the world: a punk rocker with a dog (who takes up an extra seat), a young woman in a wedding dress who left her groom at the altar, a burnout who lost his job and is estranged from his wife, a mechanic who will smoke all your cigarettes. None of them have names, just labels you might use to describe a stranger: The Kid, The Songwriter, The Punk. I assume they think of me as "The Driver."

At first hitchhikers feel like they're just a tool to employ in your road events, since each brings a unique skill card to the dashboard, but as you travel together they each slowly reveal more about themselves and their journeys through quick bits of text conversation. Drive with them long enough and they'll unlock new skills, and eventually reveal their own quest you can choose to pursue. The Punk wants to go to a club in a distant town, so can you drop him off there? The Bride wants to let loose and have some fun: got any weed? More importantly, as they start to feel like friends, or at least the kinds of temporary friends you made out of necessity when you were young and exploring the world.

Developer YCJY Games does an impressive job of developing characters who are, technically, just pixelated square portraits you lock into inventory slots. With minimal text, their stories and personalities come through, and by the end of the trip it's clear that we're all crammed into this car for the same reason: because we're all a little damaged, a little aimless, a little adrift.

I was genuinely sad to see some of my passengers climb out of the car once I'd completed their quests, and not just because it meant losing the extra skills I'd been relying on. (Except for one of them: I was happy to be rid of a kid I'd picked up because they kept having to stop to use the bathroom.)

These characters also introduce you to crime, of which there is an amusing amount in Keep Driving. I even picked up a guy in an orange prison jumpsuit who didn't really convince me he was innocent. Even him I wound up liking, though he's a pain to manage (no one will sit next to him) and his initial skill is one you have to pay $10 a pop for. Weirdly, it wasn't even him who was the biggest troublemaker: a hippie named "The Hurricane" kept wanting me to get high, had a skill that could only be used if I was driving while drunk, constantly filled my inventory slots with trash, and whose third level ability would let me shoplift from stores.

In a game where you can be pulled over by the cops and arrested, driving with a gun and a baggie of coke with an escaped convict in the passenger seat definitely turns a chill road trip into a white-knuckle affair.

As required for any memorable road trip, Keep Driving has an utterly kickass soundtrack. I'm not going to pretend I'm cool enough to have heard of Swedish indie bands like Westkust, Makthaverskan, Zimmer Grandioso, and Fucking Werewolf Asso, but they've got a new fan and their tracks will be part of my next real roadtrip. Even one of my hitchhikers, a musician whose guitar took up an annoying amount of room in my trunk for one of my trips, presented me with a CD of some of his songs when we finally parted ways.

There are more than a half-dozen endings in Keep Driving besides just getting to that concert and hanging with your buddy. (Yes, you can get arrested.) I've found several of them and I'll keep playing until I've collected them all, and then I'm going to play some more.

Keep Driving is the sort of game I should love on the Steam Deck, but unfortunately, some of the interactions like dragging items around are pretty fiddly and the smaller pixel art icons are hard to read on a smaller screen. Otherwise it'd be perfect for sinking back into the couch, getting high or drunk (or not, your choice, say no to peer pressure), letting the road take you where it will, and making some temporary friends you'll never forget.

Physically, the 272URX looks like a dead ringer for MSI's larger 32-inch 4K OLED monitors, including the MSI MPG 321URX we reviewed last summer, just slightly smaller. So, it's a reasonably slick looking monitor with slim bezels and a smattering of RGB lighting on the rear.

It offers a similar collection of inputs, including dual HDMI 2.1 ports and DisplayPort. The latter, however, is upgraded to DP2.1 this time around and in the full UHBR20 spec, which allows for 4K 240 Hz without compression, albeit the only GPUs with DP 2.1 support among Nvidia GPUs are the very latest RTX 50 cards. AMD's Radeon RX 7000 also support the 2.1 standard.

Alongside that you get USB-C with 98 W power delivery and a two-port USB-A hub. So, connectivity is well covered. Actually, a lot of the panel specifications look similar to earlier 32-inch 4K OLEDs from MSI. So along with the 3,840 by 2,160 resolution, there's that 240 Hz refresh and 0.03 ms response, all really nice numbers even if they're identical to the 32-inch alternative.

The same goes for quoted panel brightness. At 250 nits full screen and 1,000 nits in a 3% window, there's no advance over the 32-inch 4K model, which uses Samsung's 3rd Generation QD-OLED panel technology.

There's been mixed messaging from various monitor makers over the status of this new class of 27-inch 4K Samsung QD-OLED. They're all using the same panel, but some are marketing it as 4th Generation.

Adding to the confusion, at CES this year both LG and Samsung showed off new TV-spec large OLED panels capable of much higher full-screen brightness up around 400 nits and peak brightness of 4,000 nits in a 3% window thanks to new quantum dot materials and a so-called five-layer tandem OLED structure.

While the MSI MPG 272URX does indeed get Samsung's new for 2025 4th Gen monitor panel tech that also sports the new QD material and five-layer tandem OLED structure, the higher pixel density is limiting in terms of brightness.

Our understanding is that without the new panel tech, this high density 4K panel would actually have been less bright than previous QD-OLED monitors. Indeed, there's also a new 27-inch 1440p QD-OLED panel that ups full screen brightness to 300 nits thanks to the new QD-OLED technology being applied to a lower pixel density.

Firing the MSI MPG 272URX confirms that the new-for-2025 QD-OLED tech looks very familiar, at least in this implementation. Pretty much all the strengths and weaknesses of the older 3rd Gen QD-OLEDs are apparent from the get go.

Oh, with one exception. 4K on a 27-inch makes for a very tight pixel density of 166 DPI, up from 140 DPI on those 32 inchers. If nothing else, that elevated pixel density puts to bed any remaining issues with font rendering on this monitor. Text looks really nice.

It's true that Samsung has retained the slightly odd triangular as opposed to vertically striped RGB subpixel structure. On panels with lower pixel density, that resulted in text fringing and a slight softening of image detail. But here, with that 166 DPI density, it's all good.

Fonts look super crisp, image content is incredibly sharp. Of course, the same is largely true of the 32-inch QD-OLED class. Yes, this 27-incher is a tiny bit sharper. But it's a subtle upgrade in that regard and one which comes with a rather more obvious downgrade in panel size. At this price point, 27 inches feels a bit stingy.

Moreover, if the improvement in font rendering with the jump from 32-inch to 27-inch 4K is marginal on the Windows desktop, it's pretty much invisible in-game. If for whatever reason you actively want a physically smaller display perhaps for ergonomic reasons, great. But don't go buying this monitor because you think it's going to make a 32-inch 4K look a little fuzzy. It absolutely doesn't.

Anywho, getting back to that carried over QD-OLED 3rd Gen panel vibe, this MSI betrays the same marginally oversaturated colors and warm temperature of the 32-inch model and frankly many other QD-OLED panels. It's not absolutely ideal, but it's something that you adjust to and can mitigate to an extent via calibration.

Likewise, the slightly purple-grey tint of the actual QD-OLED panel itself when reflecting ambient light remains present. In really bright ambient conditions, it compromises black levels a little. But again it's only a minor distraction even then, and in typical ambient conditions and especially at night, it's a non-issue.

While we're talking relative compromises, it's immediately obvious from the full-screen brightness that this new 4th Gen QD-OLED tech for monitors as applied here isn't a big step or really any step at all in that regard. That means the full-screen brightness performance is OK, but only just. Actually, MSI has been pretty conservative with its ABL or automatic brightness limiter in SDR mode. If you crank up the SDR brightness in HDR mode, you actually get a punchier result.

The only problem is then that the SDR color mapping in HDR mode isn't all that good. So, you need to use the sRGB SDR mode to get accurate SDR colors and that in turn means compromising on overall punchiness.

Speaking of HDR, that's where the MSI MPG 272URX really sings. Night time scenes and indoor in-game locations look utterly stellar. A good example is a section of Cyberpunk 2077 set at night on a raised metal gantry next to a rocket. Along the sides of the metal walkway are dotted a few boxed-in fluorescent light installations.

And, oh my goodness, those lights absolutely pop. They're incredibly bright next to the dark background, but also have crisp, sharp borders. No LCD comes close to this performance, even one with a few thousand dimming zones. There's always some light bleed, always some blooming.

That said, when rendering brighter outdoor game scenes, this new MSI is no different to all other recent OLED monitors we've reviewed. It can look a little dull because even this latest OLED tech isn't capable of driving large sections of the panel really hard.

HDR aside, the other big advantage over LCD is obviously response. By way of comparison, I've been playing with a 520 Hz IPS monitor this week, too. While it has a very slight latency advantage, in subjective terms, it's nowhere near when it comes to clarity, motion blurring, and color stability in motion. It's just no contest.

With this monitor, you don't have to worry about overshoot, smearing, inverse ghosting, any of the stuff that all fast IPS and VA LCD monitors suffer from to at least some extent. Like pretty much all OLED panels, the 272URX's pixel response is essentially a solved problem.

What almost certainly isn't a done deal, however, is OLED burn-in. This is a really tricky subject on which to draw definitive conclusions. But there are three things we can say with confidence. First, MSI has equipped the 272URX with a full suite of burn-in mitigation features, including pixel shifting, logo and taskbar detection and various panel refresh cycles.

Second, that won't absolutely guarantee you'll never have a problem with burn-in. Third, MSI provides a three-year burn-in warranty, so you are covered for at least that long. It's also worth noting that Samsung says this latest QD-OLED panel tech is even more durable than before, but for now that's just a claim. Beyond that, it's very hard to say what might happen with long term ownership other than it will likely depend on your usage and how you set up things like the Windows interface.

All of which means this new MSI QD-OLED is a largely similar proposition to other QD-OLEDs we've seen. The HDR experience is mostly stunning, though it does disappoint that OLED technology still isn't capable of being punchier across larger sections of panel.

The SDR experience is mostly fabulous, but a little more compromised. Relevant to both modes are the new OLED TV panels announced at CES. Samsung has implied their boosted brightness will trickle down to gaming monitors in the near future. So, if you have any concerns over full-screen brightness, it would be worth waiting until those panels appear.

More specifically regarding the 272URX, I'm not convinced by the 27-inch form factor. The benefits over 32 inchers in terms of clarity, image detail and font rendering is marginal. At the same time, the larger 32-inch form factor scores for both gaming immersion and desktop working space in Windows.

However, if you prefer the smaller 27-inch form factor, then you'll love this monitor. It's super sharp and gives you all the existing benefits of QD-OLED tech. So, if it's pixel density above all else you've been waiting for, the MSI MPG 321URX might be for you. In all other regards, it's a mostly familiar OLED experience despite the new QD-OLED panel technology and that includes full-screen brightness that's barely good enough. If you're after something brighter, look out for those upcoming 4th Gen 1440p QD-OLED models, which we hope to review soon.

US pricing has yet to emerge. But the AOC Agon Pro AG276FK is about £500 in the UK, implying a likely sticker of around $550. If so, it'll be priced right next to the likes of the ASRock Phantom Gaming PG27FFX2A, which is a dead ringer by most specification metrics.

What we're dealing with here is a 27-inch 1080p IPS gaming monitor that's being sold unambiguously on speed. Along with the nosebleed-inducing 520 Hz refresh rate, AOC rates this monitor's pixel response at 0.5 ms GTG and an eye-popping 0.3 ms for MPRT. That is awfully quick.

Such figures rarely if ever map well to reality. But they're useful as comparators and AOC is certainly positioning this monitor as being one of the fastest IPS panels out there. Of course, fast for an IPS is nothing for an OLED monitor, pretty much all of which are rated at 0.03 ms, an order of magnitude quicker on paper. But then good luck finding a 520 Hz OLED monitor for 500 bucks. They barely exist at any price.

Elsewhere, AOC says this monitor is good for 400 nits and has HDR400 certification. To be clear, this is not a true HDR panel. There's no local dimming and it's not capable of high dynamic range rendering. But it will decode an HDR signal correctly. That's just about better than nothing, especially given HDR sizzle really isn't what this monitor is about.

Apart from the towering refresh rate, this AOC justifies its price point with a well built, all-alloy stand that offers a full range of adjustment including height, tilt, pivot and swivel. Design wise, AOC has gone for a quirky asymmetric vibe, slim bezels on three sides of the 27-inch IPS panel, a smattering of RGB lighting, plus a slide-out headphone hanger on the right-hand bezel.

For connectivity there are two DisplayPort 1.4 connections capable of the maximum 520 Hz refresh rate. Admittedly, the pair of HDMI 2.0 sockets are only good for 240 Hz, but they're primarily there for console connectivity which only requires 120 Hz.

Rounding out the core features are a comprehensive OSD menu that includes overdrive controls and low latency modes, plus AOC's GMENU app that provides access to much of the OSD functionality within Windows.

Ultimately, there's nothing too exotic about this monitor on paper bar the refresh rate and response. So, the question is just how fast does it feel? Oh, and just how bad does 1080p look on a relatively large 27-inch panel?

To address that second point, the pixel density works out to just 82 DPI. This week, I've also been playing with one of the new breed of 4K 27-inch OLED panels. It offers in excess of twice that DPI figure. And, boy, you really can see the difference. On the Windows desktop, fonts look awfully craggy and the whole panel has a pretty pixelated look.

Actually in-game, however, it's not that bad. For sure, it's not as sharp as a 1440p 27-inch monitor, let alone 4K. But the detail level is tolerable. And, of course, the lower resolution means you've much more chance of hitting that 520 Hz refresh rate in terms of actual frame rates.

Well, much more chance in some games and with some GPUs. Ultimately, this is a display designed for esports, for online shooters. So, you can hit 520 fps-plus in something like Counter-Strike 2. But you're not going to see frame rates like that in, say, Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing enabled, probably not even with a really high-end Nvidia GPU.

Speaking of Nvidia GPUs, the new RTX 50 series with its Multi Frame Generation tech will certainly help boost frame rates in some games up bearer this monitor's refresh rate. The problem is, while you'll get the motion fluidity, you won't get the other important benefit of 520 Hz refresh, namely low latency.

Latency is totally dependent on fully rendering frames in the 3D pipeline, not guesstimating them with AI trickery. So, to get the full benefit of the AOC Agon Pro AG276FK, Frame Gen isn't going to help.

Anyway, if you can get your favourite shooter running up around 500 Hz, the sense of immediate response is very sweet. I tend to find the returns diminish above 240 Hz or so. But really competitive esports players will definitely appreciate just how instant this panel feels in terms of response to inputs. It's pretty electric.

The other factor in a sense of speed is obviously pixel response. Here, qualifiers are needed. For an LCD monitor, this thing is seriously quick. There are four levels of pixel overdrive available in the aforementioned OSD menu. Happily, the fastest mode is actually usable.

That's not always the case. With a lot of gaming panels you'll find the max overdrive mode is a mess of overshoot and inverse ghosting. Here, a whiff of overshoot is evident when you wiggle an app window around on the Windows desktop. But actually in-game, it's barely visible. Certainly, there's little to no motion color shift, something that can be pretty distracting.

So, this AOC is about as quick as current LCD technology gets. What it's not is as quick as an OLED. Of course, even the cheapest OLEDs are about $100 more expensive and won't get near 240 Hz. So, to some extent you have to decide where your preferences lie. Personally, I prefer the overall compromise of a 240 Hz 1440p panel. But then I'm not a really serious esports aficionado. The days when I was actually any good at Counter-Strike are sadly long behind me.

Speed aside, this is a very nicely calibrated monitor in sRGB SDR mode. It looks punchy and vibrant, the colors are accurate, it's just a very nice thing bar that blocky pixel density. The HDR mode is well setup, too, including nicely executed mapping of SDR tones. So, if you want you could leave this monitor in HDR mode all the time and get great image quality for all content types.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with HDR at all. That's because, as mentioned, this isn't a true HDR monitor and where both SDR and HDR versions of any given content are available, there's little benefit in choosing the latter.

All told, then, I feel pretty well disposed toward the AOC Agon Pro AG276FK despite it not being my kind of monitor. I'm not majorly into esports these days, so 240 Hz or thereabouts is plenty for the vast majority of my gaming, and I'd much, much prefer something with better pixel density.

But that's my remit and not necessarily yours. If yours does indeed major on sky-high refresh and ultra-low latency, this AOC definitely delivers and does so with excellent image quality given the limitations of this panel type. It's not for me, this AOC. But if you're seriously into esports and you don't care about general Windows performance, it might just be for you.

The MSI Claw 8 AI+, however, feels like a much more accomplished product right from the off. It's a substantial piece of kit, with a chonky chassis that immediately delivers a sense of weight and quality the second you get it in your hands. The Hall effect thumbsticks are well-placed, the triggers and shoulder buttons feel much improved, and overall it's a good-looking, desirable object to pull from the box. As it should be, for the fairly substantial price of $900/£899.

Sitting centre stage is an 8-inch IPS-type 1200p display, and it's noticeably vibrant from the moment you boot into Windows. While the Claw 8 AI+ is not the most portable of machines, everything external has a certain wow factor that the previous model was sorely missing—and that big screen sits proudly in the middle, begging you to dive in.

Inside there's plenty to be excited about, too. It comes equipped with the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, a Lunar Lake chip that we've been anticipating in a handheld gaming PC for a long time.

Intel had a rough 2024 when it came to desktop CPUs, but the Lunar Lake mobile chips stood out as perfect candidates for a portable gaming machine—thanks to excellent power efficiency and an improved, Battlemage-based Arc 140V iGPU, with eight Xe² cores and eight dedicated ray tracing units.

Not that smooth ray tracing performance was ever on the table here—it'll still be a long time before an iGPU will be capable of coping with all the settings turned up in Cyberpunk 2077 without slowing to a crawl. It's an impressive chip, though, and the Claw 8 AI+ is the first gaming handheld to make use of it.

So, this is a portable gaming machine with specs to impress. As a result I've pitted it against the Asus ROG Ally X, our current best handheld gaming PC, and the OneXPlayer OneXFly F1 Pro, an AMD Strix Point-equipped speed machine. The F1 Pro is the fastest handheld we've ever tested and retails for $1,339. That's $439 more than the Claw 8 AI+, for reference.

I've also thrown the Lenovo Legion Go into the mix, another big screen handheld with many virtues worth considering. So the big question is: Can the Claw 8 AI+ keep up with some of our top contenders?

In a phrase? Pretty much, yes. While the Claw matches the ROG Ally X in Black Myth Wukong at Medium settings with upscaling disabled, once FSR is thrown into the fray it ranges ahead by a couple of frames, with a much higher minimum frame rate. It's also a mere two frames off the performance of the OneXFly F1 Pro, and that's pretty impressive given the price delta between them.

In Cyberpunk 2077 it actually manages to beat the OneXFly by a single average frame, both in the upscaled benchmark and at straight-up 1080p. That's a superb turn of speed, and a good indication that the Intel Core Ultra 7 285V is serious competition for the Ryzen AI HX 370 at the heart of the OneXPlayer machine.

And so the back and forth begins. In F1 24, the Claw 8 AI+ gives the ROG Ally X a bit of a pasting—particularly with upscaling enabled, where it manages a nine fps lead. However, the OneXFly F1 Pro flexes its muscles once more, beating the Claw by a fair margin in both the upscaled and non-upscaled results.

In Metro Exodus Enhanced, however, the Claw scythes its way to the top, leaving the ROG Ally X in the dust and edging ahead of the OneXFly by another single frame, with a four fps lead in the minimums.

One slightly odd result in my testing occurred in Horizon Zero Dawn. With upscaling disabled, the Claw leads the OneXFly machine by two frames on average, with double the minimum frame rate. However, with FSR set to Quality at 1080p it drops below all of our tested handhelds on average, although maintains a very high minimum figure compared to the rest.

I ran the benchmark over and over for hours and fiddled with many settings, but nope, this was a consistent quirk.

Intel drivers? Perhaps. It wouldn't be the first time we've experienced odd driver-related issues with an Intel GPU, although it's worth mentioning that all of the games in our test suite ran on the Claw without major problems, just with the very occasional performance oddity.

Speaking of quirks, how about that scorching high 3DMark Time Spy GPU score? Intel's Arc desktop cards have a habit of performing brilliantly in 3DMark benchmarks, while not translating those gains particularly well into actual games—and it seems the Arc 140V iGPU is the same. I'd look upon that number with a good bit of scepticism, but again, it was a consistent figure among multiple runs.

In terms of CPU score, it's worth noting that the Core Ultra 7 285V makes use of four Performance big boi CPU cores, and four low-powered Efficient cores. When compared to the eight fully-fledged cores in the Ryzen Z1 Extreme (and the four Zen 5 cores paired with eight Zen 5c cores in the Ryzen AI HX 370) it's no great surprise the Claw's CPU score is down on the competition.

This is reflected again in the Cinebench R24 results. While the single core index of the Intel chip is the highest out of our handhelds thanks to the speed of those Performance cores, the multi-core score pales in comparison to the AMD chips in the ROG Ally X and the OneXFly F1 Pro. Although it's worth mentioning it does manage a slightly higher result than the Lenovo Legion Go, also using the Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU.

Does this performance deficit matter? To me, no. This is a gaming handheld, after all, and real world gaming performance is where the Lunar Lake chip really delivers. While benchmarks will always drag out the best and worst of a chip, I can't see many people crying into their cereal about the lack of multi-core productivity performance in something designed primarily to play games on the go.

I re-benchmarked the ROG Ally X myself for the purposes of this comparison, as our handheld benchmarking suite has changed slightly since Nick's original review and I wanted the latest numbers. And while the Asus machine is fairly loud under load at its max 30 W TDP, the Claw 8 AI+ is surprisingly quiet, to the point where I wasn't sure if benchmarks had finished or not when it sat a few meters away.

It runs relatively cool, too, with a max CPU temp of 86 °C. That larger chassis appears to give the Lunar Lake chip plenty of breathing room, without being plastered in vents like the OG Claw.

Speaking of efficiency, the Claw 8 AI+ managed a massive 129 minutes in PCMark 10's gaming battery life test. That's a single minute more than the ROG Ally X, and nearly double the battery life of the OneXFly F1 Pro under load. That substantial casing has allowed MSI to cram an 80 Wh battery under the hood—and combined with the efficiency of Intel's impressive chip, the Claw keeps going, and going, and going.

This translates into my real world testing, too. I managed to play an hour and a half's worth of Doom 2016 at Ultra settings on my journey home from the office, with battery life to spare. And it ran like water.

Admittedly it's nearly a nine year old game, and wasn't particularly hardware-demanding even at release. But it was something of a revelation playing a still-fantastic-looking shooter on a large screen at very high frame rates—mid-train journey—without thinking once about a cable.

In fact I've been playing as many fast-paced games as I can on the Claw to test out those Hall effect thumbsticks and updated controls. The sticks are certainly accurate, and feel great under the thumbs for a long session. However, having the ROG Ally X to compare side-by-side, I have to say that the Asus machine's triggers, shoulder buttons, and face buttons do feel better.

It's a tolerance thing, perhaps, but the Asus simply feels more premium in my hands. The Claw's chassis and controls feel good, great even, but the ROG Ally X has a special quality to its moving parts that edges it ahead.

So, for that matter, does the OnePlayerX OneXFly F1 Pro. It's not that the MSI feels bad, more that its direct competitors feel just a touch better in the materials and factory tolerances department.

Other issues? Well, MSI's M-Center software is pretty basic, and while the AI Engine feature is supposed to intelligently adjust performance on the fly depending on your use case, I'd advise turning it off and adjusting the power settings manually. It's fairly good at dropping TDP down on the move to save some battery, but it also managed to screw up the odd benchmark run while plugged in, which is disappointing.

And again, sticking the Claw side by side with the Ally X, I do wonder whether I'd trade some of the Claw's advantages for portability. That big screen is a wonderful thing, but the ROG is just small enough where slinging it in your backpack requires no consideration, whereas the Claw is big enough to make you wonder whether you might leave it at home.

But I simply can't ignore what the Claw 8 AI+ provides for the cash. It delivers performance capable of giving the fastest handheld we've ever tested a run for its money, a large and vibrant display, good controls, and battery life that matches the notoriously long-lasting ROG Ally X. All for $900, which given the pricing of some of the competition, actually strikes as downright reasonable for what you end up receiving.

The thorny question is, does that mean the Claw should replace the Asus ROG Ally X as our best handheld gaming PC overall? To me, not quite. While the Claw beats the Ally X in many of our benchmarks, I think as an overall package, the Asus has it. Just. Really though, both of these handhelds have their place—and for very different reasons.

If you want portability, an ultra-premium feel, and good performance for the more competitive price of $800, I'd lean towards the Ally X. But if you don't mind paying $100 more for sheer raw power and a big screen, and can put up with it being a little unwieldy and slightly rougher around the edges? Yep, that's the Claw.

Think of it as a big, bruising, heavyweight boxer of a handheld gaming PC. It lacks the odd touch of refinement, sure, and occasionally wobbles on its feet. But it delivers such a whack, such a powerful punch of gaming performance and battery life combined with that big, luscious screen, it cannot be ruled out of the fight. It's not just better than the original Claw—it's easily one of the best handhelds I've used to date.

In mid-2023, a few prophetic minds warned that the imminent launch of Baldur's Gate 3 was going to raise expectations for future RPGs to unrealistic heights. Now, in early 2025, I'm here to say that, sadly, they were right: I'm compelled to point out right off the bat that Avowed is not Baldur's Gate 3, nor is it Stalker 2, nor is it Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. It's not Fallout: New Vegas, either. No, it's a much more old-fashioned kind of thing.

Avowed is undeniably a product of the studio responsible for The Outer Worlds and—most relevant in this case—Pillars of Eternity. It spins a gripping fantasy yarn, balancing existential severity with arch humour, while retaining that most enduring and fascinating Obsidian quirk: this is an admirably flawed achievement. It succeeds as an action game, it excels as a choice-based narrative game, but with the criteria determining what makes a brilliant RPG having so dramatically shifted of late, it doesn’t feel like a standout RPG in 2025. Its world, though beautiful, is simply too static—not as malleable or reactive as some of its contemporaries, nor even the classics it recalls.

I am a Godlike envoy of the Aedyr emperor, sent to the notoriously dangerous Living Lands to investigate the Dreamscourge. This "soul plague" sends people and animals mad while blighting them with actually-quite-stylish technicolour body fungi. The virus is spreading fast, so my nameless, voiceless and fully-customisable envoy must put a nip in its fungal bud before it spreads to the Aedyr empire proper.

As an envoy for a powerful empire hoping to claim dominance over the Living Lands, I’m both hated and feared by the races who have planted flags across the island. But that's not the only special thing about me: I'm also a Godlike, which means I’m blessed by a god, boast gnarly divine abilities, and am also marked by fungi signaling my connection to divinity, though without the "going mad" component. I'm also, importantly, harangued by strange voices in my dreams. The character creator is complete with all the lip and ear-size sliders you could want, and if the fungi creeps you out (like some members of the PC Gamer team) it can be toggled off entirely.

As the narrative unfolds, Avowed evolves from a fantasy-flavoured political potboiler into something verging on Dantean: there are ancient gods, forgotten races, and many bewildering philosophical rants. I begin as a mere messenger, but things inevitably get way out of hand, as they surely must in a game that obliquely traverses a lot of thematic terrain—colonialism, encroaching totalitarianism, environmental disaster—without ever feeling heavyhanded. Obsidian is good at writing fantasy. With Avowed, they have a world already substantiated across two meaty CRPGs, and people who played the Pillars of Eternity games will be amply rewarded with callbacks and lore. I for one loved reacquainting with the weirdly cute Xaurips and Sporelings (before killing them).

As unwieldy as the setup may seem on paper, Avowed maintains an admirable focus during its 50-odd hours. I never lost track of what was happening. And I thought I would, given this is a game with a dynamic glossary accessible mid-conversation, à la Final Fantasy 16. Across a handful of discrete "open zones," Obsidian weaves a compact critical path between a wealth of fascinating sidequests that, while ostensibly optional, feel like the substance of the game.

Eora mission

Like in all the best RPGs, it's not the world you hope to save that matters, but the frivolous jobs you do along the way. I remember a dubious situation between a Paradis woman and her weirdly adoring Xaurip admirers more vividly than any of the major plot beats. Likewise, visiting my companion Marius's vanquished home village, crouched in the shadow of a giant volcano, was more impactful than finally confronting the fascistic antagonist for the first time. I was more proud of saving a brothel in Paradis than I was of deciding to have mercy on a villain who I really ought to have, in retrospect, killed. These sidequests shouldn’t be missed, and in truth cannot be, because focusing on the main quest at the expense of the XP and steady upgrade materials they provide probably won’t be feasible for most players.

Marius is one of four companions, and like the others, he's familiar: a diminutive foul-mouthed tough guy with a golden heart. Early favourite Kai is the sardonic but sincere Garrus-like (voiced by Brandon Keener of Garrus fame, coincidentally), while a later character—it may be a spoiler to say too much—is the sassy sexual innuendo enjoyer. And don't fear: there's a bookish, determinedly humourless companion too.

You've met these people before in other RPGs but they're nevertheless well-drawn, with stories and motivations of their own, and an almost unbelievable reservoir of random stuff to say at the campfire sites where I can lick my wounds, improve my gear, and mercilessly question them. Archetypal though they are, they feel alive.

Adventuring with this gaggle across the varied regions of the Living Lands is gratifying mainly because Avowed is a stunning game to look at. Each zone carries a distinct grandeur of its own, and whoever designed these landscapes did so with the sensibility of a cinematographer. It’s common to turn a corner, or mount a crest, and bear witness to a perfectly framed vista that would have looked like overly ambitious concept art 10 years ago. The discrete maps are dense with points of interest, whether caverns chiselling deep into the earth or ruins full of spoils. They don’t feel like real spaces, but that’s not because they feel like videogame spaces: they feel like dreamlike fantasy worlds dreamt up by paperback fantasy bonglords.

Avowed leaves a great first impression. Those first 10 hours I spent in the sprawling city of Paradis and the wider Dawnshore region, learning about the Dreamscourge and life under the Aedyr colonisers, exploring surprisingly deep dungeons, shooting the shit with Kai, and making enemies with the local strongmen, put me in mind of the feeling of playing New Vegas or Oblivion for the first time, but better. Some of the missable sidequests, particularly in the first area, take me places other studios would want to frontload in the opening hours of the main quest. Avowed felt like a sumptuous embarrassment of riches.

But while this is a very good game, with time I came to understand that its ambitions are a touch more humble than some recent genre heavyweights. I realised that it might be more flattering to think of Avowed as a choice-based narrative-driven action game. Or, as a certain kind of simplified blockbuster RPG that is fast receding in the medium’s rearview mirror.

Doom infernal

Let's talk about the fighting first. Avowed is surprisingly combat heavy, especially in its second half. It’s possible to play with the usual array of melee weapons—swords, axes, spears, maces—but you’d be missing out on a lot if you’re not playing Avowed like 21st century Hexen, mixing powerful ranged attacks with down-and-dirty close quarters hacking. Every one-handed weapon can be dual-wielded, so I normally roamed with a grimoire in one hand and a fire-enchanted sword in the other, raining down elemental area of effect attacks on bears, bugs and lizardmen before sprinting in to hack away. For the magic averse, it's also possible to muscle about with a mace in one hand and a pistol in the other, for example.

The grimoire is fun for all the flashing lights and mystical effects it conjures, but if magical pew-pew is more your bag there are wands too. Pistols and arquebuses are present too with all the slow reloading that entails, and so are bows. These conventional weapons have unlimited ammo, probably for magical reasons, but grimoires need essence (basically mana, in this context). Whichever route is taken, high mobility is key, standing still is death, and my envoy’s impressive parkour abilities proved useful when manoeuvring around the hordes.

There are classes and backgrounds to choose from, but all skill trees—fighter, ranger, wizard, and godlike—are available to all classes, and I ended up with a fully blended build without feeling disadvantaged for not specialising. I can't change the gear used by my companions, but they steadily accrue special attacks I can trigger at any time. My crew is pretty good at using these specials themselves, but they're close to useless when it comes to moment-to-moment combat, except when I revisit areas I'm way overpowered for.

Each quest has a difficulty ranking, not based on my level but on the power of the weapons and gear I'm using. The system is pretty vague: while gear is graded along typical RPG lines, I usually had to mix-and-match a bunch before a three-skull difficulty ranking de-escalated to two, mostly blindly, because there aren't any Destiny-style numbers to crunch. Upgrading gear is essential, because finding viable weapons is rare and usually relegated to sidequests or off-the-beaten path destinations. In the early game I found a unique one-handed fire sword that I went on to use right until the end, mostly because I can toggle between two loadouts on the fly, swapping fire for an ice mace and a shock-focused grimoire.

I don’t think Avowed’s combat could sustain my attention over the course of a linear, 15-hour action game, but as one of the main components in a story-led, exploration-rewarding RPG, it’s a lot more fun than I had dared hope for.

Performance was a little shaky on my increasingly long-in-the-tooth gaming laptop. With an RTX 3060, Ryzen 5600H and 16GB RAM, I obviously had no chance of smoothly running raytracing, but even at 1080p and low settings the framerate frequently dropped down to the 30s and 40s when I was in busy areas. The good news is that even at low settings Avowed is gorgeous, though low-quality shadows were a little over-obvious in places, and distant reflective surfaces acquire a weird opaque texture.

Immersive simple

But Avowed isn’t just a first-person action game, and after a while the artifice of its RPG systems started to show. These limits first became apparent when I, a lowly thief, realised I can rob people blind with no consequences at all. It’s possible to just enter some public figure's house, have a look around, open their chests and lockboxes, rob them of their coins, and the worst I’ll receive is a mild scolding.

When I’m not in conversation with someone, that someone forgets that I’m there. Nothing happens in this world unless I’m invited to make it happen or I'm bearing witness to it. This doesn’t make Avowed bad—I loved it—but it’s symptomatic of one area where it falls short compared to its contemporaries, not to mention the first-person Bethesda games it’s clearly modelled on. I can’t attack anyone at will and suffer the consequences (though the narrative stages ample opportunities for me to kill or have mercy). Likewise, while stealth is an option, it’s usually just a means to get an upper hand on a particular foe. Once I’ve attacked—whether from cover or using an invisibility spell—every baddie in the vicinity knows I’m there.

Where agency exists it’s in the conversation trees, and Obsidian makes good in this regard. As in Pillars of Eternity, usually my important choices are between two undesirable outcomes, or between lesser and greater evils. Moral ambiguity usually amounts to whether something bad will happen now, or whether it might happen at a more severe scale later. Decisions culminate in fun ways, especially towards the end where sidequests and the critical path cleverly intersect. Nevertheless, it all builds towards a climax that, while satisfying, loses some of the ambiguity that seems to define the series.

It’s the choices that don’t matter a lot that I really enjoyed: Avowed let me wave my snark flag at high mast, and it’s possible to be very cheeky during otherwise very stern occasions, which always made me laugh. I can be an arsehole, I can be flippant, I can speak with sagacity or well-meaningly, or I can safely opt for the answer that suits the background I chose at the beginning of the game. It’s possible to build a certain kind of envoy, even if, in the end, all it amounts to is guided head canon.

Systems shock

Avowed arrives at a weird and exciting time for RPGs. Baldur's Gate 3, Stalker 2, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2—heck, let's include Elden Ring as well—have all demonstrated that some amount of friction, whether it be difficulty, complexity or both, is welcome. Maybe even expected.

Avowed is a better RPG than Dragon Age: The Veilguard in almost every meaningful way, ranging from the meandering depth of its companion conversations through to the nuance of its worldbuilding and its willingness to get extremely dark at times. But when I look at them side-by-side I see RPGs made for audiences at scale, at a time when RPGs made for dorks and weirdos are having much more success. I really hoped that Avowed would remove the blockbuster guardrails the way recent genre heavyweights have. Obsidian knows how to do this and is among the best to have done it. Avowed is smart, but it’s not reactive. It’s not breakable. It’s not excitingly pliant, like some of Obsidian's finest.

Perhaps that's not the kind of game Avowed wants to be; it definitely succeeds on the somewhat humbler terms of a narrative-driven action RPG with memorable characters, a gorgeous world, and really fun combat. Just imagine if one day, these separate Obsidian tracks—spicy, reactive CRPGs and sumptuous first-person narrative adventures—perfectly intersect.

I tested this PC case the only way I know how: building a gaming PC inside it and measuring how well it runs. For this build (full build log here), I opted for an ASRock Z890 Steel Legend WiFi loaded with an Intel Core Ultra 5 245K. To keep the processor cool, a Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5 air cooler. On the graphics front, one last hurrah for AMD's outgoing RX 7900 XT. All of these went together without issue inside the Shadow Base 800 FX. Like, zero issues.

There are a few ways that the Shadow Base 800 FX makes life easy for budding builders. First off, the motherboard tray is set back to leave ample space for a top-mounted radiator—you can fit up to a 420 mm radiator, or three 140 mm fans, in the top of the Shadow Base. That leaves plenty of room in the front of the case for another 420 mm radiator, or again three 140 mm fans, though any fans can be tucked neatly out of the way behind the front mesh.

Speaking of fans, you needn't worry about buying many more for this case. It comes with four 140 mm Be Quiet! Light Wings fans—three in the front, one as an exhaust in the back. They are supremely quiet in operation. That's a combination of both their size and construction—larger fans mean you can run slower RPMs while maintaining good airflow, and Be Quiet! claims a low-noise fan blade design with a lower-noise rifle bearing.

They're pretty smart-looking fans. There's RGB only around the circumference of the fan that looks superb through the front mesh of the case. The longevity of these fans is a little lower than some high-end options at 60,000 hours, especially compared to Be Quiet!'s own Silent Wings 4 at 300,000 hours, but a three-year warranty certainly isn't bad.

In my tests, these fans provided ample airflow to the components within. While largely dependent on the choice of chip and cooler used across both CPU and GPU, I measured the Core Ultra 5 245K at no higher than 65°C and the RX 7900 XT no higher than 69°C while gaming. The CPU reached 76°C during more intensive testing, such as Cinebench 2024. All of which is absolutely fine with me.

When it comes to noise reduction, this Be Quiet! case comes with insulation on the closed side panel. A layer of dense foam. There's none on the front, top, or tempered glass windowed side, however, which does make me wonder how much difference it really makes to the overall noise of the build. That said, it's hardly a loud machine with the fairly easy-going components and cooling I've put inside it.

Another reason I found building inside this case so gosh-darn simple is the serious amount of space behind the PSU. It's cavernous back there. You really don't have to worry about PSU cables or tidying them up all that much, especially when there's a couple of inches of room for your cables behind the panel.

The motherboard panel also has long, uninterrupted cable cut-outs across the top, side, and bottom of the motherboard plate, making light work of any cable tidying. My only small issue with the design is that, while there is a cable cover down the side, it does leave a lot of the cables still quite visible from the front.

In Be Quiet!'s defence, the whole cable tidy comes off with a single Philips head screw. In fact, most of this case is pretty accessible with minimal tools required—if any.

There's a controller included in the Shadow Base 800 FX, to control the included fans, the lovely RGB light rings on each, and the embedded LED lighting strips down the front of the case. This controller comes pre-installed on the rear of the motherboard plate, which comes away with a single thumbscrew for easy removal and access to a motherboard's rear.

With the front panel lighting and four fans connected, two cables a piece, there are still three four-pin fan headers and three 5-volt RGB headers spare to use for further expansion/add-ons.

The rear motherboard plate also has room for a 2.5-inch drive, and there are three total 2.5-inch SSD mounts within easy reach in the Shadow Base 800 FX. There's room for more, but there's only a single HDD (3.5-inch) cage included as an optional extra.

With airflow, cable management, lighting, and cooling sorted, I've only dust to deal with. Thankfully, very little inside the case itself, as both the top, bottom, and front of the case have built-in dust protection. The top and front are magnetically attached, and the rear slides in and out with ease.

Bonus points: the front panel can be removed with minimal force, and the RGB lighting on it is connected via a few stable contacts to a connection on the case proper. It goes back on just as easily.

The Shadow Base 800 FX is impressive for its largely tool-free, convenient, spacious build experience. And I say this as someone with a slight bone to pick with older Be Quiet!'s previous cases. I'm going back quite far here, getting near a decade (oh my god, I'm so old); though I own a Be Quiet! Dark Base 900.

This case has been in constant use over the years, from my PC to my partner's, and much of the time I've been slightly scared to open it and change anything drastically. It's well built and has stood the test of time, but trying to shift the PSU shroud or flip the motherboard mount is not worth the hassle.

By comparison, everything on the Shadow Base 800 FX falls away with ease, magnetically attaches, requires one screw, if any… case design has changed a lot over the past 10 years, and the Shadow Base 800 FX is one of the best examples of that.

Coming in at $190/£180, you wouldn't be putting a foot wrong with the Shadow Base 800 FX for the money. Especially considering the four 140 mm, RGB fans you're getting included for the fee. Though if you are looking to save money, the Shadow Base 800 DX is more or less the same with non-RGB fans for $135/£140, or there's the straight Shadow Base 800 with no RGB whatsoever for $96/£130. Any of which would work great for your next gaming PC build.

Sirens of the Deep opens with Geralt (Doug Cockle) and Jaskier (Joey Batey) rambling through side-story territory and strapped for cash, no thanks to Geralt's well-documented aversion to killing creatures that were actually just minding their own business. So they agree to each take on the next job offered to them, leading to a musical performance for Jaskier and another opportunity to ethically refrain from monster hunting for Geralt.

The kingdom of Bremervoord has a problem: the prince (human) is inconveniently enamored with a princess (mermaid) which is going to cause some dynastic planning problems if allowed to continue. Though the merpeople kingdom and Bremervoord have lived in a tense peace for years, it's all at risk as the human pearl-diving industry wanders further into mermaid territory and human ships keep being attacked while the merpeople claim not to be the perpetrators.

As any story of simmering tension between humans and a neighboring society of non-humans is wont to go, Geralt winds up at the center trying to prevent a war as both kingdoms find further reasons to distrust each other. He's helped along by Jaskier's childhood friend and fellow bard Essi Daven (Christina Wren) as they translate overtures of love between human and mermaid monarchs and attempt to keep their respective people from killing each other while determining who's stirring this pot behind the scenes.

In the context of Netflix's growing Witcher adaptation universe, it's a good choice of story to pull from the source material for a standalone adventure and the right amount of artistic license with that material. By the by, it is great to hear Doug Cockle, voice of Geralt in CD Projekt Red's games, pulled in for one of Netflix's adaptations.

The choice in story allows for some nice mermaid society character designs, all gaunt torsos full of gills with kelp-y flowing accents and finned ears that look great in animation but wouldn't have been attempted in a live-action version. It features plenty of colorful undersea society sequences, ship battles, and a whole lineup of massive ocean-dwelling monsters.

Meanwhile, refocusing the story from the original (more on that below) means that director Kang Hei Chul and Studio MIR get to lean into plenty of flashy fight scenes. There's all of Geralt's pirouetting and mid-air acrobatics with sword choreography that you're only going to get in animation plus a few indulgent first-person Geralt POV shots during the bigger fights. If you're going to animate Geralt, of course you should take the opportunity to make him a superhero doing gravity-defying stunts without messing up his Pantene perfect hair.

One blemish on the overall production is that the couple of brief musical number sections feel a bit flat thanks to some weird mixing choices that leave the vocals and accompaniment without much range in volume. I gather it's essentially illegal not to give Joey Batey a singing part after the viral Toss A Coin To Your Witcher moment from the live action show's first season, but Sirens of the Deep really didn't toss him much of anything to work with.

Sirens of the Deep also briefly pays lip service to Geralt and Yennefer's relationship, though the reimagining of the relationships between other characters makes Geralt's hangup over her feel like a vestigial limb in this otherwise standalone story. At that rate, we could have likely done without Geralt's very brief nightmares explaining his falling out with his sorceress lover who makes no actual appearance in the story and pretty easily accepted his side adventure dalliances with Essi—it's not like it's a first for him or for Yen.

Considering The Source

Like Andrzej Sapkowski's short story A Little Sacrifice, Sirens of the Deep is in some ways a riff on Hans Christian Andersen's story The Little Mermaid. Where Sapkowski's work is often a sort of smirk in the direction of fairytales, Netflix's adaptation folds those references in with a more hopeful tone.

In general I've found Netflix's adaptations to miss the mark on The Witcher's true wry sense of humor in favor of shoving Jaskier out as comic relief with an implied laugh track. In this case though, having just re-read A Little Sacrifice, Jaskier's got nearly as many ba dum tshh-level lines right there in the text.

Sirens of the Deep does plenty of reimagining and recasting of characters, though mainly for the sake of telling a more coherent overall story. Those who've read Sword of Destiny will notice that the adaptation features a star-crossed prince and princess rather than a foolish duke and prideful mermaid along with a whole merpeople kingdom side of the story that is only hinted at in A Little Sacrifice. It spins a side character into an embittered bastard son of the throne with his own motivations. It also imagines a backstory for Jaskier as a young boy from Bremervoord so that Essi can be of-age with him as a love interest for Geralt rather than another barely-18 girl for the witcher to tumble into bed with.

Those changes in Geralt's tryst with Essi may actually be the biggest, since the original story spends comparatively little time on monster hunting and way more on Geralt fumbling the bag with this young bard in ways that leave them both much unhappier than what Sirens of the Deep depicts. Ultimately, A Little Sacrifice is a tragedy with a sour ending in which Geralt witnesses one inequitable doomed love story and is the unwilling party to another. His emotional navel-gazing sets him up to recontextualize his relationship with Yennefer as the stories after it immediately return to the dedication they both have to Ciri and the destiny that binds the three of them.

Call me a non-believer, but a more literal interpretation of A Little Sacrifice just would not have been the stuff of a feature-length film worth calling up Studio MIR for. The version we get here is a complete thought in its own right, even if 'hero forcibly negotiates peace between adjacent societies' is one we can all pretty much recite beat-by-beat.

It's a story that's missable by design—Geralt and Jaskier going to a town we'll never see again to solve a conflict with no bearing on the war of the Northern Kingdoms with help from characters who will never return to the plot. But by the same token it's self-contained and satisfying as a story and a well-choreographed 2D animation for Geralt in all his glory.

Well, let's take a look at what we've got here and find out. The TK101 features quite an odd layout, which the brand terms as being a 98 percent option. It looks similar to a 96 percent, or 1800 layout, as featured on Keychron's Q5 HE, although chops and changes things by moving some of the nav cluster keys above the number pad and omitting the right Windows, Alt and Insert keys. This leaves others in between the Enter key and the number pad, with the arrow keys underneath. It's fine to use, providing a mostly full complement of keys, although takes some getting used to—even as a long-term enthusiast, it wasn't a layout I'd come across before.

The keycaps are comprised of double shot PBT plastic, which is excellent at this price, and come with a similar retro-inspired taller profile to Keychron's Q5, too. There is some slight curvature to the top of the caps to make them more comfortable to type on, although the fact that there is a lot of key wobble can make it a bit of a pain. What's more, as much as the keycap plastic is durable, the rest of the TK101's construction isn't up to the same standard.

The chassis is entirely plastic, with a two-tone black and red colourway, which looks okay. I don't bemoan the use of plastic here, as if it's high quality enough then there will be no flex or creaking. That isn't the case though. At a push, the TK101 is *bendy*. It suffers from a lot of flex at the corners and in the middle under pressure, which can leave a lot to be desired. I appreciate that this is a more affordable option, but perhaps a metal plate running through the middle for extra structural rigidity would have been handy.

The closest you get to anything metal is a mirrored surface on the keyboard's top side for added flair, which is where you find the USB-C port for charging and wired operation, a small cutout for the USB-A wireless receiver, and a selector switch for different connectivity methods. This unfortunately isn't labelled, which seems like an oversight. To find out which connection method is actually selected, there is a small set of status LEDs next to the Esc key in the top left corner, which works for lock lights as well as wireless connectivity with Bluetooth being blue and 2.4 GHz wireless being green.

Wireless connectivity works well enough, with plug-and-play operation over the 2.4 GHz receiver on my Windows gaming PC without a hitch. Bluetooth pairing is simple too, with the use of the Fn key, and either the 1, 2, or 3 key depending on which channel you wish to use. With the wired connection in tow, it technically means you can use the TK101 with up to five devices at once.

There is a 4000 mAh battery inside, which Gamakay says can last up to 20 hours in use. In my experience, I got around 25-30 hours on a charge with the RGB lighting at its default level before it conked out. While it is better than Gamakay's own estimate, it's quite weak otherwise, given Keychron's options can last for four times longer on the same capacity, and up to 400 hours on a charge without any RGB lighting.

Inside, my sample of the TK101 came with the brand's Pluto tactile switches. These are 50 g soft tactile switches that feel reasonable under finger with decent tactility and a slightly shorter total travel at 3.5 mm. They're quite responsive for productivity workloads and are quite smooth thanks to being lubricated. For more affordable switches, I don't necessarily mind them, although the likes of Drop's Panda switches and Cherry's special MX Purples reign supreme.

If either the tactile Pluto switches or the linear Saturns aren't to your liking, then the TK101 is at least hot-swappable, meaning you can change the switches out without needing to desolder and solder in new ones. There is a keycap and switch puller in the box to make this a simple process, and it isn't too difficult—just line the puller up with the tabs at the top and bottom of the switch and pull straight up. Then, to swap a new switch in, line the pins up on the underside with the cutouts in the PCB, and push down until the switch clicks into place.

There is RGB lighting here, which acts as more of an underglow than fully-fledged illumination because of the solid keycaps above it. It isn't too bright, and can be blocked even simply by pushing keycaps down. Changing the lighting can be done on the keyboard by pressing the Fn key and the backslash key, which cycles through differing presets such as where pushing one key fans light out in all directions, or it pulsates different colours. If you've owned a cheaper RGB keyboard from the last decade or so, you'll know the presets I mean.

The RGB is also addressable in Gamakay's Launcher software, which offers a basic method of remapping keys, programming macros and fiddling with the lighting effects either from the range of presets, or on a per-key basis if you're willing to take some time out. You can map the lighting to any audio that's playing and even load a picture into the system where the software attempts to represent its colours on the keyboard. It is a bit gimmicky, but at least it's there for those folks that want it. Gamakay Launcher can be quite slow to respond, and is a tad on the clunkier side, but it gets the job done I suppose. It would have been better for the TK101 to be compatible with VIA and QMK firmware flashing, as a lot of other enthusiast-grade options are for more convenient controlling.

If you want a cheap mechanical option that'll suffice for the basics, it's completely fine, but there are better options for just a little way up the price ladder. The Ducky Zero 6108 comes with proper Cherry MX2A switches, much stronger build quality and battery life for just under $100, while the Keychron K2 V2 remains an excellent all-rounder at $69 if you don't mind giving up some keys in a smaller form factor layout with a similar feature set to the TK101 but with much better build quality and endurance.

To sum up, then, I'd say that the proposition the TK101 offers is a bit too good to be true. As much as some of Gamakay's products, namely the excellent TK75 Pro, have been diamonds in the rough, this TK101 cuts too many corners to truly stand out in the sea of increasingly affordable mechanical boards in and around this price point.

Of course, at this price point something has to give. Actually, with the AOC Gaming C27G4ZXE, plenty has to give. The most obvious casualty to cost reduction is resolution. This 27 incher is a mere 1080p panel, so that's 1,920 by 1,080 pixels.

The result is a very modest pixel density of just 82 DPI. We'll come back to the impact that has on image quality. But up front it's worth noting that while this relatively low resolution is a necessary compromise to hit the price point, it actually makes sense from a price-performance perspective.

If you're shopping monitors at this end of the market, safe to assume you're not running a $1,000 GPU. So, a lower resolution will likely be a better fit with your graphics card, especially if you want to make use of that 280 Hz refresh.

Anyway, the next concession is a VA rather than IPS panel. As we routinely explain, VA tends to have worse response and viewing angles compared to IPS, but better contrast. This isn't always the case, but the slower pixel response can obviously be a bit of a bummer on a gaming display.

Those limitations aside, the AOC Gaming C27G4ZXE is also a little stingy when it comes to build, ergonomics and connectivity. This monitor feels a bit cheap and the stand only offers tilt adjustment.

That said, it doesn't actually look too poverty stricken thanks to some nice geometric design for the stand base and rear of the screen enclosure. This isn't a totally anonymous black square, some effort has gone in. The 27-inch panel's gentle 1500R curve also adds perhaps the slightest frisson of upmarket consumer electronics.

At the very least, it's a decent looking thing sitting on your desk when you consider the price point. It just doesn't feel all that robust. Again, you can't really expect much more at this price point.

As for the connectivity shortfall, well, you get two HDMI 2.0 ports and single DisplayPort input. What you don't get is any kind of USB hub. But try finding an equivalent monitor with a USB hub from a big brand at similar money. You'll struggle.

The final obvious casualty of the low price point is HDR support. Honestly, it's the merest of flesh wounds. You do get basic HDR 10 support. But with a maximum brightness of 300 nits and no local dimming, this is clearly not a true HDR display. But then neither is any monitor with entry-level HDR400 certification.

Actually, I'd argue very few LCD as opposed to OLED monitors are truly capable of high dynamic range rendering. At least with the AOC Gaming C27G4ZXE you can theoretically decode HDR content with correct colors. That's something.

But what of the actual image quality? First impressions are none too shabby. The C27G4ZXE may only be rated at 300 nits, but it's fairly bright and punchy. The VA panel tech helps with that impression. VA panels have much better contrast than IPS and that contrast between brighter and darker tones makes a screen look subjectively more vibrant and dynamic.

AOC has actually calibrated this thing pretty well, too. The colors in default sRGB mode are bob on, which isn't always the case with cheap VA monitors. They are often set up to be over-saturated.

Sadly, that deft calibration doesn't extend to HDR content. Generally, this monitor looks rather dull in HDR mode, it's actually more vibrant in SDR mode which obviously isn't right. What's more, SDR colors in HDR mode are a mess. Ultimately, the HDR mode is best avoided unless you absolutely have to use it. That's not a huge disappointment given the price point. But it does mean that the AOC Gaming C27G4ZXE is very much best viewed as a non-HDR panel.

If those elements of the static image quality are decent, what about when things get moving? The 280 Hz refresh definitely translates into snappy responses to control inputs. The latency is great given the price point. So, this monitor is a great choice for online shooters and esports on a budget.

Less impressive is the pixel response. AOC quotes some very impressive figures here with 0.3 ms MPRT and 1 ms GTG response times. You also get four levels of pixel-accelerating overdrive in the OSD menu to help you tune the response.

Sadly, however, this monitor conforms to the cheap VA norm. All but the quickest overdrive mode suffers from at least a little visible smearing and blurring. As for the quickest option, that largely eradicates the smearing only to swap it for a touch of overshoot and inverse ghosting.

Unfortunately, you can actually see that overshoot in games in the form of texture colors shifting as you move your mouse and the pixel overshoot their target colors. It's not super obvious, but it is there and once you see it, it can't be unseen.

Of course, this is the norm for a VA panel at this price point. So, it absolutely isn't a deal breaker. But if you were hoping that AOC had done something magical and somehow delivered pixel response performance way beyond expectations, well, that simply hasn't happened.

Apart from response, this monitor's other obvious weakness is the aforementioned pixel density. It's a tricky aspect to critique. The price point ultimately dictates 1080p. A 1440p 280 Hz panel at this price point is too much to ask.

And as we said, 1080p is actually a good match in terms of GPU load given the low price point here. But that 82 DPI pixel density is awfully ugly on the Windows desktop. It makes for craggy, rough looking fonts and a generally pretty pixelated vibe.

The saving grace is that games don't actually look too bad when it comes to visual detail. You're still getting full HD and if you switch on upscaling, such as Nvidia DLSS or AMD FSR, the slight softening effect helps to smooth out the craggies that are consequent from the fairly large pixels.

As a final note, the 1500R panel curvature is really neither here nor there. There's really very little benefit to a curved panel on a 27-inch 16:9 screen. But equally the curve is slight enough not to be a distraction.

Overall, then, this is a decent display for the money. 280 Hz and 1080p is a sensible combination and makes for a snappy feeling gaming experience even with a commensurately budget GPU. The low DPI look isn't great, but it's a reasonable compromise at this price point.

The caveat to that is that were it our money, we'd prefer to stretch to around $200 if at all possible and go for a 1440p 144 Hz option. The refresh is lower, but the pixel density is a lot nicer.

If there is an element that's hard to really get on board with even at the price point, it's the mediocre pixel response. Admittedly, you'd do well to find a competing screen that's much better. So, the problem isn't unique to this AOC. But the response really isn't great. So, chalk that up as something we'd like to see improve industry-wide on this class of display as opposed to something AOC specifically has messed up.

Actually, on that note, if money really is tight and $200 for a 1440p monitor isn't an option, we'd probably lean towards a 24-inch IPS monitor, maybe even one running at a lower 160 Hz refresh rate. You'll get better response and slightly better pixel density, albeit on a smaller panel.

Ultimately, there are no perfect choices here. And of the available 27-inch 1080p gaming monitors in the budget class, the AOC Gaming C27G4ZXE is absolutely a worthy contender.

In the wake of a recent tragedy, which has claimed the lives of the current president of the Roottree Candy Company, his wife and their three daughters, you’ve been hired by a mysterious client to chart the Roottree dynasty in incontestable black and white. That means combing through fictional websites, library books and periodicals for the facts required to pin them down on your big, conspiracy-style cork board.

Sure it’s easy enough to uncover the names of the three sisters that died in the crash – they are currently plastered all over the internet – plus their professions and a photo each to "lock them in". But what about their parents? And the parents of their parents’ parents? You have 90 years of this stuff to dig up, so get searching.

Every time you find a clue⁠—if you even noticed it, as they can be cleverly buried⁠—you have a number of avenues to turn to (on your swivel chair). There’s the evidence on your evidence desk (maybe I should get an evidence desk): relevant photos and documents you’ll return to, time and again, to cross-reference new information. But your main port of call is the World Wide Web, the Information Superhighway, which⁠—just as in the real 1998⁠—has exactly three sites of note.

Fictional search engine SpiderSearch is useful for looking up the more famous Roottrees, or notable incidents involving them, while any books you have uncovered may be available from a central library database. Periodicals are also handy for digging up the titbits you need to complete an entry. I lost track of the number of times I had used the married rather than the maiden names of the Roottree spouses.

Bloodlines

Technically you’re only required to fill in direct descendants on the family tree (company founder Elias Roottree was a bit obsessed with the bloodline), but when every name or profession or discovered photograph feels like sifted gold, you’re going to slap them all on the cork board anyway.

After every few successful entries, the game fades to black to pat you on the back, confirming your work by locking those entries in place. The game is essentially one giant puzzle⁠—pretty daunting when you zoom out to a sea of question marks and no idea where to start⁠—so it’s best to take notes, whether in real-life or with the in-game notebook.

Actually, speaking of that notebook, it’s one of the niftiest notebooks ever made. Just one element of an interface that works its socks off to keep you immersed in the detecting flow state. Found a clue on a website, in a book, or in one of your evidence folders? Simply highlight it with the mouse for options to search for it on the internet, or to add it to your notebook, no typing required. The Roottrees are Dead never feels fiddly, repetitive or time-consuming, and in a game about transferring information between menus repeatedly, that’s no small feat.

I said much the same thing back when I reviewed the earlier, free version of The Roottrees are Dead, which is largely similar but neatly eclipsed by this paid remake. The AI-generated artwork of the original is thankfully gone, replaced by beautifully hand-drawn photos, magazine covers and promotional flyers, while the action has spread out from just your desktop to your entire living room. The corners of the room are dominated by your PC, your cork board, the evidence desk and the front door, which is where your client will occasionally pop up to progress the overall story.

With such a large cast of characters, and often cursory details about their lives, I felt like I knew a lot and very little about the Roottrees after playing the game. It was fascinating to unravel their history, their secrets, to follow potential clues down rabbit holes and feel like an actual detective, but very rarely did I discover anything to make me care about the characters.

The Roottrees are Still Dead

That’s just one element bettered in the expansion, which is included as part of this remake, and accessible after you complete the main game. Roottreemania deals with the fallout of the explosive ending of The Roottrees are Dead, enriching characters from the previous game while introducing additional branches to the family tree. Here, you’re following the trails of various infidelities—an area not really touched on in the previous game—and the illegitimate offspring that now have a claim to the Roottree fortune.

Partway into this tougher investigation, I realised I’d been touched by some of the stuff I had uncovered. Little details had fully brought many of its characters to life. The game generally summarises websites and documents, rather than delivering them to you wholesale, and more interesting and affecting details about their lives have been picked out here.

This second part of the Roottree saga is also a better detective game, with a greater amount of useless information to sift through (making the genuine clues, when you find them, all the more rewarding), and a more challenging method of inputting information. In the first part, you select first and last names from a reassuringly dwindling list, but here the pool of available names is considerably larger, and it doesn’t deplete, meaning you’re less able to rely on guesswork to fill in the blanks.

All in all, you could hardly ask for a better follow-up to The Roottrees are Dead, which itself is a lavish revamp of the free original. This is a game for the quiet hours at your desk, your lamp low and the coffee steaming away, and one of the best games about unglamorous detective work.

That is certainly the biggest draw to it right now. If you're in the US, you can pick one of these up for about $600 if you buy before the product launches in April 2025, and that's only applicable to the first 1000 orders (there's a handy ticker on the pre-order page that tells you exactly how many are left). Still, that's a special introductory price, which is, at least on the surface, a very wild way of entering a market segment, but an effective one nonetheless. I can guarantee you, they're not going to make a profit on those first thousand units, that's for sure.

Outside of the pre-purchase window, the standard retail price slides in at around $999 US, or £819 in the UK. That's not bad, but not exactly revolutionary.

Given the hardware it has to hand, it puts it in line with projectors like Acer's Predator GM712, which similarly features the same Texas Instruments DLP display tech to achieve those resolutions and latencies and equally comes in at about the same cost. It is worth mentioning, however, that the GM712 has been out now for several years.

If you're aware of the projector marketplace right now, then 4K units like this and their equivalent specs are pretty much a dime a dozen. If they can do 4K at 60 Hz, they can do 1080p at 240 Hz, with reduced latency as they do it. The higher the res, the greater the technical latency. This isn't like MPRT or grey-to-grey; however, it's a lot smoother than that, so do bear it in mind. Philips won't advertise its 4K latency because of that, but if you decide to opt for the 4K mode, you're looking at an input lag of around 12 ms or higher, at 120 Hz that drops to 8 ms, and at 240 Hz (at 1080p), you nail down that 6 ms response which it is advertising.

As for other key specs, Philips has it rated at about 1,000 lumens (ANSI) or so; if we compare that to the GM712, it's not quite as bright. The GM712 clocks in at its standard mode at around 4,000 lumens (around 1,667 ANSI). Fortunately, lower brightness does give you a far longer-lasting bulb, and the GamePix is earmarked for a life-span of around 30,000 hours or so (about 3.4 years if you used it for 24-hours a day, every day for that duration). In my own time testing it, I never felt it was too dim at all, certainly at night in my office, and I even tested it against a dark gray wall, with little change in that experience.

Outside of those basic stats, however, the GamePix is incredibly barebones by comparison to some of those other units. There's no wireless connectivity, no Bluetooth, no Google Casting, AirPlay, Android TV, or anything of the sort. I/O is also incredibly limited, with only a single HDMI port, a USB Type-A power out, a headphone jack, and that's about it.

There's also no automated feature here either. No auto-keystone, no auto-focus—it all has to be dialed in by hand. That's not the end of the world, and the reality is if you're setting this up in a mancave or gaming den, you're probably going to do it once and then never move it again, but still, it'd have been a nice inclusion here for sure.

Build quality is generally quite average as well, sadly. The housing is just a cheap fingerprint-absorbing black plastic with a slight red accent around the lens, and that's it. There's some good ventilation on the sides, and slick fans that are quiet enough, and it does come with an adjustable front foot, along with a pretty barebones remote, but there's really not a lot to talk about from a pure design perspective. It's certainly nowhere near the caliber of the likes of BenQ's X series units, although those projectors are considerably pricier in contrast. There's no glitz or glam here; still, that could be a good thing. After all, you should be focused on the image, not the device.

And the GamePix 900 delivers on exactly that. Oh boy, image quality—what a treat this thing is to use. It might be barebones, might be quite simple, but the clarity and color is outstanding. 4K absolutely delivers on that premise, with crystal clear definition and beautifully punchy colors, with impressive dark tones, no matter the content you drive through it. Latency, even at 4K, even above that 8 ms mark, is barely noticeable at all. Particularly when configured in its game modes.

Settings are again quite basic. There's little to write home about here. There's a plethora of color profiles, some of them a little odd; "Brightest," for instance, seems to turn the entire image green; standard's a little dim, and movie chucks it into a warmer tone mode, but there's a ton of calibration in here to really dial in contrast, and color tones exactly how you want them.

The speakers are, probably what you'd expect at this price, just average. No treble or top-end, overly bassy, very loud, but they'll do in a pinch, until you get a better solution hooked up.

The GamePix 900 is ultimately a fairly barebones unit. It delivers on the core ethos of what a projector should, and that is exceptional image quality with impressive color accuracy, all while slamming it up onto a seriously large display (120 inches at its max throw). It does that while delivering some impressive latency and a fantastically enjoyable experience as a result. Still, it just lacks that refinement, the feature set, and the build quality that others at its retail price have, and that really does hurt it at its full price.

If you can grab this with that pre-order discount, what you're looking at is one of the best value 4K projection purchases you can make this year. But, and more importantly, if it's at retail, if this is post-April, or if Philips hasn't continued that discount on after the fact, you'd be better served looking elsewhere.

Before playing Skald: Against the Black Priory, I liked the idea of this throwback roleplaying game, but wasn't sure it was for me. I love old-school RPGs, but pre-1997 is too old-school for my tastes, and Skald's primary source of visual inspiration is an era of DOS and Commodore RPGs I have respect, but not much affection for. Skald's gorgeous VGA-inspired pixel art scared me off as much as it enticed me.

Finally diving into the game, though, I found something decidedly more modern: Skald is crisp and tight, threading the needle with an elegant, modern design sensibility that doesn't sand off the complexity and depth I crave in my RPGs. It's easy to get your arms around, but also challenging and surprising the whole way through. The biggest shock of all was the writing: Skald is one of the most effective, unnerving cosmic horror stories I've seen in a game, and part of that comes from all the effort it puts into fleshing out its fantasy world and characters before tearing it all down.

Roll for initiative

When I'm playing an RPG with its own bespoke rules (that is, not based on something familiar like D&D or SPECIAL), I always feel like I'm making a leap of faith. Is this one where dialogue skills are fun and useful? Which weapon and armor proficiencies are actually supported by the game's loot? Do rogues just suck for some reason? For every Divinity: Original Sin or Disco Elysium that knocks it out of the park, there's something like Broken Roads or Rogue Trader that leaves me frustrated, pondering an empty character sheet full of stats, skills, jargon, and effects of dubious utility.

Skald blessedly falls into the former camp. It's very much iterating on D&D, but with a unique progression system and checks based around 2d6 dice rolls rather than the d20. Every class can be powerful and find a niche in a party of six, and you only mess around with skills and attribute numbers at character creation. As the game goes on, you can increase those scores with gear and the passive bonuses of feats you choose on level-up. Ranger feats, for example, will boost your dexterity and survival in addition to giving you powerful new attacks.

Skald's combat is similarly simple and elegant. Battles are turn-based and on a grid, while the classes feel very distinct to command. Rogues are all about positioning, backstabs, stealth, and beginning fights with advantageous ambush rounds. Armsmasters are your classic fighter, wanting to charge in and facetank everything. The Guild Magos (wizard) and Battle-Magos have a Baldur's Gate-esque variety of spell effects that you can learn both on level up and through scrolls you find in the world (but the level-1 Swarm of Gnats is a beast that can carry you through much of the game), while rangers are machine gun turrets that can snipe enemies from anywhere on the screen.

Most of Skald's quests end in with a fight, but there's a lot of non-combat gameplay, comparable to Baldur's Gate 3 or Obsidian joints like Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. You don't just use diplomacy to get around fights: Lore can unlock a ton of clues, background, and context in quests and conversations, while athletics can open up alternate paths through the environment via climbable walls and difficult jumps. Lockpicking is extremely useful, you can rob shopkeepers blind, and I absolutely love that every candle, torch, and fireplace in the game can be put out to help sneak past enemies, or lit to make spotting hidden items easier. Every skill check is represented by an in-game dice roll, with Skald's pixelated 2d6 a delightfully retro echo of Larian's iconic digital d20.

An early standout quest involves infiltrating a city that's fallen to crazed cultist barbarians, with some of the islanders' genetic memory of worshiping eldritch fish-people having driven them to an orgy of violence. The city itself is dense and fun to explore, while your struggle against three factions of cultists can play out a number of ways. I managed to get them to wipe each other out by pinning the theft of a sacred idol on the strongest faction, then convincing the other two to unite against them. It felt like the open-ended nexus of New Vegas' Second Battle of Hoover Dam but in miniature.

As the game went on, some of its fights began to feel a bit easy and throwaway on the middle "Normal" difficulty⁠—Skald recommends beginners start with "Easy"—but its big story beat battles always felt properly interesting and substantial. Skald offers a bit of flexibility in crafting your party, with a well-balanced complement of preset characters available to join you over the course of the story, as well as blank slate "mercenaries" you can find, buy, and customize as you see fit.

Psychedelia

But you'll want to stick with the premade guys, at least on a first playthrough. These aren't full-on BioWare loyalty mission romanceable companions, but the canon crew is varied, interesting, and they'll regularly pipe up to comment on story events and sidequests. Classico fighter-tank Roland, a reliable sellsword haunted by past crimes, is a favorite of mine, and a spoilery midgame party addition adds a lot of context to the cosmic horror parts of the story. Skald's companions are sketched with a light hand, but give the impression of depths and history that will never be fully revealed. They left me wanting to know more about them, rather than bowling me over with way too much backstory.

Skald's setting is some familiar western fantasy, but with an edge and sense of history that I always crave. The emperors of this world's questionably moral dominant polity are living demigods, and when they die, their bodies remain radioactive with magic, needing to be interred in some kind of Raiders of the Lost Arc deep vault after death. All magic is derived from an eldritch ozone layer cloaking the planet that may be sentient, is likely not benevolent, and yet seems to be protecting Skald's world from the gaze of something truly horrific out in the darkness.

This is some pretty rad worldbuilding on its own, which is what makes developer High North's commitment to utterly destroying it with a deluge of horror so impressive. As you explore the Outer Isles, there's this feeling that you're descending into a truly vile, subterranean, alternate world separate from anything human or kind. Having this initial context of an interesting fantasy world, likable characters, and engrossing human drama sharpens the contrast with what comes later: You have a frame of reference for exactly how far everything's fallen.

As things get freakier, one of Skald's greatest pleasant surprises of all is the sheer quality of lead developer Anders Lauridsen's prose. I'm talking bigass chunks of text straight out of Planescape: Torment or Disco Elysium, with the same sort of evocative, poetic quality that always sent chills down my spine in those games. Skald is decidedly low-fi, but the excellence of its pixel art and soundtrack really drive home its unique atmosphere: CRPG fantasy nostalgia undercut with something deeply sinister.

After a knockout last level, things take a final dive into the strange and deranged that left me speechless, and the game finally comes back up for air with a hilariously, deliberately anticlimactic epilogue slideshow that had me hooting with laughter. Skald was one of the absolute best RPGs of last year, a pleasant surprise like nothing else, and a first outing from High North Studios that has me thrilled for what's next.

In its first Spider-Man game, developer Insomniac already got the most important thing right: the feel of being super-powered. That was most evident in the excellent traversal, which set a new high watermark for web-swinging, but also in the smooth and agile combat. Where it struggled was in giving you anything interesting to do with all that power, its visually impressive but largely empty open world offering only tired old side activities and filler.

My hope for this sequel was that with the core action already perfected, there would be the space to improve on the wider formula, creating a more interesting New York playground. Instead, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 simply has more stuff—a bigger story, more pointless collectibles, sprawling skill trees, and double the Spider-Men.

The result is a cinematic but messy experience that not only still bears all the same flaws as its predecessor, but in many areas—particularly the storytelling—feels like a step backwards. The ropiness of this PC port is a sad addition to the issues, resulting in a flawed version of an already flawed sequel.

The set-up is as straightforward as ever. You swing freely around New York, taking on whatever missions and activities you choose. The main story has that mix of slick but very linear action setpieces and quiet character moments common to almost all the modern PlayStation first-party titles—outside of those, the city is scattered with optional side missions and things to find. The big twist in Spider-Man 2 is that… well, there's two Spider-Men.

Where the first game starred Peter Parker, and its spin-off starred Miles, this one has both. Story missions choose for you, but often swap seamlessly between them as the action demands. Out in the open world, you're free to change at will, with only a handful of activities requiring one or the other.

Though not wildly different mechanically (they're separated mostly by a different set of combat powers), the two do feel impressively different, largely thanks to top notch animation work and a commendable attention to detail. Whether swinging through the city or beating up thugs, Miles has a loose, energetic, and inexperienced feel, where Peter's movements are more confident, deliberate, and grown-up—and each has their own set of dialogue and reactions to anything they run into in the city. How much this dual protagonist feature actually adds to the game is a little questionable I think, but the execution is undeniably slick.

Where the two feel rather less balanced is in the game's story. Following the conclusions of their respective solo adventures they're now a tight-knit crime-fighting duo, but both are predictably still struggling to juggle their superhero callings with their personal responsibilities. It's hard not to feel, though, that Peter's inability to hold down a job or progress his relationship with MJ feels a little higher stakes than Miles… procrastinating over his college application? He often feels more superfluous than superhero.

On the whole it's a tried and true set-up for a Spider-Man story—the perils of leading a double life, making sacrifices to do the right thing, all that jazz. But that does also mean it's a story we've seen an awful lot of times before, not only across films, TV, and comics, but also in the previous two games in this series. It's a formula that demands a fresh spin to be interesting.

Instead, Spider-Man 2 plumps for a pretty confused take on the now venerable black suit/Venom's origin storyline. It's mashed together with an uncharacteristically large-scale invasion of New York by Kraven the Hunter (seeking worthy super-powered prey) and a tangle of other subplots and returning villains. The plot points are outlandish, the themes muddy, and Miles doesn't really have enough to do. None of that's necessarily a dealbreaker, though—the real problem is the characters.

Your friendly neighborhood

In a story ultimately all about the emotional stakes and the cast's relationships with each other, the actual personalities are remarkably flat. Almost everyone fills essentially the same role (Incredibly Nice Genius) and the addition of Miles' supporting cast means there's twice as many of them chattering at you.

Dialogue has this odd faux-wholesome tone, like you're trapped in a corporate training video—all careful politeness and empty one-liners. Even in emotional outbursts and tense confrontations, there's no edge to anyone or any sense of an inner life. They're so blandly nice it tips over into being unsettling—you keep getting that feeling like everyone's waiting for you to leave so they can badmouth you behind your back.

The same issue even extends to the city itself. Despite being awash with paramilitary criminal organisations, New York has never felt more toothless and dull. Anyone Miles and Peter interact with who isn't part of a supervillain's crew is as robotically pleasant as the main cast (get ready to meet even more Incredibly Nice Geniuses), and their problems are usually minor and easily solved without the aid of a Spider-Man.

The majority of the side activities wind up feeling both mechanically and narratively pointless. An electric bike race feels silly enough in a Spider-Man game, but when the stakes are just "I need someone to try out my electric bike", it's hard not to think Miles and Peter have more pressing stuff to be getting on with. Ditto helping a load of drippy students finish their class projects and ask each other out to prom, stopping some well-meaning tourists from setting off fireworks without a permit, or the endless flying of drones, and remote-control bug robots through holographic rings in the sky. Far too much of what you're doing feels like padding from the early days of open world games—there's more inspiration here from Crackdown than there is from GTA V.

It makes those excellent core fundamentals carried over from the first game feel wasted. I find myself traversing the city aimlessly, loving how it feels just to swing around but with nothing to swing towards. And it undermines what's already a weak story—if the core conflict for both heroes is a lack of balance in their lives, couldn't that be solved by just not bothering with half this stuff?

Ignore all that cruft and stick to just the main story missions, and what you have is about 10 hours of pretty fun action and impressive spectacle intercut with another 10 hours of limp character moments, predictable plot developments, and increasingly odd stealth missions starring a Mary Jane who seems to have gone to John Wick night school between games. It's enough of a roller coaster to hold your interest, and the way the city physically changes and evolves to fit the ongoing narrative is impressive (from 'post-Sandman attack' to 'overrun with big game hunters' and beyond). But from a project this obviously big and expensive, it all feels disappointingly undercooked.

But not, it must be said, as undercooked as the port work. Though hotfixes are flying thick and fast as I finish out this review, for me the patches have so far failed to tackle frequent crashes to desktop. I find it difficult to diagnose my experience—while others have seen wide-ranging performance issues, for me the game runs smoothly, until it suddenly doesn't. Without warning, in seemingly undemanding scenes and without any preceding slowdown, the game simply gives up, citing only nonsensical display driver issues. So far it's happened about once every 30 minutes, seeming to be more frequent during story missions.

While I do now very much appreciate how zealously Spider-Man 2 autosaves, having to reload the game twice an hour has made it all the harder to feel excited and invested in what should be a thrill-a-minute experience. Insomniac Games created something remarkable in the first game: perhaps the best feeling videogame superhero ever. For the most part, this game only makes him feel better—and gives him an equally fun partner to boot. But the studio only seems to have less and less idea of what to actually do with him.

On PS5 in 2023, Spider-Man 2 at least served as an impressive technical showcase for the hardware, and a blockbuster release in a relatively quiet release schedule. On PC in 2025, without those advantages and in a disappointingly shaky state, it's much more difficult to recommend.

Don't get me wrong, they're not awful. Everything you are looking for in a soundscape is there. You can hear the mids and highs, and feel the bass. That's only really in one EQ mode but we'll get to that later.

I initially tested this headset out with The Last of Us Part I and Gustavo Santaolalla's guitar-driven soundtrack hits as hard as ever, providing clear mids and distinct highs.

The opening scene, with distant sirens, dogs barking, and the chaos floating just above your head works well in the headset's 7.1 surround sound. However, that sound isn't quite as all-encompassing as I was hoping. Nothing huge is missing from the mix but there's a slight hollow feel to it. This is partially helped by The Last of Us' soundtrack mix being relatively sparse.

There are three EQ modes in this setup and that's pretty much all the customization you will get as OXS Audio, the company's music app, doesn't support the Storm G2. If you don't like the EQ, tough luck.

Starting with Game mode, the bass is largely cut out of the mix, with it all relying on the mids and highs. This is intentional, of course. If you want to hear footsteps or the ping of a grenade before it's flung in your direction, this effectively amplifies those little almost unnoticeable movements. It works as intended, yet the sound suffers as a result.

Music mode is a little better, focusing on a more balanced sound. The bass, mids, and highs are given near-equal attention. In Mick Gordon's 'At Doom's Gate' from the Doom 2016 soundtrack, the splashy synth accompanying the drums doesn't quite sound right, and I found this same problem in the drums midway through Delta Sleep's Toe Stepper.

There's a blurriness to the sound that I didn't find in other headsets I had to hand. This happened mostly in music that is heavier and focused on mids, but not exclusively, as the rhythmic beats of Bastion's soundtrack had the same fuzziness. These muddled mids are fairly common in budget gaming headsets, of course, but this is perhaps the most telling sign of the Storm G2's price.

This headset is at its best when swapped to the Surround Sound EQ mode, and almost the only way I'd ever advise using it.

The previous two modes are not only more hollow feeling but also seem a bit quieter, which makes the handiness of having a built-in EQ button feel a bit counterintuitive, given you will immediately have to mess with the volume settings too.

The lush gothic orchestra that shines as you take your first bite in Vampyr performs well in Surround Sound mode, mostly because it does a good job at offering a proper soundscape. Surround Sound isn't just louder and more bassy, all the sound feels a bit more full. Even at its best, the sound has a distinct yet hollow feel to it.

The Surround Sound mode can be a bit of a double-edged sword in the Storm G2. In my first game of Counter-Strike 2, being one of those annoying guys who almost exclusively like sniper rifles in games, the thunder of the AWP made me jump and drop it on the ground. This EQ mode really cranks up the bass, which works in most instances but immersive first-person shooters can almost be a little too much.

Soundscapes, like those in Sea Power's Whirling-In-Rags, 8 AM, from the Disco Elysium soundtrack, is perhaps where the headset is at its best. When there's not too much focus on any one part of the mix, and instead everything is dynamic and varied, the decent noise isolation that comes from its comfortable set of earpads can make it all feel truly immersive.

This immersive sound is helped by a genuinely comfortable fit. It's quite light, at just over 250 g, though the clamping power on the pads is a little weak. It won't come off your head with light head banging (believe me, I've tried) but it feels like it will, which made me a little less likely to.

Listen to the microphone test below:

The build quality and design are also pretty solid for the price point. The headband at the top reminds me of the HyperX Cloud Alpha, made from protein leather with red threading and this is connected to the earcups through a strong aluminium frame. The earcups themselves feel a little cheap, with a plastic frame and smattering of RGB.

That RGB also brings the 40 hours of battery life down to just over 20 so, in most cases, I'd recommend turning it off and just playing without that pretty lighting on the side. It's unlikely many will notice anyway, unless you regularly turn your head to people with a headset on.

If you do plan on being sociable with this headset, the included boom mic sounds surprisingly good for the price, and the headset even has a backup mic built into the earcups for when you can't be bothered to plug the boom mic in. There's a mute button just below the EQ button and the headset informs you with a sound when you click it, but only when you're in a call or game. You can't mute ahead of time, as you won't know when you are muted.

Interestingly, the black and white variants have a few unique differences. My white one came with two USB-C cables, whereas the black one came with a USB-C and aux cable. As well as this, the receiver for the white model has a USB-C receiver built in, which you then take and pop in. The black one has the USB-A port and USB-C port on two separate sides of the same receiver. For the most part, I would say the black one has better accessories.

This dual-mic system is great for when this headset is connected to your phone too, which it can do pretty easily via Bluetooth or a good 'ol aux chord (assuming your phone hasn't done away with the 3.5 mm jack). For low latency play, the included 2.4 GHz dongle can connect via a handy USB-C and USB-A connector, tucked into a smart but ugly stowaway section in the dongle itself. It can't support dual connectivity, as you have to choose Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz on the headset cup but it's a reasonably robust connectivity variety.

The OXS Storm G2 isn't an affordable all-rounder that I would recommend to everyone on a budget but it does do enough right to be pretty solid. The sound gets muddled, especially in the mids, and the lack of much EQ control means you have to just be okay with what's on offer. However, a 40-hour wireless gaming headset with a solid mic might just be enough for many, especially if you just need something cheap to whittle away the early morning hours with a couple of friends on Discord.

The NH-L12S is a known quantity—it's been available for years now. Yet it remains a solid pick for a mini gaming PC in 2025. If it ain't broke…

I've rolled out two test systems for this cooler: one, fitted with an Intel Core i7 14700K; and the other, an AMD Ryzen 7 9700X. The former is our usual test bed for cooler reviews—there are no case fans to help the cooler out and the chip requires sufficient cooling for its high power draw up to 253 W. This is too big of an ask for a plucky low-profile cooler—though prepare to be mildly impressed later in this review—hence why I grabbed the 9700X off the shelf for my mini PC build. This AMD chip runs at a mere 65 W TDP, which is fantastic for small form factor.

The cooler itself is made up of nickel-plated copper heat pipes and plate connected to an aluminium heatsink. As I mentioned, there are four heatpipes, which all run the full length of the plate and through the heatsink.

This cooler comes with a single fan, one Noctua NF-A12x15 PWM. This is the width and height as regular case fans and can get up to 1850 RPM, except it's slightly thinner than most. This allows it to be set-up in one of two ways: on top of the heatsink or sandwiched between the plate and heatsink. The former is the better option, as it leaves 48 mm of clearance for system RAM, while the latter offers only 35 mm.

First off, installation. This was relatively straightforward on the open Intel bench. Noctua includes a metal backplate in the box that fits a range of Intel sockets, including its latest, LGA1851, and the one I'm using, LGA1700. Once attached, the legs protrude through the motherboard where I'm able to attach some large spacers, brackets, and screws. It's a touch fiddly to get all on at once and then firmly attached, but nothing ol' Jacob couldn't cope with. For those familiar, this is largely the same mounting method used across many of Noctua's air coolers.

With a dab of thermal paste (more like a dollop), the cooler then sits atop of the bracket and has a pair of sprung screws to help keep tension evenly applied across the CPU's heatspreader (IHS).

All that's left is to plug the fan into the CPU Fan header with the 21.5 cm long PWM cable. There's also a low-noise adapter included in the box, measuring an additional 10.5 cm, which knocks the fan down to 1,400 RPM. You shouldn't need to use the adapter as the fan isn't particularly loud most of the time, but there's a degree of personal preference here.

Let's talk performance. Considering its small statute, the cooler put up a good fight against the 14700K. The chip reached a maximum temperature of 92°C while running a stress test of 3DMark's Steel Nomad benchmark, and just 86°C in Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition. That's admittedly not great by the standards of most liquid or larger air coolers, but the fact it wasn't thermal throttling had me impressed.

When you push the 14700K to its limits in X264 or Cinebench R23, however, the NH-L12S starts to collapse. The chip hit 100°C in both benchmarks, engaging thermal throttling, which means the lack of adequate cooling limited to the performance of the PC. That's not great.

Though, as I mentioned before, this isn't a CPU/cooler combination I would recommend. I wouldn't have paired them up if our cooling tests hadn't demanded it. For a more realistic test, then, I paired the NH-L12S with the Ryzen 7 9700X and plonked it inside a Fractal Terra chassis. This is more its natural habitat.

I needed to flip the fan mounting for this case. That's easily done, though it leaves me with less room for RAM and did mean my cooler came in contact with the edge of the motherboard IO. The motherboard being the Asus ROG Strix X870-I Gaming WiFi. That's a bit of a concern. The cooler packs down to just 70 mm in height, including the fan attached between the plate and heatsink, which is impressive, and offers a RAM clearance of around 35 mm. That's just about enough space for low-profile RAM sticks—nothing fancy.

A word of warning: I decided on PNY XLR8 Gaming 32 GB DDR5-6200 sticks inside my test machine. These are, by my measurements with a set of iFixit calipers, 34.87 mm in height. That's under the 35 mm required, though even so there was some contact between the cooler and closest DIMM, even in the second slot away from the CPU. Both ended up sitting pretty in the end, though with a little pressure applied to the side of one DIMM.

The NH-L12S dealt with the 9700X fantastically. It reached a maximum temperature of just 76°C while gaming, and 79°C under more intense loads, such as Handbrake and Cinebench R24. This is both a compliment for Noctua's compact cooler, which was operating with only a moderate amount more airflow from the additional 1x 120 mm fan installed in the Terra, and AMD's power-savvy 9000-series processors.

Even with the additional fan in place inside the Fractal Design Terra, and the case sat atop of my desk within earshot, the NH-L12S isn't overly loud.

Small form factor components tend to illicit large prices—make of that what you will—and the NH-L12S does come with a tall price tag considering its stature. It'll set you back $65/£64. If you want a cheap air cooler, we have other budget air cooler recommendations for that. Likewise, Noctua makes a taller variant called the NH-L12Sx77, which features two additional heatpipes for greater cooling potential, though this will run into greater compatibility issues with a number of Mini-ITX cases due to its 77 mm height (NH-L12S is only 70 mm).

Yet there's something to be said for this compact cooler even in light of other units. It straddles a fine line between cooling potential and size. It's a great fit for one of AMD's latest processors—at least the lower wattage ones—and, as proven in testing, you don't really need much more than it offers.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 might be the most specific RPG I've ever played. Everything from its location, to its era, to its combat, to its clothing feels hyper-tuned, dialled in with precision to suit oddball tastes.

Looking for a sweeping fantasy romp? You won't find one. Like its predecessor, this is a game whose story springs inevitably from the politics of its time and place: the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1403. Want to mow down your foes by the dozen? Good luck. Combat is a strange dance of positioning both your hands and feet relative to those of your enemies, and charging into the fray even in the late game is liable to get you cut apart. Want to equip a hauberk without first equipping a padded gambeson beneath it? What are you—some kind of moron?

Like I say, oddball tastes, but they happen to match mine exactly, and my only regret after 75 hours or so with KCD2 is that the demands of having to review the thing compelled me to sprint to its endpoint. I would happily have spent another 75 hours getting chivalrous in the Bohemian crownlands. This is a new RPG classic, an instant favourite for me, and a successor in tone and feel to the great mavericks of old—games like The Witcher 1 and 2—ragged edges and all.

Lads on chore

KCD2 follows on directly from the first game. You're still Henry of Skalitz: blacksmith's son, noble bastard, orphaned when mercenaries attacked your town, and companion to Lord Hans Capon of Pirkstein. Bohemia is in the grip of war, torn between supporters of the abducted King Wenceslas of Bohemia and supporters of his abductor and brother, Sigismund.

Capon's lordly guardians are Wenceslas supporters, and have dispatched him, Henry, and a retinue of protectors to deliver a letter to Otto von Bergow, one of the foremost supporters of Sigismund, with an eye to putting an end to the whole internecine thing. It all goes really, really well and everyone gets to go home.

Oh no, wait, sorry, it all goes to hell pretty much immediately, and before long Henry and Hans are AWOL on a quest that sees them jumping through all the mad loopholes and imbrications of 15th-century Central European politics, hopping from faction to faction in a plot that gets tense and intriguing, particularly if you're the kind of dork who will get very excited by the presence of historical figures like Jan Zizka and Sigismund.

Their mission doesn't just take them through the haute monde of medieval Bohemia; it brings them into contact with the periphery of society, too. Jewish people, Roma, even a roaming Muslim scholar pop up to offer a glimpse into life outside the velvet confines of the imperial court, and while their tales aren't always masterful, they always feel well-meaning.

All in all, it's a period with great fodder for anyone who likes sinking their teeth into meaty political plots, and presents plenty of opportunities to chuck difficult choices and moral compromises at you, which the game does semi-regularly. But where the Euro-RPGs of yore (and, really, I'm thinking of CDPR here), delighted in visiting you with the consequences of your choices, it does sometimes feel like KCD2 pulls its punches on that front. A choice that might, for instance, seem to be about choosing which of your companions dies might resolve with a handwave: Actually, all the named characters are fine, but boy we had you there for a second, eh? It's a lack of sadism that shears some choices of weight.

But the politics are knotty and good fun, and really, the gold thread that ties the whole narrative together is the relationship between Henry and Capon. Henry's a plucky, likeable lad with a West Country accent you simply don't give to a videogame protagonist unless you are possessed of an almost religious vision, while plummy Lord Capon is realised incredibly well. It helps that, in contradistinction to most of the game's secondary cast—whose voice acting ranges from 'acceptable' to 'inexplicable'—they're both portrayed with plenty of range and emotion.

But also, Capon is so believably of his time and place, with all the obnoxiousness of a child raised from birth to think he's inherently better than the common rabble, but under the muck of aristocracy a genuinely decent lad. His development and the development of his relationship with Henry are very well done indeed.

Feudal systems

It's the game's systemic ambitions that really elevate it, though. There are times when Warhorse's simulation of a medieval world approaches Stalker-levels of zeal. Stole something from someone's house without being spotted? All well and good, but if someone spied you hanging around there they'll still put two and two together and report you to the guards. I once got chased out of a fortress because I'd absent-mindedly equipped a stolen ring and walked past the schmuck I took it from.

It's that kind of world: A world of rules, a world that feels interested in itself for its own sake, and that feels to some extent like it happens independent of you, the player.

By the end of the game, when you're teeming with perks and fancy gear, you'll be a rambling Bohemian Cuisinart turning all your foes to shreds, but even this feels like a more earned and systems-driven process than it does in your average Skyrim-inspired RPG. You're not just inevitably climbing a levelling power curve, you're feeling out the edges of the game—what's possible, what's impossible, what's expected from you.

By the time you become a whirlwind of death it's partially down to all your skill points, sure, but it's also a product of you making sense of the game's angle-based combat system, its combos, knowing how to manoeuvre and approach foes, and what the deficiencies of the AI are that let you chalk up a few stealth or ranged kills before the fight kicks off properly.

But even better, it's a world that's happy to let you cheat your way to the top. It obeys its own rules to your detriment and your advantage. Seen an impossibly expensive set of armour in a shop? KCD2 will let you break in after dark and pull it right out of the storekeep's stockroom (just don't wear it in front of him). Want to take advantage of every skill-trainer on the map to buff up your skills way ahead of the endgame? The money you pay for their training goes right into their eminently pickpocketable inventory. It's a game that usually answers the question 'Wait, couldn't I just…?' with a resounding 'Yes, absolutely.'

And then, if you're like me, you spend about five hours robbing a single castle of all its incredibly valuable loot, armour, weapons, and clothing. It has no problem letting you feel like you've gotten one over on it. In other words, it reminded me of Morrowind, the highest compliment I can give a videogame.

Not that you have to become a criminal, of course. You're just as likely to stumble across a skirmish—or its aftermath—in the road as you are to see an enticingly robbable armourer. No one will object to you yanking off a dead man's boots, giving you easy access to what would, in another videogame, be much higher-level gear, and all because you happened to be in the right place at the right time.

It's all a continuation of the philosophy of the first game, of course, but where I remember hearing horror stories of bugs and technical weirdness on KCD1's launch, the second game has been pretty bug-free in my playing. My performance has been good, I've not run into crashes, and all its ambitious systems seem truly to work, discounting a few oddities and, well, a frankly huge number of typos in the game's subtitles and menus, which I hope get patched promptly.

Gloria mundi

Bohemia, it turns out, is large. KCD2 features two alarmingly sizable maps stuffed to high heaven with things to do. It's the kind of pitch that could easily get tedious, like clearing all The Witcher 3's question marks—but so long as you approach them without a fanatically completionist fervour are just a big grab-bag of things to do: activities and distractions that root you in the world and act as yet more means to give yourself an advantage.

There's hunting, bandit camps, graves to dig up, side quests to trigger, all the things you expect, along with blacksmithing, alchemy, dice (all the best games have dice), treasure maps, and who-knows-what else. So far as I can tell, medieval Czechia is one big freshers' fair full of exciting new hobbies to take up, and getting good at any of them hands you new skill and perk points (plus new weapons and potions, from blacksmithing and alchemy) to use in your daily pursuit of slaughtering your enemies.

They're also, naturally, intensely involved. No Fable-2-style blacksmithing rhythm game here; you'll heat your metal, hammer it into shape, quench it when it's done and you'll like it. Alchemy is even more absurdly elaborate, which is something I admire conceptually but which doesn't quite work in practice. I never really figured it out, and every potion-brewing sesh ended with Henry muttering about how I'd screwed it up, though you still get a slightly worse potion for your trouble.

But the point is that, even over its ample runtime, KCD2 manages to maintain a sense of momentum and unfurling between all its stuff to do and the zigs and zags of its plot. You're a soldier, now a spy, now a gambler, now a blacksmith. The arc of its medieval life simulator is long and varied. About 50 hours in, the game suddenly sprung a whole Thieves' Guild questline on me to finally make use of those stealth skills I'd been underusing for the rest of my playthrough.

Signed, sealed, delivered

KCD2 feels a bit miraculous: a ludicrously ambitious and peculiar thing that somehow fulfills its ambition and peculiarity, managing to hit the highs Warhorse aimed for in the first game but perhaps fell just short of.

It feels tailor-made for a certain brand of systems-loving sicko—the kind of person who still gets starry-eyed about Stalker and Morrowind—and manages to actually make good on their (or at least my) nostalgic yearning for those halcyon games of old.

Founded in the pre-SVGA age of gaming antiquity, Civilization's randomised yet celebratory take on human history has stood the test of time. Over three decades on, you can still put me down in front of any of the games in the series and I will spend half my waking hours for a week straight guiding my people through the ages via war, diplomacy, exploration, culture-bombing, and plonking down World Wonders before my rivals.

Over its first several entries, the series rapidly evolved to better encapsulate the vibrancy and madness of human history in a turn-based strategy format. But in more recent outings, it's become more about rejigging rather than revolutionising that cavemen-to-cosmos saga.

Yes, Civilization 5 de-stacked units made warfare more tactical, while Civ 6 spread cities across multiple tiles to allow for more focused, thoughtful city management. But in areas like diplomacy, religion, and warfare, changes have offered alternative ways to make fun these phenomena of human history rather than pursuing some goal of 'The Ultimate Civ Experience'. This is reflected in the fact that both Civilization 5 and 6 enjoy huge player numbers to this day; 5 is tight and balanced, 6 is big, bold, and systems-heavy, both are brilliant.

Many of the design decisions in Civilization 7 appear to be in the name of brevity and pacing, with quite a few major systems trimmed in the process. It’s still Civilization, and will still leave you snapping out of it wondering where the last few hours went, but series fans be warned: things are different now.

New age

Let's begin with the broad strokes, and the boldest idea that Civ 7 introduces: Age transitions. Leaders and civilisations have now been separated: you keep the same leader throughout a game, but your civ will change. Each game is split into three Ages—Antiquity, Exploration, Modern—and each time you move into a new one, time skips several hundred years, and you pick from one of a bunch of new civs to lead, specific to that era. So you may start with Egypt in Antiquity, then move onto Normans in the Exploration Age, before landing on the good ol' US of A to see you through the Modern Era. Each civ has some unique units, bonuses, and a dedicated civic tree with special policies, some of which you can carry over into the next era's civ as 'Traditions.'

That age transition is, by design, far from seamless. As you near the end of an Age, which all civs collectively reach by making progress down four linear Legacy Paths, the world will face some kind of crisis, such as plague or barbarian invasions. Once the crisis reaches its head, the current iteration of your civilisation collapses, and you pick a new one to build over its foundations.

Building on the Golden/Dark Age system introduced in the Civ 6 Rise and Fall DLC, your achievements of the previous era unlock boons for the next one. These achievements are acquired through four linear Legacy Paths—Economic, Cultural, Military, and Science—which reset at the start of each Age, with new goals relevant to that age. The more milestones you reach in each Legacy Path, the more Legacy Points you have to spend on special boons at the start of the next era, until you reach the Modern Age, where each Legacy Path leads to a victory condition. There's a hint of the roguelike about it, as your foot-up in the next era is built on your efforts of the previous one, while also setting you back to something of a new beginning.

From a pacing perspective, this works wonders, because at the point in previous games where things would start getting a bit stodgy in terms of unit clutter, city micromanagement, and losing players basically being out of the victory race by the midway point, Civ 7 speeds things up and narrows the gap between the haves and have-nots. The Legacy Path victory conditions include some quite attainable ones, such as digging up artefacts for the Culture path, or industrialising your nation with railways and factories for the Economic one, and it's not unthinkable that players who were flagging for much of the game to pull a smash-and-grab victory out of the bag. It certainly keeps things more suspenseful right up to the end.

Problems of modernity

Each era ushers in new game systems. For instance, religion only gets introduced in the Exploration Age, as does the concept of 'Distant Lands', which unlocks new luxury resources that you can return to your homeland via treasure fleets (the settlement of Distant Lands is also at the heart of the Military Legacy Path for this age).

By the Modern Age, the function and yields of luxuries from the Exploration Age changes, as they're no longer exotic luxuries but common commodities that can be slotted into factories for bigger bonuses. In the modern age also, the ideologies of fascism, democracy, and communism come into play, each with their own civic trees and effects on relations with other civs. This is all good stuff, making each era feel somewhat self-contained and defined by unique goals and mechanics. It does mean that such joyful scenarios as phalanx spearmen resolutely poking at tanks, or cavemen smacking helicopters out of the sky with clubs are now gone, but if you want that, then you're spoiled for choice with the preceding six games.

The soft resets and feature-drip of the Age system does a lot to keep the game fresh, but the Modern Age still feels weakest. Turn times don't drag as much as in earlier games thanks to nice touches like the ability to stack military units into Commanders, and to instantly move troops between cities that have railway stations, but it lacks the focus of the ages that precede it. It's a shame that Firaxis cut the World Congress from this outing—which allowed civs to vote on resolutions, global policies, and engage in diplomatic skulduggery like banning pearls to undermine the civs that depend on them—because it would've been the perfect thing to spice up the late game.

Getting resourceful

Civ's age-old system of citizen management, whereby you could manually assign a city's population to work specific tiles as a way of adjusting a city's focus, has been replaced by slottable resources. So if you've just built a town, you can send it plenty of grub to accelerate growth, or send some gypsum over to a new distant land city that'll give it a nice big production boost. In my relatively short time with the game so far, I've even managed to find some dirty little tricks with resource-slotting, like adding several camels to a city to increase its resource capacity, then building the Tomb of Askia Wonder to grant it extra gold and production for each resource in that city; I'm sure savvier Civvers than myself will find plenty of ways to meta the hell out of this new system.

The idea of distributing resources throughout your empire to where they're most needed is a sensible one, but by the late game I had gotten a bit fatigued with the resource screen, which winds up containing dozens of little resource icons to manually micromanage. Also, you can only chop-and-change resource distribution in cities when you acquire new resources, so you no longer get those nail-biting rushes to complete a Wonder before your rivals, where you'd temporarily send a city into production overdrive, speed-build some logging camps, and deforest the surrounding area to generate as much production as quickly as possible.

Cities are now divided into urban districts (which can accommodate two buildings each) and rural ones. This means that you have a bit more fluidity about how you want to specialise a city, if at all. In fact, the ability to build over the previous age's buildings almost beckons you to shift a city's production focus across eras. For instance, a city that you founded in Antiquity as a military border stronghold might not have that same purpose a thousand years later once your borders have expanded, so why not turn it into a lucrative economic hub for the Exploration Age?

Workers, or Builders, who were previously used to improve empty tiles around your empire, have been done away with altogether, victims to automation. Instead, each time a city grows you get to instantly upgrade one tile in its vicinity with rural improvements like mines, farms, and plantations. And while I miss certain builder actions like the aforementioned forest clearances for quick-and-dirty production boosts, on balance this is a sensible cut, reducing unit clutter while retaining a key aspect of city improvement.

International relations

A little too often, however, Civ 7's fat-trimming cuts into the lean part of the meat as well, losing some richness and flavour in the process. Diplomacy, for instance, feels very thin, and interactions with other leaders a little too transactional. Where before they'd come voicing their opinions on certain actions of yours, share little aphorisms, partake in gossip, or ask you to move your armies away from their borders, they now mainly come to you with offers for generic repeatable agreements.

They're a lot less sassy this time round, and therefore less characterful (and maybe this is just film-studies-graduate-over-analytical wankery bubbling up, but the fact that they're no longer looking out from the screen at you, but side-on at the leader you picked, makes me feel a bit detached from these interactions, like I'm the translator at their meeting rather than a leader).

Gone also is the freewheeling bargaining system where you could demand, say, a city, 5 gold per turn, and a sheep, from enemies in exchange for peace. For a start, resources are now automatically acquired from other civs when you establish trade routes, so you can't lord over other civs by hogging or demanding extortionate prices for valuable resources that they desire. The only bargaining chips in peace treaties are cities, which the AI seems all too eager to give away; there was one point where an alliance I had meant that I was technically at war with someone way on the other side of the world, and despite having not once encountered them in battle, they offered me one of their cities in exchange for peace. Obviously, I said yes, but it was bizarre.

Austerity measures

This iteration of Civilization is also weirdly, well, civil. City-States and barbarians from previous games have been rolled into Independent Power—some start off hostile and effectively act as barbarians, but all can be befriended by spending enough Influence (a new currency used for every diplomatic interaction). Once you start the befriending process, you're basically guaranteed to become their suzerain for the rest of the age unless they get wiped out.

There are no more city-state quests, and no more tussling among civs for the support of these small but important powers via envoys or outright bribery. It relegates what was once an interesting and sneaky way to gain diplomatic leverage to, effectively, the single click of a button. Espionage has received similar treatment, reducing its scope to several fairly low-impact actions, such as Steal Technology, Hinder Military Production, and Hinder Research, that you spend Influence to carry out. No more sabotaging Wonder production, spy networks, or—Civ 4, how I miss thee—feeling like you're running your own MI5-style spy agency.

Religions and governments have also faced severe cuts. Religion somehow manages to feel both unrewarding and frustratingly hands-on to actually play, and simply involves sending missionaries to convert other cities (which you have to do on both an urban and rural tile if that city already has a religion). Converted cities no longer passively spread religion, there are no religious diplomatic effects, nor is there any of that wild religious combat that saw inquisitors striking missionaries down with divine lightning in Civ 6. Seeing as religion played a major part in each series game dating back to Civilization 4, it's disappointing that over two decades on it's been reduced to something so superfluous.

As for governments, you are locked into picking one per era, and all it does outside of minor diplomatic sway is affect what your choice of boosts for a bunch of turns is each time your civ enters a period of Celebration (achieved by accruing Happiness). Reducing, say, Theocracy to the occasional binary choice between a temporary Culture boost or production boost for 10 turns just doesn't feel like a substantial reflection of that government type's impact on a nation. Like religion, it feels like a backwards step for the series in the name of streamlining.

A looming legacy

To be clear, most of Civ 7's shortcomings are relative to the two very fleshed out and still popular games preceding it in the series, which for me still remain at the head of the genre. I still lost track of time and reality playing it, and there are some pretty clear improvements here. Games tick along at a more even pace thanks to some clever ways of addressing unit clutter, and war feels great (even if the AI can't entirely handle its tactical complexity). Newly navigable rivers have legitimate strategic value too, and I've had some great times sending dreadnoughts upriver deep into enemy civ territory to effectively bombard them from within.

I'm also happy to see the art style build on the more grounded one of Civ 5 rather than the divisive cartoon stylings of Civ 6 (something about dropping nukes on cities that looked like they were made out of gingerbread never sat right with me). Speaking of presentation though, the UI isn't great; it often requires one too many clicks to get the details you want, there's no shortcut key to scroll through units, nor a way to get an overview of all your units on the map. Where similar games use nested menus and text highlighting to give you quick info about key concepts, in Civ 7 I'd need to go and type things into the Civilopedia to get basic info on things like building effects or unit combat bonuses.

Civilization 7 feels like a reaction to the maximalism of its predecessor: sleeker and speedier, colder and less complex. Being the first game in the series to come out on consoles at the same time as PC, I can't help but feel that some of the complexity cutbacks are made with gamepad players in mind. Some of these cuts are positive, and they help the game flow better (especially, I imagine, in multiplayer), but the simplification of systems like religion, diplomacy, city-states, and espionage means that the journey through history doesn't feel quite as rich or rewarding.

It's as if Civ's gone through its own age transition—a few steps forward, a few steps back. While it's addressed some longstanding issues, there's a little too much that's been stripped away for veterans like myself to call this meaningful progress on the legendary series' Legacy Path.

I try not to think about my body as a 'vessel' too much, if I can help it. The idea that my mind is just a rider in something that can wear, tear, and break down isn't a comforting thought—but it's an increasingly pressing one. Citizen Sleeper 2 reminds me of this fact twofold: It's a game about the slow degradation of the body, sure, but it's also a sequel. It's an attempt to show growth, to do more. But in trying to grow, it's become fuzzier around the edges. Fractured, bumpy, nicked in places, and lovely in its own way.

Citizen Sleeper 2 understands that you don't get to choose how your body grows. You can decide on some things if you're one of the lucky ones, sure, but eventually everything bends and falls apart. The solution for your character, an android 'Sleeper', is to start stapling bits of yourself back together with spare parts.

As a story, it understands that for Sleepers and humans alike, our bodies barely belong to us in the cosmic scheme of things—they belong to the universe that made them, subject to its weights and pressures. Which is a pain in the arse, really, because I'd like to not have back problems and my shoulders hurt.

While Gareth Damian Martin's first game hinged around building and finding community in a strange place, Citizen Sleeper 2 turns the gaze inward to the self. The body and how it might change—naturally or because of others—is the threat. But it pushes ambitiously outwards, as well, broadening its scope from one space station to an entire slice of asteroid belt, and its quality suffers a tad, much like my aching shoulders do.

Take my eyes, take them aside

In case you haven't played the first game, here's a primer: Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is a game about dice that mimics tabletop RPG systems like Powered By The Apocalypse and Blades In The Dark. Each day, you get a batch of dice. Each day, these dice let you do stuff, and your chances of failure scale with how well you rolled.

Citizen Sleeper 2 has four things to keep a track of: energy, stress, dice breakages, and glitches. Lose all your energy, and you start taking stress. Take too much stress, and your dice start breaking. Break all your dice, and you get a glitch, which saddles you with a chance to roll a glitched out die. These chuck away all your stats to give you a 20% chance at success or a 80% chance at failure, no matter what.

It's a fun way to represent the slow degradation of one's body—as for why that's happening, well, you're a Sleeper: An android copy of a living, breathing person invented to circumvent anti-AI regulations, while also allowing heartless corporations to benefit from what is, essentially, slavery. You escaped your corporate masters and stumbled right into the yoke of a criminal one, a right bastard named Laine, and the game begins as you scramble away from his clutches—a botched reboot wiping most of your memory.

Laine's belief that your body belongs to him looms over the whole narrative. It also drives you and your flesh-and-blood buddy (and fellow escapee), Serafin, to leg it in a little rust-bucket. Cue a series of Firefly-esque missions, packaged into an adventure-of-the-week style format. You balance a bunch of other secondary resources—cyro (space dollars), fuel, supplies, and the like—while trying not to let your body crumple apart.

This setup plays out well on the whole, because Citizen Sleeper 2's story is filled with charming characters, excellent knife-twists to the heart, and fascinating worldbuilding. While the first game limited you to a single space station, this Citizen Sleeper 2 feels like a DM taking their training weights off and finally showing off their lore documents. Revelations about the mysteries of the bleak, corporate war universe abound.

Each mission is a fun exercise in risk assessment, one that rewards you with charming narrative as well as in-game resources: You meet rogue, lonely AIs in destitute space stations. You scramble to dodge cannibalistic drill machines in desolate mining rocks. You help an old, stranded woman fix her mess of a ramshackle engine. Citizen Sleeper 2 is a great adventure, with enough texture to get me thinking about a campaign of my own.

It's also a warm, thoughtful treatise on what it means to be a broken thing. The Sleeper is a machine, so the metaphor is writ large, but the game also makes it clear that your fleshy friends are going through the exact same thing on a drawn-out timescale. It outright states this to you: "No one gets to choose their own body. Everyone has to contend with the entropy of their flesh."

It's fitting, then, that the game itself suffers from its own kind of entropic pull. Citizen Sleeper 2 is more ambitious, widening the scope and increasing the amount of plates you need to spin. But it's this desire to go bigger that ultimately makes it a little flawed, much like your body's own degenerating machinery.

My arms and legs, they get in the way

Citizen Sleeper 2's mechanics just don't gel as well with its themes. In the first game, your initial scrambling for resources—and the slow, gradual comforts you achieve afterwards—paired nicely with the desperate circumstance you found yourself in. Citizen Sleeper 2, meanwhile, never quite properly gets its dice rolling in harmony with its storytelling.

The game is keen to start you off with a sense of feeling hunted, and it's not impossible to slide into a death spiral from the get-go—but as long as you build up just the slightest bit of momentum, this pressure rarely ever risks catching up to you.

It's possible I just got lucky, but I only had a little difficulty stockpiling the resources I needed. All Laine's initial pursuit produced was a "right, move along now" clock I had to pay the barest bit of attention to, one that sort of just melts away in the latter half of the game. There comes a point where, outside of the mild stresses of missions, you're just pleasantly ticking off a list of errands as you nip across the galaxy in your clown car of well-written buddies.

This slow easing of pressure worked wonders in the first game, because the slide into comfort, familiarity, and routine was sort of the point—it doesn't work nearly as well in a game that's meant to be aping the 'adventure of the week' structure of shows like Cowboy Bebop, even though its story nails the vibe.

There is a harder difficulty, mind, but it also fights with the game's themes as well—instead of fearing a slow breakdown of your body via glitches (which manifest when all of your dice break due to stress), it's just game over. Thematically, the permanent scar from a mission gone wrong is far more interesting—and the hardest difficulty has to throw that away in the interest of challenge.

Take my hands, they'll understand

The crew system, while neat and novel, also doesn't quite click. Because your Sleeper is forever barred from being good at one task, the choice of which crew members to take along isn't determined by story, but convenience. Because you never know what stats a mission'll demand of you, you're only really trying to patch up your blind spots.

When the story's working its magic, your crew are a fleshed-out set of misfits with complex motivations and flawless characterisation. When you're on a mission though, they're just meatshields and dice vendors, there to hedge your bets with the occasional dialogue bubble.

There's also a little weirdness when you're not on missions—in which case, your crew is completely unavailable to help. Here I am, busting my Endure-adverse arse to scrounge enough fuel from Helion Gate, and you're telling me Yu-Jin's too busy to help? We're in the middle of nowhere! What's keeping him, a stirring game of holochess?

There's also an absence of real, proper friction between your crewmates—while there are some fun early choices to make, the more I played, the more Citizen Sleeper 2 made me realise that my 'unilaterally trust everyone' bleeding heart wasn't ever going to get punished in a meaningful way, other than a few less Cyro here and there.

That's not to say the game never has its moments. One mission in particular was very memorable. To be as spoiler-free as possible: I was isolated, cut off from my crew, and desperately scrounging to survive. I almost broke my whole tray of dice just pushing myself to get things done in time, and it worked beautifully with the narrative swings I was taking. The fact remains, though, that I had to have most of my toys removed before I started to feel the burn.

I've (not) grown tired of this body

Despite my gripes and complaints, though, I can't help but look at Citizen Sleeper 2 with a burning fondness—there are parts of it I don't like, but they don't spoil the parts I do enjoy.

This is, after all, a game about the beauty of broken, flawed, and fractured things—and it's fitting that the machine of it all creaks and groans under the strain of being well-loved by its creator. There are enough instances of this sort of thematic representation in the story that I almost suspect Martin and Co. knew this was happening, but forged ahead regardless.

I would almost get this pleasant feeling of kayfabe whenever some of these foibles (in some instances, minor spelling mistakes and grammatical errors) showed their ugly mugs. The feelings of frustration at missed opportunities somehow managed to resonate with what it was trying to tell me.

I felt like I was being invited—earnestly, often, and with a lot of intimacy—into a world that had been pent up in a busy mind, and was coming out all at once. It's a universe that's desperate to share itself, but the more it lets that yearning show, the more things start to flake and peel. As such, Citizen Sleeper 2 is not the perfect sequel, but I think that's more than fine.

It's a game that overextends itself, rattling against the mechanical bars of game balance, budget, and scope. It yaws steeply into unfamiliar territory and groans under its own weight. But it trades mechanical grace for a more developed, complex, and fragile glimpse into its world—and its Sleeper's body. I've come away energised, moved, and inspired by its busted-up heart.

Team Ninja’s trilogy of Ninja Gaiden games is a frustrating endeavour. Not because of the overwhelming difficulty, but because each game has multiple versions available, and all are not created equal. For 16 years a singular, "perfect" version of the Xbox 360's Ninja Gaiden 2 has remained elusive. Its first remaster, Sigma 2, changed things up by reducing the overwhelming enemy count, cutting back on the gore, and adding new playable characters, bosses and missions. Some of its essence was lost.

Generally the community prefers the relentlessly vicious original version despite some dire flaws, so when the Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection version was based on Sigma, it was a letdown (I never bought it for that very reason). Which is why the announcement of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black was so exciting: 2005's Ninja Gaiden Black is a "director's cut" and the undisputed best version of an all-timer. The implication was, clearly, this is the one you've been waiting for.

In reality, the Black subtitle is somewhat misleading; this remake lands somewhere in the middle of the original Ninja Gaiden 2 and Sigma. But I forgot about all that when I started playing Black. I was entranced again, just like I was back on the Xbox 360, making this new version, while not quite definitive, now the ideal way to experience an incredible action game.

Rules of nature

2004's Ninja Gaiden demanded a more defensive approach to combat than contemporaries like Devil May Cry. Pulling off carefully timed strikes and flashy wall-runs in between precision blocking was excruciatingly punishing but an exhilarating exercise in discipling my fingers. Then Ninja Gaiden 2 threw that out the window and stuck a brick on the gas pedal. Excess is the name of the game: Enemies shoot out fountains of blood like they’re trying to outdo the climax of Sanjuro, relentless offence is key to survival, and everything is faster. If Ninja Gaiden 1 is a long-form symphony, then Ninja Gaiden 2 is the Dead Kennedys one-minute punk classic Nazi Punks Fuck Off.

Front and centre in Ninja Gaiden 2 Black after being toned down in Sigma 2 are dismemberment and obliteration techniques; as you attack enemies, their arms, legs, and heads come flying off, spurting red. But this is Ninja Gaiden, where hemorrhaging enemies are somehow scarier than healthy ones.

A one-armed ninja can still lunge at me and detonate himself with a grenade the second I stop moving. To combat this you’re armed with obliteration techniques, which live up to their name. Triggering a heavy attack near a wounded foe sends Ryu into a flashy animation of lightspeed swings, the camera greedily crowding in for a better look as he transforms his enemy into piles of viscera (think Doom’s glory kills). And then you're seamlessly back in command, potentially capitalizing on the collateral damage from one obliteration flurry to immediately trigger another one on a freshly armless baddie.

Ryu himself feels incredible to control thanks to a nimble and deadly moveset: You’ll be able to get by with just attacking and dodging, but the game becomes something more when you push past blind combo mashing and begin deliberately weaving his ninja abilities into the mix. If you’re cornered by a group of enemies, run up the wall behind you to escape, or use the Flying Swallow (a slicing dash attack with the screaming velocity of a divebombing hawk) to launch yourself across the arena.

These moves give the combat an incredible sense of momentum. With enough confidence, you often don’t even have to slow down to assess the situation. Ryu's moves, many available right from the first stage, allow me to pull off stuff like running across a wall parallel to an enemy and slashing them in two in mid air, which had me hollering because it was so rad. Ryu’s Izuna Drop grapple (which has him grab an enemy in midair before spinning to the ground and pulping their skull) remains one of the most satisfying attacks to pull off in all of videogames, irrefutably sick even if it's not his most efficient damage-dealer.

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black has nine weapons, and somehow all of them are great. Even Devil May Cry has a weapon or two I'm not so keen on, though unlike in DMC swapping from Ryu's blade to a pair of bruising tonfas or a giant scythe requires a pause, interrupting the flow of a fight and discouraging on-the-fly experimentation. Each weapon can be upgraded to unlock new techniques, and I'm happy that Black brings back the option to boost them in shops versus Sigma’s constrained timed unlocks.

Returning from Sigma are three extra playable characters: Rachel, Ayane, and Momoji. Each one gets a unique mission; while these do mess with the pace of the story, it's not an obnoxiously long distraction, and each character brings a refreshing spin to combat. I’m especially fond of Rachel, whose massive club and machine gun are as far away from the tools of a nimble ninja as possible. You can also take them into the Tag Mission mode, which offers some nice bite-sized chunks of that moreish action without the need to commit to a whole mission.

The Xbox 360 version of Ninja Gaiden 2 was notable for its overwhelming number of enemies on screen at once, and while those full swarms haven't returned for Black, the enemy count and overall difficulty have been bumped up from Sigma. I played on Acolyte difficulty—which is presented as Normal—so when I found the game surprisingly breezy, with only a few deaths across the run, I was a bit disheartened. Then I discovered that Warrior (billed as Hard in this release) was what the original game called Normal. Confusing! It's a shame there's no option to swap difficulties mid-story. I have gone back and played some on the harder Warrior, Mentor, and Master Ninja difficulties and can thankfully say my ass is getting kicked, so I’m looking forward to a replay.

Demon sweat

Aside from the usual Unreal Engine 5 issues like texture loading and occasional stuttering (although thankfully I didn’t experience much), Ninja Gaiden 2 Black's fully revamped graphics are a winner. The game looks absolutely gorgeous; the lighting, ray tracing and character models shine with a premium gloss, and I wasn’t even playing on the highest settings. Characters are especially detailed; you can see individual freckles, scars and burst blood vessels on skin. Meanwhile, the buttcheek definition on Ryu’s suit is genuinely impressive in motion. While somewhat less stylized than the original game, to my eye none of the charm has been lost in the way that other realism-heavy remakes have gone awry.

This is also complemented by smooth performance; for the most part, the game ran perfectly at 60 fps for me at 1440p on Steam. The game isn’t quite as pretty on Steam Deck as it is on my PC. It’s definitely playable—averaging around 50 fps on low settings from my testing—but it's far from an ideal way to play such a frantic game.

Even if it’s not the remaster I thought it would be from the title, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black was an absolutely joyful way to experience the game again. The graphical fidelity is nice and all, but just having a version of the game that takes the good from Sigma 2 and tuning it into a far better experience, cutting its weaker additions and inching the ferocity of combat closer to its original form. At the end of the day, if your head isn't swimming with the details of each version like I am, all you’ll experience is a banger of an action game with few equals.

It's a tower PC you can put under your arm and carry easily. It looks great, with its internal components in white (matching the case) against a black motherboard, and the graphics card enclosed in a cage that makes it look like a bridge that's fallen out of a Halo game. There are extra heat sinks arranged around the AIO CPU cooler's pump block, two RGB front fans that sit behind a perforated grating so you can see the glow diffused into hundreds of pointillist dots. Even the Omen branding is largely unobtrusive, restrained to a logo on the CPU cooler and a wordmark on the front and non-transparent sides.

HP's choice of case is a good one. There are easily accessible USB ports on the top and right at the front, including a 10 Gbps Type-C. There's only one Thunderbolt 4 to be found, at the back, which might trouble those using it for non-gaming purposes who want to hook up some fast external SSDs, but otherwise the Omen 35L is well specced in terms of inputs, and it's nice to see Wi-Fi 7 in a desktop PC.

The components used to make the PC are less restrained than its exterior. The GeForce RTX 4080 Super we're all familiar with, one of the best graphics cards for gaming and one that should retain its usefulness long after the RTX 50-series cards take all the top spots in the rankings. Less common is the new Intel Core Ultra 7 265K, an Arrow Lake CPU with 20 cores, eight of them full-fat P cores. It's the same arrangement as many Core i9 CPUs of the 13th and 14th generations, which has now trickled down to the 7 level, only with a maximum turbo frequency of 5.5 GHz and the K designation that means it's unlocked for overclocking.

And the new Core Ultra proves to be a very performant piece of kit. In the demanding Cinebench 2024 benchmark it powers past the 24-core Core i9 13900K and the 32-core Threadripper 2990WX. It passes the 20-core Apple M1 Ultra, and the 24-core Xeon W-3265M. Most surprisingly, it produces a better multi-core score than the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the current king of gaming CPUs. Single-core performance is important in gaming, and in this test the 265K beats the i9 13900K and draws level with the 9800X3D.

In other testing, the SSD—a Western Digital Black PCIe 4.0 model according to 3D Mark—produces speeds that are distinctly PCIe 3.0. It's unclear if this is by design, whether there's something improperly configured somewhere, or maybe a pin isn't connecting properly, but it's a disappointing showing. It transferred at 300 MB/s when other drives in other PCs regularly top the 500 mark.

Despite this, the PC does very well in gaming, its GPU beating other RTX 4080 Super boards and getting close to RTX 4090 levels in 3D Mark's Time Spy Extreme. That synthetic benchmark isn't the real world, however, but the card also does well in actual games, able to provide an average of 52 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K and in Ray-tracing Overdrive mode. Fiddle with the DLSS settings and you could easily get that over 60.

In other games, we get the kind of results that are becoming typical of the RTX 4080 Super in a desktop machine. You won't struggle to get 60 fps from this card, no matter what game you're playing, and the news that DLSS 4 may be coming to RTX 40-series cards after all makes it even more likely you'll be able to use this card for years.

The Baldur's Gate 3 result might seem like a bit of an outlier, but that's there to show what difference a good CPU can make. The game scales impressively with different processors, and you can see where the Ryzen 7 9800X3D pulls ahead thanks to its 3D V-Cache-enabled processing power.

But while all this gaming stuff is going on, the Omen 35L makes little more than a hum. While compressing a Steam game for backup onto an external drive the CPU fans (there's a 240 mm array on the AIO) span up but remained relatively unobtrusive, and the GPU fans followed suit while rendering complex scenes. It's remarkably cool-running too, with the CPU barely nosing its way up to 74 °C while video encoding.

Intel's investments into processor efficiency led to somewhat disappointing first generation of Core Ultra chips over in laptopland, which were pushed further down by the arrival of a new challenger in the form of Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, but this second generation of desktop CPUs seems to have hit the bullseye in terms of performance and efficiency.

And at least until AMD hits back and Snapdragon arrives on the desktop, both of which are bound to happen. Arrow Lake is not going to give you a silent running PC—the noise is there, but it's not going to bring relatives rushing up the stairs to see what the fuss is all about.

And not making a fuss is perhaps what the Omen 35L is best at. It's not a big or heavy machine, but it is quietly notable. The white case, cooler and component cages give it a sleek look, the build quality is excellent, and the results in games (and a PC like this has uses way beyond gaming) speak for themselves. While it may be a bit of a reach to drop nearly $3,000 on a pre-built gaming PC, if they were all like this the decision to do so would be so much easier. Goldilocks would happily sit down to this desktop gaming PC, while wiping the porridge away from around her mouth, for a few rounds of Diablo 4. She plays as a druid, naturally.

I don't want to have to refer to this second spin of the Blackwell wheel as an ostensible RTX 4080 Ti Super, but there are a ton of similarities between the Ada refresh and this new GB203-powered RTX 5080. And if there was ever a reason for Nvidia not enabling its new Multi Frame Generation technology on RTX 40-series cards, this is the physical embodiment of it. Right now, it's kinda all the RTX 5080's got going for it.

But while not a lot has changed between the two cards, that includes the price. We are talking about a GPU which costs half the price of the most powerful consumer graphics card on the planet, and yet notably performs better than half as well. Of course, you're always going to pay more for that last little bit of ultra-enthusiast power to step up, I just kinda mean you shouldn't feel too bad if you can only drop $1,000 on a new GPU and not the $2,000+ of the RTX 5090. Poor lamb.

And, of course, there's AI. But actually useful AI, which makes our games run faster through the magic of AI models and yet still look damn good in the process. Yes, DLSS 4 with its Multi Frame Generation feature is the sign the RTX 5080 will continually tap whenever anyone brings up its striking resemblance to an RTX 4080 Super.

Nvidia RTX 5080: The verdict

I don't hate the RTX 5080, it just very much feels like this is an Ada GPU with some tweaked Tensor and RT Cores, an enhanced bit of flip metering silicon in the display engine, and an AI management processor queuing up all the new AI-ness of this neural rendering future of ours. Which we're going to have to wait and see what those end-user benefits actually end up looking like.

I mean, you wait two and a bit years for a new graphics card architecture and the silicon we're presented with looks remarkably similar to what went before, but with the promise that it's got some revolutionary tech baked into it. So long as developers go ahead and make use of it all.

But it's not like Nvidia hasn't been upfront about what we should expect with this new chip. It's just that maybe its overly bombastic initial CES numbers didn't make it too obvious that MFG was responsible for most of its early perf claims.

It gave us the important specs and the relative gen-on-gen performance figures of a 15% increase over the previous generation at the following Editor's Day. And that's what I've seen in my own testing, across our new GPU test suite the RTX 5090 is delivering an average 4K gaming performance uplift over the RTX 4080 Super of just over 15%.

Though just 9% and 14% compared with the same card's performance at 1080p and 1440p respectively.

And it's not like Nvidia is asking us to pay any more for the new card over the one it's essentially replacing, like-for-like. Though, I've no idea how it could have charged more for this card, given the brakes the green team has put on the silicon development of this GPU, and not ended up with a full-on riot on its hands.

I just don't feel a whole lot of affection for the RTX 5080. Right now, without any neural rendering shiz to actually get excited about, it feels like the GB203 on its own just kinda isn't trying. It'll slot in exactly where the RTX 4080 Super did, filling prebuilts and the hearts of those who balk at paying $2K for a GPU, yet are able to convince themselves and their significant others that $1,000 is worth it.

Except it will have far worse stock levels and a likely RTX 50-series premium attached to any build and non-MSRP card. This is definitely a concern for the RTX 5080. While the $999 MSRP means there's no price hike over the RTX 4080 Super it's replacing, the manufacturers and retailers will be keen to exploit its initial scarcity and newness by slapping a hefty tax on top of that base MSRP. $1,500 RTX 5080s aren't going to be uncommon, I would wager.

If it wasn't for Multi Frame Gen, the RTX 5080 would be a total non-event. But of course there is DLSS4 and MFG here to salve a good chunk of the pain one might be feeling in regard to the relative performance of Nvidia's second-tier RTX Blackwell card. The still impressive technology smooths out the gaming performance of the RTX 5080 and delivers exceptional high frame rates in all the games I've tested it in. Which admittedly isn't the full 75 games and apps Nvidia has been promising, but the innovative DLSS Override feature of the Nvidia App isn't working even on the review drivers.

But seeing 100 fps+ at top 4K settings in Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 is quite something to behold, though the latency in AW2 does highlight a problem we'll have further down the stack. So long as that level of performance uplift remains consistent across all the supported MFG games in its long list of Day 1 supporting titles, then there are going to be a huge volume of games where the actual gaming experience of running the RTX 5080 will feel entirely different to that of the RTX 4080 Super.

And that is where we have to end up, because however I might feel about the lack of tangible silicon advancement with the RTX 5080's GPU, what it's going to feel like when the average gamer gets the card slapped into their PC is arguably all that really matters.

So, if you've ever entertained the thought of spending $1,000 on an RTX 4080 Super, then this is the obvious next object of your affections. It's a like-for-like drop-in GPU, with an MFG magic trick, which is just as effective and strangely unexciting as that sounds.

Nvidia RTX 5080: The specs

The overall RTX Blackwell architecture remains the same as with the previous card, and I've covered that in some depth in my RTX 5090 review. Suffice to say, the big change is the fact the shaders are now to be given direct access to the Tensor Cores of an Nvidia GPU—rather than relying on CUDA programming—which will allow a level of AI game integration we've not seen before.

You're also getting a dedicated AI management processor (AMP) inside the chip which allows it to regulate and schedule AI and standard graphics workloads so that it can still do all your DLSS and Frame Generation tasks alongside the other neural rendering stuff it's going to be tasked with when RTX Neural Skin, RTX Neural Materials, RTX Neural Faces, and RTX Neural Radiance Cache come into the picture in future gameworlds.

You can also kinda include Multi Frame Generation as part of this architecture, for now at least. Since it is entirely locked down to the RTX 50-series, the skinny is that MFG is only possible at these PC latency levels because of the power of the 5th Gen Tensor Cores, that AMP scheduler, and the enhanced flip metering capabilities of the RTX Blackwell silicon inside the GB203 GPU inside the RTX 5080.

I've said it's like magic before, but that's doing the Nvidia engineers who worked on it a disservice. The ability to generate up to three extra frames between every two that are rendered is impressive on its own, but being able to do so without adding a ton of extra latency into the picture, pacing it perfectly, and with only some very minor artifacting at worst is something else.

It's this feature which entirely makes the RTX 5080 as it is, without it you would have a very different GPU, or at least a much cheaper card. But whatever took its place, you wouldn't have a card that could hit 100 fps+ in the latest games at their top 4K settings.

So what is this GB203 GPU about, then? Well, it's got 5% more cores than the RTX 4080 Super, with 10752 CUDA cores inside it. Despite rocking the same TSMC custom 4N lithography, it's also a smaller chip, if only by a smidge. There are 45.6 billion transistors inside the GB203 where there are 45.9 billion inside the AD103 chip, and in terms of total die size we're looking at 378mm² compared with 378.6mm².

It's also worth noting the RTX 5080 is using the full GB203 GPU; given the scale of the chip and the maturity of the 4N process, that's probably not a huge surprise. But what it does mean is that any future RTX 5080 Super refresh is going to have to be running on either the GB202 or an entirely new chip. Which would also mean you'd either have to jam a lot more memory in there or use 1 GB dies to fill the 512-bit bus to match the same 16 GB.

So yes, you are still getting the same 16 GB of VRAM in the card as you did with the RTX 4080/Super cards, except this time you're getting GDDR7 instead of GDDR6X, running at 30 Gbps versus 21 and 23 for the previous Ada cards. That means there's a fair chunk more memory bandwidth available to the Blackwell chip.

There are some other tweaks inside the GB203 silicon which separates it from the AD103 chip of the RTX 4080 Super. There are more texture units, which means more texture processing power, and more L1 cache. Though you are looking at the same 65 MB level of L2 cache across the chip.

Nvidia is throwing a bit more power at the card, too, with the TGP rated at 360 W versus 320 W for the RTX 4080 Super. And that means the recommended PSU specs have risen by 100 W, too. That 750 W might not be enough to keep your new GPU fed, y'know.

Nvidia RTX 5080: The performance

In line with the extra power Nvidia is jamming through the card, the extra memory bandwidth, and handful of extra cores, the overall gen-on-gen performance of the RTX 5080 is exactly what the green team said it would be. I'm getting a reliable 15% 4K gaming performance boost on average across our test suite.

Yeah, if you were hoping for RTX 4090 performance from the second-tier RTX Blackwell card then you're going to be disappointed.

If that sounds largely unexciting in percentage terms, it gets even less so when you look at the raw frame rates. When you're going from 47 fps to 55 fps or 31 fps to 36 fps it stops looking like any kind of tangible generational improvement in gaming performance. It's certainly not exactly going to set hearts aflame with acquisitional zeal.

Anyone on a relative RTX 40-series GPU will likely be pleased to see that; taking the pressure of any niggling desire to upgrade their already expensive graphics card.

The performance delta—as with the RTX 5090—shrinks as we drop down the resolution scale. At 1080p and 1440p it drops to 9% and a touch under 14% respectively. At least if you're going to be running at 4K with DLSS Quality you're going to see a similar performance bump as at 4K native.

But the performance picture changes dramatically once you start to look at what Multi Frame Generation does to the card's frame rates. Going from 20 fps at 4K native to 130 fps with RT Overdrive in Cyberpunk 2077 and DLSS Quality with 4x MFG really does give you the generational improvement we've been craving. And it looks great, too, even the 67 ms latency is absolutely fine.

What I will say about latency, however, is that the Alan Wake 2 numbers do highlight a potential issue for MFG being the frame rate panacea of the lower class RTX 50-series GPUs. For AW2, I left it on the same extreme settings as the RTX 5090, which is honestly too demanding for the RTX 5080.

It gets just 19 fps natively, and only 35 fps when you turn on DLSS. Sure, you'll hit 117 fps when you slap 4x FG on the table, but the native latency is too high for DLSS to bring it down enough for frame gen's subsequent latency to be truly palatable. At 102 ms you could maybe get away with it on something like Alan Wake 2, but it's definitely stretching things for me.

Again we have to come back to where frame generation features inevitably fall down. As much as it sometimes feel like magic, MFG is not; if you don't have a high enough input frame rate the final latency is going to be utterly punitive even if the fps figures look good.

For the weaker cards in the RTX 50-series it does feel like MFG is going to be a little less exciting an advance. Though we'll have to wait and see how it holds up on the RTX 5070/Ti when they arrive in February.

It's also worth noting that, while 75 apps and games with DLSS 4 and MFG support at launch is great, it's notably not all games that sport Nvidia's Frame Generation. The DLSS Override setup in the Nvidia App is great and impressively comprehensive, but it needs game support, and can't just be used to add MFG into any existing Frame Gen game.

Black Myth Wukong is a popular modern title, and a graphically intensive one, too. It sports Nvidia's Frame Gen technology but is notable by its absence from the list of native or DLSS Override supporting games. While Bears in Space is there. Good ol' Bears in Space.

It's only one game, but it's an example of where the RTX 5080 isn't going to feel like a step up over the RTX 4080 Super even when you flip the Frame Gen switch.

System-wise, that extra 15% performance bump comes with both a steady rise in power demands and in temperature. Granted that last is mostly down to the fact that the Founders Edition comes in a dual-slot configuration as opposed to the chonky triple slot cooling array of the RTX 4080/Super cards. The cooling on the big boi was certainly more effective, but I will say I'll happily take 71°C over 63°C if the card itself is so much smaller.

If the gen-on-gen gaming performance doesn't excite you then the card's creator chops are going to leave you utterly cold. When it comes to raw rendering performance, its Blender performance is around 12% higher than the RTX 4080 Super. And then on the AI side, it's only 5% better off in the PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve tests, though is at least 14% faster than the Ada card when it comes to AI image generation with the Stable Diffusion 1.5 benchmark.

Nvidia RTX 5080: Analysis

What would Nvidia have done if Multi Frame Generation didn't work out? Brian Catanzaro freely admitted at the Editor's Day during CES 2025 that it was not something Nvidia could have done around the Ada launch.

"Why didn't DLSS 3 launch with Multi Frame Generation?" He asks. "And the answer is, we didn't know how to make the experience good."

Catanzaro notes that there were two big problems it needed to solve to make Multi Frame Generation a workable solution to a lack of big GPU silicon advances.

"One is that the image quality wasn't good enough. And when you think about it, when you're generating multiple frames, the amount of time you're looking at generating frames is much higher, and so if there's artifacts, they're going to really stand out. But then secondly, we have this issue with frame pacing."

Nvidia solved the issues with a shift to a new AI model for its Frame Generation feature to help deal with motion artifacts, the new transformer model for resolving the image, and flip metering to ensure the extra frames are slotted in smoothly, and all without adding too much over 2x Frame Gen in terms of PC latency.

The work Nvidia has done in making Multi Frame Generation work is truly impressive, but if that hadn't worked out what sort of GPU generation would we have in place of the current crop of RTX Blackwell chips? Maybe the RTX 5090 wouldn't have been much different; you'd still get the extra silicon, the extra VRAM, and essentially a rendering, gaming monster of a card, though with only 30% higher overall performance.

It would likely have been tough to cost it higher than the RTX 4090 at $1,600, however, given the relative performance increase.

Things would have to have been different for the RTX 5080 and its GB203 GPU, though. This is the full chip being used at launch, which means there's no more headroom here to offer more than the 15% 4K performance bump that it offers over the RTX 4080 Super. There's no way it could have been released for the same $999 with such a slight bump and no MFG in sight.

Or else it would have had to be an entirely different, much more powerful GPU. And that would have necessarily translated further down the RTX 50-series stack, too.

It's good that, despite being half the price of the RTX 5090, the RTX 5080 isn't delivering half the performance; it's better than that. The RTX 5090 is some 50% quicker than the second-tier RTX Blackwell card. Though what I will say is that the price delta was much lower between RTX 4080 Super and RTX 4090, and the top Ada was only 35% quicker. So, that gen-on-gen comparison isn't too favourable for the RTX 50-series, either.

In reality, it's a moot point. I guess it's lucky for Nvidia's gaming division's bottom line it's got such smart folk working for it who could solve the issues with Multi Frame Generation in time for the RTX 50-series launch.

In the end, Multi Frame Generation exists, and the RTX 5080 is the silicon you're going to get because of the experience and extreme level of performance it can offer in the games that can exploit DLSS 4 and MFG. Thank Jen-Hsun for AI, eh?

In Eternal Strands everything I can see is part of a new challenge: Something to be scaled, scouted, or slashed at.

I don't even have to waste my time trekking across boring expanses of open field to reach the things that have caught my eye, as this compact game is broken up into a series of carefully crafted areas attached to a homely hub. It reminds me of Monster Hunter more than a seamless but flabby open world sprawl of #content. Some regions invite me to run across rooftops, while others want me to dive into the bowels of the earth. Along the way I stumble upon fragments of stories in these abandoned places, told through lingering magical mishaps, forgotten statues, and dusty meeting rooms.

Oria, my group's leader, is constantly watching over me via a magical video link, and her voice in my ear spins the details I stumble upon into meaningful quests; Eternal Strand's story covers everything from sweet personal relationships to deadly hordes of sealed horrors. Her vast experience in the scouting role I'm currently occupying makes her a little intimidating—and also makes her softer, slightly awkward pep talk moments frankly adorable. She wants to connect and care, she's just not quite sure how to do it.

Everyone else in camp is just as layered. The quartermaster knew what everyone needed before they did, and was on top of our supplies and logistics. But what did she want? What would help her? Well. I've never had an enthusiastic conversation about shelving before, but now I have, and I kept going back to her in the hope of having another.

These missions often overlap in some convenient way, so even though one character's optional request to collect glowing plants at night didn't exactly have me rushing out of camp, I ended up easily gathering everything I needed anyway when I later found myself in the same area as part of a more exciting expedition.

The weather, shown on a quick summary screen for a map zone before heading out, matters as much as the time of day. Huge magical swings in temperature turn lush greens into frosty blues, suffocate an area in a shimmering heat haze, or leave behind a choking miasma. The climate faced is fixed for the duration of the expedition, and deliberately extreme and unnatural—another mystery to unravel in this strange land. These conditions add new hazards to familiar places; a drought making fire dangerously easy to spread, miasma forcing me to choose between a detour or a painful dash through the haze. It's enough to make me question whether I really want to take on ice monsters when there's a chill in the air, but never such a dramatic shift I feel the need to sleep the days away in my tent back at camp until I get the "right" sort of weather.

Whatever the temperature, I have to use my small but versatile pool of fire and ice abilities well to survive. Some of their uses are obvious—encasing an enemy in ice gives me time to get some free hits in, setting fire to fur and foliage will cause extra damage over time—but right from the start there's always something more cunning and creative I can do with these powers. Huge chasms can be traversed with improvised icy bridges if I'm quick and brave enough. Wooden floors can be set alight, collapsing underneath the enemy chasing after me. It feels natural and improvised. When I tried things in Eternal Strands it consistently delivered moments of "Wow, I can't believe that worked," rather than smacking me in the face with artificial setups screaming "Please notice the one conspicuously flammable thing in the cold area." Here, pretty much everything's flammable if I try hard enough.

Complementing elemental magic are some fun telekinetic powers, urging me to tear my surroundings to pieces. I love that the quickest way to open a massive door is to whack it really hard with something explosive, and how a bench or table can become an offensive weapon to hurl at my enemies. The only thing better than smashing a smaller monster with furniture is to pick it up and toss it into a chasm myself, although that does mean missing out on the materials they drop when defeated.

I do really need those if I'm going to craft myself some new armour and weapons from the designs I pick up while exploring. Instead of this being a boring chore where I go farm a laundry list of specific items and curse enemies for being stingy with their drops, all materials are split into broader types, with the game only really caring that I've got enough of whatever categories it requires. The individual materials I select do however have a huge impact on the strengths and weaknesses of these creations; thick fur helping insulate against the cold, rare ores leaving me with sturdier armour. The choices I make are reflected in my equipment's look too, my own efforts and experiences weaved into everything I wear.

This customisation's balanced just right, with the min-maxing side of forging present but very much optional. I'm definitely more powerful if I bother to take a loadout suited to the enemies I'm fighting, and I can take more damage if I make my armour out of gold-bordered rarities, but I don't need to. There was never a moment where I got smashed to bits by a gigantic monster and thought I had to give up and go gather five shiny rocks and some thread instead of fighting with more skill next time.

I was having too much fun in these epic encounters to take a farming break anyway. Much like running into a large wyvern in Monster Hunter or a drake in Dragon's Dogma 2, these standout foes take serious effort to bring down. They're all so large they can be clambered on, and I needed to to expose their weak points, break their armour, or damage specific body parts, preventing some attacks from landing with the intensity they did before.

Sometimes I need to raise my shield before nimbly rolling in for a quick swipe of my sword. Other times I'm hitting aerial opponents with arrows from a high vantage point, maximising my damage from afar. And then there are moments where only swinging a huge lump of sharp metal around will do, monsters visibly wincing under the force of these slow, weighty, blows. I only have three weapon types to smoothly switch between in battle, but they all fill a unique role and significantly alter my tactics and playstyle—and that's before I start considering any of them elemental special attacks I've crafted into them. From beginning to end taking on these massive monsters always felt like a real treat, the unique materials and new abilities awarded afterwards just the icing on an already enjoyable cake.

Open-ended adventure games often leave me resenting their endless hamster wheels, smothering me with busywork for busywork's sake. But the tight focus here, always offering specific tasks in well-defined locations that naturally led from one plot point to the next, meant I honestly didn't want the game to end. 20-ish hours and the chance to go back and mop up any unfinished quests, or just go out on another walk, wasn't enough. I wanted to spend evenings chatting with the cast. I wanted to pit myself against its enormous beasts one more time. I wanted to climb every tall tree and explore every deep cavern.

Eternal Strands dared to give me less, and because of that I only ended up loving it more.

It seems like boutique brand NuPhy has rendered me speechless with their latest keyboard, the Air60 HE, though. The fact is that this is a low-profile keyboard with Hall effect switches. That's right, a low profile Hall effect keyboard, which is a world's first. On its own, that's impressive, given you get the speed and customisation of Hall effect with the physically shorter switches of a low-profile keyboard.

If NuPhy plays its cards right, this could just be one of the zippiest and best gaming keyboards around.

And play their cards right they have. The Air60 HE doesn't just benefit strictly from its Hall effect switches, but from the fact there is support for rapid trigger to the point you can have an actuation and reset point of 0.01 mm. That's one of the most diabolical settings I've ever seen on a gaming keyboard. Normally you get to go as high as 0.1 mm, so being able to go even taller so you literally have to breathe on the switch for it to actuate is ludicrous.

It translates to some of the zippiest and most responsive experiences in Counter-Strike 2 I have ever come across, especially from a low-profile keyboard. The thing is, I haven't even touched on its other settings that are found in the lightweight but powerful web-based NuPhy.io configurator. And believe me, there's a lot to get through here.

The Air60 HE comes with similar fun, although much-maligned, SOCD tech as the Wooting 80HE and Razer Huntsman V3 Pro TKL in the form of its 'last key prioritization' mode which allows you to activate one key while holding down the other for especially quick actions. In this instance, it works based on the most recent one pressed; for instance, if mapped to the A and D keys, it can allow for unnaturally quick side-to-side movement.

It can also work based on other conditions too, such as whichever key is pushed down further when you right-click a specific key in software. You can even lock a key's actuation so you don't have to keep the key held. For instance, you could map it to W for seemingly continuous walking.

As well as this, the Air60 HE also has a Mod Tap mode, so you can assign functions to a key based on how it's pressed—ie whether it's pressed down fully or tapped—and even assign up to four functions on one key. In addition, there is also a clever innovation called Hyper Tap, which isn't something I've seen on other Hall effect, rapid trigger keyboards. This triggers a second input when you release a key, as opposed to relying on another being held down, which is seriously clever. It potentially could be a way to get around the thorny issue of SOCD-tech being banned in Counter-Strike 2, although I wasn't feeling brave enough to test it online.

These types of features can make a tangible difference within the likes of CS2, where I chose to test the Air60 HE's gaming chops.The problem you have is that the SOCD tech, and its derivatives, have been banned by Valve for online play, rendering them useless apart from in single-player matches. With this in mind, it still became clear as to the speed on offer, with the SOCD tech providing me with the ability to move side-to-side especially quickly in spite of my less than average skill level. In addition, the Hyper Tap mode provided an intriguing benefit of being able to walk and crouch with one key that become useful if I wanted a better position for sniping enemies from afar.

The inclusion of all this tech is perhaps more for the marketing bumpf and spec sheet than for its actual utility, given the likelihood of it being found out for competitive games. However, it doesn't stop the Air60 HE from serving up some of the easiest-to-use, yet most powerful software around, all contained within a web browser. You can also use it to program macros and fiddle with the RGB lighting to your heart's content.

My sample of the Air60 HE is the slightly more expensive variant, which comes with the Gateron Jade Pro double-rail Hall effect low-profile switches. They're a 40 g linear option with a 3.5 mm total travel, and are full POM and factory-lubricated, so feel especially smooth under finger, and make for some of the snappiest switches I've used in a low-profile gaming keyboard, especially with all that Hall effect goodness. You can also get it with non-Pro switches for a $20 saving, which are 10 g lighter, making them arguably even brisker.

I'm also suitably impressed by the overall fit and finish of the Air60 HE, with its funky grey and purple colourway, complete with weird scientific right-hand keys, and the translucent finish on them. It's certainly a different style to a lot of the more serious gaming keyboards I've encountered in recent years, and looks marvellous. The combination of the aluminium top housing and plastic bottom case also keeps this 'board feeling sturdy, with no flex or creaking to speak of whatsoever. There are also several layers of foam and dampening inside which, combined with the fully lubed switches, make the Air60 HE sound fantastic.

Without knowing this was a fully wired keyboard, you could also be forgiven for thinking the Air60 HE has some form of wireless connectivity, given the selector switch on the rear side. It isn't for selecting between modes of connectivity, but instead for choosing which profile you want the keyboard to be in. M1 is for gaming, M2 is for Windows, and M3 is for Mac use, although they are adjustable in software.

It comes in a small form factor 60 percent layout that has long been favoured by pro gamers, and I can see why, given the sheer amount of desk real estate you reclaim for big, sweeping mouse movements that wouldn't be as easy with a larger keyboard. You are making quite a few sacrifices, though, such as a function row, nav cluster and arrow keys. For gaming, it was completely fine for me, although I did find myself reaching for a slightly larger layout keyboard for office work.

Then there's the perceivable value for money here. The Air60 HE, with the Pro switches inside, retails for $140. That's fantastic value against the Wooting 60HE+ that costs nearly double in its fully custom variant, or $45 more for the pre-built option with a plastic case. You are gaining analogue switch powers, although at the expense of some of the zanier 'tap' effects that the Air60 HE offers, and of course, the inclusion of low profile switches.

NuPhy's choice is competitive against the Keychron K2 HE too, matching its price tag. Here, the difference is 'full height' switches that lack some of the more advanced powers of the Air60 HE, a fully aluminium (or wooden accented) case and wireless connectivity. What the K2 HE lacks in power, it makes up for in convenience.

However, I don't think those two choices offer as much of a compelling package for the price as the Air60 HE, at least from the perspective of sheer power and speed, not least being the world's first Hall effect low-profile keyboard. If that sounds good to you, then this gets a strong recommendation.

Which is why I was keen to open the box when the XPG Precog Studio gaming headset turned up. I've reviewed some expensive headsets recently, and this more reasonably-priced option has some specs that suggest it might be a bit of a budget wonder.

Available for around $60/£58, it boasts 50 mm drivers with a 20-20,000 Hz frequency response, and a DAC adapter that takes its 4.4 mm balanced Pentaconn audio connector (alongside its more traditional 3.5 mm mic jack) and amplifies the signal, resulting in a USB Type-C input that XPG hopes will sound more "studio-like" than its competition.

Balanced signals? In-wire DAC adaptor? $60? I had to give it a look. Those are the sort of features that you'd expect to see on a boutique set of headphones, not a relatively budget gaming headset. However, all it took was pulling the Precog Studio from its packaging to dispel any illusions that this might be an under-priced premium headset in disguise.

The outer earcup plastic is tinny. I mean, really tinny. Tapping a fingernail against it creates a shiver of ick down my spine. On the left earcup is a volume dial, along with a dedicated mute switch, and both manage to feel somehow overly stiff yet worryingly flimsy at the same time like tolerances really weren't a consideration at the factory.

Most worrying of all, though, is the inner headband. The fabric material has a paper-like texture to it that suggests I could rip it if I pulled hard enough, and it's attached at either end with two impossibly skinny plastic tethers. There's some kind of spring-loading inside the headband material itself that allows adjustment, but the effect is that it appears to be adjusted by some incredibly thin rubber bands.

It's not confidence-inspiring, to say the least. However, wearing the XPG Precog Studio puts aside some of those initial worries. It's very light atop your head, with a decent clamping force and earcup design that means it refuses to fall from your dome with fast movements.

The fit won't be for everyone, it must be said. My partner immediately noticed that her ears touched the hard inner surface of the earcup, where the drivers live. Once this was pointed out, I noticed mine did too—although I didn't find the effect perceptible, whereas to her, it couldn't be ignored. And the earpads are made of the same scratchy fabric as the inner headband, which means they're slightly itchy against my skin.

Not a promising start, then. The XPG Precog looks nice enough, but all it takes is a quick feel of the plastics and the controls to realise that it's cheap with a capital C.

It's also red. A lurid shade, in fact, verging away from deep and voluptuous all the way into "cheap lipstick" territory. A personal thing, this, but I don't mind a splash of red on a bit of gaming gear. This shade though? A touch too much, if you ask me.

I like a review with a turnaround, and if you've read the For and Against columns at the top you've probably guessed what's coming next. Despite the nasty chassis materials and the debatable looks, it appears that XPG has focussed on the things that count when it comes to audio, like connections, amplification, and drivers—and this is where the Precog Studio begins to shine.

I'm not going to start falling into raptures, mind. But upon connecting the cables to the DAC, plugging it into an appropriate USB port (the USB Type-C DAC comes with a Type-A adapter, which is a thoughtful touch) and cranking up the volume, I felt my eyes bulge a little in surprise. The XPG Precog Studio actually sounds pretty good, or at the very least, much better than its price and the cheapness of its materials would have you believe.

There's a restrained-yet-weighty punch to the bass, without being overblown. The mids are detailed. The treble, crisp to the point of almost becoming fatiguing. The problem with many budget gaming headsets is the lack of definition and detail in the sound, but definition and detail the XPG most certainly has.

A little too much, in fact. I appreciate clarity as much as the next person, but the XPG can become edgy with its sound profile, although it never quite wanders off into painful, reference-like territory. I'd say it could do with a touch of sweetening up in the tuning (an easy thing to perform by dropping a gentle curve into a separate EQ), but overall it's really not bad straight out of the box.

This is a gaming headset, of course, and you can tell the drivers and DAC have been tuned to accentuate footsteps and distant gunshots while keeping enough bass to let explosions rumble. I'm really not too keen on that sort of gaming-specific tuning in general, as a quality pair of drivers tuned well for all purposes should easily be capable of the same effect without losing musical sweetness.

Here, the sweetness suffers. It's more than acceptable by default, though, and I would classify the XPG Precog as one of the better budget headsets I've heard— for sheer accuracy and attempts at audio greatness, at least.

It's an attempt though, not audio greatness itself. The Precog can become plenty loud, and it's here where the drivers reveal themselves to be lower quality than some. There's a little confusion in the mids and a touch of distortion in the upper treble that tells you these dynamic units are capable of very good things but have unfortunately found their limits. A shame, but it's a fairly pleasant ride as you get towards the top of their capacity.

And then there's the mic. Once again, this feels cheaply made under the fingers, with a bendy rubberised wire that feels slightly too short for comfort, while being susceptible to the odd kink. But the microphone quality itself? Surprisingly good.

Listen to the microphone test below:

Nobody's going to be falling over themselves thinking that this is a studio microphone, but in terms of sound capture, it's a lot better than some expensive headsets I've reviewed recently. It's clear and distinct while keeping a fair dose of warmth, although there's no noise-cancelling (or actually, any software at all) to keep things in check.

It's much better than I was expecting though, given how poor the XPG feels in your hands. It's a resounding theme with this headset overall—feels sub-par, looks flimsy, but in terms of performance? Actually pretty decent, especially for the price.

Which leads to a real headscratcher of a conclusion. In my time as a reviewer, I don't think I've come across a product that has baffled me as much as this one. The internals at work here are obviously much better than the price suggests, and for that, I should be lauding the Precog Studio—and perhaps even suggesting it as an addition to our best gaming headset guide in the budget category.

But I absolutely point-blank refuse to ignore the materials around it. It looks and feels cheap, in a way that is almost certain to disappoint when you pull it from the packaging. And while I haven't gone as far as to torture test the poor thing (beyond some gentle twisting, which resulted in some worrying creaks), the resilience of these materials suggests to me that it's not long for his world.

And as for the fabric material, on both the headband and the earpads? Put it this way—I have yet to find a version of that fabric that doesn't begin to pill, bind, and eventually disintegrate over time. This stuff rustles as you touch it.

I don't want to break out the sandpaper here to simulate months of wear, but a quick feel would suggest to you if you were sitting here with me, the same likely conclusion. It doesn't inspire any confidence that it will last.

Which is really the ultimate point here. While I absolutely appreciate the ethos that has led to XPG sacrificing outer materials in favour of great internals, the balance has been skewed way too far towards the latter. As an $80 headset with better plastics, fabrics, controls and design, those drivers combined with the mic and DAC extension would make for a compelling recommendation.

As a $60 headset, though, in its current condition? I actually think it's overpriced. The Corsair HS55 is the same money, and while I wouldn't exactly call it premium-feeling, it's stood the test of time in our office quite nicely. It's got a certain degree of plushness that proves you don't have to spend $100+ to get decent materials wrapped around a good set of drivers, even if they're slightly lesser than the ones on offer here.

As for the XPG Precog Studio? It's being placed carefully back in its box, after an apology has been given to the internals. I'm sorry, my friends. You really do deserve better.

Yet, with the new Capsule Elite, NZXT seems to be offering pretty much an identical feature set to the competition alongside a smart design, highly adjustable stand and higher bitrate recordings for just $90/£85/€100. That sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?

Well, I'm here to tell you that it isn't. The Capsule Elite is an excellent USB microphone. I could just end the review there, really, but my editor would likely kill me if I did, so let me explain why.

The fact is that NZXT's latest microphone offers rich and full-bodied pickup as you'll hear from the sample audio with pleasant depth and clarity. It's a surefire cut above a lot of headset microphones from options that are well into double figures, while also taking it to those more expensive choices from Logitech and SteelSeries. I'm mightily impressed with the Capsule Elite right out of the gate.

You don't get the flexibility of other polar patterns, as the likes of the Blue Yeti and HyperX Quadcast S provide, but for solo recordings, the Capsule Elite's cardioid option will definitely suffice.

It's not only ideal for voices, but it also means that the noise rejection is second to none. This is because the pickup pattern is designed to pick up audio from the front while rejecting it from the back and sides. In testing it with a series of recordings while playing music at a reasonable volume from speakers behind the Capsule Elite, it was only my voice that came through loud and clear. Of course, turning the music up too loud did allow some of AC/DC's Heatseeker to come through, but it wasn't much at all. Even picking out a deliberately loud mechanical keyboard and putting it a few inches from the microphone didn't phase it.

Listen to the microphone test below:

Connectivity is handled with a simple USB-C to USB-A cable, and I had no trouble plugging into either my main Windows gaming PC or my MacBook Pro (with a USB-A to USB-C adapter) and it was recognised instantly. From there on, select it as your main input device and you're good to go.

For the most part, the Capsule Elite is a doddle to set up, what with that plug-and-play connectivity and whatnot. The only trouble I had was in physically setting it up on the included stand in the box. It intriguingly uses a similar system to a lot of monitors with a base that screws into the shaft that the mic sits on, which proved to be a bit of a pain for a ham-fisted idiot like me. You have to line up a couple of nibs on the shaft and base, and then screw it in from the bottom. The problem for me was keeping both parts level so the microphone was straight and true when I turned it over and placed it on my desk.

The issue is that the stand isn't straight. I checked the product imagery against my best efforts, and the stand slants inwards. With this in mind, the stand is entirely metal and is sturdy once screwed into its threaded mount. I definitely didn't feel like the Capsule Elite was going to keel over at any given moment. You can also put the mic on a standard thread boom arm if you wish to avoid the stand shenanigans altogether.

While the stand is metal, the microphone body is plastic, which is perhaps where NZXT has been able to cut some costs down against rivals from Logitech and SteelSeries. It looks fetching in the white and silver colourway I have here, although you can also get it in black if you want something more conventional.

The actual body is also quite tall, reminding me of the Elgato Wave 3 with its flat, rectangular profile. The front portion comes with a large NZXT logo and a gain dial that also doubles up as a mute button when pressed. Above that is a small strip, which doubles as an indicator for both the microphone gain and the monitoring volume, as controlled by the wheel on the mic's right-hand side.

Handily, the indicator changes colour depending on what's being done—when the mic is muted, it's red; when the gain is changed, it's purple; and the monitoring volume is green. The gain wheel has some pleasant resistance to it, which is absent on the monitoring volume wheel, oddly.

On the rear, there are two ports—a USB-C for connectivity, and a 3.5mm audio jack for on-board monitoring. You also get a small light strip at the top, which is addressable in NZXT's CAM software. Here, you can also perform a mic test, adjust gain, EQ levels and sidetone, and fiddle with more advanced settings such as the compressor, noise suppression and high pass filter. It's all presented very cleanly and is simple to use.

For $90/£85/€100, the NZXT Capsule Elite certainly takes it to more expensive options from other manufacturers with its rich audio quality and excellent noise suppression. It also comes with convenient software control and handy on-board features. Where the other options come up trumps is with slightly better build quality, but the nuts and bolts of what's here prove just how excellent the Capsule Elite is for the price.

Let's focus on some similarities, though. This new Function Elite MiniTKL retains the same convenient 75 percent layout, complete with a function row, arrow keys and single-column nav cluster on the right-hand side. It provides most of the fun of a more traditional TKL layout while giving the benefit of even more desk real estate for those big, sweeping mouse movements you might undertake in FPS titles such as Counter-Strike 2. It's easy to see why this has become such a popular layout among enthusiast folk like myself, simply on that basis.

Elsewhere, the Function Elite MiniTKL retains the same quality finishing as its predecessor, although now comes with double shot PBT keycaps as standard, which is a sign of how far the mechanical keyboard industry has come in just a few short years. Quality touches are now a necessity for premium 'boards like this, not just a nice-to-have.

Its chassis is immensely sturdy with its metal top assembly, complete with a pleasant NZXT logo on the bottom side, and its thick plastic underside. There is also some texturing on the side of the Function Elite MiniTKL that's rather grippy. I'm not sure what its purpose is, but it's pleasant to touch and makes the keyboard easy to move around if needed.

It's available in either black or white, with my sample shipping in the latter. There's just something about a well-finished white keyboard which makes it look the business, and the Function Elite MiniTKL is exactly what I'm talking about. It's wonderfully smart, although draws some comparisons to the Cherry Xtrfy K5V2 in my eyes given the colourway and small form factor layout.

Where the Function Elite MiniTKL truly becomes its namesake though is with what's inside. After all, that's what counts, right? Instead of opting for standard mechanical switches, NZXT has followed the trend and opted for magnetic Hall effect switches inside this new model with the benefit of rapid trigger capabilities for some serious speed. For those unaware, rapid trigger allows a switch to have virtually instant actuation and reset points to provide immensely brisk inputs.

It's something that has become a lot more common over the last couple of years as seemingly every manufacturer, big and small, has put the tech into some of their flagship keyboards.

Combined with this, the Function Elite MiniTKL also has an 8000 Hz polling rate, meaning it reports inputs much quicker than more conventional keyboards (typically with a 1000 Hz rate). While this may not be noticeable for us mere mortals, it can make a difference for competitive players (how much, who can say), alongside the rapid trigger capabilities available.

Both of those features combine to make this NZXT 'board immensely fast in FPS games. It served up some rather snappy inputs for movement and switching between weapons in Counter-Strike 2. You can set the actuation point as high as 0.6 mm with a sensitivity as high as 0.16 mm, making them quite fast. There are some keyboards that can go even higher, or offer even more advanced features such as controller-like analogue capabilities such as the similarly-priced Wooting 80HE, although the Function Elite MiniTKL still remains rather fast indeed.

The switches themselves, with a 30 g force, are also rather lightweight, and feel smooth for day-to-day work, too, once you come out of your favourite games. NZXT also bundles in a keycap and switch puller if you want to swap them out, although it's unclear as to what other switches are compatible, as hot-swappable Hall effect keyboards tend to have less in the way of choice.

There is also the SOCD-type tech that's been banned by Valve here, making tactics such as counter strafing in Counter-Strike a lot easier by allowing you to hold the A or D key down and tap the other quickly for unnaturally fast side-to-side movement. You can use it as long as you're willing to play offline only. Go online with this tech and you might receive quite a large slap on the wrist. Nonetheless, it is a powerful piece of tech, and I can see why.

The fact it's here is arguably more of a gimmick than an actual feature, as it isn't something you can use in anger in a game without being hit with Valve's ban hammer. I've tested it with bots in single player CS2, and it makes even a ham-fisted idiot like me play better, given the unnatural speed at which you can move from side to side. It's not something I'd argue is too important, given the precarious nature of the feature, or something you should focus your buying decision on too much.

All of this is controlled within NZXT's CAM software, which brings together the keyboard's lighting adjustments, key remapping, macro recordings and the aforementioned rapid trigger settings. Setting it all up is especially simple, with you being able to click on a switch and then slide to adjust its actuation and reset point in the menus. That's it. You can do it on a per-key basis, or make it blanket across the entire keyboard.

The same also goes with the Function Elite MiniTKL's RGB lighting, for which there is also a lot of presets to choose from if you don't want to program it all yourself. The RGB lighting is also quite tasteful, and offers a pleasant blend of underglow around the keycaps, as well as shining through them. It keeps the Function Elite MiniTKL quite classy.

Then we come to the business of price. NZXT's Function Elite MiniTKL has a $190/£170/€200 asking price attached to it, making it quite the compelling option against the Wooting 80HE, the Glorious GMMK 3 HE and Razer Huntsman V3 Pro TKL. In fact, it undercuts them all, while offering a remarkably similar feature set and arguably a smarter look and feel.

This makes the Function Elite MiniTKL quite the compelling purchase, if it wasn't for one thing—namely the Keychron K2 HE. That too has rapid trigger functionality thanks to its Hall effect switches, and while it may not have an 8K polling rate, it has wireless convenience, a wooden chassis for even more style, and is cheaper at just $140.

Nonetheless, the Function Elite MiniTKL makes for a fantastic option if you want a stylish, small form factor gaming keyboard with seriously potent internals. Well done, NZXT.

As with the other peripherals released in this new Elite range, the Lift Elite Wireless is targeting an aggressive price point at $89. With the spec sheet on offer—a 26,000 DPI sensor, 57 g weight and support for up to 4K wireless and 8K wired polling rate—that makes this quite the compelling option against the Logitech Pro X Superlight 2 Dex and especially the Razer DeathAdder V3 Hyperspeed, our top contender.

Unlike the more ergonomic and contoured lines of the DeathAdder, the Lift Elite Wireless features a more symmetrical shape to its lightweight chassis that's reasonably comfortable to hold. It fits my medium-sized hand well enough, although folks with larger hands may want to seek a bigger option.

The plastics used here feel rather solid, and come with a pleasant texturing to them to aid comfort. What's more, both sides of the Lift Elite Wireless features some light grey side portions with added hatching for grip.

The 57 g weight makes this one of the lighter mice I've tested and even with that weight, the Lift Elite Wireless doesn't feel cheap, as some ultralight options can. Button placement is sensible for the most part, with the main options and a scroll wheel on top and two navigation buttons on the left side. The button to change DPI is left on the underside, and owing to the open underside, there isn't anywhere to store the USB-A receiver needed for connectivity. Nor is there any additional flair with RGB lighting, as that just adds weight.

That light weight makes the Lift Elite Wireless quite the zippy mouse to use in competitive titles such as Counter-Strike 2 and Apex Legends. Its chassis works well for my usual palm grip, although the fact it's symmetrical means claw and fingertip grippers should also feel at home.

This NZXT option also benefits from a 26,000 DPI sensor for especially fast movements. While the competition can go even higher, it doesn't make much of a difference to mere mortals like you and I. In fact, once you get above 12,000 DPI, you'll be hard-pressed to find a difference.

That high DPI nonetheless made sweeping movements in Counter-Strike 2 an absolute breeze for when I needed to swing around to fire at enemies in a flash, although is too jittery for productivity workloads. By default, it's set to a much more reasonable 3200 DPI as the maximum, so you will need to bump it up to 26,000 DPI in software which is easy enough.

The big kicker alongside that high DPI is that the Lift Elite Wireless supports up to an 8000 Hz polling rate. This makes it part of an exclusive club of gaming mice that go above the more standard 1000 Hz. The reason why this is important is because of responsiveness and potentially lower latency. A higher polling rate means a device reports its position and inputs more frequently (hence Hz as the measurement), and the Lift Elite Wireless benefits from up to 8000 Hz over a wired connection, and 4000 Hz over its bundled 2.4 GHz receiver.

The 4K rate isn't shabby at all, and I had no issues with how responsive this mouse felt in hours of Counter-Strike 2 rounds.

The connectivity here is pretty simple, with the Lift Elite Wireless working via the bundled 2.4 GHz receiver, or over its included USB cable. There isn't support for multipoint Bluetooth for added versatility, which is a shame if you want to use the mouse on multiple devices at once.

The 70 hours of rated endurance is reasonable too, although sits well behind the DeathAdder V3 Hyperspeed's 100 hours. It's worth noting that the figure NZXT provides is with a 1000 Hz polling rate selected, so if you select anything higher when using the mouse wirelessly, expect the battery life to drop a fair amount. In my experience, I probably ended up getting around 20-30 hours of playtime at the maximum 4K wireless polling rate, although your mileage may vary.

Against some of the competition, the Lift Elite Wireless' software customisation feels a little basic. It's all present in one tab, which is convenient, although you only get options for configuring the five DPI levels, polling rate, lift-off distance and button remapping.

You also get the option to save up to five profiles, although that's about it. There aren't any advanced surface calibration or game-specific profiles, as is found in Logitech's G Hub for instance. Of course, with no RGB, there's no customisation for lighting effects, either.

The problem here is that the Lift Elite Wireless doesn't do much to differentiate itself from the competition.

Don't get me wrong, this is a good mouse all things considered, but it doesn't stand out as Razer's choice does in terms of specs and performance, or as the Logitech Pro X Superlight 2 Dex does with its clever software. We've got so many options in this aggressively priced section of the market, and not even the stylish white colourway is enough for NZXT's choice to give me the wow factor. It doesn't do anything wrong, but it's just lacking that je ne sais quoi.

For many in the SFF (small form factor) enthusiast space, the majority of modern ITX cases just aren't small enough. Most are big, bulky juggernauts that fall more on the side of a being Micro-ATX setup, or some weird Frankenstein mid-tower, complete with dual rad support and GPU space larger than most keyboards.

Fractal Design has proven in the last few years that it very much adheres to that old-school way of thinking about SFF chassis. And, with the likes of its ridiculously small Terra, Mood, and Ridge cases, it has re-defined exactly what it is you can do with a chassis that has such a small footprint.

The Era 2 is a direct refinement of its initial Era ITX case, which launched way back in 2020. Aesthetically, Fractal has abided by an incredibly similar design language with it. It's got that curved anodized aluminum external housing, walnut panel lining the roof (albeit this time with ventilation), and intriguing perforated side panels, complete with an almost identical overall footprint. Yet, it's the internal layout that's had the biggest overhaul, by contrast. In fact, compare the two side-by-side, and what you're looking at are two incredibly different cases. It's this change which radically alters the build experience, and absolutely for the better.

Design shenanigans aside, it's not a particularly cheap chassis; the Era 2 clocks in at $200 US and £195 UK at launch, putting it in the more premium bracket for wee metal boxes of this caliber. It's got a lot to live up to with that kinda price tag attached, and honestly, it does a fine job of justifying that cost.

If you look directly at the internal layouts of both the Era and the Era 2, the differences are astounding. Everything from motherboard position to cooler location, power supply mounting and support, and more have changed. Mostly for the better.

Although the aesthetic and general design ethos certainly follow that of the Era ITX, its internal layout actually closely mimics that of Fractal Design's more recent SFF chassis, the less-costly Terra. Albeit with some slight tweaks and improvements here and there. Motherboard mounting, power supply location, and GPU solution are almost entirely identical, bar some minor tweaks that are mostly possible only due to the increased height.

The largest difference between them lies in the fact that the Era 2 supports AIO coolers. You can technically fit up to a 280 mm radiator in the roof, although admittedly even Fractal recommends you stick with a 240 mm there. You know, just for your own sanity, and I'm inclined to agree.

There's also been some additional changes to how the GPU is installed (the removable setup is gone). Plus, the PSU now mounts with a sliding bracket rather than the latch system the Terra uses. The adjustable internal backbone/motherboard tray design—which allows you to shift the entire internal layout backwards and forwards to give you more space on the CPU or GPU side—remains and is a welcome addition, albeit with some caveats.

From a glance, the Era 2 is just stunning. Its satin metallic finish on that anodized aluminum panel is outstanding to look at, particularly with the blue review sample I've got to hand. Combine that with the walnut top plate and the subtle Fractal Design logos etched here and there, and it definitely feels like a premium chassis; it feels like it's worthy of that $200 price tag.

The real challenge for any ITX case though, is the build process, and let me be clear: this is a true ITX case; it's not for the faint of heart. Going into it, component selection is going to be critical to your success. Although the Era 2 does support 'full-size' SFX-L PSUs, I'd highly recommend sticking with the shorter SFX design. Doing that gives you a lot more cable management room to play with. Although that is basically just an additional inch of space, it's an inch that seriously counts.

Similarly, you need to pay close attention to your power lead port location on the PSU you're using, as the passthrough cable Fractal has included is right-angled in one orientation. With my be quiet! SFX-L 600W PSU, it directly conflicted with the side of the case's shell.

You'd think, given you can move the entire internal mounting frame in the Era 2 back and forth, that would eliminate such a problem. However, the PSU mounting solution is on rails and secures to the case via a single screw and metal tab attached to the side of the entire frame. You can move the frame, but the PSU stays where it is. There is a workaround to bypass that metal tab, but to do it, you have to disassemble the entire front of the chassis, remove part of the plastic sledge rails, and jimmy the PSU into position. Something I did during my build, to get everything, including the AIO and its tubing, to fit.

The optimal build process in an ideal world goes like this: Tear the chassis down—removing as many panels as possible—then immediately install your power supply, getting as many cables routed and tied down as you can ahead of time. Once that's done install your motherboard with everything but the RAM in. Then plug in as many cables as possible, thinking hard about cable management as you do it, and where your GPU and cooler are going to sit. After that, install your RAM, then move on to your graphics card, and finally your AIO after that.

Opting for an air-cooler—something like Noctua's NH-L9 series—makes this build far simpler to produce and honestly is a setup I'd recommend, particularly if you're running a Ryzen 5 or an Intel Core Ultra 5, especially given how potent some of those low-profile cooler units are. That way, not only do you get more cable-management space back, but you can then install two 140 mm fans in the roof to help with exhaust. Combine that with the two included 120 mm fans in the floor, and you'll have a seriously potent cooling setup that takes advantage of convection quite nicely (it's worth pointing out you do still have this with an AIO, but the radiator does add additional air resistance into the mix).

Because of its limited form factor, you really do need to be on top of cabling. Take your time with it; you've got very limited space between the GPU and the motherboard tray, and there are cutouts there that you can run front I/O cables through, but they're quite narrow, and if you put too many here that are too thick, it's not possible to fully install the GPU, without potentially damaging the graphics card.

This is actually one area where the Terra has the advantage over the Era 2, as the GPU was installed via a removable bracket, which did allow you to compress some of that cabling if you ran it behind the graphics card, making it far easier to install.

Similarly, when you're installing your AIO, you need to be mindful about where you place its fans. I initially tried to install it with the fans on the bottom of the radiator acting as push, with the rad mounted to the removable bracket, but immediately came into contact with my armada of cables from the SFX-L PSU, stopping the fans from spinning. Swapping it around, so the AIO fans were acting as pull rather than push, proved a better solution, although it was still a tight fit.

That might sound like I had a hell of a time building in the Era 2, and to be frank, I did, but that's all part and parcel of working in a proper ITX form factor. What Fractal's managed to do here however is impressive. This is a remarkably small case with a ridiculously tiny footprint, and yet, I've got a full 240mm AIO in here, a healthy-sized graphics card, along with a fairly high-end CPU setup as well.

All running super smooth and seriously quiet in a stupendously good-looking case. With a bit of luck and the right GPU, if you had an SFX-L PSU, you could even potentially fit an RTX 4080 Super in here as well (MSI's Gaming X Slim series should technically fit according to the specs).

Is this one of the best cases of all time? The best ITX chassis out there today? Well, that still very much depends on your perspective. If you're looking for a super easy, done in an hour build with plenty of room to work in as you do it, this isn't for you. This is a challenging case, and at times frustrating, but that's purely down to how small a footprint this thing has. There's a lot to love here, and a lot of engineering prowess that Fractal's leveraged into it, but we'd probably stick with the Terra as the best ITX of all. For those looking for a nice sleek metal box for their latest rig that takes up minimal desk space, looks incredible, and still supports all the hardware they want, with a bit of a challenge built-in to it as well, the Era 2 is still by far one of the most impressive ITX offerings out there today.

Nazis are pretty much the definitive bad guys. They're perfect videogame fodder because you never have to feel bad about punching, shooting or exploding them. And for sad real world reasons, it's never felt more cathartic to do so—so Sniper Elite: Resistance couldn't have come along at a better time. Channelling the spirit of a classic WW2 movie, there's daring romps and blockbuster beats aplenty.

Sniper Elite: Resistance is the first spin off for the Sniper Elite series that doesn't have you fighting zombies, and it's clearly hoping to capture some of the magic of 2022's Sniper Elite 5. You play as new recruit to the series Harry Hawker, fighting arm in arm with several of the French Resistance characters from Sniper Elite 5 and romping around the countryside. It feels a lot like playing an expansion pack for Sniper Elite 5, with familiar enemy behaviours, mechanics and tools. But that's no bad thing—Sniper Elite 5 was a huge step up in quality, and Resistance feels like half a step forward again, full of excellent playgrounds for the series' trademark mix of long-range sniping and guerilla warfare.

There are just seven main missions, but they're all huge and took me about 90 minutes to play through. The French locales are varied, inviting you to crouchwalk your way through farms, chateaus, secret bases, and more. Importantly, each of the levels feels distinct, with a good mix of tight corridors, interesting geometry to stealth your way through and, of course, some perfect viewpoints for sniping.

The exploration age

Sniper Elite 5 paid homage to Hitman somewhat, and here that admiration is even more obvious from the wide open levels and greater focus on player freedom and exploration. The first run through a level is often just poking and prodding at the different systems to see what's possible, what routes you can skulk your way through the easiest, and what vantage points you prefer.

It does mean that actually achieving your goals on that first run can be tricky. In one level, I encountered a multi-storey hotel—the map told me that the objective was somewhere inside, but not where it was. I had to explore five floors before I found what I was looking for, a 30 minute search that left the place a graveyard.

Many of these objectives are bombastic affairs—sabotaging dams, blowing up trains, that sort of thing—but there are also a few kill objectives that play out like a riff on the Hitman series directly. You can always simply shoot your target in the head, but if you kill them with the specific method requested you'll unlock a brand new weapon for your troubles.

I enjoyed the extra challenge. Killing with a bullet is easy in Sniper Elite: Resistance, but doing the deed with poisoned wine or an explosive piece of coal? That's much tougher, and often involves passing up on several different tempting opportunities as you sneak around behind them setting things in motion.

Old school stealth

Violence is easy, but stealth is much more challenging, demanding patience and plenty of information gathering. A lot of recent stealth games just chuck ultramodern gadgets or magical devices into the mix to make things easier, and I've got to admit I've been spoiled by them. Here, the best gadget at your disposal is often a silenced pistol, or even just a patch of mud to go prone in.

You do still have a few tricks up your sleeve, though. I've gotten the most use out of the variety of explosives you can use to booby trap bodies and walkways, but there are also lures to distract people, and even a little helmet on a stick that will distract (and mark) enemy snipers.

But it's still pretty unforgiving. Once enemies are in "combat" mode, they pretty much stay that way until you kill them. As a result, once you're seen things often devolve into awkward skirmishes or a tornado of violence depending on the level. It's tough to disengage because of the crushing weight of enemies around you. And in addition to a numbers advantage, the troops you're fighting are pretty formidable—once they've got you in their sights, they'll fire at your last known position to keep you pinned down while others move up to flank you. Overconfidence or a bad position will quickly dump you out to a game over screen.

So, gathering information before everything goes sideways is your best hope of survival. Stalking enemies and tagging them with your binoculars allows you to track their movements for the rest of your mission, but also to find out more about them. Their equipment, sure, but it also turns out your binoculars are capable of detecting someone's darkest secrets.

One of those soldiers might have plans to flee Germany to be with their partner, while another… has a pet rock. The equipment is useful, the secrets not so much, but these asides are well written and funny, a charming bit lifted from The Heart in Dishonored (where the Heart item told you such things). I don't know why my binoculars can tell me someone's deepest fears, but I'm okay with it.

Unfortunately, movement during these stealth sequences can feel imprecise at times, particularly when it comes to scaling ladders or crawling through vents. When it goes wrong it feels less like I'm controlling an elite sniper and more like I'm veering around a warzone on roller skates. It's an occasional issue, but when you blow your cover because you got stuck on some invisible geometry or clipped into a wall, it grates.

Going ballistic

Still, when the stealth goes out the window you get to play with Sniper Elite: Resistance's remarkably detailed ballistics. Bullets will punch through wood to hit anything behind it, and pretty much everything you can shoot is fully modelled too—externally and internally.

Sniper Elite's killcam is one of the defining features of the franchise at this point. With almost every killing bullet fired, you get to see the damage done to the target via an x-ray view that shows bones breaking, muscles tearing and organs bursting. Rifle shots put on a spectacular and harrowing show, but this time you also get killcams for kills with your pistol or secondary weapon, and those are much less visually striking.

As I get older, I find watching the impact of your bullets on a human body doesn't really spark joy. I don't know if I want to see that my long-range shot took out several vertebrae, or blew someone's jaw across the nearby countryside. Call me a prude, but these killcams slow gameplay down significantly, and mostly just make me squirm.

I do still get a kick out of the detailed biology on show though. At times it feels almost educational, when a target goes down in one shot rather than three and it turns out it's because I accidentally put a round through their kidney.

You can also incapacitate enemies with limb shots and enemies will strive to save them, slowing themselves down as they hoist their injured colleague onto their back and try to get them to safety. You could use this for bait if you wanted. I often wanted.

My favourite trick, something that I loved in Metal Gear Solid 2 all the way back in 2001 and I've barely seen in games since, is that if you shoot a soldier in the arm, they'll immediately drop their main gun and switch to a sidearm. In practice this doesn't happen that often, but the first time I noticed it I let out a little squeak of joy.

Resistance's weapons start off clumsy and your character can't take many hits. Given that an alarm will often bring every enemy on the map into one big fight, the best way to progress is to wage a guerilla battle, evening the odds with each brutal firefight. I'd try to take out as many people as possible, hiding or trapping bodies ahead of the grand firefight that often accompanied me trying to do any big objective.

There's a fairly dull skill system that will make you more survivable over time, but the real empowerment comes from both learning as a player and tinkering with your weapons. I quickly fell in love with the Modelle 1935 pistol, bolting a stock, silencer and long-range scope onto it, turning it into a pocket sized rifle.

Full scale invasion

Once you're done with the campaign, extra modes offer more to do. Survival is just a horde mode where you try to protect your HQ from waves of enemies, Propaganda features small scenarios set in the maps you've already played but let you play as different characters and complete new challenges, and then there's a player vs player multiplayer mode for sniping matches.

These are all fine, and a good way to eke more fun out of your time with Resistance, but the standout is Invasion, which first came into the series with Sniper Elite 5. This lets you drop into another player's campaign as an Axis sniper to stalk and hunt them. Resistance, like many stealth games, is about learning patterns and systems and exploiting them, but when you are there as the sniper hunting them, you both have to do some more creative thinking.

I've baited the hero of their own campaign into hunting me only to have them stumble into a mine next to an explosive barrel that killed them instantly. I've had a tense Enemy At The Games-style standoff that went against my opponent because after they shot and incapacitated me, they were charged by my German allies and killed as I lay on the ground trying to patch myself up. It's great fun playing a miniboss for someone else, and I can see myself revisiting this for as long as there are still games to invade.

All in all there's plenty to keep you occupied here, and despite some frustrations, there's only one major problem: new hero Harry Hawker. He's maybe my least favourite protagonist of any game from the last few years. I've always thought of Karl Fairburne, star of the main series, as a human-shaped blob of porridge, unburdened by anything remotely resembling charisma. Compared to Hawker however, Fairburne is George Clooney.

He feels like an awkward children's TV presenter, constantly chipping in to tell me that long grass is itchy but good to hide in, or suggesting I might get spotted if I go this way. I think I might hate Harry Hawker, with all his overexplaining and the way he says things repeatedly with the exact same intonation during the same level. Hawker doesn't seem to care, though, rattling through his canned lines like he's getting paid per word and describing his blood as "motion lotion" for some reason.

But ignore Hawker—I try to— and Sniper Elite: Resistance is a solid stealth game that wears its influences on its sleeve but has plenty of its own tricks. It's old fashioned, but I find it quite compelling that it's a game that knows exactly what it wants to be. Sniper Elite has felt like the heir apparent to the stealth genre for a while now, and Resistance further solidifies that, a generous helping of sneaky action that's only slightly less impressive because it's retreading the same path Sniper Elite 5 already took in 2022.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That mantra could apply to horde shooters in general—demonstrating through games like Helldivers 2 and Deep Rock Galactic that mowing down thousands of something will always be cool—as easily as it could apply to Orcs Must Die, a series which spent the last decade content to reprise its novel blend of tower defense and third person shooting with steely consistency. Trends come and go, industries shift and change, but orcs? Orcs must die, and that’s just not the sort of thing you mess with.

Until now, anyway. The series has seen an overhaul in Deathtrap as it reaches for that holy grail of infinite roguelike replayability. In past entries, Orcs Must Die had static level layouts; over the course of the game, you’d master an expanding toolset of traps and weapons as the game’s raving hordes escalated in quality, quantity, and complexity. If you lost a level, you replayed it until you got it right, and eventually could set up such an efficient factory line of firepower that no amount of orcs could successfully pile through.

In fact, those most potent of tower defense setups—affectionately called killboxes by the community—are as fun as they are obstructive to replayability. For a horde shooter, Orcs Must Die has always been a bit too easy to solve, reach a point where nothing can touch you, and dispense with any challenge. Deathtrap’s sweeping changes feel angled to prevent that issue by ensuring any and all plans can go wrong; a sea change that sometimes leads to an exhilarating sense of panic, and sometimes leaves the game feeling at odds with itself.

The meat and potatoes are unchanged; you’ll load into a mission with a loadout of traps, festoon the map with them in key locations, and use your weapons to clean up any leftover orcs, defeating wave after wave and using cash from your kills to bolster your defenses. These basics are as good as the series has ever been, and blasting through irresponsible quantities of green goofballs will always carry some inherent satisfaction. Deathtrap’s biggest shakeups are with format and progression. Rather than linearly trawl through a campaign’s worth of levels, you load into a lobby with up to three friends and pick from a randomized selection of maps with mutations that present additional challenges.

Corrupted ground might prevent trap placement in key areas, orcs might become skeletons when killed, you might immediately game over when you die, and so on. In between each wave, you’ll get to stack the deck back in your favor with upgrades to your traps and weapons. Once you beat that mission, you can either stash your rewards and start from zilch, or “gamble forward,” selecting a new map but retaining all upgrades and mutations. With plenty of meta-progression upgrades to snag and difficulty that scales with each additional player, it’s easy to see how things could remain fresh over hundreds of runs.

New avenues for variance are all over Deathtrap, from undead which spawn at night to water elementals that arrive in the rain. There’s plenty to consider when picking a mission, and you might even be tempted to reorient your trap selection to anticipate certain modifiers. These changes are Deathtrap’s strongest aspect, and because your base’s health carries over between rounds, that choice to gamble forward can be a tense, exciting one on particularly rough runs. I do wish the mutations and upgrades had a bit more bite, though; while they occasionally impact enough to alter your decision-making, it’s too easy to pick a mundane upgrade that gives your weapon 25% more damage or a mutation that gives orcs a splash more health. Regardless, measuring an increasingly precarious pile of downsides against your party’s skill and upgrades is an exciting new dimension to the game.

Going rogue

None of this stops you from making an absolutely ruthless killbox though, and that’s where developer Robot has made some key tweaks to send best laid plans astray. Plenty of new flying enemies will bypass ground traps entirely, new enemy types hunt players directly rather than follow the crowd, unstable portals will open and spawn enemies where you may have no traps at all, and crucially, the game’s barricade trap is now a universal, but limited, resource. In past entries, you could use this trap to funnel all the map’s orcs into a single choke point by walling off every alternative; here, you have permanent access to a small number of barricades that, even if you use all of them, will leave two or three passages to your base open. At the best of times, this particular change really ramps up the intensity—in one mission I had to defend two bases at once, each with a few entrances to cover, with too few traps to account for everything. Spinning all those plates at once was a thrill previous games would have let me bypass.

But when these wrenches get thrown in, the results don’t always dazzle. I’m in two minds about these changes, because while they do mix up my trapping strategies, they also de-emphasize the importance of those strategies. The killboxes of yore still work, but when anything could happen and a good portion of each wave is flying, resources pooled into an expensive combo are sure to be ignored by some enemies. In one mission, I sold most of my ground traps and threw down dozens of anti-air auto-crossbows around my base with little rhyme or reason, and I ended up having more success with a much dumber strategy. While I wasn’t scoring as many combo kills or leveraging any elemental weaknesses, it allowed me to actually use my gun and traps in tandem regardless of what the game threw at me.

I’m certain these issues will be less prevalent in four-player co-op, where that disorganized rush to cover every exit and put out random fires can be split among a group, but in solo play, it feels like the game does everything to upend the value of those traps I just spent 10 minutes trying to place intelligently. While Deathtrap’s new smorgasbord of playable heroes are a nice way to spice up the moment-to-moment, and each one having a signature trap is a nice touch, the shooting and spell-slinging just isn’t complex or varied enough to match the fun of OMD’s tower defense heart. Whenever I’m pulled away from my devious labyrinths to go and shoot some stragglers halfway across the map, it feels like a distraction rather than an equally fun element of play.

Despite my gripes, I do hope to rope in a few friends in for some inebriation-friendly wave defense. That niche mix of chaotic, cartoony action and lite strategy is a vibe this series has locked down. But its metamorphosis into a rich and infinitely replayable game is not complete with Deathtrap, and its systems come into conflict just a bit too often to match the elegant simplicity of Orcs Must Die 3.

I had pockets of fun with Synduality. Of the 20-plus hours I’ve clocked so far, the first 15 were a compelling journey of discovery. From choosing and customizing my first Magus (the android co-pilot that provides constant chatter and guidance in and out of the mech cockpit), to my first tentative forays into the post-apocalyptic wastes, to scavenging enough work gloves to clean the weeds out of my doer-upper mech hangar, all the way to my first (accidental) PvP encounters in the field, I thought it was all building to something. But Synduality never gets better than its opening hours.

Friendly fire

Synduality is (at least initially) an extraction shooter, inspired by the likes of Escape From Tarkov, but in lightweight mechs that remind me a bit of Hawken’s twitchy yet streamlined rumbling robots. You explore a hostile wasteland full of monsters and NPC bandits, collect loot, then try to bring it home to sell or craft into useful upgrades for your base. Normally it’s a cutthroat genre that players treat as a high-stakes deathmatch where everyone’s risking their best gear for a slight advantage over the competition. But Synduality aims to ease newcomers into the action by making co-op (albeit with strangers—there’s no way to roll out with your buddies) the default way to play.

Unless you choose to go rogue and immediately start blasting other players (in which case you’ll be exiled to a harder, more PvP-centric map), you’re probably going to be working alongside other players more than fighting with them. While I had the occasional tussle that usually ended with an apology for reflexively shooting at another player, my Magus let me know whether sighted players had a reputation for causing trouble, and a friendly ‘Hello’ emote was usually enough to defuse any tensions, letting me focus on the satisfying loop of hunting post-apocalyptic monsters and bandits, gathering treasure and slowly converting my hangar into a home.

I found the base renovations to be surprisingly fun. Between some lively animations and chatter from my Magus, there’s a real sense that I was turning a ruined, rusted building into my home, with a couch and coffee table parked cutely in front of the mech repair platform. The game goes to great lengths to get you attached to your Magus, endlessly doting servant-partners reminiscent of the Pawns from Dragon’s Dogma. It even has you install a bathroom so you can watch them bathe in (purely work-safe and PG-13) cutscenes… for a small in-game price per bath session. Yes, this anime game is very anime.

Low roller

Fully relaxed after bath time, stakes remain low in the field. Rolling out with the free, default mech chassis (which I found perfectly serviceable for most non-PvP runs), I only had to insure my guns. Even in the few cases where I did die I sometimes managed to get to my fallen mech and recover everything, claiming both the insurance payment (around 80% of the lost gear’s value) AND all my lost gear, turning defeat into a lucrative and potentially exploitable misadventure. A curious design oversight, and sadly indicative of a slightly thoughtless whole.

Synduality’s greatest failing is that the moment-to-moment combat is very flat. Enjoyable in short bursts as a lightweight mech game where movement has more heft than your average third-person shooter, but you’re still running with a very standard FPS protagonist’s loadout. A melee attack, a pair of guns (SMGs, Shotguns, Snipers—all familiar stuff upscaled), maybe a few grenades and a special power via your Magus that can be used once every five minutes or so. New mech chassis types only offer moderate stat boosts, no real interesting build options and very little visual customization. Shooting stuff is fun enough, and some of the guns are satisfyingly loud, but you’ll be doing a lot of mag-dumping into the same few slow and spongy targets, with monsters only really being a threat if they sneak up on you and NPC bandits demanding stop-and-pop tactics from cover.

The choice to have the weak-point on mechs be their back (where your Magus is held) rather than the head is a nice tactical twist, making facing danger head-on into the safer option. But unless you’re an actively rogue player, PvP doesn’t happen often. With combat so predictable (especially against NPC enemies), the tension of getting away with a good haul that so many extraction shooters rely on was absent, replaced with an almost Animal Crossing-like cozy loop of resource-hunting and watching numbers go up. Not unpleasant, but hardly gripping.

At least there’s somewhere to go for a shot of more concentrated action, even if it feels barely attached to the greater game and only a little more focused than open-world scavenging. Around 10 hours in I unlocked the first few missions of a weirdly located solo campaign. Scripted missions where you pilot a fixed mech through checkpointed, scripted battles. Strange, and made all the weirder as the only rewards for these single-player diversions are ‘historical’ cutscenes, animatics and audio logs that feel like they’re from an earlier, more story-driven iteration of the game, but are otherwise unrelated to the looting and shooting extraction loop.

Small world

After 15 hours the cracks really began to show. I’d unlocked the ‘harder’ second map, but quickly realized that it only mildly escalated the stakes. I was still fighting the same five NPC enemy types with the occasional palette-swapped elite variant and only rarely exchanging fire with human players. The missions weren’t offering anything new. The only thing that was really speeding up was my XP gain, which only serves to unlock more seasonal battle pass rewards. And yes, this being a Bandai Namco game, you can buy battle pass levels or expensive premium outfits for your Magus, on top of the game’s retail price. Standard enough for a live service game in 2025, but still exhausting to think about.

After 20 hours I had just grown tired of it all. Nothing was changing. Runs remained uneventful. I was looping around the same two maps, picking up the same items. The combat’s simplicity was wearing thin, and technical flaws like excessive motion blur and occasional performance stutters (potentially network-related) became increasingly grating. Synduality’s goal to make extraction shooters more friendly and social is a laudable one, but once the novelty wears off, there’s just not much here.

Perhaps things will change again if I give into growing temptation and become a bandit myself. Preying on unsuspecting players, building up my bounty and encouraging ‘law-abiding’ players to try hunting me instead. But then I remember the gentle, Animal Crossing-like vibes from my own early runs, and I don’t think I’ve got it in me to ruin that for someone else.

The SE880 suffers primarily because of the existence of newer drives such as its ostensible successor, the Adata SD810, which does everything just that bit better and has a little more to offer, for only a smidge of extra cash. That's why the SD810 is the best external SSD for gaming at the time of writing, and it's why the SE880 probably isn't worth picking up while the SD810 is available at a similar price.

It's not all negative, though. The SE880 does have something to offer, even if it's pipped on the performance and value front by newer eSSDs. The main plus to this dinky little drive is its minuscule size. It's actually smaller than the tiny TeamGroup PD20, which I rate highly for its portability, though it doesn't look quite as suave, nor does it have the PD20's keychain hook.

If you're just looking for something small, though, the SE880 will serve you well. First impressions upon unboxing had me impressed by its diminutive 64.8 x 35 x 12.25 mm shell, and its brushed metal casing is rather pleasant to behold—and to hold, come to think of it.

However, its plastic ends and light weight don't give me tons of confidence in its durability, unlike more premium drives such as the Samsung T9, which feel like you could pitch them at a particularly solid surface without a worry in the world (don't actually do that). Plus, the SE880 lacks the dust protection of other drives such as the SD810, which has a cap to cover the USB-C port that gives it an IP68 rating.

And make no mistake, the main problem with this drive is the Adata SD810. Sure, being smaller and more portable is nothing to turn your nose up at, but for one, it's not that much smaller than the SD810—if one will fit in your pocket then so should the other. But second, and most importantly, size isn't everything when it comes to portability. There's also attachability and durability to consider, and there are better options than the SE880 on these fronts.

Those two things, in addition to looking lovely, are what make the PD20 such a great portable drive: it has a hoop that you can use for a keychain and it has a dust plug for the USB-C port that gives it its official IP54 rating. If I had to choose between a slightly smaller drive lacking solid dust and drop protection and a slightly bigger one with said protection, I'd choose the latter every time.

That's far more important for portability than an extra few millimetres in length because taking your drive everywhere means putting it at more risk of damage, and a dead drive is a dead drive, no matter how small.

None of this would be fatal for the SE880 if it was a great performer, but it's not. It's not bad, but again, other drives can do better for little extra cost. Ignoring the very inconsistent IOMeter performance the drive achieved over multiple different tests—a problem that a full, thorough format seemed to fix—I found the SE880 to offer decent transfer speeds close to its rated 2,000 MB/s, but only for about a minute. After this—after its pseudo-SLC cache ran out—it slowed down dramatically, sitting at about 70 MB/s for the rest of the 15-minute IOMeter run.

Compare this to the SD810, which not only maintained its similar peak for about two and a half minutes—over twice as long as the SE880—but dropped down to about 150 MB/s after that. 150 MB/s isn't a lot, of course, but it's double the SE880's 70. That's a performance difference well worth the slight price increase.

Even the PD20 is a better contender for sequential writes, in my opinion. Yes, peak speeds are only maintained for about 30 seconds, but that'll get you about 50 GB of data transferred, which is more than most people will need. If you need a lot more transferring at peak speeds, the SD810 is there for you, leaving the SE880 in a bad spot between these two drives which both have the additional durability/portability/aesthetic benefits.

So much for sequential, but what about random reads and gaming performance? The SE880, for sure, is far from an awful choice of game library drive. But again, it's not quite as good as other options such as the SD810 or Samsung T9. Yes, it performed as well as (if not better than) the SD810 in my FFXIV testing, but in 3DMark Storage it fell consistently and decidedly behind the SD810 and T9. It stayed in line with the PD20, though, which makes sense given both are mini drives.

And to be fair, all of these drives should be serviceable as a portable game library. I tried the SE880 out with my beloved Crab Champions game install, moving the Steam files over to the drive with the Steam helper and then loading up the game and playing a couple of levels.

The 1.7 GB transfer was quick, though not instantaneous like some other drives (the Crucial X9 in particular worked a charm), and when in-game, levels loaded instantly and there was no stuttering.

So yes, it works perfectly well as a game drive, but the point is, there are other, better options even for RND4k read and gaming performance, whether that's the super-chunky, actively powered and ultra-reliable SanDisk Desk Drive or, as ever, the SD810.

Don't get me wrong, a minute of peak speeds over a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 connection, plus decent game storage performance, is plenty. It's just there are now better options on the market, whether that's in terms of performance, durability, or portable aesthetics. And some of those barely cost any extra, which truly makes the SE880 seem a little antiquated.

I suppose if you want USB 3.2 20 Gbps speeds for as cheap as possible, the SE880 isn't a bad choice. But if you're willing to spend even a little extra, the SE880 fast loses its appeal.

The thing is, with some of the more mainstream companies, they tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to radically altering their chassis designs. Certainly over the years. Predictability in sales is far more important than radical features and ideas that might flop or cause a major loss. These things take time and money to design and manufacture, so return on investment is key. Hyte, sister company to the system builder iBuypower (one of the best gaming PC manufacturers out there currently), took that very idea and went "to hell with it", launching the Y60.

It revolutionized the scene at the time, with angled glass panels, default vertical GPUs, and a whole host of innovative new design tech and cooling solutions that really took things to the next level. It effectively created a whole new case segment and form factor known as "fishbowl chassis" that, although technically started by Lian Li and the now legendary PC O11 Dynamic, was really cemented in place by little ol' Hyte. In fact, even today, manufacturers are still playing catch-up with the idea.

Here's the thing: the Hyte Y60 is a seriously chunky case, and although highly successful and eventually leading to the equally wild Y70 Touch, complete with an in-built 2.5K vertical IPS monitor, it didn't quite pin the market for that traditional staple mid-tower form factor that PC gamers know and love. That's where the Hyte Y40 comes in.

A far more budget-oriented solution, the Y40 takes a lot of the design aesthetics of the Y60, and Hyte as a whole, and condenses it down into a more traditional form factor and design without compromising on airflow or functionality.

You still get the powder-coated finishes in black, white, or red; you still get those half-height PCIe slots and vertical GPU solution as standard; and you still get some epic cooling options as well. But the real kicker is the price. This thing starts at $100 in the US, and because of that and the wild amount of features it comes with, it radically pushed the price down of some of the staple mid-tower cases that held the majority of the market share for many years as a result.

So, what is it then that makes the Y40 such an interesting chassis? Besides it's price, of course. Without doubt, the first thing that grabs your attention is the overall design. The Y40 has two beautiful tempered glass windows front and side that line the thing top-to-bottom, even encompassing the entirety of the black plastic ventilated PSU shroud that saturates the bottom of the case. It almost borders the entire thing, and the shroud itself adds a unique element to the overall look and feel. It's also got what feels like a beautiful powder-coated finish. The white sample I have on review is a more traditional satin/matt styling, but the Cherry Red is very much a gloss option for those looking for something with a bit more punch.

Then there's the internal design. It's intake airflow is managed by effectively three fans. Two, that you fit on the side yourself, as either 120 or 140 mm options, and one 120 or 140 mm hidden away underneath that PSU cover, drawing air in from the floor (Hyte include a 120 mm here as standard, pre-routed, and cable managed for you). For exhaust, you've got three 120 mm in the roof (again, you'll need to buy and fit these), where ideally your AIO would go (although you can run it on that side-mounted location), and lastly, there's the option to theoretically install a 120 or 140mm in the rear as well (with a 120 mm coming with the case as standard).

The big party piece, however, is that vertical GPU setup. By default, Hyte includes a PCIe 4.0 riser with the Y40. There's no option to buy the case without it, and depending on which color you pick up, you'll get a similarly colored premium PCIe riser solution as well. The reason for that is the actual design of the PCIe slots. As standard, the Y40 houses seven half-height horizontal slots (one of which is taken up by the riser) and four vertical slots for your GPU. Without a riser solution, unless you're running a half-height card, you cannot use this case with a horizontal GPU.

That does mean that a lot of the builds you'll see in the Hyte Y40 are kinda homogenous with one another, the only major difference between them being which graphics card you've installed. But that does mean there's a phenomenal amount of clearance available for your GPU of choice; even the chunkiest of RTX 4090s will fit in this thing no sweat. Although, do bear in mind Hyte recommends you keep the height (depth?) of the card to 80mm for optimal airflow, so it doesn't get too close to that tempered glass panel.

As for building in the Y40, it's insanely easy to pull off. I've built in two of these multiples times now, both with air-cooled and AIO solutions, and every time the build has gone incredibly smoothly, and I'm mostly wrapped up in 45 minutes to an hour from start to finish.

That homogenous single-build style, although forcing the builder a certain route with their setup, effectively means Hyte has a lot of control over how you should build in this case. Because there's effectively only one 'way' you can build it, it can make sure that the way you build an ATX rig is as flawless as possible. Cable cutouts are perfectly matched; there's a cutout in the PSU cover that's ideal for 12VHPWR cables or PCIe power in older systems; fans are pre-routed and cable-managed, and clearances are ideal for any mid-range or premium ATX build. Although do bear in mind it doesn't support E-ATX or larger motherboards sadly, as you'd block off the cable cutouts for the 24-pin and those side connectors.

That vertical GPU in particular does a lot of the heavy lifting here too, hiding any front I/O cables, USB 2.0 internal cables, or HD Audio passthroughs located on the bottom of your motherboard, as well as blocking out those ugly GPU power cables I mentioned earlier as well.

Flip around to the back, and although cable management options here are fairly minimal (there really are only some cable tie-off points, and that's about it), it doesn't really matter, as everything is well hidden with fairly minimal effort.

In fact, it's the cable management that honestly is this case's only weakness. What it could use is some plastic channelling and velcro straps here and there to better route some of the chunkier cables, such as the 24-pin ATX and EPS power, and perhaps some rubber grommets, or a cable tidy bar, to keep everything else looking a touch more discrete from the front. Plus, if you're not careful and you just tuck all your spare cable length underneath the PSU cover, you can accidentally block the 120 mm intake fan located underneath there as well.

There's also some argument to be had that it could probably use a removable radiator bracket up top and potentially some integrated lighting as standard (something Phantek's latest XT View does remarkably well at an even lower outlay), but really, given the quality of the panels, the internal design, the sound-dampening baked into the rear, and more, it's easy to let those flaws go and just enjoy that sub $100 price.

Thing is, it's just incredibly easy to build a system in this—even a budget or entry-level rig—that looks radically good for very little outlay, and these additions could potentially bump up the cost on an already phenomenally affordable chassis.

The Y40 represents one of the best cases out there on the market today, particularly if you're looking for something that delivers top-tier quality on a shoestring budget. It's almost impossible to build a system in this thing that doesn't look good, and that is telling. With some slight tweaks and improvements here and there, the Y40 could be out of this world.

Even by those expectations the Glorious Series 2 Pro Wireless is a non-event when you pull it from the box. Yep, that's a gaming mouse alright. It's black, sits low to the table, and features two main buttons, a pair of side buttons, a DPI button on the top, and a ratcheting scroll wheel. Oh, and it's light enough to feel like it might float away at any moment. Other than that? There's nothing particularly interesting to report. The real surprise here is the price, as I nearly had to steady myself when I saw the listing on the website.

$130. One-hundred-and-thirty freedom dollars for a mouse that, for all intents and purposes, looks like the default option you'd get if you asked a 3D designer to whip one up in half an hour for a quick render. Somewhat horrified, I tucked it back in its box and resigned myself to using it later. Call it an early bias if you like, but there was nothing I could see or feel about the Series 2 Pro that suggested it might be worth $30 more than our current best gaming mouse pick, the Razer DeathAdder V3 Hyperspeed.

Speaking of bias, I have long been of the opinion that, if you're not an esports enthusiast, there's really very little point buying yourself an ultralight 8K mouse. I do not have whippet-like reaction times and supreme hand-eye co-ordination, nor have I ever been under the illusion that the thing holding me back from being a multiplayer megastar is my choice of equipment.

The Glorious Series 2 Pro mouse has an 8K polling rate, thanks to an included dongle attached to a high-quality braided cable, and its specs sheet is littered with figures that look very impressive on paper. Resigned to the idea that it would likely be very accurate and speedy in ways I'd struggle to feel or take advantage of, I settled in for a weekend of plinking around in Gray Zone Warfare.

I was wrong. Because while the Glorious Series 2 Pro is unremarkable in many ways, the way it glides, the way it responds, the slippery-yet-accurate feeling of the thing, is very noticeable.

I'm not quite sure how Glorious has managed it, given that there's nothing remarkable about the PTFE feet under this mouse compared to others, but it skates about your mousepad in a way that feels… smoother, than many other mice. It pairs particularly nicely with my cheap Corsair mouse mat, in a way that has since made me reappraise other devices I use for plinking around in a shooter on a Sunday afternoon.

The optical switches feel crisp, too. If I was picky (and being a reviewer, I am) I'd complain that the main buttons feel a little hollow, likely owing to this mouse's ultralight 55 gram weight and the concessions made in order to keep that target as low as possible. Still, they feel precise, which in combination with the satisfying click of those switches makes headshots feel snappy in a very pleasing way.

The sensor here is the Glorious BAMF 2.0 26K, and embarrassing acronyms aside, it's jolly good. I've used plenty of gaming mice with excellent sensors, like those using Logitech's Hero 25K, and I can tell that the BAMF 2.0 is comparable—if not perhaps slightly better—under real world usage. It really is a pinpoint sharp little rodent, and lots of fun to game with.

So much so, in fact, that I've found myself reaching for it whenever I'm playing something that requires a serious turn of performance, especially with that 50 G max acceleration figure and 650 IPS maximum speed, both of which are noticeable when pushed.

So that's the good—it's very light, super fast, and feels responsive and precise under duress. However, there are some caveats here that make me look at that pricing with a quizzical eyebrow raised.

The scroll wheel, for one. It's not bad, by any means. There's a pleasing weight to the action, and it's fine for regular usage. But it does feel like it's hovering over an empty case, again likely as a concession to weight. The side buttons have a shiny finish, which doesn't feel high-quality compared to the textured finish on the rest of the components. The side clicks are a little flimsy-feeling, too.

It's the little things. The odd niggle. But for a mouse that's so focussed on doing a small number of things well, little details that are 70% of what they should be—in a mouse that costs 30% more than the best we've tested—is a slight let down, no matter which way you look at it. There's a sense here that the need to put an impressive weight figure on the box has superseded the need for a premium feel, and at this price, it feels like the balance is slightly off.

And then there's the software, which is poor. Alright, it's mostly functional enough, but I've had issues with Glorious Core before in my review of the Glorious GMMK 3 HE keyboard, and they're still on display here. The interface feels archaic, the profiles are occasionally forgotten, and while you can adjust things like polling rate, debounce time, and lift off distance relatively easily, there's a feeling that you can never quite trust it to do what it says it's going to do.

All this is a real shame, because I can honestly say that I like the Glorious Series 2 Pro, even with those flaws taken into account. It might be dull to look at, but in terms of getting on with the business of being a gaming mouse, and a darn speedy, pointy, racecar-like one at that, it's quite the thing

Actually, let me lean into that racecar analogy. Consider the Series 2 Pro to be the gaming mouse equivalent of a stripped out GT3 car. It's got quirks aplenty, it's been pared to the bone a little too closely, and there are omissions regarding refinement that, as a daily driver, I'd ideally like to be put back in. But as a speed demon, it's kinda ace. It handles with aplomb, it offers most of what you need and none of what you don't, and for the most part it gets out of the way and lets you focus on taking it for a spin, with none of the fluff.

That price still seems excessive, though. Would I rather have the DeathAdder for $30 less? Sure. It's more refined, more shapely, more interesting and better designed than the Series 2 Pro. But there's something about the sensor, feet and lightness combo here that makes it a compelling option nonetheless.

Perhaps I respect it. Perhaps given the showy nature of some of its competition, I'm drawn to the fact that it's a no-frills mouse that focuses on raw performance over all else, and mostly succeeds. If competing at shooty-bangs on the internet is your thing, you may well too. For the rest of us there are more refined options available for less, and that's where your money is likely better spent. But if you like your gaming mice lean and mean, the Glorious Series 2 Pro has a lot to recommend it for.

And it's a 2025 where Nvidia hasn't slapped a $400 price hike on the most powerful of its new RTX Blackwell graphics cards.

But in this timeline, the RTX 5090 is an ultra enthusiast graphics card that is begging us to be more realistic. Which, I will freely admit, sounds kinda odd from what has always been an OTT card. But, in the real world, a GB202 GPU running on a more advanced, smaller process node, with far more CUDA cores, would have cost a whole lot more than the $1,999 the green team is asking for this new card. And would still maybe only get you another 10–20% higher performance for the money—I mean, how much different is TSMC's 3 nm node to its 4 nm ones?

The RTX 5090 is a new kind of graphics card, however, in terms of ethos if not in silicon. It's now the best graphics card you can buy, but is also a GPU designed for a new future of AI processing, and I don't just mean it's really good at generating pictures of astronauts riding horses above the surface of the moon: AI processing is built into its core design and that's how you get a gaming performance boost that is almost unprecedented in modern PC graphics, even when the core at its heart hasn't changed that much. Though it has at least changed more than the Nvidia RTX 5080 GPU has...

Nvidia RTX 5090: The verdict

The new RTX Blackwell GPU is… fine. Okay, that's a bit mean, the GB202 chip inside the RTX 5090 is better than fine, it's the most powerful graphics core you can jam into a gaming PC. I'm maybe just finding it a little tough not to think of it like an RTX 4090 Ti or Ada Titan. Apart from hooking up the Tensor Cores to the shaders, via a new Microsoft API, and a new flip metering doohicky in the display engine, it largely feels like Ada on steroids.

The software suite backing it up, however, is a frickin' marvel. Multi Frame Generation is giving me ultra smooth gaming performance, and will continue to do so in an impressively large number of games from day one.

The nexus point between hardware and software is where the RTX 5090 thrives. When everything's running like it should I'm being treated to an unparalleled level of both image fidelity and frame rates.

It's when you look at the stark contrast between a game such as Cyberpunk 2077 running at 4K native in the peak RT Overdrive settings, and then with the DLSS and 4x Multi Frame Gen bells and whistles enabled that it becomes hard to argue with Nvidia's focus on AI modeling over what it is now, rather disdainfully calling brute force rendering.

Sure, the 30% gen-on-gen 4K rendering performance increase looks kinda disappointing when we've been treated to a 50% bump from Turing to Ada and then a frankly ludicrous 80% hike from Ampere to Ada. And, if Nvidia had purely been relying on DLSS upscaling alone to gild its gaming numbers, I'd have been looking at the vanguard of the RTX 50-series with a wrinkled nose and a raised eyebrow at its $2K sticker price.

But the actual gaming performance I'm seeing out of this card in the MFG test builds—and with the DLSS Override functionality on live, retail versions of games—is kinda making me a a convert to this new AI world in which we live. I'm sitting a little easier with the idea of 15 out of 16 pixels in my games getting generated by AI algorithms when I'm playing Alan Wake 2 at max 4K settings just north of 180 fps, Cyberpunk 2077's Overdrive settings at 215 fps, and Dragon Age: Veilguard at more than 300 fps.

Call it frame smoothing, fake frames, whatever, it works from a gaming experience perspective. And it's not some laggy mess full of weird graphical artifacts mangled together in order to hit those ludicrous frame rates, either. Admittedly, there are times where you can notice a glitch caused by either Frame Gen or the new DLSS Transformer model, but nothing so game or immersion breaking that I've wanted to disable either feature and flip back to gaming at 30 fps or not run at top settings.

There are also absolutely cases where the DLSS version looks better than native res and times where those extra 'fake frames' are as convincing as any other to the naked eye. Honestly you're going to have to be really looking for problems from what I've seen so far. And I've been watching side-by-side videos while they export, where you can literally watch it move one frame at a time; the frame gen options stand up incredibly well even under such close scrutiny.

If that noggin'-boggling performance were only available in the few games I've tested it with at launch then, again, I would be more parsimonious with my praise. But Nvidia is promising the Nvidia App is going to be offering the DLSS Override feature for 75 games and apps to turn standard Frame Gen over to the new frame multiplier. And you still don't need to log in to the app to be able to flip the Multi Frame Generation switch.

And, rando PlayStation port aside, most of the games you're going to want to play over the next 12 months—especially the most feature-rich and demanding ones—will more than likely include Nvidia's full DLSS feature-set. Unless other deals take precedence… ahem… Starfield.

I will say the switch to the transformer model for DLSS hasn't been the game-changer I was expecting from the demos I witnessed at CES, but it's at the very least often better than the standard convolution neural network in terms of image quality. It's just that it will add in some oddities of its own to the mix and doesn't completely rid us of Ray Reconstruction's ghosting.

But don't get me wrong, more base level rendering grunt would always be welcome, but to get to these sorts of fps numbers with pure rendering power alone is going to take a lot of process node shrinks, more transistors than there are stars in the sky, and a long, long time. Oh, and probably cost a ton of cash, too.

Though even a little more raster power would push those AI augmented numbers up even further, and that's something which will certainly be in my mind as I put the rest of the RTX 50-series through its paces. I, for one, am a little concerned about the RTX 5070 despite those claims of RTX 4090 performance for $549.

The RTX 5090, though, is as good as it gets right now, and is going to be as good as the RTX Blackwell generation gets… until Nvidia decides it wants to use the full GB202 chip. Yields on TSMC's mature 4N node are surely pretty good this far down the line, eh?

And, oh is it ever pretty. With all the comic girth of the RTX 3090 and RTX 4090, they are just stupid-looking cards. I'm always taken aback whenever I pull one out of its box to stick in a PC. Being able to come back to the dual-slot comfort zone is testament to the over-engineering Nvidia has done with the Founders Edition, even if both the RTX 5090 cards I've tested have been some of the squealiest, coil-whiney GPUs I've tested in recent history. But your mileage and your PSU may vary, they certainly don't sound great with the test rig's Seasonic power supply.

Despite being somewhat of a loss-leader for Nvidia, this RTX 5090 Founders Edition is also likely to be as cheap as an RTX 5090 retails for over the next year. With every other AIB version sure to be bigger, and most of them more expensive, the Founders Edition is the card you should covet. And the one you will be disappointed about when you almost inevitably miss out on what will surely be slim inventory numbers.

The GPU at its heart might not be super exciting, but the potential of all the neural rendering gubbins Nvidia is laying down the groundwork for with this generation could change that given time. Right now, however, it feels more like an extension of Ada, and with the outstanding AI augmented performance really symptomatic of where we're at in time.

Still, when it comes to the raw gaming experience of using this svelte new RTX 5090 graphics card, it's literally impossible to beat with any other hardware on the planet.

Nvidia RTX 5090: The RTX Blackwell architecture

As a layman, not a huge amount seems to have changed from the Ada architecture through to the GB202 Blackwell GPU. As I've said, on the surface it feels very much like an extension of the Ada Lovelace design, though that is potentially because Blackwell is sitting on the same custom TSMC 4N node, so in terms of core counts and physical transistor space there isn't a lot of literal wiggle room for Nvidia.

There are 21% more transistors in the GB202 versus the AD102, and a commensurate 21% increase in die size. Compare that with the move from the RTX 3090 to RTX 4090, with the switch from Samsung's 8nm node to this same 4N process, Ada's top chip gave us 170% more transistors, but a 3% die shrink.

There are still 128 CUDA cores per streaming multiprocessor (SM), so the 170 SMs of the GB202 deliver 21,760 shaders. Though in a genuine change from Ada, each of those can be configured to handle both integer and floating point calculations. Gone are the dedicated FP32 units of old.

Though, interestingly, this isn't the full top-tier Blackwell GPU. The RTX 5090 has lopped off one full graphics processing cluster, leaving around 2800 CUDA cores on the cutting room floor. I guess that leaves room for a Super, Ti, or an RTX Blackwell Titan down the line if Nvidia deems it necessary.

You are getting the full complement of L2 cache, however, with near 100 MB available to the GPU. But then you are also seeing 32 GB of fast GDDR7 memory, too, on a proper 512-bit memory bus. That means you're getting a ton more memory bandwidth—78% more than the RTX 4090 could offer.

Neural Shaders

There are deeper, arguably more fundamental changes that Nvidia has made with this generation, however. Those programmable shaders have finally been given direct access to the Tensor Cores, and that allows for what the green team is calling Neural Shaders.

Previously the Tensor Cores could only be accessed using CUDA, but in collaboration with Microsoft, Nvidia has helped create the new Cooperative Vectors API, which allows any shader—whether pixel or ray tracing—to access the matrix calculating cores in both DX12 and Vulkan. This is going to allow developers to bring a bunch of interesting new AI-powered features directly into their games.

And it means AI is deeply embedded into the rendering pipeline. Which is why we do have a new slice of silicon in the Blackwell chips to help with this additional potential workload. The AI Management Processor, or AMP, is there to help schedule both generative AI and AI augmented game graphics, ensuring they can all be processed concurrently in good order.

It's that Cooperative Vectors API which will allow for features such as neural texture compression, which is touted to deliver 7x savings against VRAM usage—ostensibly part of Nvidia's dedicated push to ensure 8 GB video cards still have a place in the future. But it also paves the way for RTX Neural Radiance Cache (to enhance lighting via inferred global illumination), and RTX Neural Materials, RTX Neural Skin, and RTX Neural Faces, which all promise to leverage the power of AI models to get us ever closer to photo realism. At least get us close to the sort of image quality you'll see in offline rendered films and TV.

The new 4th Gen RT Cores aren't to be left out, and come with a couple of new units dedicated to improving ray tracing. Part of that push is something called Mega Geometry, which massively increases the amount of geometry possible within a scene. It reminds me a whole lot of when tessellation was first introduced—the moment you turn off the textures and get down to the mesh layer in the Zorah demo, which showcases the tech, you're suddenly hit by what an unfeasible level of geometry is possible in a real-time scene.

This feature has largely been designed for devs on Unreal Engine 5 utilising Nanite, and allows them to ray trace their geometry at full fidelity. Nvidia has put so much store in Mega Geometry that it has designed the new RT Cores specifically for it.

DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation

The final hardware piece of the RTX Blackwell puzzle to be dropped into the new GPU is Flip Metering. The new enhanced display engine has twice the pixel processing capability, and has been designed to take the load away from the CPU when it comes to ordering frames up for the display. The Flip Metering feature is there to enable Multi Frame Generation to function smoothly—displaying all those extra frames in between the rendered ones in good order is vital in order to stop it feeling "lumpy". That's not my phrase, that's a technical term from Nvidia's Mr. DLSS, Brian Catanzaro, and he should know.

In terms of the feature set, DLSS itself has also had a potentially big upgrade, too. Previously it used a convolutional neural network (CNN) as the base model for DLSS, which is an image-focused model, and made sense for something so image-focused as upscaling. But it's no longer the cutting edge of AI, so DLSS 4 has switched over to the transformer architecture you will be familiar with if you've used ChatGPT—the GPT bit stands for generative pre-trained transformer.

It's more efficient than CNN, and that has allowed Nvidia to be more computationally demanding with DLSS 4—though I've not really seen much in the way of a performance difference between the two forms in action.

Primarily it seems the transformer model was brought in to help Ray Reconstruction rid itself of the smearing and ghosting it suffers from, though it's also there for upscaling, too. Nvidia, however, is currently calling that a beta. Given my up and down experience with the transformer model in my testing, I can now understand why. It does feel very much like a v1.0 with some strange artifacts introduced for all the ones it helps remove.

I've saved the best new feature for last: Multi Frame Generation. I was already impressed with the original version of the feature introduced with the RTX 40-series, but it has been hugely upgraded for the RTX 50-series and is arguably the thing which will impress people the most while we wait for those neural shading features to actually get used in a released game.

It's also the thing which will really sell the RTX 50-series. We are still talking essentially about interpolation, no matter how much Jen-Hsun wants to talk about his GPU seeing four frames into the future. The GPU will render two frames and then squeeze up to three extra frames in between.

Using a set of new AI models it no longer needs dedicated optical flow hardware (potentially good news for RTX 30-series gamers), and is able to perform the frame generation function 40% faster and with a 30% reduction in its VRAM footprint. That flip metering system now means the GPU's display engine queues up each frame, pacing them evenly, so you get a smooth final experience.

The 5th Gen Tensor Cores have more horsepower to deal with the load, and the AMP gets involved, too, in order to keep all the necessary AI processing around both DLSS and Frame Generation, and whatever else they get up to in the pipeline, running smoothly.

Nvidia RTX 5090: The performance

The raw performance of the RTX 5090 is relatively impressive. As I've mentioned earlier, I'm seeing around a 30% improvement in 4K gaming frame rates over the RTX 4090, which isn't bad gen-on-gen. We have been spoiled by the RTX 30- and 40-series cards, however, and that does make this bump seem a little less exciting.

The main increase is all at that top 4K resolution, because below that the beefy GB202 GPU does start to get bottlenecked by the processor. And that's despite us rocking the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D in our test rig—I've tossed the RTX 5090 into my own rig with a Ryzen 9 7950X in it and the performance certainly drops.

And in games where the CPU is regularly the bottleneck, even at 4K, the performance delta between the top Ada and Blackwell GPUs is negligible. In Homeworld 3 the 4K performance increase is just under 9%, even worse, at 1080p the RTX 5090 actually takes a retrograde step and drops 7% in comparison.

Where the GPU is the star, however, the extra 4K frame rates are matched by the overall increase in power usage. This thing will drain your PSU and I measured the card pulling down nearly 640 W at peak during our extended Metro Exodus benchmark. The commensurate performance increase does, however, follow so the performance per watt at 4K remains the same compared with the RTX 4090.

But yes, it does start to fall down when you drop to 1440p and certainly 1080p. If you were hoping to smash 500 fps at 1080p with this card we might have to have a little chat. It will still draw a ton of power at the lower resolutions, too, which means its performance per watt metrics drop by 15%.

You might say that's not such a biggy considering you'll be looking to play your games at 4K with such a beast of a GPU, but this is a graphics card built for DLSS, and as such if you hit 4K DLSS Quality settings you're actually rendering at 1440p. That 30% 4K uplift figure is then kinda moot unless you're sticking to native rendering alone.

Which you absolutely shouldn't do because Multi Frame Generation is a game-changer, in the most literal sense. The performance difference going from Native, or even DLSS Quality is stark. With Alan Wake 2 now hitting 183 fps, with 102 fps 1% low, it's a glorious gaming experience. Everything in the graphics settings can be pushed to maximum and it'll still fly.

More importantly, the latency is only marginally higher than with just DLSS settings—the work Nvidia has done to pull that down with Multi Frame Generation is a marvel. As is the Flip Metering frame pacing. This is what allows the frames to come out in a smooth cadence, and makes it feel like you're really getting that high-end performance.

Cyberpunk 2077 exhibits the same huge increase in performance, and is even more responsive than Alan Wake 2, with just 43 ms latency when I've got 4x Multi Frame Generation on the go.

And even though Dragon Age: The Veilguard is pretty performant at 4K native, I'll happily take a 289% increase in perceived frame rate, especially when the actual PC latency on that game barely moves the needle. It's 28 ms at 4K native and 32 ms with DLSS Quality and 4x MFG.

Another benefit of the DLSS and MFG combo is that it pulls down the power and thermal excesses of the RTX 5090. I've noticed around a 50 W drop in power consumption with MFG in action, and that means the temps go down, and the GPU clock speed goes up.

Still, the overall combination of high power, high performance, and a new, thinner chassis means that the GPU temperature is noticeably higher than on the RTX 4090 Founders Edition. Running through our 4K native Metro Exodus torture test, the RTX 5090 Founders Edition averages 71 °C, with the occasional 77 °C peak. That's a fair chunk higher than the top Ada, though obviously that's with a far thinner chassis.

For me, I'd take that extra little bit of heat for the pleasure of its smaller footprint. What I will say, however, is that I did experience a lot of coil whine on our PC Gamer test rig. So much so, that Nvidia shipped me a second card to test if there was an issue with my original GPU. Having now tested in my home rig, with a 1600 W EVGA PSU, it seems like the issue arose because of how the Seasonic Prime TX 1600 W works with the RTX 5090, because in my PC the card doesn't have the same constantly pitching whine I experienced on our test rig.

The RTX 5090 being a beastly GPU, I've also taken note of what it can offer creatives as well as gamers. Obviously with Nvidia's AI leanings the thing can smash through a generative AI workload, as highlighted by the way it blows past the RTX 4090 in the UL Procyon image benchmark.

Though the AI index score from the PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve test shows that it's not all AI plain sailing for the RTX 5090. GenAI is one thing, but DaVinci Resolve's use of its neural smarts highlights only a 2.5% increase over the big Ada GPU.

Blender, though, matches the Procyon test, offering over a 43% increase in raw rendering grunt. I'm confident that extra memory bandwidth and more VRAM is helping out here.

PC Gamer test rig
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D | Motherboard: Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master | RAM: G.Skill 32 GB DDR5-6000 CAS 30 | Cooler: Corsair H170i Elite Capellix | SSD: 2 TB Crucial T700 | PSU: Seasonic Prime TX 1600W | Case: DimasTech Mini V2

Nvidia RTX 5090: The analysis

When is a game frame a real frame? This is the question you might find yourself asking when you hear talk of 15 out of 16 pixels being generated by AI in a modern game. With only a small amount of traditional rendering actually making it onto your display, what counts as a true frame? I mean, it's all just ones and zeros in the end.

So, does it really matter? For all that you might wish to talk about Multi Frame Generation as fake frames and just frame-smoothing rather than boosting performance, the end result is essentially the same: More frames output onto your screen every second. I do understand that if we could use a GPU's pure rendering chops to hit the same frame rates it would look better, but my experience of the Blackwell-only feature is that often-times it's really hard to see any difference.

Nvidia suggests that it would take too long, and be too expensive to create a GPU capable of delivering the performance MFG is capable of, and certainly it would be impossible on this production node without somehow making GPU chiplets a thing. It would be a tall order even just to match the performance increase the RTX 4090 offered over the RTX 3090 in straight rendering.

But that's the thing, the RTX 4090's 80% performance bump is living in recent memory, rent-free in the minds of gamers. Not that that sort of increase is, or should necessarily be expected, but it shows it's not completely beyond the realms of possibility. It's just that TSMC's 2N process isn't even being used by Apple this year, and I don't think anyone would wait another year or so for a new Nvidia series of GPUs.

Though just think what a die-shrink and another couple year's maturity for DLSS, Multi Frame Gen, and neural rendering in general might mean for the RTX 60-series. AMD, be afraid, be very afraid. Or, y'know, make multiple GPU compute chiplets a thing in a consumer graphics card. Simple things, obvs.

Still, if the input latency had been an issue then MFG would have been a total non-starter and the RTX Blackwell generation of graphics cards would have felt a lot less significant with its rendering performance increase alone. At least at launch. The future-gazing features look exciting, but it's far too early to tell just how impactful they're going to be until developers start delivering the games that utilise the full suite of neural shading features.

It would have certainly been a lot tougher for Nvidia to slap a $2,000 price tag onto the RTX 5090 and get away with it. With MFG it can legitimately claim to deliver performance twice that of an RTX 4090. Without it, a sole 30% 4K performance bump wouldn't have been enough to justify a 25% increase in pricing.

What I will say in Nvidia's defence on this is that the RTX 4090 has been retailing for around the $2,000 mark for most of its existence, so the real world price delta is a lot smaller. At least compared to the RTX 5090's MSRP. How many, and for how long we'll see actual retail cards selling for this $1,999 MSRP, however, is tough to say. It's entirely likely the RTX 5090's effective selling price may end up closer to the $2,500 or even $3,000 mark once the AIBs are in sole charge of sales as the Founders Edition stock runs dry.

I can see why Nvidia went with the RTX 5090 first as the proponent of Multi Frame Generation. The top-end card is going to benefit far more from the feature than cards lower down the stack, with less upfront rendering power to call on. Sure, Nvidia claims the RTX 5070 can hit RTX 4090 performance with MFG, but I'm going to want to see that in a few more games before I can get onboard with the claims.

The issue with frame generation has always been that you need a pretty high level of performance to start with, or it ends up being too laggy and essentially a bit of a mess. The most demanding games may still be a struggle for the RTX 5070 even with MFG, but I guess we'll find out soon enough come February's launch.

Until then, I'll just have to sit back and bask in the glorious performance Nvidia's AI chops are bringing in alongside the RTX 5090.

The middle entry in Square Enix’s ambitious planned trilogy remaking one of the most iconic games of all time, Rebirth sees the cast of 2020’s Final Fantasy 7 Remake on the road, having escaped from the industrial city Midgar to travel the world and hunt down the evil hottie Sephiroth. As Square Enix proudly claims, it’s a "standalone game that welcomes fans and newcomers alike," and—wait, are we sure about that?

I don't know how Square Enix got that idea in its head, but take it from me: Rebirth is the most sequel a sequel has ever sequel’d. There’s a video summary you can watch to get yourself up to speed, but once you hit New Game all bets are off, with anyone unlucky enough to start here plunged headfirst into the complex world-building and character arcs that’ve already been stacking up for 40+ hours or 28 years, depending on how you look at it. And that’s to say nothing of the incidental Remake faces you’ll encounter. It seems like the entire population of Midgar decided to leave with the main cast, because I was constantly finding folks I could barely remember, and just as many that I couldn’t at all.

Rebirth isn’t shy about bringing in ideas and folks from the game’s wider universe, known as the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7. This isn’t just the second entry in a series, it’s the latest chapter in a saga with decades of ever-expanding lore. It wants you to experience the 1997 original, to watch the movie, to read the spin-off books, and to play the battle royale mobile game that’s already been shut down. Rebirth is the Final Fantasy 7 cruise: everybody is here, and you’re stuck on the boat, the extra lore baggage only confusing an overly complicated plot with knowing nods and the vague idea of a mystery slowing the ship to a crawl.

(Not) a small world

In keeping with a game that's proudly unrestrained, the heroes are now free from the constrictive streets and slums of Midgar. Ditching tight corridors for massive open world zones, Rebirth highlights Final Fantasy 7’s environmentalist message by constantly dwarfing the player in a lush, vibrant world. Look left and see giant snow-capped mountains; look right and admire the shipwrecked ruins of a gigantic boat in the ever-expanding ocean.

It doesn’t matter where you are or where you point the camera, the action in Rebirth is constantly framed by the awe-inspiring hugeness of nature. The world of Gaia is beautiful, and unshackled from the constraints of the PS5 is able to sing the way it was always meant to—previously shoddy framerates now uncapped and damagingly low resolutions made crystal clear.

Throw in a contender for the greatest soundtrack in Final Fantasy history—packed with rousing choirs, prog rock noodling, and even an electropop bop about a very, very good pup—and Rebirth becomes one of those rare games where just looking at a digital landscape is enough to get me a bit emotional. Gazing out at rolling hills packed with flowers, the lifestream of the planet escaping the earth in delicate green wisps as the iconic overworld theme idyllically sings in the background and I can’t help but let all sorts of cornball sentiments about the beauty of our planet well up in me.

Tragically, unlike the wonder these vistas inspire, the activities you can find in them are as plain as they come. The ever-obnoxious Chadley returns from Remake to constantly interrupt your adventuring so he can tell you about his "world intel" activities, which amount to little more than bland busywork. Here I am in the most beautiful locales I’ve ever seen, ignoring them to scan the ground for materials and hidden lifestream pools, or climb the prerequisite open world towers to reveal more of the map. This needless padding quickly wore on my patience, feeling less like exciting ways to explore the world and more like keys being dangled in front of my face.

Fantastic fights

Luckily for Rebirth, any grumbling from picking up another piece of grass vanishes the second I get into battle. Building on the foundations set up in Remake, Rebirth combines lightning-quick real-time action with the ATB-based menuing the Final Fantasy series is famous for. Every action—every swing of the sword into a skull or blocking of a bullet—builds up a meter that, when full, lets you jump into super slow-motion to hurry through menus to select an ability or spell to unleash. The result is the chess boxing of RPG battle systems, a beautiful ebb and flow rhythm that rewards my love of turn-based tactics while also satisfying my primal desire to go ham on the controller.

With each member of the party playing so radically different from one another that any of them could star in their own action game, these brawls also end up as perfect personality showcases for one of the strongest casts in gaming. I could feel ninja Yuffie’s hyperactive teen energy as she zipped around like a little lightning bolt, or weirdo cat-puppet-thing Cait Sith’s trickster vibe, his arsenal full of RNG-guided abilities, in a way more immediate and physical than ever before. The same goes for relationships, highlighted with the introduction of tag-team synergy attacks packed with enough fan service to convince any FF7 lover that they’ve found heaven. Aerith throwing on some shades to pose with Barrett is so charming that, for a second, I was ready to marry the game.

But beyond the rhythm and personality, the secret that kept me hooked on the battle system lies in the art of the pause.

Every single time I open up that menu and slow time down to a crawl, the battlefield finds itself in some unspeakably awesome configuration. The gauge fills up and suddenly I’m looking at a bullet whizz inches from Cloud’s face as he buries his giant sword into some poor sap, Barrett in the background gatling down a monster bird; a second later I’m pausing again and Cloud is a mile away in the sky, letting the weight of the sword turn him into a flying death machine while Tifa pops a baddie up to him with a flashy uppercut. Fights in Rebirth are diorama generators, infinite gardens of delight for the videogame photographer. It sucks that the otherwise robust options are lacking any way to disable its aggressive motion blur, sometimes turning what should be a moving work of art into a cartoon dust ball of arms and legs. But when it doesn’t? Simply sublime.

Little amusements

What a shame you spend so much time doing everything but fighting, then. Beyond its obsession with open world activities, Rebirth also boasts what feels like a Mario Party’s worth of minigames. Some, like Queen’s Blood—the latest in the time-honored Final Fantasy tradition of including an optional card game—are more than good enough to be released as standalone games, while others, like gliding chocobos through Superman 64 hoops are… less inspired. I appreciate the sheer variety packed into Rebirth, but at some point—around when I was forced to ride a finicky segway and play Rocket League But With Dogs—I was begging for the game to get on with it, already.

And that’s ultimately my big issue with Rebirth. It doesn’t have anywhere to go.

Rebirth has the unenviable task of being the middle part of a trilogy that probably shouldn’t have been a trilogy in the first place. Stuck adapting not a whole lot of story, the game has to find some way to justify itself, and it tries to do that with too many mindless activities in open fields, too many extended mini-game breaks, and Cait Sith deciding that you have to suffer through an entirely pointless dungeon just because.

Narratively, it tries its best to disguise this issue by taking an increasing interest in sophomoric multiverse plays that exist only to create puzzle boxes for the audience to ponder over. But pry those boxes open and what’s inside? Absolutely nothing. For as much as the game wants to be a commentary on its own legacy, how Final Fantasy 7 has evolved beyond its creators over the decades, it pulls back every time it inches towards saying anything of interest on the topic. It’s hungry for change, but too wrapped up in its own reverence, too afraid of betraying its legacy, to take that necessary step forward.

Being so devoted to Final Fantasy 7 means that there’s a lot of love to be found in Rebirth. And as a fan of that original game, it was so easy, for a while at least, to be swept up in the dazzling sights of Gaia, in the vibrant amusement park of games and sidequests at my fingertips, to hop on this rollercoaster journey with many of my all-time favorite characters and give myself to the joy of being able to spend more time with them. But all the charm and pageantry in the world can only distract me for so long before I realize: nothing has happened this whole vacation. The ship hasn’t even left the dock.

The creators of my favourite extreme downhill biking game, Descenders, went on to make an extreme snowboarding game, and now the creators of my second favourite extreme downhill biking game, Lonely Mountain: Downhill, have made an extreme skiing game. I'm not going to pretend to be surprised by this: all of these sports are good because they're fast and dangerous, especially at sharp gradients.

The problem, as I see it, is that bikes are better than the other two, and there are far too few mountain biking games. I love bikes. I love the quiet zip of their cogs and wheels. I love the distinct subtleties of the momentum born of pedalling. For the first couple of hours spent playing Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders, I really wished I was playing Lonely Mountains: Downhill instead. Skis are clumsier than bikes. They don't get fast quite as quickly as a bike. But I gradually learned the orthodoxies of going fast down technical hills on skis, and once I figured out how to go faster quicker, Snow Riders started to click gloriously into place, to the extent that now I think I love skis more than bikes.

First I learned that to gain speed quickly, I need to go downhill first without crouching, and then tuck in tight to become a human bullet. My next lesson was one the loading screens constantly reminded me about, but I was slow to learn: braking is important. On a bike, brakes slow the bike down, and at super high speeds this is more likely to lead to imprecision if not death. It’s kinda the same on skis, but with the right know-how applied, and with fast reflexes, I can usually maintain my speed while taking some of the trickier pins and bends.

There are a lot more subtleties to learn, such as the benefits of skiing backwards, and the finer details of the trick system, but my point is that eventually I came to love skiing. And you don't need to learn all of Snowriders' subtleties to have a good time with it: you can ignore tricks entirely and still get sucked into setting faster and faster times on each downhill course.

Like its predecessor, each of the 12 handmade point-to-point tracks in Snow Riders is viewed from a fixed camera perspective. Sometimes the camera hovers behind my skier, sometimes it takes an isometric view, and quite often it floats ridiculously in front. This lends the Lonely Mountains games a dreamlike cinematic mood, but it also emphasises that these "zen" games have little truck with realism. Snow Riders doesn’t try to be a skiing simulator. It focuses instead on evoking the myriad conflicting moods of high-risk high-reward pursuits. I would describe Snow Riders as a reflex-oriented cosy game with bucket loads of failure.

I realise there’s a category error in that: if there’s a quality that seems to unite "cosy" games, it’s that they usually forego death or any other conventional videogame punishment. In Snow Riders, like in Downhill, you’re probably going to die every 30 seconds or so, at least. In the campaign it’s necessary to complete courses either without dying or within a certain tight time period in order to unlock further tracks and thus progress. This will usually require countless retries before I've nailed a record by the skin of my teeth. That’s a lot of pressure, sure, but the pressure is alleviated in two ways.

The first is by avoiding the pressure altogether. There’s a "zen" mode that just lets me muck around on any track I like, even if I haven’t unlocked them in the campaign. In zen mode, I can also place checkpoints wherever I like on a map, which not only eliminates the frustration of repeating difficult sections, but also lets me focus on the primal joy of hurtling fast down hills without death or clever wayfinding occupying my mind. The latter is important in the campaign, because as in Downhill there are usually several ways to navigate any given bend or drop, and finding the most expedient route that I’m skilled enough to pull off is one of the things I love most about this series.

The second "cosy" aspect is just the vibe. As many have remarked about Downhill, Snow Riders is just a gorgeously atmospheric game. Instead of music, we hear the gentle winds of ethereally lethal cliff-scapes; instead of V8 engines, we hear the mushy drones of skidding blades and disrupted snow. The landscapes in Snow Riders have a sense of amplified reality that is both feasible but questionable: sometimes the ostensibly realistic tracks narrow into surreal spirals, or turn onto two-storeyed bridges that thatch bizarrely through the otherwise too-rugged expanse. These lapses in realism are all the more effective for their rarity, and they usually arrive without any build-up or warning.

If I were to draw a parallel, it would be with that famous free-gliding sequence in Journey, or more obscurely, with Superflight. The lack of music is important: this is a lucid interpretation of what going dangerously down hills might really feel like, ladled with the blissful certainty that you’ll never break a bone or suffer brain damage. Equally important is that Snow Riders doesn’t try to psyche me out when I fail or overly praise me when I succeed. When I die, the game doesn’t make a fuss about it. When I do something brilliant, my brilliance goes unremarked.

But don’t get me wrong: Lonely Mountains is also an incredibly tough dexterity-testing racer for those who seek challenge, and this sequel places extra emphasis on this thanks to its online competitive modes. There’s a realtime racing mode for up to eight players—no ghosts here, you can collide with your opponents—as well as a cooperative mode that grants six manually placed checkpoints to the team and tasks them with earning as many points without dying as possible, with all points banked at checkpoints. The races feel a lot like the core game, just with other players and end-of-play stat screens full of bragging rights. I can see myself coming to this again and again, though the cooperative mode feels a little at odds with the straightforward unfussiness of the rest of the game.

The success of Snow Riders lies in its minor details: the slow realisation that flat ice surfaces can be a help rather than a hindrance, the gradual hard-earned understanding of airborne momentum, and the fact that each "death" leaves all previous ski tracks in the snow, making it easier to finetune adventurous routes.

Amid all this learning, and all of the rapidfire decisions needed to pull off a successful run, lies Snow Riders' secret ingredient: the quiet. There’s no effort to compensate for the awkward aural peace of skiing, no burgeoning strings or loud breakbeats. Snow Riders luxuriates in the lofty drone of skis against impossible mountains. It’s beautiful, terrifying, sometimes exhausting, but it never loses its chill. It's the kind of game I'll probably play for half-an-hour every month for the rest of my life.

Quality and comfort are paramount to controller choice. These aren’t things I expected of the Neo S based on initial impressions garnered from its awkwardly boxy looking form.

This large rectangle looks about as comfortable as a dad delivering ‘the talk’ far too late while sitting on a pineapple, wearing wet socks. In reality, this deceptive daddy is surprisingly cool with everything. What I mean is, CRKD's Neo S is super, and surprisingly, comfortable. I’ve gamed for hours on this thing and haven’t had so much as a hand twinge.

It’ll also pair with basically anything willing, and quickly change between them as necessary. Once set up, I can easily swap the Bluetooth connection from Switch to iPad to Android phone by holding different buttons on the D-pad when connecting. What's really surprising is how responsive the connection is.

In this house we've been hammering some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate—aka TMNT flavoured Hades with couch coop—so out of curiosity we did some controller swapping. None of us noticed much difference between the CRKD's connection and that of the Xbox controllers on their specialised dongle. We did the same test with some Serious Sam silliness and were all just as happy to play on the Neo S for both connection and comfort. This led me to getting in some Doom eternal—changing between the Neo S and Xbox and not really feeling like either performed better.

At only 192 grams, according to two of my kitchen scales, it’s quite nifty to have while travelling and the Bluetooth connection holds really well as long as the device is within a few metres, with no latency issues so far. The internal battery lasts an age and it sports a USB Type-C port for charging as well as a wired connection (you better believe it can even do both at once) so I don’t have to bring any extra lengths of wire for my journey.

With enjoyment being key in gaming, customisation to personal satisfaction is a huge boon. This CRKD brick once again surprises in being one of the more flexible controllers in this regard. Software isn't required as everything can be altered via button combinations on the controller itself, if you can remember them. It's possible to adjust the rumble motor side and strength, trigger sensitivity, stick dead zones, configuring turbo mode, and full button remapping, including turning off the back triggers.

Thankfully, the mobile app is available and gives a straightforward alternative method to change most of these, complete with visuals. I just wish it gave options to save different configs to profiles or even connections. Having it automatically load up my Zelda config when paired to the Switch and Hades when on PC, for example, would be next level. Still this is a lot of functionality and quality for a controller that’s only $90 AUD.

The app can also pair, register and even check the rarity of the controller which is assigned by an arbitrary number, if you’re into that sort of thing. There’s a manual section that links to the downloadable PDF. It’s refreshingly full of useful, clear instructions for pairing, plus all those button combinations for app free customisation. Unfortunately for me flying from Australia to Europe, a download link rather than in app file (even after downloading it) is somewhat less helpful when you’re on a plane with no net trying to figure this stuff out.

All these wonderful modern implementations almost feel concealed by the retro styling of the CRKD Neo S. It’s a controller I’d easily assume was going for form over function with not only its shape but its livery. It comes in an array of pretty cool looking shell designs that range from painted cherry blossoms to retro styled casings. I’m rocking the clear transparent for the joy of seeing the tech under the hood. While undeniably styling, it gives off a Cheeto dust covered sticky button 2 player energy. I’m almost surprised whenever I pick it up and the face buttons and D-pad feel fast and responsive, the Hall effect sticks smooth, and while not DualSense level, the triggers are quite robust.

It’s not at the level of your $300+ pro controllers but for a third of that price it punches far above its meagre 192 grams. WASD may reign superior for effective head clicking, and I certainly indulge in its superior accuracy for competitive PC shooters, but it comes at a cost to my natural enjoyment. The CRKD Neo S is a surprisingly well built, comfortable, and versatile controller, and more to the point, I had a lot of fun playing games with the CRKD Neo S.

At under $200, this feels like a smart camera that just happens to support 4K video support at up to 30 fps. Google Meet, Zoom, and most other conferencing support can only go up to 1080p max and even Discord only supports 4K with a Discord Nitro subscription.

This is assuming you even have the connection to stream that sort of resolution to whoever is on the other side of the call and the recipient has the connection to receive it.

However, I can see a genuine use case if you're a YouTube creator of any kind, and want to use your webcam to take up a decent chunk of the screen rather than just a small corner at the top. If you do cutaway jokes to your face or it takes up a sizable amount of your screen, a 4K webcam can signal quality to a viewer.

The Tiny 2 Lite just so happens to have a whole host of little features that will make it even more enticing. Even if you only plan on using the Tiny 2 Lite in its 1080p, at this price, there are still a few solid reasons to make that upgrade.

Where this came ahead of the pretty great OBSBot Meet 2 for me is its stand. Where the Meet 2 struggles to hold on to the top of a monitor, especially when it's connecting with a thicker USB-C cable, this stand clips on firmly and is strong enough to withstand the gimbal spinning almost all the way around.

Even a shake of the monitor (which I'd generally advise against) won't free it from the firm clasp the Tiny 2 Lite has on it. The stand also has threading on the bottom, just in case you want to pop the whole thing on a tripod.

When turned off, the camera swings down, which is a bit of a showy way of giving you some privacy. It's a useful feature for anyone who is just a little cautious of camera lenses in their devices. Plug the webcam in and join a meeting to see the entire thing spring into life. This is helped by a truly tremendous automatic focus, that can pick up a box directly in front of the lens almost immediately.

This works well for small or large items you put into frame, so you don't even need to place your hand behind your item, like you may be accustomed to from Mukbangs and makeup tutorials.

OBSBot Tiny 2 Lite autofocus testing.

Recording at 4K, you can get up to 30 fps but that goes up to 60 fps in 1080p. With apps like OBS supporting a 4K video feed, this is one of the best ways to actually get the most out of this webcam. Luckily, either way, that half-inch CMOS sensor is a wonder for its size, providing accurate colour and vibrancy in video.

The microphone is also adequate, not giving the clarity of something dedicated but enough to be heard in meetings.

The camera can struggle a little with the light around windows from a distance but handles that light with ease when up close. I did, however, spot a strange AI problem when it comes to lighting and colours. You can put your hand up to get the camera to autofocus onto your face, or turn off that feature.

I decided to show up to the PC Gamer office with a pink overcoat and, against that backdrop, it struggled to pick up the pasty pink shade of my fingers. I had to hold it just above my shoulder to get it to work. I guess the Tiny 2 Lite just doesn't appreciate fashion when it sees it.

However, that feature, apart from making you look like you're putting your hand up to ask your teacher a question, tends to work rather quickly. You can tell when it's on because the usual green light beside the lens goes blue. When it focuses on your face, you can effectively walk around the entire room and the little camera, with its attached gimbal, will follow you. Though perhaps a tad niche, the movement of the camera is smooth enough to not disorient on a call.

Some of the other AI features are more superfluous. By holding up your hand in an L shape, you can get the camera to zoom in on your face. This could work for a gag in a stream or video but the two or so seconds it takes to register the signal would choreograph the joke. You could also do it for specific tutorials around your face like makeup but, once again, this is a bit niche and slow to get regular use from me.

You can also hold up an L shape in each hand and bring your hands closer together or further away to change the zoom. Unfortunately, this too is rather slow which means you are better off using the app if you want a very specific zoom and it can be a bit finicky if your hand passes by a colour too close to your skin colour. In a pinch, it works fine though.

The OBSBot software, which can be used to get updates for your webcam, is super solid. Split up into 'console', 'image', and 'more', all functions are in those three central categories. In console, you can adjust how AI tracking works, from following you as a person, to focusing on a group or your hands.

The first set of tracking targets automatically follows your face but can be set to adjust for your upper body, a close-up of your face, a headless shot, or perhaps the strangest, a video tracking your lower body. I don't know what that would really be used for and, at this point, I'm too afraid to ask.

Also in 'console', you can change the lens (in a software sense) from wide, to medium to narrow, and manually adjust the gimbal. If it has lost tracking or you want to swing the whole thing around, you can do so from here. Luckily, accounting for how far it can turn both left and right, you can effectively get a 360-degree view with this camera, though it can't swing all the way around from a single side.

'Image' can adjust HDR, which, unfortunately, has very little effect. The view is a little lighter on my HDR screen but, without being told, I think I would just assume individual images are products of small lighting changes and not a full-on new function. However, this section can also change exposure, focus, and adjust some image settings.

It's nice to have easy access to customisation but I actually found the webcam to be well-adjusted for most environments straight out of the box—another great feature for streamers.

With the OBSBot Tiny 2 Lite, you are paying for that 4K video quality, and it will go mostly unnoticed in the majority of streaming or video conferencing setups but you aren't paying all that much more for it, when even the best webcam right now (the Elgato Facecam MK.2) is only tens of dollars cheaper.

If you want a webcam capable of high quality and consistent 1080p recording, with the option for higher quality video should the mood strike you, the Tiny 2 Lite strikes an excellent balance between budget and performance. Its gimbal stand makes it perfect for a conference (or if you just have a lot of energy in your 9 AM meetings) and its built-in software is intuitive and customizable.

Some functions in this webcam may get lost on the average webcam user but getting started really is just as easy as plugging it in and pointing it in the right direction. Hey, it's so functional you practically don't even have to do that.

The Fractal Design Terra is a compact case measuring 343 x 153 x 218 mm. It can house a Mini-ITX motherboard, SFX PSU, and a graphics card—up to 322 mm in length. There's space for a single 120 mm case fan and two 2.5-inch drives. It's a dual-chamber design with adjustable width, though it's pretty slim for space whichever way it's laid out.

To put those measurements into perspective, it's dwarfed by the largest of my two cats.

To test the Terra, I set out to build a powerful yet compact mini PC powered by an RTX 4070 Super and Ryzen 7 9700X. I was expecting some hiccups, issues, or annoyances when setting out this build. It's a small form factor PC, I thought to myself, I'm destined for a couple cut fingers and mutter at least one curse word under my breathe. Maybe a few choice words, to be truthful.

But the build was a breeze. It came together with next to no issues. The only minor fault I ran into was of my own creation, in trying to stuff the fan on the Noctua NH-L12S on the outside of the heatsink rather than tucked between the cooler and CPU. Optimistic—but the Terra saw to a simple fix.

Besides the (real) wood panel adorning its front panel's lower quarter, the Terra's best feature are its gull-wing doors. That's overselling them—the side panels are hinged. Shifting the side panels up to one side is handy though removing them altogether is even better. That's easily done by just pulling a small locking mechanism on one of the two hinges and levering the panel off. Both panels remove in this way and, with them gone, you can access the innards like a crazed surgeon.

The central motherboard tray and mount for the PSU straddles the centre of the case. It's held in place on a sliding bracket, which can be loosened up very easily with a few screws. This can be shifted forward and backwards by a couple centimeters. You can do this mainly for two reasons: to make way for a bigger GPU or a bigger CPU cooler. With the slimline RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition prepared for this build, I only needed to knock back the tray on the GPU side to make way for the Noctua NH-L12S. That was about the biggest cooler I could fit in this build, too, as there's not much wiggle room. That's why the 9700X was a good choice with a 65 W TDP—anything more might get a bit toasty.

The motherboard is mostly easy to reach for installing cables, though I did struggle to get the CPU power connection in place. So, there's a piece of advice if you're planning your own Terra build: plug in your CPU power cable before you install the motherboard.

The case offers a PSU mounted vertically, which would be a pain to reach if the bracket holding it in place wasn't removable itself. That's done with a couple of tiny screws, which were a bit awkward to reinstall with the PSU fitted.

The power cables have ample but not roomy space to fall out of the unit into the base of the chassis. Right into the firing line of the only space available for a case fan. Fractal provides no mesh or form of protection from cables falling directly into a fan blade at full whack but it needn't have to with a little cable management. Using a modular PSU with freedom to remove unnecessary cables, Thermaltake's Toughpower SFX Platinum 750W, I wrapped the cables firmly out of the way in the little remaining space leftover on the motherboard side of the case. I should note I, rather foolishly, did this and then installed the Noctua NF-A12x25 fan. That was another mistake of my own making, but it worked out after a little push and pull.

The extra fan isn't a requirement but my temperatures were better than you'd expect from a cramped build such as this. I'd chalk up some of that to the extra air whizzing around the case. Both side panels are vented across most of the surface area for a little more breathing room and there's technically space for a tiny 120 mm radiator, though it requires massively cutting down to a low-end GPU. It's just not that usable for most.

The PSU is connected to the rear power port via an extension cable. The on/off switch on the PSU is therefore unaccessible without opening the case. Though, like I've mentioned already, that's as easy as lifting the side panel up and hitting the switch. The problem is not a problem.

Installing the GPU was about as easy as any PC build. The chassis comes with a PCIe 4.0 riser pre-installed, which only needs to be plugged into the motherboard and left in-situ on the GPU side. It's a pretty normal GPU installation from there, providing you have the room. There's plenty length at 322 mm, though width-wise you're more limited between 72 mm and 43 mm.

With a small case such as this, I was surprised how quickly it all came together. An empty husk of a chassis at one point in the afternoon, a functioning gaming PC later that very same afternoon. No fuss, no fiddly bits, and no breakdowns (the PC or myself). It's a bit of a magnet for marks in this black colourway but that's one of very few complaints I have with it. That's a tremendous badge of honour for a tiny chassis.

Oh, and did I mention this one is cute as all heck?

Getting it out of the box, the Pimax Crystal Light has a fairly sci-fi aesthetic, with the main screen housed in a casing that is not only quite wide but made up of a mass of edges.

The very front of the headset has a silver visor-like accent, which reminds me of LeVar Burton's character in Star Trek: The Next Generation or, perhaps a little cooler, a medieval knight. I didn't feel particularly cool in the headset, mostly because that look was accompanied by groans of getting the wires just the right way to avoid the whole headset feeling too cumbersome.

Though you can do little things like tidying the cables to make it all feel a little better on the head, I found the Pimax Crystal Light to be not very uncomfortable at all. The shape around the head is good and cushioned faceplates work well to offset some of that weight but it's all very front-heavy. I still felt that dreaded pressure on the nose that is so common with VR but, within 20 minutes, started to feel it on my entire face.

You can do some messing around with the weight, or get an extra strap to balance it out, but playing with this headset very quickly drained me. As well as this, that included wire gets even more finicky when you realise the whole thing is proprietary.

There is a single mass of cables that cannot be unplugged from the headset without tearing the whole thing apart, which not only limits how far you can walk away from your gaming PC but also means that a rogue cat gnawing a wire could see the end of the entire thing.

This also makes troubleshooting harder as there are three separate cables to unplug and plug back in, being the power outlet, USB-A, and DisplayPort. Given how dependent this is on those specific ports present in your rig, this makes VR gaming on a gaming laptop a bit harder too.

However, even if you manage to get an adapter into the DisplayPort and get the whole VR headset set up and ready to go, you have to consider performance. At a mighty impressive 2880 x 2880 per eye, you need something capable of actually rendering all of that directly into your headset. Luckily, Pimax does what it can to accommodate that graphical intensity with fixed-foveated rendering.

Without eye tracking like that found in the standard Pimax Crystal, this instead chooses to render things in the centre of the headset at a higher fidelity, with those outside of it at a lower quality. This rendering technique can be noticeable when you try to find it but mostly works rather well to get a little more performance out of your rig.

To put that 2880 x 2880 resolution into context, this is effectively one of the strongest resolution VR headsets on the mainstream market, behind Pimax's own 8K and 12K headsets and Varjo's XR4.

It places it fractionally ahead of the Varjo Aero and Varjo VR-3. At its price point of around $800, it outpaces many of them in price, even though it's a pretty big investment to make into a VR headset. This is a decent price point for high-end VR.

The aspheric Mini-LED lenses in the Crystal Light are nice and bright but going for this tech over the more popular pancake style has tacked on some mass in the headset itself at 815 g (29 oz) total. The Meta Quest 3 isn't super light yet shaves 300 g (11 oz) off this.

Unfortunately, this means that in active games like Beat Saber and Synth Riders, I felt myself constantly battling against the weight of the headset and the pull of the cable. It is looped in the headset itself, which helps alleviate some weight but not enough to stop me from getting into the habit of just holding the wire as I play. Playing the Nyan Cat theme in Pistol Whip is hard enough without the headset also working against me.

However, the headset is much better in slower games like A Fisherman's Tale, Red Matter, and Vacation Simulator. The clarity of the lenses adds a lot to play and a wide FOV of 115 degrees is excellent for immersive games. This brings me to perhaps the single best reason to pick up a Pimax: racing sim and cockpit games.

This feels like a headset intended for the likes of F1 22, Dirt Rally 2.0, and even space exploration games like No Man's Sky and that makes a lot of sense when you get situated in your gaming chair.

The extra FOV helps realise the size and space of the cockpit and driving games, a genre that has always managed to look rather pretty and feel especially crisp. I could see that long-term discomfort making endurance races much more difficult but it's fine while seated for a few races.

The swap from base station to inside-out tracking is smart, as it makes the set-up process a little easier, but the tracking itself is mostly just fine. Passthrough is grainy and in black and white and I did lose connection to my controls sometimes, though not nearly enough to pose any real problems with gameplay.

The controllers are mostly fine, taking after the look of the Meta Quest 2 controllers with their iconic ring design, but feeling a bit lighter and less sturdy. They feel heavily of plastic but are mostly comfortable in the palms.

The Pimax Crystal Light feels somewhat niche to me, though not nearly as much as the Pimax Crystal. Cutting away some of the things that made the Pimax Crystal so expensive like its standalone mode, yet keeping a high resolution, up to 120 Hz refresh rate, and Mini-LED Display, this outshines the main competitors in specific areas but lacks the punch in overall feel and intuitiveness.

In short bursts, with the cable wrapped around my arm or on top of the chair I'm sitting on, I really see the vision here. The clear visuals, high FOV and good refresh rate make for an immersive experience in VR experiences that are mostly stationary. However, I've always used VR as a way to blow off steam or think about things after a long day and the setup process, comfort, weight, and general finickiness of the entire headset feel like it defeats that purpose.

With the Pimax Crystal Light, I feel like I've played the most promising VR headset of a few years ago but, outside of a few specific use cases, there are a handful of headsets I'd reach to over this one, even if it means a picture downgrade.

On the plus side, I need less raw computing power for it too. If you aren't quite as bothered as me by a cumbersome headset or only really play cockpit-bound games, this headset is well worth a look but, as a more general device, this Pimax device is Crystal clear but not very Light.

Logitech's version of SOCD is called Key Priority, and it effectively allows you to make software shortcuts for how it handles opposite commands. When you tap the d and a keys together, instead of standing still, it can prioritise the last used key, the first used key, or a specific one each time.

This was banned in Counter-Strike 2, as it was judged to give an unfair advantage to players who didn't know how to strafe effectively, which, I think, is why it isn't really mentioned that much in the keyboard's marketing materials.

What is mentioned, however, is that rapid trigger implementation which, alongside custom actuation, adds so much to Logitech's current lineup. With the launch of the Pro X Superlight 2 Dex and Logitech G Pro Lightspeed, I found myself wondering what they would really add to the average Logitech gamer's life, even if they were solid upgrades. I don't need to wonder about that with the TKL Rapid, as its selling point is practically in the name.

Starting with the rapid trigger. This has long been a selling point of Wooting, our previous pick for the best gaming keyboard for rapid trigger before being dethroned by the SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3. Rapid trigger lets you adjust the sensitivity for when you let go of a switch, which not only allows you more control over long presses but makes consistent pressing much quicker.

If you want to stop moving in the likes of Valorant, which penalises you for shooting while moving, this allows you the absolute quickest response time. This keyboard is also wired only, which makes some sense as even the slightest amount of latency would discount the reason for getting rapid trigger keys in the first place.

You can also customise actuation, which is how far down you have to press a key to register a hit. Impressively, this can go anywhere from 0.1 mm all the way up to 4.0 mm, which, turns out, is less than I naturally hit keys anyway. I know this because Logitech G Hub, the software for Logitech gear, tells you how hard you press individual keys when you're in the 'actuation point' tab. This helps to contextualise the types of actuation that works for you.

As the keys can register how far they are away from the analogue switches, you can actually set two actuation points with each key, like walking when you press down to 2 mm and running when you press 4 mm down.

You can either use rapid trigger, multi-actuation, or SOCD individually, but not at the same time.

The G Pro X TKL Rapid has a very smooth typing experience. Lubricated switches ensure everything goes down with little pressure and the custom actuation points help to avoid most of those pesky mistypes. It's a very loud keyboard, much more so than the Logitech G915X Lightspeed, SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3, and other keyboards I have to hand. I quite like the clackiness of it all, but in an office space or with a partner who is a bit more sensitive to sound, this may soon get irritating.

The front plate of the keyboard is aluminium, which adds a lot of sturdiness, but this isn't the cause of the sound. Neither are the switches, which are quite silent with the keycaps off. Something about the pressure and speed of typing gives this keyboard a bit of a perceptible thump as keys go down. Despite that aluminium, the back of the G Pro X TKL Rapid is plastic, which I think is a smart move as the keyboard doesn't feel as heavy as you might imagine from its strong materials.

The back of the keyboard is plastic, which means the aluminium at the front adds a sturdiness and the plastic means it isn't super heavy on a desk or in a backpack. There's nearly no flex when bent too, which I broadly wouldn't advocate doing to your keyboard—but it's still nice to have some assurance there.

I've had hands on with the white model and I honestly think it looks great on my desk. This keyboard doesn't have a fancy screen and it's slightly smaller, missing out on a num pad but they don't feel like major misses. Fully backlit, the switches have individual RGB which not only allows for custom programming, like animations in the lighting, but also gives it all a vibrant shine.

Of course, if you want something with a little less glare, a lighting button at the top can cycle through a handful of lighting brightnesses and the game mode to the left of this button tactically turns off keys for when you're in the zone.

Initially, this disables the Windows key, lighting, and the menu key. None of these can be turned on in game mode, even when navigating G Hub, which feels a bit needlessly restrictive to me. However, what it's best for is cancelling out buttons near those you may use.

I tested Deadlock, Valve's MOBA, on this keyboard and found getting up to 1,2,3, and 4 to be a joy by turning off 5 and r. Usually, I'm a little more careful hitting the number keys in something so fast-paced for so long but it feels very natural in game mode.

I also tested Counter-Strike 2, making sure to disable SOCD as it can get you banned, and that extra quick stop to movement is genuinely great. I don't consider myself to be a hugely competitive player but I do think I'm just competitive enough to get some geeky joy out of rapid trigger, and it is effective here.

In slower singleplayer games like Red Dead Redemption 2, there's no real need for the tech in this keyboard and you likely won't notice any difference, but the keys are comfortable and the double shot PBT keycaps are smooth and rounded towards your fingertips in a way that makes it quite comfortable to use after hours of play.

This isn't built for single-player games (and a Logitech rep expressed to me that it's not really the best choice for a purely single-player gamer) but you aren't at any sort of a disadvantage when doing so.

This keyboard isn't all business though. As well as the RGB looking pretty, it has five media controls, four of which being buttons and one being a bar that can change the volume. Through G Hub, you can also set up custom controls for individual keycaps, which makes it a solid browsing keyboard. I've had a lot of problems with Logitech's G Hub software over the last few months but it mostly worked totally fine here, though we did struggle with the app in our Logitech G RS Shifter and Handbrake review.

However, it is worth noting that all these fancy competitive features are reflected in that price. If you want something sturdy, wired, and pretty, yet understated, there are cheaper options like the recent Corsair K70 Core and Endgame Gear KB65HE. Still, if you are a big fan of Logitech, there are a few strong wireless choices.

If, however, you want a rapid trigger analogue keyboard to cut a fraction of your reaction time for the most stable aim in first-person shooters, this is one of the better entry points on the market. It's pretty and solid to boot, feeling sturdy enough to fling in a back and that per key RGB allows a level of aesthetic customisation to make the whole keyboard shine. It's a niche bit of tech but a great one.

To answer that question we first need an understanding of what the fundamental differences between the two chipsets are, so let's break it down into what each one is capable of supporting.

Even just a cursory glance at this table shows that the B860 is a far less capable chipset compared to the Z890 but it's not really any different to how it was with previous generations. Considering that AMD allows CPU overclocking with its B850 chipset (and yes, the names are all far too similar), the fact that Intel is still sticking with memory-only overclocking with the B860 is very anachronistic.

While the B860 chipset doesn't support USB4, there's nothing to stop a motherboard vendor from adding such a feature to a mid-range model. However, to do so, four PCIe lanes out of the supported 14 would be required for 40 Gbps, so it's unlikely that you'll see many B860 motherboards sporting USB4, if any.

In the case of the Asus TUF Gaming B860M-Plus WiFi, eight of the 14 PCIe 4.0 lanes are used for two of the M.2 slots (the primary M.2 slot is a CPU PCIe 5.0 connection), which leaves just six lanes for everything else. Four of those are taken up by a lone PCIe x4 slot, at the bottom of the motherboard, so Asus didn't have much scope for adding more.

What this and most other B860 motherboards do have, though, is a Wi-Fi 7 module and having tested several new boards of late (all sporting the aforementioned wireless system), I can honestly say that it's a feature that's well worth having.

You don't even need a Wi-Fi 7 router to take advantage of the better system, either—I use a Wi-Fi 6 router and the wireless signal and transmission speeds are notably better on Wi-Fi 7, compared to older ones.

Some other nice touches are things like the quick-release lever for the graphics card slot—no more digging around trying to unlock the card, just press the plastic bar above the chipset's heatsink and you can easily pull the card out.

The latest BIOS is in 1080p, making it much nicer to read, and the Q-Dashboard option, providing an overview of the motherboard's sockets and slots, is a great way to see what's connected properly at a glance.

It's fair to say that the launch of Arrow Lake, back in October 2023, didn't go to plan for Intel and the performance of the Core Ultra 200S series of processors missed expectations all round. Since then, both Windows 11 and Z890 motherboards have received numerous updates, improving thread scheduling, power profiles, and memory latency.

That makes it a little difficult to fully assess the performance of this Asus TUF Gaming B860M-Plus WiFi because it's been released with all these updates in place, whereas the previous Z890 benchmark figures are all pre-patches.

However, we do have results for the Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice and given it retails at $270, it's a useful inclusion in the benchmarks below. At the very least, one will be able to see what the current state of Arrow Lake is like and see how far it has come.

Benchmarks and performance

PC Gamer test bench
CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K | Cooler: MSI MAG Coreliquid I360 | RAM: 332 GB Lexar Thor OC DDR5-6000 | Storage: 2 TB Corsair MP700 | PSU: Corsair RM850x Shift 850 W | OS: Windows 11 24H2 | Chassis: Open platform | Monitor: Acer XB280HK

The first benchmark I ran was our Factorio test, as I discovered during my initial tests of Intel's Core Ultra 200S processors, that it's a very good indicator of whether the BIOS is decent or not. As it turned out, the one that the TUF Gaming B860M-Plus WiFi shipped with wasn't, so the first thing I did was update to the 0805 BIOS—it's a beta release but it does support all of Intel's latest performance fixes for Arrow Lake.

Well, it wasn't quite the first thing I did. During the installation of Windows 11, I needed to install drivers for the Wi-Fi module. While this can be bypassed if you don't have a LAN connection (press Shift+F10 when you reach the stage where the installation looks for a network, then enter oobe\bypassnro to restart and have the option to set up a local account), I prefer to just jump into an online setup as soon as possible, to get all the relevant updates.

Except I couldn't because there are three Wi-Fi driver sets on the support page for this motherboard (Realtek, MediaTek, and an unbranded driver) and the box/manual doesn't state which module is installed on the board. After trying them all several times, as well as manually installing a whole host of other drivers, I eventually got the MediaTek set to work.

Anyway, you can see that the Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3, and our Factorio test all run at a level that puts the performance of the Asus B860M-Plus roughly halfway between the average state of Z890 motherboards in October 2023 (for the launch of Arrow Lake and marked with an asterisk) and the recently tested Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice.

It's not bad but it's not great, either. In theory, the B860 chipset shouldn't have any impact on the gaming performance of a CPU, because it just handles USB ports, M.2 slots, and the like. So the disparity seen will be down to how Asus has designed the rest of the motherboard and how it has configured the BIOS.

If productivity and content creation are more important to you than gaming, then it's good news on that front. For our standard CPU benchmarks of Cinebench 2024, Blender 4.2, and 7zip, the Asus TUF Gaming B860M-Plus WiFi performs far more like the Gigabyte Z890—the differences you can see are within margins of test variance.

Where things start to go awry for the Asus B860M-Plus is heat. The motherboard doesn't have any thermal sensor for its VRMs so it wasn't possible to accurately measure how hot they get during a heavy CPU workout. I did use the tip of my finger to judge how toasty the heatsinks were but one can hardly add 'Hmm, that's a bit hot' to a graph.

And then there's the primary SSD heatsink. It's a slim piece of lightweight metal, with a fairly insubstantial thermal pad underneath, so I didn't expect it to manage a PCIe 5.0 SSD when being worked hard. Suffice it to say, my lack of expectation was fully met as the drive repeatedly bounced off its thermal limit, throttling the write performance.

Given that one of the motherboard's key selling points is a Gen5 SSD slot, the fact that it doesn't really cope with one is rather disappointing, though to be fair to Asus, relatively few affordable motherboards do cope.

At least the chipset itself ran cool at all times, and I even experimented with loading it up with another SSD and various USB devices to try and stress the little chip as much as possible. At no point did its temperature ever exceed 40 °C and a quick finger test of the heatsink showed that this wasn't a reading error.

Conclusion

Taking all of the above into consideration, it's hard to recommend the Asus TUF Gaming B860M-Plus WiFi motherboard. It's not a bad product and at $210, it's notably cheaper than many other Arrow Lake boards. However, if you're willing to spend a little more, then there are better microATX options to choose from.

For example, Asus' own Prime Z890M-Plus WiFi sports four PCIe slots and six SATA ports, and it's just $27 more expensive. The ASRock Z780M only has a WiFi 6E module and a single PCIe slot, but alongside the eight rear USB ports, there are two full-speed Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports.

It is $260, though, but for $20 less, you could get the Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite Ice, with ten USB ports on the rear IO panel and one of those is USB4.

And that's just if you must have a microATX motherboard. If your PC case has room for a full-size board, then you're going to be far better off with one of those, Z890 or B860, as there will be more room for PCIe slots and other features.

Other than its relatively low price, the TUF Gaming B860M-Plus doesn't have much else going for it and in today's motherboard market, just being cheap isn't enough.

Of course, there's also the fact that 10 Gbps drives are often a fair bit cheaper than 20 Gbps ones, and this certainly holds true for the Crucial X9. Make no mistake, that's a primary benefit of the X9 in today's market: it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

In fact, at the time of writing, you can pick up a 2 TB version such as the one being reviewed here for just $117 at Newegg (or $109 at Amazon if you don't mind it being imported), and a 1 TB version for just $77 at Newegg (or $70 at Amazon with the same caveat). And while the former price is admittedly with an ongoing deal, it's frequently on sale and even when it's not it doesn't cost a bunch much more than this—technically a $170 MSRP, but pretty much always $135 maximum, these days.

This places it firmly in budget portable SSD territory, but that would matter nil if the Crucial X9 wasn't also a quality little drive. Fortunately, it is. From build quality and thermal performance to, well, actual performance, the Crucial X9 works a charm, as I discovered when I saw it run rings around the PC Gamer external SSD test gauntlet.

I also found myself falling in love with its design when I used it, much as I did with the TeamGroup PD20, though for different reasons. I'm not entirely sure why it had this effect on me—perhaps there's something about very square, puck-like products that my fingers just love to hold and my eyes love to gaze upon.

The Crucial X9 is very understated: it's just a small, flat, squared drive with a slight curve and gloss to its edges. You can tell it's been designed for people who will actually be using it as a portable drive, in public, for work, and so on.

It has a hole to attach a lanyard, too, just like the more sturdy metal Pro version, and if I was a lanyard kind of bloke I'd have hooked it up in a heartbeat. And speaking of sturdy, although the non-Pro version is plastic, it is "shock, vibration, and drop proof up to 7.5 feet", according to Crucial (PDF warning).

So, you should be fine unless you're keen on sticking your arms up straight and dangling the thing precariously for that sweet hit of risk-adrenaline. No IP rating for dust protection, though, which is a shame, but the low price has to come from somewhere.

The X9 is a successor to—you guessed it—the X8, but it also competes against the X6 given the now-similar price tags. And on this front, the charts speak for themselves, don't they? The X9 blows the X6 away, so in my eyes, unless the X6 has a particularly stunning deal on, I'd opt for the newer drive any day.

True, the X6 that I have on hand is the older 540 MB/s one, but the newer 800 MB/s one will still hit lower peaks than the X9, so the comparison holds even if the newer X6 fares a little better.

Based on my IOMeter testing, you're looking at about six minutes of peak transfer speeds at about 960 MB/s. That should mean you'll be able to transfer just shy of 350 GB of data over 6 minutes before the drive's pseudo-SLC cache runs out and speeds drop.

But even after that, you see speeds return back up to peak after about a minute and a half and lasting for another minute and a half. The jumps back to peak speeds are impressively frequent and long-lasting with this drive. This quick bounce-back is because of the relatively low write speeds, which give the cache a chance to clear up swiftly.

You have little to worry about if you're considering using this as a game drive, too. Read speeds are the name of the game for gaming, and these speeds should be far more consistent than write speeds. While it didn't perform spectacularly in FFXIV testing, it did perform well in the 3DMark Storage benchmark, which tests a number of real-world gaming scenarios such as loading and installing various games.

Because of this, I'm inclined to believe that the X9 perhaps just doesn't gel well with FFXIV but performs well in games overall. Its RND4k read results in CrystalDiskMark 7 are pretty good at 35.6 MB/s, and random reads are what an external SSD will spend most of its time doing when used as a game drive.

Using it as a game drive seems to work well in practice, too. I moved my 1.7 GB Crab Champions Steam install over to the drive (using the in-built Steam tool) in an instant—I swear it actually seemed to do this quicker than any other drive I've tested, but it's hard to tell with sub-one-second transfers.

Anyway, booting up and running my little crustacean about was a breeze, levels loaded instantly, and I ran into no stutters or hiccups. When used to house a game library, the Crucial X9 seems to run as smooth as butter.

Of course, you're not getting the blisteringly fast speeds of some of the latest (USB 4) drives, nor are you getting the swelteringly (?) fast speeds of somewhat more common USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 drives.

But you're not paying those higher prices, either, and you're likely to have more 3.2 Gen 2x1 ports than Gen 2x2 ones—do make sure you have a 3.2 Gen 2 port before you drop any cash on a 10 Gbps drive like this X9, though, because without such a port you won't be able to make the most of it.

For such a solid performer that looks and feels great, I reckon the Crucial X9 is a great budget buy. It's well worth the money for those looking to increase their portable storage without spending an arm and a leg.

I played Mouthwashing entirely in one sitting back in October and had to lie down for a while afterward to recover. I felt vile, unsettled at what I'd seen over the previous three hours. Mouthwashing is about as classic a "walking simulator" as you can get mechanically, and while its stabs at more intensive gameplay fell a little flat for me, its narrative, vision, and atmosphere made it one of 2024's standouts, a people's champion of indie horror for very good reason.

Mouthwashing is one of those games where, if you're recommending it to a friend, you go all, "No dude, don't look up anything about it, just play it, trust me, promise you'll play it? If Steam says you're playing Path of Exile instead I'll egg your house." That makes it hard to review without spoiling, but I'll leave the full plot recap and analysis to one of those three-hour YouTube video essays and try to drill into what makes Mouthwashing special, spoiler-free.

The game begins with you playing as Captain Curly of the long haul delivery space ship Tulpar, purposefully setting the vessel on a collision course with an asteroid. After crash landing, the ship is compromised and flooded with emergency foam, sealing it against the vacuum of space. Curly is horrifically maimed and burned in the crash, leaving him unable to speak but still painfully aware of everything around him. The defining image of Mouthwashing is Curly's broken body laid out in the Tulpar's med bay, the ship's time of day/mood lighting screens glitched into an eternal sunset.

Mouthwashing tells a nonlinear story, swapping between Curly's perspective before the crash and first mate/acting captain Jimmy's after. The Tulpar is an incredible little videogame environment, a pound-for-pound phenom compared to games with exponentially higher budgets. It's strangely homey before the crash, despite the omnipresent motivational/disciplining posters from Amazon-esque employer Pony Express. The Tulpar's full of great clutter and character details to make it feel lived-in by the crew, and swapping between its pre and post-crash state helps underline how drastically things are degrading in the present day. One of my favorite things might be how it has no windows, the aforementioned time of day screens failing to alleviate the close, stuffy feeling of the place⁠—it's like a submarine, and after the disaster, the crew has no way of knowing how bad things look outside.

The claustrophobic horror with the specter of a cruel, uncaring corporation looming in the background reminded me of Alien, but there's nothing supernatural or mysterious about the horror in Mouthwashing⁠, just the brutal fallout of a human drama downstream from—sorry to be that guy⁠—capitalism. Somebody should really sort that whole deal out. The aforementioned posters featuring Pony Express mascot Polle had me worried Mouthwashing's workplace angst might wind up being something blunt and played out at first. There are plenty of latter-day Vault Boys out there yucking it up over the black comedy contrast between their cartoony nature and the evil of their creators. But Mouthwashing is way smarter than that.

It's a story about how a life without a future makes someone sour, the small joys and overwhelming horror to be found in shit work, and how even the worst circumstances don't necessarily make one's actions sympathetic or justified. The crew members of the Tulpar all came into their lot in different ways: A failed student, a rich kid pushed out of the nest, and a high achiever wondering if his success actually fulfilled him, to name a few. They've all been curdled by the lives they were funneled into, with the banal cruelty of their employer implied to be itself driven by the continued automation of their industry⁠—unmanned ships don't go crazy and crash themselves into asteroids, after all.

When things go utterly tits up as rescue continues to be a no-show⁠—I guess that's kind of a spoiler, but come on, this isn't a happy story⁠—it feels like a scab being ripped off to let loose a firehose of pus. The ugliness and inhumanity in the later stages of the story were always there, simmering and fermenting, the logical conclusion of people forced to live as processes. The fact that the crew of the Tulpar is so lovingly sketched out, their characters believable and recognizable, serves a similar purpose to the sad, stepped-on coziness of the pre-disaster ship: It gives you a frame of reference for the horror.

Point and click

The actual gameplay of Mouthwashing is less consistent than the story. Most of it goes down smooth, and there are a few strokes of genius that continue to impress me. Then there are some stinker moments that really crapped in my soup⁠—and not like, "This game is supposed to make me feel bad," more like, "This feels like a mistake, or I am frustrated and missing something."

For the most part, Mouthwashing has very straightforward problem solving: Finding various forms of key (numerical code, isopropyl alcohol, gun) to open various forms of lock (door, REDACTED, REDACTED). Optional hidden ID cards for each crew member make for a nice scavenger hunt throughout the game, and I dig how the mess hall food processor's recipe system can be monkeyed around with outside its big story beats. The way you have to click around to pry open Curly's jaw and feed him painkillers is a brilliant mechanic that's gruesomely echoed in various scenes throughout the game.

Mouthwashing takes a few stabs at more hands-on gameplay where it mostly falters. There are two puzzles right at the end of the game that are, aesthetically and thematically, absolute heaters: Climactic, shocking moments that really socked me in the gut. But my horror and disgust were undermined by them being fiddly, obtuse little exercises that overstayed their welcome⁠—I'm not proud to say I googled to see what the hell I was supposed to be doing.

There's also one stealth and one (sort of) action sequence. The action bit was actually quite good and tense, but the stealth section, yeesh. Under its layers of uncanny dread, it's basically a game of red light green light that goes on for way too long. Doubly so if you're thick as a sack of bricks like me and it takes some trial and error to figure out what's going on.

But in terms of atmosphere and narrative⁠—the most important parts of a narrative adventure, I gotta figure⁠—Mouthwashing is a home run. Those crazy Swedes at Wrong Organ popped an absolute dinger and are being rightfully rewarded for it. This is a horror game whose narrative and aesthetics are going to be remembered, celebrated, and emulated moving forward, and it feels like Wrong Organ is just getting started. The future of the Tulpar may not be great, but the future of this group of game devs is bright.

There are two parts to this latest release: the RS Wheel Hub ($130), containing the interface, paddles, and electronics to attach the wheel to the Pro Racing Base; and either the RS Track Wheel ($70) or RS Round Wheel ($70), which are simply metal and a rubber-like plastic.

For a complete set-up, you'll also need a Pro Racing Base ($600) and Pro Racing Pedals ($350). And there's also the optional RS Shifter and Handbrake ($150).

That all adds up to a grand total of $1,300.

The alternative option for newcomers is purchasing the Pro Racing Wheel ($800), which contains a Pro Racing Base and a hub and wheel combo. However, I made the mistake of assuming that the hub used on the Pro Racing Wheel was the same, or at least compatible, with the RS Wheel Hub.

It's not—the layout is different—you would need to purchase an RS Wheel Hub and RS Track/Round Wheel separately with this unit to swap out to a different wheel design. Altogether, you're looking at a total of $1,500 ($1,350 without the shifter).

Still with me? You don't necessarily save anything by going for the Pro Racing Wheel versus the Pro Racing Base with RS Wheel Hub and RS Track/Round Wheel. If you decide down the line to buy a round wheel to go with your track wheel, or vice versa, you can buy another RS Wheel Hub and the corresponding wheel for $200. You could swap your wheels between one hub, however, it just might be a bit of a pain to undo the six bolts and three screws every time.

But wait, there's more. PC players can play with any of Logitech's bases/wheels/hubs/shifters—they're all PC compatible. However, if you want Xbox/PlayStation/PC compatibility in a single wheel, you should buy a PlayStation-compatible Pro Racing Base and an Xbox-compatible RS Wheel Hub.

The other thing to consider is that you can use any pedals, shifter, or handbrake with the Logitech gear provided you plug it into your PC separately. The Logitech stuff all combines into a single USB cable via the USB hub on the rear of the Pro Racing Base/Wheel.

Got all that? Phew. It's a lot to chew through.

If you already have a Pro Racing Wheel then the only bits that matter are the RS Wheel Hub and RS Track/Round Wheel. So let's talk about those.

The RS Hub contains 15 buttons, one-directional stick, two dials, and two rear paddles. Compared to the Pro Racing Wheel, the RS Hub offers two extra buttons and a better overall layout with symmetrical dials, which are easier to use while racing. However, it disappointingly lacks the dedicated clutch paddles.

While only useful for launches at the very start of a race, F1 cars use a clutch paddle rather than a pedal. As an F1 fan who was hoping to use the RS Track Wheel for a more authentic experience, it feels a bit odd that I can have either a round, non-F1 style wheel with clutch paddles or an F1-style track wheel with no paddles, but never both optimal options at the same time.

Them's the breaks. The RS Track Wheel does make it up in other ways, at least.

Rounding off the RS Wheel Hub is an RGB LED strip that corresponds to your revs in-game. This actually takes over from the rev meter already included on the Pro Racing Base as standard—the difference is the one on the RS Wheel Hub is diffused, which is a bit love-it or hate-it, and can be customised to show all sorts of different colours and varying rev patterns, including inside-out, outside-in, left to right, right to left, or other designs of your own creation.

I must say I'm a fan of the diffused rev lights, which erupt from green to yellow to red to purple to blue when I put my foot down. They're positioned more upfront and are more obvious than the more traditional rev lights on the base, even if they are maybe a little less accurate at a glance for the added diffusion.

Onto the RS Track Wheel. It's a hunk of metal over 3 mm thick and wrapped in a moulded TPE grip. TPE feels a lot like a hard rubber, though it's a type of plastic. That's capped on either side by plastic. It feels like it'll last a good few thousand laps, at the very least, but it does lack the softer, more premium feel of the Pro Racing Wheel, which comes wrapped and stitched.

Combining the RS Wheel Hub and RS Track Wheel couldn't be easier. Slot the wheel over the hub and it fits snugly into place. Then go around attaching the six included bolts with the larger of the two included Allen keys. The smaller key is to fit the three screws on the rear—one on the middle stem of the wheel and the other two slightly awkwardly under the shifter paddles. They're easy enough to screw in all the same.

Once combined, I weighed up the combined RS Wheel Hub and RS Track Wheel versus the standard Pro Racing Wheel, uh, wheel.

• Pro Racing Wheel (hub and wheel): 1,451 grams
• RS Wheel Hub and RS Track Wheel: 1,220 grams

The Track Wheel weighs a good bit less and combined with that smaller size and open-wheel style design, I felt like I could really throw it around at high speed. It's agile but with the option to fully grip either side to steady it during a tough corner with 11 Nm of torque pushing through it.

It's also wicked fun.

I have to admit, I've had a blast with the Track Wheel installed. It just feels right to be racing around in F1 24 with a compact wheel like this. Easing into the deep corners with a full rotation, like the pros, is really satisfying.

I've also taken it for a spin in Forza Motorsport and something altogether more absurd: an old Lotus F1 car at Brands Hatch. Phwoar, that thing goes. The grip on that thing is otherworldly and I could nail the speed through the corners with accuracy with a little tweak of the Track Wheel either way.

Altogether, I'm itching to get back into the racing seat even as I write this. It's a world of fun and more than I was expecting more or less a new wheel design to be.

Considering this is a competitively priced unit compared to even Thrustmaster's cheaper F1-style wheels, I'm thoroughly impressed with it. Pulling it out of the box, it feels all the premium product you want it to be and maybe a little more for the money.

The lack of clutch paddles is a bit of a shame—these would really bring together an F1 sim experience nicely—and I was really expecting this to work neatly with my pre-existing Pro Racing Wheel hub. Nonetheless, it's a great upgrade for a sim racing setup, and undeniably fun, too.

This is a wireless ANC gaming set, and I first got a sneak peak at one during Gamescom all the way back in August of last year. The Alienware team was very keen to point out the graphene-coated drivers, the concessions to comfort, and the overall build quality of what is hoped to be a set that makes a splash in the fiercely competitive gaming headset market.

For $230/£222 it's quite a pricey affair as gaming headsets go, so I was keen to get my hands on one and put it through the ringer myself. There's some tough competition available for under $230, so it needs to swing for the fences if it's going to make its mark.

If there's one word I'd use to describe my initial impressions of the Alienware Pro when I pulled it from the box, it'd be squidgey. If there was another word I'd use to describe this supposedly all-black model, it would be grey. It's a difficult thing to show in photos, but I handed this set around the office to check it wasn't just my ageing eyes, and we all agreed it was a blue-grey sort of finish rather than a black one.

It's not a big deal, I suppose. But as someone who's previously asked Alienware to send me black Pro peripherals for review after an onslaught of dirt-revealing white ones, the irony isn't lost on me that I was finally sent something that's supposed to be black (or "Dark Side of the Moon" in Alienware-speak), but doesn't really look like it.

Anyway, back to squidgey. The memory foam earcups have a significant amount of give to them, which makes them very pleasing to put upon your lugs. The inner headband material is the same, so overall it's a very comfy, slightly bouncy, somewhat comforting thing to wear.

It's also quite light, which means you can happily wear this set all day without noticing it's there.

The clamping force is fairly well-judged too, so there's no worries about it falling off while you hunt for a cable—although it might be a little tight for those of you with larger heads. Not that you'll need to plug it in often, as the Pro features a 75-hour battery life.

That's up there with other premium headsets, although not a patch on the 300-hour battery life of our favorite wireless gaming headset, the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless. I still don't know how HyperX has managed battery life that impressive while others languish, but I reckon 75 hours is still pretty good regardless for a premium set of phones.

The Alienware Pro also features dual wireless connections, both 2.4 GHz RF and Bluetooth 5.3. Included in the box is a tiny blue-LED-lit USB Type-C wireless dongle along with a USB Type-A adapter—which comes as a merciful relief for someone like me who still only has one proper USB Type-C port on the back of their machine.

This is a noise-cancelling set, and the effect is excellent. It doesn't provide complete silence, but it mutes the clack of a mechanical gaming keyboard nicely and provides some much-needed respite on the odd train journey, too. In fact, thanks to the included Bluetooth connection, the Alienware makes for a decent set of travelling headphones.

I'm all for multi-usage headsets, and this one's got a lot of desirable features for exactly this sort of real-world use.

Connects, disconnects, microphone mutes and more are announced by an irritatingly cheery voice, with the same sort of smooth tone that a hotel receptionist would use to tell you they can't find your booking. This is the most minor of critiques, but I would describe this set as quite chatty. Perhaps it's just the upbeat nature of the vocals grinding against my ears, but the Pro does seem to announce what it's doing more often than some.

Speaking of sound, there's some odd audio tuning at work here—and it's had me wrinkling my nose at points. The 50 mm graphene-coated drivers are quite capable of delivering some seriously punchy bass at low to medium volumes, and for gaming this means whomping great menu effects, weighty explosions, and chonky gunfire. All very enjoyable.

However, at higher volumes things become chaotic, with the bass dropping back and the mix suffering overall. Run The Jewels' "out of sight (feat 2 Chainz)" is a go-to on my headphone testing playlist for huge gobs of skull-rattling low-end, and the initial synthesised kick drum hits deliver a promising amount of sub-bass weight.

As soon as the track hits full swing and you crank the volume up, though, the low-end mix disappears, and other frequencies higher up the scale start to break up.

The Pro Wireless can become properly loud, and as a volume-enjoyer, this is much appreciated. Many modern headsets leave me wanting, but this one can push to eardrum-destroying levels. It's just a shame the low end disappears with it, meaning you only really get the full weighty effect at around 40% volume and below.

On this particular set, that's still pretty loud, and probably more than enough for many—but should you wish to push things to higher levels, be prepared to hear a messy sonic result, with some perceptible distortion, too.

It's all a bit crunchy at the top, like the drivers are being pushed beyond their limits too early on the scale—so the much-appreciated headroom goes to waste.

I'm often criticised by my partner for listening to music too loudly on my headphones. As a result, I've probably got a skewed metric as to what volume most people regard as acceptable, but I've got a feeling the Alienware's 40% cut off is probably it.

It's still fairly loud, and you get all the weighty chonk without sacrificing the quality of the treble or the mix overall. But I'm forced to wonder why these drivers are allowed to push themselves into frequency-crushing ranges in the first place.

The microphone is a removable boom unit, and I'd describe it as muffled, at best. The Alienware Pro shows up as two different audio devices, labelled Wireless Game and Wireless Chat, but no matter which I set it in, the results are poor. A shame, although it's still not the worst gaming headset mic I've heard.

Still, as my testing shows, it's pretty awful by default—although it does come with a fairly aggressive noise cancelling feature that I've turned off for the test recording, as it has a tendency to clip a little too easily. Regardless, however I play with the settings (beyond breaking out the VST plugins, which seems a step too far for a headset mic) the results are disappointing.

Taking all this into account, there's still plenty to like about the Pro. It's a very comfortable gaming headset that, if the volume is left in reasonable ranges, performs well when it comes to overall sound. And while I'm not a huge fan of its blue-grey looks, it's still discrete enough that you can wear it in public without inviting comment.

But those high volume issues are disappointing, there's no denying it. I've still been enjoying using the Alienware Pro as a daily driver while I work, as that's the time I listen to music at a respectable level so as not to distract myself too much from my train of thought. For this usage it's performed with aplomb, and it's a comfy companion for some late-night gaming, too.

But I'd still rather have the superb battery life and excellent audio handling of the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless for a fair bit cheaper. Or, if you can stretch your budget further, the supreme sonic excellence of the Audeze Maxwell.

The Alienware Pro exists in a bit of a no-man's land, where it's expensive enough that its flaws can't be ignored, but still possesses enough merit when it comes to comfort, design, and reasonable-volume listening to be worthy of some consideration.

Still, every time a track I love appears on my playlist and I reach for the volume knob, I can't help but wince. And, while this set has something to recommend it for, I can't get past the idea that, for $230, you'd be better off looking at something that can handle its liquor, so to speak, a little better than this.

As with any keyboard, the most important aspect is the typing feel, and here the BlackWidow V4 Pro absolutely knocks it out of the park. Razer has used its own third-generation orange tactile switches, and while the fact that this is the only option the board ships with might sound disappointing, these switches are phenomenal.

Using them, I felt like I was typing faster than I had done for years. There's just enough tactility to satisfy typists, yet they're fast and light enough to be perfectly formed for gaming. Whether you're drafting essays or honing your headshots, they're rapid to the touch and supremely satisfying to type on. The textured PBT keycaps also make each key easy to find by feel, and you can swap out the switches for any three-pin or five-pin alternative, which is a welcome addition.

Gaming also benefits from Razer's Snap Tap feature, which takes the latest input from two keys without you having to release one of them. It's handy for strafing, for example – hold D and repeatedly tap A and you'll move back and forth without you ever needing to let go of the D key.

Typing on this board also sounds great, with a lightweight clacky profile that is very pleasing on the ears. Razer has added two layers of sound-dampening foam to the V4 Pro model, and the payoff is noticeable.

I'm not a huge fan of the 75% layout – 80% is where it's at for me – but it certainly aids portability. This isn't exactly the most featherweight of keyboards (it weighs 985g without the cable or wrist rest), but it should be easy enough to fit into a bag.

Razer has added a bunch of premium features to the BlackWidow V4 Pro 75%, and at $300, you'd certainly hope that was the case. You get textured PBT keycaps, an aluminium top case, a built-in OLED display, a comfortable wrist rest (it feels a bit tall at first, but you get used to it) and RGB underglow lighting.

The underglow RGB looks lovely, but there's a problem: you can't see it when you're typing as it's directly under the keyboard, so it could easily have been left off. That's not so for the keycap RGB, though, which shines through the PBT caps without an issue.

The problem with all this RGB, though, is that it obliterates the keyboard's battery life, which was quite shockingly poor in my testing. It wasn't unusual for me to lose a third of the battery life after only a few hours of usage. Razer's website says you'll get up to 2,100 hours of battery life in power saving mode, yet it doesn't mention what you can expect from regular usage – so I decided to find out.=

Beginning one day at 97%, 14 hours later it was down to just 2%, a startlingly rapid decline. This was using Bluetooth mode – in 2.4GHz mode, the board burned through 87% of its juice in just under nine hours. You shouldn't expect anywhere near 2,100 hours in normal usage, and it's clear why Razer didn't feel like talking about regular battery consumption. This keyboard is wireless on paper, but with such prodigious battery drain, you're essentially forced into using it as a wired keyboard most of the time.

There are problems elsewhere. For one thing, there's that $300 price tag, which is a full $70 higher than the V3 Pro. It's an awful lot to pay for a keyboard. And while I love the tactile switches inside the board, the BlackWidow V4 Pro 75% can't be shipped with any other switch options. Sure, its hot-swappable nature means you can add different switches, but that might mean having to buy them separately, which adds to the already considerable cost.

Then there's the OLED screen, which can display your CPU load and temperature, the mode the keyboard is operating in (wired, Bluetooth, etc) and more. Next to it is a dial that can be turned to adjust things like volume and backlighting brightness. The display is fine, but I didn't find myself using it much. While it comes with a few options, the default one is a flying spaceship that quickly gets distracting – I had to change it almost right away.

Ironically, the two biggest faults – the OLED display and the battery life drain in wireless mode – are the two things differentiating the V4 Pro from the wired BlackWidow V4 75% … which costs $190. It might be worth considering that board before you pull the trigger on the V4 Pro 75%.

Still, it's hard to be too critical when the typing experience is so supremely satisfying. Ultimately, deciding on this keyboard depends on your priorities – whether a fantastic tactile typing feel outweighs the frustratingly short battery life – and whether you want to pony up the $300 asking price.

In case you're not familiar with the new chipset, it's worth noting that the primary difference between AMD's Xx70 and Bx50 is the number of connectivity options, such as USB and M.2 ports, but it's a little more nuanced than that. For example, X870 motherboards all come with at least one USB4 port but such a feature is entirely optional for B850 boards.

What you're getting here though is pretty much all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a last-gen X670 motherboard. The ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi sports four M.2 slots for SSDs (the primary one is Gen5, while the other three are all full-speed Gen4), which makes a change from seeing multiple M.2 slots running at all kinds of different speeds.

The good news continues with the USB options. You're not getting USB4 but at least you have one 20 Gbps Type-C, one 10 Gbps Type-C, two 10 Gbps Type-A, four 5 Gbps Type-A, and four USB 2.0 ports on the rear IO panel. Those twelve USB ports are joined by another four headers on the board (1x 10 Gbps, 1x 5 Gbps, 2x USB 2.0) for a total of 16 USB ports.

However, the payback for all these storage and connectivity options is a dearth of SATA ports and PCIe slots. You get two apiece and that's it. That's probably going to be fine for most PC gamers building a new AM5 rig, and at least both PCIe slots are electrically x16 (one being Gen5 and the other Gen4), but just two SATA ports seems a tad measly.

If you do need more SATA options, then this isn't the motherboard for you but I strongly suspect that most B850 models will be similarly equipped.

The ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi motherboard supports all AM5 Ryzen processors and thanks to its 20 power stages (80 A each, with 16 for the CPU), it should have no problem dealing with a 170 W Ryzen 9 9950X or the like.

In terms of RAM, you can load it with up to 192 GB of DDR5, though the more you pile in, the less likely it will run at higher speeds. As with all AM5 processors, DDR5-6000 is the best balance between stability and performance, so you're going to be better off just using two DIMMs and no more.

Asus, MSI, and others have taken the opportunity, with the launch of new CPUs and motherboard chipsets, to do something about the overall ease of use of their products. In this instance, there's not much on offer, though—just Asus' Q-Release mechanisms for the primary PCIe and M.2 slots.

The former works by holding a graphics card firmly in place until you pull it out at an angle, which pushes the mechanism back. I'd much prefer to see the implementation used on other Asus models, where you pull a spring-loaded lever on the side of the board to release the graphics card. At least the one on the M.2 slot is very simple to use and it's genuinely worthy of the Q-Release name.

But that's where QoL (quality of life) features start and end on the ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi. For example, there are no chassis fan headers in the middle of the board—all three are located at the very bottom. There is no display for BIOS codes, just four tiny LEDs that indicate the status of the CPU, RAM, GPU, and boot status.

There's a tiny, almost hidden power button (but no restart) on the board but it is tucked away right at the top, making it very inaccessible once installed in a case, with cooling and wires all fitted. While such features aren't hugely useful to everyone, I expect to see better ones on a motherboard with a $300 price tag.

You do get a BIOS reset and flashback switch on the rear IO panel but they're both very small and fiddly to use. It would add mere cents to change them into more substantial buttons.

Then again, this is a motherboard that's designed to be installed once and only gradually worked on with component upgrades over time, and I should imagine most PC enthusiasts will just be more interested in the substantial heatsinks covering the VRMs and primary M.2 slot, or the fact that it sports a built-in Wi-Fi 7 module.

Benchmarks and performance

As we've only recently updated our motherboard benchmark suite, we don't have a wealth of other models to compare the ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi to. Since the first Zen 5 processors came to market, AMD has been gradually improving the performance of its Ryzen 9000-series chips with Windows and BIOS updates.

This means that some of the performance results aren't fully comparable as the underlying performance environments aren't 100% identical. However, at the very least, one can look at the figures and judge how well the ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi performs compared to an Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero and MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk on the basis of how they were in October 2024.

At the very least, the Gigabyte X870E Aorus Pro included in the figures is as up-to-date as possible and both it and the MSI board are similar in price to the ROG Strix B850-F Gaming.

That said, I have retested the ROG Crosshair with its latest BIOS version and Windows 11 24H2, and while there is no difference in the average frame rates since the last time I benchmarked the motherboard, the 1% low figures are lower by around 5 to 7%. On the plus side, in Windows 11 24H2, the Factorio benchmark is now 13% quicker, as is the compression result for the 7zip test.

While it's best not to read too much into these figures, mostly because of the impact of Windows 24H2, the Asus B850-F is clearly just as good as the others and in the case of Cyberpunk 2077, better than the $640 Crosshair X670E Hero. It's worth noting, though, that the results for that board and the MSI Tomahawk were collected with an 'all-high' power profile enabled.

AMD recommends that you use Balanced in Control Panel and then Balanced or Best Performance in Windows Settings, but I have consistently found that the Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X perform better in games if one uses the High Performance setting in Control Panel.

If all you want is a motherboard for PC gaming and nothing else, the little Asus seems to be the one to go for. That said, we're only talking about a few frames per second here and there, and at $300, you'd certainly want a bit more than just gaming chops.

When it comes to CPU-heavy tasks, such as offline rendering and file compression/decompression, the ROG Strix B850-F is as good as the two X870 boards and it easily outpaces the X670E model in the 7zip test.

That's to be expected, of course, because while the B850 chipset doesn't really offer any real benefits over the previous generation, in terms of performance tweaks, the newer motherboards do support higher RAM speeds. That suggests the manufacturers have improved the underlying memory structures, increasing stability and reducing latencies.

However, while relative performance is on par with the Gigabyte and MSI boards, the Asus B850-F falls behind in another aspect.

Even though the ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi has hefty metal heatsinks covering the power stages and the primary M.2 slot, they're clearly not as good as those on the Gigabyte and MSI models. I suspect it's down to the thermal pads used between the sinks and components because removing the M.2 heatsink after all the tests were done showed that the thermal pad barely made contact with some of the Corsair MP700 chips.

That would be acceptable on a $120 budget motherboard but on something that's $300? Not in the least bit and it makes a bit of mockery of the fact that the ROG Strix B850-F sports two PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots. If the main SSD cooling system isn't up to dealing with a Gen5 drive, then the other one certainly isn't.

It also brings the board's gaming performance into question because many PC gamers will want to overclock their CPU, use ultra-fast RAM, or install a Gen5 SSD. If the board isn't truly capable of managing the thermal load, is it worth buying it just for the sake of a few more frames per second?

Conclusion

On the basis of those last thermal performance figures, you can probably guess where the conclusion to this review is heading. But just to make the point extra clear, here's how the Asus ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi compares to the Gigabyte X870E Aorus Pro and MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk WiFi in terms of price and features.

Other than the weak thermal solutions, the Asus B850-F is a really good motherboard. However, its feature set doesn't justify the price, especially when one can get more USB and SATA ports, and more PCIe slots, for the same kind of money.

If Asus had set the price to, say, $240 then it would be a far more tempting proposition.

The Asus ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi is a good motherboard but it's let down by some odd decisions concerning component choice, layout, and thermals. It's also let down by the price and if you are looking to spend $300 on a new AM5 motherboard, Gigabyte and MSI have better options.

No, I haven't been massively disappointed by the 8BitDo. But I have been a little disappointed due to one particular thing, which sucks to say about such an all-round fantastic controller. That thing is the shape, which has remained the same as the original Ultimate controller and opts for a slimmer Switch Pro-like design rather than a more splayed-out PlayStation or Xbox one.

Admittedly, my reaction to this is almost entirely subjective, but tell that to my God-given hands. They feel what they feel when holding the controller, and now they must write what they must write.

These somewhat subjective assessments aside, though, the 8BitDo Ultimate 2C is a controller that kind of stumps me, because I cannot for the life of me see how 8BitDo is listing this thing for a mere $30. Apart from looking far from budget thanks to the variety of lovely pastel colours on offer, it also feels far from a cheap controller, nor does it perform like one.

That's because it not only has Hall effect joysticks, but also Hall effect triggers, and 1,000 Hz polling on its 2.4 GHz wireless connection. That's faster polling than you get with most budget controllers and even some mainstream ones (the standard Xbox controller has 124 Hz polling, of course, because it's designed for consoles which hit lower framerates).

I found this polling rate to bear bountiful tasty fruits in my testing. Loading up Crab Champions, my little crustacean ducked and dived in what felt like the instant I commanded it to via the firm clicks of the 8BitDo's buttons. Ditto in other, less serious games, of course. And it's rated for 19 hours of gameplay on one charge over 2.4G, and 32 hours over Bluetooth.

Bluetooth's a funny affair with the Ultimate 2C, though. That's because the controller only officially supports connecting to Android devices using this protocol. We managed to get it connected to Windows PC via Bluetooth, but it wouldn't auto-configure in Steam and required some manual set-up to work in-game. Looking to others' experiences, it seems to be a very mixed bag, sometimes working well but sometimes not at all.

I suppose this tracks for something that's not officially supported. This is quite a big caveat, since I imagine a lot of people will be considering a budget controller like this as a travel companion, where Bluetooth reigns supreme.

Provided you're properly connected via USB-C (Windows) or Bluetooth (Android), though, you're getting a lovely, clicky experience. One thing I've always loved about my 8BitDo Pro 2 is its satisfying button clicks—I've genuinely never felt anything better on a controller. The Ultimate 2C follows suit, albeit slightly trailing behind the Pro 2 on the ABXY buttons front.

"Slightly trailing behind the Pro 2" on this front, however, still means beating most other controllers. The Ultimate 2C's ABXY buttons feel substantially better than the ones on an Xbox controller, at least to my fingertips. Ditto the shoulder buttons, in this case even compared to the Pro 2. They're just. So. Clicky. You get extra buttons near the shoulders, too, which I found surprisingly easy to avoid accidentally hitting—although I would definitely have preferred underside paddles like on the Pro 2.

Unfortunately, there has to be some give, and in the case of the 8BitDo Ultimate 2C it's the d-pad. It's not bad, it's just not great. It's the standard rolly-polly, slightly mushy-wushy affair, and presumably there's some membrane mechanism warbling about underneath the surface. Again, though, not awful, just standard.

The reach on the thumbsticks is much more in-line with what I'm used to than it is with some other budget controllers such as the GameSir Nova Lite, which I found to roll a little too widely. The Ultimate 2C's sticks also have that characteristically smooth Hall effect feeling, love it or hate it (I've come around to it, now), and feature anti-friction rings around the edges.

The triggers are great, too, though I couldn't decide between them and the ones on the standard Xbox controller. Apparently the Ultimate 2C's triggers are lighter than on the original Ultimate, which was a great move by 8BitDo if true, because I found the lightness to be a definite boon.

I was craving for opportunities to shoot in-game just so I could feel that springy action again, and that's a sign of a good trigger.

And the colour schemes look absolutely gorgeous, don't you think? It's one controller that I've been genuinely proud to display on my pegboard, and I'm not usually one for all that colourful nonsense—it's usually blacks, whites, browns, and beiges for me. But pastel colours I can gel with, as they're not too in-your face and can add a nice accent to a setup.

Anyway, that's unfortunately where the fun ends—because when the rubber met the road, for some of my longer gaming sessions, my hands weren't as pleased as my eyes were. That's because the 8BitDo Ultimate 2C has a Switch Pro-esque slimline design that belies its seeming Xbox layout.

Compare the 8BitDo to the admittedly more expensive Xbox Wireless Controller (or another budget controller such as the Nova Lite) and you'll notice it's far less splayed. What this means in practice is that your wrists have to be pushed in more, or your elbows tucked in more, to keep things comfy. That might be fine for some—and clearly it is, because lots of people love the Switch Pro controller—but gaming like that is uncomfortable for me.

Given the Xbox-style layout that lured me in, I'd have liked an Xbox-style design, too, splayed grips and all. But 8BitDo has kept those grips tucked in, and for gaming sessions longer than an hour my hands did start to complain. Not much, mind, but more than with an Xbox controller, for sure. It felt comfortable if I kept my elbows tucked in, but screw that when I'm sitting back and exploring the rocky expanses of Firewatch.

If you're fine with Switch Pro-style grips and are happy with no official Bluetooth support on Windows, I can give this controller a very firm recommendation—top marks, across the board. But given proper non-Android Bluetooth support is pretty common for peripherals these days, and given pretty much everyone finds Xbox controller designs comfortable but not everyone finds Switch Pro controller designs comfortable, I can't help but think of these two things as detracting from an otherwise perfect and incredibly value-friendly product.