At $299 for the 8 GB version and $349 for the 16 GB variant, the latter I have in front of me here, the little AMD card is not just looking to knock the $299 RTX 5060 off its precarious perch, but even aims to take a swing at the $429 RTX 5060 Ti. Everyone loves an underdog story, but in a GPU market plagued by inflated prices and less-than-impressive generational performance gains, the RX 9060 XT has its work cut out from the start.

So, what you're likely wondering is, does it give Nvidia's budget offerings a comprehensive floor-wiping? Not quite. But what AMD has come up with here is a cool, calm, and collected 1080p and 1440p performer for a very reasonable sum, and right now that feels like a cool breeze on a hot summer's day.

RX 9060 XT 16 GB verdict

I've had the XFX Swift version of the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT sitting in one of our benchmarking rigs for the past week, and it's rather impressive. While it's not quite been able to beat out our RTX 5060 Ti sample overall (AMD's claims that it's 6% faster than the RTX 5060 Ti at 1440p haven't proved out in my testing), it often comes perilously close at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions for a full $80 less—and that's just the sort of thing that might cause Nvidia to drop the Ti's price down in response.

Competition is a good thing, y'see, and the RX 9060 XT provides just that.

And as for the $299 RTX 5060? Fuggedaboutit. While the Nvidia card is $50 less, the extra performance you receive from the 16 GB RX 9060 XT is more than worth the money, in my opinion.

The RX 9060 XT might not quite have the goods to outright beat the RTX 5060 Ti in many of our benchmarks, but it's so close to it it makes the non-Ti card look poorly-equipped by comparison. Not to mention, the 8 GB RX 9060 XT is the same cash as the RTX 5060 at MSRP.

That being said, I'll be very interested to see if the RX 9060 XT's MSRP proves out in practice. This generation of GPUs has been marred by low availability, ludicrous retailer mark ups, and a host of factors that have made it hard to recommend any card—given what it'll likely end up costing you when you plug your details in at the checkout.

Ultimately, though, I have to review the GPU in front of me, and I can say that it's a good 'un. It's also been remarkably stable, only finally sullying its 100% reliability record once I pushed those GDDR6 memory chips past their stated speeds. My particular XFX sample isn't much of an overclocker compared to the Palit RTX 5060 Ti, for sure, but I'd wager that even in 2025, most people are more concerned with the apples to apples performance you get from either card fresh from the box.

And in the RX 9060 XT's case? I'd say it's got enough grunt to make the RTX 5060 Ti worry. Time will tell if that pricing holds out, but should you be able to find one for MSRP, it's the new budget GPU I'd plump for if I was looking to save a penny or two. Money makes all the difference at this end of the market, and an $80 saving goes a long way towards some shiny new games, a slightly better CPU, or even just a good night out.

Great entry-level GPUs have been far too expensive for far too long, if you ask me. The RX 9060 XT, though? It might just be the turning of the tide. Fingers crossed, ey?

RX 9060 XT 16 GB specs

When it comes to the specs, the little RX 9060 XT looks a lot like an RX 9070 XT, only halved. It's a Navi 44 variant built on TSMC's N4P process with 32 RDNA 4 Compute Units, 32 Ray Tracing Accelerators and 64 AI Accelerators, all of which matches with that basic equation—although with a stated 3.1 GHz boost frequency as standard, it certainly comes with a hefty dose of clock speed straight out of the box.

Those improved RDNA 4 CUs are key to AMD's recent catch up to Nvidia-like performance, in tandem with third generation RT Accelerators that mean the red team is no longer on the back foot when it comes to the increasingly-important ray tracing performance figures.

We're starting to see games like Doom: The Dark Ages require ray tracing capable (and ideally, performant) graphics hardware these days, and it looks like a trend that's likely to accelerate in years to come.

Memory-wise, both the 8 GB and 16 GB variants make use of GDDR6 connected to a 128-bit bus, with a total effective memory bandwidth of 320 GB/s. That's around 28% less memory bandwidth than you'll get from the RTX 5060 Ti with its speedy GDDR7 chips on board, albeit with the same bus size.

For the 16 GB cards that's probably going to be just about fine, but it might spell trouble for the 8 GB variant of the RX 9060 XT. The Nvidia GPUs with a paucity of VRAM may have a little more to give than the competing 8 GB AMD chip, but as we've yet to manage to get hold of the lower spec version that's all speculation for now.

Mention should also be made of those second generation AI accelerators, which allow the RX 9060 XT to take advantage of the latest, machine learning-enhanced iteration of AMD's upscaling tech, FSR 4. DLSS has long ranged ahead of FSR for sheer image quality thanks to its reliance on local, AI-capable hardware, and the RX 9000-series now has an equivalent of its own.

Multi Frame Generation has oft been touted as a reason to pick up an Nvidia card over the competition, but we've found it doesn't scale so well further down the stack due to increased latency. You can artificially boost the frame rate to gain some impressive figures, but the lower-end RTX 50-series cards show the limits of the tech when it comes to real world gaming experience.

AMD doesn't yet have an exact MFG equivalent, instead primarily relying on 2x Frame Gen as part of FSR 4—although major AI enhancements are said to be coming to AMD's tech in the Redstone update later this year. Regardless, at least when it comes to the bottom end of both company's current lineups, the AI frame rate-enhancing doohickeys look fairly evenly matched on paper.

All that being said, comparing AMD's efforts to Nvidia's with a specs sheet showdown doesn't reveal the performance differences between the two, nor what it's like to use one for real world gaming. The architectures are distinctly different, so it's in the benchmarks where we'll find whether the budget AMD card has the potential to give the significantly more expensive RTX 5060 Ti some serious trouble.

RX 9060 XT 16 GB performance and benchmarks

For now, we've only received a 16 GB sample for review, so I can't tell you how the 8 GB variant performs. I have, however, primarily pitted the XFX card against the Palit RTX 5060 Ti Infinity 3 16 GB, with our MSI RTX 5060 8 GB sample thrown in for reference, alongside the RX 7700 XT from the previous generation. I've also dropped in the numbers from the XFX Swift Radeon RX 9070 OC, to give you an idea of what $200 extra (technically) gets you in the world of AMD GPUs right now.

To war, then. AMD's chief architect of gaming solutions, Frank Azor, has been keen to point out that the "majority of gamers are still playing at 1080p", and the RX 9060 XT is aiming for great 1080p and good 1440p performance. And, while the 16 GB variant I have on hand here seems designed to allay concerns of a lack of VRAM, it would be unrealistic to expect smooth 4K frame rates from such a budget offering, and that is certainly reflected in the benchmarks here.

At 1080p, however, the little XFX card puts on an impressive turn of speed. A mere two frames difference between the RX 9060 XT and the RTX 5060 Ti in both the Black Myth Wukong and Cyberpunk 2077 average results is pleasing to see, especially when you factor in the price difference between the two, and the proclivity for ray tracing in CDPR's game. In F1 24 the AMD card pulls five frames ahead on average, although the 1% minimum is a full 10 frames behind.

Total War: Warhammer 3 delivers the best overall result for the XT when taking into account both the average and minimum frames, which is something of a surprise given it's traditionally a more CPU-focussed benchmark, especially at 1080p. I had a play around outside of the benchmarking tool to see what it was like in actual gameplay, and the little AMD provided a reliably high minimum result when paired with the mighty Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

Overall, though, the AMD card is slightly behind on average. Claims that the RX 9060 XT is 6% faster than the RTX 5060 Ti haven't quite proven out in my particular testing, but it's close enough across most benchmarks to show the performance is very much comparable.

1440p is a similar story: Close, but not quite the full cigar when it comes to beating the RTX 5060 Ti overall. Still, F1 24 seems to be the AMD card's jam, as it once again ranges ahead of the Nvidia GPU by a reasonable margin. And then there's 4K where… yep, you guessed it, the AMD card is ever so slightly behind on average once more.

Not that smooth 4K performance was ever on the table for either GPU—but should you be a fan of crunchy gaming, the RTX 5060 Ti delivers slightly more frames. A close run thing, though, no doubt.

It's the real world performance chart where the value of the AMD card becomes apparent, though. With upscaling enabled at 1440p (and frame gen, where applicable) the budget RX 9060 XT delivers figures that would have been decidedly mid-range for the previous generation.

Take note of the Cyberpunk 2077 result, for example. Six frames ahead of the significantly-more-expensive RTX 5060 Ti is nothing to be sniffed at, and is comparable to the figures I recorded with the RX 7800 XT when I played through the game last year with similar settings, minus some of the ray tracing goodies.

That particular card is still what I'd consider a great 1440p GPU in 2025, so the fact that the new budget AMD offering can match it is mighty impressive. And as for the ray tracing performance? It's much better than its older, bigger brother. As gen-on-gen comparisons go, that's the sort of major improvement I can get behind.

And so, up and down we go. The RX 9060 XT is eight frames slower than the RTX 5060 Ti in Black Myth, a full 20 fps quicker in The Talos Principle 2, and eight frames slower on average in Homeworld 3. Pretty much the definition of trading blows, this particular chart, but still a good result for the AMD card when price is taken into consideration.

The real kicker, however, comes when you compare the $349 RX 9060 XT 16 GB to the $299 RTX 5060 8 GB. The AMD tiddler is roughly 14% faster on average at both 1080p and 1440p Native, and a whopping 23% faster in the real world upscaling and frame generation benchmarks.

I'll admit, that last percentage is significantly skewed by a staggering 190 fps 1440p result for the RX 9060 XT in F1 24 with the upscaling and frame generating goodies turned on. We saw similarly astonishing numbers in that particular game in our testing of the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT. Whatever FSR is providing, this particular F1 racing game seems to love it. DRS, perhaps?

Anyway, while it might seem unfair to pit the 8 GB RTX 5060 against a $50 more expensive 16 GB competitor (although that VRAM difference is likely to only come into play for 4K gaming, which neither card is particularly good at), it's still pretty impressive what you get in terms of extra performance for the cash.

Where the RX 9060 XT truly lags behind, however, is in productivity performance. Not that I think that particularly matters in a budget gaming GPU, but should AI image generation be your thing, you'd be far better off with the Nvidia card.

The Blender result is also fairly disappointing, although it's far from the first AMD card we've seen drop significantly behind the competition in this particular benchmark. Rendering games? Great. Rendering for work? You'll be wanting something else.

Overclocking

While Nvidia's RTX 50-series GPUs are reliable overclockers, I'll admit to clenching my teeth when I push the AMD card above its usual speeds. With a 3.13 GHz boost clock speed as standard, it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of headroom to play with—and the card as a whole feels like it's pushed fairly close to its limits straight out of the box.

However, I was able to achieve a 300 MHz overclock on both the chip and the memory with little effort using AMD Adrenaline's built-in tuning software, which works fairly well. Going much past this, however, results in some jarring hard locks, particularly when trying to eek a little more speed out of the memory.

What's also held me back from pushing the AMD card into the stratosphere is the coil whine. The XFX card runs virtually silently at stock speeds, but boost the frequencies and it gets very chatty, very quickly.

Call me a nervous nellie if you must, but when an overclocked component starts squealing under serious duress, I find it difficult to ignore. This is most evident in The Talos Principle 2, where the RX 9060 XT makes its displeasure audibly known at every opportunity when pushed beyond its specs sheet. Still, that could be a PSU-dependent thing, and is more of an observation of this particular setup than an outright critique.

My testing shows a decent two to three fps improvement from this relatively mild OC in most of our games, with the odd outlier result. That's enough for me to say that if that slight fps discrepancy between the stock RX 9060 XT and the RTX 5070 Ti really does bug you, a little light overclocking can help to close the gap.

However, I would point out that the overclocked Nvidia GPU is capable of going a fair bit further—although your mileage will likely vary from card to card as to what stable clocks and performance you can eventually achieve.

Our Dave found that the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT both benefit from a spot of undervolting, but it's no bueno on this particular card. Even the mildest -60 Mv undervolt causes insta-crashes in most tests, even with a 10% tickle of extra wattage to play with. I'm no expert overclocker, but I'd say the RX 9060 XT has had most of the juice tweaked out of it by AMD to begin with.

Which makes sense. This card is a little late to the party, and I would wager that's because AMD was keen to see what the RTX 5060 Ti was capable of before it committed to final tuning. It feels like a card that's been gussied up to near its maximum in order to give Nvidia a headache right out of the box, so those looking for an overclocking wonder would be better off elsewhere.

PC Gamer test platform
Supplied by Cyberpower | MSI

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D | Motherboard: MSI MPG X870E Edge Ti WiFi | RAM: Kingston Fury Beast RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) @ 6,000 MT/s | Cooler: MAG CoreLiquid i360 White | SSD: Spatium M480 Pro 2 TB | PSU: MPG A1000GS PCIe 5 | Case: MAG Pano 100R White

RX 9060 XT 16 GB analysis

I've had my ear to the ground over the past few months, gauging the reaction of gamers to AMD's new GPU lineup, and I know expectations have been high. After all, the RX 9070 XT manages to give the RTX 5070 Ti a proper run for its money, and many have been hoping that the RX 9060 XT would do the same for the RTX 5060 Ti, too.

And although the AMD card is slightly behind on average in many of our gaming benchmarks compared to the Ti, I still think it achieves its goals—excellent 1080p performance, good 1440p figures, low power draw and cool temperatures, all for a significantly cheaper MSRP than its direct competition.

Which brings me back to money once more. What's absolutely key here is pricing and availability, and that's a hard thing to judge at this point. While I want to believe that, as AMD claims, the RX 9060 XT will be widely available for its stated price come launch day, we've all been disappointed before.

That being said, a look at our best graphics card deals page reveals multiple 8 GB RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti cards at MSRP or less, and a (relatively) small mark up on the 16 GB Ti variant. The 16 GB RX 9060 XT makes a whole lot of sense if it can maintain its $80 cheaper MSRP than the 16 GB Ti in particular, but should it prove popular (and I'm willing to bet it will) and retailers start to even out the price difference between the two, you're looking at a whole different recommendation.

I've been told by an AMD representative that the XFX Swift 16 GB model I've reviewed here has a recommended price of £315 in the UK. That's an encouraging thought, but again, what it ends up listing for on retailer websites remains up for debate at the time of writing.

As things stand, though, the AMD card seems destined to become the new budget darling of this generation. As someone who regularly recommends PC builds for this very website, I know how tough it can be to spec out a budget gaming rig in 2025, and how every penny counts when it comes to maximising the bang for your respective buck.

And while I wouldn't call the RX 9060 XT an exciting card, what it is is something more tangible. It's a workhorse, a reliable, cheap, chuck-in GPU willing to do some serious work in the graphics mines for much less than its main competition.

In short, it's exactly what we've been waiting for at the lower end of the market, and for that, it's deserving of some serious praise. It might not be the quickest card in its segment, but it gets darn close for significantly less.

There's a sense of confidence in Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. You can see it in the world design, feel it in the colorful cast of characters. 'Skyrim but you're also haunted by the ghost of King Arthur' is a concept that demands ambition.

But developer Questline is an untested studio, and fumbling the ball was always going to be a strong possibility. After dozens of hours, I’m happy to report that we have a genuinely fascinating open-world first-person RPG experience on our hands.

It's not without blemishes, though. Yes, Tainted Grail is sure of itself, but for every moment worth celebrating there's also a frustrating enemy encounter or a confusing UI feature to endure. The resulting game can be summed up in one word: inconsistent.

Setting the Round Table

Tainted Grail is a dark fantasy take on Arthurian legend set in the same world as the popular board game; in fact, it came to be thanks to the wild success of the 2018 Kickstarter campaign for the tabletop game.

Being a first-person open-world RPG, Tainted Grail invites comparisons to genre mainstays like The Elder Scrolls and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and it unabashedly leans into those influences—it even opens with an Oblivion-style prison break.

You'll level up skills as you use them, rewarding whatever playstyle you happen to be rolling with at the time; I tended to favor a battlemage-style build with a magic spell in one hand and a sword in the other. Each cast grew my magic power, each swing made me stronger with one-handed weapons. I've always been a big fan of this system in the Elder Scrolls games, and it's used to good effect here.

There are traditional skill trees, too. More than 20 of them, in fact, offering more substantial upgrades to your abilities. I felt overwhelmed in the early game when deciding what playstyle to try out, but skill points are plentiful enough that I felt free to experiment.

A wyrd wide world

The world is also a lot of fun to explore. The realm of Avalon is divided into three different hub regions, each with their own storyline and biome. The environments are very pretty and loaded with points of interest to explore, like caves and abandoned villages. I found something useful—a new piece of armor, a new crafting recipe—almost everywhere I looked. There's very little filler space in the game's large maps.

During your journey, you'll make several forays into the "Wyrdrealm," an alternate dimension populated by spirits and otherworldly monsters. The design of this realm is filled with character, from huge statues of eldritch creatures to a skyline of crumbling towers. Trips here were always full of surprises and I often looked forward to the next mission that took me to the Wyrdrealm.

For me, though, Tainted Grail shines brightest with its characters. Every NPC has something worthwhile to contribute, and most of them offer side quests that add new wrinkles to the larger story. They can also be surprisingly funny: you'll help a nobleman fake his death to get out of a loveless marriage, uncover the lair of an undead chef chasing the next great meal, assist a woman who accidentally turned her husband into a pig, and more. That sense of humor extends to gear too, with a haunted chest piece that screams in agony as you take damage and a magic spell that can turn enemies into cheese.

The larger story is a lot of fun too. Awaken Realms and Questline have presented a unique take on the tale of King Arthur, steering it into dark fantasy territory. There are a lot of clever twists on familiar tropes, like the roles played by Arthur's closest confidants, including Galahad and Merlin.

Tainted Grail is ambitious and grand in scope, so it's surprising that it's as technically sound as it is. Games of this scale tend to come with a bunch of bugs and glitches, but I experienced very little during my 40-plus hours; the most glaring hiccup I encountered was a few dropped lines of dialogue. It's likely that the game's two years in early access on Steam played a large role in this technical feat.

Sword in the groan

There's a lot to like about Tainted Grail, but Questline's ambition runs ahead of its execution in myriad small ways: little quirks here and there that don't amount to much individually, but, taken together, lessen the immersion and lead to some frustration and monotony.

My biggest complaint here is with some of the worldbuilding. I don't want to disparage the work of any voice actors, but it feels like many of them weren't briefed on some important bits of lore. For example, Cuanacht, the name of the second region of the game, is pronounced at least four different ways. This is true for a handful of other proper nouns, too, like "Dal Riata," and "Osbryht," and it makes the world feel less cohesive. (This could have been a way to differentiate between cultures, but I didn't notice any in-game reasons for the different pronunciations.)

Some more variety in enemy design would have been welcome as well. You can only kill so many bandits with the same face before it becomes rote, and the liberal use of palette-swapped monsters makes the world of Avalon feel smaller than it is. The upside is that boss encounters feel novel and unique, such as a Davy Jones-type squid pirate, or a deer spirit that can clone itself. With boss designs like that, it's a shame the intervening chaff feels so repetitive.

There are some design decisions that I'm not too keen on. Being limited to only four weapon loadouts was a bit disappointing, and having to menu my way back to the weapons screen got tedious every time I wanted to experiment with something new. By and large, though, the first-person combat feels smooth—sword swings have weighty impact and spells explode in showers of sparks and ice. However, there are a couple difficulty spikes that caught me off guard. There were times when I'd breeze through most of a dungeon's monsters, taking them out with just a couple spell casts, only to come up against a boss that may as well have been a brick wall for all the damage I did. This didn't happen often but it was discouraging when it did.

Exploring the world's dungeons and caves offers worthwhile rewards, but the design of these places is often disorienting. Pathways twist and turn, crossing over themselves in maze-like tunnels. I got lost more than a few times in these labyrinths, and the lack of a minimap was very much noticed. Confusingly, you can't seem to be able to access the full world map inside dungeons either.

There's a lot to like about Tainted Grail, and the good outweighs the bad by a fair margin. In a genre largely dominated by Bethesda and Obsidian, it's good to see a new developer making its mark, and Questline is punching above its weight.

It would probably be a lot to ask that you become the most active municipal volunteer in the troubled local community, restore the divinity of their god, and embark on a quest to rejuvenate the world after a devastating apocalyptic event. Well, you clearly don't have what it takes to be an Earth Dancer.

Kaguya, one of the two possible protagonists of Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, does have what it takes. Never has there been a more concerned citizen, a more selfless activist, or a more ambitious amateur farmer. She gets knocked out of the heavens after a violent battle with a mysterious figure on a black dragon; she gets thrust into tales of Celestial Collapse and Blight and meets the god of spring; she takes out a hoe and starts planting turnips. She also does some adventuring, romances some people, builds a house or two, learns to cook, and does her best to save the world. We love a Renaissance woman.

Most of Guardians of Azuma is a fairly straightforward action RPG. Kaguya has multiple choices of melee weapons, a bow, and sacred artifacts given to her by the gods, which do elemental damage. Weapons can be upgraded or enhanced, and later on she can acquire talismans to aid her in combat. This implies a diversity to combat that doesn't materialize—I never encountered a fight in the game that I couldn't brute force with my sword, whatever sacred artifact I was feeling at the time, and an inventory full of cheese omelets.

Most battles won't need strategizing, though enemies do have weaknesses and bosses can be stunned as well as just hacked at. I wasn't particularly bothered with the shallowness of combat—it's fun to spin in circles with my Fan Of Death and hear my party members chatter at the monsters we encounter, and it doesn't distract from the parts of the game that are more engaging. Let the friends I've recruited go slice up oni for me: I've gotta float around with a parasol to find frog statues for a local child.

The polar opposite of combat is the game's farm sim/village developer/landscape architect aspects, which can be as simple or as complicated as your heart desires. My urban planning style ended up being "function over form," which means I've got four bustling, productive villages that look like they were zoned by an over-caffeinated squirrel. Players with more of an eye for aesthetics will have fun messing with decorations, of which there are plenty to find within the world, and the development mechanics are easy to use (though there's some frustrating friction at the beginning, when crafting basic terrain tiles requires an annoying amount of menu navigation).

Once you can start recruiting villagers they'll be assigned to work in your absence, which means Kaguya only has to make a few decisions in her role as Literally Everyone's Mayor before the money starts rolling in, leaving her free to wander around and fight or flirt or make more onigiri.

There's a lot going on in this game. Kaguya's got to explore, fight monsters, and discover what her amnesiac protagonist deal is, but she's also got to build up these villages, do some farming, socialize, cook approximately a hundred thousand recipes, revive the divinity of some gods, and go to bed before midnight. At first it's unwieldy, these systems bordering on excessive in what is actually not a huge game world. Kaguya spends a ton of time retracing her steps as she slowly unravels the truth about what's going on with Azuma. Early on, that's a weird juxtaposition: why do I have so much I can do and so little to do it with?

Time and progression pay off extremely well to combat that imbalance. The social mechanics reward long investments with different characters, and it takes a while to wade out of the shallower aspects of their personal quests. The villages you're developing are irregularly stocked with dev zones and existing infrastructure, so some have easy early rewards whereas others get a boost at later levels. And the story simply gets more interesting later in the game. The first 10 or so hours are almost off-puttingly busy, but as the game progresses, the feeling of busyness turns into a feeling of comfortable denseness.

It is satisfying and occasionally heartwarming to see characters I met in Spring Village settling down to eat a meal in Autumn Village, or to know that I'll be able to fulfill a request of a villager in Summer Village because my barn in Winter Village is producing the eggs I need for the recipe. Because so much is automated, it escapes the player-centric god-king-of-all-I-survey trap it could have easily fallen into; Kaguya's role, both narratively and mechanically, is just to get the ball rolling, to bring life back to something so it can continue living. Build a house, plant a field, and there will be people to till it, to water and harvest, to fish and mine and log and tend to animals and run shops.

It's one instance of the game's throughline: That the point of helping someone, or healing something, is so they can stand on their own.

The social system is the other standout. It's regrettably frontloaded with some of the weakest writing and least interesting characters, but once you unlock more villages the roster of characters you can befriend is varied and charming, with some personal quests that go in really delightful directions (I have lost hours of my life to chasing around mischievous shapeshifters, advertising local businesses, and making gamers be social.)

Because personal quest progression is tied to the calendar, and because there's no limit to how many characters you can interact with in a day, it fits in well between main quest progress, exploration, and village development. I thoroughly enjoyed when I'd be wandering around only to spot someone I'd been talking to in the distance and sprint after them to go grab a bite to eat together.

Out of all the characters you can meet in Rune Factory, the best ones by far are the gods you awaken throughout the story. Without spoilers (because there are some legitimately fun reveals in their roster) the fact that the gods have both main story relevance and sidequest social relevance means they have the most time to develop, even the ones you don't meet until later in the game.

Kaguya often takes a step back in these parts of the story, and the quirks, neuroses, fears, and desires of the gods get to take center stage. This is excellent, since they resemble less a pantheon of powerful deities and more an impromptu reunion of bickering siblings that have been ignoring each other's texts, complete with blithe nicknames, established alliances, and a handful of held grudges. They're just as invested as Kaguya in restoring their divinity and investigating the cause of the Celestial Collapse, but also some of them are socially anxious or easily distracted or owe someone some money, so they'll need a hand here or there.

Those are the two levels the game operates on: help save the world, or help a buddy out. At the beginning Kaguya is a stranger, literally crash-landed in the shrine of Spring Village, with no memory of her place in the world. Rune Factory feels like a stranger to itself at this point, with all of the moving parts present but watching each other warily, not sure how to work together yet. As Kaguya settles into herself, as she engages with her environment, helps the village and the villagers, and starts her divine journey, the game matches her.

On the macro level she collects the allies and information needed to figure out what's going on with the Celestial Collapse and how to fix it. On the micro level, she collects the resources and knowledge needed to figure out how to cook honey toast for a demanding pastry chef. She might be an Earth Dancer for the gods, to bring them back to life and guide them towards the rejuvenation of the world, but in every other aspect she's just a person trying to help out where she can.

The Pelta has a notably soft and comfortable texture—one that doesn't stand out in the looks department but is much appreciated after a long day's work. Coming into the summer months, their light, breathable texture is a welcome sidestep from the Corsair Virtuoso Max I was previously using day to day.

As it is a gaming headset, the ROG Pelta inevitably comes with RGB lighting on the side—with all of its battery sucking trappings—but is otherwise relatively understated. The mic can even be unplugged, which, when paired with the fact that the Pelta can connect to a phone or tablet via Bluetooth, makes it a reliable choice should you want to go for a walk with it on.

There's no worry of your ears overheating, and the light clamping force gives the headset a small amount of protection from outside sounds. It certainly doesn't have active noise cancelling, which I don't hold against it at this price point, but it does a satisfactory job of immersing in music on the go.

None of that would matter if the sound wasn't strong, but luckily, those 50 mm titanium-plated drivers come through clear and loud.

In Doom: The Dark Ages, every inch of the game's music feels well tuned in the headset, pulsing and punching in step with the game's mighty guitars. However, the feeling of the Doom Slayer's feet stomping on the pavement doesn't quite match the weight I was expecting with the standard EQ settings.

Pumping up the bass certainly helps, but the headset doesn't quite have the wurble you may want from authentic bass. It's adequate, but not quite as real sounding as some headsets.

The mids and highs, however, are clear and well-tuned. The intricacies of sound come through well, and directional atmospheric noises are pointed and easy to pick out. This makes listening for footsteps in the likes of Valorant incredibly easy. For its price point, the Pelta really delivers with its drivers.

There's a nuanced fright to the metallic clangs and rhythmic pounding of Buckshot Roulette that adds to the already creepy atmosphere of, well, every other part of the game. The comfort of the headset only adds to this feeling, never daring to intrude on the immersion of whatever game you're playing. It handles music well, too.

Genesis Noir's jazzy, vibey soundtrack slickly oozes out of the Asus ROG Pelta, with both the squealing of smooth sax and the pitter-patter of jazz brushes coming through clear.

In the UK, the ROG Pelta has gone as low as £95, and for that, I don't think I can name a single headset I'd pick over the Pelta right now. However, the US doesn't have it quite as good, only getting a couple of dollars off the headset here and there.

At this point, it puts up a fight against the likes of the Turtle Beach Atlas Air and Steelseries Arctis Nova 5X. It is over $100 cheaper than the Delta II and certainly doesn't feel like a budget option when it comes to its sound.

As well as coming with Bluetooth, the Pelta has a 2.4 GHz USB-C dongle and can be plugged in via a USB-C. The only connectivity option it's really missing is a 3.5 mm port, but the amount of versatility you'd gain from that inclusion would actually make the side controls worse.

As they stand, the on-ear controls are totally fine, and only on the left ear (like the Arctis Nova Pro). The volume wheel can be accessed easily, then there's a switch to flip between connectivity modes, and muting the mic makes a red light pop up on the side, which is great when you've forgotten if you're muted or not.

The one place this could improve is a quick switch on the mic or some sort of smart mute mic mechanism, as it's a button on the left earcup, and one that always takes me a few moments to find.

Listen to the microphone test here:

The mic performs around the middle of the pack for its price range, coming through fairly clear but not beating out even a cheaper dedicated microphone. In meetings and games, I never felt like it faltered to cut through the noise.

The Pelta has 90 hours of battery life in Bluetooth mode with RGB lighting off and mic on mute. That figure drops to 60 hours with lighting on. The Pelta gets up to 70 hours of power with the lighting off and the mic muted in 2.4 GHz mode, and 45 hours with them both turned on. I practically only charged the headset when the thought occurred to me, and it never ran out. Fast charging means you can get up to 3 hours of listening time with a 15-minute charge, which means if it does run out, getting it up and running again isn't too much hassle.

The ROG software, Armoury Crate Gear, is pretty much exactly what I want from it: barely noticeable. It can change some AI noise filtering settings for the microphone, adjust the EQ, customise lighting, and, more importantly, get firmware updates where necessary.

If I could describe my time with the Asus ROG Pelta in a single word, I'd say smooth. It's comfortable, with a healthy battery life, decent microphone, and all-around great sound. The bass is a tad underwhelming, but this is one of the only real downsides from its reasonable price point.

The light material and great padding have been an absolute boon in hotter months, and connectivity is smooth and fast, with no cutouts in all those evenings spent gaming late into the night.

The Pelta's price point is a tough one for most headsets because there's so much competition at just above $100, but its quality means it doesn't get drowned out despite it.

However, I can't recommend it for use as a primary gaming mouse, not when there are cheaper options that do similar, such as the Logitech G305 Lightspeed, or better options for a little more cash, such as the Turtle Beach Burst II Air or even the Logitech G Pro X Superlight.

But let's start off with the good. The SteelSeries Rival 3 Gen 2 Wireless shares many of the benefits of the original Rival 3, and the main allure—apart from its striking 'Aqua' and 'Lavender' colour options that you can choose instead of plain black or white—is that it has dual wireless connectivity and removable batteries. This makes for an incredibly versatile mouse that's a great Jack of all trades.

It has some other upgrades compared to the first edition—better battery life, PTFE feet, and click latency—but the main one is that it now supports rechargeable batteries.

I've been a massive defender of wireless mice over the last few years, but I've always gone for the baked-in type. Now, after using the Rival 3 Gen 2 Wireless for a while, I must say I see the appeal. That's not only because you get some fantastic battery life out of removable batteries (up to 200 hours at 1,000 Hz polling with 2x AAA batteries, here), but also because you never have to plug your mouse in again if they're also rechargeable.

The main benefit of removable, rechargeable batteries in your gaming peripherals is one we discovered with the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro headset: It allows you to keep one set of batteries charging while the other one's in use, then swap them over when the battery gets low. This means you can essentially have infinite battery life, without ever having to plug in your mouse. Of course, you'll have to have your batteries plugged in and charging somewhere, but that's more convenient.

That kind of setup is possible with the SteelSeries Rival 3 Gen 2 Wireless, but only if you sort out your own rechargeable batteries and charging station. The mouse itself only comes with two single-use AAA batteries. Which means, of course, that if you want one of the main benefits of this mouse, you have to spend a bit extra.

In practice, I found battery life to match up to what's claimed on the spec sheet. I used just one battery at a time to keep the mouse weight a little lighter at 95 g, and I found that to last me just over a week of daily use for work and gaming. Then I just popped off the top and swapped in the new AAA battery.

The main downside to this setup is that 95 g weight. Stacked against some current competition, such as the aforementioned and admittedly more expensive Turtle Beach Burst II Air or Razer DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed, it's just far too heavy.

There are lightweight options for cheaper than these, too. The Glorious Model O Wireless doesn't cost much more, for instance, and frequently drops down to about the same price as the Rival 3 Gen 2 Wireless, yet it weighs just 69 g. Ditto the NZXT Lift Elite Wireless which weighs just 57 g. You might have to wait a week or two to find such a lightweight mouse on sale, but before long you'll find something much lighter for about the same price as this Rival 3 Gen 2 Wireless.

This weight is par for the course for removable battery mice—just ask the G305 Lightspeed—but it's a drawback nonetheless, unless you're one of the few to prefer a heavier rodent.

It's not just the weight itself, either; it's the distribution. Because the batteries sit more towards the back of the mouse, there's a definite drag at the rear end. I found this very noticeable, and while I've become familiar with it over the last couple of weeks of use, I still notice it.

It's not an uncomfortable mouse to use, mind. Far from it. The textured plastic surface feels very nice under my fingertips, and it feels incredibly comfy under my hybrid palm-claw grip. It's pretty shallow, though, so don't expect the pinnacle of hand support for all you palm grippers.

It's sturdy, too, and certainly feels worth its $60 MSRP price tag on the build quality front. That is, in all but one area, this being the scroll wheel.

Unfortunately, this mouse's wheel suffers (although not quite as badly) from what I distinctly remember my very first Razer DeathAdder mouse suffering many, many years ago: It's got a distinctive kind of mushiness to it that makes it feel a little… unsettled on its notches. As if it could slip into that no-go 'between the notches' zone at any moment. It's a difficult sensation to describe, but it suffices to say that it's not the best scroll wheel I've used.

And I'm glad I didn't get around to writing this review until a few weeks in with the mouse, because until now, that was the only complaint I had about the mouse wheel, but as of today, it's started occasionally squeaking, too. It doesn't happen all the time, but it's a particularly grating sound to my ears, and it's not a good sign that this has started after just a couple of weeks of use.

The other thing that bugs me about the Rival 3 Gen 2 Wireless is its bottom switch that allows you to toggle between Bluetooth, 2.4 GHz, and Off. It's pretty difficult to switch between 2.4 and Bluetooth, and God help you if you want to switch it to the middle Off position. To get enough pressure on the tucked-in little bugger to get it to actually move, that's then so much pressure that it overshoots the middle.

It's a good job the sleep functionality works a charm for that reason, because otherwise this thing's battery would drain a whole lot quicker. This can be toggled in the app settings, and I don't have any complaints on this front, really. You get plenty to fiddle with: polling, DPI, wireless stability enhancement (at the cost of battery life), and so on.

When it comes to gaming, I had no issues with the mouse other than occasionally being a little bothered by its rear weighting. I'm used to lightweight mice like the Logitech G Pro X Superlight, though, and not everyone might find that as big of a deal.

If maximising competitive performance is what you're going for, though, you're probably better off looking elsewhere. This mouse is still using the same TrueMove Air 18K sensor that the original used, and while 18,000 DPI and 400 IPS should be plenty for most people, it's often more about what those low numbers say about the sensor quality in general than the actual numbers they reach.

In the case of the SteelSeries Rival 3 Gen 2, my testing showed the sensor to be a little below average compared to some other gaming mice on the market right now. This primarily shows in the MouseTester sensor consistency results—there's a higher amount of tracking deviation than what you might want out of a sensor for, say, high-level gaming in pro shooters.

I didn't run into any problems clicking heads in Counter-Strike 2 or tracking enemy Pharahs with Soldier's rifle in Overwatch 2 (well, no more problems than usual, anyway), but better-performing hands and eyes than mine might be able to notice the difference between this and a top-tier sensor.

So, with all this being said and done, why would one pick up a Rival 3 Gen 2 Wireless? Well, as I said at the start, I think this mouse is great as a Jack of all trades kind of deal—perhaps if you want to use it not primarily for gaming but for work and travel, too.

Its ability to run off rechargeable, removable batteries makes it attractive on the battery life front, and its dual 2.4 GHz and Bluetooth modes make it very versatile. Apart from the slight fiddliness of actually flicking the switch, swapping between the two connections is a breeze, and it allows me to go back and forth between using it with my gaming PC and my laptop at will, instantly.

If all of that is specifically your jam, then have at it. Just remember that you have to spend extra for rechargeable batteries and a battery charger if you want one of this mouse's main benefits.

For me, the weightiness, the mediocre sensor, and most importantly, the squeaky and slightly mushy scroll wheel make it a no-go, considering there are other great options on the market for a similar price. It's a shame, because it'd have been nice to keep on the rechargeable, reusable battery bandwagon more permanently, but the drawbacks aren't worth it here.

To give the Eclipse G400A a proper test, I set about building an affordable PC inside it. Easier said than done in today's economy, but I just about managed to get it done for a reasonable budget. You can read all about that in our budget build guide, but I took away from that experience a very positive outlook on everything the Phanteks G400A has to offer.

The G400A's frame is machined well with few sharp edges and clean corners. The case I received had no visible marks on any of the panels, which you'd think would be a given with a brand new case, but scratches can and do happen in transit with poor packaging. There's only a small box of accessories included with the G400A, though Phanteks has been extremely generous by putting 30 zip-ties in there—count 'em, 30! It also has the prerequisite screws for the motherboard, PSU, HDD, and a couple extras.

It's a similarly priced unit, at $110/£85, to the Corsair Frame 4000D with fans. Both have their pros and cons. The Corsair is a better-looking case in my opinion, though it also has panel flex (which I'm told might go away soon as Corsair moves to thicker metal). The Phanteks is built like a tank and has one more fan than Corsair and they're all the larger 140 mm variety.

Where this case really shines as an affordable, almost budget, chassis is in fan selection. There are four M25-140 Gen2 D-RGB fans included on the G400A. These are not your basic case fans. Case in point, a single fan would cost you around £10 if you were to buy it separately. These are some of Phantek's latest, with strong stats and lit up to the nines with RGB-lit blades and an infinity mirror effect on the central fan hub.

These fans are connected together using a proprietary connector, which combines PWM fan control and RGB control together. It's pretty easy to daisy chain more of these fans together, terminating in the standard PWM and A-RGB headers using an adapter cable, though you shouldn't have to worry about that. The case comes pre-wired and ready to go, and the four fans fill out the case with enough cooling that you shouldn't have to worry about installing any more.

A dust filter covers the front of the case for all three fans. It has a relatively small impact on the airflow through the front of the case when installed, however, once combined with the mesh front panel does stack up to become a bit more of a hindrance. Using an anemometer, I measured airflow to be at around 1.9 m/s with the dust filter and front panel fitted, 2.2 m/s with only the dust filter, and 2.3 m/s without either. That's more than some I've tested, but even so, I'm not too worried about airflow in this case with those three 140 mm fans loaded in the front.

I opted for an air cooler for my test build, Arctic's Freezer 36, though you could just as easily fit up to a 360 mm radiator inside the top of the Phanteks G400A, and without moving around any fans. The top mesh panel pops off the case for easier access and there's easily enough room for a standard thickness radiator between it and the top of the motherboard once fitted. The Phanteks is quite generously sized all-round at 495 L x 230 W x 522 H mm. It didn't feel quite as spacious as the Be Quiet! Shadow Base 800 FX, but it's as easy to build into.

Along the bottom of the case is a PSU shroud with plenty of room for cables. The PSU sits in the rear and in front of it is the storage bracket for any 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drives you might have. I didn't have any, which means I could have removed this storage bracket entirely if I wanted to, but I had such a gluttony of room under the shroud that I left it in.

The PSU shroud is where Phantek's sought to apply the only dab of flair to the entire build, bar the RGB fans. There's a light strip that runs the length of the PSU shroud. It's diffused, which looks so much better than a strip with obvious LEDs, and it's easily controllable in-line with the fans through the motherboard. In my case, via ASRock's RGB software.

The cable management on the rear is a real boon to the G400A, too. It's a smart system that ditches the usual channels and ties for a velcro loop system. It sounds pretty pedestrian, but the way the velcro loops around makes it much easier to thread through new cables or remove it and replace, without undoing all your hard work cable managing. This is great for beginners, especially if you're prone to running a few extra cables or reworking your system to get it just right.

My only concern with the rear cable management is that the right-most side of the chassis, traditionally where your CPU power cables go, only offers a few tabs to loop a zip-tie around to secure any cables going that way. But it's times like these where it's important not to forget the 30 zip-ties included in the box of those in the box so you can cut and reconnect many times over without running out.

The G400A is certainly not the flashiest case on the market. You could spend a similar amount on just a case, no fans, on the likes of the Phanteks Evolv X2 or Lian Li O11 Vision Compact. Both of which are some of the best-looking glass boxes around. But you won't quite get the affordability of four 140 mm fans included in the box, and that's what Phanteks has got absolutely right with the G400A. It's a wonderfully easy option for first-time buyers.

That's really the strongest argument for the G400A: if you're set to brave your first PC build ever (don't worry, it's not that bad), this is a superb choice. You have all the case cooling you need already wired up and ready to go, there's ample room for a power supply and no tight connections or corners to work with in the rare occurrence you have to troubleshoot.

Teen's origin story (I won't spoil it for you, don't worry) is just one of the many wonderfully weird things going on in To a T, a short adventure game designed by Katamari Damacy director Keita Takahashi. It's a world where a ladybug runs the town newspaper, where the two most important events of the story are kicked off by a dog pooping, and where my science teacher, Mr. Mushroom, casually announces one day that my teenage classmate "is an authority on Dark Magic." Sure. That might as well all happen.

It's all delightful, absolutely silly stuff, and I wish more games made for kids were filled to the brim not only with wholesomeness but with just plain weirdness like this one. I also wish the same amount of thought put into the story and characters went into the controls and camera of To a T, because while the world is a delight to discover, it can sometimes be a chore to actually play.

T for two

Being T-shaped has its challenges. Getting dressed and using the bathroom requires the help of Teen's dog, navigating through narrow doorways means carefully turning sideways first, and simple tasks like pouring cereal and milk into a bowl and then eating it means making an occasional mess and using a very long spoon.

Teen's morning tasks like having breakfast, washing their face, and brushing their teeth are minigames, repeated every new day during the adventure. (You can skip them after the first day, but amusingly Teen will have eyeboogers for the rest of the day if you do.)

Though Teen is cheerful enough about their shape, they're less enthusiastic about going to school, where bullies routinely mock them. Teen's sudden mood change from happily performing their morning tasks to absolutely dreading the school day strikes home for me, and I suspect will do the same for anyone who is or was bullied at school.

I won't describe how Teen eventually turns those bullies into friends, but if I gave you a hundred guesses you'd never come close. More wonderful weirdness.

When Teen isn't at school to play math and fitness minigames, you're free to explore the town. There are popcorn and ice-cream stands (all run by singing giraffes) where you can participate in speed-eating challenges, there are coins lining the sidewalks and hovering in hedges to collect so you can buy new outfits for Teen, and there are plenty of oddball characters to meet, like DJ Pigeon (a giant pigeon who is a DJ, of course).

There's also some pretty strange stuff happening (beyond talking pigeons and singing giraffes, I mean) for Teen to investigate, which slowly takes you deeper into the unusual town and mysterious backstory of Teen, Teen's mom, and other characters.

To a T's world is a bright and cheery one, but also packed with butt and poop jokes, plus a few dark turns and surprising twists that add up to more than just a colorful and wholesome game. The real star of To a T is a song with the lyrics "You are the perfect shape," which not only slaps (thankfully, because you'll hear it a lot) but is always accompanied by a montage of Teen going about their day in the midst of their current situation.

It doesn't matter if Teen is having a good day or a bad one, the peppy music kicks in and we see them just sort of dealing with things, maybe even unhappy things, sometimes making the visuals a bleak juxtaposition to the cheerful ditty.

There's even a point where being "the perfect shape" takes on a downright ominous tone due to events in the story. I've never seen a song used this inventively in a game before, and it's a real treat every time it starts playing. Another song, where the giraffe explains how they make sandwiches, will also stick in your head long after you stop playing.

T-Boned

It's a shame that To a T can be frustrating to actually play at times. The camera is routinely awkward while getting around, sometimes zoomed in so close to Teen that it's hard to tell where you are and what direction you're going without having to repeatedly bring up the map. Objects like cars or and trees—blurred with depth of field that can't be turned off—frequently obscured my view of Teen, making it tricky to navigate the town.

The camera gets even worse in a segment where you control Teen's little dog on an investigative adventure through the city: the camera is zoomed in so close that several platforming segments where I had to lead the dog through a maze and jump across gaps were genuinely frustrating.

It's weird to say, but I wound up looking more forward to the story sections where I could just sit back and watch the strange revelations unfold than I did the parts of the game where I actually, y'know, played it.

It's still worth struggling through the sometimes-awkward gameplay for the fabulous story contained within its five hour duration. It's surprising, it's got a lot of laughs, and there's a nice message at its core: we're all different, so let's stop pretending things would be perfect if we were all the same color and shape. Also, maybe we should stop killing each other just because we don't look alike? That's good advice: take it from a T.

At this point, I've tested every generation of Stealth 700, and the latest is clearly the best, but the broader market has changed a lot recently, too. One of the biggest problems with buying a gaming headset right now is that it feels like there's a bit of a solved science to many price brackets. You got about $60? Go for the Corsair HS55 Stereo. Is your budget $200? The HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless is the obvious choice.

The Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3 will have a tough time in its market, mostly because there are so many solid options already available. The question is no longer "is it good?" but "is it better?" The answer, I'd say, is "not quite, but it puts up a good fight".

The Stealth 700 Gen 3 I'm testing right now is the PC version, which comes in a sleek black colourway with light silver detailing—but I wouldn't exactly call it stealthy. From the thick cushion, fairly heavy size, and Turtle Beach name slapped on the side, it is noticeably a gaming headset. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's perhaps a little too gamery on the go, if such a thing is possible.

The PC version isn't just the go-to for PC gamers because of its colours. It comes with unique features in Turtle Beach Swarm II, the audio software, like game chat boost, game chat mix, and Waves 3D, the 3D audio option. Unfortunately, the colour of the headset defines the platform, so if you purchased the Cobalt Blue model because you like the look, you are missing out on the 10 Hz to 40 kHz frequency response that is only possible on the PC headset.

It's worth noting that the PC version of the headset also works on PS4 and PS5, though not on Xbox. If you happen to also play on PlayStation, I don't see a single reason to buy the PlayStation-exclusive white headset instead.

The headset also comes with two 2.4 GHz connectors, as well as built-in Bluetooth 5.2 support. This means you can plug one receiver into a PC and one into a PS5, and swap from device to device by simply clicking a button on the headset. Then, Bluetooth connectivity is simultaneous, which means you can watch a quick TikTok from your phone without having to take the headset off. It's super handy and one of the best features of the Stealth 700 Gen 3.

Unfortunately, though the ability to connect to multiple devices at once is superb, it can be a bit more effort than I otherwise expected. Updating the headset, letting it go to sleep through inactivity, or swapping devices can take a moment, and it occasionally fails to connect on the first go. This means light troubleshooting is a pervasive issue with the headset. Swapping devices never meant I had to commit to a full-on reset, but if the headset went into sleep mode, I'd occasionally have to reconnect again manually. On top of that, there's no wired connection option with the headset.

The Stealth 700 Gen 3 is rather impressive when connected, though. It has a neutral sound profile with a light boost in bass, which means it's atmospheric for games and head bob worthy for music. Testing it in Runescape: Dragonwilds offered a real thump to the sound of a cow hitting the ground that almost made me feel bad. Almost. Then, the sounds of Dragonwilds, filled with birds singing and magic in the air, came through cleanly and clearly.

The explosive sounds of Doom: The Dark Ages are as punchy and weighty as you might expect, but the drivers are able to enunciate the parts in the soundtrack that aren't thumping and shrieking over the top of the mix. It allows nuance to slip under all that distorted guitar.

Controls are built into the side of the earcups and are very easy to navigate, which I was thankful to learn after being shocked by the pounding music in the Counter-Strike 2 lobby theme. Counter-Strike 2 itself is an appropriate test of the headset, as very bass-heavy gaming headphones sometimes drown out footsteps and reload sounds amid the thunder of an AWP shot. Despite a bassy sound, the Stealth 700 Gen 3 performs admirably and clearly.

There's also plenty of customization in Turtle Beach Swarm II, with simple EQ controls, and toggles for Waves 3D, a boost in game chat, and mic monitoring. I did find that above 80%, mic monitoring would result in a pretty nasty buzz. This buzz wasn't projected while speaking, so 65% is the sweet spot here.

Listen to the microphone test here:

Swarm II is both a quality bit of software with intuitive controls and easy access to future updates, but a pain to continue using. After a little while, the software just refused to open, requiring a fresh install or restarting my entire rig just to turn on. On one PC, I had no problem with the software. On another, it totally failed when trying to get an update and required tonnes of testing to get working again. Broadly speaking, software generally can be finicky, so there's always a chance this is partially my rig's fault, but it feels worth noting here regardless.

The Stealth 700 Gen 3 has a nice snug fit, with a pretty secure clamping force on the head. It never caused me any pain or discomfort, but it is a stronger squeeze than I'm used to. Luckily, the top headband and side earcups are super cushioned, so the whole headset ends up just feeling cosy. I rather like the fit, but it is bulky and tight, so it may annoy others.

The mic is okay for its price range. It's clear, with the software giving plenty of customization options. It can come across a tad tinny, even with AI noise filtering turned off. The flip-to-mute system also works perfectly, thanks to a small chime indicating every time you are muted. Just pop the mic down, and you are ready to get talking to your friends.

One of the biggest sins the Stealth 700 Gen 3 commits is being the same price as the MSRP of the Cloud Alpha Wireless. Given that the latter headset often comes in cheaper as it's older. The comparison isn't the most flattering for the ol' Turtle Beach. The Stealth 700 Gen 3 has a notable battery life of 80 hours, but this pales in comparison to the 300 hours the Alpha Wireless will give you. As well as that, the older headset sounds great, has no software issues, and doesn't require an acquired taste for the close fit.

I have tried every Stealth 700 headset to date, and the Gen 3 is my favourite of the lot. However, that MSRP is high enough for the competition to be quite tight, and it's not nearly as easy to use as I had hoped. A comfy fit and great drivers are let down by mediocre software, and impressive yet somewhat inconsistent pairing.

In the fight against Elden Ring Nightreign's riff on Mothra, I never expected it would eventually touch down and mount the head of its partner, a giant stick bug with claws, like a mech. For the rest of the fight they were operating in unison, a kaiju cowboy with orbital lasers piercing the sky. That's a problem pesticide can't solve, but, as it turns out, three guys with bows absolutely can.

There's nothing like fighting a boss in a FromSoftware game that is designed to be a joke with you as the punchline—and defying fate with your own ridiculous strategy. Elden Ring Nightreign is a game about losing a fistfight over and over until you luck or strategize your way into an opportunity to bring three guns. The harder you've been hit the more glorious the payback, and Nightreign is a merciless bully.

Even if you've played Elden Ring, Nightreign will surprise you. Imagine the Lands Between as a stadium filled with familiar monsters and a team of three players as its contestants. It's an action RPG as a sport, cranked up to two times speed, and designed to be replayed every 30 minutes. Randomized loot and an ever-tightening battle royale-style circle apply constant pressure that you're only released from at the end of the match, whether you survive or not.

Nightreign is the most peculiar game FromSoft has made since the '90s. It's also its most abrasive.

Even now after putting well over 30 hours into it, I believe Nightreign is both a trend-defying remix of Elden Ring and also a pile of complete bullshit that I shouldn't have to deal with in the year 2025.

I can't help but respect the fact that it works, however. Dropping down into Limtown with the boys is the kind of thing someone would pitch on NexusMods, and yet that is exactly what I've been doing in Nightreign. We've been "looting churches," "clearing camps," and "popping crab" for the past week. Some of my most heated, frustrating moments—like when a boss "invaded" my run to steal entire levels from me before peacing out—were cooled by the fact that I was palling around Elden Ring like it was Fortnite.

There were also plenty of times I was convinced that maybe Nightreign is actually a terrible idea. Elden Ring didn't need a time limit, nor did it need a randomized loot system. The randomization often feels designed—or under-designed—just to screw you over. There's a difference between mistiming a dodge on a fatal attack and spending 10 minutes on a grueling boss fight because the map refused to cough up a holy weapon for a boss who is weak to holy. This game has optional events where you can spend half of a run fighting for a bonus reward that will be irrelevant to the final boss you've targeted for that session—or any boss for that matter. And the ability to meaningfully buildcraft is in constant tension with Nightreign's pace and its UI, which obfuscates key information around damage scaling and weapon abilities.

Do you know the difference between Dragon Communion Incantations and Dragon Cult Incantations? I don't either, but you have five seconds to figure it out before the circle consumes you.

Nightreign is kind of a mess. FromSoftware's inscrutable terminology and uneven balance makes the learning curve much steeper than it needs to be. Or maybe that's the beauty of it: A game not trying to entice you with daily login bonuses or battle passes, but a language to learn over the course of hundreds of runs. In that way, it emulates the joys of gaining acuity with any of the studio's other games. But that might also be why the structure of Nightreign falls apart for me.

If you hated running back to a boss in Elden Ring, try doing that with a whole-ass battle royale to survive on the way there.

It's hard to enjoy the journey when the destination is the only thing you're meaningfully rewarded for. Each character in Nightreign can equip three Relics with passive benefits that range from unnoticeable (dexterity +2) to game-changing (item effects or healing flasks are shared with all players). Most of them are trash and will have little to no bearing on whether or not you can kill the final boss, let alone reach them. But that's all that you get to take home after each run.

Build-brained

Nightreign wants you in it for the love of the game, and while I can appreciate that in a sea of games that practically bribe you to keep playing, it can also make the routine moments of a run kind of boring. Elden Ring has its punishing sections, but there's always something else to do. In Nightreign, you just fight bosses until you're strong enough to fight a different boss. When my team cut down the final one, I couldn't think of many reasons compelling me to do it all over again.

But later, I watched a recording of the fight and saw that the final sliver of health on a boss we'd attempted at least six times was extinguished by the tiny magical daggers summoned by my sword's passive effect. And that's when the gears started turning.

What if I found that weapon again and actually played the right character with the right items to emphasize that technique? What other effects have I ignored that could inspire entirely new strategies? I immediately wanted to go for another run as an experiment.

Uh oh. It's possible Nightreign rules, actually.

The combinations of weapons and effects you can put together in a run frequently activate my "RPG build" neurons. Part of the reason we even made it to the point where the final boss was nine magic glintblades away from death is that I discovered the "successive attacks negate damage" passive effect. On most of Nightreign's eight playable characters it's hard to activate, but it naturally synergizes with the dual-wielding knife specialist Duchess' playstyle. Though she's normally one of the squishiest nightfarers, a flurry of stabs into a boss and I could tank an attack that would take my teammates out in one hit. Paired with a Relic that automatically activates her skill to repeat damage done to a boss after landing several hits in a row and I was playing an immortal god. The problem is you won't find those buffs every run—or on the right character.

But when you do, the thrill of having that kind of power in a FromSoft game is delicious, especially when the difficulty is as brutal as Nightreign's. The RNG of it all and the number of bosses standing between you and the end demands a high level of execution and, frankly, luck. You get better at knowing what locations to hit each night, but if the drops don't serve you, the run can go sour quickly.

In Fortnite, the odds are stacked against you. One hundred players enter a match and only one comes out a winner. In Nightreign the odds are the same, except most of the time the game wins. This feels backwards to how I've always approached FromSoft games, but the elation of finally getting a win can be tantalizing. And that's all it takes to pull me back in. It doesn't matter whether it's a silly weapon I want to try again or a different character I want to learn, like the witch who can yank magic out of enemies to buff her allies. Every time I get a taste of victory, I forget the misery of spending 30 minutes to lose to a boss and hit the button to do it again anyway.

Brutal but brilliant

All of Nightreign's faults fade when the brutal difficulty and the randomized nature of it creates something beautiful, like when you discover the skeletons summoned by the little necromancer girl can revive you when you're downed.

Or when you're fighting a jellyfish god from another planet and your buddy in Skyrim armor screams as he rises into the sky on a giant rock, saving you from a big attack.

Or when you're low on healing flasks and praying for an easy boss and out from the dark portal steps a nightmare from an entirely different game, one you thought you'd never have to face again. Sometimes Nightreign is so cruel all you can do is laugh as it shoves your nose in the dirt.

But then it turns around and delivers catharsis. Everyone cheered in voice chat when Centipede Demon, the boss nobody remembers from Dark Souls, showed up to get obliterated by 14 years of action RPG combat advancement. When the stars align—and they will—Nightreign is unlike anything else I've played.

I just wish it wasn't so hard to play—not because the bosses are tough, but because of how indifferent it is to helping you experience everything that's so endearing about it. All the work is on you to find something that draws you back in, to find a reason to try again. For me that's a new build or a new character to focus on with a game-changing Relic setup. For others it can be helping out a friend struggling with the brutal difficulty. And for something as experimental and as weird as Nightreign is, that might be enough.

Nightreign is light on story, but it carries with it my favorite theme core to all of FromSoft's games: The irresistible nature to persevere against what feels like impossible odds. That I can spend three hours getting pummeled by a game as impenetrable as this and still feel the urge to give it another go has me annoyed that the same trick's working on me again.

Nightreign may be kind of a mess, but it's a mess made just for me.

Let's be clear: We're still looking at another high quality, gobsmackingly authentic racing game, but the returns are diminishing to the point it's no longer easy to recommend—even with the welcome, concluding instalment of Braking Point. Sorely absent last year, the third entry in the fictional story mode has been worth the wait in many ways, adding greater depth and drama to its returning cast of characters.

Seeing drippy Aiden Jackson go from rookie to title challenger in 6 seasons has been a genuinely organic transformation and we now have his team mate California Mayer fighting for the title too. It's a shame a fictional female F1 driver is challenging for the fictional title before any real female has even made it onto the modern F1 grid. Still, from a dramatic perspective, Braking Point 3 does a great job of developing its best character: Devon Butler. The 9-hour story isn't quite worth the RRP on its own, but it's a compelling addition to the game, now offering the player much more managerial input between progressing the story.

It makes you wonder how 'Braking Point' could have fared as a full-price, standalone game comprising the three entries in the style of TOCA Race Driver and its superlative first sequel.

Naturally, when the characters are spouting recorded lines of dialogue there's only so much player-instigated variation that can be accommodated in the game code, so you do end up with some disappointing shortfalls. For instance, one scenario clearly intends for you to finish lower than hoped, while a secondary managerial objective requires you to win. So if you complete the latter objective and win the race, Aiden's still moping about because of his penalty, saying: "A few missed opportunities, like today for example". No real driver would dwell on it if they still won, and it does pull you out of the action.

But that only goes to show how well everything else is delivered. From the incessantly ringing phone full of carefully interwoven sub-plots through to the way you can then take the Konnorsport team through into the My Team mode after finishing the story, it's amazing how well this entirely fictional saga fits into the F1 world.

Particularly noteworthy is the email system whereby staff you promoted will message you, eagerly highlighting personal accomplishments as if trying to win your approval. It's so very human and you start to feel like you're managing an actual team, which is a first for the series despite similar systems being present in previous games. It really adds to your emotional investment. It is a bit jarring to see Max Verstappen popping up, interested in signing for this yellow-liveried team but, sure thing, why not? If Max asks to sign, you say 'yes!'

Fan your success

You can turn off all the fictional and fantasy content—which can include having the legendary Ayrton Senna available in the driver market—if you prefer. But if you do, you'll be left with scant little else to convince you this is better than the previous six years of career mode. The greater emphasis on R&D is laborious, with part research, fabrication and deployment annoyingly split across three separate screens.

More pleasingly, facility upgrades and department morale levels work in tandem with the sentiment of your fans. Do well in inter-team rivalries and you can win fan support, bolstering your negotiating powers in sponsorship deals and driver signings. If anything, there's a little too much emphasis on the logistical side, as playing the game really does become a job. In Braking Point 3, at one point you are so overwhelmed with managing the team and emotional turmoil, you might start to wonder where the fun is. It genuinely feels like work, instead of being a recreational way to realise your childhood dream of being a racing car driver.

So let's put the heavy stuff to one side and focus on that core driving experience. After the furore surrounding last year's handling model, pad control is unfortunately the worst it's been in over a decade. It's important to have some degree of steering input dampening at high speed because no racing driver would see-saw at the wheel on full lock while going down hangar straight, which is what you'd essentially be doing when you waggled the analogue stick left and right.

Trouble is, this woolliness is now too heavy handed, resulting in alarmingly spongy, cumbersome steering when you're trying to correct oversteer on the exit of a fast corner. Inexplicably, any kind of traction control assistance exacerbates this effect. You want to snap the car straight with a flick, but instead your correction veers you off the road, the car unwilling to turn like it's a laden shopping trolley.

The driving in general feels heavier than usual and seems to need you to brake more in order to get round corners that used to be easy. Turn 4 at Bahrain has always been tricky, but navigating it is so laboured here it just doesn't feel right. It's better with a steering wheel where you get 1:1 movement with the front wheels, but pad control has always been so good in the F1 series that this noticeably feels changed for the worse.

There are a few uncharacteristic bugs, too, like odd or incorrect radio messages, uneven engine sound audio mixes and subtitle text that sometimes contains spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. It feels harsh to criticise the game for what it doesn't do perfectly when so much of it is so astonishingly well constructed, weaving as it does all of the various influences into a cohesive and expansive campaign. But while the game frequently points out what's objectively new, subjectively it feels all too familiar.

New features like some tracks being available in reverse and some LIDAR-mapped courses being authentic to actual race weekends are all well and good, but they don't improve the gameplay. If this is your first F1 rodeo, you'll be in heaven, but for anyone else, it's underwhelming.

There is a third pillar besides Braking Point and career, however, and it shouldn't be overlooked as it offers a meaty and satisfying online-integrated experience: F1 World. This again offers a quickplay series of events based around loot and upgrading your bespoke F1 car. It's largely unchanged from its '23 debut but does nevertheless offer an appealing and enjoyable side mode, especially if you're low on time or attention span. The game is far stronger for its inclusion, even if the emotes you can win are absurd. So the 'three games in one' I championed two years ago are evident here, only two of them aren't as enjoyable as before, and the other feels mostly unchanged.

Tracing line

Tech-wise, you get modern bells and whistles like path traced lighting, which does look very nice, but is restricted to graphics cards higher than an Nvidia 2070. That graphics card will still provide a playable but comparatively low frame rate with standard ray tracing enabled at 1080p, and will even give you a very smooth experience on Ultra settings with ray tracing disabled at the same resolution, but it's interesting to note the early RTX series is starting to become outdated.

Played on a newer card, however, the path traced lighting and newly rendered tracks look sublime. There are a few uncharacteristic choppy moments, particularly at Spa Francorchamps, but with so many variables it's hard to point to exactly why that is. Still, for the most part it is well optimised and looks incredible when running smoothly, and scandalously pretty at 8K60.

Sadly, despite the commendable upgrades, F1 25 feels like fundamentally the same game for arguably the 7th year in a row. Combining F1 World, Braking Point's return and career mode, it's very, very similar to F1 23, only not as fresh or as enjoyable as that game felt on release. It's not practical or even possible to keep rebuilding a game this big from the ground up year after year, that's understandable, but when so much familiar content is being repackaged as a full-priced iteration, it feels like a more radical change is needed soon. Most tellingly, last year's F1 24 felt like an 'off year' as it didn't have Braking Point in it, but—for the first time ever—even this 'on year' feels stale.

ITX is, from a manufacturing perspective, a bit of a problem child. There's not enough market volume for them to really heavily invest in the segment, and the folks who love those teeny tiny sleeper builds (myself included) have seriously high standards on what exactly constitutes a good ITX case and what they want out of it. It's like making a coffee for your dad, but he's a World Barista Champion and James Hoffman. You get the idea; we're never happy.

The H3 is, in essence, a complete redesign of the H210 line that debuted way-back-when in 2019. But, unlike those early models, NZXT's been listening and has radically altered and adjusted this small form factor offering to better cater to modern audiences. Or thereabouts anyway.

The first big takeaway is that, actually, this isn't really an ITX case. Despite being just 400 x 225 x 389 mm in size, with a 35 L volume, the H3 Flow supports ITX and Micro-ATX as well. It can also hold GPUs up to 377 mm in length (if you opt to install your AIO in the roof and ditch the front fans), and there's capacity for twin 280 mm radiators as well, plus a full-fat power supply in here too. In fact, I checked, it'll even fit a full-sized RTX 5090 in here fairly comfortably, and thanks to that Micro-ATX support, it's got the four PCIe slot covers there for even the chonkiest of graphics cards.

That also gives us access to larger VRM solutions, more M.2 support, and internal headers as well. Which, in a world of curved OLED AIO displays, cheap(er) storage, and fan controllers sucking up every USB 2.0 header in sight, is no bad thing.

The biggest issue NZXT had with both its H210 line and, similarly, the now legendary Manta, is that they acted very much like large heat traps. With poor ventilation and spacing in the front panel and minimal exhaust, moving air through them was incredibly difficult, and that inevitably led to massive heat buildup. Those early H cases in particular were notorious for it, with temps easily hitting 95 to 100°C on some GPU setups over prolonged usage. The solution back then was often to take the window off entirely or the front panel to let the chassis breathe, not ideal.

The H3 Flow then, much like its larger numbered flowy siblings (the H7 Flow's a great example of this), has massively addressed this issue first and foremost. The front panel is now entirely perforated, there's expansive support for cooling in the roof and the rear as well as the front, and the entire PSU bay below is ventilated across three out of the four sides, with the only solid panel being the base. There's no mesh filter adding turbulence either, bar one in the roof acting as a dust filter.

Interestingly, though, given it's a Flow chassis, it hasn't hit every note in that mantra quite right. Take the fan situation, for example; you get just one 120 mm in the rear, and that's it (although, to be fair, it is ridiculously cheap). Nothing pre-installed, no F series frames dotted about anywhere, no intake, and no fan controllers to help you manage the potentially seven that you could install in here. Plus, although it does support 140mm options (NZXT actually encourages that you use 140mm units in this case), there's no official support for any 360 mm setups.

And it's that last point that's perhaps my biggest bugbear. It's, ironically, just a tad too small. Take the roof, for instance. If you grab one of NZXT's F360 Core fan frames and pop it in the top. It fits comfortably, and you could install two 140 mm fans in the front. But there's no cutout to mount that F360 to the roof properly.

Then there's the cable management. Hop around the back, and although it's clearly BTF ready, very little has been done to really assist with keeping your cable mess tidy. There's none of that signature NZXT channeling, Velcro straps, or similar. There are a few cable tie points, yeah, but it just feels massively underwhelming. You don't even get rubber grommets to hide the mess you are making.

And then there's the curious case of that cable cutout to the left of the NZXT logo on the motherboard tray. In the H9 Flow RGB+, it comes with a plastic cover that fits in that groove that you can pop out. If you're using BTF, then keep it installed, and the case is super slick and clean; if not, pop it out and run your 24-pin through here instead. In the H3, it's just a gaping hole, and given the rear panel is mostly perforated mesh, it makes it very easy for light to penetrate through and flag up any cables that might be draped across that back gap.

There's no radiator brackets here either, so you're going to be fumbling around for a while, and NZXT's also included mounting locations for two 120 mm fans above the PSU shroud, which is great, but they're not recessed or particularly easy to get to to mount your fans on. If you've installed your power supply before your two 120 mm fans there, well, you're stumped. Not quite the best PC case of all time then.

It honestly feels like this product was designed in 2022. Like it was a predecessor of NZXT's latest revamp, an engineering sample meant to be a proof of concept in chassis aesthetic and featureset, and then they beefed up the entire lineup, added recessed fan mounting, better cable management, and more, then put the H3 on ice for a few years while releasing the mid-tower versions and above. It's just not premium enough; it doesn't work well enough with the products in NZXT's own arsenal like it should, and that's slightly frustrating to see, particularly given how highly the H9 Flow RGB+ ranks in comparison.

Still, wrap up your build inside the H3, stick a few RGB fans inside and a decent cooler, and what you're left with is an incredible rig that looks the part and remains cool throughout. All in a nice tiny form factor, finally, at last, after six years. If you can live with the foibles, and the bugbears, and the first-world PC builder problems, and the price is right for you, then yeah, she's a treat.

So is this $2,500 projector worth the hype? After a few weeks of gaming, binging, and living with it, the answer is mostly yes—with a few caveats.

The Hisense C2 Ultra is smaller than I expected for something boasting up to a 300-inch projection. At just 11 inches wide and under 14 pounds, it's surprisingly portable. The gunmetal chassis isn't flashy, but it's functional and has a bit of sci-fi charm. Its most notable design feature is the integrated gimbal-style swivel stand, which gives you 360° horizontal rotation and 135° vertical tilt. It's a manual system, so you'll have to physically adjust it each time, but it's smooth, stable, and incredibly flexible for different room setups.

What's even cooler is that the base of the stand houses JBL-powered speakers: two 10W drivers and a 20W subwoofer. The sound quality is genuinely shocking for something this size. It fills a medium room with ease and feels like it's coming from the screen itself—not from behind you. It's not quite Dolby Atmos, but it's more than enough for casual viewing and even some immersive gaming. I rarely pushed it past 20% volume.

On the back, the C2 Ultra offers plenty of ports: two HDMI 2.1 (with eARC and ALLM), two USB 3.0, Ethernet, AV in, and digital audio out. Wireless is covered too, with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Whether you're streaming, gaming, or plugging in peripherals, it's got you sorted.

And here's where the C2 Ultra starts to justify its premium price. Hisense's TriChroma triple-laser engine delivers stunning colors—covering 110% of the BT.2020 color space. Most TVs can't even get close. Add in 3000 ANSI lumens of brightness and you've got a projector that holds its own even in moderately lit rooms. Yes, a proper ambient light-rejecting screen would help, but it works surprisingly well on my regular painted wall.

The 4K resolution is razor-sharp up to around 150 inches, with diminishing returns beyond that. Blacks on a projector can obviously never OLED-level deep, especially in bright rooms, but they're respectable. In a dark room, it really shines—especially with HDR content. The projector supports Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and HLG, and the difference is noticeable. It's vibrant, cinematic, and an easy upgrade if you're coming from a budget 4K TV or entry-level projector.

There is a mild rainbow effect—a typical side effect of DLP technology—but only visible to some and only on high-contrast content. Personally, I've only caught it once or twice.

Setup is dead simple: plug in, point it at your wall, and you're off. There's auto-focus, automatic keystone correction, and manual zoom. Keystone correction works remarkably well (better than on Hisense's PX3), but it does shrink the viewable image, so positioning the projector head-on is still best. That might make for a slightly awkward living room setup, but in a dedicated space, it's perfect.

Fan noise is minimal and never distracting. I've only found it noticeable up close during HDR-heavy scenes or silent moments in shows. Even then, the excellent speaker output easily drowns it out.

This isn't just a projector for movie buffs—it's built for gamers, too. With a "Designed for Xbox" certification, the C2 Ultra features 15 ms input lag at 4K/60Hz and as low as 12ms at 1080p/240Hz. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), and yes—it makes a real difference.

I tested it with my PS5, where God of War looks breathtaking and runs smooth. Destiny 2 is a highlight, offering fluid and responsive gameplay even at high refresh rates. While I didn't get to push the full 240 Hz potential with an RTX 50-series laptop, what I did see was buttery-smooth gaming with no ghosting or weird latency issues. Just giant, immersive action.

In Australia, the C2 Ultra runs on Hisense's Vidaa OS. It's clean, quick, and thankfully light on bloat. You get the core apps—Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, Disney+—but the app store isn't as expansive as Google TV or Roku. If you're in the US or Europe, though, your model will ship with Google TV instead, which I'd prefer. Still, Vidaa handles the basics well over here and doesn't get in the way.

There's some light AI running in the background for content suggestions and device control, but nothing too in-your-face. Voice assistants, smart home integration, and multi-device syncing are all here if you're into the Hisense ecosystem. Otherwise, it mostly just lets you get to your shows quickly—which I appreciate.

The Hisense C2 Ultra is a seriously impressive mini projector that delivers on its promise of big-screen versatility. From colorful 4K visuals to surprisingly great sound and responsive gaming, it's a standout device that fits in spaces where traditional TVs can't.

It's not perfect: no motorized stand, no bundled tripod, and the lack of OLED-level blacks might be dealbreakers for some. But it's also one of the most user-friendly and enjoyable projectors I've tested. If you've ever wanted to game on a 200-inch ceiling or set up a backyard cinema without needing a forklift, this could be your dream machine.

JDM understands the nostalgic appetite for that era of NFS game—you can tell that by its car collection of noughties NFS cover stars. But its ambitions are far higher than the throwaway drift events in EA’s racers, and in fact higher than those games in their entirety. Here’s a game that wants to capture every nuance of drift culture and its Japanese origins, wants to tell you a story about an outsider in an insular community, a failing sushi delivery business and an unsolved murder all at once, all through the medium of anime comic panels.

It’s also an open-world game with NPC storylines, with an impressive roster of licensed vehicles and a heaving catalogue of visual and performance parts for all of them. And at the nucleus is a driving discipline which most games treat as a momentary diversion.

The handling model takes on crucial importance here. Not only does it need to make drifting fun, challenging, and vaguely authentic as a simulation, it also needs to make driving around the open world when you’re not powersliding for high scores feel pleasant. There are drag events, grip races and delivery runs in JDM’s event roster and in all of them, getting a drift going is a bad idea because it slows you down. It also offers arcade and sim handling options, with a range of assists within them.

Is it versatile enough to pull that off? It is not. Using either arcade or sim physics, trying to drive your car conventionally around the narrow suburban streets of JDM’s fictional Japanese burgh always feels a bit awkward and that only comes to the fore when you race in track events. Fortunately, the drift physics are spot on.

And that’s why I completely forgive it for not being Forza Horizon in a straight line. Once the steering angles are applied, It’s an odyssey of tire smoke and revs bouncing off the limiter. There’s such a pure sense of gratification to holding a drift angle in parallel with the angle of a turn, reminiscent of pulling off a nice long grind in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, it’s enough to make you care about drifting as much as Gaming Factory clearly does.

That’s the other thing: this feels like a pleasantly personal game. It’s fascinated with esoterica that other games would brush past. How many stories have you read about a young Polish boy trying to ingratiate himself in a suburban Japanese community? Hardly any, is my guess.

How many games let you clutch-kick during a drift, or mess about with your wheel alignment angle to fine-tune the sensation of mid-corner control? But JDM does, because it seems determined to be the alpha and omega of this one thing. And that’s smart. A small independent project like this isn’t going to topple Need For Speed, but it can put its flag resolutely in one specific piece of its territory.

You know how it goes with ambitious, eccentric passion projects, though: there are rough edges. And boy howdy, you could lose a few layers of skin brushing against this thing.

Know that I take no pleasure in reciting this list. There are translation issues (an early tutorial message explains how ‘breaking’ to slow the car works). There are optimization issues. And I say that with the considerable qualification that my RTX 2080 TI is no longer the frame-vaporizing powerhouse it once was—I’m fine with not hitting max settings if the pixel fidelity’s appropriately high, but JDM’s scenes just don’t justify the chug.

Loading screens are onscreen more often than they should be, hanging around for just a few extra seconds whenever you teleport between garages on the map, enter or exit a mission. And the map markers sometimes blend into the map detail.

It takes too long to turn a page in the anime sections (really, though). After completing an event, there’s five to ten seconds of awkwardness, waiting for the UI to show you various messages about things you just unlocked, levelled up, or completed, before it’ll show you the next mission on the map. Trying to set that mission location as a waypoint and have the map show you a route there is not a foregone conclusion. There are odd difficulty spikes, and other events at which the AI drivers seem fairly hapless.

So it goes, throughout the game’s five chapters. If you look for them, you’ll see morsels of jank just about everywhere. Some are pretty inconsequential, or even endearing (there’s an earnestness to the storytelling in those comic panels that’s hard to hate, however basic the component parts may be), but a couple—the performance and AI issues—are harder to turn a blind eye to.

It leaves you with the sense that there’s a brilliant game in here which isn’t releasing in its final form. But since this isn’t an Early Access release, and indeed Gaming Factory ran a demo and collected plenty of feedback from it earlier this year, I can’t ignore the rough bits just because I like the game.

Nor can I ignore the awkwardness JDM evokes when it delves into 'impress the busty anime girl with your drifting skills' territory. One mission has you giving your friend a lift home and amassing drift points to raise her excitement level, with accompanying facial expressions. All I can say is that those diversions do nothing for me.

However: mechanically and (for the most part) conceptually, I really like the game. I want it to succeed. It’s so inventive with its mission types, switching between Crazy Taxi-esque sushi delivery runs in which you’re scored on damage taken and style points, duels against unfriendly locals, and helping your influencer friend to create content (whatever she’s saying on camera simply shows up as ‘Blah blah blah’ in the comic panels).

It’s generous with its unlocks and currency rewards. It actually wants you to buy all the cars on its roster and tune them so that they feel like your own. And it really succeeds as a walk-in encyclopedia of Japanese tuner and touge culture, taking every opportunity in NPC interactions, training missions, and loading menu text to add another tidbit about the discipline’s history and evolutions.

And over the course of the next year or so, its rough edges probably will be sanded down. Probably. I can only play and evaluate the game as it appears today though, and that game doesn’t always let JDM’s best qualities shine.

I’ve been more hyped for this sequel than I am for the return of Christ. And if you didn’t care for that bit of blasphemy, then Monster Train, a game about helping the demons of Hell defeat the goody two-shoes of Heaven, is likely not for you. Everyone else, though, should get ready to play a roguelike deckbuilder that’s every bit the equal to Slay the Spire and Balatro.

Hyperbole? Hardly. Monster Train was one of 2020’s few pleasant surprises. A game that shamelessly ripped off smartly built on Slay the Spire’s structure with a welcome layer of tower defence.

Structurally, this sequel is near-identical. You still occupy a fancy four-floor train, with a fragile pyre you need to protect occupying the top floor. Every turn several enemies rudely break into your train via floor one. The fools telegraph exactly how they’re going to attack so you can plan accordingly, and any surviving enemy at the end of each turn ascends one floor closer to that crucial pyre.

To defend it, you have a deck of spells and the all-important monsters that you strategically place on each floor of the train. It’s often as chaotic—and exhilarating—as playing three games of Slay the Spire at once.

Each deck is made up of a unique clan of monsters, and these are what had had the original Monster Train troubling ‘best deckbuilder ever’ lists.

I adored the Melting Remnant, a zombie-like race of candle people who could temporarily be brought back from the dead. Other monsters in that same deck had a ‘harvest’ ability, which buffed them whenever a monster died. This was such a brilliant fit with a deck full of constantly-returning undead that it managed to make zombies feel fresh in a videogame again.

And Monster Train 2’s most audacious move is to take all those brilliant cards and tear most of them up.

Fresh hell

Start the game, and the decks that introduced you to the first Monster Train are nowhere to be seen. Instead, you get the Pyreborn, a clan of gold-hoarding dragons, and the Banished, angels who are now working with the forces of Hell. The Pyrebound can cover enemy units in pyregel, which increases the damage they’ll take. They also gain Dragon’s Hoard, a new currency that can be exchanged for increasingly generous rewards.

Both these ideas are immediately more interesting than the Hellborn that opened the last game, whose cards were easily the most simple. That’s because they were more a tutorial deck to get you up to speed, something Monster Train 2 could justly be accused of lacking. Still, there’s worse sins for a sequel to commit than being overexcited to show you new stuff.

Like the other starter deck, the Banished, which is all about constantly moving units and gaining valor.

Valor is a buff that gives more attack power, and at the end of each turn more armor, but only if they’re at the front. So if you want that armor bonus, you’re going to have to risk putting your poor monsters directly into the line of fire.

I’m not planning on visiting Hell myself, so I won’t spoil every new clan, but I’m hopelessly in love with the Underlegion. They’re sentient mushrooms whose powers revolve around spawning and decaying. Certain cards will spawn a funguy, a laughably weak lil shroom who at least serves as an effective shield for my more important monsters.

Except spawning more funguy on the same floor doesn’t add another. It ‘stacks’, essentially buffing the first funguy with more health and strength. Another monster has the power to spawn two more funguy stacks at the end of every turn, and another gives the funguy an attack boost and the ability to ‘trample’, which means any overflowing damage from a successful enemy-slaying will carry over to the next. Steadily you can Magikarp your funguy into a monster that rivals anything in the game.

Decay is a nasty status effect that inflicts a set amount of damage every turn. Lots of the Underlegions monsters and spells can inflict it, but one monster in particular, my special horrid mushroom boy, inflicts three decay on all enemies every time you summon a monster. Oh, and spawning another stack of funguy absolutely counts as a summon. I can’t tell you how many runs I’ve lost because I’ve been stubbornly trying to create a self-sustaining engine of spawning and decaying that means no foe will even get a glimpse of my pyre.

Monster Train 2 is full of these delightful synergies. Each run is played with two clan decks combined, so the fun comes from trying to discover and create them. What if I used the Banished clan with the Underlegions? A clan that offers armor bonuses to the front unit and a clan that’s all about making an increasingly strong front unit has to be a match made in Hell, right?

The best synergies feel like you’ve broken the game. Occasionally you have, but Monster Train remains the master of tricking you into feeling like you’re playing a duller deckbuilder with all the cheats on. Between bouts you’ll be offered incredible rewards, like the ability to clone almost any card in your deck, or upgrades to your monsters like multistrike or huge boosts in attack power. Artifacts, powerful talismans with potentially battle-winning power-ups (think Balatro’s jokers), are also unlimited and often handed out like sweets.

But the game is no pushover. For every gift it gives, it brutally counters with a terrific new bestiary of enemies and bosses.

One flies between floors, doing instant damage to the pyre if it finds no monsters there—a clever reprimand of my foolish ‘just ignore the other two floors and focus on one’ strategy. Some opponents gain a truly horrible amount of power every time they climb a floor or you play a spell card. But because the game has given you so much power, it rarely feels unfair.

Which bosses you face changes between runs too, keeping things feeling fresh. All true of the last game, but the fact they’ve been able to introduce five great new clans along with new artifacts, spells, enemies and curveballs without breaking that balance makes for one Hell of an encore.

Forgiven sins

A new undo button is a godsend, even if I can no longer blame a misplaced click for screwing up. There’s also now a deployment phase where you have access to most of the monsters in your deck and can play them before the battle starts properly. It's a great change that cuts down on the RNG massively. Do you really want to lose because God decided you were only going to draw spell cards for the first three turns?

New room cards set a rule on an entire floor, like bonus energy when units die, or a wonderfully risky one that deals 50 damage to everyone at the end of each turn. Equipment cards are also new, offering permanent buffs when applied. Stick an equipment card that grants multistrike on one of your monsters and you can likely guess what happens next. Ah, but Monster Train never met a simple game mechanic that it couldn’t resist complicating and pumping full of steroids.

So there’s a new clan of mad scientists, with grunts that drop valuable equipment upon death, encouraging you to kill your own monsters. There’s also a monster who gains attack power and health every time you attach some equipment to it, and this boost persists between battles. Will I ever learn to stop screwing myself over because I can’t resist the Faustian bargain of persistent buffs? Maybe in Monster Train 3…

Let’s take a break from all this praise for a moment to talk about the story. All two of you who were hoping for a more narrative-heavy Monster Train sequel are in luck. The rest of us have to click through several cutscenes that occasionally pop up between runs, or ‘comedy’ vignettes between the characters. None of this is terrible, but I much preferred the last game’s storytelling, where you got hints of its wider world through chance encounters on runs, or creatures near the track you could click on for more lore if you wanted it.

Anyone hoping for a revolution will also admittedly be disappointed. This is definitely a sequel that adds new ideas to the old train engine, rather than trying something completely original. But Monster Train’s terrific locomotive didn’t need an overhaul, and when there’s so many brilliant ideas in the huge roster of new cards, it feels churlish to complain. Sixty hours in and I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface. Slay the Spire 2 might have to grant access to actual Heaven to top this.

It was the culmination of five or six hours of accumulated jank, gathered up like a Katamari Damacy ball of frustration and pitched directly at my head.

Was this good design 23 years ago? I can’t say for certain because I had no experience with Onimusha 2 until now. But I sure as hell can say in 2025 it isn’t. It’s particularly disappointing because, up until that point, I had mostly been enjoying this remaster. I saw a lot of charm in Onimusha 2’s goofy voice acting and stiff combat, artifacts of a bygone era.

No camera movement? I remember those days.

Unclear combat controls? How quaint!

Individually, these elements amount to nothing more than quirks activating my nostalgia glands. Taken all at once—say during a single frustrating boss battle—these outdated foibles make me realize how far we’ve come in the last two-plus decades.

Oh, and there’s a counter move in the game—some sword techniques are eternal—but good luck learning the timing for it.

Sons of a battlecry

The setup for Onimusha 2 is as 2002 as the camera. You control Jubei, the lone survivor of a village massacred by a demon lord, on his quest for vengeance. Along the way he joins forces with a ragtag group of warriors and together they set out to destroy evil. It’s fine. It’s not like I need much of an excuse to go swing a sword, anyway, and this setup gets the job done well enough. But there are some antiquated story elements that had me cringing pretty hard, most of them centered around the lone female protagonist.

The first time you see Oyu—during the opening cutscene of the game—she is nude under a waterfall. The second time you see Oyu, she is being actively sexually harassed by townspeople. From there, Jubei spends a lot of time rescuing her from monsters and other perilous situations. Yet Oyu is framed as a strong warrior-type, a woman who takes no guff, but is in constant need of rescue. This inconsistent characterization felt ugly and left a bad taste in my mouth.

As I understand it, the original Onimusha was conceived by developer Capcom as a sort of “samurai Resident Evil,” which sounds amazing. I’ve loved that series since the first one. And you can certainly see the influence in the fixed camera angles and progress-gating puzzles. One of the main healing items is even an herb, for crying out loud. But Resident Evil was a deliberately slow-paced horror experience, a structure which was not made to accommodate action-heavy hack and slash combat. There’s an option to play Samurai’s Destiny using old school tank controls, too, but the idea of doing so chills me to the bone in an eldritch way.

It’s easy to dunk on a decades-old game for its dated design, but there’s still a lot I liked about Onimusha 2, even if I was unaware there was a block button for the first hour or two. There’s a surprising amount of variety in combat thanks to the weapons Jubei acquires throughout the story. Each comes with a different set of attacks and its own special move. My favorite is the Hyoujin-Yari spear, which can freeze enemies, allowing you to shatter them with standard attacks. You can level up weapons by spending souls Jubei absorbs after defeating monsters, letting you focus on your preferred arms.

The game looks great, if a bit sterile thanks to the HD upscaling. Pre-rendered backgrounds tend to age well, as they have here. Environments show off a good deal of creativity and I was always excited to see what medieval Japanese castle or haunted forest I’d be exploring next. The side characters, too, inject a lot of personality into the story.

Throughout the campaign, Jubei can gift items to his allies which impacts who joins him on any given mission. You can even control them instead of Jubei if you get tired of him. This came in handy on more than one occasion when I took control of Magoichi, who saunters around with a rifle on his shoulder. Here’s a tip: ranged combat can trivialize some of Onimusha 2’s tougher encounters.

The enemy variety is also fun: New monsters are constantly being introduced, and they’ve all got their own attack patterns to learn. But Onimusha 2 likes to throw a ton of them at you all at once, and juggling melee attackers with off-screen ranged attackers had me threatening my PC with a trip to the landfill more than once. In many areas, monsters seemed to respawn indefinitely, too, stopping me from exploring when I wanted to.

Combat would've been less frustrating if the default layout of any given stage wasn't “narrow passage and/or pathway,” clogged up the second a single monster appeared in my way. Onimusha 2 boasts more hallway fights than an entire season of Daredevil. At some point it graduated from rote to exasperating. Towards the end I was really yearning for the more wide-open arenas of modern action games.

If Capcom is hoping to drum up excitement for the recently announced Onimusha: Way of the Sword, I can’t imagine this rerelease attracting players new to the series—it didn't work on me. Nostalgia can be powerful enough to help us overlook shortcomings and reconnect with simpler times, when game design was not so wrought with expectation. I understand that you have to adjust your assumptions going into a 23-year-old game, and I gave Onimusha 2 a lot of grace. After all, I cut my teeth on the PS1 and PS2 generation of consoles.

But fond memories don’t necessarily translate to modern tastes. Perhaps sometimes, as one special boss fight suggested, the past is better off staying past.

The game truly believes that taking the time to explore its rustic fantasy locales, poking around sandy ruins and enormous crumbling castles instead of rushing from one waypoint to the next, is the heart of the experience. So much so that the game defaults to the hardest difficulty setting, the only one that doesn't allow me to bring up a convenient "go here next" map marker whenever I'm feeling a bit lost.

And for a short while, it's magical.

There's always some out of reach place I can't help but wonder how to get to close by, and every small deviation off the beaten path seems to hold some convenient shortcut or permanent stat boost. Everywhere I go looks gorgeous, whether covered in snow, sand, or blood, and I did enjoy entering new areas just to see what gorgeous vista I was going to be treated to next.

Actually trying to progress through these areas is another matter. The first dozen or so hours contain not one but two hours-long "drag the NPC around if you want to get anything done" gimmicks, one of which revolves around a crying child. Pushing further on only leads me to an endless parade of increasingly frustrating and flimsy roadblocks, the game making me stand right in front of the one thing/gate I needed to activate/unlock to move on… just so it can explain why it [in]conveniently isn't working right now. Too often I was sent off to gather several key items split across multiple unrelated zones first, or had to retrieve something I used once in a completely different location, hours ago, for the sake of a single barrier. Not even free fast travel, available at any of the sensibly-placed rest/repair/forging anvils scattered around, was enough to soften the repeated hammer blows to the game's pacing.

The "boy" that sticks by Aran's side through all this is Adso, a young scholar who takes notes and draws illustrations in his journal as I play. When complete, these notes are a nice mix of interesting lore and genuinely useful battle information, with the two combining nicely. I can learn why a boss has a particular attack, as well as what I should do about it.

Unfortunately Aran and Adso struggle to go two minutes without engaging in some sarcastic bants. In cutscenes this can lead to some funny moments, but I really could have done without hearing the same small selection of quips whenever there's a button to push or, at its most grating points, a ladder or rope to climb. I can send him back to camp whenever I want some peace and quiet, but that just leaves me with a half-empty journal (Adso can't record things he hasn't seen, after all) and sometimes without the one person I need to activate a lever on the opposite wall.

At least he's invincible, so I'm free to focus on mowing down the vast hordes of twisted abominations standing between Aran and the end of his quest.

To shreds

My controller's face buttons match the direction of Aran's swings—hitting the Y button at the top unleashes an overhead smash, while tapping B results in a slash from his right. It makes sense immediately and allows me to create some smooth combos on the fly, switching between piercing pokes and broad sweeps with ease. Attacks with heavy weapons feel wonderfully weighty, while smaller swords, axes, and daggers are light and agile in Aran's coal-stained hands.

These directional attacks aren't just for show either. Locking on to an enemy brings up a colour-coded outline, showing how vulnerable each of the four major areas of their body are to Aran's currently equipped weapon—and where an attack will be so ineffective it'll harmlessly bounce off.

In theory this brings some tactics into my fights—I'm supposed to aim for the green bits, treat the orange as second best, and actively avoid the red—but by and large enemies are just one uniform colour, and if that colour is anything other than green I just switch to a more effective weapon Aran has assigned to a quick slot (he can have up to four at a time, with even more readily available via the equipment screen) and carry on as normal.

This colour coding is tied to my weapon's stats and damage type, instead of anything my opponent's wearing, divorcing what I'm seeing from what I have to do. A guy completely sealed in plate mail? Green. Weird skinny thing with obvious exposed areas? Maybe some orange or red in there. For all this tinted targeting, my tactical opportunities are limited to hurting them a little or a lot (or not at all). I can't make an effort to hack off a powerful enemy's sword arm, leaving them weaponless, or force a quick monster to stumble with a series of low blows.

It doesn't help that there's little practical difference between most common enemy types; they're all just fodder for the end of my blades. One dagger guy is very much like any other dagger guy, no matter how they're dressed up or what difficulty setting I'm playing on. And those that do require me to change up my techniques are, a bit too often, just That Guy From Before: On Fire Edition or some other obvious remix. By and large, the battle tactics I was using 30 minutes in were unchanged 30+ hours later—as were the attacks being used against me.

The rare boss battles were thankfully much better, offering an enjoyable combination of genuine challenge, cinematic climaxes, and truly unique phases and mechanics I had to learn and then perfect. Well-timed dodges, blocks, and parries are essential if I want to survive the lightning blasts, blades, and fiery magic sent my way. I'm encouraged to pay close attention to my own positioning and closely read my opponent's behaviour, while dealing with situations I have never experienced before or since.

Hammer it out

This naturally led to more than a few lost or broken weapons along the way, which need to either be retrieved and repaired or abandoned and then forged anew (materials willing). I expected to hate everything about this system. I am so over watching out for durability and breakages and wasting my time crafting things out of spare parts. So I was surprised to see just how quickly Blades of Fire won me over.

Unless I deliberately go swinging a less sturdy weapon at the nearest rock, durability is something to generally keep in mind rather than constantly fuss over, and I never, ever, needed to carry a small army's worth of identical swords with me. Instead I ended up with a favourite undead-bopping polearm, as well as a sword I was sad to have to recycle for parts after I'd used it until it couldn't be repaired any more, and a pair of hand axes I cared for like they were my children.

The in-depth forging process does a fantastic job of making whatever I create truly feel like mine from the moment Aran stands in front of the design slate with chalk in hand, allowing me to select everything from the weapon's handle type to the end point shape and the exact materials used for each major part too; every decision altering its speed, reach, balance, and more. I'm then made to hand-hammer the molten metal into its final shape, "feeding" the thinner areas from the "lumps" by carefully pushing them along the line, the angle and strength of my blows deciding how many one-click repairs the final weapon gets.

It's even possible to auto-forge something to the highest quality already reached for that weapon type, greatly speeding up the process when forging an upgrade or just creating a handy spare. There were times I chose not to even when I could, just because it was so satisfying to do it all myself.

So sometimes it sparkles like a diamond, but I still came away from my time with the game thinking it would have been twice as good if they'd dared to make it half as long.

The lack of enemy variety and reactivity wouldn't have been so obvious if they'd shaved a good 10 hours off the nigh 40-hour run time. A major plot twist made me groan in frustration, game-long goalposts suddenly moved to shift the focus onto a character who before that point had been given about as much depth and screen time as the farting ogre with a comedy moustache I'd suffered through earlier. The odd bout of fetch-questing can be a great excuse to revisit an old area with a fresh pair of eyes, but too often I'm made to act like a bored fantasy courier, sometimes for people who can fly, rather than a brave hero.

Even so, I like it. It looks beautiful, smashing skeletons to bits with a giant axe feels fantastic, and Aran and Adso are great characters when they're not slipping into some "God of War via Marvel" routine again. Blades of Fire may not be polished steel, but there is a shining nugget of something good in here; it's just a shame it's often hidden under layers of patience-testing flaws.

The H9 lineup is, without a doubt, NZXT's crowning glory. The flagship, the pinnacle of everything it can throw into good chassis design. I built with the most recent one, in its Elite configuration, complete with far too much glass and not enough intake, plus a Ryzen 9 9950X and an RTX 5090, and what I learned from that experience was that it seriously needed a lot more modern touches in terms of both cable management and how its cooling was handled. Yeah, it was good, but certainly not best case of the year kinda good; that's a fact.

Fortunate for me, then, that this little number turned up in my inbox. Getting to test the new and improved, redesigned, and redeveloped H9 Flow was too tantalizing to throw up. For those familiar with NZXT cases, you might immediately recognize this as being remarkably similar to the H6 Flow that the company launched way back in 2024.

Indeed, in many ways it feels like it's just that case but scaled up. You get the same recessed bottom mount fan slots. The same angular side vent and the same sweeping design aesthetics internally as well. Poke your head around the rear of the case, and you'll spot a remarkably similar internal layout there as well. Complete with Velcro straps and cable management doo-dads too. It's got the works.

But a lot's changed here. The biggest thing being, of course, those included fans. The H9 Flow is designed with 140mm fans in mind. The Flow RGB+ I've got in for testing here comes with two sets of NZXT's brand-new F420 Core RGB fan grids installed as standard, all routed and ready to go and plumbed into an included fan controller. These are monstrous, and, thanks to that chassis design and frame combo, look stunning. In fact, it's incredibly reminiscent of what Phanteks did with its Evolv X2 earlier this year and, of course, NZXT with its own H6 and H7 Flow.

Cable management has seen significant improvements back here as well. There's full compatibility with back connector motherboards now as standard, and NZXT's also done a lot here to improve that particular building experience too. Very specifically, if you do decide to not go with BTF, it includes a pop-out plastic panel that will allow you to run your "old-school" 24-pin cables through instead. Go full prima donna mode, though, and the cover just stays there looking entirely flush.

NZXT's also included a magnetic, screw-secured door here, along with a variety of SSD mounting points on it, plus some nice little cable management additions here as well, and if you look just close enough underneath the bottom left-hand side of the rear tray, there's enough space to tuck some of those unwanted front I/O cables out of the way. Nice.

CPU: Intel Core i7-14700K | RAM: 32 GB (2x16 GB) Corsair Dominator Titanium DDR5 @ 7200 C34 | SSD: 4TB Samsung 9100 Pro M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD | GPU: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5070 Ice SFF 12G | Motherboard: NZXT N7 Z790 | CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken Elite 360 RGB | PSU: 850W Phanteks Amp GH 850

Cabling aside, It's remarkably spacious to build in, and, if you keep those F420 RGB Core frames, super quick to complete, particularly as everything is already pre-routed for you. Plus, with that larger PSU enclosure (it's much heftier than the one found on the H6), even if you don't fancy cable-managing everything to the nines, you're not about to see any of it anyway, and you can just cram the lot in the back. Everything is well ventilated, and it all just works. The H6 Flow was a good case, and it turns out if you scale it up, the same basic principle applies.

The major downside, of course, is that price. The standard H9 Flow starts out life at $170 or £150, going all the way up to $290 / £250 for the full RGB+ suite. You can kind of justify that, given you effectively get a case with seven fans plus a decent controller, but it's still a heavy investment straight out of the gate, and it's not all brilliant either; the H9 Flow does have problems.

The topmost radiator mounting location still doesn't have a removable bracket (although the angled side intake does); the F120 fan in the rear, compared to all of the F420s in the chassis, feels cheap and lackluster and just hasn't had a refresh yet like the other dual+ fan solutions (it lacks the side illumination and cleaner look); and the internal paint job just feels like the same you find on an $80 case, not ideal for what it is.

Still, these are all fairly minor quibbles in the grand scheme of things. If you can pony up the cash and don't mind NZXT's F Core fans, this thing is an absolute treat. Not only does it look the part, but it keeps things seriously chilled and controlled while it does it. No fuss. No mess. Just a simple, easy rig.

Popping the case out of the box, I was impressed with the smooth, matte pebble design. It looks great in white and, although scuffs have become a common sight through weeks of daily usage, it's easy enough to wipe clean. The lid slides up gently (so long as you remember which way up the Soundcore logo sits) to reveal two stemmed earbuds and a tiny button between them for pairing. Simple, aesthetically pleasing, and I only need one hand to open them. That's a bloody good start.

Before getting stuck in, I had my pick of six different sized ear tips. A surefire way to ingratiate yourself to a small ear haver like myself as I'm constantly fighting larger-tipped earbuds. They tend to fall out whenever I smile. Not with these babies. You'd be hard pressed to find a person whose ears don't fit at least one option. Sure, they're not going to mold to your ear shape like the Logitech G FITS, but the Liberty 5 is also half the price and comes with a better spec.

Pushing that customsation to the max, the Soundcore app lets you choose between five levels of Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) in Manual mode, and Airplane or Car in the real-time adaptive AI Transportation mode. I've not had a chance to test it in an actual airplane yet, but there's a notable difference as you scale up to fifth level ANC (Our Jacob has used the Soundcore Liberty 4 Pro on an airplane and says it works great, too). It turns droves of passing cars to a whisper, and the rumble of my dehumidifier is completely inaudible. Sadly they don't block out higher pitched sounds like next door's dog yapping, but they do take the edge off.

In the app you can not only change the EQ—with a pretty effective preference test to tune it to your liking—but also edit the on-ear controls. Each earbud has a pressure touch sensor on the stem, making it easy to avoid pressing accidentally, but most importantly both can be assigned multiple controls. There's single, double, triple, and long press gestures, and every single one is mappable to play/pause, previous, and next controls. You can even get it to open your preferred voice assistant, scroll through the ANC modes, or take a photo. The main benefit for me is that I never end up stuck with the back button earbud, unable to skip songs because I left the other one somewhere.

This is something I do a lot, which with my old Amazon Echo Buds meant I would always come back to dead earbuds. Thankfully the liberty 5 lets you power them off when inactive (also editable in-app). I've only had to charge the case for these puppies once in the past two weeks of constant use—and I mean constant. I worked with the Liberty 5 all day, walked the dog with them, and was still able to get a stretch of rain sounds out of them before falling asleep.

With literally five minutes of charging I get just over seven hours of battery life, about four times over until the case itself needs charging… all with ANC turned on. Not to mention that the case charges in five minutes with the little fast charge cable, too. Basically, Anker nailed the battery rating. And sure, the Liberty 5 won't match the Creative Outlier Pro for its immense battery life, but it's got enough to keep you going for weeks at a time.

Take a listen to the microphone on the Liberty 5 in the clip below:

My testing has involved some very loud, very angry listening, which the Liberty 5 handles valiantly thanks to Dolby Audio. Alongside a wide frequency response and LDAC support it delivers warm, versatile soundstage even at metalhead volumes, though earbuds will never match the prowess of the best wireless gaming headsets. The really sad part? No LDAC or Dolby in gaming mode. That's because it would absolutely trample the response times which, when primed, are pretty stunning. Most gamers won't notice the difference, but gaming mode certainly elevates the experience. There's a higher accuracy with clearer footsteps since it leans into the higher frequencies, while moving away from the rumbling lows. It makes me think these would be wonderful for ASMR, though I'm loath to test that out.

As for the mic, you can expect super clear audio recording quality, but with no in-app features to reduce background noise and six microphones, you can hear everything going on in the background over calls. It even picks up all those annoying mouth noises that set off my misophonia. Accurate, then, but some noise gate options wouldn't have gone amiss.

With gorgeous aesthetics, rugged ANC, practical customization, and speedy, accurate sound, there's a lot to love about the Liberty 5. My main gripe as a woman whose clothes often don't contain pockets, is that I can get about five meters away from my phone, behind a single thin wall, before the Bluetooth connection drops out. That's not going to be an issue if you're glued to your gaming monitor, but it's not great for housework. Still, it's the only bad thing I have to say other than the easy-to-scuff matte white case.

It's true you could spend a little extra cash on the shinier pebble-design sister, the Soundcore Liberty Pro 4, but who needs a barometer and a fancy OLED screen when you can have a matte design with the same level of battery life and a wider frequency response, all for less?

Of course, there are cheaper earbuds you might consider as a gamer, depending on what you need. Against our current best mid-range gaming earbuds, the EarFun Air Pro 4, the Liberty 5 is a little more expensive but offers a wider soundstage. It doesn't quite match the Air Pro 4's battery life or allow for wireless earbud charging, though it's hard to find earbuds with this level of customisation and audio accuracy at this price range.

Let me start by making this clear: the M5 isn't sold as a gaming mouse, despite some of its technical specifications. Keychron simply labels it as 'wireless ergonomic', but when you have features such as a 30,000 DPI sensor and an 8 kHz polling rate, it's clearly been designed to be suited for gaming and everyday use.

What makes the M5 more ergonomic than your average rodent is the fact that it's a vertical design—picture a normal mouse tilted onto its side, and you'll get the idea. Or just look at the pictures in this review!

The idea behind this layout is that it puts your wrist into a more natural resting position, and it's easier on your hand to squeeze your fingers inwards to activate the buttons, rather than raising them up to click them.

You can, of course, use the traditional motion to click on the buttons, but as with all vertical mice, tapping like this causes the mouse to be nudged slightly to one side. A gripping mouse pad or a lower DPI setting helps counter this, but a normal mouse won't budge when clicking its buttons.

Having used vertical mice on and off for many years, I can confirm that Keychron's design for the M5 works very well, as it's one of the most comfortable mice I have used for a very long time. So much so that using a traditionally designed mouse just feels quite painful after long use, in comparison.

Not that I was enamoured with the M5 to begin with. The main thing I didn't like was the choice of plastics for the mouse body—I'm entirely sure what Keychron has used, but it has a somewhat dry, rough feel, and it initially reminded me of how 3D-printed objects feel when first held.

That said, it felt better over time, and by the end of my testing period with the Keychron M5, I found that I preferred the feel to the glossy finish that most gaming mice have. I was also worried that the white plastics would attract grime and dirt, but that proved not to be the case.

The last vertical mouse I used was Logitech's Vertical MX, and I stopped using it because it was slow, unstable, and generally rather poor quality, especially when compared to Logitech's brilliant MX Master 3S.

Keychron has produced a far superior vertical mouse to the MX—partly because it's vastly more stable but mostly because the sensor is faster and more accurate. It's actually a little too fast and accurate, and on a smooth surface, clicking the buttons nudges the mouse slightly out of position, making it quite hard to navigate applications with small icons.

The solution for me was to use a large neoprene mouse pad, along with a reduction in the DPI setting. The former stopped the mouse from moving too much (the PTFE sliders on its base are very slippery), and the latter helped me with fine control.

You can see just how good the M5's internals are in our mouse tracking test results below. The Mouse Tester benchmark records how well a mouse follows rapid movement—the consistency of the points in the charts proves that the M5 has no problem keeping up for the most part. It's not quite as good as a high-end, dedicated gaming mouse, but it's very good for a vertical, ergonomic mouse.

Some of the input latency times when using 8 kHz polling are a little on the high side, though that's more down to the PC being used for the testing than the mouse itself. But even so, it shows that you're better off avoiding 8K polling for something less demanding on your PC.

You might think that having a 30,000 DPI sensor and a polling rate of up to 8 kHz would make it an excellent mouse for gaming. In any other mouse format, this would be true, but vertical mice are just too unwieldy to be suitable for anything other than slow-paced games that require minimal mouse movement.

The Keychron M5 has a very wide base to ensure it's as stable as possible but that just makes it take up more space as it moves around, and while its 95 g weight isn't the heaviest you can get in the world of PC rodents, you're not going to be whipping the M5 around in a frantic round of Counter-Strike 2. It's fine in something like Hearts of Iron 4, or any strategy/turn-based game, and perhaps even a slow-paced RPG like The Witcher 3, but nothing that involves quick or wide movements.

So the M5's gaming credentials aren't great (though that's par for the course with vertical mice), but what about using it as a daily driver?

This is where the Keychron M5 really shines. The primary mouse buttons are lovely to use, with a positive action, and the web-based Keychron Launcher makes it a doddle to adjust the switches' lift-off distance and debounce times to suit your exact needs.

Using a webpage to change your mouse's settings might seem a little odd (for example, if Keychron's servers go down, you're stuck with the settings you've got until it's back up—though you can still change some settings directly on the mouse), but it allows the launcher to be updated or reconfigured without you having to keep track of software updates and downloading them.

You can reconfigure all five buttons and the two wheels to do anything, as well as set up macros and adjust the DPI and polling rate. Those last two can also be adjusted by small buttons in the mouse's base, and I applaud Keychron for adding useful LEDs to indicate what value they're currently set to.

Add in the fact that the M5 can be paired with up to three different devices via Bluetooth (with a dedicated base button to switch between), as well as another computer that's using the 2.4 GHz dongle, and you've got an incredibly versatile rodent.

The cherry on the top of the M5's cake, though, has to be the price. At $70/£74, Keychron's ergonomic offering is considerably cheaper than the Logitech MX Vertical, which normally costs $120/£120 (though it's often on sale for less than that). The fact that the M5 is a much better vertical mouse and it's much cheaper makes it a no-brainer when it comes to picking a new ergonomic clicker.

Sure, the 8 kHz polling rate isn't really all that useful (it drains the battery quicker than when running at a slower rate), and the sensor is perhaps a little too fast and accurate with default settings, but these are minor gripes in the grand scheme of things.

Vertical mice aren't for everyone, and they're not a sensible choice for gaming, but if you are dead set on buying one, then just buy the Keychron M5. There's really nothing else to touch it in the ergonomic market right now.

In a world where laptops like the Razer Blade 16 and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 are redefining what it means to own a portable powerhouse of a gaming machine, the Raider 18 HX sits distinct from its similarly-powered brethren. It's a titanic 3.6 kg slice of hardware that appears to come from a different universe—never mind era—of PC hardware.

It's also fast. Very, very fast. And expensive. Very, very… you get the idea. $4,400/£4,200, to be precise, which makes it the priciest RTX 5080-equipped gaming laptop we've tested to date.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. This laptop is about excess, and so for those many, many dollars, you receive a quite astonishing amount of hardware. You get the full-fat Intel Core Ultra 285HX, a 5.5 GHz, 24-core mega chip, in combination with a stonking 64 GB of DDR5-6400, 4 TB of Gen 4 SSD storage, and the 175 W version of the mobile RTX 5080.

Nope, not the RTX 5090, which is something of a blessed relief. It wasn't so long ago that I reviewed the MSI Titan 18 HX A14V, a similarly mega-specced (and similarly mega-proportioned) lappy with Nvidia's top mobile chip at the time, the RTX 4090. It's an absolute jet engine at top whack, so bringing the GPU down to something more reasonably-placed in the stack for the Raider strikes as a good move to me.

Initially, the chassis of the Raider 18 HX feels like an improvement on the Titan. It's still massive, it's still got those odd coloured inserts between the fan vents that look like they come from a different machine, and the screen still flexes independently of the bottom deck. However, the Raider feels like a slightly more solid proposition.

Perhaps it's the all-black styling, the mercifully subtle RGB lip on the underside, or the much better-feeling keyboard. But the Raider, to my tastes at least, edges into 'industrial chic' territory, and that's a desirable place to be. It looks and feels mean, and I appreciate that. Svelte, though? Not a bit of it.

This is a laptop out for blood, and everything about it feels brutally designed. Whether that tickles your fancy is a personal thing, but I'm not opposed to a bit of square-edged meatiness in my gaming hardware, even if I would prefer the odd concession made to comfort.

Dominating my retinas from the outset is a 120 Hz, 2400p, 18-inch Micro-LED display—and like many panels fitted to MSI laptops, it's a bit of a stunner.

I'm a big fan of Micro-LED tech, as while it has definite downsides (a limited number of local dimming zones means you can occasionally catch it out with a pinpoint of light on a black background), a good panel can still look almost as vibrant as OLED, at least to my eyes.

Take note of that resolution, though. A 3840 x 2400 res means there are an awful lot of pixels for that mobile RTX 5080 to keep fed at native—although being an RTX 50-series machine, there's always DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation to help out with those frames in terms of real-world performance. More on that in a minute.

Performance, then. For comparison, I've thrown in several RTX 5080 laptops from our current crop of reviewed machines into the benchmark graphs, but the one to pay attention to is the MSI Vector 16 HX AI A2XW. This is a $2,500 MSI machine (for the 16 GB version) that also has some chonk-related issues, but makes use of the same 175 W RTX 5080 as the big Raider.

It's a 16-inch lappy, and makes do with a (perfectly decent) 1600p IPS panel rather than a lovely Micro-LED-lit 2400p 18-inch version—although it's worth noting that with a 240 Hz refresh rate, the Vector's screen is twice as fast.

For a direct performance comparison, I've benched the Raider 18 HX at 1080p and 1440p, as the rest of our RTX 5080 laptops have 1600p displays. What's obvious from the off, however, is that the GPUs in both MSI machines perform almost identically in terms of average frames. It's only in the Baldur's Gate 3 benchmark that the Raider ranges well ahead, as BG3 is much more CPU-dependent than GPU-bound.

As we've observed in our other testing, it turns out that the world of Faerûn really likes as much Arrow Lake performance core grunt as it can get. Otherwise it's much of a muchness between the two MSI machines, albeit with the Raider pulling in a higher minimum frame result on average—although I would point out that minimum frame readings can be twitchy beasts.

While I'm in the business of pointing things out, take a look at the results from the $3,560 Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen 10, sitting at the bottom of our graphs. It's also got a 175 W RTX 5080, but manages to beat out all of our other contenders by a not-insignificant amount in almost every benchmark. And it's got a 240 Hz OLED display, now I come to think of it.

The real-world gaming performance graph reveals exactly what it's supposed to—the frames you can expect when running the Raider's 2400p screen at its native resolution with the upscaling and Frame Generation goodies tuned to reasonable levels.

Here you can really see what the strain of all those extra pixels does to an otherwise very performant mobile GPU, as DLSS still has to pull from a 1600p source when set to Quality at 2400p. While a 61 fps result in Cyberpunk 2077 sounds good on the surface, it's worth bearing in mind that Frame Generation is doing a lot of heavy lifting, doubling the frame rate to create a (mostly) smooth experience.

And while Frame Gen might have the appearance of magic, when the game itself is crawling along underneath at 23-30 fps it creates a noticeably floaty effect when it comes to input latency.

I personally wouldn't want to play games using Frame Generation with this low of a base frame rate, and it really brings into question the legitimacy of cramming a 2400p panel into a laptop, even one with some seriously grunty hardware.

You could drop the DLSS to Balanced, of course, which will definitely gain you some more frames. Or even Performance. But this is a $4,400 gaming laptop, and when you're paying this sort of cash for a mega display, it's a shame that you have to make significant concessions in order to see it at its best.

The CPU results are a bit of a mixed bag, too. While Cinebench R24's multithreaded benchmark allows the Raider to scream ahead thanks to all those cores, in the rest of our benches it's on a near-as-makes-no-difference level with the much cheaper Vector 16 HX.

It's also, and I'm sure you've been waiting for me to say this, very loud. Interestingly, the RTX 5080 doesn't appear to stress out the fans too much, even at the Extreme setting. Like its Vector 16 HX sibling, though, hit the CPU hard and the fans rev up to match.

Dropping the fan settings to Balanced improves things immensely. In fact, in terms of GPU-heavy gaming (and most games still lean much more heavily on the GPU than the CPU), I noticed very little real-world drop in gaming performance with the fans reined in by the less-than-impressive MSI Center software.

I've had to reinstall it twice during testing to make it launch reliably when I need it to, although I'll be generous and say perhaps this is because it's a new laptop, with a few kinks still left to iron out. Very generous, actually, as I've had issues with MSI Center before—but the benefit of the doubt is in full swing here.

Still, you can game on the Raider without wearing ear defenders in Balanced mode with reasonable performance, and that's an improvement. It's still not quiet, naturally, but after annoying my household with my extensive testing of the Titan 18 HX, I'll take it.

It's not an easy machine to live with, though, mostly down to its proportions and weight. I took it into the office with me to see if lugging it around on your back was feasible, and can say with some confidence that it is.

Feasible, that is, not desirable. Those squared-off corners combined with its overall bulk meant the edges poked through the material of my laptop bag, and the weight left me breathless after climbing a few flights of stairs.

And as for the battery life? It puts in a decent result in our PC Mark 10 gaming test, but in real world usage, I've found it a bit disappointing. A little YouTube watching drains it considerably, unless you're prepared to drop the brightness down to ultra-low levels and sacrifice the benefits of that Micro-LED panel.

Nope, this is an ultra-powerful, outlet-demanding desktop replacement, through and through. But even when viewed through that vaseline-smeared, overly-rosy lens, the Raider still doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Its $4,400 price tag is almost impossible to justify, especially when you put it next to its RTX 5080-touting cousin, the MSI Vector 16 HX AI. That's a $2,500 laptop in 16 GB configuration, meaning that you're paying $1,900 more here, mostly for a larger, better-looking display.

Sure, you get 64 GB of RAM with the Raider, and 4 TB of storage. Nice things to have, but in a laptop (even a desktop-replacing one), it's more than most of you will really need. It certainly doesn't justify all that extra expense, particularly not when both of those components are easy enough to upgrade on the cheap.

Still not convinced? Think of it this way. If a desktop replacement is your goal, you could pick up the Vector 16 HX and two $950 MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED monitors for the same money.

Yep. Two 32-inch QD-OLED beauties (the best gaming monitors we've tested to date, in fact), and a laptop that's virtually as fast in the gaming benchmarks, for the same cash.

Oh, and while the Vector isn't exactly a slim and svelte machine, it's much more portable than the Raider, meaning you could still cram it into your bag and take it to work without feeling like you were destined for the great beyond when you climbed the odd set of stairs.

I want to like the Raider, I really do. It's big and brash in a way that normally tickles my fancy. And it's stonkingly quick, with a superb display. But the more time I've spent with it, the less and less I've felt like I can justify its cost for what you end up receiving. There's something to like here, no doubt—but in practical terms, it never quite adds up.

Labyrinth of the Demon King is a cruel, miserable dungeon crawler set in a collapsing feudal Japan. I'm a lowly foot soldier, or ashigaru, seeking to avenge the murder of my lord and his army at the hands of the demon king. As you can imagine, the odds are hopelessly stacked against me. My katana is broken, I tire easily, and the labyrinth I'm forced to navigate is the most depressing and confusing entanglement of narrow halls and non-descript rooms I've visited since the PS1 era. Not to mention that the demon king is openly mocking me with his arcane puzzles and repulsive yokai.

This nasty 15-hour adventure belongs to a new generation of dungeon crawlers heavily indebted to King's Field, a dark fantasy FromSoftware series that prefigured the Dark Souls games. Labyrinth of the Demon King follows in the footsteps of Lunacid, which popularised the revival, and there are tonnes of similar forthcoming games on my Steam wishlist at the moment including Hark the Ghoul and Monomyth. Labyrinth trades Lunacid's oft-lurid VHS fantasy for an oppressive commingling of Buddhist folklore and survival horror grime, while also advancing—albeit incrementally—the complexity of the combat you can usually expect in games of this ilk.

About that combat: I was ready to give up Labyrinth of the Demon King after about the two-hour mark. The game forces a combat tutorial straight out of the gate, but I was nevertheless getting my arse handed to me. My ashigaru is tortoise-slow, with a stamina bar that depletes at an alarming clip with every flailing, poorly timed swing of my katana. Dodging once doesn't deplete my miserly stamina bar, but if I dodge again within a four-second cooldown, it does, and the penalty is enormous. If I happen to get hit by any of the squealing, maddened figures whose attacks I can parry inside a tiny window, I lose my cool and death is certain.

But then I learn to kick. There is a kick button, and for a long time I neglected to use it. Kicking an enemy staggers them for long enough to get a risk-free thrust in, and takes the edge off the otherwise overwhelmingly tense fights. I eventually learned that the combat was really just testing my ability to stay cool during terrifying encounters. Once this came together—and once I started to understand some of the other quirks of the game, such as the bonfire-like save system, and the importance of running away—it wasn't long before I flipped. Not only was I not going to drop Labyrinth anymore, I became obsessed with it.

It's surprisingly easy for this to happen. The demon's labyrinth is split into four major areas, and aside from some refreshing outdoor sections, it pretty much all looks the same. Every surface is caked in an unspecified brown-grey ooze. Doorways and occasionally whole halls can be blocked by mysterious breathing gore piles. Many doors, of course, are jammed or locked. It's an oppressively bleak and monotonous world to spend a long time in, and yet, the illogically twisting halls and ruined rooms do manage to leave an impression, so much so that by the end I felt I knew the map fairly well.

Meanwhile, the enemies themselves—and even the NPCs—are rendered inscrutable by their nascent 3D stylings. It took me a while to realise a merchant cat, for instance, was a cat. When it comes to the demons, the chunky pixels renounce detail and subtlety in favour of a generalised fetidness: it feels like I'm slashing away (or running away) from a mass of horrific sentient polyps, and that's somehow scarier than if it were a meticulously polygonal take on the akaname.

It’s probably worth dwelling on this stylistic decision. At least a half-dozen horror games release on Steam every week that plunder the wobbly unrealness of mid-’90s 3D graphics. It’s become a shortcut towards a certain disarranging horror effect that more modern presentations can’t hope to match. But in the case of Labyrinth, the graphics are actually murkier and more degraded than the '90s material it channels. This makes the enemies scarier and more inscrutable, yes, but it also lends the game a homebrew ruthlessness reminiscent of video nasties. It overall feels like something no one in the '90s would dare to bring to market: it has the sense of something forbidden about it.

But as terrifying as the beasts and hallways are, by mid-game I felt far less threatened. There are a bunch of different weapons, all upgradable, ranging from my starter katana through to an otsuchi ("very heavy hammer"), a Great Dao ("massive sword"), and naginatas, axes, spears—even a rifle, all with different attack speeds and stamina trade-offs. There are also talismans, which I mostly forgot to use, but which have both offensive and defensive capabilities. The difficulty tapers off by the halfway mark, mostly thanks to familiarity with the combat system, but upgrading my health and stamina certainly helped (trust me: prioritize the latter), and so did an understanding of the movement patterns of the roaming Nuribotoke, a stalking figure modelled after Resident Evil's Mr. X.

There aren't a lot of puzzles but they all make a dim kind of sense, usually requiring a lot of backtracking across the map. One of my colleagues tended to struggle with the ones I found easy, and vice versa, but all have solutions any halfway observant player will solve with no trouble. Many clues are hidden in scrolls found in the world, and reading these can be as discomforting as roaming the halls: beware some disturbingly detailed descriptions of the Buddhist Eight Hells.

Labyrinth of the Demon King is predominantly the work of a single person, J. R. Hudepohl, and it definitely feels like the result of a productive obsession. I don't know if a team could make something this quietly disturbing without someone piping up to ask: how will people cope? I won't lie: as I watched the credits roll on Labyrinth of the Demon King I felt an unutterable sense of relief that I would never need to roam those halls again, with their drones of mysterious provenance, and the wheezing of their gross denizens. But I'm sure glad I did at least once: this is the most potent weird horror we're likely to see in 2025.

Yeah, alright, new 5.0 drives are a dime a dozen these days, and the speeds involved are so vastly ahead of the rest of the PC ecosystem that it effectively makes them kind of pointless for the humble PC gamer. I get it. It's like comparing a Lamborghini Aventador to your grandma's clapped-out sedan. Alright, it can do 0-60 in less than 4 seconds, but it's still going to get you from point A to point B in about the same amount of time, thanks to that trusty old bottleneck that is highway speed limits.

Yet, every now and then, a drive comes along that radically alters the landscape. Perhaps not in a massive way, but just enough that it makes us journalists sit up and take notice. Enough to turn heads and ensure you do a double take of those figures and go, "hang on a minute". That is exactly what the SN8100 is, and Western Digital knows it. This is, quite bluntly, one of the best SSDs of 2025, and I'd wager my hat on that statement.

This thing is special; it's the company's first PCIe 5.0 SSD, and it absolutely slaps in terms of performance. It's built off the back of a proprietary controller designed internally by Sandisk (which was, until recently, under the WD umbrella but now its own company), the SMI2508. There's not a huge amount of data out there right now regarding it (I have pestered WD directly about it), but what I can tell you is that it's designed to operate with DRAM cache and comes in at a full-fat 8-channel design as standard. It's entirely unique to the SN8100 and not found on any of WD's other product lines just yet.

WD's also gone ahead and paired this with Sandisk 218-layer BiCS8 TLC 3D CBA NAND. That in and of itself is quite the radical decision. Kioxia has long been WD's NAND flash partner with the likes of the SN7100, SN850X, and more, all featuring its TLC in one form or another. This is likely to do with that de-merging of WD and SanDisk, and why there's a big SanDisk logo on the reverse of this drive. It's more SanDisk than WD, as the latter focuses on HDDs.

That NAND's then backed up with 1 GB of DRAM cache per TB of storage as well, all on a single-sided platform, making it ideal for pretty much any device that can support that 2280 form factor.

Initial launch capacities feature both 1 TB and 2 TB configurations with or without a heatsink, and they're aggressively priced too. The non-heatsink variant I've got here, at 2 TB, clocks in at a retail price of $280 in the US and £227 in the UK. Averaging out at about $0.14 per GB and £0.11 per GB, respectively. The only drives that come even mildly close to competing with that are the older first-gen 5.0 solutions, with Crucial's T700 coming to mind, or Corsair's MP700 Elite (itself a slower, more efficient 5.0 drive anyway, which kinda can't hold a candle to the SN8100).

And yes don't worry, you still get the as per usual 5-year warranty and 1,200 TBW endurance rating as well, a standard affair that one these days.

So then, now that the dull stuff's out the way, let's talk performance, because it's wild.

Sequential performance in CrystalDiskMark topped out at 14,710 MB/s on the read and 13,926 MB/s on the write. Those numbers are the quickest I've seen on any drive I've ever tested in this setup, just full stop.

Usually it's at this point I turn around and tell you, "Well, the sequentials are good, but the random 4K? Very bad", like we saw with Samsung's 9100 Pro and other drives. Nope. 119 MB/s on the read, 349 MB/s on the write, and again nothing even comes close to it. That read speed in particular is wildly fast, 31% faster than even the best drive I've tested to date. It's just monstrous.

Random 4K performance really is crucial as well, critical even for PC gamers, because it generally correlates well with how games load assets, files, scenes, textures, you name it. The higher that performance, the quicker your game will load. Probably unsurprising, then, that yet again, in Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, the SN8100 just mopped up the competition, with a total time averaging just 6.575 seconds across all five scenes. The temperatures aren't absurd either, as it managed our entire benchmarking run, topping out at just 74 degrees.

All of its performance metrics, they just utterly annihilate everything else I've ever tested, by a huge margin. It's game-changing, and in a world of SSDs where we're continually seeing either fractional performance bumps or new drives launching but missing one key element of speed (insert poor sequentials or random 4K here), to have something like this come out and just deliver how it does is awesome.

And that's the thing, you see. We've had so many brand-new 5.0 lines launch in the last 12 months. We've had Samsung's 9100 Pro with its mediocre random 4K performance, Biwin's Black Opal X570, which absolutely chugs in load times and overpromises yet underdelivers on temperature, and Corsair's MP700 Elite, which, while impressively efficient, lacks the speeds we really want to see from flagship products in this category. What WD's done with the SN8100, by keeping everything in-house and fine-tuning it all to such a high level, is create a product that not only delivers but makes one hell of a statement as to what a true flagship product launch should be. One that this side of the PC community desperately needs.

I'd go so far as to say this is almost the perfect drive. If you want to game, if you want to render, if you want to do any professional workload, it's got your back and then some. If Phison wasn't worried about it yet, it damn well should be.

The flexibility to allow you to switch between those two approaches is one of the Thunder X3 Flex Pro's biggest selling points. Boasting 19 different "dimensions of adjustment," you can feel it working to accommodate you no matter what orientation you're sitting in. Across its seat, lumbar, back, and head rests, a combination of mesh material and a dizzying number of moving parts means that you've got plenty of support.

Perhaps most outlandish are the two separate lumbar support panels. Moving independently of one another, they're the stars of the show whether you're sitting up or leaning back. If that sounds a little more 'massage chair' than 'office chair' to you, the good news is that all of this chair's various moving parts can be locked in place, often with nothing more than the simple twist of a lever. The extent of all that adjustability does mean that you might have to struggle through some confused pushing and pulling at the start, but that should be a short-term problem.

With all those moving parts, I was worried that the ThunderX3 Flex Pro would be a building nightmare, but thankfully I was wrong. The entire build took me 30 minutes on my own, and while the hardest part was getting its enormous, heavy box up the stairs to my office, actually pulling the whole thing together was pretty easy. I thought I'd be in for a nightmare of complex moving pieces, but 12 screws and just six major components brought the entire chair together.

Unfortunately, not all of those components are great. The mesh seat is quite hard, which feels a little out of place with the gentle give that the rest of the chair clearly prides itself on. It's also pretty small, and while you don't really notice that while leaning back, while sitting up I'm not dealing with a lot of extra room, despite fitting firmly within the size and weight descriptions.

And for how solid some of the rest of the build feels, I was a little disappointed by the simple plastic rollers I got for wheels. Thankfully, my initial uncertainty about the armrests' 360-degree adjustability seems to have been mostly unfounded, but even for all the movement I do have access to, I've struggled to get them exactly where I wanted them.

It's a slightly similar story with the headrest. It's massive, and you can move it around a fair bit, but I wanted to move it forward to give me some help while I'm sitting up as well as leaning back. Whether that's by design or my issue interpreting the slightly hieroglyphic instruction manual I'm not sure, but it's another slight miss.

I was initially sceptical about the value of all that adjustability, especially when it didn't always seem to work as intended. The first time I sat down, it was easy to feel where the chair was moving with me, but only after I stopped sitting up straight. Almost immediately, it felt as though the ThunderX3 Flex Pro would be great for lazily leaning back with a gamepad, but would offer much less value in meetings or for keyboard + mouse games. Given how much more time I spend dealing with the latter than the former, that was a concern.

Happily, I appear to have been wrong on that front. The combination of the hard seat and a bit of clever post-sitting adjustment around the lumbar support meant that I could feel nicely held up, even when sitting up straight. Obviously, it falls away if I lean forward, but an adjustable seat does offer a partial means of addressing that particular issue.

Nevertheless, it does leave me slightly torn on the ThunderX3 Flex Pro. For the price point, I think it's excellent—you're definitely getting more support and flexibility than most of its gaming chair competitors at the same price (and often at higher prices too).

The problem is, some of this chair's biggest selling points feel a little like they're aiming in the wrong place. Much of its best supportive and flexible features fall away when you use it as an actual office chair. Sat forward at a desk, you're simply not feeling several of those 19 points of adjustment. Thankfully though, I do have to admit that when it comes to arguably its most important spot—the lumbar support—it does great work no matter how you sit.

As a gaming chair, I think this is much better. Lean back, and you can feel the ThunderX3 Flex Pro moving with you, and the mesh material means it's breathable and has some decent give.

The lumbar supports feel amazing here too, almost as though they're holding you up on their own. For longer sessions where you've using a gamepad and leaning back to drink in an hours-long open-world session, this chair does a really good job. It might require a little getting used to, and a little fine-tuning to make sure it's working at peak performance, but if you can get past that initial admin stage, this is a solid hybrid chair at a price that leaves its biggest gaming rivals pretty far behind, without compromising on anything more than a few small details.

It would be all too easy to tar the Legion Pro 7i with the same anachronistic brush as the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 and MSI Vector 16 HX AI—it is, after all, very much one of those big old school gaming laptops you expect to have plumbed into a power source for its entire life. But, though it doesn't have the same thinned-down chassis as the latest Razer Blade 16 design, Lenovo has given its Legion line a complete redesign, which makes it look far slicker and with more than a hint of the Alienware flair about it, too.

The angular RGB rings around the exhaust ports on the rear of the Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 are what give that feel, and that's not a bad thing. There's a real style about this new chassis design that I'm into. It feels knowingly solid, designed to be a strong base for your mobile components, and give them enough cooling power to keep them running at peak performance.

It's also made it more of a unit by culling the side exhaust vents and leaving just that whole expanse at the back of the machine for blowing out all the hot air from the system. That makes it feel more grown-up, with the chassis being more enclosed rather than all exhausts and vents. To me, it feels more modern and that RGB flair—like the tail-lights of a BMW concept car or a Tron light-cycle—has a definite style which doesn't feel crass in the way external lightbars often can.

Lenovo has also taken the same approach as Razer in terms of creating a large underslung "thermal hood" over the triple intake fans, giving it a lot of space to pull in cooling air. And, again like the Razer design, the Legion is super-easy to open up, though here with just a Phillips screwdriver and a little shiv to pry it open. There's a secondary thermal covering to the twin SSDs and SODIMM slots, but that's labelled up to make it simple to remove, too.

Okay, that's just me taking a lot of words to say, 'hey, it might not be a skinny boi, but I really like the look and experience of the new Legion.'

And I really like the performance of the new machine. This is outright the most performant RTX 5080-toting gaming laptop I've tested so far, and whoever's going to compete with Lenovo is going to have to really pull some levers (and push the cooling array) to get their machines even on par with the Legion Pro 7i.

So yes, there's an RTX 5080 mobile GPU as the gaming heart of this laptop, and as with most of the rest of the pack we're looking at a 175 W version of the Nvidia GPU. That's the top RTX 5080 spec around, but even so in our Metro Exodus Enhanced testing we never saw the power draw go much above the 150 W mark, with an average of 127 W.

It's a similar story with all the other nominally 175 W GPUs I've checked out this year, and arguably the Legion is one which pushes its hardware as hard and as far as any others.

But it's not just about the GPU inside this laptop, because Lenovo has also seen fit to drop an Arrow Lake-HX chip into its Gen 10 laptops, and here that means an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX. That's a 24-core hybrid chip, with eight full-fledged performance cores giving it the gaming grunt. And, while I am very much into the AMD Ryzen AI chips for their efficient power-sipping performance, you cannot argue with the CPU grunt the latest Intel mobile chips display.

You just have to look at the relative Cinebench or Baldur's Gate 3 performance numbers to see the delta between AMD and Intel on this one. Still, we haven't seen AMD's trump card yet, the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D. That ought to be a gaming CPU powerhouse, though likely in far fewer notebooks than Intel can deliver.

There is also 32 GB DDR5-6400 in there, in two ranks of standard SODIMMs. Which is important because Lenovo was certainly guilty of some gross offences against gaming laptop memory in the previous generation. It's something Alienware does, too, but still, only slapping a single stick of 16 GB DDR5 memory into a gaming laptop is just plain wrong.

Thankfully, Lenovo is going full dual-channel here—with a single stick, even if it's fast memory, you're getting half the bandwidth of using two sticks, even adding up to the same overall capacity.

It's also doubling up on storage, too, with a pair of 1 TB SK Hynix SSDs giving you options as to where to store your games. It's not configured in any kind of RAID array—the PCIe 4 SSDs are plenty fast enough for gaming needs—and so you're just getting one speedy SSD for your OS and another identical one for extra data. Simple, and effective.

And all of that lovely mobile silicon leads to the Legion Pro 7i delivering generally the highest gaming performance out of any machine touting the same core parts. Lenovo has tuned its system to the point where it genuinely delivers on frame rates. That's even true when we put it up against the RTX 5090 in the Razer Blade 16. Though that isn't really indicative of the sort of frame rates you could get out of the top RTX Blackwell GPU if you jammed it in a broad 18-inch chassis.

The Legion Pro 7i has the frame rate edge in pretty much every game at 1080p, though things are a touch closer when it comes to the 1600p tests. That said, once you go into 'real-world' testing, using DLSS and Frame Generation, the Lenovo lappy pulls out in front again.

But, as you will no doubt expect from a gaming laptop review, here comes the expected, 'but it ain't half loud' comment. And yes, running the LegionSpace app and sticking the machine in Performance mode will make those fans rather noticeable. What I will say is that it's nowhere near as ear-splitting as the racket that the Legion 9i I tested with an RTX 4090 gets at full speed.

Unlike the MSI Vector 16 HX AI or even the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16, knocking things back to the Balanced mode isn't particularly satisfying from a gaming perspective, however. Where those machines tempered the fan noise but only lost a touch of gaming performance, Lenovo's setup seems to be rather more aggressive when it comes to limiting the GPU, while still letting the Intel processor go wild with its 5 GHz+ frequencies. Sure, you get lower fan noise, but the fps tradeoff is much more prominent.

That would be a huge shame for the Legion Pro 7i if that were the end of the story. Yay! Highest performance! Boo! A big hit on the gaming mode that you would actually want to use! Thankfully, that LegionSpace app has a little trick up its digital sleeve I've been wanting to see in laptops since I first got my mitts on a modern handheld gaming PC: Actual granular power control.

The Custom setting is the most configurable I've seen in any laptop, gaming or otherwise. It's something I've been crying out for with the Framework machines, and it's great to see the level of control Lenovo is letting its users have.

You can only use it when the system is plugged into the wall, but when you do it reveals a sea of sliders allowing you to adjust the power limits, both short and long term, as well as both the CPU -> GPU and GPU -> CPU Dynamic Boost options. You can also mess with the full 150 Watt configurable TGP of the graphics chip and set temperature limits on both the processor and the GPU.

It's super granular, and allowed me to create a custom profile that knocked back the CPU demands while bumping up the graphics card limits. That makes it a relatively quiet, but still very powerful, gaming mode. That's my new balanced mode, and that's the version I'm sticking to.

I've not had this level of freedom with the settings of a gaming laptop in some time—maybe not ever—and I give huge props to Lenovo for actually not trying to dumb this stuff down and trust its users. Well, trust them to an extent. While there is a fun curve editor, that initial level is the lowest on offer, not allowing you to go lower and limit the cooling to such an extent that it might fry some silicon.

A nice visual touch is the Legion logo around the power button lights up different colours to indicate which profile you are using and glows hot pink—my personal PC RGB preference—when in my new custom gaming mode.

I do like that logo lighting quite a lot. More than I really should, to be honest. But strangely, it's the little things with expensive bits of kit that can really sell them. I love the way it slowly flashes when you lift the lid and it wakes out of sleep, flashing faster as it glows up into life before going solid the instant the screen comes on.

Speaking of little things, here's one I don't really like: the trackpad. Now, it is responsive and slippy in all the good ways, but it feels almost restrictively small. It is absolutely functional, and its central placement beneath the spacebar means hitting a right-click isn't as tricksy to get your muscle memory around as with the frankly enormous Blade 16 pad, but it's the only area where the package doesn't feel completely premium.

Though everything else does. I regularly refer to Lenovo as the best in the business when it comes to laptop keyboards and the one on this Legion Pro 7i is typically good. Razer has upped its game, giving you more travel on the keys, but Lenovo has been refining its design for years, and it's ace. There's great travel, there's plenty of space between the keys while still offering a full, and importantly accessible numpad.

And the OLED screen is glorious. Even set at 66%, the screen feels pleasingly bright in a well-lit springtime office, and the colours and contrast are impeccable. It's not too warm, there's a glossy coating which only accentuates that pin-sharp contrast, and the 16-inch panel means that even at 1600p, there's some real fine pixel density right here.

Where there is one major let-down—and it's only in the face of improvements from other manufacturers—it's the battery life. Lenovo Legion machines have almost always had appalling gaming battery life, and while the Legion Pro 7i isn't the worst we've seen, sitting only just over the hour mark is disappointing for a GPU generation that has been touting on-battery gaming.

Certainly that's eminently possible with the RTX 5090 and Blade 16, but with the Legion Pro 7i, however, gaming on this thing's battery really isn't. I partly blame the Intel CPU—as you can see from the benchmarks, all the other Intel-based RTX 5080 machines come way behind the AMD-powered Razer—but it's also down to the tuning and efficiency of the Lenovo build as a whole. This thing's rocking a 99.9 Whr battery and shouldn't be delivering such a poor level of uptime while gaming. It's nowhere near as bad when you're not gaming, but that's not really the point.

I'm not really going to hold that against the Legion too much, though. This is a classical 16-inch gaming laptop, not one developed for gaming on the go, more about gaming when you finally reach your destination and can plug in. And in that, it excels.

The starting price is steep, however. Especially in the face of a Razer Blade 16 that costs a shade less. What I will say is the Legion will confidently outperform the Razer machine with the same RTX 5080, so if that's all you care about—and portability and on the go performance be damned—then the Legion Pro 7i has the edge.

It's also probably worth stating that last generation's best value gaming laptop was arguably the Legion Pro 7i with an RTX 4080, which quickly dropped in price. And I wouldn't be surprised to see this drop down below the $3,000 mark by the end of the year.

I like the clean, nicely RGB-lit looks of the new Legion chassis, I'm into the all-round performance of the device, and I absolutely love the level of customisation the Lenovo Legion software now affords its users. I'm still always going to be pining after the new Blade 16 as my go-to gaming laptop of choice, but this is a pretty close second if all you want is straight line gaming performance.

The AceZone A-Blaze goes hard on comfort. Wearing it all day, every day, for the past week I've only felt minor discomfort on my crown, despite the thin headband. I'm a stickler for a floating headband like that of the Arctis Nova Pro, but the A-Blaze is cushioned enough that it's not a real issue. The rotating cans and ear cup padding further serve this feather-light gaming headset, all but eliminating the pressure I'd usually get from wearing glasses. Even my chunky hoop earrings aren't an issue, which is kinda wild. That's thanks in part to the flexibility of the headband, as well as the glorious ear-cup padding.

Thankfully, AceZone has also added swappable earpads over some previous models, which is always a welcome feature since pleather tends to shed after a while.

There's an evident focus on build quality here, but that's not to say the A-Blaze neglects aesthetics. It's nowhere near as jarring to look at as some sharp and garish gaming headsets I've seen, and it doesn't show off with flashy RGB either. Its subtle, almost retro styling nearly makes it worthy of whipping out on the bus, though the un-detachable mic and pop shield makes you look like you work for the bus company.

I have been impressed with the A-Blaze microphone, though. Handling plosives and sibilants well, it's great for in-game chat and Discord calls and doesn't sound too harsh, though it can come across a little compressed compared to the best gaming microphones.

There's some fair active noise cancelling on the A-Blaze. Hybrid ANC, AceZone calls it. And although there's only on, off, and transparency settings, it does a great job of reducing more distant droning sounds like passing cars and air-con. Still, it's nowhere near the kind of ANC you'd get in the $200+ price range.

As for sound, the A-Blaze comes with a middling frequency response that, while it's more than satisfactory for everyday use it isn't the most well-rounded. It's well-editable in the accompanying equalizer app, though you'll need to connect via both Bluetooth and Wireless to get the benefit in game since there's no Windows app.

When gaming, footsteps and vocals are clear. I've definitely been hearing sounds I don't usually notice, which says something about the A-Blaze's ability to pick up more distant in-game audio. While it doesn't match the sound quality of its big sister, the A-Rise (usually around £700/$750), it's certainly speedy and accurate. Plus it's supremely light by comparison and doesn't cost the earth.

Where other headsets have struggled as I move around the house and garden, the AceZone keeps a super consistent connection over wireless. It even stays connected to the wireless dongle some three doors down from my house, though the Bluetooth has some trouble with lots of other signals present.

My main issue while I'm listening to music away from my PC, is that there's a point at which the pause button refuses to work while the sound is still ringing clear. What's more, when I return to my PC, pause, then try to unpause music, it starts playing a random YouTube tab I have open. Basically, it picks up the input of whatever is the active window. Thankfully it does no such thing in-game. Still, the on-ear controls are a little lacking. Aside from the utter lack of back and forward music controls that other wireless headsets pride themselves on, the volume also jumps up a lot on a quick button press—I once had it go from 76% to 100%, which was a bit of a shock. Just something to be aware of if you've got sensitive ears.

If you're willing to forgo wireless and ANC altogether, you can nab the Corsair HS55 Stereo for better than half the price of this one, but then you're stuck tethered to your workstation. Still, if a wizard 300 hour battery life and stellar wireless is what you seek, the HyperX Cloud Alpha is our top wireless headset at £190/$100, and often found on sale. It's a little heavier but just as comfortable, and even comes with a detachable mic. And while the A-Blaze improves upon the £279/$369 wireless A-Spire design, with improved aesthetics, better wireless performance, more impressive battery life, and a nice pop-shield for the mic, AceZone notes that its ANC is a little weaker by comparison, as is the noise cancelling microphone.

There are plenty of similar-specced headsets going for slightly cheaper. Take the Turtle Beach Stealth 600 for example, which sits at around £100/$100. While it delivers arguably better sound quality with its 50 mm Nanoclear drivers and more resounding ear cups, it doesn't quite match the comfort or battery-life of the A-Blaze.

The question is, are you willing to sacrifice a little extra cash and a little control, for fae-like connection over Wi-Fi and a gratuitous 45-hour battery life? While your average gamer won't need or even benefit from the lightning fast response times this wireless gaming headset provides, it's got it where it counts for those looking to go pro. Plus, there's a lot to love about a sleek, comfy gaming headset that'll keep going, all night long. I just really wish I had the option to remove the mic, so I could take it out on daily dog walks without getting funny looks.

Arctic has nailed the formula with the Freezer 36. I've used other popular designs from the company prior to this, such as the Freezer 34, but without a doubt the Freezer 36 is the one to buy today. A big part of that is price. You can buy a Freezer 36 for $46/£23 today, which puts it very much on the budget end of price scale—a true budget hero in the UK, if pretty close in the US, too.

That's the price for model with aluminium and copper on show, and the one I have for review. It doesn't look half bad. However, you can also spend a few dollars more on the all-black version ($48), or a little more again (in the US) on the RGB version ($59/£35). If I had the option at the time, I'd have gone for the all-black, but this is a popular cooler, and for good reason.

The Freezer 36 is ready for any modern PC, with AM4/AM5 mounting options and support for Intel LGA1700 and LGA1851 using an included contact frame.

That's right, a contact frame is included in the box with this budget cooler. I'm as surprised as you are. If you're not familiar, this is a replacement for the ILM (levered mounting bracket) that comes pre-installed on a motherboard. It surrounds the CPU on all sides, and offers a studier point to mount a cooler onto. It's a good thing to have with a 13/14th Gen Intel processor as these are prone to bending ever-so-slightly under continued use, which can lead to higher temperatures over time. A contact frame prevents that.

So, this budget cooler comes with a contact frame, saving around $10, maybe more, on buying one separately. It's good to see a manufacturer taking processor bend seriously, too, alongside brands like Noctua that have released models of their coolers for already bent chips (once a chip is bent, it's staying that way).

I've carried out all my testing using our usual Core i7 14700K test bench. That means loading the contact frame into place for installation. It's a bit trickier to install than a traditional Intel cooler bracket, which often tend to be screwed into place using a rear bracket. There is more scope for damaging your motherboard's socket without the ILM in place, which you have to remove using an included Torx key. Once off, it's much easier if you have your motherboard laid flat to keep the CPU in the socket, then it's fairly easy to fit the contact frame around it, making sure to orient it the correct way using the matching symbols and keeping the rear plate in the correct position.

Like I said, the Freezer 36 is trickier to install on an Intel chip than your average cooler, but a contact frame is worthwhile to have, especially on a brand new chip. I also installed the Freezer 36 on an AMD-powered PC. This was a simpler process, and only required removing the motherboard cooler mounting points and replacing with the included brackets and spacers.

Oh, and there's a small 0.8 gram tube of Arctic MX-6 thermal paste in the box that's good for an install or two. I didn't use it, as I test with MX-4 across everything, but it's great to see everything you need included in the box.

With the cooler installed, it's onto testing.

The Freezer 36 manages to deal with the power-hungry Core i7 14700K extremely well while gaming. On average, in extended runs of Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition and Baldur's Gate 3, it outperformed the Cooler Master Hyper 612 Apex and Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5, both of which are more expensive, and it even matched the Noctua NH-D15 G2 in Baldur's Gate 3. It did allow for marginally higher maximum temperatures at times, and this is where the NH-D15 G2 comes into its own, though well within the expected variance with cooler testing.

It is a different story when it comes to Cinebench R23 and X264 benchmarks, both of which are hugely CPU intensive. Not a single air cooler I've tested to date is able to handle the 14700K in these benchmarks and the Freezer 36 doesn't buck that trend.

However, I do run a separate test in which I tune the 14700K down to 120 W. This puts the power-hungry Intel chip, usually able to run up to 253 W, on a more level-pegging with modern Intel and AMD processors, the latter often running at a 120 W TDP. It's not a massive drop for the 14700K, as it more often than not runs closer to 120 W than 253 W, but it does mean the Freezer 36 and most other air coolers stand a chance of keeping it cool.

PC Gamer test rig
CPU: Intel Core i7 14700K | Motherboard: Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero | GPU: Nvidia RTX 4070 Founders Edition | RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 @ 5600 MT/s | SSD: Sabrent 2 TB | PSU: Gigabyte Aorus P1200W | Case: Thermaltake Core P5 (open)

Since I also fitted this cooler inside a gaming PC powered by a Ryzen 5 9600X, I can confirm it manages to cool just about anything that chip can muster. Even throwing Cinebench R24, Blender, 7Zip and 3DMark Time Spy Extreme only saw a max temp of 72 °C, and throughout various gaming benchmarks it kept the CPU at 62 °C or lower.

All of which is to say, it performs easily as well as more premium air coolers, but what's more is how quietly it goes about it.

This single-tower cooler is sandwiched between two P12 PWM PST fans. These aren't anything special, except that they connect to the tower using what Arctic calls a 'click system', which is essentially made up of small metal fittings that click into place without any additional clips. It's a small difference, but it makes for a cleaner finish overall.

What is special is these two fans make very little noise during operation. We test all coolers with the fans ramped up to 100%, to get a gauge of the maximum performance on offer, and these two were quieter than some coolers with just one. Seriously impressive, Arctic, and you wouldn't expect it from looking at it.

Quiet, performant, and affordable—the Freezer 36 gets a whole lot right. You could spend more on something like the Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5 for better looks, or get something flashier in the Cooler Master Hyper 612 Apex or 212 Pro, but you wouldn't get anything as complete as you would with the Freezer 36. I won't belabour the point for long as I think this is one of the easiest recommendations I've made in years: if you need a cooler for your next CPU upgrade, and you don't want to spend a lot, the Arctic Freezer 36 is easily one of the best you can buy today.

No expense has been spared with the packaging of this air cooler. Its slight air of pretention carries over to the cloth bag it's tucked inside. A nice touch, if a little unnecessary. Remove it from its sheath and there are only a few flourishes in its design: a small Cooler Master logo on the top plate and the aforementioned silver facade to the fan housing.

It's a hefty unit, measuring 159 mm in height and weighing 1.134 kg. Make sure you measure the space between your CPU and the side panel on your chassis, as this is the biggest compatibility concern for this cooler. You'll probably be fine, as many cases will be sufficient, but as it stands a little taller from the motherboard than some modern graphics cards there could be the occasional issue. You really don't want this butting up against your tempered glass side panel.

On either side of the lone heatsink tower sits a Mobius 120P PWM fan. These come with nicely braided cables and are installed with a rail system that cuts out any fiddling with wire mounts or screws. It's a neat system for installation, especially as the top plate is magnetic and peels away easily, and it makes for easy access to the screws below, but there are downsides. Namely, you have to unscrew the mounts attached to the heatsink if you want to reverse the orientation of the fans, but also you are a little stuck with the fans it comes with.

Now, potentially, yes, you could switch out the included fans for others, but they'd have to be pretty similar in size and shape to match the fittings used on the Mobius models and removing the silver facade on either side feels like an experiment in how far you can bend plastic until it breaks. It's all possible, but much more work than most.

You needn't be too concerned with switching out the fans, at least. They're not the quietest on offer, and a good deal louder than Arctic's Freezer 36 in my testing, but it's still on the quieter side when compared with most liquid coolers. You won't find a lick of lighting anywhere on the 612 Apex, fans included, but that's to be expected from its clean-cut finish.

Installation is fairly straightforward on the 612 Apex. On Intel systems, a bracket and backplate are supplied to punch through the provided holes on the motherboard and secure down with thumbscrews. Easy peasy.

On AMD systems, replace the pre-installed mounting bracket on your motherboard with the one provided, ensuring the correct orientation, and secure down with thumbscrews.

Orientation is key here. The 612 Apex has a slight offset to the six copper heatpipes protruding from the coldplate, and ensures it sits away from the RAM and out of the way of the motherboard. There's no overhang over the memory by the right-most fan in this configuration, which is a good thing as there's only around 35 mm of height between fan and coldplate, which could be quite restrictive for memory module selection otherwise. You don't have to worry about that, providing you absolutely want the cooler mounted in this way. Any other way and it wouldn't fit my motherboard, the Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero, which has massive VRM heatsinks.

In my testing, the 612 Apex performs admirably compared to the Freezer 36 and Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5. It keeps an Intel Core i7 14700K at a steady 60 °C during five runs of the Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition benchmark, and while it did struggle more than those other two in Baldur's Gate 3, which is more CPU intensive, the average 78 °C isn't half-bad.

In truly CPU-heavy benchmarks, Cinebench R23 and X264, it hit 100 °C and stayed near to that throughout, as is the case with all the air coolers I've tested, bar the Noctua NH-D15 G2, though it gets close. I've found a more reasonable test is to drop this chip down to 120 W in the BIOS—a match for AMD's top gaming chip, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D—and run Cinebench R23 over again. In this test, the 612 Apex easily keeps the chip at bay with a superb 54 °C on average.

PC Gamer test rig
CPU: Intel Core i7 14700K | Motherboard: Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero | GPU: Nvidia RTX 4070 Founders Edition | RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 @ 5600 MT/s | SSD: Sabrent 2 TB | PSU: Gigabyte Aorus P1200W | Case: Thermaltake Core P5 (open)

Overall, a totally acceptable picture of performance for an air cooler on one of Intel's most power-hungry chips. Thankfully, most modern chips aren't anywhere near as demanding, and this cooler will come into its own.

As for how it stands up versus the competition, such as the aforementioned Freezer 36 or Dark Rock 5, it all comes down to price. At its $80 MSRP, the 612 Apex is on the pricey side, and it's tough to justify even for its devilishly good looks. However, it is on sale over at Amazon for $65, and as far as I can tell that's been the case for some time. That's a lot more competitive and it's easier to argue the case for the 612 Apex when it's just $19 more than the Freezer 36. I wouldn't pay much more than that, however.

At $65, it's priced similarly to the Dark Rock 5, which fluctuates in price around that sort of region. That's a tougher decision, as the Dark Rock does perform well for only a single fan, but I'd take the Cooler Master over it in a pinch. It looks sharper, and you need to be in it for looks to pick anything pricier than the Freezer 36.

The same can't be said for the 612 Apex in the UK. It is still discounted at Amazon at £55, which looks to be a fairly steady price, but the Freezer 36 is an unbeatable £23.

For pure performance-per-dollar, and price-per-decibel, the Freezer 36 has the Hyper 612 Apex beat. However, I really do like the styling a lot, and I think that counts for something. For more flair on a your next build, this is a good way to go about it without spending extra on a liquid cooler.

In a time when the FPS campaign is so vanishingly rare that the only helping of big-budget shooting we can rely on each year is from Call of Duty, it'd be easy for id Software to kick up its feet and decide "more Doom" is good enough. Honestly, it'd be good enough for me. But that'd be dereliction of id's duty to the genre it created.

To id, a new Doom is an opportunity to demolish a perfectly good sand castle and start fresh. Doom: The Dark Ages is the trilogy's sharpest zag yet—recasting the Slayer from a meaty fighter jet, ducking and dashing past the hordes of Hell, to a stalwart tank, smashing shield-first into the action.

The transition is successful, but not without major sacrifice. This is Doom at its most indulgent and deliciously violent, but it's also dumbed down and undeniably the easiest of the trilogy. Maps are uncharacteristically barren, secrets abnormally obvious, and puzzles so simple that they hardly fit the description. Viewed through the lens of loud feedback that insisted Doom Eternal was too complicated, The Dark Ages is an overcorrection.

Short leash

The Dark Ages turns back the clock to our favorite demon smasher's salad days as a pawn of the Makyrs (those floating tentacle guys from the previous games) in a war against Hell. He's the same Slayer as ever, still feral and focused in his distaste for demons, now sporting a tasteful beast pelt to let us know we're in olden times. But in a decision that proves profoundly shortsighted, the Makyrs keep him locked up in a spaceship with a shock collar. You can imagine how that goes.

We got Sentinels, battle tanks, mechs, dragons, and a surprising density of cutscenes for Doom. This time, it's not just detached robot voices telling the Slayer what to kill next. Instead, we see the main players in his orbit, King Novik of Argent D'Nur vs. Prince Ahzrak of Hell, facing off between bouts of bloodshed. Characters and plot have as much nuance as professional wrestling, setting the stage for the campaign's next set piece—a grand siege, ancestral forge, the belly of a demon taller than a downtown highrise—without ever getting bogged down by proper nouns.

It's appropriately uncomplicated. The Slayer's otherworldly determination and general freakishness are amplified by his proximity to normal, communicative humans. They treat him like an unknowable demigod, inherently dangerous but effective when pointed in the direction of hellspawn. I loved the dynamic, partly because id is paying off years of mythbuilding, but also because this Slayer adopts the role of a deranged Master Chief, more or less following orders as long as he agrees with the mission.

Close guard

The Dark Age's rebooted gun ballet revolves around the Shield Saw. Permanently bound to right-click, the shield blocks all damage from the front and sends green projectiles back to their senders. It's a singular change that ripples through every facet of The Dark Ages, anchoring the Slayer to the ground in exchange for survivability.

I cannot sing the praises of the Shield Saw loud enough: Shrugging off the blows of lesser demons and nailing the timing on parries is empowering from minute one, elevating Doom's brutality and giving the player permission to run toward the biggest threats instead of playing keep-away. In fact, the only move resembling Eternal's air dash is a shield dash that instantly closes the distance on large demons and obliterates fodder on contact. An early upgrade gives the shield its chainsaw teeth, turning it into a throwable that either stuns or slices straight through demons.

The shield slots into Doom's deadly dance like it was always there. It's elegant, useful, aggressive… and unfortunately also one-note. Once you can throw it around, the shield is done evolving, my tactics were locked in for the campaign's duration.

Civilized age

What The Dark Ages gains with its shield, it loses with its guns. Relinquishing right-click to block means guns no longer have dedicated secondary fire modes—they're still upgradable, but now focused on passive boosts to reload speed, fire rate, or damage. Besides a few bright spots, like a Shredder upgrade that let me shoot at my thrown shield to ricochet stakes toward surrounding enemies, my weapons never improved in ways that encouraged me to alter my game plan.

For example: I'd been glancing at this greyed-out screen of upgrades called Shield Runes for hours, anticipating some sort of blue Gravity Gun-level twist that'd take my shield antics to the next level. When I got my first Shield Rune halfway through the game, I was disappointed to find that they're essentially gun upgrades for the shield—damage-dealing attacks automatically triggered by successful parries, and I could only have one equipped. Neat, but since they're just something that happens when I parry an attack (something I was already doing whenever possible), it's just more DPS on the pile.

What worked in hour one of The Dark Ages—spamming my shotguns, shield dashing away from danger, and deflecting anything colored green—worked in hour 17, and that's a huge bummer.

As much as it pains me to admit, The Dark Ages' thematic stand-ins for ballistic guns just aren't as fun to shoot. The Ballista replacement launches stakes that hit hard but have an oddly short range, the Shredder is just a Heavy Cannon that sounds like a nail gun, and those guns that hurl bits of skull are all bark and no bite. The lone exception to this rule is the Chainshot—a monstrous back-half arrival that launches wrecking balls, caving in skulls before reeling back into the gun like a sinful yo-yo. Thankfully id didn't mess with its two shotguns, the rocket launcher, or the plasma rifle, all of which sound and look better than ever.

Blunt trauma

Bland guns are a symptom of The Dark Ages' larger streamlining problems. The role of any individual gun is murky at best because all demons are vulnerable to almost all weapons, and most don't pose a significant threat. Every boss fight and high-tier enemy is designed around creating openings by parrying with the shield.

This is a quietly huge shift because in both previous Dooms of this series, enemies had clear-cut resistances and weaknesses that, here, are replaced by throwing the shield at armor to destroy it. The Slayer's constant vulnerability previously meant his arsenal was his shield. It was about working quickly and efficiently to kill demons faster than they can kill you. It was crucial to survey the battlefield and make decisions about which weapons to conserve for tougher targets. The only way out was through. In The Dark Ages, the solution to every problem is in your left hand: Block it, shoot it, and you're done.

It doesn't help that ammo is completely irrelevant, too. In a truly baffling change, the chainsaw is gone, and now all you gotta do for endless piles of ammo is punch (E) the nearest grunt. Glory kills get a similar treatment: They're mostly gone, with larger demons getting some gruesome new animations while the majority of executions settle for brief slo-mo punches that pop health items. Hear that? It's the sound of Doom's signature health/ammo/shield resource economy evaporating.

Flattened

I get the sense that The Dark Ages' heavy mechanical pruning is in service of making it the most accessible, instantly enjoyable Doom for the most people. If that's the case, then mission accomplished. It's still Doom, so it's still very fun. The last two set the bar absurdly high, and being in their shadows still makes The Dark Ages one of the best singleplayer FPSes around.

I suspect its throttled pace will make The Dark Ages the most comfortable of the series to play with a controller. Customizable difficulty will help, too: A long list of toggles and sliders let me tune everything from projectile speeds and parry windows to exact damage values. That's a win for everybody.

I did have more fun after increasing enemy aggression, tightening the parry window, and experimenting with higher projectile speeds, but at some point, I had to accept I was fishing for complexity that wasn't there.

The Dark Ages' levels are especially simplistic next to the mazes and jungle gyms of the last two games. Presumably to accommodate all the slow-moving projectiles and the Slayer's wimpy new jump, most maps are massive, flat, and devoid of hazards—like id took Doom 2016's winding corridors and pressed them into a pancake. I like that they're more friendly to backtracking than ever, with areas spoking off a central platform, but a few of the larger maps had me sprinting across empty deserts way too often.

Secrets are still scattered literally everywhere, but the majority of them are so obviously placed and announced by the map that I rarely felt like I was discovering something. It's another area where Eternal had more to offer: Those ultra-hard, opt-in challenge rooms? Gone. Now puzzles just give you an extra life or more gold to buy upgrades. At least those platforming sections that a lot of folks hated (but I loved) demanded a quick reflex test to get to the side goodies.

I should mention the mech and dragon stuff that's all over the trailers. They're cool little moments of punching demons in a big robot and dogfighting with hellships sprinkled throughout the 22-level campaign, but they're so brief, easy, and detached from the main action that they didn't stick in my head. An unnecessary, but welcome change of scenery.

If it sounds like I'm just asking for Doom Eternal 2, I promise I'm not. The Dark Ages is fun in totally different ways than its predecessors, and I love that, but its peaks are lower. After rolling credits, I went back to Doom (2016) and Eternal to confirm the gut feeling. id has done a lot of subtraction with not a lot of addition, and I reckon this is the first Doom that I won't replay. Doom is a series I associate with taking big swings, but The Dark Ages is safe.

HP has taken the opportunity to cram this 16-inch Omen Max 16 with the latest gaming technology. There's a Core Ultra 9 and an RTX 5080 laptop GPU in there, along with lots of RAM and a decent SSD. It's a complete package, albeit a bit of a heavy one.

There's a lot to like about the Omen Max 16, but what I especially appreciate is the way it doesn't skimp. Being able to fit one of the new RTX 50-series graphics chips in a laptop is one thing, but HP didn't need to put Thunderbolt 4 in a gaming machine—USB 4 or even USB 3.2 10 Gbps would have done—so we get extra video outputs alongside an HDMI 2.1 that's already perfectly well suited to hooking up an external monitor, alongside the capability to use some of the fastest external storage and a 2.5Gb Ethernet network too.

Away from the port selection, this is also a really nice laptop to actually use. The screen is an IPS rather than an OLED, with a 16:10 2.5K resolution and a 240 Hz refresh rate that will still make many people happy. It's not a touchscreen, but you get a decent-sized trackpad.

Though it only seems to respond to taps and not clicks, despite having a nicely positive click mechanism, which is a big problem if you're trying to drag with the trackpad—hopefully this will turn out to be a settings or driver issue and can be addressed. There's also a keyboard with a 3D effect to the keys that looks like someone's been biting the tips off Toblerone segments.

Still, it's definitely a gaming laptop. You can tell by the way it lights up (the keyboard is a rainbow, and there's a light bar under the front lip), has a foreboding name, and a little slogan written on the back. It's "Designed and built for winning," apparently. While it's outside the scope of this review to promise victory, or even speculate on its likelihood, what it can do is offer proof of frame rates.

Cramming a GPU like the RTX 5080 into a laptop was always going to generate the frames, but it generates heat too. Having the fan exhaust pointing downward means that warmth is directed at an area of leg just above your knees, making it a suboptimal machine for use while wearing shorts, and there are also some big vents at the back.

It needs them.

I saw CPU temperatures rise to 60 °C just while installing software and 105 °C (briefly—well into thermal throttling territory) while running benchmarks, with the GPU spending most of its time around 70 °C while being pushed. Though it's fair to say that all the laptops we've has tested with this CPU exhibit this same thermal behaviour.

HP has equipped the Omen Max with its 'AI' fan control software, and an ‘Unleashed' mode that sends the fans up to 5,000 RPM in its attempts to keep the CPU under control, and they certainly make themselves known. The Balanced fan mode keeps things a lot quieter, but also knocks almost 25% off its score in the Time Spy Extreme benchmark.

The Core Ultra 9 in the Omen Max 16 is a 24-core Arrow Lake-HX model (which means no hyperthreading), which is capable of 5.4 GHz alongside 36 TOPS of AI performance and with a maximum turbo power of 160 W. It's the same chip you'll find in laptops such as the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 and MSI Vector 16 HX AI A2XW, clearly a popular choice for mobile gaming in 2025. It's a very capable processor, whizzing through creative work as well as games, and providing a lot of grunt for CPU-intensive games such as Baldur's Gate 3. It's not quite a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and BG3 sure does love that extra cache, but I'm not sure we need 150 fps or more in top-down RPGs anyway.

If you've got the monitor to take it (and the Omen Max goes all the way up to 240 Hz) then you can use DLSS 4's multi-frame generation to give your games a bit of a boost. It's one of the more interesting features of the new RTX 50-series GPUs, and it does make a difference, boosting the frame rate in Cyberpunk 2077 from 38 fps to 116 fps at the native 1600p resolution.

Elsewhere, the gaming benchmark results from the Omen Max are surprisingly inconsistent. It is capable of some good frame rates, though consistently produced ever-so-slightly lower average figures than other laptops we've tested packing the same RTX 5080 chips, and suffers from stuttering in multiple games leading to some 1% low scores that really stand out from the rest.

This might be one firmware or driver update away from improvement, but we can only review what's in front of us.

It's not all bad news: the SSD in the Omen Max 16 performs slightly better than those in similar machines. Its maximum bandwidth score in our tests hits 398.42 MB/s, beating the MSI Vector by almost 100 MB/s and the Asus ROG Flow Z13 by more than 70 MB/s. It's probably not something you'll notice in-game, as it will shorten loading times by only a small amount, but it's always nice to know.

And while nobody buys a gaming laptop for the battery life, the Omen Max doesn't do too badly... as long as you don't actually play games. Because it does that clever Nvidia Optimus thing that switches between the iGPU and GeForce card depending on what you're doing. So if you're just using it to watch videos or browse the web, you can expect almost four hours of use out of it before you go hunting for the very large 330W power brick.

Start playing games and stressing the RTX 5080, and the time it can spend away from a power outlet will drop to about an hour and a half even though Blackwell GPUs are meant to be more power efficient than older generations.

Value-wise, the Omen Max 16 has to be weighed against other gaming laptops with similar specs, and a lot of them have come along at once. There's the MSI Vector 16 HX AI, which has 16 GB of RAM but costs $900 less. And there's the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2025) which costs $300 more and has a 120 W version of the GPU. So it does occupy some middle ground, especially when you put 32 GB of RAM in the Vector, and in recent laptop tests it's the cheapest to offer the 175 W RTX 5080 and 32GB of RAM.

It's still not a budget machine—and that's okay—but the Omen Max 16 has a lot of competition out there from the usual suspects. You'll also have to keep the fans high if you want the best performance, so perhaps some of the best noise-cancelling headphones should be on your shopping list too.

And however you feel about Apple, you have to admit that the Cupertino phone company does good packaging. The box for the Mac Studio even comes with a carrying handle, and when it opens up the sides fall away to reveal the slab of sharply milled aluminium inside in an act of theatre to rival the moment a magician unveils his lovely assistant from within a wooden box.

At the time of writing, new Macs are packing variants of Apple’s M4 CPU, an ARM-based design that’s as far removed from the weak chip that powers your Android phone as a Siberian tiger is from a house cat. The basic M4 in the MacBook Air comes packing 10 cores and easily beats the Intel Core Ultra 7 265V despite being passively cooled, and what we’ve got here is an order of magnitude better.

There isn’t just any M4 in the Mac Studio we've got our hands on, this is an M4 Max and, to use a technical term, it’s a bit powerful. The machine tested here is also £3,799/$3,699, around the same price as a Razer Blade 16 with an RTX 5080 and an OLED screen, but we’ll gloss over that.

For your money you get a 16‑core CPU, and importantly a 40‑core GPU. The M4 version of Apple’s graphics chip supports ray-tracing, and in synthetic benchmarks it comes out somewhere around the RTX 4070 level, though direct comparisons between the different GPUs are tricky. It certainly beats the AMD Radeon 8050S in the Asus ROG Flow Z13, which is considered one of the better integrated GPU solutions at the moment. Our Studio also has 128 GB of RAM, which is probably overkill for gaming but makes sense when you consider the kind of tasks Mac power-users are likely to set their machines, and it offers a bit of future-proofing too, as the Studio can’t be easily upgraded once you’ve ordered it.

It does all this in the kind of SFF case that makes the Fractal Terra look positively ginormous—there are smaller mini PCs from the likes of Minisforum, but not many with this kind of power—and it pulls about 100 W all-in. There's a fan in the case, but it’s not required a lot of the time, and you’ll never know it’s there unless you’re making it work exceptionally hard. Also, being a modern desktop Mac, you get loads of Thunderbolt 5, an HDMI 2.1, 10 Gbps Ethernet, some 10 Gbps Type-C ports and 5 Gbps Type-A ports, and even an SDXC reader. It can output to five monitors at once, and is well equipped for life on a desk. Wi-Fi is version 6E, which is surprising as you’d expect Apple to have the latest, but it’s good enough.

Mac gaming has come a long way in the past few years, but things aren’t perfect yet. When I installed Steam onto the Studio, I was interested to see how much of the PC Gamer benchmark suite (TM) would be supported, and… it’s not much. While a native version of CyberPunk 2077 with ray-tracing should be released later this year, crucially it’s not out just yet, and the benchmarkable games tend to be older ones from the days of Kaby Lake.

There are a lot of games with a native Mac version on Steam, and there are versions of Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Mirage on the Mac App Store, for just two examples. Combined with an M-series Mac’s ability to run iOS apps this means a lot more games are available, though these are often mobile ports meant for the iPad.

Still, from Steam alone it’s possible to have a very good time on a Mac. There's Metro Exodus, Frostpunk 2, Civ VII, Stardew Valley, WH40K Rogue Trader, XCOM 2, Alien Isolation, a few COD games and lots more, though it’s still a much slimmer selection than that faced by Windows gamers.

What Shadow of the Tomb Raider shows us is that, despite the high performance level of the M4 Max’s GPU, it’s still not quite enough to get to 60fps in 4K/highest. Interestingly, the 4K score is exactly what our reference RTX 3070 hits. The stats the game provides show it GPU-bound 99% of the time in 4K, so we’re really maxing out those graphics cores. It’s definitely playable, though dropping down to 1440p produced something much more palatable to modern high refresh-rate monitors—and it still showed as GPU limited 98% of the time. At 1080p this drops to 53%, suggesting 1440p is very much the sweet spot here.

We've also got some comparative numbers for Warhammer III, where the new RTX 5060 Ti is delivering the same sort of 4K frame rates as the M4 Max here.

Shadow of Mordor has some weird video options, so I chose something close to 4K and got a playable frame rate in its benchmark tool. The 1440p and kind-of-1080p settings show the kind of frame rate increases you’d expect, with 1440p looking like a great option across all the games we tested, and only Shadow of Mordor showing outrageous dips in frame rate to completely unplayable levels when running in slightly-more-than-4K.

In the synthetic CPU benchmarks, the M4 Max puts out some excellent scores. For comparison, a Ryzen 7 9800X3D I happened to have laying around scored 132 in Cinebench’s single-core test, a 36% win for the Mac, and 1336 in the multi-core test, for a huge 57% increase in the M4 Max’s favour. This is to be expected when you pit a 16-core chip against an eight-core one, even one as beastly as the 9800X3D. The 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X3D and the nominally 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 285K both post better multithreaded scores, but are still a mile off when it comes to single core performance.

You’d never buy a Mac Studio like this as a gaming PC, but if you want to take some time off from visualising a striking new brutalist architecture, torturing LLMs or designing a novel form of minimalist coffee cup, slip off your black-framed glasses and recline in your Herman Miller for a while, then the M4 Max will give you a satisfying experience at 1440p, though I suspect you may have to turn it down to 1080p for more modern games, especially once that ray-traced version of Cyberpunk arrives.

That bouncy walk cycle is a great marker of Revenge of the Planet's endearingly upbeat take on sci-fi and social commentary, and also a great marker of how well realised that tone is throughout each of the game's component parts. Alex Hutchinson's Racoon Logic studio seems to have diligently branded every wall texture, creature noise and item upgrade with the same unifying irreverence, creating a satisfying whole that feels a bit like, and only very slightly in an unnerving way, stepping inside the writers' minds to enjoy a kind of walk-in closet of a joke.

In more material terms, it's also a very well constructed metroidvania of the same calibre as its predecessor, featuring survival elements, a steady upgrade path, and a brilliant ecosystem of flora and fauna whom you can manipulate to get around, harvest resources and now, troll your co-op buddy relentlessly.

The second thing that hits you is the goo. Great globules of the stuff, everywhere, colour-coded to indicate its various status effects. Some creatures or planets spew it out passively. Others leave gruesome puddles of it when you kill them. Whatever the origins, there's more gunge laying around on these four planets than a Nickelodeon studio set circa 1996.

And naturally, the first thing you'll think when you see it and realise that it makes some areas slippy, or on fire, is: I bet I could lay a trap for my co-op companion with this. Personally, I haven't had this much fun messing about with colour-coded status effects in a co-op game since Divinity: Original Sin, and it's striking that Racoon Logic hasn't just ticked the co-op box, but instead really thought about how to make cooperative play fit within the game's identity as an abdurdist improv comedy sandbox. Yes, it's important that there's local/split-screen co-op now, but it's just as important that I perfected the art of making slippery green goo slopes with lava goo at the bottom, and that my friends repeatedly fell into those traps.

Veterans of 2020's Journey to the Savage Planet will recognise plenty about this sequel, despite the perspective shift from first to third-person and a newfound emphasis on platforming. Once again there's the impressive variety of big-eyed, gently cooing creatures who populate the alien landscape, and the ways they can be culled, corralled or fed to giant plants in order to aid your progress. The metroidvania-style backtracking through outlandish landscapes painted in robust colour, and the excitement of figuring out that once you've upgraded your jetpack, or whip, or water cannon, now you can clear that obstacle that was blocking your way three hours ago. That joy of exploration, in a vivid ecosystem that seems to be constantly interacting with itself independently of you, is the beating heart of this game—as it was in the last—but structurally the way that exploration happens is quite different.

Before there was just the one titular Savage Planet. As you journeyed through it, one distinct biome gave way to another every few minutes, lending the sense of an epic journey in even a short play session. Then there was the enormous tower at the centre of planet ARY-26, looming large and full of secrets on the horizon at the start of the game. It was an early hook—you absolutely had to know what was at the top of that tower.

Where there was once one planet, now there are four of them. It makes a lot of sense on paper—it's a sequel, so let's go bigger—and there is a pleasure to travelling between planets with distinct looks, creature populations and design motifs. But it's a different, lower-key pleasure than the kind that its predecessor served up on that one, densely packed, varied location.

This isn't another case of an open-world developer setting you among acres of meaningless empty space, mind you. Each planet retains a hand-crafted feel, built in a patchwork of distinct areas that connect without loading times, and which contain their own hidden secrets, multi-path verticality, and mechanical challenges. Instead, it feels like a developer pushing back the boundaries in order to let you make a bigger mess when you're playing in co-op.

And it does that well. Even aside from the knack Savage Planet has for serving up opportunities for two of you to combine your tools to apply a status effect to an enemy and then deal damage, there's also such a variety of objectives that you can divide them up between the two of you and play semi-independently. One heading off to gather silicon while the other hunts for a rare creature to lasso and capture, before you reconvene back at your space trailer and buy a new pinball machine to cheer the place up a bit.

Where all that multi-planetary space feels a bit too spacious is during solo play. I know how that sounds. 'Co-op game is shockingly less fun alone'. But given how well its predecessor handled both, it's worth raising.

Even when playing alone, though, many qualities come to the fore here that are genuinely rare to find in modern releases. Not only are your tools and weapons intrinsically fun to use, the resource-hunt to upgrade them doesn't feel overly grindy and each new level of the upgrade tree gets you thinking about what you can do in the world now.

When you scan objects, plants and creatures, every new description has a turn of phrase that'll make you smirk, and a tidbit that deepens your understanding of the universe you're in. Every new video you unlock from your various corporate bosses feels like a treat.

It's a game that's spent all its energy on getting its component parts to function well and serve up opportunities for player expression, instead of incentivising a battle pass purchase. How sorely we need games like this in 2025.

It's also a game with a specific vision for the experience it wants you to have with it, and that's carefree fun with a friend, not a hardcore solo grind with a second screen full of crafting recipes and boss fight guides. I'd hesitate to say it's a casual experience, but if you turn up expecting No Man's Sky with fart jokes you won't get the mechanical depth you bargained for.

Then again, nobody would look at that walking animation and expect anything other than what Revenge of the Savage Planet delivers.

When it comes to gaming, and without wishing to give away too much, too soon, the simple answer is, nope, you probably won't want to buy this monitor for gaming. However, at its best this fascinating 3D display is stunning; an experience you won't quickly forget. Hold that thought and get comfy, there's a lot to get through when it comes to the technology involved here.

In simple terms, what you're looking at here is a 27-inch 4K gaming monitor with an IPS-type panel (actually AHVA, but that's splitting hairs) and 160 Hz refresh support. It's pretty well specified with a glossy panel coating and plenty of connectivity, including USB-C. What you don't get is any kind of HDR support, not even basic VESA DisplayHDR400.

That's not a disaster given most LCD-based monitors with claimed HDR support deliver little by way of true HDR visuals. But omitting even basic HDR signal decoding is rather stingy, especially considering the painful asking price. Oh yeah, did I mention, this thing costs $1,999 or £2,199. Holy moly.

Of course, this is no ordinary 27-inch 4K panel. You can guess that from the slightly unsightly oversized bezels. These are needed to house tracking cameras, and some odd-looking speakers tacked onto the lower bezel.

For starters, the Acer Predator SpatialLabs View 27 offers glasses-free 3D visuals. The glasses-free bit is absolutely critical since the need to wear some kind of goggles or headset has arguably been the chief impediment to widespread adoption of many previous attempts at 3D visuals.

With this Acer monitor however, you don't need to wear anything or really even do anything. The 3D effect just works. How is that possible? The short answer is a combination of eye-tracking camera tech and lenticular lenses. The long answer involves the lenticular lenses sending a slightly different image to each eye, creating the illusion of a fully 3D image.

It's fundamentally a complex active technology, which applies both to the eye-tracking camera and the lenticular lenses and that explains why it hasn't been done before. At least not at a vaguely accessible price point.

Oh, and one more thing. Not only does this monitor have visual 3D capability. It also has integrated 3D sound courtesy of a spatial audio system from UK outfit Audioscenic. Yeah, it's a lot to take in, whether for your ears or your eyes.

So, what's it actually like? The answer is that it depends on what you're doing, watching or playing. By way of example, Acer has included an app for viewing 3D models, individual game figures, vehicles, things like that. You can load up one of the provided models, including an armoured personnel carrier, and then manipulate it, spin it around, zoom in and out, that kind of thing.

And you know what? It looks totally incredible. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust, but once they do the illusion of, well, 3D-ness is remarkable, even tangible. It absolutely looks like the model is sticking about a foot or so right out of the screen. It's very convincing and feels like you could reach out and touch the thing, at which point the illusion inevitably breaks down.

Anyway, for engineering, science and medical applications, I'm sure it's fantastic. But what about for gaming? Running an entire game world is a very different discipline and for that task, this 3D technology is far less successful.

For starters, the effect is less consistent when multiple objects are being rendered. Whether it's an eye adjustment thing or a limitation of the lenticular tech, you tend to find only the object you're focussing on reliably resolves properly, with other elements in your peripheral vision tending to suffer from a noticeable double-vision effect.

That detracts from the overall sense of peering through a window into a fully realised 3D world. You do get that up to a point, but it's not a consistent experience. The other problem is that when it does work, the impression you get isn't of a life-sized 3D vista, but more a scale model.

Let me explain. Imagine a 3D object sticking out of the screen, perhaps a tank or a person. Well, that object obviously isn't life sized and that's very much the impression you get—of a scale model rather than the full-sized object viewed at distance. It feels like you're looking at a miniature version of a world, not a life-sized universe.

All told, and combined with the double-vision thing, the overall experience is fairly patchy and a bit distracting. Personally, I wouldn't want to game with this technology as it currently is. But apart from the actual visuals, there are other drawbacks from a gaming perspective.

It's a little bit of a palaver getting games running. You'll need the Spatial Labs Experience Center app installed, then SpatialLabs TrueGame, which is a gaming platform that's superficially similar to Steam, but just for 3D games. Of course, first you must also install any given game using whatever the normal method is, for instance via Steam. Then you manually point the SpatialLabs TrueGame app at the installed location.

Just for the record, specific per-game support is required. You can check out the full list here. In terms of sheer numbers, it looks decent. But on closer inspection you'll find a lot of the titles are older, mediocre affairs, while many, perhaps most, of the latest and most compelling releases simply don't feature. For now, at least.

It's also worth noting that image quality takes a hit with the 3D effect enabled. As a consequence of 'projecting' a different image to each eye, the lenticular lenses effectively cut the resolution of the image in half and give the screen a slightly odd, grainy look. It's a little like an old CRT displaying interlaced video.

What's more, even when the 3D effect is disabled, the image is slightly impacted if you view the display off-center in the vertical axis. It's subtle and the best equivalent I can think of is the circuitry that can occasionally be just about visible on some touchscreen panels. It's not a major issue, but when you're paying this much for a display, any slight flaw becomes significant.

As for the 3D spatial audio setup from Audioscenic, it's a somewhat similar story. To be honest, it's a little overshadowed by the 3D visual tech, which is enough alone to be getting your head and eyes around, let alone having another novel technology to absorb. The spatial audio probably deserves its own, dedicated, debut.

Whatever, to cut a long story short it too can work well, but has limitations. Like the 3D visuals, it relies on a camera and head tracking, which is fine. The first problem arrives with the built-in speakers. They're necessary, as opposed to using whatever speakers you already have, because their location needs to be very carefully calibrated.

In theory, that is possible with the end-user's speakers. In practice, the calibration requirements would be too onerous. Anyway, the speakers look like a fairly ugly afterthought and they are pretty small and offer limited dynamic range.

That makes it a little tricky to fully appreciate the clever spatial effect that the Audioscenic system is capable of producing from mere stereo speakers. To an extent, it can fool you into thinking sounds are coming from all around you, which is a nice trick from just two speakers. But the actual sound quality simply isn't terribly good.

On a more positive note, the Audioscenic system is compatible with any game with spatial audio, so it's much more widely supported than the SpatialLabs 3D visuals. But, while it does have some advantages over a half-decent set of cans—including the sense of sounds coming from a distance—I'd personally prefer the headphones for the massively richer and more dynamic audio experience.

Oh and one final comment regarding broader usability. To enable all its features, this monitor needs to be connected via both a display input and via a USB-A to USB-C cable. Hardly the end of the world, but that cable clutter slightly adds to a sense of a complicated and slightly unfinished technology.

So, what to make of the Acer Predator SpatialLabs View 27 overall? There's some seriously clever technology here. Almost too much to process from a single product. But from a purely gaming perspective, it's clearly suboptimal.

If you could have this technology for only a small price premium, it could be interesting as an occasional diversion. Perhaps the 3D effect could be toggled for specific elements of a game where it works really well. But given the huge added cost, there are just too many limitations.

As for the spatial sound, in some ways it works better than the 3D display aspect. But it has its own limitations and, again, isn't something we'd want to pay heavily for in this format. All told, then, the Acer Predator SpatialLabs View 27 makes for a fascinating tech demo. But as a product, something you might actually buy? In that context, it's a lot less convincing, especially at its current sky-high pricing.

Design wise, this thing isn't going to turn heads—it's a typical Gigabyte, plastic, utilitarian design. No flashiness, no RGB rainbows or slick colors. The matte-black chassis, subtle stand, and 1800R curve make it feel more like an accountant's monitor than a gamer's. About the only flashiness is the silver badge on the stand boldly proclaiming "OLED" just in case you missed that.

The stand is simple with large flat angled feet that keep everything nicely sat on your desk. You get height, tilt, and swivel adjustment—everything short of pivot, which, let's be real, nobody's doing with a 34-inch ultra-wide anyway. Build quality's tight: no wobble, no creaks, just a reassuring sturdiness that makes it feel like it's built to last.

The QD-OLED panel here is nothing we haven't seen before. It's a 3rd Gen Samsung panel shaped into 34-inches of glorious, curved looking glass. It's 3440 x 1440 which at this size isn't anywhere near the insane sharpness of the aforementioned 27-inch 4K OLEDs.

That said, what it lacks in pixel density, it makes up for in expansive canvas that's as good for super multi-tasking as it is for immersive gaming. The 1800R curve is gentle but still saves you from whiplash while gaming. Like others of its ilk, it boasts VESA ClearMR 13000 certification for Motion clarity which, in tandem with the 240Hz refresh rate and 0.03ms response, means there's no ghosts around here.

From twitch shooters to high-speed racers, the performance is buttery smooth. Color-wise, it's everything you'd expect from OLED and more. Perfect blacks enhance the perception of color making everything seem more vivid. Color accuracy is rated at 99% DCI-P3 coverage which makes it very useable for more serious video and photo editing workflows. Dig into the OSD menu and you'll find a plethora of color presets including an sRGB and full six-axis color control.

Even though it's 'just' HDR400 True Black certified, games like South of Midnight and Assassins Creed Shadows look stunning. Of course, that's once you get passed the usual Windows 11 HDR oddities. The monitor hits about 455 nits of peak brightness in small areas, which won't blow your socks off but its enough to make HDR in games look quite respectable. Honestly, though, more often than not, I ran the monitor in SDR; the greater contrast and colour saturation often made games look better than in HDR.

Running Assassins Creed Shadows on this thing really sucks you into historic Japan—immense detail, wide field of view, fluid motion and breathtaking colors. The 21:9 aspect ratio is my favorite way to play games on PC thanks to that expanded view and immersion. To me, its better than VR.

Gigabyte has always been good with ports and the MO34WQC2 doesn't buck that trend. You get two HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, USB-C with DP Alt Mode(albeit a paltry 15W charging), plus downstream USBs—enough for your console, your PC, and your work laptop to all play nice. There's a built-in KVM switch too, though it's a little bit wonky with slow switching between devices. In addition to a headphone and microphone jack, the MO34WQC2 has two 3W speakers which you can use in a pinch but should generally be avoided.

The OSD is straightforward and joystick-controlled, with easy access to presets, black equalizer settings, and overdrive tweaks. You can also use the Gigabyte Control center in Windows to control the monitor with your mouse. Besides the nipple are two buttons, one is the aforementioned KVM button while the other is a Tactical button to switch the display to a smaller 24-inch, 1080p viewport for those who want to play some serious shooter games.

Of course, as an OLED, we have to address the proverbial burn-in elephant in the room. Now, I don't believe any normal person will ever have burn-in on these modern OLEDs, however, the MO34WQC2 comes with the usual suite of protections. Interestingly, Gigabyte isn't in your face about reminding you to run OLED care every four hours, which is a welcome relief.

Instead, Gigabyte says it uses AI presets running in the background for minimal interruption, which I welcome. You do get all the standards though; pixel shifting, cleaning, brightness limiter and logo detection. Strangely, you can't manually activate these using the OSD; you'll have to use Gigabyte Control center on a Windows PC for that.

Coming in at $1,099 (but currently at $800 on discount), the MO34WQC2 doesn't really undercut its rivals, which is something Gigabyte is known for often as a reliably cheaper monitor brand. The legendary Alienware AW3423DWF is harder to find these days, but the new AW3425DW—its 240 Hz replacement—is the same as the discounted price of the Gigabyte. The only benefit the newer monitor offers is better port selection and KVM. But you do lose a little polish and design flair, but the tradeoff could be worthwhile for you.

Like I said, the Gigabyte MO34WQC2 is not the most exciting OLED gaming monitor. What it is, is a no-frills, honest to goodness, practical gaming monitor that's great for gamers who work from home doing lots of spreadsheets and multitasking. That said, we haven't yet had a look at Alienware's new AW3425DW so maybe something to consider.

At its $40 price point, I reckon it mostly just needs to do its main functions well enough to be unnoticeable, or at least not noticeably bad. We've seen the HyperX Cloud Alpha all the way down to $50 during sales events, which is still confidently the best gaming headset, even so long after it arrived on the scene. It's a tough price point, mostly because the jump in quality is tangible once you move out of the tightest of budget brackets.

Right out of the box, however, that reasonable price point shows in its build quality. Everything, apart from a light cushioning on the top and in the earpads, is made out of plastic. The whole thing rattles with a light shake, and it's noticeably designed for a head that, well, isn't mine.

The scale of the Recon 70 suggests it was maybe created for children and teens, and with that in mind, both the design and price make sense. The top of it becomes very, for lack of a better word, square-like, wrapped over the top of my rather large cranium. The side stretches, and the plastic bends under pressure. It all feels a tad flimsy.

The Recon 70 is available in a wide range of colours, and the Blue Camo variety mine came in looks quite pretty. The top of the earcup is the camo design, while the bottom is a solid navy style blue. There isn't too much branding on the headset either, which is a plus, with just the logo on the very top.

Different colours not only look different but also denote the difference between platform-specific headphones. This is an odd distinction, though, as they all seem to be multiplatform, with just marketing differences on the box. Though marking headsets as platform-specific makes more sense in the more expensive Turtle Beach headphones like the Stealth 700 Gen 3, which has PC-specific 3D sound.

Once on and plugged in, the Recon 70's 40 mm drivers perform just okay. The mids are clear and easy to make out, but both the highs and the bass feel lacking and generally weak. It takes that oomph out of songs, even if the drivers can deliver on the overall clarity.

Footsteps and the thump of an AWP in Counter-Strike 2 are certainly distinct enough to make out in the heat of the battle, though, and that seems to be what this set of cans is going for. You won't miss out on the actual sound of the world, but you will miss out on the feel the violin trills of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's wonderful music evokes. You can hear the subtle jazz bass of Le Grand Café de Lumière from Expedition 33, but it doesn't quite rattle as it should. The sound is simply flat.

Fallout: New Vegas' blend of shots, screams, talking, and ol-timey radio, however, works absolutely fine. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice's unique use of audio, too, is fairly distinct when played through this cheap set of cans. The whispers and hushed tones in my ear feel well-projected and clear. The Recon 70's strongest points are in the mids, and you won't be missing vital information in single-player games, even if it takes some of the gut punch out of the best soundtracks.

Even after hours of wandering around the Mojave wasteland, the headset still feels comfortable on my head, thanks to its light weight and stretchy fit. The spongy earcups offer light protection from the hard plastic shell of the headset, though this isn't enough to fully isolate. If you happen to play in a room with others, you will likely catch an earful of whatever conversation they're having if your volume isn't loud enough to drown them out.

Listen to the microphone test below:

Even for a resolutely wired headset, the connectivity is a tad lacking, with just a single 3.5 mm jack that can't be unplugged. This means it can technically work in any device with an audio port, but the lead is fairly short at just over a meter. This is restrictive, particularly if you have your PC sat under your desk or use a standing model. This limitation is fine for console use—the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 controllers have audio jacks built in—but PC gamers will feel tightly tethered to their rig with the Recon 70 thanks to that wire.

The fact the jack can't be unplugged also means that if the wire ever breaks for any reason, you have to throw the entire headset out. This maybe isn't the end of the world for such a cheap set of cans, but it's a shame to throw the whole thing out should your cat fancy the forbidden bite of a tasty set of audio wires.

Another light annoyance is the microphone. Though it actually performs admirably for its price range, and sounds clear without much artifacting or muddiness, the flip-to-mute system is not completely fit for use. Not only is there not much of a tactile click alerting you when it's muted, but you don't get an audio notification either. This means you're never quite sure when it's muted. At a right angle upward, I assume I'm always muted, but it has certainly left me paranoid that I haven't quite pushed it far enough up.

The Turtle Beach Recon 70 looks pretty clean for the price and has a clear microphone, but the quality dip from headsets that are even just tens of dollars more is notable. For a closer price point, the Corsair HS55, at an MSRP of just $20 extra, offers a more complete and more attractive package.

If you can only afford this sub-$50 price point, the Recon 70 will reasonably replicate sound in your games, but if you have the funds for more, or the patience to wait for a sale on the HyperX Cloud Alpha, it's hard to recommend the Stealth 70's weak audio over even slightly more expensive headphones.

Shotgun Cop Man is a throwback to an earlier age of indie games, before the phrase roguelike deckbuilder had occurred to anyone, an age when 2D puzzle-platformers with a single mechanical hook were all the rage. "In this one you can reverse gravity." "In this one you can rewind time." Well, in Shotgun Cop Man you jump by shooting at Hell.

The plot is a wafer-thin excuse to fill levels with enemies and traps: You are a brick-shaped cop man who has descended into Hell to arrest Satan. Satan wears a string vest and has a bum-cleft chin, and each of the game's nine worlds begins with him giving you the finger and telling you to fuck off before buzzing demons lift him away. Do not go into Shotgun Cop Man expecting any more story than that.

DeadToast's previous game, My Friend Pedro, had an equally silly excuse plot—a talking banana told you to do murders—but explored it with surprising thoroughness. While I miss that level of commitment to nonsense, Satan's casual dismissals of your attempts to bring double-barreled due process to Hell are pretty funny.

It's a game about momentum. Shoot down with your shotgun and you get launched into the air, but shoot down with a pistol and you do a little hop that'll let you skip over a bullet without braining yourself on the spikes overhead. It's also about momentum because the levels are quick-fire bursts, full of diagonal slopes to slide down and gaps to launch yourself across in a propulsive race to the exit.

What you should expect is a taut action-platformer where you can grab a demon in midair then throw it at another demon to kill them both. (Something that's not tutorialized but doesn't need to be—an option to press the same key you use to pick up guns appears as you fly past a demon and it just makes sense.) Complications arrive in later levels like explosives, spinning lasers, and demons who are also wizards, as do more weapons to swap your pistol for, like the one that shoots in three directions at once.

Once pipes arrive the gun that ricochets becomes amazing, because if you shoot it down a curved pipe at the right angle you can pop a flying demon at the other end. This is the kind of joy you'll find in Shotgun Cop Man.

It nails the little details, like the way you stop falling briefly while shooting your pistol, letting you chain together a bunch of air-time kills as you plummet down a shaft full of demons, or the way the thumping music sounds tinny and distant when you've been hit and are frantically trying to grab the floating heart that stops you dying. Sound effects like the "foonk" you make when entering and exiting pipes and animations like the spinny one-hand reloads are all perfect too.

There's a level editor and achievements, and yet I can't see myself going back now I've defeated Satan. The moment I finished Shotgun Cop Man it left my head completely. Which is fine. For me, this is a one-and-done run, a single-serving treat I played for five hours and enjoyed and that's all it needs to be.

I might have been wrong about that.

Although Oblivion's tutorial-laden intro, starring the most obviously doomed MacGuffin-carrying Emperor who ever briefly lived, didn't do a great job of convincing me otherwise. The only amazement I felt during this segment was that a game this ambitious seriously expected me to be thrilled with the sight of a rat-filled sewer, the most clichéd RPG environment of them all. Was this honestly the best opening they could come up with?

And then I escaped that boring place, and all of my grumbles were instantly forgotten.

This sunlit paradise doesn't look like a game that came out when My Chemical Romance songs were in the top 10. Not even close. Dragonflies flit across the water, and butterflies lazily flap in the air as flowers gently sway in the breeze. I'm honestly taken aback by it all, and only alt+tab out of the game so I can hastily type 'Oblivion photo mode' into the nearest search bar. There isn't one at the time of writing, and I'm offended on the game's behalf because of it.

I immediately decide I'm going to walk, rather than fast travel, to the next conveniently marked story location just so I can spend more time taking in my gorgeous surroundings. But the path ahead isn't quite as beautiful as the one I'm about to leave behind, and that makes me take one last look back and… hang on, is something glowing on that small island just across the water?

Nope, no. Not happening. I mean, yes please, but I've got a magical plot device to deliver and I don't want to get sidetracked straight away and then never recover. But… a little peek wouldn't hurt seeing as I'm already here, would it?

Dungeon diving

One short swim later and I'm loot-deep in the Vilverin ruins, fighting bandits and poking my nose everywhere I shouldn't. The tripwire across the entrance I spot just before I set it off may as well be an invitation—if these bandits want me to stay out that badly then there's got to be something worth spending a little time searching for down here.

I'm quickly so enthralled by this mysterious place I don't even realise I've jumped down into another area with no real idea how I can get back up, and I just shrug and carry on anyway. I'm actually a little disappointed when I notice the name 'Bandit ringleader' above someone's health bar, assuming I'm done here when they finally drop dead.

My assumption was way, way off. I spot another mysterious door. Behind it lies a small area with not much in i—is that a pressure plate?

Instead of quickly finishing up and leaving the way I came, my improvised adventure spirals into a world of skeletons, underwater swims into the unknown, and swinging blade traps. I don't even care how long I've been here and any urgency to get on with the 'real' story has long gone, because I'm having too much fun here and now. I eventually clear the dungeon, grab some shiny loot, then exit via a handy shortcut.

That sunset I left behind has transformed into a breathtaking canopy of stars. I'm in awe. I've done more than just clear a dungeon or complete a subquest, I've explored.

Story time

I've done so much, even though the game's hardly begun.

Ploughing through Oblivion's endless array of quests is simple thanks to a straightforward UI that makes it easy to activate and then follow one particular thread, helpfully keeps interesting side activities separate from main events, and never leaves me more than a click or two away from a large map with big red 'GO HERE NEXT' markers on it.

The sheer variety of experiences these markers can lead to keeps surprising me. I've sneaked around sleeping cultists. Stolen treasures from forbidden trap-filled labyrinths that had me thinking "I wish somebody would make a fantasy Tomb Raider" the whole time I was in them. In one memorable incident I found myself delicately balancing a temporary drug addiction with the need to push through a place crawling with monsters (I was not completely successful at managing the severe stat buffs that came with the withdrawal).

Even the parts of Oblivion where I can keep my weapons sheathed are intriguing. Every new town and oddball inn stuck in the middle of nowhere has someone worth talking to, or some locked room, suspicious well, or half-hidden hatch I know I shouldn't enter but will poke around anyway.

The land is heaving with everything from harmless bookcases to unsettling secret murderholes, my curiosity a catalyst for anything from idle rummages around someone's personal belongings to desperate dashes to safety, new memories made at every turn.

It's just a shame everyone I have to talk to looks so damned strange. The models used for these people, from plain old humans to the catlike khajiit, may be as overhauled as their remastered surroundings, but they're wrong in every way that matters. Animations and expressions are simplistic and cartoonishly exaggerated, completely at odds with the new high resolution textures and additional details they're contorting to accommodate.

They often spoil the mood; creating an unintentional disconnect between the intriguing adventures I'm offered, the hard work of the actors voicing the dialogue, and the visual comedy playing out before me.

I can't even always catch what's being said. As the original game had its bugs, Oblivion Remastered isn't without issues: Subtitles are present, but tend to show up when they feel like it. I could somewhat understand if this was defined by my distance to the speaker, but I've had people I was rubbing shoulders with hold full back-and-forths without a single line being printed on screen. I'm not just missing out on key story moments when this happens, I'm missing out on the flavour that comes from random NPCs grousing amongst themselves as I stroll down a city street and the immersive, sometimes life-saving battlecries of my allies too.

Dishing out DPS

Some methods of dispatching whoever crosses my path are much more satisfying than others. Sneak-attacking enemies with a bow from afar never gets old, and neither does filling a monster full of arrows as they try to close the distance. Spellcasting is pleasantly frantic and messy, fireball flinging imagined as something athletic and imprecise. It's a lot of fun—so long as I'm not using a controller. With a traditional KB+M setup I can freely switch between anything I've assigned to the 1-8 keys as I move around. Smoothly shifting from lightning lobbing to a quick heal and back again as I jump around couldn't be easier. But on a controller I have to rely on a customisable radial menu to switch between spells, and for some reason opening this locks my character in place until it's closed again. This practically guarantees the enemy will get some free hits in, and tarnishes a comfortable control method that otherwise works beautifully.

Even in Remastered form, melee combat is a disappointment no matter how I play. There's a distinct lack of weight and meaningful reaction to my blows, and it never really looks like direct contact's being made. I'm not swinging a sword or blocking an incoming attack, I'm pressing buttons as animations play out and health bars deplete.

This lack of reactivity is only exacerbated by the game's AI, which, huh, seems to have been pulled directly out of 2006. I shouldn't be able to kill an entire cult's worth of weirdos by kiting them around their own altar, every last one politely chasing after me in an orderly fashion, and it'd be nice if monsters consistently noticed when their fellow fiends drop dead a few feet away.

Other bugs pop up often, many of them quest-related. Key NPCs get stuck repeating the same lines and scripted sequences fail to correctly move on to the next state in the stack. These aren't edge cases that only show up in minor quests most players never see, but early mainline scenarios. They drag the entire experience down, leaving me questioning everything I do. Did I succeed here because I was clever, lucky, or did another bug swing this fight in my favour? Have I missed something important, or has the game broken down again?

Yes, some jank is to be expected—is it even a real Bethesda RPG if there aren't bugs?—but this is a brand new remaster. Surely almost 20 years is enough time to iron out basic issues with common quests.

And add some meaningful reactivity to them. The guild quests don't shine quite so brightly in a post-Baldur's Gate 3 landscape. A single arrow loosed at the wrong moment was all it took for the Dark Brotherhood's messenger to gleefully declare me a cold-blooded killer, and in an astonishing lack of player agency I was forced to accept their quest and dagger. This quest line does lead to some fun moments—protecting someone from the irritated corpses of their dead relatives raised a smile—but it also lays bare how little RP resides in this RPG's storytelling. I have no real choice but to do as I'm told or not engage at all, all paths leading to the same end. I'm always exactly as virtuous or vengeful as the latest quest giver needs me to be, and Oblivion felt smaller for it.

But when it does work, and to be fair it usually does, I'm fully absorbed in this fantasy world. I can sit in a tavern—any tavern—and listen to NPCs strike up conversations with each other, or organically overhear something that adds a new topic to my conversations. I'm desperate to climb every mountain peak and dive into every deep lake I come across because I know there's always something worthwhile waiting for me if I go exploring. Maybe not something I can use or sell, but at the very least I'll get to watch the sun rise over the lands below, or perhaps discover a submerged cave entrance I had no idea existed. It's worth spending a night walking from one town to the next, just to give myself a chance to get lost in the wilds—and probably find some previously unmarked location when I do.

My rigid quest list is all but abandoned, unchecked and uncompleted, and I only feel free. I am the author of my own grand adventure, and I decide what happens next.

Case in point: the new MSI Vector 16 HX AI can be picked up today for just $2,500 with an RTX 5080 GPU inside it, and not a horribly compromised one either. MSI's Vector range of gaming laptops has reliably been one of its more affordable lines of notebooks, though that's regularly been more of a 'down the line' kinda thing than necessarily launching with a stellar price. That said, this Vector 16 HX is one of the cheapest RTX 5080-based gaming slabs you'll find on the market right now, and if you let it loose it will also deliver some of the highest frame rates, too.

But you won't want to.

Because it's just as loud as the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 I tested not so long back, and that was one throaty beast. Stick the Vector 16 HX in its 'Extreme Performance' mode and you will be at once delighted by the frame rate numbers and numbed by the sonic assault that is this cooling array running at full chat.

Here's the rub though: It outperforms the Gigabyte machine, and other RTX 5080 laptops, to such an extent you can comfortably pull things back to the 'Balanced' profile from the MSI Center software and be confident you're still going to nail excellent frame rates without your ears bleeding. It still won't be a quiet experience, but it will be far less obtrusive than either machine at the ragged edge of what their respective cooling arrays are capable of.

That's because, despite both having a nominal 175 W version of the RTX 5080—essentially that's the theoretical power level of the GPU silicon at its heart—the likelihood of hitting that power draw is pretty low. I mean, the Razer Blade 16 I love so well purports to have a 175 W RTX 5090, but such is its slimline figure it never gets close.

But, using the extreme profile of the MSI, the Vector 16 HX will get far closer to that top power level than the Gigabyte laptop on its equivalent power mode. The Vector 16 HX's GPU is often posting performance some 20 W higher than the Aorus Master 16, and when in the balanced mode that power draw only drops by 20 - 30 W, putting it more or less on par with top power profile of the Aorus Master 16, but using a lower mode.

Basically, stick the Vector 16 HX on its balanced profile and never look back.

Apologies, I've gone straight in for the performance jugular off the bat, without telling you what else makes up this chonky ol' laptop. Despite thinking this might be the year AMD almost entirely usurped Intel from its gaming laptop throne, I've only seen a single Ryzen laptop with all the rest sporting Arrow Lake H-series silicon.

That's surprised me, but it therefore won't surprise you to learn there's a Core Ultra 9 275HX chip at its heart. That's a 24-core chip of the hybrid variety, and means there are eight Performance-cores and 16 Efficient-cores, and no HyperThreading to be seen. As much as I am a big fan of the Strix Point AMD chips for their efficiency and impressive iGPUs, Arrow Lake in laptop form is a seriously powerful bit of tech.

You're not going to get the same level of battery life out of an Arrow Lake laptop, even with an efficient RTX Blackwell GPU, but you will see higher CPU performance than with a modern AMD 300-series part. That's especially noticeable in a game such as Baldur's Gate 3 which loves it some serious processing grunt—the Arrow Lake systems perform far better in that game at every resolution than the Blade 16 with its RTX 5090 and Ryzen AI CPU.

Though that is actually par for this gaming course, to be fair, because the RTX 5080 inside the Vector 16 HX is capable of outperforming the RTX 5090 in the Razer laptop across the board. And, as I noted before, it's also able to outpunch most other RTX 5080 laptops we've tested so far. Only Lenovo's mighty Legion Pro 7i, which I'm in the process of testing right now, is delivering higher frame rates, and that's a supremely pricey machine.

At the $2,500 price point (for the 16 GB RAM version) the Vector 16 HX is pretty tasty indeed. That Blade after all being $2,100 more expensive. Even Razer's RTX 5080 version is still another $1,100 more expensive than this impressively performance MSI machine, as is the Legion Pro.

Though it is a classic gaming laptop, largely thanks to that Arrow Lake CPU. Where I've praised the RTX Blackwell generation of mobile GPUs for their capabilities when it comes to gaming on battery, that's not something you're going to get in abundance with the Vector 16 HX. We measured a shade under an hour and a half, though you can of course stretch that by going into lower power states and limiting frame rates, etc.

Still, in real terms, this is a gaming laptop that you are going to want to keep plugged into the wall to get the most out of it. And that also makes it a laptop that you are going to want to keep primarily for gaming. It's a thick machine, and that lacking battery life also means it's not one to fling in your courier sack to take to class or your next meeting.

It's also not super comfortable to use, either. That keyboard is pretty good, with a decent amount of travel, though with those slightly [technical term warning] smooshy keys it's not on the same level as a Lenovo keyboard or the excellent new Blade keeb.

But that's not what makes it uncomfortable; that's down to the sawblade chassis. The edges of the laptop, specifically where your lower wrists will rest while you're typing or WSAD-ing, are effectively serrated. That gets mighty scratchy after a while, and typing out this review on the machine is making my arms a little sore. I get you want to stick some detail into your chassis design, guys, but c'mon. Oh, and by the way, I hate your font.

And, aesthetically, I guess it has an old world charm. Now, I know I can't get too fussy when I'm talking about a notebook that has been specifically created for price point rather than style points but its thickness does make it feel mildly anachronistic. Mind, I said the same of the Gigabyte system, but that's a far more expensive machine, so less forgivable.

What I will say is there is an industrial style to it that I can get behind. The thick plastic hinges that joint the IPS display to the laptop frame aren't necessarily to my taste but are really leaning into its brash stylings. What I do like, however, are the super-obvious copper heatpipes and heatsinks you can glimpse through the vents on the side and underneath.

That gets even more impressive when you whip the back off. That gets you access to the second M.2 slot for expanding your storage, but also exposes pretty much the entire component array, too. It's a pretty wild design, and I'm kinda here for it.

Now, the MSI Vector 16 HX is certainly not going to set any hearts a-flutter with its looks outside of what it looks like with its kit off, but if you're after an affordable RTX 5080 gaming laptop that can genuinely deliver on the frame rate promises of the RTX Blackwell GPUs, then MSI has created an excellent machine.

It's very much designed to be almost permanently attached to a plug socket, and it does often feel like it's trying to amputate your hands at the wrist over long sessions at the keyboard, so it's absolutely not an ideal do-anything gaming laptop, but it does a job and it definitely does it at a stellar price point.

Just stay clear of that Extreme Performance mode if you value either your ears or your sanity.

Trouble is, it's difficult to know whether it's worth spending a lot of moolah on something you might not enjoy, or perhaps more accurately, might want to approach from a more casual perspective. Cheap flight sticks are available, of course, but it's difficult to find something serviceable for around $100 that might wet your whistle—and give you an indicator as to whether it might be worth investing in some premium flight sim gear in future.

Enter, Thrustmaster's T.Flight HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick) range. We've had the HOTAS X down as our best budget joystick for many moons, but it's been a while since we've had our hands on a new model. Luckily, there's a new version on the block, the T.Flight HOTAS One Microsoft Flight Simulator Edition, built to support modern Xbox consoles (and PC, natch) for MSFS 2024. And other games, of course.

All for the very attractive price of $110/£90. That's around half of what you'd pay for the Logitech G X54 HOTAS RGB, our top mid-range pick, and the sort of money you might spend if you were looking to see if flap adjustments, barrel rolls, and a plethora of confusing acronyms and initialisms were for you without breaking the bank.

You get a tension-adjustable flight stick, a throttle control with built-in rear paddles, a host of buttons, a single stick-mounted hat control, and the ability to split the whole shebang in half across your desk.

The two halves can be attached together with two hex bolts (tightened with an included hex key hidden under the throttle assembly), or spread akimbo thanks to a decently-long adjoining cable.

It's also white. Very white. Putting aside my bias against white peripherals for a second (oh go on then: they're next to impossible to keep clean), it's a fairly handsome device overall. That being said, there's something about an all-white finish that makes cheap plastic look a little cheaper—although I suppose it does fit with the MSFS 2024 branding.

Yes, it's a little cheap-looking. And, if I'm honest, a little cheap-feeling, especially when it comes to all those buttons. Those looking for satisfying clunks and clicks from the controls will be disappointed, but again, I have to remind myself of the price. This is starter equipment for a very reasonable MSRP, and as such, I'll say they're not too bad.

What's genuinely good, however, is the feel of the stick movement. The tension can be adjusted underneath the stick base with an easy-to-use dial, and as a heavy-stick-enjoyer, I immediately cranked it to its maximum. It's not properly heavy at this setting, but it adds in a level of resistance that makes fine movements easier to perform. At least for this cack-handed reviewer, anyway.

The throttle action is smooth, too, although I would like to see a similar easy adjustment dial here. It's a little light and toy-like in its movement, but feels accurate nonetheless.

Install the drivers, boot up MSFS 2024, and everything is recognised immediately. You'd be surprised how many premium flight sticks make this process much more difficult than it needs to be, but the Thrustmaster set really is plug and play. It's also easy enough to configure in DCS World, as much as any flight stick can be in that most-finnicky of games.

Whizzing around the skies in an F/A-18E fighter jet, buzzing bridges and generally making a nuisance of myself, I have to say it's easy to forget that I'm using a budget bit of gear. The stick movement feels smooth and reasonably accurate, and while the throttle control is definitely light, it's still satisfying to slam forward with intent.

And while I'd like some less-rattly buttons, I have to say they're all very well-placed. Even the clicky little stick-mounted hat control is perfectly usable under duress, by which I mean, looking at the scenery briefly before realising that I'm plummeting towards terra firma.

It's not all fun and frolics, though. For a start, it's not quite as simple to connect the two halves together as it first appears. There's a lever-slot mechanism that links the two, but in order to get the cable out of the way you need to cram it into a cut out section inside the base.

Which would be fine, if the cable wasn't so fiddly to deal with while linking the controls together. An easily-detachable cable that allows you to disconnect both halves (you can technically do this with a screwdriver, but it's not a straightforward process) and then reconnect them would be a better solution. Or just a bendier cable, to be honest.

That being said, it's nice to have the option to spread the controls out for a more realistic feel. Once apart, however, the individual units are a touch light, and there's very little rubber on the bottom to stop them slipping around.

Both halves together make for a weighty-enough bit of kit to resist unwanted movement, but split them in twain and they have a tendency to wander, which is frustrating when you're trying to divebomb Christ the Redeemer for a photo op.

Ask me how I know.

So yes, there are some definite downsides to going this cheap for your entry point into flight sims. But what you get, for a fraction of the cash of other offerings, is excellent fun. The Thrustmaster kit is focussed on delivering three things—an accurate stick, a decent throttle control, and plenty of button options—all for an ultra-budget price point. And in this endeavour, it very much succeeds.

Plus, while that white plastic seems destined to mark over time, the whole setup feels robust enough that I'd say it should stand up to some abuse without breaking beyond repair. The base plastic might not be the most premium of affairs, but it's fairly thick, so if you do end up scooting it off your desk in a moment of un-pilot-like panic I think it'll likely be fine.

Or, when you dig it out of the attic to give to a friend once you've upgraded to something more expensive. That's the thing about the Thrustmaster—it's all about providing a robust starting point into a whole new arena of gaming for a minimal outlay. Yes, you can buy better, but for nowhere near this sort of cash. And that, my friends, makes it all-white in my book.

Seems some of us yearn for a return to ~ The Contraption ~ but what if you still want that tactility without the risk of waking up the whole house with your 3 AM machinations (or in my case, yet another run of Blue Prince because I refuse to be beaten by a shape shifting mansion of all things)? Well, stewards of silence Be Quiet have recently expanded into peripherals, ushering in sound dampened gaming keyboards that will allow you to plot in peace. As a modular, full-size keyboard, the Dark Mount not only enjoys versatility, but a premium price point to match at $255/£240/€260.

Before I really dive into the weeds, let me address the most obvious point first: is it actually that quiet? In a word, yes; while not completely silent, multiple layers of sound dampening foam and silicone make every keypress pleasingly understated. Even the space bar, typically the noisiest key on many keebs, has been quietly wrangled here.

Besides its sound dampening innards, the Dark Mount unit I'm reviewing owes much of its lower-key clacks to Be Quiet's silent linear mechanical switches. To briefly compare it to its smaller sibling, the Light Mount, these switches give every keypress a lovely, straightforward actuation without the oh-so-subtle springy feedback of Be Quiet's also available tactile switches.

In my Light Mount review, I likened every keypress upon those tactile switches to a steady descent towards solid ground. To leverage the same metaphor, the tactile switches offer a little bit of a grassy bounce while the linear switches on the Dark Mount are perhaps more akin to gently touching down on hardwood flooring.

The keycaps themselves are made of PBT rather than the smoother feeling ABS, though this more textured feel doesn't distract from what remains some great feeling keys (as far as materials go, PBT is the hardier, longer-lasting choice besides). But, if neither that or any of the above is your vibe, you can swap both keycaps and switches very easily with the puller that comes in the box. So long as what you want to swap in is compatible with the board's 5-pin sockets, you can customise the feel of the Dark Mount to your liking.

Now, let me finally address the nervous truck in the room: there's more than meets the eye to this gaming keyboard. On its own, there's not much to it, with the exceedingly extra RGB light bar lining the entire outer edge of the board being the main thing differentiating it from the Light Mount at first glance.

Like that smaller keyboard, you can also adjust the brightness and flick through lighting profiles using shortcuts mapped to the function and arrow keys, with further customisation possible in Be Quiet's IO Center software. With itty bitty, individually customisable segments that run the entire light-up-length of the keyboard, the Dark Mount's underglow lighting effect is a real show stopper.

But even with such an impressive light show, this tiny desk party is only just getting started. Flipping the main part of the keyboard over, you'll notice a number of extra USB-C ports. Besides the expected USB-C port on the top edge of the keyboard for the dedicated wired connection to your PC, there are two more besides it, plus another two found on the right and left hand edges of the board. These are for the Dark Mount's two main modular attachments, included in the box.

As modular designs go, The Dark Mount isn't simply reminiscent of the Mountain Everest Max, but the numberpad attachment feels directly comparable—and that's for good reason. This is because Be Quiet's parent company, Listan Group, bought Mountain a few years back, with both the modular Dark Mount and its Light Mount sibling likely the direct results of that acquisition.

My review unit comes with a media dock that can be slotted into two positions along the top edge, plus a numberpad that can slot in on either the left or right edge of the keyboard for ambidextrous placement. The numberpad features more of its lovely, sound-dampened PBT keys, plus eight more remappable buttons above those.

The media dock features a tactile scroll wheel for volume control, plus a number of media control buttons, as well as a small integrated screen with its own menu navigation buttons. Scrolling from left to right, this small dock screen offers controls for time, date, and brightness, plus some basic lighting profile customisation options.

Installing the Dark Mount's modular attachments is fairly straightforward, though I initially found the number pad's retractable USB-C connector quite stiff. My oh-so-helpful colleague had no such issue however, demonstrating that the numberpad is far sturdier than I'd initially worried. Generally, the modular design's attachment mechanisms are fairly elegant, concealed by easily detached dustcover panels when not in use—though I feel like these are the first things I'm going to lose.

Dustcovers ready to go walkabout are far from the only inelegant aspect of this keyboard, either. Ready to fry some small potatoes? To begin with, the modular design of the keyboard necessitates a similarly separated magnetically attached wrist rest, making it feel much less secure than the Light Mount's detachable palm rest.

The ambidextrous placements available for both the numberpad and the media dock make this a versatile keyboard—but unfortunately, the Dark Mount hasn't completely won me over on the subject of modular keyboards. For a start, I'm well and truly a media knob convert, so the Dark Mount's low profile scroll wheel just doesn't do it for me. The low-profile media and menu control buttons are similarly too shallow to actuate in a way that offers much tactile feedback; on a mechanical keyboard, I found it an odd sensory contrast.

The eight plastic buttons on the numberpad offer slightly clickier feedback, but there's no question that the numbered PBT keys below are the main event. Still, these eight keys can be customised via IO Center to offer a variety of functions with one press. It's neat to, say, put my PC to sleep or open the task manager with a single button click. But, like the co-ord that seemed like a good idea at the time but is destined for Depop, I just don't reach for them. Still, just because I couldn't make this versatile keyboard work for me, doesn't mean that you won't easily make it your own.

Not to encourage any sibling rivalry, but I found myself vastly preferring the cheaper Light Mount (even if it isn't as affordable as its respective keyboard ancestor, the Mountain Everest 60). As nice as it is, I came away feeling the Dark Mount's attachments were much-of-a-muchness for my day-to-day use.

There's also the fact that, on both of Be Quiet's keyboard offerings to date, gaming-specific features are light on the ground for the price point. If you're looking for a more esports-geared feature set that includes Rapid Trigger and customisable actuation, I'd say you're better off picking up the Corsair K70 Pro TKL (though you can find even cheaper options among our best gaming keyboards guide). That said, for my money (and my cluttered desk space), the Light Mount still does everything else I want in a much more focused package compared to the Dark Mount, while also offering some of the most vibrant, customisable RGB-lighting I've had the pleasure of gawping at.

Be Quiet's recent move into peripherals ushers in sound-dampened keyboards that attempt to hush your late-night clacking. The Light Mount is the cheaper of Be Quiet's two wired keyboards now on offer, costing $170/£170/€170. For that price, you're getting three layers of sound-dampening foam and silicone cushioning every press, plus per-key RGB illumination, and a fairly firm, magnetically attached wrist rest.

Let's start with the mild-mannered elephant in the room: Is the Light Mount actually that quiet? While by no means silent, every keypress is decidedly understated, especially if you're used to a more cacophonous clack underhand.

The unit I'm reviewing came with Be Quiet's own silent tactile mechanical switches, emitting some noise with every keypress, though hardly bringing the house down. The space bar is definitely the loudest of the bunch, but it's not such a chatty charlie that it completely undermines the keyboard's reason for being. To summarise it in a stage whisper, the sound of your key clacks from the Light Mount is much less likely to carry.

But can Be Quiet's switches give the Topre Realforce R2, our current pick for the quietest board in our best mechanical keyboard guide, a tip-toeing run for its money? Well, yes. For starters, Topre's capacitive switches are odd ducks that are perfect for typists with deep pockets and sensitive ears but not so much anyone else.

When it comes to price, the Light Mount has the Topre Realforce R2 beat, delivering both a pleasingly sound dampened typing experience, while also offering a game mode setting, media knob, and RGB lighting to boot.

Moving beyond how it sounds, let's get into how it feels. For starters, the unit I'm reviewing features PBT double-shot keycaps, meaning they feel a wee bit more textured than the smooth ABS keycaps of my usual go-to board, the Corsair K70 Pro TKL.

While I wasn't sure at first, the rougher keycap feel has definitely grown on me—the fact that PBT keycaps are also known for their hardiness definitely helps. Sticking with that Corsair keeb as a point of comparison, the Light Mount is an obviously bigger, full-size board with heaps of keys I'll likely never use.

Talking typing, I know even the mere mention of silicone may cause some to wrinkle their nose over an assumed 'mushy' feeling, but I'm pleased to report that isn't the case here. While every keypress enjoys a soft, cushioned landing, the controlled descent of the switches creates the sensation of making contact with solid ground and not slowly sinking into a marshy bog.

If that's not to your liking, you can swap in switches of your choice with the keycap and switch puller included in the box; so long as your preferred caps and switches have a form factor compatible with 5-pin sockets, you can customise the feel of the Light Mount.

Back to keeb comparisons briefly, Be Quiet's parent company, the Listan group, brought keyboard manufacturer Mountain into the fold back in 2022. As such, it's hard not to compare the Light Mount to what remains our top pick for the best budget gaming keyboard, the Mountain Everest 60.

In terms of price, the Mountain Everest 60 is still very appealing—if you can find one now that the official store is closed. Otherwise, keyfeel is a dead ringer…minus the oh-so-subtle feedback from the Light Mount's silicone cushioning layer. Pop off the keycap to take a peek at the switch beneath, and it's easy to see the family resemblance—though, arguably the more expensive Dark Mount with its detachable number pad and media bar leverages that inheritance the hardest.

Perhaps most importantly, how does the Light Mount measure up in-game? For starters, the Light Mount won't pull you out of management and simulation games, offering few reasons to dissuade me from clocking in a few more long hours at Two Point Museum or on The Sims 4. Its sound-dampened key presses also won't give the game away when I've snuck back for one more go around on Blue Prince after saying I'd go to bed hours ago.

As for games that are less sedate, such as FragPunk, there's nothing like Rapid Trigger here, but there is a polling rate of 1,000 Hz and full N-Key rollover. That means that while it's definitely not an esports-focused bit of kit, it's certainly responsive enough for most intents and purposes.

If you are looking for a board that has all those things, plus Rapid Trigger, customisable key actuations, and a ridiculously high polling rate all for a similar price point, you're still better served by the aforementioned Corsair K70 Pro TKL. If Rapid Trigger is a key concern for you, the Wooting 80HE claims the category top spot in our best gaming keyboard guide.

Personally, I struggle to comfortably hold Shift and the directional buttons to sprint on the Light Mount, and I also occasionally hit Caps Lock when I don't mean to. I don't think that's due to any odd spacing on the Light Mount's part, though—it may just be that years of playing shooters on a controller have completely ruined my hand posture. My sordid console gamer past aside, the Light Mount has no reason for shame as a gaming keyboard.

Besides a just lovely sound dampened typing experience, the Light Mount also, ahem, shines with its RGB lighting. You can cycle through lighting profiles saved to the keeb's onboard memory and adjust the brightness via function key shortcuts tied to the arrow keys. Even shy of the keyboard's brightest setting, the Light Mount's RGB is some of the most vibrant I've seen in a minute. There's a good amount of distinction between colours too, with my purple-pink custom profile managing to avoid looking too muddy.

I also don't hate Be Quiet's bespoke software that allows you to fine-tune your own tiny desk light show, IO Center. As peripheral software goes, the UI here is refreshingly uncluttered and straightforward to use. Even the fact that this is yet another bit of peripheral software clogging up my hard drive may soon be remedied as Be Quiet! has announced you'll soon have the option to customise their keyboards via a web-based version of IO Center.

If you're thinking of adding a splash of customisable colour to your desk job but have to contend with a locked-down corporate machine, this could be a real highlight for you.

Puns aside, it's straightforward to set up a basic lighting profile, while also offering basic tools for a more layered look, which includes setting a custom look for each individual segment of the light bar running across the top of the keyboard. Besides the usual suspects of throbbing, whirling lighting effects, the Light Mount also enjoys support for Microsoft Dynamic Lighting.

You can also remap keys, create macros, and adjust the function key shortcut layer, too. Game Mode specifically is accessed via the Function + Pause keys, and can also be adjusted via IO Center. Unfortunately, your options are a bit limited, allowing you to toggle on or off a small pool of keys and shortcuts. These include Shift + Tab, Alt + F4, the Windows Key, and Alt + Tab.

While we're on the subject of buttons to push, the media knob is similarly stripped back, allowing you to adjust the volume with a twist or silence everything by pressing the top. Though fewer levers to pull and settings to tweak may disappoint some, I found it just right for my purposes. Now shush—it's 3 AM and my Sims need me…

The allure of a hackable computer or pickable pockets is catnip for troublemakers—a license to orchestrate pranks on NPCs who can't send you to the principal's office, and laugh in their faces. Immersive sims, in all their glory, are the sacred virtualization of shenanigans, and Skin Deep is the patron saint of slipping on banana peels.

Death by peel is only the fifteenth funniest way I've solved a problem in Skin Deep, Blendo Games' latest, built with the 21-year-old id Tech 4 engine. In the shoes bare feet of Nina Passedena, a MIAO Corp deep freeze insurance commando deployed to save crews of cats from invading pirates, I've sent guards into sneezing fits with boxes of pepper, turned soap into an explosive, flushed myself down a trash chute to make a quick escape, and subjected an entire pirate crew to ear-splitting jazz.

You'd think MIAO Corp's top agent would be issued a gun, knife, or at least a leather-wrapped cudgel to drive off intruders, but thanks to the "complications of the deep freeze process," equipment protocol is procure-on-site, Solid Snake-style. Such is the zany, charmingly Die Hard setups behind Skin Deep's intricate sandboxes: Nina is outnumbered, outgunned, and literally shoeless, but she still holds all the cards.

License to spill

It would have been in line with genre tradition to give players a gun from the jump, and I suspect easier to design open-ended levels around, but Blendo's characteristic distaste for the usual is Skin Deep's secret sauce. Nina's empty pockets constantly pushed me to intimately learn spaces and look for utility in mundane objects. There is no random tat in Skin Deep. Desk succulents are sneeze bombs, electrical conduits are baseball bats, and broken glass is an accident waiting to happen.

Skin Deep nurtures experimentation with its ingenious Zoom Lens—a generous information gathering tool that lets Nina read notes, labels, and stickers from any distance. Not only were these environmental clues often funny, but they taught me everything I needed to know about what I was holding without drowning in tutorials—like how eight levels in, I finally learned that bashing a walkie-talkie against a wall makes it spark, a crucial ingredient for starting fires or triggering explosions.

The complex simulation at the core of Skin Deep has a way of turning best-laid plans into predictably unpredictable Buster Keaton routines. Like the time I accidentally helped a guard kill himself.

Franklin's fault

Nearly an hour into an early level, I'd snuck onto the bridge of a ship through a vent and clocked the key I needed to escape hanging from the belt of a pirate named Franklin. Minutes earlier I'd been gifted a single homing grenade—a reward for safely evacuating the crew—and decided to test its destructive power on Franklin.

It bonked off his head, exploded, and nearly killed him, but he was pissed. Bullets started flying, Franklin whiffed his shots, and one flew toward the window behind me. According to the event log—yes, Skin Deep is the sort of game that's so systemic that you sometimes need an event log to decipher what just happened—eight things occurred in the following two seconds:

1. Soda (empty) destroyed by: Seeker Grenade (sorry empty soda can, didn't see you standing there)
2. Window shattered by: Bullet (This one's on Franklin)
3. Franklin destroyed (He suffocated, but Nina's fine thanks to her third lung)
4. Cat Key interacted with: WindowSeal Lever (Wait why did the window close? Of course, a different key got sucked out the window and bonked the emergency seal on its way, restoring gravity)
5. Lost in space: Cat Key (So long friend)
6. Ship Authority Key destroyed (I guess it was pretty dumb to set off a grenade next to the key I need to complete the level)
7. Ship Authority Key sent to Lost and Found machine (Thankfully, Blendo Games thought this could happen and spawned another)
8. Air Freshener created: Flammable Cloud (With gravity restored, a floating can of body spray fell to the ground and squirted)

I stood there cackling for a good few seconds after the happy disaster, piecing together the layered interactions that made it possible and pretending it was all part of a genius plan.

Pushing buttons

I'm still thinking about how that key just happened to smack the window seal. It's the moment I fell hard for Skin Deep, because only the best videogames consider every moving object a valid projectile.

It took me back to that incredible, eye-opening moment in Prey (2017) where you learn a seemingly useless nerf crossbow is actually a clutch "finger launcher" perfect for opening doors, pressing buttons, and unlocking security terminals. This is a game primarily made up of nerf crossbow moments.

Though maybe the design choice I admire most in Skin Deep is how it counters the "kill every guard I come across" playstyle that coasted me through countless Dishonored and Deus Ex missions.

You see, the Numb Bunch pirate gang is equipped with jarred noggins that, if killed, detach from the body and magically return to a regeneration pad. The only way to permanently take a piece off the board is to dump their heads into space. Convenient, except the pirates have locked down all the windows, vents, trash chutes, and airlocks. That means offing guards is always an option, but it comes with a cost: You can pocket a head to dump later, but that's precious inventory space wasted.

The dynamic creates a natural progression through maps as I comb over notes and PDAs to find codes that unlock ship functions. More access means a place to dump heads, but also free roam of the barge's exteriors that often hide fun secrets exclusive to the level.

It's such a nice, tidy, almost annoyingly clever system. Skin Deep is overflowing with similarly small but smart touches that could've only come from the mind of someone with strong opinions about the sophistication of modern stealth games:

• Guards are tuned with just the right amount of perception and stupidity to be fun to sneak around, but will immediately punish a close call by making sure all their friends are still conscious
• Nina's insurance commando implants include a "Memory Palace" that automatically records a copy of all the notes she's read so far, so you don't have to remember codes but still need to go looking for them
• Nina can snap her fingers to attract guards, yell to trigger an alert, lie down to become a smaller target, or spit to push buttons from a distance
• Because it'd be too easy for Nina to spend most of her time in vents like Adam Jensen, a "sneeze" meter gradually fills the longer you stay in the dusty shafts
• After the initial cat rescue, a second escape phase begins that hands Nina guns, grenades, and lethal traps to (optionally) let loose on the rest of the ship

Sticky landing

By the time I rolled credits, there was no question that Skin Deep is among the best and deepest stealth sandboxes I've ever played in. Its only major flaw is that stealth sandboxes are all it has to offer, and they suffer from sameness.

It's a symptom of a deeper problem with its story, the one aspect of Skin Deep that's disappointing on all fronts. In 11 hours, I was surprised my goals never evolved past saving cats and escaping the ship. That lack of thematic variety ends up mattering, because Skin Deep's level design can go ten rounds with all the immersive sim greats, but they inevitably blur together.

Neat barge-specific gimmicks aside, they're missing a proper identity to build memories off—there is no mission that's "the heist one" or "the one at a gala" or "the one with an annoying boss fight." They're all the ones where you save the cats.

Nina's story is similarly sparse, happening in the gaps between missions as she works in her off time to track down the leader of the Numb Bunch. It's a fun little spy romp with slick storytelling told in Blendo's signature style of environmental exposition and mid-gameplay scene cuts, but its Bond-y interludes are entirely detached from Nina's day-to-day commando duties, and the payoff is just OK.

I also would've liked more levels, but not because Skin Deep is too short. I want more because Blendo has crafted an endlessly expandable concept of insurance commandos dispatching meddlesome space pirates, which is probably why it's the studio's second game with full modding support (please hook me up, map makers).

The truth is that new immersive sims don't come around very often, so I could've settled for something half as interactive, surprising, or downright weird as Skin Deep, but that's not what Blendo does. Skin Deep is peak improv problem-solving unmarred by the dour dystopias this genre is built on. A genuine one of one.

That's where the first P310 came into play. Complete with its compact 2230 form factor. Crucial's P310, Western Digital's WD_Black SN770M, Corsair's MP600 Mini, and a spate of other 2230 drives provided solid solutions for that problem; however, in the case of WD and Crucial, they both came with significant drawbacks.

For the P310, it touted 232-layer QLC NAND, whereas WD had Kioxia's 112-layer TLC NAND. Effectively, you could opt for either a "cheaper" solution with Crucial at $215 for a 2 TB unit that has all the drawbacks QLC is well known for. Or (at time of writing) $220 for a 1 TB WD Black unit, but with aging 112-layer TLC and slower sequential speeds as a result.

Although yes, technically, you could run either of those in your gaming rig (they're still on the M.2 form factor after all), they're still very toasty boys and honestly are just not well suited to it.

That's where the P310 M.2 2280 variant comes into play. All the features that the tiny 2230 Steam Deck drive had, but with a larger form factor, better pricing, and far better efficiency as a result. Crucial hopes that this sizing change, this recipe, is enough to shift it from that rather bespoke position of just being "another Steam Deck SSD" and pushes it toward becoming one of the best SSDs you can get your hands on today, certainly from a value perspective anyway.

Top-line specs between the two form factors are identical. They're both single-sided designs, both feature Micron 232-layer QLC NAND, both lack DRAM, and both utilize Phison's E27T controller (a DRAMless four-channel design built off the back of TSMC's 12nm process; yes, that does mean the price of these might go up if those US tariffs come into effect and stock runs out).

Top-line performance figures for the 2280 equally match up to its tiny cousin too. Even comparing the 1TB model I have here on test to the 2230, you're looking at 7,100 MB/s on sequential reads and 6,000 MB/s on the writes, with a grand total of 220 TBW on the endurance front, doubling to 440 TBW for the 2TB variants. That's not a whole lot by any means, but you do get a solid five-year warranty to back it up, and ideally you wouldn't be using this drive for anything more than gaming.

PC Gamer test bench
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | RAM: 64 GB (2x32GB) Team Group T-Create Expert DDR5 @ 6000 C34 | GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super | Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming WiFi | CPU Cooler: Asus ROG Ryujin III 360 ARGB Extreme | PSU: 1200W NZXT C1200 (2024) 80+ Gold | Chassis: Geometric Future Model 5

And that's the thing. QLC just isn't built with professional workloads in mind. Not only does it lack that endurance, but in my experience, without a suitably sized cache, large file transfers tend to lose speed over time once the cache is filled or the drive heats up. The P310 does have QLC dedicated to caching, but it's not anywhere near as effective as a pure dedicated DDR4 DRAM solution. Still, even during game downloads and installs, the likelihood is you're never going to hit that bottleneck anyway, so it's a fairly mute point, as long as it's picked up with that usecase in mind.

In my testing, the P310 certainly delivered on its promise. Particularly for a $70 drive. Crystal Disk saw sequential figures absolutely bang-on target, averaging out at 7,109 MB/s on the read and 6,035 MB/s on the write, with comfortable performance on the random 4K figures too. Admittedly, the 4K read speed is a little lower than I'd like to see, and it does fail to compete with the likes of its 2230 cousin, but it does comfortably give Samsung's latest 990 Evo Plus a thrashing. Although that's not particularly difficult.

3D Mark Storage figures were comfortable too, with 2,999 scored on the overall index and a max bandwidth reported of 517.77, again lower than its 2230 cousin. Then there's the load time in Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers. Rather curiously, it landed a score of 7.305 seconds versus the 2230's 8.101. Intriguingly, FF XIV seems to draw an incredible amount of system power when benchmarking. There's a chance that this could be inducing excess heat in the controller as it loads the benchmark scenes, leading to slower load times, as the smaller drive just cannot sustainably manage that heat in comparison to the 2280. Although that is just speculation.

Yet, that's further backed up through the temperature testing as well. I benchmarked both P310s on an X870E-E from Asus, with its own built-in dedicated full-fat heatsink on top of them, and the 2280 variant sailed in at a staggering 18 degrees cooler than its tiny counterpart, and that's with a 2 degree difference in ambient temperature as well. Thanks to that extended (normal) form factor, it's allowed Crucial to push the NAND package further down the stick and away from the controller, helping alleviate a lot of that heat buildup.

So, looking pretty stellar then, right? Well, let's talk price because that's the biggy, and this is where things get a little complicated. On the surface, the 1 TB unit I have here comes in at an impressive $70. $0.07 per gigabyte. It's actually the cheapest drive I've tested to date, far cheaper than its 2230 counterpart, and it makes it $15 cheaper than WD's latest 1 TB SN7100 model too, a far superior TLC contender.

The problem occurs, however, when you scale that up to 2 TB at 2280. In short, at that capacity, the price tag slides in at $135. Still not too bad, but that's only $5 cheaper than the 2 TB SN7100. For that saving, you're getting worse NAND, worse performance, worse endurance, and generally a drive that struggles to keep up with its TLC counterpart in almost every measure.

Yet, if you're after a solid, dependable 1 TB budget drive that can happily satisfy your gaming needs and nothing else, the P310 is a decent choice. Still, if you're even mildly thinking about 2 TB and beyond, or feel like varying workload every now and then, plus can pluck up the extra $5, then any other TLC solution is just far better value and far more versatile.

Western Digital's latest WD Black SN7100 is a fine example of that exact ethos. It is, on the surface, a simple enough drive. It's PCIe 4.0, it has Kioxia 218-layer BiCS8 TLC NAND, and the company's Sandisk Polaris 3 A101 controller (the same found in the WD Blue SN5000 I reviewed late last year). Following on with modern trends, WD's also dropped the dedicated DRAM cache (honestly, you really don't need it anymore) and gone for a single-sided drive design, making it far more compatible with the likes of laptops, motherboards, consoles, and smaller form factor systems.

Nothing new here then, just a well-known manufacturer quietly releasing a solid storage solution that's following market trends. Well, not quite, and the confusion lies in how this thing is positioned in WD's arsenal.

The SN7100 is available from 500 GB all the way up to 2 TB configurations, all of which are heatsinkless. There are some mutterings of a 4 TB config, but it's not available just yet. They're aggressively priced too, ranging from $60 to $140. The problem, however, arises when you look at the wider product stack from WD, namely the SN850X line.

Now admittedly, there are some major differences here. The SN850X starts at 1 TB capacities, and goes all the way up to 8 TB (with the 8 TB SN850X being a different design with denser 162-layer BiCS6 TLC NAND compared to the first gen), but the thing is, pricing for the non-heatsinked versions are pretty much identical. That's a big problem too, because the performance differences between them are, well, fairly negligible.

These are two wildly different SSDs as well. The SN850X isn't a single-sided design; it has far less-dense TLC NAND, comes with a DRAM cache, and a Triton MP16+ B2 controller to take advantage of that. It's also three years old, in its non-8 TB form.

So we've got two SSDs, from the same company, that, on the surface, are available at similar capacities, at identical prices, that perform almost exactly the same, bar some outlying test results here and there. But a time gap of three years. Right.

Before I get onto why that is, let's go over the performance figures. The great news is that the SN7100 seriously shines and that Kioxia 218-layer isn't holding back. Particularly in productivity work.

In my testing, it delivered some top-tier numbers in CrystalDiskMark, landing an average score of 7,116 MB/s on the read and 6,820 MB/s on the write. For contrast, the SN850X (admittedly its 8TB variant) scored 7,100 MB/s and 6,590 MB/s on the write, only slightly behind there.

Random 4K performance for the SN7100 was a bit of an intriguing one too. It absolutely demolished every drive I've tested on the read front, scoring an insane 101 MB/s. For context, the second fastest drive I've had on test, Crucial's PCIe 5.0 2 TB T700, only managed 81 MB/s there. It does, however, fall quite short on the write portion of that benchmark, landing just 276 MB/s. With even the SN850X beating it by a healthy margin of 22 MB/s too.

PC Gamer test bench
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | RAM: 64 GB (2x32GB) Team Group T-Create Expert DDR5 @ 6000 C34 | GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super | Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming WiFi | CPU Cooler: Asus ROG Ryujin III 360 ARGB Extreme | PSU: 1200W NZXT C1200 (2024) 80+ Gold | Chassis: Geometric Future Model 5

Similarly, scores across 3DMark's Storage test produced respectable numbers as well. Although again closely tied with the SN850X. Final Fantasy also landed in a smooth 7.841 seconds, making it faster than Samsung's 990 Evo Plus, but barely. It does also seem that those games do prefer to have access to DRAM cache to load those scenarios, although the likelihood of actually noticing the difference between 7.8 and 7.3 second total load times over five separate scenes in real life is admittedly slim.

The big win was on temps. Under my Asus ROG Strix X870E-E motherboard's heatsink, the SN7100 topped out at an impressively low 48 C throughout the benchmark run. That's again one of the best temperatures I've seen for some time, with the only drive that arguably tops it, in terms of "wow, that's impressive," being Corsair's MP700 Elite PCIe 5.0 SSD, with its staggering 55 C (although interestingly they both use the same Kioxia 218-layer TLC NAND).

So then, given the SN850X exists and has done for three years, why on earth release the SN7100? Aside from the single-sided design. Well, admittedly, this is purely speculation on my part, but I'd wager it's all to do with cost. But not for the consumer.

By removing the DDR4 DRAM cache, simplifying the design so its single-sided, and using denser NAND (that allows you to reduce the number of chiplets on the SSD itself), WD effectively makes this drive far cheaper to manufacture from a purely business perspective. That is fair enough; that's how tech advances. But what annoys me about that is the fact it isn't cheaper for the consumer. As mentioned, the SN7100 is the same cost as that aging SN850X, when in reality it should be cheaper. Not by a lot admittedly, but by something at the very least, and it's not. It's likely the SN850X is no longer in production at this point, and that warehouse stock is all that's left. With it slowly being phased out in favor of the SN7100, and that moniker reserved for an upcoming PCIe 5.0 or 6.0 drive. But, still, it would have been nice to see a price drop.

Look, the SN7100 delivers on two critical, key areas. Random read performance (a signature metric we use for determining game load times) and temperature, which in a world of toasty, power hungry, RTX 5090s, and super hot CPUs is no bad thing.

If you're looking for a solid and dependable PCIe 4.0 SSD that won't break the bank, the SN7100 is a fine place to start.

And, on the surface at least, it really did deliver on that promise.

But times have changed since then, and drives similar to this are at last finally popping out of the woodwork a dime a dozen (particularly with the likes of Samsung's 9100 Pro dropping on our doorstep). Still, it got me thinking, does this brute force drive, this masterfully engineered powerhouse, still have the chops to hold its own against some of the latest and greatest? Is it fit to be crowned one of PC Gamer's best SSDs, or has its sequential clout been waylaid by something better, something more potent, or more efficient instead?

Compared to Crucial's own T700, on the surface at least, there's not a huge difference between the two as far as hardware's concerned. The overall spec sheet is very familiar. It still features that Phison E26 eight-channel controller, with DRAM cache (dual-sided), and still comes packing Micron's own 232-layer TLC NAND flash as well (it's worth pointing out at this point that Crucial is a Micron brand). In fact, it's the same hardware that was utilized across the board for that first batch of PCIe 5.0 drives that launched way back in 2023 with Phison's reference design, including Corsair's MP700, Seagate's FireCuda 540, and Gigabyte's Aorus Gen5 10000. What's different here is the bus speed and, of course, the price.

That really is the only major change here comparatively as well. The E26 controller is running at a full bus speed of 2,400 MT/s, whereas the Crucial T700 lapped up at 2,000 MT/s and the earlier Corsair, Gigabyte, and reference offerings were only operating at 1,600 MT/s. To be clear, that's one hell of a feat to achieve with the E26, and you can tell as, even with a chunky built-in heatsink, my 1 TB sample I have on review tops out at temperatures only slightly lower than its 2 TB T700 sibling.

As for capacities, it's the usual affair, with 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB options available, respectively, in both heatsinked and non-heatsinked variants. If you're after those highest-rated 14 GB/s speeds, you're going to want to grab the 2 TB solutions and above; any lower than that, and the single NAND package is going to hold you back, being the bottleneck there, although the random 4K numbers are still pretty stellar, even with the singular package, making it a pretty solid pick for gamers.

A word on the heatsink. Typically, I'd recommend you get whichever drive is cheapest or on offer, depending on what's available; however, in the case of the T705, its heatsink is designed to be nonremovable. You can remove it, but we're talking about the application of screwdrivers, pliers, and bending the heatsink off it entirely, with some seriously high risk of damaging the SSD underneath. Given it's double-sided as well, it might not play ball with any thermal pads situated under a motherboard heatsink too. In short, if your board's got a solid M.2 heatsink, grab the non-heatsink variant instead.

So then, numbers.

Generally, very good, exceptional in some cases. Latency is ridiculously low in 3DMark's storage benchmark, scoring a staggering 39 ns. At a guess, this is down to that single NAND package, which, although it may be detrimental when it comes to maxing out sequential speeds, actually reduces latency significantly, in turn bumping up random access times in certain applications. That's something that you can equally see in CrystalDiskMark's Random 4K test too, with its write figure delivering an impressive 329 MB/s, beaten out only by Corsair's MP700 Elite and absolutely wiping the floor with Samsung's latest 9100 Pro, which scored a shockingly low 243.

PC Gamer test bench
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | RAM: 64 GB (2x32GB) Team Group T-Create Expert DDR5 @ 6000 C34 | GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super | Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming WiFi | CPU Cooler: Asus ROG Ryujin III 360 ARGB Extreme | PSU: 1200W NZXT C1200 (2024) 80+ Gold | Chassis: Geometric Future Model 5

Sequential performance is lower, of course, as a result; reads clocked in at 13,511 MB/s and 10,028 MB/s on the write, but that will really only affect those working with large sequential file patterns, rather than with gamers. If you're a professional art worker or similar, the 1 TB variant at the very least isn't quite as compelling.

As for temperatures, the T705 came in at 84°C at peak, utilizing that built-in heatsink. That is quite high, and although it's manageable, it does just show how far we've come in terms of controller tech. Corsair's Phison E321T, for instance, is wildly impressive by comparison, and, although yes, sequential performance is about 3 GB/s lower across the board, it's almost 30 degrees cooler.

Crucial's T705, back last year, was no doubt the king of the hill. It delivered outstanding sequential performance and insanely aggressive random 4K performance as well, certainly for the time.

But the big issue, even today, is the price. In its 1 TB configuration, you're talking about an upfront cost (at time of writing) of $153, or £136. That's about $0.15 per GB or £0.14. Corsair's MP700 Elite, by contrast, sidles up to that with a $0.09 and £0.10 per GB figure; even Crucial's own T700 manages $0.12 and £0.09 as well. That's a problem, because both of those drives so closely match the T705 on those real-world metrics.

Yes, theoretically the T705 is the quicker drive, and it's even better rounded than Samsung's latest 9100 Pro, which suffered from poor write performance, but, unless you can benefit from those extra 1-3 GB/s on the sequentials, it's a real struggle to justify the expense.

Awesome engineering feat? Absolutely. Actually worth it for gaming? Still no.

The new HD 550 have all the makings of a top-notch Sennheiser headset. I've used the older HD 650 for years on my gaming rig and the HD 550 feel pretty familiar. That's a good thing; it has faux-velour ear pads that feel the same on your ear and these are attached to largely-open metal mesh ear cups for the full open-back experience.

If you're new to the world of high-quality headphones, open-back refers to the rear of the earcup being open, usually with a metal mesh as is the case here, to offer a wide and airy soundstage. This tends to result in a more natural sound than the alternative, closed-back. Closed-back headphones do have their benefits. They're naturally adept for noise isolation and suffer less sound leakage and that makes them better for noisy environments or taking out of the house, but they're not as conducive to long-term easy-listening as open-back.

As a pair of wired, open-back headphones with a mid-to-high impedance, the HD 550 aren't going to be great for taking outside. You could drive them easily enough with a compact amp, but your next Steam Deck headphones, these are not. They are mostly aimed at the desktop crowd, and sitting at a desk is where you'll get the most out of them for gaming.

Coming with a 1.8-metre cable and a 3.5 mm jack, you don't have to worry about compatibility with a wide-range of devices. It'll plug into the back of your gaming PC just fine, or via the front panel (though I'd always recommend the direct rear connection). This cable terminates in a single connection on the headset, a twist-to-lock jack connection, which is one of the key differentiators from the HD 650 with a connection on either earcup. The HD 650 also includes a lengthier 3-metre cable.

A dedicated amp is preferable for pushing these headphones. In which case, the included 3.5 mm to 6.35 mm adapter comes in handy. I've hooked the HD 550 up to my Schiit Magni and Modi stack for testing, but you needn't bother with all that if you don't want to spend the extra cash. You can make do with a lot less and get similar results. I've used these plugged in direct to my motherboard and they're easily loud enough to game with.

I've pushed them close to an uncomfortable volume through my motherboard but it wasn't possible to go any higher than that. I'm a bit cautious about listening at high volume levels and this was just about bearable. So, basically, if you really like to crank the audio, you will likely need an amp. Otherwise you're probably all good.

The HD 550 sound great. Look to the frequency response charts provided by Sennheiser and you can see a slight extension on the lower bass frequencies compared to the HD 599 and that is noticeable even compared to the HD 650s. It's still a Sennheiser headset, however, so you shouldn't expect thumping bass to rattle your bones. It's a subtle change for a little more punch at the low-end, but noticeable enough when switching between the HD 550 and HD 650.

Though what's also noticeable is the slightly scratchier treble response on the HD 550. While listening to All I Need by Maribou State, it's only subtle, but in the more lively Round To Ya Speaker by Anaïs, it makes for a touch more uncomfortable listening. That's maybe more of a compliment to just how easy listening the HD 650 are. Perhaps that's to do with openness of the earcup on the HD 550, which is slightly reduced by a layer of foam and a smaller mesh compared to the larger, foam-free HD 650. Though with different drivers (38 mm vs 42 mm), it's tough to put it down to just one thing.

This isn't a detriment to playing games with the HD 550. It's pretty engrossing in something like Hunt: Showdown. Fire a powerful rifle and the sound cuts through the hubbub of the zombie-infested world a lot more on the HD 550 compared to the HD 650. The HD 550 is great for this sort of game.

That's a pretty specific picture but, more broadly, the HD 550 sounds fantastic. The mid-range is absolutely top-notch for whatever you throw at it, and it doesn't feel particularly lacking in bass response, either.

Onto comfort and it's no surprise that this lightweight headset doesn't wear on you over prolonged periods of time. Sennheiser has it at 237 grams and so do I—bang-on measurement there, Sennheiser—and that airy frame means the plush padding doesn't need to do much to stay comfy. It is pretty plush nonetheless, with those faux-velour ear pads and leatherette-clad headband cushion.

The headband cushion is the one place where this headset slightly loses out to the HD 650 in my books, which is a better fit on my head for its tapered cushioning, but that might just be me. The weight of the HD 550 prevent this from becoming any more of an issue, however. They're still very comfy.

Onto pricing and the HD 550 is pretty darn affordable by audiophile standards at $300/£250/€300. That's a lot compared to some of the best gaming headsets, and the lack of mic might be a dealbreaker for some, but we're talking a pair of headphones here, and for a multitude of reasons you might want to pick these up over your usual fare. The main one being sound quality and comfort.

But the Sennheiser does have competition in this space. There's the Beyerdynamic MMX 330 Pro that our Andy, a professional audio buff in a previous life, really raved about in his review. Those come with a mic for $330/€300. Then there are the Audeze Maxwell, which come with Planar Magnetic drivers, and I don't want to overlook those for both listening to music and playing games—they're great for both with a superb bass response.

And then there's the Drop + Epos PC38X, which I reviewed a few years ago, also from the Sennheiser stable. EPOS, now defunct, was Sennheiser Gaming once upon a time. It's all very complicated, and nowadays even headphones like the HD 550 are actually made under license by a company called Sonova. Anyway, the PC38X come with a microphone and really impressive neutral drivers for a lot less cash, originally around $135, though since they're going away, they seem to be less widely available and cost more. They might be out of the running entirely soon.

But the biggest competition to the Sennheiser HD 550? Well, the thing with high-quality headphones is the oldies are still great. They don't really go out of fashion. The HD 550 are $300, the HD 560S are $200, the HD 650 are $476, the HD 6XX are $179, and the HD 600 are $355. Of the lot, it's tough to ignore the very capable and very similar HD 560S for $100 less.

It's tougher for the HD 550 in the UK. The HD 650 are just £229. Yep, that's actually lower than the HD 550, and I find myself reaching for the HD 650 more often out of preference. To make matters worse, the HD 560S are, bewilderingly, only £99. That's a ridiculously low price for a pair of very similar headphones, and it's not the first time those headphones have sat that low. While you'll find varying opinions on whether the HD 560S scratches that audiophile itch for everyone, it's tough to ignore for that reduction in price.

The price really is the sole sticking point with the HD 550. An all-round impressive pair of headphones that are an adept go-between for listening to music and gaming, hampered almost entirely by a launch price that isn't entirely grounded in the current market. At least it does feel like Sennheiser has nailed the formula for its mid-range offering with this set. With a good enough discount, I'd absolutely pick up a pair of the HD 550.

I've long loved the ethos behind the Framework 13. It's the ship of Theseus in laptop form. That's how we often refer to our desktop machines, where we'll rip out and replace the innards however we wish, but that's rarely been a feature of notebooks. And where it has been in the past, it's not been for long.

Framework, however, has proved itself, releasing new mainboards across a host of different Intel and AMD (and even RISC) PCBs you can quickly and easily drop into the same 13-inch chassis you might have bought four years ago. And each and every other part of these remarkable laptops can be upgraded, too, and in that time we've had new input modules, higher resolution panels, and now a new keyboard and trackpad module, too.

And everything is compatible with the very first Framework 13. It's an idea that really captures my imagination, and means that, despite the higher cost of a Framework laptop, the idea that it can grow with me over time and I won't need to spend that much again to get an improved device in a few years time makes the machines incredibly desirable. If you can afford it.

But all is not entirely rosy in my Framework laptop garden. I've spent a long time using these machines now, often as my daily driver work notebook and travel companion, and in that time there are things I wish the company would get around to sorting out.

It's certainly not the hardware—though I'd love a less ghostly screen—it's the software. Or rather, the complete lack thereof. Sure, we often castigate laptop makers for their bloatware and myriad apps for controlling fans and lighting and power profiles and updates and whatever else a company wants to force on us. But a simple Framework app that gives us control over fan curves and power would be the icing on the endlessly repairable cake.

Noise has been an issue with Framework 13 machines in the past and, though it's been noticeably improved with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 mainboard here, it will still get those fans blowing even just doing a Windows update. I'd love to have the option to adjust those fan curves to be a little easier on the ear, especially when I'm using my laptop in polite company. Read: don't want my partner kicking off because I'm playing Football Manager while Below Deck is dominating the projector screen.

It would also be neat to have that tied into a more granular level of control over the APU, in the same way we can with gaming handhelds using the exact same processor silicon. That's how we get better battery life and noise levels on those devices, so we know it's possible with a little software work.

But still, the gaming battery life of the AI 9 HX 370 is already pretty damned good even when that Radeon 890M iGPU is being thrashed, and it will also deliver impressive frame rates, too. When it comes to gaming, this is the most powerful and performant Framework laptop I've seen outside of the sadly stunted Framework 16. Given AMD's current mobile graphics strategy, the likelihood of seeing a GPU update for that 16-inch gaming laptop is pretty low right now.

Stick to 1080p and, with a little FSR frosting and maybe some frame gen thrown in here and there, you'll see some stellar gaming performance out of this 13-incher. The only actual let down on that front is the screen itself. Now, I'm happy that Framework has started shipping this higher-resolution, 120 Hz display for its machines, but one of the biggest downside to the original 2256 x 1504 screen was its response time, and that hasn't been massively improved with the updated 2880 x 1920 panel.

That means you do get a level of ghosting that doesn't feel great when you're gaming on the device. Though, obviously it bears saying that this is not a gaming laptop, it's just far more capable of it than previous boards have allowed.

But there are fresh upgrades alongside the new AMD mainboard, too. And the most obvious from a visual standpoint are the see-through bezels and IO modules. I've got grey and purple options for this machine, and of course I've gone for the GameBoy Advance purple, and it really does frame the Framework beautifully.

The other addition is more subtle, and that's the new input cover kit. For the uninitiated, that's the cover which includes both keyboard and trackpad. This second gen cover is designed to have better key stability and more consistent illumination. And while the white RGB LEDs still look fine—and the font is slightly different—the thing is a pleasure to type on, even though I erroneously had a German QWERTZ board shipped my way. Thankfully muscle memory really does help…

It is worth cycling back around to the cost angle, however, because Framework laptops are not cheap. It doesn't have the manufacturing might of the Dells and Lenovos of the world, and it's doing something sadly unique, which means there is a price premium.

This DIY build I've been testing comes with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 board, 64 GB DDR5-5600, and a 1 TB WD SN850X SSD. And that makes this an expensive purchase at $2,094 (£2,108). I'm into the repair and upgradeability ethos, and that will make it a more affordable laptop years down the line, but when something like the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge, with its Snapdragon X Elite chip and OLED screen is just over a grand, or half the price, it's only the potential future e-waste that would genuinely give me pause.

I've been using a Qualcomm machine for almost a year now as my actual go-to work laptop. It's not let me down yet, and will play Football Manager pretty much silently, with the same battery life.

You can go cheaper, of course. There's the Ryzen AI 7 350 board, with eight CUs and kinda Steam Deck levels of gaming perf, and you can pair that with 16 GB DDR5 and a cheaper 1 TB drive to bring it down to a more manageable $1,500. That would be a fine machine, but at that point I'd stick with the older AMD Ryzen 7 7840U Framework 13 mainboard with the better graphics and even lower sticker price. The beauty of the Framework marketplace is that older boards do get discounted while they're still in stock.

Then there's also the fact you could just buy the mainboard on its own if you're already in the Framework ecosystem, or bring in an SSD from another build, or you want to source SODIMMs yourself. All ways to make things cheaper for yourself in the same way you might while building out a DIY desktop PC.

But still, this pricing stuff is where it gets complicated because if you're starting out with Framework there is a price premium. It's morals vs. your bank account. The planet vs. what you can actually afford today. I love the Framework 13, and with the HX 370 APU it's a fantastic all-round device—and the best it's ever been—but it's also a very expensive one that means you really are paying for that possible future upgrade. If you can afford it, though, it should absolutely be an ethos to get behind.

You know how comedy geniuses and chronic dieters will say their favorite brand of chips is "dangerous," because once you rip open the bag it’s a swift trip to the bottom? That’s me with JRPGs; Kingdom Hearts’ absurd garble of a plot breached my treasured memories after I spent 100 hours with its cast, and the Wii’s Xenoblade Chronicles infected me with a deep-seated bitterness at the fact that I don’t live on a giant mech with a laser sword and a tax evading hamster.

These games demand you live in them for a while, slowly fostering a bunch of level one nobodies into god-killing besties, and I'm susceptible enough to that demand I go into new JRPGs prepared to get lost in them, love them, and succumb to ennui when they’re finally over. Clair Obscur’s offbeat take on Belle Époque France promised blockbuster action, a cast of brooding sorcerers to mold into an apocalypse prevention squad, and a battle system which cleaves to genre standards while infusing them with twitchy QTEs and a dang gun I can fire in real time. Dangerous.

Even more tantalizing was its premise, which is so convoluted it's hard to explain concisely. Every year a mysterious figure called the Paintress marks a giant tower with an increasingly low number, and everyone who's that age dies. Fantasy France has been sending expeditions to her tower to figure out what's going on beneath the shadow of a magically warped Eiffel Tower, but none of them have returned. The latest of these squads, my squad, are mostly 33, and in the apparent final year of their lives.

Clair Obscur is superlatively French and I've never played an RPG quite like it. It's a somber, swashbuckling tale of loss with lots of surprises along the way, and the strong performances throughout bolster a plot which thrives on its novelty—though too slight and short to amount to much more.

Clair Obscur oozes flair, and voice acting by the likes of Andy Serkis and Jennifer English (Baldur's Gate 3's Shadowheart) adds a lot of punch to its lengthy cinematics. Though its splashy combat UI isn't quite as extravagant as Persona's or Metaphor: Refantazio's, it's clearly cribbing from the best. Rapid QTEs and glowing swords dance in tandem with flashy particle effects and emphatic slow motion, giving otherwise ho-hum hacks and slashes the drama of a flying trapeze routine. When protagonist and sword-mage Gustave fires off a fully charged volley of red lightning and quips "For those who come after" as a reward for perfect QTE timing, it feels like the final act of a play I wrote just by killing a random goblin.

It's rare a turn-based game rolls out the red carpet so lavishly, reaching for narrative catharsis while I grind hordes of identical ghoulies into EXP. Clair Obscur's commitment to the vibe drew me in at first, but it quickly piled on real-time parries, dodges, counters, and other mandatory distractions that left me wondering if it might be more fun to gawk at than play.

Dodgepodge

I admit I've started to doze off grinding mobs in Dragon Quest before, and spicing up a turn-based battle system with a pinch of real-time challenge theoretically primed me to lock in a bit more. I think that's what Clair Obscur is going for when it takes a pretty familiar loop—queue up spells and attacks, guzzle potions to manage health and mana, make it to the next checkpoint without dying—and adds a lethal ultimatum: dodge or parry the majority of enemy attacks or get melted in a handful of turns.

It certainly adds some tension, but so would balancing a beach ball on my nose while I speed down the highway. In practice, every overworld encounter becomes an uphill climb where pattern memorization is the crux of the action. These attacks are tricky to dodge; some make use of gratuitous slow motion while others don't. The game slowly introduces new types which must be jumped over, and more still which must be countered with a different button.

It feels like Clair Obscur is deliberately trying to trip you up sometimes, and when some of its boss fights drag into multiple phases over dozens of minutes—often introducing new attacks right at the end—losing party members to a handful of failed dodges and getting sent back to the start is a drag.

One common overworld enemy is the ghost of a deep sea diver lugging around a naval mine. There's some immediate counterplay I can leverage: if I spend some mana on a Free Aim shot at his mine, it'll do massive damage to the whole pack of enemies, and previous encounters have taught me his elemental resistances. But his signature attack calls down a delayed lightning strike with a narrow dodge window. If I perfectly parry, I'll get a sliver of mana, and if I fail, I almost instantly die. Nearly every fight I wasn't overleveled for cranked up the stakes to noxious thresholds this way—nail the dodge timing for the chance to proceed as normal or it's back to the last checkpoint.

Git gud, right? I'd accept that reproach for a lot of games, but the trial-and-error rote memorization needed to reach credits in Clair Obscur frustrated me not just because it was constantly demanding, but because it drowned out the fantastic turn-based core.

Character playstyles are radically different from one another; Monoco plays a bit like Final Fantasy's blue mage, collecting enemy attacks and empowering them at the whim of a constantly spinning wheel, while Maelle is a stance-dancing fencer who struggles to stay in a fleeting Virtuoso stance that triples her damage. I grew attached to the cast and struggled to choose my party of three because I found each character so fun. But as much as I tried to line up different status effect combos and outfit my team with different passives to complement their strengths, Clair Obscur never gave me much feedback.

It's easy enough to get your party dishing out 9,999 damage regularly—the cap for most of the game—and while I struggled on nearly every boss fight, I never overcame them by adjusting my strategy. I always won because I memorized their animations and parried at the right moment every time.

The real-time half and the turn-based half feel at odds, even if there are ways they serve each other. I admit it's fun to discover a secret weak point with the Free Aim shot or parry a flurry of attacks, flooding my mana pool with more than I could possibly spend in a turn. But because the game punishes a missed dodge so harshly and all I got for tightening my strategy was slightly shorter fights, it felt optimal to walk into any given battle with the intent to lose, memorize the enemy's attacks, and return to slap them around.

Clair Obscur ultimately seemed uninterested in my build altogether, sometimes feeling more like a rhythm game with a JRPG awkwardly stapled onto it.

Growing Pains

Clair Obscur bills itself as an evolution of the JRPG, but beyond its surreal world and changes to combat, it's mostly business as usual, albeit streamlined. Exploration is split between a sprawling overworld map and smaller, self-contained zones, and enemies slowly patrol your path to the nearest objective waiting to be trounced. These encounters can be safely avoided for the most part, though you're likely to fall behind on levels if you avoid everything. That said, there's hardly a grind in this game, partially because there are no random encounters, and partially because it's astoundingly short for an RPG, clocking in at around 20 hours.

I imagine whether that's a good or a bad thing depends on your work schedule and the size of your backlog, but I found it refreshingly fast-paced and lean.

The streamlining continues in the world of inventory and party management; that is to say, there barely is any. Instead of buying or looting potions, you have a limited supply which replenishes each checkpoint. You accrue weapons which scale with different stats and passive-granting Pictos, each of which are easily swapped and reallocated between fights. It's all frictionless and slight, with the emphasis staying on the battles and cutscenes. Had the game been longer I might have wanted more, but the credits rolled before I could get antsy.

That's what leaves me in a tough spot with Clair Obscur. The world and characters charmed me. The big goofy balloon man flying my party around not-France. The tragic and convoluted story of the Paintress. The capricious, shapeshifting vendors that only show their whole stock if you can beat them in a fight. It's all strange and arresting, really baguetting a double-take in a sea of games starring anime teenagers getting their deicide on.

The score ping-pongs between swelling orchestras, roaring electric guitars, and '80s pop, and every environment I explored was radically different from the last. I feel like I should be chomping at the bit for another adventure in this world, but the majority of my time was spent wrestling with its battle system, undermined by real-time additions that feel like solutions in search of a problem. My affection for everyone in Expedition 33 was drowned out by the exhaustion I felt keeping them alive. Even as short as the game is, I sighed a breath of relief when it was finally over.

Time travel is perhaps the most deliciously compelling of all the sci-fi conceits because it taps into something so incredibly human and primal that we're all burdened with: regret. By turning back the clock, we can fix all of our mistakes. A better version of our lives is just one time jump away—at least in Wadjet Eye's brilliant new adventure game, Old Skies.

Not for Fia Quinn, though. A ChronoZen agent in 2060s New York, she serves as guide, bodyguard and fixer for tourists with enough money to book some time in the past. In this tantalisingly close future, she gets to watch people make their time tweaks, and all the changes they create just wash over her.

See, like her fellow ChronoZen agents—and important historical events, people and even buildings—Fia's chronolocked. This means she's unaltered by the constant changes to the timeline—even her personal timeline. One moment, she might have a spouse and a child who she's never technically met before, the next she's a free-spirited party girl. But from her perspective, she's always the same Fia—immutable, diligent, lonely and dedicated entirely to the job.

As we enter Fia's life, she's an experienced, busy agent helping her clients fix their present by exploring the past. It's a job that tends to come with complications. Sometimes clients go rogue. Simple missions might get tangled up in elaborate mysteries. And then there's the risk of getting shot in the head—something that happens repeatedly. It's a good thing her handler, Nozzo, always has a finger hovering over that rewind button.

Old Skies' conundrums are not the sort of thing that'll lead to your own head wounds, as you smash your face against the keyboard. Indeed, most of the time they're pretty simple—at least compared to the ridiculous leaps that so many other point and clicks expect you to make. Logic and common sense will keep you moving forward at a good clip, most of the time. But the puzzles are also frequently tactile and playful, and crucially they don't forget that you're a time traveller.

Sometimes that means you can resolve obstacles simply by searching the historical record. Other times, it means you'll need to hop between two different time periods, making changes in the past to solve problems at a later date. One of my favourites sees you trying to save your own life in 30 minutes by creating a life-saving drug that doesn't exist yet, using ingredients that have ceased to exist.

I took a few notes here and there, but mostly because middle age has stolen my ability to remember things for more than a minute. Like most Wadjet Eye games, especially those created by Dave Gilbert, the puzzles are fun rather than challenging. But the end result is largely the same: I always feel incredibly satisfied. I might not feel like a genius for solving them, but they're still clever and fulfilling.

One thing that is a little different from the rest of Wadjet Eye's oeuvre is the art. Artist Ben Chandler's vibrant, hand-painted backgrounds persist, but the character art has made the switch from intricate pixel art to something more evocative of a comic book: bold colours, thick lines, and a hand-drawn, sketched quality. I thought I'd miss the classic pixels more, but this new style is so confident and the characters so lively that I grew to dig it just as much.

Storytime

The art, puzzles and Thomas Regin's jazzy, bluesy score all contribute towards this being another feather in Wadjet Eye's cap, but I found myself even more smitten than usual this time, elevated as Old Skies is by the potency of the writing and the large cast's phenomenal performances. Gilbert's adventure games have never let me down in this regard, but this feels like a notable leap forward.

The missions initially have an anthology-like vibe—each a discrete adventure set in a different era, but always in New York. They are intimate examinations of human nature, but equally stories about the changing face of the city that Gilbert has spent his career depicting. These aren't really our stories, though. Like Fia, we are observers and facilitators. At first, anyway.

But Old Skies slowly grows into a cohesive story of love, loss and regret that started to punch me in the gut with alarming regularity. There were a few points where I simply had to stop playing for a wee bit to regain my composure. As Fia develops more agency, more personal connections, a desire to have a real life rather than just being stuck in the eye of the storm, surrounded by an ever-changing reality, Old Skies truly becomes something special.

My heart shattered into a million tiny pieces as I listened to her recite her mantra, "Focus on the job", after she'd once again had a chance at a sliver of happiness mercilessly ripped away from her by another change in the timeline. Rather than devolving into melodrama, Sally Beaumont's understated performance is uncomfortably real—you can feel Fia's composure and experience as she tries to move on, but also her weariness, and the cracks snaking across the surface of the walls she's been maintaining for all these years.

Her journey from composed workaholic to tragic hero chips away at all the sci-fi gizmos and macguffins until you've just got this incredibly heartfelt story. Too many time-hopping adventures—especially videogame ones—get lost in the high-stakes, sci-fi nonsense, but Old Skies is far more interested in familiar, evocative human stories, finding the root of what makes time travel such a gripping concept, and then keeping that at the heart of everything.

It's beautiful, sad and one of my favourite adventure games.

When I sat down to play Lost Records: Bloom & Rage’s Tape 2, I was surprised just how much anticipation I felt. Over two months since the release of its first part, Bloom, the quartet of punk girls finding themselves through riot grrrl had sunk into my heart. How could they not when I saw so much of myself—who I was, who I wanted to be—in them.

Tape 1 ended in a messy but emotional climax that revealed Kat, the weird girl of the group who makes zines and feels like the small town is killing her, is indeed dying. Leukemia. Much in the mold of Stand By Me, it was obvious this would be everyone's last summer together, though with supernatural elements and many questions left unanswered, a part of me hoped that we could amend this past, record over the tape, or rewind to some point that would change things. Tape 2, Rage, instead leaves mostly dead space.

I want to draw out the wordplay. It’s mimetic how Tape 2 arrives after delays that belie some development problems. Bugs give it away, and so does the short length. Tape 2 is not a whole second part, but a third act. It feels like its flame is burning up too bright, too soon. And so is Kat’s, right? There’s some probably unintentional meaning there, and it affects me, though I’m left wanting to see all that could have been if both Don't Nod Montreal and Kat had more time.

Tape 2 adds very little new to engage with. As in Bloom, I pick up intricately modeled objects around the levels, examine them, and find clues to the story and puzzles. I also use Swann’s camcorder to record these memories and edit together videos. There are gestures towards some iteration that could’ve been (in one scene Nora misremembers a story and time is rewound like a tape) but there is ultimately very little play in Tape 2.

At least half of the four hours must have been spent in cutscenes, which did still offer me dialogue choices that continued to shape my relationships to each girl, but were edited together with more noticeable gaps and continuity errors. It starts to look like an unintentional '90s homage to Xenogears and its infamously curtailed disc 2 that was all visual novel instead of JRPG.

While there's little for me to actually do, Tape 2 does reach its narrative and thematic conclusion. It still feels too fast, but this is almost appropriate given Kat's dwindling vitality. And while I have not yet read closely the many branches that the ending accommodates to consider how much can change in response to the player, I can see how the ending is shaped around the relationships I chose to prioritize. I don’t think there’s any bad ending, but some emphasize the bigger themes the game is interested in. And those are worth talking about.

It is not just Kat who must die. In the finale each girl is beaten, chased, harassed, and torn from girlhood, the impetus for their coming-of-age being the death of their innocence to the violence in the world. This grows from the discordant undertones of nostalgia heard in Tape 1. It shows gay bashing and intimate partner violence as much a part of a nostalgia for the '90s that remains unspoken, but not unremembered.

Lost Records makes its protagonists feel as viscerally strong as the movement—empowered by riot grrrl and feminism and makeup and each other—and as weak as the children they are—powerless to remain together once Swann’s family moves away at the end of the summer. There is another axis. Not powerless, but consigned to be abused. Ultimately, what the quartet rebels against with their songs, their hair, their makeup, their clothes, their friendship, and their intimacy is the violence of men.

In the present day Nora recalls how we snuck into Kat’s house, broke her out to watch the meteor shower. She offers me a cigarette outside the bar but I decline. I pick up her lighter, turn it over. When she was 16, Nora sang about how small the man was who called her a dyke. She had probably seen Fire Walk With Me when it came out a few years earlier, far too young to understand but woman enough to know what Lynch saw beneath Americana. Now 27 years later she has scratched the title, Laura Palmer’s fate, onto another disposable body.

And this is why Lost Records’ nostalgia in Tape 1 has been resonant to so many queer and trans women playing it this year, why these memories are different from the conservative kind snaking through games culture today. It’s all ephemeral. We don’t hold onto it. Don’t repeat those violences. We realize something like no other has been missing since we were young. Something that can’t be replaced.

And it's why Tape 2's fire is as much a form of nostalgia as the trinkets and movie rentals. They say boys will be boys: Log on to dox a streamer, harass a dev, rage against a world that let the ashes fly. They never forgot the violence of the ‘90s. They just miss the flame.

When it comes to ultimate sim racing immersion, the tippity-top of racing wheel tech is widely considered to be direct drive. Attaching a wheel directly to a powerful electric motor results in instantaneous and highly-detailed feedback, the sort you'd receive if you really were at the helm of a fearsome, fire-breathing speed machine.

Trouble is, they're expensive. Thrustmaster, however, has been a name in the racing wheel space for some time, and is known for delivering belt and hybrid-drive offerings for very reasonable money. Now it's released the Thrustmaster T598, a direct drive racing wheel bundle with a few tricks up its sleeve—the first being the price.

For $499/£450, you get a direct drive wheelbase, a wheel rim, and an all-metal pedal set, which is downright astonishing for the cash. On paper, at least. Granted, it's not exactly money you might find down the back of the couch, but I was similarly astonished when I reviewed the Moza R5 bundle, which was then available for a very similar MSRP.

Its price has varied since, but it's still our top recommendation for the best budget direct drive racing wheel. An overbuilt, premium-feeling bit of kit, the little Moza has been my go-to sim racing companion ever since I first got my hands on it, so I was anxious to see what Thrustmaster was bringing to the party for similar cash.

Which brings me to the second trick in the T598's repertoire. While the Moza delivers a maximum of 5 Nm of torque to your fingertips, the T598 makes use of a direct axial drive motor to deliver what it describes as 5 Nm of torque with an overshoot capability of +100%.

In essence, it's able to boost the torque up to 10 Nm for brief moments—like simulating the sort of snap oversteer that attempts to wrench the wheel from your grip when you mess up a corner.

Axial flux direct drive motors have their magnets aligned in parallel with the axis of the wheel, as opposed to the radial flux motors used in other direct drive wheels, which have magnets mounted in parallel with the wheel shaft. Thrustmaster says that an axial flux motor is able to deliver more responsive feedback than traditional, radial flux motors, and eliminates "cogging."

This is a phenomenon whereby the magnets aligned with the internal stator in a regular radial flux motor can cause a jerky, uneven sensation in the wheel movement, particularly at low speeds. It's not something I've found particularly bothersome in direct drive wheels I've used to date, but hey, getting rid of it entirely sounds like a good thing to me.

There are some downsides to this tech, however, and the main one is size. The T598's wheelbase unit is a seriously chonky affair, and makes for a desk-dominating addition to a regular setup. It's an unwieldy object, and one that I wouldn't be too keen to keep in place for any longer than I needed to as a result.

Included are two plastic desk clamps that slot into a screw-in lower metal frame, and I spent some time puzzling over the fitting instructions. Essentially, they're connected to the wheelbase primarily by the clamping force created when mounting them to the desk.

There's a plastic tab that slots into a corresponding hole in the base to let you know you've oriented them correctly, but it's not a confidence-inspiring thing to do when dealing with a unit of this size and weight.

Once secured the mounts feel fairly robust, although I question the use of plastic-on-plastic in the construction. A plastic screw grinding in a plastic socket doesn't feel like the strongest or most high-quality mounting solution Thrustmaster could have come up with, and the fact the clamps don't secure to the base independently raises an eyebrow. Still, money has to be saved somewhere, I suppose.

Where it really shouldn't have been saved, however, is the wheel rim itself. While the rubber grips initially feel good, the wheel rim is hollow plastic—and significant sections of the outer diameter are left gripless, which reveals the tinny-feeling material underneath. The paddles are metal, but have a significant amount of flex that initially made me think they were plastic, and the various buttons are of the thin and rattly variety.

The T598's Raceline Pedal set is much better. It's an all-metal-construction, two pedal affair, with three adjustment notches and spare springs for tension and pedal feel.

While the brake pedal lacks a piston-like load cell solution, a polyurethane stopping ring is included (along with a firmer spring) that performs a decent impression of one, giving a solid amount of resistance to the travel and an obvious end point for brake-stamping moments.

A pet peeve of mine is an unsatisfying brake pedal, but the solid construction and adjustments on offer here makes the Thrustmaster's offering better than many other cheap units. There's no flex in the bottom plate, and a set of saw-toothed add-on grips gamely suggest that the pedals won't go backwards if you use them on a carpeted floor.

This doesn't really work out in practice, as I still find them travelling away from me in heated moments. I'd still suggest you wedge something behind the pedals if you're not attaching them to a sim rig, but it's a nice attempt to solve a universal problem, regardless.

So, to racing. The pedals attach to the T598 wheelbase with an included proprietary cable, the wheelbase connects to a PC with an included (and may I say, very high-quality) USB Type-A cable, and off to the virtual track we go. The whole kit and caboodle is controlled by My Thrustmaster Panel, which immediately recognises the wheel and updates the firmware automatically. Thanks, MTP.

However, navigating to the main settings tab reveals a "coming soon" page. You can still check the inputs are working and the wheel is aligned correctly in a separate menu, but the placeholder page encourages you to use the onboard wheel settings menu to adjust the force feedback gain using the included display and wheel buttons.

Which is not a particularly intuitive process. Fiddly menus, thin plastic face buttons, and a tiny little screen with abbreviated menu titles combine to create a frustrating adjustment experience, although for what it's worth the wheel itself works fine with the default options out of the box.

Whacking the feedback gain up to 100% and jumping into Assetto Corsa Evo, I have to say the axial drive motor on offer here really is capable of delivering a lot of detail. Kerbs rumble, track surfaces are communicated through your fingertips, and the difference between a good set of tires and a bad set is night and day. All as it should be.

And as for the 5 Nm's worth of overshoot? I'm not entirely sure I can feel it in action. The T598 is certainly capable of throwing you about, but I can't honestly say it feels any more powerful than the Moza, which is a bit of a disappointment given just how much extra desk space is taken up by the Thrustmaster's huge electric motor.

That being said, when it comes to feel I'd say it's equivalent. By which I mean, pretty fantastic. It does an excellent job of conveying what the front tires are doing at all times, along with that spooky, direct drive-enhanced sensation that your rear wheels are ever-present behind you, even though they exist purely in the virtual ether.

The whole experience is spoiled, however, by that cheap-feeling wheel rim. Keeping my hands in the ten and two o'clock positions means I'm in rubber grip territory, which feels decent. Move a hand up into the middle or bottom of the wheel and suddenly I find myself in hollow plastic land, complete with screw holes on the back of the rim I can feel with my fingertips.

Worse than that, there's a seam running around the inside of the rim which ranges in feel from distracting, to downright palm-chafing. Two pieces of plastic meet right in the spot where your thumb and forefinger rest, which left me with sore hands and visible marks after a few hours' use.

Those shifter paddles aren't wonderful, either. Serviceable, sure, but I can't help but feel you should get more for your money than this, even if it is a "budget" product.

The wheel rim just isn't satisfying to use, and lets the entire experience down. If you're buying a direct drive setup, you're spending a significant amount of cash on a motor system that delivers the maximum amount of immersion.

Experiencing that immersion through a cheap-feeling wheel rim is a bit like eating a steak with plastic cutlery—the base experience is roughly the same, but you know it'd be so much better with a higher-quality set of, err, utensils.

Of course, Thrustmaster will sell you different wheel rims to fit on the direct axial drive base, ranging from Ferrari-tie-in F1 style models to more traditional fare. But the point is, you're paying for a sim racing-ready direct drive bundle, and with this wheel attached to it, I don't think it is.

Which leaves this review in an awkward position. While the base and the pedals are fantastic for the cash, I can't really recommend the T598 bundle without also recommending you swap out the wheel, which increases the price significantly. Whereas budget offerings from Moza and Fantatec feel like the whole package, wheel and all, straight out of the box.

Alright, you'll probably want to spend a little extra cash on a proper brake load cell kit, as budget direct drive wheel bundles still leave them out of the package, for reasons that remain unclear.

That's it, though. Job done, a-sim-racing you shall go. Which, now I've finished writing this review, I'm going to be doing this weekend. But with the Moza, and a wheel that feels worthy of a fully-fledged racing machine.