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Steady now, you’re looking a bit ray-traced CD Projekt RED have pushed out another hotfix forThe Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s ever-so-slightly borked next-gen update that was released last week. You can expect some extra stability compared to the previous version of the update, something that’ll always be welcome on my PC. Along with Roach’s early Christmas present of some stabilisers, the hotfix also tackles the annoying bug that caused toxicity to bestuck at max level, along with some minor tweaks to photo mode, and unexplained improvements for The Witcher 3’s performance on Steam Deck....

A Short Sail? A lot of games about ships seem dour to me, because the wind is a fickle method of propulsion and because slowly revolving around enemies during slow cannon-fire combat is dull. By contrast,Sail Forthlooks more my speed, with its enormous sea creatures, secretive faction of frogs in submarines, and a wind system itd developers claim is “deeply accessible”. It’s out now and there’s a launch trailer below....

Midnight, one more night without sleeping Tradition is a transformative power. Often unintentionally, something happens during an event and, if people want, it becomes more than an occurrence, it becomes part of the event. They repeat it, and they share it with other people in their lives and hearts, and the tradition grows. Often the original food/game/gesture/saying/joke/whatever had nothing to do with the event’s core, and that doesn’t matter. Sometimes it simply brings joy and feels right....

Getting a few rounds in Creepy stealth festGloomwoodsnuck into early access a few months ago and made fans of immersive sims look out from under their hoods - but sadly the work-in-progress won’t let you slip past its city gates. With Gloomwood’s final update for this year, though, you can at least nip in the local tavern now. Only, it seems there’s something pretty nasty dwelling inside its presumably one-star walls....

Division 2 is a fully voiced slice of a mod that revives Valve’s early concepts for the game Sometimes, I like to daydream about what games could have been like if they’d taken another direction during development. Raising The Bar: Redux is exactly that, a reimagining ofHalf-Life 2as though Valve never dropped their original concepts for the sci-fi shooter sequel. The next instalment in the modding project to bring that abandoned game to life, Division 2, is releasing soon....

Square eyes Nope, you don’t need to get your eyes tested.Alt254is a minimalist action adventure game that plays out on a small (albeit greatly enlarged) map that measures just 21x26 pixels. In this tiny space, you, a black dot, must venture forth, solving puzzles, deciphering the strange, colourful world around you and piecing together your broken memory along the way. It’s a very enigmatic little game, but one that’s instantly charming in its old-school vibes and artfully constructed world....

And a promising showing for Nvidia’s RTX Remix mod tools If I were a PC graphics bigwig, choosing which aged game to spruce up withray tracingas an elaborate mod tools advert, I wouldn’t have gone for one with as timeless an aesthetic asPortal’s. Maybe that’s why I’m not one –Portal with RTXis a gorgeous return to Aperture Science, a borderline must-play for anyone with a premium GeForce RTX GPU, and a mightily impressive demonstration of the Nvidia RTX Remix tools that built it....

Seven years of development and still going Chained Echoesis a retro Japanese-inspired RPG set in a world of dragons and mech suits. It seemingly already has the scope of the 16-bit games that inspired it, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t post-release updates to come. Its developer is now working on a New Game Plus mode. In terms of future content plans, “Matthias is currently working on NG+ and some smaller Quality of Life improvements,” says the post....

Fill your boots Have you considered that the real pleasure of PC gaming lies in buying games, installing them, and then playing them for one hour or not at all? If so, then good news! The Steam winter sale has begun, offering discounts on thousands of games you can add to your backlog. The sale runs from today until January 5th at 10 am PT/1pm ET/6pm GMT overat the Steam store....

A bunch of paid skins are the result of a crossover with Capcom’s series I expect the life of the average person in ninth-century England was a lot tougher than the fantastical future full of video games we inhabit more than a millennium later. Well, Ubisoft and Capcom have teamed up to make the lives of digital peasants even harder, by shoving someMonster HunterWorld themed gubbins intoAssassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Have a watch of the trailer below to see just how bizarre this crossover is....

Not a one-man act As we enter the end of year and awards season, it would be remiss not to revisit FMV match-cutting three-movies-in-one detective gameImmortality, one of the most innovative and thought-provoking games I played this year. But given the game’s subject centres on the depiction of women on film, and their exploitation in the film industry by male creators, it felt appropriate to examine it from the extremely talented femme members of the team....

In space, no one can hear you escape your old life For day 22 of our RPS Advent Calendar, we’re going to make a break for it. Let’s escape our enforced drudgery and make a new life for ourselves, out on the outer reaches of space in a lawless space station where we can be anything we want! Have fun existing at the fringes of interstellar society inCitizen Sleeper! In Citizen Sleeper, you play as a digital consciousness in an android body called a Sleeper, who has just escaped the clutches of a megacorp who’s now determined to hunt you down and get you back....

It’ll arrive in January The Division 2’sSteam page is live now, though there’s no information on it yet about what Steam connected features it might support. Ubisoftannounced last monththat their games would return to Steam beginning with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on December 6th and following withAnno 1800andRoller Championsshortly thereafter. At the time, a Ubisoft spokesperson said that the change was because they were “constantly evaluating how to bring our games to different audiences wherever they are....