But while many products are good or even great, only a few reach the lofty heights of being the best. We also love a great value, and it’s awesome to see and test new products that move our industry forward. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be publishing our picks for the best hardware in each of eighteen categories. We only have one rule, and it’s that a product has to have been released in 2017 in order to qualify. Gear of the Year WinnersBest CPU of the Year: Intel Core i5-8400We will announce

That was the start of Colossal Cave Adventure, the formative text adventure game (and one of the most important games of all time ) written for the PDP-10, back when you could call something a minicomputer if it didn’t take up a whole room. Colossal Cave is old enough that it could be (and often was) simply called Adventure—in 1976, no other game had laid claim to that word, yet. But soon enough it was ported to other computers like the Commodore 64 and IBM PC, meaning you could play Colossal Ca

Dubbed Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition, the new driver package is more than an incremental update, it’s AMD’s annual overhaul that was first set in motion with Catalyst Omega at the end of 2014. Next came Crimson in 2015, followed by Crimson ReLive at the end of 2016. Smaller gains can be seen in other games, such as Titanfall 2, where latency drops from 28ms with Crimson ReLive 17.11.1 to 23ms with Adrenalin 17.12.1. As with Crimson ReLive, AMD will push for better performance with incrementa

While scouring the web for deals today, we came across a few discounted monitors, including HP’s Envy 27. It’s selling for $400 (down from $500) at a few different places, including HP’s web store, or $405 at Amazon. HP’s Envy 27 is a 27-inch monitor with an IPS panel and 4K resolution with a 60Hz refresh rate. The first is Dell’s UltraSharp U2715H, a 27-inch display with an IPS panel and a 2560×1440 resolution at 60Hz. The other model we came across is Dell’s D3218HN, a 32-inch display with a 1

Existing net neutrality laws are getting flushed down the toilet, there’s little doubt about that. Despite the protests and warnings of what could potentially follow, the FCC, led by chairman Ajit Pai, is going to strip away protections when it votes on net neutrality later this week. In place of existing rules, the FCC and FTC are partnering to police the web to make sure it doesn’t turn into the wild west afterwards. “Not only is the FCC eliminating basic net neutrality rules, but it’s joining

Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom was originally slated for release near the end of this year, but was delayed in the summer to January of 2018. “The development of our latest project, Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, is coming along very nicely and we can’t wait to share this new adventure with you, our fans. In an effort to constantly innovate, we’ve also implemented new modes in Ni no Kuni II, including the new Skirmish and Kingdom Modes,” Akihiro Hino, CEO of developer Level-5, said in a statem

Okay, that’s not actually the big one, but it’s the most amusing. Funny, yes, but the real impact (so to speak) on players is that it effectively locked them out of public events on Mercury. The Masterwork weapons announced a couple of weeks ago are also live: Legendary weapons can now drop as Masterworks for players above Power level 250, which grants them randomized bonuses and Orb generation on multikills. More importantly, they give players something else to chase, and thus a reason to keep

Off the back of a 50-percent discount on all versions of the game in November, last weekend Siege hit 100,000 concurrent players, an all-time peak. But good gadgets, good information, or good timing can counter good aim. Rainbow warriorsRainbow Six is by-definition a diverse squad: a counter-terrorism team made up of operators from around the world. With Overwatch and Dirty Bomb, Siege is one of the few shooters where you can run an all-female team; 12 of the 36 operators are women. It’s one of

The Netherlands is a nation with a long and storied history, but it will steered into Civilization 6 by a ruler of a relatively recent vintage. Queen Wilhelmina ascended to the throne in 1890, when she was just ten years of age, and led the nation through both World Wars before abdicating in 1948—a reign of nearly 58 years. (Historical side note: It’s also the name of a class of advanced air defense frigates that recently went into service with the Royal Netherlands Navy.) The Netherlands will j

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’s Not A Hero DLC was originally due in the first half of the year before being delayed, instead landing alongside its Gold Edition and End of Zoe DLC. As for what each new slice of DLC entails, End of Zoe sees players following up on Zoe Baker’s unfortunate story alongside the “mysterious outdoorsman” Joe Baker, as featured above. Not A Hero, on the other hand, stars series veteran Chris Redfield who enters the fold in the immediate aftermath of the base game’s Ethan W

As our review says, it’s a grand, sweeping adventure to lose yourself in, with a gorgeous art style based on traditional Japanese ink wash paintings. Okami is a slow game designed to be soaked in, not rushed through. If you’ve never played Okami before, you’re in for a treat. Despite widespread critical acclaim, Okami didn’t sell as well as Capcom expected in 2006 and Clover disbanded soon after. Nippon is one of the most beautiful, evocative, and original game worlds to explore on PC, and it’s

The sale itself runs till December 26, alongside the PC Gamer Collection—a gathering of our favourites, spanning two decades and multiple genres. With 20 games in total, there’s something for everyone at a price that won’t break the bank. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is the PC Gamer Collection’s most expensive game, but is arguably its most interesting. Check out the PC Gamer Collection in full over here . If you’re feeling particularly flush, grabbing all 20 games will cost you £148.95/$195.36

The Creative Assembly is clear about this: the free Skaven Laboratory update is going to break Total War: Warhammer 2. The unit size slider is the one that will really make your hardware start to creak. I set these values to max and cranked the unit size up to 10x size and then built a vast Skaven army to fight. Will these huge (if unwieldy) unit sizes end up being the norm in Total War games? The Skaven Labs update is due out this week on December 14, and should tide us to the first campaign ma

GOG’s Winter Sale is now live, bringing with it a host of special offers and, as the headline above suggests, Grim Fandango Remastered free-of-charge. The 2017 GOG Winter Sale itself runs from today through December 26, and sees a variety of top games going for great prices. Furthermore, buying games in the GOG Winter Sale lets you unlock new games, too. “Every purchase counts,” says GOG in a statement, “from winter deals through GWENT card kegs purchased via GOG Galaxy.” Check out the GOG Winte

Originally due in October, Ark’s Aberration expansion is out now—bringing with it an new underground biome, dozens of alien-like dinos and over 50 new craftable items. In turn, you should expect earthquakes, environmental pitfalls, ziplines, wingsuits, climbing gear, and, obviously, a cast of fantastically terrifying creatures. Chris bills the latter process as a “rather messy chest-birth to a squirming worm grub” that’s equally gross and fun. With new challenges and over 50 new craftable items

GTA Online’s Doomsday Heist is now live as part of the game’s latest update. The cheapest one will set you back $1.25 million of in-game cash, while the most expensive option costs $2.95 million. According to IGN, Doomsday Heist features about 12 hours of new stuff, which is about as long as I played each GTA IV expansion back in the day. In real money terms, $1.25 million of in-game money costs £12/$20 in Shark Cards. To use it as a spawn point, though, I’ll need to buy sleeping quarters on top

In his review, Chris praised Assassin’s Creed Origins’ “brilliant” setting and new systems that combine well with the series formula. Due today, update 1.1.0 introduces a new Nightmare difficulty mode and adds a new NPC scaling option that lets enemies scale up to player’s levels. Ubisoft qualifies this by saying enemies will only scale up to meet the player’s level as they progress, and will not scale down. A new ‘Horde’ mode has been added to the Arena, while HDR display is now supported for P

DayZ creator Dean Hall left Bohemia Interactive in late 2014 to found his own studio, RocketWerkz. Behind the scenes, the developer has been working on another project named Living Dark, which has now been officially unveiled with a trailer. A neo-noir adventure driven by a procedural narrative, Living Dark is yours to define.” With that, Living Dark is said to connect everything with a relationship system that influences the behaviour of “every character in the city”. Most interestingly, and th

The Winter Wonderland event returns to Overwatch tomorrow, featuring holiday-themed character skins and a new Brawl called Mei’s Yeti Hunt. But ahead of all that, Blizzard has kicked off the Overwatch “Happy Hero Days,” a series of 12 draws for sweet Overwatch swag beginning with D.Va’s Dream Bundle. We’re giving away 12 prizes in 12 days, ending with one legendary GRAND PRIZE from @Razer.DAY 1: D.Va’s Dream. Retweeting all 12 days will also get you an entry into a draw for the Razer Grandmaster

Not owning the expansion means not having access to things like the Prestige Leviathan raid or the Trials of the Nine mode. Today the dev team took to the Bungie Blog to acknowledge mistakes have been made, and explain how it’s going to clean up this latest mess. Throughout the lifetime of the Destiny Franchise, Trials has always required that players owned the latest Expansion. “To make matters worse, our team overlooked the fact that both of these mistakes disabled Trophies and Achievements fo