Why use fans when you can cool your CPU with 8 lbs of copper?

My life is defined by two games currently: Persona 3 Portable and Breakout 13. The first is a classic tale of rebellious teens doing what needs to be done in defiance of an oppressive and unjust system. The second is also that, but FMV this time. I love them both, but there's a lot to be said for Breakout 13's tight 6-hour runtime compared to the classic Shin Megami Tensei sprawl of P3P.

Alright, there's a few differences beyond the length. No one's summoning monsters out of their mind in Breakout 13--a slickly-produced full motion adventure from a Chinese studio called ALT Lab--they're just trying to bust out of boot camp. Sent by their parents to a sinister 'gratitude centre' overseas to treat their addiction to tech and gaming, they quickly learn that the so-called school is little more than a prison, and have to overcome their mutual mistrust to get out.

It's an excellent entry in the underserved FMV genre, and I'd happily put it on the same tier as classics like Contradiction: Spot the Liar and that Gabriel Knight game starring the guy from Frasier. We don't get enough earnest, cheesy, low-budget FMV stuff these days, so I'm all for devs abroad picking up that torch. Here's hoping for Breakout 14?

MissMikkaa, the streamer who defeated the Elden Ring uber-boss Malenia using a level one character and a dance pad(opens in new tab), has yet another bizarre boss kill to her repertoire: This time, she's taken down Margit, the Fell Omen, with an acoustic guitar.

When it comes to PC gaming one of the biggest trials is keeping things cool. You can have all the power in the world packed into your case, but it's for naught without cooling. More power often means more heat thanks to that big jerk physics, and plenty of builds bottleneck due to temps, rather than capabilities. This is why we see overclockers do wild things like douse their CPUs in liquid nitrogen or use about 8 lbs (nearly 4 kgs) of solid copper.

Looking at 2023's beefy release calendar, not only do I have no idea how I'm going to have time to play everything that's piqued my interest, I'm probably not even going to have time to play all the tantalising strategy games that are heading our way. It is an extremely good problem to have.

To paraphrase Philip Larkin: They mess you up, your mum and dad. Deliver Us Mars protagonist Kathy can make a stronger case for that truism than most, having watched her father disappear off into space to save the rapidly declining planet without her, only to not actually get around to saving said dying planet thereafter. Stuck down there on an overheating homeworld full of panicking denizens, Kathy channels her childhood passion for space into an obsession with becoming an astronaut. The objective, you suspect, is to one day reunite with dad and finally ask him: "What the hell, man?"

I'm an old man, and I see some clouds that need yelling at. Over my time videogames have never felt especially well-served by mainstream television, and the last few years are the period where it's felt like this is changing. There's not just great adaptations like The Last of Us or the various Netflix shows, but games appearing more naturally in other shows as the secondary elements of life they are (kudos to Channel 4's Spaced which managed this in the late '90s).