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Today, the public beta for Steam China launched. While the global version of Steam has been available in the country for ages, it's lived in a strange legal limbo due to the country's strict media regulations. Steam China is an effort from Valve and Chinese game publisher Perfect World to make a platform that's compliant with these regulations, and will mean Chinese players have their own servers to play on too. For now, it seems both versions of Steam will coexist in China, though there are still concerns that normal Steam could be blocked down the line.

Nioh 2: The Complete Edition is a punishing action-RPG, but since it launched a few days ago, it's become clear it still has a few challenges to overcome itself. Players have reported frame rate drops even on high-end PCs, crashes on startup, as well as incorrect keyboard and mouse prompts.

Thankfully, the devs have announced they're on the case, with updates planned for February and March to fix these issues.

Corsair's Vengeance LPX RAM has sat at the heart of many a gaming PC I've built over the years, and it's my go-to recommendation for anyone looking to upgrade their RAM. Happily, Newegg have a new promo code offer over in the US that lets you save an extra $16 on a 16GB LPX kit at the moment, bringing this once $92 set down to a much more agreeable $76. You'll need to hurry, though, as this deal will expire at the end of the day.

I know I've said in the past how much I love having a second display attached to my PC and laptop, but man alive, there's something uniquely sinister about having seven of them unfold from a single machine. And yet that's precisely what Expanscape's done with their Aurora 7 prototype. I should stress, this isn't a gaming laptop, but a "proper mobile security operations center", according to Expanscape's website - although it does have an Nvidia GTX 1060 chip inside it if you did fancy having a cheeky Hades run on the sly. I mean, it's not like you're short on screens, is it?

The CEO of Terraria developers ReLogic says they're binning the planned Stadia release, after Google disabled his account without explanation and he's been unable to get it back. Andrew Spinks is sick of 'em, and publicly said "I will not be involved with a corporation that values their customers and partners so little." Goodness me.

This morning, CD Projekt Red revealed they've fallen victim to a cyber attack. Yesterday, they discovered an unknown hacker had gained "unauthorised access to [their] internal network", leaving a ransom note claiming they'd nabbed full copies of the source codes for Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3 and Gwent, as well as internal legal documents. At this time, CDPR don't believe any personal player data has been taken. They're still investigating the incident.

I’ve never really been one for pre-packaged emotes in games. There’s just some deep-seated arrogance in me, which always sneered at the idea of a piece of software boiling down all the vastly different ways I might react to a situation into five or six cutesy, pre-packaged sentiments, and letting me have no further say in the matter.

But then I met Hearthstone’s ‘Sweating Panda’ emote, and now everything has changed. Blizzard, it turns out, knew me better than I knew myself all along.

I've been on quite a Matrix kick as of late. Maybe it's the whole being confined to my dingy flat for months on end thing, but the idea of plugging my noggin into a new world feels quite appealing. I've watched the three movies, and even dipped into the Animatrix. Given just how influential The Matrix has been, it's surprising there haven't been more video game adaptations. It seems like a no-brainer for The Matrix to spin off into video games, but other than an online game and a Max-Payne homage called Enter the Matrix, there's not been much. But there was 2005's The Matrix: Path Of Neo.

This year's big live bowling match is over I gather, so Cyanide Studio are looking forward to their own sporting game Blood Bowl 3. In a new trailer for the orc and elf football game, the creators say that it will launch in August this year.

Lots of gaming conventions and events were cancelled last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, including E3. Unlike other events that ended up going online, the Entertainment Software Association announced the event was fully cancelled in 2020 and would return in 2021. E3's organisers have confirmed that they will be putting together an online E3 this year.

Forza Horizon 4 is busting out of the Microsoft Store and making its way to Steam. Playground Games have announced that their British racing festival will make its way to the new store in March with DLCs sold separately and cross-platform multiplayer.

In the 90s, the largest figure in video gaming on telly was the giant cyborg head of Sir Patrick Moore, the president of the British Astronomical Association and a Commander of the Most Excellent Order Of The British Empire. I swear this is not some twee British joke. The show was named GamesMaster, and now Channel 4 are looking at 'rebooting' it with a focus on celebrities battling to win that coveted Golden Joystick. But which celebrity baldie can fill the role of GamesMaster this time?

The folks of Failbetter Games announced the next story-based adventure in their Fallen London universe in December. They're now kicking off a Kickstarter campaign for Mask Of The Rose, a visual novel set in their gothic, underground London setting. It's to be part romance and part detective story following several characters as they navigate the newly underground and destroyed London.

It's been a little while since Epic Games announced a new store exclusive. Some of you may be happier with that than others, given their exclusivity deals have been a little bit cursed previously. However, they certainly aren't slowing down on those schloosies: rather, it seems Epic plans on releasing loads more in the not-so distant future. This weekend, they revealed they have more exclusives than ever arriving on the Epic Games Store over the next couple of years.

Starbound is somehow eight years old, but with its gentle nature, pixelly graphics, and procedural exploration, it hasn’t aged too badly. If it were released today, the biggest issues would be that it feels a little bit empty and underbaked. It needs more things to do, more ships to encounter, more planets to land on. Just more. And that’s what we have here.

Robot-fueled French revolution game SteelRising was first announced last summer and it seems those folks at Spiders may be spinning this one up somewhat soon. They're planning a playtest for their next action-RPG and inviting you along to try it out if you like.

If the PS4 version of punishing action-RPG Nioh 2 is a baby-faced samurai with one or two chest hairs, Nioh 2: The Complete Edition is the same warrior, but after a few years in the dojo. They sport 5 o'clock shadow now, they've mastered three swords, they're nimbler. And, of course, it's still very difficult to beat them.

The WD Blue SN550 continues to be one of the best SSDs for gaming you can buy right now, as it's not only extremely nippy but also excellent value - particularly now the 1TB model can be had for as little as £85, too.

I like little things. I mean, I like big things, obviously, but I also like tiny models almost as much. I had a dolls house when I was little and my favourite thing was the kitchen, because it had tiny beans and carrots in tiny pans of water, and tiny bottles of milk and loaves of bread, and even a tiny mouse because my dolls had terrible tiny hygeine, I guess.

So I love games that feel like minatures, like Bad North, which I love for how small everything is, including the sound design for your tiny soldiers' little marching feetsies. And so I love the little almost-alive dioramas of Tiny Lands.

If you dig the idea of carving out a life on a post-apocalyptic island but are less keen on repeatedly getting your bare arse shot off by kitted-out marauders, you might be interested in Rust's new 'Softcore' mode. The survival sandbox game has introduced servers with friendlier changes including letting players spawn in NPC-controlled safe zones and not losing all their items when they die. The game's had a huge surge of new players lately, so it's good to finally see this.

The fact that Age Of Empires 2 has a fresh expansion pack, more than two decades after it first came out, is something I’m inevitably well happy with. The release of Lords Of The West is clear confirmation that AoE2’s experimental resurrection has been a success: the monster lives, and it’s going to get continued support from its creator and patron, Doctor Microsoft. This feels good. It feels deserved, even. AoE2’s Definitive Edition has dominated my gaming time over the last year, even more than the original dominated my teens, and I’m thrilled at this sign that it’s sticking around.

But however pleasing it is that the expansion exists at all, my feelings are a little more reserved about Lords Of The West itself. I’ve been rinsing it, both in ranked and single player modes, for nearly two weeks now, so I’ve had plenty of time to see how it’s affected the game as a whole. And while there’s a lot about it that’s just as good as I’d hoped for, there are some surprising disappointments too. So there’s a bit of tough love here.

The writer of Disco Elysium has revealed more about the mysterious new quests coming with the detective RPG's big Final Cut update. Four "political vision quests" will explore the game's ideologicial alignments (that's communism, fascism, moralism, and ultraliberal), with consequences that might change the world or even your UI. I think I've already suffered enough consequences from my actions, thank you very much. And in the game, wahey.

Milkmaid Of The Milky Way is a really sweet little 2D point and click adventure about milkmaid whose favourite cow is alien-abducted. The Milkmaid does not take this well. It's got classic puzzle adventure game vibes, beyond even LucasArts stuff - I think it reminded me most of The Legend Of Kyrandia, if that comparison is of any use to you.

It's also entirely in rhyme.

Sundays are for curling up like a shrimp in your chair while browsing good posture practices. Let's sit upright together and read the week's best writing about videogames.

Most citybuilders cast you as a god-like city planner, laying down road networks and zoning districts upon an unblemished paradise. The Architect: Paris is different in a couple of key ways. For one, it takes place solely in an existing real city - Paris, obviously. For two, it casts you as an architect rather than an urban planner, and you remake the French capital by designing buildings rather than boulevards.

It's coming to Steam Early Access later this month and there's a new trailer below.

Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe is one of the seven wonders of PC gaming. It's a standalone remake and expansion of Chris Sawyer's management game Transport Tycoon Deluxe, it's free and open source, and after over 15 years, it's still regularly maintained. Now it should hopefully find a new audience, as it's coming to Steam for the first time on April 1st.

Factorio, the conveyor construction sim, is going to get a big expansion - although not for at least a year. This was discussed in a development update post marking the release of 1.1, the last major update for the base game.

Is this a story I'm writing as another excuse to say, "VR gaming is doing fine, actually", or is it a story I'm writing as another excuse to say, "Beat Saber is the best VR game? I'm a man of many motivations.

Beat Saber, a rhythm game and the best VR game, has sold 4 million copies and over 40 million songs via DLC, so VR is doing fine, actually.

Hitman 3 is a great game and a fitting end to one of PC gaming's best trilogies, but it has been released under a small dark cloud. Players were supposed to be able to import locations from Hitman 1 and 2, if they owned them, into the latest iteration of IO Interactive's assassin sim, but there was a change in plans related, its assumed, to Hitman 3 being an Epic Games store exclusive. Right now, three weeks after release, if you want to get Hitman 2 locations into Hitman 3, you have to re-buy Hitman 2 on Epic.

IOI have committed to finding a solution, and now say that it'll be ready before the end of February.

Final Fantasy 14's next expansion is called Endwalker, and it's coming this autumn. Revealed during a livestream last night, the expansion to the long-running MMO will also bring its story to a close while sending players to the moon. The teaser trailer makes me want to play this game I've never touched before.