The busy news season is just about upon us. There's no E3 this year, but that doesn't mean there are no announcements—the big publishers are hosting shows as usual, and we'll be covering each of them throughout June and July. It'll just be a bit more spread out than the typical one-week E3 extravaganza.
For our part, this year's PC Gaming Show will air on June 6, and that leaves us two more weeks to prepare. We may not be able to pack a theater this year, but you won't want to miss what we're doing instead—you might find a clue or two on Twitter.
And without further ado, here are this week's biggest stories:
I'm already tired of Rainbow Six Siege's annoying new defender
Morgan checked out what's coming next in Siege, which includes an attacker with a cool water-powered breaching gadget, and a defender with a less cool, very annoying trap.
This World of Warcraft player has 49 max-level warriors, and he isn't stopping
DesMephisto really loves warriors, and he's using his speed-leveling skills to help other players and raise autism awareness. Steven talked to him about his passion for WoW, what it was liked to be diagnosed with autism at 29, and how he helped make BlizzCon a better place.
NaturalVision Evolved makes GTA 5 look like a modern PC game
James put together a video showing off the early access version of NaturalVision Evolved—the mod is super cool, and as expected from James, the video isn't your standard graphics demo.
Sims rival Paralives shows off new character creator as Patreon support surges
Did you know that someone's making a Sims-like indie game? It was news to a lot of us when Rachel brought it up earlier this week, but it's true, and it's being funded on Patreon, oddly.
The first 8TB M.2 SSD could go a long way towards not having to uninstall games
It'll cost a fortune at first, but not forever. (The problem is that game sizes keep getting bigger, too, dang it.)
Mafia 2 and 3 Definitive Editions are out now, free for owners of the originals
We expected this after a little leak last week, but the 'definitive' versions of Mafia 2 and 3 can be downloaded now. Meanwhile, the original Mafia is getting a full remake that isn't quite ready yet.
More things we wrote
- Civilization 6 is free on the Epic Games Store
- It's ludicrous that Terraria still costs just $10
- The tiny GPD WIN Max handheld gaming PC is selling out fast
- The real world is now more ridiculous than GTA 6 could ever hope to satirize
- Watch this pro play StarCraft with a keyboard the size of a desk
- Watch clips from Arkane's cancelled Half-Life 2: Episode 4
- Sea of Thieves sails onto Steam on June 3
- Unreal Engine 5 PS5 demo runs happily on current-gen graphics cards and SSDs
New reviews this week
The 'SharkPG' wasn't Chris' favorite game of the year so far, but you do get to gobble up humans as a shark, and that'll always have a certain appeal.
Valorant vs Crucible?
Riot has spent weeks now hyping up Valorant with a closed beta that you can only get into by watching Twitch streamers. Meanwhile, Amazon, which owns Twitch, launched a shooter called Crucible this week and has hardly promoted it at all. That's kind of weird, but to each their own, I guess!
The news this week is that Valorant now has a release date: The closed beta will end on May 28, and the free-to-play release will happen on June 2. Crucible, on the other hand, is sitting at mixed average reviews on Steam. We'll have our take on it next week.
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