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The end of another Fortnite map is nigh, with Chapter 3 of the free-to-play battle royale drawing to a surprisingly early close next month. The change will coincide with the end of Season 4 in an event called Fracture, teased by devs Epic Games at the end of the Fortnite Champion Series held over the weekend. Fracture kicks off on December 3rd at 9pm GMT / 1pm PST.

Survival city-builders put the fear of God in me. There’s just something about managing an entire civilisation of people that just shreds my nerves. Managing the last group of people alive on whatever world they inhabit has me questioning my every decision like I’m cutting wires underneath a bomb.

It’s a relief then, that Floodland is a bit more chill than some of its city-building contemporaries. Gone are the humanity-ending threats like Frostpunk’s great Winter storm, forever bearing down on you and periodically tightening its grasp around your neck. Here you have a simple group of stranded civilians looking to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of an apocalyptic flood.

Crucial's rather excellent value SATA DRAM-less QLC SSD, the BX500, is down to £56 on Amazon UK from an RRP of £74. I feel that's a decent savings on a drive ideal for upgrading an older machine or as media/game storage in a new one, where money spent per gigabyte is the primary measurement of a drive's suitability. (If performance is the objective, then a faster NVMe SSD drive is the way to go.) And by that measure, this drive is almost off the scale, with a cost of just 5.6p per gigabyte.

• Get the Crucial BX500 1TB for £56 (RRP £74)

AMD's Ryzen 5000 series CPUs are getting increasingly affordable, with this week bringing rather good prices on the lowest-tier Ryzen 5 5500. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the cheapest Ryzen CPU in the lineup, but still quite a capable chip with power that's roughly equivalent to the old Ryzen 5 3600. This processor normally retails for £110, but today you can pick one up for £88 when you use code BAG20OFF.

Sundays are for crossing off Saturday on your calendar. Before you slash, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

After launching into early access in April last year, the free-to-play shooter Scavengers is closing down. Its servers will close on December 16th, with publishers Improbable pinning the cause on a "decline in the playerbase."

Last month, EA Maxis showed a few early images from Project Rene, the in-development Sims 5. They said they were showing the project early because they wanted to involve the community in its development.

Well, now it looks like someone has leaked images from a recent Sims 5 playtest, which seemingly shows a city environment with several apartments to build inside.

Next week will bring the release of Warzone 2.0, Call Of Duty's free-to-play battle royale mode, but it also marks the beginning of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's season one. With it, two new maps are coming: Shoot House, which you'll find a trailer for below, on November 16th; and sometime after that, the return of the infamous Shipment.

Final Fantasy XIV's patch 6.3 will land in January 2023, with a new one of everything. A new 8-player trial, a new unreal trial, a new ultimate raid, a new dungeon, a new 24-player Alliance Raid, plus new main scenario and side story quests. Among all of the newness are new housing wards within existing districts, allowing more players to purchase their own in-game home.

Internet's exciting this week. Reminds me of being on some video game forum in the early noughties where a moderator absolutely flips their nut and everyone runs around pulling pranks and engaging in tomfoolery, then the bans start flowing. What a weird chaotic energy. Honestly, if there had been any hint of doubt around Elon Musk, he wouldn't have played such a prominent role in my cyberpunk novel about teens saving the world with NFTs. How could I have known, those six long months ago. Wow. Egg on my face. On all our faces.

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a pretty bleak game, but it’s also really good! It’s set in Depression-era America, a time when many folks were having their assess kicked by the economy and manifest destiny. The game is about these people, specifically travellers and nomads who wander the country in search of answers. Migrant workers, preachers, poets, folk healers, Dustbowl refugees, and even men with wolf’s heads make up this cast, and it’s your job to meet these strangers and collect their stories.

Baldur’s Gate 3 devs Larian Studios are hosting another of their whimsical Panel From Hell streams in December, and they're teasing that we’ll get to find out more about the RPG threequel’s 2023 release. The broadcast will coincide with the launch of Patch 9 for Baldur’s Gate 3, although Larian are keeping schtum for now about what new things are coming to the game. Start gathering your party, folks.

Dave the Diver (character) is a bit out of practice, but he's an easygoing sort and it doesn't take much to convince him to get back in his flippers to look into the local anomaly at the behest of his arms dealer "friend", who would be clearly bad news even if his name wasn't Cobra.

Said anomaly fills with new sea creatures from all over the world every time it's visited, and possibly building-sized terror beasts and ancient merfolk, but Cobra's sure it'll all be fine, so in you go, mate. It's certainly pretty down there if nothing else, and Dave the Diver (game) is, if nothing else, a rare game that makes the usually tedious water level a bit of a treat to wander round in.

Obviously, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe in the pleasurable side of PC hardware. Building a PC (or even just swapping out a component) can be a series of lovely little tactile moments: the peeling-off of plastic wrapping, the K’nex-like click of a graphics card slotting into place, the soft whoosh of the fans on a first successful boot. Great stuff, and of course, that’s all before games start coming out of it. What’s not to like?

Oh, reader, so many things. So many, many things not to like. Gaming PCs are still only computers, after all, and computers break, often and for reasons that may be invisible to the most intensively trained eye. Introduce this volatility to a line of work that involves handling a lot of sometimes heavy, usually expensive equipment, and enjoying those little pleasures will eventually come at a cost. Namely, time spent dealing with arcane troubleshooting practices and the occasional spot of minor personal injury.

Put down any objects that might be philosophically troubling, because a sequel to brain-boggling, sci-fi action adventure Control's been confirmed by Remedy Entertainment and 505 Games. The companies have signed a deal to co-develop and co-publish Control 2, formerly known as Codename Heron, revealed in a statement shared by Remedy today. The game’s being developed in the Northlight engine, and will be published on PC by Remedy.

Being a Dragonborn in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim might have its privileges and accompanying superhuman abilities, but precognitive avoidance of incoming projectiles does not rank among them. Until now, thanks to a Special Edition mod that slows down time when arrows are flying towards your mightily voiced fantasy warrior. Enabling the Projectile Sense – Incoming Arrow & Magic Slows Time mod should give you just enough advance warning to hotfoot it out of the path of any pointy ended sticks that have been loosed and are heading your way.

I slammed back into the team chat after an appointment this morning, and Katharine asked me to take a look at the new It Takes Two merch - specifically the plushy elephant. And I was like, "Sure!" and toddled off to have a look. I was delighted! But I think Katharine was anticipating it would arouse a different emotional response in me to what it actually did, because she used the word "horrifying".

Happy 40th birthday to Microsoft Flight Simulator, which has been swooping around on PC in some form or another since 1982, as of today. To mark the occasion, devs Asobo Studio are hosting a community fly-in and heading for Chicago’s sadly demolished Meigs Field, the very first airport to feature in a Microsoft Flight Simulator game. You can join in on Twitch and Discord at 8pm GMT/9pm CET/12pm PST.

Playing games at 4K is nowhere near the fanciful cheese dream it once was. It’s still best enjoyed with a powerful graphics card, especially since so many of the best 4K gaming monitors nowadays have 120Hz or 144Hz refresh rates to take advantage of, but I’ve seen even the cheap RTX 3050 produce playable framerates at this resolution. Especially with the aid of upscaling magic like DLSS.

It’s graphics cards upgrade season, with GPU launches like the RTX 4080 and AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 series leaving some PC owners wondering if they should get a new monitor to match the capabilities of these next-gen cards. If you’ve been feeling the pressing need for a higher resolution or faster refresh rate, allow me to introduce you to the best gaming monitors around – all tested for games performance, image quality, and physical practicality by our own colourimeter-wielding hands.

EA and Dice are still trying to revive their flagging near-future military shooter Battlefield 2042 a year after launch. They’re targeting the subscription service market, together with the start of Battlefield 2042’s upcoming Season 3: Escalation in December, bringing the game to both EA Play and Microsoft’s Game Pass Ultimate. Of course, EA Play is included in regular PC Game Pass, so there's that. You can find out more by watching the development update video below.

We’ve finally got a proper look at the upcoming fantasy animated series Dragon Age: Absolution, heading to Netflix on December 9th, thanks to a new trailer. The series is made up of six half-hour episodes following Miriam, an elven mercenary, and it’s set in Tevinter. That’s where the next Dragon Age game, Dreadwolf, will take place, too. Have a watch of the trailer below.

Harvestella is a JRPG. This may seem like an incredibly obvious thing to say about a role-playing game from Square-Enix, but it’s the most important thing to know going in. Billed as a life sim RPG, and with a title that evokes farming, you could be forgiven for expecting something along the lines of Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, but with more monster biffing. Instead, Harvestella sits firmly in the epic quest camp, with your adventuring being supported by your rural activities.

Anyone looking to build a pastoral paradise is going to be sorely disappointed, as the farming elements are somewhat rudimentary. Even calling your property a farm is a bit of a stretch. Even after a few upgrades, my plot is more of a large garden, maybe an allotment, if I’m being generous.

I've been eagerly anticipating Pepper Grinder since I saw a series of tweets with GIFs several years ago. It's a pixel platformer in which the protagonist, Pepper, has a drill which she uses to plow through scenery, and a grappling hook for all the moments when she's not underground. It's now been officially announced with Devolver as publisher and there's a reveal trailer below.

Real-time tactics games have had a resurgence over the past five years, and that can be almost entirely credited to Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun. It's a gorgeous Commandos-style stealth-and-stab 'em up set during Edo period Japan. It's also currently free via the Epic Games Store.

Two Point Hospital allowed for modding via the Steam Workshop, but it only extended as far as being able to add wallpapers, rugs and a handful of other graphocs. Two Point Studios announced today that they have grander plans for their collegiate follow-up Two Point Campus. They're working on adding modding to the game, and it will include being able to add and amend in-game items.

Prison Architect continues to expand. Just a short while since the arrival of the undead comes the "Future Tech Pack". It adds a set of new technology with which to surveil and track your inmates, as well as robot dogs. You'll find a trailer below.

It's easy to place Dark Souls 2 in your crosshairs and take aim at its differences. Its map doesn't intertwine like Dark Souls 1 or 3. Lots of bosses do that thing where they summon in some mates and it's quite annoying. The atmosphere lacked that magic glaze. And yet, its quirks and frustrations make it one of my favourites.

I toyed around with this intro a lot, because I didn’t want to start with a super pessimistic bang. But, for lack of a nicer way to put it, I’ll simply say things are looking pretty scary out there, huh? Capitalism is failing, the economy is crumbling, and normal people have nothing left to give. It’s something I've been thinking about a lot lately, but I don’t really talk about it. I keep it all inside, like a microwave holding a ball of tin foil while it spins on full power.

At least, that was the case until I played Citizen Sleeper. It’s a rather simple RPG inspired by tabletop roleplaying games, giving you a limited number of action dice that you can spend each day to receive consequences. Mechanically, it doesn’t stretch much further than those actions and consequences, meaning I can instead focus on connecting with characters. In its simplicity, I found a cathartic way to process my thoughts on lots of scary stuff happening in our actual world. I also realised that Starfield, the big space game looming on the horizon which I was previously pretty excited about, just doesn’t seem appealing anymore.

Lunistice is a 3D platformer inspired by the PSX/Sega Saturn era, but its high-speed movement reminds me of Sonic’s 3D adventures, in a good way. Out today on PC and Switch, it was originally developed by solo dev A Grumpy Fox as a small 30-day project, but it quickly ballooned into something larger. It's now been over a year since A Grumpy Fox first started work on the game, but I think you can agree from the announcement trailer below, it's been time well spent.