Gamer Christmas has come and gone and with nothing left in the year but weird ports and whatever HEART of CROWN Online is, it's time to not only reflect on the year gone by but what to expect in the coming year. With that said...

Geoff Keighley's Gacha Game and Muppet Showcase Spectacular!

Another year, another mildly embarrassing Game Awards show. I watch this stupid thing every year and it always disappoints, not just in announcements but also in how the awards are presented. If they aren’t just rapidly awarded in bulk on the pre-show, they’re given 30 seconds of speech time before being played off. Now, it wasn’t an absolute disaster like prior years, but it still had its cringe moments between Geoff implying physical relations with a pig puppet and the cast of Street Fighter clearly hitting the bar before presenting. Still, there were some announcements of note, and so I thought I’d give my… uh, thoughts on some of the biggest and more interesting reveals.

Divinity

Probably the biggest announcement of the show and the game I’m most excited about, but it’s also the game that’s the furthest away from releasing. I suspect we aren’t getting our hands on Larian’s next game until 2028 at the absolute earliest, and probably only in Early Access. Still, this is Larian’s next game and without the shackles of the DnD licence. I just wish it was coming out a little sooner.

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the show was a Casey Hudson-led sequel to Knights of the Old Republic. I am not as fatigued with Star Wars as I once was a few years ago, but I’m not exactly chomping at the bit for more Star Wars. I enjoyed KOTOR 1 and 2, and I love Mass Effect, so I am at least interested in FOTOR, even if this game will also be several years off at best.

Resident Evil Requiem feat. Leon S. Kennedy.

Between 2 Remake and 4 Remake, I am kinda done with seeing Leon in a Resident Evil game for a while, so seeing him not only appear in RE9 but be playable did not fill me with excitement. What actually filled me with worry and dread was the detail that Grace will be focused on horror while Leon will be focused on action. The last time they did this split-theme campaign was Resident Evil 6, which was a game so horrifically terrible that they had to make Resident Evil 7 as an apology. I’m still excited for Requiem, but it did put a damper on my hype.

Bradley the Badger

Ehhhhhhhh, I don’t know about this one. This honestly feels like a Gex/Bubsy-level mascot platformer with Deadpool-style fourth-wall-breaking humour, which is a bad combo when done badly. I’ll give this one a try since original 3D platformers are so rare these days, but I do not have high hopes for this.

Order of the Sinking Star

Jonathan Blow is pretty much the king of pretentious indie developers, but he does make good puzzle games. This one looks a little bit more traditional than his usual work, and the claim of having over 1,000 puzzles leads me to believe this might be at least partially randomly generated, which is never good for a puzzle game. Still, his pedigree gives him the benefit of the doubt to try it.

Gang of Dragon

I find it very amusing that the Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi left Sega and the Yakuza IP behind just so he could start his own studio… to make more Yakuza-like games. It looks good, but it’s gonna need to be a lot more than “Yakuza with the numbers filed off”.

Orbitals

Probably the coolest-looking thing I saw. This is a 70s–80s anime-styled co-op platformer similar in vein to It Takes Two, but it’s exclusive to Switch 2, so I doubt I’ll be able to play it with a friend any time soon. Fingers crossed for a PC port.

Highguard

Honestly, if this game wasn’t the last thing shown, I would have completely forgotten about it. I still have no idea what kind of game it is. A battle royale? Extraction shooter? Hero shooter? It was one of those trailers that showed everything but also showed nothing, if that makes sense. I guess it is neat that the game is coming out in just over a month, but still, from the team that made Titanfall and it being the last game reveal of the event, it didn’t land with me.

I Bought a 5070 Ti – Look at Those Frames!

With the looming tech war between AI supercentres and consumer electronics, I decided it was finally time to upgrade my graphics card to a 5070 Ti. I wanted this card for a while, but when I was building my computer back in April, it was costing more than the rest of the components combined, so I decided to wait for prices to go down… and I waited… and I waited. It did decrease in price, but not enough to justify. Well, lo and behold, when computer prices started to go from “inflated” to “outright robbery”, I decided to pull the trigger and get the PNY GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Triple Fan Plus OC for $1,300 AUD, which is still too much, but I suspect that will be the best price I can get for that card for a while.

The Devil's Power Plug

My first thoughts on the new GPU are that I absolutely hate the new 12-pin connector the newer graphics cards use. Sure, it’s “simpler” than having three 8-pin connectors or whatever the older cards had to use, but the stupid 12-pin is so difficult to get plugged in. I never felt confident that I had plugged the cord correctly in either the card or the power supply, and that mistrust was justified because the first time booting the PC, the card wasn’t getting any power. It was only after I shoved the cord in well beyond what I would deem comfortable that it was able to launch.

Monster Hunter Wilds, completely maxed out.

After that, it was pretty smooth sailing from there. I upgraded from a 2070 Super, so I didn’t have to deal with driver incompatibilities, and the NVIDIA app was able to pick up on the new card instantly. After I got everything suited and running, I decided to run some benchmarks, and boy, does this thing rip. So far, everything I’ve thrown at it just runs perfectly at max settings. Cyberpunk 2077 with Path Tracing, Fortnite completely maxed, the Half-Life 2 RTX mod—all run flawlessly at full resolution. It’s kinda nuts how well everything runs, all while being quiet and cool. The ultimate test, however, was the thing that pushed me over the edge: Silent Hill 2. On my old system, I ran the game at medium settings, capped at 30 fps, and it still made my GPU overheat. Now? Completely maxed out with ray tracing at around 90 fps. So yeah, I am very happy with my purchase and I cannot wait for something like Resident Evil Requiem or First Light to really test this thing out.

GPU go brrrrrr

The Game Awards, The Games At The Game Awards And The Games I Played On My New 5070ti - The Cleanup 17/12/25