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As the Internet of Things (IoT) has grown in popularity with consumers adding more devices to build out their smart homes, new research has revealed that vulnerable apps are putting users at risk. To better gauge the security of IoT devices, researchers from Brazil's Federal University of Pernambuco and the University of Michigan examined 32 apps used to configure and control the 96 best selling Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled devices from Amazon. IoT app developers need to secure the apps themselves, their connection to cloud proxies which are used during their initial setup and the wireless connection and authentication to and from each IoT device. For this reason, the study's researchers started by inferring potential weaknesses using heuristic analysis of each app. Japanese government will hack citizens' IoT devicesOpen source may be the key to securing IoTIoT devices now a top priority for cybercriminalsThe researchers found that 31 percent of the apps (corresponding to 37 devices out of 96) had no encryption at all while another 19 percent had hard-coded encryption keys that could be reverse engineered by potential attackers. Insecure appsThe researchers even developed proof-of-concept attacks for TP-Link's Kasa app, LIFX's smart light app, Belkin's WeMo for IoT and Broadlink's e-Control app to back up their findings further. Three of the four apps used no encryption whatsoever and three communicated using broadcast messages that could provide an attacker with a way of monitoring the app-device communication to find vulnerabilites. The researchers explained their findings in a report, saying: “Based on our in-depth analysis of four of the apps, we found that leveraging these weaknesses to create actual exploits is not challenging. A remote attacker simply has to find a way of getting the exploit either on the user’s smartphone in the form of an unprivileged app or a script on the local network.” While many IoT apps have a ways to go when it comes to securing their devices, the researchers highlighted Google's Nest thermostat app as an example of how IoT security should be done with its entire configuration process secured with SSL/TLS to the cloud or via Wi-Fi with WPA. Via Naked Security This is everything you need to know about the IoThttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/fRfxH4u9UpA

Apple is once again selling the iPhone X, the older flagship it launched in late 2017, but there’s a twist: you can only buy refurbished units starting at $769 (or £769). While that’s a serious discount compared to the slightly-more-powerful and newer iPhone XS, it’s directly competing with the pared-down $750 (£578, AU$1,036) iPhone XR. The day Apple unveiled the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max back in fall, it pulled the iPhone X from its online store, sending a clear message: buy the new models or find the old one elsewhere. There are several possible reasons Apple is again selling the iPhone X (though not wholly new units) some months later. New Animoji incoming! Apple's iOS 12.2 beta 2 update is hereWhatsApp adds biometric ID for more secure messaging on iOSApple AirPods 2 release date, news and rumorsThe most plausible: plenty of users traded in their year-old smartphones to get money off a new handset once the iPhone XS and XS Max hit shelves, and now there’s inventory to get rid of. But at the same time, Apple could intentionally be adding another midrange option (well, midrange for Apple) to boost sales. The iPhone XR was the best-selling iPhone in December 2018 by a wide margin, according to a Consumer Intelligence Research Partners report (for the first time, Apple didn’t release a breakdown of iPhone sales numbers). So if you’ve held off from buying a new iPhone, you’ve now got another choice – and it’s tough to make. Refurbished iPhone X or new iPhone XR?The iPhone XR is marginally cheaper in this matchup and packs Apple’s latest A12 mobile chip. Its 6.1-inch LCD screen is bigger than its competitor, but the iPhone X’s 5.8-inch screen has a sharper AMOLED display. You can only get the iPhone X refurbished, but given Apple’s high cleaning and testing standards, that’s far less of a drawback than picking a used model up elsewhere. The iPhone X also packs two rear cameras, which tops the iPhone XR’s single lens. This might come down to personal preference for you budget iPhone hunters. Keep in mind that the $769 price is for a 64GB iPhone X, but if you want to up the storage, you can shell out $899 for a 256GB version on Apple’s online store. But which iPhone is actually best? Check out list of top iOS smartphoneVia GSM Arenahttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/j9OhiNkQeR4

Don't risk your images; whisk them up into the safety of the cloud. Here we test six leading options to find the best cloud storage for photos. Backing up your photos is hardly a blast, and that was especially the case back when that meant spending time burning them to CDs. Fortunately, keeping your photos safe is now much easier thanks to the cloud. Put simply, 'the cloud' is just techno-jargon for online storage. You can choose from numerous websites offering anywhere between 1GB and 1TB of free remote hard drive space. Backing up like this doesn't just eliminate the hassle of dealing with discs or hard drives, it also enables you to access your photos from anywhere with an internet connection. The ability to share photos is another bonus, while websites like Flickr let you exhibit your images to the world, with scope for other users to leave feedback. Of course, if you'd rather keep your photos private, most cloud storage providers make it easy to set restrictions to make images accessible only to your password-protected account, or to anyone with a private web link. We've compared six of the best cloud storage websites; three aimed at photographers and three suited to general storage. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/R9ro5hj9HhfNWeZGaqq2bL.jpg Dropbox is great for storing pretty much any digital file type. Organising files is a cinch thanks to the intuitive folder system, plus you can access your files on the go with apps for iOS and Android. All this and 2GB of storage is free with a Dropbox Basic account (you can get an extra 500MB of space for referring a friend up to 16GB). A Dropbox Plus account offers 1TB for $9.99 (£7.50) a month or $99 (£74) a year, and you can get 1GB per referral (up to 32GB) . You do get remote desktop wipe, 30-day version history and priority email upload. For its versatility and simplicity, Dropbox is superb, but ultimately Flickr's more attractive interface, social interaction and sheer value make it the better option. Get Dropbox Plus herehttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/J8Gjh4MYr7CTYHjN7xyHYj.jpg Drive (a paid plan is also called Google One) isn't just another cloud storage provider, it's also home to several free business-grade office apps (heck, we even use it in the office here). Like Dropbox, Drive is geared towards file sharing, with multiple users able to modify shared files. You can store photos on Drive, but it doesn't offer the same stylish setting as more photography-focused online storage. Instead, use Google Photos which offers unlimited storage for high resolution photos which are up to 16-megapixel in size. 15GB of free storage comes with Drive, although this is shared by other Google apps like Gmail. Google uses AI and Machine Learning to automatically label people within pictures and uses metadata (date and place) to make searching easier. You can increase the allocated space to 100GB for $1.99 (£1.5) per month, 200GB for $2.99 (£2.3) per month, 2TB costs $9.99 (£7.5) per month, while 10TB costs $99.99 (£75.5) per month. Additionally, new plans were added, 20TB for $199.99 (£151) per month and 30TB for $299.99 (£226.5) per month. Get Google Drive with Photoshttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/DREDH739YhoS7aHkvWNRab.jpg "Cloud storage is important for photographers as localized back-ups of images are never totally safe, even if you have mirrored copies on two separate drives. Using a cloud storage solution means your images are kept safe, while you can access them from any device."Phil Hall, Photography Editor, TechRadar Microsoft's cloud storage offers a very similar set-up to its arch-rival, Google Drive. Anyone familiar with the Microsoft Office suite will feel right at home with OneDrive's integrated office apps. OneDrive adopts the same look and feel as Windows 10, so it's easy to navigate. However, it isn't designed solely for photographers, so don't expect the same viewing experience as you get from Flickr. Pricing is close to Google's, with 5GB for free and an extra 50GB costing $1.99 per month. However, Microsoft's 1TB option is better value at $6.99 per month (or $69.99 paid yearly), and includes the Office 365 package. Add another $3 per month and you get six licenses to use, more storage and bonus features like one hour Skype for free. Since October 2nd, subscribers can install Office (both plans) on an unlimited number of devices. Get Microsoft Onedrivehttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/d75216cba5a9effd033d467ab41df847.jpg Where most cloud storage providers make you cough up for more than a few gigabytes of storage, Flickr - now owned by Verizon - offers the storage of 1000 photos and videos for free, with unobtrusive adverts covering the cost. If you'd rather go ad-free and with unlimited storage, you can for a $7 monthly fee or $50 annual fee for Flickr Pro+. What makes Flickr stand out is its ability to display your photos in an attractive photostream. Other users can follow your activity and comment on your shots, or you can make images private, making it a real social network for amateur and professional photographers alike. Flickr is designed for presenting your shots rather than just storing them, so it'll only display JPEG, GIF and PNG images. Dropbox is better if you need to upload RAW files but you won't get stats on your photo views or 15% savings off Adobe's Creative Cloud (with the annual plan, you also get discounts for Blurb, SmugMug, and Priime). Get Flickr for freehttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/WomnXswamuY7uvuCTyqVfU.jpg Adobe Creative Cloud offers a number of different cloud-based storage solutions specifically for photographers. It provides photography-orientated storage with attractive image galleries. Group Libraries enable friends to add photos to one shared folder, and you're free to make any photo private. There's integration with Lightroom and Elements, and you can make quick edits when needed. Uploading is easy, with apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. There's also support for RAW file formats. The cheapest tier is expensive though at $119.88 per year for 1TB of storage. That's twice what Microsoft OneDrive provides but you do get Lightroom CC. Opt for a lower storage capacity (20GB) and you can get Photoshop CC thrown in for free. Get Adobe Creative Cloudhttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/93R6xtoYKeuRAQoedPYn3V.jpg Irista is designed to rival the likes of Flickr and Adobe Creative Cloud, giving you a gallery-driven interface that's for displaying your shots in style. It accepts JPEG and common RAW file formats and is easy to use, with options to filter images by camera or lens type and arrange shots by year, tags and EXIF data. Social media is heavily integrated, so you can upload images to Irista, share them to Facebook or Flickr and track any Likes or comments. Six subscription plans allow you to increase Irista's free 15GB of storage to either 100GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 5TB or 10TB. You can get the cheapest 100GB plan for $2.25 a month, the most common 1TB plan for $12.99 a month or if you want the 10TB plan for the biggest storage, you'll have to pay $129.99 on a monthly basis. Get Canon Irista cloud storage5 things to look for in cloud storage for photosFreemium: Most storage providers give you some free space, with extra capacity available for a monthly or annual fee. Prices vary considerably, though, so make sure you get a good deal. File formats: If you just want to back up or share JPEGs, then pretty much any provider will fit the bill. However, you'll need to choose more carefully if you'll be storing TIFFs or RAW files. Internet speed: Don't fork out on a premium cloud storage subscription if your internet connection runs at a snail's pace. Consider spending the same cash on a fast external hard drive instead. Show off: Not all online storage websites will display your photos in attractive galleries for the world to see them at their best. Keep moving: Cloud storage is great for keeping your photos accessible on the go, so make sure your preferred provider has apps to help view and upload images from your mobile devices. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/TWF6nHw1fu0

Apex Legends has hit an immediate high in terms of sheer numbers, with the battle royale newcomer amassing a million players across PC, Xbox One and PS4 inside the first eight hours of its launch. Vince Zampella, the CEO of developer Respawn Entertainment, took to Twitter to celebrate the milestone for the game which is the self-declared ‘next evolution’ of battle royale. Published by EA, the shooter is free-to-play, which naturally helps a good deal when it comes to swiftly accruing recruits for the player base. Even so, to hit the magic million in such a short timeframe is a very impressive achievement. Battlefield V is soon getting a battle royale modeFortnite is being used to launder moneyThese are the best gaming monitors for FortniteTo give you some perspective, Epic Games announced that Fortnite: Battle Royale had more than a million players after the first 24 hours of going live back in September 2017. Now, it might have reached a million somewhat before the end of that first day – it had hit ‘over’ a million during that period – but it presumably didn’t do it in anything like eight hours, otherwise we’d surely have heard about that. At any rate, the success of EA’s launch could simply go to show the immense popularity of battle royale games these days, and perhaps also reflects positively on the Titanfall universe – in which Apex Legends is set – to some extent. Although the disappointing news for some regarding the franchise is the rumor that Titanfall 3 isn’t currently in development, and this game is what we’re getting instead (and it doesn’t allow you to get into any actual mechs – certainly a sticking point for some). It doubtless also helps that Apex Legends offers a different spin on battle royale in that on a basic level it’s Fortnite crossed with Overwatch – a squad-based three-a-side team battler with each player choosing one of eight character classes. And finally, another major factor has to be the game’s popularity on Twitch, with the big-cheese streamers getting involved on that front. Forthcoming fortitudeSo, Apex Legends is clearly off to a blazing start, but the real test will come in the longer-term picture, and whether this success can be sustained over the coming months. Fortnite had 125 million registered players in around nine months after launch, and over 200 million as of November 2018. The launch of Apex Legends has suffered its share of problems, although that’s only to be expected when a game is unleashed and a horde of players are stampeding through the server doors. Gremlins in the works included the predictable stability issues, for which a server-side patch is apparently inbound, and there were also some problems with matchmaking, but these have reportedly been addressed. PC players were likely more frustrated by a rather nasty bug which left them permanently stuck ‘loading’ on the main menu, although this issue has apparently now been cured. If you do encounter it, however, the advice is to shut the game down, and fire it up again. These are the best gaming PCs of 2019Via Eurogamer http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/pAJ6j1xFNNY

No-one predicted the meteoric rise of gaming on iOS, and we're not sure anyone knew what the iPad was for at all when it first appeared. However, Apple's tablet has become a very able gaming platform. With more screen space than the iPhone, games have the means to be more immersive. The iPad's therefore a perfect platform for adventure games, strategy titles and puzzlers. Not sure which iPad is best? We've got them listed on our best iPad ranking - or you can check out the best tablets list to see the full range available now.But, just like the iPhone, there are so many iPad games that it's tough to unearth the gems and avoid the dross. That's our mission here - to bring you the very best iPad games, mixing traditional fare with titles that could only have appeared on a capable and modern multi-touch device. New: Silverfish DX ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/CXx3NfGCMuLqHqxYHBwbUB.jpg Silverfish DX is an unashamedly old-school arcade romp, albeit one with shiny modern visuals. You take the role of the titular silverfish, which finds itself surrounded by aquatic and very hungry enemies. To survive, you must weave your way through the swarms, grabbing power pods that obliterate anything nearby. Max out your power – depleted during collisions – and you can briefly turn the tables on your foes by eating them. This is a mix of Robotron’s claustrophobia (but without the shooty bits) and those moments in Pac-Man where you get to eat the ghosts. Like those titles, Silverfish DX is perhaps a bit one-note, and so won’t keep you glued for hours at a time, but the game’s purity and compelling, exciting gameplay ensures it’s always worth a quick dip. Watch the video below for our 48hr review of the new iPad (2018) see/saw is a platform game that features a sadistic professor (whose credentials we’re extremely skeptical of) putting a speedy protagonist through ostensibly scientific tests. Said tests mostly involve the subject collecting coins, but also avoiding hazards. Increasingly frequently as you explore each single-screen room, your untimely demise is the key to reaching the last coin. Its basic controls – hold the left or right of the screen to head in that direction – mean see/saw works really nicely on the iPad’s large display, but this stripped-back approach to platform gaming doesn’t make for dumbed-down level design. In fact, as you progress, challenges become devious, with you having to figure out how to impale the hero just so, in order to reach that final target. 7 Billion Humans takes place in a world run by benevolent robots who do all of the work. But, of course, the humans still aren’t happy, and so the robots give them jobs – stupid, pointless jobs. In effect, doddering folks become parts of a living computer, and you’re tasked with ‘programming’ them to pick up boxes and put them down somewhere else. It sounds dull, but it’s actually riveting. Like predecessor Human Resource Machine, this is a game that takes real-life programming concepts and infuses them into a turn-based puzzler. On the iPad particularly, the drag-and-drop interface for crafting coding logic works wonderfully, and the screen’s big enough that you can spot precisely what’s going on with your work. The larger display doesn’t hurt when taking in the bitingly satirical (but generally good-natured) cut-scenes either. Twinfold is a procedurally generated dungeon-crawling survival game, masquerading as a sliding puzzler. Or perhaps the reverse. Anyway, it’s really very good, although it does have an awful lot going on. The basic goal is to keep merging golden idols to increase their value, while simultaneously avoiding angry faces and/or smashing them into walls. Eat an idol and your XP and health go up, but then all the walls in the maze change, holes appear, and new enemies join the fray. Twinfold is quite the juggling act, but one with a cleverly conceived mix of immediacy and depth. The basic concept is easy to grasp, but in order to master the game and have any chance of relatively long-term survival, you must figure out all its quirks. Doing so is well worth the effort. Football Manager 2019 Touch brings the bulk of the famous PC game to your tablet. You take the reins of a real-world soccer club, and try to ensure they don’t get a kicking – all by way of your tactical savvy and cunning player transfers. If you’ve not played before, this game has depth. It’s easy to feel swamped and overwhelmed as you work your way through the menus and options. But this is complexity married with friendliness – there’s some optional automation, and the overall experience feels more streamlined than the PC original. The main niggle is there aren’t many changes from 2018’s release. If you own last year’s game, don’t put in for a transfer just yet; but if you’re new to Football Manager on iPad, there’s no more compelling soccer management to be found on an Apple device. Spitkiss is unique in the App Store, what with it featuring tiny creatures that communicate by lobbing bodily fluids at each other. But how you get spittle and the like from one to the other plays like Angry Birds became a single-screen platformer, and then had Matrix-style slo-mo welded to it. To get started, you aim and fling some spittle, and then direct it from surface to surface until the blob reaches its goal. Hold the screen and time slows, allowing you to prepare your next shot – essential given the claustrophobic and hazard-strewn screens you face. This all works particularly well on iPad. You’ve plenty of space to move your finger, and can be far more accurate on the larger screen. The vibrant visuals are arresting, too, even if you might feel squeamish about flinging spit. Golf Peaks might look a lot like a mini-golf game, but it’s really a strategic turn-based puzzler that takes place on tiny angular golf courses hewn into rectangular hillsides. Each round has you try to get the ball in the hole, only instead of aiming and firing, you use movement cards, and only state the direction in which you want the ball to travel. This is child’s play when your ball’s one square from the hole and you have a ‘move one square’ card, but when you’ve all manner of jumping and movement cards and are staring at a complex course packed will hills and hazards, this seemingly simplistic golfing puzzler takes on new dimensions. Persephone looks like a pretty run-of-the-mill isometric puzzler. There’s an exit you have to reach, which requires you to do things like shove boxes about and flip switches. But then you fall into a ditch, die, and the game… carries on going, with you controlling your resurrected self. Your corpses (you can have up to three) are then used to great effect, in the sense of adding to the complexity of the puzzles, but also in being darkly comic. It’s hard to think of any other iOS puzzler where you must shove a line of dead ‘yous’ along, in order to trigger a switch. This is another great example, then, in how a twist can shake up a well-worn format, making it new, interesting, unique, and – in this case – more than a little macabre! Little Things Forever is the purest example of a hidden object game you’re likely to find on the App Store. There’s no overarching quest – no desire to be a sort-of adventure. Instead, you’re presented with a jumble of objects (that, when you squint, form cartoonish artwork), and things to find. Depending on the challenge you’re tackling, you either get a full list, and aim to get through it as quickly as possible, or a timer and one item at a time to discover. Sporadically, the game has you complete basic jigsaw puzzles, in order to unlock new levels. On the iPad’s larger screen, the game shines. It’s full of charm, and although the timers add some incentive for those who need it, Little Things Forever is perfectly relaxed if you feel like taking 'forever' on a single puzzle. Reigns: Game of Thrones marries a swipe-based card interface, kingdom management and a hit TV show. Taking the role of a claimant to the Iron Throne, you rule the Seven Kingdoms with a single digit. Swipe left or right to respond to what’s asked of you, and your fortunes with the bank, people, army and church shift and change accordingly. Fail to balance them, and you’ll be brutally killed. Given that Reigns: Game of Thrones was designed for one-thumb play on a phone, it’s interesting to discover that it’s excellent on iPad. Instead of a blown-up iPhone interface, you instead get a visually arresting ‘widescreen’ take; and the game’s surprising depth makes it suitable for longer gaming sessions while you’re sitting on your own iron throne (or, if you prefer, a nice comfy chair). ELOH is a chilled-out puzzle game that wants you to find your inner groove. Each single-screen level has you send blobs from loudspeakers to goals, bouncing them off of various objects. Some of those objects are masks, which can be used to change blobs’ colors, so they match their target goals. This is a game of order, played to a background beat, and with precise 90-degree bounces. But the game also wants you to gradually carve out a solution by playing the puzzle live. This is especially useful when you find yourself facing increasingly complex layouts that demand labyrinthine paths to be constructed. On iPad, this all works particularly well – the larger display makes everything a lot clearer, and objects are easier to work with. Having the music pump out of louder speakers doesn’t hurt either! Euclidean Skies is the follow-up to the superb Euclidean Lands, a turn-based strategy game that takes place on floating constructions akin to Rubik’s Cubes. In that title, manipulating the landscape is as important as the physical moves the protagonist makes – and that’s even more overt in this sequel. In Euclidean Skies, each individual ‘block’ within the landscape has the potential to be spun about any axis. This provides scope for brain-bendingly complex solutions, whether battling a gigantic monster by obliterating its spine with rotating chunks of land, or gradually unraveling what was once a flat surface, creating ‘arms’ to prod switches and fashion bridges to doors. This isn’t an easy game, but it is hugely satisfying when you crack one of its puzzles. And, like the original, it also feels unique, which alone makes it worthy of consideration. ATOMIK: RunGunJumpGun is a murderously difficult yet gripping auto runner/shooter. Like the mutant offspring of ALONE… and Jetpack Joyride, it has you blast your way through neon-soaked corridors packed with enemies, spikes, bullets and massive saw blades. The tiny snag is the protagonist is a massive idiot. Rather than pick his way through the carnage, he belts along, using a gun to blast ahead (whereupon he loses altitude) or downward (in order to gain height). Juggling these minimal options while figuring out a route – and getting the timing right to stay alive – is extremely tricky. Amusingly, levels also contain collectables – a gift for ‘self-hating completionists’. If that all sounds a bit much, there is a slightly less deranged Shield mode, which will only leave you 50% of a nervous wreck. FTL: Faster Than Light is a real-time strategy game that finds you hurtling through space, trying to get essential data to the safety of the federation. Unfortunately, you’re being pursued by shooty rebels, and so must keep jumping to new sectors. Every time you do, surprises await – you might make some cash, or end up in a frantic scrap with pirates. During action scenes, you direct your crew to make repairs, and fling explosives and lasers in your enemy’s general direction. At any point, you can pause to take a breather and strategize a bit. The game is procedurally generated, and so every mission is different. But there are some constants: pitch-perfect controls, a sense of immersion, and palpable tension when half your ship’s on fire but you know one carefully aimed shot will obliterate your foe. In the Dog House is a sliding puzzler that has a cute veneer yet plenty of bite. It features a mutt in an oddball house with moving rooms and lifts aplenty. Its only goal in life is to get to a bowl of dog food, irritatingly (from the pooch’s standpoint) situated on the far side of the dwelling. Your job is to slide corridors, elevator shafts and other bits of building around, using a bone to urge the ravenous canine onwards. As ever with this kind of game, you must think several moves ahead because the space you have to work in is extremely limited. Linear level unlocking can be frustrating when you get stuck, but In the Dog House is otherwise a furry good game that will give you paws and hound your brain until you complete the entire tail. (Sorry.) Evergarden is a strategy-oriented match game set in a fantastical forest of geometry and surprisingly demanding wildlife. Every game begins as a hexagonal grid on which flowers of varying sizes are arranged. Each of your limited turns has you work through the flowers, deciding whether they should spit a seed into an adjacent space, or combine with a matching bloom. It comes across like a glossy and noodly gardening take on Threes! But there’s more to Evergarden than these basics. Creature guide Fen makes demands that hugely ramp up your potential for high scores when achieved, and a narrative plays out alongside the puzzles. This adds extra heart to the game, but also depth – things you find on your journey unlock new strategies, and provide added impetus for doing even better during your next go. Donut County is a story-led puzzle game where you play as a hole in the ground. As you consume items, you get bigger; so whereas at first you might be able to gulp down a tin can, you’re eventually guzzling vehicles, houses, and mountains. All of this happens alongside an oddball storyline featuring a naughty raccoon who’s been sending people the hole rather than the donuts they’ve ordered. Everyone’s now underground, figuring out how to get back to the surface. The game doesn’t take more than a few hours to complete, not least because only a few levels tease the brain beyond the simplest of challenges. However, the journey is wonderful, especially on the iPad – the bright visuals shine, and the larger canvas makes dragging the hole around, gobbling everything in sight, all the more pleasing. Each puzzle in Sidewords starts with an empty grid that has words along its top and left edges. You select letters from both to create new words. Each chosen letter shoots a line into the grid, and the squares where those lines meet become solid blocks, which display the words you’ve created. The idea is to fill in every square on the grid. This is easier said than done – you might consider yourself a genius on finding a massive, extremely clever word, but later find your grid peppered with tiny gaps. Completed words can be removed with a tap at any point, Sidewords clearly wanting you to experiment and try new things on your way to a solution. It’s a great concept – immediate, fresh, and also very challenging when you start tackling larger grids. Desert Golfing is about the most minimal take on golf imaginable. The side-on game gives you a tee and a hole to reach. You drag to aim and set power, and then take your shot. Smack your ball out of bounds and you start from scratch; make the hole with one or more shots and you can continue. It feels never-ending, as you find yourself dozens and then hundreds of holes in, and it should get boring – but it really doesn’t. Your scorecard builds but ceases to have meaning as you relax into a hypnotic chill-out take on a sport that wasn’t exactly frenetic in the first place. Supertype is a strange word game, in that it’s primarily interested in the physical form of letters and how they interact in animated 2D environments. Each puzzle tasks you with using the letters to collide with dots that are littered about – you type some characters, press the tick mark, and watch as everything starts to move. One puzzle has a dot up some stairs, and is easily dealt with by placing a lowercase l on each step, and a p to knock them all down. Elsewhere, you use letters to swing from the scenery like tiny action heroes, or roundish characters that rain down like a typographic avalanche. It’s great stuff – imaginative, original, and definitely not yet another Scrabble clone! realMyst is a new take on Myst, a Mac classic from the early 1990s. It dumps you on a strange island, giving you no clear ideas what to do next. The idea is to explore, check out every nook of the island, find clues, solve puzzles, and find new places in which to poke around. To say realMyst is obscure is putting it mildly. Its puzzles can be baffling and cryptic, and smart players will arm themselves with a notepad – and a huge amount of patience. However, this iPad version is a fantastic way to experience a gaming classic, with a more free-form approach to movement, beautiful revamped graphics, and the simple fact you can play it anywhere. Holedown has you fire strings of balls at numbered blocks to obliterate them and dig deeper toward a planet’s core. You have limited shots and a set number of balls per shot, so you must carefully aim and strategize, prioritizing ‘fixed’ bricks that won’t fall if those beneath them are destroyed. The basic premise may be familiar – plenty of freebies are broadly similar – but whereas they ruin things with difficulty gates and IAP, Holedown is a premium, polished game. Upgrades come by way of gems found during digs, rewarding skill rather than your ability to open your wallet. Although the game is repetitive, it’s more hypnotic than grindy, and fun when you nail a perfect shot, sending a group of balls through a tiny gap for them to bounce around like wasps trapped in a jar. Scalak is all about matching shapes, finding patterns in objects, and spatial awareness. It begins easily enough: you’re asked to drag a square piece to a square hole – hardly the toughest challenge you’ll have faced on iPad! But across Scalak’s dozens of levels, the game gradually increases the complexity of the objects you face, which eventually resemble exploded 3D jigsaws. You start rotating and moving the central section, and must place pieces that have been bent across multiple planes. Elsewhere, you construct frameworks on to which other pieces connect. With no score nor timers, Scalak becomes all about interaction – a tactile, stress-free game of exploration and puzzle solving that’s ideal on the iPad’s large display. Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 is a racing game that has you holding the purse strings rather than the steering wheel. So instead of coaxing your car around complex turns, and blasting along straights, you manage your drivers (and their egos), plan HQ and car upgrades, and figure out when during races they should push their engines or change their tires. The game’s sense of balance is very smart. It’s immediate and intuitive enough for newcomers, with a gentle first season, but gradually unlocks complexity, depth, and challenge to make you stick around for the long term. And although races merely feature colored discs whizzing round diorama-like circuits, they are nonetheless tense, exciting affairs – not least when one of your drivers is vying for a podium finish. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit [US store] | [non-US stores] is an old-school high-octane racer that echoes pursue-and-smash classic Chase HQ. You tear along in your police car, aiming to batter nasty criminals into submission. Then, during your downtime, you and your cop chums partake in dangerous high-speed races. Visually, Hot Pursuit is sometimes a touch crude, with background pop-up betraying the original game’s age, but the cars and roadside objects still look nice enough on a Retina iPad. Most importantly, the game feels really good – not least during moments when you fire up the nitro, drift round a bend, and smash the baddie into a roadblock. And if you don’t fancy being the fuzz? You can leap into your sports car in a parallel storyline and become mouse rather than cat. Suzy Cube is a platform game set in a world with a thing for straight edges. Assuming you’ve played a platformer before, you know the drill: explore; grab gold; unsportingly jump on the heads of enemies to obliterate them. But Suzy Cube goes beyond the stripped-back 2D fare we often see on iOS for something akin to Super Mario 3D Land. This means you may find yourself quickly swapping between skidding down icy mountains in 3D, following Suzy Cube as she runs side-on around a tower, and then delicately leaping between floating platforms, as seen from above. Bar some duff boss battles, it’s ambitious, entertaining fare, with tight touchscreen controls, and a great sense of pace and variety as you delve into the world and discover its many hidden secrets. Helix has the appearance of a rough-and-ready 1980s arcade game. Your character, a chunky blinking eye, scoots about as adversaries rapidly appear from screen edges. The aim is survival, but fortunately you can do more than dodge (albeit less than shoot). Move around an enemy and a line begins to encircle them. If the line is closed, the enemy explodes, giving you some breathing space. Some enemies require more orbits, or for you to encircle them in a specific direction, and that’s about it. But Helix’s simplicity isn’t to its detriment. This is a focused, brilliantly conceived arcade blast that’s ideal fodder for iPad. The touchscreen controls are responsive, the lurid visuals are captivating, and the hard-as-nails gameplay has that one-more-go factor that will have you clamoring for more. Trick Shot 2 at its core is a game that has you lob a ball into a box. At first, despite its ultra-chic minimalist visuals, it all seems a bit simple – even dull. But this game’s charms win you over rapidly. In part, this happens as the levels become increasingly ridiculous. You end up bouncing the ball off of giant bananas, or figuring out how to get it into one box within a sea of the things – all, of course, positioned at awkward angles. Each time you think you’ve cracked it, something new arrives to test your lobbing abilities: levers; teleporters; power connectors. And even when you emerge victorious from the final challenge, that’s not the end of it, since Trick Shot 2 has its own built-in level editor. Jydge plonks you in a grubby, neon-lit dystopia, with nasty ideas about law enforcement. As the titular ‘jydge’, you go on missions that largely involve shooting bad guys, ‘confiscating’ loot, and rescuing the odd hostage. The anything-goes nature of Jydge initially wrong-foots, because the viewpoint and setup scream stealth shooter. You think you’ll be sneaking about, like a ninja with a gun. In reality, it’s often more like a brains-free twin-stick blaster. That said, Jydge does have some tactical nous when it comes to challenges that are initially impossible. Actions can affect levels permanently, meaning with a little thought – and quite a lot of violence – you can by way of a few ‘stacked’ attempts in fact clear a tricky scene in 20 seconds, assuming your thumbs can keep up as you revel in the mayhem. Oddmar is a Viking who’s not good at being a Viking, but he’s forced into action when his village vanishes and an evil takes over the land. Cue: swiftly munching a magic mushroom to get some special powers, followed by quite a lot of platforming action. And what platforming action! Oddmar looks and feels like nothing else on iPad. Although the gameplay mechanics are familiar (leap about, explore, collect bling, hack up enemies, don’t get killed), the production values here are something else. Oddmar’s world feels alive, and each level has been painstakingly constructed, imbuing the game with smarts and pace. Peppered with set pieces, survival-oriented ‘dream’ levels, and varied challenges, and blessed with pitch-perfect touchscreen controls, Oddmar is only to be missed if you can’t stand this kind of game. And even then, we suggest taking a look anyway – just in case. VVVVVV is an old-school twitch platformer. It strings a bunch of single-screen challenges together, gives them silly names, peppers restart points about, and then sits back with an evil grin as you blunder into traps time and time again. The main twist is VVVVVV’s use of gravity. Instead of jumping, your running man can switch between ceiling and floor. Most rooms within the game cleverly play with this gravity mechanic. There are bounce pads, roaming enemies, and columns of screens where you weave your way down through columns of spikes, and then head back, all because some nutcase didn’t think to install a small bridge. Visually, the game is odd – 1980s-style graphics, which also look blurry on iPad. The virtual controls are occasionally slippy too. Mostly, though, it’s a joy (albeit sometimes a head-bangingly frustrating one), with smart writing and clever puzzle-infused level design. Infinite West casts you as a cowboy in the wilderness, taking down a gang that murdered his family. That hackneyed scenario might put you in mind of a shoot ’em up, and so it’s a surprise to find Infinite West is more like chess – only with pieces shooting each other. The turn-based play across semi-randomized levels forces you to consider every action. Your gunslinger can only move one space horizontally or vertically at a time, and each foe has unique weaponry ranges. Further complexity comes from a health counter, a ‘dash’ power and an ongoing upgrades system. There are echoes of Square Enix’s GO games, but if anything Infinite West has more depth and brains. You’ll certainly need your wits about you when, many levels into a mission, you suddenly find yourself faced with a dozen gang members intent on your untimely demise. Thomas Was Alone is a platform adventure that tells the tale of a self-aware artificial intelligence. Said AI is represented as a little red rectangle, charged with leaping about blocky environments, and reaching the exit. Along the way, other AIs appear, each with its own distinct abilities, which you must make best use of to get everyone to their goals. What sets Thomas Was Alone apart is its storytelling. The little rectangles are imbued with big personalities, and a voiceover gives you a window into their thoughts, which is often meta and frequently entertaining. After all, it’s hard not to love a game that finds the hero peering at certain doom, before the voiceover notes: “Something about the boiling, toxic, glowing water intimidated Thomas. He didn’t like it, and he certainly didn’t want to swim in it.” Still, you’ll want to swim in this game, because it’s a beautifully realized production. Alto’s Odyssey is a one-thumb side-on endless survival game. It features the titular Alto, who has a thing for sandboarding on huge dunes, hurling himself into the air, performing all manner of tricks, and then trying to not land (i.e. crash) in a manner that results in a face full of sand. This is perfect iPhone fodder, and perhaps not the kind of game you’d usually associate with iPad. But like its predecessor – the similarly impressive Alto’s Adventure – Alto’s Odyssey is a gorgeous game that’s deeper than it first appears. Visually, it’s a treat, with arresting weather effects and day/night cycles. As you complete challenges, you slowly unlock new goals, environments, and abilities, but if at any point it all feels too much, you can switch off with the zero-risk Zen Mode, which leaves you with a serene soundtrack and endless desert. Mushroom 11 finds you controlling a living pile of green gunge that gloops its way around a post-apocalyptic world. Its mission appears to be hoovering up whatever life is desperately clinging on in this harsh landscape, from tiny spiders to mutated plants that spit fire. If you had to label it, Mushroom 11 is a fairly traditional side-on platform puzzler, but the manner in which it’s controlled proves transformative. There’s no virtual joystick here – instead, you touch to ‘erase’ bits of the green blob, which then rapidly grows back. This mechanic is used inventively throughout the game, whether you’re figuring out how to zoom through tunnels, make the blob ‘jump’, or split it in two, so one part can trigger a switch while the rest moves onward. On iPad, the game is one of a kind and a tactile joy. Bring You Home is a puzzler featuring rotund alien, Polo, who’s on a mission to rescue a kidnapped pet. The snag: the ‘petnappers’ have a habit of darting through portals. What follows are dozens of single-screen scenes where you figure out how to reach an exit, but instead of controlling Polo, you rearrange and swap out sections of the scene, before pressing a button to see how things then play out. If you’ve played Framed, Bring You Home is in similar territory, but is far more varied – Polo at various points ends up in living paintings, a bizarre alien circus, and a graveyard where you deal with spooky adversaries. It’s adorable, silly, and relentlessly imaginative, and the failure animations are entertaining to the point you’ll want to go back and screw things up should you chance upon the correct solution first time round. Sid Meier’s Civilization VI properly showcases the iPad’s potential as a gaming device. Previous takes on Civilization for iPad have been weirdly cartoonish and simplified. Not Civilization VI – this is the game you get on PC, with all its inherent depth and complexity. This means you get one of the finest 4X (eXplore; eXpand; eXploit; eXterminate) games around. You aim to make your civilization dominant by becoming a trading giant, heading to the stars, or getting all stabby/shooty until no-one else is left standing. The game demands time and attention, is hugely rewarding, and should keep you going for months. Just as well, given its price tag. Still, you get 60 moves for free, and ‘proper’ games cost real money. Bar some slightly blurry visuals on iPad Pro, this is the real deal – one of the best games in existence, carefully optimized for the touchscreen. The Room: Old Sins pits you against devious puzzle boxes. Like previous games in the series, Old Sins is obsessed with the impossible. This time, you’re investigating the disappearance of an engineer and his wife. You spot what appears to be a corpse in a gloomy attic and are abruptly swept inside a doll house. At this point, it’s all tap, swipe and drag, manipulating objects using your very best logical deduction until things happen. At one point you’ll discover a seemingly unending number of hidden compartments in a tiny model train. Elsewhere, something horrific and otherworldly will scream before forcibly ejecting you from a room. If you’re a newcomer and puzzle fan, Old Sins is a no-brainer – a superb, coherent title with multiple-location challenges and none of the tedious walking around found in the likes of Myst. As for existing fans, you’ve probably already bought and finished the game anyway. If not, what are you waiting for? INSIDE is a puzzle-heavy platform game that charts a boy’s adventures in a chilling dystopia. It begins with him fleeing from armed men. You must duck behind trees and flee from ferocious dogs or end up dead, face-down in the dirt. But death is not the end; like INSIDE’s predecessor, the equally disturbing LIMBO, the hero here seems doomed to repeat every failure until it becomes a victory. It’s trial and error time, then. You run through a building, get horribly killed, take some mental notes, and then try again. Occasionally, this gets old; some sequences in the game are too long, and a couple have a margin of error that’s too tight. For the most part, though, this is a game of intriguing puzzles and a mesmerizing – if extremely dark – world, packed full of surprises, horror and tiny victories. Gorogoa is a perplexing puzzle game that plays with your perception of space, and challenges you to find links between images that aren’t remotely obvious on an initial glance. The entire thing takes place in a two-by-two grid, within which comic-book panes can be opened up and manipulated. Often, part of an image can be separated and overlaid on another. For example, a stairs overlay may enable the protagonist to reach a previously inaccessible space, or what appears to be a star-like decorative element might be a cog in an impromptu machine. Occasionally, Gorogoa baffles; later on, you may hit mental dead-ends, juggling various components, locations and possibilities in your head. But as a tactile, novel, engaging puzzler, there’s little else like Gorogoa on iPad – and you’ll feel like a genius when you reach its conclusion. GNOG is bonkers. It features nine floating heads, which are gateways to miniature worlds of interactive animated madness that you poke, prod, tap and swipe to make things happen. Your tasks are often quite mundane: fix a spaceship; feed some birds; recover chests from the ocean depths. But the presentation disarms - all bold shapes, primary colors and bloopy audio, like a children’s toy hopped up on sugar. It goes even more psychedelic when you complete a level and the head starts mooing. If you’re making a face yourself at that particular thought, just grab GNOG and delve deep into an entertainingly madcap game of exploration that revels in the joy of discovery. Fire up the AR mode, plonk GNOG’s strange toys on a table, and you’ll wish real toys were even half as much fun to play with. Thimbleweed Park is a love letter to classic point-and-click adventures, designed by two of the industry’s most devious minds. Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick were the brains behind classics Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island, and Thimbleweed Park is no less tricksy as you ostensibly attempt to solve a murder mystery. We say ‘ostensibly’ because the dead body you quickly find is the least of your problems. Over the game’s length, you end up playing several characters, including feds, an aspiring game developer and a vulgar, down-on-his-luck clown. The interface is a bit of a 1980s throwback, as is the difficulty level. Thimbleweed Park can be absurdly obtuse, and a little awkward. But there are few iPad adventures that match this one’s humor, heart and cunning – and no others that feature plumbers who happen to be paranormal investigators who dress as pigeons. Grid Autosport feels like the first of a new breed of iPad games, where a claim of ‘console quality’ isn’t hyperbole. This really is a pretty much direct conversion of the hit PC and PlayStation racer, squeezed into your iPad. There’s no messing about with grinding and currencies here – you can immediately delve into everything the app has to offer, choosing from its huge range of challenges, cars, and circuits. Everything from a quick race in an open-top to a full Touring Cars season is just a few taps away. With a range of control options and difficulty settings, the game manages to cater to arcade fans and simulation nuts alike; and when armed with an iPad and an MFi controller, the only thing betraying the fact you’re not playing on a console is the size of the screen. Subsurface Circular exists in a gray area between novella, short film and videogame. Set in a single carriage within an automated transit system, it features a cast of Teks – androids that have replaced humans in many of society’s roles. You play a detective Tek, which spends its life interrogating other robots on the Subsurface Circular, and are immediately embroiled in a mystery. To say more would spoil things, so take it from us that the story entrances, twists and turns over its few hours. Despite the single-scene setup, the game looks superb, with a cast of varied Teks and a familiar messaging-style interface that has a distinctly futuristic sheen. And if you’re concerned about the game’s brevity, be mindful you’d spend as much renting a film, and probably wouldn’t have nearly as much fun. Adventures of Poco Eco – Lost Sounds is as much an exploratory experience as a game. The hero discovers a ‘lost cassette’, which enables him to speak with spirit guides. They charge him with a musical quest: to bring sounds back to the land. That might sound pretentious and ‘worthy’, but Poco Eco is more like a cartoon. One of your early guides is a massive bear, and Poco Eco jauntily scoots about the larger-than-life landscapes packed full of color and giant musical kit, bobbing his head to a soundtrack that evolves as puzzles are solved. Said puzzles are, admittedly, dead simple. Poco Eco isn’t a game to fire up if you want your brain smashed in with a stiff challenge. It is, however, perfect for when you want to relax and immerse yourself in an album reimagined as an explorable world. Starman is an atmospheric adventure featuring a little astronaut trying to bring light to a monochromatic world. Its composed, unassuming air at times echoes Monument Valley. But the puzzles and slow, considered movement recall classic 1980s isometric puzzlers like Head Over Heels. Regardless of its influences, Starman is a treat. Every puzzle you try offers something new – and some of them are really clever. The mechanics are never complex, but how they’re combined will often trip you up. Yet Starman is never unfair – when you hit upon a solution, it will seem so obvious. The only real downside is there’s a chance the slothful pace will put off some players. It can be tiresome in some puzzles to watch the astronaut trudge back and forth. But for players who aren’t in a tearing hurry to blaze through every game, Starman’s a reflective, smart, memorable experience. Campfire Cooking seems to simulate the joy of cooking around a campfire – if everyone wanted to make the process as awkward as possible. Fires are set about a grid. Move your stick left or right and your marshmallow flips upside down. You must toast both sides just once – burnt treats will not be tolerated. The campfire’s set-up rapidly increases in complexity, too, giving you multiple sticks that can nudge others, sticks that spin, meals in pots that must also be cooked, and magnets to drag the metal pots around. It’s totally ridiculous but hugely compelling, and the game looks superb on the iPad’s display. The larger device also works well with Campfire Cooking’s ‘physicality’ – although you will at times want to yell: “Just point your stupid marshmallow at the fire already.” Fluid SE appears to have arrived from the unholy union of Pac-Man and a brutally difficult time-trial racer set in a hostile underwater world of black fish and deadly red ghosts. Each test has you zoom about, scooping up dots, and attempting to beat time targets. If you’re fast enough, you get the stars needed to unlock new levels; if not, you’ll need to work on shaving fractions of a second off of your best times. The snag is levels rapidly increase in complexity, and dots you eat spawn the aforementioned ghosts, which relentlessly chase you around the screen. There are ways of dealing with them, but often that involves slowing down. Fluid SE therefore becomes a thrilling game of risk versus reward, where everything plays out at breakneck speed – right up until you’re devoured by an angry ghost. Flower is a game that revels in bombing along as a petal on the wind, scything your way through fields of lush grassland, and soaring into the air above mountains and windmills. Each environment starts with you playing as an individual petal. As you collide with other flowers, they bloom and offer a petal of their own to join yours, which soon becomes a spinning, swooping conga of color, wheeling above Flower’s tiny, beautiful worlds. There’s a smattering of exploration and light puzzling in Flower, primarily to unlock more parts of each level, and discover secrets. But mostly this game is about enjoying an immediate, accessible, beautiful journey that has an emotional core and an exhilarating edge. FROST is a thoughtful, tactile game that feels like a living piece of art. Across dozens of scenes, sparks and barriers scythe across the screen while you direct flocking neon creatures towards orbs. Once the orbs fill, you can move on to the next challenge. Ultimately, FROST is a path-finding puzzler. You use logic to understand the conditions before you, and how to meet your goal. But FROST feels very different from its contemporaries. The abstract visuals are exciting and fresh, but also it really wants you to play, experiment and discover. Most of the puzzles tend to be simple, and you could probably blaze through the entire game in a few hours. But doing so would miss the point, because FROST is an iPad experience to bask in and savor. Freeways explores interchange design for autonomous vehicles, which sounds deathly dull. It isn’t. Just as Mini Metro coaxed something gorgeous and essential from underground railway maps, so too does Freeways create a hugely entertaining game from the drudgery of urban planning. Each map sector provides you with highways that must be connected to each other. Hold a sign and you get an idea of traffic flow and the links you must make. You then scribble roads down, adding overpasses and increasingly complex routes when the realization dawns about how tough this task can be. The drawing tools and visuals are crude, and there’s no undo – mess up and you must start that particular section of the map from scratch. But the underlying gameplay is enthralling, not least when you tap ‘simulate’ to watch your layout’s traffic move in fast forward, hoping to avoid a dreaded traffic jam. Space Junk is what happens when someone rethinks classic arcade blaster Asteroids and goes all-out, souping it up for the iPad. The basics remain: you’re floating in space, blowing everything around you to smithereens. Big things, when blasted, split into smaller things. UFOs take occasional pot-shots. Anything that hits you kills you. But everything’s handled with such grace and good humor that you can’t help but be enthralled. The controls – despite being dreaded virtual buttons – work nicely, aided by subtle inertia on your little spaceman. For those who prefer precision over random blasting, there’s a bonus for careful shots. And even the varied level names and themes raise a smile, such as ‘So Long, Space Shuttle’ (blowing NASA’s finest to bits) and ‘Victorians Got Here’, with its steampunk space stations. Reckless Racing HD is a top-down racer that first graced the App Store way back in 2012. It’s different from its contemporaries in having you coax battered vehicles around ramshackle tracks. There’s no slick tarmac – bar a mall parking lot that forms part of a course. More often, you’re zooming about the likes of a wrecker’s yard, or dirt roads near an old church that rises majestically out of the screen like it’s about to poke you in the eye. Given a 64-bit reprieve in mid-2017, Reckless Racing HD is a fantastic blast from the past. The cars have a great sense of weight – the physics when racing is just about perfect. And although it now looks a bit rough and ready, it’s decidedly more reckless (and fun) than its overly polished sequel, and includes the online multiplayer that the most recent entry in the series lacks. Osmos for iPad is an ‘ambient’ arcade game, and although it started life on PC, it’s a game that only really makes sense on a touchscreen. Across eight distinct worlds, you control a tiny ‘mote’, propelled by ejecting pieces of itself, its direction of travel determined by your taps. Collide with a smaller mote and it’s absorbed. Your aim is to ‘become the biggest’. When other motes are stationary, victory’s relatively easy – although very crowded levels require careful taps and judicious use of a time-warp slow-down feature. But when levels feature ferocious motes intent on your demise, or the game shifts from microscopic warfare to motes speeding around a central giant – like celestial bodies orbiting a sun – brains and fingers alike will suddenly find Osmos a much sterner test. At every point in the journey, Osmos is magnificent. Convince a friend to buy the game and engaging multiplayer arenas await too. Mos Speedrun is an engaging speed-run Mario-ish platform game, featuring a little bug zooming through 25 hand-crafted levels. The crude visuals feel decidedly old-school, featuring the usual floating platforms and patrolling enemies that mostly lack even the slightest hint of intelligence. But Mos Speedrun turns out to be one of the finest games of its kind on iPad. First, the level design is really smart, forcing you to learn the precise position of every platform, gap, and enemy, if you want to beat the speed-run target. Secondly, each level has alternate targets – finding a hidden skull, and collecting all the loot – that boost replay value, but also force you to shake up your approach. Finally, Mos Speedrun amusingly subverts the idea of ‘ghost’ replays. Die a lot and you end up battling your way through a level alongside the spirits of the fallen from your previous failures. It’s bonkers – and humbling – when dozens of the things are skittering about. Kalimba is an inventive and compelling platform game for people bored with controlling just one character at once. Here, you help two colored totem pieces avoid deadly pits and roaming enemies – and you control both simultaneously. Initially, you’re eased in by way of a split-screen set-up where the totems don’t meet. At all times, you must be mindful that when one totem’s on safe ground, the other may be seconds from doom. And then the game really starts shaking things up. You’re soon faced with color barriers that force you to repeatedly swap the totems around, the prospect of ‘stacking’ and double-jumping to reach gems, gravity flipping, totems that fly through the air while their partners very much don’t, and chase sequences featuring massive, terrifying bosses. If it’s all a bit much alone, there’s a superb two-player single-device mode – although how much actual co-operation there’ll be when you’re juggling four totems and your friend hurls you into a lava pit, it’s hard to say. Mobile gaming’s early days featured all manner of straightforward shooters that had you desperately fending off hordes of aggressors coming from above. No Stick Shooter recalls Space Invaders, in enemies heading downwards towards your defenses, but also Missile Command, in that your weapon’s rooted to the spot, and success depends on precision shooting. However, unlike those games, No Stick Shooter is a resolutely modern affair. On selecting a weapon, shots are unleashed by tapping the display. For a very brief period, this is quite a leisurely process, picking off asteroids. But the game soon bares its teeth, flinging all manner of neon foes your way, which must be defeated by deft fingerwork and tactical weapon selection, including crackling lightning and gigantic red laser beams. On an iPhone this is a terrible game because it’s too fiddly; but on an iPad, No Stick Shooter is a wonderful, vibrant, thrilling shoot ’em up that’s not to be missed. Steredenn is an endless horizontal shooter, infused with the beating heart of the best retro blasters around, topped off with a head-nodding guitar-laden soundtrack. Unlike most games of its ilk, it works brilliantly on iPad. The responsive controls have you drag the left of the screen to move your ship, and tap the right to fire at incoming waves of enemies. A flick of your right thumb switches weapons, and if your ship darts beneath a digit, crosshairs pinpoint its position. And you’ll need that knowledge at all times, because enemies come thick and fast in all their chunky-pixel glory. But so too do power-ups – and learning the effectiveness of weapons against specific opponents boosts your long(er)-term survival. Well, that and sometimes bolting a massive whirling saw blade to your ship, like some kind of space lunatic. It’s superb, raucous, shooty fun. It takes quite a lot to make a solitaire game tense, but Card Thief manages, mostly by smashing dealing out cards into turn-based stealth-oriented puzzling. As the titular villain, you map out pathways across the cards on the screen, figuring out how to grab loot without losing too many stealth points, which are depleted on battling adversaries. Repeat play is rewarded by improving your strategies, unlocking new kit to help increase your score, and eventually finding your way to new missions with different foes. Like any take on solitaire, Card Thief does get a bit repetitive, but this is also a game you’ll be able to happily play a round of a day for many weeks, gradually improving your ability to sneak about and become a master pickpocket. This fast-paced platform game is brutal and brilliant. Your little pixelated hero auto-runs through vibrantly colored environments, which you must learn how to traverse by way of jump and action buttons. The difficulty level recalls the sadistic beating hearts of Super Hexagon and RunGunJumpGun, but Miles & Kilo’s charm is such you’ll keep returning for more, even as the game constantly showcases your lack of gaming prowess. Much of this is down to the sheer variety on offer. This is a game that never sits still, whether having you leap about colorful islands, careen along in a minecart, perform Sonic-style targeted attacks, or hold onto your dog’s lead as he belts after a fleeing cat. But also, each level is brief - just 30 seconds long. You therefore always think you’re within spitting distance of the finish line, even when that line may take dozens of attempts to reach. Monument Valley 2 echoes its predecessor in having you explore isometric Escher-like worlds packed full of optical illusions. The aim in each level is to reach a goal, which is often achieved by manipulating the landscape, creating pathways that in the real world simply could not exist. It’s a visually stunning game, with tiny levels crammed with vibrancy and details, making it ideal for the iPad’s larger display. The narrative featuring a mother and daughter also satisfies, but is careful to leave the experience with a sense of mystery. The levels are diverse in feel, demands, and structure. If there’s any downside it’s that Monument Valley 2 is short and largely bereft of challenge. But treat it as a couple of hours immersed in a unique and beautiful universe and you’ll find it’s well worth the outlay. Zombies have taken over the USA, and so it’s road trip time in Death Road to Canada, the aim being to flee to the safety of the land of the moose. The tiny snag: the aforementioned zombies, and the fact you start out in Florida. The game itself is an action-oriented role-playing title, switching between top-down shooting/scavenging scenes, choose-your-own-adventure text sections, and claustrophobic and downright terrifying sieges that lock you for a set time in a confined space with hundreds of the undead. Actually, it’s not that terrifying, given that Death Road to Canada looks like a game from the 1990s. But it is excellent fun, despite some slightly slippy virtual controls. (If you’ve an Made for iPhone controller, use that to boost your zombie-killing prowess.) In the inky blackness of space, humans have started mining massive space rocks, and it turns out aliens have a big problem with that. Enter: the hero of Darkside, who has to blow up said aliens and, for some reason, all the rocks the humans are supposed to be mining. Videogame logic! It all comes across like someone gleefully mashed together two classic arcade titles – Asteroids (shoot rocks until they’re tiny enough to obliterate) and Robotron (the original twin-stick shooter) – and wrapped the result around beautifully rendered planetoids. Although there’s a free version, splash out for the paid release and you get smart bombs in the arcade mode, and two extra modes to try: one being mission-based, and the other being a tough endless mode for cocky veterans. The end result is tons of shooty fun that’s accessible enough for newcomers, but that provides a stern test for even the swiftest of trigger fingers. It turns out the way to make sliding puzzles interesting again is to combine them with 1980s horror flicks – and then combine that with chunky Crossy Road-style visuals. In Slayaway Camp, then, the mechanics are familiar: swipe to make your character slide until it hits something; repeat (tactically) to hit several targets and then finally reach a goal. But the way everything’s portrayed is decidedly oddball, with lashings of chunky retro gore. The combination of ‘twisted’ and ‘oddly adorable’ provides a great hook, but it’s the puzzles that keep you playing. Well, unless you get a bit too much into the blood-curdling screams – in which case, please seek help. Many path-finding puzzlers have you use arrow tiles to direct auto-running critters to goals. (Long-time gamers may fondly remember ChuChu Rocket! as a shining example). Causality is in similar territory, only you also get to control time itself, by dragging up and down the screen. Early on, this primarily allows you to fix errors – going back to try again when a sprinting astronaut is eaten, or when you run out of your limited number of steps. Before long, though, you’re hurling people through time portals, so they can assist their past selves. It’s mind-bending stuff, but also one of the finest puzzle games of modern times. It’s also perfect for iPad, due to its visually dazzling and tactile nature. There’s something gleefully classic about SpellTower. It marries very old-school word games – in the sense of paper-based crosswords and word searches – with much-loved arcade puzzlers. The result is the best word game on iOS. Tower mode has you face a stack of letters, tapping out snaking words that disappear when submitted, the tiles above then falling into the gaps. A keen sense of planning is required to balance letter stacks and ensure tiles aren’t left stranded. Additional modes soon open up: Puzzle adds a new row of letters for every word you submit; Rush throws in a timer; and Debate pits two players against each other. iPad Pro owners also get Super Tower mode, offering a colossal 432 tiles and the potential for blockbuster scores – if you can find the right words lurking within the jumble. Described by its creator as a literary RPG, Voyageur mixes text adventure with space trading. Imagine seminal classic Elite combined with Lifeline and you’re on the right track. The story begins with you having bolted an alien ‘Descent Device’ to your ship, enabling faster-than-light travel – but only towards the center of the galaxy. You embark on a one-way journey, stopping off on planets to trade, explore, and become embroiled in side quests. With the game being text-oriented and algorithmically generated, descriptions and events tend to repeat quite often. Still, if you at any point feel you’ve seen a planet before, you can leave with a few taps – and there are always new things waiting to be found. For anyone armed with an imagination, Voyageur becomes a unique, captivating experience. Hidden object games are often dull and can be heavy on the pocket, demanding you spend lots of money on IAP. Hidden Folks isn’t either of those things, and has the added bonus of being hugely charming. You’re presented with hand-drawn scenes, each of which has a strip across the bottom, depicting objects to find. You can tap any of them for a clue, but the scene can also be interacted with, for example to rustle bushes to find someone lurking behind them. Cute mouth-originated sound effects pepper proceedings, and the pace is varied with differing map sizes, and the odd playable scene, such as helping someone to a destination by adjusting the landscape. Thus, with its wit and smarts, Hidden Folks very much stands out from the crowd – unlike some of the tiny critters it tasks you with locating. The basic mechanics of Splitter Critters resemble 1990s arcade puzzler Lemmings, in that you guide marching creatures to a goal. But whereas you armed lemmings with tools, Splitter Critters has you slice up the screen with a finger, so you can adjust the landscape to create new pathways. This is clever, but Splitter Critters isn’t done. The undo button reverts your last cut, but not the position of critters. Undo therefore becomes a device vital for completing levels, rather than merely a means of reverting errors. Throughout its length, the game keeps adding new elements, such as ocean worlds and a grim underground base full of critter-frying lasers. And although the challenge never rises above slight, the charm and tactile nature of Splitter Critters makes it a joyful journey, especially on the iPad’s larger display. Twisted Lines is another great iOS puzzler with simple rules, but also level design seemingly created to drive you to despair. Each of the 100 levels involves you directing a little colored block that leaves a trail of two colors, but should you cross over the trail, your block changes color to match the first line it hits. This is pretty important, given that your task is to scoop up colored blocks littered about claustrophobic, deviously designed single-screen puzzles. From the start, Twisted Lines is a pleasingly tricky challenge, and it keeps adding further complications – trail erasers; teleporters – to keep you on your toes. If there’s any drawback to the game, it’s the strict linear unlock of levels (presumably, this is designed to urge you to grab hint IAPs if you get stuck). But other than that niggle, Twisted Lines is a brain-teaser among the very best on iPad. This old-school adventure game is all the more impressive when you realize it’s the work of one man. From the delicate pixel art to the smart story – all delivered in rhyme – you’d think a team of clever people had beavered away on Milkmaid of the Milky Way rather than a sole individual. The star of the show is Ruth. Her tools have vanished in a storm, and she needs to make cheese and butter to sell. It’s all very slow and relaxing – until a spaceship abruptly shows up and rudely steals her cows, propelling her into a rather more out-of-this-world experience. If you’ve played this kind of game before, you’ll know what to expect – explore your surroundings, find objects, and figure out where to use them. But the difficulty curve is gentle enough to snare newcomers, while the feel and polish of the game should help it appeal to anyone who spent years taking on Lucasfilm fare on a PC. You might balk at Pac-Man appearing in a best-of list for iPad games, but this isn’t your father’s arcade game. Sure, the basics remain: scoot about a maze, eating dots, avoiding ghosts, and turning the tables on them on eating a power pill. But Pac-Man Championship Edition DX is significantly faster, has neon-clad mazes and a thumping soundtrack, and the gameplay’s evolved in key areas. First, the maze is split in two. Clear one side and a special object appears on the other, which refills the cleared side when eaten. Secondly, snoozing ghosts can be brushed past to fashion a spectral conga to shepherd, contain, and not blunder into – until you eat a power pill, reverse course, and eat your pursuers to amass huge points. In short, this game is superb, transforming an ancient classic into something fresh and exciting. And importantly, it works best on the large iPad display, because your fingers don’t get in the way of your frenetic dot-gobbling. In the future, it turns out people have tired of racers zooming about circuits on the ground. In AG Drive, tracks soar into the air – akin to massive roller-coasters along which daredevil racers of the day speed, gunning for the checkered flag. This is a pure racing game – all about learning the twists and turns of every circuit, and the thrill of breakneck speed. The only weapons you have available are strategy and skill. And this suits the kind of stripped-back controls that work best on iPad – tilting to steer, and using thumbs to accelerate, brake, and trigger a turbo. Also, while some slightly irksome IAP lurks, there’s little need to splash out. The game’s difficulty curve is such that you can gradually improve your skills and ship, working your way through varied events until you become an out-of-this-world racing legend. (Or, if you’re a bit rubbish, an ugly stain on the side of a massive metal building.) Most city building games are about micro-management – juggling budgets, people’s demands, and limited space. But Concrete Jungle rethinks the genre as a brilliant brain-bending puzzler. And here, restrictions regarding where you can build are of paramount importance. At any point, you have seven rows with six lots where you can place a building. Said buildings are served semi-randomly from a card deck. Each column needs to have enough housing points for it to vanish and unlock more space on which to build. The snag: other buildings boost or reduce the points allocated to adjacent lots. You must therefore take great care to place your factories (bad) and parks (good), realizing that any complacency may be severely punished several moves down the line, when you suddenly find yourself faced with a slum of your own making. Although it's almost 13 years old, Rome: Total War is one of the best games of 2017 thanks to its re-release on iPad. You can now rule an empire from your Apple slate in this strategy game that defined the genre. You start the game as one of six factions, aiming to throttle enemies and conquer the known world. This historical simulator will force you to wield your tactical brain, as well as demonstrating your diplomatic and fighting skills. You may not think this complicated battle simulator would work on iPad, but Feral Interactive have reworked the game enough that it works brilliantly with a touchscreen. You’ll want a larger iPad to play this though, as you’ll need to do a lot of reading within the menus. But if you have a sizeable slate this is essential, and the Barbarian Invasion expansion is coming to iPad very soon as well, so there's a lot of life in this game. It’s ‘maniacally yet methodically skidding through dirt tracks time’ in Go Rally, an overhead arcade-oriented take on zooming along like a lunatic, against the clock. Aside from some nicely rendered courses, Go Rally’s a winner through its controls, solid physics, and relatively short tracks. Playing doesn’t feel like an ordeal to be overcome – instead, the brevity of the courses makes Go Rally akin to a Trials title, where you can conceivably master every turn. The career mode eases you in gently, gradually unlocking access to new cars and tougher races. And if you get fed up with what the game throws at you, it’s even possible to scribble on your iPad’s screen to fashion new tracks of your own. The tracks of your dreams – and everyone else’s nightmares – can then be inflicted on the world at large. Traveling on underground railways can be a fairly hideous experience, which is perhaps why Mini Metro is such a pleasant surprise. The game is all about designing and managing a subway, using an interface akin to a minimal take on the schematics usually found hanging on subway walls. And it’s glorious. Periodically, new stations appear. You drag lines between them, and position trains on them, in order to shepherd passengers to their stops. All the while, movement generates a hypnotic, ambient soundtrack. Over time, things admittedly become more fraught than during these relaxing beginnings. The demands of an increasing number of passengers forces you to juggle trains and rearrange lines until you’re inevitably overwhelmed. But the nature of the game is such that this never frustrates – instead, you’ll want to take another journey - hugely unlike when suffering the real thing. From the creators of Machinarium and Botanicula, Samorost 3 is an eye-dazzlingly gorgeous old-school point-and-tap puzzler. It follows the adventures of a gnome who sets out to search the cosmos and defeat a deranged monk who's smashed up a load of planets by attacking them with a steampunk hydra. The wordless tale primarily involves poking about the landscape, revealing snatches of audio that transform into dreamlike animations hinting at what you should do next. Although occasionally opaque, the puzzles are frequently clever, and the game revels in the joy of exploration and play. It's also full of heart – a rare enchanting title that gives your soul a little lift. RPG combat games usually involve doddering about dungeons with a massive stick, walloping goblins. But in Solitairica, cards are your weapon; or, more accurately, cards are the means by which you come by weapons. Your aim is to trudge to a castle, defeating enemies along the way. You do so in a simplified solitaire, where you string together combos by removing cards one higher or lower than your current card. Doing so collects energies used to unleash defensive or offensive spells. Unfortunately, your enemies also have skills, and survival requires a mix of luck and planning to defeat them. This involves managing your inventory so you're always armed with the best capabilities, while probably simultaneously wondering why the hero didn't arm themselves with a bloody great sword rather than a deck of cards. High-octane card games don’t seem the greatest fit for iPad gaming, but Exploding Kittens perfectly captures the manic chaos of the Oatmeal-illustrated original. As per that version, this is Russian roulette with detonating cats. Players take turns to grab a card, and if they get an exploding kitten, they must defuse it or very abruptly find themselves out of the game. Strategy comes by way of action cards, which enable you to peek at the deck, skip a turn, steal cards from an opponent, and draw from the bottom of the deck “like the baby you areâ€. Local and online multiplayer is supported, timers stop people from dawdling, and a ‘chance of kitten’ meter helps everyone keep track of the odds. Large hands of cards rather irritatingly require quite a bit of swiping to peruse (although cards can be reordered), but otherwise this is first-rate and amusingly deranged multiplayer mayhem.  For people of a certain age, Day of the Tentacle will need no introduction. This pioneering work set the standard for point-and-click adventures in the early 1990s, through its mix of smart scripting, eye-popping visuals and devious puzzles. On iPad, you get the original title more or less intact, along with a remastered edition, with all-new high-res art and audio. (You can instantly switch between the two using pinch gestures.) Chances are the puzzles and pace might initially throw newcomers, but players old and new will find much to love trying to stop the nefarious purple tentacle taking over the world, along with delving into the importance of hamsters, and figuring out how to best utilize items to assist people stuck in three different time zones. (And if you're very old and wondering if they included Maniac Mansion in the PC, it's there, in full!) If you find golf a bit dull, Super Stickman Golf 3 offers a decidedly different take on the sport. Instead of rolling greens, a sprinkling of trees and the odd sandpit, golfers in this bizarre world pit their wits against gravity-free space-stations, floating islands, and dank caverns with glue-like surfaces. The game's side-on charms echo Angry Birds in its artillery core, in the sense that careful aiming is the order of the day. But this is a far smarter and more polished title, with some excellent and imaginative level design. With this third entry, you also get the chance to spin the ball, opening up the possibility of otherwise impossible shots. And once you're done with the solo mode, you can go online with asynchronous turn-based play and frenetic live races. In Telepaint, a semi-sentient wandering paint pot wants nothing more than to be reunited with a brush. The tiny snag: it appears to be stuck in a world of brain-bending maze-like tests, comprising single screens of platforms and teleporters. Your goal is to figure out a route, avoiding pot-puncturing spikes and a clingy magnetic 'friend' - a task that becomes increasingly baffling and complex. You're helped along a little by VCR-style controls that let you pause for breath, and these often become key to solving puzzles, enabling you to switch teleport triggers while everything else on-screen remains static. Even then, the going's tough. Still, while Telepaint has the propensity to make your head hurt like having a paint can dropped on it, this is a colorful, unique and enjoyable iOS puzzling classic that's not to be missed. One of the earliest 3D games was Battlezone, a tank warfare title at the time so realistic the US military commissioned a version from Atari to train gunners. iOS tribute Vector Tanks was subsequently gunned down by Atari lawyers, but its DNA survives in Tanks! - Seek & Destroy. Like Battlezone, Tanks pits you against an endless number of vector tanks, on a sparse battlefield. But this is a much faster, tougher game, with tilt-and-tap controls that put you more in mind of console racing games than a stodgy tank 'em up. The result is a relentlessly thrilling 3D shooter that marries the best of old-school smarts and modern mobile gaming. Pinball games tend to either ape real-world tables or go full-on videogame, with highly animated content that would be impossible on a real table. INKS. tries something different, boasting a modern 'flat design' aesthetic, and having coloured targets on each table that emit an ink explosion when hit with the ball. Each of the dozens of tables therefore becomes a mix of canvas and puzzle as you try to hit targets while simultaneously creating a work of art. Neatly, as the ball rolls through ink splats, it creates paths across the table, which is visually appealing and also shows when your aim is off. Because each level is short — usually possible to complete in a minute or so — INKS. manages to be both approachable enough for newcomers and different enough for experts to get some enjoyment out of. Nintendo fans probably wonder why the big N hasn't yet brought the superb Advance Wars to iPad, but Warbits now scratches that particular itch. However, although Warbits is influenced by Nintendo's turn-based strategy title, it isn't a copy — the iOS game brings plenty of new thinking to the table and is very much optimised for the iPad. Working with 16 varied units, you conquer a series of battlefields by directing your troops, making careful note of your strengths and the enemy's relevant weaknesses. All the while, Warbits merrily has you and your opponent trading barbs, often about subjects such as whether tomatoes are fruit, because that's the kind of thing you'd go to war over. Finish the 20-mission campaign and you'll have a decent grasp of Warbits, and can then venture online to take on other human players across dozens of different maps. With superb visuals, enough new ideas over the game that inspired it, and a single one-off price-tag, Warbits is a must-buy for any iPad-owning strategy nut. Traditional platform games often fare poorly on iPad, but Traps n' Gemstones bucks the trend. Its approach is resolutely old-school, from the on-screen controls to the Metroid-style gameplay that involves exploring a huge interconnected world, opening up new passageways by finding and correctly using objects. The theme, though, is more Indiana Jones. A little chap, armed with a whip and with a fedora on his head, leaps about a pyramid, grabs loot, and gives mummies and snakes a good whipping. Interestingly, the game simultaneously manages to appeal to casual and hardcore gamers. Progress doesn't reset, meaning you can keep getting killed but gradually work your way into the bowels of the pyramid. But your score reverts to zero when you come a cropper; getting into the thousands is therefore a big challenge for those who want to take it. Love You to Bits has a heart as big as a thousand iPads. It's a tap-based adventure that finds a little space explorer trying to retrieve pieces of his android girlfriend that have been scattered across the galaxy. The mechanics are right out of classic point-and-click gaming, essentially having you amble about 2D locations, unearth items and then drop them in the right spot. But the game is so relentlessly creative and inventive with its environments — full of dazzling visuals, references to movies and other games, and increasingly clever mechanics and ideas — that you can't help but love it to bits yourself. The little monster at the heart of A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, wants some friends, and so sets about making them from crisp snow covering the ground. But as the game's title states, making snowman is hard — largely because of strict rules governing the monster's universe. Snowmen must comprise precisely three balls of gradually decreasing size, and any snowball rolled in the snow quickly grows. A Good Snowman therefore becomes a series of brain-bending puzzles - part Soko-Ban, part Towers of Hanoi - as you figure out how to manipulate balls of snow to build icy friends for a monster to hug. You get the feeling creators of classic vertically scrolling shooters would sit in front of AirAttack 2 in a daze, dumbfounded at what's possible on modern home-computing devices. That's not down to the gameplay, though: like its predecessor, AirAttack 2 is a straightforward shooter - you're piloting a fighter in World War II, downing enemies while optionally yelling "tally ho" at an annoyingly loud volume. But this World War II is decidedly different from the one that occurred in our reality: Germans own limitless squadrons and building-sized tanks (versus the Allies, seemingly relying on a single nutcase in a plane to win the war). It's the jaw-dropping visuals that really dazzle, effortlessly displaying swarms of enemies to down, colossal bosses to defeat, and a destructible environment to take out your frustrations on. For the low price (not least given that there's no IAP whatsoever), it's an insane bargain. The first Badland combined the simplicity of one-thumb 'copter'/flappy games with the repeating hell of Limbo. It was a stunning, compelling title, pitting a little winged protagonist against all kinds of crazy ordeals in a forest that had clearly gone very wrong. In Badland 2, the wrongness has been amplified considerably. Now, levels scroll in all directions, traps are deadlier, puzzles are tougher, and the cruelty meted out on the little winged beast is beyond compare. Still, all is not lost - the hero can now flap left and right. We're sure that comes as a huge consolation when it's sawn in half for the hundredth time. This single-screen platformer initially resembles a tribute to arcade classics Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros., but Drop Wizard is a very different beast. It's part auto-runner, which might infuriate retro-gamers, but this proves to be a brilliant limitation in practice. Your little wizard never stops running, and emits a blast of magic each time he lands. You must therefore time leaps to blast roaming foes, and then boot the dazed creatures during a second pass. It's vibrant, fast-paced, engaging, and — since you only need to move left or right — nicely optimised for iPad play. Because of the nature of touchscreen controls, there's a tendency to slow things down on iOS. ALONE… throws such caution to the wind, flinging you along at Retina-searing speed as you try in vain to save a little ship hurtling through rocky caverns of doom. This is a game that's properly exciting, and where every narrow escape feels like a victory; that all you're doing is dragging a finger up and down, trying in vain to avoid the many projectiles sent your way, is testament to you not needing a gamepad and complex controls to create a game that genuinely thrills. It turns out the future will involve hoverboards, only it'll be robots piloting them. In Power Hover, all the humans are gone, but so too are the batteries that power your robot village. So you hop on your flying board and pursue a thief through 30 varied and visually stunning levels. Whether scything curved paths across a gorgeous sun-drenched sea or picking your way through a grey and dead human city, Power Hover will have you glued to the screen until you reach the end of the journey. And although it's initially tricky to get to grips with, you'll soon discover the board's floaty physics and controls are perfectly balanced. CRUSH! is deceptive. At first, it appears to be little more than a collapse game, where you prod a coloured tile, only for the rest to collapse into the now empty space. But subtle changes to the formula elevate this title to greatness: the tiles wrap around, and each removal sees your pile jump towards a line of death. So even when tiles are moving at speed, you must carefully consider each tap. Some variation is provided by the three different modes (which affect block speed and surges), and power-ups, which blast away colors and blocks in specific ways you can take advantage of. Device 6 is first and foremost a story — a mystery into which protagonist Anna finds herself propelled. She awakes on an island, but where is she? How did she get there? Why can't she remember anything? The game fuses literature with adventuring, the very words forming corridors you travel along, integrated puzzles being dotted about for you to investigate. It's a truly inspiring experience, an imaginative, ambitious and brilliantly realised creation that showcases how iOS can be the home for something unique and wonderful. It's also extremely tough at times. Our advice: pay attention, jot down notes, and mull away from the screen if you get stuck. It's great to see Square Enix do something entirely different with Hitman GO, rather than simply converting its free-roaming 3D game to touchscreens. Although still echoing the original series, this touchscreen title is presented as a board game of sorts, with turn-based actions against clockwork opposition. You must figure out your way to the prize, without getting knocked off (the board). It's an oddly adorable take on assassination, and one of the best iOS puzzlers. There's also extra replay value in the various challenges (such as grabbing a briefcase or not killing guards), each of which requires an alternate solution to be found. Racing games are all very well, but too many aim for simulation rather than evoking the glorious feeling of speeding along like a maniac. Most Wanted absolutely nails the fun side of arcade racing, and is reminiscent of classic console title OutRun 2 in enabling you to drift effortlessly for miles. Add to that varied city streets on which to best rivals and avoid (or smash) the cops, and you've got a tremendous iOS racer. Apple's mobile platform has become an unlikely home for traditional point-and-click adventures. Sword & Sworcery has long been a favourite, with its sense of mystery, palpable atmosphere, gorgeous pixel art and an evocative soundtrack. Exploratory in nature, this is a true adventure in the real sense of the word, and it's not to be missed. (To say anything more would spoil the many surprises within. Just trust us on this one, grab a copy, don some headphones, and immerse yourself in a gorgeous virtual world.) You can almost see the development process behind this one: "Hey, fingers look a bit like legs, so if we put a skateboard underneath…" And so arrived one of the finest iOS sports titles, with you using your fingers to roam urban locations and perform gnarly stunts. Admittedly, this game is tricky to master, but it's hugely rewarding when you do so, and video highlights can be shared with your friends. The game's also a great example of touchscreen-oriented innovation — Touchgrind Skate just wouldn't be the same with a traditional controller. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/znyhS4wg8yw

"I've always been interested by technology and innovation," Nico Rosberg tells TechRadar – and he has the credentials to prove it. Since retiring from the circuit in 2016, the Formula One world champion has immersed himself in the tech world, investing in Formula E, navigation system what3words, ride-sharing service Lyft, and passenger drone maker Lilium. He's also an ambassador for the Schaeffler Mover – an electric concept car capable of driving sideways for easy parallel parking in packed cities. We want to accelerate powerful change. There is a space to be filled, and the tech is damned amazingNico Rosberg Now, Rosberg has embarked on a new endeavor: a festival dedicated to green technology, which he hopes will become an environmentally sustainable version of CES. The first GreenTech Festival will take place at Berlin Tempelhof Airport from 23 to 25 May. The festival will have three parts: an exhibition space showcasing sustainable technology from around the world, the Green Leaders conference on sustainability, and the Green Awards, which aim to recognize innovation and new ideas. The Berlin E-Prix will take place on the festival's final day. We've left EdenRosberg says an event like GreenTech Festival is long overdue. "The right time was 10 years ago," he says. "As Sir David Attenborough said, we have left the Garden of Eden, and it’s the 11th hour, but better late than never. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/CongBf86ynMH2Qq4ttozam.jpg Nico Rosberg with GreenTech Festival co-founders Marco Voigt and Sven Krüger. Image credit: GreenTech Festival "There are so many tech events out there, but there are none with a purpose," says Rosberg. "We want to accelerate powerful change. There is a space to be filled, and the tech is damned amazing." As Sir David Attenborough said, this is the 11th hour for our planet, so it’s very important that each of us embraces itNico Rosberg Rosberg hopes that GreenTech Festival will go global, much like CES, with future events in the US and Asia. "CES doesn't have a purpose," he explains. "We want to be a lighthouse for positive change, with the newest technology and product launches, the most ambitious and forward-thinking people, and honoring the most special achievements over the space of the year," he says. "We are expecting 50,000 people, but we want to reach out much further and encourage people globally to embrace green technology – and the whole lifestyle. As Sir David Attenborough said, this is the 11th hour for our planet, so it’s very important that each of us embraces it." EVs explained: everything you need to know about electric vehicleshttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/YVXHp_8kdPE

More and more Xbox One games are entering the market everyday that it can be tricky to figure out which are good and worth your time, and which are best left along. Luckily, we're here to suggest our favorite Xbox One titles - a list that's mostly borne of many hundreds upon hundreds of hours of gaming. Microsoft's Xbox One console is nearing its sixth birthday - but that doesn't mean it isn't still going strong. In fact, many of the TechRadar team believe it’s only just reached its peak in the last year. One of the main reasons for that bold claim is that the Xbox One has an excellent library of games and services to offer, as well as plenty more exciting new games in the pipeline. So although it’s now 6-years-old, there's a lot of life left in the Xbox One family yet. Over the years the Xbox One has come under fire for the quality of its first-party lineup, but we think that's a little unfair. That’s because it has some unmissable, genre-defining exclusives to its name, including the Forza, Halo, Gears of War and Sea of Thieves series. Now the 4K capabilities of the Xbox One X are here, these games look better than ever too. Aside from its AAA releases, Xbox One is also a great console for finding high-quality indie games. Its ID@Xbox program has titles including Ori and the Blind Forest and Cuphead, which are essential games. It's from this big collection of titles that we compiled our list of the best games on the Xbox One. There are a lot to get through, but these are the essential games we think every gamer should have in their library. Of course you could spend your time anywhere, but if you're new, these are the game worlds we recommend visiting first. Read on to see which games make the Xbox One shine, and keep checking back periodically: we update this list with new titles we feel have become part of the exclusive club of must-play games for the Xbox One console. Got the shiny new 4K console? These are the best Xbox One X gamesMake the most of your console with the best Xbox One accessoriesOn the PlayStation platform? Check our our picks of the best PS4 gamesLooking to Switch it up? These are the best games on Nintendo SwitchCheck out the best Xbox One gaming headsets Check out the video below to see more on the Xbox One X The best Xbox One deals and Xbox One S dealsWild wild west Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 has taken 2018 by storm, giving us the gun-toting, western open-world we were hoping for. You play as Arthur Morgan, a gunslinger in the notorious Van Der Linde gang as he navigates the trials and tribulations of the changing west. Red Dead Redemption 2 is certainly game which will keep you busy. Between story missions, mini-games, activities and side quests, you will find yourself sinking plenty of hours into this title without even noticing it. And with Red Dead Online in beta testing it won't be long until players can properly team up with a posse of friends to play. Red Dead Redemption 2 hunting guideRed Dead Redemption 2 fishing guideRed Dead Redemption 2 Easter Egg guideA Grecian epic Assassin's Creed Odyssey is the latest edition to the action RPG franchise. Odyssey is set during the Peloponnesian War and sees you stepping into the sandals of either Alexios or Kassandra as they try to uncover the truth about their history while navigating the turbulent world of Ancient Greece as a mercenary. Odyssey is a graphically stunning title which will take you to the heart of Ancient Greece – just make sure you have the time to place it because there's over 100 hours of content in this Xbox One game. Making the old feel new again The second Assassin's Creed title in our best Xbox One games list, Assassin's Creed Origins sees you going back to ancient Egypt, before the brotherhood and before the Templars, where you play as the original assassin Bayek. Assassin's Creed is a series that was growing increasingly stale, but with Origins the formula has been refreshed with new RPG mechanics, story-driven side quests and a far more free-flowing combat system. Whether you're new to the series or a fatiguing fan, Assassin's Creed Origins is absolutely worth playing: it's the strongest instalment we've seen in years. Read our full review of the game and our tips and tricks guide. A refreshing jump back in time In the latest Battlefield game, DICE takes players back in time to World War One and by doing so completely rejuvenates the once stagnating franchise. It's a title well worth a place on our best Xbox One games list. The game offers a poignant and entertaining single-player campaign that sets a new standard for first-person shooter. Broken into six sections, each following a different character and front line location, the campaign never feels dull or repetitive – and even feeds neatly into Battlefield 1's multiplayer mode which, while familiar, also benefits from the much-needed breath of life that the change in setting gives. Graphically impressive, entertaining, and sometimes touching, Battlefield 1 is a return to form for the series. It's not long at all now until Battlefield V releases – November 20. So, here's everything we know about Battlefield V so far. Beautiful and frustrating in equal measure After a long development and lots of anticipation, Xbox indie exclusive Cuphead has finally been released. Was it worth the wait? It certainly was. Cuphead is a run-and-gun platformer with stationary boss fight levels thrown in, and it's certainly one of the best Xbox One games of the moment. With visuals and a soundtrack inspired by 1930s animation, but gameplay inspired by the platformers of the 80s, this game has had us torn since we first tried it at Gamescom. It's lovely to look at but its gameplay is challenging and you're going to find yourself frustrated... and dying a lot. We enjoyed Cuphead so much we named it Best Xbox Exclusive in our 2017 Game of the Year Awards. It's an indie experience that shouldn't be missed and you'll only find it on Xbox and PC. Master the remaster Dark Souls is an iconic series in the gaming world and with this remaster you have the chance to go back to where it all started in 2011 – only this time with improved visual fidelity and performance, all the better to see those horrific and punishing enemies. This is the same original game with all of its DLC but that's no bad thing. Dark Souls is a fantastic, must-play title and it's great to see it on the latest generation of consoles. The frame rate bump to 60 fps makes it a much smoother and more exhilarating gameplay experience, and well worth a mention in our best games for Xbox One list. A smart, stealthy, steampunk adventure Following the surprise 2012 hit Dishonored wasn't going to be an easy task, but Dishonored 2 has more than lived up to its expectations, earning a place on our best Xbox One games list. Picking up 15 years after the events of the original, Dishonored 2 takes players back to the Victorian Steampunk city of Dunwall. This time, though, you have the choice of whether or not you want to play as the original title's protagonist Corvo, or his equally-skilled protegee Emily. Dishonored 2 doesn't differ wildly from the first game, but there was nothing wrong with Dishonored in the first place. What we get is a vastly improved and close to perfected take on it. Anyone who likes their games filled with atmosphere, character, and a bit of wit and intelligence will find Dishonored 2 worth picking up. The best Xbox One deals and Xbox One S dealsA retro-slash-modern romp through the underworld Take our word for it: DOOM is very, very good. Not in a "wow, that’s good for a remake" kind of way, either. It's genuinely a great shooter – so much so that we gave it a Game of the Year award in 2016. While Overwatch reinvented the wheel for first-person shooting games, DOOM impresses us by bringing us back to the time where dial-up internet was the only way to access AOL email: DOOM is, in so many ways, an excellent evolution of what the series was 20 years ago. It’s brutal. It’s bloody. It has devilish, frightening creatures that bleed when you slice them in half with a chainsaw. It’s the experience we wanted two decades ago but couldn’t articulate it because of the limitations of technology, and it's one of the best games for Xbox One. "Our weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency and gigantic sidequests." Inquisition is the proverbial RPG banquet – a 200-hour array of quests, magic-infused scraps, postcard landscapes and well-written character interactions that's perhaps a bit too familiar, at times, but makes up for it with sheer generosity. It puts you in charge not just of a four-man party of adventurers, but also a private army with its own castle and attendant strategic meta-game, tasked with defeating a mysterious demon menace. The choice of Unreal Engine makes for vast open environments and sexily SFX-laden combat – fortunately, you can pause the latter to issue orders if the onslaught becomes overwhelming. It's a genre giant and easily one of the top Xbox One X titles. The homecoming we waited seven years for All things considered, this is one of the best games Bethesda has ever made, and definitely one of the best games currently available on the Xbox One consoles. It ticks all the boxes: a massive, detail-oriented open-world; still-fantastic tenets of looting and shooting; a story filled with intriguing side quests and subplots that feel like they matter; and of course a classic soundtrack that brings it all to life. In many ways it's the game we've been waiting for since Fallout 3 steered the series away from its top-down role-playing roots. Not only is the world itself wider, but the plot is better, and more digestible, than any of the games before it. There's still a sense of mystery about what's happening, but you no longer have to dig forever and a day through terminals to piece it together. Welcome home, stranger. Still the best football sim money can buy Update: FIFA 19 is here! Check out our full review. FIFA is, for many console owners, a highly anticipated annual event. The latest and arguably greatest installment in the football sim series has arrived in the form of FIFA 18. Whether you're looking to play against others online, build up a management career on your own or play a cinematic story mode that'll give you an insight into the dramatic life of a Premier League footballer, FIFA has a game mode just for you. The best thing is, there's always more than enough to throw yourself into and agonize over until the next game rolls around with further incremental improvements that'll convince you to upgrade. You can read our full review of FIFA 18 right here and make sure you're the best on the pitch using our tips and tricks guide. A free 1-vs-100 shooter set on an epic scale Fortnite Battle Royale is a certified gaming phenomenon. Pitting 100 players against each other on a single map, it melds fun, cartoonish gameplay with a fierce competitive streak, and has attracted millions of players across the globe. When starting up, you're thrown onto an island with no weapons or armor and you must scavenge for supplies and fight for your life to be the last man (or squad) standing at the end of the game. The catch is that the map closes in as the match progresses, forcing players into tighter skirmishes and often whiteknuckle encounters. Best of all, however, the game is available for free on Xbox One, with in-game purchases limited to purely cosmetic options. If you're relatively restricted financially and need something to tide you over until the next big release, Fortnite is better than all the rest. It's definitely worth a place on our best Xbox One games list. Huge, exotic and amazing to behold: Australia is a petrol-head's dream Update: check out the brand new Forza Horizon 4! While the original Forza titles were about pristine driving skills around perfectly kept tracks, the Horizon series has a penchant for trading paint and isn't afraid to have you get down and dirty with off-road races from time to time. While the first two entries in Turn 10's spin-off franchise surprised and delighted, Forza Horizon 3 is the unabashed pinnacle of the series, and stands amid some of the greatest racing games ever made. Good news for Xbox One X owners – Forza Horizon 3 now has its 4K and HDR patch too. The Gears keep on turning for this excellent third-person shooter franchise Despite a new platform, a new development team and a new-ish set of muscled heroes on its box art, Gears of War 4 isn't some grand reimagining of the series that helped Xbox 360 go supernova back in 2006. But then again, such a revelation shouldn't come as a shock – this is the cover shooter that made cover shooters a fad-filled genre all unto itself, so messing too drastically with that special sauce was never a viable option. Instead, the Xbox One and Xbox One S get the Gears of War template we all know and love with a few extra features gently stirred into the pot. For a start, the jump to current-gen tech has made all the difference to The Coalition's first full-fat Gears title. Spend a little time in the previously remastered Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and you'll see how small and confined those original level designs were, even with a graphical upgrade to make it feel relevant again. It's more than just graphics, though. It's the return to form for the franchise; the focus on what makes a Gears game so great, that really won us over and got this title on our list of the best games for the Xbox One. There's no fear and loathing in Los Santos – just explosive entertainment Yes, including one of last generation's greatest games among this generation's finest is rather boring, but GTA V on Xbox One is too good to ignore, with HD visuals, a longer draw distance and a faster frame rate. Among other, more practical perks it includes a first-person mode, which genuinely makes this feel like a different game, though the missions, tools and characters are the same. The new perspective pushes Rockstar's attention to detail to the fore, allowing you to better appreciate the landscape's abundance of in-jokes and ambient details. GTA V's open world multiplayer remains a laidback thrill, whether you're stuntdiving with friends or teaming up to complete a heist (a long overdue addition to MP, but worth the wait) – it's probably the best place to hang out on Xbox Live right now. Halo multiplayer at its best A franchise that has defined Xbox as a platform for a long time is of course Halo, and Halo 5: Guardians is a worthy addition to the series and our list of the best Xbox One games. With both a single-player campaign and the usual thrilling multiplayer combat, this is the Halo game for Xbox One you don't want to miss. Though its single-player campaign isn't the best in the franchise in terms of story, this is Halo multiplayer combat at its most fun, and anyone that loves playing online with friends will enjoy what the various modes have to offer. Say hello to the triple indie Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is developer Ninja Theory's first attempt at publishing its own game and it's quite an achievement. The game follows Senua, a Celtic warrior suffering from psychosis who travels to Hell to rescue her lost lover. The game uses an interesting mix of binaural audio and innovative visual techniques to communicate Senua's experience with her psychosis to the player, resulting in a game that's likely to be quite different from anything else you've played recently. Disturbing, insightful and extremely enjoyable to play, this is a game worth taking a look at and we're glad to see it makes its debut on Xbox One. Xbox One X owners will have the benefit of being able to choose between three visual modes which promote either resolution, frame rate or visual richness. You can read all about our experience with the motion capture tech behind Hellblade right here. How many Snakes does it take to change a lightbulb? Okay, so Hideo Kojima's last game for Konami – and his last ever Metal Gear game – might be a little tough for the MGS n00b to get to grips with, but it's still one of the best stealth-action games ever crafted. The open-world shenanigans will satisfy all your behind-enemy-lines / Rambo fantasies and probably confuse you with crazy plot twists and a million characters all with the same gravel-toned voices. But hey, that's all part of its charm, right? Definitely one of the best Xbox One games we've ever sat down in front of. Bold, brilliant and brutal Middle-earth: Shadow of War is the sequel to the accomplished Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and builds upon all of its strengths. Taking up the role of Talion once more, this game takes you back to a beautifully realized world that's bursting with originality. If you were a fan of the original game, we highly recommend that you pick of Shadow of War as it's an improvement in almost every way – and well worth a place on our best Xbox One games list. Read our full review here and check out our handy tips and tricks guide. Friends who slay together, stay together You've probably heard of the Monster Hunter franchise before now – it's a classic that's been going a long time – but we haven't seen it on console for a while. Until now, that is. Monster Hunter: World is the franchise's debut on the latest generation of consoles and it's a true breath of fresh air, easily sliding its way into our list of the best Xbox One games right now. Giving players the option to play solo or team up with up to three other friends, this game invites you into a living, breathing game world to hunt down some monsters. For research. And fun. You'll face a learning curve with Monster Hunter: World and the dark-souls style of combat has the potential to frustrate, but this is the most accessible Monster Hunter game we've seen in years. If you've been looking for a chance to break into the series, this is it. In our review we called the game "a bold and confident new chapter" and gave it a "play it now" recommendation. Thinking of becoming a Monster Hunter yourself? Make sure you check out our full survival guide. A Metroid-Vania platformer with light RPG elements and loads of heart Although Ori was released early on in the Xbox One's life cycle, it remains one of the best platformers on the console, bar none. Shockingly beautiful and ultra-deadly, the world of Ori and the Blind Forest inspires and impresses in equal measure. Add to that the game's phenomenal, easy-to-learn-hard-to-master control scheme and light RPG elements, and you have the recipe for a timeless classic. Sure, there are some sequences that aren't as enjoyable as the rest of the game (we're looking at you, timed post-boss fight sequences) but ultimately this is a series that continues to enthrall long after you put the controller down. Not had enough Ori in your life? We've learned that the game will be getting a sequel in 2019 called Ori and the Will of the Wisps. It will pick up where are story left off (no spoilers, please!) and will see Ori platforming his way through the eponymous forest for a second run. The team-based shooter you need to buy on Xbox One Overwatch has, without a doubt, been one of our favorite games to come out on Xbox One, ever – it was even good enough to nab our Game of the Year 2016 award. It's a classic team arena shooter from Blizzard that sets two six-person teams of wildly different characters against each other in a bright and cartoonish science fiction universe. And while it feels similar to the Call of Duty you've played before, Overwatch turns traditional shooters on their heads by adding unique character abilities and cool-downs to the mix, forcing you to strategize every once in a while instead of blindly running from room to room. Great graphics, tight maps, and a good roster of characters to enjoy playing. Overwatch is good old fashioned fun, and we thoroughly recommend it. A chilling return to form Your gaming collection isn't really complete if it doesn't have a quality horror title in it, and if we had to suggest one it'd be the newest installment in the Resident Evil franchise. Resident Evil is the franchise that put survival-horror games on the map and though it lost its way slightly in later titles, the newest game is a return to form for Capcom. By going back to the survival-horror basics and getting them dead on, Capcom has made Resident Evil 7 a genuinely frightening and exhilarating gaming experience. If you have the stomach for the gore, it's absolutely worth playing. Don't miss our full review of the game. The name of the game is freedom in Lara's latest sprawling outing Despite being the sequel to a prequel about the young life of the Lara Croft, this still feels like a Tomb Raider game that has grown up. The reboot which saw a brave new direction for the franchise seemed a lot of the time to be little more than a bit of light Uncharted cosplay, but Rise is a far more accomplished game. There's now a genuine open world which feels like there is always something to do, and something more than just harvesting up collectibles in exchange for a light dusting of XP. There are also tombs: yes, that might seem a fatuous thing to say given the name, but the previous game gave them short shrift. In Rise though they are deeper and more plentiful. Rise also has one of the best narratives of any Tomb Raider game, penned again by Rhianna Pratchett, it's sometimes rather poignant. So come on, ditch Fallout 4's wasteland for a while and give Lara some love. It's undoubtedly one of the best Xbox One games you can get. They had the technology to rebuild him, better than before The original Titanfall was a great game – so great that it long held a place on this very list. However, its sequel, Titanfall 2, improves on it every conceivable way: the motion is more fluid, there are more distinct titans to choose from, and (hold onto your hats here) there's actually a single-player campaign that might take the cake for the best first-person shooter story of the year. This game's pedigree is inherited from one of this generation's smartest and most unusual shooters. The original Titanfall married ninja-fast on-foot combat to the gloriously thuggish thrill of piloting giant mechs, which are summoned from orbit a few minutes into each match. The skill with which Respawn has balanced this mix of styles in the sequel is remarkable – Titans have firepower in excess but they're easy to hit, and maps offer plenty of places for infantry to hide. These ideas coalesce into one of this year's most remarkable entries in the genre and is well-deserving its own shot in the spotlight as well as a Game of the Year nomination. Stories don't come bigger than this Geralt didn't have the smoothest of entries to consoles, but after some heavy patching and a lot of angry words about visual downgrades, we're left with an RPG boasting tremendous scope and storytelling. Oh, and combat. And don't forget Gwent, the in-game card game. And there's the crafting to get stuck into. And the alchemy. This ticks a lot of boxes when it comes to the best games for Xbox One. You're rarely short of things to entertain yourself with in The Witcher 3's quasi-open world, then, and all the better that you're in a universe that involves the supernatural without leaning on the same old Tolkien fantasy tropes. Invigorating stuff. Superb in every sense Looking for an incredible single-player shooter? Look no further than the 2017 wonder that was Wolfenstein II. Picking up from where the original game left off, this game is a timely social commentary and a superbly silly adventure all rolled into one well-written package. With tight mechanics and a story worth caring about, this is one of the most satisfying first-person shooters we've played in a long time. In our full review we called it "expertly crafted" and recommended that you play it at your earliest opportunity. A strong narrative and emotionally compelling Life is Strange is an episodic graphic adventure which tells the story of Max, who moves back to her hometown and reunites with her best friend Chloe – someone who is a bit more rebellious than she remembers. On top of trying to navigate the difficulties of teenage life, Max discovers that she has the ability to rewind time at any moment and only she can prevent a storm on its way to destroy her hometown. Rather than focusing on combat, the crux of Life is Strange is the choices Max (AKA you) makes and the effect these choices have on the overall story. A game for those who appreciate an engaging story. The prequel, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, is equally mesmerising. Scallywags Rare's swashbuckling adventure Sea of Thieves lets players to take on the role of a pirate sailing the seas of a fantastical world – either alone or as part of a crew of up to four members. It's up to you whether you choose to focus on trading, treasure-hunting or plundering the loot of others. This is a great title for those who enjoy playing with others in an open-world environment, plus it doesn't look too shabby at all. One of the best Xbox One games of recent times. Here's all the latest Sea of Thieves news and updates. Another brick in the wall Minecraft released nearly ten years ago, but it's still as popular as ever with adults and kids alike. The sandbox survival game allows players to build with blocks in a 3D-generated world, providing a perfect creative outlet for those artistically inclined. If you're less creative, there's also the option to explore the world, harvest resources, craft items and square-up to enemies. Check out the history of Minecraft. Spyro has never looked better This is no mere HD re-release as we've seen many times from other fondly-remembered classics over the years though. Instead, the visuals have been completely redesigned for the modern gaming era, which considering the original Spyro Trilogy appeared on the PS1, is a great idea. If you played the updated Crash Bandicoot Trilogy last year, you know what to expect in terms of visual upgrades. Check out the best deals for the Spyro Reignited Trilogy on the Xbox One. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/vJdznYSvKGY

It's been nearly three years since the PlayStation VR for the PS4 and PS4 Pro launched onto the scene, bringing a good quality virtual reality headset experience to more people than ever before. Right now it's still the best-selling virtual reality headset on the market, which makes sense considering many of the others need high-end computers to get up-and-running. But Sony is also committed to putting excellent, high-quality games out on the system, and has done so on hardware that puts entry price at just as an important standing as performance. Sure it's not affordable for everyone - you still need plenty of spare change, as well as a PlayStation console to get started. But it's a step in the right direction. As the PlayStation VR has proved to be such a mainstream hit, it should come as no surprise that developers have been busy building great games for users to try out. And we're collecting the very best PlayStation VR games right here for your convenience. We've seen a lot of the best VR games, including those not originally intended for the Sony console, get reconfigured for the PSVR. On top of that, the PSVR has been getting its own range of exclusive gaming titles. We expect more and more great games will be landing on the platform over the course of 2019, so we'll be sure to keep our eyes peeled. Looking for a top Playstation VR deal? Check out our pick of the latest ways to save money on a Playstation headset.Once you've got your hands on a new headset, as well as some awesome Move controllers, it can be difficult to pick the best PlayStation VR games out from the increasingly large pile of titles. We’re here to help with our recommendations of some of the best PSVR games around at the moment (and the ones we’re most excited about landing soon), and our picks cover a wide range of genres and playing styles. We’re always on the lookout for brand new PSVR games, so be sure to keep checking back for our latest picks of what’s new and what’s worth it. We’ll also make sure you know when there’s an upcoming game that looks too good to miss, so you can get your hands on it as soon as it's been released. So whether you want to know what it feels like to be Batman or want to travel to a war-torn alien planet, or even face mortal dread with the most engrossing Resident Evil experience around, there’s something for you in VR. Here’s a detailed look at the best PlayStation VR games for 2019 (so far). Developer: Gearbox Price: $49.99, £39.99 Does it require Move controllers? No First person shooting meets Diablo-style loot hunting in the Borderlands games, and the superb Borderlands 2 VR now brings virtual reality action into the mix, too. Sci-fi treasure hunters in a Mad Max world, Borderlands 2 in VR takes the frantic action of the original games to a whole other level by putting you right into the center of its colorfully violent world. You'll collect countless unique weapons, battle waves of bizarre foes and explore a land as mad as its shooting action is varied. What could have been a nauseating puke-fest in virtual reality has actually been adapted with aplomb here. Whether you're playing with a DualShock controller or Move wands, the game offers ample options to make the game suit your comfort level, from full locomotion through to teleportation and peripheral vision hazing. A lengthy adventure that's well worth a look, even if you've mastered it on a flatscreen previously. Developer: Japan Studio Price: $39.99, £24.99 Does it require Move controllers? No If you own a PlayStation VR headset (which, if you're reading this, we're guessing you probably do) stop what you're doing, head over to your PS4, and buy Astro Bot: Rescue Mission. If the PlayStation VR was awaiting a killer title, it now unarguably has one. Astro Bot: Rescue Mission isn't just a great VR platformer, it's a great platforming game full stop. Full of the kind of inventiveness we've come to only expect from Nintendo's Mario series, Astro Bot: Rescue Mission plays with the VR format with such wild imagination, it makes other efforts look lazy. Weaving levels all around the player, and using scale to both disarm and delight your expectations, it's quite unlike anything you'll have ever played before. It's hard to put the Tetris Effect experience into words. Essentially you play regular games of Tetris, except that the environments you're playing in change. Each level has its own distinct flavor - with music and visuals tailored to its theme. For example, you can play an underwater level and you will hear soothing underwater noises, while sparkling, whales float around your head. It's a psychedelic and hypnotic experience, and one that everyone should have the privilege to play. Developer: Vertigo Games Price: $39.99, £32.99 Does it require Move controllers? No, but recommended Resident Evil 7 isn’t the only great VR zombie game, as Arizona Sunshine has proved by mixing a bit of humor with a whole lot of zombies. The game throws players into the arid Southwest of the United States, an area overrun with zombies. It’s lonely out there, but there’s hope on the horizon of other humans that haven’t been infected. Arizona sunshine offers a variety of zombies, some tougher than others, and a host of weapons to help put them down. The campaign can be played in co-op, and there’s also a multiplayer Horde mode. An essential PSVR game for fans of the undead. See Arizona Sunshine at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Schell Games LLC Price: £19.99, $24.99 Does it require Move controllers?: No, but with so many things you can interact with, the Move controllers will offer a lot of extra freedom. The fantastic I Expect You to Die will have you feeling like a classy Cold War-era spy, like James Bond as played by Sean Connery or Roger Moore, not Daniel Craig. The game puts you into the role of a special agent tasked with getting yourself out of exceedingly sticky situations, all without moving from your seat. It makes excellent use of VR, as you can pick up and play with objects all over your environment, whether or not doing so actually helps you complete your objective. There are several levels (with the potential of the developer adding more later, as has already been done), and each sets you in a unique environment that plays out much like an escape room. You’re faced with a series of puzzles, and your actions will determine whether you live or die. The puzzles are great, and many can be solved multiple ways, lending the game some replayability. This is also a fun one to watch your friends try, as you’ll enjoy the shock on their faces when they encounter traps, such as a cabinet full of hand grenades. See I Expect You to Die at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Ployarc Price: $30, £25 Will it require Move controllers? No A family-friendly VR adventure, Moss offers the immersion of a virtual reality experience with the fun of a platformer and sense of wonder of a Zelda game. Developed by a team made up in part of former Bungie employees, you'll direct an intrepid, sword-wielding rodent through forests and ruins, guiding her through enemy filled rooms while taking direct control of environmental elements to solve puzzles. It's the perfect use of VR from a third-person perspective, giving you dual control over a hero avatar and as an omnipotent influence on her surroundings. It makes great use of perspective too, with a 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids' look at a world from a mouse's scale. Definitely one to play on your PlayStation VR. See Moss at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Survios Price: £19.99, $29.99 Does it require Move controllers?: Yes Some people might have an impression of VR players slowly sinking into their couch as their virtual body flourishes and their real world body withers away. That couldn’t be further from the truth for players of Sprint Vector. This game is like Mario Kart meets Jet Set Radio, as players are thrust into a cartoonish world where they have to race against other players on sci-fi roller blades. The key to the movement is players swinging their real-world arms back and forth in a running motion. No motion in the real world means no motion in the game. And, to get going fast, you really need to hustle. This game is as much a workout as any game from the Wii generation, so don’t be surprised if you break a sweat and get a bit of cardio in playing Sprint Vector on your PSVR. But it’s not just a work. It’s also fun, as a goofy announcer keeps everything lighthearted even while racers try sabotaging one another with a handy arsenal of weapons. See Sprint Vector at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: SUPERHOT Team Price: £19.99, $24.99 Does it require Move controllers?: Yes, though a non-VR version of the game is also available and truly excellent. It’s always a delight when a game developer takes a tried-and-true genre and introduces a new gameplay mechanic that flips it on its head. That was the case when SUPERHOT was released, as the first-person shooter was slowed way, way down. In the game, time only moves when the player moves, and that can make for some fantastic Matrix-esque moments. All of that gameplay has translated excellently into virtual reality with SUPERHOT VR. You’re plopped right into the middle of truly precarious situations, such as standing empty-handed before three enemies with shotguns who have you dead-to-rights, with only your wits and time on your side. While the story only takes a couple hours to play through, there’s plenty of replayability in SUPERHOT VR, as you can try to play through different ways, or take on challenge modes. It’s also a great VR party game, as players can swap in and out to show off their moves. Pick it up for your PlayStation VR today. See SUPERHOT VR at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Red Storm Entertainment Price: £39.99, $49.99 Does it require Move controllers?: No – Star Trek: Bridge Crew can actually be played fully outside of VR by those who do not have PSVR or occasionally want to stay in the real world, but the most immersive experience is naturally had in VR. Star Trek: Bridge Crew puts Star Trek fans right where they’ve always wanted to be: on the bridge of a Federation starship, or even in the captain’s seat. But it doesn’t put you there alone. This is actually a multiplayer, cross-platform game. Players on PSVR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive can all play together, and as we've said, even non-VR players can join in. Each player has a role to play, specifically Captain, Helm, Tactical or Engineer. A crew of four can take on the story mission of finding a new home world for the Vulcan population, or procedurally generated missions can offer endless playability. If you want to explore space with a few friends but can’t wait for Elon Musk to make it happen, Star Trek: Bridge Crew is a great alternative. As a bonus, the game is often on sale, so you may not have to pay full price. See Star Trek: Bridge Crew at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Bethesda Game Studios Price: £49.99, $49.99 Does it require Move controllers? No. DualShock controllers give a more comfortable, familiar control system for what's quite a complex game, but Move motion controllers let you swing a sword, and there's no arguing that that's not cool. You've played Skyrim, right? The benchmark for open world gaming for so long, it's been hard to ignore, a cultural phenomenon of sorts. The RPG has now been reworked for Sony's PSVR headset, and, while not perfect, it's well worth experiencing. There's nothing quite like the scale of Skyrim in VR, with 100s of hours of RPG gaming letting you explore a huge map filled with secrets, quests and dragons to fell. Whether standing at the foot of a mountain or going toe-to-toe with a troll, the presence VR adds to the world is superb. Even if you've played through the game multiple times, it's still something quite special to actually be standing in Solitude, or climbing the steps of Bleak Falls Barrow with your own two feet. However, while the world remains superb, the transition to VR hasn't been perfect. Move-controller sword swinging feels clumsy, menu navigation is a chore, locomotion can be tricky to master and many visual compromises have been made to meet the demands of VR visuals. For anyone that's played a more recent remaster of Skyrim, it'll feel a bit more rough and ready than you're used to. Leave your expectations at the door though, and it's a unique return to Bethesda's still-excellent core game, with some new bells and whistles thrown in. See The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Polyphony Digital Price: £44.99, $69.99 Does it require Move controllers? No, but getting a racing wheel elevates the experience. It's the daddy of racing sims, so it's fitting that Gran Turismo Sport, the franchise's first foray on the PS4, should embrace that most immersive of console peripherals – the PlayStation VR headset. You'll get in the cockpit of a huge selection of beautifully realised vehicles, each modelled exactly as they appear in real life, before taking them out onto the circuit for head-to-head races. A side-helping to the brilliant main Gran Turismo Sport game, the VR mode has still been obviously meticulously crafted, with a discreet in-game HUD, useful mirrors and some fine-stitched racing gloves sitting over your digital hands. It makes an already drool-worthy racer extra tempting, and is a must-have for PSVR owners. See Gran Turismo Sport at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: SIEA/Impulse Gear Price: £49.99, $49.99 / £74.99, $79.99 with PS VR Aim Does it require Move controllers? No, but it's better with the PS VR Aim add-on. Like sci-fi? Love shooters? Laugh in the face of super-gross giant space spiders? Then PlayStation VR's Farpoint is for you. The PSVR exclusive sees you shooting your way through alien environments in glorious VR, and makes use of Sony's new gun controller to let you realistically aim at your extra-terrestrial foes. You can dodge and duck behind cover to avoid incoming fire, and while the game follows a fairly linear path, you're free to explore the levels at your leisure. Despite giving you free control over the movement of your character, Farpoint somehow manages to avoid the motion sickness issues that have plagued similar titles. We had a blast with Farpoint. Though short at six-or-so hours of single player story mode to complete, its multiplayer mode gives it some extra replayability, as does the pinpoint-accuracy of its visceral gunplay. For more on the game, read our Farpoint verdict here. See Farpoint at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Capcom Price: $60/£50 Does it require Move controllers? No. Resident Evil 7 is a bit of an anomaly on this list: the next entry in the long-running horror series takes the experience into first person for the first time, but, more impressively, can be played in its 18 hour entirety in VR. This means that the game is one of the longest PlayStation VR experiences available right now, but you'll need a lot of courage to make it through the game this way, since by all accounts Resident Evil 7 is one scary game – especially in virtual reality. However, if you're able to stomach the scares you'll be rewarded with one of the finest horror games of this generation, and a true return to form for the Resident Evil series. See Resident Evil 7 at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Criterion / DICE Price: Free (if you own Battlefront) Does it require Move controllers? No. It may only last 20 minutes, but what a fantastic third of an hour it is. Star Wars Battlefront's X-Wing VR mission, even as an extended tech demo, is a perfect example of what VR is capable of. Putting you right in the cockpit of a lovingly modelled X-Wing fighter, it transports you directly into a key element of the Star Wars universe. Handling like a dream as you dart between asteroids and take on a fleet of Tie Fighters, and you'll get all the feels when John Williams' iconic score begins to swell. Put this near the top of your shortlist for the best PlayStation VR games. See Star Wars: Battlefront at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Tarsier Studios Price: $19.99/£15.99 Does it require Move controllers? No. Statik, by Little Nightmare developers Tarsier Studios, is one of the cleverest VR games out there. It sounds simple enough. Each level sees you play as a research participant who wakes up with their hands trapped inside various different contraptions. Each button on the controller seems to do something on the device, but it's never really clear what. You'll have to experiment with trial and error to escape from each of these contraptions, and the puzzles get fiendishly difficult. But what's really impressive is how the game plays into the constraints of the PlayStation VR when used with a DualShock controller. It's camera isn't good at tracking over large distances, so the game has you sitting in a chair. The fact that you're using a controller makes you feel as though your hands really are trapped inside a box, even if you can move your hands freely in the real world. Statik is a game that's great at showing off the simpler pleasures of VR, and it's easy to get completely absorbed in its puzzles. See Statik at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Monstars + Enhance Games Price: $30/£25 Does it require Move controllers? No. Who’d have guessed that a 15 year old Dreamcast game would turn out to be one of the killer apps for Sony’s PlayStation VR headset? The second time that the classic shooter has been updated, Rez Infinite adds VR head tracking into the mix, putting you at the center of its Tron-like wireframe soundscapes. It’s always been a game that lets you “get in the zoneâ€, but with VR head tracking, Rez Infinite becomes almost hypnotic. With an ace, pulsing trance soundtrack that builds to a thumping crescendo as you shoot down polygonal enemies, you find yourself fully immersed in the futuristic landscape as it zips past your floating avatar. With an insane sense of speed and spot on head-tracking enemy targeting, it’s easy to completely lose track of reality whilst playing Rez Infinite, and it’ll be hard to stop yourself dancing along to the grooves your shots produce. Packing in all the additional content of the earlier HD re-release of Rez, it’s still a relatively short VR experience at just around an hour long. But, like a good album, it’s something you’ll want to dive into again and again. Just be careful that you don’t do a “Jeff Bridges in Tron†and find yourself so hooked that you’ll never want to leave. See Rez Infinite at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Rocksteady Studios Price: $20/£16 Does it require Move controllers? Yes. Batman: Arkham VR is probably the best introduction to PlayStation VR as a platform. While there isn’t a ton of gameplay in the traditional sense, it’s an amazing visual showcase that demonstrates the power of the platform. The opening sequence of the game draws you into in by leading you from the top floor of Wayne Manor down to the basement wherein you suit up as the Batman for the first time. What you’re paying for here are the vistas and the incredible level of immersion as you solve crimes throughout Gotham and come face-to-horrifying-face with Batman’s greatest adversaries. There’s few things scarier than looking the Joker in his beady bright green eyes or standing mere inches away from Killer Croc, and Batman: Arkham VR is one of the only experiences in the world that offer just that. See Batman: Arkham VR at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: London Studio Price: $40/£30 Does it require Move controllers? Yes. There’s a vast majority of gamers out there who are going to get PlayStation VR Worlds without ever heading to the store to pick it up. Sony’s decision to include it in the PlayStation VR Launch Day Bundle was, in many ways, one of the most brilliant decisions the company made with its VR headset. On the disc you’ll find a number of short, self-contained experiences that demo polished game ideas that could one day be expanded into full titles. The standout titles include Danger Ball, The London Heist and Scavengers Odyssey, but the remaining games – Ocean Descent and VR Luge – aren’t all that bad, either. There’s a reason Sony picked PlayStation VR Worlds to be packaged with every Launch Day bundle – it’s probably the best title to use to ease friends and family into virtual reality, rather than tossing them into the deep-end with a game like Thumper. The demos here can be a bit overwhelming at times – I’m looking in your direction, VR Luge – but if they’re feeling the motion sickness you can always bring them back to something like Danger Ball or Ocean Descent to get them back on their feet. See PlayStation VR Worlds at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Rebellion Price: $50/£50 Does it require Move controllers? No. Chances are, the original Battlezone might have passed you by if you're under 40 – Atari's 1980 arcade game doesn't quite hold the same iconic status as Pong. However, it's generally considered to be the very first VR game, which is why British developer Rebellion bought the rights from Atari so that it could remake it for modern VR headsets. The result is one of the best VR experiences we've had to date. The gameplay is fun (think a futuristic take on World of Tanks), but it's the striking-but-simple graphics that are the key to the overall enjoyment. There’s two main modes here – offline campaign and online multiplayer. While we didn’t have time to try it with a bunch of buddies online, the offline campaign mode feels pretty well fleshed out. There’s quite a number of tanks to pick from and unlock and while gameplay can err on the repetitive side, it’s enough to lock you in for a few hours at a time. While a lot of VR games try to go as realistic as possible, Battlezone's Tron-like game world is incredibly absorbing, and better yet it’s one of the few titles on the platform you'll be able to enjoy alongside your friends thanks to the game's inclusion of co-operative play. See Battlezone at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Sony Price: Free Does it require Move controllers? No. Even the coldest of hearts will be melted by The Playroom. The game’s cast is comprised of little robots who are tossed into peculiar, fun and even Mario-esque situations for your amusement. If I’m being totally honest, the whole game looks and plays like a Mario Party game and is perfect for larger crowds. In one mini-game, the player with the VR headset is a monster, while four players using a TV and DualShock 4 controllers try to avoid the debris he throws at them. In another, one player wearing the headset is tasked with sucking up ghosts from a haunted house while players outside of virtual reality locate the spectres and shout directions on where to shoot. There are also toybox demos where you just look into a miniature house and observe the droids as they go to the gym, go swimming, watch TV and so forth. But honestly the best part of Sony’s The Playroom VR is its price – it’s free to download, which makes it one of the best bargains anywhere on the PlayStation Store. See The Playroom VR at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: kokoromi Price: $30 Does it require Move controllers? No. SUPERHYPERCUBE is a legitimately fun game, like not “by VR’s standards” fun, but real honest fun. The goal here is to rotate blocks to get them to fit through an opening of a certain size and shape. Sneak the piece through and you’re rewarded with another block that will then create the next puzzle a bit harder. If you can’t, the blocks that can’t fit through the opening jettison off your cube and you start from square one. Where SUPERHYPERCUBE went right is that it didn’t try to do anything complex – like Tetris, Candy Crush and Breakout! the idea here is simple: don’t mess up. But the simple idea is enhanced by the perspective provided by VR – by allowing you to look at your floating cube from every angle you appreciate the times you solve the puzzle and simply laugh when it doesn’t work out. The only things SUPERHYPERCUBE is missing are a killer soundtrack and a few more modes to pad out the solve-it-or-start-over gameplay. A mode where you start with a cube comprised of 40 blocks or shaped like various mundane objects would’ve gone a long way to making it feel like a more complete, robust experience. Still, all that aside, it’s worth picking up. See SUPERHYPERCUBE at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Uber Entertainment Price: $20/£15 Does it require Move controllers? Yes. If you’ve been looking for PlayStation VR’s sleeper hit, Wayward Sky is it. An isometric puzzle game that’s aimed at younger gamers, Wayward Sky has you solving puzzles to reunite a young female pilot with her father. At times heartfelt and funny, other times heart-achingly sad, Wayward Sky is a rather emotional journey. Setting emotions aside for a minute, the game may not do the best of jobs leveraging virtual reality’s new perspective, but the few times it does – usually when operating a piece of machinery – are effective at making you feel more immersed. That said, it can be tough to tell who the game is targeting. While kids would make the most sense given the game’s lighter atmosphere and sometimes overly simple puzzle mechanics, Sony doesn’t recommend children under the age of 12 use its virtual reality headset. So unless you’re willing to fly in the face of Sony’s warning – or embark on the journey yourself while a little one watches along on the TV – you might need to skip past this patch of sky. See Wayward Sky at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Steel Crate Games Price: $15/£12 Does it require Move controllers? No. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes doesn’t sound like much fun on paper. While one person puts on a headset to look at an overly detailed bomb in a nondescript room, the other player uses the TV screen to read a dense direction manual on how which wires to cut and buttons to push to make sure you get to the next level. But underneath its seemingly boring exterior lies a tremendously fun exercise in teamwork, communication and sometimes sheer dumb luck as you make last-minute decisions to stop a bomb from going off. Levels that start off easy – usually with two or three puzzles to solve and a few minutes to solve them – have a tendency to escalate quickly. Part of the game’s charm is that whenever you start feeling good about your skills as either a decoder or disarmer, something else comes up that ruins your day. In that way it’s fun trying to stay calm under pressure and getting a laugh when it all, inevitably, blows up in your face. See Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Drool Price: $20/£16 Does it require Move controllers? No. Never have the words “Rhythm Hell” been a more apt description for a game. Thumper pushes you by sending wave after wave of obstacles your way that require button combinations set to a certain beat. If the flashing lightshow isn’t enough, the game’s aesthetics and boss battles are like something set out of Dante’s Inferno: hellish visages of what life in the afterlife might look like for all the naughtiest gamers. While the music in Thumper is never totally recognizable, it’s instantly catchy causing you to bob your head to the beat and curse loudly when the game sets aside all care for your emotions and just throws everything and the kitchen sink at you all at once. Thumper is, admittedly, a bit on the intense side visually – so it’s probably not the best thing to show off to mom and dad or little ones. But if you’ve gone through Rez Infinite and you’re looking for a musically inspired hellscape, Thumper should be the next game on your list. See Thumper at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Supermassive Games Price: $20/£15 Does it require Move controllers? Yes. One of our favorite aspects of PlayStation VR is just how many different genres of games it has. DriveClub in VR will satiate racing game fans' need for speed, while GNOG will put fans of puzzle games face-to-face with a dozens of colorful enigmas to solve. Unlike either of those, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood joins Resident Evil 7 in being one of PlayStation VR's first forays into the horror genre, one that straps you into a carnival-esque rollercoaster and sends you hurtling through of funhouse of horrors. While the controls are fairly limited – basically shoot anything and everything that moves – the real "fun" to be had in Rush of Blood comes from tumbling from one jump scare to the next with a deathgrip on both the controller and your bladder. Trust me kids, nothing is scarier than almost peeing your pants in a room full of your friends. See Until Dawn: Rush of Blood at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Double Fine Productions Price: $20/£15 Does it require Move controllers? No. If you're looking for a laugh while play testing your new PSVR, check out Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, a game written by the weird, twisted mind of Tim Schafer. While we've always loved the stuff Schafer has done, Rhombus of Ruin takes his writing to a new dimension. (Get it? Fine. We're not funny.) What you'll find here behind the clever jokes and Schafer's lovably strange humor is a straightforward puzzle game that can be played in just over an hour. The puzzles aren't exactly mind melting, and the experience might be a bit too short for the price of entry, but if you can't wait another minute for Psychonauts 2 or want a more laid-back experience while you're still learning the ropes of virtual reality, this is a trip to the inner psyche worth taking. See Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin at the PlayStation StoreDeveloper: Sony London Studio Release window: 2018 Will it require Move controllers? Yes. After rocking the PlayStation VR launch with VR Worlds and its standout cockney-shooting gallery mode The Heist, Sony London Studio is following it up with a full-length dive into London's underworld. In Blood and Truth you'll play as a former special forces operative exploring the murky world of London's criminal elite on a mission to save his family. Taking its cues from big-budget action movies, it wants to make you feel like the hero of your own film. From the demo we've seen so far, Sony London Studio again nails its VR gunplay, but it's the little details that look set to make the game shine. As good looking as any game that's yet hit the PlayStation VR headset, Sony London Studio offers an intuitive world where partaking action movie tropes (like shooting at the feet of a tight-lipped informant unwilling to spill the beans), are rewarded just as you'd expect them to be. If you've got a PSVR headset, we think it should be top of your wishlist. See Blood and Truth at the PlayStation siteDeveloper: Owlchemy Labs Release window: 2018 Will it require Move controllers? Most likely. Fans of Job Simulator have a new game to look forward to in Vacation Simulator. It’s looking to be more of the same humor, paired with quirky gameplay as you try your best to participate in a vacation. We don’t have many details on the game yet, other than a brief look at it here, and that it should release in 2018 on multiple VR platforms. As long as Owlchemy Labs keeps doing their thing, we have no doubt Vacation Simulator will be a fun little romp in VR. See Vacation Simulator hereDeveloper: Bandai Namco Studio / Project Aces Release window: 2018 Will it require Move controllers? Likely not. Being in a cockpit is one of the most natural settings for VR, and Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown drops players in the cockpits of a fighter jet for some extreme dog-fighting. The Ace Combat series has had a fairly consistent track record of coming out with compelling dog-fighting games, and the upcoming title will hopefully prove that little has changed. It’s unclear just how much gameplay will actually be in VR, as Ace Combat 7 won’t be a strictly-VR game. But, a package that comes with a complete game and offers a special VR mode on top is a good package in our eyes. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is slated for release in 2018 on PlayStation VR. See Ace Combat 7 at the PlayStation sitehttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/8J85Hfd2mAo

Best Noise-Cancelling Headphones Buying Guide: Welcome to TechRadar's round-up of the best noise-cancelling headphones you can buy in 2019. We all know that commuting sucks, a necessary evil to get us from A to B. But there are many ways to make it more bearable, especially to make the chatter and traffic sounds more bearable. Trains, buses, or even walking down a busy street can be awfully noisy, but there are lots of tech tools to help you block out the noise and help you reach audio nirvana. By far the best tools for your anti-sound arsenal are noise-cancelling headphones. And some of the best models come from the top audio manufacturers, including Sony, Bose and Sennheiser. With many of the best noise-cancelling headphones, you can put a pair on and say goodbye to the days of suffering from honking traffic, crying babies, and noisy conversations. That's right, these true wonders of the modern era totally tune out any unwanted sounds, while simultaneously making your music sound even better than any old pair of in-ear earbuds. We believe that noise-cancelling cans are just as vital as your laptop, TV or mobile phone when it comes to tech that'll change how you live, work and play. That means that choosing the right pair is important. Luckily, to help you pick out a pair of headphones that deliver all of the above in spades, we've put together a list of the top 10 noise-cancelling headphones, listed below and ranked by their price-to-performance ratio. Can't decide which headphones to buy? Check out our guide video below: What are the best noise-cancelling headphones?http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/tdbYLfwJ3U5eSREdqfV8oZ.jpg The Sony WH-1000XM3 are the best noise-cancelling headphones in the world two years running. Sure, they might be a small refinement of last year's excellent WH-1000XM2, but subtle tweaks like using USB-C instead of microUSB and adding padding along the bridge help make Sony's award-winning cans even better. So why does everyone love the WH-1000XM3 so much? Well, it's exceptionally good at cancelling outside noise. Put a pair on while vacuuming and you'll barely hear the motor running. For music lovers, the Sony WH-1000XM3 features aptX HD and Sony LDAC, two of the best ways to listen to Hi-Res music from your phone without a wire. Finally, all of Sony's flagship headphones offer both Google Assistant and, starting in 2019, Alexa support, making them not only the best noise-cancelling cans on the market but some of the smartest, too. Read the full review: Sony WH-1000XM3 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/yFwW5pTwL3ot83qNGZohrj.jpg If you can find a pair, the Sony WH-1000XM2 are still some of the best noise-cancelling headphones around: They sound great, deftly wield noise cancellation technology and cost just as much as a pair of Bose QC35s. They might have a slightly shorter battery life than Bose’s flagship over-ear headphones, but Sony’s WH-1000XM2 outclass the QC35 in terms of performance and feature-set. You’d want to pick these Sony headphones over the Bose because not only do they provide the same level of awesome noise-cancellation, but they have three neat tricks that Bose just doesn't have on its headphones: One is an ambient noise mode that only lets in mid-to-high frequency tones (announcements over a loudspeaker, for instance) and another being Quick Attention mode that allows you to let in all outside noise without taking off the headphones. (The latter is perfect when giving a drink order on a plane or speaking to a coworker for a brief moment before diving back into your work.) The last trick Sony has up its sleeve is the LDAC codec. Alongside the widely adopted aptX HD standard, LDAC enables Hi-Res Audio playback using the 1000XM2. Great-sounding, feature-packed and just as affordable as the competition? The Sony WH-1000XM2 are a solid all-around pick for noise-cancelling cans. Read the full review: Sony WH-1000XM2 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/7yBy7bzzHXD37rmy7qKoD6.jpg Coming in at the number two spot is the Bose QuietComfort 35 II - a nearly identical product to the already-excellent Bose QuietComfort 35 but updated for 2018 with Google Assistant. This means you still get the class-leading noise cancellation Bose is known for, good sound quality and incredible comfort, plus a convenient assistant to answer any inquiries you might have while traveling. Taken as a whole, the Bose QC35 II NC is an excellent headphone for travelers and commuters. Bose has found a good balance of features that will satisfy most mainstream listeners. While we don't love them as much as the better-sounding Sony WH-1000XM2, they're still top of the class for noise cancellation. Read the full review: Bose QuietComfort 35 II http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/e5gMLgK4J46kN43ycpFQX.jpg The PXC 550's greatest strength is their sound. Other wireless noise-cancelling headphones might offer a better user interface or better noise-cancellation technology, but ultimately none of the above match up to the sound quality of these Sennheisers. However, that said, there are a couple of irritations that prevent us from being able to fully and unreservedly recommend them, such as unresponsive touch controls. These annoyances aren't quite deal-breakers, but there are definitely other noise-cancelling headphones out there that don't suffer from the same issues. Read the full review: Sennheiser PXC 550 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/255d481c3f2bfd636fd653107e6949c3.jpg Philips presents a more elegant noise-cancelling solution with its NC1. These on-ear headphones aren't wireless like our top pick, but that's hardly a reason to knock them. Coming in at $299/£195, the NC1 are a compact set that's high on comfort and battery life. You get a lot for the money here. In the box comes the headphones, a hard case for storage and the headphones rock a rechargeable battery that provides noise cancellation for close to 30 hours. But best of all, the sound performance is extremely well balanced and warm. (A quite note for our Australian readers: Philips sadly no longer sells the NC1's down under, so you'll need to import a pair if you're keen.) Read the full review: Philips Fidelio NC1 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/042de4edf0666d3f338b0a2dcfb3ed85.jpg A few years ago, the Bose QuietComfort 25 are the best noise-cancelling headphones we've ever used. The lows, mids and highs came through clear as day, never stepping over each other. Music of all sorts sounded predictably incredible. With the noise-cancellation turned on, we never felt further immersed and concentrated than when we let the QC25 engulf our ears. But that was a few years ago and time has moved on since. Bose has released not just one sequel to these headphones, but two: the QC35 and QC35 II with Google Assistant built in, both of which we'd recommend above the QC25. But, it's not all bad. If you don't mind using the older, wired headphones, the QC25s are a finely-tuned set of cans that provide over 35 hours of very good noise-cancelling performance with one AAA battery. Read the full review: Bose QuietComfort 25 [update: These headphones also come in a wireless version - check out our review of of the Bose QuietComfort 35. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/YooLQW43d62EBYTAohk9JD.jpg Bowers and Wilkins are a little late to the noise-cancellation game, but their first foray impresses. The PX Wireless aren't just a great sounding pair of headphones, they've also got a number of other interesting tricks up their sleeve. They'll turn on and off automatically depending on whether you're wearing them or not, and they also feature the future-proof USB-C charging standard. In our opinion their only downside is the sound quality, which we felt lacks the depth of the flagship headphones from Bose and Sony. That said, if you've been a fan of the look of B&W's headphones in the past then the PX Wireless are certainly worth a listen. Read the full review: Bowers and Wilkins PX Wireless http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/4a8yHQheRW4QHr4ynDW6r.jpg If you prefer on-ear noise-cancellation, then the AKG N60NC Wireless are a great pair of headphones. At their mid-range price point the headphones offer fantastic value for money, with great sound quality and a level of noise-cancellation performance that's on a level with the much more premium entries on this list. These are a fantastically compact pair of headphones, and offer a very complete package for the price. Read the full review: AKG N60NC Wireless http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/P2XXtXpV2AbEFuA4pVggTQ.jpg With noise-cancelling tech just as effective as that in headphones from rival Bose, and with a more musical sonic ability, the Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNC are a definite contender for the noise-cancelling crown. More affordable and easy to travel with, these lightweight headphones are a great value all-rounder, whether for flights, commuter trains or busy offices. Design-wise, the Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNCs seem a more slimmed-down, lighter and more focused effort than the bulky and expensive alternatives from Bose and Sony; and crucially, the HD 4.50 BTNCs are just as good with audio, and almost as good on noise-canceling. Whether you're after noise canceling for long-haul ravel, for the commute, or just to stay more productive in a noisy office, the Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNCs are worth considering. Read the full review: Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNC http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/QfG5WbRJXCBFovBthSQMEE.jpg With the second generation Plantronics BackBeat Pro, Plantronics went back to the drawing board to fix many of the issues owners complained about the original. The BackBeat Pro 2, therefore, manage to keep all the great things about the original and improved upon its shortcomings, like its bulk and weight. In terms of value, the BackBeat Pro 2 are basically a steal. With the BackBeat Pro 2, you’re getting a travel headphone with incredible battery life, supreme comfort, the ability to pair two device as once and, most importantly, good sound quality for the cost. If you don’t want to drop $350 (£290, AU$500) on the Bose QuietComfort 35 or $400 (£330 or AU$700) on Sony’s flagship MDR-1000X, the Plantronics BackBeat Pro 2 should be on the top of your shopping list. Read the full review: Plantronics BackBeat Pro 2 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/fXZCXQnd3cPxs6GhaBivxj.jpg Overall, Microsoft’s Surface headphones are surprisingly good, with a stunningly warm sound, and generous bass frequencies, which means your music will sound great whether you’re listening to subby hip-hop or acoustic singer-songwriters. One criticism of this warm sound is that it can take some of the attack away from lower-mid frequencies, which some users may find a bit underwhelming. However, if sharp trebles and mids tend to give you listening fatigue, these could be the perfect headphones for you. The calling card of these headphones is the active noise cancellation, which we felt worked really well, and we loved how easy it was to control this using the inbuilt dials on each housing. Although we were initially unconvinced by the high price (particularly when you can buy quality cans from heritage audio brands for less), the features work so seamlessly that it feels justified. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Y2HJrLEs93HfS3c6sB9TdP.png If you haven't found something quite to your liking so far, we have one last option for you to look at – the all-new Nura Nuraphone over-ear/in-ear hybrid. Their form factor means you’ve not only got an earbud sitting at the entrance of your ear canal, but also an over-ear cushion sitting over your entire ear. This effectively means you’ve got two physical barriers meaning that the noise from the outside world can’t get to your ears. While more traditional over-ear headphones do a better job offering useful features at a reasonable price, the Nuraphone will appeal to the more experimental audio crowd looking to be on the bleeding-edge of the next big thing. Read our full review: Nuraphone Headphones We have exhaustive guides to the best headphones on the market buy today including the best on-ear headphones, the best in-ear headphones and the best over-ear headphones.Want to go wire-free? Check out our guide to the best wireless headphones.Looking for some headphones you can take in the pool or on a run? Check out our guide to the best swimming headphones and best running headphones.[update: Looking forward to CES 2019? Here's what you can expect from the annual tech-stravaganza.]http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/OzQBswDbwLg

In our view, Apple has never made a more compelling phone than the iPhone XR. Taking some of the manufacturer's best features and putting it in a package that's much more affordable than its most extravagant handsets, it's a really easy smartphone to recommend – especially when stunning new iPhone XR deals come out of the woodwork. That's why we were delighted when Mobiles.co.uk started bandying about auto-cashback offers on the XR. And the tariff that really caught our attention was this one – 15 glorious GB of data every month, plus unlimited texts and calls on O2. And £34 per month doesn't feel excessive on a phone this new (and impressive). - Head straight to this iPhone XR deal at Mobiles.co.uk The only potential drawback is the upfront spend, with the original tariff requiring you to put down £165. But, thanks to Mobiles' current cashback promotion, that cost is slashed by £90 thanks to automatic cashback, which the retailer says you'll get within 38 days of receiving your phone. Then take off a further tenner thanks to our exclusive 10OFF voucher code, and you have a total two-year spend that drops down below the £900-mark. That's pretty much unheard of for the XR. But time's running out to claim this terrific iPhone XR tariff. Mobiles.co.uk has told us that the cashback incentive will be removed this Thursday, February 7, so if you've been um-ing and ah-ing about getting an iPhone XR then you may want to strike now. Best mobile phone deals – We've found all the best prices on all the best phonesiPhone XR deals: this brilliant cashback offer in fullOr check out all of today's best iPhone XR deals in the UK – but we can promise you that contracts don't get much better than thishttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/FFAwk46vys0

A high number of British consumers are still unaware of the potential security risks they are open to by failing to protect their online privacy. A survey by McAfee timed to coincide with Safer Internet Day found that although Brits often conform to web security protection at work, at home and during personal surfing the outcome is far different. The security firm found that over a quarter (27 percent) of parents never monitor what their children are doing online, and one in five (21 percent) said they wouldn't be worried about their children potentially speaking to a social predator or cybercriminal online. Facebook paid users to install a VPN that spies on themHow to protect yourself online in 2018Security flaws found in top free VPN Android appsSafer InternetElsewhere, the survey found over a third (39 percent) of Brits say they are unable to tell if a website is real or fake and half of Brits said they would purchase from an online retailer, even if they were not fully confident it was genuine or secure, if the price was cheaper than a trusted retailer This lack of awareness is costing some UK consumers dearly, as McAfee found 45 percent of Brits have been, or know someone who has been hacked and lost money as a result, with an average of £725.00 per person lost to scammers across the UK. McAfee has urged its users to "think before you click" when surfing online, and ensuring all devices and software is updated to the latest version - including often-neglected mobile security protection. Users should also beware shady public Wi-Fi hotspots, and stick to official app stores for their download needs. “People need to wake up to the real threats they currently face be it due to their online activity or someone else's," said Raj Samani, chief scientist and McAfee fellow. "Every day businesses are caught up in breaches or hacks and its naïve to continue to think that a criminal has not accessed your private information or data as a result. "It is everyone’s responsibility to educate each other – we need to share knowledge and collaborate to protect ourselves against the current threats we face as people living in a connected world. The outcomes are set to worsen, as criminals become more sophisticated and target every aspect of our lives from the connected home, to our children’s toys, right through to our medical records and fitness trackers. Therefore, we all need to take action before it is too late.” Stay safe online with the best VPN service of 2019http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/3isHSatV-lQ

Well, we're pretty sad to say that the end of Mobile Phones Direct's triple data sale could well be in sight. Throughout January we saw a host of affordable O2 phone deals carrying a whopping 75GB of data and now we understand that there's only a couple of days before they're cruelly ripped away. Some of these offers have been our Editor's Picks throughout January and we've been blown away by the deals. We don't know how Mobile Phones Direct has managed to offer this much data at such competitive prices but we do know we're sad to see them go - expect to see them taken down from the site by the end of Wednesday. So if you're heart's pulling you towards a big data tariff, you can see our picks for the best triple data contracts below. Or if you want to see all of the options you can find them over at Mobile Phones Direct. Our selected favourite 75GB data deals in full:Not seen what you want? Then check out our best mobile phone deals page for all of the options on today's top handsetshttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/96dCFXKlyiU

Photo-sharing site Flickr is set to start deleting images from non-Pro accounts today, having previously announced a 1000-image limit for non-paying users. The site had announced the restriction in November, following its acquisition by photo-hosting site SmugMug. Users currently subscribed to Flickr on a Pro account are able to upload as many images as they want, with no overall limit on storage, in addition to ad-free browsing and other benefits. Previously, non-paying users were offered 1TB of storage space for their images, a move that Flickr has admitted attracted people drawn to the storage itself rather than those keen on using the platform to engage with other photographers. Best cloud storage 2019 for photos and picturesWhile the move will no doubt displease those who have stored years’ worth of images on the platform, Flickr states that this will allow it to provide a better service for its users. “Giving away vast amounts of storage creates data that can be sold to advertisers, with the inevitable result being that advertisers’ interests are prioritized over yours,” it says in a statement. “Reducing the free storage offering ensures that we run Flickr on subscriptions, which guarantees that our focus is always on how to make your experience better.” The statement goes on to mention how the freemium model has devalued its service in the eyes of many photographers, and that it needs its most active members to “help us continue investing in Flickr’s stability, growth, and innovation.” Users are able to download their images either individually, by album or all at once, with instructions for each method detailed in the company’s Help Centre. Those using free accounts who will continue to have more than 1000 images stored will see their oldest images culled first. Launched in 2004, Flickr was once the most popular online image-sharing platform, but has struggled in recent years to retain the photographic community. It was bought a year after its launch by Yahoo!, which itself was acquired by Verizon in 2017, where it was subsequently brought under the Oath umbrella. SmugMug acquired Yahoo in April 2018, although the terms of the deal were not publicly disclosed. A subscription to Flickr’s Pro service currently costs $49.99 in the US and £47.88 in the UK, or £5.99 a month if billed on a monthly basis. Users in Australia are charged $AU59.88 per year, or $AU6.99 per month. Image credit: TechRadar Best photo editor 2019: 10 options to kickstart your creativityhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/z4Qp8qWV6Hc

As Mozilla continues to launch new and improved iterations of its Firefox web browser every few months, the next version will bring with it a feature that has already been a huge boon for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge users thus far. Firefox 66 will introduce the option (enabled by default) to mute any automatically playing video content, avoiding the sudden bursts of volume as users struggle to find the media in their sea of open tabs. Firefox 'scroll anchoring' will stop content jumping around on-screen as ads loadShhh!While not nearly as common or invasive, the same option will apply to automatically playing audio, unless you deliberately press ‘play’ on the embedded audio or video player. If they wish to do so, users can opt out of this audio blocking for entire sites via an icon in the URL bar, and for sites that have access to a user’s camera and microphone (typically conference services such as Google Hangouts), these will be exempt by default. The changes will be implemented in Firefox 66 which is scheduled to launch March 19, and will arrive alongside other features (such as scroll anchoring) that should make its users' lives a little easier . Hangouts is going to merge with Hangouts Chat, says Googlehttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/rLU8WCRQ3eQ

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/59b277033f0687928fbb32515b4f98f1.jpg T-mobile's best unlimited plans are the most straight forward of the four major carriers. And, there are a handful of other options, including some alternative unlimited, prepaid, and pay-as-you-go plans. Despite very clear details on the flagship plans, the fine print gets a little trickier to wade through when it comes to all of T-Mobile's other plans. So, if you're looking to get the best T-Mobile plan you can, you'll want to thoroughly understand all of your options. If you need a lot of data and want to stream content, use Wi-Fi hotspot, and travel abroad, you'll probably be looking at the One Plan, which has earned the title of best unlimited data plan in our rankings for many months in a row. There are upgrades and plenty of perks to go around as well. T-Mobile also offers versions of the unlimited plan that are prepaid or don't require a credit check. You can also just get a small data package. Whatever you're looking for, we've got the details you need to help you make a decision and get the best plan for you. Quick LinksThe best T-Mobile plans: T-Mobile’s plans pickerThe best T-Mobile phones: T-Mobile phones listNew T-mobile deals: T-Mobile offersCurrent T-Mobile special offershttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/o8Ab43wdL2GDqYELRAGehP.jpg T-Mobile Trade-in discounts on top phones T-Mobile has the top phones available, like the iPhone XS and Galaxy Note 9. And, with an eligible trade-in, you can upgrade to these phones and save hundreds of dollars via monthly credits to your bill. See the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 with $360 off via trade-inSee the Apple iPhone XS with $390 off via trade-inHow much the T-Mobile One Plan costs:$70 for 1 line (Netflix not included) - $70 total$60/line for 2 lines - $120 total$40/line for 3 lines - $120 total$35/line for 4 lines - $140 totalhttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/UhUnQ4Hz7XZVnUhLFY9guP.png The best prices are clearly those with multiple lines, and the free Netflix subscription encourages users to find someone to sign up with. It should be noted that these prices require users to enable AutoPay, otherwise the price will be slightly higher. For people that want to skip a credit check or like pre-paid plans, T-Mobile offers the One No Credit Check plan and One Prepaid plan. If you don't travel abroad, the One Prepaid Domestic Only plan is actually cheaper than the standard One Plan but has almost all the same features, but the $50 monthly fee has additional taxes and fees. T-Mobile also has a stripped down unlimited plan called T-Mobile Essentials, which gives you the same unlimited talk, text, and data for a slightly lower price, at $60 plus taxes and fees, but removes some of the extra perks. See T-Mobile's plans hereSee the One Prepaid and One Prepaid Domestic Only plans hereSee the One No Credit Check Plan hereThe 9 great perks of T-Mobile serviceNo contract - there’s no contract to lock you into a long-term service agreement.Jump! - users can upgrade the phone they’ve bought from T-Mobile on an installment plan.Free international roaming - going abroad is easy, with free unlimited data in numerous countries around the world, and unlimited talk and text in Canada and Mexico on select plans.ETFs paid by T-Mobile - breaking a contract with another carrier is easy, since T-Mobile will pay for the early termination fee. (Learn more about carrier ETFs here)No overages - you can’t use too much data or too many minutes on T-Mobile’s main plans, so no fear of getting slammed with hefty overage fees.In-flight texting - T-Mobile customers can text on Gogo-enabled flights.Unchanging prices - customers who want to keep their service can do just that, and the price won’t change, even if the plan is no longer offered or the promotional price expires.T-Mobile Tuesdays - a special customer appreciation day each week with exclusive deals.Unlimited service - on the One plan, there is no limit to calls, texts or data.The T-Mobile One Plan: ExplainedFirstly, users on T-Mobile's flagship One Plan will pay exactly what T-Mobile lists as the price of the plan. That price includes all taxes and fees, so monthly budgets just got a lot easier to figure out. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/rnbyq3aute57insbsJ6ZoX.jpg Secondly, the T-Mobile One Plan doesn’t make customers think about what service they’re getting. Everyone gets unlimited talk, unlimited text, and unlimited data. And anyone getting two or more lines gets a free Netflix subscription with their service. The service also includes perks for travelers, such as talk, text and data in 210+ countries (though there are some limits the service abroad). The unlimited talk, text and data included in the plan extend to travel in Mexico and Canada as well, with up to 5GB of that data at 4G LTE speeds. And, customers on Gogo-enabled flights can continue to text for free and get 1-hour of free data. In terms of what you can do with your data on this plan, T-Mobile allows mobile hotspot at 3G speeds and video streaming at DVD quality. Plus, T-Mobile only deprioritizes your data during congestion after you've used over 50GB of data in a billing cycle. See the best plans at T-MobileImportant restrictions on the T-Mobile One Plan:While the T-Mobile One Plan is the foundation, it’s not the pinnacle of T-Mobile’s service, and there are some limitations. Users who exceed 50GB of data usage a month may experience slowed data rates during network congestion, but 50GB is a wildly high cap, and that’s just slowed data, not stopped data. For some reference, you could stream an hour of standard definition video every day and not come close to exceeding 50GB in a month. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/cAdRiWzdJDySUS2z6NsqG6.jpg Mobile hotspot speeds for the base T-Mobile One Plan are not given priority, and may not be at 4G LTE speed. That said, T-Mobile doesn’t mention anything about actually restricting hotspot usage other than that data usage must primarily be on a mobile device for users who exceed 50GB a month. For videophiles, T-Mobile also limits videos streaming over cellular connections to non-HD quality. It offers an upgrade to the base plan that adds allows HD video streaming. The upgrade available:Naturally, T-Mobile has a way to upgrade it’s One plan with more perks and functionality. This upgrade is not separate from the One Plan but functions simply as an add-on to the base plan. T-Mobile One Plus plan: For an extra $15 each month (or $10/line for multiple lines), users can get unlimited HD streaming in the US, doubled data speeds abroad, and unlimited Wi-Fi on Gogo-enabled flights. That’s topped off with unlimited mobile hotspot with 20GB at 4G LTE speeds, transcription of voicemails, and T-Mobile’s Name ID service. Simply Prepaid and pay-as-you-go T-Mobile plans:While the T-Mobile One plan is a great deal, it’s not very cheap if you’re getting a plan alone. And it has a lot of features that casual phone users might not need. For those who don’t mind a limit here and there if it saves a few bucks, T-Mobile has a few other plans. The Simply Prepaid plan has a cap on 4G LTE data, but otherwise comes with unlimited 2G data, talk, and text. It also allows for 4G LTE tethering and Wi-Fi calling. The plan costs $40 right now, but there are additional taxes and fees. Unless you're a hardcore streamer, 10GB can go a long way, and this is an affordable plan. 10GB Simply Prepaid plan for $40/monthhttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Rg2pC6r43femMhtsuj4kDC.jpg For the cheapest and most bare-bones plans, T-Mobile also offers some pay-as-you-go options for users with basic phones or who don't think they'll use their smartphone very much but want the option available. Talk/Text: $3/month - Any combination of 30 minutes of talk or 30 texts, plus 10 cents for each additional text or minuteData: $5/day - 500MB of 4G LTEData: $10/week - 1GB of 4G LTEhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/EvW6QCBGowA

EA has surprised many with the sudden announcement of Apex Legends, a new free-to-play battle royale shooter that provides the publisher a game to compete with Fortnite and PUBG, two of the most successful IPs in recent history. Developed by Respawn Entertainment and set in the Titanfall universe, Apex Legends is a squad-based battle royale shooter where teams of three go up against squads of 57 other players to try and come out on top. What makes Apex Legends different than Fortnite and its ilk is that each player will take on one of eight classes, each represented by a unique character. (Think Fortnite mixed with Overwatch and you’ll be on the right track.) Sony’s PS4 sales surpass 91 million, but that number is slowingXbox Scarlett might be the first console with discrete graphics like a gaming PCNintendo has at least one surprise Switch game coming out in 2019Battle royale, Titanfall (but no titan) StyleLike Fortnite, you and your squad will have to wander the battlefield looking for loot while taking care not to attract the attention of the game's other players. What’s strange about the game, however, is that despite being set in the Titanfall universe, players won’t be able to get into any mechs – news that likely ruffle a few feathers of franchise fans. Ditto with other signatures of the series, like wallrunning. Reports have also begun to pop up on other sites that Apex Legends has completely replaced a third Titanfall game – according to Kotaku, Titanfall 3 isn't currently in development and Apex Legends is what we're getting instead. The game was kept well under wraps during development and was only unveiled for the first time privately to a select group of journalists at an LA event last week. For the rest of us folks, though, the game was both announced and released today for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. It's free to play – what's stopping you? Read more: These are the best PC games in 2019http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/IgHxlvsPekc

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ed3f6f30a47db1da7c99fa3035be6172.jpg If you want the best Verizon plan, you've got a lot of options to pick from. Verizon has a smorgasbord of plans to choose from, with multiple tiers of unlimited data plans, a variety of shared data plans, and even a handful of prepaid options. Though Verizon's prices may keep it from having the best unlimited data plan, it has some feature-rich offerings, and the network is a great one. Customers needing Wi-Fi hotspot will find it available on unlimited plans, and international features are available in multiple plans. We've gone through the details, both the major and the fine print, to find out everything we can about Verizon's various plans so we can help you find the best one. For families and light data users, shared and prepaid plans may be the best options. Heavy users can get unlimited plans. And, in most cases, you can score discounts by signing up together with family members and activating Auto Pay. Whatever your needs, we’ll help you understand Verizon’s best plans so you can make the right choice. Jump straight there: View the plans at Verizonwireless.comSee also: The best Verizon Phones available this monthhttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg Verizon Wireless unlimited plans: ExplainedVerizon offers three tiers of its unlimited plan: Go Unlimited, Beyond Unlimited, and Above Unlimited. All three include unlimited talk and text in the US, Verizon Up rewards, unlimited mobile hotspot, video streaming, and support for talk, text, and data while abroad in Canada or Mexico. The way these plans differ is in the speeds, 4G LTE data thresholds, and perks they offer. Go Unlimited support mobile hotspots at 600Kbps, while Beyond Unlimited offers 15GB of hotspot at 4G LTE speeds, and Above Unlimited steps that up to 20GB. Go Unlimited also limits video playback to DVD quality (480p), but the other tiers support HD (720p) streaming. The plans handle network congestion differently as well. Go Unlimited may reduce your speeds at any time if the network is congested. Beyond Unlimited offers 22GB of data and Above Unlimited offers 75GB of data at 4G LTE speeds before you should see reduced speeds due to network congestion. Above unlimited also offers 500GB of cloud storage and some extra travel perks. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/976edacd8d29f59b8824ec18c059eb48.jpg Small: 2GB - $35/MonthMedium: 4GB - $50/Month5: 5GB - $55/MonthLarge: 8GB - $70/MonthGo Unlimited: Unlimited - $75/MonthBeyond Unlimited: Unlimited - $85/Month Above Unlimited: Unlimited - $95/MonthThe best Verizon Wireless plans for youLet's take a close look at what each of these plans has to offer for the price. Afterward, we'll also go over some of Verizon's alternative plans in case these aren't a fit for you. Whether you're a modest web surfer, a heavy Netflix-user, or just pull your phone out a few times a week, there should be a plan to fit your needs. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/XpjytZKadYHuY5Kqsnopd7.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/8nnzTR3mN7Jsc5jdEvhz5D.png http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/XpjytZKadYHuY5Kqsnopd7.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/wPbp58PRB6jzS2GsLSNssG.png Verizon Wireless plan: Small | 2GB data | Unlimited calls and texts | $35/Month If you don't do a lot of music or movie streaming, this plan will probably be a good choice for you. 2GB is enough data to do regular surfing and watch the occasional YouTube video. It's also one of Verizon's cheapest plans, so if you have your budget in mind, look no further. This is a Shared plan, which includes an access charge of $20 per phone added to the plan, including the first phone. View this plan: at Verizonwireless.com http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/9DkVkTu76BPv5sG3aY2kgJ.png Verizon Wireless plan: Medium | 4GB data | Unlimited calls and texts | $50/Month If you think you're likely to bump up against the 2GB limit on Verizon's cheaper plan, you may want to consider the 4GB plan. For $15 more, you get an extra 2GB at full 4G LTE speed. Plus, with these plans, you can carryover unused data into the next month, in case you want to save up some data for a new Netflix show. This plan can also be shared and has a $20/line access charge. View this plan: at Verizonwireless.com http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/XpjytZKadYHuY5Kqsnopd7.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/9bd2a2cdd4afbea82a0af81ed606ce5f.jpg Verizon Wireless plan: 5| 5GB data | Unlimited calls and texts | $55/Month When 4GB is too small and 8GB is too much, Verizon also offers a 5GB plan for $55 a month plus the $20/line activation fee. This plan is a better fit for two people who will split the data, since it would make more sense for a single customer to get the Go Unlimited plan for $75 with no activation fee. View this plan: at Verizonwireless.com http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/F62jFYBXpMVivQsoQiso6L.png Verizon Wireless plan: Large | 8GB | Unlimited calls and texts | $70/Month If you really can't hold off on the occasional movie or TV show streamed over your data plan, this might be a reasonable option for you. However, since Verizon's cheapest Unlimited plan is just $5 more, it may be worth jumping up to that plan and not worrying about how much data you use each month. Like the other Share plans, this one has a $20/line access charge. View this plan: at Verizonwireless.com http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/XV2Qfefbc9F4ZkSmQi3mNM.png Verizon Wireless Go Unlimited, Beyond Unlimited, and Above Unlimited plans | Unlimited data | Unlimited calls and texts | $75/Month, $85/Month, or $95/Month Heavy data users who don't want to worry about running up against data limits, and want to stream TV, movies and music to their hearts' content may want to go with one of these options. If there's network congestion, you may get reduced speeds, but it won't be because you accidentally fell asleep with Netflix streaming and went over your data allotment. If you don't want your speed reduced during periods of high network traffic, you may want to get the Beyond Unlimited plan. And, if you want extra Wi-Fi hotspot data and cloud storage, check out the Above Unlimited plan. These plans also allow you to add extra lines at reduced rates. You can see what you'll pay with a calculator Verizon provides on its site. View these plans: at Verizonwireless.com http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg Verizon Wireless: Prepaid plansIf the above Verizon plans aren't what you're looking for, there are also a number of monthly prepaid plans. They all include unlimited talk and text in the US and unlimited text to over 200 international destinations. They also allow data carryover and mobile hotspot usage (except the unlimited plan). They range in price from $30 a month for 500MB to $75 a month for unlimited data comparable to the Go Unlimited plan. View Verizon Wireless prepaid plans here If you just have a basic phone and want simple service, Verizon also offers a basic plan with unlimited talk and text and 500MB of data for $30 a month. See that plan here. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg Phones are more expensive, unfortunatelyhttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/47111014a4f23ff1f1190dfe59730244.jpg Since Verizon Wireless eliminated the two year contract and switch to these new types of plans, it has unfortunately done away with the old subsidies on new phones that came with 2-year contracts. That means instead of paying a flat $200 for every new phone you get, you'll have to pay whatever that phone actually retails for. For a new flagship, that can be anywhere from $600 to $1000. Verizon Wireless does offer installment plans for customers, though. So if you're shopping for a new phone and plan and have good credit, you can likely find a phone that you'll be able to pay for over the course of a couple years. See all available Verizon Wireless phones http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/JaAFROoZSTI

Having held onto this minor convenience for too long, Google is officially opening up its Chrome OS Instant Tethering feature to more devices with version 71 of its Chrome OS operating system. Before Chrome OS 71, Instant Tethering allowed any Google-made Android phone to provide a nearby Google-made Chromebook with 3G or LTE internet access immediately once Wi-Fi signal was lost or the laptop was opened without an internet connection. Essentially, this eliminates the process of setting up a hotspot SSID on your phone, finding the Wi-Fi network the phone produces from your laptop and entering the credentials you set up. What is a Chromebook?Google Fuchsia: all about Google’s OS for all devicesThe best Android phones in the USNow, the feature is available on 15 more Chromebooks and 31 more Android phones from just about every major manufacturer of Google devices once Chrome OS 71 is installed. (See below every product that now supports Instant Tethering, thanks to 9to5Google.) This move is a long time coming since Google introduced it exclusively to its own devices in 2017, and news of the expansion leaked just last week. Google celebrated the expansion of the feature as part of its “Better Together” initiative aimed at improving the experience of owning both a Chromebook and an Android phone. With Windows 10 developers now constantly producing new tools with which users can connect and interact with a tethered Android phone, it makes sense for Google to finally expand the feature. Otherwise, Microsoft might catch up to Chromebooks in the budget space, and Google can’t have that. Here are all of the Chrome OS and Android devices that now support Instant Tethering: Chromebooks now with Instant Tethering Acer Chromebook 13Acer Chromebook 14Acer Chromebook 15Acer Chromebook R11Acer Chromebook Spin 13ASUS Chromebook C423ASUS Chromebook Flip C302Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14HP Chromebook 11 G5HP Chromebook x2HP Chromebook x360 14Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630Samsung Chromebook 3Samsung Chromebook Plus V2Samsung Chromebook Plus V2 LTEAndroid phones now with Instant Tethering HTC U11HTC U11+HTC U12+Huawei Mate 10Huawei Mate 10 ProHuawei Mate 20Huawei Mate 20 ProHuawei Mate 20 XLG G7 ThinQLG V30LG V30+LG V30S ThinQLG V30S+ ThinQLG V35 ThinQLG V40 ThinQMotorola Moto ZMotorola Moto Z2 ForceMotorola Z3OnePlus 5OnePlus 5TOnePlus 6OnePlus 6TSamsung Galaxy S7Samsung Galaxy S7 ActiveSamsung Galaxy S7 EdgeSamsung Galaxy Note 8Samsung Galaxy S8Samsung Galaxy S8+Samsung Galaxy Note 9Samsung Galaxy S9Samsung Galaxy S9+http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/beL450xVowM

If you work in the field, and you need a computer that can handle the roughest and most dangerous environments – if you need a laptop that will get subjected to extreme temperatures and weather, you’re going to need one of these rugged laptops. We scoured the internet for the best laptops that can take a beating, and the best rugged laptops can handle basically anything you can throw at them – literally. The top rugged laptops will have rigid, durable builds that can withstand high pressure, extreme drops and even exposure to liquid without a worry. You shouldn’t have to worry even if you drop it off a building into a lake – as long as you fish it out fast enough. But, keep in mind that the best rugged laptops still have to be good at, well, being laptops. They need enough horsepower to get you through your day – what good is a beefy laptop if it doesn’t help you get your work done, right? So, whether you work on a busy work site, spend a lot of time in the most dangerous places on Earth, or if you’re just kind of clumsy, we’ll help you find the best rugged laptops on the market. We’ve even included our exclusive price comparison tool, so that you can spend less time shopping for the best rugged laptop, and more time saving. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/U6D3ofXKriRQ8SrHtFkjL4.jpg Check out our overall list of the best laptop 2019http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/emnV5H5AYM584EfvHNSs4i.jpg Image Credit: Dell If you want an extremely rugged laptop, you’re going to want the Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme – it’s in the name. And, while it’s a bit old right now, it’s still a well-designed rugged laptop that meets military standard requirements. It features a rigid magnesium alloy build, shock absorbent case, is IP65 certified against dust, sand and water – it can even handle extreme temperatures. Like the rest of Dell’s catalog, you can configure the dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme however you like. This product is only available in the US and UK at the time of this writing. Australian readers: check out a fine alternative in the Panasonic Toughbook CF-33 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/A8c6UCFTifpkiWLxPUQYSZ.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/FuxGVyrNoHAFzinKTE6Ena.jpg Image Credit: Dell Dell may be a mainstream laptop manufacturer, but it still makes the best rugged laptops around. The Dell Latitude 14 Rugged is a fantastic machine that combines a tough outer shell with components that are pretty powerful for the category – including an Intel Core i5 processor and dedicated AMD Radeon graphics. The display looks decent, with a matte finish that makes it comfortable to use outdoors – which is probably where you’ll use it. It’s the less ‘extreme’ version of the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme which sits at the top of our list of the best rugged laptops. This product is only available in the US and UK at the time of this writing. Australian readers: check out a fine alternative in the Panasonic Toughbook CF-33 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/A8c6UCFTifpkiWLxPUQYSZ.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/9rQceEBdQH9BskjxRumCT.jpg Image Credit: Panasonic If you want one of the best 2-in-1 laptops, but you don’t want something that feels like it’s going to snap in half the first chance it gets – the Panasonic Toughbook CF-33 is for you. This 2-in-1 has a flexibility that most rugged laptops just don’t. If you need something that’s easy to carry while you do stock takes and jot down notes, then tablet mode will work wonders. Then, if you need to type up some documents, you can attach the keyboard and comfortably type away. It may be expensive, but it’s one of the only 2-in-1 laptops that can actually take a beating. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/A8c6UCFTifpkiWLxPUQYSZ.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/krMFwpmad9xGwGvM9uCmLA.jpg Image Credit: HP You might think the HP ProBook x360 11 G1 EE is a normal laptop at first glance. However, once you dive deeper, you’ll see there’s more than meets the eye. While it isn’t designed for big drops and dangerous environments, it's still one of the best rugged laptops for most everyday users – it’s built to withstand more knocks, drops and liquids than the everyday laptop. This is due to an industrial rubberised body, spill resistant keyboard and Corning Gorilla Glass 4 display. It’s not going to be as robust as some of the other rugged laptops on this list, but it’s easily portable and the screen can be flipped – making it a rugged 2-in-1 laptop. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/A8c6UCFTifpkiWLxPUQYSZ.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/xawrs9AjbMoK36JsntV2wJ.jpg Image Credit: Lenovo Similar to the HP ProBook x360 we mentioned earlier, the Lenovo ThinkPad 11e is more like a standard laptop that just so happens to be a bit rugged. Still, you can just tell that Lenovo has put effort into the construction of this device, as it includes more robust inputs, and can survive drops of up to 90cm. It also features military specifications, that make this a laptop that can survive the harshest conditions. What’s more, it’s affordable, while still offering enough processing power for everyday tasks. Don't need a rugged laptop? Check out our list of the best business laptopshttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/2-tqdS5_ac4

These days, we live our lives in this always-online world, so it’s more important than ever to pick up one of the best gaming routers. You don’t want to watch your favorite show on Netflix, only to have it start buffering because your roommate started downloading something. So, you should go out and pick up the best wireless router you can muster. We know, we know, it’s tempting to just phone up your ISP and demand faster internet, rather than picking up a new router. However, whether you need a gaming router or a wireless mesh router, the best routers are of utmost importance. Even if you have the fastest internet connection in the world, it won’t do much good if your router can’t keep up. But, what makes the best wireless router, well, the best? There are a couple things you need to consider. Both QoS (Quality of Service) and MU-MIMO will make sure that your online experience isn’t interrupted by other devices in your home. You should also look for a wireless router that can keep up with your internet speeds – an AC1900 router should be perfectly sufficient for most users. There are so many wireless routers out there these days, so finding the perfect one for your home is harder than it sounds. Fortunately, we here at TechRadar have tested all the best wireless routers ourselves, so you can be confident you’re getting your money’s worth. We’ve even included our exclusive price comparison tool, so you can find the best deal every time. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/4gTrwymoNSmxRzK5yZkHRY.jpg The days of traditional wireless routers are over – 2019 is the year of the best wireless mesh routers. Google Wifi is the best proof we can think of for this mesh revolution – you can finally say goodbye to the days when the only way to achieve wireless freedom was to install a bunch of wireless extenders. The premise of Google Wifi is simple – buy a set of points and place them in key locations around your home. Then, just scan a QR code and you’re good to go – it’s not just the best wireless router you can buy, it’s also the easiest to set up. Read the full review: Google Wifi http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/EY2VqpnmzPzUwCzuSBgx43.jpg If you’re familiar with Asus, and specifically its more gamer-centric products, you’ll know what to expect from the Asus RT-AC86U. This wireless router looks like what would happen if you poured Mountain Dew and Doritos into a wireless router-manufacturing machine – it’ll definitely stand out wherever you put it. Beneath its ‘unique’ design is hardware that, for its price, defiantly stands against the competition. You’re not paying a premium here for a ‘gaming’ wireless router, and if you’re looking for a fast connection at a good price, the Asus RT-AC86U is a great choice. Read the full review: Asus RT-AC86U http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ZKgJZYZyvuhWAr9PPUscrA.jpg When the Netgear Orbi first hit the streets, it completely changed the wireless router game. And, in 2019, Netgear is offering the Netgear Orbi AC2200 RBK23, a more affordable router for casual users that don’t need to cover a stately mansion. It features less antennae and ethernet ports than the original, but it’s still enough to offer very solid network coverage. Plus, the smaller size means that it can more easily blend in – you won’t feel the need to obscure it. Read the full review: Netgear Orbi AC2200 RBK23 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/k5dwhUMskV56DcqugN5ime.jpg Now that smart homes are becoming more and more common, we need wireless routers that can also serve as a smart home hub. This doesn’t just do wonders for convenience, but it would clear out some of the clutter made by multiple routers, modems and hubs. And, the Samsung Connect Home does exactly that. It’s not the most feature-rich wireless router out there, but it’s competitive enough with the Google Wifi, while still packing in the SmartThings hub that it’s still one of the best routers – especially if you have a ton of smart devices. Read the full review: Samsung Connect Home This product is only available in the US and UK at the time of this writing. Australian readers: check out a fine alternative in the Google Wifi. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/vnP5bzmL7gSC9fZGsMXXgU.jpg If you’re in the market for a high-end wireless router that looks like it was a prop in some 90s Sci-Fi flick, you may want to look at the TP-Link Archer C5400 v2. Sure, it’s not a trendy mesh wireless router, but it’s unique in its ability to bridge consumer and enterprise users by featuring high-end functionality at an affordable price point – with easy setup to boot. It might look weird, but if you’re looking for a wireless router that’ll cover a large home, you can’t go wrong here. Read the full review: TP-Link Archer C5400 v2 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/v28atHLfhEjbbzVn5Gitu7.jpg If you’re ready to bring your office’s networking into the modern age with one of the best wireless routers, you need to take a look at the Netgear Orbi Pro. It’s a modular Wi-Fi mesh router, but it takes some design and performance cues from business-grade products. It’s not cheap, but if you run a business where you can’t afford anyone slowing down due to poor Wi-Fi, it’s worth every penny. Read the full review: Netgear Orbi Pro http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Aru3B5XKZPRemzA2Bygm5P.jpg In 2019, the best wireless routers need to be mesh devices – the level of coverage they offer is beyond what traditional routers can handle. And, with devices like the TP-Link Deco M9, we can see how the best wireless routers keep evolving. By integrating support for IoT smart-home devices, on top of industry standard speeds and coverage, the TP-Link Deco M9 is easily one of the best routers for smart-home fanatics. It’s a little expensive, but it has plenty of features that make it worthwhile, like built-in parental controls and anti-virus. Read the full review: TP-Link Deco M9 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/RFSmStpAgKEFqfX7Y9LJZg.jpg If you’re looking to jump on the mesh wireless router trend, but you’re trying to save a few bucks, and don’t really care about some advanced tech mumbo-jumbo – the D-Link Covr-C1203 might just be the best wireless router for you. It offers the same type of coverage as something like the Google Wifi at a lower cost, but with slightly slower speeds – it’ll still be fast enough for most users, though. It also features an attractive triangular design, which should fit in nicely with your decor – you won’t need to hide it in shame. Read the full review: D-Link Covr-C1203 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/RKYoiBJN7URFttPiaBUHYX.jpg If you’ve been looking at wireless mesh systems, but wanted to keep the control over your network that the best wireless routers allow, you’re in luck. While it’s more expensive than the competition, the Eero Home Wi-Fi system allows its users complete control over their network, while also providing an extremely secure connection thanks to its use of AI. To sweeten the pot and make the price more approachable, Eero includes subscriptions to 1Password, MalwareBytes and Encrypt.me VPN – which should help keep everyone on your network safe. The only downfall here is it doesn’t cover quite as much area as something like the Google Wifi or Netgear Orbi, but if you’re looking for sheer horsepower, look no further. Read the full review: Eero Home Wi-Fi System http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/mrJxiBKZyvVccnpy5F3yFA.jpg It might be even more expensive than the Google Wifi for similar performance, but the Amplifi HD has a modern, clean look to it. Aesthetic doesn’t matter to everyone, obviously, but it does help prevent users from installing this wireless router behind objects that will obscure its signal. This is a wireless router that features excellent performance with stylistic flair to match – as long as you have the cash. Read the full review: Amplifi HD Joe Osborne, Bill Thomas and Gabe Carey have also contributed to this article Images Credit: TechRadarWe’ve also picked out the best best wifi extenders of 2019http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/z7EAxC2giM8

Now that we have the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and Intel has launched its Coffee Lake Refresh lineup that promises to hold the best processors for gaming, 2019 is the best time to dive into the best PC games. So, if you want to get in on the action of the top PC games 2019 has to offer, like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey or Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we’ll show you the best PC games of 2019. We went ahead and gathered up 40 of the best PC games on the market right now. And, believe us when we say you’ll want to try all of these PC games out for yourself. Even if you’re not super efficient with the mouse and keyboard, you can play many of the best PC games with a controller. Even if you don’t exactly have the best gaming PC in the world, many of these games can be played across a host of different platforms, like the Xbox One X, Nintendo Switch and PS4 Pro. If you’re new to PC gaming, there’s never been a better time to jump in on the action. We’d love to extend you a warm welcome. While some PC gamers are elitist gatekeepers, we here at TechRadar believe in inclusivity. So, with that in mind, let’s dive into the best PC games you can play in 2019. Gabe Carey and Bill Thomas have also contributed to this article If you ask someone who’s been playing the best PC games for years, they’ll likely tell you the premier game to benchmark your new gaming rig with was either Metro 2033 or Metro: Last Light within the past five years. And, if you missed out on those exciting times, you’re in luck. This PC-centric shooter series will be pushing another generation of PCs to their limits when Metro Exodus launches later this year – and if Nvidia’s RTX demo showed us anything, it’s that you’re going to want a beefy rig to play this game. Forgoing the cramped metro tunnels of the first two titles, Metro Exodus will instead focus on the surface, offering players large areas to explore – without sacrificing the tension that the previous games’ linearity allowed. However, if you’re looking at this game in anticipation and you haven’t preordered it yet, you’ll have to pick it up on the Epic Games Store, as it’s now exclusive to that platform. But, it might be worth it, especially if you were one of the folks scorned by Fallout 76, and you need that post-apocalyptic fix. Metro Exodus is going to be one of the best looking PC games when it launches in February 2019. And, if the is anything to go by, we’re going to see much more varied locales this time around. Expected: February 15, 2019 Look, we know that this game is starting to get old, but it is aging like fine wine. Even three years after its release it’s one of the most ambitious open world games that’s ever existed – combining Skyrim’s unabashed scale with Grand Theft Auto V’s insane depth. It’s such a jam-packed games, that it’s still one of the best PC games in 2018. Huge, beautiful and an absolute time sink – in a good way – The Witcher 3: Wild hunt isn’t just the best PC game in 2018, but it may be one of the best video games of all time. Dragon Age: Inquisition, while not perfect, puts you in the midst of a huge, vibrant world on a much larger scale than past Dragon Age titles. Packed with hours of engrossing story and a wealth of side content, Dragon Age: Inquisition brings the series to an open world setting in a smart and compelling way. It might not be a new game, but for this excellent blend of Elder Scrolls and Baldur’s Gate, it’s still one of the best PC games available in 2018. Assassin’s Creed is basically a household name among the best PC games in 2018. And, starting with last year’s Origins, Ubisoft has been making huge efforts to revitalize the aging franchise. Well, we’re happy to report that they’ve succeeded. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey feels like an improvement in every sense of the word over last years entry, feeling like a completely different game than older games in Ubisoft’s flagship series. This time around, despite the drama about microtransactions, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey places you in the shoes of Kassandra or Alexios, in the middle of the Peloponnesian War, as you look for your lost mother and father. And, while the main story – which will have you switching alliances between the Spartans and the Athenians – will likely get lost in the mix along the way, the world that Ubisoft has created is as rich and beautiful as ever before. Just make sure you have one of the best graphics cards before you even try to run Assassin’s Creed Odyssey at a higher resolution. If you’re looking for one of the best open world games on PC, you can’t go wrong here. So, join us in exploring ancient Greece in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. Read: Hearthstone arrives on iPad, but it is better on tablet or PC?Although it's arguably not as difficult as previous entries in the series, From Software's Dark Souls 3 takes everything you like about the Souls series and combines it with elements found in Bloodborne, the developer's more recent game for PS4. We’re not going to lie – Dark Souls 3 isn’t easy. It still takes skill and, more importantly, patience to master its complex combat system, but it plays fair too, inviting more casual gamers to take part in its bleak, fantastical world. Plus, on the bright side, it brings remarkably better PC optimization than that of the first game. And, now that you can pick up Dark Souls: Remastered and see where this apocalyptic series got its start – there’s never been a better time to link the first flame. Pillars of Eternity made a huge splash in the PC gaming scene when it launched a few years ago – Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire follows faithfully in its footsteps. Not only is this one of the best RPGs you can play today, but it’s also one of the best PC games 2018 has to offer. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire puts players in the middle of the Deadfire Archipelago in pursuit of an ancient god. Along the way you’ll find yourself immersed in a rich, dense and long story crafted by Obsidian Entertainment – arguably the masters of RPGs. If you enjoy old school RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights, and long for a return to those storied days – do yourself a favor and don’t miss out on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. It’s one of the best RPGs we’ve ever played. Do yourself a favor, though, and check out Pillars of Eternity first – it still holds up as one of the best PC games and your story will carry over to the sequel. Grand Theft Auto V is one of the most anticipated console ports to ever hit the PC. You probably didn't need telling twice to head back into Los Santos's hugely detailed and interactive world, but it's 10 times more fun with the PC's richer graphics and smooth 60 frames per second gameplay. After you’ve completed its 30-hour campaign, there’s an overflow of post-game content to enjoy here. Most recently that includes The Doomsday Heist in GTA Online and even a radio station hosted by Frank Ocean. BioShock is a first-person shooter that takes concepts from Ayn Rand's Atlast Shrugged and tosses them underseas. To be exact, BioShock takes place in an underwater city called Rapture, free from government regulation, designed for artists and entrepreneurs to thrive. Of course, not all goes well in a city where the residents have all the power and, well, stop what you're doing and play it right now if you haven't already. You're in for one of the great games if you play BioShock, one that balances story elements with horror nigh-perfectly. There's a remastered version out there now, too, which is free of charge if you own the original. Set 15 years after the events of the first Alien film from 1979, Alien: Isolation is the suspense-packed game that fans of the franchise have been crying out for. Playing the role of Amanda Ripley, daughter of Alien protagonist Ellen Ripley, your mission is to track down and recover the flight recorder of the Nostromo spacecraft from the first Alien film which has been located aboard the Sevastopol space station. First and foremost a stealth game, Isolation ramps up the tension by providing you with minimal weaponry. Its excellent graphics shine on high-end PCs and clever AI helps ramp up the dread, leaving you to quiver when turning every corner. Read: How the tech of Alien Isolation will scare you back into the 1970sOverwatch, if nothing else, completely changed the landscape away from the norm of gray-ish cover shooters in the realm of competitive gaming. Its bright, vibrant colors are complemented by likeable characters, each decorated with their own interesting backstories which, though not present in game, make for a collection of awesome webcomics and cinematics. Overwatch is also one of the best PC games, because of how well it runs on all kinds of different hardware. Sure, it’s a bit old now, but even in 2018, it’s the best PC game for anyone looking for some competitive action. If somehow you’ve missed out on this game, do yourself a favor – sign in to your Battle.net account and take Overwatch, and its colorful cast of characters, for a spin today. Even if it came out almost 6 years ago, Counter-Strike Global Offensive is still a fantastic update to a timeless classic that continues to thrive thanks to its vast online communities – it’s truly one of the best PC games. Global Offensive is a well-rounded tactical shooter that builds on the simple Terrorists vs Counter-Terrorists gameplay of Counter-Strike 1.6, by updating classic maps such as Italy and Dust – while also adding new modes in Arms Race and Demolition. Simpler than Battlefield, but more complex than Call of Duty, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a shooter for those who like to think – if only just a little bit. Read: 9 games that are far better on PC than consolesIn a lot of ways, Far Cry 5 is the ultimate Far Cry game – combining all of the elements that has made the series successful, while cutting a lot of the fat (including the towers, thank god). And while on its own it doesn't do anything entirely new, it perfects the Far Cry formula to a point where Far Cry 5 is one of the best open world First Person Shooters you can play in 2018. After a very heavy and intense intro, you’re dumped in the middle of rural Montana and given the task of dismantling the local cult. But, that quickly fades into the background as a myriad of activities – from hunting down aliens to taking out outposts – ultimately become your focus. But it’s precisely this focus on playing your own way that makes Far Cry 5 so special. Monster Hunter has been one of the biggest gaming franchises you’ve never heard of for years now. However, with Monster Hunter: World, the series broke into the mainstream, and it’s also come to the PC (finally). And, well, it’s one of the best PC games you can play today. Monster Hunter: World places you in the shoes of a, well, monster hunter, and you’ll hunt progressively bigger and nastier monsters, strip them for parts and craft bigger and badder armor. It’s a deceptively simple gameplay loop, that ends up being one of the most enthralling and rewarding PC games you can play today. There’s a never-ending onslaught of content in this game, and Capcom, the developers of this monster hunting hit, are dedicated to bringing a wealth of free DLC to the game. Not to mention a new frosty expansion in . So, if you’re looking for an addictive, engaging and most importantly, fun game to play by yourself or with all your best friends cooperatively, check out Monster Hunter: World – it really is one of the best PC games you can buy today.A 90s classic brought back to life (unlike its main protagonist), Grim Fandango Remastered is a successful attempt at reviving one of the PC's best adventure games of all time. Combining writing that matches the funniest dark comedies with clever puzzles and a still-impressive art style, Grim Fandango was the most entertaining work of art to take place in a Mexican setting for years until Breaking Bad came along. Now with updated graphics, sound and better controls, Manna Calavera's adventure has never looked so good. Read: Grim Fandango is headed to the PS4 and VitaSix years after its initial release, Skyrim is going as strong as ever thanks to a vast selection of mods and high-resolution texture packs. Even if you're only interested in playing the vanilla version of the RPG, it offers more than 100 hours of gameplay. Throw in three action packs DLC expansion packs (Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn), and it lasts even longer. That Skyrim has been compared to graphically superior but similar RPG blockbuster The Witcher 3 is testament to its enduring popularity. Step into Skyrim and you too can be an adventurer - just try not to take an arrow in the knee. And, if you’re looking for a more, well, special version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda has you covered – it can’t seem to stop releasing and re-releasing Skyrim for every platform. You can even play it in VR. Read: 9 games that are far better on PC than consolesIf you’re anything like us, and you secretly pine for the days of ultra-fast arena shooters, you’re going to absolutely love Quake Champions. Unlike many 90’s series, Quake Champions completely retains that classic Quake style. You’re dumped into a relatively small map with a ton of verticality and armed with the craziest weaponry you could imagine. And, there’s no battle royale or any other trendy game modes here – it’s deathmatch all the way, baby. Much in the same way that Id Software mastered the reboot of Doom and brought it to a modern audience, Quake Champions is a nostalgic shooter that still manages to feel fresh in 2018. The kicker? If you act fast, you can score it for free on Steam ahead of its full release. Read: Is the MMORPG on the verge of extinction?The phrase "build it, and they will come" literally rings true when it comes to Minecraft, the survival-based sandbox RPG that has now been purchased more than 100 million times since its conception in 2009. In it, you can create your own worlds using resources you find in the wild or explore worlds created by other players online. In Minecraft, you can either limit yourself to the numerous tools and blocks provided by the developer, Mojang, or you can install mods to truly capitalize on your investment. What’s more, come 2018, you’ll be able to take part in the Super Duper Graphics Pack, an optional piece of DLC that adds more realistic lighting effects and textures to an already fantastic product. The Orange Box may be showing its age, but it remains a must-play collection of games - particularly for FPS fans. Half-Life 2, technically still the most recent game in Valve's franchise (excluding its Episode 1 and 2 add-ons), remains a modern masterpiece and is famed for being the first game to intelligently apply physics to its puzzles and combat set-pieces. The collection's other titles aren't too shabby either: Portal takes gravity-based puzzles to the extreme by equipping the player with the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (also known as the Portal Gun), which places two portals for objects to pass through, while Team Fortress 2 continues to go from strength-to-strength thanks to the introduction of custom gear and well-balanced team combat. Read: 9 games that are far better on PC than consolesSometimes a game that’s been out for 10 years becomes temporarily free on Origin and you just have to play it. Dead Space is one of those games. A survival horror game by definition, this acclaimed piece of science fiction stars a fittingly named Isaac Clarke, whose name itself is a combination of the famous sci-fi authors Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Told from an over-the-shoulder third-person perspective, Dead Space is a rescue mission story, wherein you (as Isaac) are tasked with investigating a mining ship mysteriously full of alien virus-infected dead bodies. All the while, you’ll have to stay on top of upgrading your futuristic ‘RIG’ suit too. Id Software's Doom was a phenomena for PC gamers in the 90s. The crudely rendered first-person shooter series was as controversial as it was beloved, largely thanks to its cutting-edge depictions of gore and violence that only a computer could deliver. Parents be damned, the franchise has made a comeback in 2016 with a fresh restart, appropriately titled Doom. Although the multiplayer might not appeal to shooter fans regardless of age, the single player campaign will pit you against demons in Hell for a lengthy experience that's as bloody as it is satisfying. If Forza Horizon 3 is the racing game for newcomers to racing games, Asetto Corsa is the game for the grizzled experts. Its obtuse handling and insane difficulty straight from the get go makes it a toss up for one of the most realistic racing simulators of all time. And, even if you can get it on consoles, unlike Project Cars, this is a game that was developed for PC first. Everything about this game, from its demanding career mode to its deep seated driving mechanics – which basically require a racing wheel accessory – make it a joy for die-hard petrolheads, even if its difficulty curve is often just backbreaking. Read: Why realistic PC racer Project Cars is the torque of the townModelled after the 1984 game Elite, Elite: Dangerous is one of the most ambitious space sims around. Featuring an in-game galaxy based on the real Milky Way (how's 400 billion stars for depth?), the ultimate goal is to advance your rankings to Elite status by levelling up combat, trading and exploration. Starting out with a rickety ship and 1,000 credits in your space suit's back pocket, you'll need to turn to piracy, trading, exploring, mining or bounty hunting to rise through the intergalactic ranks. Doing so takes time and requires serious graft, but the experience provides a level of satisfaction that few other titles can match. And then there's the Oculus Rift... Sometimes, you just want to jump into a virtual world and blow stuff up. Luckily, that’s exactly what Just Cause 4 allows you to do. This open world sandbox of destruction lets you loose on a completely made up island, where you’re tasked with overthrowing an oppressive regime – by causing as much mayhem as possible. Why? Well, just ‘cause. You’ll have access to a ton of different gadgets, weapons and vehicles that’ll see you soaring through the air, sailing across the waves and crashing into the ground when you screw up that epic stunt. You knew it wasn’t going to work, but you had to try it anyway. If all you want is unbridled chaos, Just Cause 4 is easily one of the best PC games of 2018. Described as "achingly beautiful" by Unity Engine boss John Riccitiello, Ori and the Blind Forest borrows its game mechanics from old-school 2D games such as Metroid and Castlevania while adding a modern twist. If any word can describe Ori's atmospheric world, it's alive. You'll have to think fast and use new abilities gained along the way to bash, stop and manoeuvre your way through its gorgeous locations, and with no automatic saving system or easy difficulty level, it's no walk in the park. As satisfying to master as it is to look at, Ori and the Blind Forest will re-open your eyes to what 2D games still have to offer. Unity CEO argues games are at, wants Jurassic Park in VRThere aren’t many franchises that are as iconic as Resident Evil. Since the first game launched way back in 1996, it has served as a watermark of where Survival Horror is – even in its worst days (looking at you, Resident Evil 6). So, when Capcom finally announced the Resident Evil 2 remake, we instantly started paying attention. And, we have to say – it paid off. Resident Evil 2 isn’t just a remake of the best horror game ever made, but it might actually take the mantle altogether. Gone are the ancient tank controls that divided fans, giving way to the same over-the shoulder perspective introduced in Resident Evil 4. But, this time around, through the use of Resident Evil 7’s RE Engine, Capcom has transformed the ancient horror game into a title that’s terrifying by today’s post-Amnesia standards. And, thanks to just how much you can customize how the game performs and looks, Resident Evil 2 will serve as a benchmark for the best PC games throughout 2019 – even if it doesn’t use as much VRAM as the settings menu says it does. Besides Final Fantasy, there isn’t a franchise that carries as much weight in the Japanese RPG genre as Dragon Quest. For decades, these have been the penultimate JRPGs for many – even inspiring many modern classics like Pokemon. And, for the first time in 14 years, Dragon Quest has made its way to home consoles, and more importantly to PC for the first time ever. Dragon Quest XI is a beautiful, colorful JRPG that’ll put you in the shoes of a young prince that’s set out to – save the world, obviously. You’ll get about 80-100 hours out of the game, and every moment will be memorable and magical. It even features art from Akira Toriyama, best known for his work on Dragonball – it’s easy to see why it’s one of the best PC games of 2018. Already familiar to millions before they've played a played a second of it, Rocket League turns the age old game of football (or soccer, depending) on its head. Played with rocket-propelled cars in futuristic low-gravity environments, the aim is simple: knock the ball into the opposing team's goal. Doing so is harder said than done because there could be up to three cars on the opposing team trying to steal the ball off you - or ram you into submission - at any one time. Gorgeous to look, simple to learn but difficult to master, Rocket League is the surprise smash hit of 2015 - and a wonderfully addictive one at that. Read: 8 real-life footballers in Rocket League: which one are you? When Insurgency first launched way back in 2014, it was a breath of fresh air – a shooter that completely opposed the arcade-like approach of games like Call of Duty. And, Insurgency: Sandstorm takes this formula and goes all-in. Insurgency: Sandstorm is a brutally difficult and visceral online shooter, meant to give Counter Strike: Global Offensive a run for its money. This is a game where you won’t get respawns, you won’t be able to absorb bullets, you will die easily – it’s awesome. If you’re looking for a game that rewards patience and tactics, Insurgency: Sandstorm is one of the best PC games for you. Metal Gear Solid V, the last Metal Game which will be helmed by Hideo Kojima after his forceful ejection from Konami, is a hugely ambitious title. Its massive open world setting allows you to tackle missions using stealth, but you’re still able to go in guns blazing if you prefer – though you won’t get as good a score. Taking place nine years after the events of Ground Zeroes, The Phantom Pain’s story unravels through its main missions and more than 100 Side Ops tasks. The action is interspersed with beautiful cutscenes, and while you sometimes have to decode annoying pseudo-military babble to figure out what’s happening, TPP’s fast pacing and beautiful Afghanistan and African settings make sure the game never feels like a chore. You can ask basically any veteran PC gamer, and they’ll tell you that Battlefield games have always been among the best PC games. And, with Battlefield V, the trend continues – it’s one of the best PC games 2018 has to offer, period. The core mechanics remain the same, drive, fly, or run to capture points on a map and defend them against the enemy team. However, this year’s offering refines the Operations mode from 2016’s Battlefield 1, and transforms it into, well, Grand Operations. This epic game mode takes place across up to 4 maps, and is meant to portray crucial battles of World War II. It’s an absolute blast, just make sure you have an hour to spare. Battlefield V is also one of the best PC games when it comes to visuals. Never before has war looks so terrifyingly real in a virtual space. The environments are more realistic than ever before, and if you’re rocking an Nvidia Turing card, like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, you can turn on ray tracing and experience out-of-this-world reflections. We’re not exaggerating when we say it’s the best PC game in 2018 for FPS fans. The 2016 revival of Hitman was a revelation, a rebirth of a classic series that showed what Hitman could be. So, we went into Hitman 2 with high expectations – expectations that paid off. Hitman 2 puts players in even bigger environments, with more complicated missions that will test your creativity in deadly ways. What’s especially notable here though, is the new game modes on offer. You’ll have access to a new Sniper Assassin mode, and most importantly, a co-op game mode – a first for the Hitman series. If you’re looking for an engaging stealth experience, you really can’t go wrong with Hitman 2 – it’s one of the best PC games of 2018, easy. Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide was one of the best PC games for anyone who loves playing the best PC games with friends. And, we’re delighted to say that Warhammer: Vermintide 2 takes the deep co-operative gameplay of the original and improves on it in every conceivable way. Although it technically allows you to form complex strategies with your teammates, the action often turns into chaos, where the only way you can survive is mindlessly bashing at enemies until you, and your teammates (preferably), are the only things left standing. And, because Vermintide 2 adds a wide range of Orc enemies on top of the familiar Skaven enemies, you’ll never run out of things to hack to pieces. It's official: Fallout 4 has lived up to the hype. Despite feeling a little bit like Fallout 3 but with nicer graphics at times, its tighter shooting, in-depth crafting system and well-thought out story make it a wholly more enticing affair. As the Sole Survivor (the first fully-voiced protagonist in the Fallout series) in Boston's post-apocalypse wasteland, you'll take on Feral Ghouls, Raiders, Syths and Bloodbugs and more with high-powered weaponry that includes the Fat Man mini nuke cannon and the fusion cell-powered Laser Musket. Fallout 4: the good, the bad and the ugly of the Boston WastelandsIf the Call of Duty series is the poison that dumbed down the FPS genre with its run-and-gun gameplay, then Rainbow Six: Siege is the antidote. Working as a team to out-wit the enemy, Siege plays out like a thinking man (or woman's) Counter-Strike that doesn't simply encourage cooperation if you want to win - it requires it. When you're not peering down your gun's iron sights, you'll be laying traps, scouting ahead using drones, strategising with your teammates and building walls that could keep a herd of demented bulls at bay. While Siege's heavy reliance on tactical team-based gameplay can prove its biggest weakness if you're hoisted into a server with a particularly uncooperative bunch, when it does click, it provides a level of satisfaction rarely found in online multiplayer games. After the rebooted Tomb Raider and its sublime sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, the seminal series has won its place among the best PC games with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Instead of simply porting over a console version and calling it good, Crystal Dynamics has created a technical masterpiece with Lara Croft’s latest adventure. Shadow of the Tomb Raider finds Lara heading down to South America to thwart a Mayan apocalypse. While the scenery isn’t as diverse as in previous titles, it’s still just as arrestingly beautiful throughout. And, with Nvidia’s RTX technology coming later this year, it’s going to be a great way to put the best graphics cards to the test while having some fun at the same time. Imagine a survival-based shooter where every match starts with your avatar being ejected from a cargo plane alongside 99 other players with no weapons or items. That’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, or at least the solo, free for all mode. After spending the early minutes of the game digging for resources, you’ll soon be forced to reckon with your own mortality as the body count ticker at the top of the screen descends into desolation. Abbreviated PUBG, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is based on another “last man standing” game released back in 2013: PlayerUnknown’s Battle Royale. It doesn’t require a copy of Arma III or H1Z1 to run, but you’ll need to keep your wits about you. There’s no respawning in PUBG, so it’s less about the precision of your aim as it is about your ability to scavenge quickly for weapons, first aid kits and clothing. Picking up immediately after the events of Wolfenstein: The New Order, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus will inevitably be heralded as a classic. For some, it’s the punishing old-school gunplay that’s to thank for this. Even on the default difficulty, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus will have you fretting for your life. Yet, for others, story reigns supreme. And, if The New Colossus serves as an interactive showcase for anything, it’s story, the most interesting parts of which are told through flashbacks. We won’t go as far as to spoil the plot, but what we will say is that B.J. Blazkowicz’s motives become a lot clearer in this iteration of Wolfenstein, not that he needs to justify killing Nazis. From the developer behind Persona and Shin Megami Tensei, Catherine takes unique puzzle gameplay and shoves it in the middle of a complex story of romance and inner struggle. You’ll take over the role of Vincent, and you’ll have to decide whether to take your relationship with your girlfriend, Katherine, to the next level. A decision that’s complicated after Catherine – with a C – comes into your life. The ensuing drama takes place in a series of cutscenes each day, and when you go to bed at night, you’ll have to deal with nightmares – in the form of puzzle gameplay. It’s an extraordinarily unique game, and now that it’s finally made its way to PC, there’s no reason to not check it out. Even after 7 years, it’s still one of the most unique and best PC games 2019 has to offer. X-Com 2 is one addictive game, and we still can't put it down. Following up from 2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which reimagined the 1994 cult classic UFO: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2 has delivered everything we wanted in a sequel. Bigger, deeper, faster and even easier on the eyes, the turn-based tactics game takes place 20 years after its predecessor. It pits you in control of the Avenger, a converted alien ship that serves as your mobile base of operations used to devise strategy and execute fight plans against otherworldly enemies. With a greater focus of stealth, more intelligent alien AI and deeper customization options, XCOM 2 is bound to end up one of our games of the year. Anyone familiar with World of Warcraft knows that it's among the most successful and influential massively multiplayer online role-playing games (or MMORPGs) of all-time. Comprising nearly 14 years of content, with over thousands of hours just waiting to be invested, there are few better games to spend your money on than World of Warcraft. In the new expansion, Battle For Azeroth, players explore two new continents – Kul Tiras for Alliance players and Zandalar for the Horde – though there’s something much more sinister hiding beneath the surface. Blizzard has kept the leveling system from Legion, too, meaning you can tackle the new zones in whatever order you want. This will of course come with the all-new raids and dungeons we’ve grown accustomed to over the years and a storyline that will see the two playable factions at each other’s throats in a major way. You’ll get hours upon hours of content to play through here, as is custom with World of Warcraft throughout its 14-year history. And, you can count on updates throughout the expansion, like the recently released Tides of Vengeance that add even more stuff to do. From PlatinumGames and Square Enix, Nier: Automata is a sequel to the 2010 cult classic Nier, which itself is a spin-off of the Drakengard series. Technically an action role-playing game, Nier: Automata’s most gripping quality is that it never truly adheres to one particular genre. At times, it’s a 2.5D platformer and, at others, it’s a twin-stick shooter. It’s unpredictable and a breath of fresh air when compared to other PC games out on the market. The story centers around a femme android by the name of 2B who is aided by a survey android called 9S, or Nines. With many questions being asked along the way, both of these characters are tasked with extricating Earth from alien machines that have engulfed the planet. Just be conscious of how you play because not only does Nier: Automata feature different endings, but with each new path comes vastly different gameplay. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/2dOiGbwRYCI

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/5d92f886952087267e1273cfb9eaba82.jpg The best AT&T plan you can get depends largely on what you want. There are AT&T plans to fit a variety of needs, whether that's a load of data, features, and streaming services or a simple plan with a smidgen of data and an affordable price. If you're bringing your own phone, you may want to seek out one of AT&T's prepaid plans to save some money and get simple service without too much fine print. If you're trying to get one of the best AT&T phones and need a plan to go with it, you'll be looking at the carrier's unlimited data plans. Whatever you need, we're here to help walk you through the major details of AT&T's plans as well as a lot of the fine print. We've gone through all the plans that AT&T offers to make it easier for you to understand what you're getting from each plan, what perks are included, and what the limitations are. So, get ready to find the best AT&T plan for you. Jump straight there: View the plans at att.comChoose your phone: The best AT&T phones available this monthhttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg AT&T Plans: ExplainedAT&T's plans can be broken up into three main categories: unlimited data plans, shared data plans, and prepaid data plans. Unlimited data plans: AT&T's unlimited data plans offer all the data you could need. They also pair unlimited talk and text with the data, and they come with a number of other features and limitations we'll get into further down. Shared data plans: The shared data plans are AT&T's Mobile Share Plus plans. These offer a set amount of high-speed data for the plan, which can be shared between multiple users on the same account. For both Mobile Share Plus plans and AT&T's unlimited data plans, the cost per line is reduced the more lines you add, which is a cost-saving incentive for families to sign up together. Prepaid plans: AT&T's prepaid plans are not very different, offering many of the same features as the postpaid plans but with a notably different payment process. We'll get into all the fine details as we break down each of AT&T's plans below. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/30525324c41e052d08c3a4f5a253ad3e.jpg How much data do you really need?While 1GB of a data might be enough for someone who mostly uses their phone for calling and texting (and the occasional search on Yelp), it may not be enough for most of us data hogs. If you stream a lot of video you may be looking at 10GB plans and up. For a lot of Internet browsing and Instagram use, somewhere in the ballpark of 5GB may be enough. Thankfully, even if you use up all of your high speed data, AT&T continues to provide data at lower speeds, so you can still upload your Instagram photos. AT&T Next: Device installment and upgrade planIf the upfront cost of a new phone along with starting a new data plan is too much, AT&T offers an installment plan service to spread the cost of the device over 24 to 30 months. The Next and Next Every Year plans also offer a change to trade-in your phone and upgrade before you've finished paying off the device. Here's how each plan works. AT&T Next: AT&T Next lets you break up your device payments over 30 months. At the end of those 30 months (after the phone is paid off) your monthly payments will drop. Alternatively, after 24 months, you have the option of trading in your phone to upgrade to a new phone. AT&T Next Every Year: If you can afford slightly higher monthly payments and want to have a new phone every year, the AT&T Next Every Year installment plan spreads the cost of a device over 24 months but lets you upgrade to a new phone every year. After 12 payments, you can trade in your device and switch to a new one. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg The best AT&T plans for you:Now that you know about the types of plans and how to get a device on an installment plan, let's take a look at the plans themselves. One thing to note here is that we're considering the plans as they're priced when using auto-pay and paperless billing, as these offer discounts to customers. We're also considering them for single lines, so if you're planning to sign up multiple lines, the cost will generally be even cheaper. Let's take a look at each tier of AT&T's plans and see which one fits your needs the best. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg AT&T shared data planshttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/b70d14057ad5d9b108202d6252d36e8f.jpg 1. AT&T Mobile Share Plus plan | 3GB data | $50 per month For $50 per month, you can get 3GB of high-speed data that includes 480p streaming, mobile hotspot functionality, and unlimited talk and text. Unused data can also be rolled over to the next billing period. After you use up your data allotment, you're not completely cut off, as data speeds simply slow to 128Kbps. See this AT&T plan here. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/b70d14057ad5d9b108202d6252d36e8f.jpg 2. AT&T Mobile Share Plus plan | 9GB | $60 per month For $60 per month, you can get a plan that includes 9GB of data at 4G LTE speeds. The terms of this plan are the same as the 3GB plan, but you get more data. If you're signing up with multiple lines, this is likely a better allotment to share, and the price per line will go down. See this AT&T plan here. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg AT&T Unlimited planshttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/b70d14057ad5d9b108202d6252d36e8f.jpg 1. AT&T Unlimited &More Plan | $70 per month This plan is straightforward: unlimited talk, text, and 4G LTE data each month. It includes texting to 120 countries along with calls to Mexico and Canada, plus roaming in those two countries. The plan adds in access to over 30 live TV channels. This plan does limit streaming to 480p and doesn't allow mobile hotspot usage, though. Also, customers may experience reduced data speeds during periods of network congestion. See this AT&T unlimited plan here. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/b70d14057ad5d9b108202d6252d36e8f.jpg 2. AT&T Unlimited &More Premium plan| $80 per month For an extra $10 a month, you can get some decent upgrades to the standard unlimited data plan. AT&T's Unlimited &More Premium plan offers all the same features as the other plan but includes 15GB of mobile hotspot use at 4G LTE speeds, allows 1080p video streaming, and offers access to one of seven music, movie, or entertainment channels, like HBO, Starz, and Pandora. The plan also offers 22GB of high speed data before customers are subject to slowed speeds as a result of data deprioritization. See this AT&T unlimited plan here. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6055d9b3b185c0b87d5043eec55f7653.jpg http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/06b231624210304dd697894d2c94d1c7.jpg AT&T prepaid plansCheck out AT&T's prepaid plansIf none of the plans have seemed right for you so far, AT&T also offers a number of prepaid plans with a lot of the same perks as the aforementioned plans and reasonable prices. You can get 1GB for $30, 8GB for $40, unlimited data for $55, a higher-tier unlimited plan for $75 – or even no data at all. No contract is required. The 8GB plan and unlimited plans also offer talk, text, and data access while in Canada and Mexico. See AT&T's prepaid plans here. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/hF5td8mt5kE

Apple’s macOS High Sierra isn’t the newest Mac operating system out there – that honor goes to macOS Mojave, so you’d be forgiven for assuming that no one cares about that old mountain-themed OS. But, if you think about the fact that macOS Mojave requires more recent hardware, you’ll realize that plenty of users will be using macOS 10.13 High Sierra for years. And, while macOS High Sierra may have faced its own problems, like password vulnerabilities and other security issues, back at launch – those days are over. Apple has effectively fixed all those lingering problems, and macOS High Sierra grew into quite a respectable macOS release. Plus, Apple more than made up for any launch issues with that new file system – not to mention those built-in photo-editing tools. At the end of the day, macOS High Sierra faced, and still faces, to some extent – the same issues that macOS Mountain Lion did, as it followed Lion. It brings some interesting changes, but doesn’t do anything all that new and exciting. So, let’s dive into everything there is to know about macOS High Sierra. Cut to the chaseWhat is it? The 2017 edition of Apple’s Mac operating system, macOSWhen is it out? Available to install nowWhat will it cost? macOS High Sierra is free to downloadhttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/enyqXnmAvPLjvGPUq35Kf3.jpeg macOS 10.13 High Sierra release dateApple revealed macOS 10.13 High Sierra at the WWDC 2017 keynote, which is no surprise, given Apple’s tradition of announcing the latest version of its Mac software at its annual developer event. However, it wasn’t until September 12 that Apple revealed that High Sierra would launch little more than a week later, on September 25. There was a developer beta of the operating system you could enroll in leading to the final release, but luckily, that’s no longer required to take advantage of macOS 10.13’s latest features. The final build of macOS High Sierra, 10.13.6 is available right now. Beside a few bug fixes, it integrates Airplay 2 into iTunes – though you will need to update iTunes to take advantage of it. You can download the update from the Mac App Store. More importantly, this update contains the bug fix that stops the Core i9 MacBook Pro from thermal throttling. Safari 12 is also available for macOS High Sierra users, which not only supports website icons in your tabs, but also has better security. Websites, for instance, won’t be able to track your specific Mac when using the native web browser. If you’re ready to jump to the next version of macOS , you can download macOS Mojave today. And, fortunately, we can show you how to download and install macOS Mojave. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ZCfuQDnxQgQECx76Bbmmmd.jpg macOS 10.13 High Sierra compatibilityLuckily, because macOS High Sierra doesn’t really shake things up, the barrier to entry didn’t change. In fact, macOS High Sierra has much more lenient requirements than Mojave, so it should be popular for a while. As long as you're on one of the following Mac models, you can upgrade to macOS High Sierra (if you haven’t done so already). Late 2009 iMac or newer Late 2009 MacBook/MacBook (Retina) or newerMid-2010 MacBook Pro or newerLate 2010 MacBook Air or newerMid-2010 Mac Mini or newerMid-2010 Mac Pro or newer2017 iMac ProBear in mind that if you want to take advantage of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) benefits posed by macOS High Sierra, you’ll need a Mac donning – at the very least – an Intel sixth-generation Skylake processor. Unfortunately, that discounts everything released prior to 2015, but on the bright side, everything else macOS High Sierra brings to the table is fair game. macOS 10.13 High Sierra featuresBeyond the Hackintosh users being reasonably worried about the newly enforced security checks on EFI firmware automatically implemented each week, Apple has revealed a number of awesome new features with macOS 10.13 High Sierra. These include improvements to Safari – which will now stop ad-tracking and auto-playing videos in their tracks – and a more expansive Spotlight Search in the Mail App. Additionally, when you’re composing emails, the app now allows split view for the compose window – and, to make matters better, it uses up to 35% less disk space. The Photos app has also been updated, with a better sorting tool to boot. All of this is accompanied by a better layout, improved facial recognition thanks to neural networks, and improved syncing across all Apple devices – this all makes macOS High Sierra’s photo experience better than ever before. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/iryWSq6DjLWtWM8zyQZHv5.jpg Editing tools, too, have seen improvements, in turn making it easier than ever to enhance the quality of your photos without learning the ins and outs of Photoshop or Camera RAW. And of course, you can count on Instagram-like filters being a part of this. One of the biggest changes that comes with macOS High Sierra is with the file system. It’s ditching the HFS – which Apple has used for around 30 years, and is now using the Apple File System (APFS) instead. Every Mac that has been upgraded to macOS High Sierra will receive these file system updates automatically with the exception of those sporting Fusion Drives and older HDDs. Similarly, all new Macs will ship pre-formatted for APFS. To be exact, APFS is a 64-bit file system that supports native encryption and faster metadata operation. This may all sound a bit techy, but the bottom line is that this will make your Mac feel a lot faster, while also being more secure and more transparent about the nature of your files and folder contents. Unfortunately, this comes with the caveat of Apple’s confirmation that 32-bit apps will be discontinued in later versions of macOS High Sierra. The update also brings HEVC, or H.265, video compression to the Mac. Apple claims that this new standard can compress video files 40% more than the previous-generation H.264 standard. The end result will be faster video streams at higher resolutions – ahem, 4K – and smaller video files sizes when stored locally. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/mUrRhi5YuWQ9CdGqjrdeVo.jpg VR finally comes to the MacOne of the biggest bits of news surrounding macOS High Sierra is that it will finally bring support for virtual reality headsets officially. Namely, the HTC Vive and Steam VR will work with Macs running the new OS this autumn. However to use such a device, you’ll need at least a 5K iMac or MacBook Pro – or, any Mac that can run the new OS with an external GPU solution. Support for such devices comes part and parcel with macOS High Sierra, but won’t be an active function until later this year. The good news is that macOS High Sierra comes with a helping of refinements to its graphics API that make up for the scarce GPU support. Metal was a step forward for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, but with Metal 2, Apple promises less strain on the CPU as well as proper machine learning and better Xcode profiling/debugging in macOS High Sierra. Perhaps more important, though, is the fact that MoltenVK was recently brought to Mac by Khronos Group. An implementation of the open-source Vulkan API, it’s said to bring frame rate gains of up to 50% in Dota 2. As it’s cross-platform, too – being supported by Windows and Linux as well as Apple’s devices – MoltenVK is likely to be more widely adopted by creators. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/82HTdpfpGbB8niZJbMzGFR.jpg Images Credit: Apple Joe Osborne and Gabe Carey have also contributed to this report http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/TzVl99xeupU

All three models in the Samsung Galaxy S10 line will be compatible with Wi-Fi 6, the next version of the wireless internet networking tech, according to an FCC filing spotted by Droid Life. While there aren’t many Wi-Fi 6-supporting routers out there to benefit from it yet, clearly Samsung is looking to future-proof its next flagship phone. If ‘WiFi 6’ sounds new, that’s because it is: the Wi-Fi Alliance, a group shepherding the implementation of WiFi standards, announced it was changing its nomenclature last fall to clarify which version is the latest and greatest. The last to be released in 2014, 802.11ac, has been retroactively renamed Wi-Fi 5. The next was slated to be 802.11ax, but that’s now Wi-Fi 6, and certification for it should start in Q3 2019. Just what will the new standard achieve? In short, better performance and faster speeds. But individual devices shouldn’t see the most benefits; rather, Wi-Fi 6 improves networks with plenty of connected devices. LG G8 probably set to be unveiled on February 24 at MWC 2019WhatsApp adds biometric ID for more secure messagingGSMA suggests Huawei 5G talks at MWC In other words, this won’t necessarily make the Samsung Galaxy S10 noticeably faster than other phones on Wi-Fi. It’ll just help it play nicer in crowded home networks. Wi-Fi 6, only on the latest chips?True, the S10 would technically be quicker than phones that don’t support Wi-Fi 6, but you’d need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6 to begin with. But given that the S10 will pack a Snapdragon 855 chip, which packs in support for Wi-Fi 6, it won’t be surprising when other phones launch this year with support for the new Wi-Fi version. Whether that means phones will require the latest-and-greatest processors to take advantage of Wi-Fi 6 is unclear just yet. Want to upgrade routers before WiFi 6 comes out? Check our list of best routersVia The Vergehttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/Ay3tlR2xcp4

The home improvement site Houzz has announced that it suffered a data breach in which third-parties gained access to a file containing publicly visible user data as well private account information. The company explained to users in an email that an unauthorized third-party obtained access to a file containing internal account information such as user IDs, email addresses, one-way encrypted passwords, IP addresses, city and zip codes and user's Facebook information. At this time, it is not clear as to whether Houzz's data was stolen through a hacked system, unsecured database or files or even by an employee. The company has also failed to disclose how this data was used or if it had been distributed or sold on any hacking forums. Breaking the credential reuse cycleHalf of malicious emails tied to credential phishingNew 'collection' data dump contains 2.2bn usernames and passwordsAll we do know is that in late December of last year, Houzz was informed that a file containing their data was in the possession of third-parties and that the company had hired a forensics firm to find out exactly how the data was stolen. Credential stuffingAccording to a security notice sent out by Houzz, we know that information from user profiles including names, city, state, country and profile description was obtained by third-parties. Fortunately though, no payment information or social security numbers were part of the data breach. However, armed with email addresses and encrypted passwords, hackers could decrypt them and utilise Houzz user credentials in credential stuffing attacks where attackers try leaked user names and passwords on other sites to see if the same login information was used. Users affected by the Houzz data breach should change their passwords immediately and consider using a password manager in the future. Via Bleeping Computer We've also highlighted the best antivirus to help keep your systems safe onlinehttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/GHtlyvoIMws