Fast forward to early 2023, and I’m sitting here with an HHKB Professional Hybrid Type-S in front of me. It’s been my daily driver for the last few weeks, well, apart from when I’ve been swapping between it and my Topre Realforce R2 PFU, but anyways, I digress. Would I recommend right out of the gate for you to go and buy one? Well, yeah, definitely, but at the same time, also, no.

Allow me to explain. There are a few things that make the HHKB a unique keyboard in its own right that you may need to get used to. Chief among these is its odd layout. In taking a quick glance down, the HHKB might look like any normal US ANSI layout 60% keyboard, but take another look at it. It’s missing a few keys, most notably Windows keys, and a secondary Control key, and where the hell’s the Caps Lock key? What’s that… it’s now a Control key? How can this be?

Well, the HHKB uses a layout that was first devised by Eiiti Wada (opens in new tab), in collaboration with PFU, the company that makes the HHKB—they’re a big conglomerate business that includes brands like Fujitsu and Ricoh.

The story goes that Wada wasn’t happy with having to use a different keyboard layout with differing complexities with every operating system that he had to use, and he wanted to design a one size fits all sort of thing to suit every platform he was using. He saw the keyboard as an accessory that PC makers had neglected, when in fact it’s one of the most integral parts. With that philosophy in mind, he compared the keyboard and PC to a horse and saddle in the Wild West, with one of the best analogies I’ve ever read: “The horse was a consumable good, but the saddle was an interface that their bodies had gotten used to. In the same vein, PCs are consumable goods, while keyboards are important interfaces.”

The point here though is that while the HHKB layout takes some getting used to, and it took me a week or so of constant use to do so, the placement of certain keys makes perfect sense. The single level Enter key directly below backspace means there’s less of a jump for deleting characters, while the same is also true on the left-hand side with the Control key where Caps Lock is. There’s no need to reach down an extra row for modifier keys, keeping your fingers firmly where they should be.

Of course, it’s touch typists who are really going to feel the benefit of this, but even if you touch type with only half your fingers like I do, the layout is still perfectly usable, and it’s immediately become one of my favourites.

That small 60-key layout also helps the HHKB Professional Type S to be one of the dinkiest keyboards I’ve ever had on my desk. At 540g or so, it’s also immensely light, which may lead you to believe it feels cheaply built, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Despite being entirely comprised of plastic, the HHKB’s chassis is ridiculously sturdy and especially fetching in the ice-white colour I’ve got here. That excellent finishing is also evident on the dye-sub PBT keycaps provided, which feel gorgeous under finger. Given that high-quality construction, there’s also no need to worry about legends wearing off or things looking shiny, unlike with some cheaper ABS keycaps with printed legends.

Apart from the layout, the HHKB also features some intriguing electro-capacitive switches of sorts, which are the same as you get on a Topre RealForce, another one of those holy grail keyboards I alluded to earlier. I talked about electro-capacitive keyboards with a feature on them about this time last year, but if you’re unaware, these work via a plunger pushing down a membrane, which in turn pushes down a conical spring, creating electrical contact and causing a keystroke to be registered. In short, they aren’t mechanical in the traditional sense, but are given a bit of a free pass, given how amazing they feel.

The best way I can describe it is this: typing on the HHKB Professional Type S is like typing on a cloud. Where normal key switches can feel harsh with a form of tactility, the HHKB feels soft but tactile, without feeling spongy or wet, like some membrane keyboards can feel. The switch feeling here can be pretty polarising; die hard mechanical fans will say it doesn’t feel right but to my fingers, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever typed on, apart from my RealForce. What’s especially intriguing is that the HHKB doesn’t feature a metal plate inside, lending the bottom out of the keypress to feel smoother and crisper than my RealForce, with its steel plate offering a stiffer bottom out on the key travel, despite using the same switches. The HHKB here also features silenced and dampened Topre switches, so if you’re working in a busy office, or you don’t want to wake the neighbours, it’ll also be an excellent keyboard, too.

Returning to normal keyboard things, this is a wireless keyboard, and works via 2 AA batteries that can be changed easily with the protruding battery compartment out of the top of the chassis. In my mileage, I actually didn’t have to change batteries during the six or so weeks I had the HHKB in hand, and PFU says you can get up to four months charge on a set of batteries. There is also a USB Type-C port for wired use, although it doesn’t charge the HHKB’s batteries—that’s up to you to get some rechargeable cells. Personally, I think this is a bit of an oversight given the sheer cost for getting the HHKB: a rechargeable cell with USB Type-C charging not only makes more logistical sense, it also means you don’t risk the HHKB suddenly dying without warning.

This leads me nicely onto the big elephant in the room, the price. It’s $357/£300 at the time of writing—for a keyboard that doesn’t come with all the keys or proper mechanical switches, single channel Bluetooth connectivity, and you don’t get a USB Type-C cable in the box. But, let’s face it, if you’re considering buying one of these, you know exactly why you should buy one, and you may not need this review to convince you.

I’ll be honest, I’m blindly in love with my HHKB Professional Hybrid Type S, and I’ll recommend you go and buy one, even if it’s just simply to try it out. Yes its layout will take some getting used to, and the fact I’ll have to burn through some standard AA batteries to power it is a bit of a pain, but the fact remains that you’re getting arguably the best typing experience money can buy in a keyboard that’s amazingly well built and one that’s unlike anything else on the market today. If that isn’t worth your time, I don’t know what is.

The developers are also adding something even more unusual: The original version of the game, as it launched in early 2018. “Maybe you feel nostalgic and want to go back and experience those early days of glory,” writes Ghost Ship Games (opens in new tab). “Or maybe you just want to appreciate everything that has been added since launch by actually seeing how different the game is today by comparison.”

So few games ever offer this opportunity to take stock. There are some games where there may be a reason you seek out and play an older, unpatched version, but rarely do developers want to go back and serve-up something they’ve spent many years improving. It’ll be especially illuminating to go back and see what this was like before all the additions, because I started playing Deep Rock Galactic long after it had become popular. 

The quality of free updates for Deep Rock Galactic is such that it has the most unusual problem of its players trying to work out how to give the developers more money. So the fifth anniversary jamboree includes the game’s second supporter pack: “a most decadent, most luxurious, most supportive package of cosmetic DLC and extra goodies.”

The developers are going to livestream the fifth anniversary from its Copenhagen office and discuss “the past and future of DRG,” saying a celebration doesn’t mean resting on any laurels. “We are not slowing down on Deep Rock Galactic,” writes Ghost Ship Games. “On the contrary, we have never been as busy making exciting new things for this labor of love which now turns 5.”

Deep Rock Galactic’s third season launched last year, and turns your miners into grenade-lobbing doctors (as PCG’s Joshua Wolens sagely notes, “what is a miner but a doctor for rocks?” (opens in new tab)) It’s also one of those games that has gathered momentum over the years and continues to sell at an incredible rate, with over two million people in 2022 (opens in new tab) deciding that, yes, tunnelling through asteroids with a team of bearded dwarves is my idea of a good time. At the rate this thing is going, don’t be surprised when we’re back for the tenth anniversary, where maybe the devs will release the game as it was in 2023.

Since the dramatic and exciting Starfield gameplay reveal trailer released back in 2022, it’s largely been radio silence from Bethesda in terms of revealing new details about the game.

However, one eagle-eyed gamer has just seemingly spotted a Starfield feature that has been hiding in plain sight ever since that gameplay trailer reveal—it’s just that hardly any gamers spotted it.

The discovery, which was posted in a thread (opens in new tab) on the Starfield subreddit, was made when the gamer just happened to spot that in one frame of the gameplay trailer you can see the option to ‘pickpocket’ an NPC.

During the early gameplay footage showing the player fighting a bunch of space pirates within a dark facility, one enemy runs up to the player and, just before they get killed, an option to pickpocket flashes up for a frame, with the player offered the chance to press the ‘A’ controller button to do so. Here’s a close up.

After that single frame the pirate is killed and the command quickly changes to the far more obvious to see ‘transfer’ option, indicating that the now deceased enemy can be looted.

Last year, Knockout City went free-to-play and independent, leaving behind Electronic Arts, which had published it as part of the EA Originals label. According to SteamDB’s charts (opens in new tab), the switch to free-to-play temporarily bumped its daily player count from under 200 to over 2,000, though that soon dropped down the 200–300 mark where it’s stayed ever since.

Knockout City’s final update on February 28 will bring it up to version 9.0 and mark the beginning of Season 9. “This will be a 12-week season,” Russo writes, “with six back-to-back events featuring some of our most creative cosmetics yet, fresh new twists on several of our best playlists, a whole event focused exclusively on League Play, and a super-sized two-week Midnight Madness where the community will pick the two Playlists they want to play to close out the last Season. There will be a whole new map to accompany an entirely season-themed Brawl Pass and Deep Space Dispatch storyline!”

On the same date, Knockout City’s real-money transactions will be disabled. Season 9’s events will still hand out rewards including its in-game currency, which is called Holobux, and cosmetics will be on sale while rewards will be increased.

When Season 9 is complete on May 23, a final two-week farewell event called “Thanks for the KOs” will run, offering triple XP and the return of a playlist called “Superpowers: Power Grab”. The servers will officially shut down at 12pm UTC/4am PST on June 6, though players on PC will be able to continue playing, Russo writes, as “we’ll be releasing a standalone player-hosted version of the game for Windows PCs. Even after the official servers go offline, Knockout City can continue to be played for eternity by fans that want to host their own servers!” More details on how that will work are still to come.

As for what Velan Studios plans to do next, it may well include something adjacent to Knockout City. “We’re currently in the process of doing a comprehensive retrospective on every aspect of the game,” Russo writes, “all the community feedback and analytics data, and even our development processes. Our hope is that sometime in the not-too-distant future, all this information can be used to start work on what comes next in the Knockout City universe. While we can’t promise that Knockout City will be back, what we can promise is that you’ll continue to see new and innovative games from Velan Studios that will surprise and delight players around the world.”

This news comes just days after the announcement that Iron Galaxy Studios’ free-to-play online wrestling game Rumbleverse is shutting down just six months after its launch, which came only days before the similar announcement that Ubisoft’s free-to-play battle royale Hyperscape is shutting down less than two years after its launch. It’s rough out there for live-service games right now, even ones as well-liked as Knockout City was when it arrived. Has anybody heard from Rocket Arena lately?