Company Of Heroes devs Relic bounce back with plans for big RTS games, smaller experiments and spiritual revivals - Related to detonate, —, plans, relic, steroids

Ayaneo 3 is a Steam Deck on steroids — in every way

co-founded Polygon in 2012 and is now editor-in-chief. He co-hosts The Besties, is a board member of the Frida Cinema, and created NYU’s first games journalism course.

It felt like magic. The Steam Deck played practically everything when Valve launched the handheld in 2022. By toggling to low graphical settings, even Elden Ring ran on the diminutive screen. But in 2025, gaming’s latest visual spectacles — including critical darlings Indiana Jones and Dragon’s Dogma 2 — won’t boot on Valve’s now-aging hardware.

Enter the Ayaneo 3, one of the most powerful (and expensive) handhelds to appear in the wake of Valve’s hit. For over two weeks, I’ve been testing a preview build of the ridiculously powerful handheld. Both of the aforementioned titles run on the Ayaneo 3, as do multiple embargoed AAA games that will be released in the coming months — running on medium settings, no less!

But where the Steam Deck miraculously fit the best of desktop PC gaming on a handheld that cost $399 and worked out of the box, Ayaneo’s PC power comes with costs on all fronts.

The hardware is much more expensive, starting at $799 if you pre-order early on Indiegogo and opt for the less powerful CPU. Want an Ayaneo 3 similar to the one I tested, featuring the more powerful AMD Ryuzan AI 9 HZ 370 CPU? The pre-order price starts at $1,399. The build I tested, with a retro-inspired exterior, a collection of modular handles, and 4TB of storage will set you back $1,999 if you order on Indiegogo (and will retail for an eye-watering $2,099).

You may wonder who would pay nearly three times the price of the best Steam OLED for a console that can play an extra handful of new games. Consider the broader PC gaming ecosystem, where those with the means will calmly drop $2k whenever NVIDIA launches a new top-of-the-line GPU to run the same games at ever-higher resolutions and frame rates. It should be no surprise, then, that the “more power no matter the cost” mentality of desktop PC gaming culture would migrate into handheld gaming, turning that new landscape into a similar arm’s race.

And it’s PC gamers who will have patience for the Ayaneo 3’s quirks. Don’t expect the “it just works” ease of the Steam Deck. Prepare for the sort of tinkering that’s long been required for gaming on Windows. I spent my first two hours struggling to get the Ayaneo 3’s controls to be interpreted as a controller rather than a keyboard and mouse. And then I ran into issues with the HDR settings.

Should I blame Ayaneo’s ambitious but flawed UI or Windows 11? I’m still not quite sure, but probably both?

After the first couple of days of frustrations, my time with the Ayaneo 3 has been a pleasure. I feel, as I did with the original Steam Deck, like I’m holding the future. The hardware itself is decadent: comfy Hall triggers, forceful haptics, a 7” 144Hz OLED screen with 800nits HDR, and shockingly excellent sound — besting one of the Deck’s strongest surprise elements. Though the modest battery — like with many handhelds — practically requires you to carry an industrial-grade power brick for lengthy on-the-go gaming.

In a true act of overkill, the handheld is the first of its kind to feature modular controls. In theory, with the tap of a button, the two ovals housing the joysticks, D-pad, and buttons will pop from the handheld, allowing alternative modules to take their place. I tested an unfinished preview unit — with specifics regarding the modules under embargo — so I can’t speak to the feature’s longterm reliability, but I can say it’s novel to play a fighting game on a handheld using a custom fight pad module.

Is that novelty worth the cost? No. But that’s beside the point. The Ayaneo 3 isn’t for someone who wants to stretch their dollar. It’s for whoever who wants the most powerful handheld on the planet, no matter the cost on their wallet and their time — the gaming equivalent of steroids that build muscle fast but cost a fortune and have, well, let’s just say side effects.

I keep talking about magic, which calls to mind images of wizards and sorceresses. But if I were to roll a D&D character for my Ayaneo 3, the better fit would be a barbarian, a class with incredible power. When it hits, it obliterates the competition. But it can also be clunky and awkward. Occasionally, getting it to do what I want feels like arguing with a brick wall. Then, WHAM, the Ayaneo 3 runs a modern game at 60 fps without breaking a sweat.

If the final product “just works” like the Steam Deck does, its bounty of high-end functions may justify the price tag. And if not? As the Indiegogo pre-sales already show, a contingent of PC gamers won’t let some headaches get in the way of horsepower.

The Ayaneo 3 is available for pre-order on Indiegogo. It was tested using a pre-release unit provided by Ayaneo. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.

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Company Of Heroes devs Relic bounce back with plans for big RTS games, smaller experiments and spiritual revivals

Last March, Sega sold off enterprise Of Heroes and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War developers Relic Entertainment in the course of wider "restructuring", "realigning" and lay-offening at the house of Sonic. Relic's new corporate partners are a holding enterprise established by the UK investment firm Emona Capital LLP - an arrangement that apparently lets them operate like an independent studio, though I'm fuzzy on the moving parts.

I was happy to hear that Relic had escaped outright closure. I'm even happier to hear that they're making more strategy games - a mixture of revival projects, big new games, and smaller productions with a faster turnaround.

All that's from a brief chat with Game Developer, in which CEO Justin Dowdeswell lays on the talk of sunlit uplands. Relic will continue to support their existing games, like 2023's organization Of Heroes 3. They'll also work on projects of similar scale and complexity, perhaps including remasters or re-releases for older Relic games. There's the dangled carrot of remakes that "capture the spirit of the originals" but, by implication, take a few liberties with the fundamentals. Picking which older Relic games to revive will, as you'd expect, be a "multifactored process" of haggling it out with external partners.

And then there's the prospect of smaller Relic projects that, in Game Developer's paraphrase, will allow the developers to "explore new genres and experiences". Relic's hope is to develop and ship these in under two years.

"We're looking to operate with smaller teams on shorter timeframes, which means likely getting a game in market roughly in the 1-2 year range," Dowdeswell explained. "Budget costs will vary depending on scope, but these titles will have a notably smaller budget than the big Relic RTS games we will continue to work on."

Relic cut back on staff following the Sega sale, but Dowdeswell insists the organization are on a "much advanced footing" these days. Fingers crossed that it all pans out, I guess. While they're a different team nowadays, I still venerate Relic as the creators of the original Homeworld, to say nothing of Dawn Of War, and their recent stuff has been pretty good: Katharine (RPS in peace) called organization Of Heroes 3 "a glorious comeback".

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Commandos Origins plants a release date under an enemy tank, will detonate in two months time

enhanced get yer cigar chompin' mouth muscles warmed up. Second world war sabotage 'em up Commandos: Origins now has a release date, and it's fairly soon. Good news for people who enjoy sniping fascists from across the map while commanding a barrel-armed Irishmen to simultaneously slit a throat. And equally good news for those who lament the loss of Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun developer Mimimi Games.

This reboot is coming out on April 9th, introduced developers Claymore Game Studios in a Steam post. "After more than four years of setting up a new studio, design and development, and the invaluable community feedback from various playtests - operation ‘Release’ is a go," introduced studio director Jürgen Reusswig.

But maybe you don't have all the requisite wrinkles to remember Commandos? They were a series of tough top-down tactics games that saw the player infiltrate axis territory during World War 2. They looked like real-time strategy games but were really all about high-stakes stealth. That, and trying to find the one good angle your sniper could actually shoot from.

This follow-up will have 10 missions in wartime locales like the North African desert and snowy Scandinavia, and you'll be able to slink through Nazi encampments slashing necks with a pal in two-player co-op (both online or split-screen). Nic played a demo during last autumn's Next Feast, and walked away feeling broadly positive about all the meticulously timed soldier strangling. He also dropped a wardrobe on the heads of two unsuspecting Nazis. What's not to like?

Publisher Kalypso Media bagged the rights to the Commandos games back in 2018 and promptly got to work setting up a studio to revive the series. The resultant reboot will be flying the flag for the stealth tactics genre after the demise of Mimimi Games, who basically revived and modernised all the ideas of old-school Commandos games when they made Shadow Tactics, Desperados 3, and Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. These were all well-liked games by folks here at RPS. Sadly, the studio closed down in the summer of 2023, with the founders of the studio citing exhaustion as the main reason they were downing tools.

"We cherished every game we made and feel proud of what we were able to accomplish as a studio," they mentioned when announcing the closure. "At the same time, dedicating the past decade and a half of our lives working on increasingly ambitious games took a heavy personal toll on us and our families."

It'll be interesting to see how Claymore learn from Mimimi's work, and what ideas of their own they'll inject (or re-inject?) into the genre. Although Edwin has just soldier-crawled into the room wearing two stripes of boot polish on his face to pass on some intelligence. He says monastery stealth game The Stone Of Madness from the Balsphemous developers is also keeping the genre alive. This is a promising sign. Dismissed.

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