I made the transition to a standing desk in 2015. I was definitely drawn to this widely accepted fad, which aims to cut down on the amount of time you spend sitting. Even though I had bought a stool that I occasionally used, my work arrangement was still more for ergonomics than relaxation. Because of this, I was never comfortable sitting in front of my PC; instead, I preferred to curl up in a far more comfy chair in front of my TV to play a game. As a result, I essentially stopped being involved in the PC gaming community.

But last year, after upgrading my PC, I began to think about switching things up. This coincided with my chance to review the Noblechairs Legend TX gaming chair. Although I didn’t really picture myself doing this, I decided to give it a go because the time was ideal. It turns out that I made the right decision, and my PC gaming experience has improved significantly since I made the move to a higher-quality chair.

Prior to delving into the reasons for the disparity, let’s discuss features. All of the parts were carefully packaged and the chair came in a sizable, heavy container. I used the given tools and followed the instructions to piece it together in about 20 minutes. With the instructions outlining the process in a clear and readable manner, the setup process is really easy. (In this particular sector, well-known businesses typically do noticeably better than their unbranded counterparts, which frequently provide unclear or erroneous instructions.) One thing to keep in mind is that in order to utilize the tilting mechanism, a little bolt must be removed. Pay close attention to this since you won’t be able to lean back without taking care of it first.

After finishing, I moved the chair in front of my computer and sat down. Like with any new desk chair, I started experimenting right away with all of the functions and adjustments—and there are a lot of them. The chair’s tilt, backrest angle, and base height may all be changed. Locking it in place is also an option. With the lumbar adjustments on the backrest and the incredibly flexible arm rests with a wide range of motion, you may precisely choose a configuration that suits your setup.

I’m sure all of these features are typical for gaming or high-end office chairs, but even while I’m finicky about these things, the amount of adjustable granularity offered here pleased me. After adjusting my desk to the proper height, I felt far more at ease than I had previously. My prior, less expensive office chair frequently caused me to feel uncomfortable if used for an extended period of time, which is one of the reasons I decided to make the transition in the first place to a standing desk. The fact that the Legend TX hasn’t yet caused any of these issues truly surprised me, which is a major accomplishment and illustrates the breadth of ergonomic solutions available.

The softly textured Anthracite gray fabric covering the chair I received for evaluation feels fantastic, but if you’d like, the chair is also available in fake leather for a higher price (up to £460 for the faux leather variants against £420 for the fabric TX).

The fabric model has not clearly shown any signs of wear after three months of use. Naturally, this is what you would anticipate, but I’ve had terrible luck in the past with inexpensive synthetic leather computer chairs that developed problems quickly. Above all, the fabric is relatively comfortable and breathable, which may make this kind of chair a better option than faux-leather in hot and humid areas.

And then there’s the layout. Up until now, I had mainly avoided self-described “gaming chairs” because of their sometimes flashy design language and ridiculous color schemes. Thankfully, the Legend TX completely avoids this issue because to its stylish, minimalist matte gray appearance, which looks perfectly at home in an office. The head rest’s shapes may, I think, give it a little gaming feel, but the overall style is elegant and simple.

After using this chair for three months, I can declare with confidence that I’m a fan. Even though I still occasionally rise up during the day to avoid sitting down for extended periods of time, having a comfortable chair at hand has allowed me to play PC games in front of my display for longer periods of time than I did in the previous three years put together. I finished Titanfall 2 and Halo Infinite, played through Need for Speed Unbound, and played The Witcher 3 for the first time, among many other games. I have been playing PC games nonstop.

Therefore, even if you work from a standing desk, it makes sense to invest in a chair that you can sit comfortably in if you also spend a lot of time at your computer. It merely has to have the structure and adjustability choices required to ensure that you’re sitting in an ergonomic manner. This specific type is excellent, but it’s not necessary.

Consider both office and gaming chairs since they may both work well in this situation. Look for a chair that suits your body type, has enough adjustability, and is supported by positive reviews. Based on our research, we offer a few suggestions for gaming chairs, including models from companies like Herman Miller, Ikea, and Corsair.

For instance, the Corsair TC200 is a nice, less expensive cloth substitute for the Legend TX with a simpler design, while the Noblechairs Hero and Razer Iskur both include inbuilt, adjustable lumbar support, making them an excellent choice in addition to the Legend TX for those with terrible backs. Additionally, if you like the style of an office chair, the Herman Miller Embody and Ikea Markus are excellent choices that fall at different price points; in terms of ergonomics, you usually get what you pay for.

Spend money on what keeps you off the ground, as they say. In my opinion, chairs fall under this category along with mattresses, shoes, and tires.

Let’s start off by saying that discussing how much fun the parts of a video game where you get to play as Erwin Rommel are can be a little odd, or worse. But this is the peculiar predicament that Company of Heroes 3 places you in. A rather unbelievable game that puts you in the shoes of a Wehrmacht commander and was released the day before the anniversary of the conflict in Ukraine is a war simulation game that manages to be successful in spite of its dubious release date and questionable design. The fact that Company of Heroes 3 has gambled so carefully with its setting and tone contributes significantly to its outstanding quality.

That being said, this is hardly shocking. For a while now, Relic has been the epitome of the RTS (real-time strategy) genre. After Dawn of War 3, which bet much more heavily on providing troops active powers and more clearly defined “lanes” on its multiplayer maps, some people might have been concerned, but they shouldn’t have. A safe-bet sequel, Company of Heroes 3 is a response to the studio’s obvious excitement at the creative possibilities of the first film. It’s a conservative’s dream come true. All of the things you enjoyed about Company of Heroes in the past are back, plus more, and everything is slightly improved. There aren’t many, if any, significant innovations—just tweaking, iteration, and dial tinkering.

However, they are nearly universally successful, with the dials set precisely where you would want them to be: for large explosions, tactical demands, and magnificently recreated sounds; in other words, they are dialed right up to the point just before the last notch on the Realism Scale where you hit the range known as Excess. As a result, real novelty or proper creativity are replaced with an extremely high level of competency. Most of the time.

I have a problem with CoH 3’s Italian Campaign. With CoH 3, there are two single-player elements, which is more than ever (a recurring motif) and maybe more than you’ll ever need. The Italian version is large, even by series standards, a sweeping spectacle that combines the simpler, arcady pleasures of classic Relic games, such as the planetary conquest of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, with the wonderfully bureaucratic components of the sandbox overworlds you’d find in the Total War games.

On paper, a lot of stuff is excellent. Starting from the point of Italy’s boot, you ascend the country by subduing towns of all sizes, besieging cities for many routes, risking ambush on speedier roadways, or choosing slower routes across the sun-dried hills of the Mediterranean. Meta versions of the troops, weapons, and fuel from CoH’s real fights are the resources to be managed. There are also a range of tactics to use, such as naval bombardment, artillery, and parachutes. You can see Creative Assembly’s combined talent at work; one would assume that the two Sega-published strategy masters are seriously hiring each other. As someone who has long yearned for the return of stomping through maps and dousing them all in your colors, as we did during the Dawn of War era, I was extremely excited for this to succeed.

Its blend of pulpy enjoyment and rigorous strategy, with a sort of no man’s land at the conclusion, is where the troubles lie. Many aspects of the game feel overly simplistic: auto-resolve is only partially implemented in certain engagements, which results in a lot of manual fighting of brief, repetitive skirmishes on the same maps (somewhat abstracted locations try to break things up, but not enough). The fact that they are reused makes sense: Unlike the more generic chunks of land you may encounter in Total War, Company of Heroes maps are by necessity more complex, with strategically placed structures and cover systems. However, in this case, they age quickly. Similar to that, there are a ton of systems here, but you really don’t need to interact with them at all for the most of the campaign—certainly not for the first third. You just need to slowly advance your little men up the spine of the country, healing themselves for virtually nothing every turn (companies’ overworld health also didn’t seem to affect their actual strength in battle, as far as I could tell), until they reach a choke point that may be strong enough for you to use your battleships to launch a few artillery strikes on it before moving on.

The’sandbox’ aspect of things is further limited by the wish, and maybe necessity once more, to present a particular tale of the liberation of Italy and its resistance fighters by US and British forces. In terms of sandboxes, this one is long and narrow, requiring you to begin at one end and end at the other while starting on the same team every time. Whichever option you select, your advance will be dotted with sub-objectives from three factions of allies: an Italian resistance commander, two quarreling US and British generals, and others. These do provide some variation and dynamic. You’re compelled to give in to their demands and make an effort to satisfy all three of them. Usually, this involves making fairly straightforward trade-offs between upsetting and pleasing each other, tied to a loyalty system that advances you through a tree of bonuses based on how satisfied or unsatisfied they are with your choices. However, when you’re trying to, you know, win a war, sometimes this can devolve into a kind of constant badgering. Visit an athletic meet! Preserve the ancient church! As in, extinguish a fire! Go on now! Give me a break!

Having said that, Company of Heroes still has this as a recent addition. Despite the annoyances, engaging in multi-stage, goal-filled missions inspired by actual conflicts is still incredibly fulfilling. The Italian landscapes are a welcome diversion from the usual fare and may appear like a “where’s left in WW2?” choice, but they are exquisitely rendered. Fundamentally, there is still undeniable satisfaction in moving little men over a large map. This place is enjoyable, especially after the easier open hours expire and the resistance gets more varied and fierce. But don’t anticipate the massive replay value or the more endearing schlock of previous games whose main draw was conquest-style adventures.

Remember that this is only a portion of Company of Heroes 3. North African Operation, an eight-mission linear plot that mostly replicates the single-player portions of previous Company of Heroes games, makes up the other half of the single-player experience. This is the one that puts you in the role of Rommel, the well-known “Desert Fox” of the Second World War. Rommel has been romanticized and mythologized in the year following World War II, being shown as a sort of “gentleman general” who is aloof from all that awful Nazi things. However, even in the context of detached, ironic moustache-twizzling and the undeniable fact that humans find a strange kind of fun in playing the virtual villain, role-playing as a man who was known to support, or in some historians’ words “worship” Adolf Hitler for much of the war remains, at best, deeply strange. A “gentlemanly” Nazi is still a Nazi. Rommel, for example, eventually died as a result of a plot to overthrow Adolf Hitler.

Even if the team established this very impossible goal for itself, Relic has at least been wise to assign it. In order to refute the notion that the North African conflict occurred in some sort of civilized vacuum removed from the unpleasantries of the war, the narrative of this portion of the conflict is told from the viewpoint of local civilians in between missions, illustrating the death and destruction among their homes. You will hear the shouts of the British troops as much as your own as you advance. You read letters home from a local man they’ve recruited while the screens load. Rommel and his DAK (Deutsches Afrika Korps) are not idealized, nor is there an overabundance of sanitization or correction. It is given exactly as it was, or rather, as it is, in the context of its whole historical occurrence, as all history ought to be.

Though you can’t help but think that the more vile areas of military history games would still happily hop into their Panzers while ignoring that backdrop. Relic has made an effort to lessen their justification for doing so. However, there is a persistent feeling that a sequence of missions from a certain character’s perspective would always fall back on a type of pity without extra care, regardless of how many heartfeltly rendered cutscenes you put around the borders. Generally speaking, I would argue that it is very acceptable to offer your own critique as a viewer, but this is the weird, hazy space where engaging in active gaming diverges from the passive experience of other media.

The missions themselves are excellent examples; they are dynamic, multi-staged, demanding, and varied. Leading a small force of tanks will give way to retrieving and reusing wrecked vehicles, surviving assaults, pincer movements, and counterattacks. The only probable critique is that such sharp countermeasures and cerebral outflankings have little impact if there isn’t a larger backdrop outside the staged missions; otherwise, you just have to follow orders to complete the goals. It almost makes you want for a hybrid of the two campaigns, in which you navigate an overworld map and may virtually play through the maneuvers before carrying them out. However, it’s actually a minor quibble because the missions are fantastic.

In relation to that, Company of Heroes 3 has included a fantastic feeling of spectacle that flawlessly matches its little adjustments. With sand dunes, desert ruins, bell towers, and captured castles, maps now have a lot more “verticality”—that darling word beloved by developers—because the height of your troops now directly affects sightlines, sight ranges, and cover. Everything is capable of being destroyed by explosion, which fits in pretty well with a campaign centered around blasting objects with tanks. The series’ renowned accuracy in sound design is also a joy, sounding both realistic and flamboyant at the same time—a classic Hollywood meets historical moment that resonates loudly in your ears.

In actuality, CoH 3 is elevated by the same elements that made Company of Heroes the legendary wonderful game that it is. With the exception of the occasional rogue tank, Relic’s long-standing mastery of battlefield context is better than ever. Squads naturally line up outside buildings or hop low walls to neutralize enemy squads (breaching is a new mechanic that is, to be honest, almost gimmicky, as it is essentially the same as just lobbing a grenade into a building as you did before). Compared to other RTS games, it has greater tactical complexity, but it also has more intuitive gameplay as its strategies make sense: avoid running troops over wide highways or, as of late, up blind slopes, and instead target tanks from the side or back. There’s a sort of pre-made logic to every successive layer of complexity that is added, such as more scouting units, light and heavy tanks, structures, and tools for constructing and combating traps.

That being said, be ready for a challenge as usual in multiplayer, where my brief and disastrous attempts at taking on other players online have shown me that CoH 3 has a low entrance barrier but a very, very high skill ceiling. The positive is that there is once again more diversity than before: 14 maps, four factions with three sub-faction “battlegroups” apiece, the most of any series at launch, co-op, and even modability ready to play right away. There is a good deal of tonal similarity, but there is also a wonderful historic texture. I love how special forces from other parts of the world, like the Gurkhas, Australians, and Canadians, or even just different British accents, like cor-blimey-guv and still effing-and-jeffing Welsh, are used to remind us of the Second World War’s global scope, human cost, and intimate moments in between the action.

Again, the end product is a game that is more safer than it is creative, one that mostly builds on the qualities already present—human touches, bombast, an unmatched blend of tactical intricacy and contextual immersion—rather than introducing anything new. Company of Heroes 3 is just Company of Heroes, just better and more abundant. That’s more than sufficient in this instance.

When you feel like you’ve reached a dead end in a game, whether it’s early on in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty or at the conclusion of what is supposed to be the introductory task, it’s usually reason to be concerned. During the Yellow Turban Rebellion, you are thrust into the center of China’s chaotic Three Kingdoms era and face one of its powerful commanders, whose strength has been increased by a cursed elixir. Surely, as in Sekiro, this is intended to be a trick boss that you have to lose against? Or perhaps there’s a simple exploit hiding right in front of you, like the Taurus Demon in Dark Souls? Thankfully, after almost an hour of effort, I realized it was the latter—the cost of using the actual Chinese audio while neglecting to read the subtitles while the fight was intense.

Putting yourself through this harsh initial obstacle may be indicative of Team Ninja’s “masocore” mentality, but it almost seems like a departure from the remainder of the marathon that lies ahead of you. The company has abandoned the Sengoku-era Japan-based Nioh series in favor of new features and gameplay that make Wo Long one of the most approachable Soulslikes I’ve played in a long time—all without just putting it on easy mode.

Having spent two decades hacking and slicing through this historical period in the Dynasty Warriors game, Koei Tecmo is no stranger to the Three Kingdoms era. The translation of “musou” to “Soulslike” has a dark fantasy element because everyone exposed to this enigmatic substance is being transformed into demonic monsters, even the warlords vying for control of its power. It seems appropriate that these characters battle with you, considering the many larger-than-life heroes who have practically become myths, not only in the musou games but in countless other Chinese adaptations as well. If you’ve played Nioh 2, you may recall that on a few missions, you were periodically joined by an AI-controlled buddy. This is almost the standard in Wo Long, where you start a task with one ally and it ends with a boss fight at the end. You may also call out other allies from your growing roster.

That is not to mean that renowned figures like Liu Bei, Zhao Yun, or Cao Cao would fight your battles for you; nonetheless, encouraging them will make them far more aggressive. Though it’s the more enhanced and more fluid fighting system that makes me want to take on its challenges alone, I treat them almost as a security blanket so I know someone has my back and can charge in more recklessly.

This is partially due to Nioh’s more lenient adjustments. For example, falling from a cliff or into the sea does not instantly result in death, nor do sprinting or even standard assaults deplete stamina. Even when you die, you don’t lose all of your Qi—Wo Long’s version of souls for character leveling—but you will need to get even with the person who murdered you if you’ve lost some. A dedicated jump button has also made movement much easier. It has a double-jump that makes it much easier to flip up to higher ground, which in turn provides you more possibilities to leap down for an unexpected takedown. Keeping your distance from your adversary allows you to sneak up on them and pull a backstab. Although it would have been nice to have had a crouch button, it helps that your enemies are frequently quite nearsighted.

But enough about that; let’s return to the fighting and specifically the stamina system, or as Wo Long would say, your spirit gauge. An orange-red bar that advances to the left for the former and a blue bar that goes to the right for the latter represents the progression of Nioh’s Ki meter, which now has a gauge that can flow both positively and negatively. As you’ll be utilizing spirit a lot for your harder strikes, wizardry spells, and weapon’s martial arts, it makes sense that you’re seldom in the blue. However, normal strikes don’t utilize spirit, therefore the only things that will keep your spirit out of the red are these and deflecting assaults.

This is where things become interesting—deflecting. Experienced players of Soulslike would know that blocking is not as effective as evading, and that Bloodborne (which has the same producer as Wo Long, Masaaki Yamagiwa) does not use shields at all. Since the deflect button in Wo Long is also the button for escaping, it may appear counterintuitive at first, but in practical application, it’s rather clever. My natural reaction is to parry an approaching assault, but if I time it well, the parry turns into a deflection. It seems like I can still try to dodge but occasionally also luckily deflect, and before long I was basically preparing myself to ‘dodge into’ an attack in order to deflect it. Instead of having a separate parry button that you’re hoping you’ve timed well enough to escape a terrible punishment. It soon becomes crucial, not only because it throws your opponent off-balance and opens the door for you to react, but also because it aids in regaining that crucial spirit. It’s also less demanding than Sekiro’s extremely exact and difficult parries since Wo Long allows you to parry anything, and I mean anything. Sekiro was mostly a fighting game where you had to know when to jump over a sweep or evade a grab.

This is particularly true in situations where your opponent is about to deliver an unblockable critical blow—which is clearly indicated by a wind-up animation and a demonic red aura—and you are faced with the choice of either losing badly or turning the tables and severely weakening your opponent’s will to the point where they are vulnerable to a deadly blow. In fact, I found myself eagerly awaiting and even trying to set up these attacks—not to mention that it looks so good to parry big hits. It is really satisfying to have the camera crash-zoom in cinematically when I follow through with a lethal strike; the crackling soundtrack that goes with it creates the same sensation as when you bowl a strike.

Because of its connection to Wo Long’s morale system, landing deadly attacks is another way to make the game simpler. In Wo Long, morale is represented by a number over an enemy’s head. It functions similarly to an enemy’s level in a role-playing game, allowing you to determine whether to take a chance or to avoid them. The distinction is that these values are mutable, meaning that, similar to shifting weights from one side of balance scales to the other, striking an opponent fatally decreases their morale while you gain it. If you continue on your current winning path, you will eventually become a heavyweight fighter capable of facing any evil opponent that may be hiding around the corner. It’s important to remember that dying also results in the loss of any morale boost, so there’s a true risk/reward tension.

If you think the punishment is too harsh, don’t worry—flags serve as both checkpoints and, in line with the Three Kingdoms motif, a symbol of your dominance over the battlefield. Your fortitude rank increases as you plant more flags; it also has a number that is the lowest point at which your morale may drop. Stomped by a boss who has a twenty-percent morale? So that your default morale is the same as theirs, place all the flags in that level. In a variation on how you engage with other players who have fallen, skilled players who survive can even enhance their morale beyond this point. You can contribute one of your healing potions in return for increased morale. It’s similar to having a dynamic difficulty setting that pushes you to fully explore every level.

Though graphically things do eventually change beyond the usual devastated villages and hollow mountains, it still offers additional reason to interact with the settings, which, like Nioh before, seldom inspires the imagination beyond the conventional closed doors, blocked roads, and returning shortcuts. It’s also odd that Team Ninja hasn’t thought to redesign a loot system that is so abundant in quantity—a holdover from Nioh’s original design, which gave its gear limited durability—that the only sensible and effective solution is to equip the item with the highest number and sell the rest. It makes sense that until very late in the game, I was hesitant to visit the smithy to improve anything, knowing that you’ll probably discover even better gear in the next task regardless.

While a new setting might imply a new chapter, I would almost rather refer to Wo Long as a Nioh-like, or more accurately, as the follow-up that Nioh 2 ought to have been, improving its customization and systems, eliminating most of the bloat, and adding an intriguing evolution to its foundations that makes its challenging core more manageable on its own terms. It is undoubtedly more pleasant to travel with comrades, but you can feel completely satisfied if you can halt a warrior twice your size who is possessed by a demon, respond with a spear that plunges from the sky, and reduce his morale to nothing in the process.