The special, almost intangible loveliness of the Plucky Squire isn't down to either the game design itself or the way it's presented. It's down to both of these things, combined so thoroughly, and with such imagination, that it's hard to stir them apart.

To put it another way, it's not just that this is a fantasy-action game in which your hero receives a bow and arrow from a beautiful elf. It's that, to win that bow and arrow, the hero first has to venture across the authentic wilderness of a child's cluttered bedroom desk, and into a cardboard castle. There, at the top of a tower formed by a stack of beloved books, the hero and the elf must do battle inside the stiff confines of a knock-off Magic: The Gathering card.

This completely rules. And that's just one moment from the preview build of the game I've been playing over the last few days that has elicited such a gasp of wonder and delight. A battle inside a battling card! And then I walk away from it with a golden bow. Yes please, Plucky Squire. Yes please.

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Nintendo is dropping a free three-part demo for its upcoming horror, Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club from next week.

From Tuesday 20th August, players will be able to grab the prologue and chapter one.

Chapter two will drop on the morning of the 23rd August, and the third and final freebie, chapter three, will be available on 28th August.

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Destiny developer Bungie says it has addressed an issue where players have had their usernames changed by its "name moderation tool".

After "actively investigating" the issue for 24 hours, Bungie advised that while it had "identified the issue that was forcing a high number of Bungie name changes", it was "continuing to investigate" what happened and how "to address player accounts that were impacted".

Although Bungie acknowledged that a "high number of account names have been changed", the studio stopped short of confirming exactly how many players were affected.

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If you cast your minds back to October 2021, you may recall the news that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was set to make its way to the VR headset, Oculus Quest 2. While details on the project were thin on the ground at this time, it was said to have been "many years in the making".

However, not quite three years since that initial announcement, Meta has now said work on the VR port is "on hold indefinitely".

In response to a YouTube commenter inquiring as to the whereabouts of GTA: San Andreas VR, the official Meta Quest Vr account replied: "GTA: San Andreas is on hold indefinitely while we both focus on other projects."

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Hello! You might be seeing a few Black Myth: Wukong reviews going live at the moment, and so we wanted to let you know where ours was.

In brief: we need a bit more time with this one. It's a big ol' game, and we haven't had very long with it, meaning we've not had enough time to make significant enough progress for a full review.

There are a couple of other factors worth bearing in mind. There are some quite tight embargo restrictions for what we could talk about in an early review for this one - though that's increasingly the norm these days really - and also, we've been informed there is no PlayStation 5 code available for the game at all until on or after launch. That doesn't necessarily mean anything should be read into there - code for one platform is often available before another - but it is just one more small reason for us to sit tight a little longer.

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The Elder Scrolls mobile game, The Elder Scrolls: Castles, is set to launch on 10th September.

The Elder Scrolls: Castles - which was quietly released into early access in September 2023 - is now open for pre-registration on both Apple and Android.

From the same "award-winning team" behind Fallout Shelter, The Elder Scrolls: Castles lets you reign supreme over your very own castle and dynasty within The Elder Scrolls universe.

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Following the news Krafton was saving Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks from being shut down for good, the PUBG publisher has confirmed its plans to "transfer approximately 50 development staff" from the studio to its Japan subsidiary.

This is roughly half the number of the studio's initial development staff, which was over 100. Gameranx reports this is because others have since found employment elsewhere, and as such there are a number of job openings at the studio.

In an update on social media platform X by Game File's Stephen Totilo, the reporter shared a statement from Krafton's PR, which said those 50 staff who are part of the transfer will "continue to work on new projects, including the expansion of the Hi-Fi Rush IP, at Krafton".

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered mod, H2M, has been cancelled following a cease and desist demand from Activision.

Although the mod - which upgraded Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer mode - was announced over a year ago, the cease and desist arrived yesterday, a day before the mod was scheduled to be released later today.

"Today, our team members received a Cease & Desist order on behalf of Activision Publishing in relation to the H2M-Mod project," the team explained on Twitter/X.

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Two Legacy of Kain games are being re-released, but for the Evercade retro handheld console.

The Legacy of Kain Collection will include both Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver on one giga cart priced £22.49.

The collection will release next month and will be available to pre-order from 30th August. It's compatible with all Evercade and Super Pocket devices.

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Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney has said he has "no regrets" over his company's decision to break Apple and Google's terms of service back in August 2020 - something that saw the hugely-popular Fortnite booted off both iPhone and Android storefronts.

The carefully choreographed stunt sparked four years of legal wrangling over Apple and Google's app store policies - and has ultimately led to Epic Games launching its own mobile store today on Android worldwide and on iPhone in mainland Europe, thanks to policy changes demanded of Apple by the EU.

"We've probably lost a billion dollars not having Fortnite on iOS the past four years," Sweeney said, in a briefing to press ahead of the Epic Games Store on mobile going live. "But what's the price of freedom?"

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Kaitlyn Dever, the actress portraying Abby Anderson in the second season of HBO's The Last of Us adaptation, required extra security during filming for her own protection.

This comes from fellow castmate Isabel Merced, who is playing Dina in the show. Speaking with Josh Horowitz on Happy Sad Confused, Merced discussed the strong emotions the series can spark within some that have resulted in volatile reactions from so-called fans.

When Horowitz said he was concerned about Dever, and the toxicity she will likely receive "through proxy of being Abby", Merced stated there are "so many strange people" who "genuinely hate" the character. This is despite her being completely fictional. And, because of this, Dever was required to have extra security during the filming for the second season.

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Genvid's experimental choose-the-outcome, episodic Silent Hill series, Ascension, has won an Emmy.

Genvid CEO Jacob Navok marked the award with a heartfelt post on Twitter/X, stating the Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation in Emerging Media Programming for Silent Hill: Ascension was a "testament to the dedication" of the team.

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The enhanced version of classic point-and-click adventure Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars now has a release date: 19th September.

This "Reforged" version will be available across PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Series X S, Nintendo Switch and PC (Windows, macOS and Linux).

The game's redrawn visuals have been upgraded to 4K, but there's also a new story mode UI including subtle hints aimed at new players.

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Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we get sweaty in a new fitness game called Quell; we mull the ways in which Dungeons & Dragons combat is exciting but also frustrating; and Ian goes digging through the crates and revisits a classic.

What have you been playing?

Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.

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Japanese airline ANA has revealed a new plane safety video starring a variety of Pokémon.

The Pokémon brand has a long-standing relationship with ANA, and has adorned several of its jets with Pokémon characters over the past few decades. But this safety video is the first of its kind - and it's worth a watch to see numerous Pokémon getting to grips with good airline etiquette.

While Pikachu and Pichu are the stars, of course, you'll also see a mildly disturbing Jigglypuff scold a man for vaping, Mr Mime appear to mime safety instructions, and Floatzle turn up to demonstrate its own in-built life vest.

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Call of Duty has become an absolute hard drive hog in recent years, with 2023's entry managing to consume over 200GB of storage in some cases. That all might be about to change, however, as Activision has announced major changes to the way it'll be handing installs with this year's Black Ops 6, promising "smaller and more customised downloads" as a result.

Activision shared the news in a post on its Call of Duty blog, explaining its optimisation work will begin with a revamp of "the experience formerly known as Call of Duty HQ". This revamp is set to roll out over the course of several updates ahead of Black Ops 6's October launch, and will promises to introduce a streamlined interface, direct access to games, more control over downloads, and expanded texture streaming technology to reduce file sizes.

A first update to reorganise game content arrives on 21st August. Then, following Black Ops 6's open beta on 30th August, a new user interface and other "remaining updates" are scheduled for mid-October. After these "larger initial updates", Activision says future Call of Duty downloads will decrease in size and existing files will take up less space on players' device.

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Back in June, developer IO Interactive revealed it was resurrecting and reworking Hitman 3's VR mode, first released for PSVR in 2021, exclusively for Meta Quest 3 - and the studio has now shared first gameplay, showcasing this Reloaded edition's various enhancements.

On a basic level, Hitman 3 VR: Reloaded is the same game that earned itself a Eurogamer Recommended badge back in the day, meaning players can don goggles and immersively sneak through likes of Dubai, Dartmoor, Berlin, Chongqing, and Mendoza.

However, Reloaded - which is being developed with XR Games - is more than just a straight port of Hitman 3 VR's scrappy but enjoyable previous release. It also introduces a new flat-shaded artstyle, more "fluid and natural" movement options, an overhauled UI, and - perhaps most notably - dual-wielding, so players can use a different weapon or item in each hand.

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Lonely Mountains: Downhill, the brilliantly serene/controller-snappingly infuriating mountain biking game from developer Megagon Industries, is trading its wheels for a pair of skis later this year, with the arrival of newly announced follow-up, Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders.

Much like its predecessor, Snow Riders is all about getting from up to down as elegantly and/or speedily as possible. This time, though, its gorgeous mountain vistas are blanketed in thick snow and ice, lending a different dimension to proceedings as players attempt to perform tricks, discover shortcuts, and beat their best times with a pair of skis strapped to their feet.

Once again, there'll be challenges to complete and new equipment, outfits, and tricks to unlock during play, but Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders also introduces online competitive and co-operative multiplayer across a variety of modes.

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Flame Fatales, the all-women and femmes charity speedrunning event from Games Done Quick, returns for another week-long programme of impressively swift gaming feats this weekend.

This year's Flame Fatales (which will be the event's fourth outing since its launch back in 2021) gets underway on Sunday, 16th August. More specifically, things kick off at 6:15pm BST, with a Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores 100% speedrun by RE_doc19.

Seven days - and more than 50 speedruns - later - this year's Femme Fatales comes to a close at 4:06am BST with a Super Mario Odyssey Talkatoo% speedrun by CheeseJay. In between, you can expect speedruns for the likes of Persona Dancing, Sonic CD, Broken Age, Stray, the Resident Evil 2 remake, Rez, and plenty more - as outlined in this year's full schedule.

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New World: Aeternum, the latest expansion/do-over for Amazon's middling MMO New World, is having an open beta on 13th September ahead of its full PC and console release in October.

Aeternum, if you're unfamiliar, emerged back in June, amid some confused messaging that didn't entirely make it clear exactly what it was. And, truthfully, Amazon's marketing remains as baffling as ever. The gist, though, is that this is the same MMORPG released back in 2021, albeit with new features and a bit of finessing ahead of its debut on Xbox Series X/S and PS5.

It's got a pacier story (told through in-game cinematics and pre-rendered cut-scenes), combat improvements, cross-platform play, enhanced controller support, and more - while still retaining its other MMO bits like classes, crafting, and questing. Then there's New World's first-ever large-scale PvP zone, a new 10-player raid, end-game solo trials, and other additions.

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For many, scaling Mount Everest has stood as the ultimate challenge of one's strength and endurance. An achievement of a lifetime. For long-time Doom players, however, there is an equivalent: NUTS.WAD. Legend has it that NUTS.WAD descended upon Doom players in the year 2001: a map from the future in which players are dropped into a single map with more than 10,000 enemies and a handful of power-ups. And now - for the first time ever - it's playable on a games console.

I'm half-joking, of course, but the ability to load in any Doom mod is just one great feature found in the latest version of Doom and Doom 2. Helmed by Nightdive in cooperation with id Software and Machine Games, this new version is worth looking at as it is the most feature rich, best-performing version of Doom on consoles. It's available on PC, PS5, Xbox Series consoles, Switch and even last-gen PS4 and Xbox hardware. The game was transitioned over to Nightdive's KEX engine and brings with it a vast array of enhancements - 120fps support on consoles, 16-player multiplayer including co-op, and a new soundtrack from the legendary Andrew Hulshult.

But it was the mod support that was my first destination and with it, the chance to see how Nightdive's work would cope with the NUTS.WAD challenge. This pushes beyond the limits of what Doom engine was intended to handle and now we can test it on console and the results are interesting. Before we go on, it's worth stressing that all current-gen machines can handle 4K gaming at 120fps - and yes, that includes Series S. The engine is optimised and fast - all the included content and every map I tested runs like greased lightning. I wanted to raise this caveat because the challenge of NUTS.WAD is so extreme and cruel that I don't want people to get the wrong idea. The fact that you can run NUTS.WAD at all is cause for celebration!

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The thing I loved the most about the original Splitgate was the fact that, to me at least, it felt like playing the original Halo with my pals at LAN parties back in the early 2000s. Not only that but it came with all the mod cons of the current gaming era, including a wealth of customisable lobbies and crossplay multiplayer so it was incredibly easy to set up our ideal matches.

Despite a large selection of game modes to choose from, the ones my friends and I gravitated towards were the simple Deathmatch lobbies, with the occasional bout of Gun Game thrown in for a bit of variety. We loved running around in these free-for-all game types, switching between weapons as and when we found them on the floor or indeed working our way through the game's catalogue of guns one kill at a time in Gun Game.

Splitgate's blend of Halo-esque nostalgia mixed with the strategic elements of portal-based flanking was an absolute hit in my gaming social circle. In our opinion it played better and had way more maps and options than Halo Infinite's multiplayer, and so Splitgate easily replaced that game as our FPS of choice when it came to meeting up online for a few casual gaming sessions.

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The Plucky Squire, one of Eurogamer's most anticipated games of the year, will launch for PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series X/S on 17th September, publisher Devolver Digital has announced.

It'll also be a day one launch via PlayStation Plus, for anyone signed up to Sony's subscription service.

An innovative 2D and 3D platformer based in and around the pages of a picture book, The Plucky Squire is the first project from All Possible Futures, the indie development studio set up by former Pokémon artist James Turner.

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Fans were jubilant when Persona 3 received a remake earlier this year, but this turned to disappointment when it became clear its Episode Aigis epilogue DLC was not included. Multiple versions of Persona 3 have been released since the game's initial PS2 launch in 2006 - namely Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable, each with unique additions. The release of this year's Persona 3 Reload was an opportunity to provide the definitive version of the game, but without Episode Aigis fans were upset it would remain incomplete.

That's why Atlus relented and has now additionally remade Episode Aigis: The Answer with all the trappings of Reload - though no doubt the fact it's the fastest-selling Atlus game ever was also persuasive. Finally, fans will get the complete story experience they've craved (though still without the alternative female protagonist from P3P). But after going hands-on with the DLC, I'm still left with a lingering question: what exactly was the main game missing?

I played Persona 3 for the first time this year and really enjoyed its twisted teen drama, even if the series as a whole is starting to feel formulaic. Yet after receiving the true ending, the story felt complete and I wasn't left with unanswered questions. So what kind of answer can The Answer provide?

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Warhorse Studios has revealed a delay to Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which will now arrive on 11th February 2025.

"We aimed for the end of the year and almost made it - almost is not good enough though, so we slipped to 2025," Warhorse's Tobias Stolz-Zwilling said in a video posted to X.

The next week will still be a busy one for the game, though, as it pops up during Gamescom's Opening Night Live show next Tuesday, 20th August, and is then showcased in a 20-minute gameplay reveal video set to go live online the following day.

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UPDATE 6.45pm UK: This evening's big new Dragon Age: The Veilguard trailer has landed, confirming what we knew already - that BioWare's upcoming RPG will arrive at Halloween. Also in the trailer? Well, Dragon Age fans will get to see a very familiar face - we'll let you watch for yourselves and read more below.

Yes, that is absolutely Morrigan, the fan-favourite returning character voiced once again, it sounds like, by Farscape and Stargate SG-1's Claudia Black. It certainly looks as if Morrigan's clothing here is inspired by her mum Flemeth - which probably isn't good news.

Excited yet?

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Amazon has reportedly commissioned a new animated anthology series for its Prime Video streaming service that'll feature new stories set across a variety of existing video game worlds, including Spelunky and Amazon's own New World.

That's according to Hollywood news publication Deadline, whose sources say the series - which is reportedly titled Secret Level - is being developed by Tim Miller and his Blur Studio, the creative team behind Netflix's animated sci-fi show Love, Death & Robots.

In fact, it sounds like Amazon's new project will follow a similar template to Netflix's anthology series. In a similar fashion to Love, Death & Robots - whose standalone episodes are largely adaptations of existing short stories - Secret Level will reportedly feature original short stories set within the worlds of existing video games.

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Springloaded Software, the developer behind 2021's animal-splicing tycoon game Let's Build a Zoo, has unveiled Let's Build a Dungeon - a new "multi-layered" management sim in which players attempt to run a game development studio while creating their own MMORPG.

Let's Build a Dungeon's first layer comes in the form of studio management, with players needing to recruit staff (including artists, programmers, planners, and testers); manage project deadlines, advertising campaigns, and press relationships; negotiate with shareholders, and pitch to publishers, all in the hope of rising from indie start-up to mega-blockbuster studio.

But alongside the business stuff, players also need to get creative and build their own fantasy MMO - which could be anything from a creature-catching RPG to a cosy farming sim - filling it with towns, monsters, dungeons, and quests, all tailored to satisfy their virtual playerbase's demands and expand its audience. And it's even possible to jump into your creation at any time to experience it through the eyes of your players.

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Sony has announced August's PlayStation Plus games.

Those on the subscription's Extra tier will get the following titles:

In addition to the above, those on PS Plus Premium will also get access to the below:

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Activision sure is dragging out its reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's Zombies mode. But if you're sucker for the undead stuff, there's more where last week's trailer and gameplay reveal came from, with developer Treyarch having now offered a tour of Zombies' Terminus map.

Terminus Island is one of two maps that'll be available at launch (the other being the West Virginian town of Liberty Falls), and Treyarch calls it "one of the largest round-based Zombies maps ever created". Black Ops 6's Zombies mode takes place in the early 90s - five years after the events of Black Ops Cold War's Zombies mode - and Terminus Island serves as a prison for some familiar Requiem faces. After their liberation early at the start of the story, players can explore the prison itself before moving out to investigate its tropical island surroundings.

There's a secret research facility specialising in "weird science" (in case you were wondering where the zombies might spring up from this time), as well as the ocean, and assorted smaller islands - all of which players will visit as part of Terminus' main quest. It's described as a "living world" full of scripted encounters, ranging from zombies smashing out of vats and prison guards still trying to control the undead threat, to less fortunate souls being chomped on.

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I've been playing Arco on and off for the last few weeks on Switch and PC. I'm loving it - I think Arco's pretty wonderful. But the builds I've been playing on are also rather buggy, and I haven't been able to get to the end, either because of show-stopper bugs or random crashes.

What we're going to do in this case is hold back the review until next week, when I'm able to play retail code and know how the final thing runs. Until then, I wanted to give you a brief taste of what this game is like and why I think tactics fans should be excited. Hopefully next week we'll find that the final code is a lot more stable.

I'm going to focus pretty tightly on the combat today, which is an absolute gem. Just to set the scene, though, Arco's a Western story of indigenous people and greedy colonisers, and it plays out across a number of acts with the player shifting between different roles in each act. You take on missions and move from one area to another, helping people, fighting, and generally learning the story of this place.

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Eli Roth's recent Borderlands film adaptation hasn't exactly had the best debut. Ahead of release, critics far and wide shared disparaging reviews of the adaptation, with phrases such as "disaster" and "lifeless, unfunny, and visually repulsive dud" being bandied about.

And then the film was released and, well, things didn't really get much better. The Cate Blanchette-fronted adaptation generated just $4m on its opening day, a disappointing result that looks set to result in the film becoming a commercial flop.

In fact, Borderlands has been such a misfire that now even filmmaker Uwe Boll - who previously directed that Alone in the Dark adaptation, which saw him nominated for not one but two 'Worst Director' awards (one of which he won) - is taking a swipe at it.

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A week ago we looked at the slightly underwhelming AMD Ryzen 9600X and 9700X, which were marked by modest gaming performance increases in some titles, more significantly better content creation grunt and slightly better thermals. Now it's time to look at the second half of AMD's Zen 5 quartet, the £459/$499 Ryzen 9 9900X and £609/$649 Ryzen 9 9950X. These are powerful 12-core and 16-core parts that ought to be more of interest to content creators than gamers, so do they make a better case for Ryzen 9000? And does either one manage to exceed the top-level gaming performance of the 7800X3D?

Unfortunately, after four days of frantic benchmarking and troubleshooting, I'm not sure AMD has succeeded on either of these points. Our Ryzen 9900X and 9950X testing has been marked by confusingly poor gaming performance, including performance regressions versus the 7900X and 7950X, alongside a few examples of genuine uplifts that nonetheless don't go far enough to making these CPUs worth recommending.

This review does at least mark the debut of two improvements to our benchmarking suite compared to last week's reviews, which itself marked the introduction of an entirely new automated benchmarking system for Digital Foundry - and therefore only included a more limited selection of games than we've offered in the past.

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It began in 2013 with the arrival of Nvidia G-Sync - the first form of variable refresh rate (VRR) display technology. Rather than attempt to synchronise, or not synchronise GPU output with your screen, the host hardware took control - kicking off a new display refresh when the GPU was ready with a new grame. V-sync judder didn't happen, screen-tearing would (by and large!) disappear. FreeSync and HDMI VRR would follow, but essentially they all did the same thing - smoothing off variable performance levels and delivering a superior gameplay experience. But let's be clear: VRR is not a cure-all. It's not a saviour for poor game performance. It has its limits and it's important to understand them and in the process, we'll gain a better understanding of performance more generally - and why frame-rate isn't that important compared to other, more granular metrics.

Let's talk about VRR basics. Displays have a native refresh rate - whether it's 60Hz, 120Hz, 165Hz or whatever. Without VRR you have limited options for smooth, consistent play. First of all, there's the idea of matching game frame-rate to the screen's refresh rate. Every display refresh gets a new frame. The most popular example of this is the 'locked 60 frames per second' concept, where a new frame is generated every 16.7ms to match the refresh rate of a 60Hz screen - a truly tricky thing to deliver on consoles while maxing out their capabilities.

Secondly, you can ask your hardware to offer a clean divider of the refresh rate - the classic example being a 30fps game running on a 60Hz screen. In this case, every other refresh receives a new frame from the source hardware. There are issues with this, like ghosting, for example, but this is the classic compromise for maintaining consistency when unable to match the refresh rate.

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What impressed me most about Two Point Studios' previous games was how far they flourished from a single concept. The simple seed of a hospital setting, and then a campus, were able to offer such a depth of systems, such a variety of gameplay - and of course a whole load of gags.

That's just as true with the newly-announced Two Point Museum, where, as the title implies, players are tasked with creating and managing a museum of historical exhibits. But, this being a Two Point game, things aren't as simple as they may first seem. Think Night At The Museum, but with zany and sarcastic British humour.

Designing a museum, decorating exhibits, adding gifts shops full of tat, providing restaurants, and seeking donations. All the obvious boxes have been ticked, but these alone would be mundane. Because of course, here in the world of Two Point County, exhibits aren't just a handful of bones but opportunities for discovery, as well as potential disaster.

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We now have a release date for the upcoming, current-gen version of Supermassive Games' slasher horror Until Dawn.

The game will arrive on both PC and PlayStation 5 this autumn, on 4th October. What better way to get yourself ready for the run up to halloween than doing your utmost to save that poor group of unsuspecting teens from the horrors of the night.

In addition to announcing a release date, the Until Dawn team has also shared a few details about how it has enhanced the game with changes to graphics, gameplay, story elements and "more". Before I get into all that, though, you can check out a new trailer for Until Dawn showing off some comparisons between the remaster and original below.

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In the roiling waters of the northern sea, a mysterious oil rig has appeared whose lights can be seen for miles in the darkness. The foreman is a bit jittery, clearly worried about the platform's somewhat shoddy construction and his overbearing boss docking his pay for being behind schedule. When the drilling does begin, it's not oil they strike, but something far more sinister that splinters the sea floor with an ominous red, volcanic glow. And the resident scientist and his corporate suit boss only seem to want to feed this supernatural terror, the safety of their fellow workers be damned.

To some, I've just described the plot of The Chinese Room's recent walking horror, Still Wakes the Deep. But in a strange coincidence, Dredge is now following the same trajectory with its latest DLC, The Iron Rig - albeit with fewer left hooks throwing errant Coke cans to distract wandering nasties and more actual hooks reeling up yet more fresh horrors from the deep. This new chapter in Dredge's faintly cursed archipelago finally puts the spotlight on the mysterious Ironhaven Corporation, whose CEO is a dead ringer for Wake's weaselly boss Rennick, right down to his last-minute escape on the corporate helicopter. It's all profits before people in this unfortunate corner of the ocean, though unlike Wake's poor Caz, at least you can share in some of those benefits this time thanks to the plentiful supply of upgrade opportunities for your boat.

Over the course of three to four hours, The Iron Rig will see you revisit each of Dredge's main island clusters, hunting for fresh fish in new micro-habitats created by pools of ungodly ooze that have sprung up from the fissures created by the rig's drill. Each time one of these clearly very bad cracks opens up, the rig's scientist will task you with collecting various samples to bring back to him for further analysis, but some of these aren't easily won with your default set of equipment. Cue, then, a gentle and well-paced upgrade back and forth that will see you construct new buildings on the rig to unlock enhanced versions of your rods, nets and winches, as well as blueprints for new engine parts, bait types and other gadgets to help speed the process along.

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Among Us developer InnerSloth has announced a collaboration with Dungeons and Dragons web series Critical Role.

This collaboration means players can now bedeck their little space beans with a number of items worn by those intrepid members from Vox Machina, Mighty Nein, or Bells Hells. I am talking about Artagan's Incredible Brows Visor or the Dust of Deliciousness Nameplate, to name but two.

"Getting to work alongside the wonderful crew of the hit TTRPG show Critical Role to bring some of their magic to Among Us for Gilmore's Curious Cosmicube has been mind blowing," InnerSloth said. "Be sure to go to our in-game store and spend some Stars before the Cosmicube is gone."

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Nintendo Switch 2 won't launch before April 2025, per a report online that Eurogamer understands to be correct.

The next console from Nintendo is still officially unannounced, though developers have been prepping games to be ready for its launch for some time. Nintendo initially wanted to launch Switch 2 in late 2024, but has since shifted its internal plans - firstly without ruling out a Q1 2025 date.

Now, however, developers have been told not to expect Switch 2 this current financial year, which ends on 31st March 2025.

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Valve is making some changes to written store page descriptions on Steam.

Starting in "early" September, the Steam team (the dream team's lesser known cousin) will be "enforcing new rules for what can and cannot be included in your written store page descriptions".

These changes are coming into force due to a recent "trend", as Valve describes it, that has seen a number of developers using their store page descriptions as a platform to "present information or links" to other places.

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Arrowhead Game Studios has acknowledged Helldivers 2's recent Escalation of Freedom update "didn't hit [its] target" following significant criticism from the community, and it's detailed the steps its taking to address core areas of complaint over the next 60 days.

Helldivers 2's latest round of community unrest followed the launch of last week's major Escalation of Freedom update, which featured headline additions including new mission objectives and enemies. However, it's some under-the-hood balance tinkering that's proven particularly controversial, with nerfs to the popular FLAM-40 flamethrower - which has significantly reduced its effectiveness against Chargers - drawing considerable ire.

Various senior team members have already acknowledged player feedback - Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani drew parallels with a similarly unpopular balance update released in April (thanks PC Gamer), confirming the studio was already discussing "what we can do to avoid this situation again" - but now the developer is ready to offer a more formalised plan of attack.

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Cast your mind back to the murky distant past of 24 hours ago and you might remember publisher Boss Team Games teasing two projects based on John Carpenter's Halloween. Well, it turns out one of those is a 16-bit-style platformer from Shantae developer WayForward, and the studio's creating an Ash vs Evil Dead platformer too.

As reported by IGN, Boss Team (which previously published Saber Interactive's now-defunct Evil Dead: The Game) is releasing both titles as part of its new RetroRealms series. The publisher describes its first two instalments as "gore-filled" and "fast-paced 90's arcade style" platfomers, and you can get a taste of their retro-inspired action in the trailer below.

RetroRealms: Halloween and RetroRealms: Ash vs Evil Dead are both set to launch for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch on 18th November, and they'll cost $24.99 USD (around £20) each. A $49.99 physical Double Feature bundle is also on the way, with Boss Team noting players owning both games will unlock new features, including the ability for protagonists Michael Myers and Ash Williams to cross over to each others' worlds.

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Developer Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation is, of course, a stone-cold horror classic, so it only seems right the movie series it's based on would finally get around to paying it some dues. Which is exactly what Fede Álvarez, the director of new movie Alien: Romulus, has done by sneaking in a whole bunch of Isolation-inspired phones.

As fans of the sci-fi horror masterpiece will already know, telephones play a prominent role in Alien: Isolation, serving as save points scattered intermittently throughout the nail-biting, Xenomorph-dodging adventure. "In the game," Álvarez told Total Film (via VGC), "every time you knew there's a phone you'd go, 'Fuck, I'm about to go into some bad set-piece.'"

And it's in that spirit Álvarez, tipping his hat to Alien: Isolation, elected to plaster emergency telephones all over his new movie, sneaking them into frame like an omen of imminent horrors to come. "It's the same thing here," he continued. "You'll see they're planted strategically throughout the film. When you see the phone, it's like: brace for impact... The movie is set up in a way [that] every time something bad is about to happen, you will see a phone."

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Cyberpunk platformer Replaced will now launch in 2025, developer Sad Cat Studio announced today.

The game - which is described as a 2.5D "retro-futuristic sci-fi platformer" and, as I have said before, looks pretty darn good from what I have seen so far - was scheduled to release this year, having been previously delayed due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In a new post shared on social media this afternoon, Sad Cat said this most recent delay into next year was to ensure Replaced met the "high standards we've set for ourselves and to meet the expectations of our fans".

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PC and PlayStation console exclusive live-service shooter Concord launches next week, if you recall, and so today Sony has set out its plans to keep the game fresh for at least three seasons.

When the game arrives next week, priced £35, you'll find six modes, 12 maps and 16 characters included. This will then be expanded in October when Season 1 arrives, and then again in both January and April 2025 when Season 2 and 3 turn up.

Season 1's launch in October will add a new map, character, story scenes and more. Season 2 will bring another new map, character and set of story scenes, plus a fresh mode. Season 3 - for now - remains under wraps.

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Following the release of The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020, developer Naughty Dog had plans to launch a standalone multiplayer game. Prior to the base game's PS4 debut, the developer confirmed this multiplayer aspect would not be released alongside Part 2, as had been expected.

Back in 2019, Naughty Dog explained its efforts to evolve The Last of Us Part 1's multiplayer Factions mode for the sequel "grew beyond an additional mode that could be included with our enormous single player campaign" and therefore it would release separately.

The project then hit a number of stumbling blocks, with Naughty Dog stating more time was required as recently as May 2023. But, despite this, the studio maintained the game was coming up until last December, when The Last of Us' standalone multiplayer project was ultimately cancelled.

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Rockstar Games yet-to-be-announced PC version of Red Dead Redemption has been detailed, bizarrely, via the PlayStation Store page for game.

As shown in the screenshots and video below taken by Eurogamer this morning, the description as it was shortly after 8am UK time today stated players were "now" able to play Red Dead Redemption on PC "for the first time ever".

In addition, it detailed some PC specific features. "Featuring the complete single-player experiences of both games, including bonus content from the Game of the Year Edition, Red Dead Redemption features all of the 2023 console version upgrades plus PC specific enhancements including support for increased resolutions and framerates, multiple displays, and other accessories, plus spatial surround sound," the sales page read.

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Voice actress Rachael Lillis, known to millions as the English voice of Misty and Jessie in the Pokémon anime series, has died aged 55.

Lillis passed away on Saturday in Los Angeles, The New York Times reported, following a breast cancer diagnosis earlier this year.

Tributes have poured from fellow voice actors and fans alike, including from her fellow Pokémon co-stars Veronica Taylor, who voiced Ash, and Eric Stuart, who voiced Brock and James.

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Shadows of Doubt, the procedurally generated first-person detective sim from developer ColePowered Games, is leaving Steam early access on 26th September, and it's getting a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S release on the same day.

Shadows of Doubt entered Steam early access last April, challenging players - in the role of a private investigator - to snoop and sleuth their way around a noir-ish open-world sci-fi city, aiming to complete enough investigations that they're able to hang up their trilby and retire.

It's the procedural generation at the heart of the game that makes all it so nifty, though; everything - from the simulated city and the daily routines of its citizens to the murders and odd jobs players can tackle - is different each playthrough. And it's coupled with an immersive-sim-like level of freedom that lets players hack, lock-pick, shimmy, snoop, explore, break-and-enter, interrogate, and more in order to solve its unscripted cases.

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Following Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl's recent delay to November, developer GSC Game World has rewarded patient fans with a new 35-minute deep dive into the post-apocalyptic horror shooter sequel - showcasing a mission across its bleak, beautiful open-world.

Stalker 2's "huge" world - officially known as the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone - consists of 20 regions, each with its own residents, anomalies, and nature. It's also said to feature few barriers, meaning players are free explore locations as they choose - with the goal being to "give the feeling of freedom, to give the feeling of loneliness, to give the feeling of anxiety".

While GSC's deep dive offers a good look at Stalker 2's strikingly varied enviromental work, the bulk of it is focused on the swamp - a formerly inhabited region, free of Stalkers but home to many other dangers, that plays host to a quest in which players must disable deadly, repurposed psi-beacons in order to reach the Clear Sky base.

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Terminator: Survivors, the open-world Terminator game from Rims Racing developer Nacon Studio Milan, has been delayed, with publisher Nacon having opted to move its previously announced Steam early access launch from this October until sometime in 2025.

Terminator: Survivors was teased back in 2022, but it wasn't until this February that Nacon gave it a name and shared first details. It sees players, cast as the titular survivors of humanity's near-extinction on Judgment Day, attempting to "reestablish some semblance of society in a world that seems hell-bent on eliminating... the last vestiges of mankind."

More specifically, players - either working solo or co-operatively with up to three friends - must roam Terminator: Survivors' hazardous post-apocalyptic open-world in search of materials, resources, information, and other survivors as they set about establishing a base of operations - all while fending off Skynet's machines and rival factions hunting for the same resources.

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John Carpenter's seminal horror movie franchise Halloween is getting two new video game adaptations from Boss Team Games, the publisher behind 2022's Evil Dead: The Game.

That's according to IGN, which says both titles will be based on Carpenter's original 1978 Halloween movie, which saw Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode taking on masked serial killer Michael Myers. Specifics are scarce, but the games will reportedly enable players to "relive moments from the film and play as classic characters".

The projects - which will be the first proper video game adaptations of Halloween since it appeared on the Atari 2600 back in 1983 - are being developed in conjunction with the franchise's producers, and Carpenter is said to be "intimately involved" in one of the titles.

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Ubisoft is set to release the latest entry in its long running Assassin's Creed series in a few months, and ahead of this has suggested future games will see a longer development time.

When Assassin's Creed Shadows launches this November, it will have been in development for four years. This will mark the longest development period for the series to date, coming in at a year longer than that of previous series tentpole Assassin's Creed Valhalla (which released in 2020).

However, according to Shadows' lead producer Karl Onnée, four years is "the right balance to go from conception to production and get the feedback necessary to adapt" an Assassin's Creed game.

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In this week's DF Direct, the team discusses a range of topics but it's the subject of the Ryzen 9000/Zen 5 CPU reviews that made the biggest impression on me. Actually, it was a question raised by one of our supporters, asking about discrepancies in results between various outlets. We saw some reasonable, if modest, improvements comparing the new Ryzen 7 9700X against the last-gen 7700X, while others only saw fractional improvements: two to three percent is barely outside the margin of error in CPU-bound scenarios. So why isn't there the same kind of consensus we more typically see in GPU reviews?

All of this relates to how tricky it is to get the measure of CPU performance in gaming - but the simple answer is that in a world where in-built game benchmarks only rarely stress the CPU, results will vary drastically based on the actual material being benched. Even the same game tested with the same components on identical settings can produce very, very different results - and this speaks to the diversity of tasks the processor is asked to tackle.

Going back in time here, I remember benchmarking The Witcher 3 using the Core i3 4130 up against AMD's price-equivalent six-core FX-6300. In cutscenes and the open world, the i3 was faster. However, in the dense city of Novigrad, the FX-6300 ran a lot faster. So, which processor is actually faster? It all depends on what you test, but I'd say that whichever scene is more demanding overall - which area tanks frame-rate hardest - should be the focus of testing - and that's the Novigrad run. However, both sets of data are valid as they both represent processor performance and both benchmarks together may illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of different CPUs. The question is, how deep do you want to go?

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Deadlock - a game which is yet to actually be announced in any official way, shape or form - had a concurrent player peak of over 16,000 this weekend.

At the time of writing, the game's peak is sitting at 16,947 players on Steam, with 4,714 people playing it at this very moment in time.

I tried to install it myself via a little tab on SteamDB just now, but was met with the message: "An error occurred while launching this game: Game configuration unavailable." I was then taken back to the Steam app's main page.

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Just because a brand does one thing well, doesn't mean they can waltz into another sector and do just as well, right? Noctua may be one of the rare exceptions, as the Austrian fan makers have adapted one of their legendary high performance PC fans into a genuinely decent desk fan following years of teases and rumours.

The humble desk fan was first mentioned six years ago at Computex, and garnered a lot of attention at the trade show for being such a left-field product. The proposed launch date of late 2021 came and went, so people started 3D-printing their own takes on the concept, integrating Noctua fans into desk-friendly chassis to get a sense of what the concept might look like if it was ever released. After all, if Noctua fans are known for being quiet yet powerful, surely the human face could benefit just as much as power-hungry PC components?

Fast forward to May 2024, and Noctua finally unveiled their Home series of products, which includes all manner of cooling options, including hubs, adapters and two types of fans. One is designed for cooling everything from consoles to AV receivers, while the other is designed for cooling people - and that's the one we have in for review.

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PUBG publisher Krafton has acquired developer Tango Gameworks and the rights to Hi-Fi Rush, marking the company's first "significant investment" in the Japanese video game market.

Tango Gameworks, which is also known for the likes of the Evil Within series, was founded by Shinji Mikami in 2010. In 2012, Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media purchased Tango, before it was then itself acquired by Microsoft years later.

Under Microsoft, Tango surprise launched Hi-Fi Rush in 2023 to wide acclaim, with the rhythm action release becoming a highlight in the Xbox Series X/S catalogue. Our Ed called the Xbox console exclusive both "vibrant and self-assured" in Eurogamer's own Hi-Fi Rush review.

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As Sega prepares for remaster Sonic X Shadow Generations' release in October, the original Sonic Generations game is being withdrawn from sale as a "standalone title".

From 9th September onwards, the 2011 game will only be available "via bundles of other iconic Sonic titles on Steam and Xbox".

"We're excited to share Sonic X Shadow Generations with you this October and see a new generation cherish this game as much as we do!" the developer/publisher said on its X account just before the weekend.

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The Borderlands movie adaptation generated just $4m across 3125 locations on its opening day.

As reported by Variety, even with boosted ticket sales from Imax and "other premium large-format auditoriums", it seems its Hollywood cast isn't enough of a draw for the $115m production.

Variety points out that distributor Lionsgate has "financially shielded itself" and recouped 60 percent of its production costs through international pre-sales, but right now the film has the dubious honour of boasting the worst critical reviews of any movie released this summer.

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Dark Souls 2 is an often overlooked entry in the Souls series, despite just how unique it was in experimenting with its mechanics and atmosphere back in 2014. In being sandwiched between the now iconic original Dark Souls, and developer FromSoftware's later efforts like Bloodborne, it's at times forgotten - thought of as an experiment, a tangent that wasn't followed up on. Even so, the modding community around Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin is blossoming on PC right now, and among the most remarkable mod offerings for the game is the Dark Souls 2 Lighting Engine.

Essentially, Lighting Engine is a replacement of the game's original engine, allowing major changes to its visuals, and offers a toolbox of sorts for others in the modding community to go much further. At its core, installing the Lighting Engine mod adds new anti-aliasing options like Nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR - replacing the FXAA post processing of the official release. We get lighting upgrades, volumetric fog, vastly improved shadows, ground truth ambient occlusion, and it even re-arranges foliage, trees and terrain with new meshes. This is just scratching the surface, with more features that are work in progress. It's a simple one to install too: go to Nexus Mods, download, unpack, and replace the shader folder next to the Darksouls 2.exe with the new one - along with several other files - and you're good to go. From here, the upgrades are transformative in spots like Forest of the Fallen Giants, and No Man's Wharf.

All of which raises the question: is this the Dark Souls 2 remaster that we've needed all these years? Of course, Dark Souls 2 has technically already received a remaster of sorts with the Scholar of the First Sin update in 2015 - a year after its initial release on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. The idea was to upgrade it from DX9 to DX11 with improved lighting, textures, enemy placement, bug fixes, while bundling in the first three DLC expansions. However, despite this suite of upgrades, Scholar of the First Sin still falls short by modern standards. Certainly, it doesn't live up to the captivating early trailer of Dark Souls 2: the E3 2013 reveal where interplay between light and shadow was a major mechanic of play, where wind physics and volumetric effects played a bigger role. All of this was ultimately dialled back in the final release, and failed to make the grade in Scholar of the First Sin as well. Ten years on, then, it's impressive to see at least some of that early promise realised by an advanced mod like Lighting Engine, as devised by a fan of the game.

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Fallout: London is the "fastest-redeemed" game of all time on GOG.

The fan-made mod - which is being distributed for free via GOG's platform, hence why the digital games distributor can't use terms like "fastest-selling" - was redeemed more than 500,000 times in its first 24 hours.

"The initial release of Fallout: London quickly turned out to be an incredible success - and a prime example of how work of passion and creativity can bring in a plethora of new, exciting ways to enjoy a game," GOG said.

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While we may have already known that Geralt will not be the focus of CD Projekt Red's next The Witcher game, voice actor Doug Cockle has confirmed he'll at least be reprising the role in The Witcher 4.

In an interview in which Cockle tries to remember his most iconic lines, the voice of Geralt of Rivia confirmed that Geralt will be "part of the [next] game", but the storyline will "not be about him this time".

"Witcher 4 has been announced," he teased (thanks, PC Gamer) halfway through his famous lines test. "I can't say anything about it.

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Fortnite will host another Marvel-focused season, this time centering on Doctor Doom, accompanied by yet more superhero faces for Epic Games' evergreen battle royale.

Details of Fortnite's next season, named Fortnite x Marvel: Absolute Doom, were announced this morning during Disney's D23 fan event, and livestreamed in Fortnite itself.

Marvel boss Kevin Feige was joined on stage by Star Wars legend Dave Filoni and Pixar head honcho Pete Doctor, who additionally detailed a treasure trove of Disney franchises also set to get crossovers in Fortnite over the coming months, as Epic Games' integration with the Mouse House deepens.

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It looks like PlayStation is introducing user reviews on the PS Store.

In a thread entitled "When did PlayStation start allowing written reviews?", an eagle-eyed PS5 owner noted on the PlayStation subreddit that the company was inviting user reviews for a select number of games.

Whilst fans have long been able to rate games from zero to five stars out of five, this is the first time players have been invited to leave a written review.

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Brace yourself, Call of Duty fans - it seems the cinematics from Black Ops 6's single-player campaign have leaked online.

Just like last week, when multiplayer images leaked, the video was hit with copyright claims from Activision within hours, intimating that it's authentic.

According to InsiderGaming, the cutscenes - which did not have audible sound - were "extracted from the beta build of Black Ops 6", after some players managed to access the beta ahead of its formal release via jailbroken PS4 consoles.

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Team Folon – the volunteer squad of developers who have released the ambitious Fallout 4 mod, Fallout London – is set to launch itself as a new indie studio.

Talking to the BBC (via PCGN), Folon's project lead, Dean Carter, admitted that "as much as I love the fact that this is a free project - that we can offer this thing for free for all the community - free doesn't pay our bills".

"What has been great for us is that a lot of people who have really enjoyed [Fallout London] have donated to us, and we're channelling that into Team Folon, which is what we're going to be moving into," Carter said.

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Take-Two Interactive boss Strauss Zelnick said the company is not tempted to put its game on subscription services like Xbox Game Pass on day one because "our decisions are rational".

Talking to our sister site GamesIndustry.biz, Zelnick said that whilst he accepted "offering a frontline title with a premium price in a subscription service, day and date, will push consumers to that subscription service for at least a period of time", "it won't affect [Take-Two's] decisions [not to offer AAA games on subscription services on day one]".

With "15 immersive core" games on Take-Two's books for 2026 and 2027 - one of which is GTA 6, of course - as well as one indie, five mobile games, and three remasters, Zelnick says it's his company's "job to outperform the industry, and the one way to do that is to generate big hits, and I think we have all the necessary elements to deliver that."

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I was born in the UK, and I've lived all my life here, but I've never quite been able to reconcile myself with the weather.

Most of the year passes in a grey, eternally chilly manner, often paying host to a weak drizzle of rain. The sun is simply known as a stranger in a strange land that visits during summer, but there are no guarantees of that either. I wake up, day after day, to an ashen tone outside the window, and I try to keep myself warm by bundling up under a duvet that I tug up to my chin. Even when it's warm inside, it's still miserable to look out at the grey world through that window, and it gets particularly grim in Autumn, when darkness arrives as early as five o'clock in the afternoon, and soggy leaves and mud cover pavements.

When we do get real heat and sunshine, however, the feeling is almost indescribable. Life is suddenly more exciting, the outside world is something to be savoured instead of avoided. I feel as if my body is somehow deriving power, Superman-like, from the Sun. After one particularly unpleasant visit to the dentist last summer I remember walking home and basking in the sunlight and the heat that blanketed my skin. It felt genuinely therapeutic. Unlike Autumn - or any other season for that matter - I could walk down a street in the evening and it still be light and warm. Weather can be misleading here, mind. I distinctly remember an unusual sunny day where I was so enthused to head outside due to the weather that I started playing the cheerful 'Here Comes the Sun' by The Beatles while I prepared to leave the house. Just as I was ready, the rain started. There Goes the Sun.

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Following yesterday's "enhanced" Doom 1 & 2 release, developer id Software has unveiled another treat for Doom fans as this weekend's QuakeCon celebrations continue: official mod support for Doom Eternal on PC, which arrives in the form of a new mod browser and the release of its idStudio mod creation tools on Steam.

By installing Doom Eternal's new Update 6.66 Rev 3 beta, players can browse, download, and play mods via the new PC Mod Preview. Currently, mod support is only available on Steam (it's coming to the Microsoft Store on PC "soon"), and it first requires players to opt-in.

To do so, right-click on Doom Eternal within your Steam library and select "Properties". From there, navigate to the "Betas" tab, select "pc-mod-preview" from the drop-down menu, confirm your choice, then wait for the new update to install.

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Remedy Entertainment has released its latest half-year financial report, detailing progress on some of its most anticipated titles - with its Max Payne 1 & 2 remake confirmed to have entered full production, while "important" Control 2 features are now in "playable form".

Remedy confirmed it was remaking cult-classic slo-mo shooters Max Payne 1 & 2 back in 2022 as part of a collaboration with Rockstar, and the studio has sporadically offered updates since then. Last October brought the news the project had entered "production readiness", and things are now a further step closer to release as the game moves to "full production".

More specifically, Remedy says the development team "has been working towards developing the game to an early functional state from beginning to end."

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I always feel a little icky when I say I'm a fan of reality TV. It's no doubt a pop-culture titan, but it's also a genre that comes with a lot of problematic baggage. Exploitation, humiliation, hypersexualization, reinforced gender essentialism - the list goes on and on. The controversial topics the genre is tangled up in is - put lightly - a complete nightmare, but I can't stop watching. It's not just the drama (although I love the drama, too), I also like watching humans just be human, you know? I connect with the authenticity on screen, seeing people's emotions in their rawest form.

This duality of reality TV is endlessly fascinating. By watching these shows, what is my role as a spectator? What systems am I participating in when I tune in to watch? Self-described "thirst-person shooter" The Crush House sets out to comment on the complexity of this relationship, and successfully delivers. It's a satirical comedy that pokes fun at the shallowness and manufactured nature of the TV genre and tops it all off with a cheeky wink and peace sign gesture. It's fun, dynamic, and has something to say.

The Crush House puts you in the role of a TV producer of a 90s reality TV show who must film a cast of hotties and their drama in a bubblegum pink Malibu mansion for a ravenous audience. You need to record the cast each day – catching their intimate conversations, trivial catfights, and steamy romances on camera – while also keeping track of what viewers want to see. You have a targeted viewership to satisfy each day set by the omnipresent 'Network' and if you don't deliver those numbers the show will be cancelled, and you'll be asked to sashay away.

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Valve looks to be introducing a new filter system to help players sift out user reviews not deemed "helpful."

As spotted by a member of the Steam subreddit, Valve appears to have briefly activated a "helpfulness system" that essentially hid joke or silly reviews from view.

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Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick would like you to give the new Borderlands movie "a chance" because "a lot of people worked really hard on it".

Zelnick was asked about the film's less-than-stellar early reviews during yesterday's Q1 earnings call, and whilst he called the "look and the feel" of the movie "terrific", Zelnick told IGN its performance "wouldn't have a financial impact" on Take-Two or, indeed, the Borderlands franchise itself.

"Let's give the film a chance. A lot of people worked really hard on it," Zelnick said.

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Annapurna's delightful Stray will finally make its Switch debut later this year, on 19th November.

Whilst we knew the kitty caper was on its way to Switch courtesy of June's Nintendo Direct presentation, Annapurna confirmed the release date yesterday, which also just-so-happened to be International Cat Day. Meow.

The kitty caper - which is already available on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox - is a third-person adventure game that Eurogamer recommended when it released two years ago.

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The majority of Arcane's second and final season has been leaked online, three months ahead of its intended November launch.

Five episodes, along with many from other animated Netflix shows such as Terminator Zero, Dandadan and Ranma 1/2, have been posted on social media and are now being shared around Torrent sites.

It's a huge blow for a brilliant series that has been almost a decade in the making - six years for its initial season that debuted to universal praise in 2021, and then another three years to develop its second season this November.

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Disney Dreamlight Valley will round out its current roadmap with the addition of Princess and the Frog's Tiana later this month, a new Steam post from developer Gameloft has confirmed.

Owners of the life sim live service's paid expansion Rift in Time will also get the concluding chapter of its story, in which you can see off the evil Jafar for good.

Looking towards the tail end of this year, Disney Dreamlight Valley creative director Joshua Labelle acknowledged that updates would become lighter than usual as the team ramped up to announce its next all-new roadmap and a larger update before the end of this year.

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Redemption Road's time-travelling bring-an-assault-rifle-to-a-medieval-sword-fight shooter and strategy game, Kingmakers, isn't even out yet, but it's already secured a movie adaptation.

In an update on Steam, the studio said it was "absolutely thrilled" that the unreleased game was "making its way to the big screen" in partnership with publisher tinyBuild and Story Kitchen.

Story Kitchen - which specialises in "the adaptation of video games and other 'non-traditional' IP into film and TV" shows - was founded in 2022 by Sonic the Hedgehog producer, Dmitri M. Johnson. As well as the Sonic movie franchise, it's also involved in Dredge's adaptation, and Pheobe Waller-Bridges Tomb Raider project.

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Dragon Age developer BioWare has discussed its decision to no longer allow full control over companions during combat, in a shake-up to the series set to be seen in upcoming entry The Veilguard.

The change has been made for several reasons, game director Corinne Busche told Edge magazine (thanks, GamesRadar), most notably the additional options instead available to controlling main character Rook.

The Veilguard "is a much higher actions-per-minute game," Busche explained. "It is more technically demanding on the player. So when we tried allowing you full control of your companions as well, what we've found is it wasn't actually adding to the experience. In fact, in some ways it was detrimental, given the demanding nature of just controlling your own character."

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Dead Rising will no longer reward players for taking intimate in-game photos of female characters.

While players can still level up by taking in-game photos of gory, violent, or funny scenes - categorised as horror, brutality, and outtake shots respectively - the hitherto "erotica" category will be removed when the remaster drops next month.

As spotted by Famitsu, this means that photographing women's underwear or cleavage will no longer give you prestige points.

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Destiny developer Bungie has issued a short statement acknowledging concern over the future of its decade-old sci-fi franchise following "recent changes" at the studio.

Those "recent changes" are, of course, the sweeping layoffs that have seen 220 Bungie staff out of a job, less than a year after a further 100 employees were let go last October. A further 155 Bungie staff are also departing the studio for roles within parent company PlayStation.

In response, Bungie has now said it remains "committed" to Destiny, though details of what's next remain thin on the ground. There's also no mention of the departures of key Destiny creatives Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy, who were reportedly developing a now-cancelled Destiny spin-off named Payback.

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Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we struggle to come to terms with ending a game, we delight in a superb interactive fiction detective game, and we revisit an old zombie game that apparently refuses to die.

What have you been playing?

Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator was already sounding pretty damned spectacular, but my excitement levels are now appropriately sky-high following developer Asobo's revelation you'll be able to get out of your plane, stroll about the countryside (or anywhere else), and watch the sun set in your preferred corner of its gorgeous recreation of the world.

That's according to Microsoft Flight Simulator boss Jorge Neumann, who shared the news while chatting to PC Gamer - after reiterating just how much additional detail is going into Flight Simulator 2024's digital version of Earth compared to its already impressive predecessor.

For instance, the team has improved the look of every airport, has added glider airports, every oil rig, and every lighthouse in the world. That's alongside "hundreds of species of animals that run around", and it's also simulating "every ship on Earth" via their transponder signals - all of which, claims Neumann, you'll be able to land on. "I think we're in a new era of making games that I think are going to break new ground, from a scale and complexity perspective."

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Following a brief introduction to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's Zombies mode earlier this week, Activision and developer Treyarch have shared first gameplay details of what it's calling a "purely round-based" Zombies experience for this year's game.

Storywise, Black Ops 6's Zombies mode begins after a group of former Requiem members are liberated from the remote Terminus Island complex in the Philippine Sea by Maya Aguinaldo and Dr. William Peck. Maya is one of four playable Operators in this latest iteration of Zombies - she's joined by Grigori Weaver, Elizabeth Grey, and Mackenzie "Mac" Carver - and unfortunately for them all, Terminus Island is a bio-research station for Project Janus, and those pesky Dark Aether undead are soon up and about again, ruining everyone's day.

Terminus Island is the first of two Zombies maps so far revealed for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's launch (the other being the West Virginian town of Liberty Falls), and here, up to four players must work together to discover and complete objectives in order to escape the maximum-security complex - all while fending off waves (or "rounds") of the undead.

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UPDATE 8.39pm: Following sightings of a new "definitive" Doom 1 & 2 bundle on Steam, the same bundle how now surfaced on GOG, Epic, Switch's eShop (so far only in the US), the PlayStation Store for PS4 and PS5, and the Microsoft Store for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

All versions of the game cost $9.99 USD (around £8, with some variance depending on your platform of choice), and early reports - in lieu of an official announcement from id Software or Bethesda - are suggesting existing owners of either Doom 1 or Doom 2 will be upgraded to the new two-game bundle and its various expansion content for free.

ORIGINAL STORY 8.23pm: As id Software's annual QuakeCon gets underway today, a new - and currently unannounced - Doom 1 & 2 bundle has been sighted on Steam, promising "enhanced" versions of the classic shooters with a brand-new episode from members of id, Nightdive Studios, and Wolfenstein developer MachineGames.

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God of War Ragnarök is making the jump from PlayStation to PC on 19th September, and ahead of its arrival, Sony has shared PC system requirements - which, among other things, reveals players will need to free up 190GB of hard drive space to play.

As per the PlayStation Blog, the minimum hardware players will likely need to get Ragnarök running at 1080p with an average of 30fps at Low settings is a GTX 1060/RX 5500 XT, an Intel i5-4670K/Ryzen 3 1200, 8GB RAM, Windows 10, and the aforementioned 190GB SSD space.

Right at the other, considerably flashier end of the spectrum, it's recommended players hoping to hit an average of 60fps at 4K on Ultra settings have an RTX 4070 Ti/RX 7900 XT, an Intel i5-11600K/Ryzen 7 3700X, 16GB RAM, Windows 10, and, yes, a big ol' chunk of SSD space.

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Vampire Survivors - the acclaimed (and still doggedly vampire-free) minimalist survival RPG from developer Poncle - is finally launching for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on 29th August.

Vampire Survivors launched into PC early access back in 2021, where it immediately set tongues wagging - partly because it cost an absurdly generous £3.99, but mostly because its mix of wave-based monster dodging and auto-bludgeoning is very blimmin' good indeed.

"Once this wave is done, once this boss is done, once I've unlocked a new character or item, I should really turn off the computer and go for a run. Maybe," wrote Christian Donlan in Eurogamer's Recommended review. "Or maybe one more go, one more choice, one more chance to confuse speed with damage with experience."

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Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 stands as one of the most impressive games we've seen this year, and, in fact, this entire generation. It's a game that pushes the limits of what Unreal Engine 5 can offer at this point in time, taking full advantage of its many features. Beautiful acting, amazing character models, stunning landscapes, and truly exceptional lighting all come together to create a moody, beautiful and atmospheric experience.

We recently had the chance to sit down with three key members from the Hellblade 2 development team at Ninja Theory: VFX director Mark Slater-Tunstill, environment art director Dan Atwell and audio director David García Díaz. We spoke at length about the tech behind the game, the challenges and opportunities of being an early Unreal Engine 5 release, and some key development decisions that defined the title.

As usual, the interview text below has been lightly edited for length and clarity, with the full discussion available via the video embed below.

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KeelWork’s strikingly opulent shooter dares to do new things with its genre in an effort to unite players of every level. This is what a blockbuster shooter should look like.

Arcade shooting games are, in truth, about fragility. Despite their reputation as gaming's most furious, excessive form, they almost universally place you at the controls of a weaponised weakling; a vessel that disintegrates after the briefest contact with a single enemy bullet.

That’s not the case with Cygni: All Guns Blazing, a new shooter that insists it's OK to take dozens of enemy hits and stay in the game. That might sound like a reckless inversion of what makes the genre so special and rewarding. However, Scottish developer KeelWorks appears to have been meticulous in its subtle revolution of what a shooting game can be – and who it can serve. There’s even an argument to be made that Cygni proposes a vision of what a blockbuster shooter could be; namely staggeringly polished, technically muscular, and able to welcome and impress a vast mainstream audience.

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Roblox has responded to news the government of Türkiye has banned access to the platform in order to "ensure the protection of our children".

News of the ban was shared yesterday by the country's Minister of Justice Yılmaz Tunç in a lengthy statement on social media site X.

Tunç didn't provide a specific reason for the ban beyond it being "due to the content that could lead to the exploitation of children" and that the country is "obliged to take the necessary measures to ensure the protection of our children".

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As teased earlier this week, Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio has today unveiled the first details of his next game at WolfEye Studios.

While the game's name is still under wraps, this new project is a first-person action RPG that's set in an alternate America in the 1900s, marking a shift in time and perspective from the top-down, isometric sandbox towns of WolfEye's debut game, Weird West.

As the studio also previously teased, the new game's visuals will be grounded in a retro sci-fi aesthetic - and if the first three in-game screenshots didn't already give it away, Colantonio (who's creative director for this new game) and executive producer Julien Roby tell me over a video call that both its gameplay and art direction are intended to be "something like Fallout meets Dishonored".

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Krafton, the publisher of survival horror game The Callisto Protocol, forced developer Striking Distance to release the game early.

That's according to the game's director Glen Schofield, in an interview with Dan Allen Gaming (thanks PCGamesN) in which he discusses problems during the game's development.

Krafton, known for publishing PUBG, insisted the game release three months earlier than Schofield wanted. As a result, two and a half bosses and three or four enemy types were cut from the game.

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There are some pretty chunky spoilers here about the Dark Urge playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3, and perhaps one or two about other parts of the game. If you're still planning a Dark Urge playthrough of the game, I'd suggest going in as unaware as possible. Bookmark this for later.

Being evil in games excites me. I cannot resist the temptation of pressing a big red button. I do it because I want to see what a game dares let me do, and I do it because it's naughty. For months, I've been daring Baldur's Gate 3 to see how far it will let me go in my evil adventure, and so far, it's never backed down. I've pushed every red button I've found and the results have been extraordinary.

It's not common. Being a villain in a game is anathema to being a hero. How can you be one and also the other? This question has fascinated me for a long time, and it's why, when I first saw the Dark Urge option in Baldur's Gate 3, I was captivated. Here was a background option I could apply to my character that would implant some kind of unrestrainable evil in me - a murderous desire that could race forward and take control at the merest provocation. It could mean the death of companions and majorly upended story events. Was I ready to cede so much control to something in a role-playing game?

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Game Science has released a fresh trailer for forthcoming action-RPG Black Myth: Wukong ahead of its release later this month.

The trailer gives an extended look at the world of the game, the combat and transformational abilities of the monkey protagonist, and the imposing bosses he'll face - from smaller enemies to colossal beasts.

You may want to skip the trailer if you're looking to go in completely spoiler free, but it's certainly worth a look to admire the dramatic production.

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Gaming revenue for Warner Bros. Discovery has declined by 41 percent year-on-year due to the "weak performance" of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

The decline was part of an overall four percent decrease across studio revenue (gaming, TV, cinema) as revealed in the company's latest quarterly earnings report.

Warner Bros. Discovery is still yet to give exact sales figures for Rocksteady's Suicide Squad game, though in an earnings call in February the company's chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels stated the game had "fallen short of our expectations". Later, it was revealed the company took a $200m loss on the game.

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Eli Roth's Borderlands movie is nearly here, and early impressions are starting to trickle in - and, well, they're not great. Critics have taken to social media to brand the live-action film adaptation of Gearbox's looter-shooter everything from a "huge misfire" to a "disaster".

The Borderlands movie has, of course, been in the works for some time now. It was initially announced back in 2015 before utterly vanishing in a puff of elongated silence. Then, just as it looked like the project was dead and buried, Gearbox re-announced it in February 2020, this time with Hostel director Eli Roth at the helm.

Since then, the high-profile likes of Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Gina Gershiwn, Kevin Hart, and Jack Black have all (rather mystifyingly) signed onto the project, giving fans at least some hope it wouldn't entirely suck. Unfortunately, its recent trailers haven't inspired much additional confidence.

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Ready at Dawn - the studio behind the likes of Lone Echo and The Order: 1886 - has reportedly been shut down by its currently owner, Meta, after over two decades of operation. The news follows heavy job cuts at the studio last year.

Ready at Dawn Studios was founded in 2003 by former members of Naughty Dog and Blizzard, and was initially known for its work adapting Sony's Daxter and God of War franchises for the PlayStation Portable. In 2015, its first original game, The Order: 1886, released to mixed reviews on PS4, and the company would later shift its focus to VR.

Its first VR project was 2017's acclaimed sci-fi adventure Lone Echo, followed by standalone multiplayer spin-off Echo VR (which shut down last year), then a sequel in 2021. Amid Ready at Dawn's success in the VR space, Meta announced it was purchasing the studio in 2020.

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Epic Games has announced it's ditching a long-standing Fortnite promise that Battle Pass items will never be made available to buy at a later date - although it's implementing an 18-month wait period before items can appear in its in-game shop.

It's a rule Epic has been accused of breaking before, specifically when it released a beachwear version of Fortnite's season 5 poster boy Drift for purchase in 2019 - but the practice of releasing paid variants of previous Battle Pass characters has become commonplace in the years since.

Now, though, Epic is ditching the rule entirely so that any item released as part of a Battle Pass in the future can be sold in the Fortnite Shop, provided 18 months have passed since the Battle Pass' release. "This change lets us continue investing in new and exciting Battle Pass rewards" the developer wrote in a blog post, "while enabling players down the road to also enjoy the content, including Outfits based on popular licensed characters."

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Exactly one year (and four days) after Baldur's Gate 3's version 1.0 release, developer Larian is celebrating the highly acclaimed RPG's first anniversary by releasing a whole bunch of revealing players stats. Which, among other things, confirm that 30 percent of the 30 percent of players who opted to sex Halsin sexed Halsin in bear form.

Larian's newly unveiled birthday stats get pretty granular, and I'll be glossing over the spoiler-y ones here (as well as the ones that mean absolutely nothing to me because I'm still prancing round the crash site right at the start desperately wishing I had more time to play). Instead, let us discuss the more universal revelations, such as the news 75m companion kisses have been shared in Baldur's Gate 3 over the last year, with 27m of those landing on the lips of Shadowheart, while 15m were planted on Astarion's puckered mouth-hole. And right at the bottom of the smoochy charts? Poor old Minthara with just 169,937 kisses. Which, let's be honest, is probably still way above average for most people.

And while we're on the subject of romance, it should be noted that around 197K players opted to bang Halsin in his now legendary bear form (out of the 658K players total that danced down O-street with the hunky Wood Elf Druid), while approximately 407K people were up for mind flayer tentacle sex when the opportunity arose. Absolutely no kink-shaming here.

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Earlier this week, Nintendo released a fresh trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, that's due out next month.

The game stars the titular princess in the leading role for the first time and includes a new Echo mechanic, where Zelda can essentially copy and paste elements from the world to explore and solve puzzles.

The new trailer focused on giving a tour of Hyrule, showing off its various regions, and the new power Bind that allows Zelda to attach herself to (and move with) objects and enemies.

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Popular deck-building roguelike Balatro has now passed 2m sales and a major update is due next year.

The game was released across PC, Switch, PS5 and Xbox back in February and has proven particularly successful over the past six months.

Publisher Playstack and solo developer LocalThunk has a series of three announcements it's sharing across August and September, what it's calling a "Three-of-a-Kind of Surprises" campaign.

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