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poly-lt-wire-logo Photo: Diyah Pera/Netflix Season 3 ends the show on a high note By Dec 1, 2021, 9:30am EST When it debuted in 2018, the rebooted Lost in Space series was (according to Netflix’s self-reporting) watched by 6.3 million Netflix subscribers in its first 72 hours, one of strongest debuts on the platform that year. Since then, streaming services have hosted an unprecedented boom in big-budget space sci-fi television. The Expanse found an audience on Amazon Prime, Disney Plus launched The Mandalorian, CBS/Paramount Plus expanded from one new Star Trek series to four (going on five) — there’s more than any fan of the genre can keep track of, let alone watch. This goes double for series that debut on Netflix, whose “all at once” season drops mean that anything short of a smash hit completely disappears off the cultural radar in a matter of days. In an arena this crowded, Lost in Space seems to have gotten, well, lost. Thankfully, this hasn’t kept showrunner Zack Estrin from completing his planned three-part arc for the series, which concludes when Season 3 lands on Netflix on December 1st. While it might be dismissed for its “Family Watch Together” label (as if The Mandalorian isn’t as much for kids as for adults), Lost in Space is an exciting, delightful, and self-contained space adventure that stands in contrast against the ever more complex universes of its contemporaries. What’s more, Lost in Space rests in the Goldilocks Zone of rebooted intellectual properties — it’s got a strong central premise and a recognizable name, but there’s little else salvageable about the original work, allowing modern storytellers to take their version in whatever direction they choose without being weighed down by the pressure to “play the hits.” Inste
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Your reminder that codes will be available from 4pm GMT today, on a first-come, first-served basis On Monday, we announced the next free game for RPS premium supporters, the all-new, early access open world strategy RPG, Wartales. This is your reminder that you'll be able to claim your free copy of Wartales today, December 1st, from 4pm GMT / 8am PT. As you may remember from my announcement post earlier in the week, we only have a very limited number of codes available for this key drop (kindly provided to us by Wartales' developer, Shiro Games), so we'd kindly ask you to please only claim a code if you're intending to play it. They'll be given out on a first-come, first-served basis, and I'll update this post again once they've run out. To claim your code as an RPS premium supporter, sign in to your ReedPop ID and from 4pm GMT onwards you'll be able to get your code by visiting the Codes page on your a
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Even with Netflix’s recommendation algorithm serving you new movies, new TV shows, and original programming tailored to your viewing habits, the streaming service’s fire hose of content makes what’s coming and going difficult to parse. A whole host of Netflix favorites return for new seasons, including but not limited to The Witcher, Cobra Kai, Emily in Paris, Queer Eye, and Aggretsuko. The newest season of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure — subtitled Stone Ocean — also debuts. From the back catalogue, enjoy some Final Destination movies and Teen Mom 2. Available in December Decoupled (Netflix Series) From Netflix: A misanthropic writer and his startup-founder wife juggle their impending divorce with the absurdities and annoyances of life in their affluent world. Available Dec. 1 JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: STONE OCEAN (Netflix Anime) Image: David Productions/Warner Bros. Japan Anime via Sugoi LITE/Twitter From Netflix: The legacy of the Joestar family continues with Jolyne as she and her companions take on new Stand users behind the bars of Green Dolphin Street Prison. Kayko and Kokosh (Netflix Family) From Netflix: Two Slavic warriors do everything in their power to defend the village of Mirmiłowo from the evil order of Knaveknights. Kayko and Kokosh: Season 2 (Netflix Family) From Netflix: From an all-inclusive vacation to an extravagant Sweet 16 party, Kayko and Kokosh continue to stumble into different misadventures. Lost in Space: Season 3 (Netflix Series) From Netflix: In an epic final season, the Robinsons’ survival instincts kick into hyperdrive as they race to reunite and protect Alpha Centauri from a robot invasion. The Power of the Dog (Netflix Film) From Netflix: Charismatic rancher Phil Burbank inspires fear and awe in those around him. When his brother brings home a new wife and her son, Phil torments them until he finds himself exposed to the possibility of love. Are You The One: Season 3Blood and BoneBody of LiesBordertown: Mural MurdersChloeChocolatCloserDeath at a FuneralDr. Seuss’ The Cat in the HatThe Final DestinationFinal Destination 3Final Destination 5Fool’s GoldThe Fourth KindInk Master: Season 3Ink Master: Season 4Knight Rider 2000Knight Rider: Seasons 1-4Law Abiding CitizenThe Legend of ZorroLifeLooperThe Mask of ZorroMinority ReportPet Sematary (1989)PremonitionSabrina (1995)Soul SurferStepmomStuart Little 2Sucker PunchThink Like a ManTremorsWe Were SoldiersWild ThingsWyatt Earp Available Dec. 2 The Alpinist Coyotes ​​ (Netflix Series) From Netflix: A close group of summer campers finds diamonds in the woods, setting off a wild ordeal that tests their friendship — and puts their lives in danger. Escalona: Season 1 Single All The Way (Netflix Film) From Netflix: Peter asks his best friend to pose as his boyfriend on a Christmas visit home, but their plan — and feelings — change when his family plays matchmaker. The Whole Truth (Netflix Film) From Netflix: When two siblings stumble on a strange hole in the wall of their grandparents’ house, horrifying incidents reveal sinister secrets about their family. Available Dec. 3 Cobalt Blue (Netflix Film) From Netflix: When an aspiring author and his free-spirited sister both fall for the enigmatic paying guest at their home, ensuing events rock their traditional family. Coming Out Colton (Netflix Series) From Netflix: Former professional football player and star of The Bachelor Colton Underwood embarks on a journey of self-discovery coming out as a gay man, including addressing his past and embracing his place in the LGBTQ community. Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous: Season 4 (Netflix Family) From Netflix: The campers leave Isla Nublar behind, only to wash ashore on strange new terrain that’s crawling with threats — and closely guarded secrets. Money Heist: Part 5 Vol 2 (Netflix Series) From Netflix: The stakes couldn’t be higher for the embattled Professor as he races to get the gold — and more importantly, his team — out of the bank. The Great British Baking Show: Holidays: Season 4 (Netflix Series) From Netflix: Familiar faces return to the tent to make delicious mincemeat of the competition and be crowned star baker by hosts Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood. Mixtape (Netflix Film) From Netflix: In 1999, 12-year-old Beverly discovers a broken mixtape made by her late parents. She sets out to find the songs — and learn more about her mom and dad. Money Heist: From Tokyo to Berlin: Volume 2 (Netflix Documentary) From Netflix: It’s the end of an era for the showrunners and actors behind “Money Heist,” who share secrets about filming while saying goodbye to the beloved series. Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas (Netflix Family) Only available on Netflix in the US, Latin America, Spain, Russia, Poland and Greece From Netflix: When Shaun’s hunt for a bigger stocking hits a snag, the whole farm sets out on a wild holiday adventure — complete with a sleigh! Available Dec. 5 Japan Sinks: People of Hope: Season 1 (episode 8) Available Dec. 6 David and the Elves (Netflix Film) From Netflix: A jaded, overworked elf runs off to the real world where he tries to experience the magic of Christmas with the help of a newly befriended young boy. Voir (Netflix Documentary) From Netflix: Film lovers examine the cinematic moments that thrilled, perplexed, challenged and forever changed them in this collection of visual essays. Available Dec. 7 Centaurworld: Season 2 (Netflix Family) From Netflix: Horse embarks on a mission to build an army and defeat the Nowhere King. It won’t be easy, but she’s got the herd by her side — and Rider back home. Go Dog Go: Season 2 (Netflix Family) From Netflix: Adventurous pups Tag and Scooch are going everywhere this season, from exciting places all around Pawston to the bright lights of Chew York City! Nicole Byer: BBW (Big Beautiful Weirdo) (Netflix Comedy) From Netflix: With her first hour-long Netflix comedy special, Nicole Byer’s Big Beautiful Weirdo is sexy, fun and honest. Filmed at the Gramercy Theatre in New York City, the city where she first got her start in stand-up, Nicole discusses everything from how she basically is a vegan (she’s just doing her part), what she’s looking for in a man, just how crazy this past year-and-a-half has been and much more. Available Dec. 8 Carolin Kebekus: The Last Christmas Special (Netflix Comedy) From Netflix: Carolin Kebekus unpacks the many headaches of the Christmas season, from intense hangovers to the agony of Advent calendars to a big gift-giving gap. Available Dec. 9 Asakusa Kid (Netflix Film) From Netflix: Before he hit it big, Takeshi Kitano got his start apprenticing with comedy legend Fukami of Asakusa. But as his star rises, his mentor’s declines. Bathtubs Over Broadway Bonus Family: Season 4 (Netflix Series) From Netflix: A kitchen fire, a classroom showdown and a call from the hospital set in motion a flurry of family reckonings and relationship crises. The Family That Sings Together: The Camargos (Netflix Documentary) From Netflix: Surrounded by family and friends, Zezé Di Camargo and daughter Wanessa spend time together and collaborate creatively in this exclusive reality series. Available Dec. 10 Anonymously Yours (Netflix Film) From Netflix: After an accidental text message turns into a digital friendship, Vale and Alex start crushing on each other without realizing they’ve met in real life. Aranyak (Netflix Series) From Netflix: Political ploys, personal agendas and a beastly myth all surface as two mismatched hill station cops navigate a web of suspects after a puzzling murder. Back to the Outback (Netflix Film) From Netflix: They might look dangerous, but these wildly misunderstood creatures have hearts of gold — and they’re breaking out of captivity on a quest to find home. How To Ruin Christmas: The Funeral (Netflix Series) From Netflix: A year after last year’s Christmas disaster, Tumi finds herself in the center of another holiday family mess when a relative suddenly passes away. Twentysomethings: Austin
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It's the very first day of the Advent Calender, so to get hyped up we're all going to strap on some medieval armour and charge at our foes waving swords around. Or possibly waving fish around. It's up to you. Go forth, brave knight! It's Chivalry 2! Matt Cox: A sword fight gets so much more intimate than a shootout. I’ve lost count of the multiplayer FPSes where death comes instantly and often, and usually at the hand of whoever happens to spot the other first. Swords aren’t like that. They’re personal, they require an exchange. Every blow has to be fought for, every victory earned - and there’s so much more to it than clicking in the right place quickly. Chivalry 2 understands this, because Chivalry 2 has separate buttons for jabbing, kicking, thrusting, slashing, overhead smashing and weapon-specific murderising. You can dash. You can duck. You can (and should) bellow out war cries to inspire your allies and instill fear in your enemies. The chopping goes much deeper than in Chivalry the first, and perhaps even a smidge deeper than in Mordhau. Castle gates crumble under cannon fire, crenellations turn to dust, and villages burn while huge ship masts shatter to the ground in Battlefield-worthy spectacle. This is certainly where chopping gets the glossiest, and the most bombastic. Castle gates crumble under cannon fire, crenellations turn to dust, and villages burn while huge ship masts shatter to the ground in Battlefield-worthy spectacle. The biggest clashes take place across sprawling, varied multi-stage objectives, often rewarding the best player on one team the chance to take on a special pivotal role, like surviving as a big Duke or fleeing as a massive bare-chested prisoner. Even if you don’t want to delve into mastering fancy swordplay, it’s worth coming for the action scenes. Of course, I am here to master fancy swordplay, and combat I initially dismissed as overly forgiving compared to Mordhau turns out to have its advantages. Chivalry 2's health pools are vast, blocking is near infinite, and everyone moves just a touch slower. That means you get fewer jaw-dropping rampages where a single combatant slays ever
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A whole host of games will be added to Xbox Game Pass this month alongside Halo Infinite, including Stardew Valley and Among Us.ConcernedApe's cute farming simulator will be available on PC, console and the cloud from 2nd December. And there's plenty of content to play through ahead of follow up Haunted Chocolatier. Among Us became a phenomenon during lockdown and now will make its way to Game Pass on 14th December on console only. These two titles join Halo Infinite as Microsoft's big addition to the service on PC, console and the cloud. The flag
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Xbox Game Pass is setting subscribers up for a big December as new games like Halo Infinite, Anvil, and Archvale come to the service, along with older favorites like Among Us, Lawn Mower Simulator, and Stardew Valley. Subscribers will also get access to Final Fantasy XIII-2, Rubber Bandits, Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector, Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, One Piece Pirate Warriors 4, and Aliens: Fireteam Elite. All of these games will be available in the first two weeks of December on consoles, Xbox’s cloud service, and PC. Here’s a full schedule of what to expect from Xbox Game
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Tis the season to click bombies After dropping the ball with Solitaire merch, Microsoft have now done right by Minesweeper with an "ugly" Christmas jumper turning one of the most iconic PC games of all time into a blocky Christmas tree. For £58 (plus shipping), you can tell all your festive friends how little work you actually did on your PC in the 1990s. It's not bad! The Microsoft Minesweeper Ugly Sweater shows a Minesweeper grid in the shape of a Christmas tree and snow-capped mountains. I've had a look, and the numbers on the grid do seem to line up with a real game of Minesweeper too. It has the UI too, with scores (well, years), the reset button, and the minimise/maximise/close buttons. I don't go for novelty Christmas garb myself but it's pretty decent as it goes. The jumper is available now in the Xbox Store for £57.95 (that's £83.88 including taxes and postage to the UK), though it is already sold-out in most sizes. Lot of people want to show off their dedication to slacking this festive season. In the giving spirit, alongside this, Microsoft plan to donate $100,000 (£75k) to the excellent accessibility charity, AbleGamers. That's nice. They've also whipped a few Christmas Minesweeper wallpapers into a zip file to use as Microsoft Teams camera backgrounds. I adore Christmastime. The delightful part of autumn has ended, daylight basically doesn't happen, all the swimming and cycling I live for is now chuffing freezing (and a mite dangerous), and basically everything is cold and dark and miserable until April. Everything except Christmas. My lights went up weeks ago, I've taste-tested half the new Christmas snacks in the Tesco, I've been watching Christmas movies since Halloween ended, and I even subscribed to the Hallmark Channel's streaming service to get more (99p/month for the first three months, absolute steal). I used to be dead cynical about Christmas as a festival of commercialism but turns out, you can largely skip that and just have a nice time with colourful lights and loving memories with your nearest and dearest. This jumper's not for me but if you want it, go for it.
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Let this year's Bestest Best countdown begin Ah, gentle friends! That time has come again, and we must celebrate the birth of many sweet video games across this (once again) extremely cursed year. We were lucky enough to feast upon so many pixely entertainments this year; such glorious toys to keep us occupied while other things went totally down the toilet. Yes, let's raise a glass together for The RPS Advent Calendar 2021! This is what's happening: every day from December 1st until December 24th we reveal one PC game from 2021 that we think is the cat's big fluffy pyjamas. Every game gets a whole post to itself wherein one or more of the RPS writers will explain why it's so good. This year, that includes some of our most regular freelancers as well. Isn't that lovely? Found family, and all that. The games are revealed in no particular order, apart from the game revealed on Christmas Eve, the 24th. That game is our Goatest of the year, our GOTY, the bestest of bestest bests 2021. This year, we have engaged Nate Crowley to do another Christmas calendar picture for us, which has quite a threatening aura. Here you can see Horace The Endless Bear (praise him) nestled in a pile of Christmas presents. He is supervising the Alabastar Titan, a feature of the EWS Podcast, as Tites constructs more presents on a mighty anvil. Behind them both you can see both a festive Christmas tree and, err, a festive haunted Christmas train. It's possible this is all taking place in a decommissioned nuclear bunker, Death Stranding-style. Who can say? You can access each day's post by clicking on the right door below as it opens, which will be at 1pm each day, around about lunchtime. If, for some reason, the image links don't work (for example, you're browsing on mobile) scroll below for a normal set of text links. Enjoy! The rules for our calendar voting are thus: Any game released in 2021 is eligible for inclusion, which also includes games that have released into early access got a full release this year after an early access period. We are fickle, so might also consider games that have big 2021 energy, like indie games that got a huge surge of interest this year or games that got big juicy DLCs. We will also consider December games that have not yet released at the time of voting, which is why Cyberpunk squeaked in last year. Each member of the RPS team gets 10 points to vote with, and can put as many in a game as they like, including giving one game the full 10 points. There is a tremendous amount of tactical point reshuffling until the final moments of voting. Then there is some discussion amongst editors in the case of ties, and also Katharine has the power to move some stuff around for sensible reasons, just because none of us can really stop her. We do the calendar almost every year, including in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. In 2014 we did the RPS Bestest Bests which were the exact same only it wasn't based around a calendar. This was clearly inferior, and so the calendar returned in 201
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There's something I need to tell you all, dear readers, and it may be a bitter pill to swallow. Superhero comics are just soap operas with spandex and punching. This also goes for professional wrestling, but that's a topic for someone whose knowledge on the subject is more up to date than about 2003.Don't get me wrong, I like seeing superpeeps thrashing seven shades of superpoop out of each other as much as the next person, but the real reason people keep coming back to the ol' funnybooks is the drama. Sure, Batman is cool, but would he still be popular after all these years if all he ever did was fight? Of course not! If that were the case, we'd be celebrating the 90s as a New Golden Age instead of quietly pretending they didn't happen while making jokes about pouches and feet.Unfortunately, the superbiffing is the easiest part of the whole thing to translate to video games, so that's generally what we get. Occasionally a developer will remember that Batman is the World's Greatest Detective, or that web-swinging is clearly the most fun part of being Spider-Man, but it's usually in service to the fighty parts. Telltale's Batman stands out as one of the few examples of something a little different.Instead of going straight for action genres, or even something more strategic like the venerable Freedom Force or the forthcoming Midnight Suns, I reckon the best starting point for a great superhero game is actually The Sims.No, no come back. Hear me out. It's good, I promise. All very exciting, but what happens when he lets the electric meter run down last thing at night? Picture a game with the X-Men, the Teen Titans, or a generic cohabiting superteam if your imagination can't afford a license. You build your own base of operations, stuff it full of Danger Rooms, living quarters and an insufficient quantity of loos, then let your supersquad loose within its confines.Your job is to look after the needs of the team, train them, build friendships and manage rivalries before they get out of hand. The better you take care of them, the better they'll perform when you send them out on a mission. On their return, you patch them up and get ready for the next one, while continuing to navigate the escalating drama. What happens when one of your heroes takes a shine to a villain? Or if someone's teen offspring from a dystopian alternate future shows up at the door?That's what you're supposed to do, but anyone with experience of Will Wright's magnum opus will know that the real fun comes with poking the proverbial ant's nest and seeing what mayhem and distress you can inflict upon your hapless virtual households. I giggle with impish glee at the thought of forcing perennial love rivals Cyclops and Wolverine to share a room, or seeing exactly how much Superman's yellow sun-powered Kryptonian biology helps him when you've removed all of the toilets and beds.Good superhero fiction isn't about what makes the heroes super, it's about what makes them human, even if they're mutants or aliens or have the power of gods. A game that allowed us to engage with these characters at their most mundane moments wo
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The Bard's Tale is coming to Amazon Alexa, in the form of a new audio role-playing game titled Warlocks of Largefearn. It's a project developed in conjunction with Xbox's inXile Entertainment, and created by Wanderword - a Swedish developer which previously released other Alexa-based RPGs.This new Bard's Tale chapter boasts of "hours" of gameplay as you pick from four character classes and explore Largefearn, recruit companions and get stuck into some (naturally, turn-based) combat. If you are playing with a device that has a screen, Warlocks of Largefearn also includes illustrations showing characters and locations, or you can sit back, close y
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Plus it's coming to Xbox Game Pass
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Slams Bobby Kotick for "inaction and refusal to take accountability". Jessica Gonzalez, a key figure in the recent employee action at Activision Blizzard, is leaving the company and quitting game development. Gonzalez announced her resignation yesterday, in a message in which she further criticised Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick and said his "inaction and refusal to take accountability" was "driving out great talent. "Products will suffer until you are removed from your position as CEO," she wrote. "This may seem harsh, but you had years to fix the culture and look at where the c
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Maybe the most impressive makeover mod ever? One of the most impressive mods going is the Resident Evil 4 HD Project,
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EDM DJ Steve Aoki played a 60-minute virtual Sonic concert for the SEGA mascot's 30th anniversary.It was weird.The performance (which you can watch in full below) was broadcast on Twitch and YouTube (as well as in VR using the YouTube VR app) and had Aoki playing a set in a number of Sonic-themed backdrops, from the iconic Green Hill Zone to Chemical Plant. Sonic and co raced around the areas and shimmied awkwardly, proving the blue blur can run fast but can't dance. It looked more like a techno Balan Wonderworld.Worse, the performance contained only one track from the Sonic franchise: a remix of the Stardust Speedway theme from Sonic CD. Otherwise, this was simply a Steve Aoki set with Sonic assets slapped on.The YouTube video has plenty of negative comments from disappointed fans who expected more... Sonic from the experience."I feel like I should be forgiven for assuming that a Sonic concert would have some Sonic music in it. Clearly I was wrong to assume that," reads one comment."Shoutouts to a Sonic concert not having Sonic music. It was literally a Steve Aoki concert with bad Sonic animation around him lmao," reads another.There are plenty of disappointed comments and memes on Twitter too. NAH I OPENED THAT STEVE AOKI SONIC CONCERT FOR A SEC TO SEE HOW IT IS IM FKN CRYIN LOOOOOOOOOOOOLL pic.twitter.com/u6Vi75a4SR— GamesCage - Hype Guy (@OnTheDownLoTho) November 30, 2021 Steve Aoki's Sonic concert manages to dethrone Sonic Chronicles as the worst ranking Sonic associated soundtrack ever made pic.twitter.com/4sis7LZbau— Sonic News NOW ? (@sonic_news_now) November 30, 2021 The Steve Aoki x Sonic concert was one of the most disappointing things I've ever had to experience as a Sonic fan pic.twitter.com/JQsRQOhJ2g— Rouver (@RouverTheFox) November 30, 2021 Others are angry at Aoki's apparent support of NFTs. Do not support this concert. Steve Aoki supports and sells NFTs; It is clear that SEGA is only doing this for money, and unless it is proven that this concert is removed from NFTs, do not support it. https://t.co/cka4Vxt9kC— Sonic Forces (@SonicForces9) November 24, 2021 This isn't the first time Aoki ha
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A folk horror spectacle turned score-attacker that will give you nightmares in a matter of minutes. The first thing you do in every round of Nix Umbra is collect your sword. It burns in your right fist, casting a pool of harsh emergency lighting a few metres wide. As long as the sword is lit, you live. Your shared vitality is measured by a sun icon in bottom right. Ahead, coarse soil disappears into twitching shadow. Above, bedroom-wallpaper stars flicker uncertainly. You think you see the moon. After around five seconds of walking you'll encounter your first tree: a gritty slash of texture in the baleful glare of your sword. Early on in your time with Nix Umbra the trees might seem comforting: landmarks and barriers, things to retreat to, weave through while fleeing. You peep around the trunk and it bursts into flame, illuminating other trees, grouped in a ring like petrified ogres at feast. Your sun icon dims a little. You keep moving. A Nix Umbra trailer. 30 seconds in. Something is watching you through the trunks, maybe a hundred metres away. The suggestion of glowing sockets and a lipless grin. It rarely stays put
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Square Enix has warned of heavy congestion in Final Fantasy 14 Online ahead of the Early Access period and release of new expansion Endwalker.The MMORPG already suffered from congestion earlier in the year due to a mass increase in its playerbase, many of whom will be jumping back in for Endwalker. A new post in the Lodestone states that servers have been optimised in advance. However, due to the global shortage of semiconductors, Square Enix has been unable to add new Worlds, meaning long wait times as current Worlds reach maximum capacity. "We would like to apologise for making this sort of announcement at a time when many of you are looking forward to the expansion, as well as for inconveniences that may be caused by congestion," states the post."Although we were unable to add new Worlds, we have implemented every other measure that was possible... We will further enhance our monitoring of the situation to allow for as many players as possible to log in. We ask for your understanding and cooperation regarding this matter."Login wait times are expected to be long and will prioritise paying players over those on the free trial. Since Patch 5.57 there's also a feature that allows players to log into a less-crowded World within the same Data Centre.In addition, new characters cannot be created on a World experiencing congestion, so players are advised to do this outside of peak hours.The post also highlights a previously added feature where inactive players are automatically logged out after 30 minutes, in order to prioritise active players.Visit the Lodestone for the full explanatory post. Square Enix has also released the preliminary patch notes for Patch 6.0. This includes content added in preparation for Endwalker, including new playable content (such as areas and quests) and a host of new items. Game director Naoki Yoshida apologised last month for the expansion's two-week delay, saying his own "selfishness" was to blame.
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Suspicious User Detection will flag channel ban evaders. Twitch has launched a Suspicious User Detection tool to help safeguard streamers and their chat from abuse.The tool comes in the wake of hate raids and harassment on the platform, particularly for streamers from marginalised communities.It aims to catch users evading channel-level bans, powered by machine learning, by highlighting potentially suspicious activity in chat."When you ban someone from your channel, they should be banned from your community for good. Unfortunately, bad actors often choose to create new accounts, jump back into Chat, and continue their abusive behaviour. Suspicious User Detection, powered by machine learning, is here to help you identify those users based on a number of account signals," explains a blog post by Twitch. Suspicious User Detection, powered by machine learning, is here to help you identify and restrict suspected channel ban evaders from chatting before they can disrupt your stream. Learn more here: https://t.co/01cCwnQZfw pic.twitter.com/QWVSnRPg1X— Twitch (@Twitch) November 30, 2021 There are two levels of flags for suspicious activity. For "likely" ban evaders, any message in chat will be visible only to streamers and their moderators. For "possible" ban evaders, the message will be shown but flagged to streamers and moderators. From there, messages can be removed and users banned.The tool will be turned on by default across all streams. However, streamers will have the option to turn it off, or adjust the settings to be more cautious - for instance, preventing any and all messages flagged by the tool."One thing to prepare for, particularly around launch, is that no machine learning will ever be 100 percent accurate," says Twitch, which is why bans on suspicious activity aren't automatic."You're the expert when it comes to your community, and you should make the final call on who can participate. The tool will learn from the actions you take and the accuracy of its predictions should improve over time as a result."Twitch continues: "This tool highlights our
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Generation Zero and Evil Genius 2: World Domination available now. Season two of Aliens: Fireteam Elite arrives next week as the game joins Xbox Game Pass along with Generation Zero and Evil Genius 2: World Domination.On 14th December, Aliens: Fireteam Elite will be available on Game Pass alongside the new season (also on PlayStation and PC via Steam).The co-op third person survival game sees your team of marines up against waves of the iconic Xenomorphs. Season two adds a new game mode, Point Defense, as an alternative to Horde Mode, in which fireteams must protect, repair and hold three strategic points through multiple waves of attacks.Other additions include weapons, at
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"There's been a lot of speculation." Fall Guys developer Mediatonic has confirmed that the game's delayed Nintendo Switch and Xbox versions won't arrive before the end of the year.These editions were originally due in the summer, but in April were pushed back to an undefined date - and we've not heard much since. As for when they will arrive, those details will have to wait for 2022.Mediatonic acknowledged the wait in a blog post detailing the launch of Fall Guys' sixth season, Party Spectacular, which is out now. It welcomes Sackboy to the game, as well as cross-platform progression between PlayStation 4 and Steam when using the same Epic Games sign-in. "We know everyone's
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Switch version not due until 2022. Rockstar has delayed the release of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition's physical versions. PlayStation and Xbox editions have been pushed back to 17th December. The Nintendo Switch version has been delayed further, and will now arrive "in early 2022".Boxed copies of the game had been due to arrive next Tuesday, 7th December, following the game's digital launch last month. But, as you're probably aware, things have not exactly gone to plan. GTA Trilogy's rocky launch was marked by a slew of technical issues, while the game's PC version was pulled offline completely for several days as Rockstar rushed to remove "unintentionally included" files. Rockstar has now issued two big post-launch updates, including yesterday's patch which added ground fog to improve visuals in San Andreas. Other tweaks in that patch include a range of changes for the game's blinding rain - another fan bugbear.Fingers crossed, the version of the game available when boxed versions release should get a better reception. The release dates for
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Ahead of December 8th release Halo Infinite surprise-launched its multiplayer a couple of weeks ago. People seem to like it a lot, grindy and unrewarding battle pass aside. If you, like me, are more interested in the game for its singleplayer, then have a gander below for the launch trailer put together ahead of the campaign's December 8th release. I've only ever played Halo 1, and that was long enough ago that I've forgotten most of the details. If I remember correctly, the series is about a man in a BMX helmet and his absolute best mate, blue Tinker Bell, fighting different sizes of ape. Halo Infinite's launch trailer seems to confirm that little has changed, except now there's a King Ape and he has a beard. No, I will not watch your Halo lore video. What Halo was always good at was carefully constructed combat encounters and satisfying weapons, and there's plenty glimpses of both in the video above. I like breaking helmets off enemy noggins, the pop-and-hurl when hitting apes with a Warthog, and the look of your slamming hammer. I also like that the trailer seems to be made entirely of previously shown footage from the early stages of the game, making it exciting to see what lies beyond. I also enjoyed the look of Infinite's singleplayer when it was first shown off last year, but that initial reveal trailer prompted complaints from the noizy boizies about graphics and the game was delayed shortly thereafter. Leading with the multiplayer ever si
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Plus Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and many more Although Black Friday is over, the Xbox Cyber Week sale doesn't end until midnight tomorrow. It's worth checking out some of the deals before they disappear, because there's a lot included, from arcade classics to last generation's best-sellers and the latest AAAs. You can find all of our top picks and highlights from the sale below. Xbox Cyber Week game deals Here are all the deals we think are worth checking out from the sale, or scroll down below for some thoughts on the best of the bunch.Resident Evil - £3.99 (was £15.99) Resident Evil 0 - £3.99 (was £15.99) Resident Evil 2 Remake - £12.79 (was £31.99) Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition - £3.59 (was £23.99) Dead Island: Definitive Edition - £4.99 (was £24.99) Rise of the Tomb Raider - £4.99 (was £24.99) Shadow of the Tomb Raider- £4.72 (was £15.74) Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour - £2.39 (was £15.99) Silent Hill: HD Collection - £6.24 (was £24.99) Soul Calibur 6 - £7.49 (was £49.99) Hitman 2: Gold Edition - £15.99 (was £79.99) Metal Gear Solid V: The Definitive Experience - £8.24 (was £24.99) GTA V: Premium Edition - £12.49 (was £24.99) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Game of the Year Edition - £6.99 (was £34.99) Assassin's Creed Odyssey - £13.74 (was £54.99) Control Ult
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"It'll never go away entirely…" 343 has addressed cheating in Halo Infinite, as concern about the state of the game has grown since launch.Halo Infinite's multiplayer is free to download and play, and since it went live cheating has already emerged as a problem. For example, Twitch streamer Douglas "DougisRaw" Wolf tweeted a clip of himself watching a clip of a run-in with a Halo Infinite cheater using what looks like an aimbot and a wallhack. So I tried my 10 placements on M+
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Will be co-published by 505 Games. MercurySteam, the developer behind this year's critically acclaimed Metroid Dread for Switch, has announced it's working on a new third-person action-RPG "set in a dark fantasy world".Details on the new title, codenamed Project Iron, are limited, but it's described as a brand-new IP intended for a multi-platform global release. Project Iron's initial development investment is set at €27m (approximately £23m), and the IP will be co-owned by MercuryStea
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A confluence of curious circumstances has vaulted Capcom Arcade Stadium, a nominally free-to-play anthology that launched in May, to the top of Steam’s charts — rivaling the likes of Apex Legends, Grand Theft Auto 5, and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. It isn’t because fans have renewed thirst for 32-year-old 1943: The Battle of Midway, the lone free game available with Arcade Stadium. Instead, bots are idling in the game to mine Steam trading cards, which can be sold for store credit on the Steam Community Market. At least, that’s the view from Pavel Djundik, the creator of SteamD
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From cups to step-out moments I don't much envy Bethesda. All game development seems like a bunfight with the impossible, but following in the footsteps of Skyrim is surely cursed. Starfield, the team's sci-fi open-world game, needs to be the same and different and better than Skyrim, a game that has been consistently popular for ten years. In the latest, teasing, behind-the-scenes Into The Starfield video, the development team discuss some of the values that remain the same between Starfield and Bethesda's other games. It maybe starts with the cups. In the seven-minute video above, game director Todd Howard, studio director Angela Browder and art director Matt Carofano discuss Starfield in the context
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Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive edition can’t quite catch a break. Despite this week’s rollout of a title update that fixes tons of bugs that marred the not-so-definitive rerelease, the news isn’t all rosy. The latest setback is a delay for the physical versions of the trilogy, with Xbox and PlayStation versions pushed back 10 days to Dec. 17, and the Nintendo Switch version coming in “early 2022,” per Rockstar Games’ Twitter account. The release dates for the physical versions of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition have changed.Xbox Series X / Xbox One and PS4 will now release on December 17. The Nintendo Switch version is coming in early 2022.Check your local retailer for availability. pic.twitter.com/6avP8yp6la— Rockstar Games (@R
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. No more picking games up with their teeth CD Projekt say that they're re-focusing GOG, their digital storefront, "more on its core business activity." This is in response to the store losing money - around $2.21 million year-to-date. "Regarding GOG, its performance does present a challenge, and recently we’ve taken measures to improve its financial standing," said CD Projekt CFO Piotr Nielubowicz during a quarterly earnings call on Monday. "First and foremost, we’ve decided that GOG should focus more on its core business activity, which means offering a handpicked s
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Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City goes to great lengths to recreate the events of the original Resident Evil game and its beloved sequel in condensed, cinematic form. From “Jill[’s] sandwich” puns to green herbs on set, director Johannes Roberts strived to show his love of the Resident Evil games in his newly released movie adaptation. One unforgettable Resident Evil scene Roberts chose to include is the original game’s frightening first encounter with a zombie. Early in Resident Evil, the player comes upon an undead man feasting upon a corpse, who slowly turns around, in search of fresh meat, and attacks the player. (Resident Evil’s “Director’s Cut” and Sega Saturn releases used an image of that specific zombie for their cover art, establishing the over-the-shoulde
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Plus rain, UI and other bugs squashed The Grand Theft Auto games are full of jokes - or, as I like to call them, "jokes". I'm referring to the habit of replacing words in signs and company names with rude soundalikes or double entendres. These jokes have been restored by GTA: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition's latest patch, which corrects spelling on signage, puts the hard angles back on the Tuff Nut logo, and stops it raining indoors quite so often. Several of GTA's joke signs were broken by the Definitive Edition, which seemed to upscale textures and OCR text with inconsistent results. A music shop's advertised "Air Guitars" became "AR Guitars", and their "Guitarwank Booths" became "Guitarhenk booths". S
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Tales of Dunk and Egg, which follows 2022’s House of the Dragon as HBO’s other Game of Thrones-related series in development with author George R. R. Martin, has landed a writer. Reported by Variety, the task of adapting Martin’s novellas, which take place in the same universe as Thrones, falls to Steve Conrad, who will also be an executive producer. Conrad is perhaps best known for creating the Amazon Prime series Patriot, a spy show which offered a twisty look at depression, PTSD, and the challenges for anyone, even a government spy, to get from Point A to Point B. Conrad also co-created Perpetual Grace, LTD, which Polygon named one of the best shows of 2019. At the time we noted Perpetual Grace, LTD’s “colorful dialogue that borders on the poetic.” Conrad’s comfort wit
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Here at Polygon we write a lot of reviews of video games, but also reviews around video games. We’ve reviewed movies based on games, Lego sets based on games, and now, finally, chips based on games. You see, we live in a world with Halo-themed Pringles, and they’re actually pretty great. The Moa Burger Wavy Pringles are a Walmart exclusive chip designed to taste like a burger made out of the Ostrich-like Moa bird — one of the few lifeforms roaming about in the Halo games. The Pringles website says it has flavors of “garlic, sweet ginger, and savory beef.” There’s also some chili pepper and red pepper. But what do the Moa Burger Pringles really taste like? Well I’ve had two cans of these suckers, so let’s get into it. The first and only thing you need to know about the M
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Arriving early 2022 on PC and consoles. Developer Motion Twin's majestic rogue-like action-platformer Dead Cells is getting a third paid expansion; it's called The Queen and the Sea and will be making its way to PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC "early" next year.The Queen and the Sea, which follows previous paid expansions The Bad Seed and Fatal Falls, brings a selection of nautically minded additions to Dead Cells, including two brand-new biomes, Infested Shipwreck and the Lighthouse.In terms of progression placement, these new biomes appear toward the back-end of the game, running parallel to Dead Cells' existing High Peak Castle and Throne Room stages. That means the Hand of the K
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It’s a little odd to think about now, but there was a time when “Mac gamer” was a legitimate label a person might apply to themselves. Among these dedicated Apple fans, there was perhaps no developer more revered than Bungie. The studio got its start as a Mac-exclusive game developer, with titles like Marathon and Myth, though eventually it would publish its games on both Mac and Windows PC. Despite its multiplatform predilections, Bungie was still known as the premier Mac game developer well into the late 1990s, which is why Steve Jobs, of all people, got to reveal the first footage of Bungie’s Halo to the public at Macworld 1999. It’s a surreal clip: The “iCEO,” complete with iconic black turtleneck, proudly introduces Jason Jones, Bungie’s co-founder, but not before
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Dreams is quietly one of the most wonderful and deranged things in the PlayStation library, a place to play and create games and experiences as varied as an eerie Seinfeld nightmare, a beautiful replica of Stardew Valley’s Pelican Town, or simply, a gorgeous breakfast. If there’s anything holding Dreams back, it isn’t imagination. It might be people, though: more of them could be making things in Dreams. The game’s latest update might help. In a post on the PlayStation Blog, Media Molecule details the latest Dreams update, which includes substantial additions for Dreams fans who enjoy creating, and those who would also rather just play. For the former, Dreams now has a template system, allowing creators to start with a basic structure in place based on the genre of game they’
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poly-lt-wire-logo Image: Kelly Sue DeConnick, Phil JImenez/DC Comics Drink up and choke on this 64-page opus By Nov 30, 2021, 2:25pm EST Art by: Kelly Sue DeConnick, Phil Jimenez/DC Comics By the second page, it’s immediately obvious why Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons took over three years to make. The long-awaited title from DC’s Black Label imprint is a cup that
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Pokémon Go’s next season of gameplay, known as the Season of Heritage, launches Dec. 1, and developer Niantic is teasing an exploration of the Pokémon franchise’s past — much like the next main game in the franchise, Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Niantic announced first details on Pokémon Go’s Season of Heritage on Tuesday, outlining the next three months of events for the mobile game. Missing from Niantic’s announcement is any sort of explicit tie-in to Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which is coming to Nintendo Switch in January. But Pokémon Go’s resident professor, Willow, is said to have found an ancient relic: a door with three mysterious locks. With three months in the season and three Team Leaders offering monthly timed research, one might safely assume that it’ll take a
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. World's End Club arrives after Apple Arcade and Switch releases If you enjoy games where people are trapped somewhere mysterious in a deadly game, here's a new one for you: World's End Club. Released on PC today following Apple Arcade and Switch versions, it's made by a team including two heavy-hitting murdergame veterans: the director of the Zero Escape series, and the writer of Danganronpa. It's about a group of schoolchildren who find themselves in an undersea theme park and are forced by a clown to- oh for, what is it with these cheery mascots who have one jacked-up eye and a propensity for violence? World's End Club is about the Go-Getters Club, a group of weird kids from across Japan whose summer trip somehow ends up in an abandoned undersea theme park, where a clown forces them into a "Fate Game". And from this mundane starting point, it gets weird. Sounds grim? In Japan, it was even more intense, released under the name Death March Club. It looks to unfold with simple side-scrolling platforming, mild action, gentle puzzling, and a lot of chat and cutscenes as the gang make a long journey. Reviews have been pretty middling for the other versions, but the plot seems to have pleased some folks who like other games from the big names working on this. It's made by Too Kyo Games, a studio founded by former Spike Chunsoft employees. They've got some big names, including Danganronpa writer Kazutaka Kodaka (who's the creative director of World's End Clu
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Time to make a hovel in some Lush Caves We've waited so long for Minecraft's Caves & Cliffs update to be complete, but it's finally here. Caves & Cliffs Part 2 arrived today, bringing with it deeper underground layers, taller mountains, and a couple of new biomes to explore. I've been really eager for the 1.18 update specifically so I can build a nice home in the new Lush Cave biomes. Underground houses are the best! And now I can live near pretty cave plants! So, the most exciting additions for me are the new Lush Cave and Dripstone Cave biomes. The former are full of new flora like azalea trees and roots, as well as a new block called dripleaf that players can stand on briefly before it tips and drops you off. The latter are pretty much normal caves, except they have stalagmites, 'tites and glowing dripstone blocks. Players will also be able to explore the world even deeper than before, digging below Y=0 to get to the new Deepslate layer (you'll need to relearn where to find diamonds in Minecraft because of this though). Mountains can grow higher now too, and have a bunch of sub-biomes that will spawn depending on how tall it is. A lot of this is stuff you'll have already seen - snow, ice, goats, berry bushes, etc - except now they're in dedicated little sections (Mountain Groves, for example, exist fairly low down, and are home to rabbits, polar bears and snow). Unfortunately, a few extra bits that were supposed to arrive with Caves & Cliffs have been pushed back into the game's next update, The Wild. The big one is the Deep Dark biome, an underground network of ruined cities
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And there's new trailer to put you in the mood. Free-to-play sci-fi shooter Warframe's long-awaited cinematic story expansion The New War will be launching for PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC on 15th December.Described by developer Digital Extremes as Warframe's "biggest narrative expansion...so far", The New War - which was initially teased all the way back in 2018 - tells the story of a massive Sentient invasion over the course of three acts, taking players across 16 planets and three open worlds, including previously unseen environments.It's an adventure that unfolds from the perspective of multiple playable characters - including a Grineer Lancer called Kahl-175, Corpus engineer Veso, and Conclave Master Teshin - and promises to combine a "personal story of self-discovery with an action-packed space opera". Warframe - The New War Official Cinematic Trailer. Digital Extremes has previously called The New War, the "most ambitious thing we've done", and players will finally be able to experience that ambition for themselves on 15th December. To do so, however, they'll need to have completed a good chunk of Warframe's existing story missions, specifically Natah, The Second Dream, The War Within, Chains of Harrow, Apostasy Prologue, The Sacrifice, Chimera Prologue, Erra, The Maker, Rising Tide, and Heart of Deimos.Additionally, players will need to have built an Archwing, built or purchased a Railjack and Necramech, and unlocked an Operator. As such, new (or indeed lapsed) players hoping to enjoy The New War on launch day will want to start working through that checklist now - and Digital Extremes offers a few assistive pointers on its website.Alongside The New War, Warframe's 15th December update will introduce Caliban - a new Sentient-Warframe hybrid that brings the game's total Warframe count up to 48 - plus new customisations, weapons, and accessories.
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Decision In The Desert, Crusade In Europe, and Conflict In Vietnam Fancy kicking off your advent calendar with a spot of 80s strategising? Atari are releasing Sid Meier's classic Command series on Steam tonight, so you'll be able to get your hands on Decision In The Desert, Crusade In Europe, and Conflict In Vietnam. They're a vintage bunch of RTS games that make you a commander in various wars, you know, if wars were about controlling tiny little blocky tanks in a bright blue desert. Decision In The Desert first arrived in 1985, and places you in the shoes of a commander leading troops in North Africa during World War 2. Crusade In Europe was released the same year, but focuses on the more famous WW2 scenarios, like D-Day. Finally, Conflict In Vietnam originally came out in 1986, and follows five major battles in the Vietnam War. Sid Meier designed the Command series with historian Ed Bever, and the games were developed by MicroProse. Apparently, they "grew from observation of actual tabletop U.S. military scenario exercises". Find Decision In The De
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Netflix has finally shared the release date for Vikings: Valhalla, the much-anticipated spinoff of the History Channel drama Vikings. The new series, from showrunner Jeb Stuart and Vikings creator Michael Hirst, will debut on Friday, Feb. 25. Vikings: Valhalla takes place in the early 11th century, 100 years after the events of the Vikings series finale. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina vet Sam Corlett stars as Leif Erikson, the famed explorer who is said to have journeyed to North America centuries before Christopher Columbus. Frida Gustavsson (The Witcher) will play Leif’s strong-willed sister Freydis Eriksdotter and Leo Suter (Sanditon) will play Nordic prince Harald Sigurdsson. The series will follow these three legendary Vikings as they travel the world at a time when the conflicts between the Vikings and English royals — as well as the pagan Vikings and Christian Vikings — escalate toward the point of no return and ultimately the end of the Viking Age. Vikings: Valhalla also stars Laura Berlin as the ambitious Emma of Normandy, Bradley Freegard as the Danish King Canute, Johannes Haukur Jóhannesson as Harald’s half-brother Olaf, David Oakes as the English counselor Earl Godwin, Caroline Henderson as the Kattegat Jarl Haakon, Pollyanna McIntosh as the Danish Queen Ælfgifu, and Asbjorn Krogh Nissen is Jarl Kåre. In addition to the Vikings: Valhalla premiere date, Netflix also shared new photos of the historical drama that give us a first look at these new characters — and more importantly, at all the bloody good action to come. Leo Suter in Vikings: Valhalla Bernard Walsh/Netflix Frida Gustavsson and Sam Corlett in Vikings: Valhalla Bernard Walsh/Netflix Sam Corlett in Vikings: V
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In the last few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time looking through scopes. Red dots and ACOGs and telescopic ones. From one FPS to the other, I put my eye up to a lens and I press triggers. Sometimes I’m a sniper dropping Nazis to protect my father, sometimes I’m a soldier surrounded by 127 other players. Lately, I’m a chunky spartan with crunchy crayon armour. All this time with the three big FPSes of the year, each packaged in their own ways, has left me wondering what’s important nowadays. Do they need campaigns, or is multiplayer-only the way to go? How about introducing one a bit later than the other? Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4. Remember that one? No, probably not. But this fourth edition of the Blopsverse was the first to ship without a story mode. The devs decided that they’d lop off the campaign component because player data showed that we were spending less time in the story, and more in all-out online war. According to the numbers, we were all giggling among bullet casings in a state of multiplayer euphoria, so it made sense to balance that equation. Generate more multiplayer #content and other digits would multiply exponentially. The Blops 4 devs did replace the traditional COD campaign with quick story missions for the game’s various characters, but reviews suggest these were disjointed and a far cry from the usual corridor dash. I can’t say I ever really played Blops 4, so I can’t attest to the dismay of players who missed the campaign, but I reckon if I travelled back in time I’d be miffed. For me at least, campaigns matter. This might seem a bit hypocritical coming from someone who said that Call Of Duty: Vanguard’s story was unambitious filler, but that’s because it comes from the heart. I really do care, mate, and I semi-grilled COD this year for a similar reason. I know the devs can cook up a better story: the original Modern Warfare had the magnificent All Ghillied Up, with its heart-pounding crash course in sniping; Modern Warfare 2 featured James Bond-inspired snow mobile chases; Black Ops made you question the NUMBERS MASON; even Infinite Warfare was a sorely un
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Call of Duty: Warzone Pacific’s Caldera map includes 15 drop zones, according to the first look at battle royale’s new setting, tweeted out Tuesday morning by the game’s official account. Caldera, said to be about the same size as, although slightly larger than, the outgoing Verdansk map, will become available to Call of Duty: Vanguard owners on Dec. 8. Free-to-play Warzone players can get in the next day. The new map changes the name of the battle royale to Warzone Pacific and inaugurates the first season of Vanguard multiplayer, too. The map posted on Tuesday gives a better sense o
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Dead by Daylight's latest chapter, Portrait of a Murder, has launched today.The DLC adds a new original killer and survivor, as well as a brand new map set in an abandoned Chilean graveyard.In addition, the game will be available on the Epic Games Store from 2nd December, including all past available DLC. The Artist is the new killer, able to summon a flock of killer crows. She's joined by Survivor Jonah Vasquez, a brilliant Mexican American CIA codebreaker."Birds have borne a very powerful sense of fear and fascination throughout the history of
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Starfield isn’t coming out until next year but that won’t stop Bethesda Game Studios from giving out new teasers about the game. The developer released the latest Starfield video on Tuesday, and it includes game director Todd Howard, studio director Angela Browder, and art director Matt Carofano discussing the game, along with a mix of old and new concept art. In the video, Howard and company discuss what it means to make a new Bethesda title, and how the studio’s legacy has helped shaped the direction of Starfield. Howard even mentions Bethesda’s signature “step out” moments — when players first get to see the game’s world in full — and teases that Starfield has two of them. Howard also says that the team wants to make Starfield a game that players can get lost in for hundreds of hours, but still come out with recognizable stories to tell their friends, whether that’s saving the world or other adventures through space. Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Xbox Game Studios Of course, the video has more in it than just the developer’s ambitious plans. There’s also plenty of concept art shown while Howard and the others talk. There are a few old images, like landscapes of futuristic cities or alien planets, as well as a few old pieces of art that now have animated elements in the background. But the real draw of the video is the new concept art; there are at least half a dozen new pieces in this video, including drawings of crystalline caves, lonely extra-terrestrial explorations, and a space cat. Image: Bethesda Games Studios/Xbox Game Studios While the fantastical science fiction and space elements clearly play an important role in Starfield’s world, Browder also emphasizes that this is the most grounded world that Bethesda has made so far. According to Browder, the team’s individual interests in things like robotics and engineering play an important part in the things they create for the world of the game. Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Xbox Game Studios Starfield is set to launch Nov. 11, 2022 f
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Thorn arrived today alongside the new season, High Calibre Ubisoft's tactical FPS Rainbow Six Siege ushered in Year 6 Season 4 today. Named High Calibre, it introduces new defensive operator Thorn, who's special gadget is a sticky grenade that explodes into razors when it detects an enemy. Ouch. The other big change with this season is a rework of the Outback map, which cleans up a lot of junk to improve sightlines, and help attackers strategise. First up, Thorn. She's an Irish technical weapons expert whose unique gadget is the Razorbloom Shell, which sounds a lot like a grenade full of blades. Very technical. She can stick it to surfaces, and when it detects enemies it explodes launching little stabbers in all directions. This gadget can kill a player outright, so those'll be fun for attackers to look out for. Next up is the Outback rework. The devs have moved the bombsites, added a handful of new locations to sneak through, made the office larger, and split the restaurant into two rooms. Ubisoft say their changes should "allow attackers to create and execute more effective strategies" and "provide better lines of sight and balance." These are all good things to have in a first-person shooter, lovely stuff. Another interesting change with this season is that the devs have changed the team colours. Since launch, your team is always in blue, while enemies were always orange. They've changed enemies to red now to help newbies understand who's who, and make the UI more consistent. An odd decision this far into the game's life, but I'm down with it. Orange always struck me as a stran
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Rockstar has added a new "Ground Haze" option to the settings found within the GTA Trilogy version of San Andreas. The visual option is being praised by fans for improving the look of San Andreas - which had come under significant criticism previously. San Andreas' new Ground Haze option tested out. Eurogamer has tested out the option for ourselves - you can see before and after comparison shots below.Ground Haze off... and on.Rockstar's remastered GTA Trilogy had a disastrous launch earlier this month, when the PC version was pulled offline completely for three days. Fans complained the games featured progression crashes, bugs, poor performance across all platforms, and a host of art concerns across all platforms."We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience, and are working to improve and update overall performance as we move forward," Rockstar said at the time.Embarrassingly, Rockstar was also forced to admit the games contained "files unintentionally included" in the final release, as dataminers discovered code relating to the infamous Hot Coffee mini-game from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, as well as unlicensed music tracks and even developer notes.Rockstar's first post-launch update for the trilogy arrived around a week later, with fixes for "all platforms". Clearly, today's update shows Rockstar is still working on more."The bottom line is that it's impossible to believe that this remaster was properly tested - and
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A modern keyboard classic gets even better You might be familiar with the Fnatic Streak65. Very small? Lives on our best gaming keyboards list? Answers to “Fnatic Streak65”? Whether it rings a bell or not, there’s a new version of this low-profile mechanical keyboard out, adding a handful of hardware enhancements. It’s brilliant. Granted, much of this brilliance is inherited. The Streak65 LP has the same compact dimensions and low-profile, linear Fnatic Speed switches as the original, so it was always going to feel as good under your fingers. Even without the literal lightspeed tech of optical-mechanical keyboards, the Streak65 LP feels fantastically fast, and what the Speed switches lack in the meatiness of a deeper, clickier switch design, they more than make up for in agility. The half-height keycaps help maintain this sensation of speed, much as they did on the first Streak65, though this time they’re made from a higher-quality type of plastic. These PBT keycaps (that’s polybutylene terephthalate, for the chemists) go for more of a durable feel than the original’s ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) keycaps, though the biggest benefit isn’t the prevention of hypothetical breakages. It’s the texture: a pleasantly matte, but not rough, finish that directly upgrades the basic slick finish of the Streak65’s keys. In addition to being less of an oil magnet, the new Streak65 LP is quieter too. Sort of, anyway - although the clickless acoustics of the Speed switches are themselves unchanged, Fnatic has stuffed the Streak65 LP’s innards with dampening foam, eliminating pings when bottoming out a press. Together with the ever-so-slightly thicker keycaps, this keeps the clacking mellow and controlled, still with enough audio feedback for typing but none of the avoidable waste sound. It just sounds so clean, which I suppose fits with the icy white model I received (there’s a black model as well). I’m more ambivalent about the final change from the Streak65, which is the coiled cable. I get that a lot of people like these, though I’m evidently not as much of a fan of the Turkey Twizzer aesthetic. Still, the whole cable is braided now, which is an improvement no matter how you look at it, and you can still detach the cable via USB-C for easy transportation (or cheaper replacement if the cable gets damaged). Otherwise, all the best bits of the Streak65 are still here. There’s the lightweight yet sturdy build quality, thanks mainly to an aluminium frame, plus customisable inputs and RGB lighting. There are no dedicated function keys, but that’s normal for the 65% form factor, and you at least get proper arrow keys and four macro keys for games. The former have media control functionality too, via the Fn key. It's probably not worth upgrading from the original keyboard if you already own it, particularly when the Streak65 LP is a pricey little board at £110 / $120. But then, that’s about what the standard Streak65 cost at launch, so you're not getting stiffed on the upgrades. The bigger concern for brand-new buye
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Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition developer Grove Street Games released a major update for the remastered collection of GTA games on Tuesday. Title update 1.03 for Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition seemingly fixes numerous visual bugs, including misspellings on textures and store signage, indoor and underwater rain, and Cesar’s notorious “hot dog” fingers. The infamously upscaled nut on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ Tuff Nuts donut shop, which was erroneously altered to not be nut-shaped, has also been fixed, Rockstar said in patch notes for the title update. San Andreas’ sky will also look more natural, thanks to newly added cloud cover. (The remastered version of San Andreas previously offered an unnatural, crystal-clear and unobstructed view of the entire landmass.) The full list of changes, which also address gameplay, camera, and crashing bugs, can be seen below. Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X in early November, but the launch did not go as expected. Fans quickly and vigorously complained about the quality of the remastered ports of Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas, citing numerous visual bugs and questionable visual upgrades. Rockstar apologized days after the games’ launch, saying, “The updated versions of these classic games did not launch in a state that meets our own standards of quality, or the standards our fans have come to expect. We have ongoing plans to address the technical issues and to improve each game going forward. With each planned update, the games will reach the level of quality that they deserve to be.” The first major update for Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition launched the same day as Rockstar’s apology to players, and that update also included a long list of gameplay-related bug fixes. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition Title Update Notes 1.03 General - PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Stability improvements Added the cinematic camera, which can be toggled by cycling through the camera modes when in game Fixed a number of misspellings on texture art/signage Fixed a number of instances where rain would appear indoors during cutscenes Grand Theft Auto III – The Definitive Edition Adjusted the rain during the Give Me Liberty intro cutscene so it matches what is visible during gameplay Improved the resolution of the signs on taxi front doors Fixed an issue where rain could be seen inside the mansion during the cutscene to the mission Cutting the Grass Fixed an issue where rain could be seen inside Donald Love’s apartment during the cutscene to the mission Liberator Fixed an issue where rain could be seen inside Luigi’s Club during the cutscene to the mission Don’t Spank Ma Bitch Up Fixed an issue where rain could be seen inside Joey’s Garage during the cutscene to the mission Cipriani’s Chauffeur Fixed an issue where rain could be seen inside during the cutscene to the mission Bomb Da Base: Act I
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Microsoft has sparked criticism for baking a "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) option into its Edge web browser, beginning in the US. The option allows Edge to suggest a sponsored BNPL payment method when customers begin entering their card numbers into retail sites - even if specific sites do not offer it natively. Microsoft has signed a deal with third-party BNPL company Zip (previously Quadpay) to feature the sign-up option on retail checkout pages at browser level, for any purchase Edge detects between $35 to $1000.Think how a browser may suggest a previously-used credit card when paying currently. It's here some Edge users are now seeing Zip's BNPL offer a
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Starfield, Bethesda's big upcoming foray into sci-fi for PC and Xbox Series X/S, has been shown off again in a fresh video.Today's seven-minute mini-documentary is
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Plus revamped UI and templates for beginners. An update to Dreams adds a new adventure, as well as a revamped creation UI.Ancient Dangers: A Bat's Tale is a third person dungeon crawler from Media Molecule playable in single player or co-op with a friend."Whether you're after frantic combat against strange and silly foes, puzzles to tickle your brain cells, or a showdown against a dragon with huge teeth (and an even bigger ego), Ancient Dangers: A Bat's Tale has you covered," reads a PlayStation Blog on the update. The story follows a pair of orcs seeking a special herb to cur
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Ratses to ratses, Tusk to tusk “Play against type,” Sin Vega advised in her well good piece on getting the most o
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poly-lt-wire-logo Image: Studio Pixel Punk/Humble Games A Zelda-like world with Metroidvania trappings in which time is always running out By Nov 30, 2021, 9:00am EST At the center of Arcadia lies the city’s wounded heart. A great meteor that crash-landed some time ago gave consciousness to the automatons of the world, but now, humans have it under lock and key. Without access to its precious resources, the majority of the city’s robots have become “unsighted” — mindless killers, robbed of their sensory control. It won’t be long before those that remain join them. A top-down action adventure game with slick, plucky pixel art whose flat perspective only occasionally frustrates, Unsighted starts out in a gloomily familiar underground lab. In a kind of Metroid reversal, you play the specimen Alma, an experimental robot and Arcadia’s last hope. From here, you’ll travel to various corners of a large, labyrinthine map, in search of five meteor shards. Each one lies at the very top or bottom of some kind of sprawling dungeon. For every generic cave or industrial area, there’s another, more interesting locale: an old museum or derelict aquarium, hinting at life before the human-made apocalypse. One dungeon introduces verticality, allowing you to fall down into rooms below, while another makes use of switches that you can flick on and off to shift areas between light and dark. Each dungeon also comes with a unique piece of equipment that unlocks new mechanics (and with which you can loop back to earlier areas to find shortcuts and secrets). In a familiar format for anyone who’s played a 2D Zelda before, you’ll collect the usual boomerang, hookshot, and bomb equivalents. Despite being well-worn territory, Unsighted consistently introduces enough complexity to keep its assortment of rock-pushing and switch-flipping puzzles fresh. Image: Studio Pixel Punk/Humble Games Combat is another familiar affair: stamina gauge, devastating parries, and lots of dash-and-rolls. The visually spectacular boss at the end of each dungeon is where the real challenge lies. You often have to contend with complex sequences of attack, along with a variety of smaller enemies in between. Bosses will fill the screen with lasers and projectiles, forcing you to find tiny safe spaces in the arena to wait out bombardment, or push on to deflect incoming fire with perfectly timed parries. And these are generous, satisfying counterattacks, letting you quickly blitz through the toughest of bosses once you’ve familiarized yourself with the patterns. With so many interlocking systems, Unsighted subscribes to a flashy kind of maximalism. You can unlock three refillable health potion
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Halo Infinite’s battle pass is still a source of frustration for many players but developer 343 Industries isn’t done changing it just yet. In the latest update to the multiplayer reward system, players will now get experience for playing a certain number of matches every day, the developer announced on Tuesday. After Halo Infinite’s new update, players will now get XP for the first six matches they play each day, with the biggest reward given for playing just one game. This was designed to help make sure players can kick off each of their play sessions with a sizable reward, 343 Ind
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New client-side improvements available in Edge Microsoft are now testing a feature to improve image quality in Xbox Cloud Gaming, their service which lets you play fancy new games through an Internet browser even on a cruddy old computer. Clarity Boost, as they call it, aims to make games look better through some client-side processing fanciness. The feature is currently only supported in a test version of the Microsoft Edge browser, planning to roll out to regular Edge soon. Playing fancy games even on a rubbi
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Music festivals have been absent from our lives for the past couple of years. The joys of muddy fields, blocked up toilets, crowds and crowds of people, and watching some sort of music act somewhere in the distance obscured by a load of flags have all been scuppered by the pandemic.For anyone suffering from withdrawal, there's Festival Tycoon courtesy of solo Austrian developer Driehaus, currently in early access on Steam. It's a cute little title that puts you backstage managing your own music festival, thankfully without your wellies getting sucked into a muddy hole.It's a wonder really that more sim games haven't tapped into the festival scene. Selling tickets; managing amenities; booking bands and sponsors; pleasing thirsty guests and demanding artists - this is all great fodder for a strategy game. And Festival Tycoon has all of these things, delivered in a clean and simplistic aesthetic. First you'll need to name your company and choose a logo, before starting your first festival proper in the surprisingly sunny scenery of Wales. A tutorial takes you through slapping down your key buildings: an entrance, a stage, a tent area, food and drinks stalls. Then it's on to booking sponsors, creating your lineup and setting the ticket prices.In some ways it's more puzzle game than strategy. With limited space, immovable scenery, and budget constraints, you'll need to choose which amenities are most needed to please guests, bands and sponsors alike. More sponsors means more cash to spend, but you'll need space for ugly billboards to keep them pleased.There's room for creativity though, both in the types of activity stands and food stalls, and in the music acts you sign. You can switch between the likes of rock, hip-hop and EDM, but grouping genres together will net a higher score. And it all softly lampoons the music industry with its weird, randomly generated band names. Perhaps metal act Gullible Human Baby Importance will headline the festival, or hip-hop group Awkward Computer will make an appearance.Once your layout is complete, your bands are ready to go, and your early bird tickets are sold, it's time to open the gates and let the punters in. But it's here the game falters. Going live means locking your festival in place; all that's left is to order around your mechanics to fix broken amenities, use security to break up fights, and ensure your janitors are regularly sweeping up after those nasty crowds leaving plastic cups lying around.There's just not enough to do at this point. With no way to fix any errors in the planning stages, you have to live with your mistakes. Maybe you didn't build enough toilets, or you forgot the medical tent, or missed off a sponsored billboard. Tough.What's more, it's oddly silent for a music game. The planning stage is accompanied only by a soft breeze and even once open, the festival is only loud once there's (original, jokey) music playing from the bands. It makes you want to book more acts next time, budget permitting of course. For that there's sandbox mode, which lets you live your fantasy without restriction and get really playful.The game is
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Upgrade your gaming and work station with this compact gaming monitor. After the mountain of deals we sifted through during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you'd think there'd be no more to go through, but we're here bringing you offers right to the end.If you're someone who's looking for some more visual spectacle and higher immersion when playing the latest games, or even just more screen space when working, we've got something for you. The Dell S2422HG 23.6-inch curved monitor. It's a 24-inch 165Hz monitor for just £139, reduced from £210.That's a great price for a high refresh rate gaming monitor, and it comes with some nifty features too. For example, thanks to its AMD FreeSync Premium technology, gameplay becomes even more seamless by eliminating screen tearing and judder. The screen's 1500R curvature is also clever, as it keeps the sides of the monitor in your peripheral vision, ensuring that you're seeing them straight-on so they look their best. Of course, it also makes for a more immersive experience, which is perfect for anyone who prefers gaming at higher FOVs.This monitor is especially efficient when it comes to quick response times; it features a 4ms GtG (Grey to Grey) response time - which is on the better side of average for VA panel monitors. This is made better with the 165Hz display, opening up the possibility of gaming at higher frame rates with even an entry-level gaming PC. This is great for games like Fortnite, Counter-Strike or Apex Legends, as the more fluid nature of the screen makes it easier to see and shoot fast-moving enemies. VA screens also have great contrast, so blacks will appear properly black rather than just a dark grey.When it comes to the appearance of the monitor frame, the Dell is built with a slim stand that can be adjusted both in terms of height and tilt. The base is angled as well, supporting the screen with a smaller footprint, making it a good choice for a variety of setups. It's also great for anyone who'd want two monitors for their setup, providing more screen space for work and general multitasking.Below you can see the deals we've spotted for this gaming monitor. The US deal isn't the exact same monitor as the one we outlined above, but it retains key features of the S2422HG, such as the slim stand, high refresh rate and curved design, and even has a quicker GtG response time of 2ms instead of 4ms. UK Dell S2422HG 23.6-inch curved gaming monitor - £139.00 at Amazon (was £209.99) US Dell Curved Gaming Monitor 27 Inch Curved Monitor - $239.99 at Amazon (was $329.99) Cyber Monday is coming to a close, but there's still time for you to net a few deals. If you're hunting specifically for PC products, check out our dedicated PC hub, and if it's something a bit more general than that, we've got multiple articles on our dedicated Cyber Monday page, highlighting the best deals we've seen. In case you don't want to miss any deals, both for the rest of today and just in general, you should head to Twitter and give Jelly Deals a follow. We tweet about the lates
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Several retailers are running Cyber Monday 2021 gaming deals right on the heels of their Black Friday discounts. While there weren’t many big gaming deals to look forward to this year with the ongoing console shortages, there were still some discounts to be found last week. Below we’ve compiled the best Cyber Monday 2021 gaming deals from retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Walmart, and Target. You’ll find deals on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X in our guide. We’ll also share some of the best Cyber Monday discounts we could find on gaming monitors, gaming TVs, and PC gaming deals. Table of contents Cyber Monday 2021 Nintendo Switch deals Cyber Monday 2021 PlayStation 5 deals Cyber Monday 2021 Xbox Series X deals Cyber Monday 2021 PC gaming deals Cyber Monday 2021 TV and monitor deals Cyber Monday Nintendo Switch deals Photo: Nintendo Even though Nintendo games hardly go on sale, you can find several discounts on games from multiple retailers this year. Finding a brand new Nintendo Switch OLED may prove more difficult, but as long as you’re looking for deals on Switch games and accessories, you can still find some discounts worth shopping for on Cyber Monday. Nintendo Switch, Switch Lite, and Switch OLED consoles If you’re looking to buy a Nintendo Switch OLED, that may be hard during Cyber Monday. However, we’ve been tracking Nintendo Switch restock updates for the past few weeks. Below are links to retailers and the most recent time they’ve announced a Nintendo Switch OLED restock. Nintendo Switch games Just about every retailer has a small assortment of games with Cyber Monday discount prices. Be sure to check out every retailer to see if they have a deal on the games you’re looking for. Amazon has select Nintendo Switch digital game downloads up to 67% off Best Buy is listing a handful of Nintendo Switch games up to $45 off GameStop has deals on several Nintendo Switch games Target has Nintendo Switch games at up to 60% off Walmart has a collection of Nintendo Switch games with discounts Nintendo Switch accessories There weren’t many deals on our favorite Nintendo Switch accessories on Cyber Monday, but if you’re looking for microSD cards, you’re in luck. Black Friday PS5 deals Image: PlayStation/Twitch It hasn’t become any easier to get a PlayStation 5 console this year. However, if you already own the console or need gifts for someone who does, you’ll still find some good PS5 Cyber Monday deals out there. PlayStation 5 console While you may not be able to find the PS5 anywhere in stock today, you can refer to our PS5 store restock list to keep track of the last time most retailers have had the system for sale. For the most up-to-date information on when you might be able to buy this system, check out our PS5 store restock tracker guide. PlayStation 5 games Several retailers have game deals on games for both the last-gen and current-gen consol
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Icarus, the intriguing-looking sci-fi survival game from DayZ creator Dean Hall, launches this Friday, 3rd December.You'll be able to buy a copy of the game in its version 1.0 launch build via Steam from 10pm UK time. It's normally priced £23.79, though there's a 10 percent discount for the next two weeks.The launch follows seven beta weekends where various aspects of the game were unlocked, bug-fixed and optimised. This period "worked really well for our team and the health of the game", developer RocketWerkz said today. Hall first announced Icarus back at E3 2020, when he described it as an alien planet survival game where you must go on miss
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Bonus XP for the first six matches you play each day Though Halo Infinite launched in decent shape (our Ed called it "
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Some libraries do 'ave 'em. I know, we've all got too many TV streaming subscriptions already. It's expensive and daunting. There's too much to choose from, too much to catch up on, and it oftens feels like you're paying for multiple iterations of the same thing. Juggling them is a chore, but it's increasingly something we'll have to do as we hop between new seasons of Ted Lasso and Succession.Far be it from me to suggest yet another subscription is the answer to this modern malaise of plenty - and yet, maybe it is? BritBox, a streaming service put together by the UK's dominant TV netwo
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If you use Microsoft Edge.  Microsoft Edge may not be everyone's favourite internet browser,
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Big Bad Wolf want time for additional polish and QA without sacrificing work-life balance I'm sure one day we'll get to masquerade as vampires, but it seems we'll be waiting a little longer than expected (again). Developers Big Bad Wolf have delayed Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong into May 2022. They say the extra three months will help ensure their team keep a healthy work-life balance, while having more time to add polish and go through QA. "Swansong features lots of characters, choices, dialogues, and opportunities to decide how the story plays and our ultimate focus on quality," Big Bad Wolf posted on Twitter. "With this in mind, we've made the difficult decision to delay the launch of Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong from February 2022 to May 2022." The blood-sucking World Of Darkness RPG was originally supposed to launch this year, before being pushed back into February. I certainly don't begrudge pandemic-related delays though, things are still pretty strange out there. "This wasn't a decision we took lightly, but one necessary to ensure the highest possible quality while retaining a healthy work-life balance for our team," the devs add. "Granted, the pandemic also threw a couple of wrenches into our planning, but this delay will allow us to apply some additional polish and give us some extra time for QA." Swansong's new release date is May 19th, 2022. At launch, it'll be exclusive to the Epic Games Store. Thinking about it, lots of big games are coming out in February (like Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, Destiny 2: The Witch King, and more), so it makes total sense to get out of their way. It'd be nice if publishers coordinated so we could get a nice spread of games throughout the year, rather than one large clump. Elsewhere in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade, the upcoming battle royale Bloodhunt has also been delayed until "early 2022". And Bloodlines 2 continues to live in some sort of limbo - the game swapped developers early this year, but Paradox Interactive still won't say who the new devs are. Fine, keep your secrets.
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Pokémon Go's fifth season has been named as the Season of Heritage, and will be themed around January's big release of Pokémon Legends: Arceus for Nintendo Switch. Artwork for the new season was teased by Pokémon Go developer Niantic last night, ahead of the season's full details arriving later this week. Fans had expected some kind of tie-in for Legends: Arceus - traditionally, Pokémon Go has featured some kind of event for big Pokémon game launches. But the theming of an entire season around the game, seemingly, is a big step up. What do we expect? Well, Legends: Arceus is set in an ancient version of the Sinnoh region, then named the Hisui region. Already, we've seen glimpses of some new Pokémon forms and evolutions exclusive to the Hisuian region. It's likely some of these will become available in Go. There's a fluffy-headed Fire/Rock-type Hisuian Growlithe, for example, a new Stantler evolution named Wyrdeer, and an alternative evolution for Scyther named Kleavor. More have also been teased - including via an Easter egg in this month's Pokémon Shining Diamond and Brilliant Pearl. The big thing, though, would be the debut of Arceus itself. This highly-anticipated Mythical Pokémon - said to be the god of all Pokémon -
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. As CD Projekt Red continue to fix up their fancy-but-oh-so-flawed futuristic RPG Cyberpunk 2077, they've confirmed that we should expect a "major update" next year, by the end of March. CDPR had previously said Cyberpunk 2077's next-gen console update would be out by then, but confirming another big patch for everyone then too is news. Not big news, but welcome news, especially considering how many new players the game has picked up since going half-price in Black Friday sales. "We are hard at work on the next-gen version of Cyberpunk, scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2022, alongside another major update for all platforms," CD Projekt Group president Adam Kiciński said in the business blast. "There is also ongoing work on the next-gen version of The Witcher 3 and the Cyberpunk expansion." He also noted that they are "[carrying] on with the transformation of our studio, which is affecting more and more production teams." They announced plans to shift to parallel game development back in March, simultaneously working on both their RPG series. Their new plans also involve not starting marketing until closer to launch (quite sensible), so it might be a while before we learn more about what they're up to. Cyberpunk 2077 is still half-price for a few short hours longer in the GOG Black Friday sale, while it's half-price in the Steam Autumn Sale for another day-and-a-bit. The game seems to have picked up a lot of new players during the sales. Its 25,000-odd new player reviews on Steam within the past 30 days together are 83% positive, higher than its overall rating." "You can't imagine what it means to me," 2077 quest director Paweł Sasko tweeted in response to the new positive reviews. Adam Kiciński recently told Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita that he belived in the long term, Cyberpunk 2077 would be perceived as a very good game and sell for years. Players who didn't buy the game at launch came in with full awareness of what the game was and wasn't, and
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343 has increased Halo Infinite's XP payout for the first six matches of each day in response to a backlash over progression.The change goes live when Halo Infinite updates later today. 343 has faced criticism from players ever since it launched the free-to-play multiplayer portion of Halo Infinite for the slow pace of progression through the battle pass, which is tied to completing challenges. (For more on how it all works, check out our guide to Halo Infinite's multiplayer challenge system.)Here's the new XP gain:1st Game = 300XP2nd Game = 200XP3rd Game = 200XP4th Game = 100XP5th Game = 100XP6th Game = 100XP7th+ Game = 50XP"We believe this increase will help address those slower initial payouts while also benefiting those of you jumping on each and every day," John Junyszek, Halo community manager at 343, said in a tweet.This is the second change to progression 343 has made since Halo Infinite MP went live.The initial change added daily "Play 1 Game" challenges, updated weekly challenges, and doubled the duration of 2XP boosts, but it was felt that step did not go far enough."After seeing how XP was earned with those changes, we noticed that players were starting their sessions with slower payouts than we'd like," Junyszek said."We know many of you want even larger changes and we're committed to doing so, but those will take time. We made this update based on data and player feedback, and we'll monitor its impact after we push it live tomorrow morning. As always, keep sharing your feedback!" While this new XP gain has been welcomed by players, it does not address some of the other key concerns with the way progression works in Halo Infinite, as well as its cosmetics.As Eurogamer reported yesterday, Halo Infinite's controversial Fracture: Tenrai limited-time event ends today at 6pm UK time.This also means the associated Fiesta event playlist goes dark until the Tenrai event returns to Halo Infinite in January 2022.There's no news yet on whether meaningful changes will be made to Fracture: Tenrai before its return. And there's no word from 343 yet on the heavily-criticised cosmetics, either.
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Content parity coming across all versions. Terraria: Journey's End is on its way to Nintendo Switch next year.The final update to Re-Logic's sandbox game, this release will bring parity of content between all console versions.The launch is on 4th January 2022, with the news announced in a Terraria State of the Game blog post. On why the game is launching early next year despite being almost complete, the post states: "While we are confident in this build, every launch has some bugs, and we just don't want to put everyone in a situation where there are issues that everyone is powerless to address."Elsewhere in the post, a number of bug fixes have been made to the PS4 and Xbo
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GOG to "focus more on its core business". The latest CD Projekt earnings report shows that digital storefront GOG.com has been losing money.The company's overall revenue has increased 38 percent ($34.7m) owing to sales of The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077, but GOG reports year-to-date losses of $2.21 million.During a presentation on CD Projekt's Q3 revenue for 2021, CFO Piotr Nielubowicz stated organisational changes would be made within GOG. "Regarding GOG, its performance does present a challenge, and recently we've taken measures to improve its financial standing," said Nielubowicz."First and foremost, we've decided that GOG should focus more on its core business activity, w
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Progression levels up mobile game and main Rocket League. Rocket League Swideswipe has now launched worldwide for both iPhones and Android devices.This is the same football-in-cars Rocket League you know and have probably played before, but now retuned for mobile play.Matches are now two-minute-long 1v1 or 2v2 affairs, for instance, played out using touchscreen controls and a new side-on perspective - hence the name. Sideswipe has been in testing for much of this year, although only available in certain regions. Today it puts on its big boy boots and launches in the wild across the world.Download the game now and you'll find Swideswipe in "Pre-Season" mode, where you'll earn XP for both it and the main Rocket League when logged in using the same Epic Games account. Each win in Sideswipe also logs a "Bonus Win" in Rocket League.Tempted to try? You can download it now via the App Store or Google Play.
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Successor to one of the most popular mice of all time. Few mice in the world are as well known as the Razer DeathAdder. Well, maybe Stuart Little, but that's not the type of mice we're discussing here today. Today, we are going to talk about the DeathAdder V2, the successor to the much beloved original and currently going for a fantastic discount. The Razer DeathAdder V2 is currently priced at £30 on Amazon UK. That's over 57 percent off from its original price of around £70, making it superb value for money. The DeathAdder V2 builds on the design of the immensely popular original that sold over 10 million units. It has the same basic shape and size as the original but weighs a little less at 82g, making it even more comfortable to operate no matter the grip style. Razer DeathAdder V2 - £29.99 at Amazon (was £69.99) The DeathAdder V2 makes use of Razer's optical switches. These use an infrared light beam to register a click, making them exceptionally quick and also extremely reliable as the issue of double clicking that often plagues other mice with mechanical switches simply cannot occur with this design. This mouse also uses an upgraded optical sensor with 20,000 DPI and 650 IPS tracking speed. This allows for improved sensor performance, which in turn increases accuracy and responsiveness. Razer has also altered the braided cable of the DeathAdder V2, making it more flexible which helps produce minimum drag during movement. Other features included a clicky, tactile scroll wheel, 8 programmable buttons, 100 percent PTFE mouse feet,
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The latest high profile Twitch departure. Twitch streamer Ludwig has signed exclusively to YouTube.The streamer set the record for Twitch's new individual subscriber record during a month long livestream earlier this year, and has since become one of the most popular creators on the platform.His move to YouTube follows the likes of DrLupo and TimTheTatMan who signed exclusively to YouTube earlier this year. Ludwig announced the move with a short skit that sees him transferring from a purple car to a red car (the colours of Twitch and YouTube) and poking fun at Twitch's DMCA music strikes ("don't you get in trouble for playing music," says his friend. "Not in this car," Ludwig replies).Twitch responded to Ludwig's tweet saying "You're a mogul in every sense, Ludwig. Best of luck and keep doing big things out there." You're a mogul in every sense, Ludwig. Best of luck and keep doing big things out there.— Twitch (@Twitch) November 29, 2021 Ludwig started streaming in 2019 but grew to prominence earlier this year with a 31 day streaming subathon, where he would continue streaming as long as viewers kept subscribing. The event set a new subscriber record of 283,066.The streamer is already popular on YouTube, with 2.09 million subscribers currently and plenty of content.YouTube is seeking to gain further traction in game streaming, not only by poaching Twitch's b
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Blood Bowl 3 and Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong now have new release windows, after a further delay to both games from publisher Nacon. In September, Nacon delayed the early access launch of murderous sports game Blood Bowl 3 indefinitely, after previously postponing plans for an August debut.Blood Bowl 3 will now release "later in 2022", Nacon said today, admitting that its tentative plans for a February launch had now been pushed back. Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong has been beset by a similar hold-up - and again, this isn't the first d
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PlayStation 5 owners can at last add BBC iPlayer to their list of media apps today.The BBC confirmed iPlayer's roll-out on PS5 this morning, just over a year after the console first launched. As you'd expect, the app offers streaming in up to UHD quality for supported programs (and if you have the right screen attached). To download iPlayer on PS5, head to the Media tab on your PS5 home screen, then select BBC iPlayer from the All Apps section."We're always working to make iPlayer available across as many platforms as we can, and we're delighted
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With the all-essential RGB lighting.  With Cyber Monday in full swing, SteelSeries, a brand known for high-quality gaming peripherals, has a wide range of products on sale, including the Rival 3 Wireless gaming mouse. Right now you can grab it on sale for just £27.50 (a huge 50% off RRP) at Amazon UK. The Rival 3 Wireless features year-long battery life (400+ hours), Bluetooth and 2.4GHz wireless support, a custom 18,000 CPI sensor, rated for 60m clicks, and most importantly, has RG
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Work on paid expansion "ongoing". CD Project has provided an update on the continuing post-launch development of its troubled Cyberpunk 2077, confirming a "major update" is planned to launch alongside the game's long-awaited next-gen versions in Q1 2022.As part of its third quarter 2021 report, CD Projekt said it's currently "hard at work" on Cyberpunk 2077's PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions - which were originally due to launch this year before the studio made the decision to push their release into early next year - and that these would be accompanied by a "major update" for all platforms.CD Projekt is yet to detail what this will include, but Cyberpunk hasn't received an
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YouTube Gaming has another new star in streamer Ludwig Ahgren, the popular streamer who started off on Twitch, where he gained notoriety for his consistently entertaining streams and his ridiculous 31-day streaming marathon. Ludwig announced his move to YouTube on Monday with a short skit that ends with the YouTube Gaming branding and the name of his channel. The skit itself starts out innocuously with a few irreverent jokes as Ludwig and his friend are driving in a car. Eventually they park the car and get out and we see that it was purple the whole time. After a few more jokes, the purple car explodes and Ludwig and his friend get in a red car, commenting that it’s basically the same car anyway. When Ludwig turns on the radio, his friend asks if he gets in trouble for playing music
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Age of Empires 4’s first balance patch is finally here and it’s bringing dozens of changes to the game’s most powerful (and annoying) units. On top of balance, developer Relic Entertainment also used this patch to fix some of the game’s biggest bugs. The patch went out on Monday, along with a huge patch notes post that details each of the update’s new changes. The update’s most anticipated changes are huge nerfs to the French civilization, which has been the strongest in the game since it was released last month. The French Hulk ship — an extremely powerful naval unit that it gets before every other civilization in the game — has been nerfed by reducing its armor significantly. The French’s other major strength was their cavalry, which got a slightly less direct nerf.
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The Cooler Master Hyper 212 is one of the most popular CPU tower coolers on the market today, known for its affordability and performance. The RGB Black Edition maintains the value and performance quotient and adds a generous dose of style on top. Now, thanks to some nifty Cyber Monday deals, you can grab this swankier version of the 212 for just a little bit more over the original model. The Hyper 212 RGB Black Edition is currently priced at just £30, which is a sizable 26 percent discount over its usual £41 price. This is just a few pounds more over the standard as well as the EVO version of the original Hyper 212, making it vastly better value. The Hyper 212 RGB Black Edition is a standard 120mm tower cooler suitable for CPUs in the 65-1
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Also save �50 on the 2TB and �100 on the 4TB models. A good portable SSD is something we can all use, making it a great purchase for yourself or as a gift. The WD My Passport has been one of our top recommendations due to its combination of price and performance, and now it's cheaper than ever to get this excellent portable drive thanks to some amazing Cyber Monday discounts.If you're looking for the more affordable option, the 1TB version of the My Passport drive is a great option, currently selling for £100 (down from £130) on Amazon as well as on the WD website. For those seeking more space for their files, the 2TB option is selling for £180 (down from £230) on Amazon and o
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An OLED television can single-handedly elevate any home theatre or gaming setup but for a long time has been out of reach for many due to its high price point. Not anymore though, as thanks to this great deal on the new LG A1, what was already an affordable entry point into the OLED world is now almost too good to be true. How great of a deal, you ask? Well, if you were to purchase the 55-inch LG A1 from John Lewis, you only have to pay £779. That's £220 off its usual sticker price and you get a 5-year guarantee as part of the package. And if you want more peace of mind, an additional £80 will give you five years of accidental damage protection, which also includes screen burn-in for OLED televisions. The LG A1 is the company's newest addition to its
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�90/$100 for incredible-sounding open-back headphones. Sennheiser's HD 598 and 599 series of open-back headphones are legendary for their neutral sound signature, comfy velour earcups and wide sound stage. I've owned a pair of HD 598 SE headphones for six years, and I still use them regularly - whenever I'm not obligated by my job to test out a new set of gaming cans! So I was excited to see a set of HD 599 SEs pop up as an Amazon US lightning deal for $100 in the US, down from a list price of $200 - and even more excited to see these headphones also available at 50 percent off at Amazon UK. They're already 46 percent claimed on Amazon US by the time I started this article, so
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Both the New York Times and The Guardian reported on Monday that Disney’s November launch of a Hong Kong version of Disney Plus arrived with most of the streaming platform’s content, one notable work was excluded: “Goo Goo Gai Pain,” a 2005 episode from season 12 of The Simpsons. The episode centers around Marge’s sister Selma pretending to be married to Homer while attempting to adopt a child from China. “Goo Goo Gai Pain” includes scenes in which the family visits the embalmed tomb of Chairman Mao; Homer calls the leader “a little angel that killed 50 million people”; a Chinese minder named Madame Wu (Lucy Liu) mocks Tibetan independence; Homer tricks Chinese soldiers by pretending to be a Buddha statue; and the family walks through Tiananmen Square to find a plaque
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Sea of Thieves’ next season is full of fun features. While none of them are as big or impressive as, say, a crossover campaign with Pirates of the Caribbean, they all work together to help the sandbox of Sea of Thieves feel more lively. From scurrying rats to cannons on rowboats to a host of quality of life updates, Season 5 is set to add a lot of spice to the normal Sea of Thieves formula. The first change is pretty small, but great for shenanigans. The speaking horn, which usually projects a player’s voice, can now be reversed. This is perfect to scheme and whisper to nearby allies without alerting foes. It’s easier to set up ambushes, betray foes over a fort, or debate strategy, which is a great way to help players make more elaborate plans. Pirates can now bury their treasure
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One of best gaming headsets with Hi-Res audio. SteelSeries, a brand known for high-quality gaming peripherals, has a wide range of products on sale for Cyber Monday, including one of their flagship headsets, the 61453 Arctis Pro + GameDAC. Right now you can grab it on sale for just £139 at Amazon UK. What's great about the Arctis Pro is the dedicated hardware DAC and headphone amp which transforms any PS5, PS4 or PC into a high-performance audio source by bypassing the low fidelity, poor quality DACs found in typical console controllers, USB headsets, and PC sound cards. This DAC also supports High-Res audio, allowing you to play up to 96 kHz / 24-bit audio with no downsampling.
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If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. Ever since Halo debuted at Macworld in 1999, the franchise has been a staple of the game industry. Master Chief has become an iconic hero, carrying the series on his shoulders for 20 years. In that time, we’ve heard of quite a few Halo projects that never saw the light of day. That’s far from unique in the game industry, and we wouldn’t be surprised if there were even more attempts that never became public knowledge. To celebrate Halovember, we decided to look back on those we know. From an attempt to see Master Chief on a handheld console to collaborations with director Peter Jackson, the history of Halo projects cut short is vast and fascinating. Halo MMO Years before the 2009 re
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If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. To describe Bone, Jeff Smith’s 55-issue comic series published between 1991 and 2004, as a fantasy series is technically correct, but far from complete. The dragon-laden tale is high fantasy, but less of the classic Western knights and swords fairy tale and more the Ghibli-esque yarn of young women with strange destinies and dark creatures in the woods. It’s also a comedy adventure in the tradition of Carl Barks’ duck comics, with drinking and gambling thrown in. It’s also a little bit of a talking animal book? Bone defies categorization, yet developed a firm grip on success, particularly in places where very few American comics had found success before. Although Smith didn’t
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A few of these picks normally sell at over �100 too. With Black Friday over, Cyber Monday is your last chance to bag a bargain and if you're looking for a gaming mouse to upgrade your PC set-up, then you've come to the right place. If you're just using a PC for work or browsing the internet, you might be content with a standard mouse. But when it comes to serious gaming sessions, having a gaming mouse can truly change the game, offering new options, improving your performance, and also providing extra comfort from long gaming sessions. That said, a gaming mouse is usually pricier than a typical mouse, all the more so if you're opting for a wireless one, although gamers who value responsiveness overall will want to stick with a wired one. Fortunately, Cyber Monday deals have got some big savings so that even the most expensive gaming mice can be yours for under £100. Here's our five picks from a range of highly regarded gaming peripheral manufacturers. 1. Razer Naga Pro Gaming Mouse - £87.99 (was £149.99) The best gaming mouse is also usually one of the most expensive which makes a discount of more than 40 percent a cracking deal. The ergonomically designed wireless Naga Pro features up to 20 programmable buttons allowing macros quite literally at your thumb and fingertips, with swappable side plates to customise as you need. With over 100 hours of battery life and a 20K DPI Optical Sensor, you'll barely differentiate it from a wired mouse. 2. SteelSeries 62593 Prime Wireless Mouse - £49.99 (was £129.99) With a deep discount of over 60
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Includes 45% off the Roccat Elo 7.1 Surround Sound Gaming Headset. If you missed out on Black Friday weekend, there's still a chance to bag some deals this Cyber Monday, especially if you're looking for PC gaming peripherals as Roccat has a decent range of its headsets, keyboards and mice on offer at Amazon UK, where you can save up to half price off, until the end of the day. Roccat is a highly regarded German manufacturer of PC gaming peripherals. It's also been owned by Turtle Beach, who you will also know for their high quality console headsets, though the two companies have stuck to specialising for PC and console respectively (although you'll find the wired headsets are still compatible with PlayStation, Xbox and Switch). These deals include a great range depending on your preference, whether you're after a full-fat mechanical keyboard or the smaller TenKeyLess (TKL) version, wired or wireless options, as well as some stylish RGB lighting that complements any PC set-up. Roccat Elo X Wired Gaming Headset - £27.99 (was £39.99) Roccat Elo 7.1 Surround RGB Wired Gaming Headset - £32.99 (was £59.99) Roccat Elo 7.1 Air Wireless Gaming Headset (Black) - £59.99 (was £89.99) Roccat Elo 7.1 Air Wireless Gaming Headset (White) - £59.99 (was £89.99) Roccat Syn Pro Air Wireless 3D Audio RGB Gaming Headset - £89.99 (was £129.99) Roccat Vulcan 120 Mechanical RGB Gaming Keyboard - £99.99 (was £149.99) Roccat Pyro Mechanical RGB Gaming Keyboard - £59.99 (was £89.99) Roccat Magma Membrane RGB Gaming Keyboard - £39.99 (was £49.9
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Including Digital Foundry-approved picks! It's the final hour of Cyber Monday and if you're still trying to find a good quality, affordable headset, our bite-sized guide for the best gaming headsets under £100 is here to help. From SteelSeries to Logitech, here are our top headset picks from the Cyber Monday sales. SteelSeries Arctis Prime The SteelSeries Arctis Prime, a headset that despite having missed out on Digital Foundry's best headsets for 2021 previously, has since been stated as one 'well worth considering' due to its discounted price of £69.99, and it's still up for grabs right now. Overall you can expect a decent neutral sound quality. The headset is great for blocking out a moderate amount of background sound, so long as you can get a good seal around your ears. SteelSeries Arctis Prime - £69.99 at Amazon (was £99.99) Razer Kraken X The Razer Kraken X boasts 7.1 surround sound for positional audio with precision, a lightweight design of 250g and compatible with multiple platforms. Digital Foundry have previously dubbed it the 'one of the best entry-level gaming headsets on the market'. Razer Kraken X - £26.29 at Amazon (was £49.99) Fnatic React Alternatively, there's the Fnatic React, a headset that, as Digital Foundry puts it, provides 'great passive noise isolation, making these an ideal choice for playing competitive or immersive games where you don't want to be disturbed by the world around you'. It's also Digital Foundry's pick for best value gaming headset. Fnatic REACT - £42.99 at Amazon (was £59.99) More of the best Cyber Monday gaming headsets under £100 HyperX Cloud II - £58.49 at Amazon (was £74.99) Logitech G432 - £29.28 at Amazon (was £69.99) US SteelSeries Arctis Prime - $69.00 at Amazon (was $99.99) Razer Kraken X - $29.99 at Amazon (was $49.99) Fnatic REACT - $48.75 at Amazon with 25 per cent off coupon applied at checkout (was $64.99) Hyper X Cloud - $59.99 at Amazon (was $99.99) Logitech G432 - $39.00 at Amazon If you're look
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Save 35% on a Rock Paper Shotgun yearly subscription this Black Friday! If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Here we are, chums, Cyber Monday. Ahh, how the mighty have fallen. What was once an interesting online addition to the Black Friday feeding frenzy, is now a withered and useless appendage. We all shop online now and Black Friday lasts for at least three months of the year. Well, either that or I’m in some kind of deals post writing, Groundhog Day-esque limbo. Whatever the case may be, Cyber Monday is still a weird 90s relic, like many other things with cyber as a prefix. Cybergoth, for example, a sub-sub-culture whose chief point of relevance in the modern era is having their entire aesthetic appropriated by gaming peripheral manufacturers. You can’t move for black and neon doohickeys with LEDs dripping from every orifice. While I’ll be the first to argue that anything is better than the beige everything of yesteryear, sometimes you need to be a bit grown-up and accessorise your PC with reliable, understated, no-nonsense black. Like this HyperX Cloud Alpha S headset which is now discounted at Amaz
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Save 35% on a Rock Paper Shotgun yearly subscription this Black Friday! If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word odyssey, I’m expecting something grand, something mythic, something literally homeric. Samsung’s line of monitors certainly contains models that fit the bill, including the cyclopean Odyssey G9. Sadly, such excess isn’t always practical. Your desk just isn’t big enough or, for some reason, you don’t have a grand just sitting around to spend on a monitor. Despite that, you still want to have a little odyssey, as a treat. An odyssette, maybe? Which I’ve just discovered is a real word and not something I made up for a bad gag. Well, don’t worry, chums, I’m here with a deal on the much more manageable Samsung Odyssey G5, for when you’re feeling just a little bit epic. It’s a US-only deal, I’m afraid, but Ameri-chums can grab the G5 direct from Samsung for $250, that’s $130 off the regular asking price. Samsung Odyssey G5 gaming monitor - $250 from Samsung (was $380) This monitor may be on the less herculean end of the Odyssey range, but it’s still a large lad at 27”. The QHD resolution, that’s 1440p or 2560x1440 for the folks who like numbers, means that you still have a nice pixel density at the size without requiring the huge graphical grunt of 4K. The big selling point is the rather severe 1000R curvature, which supposedly matches the contour of the human eye and provides a viewing experience with minimal strain. Black Friday is over but many of its best deals remain available on Cyber Monday, so check out our Cyber Monday deals hub for our curated picks of offers on all kinds of PC gaming hardware. We're also keeping track of the best Cyber Monday mouse and keyboard deals, the best Cyber Monday SSD deals, the best Cyber Monday gaming monitor deals and many more.
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Plus, fireworks! Rats! A cannon on a rowboat! More! With the season of spooky fruit mutilation behind us, Sea of Thieves is readying to trade one lot of festivities for another, and will be getting into the spirit of celebration when its jam-packed fifth season gets underway this Thursday, 2nd December.Unlike Sea of Thieves's third and fourth seasons, which went all-in with their big headline features - the Pirates of the Caribbean Tall Tales and Sunken Kingdom map expansion respectively - Season Five is focussed on delivering a pleasingly diverse grab bag of slightly less flashy but no-less-welcome additions and quality of life improvements.One such long-requested new feature will finally enable pirates to bury their own treasure, leaving their mark on the Sea of Thieves for other pirates to discover. Treasure maps are generated on-the-fly as players start to hide their on an island, and these can be posted on quest boards newly added to outposts and sea posts. Sea of Thieves Season Five - Official Content Update Video. Once a map has been submitted, other crews can accept it and go on a mini-adventure of your own making - and any treasure successfully find will be award gold and renown to both the questing crew and the pirates that buried it. Let the tidal wave of treasure maps featuring crudely draw male genitalia fashioned from bright red crosses commence!That is far from everything in Season Five, however. It also introduces a selection of new and improved tools, including themed fireworks, purchasable from the Merchant Alliance, which essentially appear to function as giant (and extremely pretty) sky emojis. These are joined by handy new flares to fire out of cannons, including a red one - perhaps useful for alerting your crew mates to an incoming threat should they be elsewhere on a large island - and a white one bright enough to illuminate its surroundings, ideal for a bit of night time treasure hunting.There's also an upgraded speaking trumpet, which can be used to whisper directly to another player without being heard by anyone else
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Plenty of capacity and raw speed to run the heaviest modern games. The Amazon Cyber Monday sale will soon be coming to an end, and if you're still on a hunt to pick up some last minute PC-related bargains, you'll be pleased to know there's still a huge number of deals available, including deep discounts on storage and peripherals. We had some fantastic discounts over the Black Friday weekend on super-fast SSD storage for both PC and PS5 owners. But if you missed out on those, don't f
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Magic Mike’s Last Dance will be the third movie in the Magic Mike epic trilogy about male strippers and the struggles of small business owners. The new film was announced by series star Channing Tatum, who tweeted photo of the script on Tuesday. While Tatum didn’t reveal any details about the movie, the script is written by Reid Carolin, the writer of the first two movies in the series. The third movie will also be directed by Steven Soderbergh, who directed the original movie in 2012 but did not return for the 2015 sequel, Magic Mike XXL. Since Tatum is the one who seemingly announced
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Codes will be first-come, first-served, and in limited quantities, so here's how to get it If you've been on the fence about whether to get an RPS subscription on the cheap this Black Friday / Cyber Monday period, our latest free game announcement might just be the thing you need to tip you over the edge. Hot off the heels of our Darkest Dungeon giveaway, the next free game we're offering to existing RPS premium subscribers is the all-new open world strategy RPG, Wartales. Wartales is the next game from the makers of Northgard, and it launches into early access in just a couple of days time on December 1st. We'll have a full review of the early access version up on the site very soon, but we've loved what we've played of it so far. In case you missed our earlier coverage, Wartales is an open world tactics RPG that sees you take control of a group of mercenaries making their way through a plague-ridden medieval world. Your goal is to survive by feeding and paying your band of mercs, and when we spoke to the devs about it, they said you'll have plenty of freedom in how you go about it. This is not a game that bogs you down in tedious sidequests, and you can "pretty much play the way you want," game director Nicolas Cannasse told us. "You can explore, fight bandits, or be bandits yourself." Nate (RPS in peace) also loved the low fantasy setting when he played a preview build of it back in August: "Low fantasy, to me, offers all the grim delights of medieval history, without being weighed down by any need to reflect the actual events of the past," he wrote. "It's a subgenre that lends itself particularly well to stories of murky people doing murky things, and people don't get much murkier than mercenaries." If that sounds like your cup of medieval stew, Wartales will be available at no extra cost to RPS premium subscribers on the same day it comes out, Wednesday December 1st. We're announcing this key drop in advance again because, much like our Darkest Dungeon giveaway, it's a smaller key drop than usual. Codes will only be available in limited quantities, and we wanted to make sure everyone has an equal chance to grab one to avoid disappointment. These keys have kindly been provided by Wartales' developers, Shiro Games, and they'll be available on a first-come, first-served bas
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White, Midnight Black and Cosmic Red are all enjoying a small discount. Managed to get hold of a PlayStation 5 over Black Friday week? Congrats! You might however also be looking for an extra DualSense controller since the old PS4 DualShock controllers aren't compatible with PS5 games (although you can still use them to play backward-compatible PS4 games). Fortunately, you can get these new wireless controllers for a little less this Cyber Monday and Base has them priced the cheapest. While retaining the classic PlayStation controller layout since the original DualShock controller, the bulkier DualSense also comes packed with all-new next-gen features, notably its much more immersive haptic feedback that really makes you feel the subtle differences between elements such as a car engine, different kinds of guns or the subtle patter of rain. Its adaptive triggers can also change the pressure of how you squeeze them, and in the case of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, can even be used to provide primary and secondary fire on the same trigger based on how tight you pull back. And let's not forget the built-in mic and speaker so you can use voice chat even without a headset. All this extra functionality does however make the DualSense a pretty pricey official controller at £59.99 RRP. Base has however shaved off just a little over £5. Sure, it's not a massive reduction, but it is still the cheapest you can get one of these controllers right now. While you can't officially change the white faceplates of the PS5 just yet, Sony also recently released a couple more
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Pokémon have always been a wondrous concept, and it’s no surprise that many people who play the games want to live in that world. Who among us hasn’t expressed a wish to be the very best, like no one ever was? Even if we didn’t become famous Pokémon trainers or go on to battle the Elite Four, it’d still be great to live in the world. Just think of the variety of pets you could have, and all the iconic worlds you could visit. So it’s no surprise that the Twitter game “Tweet like Pokémon were real,” originally posted by user nellychillin, has taken off. There are over 17,000 quote tweets, and people are just having some good, wholesome fun coming up with these alternate universe tweets. Some of these tweets are about the majesty of encountering Pokémon during just a normal day. Frankly, I would be honored to have Team Rocket’s Meowth tail me in an attempt to con me into investing in cryptocurrency, but I guess I’m just built different. That’s not to say that a world with Pokémon would be simple. There are still lots of complications that would occur in everyday life, from the mundane (path blocked by a Snorlax) to the apocalyptic (Pokémon Gods get loose thanks to a guy like Giovanni). Then there’s a genre of Tweet that I’ll generally refer to as “slice-of-life.” There are tons of great jokes riffing on playing through the campaign of Brilliant Diamond or Shining Pearl, or just enjoying the eccentricities of the Pokémon world. I
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69 / yes please / The Gibson A very merry Cyber Monday to you, reader dear, from all of us here at RPS! I hope you and your loved ones are together as you celebrate 90s cyberspace, cyberculture, cyberpunk, hackers, kewl d00dz, and netizens. Perhaps you've visited your subnet neighbours to sing Front Line Assembly carols and share mulled Jolt Cola. Maybe you're gathered round an overclocked Pentium 3 to warm your datagloves and roast Doritos. Whatever you're doing, please put on your mirrorshades to enjoy some of our cyberwords from across the years. A few years back, Sin Vega jacked into cyberpunk vampire game Bloodnet. It's a rare game that would excite a traditional RPG fan as well as a genre cynic like me - an unforgiving, non-linear, party-based adventure with turn-based combat and minimal handholding, set in a world devoid of goddamn elves. Instead, it's set in the kind of future that only the early 1990s could conjure up. Much as our understanding of Christmas is rooted heavily in Dickens and Victorian England, to me the spirit of Cyber Monday is in the 90s. So here's Alex Wiltshire looking at the making of Hypnospace Outlaw's 90s Internet in The Mechanic. Hypnospace Outlaw is a game about surfing a fictional 1999 internet, a web of GeoCities-like pages made by a community of weirdo artists, rock stars, scammers, edgy teens, pastors, hackers and spiritualists. It's funny, bizarre, poignant, and sometimes dumb, just like the early internet that it spoofs. And if you like that, you'll enjoy Alice Bee's look at some great ASCII art in video game guides. I used to sit up reading these in the 90s and 00s, a little goblin who wasn't yet good enough to complete these games without help. You reached out to me, guides writers, and you never even knew it. And the true marker of the dedication of these artisans can be seen in one thing: the ASCII art of game titles they put in at the top of their work. A true craft that has died out but deserves to be seen and celebrated. Rocketing into the future of cyberspace, Karen Gillan wrote about System Shock and Shodan, the girl who wanted to be god. She's not just a machine that disobeys us. She's a machine that wants to be us – a creator. This resonates back to the original technofear work, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. Its point wasn't just that technology is dangerous – but man shouldn't create life, shouldn't play God. We should know our limits. Shodan extrapolates from that base point: in begetting the intelligence of Shodan, we played God. Then, by breeding her own creatures, our creation attempts to do exactly the same thing. In one of the more memorable quotes, found in Prefontaine's notepad in the belly of the Many on the way to being devoured by Shodan's out-of-control children who've gone from goo to a complicated (if murderous) species in forty years: "We shouldn't let Shodan play God. It's clear that she's too good at it". She really is, and that's the warning of Shock. She's not just a machine that's out of control, but a machine that's out of control in exactly the same way we were – hubristically pl
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Plus you can get one month free of Game Pass Ultimate! Cyber Monday 2021 has been dishing out deals for gaming and tech products all day long and we've been eagle-eyeing the best bargains so you can get the most bang for your buck, before the sales end at midnight.This last quarter of the year has been a busy time for new game releases, which means plenty of older Xbox game titles have been discounted - including games released earlier this year. And if you've already picked up a bunch of these heavily reduced titles for the latest or last-gen consoles, you might now be wondering where you're possibly going to store all your games and save files? Well, the next port of call following those purchases is a new storage solution to actually be able to hold and install all those games. That's why this deal on the WD_Black D30 1TB game drive SSD, compatible with Xbox Series X and Series S, is the perfect solution!Typically your external drive of choice would be a HDD, but with this SSD you'll be able to ditch those slow speeds, taking advantage of faster load times thanks to its optimised speeds of 900MB/s, creating less disparity between the Series X's internal and external SSDs. Simply put, you spend less time waiting and more time playing. It's not all about the speed though, the actual storage size of this drive is 1TB meaning you can store a lot of games. In combination with the internal storage, this doubles the storage capacity for games with a total of 2TB to play around with. Since this drive is primarily for backwards compatible games from previous generations, you can save more of that precious internal storage for newer Series S/X titles whilst keeping favourites from the past on this drive. Alternatively, you can use this expanded storage to store Series X/S games to free up the internal drive for any next-gen game you want to play. And thanks to the SSD's speeds, you'll be able to transfer those games back to the internal drive at a rate several times faster than a standard HDD! You won't need to worry about this drive looking out of place either, because with its stylistic aesthetic and compact design, this SSD visually looks the part, easy to tuck away alongside your Xbox hardware. Below we've included the deal available on this SSD (which includes 1 month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate), along with an alternate option for those of you looking more for higher storage capacity than storage speed. There's also options for those of you across the pond too. UK WD_BLACK D30 1TB Game Drive SSD for Xbox - £116.99 at Amazon (was £178.52) WD_BLACK D10 8TB Game Drive - £144.99 at Amazon (was £241.99) US WD_BLACK 1TB D30 Game Drive SSD for Xbox - $159.99 at Amazon (was $169.99) WD_BLACK 8TB D10 Game Drive - $229.99 at Amazon With Cyber Monday soon coming to a close, you probably won't have much time left to go deal-hunting out in the wild. So if you want to check out what else there is available for your Xbox, be sure to pop on over to our dedicated Xbox page. Whilst you're here
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Save 35% on a Rock Paper Shotgun yearly subscription this Black Friday! If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. A moth in the hand is worth two larger moths Back in August, which is obviously an unfathomable length of time ago, the adverts for a mobile game called Merge Mansion went semi-viral on Twitter. The post was not unwarranted. The twists, the turns, the drama: it all makes Merge Mansion seem like it must be bananas. In that original advert, a bride gets out of a taxi to find her house (and pres
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A detachable mic and long battery life makes it an ideal portable gaming headset. Cyber Monda
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CD Projekt’s “next-gen” versions of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 are coming in the first half of 2022, the company said Monday as part of a quarterly earnings update. The publisher-developer said that a “major update for all platforms” for Cyberpunk 2077 will arrive alongside the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of the open-world action-adventure game. Cyberpunk 2077’s next big update and its new-console versions will arrive sometime in the first quarter of next year, said Adam Kiciński, president and joint CEO of CD Projekt, in a message to investors. That’s a bit more clarity than CD Projekt offered just last month, when it warned that all updates planned for
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Save 35% on a Rock Paper Shotgun yearly subscription this Black Friday! If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editori
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