November 2022

Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse will release digitally on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch on March 9, 2023.

The fourth entry in the beloved survival horror franchise, the game's plot concerns Ruka Minazuki, whose two friends died in an abandoned sanatorium on Rogetsu Isle. She returns to discover the truth of what happened. You will play as several characters to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Fatal Frame's combat is centered around taking pictures of ghosts with a magical camera, known as the Camera Obscura. Enemies can take different kinds of damages based on the film used and the composition of the shot. This version of the game adds a photo mode, alongside the usual graphic enhancements.

Mask of the Lunar Eclipse was originally developed and published for the Wii by Grasshopper Manufacture and Tecmo (before the merger with Koei). Nintendo declined to publish the game in the United States and Europe. This new version, announced at a Nintendo Direct earlier this year, will be the game's first official release in the west.

Purchasing the game at release or two weeks after can get you a Marie Rose (from Dead or Alive) themed costume. If you have save data from Fatal Frame: The Maiden of Black Water on your device, you can pick up a Camera Obscura hat. A digital deluxe edition comes with a dinner party costume set and a digital art book.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 boasts a ton of weapons and attachments to gear up with, and sometimes customizing the most optimal weapon loadout in the Gunsmith can be a bit overwhelming. Here we recommend some of Modern Warfare 2's best multiplayer weapon loadouts to help get you started in multiplayer.

M4

One of Modern Warfare 2's most reliable choices for multiplayer is the M4 assault rifle, which is an easy-to-handle assault rifle with great range. The recommended attachments will help give you the best performance for mid- to long-range combat.

Recommended M4 attachments:

• Muzzle: RF Crown 50
• Barrel: Hightower 20" Barrel
• Optic: Cronen Mini Red Dot
• Rear Grip: Sakin ZX Grip
• Underbarrel: FSS Sharkfin 90

Kastov 762

I cannot believe I'm writing this, but Microsoft has released a ride-on Halo Warthog designed for kids ages three and up. The 24-volt vehicle has two seats and even has the Gauss Cannon on the back, which has been rigged with a laser tag blaster. It comes with a vest so you can chase after the person wearing it. The Warthog is available to purchase exclusively at Walmart for a whopping $498.

Black Adam arrived in Multiversus today alongside a brand new Arcade mode. He is a slow but hard-hitting superhero, with electrical attacks and the power of flight.

Black Adam is a bruiser type character, with lightning abilities that can deal continual damage. He moves slowly, but dishes out big damage with large hit boxes. He can shock opponents with electrical attacks, create forcefields to block enemy projectiles, and fly to evade and recover. Black Adam even has some ranged attacks, such as an electric ball that can chain between enemies. He can also give allies some of his electrical power.

The character's debut in Multiversus was delayed to fix unspecified problems. There was no word on when exactly Black Adam would arrive, but the delay ended up being only a few days. Though obviously a tie-in with the recently released movie, Black Adam's appearance in the game takes more from comics than from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Players can also pick up the Comic Classic Black Adam skin in the Multiversus store, which removes the massive cape that defines the game's default design and instead opts for a golden sash.

The Arcade mode has three difficulty levels and can be tackled with a friend. It tasks players with battling AI enemies and achieving objectives to earn in-game rewards.

Black Adam just released and was subject to middling reviews. Its star did express hopes that the film will eventually lead to a Black Adam vs. Superman movie. In other DC news, Henry Cavill will be returning as Superman in future projects.

The Ghostbusters VR game announced in April 2022 now has a full title and release window. This game, revealed earlier this year as Ghostbusters VR, is called Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord. It is a VR title for Meta Quest 2 and PlayStation VR2 that's scheduled to launch in 2023.

nDreams is developing the title, which will be published by Sony Pictures Virtual Reality. Players will become a ghostbuster in San Francisco as they traverse the city to bust ghosts. Locations like the Golden Gate Bridge will be featured in the campaign, which supports solo play and co-op. The end goal is to defeat the Ghost Lord and his minions from destroying San Francisco.

Full details on the game haven't been confirmed yet, but players will be able to use and upgrade "iconic Ghostbusters equipment" and customize their characters. More details on Rise of the Ghost Lord were revealed to Kinda Funny as part of a sponsored video broadcast today that you can watch above.

The key art for Rise of the Ghost Lord was also released, showing off what to expect in terms of the style and tone of the upcoming Ghostbusters title. Check it out below.

Resident Evil Village's DLC, The Winter's Expansion is here, including additional Mercenaries content and a new short campaign to playthrough starring Ethan Winter's daughter, Rose Winters. Shortly after the opening sequence of the DLC you will find yourself in Lady Dimitrescu's castle, tasked with finding three masks to obtain a crystal. Here's where you can find all three masks.

The Bronze Mask

You start in the main hall where the statue puzzle is. From here, head to the dining room, which connects to the courtyard and the kitchen. The door to the courtyard is locked with a chain. You can find the bolt cutters in the back right area of the kitchen, which contains one enemy. Grab the bolt cutters and head into the courtyard. The Bronze Mask is actually in the center of the courtyard, but you need to unlock an ability first, so head to the left side of the courtyard and enter.

NFL QB Kyler Murray of the Arizona Cardinals is known for his love of video games. So when he threw an interception during Sunday's game against the Minnesota Vikings, Patrick Peterson of the Vikings trolled the QB with a video game-themed celebration.

Watch in the video below as Peterson pretends to play a video game by motioning like he was putting on a headset on and then moving his thumbs and fingers as if he's playing a video game. Peterson wasn't the player who picked off Murray on that play, but he joined his team in celebrating the interception all the same.

Peterson told reporter Tom Pelissero that he was imitating Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II specifically with his roast of Murray. "I think it's called Call of Duty? I'm not much of a gamer. Heard it just came out," Peterson said.

Murray might have been off-target on a few throws on Sunday, including the interception that inspired this celebration, but he still threw for 326 yards and three touchdowns. He completed 70.5% of his passes and had a passer rating of 95.5%. He did have two costly interceptions, though, and the Vikings beat the Cardinals by a score of 34-26.

FIFA 23 is setting records for EA Sports. Electronic Arts has announced that the game had a "record-breaking" launch, reaching 10.3 million players in the first week, which was good for the "biggest launch period" in the history of the professional football series.

EA went on to say that FIFA 23 has been played in 200+ nations worldwide, with players collectively logging 1.7 billion games thus far. Virtual footballers have spent more than 15.7 billion minutes in the game so far, which works out to more than 30,000 years. Players have collectively scored 4.3 billion goals so far, EA said.

Additionally, Jude Bellingham is the top transfer player in FIFA 23 so far, with more than 630,000 players trying to add the Borussia Dortmund midfielder to their side.

The Ted Lasso crossover in FIFA 23 is proving to be successful, too, it seems, with players collectively winning 1 million matches as AFC Richmond thus far.

In terms of popular teams, Chelsea Women were the most played women's team so far, with Manchester City the most-played men's team. As for goal-scorers, Marcus Rashford and Sam Kerr lead the way for men's and women's teams, respectively. You can see the top 10 scorers for men and women below.

Men's Top 10

1. Marcus Rashford
2. Kylian Mbappé
3. Darwin Núñez
4. Erling Haaland
5. Gabriel Jesus
6. Arnaut Danjuma
7. Timo Werner
8. Cristiano Ronaldo
9. Karim Benzema
10. Vinícius Jr.

Women's Top 10

1. Sam Kerr
2. Fran Kirby
3. Marie-Antoinette Katoto
4. Vivianne Miedema
5. Ada Hegerberg
6. Kadidiatou Diani
7. Beth Mead
8. Caitlin Foord
9. Guro Reiten
10. Alessia Russo

As for celebrations, the "Griddy" is the most popular so far, with the "Knee Slide" ranking second.

Blizzard will soon be giving away free in-game goodies for World of Warcraft in the form of Twitch Drops, with a mount, pet, and in-game toy all up for grabs.

As detailed in a new blog post, the first phase of the promotion will start on November 15 with the arrival of the second phase of the Dragonflight pre-patch. Between November 15-17, players who have connected their Battle.net account to their Twitch account and watch four hours of WoW content on a channel that has drops enabled will be able to earn the Dragon Kite in-game pet.

To celebrate the release of the new Dragonflight expansion proper, another Twitch Drop will go live on the expansion's actual launch date, November 28. Players will then have until November 30 to watch four hours of WoW: Dragonflight content on Twitch to earn the Feldrake mount, a re-colored version of a drake mount that has been in WoW since the release of Wrath of the Lich King.

From December 13-28, players will be able to unlock the Perpetual Purple Firework toy by watching two hours of WoW: Dragonflight content. The third phase of the Twitch Drop promotion coincides with the launch of Dragonflight Season 1 and the arrival of the Vault of the Incarnates raid.

We're just hours away from the launch of Apex Legends Season 15: Eclipse. Players have already met the Season 15's new legend, Catalyst, along with her homeworld's moon, where the new Broken Moon map is set. But today, Respawn introduced players to the Eclipse battle pass via a new trailer uploaded to the official Apex Legends YouTube and Twitter accounts this morning.

The new trailer gives players a better look at the spellbinding cosmetics they briefly glimpsed in last week's gameplay trailer, and they are truly something to behold. From star-crossed legend skins to witchy weapon charms, the Eclipse battle pass is sure to have even the staunchest of skeptics feeling a little spellbound.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's Amsterdam level has already triggered a range of reactions, including some Dutch people praising its realistic depiction of the famous city. However, not all the press is positive, as it seems that a hotel that's clearly depicted in the game is considering possible legal action against publisher Activision Blizzard.

As reported by the Dutch outlet de Volksrant, the five-star Conservatorium Hotel appears under the name Breenbergh in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and the hotel's manager isn't happy about its depiction as a warzone. In real life, the Conservatorium itself is a former bank building designed by the famous Dutch architect Daniel Knuttel, which was converted into a luxury hotel in the 1980s.

"We have taken note of the fact that the Conservatorium Hotel is undesirably the scene of the new Call of Duty," the hotel's manager Roy Tomassen said. "More generally, we don't support games that seem to encourage the use of violence. The game in no way reflects our core values and we regret our apparent and unwanted involvement."

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X is a good gaming CPU with better content creation performance than the more expensive 5800X3D - even though it's slower than the X3D in gaming. Still, at its price point it hits a punch, and the boffins at HUKD have spotted a good deal for the 5800X at CCL. There, you can find the 5800X for £235 when you use code AFF15 with some nifty extras: a 64GB Micro SD card and a code for Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves.

The way it works is pretty simple - you need to get your total basket over £250 for the AFF15 code to work. So, pick anything on the store that's more than £5.51, like this Micro SD card, add it to your basket alongside the 5800X, then use the AFF15 code to bring the price down to the £235 we quoted. The game code will come with your order, no opt-in necessary, from what we understand.

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Logitech makes some of the best mainstream racing wheels and pedals on the market, but the cost of entry is still fairly steep: £269 for the PC/PlayStation-compatible G29 and the same for the PC/Xbox G920 variant. Today though, Currys in the UK are offering £80 off on either model when you use code WHEEL80, dropping the price down to £189.

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I guarantee you’ve never played a more elegant puzzle game than Gorogoa. This tile-based adventure is gorgeous with a capital G. Its story, puzzle mechanics, and visuals: Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

The game is structured into four square panels in a two-by-two grid. Players can move around each of the squares to solve puzzles or click inside each square to interact with the scene. This is where it gets cool: Any object you see that has some sort of frame around it - doorways, paintings, windows, photographs - you can actually move through them and discover new areas to explore.

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Canny Overwatch 2 players have reported more success in obtaining skins by grinding for in-game gold in Blizzard’s long-running fantasy MMO World Of Warcraft and converting that into Battle.net balance than by completing weekly challenges in the hero shooter itself. The trick involves trading gold farmed in WOW for tokens that convert to Battle.net balance, which can then be spent on Overwatch 2 cosmetics. It’s a cunning ploy that speaks volumes about player frustration with the multiplayer shooter’s new free to play mechanics, a situation that might still change if Blizzard listen to results of a recent survey.

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A hugely impressive new mod launched on Saturday for Elite, as in the first Elite, from the eighties, for BBC Micro computers. As its name suggests, the Elite Universe Editor lets you create your own space in the seminal spaceship sim, placing planets and stars and stations and tweaking ships and such. For this to come after almost 40 years...! PC gaming is an endless delight.

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Immortality developer Sam Barlow has spoken about being contacted by electric car manufacturer Tesla for the opportunity to put interactive movie Her Story into their vehicles for no compensation other than “exposure”. Barlow’s comments emerged on Twitter in response to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform, specifically, the suggestion that Twitter users may soon have to pay for blue tick verified status.

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Overwatch 2’s lead hero designer has revealed Blizzard are working on new support heroes for the game as one of their “long-term focuses”. The admission came as part of a response to players asking for more support characters in Overwatch 2, as there are currently only eight of them to pick from right now, versus the ten tanks and whopping 16 damage characters in its overall roster. It's not just the number of supports Blizzard have been thinking about either. Over the weekend, it also emerged the Overwatch 2 devs are sending out a survey to current players, with emphasis on the game’s store and the divisive battle pass introduced when the series went free to play. The developments follow on from hero balance changes being brought forward from season two to mid-November.

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Look, it's all well and good wanting to get scared on Halloween or whatever. But some of us live the horror life every day of the year. We seek out spooks even in the heat of summer, and know there's no better mid-winter warmer than a good ghost story. So what are we to do to make this occasion still feel special?

I know common wisdom considers Halloween to be "Goth Christmas", but in my experience goths bloody love Christmas as much as the next person. They are, however, far more likely to be agnostic on the subject of Valentine's Day. Yes, I have spent far too long thinking about this, but I'm determined to stand by my conclusions, thereby dubbing this holiday "Goth Valentine's". Which leads me neatly into the purpose of this feature: games that let you date the monster.

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Putting together this list of the best early Black Friday SSD deals has proven trickier than expected, and not because Black Friday is still three weeks away. It’s because so many SSDs are subjected to dirty retailer tricks, mainly raising prices for the sole purpose of dropping them back down and calling it a “deal”. Naw, sir, not falling for that. What you’ll find here, then, are SSD offers with genuine discounts only – and with both lightspeed-fast NVMe SSDs and affordable SATA SSDs on early sales, there's something for all kinds of PC builds.

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Horror games, you say? Feh, hardware can be scary too. One time I turned on a power supply and it literally went up in a cloud of smoke. Last year I cut my hand on a CPU cooler radiator. And did you see how dusty my PC was before I cleaned it? That’s basically body horror.

Apparently ignorant of their products’ ability to frighten and maim, PC gaming hardware makers sometimes try to manufacture an imposing aura by giving them big, bad names. You’ve probably seen these already: keyboards named after swords, laptops christened as mythical animals and the like. But some go full spooky, consulting the Halloween kids’ costume pantheon of creatures and creepers. Is an eerie moniker enough to strike fear, even before it has the chance to cause minor injuries or force you into a tedious warranty replacement process? Let’s find out.

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Management at a hotel that appears in the Amsterdam missions of new Activision Blizzard military shooter Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 have said they regret the hotel's “unwanted involvement” in the game. The Conservatorium Hotel, a five-star gaff that describes itself as the “living room of Amsterdam” on its website, hasn’t taken too kindly to being shot to pieces in digital form. Despite a name change, it’s still recognisably the same establishment.

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Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week's pick is a lot less comprehensive than usual because I'm having some Twitter troubles which I hope are tech issues and not policy changes, but I guess we'll see. Still! My eye was caught by some good and fancy things, including Halloweenie bits like an armed squirrel spooking people and lots of red fluids.

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I am, generally speaking, a horror fan, but this year for Halloween I've niched down on a particular topic and it has sort of accidentally taken me away from horror. Hm. Too late now! Plus, witches are totally Halloween fodder - and they're one of my key trends for games at the moment. Video games are lousy with both current and upcoming witches these days.

It makes sense. They've already got brilliant marketing. Few Halloween-y sights are more iconic than a pointy hat, a black cat, and a sihouetted figure flying in front of the moon on a broomstick. The witches I've collected here are definitely going to get you in the pumpkin spirit, even if they manage to run through most other genres except horror... Look, Halloween is mostly about sweets and dressing up these days anyway (and by the way, I am livid that I've not got any parties to go to this year, because my hair is exactly the right length to do a perfect Carmy Berzatto costume).

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As part of the game’s 1.05 patch, DC bad boy Black Adam finally joins the roster of fighters in Warner Bros. licensed brawler MultiVersus today. Adam is a bruiser and launches with an unlockable skin modelled after his classic comic book look, which nabs players extra candy during the Halloween event running through to the end of Multiversus’s first season on November 15th. Today’s 1.05 update sees an arcade mode added to the game too, along with a new casual Growth Spurt mode.

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The original Butterfly Soup is named for its ending monologue. Its four main characters, Diya, Min-seo, Noelle, and Akarsha, use the liquefaction of a caterpillar inside a cocoon as a metaphor for the awkward teenage growing phase they’re all in. In the sequel, set a few months later, they find a butterfly with a crumpled wing. It’s a victim of a false spring, having emerged from its cocoon too early due to unseasonably warm weather. One of them worries that they are like the injured insect; forever marked by their early life. And it’s this that Butterfly Soup 2 digs into much more deeply than its predecessor.

If you’re not familiar with the original, Butterfly Soup is a visual novel about four Asian girls navigating high school in the late 2000s, playing baseball, and falling in love. On replaying it to get ready for this review, it made me cry at least twice and laugh out loud a bunch more. It’s pay what you want with no minimum price, and takes about 2-3 hours. I’m also going to spoil parts of it, so go play it already.

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Boo! Did I startle you? GOOD. I'm currently competing for the title of trickster-in-chief here at RPS, and I'm never going to have a chance of receiving this promotion unless I reach my daily scare quota. If only there was a way I could package together a collection of scary stories as told my colleagues and claim them all as my own.

Aha! I got you again! They don't call me the Merry Trickster Of UK PC Gaming Websites for nothing! You've been Halloween'd, my friends! To celebrate spooky season, I gathered seven members of the RPS treehouse to tell me about one moment from a PC game that scared them the most. The results were exactly as I expected. Some recounted events in classic horror games that shocked them senseless, whereas others told me anecdotes about games that most wouldn't consider scary at all. The result is seven tales of spooks that are sure to chill your bones this All Hallows' Eve.

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Sundays are for moving forwards a bit, so your backpack doesn't get trapped as tube doors snap shut. Before you shuffle, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

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Dota 2 is getting a Cave Johnson announcer pack. Johnson is the deranged founder of Aperture Science from Portal and voiced by the Oscar-winning JK Simmons. Simmons doesn't feature much in the six-minute advert for the pack produced by Valve, but Gabe Newell does. You can watch it below.

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The Witcher's third season hasn't yet released on Netflix, but the streaming service today confirmed that the show has been renewed for a fourth season. They also announced that Henry Cavill, who has played protagonist Geralt for the first three season, won't be returning. He's being replaced for season 4 by Liam Hemsworth.

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The sequel to 2017 visual novel smash hit Butterfly Soup is out now. It's set a few months after the original game and continues to tell the story of "gay Asian-American teens playing baseball and falling in love". It's also, just like the first game, free to download and play - although you can also name your price and pay $5 for a digital artbook over on Itch.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's launch hasn't gone according to plan, with players reporting various crash bugs. Infinity Ward have already released a patch to address some of the issues, but at the time of writing the game has only 58% positive reviews on Steam.

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Boo! Ha ha, don't worry, reader dear! That was just me, not any sort of goblin, boglin, or nilbog—this time...! I do always enjoy Halloweentime, and not just because I own a litre of movie-grade fake blood. It's nice to enjoy this sort of stuff as the days draw shorter, and after this we get to launch into Christmastime and 24/7 Hallmark Channel movies (pro tip: look for ones with Andrew W Walker or Cameron Mathison, they're usually good). But first, what are you playing this weekend? We do have some offbeat Halloween lists if you need inspiration. And here's what we're clicking on!

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Overwatch 2 developers Blizzard previously said that players would need to wait until season two for balance changes, but they've now changed their minds. "There are some Hero balance adjustments we’d like to make sooner," and it includes tweaks to heroes D.va, Zarya, Genji, and Sombra.

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Welcome to the very first RPS 100: Reader Edition. You've already read our RPS 100 list of our favourite PC games of all time (and if you haven't, do go and read Part One and Part Two when you've got a mo), but now it's your turn. You've cast your votes, I've counted them all up, and here we are. These are your top 100 favourite video games of all time.

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Halo Infinite's winter update will finally bring network co-op and the Forge Beta to the drips-and-drabs scifi shooter. While those are large, long-coveted features, a new trailer focuses on a couple of smaller additions: two new multiplayer maps, and a new mode, Covert One Flag. And one of the maps looks particularly lovely.

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Yesterday, F1 Manager 2022 developers Frontier told the community that the game's next update "the last significant update that addresses player-reported feedback, or suggested changes and additions." Players were upset that updates addressing their concerns seemed to be coming to an end two months after F1 Manager 2022's release.

Today, Frontier called the situation "crossed wires", and said that there are "multiple updates currently in the pipeline, focused on addressing the most important topics raised by the community."

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Having recently complained about managing traffic in building games, it is only natural and right that I now praise one that is entirely about managing traffic.

I've had an eye on All Quiet Roads for months, but between Tile Cities and Blink Planets it seemed a bit much to throw this recommendation at you as well. But a game exclusively about the thing I hate most holding my interest this well has to be respected. All Quiet Roads also balances relaxing, freeform play with stressful, occasionally overwhelming challenges, giving it a tonal variety that I wasn't really expecting from such a simple concept.

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Stress Level Zero's Boneworks was Half-life: Alyx before Half-Life: Alyx released. Released in December 2019, its combination of deeply tactile interactions with a campaign heavily inspired by Half-Life 2 represented a major step forward for VR experiences at the time. It had a fair few rough edges, and you needed a cast-iron stomach to play it, but for about four months it was the ambitious, all-encompassing VR experience that the medium had hitherto lacked.

Then Half-Life: Alyx came around, raising the (crow)bar so high that you'd need to be Mr Fantastic or some sort of bird with hands to reach it. Which is partly why Bonelab, the newly released sequel to Boneworks, hasn't quite gelled with me in the way its older sibling did. Technologically, its still very impressive, and noodling around with its massive interactive potential remains undeniably fun. But it often feels like a lot of good ideas with too little connective tissue between them. It's also even less compromising on your physiology than Boneworks was, seemingly determined to make existing in VR as uncomfortable as possible.

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Raw Fury have announced they’re publishing the narrative-horror game, My Work Is Not Yet Done from indie developer Sutemi Production. In their announcement tweet, Raw Fury describe the game as “nothing you’ve ever experienced before,” which in my books is more than enough invitation to plug its announcement trailer straight into my eyeballs:

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