Eurogamer

Nintendo Switch doesn't have Netflix, but it will soon have a calculator app.

The application, simply named Calculator, launches on the Nintendo Switch eShop tomorrow,12th May, priced £8.09.

Calculator is a third-party app, not made by Nintendo, and one of the rare few non-gaming applications to make it onto the eShop. Of course, some people do find maths fun - perhaps even a game! I am not one of these people.

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Galactic Civilizations 4 is due out on PC in 2022, Stardock has announced.

The space 4X strategy sandbox sequel goes into early access later this spring. The announcement trailer is below:

The player begins with only their home planet and must research new technologies, explore the known galaxy and colonise new worlds while keeping their people at home happy. At the same time, players engage in trade, diplomacy, intrigue and war with alien civilisations.

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Reverse-engineered GTA code was restored after its developer filed a DMCA counterclaim on GitHub.

TorrentFreak reports GitHub restored a fork of the fan-made re3 project after its creator filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown counter-claim.

As Eurogamer reported in February, the Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City reverse-engineering fan project known as re3 was hit by a DMCA filed by Rockstar parent company Take-Two that claimed copyright infringement.

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Amazon kicked off its Gaming Week promotion with some great offers on HDDs, SSDs, laptops and PC accessories yesterday. To keep the momentum moving, a decent selection of the latest titles including Dirt 5, Watch Dogs Legion, Immortals Fenyx Rising and the not-so-decent Balan Wonderworld have now been added to the sale.

If we put the obvious borrowings from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to one side, Immortals Fenyx Rising is a genuinely enjoyable experience, even if it does suffer from the same repetitive bite of Ubisoft games. Donlan called it a “skilful, lovingly made product,” in his review, and, in our opinion, it's well worth checking out.

If you were fast enough to grab it on the PS5 earlier when it was listed at £22.97, congratulations! But that price has since been updated by Amazon (boo!). It's now available for £25.99 on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5 and Xbox consoles from the links below.

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Fortnite looks ready to launch its sandbox survival mode, Daybreak, according to files added in today's new 16.40 patch.

We've seen glimpses of Daybreak before, in leaked files from previous patches and also, intriguingly, via internal documentation released as part of the ongoing Apple v Epic trial, dated from last year. This suggested it has been in the works for quite some time, and was set to arrive a lot sooner.

"You wake up alone and unarmed along the coast of an island, with no memory of how you arrived," states a leaked description for the mode. "Quickly search for weapons and ammunition before night falls and creatures begin to roam the hillsides, hunting for prey. Keep an eye out for other stranded people they may prove to be invaluable allies in your fight to stay alive on the increasingly hostile island.

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It's early days in the burgeoning demand for Resident Evil Village mods, but already the community has come up with some... interesting tweaks.

THERE MAY BE RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE SPOILERS AHEAD.

Mini Me Chris is one of the more eye-catching mods, simply because of how nightmarish it is. Modder JTeghius Kittius said: "This was a dumb joke that popped into my head so I had to do this."

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Respawn recently reassured players that it was exploring "every avenue" to take down Apex Legends cheaters - legal action being one of them - and it seems one high-profile cheater is already facing something worse than the ban hammer. Prolific cheater Tufi, who some in the Apex Legends community have described as a "God" and "unbannable" cheater, is apparently facing some form of legal action from Respawn - although details remain light on exactly how far this has progressed.

Earlier this week Apex Legends streamer Tanner "Rogue" Trebb announced during a stream that Tufi was "in jail", later clarifying in a Reddit comment that the jail comment was a joke, but reaffirming that Tufi is facing legal action and "100 percent in the courts no basketball".

Dot Esports contacted Respawn and was told the developer was unable to discuss the matter, citing an inability to comment on legal action.

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Twelve Minutes begins to make a lot more sense to me when the director, Luis Antonio, talks about it being like a play. It's not that the central time-looping concept is hard to grasp, nor that it's confusing to play - it's absolutely neither of those things. But it's hard to see how such a contained set of ideas can fill eight to 10 hours of the game's duration. Particularly as, after 25 minutes, I've apparently seen 95 percent of all the objects and things I can interact with. But when he says, "We're going for kind of a character piece like a theatre play," I begin to understand.

There are few, if any, distractions. There's one small set - an apartment - three characters, a few props, and that's it. And there are no gamey exaggerations like flashy powers or combat systems, or anything like that. Instead, there's the characters, and a drama that comes through them, through the things they say and the things they do. Like in a play. Except it's a play that rewinds roughly every 12 minutes and then runs again, and when it does, someone makes a change and triggers a chain reaction in which new character discoveries can occur. And that's how the story emerges, in evolving loops of time.

Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector comes out 15th July on PC, PlayStation and Xbox priced £30.99, publisher Slitherine has announced.

The PC version of the Blood Angels versus Tyranids turn-based strategy game was due out in May, with the console versions to follow in the summer. But Slitherine is now going for a joined-up launch across all platforms in July.

Battlesector is developed by Black Lab Games, maker of the well-received Battlestar Galactica Deadlock. It's described as "battle-scale", and based on gameplay it's a scale bigger than leading turn-based strategy game XCOM, but smaller than the likes of Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon.

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It was inevitable: the appropriateness of Fortnite's bizarre banana man Peely has now been discussed in open court.

Last night, in the ongoing Apple v Epic trial, Peely came under scrutiny for being a naked piece of fruit with arms and legs.

In remarks transcribed from the courtroom by Verge reporter Adi Robertson, a lawyer for Apple brought up Peely in court and made a deal of showing the character wearing clothes (his Chapter 2 Season 2 Bond-esque Agent Peely tuxedo).

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As we enter May, the good news is the more PS5 stock is finally on the way. After a lengthy delay throughout April, PS5 consoles are expected to arrive at retailers over the next couple of weeks. You can stick with this page for all the latest updates for each individual store. You can also find where the Xbox Series X is available to buy on our dedicated Xbox Series X/S stock page.

Remember, you can always find up-to-the-minute stock up updates on the Jelly Deals Twitter.

Latest: As predicted, we've seen some PS5 stock be made available today. Argos once again led the way with a drop in the early hours of the morning, congrats to anyone who braved staying up and secured one. Now, we're waiting on Game, Very and John Lewis who should have PS5s for sale either today or over the next couple of days. Other key stores to follow are Amazon, Asda and ShopTo. Of course, these dates are little more than rumours and subject to change.

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A PC port of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is coming later this year, Black Isle Studios has confirmed.

The cult classic console RPG re-released last week on PlayStation and Xbox consoles (the Nintendo Switch version is still M.I.A.). The console launch trailer is below:

"The PC port of BG:DA is in the works and coming later this year," Black Isle tweeted.

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The Crucial MX500 has been our top SATA SSD recommendation for a little while now, so when I saw the 1TB model had been discounted to £67.64 on Amazon UK I had to tell you about it. You see, the MX500 is often the best value SSD available, and so far this year it's sat around the £90 mark - so today's ~25 percent discount on top of that is pretty outstanding.

As someone who used a 240GB SSD for years, it's hard to describe how much better it feels to have a 1TB drive instead of - or in addition to! - a smaller capacity model. It means you don't have to spend time re-downloading games you've deleted to save space, or going through your filesystem with a fine-tooth comb to cut out every unneeded megabyte. Instead, you get plenty of space for your Windows install, and a healthy collection of games, videos and other media.

This holds true whether you're on a desktop or a laptop, although on the latter you will need to check whether your particular model uses SATA drives, M.2 drives or a combination (Crucial's SSD buying guide can be handy here!)

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Capcom has shipped over 3m copies of Resident Evil Village, the company has announced.

The horror game went on sale on Friday, 7th May, and has launched strong. (Digital Foundry's Resident Evil Village tech breakdown is in the video below:)

In the UK, Village is already the second-highest UK boxed debut this year, beaten only by Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury, and has set franchise records for concurrent players on Steam.

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I never asked my parents for a Game Boy Printer for Christmas, because I knew, like a skateboard or a Digivice, it fell into the land of items I wasn't allowed to have. Looking back, this is probably because I knew they knew I'd get bored of it far too quickly. Still, I desperately wanted a picture of the backbone of my Pokémon Yellow team, my main shrew, Fred the Sandslash. The original Fred, sadly, would never be immortalised in a black-and-white photograph, but the Game Boy Printer has been reborn as the instax mini Link Special Edition.

Through the use of the dedicated Instax for Nintendo Switch app and the console's ability to connect to smart devices, this printer allows you to turn your favourite screenshots into small photographs. Uploading your chosen screenshots is a quick process and the app remembers any past photos you've printed, which streamlines reprinting. The app also contains a number of editing features - zoom, adding text, changing the brightness or adding a filter - which, while basic, are easy to use, especially for beginners. Best of all, and most importantly, the quality of the printed screenshots is great, with each one retaining all the colour and vitality of the original version. It means I'm now the happy owner of a picture I took of an Alolan Sandslash - I call him Ice Fred - I took in New Pokémon Snap.

Lego is (as a year in lockdown with a whole lot to time to assemble plastic bricks has taught me) cool, and developer Fireproof Games' gorgeously atmospheric The Room puzzle series is, among many other good things, cool too. So it should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that combining the two results in a very cool thing indeed.

The architect of this particular very cool thing is Fireproof Games' own graphic and motion designer Roger Schembri who, under the name Lego CustardKid, has previously submitted a number of creations to the endlessly impressive Lego Ideas website, including an elaborate ornamental safe inspired by the original The Room.

The Room 4: Old Sins' Dollhouse (as spotted by Kotaku) is Schembri's most ambitious Lego Ideas build yet, lovingly recreating the game's deliciously sinister enchanted dollhouse - itself a detailed recreation of The Room 4's Waldegrave Manor - in impressively miniaturised detail.

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Activision has offered a glimpse at Rambo in Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops Cold War.

The official Call of Duty Twitter account released a short clip showing Rambo preparing to unleash a fire arrow from his trademark bow at an unfortunate victim, alongside the tagline: "Become war."

Rambo arrives on 20th May as part of the mid-season update for Season 3 - no doubt as a costly soldier skin.

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Welcome to the 10th episode of Digital Foundry Direct Weekly! It's our chance to disengage from our ongoing projects, sit down together (virtually, of course) and to discuss the biggest news items of the week. As you might imagine, the unseemly Epic vs Apple legal bunfight dominates proceedings - principally owing to some of the more astonishing documents to have been published and/or inadvertently leaked. We also discuss Resident Evil Village and offer up some first thoughts on the PC version (with a full analysis due later in the week). And as for Housemarque's brilliant Returnal, what's going on with its post-launch rollout and what's with all the patches?

The team also spend some time talking about the recent 74 game drop of FPS Boost updates for Xbox Series consoles - and again, we'll be returning to this with more detailed coverage later in the week. Suffice to say that it's great to see so many games getting huge performance uplifts, but is FPS Boost all it can be on Xbox Series X, where so few titles are fully tapping into the Xbox One X feature sets and sometimes run at Xbox One S resolution targets? Other topics up for debate include Genshin Impact - which launched on PlayStation 5 in a sub-optimal state then saw a dramatic frame-rate upgrade literally within days of launch.

Eurogamer and Western Digital are teaming up to give away some of the latest WD_Black drives for PC and consoles.

We'll be giving away one brand-new WD_Black Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Special Edition SN850 1TB NVMe SSD, perfect for use in computers with the latest motherboards. We'll also give away one WD_Black Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Special Edition P50 Game Drive, a portable 1TB NVMe SSD that works with the latest consoles* and more.

Both drives come with a unique look and a voucher for 2,400 Call of Duty points¹, which are redeemable for in-game items. Each drive is amongst the fastest in its class too, with the SN850 topping out at a blistering 7000MB/s² for sequential reads and the P50 managing up to 2000MB/s - impressive for an external drive that you can take on the go.

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After an extended period of silence, more PS5 stock is set to be available this week in the UK - and these are the retailers you'll want to keep an eye on.

Amazon, Game, Argos, Very and John Lewis are the five main stores that are poised to release more PS5 consoles into the wild over the next few days. The expectation is they will mostly be the standard PS5 but there will also be a smaller percentage of PS5 Digital Edition consoles, too.

A movie director has accused Capcom of copying one of his monsters for a Resident Evil Village boss fight.

Dutch director Richard Raaphorst said the Sturm boss found in the recently-released Resident Evil Village is a "one-to-one" copy of a monster he created for his 2013 found footage horror film Frankenstein's Army.

Capcom failed to comment by press time.

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Amazon Gaming Week is here, which has a decent selection of offers and promotions covering everything from mice and keyboards to laptops, SSDs and loads more. As always, we've sifted through everything that's on offer to bring you the biggest deals in the sale so far.

We'll be updating this page as new deals get added throughout the week, so be sure to keep checking back, or follow Jelly Deals on Twitter if you wanna be the first to hear about what's on offer. For now, let's take a look at the highlights below and what the best offers are ahead of Amazon Prime Day later this year.

There's a decent selection of Logitech gaming mice included in the promotion, many of which feature in Digital Foundry's top picks for gaming mice, such as the Logitech G502 Lightspeed for £70. Digital Foundry named it their best gaming mouse thanks to its ergonomic shape and lightweight. It's got a HERO 25k sensor for performance of up to 25600 DPI, 11 buttons alongside a hyper-fast scroll wheel, and a rainbow of customisable colours.

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Have you ever felt like going on a big cruise ship around the mythical world of Valheim? Thanks to the power of modding, now you can, so get ready for some very large vessels.

ValheimRAFT is a mod by Sarcen that allows players to construct their own ships rather than simply use the pre-made ones available in vanilla Valheim. (If the name didn't give it away, it's inspired by the game Raft, a survival game in which you construct a boat from bits of debris.) I had a quick tinker with it and made a basic ghost ship, although in retrospect I would have made it a little larger - the deck is somewhat crowded.

The mod lets you place a modified version of a raft, which comes with a platform to let you build on top. It also provides a number of accessories, such as sails and a big old helm for steering. If you fancy building a more modern look for your boat, it turns out the mod will let you achieve full speed without sails, so you're free to go ahead and create an aircraft carrier made of wood. I'm serious - the raft doesn't appear to follow Valheim's normal rules of building stability, so you can make something truly massive.

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Assassin's Creed and Far Cry publisher Ubisoft will now brand all of its games made by internal studios as "Ubisoft Originals".

The name first cropped up last week, when Ubisoft announced Tom Clancy's The Division: Heartland, a new free-to-play spin-off due later this year or early next.

When asked whether this label meant anything more than fancy new branding, a Ubisoft spokesperson told Eurogamer today that, "Moving forward 'The Ubisoft Original' mention is attached to all of Ubisoft's games created in-house by our talented developers."

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The constrained supply of the PlayStation 5 will continue into 2022, Sony has warned.

The company's CFO, Hiroki Totoki, said Sony will struggle to meet demand even with a supply boost, Bloomberg reported (paywall).

As most know, the PS5 is incredibly hard to buy at the moment, with stock snapped up as soon as it goes on sale. The console has also been the focus of scalpers, who sell on for an inflated price. Retailers have struggled to prevent new consoles from getting into the hands of scalper groups, some of which sell membership to their services. The situation got so bad, the government issued an official response to an online petition calling for a change in the law to tackle console scalping.

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Capcom has seen record profits for the fourth year in a row.

Revenue for the financial year ending 31st March 2021 was 95.3bn yen (£622m), up 16.8 percent from the previous year, with profit of 34.6bn yen (£226m), up 51.6 percent from the previous fiscal year)

Capcom pointed to the success of Monster Hunter Rise and the Resident Evil 3 remake, as well as sales growth for high margin back catalogue titles including Monster Hunter World: Iceborne and the Resident Evil 2 remake. Capcom said the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S version of Devil May Cry 5 "also performed well". The boost to video game interest during lockdowns also helped.

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They met when the story of Before I Forget begins, at a game jam in Bristol in 2016. Chella Ramanan and Claire Morwood didn't know each other but, on a wave of intuition, decided to tackle the brief of 'borders' together. And whereas other people took a more physical approach, looking at things like Trump building a wall, or the Syrian refugee crisis, Ramanan and Morwood decided to look inwards.

They pulled on an idea Ramanan had scribbled down in a book at some unconnected time before the event. Simply, she wrote, 'Woman with dementia'. It was an idea born out of a fascination with memories and what they are, and what happens when someone begins to lose them.

I'm a bit surprised by this. I expected the idea to originate from some kind of personal experience of dementia, in whatever form that may be. From what I've seen, it's a condition that seems to leave an indelible mark on the lives it touches, something you need to see up close before you fully comprehend it, fully understand. If they hadn't, how could they?

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Registration to participate in the closed beta for Square Enix's upcoming battle royale, Final Fantasy 7 The First Soldier, is now open.

Prospective players have from now until 27th May 2021 to register their interest, although right now, the beta is restricted to players with 64-bit, 7.1+ Android phones with at least 3GB of memory available.

As is usually the case with these things, registering does not guarantee you a spot in the closed beta, but the sign-up page hints that it wants "tons of players" to get involved.

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A new rumour purports two new DualSense controllers could be coming to market "very soon".

According to AreaJugones - a Spanish-language site that has previously correctly leaked a PlayStation Plus freebie lineup ahead of confirmation from PlayStation - the new colour schemes deviate from the current white and black scheme to include shades of red and grey.

Without photographic evidence, it's not possible to know precisely how the colours will be used, or what parts of the controller will be more colourful (or even if it's true; right now, we can only take this as pure speculation), but the leak - reportedly from an "internal contact" at Sony - says the company will launch the new red and black and black and grey variants "very soon" (thanks, TheGamer).

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Respawn has seemingly nerfed Wattson's electrified fence in Apex Legends.

As spotted and shared by Twitterer LilakeyLK, it looks as though the latest season has not only introduced a new Legend and competitive mode Arenas, but it's also made a tweak to one of Wattson's key defences... with an emphasis on "fence".

Previously, running into Wattson's fence would slow down an opposing player, but now it looks as though the slowdown and corresponding stun has been removed, essentially making the fence useless (thanks, PCGN).

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Remnant: From the Ashes will shortly receive a free next-gen update to "enhance both frame rate and resolution".

According to developer Gunfire Games, on 13th May players will "receive a free major upgrade patch that will add the option to run the game at 4K resolution at 30fps the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, or 1080p resolution at 60fps on both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S".

That's not all, either. On the same day, the game will also be added to the PC version of Xbox Game Pass - up until now it's only been available in the console Game Pass library - with cross-play support for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows 10 players, too.

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Activision has cut ties with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's Ghost voice actor Jeff Leach following the dissemination of a video that compiles his misogynist comments.

The montage - which was shared online by streamers hitting back at Leach's derogatory statements - is described as containing "serious personalised intrusive sexism" and shows Leach using sexually explicit and aggressive language as well as personal insults.

"In 2021, misogyny has no place," states a caption on the video. "Yet female gamers regularly experience sexist abuse" and goes on to suggest that as Leach remains, at the time of writing, a Facebook Gaming partner, "doesn't that mean by affiliation Facebook is okay with what's being said?"

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While videogame sequels have never quite gained the erratic reputation of their respective cinematic experiences, there's always a fear that a follow up won't quite hit the heights of its predecessor. Not so Electronic Arts' and Visceral's Dead Space 2, ten years old this year and rightly regarded as one of the finest sequels of its generation.

Having survived the many trials and dangers of the first game, engineer Isaac Clarke awakens three years later on the Sprawl, a huge space station in orbit around the Saturn moon of Titan. Now in possession of a voice, Clarke is soon knee-deep in necromorphs as another outbreak of the undead creatures threatens to engulf the station. Throughout the first few hectic and horrific levels of Dead Space 2, the player guides Clarke across urban areas and the headquarters of the shady Unitology religion.

Meanwhile, lurking in the background and often visible to an alert gamer is the formidable planet cracker spaceship of the first game, its spiky angular shape haunting Isaac as he seeks to escape the necromorphs once more. "Very early in the game you can see the Ishimura parked up out there," says Ian Milham, Visceral's art director on Dead Space 2 and the driving force behind the game's most famous level, chapter ten. "And y'know, we're not hanging a lantern on it so it's so literal. But we wanted to plant that seed, like, 'oh man, are they gonna make me go back there? That's going to be terrible.' That was the idea, to spend the first part of the game hyping it up."

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The 1980s action movie heroes are coming en masse to Warzone. After this week's tease that Rambo will be added to the battle royale, Activision has indicated Die Hard's John McClane is on his way, too.

Activision even created a website for a fictional air conditioning repair company called Nakatomi Duct Cleaning, offering its services in Verdansk.

The website says "A NAKATOMI CORP DIVISION MASTERING A/C DUCT CLEANING SINCE 1988", but the current Warzone map is set in 1984. Nah... I'm applying too much logic to Call of Duty here.

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This week, if you pottered along to the Mendip Hill near Cheddar, Somerset, you'd probably have caught a glimpse of something a bit off: a huge chalk artwork of a lycan.

Local press reported the strange image on Monday, 3rd May after it popped up overnight - and seemingly had no idea what it was about or who made it.

Its true nature was revealed when Resident Evil Village came out on Friday - it was a Capcom PR stunt. And a pretty cool one, I'll admit.

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A modder has released their final Nier: Automata HD texture pack after four years of development.

GPUnity's texture pack mod began life soon after Nier: Automata launched on PC in March 2017. They've continued to work on the mod since then, and now, four years later, released the final version.

Nier: Automata's PC version is infamous for a raft of technical issues that were fixed by modders, including a constant stutter tick due to the game running at around 59 frames per second (this is something explored in the Digital Foundry video below).

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This week, Sega announced Lost Judgment for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and S, and Xbox One - but there was no word of a PC version.

It seemed an odd omission - Tojo Dojo noticed the Yakuza spin-off sequel was briefly listed as coming to PC on the official countdown website that was home to the Lost Judgment announcement. Even after mention of PC was removed from the website, fans spotted mention of the Steam logo in the Lost Judgment website source code.

Unfortunately, it appears Lost Judgment will not come out on PC when the game launches on consoles on 24th September 2021.

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Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance's re-release on Nintendo Switch was delayed at the last minute.

The re-release of the much-loved 20 year-old action RPG went ahead as planned yesterday on Xbox One, where it costs a pricey £29.99, and PlayStation 4, where for some reason it costs a fiver cheaper at £24.99.

But even though the official Black Isle Studios Twitter page said yesterday that the Switch version would arrive in a couple of hours, the game failed to materialise on the Nintendo eShop.

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With Titanfall 2 enjoying an Apex Legends-powered resurgence, so is its superb Gauntlet.

Respawn's wall-hopping assault course tasks players with completing one lap as quickly as possible - and nearly five years after Titanfall 2 came out, speedrunners are breaking world records again.

In October 2019, speedrunner Cash Mayo set an incredible time of 11.7 seconds, shaving a fraction off Mayo's previous world record of 11.9 seconds:

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The Yakuza series remains a turn-based RPG, whereas the Judgment spin-off series is where the action's at, developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has said in a new interview.

Speaking to IGN, Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi and producer Kazuki Hosokawa confirmed the plan for the two series:

"The Yakuza series has been transformed into a turn-based RPG. On the other hand, over the years, Ryu ga Gotoku Studio has accumulated resources and know-how of making flashy and exhilarating action games that are effortless to enjoy. We decided that we should let our signature action gameplay live on through Lost Judgment."

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