Eurogamer

The pricier new PlayStation Plus Premium subscription will include time-limited game trials - and now Sony has reportedly informed some developers it will need to ensure it provides them.

According to a GameDeveloper report, PlayStation has updated its developer guidelines to state that a game demo lasting at least two hours will now be required for any title which costs $34 or higher (around £27).

This rule is not retroactive, so will only apply to games currently in development and not yet released. Additionally, developers will have a three-month grace period after a game launches before this trial must be made available.

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Set up Recon Cameras to get more info about the IO Doomsday Device is one of the Resistance challenges in Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 2.

To complete this challenge, you must first complete Weeks 1 to 5 of this season's Resistance challenges, and then establish a Device Uplink near Loot Lake.

Completing this challenge will reward you with 23K XP, which will help you unlock skins from the new Battle Pass.

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Bethesda has released another video ahead of Starfield's approaching release date, this time focusing on the game's music and sound design.

In this video, entitled "The Sound of Adventure", audio director Mark Lampert and Starfield composer Inon Zur chat more about what music means to them, and why it is important for the overall gameplay experience.

"I always say, music is the fourth dimension. It is the emotional dimension," Zur explains. "In order to create this, you have to ask these questions - where are you going? What is your motivation? What is your story? What is really pushing us?" It is these questions, that Zur says are "as big as space", that drove the compressor forward with his work on the game.

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Monthly active users of Activision games fell by a third over the past 12 months, the company has confirmed.

In March 2021, Activision had 150 million monthly active players across its games (at this point, a figure likely dominated by those playing Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Call of Duty Warzone).

In March 2022, Activision had 100 million monthly active players - a third less than a year ago.

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like if The Truman Show and Deathloop had a baby, and that baby also had some Hunger Games bloodlust running through its veins? And yet, despite all this, was still somehow colourful and cute looking? Well, wonder no more, as Call of the Sea developer Out of the Blue has today announced its latest game - American Arcadia - and it looks like that is just what it's going to be.

You can check out the new teaser for yourself below.

American Arcadia tasks players with escaping a seemingly idyllic life of luxury. However - plot twist (which admittedly I may have spoiled with my opening sentence) - this life is not all it is cracked up to be. Rather, residents in this apparent utopia are under the watchful gaze of "countless anonymous observers". Shudders.

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There is a shiny Sunshine Form Cherrim in Pokémon Go, but this isn’t the sole reason why you should partake in this week’s Spotlight Hour.

Throughout this week’s Spotlight Hour, you have the chance to catch both a 100% perfect IV stats Cherrim and a shiny Cherrim, which you can find a preview for down below.

Cherrim’s Spotlight Hour falls on a quiet day in Pokémon Go as we wait for the Mega Evolution rework to arrive worldwide.

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Secure insider intel from a drop dead is one of the Week 6 Resistance challenges in Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 2.

To reach this challenge, you must first complete the Resistance challenges for Week 5 and two of Week 6’s Resistance challenges, including setting up recon cameras.

Completing this challenge will reward you with 23k XP, which will help you unlock skins from the new Battle Pass.

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Valve has released an update for the Steam Deck, which adds a new lock screen to the handheld PC, as well as several other changes.

"We've added the ability to turn on a lock screen and PIN for Steam Deck," Valve writes.

"You can set this to show up on wake, boot, login, and/or when switching to Desktop mode. Sorry little bro/sis, you won't be able to borrow your sibling's Steam Deck and mess with their save games anymore!"

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There's a wealth of PlayStation 3 exclusive games that remain locked to the system - console-exclusive titles that sold millions of copies in their day that are no longer playable natively on modern systems. Sony itself has a system in place to make them accessible at least - the streaming-based PlayStation Now - but what you're looking at are compromised versions of the original experience, marred with image quality and latency problems. However, there is a route forward, albeit to a limited audience. The open source RPCS3 emulator allows PC users to access the PlayStation 3 library, and I've been playing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots at 4K resolution at 60fps, with 16x anisotropic filtering. It's a remarkable showcase of what could be, whether it is via local emulation on a PlayStation console, or via a Bluepoint-class remaster.

At Digital Foundry, we always desire the highest possible frame-rates with new game releases but also understand this isn't always possible, but Metal Gear Solid 4 is an interesting case as it's a game that teased us with the possibility of 60 frames per second only to stomp on our dreams with its eventual release. Flash back to the Tokyo Game Show in 2005 and we saw a game trailer running flat out at 60 frames per second - a far cry from the final release, that mostly operated in a 20-30fps window. The game did run unlocked, however, so there were sparing sections where 60fps was possible - a teaser of the game it was supposed to be.

The first and most frequent question the Garden Path makes me ask is ‘what now'. Left without direction, I'm usually quick to get lost. But lack of direction is this game's whole point. All that's explicitly explained after creating your own gardener is where to find your inventory and how you equip tools. Then you find yourself in the garden. The garden isn't a small tidy pitch of land secured with a picket fence – in the Garden Path, the garden is more like a forest. It's a large piece of land, a forest full of trees, bushes and rivers. That takes a bit of getting used to because, not to get too spiritual, if everything is the garden, what does gardening really mean?

The Garden Path wants you to roam. It doesn't tell you what to do. I find a broken tool – looking at it in my inventory reveals there must be a person who can fix it, so I decide just to get going. I already carry an axe with me, so I fell a few trees, as you do. Some trees shed twigs, or even seeds, which I automatically pocket. This is the first of several similarities with Animal Crossing, which served as an inspiration for The Garden Path, along with Ghibli films and the Moomin books. I just take note of my spoils, with no real idea of what they might be useful for.

Pikmin Bloom will add a weekly challenge feature this Thursday, 28th April - the biggest new feature to come to the game since it launched worldwide five months ago.

Each week, you'll be able to sign up to a challenge goal to hit solo or with friends. This week will see the options of 50,000 or 100,000 steps.

You'll be able to start the challenge via a new widget in the app's home screen, and select in-game friends to join in with you. Progress through the week then updates in real-time, with individual contributions shown in a meter.

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A new LinkedIn listing has pointed to the previously-reported The Last of Us remake.

Naughty Dog QA Corey Hong has both "QA testing and development support on environment design for unannounced multiplayer project" and "QA testing and development support + Level Point of Contact for unannounced remake project" listed on their resumé. This, fans expect, relates to both The Last of Us' long-awaited standalone multiplayer component and a remake of the initial game.

While Naughty Dog has never officially announced it is remaking The Last of Us, its existence was first reported over a year ago now. Bloomberg initially revealed the project, claiming that it was in development at an unannounced new studio created within its little-known San Diego-based Visual Arts Service Group, but was handed to Naughty Dog after Sony had a change of mind.

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Nintendo Switch Sports is out this week on Friday 29th April 2022, and you can already bag it for a bargain when you pre-order a physical copy of the game at Currys.

The retailer is offering a 15 per cent discount when you use the code 'SWITCHSPORTS' at the checkout, bringing the price down to just £30.59. You can also make a new fashion statement when sporting your free pre-order gift- a swanky Nintendo Switch Sports silicon bracelet.

If you fancy taking a swing at this new iteration of Wii Sports, you'll be able to play six fun sports in single player, co-op and online multiplayer. These include Wii Sports classics such as bowling and tennis, as well as badminton, football, volleyball and Chambara sword fighting. You can also create and customise your own avatar, and compete in leaderboards in Pro League mode.

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A concert of video game music will be included as part of this year's Proms, the annual music festival held each summer in London's Royal Albert Hall.

This is the first time the classical music festival has featured a concert dedicated to game music - something which has seemed a very long time coming.

The event - titled Gaming Prom – From 8-Bit to Infinity - will be held on Monday, 1st August at the Royal Albert Hall and feature a new arrangement of music from Battlefield 2042 as originally composed by Hildur Guðnadóttir and Sam Slater, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

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Combined sales of the Xbox Series X and S consoles gave Microsoft its biggest March in terms of hardware revenue for a decade.

Xbox Series X/S led the US console market in March - and cumulatively over the year's first quarter - in terms of dollar sales, according to numbers from analytics firm NPD.

However, Nintendo Switch still was the US' best-selling console in terms of units sold, in March and across 2022 to date.

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Ubisoft has ended the online services for 90 of its games. Don't be too alarmed though, as they are all from a considerably older catalogue of titles. We are talking about games such as Scrabble 2007 and Far Cry on PC.

Other games affected by this announcement include Splinter Cell: Double Agent for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Tom Clancy's EndWar (also for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360) and Watch Dogs Companion for Andriod and iOS, with the full list available here.

However, do not worry if you still enjoy a twirl around the dancefloor with the likes of the Xbox 360's Just Dance 3, as the offline features for each game will still remain available.

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Pokémon Go developer Niantic has now officially announced its overhaul of the Mega Evolution mechanic, which was previously leaked through datamined game files.

As expected, the changes go a long way to answering fan criticism of the way Pokémon Go has handled Mega Evolution since it was introduced in August 2020 - in particular, adding the ability to re-Mega Evolve a creature without energy cost after it has been Mega Evolved once.

Players in Australia and New Zealand can access the new system now, with a global rollout expected shortly. (The game's next Mega Pokémon release is due this Friday, so we'd expect before then.)

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Workers at Call of Duty developer Raven Software are now one step closer to realising their unionisation efforts, something which, it's fair to say, has not been encouraged by parent company Activision Blizzard.

Axios has reported that those at Raven Software have now obtained approval from the National Labour Relations Board to move forward with a vote on whether to unionise. This is a major step for the QA team, as previous efforts for voluntary recognition from ABK had been denied. This latest approval means that legally, should the vote to unionise be won by the majority of workers, Activision Blizzard will have to recognise its workers' terms and conditions.

"Once a union has been certified or recognised, the employer is required to bargain over your terms and conditions of employment with your union representative," states the NLRB.

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UPDATE 27/4/22: PlayStation has now confirmed yesterday's leaked list of PS Plus games, including FIFA 22. Full details on all of those lie below.

ORIGINAL STORY 26/4/22: FIFA 22 will be offered as part of PlayStation Plus next month, it has been reported.

Dealabs, which has correctly revealed every Plus line-up for months, has noted that EA's most recent football game will be available for subscribers in May.

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I feel instinctively that a good children's book should be two things at once. Take something like Home, by Carson Ellis. On one level this is an imaginative exploration of the various ways that various people might live. People who might find a home in a shoe, say, or perched at the top of a mountain. But a good children's book should be two things at once, and the deeper, most satisfying aspect of Home involves tracking a number of items that pop up across the sweep of the book's individual pages - a tea cup, a flag - and then seeing them arranged in the final home we get to see, which happens to be Carson Ellis' home where she creates her art.

Sam & Dave Dig a Hole is two things in one. And that's hardly surprising, really, as it's the result of one of the most ideal partnerships in all of children's books - words by Mac Barnett, and pictures by Jon Klassen.

Real talk: I would like to be friends with both these people. Barnett is a writer of astonishing range and precision, a playful scamp in one book, while reaching more soulful depths in the next. He's a dandy, but a dandy who can play any tune, match any beat. Klassen, meanwhile - and apologies to Oli Welsh, who made this connection first - is Samuel Beckett. The writer, not the time traveler - but who knows? He's Samuel Beckett with a few more jokes. And much else besides. His watercolours - I think they're watercolours - have a glorious way of bringing out the thickness and density of the paper they're spread across: they capture that feeling when good paper gets damp and takes on a felty quality. Klassen is also very skilled when it comes to capturing starkness and surprise in the faces of his characters. He is the ideal illustrator for stories which involve the blunt limitations of language - the places where it stops short and fails everyone.

In the north tower of Castle Wewelsburg in Germany's Alme Valley there's a pillared chamber with a sinister design on the floor - a mottled, marble circle with two outer bands linked by 12 zig-zagging runic rays. This is the Black Sun, laid down in the 1930s at the orders of Nazi Schutzstaffel chief Heinrich Himmler. The Black Sun was part of Himmler's efforts to, essentially, devise a grand RPG backstory for the Third Reich: it links Nazidom to the sun heraldry of the Merovingian and Frankish empires, presenting Hitler's reign as the completion of a mythological narrative centuries in the dawning. It's also an occult symbol that is still in vogue among alchemists - and far-right activists - today. Quite how much credit Himmler gave the occult is debated - according to some, he fancied himself the reincarnation of the 10th century Saxon King Heinrich I - but he certainly understood the sun's power to dictate reality, treating its Nazified emblem as the gravitational centre of a new Aryan society and history.

You may know Wewelsburg as the inspiration for Castle Wolfenstein. Reinvented as a set of shooter levels, it has swelled and warped and flourished across generations of videogame hardware and creation tools, from the blue-walled labyrinths of 1992's Wolfenstein 3D to the campy, steampunk environments of the MachineGames reboots. Wolfenstein deals extensively with Nazi sun worship, plugging it into present-day discussion of the social transformations bred by new forms of energy. In the 2009 game by Raven Software, Black Sun motifs are portals to another dimension, the desolate former home of an alien race named for the real-life Thule Society of Nazi mystics.

The upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie has been delayed, and will now launch in cinemas next April.

Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto himself announced the holdup this morning, via Nintendo's Twitter account.

The film's new launch dates are 7th April (in North America) and 28th April (in Japan).

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Sony has confirmed it'll finally start rolling out Variable Refresh Rate support to PlayStation 5 in the new few days, with patches to implement the feature across a variety of games - included Spider-Man and Resident Evil Village - set to follow "in the coming weeks".

VRR dynamically syncs the refresh rate of HDMI 2.1 VRR-compatible TVs and PC monitors to the PlayStation 5's graphical output, helping, as Sony puts it in its announcement post, to minimise or eliminate visual artifacts, including frame pacing issues and screen tearing.

"Gameplay in many PS5 titles feels smoother as scenes render seamlessly, graphics look crisper, and input lag is reduced," it adds.

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Capcom's Ace Attorney series has some very good music (especially the one that goes dur-doo-dur-doo-dur-doo-dur-doo-dur-durr from the first Phoenix Wright game) and the publisher is celebrating that fact once again this year with a new live orchestral concert, being streamed across the internet in May.

Following on from last year's similarly styled event, Capcom is poised to hold another Ace Attorney orchestra concert on 7th May at the Bunkamura Orchard Hall in Shibuya, Tokyo, this time in honour of the series' 20th anniversary.

If your interest is piqued, the official website has now revealed the full, series-spanning set list for the 20th anniversary concert (which you'll find below) and you can get a solid idea of what's in store by watching this 7-minute snippet from the 2021 show.

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This weekend marked the tenth anniversary of Telltale Games' celebrated The Walking Dead series, and to mark the occasion, publisher Skybound Games has released a new mini-documentary bringing with it various behind-the-scenes treats, including early prototype footage, and even the revelation that Telltales' genre-defining adventure was at one point planned to be a Left 4 Dead spin-off.

Telltale Games' The Walking Dead first released on 24th April 2012, and, over the course of Season 1's five critically acclaimed episodes, would establish not only the template for pretty much every one of the studio's releases from that point onward - blending real-time events and persistent choices - but a host of other narrative-driven adventures too, most notably the work of Life is Strange developer Dontnod.

However, as revealed by The Walking Dead's season design and direction lead Jake Rodkin in the newly released mini-documentary, Telltale could have ended up with a very different zombie experience if it's original plans had come to pass, given the project started life as a pitch to do a narrative side-story within Valve's Left 4 Dead universe.

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Right on cue, with Apex Legends' current season rapidly racing towards its conclusion, developer Respawn Entertainment has started cranking the hype handle for the free-to-play battle royale shooter's imminent thirteenth instalment - confirming that Newcastle will play a major role when it launches on 10th May.

Newcastle, who'll be Season 13's latest playable hero (sorry to disappoint if you had other ideas), is described as the Hero of Harris Valley, but, more importantly in lore terms, has a direct connection to another Apex Legends character - with Respawn confirming Newcastle to be none other than Jackson Williams, the long-missing brother of Bangalore.

Newcastle's arrival in Apex Legends isn't too much of a surprise, of course; back in March, a huge Apex Legends leak seemingly revealed, accurately it now appears, the game's next nine seasons' worth of unannounced heroes - with Newcastle being the most likely candidate for Season 13 at the time, given his advanced stages of development.

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Warzone Season 3 is almost here - offering new additions to both the battle royale mode and Vanguard.

Themed Classified Arms, the new season - as always - introduces a new Battle Pass, new Operators and weapons.

It also paves the way for the Operation Monarch event in May - which will introduce a surprise collaboration between Warzone, Godzilla and King Kong.

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One Elden Ring dataminer has given us all a closer look at two of the game's gigantic NPCs, including "what is probably the largest dragon in any From Software game so far, depending on how particular you are about what's allowed to be called a dragon."

Please be aware there may be spoilers ahead.

Zullie The Witch has shared a new video, highlighting the Great Jar and Greyoll.

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While the major publishers are keeping their announcements to a minimum, making for an interesting challenge in creating a weekly tech news show, there are still some interesting topics to discuss in DF Direct, though the discourse is still centred around Unreal Engine 5. This, in turn, raises the question: has the next generation era actually started to 'happen' yet?

There's no doubt whatsoever that we've seen plenty of games that offer big improvements when run on the latest wave of consoles - Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, Forza Horizon 5, Gran Turismo 7, Horizon Forbidden West - but the amount of truly impressive current-gen exclusives are thin on the ground, to say the least. Unreal Engine 5 is so significant because it's the first time that we've seen a company attempt to utilise the power of the most recent hardware to bring about a fundamental change. However, recent experience with the engine suggests that it's still some way from being the finished article.

This week's Dying Light 2 update adds its New Game Plus mode, as well as new endgame content.

Patch 1.3.0. launches this Wednesday, 27th April and allows you to carry over your character progression and equipment to a new adventure (though Nighrunners tools like the grappling hook and paraglider will still have to be obtained through the story).

You'll also be able to find 30 new inhibitors to further max out your health and stamina.

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Finding the right mouse can be a tough task with so many great options out there, but two things that are always needed in a good gaming mouse are speed and precision.

If you're in the market for a new gaming mouse, you might want to consider the Prime Wireless from SteelSeries. It has a 18,000 CPI optical sensor, and magnetic optical switches so it won't cause phantom flicks or misclicks in competetive games.

The Prime Wireless is a premium gaming mouse and usually has a premium price to match, but right now there's a collossal 65 per cent saving on Amazon which brings the price down to just £44.99!

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If nothing else, Dune: Spice Wars - out in early access tomorrow - definitely feels like reading Dune. Aside from a few, pretty limited tooltips (along the lines of "consider harvesting Spice" - yeah, no kidding), there's no real tutorial in Spice Wars' early access version, and so your first game will feel a lot like opening up Frank Herbert's first chapter. What's going on? Who's this guy? What's that mean? Did my ebook download some kind of bugged version that's missing the first hundred pages?

Puncture that layer of surface cloud though and there is something good here. Not of the swelling gravity of Villeneuve's film or the oddness of Lynch's. And not of mythically all-spanning, political, religious, philosophical-and-everything-else nature of the books either, of course. And not something that's likely to kick-start a platform-defining genre like Dune 2: Battle for Arrakis famously did with the RTS, back in 1992 either. But it's good! And for early access, good is generally enough.

Publisher Coffee Stain and developer Iron Gate Studio have today announced that their Viking epic Valheim has surpassed 10m sales.

In a joint press release, the companies wrote: "[We are] pleased to reveal that Valheim has surpassed ten million copies sold just over one year since its Steam Early Access release."

In addition to this, the companies also revealed that Valheim had an all-time player peak of 502,000 – not too mead-iocre at all. In fact, the player numbers were so good, that in just over two weeks, Valheim sold an astounding 3m units.

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Activision has said it will reveal the "groundbreaking innovations" it is building for new Call of Duty Warzone later this year.

The new Warzone, which Activision today again described nebulously as an "experience" rather than a fresh update or full sequel, will also be free-to-play.

It's being "built from the ground-up" alongside this year's main Call of Duty release, Activision said, which is a sequel to Infinity Ward's 2019 Modern Warfare.

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After a controversial launch and a series of updates focussed on course correction, Gran Turismo 7 got its first proper content drop today, bringing three new cars and a sort of new track into the mix, as well as a suite of fixes and new features.

Let's get the disappointing bit out the way first - the new track on offer is the 24-hour layout of the Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium, which makes bold and daring changes to the layout you'll likely know well by…. Changing the position of the start/finish straight. So it's the same track you know and love, with Eau Rouge serving as the first corner rather than La Source, but this new configuration inspired by the round-the-clock race does at least suggest extended support of Gran Turismo 7's time-of-day feature.

In terms of new cars, leading the charge is the Subaru BRZ GT300 which was seen challenging and indeed conquering last year's Super GT series, and it's joined by its road legal offspring the freshly tweaked Subaru BRZ S. For lovers of kei cars there's a neat surprise in the diminutive form of the Suzuki Cappucino EA11R from 1991 (you'll find it on sale in the used car dealership).

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Diablo Immortal will launch on 2nd June for both mobile platforms and via an open beta on PC, Blizzard has announced.

Word of a Windows version was unexpected - but footage debuted in the release date reveal stream, below. Blizzard also confirmed the PC edition would be free-to-play and support cross-play and cross-progression.

You sign up to pre-register now, via the link below.

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Peridot, the next game from Pokémon Go maker Niantic, has begun to roll out via its recently-announced soft launch.

So far, the cute Tamagotchi-like app has become available in Malaysia - and footage of the game's opening stages has been posted online.

Around 10 minutes of footage from one user reveals Peridot's opening tutorial, item shop and a list of possible tasks to increase your creature's happiness. These tasks include pointing your phone camera (and therefore your Peridot pet) at specific objects like a flower, a cat or a dog.

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Ron Gilbert's upcoming Return to Monkey Island will have an easy mode, at least of sorts.

Chatting to Ars Technica, the creator revealed a hint system will be included in the upcoming release. "[One thing] that people really want in games today are built-in hint systems," Gilbert explained, retconning his previous desires to shun any such mechanic.

"If [players] don't have a built-in hint system, they're just going to jump over to the web and... read a walkthrough"

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GSC Game World, the Kyiv-based developer of Stalker 2, has had its website blocked by the Russian government.

The Stalker 2 website, unsurprisingly, includes a message of support for Ukraine. The developer has also called for an end to Russia's brutal invasion of its home country, as it struggles to continue development while Kyiv has been under attack.

Now, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation has blocked access to the website for Russian audiences, removing access to anyone in the country without use of a proxy. The RIA Novosti news agency said the move followed GSC's decision to cease business in Russia (thanks, XGP.pl, via VGC).

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A modder is working to make Elden Ring multiplayer more seamless.

Co-operative gameplay has been a staple of FromSoftware's games since Demon's Souls, allowing players to summon in help. However, if either player dies they must restart again; and if a boss is defeated, the summoned player will still be booted.

YouTuber LukeYui is now working on a mod that will stop players from being booted out during multiplayer (spotted by TheGamer).

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