Eurogamer

Halo Infinite's second season, Lone Wolves, has been teased via a new trailer.

The new season, set to arrive on 3rd May, will contain "new maps, modes, themed limited-time events, and an all-new Battle Pass," the video's description states.

Last weekend, 343 community director Brian Jarrard said the studio understood some fans were "simply out of patience" with the game's various frustrations, and that his team was "certainly not happy to be unable to meet player and community expectations". However, some of these should be addressed as part of the new season, he added.

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Just in time for Easter, Square Enix is launching a Hatching-tide event in its MMORPG, but a certain emote is causing debate.

As part of the event, various items and minions will be available to collect, as well as an emote for eating an egg.

A picture of the emote shows a cute little Lalafell eating an egg, but the egg still has half the shell on. Which begs the question: how are you meant to eat a boiled egg?

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Here you can find the best gaming laptop deals in April 2022 for both the UK and US, whatever your budget. This includes steep discounts on high-end gaming laptops, decently-priced mid-range units, and great savings on lower priced machines.

From Asus and MSI to Acer, Lenovo and more, we've rounded up discounts from some of the best gaming laptop brands and even some price reductions on the latest models. To help make your search a little easier, we've scoured through the best online retailers including Amazon, Currys, Scan and more to help you save money on your new investment, but also to ensure you get the best quality laptop within your budget.

Fresh from winning the BAFTA Games award for Performer in a Leading Role, Returnal star Jane Perry discussed the importance of having an older woman "kicking butt".

Speaking to Eurogamer, the actress behind Returnal main character Selene Vassos and Hitman's Diana Burnwood discussed the tension between being a parent and having a career.

"I think that's very unique, and kudos to Housemarque. I think they took a risk, they could have had a younger gal, or they could have had a man, but no," she said.

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Paramount's Halo TV has revealed yet more of its famously-suited star - and fans remain split on whether this is a good thing.

After revealing the face of Master Chief (AKA actor Pablo Schreiber) in its premiere episode, the series' third slice has now unveiled his naked bottom.

Fans have expressed surprise at seeing their suited hero standing in the butt, sorry, buff during the episode screened last night via Paramount+ in the US. (The show remains unavailable to watch in the UK.)

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In Resident Evil 3, mutant monstrosity Nemesis pursues Jill throughout a burning Raccoon City. But how was Umbrella's relentless scaremonger made? Fresh concept art shines a light on how that might have gone - had it been realised in virtual form.

Capcom, via the Resident Evil Twitter account, released four pieces of artwork, each revolving around Nemesis.

We see him on a table in an Umbrella lab, hooked up to various tubes and with technicians in hazmat suits making notes.

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We've seen some deals on gaming laptops with the RTX 3060 and the budget-oriented RTX 3050. However, the RTX 3070 has seemed pretty elusive.

This is why we're welcoming a deal on this MSI Katana G66 gaming laptop, with an RTX 3070, available from Amazon for £999.99. This is nearly a £400 saving off the RRP.

MSI are one of the more trusted gaming hardware manufacturers. This laptop has an 11th gen Intel Core i7-11800H processor, which has eight cores and can turbo up to 4.6Ghz. And the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 is one of the higher-end GPUs you can buy today, whether it's a laptop or desktop.

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Tomb Raider writer Rhianna Pratchett wants Lara Croft to have fewer father issues in the forthcoming next game.

Speaking to Eurogamer at last night’s BAFTAs, Pratchett confirmed she's not working on the newly announced title, but is "very excited to see what they do with Lara next".

"We had a really fun time evolving her character, so I would like to see probably less father issues," she said. "And that's coming from me!"

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Football Manager 2022 is now free-to-play on Steam and Xbox until Monday, 11th April.

Head to Steam or the Microsoft Store to download Sports Interactive's football management sim.

Official social media accounts say Football Manager 2022 will be free on the Epic Games Store, too, but it currently isn't. According to the Football Manager Twitter account, there are some problems the developer is trying to work through.

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Square Enix has trademarked Tactics Ogre: Reborn in Japan, sparking speculation a remaster of the wonderful medieval-themed tactical role-playing game Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together will soon be announced.

The trademark, spotted by Twitter's Renka and shared by the ever-watchful Nibel, is being paired with the Tactics Ogre remaster that appeared on last year's infamous GeForce Now leak.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together first launched on the Super Famicom in Japan in 1995. It later came out on the Sega Saturn and, in the west, the PlayStation. It was remade for PSP in 2010.

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Returnal developer Housemarque is hopeful the game's arrival on PlayStation Plus will help it find a bigger audience.

Speaking to Eurogamer last night at the BAFTA video game awards, Housemarque managing director Ilari Kuittinen said it was "brilliant" that Returnal will be added to Sony's forthcoming revamped subscription service.

"As you know, it's been a while since the release. And we know the people who get into [subscriptions] play a lot," he said.

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Metroid Dread now offers three boss rush modes, thanks to today's free game update. You'll gain access to the first after completing the main game's story.

The standard Boss Rush lets you fight 12 bosses one after the other, with damage from each carried over to the next. Weapons are fully restored, however.

Your aim here (apart from at the boss' weakpoints!) is to down each boss as quick as possible. If Samus is downed herself then you'll be able retry your current boss fight, but incur a time penalty.

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Activision Blizzard will convert all US-based game testers on temporary contracts to full-time employees, with an improved $20/hour salary and access to full company benefits.

Almost 1100 staff will benefit from the change from 1st January - although this will not apply to staff at Call of Duty studio Raven who are currently seeking unionisation.

Activision has said it is "prohibited from making new kinds of compensation changes at Raven at this time" due to "legal obligations under the National Labor Relations Act" (thanks, The Verge).

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MultiVersus gameplay has leaked online and, unsurprisingly, the game looks a lot like Smash Bros.

The near five-minute gameplay clip is live now on vk.com, and looks like it was captured from a recent restricted test, given the black bars that block an identifying watermark from showing on-screen.

We see a raft of characters from the Warner Bros. character pile in action, including Wonder Woman, Batman, Harley Quinn and Velma.

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Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: foxes, a unique take on running, and spooky stuff.

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

There’s a great documentary with Ghostwire: Tokyo’s former creative director Ikumi Nakamura on YouTube as she explores “haikyo”, abandoned Japanese buildings. She photographs these desolate, skeletal structures; half finished constructions that seem to have simply…stopped.

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Use an Ascender at Chonker’s Speedway and Command Cavern is one of the Seasonal Quests in Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 2.

To complete the challenge, you must first find an Ascender at Chonker’s Speedway and Command Cavern. This doesn’t need to be done in a single match, so don’t worry if one location ends up being outside the circle, or you die before using both Ascenders.

Completing this challenge will reward you with 20K XP, which will help unlock new Battle Pass skins.

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The original Moss released just over four years ago and back then the PSVR’s landscape was a very different place. At that point its community was alive and vibrant. Multiple new releases were popping up each week offering a wide variety of experiences and it felt like an exciting new era of gaming was being born (quite literally) right in front of our eyes.

Nowadays, the hustle and bustle of the PSVR storefront is long gone and decent new releases, hell, even bad to medium releases, are few and far between. Due to the minimal longevity of VR games in general and this drip-feeding of new experiences, it’s a safe bet to say that a lot of people’s PSVR headsets have been gathering dust for a while. I know mine certainly has.

Chances are this drought of games is due to the impending release of the PSVR 2. With its new controllers and camera-free tracking promising a much better experience overall, it makes sense to think that developers would be prepping games to launch with that, rather than catering to a headset that’s about to become obsolete. And that’s why Moss: Book 2 feels like it launched with more of a squeak than the bang it deserves. It’s the sequel to one of my favourite VR games of all time - yet news of its arrival barely caused a ripple of excitement, even from within the VR sphere.

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BAFTA has announced the 2022 winners of its annual Games Awards, with developer Housemarque's sci-fi shooter rogue-like Returnal leaving the show most laden, having taken home the gong across a grand total of four categories, including one for Best Game.

Alongside that Best Game award, Returnal came top in BAFTA's Audio Achievement amd Music categories, while Jane Perry scored a win in the Performer in a Leading Role category for her portrayal of Returnal protagonist Selene Vassos.

Returnal wasn't the only multi-award winner, however; Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart successfully beat the competition in BAFTA's Animation and Technical Achievement categories, while Hazelight Studios' It Takes Two was named best Multiplayer game and best Original Property.

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Pirate Legends yearning for some adventure to really test their nautical prowess will finally get their wish from 21st April, when Sea of Thieves launches Legend of the Veil - a brand-new, story driven quest designed exclusively for the piratical cream of the crop.

Rare initially teased Legend of the Veil during its Sea of Thieves' 2022 roadmap reveal back in January, and with a release date for the adventure now confirmed, the developer has shared more on what players can expect to see come its arrival.

While Sea of Thieves' existing Pirate-Legend-focused Athena Voyages are little more than a clutch of Trading Company tasks strung together into one lengthy quest, Legend of the Veil is aiming to be rather more ambitious, blending the cinematic presentation of previous Tall Tales adventures - complete with cut-scenes, music, and voice work - with the randomness and replayability of standard voyages.

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Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is Team Ninja's latest, a fast-paced action game that serves as a prequel to the original Final Fantasy. Early reports suggested shouldn't expect a technical stunner, but as a new full-price Final Fantasy adventure seemingly built on the Nioh engine, the potential was there for something interesting and worthwhile.

The problem is that the tech is clearly dated, to the point where core rendering elements are reminiscent of the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 era. Even so, the demands placed on our consoles are significant – to the point finding any machine capable of providing a locked 60fps proves to be a remarkably difficult experience. It's not possible on any of the current-gen machines with only PS4 Pro code running on PS5 getting close. However, remarkably, Xbox One X gets closest to a locked 60fps from all available options, albeit with the uglified rendition of the game's visuals common to all last-gen machines and – unforgivably – on Xbox Series S too.

If you hurl yourself over to the Epic Games Store right now, you've a strong selection of freebies to choose from in the form of Rogue Legacy and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, but if your lust for a bargain remains unsated, Epic has more to come, with developer Firaxis' XCOM 2 now confirmed as next week's free game.

XCOM 2 is, of course, a bit of a winner, refining the base-building, alien-annihilating turn-based tactics of its 2012 predecessor (itself a refinement of Julian Gollop's classic X-COM series) to create a prettier, tougher, richer game of extraterrestrial slaughter.

As Chris Bratt put it in his 2016 review, "XCOM 2 isn't a reworking of the original game...it's a genuine response to it... Moment to moment, the thing that makes this astonishing game truly sing is the way in which it's managed to respond to the bad habits we picked up last time around. Move faster, it urges. Take more risks. Become a more interesting player."

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A new report has highlighted staff concerns at Riot Games, as the League of Legends developer has begun encouraging staff back into its Los Angeles-based office.

Employees told Vice that Riot's decision to drop its mask mandate and stop testing for unvaccinated employees put them at risk, as hybrid working with three days in the office per week was being encouraged as the new norm.

Today's report comes just a week after similar criticisms and staff walkouts at Activision, which also has studios in California. Both companies said the changes reflected their state's recent relaxation in Covid safety rules - despite rising case numbers due to the Omicron BA2 subvariant.

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The release of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga marks an incredible 17 years between this new instalment and the very first game in the series, 2005’s LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game.

While the original game may almost be old enough to pop down to the Mos Eisley Cantina for a Fuzzy Tauntaun or two, since its inception, the LEGO Star Wars video game brand has spawned a surprising amount of adventures both old and new.

Some of these games have been lost in the sands of time and are either no longer playable, no longer canon to the series, or both, but all have been included in the list video above. In it, I rank all 15 LEGO Star Wars games (except for LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga which is the 16th) from worst to best. Or should that be from Dark Side to Light Side?

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Developer Cellar Door Games has announced that Rogue Legacy 2 will officially launch on PC, as well as Xbox One and Series X/S, on 28th April 2022.

"Rogue Legacy 2 is finally reaching v1.0 and we couldn't be happier with how it turned out," the developer wrote today.

"Our goal for Rogue Legacy 2 was always to make 'Rogue Legacy 3' because we didn’t want to settle for just more. It had to stay true to the original, but also stand on its own as something new.

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This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, we're celebrating the return of Monkey Island and Max Payne!

A brilliant April Fool's announcement from Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert has become a very-real revival for everyone's favourite pirate Guybrush Threepwood. Meanwhile, Grand Theft Auto maker Rockstar is lending the Max Payne franchise back to Control developer Remedy.

Chatting with me about all this - and what we'd like to see revived next - are Eurogamer news reporters Ed Nightingale and Victoria Kennedy. We discuss playing as a digital Sam Lake, mangle poor Guybrush's name, and hum the F-Zero theme tune.

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Things might be getting better on the graphics card front, as retailer Scan has managed to keep Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti and 3090 Ti Founders Edition models in stock for far longer than expected.

The two GPUs are the latest iteration on Nvidia's RTX lineup of cards, providing a marginal boost over their original counterparts, the 3080 and 3090, respectively. However, those still in the market looking to upgrade from the 10-series or lower-end 20-series cards will find that these two GPUs represent a ton of extra performance, plus useful features like AV1 decoding and compatibility with HDMI 2.1 TVs and monitors.

Scan has both models at RRP, which is the benefit of Nvidia's strict control over the sale of its Founders Edition products. You also get a pretty slick thermal solution and Nvidia's modern 12-pin power delivery cables, in a package that's smaller and easier to fit in your PC than most 3080 Ti and 3090 Ti models.

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Since releasing in 2017, and going free-to-play in 2019, Destiny 2 now has six expansions with The Witch Queen releasing earlier this year. The last three expansions need to be bought to play, and are solely developed by Bungie. They add new locations, weapons, boss fights and more for you and your friends to take on.

Whether you're a completely new Destiny 2 player or you're yet to play the latest expansions, you can grab them for less in Humble Bundle's Bungie Publisher sale where there are savings of up to 50 per cent on Destiny 2's expansions.

Before taking on Destiny 2's The Witch Queen expansion, you'll want to go through the Shadowkeep and Beyond Light expansions that came before. You can get these along with the Forsaken Weapons pack in the Legacy Collection bundle, which is half price in the Humble sale.

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When it comes to PC gaming, RAM is an oft-overlooked part of the equation. Your graphics card and CPU are the most important determiners of performance, but fast RAM helps speed up anything CPU-limited - including PC gaming on a 1080p monitor. If you're running slow or high-latency memory from a few years back, then upgrading to a faster kit can be worthwhile.

That's why we wanted to let you know that Crucial is currently selling a 16GB kit of their Ballistix DDR4-3200 CL16 memory for £46.79, compared to £58.28 for the same kit on Amazon. It's rare to see 16GB of RAM below £50, especially some from a major manufacturer like Crucial, so this is a pretty outstanding deal. The lowest price we can see for a similar spec RAM kit is £56, and that's from a much less well known brand.

Rated at 3200MT/s CL16, this kit is precisely in the sweet spot when it comes to price versus performance. When going below 3200MT/s, you tend to lose performance pretty rapidly, whereas going beyond around 3600MT/s you start running into diminishing returns, with very marginal gains and much higher prices. There are still tons of PCs operating with 2133MT/s, 2400MT/s or 2666MT/s memory, and they're leaving a bit of performance on the table. To check your memory speed, you can use Task Manager's performance tab, or programs like Speccy or CPU-Z.

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Lego and Fortnite maker Epic Games have today announced a "long-term partnership to shape the future of the metaverse" with a focus on building a safe space for young players.

"The family-friendly digital experience will give kids access to tools that will empower them to become confident creators and deliver amazing play opportunities in a safe and positive space," the pair announced in a joint statement today.

Details are thin on the ground, but it feels like a major commitment for Lego's digital future, and a huge win for Epic Games to be entrusted with the notoriously child-safe brand.

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Excerpts from the abandoned Deux Ex: Human Revolution movie script have surfaced online, giving us our best view yet of the project.

Around a decade ago, plans were in place for director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill to adapt Eidos Montreal's popular cyberpunk shooter into a film. But it wasn't to be.

Derrickson and Cargill were snapped up by Marvel to make Doctor Strange, and without the duo onboard, production company CBS Films lost interest and moved on.

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AC Milan will put the awful eFootball logo on its training kit, Konami has announced.

The logo, which looks like a rip-off of the euro sign, will be on the famous Italian club's training gear from the beginning of next season.

The players wear the training kit during sessions at the Milanello Sports Centre and before every fixture in domestic and international competitions. They of course wear the proper AC Milan kit while they're playing matches. Konami hasn't got its eFootball logo on that - yet.

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There's a childlike wonder to Two Point Campus. With its collection of fantastical lessons, it indulges those daydreams of 'what would you like to be when you grow up?' and let's you play those out in silly fashion.

"Kids have these great ideas of what they're going to become and you never become that, you never really do become someone who rides a rocket ship to the moon," says Gary Carr, game director at Two Point Studios.

"And in this game we said why not? Why can't you be fighting dragons? And why can't you be flying rocket ships or building robots?"

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Overwatch character Zarya has been quietly edited to remove a "Z" logo on her character model.

Developer Blizzard has not yet commented on the change, though fans have spotted the "Z" has now disappeared in the game's most recent update (thanks, PC Gamer).

It's not hard to guess why this change has occured now. The "Z" symbol has recently become co-opted by Putin-supporting Russian citizens and emblazoned on military vehicles currently involved in the country's devastating invasion of Ukraine.

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A new Ghost Recon game is reportedly in the works, following news that Ghost Recon Breakpoint has received its final update.

As reported by Kotaku, the next game in the series is codenamed OVER and was originally leaked by Nvidia. Kotaku sources claim it has already been in development for over a year and could be released in fiscal year 2023.

Also reported is that free-to-play live-service shooter Ghost Recon Frontline is undergoing a reset following negative feedback from an internal playtest this year. It's unlikely to launch soon.

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When working your way through Moreau’s watery swamp pit in Resident Evil Village, players were reportedly once set to encounter a range of new creatures, including mermaids. But as is to be expected from a Resident Evil game, these mermaids were not going to be the Disney princess versions akin to the likes of Ariel and her family. Rather, they were going to be a (literal) monstrous pain for Ethan Winters and players.

Reliable Resident Evil leaker Dusk Golem, who has a record of insider knowledge on the series' development, has shared more details on Moreau’s area within the game, as well as the enemies players would encounter there. When discussing the mermaid like enemies that were ultimately cut from the final release, Dusk Golem revealed:

"In the water they could swim for you quickly if [they] spotted you, and you had to get to patches of land or kill them successfully before they reached you.

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Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has only been out a couple of days, but players are already getting creative with some of its quirks.

For example, you can't kill children in the game - and players have found that by chaining lightsaber attacks against these invulnerable younglings, you can essentially levitate and hover to places you'd normally struggle to reach.

Specifically, people are beating up little Episode 1-era Anakin Skywalker, who will simply glow red from repeated lightsaber damage. (Normally, whacking your party members with lightsabers sends them tumbling apart into their Lego components.)

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Mario Golf will be the next N64 game to hit Nintendo Switch Online.

As revealed in a tweet from Nintendo, it will tee off from the service on 15th April.

Originally released in 1999, this was the first instalment in Camelot's Mario Golf series and is considered the first modern Mario sports game, with a Game Boy Colour counterpart later that year. Check out the Japanese trailer below.

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Dune: Spice Wars launches in early access form on 26th April.

The real-time strategy game features four factions fighting each other for control of spice on Dune's iconic desert planet, Arrakis.

Publisher Funcom and developer Shiro Games also announced the fourth playable faction, the Fremen, who join the Atreides, Harkonnen and Smugglers factions. Here's the official blurb:

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Remedy has announced plans to remake Max Payne 1 and 2 after agreeing a deal with original publisher Rockstar.

The neo-noir action games, known for their bullet-time gameplay, return as a single title for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, and are built with Remedy’s own Northlight game engine.

According to Remedy, Rockstar is footing the bill for development. The studio behind Alan Wake and Control said the remake's development budget is "in line with a typical Remedy AAA-production".

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The first big fix for Gran Turismo 7's launch issues – chiefly its grim grind made all the more unpalatable by the presence of microtransactions – is now live, boosting payouts for campaign and online events and making some other welcome changes along the way.

New events have been introduced, with big races at Le Mans, Sardegna and Tokyo Expressway slotting in alongside other tweaked races towards the end of the campaign that now all deliver bigger payouts. There are new 1 hour endurance events available once you've reached Collector Level 23 – all coming under 'The Human Comedy' banner, which is rather apt for the discipline – while online events will also now offer bigger payouts. Elsewhere the in-game credit cap has been lifted and more legendary cars will be listed in the auction house at any one time.

And there's more! Off-road physics, which were a bit waywards, have now been grounded, some graphical tweaks have taken place and plenty more besides – you can see the full rundown of what's new in Gran Turismo 7 version 1.11 in the extensive patchnotes.

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