Eurogamer

EA Sports has outlined FIFA 22's next big patch.

The highlight here is the handful of changes made to gameplay, specifically nerfs to the AI.

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The highly anticipated, Oculus Quest 2 exclusive VR remake of Resident Evil 4 finally releases tomorrow and I've played through the first 4 hours.

Developed by Armature studios, Resident Evil 4 VR features remastered art, 3D spatial sound, a new first-person perspective, and a movement and comfort scheme that allows the game to be played in either seated, standing or room scale VR.

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Activision Blizzard has said that "more than 20" employees have "exited" the company due to "various resolved reports" in the wake of its sexual harassment becoming public.

A further 20 employees remain at the company after investigation, but have faced "other types of disciplinary action", the company said. For context, Activision Blizzard had 9500 employees total in 2020.

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EA has slapped over 30,000 FIFA 22 players with a week-long ban for exploiting a glitch in Ultimate Team.

The so called "no loss glitch" was active in FIFA Ultimate Team's hardcore competitive mode last week.

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Destiny 2 players will need to fork out extra to access the new dungeons coming to the Witch Queen expansion.

Dungeons have previously been included within the various Destiny 2 expansions and season passes. However, they won't be included in the standard edition of the forthcoming Witch Queen expansion, nor in the Year 5 season passes.

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The number of people subscribed to Xbox Game Pass has grown by 37 percent over the year ending 30th June, Microsoft has revealed.

But that's a slower growth curve than the 48 percent goal it had previously set itself (thanks, Axios Gaming).

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UPDATE 20/10/21: Square Enix has now confirmed the PC file size of Guardians of the Galaxy will be "approximately 80GB at launch". The system requirements on the Steam page have been updated accordingly.

The news was shared in a tweet, with replies confirming that the PS4 and PS5 versions of the game will require around 50GB of storage. There's no official word yet on the Xbox version.

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Look, I get it. Even at the height of Quantum Leap's popularity three decades ago, turning an anthology TV series into a video game would have been a hard sell. This was a show that bravely hit the reset button every single week. In a flurry of electric blue flashes, time-travelling scientist Samuel Beckett would zap into a new body with the laudable but rather vague mission to "put right what once went wrong". Even with the probability analytics of his hologram guardian angel Al, it tended to be a painful process of trial and error. Sam would style it out while trying to deduce the win conditions that would allow him to advance. One week a blind concert pianist, the next a convict on death row. Such was the life of a cosmic samaritan.

Yet the more I think about Quantum Leap - and all five soul-nourishing seasons are, at time of writing, available to stream on Now - the more I reckon it would make for a tremendous gaming chassis. The concept of "leaping" into other people has gradually become a familiar trope, from the creepy sight jacking of Forbidden Siren to the vehicular hopscotch of Driver: San Francisco. Titles as varied as Dishonored, Beyond: Two Souls and Superhot all allow you to borrow a passer-by to achieve your next objective, while Watch Dogs: Legion made recruiting an army of remote-controlled London meatbags its main selling point.

Players hoping to get stuck into Techland's impressive Switch port of Dying Light have run into a pretty significant hurdle while trying to purchase the zombies-and-parkour shooter from Nintendo's eShop; the digital version is currently unavailable in the UK and across Europe as a result of Dying Light being banned from sale in Germany.

Switch players began flagging Dying Light: Platinum Edition's unexpected absence from eShop in multiple territories, despite its 19th October release date, over on Reddit. The mystery was eventually solved by an official Techland spokesperson, who explained the issue stems from the fact Nintendo's European eShop is registered in Germany - a country where Dying Light is unrated and thus prohibited from sale.

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If you've found yourself tantalised by Ubisoft's upcoming extreme sports game Riders Republic, but not so much that you're quite ready to commit, you might like to get involved in the newly announced Free Trial week, giving players up to four hours with the full game ahead of launch.

Riders Republic, a spiritual successor to 2016's underrated Steep, expands on the open-world winter sports action of that game to usher in a fuller roster of activities. There's skiing, snowboarding, biking, and wing suits (of the vanilla and jet-powered varieties), playable both solo and competitively, with Ubisoft's heavily pushing the game's large-scale competitions for upward of 50 players.

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Yesterday, Valve unveiled a new compatibility ratings system for Steam Deck, intended to give users a clear indication of how well specific Steam games will run on the upcoming portable gaming PC. And now, a new beta update for Half-Life 2 has been discovered, seemingly released to ensure the seminal FPS meets the requirements needed to earn Steam Deck's top-tier Verified compatibility badge.

Half-Life 2's new beta branch update, as detailed by Valve watcher Tyler McVicker on his YouTube channel, reportedly covers a surprising amount of ground, not only making adjustments to the way the UI and resolution are handled in-game - primarily to ensure the FPS classic fits Steam Deck's aspect ratio and remains legible at its relatively diminutive size - but addressing some long-standing bugs as well.

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Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto has joined EA as game director of an unannounced first-person game.

Lehto, dubbed "the father of the Master Chief" for his role in the creation of the iconic Halo series at Bungie, is building a new EA office in the Seattle area.

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20,000 Pokémon Go fans turned up in Liverpool's Sefton Park last weekend to finally play the UK's first Safari Zone.

The in-person event was the first major Pokémon Go gathering anywhere in the world since late 2019, before the pandemic took hold.

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A day late as we clear a content backlog, DF Direct Weekly is back! Myself, John Linneman and Alex Battaglia sit down for almost an hour and a half to discuss the latest gaming and tech news and drill deep into a mailbag of questions offered up by backers of the Digital Foundry Supporter Program. Forza Horizon 5, Star Citizen, GTA Remastered and some curious matters surrounding Metroid Dread performance dominate the discussion this week.

We'll have more on Forza Horizon 5 soon, but we have had access to the recent preview build played by Oli last week and in our opinion, this is odds on in delivering one of the most exciting games of the year. We've only had access to an Xbox Series build, but this has it all - genuine 'next-gen' spectacle and outrageous action while still retaining Forza's signature simulation core. It's also interesting in that both 30fps quality and 60fps performance modes both appear to be running at native 4K on Xbox Series X - Forza has always had the ability to scale settings and it opts for that over dynamic resolution scaling. It's something we're going to need to take a closer look at with final code, because both Series X and S maintain a rock solid 60fps while still looking beautiful.

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G2 Esports has launched its first ever all-female team for Valorant.

G2 Esports is one of the most successful esports organisations in Europe, having won the League of Legends European Championships eight times.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator will add a fleet of new aircraft and upgrades as part of a new Game of the Year Edition, coming as a free update for PC and Xbox Series X/S on 18th November.

There's an updated weather system, "early access to DX12" and a dev mode replay system, Microsoft said, plus new sightseeing missions and tutorials.

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Sea of Thieves has sailed past 25 million players.

Rare's multiplayer Xbox and PC pirate adventure launched in March 2018, and has grown steadily since.

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Microsoft will broadcast a special show to celebrate the Xbox's 20th anniversary, on 15th November at 5pm UK time (that's 1pm Eastern, or 10am Pacific).

The Xbox Anniversary Celebration will feature "a special look back at 20 years of Xbox", Microsoft teased, saying it would share more details soon.

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The Pokémon Company has announced the Super Pet Contest to celebrate the release of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Pokémon Shining Pearl next month.

Inspired by the Super Contest Shows from those games in which Pokémon are judged in a pageant style show, the Super Pet Contest is a digital version that puts fans' pets in the spotlight.

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Microsoft has announced a raft of eye-catching titles coming to Xbox Game Pass throughout the rest of October

Available today are Into the Pit on cloud, console and PC, and Outriders on PC.

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A new Splinter Cell has been put into production by Ubisoft, according to a report.

Serial leaker Tom Henderson, via VGC, has said the game will be a "mainline" entry in the series - which will likely end up being the first in over a decade.

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Data from the recent Twitch leak may not have included user password information, but it did include a list of its top earning streamers and, strangely, references to pizza.

It also included a "do not ban" list.

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FIFA 22's customisable pitch lines are causing an accessibility problem, players have said.

FIFA 22, like FIFA 21, lets you customise your stadium for use in FIFA Ultimate Team. And, like FIFA 21, FIFA 22 lets you change the colour of the pitch lines.

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A new mobile game has been created in collaboration with the World Health Organisation to raise COVID-19 vaccine awareness.

Called Antidote COVID-19, its tagline "I am the Shield" is representative of a desire to increase awareness of coronavirus vaccination and other preventative measures.

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Yesterday, Fortnite set tongues wagging when it revealed that both Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya would be joining the battle royale via their Dune characters.

Artwork for the skins also included one of Dune's big ol' sandworms, though now with Fishstick's head. Long-time Dune fans reacted with typical skepticism as their beloved series was brought into 21st century pop culture.

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Sony is testing a limited-release beta for PS5 players to share screenshots and clips through the PlayStation app.

The app update will make it far easier for users to access their game media on their phone to share straight to social media, rather than sharing directly from the console with its awkward typing function.

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Monster Hunter: World has achieved an impressive 20m units shipped.

This figure includes shipments of Monster Hunter World: Iceborne Master Edition, Capcom said.

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The company that told Sony "go ahead, sue us" then pulled its replacement PlayStation 5 plates from sale after Sony threatened to sue them is now selling redesigned PS5 plates - and has taunted Sony once again in the process.

In February, Canadian-based device customisation company Dbrand launched its replacement PS5 plates, dubbed Darkplates, with a brazen attitude towards the prospect of a Sony takedown.

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It's funny how attached you can become to the little bits of plastic we carry around with us. After four and a half years of diligent service - including some 300 hours of Animal Crossing, three and a bit playthroughs of Breath of the Wild, countless late night matches of Arms and somehow, inexplicably, over 100 hours in Tetris 99 without registering a single win - my launch Switch model has finally been placed peacefully into retirement as it makes way for the OLED.

After a couple of weeks with Nintendo's hardware refresh, I'm pleasantly surprised how much it reinvigorates the Switch experience, which in recent months has sometimes felt as dog-eared as my old console. Having an excuse to return to older games - and after four and a half years I've somehow managed to acquire just shy of 200 of them - is a delight, and I've begun to recapture some of that same pang of excitement I had about the console in its first few years. Skyrim on the toilet! Dark Souls in bed! And hey, I've got an all-new Metroid to keep me smiling too.

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Episode 1 of The New Eurogamer Podcast, featuring Quake legend Sujoy Roy, is now available to all. This took a little longer than expected due to faffing with RSS feeds, but you should now be able to find it in all the places you podcast. If you can't, please let me know below.

Also, yes, the Eurogamer Podcast is back! But it's slightly different to what we've done before, with a new host - me! - and a new direction. I've decided to move to an interview format instead of a chat show because that's what interests me most. I like sitting people down and hearing about their lives. Some of my best work on the site, in all the many years I've worked here, has come from doing it, so that's what I'm going to be doing here.

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If people ever ask what I do for a living - and after I've navigated the follow-up issue of whether I play games all day; I was once asked that while having a lumbar puncture - I generally say that I spend a lot of time thinking about how to describe things. Games are complicated pieces of technology and thought, and, in truth, anyone can have an opinion about something. So description seems to be the bit of the job that I find the most challenging and rewarding: what is something trying to do and how does it feel? What is it?

I'm not brilliant at this - which is why it's both challenging and rewarding. But I am always on the look out for people who do this description business well. And sooner or later, I always turn to Counter Intelligence, the only book from Jonathan Gold, the late, great restaurant critic from Los Angeles and the only person to ever win a Pulitzer from writing about food.

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Pokémon Unite, like almost all live-service games at this spookiest time of the year, is getting in on the Halloween action with a major new patch that will, among other things, add the (not especially spooky) squirrel-like Pokémon Greedent.

Greedent makes a brief appearance in Pokémon Unite's new Halloween Festival reveal trailer, but specifics regarding its abilities are pretty limited right now. Instead, we're mostly treating to the spooky stuff, which includes a Halloween-y map makeover, replete with pumpkins and other seasonal trimmings.

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As the release of Steam Deck draws ever closer, Valve continues sharing more details about its highly anticipated portable gaming PC, and the company has now announced it'll reviewing the entire Steam catalogue to create a new compatibility ratings system.

As outlined in Valve's latest video, all games on Steam will fall into one of four categories - Verified, Playable, Unsupported, and Unknown - giving Steam Deck users an easy, at-a-glance means of checking compatibility with their system.

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Two and a half months after the arrival of Apex Legends' season ten hero Seer, it's time to do the official dance of welcoming once more, as developer Respawn Entertainment formally introduces the free-to-play shooter's next new playable character, Ash.

Ash should be immediately recognisable to fans of Respawn's previous work, given the formidable simulacrum played a prominent role in Titanfall 2 - but should also be familiar to Apex Legends players too, having been restored during Season 5's Broken Ghost quest.

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Outriders, developer People Can Fly's "smart if familiar" (as Eurogamer branded it) third-person sci-fi shooter, will be making its way to PC Game Pass tomorrow, 19th October.

Outriders initially launched for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation back in April, delivering a slice of co-operative sci-fi shooter action Eurogamer reviewer Vikki Blake enjoyed, albeit with some provisos, in her review. "For some," she wrote, "I suspect Outriders doesn't innovate enough to stand out from an already oversaturated shooter market, relying too much on the ideas of other, stronger titles that have come before it."

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Hiroshi Ono, graphic designer and pixel artist at Namco, has passed away.

Known as Mr Dotman, he was responsible most famously for the sprites in Galaga.

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Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida is "positive" on the possibility of the MMO coming to Xbox.

Speaking in an interview with Easy Allies (and reported by TheGamer), Yoshida was asked about whether the game will come to Microsoft's console. Though he wasn't able to share any details, it seems conversations are ongoing.

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Elden Ring has been delayed a month to February 2022.

The hotly-anticipated next game from From Software was due out on 21st January 2022 for PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. It's now coming out 25th February 2022.

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Doom is playable on pretty much anything, from a fridge to a pregnancy test. Now it's playable on Twitter.

Thanks to new bot Tweet2Doom, Twitter users can reply to tweets with various commands to control Doom Guy and receive a video clip of the results.

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Fans of Minecraft voted for the Allay mob to be added to the game during the Minecraft Live event at the weekend.

As has become annual tradition at Minecraft Live, fans are given the opportunity to vote for one of three mobs to be added in a future update. This year, as we previously reported, the three potential mobs were the Allay, Glare and Copper Golem mobs.

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