Eurogamer

Ubisoft has announced its Ubisoft Forward digital showcase event will be returning this June, delivering a fresh batch of announcements on its upcoming games.

Ubisoft Forward 2021 will take place at 8pm BST/12pm PT on Saturday, 12th June, coinciding with the start of this year's online-only E3 week.

The publisher hasn't yet revealed the games it'll be showcasing during the event - although it says to "stay tuned" for more news on the line-up - but it should be pretty easy to make some educated guesses about what it'll bring.

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Outriders has a new patch designed to tackle the awful inventory wipe bug.

The patch, out now on Steam, Epic Games Store, Xbox and PlayStation platforms, addresses the bug that, since the previous update, caused the inventories of certain players to be wiped.

There is no mention in today's announcement of the Stadia version, which lags behind the other versions in terms of patches.

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Wasteland 3's first expansion is The Battle of Steeltown, inXile has announced.

The Battle of Steeltown DLC releases 3rd June on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation, inXile said. The trailer is below:

Here's the official blurb:

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Codemasters and new owner EA have announced F1 2021.

The racing game launches 16th July 2021 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC via Steam.

As you'd expect, the game features the teams, drivers and circuits for the 2021 FIA Formula One World Championship. Expect a "visual uplift" and faster loading times on PS5 and Xbox Series X, Codemasters said.

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We're used to seeing Call of Duty: Warzone players make use of aimbots and wallhacks to win. Now, they're also using night vision goggles for no real reason other than to show off.

Night vision goggles is an item that isn't officially in Warzone. It is in Infinity Ward's 2019 shooter Modern Warfare - the game upon which Warzone is built. You may remember night vision goggles from the superb Clean House campaign mission, but they're also used during nighttime multiplayer maps.

This week, Warzone streamer Stephen "Yungstaz" Galloway uploaded a gameplay clip to Twitter that showed one cheater auto ping everyone in the lobby - and even equip night vision goggles.

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PlayStation soon-not-to-be-exclusive Days Gone launches for PC on 18th May, and a new trailer has shown off how it looks.

The PC version of the post-apocalyptic motorbike game includes 21:9 ultra-wide monitor support, an unlocked frame-rate and hordes of Freakers (don't call them zombies) up to 500 in size.

Environmental details and foliage draw distances have been improved, and the game's photo mode now features a "new super resolution", Sony said.

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The Elder Scrolls Online's upcoming chapter includes a city not seen in a game in the famous fantasy series since 1994's Arena.

Blackwood, the Oblivion-themed chapter due out for The Elder Scrolls Online in June, includes Gideon as a hub city.

Gideon is an Imperial-based city built on Ayleid ruins but run by the argonians. It's situated on the eastern portion of the new zone, and borders the Black Marsh area.

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Sea of Thieves, having swabbed the deck and washed away the remnants of its inaugural season, is now embarking on its next adventure, with Season 2 introducing the lucrative Forts of Fortune world event, Emissary improvements, a new trade route system, and more.

The flagship addition this season - if only because it takes the form of a bloody enormous red skull cloud that's not exactly easy to miss - is the new Forts of Fortune world event. Quite whether or not it'll be enough of a change from the existing skeleton forts to justify a third re-skin of the long-running feature remains to be seen, but Rare is promising tougher waves of enemies, including Skeleton Lords, and a final "even fiercer" foe. The pay-off for all this is increased rewards, including items to boost Athena's Fortune reputation.

Elsewhere, the Merchant Alliance and Emissaries get additional tweaks, with the latter receiving a new Trade Routes mechanic. Here, players can purchase Commodity Crates from an outpost and check the nearby Merchant Inventory, which provides an ever-changing list of destinations that sell low and buy high for those looking to earn a bit of extra gold.

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You can, of course, be Captain Marvel in Fortnite - but that's not who Brie Larson picked for her new purchasable locker loadout.

On the contrary, Brie Larson is clearly someone with taste when it comes to Fortnite characters - and so she picked her favourite skin, Bushranger, to be offered in a cut-price bundle with an array of associated accessories.

Bushranger, a kind of anthropomorphic shrub with styles for every season, has also received an additional in-game style. It's been designed specifically for Brie Larson in honour of her Fortnite squad actually being named the Bush Babies. Brie Larson really does love Bushranger.

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It's been a while since we heard some player numbers for Apex Legends, but the battle royale seems to be doing pretty dang well - and Respawn has announced the game now has over 100m players in total.

The news was shared on the official Apex Legends Twitter account, with an accompanying video to celebrate the milestone. The clip ends with the date of 19th April, and although there's no explanation as to what this may be, there's a brief snippet of what appears to be a town takeover - and it's left a lot of players scratching their heads.

The big player pool milestone probably doesn't come as much of a surprise to those keeping an eye on Steam's top games: Apex Legends is consistently in the top five, and has a concurrent player count of 104k at time of writing (via Steam Charts). And that's not even including players on Origin, Xbox, PlayStation or Switch.

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After 20 years of waiting, we're just two weeks away from a new Pokémon Snap game! So, of course, Pokémon Go has announced details of an event to celebrate.

Pokémon Go's New Pokémon Snap Celebration will run from 10am local time on 29th April, the day before New Pokémon Snap launches on Nintendo Switch, until 8pm local time on 2nd May.

Smeargle - the paintbrush Pokémon who can appear in Go when you take in-game photos - will be available in its Shiny version for the first time. But you'll need to be lucky to get one - you'll only be able to take a limited number of photos, and the ability to find Shiny Smeargle will then be switched off after the event concludes.

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Picross S6, the latest entry in the popular puzzle series, launches for Nintendo Switch next week on 22nd April.

Priced £8.99/$9.99/€9.99, it brings another serving of tricky nonograms from developer Jupiter, with more than 480 new puzzles to solve. This includes Mega Picross, Color Picross, Clip Picross and Extra Puzzle variants.

If you're a long-time fan of the series and have saved data for earlier Picross S games, you'll also get bonus puzzles to solve.

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Cyberpunk 2077's big 1.2 patch rolled out at the end of last month, promising a huge amount of bug fixes and performance improvements (and delivering some significant boosts for PS4 Pro, at least). But it seems the patch may have quietly added some content for upcoming DLC updates, as a dataminer has discovered new files referencing previously-unseen "episode one" street story quests.

Discovered by a member of the modding community who goes by the username romulus_is_here (shortened to Romulus for this article), the quest descriptions were recently added during the 1.2 patch. Using modding tool "CP77 Tools", Romulus has been unpacking archive data to browse quest files for some time, and told me he does this as a hobby.

Romulus told me that main quests in Cyberpunk 2077 are normally split into three categories: prologue, part one and epilogue, numbered from q000 to q204. A couple of quests, however, can be found in the localisation directory, where they are named q301 - outside the parameters of the regular quests in the game. They're also named "story-ep1", presumably short for story, episode one.

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For anxious people, conversations can feel like video games with permadeath - say the wrong thing when meeting someone for the first time and there's no do-over. First impression: ruined. Games don't often think about these stepping stones, those intricacies in talking to people.

That's not to say they don't do that at all - there are some great games about having conversations. I will always recommend Bithell Games' Subsurface Circular, available on PC and Switch, to anyone even remotely interested in conversational mechanics, and the recent We should talk. by Insatiable Cycle, available on PC, uses an interesting modular conversation system. But right now, my favourite game about having conversations is Signs of the Sojourner.

Nintendo has unleashed another of its indie-focussed showcases, firing out more announcements of games heading to Switch in the coming months and beyond. And in case you missed it - or have an exceptionally short memory - here's everything it contained.

Digixart - the developer behind acclaimed World War 1 narrative adventure 11-11: Memories Retold is bringing its striking procedural road trip adventure, Road 96, to Switch later this year.

Aerial_Knight's Never Yield is a parkour-infused 3D runner set in an eye-catching, futuristic Tokyo - and to a "dope-tastic" soundtrack by Detroit artist Danime-Sama - that's heading to Switch on 19th May, with an eShop demo available right now.

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Acclaimed point-and-click supremo Wadjet Eye Games is teaming up with Wormwood Studios, the developer behind celebrated post-apocalyptic adventure Primordia, once more, this time to bring surreal horror Strangeland to PC on 25th May.

Strangeland, described as a game about "identity, loss, self-doubt, and redemption", unfolds within a strange carnival, whose "denizens and devices... answer with riddles, puzzles, and warnings of a Dark Thing lurking at the park's peak".

"Forge a blade from iron stolen from the jaws of a ravenous hound and hone it with wrath and grief;" teases Wormwood on Strangeland's Steam page, "charm the eye out of a ten-legged teratoma; and ride a giant cicada to the edge of oblivion.... Amidst such madness, death itself has no grip on you, and you will wield that slippery immortality to gain an edge over your foes."

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Cast your mind back to 2019 and you might recall the news that a number of House of the Dead remakes were on the way. Now, publisher Forever Entertainment and developer MegaPixel Studio have shared first footage of their zombie shooter spruce-up running on Switch.

Forever Entertainment - which published MegaPixel Studio's uneven but enjoyable Panzer Dragoon remake last year - previously confirmed House of the Dead 1 and 2 would both be getting the remake treatment, but today's reveal focusses solely on the first game.

Sega originally released House of the Dead 1 into arcades in 1996, sending players - as either Agent Thomas Rogan or his partner G - on a first-person, on-rails rampage through a spooky old mansion, using their light gun to obliterate the undead creations of the evil Dr. Curien.

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Wrath of the Druids, the first major expansion for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, has been delayed into May.

Originally set for 29th April, the Ireland-set add-on will now launch two weeks later on 13th May.

"To deliver a more refined experience, we're sharing that Wrath of the Druids will now release on 13th May," Ubisoft announced on Twitter. "We're working on an article to provide transparency and share insights on our dev process. Thanks for your patience."

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Indie darling Fez surprise-launches on Nintendo Switch today.

Announced as part of Nintendo's indie game presentation, Fez is due up on the eShop just one day after its ninth birthday.

Fez originally launched on Xbox 360 on 13th April 2012. It's a wondrous game that involves shifting the camera around to see the virtual world from different points of view. Oli's Fez review, which returned a Eurogamer essential, is one of my favourite reviews ever published on the site.

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OlliOlli, it's an absolute delight to say, is back. Developer Roll7's superlative skate series is making its return with OlliOlli World, coming to Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC this winter courtesy of publisher Private Division. From what we saw in today's Nintendo Direct Indie Showcase, it boasts all the spark and flair I've come to associate with the studio most recently behind 2018's Laser League.

It's certainly a bigger, bolder game than anything Roll7's attempted before, and the most obvious first point of order is how it brings the series into lavish 3D, and into a fully-realised, fuzzy-edged Adventure Time-esque world of pastel colours and wholesome character. Radland - as OlliOlli World's setting is known - looks like the sort of place you'd happily poke around for hours on end, which gets to this sequel's other bit of business.

"The other pillar of OlliOlli World [alongside the move to 3D] is how can we make it more welcoming," says Roll7's creative director John Ribbins. "Can we make it as rewarding to play at a high level when it comes to chasing scores, but also can we make it something my mum could play as well? Like if I gave her the controller, could she actually get through some of the levels and enjoy it?"

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The wonderfully creepy narrative adventure Oxenfree is getting a sequel, developer Night School Studio has announced.

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals was announced during this evening's Nintendo Indie Direct, and it'll launch for Switch in 2021 (and other platforms such as Steam too).

Oxenfree 2's announcement comes a welcome surprise - it's been five years since the original Oxenfree launched and its developer has since been busy with other projects, such as its drunk-in-hell adventure Afterparty and a Mr Robot spin-off.

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The PSN Store Spring Sale has been underway for a good while now but Sony has just added a number of new games, including some terrific offers on Yakuza 0, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Crysis Remastered and more.

If there's anything that's a must-buy in the sale it's Yakuza 0 for £3.99. If you haven't tried any games in the series before, by now you've probably been inundated with suggestions from fans that you really, really should by now. Well, here's your chance for cheap.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, those in the know say that Yakuza 0 is your best starting point for the series. It may be a prequel that was developed much later in the lifecycle of the series, but it serves as the natural introduction to the whole Kazuma Kiryu saga. From there, you can decide if you want to invest the time commitment in another six whole games. Luckily, they're all on Game Pass if you've access to a PC or Xbox.

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Outriders certainly has some worrying issues - the terrifying inventory wipe bug chief among them. But those who are soldiering on with the endgame have found a useful method to the madness: punching.

Punching - or, to give it its proper name, melee - is an ability I barely used during my playthrough of the campaign. But players have found it is a powerful tool in Outriders' brutally-difficult endgame, and can be a potent option even when playing solo.

Even more interesting, the melee skill - and the melee builds that have emerged around it - is most powerful with the much-maligned Devastator class. This class is ostensibly a tank that some Outriders players are kicking from random co-op groups because of a perceived lack of damage per second potential during Expeditions, the endgame missions that revolve around completing the map as quickly as possible.

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Minecraft's big Caves & Cliffs Update has been split in two, with the latter part now not due until "around the holiday season", developer Mojang said today.

While some of the update will still arrive this summer - more on that below - this constitutes a delay for many of its more ambitious parts.

Explaining the cause in a detailed blog post and FAQ, Mojang said that "significant technical challenges" had stemmed from the far-ranging nature of this update, which touches on fundamental parts of Minecraft's world-generation system.

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UPDATE 15/4/21: Watch Nintendo's new indie showcase event with us, starting at 5pm UK time, via the video below:

ORIGINAL STORY 14/4/21: If you're a Nintendo fan comfortably nestled in the nook of the two-circle Venn diagram also marked 'indie', you may wish to prepare yourself for imminent excitement: Nintendo has another indie showcase scheduled for tomorrow, 14th April.

Proceedings get underway at 5pm in the UK/6pm CEST, with Nintendo promising "roughly 20 minutes focused on fresh and new indie games" for Switch. Quite where the distinction between 'fresh' and 'new' lies, I do not know, but perhaps all will be revealed tomorrow.

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Ubisoft is launching a new online channel in the UK with original talk show, comedy and documentary series.

gTV will stream online via Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and feature series focused on the wider world of video games culture - not just Assassin's Creed.

In Ubisoft's words, the channel will "feature a wide range of original programming inspired not only by Ubisoft, but by the video game industry at large, going behind-the-scenes on how games are created and celebrating the the people who make and play them, as well as the biggest events in the gaming calendar".

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CD Projekt has vowed to stick with its embattled Cyberpunk 2077, despite concern about the state of the game and the studio's ability to turn it around.

Upon release in December, Cyberpunk suffered from a raft of crippling technical issues, particularly on consoles, and failed to live up to the expectations set by its pre-release marketing.

The problems were so bad that Sony pulled Cyberpunk from sale on the PlayStation Store - and Microsoft slapped the game with a performance warning. Refunds were eventually offered for a limited period. CD Projekt also faces class action lawsuits in the United States over Cyberpunk's troubled debut, and potential legal action from investors.

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An Indian Harvest Festival has just begun on Steam, providing us with a great opportunity to discover some games made there via demos or a discounted price.

Probably the best-known game among them is Raji: An Ancient Epic, a game we've talked about a fair bit on Eurogamer. It's an action adventure a bit like Tomb Raider, a bit like Devil May Cry, and a bit like something from Hades-maker Supergiant. And it's very good, as the comparisons suggest. There's a demo of Raji available now.

Other demos include those for an intriguing-looking narrative game called Forgotten Fields, out today, and a tea garden simulator called Two Leaves and a Bud (presumably not the beer). Forgotten Fields is about a man with writer's block who's summoned to an unavoidable family meeting and embarks on a trip down memory lane. And Two Leaves is, well, a game about growing your own tea, and it looks lovely. Oh leaf it out! Brewww, hiss!

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Let us now praise the poets of the watermelon. There is Frida Kahlo, who arranged them like architecture, a strange city of watermelons, one particular example etched with the words, Viva La Vida, a sentiment so joyous not even Coldplay could ruin it. There is Ricky Jay, the conjurer, actor, writer, historian of magic, who could fling playing cards with such deadly speed that their 52 polite razor edges would pierce the thick, "pachydermous hide" of "his majesty", shining and green on Broadway or on the set of the Johnny Carson show.

And now we must add Fruit Ninja. A hush and that hollow popping noise, a T-shirt cannon has fired off-screen and then the watermelon is tumbling before us. "His majesty" is not the half of it. Are we in space? Are we orbiting, circling, caught in some endless Kubrick freefall, upwards and around? Behold nature's panzered blimp: its outside speaks of snakes and camouflage and armour. Its inside, once the blade has sung and fairly scorched the mineral air, is a revelation of blood. And yet, amidst the snakes and camouflage and armour and blood, amidst the scattered punctuation of those little black seeds, the pedantry of pips, the watermelon is revealed as a thing of purest joy.

KT Racing has announced what's set to be its penultimate crack at the WRC licence, with WRC 10 set to come to PlayStation, Xbox and PC on September 2nd, with a Switch version to follow at a later date.

Following last year's impressive WRC 9 - a highlight of the PlayStation 5's early line-up thanks to its brilliant use of DualSense feedback - WRC 10 introduces a more historic theme, celebrating 50 years of the World Rally Championship with classic cars and events such as Acropolis, San Remo, Argentina and Germany. It'll also feature 19 events that look back at significant moments in the championship's history.

There's new modern content too in the form of rallies in Estonia, Croatia, Belgium and Spain, plus a further tweaking to the handling dynamics and a deepening of the career mode with a feature that allows you to create your own team, complete with its own custom livery.

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Activision has confirmed it does issue hardware bans to "repeat or serial" Call of Duty: Warzone cheaters.

In an update on the company's Call of Duty-related anti-cheat efforts, Activision confirmed it has issued more than 475,000 permabans in Call of Duty: Warzone to date.

"Some have asked if we issue hardware bans. We do issue hardware bans against repeat, or serial, cheaters. This is an important part of our effort to combat repeat offenders," Activision said.

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Cyberpunk 2077 patch 1.21 is out now on PC, consoles and Stadia.

It makes a long list of fixes, including for an issue where, after the player commits a crime on the roof of a building, NCPD officers would spawn behind the player's back.

Remember, update 1.2 tackled police reaction times with an increase to their spawn radius for when a player commits a crime, among other things.

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Activision is embroiled in a trademark lawsuit with the developer of a strategy game called Warzone.

The mega-publisher filed a suit seeking a declaration that Activision's use and registration of the trademark's Warzone and Call of Duty Warzone do not infringe on the trademark rights relating to the free-to-play, turn-based Warzone strategy game.

Warzone the strategy game came out in 2017. Activision's battle royale launched three years later, in 2020.

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The American political system often throws up some fairly strange stories, but this might be one of the weirdest yet - as a Roblox player managed to infiltrate the White House press corps.

An individual by the name of "Kacey Montagu", who was able to ask questions directly to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, has now been revealed as an imposter. Politico ran an extensive story on Montagu, detailing how they created the fake persona and were able to fool White House insiders.

Montagu had apparently been masquerading as a White House correspondent since last year, creating a fictional "White House News" outlet to do so. They set up two Twitter accounts to repost information from official sources, and the speed and efficiency of these accounts attracted the attention of White House correspondents (and even some working in the administration). A senior advisor and chief spokesperson for vice president Kamala Harris, and Michael LaRosa, press secretary for Jill Biden and Symone Sanders, were both following one of the accounts.

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UPDATE 14/4/21: You can now download Sony's big PlayStation 5 system software update - which also contains a couple of previously unannounced features (thanks, The Verge).

There's an option for the PS5 to automatically switch off HDR features when the console detects non-HDR content. 120Hz support for 1080p PC monitors is also now supported.

Finally, there's options to link your console and TV's power - so your TV switches on when you power up your PS5, or your PS5 powers into rest mode when you turn off your telly.

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Call of Duty: Warzone's big nuke event is set for 8pm UK time on 21st April.

A tweet from the official Call of Duty account revealed the time and date, alongside the phrase "The end is near..."

So, what's happening? Activision's plan for Verdansk was set in motion by the arrival of zombies on the map as part of season two. Each week, the zombies have spread to new areas. As we reach the climax of the season, this "containment protocol" will fail, and the powers that be will nuke the map. It's the only way to be sure, after all.

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The current world record video for Super Mario Bros. is only eight minutes long, but you don't need to see much of it to understand something special is going on. As Niftski rushes through the NES title, he pulls off some incredible feats that most wouldn't think possible. What is truly impressive, though, is when Niftski stops the timer. Emotions fly. The final number shows: 4:54.948.

By what was just a single frame, the 4:55 barrier has been broken, and the SMB speedrunning community is celebrating a historic occasion. The last time a second barrier was broken for the titles was in 2018, so for Super Mario Bros. this isn't a common occurrence, and the emotion in Niftski's video shows how big a deal it is. "It just feels insane that I have this good of a time in [Super Mario Bros.]," he tells me over Discord. "Me and a few other top level runners started the race to 4:54 after Miniland got his former world record speedrun of 4:55.230 [in February]... we all knew it was going to be a tough grind, but we were all dedicated to getting this time."

Reaching 4:54 is a big deal. To those outside of the community and looking in, though, it may be difficult to understand why it matters quite so much.

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Blizzard has updated its Arcade Collection to add a couple more classic games: Lost Vikings 2 and RPM Racing.

There's also a new design documents gallery for you to browse, and a streamer mode for Rock N' Roll Racing to fix the music licensing issues causing problems while streaming.

The Blizzard Arcade Collection was officially announced back in February at BlizzCon 2021 to includes Lost Vikings 1, Rock & Roll Racing and Blackthorne.

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Stylish first-person adventure Call of the Sea will come to PlayStation 4 and PS5 next month.

The game's Twitter confirmed the May release last night, some five months after the game first launched for PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, including via Xbox Game Pass.

A mix of 1930s action and HP Lovecraft weirdness, Call of the Sea follows adventurer Norah Everhart as she travels to a mysterious island in search of her missing husband Harry.

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There is a surprising amount of art on the moon. There's a whole museum, allegedly - although it's very hard to confirm it's really up there. Who's going to check? You? Me?

The Moon Museum is pretty small as museums go - it's a piece of ceramic wafer, 19 by 13mm in size. It contains tiny images from six artists, and it's attached - allegedly - to the Apollo 12 Lunar Module, Intrepid. That means it's been up there and open to visitors since November 1969.

Nice museum! What about sculpture? There's some sculpture on the moon too. I first discovered the Fallen Astronaut several years back in the beautiful, mind-expanding Phaidon book, Universe: Exploring the Astronomical World. Buy this book. I am not being paid to say that. I am compelled. Universe is one of those books I would rescue from my house if it was burning - a massive thing that shuffles together images from space exploration and scientific study with artefacts that speak of humanity's response to the cosmos over the last few thousand years.

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