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UPDATE 2.20pm: Xbox Palworld players, your time has come. The below patch, known as version v0.1.1.4 on Xbox, is now available for you as well.

The original story continues below.

ORIGINAL 11.29am: Palworld developer Pocketpair has detailed a patch that will ensure all those Pals sent to the breeding farm will no longer be so exhausted from reproducing they go to sleep and never wake up.

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High-profile wrestler Brock Lesnar has been removed from WWE 2K24's special edition box art, following the publication of a lawsuit regarding disgraced former WWE boss Vince McMahon.

The lawsuit alleges McMahon sexually assaulted and sex trafficked an employee while running WWE, and claims an unnamed wrestler then requested an explicit video of the victim from McMahon during a contract renegotiation.

The Wall Street Journal has said that wrestler is Lesnar. McMahon has denied the allegations in the lawsuit. Lesnar has not responded to requests for comment.

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Modern Warfare 3 is offering a free multiplayer trial this weekend, during the launch of Season 2.

Modern Warfare Season 2 begins later today at 5pm GMT / 12pm ET, and will add three new 6v6 maps called Stash House, Vista, and Departures.

Both Vista and Departures are medium-sized maps, while Stash House is small-sized. Here's a quick look at them from Activision.

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Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters of Eurogamer. It's a series that highlights some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also about having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and if you want to read more, you can - you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

Come on, there's nothing more fun than watching a conference and seeing someone demo a game and then announce: "It's available right now!" Whatever the game is, it produces a jolt of excitement. It's an occasion! It's a talking point. And they seem to be more popular now than ever.

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If your nights spent kingly (or queenly) crusading have been growing a little stale of late, Paradox Interactive would like you to know there's a busy year ahead for its acclaimed medieval grand strategy game, with its newly revealed 2024 Crusader Kings 3 roadmap promising two new large-scale expansions and more to freshen up that sandbox.

2024 marks the start of what Paradox is calling Crusader Kings 3: Chapter 3, which includes the aforementioned two expansions - Legends of the Dead and Roads to Power - plus the Wandering Nobles event pack, and the Couture of the Capets cosmetic clothing DLC.

Legends of the Dead is up first, falling under the banner of what Paradox likes to call a Core Expansion - which is to say, sizeable but not quite as sizeable as Crusader Kings 3's Major Expansions. Legends of the Dead is, as its name suggests, primarily concerned with legends, giving players the means to raise their renown and strengthen the legitimacy of their rule by either commissioning an epic tale of their general awesomeness - which can then be usefully spread around the place - or by actually going out and doing some heroic deeds themselves.

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"My take on Final Fantasy, and this is quite deliberate, is I don't restrict it to being any one thing," says series producer Yoshinori Kitase. I'd asked him what he felt was the essence of Final Fantasy, especially as so many fans have their own ideas of what the series should be.

"We talk about Final Fantasy as being a toy box," he continues. "The idea that you take the lid off the toy box and you've got all kinds of different things in there. There's a dinosaur here, you've got your football here and your baseball here. And there are so many different things to play with and have fun. And that to me, that's what Final Fantasy is."

I'm chatting with Kitase at a preview event for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, the next game in the series and second in the planned trilogy of remakes. The Final Fantasy series is beloved, but the seventh is, perhaps, the most beloved of all - at least in its legacy of 3D graphics and cinematic storytelling.

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The grasslands lay out before me, the greens and blues seemingly luminous compared to the polluted, labyrinthine city of Midgar. The map screen is a tantalising glimpse of how sprawling this particular region is and icons at the top of the screen tempt me towards the main quest. But all I can think about is playing more cards.

The original Final Fantasy 7 had plenty of minigames, but not a card game. It was follow-up Final Fantasy 8 that introduced Triple Triad, which later found new life in Final Fantasy 14, while Final Fantasy 9 gave us the similar Tetra Master, later included in Final Fantasy 11. These card games are some of the most popular minigames in the series - there's now a real life trading card game too.

Which brings us to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Queen's Blood is this game's iteration: not just a fun diversion, but a key example of Square Enix stuffing the game with content to keep players occupied away from the main quest. Perhaps even too much.

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Anna Megill has joined CD Projekt Red as lead writer on the studio's upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, codenamed Project Orion.

Megill has over 20 years of experience in the industry, and has previously worked on games such as Control and the upcoming Fable reboot. She will be joined on the narrative team by Alexander Freed, whose previous work includes serving as lead writer on Star Wars: The Old Republic at BioWare.

"I'm so excited to work with this brilliant, creative team," Megill wrote on X. Megill left Fable reboot developer Playground Games last year, saying the time felt "right for new challenges".

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Square Enix will review its development system to improve the quality of its games, company president Takashi Kiryu has announced.

Kiryu's comments were made during Square Enix's latest financial results briefing, Bloomberg reported, during which he indicated a policy of reducing outsourced development and focusing on large-scale games developed in-house, with the aim of boosting both the quality of games and profit margins.

The new system is set to be announced in spring, with multiple sources at the conference call stating it will be in effect in April. That would align with the company's new financial year.

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Valiant Hearts: Coming Home looks to be making its way to consoles in the future.

The First World War Ubisoft sequel was previously exclusive to Netflix on mobile, having been announced during 2022's Game Awards. However, this exclusivity may be over soon, as a post by Brazil's ratings board (spotted by VGC) has the game listed for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Valiant Hearts: Coming Home is described as a "dramatic narrative game" by Ubisoft, and sees players following the interweaving stories of James, Anna, Ernst and George. Walt (the first game's canine companion) returns in the sequel to help players work their way through these stories, which include themes of friendship, survival and sacrifice "amidst the turmoil and tragedy of war".

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Years back I knew someone who was really into lucid dreaming. They had never actually had a lucid dream, but that inevitably only made them more into it. They read books on lucid dreaming and probably attended symposia on lucid dreaming. Their house was filled with Post-it notes on which they had written, over and over, "IS THIS A DREAM?" before plastering them to every surface, because the books and symposia had all told them that the key to this magical garden was teaching yourself to constantly question whether or not you were dreaming right now.

Reader, like my friend I have never had a lucid dream. But I imagine it's a bit like Infinite Craft, the latest browser game from Neal Agarwal. My boss Graham dropped it into our Slack this morning, and it was exactly as if he had dropped a bunch of mentos into a communal vat of Coca-cola. We are all lost now. Do not send help.

Infinite Craft is a highly evolved version of those games where you combine items to get better items. I think these used to be called alchemy games? But anyway, you combine WATER with FIRE and you get STEAM. That kind of thing. But twenty minutes later you're staring at PORN GENIE, and you know that somehow this all started with WATER and FIRE and you decide you need to step away from it all for a while and do something else.

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The ability to adjust the brightness of your console's power indicator is one of several nifty features included in the PlayStation 5's next console update beta.

While 'Bright' is the indicator's standard level of illumination, those taking part in the beta will also be able select either 'Medium' or 'Dim', if they so desire.

New Share Screen interactions in the form of pointers and emoji reactions will also be available. Participants viewing Share Screen in fullscreen mode can send these emojis to a host as a way to provide encouragement and celebrations.

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A Twitch streamer has had his custom Pokémon emote removed due to sexual content - even though it's just an innocent Bonsly.

Pokémon streamer SBCoop shared the response from Twitch on X, formerly Twitter, showing the emote in question. It's just a little Bonsly on its back crying with a hole in its base, isn't it?

According to the removal statement from Twitch, the emote includes "imagery of sexual content or nudity" in a "gasm-style".

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I've always been a fan of underdog brands, and Romanian headphone maker Meze definitely counts as one. The company has been making wave amongst audiophiles, and today we have in for review their most affordable headphones - the £185/$199 Meze 99 Neos. These are far from cheap headphones at that price, but when the other end of Meze's range tops out at €4000 they're still relatively modest!

As you'd hope, the Meze 99 Neo still carry a certain air of authority with their black textured plastic earcups and zinc alloy headband. They actually look more expensive than they are, and their blend of high-quality metals and plastics goes some way to justifying the price point - though they of course don't look or feel quite as premium as the wooden earcups of the Meze 99 Classic. The headphones are well-built too, held together entirely by screws and metal fixings to ensure complete repairability. I haven't felt the need to test this, but reports elsewhere suggest they're easy to tear down.

Henry Cavill has hung up the long white locks of The Witcher's Geralt, and is now ready for his next foray into the gaming adaptation sphere with Warhammer, calling it the "greatest privilege" of his career.

Back in 2022, the actor signed a deal with Amazon to bring Warhammer 40,000 to our television screens. Even before this deal, Cavill was known to be famously into Warhammer 40,000, often talking about it in interviews. He once even corrected Graham Norton during an interview when the host mistakenly called Warhammer World of Warcraft.

Cavill's long-time love for Warhammer is apparent even further thanks to a recent interview with Josh Horowitz (thanks, PC Gamer). When asked about the upcoming Warhammer 40,000 project, Cavill said it was the "greatest privilege of [his] professional career" to have this opportunity.

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Tencent is developing an Elden Ring mobile game, according to a new report.

The company acquired the licensing rights to Elden Ring from owner FromSoftware in 2022, Reuters reports, and a team was put together to work on a prototype. Sources say development on the project has been "slow".

Tencent is reportedly seeking to turn its Elden Ring mobile version as a free-to-play title with in-app purchases, like Genshin Impact.

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Nintendo remains tight-lipped on the widely-expected launch of Switch 2 this year - except to say that its current Switch hardware would remain its "main business" heading into the year.

In an investor call today, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said the company would lay out its plan for the coming financial year at its next earnings briefing, expected in May (thanks, Bloomberg).

For now, Nintendo reported a rosy set of results, with better-than-estimated numbers for Switch sales and overall profit. The current Nintendo Switch now stands at 139m sold - around 38m more than the Wii.

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Content Warning: Silent Hill: The Short Message contains explicit and continual themes and references to self-harm, suicide ideation, child neglect, and child abuse. While I won't dwell on these in this review or go into much further detail, please be mindful of this before reading further or, indeed, playing the game yourself.

It's long been known that different Silent Hills wait for different people. For some – most famously perhaps – there are faceless, buxom nurses lurking in the rust-encrusted corridors. For others, flames tower around them, leeching the air of all light and hope. For Anita, sticky notes daubed with crude insults are layered like feathers on every surface. It's kind of beautiful in a dark, melancholic, effed-up way.

Kind of beautiful in a dark, melancholic, effed-up way is actually a pretty good summary for Silent Hill: The Short Message, actually. I went in hopeful, if cautious – I know better than most how many false dawns Silent Hill has had – but by the time I came out the other side just a couple of hours later, I was surprised at not only how complete The Short Message feels, but how much it affected me, too.

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UPDATE 2.20pm: Microsoft has confirmed the next batch of Xbox Game Pass games.

As we reported earlier, Resident Evil 3, PlateUp! and Madden NFL 24 will all be joining the service this month. Other games also coming include A Little To The Left and Return to Grace.

Here is the full list of titles coming to Game Pass with this wave.

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UPDATE 07/02/24: The demo for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has now been officially announced and is available to download and play immediately.

The official announcement took place at tonight's PlayStation State of Play dedicated to the game that also showed some new and returning characters, nods to various minigames, and story hints from throughout the plot.

There are character-specific traversal mechanics; performance and graphics visual modes; relationship mechanics; DualSense feedback; skill boards for synergy commands; and more.

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Season 2 of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is taking you on a trip to three new 6v6 maps. The new maps coming to MW3 are:

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If it's demos you want, today's your lucky day; Valve's thrice-yearly Steam Next Fest event is back for another outing, this time featuring "hundreds" of demos across its seven-day duration.

Valve's latest Steam Next Fest is already underway and runs until Monday, 12th February. That means you've got approximately 160 hours to piledrive your way through everything on offer - which, given the magnitude of the task, is probably a literal impossibility at this point. But then we live in a world where someone finished Dark Souls 3 with a banana, so what do I know.

As usual, Valve has tried to make the whole Sisyphean challenge a little less daunting by sorting all those playable demos into easily perusable categories on its Steam Next Fest landing page. And while you're there, you can also take in some of the "hours" of developer livestreams running across the week, as if you didn't already have enough to be getting on with.

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Following a day of reports pointing to a potentially seismic shift in Microsoft's approach to its first-party games, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has confirmed the company will be sharing its "vision for the future of Xbox" in a "business event" next week.

All this began earlier this year, when reports surfaced that Microsoft could be preparing to release Tango Gameworks' acclaimed Hi-Fi Rush on PlayStation and Switch - a rumour that was rapidly followed by claims Rare's multiplayer pirate adventure Sea of Thieves is also readying for release on competing consoles. However, reports began snowballing this weekend, with Starfield, Bethesda's upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and even Gears of War all emerging as candidates for a potential PlayStation release.

As the rumours of Xbox first-party titles going multiplatform have steadily escalated, Microsoft has remained silent, but Xbox boss Phil Spencer has now - following a dramatic day of reports from numerous reliable sources - taken to social media to announce that Xbox will be outlining its future plans in an official "business update event" coming next week.

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Amid a fresh swirl of reports suggesting Microsoft is at least mulling a dramatic shift in strategy for its first-party Xbox titles, it's been claimed Gears of War - a series that's long been tightly intertwined with Xbox's identity - is also being considered for a PlayStation release.

That's according to Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb, who made the claim in the latest edition of his Game Mess Mornings podcast (thanks VGC). Addressing the recent spate of rumours about first-party Xbox games heading to PlayStation - which so far include Starfield, Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, and Bethesda's upcoming Indiana Jones game - Grubb said, "The other one that I've heard that's definitely under consideration...is Gears of War".

"It doesn't mean that it's going to happen," he added, "but it's in talks".

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Roblox is today introducing a new AI feature that will translate a user's real-time text into other languages. Following this, the Roblox team has plans for a feature which will translate voices into different languages with the use of its AI tech.

Today's addition to Roblox will allow users to type a message in their own language, to then see it translated into other languages supported by the gaming environment instantaneously.

This feature will available within all Roblox experiences that leverage TextChatService.

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Apex Legends: Breakout, the 20th season of the fast-paced battle royale is due to launch on Tuesday, 13th February and there are a few big changes coming including a new Legend Upgrade system, Shields being removed from ground loot and a ranked reset.

To celebrate the game's fifth anniversary, maps will be strewn with celebratory confetti and balloons, plus the potential to earn six Legends previously only available through premium currency.

If you're playing Apex on a next-gen console, then you might be pleased to hear that Breakout will be introducing 120Hz for you as well as haptics and adaptive triggers for controllers. This will apply from launch for all PS5 and Xbox Series S/X users.

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If there's a sense of burning injustice at Rocksteady Studios, it's probably understandable. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is filled with little moments of brilliance: humour, style, expression, that signature rhythmic, flow-state approach to combat. There's no question - as there rarely is with any video game - that its team was remarkably dedicated to making it as good as it could be. It's just that for each upshot there's a matching, crashing downturn, and in looking for a cause it's difficult to see beyond the ambitions that this game has been asked to juggle.

All at once, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League must be a live service game that pays for its extraordinary, almost nine-year run-up time after 2015's Batman: Arkham Knight, plus the support of those live services beyond launch. It must feature multiple main characters that not one, but two distinct Hollywood films - plus Birds of Prey - have failed to generate any kind of public good will towards (or even mild interest in). And it must deliver, or at least seem to deliver, on its promise of making antagonists out of and subsequently killing the Justice League - a group of beloved, decades-old icons that have in part earned their iconic status from not dying. (And which come with a subsection of fans - emphasis on the subsection - known to be as toxic as they are dedicated). All together, it means the question that arose for most onlookers the moment Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was revealed in 2020 remains the same now, and even well into its perpetual grind of an endgame: why?

Action-RPG Granblue Fantasy: Relink has had a successful launch weekend on Steam, peaking at over 100,000 concurrent players and debuting high on the global top-selling games chart.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink recorded a peak of 114,054 concurrent players last night (recorded by SteamDB), which makes it one of the most played action-RPGs alongside Monster Hunter: World on the platform.

Currently it's the second top seller globally on Steam, beaten only by the record-breaking Palworld.

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Composers Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab won at the Grammy Awards last night for their Star Wars Jedi: Survivor score.

The pair beat out the likes of Austin Wintory and Bear McCreary for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and other Interactive Media.

The other nominees included Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Sarah Schachner); God of War Ragnarök (Bear McCreary); Hogwarts Legacy (Peter Murray, J Scott Rakozy & Chuck E. Myers "Sea"); and Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (Montaigne, Tripod & Austin Wintory).

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Tencent was developing a new mobile game for the Nier series but stopped development in December, according to a new report.

As reported by Reuters, sources said the game had been in development for almost two years. There was reportedly a playable internal demo, which showed some of the game's combat and story.

The company is said to have "struggled to find a compelling monetisation model" to offset the high costs of the mobile entry.

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A remake of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was "considered" to be in the pipeline at PlayStation, a new report has claimed.

XboxEra's Nick Baker and Jon Clarke said they both had received "evidence" that Sony has ideas to remake the first Uncharted game from the "ground up".

"It is worth saying that the additional detail I got was that this was, this was quite old - like I am talking a number of years," Clarke warned. "But it wouldn't surprise me, right... as a way to bring the series back into the limelight again and get people hyped."

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The Final Fantasy 14 open beta test for Xbox Series X/S will begin on 21st February.

The test will only be available for new players playing the game for the first time. Players who already have the free trial, or a licence for the game registered to their Square Enix account, will be unable to participate.

The official version of the game will launch on Xbox Series X/S "immediately following the conclusion of the open beta test" according to the official announcement on The Lodestone, though the exact date of this is unknown.

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Major Xbox console exclusives such as Bethesda's Starfield and the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are being considered for launch on Sony's PlayStation 5, as part of a huge shift in strategy by Microsoft.

Previous reports suggested Xbox would bring a handful of smaller titles to PlayStation beginning this year, including Hi-Fi Rush - something Eurogamer understood to be true and also which has now seemingly been confirmed by its in-game files. But the idea that Microsoft will also - at some point - drop exclusivity for some of its biggest games marks a policy change far bigger than previously expected.

A swathe of reports emerged last night suggesting Microsoft's PlayStation plans now included Starfield - Xbox's tentpole release for 2023, albeit one which received a somewhat mixed reception - and potentially also Indiana Jones - the company's biggest release currently on the calendar for 2024.

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The Last of Us Part 2 was originally designed as an open-world action game that was heavily inspired by Bloodborne.

Confirmation came via co-game director Anthony Newman, who revealed during in the fantastic behind-the-scenes documentary, Grounded 2: Making The Last of Us Part 2, that for the first four or five months of development, The Last of Us Part 2 was a "purely melee focussed" game that "kept getting bigger and bigger as you explored", as inspired by FromSoft's fan-favourite adventure.

"When we started out making The Last of Us Part 2, Neil actually wanted to be very ambitious about changing the game almost entirely," explained Newman.

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Pocketpair is spending around half a million dollars a month – that's around £378,000 – to keep its sleeper-hit Palworld's servers online.

In a tweet, Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe posted a snippet of how the cost of servers have changed since the game launched just a few short weeks ago, joking – I hope, anyway – that the studio could "go bankrupt from server fees".

Not that that kind of cost is prohibitive, apparently; Palworld network engineer Chujo Hiroto replied to their boss' message, revealing to the world that they'd been instructed to "never let the service go down no matter what".

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Konami is releasing a collection of Yu-Gi-Oh! games for Switch and PC via Steam.

Right now the publisher is holding back on what, exactly, the collection will comprise of, but did tease the names of two games that will be joining the bundle: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 4: Battle of the Great Duelist and Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 6: Expert 2.

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There are "five Resident Evil games in dev[elopment] right now, including Resident Evil 9".

That's according to notable leaker Dusk Golem, who – whilst not without a couple of misses – has previously accurately leaked insider information about several then-unannounced horror games, including Resident Evil 8, the Silent Hill 2 Remake, and Silent Hill: The Short Message.

As spotted by the eagle-eyed members of the Gaming Leaks and Rumours subreddit, Dusk Golem reportedly made the announcement on Discord.

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With an extended development cycle, plenty of controversy, multiple delays, and a rocky preview period, it's fair to say that Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League isn't making the smoothest landing. However, in my case, this simply increased my desire to see what this game was about and after spending a decent chunk of time playing it, the news is much more positive than I expected - but there are caveats.

The expectation surrounding the game is outsized, simply because of the pedigree of the developer. When Batman: Arkham Knight was released in 2015, Rocksteady delivered a new high watermark for visual design. Built in Unreal Engine 3, no less, Arkham Knight remains striking to this day with gloriously detailed environments, great modelling and superb VFX. It was a genuine visual tour de force. The question is, does lightning strike twice with Suicide Squad?

Well, there's little doubt that Suicide Squad is a very different looking game. Right from the introduction sequence, it's clear that the team has shifted towards a brighter colour palette set during the daytime. Metropolis is a very different place, thematically, compared to Gotham City but there is a lot to like here.

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The Pokémon Company has confirmed it will re-stock the infamous Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat card in a bid to defeat scalpers that sold the free card for hundreds of pounds.

The card was initially a free add-on for Pokémon customers, given out at a rate of one card for each item in the Van Gogh collection bought, but scalpers descended onto the store in droves, wiped out the supply, and then immediately put their wares on internet auction sites at grossly inflated prices.

Shortly after, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam confirmed it will not be restocking its promotional Pokémon card following "safety and security concerns" for its staff and customers, and we learned just last month that four employees of the museum in Amsterdam were eventually suspended for misconduct.

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The voice actor who played Abby in The Last of Us Part 2 has revealed that not only did she receive abusive messages when the game was released, but abusers also sent death threats about her infant son, too.

Talking in the fascinating behind-the-scenes documentary, Grounded 2: Making The Last of Us Part 2, Laura Bailey confirmed that the "real hardcore death threats" were so concerning, they were passed on to police, whilst her baby son – who was "born during all of it" – also received threats, too.

The threats – sent because the fictional character she played did something to another fictional character that a subset of so-called fans didn't like – became so serious that she even had to turn some over to the police to ensure her safety.

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