Eurogamer

Look out from the south-east coast of England and you can see France in the distance on a clear day. And now, if you open Pokémon Go at the same time, you might see a France-exclusive Pokémon, too.

At a time when international travel is not high on anyone's agenda, south coast UK Pokémon Go players are delighted to find they fit within the radius for the game's new French regional Pokémon, Klefki.

Players from London and beyond have already reported making the journey down to snag a few for themselves. Here in Brighton, Eurogamer guides writer Lottie caught one last night, while Eurogamer reader Kate, from just down the road in Seaford, says she scooped up several last night while in the bath.

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We've finally reached the point where we're less than a week away from the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, and perhaps unsurprisingly given all the release date changes, copies of the game appear to have shipped a little early. In anticipation of any potential leaks stemming from this, CD Projekt Red has requested that players avoid streaming or uploading videos of the game before release day... or else face a corporate take-down task force. I guess that's something you would expect from the world of Cyberpunk.

The source of the early copies, according to customer reports on social media, appears to be American retailer Best Buy. Several customers have uploaded images of their Cyberpunk 2077 boxes, and it's the flashy collector's edition that appears to have turned up ahead of time.

At the time of writing, nobody is attempting to stream the game on YouTube or Twitch - but perhaps that's due to a warning from CD Projekt Red. "We're getting closer and closer to launch and chances are some of you will get your hands on a copy of Cyberpunk 2077 before release day," the Cyberpunk 2077 account tweeted last night. "However difficult this might be for us to achieve, our ambition is for gamers all across the world to have the same spoiler-free experience at the time the game releases.

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Sliding about on a bedrock of blancmange, moving past boulder-sized strawberry slices and mountains of pink-tipped whipped cream, I pinball myself off chunks of milk chocolate straight into a gooey, molten vat of the stuff. The strange but friendly creatures lounging at the sides appraise me silently, unconcerned that I didn't get the memo that it was Giant Fruit-Shaped Hat Day - I am shamelessly sporting a snorkel and a nightcap - and sigh contently. I'm a little envious as they slip a little further into their delicious hot tub.

I spend the next ten minutes or so doing a whole lot of nothing much. Phogs! - a sweet, if peculiar, puzzler that stars an elasticated, two-headed dog (now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write) - doesn't intervene. Like my hot tub companions, its calm and unhurried, content just to wait for me to noodle about and work it out on my own. I know pulling the (marshmallow) cork free from the (chocolate) cauldron up above must have done something but... ah! Wait! I didn't know I could grab onto this fountain!

Phogs! is full of those "ah!" moments. Mostly it's exclaimed in delight, incited by the whimsy of it's sweet, dreamy environments and sharp puzzling, and sometimes it's uttered through clenched teeth like a curse word. This, my friends, is a physics game, where you can solve a puzzle properly, bumble your way through and cheese it, or end up sacking it off entirely because you've wedged yourself between a jammy dodger water wheel and a giant Victoria Sandwich cliff-face.

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Amazon's Prime Gaming service offers free games each month, and this one is pretty noteworthy: Battlefield 3, the modern shooter classic that many consider the untouchable high point of the franchise.

Don't worry about signing up for yet another monthly subscription service - Prime Gaming is included with Amazon Prime for no extra cost (if you link your account to Twitch), and those who haven't tried Prime before are eligible for a free 30 day trial. So you could, theoretically, sign up for the free trial, get Battlefield 3, do all your holiday shopping, then carefully hit "do not auto-renew" in settings before the month is up. We're not saying you should, of course. Purely theoretical.

That being said, Prime Gaming might be a good thing to have if you're big into PC gaming and do a lot of online shopping, as it comes bundled free with Prime anyway. There's regular games given away, as well as numerous exclusives in certain games aligned with either Amazon or Twitch. Again though, you can always test it out through the free trial and let it go afterwards if it's not your thing.

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EA Sports has surprise launched the FIFA 21 PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S free upgrade a day before the next-gen version goes on sale on 4th December.

The upgrade lets existing FIFA 21 players on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One upgrade to their respective next-gen console versions.

To get the next-gen version, log into your PS5 or Xbox Series X or S with the platform account associated with your last-gen copy of FIFA 21, pop over to your game library, and you should see the icon for the free PS5 upgrade. Buy this (it should be free) and then you can download the next-gen version. On PS5 you're looking at a download of around 50GB.

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It's all change on the Sea of Thieves starting in January next year, as Rare's piratical multiplayer experience goes the way of countless other online games, adopting a new battle-pass-style progression system and new Seasons content release model.

Before all that, though, there's some disappointing news for fans of the PvP-based Arena mode; Rare has announced that all future Sea of Thieves updates will focus on expanding the game's more popular Adventure mode, meaning that while Arena mode will still be available, all development will cease - a sad fate for what started out as a brilliantly chaotic, rapid-fire alternative to the core game, but one that struggled to overcome myriad technical issues and, later, an unfavourably streamlined reworking robbed of the original's adventuring spirit.

That, then, firmly places the focus back on Adventure mode, and the debut of Rare's new Seasons model in January. As explained in its latest video update below, each season will last approximately three months (previously, Rare aimed for monthly content updates), and each will begin with the introduction of "a new experience or way of play".

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If your battle-royale-infused block-spinning still isn't Mario enough for your tastes, there's a chance to unlock a new Super Mario All-Stars theme for Switch's Tetris 99 this weekend, as part of Nintendo's latest limited-time Grand Prix event.

Surprisingly, Super Mario All-Stars' inclusion marks only the second Mario crossover for Tetris 99 - a Super Mario Bros theme can be unlocked with in-game currency - and those wishing to add the new theme to their collection can do so starting from 7am this Friday, 4th December.

The event - part of Nintendo's ongoing celebrations marking Super Mario Bros' 35th anniversary - is the 18th Grand Prix to be held in Tetris 99 since its launch back in February last year, and will continue until 6.59pm on Tuesday, 8th December.

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Failbetter Games, the developer behind the likes of Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies, has revealed it's currently working on two new titles, one of which is a visual-novel-style prequel to its acclaimed browser game Fallen London.

Fallen London, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, unfolds in an alternate-universe Victorian London that was stolen by bats and carried beneath the planet's surface, down into a vast underground cavern system known as the Neath.

Failbetter's next game, titled Mask of the Rose, takes place in 1862, shortly after London's move underground and around three decades prior to the events of Fallen London and Sunless Sea. It's a somewhat different proposition to other games in the series too, being pitched as a "romantic visual novel" - albeit one that retains Failbetter's darkly irresistible gothic wit.

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CD Projekt has unveiled Cyberpunk 2077's photo mode.

In the video below, we see the feature in action. It's pretty in-depth, with various sliders available within the camera, depth of field, pose, effects and stickers options.

You can pause the action even in the heat of battle, which we see in the video, and change V's pose from a variety of category-based presets, including "roundhouse shot to the face", "with a precision rifle", and "V for Victory". You can even change V's expression from a number of options, such as "boredom", "satisfaction", "happiness" and "fear". In one section we see the player take a shot right after causing an explosion for dramatic effect. I imagine I'll spend a decent amount of time creating some snazzy Cyberpunk wallpapers.

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Call of Duty: Warzone looks set to expand soon with the addition of Rebirth Island.

As image doing the rounds within the Call of Duty datamining community shows the logos for Warzone and Rebirth Island on top of an aerial shot of the island itself.

In its roadmap for Warzone published last month, Activision teased a "classified Warzone experience" set to launch when Season 1 of Call of Duty: Black Ops - and its integration with Warzone - begins on 10th December.

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Worms Rumble reimagines the turn-based classic as a real-time arena shooter. It's arcadey and colourful and extremely brisk. I would love to tell you that this is the definitive Worms Battle Royale, but so far Last Worm Standing is actually my least favourite of the three modes on offer. Nonetheless I guess that's the pitch.

It's 32 players blasting each other to pieces in surprisingly expansive 2D environments with lots of architectural complexity to balance the fact that there are so many people packed in there together. There are shopping malls and underground stations with working trains. There are vents and elevators and secret areas, which are covered to the player until you head inside yourself - which could mean a nasty surprise. You spawn with one of a handful of weapons but there are plenty of others scattered around. This is Worms so there are rifles and shotguns, but also bazookas and the infamous Holy Hand Grenade. The baseball bat is there for melee.

Death Match is where it's at if you ask me: a clock ticks down while you die and respawn and die again, grabbing gear from moment to moment, maintaining the perfect two-weapon loadout, and finishing off as many other worms as you can. The weapons are extremely unbalanced - basically give me a bazooka and I'm a king for the next thirty seconds, and thirty seconds is a long time in this game - but this is a comedy affair as much as a precision shooter. It is hard not to have fun even when things can feel a little scrappy. There are in-game events, but as far as I've seen nobody really pays them too much attention. The trick is to keep moving, using the roll to get out of trouble - and using it in concert with the shotgun to pull off the old Gears multiplayer dance-and-blast number.

Amazon has begun contacting customers hit by its launch day missing-presumed-stolen PlayStation 5 disaster, and is offering a priority order for a replacement.

But because all affected orders were mass-refunded last week, this will now mean ensuring payment details are up to date and accepting a new £449.99 charge.

One affected customer - Push Square managing director Anthony Dickens - shared the email he received from Amazon via Twitter. In the message, Amazon gives a deadline of 23:59 UK time this Saturday, 5th December to accept.

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A hacker who stole Nintendo secrets and was found to be in possession of child abuse images has been sentenced to three years in prison.

21-year-old Californian hacker Ryan S. Hernandez, aka Ryan West, who used the online name "RyanRocks", was sentenced to three years in prison this week in the US District Court in Seattle for crimes relating to hacking and possession of child abuse images, the United States Department of Justice announced.

In 2016, Hernandez and an associate used a phishing technique to steal credentials of a Nintendo employee. These credentials were used to gain access to and download confidential Nintendo files, including information about the upcoming Nintendo Switch. This was then leaked to the public.

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Even now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over, there's still some very good offers on high-demand games, with a notable pattern of lowered prices on Nintendo Switch games at stores like Amazon and Asda.

We hesitate to call these "sales," per se, but if you'd bought a Switch console over Black Friday and were looking for some supplementary games to go with it, this feels like a good opportunity, as they'll be going for about as cheap a price as anybody could expect for the time being. We've listed the best offers we saw below, but we'll be sure to update if we see anything better in the immediate future.

There's plenty more deals around at the moment, and you can find all of them here! Check out where you can find affordable Switch Bundles here, or check out our full deals hub page! Alternatively, follow us on the Jelly Deals Twitter for quick info on discounts everywhere!

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PlanetSide developer Daybreak has been bought for $300m.

Enad Global 7 (EG7) agreed to buy 100 per cent of the shares in San Diego MMO specialist Daybreak Game Company for $300m, on a cash and debt free basis. The deal consists of a cash payment and newly issued shares in EG7.

EG7 is a Stockholm-based company that has so far focused on helping other game companies with marketing, publishing and distribution. It owns the budget publisher Sold Out and has worked with the likes of Team17, Rebellion and Frontier.

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Growing up, I often imagined myself charging through the jungle in pursuit of some exotic creature then whispering excitedly into an imaginary camera.

Eventually, I did indeed have an enjoyable and productive career in the wildlife sector, mainly working in the field of UK wildlife, often travelling around the country in search of bats and birds.

At the age of 40, however, I was diagnosed with a serious neurological illness which has resulted in full paralysis. I needed to find wildlife that would come to me, rather than having to travel to see it. Then I heard about moth-trapping.

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Microsoft has announced the new games coming to Xbox Game Pass in December.

Remedy's Control comes to Game Pass for Android and console on 3rd December (here's Donlan's Control review). Also on that date, id Software's first-person shooter Doom Eternal hits Xbox Game Pass for PC (here's Edwin's Doom Eternal review).

3rd December is a big day for Game Pass: romantic space adventure Haven, from The Game Bakers - the studio behind gloriously psychedelic arcade boss-rush extravaganza Furi - hits the service then for console and PC, as does id Software and Avalanche Studios' Rage 2 on Android.

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UPDATE 2/12/20: Epic Games has announced a record-breaking 15.3 million concurrent players for its Marvel season finale event, the largest in-game total for Fortnite ever. A further 3.4 million people watched live via YouTube and Twitch, Epic said. You can catch up on everything that happened and watch the event in full yourself below, or see what the new season has in store here.

ORIGINAL STORY 1/12/20: There's been criticism this Fortnite season has been too much of a Marvel advertisement, that the game's first crossover battle pass was too much crossover with too little Fortnite underneath. But after the fireworks of tonight's season finale, and with all the game's Marvel influences seemingly warped out of the way, Epic has left its game on an enormous cliffhanger, and definitively moved on Fortnite's own internal narrative.

Let's recap. Throughout the season, Marvel planet gobbler Galactus has been looming ever closer, drawn in by the temptation of a tasty snack on Fortnite's all-powerful Zero Point. (That's the shiny orb thing which used to live under the old map's Loot Lake, and which seemingly hides beneath this new map, too.)

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UPDATE 2/12/20: Players now report a fix has been pushed live, and came into effect yesterday evening UK time. Ubisoft is yet to acknowledge the fix but, for those affected, it's worth checking if your PS5 upgrade is now available.

UPDATE 1/12/20: We're approaching the two-week anniversary of PlayStation 5's UK launch, but many Ubisoft game owners are still unable to upgrade PS4 titles such as Watch Dogs Legion and Assassin's Creed Valhalla to their shinier PS5 versions.

The problem has been an issue since the console's UK launch, though word picked up around a week back. It's then we highlighted the issue to Ubisoft, and have subsequently heard the company is trying to fix it.

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Last night, Fortnite bid farewell to its Marvel season in a game-changing live event which wiped away all trace of its superheroes.

Today, Fortnite returns - around 9am UK time - and picks up the pieces from that big cliffhanger. We're back on a familiar map - though with some notable changes.

For those who prefer Fortnite to focus on its own storyline and original characters, there seems plenty more of that in the new Chapter 2 Season 5 - albeit with a guest appearance from Star Wars' Mandalorian and Baby Yoda.

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If you've yet to experience the chaotic splendour that is The Wonderful 101: Remastered but still remain sufficiently intrigued, developer Platinum Games is now offering a free two-hour demo of the game for PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC.

Available to download now, the new Wonder-Size Cadet demo (as it's officially known) features Wonderful 101: Remastered's complete prologue and Operation 001 - offering a reasonable introduction to the game's decidedly idiosyncratic isometric action, in which players command a screen full of miniature heroes, battling in unison.

In-game currency and support items are provided from the off in order to get the action moving, and all progress can be carried over to the full game, should you decide to make a purchase.

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We saw plenty of Humble deals during Black Friday but that isn't stopping them just yet. Available for the next two weeks, they've just launched the Humble Explore and Expand Bundle, with a strong emphasis on space-themed titles.

The main offering this time is Stellaris, Paradox Interactive's grand strategy juggernaut. Acting as the sole top tier item, Humble are offering the "Galaxy Edition" which includes Stellaris: Infinite Frontiers novel by Steven Savile, Stellaris' soundtrack, exclusive DLC skins, signed wallpaper, and more.

This time around, Humble are supporting the American Red Cross as their featured charity, though you can always select a different charity if you wish. There's only 6 games here, with the middle tier mostly consisting of Galactic Civilizations III DLC, but it begins from just 75p.

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Planet Zoo is set to get a little bit splashier next Tuesday, 8th December, courtesy of its new Aquatic DLC, which adds, among other things, penguins and otters.

The Aquatic DLC is Planet Zoo's fourth paid expansion - following on from its Australia, Arctic, and South America Packs - and is, unsurprisingly, all about water-dwelling creatures. In total, it adds five new animals - the King Penguin, Giant Otter, Diamondback Terrapin, Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman, and Grey Seal - and at least some of these make an appearance in the trailer below.

Additionally, Planet Zoo's Aquatic DLC introduces 170 new water-themed foliage, scenery and zoo construction pieces - including animal sculptures and cascading waterfalls - and there's a new timed scenario set in Oregon too. This one challenges players to flex their management muscles and make the most of a space-limited zoo built on a drained riverbed.

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With PS5 and Xbox Series X in its hands, developer Gearbox's first port of call it seems is to give Borderlands 3 the next-gen treatment. Through a sizeable patch, the studio taps into the strengths of each machine with two modes - targeting 60fps and 120fps respectively. But how close does the game come to its performance targets and, as ever, where does Xbox Series S slot into the line-up?

Targeting 4K at 60fps is the primary objective for the new version of the game, with plenty of behind the scenes tweaks in improving performance, beyond leaning into the raw horsepower of the hardware itself. Collision detection is extensively revamped, for example, but Gearbox also leans into more traditional optimisations - such as the use of dynamic resolution scaling (DRS) meaning that the game engine adapts its pixel counts based on GPU load. It's something that in practice doesn't show up too often, with few deviations from the target 4K - to the point where my pixel counts showed very little variance from 3840x2160, even when the game was dropping frames (2016p was the minimum resolution I found).

Xbox Series S on the other hand, lives up to its spec by targeting 1440p as the maximum resolution, with more obvious drops in resolution, down to a 2112x1188 lower bounds. Crucially though, it's a well-worked version that holds to 60fps just as well as the two premium machines - in fact, I think it actually runs a touch better. One big catch to Series S is that there's no toggle between resolution or performance modes, as there is on PS5 or Series X. It's 1440p60 with DRS and there is no 120Hz support at all.

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There's a new paid expansion coming for developer Motion Twin's majestic rogue-like action-platformer Dead Cells; it's called Fatal Falls and it's currently expected to arrive on PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One early next year.

Fatal Falls is Dead Cells' second paid expansion, following on from January's The Bad Seed DLC, and introduces two new biomes, new enemies to occupy them, a new boss, plus new weapons.

Motion Twin - or rather, subsidiary Evil Empire, which now handles Dead Cells' development - is keeping some of the specifics under wraps for a later reveal, but has offered an early glimpse of Fatal Falls' new biomes, Fractured Shrines and The Undying Shores, in the teaser below.

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Guerrilla Games' open-world action-RPG Horizon Zero Dawn leads a fresh batch of on-demand additions to Sony's PlayStation Now subscription service in December, with the likes of Wreckfest, Darksiders 3, The Surge 2, Broforce, and Stranded Deep bringing up the rear.

Horizon Zero Dawn, which seems as good a place as any to start, sees outcast and hunter Aloy embarking on a journey across a sumptuous future version of Earth, where wonderfully designed robotic wildlife roams free. It's an experience that blends exploration and (sometimes stealthy, sometimes bombastic) combat with solid results, and PlayStation Now subscribers can continue Aloy's adventure in its sizeable wintery expansion, The Frozen Wilds.

Next on the list is Wreckfest, a game Eurogamer's Martin Robinson called "a true successor to the brilliant Destruction Derby" before slapping it with a Recommended badge last year. "Wreckfest offers primal pleasures, and offers them up with little by way of pretension," he wrote. "It also offers them with a little bit of that Bugbear class that made those older Flatout games so treasured, and what a thrill is to have that back after far too long."

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Footballing car game Rocket League will begin its second season next week, on 9th December.

Rocket League is getting on for five years old, though recently relaunched as free-to-play with a seasonal battle pass and an eye-catching Fortnite promotion to encourage in new blood.

Next week's new season will bring the second Rocket Pass, themed around music, with items to unlock that react to menu and arena tunes.

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A car drives down a quiet road, past rows of trees, until you eventually glimpse a town, its long-abandoned factories stretching into the skyline. The images are accompanied by a sombre song by folk artist Sean Rowe. Welcome to Basswood, West Virginia.

It's an impressive way to start, not least because of how good Twin Mirror looks, and Dontnod knows it - just a few minutes before reaching his destination, protagonist Sam Higgs gets out of his car and glances down at Basswood from a viewpoint awash in the rays of the setting sun. But then Sam opens his mouth - and things inevitably go downhill from there. Sam has returned to his hometown to attend his best friend Nick's funeral. Trouble is, as Sam puts it, he's ghosted Nick for two years after leaving Basswood in a hurry, and now Nick's ghosting him by being dead. This, maybe five minutes into the game, is the first moment I put the controller down and looked into an imaginary camera like I'm on The Office, because this is the type of writing you are in for.

Sam used to be an investigative reporter at the Basswood Jungle, where he uncovered the local mine's violation of safety protocols. His reporting led to the closure of said mine, and to a lot of angry miners, who greet Sam with the mating call of every fictional bully to his victim of choice: "Well, well, well, look who we have here!" It emerges rather quickly that no one in Basswood is strictly speaking a nice person, not to each other and certainly not to Sam, who most residents have decided was single-handedly responsible for the demise of the town.

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Online tech retailer Box is asking wannabe buyers to enter a ballot for a chance to purchase the Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S when stock becomes available later this month.

Box will be receiving additional allocations of both new Xbox consoles in the weeks commencing 7th and 14th December, with delivery set to be made before Christmas. Instead of the usual chaotic scramble to purchase one, though, those who are picked in the ballot will be sent an invite to buy a Series X or Series S.

Here's where you'll need to go if you want to put your name in the hat. Good luck if you do so!

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Since the launch of both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, stories of scalping groups and extraordinary third-party prices have hit the headlines - and it's often felt like little has been done to prevent the practice. But today's scalping story ends somewhat differently, as a group that boasted about securing 1000 Xbox Series X orders has found them all cancelled.

The scalping group - the same one that claimed to have ordered 2500 PS5s at launch - yesterday posted on social media it had secured "over 1000+" Xbox Series X consoles from a "very well known online retailer". The scalping group charges a £29.99 monthly subscription (or lifetime membership of £399.99) for its members to get information on how to carry out scalping themselves, and reportedly uses bots to automatically find cheap prices and complete mass purchases. The group claimed to have notified its members of a restock at the retailer, and urged its followers to buy a subscription for the information.

The retailer in question, it seems, was Very - which normally limits console purchases to one per address. It seems likely the scalping group was able to find a way around this restriction: but unfortunately for the scalpers, the company has now cancelled all the orders.

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Halo Infinite community director Brian Jarrard has spoken out about a certain rumour currently swirling around the game.

Yesterday, numerous websites and blogs widely spread the rumour that Halo Infinite would include a battle royale mode.

The original source of the rumour was a month-old reddit post from an anonymous user which picked up little attention at the time. The post made numerous claims about Halo Infinite's planned development throughout the next decade, including "a Battle Royal [sic] styled game mode for free set on Zeta Halo" apparently due in 2021.

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The rumours were true: the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is a real graphics card, and we've been testing it for the past week. Nvidia promises RTX 2080 Super level performance in a smaller, cheaper and more efficient Ampere design, and - spoiler alert - that's exactly what our testing shows they've delivered.

For £370 in the UK, $400 in the US and around €399 in Europe, the 3060 Ti isn't quite in mainstream territory, but it's significantly faster than the RTX 2060 Super it replaces at the same price-point and AMD's competitive Big Navi architecture has yet to debut at anything below the $580/£530 price point of the RX 6800. If the Green Team is able to actually produce these cards in volume - and sell them to actual customers rather than bot farms - they could be onto a winner.

In terms of the specs and underlying architecture, the RTX 3060 Ti uses the same GA104 GPU as the RTX 3070, but with fewer CUDA cores - 4864 versus 5888. The card also operates at slightly slower clock speeds (1665MHz boost versus 1725MHz) to fit into a 20W lower TDP (200W vs 220W). The memory subsystems are unchanged however, with both cards sporting the same 8GB GDDR6 operating at 448GB/s. It's good to see 8GB of VRAM becoming the new standard, with all next-gen cards from both teams providing at least that much thus far.

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eBay has introduced a new discount code that allows users to drop 15% off a lot of products' price, including tons of great options for video games such as Nintendo Switch Lite bundles and more!

The code itself is "PRESENTS15", entered at checkout, and there's a few restrictions on it, as there always are. First of all, you have to spend more than £15, and the code won't save you more than £60. So once you spend more than £400, it caps out and you'll stop saving money from that point.

Still, it's a great discount and can get even better for Nectar members. Those who've linked their Nectar Card to their eBay account can enter the code "NECTAR20" for a greater discount of 20%. For those who want to know how to do that, check this link. Keep in mind that you can't use both codes on the same purchase - one or the other, I'm afraid.

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Nintendo has today dropped a Switch system software update with a couple of nice features, and an ugly new home screen icon you can't get rid of.

First off, there's the ability to transfer captured screenshots and videos from your Switch to your smartphone. You'll need to scan a QR code using your phone when selecting this option, because Nintendo, but otherwise it's a painless process. You can transfer up to 10 images and one video at once.

Alternatively, you can also now connect a USB cable to copy screenshots and video to a PC. Handy!

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Xbox's November system update began to roll out last night, making it the first major update to include the new Xbox Series X/S consoles alongside Xbox One. It introduces a couple of nice additions to the UI and dashboard: including more dynamic backgrounds, useful library tags, and the option for players to preload Game Pass titles.

If you want to jazz up your Xbox X/S dashboard, the new update gives you a further six new options, "including homages to previous generations of Xbox consoles and others based on popular profile themes". It sounds like Xbox has plans to create even more dynamic backgrounds, so keep your eyes peeled for further designs in future updates.

Beyond just making the dashboard look pretty, the update adds some useful features such as Auto HDR tags, which can help players recognise when a game is running with Auto HDR enabled. For this, you'll simply need to open the guide menu when the game is running, and a tag should appear on the top-right corner.

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After staying seemingly closed off for many years, 2020 is looking like the year Chinese games break out onto the global market. There's first-person shooter/slasher Bright Memory, which not only left early access earlier this year but is also being developed into a full-length game, while early footage of next-gen action game Black Myth: Wukong was enough to generate buzz around the world. The biggest success however belongs to Genshin Impact, already the biggest global launch for a Chinese game ever, with over $100 million revenue reported within two weeks of release. If these are signs of a trend, then Chinese developers are in for a bright new dawn of premium-quality games.

But when I think of Chinese games, I'm never just thinking of games made from China. As a Chinese person myself, I'm thinking of all the other cultural traditions and sensibilities that carry across a whole ethnic diaspora. For the longest time, Chinese characters or representations of Chinese culture have come from non-Chinese developers, Street Fighter's Chun Li or the Three Kingdoms-inspired Dynasty Warriors franchise arguably the longest running examples. That's not strictly a criticism, but after decades of seeing non-Chinese developers appropriating Chinese culture, I'm interested in seeing how Chinese developers handle their own representation. That is if they do at all.

For instance, China's biggest mobile game Honor of Kings is a MOBA whose roster comprises a who's who of Chinese folklore and mythology. Yet when the game received its international release, the majority of its Chinese elements were gutted and replaced with more western archetypes (and DC Comics), ending up with the generic-sounding Arena of Valor that did little to differentiate itself from DOTA or League of Legends.

Treyarch has tweaked Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War so players level up weapons faster.

The developer released a patch for the shooter this evening just as Black Ops Cold War's double XP and double weapon XP event came to a close.

"Coming out of last week's 2XP + 2WXP event, we've made some additional tuning changes to global Weapon XP earn rates across the board," Treyarch said in the patch notes.

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Some might consider Cyber Monday offers a bit like Black Friday leftovers. But, like a reheated curry, they can sometimes be even more delicious the second time around. That's what I hope to prove here, with a handful of the best Cyber Monday gaming deals that are still good as we come to the end of the yearly sales spree.

So, whether it's a Nintendo Switch, some PS4 or Xbox games, a brand new 4K TV or one of many top gaming accessories - grab them here before they expire.

Relatively light on Switch bundles this year as Nintendo favoured launching this Switch Lite offering. Luckily, it's still a good one, with a Switch Lite console, Animal Crossing New Horizons and 3 Months Switch Online. It's gone back up to full price at most stores, but you've still got a chance to get it for just £209 at Very.

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Well, that didn't take long. Assassin's Creed Valhalla has been out for less than a month, and PC players have already figured out how to access premium cosmetics for free - including some that haven't even been released yet.

Over on Nexus Mods, users are sharing a table for Cheat Engine (free memory scanning software - download at your own risk) that allows players to gain access to sets such as the Berserker, Valkyrie, Draugr and Huldufolk packs on PC. I tried it out myself, and after a bit of tinkering found I had suddenly acquired pretty much all the premium packs, which would normally cost around 2000 Helix credits each to unlock (a pack of 2300 Helix credits costs £16.99, if you're wondering). Or a lot of grinding for opals and waiting for Reda to sell each item individually, I suppose.

While this is already a little bit naughty, others have taken things a step further, using Cheat Engine to load currently unreleased items. On some forums users are sharing images such as this fiery wolf, along with Ezio's Brotherhood Outfit, which has not yet been made available in Valhalla. Judging by the hash lists being shared online, it's likely we'll see further unreleased cosmetics posted to the internet in the coming days.

The cubes are probably my favourite thing about Immortals Fenyx Rising. The floating cubes. Huge cubes, taller than me, scattered nursery toys of the Gods. You whack them to start them up and then they glow and hover above the ground. In this state you can pull them about and even throw them. You can stack them and use them for all kinds of platforming puzzles. Clever stuff, inevitably. What I love though - and I think I do love the cubes a bit - is their playfulness. Prod them and they drift a little. Lob them at a target and they spin away afterwards with a sort of Space Odyssey laziness. Once I was standing on a cube and I got another one stuck underneath it, which meant the cube I was standing on started to tilt and threatened to throw me off. Immortals is always a lively game, but the cubes seem to really bring it to actual life. You sit up. There's a bit of mischief in them. A sense of surprise that is sometimes missing from the wider experience.

Immortals Fenyx Rising used to be called Gods and Monsters. It's an open-world action-adventure set amongst the Greek myths. You play as Fenyx, a demi-god who has washed up on the Golden Isle just as the monster Typhon has arrived to get revenge on the gods for his banishment. All fine. It's a game about hitting enemies with a sword and an axe, and gadding about from on high with wings made for you by Daedalus himself, before engaging in a little puzzling.