Rock, Paper, Shotgun

New World has had quite the start to life, becoming the most popular game on Steam last night. Unfortunately, the MMORPG's popularity has caused an awful lot of queuing, with players having to wait hours to get their preferred servers. Amazon Games have announced a sort of workaround for that, though. Over the next two weeks, if you get your character started on a lower player count server, the devs will let you transfer them for free to the server you want to settle down in.

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Trying to figure out how to respec in Diablo 2? A quick initiation for those who aren’t RPG diehards - respec simply refers to the process of refunding and reallocating things like skill and attribute points that are common to the genre. Respecing in many modern RPGs is a simple, repeatable process, but things aren’t quite so easy in Diablo 2: Resurrected. While you will earn a few easy respec opportunities, once you’ve used them getting another will be a fittingly grindy process. To make sure you don’t waste your chances and cripple your build, we’ll walk you through all the ways to respec your character in Diablo 2: Resurrected.

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Want to learn about RTX ray tracing in Minecraft? When you think of gorgeous graphics, Minecraft might not be the first thing that comes to mind. Sure, it has a charming aesthetic, and texture packs can make your worlds look really unique, but it isn’t very realistic. However, Nvidia have now created ray traced RTX worlds in Minecraft that will completely transform your experience.

This guide will explain everything that you need to know to get RTX ray tracing in Minecraft, including the minimum requirements for ray tracing.

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Night School Studio are "joining the Netflix team." The developers of Oxenfree and Afterparty are the first games studio to be bought by Netflix, with founder and creative director Sean Krankel writing in a blog post that they'll continue working on the in-development Oxenfree 2.

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Picture the scene. You're playing newly released coloniast theme park New World when who should walk over to you but Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The billionaire says that he's locked out of his bank accounts, but if you buy him several Amazon gift cards, he'll pay you back with "extra" once he gets his access back.

This situation probably can't happen, because "Jeff Bezos" and almost every variation of it aren't permitted names in Amazon's MMO.

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Inscryption is reportedly "inky black card-based odyssey that blends the deckbuilding roguelike, escape-room style puzzles, and psychological horror into a blood-laced smoothie." It's also from Daniel Mullins, the makers of Pony Island and The Hex, which means it's probably a few other, secret genres, too. It's coming October 19th, but there's a demo available now and a new trailer below.

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Amazon's MMO New World launched earlier today, and it's apparently great if you like queues.

To put the login issues players are experiencing in context however, it's maybe worth noting that New World is currently the most popular game on Steam, knocking CS:GO from its perch within hours of release.

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Seasonic is known the world over for their high-spec, high-reliability power supplies, and today one of their small form factor (SFX-L) PSUs is heavily discounted at Newegg. The fully modular Focus SGX-500 is a 500W PSU that comes with a ten-year warranty and a footprint of less than 5 x 5 inches. Normally you'd expect to pay $120 for it, but a combination of a Newegg discount, a $15 mail in rebate and a code for $10 off (NEOCTOBER) has dropped it to just $35 when all is said and done - pretty impressive!

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Yesterday we featured a cut-price 49-in Samsung ultrawide monitor, which was marked down to £1099. That's still stonking expensive, so how about something more reasonable? This is the Samsung CRG9, the Odyssey G9's predecessor, and it offers almost all the same specs for much less - just £699, down from £1099. Here's why it gets the sagely RPS nod of approval.

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I adored Halo 3 and Halo Reach's multiplayer. So much so, I never want to play them again. In my mind, I view them through a next-gen lens, coloured by nostalgia and post-homework energy. I know that if I jump into the Halo: The Master Chief Collection, I simply won't be able to recapture those heady times. I'm genuinely afraid of tarnishing those memories.

Halo 4 didn't do it for me, and I skipped Halo 5 altogether. They just felt off, you know? But having spent some time with Halo Infinite's tech preview this weekend, though, I'm hopeful that this is the Halo that recaptures those former glory days. It's a step backwards in the best possible way.

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Following the recent delay of Battlefield 2042's launch into November, Electronic Arts have now confirmed new timing for the open beta test of Dice's near-future shooter. It'll start on Friday the 8th of October and run until the morning of Sunday the 10th, inviting everyone to play Conquest mod on the map Orbital.

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So, the main point of discussion on this week's podcast is the Outer Wilds: Echoes Of The Eye DLC. Talking about it is tricky, because saying pretty much anything about it feels spoiler-y. Christ, I'm trying to be careful writing this blurb in case I say something that I shouldn't. But, somehow, I think we managed to talk about it, without talking about it. Know what I mean?

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Echoes Of The Eye, the new expansion for Outer Wilds, is out... now! And I’d like to congratulate Mobius Digital and Annapurna on just how little promoting their promotional campaign did. The reveal trailer did anything but, showing us the familiar solar system of Outer Wilds, only with the beginning of an eclipse followed by shots of murky caves and forests. And take a look at the official screenshots used in this article: obscured to the point of ugliness. Here’s a team so determined to keep their secrets they’d rather present the game in an unflattering light. It was worth it.

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Squid Game is a South Korean survival drama show that's been taking Netflix by storm recently, and it's inspired a whole bunch of Squid Game games on Roblox. The show pits folks against each other in games like tug-of-war, where the winners earn cash, and the losers earn, well, death. It's a fun (read: somehow even more sinister) twist on the battle royale genre. It reminds me a bit of when the Hunger Games films inspired loads of Minecraft mods.

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Looking for the best weapons in New World? The highly-anticipated MMO New World from Amazon Game Studios is now available as a full release, and for most players getting stuck into life on Aeternum Island, putting together a good selection of weapons will be their number one priority. In this tier list, we've ranked each weapon according to our experiences, and also put together some pointers on choosing the best weapons for your play style.

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'Tis the season of the time loop. If you have any space left in your brain after Deathloop for more groundhog day-like shenanigans, you might be interested in Lemnis Gate, a strategic first-person shooter that launched today. It pits players against each other in 1v1 and 2v2 matches, letting you plan out moves in 25 second-long rounds. It sounds a little confusing, but seems pretty fun. It also has some excellent-looking sci-fi backgrounds and laser guns, which is truly the most important part.

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Want to learn more about Dripstone in Minecraft? Caves are getting a huge revamp in Minecraft 1.18, and Dripstone is going to be an important new block, as you can use it to make an infinite lava source in your base.

This guide will explain everything you need to know about Dripstone, including where you will be able to find it and how to use Pointed Dripstone to create a lava farm in Minecraft.

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NEO: The World Ends With You is out on PC today (via the Epic Games Store), and marks the grand return of a franchise that, despite a rabid fanbase and numerous re-releases, is only receiving its first sequel after 15 years. The original The World Ends With You impressed audiences on Nintendo DS as much for the game’s stylish Tokyo setting as it did for a unique battle system that saw players control multiple characters on multiple screens simultaneously. Yet what made this game really memorable was how it transformed the fashion and pop-cultural power of Shibuya into its own JRPG battle system. Your drip gave you strength, your armor made you a trendsetter, and the music and energy of the city were translated into a story about coming-of-age, self-worth and finding strength in yourself and your friends by embracing the things that make you unique.

Now, NEO: The World Ends With You has arrived, but this long-awaited sequel is far from a simple retread of what the first game did 15 years ago. Shibuya itself has changed a lot in the intervening years and it's fascinating to see how NEO's setting and its gameplay mechanics have evolved alongside it.

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With graphics card prices being what they are, gaming laptops like the Gigabyte G5 have been making a lot more sense. Believe it or not, this particular model is – at £850 / $969 – one of the cheapest routes possible into a complete PC gaming system with Nvidia’s RTX ray tracing and DLSS powers.

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As various UK agencies and organisations continue to regard microtransactions and loot boxes with escalating curiosity and suspicion, the Advertising Standards Authority have laid out new guidelines for advertising in-game in purchases. Basically, they think games should be clear about what they're selling and how much things cost in real money, and that advertising shouldn't pressure or mislead. The ASA are relatively toothless but fairly prolific, and their interest might lead to more official interest.

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At long last, Amazon's MMO New World has launched. After multiple delays and two rather popular betas, folks can now jump onto the supernatural island of Aeternum and stay there for as long as they please. The EU servers are already live, with the rest of the world to follow throughout today. Do watch out if you're jumping in this morning though, because some players are reporting long queue times, while others are struggling to get into the queue in the first place.

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Activision Blizzard have agreed to create a claims fund of $18 million (£13m) for employees who experienced harm from "sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination and/or related retaliation". This is part of a settlement with the USA's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), who had taken Actiblizz to court with allegations of those issues. This is only one of Activision Blizzard's current legal battles over alleged workplace problems, and not the big one you're probably thinking of. The company also had to agree to, like, not do any of those bad things—but the settlement is not an admission of guilt.

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Yet another beefy trailer and launch date exploded out of Netflix's corner this weekend. Their upcoming animated series Arcane, set in the universe of Riot's League Of Legends, has gotten one of each. The new trailer down here digs into the dynamic between protagonist sisters Vi and Jinx. The release date, at least the first of them, is coming up pretty quick too, scheduled for November 6th.

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As they always do, things in Steam are likely to change again. Unlike Valve's Steam Labs experiments for storefront discoverability or downstream effects of the upcoming Steam Deck, this one is a little more under the hood. As spotted by the unaffiliated Steam tracking site SteamDB, the beta version of Steam's client now has a new method that is capable of preventing users from accessing former builds of games they own. The majority of players likely aren't pulling up old game builds often, if ever, but this change could make life a lot tougher for modders, speedrunners, and anyone trying to roll back a buggy game update while they wait for a hotfix.

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October is creeping up on us all and, like a proper jump scare just before I'd expected it, so has Resident Evil 4 VR. Leon Kennedy's spooky cult adventure begins again in the first-person and hands-on version that's arriving on the Oculus Quest 2 next month. Now that you'll be getting all up close and personal with Salazar and Saddler and El Gigante and all, they've gotten some fresh pixels as well, which you can catch a look at once again in a new trailer.

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I've been positively held hostage by the lady assassin action movie trend—having been in the same room as my partner relentlessly devouring the likes of The Old Guard, Ava, Terminal, and Gunpowder Milkshake. No surprise then that I also got sucked into watching Kate, Netflix's new action movie starring assassin Mary Elizabeth Winstead and her teen hostage slash sidekick Miku Martineau. What is surprising—even though Netflix have shown an increasing interest in games—is that Kate is getting a tie-in action game called Kate: Collateral Damage. It's a fast-paced and arcade-y roguelike with some twin-stick style shooting coming out in October.

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For a while, I was super into Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and I took getting better at the game very seriously. I swapped out my mouse and headset, practiced grenade line-ups for hours and even learned a few Russian phrases to try and get the respect of my match-making teammates. All these steps worked, but the real results came when I swapped my old 144Hz monitor for a 240Hz model, the Samsung CRG5. Hitting such a high frame-rate in Counter-Strike isn't difficult even on old hardware, and the increase in clarity meant hitting shots a lot easier.

If you want to follow in my footsteps, then it's good news: this 240Hz screen is going cheap on Amazon today. They're asking £229 for it, £70 off its regular price of £299, and I think that's a great deal.

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We reckon that Samsung's 870 Evo is the best SATA SSD for gaming, and today the mammoth 2TB model has been reduced on Amazon. It's now retailing for £197.50, the best price we've seen on this drive since the Chia mining craze began and some £45 below RRP. It's even cheaper than the (older and slower) 860 Evo. Here's a link to the deal and a few more words on why we like this particular drive so very much.

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If you thought there was any risk of Netflix dumping Geralt and company in the near future, you can rest your head easy after this weekend. They've now shown off several more clips for the upcoming second season of their main, Cavill-powered Witcher TV series and also announced that they're definitely going to be going for a third season. Not just that, but there are even more Witcher projects on the way: another animated movie, that Blood Origin series, and—for some unfathomable reason—a children's show.

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The Plane Effect is a moody isometric adventure game about a guy trying to get home. Pretty normal stuff, except there is a cosmic anomaly looming over the city that seems to be causing some weirdness, so good luck with that. Out now, the game will have you puzzling through levels full of high-contrast moody lighting. It reminds me a bit of Inside, if Inside had rooms full of scary-looking red lasers.

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Potion Craft came out in early access last week, and while I still think the economy and haggling bits need a little tweaking, I am really enjoying the methodical nature of being an alchemist. It's part art, part science, because you have to sort of feel your way around the potion map and fudge recipes with the ingredients you have. Your recipe book is limited, so I've started writing down extra recipes in real life, crossing things out and updating them as I find better combinations. It's just like being a real backwoods alchemist throwing twigs in a bucket!

But my favourite thing is the pestle and mortar. Smashing ingredients up (and grinding them into sludge) awakens their properties so they move further on your potion map, like how crushing mint will make for a livelier mojito. And I love it intensely.

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Rejoice! The absolute pain in the arse that is Bastion is getting a rework for Overwatch 2, and he'll no longer be able to heal himself or turn into a murderous tank. He will be a lot more mobile and have a sticky grenade however, so watch out for that. Over the weekend, Blizzard revealed the changes coming to both Bastion and Sombra in the sequel. While Sombra's tweaks are a little more minimal, it looks like Bastion's will make him play a whole lot differently. Importantly, he'll also wear one of Torbjorn's caps. Fashion.

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Want to know more about the Warden in Minecraft? The Warden is a new mob that will arrive in Minecraft 1.18, otherwise known as the Caves and Cliffs update. It is set to be a terrifying addition, making every adventure underground a trip that could result in a particularly scary death.

This guide will cover everything that we currently know about the Warden in Minecraft, including its behaviour and where it will spawn.

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On the face of it, Astria Ascending should be right up my street. With its lush visuals, intriguing character designs and often engaging turn-based battle system, this handsome hand drawn adventure could have been a surprise dark horse to rival recent JRPG greats such as Tales Of Arise and Bravely Default II. Colombian RPG Cris Tales managed it, so why not Astria Ascending?

French Canadian developers Artisan Studios have certainly tried hard to fulfill J part of this Japanese-inspired RPG, acquiring the talents of Final Fantasy XII composer Hitoshi Sakimoto and Final Fantasy X writer Kazushige Nojima to bolster their small team, but even these big name veterans can't salvage this game from the depths of its own tedium. Between its bewildering, colour-swap dungeons, cringeworthy voice acting and uneven focus on its large cast, Astria Ascending stumbles before it ever has the chance to soar.

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How do you cook in Valheim? Valheim has never been short on food and recipes, but with the recent Hearth & Home update, the game's cooking system has been significantly expanded and overhauled. Gone are the days when nearly every animal dropped the same generic type of meat, or when you could cook sausages without the right spices (ugh, so bland, you monster). The buffs offered by some of the original foods have also been rebalanced, so read on for an up-to-date culinary guide to Valheim.

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Diablo 2: Resurrected launched last week, letting players dive into a remaster of Blizzard's hellish action-RPG. Alas, "hellish" seems appropriate in more ways than one, because players are still struggling with launch bugs. While the developers issued a number of fixes over the weekend, some players are still experiencing "lockout", meaning they can't play with certain characters because the game thinks they're already in use.

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The Elder Scrolls Online is the first game to implement Nvidia DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing), and thanks to YouTuber MxBenchmarkPC you can now see how the AI-powered edge-smoothing system looks in the fantasy MMO. DLAA is a new spin on Nvidia’s existing DLSS (Deep Learning Super-Sampling): whereas DLSS involves rendering a game at a lower resolution then upscaling, reducing the performance hit of the AA it applies, DLAA skips the upscaling part and keeps the resolution native.

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Sundays are for watching Antiques Roadshow with all your might. Before you tune in, let's read this week's best writing about games.

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During this week's Nintendo Direct, we found out that N64 games would soon be playable on Switch via Nintendo's online subscription. More importantly, we found out that Nintendo are making a new wireless N64 controller for use with the Switch.

You can connect the Switch Pro controller to PC with or without a wire, so it stands to reason I'll be able to use this new N64 controller on PC too, right? Because if so, I'm gonna.

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Foxhole has made foxholes better. The Entrenched update for the massive, multiplayer sandbox war game adds a lot, but top of the pile is new building tools for crafting better bunkers, trenches, and frontline defenses. The update is live now, and there's a video introducing its many features below.

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