Rock, Paper, Shotgun

After long years of yearning, Dark Souls developers FromSoftware and world-class procrastinator George R.R. Martin have finally given us a look at their Elden Ring. The fantasy action-RPG's "gameplay reveal" trailer dropped during the Summer Game Fest today, and honestly it looks a lot like Dark Souls. The trailer even has a gravelly fella going on about flames and a faint woman talking about unending curses. Yep, I'm 100% cool with this.

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I don't often get grabbed by team shooters. There were the regular 3am TF2 seshes as a student, and I spent most of 2016 playing a load of Overwatch, to the exclusion of almost everything else. But the battle royales have largely passed me by, either because they're all kind of muddy war games or cartoony war games, and neither of those concepts really set me on fire. But as the emo-adjecent kid who would tell anyone who'd listen that S Club 7 sucked, a battle royale game based on the World Of Darkness IP - the setting for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines - is very much speaking my language.

Obviously, now I am a sensible adult I know that S Club 7 songs go hard - but so does being a vampire. So let's take a closer look at Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt, the aforementioned, free-to-play, bloodsuckers' battle royale that has just been revealed by developers Sharkmob. Having played an early preview, I can confirm that it's loud, messy fun. I also don't think I should have been allowed to play it.

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Frontier Developments have announced Jurassic World Evolution 2, the sequel to their dinosaur park building sim. I say Frontier announced it, but actually on the big screen at the Summer Game Fest kickoff, Jeff "Life Finds A Way" Goldblum introduced the new trailer. He'll be reprising his role of Ian Malcom from the Jurassic World films for the game, and other cast members will be joining him too. Jurassic World Evolution 2 is set to release later this year.

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While the original studio behind Left 4 Dead are making an unofficial sequel in Back 4 Blood, one of the Valve writers who gave L4D its personality is making a new cooperative monster-mashing shooter too. Stray Bombay, the studio co-founded by former Valve writer Chet Faliszek and former Riot designer Dr. Kimberly Voll, today announced The Anacrusis. It's a four-player FPS set aboard a giant stranded spaceship, and you can see a bit in the trailer below.

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Sega have announced Two Point Campus, the follow-up to Two Point Hospital, one of the best management games on PC. Chuck away those scrubs and don your mortarboard, because next year you'll be building universities, hiring teachers and teaching students to do useful things, like cooking and *checks notes* uh, jousting. Man, I wish I could've done jousting at uni.

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During this evening's Summer Game Fest stream, Geoff Keighley got his pen pal Hideo Kojima up on a video call to chat about his next game. Kojima said a lot of things, none of which revealed much about said new game at all, but he did reveal that a Death Stranding Director's Cut is on the way. They showed a little bit of footage that looked suspiciously like a Death Stranding X Metal Gear crossover.

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Borderlands devs Gearbox will continue looting 'n' shooting in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, a new game announced today. The wee weirdo is leading folks on a tabletop fantasy adventure to plunder dungeons, murder monsters with guns, swords, and magic, and ultimately off a dragon. But it's officially not a Borderlands game. Got an impressive voice cast too, including Brooklyn 99's Andy Samberg.

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Valheim's developers have responded to the overwhelming success of the viking survival game by revamping their update roadmap. The Hearth & Home update will still be the first to arrive, but they're now aiming for launch this autumn. More broadly, Iron Gate will be "putting aside the smaller updates for now" in favour of meatier new content.

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Sid Meier's Civilization 6 has a whole lot of extra content. Vikings, zombies, natural disasters and Australia are but a few new additions the strategy game has seen since its initial release in 2016, and today you can nab it all in a helpful and well-priced bundle. The Civilization 6 Anthology contains the base game as well all the DLC packs and expansions, which would normally be £143 bought individually. That's a lot of Civ 6 indeed.

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THQ Nordic, an arm of the monolithic and ever-hungry Embracer Group, today released new footie manager sim We Are Football - and I spy a very familiar absence-of-face on the box. The cover shows a fella in a suit pumping his fist, while his face is shrouded in shadow. I've seen this pose before. Could this be what happened to Football Manager's mascot after he was fired? Have Embracer Group acquired even Manager Man now? Where does it end?

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It’s funny, isn’t it, the things which make you fall in love with a game? I’d first heard of early access colony sim Going Medieval two years ago, at the very start of its development. It looked promising enough, for sure. But pre-alpha colony sims are like the planktonic larvae of crabs - there’s millions of them, and most of them get eaten by fish, so I don’t tend to pay attention to them until they’re big enough to nip my fingers.

Even when Going Medieval did scuttle into early access at the start of the month, I have to say it seemed a blunt-clawed specimen. It was the same as RimWorld, basically. As in, identical, save for a medieval setting and a ton of missing features. After a moment or two to get used to the UI, I was playing my first game on autopilot, and all it really did for me was make me want to play RimWorld. And then I discovered the wooden beam.

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This week's free game on the Epic Games Store is a good'un, 2019's Control. Made by Max Payne and Alan Wake studio Remedy Entertainment, it's a supernatural shooter starring a woman who ventures into the vast and shadowy Federal Bureau Of Control in search of answers. She then proceeds to near-demolish that building from within by using telekinetic powers to hurl great chunks of it at employees possessed by an otherworldly force. Fun!

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With the launch of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, we've now got a complete suite of high-end RTX 30 cards to choose from - or at least we would under ordinary circumstances, the current graphics card shortage notwithstanding. While we wouldn't advise trying to buy a new graphics card right this second due to the ongoing stock problems, you've probably had your eye on at least one of these cards for quite some time now, so we've put the RTX 3070 and RTX 3070 Ti head to head to show you exactly what kind of performance you can expect to see from each card once they're more readily available. And to help you make an even better buying decision, I've also included my RTX 3080 figures in here, too, for the ultimate RTX 30 face-off.

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The start of E3 is unofficially heralded today by the Summer Game Fest's Kick Off Live, promising announcements, trailers, and a live musical performance from the band off the Windows 95 CD-ROM. The show starts at 7pm UK time (11am Pacific). Everyone is desperately hoping it'll show Elden Ring. Geoff Keighley's blast will be followed by Day Of The Devs, the indie showcase organised by Double Fine and Iam8bit.

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This week we have a special E3-themed episode of The Electronic Wireless Show podcast, which will be of no use to you if you want actual information about E3 2021. Rather, we imagine what we would do if E3 was condensed into one show, and we were put in charge of its content.

As you can imagine, this goes off-piste almost from the get go. We start with cloning and escalate from there. Nate pitches a mobile game about Gimli that doesn't exist. Matthew suggests that platforms for games should be decided by a Wheel Of Fortune spin. But we do get around to making some sensible points about creativity, and the role of E3 in general, although we apologise for doing so.

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Master murderninja Ryu Hayabusa flipped onto PC today withthe Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection, which bundles together the hack 'n' slash trilogy that ran between 2004 and 2012. They're great games, and murderously difficult. Unfortunately, the first two games come as their Sigma versions (which many consider worse than the originals) and many players are reporting the PC port is hellla barebones. Shame.

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The Fermi Paradox is an upcoming galaxy-spanning god game, and developers Anomaly Games have snapped up a couple of former Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 writers to work on it. Brian Mitsoda (the game's former narrative lead) and Cara Ellison (who was senior narrative designer on Bloodlines 2)are bringing their writing talents to this new sci-fi strategy game that's coming out in early access on July 1st.

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It's E3 season and rumours are flying all over the place like a bunch of, err, Spitfires. Among them, Call Of Duty: Vanguard, the rumoured World War 2-themed next instalment of the big shooty-bang, and the possibility of a new Warzone map arriving alongside its launch later this year. I am cautiously excited.

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As Greg Lobanov was putting the finishing touches to his delightful singing bard adventure Wandersong and waiting for it to debut in the autumn of 2018, the first threads of what would become his next project, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, started to form in his head. He wasn't sure what it would be back then, but "a game about drawing was my first idea," he says, "and seemed like the most natural progression from Wandersong. It took a couple of months of moving pieces around to find the game Chicory was gonna be; there were a lot of bad versions of it to sift through first."

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On June 8th, just four days after it launched, the Itch.io indie bundle for Palestinian Aid smashed its fundraising target of $500,000 (around £354,000). The huge charity collection features over 1000 games, tabletop RPGs, soundtracks, books and more, and all money raised from sales goes to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), who provide aid to Palestine refugees. You have two days left to grab the bundle now, and help push the fundraising total a little closer to $1 million.

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Tis the season to spaff your marketing budget on big announcements with lavish trailers and cars descending from auditorium ceilings, but Frostpunk developers 11 Bit Studio are playing this one low-key. Today they put out a video titled "A Tease Of Things To Come..." which sure looks like something Frostpunk-y, though they say absolutely nothing about what it is. They have previously mentioned wanting to make a RPG spin-off, so maybe this is that. Or a straight sequel. Or... dunno. They say they'll actually announce the game in August.

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The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is the latest graphics card in Nvidia's RTX 30 series and today's the day it goes on sale, June 10th. While I don't rate the card personally and strongly advise against trying to buy a new graphics card right now, there will no doubt be some of you out there itching to get one. So, if you're desperate to get your hands on an RTX 3070 Ti, here's everything you need to know about where you can buy one, its release time, starting price and specs.

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Everyone's a rotter in The Shrouded Isle. You especially. As the high priest in a small island town, you must appease the slumbering god beneath the waves by sacrificing one villager every season. For the past 495 years, everything's been going swimmingly. But now there's talk of your monstrous lord rising again in five years time. Will you be able to work with the town's five noble families and root out all those pesky sinners before He arrives and be judged a worthy disciple? That's what this cult sim is all about.

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In among all the E3 announcements and big game sales and absolutely everything else begging for our eyeballs this month, there's the Steam Next Fest as well. That's the new name for Steam's limited-time demo festival, if you'd not heard. The demo bashes can be just as (if not more) overwhelming than giant sales, I've found. So here's a hot tip ahead of time: the sequel to that super swell secret agent VR game is going to call in a demo. I Expect You To Die 2 is going to be one of the many options available starting on June 16, and perhaps one you'll want to prioritize if you're a VR-liker.

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The Logitech G305 Lightspeed has something of a cult following within the insular gaming mouse enthusiast community, who appreciate its low price, impeccable Lightspeed wireless connection and comfortable shape. Normally the mouse retails for a little under £40, but today the fetching blue colourway has dropped precipitously in price on Amazon UK and now retails for just £21.98. Considering Logitech still sell the mouse for £51.99, this is an incredible savings on one of the most popular wireless mice on the market.

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Upcoming Forgotten Realms romp Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is venuring forth before this month is over with, so developers Tuque Games have been giving a closer look at its combat and characters. A longer combat trailer posted today gives a rather action-packed look at each character's many special abilities and slice-y, dice-y combos. I'm always well up for an action RPG, especially with co-op, which the trailer has plenty of as well.

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The SteelSeries Arctis Pro + GameDAC remains one of the very best wired gaming headsets on the market, and today you can pick up this premium model at a big discount. Amazon are selling the Arctis Pro + GameDAC for just £150 today, down from a list price of £250. That's the best price we've seen in more than a year.

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Just last month, Blizzard mentioned they'd be rolling out some major new feature for Overwatch in the near future. They've just announced that their big hero shooter is getting cross-platform multiplayer between all of its platforms. There are caveats about competitive play and input types and attempting to keep the playing field level, of course. The bottom line though is that you'll be able to group up with your console pals sometime soon.

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At last there's no more barriers (aside from owning a gamepad) to trying out aughties cult classic No More Heroes. The irreverent beat 'em up from 2008 and its sequel No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle have broken onto PC today. The world's 11th best assassin Travis Touchdown has arrived with an HD upgrade for slashing up the competition, riding motorbikes, and playing with cats. All equally important assassin tasks, I assume.

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When Homeworld 3 launched a token crowdfunding campaign in 2019, it was through a site which not only lets people throw in cash, it lets some actually invest in the game and get paid if it does well. Well, that's off. While development continues, the investment aspect has been binned, presumably as a consequence of Homeworld owners Gearbox being bought by the ever-growing Embracer Group. But Homeworld 3 is still on. So that's fine.

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I've hinted a few times at my dislike of naval antics in strategy games. Since Strategic Mind set me off on a World War 2 kick, this week seemed like a good time to resolve this by picking out a dedicated seaborne war game and making a sincere effort to get over myself.

It is time to declare War On The Sea. And thus it is that I gave the order to dive to crush depth with oh wait, no this is a destroyer what have I done.

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I haven't played a video game in over a week. I'm sorry to say that there's no exciting reason behind this lack of button-pressing. I've not gone rogue and DDOSed your dad's start-up, or clotheslined a wine rack, or drop-kicked a cop car for a giggle. I simply went on holiday and I didn't think about games. It was nice.

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Tear your eyes away from all the upcoming E3 and E3-adjacent summer showcases for a moment, folks. Lest you forget, summer also brings game sales on games you can actually play right now, instead of games you'll play three years from now. GOG have kicked off their mega summer sale, starting off with some limited-time game and DLC bundles only available for the first 48 hours. Beyond that, you've got until June 28th to pick up your favorites from any of the other thousands of games that are on sale.

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It's called Battlefield 2042 and there are robot dogs. The next multiplayer shooter from noted mud artists Dice will be set in a near future where global civilisation is in decline. Food shortages, unrest and climate change has collapsed nations everywhere, leaving refugee soldiers fighting for an embattled US or a tired Russia.

Importantly, some of those soldiers have wingsuits. Others have recon drones, or sentry turrets. They always seem to fight in battles totalling no more than 128 players, and they don't mind having a barney in the path of a tornado. Dice revealed all this and more in a press show last week, during which they repeated several times that there won't be a battle royale mode. Look, here's all the details, plus a blustery trailer.

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Move over, dismembered torso statuettes and ugly t-shirts: Farming Simulator 22 has claimed the trophy for Bestest Best Collector's Edition Bonus. The next plough 'em up's CE will include a flashing orange light which plugs into your USB port and will flash when your in-game tractor's beacon light flashes. Amazing. Just amazing. The best CE tat.

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When Nvidia released their RTX 3070 at the end of last year, it was by far the most compelling GPU in their initial RTX 30 line-up. Offering RTX 2080 Ti levels of power for a (supposed) fraction of the cost, it remains my graphics card of choice for those after high frame rates at 1440p and playing games in ultrawide. Even though graphics card prices and stock levels are all over the shop at the moment, the RTX 3070 comfortably sees off competition from both of its nearest AMD neighbours, the Radeon RX 6700 XT and RX 6800 (at least until AMD's answer to DLSS gets off the ground on June 22nd), and in my eyes it's almost certainly the graphics card you'll want to watch out for if you're currently thinking about replacing your old GTX 1070 or above.

Now, we have the RTX 3070 Ti, slotting in between the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 with its alleged starting price of £529 / $599. I say alleged, because in all likelihood you're going to be paying a lot more than that when it goes on sale tomorrow (June 10th) due to the ongoing graphics card shortage. It's a bad time to be buying a new graphics card, and if you can at all help it, I'd strongly urge you to just keep what you've currently got right now - especially since this whole situation isn't likely to resolve itself until next year, according to AMD and Nvidia.

For more than a year now, the events industry has been in something of a total war footing, as hundreds of thousands of minds have set themselves to the challenge of proving that a website can, indeed, be a live event. Many experimental web design gimmicks have been deployed in the course of this effort, in the same way that bizarre new forms of life tend to proliferate after mass extinctions. Some have felt inspired. Some have felt sad. And some, of course, have been E3's eerie, Picrew-esque avatar system.

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EA and Dice today announced Battlefield 2042, as had been rumoured. Watch the reveal trailer here and check out our preview for more info.

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While Phantasy Star Online 2 only came to the west last year, it's been out in Japan for almost a decade - that's a long time! Well overdue some newness, if you ask me. Today, Sega will release New Genesis, a new standalone expansion for the old sci-fi MMO that spruces up the visuals and lets players explore an entirely new open world area.

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The thing people remember about co-op prison escape game A Way Out has nothing to do with the actual game itself. People remember the man doing a bad word on the internet telly in the lead up to launch.

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