Rock, Paper, Shotgun

After so splendidly reviving the real-time tactical squad series, Desperados 3 is now just showing off with its own new take on an old location. The third and final DLC of its season pass is out today, Part 3: Once More With Feeling, and it’s returning to the Eagle’s Nest – a vast bandit fortress from previous games. The base game and its DLCs have hearty discounts for a few days, too. Get a peek at the task ahead in the new trailer below.

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Watch Dogs Legion

is one of this year’s big [cms-block], utilising ray traced reflections to bring the wet, rainy streets of London to life. It’s also one of the growing number of games to support Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS tech – and based on my initial testing of the game’s ray tracing effects on PC, you’re definitely going to need it if you want to admire the UK’s dystopian capital in all its reflective glory, even if you managed to bag yourself one of Nvidia’s newly-released [cms-block] cards.

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It must be easy to run a country when you’ve only two dimensions to work with. This week, Kingdom (that’s Kingdom: Classic and not Kingdom: New Lands or Kingdom: Two Crowns) became free to download and keep over on the Humble Store. The old king may seem stripped down compared to its successors, but it’ll let you dole out pennies across your lands without dropping real-world coin ’til this time next Monday.

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Since Starfield was first announced, Bethesda have been pretty quiet on the details. The upcoming spacefaring RPG was revealed at E3 back in 2018 as their new next-gen singleplayer game. But now, Todd Howard has shared a few more titbits. For starters, Starfield’s map will be the largest of any Bethesda RPG yet thanks to procedural generation.

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I recently talked to a group of people who were unfamiliar with games, about what games are. It’s always a bit weird doing that, because the answer is often “I mean, IDK. What are ‘sports’? Now please don’t ask me if they’re art.” See also: when is a door not a door?

As ever, though, weird indie games provide the answer to most questions, if you look hard enough. In this case, I’m talking about Menu New Game+, available to fiddle with for free on Itch.io. When is a game not a game? When it’s a series of start menus for games that don’t even exist! Ha! Take that, films, you can never be as much art as that because you’re not interactive and therefore can never be quite as meta.

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Halloween’s over. The pumpkins are packed away, the witches hats back in the wardrobe, but that doesn’t mean the scares should end, right? This weekend, the indie spooksters working under the Haunted PS1 movement released their latest compilation, C.H.A.I.N. – a compilation of 20 wildly varied haunt ’em ups from over 20 developers, Frankenstein’d together for free into a single winding narrative anthology.

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Apex Legends places a lot of emphasis on its wide array of guns and attachments, but just as much on its selection of Armor and Gear. Helmets, Body Shields, Backpacks, and Knockdown Shields are essential items to find across the map; and each type of Gear gives you a distinct and significant advantage for the rest of the game. Our Apex Legends Gear and Armor guide will walk you through the stats, effects, and little-known quirks surrounding each piece of Gear you can find in a match.

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Given how much Respawn like to change around their repository of Apex Legends attachments, it can be difficult to keep track of which attachments are in the game, which are gone, and which to prioritise while looting up. But fear not – our Season 7 Apex Legends attachments guide will walk you through every single attachment in Apex Legends, with up-to-date descriptions and stats on each one.

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Your Apex Legends loadout should be something you’re constantly thinking about over the course of a match. Out of over 20 unique guns in Apex Legends, you can only hold two at any given time. It’s a design choice that forces you to constantly reassess your needs, and make sure you pick the right tools for the task ahead. Our Apex Legends loadout guide will walk you through some of the top loadouts that’ll allow you to kick off Season 7 with a bang.

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Our Apex Legends guns & weapons guide will walk you through all 24 weapons in Respawn’s phenomenal battle royale one by one, along with detailed stats and opinions, and even a tier list ranking all of the best guns within their respective classes. All up to date as of Season 7! Ain’t that swell?

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In a new virtual ‘fireside chat’, Blizzard head honcho J. Allen Brack has given an update on the success of their anti-toxicity systems. They’ve been using machine learning to help combat abusive chat and bad behaviour in Overwatch and Heroes Of The Storm for a while, and recently brought the system to World Of Warcraft’s public channels. It sounds like a success there too. Brack also announced that the next BlizzCon, which is online-only, will be free for everyone to watch.

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While next year’s Awesome Games Done Quick won’t be held in-person, the charity speedrunning event is still going ahead, and it looks like it has some brilliant runs in store. AGDQ 2021’s game list was revealed over the weekend, and oooh January can’t come soon enough. From the new mythological roguelike Hades and charmingly difficult platformer Celeste, to old favourites like Half-Life and Left 4 Dead 2; there are some absolute belters in the lineup.

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Once upon a time, seven dwarves set out into the jungle with the simple dream of constructing an underground chimp jail. You can’t write sentences like that about most games. But in the context of Dwarf Fortress, the legendary world simulator under permanent construction by programmer Tarn Adams and his brother Zach, it is a perfectly reasonable statement.

Dwarf Fortress is my favourite game. And since it’s essentially a machine for generating weird fantasy stories, it’s even more fun to narrate than it is to actually play. Hence my previous diary series – The Basement Of Curiosity – which concerned the aforementioned chimp zoo. After a lengthy 25-episode run, the Basement finally came to an end on camera, at this year’s EGX Digital event. And while I won’t spoil its conclusion, I strongly recommend you watch it for yourself, right here. The ending will… surprise you.

Spoiler alert for the Sky Larsen storyline in Watch Dogs: Legion coming up, so don’t read on if you don’t want to hear about it. Upon meeting Nowt, you’ll start digging into the backstory of Skye Larsen. This culminates in the Into The Void mission, which gives you a choice at the end. Here’s what happens when you upload or kill Skye Larsen.

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Ah, N7 Day. A time for Mass Effect fans to come together and be sad because there hasn’t been a new game in the series since 2017 (even then, we don’t particularly like talking about that one). This year could be different, though. On Saturday the 7th November, a couple of BioWare developers and a bunch of voice actors from the Mass Effect trilogy are holding a “very special” panel.

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I’m convinced everyone at Supergiant Games were watching old episodes of Gladiators on the ITV Hub when they were making Pyre. I get the basketball comparisons, obvs, but it reminded me so much of powerball that I couldn’t help but wonder why referee John Anderson wasn’t asking me if I was ready at the beginning of every match.

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Watch Dogs Legion

may be set in future London but it’s not short on contemporary celebrity cameos. Ubisoft themselves announced before launch that you can find Stormzy in Watch Dogs Legion, but players have now spotted another cameo collection. Political podcast “Oh God, What Now?” have provided their writing and voices to some political analysis over the radio in Legion.

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Do you suppose Gabe Newell himself has earned the Half-Life 2: Episode 2 achievement for carrying a garden gnome to the end of the game? He’s planning to snag a real-life achievement, apparently, and has partnered up with Rocket Lab to blast a real Gnome Chompski into space. Not for nothing, Newell is planning to donate to Starship Children’s Hospital based on the number of folks to tune in to watch the launch.

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Steam accidentally cooked up something truly frightening for the end of its Halloween sale. At some point today the store’s payment system appears to have crashed, preventing users from making purchases around the time the sale was scheduled to end. Sorry to you last-minute shoppers. The ability to purchase games through their store seems to currently have mixed results.

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Red Dead Online

went on a bit of a dry spell earlier this year before its Naturalist role was added this summer. Rockstar have now said players won’t be waiting too long for another update. This time around they’ll be focusing on an action-oriented update to a current role, which sure sounds like Bounty Hunting. With RDO’s Halloween event still ongoing, it’s good to hear Rockstar already talking about what’s next.

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While carved pumpkins and turnips have barely begun to rot on windowsills, Christmastime is in full swing as far as the shops are concerned. There’s nowt else on this year so sure, let’s break out the old Christmas traditions already. And where better to start than Skeal? Pop on your mittens, brew a flask of cocoa, and hit the slopes in this free game to experience the snow, sleigh bells, power, pleasure, and pain of the Yuletide season. It’s the best bit of daft wordplay this side of a Christmas cracker.

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Horror anthology The Dark Pictures is apparently jumping even further back in time for its next spook story. Little Hope just launched last week, taking a group of students and their professor to a town haunted by the ghosts of witch trials past. A post-credits scene in Little Hope contains a teaser trailer for the next chapter: House Of Ashes, which will haul some modern-day military folks out to be haunted by Sumerian myths.

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Little Hope

Watch Dogs: Legion

features grime star Stormzy, not just as a piece of marketing material but as a quest giver. He’s been a big part of the hype of Watch Dogs: Legion, so fans are obviously excited to find and collab with him in-game. Here’s how to find Stormzy in Watch Dogs: Legion.

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If you’re an avid Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor fan, I have some bad news for you. Warner Bros. are removing all of its online features, so you only have until 31st December 2020 to enjoy them before they disappear forever.

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Parents of RPS, good news: a lovely-looking game about a funny farm of silly talking animals is coming in time for you to put it on your kid’s Christmas laptop. Orwell’s Animal Farm will launch on December 10th, the developers announced today, turning Georgie Orwie’s picturebook into a game where you make decisions to determine the fate of the farm. I just know I’ll be best friends with the big ol’ shire horse, Boxer.

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[cms-block], Black Smi-day, who needs to wait until November 27th when you’ve already got deals like Samsung’s 500GB 860 Evo already going on in the US for their lowest ever prices right now? As part of Amazon’s new ‘epic’ daily deals promotion, the 500GB model of our best SATA SSD recommendation can now be had for just $54, making it a much better buy than its $50 250GB sibling. Hurry, though, as this deal is today only and will be gone at midnight.

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The early [cms-block] deals continue this week, and one of today’s highlights is this 16GB Crucial Ballistix RAM kit clocked at a nippy 3000MHz for £65 over on Amazon UK. This is the cheapest this set has ever been, according to my Amazon price tracker, as it’s cost £78 or more for most of 2020. If you’ve ever wanted some rainbow RAM on the cheap, this is definitely worth considering.

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While Bloodlines 2 is the big Vampire: The Masquerade game folks are waiting for, it’s far from the only game in the tabletop RPG setting, with the newest and weirdest being… a battle royale? Huh. Sharkmob, a Swedish studio founded by former The Division devs, this weekened announced a yet-unnamed battle royale that’ll see vampires scrapping through the streets and over the rooftops of prague. Huh. A surprising use of the license. It’s due next year, and all they have to show for now is a cinematic trailer.

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Sure, you could drop a few hundo on one of those spang new consoles to play all the games coming out in November, but why would you? Every exclusive’s been delayed and all the best November releases are coming to PC anyway.

What’s that? You don’t know what video games are coming out during the penultimate month of this hell year? Well, let me tell you!

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The default Fortnite dance is terrible. You move out of time with the music, the music itself is boring, and it wasn’t even stolen from a pop-cultural icon (although to be fair it has become one in itself). No one thinks you’re cool doing the default Fortnite dance.

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Scream-shot Saturday Sundays? Not on your unlife, pal, it’s November. Halloween’s over. I have no contractual obligation to be “spooky” today, so let’s fearlessly dive back into the well of Twitter’s favourite gamedev hashtag. This week: A frog chorus, a living painting, an ominous orb, and a begrudging admission that yes, it’s the scary weekend, fine.

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Much as Riot might like to think otherwise, a MOBA just ain’t the best place to show off your sprawling lore. It’s just hard to care about my wizard’s tragic past when I’m trying to hold mid. That’s where Ruined King: A League Of Legends Story comes in, a singleplayer turn-based RPG that’ll let you linger and explore Runeterra’s fantasy scenarios outside the brutal confines of a 90-minute multiplayer murderfest when it arrives next year.

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Remember Lone Survivor? It’s hard to believe Jasper Byrne’s harrowing side-scrolling adventure game is almost a decade old at this point, but such is the equally terrifying march of time. Today, the developer and composer announced Super Lone Survivor, a remake that’s bringing the 2011 game up to date with a new engine and a brand new chapter later next year.

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Okay, so nobody was accusing Disc Room of being short on blades. But as Devolver Digital have proven, there are so, so many ways to be sliced and diced by a room of spinning saws. Wrapping up today, the official Disc Room Game Jam over on Itch has summoned dozens of razor-sharp new takes on the game, from paint-splattered puzzles and household chores to an unexpected mash-up with one of the year’s biggest games.

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If there’s been one small positive about this year, it’s the reliable rollout of once console-locked Halo games on PC through Halo: The Master Chief Collection. With Halo 4 currently on the launchpad, 343 Industries have chosen to extend the game’s testing (“flighting”) period by another week, with the Insider client now testing crossplay support for Halo Reach.

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I do love a good RTS from time to time. It’s just that, well, I start to lose focus as soon as I’m juggling a dozen units or more, my perfect opening collapsing into a panic of select-all death balls. Fortunately, that’s not a problem I ever see myself having in Sokpop’s King Pins, with the Dutch indie rascals stripping the genre down into an adorably simple single-screen strategy puzzle for you and up to three pals.

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Well hellOoooOo to yooOoOou this spOoooOoky weekend. Ghost noise, innit. Happy Halloween! In a fine stroke of serendipity, today also has a full moon (a full awooooon? werewolf noise, yeah), the blue moon. This could well be the best day of the year. Enjoy!

What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!

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I am not usually one for horror games. I don’t like jump scares and I prefer my video games to be chill and relaxing instead of stressing me out to high heaven. To be honest, I’m still not sure why I decided to put myself through panstasz’s all-caps World Of Horror last week when the name itself would normally be a big, all-caps “Nope” for me. But it was on Game Pass, and I’ve been mildly intrigued by its 1-bit, Junji Ito-esque art style ever since I clapped eyes on it (through cracks in my fingers, natch), and with the autumn sun blazing in through my window over the weekend, I thought, “What’s the worst that could happen?” A lot, it turns out.

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If you’re in the mood for futuristic cars that shoot at one another you might like—no, it’s not Mario Kart and it’s not Wipeout either, though it’s definitely inspired by the latter. The name’s Pacer and it’s a futuristic racer where your fancy anti-gravity vehicles zoom around tracks while also shooting one another with guns and such.

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