Rock, Paper, Shotgun

During their recent Minecraft Live presentation, Mojang introduced quite a lot of new blocks, features, and mobs (hello, axolotls) coming in the Caves & Cliffs update next summer. Among them is this horrible beastie, The Warden, who will live down in the Deep Dark cave biomes. Wardens have oodles of health and can slap you in the face for massive damage, so I know there are confident adventurers out there thinking “yeah, I’m going to kill it”. During a new Q&A session about the update, Mojang say they would rather you didn’t, or at least that they won’t encourage you to.

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Before Genshin Impact goes ahead and adds a whole new area, it has to finish with the current one. The developers, Mihoyo today confirmed that the main storyline’s chapter in Liyue will wrap up with the first major update on November 11th. That’ll also add reputation levels with cities, with useful rewards like a portable stove and treasure compass, as well as start the first event.

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This year for my holidays I was going to go on a road trip around a European country before it became too late, but then this summer became a bit of a write off. Enter the latest DLC for EA’s blockbuster life sim The Sims 4, a combined winter wonderland and chill hiking holiday. Snowy Escape is set in the “Japanese inspired” Mt. Komorebi, and the headline is that your Sims can do loads of winter holiday stuff. Having had access to a preview build, I have already shared my thoughts that Snowy Escape may actually be the precursor to Skynet, so this time I will ignore that sinister aspect of it and just share some holiday snaps.

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Dota 2

‘s spooky seasonal event Diretide has been absent for quite a few years, a fact that the trailer for this year does not gloss over. You may have thought that the haunted forest would stay dormant forever but oh no, tricks and treats are back for 2020. This year’s event brings back a taffy-collecting game mode and a whole barrel full of rewards. You’ll have plenty of time to jump in because it’s on now and running for nearly two months.

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We already know that Activision are planning to inject their free-to-play battle royale ’em up Call Of Duty: Warzone with content from the next not-free game Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Activision have now given a rough timeline, saying that Verdansk will begin adding Cold War content when Black Ops season one launches in December.

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Ah yes, here’s the face of Eivor. You know him for being the muscly, bearded bloke in Ubisoft’s upcoming Vikings game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. No surprise such a famous fella would be getting deals to appear in commercials for—sorry, wait, he’s still repping his own game that’s not out yet? I dunno, are you absolutely sure he’s not selling performance-enhancing basketball shorts or something? Oh alright, I suppose he is still drumming up views for Valhalla until it launches in November.

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The Roccat Vulcan has been sitting at the top of my [cms-block] list ever since it first came out at the beginning of 2019. Its superb build quality and Roccat’s brilliant mechanical Titan switches were a winning combination in my eyes, so I was extra intrigued when they announced that not only were they making a smaller, tenkeyless version of the original Vulcan, the Vulcan TKL, but that they were also introducing two new Vulcan Pro models with their new Titan Optical switch as well.

I’ve been testing the smaller of these two Vulcan Pro models for the past couple of weeks – the Vulcan Pro TKL – and I can confirm it’s every bit as lovely as the full-sized original.

In Watch Dogs: Legion, you’re able to explore the world to pick up special masks for use when you’re doing illegal DedSec stuff to avoid being recognised. There are special ones to find around the city of London though, so here’s all the mask locations in Watch Dogs: Legion.

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A lush city in the sky, a time-travelling Scottish scientist and vehicles you can turn into gassy death machines. These headline the cool new additions coming to Apex Legends‘ seventh season, Ascension, and I got to play it ahead of Wednesday’s launch.

There’s a lot I like about this season. The new map, Olympus, is gorgeous and interesting to traverse. This is largely thanks to the vehicle, the Trident, which isn’t particularly deadly but is certainly versatile. Then there’s Horizon – the brand new Legend who is my new favourite mum (sorry real mum).

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Right then you muppets. I bet you’ve heard all sorts of old rubbish about London town in Watch Dogs Legion, ‘aven’t you? You’ve probably got yer knickers in a right twist over how faithfully it recreates the UK capital, and how totally facked it is.

Well don’t you worry no more, sunshine. The name’s Ronald McNationalism, hardest bloke in DedSec, and I’m going to take you on a little bloppity-blip (that’s geezer chat for “trip”) round some of the city’s most iconic landmarks. We’ll start with the Shard, that massive tower full of money in Southwark. You can see behind me there, plastered with massive warnings about what an utter bloody danger I am.

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Supermassive Games, the makers of Until Dawn, return today with a new branching horror story, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope. This time, they’re sending hapless students to an abandoned American town with a dark history of witch trials. Oh you bet they’re getting a spooking! It supports co-op so your pals can join in making foolish decisions leading to their deaths too, make a real Halloween of it.

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Ever since the 2013 Cyberpunk 2077 teaser trailer, we’ve known that the game was going to have one banging soundtrack. The music of CD Projekt Red’s extremely ambitious RPG has been the topic of much excitement and discussion, so we thought we’d put together this quick Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack guide, which will walk you through the diverse selection of musical artists and songs that are known to be in the game.

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Generally when a Flare Path interviewee says they dabbled in diplomacy in their younger days they are talking about their formative games. However, in Ryan Hewer’s case the lower case ‘d’ isn’t a typo. My interlocutor today is a man whose CV bestrides two parallel worlds. In one the dire consequences of a clumsy piece of international brinkmanship can be fixed with a single dab of the Load button. In the other geopolitical miscalculations blight real lives and end them. (more…)

Roman thinks you’re ready for Rithmetic Foxers. Below are three equations disguised as picture sequences. Each pic represents a number (For example a photo of The Flying Scotsman might signify 4472, 462, or 3). It’s your job to identify the mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication or division) indicated by the lettered squares. The BIDMAS rule applies. If a solution involves brackets or indices, Roman will mention it. (more…)

Cyberpunk 2077

‘s Night City is a veritable warzone. The skyscrapers are dominated by unimaginably wealthy megacorporations, while the streets are home to various powerful gangs and factions, each with their own agendas and conflicts. To help you navigate this warzone, we’ve put together the below Cyberpunk 2077 gangs and corporations guide, which will tell you everything you need to know about all the factions revealed so far.

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There are a few easy ways to snap pictures Watch Dogs: Legion’s dystopian London, whether you want to get some nice shots of the cityscape or you’re looking to photograph evidence to #resist the powers that be. Here’s how to take photos in Watch Dogs: Legion.

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Fashionistas of The Last City, you may breath a sigh of relief and begin clearing out your wardrobe: Bungie have confirmed that Destiny 2‘s upcoming transmogrification won’t require us to hold the original item. The workings of the transmog system are still largely unknown but game director Luke Smith did say last night that yes, if we want to duplicate a garment’s look and apply it to another, it is enough to have the original in our Collections. I’ve been saving every swish item for months, my Vault now overflowed into my inbox, and am so very glad to hear this.

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I won’t dignify the underscore that is in the official title. Watch Dogs 2 may not have an iconic cap, but you know what it does have? An iconic mask.

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Oh dang, they’re really giving this Anthem comeback a proper shot aren’t they? 3 months after we last checked in with BioWare’s beleaguered loot ’em up, the studio has returned with a fresh look at the game’s revamped UI, along with a new approach towards character skills and robot-suit loadouts aimed at fixing the base game’s seemingly-limited build options.

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London’s a weird place. As a Scot, I’ve always found my trips to the giant English sprawl to be bewildering affairs, as suited blokes ferry themselves from one Pret A Manger to another packed anchovie-like in screaming metal cans. Thank goodness then, that Watch Dogs Legion‘s condensed capital is an equally strange place – and it couldn’t possibly just be launch-week weirdness, right?

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A creak behind the door. A shiver down your spine. A shriek pierces your ear, but before you can turn and run, you see it – thousands of hapless videogames, slashed into pieces by big Gabe’s discount knife. Oh, The Steam Halloween Sale has very much begun, dear readers, chopping the recommended retail price out of the storefront’s finest games – be they spooky or otherwise.

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Despite having just launched one blockbuster with another due next month, we might have a while to go before Ubisoft’s next round of games. During today’s financial earnings report, Ubisoft revealed that both Far Cry 6 and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Quarantine have been pushed back into the next financial year, setting their release dates as no sooner than April 1st, 2021.

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We’re back on track for a trip to hell, adventurers. After last month’s delay failed to give us a new release date, Blizzard are now confident in their ability to deliver World Of Warcraft: Shadowlands by the end of November. It’s not the Halloween launch I imagine they were hoping for, but hey – what better way to close out this year than by yeeting ourselves into the fantasy underworld?

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As you’ll probably know by now, Watch Dogs Legion‘s big boast is its “play as anyone” feature, where you can recruit and subsequently play as any one of nine million procedurally generated Londoners. As I done said in my review, it works as advertised… sort of.

The level of simulation is dead impressive, and can lead to some interesting situations. But it leads to a lot of weird ones, too. Regardless of how well Ubisoft have concealed the practical limitations of this extraordinary system, we’re just not at a point in game design where you can automate the generation of a character’s appearance, backstory and personality, and have them walk out of the process as a believable and compelling human being.

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Adamgryu, creator of ‘Game That Graham Won’t Shut Up About 2019’ winner A Short Hike, has released a pay-what-you-can pumpkin carving game on itch. Just in time for the spookiest weekend of the year, Mayor Bones Proudly Presents: Ghost Town’s 999th Annual Pumpkin Festival is a genuine Halloween treat, and the best cure for October blues I have yet come across.

The premise is simple: you carve a pumpkin. Every player can submit three pumpkins to the server, but you can have as many goes as you want at the carving table. When you’ve got a pump you’re happy with, you can place it in the festival display alongside the work of your fellow ghosts. It is, and I am not exaggerating here, wonderful.

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What’s the point of forging an eternal space empire if you’re not around to see it? Why let a pesky thing like mortality ruin your timeless dominion over the cosmos? Such things don’t concern Stellaris‘s newest band of ramblin’ shamblin’ undead aliens, The Necroids, descending upon the galaxy in today’s new Species Pack. ‘Tis the season for an undead apocalypse, after all.

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As is customary for a modern Ubisoft open-world icon-clearer, Watch Dogs: Legion launches today with not only a £50 price tag and a £34 season pass but optional not-so-microtransactions too. Ubisoft are selling ‘WD Credits’ in bundles ranging from £4 to £42, which you can spend on in-game goodies like unique characters, skins, maps of collectibles, and wads of digicash. You don’t need any of these to complete Legion but welp, it’s still gross to see them juicing the game so much.

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Let’s face it, we’ve all been in situations where we’ve done something at work that’s resulted in a conversation we know is going to be awkward and embarrassing, but we’ve still had to do it anyway. On this basis, I sympathise with CD Projekt Red’s joint CEO Adam Kiciński and board member Michał Nowakowski, who had a Q&A call with investors yesterday to discuss the news that Cyberpunk 2077, big action RPG and pre-anointed game of the year 2020, has been delayed. Again.

On the call, Kiciński explained that the game is ready to go on PC and next-gen consoles, but on the current-gen builds “some very final optimization processes for such a massive and complex game require a bit of additional time”. This is what’s led to the three-week delay from its previous release date of November 19th. But they probably definitely will be ready to launch on December 10th – or at least that’s what he says in response to an investor asking if the studio can really be comfortable saying it’s going to actually come out on the 10th: “That’s more or less what I’m saying, I guess – yes.” But the full transcript goes from excruciating to downright embarrassing.

Feeling squeamish? If so, A Total War Saga: Troy‘s latest DLC probably isn’t for you. The subtly-named Blood & Glory DLC for Creative Assembly’s Ancient Greek murderfest arrived today, bathing Troy in a flood of blood, gore and grizzly details. And hey, if you’re a sicko wot wants to immortalise your bloodiest victories forever, you can now snap your most gruesome battles with Troy’s free photo mode update.

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After the rip-roaring success that was last week’s episode of The Electronic Wireless Show, where we talked about autumnal games and Matthew and I almost came to blows, this week’s podcast is a sequel. Yes, this week we are discussing our favourite wintery games. There is, obviously, a discussion about what constitutes ‘wintery’, because I think a game being snowy isn’t enough.

Surprisingly, it is Nate who tries to keep on theme this week, and me that goes off on upsetting tangents. Wonders never cease! We also spend some time discussing Skyrim, i.e. whether it is on or off the wintery table. Tangents include the Vic Mignogna lawsuit and whether Judi Dench is an autumn or a winter. Also, thank you to listener Kitku, who sent us a very nice email telling us how great we are.

The Five Nights At Freddy’s Book Club will return…

Intel have revealed more details about their upcoming 11th Gen Rocket Lake desktop CPUs, including the name of its new desktop architecture, “Cypress Cove”. Intel claim this new architecture will bring “double-digit percentage IPC (instructions per clock) performance improvements” over their current 10th Gen Comet Lake CPUs, leading to even faster gaming performance. We still don’t know the exact specs of Intel’s Rocket Lake CPUs, but they will include Intel’s hotly anticipated Xe graphics and, crucially, introduce support for a brand-new motherboard chipset, the Intel 500 series.

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We’ve put together all kinds of guides on Watch Dogs: Legion, and it’s easy to lose your way in the techno-futuristic world of sort-of-London. No worries though – I got you. Here’s the Rock Paper Shotgun Watch Dogs: Legion guide hub, constantly updated for your convenience.

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There’s nothing quite like a fully destructible world to relieve a little stress, is there? Smash ‘n’ grab heist ’em up Teardown came out in early access today, inviting you to absolutely demolish some voxel environments. In it you’ll get to use explosives, vehicles and all kinds of tools to tear down walls and buildings to pull off the perfect (and messy) heist.

The trailer gives me GTA-meets-Minecraft vibes, but with a very healthy dose of ruthless destruction thrown in there. It looks: great.

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Cyberpunk 2077

, it should be no surprise to anyone, is an incredibly ambitious game, and this ambition extends to the startlingly diverse arsenal of weapon types available to the player throughout their journey. Our Cyberpunk 2077 weapons guide will give you a full understanding of how Power weapons, Tech weapons, Smart weapons, and Cyberware all differ from one another, and which are best to use in different situations.

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For so long has Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice‘s One-armed Wolf been running and jumping around in the same drab clothes, it’s about time he jazzed up his wardrobe. In the new free update that dropped yesterday, From Software have done exactly that, and added three new outfits. They’re not just giving them to you that easy, though. To unlock two of them, players will need to have a go of the game’s new Gauntlets: a boss rush-style game mode that’ll pit you against a series of Sekiro’s most punishing enemies.

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The PC Gaming Weekspot

has everything you could ever want from a weekly video podcast about PC gaming. We chat all the latest news, we review the newest games, and we get cross with one another while we try to guess video games from just their Steam reviews.

This week is an emotional rollercoaster.

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If you’d told me back in 2018 that I’d be able to get the same amount of graphics performance as Nvidia’s $1100 / $1200 RTX 2080 Ti in a card that cost less than half of that in just two years time, I’d have straight up laughed in your face. Impossible, I would have said. It cannot be done. Yet here we are with the £469 / $499 RTX 3070, the third [cms-block] GPU to have been released so far that’s effectively an RTX 2080 Ti in all but name, and the soon-to-be rival of AMD’s just announced [cms-block] GPU, the RX 6800.

Today’s the day, folks, it’s release day for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070. Launching at 6am PT / 1pm GMT today, October 29th, it’s set to be one of the most anticipated graphics card launches of the year – and you can find out exactly why in my Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 review. Offering RTX 2080 Ti-level performance for a fraction of the cost, the RTX 3070 is likely to be in hot demand when pre-orders open shortly, so here’s a list of exactly where you can buy one so you don’t miss out.

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When you’re installing Watch Dogs: Legion, you’ll have the option to install 20GB worth of HD textures. It’ll put a load of fancy textures in your game, but should you download the HD texture pack?

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Today is the big launch day of Watch Dogs: Legion, inviting us into a wee open-world London to punch faces and hack the planet, though if you to see the game up at its best you might want to wait a touch before starting. Ubisoft have announced they plan to release a Legion launch hotfix patch for PC on Friday, focused on performance improvements. It doesn’t seem a huge mess now, but it will seem better tomorrow. Those lucky dogs on console got their launch hotfixes today, though I’d take our problems over theirs: apparently Legion can make Xbones overheat and shut down.

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