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Instead of kicking back on the beach like they were supposed to, Final Fantasy 14 players are stripping their pristine new island sanctuaries of every single plant and resource to feed the machine of efficiency. This week's patch 6.2 dropped Island Sanctuaries, a solo mode that lets you tend to a farm, gather resources, craft items, and pet animals. As you explore the island and build facilities, you gain unique XP to increase your rank and ability to purchase mounts and hairstyles for your character. Naturally, MMO players have found a way to turn this laid-back diversion into a job by sharing spreadsheets, maps, and details on spawn rates. Reddit user LucarioMagic circled plant locations on the island map to keep you from exploring for too long. Twitter user stalvtuber went further and provided exact coordinates so you can create linear paths from each resource. And YouTuber Cole Evyx made a video that warns viewers of a "noobtrap" that prevents you from building your island base and provides an entire Excel sheet of items to craft with a value per hour (VPH) number for each one. Twitter and the game's subreddit are full of people highlighting the discrepancy between the mode's intended purpose and how people are actually treating it. MMOs have this problem a lot: World of Warcraft has implemented its own farms and other casual-friendly features over the years and many people choose to squeeze them dry instead of savoring the break from raiding and grinding mobs. While nothing in FF14 stops you from churning through island life, it also doesn't provide a lot of reasons for speedrunning it either. It purely depends on your patience and what's most satisfying to you. two hours into island sanctuary: this is so relaxing i love taking care of my animals :)twelve hours into island sanctuary: the mammets demand a week of rest and are unionizingAugust 24, 2022 See more For fellow Warriors of Light that are secluding themselves in their Island Sanctuary, this path is good for your copper ore needs!Might be a better spot later in Island development though.#FFXIV #FF14 #FinalFantasyXIV pic.twitter.com/hsv4BuCRquAugust 24, 2022 See more i_love_island_sanctuaries from r/ffxiv Several Reddit users explained in one popular Reddit thread why they've turned the island sanctuaries into a mini management sim: "I was a math/econ major. I love factory sims and optimizing 'frack', just how my brain works," spock2018 wrote. "It's like a puzzle. It's fun to engage your brain with how to best get things with what you have," Gorbashou wrote in the same thread. For others, all the crop harvesting and crafting can wait. FF14's islands are where you take a break from challenging raids and quests to pet animals and let your minion companions run free. An island where you can build your dream treehouse for taking photos of your Warrior of Light or having friends over to hang out. FF14's island sanctuaries resemble what it was like to see rabid Animal Crossing players take on New Horizons when it launched in 2020. The game that's practically synonymous with chill was harvested alive by early-pandemic players without much else to do. People used the Nintendo Switch's clock to fast forward through the game and they used dedicated websites and Discord servers to track turnip prices to maximize their profit. Clearly none of it was what Nintendo intended, and yet everyone did it anyway. Now it's Square Enix's turn to bear witness to hordes of players who want nothing but the pure efficiency of a well-oiled farm. View the full article

As reported by our friends at GamesRadar, On August 24, Avalanche Software revealed the very pricey $300 collector's edition version of Hogwarts Legacy. Videogame limited editions can be hit or miss. After all, what if you just committed to a triple digit price tag "le epic nerd" swag box for a real 5/10 experience (or 50%, going by the best videogame review system on the planet?) What if, bear with me, you get the limited edition of Dragon Age Inquisition on pre order as a birthday present in 2014 and it winds up being a fairly satisfying 7/10 (87%), but comes with a couple plastic pieces of crap and a "cloth map" that's just the same dot jpg of Thedas that's been up on the Dragon Age wiki since 2009, printed on the cheapest polyester imaginable? Hypotheticals aside, the quality of the goods themselves doesn't seem to be at issue with the Boy Who Lived Supderdeluxe Edition of Legacy, at least. Its centerpiece is a giant cast of a wizardly tome with a map of Hogwarts printed on its open pages. It can be plugged in and powered on, activating the electromagnets under its pages and allowing the included magic wand collectible to float above—pretty neat! That's kind of it though. The Every Flavored Bean Edition also boasts an exclusive outfit and all the digital goods of the lower-tier Deluxe edition. Players also receive a steelbook case which, for those of us on PC, will only hold a download code⁠—another symptom of our cursed modernity. Collector's edition owners will also be able to access Hogwarts Legacy three days earlier than other players. I can't help but compare this to the offerings of Limited Run Games and iam8bit, purveyors of fine collector's editions of indie and classic games. I recently snagged the Limited Run release of KOTOR 2, an old favorite, for around $200 after tax and shipping. It's an old game and none of its included bits and boobahs have the wow factor of Legacy's levitation rig, but its wider spread of collectibles and included art book speak to me more than Legacy's single showstopper. I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention Harry Potter creator JK Rowling's extensive anti-trans rhetoric and political activity. Avalanche and Warner Bros have tried to distance themselves from Rowling's politics, asserting that she had no creative input on the game and including a "trans-inclusive" character creation system. Let they who have never once purchased a spicy chicken biscuit from Chick-fil-A cast the first stone when it comes to "ethical consumption,"⁠ but Warner Bros declined to comment to Kotaku on whether or not Rowling would receive royalties on the game. Given her creation and ownership of the setting, her social and financial gain seems secure. View the full article

A two-year-long storyline in Elite Dangerous ended with a bang this month. Actually, there were two bangs in Update 13: the first was the firing of a superweapon in an attempt to destroy the alien Thargoids… quickly followed by the second bang of the Thargoids totally not being destroyed and blowing that superweapon into space-smithereens. These disastrous events, which were viewable to players via an in-game cinematic, bring Elite Dangerous into its next story arc, Aftermath, as the fallout from the failure of the superweapon opens up new events and plenty of questions for players. What exactly went wrong? What will happen next? How will the galaxy, its factions, and players react after the catastrophe? I recently spoke with members of the Frontier Developments team about the future of Elite Dangerous, and what Update 14 will mean for the long-running simulation of Milky Way Galaxy. Naturally they prefer to let the story unfold for players instead of straight-up telling me every single detail (darn), but they did drop a few hints about the ongoing alien threat, as well as something they themselves find threatening. "As we move towards Update 14, and the Aftermath, we'll be really escalating the Thargoid threat, to the extent commanders have not seen before," said senior producer Samantha Marsh. "I think everyone can see that bad things are coming. But the Aftermath will continue to kick that into higher and higher gear, and we're really excited to see exactly [how] everyone deals with it. "And it's definitely safe to say the galaxy won't be the same," she added. The in-game cinematic that ended the Azimuth Saga was a new way to share a story with players, but it's not the only tool Frontier Developments will be using as the events of Aftermath are slowly revealed. "There's also the part of Elite that's the exploratory storytelling, and people who are sort of uncovering elements of the story and piecing it together," Marsh said. "And we love to see the players doing that part of it. I think it's really amazing to see what they find." "Yeah, [we] love putting little mysteries in the game for players to solve," said Luke Betterton, lead game designer. "One of the things that we do quite a lot of is pretty hefty kind of narrative consideration behind a lot of what we create. So for people to be able to piece together what that narrative is when we're not quite upfront with it, for players to get those theories, all the cogs are whirring, they're trying to figure out exactly what is happening here. What's what is coming next? That's a great joy of mine." (Image credit: Frontier) Speaking of threats, there's a new one when it comes to Elite Dangerous, but it's not of the alien variety. It's from right here on Earth. I asked the developers if astronomers—real world astronomers, that is—making new discoveries about our galaxy have an effect on the simulated Milky Way Galaxy of Elite Dangerous. "If you're asking whether the James Webb Telescope is terrifying for Elite Dangerous' future? Yeah, it is, yeah," said Betterton, laughing. "If they start seeing stuff that we then have to retrofit into the game, that's going to be a challenge." "We're not going to overhaul the whole galaxy if there's loads of different new discoveries, but it certainly does influence what we do," said Marsh. "I can give you an example of something that NASA renamed, I think it was a galaxy, I really can't remember exactly what, but they renamed it because the original name, they found to be a bit more offensive these days. So, we actually went in and renamed it ourselves to match the new name from NASA as well." "I think that's also what makes Elite so interesting is it's [an] evolving, living game," Marsh continued. "It has these updates and changes and it's always kind of evolving into something really new and unique, which is really cool." View the full article

Security skeptics and advocates have worried for some time now that exploits able to take advantage of anti-cheat kernel-mode drivers could wreak serious havoc on PC security. Now it seems to have happened: The anti-cheat driver used by Genshin Impact, the popular free-to-play RPG, has been abused by a ransomware actor to stop antivirus processes and enable the mass deployment of their ransomware. A new whitepaper published August 24th to Trend Micro explains how the perfectly legitimate driver mhyprot2.sys was used, absent any other parts of Genshin Impact, to gain root access to a system. "Security teams and defenders should note that mhyprot2.sys can be integrated into any malware," wrote authors Ryan Soliven and Hitomi Kimura. "Genshin Impact does not need to be installed on a victim’s device for this to work; the use of this driver is independent of the game." Kernel-mode drivers are at the very core of your computer's system. At the risk of gross oversimplification, software at the kernel level generally has more control over your PC than you do. Genshin Impact's anti-cheat was previously under scrutiny for continuing to run—at the kernel level—even after you closed the game. Developer HoYoVerse, then known as MiHoYo, later changed that. The paper is clear that this is a severe security breach of the entire Windows operating environment. It notes that the driver module "cannot be erased once distributed" and isn't inherently malicious—simply an abusable piece of otherwise-legitimate software. "This module is very easy to obtain and will be available to everyone until it is erased from existence," the paper states. "It could remain for a long time as a useful utility for bypassing privileges. Certificate revocation and antivirus detection might help to discourage the abuse, but there are no solutions at this time because it is a legitimate module." This is hardly the first time that kernel level anti-cheat has been a security concern for the games industry. A double whammy hit in May 2020 when both Riot Games' Valorant and Doom Eternal released with kernel mode anti-cheat. At the time, Riot noted that plenty of other kernel-level anti-cheat software already existed—although not to the extent of Riot's Vanguard software, which begins when Windows boots up. But kernel level anti-cheat technology is generally effective, and for some gamers who are sick of dealing with cheaters, that makes the risk worthwhile. By the end of last year, for instance, Call of Duty players were unhappy enough with cheaters that some welcomed Activision Blizzard having access to every bit of memory on their entire PC. No matter the history and now-widespread usage, this kind of abuse is exactly what those who feared the spread of kernel-mode anti-cheat were warning of. If a vulnerability has been found, what follows could be significantly worse than vulnerabilities in normal, user-level anti-cheat software. I've reached out to MiHoYo for comment on the report, and will update if I receive a reply. View the full article

Games Workshop earned £25 million from videogames in 2021, so don't expect it to stop licensing out its properties anytime soon. Apparently it's got "12 unreleased games in development and four new licences were signed in the year." Not all of those will come to PC of course, with a handful of mobile games like Total War Battles: Warhammer (being made by NetEase, co-developer of Diablo Immortal) in the works. Still, even if you're only looking at the ones on PC, there are enough that keeping track of them can be a hassle. The advantage of the high number of Warhammer games being green-lit at the moment is that the developers making them span a wide variety of genres. We're finally getting a Warhammer CRPG, and there's a 2D platformer and a boomer shooter on the way. We can only hope a city-builder and an immersive sim aren't far off. It's great to have Warhammer games covering so many bases. Whether you're into real-time shootybangs or turn-based thinkyplans, co-op action or competitive sports sims, there might be a Warhammer game for you. These are the four I'm most excited about. Darktide November 30. Vermintide 2 had the best first-person combat since Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, and that's reason enough to be excited for developer Fatshark's take on 40K. Like the Vermintide games, Darktide is four-player co-op with seething hordes of enemies, and what we've seen so far suggests it'll be every bit as brutal. Perhaps even more so, if you're swinging a chainsword. It's also clear that Fatshark understands the setting. The character creation in the Gamescom trailer shows a press-ganged prisoner whose selected background explains how you ended up imprisoned before being recruited into the Inquisition: "Someone overheard you expressing disgust at the weird taste of corpse starch and reported you to a foreman." Darktide promises to be as grim and grimy as a 40K game should be, with its heroes, explicitly called "rejects", treated as cannon fodder and having to use "skull decoders" to interface with machinery as they struggle across an awful gothic industrial nightmare of a city. Can't wait. Rogue Trader Beta in 2023, no release date. (Image credit: Owlcat Games) Owlcat knows how to make a CRPG, having released Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Expect complicated character progression and combat, endless hours of playtime, and an expanding cast of characters so deep they should come with some kind of warning signage for divers. Rogue Trader will cast us as the captain of a gigantic voidship on the edge of the Imperium, heir to a dynastic tradition of settlers and traders. We'll be able to explore uncharted worlds, find relics of lost civilizations, and bring new worlds into the Emperor's light—or more likely fall into heresy. It's drawing inspiration from a tabletop RPG published in 2009, though hopefully not too much. Pen-and-paper Rogue Trader was kind of a mess—the spaceship rules in particular. Fortunately, while the Pathfinder videogames used roughly the same rules as the tabletop game they were based on, Owlcat's community manager has said Rogue Trader "won't be a direct transfer from tabletop to a videogame". It will have purely turn-based combat though, which is probably a good thing, given how chaotic Pathfinder's real-time-with-pause option made every fight. One concern remains, and that's what kind of state Rogue Trader will launch in. Owlcat's previous games arrived with plenty of bugs and balance issues, and though patches rectified the biggest, it would be nice if the studio's next game was easier to recommend on arrival. Space Marine 2 No release date. (Image credit: Saber Interactive) We'd given up hope of ever seeing a follow-up to Relic's 2011 third-person action game when a sequel was announced out of the blue in December of 2021. Get it, "out of the blue" because it's about Ultramarines… I'll get my coat. The licence has now been picked up by Saber Interactive, developer of World War Z: Aftermath and Evil Dead: The Game, which has a lot to live up to. The original Space Marine was a bombastic hack-and-shooter with a mechanic that gave health back for performing melee takedowns that now seems ahead of its time. It also had an excellent jump pack. Space Marine 2 will pick up the adventures of Ultramarine Captain Titus after he's been promoted to lieutenant and ascended to become one of the Primaris. A relatively recent addition to Warhammer 40,000, this new generation of space marines are even beefier than the vanilla variety, retroactively dubbed the Firstborn. He'll need all that extra strength and speed, since he'll apparently be facing "thousands of tyranids". Even after taking on a clan of orks and the forces of Chaos in the first game, the massive amount of enemies the Saber Swarm Engine can throw around should prove a challenge. Blood Bowl 3 In closed beta, no release date. (Image credit: Cyanide Studio) Though kick-off has been delayed multiple times and plans to release Blood Bowl 3 in Early Access last year were scuppered, I'm still holding out hope. Cyanide Studio's third stab at this turn-based American football parody will bring the rules into line with Games Workshop's current version, which is less restrictive about when you use rerolls, adds new skills like projectile vomiting, and brings back the Special Play cards. These inducements make the gleefully random game of Blood Bowl even more madcap. Serious competitive players aren't in favor of them, but the very existence of serious and competitive fans of a game so deliberately unpredictable is baffling, so who cares what they think. Though Cyanide has said only a selection of the Special Play cards will make it into Blood Bowl 3 at launch, even a few additions like greased shoes, catapult traps, and enchanted buckets would make it even more Looney Tunes. And that's a plus. Cyanide's previous Blood Bowl games have had poor AI and been terrible at teaching its tactics to new players, but even if they drop the ball on both of those again I'll probably enjoy Blood Bowl 3 just like the previous two. If you're already familiar with Games Workshop's silliest game from its physical edition, then a digital version you can play online or against a braindead computer is good enough. It'd be nice if all this development-delay overtime led to a significant improvement, though. Here's all the other upcoming Warhammer games on PC (Image credit: Rogueside) Shootas, Blood & Teef (October 20, 2022). Sidescrolling action-platformer with hand-drawn art where you're an ork.Boltgun (2023). Retro FPS about an Ultramarine fighting Chaos with the power of heavy metal and 1990s graphics.Warpforge (2023). Free-to-play collectible card game pitting 40K's various factions against each other.Untitled Age of Sigmar game (???). Not much is known, except it'll be published by Nexon and feature PvE multiplayer in a "virtual world". View the full article

Hello Norbert, Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. Norbert joined on the 08/25/2022. View Member

A new Deadline report says Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence has been signed to direct the upcoming BioShock film, while the script will be adapted by Michael Green, whose previous credits include Logan, Alien: Covenant, and American Gods. Getting BioShock to the big screen has been a struggle. The first game in the series was released in 2007—that's 15 years ago—and while a film project helmed by Gore Verbinski was announced the following year, the project stalled and ultimately fell apart. In 2013, BioShock creative director Ken Levine blamed the failure on Watchmen, an R-rated superhero flick that didn't do very well at the box office. Universal wanted to cut BioShock's budget but Verbinski did not, so he split. Levine said he "didn't really see the match" with the director Universal brought in to replace Verbinski, so he canned the whole thing. That was the end of things until February, when Netflix announced a partnership with Take-Two Interactive "to produce a film adaptation of the renowned video game franchise." There was no indication as to Levine's role on the new project, if any, and he doesn't appear to have publicly commented on it. The most recent BioShock game, BioShock Infinite, came out in 2013; these days Levine is working on something entirely new at Ghost Story. With or without him, Netflix's BioShock film seems to be moving ahead with a level of purpose and urgency that the original project never had. Signing a director and screenwriter is a long way from putting images on a screen, but Netflix has a pretty solid history of getting things done, and it hasn't been shy about taking advantage of videogames for new content: The network has also released or is working on new films or series based on The Witcher, Resident Evil, Dota, Splinter Cell, Tomb Raider, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Division. View the full article

Microsoft says there are currently no plans to increase the price of its Xbox Series S and Series X consoles. This comes after news of Sony's surprising global price hike for both models of its PlayStation 5 earlier today. Sony cites "challenging economic conditions" as the reason for the PS5 price increase as global inflation has hit its highest levels in decades. While the company has been producing more consoles to meet its high demand, the one-two punch of supply chain issues and the current economic state of the world have not helped at all. “We are constantly evaluating our business to offer our fans great gaming options. Our Xbox Series S suggested retail price remains at $299 (£250, €300) the Xbox Series X is $499 (£450, €500)," Microsoft said in a statement to Windows Central. Once the news of the PS5 price hike broke, many folks online were wondering if the software and hardware giant would do the same, and it seems like we got our answer. While it's good news that Xbox won't see a price increase at the moment, there's no telling what will happen if global inflation continues to rise. Global inflation rates and supply chain issues have been contributing factors to the "challenging economic situation" Sony is referring to. Interestingly enough, the only region that won't receive a price increase on PS5s is the United States. As of July, the PlayStation 5 holds a 57% market share against the Xbox Series S/X's 42.3%. View the full article

Let's get real. We're all thinking about 2023 games already, even though there's plenty of this year left to go. Some of the biggest releases we'd been anticipating this year got edge guarded into the next and there are guaranteed to be more release date casualties before December rolls around. Even though there are a lot of great games left on this year's docket, it can't hurt to take a peek ahead. I'm not the only one who starts thinking about what I want for tomorrow's breakfast while I'm still cooking today's dinner, right? Best of the best (Image credit: Paradox)2022 games: This year's launches Best PC games: All-time favorites Best free PC games: Freebie fest Best laptop games: Low-specs For the third year running, we've seen an increase in big games willing to push back their release dates to get a bit more development time. Not even just once, either. Some are still getting multiple delays before they finally hit our game libraries. Knowing that, let's call this a tentative 2023 games list. Inevitably, some of the names here will get kicked into the year 2024—a frightful number for me to be forced to type already. When they do, we'll be keeping track right here, just like we are for the current year. From what we know so far, 2023 is going to be a huge year for RPGs. A lot of major series with long-in-the-works sequels are targeting next year for release dates. Starfield's delay put it in the early part of 2023, Baldur's Gate 3's early access is planned to end with a full release during the year, and Diablo 4 is scheduled to turn up too. Take a peek at next year's presents right now with all the games currently confirmed for 2023: Biggest 2023 games 2023 games with release dates January 24, 2023 — Forspoken - Magical parkour adventureJanuary 27, 2023 — Dead Space remake - Motive's space horror remakeFebruary 2, 2023 — Deliver Us Mars - Story driven space mysteryFebruary 3, 2023 — Dead Island 2 - Zombie survival RPG infects CaliforniaFebruary 10, 2023 — Hogwarts Legacy - Wizarding world RPGMarch 24, 2023 — Resident Evil 4 remake - A reimagined story for LeonApril ??, 2023 — Mask of the Rose - Failbetter's 'sort-of' dating sim 2023 games with dates to be announced Alan Wake 2 - The survival horror sequelAliens: Dark Descent - Alien, but an RTSArk 2 - More dinosaurs, plus Vin DieselAtlas Fallen - Monster Hunter by way of righteous deicideAvatar: Frontiers of Pandora - Open-world AvatarBaldur's Gate 3 - Larian's take on a classic RPG seriesBramble: the Mountain King - Nordic horror platformerCreature Keeper - Real-time combat creature collectorThe Day Before - Open world zombie survival MMODiablo 4 - The long-awaited action RPG continuationEdge of Sanity - 2D lovecraftian survival horrorEl Paso, Elsewhere - Third-person shooterEverywhere - A vague metaverse dream from GTA producersThe Expanse: A Telltale Series - Telltale storytelling for best Belter bosmangFinal Fantasy 7 Rebirth - The next chapter of the FF7 remakeFinal Fantasy 16 - The RPG series returns to medieval magicFlintlock: The Siege of Dawn - Soulslike for musket fansThe Gap - Psychological walking simThe Great War: Western Front - WWI RTSHomeworld 3 - Sci-fi RTS classic returnsHouse Flipper 2 - More gentrification simulationHyenas - Sega's multiplayer FPSHyper Light Breaker - Action adventure sequel to Hyper Light ShifterThe Invincible - Retro-future space thrillerKerbal Space Program 2 - Physics disaster in spaceKiller Klowns from Outer Space - Asymmetrical horror throwbackThe Last Case of Benedict Fox - Eldritch investigation metroidvaniaLayers of Fears - More horror from Bloober TeamLies of P - Bloodborne, but you play PinocchioLightyear Frontier - Chill farming sim with mechsLollipop Chainsaw - A remake of the zombie hack-n-slashLord of the Rings: Return to Moria - A middle earth crafting gameMinecraft Legends - An RTS spinoffMoving Out 2 - Packing party game sequelNightingale - Crafting survival RPG in the Fae RealmsOff the Grid - Blomkamp Battle RoyalePayday 3 - Long-awaited co-op heist sequelPark Beyond - Tycoon simulator of the rollercoaster varietyPlanet of Lana - Sci-fi puzzle adventurePragmata - Outerspace action adventureRavenlok - An action adventure fairytaleRedfall - Co-op open-world vampire shooterSea of Stars - Classic-style turn-based RPGShadows of Doubt - Neon noir detective simSkate Story - Chill skateboarding through the atmospheric underworldSnufkin: Melody of Moominvalley - A story adventure gameStalker 2 - Chernobyl-based zombie FPSStarfield - Bethesda's new original space RPGStar Wars Jedi: Survivor - The Fallen Order sequelStray Blade - Soulslike with El Dorado flavorStreet Fighter 6 - Ryu Ryu Ryu Ryu Ryu RyuSuicide Squad: Kill The Justice League - Co-op villain adventureTempest Rising - Archetypal base-building RTSTeslagrad 2 - Electrifying puzzle platformer sequelTest Drive Unlimited Solar Crown - Open world driving in Hong KongTortuga: A Pirate's Tale - Turn-based piratical strategyUnder the Waves - Subaquatic psychological storyWo Long: Fallen Dynasty - Three Kingdoms gave from Nioh devs View the full article

It's hard to believe that Skull and Bones is actually happening. Even though an official launch date was announced in July, the litany of delays and uncertainty leading up to that point has embedded a tiny, nagging sense of doubt in the back of my brain that's not going away until after it comes out—and maybe not even then. But now we're one step closer to a release actually happening: Ubisoft has unveiled the official Skull and Bones system requirements, PC-specific features, and anti-cheat systems. First things first: The hardware you need if you want to play. Low (1080p, 30 fps) CPU – Intel Core i7-4790 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600GPU – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB) or AMD Radeon RX 570 (4GB)RAM – 8GB dual channelStorage – 65GB SSDOS: Windows 10 High (1080p, 60 fps) CPU – Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600GPU – Nvidia GeForce GTX 2070 (8GB) or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (8GB)RAM – 16GB dual channelStorage – 65GB SSDOS: Windows 10/11 High (1440p, 60 fps) CPU – Intel Core i7-9700K or AMD Ryzen 5 5600 XGPU – Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 (8GB) or AMD Radeon RX 6800 (16GB)RAM – 16GB dual channelStorage – 65GB SSDOS: Windows 10/11 Ultra (4K, 60 fps) CPU – Intel Core i5-11600K or AMD Ryzen 5 5600 XGPU – Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 (10GB) or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (16GB)RAM – 16GB dual channelStorage – 65GB SSDOS: Windows 10/11 (Image credit: Ubisoft) (Image credit: Ubisoft) Owners of the PC version of Skull and Bones will also enjoy uncapped framerates, multi-monitor and widescreen display support, customizable controls, advanced graphics settings and adjustable FOV, built-in benchmarking, and for those with the hardware to handle it, support for DLSS/FSR and ray-traced global illumination. It will also have full crossplay support with all other platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Stadia. Skull and Bones can be played solo but "is best experienced with up to two other friends," or randos you run into on the high seas, as the case may be. Either way, the game will endeavor to make your adventures both fun and fair. Players will be matched up based on their infamy level and PvP preference, and a built-in reporting system will enable players to report or block others for "disruptive behavior." It will also employ the widely-used BattlEye anti-cheat software, and it sounds like Ubisoft won't be messing around: It warned that players will be permanently banned on the first offense if they're caught using cheats. Barring any further delays (and these things are always possible), Skull and Bones will be out on November 8. View the full article

Minecraft Legends creative director Magnus Nedfors and executive producer Dennis Ries sat down during the Xbox booth livestream at Gamescom this week to deliver a couple new details about Legends, including info on some new mobs—both friend and foe. As with its past genre experimentations, Mojang and Blackbird Interactive's upcoming RTS spinoff is going to make its own mark on the Minecraft world. Dungeons stepped out of the bounds of existing Minecraft lore to create mobs needed to suit its action RPG world and Legends is doing the same. As we learned in its initial reveal trailer, the big baddies of Minecraft Legends are the familiar Nether denizens, the Piglins. While we're familiar with Piglins and Hoglins in Vanilla Minecraft, Legends is adding what Nedfors calls a "Pigmadillo," which crouches down into a cube and, despite what you'd assume based on the physics of a cube, offensively rolls towards what it's attacking. There are also "Bruisers" which Ries points out have two giant razor blades to wield. Bit horror-esque, innit? Both new mobs make an appearance in the new cinematic trailer that Mojang showed off. Over on the friendly side, two types of golem will join your army: the Cobblestone Golem, who is apparently great for taking down enemy structures, and what it sounds like Ries calls a "Plank Golem" which is a ranged unit. They also mention something called speed wheat and a special type of mushroom for jumping extra high that you can use to get across the world and unlock new areas in Legends. Minecraft Dungeons, for its part, also added new mobs like the Iceologers and Mountaineers. The Iceologers wound up being included in the Minecraft Live 2020 fan vote for which mob to add to Vanilla Minecraft. They lost to the Glow Squid, but I wouldn't be surprised to see one of these new Legends baddies given the same chance at Vanilla Minecraft fame. And in case you missed it, there is definitely a badger at the beginning of the trailer too. Project Badger was the codename for Minecraft Legends before it was revealed, which may be all that's a nod to. But hey, maybe it will make its way to official mob status too. (Image credit: Mojang) View the full article

The demo for upcoming boomer shooter They Came From Dimension X is a blast from start to finish. Less than a minute in, I hooted so loud I startled my girlfriend from across the apartment when I stepped into the first room and started walking straight up a wall. The experience felt like it needed to be accompanied by that dude from the old Sega Saturn ads talking about the new millennium. First spotted by Alpha Beta Gamer, Dimension X immediately resembles Quake or Dusk with its chunky, lo-fi presentation. It sets itself apart aesthetically with a 1950s Forbidden Planet raygun look and eerie soundtrack. Dimension X's official page explains its central mechanic well: "gravity is only as consistent as the ground your boots are stepping on." You can't jump and magnetize to a wall, but any contiguous path can be followed in contravention of the rules of gravity, with sloped surfaces letting you seamlessly transition from the floor to the ceiling and back again. A highlight set piece for me was a fight in a drum-shaped room against a gaggle of Dimension X's aggressive melee monsters, a Great Race of Yith-style flower-serpent-abomination. I was constantly backpedaling, blasting the guys with the dark laundry machine room tumbling around us illuminated by the projectiles of the game's ray gun. The mechanical and aesthetic innovation immediately make Dimension X feel fresh and surprising, despite having retro inspirations and coming in the midst of a renaissance of classic shooters. It promises to turn the one-off level design experiments of other shooters like Dusk's fantastic Escher Labs level into a full game. The wall-walking antics feel like a revelation to me, similar to how Valve's Portal and Gravity Guns took first person shooting in such unexpected directions. I'm excited to see how nutty developer Blue Key Games gets with its level design in the full release. There are some kinks I hope get ironed out by that time. The lighting in the demo's a bit dark at times, making it hard to parse the action. At the same time, it paid off big for me as a stylistic choice when I encountered a pitch black room absolutely full of those cthuloid enemies, patiently staring at me out of the dark with their beady red eyes. It was a striking scene for sure, and some of the later levels featured in the trailer look more vibrant, giving me hope that Blue Key will strike a good balance. The enemies in this demo were a bit bullet spongey for my taste, but additional weapon variety in the later game could certainly refocus the balance. I do appreciate that Dimension X has a more methodical pace than other retro shooters, enhancing its horror vibe. Unfortunately, the game's framerate was quite rough on an i5 12600K and RTX 3070 at 1440p, and I'm hopeful further development time can iron that out. They Came From Dimension X has shot to near the top of my personal "most anticipated games" list, and I only hope that we get to see and sample a bit more of it before its faraway release date. 2024 just feels like such a long way off. For now, you can check out its demo for yourself and wishlist it on Steam. View the full article

Every game of Total War: Warhammer 3's new Immortal Empires mode ends, by default, with some disastrous event befalling the Warhammer world. It spices up the normally staid late game of a Total War campaign. You know: A mass rising of the undead, a vast horde of orcs, the dwarfs getting tired of everyone else's 'frack'. Update 2.1, which is currently scheduled to arrive on September 6, will add a new feature to the scenario: "Ultimate Crisis Mode," which fires off every single end-game scenario at once if you select all five apocalypses. Creative Assembly helpfully notes that "this may have unexpected results" in modded games, especially those that add even more end-game scenarios. The Ultimate Crisis mode will only get more wild as time goes on, I expect, because Creative Assembly will likely add more apocalypse scenarios over time. Fans have already datamined the skeleton of a "Chaos Elector Count" scenario for a civil war within the human Empire, and the truly infamous Warhammer Fantasy apocalypses like The End Times and the Vermintide aren't even in Warhammer 3 yet. (Come on, there's a whole series about that second one.) The announcement of the Ultimate Crisis mode is teased in the end game scenarios trailer, above and on YouTube, as well as buried deep in the Update 2.0 notes... under the Update 2.1 heading. There are a few other tweaks coming in 2.1 as well, like starting condition tweaks, revamped Tzeentch Doom Knights, and other bugfixes. Total War: Warhammer 3 – Immortal Empires is a sprawling, massive game mode combining the sum total of the Total War: Warhammer series into one big map. Fraser Brown said that "even in beta, it's a strong contender for the greatest Total War campaign." You can read more in his piece about this messy masterpiece. In related messy masterpiece news, our Sean Martin completely broke Immortal Empires with a Dark Elf Black Ark super fleet, sacking cities for nearly half a million gold. View the full article

It would be reasonable to think that Microsoft's pursuit of Activision Blizzard was driven to a significant degree by Call of Duty. It's one of the biggest game series on the planet, after all, a perennial money-maker that just can't seem to lose, even after over a decade of yearly releases. But in an interview with Bloomberg, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said what really drove Microsoft's interest was mobile games and, to a lesser extent, PC. "The biggest gaming platform on the planet is mobile phones. One and a half billion people play on mobile phones," Spencer said. "And I guess, regretfully as Microsoft, it's not a place where we have a native platform. As gaming, coming from console and PC, we don't have a lot of creative capability that has built hit mobile games. "One thing about the videogame space is, if you've been around maybe too long, you know most of the creators out there. So you kind of know teams that could be a good fit in terms of what we were trying to do. But we really started the discussions, internally at least, on Activision Blizzard around the capability they had on mobile, and then PC with Blizzard. Those are the two things that were really driving our interest." It's an especially interesting point because Call of Duty is popularly seen as a major potential obstacle to regulatory approval of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Microsoft was recently forced to respond to allegations from Sony that Call of Duty games are so "essential" that they can influence console purchasing decisions. In light of that, it's understandable that Microsoft might want to minimize the role that Call of Duty played in driving the deal. Mobile genuinely is where the money is at, though. Activision Blizzard revealed in its Q2 2022 financial report that more than half of the total revenues it earned in the quarter came from mobile games—$831 million in all. That's more than PC and console revenues combined, and a dramatic leap from the same quarter in the previous year, when mobile revenues accounted for 35% of the total. And while both PC and console revenues were down on the quarter, mobile revenues managed a small amount of growth. Interestingly, the vast majority of those mobile revenues come from the silent "K" in Activision Blizzard: King, the mobile developer Activision acquired in 2016, which reported total quarterly revenues of $684 million—more than 82% of the total. But the move to mobile is spreading. Diablo Immortal is a hit despite furious backlash from mainstream gamers, Call of Duty Mobile is maintaining a steady audience, and work is continuing on mobile version of Call of Duty: Warzone and Warcraft: Arclight Rumble. Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard cleared its first regulatory hurdle earlier this week when Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Competition (GAC) gave the deal an official green light. The deal is still being investigated by more significant regulatory bodies, however, including the US Federal Trade Commission and the UK's Competition and Markets Authority. The general consensus is that the deal will ultimately be approved, but some US politicians have been critical of the role played by Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who remains under fire for his handling of allegations of widespread misconduct at the studio, and how he will benefit from a "golden parachute" under the terms of the deal. What role Kotick will play at Activision Blizzard if the acquisition is completed, if any, remains an open question for now: Spencer declined to comment on whether Kotick will remain, saying that until the deal closes he's "not really in a position to say" how the company is managed. View the full article

The Microsoft Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary Edition patch now has an official release date: It'll be free to everyone on November 11. The update will bring 12 new aircraft, 20 missions from the game's past, 4 big commercial airports, 10 glider airports, and 14 heliports. Most notably for sim fans, it'll introduce helicopters and gliders, the two things people want the most from Microsoft Flight Simulator and that've been absent since the latest version's 2020 launch. It'll also have a proper full-size airliner, per community demand: The Airbus A-310, where they say "nearly every single button works just as expected." My excitement, however, is reserved for the historical planes: Specifically, Flight Simulator is getting the Hughes H-4 Hercules, the largest wooden plane and largest seaplane ever built, known colloquially as the Spruce Goose. The real life version only flew once. Flight Simulator versions are going to fly a lot more than that. This giant update will also include the famous Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, the Douglas DC-3, and more—seven historicals in all. It's part of the same series of updates surrounding Flight Simulator's 40th birthday (yep, the first one came out in 1982) that added the famous Halo Pelican dropship to the normally ultra-real simulator. The 40th Anniversary year has also included a series of Local Legends aircraft. The latest of those, the 1919 All-Metal Junkers F 13, hits today alongside the first-ever cities update bringing photogrammetry-modeled detail to the German cities of Hanover, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Bonn, and Cologne. We'll keep up with Xbox in case any more airplane news comes out of Gamescom, but for now, please enjoy a few more of Flight Simulator's spectacular trailers. View the full article

If ever a game was sold on an inspired trailer, Dead Island was that game. Originally announced at E3 2006 by developer Techland, then best-known for its work on the Call of Juarez series, Dead Island suffered considerable delays before eventually breaking cover with a CG trailer that grabbed everyone's attention. Showing a family's grisly fate in reverse order, with an understated piano backing as time speeds up, slows and freezes, the quality of its cinematography was unusual then and now. The game, of course, was nothing like this trailer. But this is what sold Dead Island to people. Fair warning: The animation is graphic, and caused controversy at the time for its inclusion of the family's young child. Dead Island was a commercial success for Techland and publisher Deep Silver, selling over five million copies, and naturally enough the publisher wanted more of the same. The core team at Techland who'd made Dead Island, however, didn't consider Deep Silver's plans to be ambitious enough. Deep Silver, for its part, thought the studio was being too ambitious. Instead of making Dead Island 2 with Deep Silver, most of Techland's Dead Island team would move onto another project, which would eventually become Dying Light, while the studio put another team on the standalone expansion-cum-sequel Dead Island: Riptide. This was released two years after the original game to mixed reviews, and marked the end of Techland's involvement with the series. "Well, you know, we had our ups and downs," Techland game designer Maciej Binkowski told Eurogamer in 2014. "There's always tension between the publisher and developer. For us it turned out well, because being forced to come up with a new IP... We can't just make a Dead Island 2 and change the name; it's got to be something fresh, it's got to be something unique. It was a bit tough. I would love to make a direct sequel, but at some point a decision was made." In 2014, Deep Silver had announced that Dead Island 2 was in development at German studio Yager, best-known for Spec Ops: The Line. It tried to once again make a big splash at E3 2014 with a trailer that, while it doesn't and couldn't quite live up to the original, is excellent in its own right and established a new and slightly more comic tone for the series (one that arguably suits the moment-to-moment gameplay better). False start "Having a project cancelled in such a late state is a catastrophic event on so many different levels." Timo Ullmann, MD of Yager It didn't last long. In July 2015, Deep Silver and Yager announced they were parting ways. "The team worked with enthusiasm to take Dead Island 2 to a new level of quality," wrote Timo Ullmann at the time, MD of Yager Group. "However, Yager and Deep Silver's respective visions of the project fell out of alignment, which led to the decision that has been made." Yager had, however, been working on Dead Island 2 for three years by this point and, while not complete, the game was close to being finished. Exactly how close we'll come to, but a few months after the cancellation was announced, Ullmann was more forthcoming about the effect Dead Island 2 had on Yager. "Having a project cancelled in such a late state is a catastrophic event on so many different levels," Ullmann told GamesIndustry.biz. "It really is the worst possible outcome. Everybody involved loses." Dead Island 2's cancellation led to the closure of Yager Productions, a division of the company created specifically to work on the game. Over half of those involved with the game lost their jobs, with others leaving Yager, bitter that the project they'd worked on would never see the light of day. "I really don't blame them, and we wish them all the best," said Ullmann. "It's tough, and not being given the chance to finish Dead Island 2, that... that hurts, you know? Right after the announcement a part of the team was a bit shell-shocked, of course, but you have to motivate yourself to keep going. Cancellation of projects, especially if the stakes are so high, is not unheard of. It hurt us, yes, but it happens." That wasn't the end for Yager's version of Dead Island 2, however. Five years after its cancellation, a playable build dating from just one month prior somehow leaked into the wild, and everyone could finally see that, yup, it sure seemed like a Dead Island game. "A THQ financial report in 2019 finally blew the lid: Sumo Digital was no longer on the project." This was clearly a game that could have been brought to market, but wasn't. At the time, Dead Island was the biggest-selling brand in Deep Silver's history, with multiple spinoffs in development as well as the sequel, and there must have been a feeling at the publisher that this game might mess things up. Given that it seems Yager was expecting, or perhaps hoping against hope, to ship the game, I'd wager that this version of Dead Island 2 wasn't bad but just risked being another Riptide, and Deep Silver didn't want to kill the golden goose. In March 2016, it was announced that British developer Sumo Digital would be taking over development of the title. "It's an honour to be charged with the evolution of such an important franchise in Deep Silver’s catalogue," said Sumo COO Paul Porter. "We're looking forward to exceeding fan expectation with an ambitious design that we're confident will take bone-crunching, visceral, zombie action to a whole new level." Sumo Digital's version of Dead Island 2 was apparently something of a zombie project itself, with the British studio charged with taking the foundations of Yager's work and building on it to Deep Silver's expectations. But that's just scuttlebutt, because there's surprisingly little public information about what went on with Dead Island 2 over its three years with Sumo. Things went quiet for around a year, until rumours of development troubles led to Deep Silver issuing a holding statement about development being ongoing, a process that was repeated in 2018 when a Dead Island mobile spinoff was released and prompted more questions about the sequel. A THQ financial report in 2019 finally blew the lid: Sumo Digital was no longer on the project. Deep Silver was being, perhaps understandably, non-committal about exactly what had been going on, and whether we'd see the game in one year or five. Probably because, and I'm just guessing here, it didn't quite know either. Image 1 of 6 (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 2 of 6 (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 3 of 6 (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 4 of 6 (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 5 of 6 (Image credit: Deep Silver)Image 6 of 6 (Image credit: Deep Silver) Last call At this point, Dead Island 2 development was given to the internal Dambusters studio. Dambuster is appropriately named in this case, but its history may surprise some: This is what ultimately became of Free Radical Design, the Nottingham-based studio set up by GoldenEye veterans, who went on to create the Timesplitters series. Free Radical eventually went into administration, thanks largely to LucasArts cancelling Star Wars Battlefront 3, and was bought by Crytek, becoming Crytek UK. This would, in a time of financial straits for Crytek, be acquired by Deep Silver in 2014, dissolved and re-formed as Dambusters. Its first and only shipped game so far is 2016's Homefront: The Revolution. This was a fairly competent but uninspired open-world shooter, which received a lot of bad press for widespread technical issues at launch. It wasn't the disaster some claimed, but it was far from great. After announcing its third developer in five years, Deep Silver went quiet on Dead Island 2's development and when it could expect to be seen. The whispers of vaporware had long circled around the project, arguably unfairly, when this was more of a 'ready when it's ready' deal. Then, finally, it was time for another trailer to once more try and crank the anticipation up: You be the judge. It seems slightly incredible that now… it may really happen. Dead Island 2 finally has a release date it might make. Whether it will remains to be seen. Dambusters was apparently given the project in 2018, and game director David Stenton told PC Gamer this Dead Island 2 has been "built from scratch". While this is unsurprising, it's also unclear whether Stenton's talking in a purely technical sense or if some old ideas remain. But the biggest question of all is, after this long and protracted of a development process, how on Earth can this game deliver? It feels a little like Dambusters, and Deep Silver, face expectations that will be impossible to match. Perhaps this really will be something special, something that was ultimately worth all the false starts and changes and cancellations along the way. Or perhaps, after all that, this will just be a shambles, an animated corpse of a game patched-together from multiple dead ones. Perhaps Deep Silver is finally just cutting its losses, and relying on a great trailer to do the business once more. Soon enough, we'll know. Catch up with our full list of Gamescom announcements from Opening Night Live and check our Gamescom schedule to find out when to watch everything else. View the full article

One of the Week 12 Fortnite challenges tasks you with taming wildlife during a single match in Fortnite. Taming animals has been around in the battle royale for a while now—since Season 6 back in 2021, in fact—though we've only recently been able to ride those tamed animals too. Riding a wolf or a boar into battle might not be the most conventional way of getting around, but it's certainly helpful for the taming challenge. So if you're ready to find out more, here's how to tame three wildlife during a single match of Fortnite for the Week 12 challenge. Fortnite: How to tame three wildlife during a single match Taming wildlife is pretty simple in Fortnite. Aggressive animals like boars or wolves might try to attack you, but if you can catch them unaware, you just need to get close enough to interact with them and jump on their back. If you're having trouble, try throwing down some food to distract them first—boars like vegetables and wolves like meat. You'll want to make sure you drop in somewhere where plenty of wildlife is roaming around. No matter how good your taming skills are, they won't do a lot of good if you have to waste half the match searching for a target—or three. This might seem obvious, but don't head to a built-up area. You're less likely to see a boar or wolf walking down a road than hanging out under trees. It's always worth trying your luck at an animal pen, such as the enclosure at the building east of Shifty Shafts. You can check the Fortnite Interactive map to plan your route—just be aware that other players might have the same idea. Once your first animal is tamed, you can use the additional speed to gallop (trot?) to your next taming target. Once you've grabbed three, you'll complete the weekly challenge. Good job! View the full article

The latest addition to the Dark Pictures anthology is officially The Devil In Me, confirming the name leaked last year. This serial killer focused entry is set to be more expansive, according to an interview with VG247, with game director Tom Heaton wanting to frighten players by giving them more agency—and more puzzles. "We’re expanding the exploration, adding this inventory, adding puzzles, and increasing the game length, but it’s still very much a Dark Pictures game," Heaton says. "We’re not breaking the formula, it’s still going to feature intense choices, consequences, and gruesome deaths." The Devil In Me will follow the story of a documentary crew invited to a replica of historical serial killer H.H. Holmes' "Murder Castle", only to find themselves chillingly surveyed, trapped, and tested by a wannabe copycat. Supermassive is known for their cinematic, narrative driven horror—and having to navigate a deft QTE to escape the brutal death of one part of your entourage. The addition of puzzles absolutely scans for a sinister hotel drawing inspiration from the Saw franchise, but it will make an interesting change of pace. You can read the full interview with Heaton at VG247. The Devil In Me is expected to come out on Steam on November 18th, where it will cost £35/$40. View the full article

Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy doesn’t waste any time when you press start. Smash through a simple tutorial and within a few minutes you’re an amateur general, frantically issuing commands to your motley crew of D&D archetypes. Combat plays out as a dance, lunging forward to deliver crushing blows and recoiling back to pass out combat buffs to your squad. Unfortunately, that dance can lose a lot of its momentum when knock-off Edward Elric protagonist Huxley flips his shounen switch on and takes you back to 2005. When I muted the music, ignored the story, and threw up an episode of The Rehearsal on the other monitor, I found Absolute Tactics' groove: it's a comfort game, ideal for when you want to move units across a chessboard battlefield and knock down some knight-shaped pins. There’s a cozy battle-flow that makes Absolute Tactics difficult to put down. You don’t face a crisis building up over several turns here⁠—there are no stressful XCOM 2-esque turn limits or the constant threat of enemy reinforcements. Stygian goons diligently march at you in formations that are basically puzzles to be solved, and knocking down a squad of enemies evokes the same feeling as clearing four rows in Tetris with the perfect I-block placement. Your mages and wizards dole out powerful attack and defense buffs, numbers which can be pushed ever-higher through skills like "pet the dog" (the most mechanically busted ability I’ve found so far). The chessboard levels funnel enemies towards your party in tight, aggressive formations, exposing a particular vulnerability and begging you to exploit it. There’s a nice tabletop skirmish game energy behind Absolute Tactics, bringing some commonsense design principles to combat⁠—like how every unit in the game, friend or foe, can be attacked from behind for nearly double damage. So, yeah, the direction you face when you end a turn is extremely important, which I learned early on when my squad was pin-cushioned by crossbow wielding-goons that punished my exposed flank while I greedily snatched some tempting chests. This is my weakness in this sort of game: an obsessive need to have the best gear, the ultimate loadout, the perfect party⁠. Absolute Tactics caters to my cravings by expanding your party and toolkit through mid-mission progression—you’ll often rescue a new party member or have one join you every other mission, unlocking a slew of new combat options and teasing you with potentially devastating gear combinations. The flow of currency from enemy bodies to your wallet is steady enough to give you free run of the item shop between missions, so you’re encouraged to play around with different loadouts. Image 1 of 6 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 2 of 6 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 3 of 6 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 4 of 6 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 5 of 6 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 6 of 6 (Image credit: Curious Fate) Progression is largely linear. You’ll rarely be making in-depth decisions as your primary focus is pushing attack, defense, and magic attributes ever higher. That feeling of chasing the perfect party is the game’s biggest draw for me, and progression is quick enough to ensure you’re getting a constant stream of upgrades and skills to test out on the bevy of side content⁠, but it’s a tall ask that you stay immersed in Absolute Tactics long enough to see all of it. Absolute Tactics’s high-medieval setting doesn’t take itself seriously, but it expects your attention nonetheless. The dialogue is a cocktail of Whedonisms and soulless quipping from characters who act like they want you to click "play now" on one of those old Evony ads that once blanketed webpages. We’re talking real bottom of the barrel stuff here: calling out a murderous, blood-drunk berserker for being a "chump" and having the disembodied voice of the captive princess in your head call him "cringe" when your dog tears his throat out. The main quest has me defending my home from an invading army, but the narrative never feels rooted in place, like the Triangle Kingdoms and Great Houses of contemporaries Triangle Strategy and Fire Emblem. What little plot Absolute Tactics has to offer doesn't much worry about motivations—some baddies named the Daughters of Mercy are killing people to use their blood in magic rituals, and that's that. (Image credit: Curious Fate) Backgrounds are sharp and colorful, evoking a high production tabletop style, but experienced DMs and wargamers know that you have to sprinkle a little grimdark tragedy into your story of a brutal occupying army⁠. You know, strewn about bodies, refugee camps, signs of plague and pestilence, that sort of thing⁠, all completely absent here. The result is a narrative that feels light, fluffy, and devoid of substance, and Absolute Tactics's quips aren't good enough to get away with that. Combined with the repetitive stock music (there’s one battle theme that you’ll hear for the majority of the first major act), stiff animations, and an early 2010s browser game feel, it was an uphill battle to pull my attention away from the excellent second season of Better Call Saul. Mechanically, Absolute Tactics delivers. Narratively, it’s got the same energy as the Borderlands 2 "Assault on Dragon Keep" DLC (before they found their groove with the fantasy setting). The game's at its best when it’s not your sole focus, when you want to sling spells and chop heads while powering through a more engaging TV show. It does not leave me pining for its world, yearning for its characters, or pondering the mysteries and intrigue of its main quest, and I really would have preferred if it didn’t aim to do any of that in the first place. View the full article

Throughout this Two Point Campus tour series, we've covered the core aspects of campus life. In our first video we introduced prospective students to the variety of classes they can take, and in our second we talked about the many ways to keep students happy throughout the academic year. But there's a whole lot of stuff in between that hasn't been revealed yet; how to shore up students' skills between classes to make sure they get the best grades, how to make the most of your staff, and how to expand your campus as your reputation grows and the students begin flocking to your college in droves. So here's the best of the rest of the things you need to know about Two Point Campus. A student's education doesn't end in the classroom. To maximise those grades, students will need to attend lectures on their chosen topic, as well as get private tuition. Tuition is a specialised skill, so if you find a teacher skilled in it, consider assigning them to work exclusively one-on-one with students. It really will pay off. (Image credit: SEGA) Then there's the library—a veritable world of knowledge at students' fingertips. The bigger the better here, as things can get pretty rammed pretty quickly. Buy bookshelves dedicated to specialist topics, create different types of cubicles for students to work in, and make sure you have a skilled librarian in there around the clock. Not every student cares as much for the body as the mind, but those that do will appreciate an on-site gym. Here students can shoot some hoops, practice vaults, and pump some iron, aluminium, or whatever other metal is associated with the gym these days. Students of 'Academic Exercise' in particular will thrive here. If the strain of campus life gets a bit much for students, send them over to pastoral care. Here a counsellor will sit them down in front of the fire with a cup of tea and let them talk through their worries—whether it's a gastronomy student overcome with Seasonal Issues or a Clown with a sad case of Comic Mistiming. And let's not forget that staff are people too (only smarter and wiser). Build a staff room with tea and food tables for them to unwind in. Chuck some sofas, a dart board, arcade cabinet, and old-fashioned TV in there and they'll return from their breaks ready to deliver some serious education! (Image credit: SEGA) If you're lucky enough to be working with a staff surplus, send off-duty staff to the Training Room. Make teachers smarter, assistants funnier, and janitors better-skilled with their Super Soakers for getting rid of intruders. Over in the Research Lab, meanwhile, teachers can uncover upgrades to existing equipment, and new items and furnishings that will improve both classrooms and the wider campus. You may not think you need a Dragon Tower or Green Screen, but the campus is a complex place with complex demands. As your campus grows, you'll need the funds and flexibility to accommodate a bigger influx of students. Buy out new plots of land surrounding the main building. If that old lecture theatre suddenly feels a little cosy, then expand it, pick it up and plonk it down in another building. Students may be surprised when suddenly a lecture theatre disappears out from under their feet and they have to go looking for it, but they're young, they'll adapt. If you've built the perfect dorm or toilet that strikes the perfect prestige-price balance, save it as a template, then copy-paste it around your campus (making adjustments where needed). It'll save you a ton of time in the long run. Your college is an ever-evolving, ever-growing space, and you'll need to exercise a little creativity to keep things flowing smoothly in Two Point Campus. View the full article

Absolute Tactics, or as it would've been called in '90s California, Hella Tactics, is an indie project that longtime Gearbox Software developer Jason Shields has been working on for the last five years. It's finally almost finished, and landing on Steam and the Nintendo Switch on September 15—right in the middle of the biggest year for the strategy RPG genre in decades. Tactics Ogre, the grandfather of the genre, is making its way to PC later this year, but Shields took a bit of a different tact with his design for Absolute Tactics. "I think a natural trend in games, and SRPGs are no exception, is to become more and more complicated over time," he says. "Even though there’s plenty of gear and min-max opportunities for those who are inclined, I wanted Absolute Tactics to have a little bit more streamlined approach in those areas." For example: Your characters in Absolute Tactics aren't locked into a particular class, and swapping classes doesn't mean starting from zero. You just swap a piece of gear called a Class Handbook to switch classes, or equip two to dual-class. Upgrade the handbook, and the class grows stronger. "This was a simple way for me to help make choosing classes be a bit more fluid and let players try lots of different combinations, rather than feel locked in to certain playstyles for the whole game," Shields says. Dual-classing is probably Absolute Tactics' standout feature, and it makes sense for the smaller squads you'll be deploying compared to the dozen-odd units you micromanage in many strategy RPGs. "I think dual-classing is generally the way to go in order to get a wide array of skills for each character, to make them super useful in as many situations as possible," says Shields. "For example, a defensive class like Saboteur who places traps, or the Guardian class who places barricades, can benefit a lot from pairing those with a class like Necromancer or Fire Mage, who can launch some ranged skills from behind their defensive lines." Image 1 of 6 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 2 of 6 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 3 of 6 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 4 of 6 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 5 of 6 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 6 of 6 (Image credit: Curious Fate) Some of today's indie tactics games are all-in on recreating Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem, right down to their UI or pixel art style. Absolute Tactics is more of a blend, based on some particular favorites from what Shields calls his favorite videogame genre. "The isometric, grid-based classics are where I really drew my inspiration from," he says. "Shining Force had the coolest characters to me, so I knew for sure I wanted actual characters with unique personalities, as opposed to the more 'paper doll' approach of some games. Vandal Hearts had this awesome story and utter brutality of the enemies that has really stuck with me over the years. And Final Fantasy Tactics had amazing levels and scenarios, and fantastic player choice while building your units' playstyles. So those were all things that I thought about while making Absolute Tactics." Absolute Tactics has a demo you can play on Steam now, ahead of its launch on PC and Switch in three weeks. Image 1 of 7 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 2 of 7 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 3 of 7 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 4 of 7 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 5 of 7 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 6 of 7 (Image credit: Curious Fate)Image 7 of 7 (Image credit: Curious Fate) View the full article

When a developer starts saying stuff like "we hear your feedback," it's hard not to imagine that a clock has started ticking. Any online game is in danger of Antheming out of existence these days, or at least being deprioritized if it underperforms. So far, though, DICE hasn't wavered commitment to making Battlefield 2042 popular. It hasn't quite succeeded, but the game's average Steam concurrent player count did increase after the delayed Season 1 update dropped in early June. Now the shooter's second season is about to start: A new map, specialist, guns, and vehicles are coming next week, on Tuesday, August 30. Later in Season 2, DICE will also patch in revisions to the Renewal and Orbital launch maps based on player feedback: Renewal in September and Orbital in October. Another launch map, Kaleidoscope, has already been reworked, and in a recent blog post, DICE also said that it plans to reintroduce "classic and familiar classes" to Battlefield 2042 by putting gadget restrictions on specialists. There's no ETA on that change (Season 3, maybe), but it's a significant, if not total, concession to players who've shunned 2042's freeform loadout system and focus on specialist abilities. The new map coming in Season 2 isn't quite as interesting as the snowy peaks from the first season's map; it's another stranded container ship in a former body of water. I did see a lot of calls from players for tighter quarters, though. One of the new vehicles, the EBLC-RAM, can place spawn beacons, and the other is a lightweight buggy that could be fun. The update will also add concussion grenades and three new guns, the most interesting of which is the PF41, a full-auto pistol that uses a P90 magazine. The new specialist is named Crawford: He can drop a mountable stationary minigun, and when he revives players, their gadget ammo is resupplied, which should help with maintaining anti-air pressure. Nothing too wild there; I tried the mounted gun in a preview build of the update, and locking down doorways was entertaining. The first battle pass is also coming in Season 2, though DICE has reiterated that anything that affects gameplay, such as the new weapons and vehicles, will be unlockable without the premium tier. Season 2 will also introduce an assignments system that will let players unlock guns and vehicles from previous seasons, as well as guns from the old Battlefield games featured in the Portal mode, starting with the M60E4 and M16A3. Portal guns in regular 2042 Conquest is another thing I saw players requesting after launch. Portal itself is getting some updates, too, including customizable Conquest rules. The fact sheet DICE provided mentions "user-editable objectives," which I'm excited to check out. Sometime after the start of Season 2, DICE will add "extra-small playspaces" and new guns to Portal, too. Image 1 of 6 (Image credit: EA)Image 2 of 6 (Image credit: EA)Image 3 of 6 (Image credit: EA)Image 4 of 6 (Image credit: EA)Image 5 of 6 (Image credit: EA)Image 6 of 6 (Image credit: EA) My opinion on Battlefield 2042 hasn't changed a lot since it launched last November: It's a dated-feeling game, but as a dated gamer, I enjoyed its unserious, inefficient, and buggy battles for a few weeks. Someone recently asked me why I didn't keep playing it if I enjoyed it so much, and my excuse was that I broke my wrist, but if I'm being real, I did play a bit of Rocket League while healing. So, fair point. Battlefield 2042 might've lacked the so-called stickiness developers always hope their multiplayer games will have. For $60 or more, people want endlessly repeatable fun, especially when there are free-to-play games that offer that (like, say, Rocket League, if I had to pick an example that I've put over 1,000 hours into). It seems like DICE is working hard to find that glue, though. I recently saw a rumor going around that the studio had given up on Battlefield 2042, but I haven't seen any evidence to support that idea. DICE said in June that it is "only focusing" on Battlefield 2042, and the developer has communicated about everything it's done—the map reworks, balance changes, big fixes, scoreboard redesign—in more detail than I think most people really care to read. The evidence of DICE's efforts is in all the blog posts and patch notes I've been swimming in for the better part of a year. EA has plans for the Battlefield name that are a lot bigger than 2042—Respawn head Vince Zampella is in charge of the series now, and at least one singleplayer game is coming—so maybe EA and DICE want a comeback story here bad enough to make it happen. It wouldn't be the first time public opinion about a Battlefield game changed. Battlefield 2042 Season 2 starts on August 30. All the stuff I've talked about here is free for owners of the game—the map, new weapons, new vehicles, new specialist—but there will be premium cosmetic stuff. DICE will be talking more about that next week. View the full article

It's been a while since we last heard from Atomic Heart, the alternate reality FPS-RPG set in a retrofuturistic USSR, but developer Mundfish has seen fit to give us a surprise in time for Gamescom. It comes in the form of an announcement that the game will release later this year, and a new trailer showcasing the game's gunplay, powers, enemies, and… halo-braided robot women cutting each other open with unicorn horns. Sure! It's one of the most in-depth looks we've gotten at the game's combat so far, and it'll look incredibly familiar to anyone who's ever laid hands on a BioShock game. From the trailer, it looks like you'll be wielding powers in your left hand and a weapon (ranged or melee) in your right, unless you're toting something like a Kalashnikov that requires both hands. Combat seems to be a bit faster-paced than it was back in Rapture, though: the trailer shows the protagonist using their powers to manage throngs of fast-moving enemies and dodging out of the way of charging behemoths. Hopefully it all fits together into a combat system that's weighty and satisfying; it's difficult to get a proper gauge on it from the trailer alone. Either way, though, I've been willing to tolerate a lacklustre combat system if the vibes are good enough ever since the first Deus Ex, and vibes seem to be something Atomic Heart has in dizzying abundance. I'm looking forward to this one. Everything we've seen of Atomic Heart so far has been redolent of BioShock, Stalker, and Prey (2017). That's a potent admixture all by itself, but when you drench it all in Soviet kitsch and give it an Alla Pugacheva soundtrack, you're basically sitting down and making a game just for me. We've been keeping a close eye on Atomic Heart ever since it came out of nowhere with a scintillating trailer back in 2018, but it's remained a beautiful mystery ever since. Even now, with a surfeit of trailers and a vague release date, I can't really tell you exactly what it is this game is going to be. Whatever it is, though, I'm into it more than almost anything else I've seen this year. View the full article

Surprisingly innovative. That's how I'll sum up the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL. I've never been one to look for much in a gaming desk—I ask only for a flat plane on which to sit my monitors, keyboard, and mouse—yet the Magnus Pro XL has so thoroughly impressed me that I'm starting to reconsider my whole opinion of what a desk should be. The sit/stand functionality on the Magnus Pro XL is quite simply one of the best out there. I'm now firmly in the camp that a desk should be absolutely massive. The Magnus Pro XL is the largest desk I've ever used personally, having only recently found the space for such a behemoth, coming in at 177cm x 67cm. This is also the heaviest desk I've ever had to move solo by far, at 32.9kg for the desk alone. The mostly metal frame of the Magnus Pro XL, explains some of that, though it's the two included motors, one integrated into each of the legs, which add a whole lot of mass to the equation. I don't have an exact weight for the completely assembled desk with accessories, but the two boxes the Magnus Pro XL comes in (which includes the Magpad Desk Mat but no other accessories) weigh ~77.8kg (171.5lb) combined. But that's what makes this the Magnus Pro XL: the desk's adjustable sit/stand functionality. The standard Magnus doesn't offer this. The Magnus Pro XL is capable of lifting 120kg in gross weight (87.1kg if you subtract the weight of the metal desk itself) up to a height of 125cm. It sits only 65cm off the ground at its lowest. Magnus Pro XL specs (Image credit: Future)Desk dimensions: 177cm x 67cm x 2cm Adjustable height range: 65–125cm Weight: ~77.8kg Warranty: 5 years Accessories (included): Magpad Desk Mat Accessories (not included): Cable Management Bundle ($49), PC Mount ($89), Dual Monitor Arm ($249), MagRGB Lighting Kit ($89), Headphone Hanger ($29) Price: $949 | £829 To control the Magnus there's a control panel integrated into the front right of the desk. It's pretty easy to get to grips with. You can pre-program three heights to one of three hotkeys on the desk for quick adjustments or you can manually tap the up and down arrows for a little more granular control. The best bit, however, is the on/off switch, which simply prevents any accidental bum bumps or hand taps from moving the desk at all. The sit/stand functionality on the Magnus Pro XL is quite simply one of the best out there. The motors are whisper quiet and they move with a liquid action. The fact they gradually come to a halt means you don't have to worry about what's on the desk jolting to a stop as you adjust it, even a cup of coffee or glass of water. Another thing I've come to re-evaluate since the Magnus XL is how a desk should handle cable management. The foremost impressive thing about the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL is how sharp and clean-cut it makes your PC setup look. That's not through a lack of cables on my part, of which I have arguably too many, but for the Magnus Pro XL's clever magnetic cable management accessories and discrete cable tray. These hide my gluttony of USB, audio, and power cables out of sight. (Image credit: Future) My favourite of which is the compact cable tidy: a small block of metal with a couple of strong magnets within that securely fixes my cables in place. This has proven especially useful for my stack of audio devices, including DAC, amp, and microphone interface. Whereas the front-facing ports on these would usually spill the cables out towards my keyboard, I have neatly redirected these off to the side using only a single, magnetic cable tidy. Sticky miceOne unforeseen issue I ran into during my initial setup with this desk is that my mouse, the Logitech G Pro Wireless Superlight, was sticking to it. The Superlight has magnets in the base that are intended for use with Logitech's Powerplay charging system, and these magnets have some very slight sticking power to the Magnus Pro XL's metal surface. That causes a noticeable drag while you're skirting the desk's surface. My solution, however, was to remove the small plastic token from the underside of the Superlight, therefore keeping the magnets far enough away to avoid any sticky behaviour. Though it must be noted that these magnetic cable ties are not included within the cost of the desk itself, and instead can be purchased for $25 for a set of three or for $49 as a set of three alongside two cable management sheaths and a stack of fastening straps. If, like me, you have plenty of velcro cable ties already, I'd recommend just picking up the three cable tidies on their own; the sheaths are decent, though may not be as handy depending on how you set up the desk with your PC. This is the thing: the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL requires some added expense to make it as sleek an experience as it should be. If you're tucking your PC under the desk you might want to consider extra lengthy DisplayPort, HDMI, or USB cables to make sure you have the length for the desk's sitting and standing positions. That's easier said than done, and I had to buy some new 3-metre DisplayPort and USB upstream cables to cope. If that's not what you're after, you could mount your PC on the desk or consider Secretlab's PC Mount ($89), which hangs on the underside of the desk and offers a place to load your PC into. That means it can move up and down with the rest of the desk, cable runs be damned. My Corsair 5000T case rules that one out—the max load for the kit is 15kg and that case alone (sans any components) weighs 14.53kg. (Image credit: Future) The other extras to consider include the MagRGB Smart Lighting Edition lighting strip ($79) and the Magnetic Headphone Hanger ($29), which are slightly less essential, if quite appealing add-ons. I particularly like the robust, flexi-feel to the lighting strip, which is powered by Nanoleaf for in-sync RGB goodness. Though there is also a cheaper option I haven't tried out for $59. The dual monitor arms come with slick magnetic cable management covers, though my 3-metre Amazon Basics DisplayPort cables are too big too fit. My 1.5m cables fit just fine, however. (Image credit: Future) The one accessory I really do think is worth investing in is the dual monitor arm. It's a single unit that clamps firmly onto the desk, between the hinged cover and the desk itself, and it offers sprawling reach for both the 28-inch and 32-inch monitors I've got in right now. They're highly adjustable with just a couple of turns of the included tool, and they're easy to switch up when you shift from sitting to standing. This accessory will set you back $249, however. None of these accessories are absolutely essential but they absolutely make the desk feel more deserving of its considerable price tag. At $949 for the Magnus Pro XL alone, you're looking at over $1,000 for the all-in setup I've been using for this review, and that's the version that makes Ultimately I have to ask myself would I be happy with this desk if I'd paid that sort of sum for it? And, yes, I would. Though it is a definite luxury to be able to allocate that much of your budget to a component in no way connected to the performance of your gaming PC. The main reason I feel it worth doing is more because I feel I fit into a group of people most likely to benefit from an investment in a high quality sit/stand desk alongside an ergonomic gaming chair: those that work primarily from home. (Image credit: Future) The option to change up my workspace with the push of a button is more worth it for me than, say, someone who is primarily using this desk for gaming in the evening after work. If that functionality isn't to your liking, a lot of what makes the Magnus Pro XL great is similarly found on the Magnus for over $350 less. I had to take a snap of this gorgeous issue of the PC Gamer magazine I had on the desk this week. (Image credit: Future) You also can't ignore the many motorised sit/stand desks going for a lot less money, some around the price of the non-motorised Magnus. Really you're paying for the attention to detail and clever design with these Secretlab models, and for that they're firmly planted in the premium market. Though I really am impressed with what the Magnus Pro XL offers, as it's much more than anything I had expected from a desk previously. To turn a slab of metal into a clever combination of cable management and functionality, one which offers both function and form, it's impressive. I didn't expect to be blown away by a desk, of all things, but here we are, and I am. View the full article

Strike it big in the Season of Plunder (Image credit: Bungie)Destiny 2 map fragments: How to get treasure maps Destiny 2 Delicate Tomb: Grab the new season exotic Destiny 2 Cryptic Quatrains: Solve the riddles The Destiny 2 Fortnite armor sets are a lot cooler than I thought they would be. As usual, the Warlocks have it best with their Painted Kitsune helmet and robes making them look like some kind of space-fox; pretty in-keeping with the recent reveal of a cyberpunk city on Neptune. The other fits aren't bad, either, though. Titans get the Knightly Noire set, which is basically a black and red suit of armour, while the Hunters have the Eternal Vengeance set, which has pretty similar colouring, but also comes with a great-looking horned cloak and more of a cyber aesthetic. You can purchase these cosmetic sets now in Eververse, but there's also a way to get them without paying money, and here I'll tell you how. Destiny 2 Fortnite armor: How to get it for free You can purchase all three cosmetic sets of Fortnite armor through Eververse for 1,500 Silver, which costs real money to buy. However, according to Today In Destiny's Eververse store schedule, individual armor pieces are going to be on sale for Bright Dust during weeks 6, 8, 12, and 14. Bright Dust is a free currency that you spend in a dedicated store for cosmetics, and you get it through Eververse Engrams, the season pass, and by completing additional bounties from vendors like Zavala, Shaxx, and The Drifter, which is handy if you're already doing them to level your season rank. You also get a load for clearing every weekly challenge in a season. (Image credit: Bungie) The bad news is that it costs 1,600 Bright Dust for each individual piece, which is around 400 more than ornaments cost last season. However, the positive is that if you don't like an entire set, but just want the Warlock's Kitsune mask, or that horned hunter cloak, you can get them without having to pick up everything. If you decide to buy the full set later, its price in Silver will also be reduced based on how many pieces you already own. View the full article