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The Callisto Protocol is a forthcoming survival horror game in development at Striking Distance, a studio founded in 2019 by former Dead Space lead Glen Schofield. As a result of that connection, The Callisto Protocol has generated quite a bit of buzz. It no doubt helps that, from what we've seen so far, The Callisto Protocol looks very Dead Space. So what do we know about The Callisto Protocol? Here's the broad strokes: it's a "story-driven, singleplayer survival game," and for a while at least, it was primed to be set in the PUBG universe (Striking Distance and PUBG Studios are both owned by Krafton). It's a third-person survival horror game, with plenty of aliens and alien/human hybrids. And it's got a horrifying amount of their saliva. What is the Callisto Protocol release date? The Callisto Protocol will release on December 2, 2022. It's worth noting that Striking Distance Studios opened in mid-2019. If the December release date holds true, and it seems like it will, that's a quick turnaround for a newly founded studio—albeit one with a lot of proven experience in the genre. Check out the new Callisto Protocol trailer from Gamescom Striking Distance Studios brought a new Callisto Protocol gameplay trailer to Gamescom in August showing off a mutating enemy type in the first half and a sewer escape in the second half. Here are all the Callisto Protocol trailers we've seen We first saw The Callisto Protocol reveal trailer back in the heady days of December 2020. It's a cinematic trailer with no actual gameplay footage, but it makes abundantly clear that The Callisto Protocol will be gory sci-fi horror in the Dead Space mold, complete with eerie flickering corridors, ominous holographic transmissions, and, yeah, an extremely unpleasant looking alien. A prisoner wakes in a less-than-ideal prison cell, before being attacked (presumably fatally) by the aforementioned alien. Our point of view then shifts to a closed circuit camera witnessing this event, and keeps zooming out until we see the figure watching that footage, who then wanders off to a window overlooking a bleak landscape that is definitely not planet Earth. In the official gameplay reveal trailer, we're given a sense of protagonist Jacob Lee's circumstances: apparently, crash-landing a little too close to the maximum security prison on the 'dead moon' of Callisto is enough to earn yourself a sentence. For Jacob, that sentence seems to mostly entail stomping, bludgeoning, and shooting his way through buckets worth of bodily fluids, either human or alien. Or both at once. What will The Callisto Protocol gameplay be like? Have we seen any? This first look at gameplay footage for The Callisto Protocol should give Dead Space fans plenty to rejoice. It's got your heavy, thudding protagonist, malformed alien-human hybrids lurking in poorly-lit space hallways, high-recoil firearms for blasting off enemy extremities. The Callisto Protocol is very much one of those, down to the gruesome death animations. The Callisto Protocol definitely seems heavy on the third-person combat, in both melee and shooting flavors, and with all the splattered viscera you'd expect. Hacking off limbs is a valuable tactical option, as is hurling enemies into environmental hazards using a gravity weapon called The Grip. Otherwise, it remains to be seen what sorts of mechanics surround all that splattering. If the obvious Dead Space parallels hold true, it'll belong to the survival horror school of "yeah, you can shoot the baddies, but we're not gonna make it easy." Where is The Callisto Protocol set? It's set on a dead moon. Specifically, a dead moon of Jupiter called Callisto, which actually exists in real life. In The Callisto Protocol an organization called the United Jupiter Company has built a prison colony there called Black Iron. If a privately-owned prison installation wasn't evil enough, protagonist Jacob Lee wakes up one day to find the prison overrun with hostile aliens. It's an exquisitely "eff this 'frack'" situation that sounds as indebted to the Alien films as it is to the Dead Space games. "Prison is a really scary place," Schofield somewhat redundantly pronounced in a 2020 Discord Q&A, before adding, "And a prison on Jupiter's dead moon is terrifying. Can't think of anything more desolate and isolated than that." (Do you think Dark Souls 2 is the best Souls game? If yes, think of how desolate and isolated you feel, and multiply that by thousands.) Schofield said during the same Q&A that he wants The Callisto Protocol to be "the most terrifying game of all time," which is an incredibly ambitious undertaking, given we live in a world with games like Visage, Silent Hill 2, Murder House, Alien Isolation, and indeed the original Dead Space. (Image credit: Striking Distance Studios) So is The Callisto Protocol part of the PUBG universe or not? It's not! Though for a little while, it was. In an August 2021 interview, director Glen Schofield said that The Callisto Protocol was indeed part of the PUBG universe. "The funny thing is, I came in with this story when I went and met with the PUBG people for the first time and started talking about [The Callisto Protocol] and building a studio," Schofield said. "I presented this game to them, and so what we did was we made it fit within the PUBG storyline." It makes a little bit of (business) sense, since Striking Distance Studios is owned by Krafton, the same parent company who oversees PUBG Studios. But much to the relief of some, and probably to the great disappointment of others invested in PUBG lore, that has since changed. Glen Schofield tweeted in May 2022 that The Callisto Protocol is now "its own story and world. It no longer takes place in the PUBG Universe. It was originally part of the PUBG timeline, but grew into its own world. PUBG is awesome, and we will still have little surprises for fans, but TCP is its own world, story and universe." What do you actually do in The Callisto Protocol? The Callisto Protocol definitely seems heavy on the third-person combat, in both melee and shooting flavors, and with all the splattered viscera you'd expect from a sci-fi horror game. And owing to its Dead Space lineage, hacking off limbs is a valuable tactical option. Otherwise, it remains to be seen what sorts of mechanics surround all that splattering. If the obvious Dead Space parallels hold true, it'll belong to the survival horror school of "yeah, you can shoot the baddies, but we're not gonna make it easy." Coincidentally, the website does mention being able to use a "gravity weapon," which is never a bad thing. Does The Callisto Protocol have co-op? No, The Callisto Protocol will not have co-op. Dead moon prisons just aren't scary enough with a friend by your side. "There's a story that we want to tell, and the best way we could tell it was being a singleplayer game," Glen Schofield explained on Discord last year. "Sometimes when you get into co-op, you don't follow directions and you're not following the story as well, and not only that, we wanted this to be—we wanted you to be alone. That's what makes this really scary." Sounds cool, but I want Dead Space instead, please. The future of the Dead Space series continues to remain up in the air, but the original game is getting a thorough revamp. The Dead Space remake is set to release in 2023. View the full article

Slipped in quietly amidst today's big news about the next major Destiny 2 expansion, Lightfall, and the new Season of the Plunder that started today, Bungie has announced that it will no longer remove expansions from the game in the future. The practice of culling content from Destiny 2 was announced in 2020 as a way of dealing with bloat: Destiny 2 is a huge game, and with plans to continue growing it for the indefinite future, Bungie decided that the only way to keep it manageable, for developers and players alike, was to shunt older content into the Content Vault. Going forward, that's going to change. "We've also been working on the Destiny engine behind the scenes, preparing our technology and our game to last for many, many years to come," general manager Justin Truman said during the showcase. "Because Destiny 2 is not going anywhere, and neither are your expansions. We want this story, since we first communed with the Darkness on the Moon, to be fully playable start to finish. "We're happy to announce today that we are not planning to sunset any more expansions. We want the Destiny universe to grow, and we're going to continue to do everything that we can behind the scenes to keep that possible within our game engine." The Content Vault isn't going away entirely: The showcase recap clarifies that "seasonal content will continue to stay throughout the current expansion year and then move to the Destiny Content Vault when a new Expansion launches." But the expansions themselves—the bits that keep players up to speed on everything that's happened so far—will remain available. In practice that should mean that major destination spaces, such as The Moon and Savathûn's Throne World (which were added in Shadowfall and The Witchqueen, respectively), will be staying in perpetuity. It's definitely good news for Destiny fans, but bear in mind that this only applies to current and future expansions: Shadowkeep, Beyond Light, The Witch Queen, Lightfall, and whatever comes next. There's no word on the possibility of permanent Vault removal for older expansions, like for instance Forsaken, the one where Cayde-6 gets put down for good—an important part of the overall Destiny 2 narrative by any measure. We'll have to wait and see how that works out. View the full article

Every self-respecting student—especially those studying the arts—knows that getting a degree isn't really about setting yourself up for a career, but about the friendships, romantic dalliances, and debauchery you get up to along the way. Two Point Campus understands that as well as any institution, which is why it offers its students a vibrant life beyond the classroom. Every student in Two Point Campus is a simmering cauldron of young adult energy, complex emotions, and needs. Students not only need to eat, sleep, and wash, but also crave excitement, adventure, and that electric crackle you feel when you meet someone you really connect with. One of the best ways to get students bonding is to organise parties in the Student Union (or Student Lounge if you don't yet have the dosh for a full-on union). Set up a party near the start of the school year, and students will gain a spring in their step for some time, as well as establish those tentative early connections with their peers. To some extent, students will form their own bonds. They'll chat before lectures, come up with silly handshakes at the gym, and throw down shapes together on the dance floor. But you—as the campus Cupid—can weave some magic to bring students even closer together. (Image credit: SEGA) For a start, you can create romantic hotspots for your students. Decorate an outdoor area with trees and rosebeds, put down a Lover's Bench or Tree Benches (perhaps surrounding a Statue of Love), and watch the sparks start to fly. You could even set up a couple of cool Cadillac dining tables away from the crowd so that students can stare adoringly at each other over the tops of oversized milkshakes. Then, once those love hooks bring a couple of blissful students together, let them take the leap from 'Sweethearts' to 'Soulmates' on the Double Jump Bed. And what do you do on this bubblegum-pink double bed adorned with love hearts? Why, jump around on it, of course. Beyond the intoxicating haze of romance, there are other invaluable experiences for students on your campus. Once you can afford it, a concert stage in your Student Union can attract some of Two Point County's most famous acts, like DJ Sue Chef and the Boogie Knights. More competitive students, meanwhile, can compete in Cheeseball matches or County Cook-Offs against rival colleges. Hosting all these memorable events will make your college a vibrant buzzing place, which will be a big boost when the end-of-year awards come around. (Image credit: SEGA) There are more laid back ways for students to spend their time too. A nice movie in a lecture theatre, games rooms, or simply hanging out in the dormitory. Admittedly, the dorms are usually a bit more packed in Two Point Campus than the ones you may have experienced, but hey, five students to a bed (not at the same time) is a lesson that nothing—whether it's education or privacy—comes free in life. This is a university campus, not some glamping holiday. Keeping students happy and engaged is crucial to your campus. Give them a time to remember, and they'll give you the grades you want. View the full article

I hope you like walking planks because as part of its big livestream showcase, Bungie just dropped a trailer for Destiny 2's Season of Plunder, which starts today. Eramis, who you may remember as the Big Bad from the Beyond Light expansion, has broken free of her icy prison and it's up to you to create a ragtag crew to take her out (again). Quite why nobody was guarding her frozen body is anyone's guess. The highlight of the new stuff for me is that you can turn your guardian into a cannonball and launch yourself between Fallen ketches in the new six-player activity, Ketchcrash. Season of Plunder starts at weekly reset today and runs until December 6. There's been some leaked information floating around for a while now, so let's clear up those rumours. In Season of Plunder you'll be cosplaying as space pirates, sailing—or is it still flying?—around on a big 'donkey' pirate ship, which is a nice departure from sparrows. There are new expeditions to go on, new pirate hideouts to loot, and the usual gamut of new armor, weapons and fancy exotic items. Image 1 of 6 (Image credit: Bungie)Image 2 of 6 (Image credit: Bungie)Image 3 of 6 (Image credit: Bungie)Image 4 of 6 (Image credit: Bungie)Image 5 of 6 (Image credit: Bungie)Image 6 of 6 (Image credit: Bungie) Lost relics are a key motivator this season as you hunt pirate leaders and their loot. Spider, Mithrax and Drifter will be helping you this season as you try to prevent Eramis from getting her hands on all the booty. You can recruit other NPCs throughout the season to do cool pirate stuff with. Of course, Arc 3.0 is also being added, including a sweet new spear-based super for Hunters. It all looks like great news for Riskrunner fans (like me), so get in and start prepping that build to make you an unstoppable menace. This season also brings another reprised raid from Destiny 1, which will be free to play for everyone. That's finally been revealed as King's Fall, which will please the veterans, and will become available on August 26 at 10 am PT/ 1 pm ET/ 6 pm BST. It'll be in contest mode for the first 24 hours, meaning your power will be capped, and you'll need to be at 1560 to enter. There's also the Gift of the Thunder Gods, a free collection of Arc-themed gear that includes two exotics and ten legendary items for each class so you can catch up instantly. View the full article

Bungie has announced that with the launch of the new Lightfall expansion it is going to add new loadout systems and LFG to Destiny 2. The news was revealed during the annual Bungie livestream, and honestly, it's a pretty welcome change. Previously, if players were looking for a fireteam for non-matchmade activities, they'd have to search through the fireteam finder on the Destiny 2 app, but that functionality is finally being introduced to the game. This will let players partner up to try dungeons, raids, and nightfalls. Since a common complaint with Destiny 2 is being unable to find a group for endgame content, Bungie hopes this will create a better new player experience where it's easier to party up. A new Guardian Commendation system is also coming to the game, and will let you rate other players post-activity. The more commendations you get, the more that other players will know your strengths—it's a bit like Guardian reviews. If you have lots of commendations, other players will know you make for a reliable fireteam member. This system sounds like it could have some potential niggles, but on the plus side, it'll mean you can pick reliable players and guides for tough content. Image 1 of 2 The new post-activity commendation screen. (Image credit: Bungie)Image 2 of 2 A mockup of the new loadout menu for Destiny 2. (Image credit: Bungie) The mod menu and loadout system are also getting some much needed love. Currently, you have to change mods individually on every piece of armor, so if you don't use something like Destiny Item Manager, it takes multiple armor sets, or a lot of mod switching if you want to change your build. This is something you frequently need to do for endgame content. Bungie announced that they are introducing preset loadouts so you can change between armor and weapon sets quickly, and also that the mod menu will receive a complete overhaul to be more in line with the updated cosmetics screen. This will let players change all their mods at once and should make build-crafting a lot simpler. "The changes we're making make Destiny easier to come into," says Tyson Green, system creative director. "Changes to how you build your characters, changes to how you see what there is to do and what there is to accomplish, and in the year ahead we're actually making it easier to form groups together so you can go and do some of the greatest content Destiny has to offer." All of this drops alongside Guardian Ranks; a new 11 rank system that guides new players through the initial stages of Destiny 2, and generally shows other players how experienced you are at the game. Along with the reveal of Neptune as a destination, and the new darkness-based subclass, Strand, things are looking pretty exciting for Destiny 2 next year. View the full article

Earlier today Bungie teased the new darkness-based subclass coming to Destiny 2 called Strand, and it's as much about movement and traversal as combat. In its showcase, the developer finally detailed the much-rumoured new subclass. Now confirmed to be called Strand, the subclass looks as much about exploring the new city on Neptune with a cosmic grappling hook as it is whipping cabal in the face with ropes of green energy. "Strand is psychic energy that forms this extra dimension, this sort of matrix that connects everything together. It connects all living beings and all minds, and you the guardian are sort of gaining the knowledge and gaining the power to peer into this alternate psychic universe and begin to pull on these threads and tug on these wires that are connecting all these living beings," Samuel Dunn, senior designer, says. If you haven't heard already, Bungie also showed off the next big expansion for Destiny 2, Lightfall, during a livestream. It broke down the upcoming subclass changes and new Neptune-based location: a cyberpunk-style city that's been largely untouched by the collapse that has seen most of the known Destiny universe we've played in so far be a ruin of its former glory. "When you play through Lightfall, you are discovering this power for the first time. No one in the universe, ever in the history of Destiny, has used Strand before," Adam Grantham, narrative director at Bungie, says. The Strand subclass plays into that new location, with a whole new way to traverse the world unlike anything we've used so far. Harnessing a thread of darkness energy, you'll be able to fling your guardian around the new location. Sort of like a space-age Spider-Man, but actually slightly better. Your grappling hook doesn't need to actually connect with any object to fling you forward, it sticks to a web of magical space energy—because of course it does. "Since you are seeing into this cosmic web, you are able to grapple at any point because the cosmic web exists everywhere. Even if there is not an object there, it will hook onto that web and pull you forward," Dave Samuel, senior VFX art lead, says. (Image credit: Bungie) In regards to the new map, players will be "using Strand to traverse through it, explore it." How far the grappling hook will flow into the rest of the existing content is not yet clear, but I imagine it could have fairly wide-reaching implications if, say, you could take it into a raid run. Plenty of cheeses came out of swords back in the day, so I wonder how a whole grappling hook will impact how we play older content. It might be a risky strategy to throw yourself into an abyss and hope a hook will save you, but only those brave enough to risk it all learn cool new tricks. But Strand isn't all exploration-based. No, it's a fully-fledged subclass that will offer each of the three Guardian classes—Hunter, Warlock, and Titan—a new way to crush alien enemies. (Image credit: Bungie) Warlocks are the "telekinetic master of Strand" and will receive a new missile-based super ability that barrages foes. When these missiles land, they split and unravel.Titans get hands-on with some up-close and personal claw hands that offers a spinning and slashing AoE attack.Hunters will be whipping Vex right in their milk hearts with a rope dart (also known as a rope javelin). Players will be able to spin and launch this rope dart as they're flipping and sliding around, or whatever Hunters do. "We've learned a lot from creating our other subclasses, and we've taken those learnings about combat, about movement, about build crafting, we've put that all into Strand," Eric Smith, senior designer, says. Bungie says that Strand was initially a Hunter-only kind of deal, though felt it was too fun to restrict to the cape fanciers. And I say that without any sort of envy of what might have been as a Warlock-main. It all looks absolutely killer, though we'll have to wait and see which super has the most practical use for our respective classes. As a Warlock, I'm wondering how much Strand will play like Nova bomb or a void build, but I'm sure there's a lot more there to shake things up. Beyond Strand, Bungie is also reworking Arc builds with Arc 3.0 launching today, so it's not Strand or nothing. View the full article

(Image credit: Blizzard) In terms of popularity, there's a case to be made that Hearthstone's Battlegrounds spin-off has superseded the original game, with the arrival of a major new patch to refresh the meta as eagerly anticipated as any card expansion. The next update is due to drop on August 30, and today Blizzard has begun detailing the contents, which include a refresh of the minion and hero pools, Battlegrounds Missions (think: dailies), as well as the addition of a rewards track that will contain new kinds of cosmetics. Here's a glimpse at Battelgrounds' bespoke season track. It'll contain emotes, hero Skins, strikes and other cosmetics. (Image credit: Blizzard) The latter is no surprise given that the publisher has been trying hard to monetise the mode's runaway success for some time (it uses a season pass model in the absence of player's needing to buy card packs). You can read the fine detail in the official announcement, but the big new gameplay feature is going to be the Quest mechanic. Here's how it works: At the start of turn four (i.e. when you have six Gold) you'll be presented with three quests to pick from, each with a randomly selected reward. Here are the three initial quest and reward examples provided: Reward nameReward DescriptonRandom QuestThe Smoking GunYour minions have +5 Attack.Play 4 Naga or Demons.Evil TwinStart of Combat: Summon a copy of your highest Health minion.Summon 20 minions.Another Hidden BodyDiscover a minion of your Tavern Tier. (Can be earned endlessly.)Have a friendly Taunt minion attacked 12 times. Each game you'll discover three Quest-Reward pairings from which you pick one to complete. (Image credit: Blizzard) Game designer Mitchell Loewen tells me: "We're hoping that that flexibility gives players more opportunities for skill expression as they decide how they want their games to unfold." Loewen mentions that they tested having the quests appear at various stages of the game, and ultimately found that having too many could be overwhelming. He say six gold felt like the sweet spot because: "You have the ability to buy two minions, so you could make meaningful progress on it. You've also bought a couple of minions already, so kind of already know what you want to do." http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/GYunKftLHVYqMGT9szQupK.jpg Mitchell Loewen Game Designer, Blizzard Loewen joined the Hearthstone team in 2021. He has a Master's Degree in Game Design and previously co-founded Cloudfall Interactive Studios, which successfully funded Captain’s Gambit: Kings of Infinite Space on Kickstarter. Note that the quests and rewards are paired randomly. There will be 13 total quests to pair with 24 possible rewards, so you'll quickly need to parse which combination you've been offered best suits your current hero and gameplan. Interestingly, Blizzard explains that quests have "have baseline requirements that vary based on which Reward they are paired with. Better reward pairings will make the quest a little harder to complete." So if the quest requires you to, say, summon minions, then the number required will scale up if the reward is particularly juicy. We're also told that quest requirements will be affected by the power of the hero you're playing (as indicated by the amount of Armor they begin the game with), and some quests won't appear if the current pool of minion tribes doesn't suit their description. Intriguingly, others won't be offered to certain heroes if they risk enabling "extreme situations". We'll be revealing all the remaining quests on PC Gamer, and the two new heroes being added with the patch, exactly an hour from the time of publishing this story. Send your browser here to see them. Here you can see the combined Quest and Reward screen. (Image credit: Blizzard) Once you've picked your Quest, an icon will appear over your hero portrait in much the same way that Quests work in the Standard mode, enabling you to check progress at any time. You'll also be able to see how close your opponents are to completion by hovering over their portraits in the scoreboard. After completion, your Reward will then display in the slot to the left of your portrait that the Buddy Meter previously used. Rewards will apply for the remainder of the game. As for what the other Rewards are, those are being revealed by Hearthstone content creators over the coming days in the build up to release. Patch 24.2 goes live on August 30, preceded by a full set of notes later this week. Rest assured that I will be picking whichever Reward best enables me to force a Demon comp, regardless of viability. View the full article

We're republishing this article from April 2022 to coincide with Death Stranding's launch on PC Game Pass. I recently got around to reading Hideo Kojima's The Creative Gene, a collection of essays by the designer on a diverse range of pop culture topics: re-issues of animes he liked watching as a kid, reviews of new science fiction novels, retrospectives on great movies. As anyone with an interest in Kojima's work might expect, it is a book that veers between searing insight and tiresome navel-gazing. You're absorbed on some pages, and your eye's flicking to the next paragraph on others. While the book is a grab-bag of essays with no real through-line, it does have a theme—loneliness. When Kojima writes about a given topic, his tendency is to connect it to periods in his life, some of which are described in great detail. The book is full of ghosts, Kojima's father in particular, and how Kojima thinks about certain works is bound-up with his first experiences of it in the context of his own life. While the overall tone of things always returns to the triumphal—Kojima never shies from adding in a reference to his own hugely successful oeuvre—it is a book shot-through with feelings of isolation and, in some cases, futile regret. This was a good staging ground from which to embark once more on Death Stranding's journey across a near-future and wasted landscape. Death Stranding: The Director's Cut adds a whole bunch of new stuff to the game (read about it here), though this all seems mostly backloaded and the first 12 hours or so are familiar from my first playthrough at launch. Except… the real world's a bit different. Death Stranding was released in November 2019. A month later, a novel virus outbreak was detected in Wuhan, China, and within months almost the entire world had entered some form of coronavirus-related lockdown. (Image credit: Kojima Productions and 505 Games) “The world was designed such that Sam almost never sees another human being in the flesh.” Let's not overdo things here but, like everyone else, I've gone through two-and-a-half years that have been spent mostly at home, the first year almost entirely. I now live in a world where I don't even notice the plastic screens at supermarket checkouts anymore, nevermind find anything unusual about passing dozens of masked individuals on a town walk, and where my kids sometimes come home from school and I have to jam a cotton bud up their nose. Everyone has gone through some version of this. And so the things that Kojima was noticing about our society, and making core to Death Stranding, have become acutely magnified through this lens. The most obvious point to make is that you play a deliveryman, and we've just gone through a spell where delivery people could be the week's only face-to-face human contact: as Larkin wrote in Aubade, "postmen, like doctors, go from house to house." Parts of Death Stranding now land differently. The world was designed such that Sam almost never sees another human being in the flesh outside of cutscenes: the vast majority of deliveries are made to functional industrial-style bunkers, where you're thanked by a hologram projection and sent on your way with new deliveries. There's the CODEC calls but Sam is nearly always—with the exception of BB, which we'll come to—alone in a vast landscape. Thanks to having played it through already, I'm much better at Death Stranding now: one of its nicer elements is that this isn't really a game where the difficulty is skill-based, but more about thinking. I approach deliveries with patience, planning, the right gear, and a bit of knowledge. I plan routes now (I know, I know, I should've been doing this first time). And while I'm walking slowly along, back loaded-up like a forklift truck, I've been thinking about the interactions Kojima Productions put in. I'd initially forgotten that Sam could shout out to the hills, until a mis-placed 'like' activated it: now, just like when I'm on a walk myself, I every-so-often talk to myself. (Image credit: Kojima Productions and 505 Games) “ Thematically at least, Death Stranding is at its weakest when it later adds more traditional elements.” This world is, to begin with, almost all nature. The human structures that exist are disparate, brutalist blots on the landscape, nibbled-away at their edges by flora. You begin the long trek up a mountain knowing with certainty you won't bump into anyone else on the way. Half the time you forget that BB's even there: until you start fooling around with the 'soothe' interactions, and now I feel guilty if I see a spectacular view and don't treat BB to some photo mode. I suppose you could describe Death Stranding's arc as Sam, the outcast, becoming the common strand that ultimately binds various groups together. But the game's power doesn't come from that rather pat conclusion. It comes from the fact that Sam is this lonely outsider figure for the most important parts of your experience. Thematically at least, Death Stranding is at its weakest when it later adds more traditional elements, such as shooting sections and more regular 'combat' encounters, because its strongest theme is loneliness. Kojima made a game that is about how the lifestyle in developed societies is driving us into isolated groups, and how this leads to a collective inability to act on an existential threat like global warming. What happened in the real world with the pandemic, however, seems to me to have made Death Stranding's underlying atmosphere of loneliness the most prominent part of the experience. (Image credit: Kojima Productions and 505 Games) A funny thing happened the other day. I live in a semi-rural place, and have to walk up a muddy hill to the nearest stores. I carry it all in a backpack and, as I was coming back down, readjusted the weight on my straps. Just for an instant I felt like Sam, and smiled at the thought of it, returning to home base with the deliveries in S-rank condition. It made me think of something else, too. In Kojima's book The Creative Gene, he has an essay about Taxi Driver where he writes about how he identified with Travis Bickle: to the extent he started dressing like him. "But what moved me to tears was not the story, the direction, or the actors' techniques. It was because, through experiencing Travis's loneliness secondhand, I learned that other people, somewhere out there in the world, were like me. "I'm not the only one who thinks he's alone! A man with the same kind of feelings of isolation as me is out there driving a taxi. The thought alleviated my loneliness. "After the movie was over, I bought the same military jacket as De Niro wore for his performance, put on leather boots, and went out into the city. To complete the imitation, I thrust my hands into my pockets and walked with a slouch. As I walked the streets as Travis, something seemed to have changed. It wasn't that the movie had taught me how to battle my loneliness; Travis taught me how to keep its company." That moment of imaginative empathy, large or small, seems like a great thing for a game or a movie to leave behind. While I'm a fan of Kojima's work, one has to accept that his games do bludgeon you over the head with 'narrative meaning' at times: but what sticks with me most in Death Stranding is a feeling. It hits even more profoundly years after launch than it did at the time: that moment of loneliness in the world, and whatever it is we doggedly walk towards. View the full article

Anyone expecting to see their Steam Deck later this year could be in for a pleasant surprise. Some folks with Q4 reservations should be getting emails to complete their Steam Deck orders way earlier than anticipated since "production has outperformed" estimates, according to Valve. "Hi all, a few of you may have received an order email for your “Q4 window” Steam Deck reservation today", wrote Lawrence Yang from Valve on Twitter. "This wasn’t a mistake! Production has outperformed our estimates, and we’ll be moving more Q4 folks into the Q3 window. Valve has been ramping up production, nearly doubling the number of Steam Decks shipped out every week. That's all coming from Yang's personal account, but the Deck developer says an official announcement with more information, will be coming soon. This still comes as a bit of a surprise since we are still in the middle of Q3 Steam Deck shipments, and at this rate, this hopefully means anyone could order a Steam Deck this holiday season and not have to wait months for one. This news also comes as the Steam Deck becomes available in other parts of the globe, too. As with previous reservation emails, there's a grace period of a few days for you to complete the order for your Steam Deck. So make sure you check your spam folders for the email, and if you have any issues head to Steam Deck support. Yang also notes that the reservation windows have not been updated on the Steam Deck product page, so it may say your shipping date is still in the "Q4 window." This should be updated before the next batch of emails goes out on Thursday, so you'll get a more accurate time frame of when you can have a Deck in your hands. Hi all, a few of you may have received an order email for your “Q4 window” Steam Deck reservation today. This wasn’t a mistake! Production has outperformed our estimates, and we’ll be moving more Q4 folks into the Q3 window. Official announcement and info coming soon. August 22, 2022 See more View the full article

After months of anticipation (and a big leak), Bungie has finally unveiled Lightfall, the next major Destiny 2 expansion, which will give Guardians access to an all-new subclass and a very cool looking new destination: The cyberpunk-styled world of Neptune. Lightfall, the long-awaited conclusion to Destiny 2's Light and Dark saga, will take players to the previously unknown capital city of Neptune, which somehow went unnoticed until now. The main antagonist will be a newly-empowered Calus and his Shadow Legion of Cabal. There will also be new enemies called Tormentors, which come from the Black Fleet of pyramid ships, and a race of Guardian-like beings called Cloudstriders. The Guardians will also discover a new Darkness power called Strand, giving them and additional (and very green) subclass. It's a psychic-based power themed around pulling the threads of life and death. Or in other words: you get grappling hooks. There's a lot going on in this one—we'll update with more detail as it becomes available. Destiny 2: Lightfall is set to go live on February 28, 2023. View the full article

I've tested a whole host of different wireless earbuds recently and the JBL Quantum TWS are, for me, the pinnacle. They don't necessarily have the best sound, or the longest battery life, but they are the buds I choose to use on a daily basis out of all the ones I have on offer. And I have amassed quite the collection. The JBLs though are simple, effective and feature-packed. All in all, they just plain work. That might seem like a given for any product put out by a reasonable company in 2022, but it's not a guarantee by any means. The JBL Quantums are your classic wireless fare; aping the long-stemmed look of Apple's EarPods, but with a black finish. They come in a magnetic charging case, which helps extend the battery life of the buds themselves, and this case also holds the USB Type-C dongle which allows you to connect to other devices, such as a gaming laptop. That's one of the features which propels the JBL Quantums ahead of the pack; the fact that it has both Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity and 2.4GHz wireless via a Type-C dongle. And the switching is fast and the connection robust. Quantum TWS specs (Image credit: Future)Drivers: 10mm Frequency response: 20Hz - 20,000Hz Weight: 0.4oz | 11g Connection: Bluetooth 5.2 | 2.4GHz wireless Battery life: 5 (ANC on) | 16 from charging case Price: $150 | £129 Once you've paired your buds via Bluetooth, or plugged your dongle into your PC, laptop, or Steam Deck, then it's just a question of pulling the buds from the charging case to turn them on and jamming them into your ear holes. They swiftly power on and connect, and you're up and running in a trice. Honestly, that's something many of the wireless buds I've tested recently will do, and I'm eternally grateful the bad old days of headset pairing has seemingly long gone. Many of the other wireless earbuds also have touch controls, too, but few as eminently usable as the Quantums. I do have a soft spot for Creative's Outlier Pro buds—they sound great and the noise cancelling is excellent. But I found myself constantly infuriated by the controls, or rather the complete lack of control as I'm jabbing at the earbuds in order to double tap and get them to just damn well pause for a second so I can buy a bus ticket. The JBL Quantums, on the other hand, are easy to use and have a basic single tap on the right bud to pause and play, and the same on the left bud to cycle through active noise cancelling, ambient aware, or sound control off. It's straightforward, easy to access, and doesn't frustrate the process. Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 2 (Image credit: Future) That noise cancelling is decent, too, even if it does inevitably cut down the battery life from eight to five hours. Using the JBL phone app you can tune them to your ear canal, to further enhance the ANC as well. I would say, the Outlier Pro buds do have the edge when it comes to completely blocking the outside world, but the Quantum buds are still impressively effective. But what about the audio quality? I've said they're not the best-sounding buds I've tested, but the sound quality is good. I would steer clear of the QuantumSURROUND feature if you're running them from the USB dongle on your desktop PC, though—I almost blew out my eardrums with the unreasonable bass thuds in Red Dead Redemption 2 from just a short gallop through the desert cacti. With that off the bass tones are more subtle. And, in fact, I did bump the EQ to Bass over the Bluetooth connection in order to squeeze a little more feeling out of The War on Drugs, but in general they sound better with a flat EQ. The JBL app will also allow you to enable game mode, which helps sync game and video audio, but the fact you can jam the Type-C dongle into your laptop or Steam Deck and play without delay makes the Quantums incredibly versatile. Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 2 (Image credit: Future) And they're affordable, too. Considering that the Audeze Euclids—easily the best-sounding earbuds I've ever used—are $1,200, that the JBLs are more usable on a day-to-day basis and a tenth of the price is pretty astounding. I have options for better-sounding, longer-lasting earbuds, but I'm going to stick with the JBL Quantum TWS buds. The still sound good, last a decent amount of time, and are the most versatile and easy-to-use set around. I am most definitely sold. View the full article

Such 20% keyboards, or keypads, have been around for a while, but here comes Nordic Game Supply with "The Shrimp" mechanical keyboard to shake things up, or rein them in as the case may be. When I first spotted this teeny little keyboard from NGS it took me a while to figure out the selling point. As a gaming keypad there are of course the standard benefits: not being relegated to using the WASD keys on your gaming laptop—great for a bunch of reasons including avoiding sweaty fingers in a heatwave—and of course they're a lot more portable than even their 60% counterparts. But there's something about this keyboard that stands out, something it does differently to a lot of gaming keypads on the market today. Consider the Razer Tartarus Pro gaming keypad with its super ergonomic wrist rest, thumbstick and pressure sensitive keys; or the frankly immense 26-key, hand-conforming Azeron Gaming Keypad. Both are ergonomic to the max and kitted out with more greebles than a Star Destroyer. But what's different about The Shrimp keyboard is that it's just a standard keyboard chopped in half. No frills or funky shapes, just good old fashioned cuboid click clacks. "The Shrimp gives you the freedom to position your hands as you desire," says product designer Kari Viljanen. "No more twisting your keyboard, hands and shoulders into awkward angles to find a feasible gaming position." I'm not exactly sure how holding back on ergonomics can make something more ergonomic, let alone be considered a selling point, but there must be a market for it. The keypads out there were getting a little ridiculous, I have to say. "There have also been keypad sized gaming devices before the Shrimp but they have either been non-standard layout, made to adapt keyboard & mouse on gaming consoles or have had some off-putting futuristic 'space-captain' designs. I believe we have made a design that is both comfortable to use and looks great on your desktop." (Image credit: Nordic Game Supply) Perfect peripherals (Image credit: Colorwave)Best gaming mouse: the top rodents for gaming Best gaming keyboard: your PC's best friend... Best gaming headset: don't ignore in-game audio The Shrimp comes in a 25-key global keyboard layout, with Cherry profile which means the keycaps are shorter and less angular than that of standard OEM keyboards. There's Gateron G Pro mechanical switches packed in there, and even RGB lighting that shines through some intensely large lettering. Nordic Game Supply also boasts about The Shrimp keyboard's "Cool gadgety knobs," which is going on my list of potential band names. To be fair, multimedia controls are always well received in my book, and I appreciate the snazzy colour ways. These include pink, blue with a monkey on the wrist rest, and one with a sticker-bombed wrist rest. There's still no word on pricing and availability, however. View the full article

Warner Bros' free-to-play character brawler MultiVersus has launched to enormous success, attracting over 20 million players so far, and looks set to become something of a cross-platform Smash Bros. It's also created an amusing spectator sport, which is watching the traditional fighting game jargon being applied to a cast list that features characters as diverse as Tom & Jerry, Superman, Arya Stark, and Shaggy. There's just something funny about Velma being called OP. Pre-launch Multiversus attracted some grumbling for its inclusion of the Iron Giant, a character created for a children's book called The Iron Man by the great author Ted Hughes. This is because the story ultimately shows the gigantic metal man setting an example of pacifism and understanding that leads to world peace. Thus the Iron Giant may seem like an odd fit for a fighting game. Which is a fair enough perspective though, personally speaking, I don't find that taking a bit of license with a well-known fictional character to be a problem: particularly in a nonsensical cartoon brawler. I mean, we can all still read the book. Anyway, the Iron Giant has, amusingly enough, turned out to be so powerful that developer Player First Games has been forced to apply some swingeing nerfs to the character. The game will be down today for a short maintenance period, after which it returns with a new patch that also introduces Morty from Rick & Morty. "Iron Giant is currently dominating with abnormally high win rates at every skill level," reads the notes on the character. "Iron Giant’s Neutral Special with stacked cooldown reduction and Velma are causing too few windows for opponents to counterplay. Updates to Iron Giant, global updates to perks, and Velma updates should help provide more windows of opportunity for opponents against Iron Giant." See what I mean about this stuff just being quite funny at times? The nerfs amount to increasing Iron Giant's cooldown on certain attacks (the Velma reference above is because she can reduce cooldowns with her abilities), and reducing the rather large hitbox of his upwards air attack. His Air / Ground Up special has also had its damage slightly reduced, and the knockback from its final hit reduced. We'll see if that's enough to flatten-out the big boy's abnormally high win rate. In addition to the direct nerfs for the Iron Giant, Velma's 'Educated' buff has also been nerfed: where it reduced cooldowns by 75% over 8 seconds, it now does 50% over the same time. There's also been a reduction in how cooldown refunds are calculated for all characters. The wider picture is probably of most interest to assassin characters, which have seen a major buff across-the-board that means they'll all take less damage. All assassin characters have a passive ability that increases damage taken by 14%, making them high-damage but lower health picks. This 14% is being reduced to 5%, and the developer's notes say it's considering whether to remove it entirely: "We want to take a step towards that while trying to not to go too far too fast. We don’t want to create an assassin dominated meta." The full patch notes follow: General GeneralMorty will be arriving tomorrow! 08/23! He will be our first Plumbus-wielding character!This patch is entirely server-side so all updates are Online Only and will not be reflected in local/lab play until the next patch. General Perks Ice To Beat You!: Projectiles will only apply Ice debuff to fighters that are not already debuffed by Ice.I’ll Take That: Unstacked cooldown refund decreased from 0.5 seconds to 0.25 seconds. Stacked cooldown refund decreased from 1 second to 0.5 secondsGameplay Systems: Fixed a bug where ability cooldowns may not trigger when projectiles are spawned close to terrain Characters Arya+ Assassin Passive: Reduced extra damage taken from 14% to 5%.We’re evaluating if this passive should be removed entirely. We want to take a step towards that while trying to not to go too far too fast. We don’t want to create an assassin dominated meta.Movelist Description of this change will not be updated until the next patchFinn Since we removed some power from the Backpack on Finn, we’re pushing some additional power into the rest of Finn’s attacks to give him more kill options.+ Air/Ground Neutral Special: Increased base damage from 5 to 6This base damage is increased by holding and charging the attack+ Air/Ground Down Special (BMO Chop): Increased Damage from 18 to 20Increased Knockback Scaling from 18 to 20+ Assassin Passive:Reduced extra damage taken from 14% to 5%.We’re evaluating if this passive should be removed entirely. We want to take a step towards that while trying to not to go too far too fast. We don’t want to create an assassin dominated meta.Movelist Description of this change will not be updated until the next patchGarnet Garnet buffs are incoming in the next patch!Harley+ Assassin Passive: Reduced extra damage taken from 14% to 5%.We’re evaluating if this passive should be removed entirely. We want to take a step towards that while trying to not to go too far too fast. We don’t want to create an assassin dominated meta.Movelist Description of this change will not be updated until the next patchIron Giant Iron giant is currently dominating with abnormally high win rates at every skill level. Iron Giant’s Neutral Special with stacked cooldown reduction and Velma are causing too few windows for opponents to counterplay. Updates to Iron Giant, global updates to perks, and Velma updates should help provide more windows of opportunity for opponents against Iron Giant.- Air/Ground Neutral Special: Increased cooldown from 23s to 25s- Air Up Attack: Hit boxes shrank to more accurate fit the attack visuals- Air/Ground Up Special: Reduced damage by 1 and base knockback on final hit of spin+ Air/Ground Down Special: Allow cancel out of Cannonball if it hits an enemySupermanFixed a bug that would allow Superman to grapple enemies that wall bounce even if his hitboxes did not connect.Taz Taz buffs are incoming in the next patch!VelmaAir/Ground Down Special: Velma Educated buff reduced cooldown return from 75% over 8 seconds to 50% over 8 seconds In our recent review, Mollie said "MultiVersus has done a bang-up job of laying the foundations for a fantastic platform fighter that has the potential to blossom into something amazing". It's certainly off to a strong start even if, in the case of the Iron Giant, it was maybe a little too strong. View the full article

Saudi Arabia has become the first country in the world to greenlight Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The country's General Authority for Competition (GAC) tweeted Sunday that it had no objection to the completion of the "process of economic concentration" between the two companies, making it the first regulatory hurdle Microsoft has cleared in its quest to acquire Activision. تعلن #الهيئة_العامة_للمنافسة عن عدم ممانعتها من إتمام عملية التركز الاقتصادي بين:-مايكروسوفت كوربوريشن-أكتيفيجن بليزارد إنك pic.twitter.com/lo5scC3F7kAugust 21, 2022 See more The GAC didn't go into great detail about how it scrutinised the acquisition, but it's not really a surprise that they've waved it through. Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 plan aims to diversify the country's economy and wean it off its dependency on its unthinkably huge reserves of oil, and investments in the tech sector and videogames are a big part of that plan. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has been doling out billions of dollars in investments to the likes of the Embracer Group, EA, Take-Two and, yes, Activision Blizzard. Because of Saudi Arabia's appalling human rights record, every one of those investments has been accompanied by some measure of controversy. Nevertheless, enormous games companies continue to accept Saudi billions, and the presence of the House of Saud in the games industry as a whole continues to grow because of it. The Saudi government says it expects the games industry to make up about 1% of its economy—for a value of around $21 billion—by 2030. For that to be possible, Saudi Arabia needs to be an appealing place for videogame big business to do business. Authorising the Microsoft/Activision deal so quickly sends the larger message that Saudi Arabia wants to be sending right now. Throwing up any barriers would have had the exact opposite effect: indicating to the games industry that doing business in the country comes second to navigating the whims of its princes. Microsoft still has plenty of regulators it needs to convince before the Activision deal can go through, although it doesn't seem likely it'll run into too much trouble. While Sony might be complaining to Brazilian regulators about the fallout of making Call of Duty an Xbox-exclusive, it's unlikely anyone will want to rock the boat too much. It's not just Saudi Arabia that wants to stay attractive to big business, after all. View the full article

Contracts between content creators and the websites they publish on have always been a little complicated. To make each site such as YouTube or Twitch feel special, they've often had clauses in the contracts of popular personalities that specify they can't put content elsewhere. Well today, Twitch has finally put an end to partner exclusivity which means if you're a partner on Twitch you can finally stream elsewhere—as long as you're not silly about it. Twitch streamers previously could not stream on other platforms such as YouTube or Facebook if they had a partner contract with the site. Now those with that all important purple tick will be allowed to stream wherever they wish as long as they're not streaming on Twitch at the same time, which is a practice called multistreaming or simulcasting. The exception to the rule is that streamers can be live on Twitch while also broadcasting to TikTok or Instagram Live, which is a trend that has been growing rapidly over the last year. This is all in the name of discoverability. These days it's very very hard, if not impossible to get big on Twitch without diversifying your content. That means having clips of your work, livestreams, full edited videos on as many other platforms you can get your hands on. With the trend of Twitch and YouTube reaching streaming agreements with content creators it's not clear if these new changes apply to those with exclusivity agreements. It might just apply to partners that have reached a smaller level of streaming fame. For those wondering today Twitch announced the end of our exclusivity clause in Partner contracts!This means you can:- do singular streams to YouTube or Facebook- do multi streams (streaming at the same time as you are live) on Instagram Live or TikTokAugust 23, 2022 See more Many partners on Twitch may never have streamed elsewhere as YouTube and Facebook are the smaller streaming platforms. But with their continued progress in moulding these websites to cater better to streaming, it gives partners an opportunity to test out new waters. This change has probably come into place because streamers have been forced to diversify to find any level of success on Twitch in recent years. They're already having to get creative with their work, so it makes virtually no sense to stop streamers performing elsewhere when they're already being forced by these platforms to reupload content from streams just to attract new viewers. The changes are already in place, so expect to see more Twitch personalities testing out the alternatives. View the full article

We've known for a little while that Nexon is working on a new looter-shooter called The First Descendant that charges players with protecting humanity from an onslaught of alien invaders backed by very big bosses. It's a classic, some might say overly familiar, tale of super-powered good against relentless evil from space, and it's headed to its first beta test in October. By way of celebration the publisher has also put out a new trailer, which you can watch above. The First Descendant was actually announced more than a year ago, and it got its first teaser in September 2021, under the working title of Project Magnum. The official title was announced in July of this year, and the Steam page describes it thusly: The First Descendant is a free third-person cooperative action RPG shooter featuring high-quality graphics. Experience the fun of strategic boss fights through 4-player co-op and various unique characters, exciting gunplay, and looting. A variety of equipment is necessary for growth, and you can obtain them through clearing scenario missions within the game or in the World Missions where cooperation is crucial and battles with huge bosses. Narratively, it doesn't sound like Nexon is breaking too much new ground here. As "Descendants," players will battle Karel and his army of alien invaders, who for reasons currently unclear are bent on either subjugating or annihilating (that's also unclear) the Ingris Continent, which is the last bastion of humanity. Fortunately, there's a little more depth on the mechanical side. The First Descendant will support different character classes with unique skill sets, combos, weapons, and skin options, and feature battles against "huge boss monsters with different appearances and abilities." Squads of up to four players can team up for co-op action, and while there's no mention of PvP I'd be surprised if that's not in there somewhere too. Interestingly, the beta announcement implies that The First Descendant will feature predefined characters rather than completely DIY heroes: The trailer features Lepic (a versatile fighter with powerful guns built into his arm), Viessa (a debuffer who freezes enemies by controlling cold air), Bunny (super-quick nuke with electrical attacks), and Ajax (the tank with space-warping skills), and Nexon said that "more dynamic action can also be seen through additional characters with unique skill sets." Image 1 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 2 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 3 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 4 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 5 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 6 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 7 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 8 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 9 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 10 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 11 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 12 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 13 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 14 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 15 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 16 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 17 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 18 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 19 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 20 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 21 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 22 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 23 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 24 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 25 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 26 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 27 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 28 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 29 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 30 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 31 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 32 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 33 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 34 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 35 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 36 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 37 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 38 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 39 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon)Image 40 of 40 (Image credit: Nexon) To my eyes the trailer is competent but not much more than that, and the very big question for Nexon is how (or whether) The First Descendant will find a niche in the looter-shooter ecosystem. The space is dominated by Destiny 2 and to a lesser extent Warframe, and there just doesn't seem to be room for much else. The most recent contender, Outriders, is still chugging along but not likely to usurp Bungie's throne, and we're not even going to talk about what happened with Anthem. We'll get a closer look at The First Descendant soon enough. A more detailed reveal will take place this week at Gamescom, which runs August 24-28, and a beta test is set to run October 20-26 on Steam—access requests are open now on Steam. View the full article

I wasn't prepared for Immortal Empires. After loading up the game I spent a good 15 minutes paralysed with indecision, scrolling through factions and legendary lords, looking at new start positions and mechanics, unable to decide who I should sample first. In the end I opted for one of my favourite campaigns from Mortal Empires: Lokhir Fellhart. Just like the pirates of the Vampire Coast, Fellhart has a fun playstyle centred around sacking settlements and getting super low upkeep armies from his Black Arks. It occured to me that these floating fortresses might be a great way to see as much of the world as possible. Since Lokhir has traded the humid jungles of Lustria for a new start position on the coastline of Cathay, I was also eager to see how CA had improved the overly compact region from the Realms of Chaos campaign. Truth be told, I was pretty pleased. Cathay is no longer a box with one route of expansion, but a region almost as expansive as the Empire, filled with winding rivers and ports, wood elves, vampire pirates and other undead pests. It was the perfect playground for Lokhir, and as I blazed a trail of destruction along the coast, I sent my Black Arks inland via the rivers to snatch up even more ports. Fellhart gets a new Black Ark for every major port settlement he takes, so by the time I'd wiped out Nakai, Zhao Ming, Miao Ying, and taken most of Cathay by turn 100-ish, I had nine fully upgraded super ships waiting off the coast. Black Arks in Mortal Empires used to require growth points to construct any kind of building and that meant it took a long while to get their best recruitment and upkeep reductions. In Immortal Empires, however, you only need growth for the primary building chain, and that let me upgrade them so fast they effectively made settlement-based recruitment obsolete. (Image credit: Creative Assembly) I was also delighted to discover that Black Ark AoE effects seem to stack. For example, I constructed an Arena building in an ark that buffs recruit rank by three for all armies in the ark's AoE, but if I put these in all my Black Arks, every unit I recruited was immediately max rank. This got me scheming: the Prison Wing building increases post-battle and settlement sacking income by 60% in the same AoE, but if that stacks for every ark, I could potentially reach some terrifying numbers. I had to experiment, so I sent my fleet through the sea lanes to the Eastern High Elf colonies, south of the Dark Lands. When I parked my arks around the Tower of the Sun and sacked it for 140,000 gold, I realised all was not well, and immediately decided to ride this train for every coin I could get. I'd only seen a small fraction of the major port settlements in Immortal Empires, but if I could get a Black Ark from a decent number, while also increasing sacking income by 60% for each, I could potentially create the ultimate sack. I set my sights on Altdorf as a final goal and embarked on my port-eating cruise. It was shortly after this that the dwarf apocalypse occurred; every dawi in the world decided to gang up on me, which is a little unfair considering I hadn't met a single dwarf faction in Cathay. Maybe someone made a typo in the Great Book of Grudges? Either way, as I traversed the seas, dwarf armies started to gather and nibble at the heels of my mega-fleet. First, I went north to the Dragon Isles and wiped out Ku'gath, then beelined along the coast of the Southlands and around the cape, sacking the Fortress of Dawn, Zlatlan, and Sudenberg. It was here that I slipped up and lost a couple of arks to crafty Settra, but I realised that he'd actually helped me. My fleet had become a hydra: kill one ark and I could immediately replace it with another, while also re-recruiting the lost ark once it was fixed up, effectively doubling my gains. How does that work in regards to Black Ark capacity? I've no clue. Image 1 of 4 Great Turtle Isle (Image credit: Creative Assembly)Image 2 of 4 The Blood Hall (Image credit: Creative Assembly)Image 3 of 4 The Awakening (Image credit: Creative Assembly)Image 4 of 4 Galleon's Graveyard (Image credit: Creative Assembly) When I hit the sunny shores of Lustria, the income was getting tasty. I sacked Great Turtle Isle and Blood Hall (sorry Rakarth!), Altar of the Horned Rat, and The Awakening, each for amounts between 200-250,000 gold. By the time I hit turn 230, I arrived at Galleon's Graveyard with 23 Black Arks in-tow and proceeded to sack it for 420,000 gold. By this stage my fleet was an unstoppable island of terror, but I was still somewhat perturbed by the number of doomstacks chasing me. The dwarfen throng had been following me for around 90 turns at this point; a true testament to dawi stubbornness. Whenever I stopped I made a giant cluster of Black Arks to discourage attack, not that this fully prevented them from doom-yeeting armies at me. For my last leg, I pinballed between the coasts of Bretonnia and Ulthuan, snatching up a few final arks in preparation for my run down the river Reik. Should I have considered the logistical nightmare of getting 25 Black Arks down a small river? Perhaps. It was slow progress, and worse, some dwarfs decided to cut across land and meet me on the other side. Not that it helped them of course. I had 5,000,000 gold in my treasury, and enough recruitment capacity in my fleet to create eight max rank armies every single turn, so I just started doing that and leaving them in my wake like sea mines. It bought me plenty of time to gather around Altdorf for the final sack. Image 1 of 4 Black Arks trying to get down the river Reik (Image credit: Creative Assembly)Image 2 of 4 Dward doomstacks chasing me (Image credit: Creative Assembly)Image 3 of 4 My Black Ark defense island (Image credit: Creative Assembly )Image 4 of 4 Sacking Altdorf (Image credit: Creative Assembly) In the end Altdorf went for 426,000 gold, plus 44,000 post-battle income, and I felt that was a good stopping point. There's only so much sacking a person can take. Are Black Arks OP now? Maybe. But is that the most fun I've had with a Total War campaign in like a year? You bet. Immortal Empires in its current state is a bit buggy and unbalanced, but I think that also makes it a fun time to mess around when stuff like this is possible. Campaign balance is overrated in a trilogy as over-the-top and experimental as this. You better believe I'm going to keep building my mega-fleet and head to Lothern; when I can be bothered reversing all those arks back up the river, that is. 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If you don't own World of Warcraft's Shadowlands expansion, you can get it free for the next few weeks—as well as a level 50 character boost—though you'll need to claim it by September 5. Regardless of how you feel about Shadowlands—I actually think Season 4 is pretty great—the next expansion, Dragonflight isn't far off. If you're planning on returning to Azeroth for the pre-patch to check out the new Drakthyr, this is a handy way to get access to the current endgame activities so you can test out the new class in raids, dungeons, or even Torghast. And if you were thinking of leveling a new character, the character boost can help with that too. Naturally, there are a couple of stipulations. The first one might seem obvious but you can't already own Shadowlands—that applies to any WoW accounts linked to your Battle.net. So if you have, say, a second account for auctioning or crafting, you can't claim a free Shadowlands upgrade if you already have the current expansion on your main WoW account. You'll also need to have any previous expansion license attached to the account you want to upgrade. If you're eligible to claim a free copy of Shadowlands, you should find a "gift icon" in the top-right corner of the Battle.net desktop app. For more details, check out the post on the official site. This offer is available now and will run until September 5. View the full article

The Destiny 2 showcase is one of the most important recurring events for the game, reflecting on the past year, but also revealing exciting new details about the upcoming expansion and seasons. As it was with The Witch Queen showcase, we can expect new information about the Lightfall expansion's new subclass and destination due next year, as well as a content roadmap of sorts, laying out the seasons from now until then. This showcase is a little special, though, as it will also show off the new Arc 3.0 subclasses, as well as providing details about Season 18, which is set to launch right after the livestream ends. Below you can find where to watch the show for yourself and what time to tune in for all of the reveals. Destiny 2 showcase: Where to watch You can watch the Destiny 2 showcase on the official Bungie Twitch or YouTube channels. There will be a pre-show that starts an hour earlier at around 4 pm BST/ 12 am ET/ 9 am PT, and you can check out when the actual showcase begins below: UK: 5:00 pm BSTEurope: 6:00 pm CESTUS East Coast: 12:00 am EDTUS West Coast: 9:00 am PDT As with the showcase for Witch Queen, this will likely feature community-related stories about Destiny 2 and just generally chatting with developers at Bungie about where the game is currently at. If the leaks are anything to go by, the showcase should feature lots of info in regards to the Lightfall expansion that's due next year, as well as details for the upcoming season 18, the new Arc 3.0 subclasses, and a confirmation of the raid that's set to return on August 26th, though it's basically confirmed to be King's Fall. View the full article

Two of the best racing sims are being delisted from Steam. Both Project Cars 1 and 2 are going to be removed from Valve's storefront in the coming months due the expiration of various licences and, boy, is that really sad for both the team at Slightly Mad as well as fans of the series. A message was posted on Twitter to announce the delistings and it mentioned that both car and track licences are the cause of the change. Though sad, there is a small silver lining in that the game will still be available to play, including the multiplayer, as long as you already own the game before it disappears. "Due to expiring car and track licenses, both Project Cars and Project Cars 2 will be delisted from sale in the coming months," the tweet reads. "The games remain fully playable, and our players will still be able to enjoy all the game features, including multiplayer. We will remove Project Cars from sale on October 3rd and Project Cars 2 on September 21st. We remain focused on making the best sim racing titles, and as mentioned previously, we look forward to sharing more on the next Slightly Mad project when the time is right." An update from the Slightly Mad Team on #ProjectCARS and #ProjectCARS2. pic.twitter.com/VtWEow5jaoAugust 22, 2022 See more It's a shame they're being delisted, as it is with any game. Licences running out ruin all our fun. We reviewed both of the first and second Project Cars games very well here at PC Gamer giving them an 83 and 89 respectively. If you're interested in checking them out the games are still available Steam for the moment, and you can grab the first game for £4 thanks to a discount or the second at full price for £45. Once these games are gone, however, there still is Project Cars 3 kicking about, so the entire series won't have disappeared. Though fans of the series think 2 was the better entry. And I'm sure you'll have noticed that Slightly Mad hints its next project in the message above so maybe there will be a fourth instalment soon. View the full article

There's not long to wait for Genshin Impact 3.0 to unlock in your timezone, and we'll finally get to explore the region of Sumeru. As you'd expect from any major version update, there are new bosses to overcome and a new Archon quest to complete. Events take a turn in the spotlight too, with Graven Innocence and the return of Ley Line Overflow. The main focus of the new update though is Sumeru. It's a forested area, presided over by the Dendro Archon and we'll get to wish for the first two characters powered by the new Dendro element—Tighnari and Collei—during the first phase. The existing elements haven't been neglected though as Dori, a new Electro claymore-user, will arrive during the second phase. So, if you're excited to start exploring, here's when you can expect Genshin Impact 3.0 to unlock in your timezone. Genshin Impact 3.0 unlock time As with every Genshin Impact update, maintenance will start around five hours before the new version is due to go live so you won't be able to play during that time. You'll get Primogems as compensation though, so don't forget to claim them from your in-game mail when you log in. Here are the Genshin Impact 3.0 unlock times: Los Angeles: 8 pm PT (Aug 23)New York: 11 pm ET (Aug 23)London: 4 am BST (Aug 24)Paris: 5 am CEST (Aug 24) You can pre-install it now to save time when the update goes live, and you'll need around 9GB of space. Just open the launcher and hit the download icon next to the launch button. See you in Sumeru! View the full article

In advance of the upcoming Destiny 2 showcase later on today, lots of Lightfall images have surfaced via the Destiny 2 leaks discord. Before we start, though, if you don't want to see any spoilers for Lightfall or Season 18, which also starts later today, you should probably leave now. Most notably, the supposed leaks include Neptune, a new destination that honestly couldn't look more cyberpunk. There's also a glimpse at what looks like the next subclass, with the guardians wreathed in various forms of green energy. Rumours about "Strand", which is thought to be Destiny 2's second darkness subclass after Stasis, have been knocking around for a some time. It now seems certain to be revealed in today's Showcase. What's less clear is whether Strand will lean into the 'poison' effect used already in Destiny 2 by the exotic weapons Osteo Striga and Thorn, as had been predicted by many players. According to the more recent leaks, the subclass will be heavily movement based. If we are heading to the watery planet of Neptune in Lightfall, according to the leaks it will be to try and stop (big bad) The Witness from stealing a powerful artifact from a previously unseen alien race. Either Calus, or a new disciple similar to Rhulk, judging from the leaked key art, seem to be in command of the Witness's forces. The rumours also suggest that these new friendly aliens teach the guardians the new subclass to help them in the fight. The introduction of a whole new alien race would be pretty wild, since it'd be the first proper new faction since the introduction of the Scorn in Forsaken back in 2018. An Epic Games crossover is also reportedly on the cards, with three sets of armor modelled after Warlocks, Titans, and Hunters coming to Fortnite. The partnership will also feature in Destiny 2 as well, with possible emblems or Eververse sets. Safe to say that talk of the game also becoming available on the Epic Games Store is also correct. Lastly, the leaks also covered elements of Season 18, which kicks off with the weekly reset today. The new season is apparently called Season of the Plunder and is pirate-themed. It'll have us fighting Fallen and boarding their Ketch ships to relieve them of valuables. Season 18 also sees the release of Arc 3.0, and since Fallen mainly use arc weapons, it would make sense that Bungie would want the best possible conditions to show off the new subclass. Exotics like Riskrunner are likely to see a resurgence in use, and since this offers arc damage resistance, it'll be perfect in a Fallen-dominated season. King's Fall was previously rumoured to be the returning raid from the original game, and again a leaked image appears to confirm this. Safe to say this will be the raid that fireteams will be plunging into on Friday, August 26. Remember, for now this is all unconfirmed, but we'll be getting exact details as part of the Destiny 2 showcase later today. The official stream starts at 5pm BST (12am EDT, 9am PDT, 6pm CEST) on the official Bungie Twitch and YouTube channels, but there will also be an hour long pre-show before. View the full article

Motion blur is a complex beast; easy to recognise but often much harder to diagnose. For that reason, and perhaps a lack of any proper standardisation so far, VESA has released a new motion blur compliance specification called ClearMR. This new standard and logo will begin appearing on gaming monitors, TVs, and other displays in the near future, and will signify whether a screen has been put through its paces for ClearMR certification and how it performed—measured by a new metric called Clear Motion Ratio (CMR). CMR is a rating of a display's blue performance based on a ratio of clear pixels versus blurry pixels as a percentage. For example, a display with a CMR range between 6,500 and 7,500 means it delivered 65–75 times more clear pixels than blurry pixels. For VESA's standard, CMR replaces the more commonly featured Motion Picture Response Time (MPRT) metric, which along with other metrics "do not accurately reflect the true nature of blur." The CMR performance of a screen decides its ClearMR tier: ClearMR tiers go up by increments of 1000, from ClearMR 3000 to ClearMR 9000. These numbers don't mean very much without a point of reference. However, VESA says each tier offers a "visually distinguishable change in clarity, with higher CMR numbers indicating higher image quality and less blur." (Image credit: VESA) Screen queens (Image credit: Future)Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels for your PC Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick screens Best 4K monitor for gaming: When only high-res will do Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K PC gaming LG has already certified the LG UltraGear 48GQ900, 32GQ850 and 27GP850 gaming monitors, while Samsung has put its latest OLED display through its paces for certification. The idea being that rather than some loosely defined specification posted on the specs sheet for a monitor, this standard will better serve customers. It's similar then to another standard from VESA, DisplayHDR, which aims to deliver a more thoroughly tested brightness rating and certification for high dynamic range monitors. I'd say it has helped simplify HDR standards for gaming monitors, as prior to DisplayHDR it really was a mess of manufacturer-specific ratings. Though the DisplayHDR 400 standard does perhaps get bandied around as true HDR a bit too often, when it's often nothing more spectacular than your modern SDR display. Hopefully ClearMR will be just as handy anyways—anything to make buying a gaming monitor less of a hassle. View the full article

Intel has debunked the rumours of a Meteor Lake delay, once more asserting a 2023 release for its grand new chiplet-esque CPU design. With a preview ahead of its Hot Chips presentation today, Intel has described some more detail of its upcoming Meteor Lake processor design, laying to rest the rumours that it might not launch until 2024. Meteor Lake is the next next-gen chip from Intel, a whole new 3D chiplet design to follow the more traditional Raptor Lake release in the next couple months. Though one of the interesting things to note about Meteor Lake is that it's mostly being manufactured by TSMC, not Intel itself. Meteor Lake processors will be made of four discrete chips (Intel calls them tiles), brought together with through silicon vias (TSVs) connecting them to a base die. These will be the main compute tile, the graphics tile, the SoC tile, and the I/O tile. Intel is using its 3D Foveros chip-stacking packaging tech to connect them through that base silicon slice. There was an initial delay to the mass production of its Intel 4 (nominally 7nm) process from 2022 to the start of 2023—which is going to be the lithography used for the Meteor Lake compute tile—and then Trendforce reported that orders for the 3nm TSMC process it claimed to be using for the GPU tile had been cut from Intel's TSMC pre-order. Intel's Boyd Phelps is reported by PC Watch (via Benchlife) as saying "Meteor Lake is on schedule" at a media roundtable ahead of Hot Chips, presumably in reference to these Trendforce rumours. Back in February Intel had said it was using an external N3 process for Meteor Lake and subsequently Arrow Lake, it is now being suggested that it's using a TSMC N5 node for Meteor Lake's graphics. That would explain why a shift in N3 orders hasn't affected the timing for Meteor Lake's release, and if there's one thing Intel needs to do with its processors it's just keep them coming on time. Image 1 of 3 (Image credit: Intel)Image 2 of 3 (Image credit: Intel)Image 3 of 3 (Image credit: Intel) Alongside a rumoured N5 lithography for its GPU tile, it is also said to be using a TSMC N6 process for the I/O and SoC tiles on the chip. With Intel manufacturing the 7nm compute tile and the 22nm base die for the packaging, and TSMC creating a further three tiles, you've got a contract manufacturer making the majority of core components for an Intel chip. That's potentially a smart move by Intel, allowing it to separate out the manufacturing demands, and focus on the stuff it does really well, namely the compute component. Intel is set for a more detailed Meteor Lake presentation at Hot Chips 34 today, so fingers crossed we'll get some more juicy looks at Intel's first consumer chiplet processor. (Image credit: Intel) Looking further ahead, Intel says it will start to use the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) standard for its processor designs in the latter half of the decade. "We plan to use UCIe in later products than Arrow Lake," says Phelps. That would put the efficiency focused Lunar Lake potentially as the first to use the new standard. UCIe is being worked on by Intel, AMD, Arm, Microsoft, Google, TSMC, and many others, after Intel donated the open standard to the consortium as a whole, and claims that such an open chiplet ecosystem could drive down costs, deliver higher performance, and lower power. Who wouldn't want that? View the full article

Total War: Warhammer 3 - Immortal Empires is almost here and will finally unite the campaign maps from the entire trilogy. Immortal Empires is technically still in beta—don't worry though, anyone can play—so you can expect to see some balance changes taking place over time. The collision of all three games in Immortal Empires makes for a vast amount of possibilities, though you'll need to own the DLCs to access every race and faction available. The new campaign has its own new features too such as the "Sea Lanes" mechanic, various updated playstyles for some of the older factions, and new "lore-inspired victory conditions". Here is the Total War: Warhammer 3 - Immortal Empires release time, broken down by timezone, so you can hop in as soon as it launches. Immortal Empires release time Total War: Warhammer 3 - Immortal Empires arrives on August 23, alongside Update 2.0. If you're keen to start building your empire, here's when you can expect to play in your timezone: Seattle: 7 am PTNew York: 10 am ETLondon: 3 pm BSTBerlin: 4 pm CESTSingapore: 10 pm SGT You'll need to have Total War: Warhammer 3 installed to access Immortal Empires and the two combined require just over a 100GB download. You can find the answers to any other burning questions over on the official site. View the full article