Following the release of The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020, developer Naughty Dog had plans to launch a standalone multiplayer game. Prior to the base game's PS4 debut, the developer confirmed this multiplayer aspect would not be released alongside Part 2, as had been expected.

Back in 2019, Naughty Dog explained its efforts to evolve The Last of Us Part 1's multiplayer Factions mode for the sequel "grew beyond an additional mode that could be included with our enormous single player campaign" and therefore it would release separately.

The project then hit a number of stumbling blocks, with Naughty Dog stating more time was required as recently as May 2023. But, despite this, the studio maintained the game was coming up until last December, when The Last of Us' standalone multiplayer project was ultimately cancelled.

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Rockstar Games yet-to-be-announced PC version of Red Dead Redemption has been detailed, bizarrely, via the PlayStation Store page for game.

As shown in the screenshots and video below taken by Eurogamer this morning, the description as it was shortly after 8am UK time today stated players were "now" able to play Red Dead Redemption on PC "for the first time ever".

In addition, it detailed some PC specific features. "Featuring the complete single-player experiences of both games, including bonus content from the Game of the Year Edition, Red Dead Redemption features all of the 2023 console version upgrades plus PC specific enhancements including support for increased resolutions and framerates, multiple displays, and other accessories, plus spatial surround sound," the sales page read.

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Voice actress Rachael Lillis, known to millions as the English voice of Misty and Jessie in the Pokémon anime series, has died aged 55.

Lillis passed away on Saturday in Los Angeles, The New York Times reported, following a breast cancer diagnosis earlier this year.

Tributes have poured from fellow voice actors and fans alike, including from her fellow Pokémon co-stars Veronica Taylor, who voiced Ash, and Eric Stuart, who voiced Brock and James.

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Shadows of Doubt, the procedurally generated first-person detective sim from developer ColePowered Games, is leaving Steam early access on 26th September, and it's getting a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S release on the same day.

Shadows of Doubt entered Steam early access last April, challenging players - in the role of a private investigator - to snoop and sleuth their way around a noir-ish open-world sci-fi city, aiming to complete enough investigations that they're able to hang up their trilby and retire.

It's the procedural generation at the heart of the game that makes all it so nifty, though; everything - from the simulated city and the daily routines of its citizens to the murders and odd jobs players can tackle - is different each playthrough. And it's coupled with an immersive-sim-like level of freedom that lets players hack, lock-pick, shimmy, snoop, explore, break-and-enter, interrogate, and more in order to solve its unscripted cases.

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Following Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl's recent delay to November, developer GSC Game World has rewarded patient fans with a new 35-minute deep dive into the post-apocalyptic horror shooter sequel - showcasing a mission across its bleak, beautiful open-world.

Stalker 2's "huge" world - officially known as the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone - consists of 20 regions, each with its own residents, anomalies, and nature. It's also said to feature few barriers, meaning players are free explore locations as they choose - with the goal being to "give the feeling of freedom, to give the feeling of loneliness, to give the feeling of anxiety".

While GSC's deep dive offers a good look at Stalker 2's strikingly varied enviromental work, the bulk of it is focused on the swamp - a formerly inhabited region, free of Stalkers but home to many other dangers, that plays host to a quest in which players must disable deadly, repurposed psi-beacons in order to reach the Clear Sky base.

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Terminator: Survivors, the open-world Terminator game from Rims Racing developer Nacon Studio Milan, has been delayed, with publisher Nacon having opted to move its previously announced Steam early access launch from this October until sometime in 2025.

Terminator: Survivors was teased back in 2022, but it wasn't until this February that Nacon gave it a name and shared first details. It sees players, cast as the titular survivors of humanity's near-extinction on Judgment Day, attempting to "reestablish some semblance of society in a world that seems hell-bent on eliminating... the last vestiges of mankind."

More specifically, players - either working solo or co-operatively with up to three friends - must roam Terminator: Survivors' hazardous post-apocalyptic open-world in search of materials, resources, information, and other survivors as they set about establishing a base of operations - all while fending off Skynet's machines and rival factions hunting for the same resources.

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John Carpenter's seminal horror movie franchise Halloween is getting two new video game adaptations from Boss Team Games, the publisher behind 2022's Evil Dead: The Game.

That's according to IGN, which says both titles will be based on Carpenter's original 1978 Halloween movie, which saw Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode taking on masked serial killer Michael Myers. Specifics are scarce, but the games will reportedly enable players to "relive moments from the film and play as classic characters".

The projects - which will be the first proper video game adaptations of Halloween since it appeared on the Atari 2600 back in 1983 - are being developed in conjunction with the franchise's producers, and Carpenter is said to be "intimately involved" in one of the titles.

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Ubisoft is set to release the latest entry in its long running Assassin's Creed series in a few months, and ahead of this has suggested future games will see a longer development time.

When Assassin's Creed Shadows launches this November, it will have been in development for four years. This will mark the longest development period for the series to date, coming in at a year longer than that of previous series tentpole Assassin's Creed Valhalla (which released in 2020).

However, according to Shadows' lead producer Karl Onnée, four years is "the right balance to go from conception to production and get the feedback necessary to adapt" an Assassin's Creed game.

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In this week's DF Direct, the team discusses a range of topics but it's the subject of the Ryzen 9000/Zen 5 CPU reviews that made the biggest impression on me. Actually, it was a question raised by one of our supporters, asking about discrepancies in results between various outlets. We saw some reasonable, if modest, improvements comparing the new Ryzen 7 9700X against the last-gen 7700X, while others only saw fractional improvements: two to three percent is barely outside the margin of error in CPU-bound scenarios. So why isn't there the same kind of consensus we more typically see in GPU reviews?

All of this relates to how tricky it is to get the measure of CPU performance in gaming - but the simple answer is that in a world where in-built game benchmarks only rarely stress the CPU, results will vary drastically based on the actual material being benched. Even the same game tested with the same components on identical settings can produce very, very different results - and this speaks to the diversity of tasks the processor is asked to tackle.

Going back in time here, I remember benchmarking The Witcher 3 using the Core i3 4130 up against AMD's price-equivalent six-core FX-6300. In cutscenes and the open world, the i3 was faster. However, in the dense city of Novigrad, the FX-6300 ran a lot faster. So, which processor is actually faster? It all depends on what you test, but I'd say that whichever scene is more demanding overall - which area tanks frame-rate hardest - should be the focus of testing - and that's the Novigrad run. However, both sets of data are valid as they both represent processor performance and both benchmarks together may illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of different CPUs. The question is, how deep do you want to go?

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Deadlock - a game which is yet to actually be announced in any official way, shape or form - had a concurrent player peak of over 16,000 this weekend.

At the time of writing, the game's peak is sitting at 16,947 players on Steam, with 4,714 people playing it at this very moment in time.

I tried to install it myself via a little tab on SteamDB just now, but was met with the message: "An error occurred while launching this game: Game configuration unavailable." I was then taken back to the Steam app's main page.

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Just because a brand does one thing well, doesn't mean they can waltz into another sector and do just as well, right? Noctua may be one of the rare exceptions, as the Austrian fan makers have adapted one of their legendary high performance PC fans into a genuinely decent desk fan following years of teases and rumours.

The humble desk fan was first mentioned six years ago at Computex, and garnered a lot of attention at the trade show for being such a left-field product. The proposed launch date of late 2021 came and went, so people started 3D-printing their own takes on the concept, integrating Noctua fans into desk-friendly chassis to get a sense of what the concept might look like if it was ever released. After all, if Noctua fans are known for being quiet yet powerful, surely the human face could benefit just as much as power-hungry PC components?

Fast forward to May 2024, and Noctua finally unveiled their Home series of products, which includes all manner of cooling options, including hubs, adapters and two types of fans. One is designed for cooling everything from consoles to AV receivers, while the other is designed for cooling people - and that's the one we have in for review.

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PUBG publisher Krafton has acquired developer Tango Gameworks and the rights to Hi-Fi Rush, marking the company's first "significant investment" in the Japanese video game market.

Tango Gameworks, which is also known for the likes of the Evil Within series, was founded by Shinji Mikami in 2010. In 2012, Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media purchased Tango, before it was then itself acquired by Microsoft years later.

Under Microsoft, Tango surprise launched Hi-Fi Rush in 2023 to wide acclaim, with the rhythm action release becoming a highlight in the Xbox Series X/S catalogue. Our Ed called the Xbox console exclusive both "vibrant and self-assured" in Eurogamer's own Hi-Fi Rush review.

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As Sega prepares for remaster Sonic X Shadow Generations' release in October, the original Sonic Generations game is being withdrawn from sale as a "standalone title".

From 9th September onwards, the 2011 game will only be available "via bundles of other iconic Sonic titles on Steam and Xbox".

"We're excited to share Sonic X Shadow Generations with you this October and see a new generation cherish this game as much as we do!" the developer/publisher said on its X account just before the weekend.

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The Borderlands movie adaptation generated just $4m across 3125 locations on its opening day.

As reported by Variety, even with boosted ticket sales from Imax and "other premium large-format auditoriums", it seems its Hollywood cast isn't enough of a draw for the $115m production.

Variety points out that distributor Lionsgate has "financially shielded itself" and recouped 60 percent of its production costs through international pre-sales, but right now the film has the dubious honour of boasting the worst critical reviews of any movie released this summer.

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Dark Souls 2 is an often overlooked entry in the Souls series, despite just how unique it was in experimenting with its mechanics and atmosphere back in 2014. In being sandwiched between the now iconic original Dark Souls, and developer FromSoftware's later efforts like Bloodborne, it's at times forgotten - thought of as an experiment, a tangent that wasn't followed up on. Even so, the modding community around Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin is blossoming on PC right now, and among the most remarkable mod offerings for the game is the Dark Souls 2 Lighting Engine.

Essentially, Lighting Engine is a replacement of the game's original engine, allowing major changes to its visuals, and offers a toolbox of sorts for others in the modding community to go much further. At its core, installing the Lighting Engine mod adds new anti-aliasing options like Nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR - replacing the FXAA post processing of the official release. We get lighting upgrades, volumetric fog, vastly improved shadows, ground truth ambient occlusion, and it even re-arranges foliage, trees and terrain with new meshes. This is just scratching the surface, with more features that are work in progress. It's a simple one to install too: go to Nexus Mods, download, unpack, and replace the shader folder next to the Darksouls 2.exe with the new one - along with several other files - and you're good to go. From here, the upgrades are transformative in spots like Forest of the Fallen Giants, and No Man's Wharf.

All of which raises the question: is this the Dark Souls 2 remaster that we've needed all these years? Of course, Dark Souls 2 has technically already received a remaster of sorts with the Scholar of the First Sin update in 2015 - a year after its initial release on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. The idea was to upgrade it from DX9 to DX11 with improved lighting, textures, enemy placement, bug fixes, while bundling in the first three DLC expansions. However, despite this suite of upgrades, Scholar of the First Sin still falls short by modern standards. Certainly, it doesn't live up to the captivating early trailer of Dark Souls 2: the E3 2013 reveal where interplay between light and shadow was a major mechanic of play, where wind physics and volumetric effects played a bigger role. All of this was ultimately dialled back in the final release, and failed to make the grade in Scholar of the First Sin as well. Ten years on, then, it's impressive to see at least some of that early promise realised by an advanced mod like Lighting Engine, as devised by a fan of the game.

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Fallout: London is the "fastest-redeemed" game of all time on GOG.

The fan-made mod - which is being distributed for free via GOG's platform, hence why the digital games distributor can't use terms like "fastest-selling" - was redeemed more than 500,000 times in its first 24 hours.

"The initial release of Fallout: London quickly turned out to be an incredible success - and a prime example of how work of passion and creativity can bring in a plethora of new, exciting ways to enjoy a game," GOG said.

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While we may have already known that Geralt will not be the focus of CD Projekt Red's next The Witcher game, voice actor Doug Cockle has confirmed he'll at least be reprising the role in The Witcher 4.

In an interview in which Cockle tries to remember his most iconic lines, the voice of Geralt of Rivia confirmed that Geralt will be "part of the [next] game", but the storyline will "not be about him this time".

"Witcher 4 has been announced," he teased (thanks, PC Gamer) halfway through his famous lines test. "I can't say anything about it.

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Fortnite will host another Marvel-focused season, this time centering on Doctor Doom, accompanied by yet more superhero faces for Epic Games' evergreen battle royale.

Details of Fortnite's next season, named Fortnite x Marvel: Absolute Doom, were announced this morning during Disney's D23 fan event, and livestreamed in Fortnite itself.

Marvel boss Kevin Feige was joined on stage by Star Wars legend Dave Filoni and Pixar head honcho Pete Doctor, who additionally detailed a treasure trove of Disney franchises also set to get crossovers in Fortnite over the coming months, as Epic Games' integration with the Mouse House deepens.

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It looks like PlayStation is introducing user reviews on the PS Store.

In a thread entitled "When did PlayStation start allowing written reviews?", an eagle-eyed PS5 owner noted on the PlayStation subreddit that the company was inviting user reviews for a select number of games.

Whilst fans have long been able to rate games from zero to five stars out of five, this is the first time players have been invited to leave a written review.

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Brace yourself, Call of Duty fans - it seems the cinematics from Black Ops 6's single-player campaign have leaked online.

Just like last week, when multiplayer images leaked, the video was hit with copyright claims from Activision within hours, intimating that it's authentic.

According to InsiderGaming, the cutscenes - which did not have audible sound - were "extracted from the beta build of Black Ops 6", after some players managed to access the beta ahead of its formal release via jailbroken PS4 consoles.

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Team Folon – the volunteer squad of developers who have released the ambitious Fallout 4 mod, Fallout London – is set to launch itself as a new indie studio.

Talking to the BBC (via PCGN), Folon's project lead, Dean Carter, admitted that "as much as I love the fact that this is a free project - that we can offer this thing for free for all the community - free doesn't pay our bills".

"What has been great for us is that a lot of people who have really enjoyed [Fallout London] have donated to us, and we're channelling that into Team Folon, which is what we're going to be moving into," Carter said.

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Take-Two Interactive boss Strauss Zelnick said the company is not tempted to put its game on subscription services like Xbox Game Pass on day one because "our decisions are rational".

Talking to our sister site GamesIndustry.biz, Zelnick said that whilst he accepted "offering a frontline title with a premium price in a subscription service, day and date, will push consumers to that subscription service for at least a period of time", "it won't affect [Take-Two's] decisions [not to offer AAA games on subscription services on day one]".

With "15 immersive core" games on Take-Two's books for 2026 and 2027 - one of which is GTA 6, of course - as well as one indie, five mobile games, and three remasters, Zelnick says it's his company's "job to outperform the industry, and the one way to do that is to generate big hits, and I think we have all the necessary elements to deliver that."

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I was born in the UK, and I've lived all my life here, but I've never quite been able to reconcile myself with the weather.

Most of the year passes in a grey, eternally chilly manner, often paying host to a weak drizzle of rain. The sun is simply known as a stranger in a strange land that visits during summer, but there are no guarantees of that either. I wake up, day after day, to an ashen tone outside the window, and I try to keep myself warm by bundling up under a duvet that I tug up to my chin. Even when it's warm inside, it's still miserable to look out at the grey world through that window, and it gets particularly grim in Autumn, when darkness arrives as early as five o'clock in the afternoon, and soggy leaves and mud cover pavements.

When we do get real heat and sunshine, however, the feeling is almost indescribable. Life is suddenly more exciting, the outside world is something to be savoured instead of avoided. I feel as if my body is somehow deriving power, Superman-like, from the Sun. After one particularly unpleasant visit to the dentist last summer I remember walking home and basking in the sunlight and the heat that blanketed my skin. It felt genuinely therapeutic. Unlike Autumn - or any other season for that matter - I could walk down a street in the evening and it still be light and warm. Weather can be misleading here, mind. I distinctly remember an unusual sunny day where I was so enthused to head outside due to the weather that I started playing the cheerful 'Here Comes the Sun' by The Beatles while I prepared to leave the house. Just as I was ready, the rain started. There Goes the Sun.

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Following yesterday's "enhanced" Doom 1 & 2 release, developer id Software has unveiled another treat for Doom fans as this weekend's QuakeCon celebrations continue: official mod support for Doom Eternal on PC, which arrives in the form of a new mod browser and the release of its idStudio mod creation tools on Steam.

By installing Doom Eternal's new Update 6.66 Rev 3 beta, players can browse, download, and play mods via the new PC Mod Preview. Currently, mod support is only available on Steam (it's coming to the Microsoft Store on PC "soon"), and it first requires players to opt-in.

To do so, right-click on Doom Eternal within your Steam library and select "Properties". From there, navigate to the "Betas" tab, select "pc-mod-preview" from the drop-down menu, confirm your choice, then wait for the new update to install.

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Remedy Entertainment has released its latest half-year financial report, detailing progress on some of its most anticipated titles - with its Max Payne 1 & 2 remake confirmed to have entered full production, while "important" Control 2 features are now in "playable form".

Remedy confirmed it was remaking cult-classic slo-mo shooters Max Payne 1 & 2 back in 2022 as part of a collaboration with Rockstar, and the studio has sporadically offered updates since then. Last October brought the news the project had entered "production readiness", and things are now a further step closer to release as the game moves to "full production".

More specifically, Remedy says the development team "has been working towards developing the game to an early functional state from beginning to end."

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I always feel a little icky when I say I'm a fan of reality TV. It's no doubt a pop-culture titan, but it's also a genre that comes with a lot of problematic baggage. Exploitation, humiliation, hypersexualization, reinforced gender essentialism - the list goes on and on. The controversial topics the genre is tangled up in is - put lightly - a complete nightmare, but I can't stop watching. It's not just the drama (although I love the drama, too), I also like watching humans just be human, you know? I connect with the authenticity on screen, seeing people's emotions in their rawest form.

This duality of reality TV is endlessly fascinating. By watching these shows, what is my role as a spectator? What systems am I participating in when I tune in to watch? Self-described "thirst-person shooter" The Crush House sets out to comment on the complexity of this relationship, and successfully delivers. It's a satirical comedy that pokes fun at the shallowness and manufactured nature of the TV genre and tops it all off with a cheeky wink and peace sign gesture. It's fun, dynamic, and has something to say.

The Crush House puts you in the role of a TV producer of a 90s reality TV show who must film a cast of hotties and their drama in a bubblegum pink Malibu mansion for a ravenous audience. You need to record the cast each day – catching their intimate conversations, trivial catfights, and steamy romances on camera – while also keeping track of what viewers want to see. You have a targeted viewership to satisfy each day set by the omnipresent 'Network' and if you don't deliver those numbers the show will be cancelled, and you'll be asked to sashay away.

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Valve looks to be introducing a new filter system to help players sift out user reviews not deemed "helpful."

As spotted by a member of the Steam subreddit, Valve appears to have briefly activated a "helpfulness system" that essentially hid joke or silly reviews from view.

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Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick would like you to give the new Borderlands movie "a chance" because "a lot of people worked really hard on it".

Zelnick was asked about the film's less-than-stellar early reviews during yesterday's Q1 earnings call, and whilst he called the "look and the feel" of the movie "terrific", Zelnick told IGN its performance "wouldn't have a financial impact" on Take-Two or, indeed, the Borderlands franchise itself.

"Let's give the film a chance. A lot of people worked really hard on it," Zelnick said.

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Annapurna's delightful Stray will finally make its Switch debut later this year, on 19th November.

Whilst we knew the kitty caper was on its way to Switch courtesy of June's Nintendo Direct presentation, Annapurna confirmed the release date yesterday, which also just-so-happened to be International Cat Day. Meow.

The kitty caper - which is already available on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox - is a third-person adventure game that Eurogamer recommended when it released two years ago.

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The majority of Arcane's second and final season has been leaked online, three months ahead of its intended November launch.

Five episodes, along with many from other animated Netflix shows such as Terminator Zero, Dandadan and Ranma 1/2, have been posted on social media and are now being shared around Torrent sites.

It's a huge blow for a brilliant series that has been almost a decade in the making - six years for its initial season that debuted to universal praise in 2021, and then another three years to develop its second season this November.

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Disney Dreamlight Valley will round out its current roadmap with the addition of Princess and the Frog's Tiana later this month, a new Steam post from developer Gameloft has confirmed.

Owners of the life sim live service's paid expansion Rift in Time will also get the concluding chapter of its story, in which you can see off the evil Jafar for good.

Looking towards the tail end of this year, Disney Dreamlight Valley creative director Joshua Labelle acknowledged that updates would become lighter than usual as the team ramped up to announce its next all-new roadmap and a larger update before the end of this year.

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Redemption Road's time-travelling bring-an-assault-rifle-to-a-medieval-sword-fight shooter and strategy game, Kingmakers, isn't even out yet, but it's already secured a movie adaptation.

In an update on Steam, the studio said it was "absolutely thrilled" that the unreleased game was "making its way to the big screen" in partnership with publisher tinyBuild and Story Kitchen.

Story Kitchen - which specialises in "the adaptation of video games and other 'non-traditional' IP into film and TV" shows - was founded in 2022 by Sonic the Hedgehog producer, Dmitri M. Johnson. As well as the Sonic movie franchise, it's also involved in Dredge's adaptation, and Pheobe Waller-Bridges Tomb Raider project.

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Dragon Age developer BioWare has discussed its decision to no longer allow full control over companions during combat, in a shake-up to the series set to be seen in upcoming entry The Veilguard.

The change has been made for several reasons, game director Corinne Busche told Edge magazine (thanks, GamesRadar), most notably the additional options instead available to controlling main character Rook.

The Veilguard "is a much higher actions-per-minute game," Busche explained. "It is more technically demanding on the player. So when we tried allowing you full control of your companions as well, what we've found is it wasn't actually adding to the experience. In fact, in some ways it was detrimental, given the demanding nature of just controlling your own character."

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Dead Rising will no longer reward players for taking intimate in-game photos of female characters.

While players can still level up by taking in-game photos of gory, violent, or funny scenes - categorised as horror, brutality, and outtake shots respectively - the hitherto "erotica" category will be removed when the remaster drops next month.

As spotted by Famitsu, this means that photographing women's underwear or cleavage will no longer give you prestige points.

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Destiny developer Bungie has issued a short statement acknowledging concern over the future of its decade-old sci-fi franchise following "recent changes" at the studio.

Those "recent changes" are, of course, the sweeping layoffs that have seen 220 Bungie staff out of a job, less than a year after a further 100 employees were let go last October. A further 155 Bungie staff are also departing the studio for roles within parent company PlayStation.

In response, Bungie has now said it remains "committed" to Destiny, though details of what's next remain thin on the ground. There's also no mention of the departures of key Destiny creatives Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy, who were reportedly developing a now-cancelled Destiny spin-off named Payback.

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Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we struggle to come to terms with ending a game, we delight in a superb interactive fiction detective game, and we revisit an old zombie game that apparently refuses to die.

What have you been playing?

Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator was already sounding pretty damned spectacular, but my excitement levels are now appropriately sky-high following developer Asobo's revelation you'll be able to get out of your plane, stroll about the countryside (or anywhere else), and watch the sun set in your preferred corner of its gorgeous recreation of the world.

That's according to Microsoft Flight Simulator boss Jorge Neumann, who shared the news while chatting to PC Gamer - after reiterating just how much additional detail is going into Flight Simulator 2024's digital version of Earth compared to its already impressive predecessor.

For instance, the team has improved the look of every airport, has added glider airports, every oil rig, and every lighthouse in the world. That's alongside "hundreds of species of animals that run around", and it's also simulating "every ship on Earth" via their transponder signals - all of which, claims Neumann, you'll be able to land on. "I think we're in a new era of making games that I think are going to break new ground, from a scale and complexity perspective."

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Following a brief introduction to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's Zombies mode earlier this week, Activision and developer Treyarch have shared first gameplay details of what it's calling a "purely round-based" Zombies experience for this year's game.

Storywise, Black Ops 6's Zombies mode begins after a group of former Requiem members are liberated from the remote Terminus Island complex in the Philippine Sea by Maya Aguinaldo and Dr. William Peck. Maya is one of four playable Operators in this latest iteration of Zombies - she's joined by Grigori Weaver, Elizabeth Grey, and Mackenzie "Mac" Carver - and unfortunately for them all, Terminus Island is a bio-research station for Project Janus, and those pesky Dark Aether undead are soon up and about again, ruining everyone's day.

Terminus Island is the first of two Zombies maps so far revealed for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's launch (the other being the West Virginian town of Liberty Falls), and here, up to four players must work together to discover and complete objectives in order to escape the maximum-security complex - all while fending off waves (or "rounds") of the undead.

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UPDATE 8.39pm: Following sightings of a new "definitive" Doom 1 & 2 bundle on Steam, the same bundle how now surfaced on GOG, Epic, Switch's eShop (so far only in the US), the PlayStation Store for PS4 and PS5, and the Microsoft Store for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

All versions of the game cost $9.99 USD (around £8, with some variance depending on your platform of choice), and early reports - in lieu of an official announcement from id Software or Bethesda - are suggesting existing owners of either Doom 1 or Doom 2 will be upgraded to the new two-game bundle and its various expansion content for free.

ORIGINAL STORY 8.23pm: As id Software's annual QuakeCon gets underway today, a new - and currently unannounced - Doom 1 & 2 bundle has been sighted on Steam, promising "enhanced" versions of the classic shooters with a brand-new episode from members of id, Nightdive Studios, and Wolfenstein developer MachineGames.

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God of War Ragnarök is making the jump from PlayStation to PC on 19th September, and ahead of its arrival, Sony has shared PC system requirements - which, among other things, reveals players will need to free up 190GB of hard drive space to play.

As per the PlayStation Blog, the minimum hardware players will likely need to get Ragnarök running at 1080p with an average of 30fps at Low settings is a GTX 1060/RX 5500 XT, an Intel i5-4670K/Ryzen 3 1200, 8GB RAM, Windows 10, and the aforementioned 190GB SSD space.

Right at the other, considerably flashier end of the spectrum, it's recommended players hoping to hit an average of 60fps at 4K on Ultra settings have an RTX 4070 Ti/RX 7900 XT, an Intel i5-11600K/Ryzen 7 3700X, 16GB RAM, Windows 10, and, yes, a big ol' chunk of SSD space.

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Vampire Survivors - the acclaimed (and still doggedly vampire-free) minimalist survival RPG from developer Poncle - is finally launching for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on 29th August.

Vampire Survivors launched into PC early access back in 2021, where it immediately set tongues wagging - partly because it cost an absurdly generous £3.99, but mostly because its mix of wave-based monster dodging and auto-bludgeoning is very blimmin' good indeed.

"Once this wave is done, once this boss is done, once I've unlocked a new character or item, I should really turn off the computer and go for a run. Maybe," wrote Christian Donlan in Eurogamer's Recommended review. "Or maybe one more go, one more choice, one more chance to confuse speed with damage with experience."

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Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 stands as one of the most impressive games we've seen this year, and, in fact, this entire generation. It's a game that pushes the limits of what Unreal Engine 5 can offer at this point in time, taking full advantage of its many features. Beautiful acting, amazing character models, stunning landscapes, and truly exceptional lighting all come together to create a moody, beautiful and atmospheric experience.

We recently had the chance to sit down with three key members from the Hellblade 2 development team at Ninja Theory: VFX director Mark Slater-Tunstill, environment art director Dan Atwell and audio director David García Díaz. We spoke at length about the tech behind the game, the challenges and opportunities of being an early Unreal Engine 5 release, and some key development decisions that defined the title.

As usual, the interview text below has been lightly edited for length and clarity, with the full discussion available via the video embed below.

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KeelWork’s strikingly opulent shooter dares to do new things with its genre in an effort to unite players of every level. This is what a blockbuster shooter should look like.

Arcade shooting games are, in truth, about fragility. Despite their reputation as gaming's most furious, excessive form, they almost universally place you at the controls of a weaponised weakling; a vessel that disintegrates after the briefest contact with a single enemy bullet.

That’s not the case with Cygni: All Guns Blazing, a new shooter that insists it's OK to take dozens of enemy hits and stay in the game. That might sound like a reckless inversion of what makes the genre so special and rewarding. However, Scottish developer KeelWorks appears to have been meticulous in its subtle revolution of what a shooting game can be – and who it can serve. There’s even an argument to be made that Cygni proposes a vision of what a blockbuster shooter could be; namely staggeringly polished, technically muscular, and able to welcome and impress a vast mainstream audience.

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Roblox has responded to news the government of Türkiye has banned access to the platform in order to "ensure the protection of our children".

News of the ban was shared yesterday by the country's Minister of Justice Yılmaz Tunç in a lengthy statement on social media site X.

Tunç didn't provide a specific reason for the ban beyond it being "due to the content that could lead to the exploitation of children" and that the country is "obliged to take the necessary measures to ensure the protection of our children".

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As teased earlier this week, Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio has today unveiled the first details of his next game at WolfEye Studios.

While the game's name is still under wraps, this new project is a first-person action RPG that's set in an alternate America in the 1900s, marking a shift in time and perspective from the top-down, isometric sandbox towns of WolfEye's debut game, Weird West.

As the studio also previously teased, the new game's visuals will be grounded in a retro sci-fi aesthetic - and if the first three in-game screenshots didn't already give it away, Colantonio (who's creative director for this new game) and executive producer Julien Roby tell me over a video call that both its gameplay and art direction are intended to be "something like Fallout meets Dishonored".

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Krafton, the publisher of survival horror game The Callisto Protocol, forced developer Striking Distance to release the game early.

That's according to the game's director Glen Schofield, in an interview with Dan Allen Gaming (thanks PCGamesN) in which he discusses problems during the game's development.

Krafton, known for publishing PUBG, insisted the game release three months earlier than Schofield wanted. As a result, two and a half bosses and three or four enemy types were cut from the game.

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There are some pretty chunky spoilers here about the Dark Urge playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3, and perhaps one or two about other parts of the game. If you're still planning a Dark Urge playthrough of the game, I'd suggest going in as unaware as possible. Bookmark this for later.

Being evil in games excites me. I cannot resist the temptation of pressing a big red button. I do it because I want to see what a game dares let me do, and I do it because it's naughty. For months, I've been daring Baldur's Gate 3 to see how far it will let me go in my evil adventure, and so far, it's never backed down. I've pushed every red button I've found and the results have been extraordinary.

It's not common. Being a villain in a game is anathema to being a hero. How can you be one and also the other? This question has fascinated me for a long time, and it's why, when I first saw the Dark Urge option in Baldur's Gate 3, I was captivated. Here was a background option I could apply to my character that would implant some kind of unrestrainable evil in me - a murderous desire that could race forward and take control at the merest provocation. It could mean the death of companions and majorly upended story events. Was I ready to cede so much control to something in a role-playing game?

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Game Science has released a fresh trailer for forthcoming action-RPG Black Myth: Wukong ahead of its release later this month.

The trailer gives an extended look at the world of the game, the combat and transformational abilities of the monkey protagonist, and the imposing bosses he'll face - from smaller enemies to colossal beasts.

You may want to skip the trailer if you're looking to go in completely spoiler free, but it's certainly worth a look to admire the dramatic production.

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Gaming revenue for Warner Bros. Discovery has declined by 41 percent year-on-year due to the "weak performance" of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

The decline was part of an overall four percent decrease across studio revenue (gaming, TV, cinema) as revealed in the company's latest quarterly earnings report.

Warner Bros. Discovery is still yet to give exact sales figures for Rocksteady's Suicide Squad game, though in an earnings call in February the company's chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels stated the game had "fallen short of our expectations". Later, it was revealed the company took a $200m loss on the game.

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Eli Roth's Borderlands movie is nearly here, and early impressions are starting to trickle in - and, well, they're not great. Critics have taken to social media to brand the live-action film adaptation of Gearbox's looter-shooter everything from a "huge misfire" to a "disaster".

The Borderlands movie has, of course, been in the works for some time now. It was initially announced back in 2015 before utterly vanishing in a puff of elongated silence. Then, just as it looked like the project was dead and buried, Gearbox re-announced it in February 2020, this time with Hostel director Eli Roth at the helm.

Since then, the high-profile likes of Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Gina Gershiwn, Kevin Hart, and Jack Black have all (rather mystifyingly) signed onto the project, giving fans at least some hope it wouldn't entirely suck. Unfortunately, its recent trailers haven't inspired much additional confidence.

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Ready at Dawn - the studio behind the likes of Lone Echo and The Order: 1886 - has reportedly been shut down by its currently owner, Meta, after over two decades of operation. The news follows heavy job cuts at the studio last year.

Ready at Dawn Studios was founded in 2003 by former members of Naughty Dog and Blizzard, and was initially known for its work adapting Sony's Daxter and God of War franchises for the PlayStation Portable. In 2015, its first original game, The Order: 1886, released to mixed reviews on PS4, and the company would later shift its focus to VR.

Its first VR project was 2017's acclaimed sci-fi adventure Lone Echo, followed by standalone multiplayer spin-off Echo VR (which shut down last year), then a sequel in 2021. Amid Ready at Dawn's success in the VR space, Meta announced it was purchasing the studio in 2020.

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Epic Games has announced it's ditching a long-standing Fortnite promise that Battle Pass items will never be made available to buy at a later date - although it's implementing an 18-month wait period before items can appear in its in-game shop.

It's a rule Epic has been accused of breaking before, specifically when it released a beachwear version of Fortnite's season 5 poster boy Drift for purchase in 2019 - but the practice of releasing paid variants of previous Battle Pass characters has become commonplace in the years since.

Now, though, Epic is ditching the rule entirely so that any item released as part of a Battle Pass in the future can be sold in the Fortnite Shop, provided 18 months have passed since the Battle Pass' release. "This change lets us continue investing in new and exciting Battle Pass rewards" the developer wrote in a blog post, "while enabling players down the road to also enjoy the content, including Outfits based on popular licensed characters."

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Exactly one year (and four days) after Baldur's Gate 3's version 1.0 release, developer Larian is celebrating the highly acclaimed RPG's first anniversary by releasing a whole bunch of revealing players stats. Which, among other things, confirm that 30 percent of the 30 percent of players who opted to sex Halsin sexed Halsin in bear form.

Larian's newly unveiled birthday stats get pretty granular, and I'll be glossing over the spoiler-y ones here (as well as the ones that mean absolutely nothing to me because I'm still prancing round the crash site right at the start desperately wishing I had more time to play). Instead, let us discuss the more universal revelations, such as the news 75m companion kisses have been shared in Baldur's Gate 3 over the last year, with 27m of those landing on the lips of Shadowheart, while 15m were planted on Astarion's puckered mouth-hole. And right at the bottom of the smoochy charts? Poor old Minthara with just 169,937 kisses. Which, let's be honest, is probably still way above average for most people.

And while we're on the subject of romance, it should be noted that around 197K players opted to bang Halsin in his now legendary bear form (out of the 658K players total that danced down O-street with the hunky Wood Elf Druid), while approximately 407K people were up for mind flayer tentacle sex when the opportunity arose. Absolutely no kink-shaming here.

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Earlier this week, Nintendo released a fresh trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, that's due out next month.

The game stars the titular princess in the leading role for the first time and includes a new Echo mechanic, where Zelda can essentially copy and paste elements from the world to explore and solve puzzles.

The new trailer focused on giving a tour of Hyrule, showing off its various regions, and the new power Bind that allows Zelda to attach herself to (and move with) objects and enemies.

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Popular deck-building roguelike Balatro has now passed 2m sales and a major update is due next year.

The game was released across PC, Switch, PS5 and Xbox back in February and has proven particularly successful over the past six months.

Publisher Playstack and solo developer LocalThunk has a series of three announcements it's sharing across August and September, what it's calling a "Three-of-a-Kind of Surprises" campaign.

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Kung-fu roguelite Sifu and comedy shooter High on Life lead the Humble Choice games this August.

Also available is Gotham Knights, the DC universe action-RPG from Batman: Arkham Origins developer WB Games Montréal.

The full list of available Humble Choice games for August are as follows:

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AMD's Ryzen 9000 CPUs have arrived, marking the debut of the more powerful and efficient Zen 5 architecture and a quartet of Dragon Ball Z meme-adjacent processor numbers: 9600X, 9700X, 9900X and 9950X. Today we're looking at the first two processors, the six-core 9600X at £269/$279 and eight-core 9700X at £339/$359. These mainstream offerings are due to go on sale on August 8th, with the 12-core and 16-core Ryzen 9 models scheduled to arrive one week later.

With faster-in-games X3D variants rumoured for later this year and heavily discounted Ryzen 7000 parts already on the market, are the new Ryzen 9000 models worth picking up in the meantime? And how do these processors compare to the high-flying Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which we've been recommending as the best high-end gaming CPU?

To find out, we've tested these processors and some of their closest AMD and Intel rivals in a gauntlet of demanding games from 1080p to 4K, plus taken a look at synthetic and content creation benchmarks to get an idea of whether these new Ryzen 9000 processors offer a noticeable improvement over their predecessors.

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Often, the first question for any Warhammer 40K game is simply, "Is it Warhammer 40K enough?" This is one of those franchises where the brand itself becomes the thing some fans want to play: it must be grim, it must be dark, it must have sufficient gore, and must have both recognisable nods and oblique references that adhere strictly to our "Core Brand Values". Also, I suppose, there should be a video game in there somewhere.

Worry not though, any fan-Inquisitors in the audience: in the slice of Space Marine 2 I played, I ran more or less the entire gamut of 40K-isms within the first couple minutes - and admittedly, I think that's brilliant. Your squad of Space Marines bicker about treachery and point fingers over presumed betrayals of the Empire, before unloading from their transport into a vast, embattled gothic citadel. Groups of Imperial Guardsmen quiver, assemble, and occasionally get shot by a Commissar for displaying cowardice, beneath the flapping baby-wings of servitor cherubs. The voices of a deep, manly choir soar. You grab a weapon and a sidearm and choice of knife, power sword or chainsword - you know full well what you're picking here - then you clunk through more gothic corridors, a gate slides shut behind you and, in the most 40K moment of all, find yourself immediately overwhelmed by a swarm of Tyrannids without so much as a "press B to crouch" in preparation.

Thankfully, another point of 40K accuracy saves the day here: you are wonderfully overpowered in Space Marine 2, at least in this mid-game story mission (and on the standard difficulty at which I played). You can flick between a bit of frantic button-mashing and more considered parry-and-combo business as the mood strikes and get by just fine. This is good. You are the Emperor's will made flesh. Using your bare fists to pull apart Tyrannid skulls by the dozen is exactly where you ought to be.

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I'm not ashamed to say this: one of the easiest ways to make me excited about a game is still to chuck the word "super" into the title. This is Nintendo's fault, inevitably. Super Mario Bros, sure. But then when the Super Famicom came around, they threw Super into almost every game that came out. It remains the easiest upgrade pitch of all time, and the most intoxicating. Why do I need to buy these games again? Because now they're super.

Anyway. Super Dungeon Muncher had me at "Super". But it also had me at "Dungeon Muncher". A dungeon crawler where you have to move fast to keep ahead of the fact that a monster is eating the actual dungeon? Yes please. What an easy sell. Or rather, what a magnificent pitch.

The game is currently fun and moreish rather than truly magnificent in the playing of it, admittedly, but we'll get to that. First up: the monster. This guy is wonderful. An angry red horror waiting at the top of the screen, he has exactly the kind of huge furious eyes and sharp teeth you'd expect. But it's his arms that get me. So long and rubbery and tube-like. He reaches forward with surprising delicacy to grab the dungeon and drag more of it into his mouth.

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Equity, the UK actors' union, has introduced new minimum rates in a bid to address "systemic low pay" for performers and improve working conditions in the industry.

Pay for actors in the UK has not only stagnated beneath inflation rates, but has been significantly lower than in America and Canada despite working with the same game developers.

The new rates are solely intended for AAA game development, rather than indie developers. Further, they are minimum fees as a starting point for negotiation.

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Free-to-play tactical extraction shooter Arena Breakout: Infinite will launch into early access next week on 13th August.

Early access will be available on PC exclusively via the game's official website, following a closed beta test earlier this year.

During early access, developer MoreFun Studios will focus on optimisation, introduce new features, and adjust gameplay and monetisation systems, and aims to quickly iterate on player feedback.

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A hotfix for Fallout: London to address crashing issues is still on the way, with developer Team Folon planning a "huge" patch soon after.

The game-size fan-made mod for Fallout 4 set in the English capital released at the end of July, but players have experienced a high number of crashes and issues, including Eurogamer's Ian Higton when he streamed his playthrough.

Soon after, Team Folon promised a fix was on the way and, in a new statement on its Discord, has reiterated its plans for the future.

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A profile for Final Fantasy 16 has been spotted in the latest Nvidia driver, leading to speculation a PC release could be imminent.

Nvidia has just released its latest driver, 560.81, and users on reddit have pointed out it includes game ready driver profiles for both Final Fantasy 16 and Once Human (thanks PC Gamer), though they're not in the official release notes. There's mention of a Final Fantasy 16 demo too.

Square Enix has already revealed a port of the PS5 exclusive Final Fantasy 16 is on the way, but no release window has been revealed.

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Sega's acquisition of Angry Birds maker Rovio has helped boost the company's video game profits by 181.5 percent year-on-year.

According to its latest financial report, Sega's net sales for video games increased by 34 percent, leading to a huge rise in profits.

It attributes this increase in part to the inclusion of Rovio, along with the release of Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance in the most recent quarter.

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Sony has now sold over 61m PlayStation 5 consoles, but hardware unit sales have fallen by 32 percent year-on-year.

The company has released its latest financial report today, revealing 2.4m PS5 consoles were sold in the most recent quarter. That compares to 3.3m compared to the same quarter in 2023 (and 4.5m in the previous quarter).

However, Sony has seen an overall 12 percent increase in game revenue year-on-year, resulting in a 33 percent increase in profit.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's October release date is inching ever closer, with Activision growing looser-lipped by the day. Which brings us to the company's latest reveal: a first look at Black Ops 6's Zombies mode, courtesy of a two-and-a-half-minute cinematic trailer, ahead of a full gameplay breakdown this Thursday, 8th August.

"After being imprisoned for over five years at a remote outpost in the Philippine Sea, the former members of Requiem stage a daring breakout," explains Activision in a bout of scene-setting over on the Call of Duty blog. "They are aided by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious Filipina smuggler and a former adversary. Unfortunately, their bid for freedom from Terminus Island coincides with another chaotic dimensional outbreak... Welcome to Black Ops 6 Zombies."

That daring breakout is what we see in Black Ops 6 Zombies' first cinematic trailer, which introduces the mode's new characters - former Requiem staff members Grigori Weaver, Mackenzie "Mac" Carver, Elizabeth Grey, Oskar Strauss, and Stoney Maddox (AKA Raptor One) - alongside their liberators, Maya Aguinaldo and Dr. William Peck.

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Between its animated adaptations and video game collaborations - which so far includes the likes of Dead Cells and V Rising - Konami's legendary Castlevania series is alive and well and shows no signs of stopping (although an actual new game would also be nice, Konami). And up next is Dead by Daylight's previously announced Castlevania chapter, which is now confirmed to be launching on 27th August, with a public test build arriving today.

Castlevania's Dead by Daylight colloboration sees Dracula joining the asymmetrical multiplayer horror game as a new Killer, and he'll be accompanied his power-granting castle, as both are "inextricably linked". Developer Behaviour Interactive notes any time Dracula is the featured Killer in a trial with an original map, players will see his castle looming over proceedings.

Dracula is officially Dead by Daylight's first shape-shifting Killer, and is able to transform into a bat and wolf alongside his vampire form. The bat is "quiet as a creeping shadow" and can gain ground "with a blink", which, more practically means bat-Dracula has the Undetectable status effect, can move faster, ignore vault points, and teleport to any vault points within 32 meters. Survivors become invisible, but their scratch marks can be seen.

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A little over a year after confirming a last-gen release for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was in the works, EA has announced the action-adventure sequel will be launching for Xbox One and PS4 on 17th September. Additionally, improvements to the much-maligned PC version are coming.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor initially released for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC last April, picking up its story some five years after the events of 2019's well-recieved Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. This time around, Jedi Knight Cal Kestis is still picking a fight with the Empire, but developer Respawn has given him new Force tricks and expanded fight styles to help him through.

There's more, of course, but third-person sproinging around the gorgeously rendered Star Wars scenery, hitting baddies with lightsabers remains at its core.

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Developer RageSquid has unveiled Descenders Next, an extreme-sports-focused sort-of-sequel to 2018's acclaimed downhill biking hit Descenders, which is aiming to be "the only extreme sports game you'll ever need" when it comes to Steam and Game Pass sometime in 2025.

The original Descenders was all about exhilarating mountain biking across a procedurally generated world. Descenders Next, though, is doing something a little bit different, expanding its scope to include as many extreme sports as it possibly can over the coming years.

As per its reveal announcement, RageSquid's goal with Descenders Next is to capture the "same feel, the same sense speed" as its predecessor, but across numerous disciplines, beginning with boarding sports on release.

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The less said about gaming on the new wave of ARM-based Windows laptops, the better. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite has severe driver issues resulting in generally poor performance and while the PRISM CPU translation layer allowing x86 code to run on ARM looks impressive, no support for AVX instructions means many games won't even load. Let's be generous and say that gaming support on 'Windows on ARM' hardware is a work-in-progress - but there's an element I feel is well worth examining. Microsoft's Auto Super Resolution upscaling technology has its limitations, but it works.

In robustly embracing the AI era, Microsoft has mandated that new, AI-focused Copilot+ PCs should contain an integrated neural processor rated for at least 40 TOPs (tensor operations). New processors like the Snapdragon X Elite and AMD's Strix Point line contain the requisite hardware and while we can expect gaming not to touch the NPU for a good while yet, Microsoft's Auto SR can be invoked at will on practically any game. Right now, there's a curated 'white list' of games that support Auto SR, but as far as I can tell, there's nothing stopping you from simply adding the feature yourself within the Windows control panel. Right now, Microsoft is only talking about Snapdragon support for Auto SR, but one would hope that the feature will roll out for all Copilot+ PCs in due course.

While both DLSS and Auto SR aim to take lower base resolution imagery and upscale them to higher resolutions, the way this is achieved is very, very different. DLSS and rivals like FSR2/3 and XeSS have a wealth of data to work from: the base image, motion vectors, colour and depth information and more. They're also integrated into the game engine pipeline, meaning that some aspects of the image - such as post-processing or HUD elements - can be processed at native resolution. Auto SR seemingly only has access to the base image, effectively making it a screen-space upscaler.

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There's now a release date for A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, the upcoming video game tie-in to the Emily Blunt-starring post-apocalyptic horror movie franchise.

The Road Ahead, which looks to tell its own original story within the world of the franchise's three films (and counting), will launch for PC via Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on 17th October.

Fans of the film series will recognise its creepy alien antagonists are back, and fans of the excellent Alien Isolation have already been comparing The Road Ahead's gameplay favourably with that survival horror classic.

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Here's a chance to win a decidedly different piece of gaming gear - one designed not for you, but for your cat.

Ahead of Cat Quest 3's launch for PC via Steam, PlayStation, Switch and Xbox this Friday, 8th August, the game's publisher Kepler Interactive has put together a feline care package for your furry companion - complete with a pirate ship bed, toys and more.

All you need to do to earn your cat's favour forever (in other words, the cardboard box it all comes in) is answer the simple question below. To help you answer, it may be worth knowing that Cat Quest 3 takes the series' role-playing gameplay onto the high seas, where you play as a "purrivateer" and battle evil "pi-rats".

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Sony's Playstation VR2 PC Adapter is set to go on sale from tomorrow but, before you go rushing off to buy one straight away, in my experience, getting the PS VR2 working on PC isn't nearly as easy as it should be.

I was planning on having a review on the site ready for launch, but it turns out the PS VR2's Sense Controllers are very flakey when it comes to Bluetooth connectivity. Even though I have the required Bluetooth adapter built into my PC, constant connection losses meant that I couldn't even make it past the headset's initial setup process on PC.

While waiting to hear back from Sony about my issues, I did a bit of digging on the device's support site and found this line of text hidden away near the bottom, "Some Bluetooth® adapters may not be compatible with your PlayStation®VR2 PC adapter. For more information on Bluetooth® adapters, visit the link below."

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Microsoft has announced its next lineup of titles headed to Xbox Game Pass over the first half of August, and it's headlined by Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy.

Is this one game? Is this technically three? Regardless, get ready to play (or replay) Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped on cloud, console and PC from this Thursday 8th August.

Coming to Xbox Game Pass this month:

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If you know your Cat Quest, probably all I need tell you about Cat Quest 3 is that it's more of the same, only this time with pirates. Which is to say, it's a treat. But if you've not yet played developer TheGentlebros' pun-obsessed series of super-casual, ultra-streamlined open-world action RPGs, I guess I have some explaining to do.

The original Cat Quest released back in 2017 and was immediately heralded as a very good thing by people with exceptional and accurate taste. The pitch is pretty straightforward: what if an expansive open-world action-RPG but with all the faff taken out? You've got your adventuring, your exploration, your combat, your questing, your dungeon-crawling, your levelling, plus heaps of treasure and endless gear - only pared right back as far as is possible without the whole thing collapsing in on its own insubstantiality, then polished to a sheen.

Cat Quest 2 did the whole thing all over again in 2019 – this time with dogs and two-player co-op – and five years on from that, we've got a third outing that shakes up the familiar formula a little by covering half the map in water, handing you a boat, and then festooning everything with pirates. Strip away the tricornes, jaunty shanties, and other nautical flourishes, and Cat Quest 3 admittedly isn't that much of a departure for the series, but, honestly, who cares when it remains such a delight to play?

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Bean-based battle royale Fall Guys now exists within Fortnite, with fresh courses built by developer Mediatonic.

The addition of Fall Guys as a permanent part of the Fortniteverse comes after Epic Games acquired Mediatonic back in 2021, and after extensive layoffs at the British firm last year.

For a limited time, you can play Fall Guys within Fortnite's battle royale, via an enormous obstacle course currently floating above the map. Enter into it and your in-game character will be turned into a customised Fall Guy bean. There's also a smattering of limited-time rewards.

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Fans of Konami's original Silent Hill 2 have been sceptical of Bloober Team's forthcoming remake, but its CEO Piotr Babieno has called for fans to trust the studio.

Bloober is known for developing psychological horror games, but despite its confidence in the remake fans have been less forgiving in their criticism of trailers shown so far.

"I am dreaming that gamers will trust us," Babieno told Rolling Stone, "but I realise that trust is earned through actions, not through words. So that's why we have a policy of not commenting [on the specifics of the game] and raising hopes. We want to show our ambitions through our work, so we can't ask for anything more than 'give us a chance.'"

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Inflexion Games, the studio behind gaslamp fantasy survival game Nightingale, is "not satisfied with where the game is at".

That's according to CEO Aaryn Flynn, who spoke alongside art and audio director Neil Thomson in a particularly candid video discussing what's next for the early access game.

Since its release into early access six months ago, Inflexion has focused on quality of life changes, bug fixes, and adding in the much-requested offline mode. Now, the team is looking to better fulfil its original vision and address shortcomings to the experience.

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I'm not sure how funny Buster Keaton movies are these days - I assume there are moments that still work as pure gags. But these films of his remain wonderful, because Keaton was kind of the Tom Cruise of his age - or rather Cruise, who namechecks Keaton often in interviews - is the closest thing we have to the original. Keaton's gags were almost always stunts, dangerous, brilliant, clearly visual stunts that moved the action forward while giving audiences something to gasp at. There's nothing on the surface to make me think of the World of Goo games, and yet I think of Keaton constantly when I play.

Keaton's world moves. I think that's it. Its physics are dependable - and predictable, which is important for gags and for games - but the ground itself cannot be trusted. If Keaton's sat on a steamboat's wheel and he thinks he's safe, we know that wheel's going to start turning. If he's climbing a ladder, we know that the ladder itself will start sinking into the mud. What then? Keaton has to vamp - to make the moment work. He has to over-engineer things to create a sense of new stability. That's where you get the gag, where you get the fun.

This is everywhere in World of Goo. At the heart of the first game, which helped usher in the Indie era, and at the heart of the second, which has just arrived, bringing with it both new ideas and a lot of fond memories - at the heart of both you're dealing with treacherous foundations. These games are bridge builders at their simplest. (Granted, they never stay simple for very long.) You have a pile of black goo lumps, and you can extend the lumps outwards to create rudimentary frames. The goal for each level is a pipe you have to reach, which will suck in any remaining goo balls. So build upwards in a tower to a pipe that's lurking above you! Build outward as a bridge across a nasty gap.

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Sales of Square Enix games have dropped compared to last year, despite the high profile release of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

According to its latest earnings report, the company's overall net sales dropped by 18.4 percent year-on-year for the most recent quarter.

This is driven in part due to a decline in sales of new games. By comparison, the same quarter in 2023 saw the release of Final Fantasy 16 and the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters.

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The remake of cult classic Lollipop Chainsaw will now arrive a couple of weeks earlier, on 12th September here in Europe and in America.

Lollipop Chainsaw RePop, as this new version is titled, was previously announced as launching on 26th September, for Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

After some initial confusion, developer Dragami Games has now made clear that RePop is a remaster of the original game by Grasshopper Manufacture, first launched in 2012, and not a full-on remake.

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Chatty gun game High on Life is set to be turned into an animated TV series, with Curb Your Enthusiasm's JB Smoove signed on as producer.

Smoove starred in High on Life game as Gus, one of the game's talking fish/guns, and Deadline reports there's a "good chance" he'll reprise the role in the upcoming animated series as well as producing the project.

High on Life launched in December 2022 for PC and Xbox and was the year's biggest launch on Xbox Game Pass, but proved controversial even before release, after it emerged the game included AI art and voice acting.

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With just a couple of weeks to go until the release of Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft has shared a post-launch content roadmap which, among other things, confirms Lando Calrissian and Hondo Ohnaka will appears as part of the game's paid Season Pass.

Star Wars Outlaws launches on 30th August, and owners of its Season Pass - which comes bundled into the game's £95 Gold Edition and £115 Ultimate Edition - immediately gain access to the Vessel Runner Character Pack (also a pre-order bonus), containing cosmetics for protagonist Kay and companion Nix, plus the exclusive Jabba’s Gambit mission.

Ubisoft moved to assure players Jabba the Hutt would also make an appear in Outlaws' base game earlier this year, after fans grew concerned one of Star Wars' most iconic villains would be locked behind a paid season pass. Lando Calrissian and Hondo Ohnaka's newly confirmed inclusion in Outlaws' Season Pass may prove similarly controversial, especially as Ubisoft is yet to confirm whether they star in the base game too.

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Monster Hunter Wilds might not be out until next year, but Capcom has just given the hype handle a tiny tweak with the release of three new videos detailing some of the mechanial additions and refinements players can expect when this latest series entry shows up in 2025.

Video number one, titled Basic Mechanics Overview, whizzes through some of the most fundamental aspects of Monster Hunter gameplay before introducing Wilds' new bird-like dino-mount, the Seikret. This (alas) replaces Monster Hunter Rise's awesome dog-like Canyne, serving as a new way to speed about the place.

The Seikret can automatically guide Hunters directly to their target if desired, and players are free to gather items from the environment, drink potions to recover their health, sharpen their blade, or switch between primary and secondary weapons ready for battle while in the saddle. The returning Slinger has also had a bit of an upgrade in Monster Hunter Wilds; as well as being able to launch different ammo types found around the map, it can gather items from a distance, and yank loose bits of scenery (rock, for instance) onto monsters' heads.

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Forthcoming action-RPG Phantom Blade Zero developer S-Game says that as it believes in "making our game accessible to everyone", it has not "ruled out any platforms".

Confirmation came via the studio itself, which took to social media to clarify its stance after several media outlets reported an unnamed developer said "nobody needs Xbox".

S-Game has distanced itself from the comments, saying they do not represent "S-Game's values or culture".

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It's another packed edition of DF Direct this week, with our latest thoughts on Star Wars Outlaws, impressions on Nobody Wants To Die and the Visions of Mana demo plus a look at how ray tracing is being introduced into the next wave of EA Sports titles. However, the focus for this piece is on the release of a new technical preview for AMD's Fluid Motion Frames technology - AFMF 2. This is the Radeon team's second attempt at driver-level frame generation and if you have the means, I highly recommend checking it out.

First of all, it's worth getting all of the caveats out of the way: driver-level frame generation can never hope to match the quality of Nvidia DLSS 3 frame-gen or AMD's FSR 3 alternative. These technologies have deep-level integration into game engines that allows for much higher levels of fidelity from generated frames. AFMF is essentially FSR 3 without the additional information given up by the game, so in effect, it works in a similar way to smooth motion interpolation in TVs. The game frame is rendered, then another is held, and then AFMF interpolates an 'in-betweener' image to sandwich between the two.

With only screen-space information to work from, AFMF has to make a lot of guesses in only a very short amount of time, so more artefacts and errors will present themselves. However, similar to other frame generation techniques, generated frames are effectively strobing between standard rendered frames. The higher the base frame-rate, the faster the strobing effect and the less noticeable the artefacts will be. AMD typically says that 60fps is a good base-level frame-rate for FSR 3, so it stands to reason that AFMF would require a higher base fps level to better hide its inadequacies.

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God of War studio Sony Santa Monica is developing its first new IP in over 20 years.

As spotted by a member of ResetEra, a developer at Sony Santa Monica mentioned they've been working at the studio "looking after the entire character development pipeline on their new IP".

In the "about" section of their LinkedIn profile, a developer supervising character development said they were "thrilled to be back" at Santa Monica after a brief departure to work at Striking Distance and Unknown Worlds.

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The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom continues to look brilliant in this latest trailer from Nintendo that gives you a whistlestop tour of its version of Hyrule.

From Hyrule Castle to Gerudo Desert and Kakariko Village, the upcoming Switch game will let Zelda see all the sights, plus hang out with Gorons, Deku Scrubs and both flavours of Zora.

As well as fast travel points, Zelda will also be able to explore on horseback to hop over small echoes. Just create a carrot "echo" - using your ability to conjur up objects you've seen previously - and your trusty steed will come running.

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Following yesterday's bombshell news that Valve could be developing a new Half-Life game, Valve expert Tyler McVicker has stepped forward to say he too believes it's true.

Codenamed "HLX", McVicker asserts the new game "seems to be a fully-fledged non-VR Half-Life game, something that seems too good to be true".

I'll go into some of the details after the video embedded below, but please be mindful there may be spoilers for this new game.

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Larian began a continuation of its work on the beloved Baldur's Gate 3 last year as it was "the obvious thing" to do - before ultimately deciding to change course.

Speaking to PC Gamer on the anniversary of Baldur's Gate 3's full release, Larian boss Swen Vincke said the initial decision to continue working on the Dungeons & Dragons-based franchise saw his team focus on an obvious follow-up - an idea that sounds like it was initially pitched as an expansion, before being considered as the basis for a potential Baldur's Gate 4.

"It's something that you all would have liked, I think," Vincke said. "I'm sure, actually. And we actually went pretty fast, because the production machine was still warm. You could already play stuff."

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Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi has confirmed card game Queen's Blood will make a return for the third part of the remake trilogy.

Hamaguchi was speaking at the Otacon anime convention in America as part of a panel with producers and voice actors from the game.

The director was asked by a fan if he could make the card game in real life. "Actually I've been receiving so many requests," he replied. "Right now we are preparing a revamped or even better version of Queen's Blood for the next title of this series. So I hope to be able to share more in the near future."

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HBO has released its first teaser for the second season of The Last of Us.

The teaser is short, but gives us a look at some returning and new faces coming to the second season. New faces include Kaitlyn Dever as Abby and Catherine O'Hara's still to be named character (although previous rumours suggested her character will be called Gail).

You can check out the teaser below, towards the end of HBO's latest sizzle reel. It starts at around the 01:15 mark. After the trailer, I will be breaking down a few bits I noticed, so please be aware of spoilers for The Last of Us Part 2 (the video game) below.

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Update 5th August, 2024: Natasha Chandel's website is currently down after it exceeded the bandwidth limit.

Just before the website went down, it had been updated, and all references to Valve's "Project White Sands" had been scrubbed.

Original story follows.

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Images of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 have leaked online, including multiplayer maps, menu screens, and perks.

Within hours, the screenshots were hit with copyright claims from Activision, adding credence to the claims they come from an in-development build. However, this is the internet, which means nothing's ever truly gone, and the images are still going up faster than Activision can remove them.

Whilst the map images have since been removed, the leaker claims the maps have partial titles, many of which will be familiar to Call of Duty players.

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I'm a big old dreamer, me. I see a thing that I love, like VR, and I like to imagine the best outcomes for it. You know, like Sony actually bringing a new Astrobot to the PS VR2, or say, smaller, lighter, cheaper headsets for all. Obviously I'm disappointed every time - newer headsets seem to be getting impossibly expensive and, well, of course Sony's gone done a Sony with the PS VR2.

One of my biggest dreams though, is that one day, in the future, every game released would come with a hybrid VR mode. A simple toggle at the start, like Capcom put in Resident Evil 7, that gives players the choice to either experience the game in VR, or enjoy it in flat screen on whatever TV or monitor they choose.

While this dream seems like a distant improbability, we do at least get to enjoy a taster of this fantasy thanks to Praydog's magical UEVR mod, which lets you convert any UE4 or UE5 game into VR at the click of a button. Sure, not every game runs perfectly and there's plenty of fiddling that can be done in the mod's menus to iron out the creases but still, for this week's VR Corner I was able to play a demo of a game that's not even fully released yet in both third person and first person VR.

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Humble Games' last release before the studio was "restructured" last week, Bõ: Path of the Teal Lotus, has launched a Patreon to support the game "in these uncertain times".

Writing on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, developer Squid Shock said that whilst it did not fault the team's work, Humble's changes "have meant we have missed out on critical post-launch support, which may put our studio's future at risk".

Although Humble has disputed the statements of former staff that characterised the layoffs as a shutdown, instead insisting laying off its staff is merely a "restructuring", Squid Shock also describes the changes as "shutting down".

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Activision has banned over 65,000 players across Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

The bans rolled out in the last few hours, purging thousands of "cheating and boosting" players from both Ranked and non-Ranked play alike.

"The Ricochet Anti-Cheat team has now purged the Ranked Play leaderboards in both Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare 3, banning accounts for cheating and boosting," Team Ricochet – the cheating enforcement team – said.

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Silent Hill: The Short Message – a two-hour free-to-play first-person horror shadow-dropped by Konami earlier this year – has been downloaded over three million times.

Konami marked the occasion on social media, inviting players yet to meet Anita to "please give it a try".

"In an abandoned apartment building where strange phenomena occur one after another, can you escape from the grotesque creatures?" the publisher teased (machine-translation provided by Google Translate).

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China has approved a number of new mobile games for release, most notably Marvel Rivals, Rainbow Six, Dynasty Warriors, and Final Fantasy 14 Mobile.

According to Niko Partners, a total of 15 games were approved yesterday (2nd August), including the still-as-yet-unconfirmed Final Fantasy 14 mobile port.

The news adds credence to a recent rumour that Final Fantasy developer Square Enix had linked up with Tencent to develop a mobile version of its fan-favourite MMO, Final Fantasy 14.

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Apple's iPad series of tablet computers had a huge impact on the computing landscape. The combination of a large-format touchscreen and the fluidity of Apple's software made for a really compelling device for web browsing, playing games, watching videos, and reading books. At the same time, iPads haven't quite displaced traditional computers for a lot of more traditional productivity-focused use cases, and haven't dethroned more dedicated devices like game consoles either.

That's where the latest generation of iPad Pros comes in. The 2024 iPad Pro packs a stunning "tandem OLED" display capable of up to 1600 nits peak brightness, along with the brand-new M4 processor which promises enough juice for sophisticated apps and console-level games. It's by far the most capable iPad yet, and the best positioned to shore up any weaknesses prior iPads might have had. So how does the M4 iPad Pro fare as a general purpose computer? And does it turn in satisfactory results when put up against the recent crop of demanding iPad console ports?

The M4 iPad Pro's form factor is exceptional - it's remarkable just how thin and light it is. I purchased the 11-inch mode and it feels like it's just barely there. It comes in about half a kilogram in weight, and is a mere 5.3mm thick - way thinner than my iPhone 15 Pro and substantially thinner than any other prior iPad. The actual utility of that thinness is perhaps a bit more questionable though - I can't really say that a thicker tablet has much of an impact on its day-to-day use. The second item of note is the OLED display, which is a first for any larger-screened Apple device. It offers perfect black levels, great off-axis viewing, and 120Hz support for silky smooth animation. It also features great brightness levels - about a thousand nits for a full white screen in SDR and HDR and 1600 nits for HDR highlights. I'd say those figures are better than the best OLED TVs on the market today, which can hit similar peak brightness but take a huge brightness hit with more uniformly bright content.

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