In Cayo Perico, you’ll be breaking onto the island of a dangerous drug lord to smuggle out all the ill-gotten cash and gold you can carry. It’s not a crime to steal from someone who’s also a criminal, right? That’s how that works? So far, Rockstar have just released a short teaser for the heist showing off some of the scenery, security, oh and a submarine. Rockstar call this GTA Online’s biggest heist yet, “introducing an all-new exotic Heist location, with a brand-new approach to Heist design that features the ability to play everything solo or with up to three other players,” they say....

According to Games Workshop, you can pre-order the Blood Bowl: Second Season Edition to guarantee beta access to the electronic version of Blood Bowl 3, and they’ll send you a code when it’s live. The tabletop game is £85, though, so I wouldn’t buy it if you just want to access Blood Bowl 3, as that’s a lot of money. By comparison, my cat only cost me £60. There are other, as yet unannounced, ways you’ll be able to get access to the beta, but if you’re an eager tabletop fan with a wad of cash then you have a route in....

Alternatively, you can try out this fan-made Elden Ring Geoguessr-inspired game that plonks you into a random bit of the map and scores you based on how close you can drop a pin to your true location. If Rings aren’t your thing LostGamer.io has maps from other games, too, including Skyrim and Fortnite. It’s a lovely idea. If you’ve never played, the original Geoguessr channels Google Maps and Google Street View into a wildly compelling game where you have to guess which random spot in the world you’ve landed....

Note: minor story spoilers for Hades follow. You’ve been warned. On this page: What is Nectar used for? Fastest way to gain Nectar What is Ambrosia used for? Fastest way to gain Ambrosia What is Nectar used for in Hades? Nectar in Hades is a delicacy of the Underworld, and therefore very valuable to most of its inhabitants. The initial and most powerful use for Nectar is to gift it to a character....

Here are the Twin Fists of Mouthful in action. I’m hoping they’re a high-damage, high-risk option, because while Hades is otherwise enchanting most weapons do tend to wind up feeling piddly. The big mirror that dishes out Talents has been overhauled, now letting you choose between two effects for each buff. The one that gives you bonus damage if you dodge just before being hit sounds enticing, and could have a big impact on how I play....

When I last pointed my Premature Evaluation telescope at Hades one year ago, it was already extremely good, cursing me with a misplaced confidence in the quality of early access games that was then cruelly eroded over the course of 2019 by the confusing parade of broken shite that followed. There was that janky pirate MMO where whales fall out of the sky, and the one I’m still not totally sure wasn’t a fever dream, in which unwashed train drivers ate crisps out of bins and sold red wine to distressed women in alleyways....

One of the things singleplayer Half-Life mods usually struggle with is that they can’t match Valve’s pacing, because very few mod teams can successfully break up their combat with slickly animated and voiced story beats. The trailer above, at least, gives me hope that Levitation might manage it. Levitation is the work of a handful of people, including level designer FMPONE, who is best known for working on several Counter-Strike: Global Offensive maps, including the remake of Cache, which Valve have included in various CS:GO Operations....

Microsoft showed a wee moment in Torode-117’s new story with a clip of him hopping around spaceship wreckage before finding another cyberbabe. His old sexy babe, Cortana, apparently sacrificed herself at the end of Halo 4 to save the Master Chef, then she returned in 5 because computers. Since then, Microsoft have put her to work helping people with their Bing queries, so he needs a new sidekick. “We are continuing the story of the Master Chief and Cortana from Halo 5, but also telling a story that’s welcoming for new players,” explained Joseph Staten, Hinfinite’s “head of creative” (a horrible job title)....

343 Industries announced the new autumn 2021 release window in their December blogblast. “And from now until then,” creative director Joseph Staten said, “every one of us at 343i and our great partner teams will be building, testing, and polishing an experience we hope all of you love.” The blog post gathers several key members of the art and graphics teams to talk about the game’s looks, which were disappointing to some folks who saw July’s “Gameplay Premiere” video: “The primary goal for the Campaign demo in July was showing Halo Infinite gameplay for the first time,” said Neill Harrison, director of art management....

Mario Kart aficionados will remember DK Mountain from the objectively best game in the series, Double Dash, and its follow-up Mario Kart Wii. The Halo Infinite version features the angry-looking mountain itself, spewing lava out of the top, and rickety wooden bridges, and falling boulders for you to swerve to avoid. LudoHT and Its L0L0 have even chucked in the track’s giant barrel cannon to fire Spartans all the way up Donkey Kong’s mountain, which is a great touch....

Firstly, there’s the forged map 343 featured in the winter update trailer, Eternity from creator Paimon. This map features a beautiful paper-white tower floating in space on a bed of rocks. There’s an ethereal quality to this map that I love, but it’s also a great arena map for slayer matches. Its small size and tons of fall space make it an excellent arena for grapples as you zip around the structure....

Halo Infinite’s campaign co-op test will support up to four players across PC, Xbox and Xbox Cloud Gaming. As Katharine explained when the test window was announced at the start of this month, joining co-op is just like starting a Fireteam in multiplayer. Once you’ve done that, you should be able to select Start Co-op from the main menu and take on Zeta Halo with your pals. Thankfully, 343 have worked things out so every player will keep their progress as they work their way through a co-op campaign, along with any upgrades and Spartan Cores collected....

Halo 4 didn’t do it for me, and I skipped Halo 5 altogether. They just felt off, you know? But having spent some time with Halo Infinite’s tech preview this weekend, though, I’m hopeful that this is the Halo that recaptures those former glory days. It’s a step backwards in the best possible way. Aside from an after school buzz, what made early Halo multiplayer great? Simplicity, I think. In a time when soldiers had jetpacks and wall-runs and lots of aiming down sights, Halo kept things clean and clunky....

Starting this week, each Thursday will see a new junker delivered to the collective scrapyards of Hardspace’s scavengers. Everyone gets the same craft, the same objectives, and the upgrades regardless of their career progression, and are tasked with extracting as much value out of the ship in one shift. You can retry the shift as many times as you want over the week, mind, so expect to become intimately familiar with every last airlock and weld point to get high up on the boards....

Fucking Blood Bowl 2. Ah, that’s better. You know the thing elder siblings do to younger siblings, where they use the weaker child’s arms to slap the face of the body they are attached to, while mockingly asking “why are you hitting yourself?”. That’s Blood Bowl 2. That’s the entire game’s worth of code, expressed in five cruel, puerile words. It suffers from the curse of being an all-too-faithful adaptation of a tabletop game, but with all elements of inter-player mercy put into the uncaring hands of a digital referee....

If you played Shadow Tactics, you’ll know what to expect here. Set in a wonderfully realised wild west, Desperados III tasks players with carefully guiding a small roster of characters, each with particular skillsets, through missions that are as ingeniously crafted as they are violent and bloody. Each mission is broken down into a series of tense puzzles that reward consideration and timing, while also invariably offering many different paths to success....

Untitled Goose Game embraces the art of mischief, without any malevolence. While you’re encouraged to be a sleepy English village’s number one nuisance, you’re not an evil goose. You’re a goose who just likes a bit of a laugh. A member of the gaggle that likes a giggle. Every one of the game’s puzzles revolve around being a general pest, yes, but the Peppa Pig-like flattened textures and muted pastels emphasise the fact that what you’re doing isn’t actually malicious....

To explain what I mean, I’ve boiled down what I consider to be the four biggest issues inherent in the traditional battle royale formula: camping, third-partying, reliance on RNG, and extended periods of inactivity. Nearly every battle royale out there (certainly the big three - Fortnite, PUBG, and Apex Legends) suffer from each of these flaws to various degrees. But Danger Zone somehow concocted its own formula - one which nullifies these issues more effectively than any of its peers....

Goutrial (the indie developer and YouTuber who purportedly put the whole thing together) posted a brief clip of Half-Life: Alyx that looked a little closer to its older predecessors - an alternate world where Half-Life’s long-awaited return didn’t require shelling out for expensive plastic headsets. Unlike an earlier attempt at VR-free Alyx, this mod doesn’t try to simulate floating virtual hands on a keyboard and mouse. Instead, the developer has traded them out for Gordon Freeman’s sturdier, time-tested first-person arms....

Terror seizes you, but in the same instant, your hand closes on rough iron in the bag’s polythene belly. An ancient revolver, heavy and rust-caked, with a single round taped to the barrel. Your fingers tremble as you fumble the slug into the chamber. Your mind goes blank, so that when the shot rings out across the waste, it feels as if it comes from far away. You do not look at the man’s face, as he bleeds out onto the dirt....