The Shipment map gets its Christmas on for a two-week period beginning tomorrow and lasting into the new year. As you saw in the ridiculously over-dramatic trailer, there’ll be festive bows and wreaths dangling from the shipping containers that make up the map. They’re flanked by snowmen, who you can’t easily mistake for other players because they so obviously stand out from the rest of Shipment. Probably the nicest touch in the map’s Yuletide makeover are the massive STAY FROSTY messages sprayed over the containers....

So, Fatalis. The black dragon will once again be fought in its traditional battleground of Castle Schrade, complete with gadgets like the cannons and pop-out Dragonator spikes. Squish Fatalis and you’ll get to carve it up into new armour and weapons and such, which do look quite fancy. And the Fatalis look for your Palico, which even wields a ragdolling wee Hunter and its sword, is too much for my fragile heart to bear....

“It probably goes without saying, but this certainly isn’t the scenario we envisaged for the release of the game,” the developers said in today’s announcement. “However, we have tried to make the best of a bad situation and thankfully, with the help of our IT team, have been able to continue work on the project from home. This has come with its own challenges of course, but we are still very grateful and lucky to work in an industry where it is possible to work remotely, which we know isn’t the case for many of you....

GTBike V lets you connect a smart bike trainer or cycling power meter to Grand Theft Auto V, turning your real-world pedalstrokes into virtuacranking. It’s similar to Zwift, but with the extra-prettiness of GTA V, the familiarity of Los Santos, and the sheer novelty of this even being possible. You can even upload the rides to Strava afterwards. Version 0.6.0.2 of GTBike V launched on Friday, bringing the long-awaited addition of multiplayer....

The answer lies in a combination between what the Core i9-11980HK has to offer, even compared to earlier 11th-gen chips, and the sheer luxury of the GE76 Raider as a whole. This is a mad machine for the madly monied, from its 360Hz screen to its RTX 3080 GPU and PCIe 4.0 SSD storage. The Core i9-11980HK, by the way, is one of Intel’s first octa-core laptop CPUs that can handle PCIe 4....

“Urgent news,” stresses the chancellor at last, through a grimace of social anxiety, and after a few more moments of thumping, there is a grunt of annoyance from behind the door (the chancellor hopes it is a grunt of annoyance, in any case), and the unseen motion stops. “What sort of news?” asks the Duke, in a gelid, patrician drawl. “Good news!,” insists the chancellor, voice leaping to the octave reserved for only the most desperate of liars....

I empathise a lot with Jim during these episodes, because I have definitely been ’that person’ on the office lunch squad who just isn’t as good at Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (and Bad Company 2 Vietnam) as everyone else. Our games never got quite as heated and competitive as the ones in The Office, but their average lifespan would always follow a similar pattern. We’d all get into it and play it for a few weeks, one person would go away and research the meta game in their spare time to dominate the rest of us, and then no one would want to play against that person and we’d move on to something else....

Netflix have also hired screenwriter Michael Green for the BioShock flick. Green wrote the Kenneth Branagh versions of Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile. I guess that means he’s got experience of period settings. Netflix revealed they were planning a BioShock movie back in February, and seem to want it to become a cinematic universe. Pirates Of The Carribean director Gore Verbinski was the first director attached to a possible movie based on Andrew Ryan’s undersea shenanigans only a year after the game was released, but that fell through....

I am shocked, confused, and delighted. BioWare revealed they were working on a new Mass Effect mere weeks ago, and I thought from the initial teaser images BioWare released that the next game would be set in Andromeda galaxy. I suppose it still could be, but judging from this trailer there’s clearly some business to be finished in the Milky Way. If the reaper noises early on didn’t catch your attention, then how about Liara picking up what is very likely a piece of Shepard’s destroyed N7 armour?...

Oh, they called it Little Yeety? Sure. Why not. Fine. As with Season 1, Fall Guys’ second season will be getting a little content boost at the halfway point. The “Big Fan Yeet Little” update arrives next week, as announced by a social team that really, really wanted to get an OnlyFans joke in there. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings A new level that features ONLY FANS It drops into the game next week as part of the FAN BIG YEET LITTLE update Also contains lots of fixes, a new naming system, Lil Yeety, and loads of level variations ?...

While I’ve yet to take a look at each game’s new DLSS support myself, Nvidia have released two videos showing it off in-game, as well as the kind of frame rate boost you can expect to see across a couple of graphics cards. You can have a gander at them below. Admittedly, the Nioh 2 video isn’t quite as impressive as the Mount & Blade II one below, as for some reason Nvidia chose to show off what’s possible on an RTX 3070, which, as you can see, can pretty much run the game at 60fps on max settings anyway....

When I first picked up – and bounced off – No Man’s Sky in 2016, the spacey sandbox had a distinctly Star Wars flavour. You played a lone star-lad who jumped in his Dacia Duster of an X-Wing, hopping from planet to planet without much reason to care. Well, Endurance finally adds some tweaks that could let you play this more like Star Trek. Having a crew of biologists, technicians and engineers kicking about your capital ships, with even your hired frigate captains and squadron pilots teleporting in to visit from time to time, is a lovely touch....

The racing is very solid, but more importantly it has character. Odd, odd character.

If you don’t count the NZXT Shine 3, which you shouldn’t because it was just the Ducky Shine 3 with an NZXT badge on it, these three comprise NZXT’s first crack at proper mechanical keyboard-making. Having made another peripheral debut last year with the Capsule, one of the best gaming microphones around, NZXT have gone for a diversified lineup: there’s the full-size Function (£130 / $150), the Function Tenkeyless (£110 / $130), and the Function MiniTKL (£100 / $120), which is more or less a 75% keyboard with an extra column of keys on the right edge....

Steam seems to have tripped over around noon GMT, with the Store either not loading, giving error messages, or at least taking ages. It seems to struggle back to its feet every so often, then just as I think it’s fixed, pow, gone again. Right now, I’m seeing 502 gateway errors. I’ve only seen issues with the Store myself, with Friends and games and updates and such still working fine, but evidently it had login issues too....

The announcement post specifically names “Xbox One controllers with Bluetooth support, [the] Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2, and Xbox Adaptive Controllers” are compatible hardware. Once the update is installed, it should be possible to connect the controller between to both a host device using the Xbox Wireless protocol (i.e. an Xbox) and a second Bluetooth source, i.e. your PC or laptop. Once both are connected, double-tapping the pairing button will switch between the two almost instantly....

Until those juicy morsels arrive on our gaming plates, though, these are the games we’ve enjoyed the most over the last six months. You’ll find all sorts here, from big epic space operas and zombie horror fests to cosy town builders and err… couple’s therapy puzzlers. Will any of them make it to our end of year Advent Calendar? Only time will tell. And if we’ve missed something you think is absolutely vital playing this year, please do shout about it in the comments....

We are aware that Horaszdóttir may be simplistically squashing in a lot of disparate games and developers under one unhelpful banner with this one, but look, they wouldn’t fit easily into other categories, and frankly Horaszdóttir has a lot on her plate what with tending to a huge flock of angry birds. Oddworld: Soulstorm What is it? A remake and reimagining of Abe’s Exoddus, one of the all-time 2D platforming greats....

Overland update 1.2 actually adds quite a few neat changes, but you’ll forgive me for focusing on the pups, I hope. When starting a new game, you can now toggle the “all dogs” option meaning no humans allowed. Ah but wait, the humans were always in charge of chauffeuring their dog party members to each new zone. What now, pups? Well the dogs can drive with this setting on, of course....

The new launch trailer here doesn’t reveal much of the hidden city bit, unfortunately, but you can peek it up top there. Betheath the dusty and austere decor of the old Nazi hideout is a more colorful, mysterious world of giant tree sculptures and lovely, mossy gardens. It’s a huge contrast from the wasteland up above and the industrial tech of the bunker itself. The retro-future tech mixed with water-y world beneath has shades of BioShock in it as well....