Turns out the answer is never. Asobo’s follow-up A Plague Tale: Requiem is just as gory and bleak as its predecessor and as the siblings continue to battle through a violent world that wants them dead, they’ll both face difficult moral decisions in the name of survival. Oh, and there are more rats. Like, a lot more rats. In Requiem, the duo are forced to flee their homeland and travel south, still trying to find a way to control Hugo’s supernatural power that allows him to control the rats....

As you’ll have seen if you watched it, this is as much a recruitment advert as it as a progress update. Mod projects like this are enormous, and take a long time, and so they need a constant influx of new developers willing to work for free. There’s an online form if you’re interested in volunteering. There’s plenty to enjoy even if, like me, you don’t know how to make 3D models....

21) Red-footed Booby I feel bad for the ol’ RFB. When it comes to boobies (haha, lol etc), everyone always thinks of the Blue-footed Booby, I think because it’s pleasingly alliterative. Interestingly, Boobies aren’t named after tits (also a sort of bird), but for the Spanish word bobo, which can mean “silly”, “a fool” or “a clown”. Poor Red-footed Booby, then, as it basically relegates it to being the subject of this tweet: To see this content please enable targeting cookies....

But not this year! Since this Olympics are taking place in Tokyo, Japan’s decided to spruce up the atmosphere with an ambience game-likers will appreciate. Yes, each country’s athletes are entering the stadium to orchestral versions of music from classic Japanese video games. The medley features tracks from Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Sonic the Hedgehog. I mean, I’m literally watching it right now and yes, it’s bizarre to see a nation emerge to the “Victory Fanfare” from Final Fantasy, but it’s also rather fitting....

Still, even if we were in a position where stock shortages weren’t an ongoing problem, the slower pace of AMD’s release schedule means they’re now playing constant catch-up to Nvidia’s RTX 30 GPUs. Indeed, with its starting price of $479, the RX 6700 XT sits rather uneasily between Nvidia’s $399 RTX 3060 Ti and $499 RTX 3070. AMD’s more expensive Radeon RX 6800 was already competing with the latter, outperforming the RTX 3070 at 1440p but falling behind at 4K and overall ray tracing performance, which would sort of imply the RX 6700 XT is perhaps a more appropriate rival for the RTX 3060 Ti....

That’s it for specifics – Herkelman says “More details to come soon” – but boy howdy gosh darn it to fuck, there are a lot of PC gaming hardware launches in the near future. Besides this RDNA 3/Radeon RX 7000 reveal and Nvidia’s GeForce Beyond event today, AMD also have their first Ryzen 7000 CPUs releasing on September 27th. Intel, too, are likely to announce their 13th Gen Raptor Lake chips sometime in the next few weeks, and even their long-delayed Arc Alchemist GPUs are seemingly gearing up for a proper worldwide launch....

Ainrun finally took out Elden Ring’s final boss in the wee hours of July 10th, but he’d only started two and a half hours before. His reaction? “Oh my god dude fuck this game. Elden Ring rune level one no-hit run, yes!” That sounds about right. You can watch Ainrun’s successful run in full on his Twitch archive here. He’d been foiled right at the end of an earlier run, but rolled off that to land the successful attempt: “In my opinion, a ‘challenge’ run like what I’ve done is supposed to be challenging, [so] using shortcuts doesn’t really make sense,” Ainrun told Kotaku....

On the Apex Legends website, senior level designer Garrett Metcalf talks through all the big changes coming to World’s Edge. The Train Yard has turned into a landslide, more lava is flowing through areas it shouldn’t be, and they’re “bringing back some of the dynamic gameplay that trains once offered” with new, moving Gondolas. We shall see if they surpass the greatness of the train. On top of that, Respawn are bringing back World’s Edge’s old pretty skybox, adding lots of ice everywhere, and introducing some new rotations for you and your team to more easily get to certain areas of the map....

Players have been able to get a sneak peek in-game at the new map through the limited-time Golden Tickets - items craftable at Replicators which can be used outside of matches to unlock the “A New Home” teaser. This brief teaser allows you to move through a limited area of Broken Moon and ride on the map’s most exciting new feature - the ziprails. Ziprails act like ordinary ziplines from other maps, but they allow you to move at much higher speeds along predetermined routes across the map....

Like the Discovery modes in Asscreed’s Egyptian and Grecian outings, this turns the game into a place of learning, not murdering. But while the other two focused on giving guided tours, Ubisoft have said this time players “will assume the roles of different characters and take on quests, which aim to bring them closer to the material by putting them at the center of it.” Now that’s what I call edutainment....

For a much better lesson, we should probably listen to the AskHistorians subreddit, who hosted a cool Q&A to offer their Viking knowledge to anyone with questions about the historical setting of Valhalla. One question brings up all the Roman architecture you can find throughout England in the game, and asks if those structures would indeed be there during the time Valhalla is set. The answer comes in the form of a poem about the British city of Bath from historian “thefeckamidoing”....

Godfall is epic, overwrought, sci-fi fantasy, so it’s a lame nerd’s idea of what is cool, and I love it. It’s like the video this guy would make for a DragonForce video if he had unlimited budget. It is Lord Of The Rings via a Monster Hunter fashion Tumblr. It is the “tears in rain” speech from Blade Runner, but as if that was performed by Jareth the Goblin King in his castle of M....

Get this month’s Humble Choice bundle, 12 games, for £8.69 / $12 So: the games. I’ve not played all of them on this list, but I’m a fan of Nowhere Prophet, a card game where you wander randomly-generated post-apocalyptic wastelands, upgrading your deck and trying to survive each stage. It had an unusually buggy release after a surprisingly bug-free beta, and now that its release jitters have calmed it’s a remarkably satisfying way to while away an afternoon....

Of course, they’re all largely graphics settings, but that’s what sells. Alongside DLSS, there are uncapped frame rate options, as well as multi-monitor and ultrawide monitor support (quick, someone alert Katharine and her best ultrawide PC games list). I have two monitors, so this directly affects me. Can you remember a time when PC settings were quite this sexy? The Nvidia number crunchers and the AMD artists are truly the rockstars of today....

The big add for this patch sounds likely to be its new class. Larian haven’t let on which that’ll be just yet though. BG3 Patch 4 added the Druid class back in February. With several melee and casting classes represented so far, it would be rad to see the Bard class get thrown in the mix, perhaps. That’s one that would benefit well from getting players hands on in early access, I’d think....

In their latest post, Larian talk about multiplayer, cinematics, and crowd voting systems for livestreamers. Twitch integration, which will launch with the early access version of the game later this month, sounds quite neat. Viewers will be able to peruse a streamer’s inventory, character sheet, and spells on their own screen. They’ll also be able to vote on dialogue choices if the streamer allows it, a bit like they did during Larian CEO Swen Vincke’s playthrough earlier this year—now with a proper in-game interface....

Battlefield 2042 update 3.2 is now live on all platforms. It’s mostly focused on fixes, addressing several crash problems and a whole lot of problems with the Soldier. These Soldier issues include: The update also fixed a problem which meant vehicle passengers would have their hit registration messed up when the driver’s turret rotated. See the patch notes for info on more fixes and changes. Alongside this, they’re making changes to XP gain in Portal mode....

Importantly, some of those soldiers have wingsuits. Others have recon drones, or sentry turrets. They always seem to fight in battles totalling no more than 128 players, and they don’t mind having a barney in the path of a tornado. Dice revealed all this and more in a press show last week, during which they repeated several times that there won’t be a battle royale mode. Look, here’s all the details, plus a blustery trailer....

You might think that buying a curved gaming monitor is a costly gimmick compared to flat gaming monitors, but these days they’re usually no more expensive than their flat counterparts (and in some cases they’re actually a bit cheaper). Curved gaming monitors also come with some key advantages, such as better viewing angles and higher contrast. This is because their curved edges allow you to look at more of the screen face-on rather than at an angle, which is particularly important when you get into the realms of ultrawide gaming monitors....

The very best gaming monitors, of course, know how to balance speed and sharpness. They can get pricey, though, so on this here list we’ll be keeping track of all the best gaming monitor deals to help you find a better bargain. Don’t worry, they’re still all good monitors - in fact, some are our absolute favourites on the market right now. We’re covering both standard and ultrawide form factors across the UK and US, so use the links on the right to jump to the deals that best fit your needs....