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That’s not all though, there’s a new weapon modification, new upgrades and story events, and there’s even fishing now too! If you haven’t played it, Hades is an excellent Greek mythology based rogue-like where you play as the son of the titular god, Zagreus, as you attempt to escape your literally hell-ish home. It’s currently in early access, and about once a month we’re treated to a lovely big update to make escaping the underworld that much more interesting....

“One fine fall day, Tess Devine and her mother, Opal, discover a cache of old notes and letters carefully stashed away in the attic of their house,” its Steam page says. “Hints of deep-rooted family secrets, decades-old burglaries, a lost treasure somewhere near the Canadian border… What they uncover suggests a much darker mystery, best left well enough alone.” Tess (voiced by Kaitlyn Dever, who you may recognise from Booksmart) and Opal (voiced by Keri Russell, who’s also in Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker) head off to search through long-abandoned family buildings to uncover dark secrets which may lead them to some sort of fortune....

Sources who wished to remain anonymous told Bloomberg that Google and Nvidia “provided information that backs a key FTC contention — that Microsoft could gain an unfair advantage in the market for cloud, subscription and mobile gaming.” Nvidia’s remarks to the FTC apparently stressed the need for equal access to games, but did not directly oppose the acquisition. Much of the objection to Microsoft’s acquisition relates to the unfair advantage it could offer the tech giant if Activision Blizzard’s games - including the likes of Call Of Duty and Overwatch - were exclusive to Xbox consoles and the Game Pass subscription service....

Set during-ish Halo 2, ODST focuses on a squad of troops who land in their wee pods to fight the Covenant invasion of New Mombasa. Lots of urban action for a series so often found running around fields. And you’ve got all your mates from off the telly. First released on Xbox 360 in 2009, Halo 3: ODST is coming to PC with support high resolutions, high framerates, FOV options, and other such technobits....

A rumor posted in October by the “Gaming Leaks & Rumors” account on Twitter partially based on a Reddit post is currently going around. The poster claims that 343 Industries plan to release a free battle royale mode set on the Zeta Halo ring sometime in 2021. The same source also claims that Halo Infinite will release four total campaign chapters over the next decade, beginning with the launch in 2021....

Now, bringing a club to a gunfight might not seem like the smartest idea. But while pistols require two of a gunslinger’s action points to shoot, and rifles take all three, it only takes one action point to whack some neckerchief-wearing bandit with a big ol’ stick. And Laughing Deer whacks a whole point of damage harder than normal, meaning he can rush foes and nail them into the ground with a couple of hard swings before they can pull the trigger....

The new player experience in WoW is very different to how I remember it. Back in my day you’d pick a race, like Human for instance, and you’d begin your journey in Elwynn Forest tackling Kobolds for their candles. As you started slowly levelling up, quest givers would nudge you towards the little town of Goldshire. Here you’d get a grounding in professions, perhaps fish in the rivers nearby or seek out some iron ore veins for that relaxing clink....

After an explosive opening that sees your party of five get separated across a vast island where dark magic and foul deeds are afoot, you’ll spend the game’s early hours rebuilding your crew while unravelling a deeper mystery that threatens the entire island. It’s classic fantasy RPG stuff, with talking golems, evil sorceresses, beast tamers and wise-cracking mages all part and parcel of this wonderfully realised world. When you’re not stomping around its gorgeous cel-shaded overworld map, you’ll be bashing your way through procedurally generated isometric dungeons to further the game’s story, unearthing new weapons, lore extracts and crafting materials as well as tackling the odd light puzzle between fights....

I’ve already expounded my love for Doom Eternal’s Meat Hook in a separate post, but in summary, this new addition to the series’ classic Super Shotgun is an absolute revelation, marking a clear evolution in both style and substance from id Software’s also excellent Doom reboot in 2016. Doom has always been a series that brings the fight to you whether you like it or not, but the Meat Hook lets you launch yourself into the fray like never before....

I must admit, I’d been wary about giving Gris a go given how the rest of the RPS team reacted to it around the time of its release. But when it popped up on Xbox Game Pass a couple of months ago, I thought there was really no reason why I shouldn’t play it myself and make up my own mind about it. And I’m so glad I did! Yes, Gris’ emotional journey might be a bit hackneyed, but it really wasn’t as bad or as obvious as I thought it was going to be....

And lemme tell ya. It’s a hard job being a sacrifical priest. Of all the runs I’ve attempted so far, I’ve maybe only made it two years before I annoy one of the five houses so much that they’ve openly rebelled against me and bumped me off in the night. There’s a lot to manage. At the start of each three-month-long season, you must pick five advisors (one from each house) to help you do your bidding....

By contrast, every other MOBA I’ve tried has ended up uninstalled in short order. Is it just Dota 2’s complexity that makes it special? It helps, I think – with expansiveness comes room to experiment, and heroes aren’t as forcibly pigeonholed into specific roles or meta item builds as you might figure. But there’s so much else that I couldn’t possibly articulate it all. Maybe it’s the length of the games; 40ish minutes on average is a big commitment, but leaves time for your own, memorable little narratives to develop across every match....

This is Kira. Her markings make it look like she’s wearing an Incredibles mask. Of course, as a proud cat-dad of two, I can’t display any favouritism. So here’s a photo of the equally adorable Harvey, Kira’s brother: Alright, now that we’ve all satisfied our deep craving for cat photos, I have to actually try to justify this “playing with cats is worthy of a game retrospective” stance I’ve backed myself into....

Oh, and of course one of Blizzard’s delightfully cheesy animated music videos, featuring Mecha-Jaraxxus (a sort of cyborg devil, and the baddie from the new solo campaign) giving it a bit of Immortan Joe with his Rusted Legion. With loads of new stuff to do (all of it being entirely free, and none of it buggering up the game’s meta with overpowered cards), I have to say I actually prefer it to recent full-scale Hearthstone expansions....

The next game from publisher No More Robots is an interesting prospect. It’s a strategy game where you plan out a heist. Your character(s) will only be able to see what’s in the room when they get there, but in the first level I tried I could walk around and inspect things, like a mouse-controlled Agent 47, feeling out what’s good to steal and how best to steal it. It’s immediately clear that there will probably be a lot of lateral thinking, because in order to steal a book you need to distract an old lady with a microwave....

Below, a new seven-minute clip of the remaster in action. Well, it does look better than the original, and better than the PlayStation 4 remaster, which I suppose means mission accomplished. The Last Of Us tells the story Joel and Ellie as they navigate the post-zombied United States. Players take control of Joel, whose job it is to hide behind low cover and to shoot, stab and stomp on inflatable balloon people stuffed full of red soup....

In the teaser trailer, we see Sam Porter Bridges stealthily entering a large warehouse that’s being patrolled by guys with guns. Sam picks up a large human-sized box, inspects it thoroughly, empty loads of oranges out of it, then climbs in like a curious cat. He gets out soon after though, and doesn’t commit to the box-y sneaking. The area and masked dudes shown in the teaser don’t look like anything currently in Death Stranding, suggesting the Director’s Cut might have new places to explore, and new factions to meet....

Less pleasing is ray tracing’s performance cost. I gave the patch a quick rundown on an RTX 2080 Ti and Intel Core i5-12600K, by no means a creaking geriatric of a PC, but enabling both settings at 1440p cut average FPS by about 73%. That’s down from 141fps in the built-in Dubai benchmark to just 38fps, both using Ultra quality for the rest of the settings. I wouldn’t advise approaching Hitman 3’s ray tracing without one of the best graphics cards, if it gives even the RTX 2080 Ti this much trouble....

I should stress that this method only works within that 10-day time limit; a kind of trial period, if you will. Beyond that, your best hope is a completely clean Windows 10 install, which would cost any files, games and apps you hadn’t previously backed up. If you do decide to switch back in time, you can might lose some apps and settings changed made after you first installed Windows 11, but anything you brought over from Windows 10 should return intact....