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At the time of this writing, Xbox Game Pass subscribers only have two new games to look forward to in December 2024, though more announcements are likely on the way. Release date announcements for Xbox Game Pass games give fans a sneak preview of what to expect from one month to the next. View the full article

****** Friday deals are here, and we've spotted a great Amazon saving on 7 Wonders Duel. If you want to challenge your friend or partner to an epic struggle of civilizations that only takes half an hour, you'll want to take note of this board game deal. Over ****** Friday, the price of 7 Wonders Duel has gone down from $39.99 to $19.99 - a none-too-shabby 34% drop. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: 7 Wonders Duel review - a two player marvel View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

On paper, the original, 2002 version of The Thing videogame was a great idea. Officially sanctioned by John Carpenter himself, it served as a direct sequel to the 1982 movie, and combined the claustrophobic scares of Resident Evil with a psychological element that wouldn't look out of place in modern multiplayer horror games. As the leader of a search party sent to find MacReady and co., any time you wanted, you could administer blood tests on your teammates to see if they had been replaced by a Thing doppelganger. It made for a terrific, slow-***** tension. Or at least it would have if the system wasn't completely broken. Nightdive, the studio behind System Shock Remake and remasters of ***** 64 and Turok, knows this is a problem. Its upcoming The Thing Remastered has a super-smart solution. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Cult classic horror game next to be remastered by Nightdive Studios View the full article

This year's surprise mega-hit, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, is getting a patch that should improve performance on every level of PC. The game's developer has confirmed that Patch 5.0 will not only add support for frame generation on Nvidia GeForce GPUs, but also AMD Radeon graphics cards. Frame generation tech works by inserting extra frames between the frames rendered by your GPU, smoothing out the frame rate. In this case, the Xenos-smashing epic will get frame generation from both Nvidia and AMD. Nvidia DLSS will only work on the company's graphics cards, but AMD's FSR tech will work on practically any current GPU. As such, you can also expect to see some of the best gaming handhelds getting a big boost in Space Marine 2 performance. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: How to overclock your AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D: Make your gaming CPU faster for free Gigabyte Aorus Elite X870 WiFi7 Ice review: A brilliant white motherboard AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D are coming, but with a catch, says ***** View the full article

The highly anticipated superhero shooter Marvel Rivals is set to launch on PC and consoles on December 6, 2024, bringing a new wave of action-packed gameplay to fans of the Marvel universe. As excitement builds for the release, the minimum and recommended PC system requirements have been revealed, giving players a clear understanding of what their systems need to run Marvel Rivals. View the full article

GSC Game World has released a large new update for STALKER 2, which focuses on fixing many of the early bugs discovered in the game. The 1.0.1 update for STALKER 2 is now available on PC and should land on Xbox Series X/S later today (from the time of writing). View the full article

A recent datamine from the Genshin Impact beta reveals that Version 5.5 could be adding an important dragon character from the lore. Natlan is the latest region of Teyvat that opened its doors to the Traveler in Genshin Impact, and while Version 5.1 upped the stakes considerably by pushing the war with the Abyss to the forefront, the draconic forebears of the land were largely relegated to the World Quest series. This is likely to change in Version 5.3. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

The recent Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero tournament has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons, including an imbalanced roster and competitors exploiting certain gameplay mechanics in ways that aren’t satisfying for spectators. Earlier this year, Bandai Namco and developer Spike Chunsoft released the first mainline Budokai Tenkaichi entry in nearly 17 years with Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, which updated the classic formula with new roster additions from Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super. View the full article

GSC Game World has released Stalker 2’s first big post-launch patch across PC and Xbox, making over 650 fixes. Stalker 2 enjoyed an impressive launch with over one million copies sold, but it suffers from a number of game-breaking bugs. Check out IGN’s Stalker 2 review for more. Now GSC has released patch 1.0.1, hopefully Stalker 2 players are in for a smoother ride. The update includes fixes for quest blockers, memory leaks, crashes, and minor bugs, GSC said. There are a number of blanace changes, too, which overall make the game easier. Check out the patch notes below. “Thanks for your passion and support since the release, it is really important to us,” the developer added. GSC said future updates will make A-Life system bugfixes. Free in-game content is also coming to the game - expect more on that when GSC shares its roadmap later in December. To help you survive in the Zone, we've got a list of Essential Stalker 2 Tips and Tricks, plus a guide on Things to Do First in Stalker 2 to help you through the early game, and Things Stalker 2 Doesn't Tell You - everything we wish we knew before we started playing. Save time scouring the wasteland with our Artifacts checklist and locations guide, and every Stash location we've found so far. Stalker 2 suffered a number of understandable delays, most recently in July when the game was due out in September. GSC said at the time that the extra two months would give the developers the chance to fix "unexpected anomalies," aka bugs. GSC has also been vocal about the challenges the studio faced getting Stalker 2 up to scratch after a mixed reaction to its debut public showing last year. At gamescom 2023, GSC addressed what some had called a “downgrade” sparked by Stalker 2’s then latest gameplay trailer. At the time, GSC told IGN it was still targeting a visual quality and level of polish suggested by Stalker 2’s eye-catching 2021 trailer despite the horrendous conditions suffered by the staff amid the war with Russia. Stalker 2 update 1.0.1 patch notes: AI fixes: Fixed groups of NPCs getting stuck and dying near Shelter during active Emission.Fixed issue when Burer could drop any mission items out of the player's hands.Added missing sound effects for Burer’s 'Telekinesis' ability.Fixed issues with NPCs occasionally getting stuck and not reaching the mission location. This might have caused inability to interact with NPC or progress to the next mission stage due to idle behavior of mission NPC.Fixed issues with performance drops/potential out-of-memory crashes in hubs and locations crowded with NPCs during long play sessions.Fixed issue when NPCs would move to A-pose or start flying after ******.Fixed issue when NPCs could not track whether a target in cover was covered from shots, which caused them to ****** into cover. And other, more than 20 different issues with AI. Optimization fixes: Fixed issue with invisible NPC/Mutants appearing in FOV while the Player is scoping.Fixed ***** visual effects that were not rendering at certain camera angles. Also, we fixed approximately 100 different crashes, including potential memory leaks and EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION issues. Audio & Sound fixes: Fixed issue when combat music was still playing while combat was finished. And 7 other minor audio & sound bugs. Balance adjustments: Weapons and armor repair cost is decreased.Significantly increased cost of artifacts (more revenue from selling).Money reward for most missions is increased from 2 to 3 times.Rookie difficulty armor and weapons buffs.Damage from mutants is moderately decreased on Rookie difficulty (more mutant health balance changes in Combat Balance section).Damage to player's ******* is decreased by 23 percent on Rookie difficulty.Armor durability is increased by 12.5 percent.Added silencer attachment for PTM to specific stash on Lesser Zone.Fixed sell prices for Exoskeletons, they are now more expensive to sell.Fixed sell price of upgraded weapons.Rebalanced Hercules consumable: player speed debuff removed; increased the effect parameters (now more weight could be carried by player after consuming). Some additional minor bugfixes. Combat Balance: Reduced some mission items' weight (including weight of scanners)Slightly rebalanced Bloodsucker’s damage.Decreased Bloodsucker’s strike protection rank (more damage from guns).Reduced Boodsucker’s HP regeneration outside the combat.Controller HP is moderately reduced.Burer HP is moderately reduced.Boar HP is moderately reduced.Flesh HP is moderately reduced.Damage to Boar from headshots changed to 100% of body damage.Damage to Boar from shots to the limbs is increased.Damage to Flesh from shots to the limbs is increased.Significantly increased ******* melee distance.Slightly increased ****** melee distance. Gamepad Input: Increased gamepad ***** zones Characters: Fixed eyes and teeth on NPC models.Some minor fixes of NPC models and animations. Cutscenes: Added missing footage to TV displays in the final cutscene.Fixed issue with deer animation in the opening cutscene. And 20 other different bugs in the cutscenes. Game Settings & Menus: Adjusted unreadable text at the bottom of the Shader Compilation screen.Fixed issue with the 'Nvidia Reflex Low Latency' option not being saved on subsequent boots of the game. And 10 more minor issues. Interactable Objects: Fixed physics issues with destructible and movable objects, including those floating in the air.Fixed interaction prompt with glass doors in SIRCAA’s inner yard, which caused a walkthrough blocker.Fixed missing inner doors in the X-11 laboratory elevator. And more minor bugs. Main and Side Missions: Resolved numerous mission blockers and bugs encountered under specific conditions. Key fixes include: Fixed missing interaction with ***** ****** dogs in the Nightingale’s Hunt mission.Fixed uncompletable objectives in the Seek, and You Shall Find mission.Fixed multiple issues in the There and Back Again mission, including one where the artifact couldn’t be found.Resolved dialog loop with Zotov during the A Needle in a Haystack mission.Fixed progression blockers in the Answers Come at a Price mission, including issues with bandits after an emission and missing the Heavy Key item.Corrected mission markers for NPC locations in Hot on the Trail mission.Fixed door-related issues in the In Search of a Guide mission and The Side Hustle mission.Fixed issue when cutscene does not start during the Just Like the Good Old Days mission.Fixed issue when Lodochka is missing in Quite's Camp during the Just Like the Good Old Days mission.Fixed an issue during Just Like the Good Old Days when Lodochka acts aggressively after bringing him the Emitter.It is now possible to turn off electricity in the flooded area during the To the Last Drop of Blood mission.Fixed multiple issues in the On the Edge mission, including idle NPCs, stuck doors, and the Monolith ******* progression.Fixed progression blockers in the A Minor Incident mission, including issues with Bayun's collar and locked doors.Addressed performance drops and confusing objectives in the In Search of Past Glory mission.Fixed issues in the Visions of Truth mission, including stuck NPCs and blocked progression after dialogs.Resolved stuck cutscenes and blocked progression in the Dangerous Visitors, Gray’s Last Hunt, and The Eternal Shining missions.Corrected spawn behaviors for NPCs and enemies in The Boundary and Escape from the Cage missions.Tweaked missions like Down Below, Budmo!, and A Big Score to resolve stuck NPCs, misaligned markers, and missing dialog options. And approximately 120 other issues within the main line, side missions, and encounters. Open World Experience: Fixed stretched or missing limbs on humanoid corpses.Fixed missing fast travel routes, including to the Concrete Plant for Toadstool.Resolved isses with loudspeakers, fast travel, and NPC interactions in various locations, such as the Scientists' Bunker, and Chemical Plant.Adjusted hostile NPC behavior during the Arena missions, including bandits’ tactics and increased ammo for the Tyrant ******.Corrected mission progression in the ****** Sheep and The Key to Freedom missions. And approximately 50 other issues were fixed. Player Guidance, Gear, and Weapons: Fixed a bug that allows to sell items to the trader for more money that they actually cost.Fixed input blocking issues with the PDA, inventory, and attachments when interacting with artifacts.Corrected flashlight behavior after saving/loading.Resolved issues with grenade type selection, compass marker overlaps, and missing mission markers.Fixed inconsistencies with ******* and armor upgrade effects, including pricing and upgrade reversals.Improved HUD behavior and prolonged the duration of "Point of No Return" hints during Down Below mission.Fixed a bug where player could sell mission items using gamepad. And approximately 50 minor “anomalies”. Voiceover and Facial Animations: Restored missing facial animations for Sava in the Hot on the Trail mission and Mugwort in The Eternal Shining mission.Fixed missing voice lines during the Let No One Leave Unsatisfied mission.Corrected radio call effects so NPC voices properly reflect distance during communication. And a couple more things are fixed. World: Fixed flickering textures in various locations, including the Sphere, Military Base and Chemical Plant.Resolved movement issues, including getting stuck in certain locations during missions like Once More Unto the Breach and A Tough Awakening.Corrected artifact spawn points in some areas.Fixed NPC behavior during encounters.Adjusted voice volume during storm weather for improved audio balance. And approximately 50 more bugs. Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

More than a year since it was initially unveiled as 'Project Mugen,' the open-world anime RPG from NetEase Games now has an official name - Ananta. With full freedom of movement reminiscent of Insomniac's Spider-Man games, and a vast city to explore, it's been on our calendars for quite some time. In a new teaser trailer confirming its official name, the Once Human and Marvel Rivals publisher reveals that even more information on the challenger to HoYoverse's Zenless Zone Zero is coming very soon. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Project Mugen release date speculation, gameplay, and latest news Project Mugen has multiplayer, but with a twist New free RPG is Genshin Impact meets Persona in a sci-fi open world View the full article

Re-Logic has delayed Terraria's upcoming 1.4.5 update until 2025. Despite the disappointing news, the developer has good reason to push back the large Terraria update ahead of the upcoming holiday season. View the full article

A Riot Games analyst specializing in Vanguard, the anti-cheat system behind Valorant, has weighed in on the persistent cheating issues plaguing the Call of Duty series. With Call of Duty's Ricochet software struggling to effectively curb hacking, the analyst shared insights into strategies that could strengthen the franchise's defenses. View the full article

Light of Motiram, which has gained some critical ire due to its clear and ample "inspiration" of the Horizon series, is coming to PS5 and mobile platforms. Also, there's a 16 minute gameplay trailer out too! You can watch it yourself, and see just how far the comparisons go. Shocker, it's a lot like Horizon, and Palworld too? Read more View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Saber Interactive and Focus Entertainment have once again teased Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2's upcoming 5.0 Patch. The previous 4.5 update for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 added the Neo-Volkite ******* and addressed issues. View the full article

The Fortnite Chapter 6 Season 1 trailer has been posted following its *****, and there is a lot to unpack. Fortnite took a break from the regular seasons when Chapter 2 Remix went live. Similarly to what happened in 2023, instead of moving from one chapter to another, gamers were able to return to a previous Battle Royale island for a month with a special edition OG map. View the full article

Tencent has announced plans to release its controversial open-world survival crafting game Light of Motiram on PS5 as well as mobile and PC. As reported by Gematsu, Tencent announced the PS5 version on PlayStation‘s ******** social network accounts on Weibo and Bilibili. Light of Motiram, from Shanghai-based Tencent subsidiary Polaris Quest, is a free-to-play survival game “where nature meets machine.” Screenshots and gameplay videos reveal a visual style remarkably similar to Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, complete with ****** beasts in a post-apocalyptic setting. IGN has asked Tencent and Sony for comment. Today, Tencent revealed a new seven-minute video showing more of Light of Motiram’s gameplay. After an intro that rekindles memories of Destiny’s famous Ghost ‘wake up, Guardian’ opening, we see gameplay that looks heavily inspired by the likes of Capcom’s Monster Hunter and Pocketpair’s Palworld, which itself was accused of “ripping off” Pokémon. Light of Motiram lets players befriend and raise various ‘mechanimals’ alone or with friends. You need to set up a base camp and ride tamed mechanimals as mounts, getting them to help with logging, farming, and crafting. Mechanimals can serve as ground, air, and water mounts, help in combat, and assist with resource gathering. Tencent said Light of Motiram has hundreds of realistic survival gameplay mechanics. “Trees need to be carefully cut down else they deliver a swift ******, a shelter has to be ventilated before lighting a ***** so as not to choke, and lightning may strike (more than a few times) if you’re caught wearing metal in a storm,” the company said. “These realistic details can be used to players’ advantage, as for example lightning damage can electrocute fishes and make the process of fishing much easier and faster.” While this sort of multiplayer survival gameplay is not featured in the Horizon games, the look and feel of Light of Motiram’s characters, monsters, and world are undeniably similar. Guerrilla is of course working on a multiplayer, live service Horizon game - Light of Motiram may be treading on its toes somewhat, although we’ll have to wait for a reveal to find out. Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

As Sony’s pursuit of Kadokawa rumbles on, financial experts have said the PlayStation maker may find it hard to buy the entirety of FromSoftware’s parent company. Japan’s Toyo Keizai (via Automaton) reported that Sony may be put off the deal due to the cost of having to acquire all of Kadokawa, rather than the parts it’s actually interested in. Kadokawa is reportedly only interested in doing a deal with Sony if it buys the entire company. Sony, however, is reportedly only interested in “extracting” assets related to anime and video games, which presumably includes the developer of Elden Ring. Buying all of Kadokawa would cost 640 billion yen (approx $4.3 billion), according to expert estimates. Sony’s cash for buyouts is apparently tight at the moment due to investments made elsewhere. As a point of comparison, Sony bought Destiny developer Bungie for $3.7 billion back in 2022. The studio has since suffered multiple rounds of layoffs and project cancelations. There’s also the apparent prospect of a bidding war that would cause Kadokawa’s ***** price to soar beyond Sony’s limit. The alternative is for Sony to buy 50% of Kadokawa and turn it into a subsidiary it doesn’t wholly own. Kadokawa’s business extends into areas that fit into Sony’s broader entertainment offering, which includes anime, manga, TV, and film. Kadokawa is a prolific publisher of anime, and Sony already owns anime streamers Crunchyroll and Funimation. As well as FromSoftware, Kadokawa owns Danganronpa developer Spike Chunsoft, Octopath Traveler developer Acquire, and RPG Maker and Pixel Game Maker developer Gotcha Gotcha Games. Kadokawa is the majority owner of FromSoftware, with around 70% of the company. Sony already owns around 14% of the developer, with Tencent owning around 16%. Piers Harding-Rolls, Research Director at Ampere Analysis, told IGN that news of a potential deal isn’t that surprising. "Sony’s interest in Kadokawa’s games publisher FromSoftware was made more concrete in 2022 when it acquired a roughly 14% share of the company following up on its long-time collaboration with the company," Harding-Rolls said. "At the time, Sony mentioned a broader interest in cross-media development of anime and games IP to support its other media businesses. So, in that sense any deal for the parent company Kadokawa, which also operates extensively in manga and anime, is a natural extension of this earlier deal. These other areas align nicely with Sony’s anime businesses. "The market conditions for acquisitions have changed dramatically over the last two years but Sony will always be looking for opportunities that can fuel its growth and that bolster its IP portfolio, and that represent value. There may also be a defensive element to this move. FromSoftware is an important partner for Sony’s games business, and it will not want a competitor taking control of Kadokawa and potentially disrupting that relationship. It helps that Kadokawa is also active in areas which are a strong fit with Sony’s wider business." For Sony, its gaming business has already suffered significant layoffs this year and the closure of multiple studios, including Concord developer Firewalk. In February, it announced a round of layoffs affecting 900 staff, or about 8% of its global PlayStation workforce. The layoffs impacted a number of PlayStation studios, including Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla, and Firesprite, but PlayStation's London studio was hit hardest with a notice of closure. Photo by Yui Mok/PA Images via Getty Images. Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

This poker rouge-lite can turn the card game you know into something completely new. Balatro features card enhancements, Jokers with unique effects, and a couple of keywords, including Antes and Blinds, that are a core part of the gameplay. Here’s everything you need to know about Antes and Blinds in Balatro. View the full article

****** Friday is finally here which means those who held out on buying the things they want and need ahead of the holidays are about to be rewarded. Particularly those of you in the market for a new gaming PC. iBUYPOWER’s ****** Friday ***** is now live and no matter what you’re looking for from a gaming PC, iBUYPOWER almost certainly has it for less. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

To help you decide on what to pick up, I've gone through the Steam Autumn ***** and picked out a whole bunch that will work great across both Steam Deck and Desktop Linux. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

You can now knock down ****** dirtbags using a dinner plate as a violent frisbee in Selaco. Wonderful. The first-person shooter, which is replete with satisfying explosions, gunfire, bullet ricochets, smashing glass, sparks, goo, blood spatters, dust, ice particles, smoke, flecks of plaster, and bad guys yelling at one another about how she's over there, may be described as noisy, both in the aural and visual sense of the word. Which is how we like it, you understand. This latest update to the early access shooter leans into that by layering on even more juicy shootFX. It also adds a whole new game mode and plenty of other tweaks. The bad news is that some story bits are now delayed. Read more View the full article

Magic mirror on the wall, who’s the finest Tav of them all? …Oh, what’s that? You no longer go by Tav? Well, this is awkward. That’s right, Baldur’s Gate 3 fans: You can finally change your name after leaving the character creator in Larian Studios’ hit RPG. Thanks to Hotfix #9 released on Oct. 6, 2023, the process of selecting a new name is fairly simple. But you’ll need to know exactly where to go before your companions start calling you something different. View the full article

The lead performance director for ****** Myth: Wukong has shared her opinion on the use of AI in game development, stating the tech is incapable of replicating the human touch in creative material. AI is a worrying topic for many industry professionals, but there are also a handful of major companies that are in favor of its usage. The director confirmed she wasn’t involved in any AI work while developing ****** Myth: Wukong and would likely never use it. View the full article

Seeing great games sell too poorly for the pursestring goblins to shell out for a sequel is always a heartache, but it really stung to learn that the incredible ***** Space remake didn’t catch on enough for EA to greenlight a remake of ***** Space 2 (even if EA were a little spotty on the details). Doubly so in the wake of The Callisto Protocol - a game I still think is worth picking up on a deep discount, if you like hitting ****** things with a big bit of metal. It’s quite exciting, then, to learn that the next game from ***** Of P developer Round 8 Studios might just replace that severed limb. Alongside a sequel to the puppety soulslike, they’re also working on a sci-fi survival horror game, via Eurogamer. Read more View the full article

************ developer Rasheed Abueideh has announced Dreams On A Pillow, a mixture of stealth-adventure and interactive documentary set during the Nakba - *******'s violent displacement and dispossession of ************ ****** in 1948, shortly after *******'s founding. Created by "a global team of veteran game developers", it's the story of a ************ woman grappling with the loss of her baby after fleeing a ******* ******** on her town. Read more View the full article