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Morrigan will always be an icon—as we've already discussed on this site, she's one of the all-time companion greats, pretty much stealing the show in Dragon Age: Origins. A razor-sharp wit, a barbed *******, and a deeper, sympathetic vulnerability. There's very much a reason why she keeps popping back up in sequels to play the hits... Read more.View the full article

We love a Humble Bundle here at PCGamesnN, and the latest is a must-have for choice-based narrative fans. Right now, Humble Bundle is offering The Telltale Collection bundle, featuring eight Telltale Games titles, for as little as $12 / £9.33. But, with the collection including several full series, including all of The Walking ***** games, you're actually getting way more than eight games. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Get Civilization 6 and the entire Sid Meier Collection for just $18 RuneScape is offering a huge new bundle at 79% off Grab seven great Steam Deck games, and Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, for under $12 View the full article

How do you get Path of Exile 2 Twitch drops? If you want a free attachment to add to your gear, here's when and where you'll find the Path of Exile 2 Twitch drops campaign and the goodies you can expect to earn. The Path of Exile 2 release date is fast approaching and though we already have lots to chew on, including guides to the Path of Exile 2 Witch class, Ranger class, and Mercenary class. Grinding Gear Games has announced Path of Exile 2 early access news is on the way at the next GGG Live. Here's when to tune it, what attachment you can earn, and how to link your Twitch account. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Path of Exile 2 Witch class guide Path of Exile dev "very sorry" as it rolls back account migration temporarily After Path of Exile 2 delay, Grinding Gear Games is changing how accounts work View the full article

What springs to mind when you think of the Roman Empire? Is it the insatiable need for expansion? The culture? Or perhaps even the great rulers like Caesar and Augustus? For me, the dilapidated ruins of the Colosseum flash across my mind - the building stands tall as the perfect representation of the everyday Roman people, and the architecture they'd see as they went about their lives. If you've always wanted to know what the fights in the Colosseum were like, then, wonder no longer. Upcoming management sim Gladiators of Citadelum puts you in control of a burgeoning league of warriors, but you'll remain perfectly safe. Read the rest of the story... View the full article

While Luma Island can be enjoyed as a solo-player experience, it’s a lot of fun to dig into with friends. Whether you want to set up a private game or simply open up the island to anyone on your Steam friends list, you can do so right from the beginning of your game. Here’s how to host and join multiplayer in Luma Island, including how to set up private games and see if someone on your Steam friend list is currently playing. View the full article

It's another day of perpetual sunshine on the palm tree-shaded, white sand beaches of the Rivain Coast. On this excursion, Dragon Age: The Veilguard's protagonist, Rook, fights a giant dragon. Last time, the hero and their friends battled a group of armor-plated warriors. Later, they'll return once again to investigate one of the crumbling stone fortresses baking beneath the Coast's clear blue skies. Throughout all of this, the same bright light bathes the region, the sun never moving in the sky. Nothing much changes on the Rivain Coast but the type of enemies to defeat and the twisting tropical pathways worth exploring. There's consistent beauty to the area and a hollowness beneath it that gives the impression of a land in stasis. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Dragon Age The Veilguard complete quest list All Dragon Age The Veilguard mementos and their locations Best Dragon Age The Veilguard factions for each class View the full article

Teamfight Tactics’ newest Set transports you Into the Arcane, where the world of Arcane, Riot Games’ animated show, collides with new traits, emblems, and strategies. As season two of the show unfolds, you’ll ***** into a world of new synergies, adapting your strategy to powerful trait combinations to dominate the board. In TFT Set 13, your ability to master traits and their breakpoints can make or break your strategy, so it is crucial to learn which ones you might encounter. While traits define the synergies in your team, giving your champions unique bonuses that grow stronger as you include more of the same trait, the breakpoints are what you should be mindful of. Here’s everything you need to dominate the game with a complete list of all traits and their abilities. View the full article

If you chose patience with Star Wars Outlaws, then here is your reward. The new Star Wars game has been discounted in ****** Friday sales, now down to $39.99 on PS5 and Xbox. That's 43% below the original list price, an extra $10 cheaper than it was just a week ago when it first reached a new all-time low price, and a much better offering for anyone who was unsure of the game when it launched back in late August. The deal also features Amazon's exclusive limited edition content pack, which includes Rogue Infiltrator cosmetics for Kay and Nix. It's the best deal we're getting on the game before Christmas, so snap it up if you've been waiting for a *****, or want to gift it to someone over the holidays. This would be a good time to jump on the game – it's not been long since Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment deployed a massive update bringing a host of performance and gameplay enhancements, a range of visual improvements, and bug fixes to the open-world sci-fi game on console and PC. The publisher ***** out everything new in the patch notes on its website, with Ubisoft emphasizing that these updates were shaped by player feedback, reaffirming its commitment to closely listening as post-launch support for Star Wars Outlaws continues. What We Said in Our Review Tristan Ogilvie said in his 7/10 review: "It’s ironic that Kay’s ship is called the Trailblazer, since there’s actually not a whole lot of ideas in Star Wars Outlaws that haven’t been done before in other action and open-world adventures. Instead, it’s quite like the Millenium Falcon: a bucket of bolts held together with repurposed parts and prone to breaking down, but at its best it’s more than capable of jolting your pleasure centres into Star Wars fan hyperspace. "A clever syndicate system brings real weight to almost every task you choose to undertake, some of which have creative quest designs that can often conjure up some genuinely stunning blindsides. Having a pal like Nix at your side the entire time not only adds an extra dimension to Kay’s fairly generic smuggler character, but also gives her an enhanced set of useful abilities. But even he can’t quite make its stealth and combat feel any less rigid and repetitive, and the odds of avoiding the many glaring technical issues present at launch are 3,720 to one. But you probably didn’t want me to tell you the odds." [/url] More ****** Friday Game Deals Should You Wait for Cyber Monday? The official ****** Friday sales events for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo have been underway for about a week, and most decent deals have been available. However, retailers are still droping prices on some games before they go out of stock – Star Wars Outlaws being one prime example. At this point, I wouldn't wait for a better price to come around on Cyber Monday. This is the game's all-time low price; I'd jump on this now before it sells out. Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

A certain kind of friction can go a long way in creating a challenging and punishing game that’s also Not that a lot of post-apocalyptic first-person shooters are, but STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is especially not for the faint of heart. It’s built to generate the kind of friction that goes a long way in creating a challenging and punishing game that’s also captivating. When you’re left to figure things out for yourself amid myriad dangers that can ***** you in a moment’s notice, rarely having an easy way out of a mess, it becomes clear that the survival instincts embedded in the STALKER series are very much alive in this long-awaited sequel. But there’s also an equal and opposite force at play: the type of friction that hinders you from engaging with it in earnest, like poor technical performance, bugs that are sometimes hilarious but mostly frustrating, and nonsensical ****** behavior. Yet for all that’s working against it, there’s an underlying greatness in how STALKER 2 immerses you into the mysteries within its massive and brutal wasteland. The Chornobyl Exclusion Zone – the site around the tragic, real-world nuclear disaster in 1986 – ******** the heart of STALKER, both as a harsh and often stunning open world, and a fascinating setting that’s integral to Ukrainian history. In this fictionalized version, physics-defying anomalies work as deadly hazards scattered around its huge map, while equally dangerous mutated wildlife lurks about and supernatural phenomena amid the nuclear fallout instill a sense of danger around every corner. Various factions of Stalkers – mercenaries who make their risky living in The Zone – are also on the hunt throughout; when it’s hard to tell who’s friend or foe, it’s a harsh place to survive in, much less thrive. In that respect, STALKER 2 is a masterclass in atmosphere: stunning dynamic weather, pitch-dark nights, and radioactive storms that paint the sky a hellish red or toxic green are as visually striking as they are petrifying. From the vistas of a sprawling wasteland you get on long, on-foot treks between missions to the dark corridors of abandoned facilities, the designers at GSC Game World create a distinct sense of place and in great detail. Even something as small as hearing the patter of rain from inside the hull of a dilapidated ship, or the strum of a guitar while sitting around a campfire, I was easily pulled into the life of a Stalker. All of that should be familiar to anyone who’s played the original STALKER games (Shadow of Chornobyl in 2007, Clear Sky in 2009, and Call of Pripyat in 2010) and as a veteran of those games myself, it’s an odd comfort to be back in The Zone and see how much it’s changed in the years since. The main story provides a throughline to follow, but it isn’t the kind of thing that’s going to light a ***** under you in its early hours. Skif – our character – is set up and betrayed in the opening mission, which leads him down a rabbit ***** of finding a guy who knows where to find another guy, leading to a continuous chain of finding more guys in hopes of finally finding the actual guy you’re looking for. But once it starts to rope in the scientific organization SIRCAA and the Zone’s de facto military known as The Ward, STALKER 2 begins to show you what it’s really about. It weaves in the familiar themes seen in the previous games, such as the dangers of chasing the truth about mind-bending psi emissions, the deadly risks with research in the Zone, and the futility of cultish groups clashing with governmental organizations vying for control. While familiarity with the originals is not required to understand this new story, it was enticing to see all the ways the old STALKERs were tied-in and referenced as well. STALKER 2 retains a lot of the design principles of the series – for better and worse. I’m glad it drew me in because STALKER 2 is a long game – and at times, it can be exhausting since you’re constantly fighting for your life. It took me 45 hours to finish its main story, along with a good chunk of side missions and free-form exploration. Side quests can bring in some much-needed cash or lead to rare loot, or they may not even pay off in a tangible way. However, there is sometimes an intrinsic value in seeing where they take you or learning more about the world and the people. And much like how a majority of Red ***** Redemption 2 was spent horseback riding while soaking in its world, STALKER 2’s long runs across The Zone evoke a similar feeling in that lengthy runtime. Within the main questline are some critical choices that affect the path you take along the way, mainly moments where I decided to either share or withhold important information at certain turning points, or straight-up pick a side when my back was against the wall. Although they largely lead to the same destination, the way the story context and mission objectives change makes those choices feel impactful, especially because they come up very naturally. Rarely are there explicit telegraphs for what the outcomes or consequences may be, and understanding what each choice implies requires you to really pay attention to what characters say in dialogue. And so, STALKER 2 is a suspenseful thriller with some impressive cutscenes and performances that bring the series to a new height. What we said about STALKER: Shadow of Chornobyl in 2007 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a brave game, and offers gamers a chance to experience something genuinely new. GSC Game World's creation exudes such a powerful mood, you likely won't care about the A.I. issues and bugs that will crop up. While the story fails to dazzle, the excellent **** battles will keep you hooked, and the curious dread that suffuses every section of The Zone is enough to keep you exploring, at least until you start bumping against the constraints of The Zone's open ended design. If there were more interesting side quests, a more developed arena, and a deeper faction system, this game could have been truly incredible. As it is, it's still an entirely worthwhile experience. Chances are you've never played a game like this before, or experienced this kind of disquieting ambience. What's present in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is the truss work for an absolutely stellar sequel with larger zones, more character customization, better quest rewards, and stronger NPC personalities. By itself, the game is a fascinating achievement, even if you trip over technical cracks more than you should. - Charles Onyett, March 19, 2007 Score: 8.2 Read the full STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl review. [/url] Games like this are quite rare to see at such a scale these days, and even 14 years since its last iteration, STALKER 2 retains a lot of the design principles of the series – for better and worse. It leans into mechanics we commonly see in ********* survival games nowadays, putting you into situations where you must make deliberate decisions on how to engage enemies and which environments to explore. There’s gear wear that can cause malfunctions, high damage in combat so just a few hits can ***** you, bleeding wounds if you survive that, hunger to keep at bay, radiation levels to hold down, limited inventory weight to manage, and constant looting in order to survive. Learning how to pack for the missions ahead was one of my favorite aspects, bringing just enough healing items and specific ammo types while still leaving room for loot I may find without getting overencumbered. These systems are inelegant, though at times I mean that as a compliment because I actually admire how very little is streamlined. It doesn't hold your hand so when you figure out your own approach that works, it's all the more rewarding. I started to see how its mechanics come together after enough poking and prodding and managed to find the type of friction I enjoy. Much like the harsh world of Dragon’s Dogma 2, there’s no easy fast travel around The Zone, so if you want to get from place to place quickly you need to find the right NPC and pay up. If you go on foot, you’re in for a long hike full of rogue Stalkers, anomalies, and mutants that can stop you in your tracks. (I’m not going to lie: save scumming will stave off some of that potential frustration, and I’m not afraid of what anyone thinks!) This isn’t an RPG in a gameplay sense either, so there are no progression systems or skills to unlock. You’re on the constant hunt to find good gear, upgrade it at shops, and maintain its condition. Artifacts work as rare armor attachments that can provide perks like better stamina or environmental protection at the expense of potential radiation poisoning, but they’re not necessarily as game-changing as having the right **** to ****** your way out of a sticky situation. STALKER 2 is a gripping exploration of Chornobyl, and there’s just nothing like it. Combat bounces between intense, high-stakes shootouts or unsatisfyingling unfair wars of attrition. The main difference between those two scenarios is in the bizarre behavior of the ****** AI. Regardless of difficulty setting, enemies are often ***** as rocks, reacting in nonsensical patterns while engaged and completely unaware of their surroundings. Yet their immediate, pinpoint ******* accuracy and near-perfect vision (even in pitch darkness) still make things tough, and not in ways that entirely make sense. Erratic mutant movement is more annoying than it is challenging, and you’ll just bang your head against the wall trying to land shots on radiated rats and dogs chaotically lunging at you; it takes off some of the horror-ish edge that they can instill. There are bright spots within those combat encounters, though. I’ve learned to work within the confines of sporadic ****** AI, always ready to patch up and heal to survive and take precise shots from smart positions. Sometimes fights break out from conversations gone awry and enemies are very quick on the draw, and I just had to concede the fact that I would take massive damage if I survived at all. STALKER 2’s solid gunplay picks up a lot of the slack of its combat faults. Whipping around a decked-out ******** rifle with a nice red dot sight to make headshots easy or pumping shells into a mutant from a fully modded shotgun and slowing its charge with their impact had me looking forward to those high-stakes, *****-or-be-******* situations. The flow of those encounters doesn’t change drastically over time, but the tension stays consistent throughout. STALKER 2 also impresses with how it weaves in psychological horror with psi elements that genuinely mess with your perception of its world; there were moments both in and out of the main story where I was as surprised as I was shook by how vulnerable they left me, layering on a new level of danger. Within those highs, however, is the frequent reminder that STALKER 2 isn’t in great technical shape – and this is after the day-one patch. Even on a PC with an RTX 3080, a 13th-gen Core i7 CPU, 32GB of RAM, and an NVMe SSD, it chugs on modest settings. Playing with everything on low graphics options and balanced DLSS gives me similar frame drops and large-scale hiccups as it would on medium-high settings and higher quality DLSS, even if the baseline frame rate is marginally better (but still well below a consistent 60fps). The patch definitely helped make performance somewhat more consistent compared to the pre-release version I began playing on, but my framerate still tanked to just barely playable levels in particularly dense and detailed areas with several NPCs around. Poor technical performance isn’t the only respect in which STALKER 2 still needs work. The game-breaking bugs that halted my progress pre-patch are now gone, and I have not run into any more uncompletable quest objectives since then. However, several problems still persist that include (but are not limited to) NPCs walking through walls, glitched UI elements, textures artifacting, sound effects and dialogue happening out of place, and environmental details or objects clipping through each other. Inoffensive, non-critical bugs can be whimsical in some sense – like when an ******’s body cartwheels into the sky after being shot – and simply accounted for as unexplained phenomena as you focus on the tasks at hand, but the frequency of these issues chipped away at my enthusiasm for STALKER 2. It’s hard to say whether or not these things will be patched in due time, although developer GSC Game World has stated their commitment to continually working on them with future updates. The current technical performance and roster of bugs hold STALKER 2 back from fully coming together, as it still feels as though it’s held together by duct tape. Given the story of GSC Game World’s tumultuous development time, which has partially taken place amid an actual war zone in its home country of Ukraine, it’s not hard to understand why. It’s a miracle that STALKER 2 even exists, especially considering how ambitious its world is and how it executes its vision on a conceptual level. STALKER 2 is often bleak and oppressive from both gameplay and storytelling perspectives, and making it all work cohesively for a game on this scale is already an accomplishment. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Did last week's paranormal body-swapper Slitterhead leave you cold? Do you consider its brain-jacking of rando cityfolk for monster-hunting purposes a sad waste of potential? Perhaps you'll prefer RAM: Random Access Mayhem, out now in Steam early access, in which you're a fugitive AI hopping between warlike ****** bodies in top-down view. Yes, the subtitle involves both a colon and a dad joke, but the demo is entertaining - Nuclear Dawn meets Ctrl Alt Ego, in short. The one major criticism I have after 20 minutes or so is that the flat pixelart perspective makes walls and walkable surfaces look interchangeable, and this feels more like a question of acclimatisation than a real complaint. Read more View the full article

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl from GSC Game World has now been released and after playing it pre-release, I've had a ***** fun time with it. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

One of the earliest decisions players will make in STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is whether to help Zhorik deliver supplies to a group of his friends. Almost immediately after completing the tutorial, players will encounter a friendly NPC named Zhorik - although he appears to be hiding something. He asks you first to help out some friends of his at a nearby post office, which is under siege, and then directs you onward to his friend Gloomy, whom he hasn't heard from in a little while. He's starting to get worried. View the full article

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl from GSC Game World has now been released and after playing it pre-release, I've had a ***** fun time with it. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Destiny 2 has plenty of activities for players, whether they’re chasing fashion, exploring a destination, or chasing a roll of their favorite *******. Despite its vast array of options, players can only ***** into Destiny 2 if the servers work. If the servers are facing outages or interruptions, you will see the classic “Server Offline” message when you try to log in—an indication that there’s something wrong with the servers. View the full article

There's a certain kind of profound confusion STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl inherits from the series' namesake, Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film, Stalker. Both are heavily influenced by the 1972 novel Roadside Picnic, by the Strugatsky brothers. Despite and in light of their many differences and similarities, all three share one important facet: the Zone, a setting fundamentally incomprehensible to the human mind. Developer GSC Game World admirably and ambitiously brings this setting to life in STALKER 2, an open-world, survival-horror immersive sim. View the full article

Reviews for the game on Steam are currently labeled as “Overwhelmingly Negative.” | Image: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 was released on PC and Xbox yesterday but early players have struggled to load or even finish installing the game. Users have reported a range of issues — including post-installation loads stalling before completion, long login queues, and the game itself crashing — with the $70 flying sim currently tagged as “Overwhelmingly Negative” in customer reviews on Steam. Some players are seeing their downloads freeze at 97 percent, while others were stuck on a login ****** page at launch for several hours that says “too many users are trying to connect at the same time.” Microsoft advised players to check the Xbox Support Status page for updates, which doesn’t list any ongoing issues with the game at the time of... Continue reading… View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

There's not been a game that nails the feeling of loneliness like Stalker 2. A vast and challenging open world sci-fi RPG from GSC Game World, it stands alone in its ambitious exploration of a perilous, ruined landscape plagued by greed and unflinching peril. A theme park to some and a fresh ***** for others, Stalker 2 excellently portrays the grim reality of trying to carve a life out of struggle, wrestling with the weird and the paranormal. Read more View the full article

We’re probably all past "And in the game" jokes by now, but it is fitting that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl is about venturing into a shattered world and enduring the worst of its logic-defying hardships to find the treasures within. This is a bold, uncompromising survival FPS that can easily capture you for days on end – but I can’t invite you back into the Zone without hammering in a few hundred warning signs reading "DANGER: BUGS". In Ukrainian, obviously. Read more View the full article

There are very few online games that hold my attention anymore. My days of being an Overwatch and Valorant zoomer are long gone, and I've struggled to get on with newcomers like XDefiant and The Finals. In a world where everything feels somewhat similar - battle passes, daily challenges - I've been looking for something new and exciting. Enter Supervive, the all-new brawler MOBA hybrid from Theorycraft Games, a star-studded cast of former Riot devs. Blending fast-paced MOBA action with the drop and loot mechanics of battle royales like Apex Legends, it's become one of my most-wanted games of 2024 - and now it's back. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Supervive tier list - best hunters November 2024 Highly-anticipated Supervive beta has been brought forward, and it's here soon When does the Supervive open beta begin? View the full article

What are all the Stalker 2 missions? The Heart of Chornobyl takes us back to GSC Game World's Exclusion Zone, and this time, it's ******* than ever. If you're eager to experience everything this long-awaited sequel has to offer, then a complete list of quests is essential. Stalker 2's story is set to take you across the Zone to track down the traitorous Solder and uncover the secret of the artifact that landed in your apartment's laundry basket. The FPS game has plenty of horrors in store, with Stalker 2 artifacts and enemies galore, but its open world can leave you wondering just how much you have left to complete. We've collected all the Stalker 2 missions into one handy list to tick off as you go. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: All Stalker 2 artifacts and how to get them Best Stalker 2 weapons and how to to repair them All Stalker 2 anomalies and how to beat them View the full article

What are all the Stalker 2 artifacts? These radioactive items were once ordinary objects, but their exposure to anomalies within the Zone has imbued them with supernatural properties. Veteran stalkers will be well-versed in the power artifacts hold, but GSC Game World's sequel has plenty of new artifacts to collect and use. All artifacts have a chance to drop from Stalker 2 anomalies, though the one you receive is random, and often depends on their rarity. However, the benefits they provide are worth the risk. All artifacts in Stalker 2 provide an active effect and at least one passive effect. Some can drastically change how you navigate the open-world game, while others provide invaluable protection to explore even the most hazardous areas. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Stalker 2 missions list - all main and side missions Best Stalker 2 weapons and how to to repair them All Stalker 2 anomalies and how to beat them View the full article

Hearing a ballet of bullets dancing around me as I hide behind cardboard held up by reinforced cement happens far more often than I’d like in STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl. It’s an unforgiving wasteland filled with mutants, bandits, and carefully constructed choices that can provide an easier—or more complicated—life than you already have to deal with. Still, the difficulty doesn’t keep me from playing. On the contrary, it encourages me to consider every time the footsteps or the idle chatter of bandits are nearby. Every engagement becomes a difficult challenge, with no way to improve with a specific skill tree, similar to many extraction shooters. Instead, STALKER 2 motivates me to improve myself by relying on risking it all to get new gear and using the experience I’ve built up along the way. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

I admit it: I was scared. The gleaming trailers, the Microsoft showcases, the Unreal Engine 5—Stalker 2's marketing didn't look like any Stalker I've known and loved. Had GSC traded in all the series' beloved jank in pursuit of streamlined console success? Had it made Metro by another name?.. Read more.View the full article

So, you've read the Stalker 2 review and checked out my Stalker 2 performance analysis. And, happy with what you've seen, you've made the plunge and grabbed a copy of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. But what settings should you use? How do you get the best balance between graphics and frame rate? Well, you've come to the right place... Read more.View the full article

Fourteen years after it was originally announced, Stalker 2 is finally here. Having gone through such a protracted development, you can be easily forgiven if you thought that day would never come. I had doubts about its readiness for the November launch myself but to my pleasant surprise, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl (I'm not writing all those periods GSC wants me to) is bang on schedule... Read more.View the full article