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Let’s start with the picture, because I like pictures, they’re nice: Here’s the official synopsis for season three, as shared by Netflix’s Witcher Twitter account: It was reported three months ago, alongside the release of season two, that the scripts for The Witcher’s third season were almost done. It’s a much shorter gap between seasons than there was between the first and second, where filming was delayed as a result of the Covid-19 panedemic....

Final Fantasy IV was the first of the series to use the Active Time Battle system, which adds a real-time element to Final Fantasy’s turn-based battles. Instead of choosing actions by turn, each character has an ATB meter that fills up at its own rate, controlling when they’re ready to attack. “The initial run of it just had everyone act in turn based on who was fastest,” Tokita explains. “You couldn’t tell at all what was going on, so there was no time to think about weaknesses or anything of the sort and you just ended up spamming buttons… [laughs] We came to the conclusion that would never work....

In a Steam post, Squeenix say that they’re taking time to get the last of the Pixel Remasters right: ”In order to bring you the best experience possible, we’re giving ourselves the necessary time to apply final polish while finishing development on the game.“ Perhaps unsurprising news, as Final Fantasy VI made it into Katharine and Brendy’s best Final Fantasy games on PC power-rankings, albeit at number eight. Katharine said it’s “generally considered ‘the best Final Fantasy’ of the so-called classic era” but its mobile PC port is a load of rubbish....

It’s a big shift for XCOM, and one Matt enjoyed in his XCOM: Chimera Squad review, albeit with caveats. I spoke to the game’s lead designer ahead of its release, however, to find out why they decided to make a spin-off rather than an expansion, and one that makes so many changes to the beloved formula. “After launching XCOM 2 and the War of the Chosen expansion, we felt there were more gameplay opportunities left to explore in XCOM,” says Mark Nauta, Chimera Squad’s lead designer....

Colour me excited when I had the chance to see a half-hour presentation of the game in action at this year’s Gamescom, and chat to A44’s CEO Derek Holding at the same time. It was even better than I’d expected, honestly, and I’ve come away with the belief that it may just be one of the best Soulslikes to arrive in quite some time. There’s no denying Flintlock: The Siege Of Dawn’s Soulslike credentials....

It doesn’t ever venture into the realms of 3D admittedly, erring more toward the Inscryption school of tabletop combat encounters, but it does nail the delivery of telling an artful, swashbuckling adventure through cards and cards alone. And much like Hand Of Fate, this isn’t a one and done affair, either, as there are multiple paths to take through this entertaining fantasy yarn, and several game-changing decisions you’ll have to make as you try and avert a string of terrible visions threatening to destroy its anthropomorphic animal world....

The announcement was caught on camera from the audience and tweeted by user iFireMonkey. All that was shown was a title card following the presentation of the Fortnite Champion Series trophies. The card showed the name of the event, the date and time, and confirmed it would be the finale for Chapter 3 of the battle royale. That means the current chapter will be the shortest yet. Chapters 2 and 3 have each lasted at least two years, so the move comes as a bit of a surprise....

After debuting last night, Fortnite’s Party Mode is currently showing the new Tenet trailer in its open-air cinema every hour, on the hour. Tenet is an action film which, in that Christopher Nolan way, screws with dimensions - in this case, time. Looks like lads will have sci-fantasy powers to see the future or be in the future or summat, and there’s bits where time goes backwards and forwards at the same time and… look, just watch: The trailer is bookended in-game by an interview between Tenet’s star, John David Washington and the omnipresent Geoff Keighley....

And having seen roughly 15 hands off minutes of new Forza Horizon 5 footage, I can confirm that it does indeed look like a Forza Horizon game. Should we celebrate? Yes, absolutely. Let me take you through what I saw - and for added effect, I’d recommend sticking on some house music. Now before we slam the accelerator, Playground Games haven’t exactly been shy about showing off Forza Horizon 5....

“Discover living deserts, lush jungles, historic cities, hidden ruins, pristine beaches, vast canyons, and a towering snow-capped volcano - the highest point ever in a Horizon game,” the devs say. Alongside the reveal trailer, they also released a seven-minute gameplay demo showing even more loveliness. It kicks off with a race through the Mexican jungle, following a river to some picturesque ruins, while narrowly avoiding a flock of flamingos. They also show a game mode that involves running over pinatas, which looks pretty fun....

Instead, Card Shark is all about the palming and stacking and counting of cards, rather than an actual card game like your classic deckbuilders and such like. It will be out in full on June 2nd, but last week I got to play a larger version of the current Steam demo - about four hours worth of it, in fact - and I discovered that while I’m very bad at card games, I am pretty good at (pretend) cheating at them....

Thunderful made mention of all of the projects in their quarterly earnings report, referring to each as a “SteamWorld IP game”. The citybuilder is codenamed “Coffee”, due for release in 2023, the same year as SteamWorld Headhunter. The “turn-based tactical shooter/strategy” is codenamed “Caramel” and due in 2024. The puzzle game, “Strawberry”, is due in 2023 but is apparently only planning to release on mobile. We’ve typically loved every SteamWorld game, even as they’ve leapt from genre to genre, from turn-based tactics in SteamWorld Heist, card battler in SteamWorld Quest, and platformer in SteamWorld Dig 2....

After the age of coal, conquering Frostland for the oil extraction industry is expected to be the new salvation of what’s left of humanity," says the game’s Steam page. Hence the oil pumps and inky black logo in the video above. There are few other hard details available beyond it sounding like Frostpunk only more so. Eg. expect your population to have differing views over the pursuit of oil, with players needing to balance the “demands of expectations of various factions” in order to survive....

Genshin Impact 3.0 release date and time Genshin Impact 3.0 is due for release on August 24th at 4am BST / August 23rd at 11pm EDT / 8pm PDT. The current event wish banners are expiring on August 23rd at 3pm BST / 4pm EDT / 1pm PDT, followed by seven hours of downtime during which the gacha will be offline for maintenance in preparation for the launch of 3.0. Here’s the Version 3....

To bag yourself this pretty livery, you’ll need to connect your your Xbox Live account to Twitch, and watch a Sea Of Thieves partnered streamer for 30 minutes. One piece of the Ancestral Ship Set is available each day, starting tomorrow and running until September 24th. If you’re not the sort to watch streams but you still want the set (hello), I recommend popping a stream on in the background while you’re actually playing....

Get the SteelSeries 7P+ for £154 with code MOUNTAIN12 This deal comes early enough that I actually haven’t even received a review unit of the headset, but its immediate predecessor comes with plenty of praise - including, as you might have noticed in the header image - from the likes of Eurogamer (me) and RPS (Katharine). Imagine that! While of the bulk of the headset is the same - comfy suspension style headband, 2....

Not only do KK’s case notes make for interesting reading, there’s a practical benefit to picking them up, too. Snagging one of these innocuous-looking documents nets Akito an instant 20 skill points — nothing to be sniffed at when upgrades on the skill tree get increasingly costly as you go on, and even levelling up only nets you 10 points at a time. To be absolutely clear, these aren’t side missions: you don’t need to do anything other than pick up the document to get the points, which makes them well worth seeking out....

I think your reaction to the idea of someone asking you that will predict your response to Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between, a self-described “surreal journey through the spaces between places”. Do you think “what have you been doing to give your life meaning?” is a cool way to start a conversation? A better prompt than you’d normally encounter? A big question, rather than small talk? Then you will probably be more open to the delights of Glitchhikers, a game where where you talk about choice and predetermination to what appears to be sentient windchimes while driving along a one-way motorway....

The best way to prevent this is with a brace, which pushes up from the bottom of your case to the far end of the graphics card, holding it level and preventing all that force from affecting the card or the PCIe slot. You sometimes get a support brace like this free with your graphics card, but otherwise you can pick one up fairly inexpensively from a range of manufacturers....

Get the AMD Ryzen 5800X3D for $299 w/ code JOLLY15 (was $449) So what makes this gaming CPU so fast - and how fast is it, exactly? Well, it’s all to do with its cache. Normally CPUs come with a small amount of cache, split into three levels - L1, L2 and L3. This works the same way RAM does, holding data that the CPU needs to do its calculations, but it’s way closer to the heart of the CPU - so access times are tiny, but the amount of data that can be stored at any one time is also very tiny....