Think Groundhog Day, if Bill Murray had to kill every last influential figure in Punxsutawney before midnight to continue with the rest of his life. Odd film. There aren’t many worse places to be stuck in an endless time-loop than Blackreef, a party island where the main attraction is gunning you down. There’s something of a Bioshock vibe to Blackreef’s animal-masked murderers, gleefully idling around lavish environments as they wait to gut you - night after night after night after night....

But I have been playing The Longing for about three months now, and my goal has been, and remains… to escape! I want to give our Shade, who we have named Burnsy, a better life on the surface. This has proven more difficult than I first imagined. But we are still working on our list of other goals, too. This latest chapter in Burnsy’s life gets a bit grim, though....

One Aurora R8 owner, for instance, reportedly got stuck in an infinite crash loop after what initially appeared to be a routine BIOS update. At least one Inspiron 5680 also failed to boot correctly almost immediately after the update was downloaded. Yikes. The problem children appear to the 2.8.0 BIOS version for Inspiron desktops and version 1.0.18 for Alienware systems, with version 1.14.3 causing similar issues for Latitude laptops. If you have a potentially vulnerable Dell system, and have already downloaded the “critical updates” that include one of these latest BIOS versions, you should probably roll back to an older version ASAP....

Ruinous Effigy is a new Exotic trace rifle which, like other Exotic trace rifles, fires a constant beam of energy. Normal enough so far. Then you kill someone, and the gun turns them into an orb. Hundreds of kilograms of muscle, metal, chitin, and gristle somehow condensed into a small glowing orb. Then you can pick up the orb and wield it as another weapon. Left-click is a powered-up punch that one-shots trash mobs....

So, with miles of gun on a collision course, we’re sent to help Rasputin bring his old defences online and build new ones. One part of this is Seraph Tower public events in certain zones, where we defend towers from baddies until they spit out energy orbs, use those orbs to power up an even bigger orb, and so on. It’s a bit like Escalation Protocol from the Warmind expansion but more involved, with a real need to keep enemies out of Tower zones at key times....

Destiny’s fastest-firing guns are already fully automatic (because to hell with firing a Submachine Gun semi-auto at 900 rounds per minute) but the point at which Bungie start switching to semi-auto seems a bit extreme. The semi-auto Sidearm archetypes run up to 360rpm, semi-auto Scout Rifles up to 200rpm, Pulse Rifles can be a pig too, and even Hand Cannons can get pretty clicky at 180rpm. While you can get the Full Auto perk rolled on some Scouts, Pulses, and Sidearms, they’re not guaranteed and you sacrifice a perk slot just to not have your hands explode....

This horde mode is a replacement for another mode id Software had originally planned, which would’ve let players invade others’ worlds similarly to Dark Souls. The invasion mode was binned earlier this year after the pandemic slowed development, and they saw how much players were enjoying the game’s singleplayer content. So, horde mode isn’t exactly a like-for-like change, but it should offer a nice bit of variety from what’s currently on offer....

The Valentine’s Day Rendezvous event will run from tomorrow, February 11th, through February 18th. The event hasn’t even started yet and already players are lamenting that it will eventually end, wishing that Respawn would bring the limited time mode back for keeps. They’re playing hard to get and all, it sounds. Aside from these short outings, Apex enforces squads of three, making the duos mode a rare treat. Along with the limited time doubles matchmaking, you’ll earn double XP up to a max of 2,000 per day....

Only this isn’t being made by Murayama and the rest of his former Suikoden crew at Rabbit & Bear. It’s Natsume Atari who have lead billing here, with Murayama operating in a supervisory role while development on Hundred Heroes continues. It also doesn’t have anything in common with the JRPG series that Eiyuden Chronicle proper is meant to be doffing its cap to, swapping Suikoden’s turn-based battles for real-time monster biffing, 2D dungeon crawling and a heavy emphasis on building up your hub town by completing ream upon ream of sidequests....

While the Gargoyles’ attack patterns are mostly identical to their non-boss counterparts, their boss-sized health bars and simultaneous attacks can make for a tricky fight. This guide will give you all the tools you need to defeat the Valiant Gargoyles and descend into Deeproot Depths. Elden Ring Valiant Gargoyles boss fight walkthrough If you have visited Leyndell or attempted to fight the Black Blade Kindred outside of the Beast Sanctum in Dragonbarrow, you will recognize the Valiant Gargoyles and many of their attacks....

In relative terms, one would say that a bowl of hot sick was more enjoyable than eating a bowl of cold sick, for example. Elden Ring is, of course, much better than sick at any temperature, obviously - I’m just saying that so far, I have not found it to be much easier or less opaque than any other FromSoft game, except it has clearer tooltips and sometimes an NPC will say, “You should do this thing....

Notably, these minimum requirements are identical to a list (spotted by PC Gamer) that briefly appeared on Elden Ring’s Steam page before being swiftly deleted. The vanishing act and surprisingly high specs did make it seem as if they weren’t the finished article , but nope, here we are. Does anyone even have 12GB of RAM? I mean it’s technically possible but you’d need to buy two completely different ah you know what never mind here’s the full list....

As we’ve been hearing about for a while, Odyssey is adding a few different activities for you to getup to once you’ve stepped out of the cockpit. “Disembark your ship at the nearest port to meet with new on foot mission givers and gear up with your favourite specialist suit and equipment, to be ever ready for any challenge that lies ahead,” Frontier say. “Team up with your most trusted crew, or head out alone across stunning new environments, with complete freedom in first person from a ’through your eyes’ perspective....

Rockstar sneaked in two title updates on Monday, one for L.A. Noire and one for Max Payne 3. Both updates rattle off the list of DLCs that you’ll now have access to if you own the respective games. For L.A. Noire that looks to be a handful of new cases to solve and some snazzy new suits. In Payne territory that’s some new guns, cosmetics, and quite a few multiplayer mode maps....

Marvel Guardians Of The Galaxy - new game announcement Square Enix kicked off their Summer Presents showcase with a new Marvel game from Eidos Montreal, this time focusing on The Guardians Of The Galaxy. in the reveal trailer (above), we saw lots of flashy combat, wisecracking Rocket jokes, dialogue tree conversations and plenty of explosions. You play as Star Lord in this one, although from the looks of their big deep dive showcase, you’ll be able to control your other Guardian mates’ abilities during battle to rack up those combo numbers....

Expeditions: Rome offers an “alternative historical setting”, in which you play a Legatus - a high-ranking military officer - forced to flee Rome. On your travels, you can use military might or a “silver tongue”, and your decisions impact not only your own path but Rome’s. It seemed a much more ambitious game than its predecessors when Nate had a look at Expeditions: Rome earlier this year. He was most excited about the task of leading your Roman Legion....

Bethesda say that Shelters will come in three sizes: Vault Utility Room, Vault Lobby, and Vault Atrium. When they’re fully released later this year, players will be able to unlock the first (presumably smallest) by completing a new quest called “Home Expansion”. The two larger Shelters will be available to purchase with 76’s premium currency Atoms. The particularly freeing bit about Shelters is that they’re personal instances where you’re in control....

On December 6th, fourteen players performed a 60-minute version of the show in-game in Fallout 76. Some were there as actors, positioning their characters and providing VO. The rest of the group included crew members such as a lighting technician and a security guard, because a Deathclaw ambush wouldn’t be very Christmassy. The live show was followed by a slightly shorter TV production of A Christmas Carol, with various camera angles and other adjustments to fit the medium - this production was broadcast through a Fallout 76 TV, of course....

Its creators, the YouTube channel Red Dead Online Guides, have made lots of tips and some fun time lapse videos for the cowboy game, but their latest video is definitely their tootinest, and possibly also their rootinest. On their Reddit thread, they elaborated that they achieved the effect with “a mod that would allow me to move the camera far enough away to get the shot, then using Premiere, add a fast blur & fast color correction to make a fake depth of field/blur illusion to make it work....

Update: And here’s a wee teaser video in response: The Far Cry 6 page appeared on Hong Kong’s PlayStation Store earlier today. It is still in the store’s listing as I write this, but its specific page is now gone. Thankfully, you can see an archived version over here. Forum posters on ResetEra say the pages they saw had that February date. The store blurb said: All I need to know is that the open-world FPS will again have animal friends....