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Among Us took the world by storm at the perfect time: when we were all stuck inside and paranoid about Imposters (family members) betraying us (swiping the last bit of edible food out of the fridge). Now, the hit multiplayer game will infiltrate the world of television, as developer Innersloth have teamed up with CBS’ animation crew to work on a new series based on the game.

Dave the Diver (character) is a bit out of practice, but he's an easygoing sort and it doesn't take much to convince him to get back in his flippers to look into the local anomaly at the behest of his arms dealer "friend", who would be clearly bad news even if his name wasn't Cobra.

Said anomaly fills with new sea creatures from all over the world every time it's visited, and possibly building-sized terror beasts and ancient merfolk, but Cobra's sure it'll all be fine, so in you go, mate. It's certainly pretty down there if nothing else, and Dave the Diver (game) is, if nothing else, a rare game that makes the usually tedious water level a bit of a treat to wander round in.

Cyberpunk 2077 expansion Phantom Liberty got a new trailer and a release date during this month's Xbox Games Showcase. If you watched Xbox's extended showcase a few days later then you would have seen more of the game and of one of its stars, Keanu Reeves.

Let's assume you didn't watch that, though. Let's assume that you, like me, were by that point too exhausted from 90 second trailers to tune in. Let's instead watch these videos now, since they've just been uploaded as separate videos, to learn more about Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty's new district, Dogtown.

Project Rene - aka The Sims 5 - seems a long way off, but that isn't stopping Maxis from showing the game in its early, in-development state. The second episode of their community stream, Behind The Sims, continues from the first by showing lots of different prototype features, including glimpses of a new lighting model, new emotive animations, daily routines, hair customisation and more.

Diablo 4's first major patch, 1.0.3, is out now. It fixes a lot of bugs, but its main goal is to re-balance and buff every class and to "smooth out the leveling experience" by increasing the power of certain skills.

Earlier this month EA confirmed reports that they were in talks to transfer development of long-running MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic from its creators BioWare to an external studio. Today, BioWare confirmed that Broadsword would be taking over development, and that "not every role" would move with the game.

Monitor arms are brilliant. I've got three in my office, somehow, where they elevate my screens above my desk so that I can use all of the space below for my keyboard, mouse and other knicknacks without needing to awkwardly position things around the base of a monitor stand. They're a total game-changer that I couldn't go without - and thanks to this deal on Amazon US, soon you won't have to either.

You can currently pick up a dual-monitor stand that accommodates two monitors up to 32 inches in size or 17.6 pounds in weight for just $15 when you use code LHEMYSVN and you're an Amazon Prime member. That's an incredible deal for a dual monitor arm that normally costs $46 and comes with over 15,000 ratings with an average score of 90%.

Prime Day 2023 is scheduled to kick-off in mid-July, but we're already seeing some awesome deals on speedy Micro SD cards ahead of the big day. One that caught my eye today is the Kingston Canvas Go! Plus, which is available in a 256GB size for just £17.85 - down from an original price of £30!

For context, that's just £1 more than Samsung's Evo Plus SD card of the same size, yet you get maximum read speeds of 170MB/s compared to 130MB/s. That's 30% more, and well worth the extra quid!

Cinematic space horror Fort Solis is now releasing on August 22nd, publisher Dear Villagers have announced. The game follows engineer Jack Leary, who arrives on an isolated mining station on Mars. All seems to be going smoothly until, of course, some scary stuff happens, which forces Leary to hold out until the morning. Fort Solis is split between four chapters, letting us binge it like a Netflix show or take the spooks piece-by-piece.

After making their name with Max Payne's joyous gun bonanzas, Remedy Entertainment now seem pretty over guns but can never quite hang up their holsters. I've been playing Quantum Break since it arrived on PC Game Pass, and I'm finding their oft-forgotten time-bending shooter is yet another modern Remedy game full of boring gunfights even as it gives you supernatural powers that could replace guns. Their apparent disinterest in gunfights is especially felt in a game so into telling a story that it ends chapters with TV-length live-action episodes starring actual Lance Reddick. Looking back over their past games, agh, as much as I want spooky investigations, I can't get excited about their next, Alan Wake 2.

Following phenomenally frightful survival horror game Darkwood, Polish team Acid Wizard Studio are now making... a football game? They've just released a free public alpha for Soccer Kids, inviting everyone to try their turn-based tactical footie game starring schoolkids in 90s Poland. This is extremely not what I expected next from the studio whose debut game made Adam backtrack to kill his own dog "because the world is convincing and I didn't want to leave suffering animals lying around the place if I didn't have to." Come watch the trailer.

Ever since the makers of Desperados 3 and Shadow Tactics announced their brand new squad tactics game, I've been dying to get my hands on Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. While Mimimi's previous games took place in mostly grounded historical settings, Shadow Gambit is about magical undead pirates hunting for mysterious booty and fighting a persecutive Inquisition. This shift into the supernatural is quite the change for Mimimi, which creative director Dominik Abé tells me was partly to challenge themselves as designers, but also so players could have a bit more fun with how they approached its plentiful stealth encounters.

"One thing we wanted for sure was that we had something that's not grounded in a realistic setting," Abé tells me. "That was a requirement for all the pitches we did internally, and that's because we wanted to improve on the gameplay. We were restricted by realism, so that was a core pillar. It had to be something fantasy, or sci-fi or something non-realistic."

Scavengers Studio have laid off more than half their staff after photography-biking adventure Season: A Letter To The Future failed to meet commercial expectations. In an email to employees shared with GamesIndustry.biz, CEO Amélie Lamarche said “the game only sold 60,000 copies during its first five months, which falls far short of what the studio needs to survive.” Lamarche notes that discounts, critical praise, and game updates didn’t move the needle, and now only 16 employees are left at the studio after downsizing.

Alternate history shooter Atomic Heart is getting its first (out of four) DLC pack on August 2nd, developers Mundfish have announced. The Annihilation Instinct DLC picks up right where the base game left off, plopping us into the steely Mendeleev Complex and the surrounding swamp areas to dent some more mechs. Take a look at the new tools on offer below:

The legal battle between Microsoft and the US Federal Trade Commission continues to plod along as the FTC seeks to stop Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard King. Last week’s proceeding gave us some interesting revelations about revenue shares, Starfield development, and Indiana Jones exclusivity, but juicy inside baseball details continue to ooze out.

Pizza Hut cashier, fashion icon, bestselling toy, game developer, and US Marine Sergeant are some of the accolades that Barbie has accrued over the last six decades (raising serious questions about whether or not she's experienced crunch or the horrors of war.) And now she can add one more to the list, as she’s joining the brilliant Forza Horizon 5. Or more accurately, her beautiful pink car (and Ken's less beautiful grey Hummer) is joining the game.

It used to be that getting 32GB of fast DDR4 RAM cost triple figures - but nowadays, thanks to the prevalance of DDR5 kits, getting even this amount of RAM in a competitive spec is quite affordable. This 32GB kit of Corsair Vengeance RS RGB RAM, for example, offers 3600MT/s speeds, decent CL18 timings and a price point of £67.99 after a tidy £26 discount at Amazon UK compared to its price last month.

HDMI 2.1 monitors were the new hotness back when the new generation of games consoles arrived in 2020 and 2021, with these models offering 4K 120Hz HDR gaming without the need for chroma subsampling. Unsurprisingly, these monitors also cost a huge amount of money, with even lower-end options in the £600+ range and higher-end examples in the quadruple figures.

Two or three years on, things have settled down and these HDMI 2.1 monitors are now much more affordable - if not yet exactly cheap. One such example is the Acer Nitro XV282KKV, a 28-inch monitor with a 4K 144Hz refresh rate on PC, that's down to £409.98 plus £5 shipping at Ebuyer. That's nearly £200 off its UK RRP and an awesome deal for a monitor with these specs.

Like Phasmophobia, Among Us and BattleBit Remastered before it, it’s time for a new indie game to blow up on Twitch and keep thousands enthralled for at least a day or two before something else comes along. This time around, it’s the turn of Only Up, a bizarre game about climbing your way into the sky.

The much-anticipated reboot of Perfect Dark is still “in the earliest stages” of development and at least two years away from being released, according to a new report.

If you want to play Metal Gear Solid’s Master Collection - which will bring MGS3: Snake Eater to PC for the first time - when it releases this autumn, you’ll need to have a controller.

The recent release of the Yakuza series on GOG has been tempered by the notable removal of several developers and even entire studios from the games’ credits.

Six months ago, MMORPG Temtem introduced a mode that let you jump straight into the game’s 2v2 turn-based battles, ignoring the busywork of quests, creature-catching, and all the other Pokémon-isms. Showdown was the mode's name; something for the animal fight pit lovers in the room, rather than the plain old animal lovers. That mode has now been spun into a free standalone release aptly called Temtem Showdown, out now.

The team of modders working to remaster The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in Skyrim’s engine have released a hefty roadmap video, updating us on all the work they have left to do before Skyblivion’s 2025 release window. As well as development updates, the new video (embedded below) contains plenty of glimpses at Skyblivion’s nostalgic landscapes. Come take a look at fancy Cyrodiil down below, which looks exactly how I remember Oblivion looking (until I looked at actual Oblivion again.)

Last week while I was away from my desk, Pete Hines showed that the Starfield hype train is an unstoppable perpetual motion engine, and he certainly won't pull the emergency break for something as normie as a federal court. While his comments were part of the ongoing Actiblizz acquisition malarkey (the point seemingly being "it's so big it'd be too hard to optimise for PS5"), hearing him pitch Bethesda's upcoming grey-rocks-but-in-space-this-time RPG as "irresponsibly large" made me want to go full Reggie Perrin.

Every time I bring my reviews of giant games to the altar of the industry, I weep tears of blood and beg that games be shorter. And every time the golden idol with the face of Phil Spencer opens its maw to spit a new £80 disc out and says: "Bigger than ever before. A million pointless collectibles. A feast of zero-calorie content. Lol. Lmao."

Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by an android demon (not to be confused with that hellish Android mascot), chill snowboarding, a golf game played on an actual physical pop-up book, and more. Check out all these attractive and interesting indie games!

June has been a feverishly hectic month between the NotE3 season, big games relentlessly releasing back-to-back, and this infernal heat wave we’ve been stuck in. Amidst all the madness though, one indie has been able to blast through the noise to become a smash hit on Steam - only sitting behind CS:GO on the sales charts - and potentially one of this year’s biggest shooters. That impressive feat goes to BattleBit Remastered, a 254-player FPS that mixes Battlefield’s large-scale skirmishes, Roblox’s low-poly aesthetics, and some wild destructible environments.

Over the weekend, DDoS attacks on Blizzard caused a bunch of issues for Diablo IV and other Battle.net games such as Overwatch 2. The cyber attacks prevented many players from logging into Diablo IV, and the hack-and-slashers that managed to log in were at risk of “high latency and disconnections” in the always-online RPG. That tragically forced many gamers to step outside during the hottest weekend in recent memory. Thankfully, Blizzard now states the DDoS attacks have ended, meaning everything should be working as normal.

Sundays are for sticking the fan on. Before you feel the breeze, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

My purchase last year of a Steam Deck rekindled my long-dormant love for arcade racers. High quality and modern entries in the genre are few and far between, though.

Enter New Star GP, which looks like it might fill the whole in my heart that's been there since I played F1 Pole Position on the SNES in 1993.