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The MMORPG already suffered from congestion earlier in the year due to a mass increase in its playerbase, many of whom will be jumping back in for Endwalker. A new post in the Lodestone states that servers have been optimised in advance. However, due to the global shortage of semiconductors, Square Enix has been unable to add new Worlds, meaning long wait times as current Worlds reach maximum capacity. “We would like to apologise for making this sort of announcement at a time when many of you are looking forward to the expansion, as well as for inconveniences that may be caused by congestion,” states the post....

The studio is currently based in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, though has understandably had to put work on hold while the Russian invasion continues. Now, the team is apparently investigating ways of finishing Stalker 2 in the Czech Republic, according to reports from Czech journalist Pavel Dobrovsky and news website Vortex, which cites local developers who are helping GSC with the move. GSC Game World has yet to confirm the move itself....

The update - which directly addresses developers with games on Steam - details how the team has worked in partnership with Epic to make it “simple” for PC games that use EAC to add Steam Deck support, which should, in turn, see more compatible games added to the upcoming handheld system. “Our team has been working with Epic on Easy Anti-Cheat + Proton support over the last few months, and we’re happy to announce that adding Steam Deck support to your existing EAC games is now a simple process, and doesn’t require updating game binaries, SDK versions, or integration of EOS,” the update states (thanks, PCGN)....

In a video tease, below, for the strategy game’s next free Legendary Lord - the Dark Elf beastmaster Rakarth of Karond Kar - we hear Rheon’s voice acting. He’s doing a great Ramsay Bolton impression! And I love the “flay them alive” line. Ramsay was always fond of flaying victims alive, after all. It’s a great fit, really. The Dark Elves are one of the most sadistic races in Warhammer, and Bolton is one of the most sadistic characters in Game of Thrones....

Thankfully, Nintendo included a Micro SD slot in the Switch, allowing you to bypass these storage limits by simply inserting a widely available Micro SD card. If you’re planning to make this essential upgrade, there are some obvious questions: which Switch memory card should you choose, and how fast will Micro SD storage be compared to running from a physical game cartridge or the Switch’s internal memory? To answer these questions, we’ll recommend the best Switch Micro SD cards on the market in 2022, from some absolute units that can hold up to 1TB, as well as cheaper cards that best hit the sweet spot between price and performance....

Minute of Islands charts the adventures of a young engineer named Mo as she attempts to save the archipelago of her home, once inhabited by a race of giants, from encroaching disaster. “Otherworldly but vital machines, festering in the underbellies of the islands themselves, must be kept going or an almost forgotten threat will swallow all,” explains Minute of Islands’ Steam page. “Mo vows to restore the hidden engines in time, but is this truly what she needs?...

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan is one of the more surprising success stories from a console that was a goldmine for under-appreciated and unique creative experiences. The game’s wacky premise of a cheer squad helping strangers and fighting aliens in a rhythm game played using the touchscreen earned viral success as import websites and magazines touted the wonders of this bizarre iNiS-developed curio. Fast-forward a few years and Nintendo finally rewarded eager fans with a localized release, replacing the songs with Western hits and the cheer squad with spies....

Besides the standard white DualSense and relatively new Midnight Black and Cosmic Red colour ways, Sony have decided to unleash three new colours: Starlight Blue, Nova Pink and Galactic Purple. As you can see, they manage to be both vivid and understated. The colours and names are inspired by the galaxies above. The purple one is available first via the PS Store until 10th February - after that it will be available at other retailers and we’ll update this page to share the cheapest place to buy it....

The first of EA’s newly announced expansions is the Moonlight Chic Kit, which appears to primarily focus its attention on new clothing options for your little digital pals, offering up new looks, designed by Parisian creator Paola Locatelli, said to be “perfect for all the experiences a Sim will encounter during a night out on the town”. Expect “slinky dresses, flowing shirts and smart jackets, all of which can be styled with sneakers for casual fun or dressed up with some silk and sparkles for a romantic date....

High School Years, which follows the release of The Sim 4’s excellent Werewolves Game Pack earlier this month, does pretty much exactly what you’d assume it does based on its name, giving players the option to send their teenage Sims off to Copperdale High for a few years of learning and post-class socialising with peers. Its first big addition is the new location of Copperdale. Nestled on the banks of Lake LaSuli, this small town plays home to more than just the local high school; it also incorporates a library, the principal’s lavish mansion, a thrift store/boba hangout known as ThrifTea, and an amusement park, complete with haunted house, tunnel of love, ferris wheel, and photo booth....

This - this urge to tidy things up, to neaten things - is A Little to the Left, a game about restoring order to the world one small mess at a time. A game about straightening pictures and sorting out drawers (and many other things) and the joy that can bring. It begins with a wonky picture. There’s no explanation because no explanation is needed - there’s just the offender on the wall, screaming silently at you to sort it out....

Ubisoft announced Valhalla would be receiving a second year of updates back in June, confirming several new expansions were on the way, starting in 2022. The publisher is yet to share specifics but clues spotted in Valhalla’s Trophy list have suggested the first will be titled Dawn of Ragnarök. Dubbed by developer Ubisoft as the “most ambitious expansion in the series’ history”, the expansion - the leak for which was posted to the Assassin’s Creed subreddit, complete with some very official-looking screenshots which I won’t share here so as not spoil anything accidentally - is expected to release on 10th March, 2022....

Case in point is this 15-inch Lenovo Legion 5 gaming laptop, which offers one of the best price-to-performance ratios I’ve seen for a long time. This spec packs an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H processor and Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti graphics card, backed with 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB SSD, all for £1500 after a healthy £300 discount. Get the Lenovo Legion 5 for £1500 (after £300 discount)...

According to ResetEra’s BlackBate - a mysterious poster who’s correctly leaked games ahead of schedule before - it looks like subscribers to Sony’s top two PS+ tiers will see the following games join the collection: Stray (which ties in with what we already knew), FFVII Remake Intergrade + FF7R EPISODE INTERmission, Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed Unity, Assassin’s Creed Rogue Remastered, Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry, Assassin’s Creed The Ezio Collection, and Saints Row IV: Re-Elected....

Frontline - a free-to-play, class-based spin on the long-running tactical shooter series - was unveiled last week during Ghost Recon’s 20th Anniversary livestream, with the announcement focussing on Frontline’s “flagship” Expedition mode, a “new take on the battle royale genre” for 102 players where teams of three complete objectives before calling for extraction. Other modes, including the 9v9 points-based Control mode and an only vaguely alluded to “traditional arena shooter”, were also briefly mentioned as being part of Ghost Recon Frontline’s eventual launch line-up, but details on those were notably light....

Sharing on the PlayStation Blog, Tunic’s lead developer Andrew Shouldice expressed his love for old-school game’s manuals. “The more I thought about it though, the more I realised that my love for this kind of mystery came not just from the games, but from the manuals they were packaged with,” Shouldice wrote, stating he would “pore over these documents endlessly”. Such was Shouldice’s love for these manuals, he decided to incorporate one into Tunic’s gameplay....

We reported in 2020 that PS3 players appeared to trigger the secret cutscene by disarming all nukes in the game’s asynchronous online multiplayer mode. As it turns out - thanks to a new video from Did You Know Gaming - players didn’t actually meet the requirement of zero nukes. Why? It’s impossible. Let’s back up a sec. Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is split into two chapters, but soon after release dataminers discovered a title card for a third chapter and a secret nuclear disarmament cutscene....

This includes the ability for streamers to customise who can “raid” them, plus the ability to share a list of banned accounts with other streamers. Both of these features are in response to the mass wave of hate raids that affected marginalised streamers last year. The features were introduced at the opening ceremony by Twitch CEO Emmett Shear: “We’re never going to be done with safety on Twitch, it’s a goal without end....

The feature was introduced in March this year, but bears a resemblance to the paid boosts programme that ended in late 2021, as clarified by a Twitch representative to PC Gamer. This new feature works similarly, however, and takes the place of a hype train - subscriptions and bits thrown can now contribute to a boost train that pushes a stream to the front page of Twitch. The feature has already been abused, however....