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Over the weekend, game developer Rami Ismail of Dutch indie duo Vlambeer (who recently announced they’re going their separate ways), held Twitch Plays Microsoft Flight Simulator over on his Twitch channel. The key to the success of this was probably that the chat wasn’t quite as large as your typical Twitch Plays events. Even still, it’s no small feat that the viewers managed to pilot a Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner around for an entire hour, with a successful take-off and landing....

Ubisoft’s offer of Watch Dogs 2 for free if you watched today’s Ubisoft Forward stream today was meant to be a tempting little sweetener, but things broke. The servers seemingly overloaded, meaning that not only were many unable to sign into their Ubi accounts and become eligible for the giveaway, some people are complaining all the failed attempts got their accounts automatically disabled. Welp. Sounds like it’ll take some fixing, but Ubisoft have at least said people who couldn’t log in will get the freebie....

“Stay tuned for all the latest information about the lineup and announcements from our teams around the world,” Ubisoft say. No hints about what they might show, though seeing as they’re a company commited to sequels and series you can probably guess some. I reckon Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Quarantine, or whatever name they settle on for Quarantine. Though I’m not so bold as to believe they’ll ever actually release Beyond Good & Evil 2....

Riders Republic is made by Ubisoft Annecy, the studio behind open-world xtreme wintersport game Steep. This seems to have a fair bit in common, though this time the kewlsports to stunt and race around in are mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, wingsuiting, and… rocket-powered wingsuiting as some sort of human fighter plane? That can’t be safe. Vidman Colm played a few hours of an early build earlier this year, and quite enjoyed it (annoying NPCs aside)....

“We’re happy to see Steam Deck coming to the industry,” said Guillemot. “It shows that there continues a flow of very innovative new hardware coming to the market and so we will look and see how big it becomes. If it is big we will be able to put our games on it.” That’s about as non-committal as you’d expect from a CEO during an investor call, but it’s interesting nevertheless....

I had no idea Valheim had a crafting system that would allow for these sorts of builds when I first played it. Scrolling through the game’s Reddit now is kind of reminiscent of looking through Minecraft’s: excellent builds as far as the eye can see. Just look at this Millennium Falcon, complete with a fully mapped out interior of Han Solo’s ship. Dubbed the Millennium Longboat, I’m not sure exactly how seaworthy this vessel would be, but I would certainly be afraid of it if I saw it sailing towards me....

Steam’s regional pricing recommendations are decided by a few different things. Although exchange rates are a factor, Valve also base their regional price recommendations on consumer price indexes, and what they call “purchasing power parity” between different countries. “All of these factors have driven us towards the commitment to refresh these price suggestions on a much more regular cadence,” Valve said, “so that we’re keeping pace with economic changes over time....

“A head-mounted display includes a front having a display housing and a back having a rear housing,” begins the abstract for the filing. There are then several blueprints of the device and its parts, and a lengthy text description of what those parts do and how it might be connected together. “Introduced above, head-mounted displays (HMDs) have a wide range of applications and in some instances, may need to accommodate for varying head sizes among different users,” begins the more detailed description on page 37....

We’ve run another poll on the Rock Paper Shotgun YouTube channel for the next edition of Mystery Steam Reviews, so go and vote if you want to have a say in what the next MSR is all about. So, this week, both myself and Matthew had to choose three games that are set in either New York or on Mars. Nothing fancier than that. If you’re new around these parts, you can see a full breakdown of the rules in the Mystery Steam Reviews Rule Bible™ below....

Voyage is an adventure about two people wordlessly exploring a series of hand-painted landscapes, solving puzzles and piecing together a mystery. You can play it alone or with a pal. Watch the trailer and tell me you don’t want to. Yes, yes, yes. This is self-evidently gorgeous, isn’t it? Those colours! Those cute creatures. The little effects like dripping rain or rustling leaves in the foreground. I mean, just look at this GIF from the store page: I’m even excited about the music, which is by Calum Bowen, he of Snipperclips and Pikuniku’s upbeat, playful soundtracks....

“Building 21 has entered lockdown after significant infiltration,” Infinity Ward said. “Access cards are disabled, but will be operational within the week. Prepare accordingly.” Building 21 went live on December 19th in Warzone 2’s DMZ extraction mode as part of the Season 01 Reloaded midseason update, and is meant to be a limited-time area. The mysterious compound is a biological laboratory that you can only find your way into if you gather keycards from around the Al Mazrah map....

In this first episode of Warzone Audio Bang, we detail exactly why the game holds a special place in our hearts. And it’s not just because we like shooty bang. We also consider how Take That’s Gary Barlow would fare in Verdansk, and we take the opportunity to compare three of our regular teammates to different rodents. This is our platform, not theirs. What else? Oh yeah, we touch on what we thought of the massive ship that brought zombies to Warzone....

Then the tanker beached and we got a new location, Shipwreck! And the zombies stayed within its confines, hmmm. A week elapsed. They moved! But disappeared from their original spot. Hmmm. Another week went by, and the same thing happened again. Then it became clear that this was it - this was the invasion. And just like that, I’d lost all interest. It’s still ongoing, this Warzone zombie ‘outbreak’. These zombies have skipped from location to location over the last few weeks, like a circus troupe or a small cluster of hermit crabs....

Legion’s PC edition may not have launched with the same game-breaking bugs it found on Xbox, but that hasn’t stopped Ubisoft’s latest open world from being a little bit broken. The Watch Dogs Reddit has been punctuated by some rather bizarre occurrences, such as this player’s slow getaway into the stratosphere. With the game procedurally generating a resistance movement of random humans, it’s natural you’d get a few oddballs in the mix....

“Review of Angle Vocabulary for Homeschooling Week because I have to teach today, but Half-Life: Alyx just came out,” he said in describing Monday’s excellent decision. Coomber teaches seventh and eighth grade at the Otay Ranch Academy in San Diego (that’s year 8 and 9, or S1 and S2 in Scotland - so kids aged 12-14 or thereabouts). Most schools in California have been closed for the obvious reason. He introduces Alyx’s stakeout flat in sunny City 17 as his own, complete with a Strider for a downstairs neighbour....

For PC use, you’ll notice excellent game load times, way better than an HDD and also slightly faster than a SATA SSD which is limited to around 550MB/s reads by its comparatively ancient interface. Load times are more down to random read speeds, but even here you’re getting a speed-up - and with DirectStorage for Windows 10 and Windows 11 on the horizon, we should see a significant reduction to load times in supported games when you have a PCIe 4....

Overwatch (not Overwatch) It’s a simple thing in turn-based combat games: a choice to sit and watch and take a shot if the enemy moves into range during their turn. With real-time violence abstracted into taking turns, overwatch (not Overwatch) is a cautious half-second pause to wait and see. Perhaps nothing will happen, perhaps no one will attack at all, but if they do, overwatch will have your back. Might have your back, given that overwatch attacks often suffer an accuracy penalty....

In this Grounded Quartzite guide: Where to find Quartzite in Grounded (3 locations) What you can make with Quartzite Quartzite blocks regenerate over time Where to find Quartzite in Grounded Quartzite in Grounded is made out of big stone-like blocks that can only be found underground in certain parts of the map. You can use a hammer of any kind to bash these blocks down into smaller chunks of Quartzite which you can pick up and use in crafting recipes....

There you are, a cowboy, seeking revenge on the wrong’un who killed your dad, wooed your mum, and kicked your dog. The destination is less important than the journey. Off you go, crossing the map by hitting nodes which are all events. Maybe you join a pocker game which turns sour. Maybe you stumble across a hanging. Maybe you hit a farm and try to woo his son. Maybe you find buried treasure....