Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has remained in first place on the New Zealand charts, according to IGEA for the week ending November 3, 2024.

There were two new releases in the top 10 this week with Dragon Age: The Veilguard debuting in second place and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered in fourth place.

Hogwarts Legacy is down one spot to third place, Grand Theft Auto V is up three spots to fifth place, and NBA 2K25 climbed from ninth to sixth place.

Red Dead Redemption is in seventh place, Borderlands 3 is in eight place, Battlefield 2042 is in ninth place, and EA Sports FC 25 rounds out the top 10.

Here are the top 10 best-selling titles in New Zealand for the week:

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
2. Dragon Age: The Veilguard - NEW
3. Hogwarts Legacy
4. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered - NEW
5. Grand Theft Auto V
6. NBA 2K25
7. Red Dead Redemption
8. Borderlands 3
9. Battlefield 2042
10. EA Sports FC 25 

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463029/dragon-age-the-veilguard-debuts-in-2nd-on-the-new-zealand-charts/

ublisher Bethesda Softworks and developer MachineGames have released a gameplay deep dive video for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle that is nearly 15 minutes in length.

"From locations and puzzles to gear and combat, MachineGames Audio Director, Pete Ward, takes us on a whirlwind journey through the world of The Great Circle," reads the description to the video. "Get ready for launch with this look at Indy’s grand adventure."

View the gameplay deep dive below:

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will launch for the Xbox Series X|S, PC via Steam and Microsoft Store, and Xbox Game Pass on December 9.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463033/indiana-jones-and-the-great-circle-gets-gameplay-deep-dive/

Neowiz announced it has signed a global publishing rights partnership with Warsaw, Poland-based developer Zakazane to publish the first title from the studio. The game from Zakazane is a single-player noir western RPG.

Zakazane is led by Jan Bartkowicz, Piotr Chomiak, Radosław Gwarek, and Marta Sobek, and features developers who previously worked at central European game companies, including  CD Projekt RED and 11 bit studios.

"Neowiz is committed to delivering remarkable, story-driven games that resonate with gamers worldwide, and we’re actively searching for talented developers with a passion for well-crafted narratives,” said Neowiz co-CEO Seung-Cheol Kim.

"When we first met Zakazane, we felt an immediate kinship around their passion for developing projects that profoundly captivate audiences. Their upcoming neo-western RPG will be a key addition to our portfolio and reflects our ambition to build lasting franchises across PC and consoles. Together, we will create a brand that unites quality and storytelling for gamers to cherish for years to come."

Zakazane CEO and co-founder Jan Barkowicz, "We found a great understanding of our vision with Neowiz, who got excited about our debut title the minute we showed them the demo. In conversations that followed, they never tried to steer us away from our principles but rather to make sure we stick to our guns. It’s clear both sides understand that games can become important to people on a personal level, making them both valuable works of culture and good business."

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463035/neowiz-to-publish-western-rpg-by-poland-based-developer-zakazane/

Following a tease, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have announced Spyro Reignited Trilogy will release for Xbox Game Pass tomorrow, November 12.

VGChartz staff gave Spyro Reignited Trilogy an 8 out of 10 and stated, "it was wise to steer away from marketing the collection as a remaster because that label undercuts the developers’ level of dedication and investment in revitalizing these games."

Read details on the trilogy below:

Remade from the ground up, the Spyro Reignited Trilogy features all three of the original games that started it all – Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage, and Spyro: Year of the Dragon, amazing for the original fans and new players alike.

Spyro the Dragon

Our new favorite little purple dragon starts on a quest to rescue his dragon friends who have been turned into crystal by the villain Gnasty Gnorc (what an unfortunate and yet apt name!). Spyro explores vibrant Dragon Realms, collects gems, and flambés his enemies, all while learning to how breathe fire and glide.

Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage!

Spyro finds himself in the magical land of Avalar where he is trying to save the realm from the evil sorcerer Ripto and his minions. Along the way, he befriends new entirely new allies, overcomes challenges, complete tasks, and unlocks even more powers to take down Ripto and restore peace.

Spyro: Year of the Dragon

In Spyro: Year of the Dragon, Spyro finds out that the Dragon Eggs have been stolen by the devious Sorceress, sending him on a new mission to recover the eggs and save the dragon population. Our favorite purple dragon meets new friends, learns new abilities, all while exploring more vibrant realms with challenges (and treasures!).

Xbox players have been able to explore the Dragon Realms with Spyro since 2018 with the release of the Reignited Trilogy, and now we’re excited to invite our community to jump into these incredible adventures once again and relive the fun and nostalgia that only Spyro can bring.

Available on Game Pass Standard, Game Pass Ultimate, and PC Game Pass, for cloud, console and PC, it’s sure to ignite some serious fun. Let’s go save the Dragon Realms!

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463034/spyro-reignited-trilogy-headed-to-xbox-game-pass-tomorrow-november-12/

Publisher Kasedo Games and developer Beard Envy have announced he roguelite spaceship repair simulation game, Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop, has been delayed to December 5. It will launch for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.

View the release date trailer below:

Read details on the game below:

Come on down to Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop, for all your roguelite spaceship repair simulation needs! Wake up, clock in, fix ships, make friends and enemies, pay R.E.N.T., upgrade your workshop, ponder the futility of your existence, go to bed and then do it all over again the next day.

On an asteroid-bound service station in an unfrequented space lane, Wilbur carves out a paltry living as a mechanic, repairing as many ships as he can to afford the ever-rising R.E.N.T payments to his corporate overlord, Uncle Chop. Where most of his customers find meaning in pastimes like worshipping deranged space gods, feeding random crap to a sentient black hole, endlessly digging for The Treasure™ or mentally enslaving donut shop workers, Wilbur lives a more humble life, fixing the galaxy’s ills one broken ship module at a time.

Fix Stuff

Using a range of tools, diagnostic devices, parts and workshop appliances, you’ll be correcting faults in the modules of procedurally generated spaceships. From simple refuel jobs to total overhauls, get ready to frantically fumble, slice, loosen, tighten, grab and drop as you try to complete as many jobs as you can within each daily time limit. With a huge variety of ships and modules, your hands are gonna get real dirty real fast, in some real unusual places.

Read Stuff

Flaunt your basic literacy by consulting manual pages for guidance on diagnosing and correcting faults in spaceship modules, as well as operating workshop appliances. And if basic literacy isn’t your bag, then at least you’ve got pretty diagrams to gawp at! All your IKEA furniture-assembly training has led to this moment.

Upgrade Stuff

Using whatever hard-earned pennies Uncle Chop doesn’t take from you, expand your workshop and kit it out with a range of workstations. From industrial devices to esoteric altars, these workstations will allow you to fix bigger and more lucrative ships.

Talk About Stuff

Interact with a diverse range of oddballs as you engage with both anthology-style storytelling and a multiple-ending, overarching narrative. The lore is (*consults notes*) “deep and rich and good,” with different factions you can choose to ingratiate yourself with – each with their own inane agendas.

Discover Stuff

Narrative and random events, hidden puzzles and upgrades, secret lore—we got all that goodness that ensures each day and gameplay run will feel substantially different from the last.

Do All That Stuff Again, But Better

Meeting those escalating R.E.N.T payments ain’t gonna be easy, but chin up, champ – certain station upgrades will persist across gameplay runs, making life a little more tolerable every time around. You’ll also get faster and smarter the more you do the thing, so keep doing the thing!

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463037/uncle-chops-rocket-shop-releases-december-5-for-ps5-xbox-series-xs-switch-and-pc/

Valve has announced Steam Deck OLED: Limited Edition White.

The handheld is a limited edition white version of the Steam Deck OLED that will be available in limited quantities for $679.

Pre-orders will open up on Steam on November 18 at 3:00 pm PT / 6:00 pm ET / 11:00 pm UK.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463040/valve-announces-steam-deck-oled-limited-edition-white/

Tencent Games subsidiary LightSpeed Studios has announced Hideaki Itsuno, who recently left Capcom after 30 years working for the company, will be leading a new video game studio called LightSpeed Japan Studio.

LightSpeed Japan Studio will have two locations in Tokyo and Osaka and is focused on developing original AAA games.

"Joining LightSpeed Studios is an exciting new chapter for me," said Hideaki Itsuno. "With LightSpeed’s strong development capability and global network, I look forward to creating original AAA action game titles together with the amazing team and building aesthetic and innovative experiences for the global player community. We welcome all talented and passionate game creators from the world over to join our vision."

LightSpeed Studios president Jerry Chen added, "It is our great honor to have Hideaki Itsuno join LightSpeed Studios. The establishment of LightSpeed Japan Studio is a significant step in LightSpeed Studios’ expansion and demonstrates our commitment to bringing the best possible games to our players."

Itsuno directed entries in the Rival Schools, Power Stone, Capcom VS. SNK, Devil May Cry, and Dragon’s Dogma franchises.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463041/hideaki-itsuno-to-lead-new-aaa-developer-lightspeed-japan-studio/

Publisher Whitethorn Games and developer Balloon Studios announced Botany Manor will launch for the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 on December 17.

The game first released for the Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam, and Xbox Game Pass in April of this year.

Our own Lee Mehr gave the game an eight out of 10 in his review and stated, "The lynchpin to Botany Manor's success is it being like an orderly garden: a well-attended array of various flowers with nary a dastardly weed in sight.  It may not capture the next mind-blowing concept within the genre, nor overwhelm you with a wild barrage of challenges, but there's an understated value in being among the most succinct within its field."

View the PS5 and PS4 release date trailer below:

Read details on the game below:

Botany Manor is a botanical puzzle game set in a historical English homestead brimming with a lifetime of memorabilia and research to explore, where players will uncover long-forgotten seeds and piece together clues as they solve puzzles to help each rare plant grow.

The enduring estate of Botany Manor is home to retired botanist Arabella Greene. After a long career, she has amassed a collection of rare, long-forgotten plants that require some research to help them live again. Play as Arabella and explore the stunning historic manor and its grounds to look for clues in her notes, books, posters, and items scattered around the residence to determine the correct set of circumstances to help the flora flourish. Unlock new seeds and plant them. Interactable items around the property that can be turned and flipped will provide information to help you solve each gardening puzzle, grow the plants, and discover their mysterious qualities.

Features:

• Explore the peaceful grounds and many calming rooms of the beautifully rendered, historically accurate 19th century manor.
• Pick up, flip, turn, and rotate the many items found around the estate to piece together the clues to solve each plant-based puzzle.
• Learn about Arabella’s life, career, and the challenges she faced as a woman scientist during the 19th century as you explore.
• Fall in love with the calming soundtrack that perfectly compliments the environment and flowers you bring to full bloom.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463043/botany-manor-headed-to-ps5-and-ps4-on-december-17/

Nintendo has announced its Black Friday 2024 deals. 

Dozens of games will be discounted including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Maker 2, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Pikmin 4, Nintendo Switch Sports, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Super Mario Odyssey, Pikmin 1 + 2, and more.

The Neon Red and Neon Blue Joy-Con controllers and the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller will be discounted by $20, while the Nintendo Switch Carrying Case & Screen Protector - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Edition will be discounted by $10.

The Nintendo Switch: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Bundle will once again return for $299.99, while the new Nintendo Switch – OLED Model: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Bundle will be available for $349.99. Both bundles include a digital download of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and a 12-month Nintendo Switch Online Individual Membership.

The Nintendo Switch Lite: Hyrule Edition with Bonus Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack will be available for $209.99. The bundle includes a 12-month Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack Individual Membership.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463045/nintendos-black-friday-2024-deals-revealed/

Sony Interactive Entertainment in a new video posted to YouTube revealed the PlayStation 5 Slim Digital Edition has been discounted by $70 and will be available for $379.99. The deal runs until December 24 "while supplies last."

No word yet if the standard PlayStation 5 or the recently released PlayStation 5 Pro will be discounted. The standard PS5 is priced at $499.99 and the PS5 Pro is priced at $699.99.

As of the time of writing, the discount isn't available yet at retailers or through PlayStation Direct.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463046/ps5-slim-digital-edition-discounted-to-379-in-the-us-until-december-24/

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 in its third week remained in first place on the Steam Weekly Top Sellers chart (excluding revenue generated by free games) for Week 46, 2024, which ended November 12, 2024.

There were two new releases in the top 10 this week. Planet Coaster 2 debuted in fourth place, while Farming Simulator 25 came in fifth place.

Steam Deck is up two spots to second place, while Baldur's Gate 3 re-entered the top 10 in third place. EA Sports FC 25 is up two spots to sixth place, Cyberpunk 2077 re-entered the top 10 in seventh place, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard fell from second to eighth place.

Ahead of its release next week pre-orders for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl came in ninth place.

Here are the Steam Weekly Top Sellers by revenue for the week (excluding free games):

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
2. Steam Deck
3. Baldur's Gate 3
4. Planet Coaster 2 - NEW
5. Farming Simulator 25 - NEW
6. EA Sports FC 25
7. Cyberpunk 2077
8. Dragon Age: The Veilguard
9. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - Pre-orders
10. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

Here are the Steam Weekly Top Sellers by revenue for the week (including free games):

1. PUBG: Battlegrounds
2. Counter-Strike 2
3. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
4. Apex legends
5. Throne and Liberty
6. Steam Deck
7. Baldur's Gate 3
8. Dota 2
9. Planet Coaster 2 - NEW
10. Farming Simulator 25 - NEW

The Steam charts are ordered by revenue, include pre-order numbers, and hardware. If a game appears multiple times it is because it has multiple editions.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463048/planet-coaster-2-and-farming-simulator-25-debut-on-the-steam-charts/

Shift Up in its latest earnings report Q&A stated its goal is to release Stellar Blade for PC sometime in 2025.

"We're aiming for a 2025 release," said the developer when asked about a PC version of Stellar Blade.

"Given recent trends like Steam’s growing presence in the AAA games market and the global success of Black Myth: Wukong, we are expecting the PC version to perform even better than the console version."

The developer revealed sales for the PS5 version of Stellar Blade "have remained steady even as the initial surge has calmed."

Stellar Blade released for the PS5 in April.

Thanks, Gematsu.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463049/shift-up-aiming-to-release-stellar-blade-for-pc-in-2025/

WASHINGTON CROSSING, Pennsylvania—At a campaign rally in the most important swing state in the country, anti-Trump activist George Conway told the Daily Beast why he thinks Kamala Harris can win over Republicans.

“She’s kind of done it already,” he said. “Look at all those people who voted for [Nikki] Haley when she was already done. I actually think there’s kind of a hidden Harris vote for Republicans who are just exhausted by Donald Trump.”

Turnout is another factor that plays to Democrat’s advantage, Conway predicted. “I also think that even the people who are still for Trump and won’t vote for Harris, I don’t think the turnout’s going to be great for him.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Liam Payne, a former member of the boy band One Direction, was found dead in a hotel courtyard in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Wednesday evening, according to CNN and La Nacion, both of which cited local police.

The singer died after an apparent fall from the balcony of his third-floor hotel room. Argentinian authorities told Good Morning America that Payne had been staying at the hotel CasaSur in the upscale neighborhood of Palermo.

He was 31.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Billionaire Bill Ackman spent days after the ABC presidential debate promoting false claims that a network “whistleblower” had allegedly uncovered collusion between ABC and Kamala Harris’ campaign. Now, a month and multiple denials later, he sees the claims differently.

“It seems pretty clear that the alleged @abc whistleblower debate story claiming that @KamalaHarris was given questions in advance and other advantages was a fake,” Ackman posted on X alongside a blog post by Megyn Kelly discussing the dubious claims.

What Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, did not acknowledge, however, is that he was one of falsehood’s early boosters. After an X account named “Black Insurrectionist” claimed it had been in touch with a whistleblower who alleged the Harris campaign had been given debate topics ahead of the showdown with Donald Trump and had demanded Trump—and Trump alone—be fact-checked.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A collective gasp echoed like a thunderclap in a valley in our Daily Beast newsroom late Wednesday afternoon at the news that singer Liam Payne, who became famous as a member of the group One Direction, died at age 31.

TMZ reports that Payne fell from a hotel balcony in Argentina, where he had reunited with bandmates at 1D-er Niall Horan’s concert. He had, according to the site, been behaving “erratically,” earlier in the day, and was spotted smashing a laptop in the hotel lobby and having to be carried back to his room. He had been in headlines on gossip blogs over tension with his ex-fiancée Maya Henry, who, TMZ says, alleged “he'd left her after asking her to get an abortion.”

In the shock of his death, fans couldn’t ignore the eerie nature that Payne had just connected with his One Direction bandmates. Dark questions emerge when a celebrity dies so young: What role did the often horrific toll of fame have on a person like Payne, who has been open about addiction and suicidal ideation? But there’s also an impulse to go back to the roots of a person’s talent, to revisit what it was that we all fell in love with—and was their passion—in the first place.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance boldly said “no,” Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election, when pressed on the issue at a campaign event Wednesday in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

The Ohio senator has avoided directly denying the results over the past few weeks.

When quizzed by The New York Times about the results over the weekend, for example, he refused multiple times to answer the question, on one occasion claiming he was “focused on the future”—echoing an answer he gave to Democratic opponent Tim Walz at the vice presidential debate.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

It doesn’t matter how long a play is: sometimes 75 minutes can feel like 3 hours if the play is bad, while a three-hour play may first elicit an inner groan, then flow pleasurably by if the writing and performances are in well-oiled tandem.

Kenneth Lonergan’s Hold on to Me Darling (Lucille Lortel Theatre, to Dec. 22) belongs, mostly, to the latter category: it is long, and it feels long, but that’s OK; not gold-standard wow, but far more than pleasant. This is down to Lonergan’s engaging writing and a collection of differently distinctive, carefully drawn performances, led by Adam Driver as a famous country star called Strings (real name Clarence), wondering if he could/should give up all the trappings of fame for a simpler life after his mother’s death.

It is an off-Broadway treat to see Driver, most recently seen on the big screen as the star of Francis Ford Coppola’s polarizing epic Megalopolis, here bestriding—he is so tall, he is really bestriding—the compact Lucille Lortel stage. Theater fans last saw him on Broadway in Burn This, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. He is renowned for playing powder-keg personas. With characters like Adam in Girls, Charlie in Marriage Story, and Pale in Burn This, the question, the bubbling menace, was when will Adam Driver go off? Those characters memorably combusted—thrashing, shouting, snarling and occupying spaces that could barely contain them—and Driver made it so that you recoiled from their crackling fury.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper was flabbergasted Wednesday by a surrogate’s defense of Donald Trump, calling his explanation for the former president’s bombastic statements literal “bulls---.”

On AC360, former California Lieutenant Gov. Abel Maldonado, a Republican, said that Trump’s recent comments calling for the military to “handle” Democrats were simply his way of expressing his inner New Yorker. “He’s a fighter,” Maldonado added.

The conversation began when Cooper brought up Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, who, alongside other military leaders, have begun to warn of the dangers of re-electing the former president. Milley has called Trump a “fascist to his core.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A hotel worker called 911 to request urgent assistance before musician Liam Payne fell to his death from the third floor of the building in Buenos Aires on Wednesday.

The 31-year-old British singer and former member of the boy band One Direction died after he “jumped from the balcony of his room,” Buenos Aires Security Ministry Communications Director Pablo Policicchio told the Associated Press. He added that police had been called to the Casa Sur Hotel in the Argentine capital after receiving an emergency call shortly after 5 p.m. local time about an “aggressive man who could be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.”

A transcript of a 911 call published by the BBC shows a worker at the hotel telling the operator that they have “a guest who is high on drugs and who is trashing the room” and the staff therefore “need someone to come.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Relatives of Lyle and Erik Menendez spoke in an interview Wednesday about their long-running fears that the brothers had been abused for years before they killed their parents.

After a press conference in which they’d called for the imprisoned siblings’ freedom, the family members told Chris Cuomo on NewsNation about how their suspicions only deepened as time passed.

“Over the years we really did know that there was abuse at gut-level. But as time goes on and we all talked to each other more and more, it validates the fears and the gut-level reactions that we had,” the brothers’ cousin Karen VanderMolen-Copley told Cuomo. “That solidified the knowledge that the sexual abuse actually did occur, because that’s not something you want to believe, and then once you talk to each other it becomes more and more obvious.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called his party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, a “stupid,” “ill-tempered,” and “despicable human being,” according to his own records.

McConnell made the withering assessments in a series of private “personal oral histories” that he gave to Michael Tackett, the deputy Washington bureau chief of the Associated Press, who has a forthcoming biography about the Kentucky senator called The Price of Power. The AP conveniently reported the book’s juicy details.

McConnell’s remarks were made after the 2020 election that Trump lost, and the senator was apparently elated to see the backside of the former president, musing, “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until he leaves office.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

I never completed the original Red Dead Redemption, but not for the usual reasons of being terrible at the game, or thinking that open worlds are too big and boring these days and I just want to lie down forever and watch anime. I never finished it because my Xbox 360 version was not, in practice, an open world game, but a lonely farm at the bottom of a vortex of butchered spacetime. In the prologue, reformed outlaw John Marston confronts an old bandit acquaintance and gets himself roundly shot to bits. He’s rescued by local rancher Bonnie MacFarlane, who nurses him back to health and gives him a few odd jobs to warm him up for the next plot point.

Read more

Today in "person you already like says something you already agree with, but it’s still good to hear them say it" news, Arkane founder and im-simmy RPG studio WolfEye head Raphael Colantonio has spoken on Microsoft’s decision to shutter Prey (2017) studio Arkane Austin - alongside a handful of others - back in May.

Colantonio, who founded Arkane in 1999 and departed in 2017 to form Weird West studio WolfEye, recently chatted to Jeremy Peel for PC Gamer about Arkane’s closure, saying:

I think if you look a little bit, it's obvious that Arkane Austin was a very special group of people that have made some cool things and that could pull it off again. I think it was a decision that just came down to, 'We need to cut something.' Was it to please the investors, the stock market? They're playing a different game.

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Part of the fun of Dragon Age's fantasy is that it's inconsistent - or at least, inconsistent by the standards of fantasy RPGs, which often break down into a million neatly organised and interlocking codex entries. It all rides on who you speak to. The humans believe one thing about the origins and workings of Thedas, the elves another, the qunari something else entirely. These differences are the basis for many factional disagreements and thus, many core series plot developments. According to former lead writer David Gaider, however, there's an "uber-plot" behind it all that may one day be resolved and bring the series to a close, assuming BioWare continue to refer to his original (and closely guarded) narrative documents.

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The Steam Deck is something of a talisman for gaming on Linux, its popularity and penguin-powered SteamOS having almost singlehandedly dragged it past MacOS as the second-most-used operating system among Steam users. Sadly, this also means the Valve handheld is the primary casualty when developers decide to stop bothering with Linux support, as Respawn Entertainment have decided to do for Apex Legends.

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Some extremely fresh vintage workwear that I bought for entirely practical reasons aside, I’m not exactly a fashion person. I have nobody to impress most days but my cat, and the only item of clothing she appears to have an opinion on is my Oodie, which is very comfortable for both of us and also smells like a chicken shop, which I imagine is more pleasant for her than me.

This aside, I found myself taking a whole bunch of Dragon Age: The Veilguard screenshots as I played just to capture the RPG’s various outfits. They are ridiculous. Incredibly intricate and detailed, as well as being obscenely impractical for the most part. I do not like any of them in the sense I would wear them, but I like all of them in the sense that they display artists allowed to run free like caffeinated weasels and indulge their every whim.

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Real gamblers play russian roulette with shotguns. That is the core concept of Buckshot Roulette, the Inscryption-looking game of blinksweat and bulletworry. It's been out for a while now but the developers have just added a fun extra - a 4-person multiplayer mode.

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Some days, I wonder if every word written before a trailer is actually superfluous. It’s a visual medium, after all. What can a description achieve save to clumsily gesture at the true shape of something; a dog-eared tour brochure for a thrilling weekend spelunking in Plato’s cave? I can usually shake this feeling, but gory zombie action game Showa American Story is my breaking point. There is nothing I can impart about this thing that will not be conveyed better by allowing its new trailer to wash over you like a tide of sheer videogame. Here’s it:

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Remedy's Alan Wake 2 has now "recouped most of its development and marketing expenses", CEO Tero Virtala has announced in a business review for January-September 2024. Speaking as somebody who would quite like there to be more Alan Wake games - or at least, moderately weird and pretty decent blockbuster singleplayer horror games - I am both pleased by this news and a little troubled that Remedy's eldritch forest fable (which came out in October 2023) has yet to break even.

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Like a plague doctor delicately administering another handful of leeches, Ice Pick Lodge have shared a bit more about the recently announced Pathologic 3, explaining how their plans for the cult epidemic-battling series have progressed since the release of Pathologic 2.

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Typing Of The Dead released in arcades 25 years ago remains a masterpiece - funny, absurd, tense, and novel. I am keen on any game that aims to follow in its footsteps, and there are a few. The latest is Blood Typers, a horror game where you tippity-tap on your keyboard to fight montsters in a spooky mansion, but this isn't a rail shooter, so you'll be typing to explore and navigate, too.

It's now got a release of February 2025, and there's a demo you can play now.

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The Elder Scrolls: Legends, the free-to-play card game set in Bethesda's fantasy world, has been removed from sale on Steam. Its servers will shut down for good on January 30th, 2025, after which it will no longer be playable. The closure comes five years after the game was last updated.

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Put your hand up if you'd forgotten that every Assassin's Creed game is, strictly speaking, set in the present day. I know I had. That's not the actual distant past you're parkouring through. That isn't actual Renaissance architecture you're clambering on. It's a holographic Animus simulation, conjured from ancestral memories flash-frozen within your DNA - convenient, inasmuch as it means that any inconsistencies are your DNA's fault, not Ubisoft's. If the ledge-mantling animations are glitchy, that's simply because you have bad genes.

We can both be forgiven for losing sight of Assassin's Creed's modern day narrative frame. Ubisoft themselves have downplayed it since the era of Desmond Miles, the watery Peter Parker figure who served as puppetmaster protagonist for AC games up to Assassin's Creed 3. In Assassin's Creed Shadows, however, they're planning to bring back the modern day setting in a big way, though details are scanty.

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When nightmarish sci-fi extraction shooter The Forever Winter launched into early access in September it was somewhat messy. Bugs and maddening enemy spawns diminished the tension of being a fleshy human scavenger in a mech battlefield. But one feature annoyed some players much more - fresh water. See, you need to keep your headquarters stocked with water, as it gets steadily used by your settlement's inhabitants. The catch being that this water diminishes even while you're not playing the game. If it runs out completely, then everything you've collected gets wiped. The developers have listened to complaints about this most Farmville of mechanics, and they've answered in an interesting way. Water thieves! Now, on top of the usual downward trickle, burglars will come to steal your H2O as well.

It's not as bad as it sounds.

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The mystery surrounding Deadlock, Valve’s work-in-progress MOBA shooter, has largely evaporated. Its freely extendable invite system is about as effective at controlling player headcount as a disinterested football steward, meaning pretty much anyone with a clued-in Steam friend can get in and start poking around its secrets. And yet, being a lane-pushing wizard fighter in the Dota 2 vein, it’s already a vast tangle of interplaying abilities, items, strats, and often unspoken rules, of the kind that even experienced gankists will take hundreds of hours to learn. It’s been too much for poor Brendy, at any rate.

Still, Brendy is but one man. What if we had but four men, working in tandem to crush lanes and flatten Patrons just as Gabe intended? To find out if Deadlock is indeed more comprehensible as a team sport, Graham, Ed, Ollie, and James joined forces, promptly getting fucked up yet emerging from the warlock hospital with a deeper understanding of its workings. Or, at least, if anyone would keep playing.

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Early reactions to Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 multiplayer range from frothing dislike through omnimovement hype to our own Ed Thorn's dead-eyed appraisal that it's "a good one, I think. Not a bad one. If you like Call Of Duty, you will like this. If you don't like Call Of Duty, you will not like this." I feel like we need to emergency-deploy a supply crate of smelling salts, because the sheer OK-ness of Black Ops 6 appears to have tumbled Ed into a stupor.

Perhaps it would be a different story if he'd encountered some of the spawning issues and glitches people are talking about, with players joining games and materialising right into a hail of fire. The players in question include Black Ops 6's developers, who comically note in the latest Black Ops 6 patch notes that "Yes, we saw ourselves in a Killcam before selecting a Loadout too." The latest patch seeks to address this, naturally. As regards the campaign side of things, it also resets your safehouse currency to 5000, if you've had your single player funds stolen (or multiplied) by technical gremlins.

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Hori's latest addition to its controller lineup, the "Horipad Wireless for Steam," is now available for preorder on Amazon. After already releasing in Japan at the end of October, now the gamepad is coming to the US.

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Discourse? Look mate, I’m just here to test the Steam Deck. Dragon Age: The Veilguard runs like a tap on any halfway decent desktop hardware, so was naturally going to be worth trying on the weaker Deck. And sure enough, Bioware’s RPG (which is really more of an action game with the occasional verbal spar) settles comfortably into handheld life.

In fact, Valve have festooned its Steam page with a Verified medal, a seal of approval for any game that performs and controls well on the Steam Deck without any glaring weaknesses or impractical annoyances. It’s still worth playing around with the settings – more on those later – but I’ll back up that official assessment, having played for several hours without so much as an undersized tooltip.

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Enshrouded has received what developers Keen Games are calling the survival game's "most sizable" update yet, sizable being an appropriate word for mountains. Expect a new playable area, the Alabaneve Summits, with its own enemies, resources, non-threatening wildlife and quests. The maximum character level has risen to 35! There are new townsfolk to find and place in your poorly built houses! You can tame animals, and make them live in poorly built houses too! You can get hypothermia!

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We’re still a week away from Blizzard’s Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct next Wednesday the 13th of November, but art from an apparent remaster of 1995 real time strategy game Warcraft II: Tides Of Darkness has leaked online, via Xibbly user Stiven. It’s a thin one, as far as leaks go, but does show what looks to be cover, logo art, and a Battle.net icon. Thanks for the spot, Percy Coswald Gamer.

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Steam's built-in game recording feature has been usable in beta since the summer, but it has now been properly launched for every user, following a client update to Steam yesterday. It's basically another method of capturing funny ragdoll glitches and posting them on the "lol-games-are-dumb" channel of your friend's Discord. Or for posting that flukey knife throw in Call Of Duty to Twitter, as if you really meant to kill the man from across the map all along. Or saving a clip for your personal records, like the footage of that time you yeeted an innocent citizen off the 50-foot wall of a castle town in Dragon's Dogma 2. We all do that, right? Right?

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Back in the misty reaches of time (March) popular farming sim Stardew Valley got a big update that added more pets to the game (it also let you drink mayonaise but let's not get sidetracked). Those new cats, dogs, and turtles had the cute distinction of being able to wear hats, should you choose to kit your wee friends out. Now, following many months of smaller updates to the game, it seems those hats are causing a problem. "[If] you are experiencing performance issues in Stardew Valley 1.6, remove all hats from pets," said creator Eric Barone in a xeet. When asked the lore-accurate cause of this problem, he blamed: "a strange rash".

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Halo Infinite recently received a big update in the form of Delta Arena, a playlist that features recreations of Halo 2's most popular maps and a special third-person mode. The true highlight, though, is yet to come. And that's through an entirely different Halo game: The Master Chief Collection. Soon enough, you'll be able to play Halo 2's lost E3 demo on it, thanks to some lovely modders.

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We'll have a review of Planet Coaster 2 soon, but I keep making Brendy do other tasks so he's not had enough time yet to ride the rails. That means it falls to me to at least let you know that Frontier's theme park builder is out now.

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Putting aside my natural annoyance at Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater for almost beating out the Twarhammer series in the headline real estate wars, I am more than a little excited to play. Some days, you simply must feast on a tree frog, and while we still don’t have a solid release date, that day doesn’t feel too far away. Good news for stealth fans, and perhaps gooder news for a dozen strapline writers sweating profusely, soiling themselves in anticipation of using “kept you waiting, huh?”.

Until then, I at least have a steady drip feed of new information to keep me sated, the latest of which is the substantial hint that there'll be some new dialogue in the game, as per the video below. Alongside that, the previously pseudonymous Suzetta Miñet - who was credited with voicing EVA in MGS3 and Peace Walker - has revealed herself to be Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Cheers for the spot, Automaton West.

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There must be hundreds of typewriters in the hall, their collective clacks a tidal wave of soulless automation, rising up to greet agent Kiran Estevez as she enters, pistol and flashlight in hands. Exploring rooms to the side, Alan Wake 2: The Lake House’s star finds whiteboards and documents revealing the typewriter’s purpose: to mimic Wake’s writing. Pages are graded along criteria such as ‘style’, ‘tone’, and ‘content’, then “fed into the algorithm” as references until “near-identical stories” to Wake’s can be produced.

“If Jules could simply cut the painter open and pull the painting out of him, he would,” reads one of the real Alan’s typewritten pages. That’s Jules Marmont, the obsessive head of the titular FBC centre. The Marmonts - Jules and his wife Diana - are running experiments to forcibly and synthetically create works of art, aiming to mimic creative passion convincingly enough for the paranatural entity inside Cauldron Lake to respond, as it has in the past.

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A few months ago, the rumour took root that GTA 6's release date would slip back from 2025 to 2026. An anonymous insider averred that studio heads were "worried" about the new open world game's progress - hence, perhaps, Rockstar's decision to mandate a full return to in-office work. Pshaw, say publishers Take-Two CEO. They announced a fall 2025 launch in March and have just doubled down on it in their latest financial briefing, with CEO Strauss Zelnick subsequently going on the tellybox to say that Take-Two are "highly confident in the timing", though he still has nothing to share about GTA 6 on PC.

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When multiplayer fishing game Webfishing came out last month, it offered a relaxing hangout zone for cats and dogs. Everything revolves around catching, selling, and collecting the fish that gather in the rivers of a small island. It also lets you customise your character with clothing. Mostly simple hats and shorts, but some options let players celebrate their sexuality, such as a rainbow-adorned t-shirts, or titles that hang above your character which simply say "Trans" or "Bi". All this led one player to complain there was no "Straight" title. So, the developer added one. It costs 10 grand.

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