Brutal boss battler Nioh 3's first major post-release patch has arrived today, February 13th. Among its array of tweaks is a "partial" fix for a pretty serious issue - it sometimes being impossible for your character to down any healing elixirs in battle.

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I wasn’t immediately sure who the latest Steam client beta update, which allows Steam review writers to optionally attach their hardware specs and anonymised framerate data, was for. The reviewers? Not unless they want to inadvertently reveal that the reason they aren’t getting 360fps in Space Marine 2 is because they’re trying to run it on a 3DFX Voodoo Banshee. Developers? Performance data could be useful but if I ran a QA department, I’d want that coming from observable tests, not from the bottom of a slur-filled missive from ViperSniper69 (0.2hrs on record).

Then I read the words "This feature is currently in Beta with a focus on devices running SteamOS," and realised: this is for Valve themselves. A devious ploy to record how thousands of hitherto unbenchmarked games run on the Steam Deck and, eventually, the new Steam Machine.

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Nvidia’s relationship with PC gaming doesn’t always feel like a loving one. Sometimes they’re gifting us a useful new version of DLSS, sometimes they’re helping drive RAM prices up to £300 a stick. Even so, it’s hard not to look at G-Sync Pulsar – a new bit of monitor cleverness that seeks to remove unwanted motion blur from its LCD panels – and see some goodness still inside that big, green eye. After trying it out at a demo event this week, I’m hopeful that Pulsar can clean up how games look in motion as well as anything since the original G-Sync.

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There’s an unpredictable “Necropolis” event in Darkhaven that will slowly turn the entire world undead. It generates a Lich sarcophagus that spills a sickly wave of gloom, rolling across the procedural map to clog player waypoints and fill the alcoves with bony minions. Let the gloom thicken for long enough, and in theory, there will be nowhere safe for your character to spawn. A true apocalypse. You can transfer your character to a freshly generated world, but you might encounter something even hard to dispel: a volcanic eruption, rising floodwaters that breed Lovecraftian fish creatures, a sweeping ice age. Worse, you might encounter several apocalypses at once.

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A goose with your skillset must be able to honk freely, unconstricted. They must be versatile, capable, adaptable. They must be grounded, stable, constant. I believe you are ready, goose. Honk.

That isn't quite what Keanu Reeves' talkative tailor says in the reveal trailer for Space Marine 2 devs Saber's Untitled John Wick Game, but it's what I heard. The stubbled and suited hitman's latest journey into videogamedom is touted as an uber-faithful putting of Wick's cinematic martial arts brawling and gunfighting into your hands, but until Saber prove otherwise, I'm treating it as a spiritual twin to House House's Untitled Goose Game.

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