Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is on the horizon, and we should be seeing it chomp its way into the necks of the general public some time in March next year. As it turns out, vidbuds Matthew Castle and Alice Liguori haven’t ever played the original Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Other vidbud, me, has> played it a bunch before, so in anticipation of brand new vampy shenanigans, I’m walking them through the World Of Darkness as a sexy Toreador fledgling called Ms Horace III.

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As is my wont, I am here to bleat about Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 at you. I got in to see the Gamescom demo build, which they were also showing off at E3, but since Brendy got a punchy vampire run I tried to steer it more towards the sneaking and talking route by yelling things like “play both sides!” at Paradox product manager Florian Schwarzer, who was talking us through the demo.

In fairness, I think they were always planning to do a bit more of that this time, as you can see in the new demo footage they’ve released. It features commentary from Ka’ai Cluney, creative director at developer Hardsuit Labs, and a lot more creeping and talking than the previous version.

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If you hold the shift key to slide down the RPS treehouse s rickety ropeladder, you ll get ropeburn, but you ll also get to the bottom of the tree. There, you ll find a trap door that requires a pulley and a rubber chicken to open, and at the bottom of the gaping chasm, you ll find me, a ball and chain fastened to my ankle and purple and green-striped prisoner s garments adorning my body, sat in front of a high-end workstation. This is the RPS video dungeon, where I have been hard at work making a deep-dive video on Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2, and all the blood-sucking and sneaking you’ll be able to do. Come look.

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Last night I met a guy, who knew a guy, who told me about a girl, who said she was penpals with some sort of rat thing, who wrote a URL down for her, all so I could get this footage of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 to you. I was up all night, and it turned out all I needed to do was Google. Anyway, here s some footage of the RPG straight from a developer s claws. It s so raw it s almost blue.

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Bloodlines 2 asks you the same question of every vampire when they’ve gone through the Embrace: Do you hide in the shadows, or become fear itself? The original Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines was a cult favourite, so beloved that the fans fixed the issues with the game. The team at Hardsuit Labs know all too well that it is a big deal that Bloodlines 2 is being made at all.

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It’s Gamescom this week, which can only mean one thing – more confirmed ray tracing games for Nvidia’s RTX and selected GTX 16-series graphics cards. Indeed, the big one that’s just been announced is Minecraft, which (like Quake II RTX) is getting full, real-time ray tracing support for everything from water reflections to its entire lighting system. That’s not all, though. Dying Light 2 will also be getting real-time ray tracing, while Tencent’s freshly-announced action survival game Synced: Off-Planet will be getting ray-traced reflections and shadow support.

In truth, the number of games on this list that you can actually play with ray tracing enabled right this second is still pretty small. A lot of the confirmed RTX games you’ll see below still haven’t received their promised ray tracing and performance-boosting DLSS support, so this is more of a complete ‘this is how many games will have it eventually’ kind of thing than ‘these are all the games you can play with ray tracing right now’. Still, if you’re currently on the fence about buying one of Nvidia’s RTX or RTX Super graphics cards as opposed to the new AMD Navi GPUs, this guide should hopefully help you decide whether ray tracing is something worth investing in. Here’s every confirmed ray tracing and DLSS game we know about so far.

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Remember that thing you like from 10 years ago? It s probably getting a sequel. Shenmue 3. Evil Genius 2. Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2. The calendar of upcoming games is packed with throwbacks that will revisit the worlds we left behind over a decade ago. Oddworld: Soulstorm is heading back to the strange homeland of Abe the skinny green freedom farter. Mechwarrior 5 is booting up a bipedal destruct-o-bot that was powered down in the year 2000. If your favourite childhood game is not getting a sequel, it’s probably getting a glittering remake.

Reviving forgotten entertainment relics is nothing new (hi, George Lucas) but the recent glut of resurrections has made me wonder: why are developers and publishers so keen to go back to old ground? Why do they want to chase this sense of nostalgia? So, I asked them.

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It s a bit tricky to knock together a list of the best upcoming stealth games, because it s a bit tricky to say what a stealth game even is anymore. Stealth is more frequently looking like a playstyle or bulletpoint rather than the crux of an entire game. Even the best stealth games in recent memory – yer Invisible Incs, Ian Hitmans, Alien: Isolations – have all layered their stealth within towering trifles of genre mashups. And that s good! It just means we’ve had to flex the definition for this list.

Below, I ve gathered together a few of the best upcoming stealth games that I ve got my ridiculously over powered, patrol pattern-sensing eye on. Some of these aren t strictly genre adherent, but all offer stealthy play as at least core element. Do feel free to suggest your own upcoming games in the comments.

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Do you hide in the shadows, or become fear itself? That’s the eternal question whenever a new vampire goes through the Embrace. The team at Hardsuit Labs know all too well that it is a big deal that Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 – the follow up to one of the cult classics of the early 2000s, is being made at all. The original is beloved by many, but also a tale of how fans picked up where the publisher dropped the ball. But what is known about Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2? We will be going over all of that, including the release date, and trailers for the game.

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