Tomorrow is unpatch day for Battlefield V, after a messy storm of backlash last week from players over tweaks to its time-to-kill. In an attempt to make the game more accessible to newcomers who might have been dying too quickly, Dice tweaked damage figures – detailed here – to make bullets just plain less deadly than before. Unfortunately, this went down about as well with existing fans of the game’s balance as you’d expect. In an apologetic statement on Reddit, the developers have announced that tomorrow the game will be reverting back to its original deadliness.

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Make love, not war, or at least repurpose the wreckage of failed mech-war into a charmingly smoochable partner for a lonely rampaging monster. Kaiju Super Datetech is a cute little free game from Powerhoof (makers of Regular Human Basketball and arcade hack n’ slasher Crawl) for up to four local players plus party pals, working together or in teams to build NotGodzilla a date. Players control little office workers, hopping around, carrying bits of robot and scaffolding and bolting new gubbins on as you race across the scrap-heap wastelands to to meet your tall, dark and scaly partner.

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Every time an HDR monitor arrives on my desk, I say a small prayer to the gaming monitor gods: “Please, PLEASE let this one be good.” I don’t care if it’s hideously expensive like the Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ or Acer Predator X27, I just want one that does HDR well and does it without a boat load of fuss and settings twiddling.

Readers, my prayers have been finally answered, and they come in the form of the giant and ever-catchily named Philips 436M6VBPAB. This jumbo TV-sized 43in 4K HDR monitor is arguably one of the best gaming monitors I’ve ever laid eyes on – and if that wasn’t enough, it also supports both Nvidia and AMD graphics cards and> only costs 673 / $797 (or 530 in the UK as part of Scan’s Christmas deals promotion). What more could you possibly ask for?

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It’s no surprise that Capcom’s support for Street Fighter V isn’t over, but I am a bit shocked that its fourth season of new characters has already begun with new fighter Kage. Available now, this angry lad (his name literally translating to “Shadow”) is pretty much a beefed up version of old palette-swap villain Evil Ryu. Now apparently cosplaying as a secondary character from Homestuck, or – more likely – some kind of Oni, Kage is a teleporting, air-dashing, punchier and generally meaner> take on Ryu’s familiar style. Give him a peek in the debut trailer and breakdown vid below.

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We’ve got our fist look at Pagan Online in action, Wargaming and Mad Head Games’s MOBA-inspired action RPG. Far from the over-the-top heavy metal fantasy excess of its debut trailer, I feel that Pagan Online looks rather restrained compared to Diablo 3, and definitely less wild than Path Of Exile’s massive monster-swarms. Mad Head Games also talk of players building up a stable of unique characters (another MOBA-like element), instead of spending ages tweaking character builds on a single hero. Take a peek at a bit of hacking, slashing and avoiding AoE markers below.

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While I was being dragged down to the depths of England last week (business reasons), Forza Horizon 4 was pushing higher into Scotland with the launch of its first expansion, Fortune Island. The fictional new hunk of rock has sprouted off Scotland, seemingly drawing inspiration for roads and landmarks from a number of places around the highlands and islands, including Skye. It’s a wild and rugged landscape which needs to make no concessions to reality, basically (though some real Scottish landscapes seem to consider reality optional, in my experience). Also, it has hidden treasure. And a Morris Minor with wooden trim.

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If you re summoning Dark Souls, you have to be prepared to make a deal with the Capra Demon. In this pact, you will be granted the power of From Software s ideas, yes, but you will also be doomed to comparison. You ll only be seen in the light of that which came before. Ashen has made such a pact, and it invites that comparison especially often. It sticks so closely to the Souls formula it could be a dream Hidetaka Miyazaki once had. But lapsed hollows who look closely will also find that it uses the template to create its own mythology and its own admirable spirit, one of restoration rather than decay. If Dark Souls is a tale of perpetual, cyclical death and redeath, Ashen feels like tramping through a creation myth as it s still being told. I like it a lot.

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We’ve been to the forest, the desert, and a tropical island in Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, but Vikendi, the newest map in PUBG, takes us to a hilly frozen tundra, located on an island somewhere between the size of Erangel and Sanhok. The map release also comes with a host of exclusive features and game adjustments, so we’ve put together this Vikendi map guide, where you’ll find everything you need to know to get started with playing the new map, such as the deadliest areas to drop into, best loot locations, Vikendi-exclusive weapons and vehicles, and some tips for getting that warm chicken dinner to feed you through the winter. (more…)

Hey, remember the good old days? Those giddy times I like to think of as last week? When the Charts felt fresh and new, filled with potential, as if any interesting game could take a top spot? Well, forget all that because it’s all gone to shit again.

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Oh, you want to see what’s behind door number 17 on our advent calendar of 2018’s bestest best PC games? It’s no good charging straight at it, trying to slide a finger into that little cardboard gap in the hope of wrenching the thing open. You’ll only break a fingernail and tire yourself out, you poor love.

No, you need to come at it sideways. Find the weak points. Go for the hinge.

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