Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Dominic Tarason)

Forza Horizon 4‘s latest update giveth and taketh away. While generous in how much Playground Games are adding free to their driving sandbox, the party is over for the Carlton and Floss dances, which have been patched out. Not surprising, given that they’re the subjects of two separate legal battles with Fortnite developer Epic Games. Still, it’s not all bad – update five adds seven Mitsubishi cars free, a new free-for-all adventure playlist and a ten mission cab-driving story featuring some iconic taxis. Below, an hour-long developer stream showing off the new stuff.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alec Meer)

There’s a twist in the tale of the today’s latest Nvidia driver, as it finally adds support for FreeSync monitors. For years now, there’s been a GeForce tax if you wanted a screen with Nvidia’s brand of adaptive sync – that is, the one that can adjust its refresh rate, and therefore in-game frame rate, with wild abandon, and more importantly without that icky screen-tearing effect or harsh frame rate step-down of V-sync – and Nvidia G-Sync screens have traditionally cost far more than the open source, AMD-supported FreeSync standard.

That changes today, with the latest GeForce driver officially ushering in support for adaptive sync on 12 FreeSync monitors, but more importantly the option to give it a go on any> FreeSync screen on the basis that it may or may not work, or indeed be very good. On mine, it does. You can touch me if you want to. (more…)

Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Dominic Tarason)

Onimusha: Warlords is out now on PC, just days short of its 18th anniversary on consoles. Capcom’s samurai-themed hybrid of precise hack n’ slash combat and survival horror puzzling was always the awkward middle child between Resident Evil and Devil May Cry, but it had heart. Rather than a remake, the PC version of Onimusha: Warlords is a straight remaster. The pre-rendered 2D backdrops are a bit sharper than before and expanded to widescreen, and a new control mode has been added for those wary of the game’s original ‘tank controls’, but the game remains largely unchanged. See the launch trailer below.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Katharine Castle)

When you’re looking for the best gaming headset money can buy, there are three things to keep in mind. It goes without saying that it needs to have top-notch audio quality, but it also needs to be comfortable and have a good built-in microphone. After all, there’s no point getting a great-sounding headset that pinches your skull after 30 minutes, or one you can’t use to play online because your mates can’t hear you over the sound of its hissing crackle. To that end, I’ve created this list of all my top, bestest best gaming headset recommendations to help you find the right one for you and your budget.

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American Truck Simulator - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

It looks like the next American Truck Simulator expansion will go even deeper into the lands I long for, into the trees and mountains of Washington state. WA! Land of Twin Peaks. WA! Birthplace of riot grrrl. WA! Home of Frasier Crane. WA! Where Valve are. WA! With that nice Twitter account saying if Mount Rainier is visible from Seattle. WA! Where rain is good. SCS Software haven’t formally confirmed Washington is the next state coming to their haul ’em up as DLC, but from the teasing screenshots they shared today it sure looks like it. WA! We may lose Alec to the woods around Snoqualmie Falls.

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Heartbound - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Steve Hogarty)

My dog has been dead for longer than he was alive, which means I m long past having any right to fondly remember him as I stare through a rainy window, or to hear his bark on the breeze on warm evening walks along the old railway track. He s just way too dead> to be taking up that kind of emotional bandwidth any more. How weird would it be for a man in his thirties, with a workplace pension and more than one Oxford shirt, to indulge in routine nostalgia for the animal who lived in his house when he was twelve? Plenty weird.

But weird as it may be, games like Heartbound mean I still think about my dead dog often. I think about how he would stare right into my eyes whenever he was laying dog eggs, as though silently accusing me of being some kind of canine pervert. I think about the time he stole an entire roast chicken from the neighbour s house and then disappeared into the hills for three days, waiting for things to blow over. Or when he turned up one morning in the front garden holding something that looked a lot like a mauled sheep torso. Oh you murderous little scamp. You will never be held accountable for your crimes, because you are dead.

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Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Warhammer’s Tyranids would be difficult to placate in a traditional 4X strategy game. They’d always be offering you bum deals for your biomass, sending heretical missionaries to spread the good word about biomass, claiming they saw your biomass first so it’s rightfully theirs, rivalling your tourism industry with such attractions as Biomass World and Eurobiomass, delivering notes sneering at your meagre biomass, and tainting your culture with television broadcasts like Biomass Hunt, Biomass Judy, and NCIS: Biomass.

Thankfully there is no diplomacy in the grim darkness of the far future, only war, so the Tyranid faction which hit Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – Relics Of War today as DLC will simply devour you, your cities, and the soil beneath your feet as they amass biomass.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Ollie Toms)

Fortnite hides a deceptively high skill ceiling beyond its veneer of seeming simplicity. In order to win fights and matches with any consistency, you’ll have to familiarise yourself not only with the game’s many weapons, items, and locations across its giant map, but also a whole heap of interlocking mechanics such as health and shields, building and editing, escaping the Storm, piloting vehicles, and much more.

So we’ve put together the below Fortnite guides series, packed with all the most up-to-date information on how to get set up, how to build properly, weapon stats, best locations to drop, in-depth explanations of items and weekly challenges… All with the ultimate goal of equipping you with the knowledge to improve your game ten times over.

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My Time at Portia - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

The game which sounds like summer hols at your posh boarding school gal pal’s chateau spent riding horses and investigating the secrets of the grandmother who lives in the attic but is in fact a build-o-farm ’em up, My Time At Portia, today launched properly. A bit like a 3D take on Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon and such, it’s about farming and fighting and crafting and grinding. Fraser Brown found that tedious when he played Portia shortly after its early access launch, but player reviews do seem positive a year later.

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The First Tree - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (John Walker)

There is a fine line a lot of introspective indie games are walking, between a careful exploration of memories and events, and solipsism. For me, The First Tree leaps over that line with a clumsily implemented, wildly incongruous double-jump. Sanctimonious from the opening moments, this is a mediocre third-person exploration game made nauseating by the most self-obsessed narration I’ve ever encountered. It makes Dear Esther look like Tolstoy.

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