The adventures of the nicest gangster that ever lived and his eyepatched life partner continue soon, if Sega’s teasing on the Yakuza Kiwami page on Steam is any indication. Continuing Sega’s habit of teasing things in weird, creative ways, the Kiwami store page now contains an animated GIF of Goro Majima emerging from his well to shame (shank?) mankind – for a single frame, the date “February 19th” appears above his head. Scribble it down in your calendars, and finish up Yakuza 0 if you haven’t- we’re skipping past the 90s and diving into near-modern Kamurocho soon.

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Fans of the weird, dream-like puzzling of Yume Nikki should feel right at home with Strange Telephone. It’s a quiet little point-and-click adventure about a woman – Jill – exploring weird, abstract dream-realms through dialling them up on her levitating telephone pal Graham. Explore, collect items, solve problems and slowly work your way towards an ending. Or just chill out in the Candy Dimension, if that’s your thing. Developer HZ3 released it a while back (appropriately enough) on phones, but today marks its English PC debut. There’s a trailer ringing below – pick up.

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Christmas may be over, but assassination is a dish best served cold, so it’s back to Hokkaido we go for a fun seasonal bonus mission for Hitman 2. Today, Io Interactive rolled out a big update for their murder-sandbox, including some new gear for expansion pass holders. The big reason to be excited is the time-limited Snow Festival mission, set in Hitman 1’s Hokkaido map. Legacy Pass owners (folks who own the previous Hitman game) get access to it today, and a standalone free trial featuring all of Hokkaido goes live for everyone tomorrow, January 22nd.

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Unlike practically every other naming convention in tech, graphics cards don’t tend to follow on nicely from one generation to the next. The new Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060, for example, may seem> like it should be the natural next step from the previous generation’s GTX 1060, but as we saw in last week’s RTX 2060 vs GTX 1060 comparison piece, the RTX 2060 is really in a whole other league of its own when it comes to performance at 2560×1440 resolutions.

Really, it’s a much better match for the the next card up in Nvidia’s GTX 10-series, the GTX 1070, which I agree makes very little sense and is confusing for everyone but that’s just the way these things are unfortunately. With that in mind, here’s how the RTX 2060 stacks up against the GTX 1070 via the medium of some nice graphs.

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A wee fundraising Twitch livestream has raised over $345,000 ( 268k) and counting for a UK charity helping trans youth. It came to feature celebrity guests including Doom level designer John Romero, Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer, whistleblower and activist Chelsea Manning, and rising star USA congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Harry “Hbomberguy” Brewis had originally set a goal of $500 ( 388) as he tried to 101% complete his gaming nightmare, Donkey Kong 64, and raise money for Mermaids, a charity which has been at risk of having funding revoked. It kinda blew up.

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There’s a new Dragon Age on the way, according to the moody teaser shown during December’s Game Awards. Forgot where you left off? Best start catching up with Dragon Age: Origins then, with the rather lovely Qwinn’s Ultimate DAO Fixpack mod. As the title suggests, it’s your one-stop shop for polishing up the game and fixing up all the little issues Bioware never had the chance to officially patch. It even reinstates a handful of lost dialogues and events to the game – nothing too dramatic, but a good foundation to start with, though you may want to buff it up with a few more choice mods before starting.

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Keeping track of the vast array of guns in Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds is one of the largest contributors to the game’s steep learning curve. PUBG features nearly forty guns to choose from, each with specific stats relating to damage, range, recoil, bullet drop, and much more – and that’s not even considering the enormous range of attachments you can use to augment all those weapons.

In our PUBG weapons guide, you’ll find a comprehensive overview of every weapon in PUBG, from bogstandard pistols and SMGs to coveted air drop-only weapons like the AWM and the M249, and even map-exclusive variants such as the G36C and the QBZ. You can take a look and find the stats of each weapon, as well as our personal opinions on how the guns perform under different circumstances. You’ll also find a handy table of attachments at the bottom of the page.

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It’s no secret that Fortnite’s immensely popular Battle Royale mode sports quite the learning curve. Not only does it feature a great deal of weapons and locations with which to familiarise yourself, but also a whole host of systems such as building and editing, the Storm, healing and shield items, piloting land and air 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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As we slide> further into the new year, Fortnite’s Season 8 is sailing> ever closer, set to arrive in the next few weeks. So it’s about time we take a proper look at the deluge> of theories and info on what to expect in this new season. Hint: think water. Lots of water.

Our Fortnite Season 8 guide is simply saturated> with everything we know about the upcoming Season 8 release, detailing its start date as well as the most likely theories regarding map changes, skins, themes, and much more. So without further ado, let’s dive> in!

Aside: RPS may not be held responsible for any distress or bodily harm brought about as a result of our blatant overuse of water- and ice-related puns in the above paragraphs.>

Fortnite Season 8 release date

Season 8 of Fortnite looks set to release on Thursday 28 February. According to Epic Games, the end of Season 7 was delayed by two weeks beyond the customary ten weeks, so that the team could take a two-week break over Christmas.

Epic’s usual approach is to bring their servers offline at around 8 AM GMT to start off the new season, and the downtime usually lasts three-to-four hours. But after that, we’ll all be free to explore the new map and Battle Pass together for (presumably) the next ten weeks, meaning Season 8 will be with us until Thursday 9 May, whereupon Season 9 will begin.

Season 8 skins, Battle Pass, themes

One recent discovery hidden in Fortnite’s map, which may indicate the theme of Season 8’s skins and Battle Pass, was a cluster of what appear to be giant dragon eggs in the castle atop Polar Peak. What’s more, you can clearly hear heartbeats emanating from the eggs if you are near enough to them – so whatever is inside is definitely alive, and waiting for the right moment to hatch.

This prompted reddit user LethalSnowmeme to post a lengthy theory explaining how we might soon see a resurgence of medieval and Arthurian-themed skins and phenomena for Season 8, much like we saw in Season 2, which brought with it numerous knight skins and accompanying cosmetic items. Backing up this claim is a recent update to Fortnite’s Save The World mode, which introduces a new medieval weapons set; and the previous release of the (hilariously game-breaking) Infinity Blade, which also resided atop Polar Peak, and alluded to Epic Games’s mobile game of the same name, which features a great deal of knightly and medieval imagery and themes.

Oh, and guess what? The Infinity Blade game also features dragons.

Whether we’ll see dragons taking the form of cosmetics such as dragon-bone pickaxes, or just as part of the spectacle which brings about the change in seasons remains unclear… But now that Epic have dipped their toes in the waters of aerial combat with the Stormwings, many players are asking whether it’s too far out of the realms of possibility that we might get rideable dragons. Or might we somehow be able to harness the power of the dragons in order to create new elemental weapons? Only time will tell; fortunately we won’t have too long to wait.

(Above footage source)>

Fortnite Season 8 map changes

Rumours of what the overarching theme of Season 8 might be were also kickstarted by the appearance of a mysterious giant sphere of ice, poised in the sky just above Polar Peak, within which the Ice King resided for a short time. Just this past weekend, an in-game event witnessed by many thousands of players simultaneously saw the Ice King emerge from his icy bubble and cast an ice storm which blanketed the entire map in snow, and unleashed icy versions of the zombies we last saw around Halloween of 2018 across the island. If you missed it, take a look at these cinematic shots caught by Reddit user “savage_star_gaming” below.

Cinematic shots, if you missed it. from r/FortNiteBR

All this points to one thing: fire and ice both have major roles to play in the coming weeks. The Ice Storm was predicted by a great many people after the sphere first appeared, and we believe this only consolidates our theory that Season 8 will bring a great deal of water to the map as the ice and snow thaws away in the transition from Winter to Spring. It may even be that the eggs hatch in the next in-game event, and fire-breathing dragons cause the island to thaw into its Season 8 form in a matter of seconds.

But, I hear you ask, if we’re to see a multitude of springs and lakes crop up across the map in Season 8, won’t this be treading on Loot Lake’s toes a little? And water isn’t exactly the most fun terrain to navigate through, anyway, right?

That’s why some players are theorising that we’ll see some changes made to how players interact with water for Season 8. Perhaps instead of treading water we’ll be able to submerge ourselves completely? And with the recent expansion of Fortnite’s arsenal of vehicles, might we expect boat and submarines to make their first appearances? If this is indeed the case, it’s fun just imagining how the introduced verticality of underwater play might affect build battles and final circle fights.

Season 8 new locations

The other question to ask is how existing locations might change, and whether new ones will be added and old favourites taken away. The advent of Season 7 disposed of Risky Reels, Greasy Grove, and Flush Factory. The first few weeks of Season 6 was dominated by a floating island that moved across the map from match to match. Travel back even further, and old favourites such as Moisty Mire were discarded in favour of new hotspots such as Paradise Palms and Westworld.

So how can we expect our favourite spots to fare against the onset of Season 8? A sudden thaw might well turn Polar Peak into an enormous 360-degree waterfall surrounded by lakes, or some similar striking landmark. We’ll presumably also see a new Loot Lake rival in the form of the frozen lake just north of Polar Peak.

But now that the snow has covered the entire map, we may well see major changes not just in the south-west corner but to other areas of the map which have remained untouched for a long time, such as Junk Junction, Pleasant Park, Lucky Landing, or Salty Springs. It feels like the north-east section of the island is overdue some major changes. They added The Block, admittedly; but compared to the major towns in the other areas of the map, there’s still comparatively little to lure players to the top-left corner.

Whatever the changes may be, it’s safe to expect they will be elemental> in nature, the result of either fire or ice – or perhaps both forces together.

That’s just about everything we know so far on the upcoming arrival of Season 8 of Fortnite Battle Royale; but do check back here for all the latest information, as we track the activities of the map, the sphere, and everything else we deem to be of interest. In the meantime, do check out our [cms-block] series, which contains all sorts of useful explanations, tips and strategies on how to become a seasoned Fortnite killer, including detailed explanations of all the [cms-block], guides on the various [cms-block], a full rundown of all the best [cms-block] for loot and safety, and much more.

StarCraft 2 remains an RTS esports favourite nine years from launch, but its mod scene never got the love or attention it deserved. Despite Blizzard’s support, an in-game mod browser, powerful editor and even a short-lived premium mod program, a lot flew under the radar. While some mods and standalone missions remain popular in the StarCraft 2 Arcade, we’re going to be diving deep into the biggest, best and newest single-player campaigns available. Whether you’re an RTS veteran or don’t know what a Zerg is, there’s something for you here.

The icing on the space-cake is that all of this is completely free. StarCraft 2’s first episode – Wings Of Liberty – has full mod support, and Blizzard made it free back in 2017. Every one of these campaigns can be played start to finish, fully intact and without a scratch on your wallet. Impressive, considering one is a full modernised remake of the original StarCraft and its expansion.

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