In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. This is a lie, of course. There s also fancy hats, for example. I know this because I ve seen the admirals of Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 wearing them while they command their giant space cathedrals to do a murder at other giant space cathedrals, in a sequel that veers fairly close to the original, but with some vastly updated visuals, and some surprisingly gripping storytelling.

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Lovely platformer Pikuniku, which our John was gushing about only the other day, today launched for all of us to enjoy. Which is good, because it’s good. Great legs on this lad too. A cracking kick. “Oh gosh, this is lovely,” is our John said in his Pikuniku review, and what I remember of playing an early version yonks again lines up with that. Though I don’t remember a dance-off against a robot.

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Fortnite is a game that requires a great deal of practice and skill to consistently win matches. Players need to familiarise themselves not only with the game’s many weapons, items, and locations across its gigantic 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.

We’ve spent a lot of time assembling this Fortnite guides series, packing it with all the most up-to-date information on how to get set up, how to build and edit like a professional, weapon stats, best locations to drop, in-depth explanations of weapon classes 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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Fortnite’s transition from one season to the next is always marked by various spectacular in-game events, and it looks like Epic Games is now beginning the wind-up for Season 8. So it’s about time we set a weather eye on the horizon, and delve into all the theories, easter eggs, and information we’ve found on what to expect in this new season.

We’ve crammed our Season 8 Fortnite guide with everything you need to know about the upcoming Season 8 release, detailing its release date as well as the most likely theories regarding map changes, skins, themes, and much more. So without further ado, let’s dive in!

Fortnite Season 8 release date

Thursday 28 February is when Season 7 of Fortnite is set to end, and Season 8 to begin. 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.

Fortnite Season 8 skins, theme, Battle Pass

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 under 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 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.

Once about people in the aggregate, Total War is increasingly a series about the antics of individuals. There’s something of the slippage from RTS to MOBA in how Creative Assembly has edged towards a more intimate breed of strategy, built around asymmetrical relationships between overdressed oddballs rather than mere economic considerations or the splash of army on army. Total Warhammer is the obvious play-maker there, with its vast archive of Games Workshop celebrities, but in Total War: Three Kingdoms, we may have reached a new tipping point. Where even Twarhammer’s crusty old lords and heroes are more structuring devices or combat specialists than characters, Creative Assembly’s latest often feels like the stabbier kind of daytime TV.

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Judging by the Steam charts, players have been enjoying their time with My Time At Portia. The same can’t be said for the voice actors, who have spent the past year dealing with poor communication and inconsistent payments by devs Pathea Games. Yesterday Pathea acknowledged their mishandling of the situation, claimed they were currently in the process of ensuring everyone was properly paid, and promised to do better in the future.

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Anthem’s free demo for the VIPs begins tomorrow, so how about a roundup of everything we have in our knowledge banks? It includes stuff for preparing your PC in advance with PC minimum specs, as well as all the information about the schedule for both the VIP demo, including the correct times for your time zone, and the free open demo. There’s also those all important details on the game’s release date if you want to know when it’s out. (more…)

So much for the RTX 2050 being Nvidia’s next graphics card, then. While rumours have been circulating for a while now about a cheaper, non-ray tracing version of Nvidia’s Turing GPU, I’d assumed the graphics card giant might finish releasing their GeForce RTX family before they started muddying the waters with potential GTX 1100 series GPUs or, as it now turns out, a new line of GTX 1660 cards.

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The historical horrors of Black Death ’em up A Plague Tale: Innocence will swarm onto PC on May 14th, publishers Focus Home Interactive announced today. That One Game With The Brilliant Rats, as our former Adam (RPS in peace) nicknamed it, is a stealth-o-story about kiddywinkles creeping across medieval France while evading bad humans and worse rats. Oh, the rats! Those ravenous rats. Scurrying, burrowing into flesh, devouring. They flow like a terrible torrent of teeth and I’ll certainly pay good money to see that myself.

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With a recent press event where people got their first chance to play Far Cry New Dawn, it only seemed fitting to put this into our roundup for the game. It seems to be more experimental, with RPG system being included for the first time. In this guide, we’ll go over everything we know, from the release date, to the trailers and the editions of the game that are available.

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