Sonic Mania

Fresh from his movie trailer glow-up, Sonic the Hedgehog has dashed over to Humble Bundle. There, a range of adventures are now available for the store's usual low price of your choosing.

Pay just 78p ($1) and you'll get Sonic Adventure 2 and its Battle DLC, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic CD and Sonic Adventure DX. This is a very good deal.

Pay more than the average (at the time of writing, 4.58) and you'll get Sonic Generations and its Casino Night DLC, Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2, and Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. All great games. You also get Sonic Lost World, which is rubbish.

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Eurogamer

Respawn has detailed a bunch of changes being implemented to Apex Legend's levelling up system - including a level cap increase and more rewards for level progression.

For starters, the level cap is being upped from 100 to 500, and there'll be more frequent Apex Packs as level rewards too. Players will receive one pack per level up to 20, one pack every two levels between 22 and 300, then one pack every five levels between 305 and 500. This brings the amount of packs players can earn up to a much more reasonable 199, from the lacklustre 45 they could earn previously.

No one is going to miss on Apex Packs either, as Respawn has specified the packs will be awarded retroactively if you're already at level 100. All you'll need to do is log in when the changes drop on 3rd December, and you could have up to 14 packs waiting for you, it'll be like opening a Christmas gift you were meant to get last year.

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Grand Theft Auto V Legacy

To mark the end of the 2010s, we're celebrating 30 games that defined the last 10 years. You can find all the articles as they're published in the Games of the Decade archive, and read about the thinking behind it in an editor's blog.

Whilst now it feels like a foregone conclusion, back in 2013, GTA Online was an exciting gambit for Rockstar. The team had to design a world that players would want to leave the comforts of their legendary single-player narratives for. GTA 4's online mode was a success, but it still amounted to a lonely city with an airport warzone and some rudimentary deathmatches.

At first, GTA Online seemed too ambitious. Wouldn't too many RPG-wielding pre-teens spoil the proverbial pot? At launch, the sceptics were vindicated. In the game's first few weeks, the experience was a disaster. I remember the vapid missions, rampant griefing and random loss of character data that kicked off Rockstar's GTA Online reparations program, where players are still being gifted lump sums of apology money in exchange for putting up with bugs.

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Beat Saber

Beat Games, the developer behind VR arm-flailing rhythm-action smash Beat Saber, has been acquired by Facebook and is now officially part of the company's Oculus Studios.

Announcing the acquisition in a new blog post, Facebook's Mike Verdu positively quivered, "The shared experiences of games are profoundly memorable ones, and for millions of people, Beat Saber was their first encounter with immersive VR. Today we're announcing that Beat Games is joining us in our quest to bring VR to more people".

According to Verdu, Beat Games will join Oculus Studios as an independently operated developer, and will continue to be located in Prague. "The story we aim to prove over time is this," he wrote, "An indie studio joins forces with some like-minded allies, and together they find a way to push VR to new heights."

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Pathologic 2

Developer Ice-Pick Lodge's masterful plague survival horror Pathologic 2 will be making its way to Xbox One - as well as Xbox and PC Game Pass - on 12th December.

Pathologic 2 is a bit of a strange beast, part sequel to and part much-improved remake of Ice-Pick Lodge's cult-classic - and notoriously wonky - 2005 original. Following the same trajectory as its predecessor, Pathologic 2 charts the sudden decline of a strange, small town on the edge of the Russian Steppe, as it succumbs to a mysterious plague.

The result is, and I say this as someone with only minimal familiarity with the original Pathologic, easily one of the most audacious, atmospheric, and thoroughly mesmerising games I've played in a very long time - but, and I cannot state this enough, it's one of the most intentionally dispiriting, emotionally draining, and cruelly testing ones too.

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Eurogamer

Fans of Bethesda-flavoured monetisation nonsense better get their hankies out; the company's free-to-play Elder Scrolls spin-off, The Elder Scrolls: Blades, will not be coming to Switch this year as originally announced, and is now due some time in 2020. That primarily appears to be the result of Bethesda's decision to ditch Blades' unpopular chest timers.

The Elder Scrolls: Blades - which Eurogamer's Robert Purchese declared to be "a bit naff" earlier this year - is a first-person fantasy affair on mobile, in which players can create a character, level it up, chat to NPCs, own a house, buy equipment, and pop off into countryside, away from the hub area, in order to have bite-sized, vaguely interesting adventures.

Regrettably, Robert found Blades to be sluggish and repetitive at launch (it's technically still in early access), and stymied by Bethesda's chosen monetisation methods, including pay-to-win purchasables and timers slathered indiscriminately all over the game.

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Castlevania Anniversary Collection

UPDATE 27/11/19: Netflix has now removed its tweet listing Castlevania's season three release date, while the series' director has poured cold water on the new episodes being finished in time for next month. (And, you'd think, he would know.)

"Hah, that's news to me and would certainly be scary," Samuel Deats told GoNintendo, "considering we're still working on the last episode of the season".

We've asked Netflix for an update on what's going on.

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Eurogamer

Ebuyer have begun their cavalcade of Black Friday deals, including some good prices on PC components like graphics cards and processors, monitors and other peripherals. Here's our quick run-down of the highlights.

For each deal in the sale that looked reasonable, we checked out Amazon to see how good of a deal it really was. In some cases, we found that the prices on Ebuyer were matched by Amazon, so you can buy from whichever retailer you like, while others were legitimate Black Friday gems.


Graphics cards and RAM

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Eurogamer

Long gone are the days of excitedly rushing home with a new game in hand and sitting down to play right away. Installs and updates await now, further drawing out the time between actually being able to play the game you just bought. And while going digital helps avoid some of this, you still need a beefy internet connection to download games at any reasonable rate. That's where our look at some of the best Black Friday broadband deals steps in!

This month's megasales period is a great time to switch providers, as many are now promoting their Black Friday prices. Take this opportunity to get yourself a faster connection so you won't have to spend hours twiddling your thumbs waiting for the latest patch to finish downloading. Of course, it's important to remember that your speeds may vary with these depending on your location. Thank you, shoddy UK broadband infrastructure.

Nevertheless, the best value package available is through PlusNet, who are offering unlimited fibre broadband with an average speed of 36Mb for 22.99 per month on an 18-month contract. As part of the Black Friday deal, they're also waiving the activation fee and giving you 75 cashback - or to look at it another way, that's three months free!

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Dishonored

To mark the end of the 2010s, we're celebrating 30 games that defined the last 10 years. You can find all the articles as they're published in the Games of the Decade archive, and read about the thinking behind it in an editor's blog.

The city of Dunwall is a paradox. As the pounding of inhuman footfalls echoes against the bruised sky, rodents of all sizes and colours scurry, silently coating the cobbles with death and disease. It's a life of extremes, this. Pomp and poverty. Science and superstition. The haves and have-nots. Ladies whisper and giggle in lavish dining halls, heavy silk drapes pulled tightly to hide the emaciated husks of citizens lying, and dying, beyond the manicured lawn.

Games often touch us not only because of what they are, but what they're not and, for me, Dishonored was a game that relaxed traditional gameplay in a way I hadn't quite anticipated. It unshackled expectations, permitting me to explore Dunwall's battered, broken environs at my own pace and in my own style.

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