What if Hollow Knight… but cyberpunk? This was never a question that really crossed my mind. The futuristic neon stuff is everywhere at the moment, largely because of CD Projekt Red’s impending RPG Cyberpunk 2077, but the last place I expected to find hints of the techy genre was in a gothic metroidvania about a long lost kingdom of bugs. Inspired by all the cyberpunk goings-on, someone is working on a little project called Cyberknight: a Hollow Knight mod that will turn the Hallownest into a sci-fi dystopia. It looks extremely cool, and I had a chat with the mod’s designer to find out more about it.

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Spider Silk is an extremely valuable material in Grounded, and it’s no understatement to say that obtaining Spider Silk is a gateway from the early game to the mid-game of Obsidian Entertainment’s fantastic survival experience. In this Grounded Spider guide, we’ll walk you through exactly how you can obtain Spider Silk, alongside some handy and practical tips on defeating Orb Weavers and other Spiders.

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Quartzite is a fairly important resource in Grounded, and one which has eluded a great many players during their first ventures into this fascinating survival game. In this guide, we’ll reveal all the locations we’ve discovered where you can mine Quartzite in Grounded, along with what you can use it for once you have it.

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The usual annual Call Of Duty announcement, like everything, has been out of step this year. But there are signs that it’s about to happen. An alternate reality game aimed at publicising what we believe will be titled Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has been solved, revealing that a reveal is to be revealed.

On Friday, something is happening, but nobody knows what. There is a hint, albeit slight, that this will mean something for Warzone.

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With the “biggest update ever” for GTA Online still promised for later this year, Rockstar today released a smaller content update to tide crimers over. The ‘Los Santos Summer Special’ update, now live, adds news bits and pieces across existing modes and activities rather than something entirely new. That still includes new cars, new F1 race tracks, new PvP maps set inside the Diamond Casino, and more. Some handy quality-of-life changes too, like the Casino’s Lucky Wheel saying when you can next spin again.

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Some former Prey and Dishonored developers are making Weird West, a top-down cowboy action-RPG that’s a bit like an immersive sim. This much we knew, and had already puzzled over. Fondly, like. The dev’s pedigree gained my curiosity, but this interview with Prey and Dishonored creative director Raphael Colantonio has my attention.

Weird West will be an “action-resolved version of something like Fallout meets Ultima 7”, says Colantonio, with “a space of possibilities where no two players have the same playthrough exactly”. He doesn’t let slip much more than that – but he does have some interesting things to say about immersive sim-iness, and why he left Arkane.

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I’ve seen my share of American media that treats postal workers with a patriotic significance. To an extent, it makes sense. Some of the most revolutionary changes to human societies followed rapid developments in communication technology or infrastructure. We’re in the middle of such a period right now, even.

Thousand Threads is a walking simulator with an open world light RPG-ish simulation on top. It is a little bit, like Death Stranding, about how a courier or postman can hold a society together. It’s a vastly more relaxing and low-key game, and about walking in the woods and observing the dynamic behaviour of its many NPCs than rebuilding or fighting or pontificating. There’s not even a story as such. But through playing it over these last few days, I have come to understand that it is not, in fact, the player’s role as a noble postal worker holding this society together. It is Gretchen Anderson.

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The 15-year wait for a Bloodlines sequel will stretch a little longer, because Paradox today announced they’ve delayed the launch of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 into 2021. While they had never announced a specific release date, the supernatural RPG was expected this year. Now Paradox and developers Hardsuit Labs say they want more time to make sure it lives up to the Bloodlines legacy (and presumably not repeat its mistakes).

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Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse

was the first Shantae game I felt compelled to give a proper chance. I’d played the previous two games for a few minutes each, and while they were okay, they didn’t keep my attention for long.

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Ubisoft have published a new version of their cinematic trailer for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. It’s mighty similar to the first one we saw, though this one includes music from the official soundtrack instead of modern rock. Oh, and it also swaps out bearded Eivor for not-bearded Eivor, the other half of of Valhalla’s interchangeable protagonist.

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