Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2's lead narrative designer Brian Mitsoda and creative director Ka'ai Cluney have been fired from the action-RPG project, with the former saying the decision by developer Hardsuit Labs and publisher Paradox Interactive "came as a shock" and that he had "never been led to believe that [he] hadn't succeeded" in his role.

A shake-up of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2's development team was first hinted at earlier this month, when Hardsuit and Paradox announced a delay to the game's release - it will now launch in 2021 - "to ensure the best player experience possible". Its statement also made references to "organisational changes" within the team that it would share at a later date.

Paradox and Hardsuit have now followed up that earlier statement with a new message. In it, they confirm that Brian Mitsoda and Ka'ai Cluney are no longer part of the development team, and that "this was a joint decision made by the leadership of Hardsuit Labs and Paradox Interactive." Alexandre Mandryka - who has worked on the likes of Assassin's Creed and Far Cry - has been brought in as creative consultant, to fill the creative director role.

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Sea of Thieves' August is slightly more low-key than usual thanks to a few coronavirus-related wrinkles, but there're still a few notable opportunities incoming - including a season of summer events with handsome rewards and a new ship set inspired by classic Rare brawler Battletoads - which can be acquired from tomorrow with a little bit of effort.

Those eager to secure some retro flair for their vessels will need to start by acquiring a copy of developer Dlala Studios' brash new Battletoads reboot, which is out tomorrow, 20th August, on Xbox One and PC. It's also available on Game Pass, meaning subscribers with a hankering for some mean, green livery already have an easy route in.

By completing Battletoads' first act "at any time", players will unlock the full Fightin' Frogs Ship Set for use in Sea of Thieves, consisting of six appropriately themed pieces: sails, hull, flag, cannons, wheel, and capstan. You can see how all that looks in the announcement video below.

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Sheffield's National Video Game Museum is set to re-open this weekend, after a successful crowdfunding drive helped raise enough money to see it through its prolonged closure during the coronavirus pandemic.

The National Video Game Museum, which is run by charity BGI and describes itself as "the UK's only museum dedicated to video game culture and education", opened at its Sheffield location in 2018. It features curated collections of games and ephemera highlighting the medium's history, it holds workshops, and it has even hosts events from noted industry contributors, such as legendary Nintendo engineer Masayuki Uemura.

The museum's engaging blend of education and entertainment managed to attract 40,000 visitors in 2019, but unfortunately its prolonged closure earlier this year, due to the coronavirus pandemic, put it in dire financial straits which risked closing its doors permanently. "We have no safety net of funding to ensure our new charity outlasts a prolonged shutdown," it said at the time, "[and] we've been ruled out of most government and all arts emergency funds."

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Way back in the olden days of 2018, developers Galactic Cafe and Crows Crows Crows announced they were bringing an enhanced version of beloved first-person narrative adventure The Stanley Parable to consoles and PC in the shiny new guise of an Ultra Deluxe Edition. Originally, it was due to launch in 2019, but then it wasn't. After that, it was due to launch in 2020, but now it isn't again.

As in the original game (and, indeed, its 2013 commercial remake), the Ultra Deluxe Edition sees players, cast as the titular Stanley, engaging in an endless battle of wits with an omnipotent narrator. From a single starting point, Stanley is able to confound the narrator's carefully laid plans in numerous ways, sending the adventure spiralling off in increasingly strange directions.

The end result is frequently hilarious and surprisingly philosophical, and the Ultra Deluxe Edition promises all of that plus ""more content, more endings, more whimsical adventures". Indeed, creators Davey Wreden and William Pugh have suggested that the new stuff in this third iteration of The Stanley Parable will amount to about half the size of the original script.

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Microsoft has revealed a look at the Xbox Series X dashboard - and it looks very familiar.

This new dashboard launches with the Xbox Series X in November, and also applies to Xbox One as well as all Xbox mobile apps and Xbox Game Pass on PC.

In a blog post on Xbox Wire, Microsoft stressed the increased speed of the new dashboard.

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Over the last few months, we've tested a few USB sound cards designed specifically for PC gaming. As well as adding extra ports and improving sound quality, these cards include features that aim to increase immersion or provide a competitive edge. While external sound cards remain a relatively niche purchase, as gaming headphones have improved over time we've found that pairing them with a good USB sound card has become increasingly important. After all, if your computer's on-board audio is sub-par, you won't be getting the most out of your shiny new headset. In this article, we'll break down the best USB sound cards for gaming we've tested so far.

As well as our top three recommendations at three price points - under £100/$100, under £200/$200 and under £300/$300 - we've also included a brief glossary and FAQ at the end of the article, where we've explained some common terms and answered some frequently asked questions asked by USB sound card buyers. You can use the table of contents below to jump immediately to the section you're interested in, or simply scroll down to read the whole thing!

Specs: 91x81x41mm, 160 grams, 2x 3.5mm

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Amazon UK has discounted some of our favourite SSDs for gaming and content creation today. The Sabrent Rocket is an NVMe SSD, allowing it to vastly outperform older-style SATA SSDs, and the 256GB and 512GB models are 20 per cent off. That brings them to £40 and £64, respectively - truly excellent prices for drives of this calibre.

We already mentioned that the Rocket drives are faster than SATA models, and that's true - SATA drives are limited to around 550MB/s for sequential reads and writes, while even entry-level NVMe drives like the WD Blue SN550 can achieve about four times that figure, around 2000MB/s. The Sabrent Rocket has a budget price - especially after today's 20 per cent discount - but it's actually a high performance drive that is closer to six times faster than a standard SATA model, with read speeds up to 3450MB/s and write speeds up to 2000MB/s.

That's a ton of performance, and it translates into a faster PC: shorter boot times, faster game load times and improved responsiveness throughout.

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It's shaping up to be a decent few months for fans of good old-fashioned arcade racers - Hotshot Racing should be with us shortly, there's an excellent new contender in the shape of Inertial Drift coming out next month (more on that soon!) and we've also got the final release of Funselektor's art of rally due.

A new trailer for the latter just dropped, showing the progress the small team who previously worked on Absolute Drift have made since we last checked in at EGX last year. There's a new handling model that looks to fold a bit more nuance in, some new backdrops and cars (which look awfully close to their real-life inspirations - it's not hard to make out Imprezas, Intergrales and Renault 5 Turbos amidst that lot) and features such as crowds that dart out of the way, a nod to the nuttiness of fans during rally's Group B era.

The game itself, meanwhile, is evocative of 90s top-down racers such as World Rally, and I can't wait to try it all out for myself. It's due out on PC sometime in the autumn.

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GeForce Now has launched in beta form on ChromeOS. It means Nvidia's £4.99-a-month game streaming service now works on Chromebooks.

"The perfect laptop for distance learning is now the perfect laptop for distant gaming," Nvidia said.

GeForce Now already works on PC, Mac, Shield and Android mobile devices. You pay a subscription service for access to some of the games you already own on other platforms, such as Steam.

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Microsoft has announced a raft of new games coming to Xbox Game Pass in the near future, and the headline addition is Resident Evil 7.

Capcom's superb horror game launches on Xbox Game Pass for console and PC on 3rd September, Microsoft said.

Also of note: Paradox's grand strategy game Crusader Kings 3 launches on Xbox Game Pass for PC on 1st September.

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