Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Valve plan to add optional profanity filters to Steam Chat, and it’ll also be able to filter language in games which use Steam’s own chat system. If you want to block effing, jeffing, and slurs, you’ll be able to fiddle with a load of settings and filters to add and remove words and otherwise fine-tune your chat civility. If you don’t want to filter chat, no worries, just don’t turn it on. This system debuts today as a Steam Labs experiment so Valve can gather feedback and improve it, then they plan to launch it as a regular Steam feature “soon.”

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

Videogames are television now. But while everything from Splinter Cell to Fallout is gunning for streaming gold following The Witcher‘s Cavill-shaped successes, Resident Evil probably makes more sense than most. With a long run of live-action films behind it, the horror series is now getting a Netflix original series, one that follows the plucky Wesker kids as they uncover the no-good rotten antics their dear old dad Albert’s been up to. Probably.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice Bell)

A screenshot of Ocotdad and his wife from the game Octodad. He is an octopus in a poorly fitting blue suit, and she is a human woman.

This week the podcast truly is the daddy of all podcasts, as we decide to talk all things dad in games. This of course means we must first establish what a dad game is. Are we talking about games that dads will like, or games about dads? And what is the crossover between the two?

Eventually we settle on having a lovely chat about some of our favourite dads in games, including the sad murder dads, and the phenomenon that is developers growing up and having kids and therefore making entirely different games. I ask Nate, as the only dad amongst us, for his dad analysis of the game dads, and we have a lovely time. Plus, Matthew leads us into the Cavern Of Lies where he presents us with a cavalcade of game dads. But which ones are real and which are fake?

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Katharine Castle)

A photo of the Alienware AW2521HFL monitor

The Alienware AW2521HFL is the latest version of Dell’s 240Hz gaming monitor, taking over from the excellent, if now slightly dated AW2518H. It’s a Freesync Premium screen at its core, but it’s also one of Nvidia’s fully certified [cms-block] as well, making it a great choice for AMD and Nvidia graphics card owners alike looking for smooth, tear-free gaming at high refresh rates. Is it a better buy than the excellent value AOC C27G2ZU, though? Let’s take a look.

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Tell Me Why - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

Lonely towns, supernatural kids and pine-filled forests at the top of America? Why, it could only be another episodic narrative from Dontnod Entertainment, couldn’t it? The first episode of moody magical adventure Tell Me Why arrives today, following the Ronan twins as they untangle a murky childhood mystery deep in the heart of Alaska.

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Control Ultimate Edition - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Imogen Beckhelling)

If you’ve been waiting for Control‘s Epic exclusivity to end, well, wait no longer. Remedy Entertainment’s third-person spook-em-up arrived on Steam today in the form of an Ultimate Edition containing the base game and both expansions, The Foundation and AWE. As fate (read: Remedy’s marketing department) would have it, AWE launched today as well. It’s the long-rumoured Alan Wake expansion, which has you exploring a new deep dark area of The Oldest House to uncover more supernatural mysteries.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Io Interactive today announced a January 20th release date for Hitman 3, the end of Ian Hitman’s latest trilogy of stealthy murdering. He’s been picking off pieces of a conspiracy for two games now, and getting ready to really bury it in this final part. Hitman 3 will be an Epic Games Store timed exclusive on PC, though it seems bits will transfer from the Steam versions of the first two.

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Control Ultimate Edition - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice Bell)

A screenshot of Jesse standing in front of a sign that says Control

‘s new AWE DLC might technically stand for “Altered World Events” – the term the game’s FBI-but-magic organisation The Federal Bureau of Control uses for the weird stuff they investigate – but let’s be honest, we all know it’s going to be remembered as the “Alan Wake Expansion”. That’s the theme for this second and final DLC for Remedy’s third-person action-adventure, which we called an accomplished and fun version of X-Files with more guns but less Mulder when we put it on our best action games for PC list earlier in the year.

AWE is a decent chunk of DLC that adds what you’d expect: about four hours of wellying fire extinguishers down hallways, a new enemy type and a new section of the Bureau’s offices to explore. By the end, you get the nagging feeling that you’ve just played through the video game equivalent of a Marvel film’s post-credits sequence – this is, after all, a step in establishing the “Remedy Connected Universe” that started with Alan Wake’s splash onto the Xbox 360 ten years ago. If you’re a fan of Alan Wake, it doesn’t really offer any answers, just more questions. Alan himself isn’t even in it that much. But what it does> have is a really bloody good monster. Some spoilers follow.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

It’s tough finding work as a surgeon these days. Turns out, hospitals keep asking for “experience” and “professional training” before letting any old punter loose with a scalpel. Thankfully, that isn’t the case with Surgeon Simulator 2‘s operating theatre. Released today, Bossa’s brutally goofy gut extraction sim will let anyone bring their friends along to try at being doctors, for far less than it costs to grab yourself a medical degree.

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Left 4 Dead - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Imogen Beckhelling)

Left 4 Dead 2

will soon get a content update bringing an old favourite Left 4 Dead map to Valve’s co-op zombiethon. The Last Stand is a community-made update that’s being officially published by Valve, and fans of the original L4D might recognise its location from Survival Mode.

Catch the teaser trailer below for a short, sweeping view of a creepy lighthouse overlooking a cliffside.

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