Control Craft 2

Control's new Ultimate Edition requires you connect to the internet to play its single-player campaign - but only once, and only for the disc-based version of the game on Xbox.

Eurogamer understands this is because the disc does not actually contain all of the game's campaign data, the remainder of which is then downloaded. There's no suggestion the game needs to connect online for any other purpose.

The issue was highlighted over the weekend on Twitter by DoesItPlay, which stated it had seen reports players can progress as far as the game's opening maintenance elevator without the internet before being instructed to download the update.

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Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 2 (2009)

Back in September, Activision teased The Haunting of Verdansk, a spooky new limited-time Halloween event for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone; and now, ahead of its launch tomorrow, it's confirmed a whole bunch of additional details, including the news that it features cameos from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Saw.

The Haunting of Verdansk runs for two weeks - starting tomorrow, 20th October and ending on 3rd November - and brings a host of seasonally suitable gameplay additions, including nighttime infiltrations in certain Warzone modes such as Trios.

"Although the full moon's glow prevents total darkness," explains Activision, "operators might want to still pack some Thermal optics". It also warns that players can expect a few spooksome encounters, including a couple of familiar villains from the aforementioned movies, and a ghost train "filled with the souls of those who lost their lives fighting in the Gulag".

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Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 2 (2009)

Back in September, Activision teased The Haunting of Verdansk, a spooky new limited-time Halloween event for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone; and now, ahead of its launch tomorrow, it's confirmed a whole bunch of additional details, including the news that it features cameos from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Saw.

The Haunting of Verdansk runs for two weeks - starting tomorrow, 20th October and ending on 3rd November - and brings a host of seasonally suitable gameplay additions, including nighttime infiltrations in certain Warzone modes such as Trios.

"Although the full moon's glow prevents total darkness," explains Activision, "operators might want to still pack some Thermal optics". It also warns that players can expect a few spooksome encounters, including a couple of familiar villains from the aforementioned movies, and a ghost train "filled with the souls of those who lost their lives fighting in the Gulag".

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Raji: An Ancient Epic

The beautiful third-person action game Raji: An Ancient Epic is now available on Xbox One, PS4 and PC, as well as Switch.

Made by Nodding Heads Games, a team of industry veterans based in Pune, India, Raji is an absolute delight: a pacy scamper around beautiful Indian architecture, all of it mixed with balletic combat. It's pretty magical.

I absolutely loved it on Switch, and I also loved this story about the developers' work tending to stray dogs. Brilliant.

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Amnesia: Rebirth

What kind of self-respecting horror game kicks off in the middle of a desert under a blazing sun?

It's a bold choice for a series so intrinsically associated with gloomy corridors and shadowy corners and flailing around in the dark. It feels intentional, too, as you trudge across the dunes, desperately hugging the shade to avoid dropping dead of dehydration before the game's even really begun. Later, you'll realise how foolish to have doubted Frictional's ability to mess with you - this is an Amnesia game, after all, not Uncharted; there is no buried treasure to recover here - but revel in the sunshine while you can, my friend. It won't last long.

There's a lot about Amnesia: Rebirth that feels purposefully different, actually. Though it retains much of the horror series' famed DNA, Frictional has been astonishingly audacious here, inverting many of our expectations to craft something that's at once both familiar and utterly otherworldly, and an effective, if complex, tale that's wildly ambitious.

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Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout New Vegas is 10 years-old today, having been released on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on 19th October 2010 in North America (it came out on these shores a few days later).

Obsidian's wonderful entry in Bethesda's post-apocalyptic open-world role-playing series was critically-acclaimed for its writing, characters and freedom with which you could complete quests. While it suffered a raft of technical problems - as most of the games built on Bethesda's RPG engine did at the time - its reputation has only grown more positive over the last decade, and it is now considered one of, if not the best Fallout game.

Writing about Fallout New Vegas for Eurogamer's Games of the Decade series, reporter Emma Kent called it "a side-quester's dream". "... it felt like even the smallest story was carefully crafted to maintain interest and deliver a rewarding kicker. Looking at a run-down of the mission Come Fly With Me, it reads like a list of fetch quests, but the compelling story points, array of player choices and engaging dialogue disguised this so well I never really noticed at the time. And, at the end of the trail, you always knew there'd be an incredible payoff - like launching a cult of ghouls into space with Ride of the Valkyries playing in the background."

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NBA 2K21

UPDATE 21st October 2020: 2K has issued a statement on the unskippable adverts in NBA 2K21, suggesting their placement was a mistake.

In a statement issued on Twitter, 2K said the ad that sparked a backlash earlier this week "impacted our players' experience in a way we didn't intend, as these ads are not meant to run as part of the pre-game introduction".

2K has promised this will be fixed in future episodes of 2KTV.

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Eurogamer

I've a soft spot for FIFA bugs. As players clash within the game's physics system, things sometimes go wrong. The ball flies off into orbit, limbs twist and turn to form Lovecraftian nightmares, and the AI creates mysterious giant goalkeepers who spread through the game like a virus.

And then there's this one, by far my favourite FIFA 21 bug since the game came out, that has... well, a lot going on.

Redditor BuschLatte146 uploaded a clip of a FIFA 21 Squad Battle game (this is the mode with Ultimate Team that pits you against a computer-controlled team) that shows a shot on goal from kick off that ends up stuck in top bins.

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Noita Official Soundtrack

Noita didn't make a good first impression. I didn't know where to go, what to do and within five minutes, I was dead. Maybe it was two minutes, I don't know. I've lost count. I've died so many times.

I wanted guidance. I wanted the pixely wizard game I'd seen in trailers, to run around and blow everything up with spells. I didn't want to be edging around in a dark cave, scared of everything. I didn't want to be eaten, shot, blown up, melted, killed. It was impenetrable, unfriendly, unfair, and I wanted to give up.

But I didn't. I looked again at what I had. I willed Noita to open and gradually, it did. It went a bit like this.

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Destiny 2

Online cheat distributor PerfectAim has been served a cease and desist from Destiny 2 developer, Bungie.

The site's Destiny 2 bundle - which included "aimbot, wallhack, teleport and other cheats" for people playing the sci-fi shooter on PC and was available for a monthly fee - is now "no longer available".

"A claim has been made by Bungie, Inc. suggesting that this product violates the game's license agreement," says a pop-up message on the Perfect Aim website. "Furthermore, a demand was made that we cease and desist from selling this product.

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