The developer of MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries has delayed the launch of the game on Steam to avoid getting trampled on by the behemoth that is Cyberpunk 2077.

Piranha Games said the recent delay of Cyberpunk to 10th December 2020 forced it to reconsider its plan to release MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries on Steam and GoG, as well as its Heroes of the Inner Sphere DLC, on the same day.

"Any developer wants their titles to get as much attention as possible, and obviously sharing a release date with Cyberpunk was less than optimal," Piranha said.

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This year for Black Friday, many are choosing to get their most significant deals on gaming and tech from Argos, which staunchly remains one of the biggest retailers out there. We've listed some of the best deals you can get from Argos, and we'll be updating this page as we go forward.

Argos are pretty good when it comes to gaming deals on what's dependable - consoles, accessories and AAA titles. You won't get a huge amount of variety or anything too niche (they're not solely a gaming outlet, after all), but if you're looking for anything nicely predictable, they should have you covered.

Games

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Ubisoft will today release its first post-launch patch for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, bringing the game to version 1.0.4.

It includes bug fixes, quality of life updates and, perhaps most importantly, options to manually choose between performance and visuals on Sony and Microsoft's new consoles.

These options, available on PlayStation 5 plus Xbox Series X and S, will "adapt the resolution and graphics settings to maintain 60FPS" for Performance mode, or "enable the game to run maximum resolution and graphic settings while maintaining 30FPS" for Quality mode.

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A long-running secret within Mortal Kombat 11 has finally been solved.

A year ago, Mortal Kombat 11 players noticed a mysterious meteor coursing across the sky within the Towers of Time mode. Players realised it turned up at 10 minutes past the hour, and suspected some sort of input was required to trigger a reward. But nobody knew the combination - until this week.

Here's NetherRealm boss Ed Boon doing his Twitter tease thing earlier this week:

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The best storage deal of Black Friday has arrived. Right now Amazon is selling the WD Black 5TB Game Drive for £88 in the UK and $95 in the US, a historic low price in both countries by a significant margin and a genuinely great deal for owners of next-gen consoles.

These portable 2.5-inch external hard drives give you a ton of storage for games and media, and can be used with games consoles like the PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. Of course, they're also a great shout for PCs, Macs and Linux computers as well. You're not even paying extra for the armoured design and gamer branding either - these are currently the cheapest 5TB hard drives on Amazon of any variety!

If you're after even faster external storage, then you should take a look at the Crucial X8 external NVMe SSD. This drive is rated up to 1050MB/s, making it twice as fast as a SATA SSD, and uses a high-speed USB 3.2 Gen 2 connection over either USB-C or full-size USB-A. Right now, the 1TB Crucial X8 is £96 in the UK and $130 in the US, a historic low price and significantly below the £150/$165 this drive normally costs.

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If all the current Black Friday deals already flooding the internet weren't enough, the Steam Autumn Sale is now here, with hundreds of deals on PC games and software.

This year the sale lasts until December 1st, 18:00PM GMT, and as usual the main Steam storefront has been redesigned to promote the new deals, with sections for genre, for major franchises, for users' wishlists and featured deals, among others. We've outlined some of the best offers we've seen here, and there's a good chance that there'll be other offers cropping up as we go through the week.

This also marks the start of nominations for this year's Steam Awards, the site-wide ceremony where users can nominate and vote for various games in various entries - game of the year, best VR game, soundtrack, story and so on. Nominations start now and voting will occur during the Winter sale later (presumably landing in the Christmas period).

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'Any last words?' they demand.

'RIP,' she responds. 'RIP me.'

Who said that? Was it Joan of Arc? Mary Antoinette beneath the guillotine? No. It was congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, shortly before she was punted into space during the first round of her Among Us livestream in September. The mainstream press was quick to praise Cortez for her media savvy, but little attention was paid to the game itself (the Guardian called it faddish). This strikes me as a serious oversight. While it looks like something spawned on the pages of Newgrounds circa 2005, Among Us is the perfect game for today - and quite possibly tomorrow, too.

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This year marks the tenth anniversary of Metro 2033's release, and developer 4A Games has celebrated the occasion in a wide-ranging new blogpost touching on its future plans - including a new IP, a new multiplayer experience in the Metro universe, and a free next-gen update for Metro Exodus.

The next-gen update will be available to owners of the existing Xbox One and PS4 digital and physical editions of Metro Exodus some time next year, and introduces significant enhancements on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, including ray tracing, faster frame rates, increased resolution, and reduced loading.

Beyond Metro Exodus, 4A has re-confirmed that a new Metro game is in development for next-gen consoles and PC at the studio. And while it says it's not yet ready to share more details, it teases that it's working on a complete overhaul of its engine and renderer "to take advantage of the new power, storage, and hardware supported ray tracing afforded by the new consoles."

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Developer Texel Raptor's superb theme park management sim Parkitect is set to receive its most ambitious update yet, introducing 8-player co-operative multiplayer on 8th December.

Parkitect is already a gloriously designed thing, successfully managing to deliver a soothing nostalgia fix for Rollercoaster Tycoon fans, while still introducing some wonderfully impactful innovations at the same time - including powerful construction tools and smart gameplay additions such as a focus on intra-park delivery infrastructure - that breathe new life into the classic building and management formula.

Texel Raptor's latest addition, however - which follows on from two paid DLC expansions - is the game's most significant endeavour yet, offering the kind of collaborative multiplayer building experience that's frequently requested by fans but rarely seen in the genre.

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Studio MDHR has announced another delay for Cuphead's long-in-the-works Delicious Last Course DLC, this time into 2021, citing challenges "amid the global pandemic".

The Delicious Last Course - which sees Cuphead and Mugman joining forces with Ms. Chalice on a brand-new island for more classic-cartoon-inspired adventuring - was initially announced in June 2018, with a projected release of the following year.

However, as July 2019 rolled around, Studio MDHR revealed it had made the decision to push The Delicious Last Course's launch into 2020 so the DLC would meet "the meticulous level of care and quality we always strive for" and to ensure the developer could continue to "make things in a way that's healthy and sustainable for our team".

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