It's been a long time since I've found an RTS that recaptures the many hours I spent playing Warcraft 2 growing up, but Diplomacy Is Not An Option gets pretty darn close. I've been playing the hybrid citybuilder/tower defence game's demo this week, and those long forgotten memories of building row upon row of archer towers to nuke incoming orcs, defending my town hall and sending my little workers out to fish, mine and chop wood all came flooding back. Only here, those enemy armies come in waves of increasing size. Fortunately, in addition to the standard sword and bow folk at your disposal, you've also got a bit of magic - including a big fat giant sky laser. Count me in.

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Loads of us were called up by Master Chief to test out Halo Infinite and its Big Team Battle mode last weekend. Going in, I thought there would be no competition between its smaller 4 vs 4 Arena modes and this bombastic 12 vs 12 playground. Surely I'd prefer the latter. In my mind, this would be Halo at its messy best.

But no, I have proven myself wrong. In a strange turn of events, I've decided I actually much prefer Halo Infinite's smaller modes. And I think this comes down to laziness.

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Isn't everything exhausting? Sorry, I didn't mean to tax you with having to think about an answer; I know you're exhausted too. And yet even I, a perpetually exhausted person, was glad to make the effort for the Exhausted Man demo in the Steam Next Fest. It is, like many modern comedy games, about completing tasks by controlling a weird figure with wonky physics—in this case, a man so tired he slithers along like a human slug. I smile every time this horrible slugman crawls up a wall.

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People get well into Starship Troopers, don't they? Back in the before times when I was a teen, a friend of mine went to uni and formed a terrible metal band, and one of their songs was about Starship Troopers (I believe it included shouting "Roughnecks! Ho!" a lot). And don't get me wrong: the 90s action-schlock film adaptation is very good. Replaceable cannon-fodder marines pumping bullets into giant skittering aliens, bombastic Join The Army And Die!! propaganda - It's good stuff. And perfect grist for the RTS game mill! Hence you can play the demo for Starship Troopers - Terran Command right now, in the Steam Next Fest.

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Update 4.35pm>: Twitch have confirmed that a breach has taken place, more below.

Original story 1.20pm>: Twitch has reportedly been attacked by an anonymous hacker who has allegedly leaked a large amount of data, from source code to streamer earnings. A 4chan user has posted a 128GB torrent supposedly containing the leaked info, and more could be leaked down the line. There's also a suggestion that user passwords might be compromised, so now is probably a good time to change yours.

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Far Cry 6 is a vast first-person shooter that's been constructed from the same mould as its predecessors. You are to liberate a land and leave plentiful bullet casings in your wake, only this time it's the heart of the Caribbean that needs clearing, not the US or the Himalayas. Still, it remains undeniably fun running between map markers and earning rewards, if a bit one-note. A good time is guaranteed, but a memorable one? That depends on whether your brain shelve what feels like 2,000 hours of guerrilla warfare without it being reduced to paste.

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A week after launch New World continues to see hundreds of thousands of players logging on to get a piece of that sweet new MMORPG action. Just this weekend, the game nearly hit a million concurrent players on Steam. But with that popularity has come long queues, and some players are going AFK once they get in so they don't lose their spots if they can't play immediately. It should be harder for them to hog server space now though, because Amazon Games released New Worlds' first post-launch patch last night, changing some AFK rules.

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To celebrate the Ghost Recon games turning 20 years old next month, Ubisoft last night announced Ghost Recon frontline, a free-to-play battle royale shooter. But they haven't entirely forgotten the roots of the tactical shooter series, because they're giving the first game away free for keepsies right now. You've got a few days to grab 2001's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon and remember the good ol' days. Ubi are giving away some DLC for the latest games too.

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How do you take part in New World Invasions? Invasions, also known as Corrupted Invasions, are PvE battles in New World primarily aimed at high-level players looking for late-game content. In this guide, we go through the requirements to take part in Invasions, as well as some tips on how to prevail in them.

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I'm pleased to announce that Battlefield 2042 is indeed a Battlefield game. I went hands-on with the upcoming beta for a couple of hours earlier this week, and yes: there was a very big fight on a very big battlefield. At its core, Battlefield 2042 doesn't surprise at all. But on the surface it's a totally different story.

EA and Dice made a big deal of the game's weather and I was like, "Yeah, it rains all the time here too, heh", but you know what? The way these battlefields chop and change when storms roll in really do make a huge difference when you're there with your boots on the ground.

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