Battlefield 6's battle royale mode REDSEC is out now, a "genre shifting free-to-play destination" that includes both the promised Fortnite functionality and a new squad-based competitive mode, Gauntlet - no, not that Gauntlet, auto keyword linker, stop it, you're making me look daft, UGH I don't have time to argue with you, please just go away - together with additional gubbins for Battlefield's Portal editor. You can find it either via your Battlefield 6 install or as a separate release on Steam.

REDSEC's battle royale map is Fort Lyndon, pictured below, with takes place in the backyards and beaches of California, and is apparently the series' biggest map ever. The setup is familiar: 100 players divided into squads are dropped into the world and must scrounge for pick-ups and do shooticuffs and fistibangs within a shrinking (and partly destructible) playspace.

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"ICE quoting Halo is surely as close as I'll get to hell this week", I said to myself earlier. "Hold my beer," interjected Manor Lords publishers Hooded Horse, before diving into a flyblown burlap sack and fishing out the press release for Darkwood 2. Did you ever play Darkwood? It's the survival horror game about being a horrible hermit in a horrible, horrible, top-down forest. It's the game that persuaded Adam Smith to mercy-kill his dog. The new one is set in "the scorched deserts of a dying sea" that is slowly being engulfed by evil trees.

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Quack.

My flesh-coloured form tightens up beneath my body armour. The sausage fingers of my massive human hands grip the trigger of the SMG with white-knuckle desperation. The tiny eyes halfway up the huge head which forms the majority of my unnaturally lanky form spot it. A flash of green. I open fire mercilessly. Blood and bullets fly for 30 seconds. I’m still standing. Shaken, panting, and staring at a perfectly cooked bird on a plate.

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For too long have you remembered Ron Gilbert as the peddler of point-and-click adventure game comedies like The Secret of Monkey Island, despite his long history of forays into other genres. From now on, you are only> allowed to remember him as the purveyor of Dragon Quest-flavoured perpetual motion machines that satirise bureaucracy and precarity. I'm referring to Death By Scrolling, Gilbert's latest project with Terrible Toybox NZ and publishers MicroProse. MicroProse? This seems awfully intuitive for that brand. Barely a dial or a light-up acronym to be seen.

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Workers at soon to be under new ownership Electronic Arts are reportedly struggling with a push from management towards trying to use AI for "just about everything". That's according to a new report, which claims staff are concerned about the likes of code mistakes they'll then have to clean up and the tech being trained to replace them.

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The USA's Immigration Customs Enforcement service, aka ICE, have started using imagery of Microsoft's sci-fi shooter Halo for recruitment posts on social media, even as Gamestop and the US administration indulge in some bantz characterising Donald Trump as Master Chief, and even as Microsoft attempt to flog a new Halo game.

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Twice now Hollow Knight: Silksong devs Team Cherry have put out a Simplified Chinese translation of the Metroidvania, only for Chinese players to point out some stuff it does weirdly. Well, in their third crack at providing said translation, Team Cherry look to have gone the tried and trusted route, introducing a fan-made one people already like with the latest update to patch 4's ongoing Steam beta.

As a quick recap, the Simplified Chinese translation Silksong offered at launch was flagged as being a bit Shakespearey, leading to mixed reviews of the game in the region. Team Cherry were quick to introduce a second translation in an attempt to rectify the issue, but that one ended up earning thumbs downs from players due to how it translated some place and character names.

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Bully, Rockstar's classic boarding school Bart Simpson simulator, is about to have another massive multiplayer mod fired at it from a slingshot. The mod's dubbed Bully Online, stands atop the battered blazer of a previous attempt to let a bunch of folks play Bully together, and is set to arrive in paid early access this December.

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After much wrangling with players over Civilization 7’s Age system, which sees you taking charge of different civilizations as you progress from Antiquity into the Modern era, Firaxis are bringing back the option to play as one culture all the way to the endgame. They’re now playtesting the feature internally, and want players to help by way of a new community testing initiative, the Firaxis Feature Workshop.

Firaxis have also shared a few snippets from Civilization 7’s update 1.3.0, due in the week of November 3rd alongside the Tides of Power DLC, which will be free to existing owners of the troubled 4X strategy game over the Xmas holidays. Update 1.3.0 is all about nautical doings and conspirings, with new naval units and buildings, the addition of ranged combat to ocean warfare, and some delightfully soggy terrain features.

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