Having bounced off the opening exposition of Death Stranding on PS4 last November I was not anticipating falling in love with its craggy exploration on PC. And yet here I am, some 40 hours under my belt (along with a pair of spare boots and 30ft of climbing rope) and readily committed to 40 hours more. Underneath that initial hit of lore, acronyms and holographic Guillermo del Toro (yes) lies a brilliant take on open world exploration; a full body cleanse of the genre’s worst habits.

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After three years of us cooing over it, Ooblets today launched in early access. To be crudely reductive: it’s a bit ‘Stardew Valley meets Pokémon, but cutesy’. There we are, growing crops on our little farm and befriending folks in the local town. We’re also growing little critters named ooblets, who we raise and train to compete – though rather than bite, claw, electrocute, and drown each other, they bust moves in dance-offs. Adorable.

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Netflix last night announced that their Dragon’s Dogma anime series will arrive on September 17th. Based on Capcom’s open-world action-RPG of the same name, Dragon’s Dogma follows a dude who’s been brought back to life as an “Arisen”, tasked with taking out monsters that represent the seven deadly sins. Netflix announced the series last year, and now they’ve finally given a tiny look at it.

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Marvelous Ms Marvel will assemble the super friends in September, but you’ll be able to go for a test flight a couple weeks earlier. Crystal Dynamics have announced the beta test dates for Marvel’s Avengers. Before that, another War Table livestream is queued up for the end of July to give you another look at the super squad in action.

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Ooblets

is what it looks like. That can be a bit of a cop out as descriptions go, but I saw almost no footage of it before guessing it was a cross between a Harvest Moon farming/fix-up-the-town game and a Pokémon-style monster collector, and so it is.

But while both those types of game tend to soak up days of my life and leave me with powerful grinder’s remorse, Ooblets feels less insidious than either. Time was going by a lot faster than I’d realised, but not in the mindless haze of repetition or chasing numbers. It’s a good time.

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Hideo Kojima’s post-apocalyptic postman sim Death Stranding has finally arrived on PC, and thank goodness we were in when the doorbell rang, because we’ve been eagerly awaiting this special delivery for quite some time. Death Stranding comes packed with a swathe of upgrades for PC, including 4K resolutions, unlocked frame rates, ultrawide monitor support, special Half-Life missions and, of course, a great big photo mode so we can enjoy taking delightful pictures of Norman Reedus, sorry, Sam Porter Bridges’ gurning face. A bit like that header image up the top there.

Even better, Death Stranding runs like a dream on PC, as my early PC performance tests showed that even a lowly Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 can hit a smooth 60fps on max settings at 1920×1080 no problem. As such, most PCs should be able to get up and running with Death Stranding pretty easily. Just in case you are struggling with Death Stranding’s PC graphics settings, though, I’ve put together this handy performance guide to help you get the game running as smoothly as possible.

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Konami have announced that this year’s new Pro Evolution Soccer game will only be “a streamlined offering in the form of a ‘season update’.” The reason for the less substantial annual refresh this year, Konami say, is that the game they plan to launch next year on the next generation of consoles is fancy enough that they’re focusing efforts on that. For now, they have a tiny teaser trailer showing their next-gen Lionel Messi.

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QuakeCon is an entire quarter-century old this year, and no pandemic will stop Id Software and Bethesda from celebrating it. While the in-person event was cancelled back in March due to Covid-19, QuakeCon will now be joining the raft of gaming events being taken online. Aptly named QuakeCon At Home, it’s set to feature esports tournaments, charity initiatives, and loads of “round-the-clock” live streams. It all kicks off on August 7th with “Bethesda’s QuakeCon Digital Welcome Global Super Stream” – what an absolute mouthful, I hope the stream is as flamboyant as it sounds.

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Like it or not, everything is a roguelike now. Dark Souls? Yep. Monster Train? Definitely. The precariously loaded cheese and pickle sandwich I’m about to eat for lunch? May as well be. Dota 2 is joining their ranks with its summer event, which is free and live right now. Aghanim’s Labyrinth is a “four-player, cooperative roguelike” where you team up to defeat various nasties lurking about in an old wizard’s shady astral maze. It immediately makes me think of raids, like wot you get in MMOs.

Could be a lark?

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The next Hearthstone expansion will take players to the wizard school of Scholomance Academy, Blizzard announced last night. The 135-card expansion will introduce 40 cards that can be used by two classes, reflecting the school’s multidisciplinary curriculum, including 10 representing the dual-class disciplines’ Legendary professors. The new Spellburst keyword is coming too, and a new Studies card type. Also, the school has just a load of wizard students getting up to shenanigans, into japes, and over their heads. Come meet some of the dolts and hear their school song in this cinematic trailer.

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