The hot meme in Los Santos right now is replacing character models with folks from other games and across pop culture, giving Grand Theft Auto V cutscenes a very weird energy. Folks are focused on the scene where Lamar roasts Franklin, swapping in all sorts of characters and voices for silly effect. But in a video game full of dickheads, the one that most warms the cockles of my heart is Yakuza‘s Kiryu popping up to serenade Franklin with a song. Even in sweary memes, Kiryu is the goodest boy.

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A whole new Caribbean island has arrived in GTA Online with the launch of The Cayo Perico Heist today, inviting us to completely rinse the drug lord El Rubio. Yes, sadly, his party island is only for the heist, not a place we can visit any time. It’s an intriguing heist though, and one we can actually complete solo for once. And we get our own submarine. Also, Dr Dre pops up for like 30 seconds.

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Grand Theft Auto Online

players are in store for another heist next week that’ll take you off to a warm island crimecation. Rockstar have revealed more about the Cayo Perico heist in a new trailer proving that this island does indeed conform to the one true purpose for privately-owned islands: hosting absolute ragers for dudes with more money than sense. You’ll be captaining a new submarine to launch your heist from when it arrives next week.

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Rockstar have finally tipped their hand on the big, new heist they have planned for GTA Online, which they’ve previously said would take you crime lot to a whole new location. No, it’s not Vice City, but you will be leaving Los Santos. The Cayo Perico Heist will send you off to a drug lord’s private island and you can even fly solo if you like.

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It’s great fun to pootle around GTA Online, taking in the sights and doing casual crimes. It’s less fun to grind the millions of virtuabucks you need for cool crimetoys and hot crimefashion, especially when Rockstar also sell the in-game cash for real money and it can sure feel like they’re pushing you to buy. But, good news: this week they’re offering a chance to get one million in-game dollars for free, just by logging in. It’s worth doing even if you’re not currently playing, what with the “biggest ever update” promised later this year.

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2K’s Borderlands 3 still costs £50. Rockstar’s seven year-old GTA V costs £25. Just some food for thought. Anyways, Take-Two Interactive, the mega corporation who own the likes of 2K and Rockstar, think they’re charging players a lot less than their games are worth.

“We deliver the highest quality experiences in the business, and we charge much less for them than we believe they’re worth to consumers,” CEO Strauss Zelnick said in Take-Two’s earnings call yesterday.

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Rockstar have announced today that, as was previously rumored, they have indeed acquired Ruffian Games, makers of Crackdown 2 and helping hands on Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Ruffian is getting less ruff, adopting the new corporate family name Rockstar Dundee. Both say they look forward to working together on future projects, though they’ve not said yet just what those will be. (more…)

It seems that Rockstar Games, the makers of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, have snapped up Ruffian Games. The Dundee studio are known for making Crackdown 2, and most recently helped out with Halo: The Master Chief Collection. While neither Rockstar nor Ruffian have announced anything publicly, records filed with Companies House say that Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive now own at least a majority stake in Ruffian. Apparently they’re now renamed to Rockstar Dundee, and I’m disappointed they didn’t give a nod to Rockstar North’s office down south in Edinburgh by taking the name Rockstar Norther.

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Ever since I squeezed my face into David Braben’s Rift hole (humblebrag), I’ve been a VR convert. I’ve moved house three times since then, and each time I’ve managed to tether up some sort of VR system, from the pokiest of rooms to my reasonably spacious home office. That last one is not a humblebrag, as I’m far too humble to do two in one paragraph. It’s just a brag.

I’ve been using VR for a long time, so I thought I’d ask myself what people might be worried about before committing to it themselves. What about those awkward tangibles, like wires, space, and PC power? Or troublesome intangibles, like what you look like when you watch a John Travolta movie in VR.

Here’s what I’ve learned in the past eight years.

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I don’t know what’s more surprising: that someone has set up a Kinect to control aeroplanes in Grand Theft Auto V by holding his arms out like a kid pretending to be a plane on the playground, or that he didn’t make speed controlled by how loudly he shouted “Nyoom!” This is the latest work of Eric “Insert Controller Here” Heckman, a YouTuber known for his weird custom controllers (including one to ragequit by pouring literal salt). Now he’s here T-posing, pretending to be a plane through Microsoft’s motion sensor. And yes, absolutely he’s planning to do this for Microsoft Flight Simulator too.

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