Once you have the mechanics down in Palworld and you want to get around the map quickly so you can level up your character and your pals as quickly as possible it’s good to know that the game contains many fast travel spots to negate some of the world-running from place to place as you hunt around for new Pals in order to chalk off some of those achievements that we mentioned.

Fast Travel in Palworld

There is nothing overly flashy about fast traveling around Palworld. Fast Travel towers are reasonably plentiful and can be identified by an orange glow around the statue which is the tower itself.

Once you locate and trigger the Fast Travel tower its aura will turn blue instead of orange and you will be able to use it in the future to get to quickly without having to yomp across the entire map, which will certainly come in handy as the game progresses.

It’s worth noting that if you want to fast travel back to your base and you don’t build it close to a tower, the Palbox also works in the same way so you can instantly return from your travels.

Of course, while you are fast traveling you may be missing out on capturing that rare Pal you have been looking for. Sometimes though speed is important so it’s the best way to go.

Finding Fast Travel Towers in Palworld

Apart from stumbling upon them by accident, it is worth keeping an eye on your compass at the top of the screen as it will highlight if there is a tower within 300 meters of your character at any time.

Don’t forget if you haven’t jumped in on Palworld yet you can get it on Steam for $29.99 or play it for “free” on Xbox Game Pass.

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In an attempt to bring Tekken 8 to as many people as possible, developers Bandai Namco inadvertently introduced a potentially dangerous filter in their accessibility options. The game’s director, Katushiro Harada, has announced that changes will be coming to accessibility options to minimize the risk, reports PC Gamer.

@Harada_TEKKEN you urgently need to remove one of your filters (the striped one), it cannot be present at launch as it may hospitalise players (or worse), in the same way as the infamous Pokémon episode.

— Ian Hamilton (@ianhamilton_) December 27, 2023

The concern was that the striped filter could induce seizures in users with photosensitivity. Users also reported migraines arising from watching a clip of the game with the striped filter active.

Harada took to Twitter/X after a clip of the filter went viral to say that people were taking the filter out of context and that there are a lot of customizable options that had been used to create the effect seen in the original Twitter post. “These color vision options are a rare part of the fighting game genre, but they are still being researched and we intend to expand on them in the future.”

Speaking at the Tekken World Tour 2023 Finals, Harada said “Many people have been talking about the accessibility features in the demo for Tekken 8. That was just a work in progress, so we’ve actually tweaked that quite a bit to try to address some of the issues and to make sure it works better for a wider variety of people.”

It is unclear at this time whether these tweaks are going to be part of Tekken 8 when it launches or whether this will come in a future update, but it is a step in the right direction. Accessibility is a relatively new concern for game developers and the fact that the developers of a huge game franchise like Tekken are taking it seriously and trying to get it right is encouraging for many.

In 2020 Cyberpunk 2077 contained flashing lights and imagery that could trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy.  After several gamers reported suffering seizures, developer CD Projekt Red apologized and quickly released a software update with a new warning, removed or reduced the flashing effects, and told gamers to be mindful of their health.

While most games don’t require warnings about photosensitive epilepsy risks, Cyberpunk 2077 demonstrated that rapid red-and-white flashing visual effects can directly endanger a small portion of the gaming community.

Featured image credit: Bandai Namco

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Character creation is a big part of gaming, but sometimes, when you are under a lot of pressure to just come up with the perfect character name before getting into the game proper, you end up with something that after about three seconds of gameplay you hate. It’s always good therefore to know how you can just pop back to edit your character and make any changes while adding in that super-cool name you only just dreamt up.

Let’s see how we do that right here.

How to change your name in Palworld  (and your Pals)

At the beginning of the game when you create your character you can alter the look, voice, and all the other good stuff. Then, weirdly, you are given a random name that you simply cannot change for your character. It’s all very odd, and we don’t know why that should be the case, but the devs are promising that in a later build of Early Access character editing and name-changing will become a thing. It’s an example of how janky some things are at this stage of development as we touched on our everything you need to know about Palworld page.

You can however change the names of your Pals (which makes the omission on the character front stranger still. To do this all you need to do is go to the Party Menu and select the Pal you wish to rename and then select the edit name option that is next to its name on the screen.

Note that you will have to level up your Pals before having access to this feature – again this is something that may change sooner rather than later as new builds get released into the wild.

The post Can you change your name in Palworld? appeared first on ReadWrite.

The Last of Us Part II picks up four years after the end of the first game. Joel and Ellie have settled down in Jackson, Wyoming, with Joel’s brother Tommy. Their relationship is fractious – instead of the happiness they have earned, there is strife borne of Joel’s decision to save Ellie at the end of Part I.

One day on a regular patrol, Joel and Tommy save a stranger from some Infected. The woman, Abby, guides them to an abandoned building to wait out the storm, but it’s an inevitable trap. Abby is now a fearless member of the Washington Liberation Front (WLF, or sometimes Wolves), a militia group from Seattle, but she was once a helpless onlooker as Joel murdered her father, who was a surgeon set to operate on Ellie at the end of Part 1.

What happens to Joel in The Last of Us Part II?

Abby and her companions viciously beat Joel to death, but not before Ellie arrives and is forced to watch. Tommy swears revenge and heads off alone to Seattle. Ellie and her new girlfriend Dina go after him to help. These first couple of hours of gameplay are extremely effective and introduce the game’s main theme – the cyclic nature of violence and how anger and hate just perpetuate endlessly. Anyone who played Part I will probably have a fairly complex relationship with Joel depending on how they feel about his choices at the end, but it will certainly hit hard to watch him get killed.

In a tender moment, Ellie reveals to Dina that she is immune to the virus, and Dina reveals that she is pregnant with her ex’s baby. With impeccable timing, the ex, Jesse, turns up. Ellie and Jesse leave Dina in relative safety in the theatre as the physical effects of her pregnancy begin to make themselves known.

Ellie and Jesse find one of Abby’s companions, who they torture and kill to gain information about where Abby is. A further theme of the game is the idea that ‘hurt people hurt people’ – when you are traumatized, how do you break free of the cycle of trauma? Ellie and Jesse follow the lead to two more of Abby’s gang, Owen and Mel. Mel is pregnant but Ellie only learns this after killing the pair.

At this point, we get a flashback that confirms what we already suspected. Ellie went back to investigate the Firefly hospital from the first game and discovered that the yarn Joel spun was indeed a yarn, and he robbed her of her autonomy and possibly the world of a cure. They have a big falling out and spend over two years almost estranged.

Back in the present, Abby finds where Ellie, Dina, Jesse, and now Tommy are hiding out in the theatre. She shoots Jesse dead in cold blood and Tommy is seriously wounded. Cut to black, and suddenly, we are Abby.

The second half

We start with a flashback underlining the strong relationship Abby had with her father and then land at a point about three days before the showdown in the theatre. We get some relationship-building and scene setting before Abby discovers her ex-boyfriend Owen has gone missing while out hunting Seraphites, a religious cult.

Abby gets herself caught in a snare trap on her search but is freed by Yara and Lev, who were Seraphites but have been shunned due to Lev being a trans man. Abby finds out that Owen has tried to leave the city and its fighting and violence behind to reunite with the Fireflies. It emerges that Yara’s arm was broken so badly in their escape that it will need to be amputated if there’s any hope of survival. During surgery, Lev runs off to try and convince his mother one last time to accept him and break free of the Seraphites. When Abby and Yara eventually find him, he is forced to kill his mother in self-defense. As they are trying to get away, the WLF arrive to wage war on the Seraphites and Yara heroically sacrifices herself so Abby and Lev can escape.

Abby and Lev arrive at Owen and Mel’s hideout to find information but instead, Abby is faced with the dead bodies of one of her closest friends and his pregnant partner. Helpfully for her, Ellie had dropped the map highlighting her hideout, and Abby seeks her revenge.

After a brutal showdown in the theatre where Abby beats Ellie into a paste and threatens to kill Dina, Lev convinces her that it’s not worth it and Abby lets them go with the warning that she better not see them again.

The Last of Us Part II ending

It would be easy to end the game here, but The Last of Us: Part II isn’t interested in easy. After a brief interlude where it seems that Ellie and Dina will get to live happily ever after on a farm, raising Dina’s baby, Tommy arrives with news. He has located Abby and wants Ellie to leave her idyllic new life to pursue his revenge. He leaves in anger when Ellie won’t be convinced. Except, of course, Ellie can’t escape from this cycle and abandons Dina and their child in the night to perpetuate the violent cycle.

The last hour or so of the game introduces a new faction, the Rattlers. These are unambiguous bad guys and Ellie has no qualms about killing her way through scores of them to reach Abby and Lev, who are being held as slaves. Ellie cuts Abby loose. Abby is confused to see Ellie but doesn’t question it, heading straight to free Lev and trying to escape.

Ellie is not satisfied, and the gameplay climax is an incredibly brutal, dirty, emphatic fistfight on the shore of the beach. Abby bites off two of Ellie’s fingers, but Ellie gets the upper hand and tries to drown Abby before a flashback snaps her out of it. She thinks of Joel and the forgiveness she had found for him just before his death. It is fitting that it is Joel who pulls Ellie back from the brink at the end here.

Letting Abby and Lev go, Ellie returns home. But of course, you can never come back from something like this. The farmhouse is empty and Dina and the baby are gone. There is a poignant scene where Ellie tries to play the guitar, her strongest connection to Joel, but finds that with her missing fingers even that has been taken from her. She leaves the farmhouse and walks towards…whatever is next.

The Last of Us Part II Remastered is out now on PlayStation 5.

Featured image credit: Naughty Dog

The post Last Of Us Part II synopsis: Plot details and storyline appeared first on ReadWrite.

When the original Senua’s Sacrifice appeared, amazingly, some six years ago it was rightly lorded as being groundbreaking, not only in terms of gameplay and graphics but also in regards to the way it dealt with a protagonist dealing with mental illness – a severe form of psychosis that was integral to both gameplay and storyline.

We have had to wait all these years for the long-awaited sequel, but now it looks like we are into the final stretch before the arrival of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, which will take us back deep into the 10th-century Icelandic timeline.

When is Senua’s Saga: Helblade 2 released?

The date that was announced at the Xbox Developer_Direct that we can all put in our diaries now is May 21st when the Hellblade II will be released for PC and Xbox on the Game Pass subscription service.

Developer Ninja Theory says the game will only last about eight hours, so in many ways, it is an experience as much as it is a full-blown game, but much like the first it will doubtless be harrowing in parts as Senua deals with her mental illness while trying to solve the game’s puzzles.

Much more work has been put into the combat system and we are looking forward to seeing how that handles now. As good as the first game was, it was elevated to cult status as much for the way it told its story as for the way its gameplay mechanics worked.

At $49.99 for eight hours gameplay is risky though and will garner some inevitable internet flak but as Dom Matthews, Studio Head at Ninja Theory said in a blog post, “Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II will be a game crafted from the heart – a game similar in length to the first Hellblade, with a focused narrative, and sold digital-only at a price of $49.99 USD. 

“And you can once again expect to join Senua in understanding her world through perception puzzles led by her experiences of psychosis, in brutal and visceral combat and in traversal gameplay, this time across the harsh but beautiful landscapes of 10th Century Iceland. Crucially, all these elements are intertwined in a unique visual and audio experience, where everything is in service of Senua’s story. 

“So, you can expect more of the same, but this time with the support to push our ambitions for immersion, fidelity, and richness far further than before.”

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Palworld is well and truly with us and the internet sensation has a bagful of achievements that 

need unlocking, even though it has arrived in Early Access. If you are playing Palworld and need to level up quickly or even find out more about how levels work we have you covered there, but as you level up you are going to unlock some of these achievements, but others you may need to work a little harder for.

In the main the achievements are not obvious, they will only appear when you actually, well achieve them. Let’s have a go at giving you a better idea of what you need to be doing in order to bag the lot.

All achievements in Palworld

There are 10 achievements in Palworld, each worth 100 points so all 10 will get you the max gamerscore of 1000 maths fans.

Five of these are hidden around the map and the other five revolve around collecting Pals. The hardest of the collection tasks sees you needing to catch 90 different species of Pal from the 113 that are in the game at launch – you better get your searching pants on.

We are still trying to figure out the names of the last four hidden ones but we have given you the task so at least you know what you are looking for. Now check out the table below and get cracking collecting those 10 achievements.

Will there be more achievements added to Palworld

Quite possibly. The game is in Early Access right now so these are all subject to change or even be removed and added to as development moves on. We would be surprised if more aren’t added further down the line.

The post How to unlock all Palworld achievements appeared first on ReadWrite.

Back in the day when the Indiana Jones movies were on every Christmas (what do you mean they still, are?) I remember seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time as a kid and being enthralled.

I watched the gameplay reveal of Lucasarts/Bethesda/MachineGames at the Xbox Developer Direct and was transported back to that Christmas childhood once again. Grandparents sat around, Mattel Intellivision temporarily turned off.

For two and a half minutes this was everything I have ever wanted from an Indy game. I remember the point-and-click Fate of Atlantis absorbing me as well – that was a game where you needed to buy a second sound card (a Roland MIDI device) for your early PC to get the best music. We did. In fact, my brother sent me a text last night saying, “Do you think we will need a new soundcard?”

Set as a  sequel to the aforementioned Raiders, the Indiana Jones and The Great Circle (disclaimer, I don’t like the title) trailer takes us on a ride with Indy in mortal danger, yet still managing to headbutt a Nazi in the face. We had puzzles, running, leaping – okay we had a new Tomb Raider, but then Lara was always loosely based on Indiana Jones anyway.

The voice acting seems decent. Sure it’s not Harrison Ford, but nor is it the AI-cloned cyborg monstrosity that it could have been, with Troy Baker, famous for his role as Joel in The Last of Us, picking up the whip and doing a more than passable impersonation. 

We had views of the Vatican and the Himalayas alongside jungle terrain and sunken temples. Indy is clocking up the air miles in this one and it looks the part. It looks like Indiana Jones, sounds like Indiana (mostly) Jones and we all hope it feels like Indiana Jones. Oh, and that music.

This could be the start of a new franchise of games and an opportunity for new gamers to experience the thrill I got when I first saw Raiders, but in the medium of the 2020s rather than the 1980s.

And with a release date of 2024 (vague, but still soon enough), we should not have too long to wait.

Featured Image: AI-generated by Midjourney

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As we recently discussed, the max level in Palworld is 50. And while you may not want to race to that number on the first day of Early Access, then get bored of the game, end up uninstalling it, and moaning on X that there is not enough content, you also need to know how to level up yourself and your Pals at the maximum rate so that you can catch better Pals quicker.

So with that in mind let’s have a look at the best ways to level up fast and efficiently in Palworld.

Level up quickly in Palworld

We did mention yesterday that Level Sync comes into play and Pals that are stronger than you scale down to match your level so it is advantageous to at least get to a decent level first up, especially as many of the enemies you will come across initially can be much higher than you, especially when you wander off the beaten path and into areas you are maybe not quite ready for.

Base building

You get XP for building your base so it is quite possible you could just hang out there doing a bit of construction work here and there and still climb the levels, but the key to this page is getting those levels quickly, so we are going to have head out and catch some new Pals for our collection.

Adventuring

For every new Pal you capture you will get XP, but di you know if you catch several of the same Pal quickly, you get a bonus that increases with each you bag. So you want to look for, let’s use the word flock, as nobody has told me the correct collective noun of a group of Pals yet, let me know when we have one,  of levels Pals and take them out quickly in succession.

Once you get your level into double figures it’s safer to start taking on the higher level Pals and adding them to your collection and even locating the Alpha Pals that lurk in the South East corner of the map and are easy to find.

Start knocking a few of those off and you will soon get your levels rising quickly.

The post How to level up fast in Palworld appeared first on ReadWrite.

So in a mere matter of hours, we will get Palworld – the game that has (perhaps a tad unfairly) been categorized as Pokemon with guns.

It’s not that, there is so much more to it than that, or at least there will be as it progresses its way through Early Access. So we have been out and about collating everything we think you might need to know before actually playing the game and have put it all together in this handy guide.

Is Palworld on Xbox Game Pass?

Yes, it is and that is great news. The fact that it will be on Microsoft’s huge subscription platform means a couple of things – a) lots more people will get to play it than might have done otherwise, as the option to just download and play it is there and b) well, it is legitimized by being there. Any fears about it being taken down for being too much like Pokemon, or even that the game is a scam – something the devs have had to unfortunately had to defend themselves against according to PCGamesN should now be eased somewhat.

Is Palworld any good?

The million-dollar question. There is no doubt that when it launches on January 19th that Palworld will look and behave in many respects like an Early Access game. A lot of the animations and even some of the graphics appear to have not been added in yet. Harnesses are missing from pets, trees just fall down, and so on, and picking things up off the floor just means they move from the floor to your hand, but we are sure all that will be added in.

The graphics, ignoring the animation glitches, are stylish and colorful, and even after a few hours of playing and watching, it doesn’t grate on you.

The last thing I can think of that launched that was janky,  in Early Access AND on Game Pass was Grounded, and that turned out to be an amazing game. It just took a while.

How big is Palworld?

Well in terms of download size, the Xbox app is reporting it as 16.35 GB, so it is no Call of Duty, but neither is it small.

What kind of game is Palworld?

Forget the Pokemon with guns line, that is just a distraction. At its heart, Palworld is a survival game. In the words of the devs, Pocket Pair, “You can peacefully live alongside mysterious creatures known as Pals or risk your life to drive off a ruthless poaching syndicate. Pals can be used to fight and breed, or they can be made to work on farms or factories.

You can even sell them or eat them.”

Is Palworld on Steam?

If you don’t have an Xbox Game Pass subscription you can pick Palworld up on Steam instead for $29.99 during Early Access which of course also gives you access to Steam’s refund policy as long as you play it for less than two hours you can claim your money back if it turns out it is not for you.

And that’s all you need to know at this stage. And now the world waits to play Palworld and see if it lives up to initial expectations, or whether we all got overly excited by a few streamers getting carried away.

How do Palworld’s levels work?

If you want to know more about level caps and how Palworld’s level sync works, we have a full guide that you can check out.

The post Palworld – Everything you need to know ahead of launch appeared first on ReadWrite.

Palworld, the open-world survival crafting creature-collection game with a twist, has announced its early access release date, with the welcome news that it will also launch on Xbox Game Pass at the same time.

Despite its many resemblances to Pokemon, Palworld has a slightly more grownup twist with the presence of modern, real-world guns. Palworld’s Steam page suggests players can either live peacefully with their Pals come what may, or they can fight back against a syndicate of poachers. “Pals can be used to fight, or they can be made to work on farms or factories. You can even sell them or eat them!” proclaims the description.

The developers behind Palworld are Pocketpair, most famous for their game Craftopia, which is also still in early access and has been for three years.

When will Palworld be released in early access?

Palworld is due to launch in early access on January 19 on Xbox and PC, including Xbox GamePass. The developers expect the early access period to last at least a year.

The screenshots and videos released so far, along with some pre-release content created by selected creators, show off the colorful world well. Exploration seems to be a key focus and what we’ve seen certainly makes Palworld look like somewhere enjoyable to look around. There are multiple biomes, each with a unique look and with Pals living in them exclusively.

The design of the Pals is very visually appealing, but there’s no getting away from just how much like Pokemon some of them look. There are lots of Pokemon-alikes out there, notably TemTem, and it seems that for now, Nintendo is content to live and let live. It remains to be seen whether the more adult nature of Palworld, with its guns and dark undertone, will provoke Nintendo into action.

Palworld is set to join a host of other exciting new games on GamePass and on PC and Xbox for its early access launch on January 19th, 2024.

Find out everything you need to know about Palworld ahead of its launch with our handy guide.

Featured image: Pocketpair

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So we know Palworld is almost with and we looked at some of the key information you might want to know before joining the fun earlier today. But the game is coming out in Early Access so does that mean there is an initial level cap and if so, what is it? Let’s dive in and see what we know about the leveling system in Palworld so we know what we are aiming for when we all start playing.

Does Palworld have a max level?

When the game arrives on Steam and Xbox Game Pass the maximum level you are going to be able to reach, certainly in this phase of Early Access is Level 50. The Level 50 cap applies both to you and your Pals.

There have been some rumors flying around that the ultimate level cap once the game is released properly and comes out of Early Access will be set at 100. This is unconfirmed at this stage.

Later down the track if Pocket Pair decides to release DLC it is possible it could get pushed even higher, but we are seriously into the hypotheticals now.

For now, we will have to be content with level 50, and our advice is don’t try to be the first there and leave yourself with little to do. Early access suggests all the content is not in place yet so sit back and enjoy a leisurely stroll to the level cap instead. You will appreciate it more if you do.

Once you hit the 50 cap your XP will stop rising, but if you have any Pals who aren’t at the max level you can still work to get them to the top as well.

What is Level Sync in Palworld?

Level Sync is just the name used in the game to make sure things don’t get too frustrating. When you equip a Pal if it has a higher level than you it will magically come down to match your own level, meaning that you won’t feel the benefit of higher-rated Pals until you hit the higher levels as well.

The post What’s the max level in Palworld’s early access? appeared first on ReadWrite.

Microsoft’s Xbox closed out 2023 with a decreasing number of Xbox Game Pass subscribers, according to third-party data.

Estimates on Xbox Game Pass subscriber numbers at the end of the last year place it at around 33 million users, reports IGN. This rings true with reports that adoption is slowing down and growth falling by two percentage points in 2023 according to industry analysts.

“We’re seeing slowing adoption of Xbox Game Pass even though Microsoft will claim otherwise thanks to the repositioning of Xbox Live Gold as Xbox Game Pass Core,” Omdia senior game analyst James McWhirter told IGN. “Our forecast estimates total Xbox Game Pass subscriptions (excluding Core/Live Gold) to be at 33.3 million at the end of 2023, which represents subscriber growth of just 13% – down from 15% in 2022. Notably, over half (55%) are currently on the device-agnostic Ultimate tier.”

Xbox is typically shy of sharing exact hardware or software numbers publicly, so it’s worth taking these numbers with a pinch of salt. However, what can’t be denied is that there’s immense pressure on Xbox to stand up to the big boys of Sony and Nintendo, especially with the Activision Blizzard deal now tidied away.

Pressure on Microsoft’s plans for 2024 subscriber growth

Microsoft has long since voiced plans to “meet gamers where they are”, not wanting to force players to buy consoles to play games. Indeed, it put its money where its mouth is in 2019, releasing previously exclusive games Cuphead and Ori and the Blind Forest to Nintendo’s Switch store.

This is an unusual move for gaming companies that sell their own consoles, with the majority pursuing Apple-style campaigns where consumers need to own the consoles to buy the in-house games. This still applies to some major titles on Xbox, but crucially not all. After all, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can play games on console, PC, or cloud, negating the need for a console on all Xbox Game Pass titles.

However, with Xbox Game Pass subscribers now flagging, it might be that Microsoft will need to think of another way to appeal to the wider market of gamers in 2024.

Featured image: Jakub Sisulak/Pexels

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Australian betting platform SportChamps has been hit with a fine of AUS $17,500 (USD $11,481) for repeated gambling advertising violations.

As reported by Gambling Insider, the Sydney-based operator has fallen foul of regulations for the sixth time, all for similar offenses.

The sanction was issued after an investigation by Liquor & Gaming NSW, the New South Wales state authority, found the company was guilty of inducing people to gamble and open betting accounts through its website and social media accounts.

With adverts such as “Punt for free. Learn the game!” and “Receive a free bet each day,” under the spotlight, SportChamps pleaded guilty in court to two offenses under the Betting and Racing Act, in violation of NSW law.

Their strategy to attract new customers has been a flawed one, with new accounts able to access the SportChamps Tournament Betting Lobby webpage once signed up, with free and paid gaming tournaments up for grabs. This initial process involved soliciting credit card details and deposits to play, increasing the likelihood of a user engaging in gambling on the site.

Extremely concerning

Jane Lin, a representative of the state regulator, provided a stern response to the findings from the investigation.

The Executive Director of Regulatory Operations at Liquor & Gaming NSW stated “SportChamps has five previous convictions for gambling advertising offenses from 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2021. It’s extremely concerning that this operator has amassed multiple convictions for breaching laws which are in place to protect people from gambling harm.”

Lin went on to point out the key guideline that operators should not specifically promote offers or bonuses to entice new customers, as much as they are free to advertise their products.

The NSW government is leading several gambling reforms, including reducing cash limits on electronic gaming machines, introducing responsible gaming officers, and a pilot of cashless gaming in partnership with a panel of industry experts.

It is also targeting gaming room advertising with non-compliant venues facing fines of up to AUS $11, 000 for each offense.

Image credit: Pexels

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What do you get if you cross the amazing gaming worlds of Call of Duty and Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40k? Something that could be amazing that’s what.

Call of Duty’s Season 1 Reloaded update recently went live soi, as per usual, data miners immediately dug deep into the files, loading screen art featuring a could of MW3 operators bedecked like Warhammer 40k grunts.

This has only just started circulating on X fully but Semtex Leaks s has put together a decent-sized list of, not only the artwork, but icons, skins, and data that suggests strongly that a full Warhammer 40k event is coming to Call of Duty. If true, this would be a pretty major collaboration. Warhammer 40k is huge right now with a surge in popularity among video gamers after games such as Darktide and Rogue Trader in the last year have propelled it more in the digital space.

WARHAMMER x #MW3 CROSSOVER

In the upcoming Warhammer x @CallofDuty crossover, the Baton Jailer, Swamp Monster (Fenbeast), Orgre Butcher and Mummy will make an appearance in-game! pic.twitter.com/d713AASfhD

— Semtex (@SemtexLeaks) January 17, 2024

From the leak, it looks as though we will also be getting new animations including one for a chainsaw – a favored weapon of the Warhammer Space Marines. There are snippets of code there that show items and how they will work in the game. It’s unclear how all this will fit into Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone at this stage but it’s a safe bet it will be hugely popular for fans of both camps.

Call of Duty is not a complete stranger to crossover events with a Diablo one already in the bag, but they are both Activision Blizzard games so it was seen as more obvious than this one perhaps.

One thing we can probably count on though is that to get the coolest Warhammer 40k skins on our operators means it is going to cost us. You better start saving up for those in-game transactions folks.

Remember though, it is a leak and not confirmed news, so we all know what that could mean.

The post Is Warhammer 40k coming to Call of Duty? Leak suggests this might be epic appeared first on ReadWrite.

Xbox Games Pass is a way for subscribers to play certain titles for free, but one game won’t be available for much longer.

Although the Xbox Games Pass roster is updated each month with new options, some games stay on there for much longer than a few weeks, offering players enough time to play them through in full. One such title is Hitman: World of Assassination, the third in the Hitman series.

The assassin-themed game has been on Xbox Games Pass since the beginning of January 2022, making it over 12 months on the platform. However, that time is now coming to an end, with it leaving the line-up of free titles at the end of the month.

Considering Hitman: World of Assassination is around 24 hours in total, and as long as 171 hours if you want to complete every side quest and achievement, you’ll want to start playing it soon if you want to complete it for free.

How to play Hitman: World of Assassination for free on Xbox Game Pass

You’ll need to sign up for the Xbox Games Pass subscription via the ‘Memberships’ tab in the Xbox Store before you can access the Xbox Games Pass roster. From there, your Game Pass Ultimate or Console membership will enable you to begin downloading console titles like Hitman: World of Assassination.

With cloud gaming, you don’t even need to download the game to start playing, so long as you have a strong internet connection. You can find a number of items on your Xbox home screen or search directly within the Xbox Store.

Hitman: World of Assassination brings a new freedom to the trilogy through its sandbox-style format, meaning the main avatar Agent 47 can take out targets through a wide variety of methods, from simple silenced pistol shots to much goofier techniques. The wilder your imagination, the crazier your eliminations can get.

Featured image: IO Interactive

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Oh, how we have waited for Skull and Bones. So long in fact even the most faithful doubted it would ever make it to the shore. It looks like it has however, and within a couple of weeks we could well all be knee-deep in the bilge in Ubisoft’s amazing-looking pirate adventure. 

February 16th is the date for your calendar and if you don’t know much about Skull and Bones yet, then think Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, but just the cool shippy bits.

Which version of Skull and Bones should you get?

It comes in two flavors, the Standard and Premium. Standard is coming in at $59.99/£49.99 and gets your base game. If you pre-order it then you get the pre-order bonus as well (see below) as you might expect.

The Premium Edition ($89.99/£74.99) will bag you the base version of the game alongside three days of early access (starts February 13th) along with the cosmetics listed below:

• Ashen Corsair Ship Set
• Bloody Bones Captain Outfit
• 11 ship items

You also get two missions, The Ashen Corsair and the Bloody Bones Legacy, which presumably will tie in with the above cosmos, and completing these missions will get you some more unlockables.

You also get the Smuggler’s Pass which is Skull and Bones’ name for a Battle Pass, as well as the obligatory Soundtrack and Digital Art Book.

Is Skull and Bones on Ubisoft +?

The quick answer is yes it is. Ubisoft changed all its subscription models earlier this week and promised that not only will you get all the games on Day One, but they are the Premium versions as well, so you should get all the above as long as you sub to the Ubisoft + Premier tier, which means you will be playing for £14.99/$17.99 per month)

What is the Skull and Bone pre-order bonus?

If you pre-order Skull and Bones you will get some cosmetics including the Notoriet Garb and Coronation Firework as part of the Highness of the High Sea pack.

We think Skull and Bones is going to be huge and cannot wait to get our hands on it soon.

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PlayStation has several PS4 games available for low prices but for a limited time only.

We might be halfway into January already but the PlayStation New Year Deals sale is still on, continuing until January 31. That means you can still score some massive savings on popular games, from well-known titles like Mortal Kombat X to smaller horror games like Slender: The Arrival.

There are savings of up to 75% on some games, ranging from niche games that you can pick up for less than £2 to huge AAA titles that are reduced by over half the original RRP. With the weather getting colder, now is the perfect time to stock up on games that have been on your wishlist for a while and hibernate with your PS4.

What’s included in the PlayStation New Year Deals sale?

Many games are discounted to less than £5 a pop, including:

Featured image: Respawn Entertainment

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Before the Holidays we reported that Starfield was due to get some major updates every six weeks or so. Bethesda’s end-of-year update said we could expect that to start in February but they would first be tested out in a beta branch on the Steam version of the game before being pushed to Xbox Live and other versions.

Yesterday was supposed to be the first day of the Steam beta updates, but a post on the Bethesda Game Studios X account stated, “We discovered an issue we want to address before releasing our update into the Steam Beta. We’re aiming to release it later this week but we’ll confirm the timing when we know for sure. Thanks for your patience!.”

This followed a post last week stating, “Next week, on January 17, we’ll be putting our biggest @StarfieldGame update yet into Steam Beta with over 100 fixes and improvements, with a planned release date for all players two weeks later.”

Further news followed a few hours later suggesting the issue has been resolved and that the update will be pushed out to Steam any time now. With the fix being so quick hopefully that means we may not even get a delay when it gets pushed through the main branch and other services besides Steam, meaning everybody gets to play the same version of the game sooner rather than later.

Update: the issue has been resolved and the Steam Beta for our next update will be going live tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for the full patch notes when it opens!

— Bethesda Game Studios (@BethesdaStudios) January 17, 2024

What does the Starfield update contain?

Bethesda says this first major update will include:

“This update contains a multitude of fixes to Quests. Eye of the Storm issues such as being unable to dock with the Legacy or data transfer not starting, and Temples not showing up in Into the Unknown, will no longer prevent Constellation from exploring the cosmos.

“Additionally, this update brings stability improvements and numerous graphic improvements ranging from additional widescreen support to improved textures, lighting, and shadows.

“Other fixes and improvements include sun disk geometry, planet ring shadows, bulldozed objects reappearing when returning to an Outpost, ship hatches marked inaccessible, and another fix for asteroids following ships.”

We have yet to get any full patch notes but we will pick through the best bits when they are finally released.

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The first major livestream from Microsoft Xbox takes place today and we are expecting a whole host of good stuff to be shown off during it. So it is a pretty exciting day.

We can expect news from many of Microsoft’s partner studios – although Blizzard will be hosting its own event around Season 3 of Diablo IV before the Xbox livestream, rather than hijacking it with pure D4 content.

One of the games most people are looking forward to seeing is the new Indiana Jones title. Equally exciting, and one we have been waiting for for a few years now is Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, the follow-up to the amazing well-ahead-of-its-time Senua’s Sacrifice.

It is still probably MachineGames/Bethesda’s Indy title that will garner the most attention though. We have had some leaks about what it may be called, but the prospect of a ‘proper’ Indiana Jones game excites the 80s kid in me who grew up thrilled by the movies the first time around.

The other big title we cannot wait to get a real glimpse of is Avowed from Obsidian. RPGs are big time at the moment as Baldur’s Gate 3 set the bar high, but this first-person affair looks more Skyrim than BG3. If Obsidian gets this right, it could be huge.

How to Watch Xbox Direct

The show will be broadcast on the official Xbox and Bethesda channels – basically, tune in to any streaming set-up or turn on your Xbox and you should be able to find it with minimum fuss.

Here are the times of the showcase for your region so you can make sure you don’t miss out.

8 pm GMT (London)

12 pm PST (Los Angeles)
3 pm EST (New York)
9 pm CET (Paris)

If you can’t make the show live, you will be able to watch it on demand on all the key channels after the event.

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Larian Studios founder and CEO Sven Vincke hits out at the recent comments made by Ubisoft’s Director of Subscriptions Phillippe Tremblay.

Tremblay made the headlines for all the wrong reasons after comparing digital gaming ownership to that of Netflix or Spotify subscriptions.

This would mean gamers could only access the titles laid out by the platform and not directly own the titles in a standalone personal library.

Get comfortable

Tremblay said gamers would need to “get comfortable” with the idea of subscriptions overtaking the direct ownership of gaming titles.

Tremblay continued in an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, “You don’t lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That’s not been deleted. You don’t lose what you’ve built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it’s about feeling comfortable with not owning your game.”

Developer direct

Wicke, an award-wining head of Larian, has other thoughts about the comments made by the Ubisoft head. He took to X to say,

”Whatever the future of games looks like, content will always be king. But it will be a lot harder to get good content if subscription becomes the dominant model and a select group gets to decide what goes to market and what not. Direct from developer to players is the way.”

Whatever the future of games looks like, content will always be king. But it’s going to be a lot harder to get good content if subscription becomes the dominant model and a select group gets to decide what goes to market and what not. Direct from developer to players is the way. https://t.co/wEUvd5adt0

— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) January 17, 2024

Vincke would go on to elaborate in a series of posts that set out the Larian chief’s stall.

“In such a world, by definition, the preference of the subscription service will determine what games get made.” He said of the subscription service driving the development of games, “Trust me – you really don’t want that.”

Vincke has been adamant that the Game Awards 2023 winning Baldur’s Gate will not appear on Game Pass.

Last month, Vincke spoke to IGN about the possibility of Baldur’s Gate 3 appearing on game pass. Vincke said, “Oh, we always said from the get-go, it wasn’t going to be on Game Pass, it’s not going to be on Game Pass. We made a big game, so I think there’s a fair price to be paid for that, and I think that that is okay.”

Two titles hitting Game Pass are Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, as announced via an incorrect social media notification to Xbox Game Pass subscribers.

So, at least one or two adventures in Faerûn will be accessible on the platform, but according to Vincke, the latest installment never will.

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