In January, Sony announced its plans to buy Destiny maker Bungie for a tidy $3.6bn. And, as has become the norm for deals such as this, the FTC has opened an in-depth investigation into this takeover. According to sources (via The Information), this investigation may set the closing date of this deal back by six months, if not more. While we were never given a firm date of when Sony had hoped to have this deal all squared away by on its initial announcement, reports now state that any closure will be happening early next year....

It has also been a year where the franchise fell short of its ambitions – not least in the graphics department, with Violet and Scarlet criticised for performance issues, while Arceus had problems with draw distance, meshing and the like. Switch games are limited by the Switch’s hardware of course, but critics and fans the world over were still disappointed. However, there is one thing that Pokémon fans unanimously love, and for once it’s not even a specific Pokémon....

To ensure you don’t miss out on all the free goodies, we’ve got start and end dates to the login event below, along with every Path of Gleaming Jade reward available in Genshin Impact and what Adventure Rank you need to be to claim them. For even more free rewards in version 3.1, be sure to also check out our codes page to keep up to date with all the latest drops, and the Of Ballads and Brews event page to see what you can get for taking part in its various sub-events....

Finding Phantasmal Conches during the event will earn you rewards like Ascension materials and Primogems. Find enough Conches around the Golden Apple Archipelago islands, and you can also unlock a new Fischl skin to go along with your free Fischl. You’ll find every Genshin Impact Phantasmal Conches location below. On this page: Genshin Impact Phantasmal Conches explained There are 20 Phantasmal Conches to collect during the Resonating Visions event in Genshin Impact....

That doesn’t mean that you still can’t get a good cost to performance ratio when upgrading or building a new PC. The 3060 range of cards can really improve your PC’s performance when gaming and save you a considerable amount of money. This 3060 has 12GB of DDR6 VRAM, a core clock of 1320MHz, a boost clock of 1777MHz, and has 3 display ports with dual fans to help cool it....

Original article: We’ve already seen some amazing deals for the Xbox Series S coming in under £190. Two years into a new console generation is quite early for any permanent price cuts to consoles, and with global supply constraints and inflation, Sony have taken the unusual step of increasing their console prices. The Xbox Series X, on the other hand, is receiving a rare discount from the folks at BT....

This Dell G15 has an Intel Core i7 chip included here with eight cores. This is enough for playing the latest games or juggling heavy tasks like video and photo editing with ease. Given there’s also a 120Hz display here, the CPU will be able to maintain everything smoothly when playing fast multiplayer games such as Fortnite, Rocket League and Apex Legends. The star of the show here is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 and its 6GB of memory....

These worlds live in service to two of video games’ most distinctly video-gamey moments: the “Aha! At last,” of finally smashing that purple obstacle with your new purple spell, and the “Huh! Didn’t expect to wind up here” of emerging into sunlight through the exit of some dark, hidden passageway, pockets clinking with the sound of plundered gold. The result is a curious tension. Of all the recent blockbusters awarded the dubious title of “cinematic experience,” God of War was the one that still carried the untamed heart of a video game....

There’s quite a lot going on in the trailer, and fans of 2018’s superb God of War will spot plenty of connective tissue between it and the upcoming sequel. Atreus is still searching for answers following the previous game’s big reveal, for instance, and a whole heap of returning characters put in an appearance. A still-very-pissed-off Freya is back - in its accompanying blog post, Sony says she’s one of the main antagonists in Ragnarok, alongside Thor - as is the ever-sassy Mimir....

Without these chests, your romp through the game will be a whole lot harder. Each of these chests are locked behind three seals that you’ll need to hit in order to unlock the chest. The challenge in God of War can ramp up fairly quickly, so get equipped with these upgrades to see you through Kratos and Atreus’ journey. If you’re interested in help with the main story, our God of War walkthrough and guide can help....

One NPC that would whole-heartily agree with me on this is the boat captain from the original God of War. Remember him? It is hard not to, as he was certainly put through it by Kratos. Please note, some of the below could be considered spoilers. If you’re still reading and want to go into the God of War series blind, this is your cue to head elsewhere now. The boat captain was swallowed whole by a Hydra during the first God of War game....

The news came as part of a GQ interview with Jim Ryan, where more details were also shared on the next generation of PlayStation VR - another candidate for release in 2022, and a likely target for Gran Turismo 7 when it comes out. “GT7 has been impacted by Covid-related production challenges and therefore will shift from 2021 to 2022,” Sony said in a short official statement. “With the ongoing pandemic, it’s a dynamic and changing situation and some critical aspects of game production have been slowed over the past several months....

This week, Eurogamer reported on how Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City fans had fully reverse-engineered both games - a passion project from a small group years in the making. Fan-created source code for both games was made available on GitHub, offering a raft of eye-catching improvements over the original games officially available to play today on PC. The work opened up the possibility of new mods, ray-tracing tech and ports to new platforms....

The feat was achieved by UnNameD, who uploaded a three-part video of the run to YouTube on Sunday. According to the description this was UnNameD’s 48th attempt at completing the run, in which he had “1HP, no Trevor ability, no armours, 0 deaths”. UnNameD used the One Hit KO mod to complete the run, which kills the player immediately if they take any form of damage. That includes rogue cars, stray bullets, or even falling a little too hard on the floor....

The teaser, which played while 343 Industries community director Brian Jarrard and community manager John Junyszek were going through cosmetic unlocks in the Season 2 Battle Pass, showed the logo for a company called “Lux Voluspa” before we hear two voices panicking about a “missing core”. The clip ends with a woman ominously saying “they’re here” and the return of the “Lux Voluspa” logo with the slogan: “Artificial Minds. Real Solutions....

This includes Pedro Pascal as Joel, Bella Ramsey as Ellie, Merle Dandridge as Marlene (a role she also played in Naughty Dog’s video game), Lamar Johnson as Henry, Anna Torv as Tess, Nick Offerman as Bill and Gabriel Luna as Tommy, to name but a few. You can see the full set of these new images below. HBO is also introducing some new characters to this adaptation. Graham Greene and Elaine Miles will both have guest roles in the series as Marlon and Florence, a “married couple surviving alone in the wilderness of post-apocalyptic Wyoming”....

That date was revealed this evening during a fresh trailer for Immortality, shown during this year’s PC Gaming Show. As previously announced, the title will launch on Xbox directly into Game Pass. Immortality is an investigative horror game where you sift through footage from three (fictional) classic films which starred the (also fictional) actress Marissa Marcel, in order to discover her fate. As with Barlow games past, your journey through the evidence is up to your powers of deduction....

As detailed on the Rockstar store page (thanks, PC Gamer), players will need 45GB of space and a recommended 16GB of memory, plus a GeForce GTX 760 or a Radeon R9 280, with a recommended GTX 970 or RX 570. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition minimum system requirements OS: Windows 10 64-bit Processor: Intel Core i5-6600K / AMD FX-6300 Memory: 8GB Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 2GB / AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB Disk: 45GB...

We’ve already seen glimpses of Sumeru, but now the developer has pulled back the curtain to give us a peek at the upcoming Sumeru deserts, as well as a load of new characters. Check it all out in the three-minute video below, although it all comes with the usual caveats that the new area is under development and the footage below “is not indicative of the final product: The design team also offers its insights into how Sumeru came to be, including new information about the land and its people, as well as the adorable Shroom-Kin, who have now evolved into Fungi that can be “territorial and rather aggressive”....

Getting right down to it, you are presented with two ray tracing options: ray traced reflections and ray traced shadows from the sun. These are binary selections - on/off - but ray traced reflections actually tie into the standard reflections quality setting, where the low to high settings there control the RT quality. First is the resolution of the reflections: moving from high to medium and then to low gradually reduces the amount of rays shot out used to calculate the reflection....