Scholarly Gamers Michael Camacho writes: Shape of the World's beautiful visuals and immersive soundtrack present a relaxing journey experiencing a world as it evolves around you.

Assassin's Creed has evolved to include romance options. Will that help or hinder the franchise?

Alex takes a look at the beautiful Battlefield 5 closed alpha, running on PC. Check out the Frostbite engine upgrades, the new destruction model and how the alpha currently runs on mainstream favourites GTX 1060 and RX 580!

The studio behind Left 4 Dead and Evolve, Turtle Rock Studios, is calling for a senior level designer to work on an “a globally known game franchise”. The listing calls for a candidate with “experience working with modern FPS engines” and on “a competitive first person shooter”, all which hint towards a new multiplayer series… our hopes are on a new Left 4 Dead but there is a lot to suggest it will be something quite different.
Turtle Rock Studios has a history of creating FPS games, after Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 the studio created Evolve - the 4 v 1 monster hunting shooter. Evolve never found an audience after its launch in 2015, and it announced in 2016 that it was ceasing the development of the franchise including all bug fixes and content updates. The likelihood of another Evolve game seems pretty unlikely at this point given its cancellation, though not entirely impossible, especially if they want a second crack at reviving the series.
Have a hankering to shoot more things? Here are some of the on PC.
A senior level designer is not the only role the studio is seeking.

The Fallout 76 release date has been announced at E3 2018. The new Bethesda game will be out this year. We also have the latest trailer and gameplay details.
The next entry in the famous retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic series has been revealed. Bethesda shared a surprising amount of information about the next Fallout game in the reveal and E3 2018 trailers. As the game title and trailer suggest, Fallout 76 will revolve around Vault 76, which is a vault that already exists within the Fallout Universe and stands apart in that it was set to open much, much earlier than most of the other Vault-Tec shelters.
Related: here are the .
In the meantime however, we have a couple of trailers to crawl through for details, and reams of background information from other games in the series to pore over for potential gameplay, setting, and story details. Join us as we dig through everything we know about the Fallout 76 reveal to find out how it connects to the other games in the Fallout series. Here’s everything we know about Fallout 76. Fallout 76 release date
Bethesda has provided a Fallout 76 release date: November 14, 2018. This was announced at Bethesda's E3 2018 showcase, debunking a previously leaked July release date. Fallout 76 gameplay

Set 50 years after the climactic events of the original Red Faction, Red Faction: Guerrilla allows players to take the role of an insurgent fighter with the newly re-established Red Faction movement as they battle for liberation from the oppressive Earth Defense Force. Red Faction: Guerrilla still defines the limits of destruction-based game-play with a huge open-world, fast-paced guerrilla-style combat, and true physics-based destruction. Features: * Open World Guerrilla Warfare - You decide who, when, where and how to battle. Utilize guerrilla tactics, improvised weaponry, and modified vehicles to lead insurgent attacks on EDF targets. Launch attacks based on your own gameplay style, take on missions in any order you choose, or engage in destructive activities to weaken the EDF's grip on Mars. * Strategic Destruction - Use destruction to your tactical advantage, setting ambushes or chain reaction explosions to attack enemy strongholds and permanently modify the game environment. Leverage fully-dynamic physics-based destruction to improvise on the fly: blow holes in a wall or floor to set an ambush or escape, take out a staircase to stop your pursuers, or drive vehicles through blown out walls. * Evolving & Emergent Gameplay - Carve your path through an ever-changing landscape as you improvise your combat tactics - mixing gameplay styles, vehicles, weapons and explosives to defeat the EDF. * Epic Sci-Fi Setting - Explore the huge, unforgiving Martian landscape, from the desolate mining outpost of Parker to the gleaming EDF capital city of Eos; then tear through the fully destructible open-world environments swarming with EDF forces, Red Faction resistance fighters, and the downtrodden settlers caught in the cross-fire. * Multiplayer Combat - There is no place to hide when you put your guerrilla warfare skills to the test in a variety of highly destructive multiplayer combat modes. Re-Mars-tered Features: > Fully reworked graphics Heavily reworked textures and graphic features adding for example specular maps. > Improved shadow rendering > Improved Lighting > Shader & Postprocessing rework > Native 4k support for the finest up to date mars destruction experience ever
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Release Date: Jul 03, 2018

The Last of Us: Part II opened Sony’s press conference with a bang. Not only did we meet a new character named Dina who’s obviously important in Ellie’s life, but we also saw a slice of the combat. As with any follow-up title, the next game always looks to improve on its predecessor, and true to Naughty Dog, it’s set on taking things to the next level. During E3 2018, I got the opportunity to sit with co-directors Kurt Margenau and Anthony Newman to discuss how combat has evolved and what we can expect from it the highly anticipated sequel. 
Proving More Stealth Options
According to Newman, when the Naughty Dog team sat down to think about the game, it explored what worked well and what would be appropriate for this game and expand on what was done previously. “The Last of Us has always been about the natural world and reclaiming society and civilization, so a natural evolution of Last of Us 1 was to increase the vegetation in the world,” he explained. “That obviously plays into the stealth game that’s super important, so that pushed us to create this analog stealth system where based on your stance, whether you’re crouched, standing, or prone in the thickness of the vegetation you’re in, enemies have an easier or harder time seeing you. There’s this sliding scale of how susceptible you are. It’s more appropriate to the tension of the world of The Last of Us.” That means gone are the isolated patches, and instead, the environments offer lush, full forests that provide plenty of opportunities for Ellie to strategize.
Melee Has Been Revamped
In the demo, we saw Ellie dodging left and right as enemies attacked her. Naughty Dog added a dedicated dodge button this time around. “This allows us to do a lot more with melee,” Margenau said. “You can fight multiple enemies at once and [there are] all these cool contextual moves she does like planting off the surface and attacking with various finishers. We also have all the melee weapons, like she’s able to take a hammer off someone and use that.”
“That’s actually a new detail; if you don’t have a melee weapon beyond your switchblade and you’re finishing off someone who does have one, you can smoothly transition and grab that weapon from them,” Newman added.
Historically, melee has been animation-based, but more collision-based elements are being added to it. For instance, if a brute keeps swinging his hammer, he can hit stuff in the environment if he misses the player. “It’s kind of a small detail but it makes the system much more connected to the environment,” Newman explained. This has also enhanced the returning melee weapons, such as the machete and switchblade. Newman spoke to the movesets being more nuanced and complex than they were in the first game.
Taking Care Of Arrow Wounds
In the trailer, we saw Ellie face off against bow-and-arrow enemies. At one point, she gets an arrow stuck in her. This was not scripted for the demo; it’s something else you must consider as you battle menacing foes. When an arrow pierces you, it stays in you until you find a safe place to remove it. “While it’s in you, you don’t have access to listen mode and your aim is all out of whack,” Margenau said. “It’s the first status effect that we’ve introduced in the game,” Newman added.
Making Crafting Matter
Margenau confirmed there will be new craftable ammo for the bow and arrow, such as the explosive arrow we saw in the demo. “When we think about crafting such a core part of that experience in the Last of Us is the choice you make and what you give up when you craft it,” Margenau said. The team is always looking for what makes the experience unique as opposed to giving you a laundry list of items you can craft. It’s important there’s always something at stake. “It is a delicate balance of what options you give the player and what we showed is just a slice of what we’re planning,” Margenau teased. 
A Different Fighter With More Enemies To Master
This entry is upping the ante with the weapons enemies use against you, such as bow-and-arrow users alongside different classes of the infected. Margenau spoke to one big adversary, who has a heavy melee attack and can throw Ellie through things and over things. He’s certainly no pushover; he can also block and parry your attacks. This doesn’t mean Ellie is defenseless against him, though. “This is obviously a harsh world and anybody who is going to survive in this world must become a very competent fighter,” Newman said. “Ellie has had five years to pick up some new tricks along the way.”
However, the team also had to think of how she would be a different fighter than Joel and what would make sense for her character. “She’s not as big or as bulky as Joel,” Newman explained. “She’s not going to be able to just overpower enemies with her raw strength.” 
To compensate for this difference and to keep combat interesting, Naughty Dog added a dodge for the melee to increase complexity. A new addition is also a jump button to make environments more vertical. “This makes escaping more dynamic and frenetic,” Newman said about the addition. “Escaping is always an option,” Margenau added. “The squeezing through and hiding under things … you don’t always have to kill everyone.” 
No Easy Way Out
While I discussed combat with Margenau and Newman one thing that kept coming up was the importance of tension, which they aren’t letting simmer in the slightest. “We’re trying to provide a lot more options for the player,” Newman said. “Overall, the level of threat that you’ll be facing means that you’re not going to be able to take things head on. Whether you want to do stealth or go loud with your combat, you’re never going to be able to do it without putting a lot of careful thought into what you’re doing.” The co-directors assured us they’ve expanded both the stealth and action playstyles. Naughty Dog wants players to have options and different ways to tackle every situation. “We’re not trying to make it more of an action game than The Last of Us,” Margenau assured. “It’s still a survival action game.”
To learn more about The Last of Us: Part II, check out that delves deeper into the narrative. 

It's an island full of dinosaurs and you've got to survive.
No, it's not Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and no, you are neither Chris Pratt nor Bryce Dallas Howard (condolences).
It's Ark: Survival Evolved, out on iOS and Android right now. James and Ric find out if it's any good, and try to work out why Sony hates Switch Fortnite players so much.
Download episode 445:
 (right click to save-as, left click to play)
 
 

Cast your mind back to November 2017, and you may remember Faker’s tears as three-time world champions SKT T1 were beaten in the final of the League of Legends World championships. Thwarting SKT at the final hurdle were Samsung Galaxy, who lifted the Summoner’s Cup after a resounding 3-0 win. Now, as is tradition, a set of skins celebrating the team’s win are making their way to the game.
As League of Legends’ competitive scene continues to change, so does the way in which teams perform on the World stage. With that in mind, Riot has been tweaking the way in which they decide on who gets a skin in the wake of a victory.
Check out our list of the s.
In a recent thread, product manager Riot Supercakes said that “over the last year, we’ve evolved and updated our approach to selecting the skins we make to celebrate the team and players who win Worlds. As teams continue to experiment with their rosters, we’ve had to reevaluate our criteria for the skins."
Only six players on a winning team will be considered for a skin. In order to earn a new cosmetic, a player has to have had an impact on a team’s progression out of the group or play-in stages, or has to have participated in at least one knockout game.