Tales of the Shire’s system requirements have me considering grafting a graphics card to a Hobbit’s bum

Tales Of The Shire: A The Lord Of The Rings Game is finally coming out this month, offering terrifyingly cosy Hobbitiness to us bumbling Bilbos. Its system requirements have just dropped, and they’re pretty reasonable.

In fact, its needs are so modest and homely that I’m wondering whether you might be able to run it on a Hobbit, provided you could find one in real life and staple some Nvidia – or AMD- branded plastic into the surface of its flesh. It’s ok, I’m sure Gandalf has a magic stapler that doesn’t produce excruciating pain if you fire it directly into a person.

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Helldivers 2’s latest patch lets you impale baddies with flags, as the bots take aim at the Democracy Space Station

Fresh Helldivers 2 patch alert. This one’s patch 01.003.200, and it brings the latest in pointy flag tip technology, in addition to another round of weapon balancing. You’ll need that flag stabbiness too, as the latest Galactic War twist has seen the Automatons try to wrestle control of Super Earth’s space station.

Yep, stop trying to rename a city ‘Gun’ for five minutes, some stuff’s going down in HD2 that you need to be clued in on, even if its just so you can run around the room cheering at how much more effective your Flame Sentry‘ll now be.

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ZeniMax Union say they’re fighting for staff left in limbo by Microsoft cancelling MMO as part of mass layoffs

As part of their mass layoffs earlier this month, Microsoft cancelled an MMORPG that was in the works at The Elder Scrolls Online developers ZeniMax Online Studios. Now, the union that represents a number of devs left in limbo by that game’s canning have issued an update about the process of fighting for their futures.

ZOS’ MMO, codenamed Project Blackbird, wasn’t the only game Microsoft pulled the plug on as they let go of around 9k people. Rare’s Everwild and The Initiative’s Perfect Dark reboot were also wiped out, with the latter studio being shuttered to boot.

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Finally, a game about a boy who thinks he’s a tomb searching for a dead body to bury inside of him

The first thing that happened to me in the demo for The Little Tomb: The Maholova Club And The Search For A Dead Body was a stuffed horse on a spring telling me it knew when and how I’d die. Many such horses. You play as Kofun, a boy shaped like a keyhole tomb who is also sort of an actual keyhole tomb but also a boy who wants to fulfill his destiny as a keyhole tomb, namely by finding a dead body to bury inside of himself. He lives in a park with his mate Haniwa, who is a Haniwa. Haniwa’s secret is that he’s very good at calligraphy. Here’s some visual orientation in case you’re not caught up yet.

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Open world wuxia RPG Where Winds Meet is having a city-sized playtest this month

You might remember Where Winds Meet as the open world Wuxia RPG that mixes scenes of exquisite calligraphy with scenes of hooligan sword masters subjecting blameless bears to sonic bombardment, paralysing whole gangs of chimney sweeps with chained Blink attacks, and getting chased by angry geese.

If you don’t, you can watch the below trailer or read Ed Thorn’s (RPS in peace) preview from 2023, in which he commented “I’m both excited to see more and a tad worried it could end up being a disjointed, overstretched mash”. Then you can consider signing up to the game’s next playtest, which runs from July 25th to July 30th.

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AMD’s Ryzen Prime Day deals are somehow still live, here’s the top discounts at Amazon

Amazon Prime Day might be over, but some of the best Ryzen CPU deals are still live right now. There’s still time to snag big discounts. We’re seeing up to 39% off, which is rare for these processors. No Prime membership? No problem. Amazon’s free 30-day Prime trial still applies, so there’s really no excuse to miss these while they’re hot.

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Ancient Aliens vs Predator game briefly resurrected by Steam player thirst for Six Packs

Deep beneath the smog of a plausibly denied planetoid, there lurks a space hulk full of dessicated hand monsters, shorn dreadlocks and long-emptied Pulse Rifles. The vessel mostly lies silent, but every so often, an ancient server deep within the core crackles awake, beaming an ominous signal far out into the void, and the chitinous corridors come alive with flamethrowers and squelchy stabbing noises and oh, so much screaming. Also, the coveted chirping of Steam achievements.

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Whether you love stealth games or hate them, Eriksholm isn’t worth your time

Great stealth games are basically forever games. Whether or not they’re boosted with regular live service jabs like a Hitman, it always feels like it’s worth returning to a Dishonored, or a Metal Gear, or a Desperados 3. Always ways to finesse or experiment or utterly style on encounters you’ve slipped your way through dozens of times before. If you love stealth, you’ve likely got a library full of such games you’ve been meaning to get back to at some point. If you don’t, you’ve likely been put off somewhere along the line by the sort of tired and punishing design tropes Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is full of. Naturally, I don’t think it’s worth your time either way.

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