However, Epic’s objectives with this demo are many and varied, beyond the obvious visual spectacle. We spoke to key members of the firm’s special projects team to gain a better understanding of the full significance of this landmark release, discovering that the team has some serious pedigree, having made the original Reflections demo for the Nvidia Turing launch, using Star Wars: The Force Awakens assets to demonstrate hardware accelerated ray tracing....

Video games are filled with cities, and one of the great pleasures of a certain kind of game is getting to explore an urban environment that’s been designed especially to intrigue you and keep you busy. So we started to wonder: what are the best video game cities, including both real and imagined places? And what are the best individual pieces from those cities? And what would a city look like if you pulled it together from your favourite elements of other video game cities?...

Of course, by any virtually any measurable criteria - bar power consumption, of course! - the Switch rendition of Doom Eternal is the least preferable way to play the game. In fact, it calls to mind classic conversions like Quake for Sega Saturn. It was by far the least impressive version, yet the technological achievement in actually making it happen was simply immense. By extension, I can praise Panic Button’s work here while knowing full well that it is best played on other systems....

Shift your attention toward the trailer below and skip to the 1 minute 15 mark, and you’ll see a peculiar thing. As the promo winds down, the camera suddenly lurches to the right, revealing that a second Crypto’s been loitering nearby all along. “Are you done yet, 137?”, the clone asks, before the original replies, “Wait your turn, little tadpole, I’m only getting started”. The most notable thing about this whole exchange, however, isn’t the dialogue, but the outfit Crypto #2 is wearing - it’s the same one Crypto (or more accurately, his clone, Cryptosporidium-138) wore in Pandemic Studios’ 2006 sequel Destroy All Humans!...

Players familiar with the original 2018 game should be immediately at home with Evolution 2, which once again tasks budding managers with building and maintaining their own dinosaur theme park, laying out exhibits, tending to visitors needs, and, of course, making sure the attractions don’t eat the guests. It’s not all business as usual though; Jurassic World Evolution 2 shifts the action away from the exclusively tropical setting of Muertes Archipelago, as seen in the first game, and gives players the chance to build their parks across a diverse range of new environments - from dense forests to scorched deserts - each with unique environmental challenges, including bespoke weather such as sandstorms and snow....

Taking its cue from the upcoming Jurassic World Dominion, Frontier’s latest blob of DLC for its park management sequel ushers in a star-studded cast, new features, and, of course, new dinosaurs, amounting to what the studio is calling the game’s “biggest DLC to date”. First up, there’s a new campaign that’ll task players with constructing a Research Compound in multiple stages. This features the vocal talents of Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Campbell Scott in their respective big screen roles, and brings a new feature that’ll see players unearthing rare genomes in amber mines to create feathered prehistoric species....

Square’s new Switch bundle - which goes by the name Life is Strange: Arcadia Bay Collection, rather than the Remastered Collection moniker used on other platforms - includes remastered versions of developer Don’t Nod’s much-loved original Life is Strange and its Deck-Nine-developed prequel Life is Strange: Before the Storm. This new collection - which was originally due to launch on 1st February alongside other platforms before recieving a last-minute delay - retains the same acclaimed narrative core as the originals, following the supernaturally imbued adventures of teenage friends Max and Chloe, but promises a range of enhancements on Switch....

Lone Echo 2 catapults protagonists Captain Olivia Rhodes and player-controlled android Echo One (nicknamed “Jack”) 400 years into the future, where an abandoned space station holds the key to returning home. Pre-release glimpses suggest it’ll deliver another bout of moody sci-fi adventure built around zero-gravity traversal and puzzling, with Ready at Dawn promising “complex challenges” and “startling discoveries” as its “emotional” far-future story unfolds. Lone Echo 2 was originally announced all the way back in 2018 for a release the following year, but the game has see multiple delays along the way - the most recent due to development challenges involving the ongoing coronavirus pandemic....

Now, however, one player has shared what seems to be none other than Dunder Mifflin from NBC’s mockumentary The Office tucked away in Part 1. As shown in the clip below, you can see Joel taking shelter from his enemies in a seemingly ordinary office. However, on closer inspection, there is something familiar about its layout. As the narrator explains, you can see what would be the equivalent of Pam’s receptionist desk opposite the office’s entrance lobby....

As it’s built on the same fundamental technology, the game runs much like Remastered - and has the exact same recommended system specifications. However, there’s an argument that city performance may be marginally improved (I measured a circa five percent increase) but that’s likely down to the revamped winter city, with the small changes to art this entails - like the lack of leaves on the trees, for example. In putting together optimised settings and the PlayStation 5 comparisons you’ll see in the embedded video below, the changes Nixxes has made allow me to get a better lock on what some of the settings actually do - and now all of them actually seem fully functional....

Numerous options available via NexusMods tweak the trilogy’s lighting, colour palette and field of view - such as the Better Camera (Higher FOV) mod by JadeBarker. An early attempt at unlocking gay romance in Mass Effect 1 has also already appeared. Same Sex Mod for Default Shepard lets male Shepard romance Kaiden and female Shepard romance Ashley. But this will only work with the game’s default Shepard models, and does not add any cut dialogue (Mass Effect did originally record voice lines for these romances, but did not implement them in the final game)....

In the patch notes for Sim Update 4, aka patch 1.16.20.0, the development team said it had performed optimisations for the initial full download of Microsoft Flight Simulator so the base game is 83GB instead of over 170GB. It’s good news to see the game’s download halved, although 83GB is still a chunky old effort. According to Microsoft Flight Simulator’s official specifications, you’ll still need 150GB of space on your hard-drive for the installation....

Speaking at the WSJ TechLive event on 26th October, Xbox head Phil Spencer admitted its Xbox Series X/S consoles are sold at a loss, with the expectation that revenue will be made up elsewhere on accessories and games. “Consoles as a business model, in the overall scope of gaming, is fairly small relative to the places people play. Consoles evolved to a business model much different from phones where consoles are actually sold at a loss in the market,” he said....

Last night, fans spotted games such as Soul Hackers 2, GTA5 and Elden Ring were listed with an option to play via cloud streaming. Some speculated this was being rolled out now, in advance of a Gamescom announcement later this month. But Microsoft has now said that the games’ listings - which also flagged them as being part of Xbox Game Pass - were bugged, and that the issue has now been fixed....

In Atrio you play as an android with a 15-minute battery. Your task is to do what you’re told, popping out of a tube onto the overworld, which is desolate and grim but also remarkably stylish. Atrio is a stunner, a kind of isometric plane of geometric art, the natural world rebuilt, presumably - this is far-future dystopia, of a sort - as if it were some utilitarian cuckoo-clock. Seemingly mechanical deer skip about, eating sap and pooping out fuel....

This year, MLB The Show 22 will arrive for PlayStation, Xbox - and Nintendo Switch. Last night, box art for the game was released showing Los Angeles Angels’ Shohei Ohtani - and that PlayStation logo - on all versions. This year, again, it will arrive as part of Xbox Game Pass on day one. Even after last year, there’s still something odd about seeing the PlayStation logo on other console boxes....

Schachner - whose extensive CV includes composing credits on the likes of Anthem, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare - was widely praised for her work on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s soundtrack in 2019. Schachner returned for this year’s Modern Warfare 2, but has now confirmed she won’t be providing any further music for the title - or indeed Call of Duty: Warzone - as a result of seemingly insurmountable work concerns....

If you head on over to the phone notifications page on the Battle.net support site, you will see the text stating that those playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, or those with “newly created Overwatch 2 accounts, and newly created Call of Duty: Modern Warfare accounts”, will be required to add a phone number to access the game. The page continues: “Adding a phone number will allow Blizzard Entertainment to send you notifications when important changes are made to your account....

Specifics are near-non-existent at present, but, in its brief announcement post, Capcom teased a “massive amount” of content in this “new, ominous chapter” of Monster Hunter Rise, including new stories, locations, and monsters. Players can also expect new hunting actions and a new quest rank - very much in the same vein as Monster Hunter World’s Iceborne expansion, although probably not quite as frosty going by its name - with Capcom promising more details at a later date....

Come Sunbreak’s release, players will have the opportunity to depart for new climes, with the bustling port town of Elgado Outpost serving as the expansion’s colourful new hub area. From there, it’s just a short hop to Sunbreak’s brand-new map, The Citadel - which combines a diverse range of biomes, including lush forests, icy mountains, and foggy swampland, with a huge ruined castle as its centrepiece. Capcom describes The Citadel - said to be a once thriving, but now devastated part of the kingdom, slowly being reclaimed by nature - as a “key location” for Sunbreak’s new Master Rank quests in its video showcase, taking viewers on tour of the castle and its surroundings biomes, as well as offering a glimpse of the location’s new endemic life....