YaKoMoS

Boris Johnson has described veganism as a “crime against cheese-lovers” in a new interview. Speaking on BBC Breakfast, the Prime Minister was asked to address rumours that he had decided to go vegan for the month of January to lose weight. "No, I am not," Johnson laughed. "I had thought of it but it requires so much concentration." Johnson added that he is impressed by those who can follow a plant-based diet. "I take my hat off to vegans who can handle it and manage to avoid all non-vegan products," he said. "I mean, you can't eat cheese, can you, if you're a vegan?" Johnson asked. "That's just a crime against cheese-lovers." Johnson's comments have tickled the internet, with viewers swiftly sharing their thoughts on social media. "Boris Johnson says he considered going vegan for January but decided against it because it 'requires so much concentration'.... (Just a reminder that he's the Prime Minister!)," tweeted one person. Many viewers also took issue with Johnson's pronunciation of "vegan", which he pronounced "vee-ganne".

Austria is still refusing to sign up to a key United Nations treaty recognising the rights of migrants, despite a change in government that saw the far-right replaced by the country's green party. The new government took office on 7 January this year with conservative ÖVP leader Sebastian Kurz in for his second stint as chancellor. Mr Kurz was previously in coalition with the far-right FPÖ, but has now gone into government with the Austrian Green Party following elections. The previous Austrian government rejected the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration - which recognises the rights of migrants to access basic services and be treated humanely. But it appears that the switch of the far-right for the greens has had no effect on the new government's position with regards to the compact. "Austria's line on this issue will remain completely unchanged," ÖVP foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg told the APA news agency. Mr Schallenberg said joining the treaty was not compatible with the new coalition agreement, while a government spokesperson said Austria believed the agreement was "not a suitable instrument for solving the migration challenges". Green vice Chancellor Werner Kogler also confirmed his party would not be pushing for membership of the treaty, stating: “The government program is an overall compromise." The Austrian government says the agreement does not properly distinguish between legal and illegal migration, or between economic migrants and refugees. While most countries have signed up to the pact, some states with governments particularly hostile to immigration have dropped out, including the US, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Israel, Australia and Slovakia.

Spore is an enjoyable game that pulls off an interesting balancing act. On one hand, it lets you create a creature and guide its maturation from a single cell to a galactic civilization through an unusual process of evolutionary development. Because the tools used to create and revise this creature are so robust and amusing, and each creation's charms are so irresistible, it's hard not to get attached to your digital alter ego. On the other hand, this intimacy is abandoned in the long, later portions of the game, when you lead your full-grown civilization in its quest for universal domination. The idea sounds ambitious, though Spore isn't as much a deep game as it is a broad one, culling elements from multiple genres and stripping them down to their simplest forms. By themselves, these elements aren't very remarkable; but within the context of a single, sprawling journey, they complement each other nicely and deliver a myriad of delights. Spore's greatest asset, by far, is its intuitive set of creation tools. If you've played the separate Creature Creator, released earlier this year, you're only seeing a small piece of the puzzle. At various stages, you'll construct, for example, town halls, land vehicles sporting cannons, and aircraft that spout religious propaganda. The creatures are the true stars though, and you can mix and match legs, arms, mouths, wings, and lots of other parts into a beautiful work of art--or a hideous monstrosity. Each part of your creation can be turned, resized, and twisted, so whether you wish to re-create a favorite cartoon character or develop an original concept, you'll probably find what you need in here. You don't need to be a budding Pablo Picasso to make an interesting creature, however; just slapping a bunch of random parts together can result in a truly hysterical beast. Yet even if your onscreen buddy is a three-armed ogre with scales running up his belly, you'll be spending some time getting to know him in the first few hours of gameplay, and you'll probably develop some affection for him in spite of his hideousness. You will need to put some creative energy into Spore, but if you aren't the artistic type or don't find the building- and vehicle-creation tools as interesting as those for your creature, you can use premade designs that ship with the game. Even better, you can utilize Spore's extensive community tools, inserting other players' innovations into your own game in progress. It's actually a lot of fun to sift through others' creations, if only to marvel at the remarkable amount of imagination on display. And you can do this from within the game proper using an online database called the Sporepedia. In Spore, community and gameplay come together in a fresh and user-friendly manner. In fact, to get the most out of the game, you should be online whenever you play. Not only will doing so give you access to the Sporepedia, but most of the other creatures, vehicles, and even entire planets you encounter will have been created by other players. The early release of the Creature Creator has already proven that community involvement is a core aspect of the Spore experience, and the sharing factor is poised to give the game remarkable longevity. In a game of Spore proper, however, you won't start off by molding the creature of your dreams. The game is split into five stages, starting with the cell stage. (However, once you unlock a stage, you can start a new game there and bypass any stage that comes before it). The creation tools at this stage are simple, limited to a 2D cell and a few odds and ends, like flagella and spikes. The accompanying gameplay is similarly minimal, and if you've played Flow for the PlayStation 3 or PSP, you will have a good idea of how it works. You choose the path of a carnivore or an herbivore at the outset, which determines what sort of food bits you can munch on. From here, you maneuver your cell about the screen using the keyboard or mouse, avoiding creatures that are looking to you for their next meal while grabbing a bite or two yourself. If you're an herbivore, you seek out the green algae; if you're a carnivore, you need meat, which means waiting for a fish fight to break out and gobbling up the remains, or starting the fight yourself. You'll also uncover new parts as you swim about, and can then attach them to your organism. To enter the cell creator, you send out a mating call, which lets you get romantic with another member of your species. Then, you add a few bits that make you swim faster or jab harder, and jump back into the gene pool. However, it is all ultrasimple: You swim around eating so you can get bigger, and avoid being eaten. If you do fall victim to a sharp-toothed protozoan, you'll rehatch with no real punishment. All in all, the cell stage may last you 20 or 25 minutes, which is just as well, since it's not very interesting and wears out its welcome quickly. Soon enough, you'll leave the environs of the sea, add some legs, and lumber into the creature stage. You'll still find new parts scattered about, this time hidden within the skeletal remains of other beasts. Again, the gameplay itself is pretty simple: You wander around exploring for other creatures and advance through the stage by either befriending other nests or conquering them. If you want to go the aggressive route, you should equip sharp claws, tusks, and spitters; if you want to make friends with the local duck-billed orangutans, you'll go with parts that let you charm, sing, dance, and pose. Should you decide on violence, the encounter plays out much like a very plain online RPG, in which you click on your target and use one of your four special abilities to do damage. If you want to make friends by singing and dancing, you'll play a little game of Simon Says, mimicking the actions of your hopeful buddies. As you progress through the stage, you build up a little pack of followers, and they will join you in your battles--and your posing routines. The gameplay in the creature stage may be simple, but it's here that you start to see what can make playing Spore such a special and rewarding experience. Seeing your creature slowly evolve from a flat cell to an awkward, gangly land dweller is fun, particularly if he doesn't look as though such a beast in real life would be able to walk, much less bounce around the forest. This is where your relationship with the creature is most prominent, and that connection is what makes the exploration of the creature stage so interesting. When you encounter a towering six-legged atrocity charging at the locals, you'll hightail it out of there--yet still be in awe, just as if you were the little guy himself. It's more about the gawking than the playing, but whether you're joining a pack of polka-dotted parakeets in chorus or catching a glimpse of an overhead UFO, there are some legitimately appealing moments to be had. Once you reach the tribal stage, you will lose some of that connection with your creation. You will no longer be playing as an individual, but rather controlling a tribe, and the stage plays like a slimmed down real-time strategy game. It's disappointing that you can no longer make adjustments to your tribe's main features past this point; you can, however, adorn the creatures with different clothing items for the duration. Fortunately, the charm and personality of the creature stage is still very much evident, and you'll still have the same thrills as you encounter excellent and unusual creatures as you order about your small group of wacky travelers. Conceptually, the tribal stage is similar to the creature stage, only now you focus the violence on an entire village, including structures. If you like that sort of thing, you can go so far as to equip tribe members with torches and set the enemy village ablaze. If you'd rather woo your neighbors with the sweet, soothing sounds of song, there are a few instruments at your disposal. Spore then pulls an about-face when you reach the civilization stage. Gone are your creature-controlling days; your beloved brutes, once the jewels of your eye, will now po[CENSORED]te the cities, and you will instead create fleets of land, sea, and air vehicles. Now you don't have just a tribe--you have an entire society to handle, though you shouldn't let the name of the stage lead you to think that you'll find the complexity of Sid Meier's classic series here. The creation tools are just as easy to use--and just as comprehensive--as those of the creature creator. Designing a mass of metal may not have the same charm as molding a living being from scratch, but the tools give you more control over patterns and colors, so expect to lose more hours of your life tinkering with the possibilities. You'll also create a town hall, a house, a factory, and an entertainment venue, and placing these in your cities has an effect on the happiness of your residents. However, the happiness mechanic is so simple that most players should be able to beat the stage on even the highest difficulty setting without giving it much thought. The stage plays out like an even broader version of the tribal stage, though you will be dealing with some light resource gathering. However, the main strategic element comes from the three different ways you can conquer your foes: economic, religious, or military. Each city is limited to one of these three brands based on how you choose to play, though the process plays out remarkably the same, regardless. For example, if you go for military victory, you send your attack units toward your enemy cities in standard RTS fashion. To convert the same city, you send religious vehicles over to broadcast a holographic image that preaches to the citizens. It's neat to watch the transparent creature spouting the word over the opposing city--it's just too bad that the gameplay is so limited. Each city can produce only one type of land vehicle, one type of air vehicle, and one type of sea vehicle. If you go for a pure military victory, for example, you will see only three units in the stage. It's breezy and enjoyable, for sure--it's just not deep or challenging. And in its final transformation, Spore enters the space stage, where many of the previous gameplay elements coalesce. As a result, this stage feels like an actual destination, and while it's not nearly as complex as the space exploration games it cribs from, it does exhibit the great charms of the early stages that are missing from the civilization stage. This is partially because it harks back to the creature stage, putting you in control of a single spacecraft (one you build using the wonderful creation tools, of course), and sending you off to explore the great black beyond. The scope of this stage is suitably massive. You travel from star to star, exploring newly discovered planets and searching for your galactic neighbors, and you can skim the terrain of a planet--or pull the camera light-years away to see the entire galaxy at a glance. This stage is somewhat reminiscent of 2002's terrific Space Rangers and its sequel, and even exhibits some of that game's wacky humor. You travel from system to system, grabbing missions from the local civilizations who will crack jokes about everything from cake to umbrellas. Most of these missions are quick and to the point: abduct this creature and bring it back, eliminate a bunch of sick animals on this planet, eliminate all of our enemy's turrets on a neighboring world, and so on. Just as in the creature stage, you will eventually pick up some AI companions, further allowing you to expand across the galactic map. To expand, you can't just plop down a colony and watch it evolve. The economy moves much more slowly in this stage than in previous ones, so you need to be careful about how you spend funds based on how you wish to play. Nor can you just choose any planet. Some worlds are simply incapable of supporting life, while others need to have the environment altered to allow for expansion and po[CENSORED]tion. This is where the terraforming tools come in. Not only may you need to drop items onto the terrain to increase the density of the atmosphere or make the air hotter, but you'll need to jump-start the ecology by throwing in plants and creatures abducted from other worlds. These tools don't just limit you to gameplay necessities, however. You can terraform entire swaths of land, putting craters and plateaus where you see fit, or even dyeing the water purple. In space stage there is, for the first time in Spore, a lot to do. At times, you are shooting lasers at enemy saucers, like a 3D action game; at others, you're outfitting colonies with turrets; at still others, you're negotiating trade routes with your allies. It's a pleasant and accessible mix. Unsurprisingly, none of these elements are as deep as you would expect in a deep space strategy game, but the real joys come from swooping onto a planet and skimming its surface to see your own creations--and those of others--po[CENSORED]ting them, and in various stages of advancement. The stylized, colorful visuals keep your eyes constantly engaged, from big, bulbous trees to herds of tentacled younglings frolicking about. The animations are top-notch, so while it's hard to imagine what a bowlegged, long-necked crane with four toes on each foot would actually look like as it ambled about, Spore makes such sights look goofily authentic. It isn't a technical powerhouse; there is a good bit of geometry pop-in, and the game does not appear to support antialiasing. Its charming, exaggerated look more than makes up for it though, and on three separate machines of various specifications, Spore ran smoothly at the highest settings without a single crash. Spore's sound design shines from beginning to end. The creatures themselves sound terrific, and are the source of much of the game's overflowing charm. The creature and tribal stages sound enchanting, from the thumping beat of the drums when you order tribal units to the squawks and squeaks of your creations. The subsequent stages are of similarly high quality. Of particular note is the customizable ambient music introduced in the civilization stage, and the hysterical incomprehensible Simlish spoken by the various galactic leaders. Spore keeps a timeline of events, pinpointing every decision you've made and assigning you into broad categories based on your overall behavior (social, adaptable, and so on), so there's plenty of reason to try a different approach. Not that these varied approaches make for drastically different gameplay, but they do give you a reason to revisit the amusing moments that make Spore unique. Taken on their own, its pieces are nothing special. As parts of a singular ambitious vision, they work far better. Throw in the best customization tools seen in years and an enthusiastic community brimming with creativity, and you have a legitimately great game that will deliver hours of quality entertainment.

Life in the Old West must have been gritty, violent, and short if it was anything like Gun, a new Western-themed action adventure from Tony Hawk series developer Neversoft. Featuring an open-ended environment that you can traverse on foot or on horseback, plenty of gory shoot-outs, numerous optional side missions, and an interesting story, Gun initially seems like a 19th-century Grand Theft Auto. Unfortunately, the experience just doesn't last long enough to be savored. Gun's main story missions are exciting, but the main plot is over so quickly that the whole thing just ends up feeling rushed, and the various side missions aren't compelling enough to hold your interest after the end credits roll. So it turns out that a terse, simple title like "Gun" is really the perfect fit for what could have been a great game, if only it had more meat on its bones. Gun is the tale of Colton White, a soft-spoken gunslinger raised by a resourceful old hunter named Ned, made instantly likable thanks to an excellent voice performance by Kris Kristofferson. One day Ned and Colton's hunt lands them on a steamboat carrying some sort of important artifact that Ned seems to know about. However, he's not alone in his knowledge, and as the ship is besieged, Colton barely escapes with his life. He makes his way to Dodge City at Ned's request, and from there embarks on a journey that will put him up against a greedy ex-military railroad mogul and his wicked cohorts. There's a strong cast of characters in Gun, and the 3D cinematic cutscenes are impressively motion-captured and choreographed, making each story mission worth looking forward to if only to see how Colton's misadventures will continue to pan out. Colton will find himself on both sides of the law, allying with a diverse array of different comrades in his efforts to find answers and seek vengeance. Unfortunately, the story hurries along at a breakneck pace. Situations that seem intended to introduce entire chapters of gameplay tend to be resolved almost immediately. For example, at a certain point, Colton is deputized as a peacekeeper in Empire City, the game's largest town. You expect to then undertake a series of sheriff-style missions, but Colton's career path very quickly goes sour as the story jarringly goes in another direction. It blazes on like this until the end credits roll--maybe six hours after you first begin play, depending on how many side missions you opted to take on and depending on how much trouble you had with the final battle, which is one of the only tough fights at the normal difficulty setting. There's just no time to really get to like (or dislike) the main cast. The mechanics of gameplay certainly are good, and even though there are only a few main story missions, they tend to be diverse and packed with intense action. Gun carefully walks the line between being a run-and-gun shoot-'em-up and more of a realistic, tactical shooter. You get to use all kinds of different authentic weapons, including pistols, rifles, shotguns, sharpshooters, bows, and dynamite in order to take on vastly superior odds, which Colton can overcome because of his excellent marksmanship and his ability to instantly recover all his health by drinking from his flask (what's in that thing?). Controlling Colton primarily from a third-person perspective, you'll also get to take on ferocious Apache warriors, play with barrels of TNT, fire cannons, and more. Plus, you also get to ride and fight on horseback, making for some high-speed battles. Your horse's hooves are arguably even more dangerous than your firearms, and besides, it can be mightily entertaining to trample your foes, causing their bodies to get flung about like rag dolls. The horse-riding mechanics are fun and well designed, allowing you to shoot rather effectively while mounted. You also get to execute quick sliding turns (an awful lot like handbrake turns in a driving game) while balancing your horse's health with your top speed. You can spur your horse to go faster and faster, but this wears the animal down. Also, with the exception of those times when you run up against a barrier of some sort and just keep running, all the animation on horseback looks very convincing. The only problem is that there's no real sense of horse ownership in the game, as horses are completely disposable. Western heroes like Colton White ought to have their very own trusty steeds, but in Gun, you'll just grab whichever animal is closest to you and won't grow attached to any of them. If you figured there'd be a lot of shooting in a game called Gun, you figured correctly. Colton will typically be up against large numbers of foes, but there's a very wide auto-aim window on his pistols, which lets you easily blast multiple foes even when they're hiding behind cover. Chances are you'll do most of your damage with your rifles, though, since you can aim down the sights of these in a first-person view, which lets you effectively shoot foes from afar. You also have limited access to a quick-draw ability, which slows everything down for a little while and allows you to quickly line up a bunch of deadly shots against groups of foes. Magically, you don't even have to reload during a quick-draw attack, though Colton's pistol ammo is unlimited anyway, and his other ammo types may be replenished by conveniently strewn power-ups. Colton can even go to town with melee weapons like knives and hatchets, easily slicing up large numbers of foes. So the action isn't exactly realistic, but it still feels that way to a certain extent since your foes tend to weave and dodge effectively, and will shout to press the attack when you're caught reloading. Most importantly, the weapons feel like they pack a real punch, and enemies are fun to fight, especially ones on horseback. It's hard to decide whether it's more satisfying to shoot a rider from his mount or to take the mount out from under him. The shooting action is great, though it's not for the faint of heart. The makers of this game must be big fans of HBO's Deadwood or something, because the level of violence and general vulgarity in Gun greatly surpasses what you'd probably expect from a typical Western, even if you've seen some of the gorier ones. Gun pays tribute to the classic films in the genre, from the unbelievable rescue from the gallows in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly to the unforgettable last battle (courtesy of a Gatling gun) in The Wild Bunch. However, Gun isn't just bloody; it's downright gnarly at times, like when you blast a big chunk out of an enemy's head with a clean shot from your rifle. Expect graphic violence, racism, and misogyny in heavy doses during the course of the game. Hey, no one said the Old West was pleasant. But for what it's worth, some of this mature-themed content borders on being gratuitous, since Gun clearly isn't aiming for historical authenticity. You'll realize this from the moment you first catch a glimpse of the main villain's private locomotive, emblazoned with a big, fat skull logo. The game is far too over the top to be taken seriously. Apart from the brevity of the storyline, other aspects of Gun feel rather half-baked. For instance, you can purchase a scalping knife, which you can use to finish off dying enemies rather gruesomely. Although, apart from whatever sadistic thrill you might get from this, there doesn't seem to be any point to it at all, since mortally wounded foes are effectively out of the fight, and all the scalps you're ostensibly collecting aren't even quantified as a line item on the statistics screen (which, for reference, records things like number of headshots you've scored). Furthermore, the free-roaming format of Gun means that you can trot into town and start trouble if you so choose, such as by wantonly killing random townspeople. This causes a "town patience" meter to dwindle, and if you empty it, a "showdown" scenario begins as a posse rolls in to get rid of you. Only, this posse tends to be laughably weak, and should you defeat all its members, the town just goes back to normal, as if you never even hurt a fly. Alternatively, if you get killed, you automatically restart without penalty--same difference. The world of the game definitely looks pretty, and it's nice to see townspeople milling about, as well as the occasional shoot-out between uppity citizens. But Gun really doesn't reward exploration or experimentation as free-roaming action adventure games ought to do. The more you explore, the less you'll find. Gun's assorted side quests can be fun for a while, and they offer a decent amount of variety, since they range from hunting down wanted felons to cattle ranching to competing in poker tournaments. Most every side quest is unique in some way, with its own voice-over narration and basic twist, but these tend to be only a few minutes long, fairly easy, and rather repetitive in spite of everything. For instance, almost every bounty hunter mission simply tasks you with galloping some brief distance before taking on a hoodlum and his thugs. Often you can earn more money by bringing your victim in alive, but all this comes down to is rushing up close and "subduing" your target instead of killing him. The missions end abruptly in this fashion, at which point you can go find another or proceed with the main story missions if you have any left. An onscreen radar display conveniently points out both enemies and destinations of importance, so for better or worse it's very simple to figure out where to go next. At any rate, the side quests in Gun certainly are nice to have, but they're not so fleshed out or enjoyable as to make them anywhere near as good as the story missions. One of the main reasons you might not be compelled to take on side quests is that the rewards for successfully accomplishing them aren't all that necessary. You'll improve Colton's stats for things like gun handling, melee weapons, and quick draw with each side quest you complete, but the effects of these boosts tend to be so subtle as to be barely noticeable. Besides, you can also purchase weapon and health power-ups, and you can find better weapons at the end of almost every mission. In practice, you'll probably be drawn to some of the side quests and be compelled to earn money with which to buy new items and power-ups. However, the game is easy enough on normal difficulty to where you really don't need to worry much about building up Colton's strength. On hard and "insane" difficulty, the challenge is substantially greater, since your foes will deal a lot more damage with every hit. You might want to play on hard mode if normal difficulty seems too easy, but it would have been better if the normal difficulty simply were more challenging overall. The action is that much simpler because story missions tend to have multiple checkpoints, so even if you fail, you'll restart from just a few minutes or seconds before with full health. At least the game isn't frustrating (not for the most part, anyway). Gun shipped simultaneously for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, and PC, and an Xbox 360 version isn't far behind. The available versions are identical in terms of content and very similar in overall quality, exhibiting only the sorts of differences that tend to be intrinsic to multiplatform games such as this. The console versions all support surround-sound systems and progressive-scan displays for improved presentation quality, though the Xbox version looks marginally sharper and cleaner. Meanwhile, the PC version offers all sorts of graphical adjustments, allowing you to take advantage of the latest graphics cards if you happen to have one. All versions of the game have somewhat of an uneven frame rate, but they still offer solid controls. The PS2's stock gamepad is best suited to the control scheme, but it's just about as simple to get used to playing on the other platforms. The PC's default mouse-and-keyboard controls work well, but you may also hook up a gamepad if you like. All versions also let you save your progress at any time. Regardless of which version you play, you'll find that Gun is an attractive-looking game, especially during its noninteractive cutscenes, which display some impressively stylized, nicely animated characters. The rest of the game mostly looks great, too, and it features a good use of realistic physics in addition to plenty of lifelike animations. The sorts of explosions that become more and more prevalent later on in the story are particularly flashy, causing nearby characters (possibly Colton himself) to get flung fast and hard away from the blast, and oftentimes getting flattened against nearby walls. Some noticeable repetition of character models and occasionally sudden frame rate drops do undermine the graphics to a certain extent, though. Other than that, the game's rendition of the Old West is pretty much spot-on, and since it's one continuous stretch of land, you really get the feel for the place. Various lighting effects signifying day and night, wild animals, tumbleweeds (of course), and other little visual flourishes help make the world of Gun stand out. The game's audio is quite good, thanks especially to the excellent voice acting heard throughout the story. Thomas Jane (Deep Blue Sea) is great as the quiet, confident Colton White, and the main villains played by Lance Henriksen (Aliens) and Brad Dourif (Deadwood) sound at least as wicked and nasty as they look. The music shies away from Spaghetti Western twanging, instead going for an epic feel that the gameplay doesn't really live up to. Apart from that, effects for gunfire, galloping hooves, and the other sounds of the Wild West are pretty much accurate, though they aren't as noteworthy as the voice work. Despite a great presentation that'll likely give a very positive first impression, Gun ultimately offers too little content for it to be a truly satisfying game. Most all of the right ingredients are here in some quantity. But the hastily delivered storyline (which, fittingly, concludes with an incredibly abrupt ending) and the lack of any real depth to the gameworld make Gun much better suited for some quick, fleeting thrills instead of for the long haul. Here are the Gun System Requirements (Minimum): CPU: Pentium III or Athlon equivalent CPU SPEED: 1.8+ GHz (Pentium) or 1800+ (Athlon) RAM: 256 MB OS: Windows 2000/XP VIDEO CARD: 3D hardware accelerator card required - 100% DirectX(R) 9.0c-compliant 32 MB Hardware T&L - capable video card and the latest drivers (NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti+ / ATI Radeon 8500+) TOTAL VIDEO RAM: 32 MB 3D: Yes HARDWARE T&L: Yes PIXEL SHADER: 1.1 VERTEX SHADER: 1.1 DIRECTX VERSION: DirectX 9.0c (Included) SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 2.8 GB of uncompressed hard disk space (plus 320 MB for the Windows swap file) CD-ROM: 100% Windows 2000/XP- compatible quad speed CD-ROM drive (600 K/sec sustained transfer rate) and drivers Gun Recommended Requirements: CPU: Pentium 4 or Athlon XP CPU SPEED: 2.4+ GHz (Pentium) or 2400+ (Athlon) RAM: 512 MB OS: Windows 2000/XP VIDEO CARD: 3D hardware accelerator card required - 100% DirectX(R) 9.0c-compliant 64 MB Hardware T&L - capable video card and the latest drivers (NVIDIA GeForce FX+ / ATI Radeon 9600+) TOTAL VIDEO RAM: 64 MB 3D: Yes HARDWARE T&L: Yes PIXEL SHADER: 2.0 VERTEX SHADER: 2.0 DIRECTX VERSION: DirectX 9.0c (Included) SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 4 GB CD-ROM: 100% Windows 2000/XP- compatible quad speed CD-ROM drive (600 K/sec sustained transfer rate) and drivers

In my sojourn through the post-apocalyptic wastes of Russia in Metro Exodus, I can’t help but think of competitive cooking show Masterchef. No, Chef Ramsay isn’t holed up in a makeshift bunker of a TV studio after the knife-wielding contestants took criticism the wrong way. Rather, Metro reminds me of the philosophy of UK hosts John Torode and Greg Wallace: a simple formula must be executed to nothing less than perfection, but the ambition of a dish that involves many complex moving parts mean that certain flaws can be overlooked. Like the chocolate fondant, the bane of budding Masterchef champions worldwide, Metro Exodus is a game that could have gone very wrong indeed. It’s not without issues and frequently messy, but the sheer swagger developer 4A Games shows in defying genre boundaries and accomplishing each of its occasionally disparate goals – in a way that just about works – is almost overwhelming. Metro Exodus is a crafting-focused survival game, a heartwarming character study, and an atmospheric horror title. It also effectively becomes Wolfenstein for a bit because, well, why the hell not? Where the Redux remasters of the previous games, 2033 and Last Light, featured separate survival and shooter modes, Exodus does both at once, and wonderfully. All of these elements are somehow knitted together into one of the most bizarre and thrilling train journeys I’ve ever experienced. It can be baffling but it’s irrepressibly brilliant. TRAIN SPOTTING Let me start with what I thought Metro Exodus was, at least for the first five or so hours. Metro games have fleetingly let us out into the light of the world above the intricate web of underground tunnels that dominate the series, but Exodus truly lets us loose. Set a decade after the canon or ‘good’ ending of the second game, you return to your role as Artyom as he joins his hardy compatriots to venture thousands of clicks from Moscow in search of a new home and other survivors. All this is made possible by the Aurora, the snaking metal beast at the heart of this epic tale. This train is your new abode for the duration of your trip, and the further you progress while bolstering your rough-and-tumble crew, the larger and more homely it becomes. Once you add living quarters and a dining area, you can play guitar, smoke, and eat with colleagues that start as NPCs but quickly become friends. Amid the trauma of battle and the elation of skin-of-the-teeth survival, this cathartic mobile sanctuary is the place in which your fondest Metro memories will be formed. It’s a shame that, in these tender moments, Artyom remains mute. Your wife Anna will speak to you touchingly, and at length, but your ensuing silence is often jarring. The rest of your expeditionary force have plenty to say, too – the Metro Exodus script is twice the length of Last Light, 2033, and all their DLC combined. Yet they’re forced to speak to you with irritating pauses in between, waiting patiently for the imagined response, before starting to talk to you again. Often I thought I had been given my cue to leave, only to politely whizz back around as the conversation continues afresh – good manners shouldn’t die along with civilisation, after all. COMING UP FOR AIR This downtime is when you’ll be given the side missions that encourage you to explore the vast hubs that make up the world of Exodus. Both this process and the UI are pleasingly clean: rather than endure quest givers jumping up and down with neon question marks above their heads, you simply listen to what they have to say and your optional marker pops up on your map. There are no waypoints, and much of what would have been the HUD is shown on your wrists. That this works is quite the achievement, considering everything you have to manage – keeping your flashlight charged, gas masks filtered and cleaned, and guns pumped and loaded. There are a few hubs to explore, and they’re huge. Metro Exodus isn’t an open-world game, per se, but the awesome size of the winter, spring, and summer environments often makes it feel like one. Each is wildly different in design and presentation, and most of the environment is available to you from the moment you arrive in them. You can explore points of interest mostly at your own pace, while main missions and side activities will ensure you see each hub’s highlights. Dotted across these chunky slices of Russia are safe houses that give you the chance to craft and replenish your supplies. I have felt few more powerful moments of relief than, when running from the werewolf-like Watchmen, I hastily stumble into a base and slam the door behind me – claws tearing the wood behind me to shreds. On another occasion, I claim a new home, only to wake to the snores of my enemies; they had retired to the same base for the night and hadn’t realised I’d done the same. You’ll want to carefully consider whether to approach your missions in the daytime, or smothered in the natural invisibility cloak of night. The latter is always best when infiltrating a human base, but beware – when the sun goes down, monsters come out. In the first hub I find that the large number of mutants means a stealth approach works best. So I set about sneaking my way around, teeth chattering as much as my Geiger counter, collecting sound-suppressing upgrades for my gear from the wintry wastes. All of that’s what I thought Metro Exodus was. I was wrong. Really, really wrong. THE RED INFERNO I won’t spoil any story details, but rarely have I experienced a more profound gameplay volte-face than during a middle-ish sequence of Metro Exodus – you’ll know the bit when you get to it. Up until that point I had hidden for hours, shrouded in darkness, inching forward at a snail’s pace, but then everything changes. Ammo is suddenly plentiful: molotov cocktails, an unusual sight previously unless crafted with crucial materials, are everywhere, torrefying my crazed foes in a sublime inferno. Now metal music pounds and I reach astonishing speeds, as if I’ve taken performance-enhancing drugs. To say that the game lurches from the survival horror of Metro 2033 to the FPS focus of Last Light would be an understatement. The result is so disarming that I can’t help but laugh, despite the relentless darkness of the subject matter. The contrast is clearly intended, if messily implemented in places, and the likes of Doom and Wolfenstein are evoked as part of this heady concoction. Metro doesn’t hit the heights of either, but this unexpected midpoint emphatically showcases 4A as an accomplished jack of many trades. As quickly as it starts, following a short breather aboard the Aurora I’m back into survival horror again – but not in the same way as before. Deep in the underbelly of the desert Caspian map, I’m hunted by spiders with a fatal aversion to light. This allows for two further counts of thrilling gameplay inversion: not only am I forced to illuminate my environment – the exact opposite of how I would sneak before – I’m also the target as these hirsute arachnids scrabble about and leap at me from all sides. In these moments I’m traumatised with fright but powerful at the same time, and it’s the freshness of each encounter, each drastic gameplay shift, that emboldens these sensations. GOD’S WONDERFUL RAILWAY While plenty of the previous games’ clunkiness has alighted, Metro Exodus has its issues. Hit detection can be a bit ropey, and the writing and voice acting leaves something to be desired. And, despite the options available to tackle each situation, that freedom is too often restricted: jump scares can scupper even the best-laid stealth plans, for instance. Also, antagonists outside of that humble hunk of locomotive junk are poorly realised. Lacking in fruitful character development, your main enemies are faceless plot devices. It’s down to their underlings to inject nuance into your mission: cornered foes plead for mercy by explaining that they need to eat too, and slaves apologise for calling to inform your location to their masters in abject terror. That said, these problems are insignificant next to the braggadocio with which 4A flits effortlessly between genres. While all of its diverging parts might not be executed perfectly, Exodus is a game that’s more than the sum of them. Tied together by an expertly honed stealth and survival core and a warm, tear-jerking family drama on the rusted carriages of the Aurora, Metro Exodus is a special achievement.

AMD’s upcoming RDNA 2.0 graphics architecture isn’t just about the introduction of real-time ray tracing support, the latest rumours claim optimisation work, born of the work the red team put in on the Zen CPU side, will pay huge dividends for the next-gen Radeon GPUs. Back in 2018 it was reported that AMD’s Suzanne Plummer had assembled a team to shift over to the Radeon Technologies Group with the specific goal of improving the efficiency of its graphics architectures with a view to boosting the overall clock speed of its chips. Plummer had been a key architect on the initial Zen CPU design, and the ‘Project Zen’ optimisation team was then to inject a little of that same magic into upcoming AMD GPU designs. Now it sounds like the RDNA 2.0 architecture will provide more evidence of the efficacy of that approach, with a new report claiming that the Zen design optimisation philosophy is now deeply ingrained in the GPU team and the next slew of consumer graphics cards will give AMD cards a real chance to compete on an even footing with Nvidia. To be fair the original RDNA GPU architecture, first made silicon flesh in the Radeon RX 5700-series of cards, showed the impact of the Zen design methodology. AMD spoke about that at the launch of the RX 5700 XT where the streamlined graphics pipeline of the RDNA architecture was largely thanks to this focus on optimisation and efficiency of design. But the story on Red Gaming Tech suggests that the second-gen RDNA technology is “a drastic improvement over the first” precisely because of the work that Suzanne Plummer and her ‘Project Zen‘ team have put in. The source of the information says that the performance improvements demonstrated by the bump in Vega performance between the new Renoir APUs and their Picasso forebears are just a hint of what you should expect between first and second-gen RDNA cards. For the record Robert Hallock has gone on record stating that each Vega compute unit in a third-gen Ryzen APU is around 59% faster than the Vega CUs in the second-gen Picasso APUs. But I wouldn’t necessarily expect that to be the level of improvement you’ll see moving to RDNA 2.0 – the 7nm+ lithography will help, but not that much… But with the expected improved efficiency of RDNA 2.0 cards that ought to mean higher clock speeds will be achievable. The GPU at the heart of the Sony PS5 is based on the Navi GPU design, has real-time ray tracing support, and sounds a lot like it could be at least tentatively operating using the RDNA 2.0 architecture. And that GPU is reportedly running at over 2GHz, which in a console form factor would be seriously quick. We don’t know when to expect actual graphics cards released using the new second-gen RDNA design, but the latest speculation is that a summer release sounds likely. Following precisely a year on from the RX 5000-series launch at E3 2019 with an RX 6000-series release around the same time does make some sense. And we know Dr. Lisa Su is giving us a high-end Navi GPU this year…

It faces tough competition, but beating tough competition is what the movie is all about. In 1966, Ford was an underdog to win Le Mans against Ferrari – a manufacturer that had dominated the famous endurance race for six straight years leading up to Ford’s historic GT40 victory. Now, Ford and Ferrari are united as underdogs in yet another contest. Ford v Ferrari – the 2019 film chronicling Ford’s story of the GT40 and its 1966 Le Mans win – is nominated for four Oscars. And yes, one of them is for Best Motion Picture of the Year. To take home the award, the racing flic will need to top eight other nominees including The Irishman, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, 1917, Parasite, Jojo Rabbit, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. That’s certainly some very stiff cinematic competition, but if Ford v Ferrari fails to take home the Best Picture honor, it has three other chances at Hollywood glory. The film is also nominated for Best Achievement in Film Editing, Best Achievement in Sound Mixing, and Best Achievement in Sound Editing. Gallery: Ford V Ferrari Behind The Scenes Video: Any gearhead who has seen the movie will attest to the sound being epic. The GT40’s eight-cylinder baritone combined with the Ferrari’s V12 soprano are a symphony of power, and the sound isn’t eclipsed by an overzealous soundtrack. For that matter, the racing action is also intense and everything you see on the screen is real, at least in terms of actual vehicles versus computer-generated facsimiles. Admittedly, Hollywood did stretch the actual Ford-versus-Ferrari story just a bit for entertainment purposes, but Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby and Christian Bale as Ken Miles delivered stellar performances to make this a thoroughly enjoyable flic for anyone with gasoline running in their veins. If it sounds like we’re a bit biased here, well of course we are. This is Motor1.com after all, though we certainly recognize the quality of the other nominated films for this year’s Academy Awards. We also recognize that Ford v Ferrari has been nominated for all kinds of various awards since its big-screen debut last November, and while it’s taken home a few trophies, the lost column far outweighs the victories. Still, we’ve seen the underdog win before. We’ll see if Ford v Ferrari crosses the finish line first when the 92nd Academy Awards takes place on February 9.

According to a recent Savills report published over the summer, renter demand has become more discerning. A wave of interest in “lettability” among potential tenants is driving rental market trends. It is forcing a higher standard of finish across UK, and largely, positions character as an important marker of “lettable” properties. The rise of designer developments – a show flat that offers you a taste of the lifestyle afforded to the inhabitants – is indicative of the wider move towards more discerning house-hunting behaviours in the prime residential sector; for example, design studio Elycion has recently unveiled its show flat at Chelsea Barracks, property developer Londonewcastle has just launched a show flat by Trilbey Gordon at Covent Garden’s Chapter House. Roksanda Ilincic, Suzy Hoodless, Tara Bernard and Sophie Ashby are creating lifestyle inspiration in show flats by designer developers, elegantly demonstrating to their buyers the true capacity for great design within the spaces they’re purchasing. This trend really does extend into the rental market. Residential retail company Uncle has cottoned on to the staggering figure that a quarter of the British po[CENSORED]tion is currently living in rental accommodation. Pair this figure with an evolving view of what constitutes a ‘lettable’ property amongst renters, and it is clear to see the niche the brand is filling. In an exciting new partnership, Uncle has instructed the Tollgard Design Group to create schemes for its UK-wide collection of apartment buildings with made.com furniture. Rental brand Tipi is also marketing itself on the design credentials of the apartments available, which have been co-designed with Samsung and John Lewis & Partners. One bedroom apartments in these kinds of developments will cost renters upwards of £1,500, with two bedroom homes reaching around £3,000. The benefits of living in new, design-savvy developments go beyond their purely aesthetic “lettability”. For example, Tipi run a no fees, no deposit programme, has on-site amenities like a gym, social spaces, secure parking and events for tenants. Uncle offers similar benefits, including co-working facilities. However, the aesthetic consideration of these rental spaces seems to be worth a premium, and all signs point to retail. As the overall quality of the UK’s rental market shifts with the whims of discerning tenants, it is inevitable that the homeware and design retail categories will benefit. Where furnishing your new apartment is concerned, Tollgard Design group founder Monique Tollgard suggests making two lists before you move in: a Want list and a Need list. She advises spending most of your budget on the pieces you need first. Leave some budget for the Want list, which should include a “final layer” of soft furnishings and accessories. Your bed and your sofa should be the first things on your Need list. If you’re renting in a city, the chances are you will have restricted space. Megan Holloway, marketing manager at Sofa Workshop, suggests one of the first things you should consider when buying a sofa is the way it will actually complement your living room. If you are tight on space, Holloway says: “Look for sofas that are lifted off the floor on slightly longer legs. This will give the impression of further floor space and give the room a lighter feel.” Your Want list should consist of things you truly love, putting your stamp on a space and creating homely warmth. Throws, ornaments and cushions are great places to start, especially as the nights draw in. H&M Home currently stock a range of highly textured throws in sumptuous autumnal colours, while Sheridan have launched a range of cushions for a sleek and glamorous look. Flexible furniture is also a must-have in rental spaces, which are often tight on floor space. This could include an extendable dining table, a sofa bed, or nesting coffee tables to provide some extra surface space when playing host. Mid-century extendable dining tables are beautifully made, and can absolutely be considered investment pieces. G-Plan models are personal favourites of mine and can be found listed on Vinterior, and Gumtree has some great options too if you’re prepared to do some scroll-miles. Look out for furniture that is modular. This will give you endless layout options, meaning you can easily reconfigure your living room for entertaining – for example British furniture brand Bisley has launched BOB, an innovative storage system that provides “infinite configurations” that click together with concealed magnets. The shelving has been designed in collaboration with designer Paul Kelly. Marketing director Helen Owen at Bisley says “modern-day storage should be smart and simple. In the office or at home, as a room divide or up against a wall, BOB can be used easily and effortlessly – everywhere.” String is another great option for sleek, minimalist shelving with a hit of mid-century modern style. The shelving can grow with you, allowing you to add more shelves to the simple bracket system. Another great tip for renters is buy items that are easy to clean and maintain. There is a range of fantastic wipe-able fabrics on the market today, including Andrew Martin’s new fabric collections created in collaboration with AquaClean. The fabrics are woven using treated yarns that allow day-to-day household stains to be removed with water alone. Made.com has published a useful guide – to looking after your fabrics, upholstery, woods and veneers on its website – which offers tips such as regularly ‘shaking’ your foam-, feather- or fibre-filled cushions as often as possible. Finally – if you’re lucky enough to have some outside space – even a small balcony or yard, make sure you use it to your advantage. Tollgard believes that one way to approach your outside space is to use it to create the illusion of increased internal square footage. She says, “outside lighting is a must, to extend the view from the inside of your apartment out onto the terrace. Without lighting on the terrace, the windows become a black mirror reflecting the interiors back.” She suggests, “using planter and floor standing lanterns to create pools of light.” Lighting Direct offer sleek LED-planter light models, while Fermob’s Balad Upright Stand light is a good option if you’re looking for floor lamps. Robert Soning, COO and founder of Londonewcastle, is an advocate of outside space as a place for mindfulness, especially if you live in a bustling city. He says, “gardens and outdoor spaces where you can enjoy nature can be beneficial in so many other ways. Having a tranquil space to practice mindfulness or a spot of yoga promotes good health, both physically and mentally. And if you share a collective outdoor space with others it can really bring a sense of community to an otherwise disconnected city.”

One of Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani's Ukrainian-American allies has handed the House Intelligence Committee a trove of information that could shed more light on alleged efforts by the president to influence US foreign policy to his own political benefit. Lev Parnas, one of two Giuliani associates who was arrested for alleged campaign finance violations in October, has given the committee a cache of "WhatsApp messages, text messages and images" which detail "interactions with a number of individuals relevant to the impeachment inquiry," his attorney Joseph Bondy said on Twitter Monday morning. In addition, Mr Bondy said he and his client have also turned over the contents of one of his iPhones and another Samsung phone to the committee, though the information contained in them remains under a judge's protective order prohibiting its public disclosure. He added that he and Mr Parnas "will be working to provide the other materials" -- the contents of two more iPhones -- to the committee "as soon as possible". The Florida-based former stockbroker is also seeking a court's permission to turn over "additional materials" from three more electronic devices to the committee, he added. Federal agents arrested Mr Parnas and his business partner, Igor Fruman, on 9 October as the pair prepared to leave the country on one-way tickets to Vienna, Austria. Prosecutors from the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York charged Mr Parnas and Mr Fruman, along with two associates, with conspiring to "circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with the candidates, campaigns, and the candidates’ governments". According to campaign finance records, one of the committees the pair supported was the main political action committee supporting President Donald Trump's re-election effort. William Sweeney, the head of the FBI's New York Field Office, said the allegations against the men – which arose out of an investigation which is also examining the affairs of Mr Giuliani, a former US Attorney who ran the SDNY in the 1980s – is about "corrupt behaviour" and "deliberate lawbreaking" rather than "some technicality, a civil violation or an error on a form". Mr Giuliani is alleged to have retained Mr Parnas and his business partner in late 2018 for the purpose of having them seek out information which could be used to undermine the investigation then being conducted by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, as well as information which could damage the reputation of former Vice President Joe Biden, who was then considering a bid to challenge Mr Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Mr Parnas and Mr Fruman were allegedly central players in Mr Giulani's scheme to force the removal of Marie Yovanovitch, then the top US diplomat in Kyiv, because Mr Giuliani reportedly believed she was an impediment to his goal of having Ukraine's government announce investigations into Mr Biden and his son Hunter, as well as a debunked conspiracy which posits that Ukraine – not Russia – interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. John Dowd, a criminal defence attorney who once represented Mr Trump during early stages of Mr Mueller's probe, said in a statement to Congress at the time of the two men's arrest that the pair had been assisting Mr Giuliani in his work on Mr Trump's behalf. But one of Mr Trump's current attorneys, Jay Sekulow, said in a statement at the time that neither Mr Trump nor his campaign were aware of the campaign finance scheme detailed in the indictment against Mr Parnas and Mr Fruman.

MySims for Wii plays and looks less like a typical Sims game and much more like Nintendo's own Animal Crossing, which may be a good or bad thing depending on what you hope to get out of the game. If you're looking for a title with a cute, colorful style and with a constant stream of structured missions to complete, not to mention an addictive construction component, you may really enjoy what EA's new Wii-exclusive effort has to offer. But if you come to MySims seeking the social experience of a traditional Sims project or the bulk of community management tasks these games encapsulate, you will leave town unsatisfied. The objective of MySims is simple. You, as a handy builder, are tasked with the challenge of restoring a zero-star town to its former five-star rating. To do that, you'll need to construct houses and buildings, interact with the townsfolk to take on new assignments, search of essences, and more. EA very clearly wanted to create a streamlined, easily accessible version of The Sims with its Wii endeavor, and for the most part it has. Take, for example, how quickly and hassle-free you can create your Sim, name your town, and begin. Using the Wii remote, you merely point to an on-screen character model, choosing face and hair types in addition to various outfits, and tap a button to cycle between a robust selection. It can be done in a matter of seconds, not minutes or hours, and anybody will be able to pick it up. The intuitive means in which MySims utilizes the Wii remote carries over into the game itself, whether you're interacting with the environment or building objects. At the same time, from the moment you delve into the character creation process, you will be left wanting more. You can't individually tweak or customize facial eyes, noses, or mouths, for example - you can only select a full set. By comparison, Nintendo's notoriously simple Mii creator is deeper, which is disappointing. Limitations like these are noticeable throughout the experience and they clash with the very nature of the franchise, which has flourished in part because of its depth. We prefer to think of MySims is an enjoyable, if slightly flawed alternative to the Animal Crossing franchise. Once you create your character and enter the town, you meet up with a variety of people, all of whom have unique issues and problems that they (naturally) require you to fix. You might be called upon to construct a restaurant for an Italian pizza chef or a dance club for a DJ, or maybe you'll need to build a bed and other furniture for another Sim. These tasks are satisfying to perform because the process is uncomplicated and straightforward. You merely collect the correct essences and then go to your workshop to design and fabricate the objects. Using the Wii remote to customize and construct items feels very good because you can very easily grab and rotate building blocks with the device and then point and click to add a wide assortment of essence colors and patterns. While you're given a basic 3D blueprint for every item that you construct, you're also free to add to the design and give your creations your own style. We really liked to add nonfunctional, but nevertheless interesting exhaust pipes to everything we created, be it a refrigerator or a podium. You may prefer to paint all of your creations in a flower pattern. The game is designed so that you have that freedom, which is great. Likewise, portions of the town are surprisingly customizable. For example, you can paint the walls of every interior and completely design the look of buildings you create. If you buy something through this post, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, learn more. The beginning world of MySims is small and unpo[CENSORED]ted, but as you play and advance, more and more patrons move to town and the activity within begins to pick up. On top of that, you're able to open up new portions of the world by advancing the star rating of the city because you unlock special items, like a crowbar, which can be utilized to breakdown barriers located on the outskirts of the area. Only when you've opened these new locales will you be able to find the unique and vital essences that they hold and also utilize their additional space to invite new citizens to your city - all integral to advancing. You will visit caves, forests, and beaches, in addition to the main town, as you progress through the adventure, and you will definitely feel a sense of accomplishment as you gain access to a new world portion. MySims disappoints, though, in a few key areas. The first is that it doesn't often feel like a Sims game because the social experience is lacking, to say the least. You don't really hold a job or sustain yourself (although you can, you don't even need to sleep), and interaction with the townsfolk is only in place as a means to relay new assignments. You can be nice or mean to the Sims, but there's rarely a need to explore this mechanic except to gain new essences. And speaking of essences, while they are initially a fun component of the building process, later in the game some essences can be frustrating to find. Sometimes, you get essences from people and other times you have to go prospecting for them - the latter of which can be cumbersome. And finally, for whatever reason, the flow of MySims is interrupted with load times, which take place whenever you leave a house or building, enter a new world, or go into your workshop, for starters. Verdict I like MySims and have given it a "good" final score. The game has style and charm. I'm partial to the cute, colorfuly visual presentation and actually wish that EA had done a little more with it, going so far as to incorporate Mii avatars – I feel that was a missed opportunity. The world that you explore in the game is filled with objectives, which is great. The problem is that nearly all of the objectives revolve around the same two tasks: the collection of essences and the construction of houses, buildings and items. All of the Sim management and social interaction elements of the previous games – well, you're not going to find much of that in the streamlined Wii affair. If you can get past that, you will still find a fun affair that uses the Wii remote well and generally looks pretty good. It just isn't as non-linear or deep as any Sims game before it. With any luck, the sequel will marry the depth of the series with the new Wii look and controls. MySims Developer: Electronic Arts Publisher: Electronic Arts Release Date: September 18, 2007 Platforms: Wii, Nintendo DS, PC, Wireless

There will come a point during your time with Rayman Legends where you'll run out of ways to express how much you enjoy it. By a few hours in, you'll have exhausted every synonym you know for "pretty." A few stages after that, "fun." By the end: "challenging." And only in the rarest occasion will you mutter the likes of "confusing," no thesaurus necessary. Don't be fooled by its disarming charm: this 2D platformer eventually becomes as difficult as it is visually alluring. But Rayman Legends' precise level design and controls, coupled with its gorgeous art style, catchy music, and impressive stage variety make overcoming that difficulty a memorable and worthwhile experience, regardless of which version you play. If you've already played through and finished the game on a current-gen console, either skip to the end for my verdict on Rayman Legends' next-gen release, or check out the new boxout that details the cross-gen differences. But if you missed out on this fantastic game in 2013 and are hungry for something to play on your PS4 or Xbox One, read on... There's not much here in the way of story: a bunch of Teensies--tiny blue people with huge noses--have been kidnapped by nightmares come to life. Still, the minimal narrative is enough of a foundation to keep you moving from stage to stage. There are multiple worlds to take on, each with a dozen or more themed levels full of collectible Lums and hidden Teensies to save. In addition to these, you'll find daily and weekly challenges tied to online leaderboards, tons of characters to unlock, and an immensely addictive soccer mini-game that will siphon hours of your life without you even knowing--and if all that wasn't enough, a sizable number of remastered stages from Rayman Origins are ready to be discovered all over again. At first, you'll be overwhelmed by how much there is to do, and Legends' initially-confusing interface doesn't really help you parse through that barrage of information. Frequent pop-up notifications try to pull you in a dozen directions at once, urging you to check out everything on offer without establishing what is and is not a part of the "main" game. It takes awhile to get your bearings, but you'll be blown away by the sheer variety of content once you do. That impressive variety even extends to the level design. It's not uncommon to eat your way through stages made entirely of cake in the food-themed levels of Fiesta de los Muertos. In 20,000 Lums Under the Sea, you'll have to swim through treacherous underwater grottos, avoiding the ever-searching spotlight of enemies to the backdrop of a music track that will instantly remind you of the famous theme from James Bond films. Each level is a visual delight brought to life by a wonderful attention to detail and an accompanying soundtrack that reflects its theme. It's almost impossible not to spend at least a little bit of time just staring in awe at the hand-drawn backgrounds, or the goofy creatures that inhabit each location. What's more, every single stage is challenging in its own way. Some are more about exploring at your own pace, where the difficulty lies in seeking out every hidden secret; others will test your twitch reaction skills as you sprint and jump from platform to platform while a wall of fire races to catch you. Best of all, each world wraps up with a stage that plays a spoof of a po[CENSORED]r song (think Black Betty, but with monster grunts in place of lyrics). Here, success relies on your ability to jump and kick to the beat of the music. You'll encounter a little bit of all of these things within each world, preventing Legends' numerous levels from ever feeling too much alike. There's just one thing that occasionally interrupts the excellent pace that pervades the entire game: a little green fairy named Murfy. Murfy is an AI-controlled character that shows up in about half of the levels. Only with his help can you move certain platforms, or, say, stop a stream of fireballs from impeding your progress. In all but the Wii U and PlayStation Vita versions of the game, Murfy moves on his own accord, hovering above objects that he can mani[CENSORED]te. With the quick tap of a button, he'll do his thing and hover along until he's needed. At best, Murfy adds a minor but noticeable layer of challenge to the platforming experience; at worst, he's an unnecessary complication in already-fast-paced levels. If you're playing on Wii U or Vita, however, the action is jarringly interrupted once he appears on-screen. You'll be forced to take control of Murfy even when playing solo, while an AI-controlled Rayman (or his friend Globox) runs along the level as you sit there and swipe at platforms, watching the computer have all the fun. Being forced to play as Murfy without even the option to revert control back to Rayman is shockingly bizarre and disappointing, especially considering Legends was initially built as a Wii U exclusive--instead, that version ends up being the least enjoyable way to play it. Murfy does, however, make a good fit for less-skilled players who still want to join in on the fun without having to worry about precision jumping. But for those looking for a more intense multiplayer experience, up to four players (five on the Wii U) can join in the fray at once. Unfortunately, Legends faces many of the same cooperative challenges of its 2D-platformer brethren. Adding another player into the mix is genuinely enjoyable and a totally viable way to play through the game. But once you get three or four players competing for collectibles and slapping each other to their deaths, everything devolves into utter chaos, and it's extremely difficult to keep track of your character on the screen. That's not to say playing this way doesn't make for some mindless fun, just don't expect smooth sailing. Even after ten hours of play, you'll have a wealth of content just waiting to be unlocked, pushing you to revisit already-completed stages or tackle challenges you'd passed up entirely. Rayman Legends is easily one of the most feature-rich platformers you'll likely see, rife with accessibility and challenge in equal measure. By a few hours in, you'll have exhausted every synonym you know for "pretty." A few stages after that, "fun." And by the end, just one word will accurately describe the whole experience: "fantastic." Is it worth shelling out the cash for the next-gen version if you fell in love with last year's release? I suppose if you're desperate for something to play and have been itching to save Teensies all over again. But for most Rayman veterans, the PS4 and Xbox One version of Legends offers little incentive to return. For those who missed out the first time around, however, this is a no brainer--one that deserves your attention immediately.

Insurgency has always wanted to make war hell. As a mod in 2007, it was a hectic, ‘realistic’ alternative to clean and sportsmanlike Counter-Strike firefights. As a standalone release in 2014, it offered the screaming shrapnel of war for those tired of Call of Duty’s badass bravado. The new Insurgency: Sandstorm is this grizzled veteran’s chance to prove it’s still got it – but while its aim might be as good as ever, the old soldier’s knees are starting to give way. This is especially a shame given the series’ push for accessibility. While Counter-Strike’s take on contemporary combat turned urban warfare into a complex esport, Insurgency removed as many roadblocks as possible between the player and the brutal reality of dusty block-by-block firefights in a Middle-Eastern war. It’s a familiar setup. Two teams, Security and Insurgents, face off against each other in a variety of standard city streets and industrial sprawl. There are a number of classes and loadout options, all built around a resource called ‘Supply’ – used to purchase either sidearms and grenades, or trick out weapons with a range of gadgets and gizmos. Those classes range from simple riflemen to the usual close-quarters experts and long-range marksmen. But then there are less conventional roles, like the Commander and Observers, who can coordinate with each other to call in devastating fire support. Each has a belt full of tools to pull from, with equipment switching up based on which team you’re landed on. All that complexity is stripped back once the menus close, however, and being the hardened vet it is, Sandstorm is very careful about what information it gives you. With no map, no hitmarkers, and no killfeed, vital information on the enemy is kept thrillingly hidden. Granular mechanics like variable reload types, leaning, kicking, opening doors, and dropping prone give you enough options to evade a devastating time-to-kill. Don’t be mistaken – Insurgency: Sandstorm isn’t Arma. There isn’t an overly detailed web of commands and keys to help you pick from 14 varieties of crouching. Sandstorm manages to eschew just enough of its gaminess to capture the panic and misinformation of urban warfare – without feeling unwieldy. Shouts and screams from friends and foe pierce the air, as the impacts of nearby shots leave your ears ringing and aim unsteady. A round of Sandstorm feels chaotic but controllable. Steady nerves and steadier aim will get you through a match, while low hit points urge patience and communication. There’s a lengthy wait to get back into the fight – at best, respawns are timed in waves, but most modes won’t let you jump in again unless your team capture an objective. It’s a great introduction to tense, tactical first-person firefights without too punishing a learning curve. This has always been Insurgency’s bread and butter, first baked in its days as a mod and seasoned for the 2014 standalone Source engine release. Sandstorm’s goal as a sequel, then, is to make things bigger and better. Some classes can now coordinate to call in airstrikes and helicopter attacks, while lengthy co-op maps flaunt drivable vehicles. Sandstorm also features competitive matchmaking, but it’s been locked off until launch. What’s been playable up ‘til now is a fairly light selection of maps, across some fairly similar point-control game types. Sandstorm’s place as a sequel is muddied, however, by the notable omission of an anticipated campaign mode – which follows two Iraqi women crossing a war-torn land – the developer cut in order to ship this year. In 2018, the gruff military story is well and truly worn thin, so it’s a shame to miss out on a potentially refreshing perspective. That twist on a traditional military story might have also lent the game a unique character – something Sandstorm is profoundly lacking currently. By fictionalising its Middle-Eastern war, developer New World Interactive trades in tropes we’re all too familiar with. The sandswept rural villages and city sprawls you visit could be any from half a dozen Call of Duty games. Sandstorm gives us nameless locations with nameless conflicts. This aesthetic felt excusable when Insurgency was a mod over a decade ago. But we’ve largely moved on, and there’s something rather uncomfortable about rendering a suicide bombing with the power of Unreal Engine 4. A campaign could have given Insurgency the option to say something about an extremely controversial real-world war – but as a multiplayer shooter, it raises imagery without ever questioning it. In Sandstorm’s defence, player avatars tend more towards local guns rather than Western interventionists. Women feature in Security character customisation, which gives dozens of little unlockable options to dress up your toy soldier. There’s a surprising wealth of cosmetics, unlocked through a currency gained via levelling up. While single-player might be missing, Sandstorm’s co-op offering manages to outshine the PvP modes. As a team of eight pushes through city streets and factory backlots, coordination feels vital – you’re teaming spotters with commanders and holding checkpoints against enemy counter-attacks. -Sandstorm is often nicely drawn on-screen, but its sandswept refineries and streets rarely pop. As a budget alternative to the annual Call of Duties or Battlefields, a minor visual downgrade isn’t a big deal – particularly when Sandstorm is offering a distinct alternative to big-budget gameplay. But becomes unacceptable when those lower visual standards are met by technical problems. I’ve encountered nothing game-breaking to speak of, but Sandstorm often struggles to keep up with its own ambitions. Texture pop-in is rife on loading maps, while first-person gun models often taking a good minute to load in. All in all, Sandstorm often feels more like an Insurgency ‘definitive edition’ than a sequel. It’s more of the same close-quarters combat over small dusty maps, given a modest degree of visual flair and deeper customisation. That said, despite its creaky bones, I don’t doubt Insurgency: Sandstorm will keep a dedicated community for months to come. Progression systems and competitive ladders hint at a desire to keep players coming back for more. New World is also promising mod support and custom servers, which are welcome features that have become increasingly uncommon in multiplayer games. Insurgency has secured a unique space as a realistic shooter without slipping into simulation territory, and Sandstorm is good enough that it can continue to trade on that – uncomfortable imagery and all.

Expanding the Urus range will be a tricky task for the Italian bull. First previewed in 2018 as a track-focused concept, the Lamborghini Urus ST-X Concept made an official debut the following year as "the first Super SUV in the world of racing." Initial reports said that the Urus ST-X will make its first appearance in 2020, but a report from Autoblog reaffirms the schedule. Speaking to the publication, Maurizio Reggiani, the head of Lamborghini's R&D department, said that the pumped-up Urus will appear at the 2020 Lamborghini Super Trofeo World Final which will happen from October 31 to November 1 in Misano, Italy. "There will be a demo race where we'll present the format," Reggiani said. Gallery: 2020 Lamborghini Urus ST-X: The Urus ST-X doesn't get an engine update, which means that it retains the twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8 engine from the road-going Urus, delivering 650 horsepower and 850 Newton-meters (627 pound-feet) of torque. It does, however, go under the knife to lose a quarter of the regular Urus' weight estimated at 550 kilograms (1,212 pounds) and bring the curb weight down to 1,650 kg (3,637 lbs). With the ST-X version reconfirmed, the Urus range will expand with a race-bred version that will star in its own one-make race. Another addition to the Urus lineup would be a hybrid version of the super SUV, according to Autoblog's report. And it's not just a hybrid – it's a plug-in hybrid that will be built upon the Urus current platform. Good thing, the Urus' platform is ready for electrification, with the Porsche Cayenne and Bentley Bentayga standing as proof of its flexibility as a hybrid platform. There goes the problem of the hybrid Urus, however. With the other SUVs under Volkswagen's umbrella getting hybrid versions themselves, the challenge is to differentiate the plug-in hybrid Urus from the rest of its sister brands. "The most important part will be to define in what way a Lamborghini must use this electric energy, and in what way we can be different from the other users of this platform," Reggiani told Autoblog.

Not long ago, telling people you were vegan would’ve elicited a unilaterally hostile response. There would’ve been gasps and sighs and maybe even condolences offered, as you mourned the death of your bordering-on-obsessive halloumi habit. Now, when plant-based diets are more po[CENSORED]r than ever before, vegans are far more likely to be met with congratulations than commiserations – probably from fellow vegans – and after having been vegan for 10 weeks myself, I can already see why. I’ll admit, I was sceptical at first. For me, Veganuary – where non-vegans commit to trying veganism for the entire month of January – was predicated by parmesan cravings and actual dreams about pizza (in case you hadn’t guessed, cheese and I had a special relationship). However, when I once didn’t think I’d make it past a full day (day one of Veganuary was obviously New Year’s Day and my hungover self was desperately seeking doughnuts), I’ve now been completely plant-based for 10 weeks and I don’t see myself giving it up anytime soon. Let me explain While I don’t quite identify as an evangelical vegan – I don’t take pictures of my meals and ‘I ❤️ vegetables’ is not listed on my dating app bio – the positive changes I’ve noticed in such a short period of time have been enough to keep me going. Sure, there are a few non-vegan foods I find myself yearning for (no points for guessing what), but on the whole, the mental and physical benefits I’ve noticed far outweigh the few niggling cravings. Ethical and environmental benefits aside, there are endless studies that document the myriad health benefits reaped by vegans, including lowering your risk of cardiovascular disease and protecting you against diabetes. So, here are just a few of the things I’ve noticed since I went cold (and meatless) turkey. I’ve become a yoga-obsessed radioactive unicorn Okay not quite, but this is probably one of the sarcastic jabs I would’ve made last year when vegan friends raved rabid about the benefits of chickpea pasta while I happily scoffed down a cheeseburger. I have however, discovered a newfound love of yoga. Again, I’m not quite at the enlightened “spiritual” level that the vegan yogi stereotype perpetuates – whereby I hiccup in “oms”, end sentences with “namaste” and sweat coconut water – but I relish in this slower and more mindful way of exercising, which just so happens to neatly align with my more mindful way of eating. In fact, restraint is one of the key components in the classical definition of yoga, known as “ahimsa”, which in Hindu and Buddhist traditions also translates to “compassion”. My digestion is tickety boo Studies show that vegans benefit from good gut health thanks to an increase in fibre intake. This can subsequently lead to lower levels of inflammation and elevated digestive health. This is definitely something I’ve noticed. Despite eating no more or less than I was before in terms of calories, I find that I digest almost every meal I’ve consumed within the hour – regardless of how quickly or greedily I might’ve eaten it. Plus, on the odd occasion when I do eat a little more than I probably should (because vegans are only human too), I feel back to normal in no time. Whereas a heavy meal the night before would’ve once left me rising the next day with a heavy stomach plagued by pangs of self-loathing, now, it’s like it never happened. Also, I’m hardly ever bloated: a godsend for my high-waisted jeans, which can now make it through even the most gluttonous of days fully zipped and buttoned. I have more energy “But, aren’t you tired all the time?” said every non-vegan to every vegan ever. Actually, no. Obviously if I’ve had a night out on the tiles till 4am like the wayward 23-year-old I am, then yes, it’s likely that I will feel a bit sleepy the next day, regardless of my diet. But for the most part, I feel more energised than I ever did in my meat and cheese-feasting days. For example, I no longer get that 4pm slump after one too many cappuccinos and most mornings I wake up before my alarm – I know, I am virtuous vegan, hear me roar. My skin is clearer This was something I read might happen – and to be honest, I wasn’t convinced until I returned to work after a holiday in the US – at which point I was a six-week-old vegan – and three colleagues complimented me on my “glowing” skin. Naturally, I proceeded to walk around the office for an entire week like the smug, spotless vixen that I now am. I have learned to indulge ‘the vegan way’ Ah hummus, pitta bread and peanut butter, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Ah raw vegan chocolate... I do love thee too, but your £8.99 price tag bears the black mark of retailers capitalising on “vulnerable” and “hungry” vegans who ought to know better. After just a few weeks of being vegan, I quickly learned that there are ways to indulge in plant-based treats without succumbing to the inflated price tags and readily-available junk food staples that just to happen to be vegan (think Oreos and French fries). In fact, there are a number of indulgent vegan foods on offer that are both pocket and waistline-friendly, when consumed in moderation. So, if you have recently gone vegan and you find yourself slowly sinking into social Siberia, where people judge, scorn and impose their preconceived notions onto you of what veganism should or shouldn’t be (this happens quite a lot to me), remember that your identity is not dictated by your diet – and thank goodness for that.

An earthquake has hit Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul. A seismic event measuring 4.8 magnitude struck 63 kilometres west of the city at 4:37pm local time, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said. Concerned residents reported feeling tremors strong enough to shake buildings, although no destruction or casualties were reported. The city’s mayor Ekrem Imamoglu confirmed the magnitude and said authorities were not aware of any negative impacts. He said the event in the Marmara Sea occurred at a depth of 16 kilometres. Turkey is crossed by fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. Experts at Istanbul Technical University, Ankara University and the Kandilli Observatory have previously warned that Istanbul and the Marmara region could see an earthquake of similar magnitude in the future, with some experts warning there is a high chance of it occurring in the next 20 years. As a result, smaller quakes are known to stoke residents’ fears that a larger event could follow. Although in the two decades since 1999’s disaster, buildings codes have been tightened and laws requiring earthquake insurance have been passed, some warn that poor urban planning means the city is still unprepared. When Istanbul was struck by a magnitude 5.8 quake in September, injuring several people and damaging buildings, one Turkish commentator claimed it sparked “the widespread realisation that there are woefully insufficient open spaces to go to in the event of an evacuation”. “We are woefully unprepared for the Big One in Istanbul,” said Can Okar, a well-known financial strategist. Mr Imamoglu said the state weather service AKOM was closely monitoring the post-earthquake process, adding: “As we have always mentioned, the earthquake is the most important agenda of our city.”

Wolfenstein: Youngblood finally has RTX-powered ray tracing: The streets of Nazi-occupied 1980s Paris are a bit shinier now. A patch that adds in Nvidia’s RTX-powered ray tracing support to Wolfenstein: Youngblood arrived this week, alongside a new game-ready driver for Nvidia graphics cards. Each neon-lit window pane will now reflect the grenade explosions that blow up groups of soldaten trying to get a bead on the Blaskowicz sisters. Youngblood had been part of Nvidia’s lineup of RTX-enabled games at E3, but shortly before the game launched in July, MachineGames announced that RTX features would not be enabled right away. No word was forthcoming from MachineGames, Nvidia, or Bethesda on when those features – ray tracing prominently among them – might show up, but MachineGames said it was working closely with Nvidia’s engineers to get it “looking as good as possible” for Youngblood. The Youngblood patch arrived Thursday, and adds RTX features for Nvidia’s GeForce 2060, GeForce 2070, and GeForce 2080 cards (as well as the Super versions). That pairs up with Nvidia’s latest game ready driver, version 441.87. Together, the two updates mean Youngblood now supports ray-traced lighting, Nvidia’s DLSS, and Nvidia Highlights (which automatically saves video clips when certain actions are performed). Here’s the trailer that shows off the RTX-enhanced effects: As you can read in this blog post from Bethesda, enabling the new effects is pretty straightforward: head into the options menu, select video, and scroll down to the ‘Ray-Traced Reflections’ option and switch it on. You’ll need to restart the game for it to take effect. If you’re running a supported card, you’ll also be able to enable DLSS in the same menu, which may boost your framerate. You can also test these new settings out by running one of Youngblood’s new benchmarks, which are fl- throughs of the Riverside and Lab X levels.