#Sissa

Game information Initial release date: June 7, 2011 Developer: Volition Composer: Brian Reitzell Genre: Third-person shooter Series: Red Faction Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows The very first objective you get in Red Faction: Armageddon captures what it's all about: “Destroy the wall.” Gripping the shaft of my mighty, gyroscopically enhanced hammer, I swing at the barrier. CRACK! The force of impact with steel-reinforced concrete reverberates through my character's body. THUD! Chunks of rebar-entangled concrete fill the air as a 50-foot-long, three-foot-thick barrier dynamically collapses, with chunks sailing into the rear supports of a guard tower behind it. The dust settles to the dull moan of stressed metal as I approach the tower, knowing what's about to happen. A sound like rolling boulders fills the air, and 10 tons of concrete and twisted metal lands at my feet. Total destruction. Absolute power. RFA has a destruction engine like you wouldn't believe (unless you've played Red Faction: Guerilla). Anything that's not terrain—barracks, bridges, people—is all fair game to be bludgeoned, blasted, or concussed into rubble. In an engagement with a band of crazed cultists in the opening battle, a rocket trail reveals two hostiles firing from cover. I've got several options available: open fire directly with my assault rifle, collapse a tower on their heads, or flank them by bashing in the side wall of their firing position with my hammer. I'm a sucker for that hammer, and in seconds tenderized cultist meat spatters the remaining walls and ceiling. The open environment provides innumerable creative combat opportunities—it's an empowering sensation that too few games offer. RFA's biggest limitation is that, 30 minutes in, its forgettable sci-fi story moves most of the action into a network of tunnels. The machine that terraformed Mars' atmosphere has been destroyed by a cult leader, driving the populous underground—where they're attacked by a swarm of Martian bugs. At least it's reasonably well voice-acted and never really descends into schlock in its search for reasons for the bald hero, Darius Mason, to break many, many things. Except for a few instances (such as a firefight with aliens on a three-story underground scaffold), that creative combat of the opening level is lost, and gives way to a feeling of playing as the unstoppable boulder chasing Indiana Jones down the tunnel in Raiders of the Lost Ark. For the rest of the game, you're moving forward from chamber to chamber, connected by dark, narrow tunnels, and fighting aliens that jump from ceiling to floor to wall faster than a pack of third graders on Pixy Stix. The change of venue isn't necessarily less fun, but the combat becomes something less thoughtful. There's simply less to destroy in these tunnels than there is on the surface. The awesome explosive weapons I pick up on my journey, such as the Singularity Gun and Plasma Cannon, just aren't very effective against enemies that don't stand still. Don't get me wrong—disintegrating aliens with a Nano Rifle is always a good time, but the particular combat situations that RFA's tunnels and bugs create are so perfectly tuned for one particular weapon that it rarely makes sense to use anything else. The real star of RFA is the Magnet Gun. Much like Half-Life 2's Gravity Gun, the Mag Gun is inventive and kinetic in a way that you won't want to use any other weapon. Its first shot fires an orange magnet tag on any destructible surface (or enemy), and the second affixes a blue magnet tag on any other. Once both are placed, the blue tag rips whatever it's attached to (say, a 20-foot-tall explosive canister) off of its moorings and tries to unite it with whatever the orange tag is on, such as the alien across the room. Because you're often in a corridor, enemies can only come from so many directions, making it easy to nab baddies one by one and splat them into stalactites at the other end of the corridor. It has unlimited ammo, and it's so powerful that I found myself going entire levels, sometimes more than an hour, without equipping another weapon. Unlike the Gravity Gun, though, this weapon isn't presented with a lot of interesting challenges. You never have to think differently about how it works—it's always either launch the enemy into something or smack things into the enemy. RFA's physics and destruction are by far its strongest features, but its potential feels wasted on the simple level design. With all the destruction, inevitably a staircase or catwalk that you didn't mean to destroy will explode. That's where the Nano Forge kicks in—it can instantly repair virtually anything man-made with the push of a button. It's a magic undo button that makes no sense, but it's a clever way of preventing players from breaking the levels permanently, and handy for reconstructing cover in battle. Collecting salvage from broken objects allows you to upgrade the Forge, buffing your health or weapons, as well as unlocking new abilities. There're also vehicle sections to vary the pace. The four mechs Mason can pilot come in varying degrees of fantastic, but my favorite has got to be the Mantis—it's a spider-legged robot that spits plasma rockets and a great super-heating laser that burns its targets as you sweep it over the battlefield, followed by a spectacular linear explosion of everything the laser touched. The delay between pulling the trigger and watching your target explode is just long enough to make you feel like a sun god, so large and far away that it takes a few seconds for the ants beneath you to suffer your wrath. Just like the on-foot sections, however, vehicle sections funnel you through tight corridors. At one point I tromped through a subterranean studio apartment complex in a one-ton exoskeleton, and the only means of maneuverability was smashing through walls and ceilings. Yeah, that's fun, but in a simple sort of way. I'm not playing cat-and-mouse with another mech, or even trying too hard to avoid damage. If the campaign is an over-seasoned meat sauce, then the co-op multiplayer is a deep-fried buffalo—and man, it's one tasty buffalo. The survival-style multiplayer has you and up to three friends battling waves of aliens and/or defending an objective. You're still mostly fighting in confined spaces, often with the magnet gun, but now there are four of you. Boulders, columns, and baddies are flying all over the place, and your Nano Forge's long-distance repair ability makes it easy to protect your objective as long as you're still standing. It's social mayhem that feels great, and it leads to all kinds of experimentation like Mag-Gunning one object in multiple directions. There's also the single-player Ruin Mode, a highly satisfying free-form destruction playground time trial that pits your arsenal against a ton of buildings. A leaderboard keeps you from feeling lonesome, and the grandeur of taking down sky-scraping structures in some of the outdoor maps is something sorely missed in the subterranean campaign. It's not really the lack of open spaces that holds Red Faction: Armageddon back, though. It's a lack of player engagement. Eventually, even with a godlike weapon, combat feels empty—a bag of pyrotechnic fun without much creative spark. Still, demolishing Mars leaves me filled with an incredible sense of dominion over my environment, and I can't help but wonder: why doesn't every game use this technology? System Requirements MINIMUM: OS: Windows® XP Processor: 2GHz Dual Core Processor (Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon™ X2) or higher Memory: 2GB System RAM or more Graphics: 320MB Video RAM, GPU w/ Shader Model 3.0 support, NVIDIA® GeForce® 88xx series or better, ATI Radeon™ HD30xx series or better DirectX®: 9.0c Hard Drive: 7.5 GB Sound: 100% DirectX® 9.0C compliant sound card or equivalent onboard sound RECOMMENDED: OS: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Processor: Any Quad Core Processor(Intel® Core i5 or AMD Phenom™ II X4) or 3.0+ Dual Core CPU Memory: 4GB System RAM or more Graphics: 1GB Video RAM, GPU w/ Shader Model 4.0 support, NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 400 series or better, ATI Radeon™ HD5000 series or better DirectX®: 11 Hard Drive: 7.5 GB Sound: 100% DirectX® 9.0C compliant sound card or equivalent onboard sound

Game information Initial release date: August 2019 Developer: Cosmo D Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS, Macintosh operating systems Publishers: Cosmo D, Cosmo D Studios LLC So, let’s be real up front: I was dreading playing Tales From Off-Peak City Volume 1.. For whatever reason, my brain has barely any appetite for unlocking locked doors, solving mysteries, unravelling conspiracies or piecing together intricately implied backstories. A lot of adventure games just ain’t for me, because I’m a brute and a philistine. Added to that, I’ve got an abiding fear of being outed as intellectually inferior, and nothing makes that anxiety tingle like high-brow stories about music, a subject that makes me feel like a complete, trudging dunce. And here was this first-person point and click game, set in an intellectually formidable surrealist landscape, about stealing a famous jazzman’s saxophone and getting sucked into a shadowy world where all was not as it seemed. Our Adam Smith described Off-Peak’s predecessor, The Norwood Suite, as being about discovering the secrets behind a hotel, but really being about “learning about music and the creative process”. I knew I was going to hate it, not because it was going to be bad, but because it was going to expose me for the idiot I was. And if you can’t already tell by how heavily I’ve set this up, I ended up loving it. Well. Nearly. I still don’t like games about searching fruitlessly for door keys, cos I do enough of it in real life. And however much you dress it up, that’s what point and clicks, and the first-person walkabouts that have evolved from them, will always boil down to. No matter how interesting its environment (and good lord, I can’t wait to be done moaning so I can talk about how interesting it is), Off-Peak’s world is topologically identical to a rope with knots tied along its length. The rope is the story, and the knots are the business of arbitrarily seeking out items, that must be unpicked before you can progress. To me, it’s like being stopped every few minutes through a film I’m enjoying, and forced to rummage around a dark room for some meaningless household object, that happens to be the only thing that isn’t inexplicably superglued to the surface it’s resting on. I’d rather just watch the film. And OK, you might argue that these convolutions don’t just slow down the story for the sake of it – they encourage you to spend time exploring the world, getting lost in its details, and then happily stumbling upon the widget-nozzle you needed for the nozzle-free widget two doors down. Well, maybe I’m just particularly uptight, but that never works for me. On the contrary, I ended up rushing through this mind-wreckingly interesting game world, and blasting through its chunks of story too quickly, because I just wanted to be done with the fetching and carrying of objects. It’s a criticism I’d make of a thousand games with the same nuts and bolts, but it’s one I’ll make especially hard here, because Off-peak deserves a format that’s as unique and creative as its design, even if I don’t know what that format is. If developer Cosmo D puts together an RTS game, I’ll be all over it. But now, onto an otherwise glowing review, which should glow all the more since the love I felt for Off-Peak had to be squeezed, like a duvet into a box containing an anvil, around the fact that I didn’t enjoy the actual playing of it much at all. As per my intuition, Off-Peak does come with a lot of the highbrow, super-cool brainfreight I thought it might: it’s set at a crossroads in a weirdo, perma-twilit city that forever seems halfway to invoking NYC or Philadelphia or San Francisco or any one of a number of US metropolises, until you realise that every component part of the scene you’re looking at is impossible. It’s an aesthetic that’s noir-adjacent, americana-adjacent, and big-S Surreal – by which I mean, surreal in the sense of words like ‘portentous’ and ‘oneiric’, rather than ‘cheese’, ‘random’, and ‘of doom’. And yes, there is a lot in there thematically about music. and not just any music, but Jazz. The universal talisman of refinement. The music that, if you listen to it, shows the world you exist at a cognitive height wheremusic, mathematics, poetry and philosophy have all blended into a grand unified theory of being cool and smart. This is what I was really freaking out about before I played – what hope did I, an outsider to music culture, an uncool man and an actual warhammer author who listens to deafening drum n bass to help the speed go down in the mornings, have of comprehending this game? All became clear within eight seconds. Because that was how long it took after the game’s soundtrack kicked in (I know because I went back and timed), for my eyebrows to raise in that sort of reverse-frown you do when something’s growing on you rapidly, and for me to find myself saying, out loud, the six words that could easily have stood in for this review: “this slaps, to be fair.” And yeah, Off-Peak does slap. Off-Peak slaps harder than a mid-90s Tango advert, and as relentlessly as E Honda. Cosmo D is a musician, you see. And you’d know it within seconds, even if the game’s theme had nothing to do with music, purely through the principle of ‘show, don’t tell’. Honestly, I’ve never known a game make me so utterly aware of sound before, to the point where it often registered with me more powerfully than the (extremely striking) visual design did. Sure, the game’s opening title track is a plain and simple banger – it’s barely more than a bass line, in fact, but what a bass line: as you cruise into the game world through its weird urban twilight, it swaggers along in the dark with you like a psilocybin-conjured panther. It sets the mood more perfectly than I could use words to describe – and in my opinion at least, that’s what music is for. And when I say, “it slaps,” I mean that in a holistic sense, rather than just saying it has some good tunes in it. There are a couple of other pieces on the same level, too. But to repeat, I’m talking about more than just a good OST, here. Sound is deployed constantly and creatively in every form you can imagine, from tiny bits of foley work to sweeping ambient intrusions, in order to shape – and relentlessly shift – the city’s atmosphere. There are the little garbled instrumental samples that stand in for peoples’ speech, but which are so much more effective than what is usually a cute trick to save on voice acting costs. There’s the traffic sound that was so compelling, I looked around from the conversation I was in just to see if there was a car, only to find an empty street yet again. There’s the game’s single moment of pant-shitting horror, in which nothing actually happens to you, but one sound in particular does all the work of watching a tiger lunge out of your fireplace with a loaded gun The onslaught is at once both meticulous and overwhelming; like being drowned via the squirting of a million pipettes. Even walking a few steps down one of the crossed streets that define the game environment can trigger a fundamental change in mood, as if you’ve moved to another space entirely without anything changing visually. Just like Hunter Thompson once memorably said of acid, Off-Peak shifts gears on you. And given the profoundly bloody odd nature of psychedelics, that’s not a comparison to be made glibly. Off-Peak is a vanishingly rare example of a game which includes a massive (growling) stone dog, a tenement building that’s just a colossal, weeping face lying on its side, a dressmaker’s window which is a void full of distant whales, etcetera etcetera, but of which you can say, with informed sincerity, that it’s “like playing video games on acid”. Specifically, like playing a high-concept half-life mod from the weird end of a magazine demo disc in 1999. And yes, those are all very strange images. But it’s the sound that makes it all so legitimately trippy – without that, it would all be so much less. I don’t meant to dismiss the sights of Off-Peak, by the way, as they’re worth a review’s-worth of enthusiasm in themselves. But I’m less familiar with being ear-wowed than eye-wowed, so it feels like I should concentrate on that. But yes: as has been written about Cosmo D games before, you can look at pretty much anything from any angle, and feel like you’re in an art gallery And was it all crushingly, intimidatingly intellectual? Well, yes and no. Actually, if I’m being honest: no. It was extremely clever, but never confrontationally. It was clearly rammed full of symbols and implication, but it never made me feel like I was missing out if I didn’t grasp any of it. Indeed, it seemed very clear that that it was “enough” just to enjoy the game on a purely abstract sensory level. In the end, Off-peak did actually suck me into a few extremely thinky thoughts – but it did it craftily, while I was too busy enjoying the surface-level elements to notice my slip into worthy pondering. For example: There’s a very odd little minigame involving making pizzas, in which customers’ orders are just oblique statements. You have to interpret what they mean, in terms of what toppings to put where, and then the customers actually critique your efforts on delivery. Like that one puzzle from Zoombinis, but coded by Camus. I had one order that simply read “right in the chest”, and as I was making the pizza – a ghastly mound of marinara sauce and flamingo meat – I got thinking about all the different interpretations of the phrase. Depending on what meaning you assign to each component word, “right in the chest” could mean “the correct things are in the storage vessel”, or “I just shot that dude in the heart”. It could refer to both, if you linked the two interpretations via the interpretation of “chest” as “coffin”. And so on. From there, I thought about the many, many strange and amusing book titles that appear on the game’s shelves, and then the imaginary record titles as well. This got me thinking about the relationship between the title of an instrumental song and its content (such as in the game’s… jazz). And then I started to examine the fundamental concept of titles, what their existence signifies, and the fundamental impossibility of translating verbal language into music, and vice versa. I even started to wonder about the nature of subjective meaning. At this point, I audibly cursed, because after all my worrying, Off-Peak had ended up tricking me into feeling smart. It’s good like that, this game: It tends to be clever with you, not at you. But again, analysis and chin-stroking is not a compulsory part of play. Cosmo D has put a wild level of effort into creating atmospheres, and it’s enough just to enjoy them. Funnily enough, this brings me back to the exact same point I used to explain why I liked Frog Detective 2, the other point and click game I’ve played in the last year. I was relating something my dad, who was an abstract painter, explained to me when I was a kid and – funnily enough – anxious about not understanding non-figurative art I don’t know anything about Cosmo D beyond the extent to which you can meet anyone by playing their game. And having done so, I’m pretty sure they’re one of those rare and beautiful folks who knows a ton about really cool, smart stuff, while having zero investment in coming across that way. I think they might just be really cool. And yes, Off-Peak deserved to be something less arbitrary than a point and click. Or it deserved a player with better taste than me. But given how much I’ve had to say in praise of both this and Frog Detective 2, the only two point and click games I’ve played in the last couple of years, I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps I just don’t dislike as many things as I thought I did. It’s always good to shed your prejudices, and Tales From Off-Peak City helped me unload a good few. System Requirements MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 Processor: Intel i5, 3.0Ghz Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 800 series / Radeon Pro 560, 2GB DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 2 GB available space Sound Card: Built-In RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 Processor: Intel i7, 3.6Ghz Memory: 16 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 900 series / Radeon Pro 560, 4GB DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 2 GB available space Sound Card: Built-In

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has denied seeking to oust the State department's independent watchdog in "retaliation" for an investigation. President Trump fired Steve Linick, the agency's inspector general, last week. He had been investigating Mr Pompeo's alleged use of government staff for personal errands, US media reported. It emerged on Monday he was also scrutinising a Trump administration Saudi arms deal. He is the fourth inspector general (IG) to be fired by Mr Trump in four weeks, and the move on Friday sparked outcry from Democrats, who claimed Mr Linick was fired for political reasons. Mr Pompeo confirmed that he recommended Mr Linick's removal, but said he did not know that the inspector general was investigating him. "I'm not briefed on it. I usually see these investigations in final draft form 24 hours, 48 hours before the IG is prepared to release them," he told the Washington Post on Monday. "So it's simply not possible for this to be an act of retaliation. End of story." The Secretary of State said Mr Linick was sacked for "undermining" the State department, though he did not give further details. "I went to the president and made clear to him that Inspector General Linick wasn't performing a function in a way that we had tried to get him to , that was additive for the State department, very consistent with what the statute says he's supposed to be doing," he said. Mr Linick, a former prosecutor, was appointed by Mr Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, to oversee spending and detect mismanagement at the state department. Democrats say Mr Trump is retaliating against public servants who want to hold his administration to account. On Friday, Mr Trump said he no longer had the "fullest confidence" in Mr Linick and that he would be terminated in 30 days. Mr Linick was said to be investigating complaints that Mr Pompeo had improperly used tax-payer provided staff for personal tasks, such as picking up dry cleaning and walking his dog. Eliot Engel, the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee said over the weekend that he believed Mr Linick's sacking was an act of "retaliation" and that he would open an investigation. Mr Pompeo denied the charge. "It is not possible that this decision, or my recommendation rather, to the president rather, was based on any effort to retaliate for any investigation t hat was going on, or is currently going on," he told the Post. Mr Trump dismissed the investigation as unimportant. "I don't know anything about the investigation but you're just telling me about walking a dog," he said. "It's terrible. It's so stupid. You know how stupid that sounds to the world? Unbelievable." On Monday, Mr Engel said he suspected "another reason for Mr Linick's firing". "His office was investigating - at my request - Trump's phony declaration of an emergency so he could send weapons to Saudi Arabia," Mr Engel said in a statement. "We don't have the full picture yet, but it's troubling that Secretary Pompeo wanted Mr Linick pushed out before this work could be completed." Last May, Mr Trump angered both Republicans and Democrats when he declared a national emergency to sidestep a congressional review of over $7bn (£5.7bn) in arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The rarely used loophole in the Arms Export Control Act was invoked by Mr Trump to approve the sale to Saudi Arabia, J ordan and and the UAE - over the objection of US lawmakers. Human rights groups have found instances when US-made weapons have been used by Saudi Arabia to kill civilians in neighbouring Yemen during that country's civil war. This is the latest in a series of dismissals of independent government watchdogs. Last month, Mr Trump dismissed Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community. Mr Atkinson first alerted Congress to a whistleblower complaint that led to Mr Trump's impeachment trial.

Game Information Initial release date: November 15, 2013 Series: Baldur's Gate Engine: BioWare Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Android, MORE Modes: Single-player video game, Multiplayer video game Developers: Beamdog, Overhaul Games, BioWare Corporation Thirteen years may have passed since the original release of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, but I still remember pulling out the 263-page user's manual, feeling my eyes widen in intimidation at stats like “THAC0,” and chucking it to the side and jumping in without it. I don't regret it. Then, as now, Baldur's Gate II's stats will lead you down countless labyrinthine passageways if you let them, but there’s something ingenious about a game that uses an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons ruleset and still gives you at least a fighting chance of survival. In this new Enhanced Edition, Beamdog's clearly learned some lessons from its first attempt at enhancing the franchise last year, and its new content and built-in tweaks and conveniences render it a generally satisfying ride for newcomers. BG2EE even looks like the 2000 version, down to the cutscenes (which were sadly replaced in last year's Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition). Booting up the original reveals the extent of the work Beamdog has done here, as it was designed in the days when we drooled over resolutions in the neighborhood of 800x600. With the Enhanced Edition, however, BioWare's classic runs comfortably at today's resolutions, and supports the welcome ability to zoom in and out as you wish. Though the resulting pixelation from zooming serves as a brutal reminder of why BioWare originally intended to keep the camera fixed, the environmental visuals have held up well over the years. Numerous other tweaks abound. No longer do you need to hit Escape every time you wish to save; a new quicksave option allows you to prepare for foul ups without interrupting the pace of the action. Elsewhere, a new help menu provides a smidge of guidance for players who don't have the convenience of the aforementioned instructional tome, and a quick-loot option avoids the old hassle of endlessly clicking the screen to collect the spoils of battle. Beamdog also updated the Black Pits addition they designed for the first enhanced edition, which allows new players a way to just kill bad guys without worrying about the story. It still amounts to little more than a straightforward arena mode, but the enemies seem more challenging now and I once again found it useful as a makeshift tutorial for controlling the six members of my party in the main game. Convenient additions all, but on its own it’s not enough for veterans to justify spending around double the cost of the original version (as found on vendors such as GOG.com), where a decade plus of mods and patches have already corrected many of its shortcomings. Instead, the real appeal of Beamdog's version for newcomers lies in the several hours' worth of story delivered through four new characters. Three of them – the annoying wild mage Neera, the monk Rasaad yn Bashir, and the brooding half-orc Dorn Il Khan – reprise their roles from Beamdog's enhanced edition for the first Baldur's Gate, and the sequel's expanded abilities make them more immediately enjoyable than before. In the first outing, many of their adventures seemed brief, uninspired and even forced, but here each of their storylines span multiple zones and offer a handful of different resolutions.The content's stronger, too. Battles in the new characters' questlines seemed uninspired when they appeared last year, but here they deliver some of Baldur's Gate II's most consistently challenging content. Enhanced Edition also throws a new evil-aligned female thief named Hexxat into the mix. She's one of the best reasons to experience BGII:EE, particularly since her well-written story arc and its twist provide a compelling reason to walk on the dark side. Hexxat also brings with her the possibility of a same-sex romance, and indeed, Beamdog took a bold step here in restricting the relationship to female characters. Already modders are clamoring for a way to make her questline available to males, but it's nice for female characters to have a same-sex option aside from Anomen after all these years. This wealth of new story content is where Baldur's Gate II lives up to its "enhanced" moniker the most, and it's all handled so well that players approaching it for the first time likely won't be able to tell where the old game ends and the new content begins. Save, that is, for the bugs that pop up during these new missions. Hexxat and Dorn's quests seemed particularly glitchy, to the point that I took to making special saves before following their questlines in case I encountered missed triggers or noninteractive quest objects that a reload usually fixed. Actual progression roadblocks aside, the rough quality of some of the new content even shows up in low-resolution textures in a few new zones and occasional typos in the quest dialogue. Considering the hundreds of hours' worth of content already in Baldur's Gate II, however, these are relatively brief intrusions in an experience that still manages to hold its own despite the widespread adoption of its model by numerous RPGs in the intervening years. That's also true of the equally impressive Throne of Bhaal expansion, which is included with the package. The story gripped me as much on this playthrough as it did the first time around thanks to the voice acting, which has lost none of its potency. Whether it's chitchatting with a talking sword, solving murders, or escaping grim dungeons, Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition captures the essence of what makes fantasy RPGs so beloved. Short of a full-blown remake (which I, for one, would love to see), this is the best way for a new generation to experience that greatness for themselves. Even revisiting it after all this time, I laughed, I faced daunting challenges, and I wanted to play it again when I was done. The visual and technical improvements may not be extensive enough to entice you if you’ve played heavily modded versions of the original, but for newcomers, this is the definitive experience. Just save before embarking on the new adventures. System Requirements OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 Processor: 1 GHZ Memory: 512 MB RAM Graphics: OpenGL 2.0 compatible Storage: 3 GB available space Sound Card: Windows Compatible

Name of Game: Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition Price: 22.49 $ USD Link Store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/435150/Divinity_Original_Sin_2__Definitive_Edition/ Offer Ends After : 28 Hour System Requirements MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 SP1 64-bit or Windows 8.1 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit Processor: Intel Core i5 or equivalent Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 550 or ATI™ Radeon™ HD 6XXX or higher DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 60 GB available space Additional Notes: Minimum requirements may change during development. RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 SP1 64-bit or Windows 8.1 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit Processor: Intel Core i7 or equivalent Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 or AMD R9 280 DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 60 GB available space Additional Notes: Recommended requirements may change during development.

Abdullah Abdullah (left) and Ashraf Ghani are the old political rivals Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah have signed a power-sharing deal, ending months of political uncertainty. Mr Ghani will stay on as president while both men will choose an equal number of ministers. Dr Abdullah will lead peace talks with the Taliban, should they get under way. It is hoped the deal in the capital Kabul will help to maintain the balance of power that existed before last year's disputed presidential election. Mr Ghani and Dr Abdullah - who both claimed victory in last September's election - last month held rival inauguration ceremonies. The Afghan electoral commission says incumbent Ashraf Ghani narrowly won the vote, but Mr Abdullah has alleged the result is fraudulent. The deal comes days after a militant attack on a maternity ward in the capital, Kabul, left 24 people dead. Mothers, newborn babies and nurses were among the victims No group has admitted carrying out the attack that shocked Afghanistan and the world. What about the power-sharing deal? Mr Ghani and Dr Abdullah - the old rivals who both held positions in the previous government - signed the agreement on Sunday. Dr Abdullah, a former eye surgeon, wrote on Twitter after the ceremony that the agreement would help to form a "more inclusive, accountable and competent administration". "We now need to come together as a nation, strive to seek solutions that are practical" 33 people are talking about this President Ghani's spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said details about positions being held by members of Dr Abdullah's team would be revealed later. The deal comes as Afghan authorities are hoping to enter peace talks with the Taliban to end years of violence. Last month, the Taliban walked out of the talks, saying any face-to-face discussions with the Afghan government had proved "fruitless". The talks reportedly broke down over a prisoner swap agreed earlier between the US and Taliban. It was meant to be a step towards ending the war, but the Taliban say Afghan officials are trying to delay the release, while officials say the militants' demands are unreasonable Afghans, still reeling from last week's unthinkable attack on mothers and mourners, will welcome any shaft of light in this enveloping darkness. Some hope this hard-fought deal is stronger than the 2014 accord that was clinched by decisive outside mediation by the US, but subsequently collapsed. But this power-sharing pact involves the same individuals and interests, same personal and political clashes. And the same leaders and warlords of the past are still sitting in the front row of a tortuous history. However, multiple crises are converging now: accelerating violence, a deadly virus, and sheer hunger. Afghans will look to their leaders to prioritise a nation's yearning for peace ahead of their own personal political futures. Moving toward talks with the Taliban is a process fraught with deepening doubt and danger. This deal provides a political structure to build a way out of war. It has to hold fast lest it fall at the many hurdles to come

Game Information Initial release date: May 14, 2019 Developer: Asobo Studio Composer: Olivier Deriviere Genres: Action-adventure game, Stealth game, Survival horror Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows Children struggling to right a world wrecked by the old is a po[CENSORED]r theme nowadays, within video games and beyond them. Asobo's often-magnificent A Plague Tale: Innocence is one of the more hopeful variations, pitching a small cast of photogenic youngsters against religious zealots and man-eating rats in medieval France. Though let down by an over-reliance on mandatory stealth, which drains a little of the sorcery from some astounding locations, it is a wonderfully dark and tender fairytale whose key draws are its frail but indefatigable protagonists. As the curtain goes up, noble-born siblings Amicia and Hugo are chased from their family estate by Inquisition soldiers, leaving their parents for dead. The two are relative strangers to one another: the victim of a hereditary sickness, which slowly blackens his veins over the game's 10 hour story, Hugo has spent his whole life locked away in a loft with his mother, a master alchemist. This affliction is the reason for the Inquisition's raid, and you'll spend much of the plot unravelling its arcane origin. The older Amicia - the character you control for most of the game - has grown up in her father's company and is a spirited creature of the outdoors: when we first meet her, she's learning to hunt with her sling. Their home's destruction throws them together for the first time, much as the death of Faye does Atreus and Kratos in God of War, and as in Santa Monica Studio's game, the story marches to the gentle beat of their growing intimacy. Hugo is often a source of frustration for Amicia, stuffing his hands gleefully into baskets of putrid fruit in deserted villages, and wailing in panic if she tries to explore without him. But his hard-wearing childishness in the face of incessant horror is also her greatest consolation, the thing anchoring her to herself as she does what is necessary for them both to survive. One of the game's loveliest explorations of this takes the unlikely form of a collectible, where Hugo gathers flowers he recognises from their mother's books, inviting his bedraggled and bloodied sister to stoop so that he can plait them into her hair. The flower stays in Amicia's hair for the rest of the chapter, even as you fell pursuing soldiers with your slingshot or shatter their lanterns to expose them to the rats. It's a gesture that says everything about who Amicia and Hugo are to one another, what they've lost and what they've held onto - and tracking down those blossoms quickly became as important to me as mastering the game's slightly wayward mixture of stealth and terrain puzzles. The ruined lustre of its environments and the sheer adorableness of its characters notwithstanding, A Plague Tale doesn't begin well. It consists, at first, of all the palate-cleansing stealth bits you wish they'd edit out of third-person shooters. The journey across France takes you to a variety of beautifully imagined places - battlefields checkered with trampled ensigns, moonlit cities on loan from Bloodborne - but many of them boil down to pockets of short-sighted soldiers, all trundling around their patrol paths, all talking loudly to each other or themselves. Playing as Amicia, with Hugo holding your hand (you can order him to let go where necessary with the D-pad), you lurk behind upended wagons or in patches of vegetation, waiting for the point in the pattern when every guard has their back to you. You can also lob rocks at crates of armour and smash pots to lure guards away for the genre-required 10 seconds or so of theatrical head-scratching. Getting caught is typically a recipe for death - Amicia can down unhelmeted opponents with her sling, and break line of sight to reset guard awareness, but unless you have a certain item in your inventory, she's toast the second anybody saunters within swinging distance. It's all rather uninspired next to the melancholy majesty of the setting and the delicacy of the game's incidental dialogue (my tip: pick the French language option - the French-accented English one is fine but a bit Monty Python in places). Worse still are the "big action beats" that conclude some levels - ungainly boss fights in which you circle-strafe while aiming for weakpoints, hold-the-button chase sequences or mercifully brief shooting galleries. The overall feel, for the first few hours, is of a well-wrought and affecting story in thrall to extremely worn-out genre conventions. Fortunately, there's more to A Plague Tale than sliding between viewcones and counting the beats till an unsympathetic man with a spear looks away. There's the rat horde, first of all, a ravenous tidal entity that explodes through soil and masonry like pressurised oil. The rats will strip the flesh from anything they come across, armour or no armour, but can be kept at bay with light. Accordingly, while dodging Inquisition troops you'll need to attend Thief-style to the play of illumination across each area. You'll use quick-burning branches to force a path through them, the ocean of rodent bodies closing back in behind you as the flame creeps down towards Amicia's fist. Where torches are scarce you'll mani[CENSORED]te parts of the environment, putting your shoulder to a brazier or hauling on a ballista crank to send its burning projectile swinging out towards an object you need. You'll also look for things the rats can scrunch on in place of Amicia and Hugo, from animal carcasses and corpses strung up by your enemies to your enemies themselves. All this changes the feel of the game, from workmanlike sneakery to a gruesome, on-going question of just how awfully you want to treat those hunting for you, with Hugo looking on. I don't think the rat horde concept is quite explored to the full - in the last third, there's a definite sense that the scenario designers have run out of steam - but there are some opulent environment puzzles to chew on, particularly once Amicia and Hugo team up with other characters who have a certain degree of autonomy. The most decadent takes the form of a giant clockwork castle made up of braziers on tracks: to purge the place of scurrying threats, you must work alongside a sour-mouthed thief, moving each brazier one by one to gain access to another. The other way A Plague Tale grows is in the familiar form of equipment progression. In some respects this represents the game at its most boring, most in hock to genre expectation: workshop benches scattered around chapters let you plug craftable resources into a bevy of iterative improvements, like being able to sling objects without making a noise. More intriguing, though, are the alchemical recipes bestowed on you by some of the people you'll befriend (who have signature abilities of their own you can call on at intervals). These include mixtures that douse torches or kindle embers, and foul-smelling concoctions with which to choke out armoured adversaries, forcing them to remove their helmets. These gadgets are hardly without precedent, and none of the puzzles tethered to them are breathtaking, but they help Plague Tale step away from its clunkier underpinning and make the most of its gorgeous, horrendous locales. There's a marvelous, if slightly rough-hewn additional set of abilities and puzzle considerations towards the end of the game, which expose another side to the rodent plague - I won't spoil them, but suffice to say it's worth the journey. The great shock of Plague Tale is that on some level, it's a Gears of War game. The more obvious comparison is The Last of Us, another poignant, apocalyptic escapade in which an older character guides a more innocent soul whose blood is touched by destiny, but in practice, and for all the absence of chainsaws, it's often Epic's game that comes to mind. It's there in the tanky handling, with characters swivelling ponderously as though secretly many times their own size. It's there in the sense of a historical backdrop (the Sera of Gears is a pastiche of familiar architectural traditions) being softly consumed by the supernatural: the darkness alive with eyeshine, the twisted, bony black rot the rats leave behind them, the alchemical motifs that gradually become the plot's crucible. But above all, it's a question of framing. As in Gears, you spend most chapters wending your way towards some distant landmark, a brooding structure such as a windmill that is teed up for you with a context-sensitive look command, then tugged into and out of view by the intervening geography. It lends each stage of Amicia and Hugo's journey a powerful inexorability, for all the trail-and-error process of bamboozling soldiers - as though you were being drawn through its world by gravity towards a procession of massive objects. It's worth giving into the pull. Just don't forget to look for the flowers. System Requirements MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64 bits) Processor: Intel Core i3-2120 (3.3 GHz)/AMD FX-4100 X4 (3.6 GHz) Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: 2 GB, GeForce GTX 660/Radeon HD 7870 Storage: 50 GB available space RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64 bits) Processor: Intel Core i5-4690 (3.5 GHz)/AMD FX-8300 (3.3 GHz) Memory: 16 GB RAM Graphics: 4 GB, GeForce GTX 970/Radeon RX 480 Storage: 50 GB available space

Name Of Game: nimbatus - The Space Drone Constructor Price: 14.99$ USD Link Of Store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/383840/Nimbatus__The_Space_Drone_Constructor/ Offer Ends up After: 4 Days System Requirements MINIMUM: OS: Windows XP SP2+ Processor: Quad Core Processor Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: nVidia® 8800 GT / AMD® 4670 or faster

Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna, were among nine who died in the crash A post-mortem examination of the helicopter crash that killed basketball star Kobe Bryant has ruled blunt force trauma as the cause of death for all nine victims. The 180-page report also found that the pilot, 50-year-old Ara Zobayan, tested negative for drugs and alcohol. The cause of the 26 January crash, which occurred in California amid heavy fog, is still being investigated. Bryant's 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, was with him on board the helicopter. The passengers - which included two of Gianna's basketball teammates, their relatives and a coach - were on their way to a tournament in Thousand Oaks where Bryant had been set to coach. Alyssa Altobelli, John Altobelli, Keri Altobelli, Payton Chester, Christina Mauser all died alongside the Bryant's and pilot Ara Zobayan when the helicopter crashed into a hill just north of Los Angeles. "On Jan. 28, the cause of death for all nine victims was ruled as blunt trauma," the examination said. "The manner of death was certified as an accident". The results of the post-mortem examination were posted on the website of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner office on Friday Bryant, a five-time NBA champion, played for the LA Lakers throughout his career and is considered one of the greatest players in the game's history. He retired in April 2016 after a 20-year career with the team. Lawyers for his widow, Vanessa Bryant, have filed a lawsuit against the company that operated the helicopter. It alleges that Zobayan - who died in the crash - did not assess weather data before taking off. Separately, earlier this year, the sheriff of Los Angeles County said eight deputies had admitted possessing graphic photos of the crash site. Alex Villanueva said he was "devastated and heartbroken" by their conduct. He said he had instructed the deputies to delete the images

Name of game: Stellaris Ancient relics story pack Price: 6.69 $ USD link Store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1045980/Stellaris_Ancient_Relics_Story_Pack/ Offer Ends up After: 2 Days System Requirements MINIMUM: OS: Windows® 7 SP1 64 Bit Processor: Intel® iCore™ i3-530 or AMD® FX-6350 Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 460 or AMD® ATI Radeon™ HD 5870 (1GB VRAM), or AMD® Radeon™ RX Vega 11 or Intel® HD Graphics 4600 DirectX: Version 9.0c Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 10 GB available space Sound Card: Direct X 9.0c- compatible sound card Additional Notes: Controller support: 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers. Special multiplayer requirements: Internet Connection RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit Processor: Intel® iCore™ i5-3570K or AMD® Ryzen™ 5 2400G Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 560 Ti (1GB VRAM) or AMD® Radeon™ R7 370 (2 GB VRAM) DirectX: Version 12 Storage: 10 GB available space Sound Card: Direct X 9.0c- compatible sound card Additional Notes: Controller support: 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers. Special multiplayer requirements: Internet Connection

Title: Stellaris: Ancient Relics Developer: Paradox Development Studio Publisher: Paradox Interactive Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Linux, Macintosh operating system Release Date:June 4th, 2019 If you are familiar with my reviews, then you might mistake this one as a press-release. The simple answer is that there isn’t really much to say about the Ancient Relics Story Pack to convince anyone who isn’t already a die-hard Stellaris fan to get this new addition. Chances are, if you play Stellaris as religiously as the xenophilic empires, you already shelled out for the DLC since you wanted something new, or you’re someone like myself who always waits to get these additions at steep discounts since you know there are always going to be a dozen more in the future. You might assume this jaded perspective is because Ancient Relics disappointed me, but the reality is the DLC lived up to my expectations for Paradox Interactive games. So in no uncertain terms: Is this DLC worth getting at some point or when put together in a bundle? Absolutely, and if you’re a fanatic for archaeology or developing the research portion of Stellaris, then you might find this addition more favorable than other players. For everyone else, you’ll have to come to your own conclusion on the matter. Before we discuss any problems with the business model or the DLC itself, it would be helpful to illustrate what new additions are added to the game. The main component to Ancient Relics is the addition of archaeological systems as well as Relics and Relic Planets that provide statistical benefits or massive resources for trading. There are also two new Precursor Races, the Baol and the Zroni. Finally, besides another four exceptional tracks to what is perhaps one of the best 4X OSTs ever made, there is also another story-focused quest-line to flesh out the lore of Stellaris, which is something that has yet to engage me as much as others. This sentiment about the quest-line isn’t exclusive to Ancient Relics; with seventy hours into Stellaris, I have yet to see the end of the Leviathan or the Distant Stars story packs. (The only reason I recall the Leviathan one is due to the one or two moments I bumped into the sleeping giants.) You might find my reaction surprising given how much I get engaged with video-game narratives and lore, but that aspect is a bigger issue in 4X games. To me, the story of a game of Stellaris is about the new blunders I will make or the new discoveries I’ll learn from the mechanics themselves. Several quest-chains along with finely crafted lore for the static intergalactic history pales in comparison to creating player-driven memories like the time I tried to assimilate my organic friends into my robot empire, but I ended up killing them all because I didn’t have the proper empire-attributes. Others will have tales of many joke-empires or Imperium of Man fantasies, which makes me wonder how many players enjoy the narrative qualities of these story packs to warrant all the effort Paradox puts into them. However, the story packs have never been exclusively about the narrative components, and Ancient Relics is no different. For those who have yet to play Stellaris or who may be rusty like myself, the science-aspect of the game mainly involved sending your research ships to scout the galaxy to expand your own territory or to research anomalies and debris to improve your own research. There weren’t any opportunities for science to apply to planetary matters, and the only relics that existed were the Fallen Empires. This story pack addresses that gap in the gameplay itself as planets can now be home to ancient civilization sites and relics, which add more to the game than simply new stuff to research. Like a chess piece with respect to the overall game, every small piece extends the complexity of the game, even as pieces as small as the pawns. Minor artifacts might add a few percentages to your favor, but what those rewards really do is get players fighting over territory. This result in return will fuel player-driven conflicts of war, diplomacy or land acquisition trades for planets, which are all further gameplay incentives to keep the game engaging. However, it’s the addition of Relcs,including former rewards like the Galatron from Leviathan, which will shake up any strategies available in Stellaris. All of these aspects of Ancient Relics justify getting these new additions for any avid fan of Stellaris, but like the other story packs—or Paradox’s business model—the changes are a lot more subtle in their influence. Part of the problem is that the constant free updates can distract players from understanding the value proposition of the new paid content, which is exactly what I felt was the case from the Tales from the Tiers “expansion” for Tyranny. It wasn’t until three to four hours into my recent game of Stellaris where I started to notice the new artifacts and the related quest-line. Most of my time spent was relearning the colony design system for buildings as the last time I had played was a year ago from some version of 2.2. If you haven’t played any version of Stellaris 2.0, then you also have to contend with the changes to Star Lanes, Star Docks, new Influence and Energy costs, and hundreds of other massive changes. Needless to say, you could call the latest version 3.2 instead of 2.3, and I don’t think most newcomers or returning players would be able to spot the difference. The real question to consider for Stellaris is to ask yourself, “At what point while you’re relearning this game should these new paid features be considered, and how do you quantify that aspect that is both fair to the developers as well as to the consumers?” That question is one I cannot answer in any satisfactory manner, and as much as I should find that practice questionable Paradox has always been transparent with their dev-blogs or store descriptions (for the most part.) Whether you want to attribute this practice as deliberate obfuscation of value or the unintended result of keeping a game thriving for so long, I will leave that decision up to you. System Requirements MINIMUM: OS: Windows® 7 SP1 64 Bit Processor: Intel® iCore™ i3-530 or AMD® FX-6350 Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 460 or AMD® ATI Radeon™ HD 5870 (1GB VRAM), or AMD® Radeon™ RX Vega 11 or Intel® HD Graphics 4600 DirectX: Version 9.0c Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 10 GB available space Sound Card: Direct X 9.0c- compatible sound card Additional Notes: Controller support: 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers. Special multiplayer requirements: Internet Connection RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit Processor: Intel® iCore™ i5-3570K or AMD® Ryzen™ 5 2400G Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 560 Ti (1GB VRAM) or AMD® Radeon™ R7 370 (2 GB VRAM) DirectX: Version 12 Storage: 10 GB available space Sound Card: Direct X 9.0c- compatible sound card Additional Notes: Controller support: 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers. Special multiplayer requirements: Internet Connection

Burkina Faso is fighting Islamist insurgents with ties to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group Twelve people arrested on suspicion of terror offences have been found dead in their police cells in Burkina Faso. The prosecutor for the town of Fada N'Gourma said 25 people had been detained overnight on Monday, and "unfortunately, 12 of them have died during the course of the night in the cells they were being held in". The cause of death is currently unknown. Security sources told AFP news agency it may have been asphyxiation. An investigation has been launched. In a similar episode in July 2019, 11 people accused of drug trafficking were found dead in a cell belonging to the national police's drugs squad. It comes less than a month after Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it believed Burkina Faso security forces had executed 31 unarmed men in the northern town of Djibo, a few hours after arresting them in a counter-terror operation. Burkina Faso, a landlocked country in West Africa, is fighting Islamist insurgents with ties to al- Qaeda and the Islamic State group. More than 300 civilians have been killed by militants, according to HRW, while the government has killed several hundred for allegedly supporting them. Most of the 12 dead men were ethnic Fulas, a group often accused of jihadist links, AFP reports. Burkina Faso's security forces have been repeatedly accused of mistreating them. A local human rights organisation said a Fula teacher accused of having terrorist associations was found dead in a police station in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, on 2 May.

Name game: Red Dead Redemption 2 Price: 47.99 $ USD Link store:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1174180/Red_Dead_Redemption_2/ Offer ends up after : 10 Days System Requirments MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 - Service Pack 1 (6.1.7601) Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-2500K / AMD FX-6300 Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 2GB / AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 150 GB available space Sound Card: Direct X Compatible RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 - April 2018 Update (v1803) Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-4770K / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Memory: 12 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB / AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 150 GB available space Sound Card: Direct X Compatible

TITLE: Stellaris GENRE: Simulation, Strategy DEVELOPER: Paradox Development Studio PUBLISHER: Paradox Interactive RELEASE DATE: 6 Dec, 2018 Stellaris has let me play a lot of ethically questionable empires. There was the time I tried to consume the galaxy as a hive of monstrous insectoids, and then there was my playthrough as a robotic legion with a penchant for enslaving every fleshy lifeform it found. None of them gave me as much pause as playing a capitalist corporate empire in the latest expansion, MegaCorp. With MegaCorp, Paradox is digging into another science-fiction mainstay: giant corporations and organised crime syndicates like Alien’s Weyland-Yutani, the Hutts of Star Wars and Star Trek’s Ferengi. They like money and, for the most part, don’t mind how they go about getting it. The less pleasant the methods, the greater the profits. I’m at the mid-game of my own MegaCorp experiment, modelled on the aforementioned Weyland-Yutani. Corporate governments have their own set of civics, like hives and AIs, separate from the regular list, including one obviously inspired by the company’s motto, “Building Better Worlds”, netting you private colony ships to better expand your reach. Another lets you foster greater unity through propaganda and PR—a media empire. You can even create evangelical mega-churches that don’t so much blur the line between religion and commerce as completely smash it. Ultimately, these corporations still broadly function like empires, warring, and exploring just like their neighbours. There’s a lot of flavour, good flavour, but the moment-to-moment experience is familiar. What MegaCorp does is give you a lot more (and a lot more interesting) options when it comes to making money and fiddling with your economy. Along with the civics, there are special actions corporations can take, such as creating branch offices on worlds within empires that they have a trade deal with. These offices let you actually build on alien worlds, though in a limited capacity, which is why the harmonious collective of friendly space jellyfish that live next door to me now have horrible fast-food chains and entertainment megaplexes. Branch offices might be too great a source of wealth. I didn’t build any in the early part of my game, so I was still occasionally low on cash even when I was enslaving aliens, experimenting on aliens and generally just being a dick to aliens. Once I remembered to start taking advantage of my trading partners, however, I quickly became one of the uber-wealthy. The risk is that these trade deals could end for any number of reasons, quickly reducing my income. There are other ways to make cash when those sources dry up, though. There’s a new economic resource that comes with the Le Guin update, whether you have MegaCorp or not, called trade value. It represents the economic output of your empire and can be affected by jobs, resources mined across the galaxy, starbases with trade modules and lots of other things. Trade value can be sent to your capital world from other places, like starbases, via trade routes, but these can be preyed on by pirates, making these space-faring menaces this persistent threat to your economy, not just a military concern. Planetary management is another big change that comes with the free Le Guin update. That probably undersells it. Planetary management is one of Stellaris’ biggest ever overhauls. The new planetary screen is pretty hard to parse, unfortunately, and it takes a bit of getting used to, but I’ve definitely been converted to the system itself. Stellaris has always made pops central to the game, and their traits, which you can eventually tweak through genetic and synthetic mani[CENSORED]tion, have a significant impact on your empire. Le Guin places another layer on top of that: their role on the worlds they inhabit. Every pop has a job (unless they’re unemployed) ranging from miners to merchants. The type of jobs available and buildings they can work in depends on everything from species traits to the laws of your empire. A new species you’ve just welcomed into your empire might be physically incapable of mining, while slavery laws might mean certain jobs would automatically be outlawed. Jobs are fundamental to resource production, with each level of society—workers, specialists and rulers—providing a different kind of resource. As you fill your worlds with new workers, you have considerably more freedom to specialise and tweak than you did with the basic ‘plonk down a building and move a random pop on top of it’ method of planetary management Stellaris had before. You’re no longer limited by a small set of tiles, and a planet’s output is much more dependent on who is living on it. As well as building regular structures, you’ll also develop specialised districts, allowing you to host a larger po[CENSORED]tion, grow more food or mine more minerals. Districts are the foundations of your worlds, giving you the basic building blocks of an empire and offering clear solutions to a lot of problems. Got a food deficit? Create another agricultural district. Need to churn out more ships? Focus on industrial districts. Specific buildings then allow you to further enhance the world, as well as creating new jobs for your citizens. The changes to planet management also introduce new wrinkles. Instead of the number of pops on your world being limited to the number of free building tiles, there’s a soft cap based on how many housing districts you’ve constructed. And even if you don’t have enough housing districts, new pops can still appear, causing overpo[CENSORED]tion. If you’ve already built up all your districts, you might have to take the hit, force them to move to another world or tear down one of your industrial or agricultural districts. Pops will take jobs and find homes automatically, so the micromanagement isn’t intensive, but when problems appear, you do need to roll up your sleeves. These districts are limited by how big the world is and how many hazards remain, but the number can also be dramatically expanded, allowing to you maintain a vast po[CENSORED]tion by turning the world into a giant city planet. You’ll need MegaCorp if you want to create an Ecumenopolis, and it’s something I’m still working towards. It’s a big endeavour and requires you to completely max out the number of city districts you can build, which also means you have to remove all other kinds of districts. But one day soon, I’ll have my very own Nar Shaadaa. While it’s far from the expansion’s most essential feature, the Ecumenopolis is a great example of Paradox using a sci-fi trope to make a novel system. Like many of the city-worlds conjured up in literature and film, Stellaris’ have sacrificed resources for po[CENSORED]tion. They’re not sustainable alone, and while they might technically support these untold numbers of citizens, they’re really reliant on the rest of the empire. They’re monuments to technological advancement, but they’re also monuments to arrogance, destroying the world to cater to more and more people. being able to get into the nitty-gritty of the economic side of things brings Stellaris closer to Victoria II, Paradox’s unsung Industrial Age grand strategy outing, which is pretty unexpected given that, until now, it was one of Stellaris’ weaker elements. I just hope I can encounter something that can stop me and my fat wallet from steam-rolling the galaxy. There’s a nasty band of reavers nearby that I’ve been trying to get tough enough to square up to, and I think it’s time I knocked on their door. System Requirements MINIMUM: OS: Windows® 7 SP1 64 Bit Processor: Intel® iCore™ i3-530 or AMD® FX-6350 Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 460 or AMD® ATI Radeon™ HD 5870 (1GB VRAM), or AMD® Radeon™ RX Vega 11 or Intel® HD Graphics 4600 DirectX: Version 9.0c Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 10 GB available space Sound Card: Direct X 9.0c- compatible sound card Additional Notes: Controller support: 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers. Special multiplayer requirements: Internet Connection RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit Processor: Intel® iCore™ i5-3570K or AMD® Ryzen™ 5 2400G Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 560 Ti (1GB VRAM) or AMD® Radeon™ R7 370 (2 GB VRAM) DirectX: Version 9.0c Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 10 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card Additional Notes: Controller support: 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers. Special multiplayer requirements: Internet Connection

Up to 100 children in the UK have been affected by a rare inflammatory disease linked to coronavirus, medics say. Some needed intensive care while others recovered quickly - but cases are extremely rare. In April, NHS doctors were told to look out for a rare but dangerous reaction in children. This was prompted by eight children becoming ill in London, including a 14-year-old who died. Doctors said all eight children had similar symptoms when they were admitted to Evelina London Children's Hospital, including a high fever, rash, red eyes, swelling and general pain. Most of the children had no major lung or breathing problems, although seven were put on a ventilator to help improve heart and circulation issues. Doctors are describing it as a "new phenomenon" similar to Kawasaki disease shock syndrome - a rare condition that mainly affects children under the age of five. Symptoms include a rash, swollen glands in the neck and dry and cracked lips. ut this new syndrome is also affecting older children up to the age of 16, with a minority experiencing serious complications. Dr Liz Whittaker, clinical lecturer in paediatric infectious diseases and immunology, at Imperial College London, said the fact that the syndrome was occurring in the middle of a pandemic, suggests the two are linked. "You've got the Covid-19 peak, and then three or four weeks later we're seeing a peak in this new phenomenon which makes us think that it's a post-infectious phenomenon," she said. This means it is likely to be something related to the build up of antibodies after infection. Exceptionally rare Prof Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said the majority of children who have had the condition have responded to treatment and are getting better and starting to go home. The syndrome is "exceptionally rare", he said. "This shouldn't stop parents letting their children exit lockdown," Prof Viner added. He said understanding more about the inflammatory disease "might explain why some children become very ill with Covid-19, while the majority are unaffected or asymptomatic". Children are thought to make up just 1-2% of all cases of coronavirus infection, accounting for l ess than 500 admissions to hospital. Michael Levin, professor of paediatrics and international child health at Imperial, explained that most of the children tested negative for coronavirus, but tested positive for detection of antibodies. "So we really think that the biology of the disease, somehow involves an unusual immune response to the virus," he said. However Prof Levin said there was "a vast amount to learn" about the reaction, which had only been known about for two to three weeks. Children appear to be affected up to six weeks after they have been infected with the virus, which could explain the appearance of the new syndrome several weeks after the peak of UK cases. There have been similar cases in the US, Spain, Italy, France and the Netherlands. Child health experts in the UK say it may not be something which just affects children. They are now working with researchers in the US and across Europe to find out more about what they have called paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome or (PIMS-TS). US officials investigating link At least 15 US states are also looking into the rare condition, according to New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Out of 82 diagnosed cases of the inflammatory syndrome in New York, 53 children tested positive or had antibodies for Covid-19. California, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts are among the other states with cases of the syndrome. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the US is set to issue an alert and updated definition of the syndrome to healthcare providers this week

Game Name: Dawn of man Price: 17.49 $ USD Link Store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/858810/Dawn_of_Man/ Offer Ends in: 4 Days System Requirements MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64 bit) Processor: 2 GHz Dual Core Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: 1 GB VRAM (Shader Model 3) DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 2 GB available space RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64 bit) Processor: Intel Core i5 or equivalent Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: 2 GB AMD or NVIDIA Card DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 2 GB available space

TITLE: Stellaris: Utopia GENRE: Simulation, Strategy DEVELOPER: Paradox Development Studio PUBLISHER: Paradox Interactive RELEASE DATE: 6 Apr, 2017 When Stellaris launched almost a year ago, its biggest void wasn't space itself, but its relatively challenge-light mid-game, especially regarding internal politics. Utopia attempts to enliven player empires, and force interesting choices in between the initial phase of wonder and exploration and the climactic finale when scripted endgame crises bring it all together. It attacks this problem with new political mechanics, a bunch of exciting late game goals that don’t involve waiting for a robot rebellion to happen, and sweeping, feedback-informed reworks of core systems. It may be the studio’s largest and most transformative expansion yet, which is saying something. Yet some of the additions feel as underdeveloped as areas of Stellaris were at launch. Alongside the 1.5 patch, Utopia rethinks just about everything relating to building and managing your stellar empire internally. Gone are set government types like Plutocratic Oligarchy and Enlightened Monarchy. In their place is a more versatile and interesting system where you chose an authority type (Democracy, Oligarchy, Dictatorship, or hereditary Empire), and then build on that with two starting civics (a third can later be unlocked with society tech) like Police State and Philosopher King to create a custom government that does exactly what you want it to. The type of government you create will influence how likely the po[CENSORED]tion units ('Pops') scattered across your planets are to adopt certain viewpoints, such as Militarism, Spiritualism, or Xenophobia. As ethics used to be assigned to Pops semi-randomly, this system gives you a lot more of an active role in influencing your people. This feeds into what I think is Utopia’s best feature: the new Faction system. Pops that follow a common ethos are now likely to found factions (such as Xenophiles starting an Alien Rights Movement, or Pacifists demanding an end to costly wars), with one of your existing governors, scientists, or military officers becoming the leader. Each faction has a list of agenda items, and depending on how many of them are fulfilled (or blatantly ignored), the faction will establish a happiness value that applies to all Pops who are part of that faction. Not only does displeasing factions potentially tank the happiness of a large base of your citizens, but keeping them very happy will grant you Influence that can be spent on useful edicts across the empire. The upshot of all of this is that internal politics actually feel interesting and participatory, which was a major weakness of Stellaris at launch. In one campaign, the two most powerful factions in my empire were the conservative religious bloc and a profit-driven party of business moguls. They usually weren’t directly at odds, but fulfilling all of the agendas to satisfy both of them required me to do some serious juggling of my usual playstyle. If I started to neglect one or the other, I would see the effects on my bottom line, just as I’d bask in the benefits when I managed to keep everyone happy. It’s a big, big step towards making Stellaris more interesting in the mid game, and giving you challenges to contend with that don’t involve blowing up spaceships. The flashier, more attention-grabbing new features don’t slack either. Using a new resource called Unity, empires can progress down Civ 5-style Tradition trees. The perks in these trees each provide big, thematic bonuses when fully completed, as well as granting you an Ascension Perk, which is where things get really crazy. If you want to upload your entire po[CENSORED]tion into robot bodies, you can do that. If you want to build a giant Dyson sphere around a sun to steal all of its energy and make any planets that depended on it freeze to death, you can do that. If you want to genetically modify your species to have 400 babies, you can do that. There’s nothing stopping you besides earning enough Unity. And while Unity can feel like one too many extra currencies to juggle in a game that already has minerals, energy, food, influence, three types of science, and strategic resources, the perks it provides are an effective way to guide your playstyle through the early and mid game, building towards some exciting, new toys in the late game. My favorite of these I’ve come across so far is The Shroud. A parallel realm accessible by a conclave of psychics once you’ve unlocked the highest tier of the Psionic ascension path, most interactions are text-based and relegated to the diplomatic menu… but its effects in the game world can be quite tangible. At one point, my telepaths were given the chance to manifest a psychic entity of great power into a physical avatar that could fight with my fleets in battle. Some of the other events are worth not spoiling, but suffice to say, galaxy-changing. However, most of these short, choose-your-own-adventure interactions essentially culminate in a dice roll. There doesn’t seem to be any way to affect the result, and it often felt underwhelming to be asked to gamble for a tiny, tiny chance of something really cool, or settling for a somewhat higher chance of something significantly less cool. One other issue with ascension is that you have to progress through all seven of the Tradition trees to unlock all the perk slots. When I was playing a race of killer bugs that quite literally ate everyone they met, I was pretty excited to complete the first few. Here’s one that lets me kill people better. Here’s one that lets me spread my broods to new worlds faster. But in order to unlock those last few perk slots, I had to spend points on the Diplomatic Tradition tree, which had nothing even remotely useful for genocidal insects shunning friendship and spreading terror through the stars. Part of the appeal is specialization and distinguishing your civilization further, so it seems odd that everyone is going to eventually end up with all the traditions, and it somewhat cheapens the choice you have to make between them initially. There are a few other features that give this same impression. For example, you can now play as a hive mind species that doesn’t use happiness, doesn’t start factions, and is ruled by an immortal consciousness that can be everywhere at once. In theory, it sounds absolutely awesome. In practice, it’s a little awkward. For one thing, when creating your own single-minded swarm, you can get a refund on some trait points by picking a negative trait that gives you -5% happiness… even though hive minds don’t use happiness. Very little of the event text has been altered to account for hive minds, so you’ll still get notifications about how the new aliens you just met are being portrayed in the media. Perhaps most significantly, without happiness or factions, hive mind play is basically electing to turn the best parts of the expansion off. It’s a really cool idea, but it doesn't feel totally integrated with all aspects of the game When it stumbles, Utopia stumbles in the same way vanilla Stellaris did: introducing new ideas that have a lot of potential, but clearly aren’t quite ready for prime time. However, where it succeeds is in fleshing out a lot of those areas that felt imperfect at launch. The changes to Pops, governments, and factions have me designing new empires in my head and wanting to sink another hundred-something hours into this universe. I didn’t come close to scratching the surface of all the endgame ascension paths in the time I’ve had so far, but the ones I have seen make me excited to discover more. Utopia may not deliver on all the promises and expectations Stellaris is tied up in, but it does bring it one, giant leap closer. System Requirements MINIMUM: OS: Windows® 7 SP1 64 Bit Processor: Intel® iCore™ i3-530 or AMD® FX-6350 Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 460 or AMD® ATI Radeon™ HD 5870 (1GB VRAM), or AMD® Radeon™ RX Vega 11 or Intel® HD Graphics 4600 DirectX: Version 9.0c Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 10 GB available space Sound Card: Direct X 9.0c- compatible sound card Additional Notes: CController support: 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers. Special multiplayer requirements: Internet Connection RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit Processor: Intel® iCore™ i5-3570K or AMD® Ryzen™ 5 2400G Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 560 Ti (1GB VRAM) or AMD® Radeon™ R7 370 (2 GB VRAM) DirectX: Version 9.0c Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 10 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card Additional Notes: Controller support: 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers. Special multiplayer requirements: Internet Connection

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has condemned a militant attack on a maternity ward in Kabul, Afghanistan. two babies and 12 mothers and nurses were killed when several gunmen stormed the hospital on Tuesday morning. Meanwhile, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, a bombing at a funeral killed at least 26 people. Mr Pompeo said: "Any attack on innocents is unforgiveable, but to attack infants and women in labour... is an act of sheer evil." "Terrorists who attack mourners lining up for prayer at a funeral are only seeking to tear apart the bonds that hold families and communities together, but they will never succeed." He added: "During the holy month of Ramadan and amidst the threat of Covid-19, these dual attacks are particularly appalling." In the wake of the attacks, President Ashraf Ghani said he was ordering the resumption of offensive operations against the Taliban and other groups. He accused the militants of ignoring repeated calls for a reduction in violence. The Islamic State (IS) group said it was behind the attack on a police commander's funeral in Nangarhar, in the east of the country. It is still not clear who carried out the attack at the Dasht-e-Barchi hospital, and the Taliban have denied any involvement. What happened at the hospital? The Kabul attack began at about 10:00 (05:30 GMT) on Tuesday, and locals described hearing two blasts then gunfire. One doctor who fled during the assault told the BBC about 140 people were in the hospital when the gunmen attacked. A maternity ward in the hospital is run by the international medical charity Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) and some of those working there are foreigners. Another doctor told AFP news agency that "total panic" took hold as the assault unfolded. Ramazan Ali, a vendor who saw the attack begin, told Reuters news agency: "The attackers were shooting at anyone in this hospital without any reason... It's a government hospital, and a lot of people bring in their women and children for treatment." Afghan special forces rescued 100 women and children, including three foreigners, an official told the BBC. The attackers, who reportedly had gained access dressed as police officers, were all killed by security personnel after a battle lasting hours. Images from the scene showed soldiers carrying one newborn baby to safety, swaddled in a blood-stained blanket. Many foreign staff live in a guesthouse behind the Dasht-e-Barchi Hospital and a doctor who fled the building told the BBC he saw an explosion there too. In the past, similar attacks in this mostly Shia area of the capital have been attributed to IS. The group's leader in South Asia and the Far East was arrested in Kabul on Tuesday, with two other high profile members, Afghan intelligence said. In 2017, IS gunmen disguised as medical staff attacked Kabul's main military hospital, prompting widespread shock and anger and raising questions about security. The authorities later confirmed about 50 people had been killed. But the Taliban also attack hospitals. Last September, 20 people died after a truck packed with explosives was detonated by militants from the group outside a hospital in southern Zabul province. On TV, Mr Ghani said: "In order to provide security for public places and to thwart attacks and threats from the Taliban and other terrorist groups, I'm ordering Afghan security forces to switch from an active defence mode to an offensive one and to resume their operations against the enemies." Even in a country which has seen the worst of the worst, this savage attack on newborn babies and their mothers has shocked, and shaken fragile hope this would be the year Afghanistan would finally start to turn towards peace. Images of special forces in bulky body armour, carrying infants to safety, will remain long in the memory of those who have repeatedly called for a ceasefire - especially when Afghans are battling another deadly enemy in Covid-19. Despite Taliban denials that this ghastly attack was their work, President Ghani's denunciation reflects the anger and frustration of many. Some worry that groups like Islamic State, trying to drive an even greater wedge between Taliban and the government, have also killed for now what were slow uncertain steps toward peace talks. And for those who have never trusted the Taliban's commitment, this latest attack solidifies their resolve to keep fighting. What happened at the funeral? Acording to survivors, thousands of people had gathered in Nangarhar province for a local police commander's funeral , and the bomb detonated about half-way through. Ataullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the governor, said 68 people were injured. A member of the provincial council was among the at least 24 killed. Tuesday's attacks were widely condemned by countries around the world and human rights groups, with Amnesty International saying: "The unconscionable war crimes in Afghanistan today... must awaken the world to the horrors civilians continue to face." On Twitter, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: "I'm horrified by the appalling terrorist attacks in Afghanistan today - including on a maternity hospital. Targeting mothers, their newborns and medical staff is despicable." People help those injured during the attack on the funeral to a hospital Meanwhile, in northern Balkh province, at least 10 people were killed and many others injured in an air strike by US forces, reports said. Residents and the Taliban claimed the victims were all civilians, but the Afghan Defence Ministry said all those killed were militants. What's going on with Afghan peace talks? Since a February troop withdrawal agreement signed between the US and the Taliban, talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban have broken down over a prisoner swap and violence has continued unabated. The agreement was aimed at ending more than 18 years of war since US-led forces ousted the Taliban from power following the 9/11 attacks on the US, whose mastermind Osama Bin Laden had been given sanctuary by the hardline Islamist group. Tens of thousands of people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict. Many more have been injured or displaced from their homes.

Name Of Game: Stellaris Price: 9.99$ USD Link Store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/281990/Stellaris/ Offer Ends Until: 18 May System Requirements MINIMUM: OS: Windows® 7 SP1 64 Bit Processor: Intel® iCore™ i3-530 or AMD® FX-6350 Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 460 or AMD® ATI Radeon™ HD 5870 (1GB VRAM), or AMD® Radeon™ RX Vega 11 or Intel® HD Graphics 4600 DirectX: Version 9.0c Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 10 GB available space Sound Card: Direct X 9.0c- compatible sound card Additional Notes: Controller support: 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers. Special multiplayer requirements: Internet Connection RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit Processor: Intel® iCore™ i5-3570K or AMD® Ryzen™ 5 2400G Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 560 Ti (1GB VRAM) or AMD® Radeon™ R7 370 (2 GB VRAM) DirectX: Version 12 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 10 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card Additional Notes: Controller support: 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers. Special multiplayer requirements: Internet Connection

Game Information Initial release date: July 16, 2019 Developer: Novarama Genre: Action role-playing game Engine: Unreal Engine Publisher: Novarama Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows Killsquad is an action role-playing game (ARPG) developed and published by Novarama, a Spanish game development company also known for their award-winning augmented reality title, InviZimals. Currently built for PC and due for a Steam Early Access release on July 16th, 2019, our team was given a pre-release look into the greed-motivated furor of the world of Killsquad. Going into the game, the player immediately finds themselves on the hero selection screen with no explanations or introductions. A more careful player might try to piece together the situation; they might begin reading through each hero’s descriptions and skills. However, the average player looking to quickly dive into the game may feel jarred; with no tutorial, the leap into the game feels empty and lacking in purpose. There is no ‘show’ and what little ‘tell’ exists, the player has to look for. Given the large body of storytelling that has been shown on the internet about Killsquad, I was a little surprised to find none of it in game. Players can group up with their friends through Steam’s internal invite system. Alternatively, they could join public contracts to play with strangers. Novarama is committed to creating the best multiplayer experience and have graciously given us two early-access codes to help us fully-experience this feature. Built with Unreal Engine 4, questions about latency are but a thing of the past. Killsquad is able to rely on UE4’s latency prediction technology to bridge the gap between the game’s action-packed pacing and the ever-present fear of dealing with player lag. As a test of this purported system, my Player 2 and I decided to enter into our first contract (Killsquad’s equivalent of a quest/objective) on different connections and we were surprised to find that our gameplay was not affected by the other’s lag or lack thereof. This is a welcome improvement to po[CENSORED]r ARPG titles such as Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo 3, where latency issues in multiplayer games can translate to a global “pause” for everyone playing, breaking the pacing and immersion of shared gameplay. A major highlight and point of enjoyment for both of us was how satisfying the combat system felt. Killsquad‘s procedurally-generated maps also impressed us with the promise of creating new experiences each play through. I personally appreciated that the game was designed with lower-end hardware in mind as I was able to view the beautifully-rendered world in decent detail on a 5+ year old laptop! It was also a pleasant surprise to find that upon death, I was still able to stay on top of the action through a spectator view – an uncommon feature amongst ARPGs. The game kept us on our toes with an added twist to the genre: environmental hazards. Meteor showers, inexplicable death rays, and minefields, all dangers to force player awareness; it is no longer enough to just look out for enemies – you need to look around you as well! A part of what makes this addition fun and not a painful hurdle involves the game’s approach to strategy. While each hero class fulfills certain recognized roles (e.g. tank, support), every class has their own version of a dash. This allows players to decide whether to save their dash as an offensive open or as a defensive dodge. It’s a fantastic way to make the game dynamic and to move away from the worn damage-heal relationship. Players familiar with the leveling system in multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games will find that Killsquad has borrowed this element in their own game. Unlike other ARPGs, the game moves away from forcing players to commit to vast skill trees and singular builds. Instead, each contract allows the player a new opportunity to explore new builds or to build around their team. Novarama again proves their commitment to the multiplayer experience by incorporating this “on the fly” playstyle. Giving players a way to quickly coordinate with both friends and complete strangers means more play and less delay With over 4 hours of gameplay under my belt, I find that I am still intrigued by what Killsquad still has to offer as it moves closer to its official launch. It is my hope that there will be a campaign mode or story-driven content with character dialogues to create immersion; voice overs would also be an excellent treat. There was a distinct lack of music and something that I felt would’ve added that extra bit of delight to the game. Additionally, small adjustments to the game’s UI would make for large quality of life improvements. An area where I would really appreciate this is with mouse-over tool tips for skills while on a contract. Another area would be to show the key bindings for skills on the hero screen to help transition from hero selection to actual gameplay. Novarama recently unveiled their roadmap for Killsquad explaining that, “July 16th will mark the start of Season 1, fittingly called REVELATION. The focus of Season 1 will be on shedding more light on the whole Killsquad universe through four major content updates. This season will last until 2020 and will encompass new game areas, factions, enemies, a brand new hero, loads of contracts and many more content additions that will shape Killsquad into a truly rich action RPG leading up to its full release on PC and consoles in 2020.” Without a doubt, Killsquad is a top contender for games to look out for in 2020. Even in early-access, it has proven to be a mechanically-polished juggernaut of the genre and we’re super excited to see it in its final form. If ARPGs are your kind of game, we definitely think Killsquad is worth checking out. System Requirements MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: 64-bit Windows 7, 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1) or 64-bit Windows 10 Processor: Intel® Core i3 or AMD Phenom™ II X3 Memory: 6 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660 or AMD Radeon™ HD 7850 with 2 GB RAM DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 6 GB available space RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: 64-bit Windows 10 Processor: Intel Core i7- 3770 @ 3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4 GHz Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970/1060 or ATI Radeon R9 series DirectX: Version 12 Storage: 6 GB available space

France has cautiously begun to lift its lockdown, with millions back in work after eight weeks of restrictions. Shops are reopening, many pupils are returning to primary schools, and people will not need travel certificates when they leave home. But some parts of the country - including the capital Paris - remain under tighter controls, with the country split into green and red zones. The government has faced criticism for howit has handled the crisis. French President Emmanuel Macron won broad support for imposing restrictions on 17 March. But many have attacked the response since then. More than 26,000 people have died from Covid-19 in France since 1 March - one of the highest tolls in Europe. Many other European countries are also easing restrictions on Monday. What's happening in France? The government has released a detailed plan of how France will slowly come out of lockdown, first brought in on 17 March. Masks are mandatory on public transport and in secondary schools as they reopen in the coming weeks. Shops also have the right to ask customers to wear one. Gatherings of up to 10 people are allowed, and the elderly and vulnerable will be allowed outside. People will no longer need travel permits to explain why they have left home. Car journeys of up to 100km (60 miles) from home are allowed, but drivers need permission for distances further than that. And anyone wanting to travel in Paris during rush hour will need authorisation from their employer. On the first day out of lockdown in France there was no mass rush back on to the street. Despite a few hiccups, the Paris commuter system was not put under strain. Metro trains were half -occupied, and there was in the main little difficulty in social distancing. Shops opened, but shoppers were few. Schools only start reopening on Tuesday. In the BBC's six- storey office building, we are the only company to have reoccupied our premises. Home-working remains the norm. What it suggests are two things: first that the real test has not yet come. People are obviously hesitant about resuming their old lives. The risk of a second wave will be when - and if - they actually get back to normal. And second: governments need not be too cautious about setting fixed dates for lockdown easing. Given sufficient warning and guidance, people react with good sense. There is no post-lockdown big bang. All shops, leisure centres and cemeteries reopen - bar shopping centres in Paris - but cafes, restaurants and beaches remain shut. France has been divided into green zones, where the outbreak is not as bad, and red zones, which are still struggling with high numbers of infections. So while primary schools and nurseries open in much of France on 11 May, schools for 11 to 15-year-olds known as collèges open only in green zones on 18 May. Schools for 15 to 18-year-olds (lycées) are not opening before June. In many areas Monday is being treated as a preparatory day in schools which are reopening. Lessons with reduced class sizes are to restart on Tuesday, but even so, some local authorities are keeping schools closed, under parental pressure. In Paris schools are only opening from Thursday, with priority given to socially disadvantaged children and/or those of key workers. Cafes and restaurants may be able to open in green zones as early as June. Paris, its suburbs, and the three other north-eastern regions of France all remain in the red zone, as well as the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte. Some 27 million people live in those areas. France has also begun testing a new app to track and trace the virus - StopCovid - which it hopes to launch on 2 June. have been raised about right to privacy for users, with parliament set to debate it later in May. And in April the government announced a new programme to encourage cycling, including free bike Repairs up to €50 (£44; $54) and funding for bike lanes throughout the country. What's been the reaction? Mr Macron gave a televised address to the nation in March declaring the start of restrictions, saying his country was "at war" with the virus. The French people broadly supported the move. But since then there has been criticism of his government's handling of the crisis. Opponents have pointed to low levels of testing compared to other nations, a shortage of medical equipment and what they say was a confused message about wearing masks in public, as evidence of Mr Macron's failings. An Odoxa opinion poll published last week suggested 58% of the French people do not trust the government to ease the restrictions successfully, and more than a third want to stay under lockdown. Some 69% do not think schools can be kept safe enough, according to the poll - despite promises to Limit class size and enforce social distancing - and 74% of respondents think the same about public transport. One angry commuter posted scenes from Gare du Nord station in Paris on Monday. Despite this, a poll taken earlier in May suggests the French do not think others would be doing a better job than Mr Macron. Only 20% believed his 2017 presidential opponent, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, would be handling the crisis better, with a similar percentage thinking former President Nicolas Sarkozy would be an improvement.