The bicentennial meme Standing on the shoulders of giants (Brendy and Pip and everyone else who did the podcast before us) means we have reached episode 200 of The Electronic Showpodcast! Wowzer! Thanks for being with us for this record-breaking feat. We asked for suggestions and received many excellent ones, but in the end we went with a suggestion from Jonathon which, at the time we recorded, I did not realise would be instantly revealed by the episode title....

No rest for the wicked There were high expectations going into Buried Memory, patch 6.2 forFinal Fantasy XIV- new raids, new story, and, most importantly, a new mode called Island Sanctuary to fulfil all of your farming dreams. There were Harvest Moon andAnimal Crossingmemes aplenty in the run up to release, with players hungry to customise their own cosy piece of Hydaelyn. Meant as a casual mode to relax away from dungeons and grinding levels, Island Sanctuary has no Job level limitations and can be enjoyed by anyone....

Compared to £500 for buying these items separately! Did you know you can get a 32GB kit of 6000MT/s DDR5 RAManda 2TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD for £235 at CCL? That’s an awesome deal on a normally £500 bundle that gives you some of the most critical components for a new high-spec Intel 12th-gen system. To get the deal, follow the link below to the TeamGroup Delta DDR5-6000 RAM. Add this to your cart, and you’ll see that the TeamGroup Cardea Z44Q 2TB NVMe SSD is added for free as well....

Hands-on with the Armada 25 and Armada 27 Last week HyperX announced their first-ever gaming monitors, the Armada 25 and Armada 27, and within a couple of days I was being led into their Gamescom booth to try each of them for myself. After a disappointingly uncomfortable preview of theSamsung Odyssey Ark, it was nice to get to grips with a far more utilitarian pair of monitors – albeit not without a party trick of their own, namely HyperX’s Armada Gaming Mount....

An in-depth second phase investigation will now go ahead Evidence on the potential effects of combining Activision Blizzard’s products with Microsoft’s console, cloud and PC businesses had been provided to the first phase of the CMA’s investigation, which they felt could damage competition in the developing cloud gaming market. Microsoft and Activision Blizzard now have five working days to address the CMA’s concerns. If the companies don’t manage to do that then the deal will be referred for a second phase investigation by an independent panel of experts....

Game director Keika Hanada shares some of the new challenges NOVECT faced It’s a firm departure from historical European fantasy and the VN genre for an adventure game about serial murders from the seedy underbelly of Japan, set in the heart of Tokyo. It’s also a proving point and new direction for a studio with more eyes on them than ever before. The challenge to retain their trademark attention to story in a more open-minded interactive format is a new one for NOVECT, yet it’s one that CEO, Fata Morgana writer and Project M’s director Keika Hanada is excited to face....

Appears to be based on the legend of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves What looks like promotional material for an unreleasedAssassin’s Creedgame is being shared online today, starring someone in assassin garb for the first time in seven years. The images show what’s purported to be artwork of something called The Forty Thieves Quest for the rumoured Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, also known by the development name of Rift. Assassin’s Creed community The Codex Networksharedthe images on Twitter, but they were initially removed at the request of the copyright holder and then deleted outright....

And includes “reverse dismemberment” Back at Geoff Fest, I spoke with Glenn Schofield aboutThe Callisto Protocol, itsgore system, spiky walls, and batteries. From what I’d seen and heard, I was keen to see more of the sci-fi horror game that’s notDead Spacebut is also quite like Dead Space. So, at this year’s Geoffscom I was able to see a 20-minute presentation of some new Callisto goodness and then chat with Striking Distance Studios' chief technology officer Mark James about what I’d seen....

Skybox Satellite gazes up at the Half-Life heavens The second-best way to make Twitter palatable (after simply unfollowing sources of bad tweets) is to follow a load of curated and bot accounts which trickle niceness into your timeline. Today I’d like to suggest addingSkybox Satellite, a Twitter account which shows glimpses of the skies wrapped around maps in GoldSrc games likeHalf-Lifeand Counter-Strike. It’s sometimes pretty, sometimes nostalgic, and sometimes impressive....

Shutdown date bumped from today to October 1st Today was due to be the day when some older Ubisoft games would see their online services decommissioned, but the company is granting them a temporary reprieve. You now have until October 1st to cram in some multiplayer for several earlyAssassin’s Creeds, the original version ofFar Cry 3,Driver: San Franciscoand others. Ubisoft say they’ve been “exploring what is possible to reduce disruption” over the last month, hence the shuffled date for decommissioning....

Hints and the answer to today’s Wordle word In this guide, we’ve got three clues that you can use to solve the Wordle answer today. If you’d rather skip the puzzle for a day but don’t want to lose your streak, you can quickly scroll a little further to find the Wordle answer itself. Wrong day? Check out theWordle hint and answer for Thursday 12th Decemberinstead! Wordle September 1 hints...

They were a highlight of my time at Gamescom I went into myHigh On Lifehands-on session with one expectation: its talking alien guns will annoy the heck out of me. But in a surprising turn of events, I left thinking the game was a real highlight of my time in Cologne’s multi-hall maze of excellent people and overpriced schnitzel. And most importantly, the guns didn’t annoy me at all! In fact, their craic contributed a great deal to my enjoyment of the strangest FPS I’ve played in a while - one where I was forever grinning at the screen like an idiot....

Beyond: two companies “By combining the wild creativity and exceptional narrative focus of Quantic Dream with NetEase’s powerful facilities, resources and execution capabilities, we believe there are infinite possibilities that could re-define the interactive entertainment experience we provide for players worldwide,” NetEase’s CEO William Dingsaid. I guess that’s why then. Quantic Dream are still developing the licensed action-adventureStar Wars: Eclipse, and announced at last week’s Gamescom that they’d bepublishingParallel Studio’s upcoming deep-sea adventure Under The Waves....