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DIY across the universe Seemingly not content withswallowing upAnimal Crossingand spitting out its own farm-and-craft minigame,Final Fantasy 14has apparently now guzzled downStarfieldand is readying to unleash its own way to sink dozens of hours into galactic wandering. Upcoming mode Cosmic Exploration will offer aco-opexperience that will take players between a number of planets as they explore the galaxy and hammer away at different projects. Cosmic Exploration sounds like it will be closer to that game-wide collaborative effort than the individual collect-and-craft progression of Island Sanctuary, as director Naoki Yoshida explained during its reveal during Fan Festival Tokyo that while the mode can be played solo, it’s primarily intended for players to work together in order to make progress....

No, it’s not FF7 Among the slew of reveals forFinal Fantasy XIVduring Fan Fest Tokyo last weekend was a new town players will visit during upcoming expansionDawntrail. While a new corner of Eorzea to explore is exciting by itself, the cyberpunk city has added to my hope that theMMOis set to shower a bit more love onthe best Final Fantasy game. That’s right:Final Fantasy IX. The latest connection to Dawntrail is in the name for the neon metropolis filled with glowing purple neon,Blade Runner-esque advertisements and buildings shaped like an Alienware PC case....

Pictomancer returning from Final Fantasy 6, while second limited job revealed as Beastmaster Final Fantasy 14has revealed the second new job arriving in its upcomingDawntrailexpansion. The Pictomancer is a new-oldie, bringing back the magical artist class fromFinal Fantasy 6- albeit with some colourful new powers for magical ranged DPS players to enjoy. Meanwhile, we now know that the MMO’s second limited job will be the Beastmaster. Revealed over the weekend duringFinal FantasyXIV Fan Festival event in Tokyo, Pictomancer joins Viper -revealed at last year’s Fan Fest in London- as a brand new playable job in Dawntrail, which is due to release this summer as theMMO’s next major expansion....

Unnamed former staffer accuses Bobby Kotick of ageism As reported bylaw360, the lawsuit cites statements allegedly made by recently-departed Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick to the effect that “there are too many old white guys” at the company, and claims that two white executives left the company shortly afterwards “based, at least in part, on Kotick’s ageist remarks”. According to the suit, one of the above departing execs recommended the plaintiff as his replacement, but Activision Blizzard promoted a younger non-white employee instead, who became the plaintiff’s manager....

Lean slate Even with therising power of integrated graphics, the prospects of getting high-quality, high-rez gaming capability in a laptop of ultrabook proportions is still years from becoming a feasible reality. Until then, slimmer gaming laptops like the HP Omen Transcend 16 remain the closest approximation of that dream, cramming discrete GPUs – theNvidia Geforce RTX 4060, in this case – into lighter, narrower chassis designs. Not that the Omen Transcend 16 is lacking in modernity otherwise....

Possibly the ideal job sim It is said that for every human being in existence there is a dedicated species of job simulator, a variety of job sim that speaks to that person, body and soul. In my case, that job sim isMedieval Machines Builder, probably better known as Siege Weapon Builder. Itsfree-to-play prologuegoes live later this week, on top of ademofrom last year. I haven’t played either the prologue or the demo and who knows, they could be rubbish, but look, I had to spend three hours this morning queuing for an appointment, and all I wanted to do during those three hours was cobble together a trebuchet from plastic chairs and retractable tape....

THE CLAW! THE CLAW! Specifically, it’s an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, of the same make that high-end gaming laptops are currently adopting, with its integrated Arc graphics on GPU duty. The Steam Deck and all its subsequent rivals have stuck to AMD APUs, so this is quite the switch-up, even if MSI maintain that the Core Ultra 7 155H is up to the task of a “smooth and immersive gameplay experience” in AAA games....

Meet the RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super and RTX 4080 Super It’s still a card for the enviably monied, but yes, the RTX 4080 Super will start from $959 / $999 when it launches on January 31st. That’s a sizeable reduction on the originalRTX 4080’s laughable £1269 / $1199 launch price, and while the latter has been available below a grand since then, that’s mainly been in limited-time sales....

Need a hint for today’s Connections? Read our guide for help with Connections #211 This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today’s solution? Check out theConnections hint and answers for Thursday 12th December! Want a hint for Connections today?Piggybacking off the monumental success of daily puzzle gameWordle, the New York Times has another fantastically popular word game out now. It’s calledConnections, and if you haven’t played it before, now’s the time to start....

I go on Twitter so you don’t have to Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter’s#screenshotsaturdaytag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by games with mechs, games set in space, games with aerial action, a game where you take photographs of draculas, and many more. Check out these attractive and interesting indie games!...

Our weekly news liveblog Some new game releases we are tip-toeing towards with our shields raised this week, in case they turn out to be Mimics:Allison Road-inspired horrorSupernormal(8th Jan), free turn-based dungeon crawlerBuriedbornes2(10th Jan), medical management simWar Hospital(11th Jan), feudal Chinese spin-offReigns: Three Kingdoms(11th Jan), pleasingly nonsensically-named retro RPGCrystal Story: Dawn of Dusk(13th Jan). Our live coverage of this event has finished. IT IS MONDAY. I am up far too early (I have an appointment to get to on the other side of London)....

£146 for a mid-range Ryzen 7000 + DDR5 board. Building a small form factor PC is difficult. Not only do you have to find the perfectSFF case, but then you have to spec out all of the components to fit inside it - and miniaturised motherboards in particular often come at a premium, especially if you’re building a current-gen system. Thankfully, right now Amazon UK is doing a great deal on ASRock’s best Mini ITX motherboard for Ryzen 7000 CPUs, with a £146 asking price that comes 20% below its £187 RRP and more than £20 cheaper than the next-closest UK retailer....

From the folks behind chess roguelike Shotgun King If you’re like me, you probably have at least one treasured memory of being allowed to play an edutainment game at school under the guise of learning. What a blast, getting to play video games at school! For me, it was a floppy disk with a bizarrePac-Manclone where you had to answer maths questions every time you ran into an enemy or obstacle....