Rats and Zombies Optimised, Seasonal Thieves

Rare teases bounteous booty for 2021

Those buckleswashers at Rare have just announced the final Sea of Thieves news of the year, teasing a fine haul of booty for 2021.

The new year will bring a battle pass-style progression system and a season system, and the team will focus their efforts on the most popular mode, Adventure, which means the Arena mode will probably receive a little less developer love. It's not going away, but there won't be anything new for it either.

Landlubberly: The new content model will cast off in January, with seasons lasting 3 months. Each season will offer a “new experience or way of play.”

X marks the spot: The first season will introduce a new voyage for the Merchant Alliance trading company offering a mystery on the high seas involving a lost shipwreck and its booty. New Pirate Emporium stock will appear each season, and there will be regular live events.

What was the first movie crossover to appear in Rocket League?

a) Jurassic Park
b) Batman v. Superman
c) Fast and Furious
d) Back to the Future

The answer will be revealed at the bottom of today's issue. Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss what the answer could be.

Nintendo’s first M-rated title skipped N64

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was originally in development for Nintendo 64, but Silicon Knights decided to shift development to the GameCube instead and aimed to make it a launch title. It was often compared to Resident Evil, but also featured a sanity mechanic.

If the player character’s sanity took too many hits, weird things would start happening, ranging from bugs crawling around the screen to your save games getting deleted.

Nintendo acted as publisher, and it was actually their first M-rated title. Like most Silicon Knights games, Eternal Darkness had a difficult development and changed drastically between announcement and its eventual release in 2002.

Join our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss today's fact.

Next-gen console shortages continue

PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X stock shortages continue, and scalpers keep snapping up what stock they can and mark it up while increasingly hopeless parents look for ways to fulfill their children’s console dreams.

For example, there's an auction for a piece of paper on eBay with the message ”Please buy this note so I can buy my 11 year old son a PS5 for Christmas after a rubbish year! Merry Christmas”.

A group of organized scalpers based in the UK claims to have bought around 3,500 PlayStation 5 units thanks to bots watching online stores and snapping up stock.

Scam fatigue: The note has received over a dozen bids, and currently looks set to raise over £700. It is, of course, impossible to tell if the 11-year-old in question exists, or if this is simply a cynical ploy using PlayStation 5 to get attention.

Stolen orders: There are also numerous reports of PlayStation 5 units vanishing in transit in the UK. Some reports say deliveries are reported as delivered but never turned up, or replaced with other items. Both Sony and Microsoft are promising to deliver more stock soon.

More old games for Xbox Series X/S

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 and State of Decay 2 have been optimized for Xbox Series X/S and are now available on Xbox Games Pass.

That means you can purge the Skaven menace at 60FPS, while State of Decay 2 just got a major content update free of charge.

Hardcore: The biggest addition is the new Lethal Zone difficulty, perfect for “ultra-hardcore” survivors who want an even greater challenge, and the developers promise “murderously unfair” combat since the difficulty level doubles damage and infection rates.

Freakish: All freaks are replaced with Heartland’s blood plague freaks, and smashing a plague heart no longer kills the surrounding plague zombies. There's also a new Lethal Map, which is 70-80% pre-looted and offers fewer vehicles as well as cripplingly demoralised survivors.

Flight Simulator VR update in three weeks

The eagerly anticipated VR update for Microsoft Flight Simulator launches on December 22nd, just ahead of a jumbo-sized update scheduled for January.

“Oculus family, Valve family – every family of headset is going to be supported,” stated executive producer Martial Bossard.

Impulse Gear teases new project

Farpoint creator Impulse Gear have just moved into fancy new offices in San Francisco (although they also allow team members to work from home), and have started work on a new project.

“You’ll be hearing a lot more from us over the course of the next couple months,” they said, alongside a carefully blurred photo from one of their “brainstorming sessions”.

• Crimson Desert footage to premiere at The Game Awards 2020 but you can admire the logo right now
• FIFA 21 upgraded for next-gen ahead of time so you can migrate to your next-gen console right now
• Rocket League Season 2 begins on December 9th and you can read everything about it in the latest developer update, including word that split-screen multiplayer is back for the Switch
• Stage is set for Doom and Fall Guys crossover after official Doom Twitter account posts flirty messages
• Cyberpunk 2077 will feature an extensive photo mode so you can capture your memories from Night City

As we head into the end of the year, we're going to be giving away a PlayStation 5 to one lucky reader. The winner will be revealed in the Christmas eve issue of DailyBits.

You can find out more about this giveaway on our dedicated page.

Here’s the Giveaway Code for Week 49, which will allow you to gain more points: 1288

What was the first movie crossover to appear in Rocket League?

ANSWER: Back to the Future!

Rocket League has featured a load of cross promotions over the years, including celebrating console launches with crossovers like Twisted Metal for PlayStation, Gears of War for Xbox and Metroid for Switch, but the most popular ones have been based on Hollwood blockbusters like Jurassic Park, Fast and Furious or Ghostbusters.

Their very first Hollywood crossover was Back to the Future, offering the time-travelling DeLorean for just £1.69 on October 21st, 2015. The DeLorean vanished after the Item Shop was introduced in December last year – but there’s always a chance that it could time-paradox itself back into the game in the future.

Today's issue of DailyBits was written by Gavin Herman, Erlend Grefsrud, Simon Priest, and Jamie Davey.

We hope you've enjoyed today's issue DailyBits! Please feel free to send any feedback over to team@dailybits.news. Thank You!