What's on your bookshelf?: Dread Delusion and The Night is Darkening's James Wragg

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Words are amazing, aren’t they? I once put in a cover letter to a creative writing university course that I’d “even invented several of my own words” before my mate talked me down from it. Spoilsport. This week, it’s the creative director of Dread Delusion, maker of The Night is Darkening, and Lovely Hellplace director, James Wragg! Cheers James! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for... oh, god, there’s more of it, isn’t there? I thought it was just a regular cave, not a cave to literally a million new things. Before I go left and spend the next three hours stressed about the stuff I missed by not going right, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things)!

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The wonderful Dune Imperium's digital version is getting its first expansion in July

Dune Imperium is a fabulous strategy game about becoming the biggest spice boy on a sandy planet I presume is called Dune. I love it despite never having read the Dune books or watched the Dune movies, because the digital version taught me everything I needed to know about Barry Harkonnen, Oscar Isaac, the tall guy from Guardians Of The Galaxy, and their insatiable pursuit of space nutmeg.

Now the board game's first expansion is headed to the digital version of the game, and it's called Rise Of Ix for reasons I definitely understand.

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Team Fortress 2 players report that Valve have carried out a ban-wave against aimbots

Team Fortress 2's received its first major update in yonks last year, and then the nearly 17-year-old game promptly broke its concurrent player record. Still, talk to one of those players and you'll find all is not well with Valve's shooter, which is apparently regularly overrun by bots and cheaters.

Some players are now reporting "a large ban wave" targeting users of aimbots, however.

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Here's how we’re all spending our last tenner on the best deals in the Steam Summer Sale

It’s that time of the year again. You know the one. Numbers you’d previously shunned for being too high have suddenly gotten smaller, and purchases have shifted categories from impractical to impulsively justifiable. It’s the Steam Summer Sale 2024! There’s no rush, of course. It runs until the 11th of July. Still, to help you navigate the meatily chummed waters of Sales Lagoon, Horace has decided to reward our combined years of service with a crisp ten bob note each to spend on games. We’ve been bringing up the whole “getting paid” thing for ages, so this is a real win for us. Here’s how we’re all spending that tenner in the sale.

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Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot suggests remakes of older Assassin’s Creed games, then bangs on about generative AI for a bit

Assassin’s Creed fans “can be excited about some remakes” of the older games in the open world series, permits generous soul Yves Guillemot, via one of those odd promotional things disguised as a conversation. They’d like to “revisit some of the games we've created in the past and modernize them,” Ubisoft told Ubisoft about Ubisoft.

Elsewhere in the blog, Guillemot repeatedly praises what he sees as the potential for generative AI and how it “can enrich NPCs to be more intelligent, more interactive,” saying this could “potentially extend to animals in the world.” So, look forward to remake Ezio putting glue in his pizza sauce I suppose?

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Hades 2 gets another monstrous patch as Supergiant turn their attention to the game's first major update

Hades 2's third early access patch is of the gargantuan variety. It improves Olympian Boons, adds lots of new UI icons, reworking Keepsakes, and basically touches every aspect of the game you could possibly think of. One thing it doesn't change is how sexy the gods are, but because they're so sexy anyway, I don't think that's an issue moving forwards.

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You can beat Shadow of The Erdtree’s final boss in 13 seconds using perfume and lightning apparently

The human body is a wonderfully complex organism, and it’s well worth trusting your instincts when it comes to feeling repulsed by certain things. We know that if the milk looks bad and smells bad, it is bad. Do not taste the forbidden yogurt, as much as it calls to you. How, then, to interpret my visceral repulsion to the most disgusting Shadow Of The Erdtree build yet seen? So gross, in fact, that YouTuber SYROBE has managed to beat the Elden Ring DLC’s infamously ridiculous final boss in a mere 13 seconds. Here’s the video. Massive spoilers, obviously.

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Disney Epic Mickey touches down on PC with improved controls this September

Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is bringing the cult classic 3D platformer to PC, with updated controls and graphics, more than a decade after its original Wii-exclusive release. Now it has a specific release date: September 24th.

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Deadrop developer Midnight Society cuts ties with Dr Disrespect following new Twitch ban allegations

Deadrop developers Midnight Society have "terminated" their relationship with studio co-founder and celebrity streamer Herschel "Guy" Beahm, aka "Dr Disrespect", over fresh allegations about the reasons for his infamous Twitch ban in 2020.

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Parry like you’re Sekiro with this one weird trick that Shadow Of The Erdtree bosses hate

Aside from its naturally satisfying rhythm and the cool audio dings of success that usually accompany it, I find something innately hilarious about parrying. Yes, yes, it’s a deeply skilled expression of martial prowess that turns your enemy’s aggression back at them. But it’s also a pleasingly low-effort method to make your opponent look very silly - the combat equivalent of waving your outstretched hand and shaking your head in unison. I assume so from videogames, anyway. In reality, I could not parry a nerf dart with a metal bin lid.

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Mystery adventure Engraving has you drawing lovely parchment maps - shame about the horrible forest graveyard

I have recently moved to an area that’s surrounded by forest, or at least, by swathes of greenery that feel like forests when you’re far enough inside them, even if they don’t meet whatever quantifiable definition is currently in vogue. My dreams are ablaze with scenes of sunlight percolating through shifting layers of beech and oak, with visions of dirt paths winding through bramble. Now, here comes Engraving to transform all those dreams into nightmares.

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Shadow Of The Erdtree's Dancing Lion boss is genuinely just two dudes in a lion suit

Among Elden Ring Shadow Of The Erdtree's more fearsome bosses is the Dancing Lion, a festive prancing terror inspired by Chinese Lion dances. Looking at it, you might expect this costumed nuisance to be another grafted abomination, its layers of papier-mache, binbags and repurposed carpets hiding a rippling quilt of flesh and bone, perhaps a real lion that has been shaved and stitched to its theatrical double. The truth is more appalling still: it's just two guys in a lion suit. They aren't even sewn together mouth to backside, like in the Human Centipede. Way to bait-and-switch, From!

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The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?

Happy Monday all! Yes, I wrote that with total sincerity. We all deserve a happy Monday - perhaps video games can help with that. As you'd expect, Elden Ring's recently released Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC remains this week's Big Kahuna, with no obvious mega releases in the offing to break its chokehold on the discourse, but I have dipped my latex-gloved hand into the gestation pools and fished out a few promising oddities.

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What's on your bookshelf?: Sluggish Morrs and Dujanah developer Jack King-Spooner

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! I do not have a completely true fact to share about books with you this week, because I just read a book telling me that sharing facts about books is actually destroying the online book facts industry. Check back next week, by which time I may have finished another book debunking these claims. This week, it’s the developer behind Sluggish Morss, Dujanah, and the upcoming Judero, Jack King-Spooner! Cheers Jack! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for leveling vigor. Don’t be a hero now. Get that baseline 60. You’ll need it. Before you hit the motivational high of turning a two-shot into a three-shot, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

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What are we all playing this weekend?

Ollie is beset by maladies unknown today, so this is my domain now. I was tempted to recreate a hellish mockery of his fun hidden face game by trapping a crumbling mirror image of his visage, Dorian Gray style, somewhere in the above image. Alas, my version of Photoshop appears to be lacking that function. I suppose I will have to turn to other avenues of entertainment, such as a video game, should any exist.

So I just checked there's actually loads of them. What a turn out! Here's what we're all clicking on this weekend.

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Certified PS1 banger Fear Effect is getting a digital Steam release

Fear Effect, a horror action PS1 game from the year 2000 that I have incredibly fond memories of, is getting a Steam release next year, by Limited Run Games in collaboration with Square Enix. The news comes as part of the controversial (more on this in a bit) company’s digital LRG3 event. You can watch the full thing here, and the Fear Effect trailer below.

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The Steam Deck is one of the best ways to play Elden Ring, and now Shadow of the Erdtree too

Elden Ring on the Steam Deck has long enjoyed a smoothness that desktop play has lacked. Not so much in simple framerate terms – the handheld spends far more time around the 30fps mark than it does bumping into Elden Ring’s 60fps cap – but thanks to a Proton compatibility update back in 2022, it’s drastically less prone to the flow-breaking stutter that still plagues the RPG in 2024. That now goes for Shadow Of The Erdtree as well, judging from my portable time in the new expansion.

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Arise, Tarnished (again) - Elden Ring Shadow Of The Erdtree is out now

Elden Ring Shadow Of The Erdtree has finally been released on PC, adding a fat, rancid helping of open world role-playing to an open world RPG of already trouser-wetting, skirt-soiling scale and hazard. You can find this "first and last" Elden Ring DLC expansion on Steam, the Xbox Store and in the suppurating depths of your very worst nightmares. Am I overdoing it yet? No matter. Let's press on.

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Republic Of Pirates is a more relaxed Anno-style city builder, out today with a demo

“The Republic Of Pirates was meant to be different…” laments the narration in the opening of the seafaring resource-chain-em-up strategy, out today with a demo on Steam at time of writing. This made me laugh, in the same way someone saying “the failure of Bastard City was deeply sobering” might. Yes, I know the pirate republic was a real thing, ended not by the infighting and treachery shown here, but by the British. I will avoid easy gags about Plundering Loisences and instead lightly recommend the demo to you. It’s got enough meat on its bones for a less brainwidth-hogging gulp of city building, assuming you like the pirate theme enough. Spy the trailer I’ve shoved in a dangling cage below, as a warning to others who might trespass around this RPS-pelago.

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The existential dread of horror game Soma has been manifested in a plushie

The sinking terror that comes of having no fixed identity and being trapped alone thousands of metres beneath the ocean has been compacted into the soft, comforting (?) form of a plushie. Frictional Games, the creators of first-person horror game Soma, launched the soft toy depiction of the game's protagonist Simon on Makeship, aka Kickstarter for plushies. Normally, we don't report on merch - why would we? - but there is something deeply and darkly funny about making a fleece-coated fuzzy huggy wuggy about the psychologically harrowing experience of being forgotten under the sea. Then again, Frictional Games are not the first to do this sort of thing.

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Captain Blood, a hack-and-slash pirate game revealed in 2004, will finally release in 2024

Way back in 2004, that terrible year when I swore off video games entirely to focus on my university studies, developers 1C SeaWolf announced Captain Blood, a piratical action game loosely based on Rafael Sabatini's adventure novels, in which a crew of 17th century freebooters set forth across the Spanish Main to rescue a magistrate's daughter from assorted bilge-drinking scallywags. Early footage painted the portrait of a spirited 3D hack-and-slasher featuring much buckling of swashes, heaving of hos and jollying of rogers.

Jim Rossignol (RPS in peace) was cautiously enthused when he played Captain Blood in 2008. "It was actually pretty fun - especially the arcade boat violence between speedy galleons - but I'm not exactly holding out for a masterpiece," he wrote. Alas, Captain Blood's ship struck a reef in the shape of unspecified publishing disputes, and sank beneath the waves after one last defiant preview showing in 2010. Now, the game has risen from the depths Flying Dutchman-style thanks to new developers Seawolf Studio and General Arcade and publisher SNEG Ltd. It'll finally launch on PC later this year.

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Fine, let's write about the stupid Banana game

You might have noticed that the second most played game on Steam right now is Banana, which released back in April, but has seen an explosion of popularity over the past couple of weeks. What is Banana? It's a free idle clicker in which you click on a picture of a banana to make numbers go up. If the number goes up enough, the game drops additional pictures of bananas into your Steam inventory. Actually, it's not even an idle clicker - simply leaving the game open all day is enough to generate a slow but steady supply of these banana pictures.

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Square Enix are remaking a classic 90s RPG about defending an empire from a bunch of spiteful ancient heroes

Japanese role-playing game enthusiasts are eating good this week, as Square Enix announce a 3D remake for 1993's Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge Of The Seven. It's a high fantasy RPG in which you must shore up an empire and defend it from generation to generation against a group of legendary adventurers, who were trapped in another dimension many moons ago and are positively livid that people don't talk about their sacrifices enough. It's out 24th October 2024, and springs from the turbulent brains of the team behind 2020's Trials of Mana remake, which was well-received. I've got a trailer's worth of rabble-rousing orchestral music and sparkly tag-team finishers below.

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American Truck Simulator is heading to Iowa in a future DLC

American Truck Simulator already has in-development DLCs which will see its 18-wheelers head to Arkansas and Missouri, but SCS Software have also commenced building a third: Iowa.

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Paradox shutter studio Tectonic and cancel troubled Sims competitor Life By You

Life By You, the Sims-like management game previously troubled by several delays, has been canceled by Paradox Interactive, and Californian studio Paradox Tectonic have been shut down. The news of the game’s cancellation came last night through a forum post, with Paradox deputy CEO Mattias Lilja painting a picture of a game still too “lacking” for more development time to fix. This morning, it emerged that Paradox Tectonic, the studio working on the game, have been shuttered, via GameWatcher.

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Shovel Knight is getting online co-op as part of a new Shovel Of Hope DX edition for its 10th anniversary

Well, shovel me timbers! Shovel Knight, the retro platformer that started it all (it all being everything from a roguelike spin-off to a Dead Cells cameo) turns 10 this month, and Yacht Club Games are releasing a ultimate edition to celebrate. Entitled the ‘Shovel Of Hope DX’, this definitive-me-doo bundles in the original game with old and new features like saving and rewinding, over 20 playable characters, local and online co-op, and new modes. Grab your shovel and prepare to dig for the trailer, then look foolish as you realise it’s directly below this paragraph.

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Dragon Age: The Veilguard strips your RPG party down to two companions, but they'll be "deeper" with a lot more banter

"Two's company, three's a crowd," the saying goes, unless the first two are warriors and the third one is a priest, in which case the superior proverb is surely "three's a moderately balanced squad, two's a massive liability"? Here to put such kitchen wisdom to the test is BioWare's Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which "only" allows you to bring two companions into the fray, one fewer than 2014's Dragon Age: Inquisition. It's another indication that this will be more biffy action game than thinky party-based RPG. The upside, assuming you find that last sentence disappointing, is that exploration and combat will be more "intimate", and individual characters will have more screentime to bounce off each other and flourish as personalities. All this comes care of a BioWare Discord Q&A from late last week, which you can watch in full below.

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While you're waiting for Shadow Of The Erdtree, Elden Ring has some free hair for you

This once verdant ground is now wrecked by the passage of time. My terrible nemesis looms before me, inevitable and devastating. Many have fallen to it, but I will overcome. Oh, Elden Ring? I was talking about male pattern baldness. It will eventually destroy all that was once beautiful about my hairline, but at least I’ll have five fancy new hairdos to pick from when the open world RPG’s newest free update releases this Thursday, 20th of June. There’s also some QOL tweaks to inventory management and summoning pools, but I can’t wear those, can I?

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The Maw - 17th-22nd June 2024

Beloved friends, hated enemies - last week, we let the side down. Due to a shortage of hands at the pump and persistent clouds of Geoff Keighley activity, there was no weekly Maw liveblog, and this has bred disaster. Shaken, stirred and finally ignited for want of two-sentence updates about Dragon Age, the Maw emitted a full 13% of its cosmo-puissance into Mundus and took a grievous bite out of the ailing and fearful lasagne of reality itself. Hated friends, beloved enemies - I am very sad to say that the proud nation of Dimplexland is no more.

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for hoping the plumber has ordered that new sink part in. My sink is ‘non-standard’ apparently. "Why can't I just be normal?!" I scream in silent longing. Armitage Shanks would never. Before I look forward to no longer having to wash up my pasta bowl in the same place I brush my teeth, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

For Aftermath, Luke Plunkett spoke to ‘Albert’, an anonymous industry vet, about the struggles of making a demo for a big showcase or event - despite sometimes knowing it’s “100% Grade A Bullshit”.

Actually, now that I think about it, I was at a studio (if not directly involved) in a trailer that was 100% Grade A bullshit. Essentially our publisher really, really wanted stuff to show and despite the fact that our next project wasn't even in the pitch phase, let alone production, we had an external team create a trailer to build hype. It was completely divorced from anything we hoped to do, and it was so early in development that it couldn't help but be misleading or tie our hands. That one sucked. It thankfully didn't eat up a ton of our resources and time, but it was still demoralizing because we had little to do with it and we all knew it was going to be promises that we couldn't necessarily deliver on.

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Wizard With A Gun developer Galvanic Games are closing down

The developers of Wizard With A Gun are closing down. Galvanic Games, who released the sandbox survival game last year, said that ongoing sales of the game were not enough to keep the studio going, and they'd run out of time to find funding for a new project.

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Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess was the best game I played at Summer Game Fest

Every so often in the ignoble craft of james gournalism you stumble on a game that reminds you why you got into this weird and silly trade, a game that slices through the phantasmagorical mulch of a million Summer Game Fest announcements and clears the portals of the brain. It seems mad to think of Kanitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess this way, given that on some level, it is a tower defence game. Tower defence! The archetypal browser-based strategy experience and darling of emerging smartphones. The great-uncle once-removed of today's idle clickers. Without meaning any disrespect to those currently working in the genre, which I've had a tonne of fun with, when's the last time you were seriously excited by tower defence? As of this week, I am seriously excited by tower defence, because Path Of The Goddess has captured my imagination. It's a stately, beautiful thing. I had a go at this year's Keighleycon, and it's one of two games at the show I wanted to carry on playing once my time was up. Thank goodness it's out (on Steam and the Xbox store) in just a month or so's time.

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Virtual pet sim Weyrdlets is like Animal Crossing on your desktop, except you might get some real-life work done too

When I was a kid, one of my absolute favourite things to do on the PC was to mess around with a free virtual Felix - like the cat from the cat food adverts - who would roam around the Windows XP desktop, chasing balls of string between program windows and curling up to take a nap on the taskbar. I have no idea where the game came from - a dream, perhaps - but 30 years later, I still think about it as a perfectly formed way to lose hours on the PC without actually doing anything.

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Still Wakes the Deep, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun and Deathsprint 66 makers to lay off hundreds of staff

Sumo Group, the British video game collective which owns developers Sumo Digital, publishers Secret Mode and more - including Everybody's Gone to the Rapture devs The Chinese Room - is laying off hundreds of staff, cutting 15% of their workforce “to better navigate the upcoming challenges expected in the coming months”.

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Can you guess which Australian TV sci-fi of the early 2000s inspired Citizen Sleeper 2?

No, it's not Silversun. Sit down, Brian. Let somebody else have a go at answering. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is a sci-fi RPG with plenty of dice and a heavy nod towards tabletop role-playing. The first Citizen Sleeper saw your bio-robotic protagonist landing on a donut-shaped space station where they learned to make a new life for themselves among interstellar farmers and ramen-serving rapscallions. In the sequel, a demo of which I've played [smug face], the hook is a little different. This time you're being pursued across a bunch of backwater truck stops, colonies, depots, and derelicts. All the while your misfit crew will clash and commingle. You still haven't got it, have you? Ugh. I suppose I'll let the game's designer tell you then.

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Disco Samurai is a brutally difficult and brilliant Sekiro-like rhythm slasher

Disco Samurai is a game that’s so difficult I’d have given up playing sooner if it didn’t contain so many of my absolute favourite action game things. Tense, decisive duels. Violence that’s both brutal and a little silly. Scalpel-sharp parry n' strike back-and-forths. Short stages that dole out chunky progression hits of dopamine, as quickly as they wrest those hits away from you with another humbling beatdown. Perhaps most importantly, it aims to do one thing - rhythm combat - and does it brilliantly. It's got teeth, but it's also got groove.

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Alice B is leaving RPS, come say goodbye

On a Monday in early 2018, Adam Smith, Rock Paper Shotgun's deputy editor at the time, handed in his notice. On Thursday that same week, I emailed Alice Bell, a person I'd never spoken to before, to ask if she would consider applying for the role.

Alice thought it over for a week, and then emailed her response: no.

Thank god I was able to change her mind, so I could spend the next six years giving her shit about it. But now Alice is leaving RPS, and you should join me in saying goodbye.

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Activision QA supplier Lionbridge accused of retaliatory layoffs in "union busting" move

US labour union the CWA (Communications Workers of America) have filed Unfair Labor Practice charges against Activision QA supplier Lionbridge Technologies. As Game Developer reports, the CWA allege that Lionbridge fired an entire 160-person team in Idaho in retaliation for union-related activities.

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PSA: Please leave my horrible silver frog sons alone as you grind for Elden Ring Shadow Of The Erdtree

It’s a well known phenomena by now that if you want to level up very quickly in Elden Ring, the best place to do so is a cliff’s edge by Mohgwyn Palace. Nearby to this now-famous site of grace camps a merry band of blood-cursed Albinaurics, as well as a stupid gross bird you can trick into killing itself over and over again. I do not give a single solitary biscuit about that leperous avian, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste my new-found position of prominence on this glorious website by not moralising at you heartless rune-hoarders about the unconscionable violence you keep inflicting on my bulbous, shiny frog sons. With Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree out soon, the amount of violence the community is collectively inflicting is breaking my tiny heart.

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Star Trucker delivers its chill mix of Euro Truck Simulator and Freelancer onto Steam and Game Pass this September

It’s been almost a decade since Rebel Galaxy ably picked up the sci-fi trading and exploration mantle handed down by Freelancer, but it looks like a successor to the serene galaxy-venturing vibes of both is finally upon us. Star Trucker is exactly what it sounds like, transplanting the chill A-to-Z courier journeys of Euro Truck Simulator to the interplanetary, uh, roads of space. It’s out this September, and it looks wonderful.

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Tactical Breach Wizards gets a summer release window, then throws a man through it

We continue to rummage through the debris caused by the horrendous pile-up of summer video game announcements. Among the wreckage, a release date for Tactical Breach Wizards, the funny strategy game in which you play a ragtag crew of uniformed magic-zappers clearing enemies in confined spaces. It's not XCOM, but it is XCOM-ing soon. That's about as good a joke as I can muster on a Monday morning. Don't worry, there are funnier ones in the trailer below.

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Do a drive-by shooting from the back of a bear in Streets of Rogue 2 this summer

"Deus Ex but tiny and hilarious" is how I pitch the first Streets of Rogue to people in elevators. Then I kick the elevator control panel to pieces, climb out the hatch, and cut the cord with a buzzsaw I smuggled in earlier. "It's also total chaos!" I yell, as the elevator plummets. "Ha ha ha ha ha ha!" Streets of Rogue 2 is looking similarly chaotic. But one thing has been brought to order: its release date. It's coming to early access on August 14th, while a new trailer (below) shows horse riding, flame throwing, and speed boating. My favourite moment is when a man pumps magic gas into a room full of people doing zumba, and it turns them all into giants, and they freak out and start smashing the walls in a panic.

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Boozy management sim Ale Abbey puts you in the sandals of a beer-brewing monk

The god of video games news is vengeful, for this weekend He has sent forth a flood of game announcements to wipe out any remaining game journalists from this earth. Come at me, God! What have you got? Ah. It’s Ale Abbey, a management game about brewing beer in a monastery of medieval monks, and between making craft ales the priests get tipsy on their own supply. You can’t fool me, god of game reveals, this one has been openly in the works on GameJolt for 2 years. But, yes, I suppose now that the developer is teaming up with the Northgard creators as a publisher, the people must know.

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for finishing up Godzilla Minus One now its on Netflix. I’m not shilling Netflix here, but I am happy to shill Godzilla. Before I shout “It’s Godzilla! That’s Godzilla! It’s him!” every time Godzilla is on screen, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

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Lost And Found Co. is a hidden object adventure in which you play as a duck-turned-human intern

I wrote about the Wholesome Direct earlier this evening and pulled out a handful of games I liked from the showcase. I didn't mention the game I liked most, because I wanted to give it this fuller shoutout. Lost And Found Co. is a hidde object adventure game set in a colourful, densely detailed world, and there's a demo available to play now.

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Wholesome Direct 2024 featured an hour of delightful-looking games, cosy and otherwise

The advertising bonanza formerly known as E3 continues into its second day with another set of streams. The Wholesome Direct was today's highlight, in my mind. The yearly collection of games that may or may not be cosy, but which definitely do not involve stabbing men in the neck, always contains some games worth keeping an eye on. This year was no different, and you'll find the archived stream below.

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Lego Horizon Adventures follows Forbidden West with a co-op spin-off, and we won’t have to wait for it on PC

Surprise! The next Horizon game after Zero Dawn and Forbidden West is also the next Lego game. Revealed during today's Summer games Fest showcase, Lego Horizon Adventures lets series heroine Aloy romp around with a pal in two-player co-op, and it’s coming to PC on the same day as it hits PlayStation.

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Doom Eternal’s Mars Core still represents the perfect use of unwelcome cutscenes

Whether or not they actually amount to anything, rumours of a new Doom have had me diving back into Doom Eternal recently. There’s at least one level in it that feels like essay-bait, so I’m obliging. The centerpiece of Mars Core - the FPS’ best level - is a comically massive superweapon called the BFG-10000. Oh, Chekov. If only you could see what we’ve done with your wisdom. The literary subtlety to gun-big-enough-to-scar-planets pipeline will eventually subsume all of pop culture, and those of us who chose to specialise writing about headshots will alternate between grins and tears from the wreckage.

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