One year on from Citizen Sleeper 2, I'm tempted back into its world with a physical release of its TTRPG spin-off

Crafting a world that begs to be explored is a tricky thing to do, especially when the world is kind of sucky, doubly so when it's woven mostly through words with only supplementary imagery to provide a broader context. Yet Citizen Sleeper's is one I'm often thinking about because amongst all the grand sci-fi concepts is a grounded sense of reality that you'll always find in the best of the cyberpunk genre. And here I am, a year on from the second game's release, tempted to return once more, but this time in a form based on its tabletop origins.

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While the jury's still out on it, Highguard gets a temporary new mode that ups the headcount in matches

I'm sure there's been many a Dweet and forum post about Highguard is already a dead game or some such silly thing to say about a game that's not even a week old, but it does at least seem like developer Wildlight is paying attention to some of the more constructive bits of criticism about the game. Namely, that many aren't fond of the shooter's 3v3 Raids simply because it feels like there aren't enough people for such large maps. So in turn, there's already an update adding in an experimental new raid mode.

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Turtle Beach Burst II Pro gaming mouse review

The Turtle Beach Burst II Pro’s raison d'être is to bung a Valorant esportist’s Christmas list of premium features into an ultra-lightweight gaming mouse; a class of peripheral that’s more accustomed to jettisoning luxuries than hoarding them. Thus we have a desk rat that weighs 57g, less than half of the apparently immortal Logitech G502 Hero, while packing pleasantly clicky optical switches and an 8K polling sensor – meaning it sends its latest positional info to the PC eight thousand times a second. That’s Windows 11 levels of notification spam.

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PSA: There's a free Fallout 4 mod for that Fallout Show NCR power armour Bethesda are charging $30 for as DLC

Right, so, spoiler alert: that NCR power armour which first appeared in the trailers for season two of Amazon's Fallout Show has finally made its grand entrance in the latest episode to drop. On cue, Bethesda have put out a Fallout 76 DLC you can buy if you want to wear the armour for yourself in a Fallout game. Said DLC costs £26.99 / $30. In light of that, I'm here to quickly point out/remind folks that there's a free Fallout 4 mod for the armour you can give a go if you fancy.

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World of Warcraft's getting a prop hunt mode, so you can pretend to be a chair during breaks from Midnight's voidpocalypse

Well, World of Warcraft developers Blizzard have decided to have a bit of extra fun with all the junk that'll fill up the new player houses rolling out in full with March's Midnight expansion. The MMO's getting a prop hunt mode dubbed Decor Duel, designed to act as a "small diversion" from the whole Xal’atath-led void invasion business.

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Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is getting a day one patch to ensure sunny Okinawa looks less deep fried

Ahead of Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties' release on February 11th, devs RGG Studio have announced plans to put out a day one patch to fix visual issues spotted the remade beat-em-up's demo. Specifically, there's a section of the game's version of downtown Okinawa by a river which players have pointed out to be garishly oversaturated compared to the original Yakuza 3 and its previous remaster.

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Nioh 3 has a demo out on Steam right now, if you've got a spare 80GB of space knocking about

Oop, beefy boy alert. I know that's a bit of a rude way to introduce Nioh 3's freshly released Steam demo, but to be fair said demo is asking for about 70GB more of my precious drive space than the Yakuza Kiwami 3 and Dark Ties demo I grabbed last week. Well, at least progress made in Nioh's not small demo will carry over to the full game when it comes out next week.

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Dune: Awakening hopes to spruce up its endgame in its next major update, coming next week

Dune: Awakening has struggled a touch with its endgame pretty much since launch, but with the MMO's next big update, Chapter 3, is promising to offer a revamp that you (yes, you! The person playing Dune: Awakening right now! Maybe!) have been after. A release date was also offered up for the big update, alongside some specifics on just what this new endgame might look like.

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Coral Social Club is like Webfishing where you're the fish, or, uh, mermaids

A thing that was quite endearing, perhaps the main appeal even, about the early internet was how it was a place you could go to, with lots of other, unique places to go through, be they forums, chatrooms, or oddball social games. The last item in the list there kind of faded away for a while, replaced by MMOs and live service games like Fortnite, but these smaller scale, social-first games, or hangout games, are making a comeback, with games like Webfishing. And soon, for the more aquatic amongst you, there will be Coral Social Club.

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Arc Raiders update rips out one of the game's most maddening puzzles

Arc Raiders has a new Headwinds game update that, amongst many other things, removes an extravagantly drawn-out puzzle from the game’s Buried City map. Introduced in December, the puzzle in question saw people tracking down and pushing 15 buttons in a certain order to unlock a secret chamber containing an actual, strummable guitar. As of this updating, you’ll now be able to buy that guitar at Shani’s, like a millionaire tourist paying to be flown to the top of Mount Everest.

I regard this as a dilution of the game, on paper, but I am not one of the players who’ve driven themselves crackers trying to get hold of the instrument (or paying real money for the battle pass to unlock it). Arc Raiders is a multiplayer game, of course, so even if you survive being shot at while stampeding between buttons, it’s possible another, distant player might innocently press one and reset your progress.

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Baldur's Gate 3 studio boss calls out "hurtful", "personal" videogame reviewers - "sometimes I think it'd be a good idea for critics to be scored, Metacritic-style"

Fresh from the trenches of the Divinity generative AI debate, Larian CEO Swen Vincke has taken to the Twitterverse with some moderately spicy thoughts on video game critics and reviewers. Broadly, he feels that we need to work harder to be “critical” without being “hurtful”. He also suggests that the industry could do with a Metacritic-style system for evaluating and scoring reviewers, to “encourage a bit more restraint”, so that "sensitive" creatives don't "lose their idealism and love of players.”

Picture me over here, huffing and snorting like a bull eyeing the red-trousered bottom of an atypically fleshy matador browsing the inside of a just-opened china shop. By gawd! A chance to pontificate about my own navel, while bagging a Baldur's Gate 3 headline in the bargain. I have some notes on Vincke’s notes, but before I start throwing my toys around, maybe read the Xitter thread in full, from late last night on the 27th. For those who do not partake of Musky products, here's a transcript:

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Crusader Kings 3 has joined the big fleet of Paradox strategy games offering a paid DLC subscription service

Crusader Kings 3 developers Paradox have decided now's the time for the medieval strategy game to take a leaf out of its predecessor's book - as well as fellow strategians Hearts of Iron IV and Europa Universalis 4 - by getting its own DLC subscription service. Starting today, you'll have the option to pay a monthly fee for access to all nine billion or so CK3 expansions and add-ons, if you don't fancy paying to own them outright in the usual fashion.

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Ubisoft propose cutting up to 200 jobs at Paris headquarters, as unions reportedly agree three day strike

Ubisoft have proposed a round of voluntary redundancies at their Paris headquarters, which could see as many as 200 jobs cut. These plans follow a major bloodbath of game cancellations and restructuring by the publishers last week, which came with a mandate demanding staff return to working in-office five days a week (an annual allowance of work-from-home days was part of that proposal). All of that understandably drew the ire of unions representing Ubisoft workers, with a number now having reportedly agreed to a three day-long strike next month.

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Yes I know Christmas was a month ago but SantaCorps 4 perfectly captures Sega Dreamcast era Sonic so play it anyway

Sega have gotten just a little bit too good at making Sonic games. Not good as in 10/10 masterpieces, good as in competent, as in mostly jank free, and where there is jank it's the annoying, not very funny kind. I like it when the blue hedgehog is impossible to control in Sonic Adventure 2 actually! But look, when I go on to tell you about a game that captures that same unruly spirit of Sega's early 3D games, please ignore that Christmas was a month ago because SantaCorps 4 is a 3D platformer that really does have the messy, gloopy sauce.

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Gambonanza is definitely a chess roguelike deckbuilder in a post-Balatro world, but when it works, it works

It is inevitable that when a game like Balatro rocks up, is really good, and makes a gazillion dollars, that there will be the odd imitator here and there. Sincerity, flattery, yada, yada, yada, point is, it's all fine as long as you at least put enough of a twist in there to make it more of an "influenced by" over a "wholesale ripoff" kind of thing. I think Gambonanza, a roguelike deckbuilding chess game, fits into the former quite nicely.

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So you think you can type the word 'pistol' over and over again without making a mistake? Typing Break will put your confidence to the test

As anyone who has edited me over the years will know, I am not a great typist. Or, ironically, as I originally spelled it: typoist. Additional letters slip in with every other keystroke, characters within words are all jumbled up, and the crime I'm most often guilty of is skipping out whole words entirely as I rush to get to the end of a sentence.

So, it was with trepidation that I installed the demo for Typing Break, a game where the only thing standing between you and the horde of enemies descending the screen is your ability to quickly and accurately type words like 'Pistol' and 'Machine gun'.

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A ton of cut Baldur's Gate 3 early access encounters, including over 100 chats, have been resurrected by a modder

Baldur's Gate 3's shift from early access to full release came with heap of tweaks and changes as Larian finalised their huge RPG. Naturally, this meant certain bits or plans not making it into the final cut, and if you've come to long for any of those after playing them initially or hearing about them, then odds are a new mod is right up your alley. It's also really cool if you, you know, just want more BG3.

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Stop Killing Games' EU petition amassed just under 1.3 million verified signatures, according to final count

The Stop Killing Games campaign have revealed the final signature count for their European Citizens' Initiative, dubbed Stop Destroying Videogames. According to the folks behind the campaign, the European Union have been able to verify that 1,294,188 of the petition's nearly 1.5 million signatures are the real deal, putting it above the one million signature goal required for EU politicians to look into the issue of server shutdowns rendering online-only games impossible to play.

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for waking up in a cold sweat at 6AM. It never ends. The monkey of life will never be off your back. You're trapped. You try to get up, and your legs don't work. You fall down, but don't feel anything. What hell is this, you wonder in horror.

Somwhere above you, something moves. You lie frozen in place as it creeps closer, and closer, and closer. Then BOOM, it's right on top of you. It's your mum, but her face is obscured by Dagoth Ur's mask from Morrowind. She takes one look at you and gasps. "Oh no," she screams. "You've caught the disease!" Tears in her eyes, she brings you a mirror. Adrian Edmondson stares out of it, winking cheekily. "It's twenty-twenty-smegging-six," your mum howls. "Why hasn't he gone away yet!"

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Tower Lab is a neat little tower defence roguelite I would have loved wasting time with in IT class as a teen

How do teens in IT classes waste their time these days? When I was a young whippersnapper, when my teacher wasn't looking I'd head to sites like Miniclip, Nitrome, wherever I could get my hands on some Flash games, to play all sorts of little oddities, particularly system heavy ones that were fun to mess around with for 10 minutes once in a while. Games like that feel rare now with the death of Flash, but I think Tower Lab, a physics roguelite tower defence deckbuilder where you attempt to blast enemies off a ledge into an infinite void to their demise, feels pretty close.

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Far and Herdling devs' next release is an already satisfying and tactile roguelike deckbuilding pinball game

Roguelike deckbuilders! They're everywhere! It's a bit of an epidemic, honestly, sorting the wheat from chaff is a tough job. Of course, once in a while a genuinely novel take on the genre rolls around, and PinKeep has done just that, a pinball game where you change the playfield as you progress through runs. And it's from the devs behind the Far series and Herdling!

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Look at that, Highguard is coming out next week after all, with a gameplay overview coming, oh, that's odd, launch day

Highguard was never a game that was going to win me over, as I generally only like single-player shooters if any, but it isn't helped by the fact that since its announcement there hasn't been a lick of actual marketing to help it prove itself. This, of course, has been the subject of much discourse, to which I will contribute slightly in the coming paragraphs, but the main point of all this is to say that actually, against all odds, Highguard is in fact sticking to its January 26th launch date, and will even show off some gameplay… on its release day.

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After 250 hours, I keep coming back to Arc Raiders not because it's surprising, but because it's predictable

When I gave extraction shooter Arc Raiders a glowing review in November, I wasn't certain it would keep me hooked.

Two months later and I'm 250 hours deep. Despite clear flaws – and developer Embark Studio's insistence on retaining AI-generated voice lines – I feel its pull every day, and not for the reasons I would've thought.

I used to think what was special about Arc Raiders was that every round was different, that anything could and would happen when you met another player mid-round. What's kept me coming back, however, is not the ways it's surprising but the ways it's predictable – the ways I can master its systems to squeeze more fun out of it, more high-tier loot, and more of its special, absurd moments.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

Saturdays are for waking up, having a big stretch, and wondering where the hell you packed the electric toothbrush charger.

In that first three day grace period, I could tell myself 'Not to worry, there are only so many removal boxes. It will turn up!" By day five, the little red flashing light had come on. The brush only has a couple of charges left. I've searched all the obvious boxes, the ones marked 'Bathroom' and 'Toiletries'. Now I'm onto anything that's still taped shut. 'Crockery', 'Books', even 'Eldritch summoning reagents'. Nada. Well, there was a half-eaten bag of Percy Pigs but after polishing those off I worry I may have made my dental needs more pressing.

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Ubisoft didn't cancel Beyond Good & Evil 2 because open world games are a "priority", but I suspect the real reason is more boring

Earlier this week, Ubisoft cancelled six games, delayed seven more, and closed three studios in Halifax, Canada and Stockholm, as part of efforts to "right-size" the ship under Commodore Tencent by chucking a lot of people and projects into the sea. I do not need to tell you that Beyond Good and Evil 2 was not one of the cancelled projects. Cats and dogs will be getting married before Ubisoft cancel Beyond Good and Evil 2 - a game announced 17 years ago, which has survived many rounds of key departures, scandals, tragedies and cost-cutting. Ubisoft's latest public reasoning for not abandoning BG&E2 is that it's an open world game, and their new corporate strategy is to focus on open world and live service games.

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Fable's evil landlords won't grow devil horns, as reboot ditches classic character morphing due to a lack of belief in objective arseholery

The character morphing system which has facilitated many a dickhead protagonist sprout devil horns and red eyes in the classic Fables isn't in Playground Games reboot, which is set to arrive this autumn. As to why they've opted not to bring back the chance to grow a halo or be beset by baldness due to your bastardry, the studio say it's a matter of opting for more regionally-focused reputation system and aiming to mirror "the subjectivity of morality that honestly we see in the world today".

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"It is out of the question to let a boss run rampant" - Ubisoft workers strike against "disastrous" cutbacks

Ubisoft’s bloodbath of game cancellations and restructuring yesterday has attracted the expected fiery response from unionised workers, with the French game industry union Solidaires Informatique calling a half-day strike today. Cost-cutting and potential layoffs aside, the strikers are protesting against Ubisoft’s decision to mandate a full return to office, with workers given an annual allowance of work from home days instead - something a publisher executive has justified as a move “to enhance collective efficiency” and “the sense of belonging”.

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Nexus Mods' latest modathon isn't a typical modathon, it's a first go at the same for multi-mod collections

With their latest Fallout modathon having wrapped up at the close of last year, mod-hosting site Nexus Mods have decided to try something new with their latest event designed to supercharge mod creation around a specific game or theme. Rather than asking folks to submit fresh individual mods like usual, the modathon that's about to kick off is all about putting together chunky multi-mod lists which can overhaul a game in one fell swoop.

These user-assembled modlists, dubbed Collections, are a feature Nexus Mods have been pushing for a number of years now, so it's not surprising they're now serving as the subject of a modathon for the first time.

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Rule your own, slightly socially awkward knights in the round table management RPG Sovereign Tower

You ever accidentally find out that you're the sovereign of an entire nation as dictated by a prophecy even though you're technically just random nobody, and so you wind-up being the one to have to make all the decisions about how your nation is run? No? Well, that's fine, but if you'd like that to be you, I'll introduce you to Sovereign Tower, a management RPG where you send off your knights of the round table to deal with all manner of quests.

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Firestarters promises to mix Rollerdome, arena shooters and visual novels into a government-sanctioned bloodsport

This is probably the umpteenth time I've said I'm not someone who plays many shooters, but here I am saying it again, because an FPS has rocked up that has clocked my interest. It's called Firestarters, an arena shooter that's a bit like Quake, a bit like Rollerdome, and looks like good, bloody fun.

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Marathon Steam pre-orders no longer automatically try to install Destiny 2, as Bungie fix Freudian slip/bug

Ah, no, not that one. That, I assume, has been the reaction of folks who've gone to pre-order the Marathon reboot on Steam, and immediately been informed that Destiny 2 is sneaking its way back onto their machines. Thankfully, Bungie have now fixed whatever issue was causing the latter to take pre-purchases of the former as a cue to re-install itself.

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Life is Strange: Reunion, the time-fiddling finale of co-protagonists Max and Chloe's tale, arrives in March

The next Life is Strange game, dubbed Life is Strange: Reunion, is set to arrive in March. Officially revealed following an impromptu teaser from PEGI earlier this month, this new entry sees series stalwarts Max Caulfield and Chloe Price serve as co-protagonists. The former's still able to stick time in reverse and the latter's return provides the verbal prowess necessary to solve a blaze-based mystery.

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The Witcher 3 now has online multiplayer thanks to a mod, allowing gaggles and gangs of Geralts to gather

As much as single-player solitude's a big reason why I love getting lost in The Witcher 3, running around its world with a small crew of mates also seems like it'd be a nice time. A good thing it is then that a new mod for the decade old RPG allows it to host online multiplayer sessions with several players running amok at once.

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TR-49 review – a code breaking puzzle game where you get all up in some dead authors' gossip

I am in the dusty basement of Manchester cathedral. On the streets above me, there are police searching for anyone who would challenge the state. Someone like me. I am supposed to be working on a weapon to use against these fascists. It isn't a gun or a bomb, it is a machine that eats books.

At least, that's what I should be doing; instead, I'm searching for the final letter between the members of a love triangle of 1950s academics. I've tracked down all their trashy novels and papers on temporal dynamics, but I want to find the last bit of saucy gossip. Smashing the state can wait a moment.

There is a lot I won't tell you about TR-49, Inkle's latest puzzle game. I don't want to ruin any of the epiphanies that lie in wait for you. But it is a treat for anyone looking to get all up in the personal lives of some long-dead fictional authors.

I know there are many of you curtain twitchers out there.

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An ARC Raiders auction house would be "risky", but Embark are looking at a playable Speranza hub and an actual trading animation

The winter abates, the days begin to lengthen, the snowdrops creep forth from their burrows, and the raiders of ARC Raiders carry on raiding Arcs. Developers Embark have also done another round of interviews, in which they discuss plans for ARC Raiders updates in 2026, and in particular, address the question of whether to implement a player-trading menu and/or some kind of auction house feature. Right now, you can only officially barter with NPC merchants.

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Alleged Fable concept art seems to point towards a return to Fable 2's rogueish hive of scum and pub islands

A bunch of alleged concept art for the Fable reboot has reportedly been unearthed via a developer's portfolio, ahead of the RPG's appearance at this week's Xbox showcase. As of writing, there's no indication as to what stage of developement the apparent game art could be from. However, if it's genuine, it does seem to point towards a location from Fable 2 making a return in the reboot.

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Real-time tactics game Strategos is out now in early access with some clever communication and morale systems

Historical real-time tactics game Strategos is out in early access today, boasting over 120 factions and 250 units based on “the major and minor powers of the ancient Mediterranean”, according to developers Strategos Games. If you are a brazen tomfool, you might summarise it as Total War without the sprawling campaign map element. If you are an excessively brazen tomfool – brazen to the point that a formation of Greek Hoplites would use you as cover while manouvering around some pesky Achaemenid Persian archers – you might also say that “Strategos” sounds like a spiky brand of cereal, rich in essential iron and horse sweat.

We neither of us are tomfools, however. We know better than to write such nonsense out loud. I’ve still yet to play Strategos, but I’ve been reading more about its “command and control” simulation, after covering the news that MicroProse would publish the game, and it does sound like a worthwhile complication of the process of clattering phalanxes together like frying pans.

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Ex-Assassin's Creed lead sues Ubisoft for around $1 Million, alleging his exit was a disguised dismissal

Former Assassin's Creed series lead Marc-Alexis Côté is suing Ubisoft for damages, alleging that his abrupt October departure from the company after 20 years wasn't a matter of personal choice, but a case of "constructive dismissal". That, in non-legalese, means that the developer believes he was left with no choice but to resign, having been offered new roles he viewed as demotions amid a round of corporate musical chairs.

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Valve rewrite Steam's GenAI disclosure rules to more explicitly allow AI-powered "efficiency" tools

Valve have reportedly rewritten Steam’s AI disclosure form, essentially a declaration of a game’s generative AI usage that developers and publishers must complete to sell on the platform. The new form, shared by consultant Simon Carless, now specifies that while the presence of in-game GenAI content must still be divulged, including on the game’s store page, the usage of AI-based production tools for "efficiency gains" does not require disclosure.

"We are aware that many modern game development environments have AI powered tools built into them," the update form reads. "Efficiency gains through the use of these tools is not focus of this section. Instead, it is concerned with the use of AI in creating content that ships with your game, and is consumed by players."

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This week in PC games: a new Inkle game, a Total War alternative, a Paper Mario-like RPG and some bladesongs

Happy new week of PC game releases, all! First, the customary paragraph of Maw musings. What we refer to as the Maw goes by many other names in different regions, as different cultures react to its cosmic incursions. Across the channel in Normandy, generations of monks have addressed the creature as La Bête des Trous. The Finnish know the Maw as Tuleva Syöjä. In the United States, meanwhile, they call it Friday Night at Applebee’s.

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for walking around your home, looking for somewhere to install the home security camera you got for your birthday, and realising a) how few unused surfaces actually exist in this space and b) it was pretty stupid to ask for a home security camera when you knew full well its only purpose would be keeping an eye on the cat while you’re out. And she’s the cat equivalent of a human octogenarian. What, exactly, is she going to do, that might warrant establishing a surveillance state in your own living room? And seriously, how is there not a single inch of unused shelf?

Better, it sounds like, to have a seat and reason quality articles. Go on, while no-one’s watching.

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How game developers worldwide are reliving Y2K Japan, from Jet Set Radio to Dance Dance Revolution

Many of today's game designers have, like me, grown up with Japanese Y2K style - the style of the late 90s and early 2000s that gave us not only fear of the end of the world due to a calendar change, but also the WipEout series, futuristic PlayStation 2 ads, and fashion that incorporated everything from glitter to holographic fabrics and cute crop tops.

In a media landscape that seldom shies away from homages and sequels, I’ve waited a long time for the influence of childhood favourites such as Dance Dance Revolution and Space Channel 5 to pop back up. After all, plenty of Western developers have taken inspiration from Japanese role-playing games, giving us Sea of Stars, Undertale and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, to name a few. Recently, I found some really cool games by Western developers that are living the Y2K dream with me, so it was time to dive into their inspirations and compare some childhood anime with some nerds.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

Saturdays are for… drat, look at the time! I shouldn't be writing an article. I should be loading boxes into vans. Frantically disassembling furniture. And stopping the friends who are 'helping' me move house from pausing to sip cups of tea. It's like they don't know how long I spent on the phone to the council booking parking permits. No, I couldn't possibly tell you. Well, twist my arm. 45 minutes.

So, if you're curled up in bed having a relaxing morning, I envy you. But know that I'm in that blessed window where I can 'accidentally' lose all the personalised mugs and t-shirts I've been given as presents over the years. You know, the ones the gift giver is always asking after or expecting to be on display. This is a window that only opens once every few years, and with both hands I'm throwing 'Boyz on tour mugs' out of it.

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Further testing seems to confirm Monster Hunter Wilds DLC performance improvement theory, to an extent

I think we all want it to be true that the Monster Hunter Wilds’ infamously limp PC performance can be blamed upon, as was reported yesterday, an overzealous DLC checking process gumming up what might overwise be a perfectly fine-running beastfight game. Partly because it just sounds funny. Willing but frustrated graphics elves running about, harangued to distraction by a hairstyle add-on overseer nagging for licenses, like a Daily Telegraph reader demanding to know why you aren’t wearing a poppy on November 3rd.

The best part? All evidence suggests it genuinely is true – albeit only to varying degrees, and in the case of my own testing, nowhere near as drastically as in the originally discovered case.

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Some of Resident Evil Requiem's regular zombies remember being alive

Capcom have released a new 13 minute Resident Evil Requiem gameplay showcase, with commentary from director Koshi Nakanishi. About 20% of it is Leon Kennedy kicking zombies in the noggin, doing Wickian dodge-shoots, or chopping torsos with a chainsaw or hatchet (the latter a subweapon that needs periodic resharpening). Another 20% consists of new, stealth-oriented character Grace creeping through ornate chambers in first person; being the "cold bath" to Leon's "hot sauna", she doesn’t have serious fighting skills, but she does have a ‘pinch hitter’ handcannon for those times when skulking behind tableware won’t cut the mustard. There’s talk of a new crafting system, whereby Grace turns zombie blood into a vaccine to stop corpses reanimating.

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The Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag remake sea shanty siren song grows even more deafening, as Ubisoft reupload a bunch of sailing tunes

We'll heave him up an away we'll go. 'Way, me Assassin's Creeda! We'll heave him up an away we'll go. We're all bound over to Ubisoft's official music YouTube channel! We'll heave him up from down below. 'Way, me Assassin's Creeda! Oh, this is where a bunch of the original Black Flag's sea shanties have just been reuploaded, potentially providing yet another hint that we're all soon bound to be playing that long-rumoured remake of the pirassassin adventure!

This sudden influx of classic ditties might not have meant much in a vacuum, but it follows many reports about the badly kept secret that is the remake and a PEGI rating that's about as close as you can get to a seal of approval short of Ubisoft finally giving up the ghost anmd revealing the thing themselves.

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Mirror's Edge's iconic art style? Yeah, turns out it was sort of an accident

It's kind of baffling how Mirror's Edge came out almost two full decades ago, and there's hardly a whisper of a game that's managed to match its art direction. The thing is just too clean, too specific, there's a purpose to every detail. It feels like the future distilled into digital form, though no one really followed suit in the years since, opting for drab, lifeless realism instead. Except, as it turns out, that's almost what Mirror's Edge looked like too.

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Point-and-click adventure game filled with "ah yeah, them" British actors Earth Must Die is out later this month

Anyone order a point-and-click adventure puzzle game for later this month featuring a cast of British actors that'll make you go "oh, right, them!" when you Google them? Well, someone must have, because Earth Must Die, the next game from Lair of the Clockwork God developer Size Five Games, now has a release date. Come on, it's getting cold!

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Valve stress again that there'll be more Steam Machine Verified games than Steam Deck ones, with "fewer constraints" in their testing programme

Regardless of whether you've laid hands on the plastic contours of a Steam Deck, you’ve probably seen the Steam Deck Verified programme in action: badges of honour (or of 'Unsupported' disgrace) on a game’s Steam store page, reflecting how well it runs and plays on the portable PC per Valve’s in-house testing. The programme is being expanded to include the upcoming Steam Machine too, and is set to bestow a lot more games with Steam Machine Verified status, given what a Valve designer calls "fewer restraints" in their judging criteria.

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Hytale's first hotfix targets crash-inducing hairdos and buckets, as its devs outline update plans for the next few months

A first round of hotfixes has arrived for Hytale, following the Minecrafty sandboxer's arrival in early access form yesterday. Developers Hypixel have also offered some insight into which aspects of it they're planning to prioritise working on in the coming months.

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