Five of the Best is a weekly series about the parts of games we overlook. We've discussed a diverse bunch: crowds, hubs, potions, mountains, hands... They're the things we take for granted while we play but then, years later, find lodged in our brains. It's only then we begin to appreciate how important they were. So let's celebrate them.

Today...

Character creators! How long do you spend in them? Do you pick a premade face and just breeze through? Do you pick a template, tinker a bit and then settle? Or do you adjust absolutely everything, take all evening and it still doesn't look right? I feel your pain.

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Microsoft has confirmed the latest batch of titles coming to Xbox Game Pass on PC - and while a few have been revealed previously, some new names, including sci-fi grand strategy game Stellaris, will also be making the leap to the subscription service before the month is through.

Alongside Stellaris, quirky (and tremendously entertaining) 60-second puzzle adventure Minit joins the Xbox Game Pass line-up on PC, as does F1 2018, a racer that Eurogamer's Martin Robison called "one of the very best F1 games to date" in his Recommended review last year.

There's more racing, albeit of a two-wheeled variety, courtesy of Lonely Mountains Downhill, and also heading to the service at some currently undisclosed point this month is Saints Row 4: Re-Elected, developer Volition's extremely silly superhero-themed open-world jaunt through an alien computer simulation, and "multi-layered" cyberpunk sci-fi thriller State of Mind.

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Microsoft has revealed the latest titles heading to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service for PC, and they look an awful lot like Dirt Rally 2.0, Saints Row 4, Cities: Skylines, and Bad North.

Cities: Skylines, of course, is developer Colossal Order's phenomenally popular city-builder, which, since its launch in 2015, has gone from strength to strength. Four years on, it's now received eight major expansions - After Dark, Snowfall, Natural Disasters, Mass Transit, Green Cities, Parklife, Industries, and Campus - plus an enormous number of free feature updates, and even a console release. Its enduring popularity is well-deserved too; it's a thoroughly entertaining urban planning and traffic management sim, and well worth checking out.

As for developer Volition's Saints Row 4: Re-Elected (which includes all DLC), it's a wonderfully idiotic spin on the open-world gangster genre, this time ramping up the ridiculousness to previously unseen heights. While early games in the series played it mostly straight, Saints Row 4 throws caution to the wind, delivering a game in which aliens trap our likeable rogue's gallery of heroes in a digital simulation of their beloved city of Steelport.

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Microsoft has revealed the latest titles heading to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service for PC, and they look an awful lot like Dirt 2.0, Saints Row 4, Cities: Skylines, and Bad North.

Cities: Skylines, of course, is developer Colossal Order's phenomenally popular city-builder, which, since its launch in 2015, has gone from strength to strength. Four years on, it's now received eight major expansions - After Dark, Snowfall, Natural Disasters, Mass Transit, Green Cities, Parklife, Industries, and Campus - an enormous number of free feature updates, and even a console release. Its enduring popularity is well-deserved too; it's a thoroughly entertaining urban planning and traffic management sim, and well-worth checking out.

As for developer Volition's Saints Row 4: Re-Elected which includes all DLC), it's a wonderfully idiotic spin on the open-world gangster genre, this time ramping up the ridiculousness to previously unseen degrees. While early games in the series played it mostly straight, Saints Row 4 throws caution to the wind, delivering a game in which aliens trap our likeable rogue's gallery of heroes in a digital simulation of their beloved city of Steelport.

Read more

THQ Nordic is laying out all the news this morning after its recent earnings call - not only is it snapping up various game developers and talking about TimeSplitters, but it has announced Volition is developing a brand new Saints Row game.

The last full entry to the series was back in 2013 when Saints Row 4 was released, and with the expansion Gat out of Hell releasing in 2015, fans have been waiting for four years for a new adventure in the franchise.

It's been suspected for a while now that Saints Row 5 might be in production after the success of the fourth instalment. But there's little else to go on, as the only information today is that the game is "deep in development".

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THQ Nordic, the company behind the Darksiders and de Blob re-releases, has bought Koch Media, owner of Saints Row and Dead Island publisher Deep Silver, in a deal worth 121m euro.

For that, THQ Nordic gets all of Deep Silver's studios and games, such as Volition (Saints Row), Dambuster (Homefront) and Dead Island. It also picks up Deep Silver's exclusive rights to the Metro games, which are developed by 4A.

In a note to press, THQ Nordic said it has no plans to restructure Deep Silver, which hopefully means jobs are safe (there are 150 people currently at Volition, for example), and Koch Media will continue to operate as a separate entity within the THQ Nordic group. It also said it plans to soldier on with Deep Silver's current slate of in-development games.

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