Vikings are cowards. Same goes for knights and samurai. If you’re a competent fighter in For Honor, then you might have clocked that defensive moves often beat out aggressive ones. Right now you can merrily block away until your opponent exhausts themselves, then go at ’em as they wheeze. This may have had something to do with my skill level, but counter-attacks seem a tad over-strong, too.

Great news! All of that will be worse soon! The upcoming Core Combat update revolves around emboldening players, introducing a load of tweaks that incentivise aggression. It’s not out ’til August 6th, but come watch this vid and and do some thinking about swords with me.

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After watching the trailer a bajillion more times, I am extremely excited for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. It’s been around 48 hours since the announcement and I cannot possibly retain this state for much longer. By the time the Christmas-ish release date rolls around I will either have exploded like a poor little meat balloon, or gone full circle and lapsed into a coma. Like the engines of the Enterprise, she cannae hold – definitely not for around six more months, anyway.

Thank god that Vikings are an enduring and popular theme for games, then! I can inoculate myself against disaster by playing a few of these existing ones while I wait. Such is the versatility of Vikings that they pop up in almost every genre imaginable, too. So if, like me, you are already on the edge of your seat (and that seat is in a longship), here are some recommendations for varied and quality video games that will get you prepared for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

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War never changes, but it has lost a little weight. Ubisoft made every character tiny in For Honor for April Fools’ day, and they have yet to reembiggen. They still whack at each other with normal-sized weapons though, making things very anime. Me and Reddit have been having fun.

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I’ve not kept up with the plot of For Honor, a game where buff lads and lasses chop each other’s limbs off with elaborate pointy sticks. But as Ubisoft’s brawny fighter enters its fourth year, they’re putting down the swords – if only for a little while. While Year 4 might be the “Year of Reckoning”, Season 1 is entitled “Hope”, and sees all three factions holding nervous truce. Oh, they’ll get to decapitating soon enough, but for now, there’s a platter of shiny gear to be earned, through a new battle pass arriving next week.

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Hey you, I heard your breath smells like a fart. What are you gonna do about it? Fight me!? Excellent. I was hoping you d say that, because I ve put together a list of the 10 best fighting games on PC, and it would be fantastic if you came and had a look, gave your thoughts, and maybe elbowed me in the teeth while you re at it. Finally, a decent reader willing to dropkick me. Matchmaking is hard.

All right, let s take this outside, where the top 10 fighting games are waiting. How exciting.

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When For Honor first pummelled its way onto the parapets of PC gaming, it was frustrating. The blow-by-blow of this ahistorical brawler presented a tough fighting game with all sorts of dastardly antics thrown in. Ledges, spikes, traps, ladders. But the gamey infrastructure around it was a disaster. Disconnections, lag, crappy matchmaking, and that all-too-common stinginess when it came to post-match rewards. A rusty pair of shin guards? Gee, thanks.

Today, it’s better. The stinginess never really went away, but most of the other problems have. Leaving a solid fighting game about booting people off high walls.

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Google held another one of their Stadia Connect conferences today, and this one was meant to be all about what games you’ll be playing in the “scary” cloud come November. Sure enough, there were new Stadia games aplenty announced this evening, with the biggest addition being Cyberpunk 2077.

To help keep track of them all, here’s a list of every Google Stadia game confirmed so far, as well as which games are coming at launch, which ones will be arriving a little bit later, and which games you’ll only be able to play by subscribing to one of the special Stadia publisher subscriptions.

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Firstly, it s free on the Epic Store right now, and free is good. Secondly, For Honor is an axe-swinging good time for all involved, even those plummeting to their death from a comically high castle wall. It is zero pennies from today until next Friday, August 9. However, you re only getting the base edition, so no Shaolin monks or creepy mystics for you, at least not at the start. Those are the unlockable characters. But if you scab together enough steel, the in-game currency, you can eventually muck about with those brawlers. Whether or not you get that far, you should give this brutish slice em up a go. Mordhau has all the swordists in a loved-up tizzy at the minute, but I reckon For Honor is better. Let me break down why.

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It’s been just over a week since Google announced their big launch line-up of Stadia games, but with E3 2019 now drawing to a close that list has now become ever so slightly longer, with new tiles such as Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs Legion, Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers and more joining the ranks. To help keep track of them all, here’s a list of every Google Stadia game confirmed so far, as well as which games are coming at launch, which ones will be arriving a little bit later, and which games you’ll only be able to play by subscribing to one of the special Stadia publisher subscriptions.

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They just keep coming don’t they? A lot of games were announced at E3 2019, things that we didn’t know about, as well as stuff that’s previously announced, or expansions to already released games. Now, to the casual outsider, what we’re doing might seem absolutely nuts, but we thought we’d put together an alphabetical list of all the PC games that have been confirmed to appear at this year’s E3 show. With well over a hundred of them now in the books, the next year or so looks packed.

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