Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.>

When people ask me about the first game I ever played, I tell them it was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. That’s not accurate, but it was the first one I played that made me realise the unique power games had to transport me to other worlds, and into the shoes of another person. (more…)

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), the North American industry body which assigns games age ratings, will expand its labelling on physical boxed games to include warnings of “In-Game Purchases”. This will cover everything that can be bought digitally for real money, from season passes and skins to microtransaction currencies and random loot boxes. They’re only a decade late to noticing all this, then.

Some industry commentators are disappointed that the ESRB don’t take a tougher stance against loot boxes, specifically pointing them out, but it’s no surprise. The ESRB exist to protect big publishers, and recently responded to a US senator’s concerns about loot boxes by calling them “a fun way to acquire virtual items.” (more…)

H1Z1 has rolled out a major new update today, officially bringing the survive-y Battle Royale out of early access. Along with it, developers Daybreak have added a surprising new variant playmode, called Auto Royale. Auto Royale is a blend of regular Battle Royale systems and perennial PlayStation favorite Twisted Metal. (more…)

This is perhaps a slightly perverse offer, seeing as so many folks who have been jonesing for Into The Breach have the jitters and the sweats specifically because it’s the follow-up to the revered FTL.

However, if you’ve managed to come to this backwards, i.e. got all hot’n’bothered about Into The Breach’s ultra-deft, ultra-lean apocalyptic turn-based strategy without ever having played its brutal star-trekking predecessor FTL, good news! If you buy Into The Breach via Humble or GOG (and the former delivers you a Steam key, FYI), you’ll get a free copy of FTL.

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It’s not just me, right? A brawler (also known a beat-em-up) is a game in the vein of Final Fight or Streets Of Rage, no? A duo or trio of co-op heroes against waves of expendable mooks? Well, the Humble Brawler Bundle doesn’t contain any of those.

What it does contain is a great selection of fighting games to start off the collection of someone looking to get into the genre, mostly focused around the back-catalogue of Arc System Works, who recently shook up the scene with Dragon Ball FighterZ.

It also contains a lot of Anime, with a capital A. You have been warned.

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Some studios are content to take their time, and refine their craft to a perfect, incisive edge. Inkle, previously of the excellent 80 Days have been working away at Heaven’s Vault for almost a full year since RPS’s Adam Smith took a peek at it last GDC and fell madly in love with its quiet, thoughtful, nature.

While Inkle aren’t quite ready to pin down any of the gritty details like a release date or system specs, they are ready to show the world a little bit of the game in motion. Take a moment to ponder its nature, before rushing off to the next game.

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Guild Wars 2 fans, it’s time to mark up your calendar again. As has become the standard format for the successful MMORPG, a second episode of Living World content – this one titled A Bug In The System – is on its way, bringing new sights to see, new monsters to bop and new loot to hoard.

It’s been three months since the release of Daybreak, the first episodic update bridging Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire expansion to whatever new release awaits next, and while we’re still a bit short on hard details (other than the launch date, March 6th), from the looks at the trailer within they’re doing something a little different this time.

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Premature Evaluation is the weekly column in which we explore the wilds of early access. This week, Fraser s hawking his wares to the ravenous consumers of Rise of Industry, a tycoon game about growing berries and other less important things.>

You ve got to give the people what they want. Booze, sex, tasty little berries harvested from a local plantation and driven straight to the farmers market – these people have needs, and for the last week I ve been spending my evenings with Rise of Industry trying to fulfill them. Well, the need for berries anyway. People go nuts for them – but they don t care for nuts – and I am the Berry King.

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Hello. Today, I will return to the public biffing of Street Fighter after a long absence, with a single rule: I can only play as Blanka.

To explain: I haven t played a game in this series since Street Fighter II, in which this Brazilian bootleg Hulk was a classic character. But he was only added to Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition last week, where he is described by the game s roster as unemployed . Join me in pretending that the release of this wildman is the reason I have decided to fight online in SFV, and not because I thought of the headline Blanka Slate first and then had to come up with a whole feature to justify using it.

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It’s been yonks since Rab Florence shared his thoughts on the original board game version of The Horus Heresy: Betrayal At Calth, although judging by his enthusiastic after-action report it can be a quite thrilling experience. As Games Workshop is wont to do these days, they’ve licensed out the rights to the PC adaptation to a lesser-known studio. Enter small VR outfit Steel Wool Studios.

Rather than attempt to replicate the tabletop experience directly, Betrayal At Calth hopes to make the experience a little more memorable by putting the player’s viewpoint on the ground with the troops in traditional FPS format, or in VR, if the tech-priests have blessed you with vision beyond the Ocular Rift, and the silly future-goggles to go with it.

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