It's time to stop making excuses for myself - I care a lot about the rules of narrative, right until I obviously don't. Otherwise there's no way to explain my fascination with World's End Club and the many convenient excuses it makes for itself. While this is the first Too Kyo game both Zero Escape director Kotaro Uchikoshi and Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka have worked on together, Uchikoshi designed the scenario, and the story at least seems to bear his handwriting. World's End Club is reminiscent of Uchokoshi's approach to storytelling - he famously admitted to wanting to tell a story people remember, whether it's good or not.

Meet The Go-Getters Club, a grade school class of 11 children who are on their way to Kamakura near Tokyo for a school trip when a meteor strikes nearby. When they come to, the children leave pods (!) and find themselves in a theme park (!!!) underwater (!!!!) where a flying mascot called Pielope tells them they have to play a death game to make it out alive.

It's an important spoiler of sorts to note that the death game, once the driving force in the game's marketing, comprises the first half hour of nearly 20, so if you go in expecting another Danganronpa, this is a likely deliberate misdirect. Instead, upon their successful escape everyone wakes up in Kagoshima, on the other end of Japan has to discover that everything seems suspiciously quiet and unkempt, and that monsters are roaming the land. Unwilling to admit that this means what it usually means in videogames, the Go-Getters Club decides to walk across the country back home to Tokyo. When a game starts with grade schoolers facing off against each other in a battle royale, you can guess the rest isn't going to be a nice hike through the Japanese countryside, either. Ghosts, killer robots, aliens and cultists are just some of what you can expect in World's End Club, as the Go-Getters Club slowly uncovers what exactly took place during their absence.

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Genshin Impact's next sunshine-packed update, 1.6, will drop on 9th June.

Entitled Midsummer Island Adventure, this latest patch will include premium summer-themed alternate outfits for Jean and Barbara - the latter of which can also be obtained through in-game activities - as well as a number of new events and mini-games.

Take a peek for yourself in the trailer below:

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Exactly five years ago, Digital Foundry Retro was born! At the time, it was an experiment more than anything else, focusing on just one version of id software's Quake - the astonishing Sega Saturn version, built from scratch by Lobotomy Software. It was the port that John Carmack reckoned couldn't exist, but somehow a talented team found a way. A half-decade on from the release of that video, DF Retro returns to Quake, this time covering it in its entirety: the game, the technology, the ports and the legacy.

Quake itself began as nothing more than a mention in some text blurb in Commander Keen, but even then, there were hints of a game that exceeded the technological limits of the hardware of the time. Building on the mega success of Doom, the first time gamers got to experience Quake was in the release of QTest in early 1996 - a Deathmatch test with three supplied maps. What was obvious was how demanding the game was. Id Software debuted with a software renderer that tapped into the strengths of Intel Pentium processors, running like a slideshow on older 486s and non-Intel processors.

The shareware episode launched in June 1996, with the full game arriving a month later. With its dimly lit corridors, abstract geometry and industrial soundscape, Quake certainly delivered something special. It was a deeply atmospheric, fast paced action game. Quake features vast, complex levels showcasing 3D graphics unlike anything the market had seen before. It builds on the artistic influences which served as a foundation in Doom while introducing dark industrial and Lovecraftian themes. It's chaotic but it works. The technology was phenomenal, but gameplay is king. In the years that followed, games would attempt to push interactive narratives and expand design possibilities but few remain as engaging as Quake.

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The COVID-19 relief Humble Bundle has raised $1,170,824 (£825,000).

Humble launched the Heal COVID-19 Bundle a couple of weeks back to support a number of charities aiding the hardest-hit countries such as Brazil and India, as well as the global medical effort to save lives. It's gone on to sell 54,374 bundles and raise aid for the humanitarian efforts of Direct Relief, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), International Medical Corps, and GiveIndia.

"Direct Relief is tremendously grateful to Humble Bundle and its community of passionate and generous people," Direct Relief said in a statement on the official website (thanks, The Gamer). "Their collective efforts will translate to critically-needed medicines, supplies, and other resources to the hardest-hit communities in India and Brazil as they continue to battle rising cases of COVID-19.

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A cancelled Fallout 2 sequel by Black Isle studios is now available to play in Fallout New Vegas courtesy of a new PC mod.

The game - which at the time had been codenamed Van Buren - takes place in 2253 and had been set in the great Midwest Commonwealth over four states. Sadly, it was cancelled in 2003, and while New Vegas inherited some aspects from the game, the Revelation Blue mod doesn't "treat [Fallout: New Vegas] as cannon [sic] in any way".

"The project's goal is to remake Van Buren for Fallout New Vegas," explains the mod creator (thanks, PC Gamer).

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The developer behind Biomutant has said an upcoming update will make significant improvements to the game.

Experiment 101 said this update, which it hopes to release soon, will include bug fixes and "changes based on community feedback".

What changes, exactly? Experiment 101 didn't go into great detail, but namechecked many of Biomutant's systems:

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Scavengers will today test up to 5000 players in a shared environment.

The recently-released sci-fi survival battle royale hybrid has an experimental sandbox testing platform built into the game called ScavLab, and it's in this that the test will take place tonight, from 7pm UK time.

This first public ScavLab event will allow thousands of players to gather together in a single, shared in-game communal hub. Developer Midwinter plans competitive sports mini-games, large-scale combat, as well as a live, digital AMA with CEO and co-founder Josh Holmes.

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Benoît Sokal, creator of the Syberia series, has died aged 66.

French video game company Microids said in a blog post that Sokal passed away on 28th May after battling a long-term illness.

Belgian comic book artist Sokal is perhaps best known in the world of video games for creating the Syberia adventure games. But his first game for Microids was 1999 adventure Amerzone, which was based on Sokal's popular 1986 Inspector Canardo comic strip L'Amerzone .

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Creative Assembly is facing a vociferous backlash over its decision to end support for Total War: Three Kingdoms.

This week the British developer announced it had wrapped up work on Total War: Three Kingdoms with the 1.7.1 patch. No more DLC or patches will be released for the game, which broke series records upon launch in May 2019.

Total War: Three Kingdoms saw seven DLC releases over the course of two years, but many fans feel Creative Assembly quit the game too early - and before the release of a promised expansion that would build out the north of the map.

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Grounded will get "larger and slightly less frequent" updates from now on, developer Obsidian has said.

After a period of radio silence, the developer issued an update on its survival game, which launched in early access form in July last year.

"We are approaching the one-year mark from the game preview / early access launch and we still have so much that we want to do for the game," Obsidian said.

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