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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Developer Volition has pledged to fix the notoriously broken PC version of Saints Row 2 over a decade after its original release, having found the game's long thought lost source code.

Speaking during a special announcement livestream (which also marked Saints Row 2's 11th birthday in the US), Volition's general manager Mike Kulas explained that the studio, when faced with having to create three versions of the game for its original 2008 release, opted to outsource the PC port. And as both Volition, and countless users on the game's Steam page will attest, the results were less than stellar.

For a long time, the only way to enjoy Saints Row 2 on PC in anything like a satisfactory manner has been to rely on community created mods. Volition's Mike Watson, himself a modder and now senior community manager at the company, has lead the charge to improve the game internally for years, but plans were scuppered when the studio was unable to find the original PC source code. Now however, after much searching, that code has been found.

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Everything is currently free on the Epic Games Store! But wait; before you go indiscriminately loading up your shopping cart (haha, just kidding), I should probably clarify: Everything the game is currently free on the Epic Store, as is Metro 2033 Redux. So if you're in the mood to expand that already insurmountable backlog still further, you know where to go.

Everything, if it passed you by previously, is the acclaimed second game from David OReilly, the Irish artist and filmmaker responsible for strange, serene desktop experience Mountain (and, I just learned two minutes ago, the Adventure Time episode A Glitch is a Glitch).

It's a somewhat unclassifiable experience, in which players are able to catalogue the universe - a goal achieved simply by inhabiting objects within Everything's procedurally generated world. And it's here that Everything gets its name, with players able to take on the form of a dazzling array of items, from caterpillars and rocks to French horns and fax machines, moving all the way down to an atom and all the way out to entire galaxies.

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There are two different ways to look at the Switch port of Saints Row: The Third'. From a glass half full perspective, what you're getting an exceptionally close conversion of the PS3 original, closer still if you play in handheld mode. But viewed in a glass half empty way, all of the failings of the last-gen console versions remain in full effect on this new release: let's make no bones about it, performance is poor and the controls have severe input lag issues.

Let's focus initially on the positives. Playing Saints Row: The Third in Switch's handheld mode is definitely the best way to experience the game. It renders at a full 720p - making it a pin-sharp native experience on Switch's six-inch screen, while performance seems to be more consistent than the docked mode. As usual, the smaller screen does a good job of hiding some of the cut-backs and compromises and to all intents and purposes, it is indeed the PS3 version in the palm of your hand. And to be clear, this game has always been hilarious fun - and this was the main reason why we were so looking forward to the Switch port, and most likely why we've had so many requests to look at it.

Much of the charm wears off when playing docked, as despite migrating Saints Row: The Third to full 1080p resolution, it feels like a step too far for the Switch's mobile hardware. Blown up on a big living room display, the extra resolution is welcome, but just about any major use of alpha transparency effects clearly reveals ugly sawtooth edges - a sign of lower resolution buffers in play. These were already cut back on the last-gen consoles versions, but the compromise is even more pronounced on Switch with even lower resolution artefacts. There's also an impact to performance: the frame-rate lows feel worse than they do in handheld mode - making the experience feel even more uneven.

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The mid-nineties was an era when PC gaming began in earnest, kick-started by the mighty Doom's release in 1993. First-person shooters burgeoned as a result, and their combination with the real-time strategy genre conspired to make the humble home personal computer a powerful commercial gaming platform. And when it came to RTSs, the one name on most people's lips was Command & Conquer. Except for those in the know. They namechecked Cavedog's futuristic adventure, Total Annihilation as a far superior game thanks to its huge battles, terrain-based tactics and imaginative units.

I interviewed its designer and coder, Chris Taylor, a few years ago to discuss this trailblazing game; now we're chatting again, only this time to celebrate Total Annihilation's spiritual follow-up, Supreme Commander, released just over ten years ago.

"I'd been thinking about another RTS since leaving Cavedog and starting Gas Powered Games," he begins, "but it wasn't until I was completely wrapped on Dungeon Siege that I began to really think deeply about what would become Supreme Commander." Gas Powered had enjoyed reasonable success with the technically-ambitious Dungeon Siege games, and these to a certain extent influenced Taylor's next project - but more on that shortly.

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Old Diablo-alike Titan Quest is getting a console re-release on PS4, Xbox One and Switch! This was a game first released in 2006.

The PS4 and Xbox One versions of Titan Quest will arrive on 20th March 2018, priced at a budget 27/€30/$30, with the Switch version to follow "when it is done".

Included will be the full Titan Quest game plus Immortal Throne expansion, but not the game's new Ragnarok expansion, released last month. There will be online co-op for up to six people, and "remastered graphics" to bring the game up to date.

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I loved Titan Quest, that old Diablo clone by Iron Lore and THQ, but it's all wrinkly now and Diablo 3 and Path of Exile rule the roost (and don't forget Torchlight 2!). No one cares about Titan Quest - or do they?

11 years later, Titan Quest has a second expansion, and by a miraculous coincidence it happens to have the same name as the new Thor movie - Ragnarok -
and be based around Norse Mythology!

Implausible as a new expansion a decade after the last one sounds, the game's new owner THQ Nordic - a rebranded Nordic Games - has been building up to it since acquiring the rights in 2013, with last year's Titan Quest Anniversary remaster only the start.

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