I truly hope the sun has got his hat on this weekend as I'm cycling out to family in the countryside and I'd rather not arrive soaked through by rain. Granted, I will be arriving soaked through with sweat, but I am happy with this outcome. For reasons I can't quite fathom, self-wetted clothes are bearable, weather-wetted clothes are intolerable.

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When bosses have assessed my work over the years it's usually taken the form of nervously watching their cursor bounce around a Google Doc. They would delete overwrought lines here, add detail to unclear statements there, and sometimes strike our intros that weren't getting to the point – thank goodness I learned my lesson there. It's a nerve-wracking and humbling experience (especially when you've managed to misspell 'RTS').

Naturally, every job has its own assessments, but the level designers working on Age of Empires at Ensemble Studios faced a novel one: studio head Tony Goodman's lunch break.

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Creative Assembly's Total War games offer up a wide spread of factions, from rampaging Gauls to furtive and disgusting Wood Elves, but they're all a little beholden to the ancient game of rock-paper-scissors: spears beat cavalry, cavalry beat swords, swords beat spears.

I think Creative Assembly generally do an impressive job of softening that triangular countering logic by means of terrain considerations, flanking, morale and other supporting mechanics. Cavalry won't necessarily beat swords if the cavalry are all tuckered out and spooked. And then you have wildcards, like heroes and war machines, who can mess with the logic more dramatically: Rock paper Mortis Engine! Still, I can't deny that I often feel drained on firing up a DLC-fresh Total War army and realising that, yep, I'm roshamboing again.

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It's been a while since Ubisoft and Netflix announced they were doing an Assassin's Creed TV show. The good news is that filming's now kicked off on it, with Ubisoft taking the opportunity to confirm that Ancient Rome's the setting for this stabby story.

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Last week, the folks behind PEGI (Pan European Game Information) - the age rating system used for games in Europe outside of Germany - announced plans to update their age rating criteria with four new categories. Games which feature the likes of loot boxes, NFTs, or daily quests designed to push players into coming back because otherwise they'll miss out will automatically be given higher ratings. The ratings board's US equvivalent, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board), have now revealed that they won't be following suit at least for now, because they're concerned parents could end up scratching their heads.

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