Ahead of Final Fantasy 14’s next massive expansion, Dawntrail, arriving this summer, Square Enix recently put out a graphical benchmarking tool. Dawntrail’s benchmark is especially noteworthy as it’s the first time we’ve really been able to put the MMO’s much-anticipated graphical update arriving with 7.0 into practice and see what sort of demands it might make on our hardware by overhauling the 10-year-old game’s visuals.

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Eiyuden Chronicles, the RPG series that’s effectively a sequel-slash-spiritual successor to nineties and early noughties JRPG classic Suikoden, will continue with a sequel despite the death of its creator earlier this year.

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In the most unsurprising news you might read today: Amazon are going to make a second season to their very popular Fallout TV show. That means one more season until we get Liam Neeson, right?

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It seems that Prison Architect 2 is going method in its approach to launching the 3D sequel to the jailhouse management game, as - like its inmates - it just can’t seem to secure a solid release. Originally due to arrive in March, before being pushed into May, developers Double Eleven have now shunted it all the way back to September.

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Lured like an unsatisfied sailor by the siren song of alleged performance woes, I’ve been giving No Rest for the Wicked a cursory benchmarkin’, and yes! The isometric ARPG does> suffer from all the early access wonkiness you’ve likely heard about already today.

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When I tick the box telling your unwanted launcher to remember my password, make it remember my chuffing password.

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It's been a while since I snuck my diary into a column, huh?

Long-term readers might have discerned that I haven't been well for a very long time. I have various ailments, of which we all suffer, and it turns out that a mere five years of clinging on by your fingernails sometimes leads to some actual treatment for... all of them. Wild.

So while there've been a lot of interesting looking games in the shortlist lately, these last few weeks have been entirely too interesting> for me personally. Piecing It Together is nothing more or less than 3D jigsaw puzzles. I've never even liked jigsaws, but it turns out that was exactly the kind of game I needed.

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What I like about browser games is that clicking on a word in this mundane piece of software could take you anywhere, to anything. For example, if you click on this link to the domain corru.observer, you'll find yourself in a dark room before a strange glowing device. Apparently it's your job to do... something with it? So begins one of the most surprising and delightful games I've played all year, a sprawling, shape-shifting sci-fi story which is still unfolding through updates. I didn't even know all this was possible with HTML and CSS.

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Capcom are working on another Dragon's Dogma 2 patch, and this one takes as its target the dreaded dragonsplague, which causes the game's AI-controlled pawns to go nuts and murder everybody, including story-critical NPCs, if you allow it to go untreated for long enough. It'll reduce the infection frequency of dragonsplague, which is spread when pawns mingle with other pawns online, and make the symptoms more obvious. Pawns already get glowing eyes when they're dragonsplagued - I guess they'll be all the glowier in future.

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While trying to keep vaguely up on both games discourse and terminology over long periods of time, I frequently find myself noticing terms enter common usage, get used a bunch, then fall out of favour again. I think this is partly because games discourse is cyclical, and partly because writing and talking about the same things a lot means that when a neater phrase for something complicated pops up, it gets assimilated quickly. Mostly, though, I think it’s because of my brain doing the thing where, say, you notice a yellow car on a walk and then see dozens of them. I was going to write a car make there but I don’t know any. Uh, (looks at monitor), Asus? Do Asus do cars? The 1994 Asus Gremlin. What a ride!

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