Over the festive break we'll be running through our top 20 picks of the year's best games, leading up to the reveal of Eurogamer's game of the year on New Year's Eve. You can find all the pieces published to date here - and thanks for joining us throughout the year!

What the Golf? (yes, there is a question mark in the title and I'm going to stick with it, sorry) is a simple game about nothing, and that is more than enough. It is, I think, the game that captures the big bang arrival of Apple Arcade better than any other. That moment was an explosion of creativity, a sudden, off-guard and off-beat arrival of fun. It was the best thing to happen to video games in the last year, I think, and at the core of it all was this silly, simple, endlessly enjoyable game about pinging things around for a laugh.

In What the Golf? you are a golf ball plonking around some zany science lab of an overworld, unlocking a path by completing the odd little golf courses that are really science experiments, or something, and occasionally getting told off by a big computer. Honestly it really doesn't matter. The brilliance is the simplicity of its fun and the basic, fundamental pleasure of playing it.

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Over the festive break we'll be running through our top 20 picks of the year's best games, leading up to the reveal of Eurogamer's game of the year on New Year's Eve. You can find all the pieces published to date here - and thanks for joining us throughout the year!

In a strange turn of events, if it hadn't been for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, I probably would have missed Sekiro. Unsatisfied by the former's meandering levels, several of my friends pointed me towards Sekiro, but it was a game I'd been reluctant to try - having watched our own Chris Tapsell crumble into dust as he wrote guides for it.

I'm so glad I listened. Sekiro's world is compact, but crafted with minute attention to detail. Enemy placement is deliberate and calculated - asking players to plan their approaches using stealth and surgical combat to thin out a crowd. In the space of one encounter you'll need to prioritise an enemy with a gong, learn lines of sight to avoid being spotted committing said murder, or just bypass it all completely by discovering a tucked-away shortcut in the winding landscapes.

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Over the festive break we'll be running through our top 20 picks of the year's best games, leading up to the reveal of Eurogamer's game of the year on New Year's Eve. You can find all the pieces published to date here - and thanks for joining us throughout the year!

Mortal Kombat 11 got under my skin. In the case of D'Vorah's grotesque insect fatality, literally.

NetherRealm's fighting games have always felt janky to me, so much so that I'd never put serious time into learning how they play in the same way I had done with Capcom's ultra fluid Street Fighter. But Mortal Kombat 11 turned a corner for me. I found myself in the lab, fussing over frame data and practising set-ups like a giddy teenager with too much free time.

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Over the festive break we'll be running through our top 20 picks of the year's best games, leading up to the reveal of Eurogamer's game of the year on New Year's Eve. You can find all the pieces published to date here - and thanks for joining us throughout the year!

What I think is most impressive about TeamFight Tactics - and to an extent the burgeoning auto chess genre as a whole - is how it somehow prevents RNG from ruining the party.

Each game of TFT starts with a carousel made up of random two cost champions each equipped with a random item. After the countdown, you must rush to touch the champion you want to start the game with, hoping you get there first. Everything about this first step is random, and it sets the tone.

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Over the festive break we'll be running through our top 20 picks of the year's best games, leading up to the reveal of Eurogamer's game of the year on New Year's Eve. You can find all the pieces published to date here - and thanks for joining us throughout the year!

Following up on a hunch is the most satisfying thing, isn't it? Someone asks for something in a game, and chances are you won't have it. Often, what they want is a complete mystery. You continue playing and almost forget about it. And then! It falls into your lap, almost by accident. Even if you don't remember where exactly it's supposed to go, or what it's for, you probably have a feeling in your gut, enough to drop everything and see if the pieces fit. And when they do, that feeling of getting it right is like nothing else.

Adventure and exploration games do this best, and whereas most have these moments humming along in the background - the trading sequence quest in one of the year's best remakes, Zelda: Link's Awakening, is a brilliant example - A Short Hike is all about these mini revelations.

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A time of good will, of being kind to people, of the giving of presents and the receiving of criticisms from family members that stab you like tiny daggers in your heart even though 'they're just joking.'

If you're still one of those folks who doesn't 'do their own Christmas' just yet, a sense of dread I'm sure is bubbling up inside as you contemplate going back to your family home to spend some very intensive days with people you don't see all that often. In a situation that seems a bit like being trapped in a nuclear bunker (no natural light, lots of sitting around doing not much, being annoyed at small children being too loud and arguments over food 'rationing.')

At the Hardy home we always argued over two things at Xmas.

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A new update has just gone live on Star Citizen.

Dubbed "a transformative patch" by the developers, "Alpha 3.8 - New Frontiers" includes "some major new technology to the Star Citizen Universe", including new planetary and tools improvements, planetary weather effects, and server-side object container streaming (SOCS), which is a fancy way of saying the server will use less power. Here's the science bit:

"SOCS will not only improve performance on the server by dynamically loading only what the server needs at that given moment, but more importantly, will enable the game to contain and present exponentially more content to players as it is only updating what it needs to, bringing the dream of a living, breathing universe teeming with experiences one step closer to reality," the press release states.

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A Call of Duty: Modern Warfare player has used a spectator glitch to explore the game's battle royale map.

Redditor KingBeezoR used the glitch, which is triggered within a private game with free spectating and the spawn camera enabled, to free roam high above the recently-added Vacant map.

Vacant is a fan-favourite map that first appeared in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. What's interesting about the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare version of Vacant is it's set within the Massive Ground War map, Port of Verdansk - and it's this feature that means you can use it to explore the upcoming - but so far unannounced - battle royale map.

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Saint-14's ship is in the Tower hangar, and outside stands the legendary Titan himself, fresh from your time-bending rescue.

Saint-14 has some quests for you to complete before he offers some bounties. His plan is to build a beacon that will help guide Guardians and Lightless alike to the Last City, and of course he needs your help.

But perhaps the best thing about his arrival in the Tower is his idle dialogue (just stand next to him and he'll start chatting). If you're wearing his iconic helmet, for example, he'll comment on it and suggest you team up to confuse Zavala. And then there's this gem: "You must be gentle. Bird is not like gun. Do not squeeze." Redditor Honestly_Just_Vibin has compiled a list of Saint-14's dialogue. There's a lot to like here.

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CD Projekt and The Witcher author and creator Andrzej Sapkowski have inked a new rights deal for the fantasy franchise.

On the day of the release of The Witcher on Netflix, The Witcher video game developer CD Projekt announced the agreement, which grants it new rights and "confirms" the company's title to The Witcher IP as it relates to video games, graphic novels, board games and merchandise.

Here's the blurb:

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