It’s been a long wait for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – four years since The Witcher 2 came out, and two since 3 was announced – but CD Projekt’s open-world monster-slaying RPG is finally, finally here. It unlocked in the wee small hours in the morning and I would very much like to be playing it right now rather than telling you that it’s out. What a noble, considerate, and responsible soul I am.

Our review is still in the works, as review code came late. But look, you and me, let’s watch the launch trailer and pretend we’re playing through what we see, and pretend we’re not at all resentful of the people who’ve already played a chunk already.

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Each week Marsh Davies plays unfinished and broken games on Early Access and usually tries to come up with an introductory sentence which says exactly this while using imagery appropriate to the idiom of the given week s game. But the idiom of this week s game is being an unfinished and broken game! So, job done. It s The Magic Circle [Steam page], a game set within a game, in which the player edits the properties of the world around him while exploring the strata of the game s many abandoned developmental stages, unravelling the story of its creators in the process.>

I have tamed Jim Rossignol s bumhole. I ve also made Jim Rossignol s bumhole fireproof, which is just as well, since Jim Rossignol s bumhole spews gouts of flame when angered. Jim Rossignol s bumhole has a lightning rod jammed in it, too, which deactivates forcefields. With my latest effort, Jim Rossignol s bumhole has sprouted a little propeller, allowing Jim Rossignol s bumhole to fly about. John Walker s angry red Weeto has many of the same properties, and it should surprise no one that Alec Meer s huge husky third leg is shaped like a ginormous mushroom.

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Curious about what the CGI orcs – and the legendary Orgrim Doomhammer in particular – will look like in the upcoming Warcraft movie? As you may have guessed, he ll look a lot like the picture above, as Wired revealed. Like a big, muscular orc. But with a sparkle in his eyes that says there s a sweet, sensitive side hidden in there somewhere.

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I fought all the way to my enemy’s doorstep, but now here I am, ten minutes later, back where I started and with an insurmountable force at my door. I started playing Highlands [official site] because of the hand-drawn artwork, but its turn-based tactics are harder than they first appear.

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The problem with Nobunaga s Ambition is that the title is a constant reminder of the fantastic Onimusha series, which Capcom has long since abandoned. So while my heart is heavy once again, in mourning of a once great franchise, I m also pleased to see that Koei Tecmo has announced that it will be sending Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere of Influence [official site] to the western world this September 4th. Good news for turn-based grand strategy fans!

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This is why you don’t schedule meetings for 5pm on a Friday. I can just picture the team at Nvidia sitting there, itching to get home. Last item on the agenda. What can we name the new GameWorks hair effects? A pregnant pause and some furtive looks towards the door. Someone at the back eventually pipes up. “…HairWorks?” A growing murmur of approval and some scooting of chairs later, here we are: with a trailer showing off a bunch of cool physics effects in The Witcher 3 [official site] (including, yep, HairWorks) exclusive to those of you with Nvidia cards. Looks like AMD fans are stuck with less luscious locks than their Geforce friends.

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Heroism is at the core of most fantasy stories, but there’s a difference between being a hero and simply a weapon to be pointed at the world’s biggest threat. When heroes happily loot peasants’ houses and murder their way through problems, do they really deserve their title?

If there’s any developer duo that should know a thing about heroes, it’s Lori and Corey Cole, creators of one of my favourite adventure series of all time – Quest for Glory. (The fourth especially is high on my list of best adventures ever, not least for its villain). In addition to those, they ran a dedicated School for Heroes for a while, and are currently working on the spiritual successor to the original games, Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption – currently in a second Kickstarter after the scope moved from a relatively simple Roguelike on a basic engine into a full-on new adventure. I spoke to them about the complex characters in their games, offering real heroism, and returning to crowdfunding.

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Long Live the Queen had players fend off armies and sea monsters, but all those pale in comparison to the viciousness of a private girls’ school. That’s the setting for the latest from LLtQ developers Hanako Games, Black Closet [official site], which came out on Sunday.

Black Closet’s about mystery, scandal, secret societies, crime, and romance afoot at the illustrious St. Claudine’s. As Student Council President, you must keep things in check and save the school’s reputation by investigating procedurally-generated intrigue, and hey, living a life of your own too. It has a demo, so you can see for yourself.

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Bethesda has just sent us a link to a video showing literally two seconds of footage from the forthcoming DOOM, in which nothing happens. Two seconds. That’s not an exaggeration. So confident are Bethesda in the frothing excitement for a fifth instalment in the series that they’re putting this out as an “E3 teaser”, with the expectation that we’ll all dance for them. We’d suggest this confidence is somewhat misplaced, and so below you’ll find some videos for some trailers for other cool stuff instead.

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Spare a thought for the person responsible for turning game features into Marketing Points . One of the things Batman: Arkham Knight [official site] brings to the series, along with loads of Batguns, is sections where Nightwing, Catwoman, and others join the fray as AI partners you can switch between.

So here, look, it’s a new video showing off the feature that surely dozens of hours of meetings and agonising and focus testing named Dual Play Combat.

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