It does seem that Bandai-Namco are committed to bringing just about everything they publish to our once anime-deprived platform. The popular Little Witch Academia series (basically Harry Potter, but aimed more at girls, and on Netflix) is soon to receive its first game adaptation – a seeming inevitability, although I doubt I could have predicted its genre.

Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time looks to blend lightweight school-life RPG mechanics with a side-scrolling brawler combat engine in the vein of Dragon’s Crown, albeit with a heavier focus on ranged attacks, and it’s due to hit PC this May.

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My own jury’s still out on whether Rare’s newly-released online pirate sim Sea of Thieves deserves to sink or swim, primarily because, during work hours, I either have to play with black-hearted randoms or solo. A little later in the week I’ll be able to tell you all about how it shakes out with a full crew of trusted mateys, but for now I can tackle the question of exactly where on the sane>insane axis playing it solo lands.

The answer: pretty darned insane. It’s frequently a horrendous> experience – but at the same time, that is both entirely appropriate and oddly satisfying.

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If you were to look at Warframe now, it’s hard to even imagine that Digital Extremes’ free-to-play mega-hit ever had humbler origins. Even harder to believe that its very existence was a desperate last-ditch plan to keep the lights on at a struggling studio that had been turned away by every major publisher.

In the latest in their oft-excellent series of candid interview-heavy documentaries, YouTube outfit NoClip went and pinned down the core staff behind Warframe’s success, and have managed to extract an hour of surprisingly candid history from them, equally educational and emotionally resonant. Worth a watch.

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The Asus ROG Strix Fusion 500 is probably the first headset I’ve used in quite some time where I haven’t had to automatically put the headband on the tightest possible setting. This surprised me, considering the enormous size of its ear cups, but the tight, rigid design of its headband meant there was no way I was getting this thing over my head without loosening it first. Finally, a USB headset for people with smaller noggins than I.

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World of Tanks launched in Russia in 2010, then in Europe and the US the next year. It s been around the block, pitting war machines and players against each other in war-torn cities and pastoral paradises, but today it s only just hit version 1.0. Eight years after launch. For a long-running, living game like World of Tanks, that 1.0 label doesn t mean what it normally does.

It means a new game, says development director Milos Jerabek. But if it is a new game, it s one with old guts.

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The latest from little indie outfit Rekim and to be published by anarchic cartoon channel-turned-games-publisher Adult Swim, Pool Panic is a game about living a life in the day of a jittering, gurning, animated cue-ball. Your mission: Explore a world of mystery, adventure and holes in the ground that you need to knock your fellow spherical kin into. Within, an announcement trailer that really wants to make sure you remember the title.

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If you’ve already ordered in a hog to roast in celebration of A Total War Saga: Thrones Of Britannia‘s launch, you might want to get your meat man on the blower. Developers Creative Assembly today announced that they will not launch the historical strategy game on April 19th, as had been the plan, as they want more time to polish it up. Thrones Of Britannia is now slated to launch on May 3rd, which isn’t much later really. But a fortnight is long enough that you probably wouldn’t want a hog in the shed the whole time. Give the butcher a bell. (more…)

The second episode of the fab sneak-o-murder sandbox Hitman is free right now, yours for keepsies if you grab it by April 3rd. This is Ian Hitman’s holiday to the sunny Italian seaside town of Sapienza, a colourful maze leading down to beautiful white sands. If you’ve tried earlier free bits of Hitman but weren’t sure about it, do give this a go as Sapienza is so much of an improvement over them. (more…)

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.>

No? You should. It’s one of my fondest gaming memories. (more…)

I do enjoy Ark: Survival Evolved‘s process of turning real-world historical(ish) creatures into video game monsters. The abilities of its reinterpreted dinosaurs and critters seem to stem from one question: what would they do in a cartoon? This logic is delightfully evident as developers Studio Wildcard continue to overhaul older beasties with updated art and abilities, turning crocodiles into stepping stones, making a honking dino into an ambulant alarm system, and of course having raptors pounce to pin prey. Anyone who’s seen dinosaur cartoons or movies knows that’s how they work. (more…)