UPDATE 1/5/18: Developer Supergonk has announced that its paint-smearing, co-op-focussed arcade racer Trailblazers will launch on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One next week, with a Switch version now slated for June.

The latter bit of news is something of a surprise, given that Supergonk and publisher Rising Star had previously stated that Trailblazers would be coming to "all major gaming platforms" this month - but at least the Switch edition isn't lagging too far behind.

If it's firm dates you're after, Trailblazers will release on PlayStation 4 and PC next Tuesday, May 8th, while the Xbox One version arrives a day later on May 9th. As previously confirmed, cross-platform multiplayer is supported between PC and PS4, and PC and Xbox One. Once the Switch version launches, it'll be compatible online with PC and Xbox One.

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How did it come to this? Public executions are being made in the name of a divine ruler. Propaganda hangs from buildings. None of us in our right minds would implement these regimes, and yet in Frostpunk I did. What drove me there? I didn't suddenly lose my mind; I did it because it was better than the alternative. I did it to survive.

Like developer 11 bit Studio's previous game This War of Mine, this is where Frostpunk exists, on the edge of coping, where you're always put between a rock and a hard place. You never make a decision in the game from a position of comfort - a mixture of dwindling resources and ever worsening cold ensure that. You never have quite enough. You think you're safe and then something happens to wrongfoot you, be it a scripted event or the temperature plummeting again. It's a heart-pumping scrabble for survival, a thrill I've never felt in a city builder. As I hung on towards the campaign's end, I genuinely held my breath.

In Frostpunk you're in charge of building the last city on a completely frozen Earth, and you're up against it from the off. The temperature is -20 degrees and you need to find coal to keep your generator stoked for warmth, wood to build shelters for your people, and food to feed them. Around you lay piles of coal, wood and steel, and you assign groups of people - workers or engineers - to gather them.

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Frozen city-building game Frostpunk, the newest by This War of Mine developer 11 bit Studios, has raced out of the gates, shifting a quarter of a million copies in 66 hours.

What this all means, besides being a lovely success for a lovely game (my review should be appearing very soon), is absolute concrete confirmation of ongoing support for the game from 11 bit. "Yes, we had plans for expansions," CEO Grzegorz Miechowski said in a statement, "and now we're 100 per cent sure we are doing that, including many free updates of course!"

Presumably those plans cover new scenarios for the game. Currently there's a main campaign, which lasts around a dozen hours (providing you don't die all the time), and two additional scenarios, which are smaller in scale but harder to overcome. They're more focused, you see, and limit you in pivotal areas, meaning you will really struggle if you put a foot wrong.

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Sometimes subtitles help you hear characters talk because the audio mix is all over the place, or you have to turn the telly down because you don't want to wake the kids. And sometimes subtitles help you understand a video game's truth. It was the latter for me, while playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

During my 45 minute hands-on demo of Eidos Montreal's adventure game there were quite a few subtitles that caught my eye and - I've decided in retrospect - sum up the modern Tomb Raider experience. It goes something like this:

[effort grunt]

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Update, 27/4/18: Bandai Namco's upcoming Adventure Time game, the swashbuckling Pirates of the Enchiridion, will launch on PS4, Xbox, PC, and Switch this July 20th in the UK - a little later than its originally anticipated spring release.

As its name implies, Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion offers a nautically-flavoured - and genuinely intriguing - open-world twist on the cult Cartoon Network show, setting Jake, Finn and the rest of the cast loose in a recently submerged Land of Ooo.

Pirates of the Enchiridion is the work of UK-based developer Climax Studios, and seems to perfectly capture the series' distinctive aesthetic in the new trailer above. Bandai Namco notes that the game will release a few days earlier in the US, launching on July 17th.

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UPDATE 1/8/18: Developer Zoink has swung its scythe and felled all remaining obstacles standing in the way of announcing a release date for its Stick It To The Man spiritual successor, Flipping Death.

The ghoulish comedy adventure will, says Zoink, be heading to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Switch next week on Tuesday, August 7th. Stick It To The Man was an unexpected delight, so I've high hopes for its jovially macabre follow-up. Trailer!

ORIGINAL STORY 26/4/18: Developer Zoink has announced that its ghoulish comedy adventure, and Stick It To The Man spiritual successor, Flipping Death will launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Switch this August.

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Brace yourselves people, it's finally happening! After weeks of teasing and speculation, massive chunks of rock are now thundering down from the skies over Fortnite's Battle Royale map and smashing to the earth.

It looks like we're still at the preliminary stage of the meteor apocalypse, however, with the only real destruction wrought so far seemingly on trees and smaller structures, as well as the nerves of unsuspecting players just minding their own business and trying to do some murder. Thank goodness Epic turned on the emergency broadcast system in time.

As such, it's still unclear if this dramatic conclusion to Epic's long-teased meteor event will culminate in the obliteration of the unloved Tilted Towers, or indeed any area of the map. Here's how things have been looking over in Battle Royale since the sky started falling down.

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Bluehole's newly invigorated development streak continues today with a sizeable new update for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on PC, bringing Miramar improvements, a map selection option, major balancing, as well as new weapons, vehicles, attachments, and more.

Update #12, to give the newest patch its official name, is still at the tweaking stage, and only available on PUBG's test servers right now. It's positively heaving with stuff, all ripe for community feedback at this current stage, but its most crowd-pleasing addition will likely be the ability to select a specific map to play.

PUBG's new menu UI option enables players to choose either a single map - guaranteeing that it will be their destination - or multiple maps which the game will then randomly select from during matchmaking. Unsurprisingly, only Erangel and Miramar are currently available, but there's space for PUBG's new tropical-themed map when it arrives later this year.

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If you've been awake and anywhere near the internet over the past six months, you'll probably have heard how the rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin has had the unfortunate side effect of driving up the cost of graphics cards all over the world. If you could find a high-end graphics card actually still in stock over the past few months, odds are good that it would cost you an almost four-figure price tag.

Fortunately, at least for now, you can head to Amazon UK and pick up a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 card for 509.99, which, while not the cheapest price it has ever been available for, is the cheapest it has been available for this year so far.

Sure, it's still going to cost you a pretty penny to get one of these things, but if you've been holding fire on a brand new gaming PC build it might finally be a decent time to pick up a card like this and get building. If Amazon isn't your thing, Ebuyer also has stock of the card at the same price of 509.99.

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Yesterday, we reported on Microsoft's move against the popular Halo Online mod ElDewrito. At the time, Halo developer 343 insisted Microsoft's lawyers hadn't shut down the mod, rather, they were working to scrub any Halo Online assets required to play the game from the internet and insisted the ElDewrito team pause development.

"While we are humbled and inspired to see the amount of passion poured into this project, the fact remains that it's built upon Microsoft-owned assets that were never lawfully released or authorised for this purpose," 343 said in a statement.

"As this project reverberated across the community, our team took a step back to assess the materials and explore possible avenues, while Microsoft, like any company, has a responsibility to protect its IP, code and trademarks. It's not optional in other words."

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