Battlefield Royale, or Battlefield V Firestorm if you’re an EA executive who shouldn’t be trusted with naming things, is terrific. Sometimes. When you’re oh-so-slowly tiptoeing through a building, anxiously attempting to outflank a foe as they do the same. Or when you spend a solid five minutes laying in a ditch, your patience pays off, and you spectacularly blow up a tank with your last stick of dynamite. Most of the time, though, you’ll be killed before you can do diddly squat.

I’ve never battled in a royale where I’m this fragile, and it’s awful. But it’s brilliant. (But it’s awful.)

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We’ve been making our way through Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice at quite the pace and have discovered a few hidden things about the game. As many a rookie shinobi are getting to grips with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice’s combat, it’s clear that some are finding the combat a little difficult to get used to. We’re of course happy to teach you the ways of a shinobi, even if it’s just an excuse to play a highly anticipated game. Since the first edition of this guide, there have been more tips unearthed throughout, PC settings optimised by our own Katharine Castle, and a fair number of bosses and sub-bosses defeated.

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EGX Rezzed is filled with indie games, which means it’s also filled with indie game developers>. It’d be foolish of us not to trap some of those developers onstage and make them share their secrets. That’s what Rezzed Sessions are all about: giving you a peek at how games are made and how you might do it yourself, from the graft of starting a studio to tips on better level design, and from the psychology of game addiction to how the designer’s of Heaven’s Vault created their own lost language. The talks run across all three days of EGX Rezzed 2019 – which is April 4th-6th at the Tobacco Dock in London – and you can find the full schedule below.

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It was a great surprise when GSC Game World announced S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 in 2018, given that they previously scrapped it when the studio essentially shut down in 2011 and its makers had long-since left. It’s simultaneously a) less and b) more of a surprise to see GSC Game World announce S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 again in 2019 because a) we knew b) wait they’re announcing it again? Indeed GSC are, repeating that they plan to release S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 in the year 2021. If anything, them repeating this with little new to show after ten months makes me lose confidence in this 1) happening 2) being good. But I’m told of a distant and hidden place named the Room, where wishes are granted, and if I can find a guide to get me there…

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Below is a list of 30 things wot you might find in, on, or over a river ( things is used in its broadest possible sense). Entries have been stripped of vowels and had any inter-word spaces repositioned. For example, if fish ladder was present it might appear as FSHLD DR. Canoe would be CN. (more…)

Pinned by the potent magic of the P key, Edward, the Flare Path Sky Tours Learjet, has spent the past week motionless above IJmuiden, a port halfway along the forward edge of the giant rotting plesiosaur flipper that is the Dutch coast. In a few seconds’ time I’ll be unpinning him so our Aerofly FS2 strand-ramble can continue. Read on for naval calamities, nocturnal massacres, nuclear near-things, and other cheering tales. (more…)

Morrowind, the third and greatest instalment in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series, has been back in the news this week. It was briefly free to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the series, and then made a brief return to Steam’s top sellers, thanks to discounts and coverage. Which is lovely: it shows its age in many, many painful ways, but its imagination, ambition and wonderfully weird visual design to this day makes Oblivion and Skyrim seem so terribly ordinary.

Gun it up today, for the very first time, and you’ll think me completely mad to say that, however. It’s basically a world of fog and people who look like they were whittled from fallen branches. But, thanks to 17 years of mods, it now only takes a couple of installations and a tiny amount of work to make it stunning in the ways that most count. If you’re about to play, quickly do these things first.

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If you asked me to tell you one game I think you should play from the last couple of years, I’d barely hesitate before suggesting Oxenfree. It is an exceptionally good game, focused on a mysterious tale told through an exquisitely good dialogue system. Night School Studio’s follow-up Afterparty is attempting to take it all one step further. A pub crawl in hell, where booze is your special power.

In Afterparty, you can vomit up your conscience, and watch it run away. It’s a neat way of ensuring all your dialogue choices are awful>. It’s one of many ways that drinking can affect your characters, as you spend one heck of a night in hell, on a mission to out-drink Satan.

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Because reasons, Codemasters tend to release their Formula One games near the end of the racing season they’re simulating, which is weird. Wouldn’t it be better if motorheads could themselves play through all the tracks ahead of their Grand Prix? Or maybe even race alongside it, listening to the actual team’s racing radio? Wearing a full fireproof racing suit in their house? Shouting for their flatmate to deliver new cups of tea to the desk at every pitstop? Pissing into a big nappy? You’ll be able to do all that for a little more of this year’s season, as Codies today announced F1 2019 for launch in June, having released the two previous games in Augusts.

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“Remember to look up at the stars”, said the late Stephen Hawking, “to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist”. Unfortunately he failed to add “but not like Dr. Simon Forman”, an Elizabethan quack proper doctor, honest, who divined medial treatment from the heavens. You play as him in Astrologaster, a “story-driven astrological comedy” based on his actual life. Yesterday developers Nyamyam announced that it’s coming out on May 9th, and popped out a fresh trailer.

Apparently he also did relationship advice?

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