There have been a few moments of panic over singleplayer games across the last several years, but a lot of this discussion emerged back when EA cancelled Visceral's Star Wars game, which coincided with the closure of the studio in 2017. 

EA didn't say anything about singleplayer games specifically, but the reason given at the time was that the company was "listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace". EA's Blake Jorgensen later suggested, according to this GameSpot article, that the game wouldn't sell enough copies to justify itself. 

Other factors have led to a sense that singleplayer games are in trouble: BioWare making a disappointing co-op game in Anthem instead of the singleplayer RPGs it's known for, for example. Black Ops 4 was the first Call of Duty game not to feature a campaign. GTA 5's possible singleplayer DLC was mothballed in the face of more content for the successful online component, the demands of porting the game to more formats, and making Red Dead Redemption 2. Jedi Fallen Order was marketed on being a singleplayer-only game with no loot boxes, which felt like an admission that EA had gone too far in the other direction. 

I won't dismiss the panic as being for nothing, because I've shared it: The biggest games of the last few years, like Fortnite and PUBG, are multiplayer-only, and they offer long-term ways for their publishers to keep making money, like Battle Passes and cosmetics. Singleplayer experiences are finite, in theory—but they are having a really good 2019 so far, which makes me think there's little to worry about in the immediate future. 

How about a quick list? These 2019 games all feature prominent singleplayer elements, and range from good to great: Slay the Spire, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil 2 Remake, Heaven't Vault, Rage 2, Sunless Skies, Tropico 6, Anno 1800, Yakuza Kiwami 2, Outward, Imperator Rome, Mortal Kombat 11, Hypnospace Outlaw, Total War: Three Kingdoms, and Metro Exodus. 

Of those, a few have been publicly confirmed successes, like Anno, Capcom's games and Sekiro. In the case of Rage 2, it's had what seems like a slow start in the UK boxed market, but perhaps a more relevant metric is looking at its all-time peak on Steam: 13,591, compared to Doom 2016's 31,623. Clearly it hasn't seen the same level of success, but Doom was a more remarkable game, and Rage 2 doesn't look like a disaster by any means. There are also players we can't see, as it's available through Bethesda's launcher, too.

I would think there's something for everyone in that list, and many of those games are from major publishers. While there have been a few multiplayer breakouts like Apex Legends and Mordhau, it feels like the year has so far belonged to solo experiences. Some games from last year have had a healthy extended life, too, if you're willing to spend money on yet more hours of Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Hitman 2 is getting a bank level!

The pervasive fear around the death of singleplayer games is likely more about where they're going, though, rather than where they are right now—so let's look ahead. 

What about the rest of the year?

The rest of 2019 is looking healthy, too. You've got Doom Eternal and Jedi Fallen Order, as well as a few co-op games that you'll probably have no issues enjoying solo, like Borderlands 3 and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Even Call of Duty will have a campaign again this year, if that's something you're looking forward to. Ghost Recon Breakpoint will let you play in singleplayer, too, with a drone helping you out in lieu of human players. Watch Dogs 3 is rumoured to be set in London, and that's historically been a singleplayer-focused series. That seems likely to be released either this year or next, based on the usual wait for Ubisoft sequels. 

Remedy's Control looks like a slightly weird proposition for a blockbuster played solo, and of course, Obsidian's The Outer Worlds is a big ticket game for long-time RPG fans. Divinity: Fallen Heroes, a tactical spin-off for Larian's series, will be playable in both singleplayer and co-op, and that's possibly going to release this year. 

What about 2020 and beyond?

This is slightly less predictable, but we can make a lot of educated guesses on what's down the line. Starfield, Elder Scrolls 6 and Cyberpunk 2077 will all be primarily singleplayer games—and interest in each is huge. 

What succeeds during the next console generation is likely to shape a lot of the blockbuster games we see over the coming decade, since almost all triple-A games are created to be multiformat now. If we assume the next Xbox and PlayStation consoles are launching late next year, I would predict some slowdown of big releases generally nearer the beginning of 2020, based on how the last generation panned out. That said, Cyberpunk has been confirmed for Xbox One and PS4, which suggests it's unlikely to be released in the distant future. Maybe that's a good candidate for the first half of next year. 

Singleplayer-friendly games are unlikely to change too much right away. Series that seem certain to return in the next few years are Assassin's Creed, Forza Horizon, Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil, XCOM, Final Fantasy, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and Far Cry, at a minimum. We know a third Total War: Warhammer game will be with us at some point. Another Nier game seems likely, based on Automata's long-term success. We can probably assume that Square Enix's coming Marvel games, featuring the Avengers and reportedly the Guardians of the Galaxy, will have a singleplayer story component of some kind. Fable is reportedly returning in the hands of Playground Games, and like all Xbox games now, expect that to be on PC. That's a dependable array of solo experiences to look forward to. If you believe the rumours, too, From Software is going to have its own effort at an open world game, with contributions by writer George RR Martin.

What seems most likely to me is that singleplayer games will keep following the recent curve of getting longer, and finding more ways to keep you playing. Genres will probably change a lot, too. There are types of games that thrived between 2007 and 2012 that mostly don't exist now—linear third-person shooters that emerged in the wake of Gears of War, for example, which is likely why Visceral's Star Wars game didn't continue in its previous form. The era of Call of Duty competitors like Homefront and Medal of Honor 2010 feels like a distant memory, too. If I had to predict anything, it's that my beloved immersive sims and stealth games will be less prominent during the next era of singleplayer games, as Jody explored last year. Those are never the games that will sell ten million copies for a publisher, so they feel the most at risk. 

That doesn't mean that singleplayer-loving players won't be able to find plenty to enjoy on PC, though. If solo gaming is your thing, 2019's games already offer lots of evidence that there will always be something to play.

Check out Chris's piece from 2017 on why singleplayer games aren't dead, but are changing.

The space station Observation has broken away from its Earth orbit and is drifting somewhere near Saturn. Its systems are malfunctioning, a fire has broken out, and the on-board artificial intelligence, SAM, is acting strangely. Things are not looking good for Dr. Emma Fisher, the reluctant, resourceful hero of this sci-fi thriller from the studio behind Stories Untold.

But what's interesting about Observation is that you don't play as Fisher. Instead, you play as SAM, her AI helper. The station is an extension of you, and its cameras are your eyes and ears. You can, when asked, open doors, cycle airlocks, assess damage, and all manner of functional duties. But something seems to have awoken in you. A flicker of self-awareness, perhaps. And an ominous command from an unknown party has infiltrated your programming: BRING HER.

The Observation is reminiscent of the real-world International Space Station: a strangely low-tech warren of claustrophobic corridors with no up or down, littered with laptops, science equipment, vacuum-sealed space food, and the personal effects of the crew. Who, by the way, are also missing. There's a powerful sense throughout that, until very recently, this place was bustling with life. People performing science experiments, socialising, watching the Earth looming below. Fisher is alone, but as she floats through the station in zero gravity there are echoes of the vanished crew all around her.

Fisher is justifiably distressed by the discovery that she has somehow, inexplicably, ended up almost 900 million miles from where she's supposed to be. But she's also a trained astronaut and immediately sets to work repairing the stricken station—with your help. At any time you can pull up a schematic of the Observation and jump between stationary cameras, panning and zooming and scanning for objects of interest. The game is largely silent except for the ambient rumble of the station and the whirring and clicking of these cameras, which is enormously atmospheric and quietly unnerving.

Observation also makes subtle use of video effects, with simulated interference, grain, and distortion giving the image a tactile, analogue quality. This along with the grounded realism of the station, as well as some beautifully natural lighting, makes for a remarkable looking videogame. It also reinforces the idea that you're playing as a machine, viewing your small world through the curve of a lens, and that the technology wired through the wounded station is as fallible as anything else. This feeling of being at the mercy of technology, with only a thin layer of aluminium between you and an endless cosmic void, adds an undercurrent of tension.

When you've located something Fisher is looking for with one of your cameras—a damaged module, say, or the source of a fire—you can respond to her request. SAM will answer in the kind of calm, reassuring, but also slightly unsettling voice so beloved by sci-fi AI. She will also ask you to unlock jammed doors, recover data from laptops, and reboot systems, including re-establishing communications with Earth and activating a tracker to find the lost crew.

SAM isn't always confined to the Observation's network of cameras. In some parts of the game you can possess guidance spheres: little orb-shaped drones that allow you to fly freely around the station, interacting with things the same way you can with the cameras. Flying takes a bit of getting used to, particularly when it comes to orienting yourself in a place where up and down is an outdated concept. But the spheres are the best way to explore the station, poking around for hidden documents and audio logs that will help fill in some of the blanks of the game's enigmatic story. But more on that later.

The Observation is a place worth exploring. The station is made up of four sections: Salyut 10, the Russian arm; Horizon, the European and American arm; Shenzhou XII, the Chinese arm; and Universal, a central hub shared by the entire crew. Each section of the station has its own distinctive aesthetic, atmosphere, and personality, reflecting both the nations who built them and the people who live and work there. The station is extremely detailed, from the intricately designed computers and machines that keep it running, down to pens and rolls of tape tethered to people's workspaces.

Finding a problem is one thing, but to fix something that's broken—such as the experimental fusion reactor powering the station—you often have to dive in and get your circuits dirty. The station is governed by a series of arcane, complex computer systems that are beyond even Fisher's considerable talents, leaving SAM to make sense of them. Here the puzzle-solving aspect of the game fully emerges as you attempt to untangle these systems, and more than once I found myself reaching for a pen and paper. It was a little jarring, I must admit, playing as a super-intelligent, self-aware computer, but still having to use a notepad to make up for the limitations of my stupid organic brain.

Each puzzle is represented by a wonderfully stylised interface, with the kind of hard, functional design you'd expect from something that was only ever meant to be accessed by a machine. It's no coincidence that the game was directed by the person responsible for Alien: Isolation's similarly utilitarian AI. Tasks include adjusting a magnetic field in the aforementioned fusion reactor, running diagnostics on your own damaged memory core, fixing the clamps that hold the station together, and rebooting a faulty cooling system. And all of these jobs have their own unique interface and means of interaction, rooted in smart, well-designed puzzles that are immensely satisfying to solve.

Many of them involve referencing schematics or diagrams which are usually found pinned to walls or hidden on laptops. Other solutions I uncovered more instinctively, prodding at a particular system's sliders, buttons, and other sci-fi doohickeys until it started to make sense. The sheer variety of puzzles in Observation is impressive—both in terms of how you interact with them and their visual design. As a puzzle game it offers a fairly stiff challenge, but nothing that will truly stump you.

The only real struggle I had was getting lost in the labyrinthine, maze-like tunnels of the station while controlling the spheres—at least until I discovered a waypoint system that, when you choose a module on the map, leads you right there. I also noticed while floating around in an aimless daze that the game, correctly guessing I was lost, automatically set a waypoint for me. In general, however, Observation leaves you to your own devices, rarely revealing much about where to go next or how to solve a particular problem. You can ask Fisher to repeat her last command, but a lot of the time this acts more like a cryptic clue or a subtle hint than an explicit instruction.

Observation's other great strength is its story and how it tells it. The influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey is obvious, but not in the way I expected. SAM's rebellion and flutters of self-awareness are not as sinister or immediately obvious as HAL's. Instead, it's in the restraint of the narrative where I felt the strongest echoes of Kubrick's austere sci-fi epic. Observation's plot is incredibly compelling, with a fascinating, mind-bending sense of mystery that kept me hooked from beginning to end. But it never spells anything out for you, encouraging you to think and observe as the story slowly unfolds.

You can fatten your understanding of the plot up with those optional audio logs and documents, but even then a lot is left to your imagination. My only gripe is that I never really felt like SAM was experiencing any kind of moral conflict, or that he was battling the mysterious forces invading his programming. In fact, he's not much of a character at all, which I found a little disappointing. Fisher is the heart and soul of the game, really, and I felt more connected to her overall. But the important thing is that, long after I finished Observation, I was still thinking about it: the mark, for me, of any great sci-fi story.

I was relieved to discover that Observation wasn't just another horror game set in space. It has the measured pacing, knife-edge tension, and twisting narrative of a great thriller. It's scary, but only under the surface, quietly eating away at your nerves rather than shocking them. And it's the best kind of science fiction: exciting and entertaining, but also making you think about humanity's place in the cosmos and, perhaps, the deeper mysteries of universe.

World War Z developer Saber Interactive has dipped its toe into quite a few series, including Halo and Quake, and it looks like it also tried to add Half-Life to the list, asking Valve if it could remake Half-Life 2.  

"After we did Halo Anniversary and Halo 2 Anniversary, as part of the Master Chief Collection, I reached out to Gabe Newell personally, because I knew him from a past life, and I said I want to remake Half-Life 2," Saber's CEO Matthew Karch told Game Watcher. "That's all I want to do. I won't charge you anything for it. I'll do it for rev-share and doesn't even need to be a big rev-share. I just really want to do because I love that game so much."

Newell declined the offer and told Karch that, in the event a Half-Life 2 remake was on the cards, it would be developed internally. That's not been Valve's position previously, with the first Half-Life getting the remake treatment, and even a Xen expansion, in the form of Black Mesa. The difference is that it started out as a mod, though the distinction has been blurred by it being sold on Steam Early Access. 

While Newell's response isn't an indication that Valve has any plans to remake Half-Life 2, modders have made plenty of demos, Unreal recreations and even a Half-Life 2 remake for the original Half-Life. 

The farm life-meets-Pokemon sim Ooblets will likely get an early access release of some sort, creator Rebecca Cordingley said back in March. But maybe, hypothetically, there might also be some closed alpha testing before that happens. And if it did—which is not to say that it will!—and you wanted to take part, that might be a possibility as well. 

Coyness aside, the tweet very strongly suggests that there will be an Ooblets alpha at some point, and that some segment of followers will be able to give it a try just for asking nicely: You don't tweet that sort of thing without at least some underlying intent to follow through, after all. 

And in case there was any doubt about the demand for Ooblets, the developers asked followers to retweet the message, to "help us get an idea for how many people would be interested." It has so far been retweeted more than 1300 times.

While unscrupulous smugglers, bounty hunters and pirates might be welcome in Elite Dangerous, some rogues have been ruffling their fellow pilots' feathers by using hacks to augment their ships. Programs used to exploit the game aren't new to Elite, but members of the community have noticed a rise, with a recent Reddit thread highlighting a specific group that's been active since at least August 2018. 

Reddit user ryan_m17 claims that a private Discord has been distributing a trainer for the game that allows players to significantly enhance their ships and tweak any module. This gives players using it an obvious advantage in PvP, and while that means they can then be reported, the trainer is still apparently in use. 

The problem doesn't seem to be recent. One player told me that cheating has seen their guild numbers decline over the last couple of years, and while these invincible ships cause lots of issues in PvP, the hacks also interfere with the PvE background simulation. Some players say their groups lost systems to people using hacks or bots. It's a galactic threat, that affects multiplayer and singleplayer.

Frontier routinely bans reported players and investigates cheating, and a ticket was submitted to Frontier, along with an export of the Discord. But without feedback from Frontier, players aren't sure if these problems are being tackled. From their perspective, they're being ignored and the cheating continues. 

"We take activities of this nature seriously," a Frontier representative told me. "Our support teams are aware and investigating." A similar response was given to viewers of a recent livestream when the subject came up in chat.

The problem with acknowledging and discussing these things is that it draws attention to them, but it also means players are better able to look out for people exploiting the game.

Some players are calling for harsher punishments for cheating. Temporary bans to to solo followed by a permaban on the third strike is how Frontier deals with players chaught cheating, but even relegated to solo these hacks could still affect the game for other players.

"Even as a solo explorer, this affects you," DarthHM said. "Imagine getting to the far side of the galaxy and finding a system first discovered by some goober who can insta-jump anywhere. Perma ban to solo is not severe enough."

While players were no doubt hoping for more information, at least Frontier is looking into the issues. And it should go without saying, but using these hacks will probably cost you access to a big portion of the game.  

Annapurna Interactive dropped a new trailer today to announce that Outer Wilds, the intriguing sci-fi exploration camping trip that won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2015 IGF Awards (in a very early iteration, obviously) will be out on May 30. 

Outer Wilds (not to be confused with Obsidian's sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds, although I often do) strikes me as a mix of Firewatch and No Man's Sky, with elements of Kentucky Route Zero and The Long Journey Home thrown in for flavor. Which is a bit of a sideways admission that I don't know what to make of it, but I think it looks potentially very good and I'm glad that the delay out of 2018 isn't going to be too terribly long. 

One of the things I find most interesting about Outer Wilds is that it trades breadth for depth, taking place within the relatively limited confines of a "handcrafted" single solar system. That will, hopefully, go a long way toward the "places to go, nothing to do" problem that can plague big games that rely on repeating structures or procedural generation to bulk themselves out. As Phil said in his preview earlier this year, "This isn’t some vast, procedurally generated universe. The handful of handcrafted planets ensure that wherever you land, you’re sure to find something, even if it’s just a weird rock." 

Annapurna announced earlier this month that Outer Wilds will be an Epic Store exclusive at launch. 

Slay the Spire masterfully fused deckbuilding with a roguelike structure, giving us one of the best games of the year so far. It’s great to see more games bringing their own takes on a similar formula. 

Like Slay the Spire, Nowhere Prophet has you moving between nodes on a map to trigger random events and fights, but instead of building one deck full of abilities and attacks, in this game you build two. One represents members of your convoy, the other the skills of its leader. There’s also a spatial element to battles. You play convoy fighters into slots onto battlefields where only the front row can attack.

I’ve played through the first of the game’s five acts in this weekend’s beta period and enjoyed the game’s fresh ideas. Warriors have familiar attack/defence stats that Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone players know all too well, but the cards carry their wounds between battles and need healing at rest sites to come back to full effectiveness. 

The battlefield allows for neat ability modifiers that might affect an entire row, or buff adjacent cards that come into play. It's nice to see some new special card effects in addition to archetypal MtG/Hearthstone effects like a 1-cost +1/+1 buff or Taunt, which forces your opponent to attack the taunting character. There’s also terrain, which can block parts of the battlefield and create awkward situations. If you have a mountain on the front row, you can be denied some damage output until you zap it with an ability.

There’s a lot to think about, but the angular art and big, chunky UI smooths things out. There are lots of nice visual flourishes, like the way unit portraits flinch and change as they take damage. You’re traversing across a wasteland, but it’s a colourful future that’s full of flavour. In one encounter I was ambushed by an army of taunting lizards who were particularly tough to shift.

My only problem is the AI, which sometimes makes some odd choices. I fought one battle where my opponent had me beat if they just attacked my prophet directly—I used that turn of grace to win. There will be 300 cards in the final game, which means there are a lot of potential synergies for the AI to process. Hopefully this beta catches most of the quirks.

In the final version of the game the maps will be procedurally generated to encourage lots of runs. Based on my brief experience with the first area I'd like more ways to earn cards so I can take my decks in a different direction sooner, but there are a lot of other features to experiment with, like gifts that give your convoy extra 'Hope' (which you spend to move around the map). Your decisions in text adventure skits also earn you morality traits that unlock new decisions further along the map, and nodes sometimes reveal new adjacent locations, which creates a stronger sense of exploration than similar systems in Slay the Spire and FTL.

Nowhere Prophet is due out this summer, and there's more about the game on the official site.

If you've got an itch for more adventures in Skyrim, you'll soon be able to delve into draugr-infested crypts and fight in the civil war on your table. The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms is a tabletop miniature adaptation where you'll lead followers into dungeons and battles with diminutive heroes drawn from the RPG.

While Call to Arms is a skirmish wargame, with two groups of heroes and warriors trying to bash each other over the head, there's also PvE threats and narrative events promising to shake things up, a bit like fellow spin-off Fallout: Wasteland Wafare. Players can team up against the game's monsters, and the PvE system also means you can play solo. 

A two-player starter set and reinforcement sets for two factions, the Stormcloaks and Imperial Army, will launch in the first wave, focusing on Skyrim's civil war. To lead them, you'll get Hadvar, Ralof, Yrsarald Thrice-Pierced, Marcurio, Mjoll the Lioness, Ulfric Stormcloak, Galmar Stone-Fist, General Tullius and the Dragonborn's long-suffering pal, Lydia. Speaking of the Dragonborn, you'll also be able to field one, but the miniature is sold separately. 

While Skyrim's civil war is the setting of the first wave, more races and characters are already planned. Future waves will expand on the Skyrim base game, as well as delving into Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls Online and more. 

Call to Arms is due out at the end of the year. 

There's something beautifully pure about Downtown Los Santos. For me, it's the most intriguing urban snapshot of Grand Theft Auto 5's San Andreas map—with its clumsy network of neon-scarred thoroughfares, volatile nightcrawlers and cops so crooked they could swallow nails and shit out screws. 

In Downtown LS, you live and breathe the city's seedy underbelly. Its traffic is louder, its alleyways darker, and its people tastier. Hang on. What? Admittedly, my GTA 5 roleplay adventures have entered dark territory before, but vampirism is a cut above the rest. And the worst thing about it? I got really into it. 

Like, really into it. Like, standing behind my girlfriend in my real-world kitchen and trying to work out, hypothetically of course, the best angle I'd adopt to get the drop on her exposed neck. 

Like, changing my eight-month old daughter's nappy and thinking: her wee leg is quite chubby, I bet the blood-thirsty vampire dude I've been roleplaying in GTA 5 would get stuck right into that. 

Like, trying on those fake plastic fangs that you get at Halloween and thinking I genuinely looked better. Sexier, even. Wow.  To my family and the strangers I set my nashers on in-game over the last few weeks, I am truly sorry. I've created a monster.    

Before embarking on my latest Grand Theft Auto 5 roleplay adventure, I was less certain of the slant I wished to pursue. One of the most exciting things about cultivating stories within FiveM's modified GTA world, is that interesting tales can be instigated without too much planning. 

Having an idea, sowing the seeds among other roleplay enthusiasts, and then watching the pantomime unfold is often how each fable begins—and then it's up to you how much you lean into the fantasy, or how much you strive to steer it in a different direction. 

This blood-thirsty tale, started with a meagre GTA: San Andreas comparison. 

“I remember, years ago,” pondered one roleplayer I happened upon at Legion Square. “When San Andreas had Cluckin' Bells, Burger Shots and Well-Stacked Pizzas lining every corner.”

This was, of course, a non-meta, in-character RP nod to GTA: SA's Eating system, whereby food was not only the 2004 game's primary health source, but also a basic necessity. Eating too much would cause your character to become overweight; not eating enough would cause them to lose fat, muscle mass, and ultimately, their life. 

In Grand Theft Auto 5 and GTA Online, though, feeding is reduced to commodity-like snacks that can only be purchased from convenience stores. Which begged the question: if I were to properly survive in a reality-reflecting RP world, what would be my main energy resource, beyond Ego Chasers, P's & Q's and cans of ECola? 

Humans. It was always humans. 

But you can't just start chowing down on unsuspecting players in GTA RP. Unlike the wild and chaotic murder-grounds of Rockstar's no-holds-barred official servers, the roleplay spectrum plays by strict rules. Crimes as innocuous as jaywalking can get you banged up in the slammer, and the server's volunteer police force rarely need much convincing when it comes to slapping on the cuffs. 

The server I played on during this particular adventure was not equipped with last year's After Hours update, therefore the only accessible nightclub on the map—FiveM uses NewTheft's Open All Interiors mod—was the functioning but abandoned Bahama Mamas West in Del Perro. 

My thinking here was simple: what better way to get close to people under the cover of darkness than within a smoke-filled club? 

Innumerable ways, probably. But this was my plan and I was sticking to it. Getting players inside the empty building would be my biggest challenge, so I started out preying on AI NPCs around the dancehall's perimeter. 

A chubby man here, a skinny woman there. Security guards, business folk, young, old, I didn't discern. I studied the NPCs' movements. I worked out the best ways to incapacitate, making as little noise as I went. I got in, I got out, I made that ‘nom, nom, nom' slurping-meets-grunting noise cartoon characters make when they eat. I stood over my motionless victims. I watched them squirm.

In RP terms, I burst necks like pinatas. But in realistic, in-game terms, I'd merely punch a harmless bystander on the back of the head, before squatting down beside them. In turn, I let my real self and my imagination do the leg work. 

“NOM, NOM, NOM,” I cried aloud in real-life, with the same unsettling vigour as Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter. 

“JOE, WHAT THE F***K ARE YOU DOING UP THERE?” cried my girlfriend from downstairs, but I daren't let her in on it. 

My first actual roleplayer mark was a success, who I snared at Legion Square. I went full-on obnoxious PR, promising the world of my totally-not-empty club that was absolutely equipped with free entry and a free bar. 

Problem was, I didn't have any money, so I had to shuttle my unsuspecting victim on the back of a rented pedal bike. I got in his face and sang the virtues of a venue that in reality had no DJ, no guests, no VIP area, no discernible entertainment value. I was less English Dave, more Glasgow knave. 

But he came all the same. Upon arrival, I marched ahead to the back room. I hid behind a door. I waited. And waited. And waited… And pounced! Screams! Fists! Death! Blood, glorious blood!

It was too easy. And yet this poor bastard would be my first and last proper kill. 

Nowadays, not much is known about Bahama Mamas West in Del Perro. High-brow establishments such as Gefängnis, The Palace and Omega have long replaced the dusty dancefloors of old, and talk of the club that once promised so much has been reduced to whispers and murmurs in and around Downtown. 

Bahamas is still accessible via FiveM's pre-After Hours servers. It's still as empty as it ever and its neon spotlights shine relentlessly into the night. I've since put the vampire life behind me, and I've pushed the memories so deep into my soul, that I hope they never again surface. 

The world has moved on. I have moved on. But the Los Santos Police Department's audio logs never forget.

May 18, 2019, 3.07pm: Botched double murder attempt

May 18, 2019, 3.38pm: Police attend suspected gun fight

May 18, 2019, 3.40pm: Wounded man provides eye-witness statement. Strangely, denies being a vampire

May 18, 2019, 3.42pm: Police aid wounded man

May 18, 2019, 3.45pm: Man gives full statement, continues to deny vampire likelihood

May 18, 2019, 3.49pm: Man attempts to eat police officers, is a vampire. Police officers ponder on-stake burning

May 18, 2019, 3.52pm: Vampire man restrained and arrested, teeth extracted

It's all over. And do you know what? All that listening has made me a wee bit peckish. Old habits die hard, I suppose. 

Oh, crap. Pray for my family. 

Halo: The Master Chief Collection's public testing phase, originally planned for April, is now unlikely to kick off before E3. Developer 343 Industries has been teasing a beta since just after the port announcement, though it's been taking a little longer than anticipated to get the game ready for players. 

"Currently it doesn't look like public flighting will begin prior to E3," 343 community director Brian Jarrard wrote on Reddit. "The team has made a lot of progress on a number of areas but everything is just taking time (in some cases longer than initially anticipated)."

In an update at the end of April, Jarrard explained that making the changes for PC was a complicated process that necessitated some extra time. Mouse and keyboard controls, as well as the UI, was a priority, he said, but wasn't in a good enough state for public testing. 

A recent progress report revealed some new details about the port, including the addition of a Reach-style progression system that will let players unlock rewards and will include levels and seasons. One of the reasons it's taking longer, according to 343, is the team's not content with making a straight port, instead aiming for a game that's "authentic to Halo and the PC platform".

E3 2019 begins on June 11. 

Cheers, PCGamesN.