Three US senators have introduced a bill seeking to regulate “pay-to-win microtransactions and sales of loot boxes in video games” which are aimed at, or known to be played by, people under 18. Should it pass, it would bar games from selling randomised rewards, things that boost the natural pace of progression, or items that give an unfair advantage in competitive games. Even if this doesn’t become law, it’s interesting to see what such legislation might look like in the USA. The most important part is that they say “video games,” so if this bill passed it would surely become ILLEGAL to spell the word as “videogames.”

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It’s still early days yet, but there’s a Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic film in development. As reported by Buzzfeed last night, Laeta Kalogridis (Writer on Altered Carbon, Shutter Island, Alita: Battle Angel among others) is nearly done on a script for the first in a possible KOTOR film trilogy. I’m surprised that the whole Old Republic setting hadn’t been tapped for any film or animation projects previously, as it’s jam packed with fun worlds to explore, strange new aliens for the CGI crew to flex their artistic muscle on, and a straightforward story, if they’re following the game itself.

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Whether it was purely stylistic or intended to make the game behave better on older consoles, a lot of people found Mortal Kombat 11‘s halved framerate during cinematic attacks distracting. Previously only available via mods, today NetherRealm Studios patched in an official set of 60fps options today for menus, cinematics (including fatalities) and the Krypt. They do warn that the Krypt toggle is only for truly high-end PCs. Below, for illustration’s sake, a comparison video letting you see the two framerates side by side, albeit captured using the unofficial 60fps mod.

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We’ve not talked much about A Robot Named Fight here before, and that’s a shame, because it is a personal favourite. Developed by Matt Bitner, imagine Super Metroid hideously fused to The Binding Of Isaac. It generates short-ish (a couple hours long if you survive to the end) Metroidvania adventures, giving you a different set of abilities and weapons each time round, which will be needed to unlock more areas and explore further. It’s also full of horrible meat-monsters, weird robot gods, and it just got a huge expand-o-patch today, and a discount. See a trailer and some more thoughts below.

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If you’ve ever been to a big, public gaming show, you’ll know a large part of your day is often spent being bombarded by at least fifteen different loudspeakers all vying for you to come and sample the source of their whizz-pop sound effects and booming trailer videos. E-Line Media’s booth for ocean explorathon Beyond Blue, however, was like a small oasis of calm when I visited it back at PAX East, if only because the developers had sensibly given everyone headphones so the soothing whines of its whales and sharp clicks of its playful dolphins wouldn’t get lost in the surrounding hubbub of the very> loud Just Beats and Shapes pod next door.

I’m glad they did, because otherwise I’d have missed a large chunk of what makes Beyond Blue so intriguing. Developed in close partnership with the BBC’s Blue Planet II documentary crew, it might not offer quite as romantic a vision of the ocean as, say, the lovely Abzu does, but its natural, semi-photorealistic divers and sea life feel just as wonderful to control and interact with. Beyond that, its emphasis on tracking, cataloguing and getting players to think critically about the state of our own real-life oceans through what sounds like an almost Jurassic World Evolution-style strategy layer suggests E-Line are dropping their anchor much deeper than other ocean explorer games have before.

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Valve are joining all those great internet thought-leaders and telling you to clean your room, or at the very least to play the games that you’ve bought on Steam. Running this weekend until May 28th, 6pm GMT, the Steam Spring Cleaning Event provides a front-page checklist of games to try or return to, and rewarding the diligent with goodies to decorate their account page with.

All fluff, really, but as good an excuse as any to dust off something you might have picked up a few sales back. Of course, undermining this push, there’s also a bunch of free weekend trials open on discounted games which also count towards your total. The list includes action RPG Grim Dawn, four-on-one competitive horror game Dead By Daylight and stylish 4X sci-fi strategy game Endless Space 2.

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June’s upcoming Final Fantasy XIV expansion, Shadowbringers, isn’t just going to bring players another fifty-odd hours of story to chew on, but overhaul a lot of the popular MMORPG’s fundamentals. Announced during a “Letter From The Producer” stream last night (archived on Twitch here), Square Enix and producer Naoki “Yoshi P” Yoshida outlined some of the big changes coming in Patch 5.0, whether you buy the expansion or not. They also released a free benchmark tool for the upcoming expansion complete with updated character creator. You can find it here.

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I gave up on the plague-doctoring of Pathologic 2 after suffering from its punitive survival meters and tedious food-getting. The place has so little grub I spent my brief visit wrestling with a frustrating hunger. Yet for those hardy souls willing to overlook constant death and harsh restarts, there are some excellent scenes of unease and disquiet in this grey, decaying town. One moment, more than any, sticks out. The evening I went to a train station, where the kids hang out after dark. There, in the dimness, they play a children s game. They call it train summoning .

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Quantic Dream are making good on their threats, today releasing a demo of Heavy Rain ahead of its PC launch in June. Heavy Rain is arguably the least awful of their recent quicktime event thrillers, telling the branching and intersecting stories of people hunting for a serial killer. The start is pants and it completely stacks the ending but the middle has some interesting bits, which this demo kinda touches on while also showcasing how cliched and stupid their writing can be. I HAVE OPINIONS ON QUANTIC GAMES. We still have Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human to look forward to later this year.

Update: After being pulled from download on Friday due to wonk, the demo is now back.>

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The game creation platform Roblox lets you create all sorts of wonders with only the thinnest knowledge of scripting, and the results are many and varied. It’s easy to glance at the vast library and write off the whole set as a minefield of easy-cash scammers with characters that look Lego knockoffs, but look further and you’ll find plenty of examples of creativity just waiting to flourish. The overall impression is of seeing the early drafts of tomorrow’s great designers – where once the curious and determined turned to creating maps for Doom, or modding the original code for Sonic the Hedgehog, today they get their start in Roblox. We’ve already seen at least one developer hone their skills and build their community within Roblox’s garden before rebuilding their idea as a commercial project, in Unturned.

To help you get straight to playing only the good stuff, we’ve put together this list of the best Roblox games you can play for free right now.

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