"Chop the parsley," he writes, "just enough to discipline it." There is a poetry to a good recipe, a way of looking at the world that transports the reader. Fergus Henderson, the founder of St John, which is the greatest restaurant in the world if you ask me, is in the kitchen. He has some parsley. He wants to chop it. How much? Just enough...

That line rattles around in my head all day every day. Chop the parsley... I have been to St John several times now, and Fergus is always there at a table. Why wouldn't he be? If you've created the greatest restaurant in the world, where else are you going to head for lunch? I have read and re-read his cookbook, too, a vast white slab of a thing, pink fore-edges, a bit of texture to the cover. Mostly I read and re-read the recipe for bone marrow on toast. Chop the parsley, just enough, discipline. Wonderful stuff, parsley.

It's not just Henderson. Eat Me is my second-favourite cookbook, written by Kenny Shopsin, proprietor of a tiny restaurant in New York that I have always been afraid to go into because Shopsin often took against people instantly and denied them a seat at the counter. Shopsin died last year, sadly. He sounded wonderful. I still look in the mirror sometimes and see a person that Shopsin would have disliked. In Eat Me, right, he is telling you how to make his chili, which is the greatest chili in the world if you ask me. I make this chili at least once a month, I even have a cooking pot that I bought specially. And how hot should you make the pot before you begin? Hot enough, says Shopsin, to bounce a drop of water off the bottom of the pan.

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As someone who was lucky enough to be a teenager in the 90s, I am very much a fan of old-school arena shooters like Quake and Unreal Tournament. That's why Telefrag VR caught my eye; its pre-release press releases boasted of fast-paced, visceral movement and combat mechanics that were directly inspired by those immortal video game classics.

But does Telefrag VR really live up to the hype from its PR department? You can find out in this week's episode of Ian's VR Corner, which you can find just below these words.

Before I go any further, I should point out that I have only played Telefrag VR in its pre-release, review phase. During this time the public lobbies were empty so my criticisms are based on vs matches with bots only. With that said, apart from perhaps some more challenging opponents, I can't imagine the overall experience being that different once human players are introduced.

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They are the side-scrolling games of 16-bit legend. Contra 3: The Alien Wars and Contra: The Hard Corps saw Konami's run-and-gun series reach the zenith of its powers but since then, the franchise has been neglected and the magic has gone. Until now. Brazilian indie developer JoyMasher has produced the 'spiritual sequel' we need - and indeed deserve - in the form of Blazing Chrome, a love letter to Contra and other 16-bit classics. It's a perfect blend of detailed, period-appropriate 2D pixel art, expertly crafted stages - and it's available now on all modern platforms, from Switch to PS4/Xbox to PC. But what makes it succeed and what did it take to build it?

I'm finding the game to be massively enjoyable and eager to find out more, I spoke to JoyMasher directly to find out what it took to make the game, and what the 'secret sauce' is in creating a new experience that also feels so authentic to the Contra classics. After all, Relying on modern technology can produce beautiful results but perfecting an experience that feels like it is running on older hardware is more difficult. Sonic Mania is an example of how to get this right, but many others have failed.

Thankfully, Blazing Chrome is equally as successful - it's a game that feels genuinely authentic to the mid-90s in every way while expanding upon what makes those classics so good. In many ways, this feels like a follow-up to Contra: The Hard Corps as it might have existed on Sega Saturn. That makes sense when you check out the early prototypes for the game. Blazing Chrome's initial builds were built using art from both The Hard Corps and Contra 3. Like the best games on the Mega Drive, there's a focus on deep parallax scrolling with a limited colour palette, but the developers have opted to push beyond this spec introducing huge numbers of sprites, scaling and rotation and other tricks. Obviously though, it's the game design that's of crucial importance.

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Just months after Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime stepped away from the World of Warcraft developer, fellow co-founded Frank Pearce has revealed he too is also stepping down.

"After more than 28 years, Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce is hanging up his armor - thank you for everything, Frank, and best wishes for the future!" Blizzard announced on its social media channels, linking to a full goodbye statement from Pearce and J. Allen Brack, who succeeded Morhaime as president.

"The time has come for me to step away from Blizzard and pass the torch to the next generation of leaders," Pearce wrote in the post.

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The dust has settled on Fortnite's big season finale, which saw the game's much-hyped monster versus mecha face-off finally taking place. The two titans battled to the death - there could be only one winner.

Spoilers lie below.

As zero hour struck on the various countdown clocks around the map, the monster rose from the sea with Polar Peak's castle still on its back. Its target was the power of Fortnite's infamous Vault, hidden under Loot Lake.

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After months of teasing, cast announcements, and costume reveals, Netflix's television adaption of Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher novels has received its first trailer, giving fans the best indication yet of what to expect from the finished article.

As you'd imagine, the new trailer - rather modestly described as a "teaser", despite being almost two minutes long - offers a decent slice of The Witcher's principal characters in action, meaning the internet will no doubt soon be alive with debate on whether Henry Cavill (as Geralt of Rivia), Anya Chalotra (as Yennefer) and Freya Allan (as Ciri) are up to the task.

As someone with only limited experience of the characters in either their game or book forms, I couldn't possibly speak to the authenticity of their portrayals, but the atmospheric trailer certainly looks the part, sporting the kind of lavish production you'd expect from Netflix - and would certainly want in order to do justice to The Witcher's epic fantasy spectacle.

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Acclaimed Industrial Revolution city builder, Anno 1800, gets its first paid DLC expansion this month in the form of Sunken Treasure, and developer Blue Byte has detailed the new activities, including shipwreck hunting and crafting, it will bring when it arrives on 30th July.

Sunken Treasure, which can be purchased individually or part of Anno 1880's season pass, introduces a new, six-hour storyline with "dozens" of new quests - accessible as soon as players reach the 700 artisans milestone - and a new continental session known as Cape Trelawney.

Trelawney's primary new landmass (which is joined by small, medium, and large islands) is packed with fertile earth and resources, and is three times the size of Anno 1800's current largest island. Blue Byte says it's been designed specifically, at the behest of the community, to deliver a more sandbox-like space that enables players to experiment more liberally, free from the space and resource restrictions of existing locations, as they build a prosperous metropolis.

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Next week, pirates across the world will be raising anchor and swinging swords as part of a two-day Sea of Thieves-focussed Twitch Rivals event - and to encourage a few more eyes on the action, Rare is giving away the exceedingly fancy new Obsidian ship livery to those that tune in.

Twitch Rivals' Sea of Thieves Showdown event runs from Tuesday, 23rd July to Wednesday, 24th July and will consist of four contests, with participants all battling to secure the $100,000 USD prize. Meanwhile, the new Obsidian ship livery (which you can admire in the video below), can be obtained by watching one complete match of Sea of Thieves' competitive Arena mode per day - which isn't too much of an ask given that a round of Arena lasts 24 minutes.

Those that successfully watch a complete Arena match (or, at the very least, have it on in the background) on 23rd July will receive the Obsidian Figurehead and Obsidian Hull, and can complete the set with the Obsidian Sail and Obsidian Flag by watching a match on 24th July.

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Perhaps the most discussed aspect of Teamfight Tactics' design is the way it dishes out items. A match of Riot's League of Legends-themed auto chess game includes a number of PVE rounds, each designed to give players items or gold.

This system adds randomness to the game - something Riot believes strongly in - but it's felt players who get lots of items early on have an advantage over those who do not.

Only now, though, are players finding out that the game will give players a leg up later on if you don't get items early on.

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The buzz surrounding the third generation Ryzen has been extraordinary, with AMD's new range of processors taking the fight to Intel's incumbent CPU champions in seemingly spectacular style. The basic AMD formula remains the same - more cores, more threads and more performance for less money - but a range of architectural improvements and a massive increase in cache size sees Team Red attempting to address Ryzen's weaknesses in single thread performance. At the same time, the firm has moved to 7nm chip fabrication, meaning that AMD actually has a process advantage over Intel for the first time, meaning smaller, cooler, more power-efficient products than the Intel competitors.

Meanwhile, AMD hasn't been sitting still outside of the chip, either. The Ryzen 7 3700X ships with a really good cooler in the box (something Intel doesn't do on its higher end products) while the new line of processors supports PCI Express 4.0 bandwidth when paired with a new X570 chipset motherboard. Socket AM4 remains the primary interface between CPU and board and as long as you update the BIOS, the vast majority of older boards should be able to handle the new chips. AMD also gets bonus points here for allowing overclockable memory to run on both mid-range and high-end boards, meaning you should still get good performance from third-gen Ryzen even with older motherboards using the B350 chipset.

AMD has launched a full product stack for Ryzen 3000, but unfortunately, owing to a pile-up in GPU releases, this review is somewhat late. We have both the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X and the six-core Ryzen 5 3600X waiting in the wings, but the focus of this review is on the eight-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 3700X. The last-gen Ryzen offerings failed to convince in gaming up against Intel equivalents including the quad-core i7 7700K, the hexa-core i7 8700K and of course, Intel's own octo-core 9900K. However, the architectural advancements here should blunt some of Intel's inherent advantages.

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