There are a lot of Metroidvanias around. Some are wonderful. Some not so much. But nowadays it's a space that's tough to stand out in. I can't see Savior having that problem though.

Savior is a 2D pixel art action adventure platformer like so many others, but its animation work for the playable character looks head and shoulders above that of its peers. There's silky-smooth parkour-like jumping here, which is great, but I just love the precision melee combat. You're able to slide under enemies, jump on their heads to use them as a platform, and parry attacks and dodge arrows in a fast fashion. It reminds me a bit of the Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace lightsaber battle between Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Sith lord Darth Maul, with a healthy dose of old-school Prince of Persia thrown in for good measure.

Savior is the work of Starsoft Entertainment, and Dan Adelman, who headed up Nintendo of America's indie effort before leaving to work with indie developers directly, is on board. There's no release date, but there is a Steam page.

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I've always been a fan of first-person shooter multiplayer matches that feature cool intros. I love the way you leap out of a carrier to start the fight in Respawn's Titanfall 2. Call of Duty: WW2's intro for the wonderful War mode, which sees soldiers sat next to each other as they're driven into the battlefield, gets the blood pumping. And Destiny 2's Gambit mode has a deliciously troll-fuelled intro, which sees each team face each other, free to spam emotes before and after each round.

Now, add Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to the list of shooters with cool multiplayer intros.

In a brief video published to Twitter, Activision revealed how multiplayer matches start in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. In the example shown, the players are flown in via chopper onto the landing zone and, without a break in the shot, hit the ground with weapons up. The countdown is up and the match starts.

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The actual fighting in auto chess is automatic. Round after round, you sit and watch your units smash lumps out of your opponent's units until there is a victor. The gameplay revolves around planning and strategy - and making decisions quickly between rounds. So while it seems on the face of it like there's plenty of downtime in an average game of auto chess, you have to focus and concentrate quite a bit if you want to win.

But, for one streamer at least, you can always do more.

American Twitch streamer Byron Bernstein, aka Reckful, took Teamfight Tactics and doubled it, playing on two accounts at the same time.

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As part of its Doom Eternal QuakeCon keynote this weekend, id Software has revealed more of the game's intriguing new asymmetrical multiplayer experience, Battlemode.

While Doom 2016 featured a competent, if ultimately rather forgettable, multiplayer mode that predominantly focussed on the classic human-versus-human deathmatch template established by the seminal series' earliest iterations, Doom Eternal introduces Battlemode, pitting one Slayer against two-player controlled demons in a best-of-five-match skirmish.

The goal is to bring more of the "fast, aggressive" dynamism from Doom's much-lauded single-player campaign into the multiplayer arena, and Battlemode will launch with six unique maps and five playable demons: the Arch-vile, Mancubus, Marauder, Pain Elemental, and Revenant, each with their own skills. The Revenant, for instance, can take advantage of its jetpack, dash, and shoulder-mounted rockets, while the flying Pain Elemental can easily track and attack the Slayer from the air, intermittently deploying its rechargeable Soul shield.

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Developer Whoop Group's thoroughly delightful wooden train set builder Tracks will be leaving Steam early access on 20th September, and it's coming to Xbox One on the same day.

Tracks: The Train Set Game (as it's more formally known) will have been ambling pleasantly through early access for just under two years come September's launch, and it's continued to remain one of my very favourite time-hoovers on PC throughout.

Inspired by the classic wooden train sets from the likes of Brio, Tracks is a genteel, but utterly engrossing sandbox experience, focussed almost exclusively on the simple pleasures of plopping down track, them theming it up using a huge selection of beautifully designed props.

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UPDATE 7.58pm: As the shadow of hatmageddon continues to loom over Team Fortress 2's trading economy, Valve has taken early steps to prevent players from securing more rare head adornments using the game's current loot box glitch.

In a bid to stop further Unusuals from flooding the market, Valve has now (as detailed by TF2 reddit mod wickedplayer494) disabled the display of Team Fortress 2 inventories on the Steam Community, preventing trades and listings on the Community Market. Player items can, however, still be used in-game.

Valve has yet to issue an official statement on the glitch - or indeed what, if anything, it plans to do to restore order to the TF2 trading economy - but at least the community will be impeccably attired while the whole thing sinks into the mud.

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This week, the UK's Gambling Commission confirmed to a parliamentary enquiry that loot boxes, FIFA player packs and the like do not constitute gambling under UK law, since there is no official way to cash out your winnings from these blind reward packs. The player, skin or card you might win from a blind pack doesn't have monetary value - officially - so rolling the dice on 'packing' it isn't gambling, even if you paid real money for the privilege.

Also this week, Rockstar opened a casino in Grand Theft Auto Online after a six-year wait. There are no semantics to be unpicked here: it is a straight-up depiction of gambling, and since GTA Online's in-game currency is for sale more-or-less directly in the form of Shark Cards, you can buy in with real money. But once again, you can't cash out - officially. So, at least as far as UK law would have it, it isn't gambling.

It was hardly a shock move from Rockstar, which already allowed players to wager on games of poker in Red Dead Online. It was, you might argue, unhelpful timing for an industry that is under renewed scrutiny from Parliament - and other bodies worldwide - for the playing and spending habits it encourages, particularly in children. But Rockstar is no stranger to such controversy and often courts it. It suits the developer's bad-boy image - not to mention the glossy gangster fiction of GTA. And anyway, the law is on its side.

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What could be scarier than having to protect yourself from supernatural forces of evil in a dark and foreboding forest? Having to also protect your beloved pet dog, of course. Please let the dog survive.

Thanks to new footage from Game Informer, we now have an idea how the upcoming Blair Witch game will work, and most importantly, the bonding techniques you can use to become best buddies with your canine companion.

As revealed in the initial E3 teaser, the game is set in 1996, where the player takes on the role of ex-policeman Ellis to search for a missing kid. The new footage shows Ellis venturing through the forest, where he instructs his dog Bullet to sniff and track scents. You'll also be able to send Bullet to retrieve items from small spaces, and alert you to monsters when they inevitably approach.

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Discord has done what certain consoles have not - it's only gone and added folders!

Yes, you can now shuffle away and organise your various Discord servers into neatly organised collections. You can name these folders, and you can also give them a coloured background. Truly, we are now living in the future.

Folders have been a highly-requested feature for the gaming chat service for a very long time, and their addition today has been warmly received by fans. Now you have a way of hiding all those servers you're still a member of but it would be too awkward to leave.

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Epic is finally beginning to introduce a feature we've been expecting for a while - cloud saves.

A player spotted the new function in the setting pages for recent Epic Store freebie, Moonlighter, and Epic boss Tim Sweeney confirmed the feature is enabled right now for a select few new games.

Reddit user u/arctyczyn also noted This War of Mine (which went up on the store for free at the same time as Moonlighter) currently supports cloud saves too. Sweeney noted Epic has "a bit more work to do before rolling it out more widely".

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