In 2008, Media Molecule launched its debut game LittleBigPlanet. The idea behind the ambitious project was to make a game where players could create their own stages and share them with a community of players, or as the tagline more succinctly puts it: "Play, Create, Share."

Upon its release, LittleBigPlanet received almost unanimous acclaim from critics, becoming one of Sony's most interesting exclusives for the PlayStation 3. But two sequels and several spinoffs later, the series has become somewhat dormant, with the lack of support frustrating the most dedicated fans.

Media Molecule appears to have put the series largely behind it, focusing its attention on its latest passion project, another creation game called Dreams. Meanwhile, those who are still playing LittleBigPlanet 3, the third game in the series developed by Sumo Digital, are reporting persistent problems with corrupted profiles and other glitches that are driving the community away. Problems that have led to some players posting tips on Reddit to avoid or limit the damage done. Things were looking grim for LittleBigPlanet fans. That was, until late 2019, when there was a beacon of hope.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's second season of post-launch content has, following several days of major leakage, finally been officially revealed, and its array of new maps, modes, and battle pass rewards are available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Furthermore, there are strong hints that a battle royale mode is imminent.

Modern Warfare's second season themes its additions around the fight against Al-Qatala, as it attempts to isolate the city of Verdansk using a stolen Soviet nuclear warhead. "On the brink of a global catastrophe," explains Activision, "Captain Price sends in Ghost to track down the location of the warhead and lead key Operators before it's too late."

That bit of scene-setting leads us on to the good stuff, with Season 2 promising five new maps as the weeks go by, with three of those available now.

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Ubisoft has unveiled Warlords of New York, a brand-new paid expansion for online shooter The Division 2 that's heading to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC on 3rd March.

Warlords of New York, as its name implies, sees The Division 2 leaving its current base of operations in Washington DC and returning to the city in which the series started in order to tie up a few narrative loose ends left dangling in The Division 1.

Players - either working solo or with friends via online co-op - are tasked with bringing down rogue former Division Agent Aaron Keener, as well as his four lieutenants, in a campaign that unfolds in the hurricane-ravaged summertime streets of Lower Manhattan. It's open-world, as you'd expect, and Ubisoft is attempting another 1:1 recreation of the area, incorporating real-life locations including Battery Park, Wall Street, Chinatown, and Two Bridges.

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Bulletstorm developer People Can Fly has offered up fresh information on its co-op sci-fi shooter Outriders, confirming it'll now be heading to PS5 and Xbox Series X - as well as Steam, Xbox One, and PS4 - this "holiday", slightly later than previously revealed.

Outriders received its official unveiling, along with a tentative "summer 2020" release window, back at E3 last year. It's described as a "dark modern shooter with a traditional voice", and promises intense, RPG-infused action - playable solo or co-operatively in teams of up to three.

"As mankind bleeds out in the trenches of Enoch," explains People Can Fly, "you'll create your own Outrider and embark on a journey across a hostile planet. With rich storytelling spanning a diverse world, you'll leave behind the slums and shanty towns of the First City and traverse forests, mountains and deserts in pursuit of a mysterious signal."

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Here's something to tickle your funny bone: hackers have figured out how to spawn two-headed skeletons into Red Dead Online, and they've been taking unsuspecting players by surprise.

First spotted by VG247, the skeletons have been getting the jump on PC players (and one reported case on PS4), a number of whom seem decidedly rattled by the experience. In one particularly entertaining post, a two-headed skeleton gets into a fist fight with a player in the middle of the road. Or Rhodes, rather.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for something already dead, it seems the thing cannot die, with some players resorting to hogtying the wriggling creature to contain it. "Dynamite, fire, burning it over your campfire, throwing it off a really high bridge, shooting it with every weapon... nothing killed it," said Reddit user GrubbyScrub.

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Filament is a game about helping people. And it's a real nest-of-tables affair, stacked several levels deep. You wake up on a spaceship suspended, gorgeously, above the slowly turning surface of an alien planet. There's a voice in your head that seems to be telling you that there's someone else stuck on the ship too, and you should work to free them. And to do that? To do that you'll need help yourself.

This is where the filament comes into Filament. When you bobble around the ship and interact with a bit of broken technology, you get the chance to un-break it via a proxy. What this means is that every now and then you find yourself playing a neat little puzzle game in which a robot attached to an endlessly unspooling cord has to power-up a bunch of nodes by touching them all with the cord. It's deeply tangible stuff. Imagine you've got a table with a few nails sticking out of it, and you've got a piece of string tied to one of the nails. Can you loop the string around all the nails without crossing over yourself? That's Filament.

Of course, you need to get the cord around all the nodes and then still be able to make it to the exit that opens up once all the nodes are activated. All of this without crossing your own path! Filament's a wonderful puzzler, and it's also wonderfully maddening - because you can get the exit door open and then realise that you've trapped yourself in anyway.

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UPDATE 11/2/18: Cupid has terrible aim, it seems, and his mighty arrow currently appears to be embedded not in the hearts of lovers across the land but in the fritzing remnants of one of Respawn Entertainment's servers. According to the developer, Apex Legends' Valentine's Day limited-time event - which re-introduces the free-to-play battle royale game's much-loved Duos mode - will no longer begin today as previously revealed.

No reason for the delay was given in Respawn's apologetic announcement tweet, but the good news is that players eager to buddy up with a loved one shouldn't have too much longer to wait. Proceedings are now scheduled to get underway tomorrow, 12th February, with Respawn promising to communicate with fans once the update goes live.

ORIGINAL STORY 10/2/18: Apex Legends' much-loved Duos mode is returning tomorrow for a limited-time, as part of the free-to-play battle royale game's Valentine's Day celebrations.

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BioWare has shared its future plans for beleaguered multiplayer shooter Anthem, confirming it's currently in the throes of a "longer-term redesign" that will ultimately deliver a "substantial reinvention" of the core Anthem experience.

Word of a major overhaul for Anthem first surfaced last November, when Kotaku's Jason Schreier reported that plans to radically rework the troubled shooter - into a so-called "Anthem Next" or "Anthem 2.0" - had been on the cards for some time. Eurogamer had previously heard similar word from its own sources.

Now, three months later - and a little under a year since Anthem's rocky launch on Xbox One, PS4, and PC - BioWare general manager Casey Hudson has confirmed those plans in a new blog post. "Over the last year, the team has worked hard to improve stability, performance and general quality of life while delivering three seasons of new content and features," he wrote, "We have also heard your feedback that Anthem needs a more satisfying loot experience, better long-term progression and a more fulfilling end game."

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A good set of speakers can really make the music you listen to and games you play at your computer come alive. Here are our picks for the best computer speakers of 2021, including a range of powered options from £50 to £600 that require no additional equipment.

Each recommendation here is suitable for use with laptops and desktop PCs, and both the mid-range and high-end picks also include Bluetooth and optical inputs to work with games consoles, smartphones and tablets too.

For the purposes of this article, a budget speaker is under £50/$50, a mid-range speaker is around £100/$100 and a high-end speaker is sub-£250/$250. We've also picked a premium option at around £600/$600. Of course, it's possible to spend hundreds or even thousands on all kinds of speakers and sound bars; these definitions are a shorthand for this article alone rather than an industry-wide standard. If you want to spend more, feel free to do your own research on the many options available and find the speaker that fits your needs!

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We've only got a little while to wait until Animal Crossing: New Horizons lands on Switch - a little over a month, in fact - but what if you want to get in on the fun with a PC? Well, it now seems there's an alternative for you, as indie village sim Hokko Life is launching later this year.

Developed as a one-person project by Robert Tatnell, who previously worked for Lionhead and Sony, Hokko Life is a "creativity-filled community sim" for PC. It's pretty easy to see the similarities to Animal Crossing titles: there's a bunch of animal villagers, fishing and bug-catching, for one thing. But Hokko Life seems to be putting its own spin on the formula by asking players to be more creative, introducing a workshop editor and painting functions so players can customise individual pieces of furniture, wallpaper, floors and clothing. These can be crafted with resources found by mining, chopping wood and collecting flowers. And there's also some farming, should you need some fresh air after assembling your furniture.

While there isn't yet a set release date, the game is due to arrive in early access sometime in 2020, and the Steam Store page is certainly worth a look purely for its charming collection of gifs. I do love a good gif.

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