Matt Fraction's run on the Hawkeye comics famously started with a brief text preamble: "Clint Barton, a.k.a Hawkeye, became the greatest sharpshooter known to man. He then joined the Avengers.

"This is what he does when he's not being an Avenger."

It was a good pitch reinforced by an even better execution. And no, it's certainly not the first or last time that a superhero comic focused on a protagonist's personal life instead of world-saving escapades, but Fraction took the archer Avenger and managed to place him in a lovable everyman context. Whether it's dealing with shitty landlords, with relationship troubles, with injured pets, with the strange half-fame of being one of the world's lesser-known heroes, Clint muddles through it all with a bow, his bestie Kate Bishop, and a selection of ill-fitting T-shirts.

Make no mistake, the good stuff in Hawkeye (2012) isn't in the action, it's in our protagonist. Under Fraction's eye, Clint is a character filled with a deep sense of ennui, seemingly at a loss for what to do with himself whenever he's not shooting at supervillains. He somehow manages to feel out of place everywhere, looking uncomfortable in expensive galas, dirty alleyways, or even among other heroes. The first time you finally see him looking confident is when he's part of a frantic car chase, firing bizarre trick arrows at gangsters. It's an important distinction: Hawkeye is the character who knows what he's doing, but Clint Barton is barely able to cope on a day-to-day basis.

However, the comics also don't make a complete mockery of Clint, which is a nice change. Too many stories that try to deconstruct characters end up descending into meanness and cruelty, tearing them to shreds so the audience can get a brief sneer. Instead, Fraction doesn't hate Barton, he sympathises with him. Too heroic for the normal world, too normal for the heroic world, and overshadowed in the public eye by the larger-than-life vigilantes he stands with.

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If you've ever enjoyed an arcade racer, I can pretty much guarantee you'll find something to enjoy in Hotshot Racing. Apologies for opening on such a banality, but honestly it's true - and that's partly because there's a little bit of every arcade racer of note in Lucky Mountain Games and Sumo Digital's enjoyable, knockabout medley of all that's great and good about the genre.

There's some of Virtua Racing, Winning Run and those other early 3D pioneers in Hotshot Racing, withs its lo-polygon look that's so sharp you could slice your finger on its hard edges. And this really is a striking thing, both in stills and in motion: commendably, it's 60fps across all platforms, that slickness doing justice to colourful, overstated worlds that feel like the developers have had some of whatever Sega was drinking in its mid-90s heyday. They're upbeat fantasy worlds, presided over by gargantuan statues and speeding under blue, blue skies.

There's a touch more Sega beneath those visuals - a dash of Scud Race in its garage that takes inspiration from real-life legends, a little OutRun in its drifting and drafting, both of which are then used to fill up a multi-stage boost bar that's pure Burnout. The drifting itself takes its cues from Split/Second, with cars quick to break traction and just as happy to snap back into line in what's a very approachable brand of arcade racing. It's incredibly easy to get to grips with, perhaps because this is the sort of thing best experienced with a bunch of rowdy friends in the four-player splitscreen that's on offer.

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The classic Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 will be getting a new Complete Edition release for PC and Nintendo Switch on 24th September.

Published by original developer Frontier, this version of the theme park management sim includes both Soaked! and Wild! expansions, meaning a total of 300 coasters and rides, 500 scenery items, 60 shops and other services, plus 20 animals.

Both platforms will see tweaked controls and visuals to bring the game a little more up to date. On PC it'll offer 1080p widescreen support for the first time, and be available via Steam and the Epic Store.

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A new studio has been founded to make Lords of the Fallen 2 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Publisher CI Games announced Hexworks, a new studio based in Barcelona and Bucharest that's building the fantasy action-RPG sequel.

It's led by executive producer Saul Gascon and creative director Cezar Virtosu. Gascon was global development director at Overkill studio Starbreeze (and executive producer on Overkill's ill-fated The Walking Dead game) before a short stint at Smilegate Barcelona. Virtosu was previously as Paris-based support studio Virtuos, and before that Ubisoft Bucharest.

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For every one thing to love about Marvel's Avengers, there's something to cancel it out, as though it's a shiny machine that's been meticulously crafted by clever people in white coats and clipboards to neutralise every last drop of enjoyment.

It doesn't matter what great ingredients you feed into the mouth of the machine - a loveable lead, perhaps, or a stellar voice cast - because by the end of it, the device works to counter every one of those positives with something irritating or frustrating. The result is a curiously bland, neutral experience that's neither terrific nor terrible but masterfully straddles both in a way that's quite frankly astonishing.

To make matters worse, there are many times - usually within the mostly satisfying single-player campaign - when Marvel's Avengers isn't bland at all. Kamala Khan - aka Ms Marvel - is adorable, and her story, if a little predictable, hits all the beats you'd expect from a tale set in such an iconic universe. The combat is fine, if unrefined. The visuals are fine, if unremarkable. The looting is fine, if a bit useless. The environments are fine, if a bit repetitive. The gentle loot puzzles are fine, if shockingly simple. But fine isn't going to keep you here, is it? Fine isn't enough to make more demands of your time and money. And that's the problem.

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CD Projekt has moved to clarify the nature of microtransactions in Cyberpunk, insisting they're planned for the multiplayer game only.

CD Projekt boss Adam Kicinski said in a recent financial earnings call that the company is looking for ways to encourage Cyberpunk players to spend money without upsetting them.

"Well, we are never aggressive towards our fans," he said. "We treat them fair and we're friendly. So of course not, we won't be aggressive. But you can expect great things to be bought. The goal is to design the monetisation in a way that makes people happy spending money. And no, I'm not cynical. I'm not trying to hide something. It's about giving the feeling of value, always.

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What's the best drift in the world of racing games? Maybe it's the blue-blooded pair of Out Run, with its stick-induced shift that broke a thousand arcade cabinets, and OutRun 2, with its majestic arcs. Or perhaps it's something more modern - Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit with its big-bottomed supercars, or Burnout which helped birth Criterion's particularly weighty take on the artform. Whatever your own pick might be, I'd like to introduce a new contender to the debate: allow me to introduce Inertial Drift, a novel and exquisite thing.

The elevator pitch is simple - this is a twin stick racer - but requires a little more explanation. In Inertial Drift, your left stick steers as it does in many other racers, though if you depend on that alone you'll soon find yourself noisily scraping along the walls. It's best to think of the steering input as a modifier for your drift angle, that angle controlled with your right stick. And then it's about working the two in tandem, maintaining momentum and as outrageous an angle of attack as you dare, glancing apexes with a side-turned nose.

That's the fundamentals, but writing them down plainly doesn't do justice to the glorious interplay between the two, or to where Inertial Drift takes them. It's a game that asks you to put in a little groundwork - it'll take at least half a dozen laps to start to get comfortable with Inertial Drift's ways - but it'll give you so much in return. Belfast-based developer Level 91 knows it's on to a good thing with its core mechanic, and goes about exploring it in ever-exciting ways.

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As anyone who's played the games will know, family bloodlines can end up getting a little weird in Crusader Kings - so why not add vampirism and lycanthropy to the mix?

Princes of Darkness is an overhaul mod based on the World of Darkness universe (the setting for Vampire: The Masquerade), and brings some good old Transyvlanian energy to the medieval world of Crusader Kings 3. It's made by the same team who completed its predecessor mod for Crusader Kings 2, and judging by the sheer complexity of this one, it's clear the team has some experience.

I'm not fully up to speed on World of Darkness lore, but I dipped my toe into the mod and still managed to keep up - as much as I usually can in Crusader Kings, anyway. The important thing is you're a vampire, and therefore practically immortal: regular causes of death like disease won't end your life, but you can still be torched or decapitated. More worryingly, failing to manage your stress levels (known as "The Beast") will cause you to transform into a feral wight, resulting in your character's abdication. Oh, and everyone will hate you.

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Heh, I'm still smiling thinking about Lair of the Clockwork God. It's so cheeky. I love how it does everything in service of a good joke. It's even prepared to let you get the wrong idea about something so it can pull an 'a-ha!' moment on you later on. I'd been planning to tell the game off for something in the review until I realised it had all been a big joke and I felt silly. What a wonderful long con. I've never seen a game do it, not like that, nor have I seen a game bundle a separate game, a prequel, that you won't understand the use of until you're about half-way through the main game. It's inspired.

Let's recap a bit. Lair of the Clockwork God belongs to the Ben and Dan series, not that you need to be in any way aware of it to play and enjoy this. The previous games were Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentleman, Please! from about 10 years ago. They're point-and-click adventure games which take the piss out of everything around them and they are very funny. Lair is very much like them, except Lair has a significant new concept (in addition to being much better looking): it's both an adventure game and a platformer.

This dual mechanic manifests in the game's two characters, Ben and Dan - incidentally the name of the game's two creators, Ben Ward and Dan Marshall (who you might know from The Swindle). Ben behaves like a character in an adventure game: he walks around interacting with objects and people, picking things up and combining them to make new items to solve puzzles. Dan, on the other hand, behaves like a platformer character: he runs and jumps around, pushing and pulling large crates. And of course, both Dan and Ben need to work together to overcome situations.

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Like a replicant during a Voight-Kampff test, there's something a little off about the Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition. That's how I felt after watching this official comparison video, anyway.

The video, released by developer Nightdive Studios overnight, compares footage of the original - and superb - 1997 point-and-click adventure game set in the Blade Runner universe, with footage of the same cinematic from the currently in development Enhanced Edition. According to the video, the original on the left is running at 15 frames per second in 640 x 480 resolution. The Enhanced Edition on the right is 60 frames per second in 4K.

For me - and I'm no technical whizz - there's something weird about the "cleaned up" right version. It looks upscaled, sure, but something is lost in the upscaling, whether it's a sense of the game presenting a "lived in" virtual world or something else, it's hard to put my finger on it. Perhaps I need to run it past a Baseline!

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