If you happened to miss it in the flurry of summer showcases, there’s a new battle royale on the block. Spellbreak ditches firearms in favor of spellcasting mages who can all dual wield magical gauntlets that blend the elements in colorful combos. The battlemage royale launched a duos mode today to go along with its current solos or squads of three options. Proletariat also participated in a PAX panel over the weekend digging into the history of the game’s development from melee viking royale to the explosive mage battleground. Forewarning: there be bears.

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One of the strange things about Crusader Kings 3 is that the sheer size of the world means that even the mightiest empire will still operate in perhaps a quarter of the map at most. When you’re a small realm, or one squished into a corner like Ireland or Kham, you can spend the entire game without proof that most of the world even exists.

It’s a good thing. I like it. Sometimes I like to pause and scroll around the world to see how it’s doing while I was busy taking Yorubaland to the regionals. And that’s when I noticed something about all the AI dynasties.

They have mottos. They have randomly generated mottos. And yet, they have no independent body to evaluate the best ones and give them appropriate awards. Well, we’ll just have to fix that.

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Halo’s long-overdue missing PC releases will continue with Halo 3: ODST next Tuesday, the 22nd of September, Microsoft announced today. ODST was one of Bungie’s last Halo games and it turns away from jacked supersoldier Master Chef to focus on some regular squishy humans: Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. The game has a good squad of these, borrowing voices from noughties sci-fi stars including Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, and Adam Baldwin off Firefly and Tricia Helfer off Battlestar Galactica (plus Nathan Drake, just because). I heard good things but never played it, so I’m quite looking forward to this.

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There are a huge number of rulers to choose from in Crusader Kings 3, and looking at the map it can get a bit overwhelming. Of course, choose the character who most resonates with you – if you want to shag your way to a horny gang of Estonian giants, no one’s stopping you.

We’ve put together some suggestions if you’re stuck though. Here’s the best rulers to pick at the start of CK3, in both 867 and 1066.

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Yeah, it’s not a great look. Hear me out though. Sometimes your heir is just destined to be a rubbish ruler and you have to get them out of the way. With the medieval laws of Crusader Kings 3, you’re forced to pass your hard work down to your descendants and even play as that useless little kid if you’re unlucky.

Wouldn’t it be nice then, if you could kill your offspring to make room for a more appropriate leader? Look, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

So, here’s how to disinherit and, yes, kill your child in Crusader Kings 3.

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There are two stages of packing for a move, as everyone knows. The first stage happens when you have loads of time before you have to leave, and is when you box things up in a way that makes sense. You slowly wrap up all but one of each piece of crockery in old wrapping paper and copies of The Metro, and put them in a box with KITCHEN written on the side. You put most of your books and DVDs in smaller boxes because they are very heavy. The majority of your clothes go into a suitcase.

The second stage is the panic stage, which is done anywhere from about a week from your moving date up to the second you hand your keys back. At this point you shove everything into wherever it will fit and have a lot of boxes that say ‘GENERAL’ or ‘STUFF’. When you start unpacking these boxes, you get to enjoy being suddenly ambushed by a load of pants or a scented candle lurking in a box of plugs and batteries. Unpacking does a very accurate representation of this, whilst also being a very satisfying and sweet game of Tetris-with-stuff.

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Jackbox Games have announced a release date of October 15th for The Jackbox Party Pack 7, their latest collection of daft multiplayer party games. It’ll bring back an old favourite with Quiplash 3, as well as debut four brand new games involving everything from giving rambling talks to drawing characters who battle each other. Jackbox has become a fairly frequent part of social cybernights during these lockdown days, so some fresh games (and fresh Quiplash prompts) sounds grand.

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Good news, 1TB SSD hunters. Newegg have slashed $35 off the excellent WD Blue 3D NAND SSD today, taking this normally $130 bit of SATA storage down to a very agreeable $95, making it quite a bit cheaper than what you’ll find over on Amazon US right now. It’s also better value than the new Samsung 870 Qvo right now, too, making this a great buy if you’re after lots of storage on the cheap.

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Twitch Plays is a strange beast. You’d think that allowing loads of viewers in Twitch chat control all the actions in a video game might be a disaster, and yet the hivemind never seems to disappoint. Twitch chat has tackled Pokémon, (kinda) beat Dark Souls, and they even managed to beat a chess grandmaster at his own game. But now they’ve taken to the skies in Microsoft Flight Simulator, managing to perform a barrel roll and even land a plane together.

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There have been a spate of pretty good deals on Asus gaming laptops over the past few months, and this latest one from Newegg is well worth a look if you’re after an RTX 2080 powered laptop on the cheap. The laptop in question is the super slim Asus ROG Zephyrus S GX531, and one of my biggest complaints when I reviewed it last year was its sky-high price. Fortunately, though, you can get a Core i7 / RTX 2080 model for just $1700 at the moment, which is just a shade cheaper than its regular price of $3000.

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