I consider myself quite the all-rounder when it comes to playing games. I’ve sampled a little bit of what sometimes feels like every game ever made during my five-squared years on this earth. And yet somehow, inconceivably, before last year’s Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare I’d never played a CoD game before. I’ve no idea how it happened (or didn’t happen), but it did (or didn’t).

Then, as if to make up for all that lost time, the CoD Gods dropped Call Of Duty: Warzone on me a scant few months later. And in a twist of irony, I’ve played very few games since.

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Welcome To Elk

recognises we’re probably all overdue a trip. Oh, a change of scenery would be nice, but it’s the people who make the place – the strange, sombre and often surreal stories from folks we’d never otherwise get to meet. While there’s still a global pandemic going on in the real world, developers Triple Topping are taking us on a trip to their storybook island starting today.

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Hogwarts Legacy

might be set 200 years before lightning-face shows up, but it couldn’t pre-empt the series creator’s transphobic outbursts. Following its debut at last night’s Playstation show, publishers Warner Bros. have attempted to reassure troubled fans that author JK Rowling is not “directly involved” in the game’s production – though they’re being cagey on just how, exactly, she stands to benefit from the game’s success.

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Sorry, Disintegration. Your gravity-defying motorbikes might’ve been fast, but it looks like they couldn’t keep pace when it came to multiplayer. A mere 3 months after release, V1 Interactive and Private Division announced they’ll be mothballing the game’s online offerings, starting today with the removal of the in-game store.

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Get in the car, loser, we’re going to Mexico – and we’re not paying for the first hundred miles. Starting today, the first episode of supernatural teen sequel Life Is Strange 2is going completely free, permanently. Oh, you’ll still have to pay up to see their journey through to completion, but now you can spend a few hours with the Diaz brothers as they begin their cross-state road trip to the border.

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This week, we at the Electronic Wireless Show were digital innovators and did our podcast live and on camera as part of PAX X EGX. It went really well and there were no slight technical hitches where my camera kept resizing itself on screen for a bit near the start. Our theme was simulation games, partly so I could talk about The Sims a lot, but also because we want to talk about how games simulate life>.

Though you can of course watch the video version, we’ve also stripped the audio for yer more traditional podpost, so it should be in your podcast feeds…now! Come for the digressions about Chris Evans, stay for the Cavern of lies, which had an extra layer of difficulty of danger and difficulty this week, because we could make eye contact with Nate while he lied to us.

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Pack an extra-thick trenchcoat and woolly fedora, readers. Empire Of Sin, the tactical prohibition crime spree from Romero Games and Paradox Interactive, is preparing to hit the streets this December. As I hear it, Chicago winters are real rough – but what better time to start extorting, shooting and smart-talking your way to the top than under the cover of a roaring blizzard?

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I am, sadly, no closer to my life’s goal of befriending a flock of crows. But thanks to Wingspan, I can at least pretend to be mates will all manner of feathered friends without fear of being pecked to death. Following last year’s stellar tabletop edition, Wingspan’s aviary collect-a-thon comes to roost on Steam with a digital adaptation, out now.

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Famed for its steep requirements and melting PCs the world over, the original Crysis was arguably one of the most important PC games of its day when it first came out in 2007. Not only did it push current PCs to their limits, but it also became a touchstone for the avid benchmarkers in the years that followed. Whenever you built a new PC, the joke was always, “But can it run Crysis?”

Now, that joke is probably going to become, “But can it run Crysis Remastered?”, which arrives on the Epic Games Store tomorrow, September 18th. With support for 8K textures, software-driven ray tracing, real-time reflections and loads more, developer Crytek and partner Saber Interactive have given the 2007 original quite the new coat of graphical paint – and I got to speak with Crysis Remastered’s project lead Steffen Halbig ahead of the game’s launch to talk all about it. We chat about everything from what kind of performance you can expect from its official PC requirements, to how their software-based ray tracing works, and why there’s currently no system on the planet that can max out its aptly-named “Can It Run Crysis?” mode.

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Ubisoft have released the PC requirements for Watch Dogs Legions, detailing exactly what kind of system you’re going to need to run the game on High settings at 1080p and 1440p, and what it takes to run the game on Ultra at 4K. They’ve also got dedicated requirements for what you’re going to need to take advantage of the game’s ray tracing support, too, both at 1080p and 4K resolutions. Here they are in full.

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