After 15 years, Age Of Empires 3 returns today with a shiny new expanded version. Like the AOE 2 Def Ed before it, Age Of Empires 3: Definitive Edition polishes up Ensemble’s historical real-time strategy game to play nice with modern computers, rolls in all the old expansions, and adds a few new things too. Considering we’ve still not got Nate back from AOE2, I dread to imagine what this might to do him. We’ll find asleep in the RPS treehouse in the morning with a mouse in each hand, two keyboards draped over himself like blankets, and two matches still going.

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I’ve not posted about Age Of Empires 2 in a while, because there’s been a lot of other things on, but I’m still plugging away with it – I start each day with a quick random match against the AI to keep my hand in, and once a week or so, I dare to enter the adrenaline-soaked APM hell of ranked multiplayer. I lose more than I win, but I’m slowly getting better. This match made me feel particularly good, and it had the plot of a classic farce (only with war elephants), so it seemed like a good one to relate to you. Get your Knight Vision Goggles on, then, and let’s see how it played out.

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Genshin Impact’s gacha system allows you to use ‘wishes’ to unlock new characters and weapons. They don’t come as easy as you may want though, and if you’re after that specific new party member or fancy piece of kit, you’ll want to gacha as many wishes as humanly possible. Here’s how to get more wishes in Genshin Impact.

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Primogems are one of Genshin Impact’s most valuable currencies. With them, you can purchase all kinds of things, from wishes to refilling your Original Resin, allowing more rewards to be collected. Here’s how to obtain more Primogems in Genshin Impact.

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When Airplane Mode was announced, it seemed a fun joke: sit in a virtual aeroplane seat for the full duration of a simulated flight, trying to entertain yourself by watching films, eating plane food, reading the in-flight magazine, staring out the window, and all that. Upon its launch today, it’s something else too, a weird virtual memory of a journey that’s now wholly out of the question. Context, eh? I am just sorry it’s not arrived under its original name, Flight Simulator, though I can imagine why that might’ve needed to be changed.

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Three unions that represent Blizzard employees in France called for a strike yesterday, following Activision Blizzard’s decision to shut their office near Versailles. It’s a move that potentially puts hundreds of jobs at risk. The unions claim the company “repeatedly denied” the closure plans, but suspect they’ve actually been planning it for a while.

“In 15 years, many of us left their homes from across Europe and beyond to join the company, people truly invested their whole lives into Blizzard success,” they said. “This comes as a shock for employees who were not expecting that announcement.”

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Sega yesterday announced plans to celebrate their 60th birthday by giving away a number of small retro-y games, including a Streets Of Rage-style demake of Yakuza and the prototype of a cancelled Golden Axe reboot. That last one has turned out to be a big surprise for some of the people who worked on it, who do not have good things to say about their experience of trying to resurrect the side-scrolling fantasy stabber. Not quite the pleasant nostalgic jaunt Sega had hoped for, this.

Update: Sega have responded with a statement saying they didn’t mean to “dredge up painful memories” or “appear disrespectful”, and have changed the Steam description. Read it in full below.>

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I was always fairly lukewarm on the lore behind Blizzard’s Warcraft games, if I’m honest. It seemed to be a case of “all shoulderpads and no substance”, and I couldn’t get why it gripped people so much. But then I got into Hearthstone. For whatever reason, the card game’s take on the Warcraftiverse, which somehow manages to ascend to an even higher plateau of camp than the base material, really grew on me, and after five years of playing, I’ve ended up an accidental expert on this ridiculous body of lore. God help me, I even unironically loved the Warcraft movie, Shrek baby and all, and I’m not ashamed to say it.

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It makes me a little bit sad sometimes, when I play something absolutely fascinating that also happens to have barely any chance of getting the recognition it deserves. These games aren’t confined to obscurity because of the ol’ David & Goliath narrative of plucky indies and all-powerful AAA ogres, but because they seem to be made without a care for mass market appeal. Lucifer’s Atoms, from Peter Stock (the developer of the marvellous Armadillo Run), is one such game.

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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

is less than a month away now, so Ubisoft are flinging out details left and right. They’ve made a whole seven minute trailer of them, in fact. The new video talks more about Eivor’s unlockable skills and customising your Viking settlement. They’ve also published the recommended PC specs today, so you can get a gander at those too.

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