Humankind is sure angling for a strategic victory this month, outlasting other contenders in the shrinking pool of the top games in August we'd been looking forward to. Better yet than just holding its ground, Amplitude Studios have just announced that their Civ-alike will be coming to Xbox Game Pass for PC at launch as well. That, and they've prepared a snazzy trailer full of big numbers to show just how much you'll be able to get up to in their 4X 'em up later this month.

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At what milestone do we begin contextualizing the age of a game with "do you want to feel old?" If it's five years, well, do you? Because No Man's Sky launched five years ago today. The space exploration sim has celebrated its anniversary with a look back on all its prior major updates and expansions as well as a tiny peek into the future. If for some reason you thought that Hello Games were done doing major updates to their procedural universe, you thought wrong. The next update is called Frontiers and is coming sometime soon.

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I am terrible at Carrier Command 2. Most of us will be, at first. There's a little comfort in that. Its very concept depends on there being a lot to manage, and much of its challenge comes from having to deal with that. A fair bit of the satisfaction springs from mastering all its parts, both discretely and in combination. But after playing it for several days, I'm still nowhere near an expert. I doubt I ever will be.

And that's okay. But I think this falls a little too short of its potential as a single player game to fully win me over.

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Apex Legends has had cross-platform play since October last year, letting players group up with their pals regardless of whether they're playing on console or PC. Unfortunately, it still doesn't have cross-progression, meaning that once you start an account on a platform, your progress is stuck there. Good news on that front though: during a Reddit Q&A over the weekend, Respawn Entertainment assured players cross-platform progression will arrive next year (they just have to sort out some complications first).

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Xbox have announced the date for their next announceathon, which will take place as part of this month's Gamescom festivities. On August 24th, a day before Opening Night Live, Xbox say they'll be showing updates for existing and previously announced games. From the sounds of things, they won't have any brand new games to show, though they do have a nice line-up of upcoming things we could hear about: Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 updates would be very nice indeed.

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Ask the internet what cities you absolutely must visit and it'll suggest somewhere like Tokyo, or Rome, or The Big Apple. Hey, no mention of Button City, though? A crime. I spent a few hours there with some animal friends and it was extremely pleasant. If you're after a place to wind down for a bit, I'd recommend stopping by.

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I spent some time this weekend wallowing happily in Back 4 Blood, the co-op zombie smasher positioned as a "spiritual successor" to Left 4 Dead. Had a great time; got covered in blood. Genuinely, I favour melee quite a lot, and one of the people I played with kept saying "You are covered in so much> blood!" in a tone I took to be one of admiration.

Back 4 Blood does have a whole rich story (including that the Ridden are technically mutants and not zombies, but potay>to, potar>to. There's also some lovely set dressing, particularly in safe houses. One is a flat that has a calendar with a picture of a snapping turtle. Ed really liked that. My favourite bits, though, are the graffiti and post-it notes.

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Last month, hackers took over Apex Legends for a brief period of time to supposedly encourage the developers at Respawn Entertainment to "save" Titanfall. Both Titanfall games, over the last few months especially, have suffered hacks and DDOS attacks leaving them in a bit of a state. At first glance, it would seem the folks participating in the Apex hack were the good guys who only turned to hacking to trying to raise awareness of their troubles. Nope. It turns out the very same group behind the Apex attack are allegedly the cause of Titanfall's issues too, and it's apparently all part of a messy plot to revive the cancelled spin-off, Titanfall Online.

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Sundays are for dropping a bag of rice on the floor and staring at the mess you've created for a while. Before you form a hand-scoop, let's read this week's best writing about games.

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Newly unsealed documents in Epic's antitrust court case against Google allege that the tech giant considered buying "some or all" of Epic Games, out of concern over the Fortnite developer's intention to sidestep the Google Play app store.

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