After entering early access in September and intending to launch this year, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt has delayed its full launch and is preparing to shut down the servers until it's done. The developers, Sharkomob say they want to focus on improving the battle royale game following feedback, including fighting cheats. While the Vampire: The Masquerade game people really want is mired in unknown development hell, I know some have found comfort in sucking drops of satisfaction from Bloodhunt—what say you, gang?

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Barry Hattrick has just signed a two-year contract with Stockport County FC. The 36-year-old former full-back, a Stockport native and lifelong fan of the Vanarama National League club, has a tactical style best described as 'my dad after three pints'. Route-one, 4-4-2, and no 'larking about'. He thinks a gegenpress is something you use to get the creases out of your trousers.

Hattrick is a quintessentially English anachronism, whose ignorance of the modern game represents my own unfamiliarity with modern Football Manager. It's been quite some time since I last sported the greying temples and Fray-Bentos paunch of football's favourite scapegoat, and returning to Football Manager is a bit like meeting up with an old girlfriend after they've had their consciousness uploaded into an all-knowing AI. I vaguely recognise the face behind all the ones and zeroes, but that person I once snuggled up with on winter evenings has ascended into something vast, intimidating, and utterly obsessed with data.

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Moncage is one of those puzzle games of intermittent lightbulb moments. One minute you see solutions with perfect clarity. The next you're left scratching your head and wondering how the heck you're meant to proceed. It wouldn't be much of a puzzle game if there weren't a few moments like this, of course, but when you're playing out mechanical riddles across five possible surfaces - in this case, the sides and top of a rotatable cube - Moncage can sometimes veer into giving you a complete cerebral blackout, leaving you at an impasse until you consult its series of timed hints (or, if you're really desperate, an in-game video solution).

When the lightbulb pings into bright, brilliant existence, though, Moncage can be truly illuminating. As you rotate, prod and investigate its five little vignettes to line-up matching bits of scenery in one tile to affect the corresponding bit in another, Optillusion's debut game harks back to the best bits from Fireproof Studios' The Room series. It's a beautifully crafted little thing, and it builds on its ideas to create some genuinely standout moments of optical wizardry. If only the story it was trying to tell was half so elegant.

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Activision have made a big deal of fighting cheaters with Call Of Duty: Vanguard, bragging about new anti-cheat tech Ricohet, and a new progress report on their anti-cheat efforts makes clear they really want wrong'uns gone. If you get banned for cheating, they'll ban you from the whole Call Of Duty series (well, as much as accounts allow). Eat it, nerks.

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Square Enix had said that Outriders was successful enough for them to justify expanding upon it, and so they shall. During a stream today they announced a big free update is coming to People Can Fly's looter-shooter on Tuesday, with a full expansion to follow in 2022. This week's free additions will include new Expeditions and a transmogrification system so you can make your wizards look all fancy.

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While Halo Infinite doesn't officially launch until December, surprise! The FPS's full multiplayer launched today into open beta, though it has all the maps and modes, it is the official start of the first season, and all progress will carry over, so basically it's out now, just might be a bit wonky. Hinfinite's multiplayer side is free-to-play so all are invited.

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The simple explanation of Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is a game where you embody the nascent consulting detective, aged 21, returning to Cordona, the Mediterranean island where he spent time as a child. It's a third-person puzzle adventure. You gather the evidence, cross reference it all, and then come to a conclusion on the case. Young Holmes returned to Cordona to find out how his mum died a decade ago, and is helped by his best mate Jon, this season's Creepy Watson. Boy, do they get in some scrapes along the way! Bingo, bango, there's yer preamble.

But the complex explanation is that this game, ironically, defies explanation. As I played, I oscillated wildly between thinking, "This is Frogwares' world and we're all just living in it!" and, "What is even happening, what is this, I need a ten-part documentary series that just follows the developers around because they really have a lot of explaining to do."

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Morse, the strategy game that teaches you real morse code to win a war, has come a long way since we first wrote about it in 2015. What started out as a free flash game (and a makeshift telegraph key made out of a clothes peg) now has proper 3D graphics and quite possibly the most impressive custom controller setup I've ever seen. When I played the demo at EGX 2021 last month, not only had creator AlexVSCoding made an entire telegraph machine for the occasion, but he'd also managed to source a pair of headphones from the 1930s to really hammer home the idea of being a wartime telegraph operator.

Obviously, you don't need a pair of 90-year-old headphones to enjoy playing Morse. A modern headset will do just as well. You also don't technically need the telegraph machine either, as there's an onscreen button interface you can click with your mouse. But let me tell you, pressing those morse code buttons in-game wasn't half as immersive as tapping out the commands on a proper dedicated machine, and I wish there was some way Morse could give everyone that experience when it finally launches in full.

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Morse, the strategy game that teaches you real morse code to win a war, has come a long way since we first wrote about it in 2015. What started out as a free flash game (and a makeshift telegraph key made out of a clothes peg) now has proper 3D graphics, a full team of developers behind it called Aljo Games, and quite possibly the most impressive custom controller setup I've ever seen. When I played the demo at EGX 2021 last month, not only had creator Alex Johansson made an entire telegraph machine for the occasion (together with custom controller designer Katy Marshall), but he'd also managed to source a pair of headphones from the 1930s to really hammer home the idea of being a wartime telegraph operator.

Obviously, you don't need a pair of 90-year-old headphones to enjoy playing Morse. A modern headset will do just as well. You also don't technically need the telegraph machine either, as there's an onscreen button interface you can click with your mouse. But let me tell you, pressing those morse code buttons in-game wasn't half as immersive as tapping out the commands on a proper dedicated machine, and I wish there was some way Morse could give everyone that experience when it finally launches in full.

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Last year, Wales Interactive released Maid Of Sker, a first-person survival horror set in a creepy hotel. It's your typical kinda horror experience - a singleplayer romp making you solve puzzles and linger in horrible places while trying to avoid spooks. You might expect that a second Sker-y game would follow a similar formula. Nope. This weekend, the developers announced Sker Ritual, a co-op shooter in which you'll need to survive an onslaught of ghouls.

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