A couple of weeks ago, I became very intrigued by the look of Ruined King, a spin-off, turn-based, single-player game set in the League of Legends universe, that was released by surprise in mid-November. I've never played LoL, but to my own surprise I've been hooked.

Whereas the main LoL game is, as you probably already know, a MOBA, Ruined King is a narrative RPG set in the port city of... Bilgewater (?) and the creepy Shadow Isles (?). Your task is to help Illaoi (?), Miss Fortune (?) and non-human Ahri (?), along with others, to fight back against the mysterious and deadly Black Mist (?). The Black Mist is some kind of "thing" that's disrupting the whole region, bringing with it shadowy creatures whose main goal is seemingly just to kill everyone.

Those question marks are me displaying my ignorance about this not-cinematic universe, as some of those names have apparently been featured in the series before (in fact, looking it up, all of them have apart from the Black Mist). I had zero idea about what to expect before loading up the game and I have to say, as a LoL-idiot, I find myself engaged in the lore and atmosphere of Ruined King. The story is an interesting adventure.

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Is there anything more festive than getting together to bicker about video games? In time-honoured tradition we're opening the voting up for your top 50 games of the year. Voting closes at 5pm December 15th (which should give you enough time to play through Halo Infinite and consider it for your own voting, or you could maybe just use that time to play some more Dungeon Encounters before voting for that), and results will be published over the Christmas break. As ever, if you can't find the game you'd like to vote for in this list let us know in the comments and we'll add it in as soon as we can!

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UPDATE 4.30pm UK: Halo developer 343 Industries has now said it is working on a way to replay campaign missions in the future - although there's no word on when that might be.

"We haven't announced a date but that is being worked on," 343 Industries associate creative director Paul Crocker told The Verge. "We want to have replay that works well, and when you have a more open game, it gets a lot trickier.

"We made a decision to improve the quality of the single-player campaign to ensure that, as a foundation, that it's as strong as it possibly could be so that we could then add the other features back in."

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Motorsport is drama. It's inherent within the sport's DNA, and sort of inevitable when you get a bunch of highly charged people in charge of millions of pounds worth of precision-engineered equipment and let them have at each other. And so you get rivalries, tensions and sometimes just straight-up dastardly behaviour like we saw last night in Jeddah, and it's no wonder F1's recently expanded success comes off the back of Netflix series Drive to Survive - a show that puts that drama front and centre.

It's the show that has helped F1 finally break the US - pre-sale tickets to next year's Miami event sold out in 40 minutes, even though the cheapest on offer was some £500 - so it's no surprise it's an approach Codemasters is hoping will help push its Grid series in front of a wider audience. With FMV interludes and a fresh emphasis on the rivalries and tensions that have been in the series ever since its TOCA days, Grid Legends is all about the drama.

It's an approach that's been attempted more than once in video games, and with varying results - the FMV scenes of the Need for Speed reboot fell flat, while Codemasters' own F1 series has benefitted from a drama more grounded in the hyper realities of the sport - though the signs are promising for Grid Legends. Utilising the same virtual production techniques seen to great effect recently in The Mandalorian, starring Sex Education's Ncuti Gatwa and written by Ghost of Tsushima's Brad Kane, it's got all the right ingredients at least.

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UPDATE 13/12/21: The wonderful Spiritfarer has now sold 1m copies, developer Thunder Lotus has said. The milestone was announced today, as the game's biggest and final free update arrives.

As of today, Spiritfarer has been updated to its all-encompassing Farewell Edition, which includes all free updates and DLC released so far. Today brings two new spirits to your ship plus a number of other additions - all detailed in our original story below.

ORIGINAL STORY 6/12/21: Spiritfarer will get its final slice of extra content next week, in the shape of its free Jackie and Daria Update.

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This weekend's big Chapter 3 launch - mere hours after Chapter 2's explosive finale - brought with it a brand new map bustling with fresh places to visit, several fan-favourite locations from the game's original map, and plenty of fun Easter eggs and secrets.

There's loads to explore already, but beyond launch there's already a lot more on the way. Next week will bring Spider-Man's web-shooters to the game as a way to swing around. An upcoming crossover for Gears of War will also see Marcus Fenix and Kait Diaz come to the Island.

Searching around the new Island, there are hints at future map changes. Currently, half of the map is covered in snow - but this is expected to recede over the back half of this season in the new year. When that happens, players expect a certain familiar clump of frozen rooftops to emerge from the ice - you can find them now just to the left of the new Island's centre.

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UPDATE 07/12/21: Square Enix has confirmed that Final Fantasy 14 now has 25 million registered players.

Back in October, the game was confirmed to be the most profitable in the series and had surpassed 24 million players. That means the game has added around a million new registered players in the last month or so.

With the official release of new expansion Endwalker today, the number of registered players is only going to continue to grow.

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It's a leap of faith, Halo Infinite. 343 took that old, reliable Halo formula, that magic golden triangle of combat its predecessor perfected, and dared to spread it across a sort of open world. It could have gone horribly wrong. Based on how the campaign looked just a year ago, I thought it had done. But I'm delighted to report 343 stuck the landing - like Master Chief slamming into the new and mysterious Halo ring upon which Infinite is set.

I thought Halo 5: Guardians did a lot right, but I get the feeling 343 has tried to leave it behind as it plots out Halo's future. Infinite is a spiritual reboot of the franchise, set chronologically after the controversial events of Halo 5, but taking inspiration from Bungie's seminal Halo: Combat Evolved not just in gameplay feel, but in tone, aesthetic and setting.

It's initially bemusing, too - and I say that as a Halo fan who's read one of the books. Infinite starts with Master Chief floating in space near Zeta Halo, one of the oldest and most mysterious Halo rings in the galaxy. A pilot drags him into a Pelican and dusts him off. "Status report," Master Chief asks in typical matter-of-fact fashion. Infinite spends the next 15 or so hours procrastinating before it makes a serious attempt at providing an answer.

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Halo Infinite is a brilliant game. Honestly, against the odds, I feel that 343 has delivered one of the best first-person shooters of the last decade. It's a release that far exceeds the studio's previous work on Halo 4 and 5 in terms of design and in nailing the 'combat sandbox' experience. Worries I had about the transition to an open world have been assuaged and despite the seemingly difficult development period, I simply love the game. Is it perfect? Certainly not. There are numerous tech issues to address and fundamentally, I'm not sure this is the game that was originally envisaged based on reviewing early marketing assets. Regardless though, you've got to play it.

Let's tackle the thorny issue of the open world first. The gradual shift in the games business away from linear design to wide-open play areas crammed with busy work and filler content is becoming a real issue - franchise titles like Far Cry and Assassin's Creed exhibit these issues at their worst. Thankfully, Halo Infinite's approach to level design works brilliantly, just as the preview build suggested, taking the foundational building blocks of Halo 1's second mission and expanding it into something far larger in scope. It works and it retains much of what makes Halo special while introducing a level of freedom that feels like a natural extension. Think OG Crisis rather than latter-day Far Cry and hopefully you'll get some idea of what I mean.

Halo Infinite is built around the concept of a broken Halo ring - look to the distance and you'll see pieces floating in space, disconnected from one another. As you progress, you explore these pieces and they basically serve as mission zones - again, comparable to the second mission of Halo 1 but larger. You always have a main objective, just like a classic Halo game, but the width of the mission has been expanded allowing you to find your own way. The various outposts scattered around the map are optional but offer tangible rewards, such as vehicles, once taken. There's never so much content as to feel overwhelming - you don't feel as if Halo is a giant checklist of tasks - and this is ultimately why it works where so many modern open world games fail.

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Epic Games has revealed what's next for Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 1 with its all-new "Flipped" trailer, highlighting the island's startling new look.

"Due to a particularly cold winter, the first thing you'll notice about the Island is that the western half's a wintry biome," the studio teases in the video description. "Perhaps stop by the suburban Greasy Grove, the industrial Logjam Lumberyard, and other locales.

"Like warmer weather? To the east are the tropics, with coastal keys, palm trees, and weathered sights to see. Although The Seven have outposts all throughout the Island, the tropics are home to their home, the 'Sanctuary'. This compound is right next to the coast, where you can get a clear view of the colossal rock statue of The Foundation. And speaking of colossal, the towering, web-covered Daily Bugle building is also in the area."

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