When I innocently went on holiday on Thursday evening, Palworld was that flagrant cash-in survival game where you can make Pokemon - sorry, Pals> - shoot guns and work on an assembly line. As of this morning, it's among the most-played games in the world, one of just six to exceed one million concurrent players on Steam. Right now, it's doing almost twice the numbers of Steam's usual chart-topper Counter-Strike 2. We have entered the Pal Age, it seems - but how long will the feeding frenzy last? How much is owing to it releasing during the quiet time of year with a meme-ish premise, while capitalising on pent-up demand for a proper PC version of Nintendo's monster-catching series? Much will depend, I think, on how quickly developers Pocketpair can update it and stay ahead of the usual early access game avalanche of community requests and complaints.

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The latest Steam Deck beta client update is out, and it’s made a pretty neat addition to the quick-access performance menu. A tap of the Y button now brings up a brief explainer for whichever individual setting is currently highlighted, a handy lil’ reference for anyone who wants to customise how their Deck (or Steam Deck OLED) runs without knowing exactly how things like TDP limits and half-rate shading affect performance. Clearly it’s also a brutal attack on the livelihoods of honest hardware editors who write guides to this sort of thing, but whatever>, Valve.

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As W.H. Auden once wrote: "our apparatniks will continue making the usual squalid mess called History: all we can pray for is that Videogame News Writers may still appear to blithe it." Welcome one and all to another week of addled product journalism care of your ever-salivating host, the Maw, ravenous hype god and certainly not a silly metaphor I’ve come up with to make my job sound grander than it should be.

This week's menu of new videogame releases: world-jumping squad tactics adaptation Stargate: Timekeepers (23rd Jan); wild-eyed Soviet job sim Trans-Siberian Railway Simulator: Prologue (23rd Jan); Valheim-ish fantasy survival game Enshrouded (24th Jan, early access); fugitive Asgardian town-builder Roots Of Yggdrasil (24th Jan, early access); moody anime fighter Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes (24th Jan); rolly-polly shooter Go Mecha Ball (25th Jan); asymmetrical multiplayer dungeon romp Phantom Abyss (25th Jan); finger-jabbing courtroom drama Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy (25th Jan); jaunty yakuza RPG Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth (25th Jan); infant witch adventure The Cauldron Kids: The Summoning of Mr. Vermicelli (25th Jan); hand-drawn horror MMORPG Mad World - Age of Darkness (25th Jan); high-kicking octa-quel (is it a word?) Tekken 8 (26th Jan).

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Sundays are for doing back mobility exercises because your body is crumbling. Let's stretch as we read the week's best writing about games and game-related things.

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During the full Xbox Developer Direct, we saw glimpses of the offices of developer MachineGames. As spotted by eagle-eyed viewers, there was a shot of a whiteboard at one point that appeared to have a Quake logo drawn on it underneath writing that seems to say "Quake 6."

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Indiana Jones And The Great Circle was announced at this week's Xbox Deveoper Direct. It looks good! There has been much discussion of its decision to make its tomb raiding first-person (with some third-person traversal and cutscenes), however.

In an interview with Lucasfilm.com, game director Jerk Gustafsson said first-person was "part of MachineGames' DNA", and that the perspective "separates our game from many other action-adventure titles."

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Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth releases this coming week and takes the series' best boy protagonists to the new shores of Hawaii. It's one of our most anticipated games of 2024. There's a slight snag though: New Game+ mode, a staple of both the genre and the series, is this time locked away within the more expensive Deluxe and Ultimate Editions.

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Halo Infinite won't receive a sixth season update and is moving away from the 'seasons' model entirely. Instead, on January 30th it'll receive a new arena map, a new operation and a handful of other new features, and it'll continue to be updated with shorter "Operation" battle passes in future.

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After saying last weekend that I was aching for the cruelty of snow, I found it. When weather warnings popped up this week, I tracked forecasts and cloud movements for hours before booking a day off work to chase potential snow. When I woke up, it looked bad. Forecasts had turned. Many areas expected to get dusted went untouched. But me, after six hours of walking over thin, old snow, the good stuff finally started to fall as I entered a wood and approached a waterfall. Pretty magic, really. It was so cold that snow settled on my shoulders and my hair froze. Perfect. That's what I craved. Anyway, what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!

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If you're working on computers, sooner or later you're going to have to face the facts and pick up a screwdriver set. Sure, that old Phillips screwdriver your dad gave you does the job most of the time, but wouldn't it be nice to put it somewhere safe and get something a little more adaptable?

Walmart are doing a good deal on a Hyper Tough 77-piece screwdriver set, which is $10 versus its regular $16 - a good deal for a set that includes everything you'd need for PC building and maintenance and has attracted a 4.5/5.0 star average after 245 reviews.

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