Well, this was unexpected. Malakai Makaisson is the single best campaign experience I’ve had since strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3 launched, and might just be up there with some of the best in the series’ history. That’s over ninety lords he’s given both barrels to getting here and, honestly, I wasn't sure Creative Assembly still had it in them. Not the talent, mind, just the passion. And nothing says passion like the amber mohawk of a furious dwarf quivering in the wake of a shakily-built zeppelin's explosive payload. Warhammer!

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Well, this was unexpected. Malakai Makaisson is the single best campaign experience I’ve had since strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3 launched, and might just be up there with some of the best in the series’ history. That’s over ninety lords he’s given both barrels to getting here and, honestly, I wasn't sure Creative Assembly still had it in them. Not the talent, mind, just the passion. And nothing says passion like the amber mohawk of a furious dwarf quivering in the wake of a shakily-built zeppelin's explosive payload. Warhammer!

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Twitter user pl_evil has helpfully translated a recent letter to shareholders from Bloober Team, showing that their new game "Project C" will be revealed later this year. This will be the studio's next original game, after they wrapped up Layers Of Fear last year with, confusingly, Layers Of Fear (the natural progression for a series: Layers Of Fear, Layers Of Fear 2, and then Layers Of Fear again, although it was going to be called Layers Of Fears at one point).

Bloober Team are currently doing a lot of IP work for other people, with the Silent Hill 2 remake due out later this year, and a game codenamed "Project R" in concert with Skybound Entertainment. Skybound are The Walking Dead company, so I wouldn't give you long odds for a bet on what Project R is about. Neither would I be surprised if Project C is unveiled this summer by a man named Geoff with shiny shiny trainers. I'm interested to see what it is, and honestly I'm hoping it's a brand new standalone thing, rather than a forced sequel to Observer or 2021's The Medium (where I got the header).

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Amazon have SHOCKED and RATTLED the world of buying things off the Internet, by announcing that Prime Day 2024 – their latest of their Prime-members-only sales events, which usually take place in July – is taking place in July. And yes, we’re only hearing about this a mere month after the last big Amazon discount splurge, Spring Deal Days. My life is a calendar where every square has "deals" written on it in increasingly scratchy Biro.

Still, let’s keep it summery, eh? Prime Day 2024 may not be a surprise (and is still lacking a specific launch date), but unless the US government announces a second June-based Black Friday or something, it likely represents the next mass serving of PC gaming deals for you to take advantage of. SSDs, graphics cards, or anything else that’s been unusually pricey lately are all but guaranteed to get slashed back down, so there are definitely worse times to be in the market for an upgrade than Prime Day.

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Amazon have SHOCKED and RATTLED the world of buying things off the Internet, by announcing that Prime Day 2024 – their latest of their Prime-members-only sales events, which usually take place in July – is taking place in July. And yes, we’re only hearing about this a mere month after the last big Amazon discount splurge, Spring Deal Days. My life is a calendar where every square has "deals" written on it in increasingly scratchy Biro.

Still, let’s keep it summery, eh? Prime Day 2024 may not be a surprise (and is still lacking a specific launch date), but unless the US government announces a second June-based Black Friday or something, it likely represents the next mass serving of PC gaming deals for you to take advantage of. SSDs, graphics cards, or anything else that’s been unusually pricey lately are all but guaranteed to get slashed back down, so there are definitely worse times to be in the market for an upgrade than Prime Day.

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The Escape From Tarkov developers' efforts to escape from a DLC paywall quagmire of their own quagmiring continue with an update and apology from Battlestate chief operational officer Nikita Buyanov, who says he "did not foresee" the adverse reaction to selling a new PvE mode as part of a new special edition, after telling purchasers of a previous edition they'd get "all subsequent DLC" for free.

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Hell, it turns out, isn't always a bubbly pool of magma where like, devils prod you with forks. There is a second hell in Helldivers 2, a hell made up of wartorn planets and soldiers who fight bile-spewing bugs and robots. And it is a hell that is subject to patches. One such update has nerfed a bunch of weapons including the popular quasar cannon. It's also increased the number of enemy patrols based on player numbers and tweaked the game's level generation, with the former making life more difficult in hell, and the latter possibly making things more interesting.

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Button mashing is advised against in fighting games if you want to climb the ranks. But those of us who've been destroyed by unpredictable little brothers going ham on a joystick know a secret. Sometimes spamming works. One Tekken 8 player is proving this point. They have programmed a bot of Eddy Gordo, the whirling Capoeira fighter, to slap the same button repeatedly, and nothing else, while broadcasting its performance against real players on Twitch. The bot is doing surprisingly well.

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“Given the opportunity, players will become a merciless egg baron and sit chuckling on a throne of shells while medieval Europe cowers beneath their imperious yolk,” is what I assume Soren Jonson once said, and it looks like Manor Lords is proving this timeless adage right once more. Despite shifting over a million units and hitting the highest concurrent player count of any ‘city builder’ on Steam, creator Greg ‘Slavic Magic’ Styczeń is already looking to the future of how the building game handles trade.

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New week, new videogames! When will it end, etc. There aren't many obvious headliners out in the next few days, but there are a lot of tantalisingly bleak games. Let's see here, we've got a survival shooter that's essentially set in Black Mesa, a sardonical adventure about questing Russian Orthodox nuns, a game about running the company that starts the zombie apocalypse, and a cosy village grower with an atypical emphasis on disease and death. Lovely!

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