Sonar Shock is a reminder that some of the best game concepts or settings seem so obvious as soon as you play them.

System Shock on an unreasonably huge submarine on an equally ludicrous trip around the Northeast Passage via Cape Agulhas? With a satirical Soviet setting that isn't just "lol russia" or "I think Stalker was about machismo and gun attachments"? And> a third thing that I'll get to in a minute because this intro is getting out of control? God yes.

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Whether or not they actually amount to anything, rumours of a new Doom have had me diving back into Doom Eternal recently. There’s at least one level in it that feels like essay-bait, so I’m obliging. The centerpiece of Mars Core - the FPS’ best level - is a comically massive superweapon called the BFG-10000. Oh, Chekov. If only you could see what we’ve done with your wisdom. The literary subtlety to gun-big-enough-to-scar-planets pipeline will eventually subsume all of pop culture, and those of us who chose to specialise writing about headshots will alternate between grins and tears from the wreckage.

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Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is no more. No, EA haven't once again taken Dragon Age 4 back to the drawing board; instead, they've just changed its name. The next entry in their trad-fantasy RPG series is now called Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and we'll get a "first look at gameplay" next week.

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Taipei’s annual Computex event is always a big, circled, triple-underlined mark in the PC gaming hardware calendar. Whereas CES splits its focus across tech, cars, and the occasional overdesigned white good, Computex is all computing, all the time, making it a prime source of reveals and showcases for the hardware bits that make games happen.

Sadly, Computex 2024 is unlikely to go down as a classic, largely because this year’s show has been mesmerised by AI and the most tedious applications thereof: search, but different somehow! Run art-stealing generation tools faster! Oh, Computex, what have they done to you, and why do you have seven fingers on one hand?

Granted, AI is a broad field, and not everything about it is necessarily gross or creatively bankrupting. But it also doesn’t deserve to overshadow all the other useful, unexpected, and curiosity-piquing gaming tech that Computex has to offer, from new Steam Deck alternatives to resurrected CPU lineups and promising graphics card updates. Here are those highlights of the show so far...

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After the climatic end to a decade-long saga in Endwalker, anticipation is high for Final Fantasy XIV’s next expansion, Dawntrail. I got to try out the game and talk to Director Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi-P) about new Jobs and the difficulty of incorporating fan feedback (not to mention the reasons the Warrior of Light has such great skin - you'll see). But how can the Square Enix possibly hope to follow the highs of Endwalker, including space travel and a fight against the physical embodiment of sorrow? By taking us on holiday, of course.

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From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, I thought: no bother, like. Everyone has different skills. Then, I realised that some other people might be less enlightened than me about the whole ‘having limits’ things, and that there was a lot of money to be made hawking implants. Enter space strategy story-spewer Stellaris, specifically, it’s spost specent spee-LC The Machine Age. It adds many options for your space civs, most of which I’m too rusty with the ever-yawpening sandbox’s myriad nuances to appreciate. But what's this? A new origin that lets you play as techno-religious corpo-cult obsessed with transcending the limits of their meat prisons through cybernetic augmentations? I recognise that from toys! Let’s do some clicking.

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If you're SPOILER sensitive, please do not read this article. Just don't do it. I'll be talking about a bunch of stuff that's SPOILERY. But I'll obviously try and not be too> spoilery for those who've decided to keep reading this, and hence, probably aren't as SPOILER sensitive. Right, onwards.>

Life In Jars is this YouTuber I've followed for a while. He makes videos that might involve, say, scooping up some puddle water, leaving it in a sealed jar for a while, then coming back to it a few months later. He'll report on the results, which are often tremendous. Look at the LIFE in that jar! The little wriggly lads just wriggling around. The blobs whose job is to float and squidge indiscriminately. A lovely bit of fauna sloshing about there, like a forest dwelling for those who implement the five-second rule. It's a reminder that bog water is rather beautiful, actually.

Having spent three hours with Elden Ring expansion Shadow Of The Erdtree's opening area, I can't help but think of Life In Jars. What resides in the shadowy dome of the Big Tree is horrendous! Miserable! The forgotten creatures and their crumbling homes are grim. But oh my word, the shadows have spawned a beautiful disasterpiece. Just, errr, those other jars? The fun guys with the scoopy arms and little legs? Yeah. I have bad news.

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Dwarven co-op caper Deep Rock Galactic has spent years raising the stakes. Where its offworld mining concern once dealt merely with steep drops and irate bugs, it’s since had to face down the robotic army of a rival mineral corp and an omnicidal alien plague. If the subsequent question is "It used to be about the rocks>, y'know?" then DRG’s imminent Season 5 update, Drilling Deeper, is the answer.

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If you love cosy games where the biggest challenge is choosing between which farm utensil to place next to your barn doors, then Tiny Glade may be just the game for you. It's a creative building game like The Sims 4 but with none of the fuss of actually controlling lives - and no quests, combat or arbitrary challenges of any kind.

Instead, Tiny Glade simply offers a meadow and tools with which to build. The vibe of the game is cottage-core at its finest, with enough whimsigoth finery that you'll soon lament that you can't actually live inside your glorious creations. I've played the charming demo as part of Steam Next Fest, and you'll find some thoughts from my time with it below.

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Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Did you know that the word 'book' was originally spelled with several extra 'o's in it? This was changed when it was collectively decided that telling someone to "please, just read a book" was resulting in several more murders a year than anyone could be bothered to keep track of. This week, it’s Obsidian vet and Pentiment creator Josh Sawyer! Cheers Josh! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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