One of my favourite pieces of internet television last year was Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, a Netflix anime series that pretends to be just another adaption of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels before, rather brilliantly, pirouetting into a warm and sincere (but not overly self-flagellating) study of the original story’s tropeyness. One of the beneficiaries is Pilgrim himself, who’s forced to confront his own immaturity and entitlement: a reckoning that, one suspects, mirrors that of O’Malley himself, not to mention lapsed fans (hello) whose ability to parse these faults needed time to develop.

It’s a growing-up that continues in Scott Pilgrim EX, the 2026-bound sidescrolling action brawler from Tribute Games (a studio packed with devs who worked on Ubisoft’s Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: The Game). While not a direct continuation of Takes Off, it’s apparently set not that long afterwards, and sees the new, more likable Scott teaming up with friends and foes to biff around demons and fitness bros on the streets of Toronto. I played about thirty minutes at Gamescom, and compared to Ubi’s 2010 beat ‘em up, EX appears to have done some maturing of its own.

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You want an Assassin's Creed Shadows update? You've got an Assassin's Creed Shadows update! Well, you will tomorrow, September 11th anyway, but Ubisoft did release the patch notes for the action game in any case. Here's what you can expect for the Assassin's Creed Shadows 1.1.1 title update! First up is the fact that the game will be ready for its first expansion, Claws of Awaji, which is due out next week, September 16th. The level cap is also being raised to 100 to account for the expansion!

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Cooking is a thing I think about almost on a daily basis, not because of the usual pesky reason that is my mortal coil demanding sustenance, but because I love to do it! Having a family background in hospitality will do that to you. Of course, doing this whole writing about games thingy is a bit of a different beast, but cooking does still often crop up in games. My only problem is I often wish it was a central aspect of a game, rather than a singular, miniscule feature. Lucky for me, a new restaurant management RPG called The Hearth and Harbour from the team behind The Pale Beyond has just been announced!

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It's that time of year, where the weather starts to get a bit chillier, cafes start to reintroduce seasonally appropriate hot beverages, and of course, the arrival of a new Football Manager is in sight. Sports Interactive announced the release date for this year's iteration, Football Manager 2026, earlier today, which you may be pleased to hear is only a couple of months away: November 4th.

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Historical strategy game Ara: History Untold will get new culture mechanics in its 2.0 update, developers Oxide Games and publishers Stardock have announced. As with culture features in certain Civilization games and - well, the only other specimen that comes to mind right now is Sins Of A Solar Empire, this will allow you to claim territory without firing a shot, by dint of being way fancier and more refined than all those yokels across the border. Should the aforesaid yokels remain unmoved by your splendour, there's also a new Agitator unit that can be sent into foreign parts to foment rebellion.

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Do you not> know gun fu? Briefly and baldly, it's the cinematic practice of making a gunfight look like something out of a martial arts film, with participants using firearms in ways that are borderline unbelievable - punting themselves backward along the floor with the recoil from two pistols, like Chow Yun Fat in The Killer, or slide-walking down a bannister while firing, like Chow Yun Fat in Hardboiled.

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