She came in like a… Until recently, Mad Maggie’s main claim to fame inApex Legendswas that she had a surprisingly spry 80-year-old mum, and loved to tell people about it. Now we know she’ll be emerging from the backstory and joining the playable Legend roster with Season 12 (Defiance), and a new trailer gives us our first look at her rather destructive set of abilities. We also see what looks like a tactical ability, where Maggie fired a gadget onto a surface which proceeded to spew damaging flames in opposite directions....

Paradox promised official support after a patch broke mods Official support for same-sex marriages will arrive inCrusader Kings 3as part of Update 1.5, launching alongside the first expansion in February. It’ll come as both a game rule for everyone and new options for modders to work with. It’s taken longer than expected, but Paradox adding an option for same-sex marriage without using mods is more than they had initially planned, so that’s nice....

What you give, you get back Boomerangs are cool as hell. The sleek wooden objects careen through the air in a perfect circle - in theory, at least - before returning right back to where they began in the palm of your hand. They’re something that fascinated me as a child, and 20-something years later I still don’t really know how or why they work. Deflectoris like someone taped two swords to a boomerang,Mad Max-style....

Fill your boots This week the Electronic Wireless Showpodcastdiscusses some of our favourite (and least favourite) inventory configurations. A humble beast, the inventory, yet a feature of many games - sometimes even a necessity. Often we only notice one if it’s terrible. But boy, a good inventory is worth a dozen mules. So lets talk about them today! In other news this week, Nate thinks he has come up with an original premise for a Pixar film, only to discover he has invented Seth Rogan’s nightmare film Sausage Party, and we are officially starting our campaign to get Henry ‘Vitamin H’ Cavill on the show....

Yanis Varoufakis talks NFTs, “a digital fiefdom in which Zuckerberg dreams of being the techno-lord”, and more Mostly, I want people to shut up about NFTs and cryptocurrency and the metaverse and play-to-earn games. Maybe if we turn away and pretend they’re not there, it’ll all burn out when scammers grow tired of being scammed by other scammers. However, one of the few people I do want to hear talk about it all is Yanis Varoufakis, who wasValve’s in-house economistbefore becoming Greece’s finance minister then an MP....

Fix machines, eat apple pie Tell you what’s the opposite of cosy: watching the world crumble from your bedroom window. Tell you whatiscosy: playing as a fox who repairs quirky machines and eats nice meals cooked by furry friends. That’sFixFoxfor you, an upcoming sci-fi adventure game developed by Rendlike which looks like the video game equivalent of a soothing balm. In FixFox you play as Vix, a space mechanic who crashlands on a mysterious planet where tools are forbidden....

And new game modes too When warp-tunneling multiplayer shooterSplitgatecame zooming out of its beta portal, gun barrels aflame, it wasjoyful madness. The maps were some of the best things about it. Old-school mega-arenas adorned with portal-zappable walls that functioned as DIY shortcuts. As virtual coliseums of chaos go, they were pretty cool. Well, now you can make your own. Splitgate is launching into season 1 this week (the developers insist the last four months have been"season 0") and alongside a couple of new game modes, there’s now a map creation tool....

Pucker up Be honest with me: when you read the words “Lovecraftian dating sim”, did your mind go straight to a joke about tentacle porn? Horror-themed dating sims are not exactly new, but it’s rare to be given the opportunity to date the eldritch gods themselves, and taken at face value, it’s hard to imagine where else this could be going. Well, allow me to dispel your illusions right away: Sucker For Love: First Date is not an H-game....

Now we’re talking A lot of the best gaming microphones are either designed for streaming, or marketed to streamers. And yet, they can be a worthy addition to your peripheral collection even if you’ve never, ever said “What’s up, guys” into a webcam. A dedicated desktop mic can be called upon for casualDiscordchats just as surely as it can for barking push-to-talk instructions at multiplayer randos, should you be so inclined, and if you’ve chosen wisely you’ll always sound clear and intelligible....

It’ll be on Game Pass too After basically remaking Bullfrog sim Theme Hospital with their first game, Two Point Studios are preparing to return with a new comedy management game. Today they announcedTwo Point Campuswill launch on the 17th of May, inviting us to build and run universities. All I need to know is that it seems one of the courses you can run involves cooking giant pizzas the size of a minibus....

Maximum vagueness With powerful graphics cards worldwide still being snapped up by cryptocurrency miners, it feels almost cruel for Crytek to announce anotherCrysisgame. Today they confirmed they’re returning to their supersuit FPS with a new instalment they claim will be “a truly next-gen shooter.” They’re not clear about what next-gen means to them. WillCrysis 4: a) require a £1500 graphics card; b) be a battle royale; or c) sell NFT hats on the metaverse blockchain cryptonet?...

I sense a great disturbance in the share prices Point is, I’m mostly just pleased that Respawn are still around to make games featuring robots that surprise and delight us. And if they’re not allowed to do Titanfall 3, Star Wars is at least a rich field to till said robots. Lousy with robots, is Star Wars. But honestly, if anyone is going to makeStar Wars games(apart from BioWare, who have spent recent years makingDragon Age 4and / orcollapsing like a magnificent neutron star) then I’d root for Respawn....

It’ll take almost two years to tweet a playthrough My personal top Twitter tip: add pleasant breaks to the nightmares of your feed by following a few good image accounts or bots which regularly post nice things. I like accounts which post rock formations or bots which generate landscapes. Perhaps you find comfort in violence? If so, you might enjoy interrupting your doomscrolling with the Doomscroll Doom Bot, a Twitter bot which is very slowly posting a complete playthrough of Ultimate Doom, one frame every hour....