Vote now as we continue deciding the single best thing in games I always like when games use character creation choices to build a little backstory rather than simply throwing numbers about. What in my life made me a rogue? How come I can read these runes? Why do I have a gun? You can always make up stories for yourself, I suppose, but some games explicitly make these decisions part of who we are and who we have been, giving us more personality as we pick perks and set stats....

Hints and the answer to today’s Wordle word Read on, dear friend, for hints and clues to help you capture today’s Wordle answer with the harpoon of your knowledge! Or, if you have already sunk to the depths of just wanting to know the answer already, scroll down below the video to catch a glimpse of your elusive white whale. Looking for today’s solution? Check out theWordle hint and answer for Thursday 12th December!...

Could be a full game, could be a DLC expansion Activision have not-so-clarified that next year’s annualCall Of Dutyrelease will be a “full premium” one. The shotgun blast of marketing speak erupted from the company’s third quarterearnings resultsfor the year, setting off car alarms, shattering glass, and triggering journalists’ Google Alerts. You can interpret “full premium release” to mean an actual game that costs $70, or an expansion packaged and sold during the ritually observed Call Of Duty release window....

A Google Stadia run squeaks in before that’s shut down, too Speedrunning charity eventAwesome Games Done Quickis returning in January, and there’s plenty of PC runs among its freshly announced preliminary schedule. Notable standouts this time around arePowerWash Simulator, which might well be my personal GOTY contender, and a bonus appearance from cutesy cyberpunk cat simStray. There’s also a Google Stadia run of nautical indie action-adventureWavetale, just a week before the streaming platform closes for good....

Easter eggs! Hints! References! Other things! The other weekI played a short demo for the upcoming Resident Evil 4 remake. You’d think being lucky enough to actually play the damn thing would have numbed my hyper-fixation about it a touch, but, nope. I’m afraid not. It turns out the guy who owns eight physical copies (and four digital) of the originalResident Evil 4is still pretty excited to play the remake.Who ever could have predicted this?...

Is there a way I can turn the mushrooms into arrows, maybe? Blacktailis a complicated, first-person adventure when you play a lil witch. Well, a witch in training, sort of. A witcheen. Baba Yaga has been forced to live in the forest having beenaccusedof witchcraft, so it seems like one of those self-fulfilling prophecy deals. It’s a very brightly coloured, fantastical world, this forest you live in, and you’re dropped in media res....

Two waves of updates before the year is done Cities: Skylinesis getting two tranches of new content before the end of the year. “Tranche” is a fitting word, too, since the largest update of the bunch is a Financial Districts mini-expansion which will let you build a Stock Exchange and invest in markets. Here’s a trailer that briefly covers everything new that’s coming. I’ve skipped ahead, because the Financial Districts mini-expansion is the largest single update, but there are other updates coming before that on November 15th....

But I do wish Touch was back on PC This year’s new features include a “Squad Planner and Experience Matrix”. This is a new screen that gathers together information about your squad to allow you to see at a glance how many players deep you are at each position, and what the squad might look like one and two seasons in advance. From here, you can theoretically make decisions about recruitment, spotting that your right-back position will need reinforcements 18 months in the future and directing your staff to start scouting replacements or developing youngsters....

Fenix rising Get your chainsaw guns, body armour and chin-fluff at the ready, because the unstoppable assault of Netflix video game adaptations has found a new target. The Coalition’sGears Of Warseries of beefy blastermen fending off equally beefy aliens is coming to the red streaming service at some indefinite point in the future, it’s beenrevealed. Netflix say they’re working together with The Coalition on producing both the movie and animation....

You probably haven’t, and that’s a genuine shame Rhythm games lose something when they don’t come bundled with a peripheral, I think. There’s something about a physical controller, custom built to emulate the action the game revolves around, that lends games a level of credibility you lose the second you try and play it with a regular pad. PlayingGuitar Herowith an Xbox 360 controller feels like trying to paint a bedroom wall using a spoon....

Pushing up daisies How To Say Goodbyestarts with someone dying. It’s not shocking or distressing; quite the opposite. The person died in a hospital bed surrounded by their closest friends and family, and after they’ve passed on the group begins to share stories and memories from when they were alive. Death isn’t always this calm and it isn’t always this peaceful, but on rare occasions it can be. This is how developers Florian Veltman and Baptiste Portefaix have approached death in How To Say Goodbye, a cosy game that explores the topic with kindness and sensitivity....

Never underestimate human defiance If you’re aMass Effectaficionado then you’d definitely have been aware that yesterday was the annual N7 Day celebration of the series. You probably also noticed that BioWaresharedsome concept art of an in-construction mass relay fromMass Effect 5, along with a snippet of jumbled audio for people to download. Enterprising Shepard stans set to work cleaning up the noise to see if anything meaningful was held within and, lo and behold, there was a short message from everyone’s favourite asari scientist Liara T’Soni....

Lasts a week, launches at a later date Warner Bros. free to play licensed brawlerMultiVersusis testing its ranked mode for a week starting today, devs Player First Games have announced. Hop into the game from 5pm GMT/6pm CET/9am PT today and you’ll find the ranked tab is accessible for the first time. Select that and you should be good to go with ranked play. Player First say they’ll be enabling ranked mode permanently once they’ve implemented any useful feedback from the alpha....