Golf. Die. Repeat. Golf games seem to be having a bit of a renaissance right now. From their beginnings on the fairway fringes of Flash-game forums, we now have been blessed with a handful of fun indie golf sims. We’ve seen the bizarre buffoonery ofWhat The Golf?, the high-speed, eye-popping courses ofGolf With Your Friends, and Secret Mode recently completely threw the clubs out the window and replaced them with highspeed motorcars inTurbo Golf Racing....

We chat to director Stephen Muray about the evolution of Paradox’s 4X space epic and its sci-fi inspirations “The biggest constant in Stellaris is change,” current game director Stephen Muray says, reassuring me that I’m not overstretching my child-rearing analogy. Muray is Stellaris’ fourth director, taking over after Daniel Moregård’s three-year tenure ended earlier this year. “We’ve learned a lot from when we took our first steps out into the 4X world to where we are today....

Doom 64 is free on the Epic Games Store this week, plus more freebies on the Microsoft Store Quakecon started yesterdayand to celebrate Microsoft have added another swathe of id Software and Bethesda games to both PC Game Pass and the Microsoft Store. That’s not all, either, as there’s also an id-themed freebie over on the Epic Games Store this week, and more Bethesda games going cheap in various sales. Here’s everything you need to know about what’s going on where....

The person who kicked it off appears to be u/FrozeninIce248, who declared that the sub shouldtake a leaf out of the Titanfall subredditandthen did. They posted commemorating the anniversary of Arkham World’s release, asking for “this sub’s opinion on the game”. “I loved the open world in this game the most,” they said, “because it was a literal world”. And boy did the sub respond. Since then there have been a lot of posts, all expanding the Arkham World lore in both the content of the original post itself and the discussion in threads beneath it....

Our early impressions of this rock hard Soulslike Where FromSoftware’s offerings weave a mysterious tale, wonderful level design, and meaningful combat into a tight package,Thymesia– like so many otherSoulslikes- knows it must excel at one thing to compensate for the others. I’ve spent some time with the game’s early levels and it perfectly captures what I’d consider to be a ‘classical’ Soulslike: a game that’s heavily focused on The Combat Bit above all else....

Learn about Relics in Tower Of Fantasy and how to unlock them Looking for the best Relics in Tower Of Fantasy?The world of Aida is filled with powerful objects and tools, and among them are Relics - unique gadgets and weapons that you can use to explore and carve a path of destruction through the various regions inTower Of Fantasy. There is a grand total of 20 Relics to find and unlock in the game, and while some have slightly lacklustre abilities, others are tremendously strong and are well worth obtaining as early as possible....

Here’s how to improve your Gear Score as fast as possible Want to increase your CS rating in Tower Of Fantasy?It’s a tough old world out there in Hotta Studio’s newfree-to-playRPGTower Of Fantasy, and you’re going to need to focus on upgrading yourself and your equipment as much as possible if you want to progress through to the endgame. The most important number you should pay attention to is your CS rating (also known as your Gear Score), which tells you how powerful you are overall, taking into account all your weapons, matrices, armour, stats, and more....

Some rogue choices and big tangents On this week’s episode of theUltimate Audio Bang, we select a few of our favourite non-traditional guns that aren’t really guns. You know, the sorts of weapons that don’t just spew bullets but generate portals or even clean filth off car bonnets. What really happens is we go off on a massive tangent aboutDeathloop, because we can’t help ourselves. Alright, so some of our weird gun picks are iffy, but they stimulate some good words from our mouths, so that’s our excuse....

Hints and the answer to today’s Wordle word Looking for today’s solution? Check out theWordle hint and answer for Thursday 12th December! Wordle August 19 hints Having trouble with the Wordle answer today? Here are a few clues to help point you in the right direction: It’s time to reveal the answer to today’s Wordle. The word is… SHRUG. I dunno, do we really need a definition for this? As Wordle solutions go this one’s a bit… meh, don’t you think?...

The BB Boys are coming in hot next week special deliverypic.twitter.com/GRTxRbDPEu At this stage, it’s currently unclear whether the version in question is the standard edition ofDeath Strandingor thenewer Director’s Cut, which adds more transportation methods, an extra chunk of story and a Mario Kart-style race track to the game, but I guess it won’t be too long before we find it, August 23rd being next Tuesday and all. August 23rd is an interesting date for Death Stranding’s arrvial on Game Pass....

I never thought she’d see a resonance cascade, let alone create one I have a new favourite bug: Janet Jackson’s 1989 certified choon Rhythm Nation had an uncanny ability to crash certain old laptops. This was nothing to do with the file itself; even being near another laptop playing the song could cause a crash. According to Microsoft, one of the sonic frequencies in Rhythm Nation coincided with the natural resonant frequencies of a particular laptop hard drive, making it crash....

Voxel Doom looks just like how I remember Doom I often grumble about remasters and ‘HD texture packs’ making classic games look worse than the original (heck, I don’t even playQuakewith newfangled texture filtering). And yet, I am delighted by a newDoommod which replaces all the sprites for enemies and items with new 3D forms. The secret is voxels, carefully recreating those old 2D sprites in 3D pixels. It’s pretty great, in a ‘makes the game actually look the way I had remembered it’ sort of way....

Gravity Falls vibes Several of my favourite games are basically just choose-your-own-adventure books andBeacon Pinesmakes that connection more explicit. It’s an adventure game where you explore environments and unlock new words, which you can then deploy during pivotal story moments when the camera pulls back to reveal the whole game takes place on the pages of a book. It looks great, and it now has a release date: September 22nd....