A little tangent This article contains spoilers for Lost Ark’s main questline. Lost Arkis a very silly game, but not in the way it initially seems. For its first 15 hours or so, Smilegate’s ARPG is like someone described Lord of the Rings to the developers through a door, an overblown yet generic riff on Western fantasy tropes with overdesigned yet underwritten characters, all of whom talk about the game’s plainly ridiculous lore with the gravity of a neutron star....

You have one week to grab a free copy The strategy layer of Skylines isn’t super-great but it’s a lovely game for building nice cities, watching them bustle away, and seeing what happens when you poke, prod, and get carried away with silly massive infrastructure projects. I have seen too many poo lagoons. Hie theeto the Epic Games Storebefore 4pm (8am Pacific) on Thursday the 17th to grab a free copy of Cities: Skylines....

But I like MobyGames! The creature wearing the skin of Atari mostly makes stupid junk I don’t care about. It can trade on other people’s glories by spaffing offblockchain rubbishandhotels that won’t get builtandbad microconsolesand endless re-releases with the logo and rights it bought, and I’ll think it’s stupid but basically not care (aside from that cryptojunk, which is abhorrent). This has now changed with the news that the creature wearing the skin of Atari has boughtMobyGames, the extremely good video games database....

Closed beta testing to begin in April Overwatch 2has been repeatedlydelayed, but it looks like it’s finally on its way - albeit in a changed form. In ablog post and video earlier today, theOverwatchteam announced that they were decoupling the game’s PvP and PvE modes, and that the PvP mode was now entering the first of several testing phases. Here’s the video with Overwatch game director Aaron Keller: Overwatch 2was announced a few years ago, and updates to the original game have slowed since while developers focused more on its sequel....

Construct a PC without cutting your hands on the case Here’s the announcement trailer: The joke goes: hey, you can’t buy a graphics card in real life these days, so why not get one in this game instead. But there is a legitimate, jigsaw-like satisfaction to clicking fake PC parts together whether or not you give a damn about clockspeeds or LED lighting. I say this as someone who not only doesn’t care about those things, but who actively finds my PC disgusting....

With music from Game Of Thrones composers “The battles in this game are defined by real-time assessment of battlefield conditions and issuing decisive orders that take advantage of your troops strengths and weaknesses to gain advantage over your foe,” Squeenix say. “Make clever use of a variety of skills, classes and equipment to complete your mission.” Also there’s a whole story about a peaceful kingdom on DioField Island (there you go) who end up targetted by two foreign powers hungry for the kingdom’s Jade, which is used in magic....

An action-RPG about fighting Ragnarok Two decades in, mythological RPG series Valkyrie will finally spread to PC with the next game. Last night Square Enix announcedValkyrie Elysium, a new entry in the series started with Valkyrie Profile way back when. See the new young Valkyrie mashing monsters to fend of Ragnarok in the first trailer, below. Valkyrie Elysium is quite different from the rest of the series, mind. They’ve been turn-based tactical affairs, while this is a real-time stabby affair Squeenix call an action-RPG....

Including 69m daily active players “It’s pretty hard to grasp a number that big,” says the post. “But just for fun: 33 exabytes is about how much data you’d use if the 330 million people in the United States all downloaded a 100GB game.” A lot of the feature updates described in the post are those designed to benefit developers, from UTM tracking to help measure external marketing campaigns, to Steam Playtest making free open beta testing easier, to the expansion of Steam Remote Play and the launch of the Steam Deck....

Cowabunga, dudes One of my earliest video game memories is at the swimming pool, where a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade cabinet nestled amongst the vending machines. After a swim I’d stare longingly at the snacks I couldn’t afford then stand on tip-toes before the game I couldn’t afford to play, waggling a joystick and mashing buttons to pretend I was controlling the attract mode demo. Appealing to this sort of nostalgia, Konami have announced they’re releasing a collection of 13 vintage Ninja Turtles games....

Blazin' saddles This episode of the Electronic Wireless Showpodcastis all about our favourite mounts in video games - as in, animals that carry you around in games. Not cars. Machines don’t count as mounts, I think we can all pre-agree on that. We discuss a lot of different horses, and some things that are not horses, from a bunch of different games. This is an unfortunate crossover with our ‘best horses’ special, which I forgot we had done....

Pedagogue of Wrong Gods Gods. Those jerks. You know what the problem with god games is? They’ve got no subtlety. It’s all open worship and overt power, conquering and seizing so you’re only superficially different to a 4X or management game. Shadows Of Forbidden Godsis different. It’s all about building the power of your evil god under the radar until it’s too late for anyone to defeat you. The more I’ve played it, the more I start to suspect that this concept will always suffer from being gamed by player who’ll seek the most efficient paths....

The roof is on fire, we don’t need no water Assassin’s Creed Valhallaenters its endgame phase with its final DLCDawn Of Ragnarök, the very concept for which is kind of a big honking spoiler, so consider yourself forewarned. The series as a whole is still electing to carry on with that subplot about super-advanced precursor god-people, like a chill friend who you ask to party knowing that they will, univited, bring along their mate who is really into a specific genre of sci-fi and will not stop derailing conversations to talk about it....

And where, and where, and where is the Batman? Batman’s Batkids will swing by for open-world antics inGotham Knightson the 25th of October this year, Warner Bros. announced today. This is the game which looks kinda Batman: Arkham-y but doesn’t have Batman, instead letting us play as his various protégés. And it’s got online co-op, which sounds Batnice. WB’s announcementtoday didn’t bring any new info or moving pictures to watch, just a date and a picture....