When Ukrainian developer GSC Game World released the apocalyptic adventure Stalker in 2007, it was considered a bleakly improbable piece of speculative fiction. Heavily inspired by cult novel Roadside Picnic, it imagined an alternative timeline in which a scientific experiment in 2006 caused a second Chornobyl disaster and a vast irradiated zone filled with powerful space-time anomalies, in which the only inhabitants were mutants and the titular stalkers: men who wandered the wastelands looking for valuable artefacts.The sequel, however, arrives in a very different world, its lengthy development period having been affected by both the Covid pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now the Stalker vision is a lot less improbable and its speculation has a much greater sense of urgency and authenticity.As if to illustrate the point, Stalker 2 begins with an apartment building being torn apart in a huge explosion. As a consequence, the now homeless lead character Skef is drawn into the Zone, carrying a powerful piece of scanning kit that could aid him in his quest for retribution and escape until hes beaten unconscious by an unknown gang and wakes to find the scanner has been stolen and now he is alone in the irradiated wastelands.A game of lonely exploration. Photograph: GSC Game WorldWhat follows is a remorselessly challenging survival adventure in which you must navigate monster-infested landscapes and marauding gangs of feral warriors, looking for your tech and trying to stay alive. The odds are constantly stacked against you: your guns often jam and require constant repair, your food and ammo run dangerously low, each building you come across could be filled with vital resources or rabid dogs or booby traps or all of the above. Scattered about the map are various safe houses where stalkers and neer-do-wells gather, offering trading opportunities, weapon upgrades, side quests and other resources. You gather what you can before heading back out into the unknown. Photograph: GSC Game WorldThe world of Stalker 2 is starkly beautiful: a hazardous, ever-changing patchwork of grasslands, swamps and forests; the natural world overgrowing the leftovers of civilisation. One moment youre wandering a rocky pathway in blinding sun, the next, a storm moves in and a howling wind sends leaves and garbage swirling into the darkening sky. Everywhere you go are anomalies sometimes blobs of floating antimatter, sometimes explosive mini volcanoes in your path all deadly if you dont learn to spot and avoid them. Like Death Stranding, this is very much a game of lonely exploration; of wandering for many minutes with your backpack too full of loot and your energy dwindling, hoping for some shack to hide in for a few quiet moments. Its so tense, so immersive, you cant help but get sucked in.The plot is its own sort of swampy landscape. There is so much lore so many warring factions, religious cults and paramilitary organisations that your head spins and all the characters, plotlines and allegiances become utterly incomprehensible. Its not helped by some terribly wooden voice acting and thudding dialogue, nor by the fact that this is a world almost entirely populated by irritable bald men with identical goatee beards. Its like being trapped in a post-apocalyptic real ale festival. When I finally encountered a woman after several hours of play, it felt like a stumbling upon a desert oasis.I also encountered dozens of bugs during the pre-release period, from incomplete character models, to side quests that wouldnt trigger their finish states, to cinematic sequences that slowed toward a near stop. Major patches have since fixed many of these faults, though I cant imagine the game will run completely smoothly for a few more weeks.But the thing is, I played through them, often deep into the night, transfixed by this flawed, idiosyncratic universe. There is, in this game perhaps more than any other dystopian fiction the industry has produced in the past few years a stark sense of desperation and of underlying tragedy. It is hard to wander the scrublands, past the skeletal remains of obliterated villages, past downed helicopters and the rusted remains of tanks, and not think of what the makers of this game have seen and lived through. For those in any doubt, GSC Game World commissioned a documentary, War Game, to explore the process.Has Stalker 2 become an allegory for the Russian invasion? Well, one of the main military factions in the game, named the Ward, has invaded the Zone, claiming to be bringing stability but actually more interested in annexing the land into its own state. Interpret that how you like. Photograph: GSC Game WorldAt the very least the game is an exploration of trauma that resonates with a similar fury to Elem Klimovs Come and See and Michael Herrs Dispatches. As you keep going, discovering new weapons, upgrading them, making new allies, opening new hubs and map areas, the narrative draws you ever closer to the heart of the Zone and whatever terrors await there. The sense of foreboding, the atmosphere of solitude and the image of humanity just hanging on by a thread are bleak and astonishing.Stalker 2 is a strange, brave and sometimes broken paean to resistance in the face of overwhelming odds. It is utterly uncompromising in its vision, often to a fault, and envelopes you in its dark spell of science, violence and chaos. Certainly, if you loved Dragons Dogma 2, which similarly edged towards self-parody with its offbeat systems, eccentric characters and overall jankiness, you will cope fine with this games technical and narrative inconsistencies. Indeed, like the stalkers that inhabit its damaged world, you may shrug, improvise, and carry on. If you thought developers werent making vast, outlandish, utterly singular open-world games any more, you were wrong: they are. And some of them have been through hell to do it.

Much like Christmas is a lot less enjoyable for the person who has to organise all the presents and cook the dinner, game-of-the-year season is rather intimidating for the people who have to put together the shortlists. Every November, I tot up all of the years acclaimed games Ive yet to play, the underground recommendations Ive yet to follow up on and the games I loved back in February but forgot about. I feel a mounting panic. And when all of the year-end lists come out, I inevitably find Ive missed something anyway.The Game Awards have just announced the nominations for this years ceremony, taking place on 12 December in Los Angeles. (Disclosure: the Guardian is one of 130 voting outlets for the awards, but my knowledge and involvement with them is limited to sending Geoff Keighley our ballots every year, usually a day or two late. Sorry, Geoff.) There are few surprises in the nominations, but I am pleased that one of the top two most nominated games is Astro Bot, with seven nominations, a game that cannot get enough praise as far as Im concerned. (The other is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, up for six awards, which our critic dubbed a miracle of fan service; alas, I remain immune to the charms of Final Fantasy despite many attempts over the years to get into it).The other nominees for game of the year are Balatro, the ludicrously compulsive card game that took over my life in January; Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, the expansion to the 2022 action role-playing masterpiece; Metaphor: ReFantazio, the wildly stylish Atlus RPG that I wrote about a few weeks back; and Black Myth: Wukong, an enormous hit this summer, despite significant controversy around its development and release.This is a close competition, but my money is on Shadow of the Erdtree for the grand prize, because that game is especially beloved by game critics although Id be delighted if Astro Bot wins. The dark horse is Balatro. Everyone I know has lost a week or two to that game, but its charm wore off the second Id won at it. There is a public vote worth 10% of the weighting, though, which will significantly boost Black Myth: Wukong, given its enormous fanbase in China.Neva, rightly nominated for best art direction. Photograph: Nomada StudioElsewhere, I was happy to see Neva, the game about a warrior and her wolf that made me full-on sob, nominated for best art direction, best independent game and the confusing games for impact category. The latter list is supposed to be for a thought-provoking game with a pro-social meaning or message, but it seems to have become a catch-all category for games involving emotions. Ive played most of the games nominated in that category and a) I dont know what unites them and b) I couldnt tell you what pro-social means in this context.Indika is a bleakly fascinating horror-ish game about a 19th-century nun that takes a swipe at the Russian Orthodox church; Hellblade II, like its predecessor, portrays its lead characters struggles with psychosis; Tales of Kenzera: Zau is about grief and draws from its creators African heritage; Closer the Distance is also about grief; Neva could, I suppose, be interpreted as environmentalist, and also has a smattering of loss in there. I cant determine what message Life Is Strange: Double Exposure has along these lines, though.Otherwise, welcome surprises are thin on the ground. Eerie explorative puzzle game Animal Well shows up in best independent game, as does Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, an unpredictable mystery set in an abandoned hotel, and UFO 50, the absurdly generous compilation of 1980s-style games from Mossmouth. Pacific Drive, the spooky weird-fiction road trip that has you constantly repairing and reinforcing a falling-apart old car, also made it on to the best debut game list. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown deserves its shout in best action game, though I was truly disappointed that Dragons Dogma II only made it on to best RPG.And, of course, Pokmon Trading Card Game Pocket is up for a best mobile game award. Ive been playing that for a couple of hours every day since it came out (and I still dont have a shiny Articuno).Video Games Chronicle have compiled an easy-to-parse list of all the categories and nominations. But if you find the Game Awards far too commercial, a new awards show is debuting this year. The Indie Game Awards will celebrate the creativity, innovation and passion of gamings smaller-scale developers, and the nominees have just been announced. Choice cuts from the best game category: Mouthwashing, a horror game that follows the doomed crew of a space freighter in their last days together; Arranger, an innovative RPG puzzler; and action game Nine Sols, a sort of cross between Hollow Knight and Sekiro, which Ive been meaning to try out all year.Tell us your favourites Before I get back to my own intimidating lists, I will, as ever, be shouting out Pushing Buttons readers favourite games of 2024 in the newsletter towards the end of December. Please do start sending them in, with a few sentences about what they meant to you, and look for the results in a few weeks.What to playGruesome and bizarre The Rise of the Golden Idol. Photograph: Color Gray GamesI remain fascinated by The Rise of the Golden Idol, a gruesome and bizarre detective story thats kind of a mix of logic puzzles, fill-in-the-blank clues and a hidden object game. Each case comes in the form of a tableau, an animated painting in a style I cant quite pin down but reminds me of a sort of twisted version of Grant Woods painting American Gothic.Characters are frozen in a few-seconds loop right at the moment of a crime, or in the immediate aftermath, and you must figure out who everyone is, why they are there and what the heck happened. All of it feeds into a bigger narrative about corruption, deception and a cursed object. This game often makes me feel very stupid (I dont have a great brain for names and details) but I have stuck with it regardless, because its so unusual and it challenges me in ways few other games have.Available on: Smartphones (with Netflix subscription), PC, consoles Estimated playtime: skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionWhat to readNever better than the real thing a remastered version of World of Warcraft II. Photograph: YouTubeTo celebrate World of Warcrafts anniversary, Blizzard rereleased Warcraft and Warcraft II with updated graphics. Unfortunately, everybody hates them. Valves Half-Life 2 anniversary update went down much better; the venerable game just broke its years-old concurrent players record on Steam.A Minecraft theme park is set to open in the UK in 2026 or 2027. Im already coming out in a cold sweat imagining the crowds at half-term.Another gaming event bites the dust: WASD, a much-loved indie-focused showcase for PC games, is no more.A useful explainer of Robloxs forthcoming improved parental controls.What to clickQuestion BlockChild friendly Terra Nil. Photograph: Free LivesIll answer a new question next week, but for now, I have some reader recommendations in response to the last few Question Blocks. First, some further suggestions for Jonnys wife, whos looking for a game like Civilization VI but not so lacking in chill:I have youngish children, and Terra Nil really scratches my massively reduced god game requirements. Also, its completely child friendly, down to any age, really. Its not an exact Civ replacement, but has sort of the same vibe. CharlieId recommend Polytopia. It can be played as a speed run Civ but is otherwise basically like classic Civ. However, knock down the difficulty and its pretty chill. Other pluses: tech stops before guns, and various Civs have their own tech trees. One lot end up with dragons. Another are an insectoid alien lot that Ive yet to properly master. Most importantly, its a quite immediate game. I loved it as a big fan of Civ II who wants to love Civ VI but hasnt got the time for it. But I can always spend a few minutes on a Polytopia battle. CraigAnd a couple for reader Lewis, who was looking for good puzzle games to play on his phone without being battered by horrible ads:Solomons Boneyard andSolomons Keep are brilliant! Favourites of mine and my friends. The former is the better of the two, but if you are not a fan of endless modes, the latter might suit you more. TimothyIf youve got a question for Question Block or anything else to say about the newsletter hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.

The fast-growing childrens gaming platform Roblox is to hand parents greater oversight of their childrens activity and restrict the youngest users from the more violent, crude and scary content after warnings about child grooming, exploitation and sharing of indecent images.From Monday, Roblox will grant parents access to a dashboard on their own phone showing who their child is interacting with, how long they are spending on Roblox each day and to make sure they are accurately recording their age.It will also restrict users under nine to games rated mild, with access to moderate content allowed only with parental approval. Mild content might involve unrealistic blood or unrealistic violence whereas the blood would look realistic for moderate violence.Preteens will also be blocked from chat functions outside of games as part of a worldwide tightening of the rules on the most visited online destination among British eight- to 12-year-olds after Google, Metas Instagram and Facebook, and TikTok.The moves comes after a short-seller last month alleged it had found child sexual abuse content, sex games, violent content and abusive speech on the site. In the UK, Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science and technology, told parliament: I expect that company to do better in protecting service users, particularly children.Robloxs millions of brightly coloured user-generated gaming worlds are enjoyed by 90 million daily users worldwide, according to the $3bn (2.4bn) annual revenue Silicon Valley company.Children using Roblox can choose from 6m games and experiences devised by users, and play with friends and strangers who are able to message them in real time.Already the company runs automated software that clamps down on texts that aim to lure children off the platform and vets the images, audio, video and the 3D models for content that breaches community standards.The most popular games last week included the dressing-up game Dress to Impress and the angling game Fisch. But there are also games themed around depression, violence and some which are described as racism simulators.Last month, Hindenburg Research, , described Roblox as an X-rated paedophile hellscape, replete with users attempting to groom our avatars, groups openly trading child pornography, widely accessible sex games, violent content and extremely abusive speech all of which is open to young children.It revealed it took a short position in Roblox shares, while the gaming platform described the claims as misleading and said safety and civility was foundational to the company.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionOn 16 October, the MP Mike Reader told parliament about a constituent who was a volunteer moderator and had identified and banned over 14,000 accounts involved in child grooming, exploitation and sharing indecent images as part of a group.Kyle responded: Companies releasing products into our society should see that as a privilege, not a right. I have high expectations, on behalf of this country, to ensure that safety is baked in from the start.Restrictions to prevent under-13s accessing new Roblox games that are awaiting maturity ratings will begin on 3 December. From Monday, under-13s will also be prevented from using games that use chalkboard writing as these attract teens drawing things that may be inappropriate for our youngest audience, said the chief safety officer, Matt Kaufman.Explaining the new parental controls, Robloxs senior product manager, Dina Lamdany, said: Parents will be able to view their childs screen time over the last week, as well as set daily limits on that screen time. In addition, from that same dashboard, parents will be able to view their childs friends. We hope that this will encourage parents to have conversations with their kids about who their child is spending time with on Roblox.

The global gaming phenomenon Minecraft is coming to the real world for the first time in a global deal to open themed rides, attractions, hotel rooms and retail outlets, starting with the UK and US.Minecraft has struck a deal with UK-headquartered Merlin Entertainments Europes largest theme park operator and the second biggest globally after Disney which runs more than 135 attractions in 23 countries including Alton Towers, Legoland, Sea Life, Madame Tussauds and the London Eye.Under the terms of the deal, Merlin will invest more than 85m ($110m) in the first two attractions. They are due to open in the UK and the US in 2026 and 2027, in either an existing theme park or as new city centre attractions.Over the longer term the two companies plan to expand the strategic partnership, which is called Adventures Made Real, to other countries and territories.Minecraft is the bestselling video game of all time, with 140 million players each month, in territories as disparate as Antarctica and Vatican City, and there are more than 1.3tn videos posted by game players on YouTube.Merlins partnership with Minecraft is called Adventures Made Real. Photograph: Merlin and TM & Mojang ABWe are everywhere digitally, Merlin is everywhere physically, said Kayleen Walters, the vice-president, franchise development, for gaming at Microsoft, which acquired the Minecraft maker Mojang for $2.5bn in 2014. It is about how do we expand Minecraft beyond the game. Mojang and Microsoft are experts on Minecraft and the brand, Merlin are the experts on location-based experiences; it is a shared vision.Minecraft is on something of a brand extension boom: a much-delayed film is due for release next April, featuring Hollywood stars including Jason Momoa and Jack Black, and earlier this year Netflix announced plans to release an animated series based on the game.For Merlin, the Minecraft partnership has the potential to be its biggest deal since it struck a deal with Lego to buy its four Legoland theme parks in 2005.In recent years, Merlin has been upping its strategy of focusing on deals with crown jewel intellectual property owners to drive the popularity of its parks and attractions, in the same way Hollywood studios do with blockbuster franchises.A Minecraft Movie is due for release next April. Photograph: Warner Bros.In 2022, Merlin struck a deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment to bring the $2bn Hollywood film franchise Jumanji to its parks, with a range of rides and attractions opening at Chessington in the UK last year.Earlier this year, Merlin announced an expansion of its Peppa Pig deal to create rides and attractions in Duplo-themed areas at a number of its parks.When we look for partners we look for the right people, scale and community, said Scott ONeil, the chief executive of Merlin Entertainments. We are in 23 countries, what brands can play at that level, you have to be one of the biggest brands in the world. We have partnered with the number one toy brand, Lego, the number one toddler brand, Peppa Pig, and now in Minecraft the biggest video game. Bringing Minecraft to life is going to be one of the greatest joys; this is just the beginning; our aspirations are very big.Last year, Minecraft became the first single video game to pass 300m sales, well ahead of other top-selling global titles including Grand Theft Auto V (205m), Nintendos Wii Sports (83m) and PUBG: Battlegrounds (75m).skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Business TodayFree daily newsletterGet set for the working day we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionTetris and the Super Mario franchise have sold more copies but Minecraft, which was launched in 2011, is the only single game to have reached that mark.Minecraft is the bestselling video game of all time. Photograph: Iurii Vlasenko/AlamyIn 2020, Minecraft moved to make its educational-themed worlds available for free, to help pupils no longer able to attend school because of the Covid-19 pandemic.The company, which said it wanted to do its part to help keep young minds sharp and stimulated, made 12 digital lessons available, including a game about generating power from renewable energy sources and an interactive lesson about ancient Greece.In 2015, Minecraft was given to every secondary school in Northern Ireland for free as part of a cultural technology festival, which was government funded, the first time it had been distributed across an entire region.In 2019, a consortium led by the family that controls the Lego toymaking empire agreed a 6bn takeover of Merlin.The consortium is 50% owned by Kirkbi, the private investment company of the Kirk Kristiansen family, the inheritors of the Lego fortune. The other 50% is owned by the private equity company Blackstone and CPPIB, the Canadian pension fund.

Sophie Turner will take on the role of Lara Croft in Phoebe Waller-Bridges new Tomb Raider series.According to Deadline, the Game of Thrones actor is in negotiations to take on the lead in the Amazon series based on the hit gaming franchise. It had been reported last month that Turner was competing against Bohemian Rhapsodys Lucy Boynton for the role.The live-action series is a major priority for Amazon and would mark the first project that Waller-Bridge has embarked upon since signing up with the company back in 2019. The deal is worth a reported $20m a year.When we look at a long-term commitment to a creator like Phoebe were so happy now that we retained her because shes obsessed with and grew up playing Lara Croft/Tomb Raider, Amazons Jennifer Salke said last month. So the fact that shes the creator and bringing this character to life, we think its going to be a huge franchise for us.Waller-Bridge will act as writer and executive producer on the series. Since creating and starring in two seasons of the award-winning dark comedy Fleabag, she has also appeared in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and co-written No Time to Die, Daniel Craigs final outing as James Bond.The opportunity to have a female action character Having worked on Bond and having worked as an actor on Indy, I feel like Ive been building up to this, she said to Vanity Fair in 2023. What if I could take the reins on an action franchise, with everything Ive learned, with a character I adore, and also just bring back some of that 90s vibe?She also said she intended to do something dangerous and exciting with the project.The role of the archaeologist adventurer has previously been played by Angelina Jolie in two films and Alicia Vikander in another. Hayley Atwell also voiced the character in a recent animated series on Netflix.Turner, who played Sansa Stark in the hit HBO series Game of Thrones, has since appeared in the X-Men movies as Jean Grey and appeared alongside Colin Firth in the crime drama The Staircase. She recently starred in ITVs fact-based drama series Joan and will next be seen in the heist thriller Haven.

At the start of Valves Half-Life 2, the seminal first-person shooter game that turns 20 this month, taciturn scientist Gordon Freeman is trapped within a dystopian cityscape. Armed soldiers patrol the streets, and innocent citizens wander around in a daze, bereft of purpose and future. Dr Wallace Breen, Freemans former boss at the scientific research centre Black Mesa, looks down from giant video screens, espousing the virtues of humankinds benefactors, an alien race known as The Combine.As Freeman stumbles through these first few levels of Half-Life 2, the player acclimatises to the horrible future laid out before them. Its hardly the most cheerful setting, but there are some friendly faces (security guard Barney, Alyx and Eli Vance) and even moments of humour, as Dr Isaac Kleiners pet, a debeaked face-eating alien called Lamarr, runs amok in his laboratory. It feels safe. It feels fun. It feels familiar. Theres even a crowbar! And then, the foreshadowing. Thats the old passage to Ravenholm, mutters Alyx Vance during Freemans chapter five tour of the Black Mesa East facility. We dont go there any more. You feel a shiver down your spine; you know you will end up going there.[Ravenholm] was a totally different environment from what the player had been in until that point, says Dario Casali, level designer and member of the informal City 17 Cabal, a group within Valve that worked on Half-Life 2s most famous level. It was an outlier of a map set that survived from a pretty early build of the game, borne from a need to give the newly introduced Gravity Gun a place to shine.Ravenholm was a totally different environment from what the player had been in until that point. Photograph: ValveThe absence of ammunition for Freemans traditional weapons is the impetus that drives Ravenholm and Half-Life 2 into horror game territory. An old mining town, previously hidden away from the Combine, Ravenholm is now a desolate place, plunged into darkness, its citizens corrupted by an intense bombardment of headcrabs (those face-eating aliens). We made use of confined spaces so that slow zombies [headcrab-afflicted people] could actually get near you, reveals Casali. And the player can no longer blast them away with a machine gun or pistol; you need to resort to the hefty Gravity Gun, picking up whatever you can find around you and flinging it at the monsters bearing down on Freeman. Pots of paint, bits of wood, even dead bodies became the players ammo.Like most of Half-Life 2, Ravenholm is a cinematic experience, taking its cue from horror movies such as Saw and 28 Days Later. When Combine forces attack Black Mesa East, Freeman escapes through the dark tunnel that leads to Ravenholm. Instantly, a sharp change of atmosphere descends like a chill upon the player: a grim set of dark buildings, wispy, almost nonexistent music, two crashed headcrab rockets, and something swinging from a barren tree. Closer inspection reveals the lower half of a corpse, pecked at by crows.Headcrab zombies appear out of nowhere, moaning their pained exhortations; but soon these are the least of Freemans worries. Designed to fit around the map, Ravenholms fast zombies climb up drainpipes and scurry across rooftops, leaving little safe haven for the adventurous scientist. Freeman must also contend with hunched creatures that hurl poisonous headcrabs.A desolate place. Photograph: EAFortunately, Freeman is not without help; soon, he encounters Father Grigori, who is responsible for Ravenholms Saw-like traps and passionately redeems his flock with a shotgun. Casali says: My take on it was that this guy had slowly lost his mind because of the headcrabs and the conversion of his congregation into zombies. Because Ravenholm was so isolated, I imagined he didnt even know about the Combine invasion and thought that the devil had come to town. Father Grigori and his flock of zombies was the perfect excuse to double down on the creepiness.Freeman follows Grigori throughout Ravenholm until a final climactic battle in (appropriately) a cemetery. I thought Ravenholm really needed a fittingly action-packed ending worthy of a horror film, says Casali, and what better place to do that than in a graveyard!While that closing encounter, with Freeman and Grigori besieged by an army of zombies and headcrabs, releases some of the tension built up while exploring the creepy streets of Ravenholm, the level still leaves a lasting impression on anyone who played it, such is the abrupt change of tone and style. The segment endured practically from the start of Half-Life 2s long development a version appeared in Valves renowned 2003 E3 demo evolving into the ammo-scarce spook-fest of the final game.As one of the outstanding games of the last 20 years, Half-Life 2 defined the future of video games with its innovative visuals and remarkable physics engine. As a part of the City 17 Cabal, Casali and his colleagues work was instrumental. The desire to outdo the original Half-Life was so strong, and we were constantly motivated by the quality of work the other teams were doing, he remembers. It was magic.

Let me guess: you recently bought Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, strayed into the multiplayer mode and now youre being mercilessly pummelled by hundreds of teenagers with suggestive usernames? Dont worry, thats perfectly normal. Call of Duty has always been the arcade twitchfest of the online shooter scene, but Black Ops 6 has a whole new feel thanks to its omni-movement system, which lets you dive, roll and sprint in every direction. And the weapons have all been completely redesigned. It is, as Olivia Rodrigo put it, brutal out there.So I asked two excellent pro players Ethan Fifakill Pink and Liam Jukeyz James for their tips. Instead of laughing and pointing at me, they agreed.Use the right gunIf youre just getting into CoD, stick with the assault rifles or submachine guns [SMGs] they suit the smaller maps and intense engagement speed in Black Ops 6. My favourite assault rifle [AR] is probably the Model L, although its so good professionals have agreed not to use it theyve moved to the AMES, says Jukeyz. The SMG would be the Jackal which feels fun to use, or the KSV which is harder, but pretty over-powered.Meanwhile Fifakill recommends the Kompakt 92. It has a super high fire rate and very good movement speed, you can absolutely destroy with it. But if youre more of a mid-range player, Id say the Model L assault rifle is a really good option. It will take a while to unlock, but its worth the effort super TTK [time to kill] and very low recoil.Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Photograph: ActivisionBecome a Gunsmith tinkererGunsmith is where you can add modifications to your weapon, and its vital for giving you the edge in encounters. For the majority of players, its best to start by reducing recoil, says Fifakill. Focus on attachments that reduce horizontal recoil if the gun is bouncing up or down its pretty simple to correct. But with left and right, while youre trying to track an enemy player, thats more difficult. Jukeyz prioritises aim-down sight speed (how quickly you can get the gun into an aiming position), but also suggests attaching a vertical foregrip to counter recoil. Id also suggest the Gunfighter wildcard, adds Fifakill. It gives you eight attachments per gun, so you can have it all: better movement, a bigger mag and less recoil.Perk yourself upBlack Ops 6 allows you to choose from 20 perks which give you buffs in specific areas. Theyre split into three categories Enforcer (red), Recon (blue) and Strategist (green) and if you pick three from the same type you get a bonus speciality perk. Ive been running the red perks because that gives you a super speed bonus and you get extra health re-gen after you make a kill it really benefits you if youre trying to run and gun, says Fifakill.If youre trying to push for kills run three red perks: I like Gung Ho, Assassin and Double Time. If youre a slower player Id go for blue perks and the speciality for that is useful. And if youre an objective player then run the three green perks.Jukeyz favours Dexterity, Assassin and then Double Time: And because theyre all red, it gives you the Enforcer speciality, which means killing enemies gets you a temp buff to movement speed and health re-gen. Its perfect for ARs or SMGs.Maximise your XPEarning experience points [XP] unlocks new items and scorestreaks so levelling up fast is a good idea. Use BankRoll as perk three, suggests Jukeyz. Once youre getting double or triple kills, youll unlock UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), Counter UAV and HARP (High-Altitude Reconnaissance Plane) a lot quicker. If you have all three activated at once, you get so much Assist XP from teammates using them all over the map. Its constant XP.Use a monitor and headphonesStop playing on the giant OLED television in your living room: the response time will be slower than a dedicated monitor and its hard to see everything on the screen while also checking your minimap and ammo count. Both our pros use a 27-inch monitor, with a 1440p resolution and at least 144Hz refresh rate. Also, switch from speakers to a headset. I use JBLs, says Fifakill. But as long as you have a headset that has decent spatial audio you should be fine, and there are in-game settings you can tweak, for example, enabling Dolby Atmos which will help you to hear where footsteps are coming from.Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 team up. Photograph: MicrosoftBe a team playerCall of Duty multiplayer is a team game, so you need to think tactically even when youre with a bunch of strangers. If you really want to win an Objective mode (a multiplayer mode such as Control or Hardpoint which has a specific goal) on a public server, focus on spawn points, says Fifakill. Its about going ahead to a new area where you know an objective is going to be and try to lock down the spawn point at that position for your team. Its not the most glamorous role, but its useful. It means when the objective arrives, your team is going to be spawning close by, so you can get reinforcements a lot faster.Jukeyz recommends a more social approach. A bit of communication is a good start, he says. Whos watching what, whos taking the hard point. Get friends to play with you, or start chatting to people you meet in public servers who you think are good. Get a bit of structure with your gameplay even shouting left or right (to indicate threats or where to run), is a start.Use the minimapFifakill reckons he spends 70% of a match watching the minimap, which becomes a lot more viable once youve learned the maps inside out. Watch for red markers which show the position of rival players and enemy fire; watch where your teammates are running, listen out for anything they ping (mark on the map). Or as Jukeyz puts it: pay attention to everything.

A ghoulish scene: a shadowy figure has just shoved someone into a high-voltage circuit box. The victim is stuck at the moment of death, sparks flying as their body convulses; downstairs, everyone is frozen in surprise at the moment the lights went off. Scrutinising this scene, you must determine who everyone is, where they are, why they are there, and of course, who committed this murder. You examine faces and objects, go through everyones pockets to see what they have on them, read notes and signs and letters for clues. Eventually you piece it together, filling in a report with missing words that explains exactly who, what, when, where and why.Rise of the Golden Idol is an alternative-reality 1970s detective game where each individual scene, once solved, tells you something about a bigger mystery. Its a sequel to The Case of the Golden Idol, set 300 years after that games age-of-exploration mystery, but following the trail of that same cursed object. Some of these scenes are relatively innocuous, even funny, like the drive-in cinema where an unexpected fire sends the cosplaying customers scrambling for the exit. Others are gruesome: in the opening case, a strangling plays out on an infinite loop like an Instagram boomerang story.Intentionally grotesque art style Rise of the Golden Idol. Photograph: Color Gray GamesSolving these cases is supremely satisfying, though youd better hope you have a good memory for names and faces. Scenes might have 10 or more people in them, and I needed a notebook to keep track. There are increasingly obvious hints on offer when you get stuck, but as the game warns, using them robs you of the pleasure of using your deductive reasoning. Nonetheless, when I had figured out the main thrust of a case but couldnt get someones surname straight, I was glad of the button that showed me which blanks were filled in incorrectly on my reports.Its the strangeness of Rise of the Golden Idol that makes it so memorable: the intentionally grotesque art style, the characters asymmetrical faces and crazy, shifting eyes, the backgrounds daubed as if with paint pens. The murders and robberies and other crimes here are bizarre, the tableaux unsettling in their eternal two-second movement loops. I found it hard to get a scene out of my head until I had solved it, leaving me poring over my phone screen for half an hour at a time, thinking, cross-referencing and noting things down. Where is that characters glance leading me? Why is that rug disturbed? Where did that stain come from?The larger story that arises from these details is very much worth all the effort. Between chapters, your fill-in-the-blank case reports turn into fill-in-the-blank summaries of everything youve learned from the last few cases, helping you to draw the connections that make the story crackle with intrigue. This isnt a game that you can play with your mind on something else; it requires you to pay very close attention, to focus your thoughts, and see what your brain can do. I was pleasantly surprised by my own power of reasoning.The crime scenes are so weird that you never know where this game is going to take you, but youll always have what you need to figure it out.

Believe me when I say: I truly thought I knew the story of Tetris. The puzzle games journey from behind the iron curtain in 1980s Moscow to multi-million-selling video game has been the subject of countless articles, a greatly entertaining book and a recent film. I have played Tetris in various forms for more than 30 years, from the Game Boy to the Nintendo Switch, even in VR. So when I loaded up Tetris Forever, an interactive documentary on Tetriss 40-year history from the developers-slash-archivists at Digital Eclipse, I wasnt expecting to learn anything new. I was proven very wrong.Did you know about Hatris, the 1990 Tetris follow-up that involved stacking colourful hats on top of heads? I did, vaguely, but I did not know about the semi-authorised twist on that game put out by Spectrum Holobyte the same year, a mildly horrifying swap-and-drop puzzler that had players stacking up mouths, noses and eyes to try to make human faces. They called it Facestris III, which suggests that whoever named it gave up halfway through. No wonder it wasnt a hit. I didnt know that Henk Rogers, the charismatic Dutch-American who played a huge part in turning Tetris into a global phenomenon, spent his student years surfing and diving in Hawaii before (his words) chasing a girl to Japan and coding the countrys first bestselling RPG in 1984.Tetris Forever is comprised of five chapters, presented as timelines with an absolute treasure trove of images and video from Tetriss 40-year history, and faithful, playable recreations of the game that show how it has evolved since Alexey Pajitnov coded the game as something to entertain himself while working in Moscows computer research centre. Its a good four hours worth of stuff, at least. Theres camcorder footage from Henks famous visit to Moscow, where he turned up completely unauthorised at a Russian government building to fight for the rights to publish Tetris on the Game Boy. Theres fascinating footage from Nintendo of America in the 1980s, and photos of Henk and Pajitnov with the infamously hard-to-impress former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, with whom Rogers struck up a fruitful business friendship over games of Go.Alongside the 15 playable versions of Tetris from throughout its history, game boxes and adverts and marketing material are digitally recreated in perfect detail for you to examine and pan around. And of course, theres plentiful on-camera interview footage not just from Rogers and Pajitnov, but from the other people who played a part in Tetriss history, too.What emerges here is a much fuller picture of Tetriss history than the Apple TV film, which glossed over quite a lot of detail, especially about the four-way scrap over the rights to Tetris in the 1980s. Here, no detail is spared. Admittedly this does turn the second and third chapters into a bit of a shaggy dog story, as we hear about every last detail, but when it comes to gaming history this detail is important even when it threatens to be boring. This all paints such an interesting portrait of the games industry in the 1980s, which in the US and Europe was truly a wild west of have-a-go coders and entrepreneurs often coders themselves shopping games around the place and occasionally getting very rich off them. This contrasts strongly with the situation in Japan, whose gaming scene was dominated by a few stiffly traditional companies with enormous respect for process, and of course with Russia and the Soviet Union, where it was straightforwardly forbidden to do any kind of business deal with a foreign company.Tetris as it first appeared, on the Electronika 60 in 1985 Photograph: Digital Eclipse/The Tetris CompanyThis might all sound terrifically nerdy and, well, it is Digital Eclipse makes super comprehensive reissues that truly respect the history of the games involved. Tetris Forever is not a general-audience documentary, but one for people with a keen interest in gaming history. The playable versions of Tetris and other connected games, meanwhile, are impressively faithful, but obviously the versions that everyone really wants to play the Game Boy and NES versions remain within Nintendos vicelike grip. For what its worth, Tetris Effect is still the best version of Tetris in my opinion it was made by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, famed Japanese developer of synaesthesic music games, who also appears a lot in this documentary footage.Tetris has come to feel eternal, and theres something almost spiritual about playing a recreation of its first version, made for the Electronika 60 computer out of square brackets and exclamation marks lined up on a flickering black-and-green screen. Playing it, I feel a small echo of what I feel when I look at the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum. It is an amazing thing, a rare example of a perfect game that despite all the drama outlined in this documentary and all the various version over the years, is still pretty much unchanged after 40 years.Tetris Forever is available now; 29.50

In 2004, Holly Longdale was a game designer on EverQuest, then the champion of a new genre of video game that allowed for multiplayer role-playing on a huge scale. In these online fantasy worlds, players could quest together rather than alone, adding a fascinating new social and competitive dimension to the static, offline role-playing that Hollys generation had grown up with. But whenever she could, Longdale would sneak in a few hours playing EverQuests main competitor instead. That game was World of Warcraft (WoW).There were so many moments in WoW I was envious of, she says, and completely lost in. I remember running through Ashenvale as a Night Elf Hunter and the music and the ambience there was a mood you couldnt deny. Then I saw another player running in the opposite direction, a Druid who buffed me on their way by. That was when I knew I was going to be in this for the long-haul. Twenty years later, Longdale is now WoWs VP and executive producer at its developer, Blizzard, as well as one of millions who embraced the game as part of their lives.By 2021, players had collectively clocked up a total playtime of nearly 9m yearsFor two decades, World of Warcraft has been emblematic of nerd culture, referenced everywhere from South Park to The Big Bang Theory to Family Guy. WoW became a useful shorthand not just for a certain type of gamer, but any and all geeky, nerdy and dorky subcultures. In the 00s, it was advertised by the likes of Ozzy Osborne, Chuck Norris and Mr T, with his infamous Night Elf Mohawk. It counts Henry Cavill, Mila Kunis and Vin Diesel among its fans, while a movie adaptation in 2016 grossed $439m, without being particularly good. In 2021, Blizzard revealed that players had collectively clocked up a total playtime of nearly 9m years.WoW is more than a game Holly Longdale at BlizzCon 2023. Photograph: Robert Paul/ Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.There were certainly other role-playing games prior to WoWs release in 2004. But 3D graphics were still in their infancy. The likes of Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest had large, mostly barren worlds that relied on reams of in-game text for exposition, and clunky rules lifted from tabletop games. Then along came Blizzard a developer that had made its name and a small fortune from superb online competitive strategy games such as StarCraft and Warcraft III. Unlike its competitors, WoWs world of Azeroth felt lived-in, with gorgeous scenic vistas and vast numbers of animals and monsters prowling its landscapes. Iconic bright-yellow exclamation marks hovered above the heads of non-player characters, letting you know a quest awaited. And, of course, youd see other players everywhere, taming beasts, taking down monsters for quests, drinking in inns, mining ore or just running by in high-level gear that filled you with jealousy as you struggled to tackle a pack of lowly Murlocs.It was the social side of the game that came to define early WoW. The worlds tightly curated zones encouraged players to stumble across other people as they quested through Azeroth. And when you created your character, you had to pick between two factions, Alliance and Horde, giving players an immediate sense of allegiance. Whether it was grouping up to tackle dungeons, rallying into 40-person bands to take down colossal raid-bosses, or even rushing the enemy capital as an army of low-level cannon-fodder, seemingly every player has a story about their time in Azeroth.A perfect storm is brewing ... World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. Photograph: Blizzard EntertainmentI still romanticise my role in sneaking up to the Alliance capital of Stormwind alongside a group of low-level Undead Rogues. What wed imagined as a daring raid ended up with us running for our lives. Another time, I asked a better-geared passerby for help taking down a particularly tough monster in the Night Elf zone of Darkshore, only to end up chatting to him for hours. I messaged that same player for months after.WoW was quite simply a phenomenon. Blizzard had to more than double its headcount within a year, employing legions of people to answer players questions, solve their technical issues and keep servers up and running. WoW racked up staggering subscriber counts, boosted further by the release of two expansion packs: The Burning Crusade in 2007 and Wrath of the Lich King in 2008.By 2010, more than 12 million players had active monthly subscriptions. Some called themselves WoWaholics. Other players found WoW to be an escape from the limitations of real life, as evidenced by the touching story of Mats Steen, recently told in the Netflix documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. Mats had muscular dystrophy before his untimely death at 25, but he was living a vibrant life inside WoW, a life of which his parents were totally unaware until his online friends sent long messages from all over Europe telling them how their son had touched their lives. Five members of Mats WoW guild went to Norway for his funeral.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionThe way were social on the internet has changed and WoW is a reflection of thatBut no game can stay in the spotlight for ever. While WoW went from strength to strength in its first six years, as the game aged, so did its players. As then lead game designer, now game director, Ion Hazzikostas put it in 2014: The person who picked up the game in 2004, who was a student with tons of free time, is now a career person with a family. Blizzard had to attract a new generation, while keeping existing fans. For the 2010 Cataclysm expansion, a decision was made to shake up the game through a massive revamp of its world, with a new design philosophy suited to faster gameplay that it was thought modern gamers demanded. The changes are still controversial.Questing through Azeroth today is a scarcely recognisable experience compared to those early years. WoW has had several distinct eras: theres the classic WoW era running up to Wrath of the Lich King (2004-8); the world revamp that defined Cataclysm (2010) through to Warlords of Draenor (2014); the pivot to a long endgame grind, where players could become endlessly more powerful in Legion (2016) through Shadowlands (2020); and WoWs modern era, beginning with Dragonflight (2022) and continuing into the recently launched expansion The War Within (2024). These eras are so distinct that it feels as though the game reinvents itself every six or so years.The social aspect has also changed with the times. As Taliesin one half of the husband and wife WoW YouTube duo Taliesin & Evitel puts it: The way were social on the internet has changed and WoW is a reflection of that; 2004 was a time of message boards and forums and a more underground internet. The internet today is much shorter and sharper. Its TikTok, its all your social media focused on one or two megasites. What we do socially on the internet has changed, and so has WoW.Anger protesters in 2021. Photograph: David McNew/AFP/Getty ImagesIts common to hear complaints that WoW has changed so much that its original spirit has been lost. Players have often been left confused about design decisions they felt were inconsistent with the traditional experience. Unfortunately for Blizzard, these reached their peak following the launch of Shadowlands in 2020, precisely when a perfect storm was brewing for the company. Not only was game development upended by Covid, but in 2021 Blizzard was hit with a lawsuit brought by Californias department of fair employment, accusing it of fostering a frat boy workplace culture, with sexual harassment and poor treatment of women.The lawsuit had wide-reaching implications for the company and the wider gaming industry. Several senior executives, including Blizzards president J Allen Brack, stood down, and the company agreed to pay millions to address gender discrimination and wage inequality concerns. The suit ultimately contributed to the formation of the first labour union at a major US gaming firm.Within WoW specifically, the suit led to rapid changes in-game. Characters named after accused abusers were renamed and many in-game assets deemed inappropriate in light of the allegations, such as sexualised depictions of women, were replaced or tweaked. Many of the changes were ridiculed by the playerbase, who urged Blizzard to combat toxicity, rather than turning women into fruit bowls.Showdown in Azeroth a WoW battle. Photograph: Blizzard EntertainmentLongdale had only just joined Blizzard in 2020 when the lawsuit kicked off. It was heartbreaking, she says. I was only a few months in. To see the team just devastated, wondering what the future will be, was truly heartbreaking. The fallout, combined with the already-present malaise about the state of the game, could easily have been the beginning of the end for WoW. But a commitment from both the WoW team and the new Blizzard leadership to build back better meant the game held on. What Im really proud of, says Longdale, is that the diversity of our team has grown significantly. Theres a lot more voice in the content that we make now and people are creating content that is very personal, based on their own experiences.Every time WoW seemed at risk of losing relevance over the years, it has managed to reinvent itself and claw its way back. And while its cultural reach has lessened over time, the impact its had is undeniable. ountless fantasy roleplaying worlds and characters have been inspired by WoWs pantheon of heroes. The game is in the DNA of every subsequent generation of video games that have been developed since 2004.While the WoW of today may not spark that same wonder that early players felt roaming the green hills of Stranglethorn or taking that first ship from Kalimdor to the Eastern Kingdoms back in 2004, the fact its still going, and still changing, is testament to the incredible foundations it laid down 20 years ago. And as for WoWs future? My goal, and I think the teams goal, is that WoW is more than a game, says Longdale. Its essentially part of your lifestyle. It can be for your friends, it can be for parents playing with their kids. Its a charming fantasy world that connects you with people.

By 2004, video games were well into their adolescence. The war between Sega and Nintendo that defined the early 1990s was in the rear-view mirror the PlayStation had knocked both of them off their perch, and Microsoft had released the Xbox. The critical and commercial hits of the day were not cartoon platformers but operatic space shooters (Halo) and anarchic crime games (Grand Theft Auto). There were lots of guns, and most games were embracing increasingly cinematic cutscenes.Nintendo, meanwhile, had fallen into third place with its Game Cube home console but it still owned the handheld game market with the Game Boy Advance. Everyone was expecting the next iteration in the Game Boy family. But instead, Nintendo released a strange-looking silver clamshell console that you controlled with a stylus.The Nintendo DS turns 20 this month. Despite its weird looks and unconventional controls, it was Nintendos biggest-ever hit, selling more than 150m units. It catered not just to people who wanted to play Mario on the go, but also to those who had never thought of picking up a video game console before. Intuitive touchscreen controls opened video games up to millions more people than the Game Boy had been able to reach. On the DS, you could play sudoku, language-learning games and raise virtual pets. Many people bought it not for Pokmon but for Dr Kawashimas Brain Training.The idea of a dual-screen console had been knocking about at Nintendo for a while. It was an idea that Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of Nintendo from 1949 until 2002, was especially fond of, and he mentioned it often to his successor, Satoru Iwata, and to Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendos creative lead. As Iwata put it: The demand to make something with two screens had been with us for a while, a persistent source of motivation, to the point where Miyamoto and I basically reverse-engineered the thing.Iwata always had confidence in the idea, but the markets and the public met the DS with enormous scepticism. At first, lots of people were confused, he remembered. When we announced, Were going to release a console that has two screens and a touch panel, most people must have thought, Nintendo has gone off the deep end.The DS marked the advent of touchscreen gaming The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Photograph: undefined/NintendoIn retrospect, the Nintendo DS prepared the world for the iPhone, and for the explosion in touchscreen smartphone gaming that would eventually kill off the whole idea of a handheld games console. We dont need them any more, now that we have one device that fits in our pockets and can do everything from giving us directions and taking photos to playing games. The DS was a half step between the Game Boy and the smartphone a device that played games but could also do other things.I was there for the games, of course. When I bought my DS, nobody knew that it would vastly expand the gaming population. And it had some tremendous games, including plenty of weird and wonderful ones. The DSs new control method seemed to inspire developers to do all kinds of playful, unexpected things. Touchscreen control was this consoles most lasting innovation, but the dual-screen clamshell of the DS is surprisingly adaptable, and lent itself to a bunch of uses.Brain Training had you holding the console sideways like a book, writing answers to simple maths and logic questions on the touch-screen. The puzzles in adventure game Another Code had you opening and closing the DS to stamp documents, or angling the screens to reflect off one another to decipher a symbol. In Electroplankton, you draw paths for small musical organisms. There was even a Guitar Hero game that came with a small attachable fretboard and plectrum. In the DS Zelda game Phantom Hourglass you have to shout at a character through the microphone to get them to lower a bridge for you. You could talk to your Nintendog, too.More than anything, the DS inspired variety. I have a huge collection of DS games ranging from unexpectedly heartbreaking desert-island simulators (Lost in Blue) and the basketball game Mario Hoops 3-on-3 to rhythm games and visual novels (the courageously heartfelt lawyer-drama series Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney has never been better than it was on the DS). Among its bestsellers were, as youd expect, New Super Mario Bros and Mario Kart, but also Brain Training, Nintendogs and Professor Layton (a charming puzzle game about an English professor and his child protege). Its catalogue was anything but homogeneous.The 3DS, released in 2011, was a worthy successor with its own great lineup, but by then smartphones had already dealt a killer blow to the handheld games console, and the industry was becoming more conservative. The kind of wide-ranging, open-ended experimentation that defined the DS catalogue would never be seen again. The DS will be remembered by the world as the console that pioneered touch-screen control but for me, itll always be the console with the most eclectic selection of games ever.What to playA classic pick Mario Kart. Photograph: NintendoThe most obvious classic DS picks are Mario Kart, Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Nintendogs (dont @ me) and Animal Crossing: Wild World. But since when have I ever served you whats obvious?Osu! Tatakae! OuendanElite Beat Agents outside Japan), is the perfect encapsulation of this experimental age in handheld game design. It is an interactive musical opera-manga in which you take control of a team of cheerleaders to help people through moments of strife in their lives, soundtracked by massive J-pop tunes. You use the stylus to tap and swipe in time with the music, directing the cheer squad to help a pottery artist rediscover his muse, a school pupil ace his exams and a ghost tell his still-living wife that he loves her. There are carts on eBay for less than 15.Available on: Nintendo DS Estimated playtime: skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionWhat to readStar Wars Outlaws, which is up for a Grammy, weaves in-universe and player-focused music together. Photograph: UbisoftThe Grammy nominees for best video game soundtrack have been announced. They are: Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora; God of War Ragnark: Valhalla; Marvels Spider-Man 2; Star Wars Outlaws; and Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. We recently profiled the people behind the music of Star Wars Outlaws in our High Scores video game music column.Deadline reports that the stars of Amazon Primes excellent Fallout TV adaptation will be joined next season byMacaulay Culkin, as a crazy-genius type character.Sony and Nintendo announced quarterly financial results this week. Highlights on the PlayStation side: Sony has now sold 65m units of the PS5, and 1.5m of the delightful Astro Bot. On the Nintendo side: it has now sold 146m Switch consoles, which still falls just short of the DS (154m) as Nintendos bestselling console ever.The next Nintendo console will be backwards-compatible with Switch games, Nintendos president, Shuntaro Furukawa, confirmed in a press conference. More details on the new machine are coming before the end of this financial year.What to clickQuestion BlockMonument Valley, one of the smartphone games available with a Netflix subscription. Photograph: ustwoReader Lewis asks:I love playing mobile games of all types, but the one I play the most often is a Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move copycat that I use to mindlessly destress after a long day (Im on level 5,264). The only issue with these games is the endless onslaught of confusing, long and weird adverts. Do you have any suggestions for solid, well designed, free puzzle games will keep me from doomscrolling?Alas, the price for free games on your phone is, almostNetflix subscription? It comes with a bunch of smartphone games, some of which are very good puzzlers: Monument Valley, Paper Trail, Arranger, Cut the Rope and a variety of appealingly mindless match-3 and word games.I also asked the fine people of Bluesky to weigh in, and here are the recommendations they came back with (thank you, everyone): Slice & Dice, Konamis Pixel Puzzle Collection, Township, Threes, Match Factory! and Twenty. A dev shouted out their game, Vectic Lite, which has ignorable banner ads, alongside another banner-ad-only puzzle game called Nokama. Theres also an independent puzzle games website, Thinky Games, that lets you search its database for recommendations.If youve got a question for Question Block or anything else to say about the newsletter hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.

The PlayStation 5 Pro was announced in September, and immediately people reacted with disbelief to the price: 699/$699, without a disc drive. Adjusted for inflation, it is the second-most expensive games console ever released beaten only by the PlayStation 3, whose price was quickly slashed when it turned out nobody was willing to work a second job to afford one. Its an addition to, rather than a replacement for, the original PS5 model. All games released so far work on the Pro, and all future PS5 games will work on both models.For your money, you get an upgraded GPU (graphics processing unit), which is overall 45% more powerful that the original PS5s; AI upscaling, which makes images more detailed; and advanced ray tracing, which makes the lighting better. In plain English, its supposed to make all PS5 games prettier and faster.My partner and I bought one last week, with an added disc drive to complement the 2TB of storage (an extra 100, though they are now in short supply). For context: I mostly play games on my Steam Deck or my Nintendo Switch, and can only just tell the difference between 30FPS and 60FPS. I appreciate a gorgeous game God of War and Ratchet and Clank have blown me away on PS5 but graphical performance is not hugely important to me. My partner, meanwhile, is a lifelong early adopter and PC gamer who is very invested in his tech. Here is our verdict.The idea behind this console upgrade is removing all compromises. The original PS5s graphical options let you pick between fidelity and performance how good everything looks v how fast everything moves. Choose fidelity and the lighting and detail of each scene will be better, but the frame rate will be lower. Choose performance and the frame rate will be higher, making things feel silky-smooth during play, but some of the fancier lighting effects and detail are turned off. With the PS5 Pro, the compromises have been removed: now you can have the higher detail at a higher frame rate.As to whether you can actually see this difference will depend a lot on your TV. If you dont have a 4K TV, for instance, there is absolutely no point in this console. Most high-end TVs now have a lot of built-in effects and features that smooth out frame rates and otherwise improve the look and performance of what youre playing, so the difference might not look as huge as youre expecting. Personally, as someone who is not invested at all in high-end tech, I can see and feel a small but noticeable difference when I compare the same game on PS5 and Pro on our 4K TV. My partner, whose eye is better trained for these things, feels that the contrast is more obvious.This lack of compromise is what tech-minded gamers hoped for from this generation of consoles in the first place, so it is nice to finally have it. Indeed, I reckon the ideal customer for the PS5 Pro is someone whos been holding off on buying a PS5 because it didnt feel like enough of an upgrade from the PS4. Most people are unlikely to play a PS5 exclusive such as Spider-Man 2 or Horizon Forbidden West again simply because its a little better-looking on an upgraded console. But if youve never played these games in the first place then youll now be able to enjoy them at their very best.Sonys pleasing hardware design is still going strong with the PlayStation 5 Pro Photograph: Sony Interactive EntertainmentSpeaking of enjoying games at their best: this console has a feature called PS5 Pro Game Boost, which enhances all the 8,500+ backwards-compatible PlayStation 4 games as well. Some of the PS4s best games have been specifically remastered for PS5 already, including The Last of Us parts I and II and Horizon Zero Dawn, but plenty havent, and they benefit hugely from this upgrade. The difference here would be noticeable to anyone.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionTypically, Sony has released these upgraded consoles just after the midpoint of a PlayStations lifespan, so we can assume well get three to four years worth of use out of the PS5 Pro before the PlayStation 6 comes along. As for whether its worth the money? If you already have a really nice TV, you like to have the latest tech, and you havent already played every PS5 game worth playing, you will, like my partner, be very happy with it. Its a nice-to-have, rather than an essential. You can be reassured that if, like me, you balk at paying this much for any games console, you are not missing out on much.

Any millennial and any parent will be familiar with Pokmon cards, newsagent pester-power mainstays since the turn of the century. Contained within shiny metallic plastic packaging are critter-adorned trading cards of varying rarity, from a humble Squirtle to a special-edition illustrated Snorlax. There have been a few attempts to bring these lucrative illustrated cards (and the competitive battling game that you can play with them) to smartphones, but until now, theyve all been poorly received. Pokmon Trading Card Game Pocket, released last week, is by some distance the best yet. It has truly gotten its hooks into me.Here, for the first time since Pokmon Trading Card Game on the Game Boy Color in 1998, we have a decent virtual version of the incredibly popular card game. This is good news, because its very entertaining, but also badJust like the real cards, this games appeal revolves around the minuscule chance that any given pack might contain something super rare. Tap on a booster pack adorned with Mewtwo, Pikachu or Charizard, and youre given a shimmering carousel of shiny packets to choose from and rip open with a swipe of your finger. The virtual cards are presented beautifully; in a nice touch, you can flip a pack over before opening it so that the cards are revealed back to front, extending that little moment of suspense before you see what they are. Rare ones sparkle and shine as you tilt the screen to admire them. Get a really rare card, as I discovered this morning, and you get a whole mini-movie animation of the scene depicted upon it.The game gives you one booster pack for free every 12 hours. A 7.99 monthly subscription gets you another daily pack, and you can play battles or pay money to earn more, but only up to a point. Pokmon Trading Card Game Pocket is not evil: it doesnt force you towards paying to spend time on it. The limit on the number of packs you can open every day is an effective brake on the dopamine-mining randomised-reward aspect of the game.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionIllustrated cards are the most beautiful versions of each critter, and the most coveted. Photograph: The Pokmon CompanyIf you want to deploy your cards in battles, meanwhile, you can do that as much and as often as you want for free. More than a simulation of collecting real Pokmon cards, this is a simulation of battling with them, something that surprisingly few card-collecting kids actually do. The rules of these battles are just the same as the real-life card game, but simplified. You build a deck of 20 cards from different Pokmon and helpful item cards, such as Potions to heal damage and Pok Balls to retrieve creatures from your deck. Each turn you generate energy, which you can attach to Pokmon to power their attacks. A good deck comprises one or two really powerful Pokmon and then a small phalanx of other creatures and cards that complement its abilities. Crucially, its not just about whos got the rarest, flashiest Pokmon card. A great strategic deck can be made out of relatively common cards, if you think it through carefully.I quickly got a feel for how my decks were working after a couple of battles, making small adjustments between each match. Its not as good (or as deep) as the real card game, but this quickfire version is much better suited to playing on a phone. Its still engaging and moderately challenging, especially against other human players, but also intuitive. Whats not intuitive are all the different currencies and items that you win in these battles. Ive spent more time trying to figure out what theyre used for than I have wrangling with the makeup of my decks. Youre rewarded constantly with gold, sparkly dust, tickets and hourglasses with every tiny collecting or battling milestone you reach.This is the worst of the free-to-play shadiness in Pokmon Trading Card Game Pocket. Overall, however, it does not feel excessively manipulative, and certainly not more so than the actual cards, which after all always cost money; I dread to think how much my family has spent on them over the years. Its not as generous as Pokmon Go with the amount of stuff you can do without opening your wallet, but for me the monetisation doesnt get in the way of the fun. Nonetheless, it has apparently already made a rather astonishing $24m.The 226 different cards on offer right now are cannily oriented towards the peak millennial nostalgia years of Pokmon in the early 00s; Trading Card Game Pocket is very tempting for those of us who were part of the original generation of Pokmaniacs. Like Pokmon Go, that selection will expand over time, and I expect Ill get tired of it eventually. For now, though, I am enjoying this daily indulgence.

Given the deluge of bad news emanating from the games industry over the past 10 months, it was somewhat reassuring this weekend to sit in a crowd of 20,000 happy, passionate fans, watching the biggest event in the esports calendar: the League of Legends world championship finals. The event, at the O2 arena in London, was the culmination of a globetrotting five-week competition to discover the best team in the world. Never having attended before mostly because the final is usually held in Asia, where the best players tend to come from I wasnt really sure what to expect. Would I be able to follow what was happening? Would I care? It turns out the answers to those questions were sort of and hell, yes.The Guardians journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.Learn more.For the uninitiated, League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena game (Moba for short) in which two teams of five players choose warriors from a selection of 170, and then battle to control a fantasy-themed map before destroying the others home base. The arena is divided into three lanes with an area known as the jungle in the middle, and each of the team members patrols their own specific section like any traditional team sport. Adding complexity is the fact that all the champion characters have their own skills, weapons and magical attacks, and throughout the game, they also have to defeat monsters and dragons to earn experience points that make them more powerful. Its both a deep strategy game and a bewildering riot of stomping warriors, galloping horsemen and levitating wizards.This years final was between experienced South Korean side T1 and Chinese newcomer Bilibili Gaming (BLG for short). The latter were riding high after smashing local rival Weibo Gaming in the semi-finals, but T1 were the firm favourites having claimed the cup four times already. Theyd almost been knocked out of the competition in an earlier stage, but apparently have a habit of charging back into contention just when everyone has written them off. In the arena, I manage to get a seat next to James Lynch from esports news site Dexerto, who volunteers to talk me through the action. He describes T1 as the League of Legends equivalent of the 1974 Dutch World Cup side freewheeling, unconventional and filled with neurotic genius. Lee Faker Sang-hyeok, widely considered to be the greatest player in League history, is the master at the centre of it all their Johan Cruyff. His movement is so weird and unpredictable, says Lynch. He is so hard to kill.South Koreas T1 team celebrate their win against Chinas Bilibili Gaming at the League of Legends world finals. Photograph: Benjamin Cremel/AFP/Getty ImagesBefore the final even commences, theres a 10-minute mini-concert featuring US rapper Ashnikko and Linkin Park, boasting astonishing art direction with pyrotechnics, giant LED displays and dozens of dancers. The whole thing has the feel of a major sporting event mixed with a K-pop gig a riot of colour, passion and stagecraft. In the hours leading up to the final, fans gathered at the venue, buying personalised merch, meeting friends from the community and of course dressing as their favourite League of Legends characters.It turns out I was extraordinarily fortunate that this was my League of Legends spectatorship debut. Its a thrilling encounter. Once the showdown begins, the best-of-five-games format gets pushed to the limit, with the two teams taking it in turns to slaughter each other for the first four matches. Throughout the final, Faker is the dominant playmaker, continually leaping in and out of skirmishes, taking down enemies and then somehow escaping with barely a millimetre of his health bar remaining. In the arena, we view the action on huge screens suspended above the stage where the 10 young players duke it out. Rather than separating us from the action, these displays draw us in. The crowd of mostly twentysomething fansloudly roar their approval at clever moves and chant when their side gains the upper hand.The decider is a cagey affair, the warriors prodding and poking at each other while warily skulking around the map until the whole thing explodes into a sprawling clash that makes the Battle of the Bastards look like a minor scuffle outside a kebab shop.Bilibili Gaming and T1 mid-battle. Photograph: Benjamin Cremel/AFP/Getty ImagesIt was T1 that emerged victorious, but this was also a win for the whole concept of esports. The scene has struggled at least economically to live up to the hype of the 2010s, when inflated estimates of its global value attracted big investors and sponsors, which lead to oversized team organisations and bloated salaries for star players. Last year saw a slew of those organisations, events and tournaments closing, including Activision Blizzards much-hyped Overwatch League. However, this weekends event attracted a peak viewing audience of 6.94 million most watching from home on streaming platforms such as Twitch and YouTube a new record for esports.Its easy sometimes to think about video games as an industry, rather than a culture that brings people joy. Sometimes, its important to look beyond sales and viewing figures, and to sit in an arena with 20,000 adoring fans. Outside the O2 megaplex, I spoke to one attendee, Morgan, perfectly dressed as Aphelios (in his Heartsteel outfit, to be precise), who explained the appeal: Theres such a competitive spirit, everyone is here to root for their favourite teams, but its very good-natured. Theres also so many different communities in League, its great to see them coming together and being able to bond over the one thing they have in common and are really passionate about. Thats the really beautiful thing about this.What to playCompelling and stylish Metal Slug Tactics. Photograph: DotemuReleased in 1996, the original Metal Slug was an exciting pastiche of the side-scrolling military shooter in which lone muscular soldiers took on whole armies of swarming bullet fodder. The brand has never really gone away, with dozens of sequels and spin-offs over the past 30 years the latest of which is Metal Slug Tactics, which takes the look and feel of SNKs franchise and turns it into a compelling, stylish turn-based strategy game. Here you assemble a team of warriors and face-off against the Rebel Army, using a huge range of customisable weapons and special attacks.Acknowledging its heritage as a run and gun game, the emphasis is on movement and dodging, with characters powering up their defences as they take more steps, giving each turn a dynamic feel. And while theres genuine depth to the strategic play, the isometric pixel art visuals perfectly capture the lighthearted feel of the series. Metal Slug veterans will love it, of course, but fans of Advance Wars, XCOM and Into the Breach will get a real kick out of it, too.Available on: PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PCEstimated playtime: 20+ hoursskip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionWhat to readSilent Hill 2 coming to a theatre near you? Photograph: KonamiPC Gamer has a great feature about an immersive stage production of Silent Hill 2 by Niko Wilkins, a student at Virginia Commonwealth University. Im certainly looking forward to the West End musical adaptation.Thank you, Polygon, for this handy guide to the best board games of 2024. Its a diverse bunch featuring everything from city building to alien spotting; I particularly like the sound of Burning Banners: Rage of the Witch Queen.GamesIndustry.biz has an interesting piece on the accessibility issues facing video game content streamers, including the punishing demands of YouTube and Twitch audiences.Minecraft fans looking to populate their Christmas lists may be interested in The World of Minecraft, a hefty new tome featuring lots of concept art, archive materials and interviews with the team at Mojang about the creation of the game.What to clickQuestion BlockIt helped me through my grief Elden Ring. Photograph: Bandai Namco EntertainmentThis weeks question comes from reader Turlough:I always avoided the FromSoftware games thinking they would be too difficult. Then, in 2021, I experienced a very painful bereavement and started playing Elden Ring. It helped me work through my grief and was one of the best games I have ever played. I have worked through all the FS Souls and Souls-like games, which also helped me through a particularly rough patch at work (Im a child psychiatrist). Are there any other Souls likes that are as good? Im playing Lords of the Fallen, which is definitely fun but lacks the magic of the others. I fear that FromSoftware have slightly ruined all other games for me, apart from the Zeldas.Thank you for your question and for your reminder that games can help us through difficult experiences. I hope things are getting easier for you. On the subject of Souls-likes, a lot of my colleagues really enjoyed Lies of P, a complex adventure based on the Adventures of Pinocchio although the narrative is extremely dark. Alternatively, I really enjoyed the Nioh series from Team Ninja, which provides incredible depth in terms of the combat and weapons systems; the Nioh Collection on PS5 brings together remastered versions of the original game and its sequel.If youre prepared to move a little further away from the Souls archetype, Id also recommend Hollow Knight, Stellar Blade and Nier Automata,which all contain elements of what makes FromSoftwares games so beguiling and immersive.

It is one of the greatest injustices of video game history that the Sega Saturn is widely considered a failure. The console, which was launched in Japan on 22 November 1994, almost two weeks ahead of the PlayStation, is continually and pejoratively compared to its rival. We hear about how Sony produced a high-end machine laser targeted at producing fast 3D graphics, while Segas engineers had to add an extra graphics chip to the Saturn at the last minute. We read that Sonys Ken Kutaragi provided creators with a much more user-friendly development system. We know that Sony undercut the price of Segas machine, using its might as a consumer electronics giant to take the financial hit. All of that is true, but what arent always mentioned are the vast success of the Japanese Saturn launch, and the extraordinary legacy that Segas 32-bit machine left behind.What I remember is this: Edge magazine reporting from Akihabara in Tokyo, where its Japanese correspondent had joined a queue outside the major Laox computer game centre to try and snag one of the thousand or so machines not already preordered by fans. Two-and-a-half hours later, the writer emerged with his purchase, which included a copy of Virtua Fighter, the best arcade fighting game of the year. It was a lucky buy: the shelves were emptying fast all over town. Sega shifted an unprecedented 200,000 units that day.Saturn brought the feel of arcade titles such as Daytona USA into the home. Photograph: Justin Leighton/AlamyI joined Edge as a writer the following September and was there for two years, coinciding with the creative height of the Saturns short life. What was obvious to me at the time, and still rings true now, is that Segas first-party output on the machine was among the best the decade had to offer. Arcade mega hits Sega Rally and Daytona USA set the agenda for a new era of stylish 3D racers, while Virtua Fighter 2, Fighting Vipers and Last Bronx brought complexity and depth to one-on-one fighting games. Segas platform-exclusive titles were equally vivid and groundbreaking: Panzer Dragoon, Nights Into Dreams and Burning Rangers were imaginative and richly visual, reinventing staid genres for a new generation. But I also loved the eccentric experiments: the toy-like platformer Clockwork Knight, the weird, frantic puzzler Baku Baku Animal, the self-consciously silly Virtua Fighter Kids.It is often said that what Saturn lacked was support from third-party developers, but that was not the case in Japan. The veteran shoot em up creator Treasure developed two of its greatest titles, Radiant Silvergun and Guardian Heroes, for the machine. Even now, if you want to play classic 2D shooters, Saturn is the place, with Batsugun, Battle Garegga and Darius Gaiden all considered essentials of the genre.X-Men vs Street Fighter: the Sega Saturn saw the beginning of Capcoms relationship with Marvel. Photograph: ArcadeImages/AlamyAtlus converted the arcade hit DonPachi and produced the underappreciated role-playing adventures Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner and Princess Crown. For horror fans there was Warps survival thriller Enemy Zero, while Capcom produced a Saturn port of Resident Evil which included an exclusive mini-game as well as new enemies and outfits. Capcom also put many of its greatest fighting games of the era on to Saturn, including X-Men: Children of the Atom (originally a home exclusive on the system), X-Men vs Street Fighter and Darkstalkers 3.Sega also had decent developer support in Europe, where coders brought up on home computers were experienced at programming in assembly language, which Saturn supported (PlayStation had a more rarified development environment, based around C). Core Design originally targeted Tomb Raider at the machine (and also made the unjustifiably forgotten action adventure Swagman for the console); Psygnosis brought over WipeOut; Gremlin produced its top-down brawler Loaded for both consoles. And Knutsford-based Travellers Tales, which would go on to make the Lego series, co-created underrated racer Sonic R with Sonic Team, which was a wonderful technical showcase for the Saturn, with smooth frame rates and gorgeous transparency effects.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionThe Saturn was innovative in other ways. Saturn Bomberman remains arguably the best title in Hudsons explode-em-up series, especially considering its support for chaotic 10-player matches via two multitaps. The Saturn was the first major console to offer online gaming via its Net Link modem, which allowed players to take part in head-to-head sessions of Sega Rally Championship and Virtual On over the internet as early as 1997. One of the third-party titles to support the tech was Shadows of the Tusk, a deck-building strategy role-playing game (years before the genre hit mainstream popularity) which came with its own physical pack of cards. Also, Segas 3D Control Pad, an analogue controller designed specifically for Nights Into Dreams, beat the Nintendo 64s pad to market by several weeks.There was a time perhaps a year, maybe even two when there was nothing inevitable about the demise of the Saturn. It held its own, matching everything Sony and its lead development partner Namco could throw at it. Daytona v Ridge Racer, Virtua Fighter v Tekken, Virtua Cop v Time Crisis. And this rivalry was an absolute boon for gamers, pushing 3D game design and creating the technical expertise that would be needed for the next generation of open-world 3D console titles. There is a reason why, 30 years after its launch, you can go on eBay or specialist retro gaming sites and find refurbished or modified Saturns for sale often region-free, with switches to flip between the European 50Hz or NTSC 60Hz TV options and its because the games I have mentioned here are still worth playing on their original format, their original home. The Saturn didnt stick around as a mass consumer device but it was a success in many ways. We need to talk more about it when considering the history of video games.

If there was ever a series that reminds me of being on holiday, it was the Mario and Luigi role-playing games. I fondly remember squinting at the Game Boy Advances screen in 2003, commanding my plumbers through thrillingly dynamic battles from a sun lounger. Brothership is the first new game in the series in almost a decade, and it brings a jaunty, seafaring adventure to the mercifully better lit screen of the Nintendo Switch.In a classic Mario plot device, our heroes are whisked away from the Mushroom Kingdom via a giant portal, and groggily awaken marooned in the oceanic world of Concordia. This place is utterly gorgeous. As you leap around the first of many vibrant, cel-shaded islands, you can practically taste the sea breeze. A stunning Wind Waker HD-esque bloom lighting effect lends this bright and breezy adventure a washed-out, sun-kissed feel.Before you can put your feet up, however, the bros discover that Concordias once great archipelago has fractured, and it falls to the ever charitable plumbers to take the helm of the floating Shipshape Island and sail around reconnecting the islands. So much for a holiday.Brotherships combat is a breezy joy, making the simple timed-button-presses of attacks, jumps, hammer blows and counters feel far more engaging than they have any right to be. Where turn-based battling can often grow tiresome in other games, Brotherships is an engaging dance, chucking new ideas, abilities and unexpectedly flashy attack modifiers at you with joyous abandon.Getting to the best of the battling, however, takes patience. At the start of the game Mario and Luigi have none of these wonderful tools, and the only thing that youll be hammering is the skip button. This series is infamous for bombarding players with walls of texts, but the opening hours of Brothership feel particularly egregious. Before the moustachioed siblings can really get the lay of the land, they are harangued by an endless array of Concordians a race of conversation-starved anthropomorphic acorns. Where the Paper Mario games delight in dishing out clever puns, the jokes here feel half-baked, and theres no voice-acting to liven up the script.A breezy joy Mario & Luigi: Brothership. Photograph: NintendoThankfully, Brothership soon gets some wind in its sails, as you unite a warring nation of ice and flame, triumph in an island-wide dance-off, solve a gloomy detective noir mystery, and even join a ragtag crew of teenage pirates. The inhabitants of each island you save flock gratefully to your ship-cum-island home, bringing new tech and equipment with them, and as the hours went by, I even started to feel some affection for these annoying acorns. The phenomenal score definitely helps: an infectiously upbeat, nautical soundtrack full of the pompous parp of horns and swelling sea-shanty accordions.As I sailed the seas, I also discovered a slew of optional puzzle-filled islets, from Middle Eastern-inspired market towns to dusty dunes full of the snapping jaws of sand sharks. Boss fights are another highlight, taking place in dimly lit dungeons that provide a welcome change in tone from the sun-drenched locales above. And Luigi is finally shown more of the respect that he sorely deserves: he can use his Luigi logic to find collectibles, solve puzzles and devise clever boss-beating strategies. All of this is delivered with grin-inducing comic gusto: Brothership is a very silly RPG that offers up some serious fun.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionIn a year that has given us not one but three Mario-themed RPGs, I was ready to be underwhelmed by Brothership. Yet thanks to captivating combat, varied platforming and well-judged difficulty, Brothership not only lives up to my childhood nostalgia for this series, but improves upon it. It is an inviting serving of sun-soaked delight at the beginning of a gloomy November.

Wilmot the anthropomorphic square has a curious but not exactly undesirable existence. He resides in a spacious, empty house to which his friendly local postwoman, Sam, brings regular deliveries of tiled puzzles; a subscription that never seems to expire. Wilmot unpacks each new delivery, scattering the pieces on the bare floor. Then he can shunt, grasp and rotate each fragment to form a coherent picture each of which has been drawn by British illustrator Richard Hogg. Matching pieces snap together pleasingly, and when the artwork is complete it can be hung on Wilmots big empty walls. As soon as one puzzle is finished, Sam arrives with the next, and soon enough Wilmots wall is as cluttered and colourful as a Saatchi gallery.Its a game to be picked at with a sense of leisurely satisfaction, as if working loose a complicated knotThere are, typically, several fragments left over when you complete a picture, so some of the challenge is in identifying these rogue pieces, setting them to one side (you are free to organise your floor space to suit your organisational requirements) to return to once you have all the necessary components. In time youll have several puzzles on the go at once, each one at a different level of completion, and its this arrhythmia that gives the game its unique feel, elevating it beyond a mere digital jigsaw simulator.Postwoman Sams breezy dialogue, which tells a gentle story via brisk interactions, adds a bit of human warmth to the relentless puzzling. But as with Witch Beams zen 2021 Bafta winner Unpacking, Wilmot Works It Out is an almost therapeutic endeavour; the puzzles are neither tricksy nor demanding. Rather, its a game to be picked at with a sense of leisurely satisfaction, as if working loose a complicated knot. The effect is gently soothing, in the way of a jigsaw, but, when it comes to arranging your artworks, a little more scope for creative flair.Watch a trailer for Wilmot Works It Out.

In 2015, when I first played as Maxine Caulfield in the original Life Is Strange, it was only the second time I had ever played a game starring a teenaged girl. (The first time was The Last of Us: Left Behind, which came out the year before.) It was an awkward game in a few ways, particularly its cringeworthy (mis)use of teen slang, but the intense, life-changing and sometimes conflicted relationship between Max and her (more than) friend Chloe rung true. It carried the whole game, actually, more than Maxs time-rewinding powers or the murder mystery that powered the plot. I believed in Max and Chloe. The end of that game forces you into a horrible choice between, as Max would put it, two shitty futures, proving that even time travellers must live with the consequences of their actions. The reverberations of that choice run through this sequel, nine years later.Grownup Max is now artist in residence at a prestigious arts college, placing her somewhere between the students, with their parties and dramatic breakups and secret societies, and the teachers in the faculty, whose pettiness and preoccupations with their own agendas rarely paint them in a flattering light. She abandoned her home town and stopped using her time-rewinding powers after the events of the first Life Is Strange. Now she is tentatively trying to form new relationships in this fresh place. And, as she discovers when one of her new friends is murdered, she has a new power, too. She can slip between timelines, investigating the murder both in the timeline where it happened, and in an alternative reality where it didnt.Max discovers she has the ability to move between timelines. Photograph: Square EnixIll say it upfront: Double Exposure does not stick the landing. There is so much potential in this setup and these characters, but it just doesnt quite come together. Some characters are great, believable and consistent; others, such as the cop competing with Max to solve the murder, behave ridiculously, or are maddeningly inconsistent, like Vinh the playboy actor who alternately sneers at Max and confides in her. There are some truly excellent individual scenes and moments here, particularly the intimate ones between Max and her friend Safi, and Max and the cute bartender she has a gigantic crush on: whoever wrote their first date deserves a raise. There are also two really good end-of-chapter twists in the story that made me really want to know how things were going to turn out.But none of it quite comes together in the end. There are plenty of small holes in the plot that, together, almost cause it to unravel. In service of this sometimes dodgy plot, characters do things that simply dont make sense, causing me to shout Why would you do that? at the screen on more than one occasion. I purposely screwed over one character again and again just to see how theyd react, but they still seemed keen to be friends because, it turned out, the story needed them later. The portrayal of grief and its effects, too, which really should be a key theme of the game for all kinds of reasons, is tonally off. I was so preoccupied by this that it really killed my sense of personal investment in Max and her story, and narrative games rely on their players feeling invested.The journal that once provided a little more insight into adolescent Maxs inner life returns here, alongside messages and a social media network that live on her phone, letting you see conversations between characters and catch up on what happened to the surviving folk from Maxs home town. I personally hated this; phone notifications kept popping up relentlessly as I was exploring the beautiful surrounds of Caledon University, and much as in real life, I ended up getting overwhelmed and ignoring them entirely. But they do provide some much-needed further context on the people surrounding Max and their relationships with each other.Life Is Strange: Double Exposure trailer videoThe first Life Is Strange was a clever twist on the idea of choice and consequence in narrative games: how does it change things if you can always rewind and pick a different option? Double Exposures message is very different: a grownup Max is now determined to live in the present, however hard it is. This Max knows that nothing feels consequential if you can simply undo it. But she hasnt lost her spark; shes still thoughtful, determined, and just that little bit cringe. It has been a pleasure to be reunited with her. There are some wonderful lines and concepts in this game, enough to make me all the more frustrated that its so inconsistent. The ending, particularly, was infuriating, though it does set things up intriguingly for another sequel. I hope that Deck Nine can build on this with whatever comes next.

Shepton Mallet prison in Somerset is the worlds oldest correctional facility. It is also reportedly one of the most haunted. Between its opening in 1625 and its closure in 2013, it saw hundreds of inmates, from Victorian street urchins to wayward American GIs to the Kray twins. Now a tourist attraction, it occasionally opens to paying guests who want to spend a night behind bars. Some are paranormal investigators, some are brave tourists, and others are video game journalists with a silly idea: how scary would it be to play five recent horror games all night, locked in a haunted prison?Carrying just a torch, an electromagnetic field (EMF) detector, and a laptop, we wandered the prison finding spine-chilling locations in which to play these immersive supernatural masterpieces. Here is what happened The Exit 8Incredibly unnerving The Exit 8. Photograph: Kotake CreateLocation. B wing level 3. The largest of Sheptons Victorian prison wings, designed to hold 94 prisoners in tiny cells which didnt have toilets until 1998. Cell 30 is said to be haunted by an inmate who has been known to tap unwary guests on the shoulder. The game: Scare factor: Unnerving rather than terrifying, but playing in a prison wing, which has a similarly stark, soulless and municipal feel, definitely increased the sense of liminal anxiety.In My HeadDread-filled adventure In My Head. Photograph: JustTomcukLocation: execution shed. This was where condemned prisoners would spend their last days before facing the noose, under the supervision if you were lucky of celebrity hangman, Albert Pierrepoint.The game: Designed to look like an old VHS horror film, this dread-filled adventure requires you to explore a dark, dingy building in the woods where youve been told an ancient relic is waiting to be discovered. The ruined gothic interiors and constant sounds of radio static and children crying are familiar horrors, but this game conjures an incredible atmosphere thanks to its detailed locations and soundscapes. Not for the squeamish. Scare factor: In My Head would have been scary enough at home, but this location had such a heavy, doom-laden atmosphere we could honestly only play for a few minutes. Just before we escaped, we bumped into ghost hunters Darren and Jay from DS Hampshire Haunts. They told us that on their last visit, Darren saw two disembodied legs walking past. We made our excuses and left.PanicoreBlair Witch Project meets Alien Isolation Panicore. Photograph: ZTEK StudioLocation: exercise yard. Reportedly built over a mass burial pit and haunted by Captain Philip William Ryal, who was imprisoned at Shepton during the first world war. He threw himself off the roof overlooking the yard, and people have seen a ghostly figure lurking up there.The game: Youre a paranormal investigator exploring a series of derelict buildings and solving puzzles while being pursued by AI-infused monsters that respond to any sound you make. Yes, its Blair Witch Project meets Alien Isolation, and just as terrifying as that sounds. We played solo, but you can opt for co-op, a la Phasmophobia, which would have been preferable under the circumstances. Scare factor: The fact that the games ruined institutional buildings looked just like Shepton Mallet prison, with peeling paint on the walls, rubble everywhere and doorways leading into total darkness, made this a truly horrifying experience.Did you feel that? Keith and Rich playing Panicore in the exercise yard at Shepton Mallet prison. Photograph: Joao Diniz Sanches/The GuardianThe Complex: ExpeditionBizarrely reassuring The Complex: Expedition. Photograph: pgWaveLocation: the gatehouse. Built in the 17th century this is one of the oldest surviving parts of the prison, and nearby you can crawl into two remaining cells from the period. Unsurprisingly, its a hotbed of paranormal activity. There is a ghost named Bob the gatekeeper who apparently runs his fingers through the hair of female visitors. Not OK, Bob.The game: The Complex is another in the current indie trend of horror games set in backrooms endless tunnels and passageways. Youre part of a research party sent into the titular facility to investigate a strange occurrence. For much of the time youre wandering through a maze of vast empty rooms and hallways, viewed through the lens of a VHS camcorder, which gives the game a strange and unsettling sort of hyperrealism.Scare factor: The stark modern architectural setting meant this one felt bizarrely reassuring while playing it in a haunted 17th-century dungeon. We didnt want to leave.ChuxieA jump-scare machine Chuxie. Photograph: LCGamingLocation: C wing. The womens wing of the prison is famous for one particular figure the white lady who was convicted of murdering her fiance and asked to wear her wedding dress on the night before her execution.The game: A viral hit on TikTok and Twitch, Chuxie is effectively a J-horror jump-scare machine. Youre a paranormal investigator exploring an abandoned hospital filled with ghosts, including a terrifying woman in a white dress Ringu anyone? Spooky figures pop up behind you, or appear for a few seconds in darkened passageways, and the visuals are detailed enough to make your grim surroundings feel very real. Scare factor: Off the scale, quite frankly not helped by the fact this wing is in almost complete darkness and has a mannequin of the white lady suspended above the ground floor. When passing one particular cell our EMF reader went crazy registering a maximum reading for several seconds. We couldnt wait to get the heck out of there.Off the scale scary the Shepton Mallet prison white lady. Photograph: Keith Stuart/The GuardianConclusion: Walking around the silent Victorian wings at 3am was the closest we ever want to get to actually being in a survival horror game. Did we see any ghosts during our night behind bars? No. Did we manage to completely freak ourselves out playing horror games in darkened cells and echoing corridors? Absolutely yes. Furthermore, when I returned home, I tried to get a maximum reading on the EMF meter again. I wafted it at my smartphone, I held it next to my microwave oven on full blast It never even came close.

Its official: after Sony pulled its struggling hero shooter Concord from sale shortly after it launched, the studio that made it will now be closing. Firewalk Studios was bought by Sony less than two years ago, as part of a strategy to improve PlayStations live-service portfolio. The closure of Firewalk cements Concords place as one of the biggest and most consequential flops in gaming history: the cost to Sony will have been in the hundreds of millions, with estimates of Concords development cost ranging from $200m to $400m in total.Sony also closed Neon Koi, a developer with offices in Helsinki and Berlin, which focused on mobile action games with epic stories but had yet to release a game.Having comprehensively outsold the Xbox with its PlayStation consoles for two console generations in a row now, Sony identified mobile gaming and live-service games (the likes of Fortnite, Overwatch and Destiny) as its growth priorities. It has had one live-service hit, Helldivers 2, a surprise success in January. But with Concords failure to launch and reports of continued troubles at Sonys other live-service studio, Bungie which makes Destiny, and which Sony bought in 2022 for $3.7bn its not looking like this strategy is paying off.We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options, wrote Hermen Hulst, head of Sonys studios, in a businesslike press release. After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio. I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication I know none of this is easy news to hear, particularly with colleagues and friends departing.Both decisions were given serious thought, and ultimately, we feel they are the right ones to strengthen the organisation. Neon Koi and Firewalk were home to many talented individuals, and we will work to find placement for some of those impacted within our global community of studios where possible.The 150-plus people at Firewalk and an estimated 30 at Neon Koi join about 13,000 other video game workers laid off globally so far this year, as a post-pandemic economic contraction reshapes game development.Firewalks staff posted a final farewell on X yesterday evening. Firewalk began with the idea of bringing the joy of multiplayer to a larger audience, it reads.Along the way we assembled an incredible team who were able to navigate growing a new startup into a team during a global pandemic Build a new, customised next-generation FPS engine and ultimately ship and deliver a great experience to players even if it landed much more narrowly than hoped against a heavily consolidated market. We took some risks along the way marrying aspects of card battlers and fighting games with first-person-shooters and although some of these and other aspects of the IP didnt land as we hoped, the idea of putting new things into the world is critical to pushing the medium forward.The fact that a studio can do all this and still flop spectacularly is sobering. Concord had its challenges, but it was not a bad game, nor were its problems down to underinvestment. But there simply wasnt room for it in a shooter market that was already too crowded, and in which established names like Call of Duty, Fortnite and Apex Legends are too dominant. The timeline for all this is stunningly compressed in just over two months, Firewalk launched its first game, had that game pulled from sale, and got shut down completely. I have enormous sympathy for everyone who worked there.Concord never got the chance to evolve past its early problems, as so many live-service games have before it. Instead, it is likely to be remembered as the emblem of a shockingly brutal year in game development the most brutal I can remember. More than 30 video game studios have shut down worldwide since 2023, as the stakes of high-end game development have become unreasonably high. Concord is the biggest, most expensive tragedy of this environment, but it is not the first and it wont be the last.What to playLife Is Strange: Double Exposure. Photograph: Square EnixWe have now entered the traditional Big Game Season, with Call of Duty out last week and Dragon Age finally returning after a long hiatus this Friday. I have been playing Life Is Strange: Double Exposure, a new game in the supernatural murder-mystery series about young people with extraordinary powers.This entry returns to Maxine Caulfield, the teenage time-rewinding star of the very first Life Is Strange game in 2015. Double Exposure is not perfect by any means, but returning to this character felt very meaningful. Max was the first relatable teenage girl Id ever played as in a video game, at a time when female protagonists were still rare, let alone queer female protagonists. Now, nearly 10 years on, Im playing a game in which the grownup bisexual Max can ask out a small-town lesbian bartender in the opening half hour. Anyone with an attachment to the first Life Is Strange and its characters, who has wondering what might have happened to Max and Chloe after the storm in Arcadia Bay, will get a lot of enjoyment out of this game despite its flaws.Available on: PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC Estimated playtime: skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionWhat to readFreaking out Rich Pelley, left, and Keith Stuart at Shepton Mallet prison in Somerset. Photograph: Joao Diniz Sanches/The GuardianHalloween is coming up, so I sent two writers to a haunted prison to play horror games all night. It seemed like the ideal reviewing environment.Nintendo is ending service for its smartphone version of Animal Crossing in November, and replacing it with a premium version that has all the same content but without the free to play nickel-and-diming. Its called Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete itll initially cost 10 and is out in December.Despite dismissing all the claims made by Hindenburg Research in its report a few weeks back, Roblox is to introduce a new type of parent-managed account, according to internal emails seen by the Verge. Seems like damage control to me.Amazon Primes adaptation of Like a Dragon is out this week. Ive yet to watch it but the reviews so far are divisive.What to clickQuestion BlockExtremely suitable for stressed adults Dorfromantik. Photograph: Toukana InteractiveThis weeks question comes from reader Jonny:Growing up, my wife fell in love with Civilization IV. Now, with many more responsibilities, shes looking to get back into gaming but finds most modern civilisation-building games too time-intensive and over-concerned with multiplayer battles. Are there any more relaxed civilisation-building games that you or other readers recommend?For a game with all the building without any of the battling thats extremely suitable for stressed adults, I recommend Dorfromantik. It has you selecting matching hexagonal tiles to slowly and peacefully expand your micro-world, which has no warring humans in it to disturb the peace. If thats a bit too laidback, try Anno 1800, which offers more traditional city building and civilisation advancement. It usually plays out as a rivalry between you and other nations, but you can actually turn that off and go entirely at your own speed if you like.Have you got more recommendations for Jonnys wife? Email them in! And as ever, if youve got a question for Question Block or anything else to say about the newsletter email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.

Whoever thought of constructing this games campaign around a safe house resembling a haunted mansion on an abandoned country estate deserves an immediate pay rise. After each foray into shoot-em-up carnage, your team of militarised misfits is deposited back into this sprawling country pile, which for some reason is filled with intriguing mysteries and puzzles: what happens if you play the piano? Where does that passage lead? What is this, scrawled in invisible ink on the wall? Its like Scooby-Doo crossed with Daphne du Mauriers Rebecca a comparison I never imagined making about a Call of Duty game.Lead developers Treyarch and Raven have had four years to work on this title and boy does it show. The multiplayer mode is both familiar and fresh thanks to its omni-movement, which lets you run and leap in every direction, radically altering the feel of movement and tipping the balance of lethal encounters in favour of people with spatial reasoning skills rather than lightning-fast trigger fingers. The small maps, taking in derelict radar stations, strip mall forecourts and penthouse apartments, have been intricately built to provide combinations of labyrinthine corridors, long sight-lines and sneaky cubby holes. The weapons, including 12 newcomers, are designed to exploit varying playstyles from quick-scope super snipers to Red Bull-guzzling SMG teens and the gunsmith allows myriad ways to modify each one, with genuine tangible effects on your play.Play your cards right Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Illustration: ActivisionFor the single-player campaign, the scene is set in 1991, during the Gulf war, where a mysterious international terror agency named The Pantheon has got its hands on a deadly weapon of mass destruction possibly with the help of corrupt CIA operatives. The only people who can stop the Pantheon are a selection of weaponised neer-do-wells including an ex-Force Recon hard nut, a troubled assassin and a very bouffant secret agent, the last of whom may well have had a sideline modelling 1980s hair products.Its kind of refreshing that Call of Duty, all too often a jingoistic standard-bearer for American exceptionalism, is now looking inward for its enemies. Its also probably a good idea that the Iraq conflict is very much a backdrop (with Saddam Hussein, Bill Clinton and George Bush all popping up in cameo roles) rather than a focus, given how complex that conflict was. There are however several controversial scenes, including the helicopter gunship slaughter of dozens of Iraqi soldiers, and the gratuitous interactive interrogation of a terrified prisoner, that are distressing in their lack of moral context or analysis.Otherwise, how does it play? Well, Oscar Wilde famously said that genius steals, and he may as well have been a design consultant on this game. Most Wanted is effectively a Hitman mission set during a Democratic party fundraiser, where youre given three different ways to blackmail a senator into giving you intel: mafia hitmen, a disgruntled wife or a mysterious note in his coat pocket. Hunting Season is Far Cry 2: an open-world quest set in a desert crammed with enemy bases to raid and secrets to discover. Under the Radar is Metal Gear Solid a heady mix of stealth and social engineering that follows the assassin as she infiltrates a Pantheon base in Vorkuta (a small Russian town that previously featured in the original Black Ops campaign).These are short, sharp genre exercises that each bring different flavours to the central gameplay conceit of killing as many soldiers as possible. But the real treat is Emergence, the narcotic-induced hallucination mission that every game in the Black Ops series must contain. It is a tense, engrossing and genuinely unsettling tribute to a certain Dr Who episode that will induce a fear of crash test mannequins in all who play it.Finally, the Zombies mode has returned to its standard format, abandoning the unpopular open-world design introduced in Modern Warfare III. Its a wave-based shootout, in which teams of co-op players try to survive against incoming zombie hordes using weapons and items discovered while exploring the tight, atmospheric locations. Once again, youre holding out against swarming corpses, levelling up your guns at Pack-a-Punch machines, collecting special weapons and facing down boss monsters, while keeping your eyes peeled for fun easter eggs, such as a hidden bowling alley where you attempt to knock down as many lumbering brain-eaters as possible. Its fraught and incredibly stressful, but with three friends its a real blast.Black Ops 6 is the best title in the series for years. Its still a maniacal first-person shootfest that many players will absolutely detest; no critics of games that glorify the military-industrial complex are going to be converted at this stage. The design team, though, knows its audience and serves them accordingly while doing just enough to move things forward and try some intriguing little segues. I would happily play a whole game in which I could customise the flamboyant safe house to make it more comfortable for my cute little family of spec-ops sociopaths; I would play a whole survival horror adventure set in the world that Emergence concocts. Nothing in this series has ever lingered with me as long as the nuclear bomb explosion in Call of Duty 4 but these violent delights, I feel, have staying power.

Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez streamed themselves playing an American football video game against each other on Sunday as the two Democrats continued their partys efforts to secure votes from young men just nine days before the White House election.During the stream of their showdown on the latest edition of the Madden game series, Ocasio-Cortez and Walz exalted the importance of regaining Democratic control of the US House, maintaining a majority in the Senate and ensuring Kamala Harris wins the 5 November presidential election against Donald Trump.We dont all share the same politics, we dont all share the same views, but the need to defeat Trump this year has been my number one priority, Ocasio-Cortez said.She echoed others who have called Trump an aspiring authoritarian ruler and fascist supported by special interests who are exacerbating the ongoing climate crisis. She also discussed how the billionaire owners of the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post prevented their editorial teams endorsing Harris over Trump, referring to it as a plutocracy mask-off moment.During the stream, Ocasio-Cortez also excoriated the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe for calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage during Trumps rally at New York Citys Madison Square Garden on Sunday.Ocasio-Cortez who hails from the Bronx and is of Puerto Rican descent called Hinchcliffe an a-hole.Know that thats what they think about you [and] about anyone who makes less money than them, Ocasio-Cortez said.Ocasio-Cortez said she spoke with Walz a couple of weeks earlier when he expressed interest in doing a game stream with her. They agreed to play Madden because he used to be a football coach, and he was familiar with the series having gamed with his children.Walz attended the stream before a campaign rally in Nevada, logging on at about 3.30pm ET before detailing a history with gaming dating back to the original Pac Man, which hit arcades in the 1980. He played with the Minnesota Vikings and Ocasio-Cortez with the Buffalo Bills as about 12,000 users watched.Walz Minnesotas governor and Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitch after a recent NBC News survey found the Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, had a lead of two percentage points over Donald Trump with young male registered voters.Despite the edge, Democrats have polled better among the demographic in previous election cycles, creating concern among the party. And on Friday, Trumps campaign seemingly tried to add to concern, having the former president spend three hours on Joe Rogans podcast, whose audience is predominantly young men and whose show often leads the global charts on both Apple and Spotify.Harris at one point was rumored to appear with Rogan, but the sit-down never materialized. And instead it was Trump who took the spot to make his case for replacing income tax with tariffs and to reminisce about the genius of Robert E Lee, the Confederate military general who owned enslaved people and commanded the white supremacist, losing side of the US civil war.Sundays event with Ocasio-Cortez came after her first appearance on the Twitch platform in 2020 was one of the platforms most watched events at that time. Trump lost the presidency to Joe Biden weeks later.Sundays session also came after the Harris campaign earlier in October live-streamed a Walz rally on Twitch alongside live play of the World of Warcraft game.Another Harris campaign strategy targeting the support of young men has centered on a series of ads on the sports gambling platform DraftKings, Yahoo Sports, and on websites such as IGN (short for Imagine Games Network) and Fandom.

Developer Bioware was never going to have it easy with Veilguard. Its been a decade since the last Dragon Age game, a decade for fan theories to percolate and expectations to rise out of control and thats not to mention all the strife thats gone on at the studio after the disappointing Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. Veilguard is by no means a bad game, with plenty of charming characters to meet and new places to see. But the writing, the heart of previous games, is surprisingly mediocre, while the new combat style gets repetitive fairly quickly.You play as Rook, an associate of Varric, who served as companion and storyteller in the previous games. Varric and Rook have been on the hunt for elven god Solas for the better part of a year. Just when it looks as if you can stop him from tearing down the Veil between the physical and nether worlds, unleashing hordes of demons in the process, a magical mishap leads to the release of two other, even worse gods. These new villains are comically evil, but they are a disappointment compared with the compelling character of Solas, who is, after all, right there. Veilguard tells his side of the story, too, through side quests.Explaining away Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Photograph: Electronic ArtsAs we travel around the continent of Thedas, we visit places that previous games havent explored: the city of Minrathous in mage-led Tevinter, or the sunny Rivain peninsula. Each place is gorgeous and filled with detail, from glowing butterflies flitting around Arlathan forest to animated skeletons swinging brooms in the Nevarran necropolis. Veilguard lets you travel freely, but certain areas of each map are closed off until a quest unlocks them; this can feel jarring, but also offers freedom to explore without the overwhelm. Exploration is fun, too, with plenty of treasure to find. Each area is home to a different faction of characters, and they immediately start asking favours. Theres a lot of variety in these tasks, which unlock vital gear for each companion.Combat is now entirely real-time. You can still order your companions to use their skills via a ring menu similar to Mass Effects, which I sometimes had to do because my companions wouldnt do useful things such as healing Rook or slowing down time without my say-so. But for the most part, they act autonomously. All I have to do is attack and dodge, pressing the same three buttons over and over again, throwing in the occasional combat skill or finishing move as my companions yell at me to watch out for imminent ranged attacks or explosions. Its serviceable, but weve seen it before in countless other games, and theres not much room for strategy. Boss battles are quite challenging, however. Dodging is vital, and you wont get ahead by blindly slashing at your enemies.Generally, Veilguard is loth to let go of your hand for even a second. While a lot of the default damage numbers, wayfinders and blinking treasure indicators can be turned off in the options menu, the writing seems to assume no player can retain information for longer than a few seconds. Characters will endlessly repeat events that have just happened and point out things youve just seen, often by using the exact same words: Our rogue necromancer might be behind that door. Well, I sure hope our rogue necromancer is behind that door! In case this were somehow insufficient, theres a written summary for each mission so you can be absolutely sure what happened. The important ones are hashed over yet again in team meetings.Big decisions that affect the story are few and far between, and the game will tell you exactly what they lead to before you pick. Decisions do, for the most part, carry real consequence, which is nice, but it would have been nicer if the game didnt tell you that several times before you commit. These choices get rarer as time goes on, almost as if time to implement them ran out later in development.Rook is our hero of the hour because, by their own admission, no one else was there to do it. Its good to play as someone other than a magically chosen superhero for once, but Rook hasnt got much of a personality behind their ill-timed quips. No matter which dialogue option you pick, a lot of it inevitably ends in some sort of joke, and sometimes even mildly embarrassing pop culture references and idioms. (I never want to hear a character say a griffon is feeling his oats, please. Please.) Veilguard isnt the Guardians of the Galaxy-esque jokefest fans feared it might be after its first trailer, but Rook is written less like a person with opinions and more like someone who makes witty observations.The central story is the least interesting thing about Veilguard, both in its narrative and gameplay. Many quests have you endlessly slotting crystals into receptacles to open doors or vanquish blight-boils, pulsing, fleshy growths that keep you from travelling to a place to fight a monster. This isnt out of the ordinary for Dragon Age, but coupled with dissatisfying cameos and by-the-numbers gameplay, it left me feeling disappointed.The companions save the day. The quality of writing does vary wildly, but its fun to get to know your new team. Necromancer Emmrich genuinely cares about the dead, wielding his magic like a conductor, and Qunari dragon hunter Taash struggles with questions of identity and gender. Romantic options dont immediately go in hard on awkward flirting and instead often just constitute the nicest thing you might say to someone whos struggling though the game does have a habit of ruining the fun by jumping in to say, Careful! Youre being romantic! Are you sure you want to commit to a romance? The bigger annoyance here is how they behave when you take them on a mission together, when they will make small talk like two colleagues meeting at an office party. Sooo, Taash, you hunt dragons? I hunt monsters. Its a far cry from Dragon Age: Inquisitions banter.There is plenty to like about Veilguard, but I sometimes had to dig deep to look past its flaws, from repetitive gameplay to a story that doesnt know how to bring everything together. Its a perfectly enjoyable RPG, then, but an underwhelming Dragon Age game.Dragon Age: The Veilguard is out 31 October; 69.99

I am feeling anxious about the world. We have had mayoral elections in my part of Canada in which one candidate was backed with more gold than Croesus, so it wasnt even a contest. In the UK people have not got the Labour government they hoped they were voting for. And as someone who lives a few hours drive from the US border, I can only pray that Orange Hitler doesnt get in again. Or maybe I pray that he does, lest our neighbours to the south end up in an election-denial-driven repeat of the civil war. So I thought Id play a game where I get to direct the rise and fall of civilisation myself instead. As a treat.Civilization 6 is whats known as a 4X game. 4X stands for EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EXterminate, a phrase that offends my pedantic spelling sensibilities. Unfortunately the four exes I spent a lot of time doing here was Exert, Expire, Exclaim and then Exit due to this games Execrable gamepad controls, which are as intuitive as a Heston Blumenthal recipe. I lost count of the times I moved the wrong unit, or had brain freeze trying to remember what button did what. I would have preferred a more common sense control system, mouse and keyboard support, or an interface that uses the power of thought, like that one Elon Musk pretends he has.My frustration is tempered by the reminder that few things are as joy-inducing as finding a barbarian camp in a Civilization game. Free stuff! Yay! As I work my way through the years, the intellectually sturdy menu of advancements reminds me that there are many elegant roads to civilisation. You learn how the world developed, through trade routes that reward mathematical thinking and furthering your goals through philanthropic diplomacy. It offers a real chance to form a spiritual land of pure peace and happiness with environmental safeguards.4X marks the spot Civilization VIBut were not here for that, are we? We want to play as Alexander the Great and watch the world burn! But the controls cause me to mistakenly swap unit locations when I mean to attack and in contrast to the still-outstanding Advance Wars on the Game Boy Advance I cannot combine two weak units to make a strong one until later in the game. That makes zero sense to me.So I switch to a non-combat DLC scenario: Outback Tycoon, which involves settling Australia, looking for gold. And sheep. I love this scenario because it only lasts for 50 turns and is primarily about sending out explorers and hoping they find something cool before the snakes and spiders get them. Its more like opening an Advent calendar than playing a video game. But it pleases me. Maybe I didnt get enough Advent calendars as a kid. Or maybe its because we have no adventuring left in the real world. Nothing left to explore. Nothing to pioneer. I emigrated to Canada in 2009, only to find the whole country had already been discovered. So I became a zealous missionary, opening up a crucial trade route: every year I transport British people over here on vacation to import irony, and send Canadians on visits to my recommended places in the UK, where they arrive with suitcases full of passive aggression.Next, I try out a new Halloween-themed scenario. Hello! Playing as Cleopatra, you can only have the most basic military units but that unit can convert barbarians into zombies. Your zombies. And then those zombies can make more zombies. Before you can say brainzzzz you amass an army of the undead large enough to surround entire cities and take them for you. I love it!I realise that at some point the rest of the world will develop jet fighters that will easily take my zombies down, but I dont get that far. After 100 turns or so my zombie army is so large it clogs the planet. And DDZA (Dominik Diamonds Zombie Army) moves so slowly, and only as individual units, which is tedious. Also as a Catholic I dont think I will ever get over the guilt of surrounding the Vatican City with zombies and showing them Jesus wasnt the only one to come back from the dead.So I start the scenario again, returning to those glorious first turns. My first warrior, my first builder, my first buildings. I start each turn talking to them, like I do to players in Championship Manager:Good morning, Frank, hows it going?Great, boss. Nearly finished this monument.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionWell stick at it and one day Ill put you on the Hanging Gardens, eh? Good morning Terry, hows it with you!Just discovered the Great Barrier Reef!Good times! Give me 40 more turns to make a boat and Ill ship Frank down there to help.But then they become just one of many things I have to move around. Turns out the modern world is a bloody hard place to run. Perhaps a zombie apocalypse is in fact the way to go.

Very few Yugoslavians had access to computers in the early 1980s: they were mostly the preserve of large institutions or companies. Importing home computers like the Commodore 64 was not only expensive, but also legally impossible, thanks to a law that restricted regular citizens from importing individual goods that were worth more than 50 Deutsche Marks (the Commodore 64 cost over 1,000 Deutsche Marks at launch). Even if someone in Yugoslavia could afford the latest home computers, they would have to resort to smuggling.In 1983, engineer Vojislav Voja Antoni was becoming more and more frustrated with the senseless Yugoslavian import laws. We had a public debate with politicians, he says. We tried to convince them that they should allow [more expensive items], because its progress. The efforts of Antoni and others were fruitless, however, and the 50 Deutsche Mark limit remained. But perhaps there was a way around it.Antoni was pondering this while on holiday with his wife in Risan in Montenegro in 1983. I was thinking how would it be possible to make the simplest and cheapest possible computer, says Antoni. As a way to amuse myself in my free time. Thats it. Everyone thinks it is an interesting story, but really I was just bored! He wondered whether it would be possible to make a computer without a graphics chip or a video controller as they were commonly known at the time.Voja Antonic talking via Zoom, February 2022. Photograph: Voja Antoni/Lewis PackwoodTypically, computers and consoles have a CPU which forms the brain of the machine and performs all of the calculations in addition to a video controller/graphics chip that generates the images you see on the screen. In the Atari 2600 console, for example, the CPU is the MOS Technology 6507 chip, while the video controller is the TIA (Television Interface Adaptor) chip.Instead of having a separate graphics chip, Antoni thought he could use part of the CPU to generate a video signal, and then replicate some of the other video functions using software. It would mean sacrificing processing power, but in principle it was possible, and it would make the computer much cheaper.I was impatient to test it, says Antoni. As soon as he returned from his holiday, he put together a prototype and lo and behold, it really worked. Thinking outside the box had paid off.His next thought was that perhaps other people would want to make their own version of the computer although he didnt foresee how far that particular thought would take him. Everything that happened after that was not because of me, he says, but because of smart journalists, who knew how to make good story.A paper blueprint for the Galaksija. Photograph: Boris Stanojevic/Boris Stanojevi, Dejan Ristanovi, Voja AntoniJournalist Dejan Ristanovi regularly wrote articles on computing for the Yugoslavian popular science magazine Galaksija (Galaxy in English), and he met with Antoni in the summer of 1983 to discuss the clever, budget-priced computer he had come up with. Yugoslavia didnt have any homegrown magazines dedicated to computing at the time, but computers certainly came under Galaksijas science remit. Ristanovi was impressed by Antonis design, and his editors decided it should be included in a special, 100-page spin-off magazine called Racunari u vasoj kuci (Computers in Your Home).The 100-page magazine would contain detailed instructions on how readers could build their own version of Antonis computer. He didnt have a name for the machine at this point, but it was quickly decided that it should be named after the publication and it was duly christened the Galaksija.Antoni and Ristanovi, along with the editor Jova Regasek, began working together to refine the machine and provide detailed instructions on how to build it. Readers would be able to order a self-assembly kit from a Croatian company that contained all the components they needed: the chips came from Austria, and the other components (like the printed circuit boards) were sourced from within Yugoslavia. Readers could also send in their EPROMs to be loaded with the Galaksija software, which included Galaksija BASIC and a limited character set (only upper case characters were included, as there was no room to include lower-case letters).The first issue of Racunari u vasoj kuciOne interesting quirk of the Galaksija is that the kit didnt come with a case. Some readers improvised their own cases made from metal or wood, while many other Galaksijas remained naked. The result is that no two Galaksijas look alike.A Galaksija computer housed in a blue case. Photograph: Vlado VinceOne person who really helped to boost the profile of the Galaksija in the early days was Zoran Modli. He hosted a show called Ventilator 202 on Radio Belgrade, and he was approached by the RacunariComputers exploded in popularity in Yugoslavia over the next few years. Ironically, the success of the Galaksija media campaign ended up being to the detriment of the computer itself. It was so successful that it highlighted the pressing need for Yugoslavians to have access to computers, and around a year after the first RacunariThe government raised the 50 Deutsche Mark import limit in 1985, and the new import cap was just enough to buy one Spectrum computer, says Antoni. So did his invention of the Galaksija directly lead to this change in the law? I believe so, he says, but I cannot prove that. Its just my opinion.Now that the Yugoslavian public had access to more powerful machines like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the humble Galaksija seemed less appealing. Galaksija was doomed as a project, laments Antoni. The only reaction amongst people was to laugh at it. They just said, Now I have a computer which is 1,000 times more powerful than Galaksija. It didnt help that the Galaksija had only a limited software library, which was mostly produced by enthusiastic amateurs. (If youd like to play some Galaksija games yourself, you can find a handful of browser-based ones at https://galaksija.net.)Soon after [the] Galaksija computer, the war times started in Yugoslavia, says Antoni. And no one was interested in anything but pure survival. The violent break-up of Yugoslavia at the start of the 1990s engulfed the Balkans in a horrific war that raged, on and off, for much of the decade. At around the same time, the economy began to collapse as the country entered a period of hyperinflation, which led to the necessity for printing a 2 million dinara bill in 1989, and eventually a 500 billion dinara bill in 1993 which was worth just a few cents.Antoni wrote anti-war articles, and kept tinkering with the Galaksija and other computer projects. I just did it as my hobby, he says. I was working just for me. I was very poor at that time, and I couldnt earn much from doing that. But I just was doing it as my hobby, and I was pleased with it, I was happy with it. Amid the upheaval of war, the Galaksija had been all but forgotten. It was during this time that Antoni threw away all of the original Galaksija prototypes and documentation, thinking no one would be interested in them.Antoni donated a Galaksija computer to the Computer History Museum in California. Photograph: Damir PerecBut in the late 2000s and 2010s, things began to change. Antoni found that people were rediscovering the Galaksija. The new century started something which I call the renaissance of hardware, he says. People started being interested in old computers. Im not a sociologist, I cannot explain that, but somehow they started to be interested. And whats now happening [with the Galaksija] is amazing for me. I cannot explain that either!Computers like the Galaksija not only provoke nostalgia in people who remember them when they were new, they also teach new generations about computer history, and the many experiments and innovations that led us to where we are today. The Galaksija is particularly special, since it provides a connection to a country and a particular set of social circumstances that no longer exist.The revival of interest in the Galaksija has been particularly moving for Antoni. Its healing, he says. If I was hurt in the 90s, then I was healed after that. Now I receive a lot of emails from people in the US, from Germany, from Australia, from Serbian people who just want to thank me for defining their life, for making them interested in digital computers at the right moment of their lives, so that they could switch to some area which triggered some interest in them. And they became mostly software programmers, but some of them even are dealing with hardware, and they all want to thank me for that.Antoni moved to Pasadena in California around five years ago, and he has been welcomed as a hero by the tech enthusiasts of Silicon Valley. He donated a Galaksija computer to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, and is a regular contributor to the hardware hacking website Hackaday. Even when I spoke to him at the age of 69, he had no plans to retire. Im still active, Im working, Im employed here in Pasadena, he said. Im not thinking about retiring: I hope that I will not have to think about it for some time. Because I just feel like someone pays me for doing my hobby, the same thing that I was [doing] for free a few decades ago. Now Im well paid for that! Not only well paid, but also well recognised.Such recognition is well deserved. By making such a brilliantly clever machine out of so little, Voja Antoni was able to introduce computers to an entire generation changing countless lives in the process.This is an edited extract from the book Curious Video Game Machines by Lewis Packwood, which explores the stories behind rare and unusual consoles, computers and coin-ops. Published by White Owl, an imprint of Pen and Sword, you can order a copy direct from Pen and Sword in the UK, or from Casemate in the US, as well as from Amazon and all good bookshops.

Youll need a pretty high geek tolerance level for this very detailed and specialised account of Sir Clive Sinclairs bestselling ZX Spectrum home computer, whose appearance in 1982 with its rubbery keys was thought to be as lovably eccentric as the man himself. But with this he revolutionised the market, educated the British public about the importance of computing, and virtually created the gaming industry from scratch. It was originally to be called the Rainbow in homage to its groundbreaking colour graphics; Sinclair instead insisted on Spectrum as it was more scientific-sounding.Interestingly, the film shows that Sinclairs flair for the home computing market arose from his beginnings in mail order and assembly kits for things such as mini transistor radios targeted at hobbyists, that fascinatingly old-fashioned word. His first home computers were available as kits and to the end of his days, he was more interested in hardware than software; perhaps this intensely serious man never quite sympathised with the gaming culture that drove his product around the world.The ZX Spectrum was many things, but above all it was affordable, and the film shrewdly says that at just under 100, it found the main Christmas present price-point for legions of teenage boys (and it was mainly boys) who were wild with excitement to find one under the Christmas tree. Theres an amusing contribution from broadcaster James OBrien who holds a Spectrum in his hands, closes his eyes and with the aid of this Proustian madeleine, mentally reconstructs every detail of his teenage bedroom.When Sinclair is on screen, his human drama charges the film with interest, but I have to say that the films long central section, simply about all the different games with their blocky 2D graphics, is challenging for non-connoisseurs. But its always interesting to see a film dig into this level of detail, and theres a strong awareness of the kind of art and design work that, without gaming, would never have found an outlet.In the end, Sinclair rather ruthlessly decided not to sell out to his American distributor Timex and instead went into partnership with Alan Sugars Amstrad, which meant laying off a lot of his loyal workforce; and, well, if these newly unemployed people were looking for sympathy from Sinclair, they were to be disappointed. And I would have liked to see Lord Sugar interviewed here about Sinclair. This is an interesting documentary, though one for the heads, as they say.

Its probably just an accident of scheduling, but this deeply affecting documentary is arriving just when theres a debate raging at the school gates about childrens use of smartphones and social media. So while its undoubtedly troubling how tech platforms set out to addict and exploit young minds, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin provides a fascinating counterargument about how online gaming at least can be a lifeline for some individuals who find themselves isolated in the real world, or IRL as the kids like to say.Born in 1989, Mats Steen started out like many other Norwegian children of his generation: energetic, sweet-natured, unusually pale. However, his parents Robert and Trude soon discovered that he had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic condition that eroded his ability to move and breathe and which would eventually kill him at the age of 25. By that point in 2014, Robert, Trude and Mats sister Mia knew that Mats spent hours of his life online playing World of Warcraft using special equipment to accommodate his disability and had been publishing a blog about his life.Then they signed on to the blog to announce his death, thinking hardly anyone would read it and a flood of emails came back, for it turned out that Mats, who had been logging into Warcraft by the name Ibelin and using an able-bodied red-haired (yet still notably pale) avatar, had built up an extensive network of friends over the years. Ibelin had courted women in this digital world, and was even a bit of player at one point, but more importantly he was deeply liked for his kindness and empathy. His sage advice had helped a mother and her son (a young man with autism) build their own relationship in Denmark through online interaction, for example. Mats may have spent most of his time alone (apart from health workers and support staff) in a flat upstairs from his family, but WoW gave him a community.Using the archive which recorded thousands of words of interactions between Mats/Ibelin and his friends, the film recreates Ibelins digital life, using animation in the style of WoW. This means the whole gamut of fantasy-character physiognomies, in all colours, shapes and sizes except that they all have chunky thighs, disproportionally engorged forearms and, if female, enormous bosoms. But scoff all you like, you non-gamers, because by the end its nearly impossible not to shed a tear after the touching finesse and shape of this story, capped with a near-perfect pan across the multi-species gaggle of digital friends gathered around Ibelins modest grave to pay their respects.

The night after their son Mats died aged just 25, Trude and Robert Steen sat on the sofa in their living room in Oslo with their daughter Mia. They couldnt sleep. Everything was a blur, remembers Trude of that day 10 years ago. Then Robert said, Maybe we should reach out to Mats friends in World of Warcraft.Mats was born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a progressive condition that causes the muscles to weaken gradually. He was diagnosed aged four and started using a wheelchair at 10. By the end of his life, Mats could only move his fingers, and required a tube to clear his throat every 15 minutes. As he became increasingly disabled, he spent more time gaming: 20,000 hours in his last decade (about the same as if it were a full-time job).Its not a screen its a gateway to whatever your heart desiresTrude and Robert wondered how they could share the news of his death with his online acquaintances. They didnt have access to his WoW account, but Robert found the password to Mats blog, and they wrote a post. It began: Our beloved son, brother and best friend left us this night ... But, they wondered, would anyone read it?Trude and Robert were stunned by the response. Emails started pouring in from around the world: Mats passing has hit me very hard. Mats was AWESOME. You should be proud of your son. Mats was a real friend to me. The couple had been anguished that Mats existence was lonely, that illness had isolated him, but here were messages, some pages long, from his close friends on WoW. To the uninitiated, WoW looks a bit like Lord of the Rings, set in a fantasy world called Azeroth populated by trolls, elves and medieval glamourpusses waging war with fancy swords.Games are my sanctuary Mats Steen. Photograph: Kristoffer Kumar/PRNearly a decade earlier, aged 17, Mats had created an alter ego in WoW. Lord Ibelin Redmoore was a private investigator with flowing golden hair, the physique of Thor, and a roguish charm. Mats had been playing as the character for years, but the emails were the first inkling his parents had of how deep his connections were in the gaming community. The story is now told in The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, an extraordinary documentary, four years in the making, about to open in cinemas and arriving on Netflix later this month.I meet Trude and Robert in a London hotel. Recently Robert has been travelling around Norwegian schools with the film. I think Ive seen it 150 times, he says with a smile. They are a warm couple, direct and open. The closeness of their family shines through all of The Remarkable Life of Ibelin.The Steens had been approached before to make a film about Mats. We said no to all of them, says Robert. It was too close, too personal, too emotional. But they felt a connection to Benjamin Rees, a film-maker who, at 35, is the same age as Mats would have been had he lived.The Steens like to film everything, and the documentary begins by telling the story of Mats life through their home movies. At screenings, this part of the film usually ends with half the audience in tears. It features footage of Trude in hospital after giving birth, stroking Mats cheek in wonder at this little miracle. We watch Mats taking his first steps at around one-year-old, proud as punch. There was no suggestion that anything was the matter at that point. It was clearer by the time he was three. Mats was staggering and falling a lot, remembers Trude. The doctors initially dismissed the couple as anxious first-time parents, before Mats was finally diagnosed with Duchenne MD at four.One of the most painful moments in the film is Trude opening up about the guilt she feels about Mats illness, because she is the carrier of the Duchenne gene. I still feel that sometimes, she admits today. I know its wrong. I spoke to Mats about it. He told me, Dont say that mum. Its not your fault. Her eyes fill with tears. She gave up her job as an adviser to the parliament in Oslo to look after Mats for a decade. The bond was very strong. We were so close.In the documentary, we also hear from Mats his words, from the blog, are spoken by an actor. He is funny and insightful and passionate about gaming: Its not a screen its a gateway to wherever your heart desires.Then the film makes a complete swerve, suddenly switching to animation, plunging the audience into WoW. Its a move that will baffle some, but feel like a stroke of genius to others. Rees commissioned animators to reconstruct Mats virtual life, with every line written by Mats and his role-player friends as they collaborate on the universe inside the game culled from 42,000 pages of dialogue. It almost feels as if theyre writing a book in real time, says Rees.In Norway, most media coverage of gaming is negative. But this film is a celebration of online communitiesWe see Ibelins first kiss with Rumour, the alter ego of a Dutch gamer called Lisette Roovers. Mats wrote about the kiss on his blog: It was just a virtual kiss, but boy I could almost feel it. The moment is especially poignant because Mats also wrote about how relationships felt out of his reach: Love was always a tricky subject for me. It feels like its not meant for me.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Film WeeklyFree newsletterTake a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that mattersPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionMats made close friends online and touched their lives. But for years he hid his illness in WoW, a place where he wasnt defined by disability. Games are my sanctuary, he wrote. I am safe here, valued. But in the summer of 2013 he started the blog, which he did eventually share with some of his gaming friends.We were so close Trude and Robert Steen. Photograph: Kristoffer KumarThe Remarkable Life of Ibelin arrives at a time when parents are agonising over how much screen-time to give their kids. In Norway there is a saying: Good people climb trees. But because of his disability, Trude and Robert let Mats spend more time gaming than other children. He was on his Game Boy during breaks at school while other kids played football. Looking back, Robert wishes hed made more of an effort to understand how important it was to Mats. He invited us very often to come and sit by him to experience how this gaming world was going on, he says. But I thought it was boring.Rees was keen to make a balanced portrait of gaming. In Norway, he says, I would say 95% of the media is negative. But this film is a celebration of online communities. He hopes, too, that it engages with the issues complexity. It was a huge advantage for Mats to be able to play that game. He felt free. It was his sanctuary but at the same time he could also hide. I think that created a lot of problems for him.Rees took an almighty risk making the documentary. He worked on it for three years before approaching Blizzard, the company that owns WoW, for permission: We wrote them an email, We are a small Norwegian production company. Could we have the rights for free? The Blizzard bosses invited him to California to screen Ibelin at their offices. I had to take extra doses of asthma medicine before the meeting, Rees says with a grin. But like everyone else, the bosses finished the film in tears.Trude and Robert invited Mats WoW friends people they had never met to his funeral. Were they at all concerned? Should you invite strangers to the funeral? says Robert. Should you share the story with a documentary producer? We just asked ourselves, What would Mats want to do?Mats often talked about wanting to be remembered. Thats natural, says Robert, when you know you will die young. Isnt it? One of the biggest fears is that you wont be remembered. Nobody will notice. Trude nods: He wanted to make a difference to other people. He said that a lot.

For those who remember the dawn of the survival horror genre, its aesthetic renaissance in the independent gaming scene has been a spooky delight. Crow County, The Closing Shift, Murder House are all modern supernatural adventures that use low poly 3D visuals and blocky textures, not just as a visual hook but as a means of reconnecting with what made the likes of Silent Hill and Clock Tower scary and engaging in the first place. Fear the Spotlight, the debut title from Cozy Game Pals and new horror-specific publisher Blumhouse Games, is another wonderful, warmly chilling example.Two girls break into their high school library late at night, looking for one particular item: a spirit board, locked in a display case as part of an exhibition on the occult. Vivian is kind of a nerd, a star volunteer at the library, while Amy is a fascinating outsider, interested in the supernatural. When the two decide to hold a seance in the empty building, they make contact, not only with the dead, but a tragic event from the schools recent past. And then Amy mysteriously disappears.Creepy atmosphere Fear the Spotlight. Photograph: Blumhouse GamesAs Vivian, you must roam the now nightmarishly altered corridors, looking for your friend and learning more about what happened here 30 years ago. Developer Cozy Game Pals understands that a school at night is the perfect horror setting this game is filled with darkened, locker-lined corridors, gross bathrooms and areas such as gymnasiums and swimming pools that take on a creepy atmosphere when theyre silent and empty. As you explore, the game feeds you the little telltale signs of horror convention; a creaking door, a flickering light, a face glimpsed at the far end of a corridor, so you know something is out there, watching. There is also excellent use of 1990s technology an overhead projector, a TV with a video player, an ancient PC that provide puzzle settings, but also tell you youre not in the 21st century any more.Particularly enjoyable are the formal nods to Resident Evil and Silent Hill important items in the environment sparkle so you notice them, and Vivians head turns toward interesting artefacts as she walks past. The puzzles too use familiar conventions, often involving mechanical objects, whether those are power generators that require fuses, or a piano that needs to play a certain tune. The use of juddering low poly visuals is accurately retro, but with a self-conscious, artsy quality that elevates the look of the game beyond mere nostalgia.This also applies to the narrative, which outdoes the sometimes schlocky plots and wooden voice acting of old-school horror titles. Fear the Spotlight has at its core a subtle and emotionally resonant queer love story, through which it explores themes of performance and observation. It is a game about the roles we play in our lives and the role that imagination (for good and bad) plays in love and desire. The spotlight of the title is literal and figurative, providing a metaphor for the human gaze, which can be adoring or bullying, desirous or obsessive.It is a short game you can finish in several hours and only mildly challenging, which makes it an excellent entry point into the horror genre for young adults. There is a lovely message at the end thanking players for their time and attention and acknowledging the game isnt perfect. It isnt, but then nothing is, and the time I have spent in its company has been engrossing, eerie, and unexpectedly thought-provoking. Horror provides a skewed and shadowy lens through which to view our lives and learn new things about ourselves and the world, and it has been expertly utilised here. With love as its focus, Fear the Spotlight will do more than scare you.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion

Last week, my favoured gaming news site, VGC, asked former US PlayStation boss Shawn Layden whether he thought the pursuit of more powerful consoles was still the way to go for the video games industry. His answer was not what I expected.Weve done these things this way for 30 years, every generation those costs went up and we realigned with it. Weve reached the precipice now, where the centre cant hold, we cannot continue to do things that we have done before Its time for a real hard reset on the business model, on what it is to be a video game, he said. Were at the stage of hardware development that I call only dogs can hear the difference. Were fighting over teraflops and thats no place to be. We need to compete on content. Jacking up the specs of the box, I think weve reached the ceiling.This surprised me because it seems very obvious, but its still not often said by games industry executives, who rely on the enticing promise of technological advancement to drum up investment and hype. If were now freely admitting that weve gone as far we sensibly can with console power, that does represent a major step-change in how the games industry does business.I also found Laydens statements quite validating, because I simply do not care about tech specs. I am the least technically minded games journalist I know, and have often felt as if I was in the minority. I would struggle to reliably tell the difference between 50fps and 60fps, or between 4k and 8k resolution, or to explain what ray tracing actually is. To me, games started looking pretty great about 15 years ago and most of the improvement Ive seen since then has felt incremental. Developers have been innovating constantly during that time, but most of that innovation has been about themes and content rather than technical advances.Horizon Forbidden West: inessentially astounding graphics? Photograph: Guerilla/SonyTechnical specifications used to matter immensely to gamers. I vividly remember playground arguments over which was more powerful between the SNES and the Mega Drive, and internet forum arguments over whether the PlayStation 3 had an edge over the Xbox 360. For me, the end of this era began when Nintendo released the Wii, a relatively underpowered console that sold 100m, beat all of its rivals in sales and proved there are millions of players out there who just want to have fun at a reasonable price. Even 10 years after that, when the Switch was announced, it was mocked for being less powerful than the PS4 or Xbox One, which had both been out for years by that point. It has now sold 140m units.Despite the provable reality that most players these days dont care enough about tech specs to base their purchasing decisions on them, there are still millions of people who do care: these are the customers for whom the upcoming 700 PlayStation 5 Pro exists, for whom Digital Foundrys exhaustively detailed analyses of games technical performance are written. It is, from anecdotal experience, quite probably the category to which most game developers belong. But I would argue that this is now a smallish subsection of the total player population.What changed? The gaming audience has certainly shifted and expanded, but also, its a matter of diminishing returns. New consoles and new technological advances used to represent whole new possibilities for video games every few years: think of the difference between the first Super Mario Bros in 1985 and Super Mario 64 just 11 years later, or the difference between the first Grand Theft Auto and GTA: San Andreas. But something as momentous as the leap from 2D to 3D gaming in the late 90s? Its been a long time since anything like that happened. The chief technological innovation of the last 15 years in games has been VR, and that turned out to have niche appeal.Animal Crossing: New Horizons playability over groundbreaking graphics. Photograph: NintendoDont get me wrong, I have been blown away by some of the stuff Ive seen on the PlayStation 5. The visual detail of games like God of War: Ragnark and Horizon Forbidden West is astounding. Its the PS5s speed and power that let Insomniac run wild on Marvels Spider-Man 2, and put those incredible dimension-shifting portals into Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. But most of this, though extremely neat, is also inessential. If its coming at the cost of studios ability to operate sustainably and therefore at the cost of developers livelihoods is continually escalating visual fidelity actually worth it? Is it time to leave that fight behind?Nintendo already has. Indeed, its late president Satoru Iwata saw this coming way back in 2004. Games have come to a dead end, he told Japanese outlet Mainichi Interactive in 2004. Creating complicated games with advanced graphics used to be the golden principle that led to success, but it is no longer working The situation right now is that even if the developers work a hundred times harder, they can forget about selling a hundred times more units, since its difficult for them to even reach the status quo. Its obvious that theres no future to gaming if we continue to run on this principle that wastes time and energy.Xbox also appears to be thinking about throwing in the towel on the console wars. Though its executives have said that a shiny new Xbox console is in the works, Microsoft seems much more interested in getting its Game Pass subscription on to as many different devices as possible, rather than focusing on new hardware. Perhaps PlayStation will soon be the only one left in the technological arms race and that could come at a huge cost.What to playIn Wilmot Works It Out, you decorate the walls of your house with your completed puzzles Photograph: FinjiWilmot is a smiling white cube, and he is very good at arranging things. After his day job in a warehouse, he likes to unwind at home by doing jigsaw puzzles and then hanging them up on the wall.Wilmot Works It Out is a soothing puzzle game elevated by lovely art from Richard Hogg (Flock, Hohokum) every time the postie knocked at the door with a new package of puzzle pieces, there would be a few leftovers that eventually transformed into something unexpected, like a snake-playing guitar or a hotdog-clutching octopus. Relaxing and minimalist, this is a good lunchtime play on Steam Deck.Available on: PC, Mac Estimated playtime: skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionWhat to readThe recently announced Project Ethos, a free-to-play hero shooter game from 2K. Photograph: 2K2K has announced a new hero shooter game from Call of Duty veterans at studio 31st Unions. Its called Project Ethos and given what recently happened to Sonys hero shooter Concord, I shall be watching it with interest.Analogue, maker of high-end modern retro consoles that let you play your old games optimally on modern TVs, has announced its take on the Nintendo 64, the Analogue 3D. It will play four-player GoldenEye at upscaled resolution, with Analogues trademark attention to detail in recreating the look and feel of the CRT TV era. Pre-orders are open now.Deadline reports that the God of War TV adaptation from Sony and Amazon has hit a rough patch. Theyre starting over on the project after several key staff departed.Good news for fans of print video games journalism: the EGM compendium, a book compiled from decades worth of issues of the recently cancelled US magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly, is 900% funded on Kickstarter.What to clickQuestion BlockWith magazines like gamesTM closing, gamers are turning to websites for news and reviews Photograph: Keith Stuart/The GuardianThis weeks question comes from reader Phil:This lunchtime my copy of On arrived, ironically alongside the final ever issue of PLAY magazine, which I had no idea was closing. I am genuinely sad to see it go, as I was with gamesTM a few years ago. It seems inevitable that the day will come when we have no choice but to head to the internet for gaming news and reviews, so could you please recommend some websites to check out? With decent quality writing and sans any dismal toxic nonsense?My first ever job was as a junior staff writer on gamesTM magazine, and I have an enduring fondness for print though media capitalism has ensured that most magazines now are shadows of their former selves, with skeleton staffs and lower page counts. (Hooray for the new wave of high-production-quality gaming periodicals!)For someone with print sensibilities, my non-overwhelming games website recommendations are: VGC, a news-focused site run and staffed by people who worked on magazines for ages; Eurogamer, a long-running British website that still makes room for long-form criticism; PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun if youre a PC guy; and Polygon, for me, is the best of the US-based sites. Also, I hear the Guardian has a very good online games section you should check it out some time.If youve got a question for Question Block or anything else to say about the newsletter hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.