February 2020

Happy Saturday, friends of Destructoid. I hope this week has found you and yours well and that you're all geared up for a neato weekend. Whether you have plans to party with pals, take a trip out of town, or just crash at home for a bit of the old R'n'R, I hope you have a good one. And for those of you who are working, well, here's hoping it's a smooth shift and that you have plans for a great evening when it comes finally time to clock out for the day.

As you're reading this, I should be milling around Montreal, Canada - some 3,200 miles from my humble homestead - in attendance at the highlight of the Rainbow Six Siege year: The Six Invitational. I'm not competing myself, (lord knows we have to make things fair for everyone else), but hopefully I'll be getting some time with some new content on the twitchy-shooter, and maybe even sharing some romantic poutine with Caveira - like that scene from Lady and the Tramp, but with added serrated blades and sociopathy.

So while I stumble round pretending I know what I'm doing, you should jot a note below and fill us all in on what games you've been playing this week. It's been another dry seven days in regards to releases, but this at least has made for some really varied responses from you, our beloved community members. Thanks for sharing each week, I really appreciate it.

Have a wonderful weekend, from all of us at Destructoid.

We've got copies of retro action-platformer Goblin Sword up for grabs in today's contest!

Huge AAA games are cool and everything, but my favorite part of this gig is getting some spotlight on indie titles that otherwise wouldn't get much coverage on the site. It makes me feel like I'm helping passionate people out, and gives the devs some extra exposure to boost their game. Also, you lot get free games -- everyone wins!

Today we've got Switch keys to give away for indie platformer Goblin Sword. It's got great retro-inspired visuals and gameplay, and I really think you're gonna dig it. So, what are you waiting for?!

Hello, and welcome to our new series which picks out interesting things that we'd love someone to make a game about.

This isn't a chance for us to pretend we're game designers, more an opportunity to celebrate the range of subjects games can tackle and the sorts of things that seem filled with glorious gamey promise.

Check out our 'Someone should make a game about' archive for all our pieces so far.

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Epic returns this week - one hand waving Assassin's Creed Syndicate, the other wafting Faeria - in another grapple for your affections, and with another batch of Epic Games Store freebies to jam unceremoniously into your increasingly unwieldy backlog.

Assassin's Creed Syndicate - Ubisoft's Animus-enhanced excursion into the smog-shrouded streets of Industrial Revolution era London - has a lot to commend. It offers another gorgeously convincing bit of period design, has a wonderful pair of leads in the form of wisecracking twin assassins Jacob and Evie Frye, and its score by Austin Wintory is utterly sublime.

It's definitely an Assassin's Creed game in the old mould though, and its creaking traversal and somewhat by-the-numbers open-world design pales in comparison to the fluidity and extravagant scale of the more recent Origins and Odyssey. Eurogamer's Tom Phillips liked it a lot back in 2015, however, awarding it a Recommended badge as he celebrated its "solid new adventure, beautiful London playground and renewed sense of fun.".

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Long-running free-to-play FPS Warface has surprise-launched on Nintendo Switch.

Warface, which initially released for PC back in 2013 before making its way to PS4 and Xbox One in 2018, offers up a bullet-zinging selection of PvP and PvE modes, enabling combatants to step into the soldier-shoes of five different classes: the long-range Sniper, medium-range Riflemen, tank-like SED, Engineer, and Medic.

Warface, in case you were wondering, is the first CryEngine-powered game on Switch, and runs at 30FPS/720p in TV mode and 540p in handheld and tabletop modes, according to publisher My.Games. It also includes gyro support for more precise aiming, HD rumble, voice chat, and is playable online without the need for a Switch Online subscription.

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Lair of the Clockwork God, the next title by Size Five Games, is due to launch only next week - but developer Dan Marshall has somehow managed to make a second game at the same time, as a surprise prequel called Devil's Kiss has also been announced.

Oh, and it's also being bundled in for free for anyone who buys Lair of the Clockwork God - or a small $2 (£1.54) for those who want it as a standalone. Now that's a deal with the devil you'll want to make.

"Devil's Kiss is a hilarious and sexually-enticing visual novel following alluring teenage heroes Dan and Ben, who meet at high school and promptly uncover a vast, horny conspiracy involving some demons," reads the press release. If you want to see what the hell that looks like, there's a trailer to help, and you can find the Steam page here.

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Kingdom Hearts fans rejoice - the Disney and Square Enix mash-up series rolls out in force on Xbox One tomorrow.

The bizarrely-named Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 Remix and Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue collections are both live now in New Zealand, where it is already 18th February.

Look for them at midnight tonight elsewhere, too.

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If you're looking for a bargain on a current-gen console with the PS5 and Xbox Series X on the horizon then you might want to check out Game where you'll find a range of Xbox One X bundles discounted to an all-new low price.

You can get an Xbox One X with one game for £259. The games available include the likes of The Division 2, Metro Saga, Fallout 76 and PUBG. There are also a handful of bundles that come with two games for £279. I've picked out a couple of the standout offers below, or you can browse the full range of Xbox One X bundles on sale.

It needs to be pointed out that these Xbox One X consoles are described as "New in Open Box" by Game. They define this as "some external packaging damage in the form of broken seals or cosmetic box damage". For all intents and purposes, then, these are new consoles you're getting. All your usual statutory rights are in place, too, so if you decide to get one and aren't impressed with what you receive then a return is still possible.

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House Flipper - the closest a millennial can get to appearing on Homes Under the Hammer - will let even more youngsters live out the property dream when it arrives on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One next week.

Developed by Empyrean and first released on PC in 2018, House Flipper is an indie sim about turning around disgusting properties for profit. There's repair mechanics, interior design options, and budget management to keep you on your toes. But then so will the cockroaches.

If that sounds like a delight to you, House Flipper lands on PlayStation 4 on 25th February, and Xbox One a day later on the 26th. Carpet diem.

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It doesn't take much to make a big, old, empty house feel creepy. Indeed, the more actual, overt threat you add to such a setting, the less fear it inspires - better to let your visitor wander undisturbed, drinking in the silence of the hallways and spotting goblin faces in the contours of broken plaster. This is one thing the creators of The Suicide of Rachel Foster grasp well, though their workmanlike blend of Firewatch and Gone Home is ultimately tripped up by a half-baked story.

A three-hour, first-person psychodrama with a gossamer-thin dusting of puzzles, the game is set in the Timberline Lodge, an abandoned mountainside hotel in 1990s Montana. You can roam about freely from the outset, though chapter breaks teleport you from room to room, and to do so is to be gently assaulted by the peculiarities of a structure that wouldn't seem out of place in Silent Hill. Floorboards creak, window-frames rattle, beams shift under a mounting weight of snow. Photographs stare from the ends of corridors, shrouded objects tempt you to pull back the sheet, and stainless steel kitchens tease your fight-or-flight circuits with their abundance of gleaming points and angles.

Spread over three storeys plus a basement and carpark, the Timberline is closer to a Comfort Inn than some Gothic resort, but in the absence of holidaymakers and staff, its spaces loom. It's also a not-so-discreet homage to The Shining's Overlook Hotel, which means that the sightlines and decor feel vaguely predatory, like they're trying to get into your head. You'll find those legendary geometric carpet patterns, a mountain diorama akin to the Overlook's model maze, and bathrooms painted a diabolical red.

Ok, so it's not quite Lara Croft herself - but Rainbow Six Siege is getting its own Tomb Raider elite skin, and it'll be worn by American SWAT officer Ash.

The skin was unveiled as part of Ubisoft Montreal's two-year roadmap shown at The Six Invitational in Quebec, and will be available "soon after" the launch of next season's Operation Void Edge. There's no set date for this event - the first season of Rainbow Six's fifth year - which is due to add two new operators (Oryx and Iana) along with an Oregon map rework.

As an elite skin, Lara "Ash" Croft will likely need to be purchased in R6 credits, but at least she comes with a unique victory animation, a breaching rounds gadget skin, weapon skins (for the G36C, R4-C, M45 MEUSOC and 5.7 USG), and a unique charm. Time to raid the piggy bank.

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Following on from last month's massive price drop on a 5TB Western Digital drive, you can now get a 4TB Seagate Expansion Desktop Hard Drive for only £64.99 at Amazon UK.

This hard drive is not only compatible with PC but can also be used to give you some extra space for your PS4 or Xbox One. With the increasing storage demands of games these days that 500GB or 1TB internal hard drive does get used up rather quickly!

While this is a spacious drive for the price, the only annoyance I can foresee is the need to plug it directly into the mains as well as your PC or console. The portable versions of these Seagate drives are USB-powered which saves the extra wire. If you have the means to power it easily, though, you could save yourself a decent chunk of money going for this desktop option instead.

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Newly-published footage of the unreleased StarCraft: Ghost has appeared online, more than a decade after the project was canned.

Ghost was set to be a third-person shooter spin-off from Blizzard's blockbuster RTS franchise, for release on GameCube, PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox.

According to a Twitter user who contacted Kotaku, the leak comes from a work-in-progress build installed to an Xbox 360 developer kit.

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Need a RAM upgrade? Amazon has discounted a range of DDR4 memory from Crucial to mark the start of a new week, offering up to 45 per cent off single sticks and kits from the company's popular Ballistix Sport and RGB-enabled Ballistix Tactical Tracer lines. Crucial memory already offers some of the best value around, so these discounts make it an excellent time to upgrade your system with more memory, faster memory or both! Here are the best deals from the Monday sale - plus a quick buyer's guide to RAM upgrades.

First, here are the highlights we've spotted:

8GB: If you're buying RAM for a new budget gaming PC, you can pick up 8GB of 2666MHz dual-channel memory for £30 - about £8 less than the usual price. If you plan to upgrade to 16GB of RAM in the near future, it might be worth getting a single 8GB 3200MHz stick for £26 (despite the performance penalty; see our RAM guide below). An RGB 8GB stick is also available for £36, down from £41.

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UPDATE 17/2/20: After getting a release date for Netflix's third Castlevania season earlier this month, we now have our first glimpse at the 10 new episodes.

Sink your teeth in ahead of the show's return on 5th March:

ORIGINAL STORY 4/2/20: Last November, Netflix's Nordic division whipped fans of the company's enormously entertaining animated Castlevania series into a miniature frenzy when it announced (erroneously, it later transpired) the show's imminent return. Now, though, it's officially official: Castlevania's third season will begin on 5th March.

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I'll admit, when Yakuza 7 was announced, the first mainline game in the franchise since Kazuma Kiryu's story concluded, I was highly sceptical. Any new protagonist would have big shoes to fill, after all. And then there's the fact that it's turn-based. There's a lot to take in.

Thankfully Yakuza 7 is a lot of fun, and is a loving tribute to JRPGs and many other games besides. It all begins not with new hero Ichiban Kasuga, but with a glimpse into the life of Masumi Arakawa, head of the Arakawa Clan, itself a small family under the Tojo Clan. Arakawa hasn't had it easy - among other things his son was left disabled after Masumi had to hide him in a train station locker (!) as an infant. In typical Yakuza fashion, Arakawa saves teenage Ichiban's life, who then swears fealty to him and later goes to prison in his stead.

When Ichiban gets out of prison in 2019, 18 years after his incarceration, the world has changed rapidly, but the biggest shock is probably that the Arakawa family has joined the Omi Alliance, famously the nemesis of the Tojo Clan Arakawa originally served. When Ichiban tries to demand an explanation from Arakawa, his former saviour shoots him.

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It's taken almost a year, but the group of volunteer developers and modders who have been quietly enhancing and improving the PC release of celebrated psychological horror, Silent Hill 2, have released a new update.

Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition is self-described as an ongoing project of enhancement packages that add various visual, audio, and bug improvements for the PC version of the game, such as implementing a modern widescreen camera, improving the display for higher resolutions, and removing several prominent audio bugs.

The most recent version - released earlier this week - sees newly-added features such as "soft shadows, self shadows, restored post-processing effects, continued controller support, and much more".

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The "exclusive worldwide third-party provider" deal for livestreaming between YouTube and Activision Blizzard is reportedly worth $160 million (£122m).

Activision Blizzard announced the deal with YouTube a few weeks ago, saying the "multi-year strategic relationship to power new player experiences" would see Google Cloud serve as the "preferred provider for Activision Blizzard's game hosting infrastructure", and YouTube as its "exclusive streaming partner worldwide", excluding China.

The details of the deal weren't specified at the time, but by comparison, a similar deal Activision struck with Twitch in 2018 was thought to be worth around $90 million.

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The Sonic the Hedgehog movie has generated over $100 million (£76.6m) on its opening weekend.

As reported by Comicbook, the success can be attributed to a number of fortuitous coincidences, not least the fact the movie debuted on Valentine's Day and benefited from a long-weekend as our friends Stateside celebrated Presidents' Day, during which it's thought to have clocked up $68m (£52m) at the box office.

The success can't just be attributed to that, though, as it's also thought to have generated $43m (£33m) worldwide, too. So we're all to blame, really.

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Sales of both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in the US are declining faster than expected, says an industry report.

In a report by market analysts NPD Group (thanks, VGC), US hardware spending was down 35 per cent in January 2020 when compared with the same period a year ago. Total spending across gaming as a whole - including hardware, software, accessories and game cards - was also lower year-over-year, dropping 26 per cent.

"An interesting takeaway from the US NPD report is that PS4 and XB1 hardware sales in Jan 2020 are considerably lower than PS3 and 360 were in Jan 2013," posited Niko Partners analyst, Daniel Ahmad. "Next-gen consoles are around the corner but both are declining sharper than expected. Switch continues to remain steady."

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Despite a myriad of issues, delays, and personnel changes, actor Tom Holland insists the script for the (hopefully?) upcoming Uncharted movies is "one of the best [he's] ever read".

"I read the newest draft of the script on the way over here and it's one of the best scripts I've ever read," Holland told IGN this week. "It really, really jumps off the page."

As Tom reported last month, Sony's increasingly-unlikely-looking Uncharted film has now lost its sixth director. Travis Knight, who previously helmed Transformers spin-off Bumblebee, was the latest to be named director of the project. That was back in October, after fifth director Dan Tractenberg quit last August.

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Our favourite 4K TV for HDR gaming, the 55-inch LG B9 OLED, has been discounted to £999 at PRC Direct, complete with a five year warranty. To get this sub-£1000 price, you'll need to use code 20FEB300 in the checkout for a healthy reduction of £300 off the listed cost.

This is the lowest price we've ever seen for this TV, equalling the best deal we saw back on Black Friday a few months back. For reference, this exactly model was selling for £1600 as recently as last autumn!

So why do Digital Foundry love LG OLEDs so much - and why did we name this one the best 4K TV for HDR gaming? Well, OLED televisions are renowned for their picture quality, with the organic LEDs inside capable of turning completely black instead of just very dark grey as you'd expect with an LED. That means the contrast between the lightest and darkest areas of the screen is nearly infinite, letting the TV look stunning in dark scenes - particularly in HDR.

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Activision has fixed an exploit that permitted Call of Duty: Modern Warfare players to use attachments they hadn't organically unlocked in the game.

In the brief patch notes (thanks, VG24/7), the developer also revealed it had addressed unspecified "exploit fixes on various maps and modes", made some - again, unspecified - changes to the backend, and fixed a bug that left some players' CDL filter active even after they'd joined a party without CDL filters.

Following an accidental data dump on the Call of Duty website last weekend, a new leak - this one from an official source via an Activision account on Xbox Live - confirmed Rust will be making an appearance in season two, along with three other multiplayer maps: Atlas Superstore, Bazaar, and Zhokov Boneyard.

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Isn't it about time we had a reboot of Electronic Arts' Road Rash franchise? Combining traditional racing with bike-to-bike violence, Road Rash was one of EA's most exciting titles back in the early 90s, making a fantastic debug on Sega Mega Drive before making the transition onto what were then the next generation consoles. However, before the series hit the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, we got our first taste of how the series would evolve into an actual three-dimensional experience - in July 1994, Road Rash arrived on 3DO.

One of the first 'next-gen' consoles with 3D capabilities delivering games via optical disc, the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer is something of a curiosity. Similar to the MSX of yore, the 3DO Company put together what you might call a reference design that was available for licensing, with manufacturing heavyweights such as Panasonic, LG (then known as Goldstar) and Sanyo each delivering their own take on the hardware across the system's relatively short lifespan.

Out of the box, the 3DO's best video output was a 480i interlaced video signal delivered via S-Video - which is something of a problem in terms of image quality as the internal framebuffer was actually a more traditional 320x240, or 240p. That's where Black Dog Technology's 3DORGB mod comes into play. Piggy-backing onto the GPU, the 3DORGB bypasses the system's internal interpolation and brings the best quality progressive scan output to the fore.

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Following the reveal of Rainbow Six Siege's first season of Year 5, Void Edge, Ubisoft has revealed the next two operatives coming to the competitive shooter: Iana and Oryx.

While Jordan-born Oryx is the first operator that ships without a gadget, he'll compensate with two abilities, one that allows him to jump up through hatches and another, Remah Dash, with which he can dash-attack not just walls but enemies, too.

"Stable, sure, and predictable" Iana will be able to confuse foes with Replicator, a gadget that deploys a hologram that the player can directly control.

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It's weird how VR can make a familiar game feel like a completely new experience. For example, I've played GTA 5 many a time before and on multiple platforms, but looking at the world of Los Santos through the twin lenses of a VR headset allowed me to spot so many little details that I'd missed on previous visits.

The best way I've found to describe this phenomenon to non-VR users is to liken it to looking through a holiday brochure at photos of a resort you're planning on visiting. The resort looks beautiful from the pictures sure, and in your mind's eye you can easily picture yourself sat there by the side of the pool, sipping on a cocktail.

But those flat images are nothing compared to the feeling of actually being there in person, to stand by that pool and to see the size of it in three dimensions. To know the depth of it by peering over the edge into the water or to spot the little weeds or odd bits of wear and tear dotted around the paths that surround it because in the photos they masked by all the scenery.

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Nvidia has removed all Activision Blizzard games from its GeForce Now cloud subscription service following a "misunderstanding" with the developer/publisher.

While players participating in the closed beta were able to play Activision games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Overwatch as part of the service, founding members who signed up after the 90-day free trial went live on 4th February noticed that the games were quietly removed without explanation just a few days later.

In a comment to Bloomberg (thanks, PC Gamer), a Nvidia representative explained that while Activision had permitted its games to be part of beta test, the two companies had not discussed licensing terms beyond that beta. Consequently, Nvidia was forced to remove the titles, adding: "per their request, please be advised Activision Blizzard games will be removed from the service".

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Ed Annunziata loves the ocean.

"I can hear the waves right now!" he tells me from his home on the coast of Northern California. "I knew when I moved from New York that I needed to live by the ocean. I've always been enthralled by the dichotomy of its beauty and the dangers it harbors. What's more terrifying than something swimming from the darkness towards you? Yet, what's more gorgeous than a coral reef teeming with life?"

It's an idea reflected in Annuziata's games, most notably, Ecco, his beloved series about a dolphin fighting to save the ecosystem and his species from mysterious aliens and human oppression. It is often considered one of the first environmental ocean games, but even Ecco couldn't predict the threat that would be posed by plastic pollution.

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Microsoft's Elite Series 2 controller has been divisive. To its fans, the Elite is responsive, powerful and premium, the ultimate first-party controller, but its detractors can point to its high price and quality control issues to paint a different picture. That makes Sony's approach, almost diametrically opposite that of its rival, so refreshing. Rather than making an £160/$180 controller that only its most wealthy players can justify purchasing, Sony has created the £26/$30 Back Button Attachment, a snap-on device that adds the single most important feature of premium controllers - programmable rear buttons - to any standard DualShock 4 controller at an affordable price. We've been testing it for the past week ahead of its launch on February 14th, and we think Sony's approach has considerable merit.

Choice is everything in FTL: Faster Than Light, a game I've returned to recently and would now quite happily swear to never leave again. FTL is, above all, a game about deciding what to do. Where to travel, when to buy, what to shoot - even where your little crewmember stands, if you're lucky enough to have one spare. You can drill down to the most micro of micromanagements or the broadest, most profound of overarching concepts in FTL and it will always, always come back to it. Choice, choice, choice. But where its choices really stand out - and where FTL itself stands out, even all these years after release - is when it asks you to make those choices blind.

Developer Undead Labs has unveiled State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition, a thoroughly reworked and expanded version of its popular multiplayer zombie survival game that's heading to PC and Xbox One on Friday, 13th March.

State of Decay 2 didn't have the best of critical receptions when it launched in 2018, with Eurogamer contributor Edwin Evans-Thirwell calling it a "poor return on the scruffy promise of its predecessor". Even so, it drew the crowds, with Microsoft revealing a player base of around 5 million in last August, giving Undead Labs ample freedom to improve on its rocky launch.

State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition is the developer's most significant expansion yet, and will be available as a free update to all existing owners on Xbox One and PC, including those accessing it through Xbox Game Pass.

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Sony Pictures, which is already in the process of adapting Monster Hunter and Uncharted for the big screen, has a new video game movie in the works based on developer Smilegate Entertainment's massively popular free-to-play FPS CrossFire.

Although CrossFire isn't exactly a household name in the west, it's absolutely huge in China and Southeast Asia, having amassed over 650 million registered players since its initial launch in 2007, making it one of the most played PC games in the world. It's primarily known for its Counter-Strike-like competitive multiplayer mode, in which two teams - representing mercenary corporations Black List and Global Risk - race to complete different objective-based scenarios.

A new instalment, CrossFireX, is scheduled to arrive on Xbox One later this year, and Smilegate has drafted in Alan Wake and Control studio Remedy to create its single-player story campaign, which should help raise the series' profile in the west.

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Developer Batterystaple Games has unveiled 30XX, the slightly more pixel-y follow-up to its tremendously entertaining Mega Man-inspired procedural rogue-like, 20XX.

20XX, if you're unfamiliar, released for Xbox One, PS4, and Switch in 2018 (some four years after its Steam Early Access debut), and it's a bit of a good 'un. In essence, it's a modern reimagining of Capcom's classic Mega Man X formula, melding traditional platforming and procedurally generated rogue-like, for some endlessly re-playable hijinks.

Although the term "procedurally generated rogue-like" might cause a few eyes to roll back, it actually works incredibly well; 20XX's optionally co-operative run-and-gun action is satisfyingly tight, its two heroes feel pretty distinct, there're some great bosses, a dizzying array of abilities to shake-up each run, and the procedural generation, while a tad uneven, uses enough pre-designed level chunks to keep things interesting.

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UPDATE 6.45pm: Niantic has now updated its ticket pricing for Liverpool's Pokémon Go Safari Zone event.

"Previous advertising for Pokémon Gp Safari Zone Liverpool tickets didn't include the service fee and VAT costs," a Niantic spokesperson told Eurogamer this evening. "We're updating all ticket listings today.

"The ticket pricing is now listed as: '£21.60 for Early Access and £14.40 for General Admission. A £3.60 service fee will be added to each order (up to 4 tickets per order). The City Explorer Pass add-on is £9.60. All prices are inclusive of VAT.'"

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Control developer Remedy Entertainment has confirmed that it currently has three games in the works, two of which it's discussed previously - including its own spin on the live service model - and a third which remains a tantalising mystery.

The news comes via Remedy's latest financial report, in which CEO Tero Virtala revealed that the majority of the studio's 31.6 million euros revenue in 2019 was, unsurprisingly, generated by its superb paranormal shooter Control, alongside additional contributions from Alan Wake.

Looking to the future, Virtala re-confirmed that one team at Remedy is currently focussed on creating the two previously announced paid expansions for Control, with both due to release some time this year, and that three other teams are also working on their own projects.

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Marvel's Avengers is still over six months away, but you can take a peek at its leaked achievement list right now.

Trophy snooping site Exophase has scooped up the details - which include a few story spoilers. There's also lots of achievements for collecting lots of things.

Marvel's Avengers was, of course, originally due to launch much sooner - until it was slapped with a sizeable delay last month. It's now set to arrive on 4th September for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (and then, presumably, on PS5 and Xbox Series X down the line).

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With Half-Life: Alyx's release date now officially confirmed by Valve as 23rd March, it's a good time to be getting hold of a VR headset.

While that's potentially a huge investment for just one game, it's also an opportunity to get hold of the many other VR experiences already available. Just as well that there's currently a VR sale over on The Humble Store.

Being the most supportive of the technology, Bethesda arguably has the biggest showing here, with 50 per cent discounts on the following:

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Something that's always bothered me about the Pokémon games is that, despite their immense power and status, legendary Pokémon have always felt quite small. Sure, they're listed as being fairly large in the Pokédex - and the game's name literally means pocket monsters - but I've often wondered what they would look like as vast mythical creatures.

Thankfully, an artist has managed to make my dreams come true: and the paintings she's produced are simply stunning.

Created by 23-year-old independent artist Devin Elle Kurtz (also known as TamberElla), the digital paintings of Rayquaza, Giratina, Lugia, Palkia, Dialga, Kyogre and Groudon have been gaining a fair bit of attention on the internet over the past few days - and rightly so. The Pokémon are presented as massive creatures emerging from clouds, overshadowing entire cities, or troubling ships in a storm.

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Finally, some seven years after it first broke cover at 2013's PlayStation Meeting as it accompanied the unveiling of the PlayStation 4, Media Molecule's Dreams is here, its long and winding road concluding towards the tail-end of that particular console's life. Except it's not the end of Dreams, of course - it's the beginning of a project that will transform over time according to the community's needs and wants.

Talking about Dreams can be confusing like that, probably because we keep making the mistake of treating it like a regular video game. The more time you spend with it, though, the more you realise it isn't that at all - it's a whole new platform, a place to create and share and a dazzling toolkit that's already been put to fantastic use.

I'm still not entirely sure what it is, but I do know that the more time I spend with it the more I love it. I got the chance to sit down with Media Molecule's Alex Evans and Mark Healey as they celebrated the launch to talk about what's taken them so long, what's changed along the way and where they think Dreams might be heading.

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Over the last ten years, 4A Games has built a reputation for pushing technology to new heights - from the original, remarkable Metro 2033 to last year's Metro Exodus - an open world showcase with beautiful ray traced global illumination. However, the firm also enjoyed success with their current-gen Metro Redux remasters, and now those titles are available for Nintendo Switch. Yes, it's another Switch port we're tackling but this time, the original developer has taken point on bringing the games across and as it's 4A you know you're in for something special.

For those unfamiliar, the first two Metro games are first-person shooters set deep within the radiation ravaged Metro system beneath Moscow. With limited supplies, players make their way through the underground (occasionally venturing to the blasted surface) while dealing with a wide range of foes. Stealth, combat and storytelling are all part of the experience, with both games offering a unique atmosphere quite unlike anything else on the market. It's also the first time a Metro game has appeared on a Nintendo platform and it's also the debut for the franchise on what is essentially mobile hardware. On top of that, the port hasn't been handed off to a separate developer as is often the case - 4A rolled up its sleeves and dug in for this one, producing a fascinating piece of work.