April 2022

Developer Heart Machine has unveiled Hyper Light Breaker, a fully 3D rogue-lite spin on its acclaimed 2016 action-adventure Hyper Light Drifter that's coming to PC early next year.

While Hyper Light Drifter served up a tautly designed single-player adventure blending rich exploration with challenging melee combat in a strikingly presented top-down, 2D world, Hyper Light Breaker looks like a very different take on the same universe.

It all unfolds in the Overgrowth, a new "vast, ever-changing" (and fully 3D) world consisting of massive, open biomes and deep labyrinths - which players can navigate using the likes of wall-dashing, hoverboarding, and gliding. Here, they'll be able to "defeat brutal monsters, create new builds, survive the mysterious Crowns and overthrow the almighty Abyss King."

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Microsoft is reportedly set to plug a gap in its Game Pass line-up by launching a new family plan, enabling five users to access the service using one subscription, later this year.

That's according to Windows Central's Jez Corden, who, citing "trusted sources familiar with with Microsoft's efforts", reports the family plan has been in the works for some time as Microsoft navigated issues around royalty distribution and third-party licenses. Those kinks are presumably close to being ironed out now, however, with Corden suggesting an official unveiling may happen relatively soon.

As for what the family plan might offer, it'll reportedly enable five users in the same country to access Game Pass' entire library using a single membership, with the cost said to be "far cheaper" than paying for five individual subscriptions.

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Closing in on seven years after the launch of its hugely successful Kickstarter, Castelvania spiritual successor Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is still ticking off stretch goals, with its latest update delivering its third and final promised playable character - which turns out to be a cameo crossover from Ubisoft Montreal's fondly remembered fantasy platformer Child of Light.

"Aurora has lost her way and awoken in a strange, dangerous new land," explains developer ArtPlay in a new Kickstarter update. "Armed with the Sword of Matildis and accompanied by the loyal Igniculus, she must find a way to escape."

Upon downloading today's free 1.30 update, players can take Child of Light protagonist Aurora (who joins existing playable characters Miriam and Zangetsu, plus "bonus" character Bloodless) on a gothic romp through Bloodstained's familiar castle, making use of her sword, companion Igniculus - who can slow opponents or heal Aurora - and her directional Light Ray skill, which damages any enemies caught in its beam.

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The SteelSeries Arctis 7P+ wireless gaming headset debuted in October 2021 and has already firmly positioned itself as one of the best gaming headsets on the market right now.

Digital Foundry called the Arctis 7P+ the best wireless gaming headset thanks to its comfortable design, impressive durability and excellent sound quality. The previous Arctis 7P offers similar performance and design for less, but is harder to find now and doesn't have as good battery life or USB-C charging like the 7P+.

Having the best sound quality can really make a difference when gaming, no matter what you're playing. Whether it's getting the upper hand by hearing everything happening around the map in competitive games like CS:GO and Valorant, or immersing yourself in rich and vibrant open-world RPGs like Horizon: Forbidden West or Elden Ring.

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This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, we discuss PlayStation's big new subscription revamp. With a keen eye on Xbox Game Pass and a need to reform its own Plus and Now offerings, Sony laid out its plans - to a mixed response.

Sony's approach clearly differs from Microsoft - it sees no need to bundle in its £70 games on day one. But does this then create confusion for PlayStation fans down the line? When will new games join the Premium service?

Chatting with me about PlayStation Plus - and also Nintendo's delay to Zelda - are Eurogamer news reporters Ed Nightingale and Victoria Kennedy. Join us to hear what we think this might mean for Wind Waker and Twilight Princess ports, and whether we'll be subbing to PlayStation Plus Premium...

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We've already covered Death Stranding: Director's Cut last September, when Hideo Kojima's unique epic received a range of tech and content upgrades for its PlayStation 5 debut. Chief amongst them was the ability to play the game at a targeted 60 frames per second - something that wasn't possible on the PS4 original, even though Kojima Productions originally designed the game for this performance target. The Director's Cut is now available on PC but the upgrade isn't quite so marked. After all, 60fps was on the table for PC users from day one, the port was exceptional and the DLSS implementation opened the door to great performance at high frame-rates.

Obviously, the content improvements of the Director's Cut make their way across, but is there anything new from a technical perspective? Well, the original Death Stranding port's 'default' graphics settings effectively delivered PS4 Pro quality to PC, with only limited upwards scalability. In the case of the Director's Cut, default now delivers the same improved visuals as PS5, which basically means that draw distance has been pushed out a touch while everything else remains much the same.

The Director's Cut also ships with a more refined version of DLSS - version 2.3.7, according to the files. This reduces and eliminates the occasional ghosting trails seen in the initial release. It's worth pointing out that DLSS .dll downloads are readily available for download, and there's nothing stopping you replacing the .dll in the original release for improved DLSS image quality. Eventually, the game will also have XeSS image reconstruction upscale, but we should not expect that until desktop Intel Arc GPUs arrive in the summer.

For me, 65 percent size keyboards are perfect. They straddle the line between compact and functional, with the arrow and navigational keys I rely on daily but without the cruft I don't, like the numpad or Function row. They're ideal for working on the go, often perfectly matched to the size of laptop keyboards, and provide tons of mousing space. Best of all, this form factor has seen an explosion of popularity, with even the biggest gaming brands exploring this brave new world once inhabited solely by mechanical keyboard enthusiasts.

Here are six of our favourite 65 percent size mechanical keyboards, based on hundreds of hours of building, testing, tweaking, gaming and typing over the past decade.

Simply choose a keyboard you like the sound of from the list below, or scroll on for our full recommendations - plus a quick FAQ section at the end! As always, if you have any questions or comments, then do let me know via the comments or the Twitter link at the end of the article, as I'm always keen to make these guides as useful as possible.

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This year's Pokémon Go Fest will return to hosting in-person events in three select cities, as well as a two-day global event you can play wherever you are.

The global event will be held on Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th June, and also offer a "bonus finale event" on Saturday 27th August.

Sandwiched in the middle of all that will be three distinct city-focused events held in Berlin, Seattle and Sapporo.

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Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt, developer Sharkmob's free-to-play battle royale spin on the long-running RPG series, is getting its full PlayStation 5 and PC launch on 27th April.

Bloodhunt (not to be confused with Big Bad Wolf Studio's upcoming RPG Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong, Paradox Interactive's troubled Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, or indeed 2019 visual novel Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York) was announced toward the end of 2020 and had a limited Steam early access run the following year.

It is, all in all, pretty much exactly what it sounds like, casting participants - either playing solo or in a team of three - as vampires and setting them loose across the rain-soaked, moon-drenched streets and rooftops of Prague. All players have access to basic vampire trickery such as the ability to scramble up walls, but the characters they choose (from one of several vampire clans) inform the additional supernatural powers they're able to deploy. Oh, and there are lots and lots of guns to loot too, if you'd just rather just do the shooty thing.

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Vermintide follow-up Warhammer 40,000: Darktide will launch on Tuesday 13th September.

The four-player co-op game builds on Vermintide 2's melee combat with the addition of "deep and balanced gunplay", developer FatShark has said.

You'll need a mix of melee and ranged combat to fight off Darktide's new menagerie of monsters, which you glimpse in the new trailer below:

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A recent job listing has revealed Sony's recently acquired studio Firesprite is working on a new AAA horror game.

The listing in question was shared on ResetEra and reads: "We are looking for a Narrative Director to join our development team for a AAA narrative driven horror-adventure game in Unreal 5. 

"The Narrative Director is responsible for the project storytelling, helping establish & consider the game's universe and lore, with responsibility for the quality implementation of narrative content for project milestones and ultimately the game's release."

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"It'll be a game for freaks," said Ben Esposito of Neon White in a gameplay trailer when it was announced for Nintendo Switch last July.

Really, it's a game for people who like fun, campy, melodrama alongside their speedrunning. In a video preview of the game, Esposito describes Neon White as a speedrunning first person shooter meets visual novel that's "nostalgic but not in a superficial way".

"We really wanted to make a game that felt cool and it really felt like the self-indulgent Y2K anime game of our dreams," he says.

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Let me get this out of the way quickly: Superfuse looks really good. It's basically a Cel-shaded action RPG in the cut of Diablo. Four-player co-op or single-player fun. There's a comic book presentation - and a comic book plot, about people who have become gods and whatnot - which means that gorgeous comic book panels pop up during cut scenes and the designers have been wonderfully bold with the application of halftone. I am a fan of halftone. And from hubs you are despatched to various procedurally wrangled dungeons to splatter sci-fi horrors and take on bosses and pick up loot. Repeat.

All of this looks great. I had a build for a while and was very happy splattering and looting - doing the inventory Tetris thing and the skills-bar glissando. Mutant crabs. Horrible shambling monsters. And me at the heart of it, a Berserker class who seemed to be lamping people for the sheer luminous joy of it all. (The voice acting is supremely charismatic, incidentally - courtesy of Eli Harris in this case, I think.)

Right. That's out of the way. Now I want to talk about the point where I almost fainted with happiness. Reader, it's to do with skills.

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Nintendo has announced three new Switch Online games for March, and they include the 90's run and gun platformer Earthworm Jim 2.

Not many could slow their fall from a great height by ballooning out huge quantities of snot to make some kind of bogey-chute, but Earthworm Jim could. Now, he is back once more, thanks to this recent update from Nintendo.

Earthworm Jim 2 can be played through the Nintendo Switch Online's SNES app.

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A choreographer is suing Epic Games over dance moves included in an old Fortnite emote.

Kyle Hanagami, a choreographer who has worked with Britney Spears, Justin Bieber and J-Lo, filed suit against Epic regarding the "It's Complicated" emote, which was released within Fortnite back in August 2020.

Lawyers for Hanagami have said the emote uses copyrighted dance moves from a 2017 video set to Charlie Puth's "How Long" (thanks, Kotaku) without credit or compensation.

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The Old West has always been weird, hasn't it? A bloody daydream of plunder and desolation, heroism and nihilism, reincarnated in a thousand motley forms across generations of books, films, folk songs and campfire stories. Videogames have certainly taken it in some peculiar directions. Think of Media.Vision's Wild Arms series for PS1, where six-shooters are ancient relics wielded by chosen adventurers, or the pre-patch version of Red Dead Redemption, with its cursed physics and flying centaurs, or the dreamy vestiges of frontier life you encounter while trudging the plains of Where The Water Tastes Like Wine.

WolfEye's Weird West mixes this vast, rancid legacy with outright fantasy elements sourced partly from the likes of Lovecraft and partly from the studio founders' previous Dishonored games. This very much isn't your classic rootin' tootin' cowboy yarn. Head out into the wilds and you'll find raucous villages of pigmen and ghost towns that absent-mindedly manifest from the foundations up. Dip into the caves and you'll encounter ravenous mutants and blue-stone temples where cultists debate visions of the apocalypse.

Magic is an everyday concern: town deputies sling lightning and fireballs alongside bullets. Stores are happy to trade in ectoplasm and cursed goblets alongside deerskin and copper. Quests alternate gritty pulp novel conceits with otherworldly enigmas: one moment you're squeezing a barkeep for information on a posse of kidnappers, against a backdrop of tinkling piano; the next, you're trying to make sense of a captive meteor. The realm is divided not just between settler communities and indigenous Americans, but factions of cannibals, werewolves and witches, all of them being manipulated by an off-screen illuminati of cowled figures who might as well call themselves game designers.

Nintendo has shown its fan-favourite Mii characters back in Nintendo Switch Sports.

When the game was announced back in February, many fans were perturbed by the new-look in-game characters, compared to the Miis used in Wii Sports.

But Miis will be playable, on top of a load of customisation options for the new characters to tweak their face, hair, and outfits.

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Another new patch has been released for Horizon Forbidden West. (Please note some of the following fixes may contain story spoilers for the game.)

As with previous patches, this latest update continues to address bugs and improve the game's graphical performance. However, most excitingly for the completionists among us, it also addresses an issue preventing players from getting the 100 percent completion notice in their notebook. Huzzah!

While Guerrilla is continuing to improve upon Horizon Forbidden West's graphical output, with this patch bringing improvements related to sharpness within the game, the team is continuing to make adjustments "to the game's content with the goal to reduce visual shimmering."

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Scott Bennie, a writer and contributor to the original Fallout, has died aged 61.

Bennie served as a designer, writer and producer of numerous games during his time at Interplay in the 1990s, including The Lord of the Rings, Starfleet Academy, plus Starfleet Command and its sequel.

On Fallout, Bennie memorably said his career had peaked with the popular naming of its canine companion, Dogmeat.

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If you're in the market for a new gaming laptop that offers a balance of price and performance, you'll want to hop on over to CCL right now. The online retailer has a bunch of spring ready deals where you can save over £300 on select gaming laptops with RTX 3060 graphics cards.

We've picked out three of our favourites to help you narrow down your search to suit a range of budgets, including a machine that's now under £900. As an extra treat, we have an exclusive discount code you can use to save an additional £30 off your order when you spend £600 or more. Just use the promo code 'GAMER30' at checkout.

One of the highlights in the sale is the Zephyrus G14 from ASUS. It's built with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS Processor, GeForce RTX 3060 Graphics, a 1TB hard drive, 8GB of RAM and offers eight hours of battery life. This version features a 14-inch screen and a slim chassis - ideal for portability. An SSD would have been nice, but storage can be easily upgraded later. You can find laptops with the same specs for cheaper, but you won't find one that is this compact. Remember, you'll save an extra 30 quid when you use our code 'GAMER30' at checkout, bringing the savings to a grand total of £376.

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A new Elden Ring-themed mod for Tekken 7 lets you duel as all the greats: namely potboy and lobster.

Modder Ultraboy has created the mod (available on Tekken Mods) that replaces various Tekken characters for new Elden Ring models.

For instance, Melina replaces Iidia, Malenia replaces Kunimitsu, and Ranni the Witch replaces Kazumi, as well as other bosses and player characters.

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Parents attempting to sue Nintendo are getting their kids involved in a class-action lawsuit.

The unusual legal situation has arisen as Nintendo and the parents tussle over the latter's ability to get the lawsuit off the ground (thanks, Axios).

And, once again, it's the notorious problem of Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controller drift at the root of the issue.

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Ella Purnell, famous for her work in Yellowjackets and Netflix's animated series Arcane, has joined the cast of Amazon's upcoming Fallout adaptation.

As reported by Variety, Purnell will be taking on a currently unspecified lead role in the upcoming series. However, sources close to the show have revealed Purnell's character will be "upbeat and uncannily direct with an all-American can-do spirit.

"But an intensity in her eyes says she might just be a tiny bit dangerous."

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UPDATE: We're live and back online! Thanks for your patience over the weekend - and please bear with us the next couple of days as we iron out some inevitable quirks. Give us a shout if you see anything that looks out of whack - we'll be able to see it in the comments now that the notifications are back online!

ORIGINAL STORY: It's going to be a bit quiet on Eurogamer this coming weekend, with some big changes being made behind the scenes that mean from 3pm BST this Friday it won't be possible for us to post new articles or for you to post new comments until the tech team has finished working its magic some time on Monday morning - and when the site's back there'll be some small tweaks you'll notice too.

So what exactly is changing? The boring truth is not very much, as it's mostly confined to behind-the-scenes stuff - this isn't a big redesign, and please don't expect big new features like dark mode. Not yet, anyway.

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UPDATE 31/3/22: Loop Hero publisher Devolver Digital has responded, confirming it supports Four Quarters encouraging pirating of its game by people affected by economic sanctions.

A statement to PC Gamer reads: "Devolver Digital fully supports Four Quarters as they navigate this incredibly difficult period. We've been communicating consistently with the team to help them wherever possible and were alerted of the statement ahead of time, which we back 100 percent."

ORIGINAL STORY 30/3/22: Four Quarters, the Russian independent studio behind Loop Hero, is encouraging players to pirate its game due to sanctions against Russia limiting its access to technology.

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UPDATE 4/4/22: Fortnite's fundraising period for Ukraine has now ended, with an astonishing $144m raised.

The final total, shared via Twitter, was raised from two weeks' worth of profits from Fortnite, plus all of Microsoft's proceeds it would normally take via Xbox.

It's an enormous amount - by far the largest of any video game company, and many countries. It also goes to show just how much money Fortnite makes at the start of its new seasons.

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This is cyberpunk right here. The analogue future of analogue yesterday, but with a bit of grit in it. A handicam with a busted viewing screen. A space-taxi dropping off stale pizza.

City Wars: Tokyo Reign gets cyberpunk. Gets it right in its chunky, villainous, brutal heart. This is a collectible card game and a roguelike, but deep down, in its heart? It's cyberpunk - eternal night, eternal scrabbling to get by. Never enough to go around. Never enough to get a real break.

It's complicated to learn - that said I am quite dim - but when it clicks it's already a dream. You select a faction, a load-out of cards, a weapon and a charm, and then you pick your way through the city, moving from district to district, one node at a time. Opening presents, hopefully. But more often facing a dilemma. And much more often getting into a battle.

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Microsoft has reinstated the ability for Xbox users to share game screenshots and videos directly to Twitter in response to feedback it received after removing the feature from console dashboards in an Xbox Insider build earlier this month.

While the direct Twitter sharing feature never got the chop in the live build of the Xbox dashboard - meaning the impact of its removal was limited - there were certainly grumbles from Insider testers after they were forced to grapple with more cumbersome methods of image and video sharing, requiring them to first upload clips to their phones, following the changes made in Microsoft's previous Insider build.

Now, however, in response Insider feedback, direct Twitter sharing has returned in Microsoft's last Beta Ring build. "Thanks for your feedback on the Twitter share feature change we flighted in 2204," Xbox Insider program lead Brad Rosetti wrote in a tweet. "That change is being reverted to the previous behaviour from today in this new build".

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Dead Cells' already ridiculously generous bounty of stuff has expanded once more, this time courtesy of its free new Break the Bank update, which brings the likes of new money themed enemies, weapons, and a brand-new biome to PC and consoles today.

Break the Bank is all about the gold, and its centrepiece is an opulent depository for unimaginable riches known as The Bank. Mechanically, this is quite a bit different from other biomes so far added to developer Motion Twin's acclaimed rogue-like action-platformer, given that its entrance - a mysterious giant chest - will appear at random during a run.

Provided you've first completed its sole unlock criteria - reach the Hand of the King once - the chest can appear in any of Dead Cells' post-biome transition stages, and players will need to decide right then and there if they want to open it and delve into The Bank. If they decide yes, The Bank will replace the next biome along the path (it won't appear before a boss), but should they choose to forego its temptations, it won't reappear on the same run.

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Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe - the remake of the remake of everybody's favourite comedic rumination on video game agency - finally has a release date and will, after a number of not-insignificant delays, be heading to PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC on 27th April.

Stanley Parable's Ultra Deluxe edition was first announced back in 2018, with developers Galactic Cafe and Crows Crows Crows (the respective studios of original Stanley Parable creator Davey Wreden and William Pugh, who co-designed the 2013 remake of the 2011 original) aiming to launch the following year. 2020 bought a second delay, and a hat-trick was achieved in 2021 - leaving many to ponder if the whole thing mightn't actually be some sort of mega-meta ruse and that the game didn't, and would never, exist.

Happy days are now here, however, with Galactic Cafe and Crows Crows Crows having finally given the Ultra Deluxe edition a 27th April release date - 4/27, of course, being the number on Stanley's near-iconic office door. And if that's not appropriately self-referential enough for you, the announcement is accompanied by a recreation of the Stanley Parable's 2013 trailer - only this time the player goes left.

UPDATE 30/3/22: Sony has now formally unveiled April's PlayStation Plus games line-up and, unsurprisingly given the veracity of previous PlayStation Plus leaks from French forum Dealabs, the official list remains unchanged.

That means, from 5th April, PlayStation Plus subscribers will be able to download and play acclaimed card-battler Slay the Spire (PS4), Hood: Outlaws & Legends (PS4 & PS5), and SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated (PS4).

Sony has also warned PlayStation 5 owners that Persona 5 is being removed from its PlayStation Plus Collection on 11th May, meaning they should download it soon while the chance remains.

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The Armaguerra 43 was introduced as part of the Warzone Season 2 Reloaded update in March 2022, giving players yet another close range, rapid-fire weapon to utilize.

It's a decent SMG that will lead you to victory, though, depending on how you build it, you might have trouble controlling it.

The Armaguerra 43 is a high-skill SMG that will delete the competition as long as you can control its recoil and manage its low ammo count.

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Today marks the launch of Intel's Arc A-series graphics family, the company's first discrete graphics cards to go head to head against industry titans AMD and Nvidia. To start, Team Blue is building its Arc GPUs for laptops, with entry-level Arc 3 models debuting now in laptops from $899. Higher-powered models called Arc 5 and Arc 7 are set to arrive early this summer, in higher-end machines. The company also teased its first desktop Arc graphics card at the very end of its presentation, showing off a much beefier design than the DG1 card shipped to developers last year. Here's what you need to know from Intel's Arc announcements.

First of all, the Arc series of graphics cards ought to be fully-featured models, with support for the full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature set (ray tracing, VRS, mesh shading, sampler feedback) plus DirectStorage and XeSS AI upscaling. That puts them on an even keel with Nvidia in terms of most features, and ahead of AMD who don't yet have a temporal upscaling solution.

Intel detailed some specs for each of the five models announced thus far, including the number of Xe cores, ray tracing units and GDDR6 memory allocation. Given the relatively rapid scaling between families - we see a doubling of core count and VRAM from the top Arc 3 model to Arc 5, then another doubling to the top Arc 7 model - we could start to see very impressive performance from those top-end models.

Sony has warned PlayStation 5 owners that Persona 5 is being removed from its PlayStation Plus Collection on 11th May.

The PlayStation Plus Collection launched alongside PS5 back in 2020, giving PlayStation Plus members on Sony's new console access to 20 first- and third-party PlayStation 4 titles for as long as their subscription continued:

From 11th May, however, that impressive list will be down by one, as announced at the bottom of April's PlayStation Plus games reveal. Anyone still wishing to take advantage of Persona 5's inclusion still have time to do so, though - they'll just need to ensure they've added the game to their library prior to the 11th May deadline. As long as this is done, the game will continue to be available while a PlayStation Plus subscription is active.

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Acclaimed Industrial-Revolution-era city builder Anno 1800 has enjoyed significant success since its release in 2019 - having surpassed more than 2m players at last count - and Ubisoft is capitalising on its continuing popularity with a fourth season of DLC. That much we already knew, but now the publisher has provided early details of Season 4 - which will include the likes of airplanes and agricultural revolution - revealing its first DLC will arrive on 12th April.

As outlined in Ubisoft's new introductory video, Anno 1800's fourth season will introduce a total of three new paid DLCs before 2022 is through, with its first offering being titled Seeds of Change. Arriving on 12th April, this will enable players to "revolutionise" the agricultural sector of the New World, introducing a powerful new building - the Hacienda - that will become the agricultural hub of players' empires.

Expanding the Hacienda with its various modules will enable players to gain access to a range of new agriculture-centric features, including the ability to produce import goods in the New World (such as beer) in order to help the population become more independent. Additionally, players will be able to adopt island-wide policies and produce high-quality fertiliser to boost farms in both the New and Old Worlds.

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Sony exec Jim Ryan believes the future of gaming is in live service games and that subscription services won't reach the levels seen in other media.

Ryan discussed the June launch of Sony's revised PS Plus subscription with GamesIndustry.biz, but believes live service games are more likely to become the dominant model.

"That phenomenon of the live service game... that has, in a very large part, fuelled the enormous growth in the gaming industry that we've seen over the last ten years," he said.

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I was a little worried Norco wouldn't be very much fun. The first from independent studio Geography of Robots, it's a dark game, a story about a region's bleak, collapsing future. And on the surface a serious one, too, with all its staid point-and-click vistas and dense blocks of prose. Serious is fine, of course. The seriousness of Norco's first act is exactly the type of thing that wins you features in the New Yorker and inaugural awards at Tribeca. It's just this type of seriousness can occasionally slip into something a bit self-regarding, a bit dour. But beyond Norco's initial, slightly po-faced outer layer is something odd and adventurous. Peevish. Occasionally quite funny. A playful spirit bouncing off its sharply political straight-edge.

Still, it takes some time to draw that out. Norco begins with you telling your own backstory, or if not telling then unearthing it, sorting through dialogue options to fill in blanks, as you will for much of Norco's six-ish hours of narrative. A brief, clever little late-game reference to one of my off-hand choices in this opening had me wondering how much this impacts - I suspect not much, and hope not much either, if only because I'm unnaturally keen to have Hoovered up every little drop of Norco's story.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is an upcoming compilation of games featuring the stories of the nine mainline Star Wars movies. The game is being released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox One and Series X.

The game promises the same charming action adventure gameplay you can expect from a Lego game. That means slicing through enemies with your lightsabre and destroying different parts of the environment to find all sorts of collectibles. What's also great about this game is, regardless of platform, being able to complete the story through local co-op. So if you have more than one Star Wars fan in your life, this could be a great game to play together.

Below we've listed all the best places to pre-order Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga standard and deluxe editions, as well as the pre-order bonuses available for early birds.

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343 Industries describes Master Chief removing his helmet in the new Halo TV series as "a mission statement".

In a lengthy blog post from 343 Industries community writer Alex Wakeford dissecting the opening episode (it's full of spoilers!), the matter of the lead character removing his helmet is addressed, seemingly in response to fan criticism.

The post notes that the games "have predominantly been a space for player projection", but fans of the expanded universe shouldn't be quite so surprised.

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Prime Gaming has announced its games for April, and they include The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Game of the Year Edition Deluxe.

From 1st April Prime Gaming members will be able to immerse themselves in eight games.

In addition to Oblivion, there's Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge, Nanotale - Typing Chronicles, Guild of Ascension, Galaxy of Pen and Paper, House of 1000 Doors: Family Secrets, and Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (which, as the name suggests, is a game where players take on the role of a turnip and evade taxes).

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