Eurogamer

Koei Tecmo's American and European websites remain offline over a week after they were targeted by hackers.

If you visit either the European or North American site, you'll be greeted with a message that reads: "Due to the possibility of an external cyberattack on this website, it is temporarily closed as we investigate the issue".

The publisher doesn't believe financial information has been compromised but did acknowledge that the hack - which is thought to have happened on Christmas Day, 25th December - may have put at risk account names, encrypted passwords, and email addresses.

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Sony has reportedly told a Japanese retailer that it is discontinuing a number of older PlayStation 4 models, including the PS4 Pro 1TB Glacier White and the PS4 2TB Jet Black.

As reported by Cheesemeister on Twitter (thanks, VGC), retailers in Japan have notified consumers that it is unable to restock the PS4 500GB Glacier White, PS4 1TB Jet Black, PS4 1TB Glacier White, PS4 2TB Jet Black, and PS4 Pro 1TB Glacier White "due to the manufacturer ending production".

As yet there's been no formal confirmation by Sony, but it coincides with a recent message on PlayStation.com that said it had "no plans to restock [PS4 Pros] in future". That statement, however, was subsequently removed.

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Sony has revealed the next set of freebies coming to PlayStation Plus subscribers in January 2021: Maneater, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and GreedFall.

While the latter two are optimised for PS4, the former is the PS5 version, so the "PlayStation Plus benefit [is] not applicable for Maneater on PS4", apparently.

"PlayStation Plus starts 2021 with a bang. PlayStation Plus members will receive two PS4 titles - action-adventure Shadow of the Tomb Raider and action RPG Greedfall - on Tuesday January 5," wrote SIE's Adam Michel on the official PS Blog.

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Netflix is reportedly planning to create a TV show based on the The Elder Scrolls franchise.

Capitalising on the success of similar adaptations that turned The Witcher and Castlevania into strong shows on the streaming service, it's now rumoured that Netflix is looking to repeat the formula with a show based upon Bethesda's action RPG, too.

The rumour comes via industry insider Daniel Ritchtman (£) (thanks, Game Rant), who reports Netflix is looking to adapt the fan-favourite franchise. Admittedly it's only a rumour right now - as yet we haven't heard from Bethesda, Microsoft or Netflix - but given there are already plans to turn Fallout 4 into a TV show, it's certainly a plausible one.

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It's a happy new year indeed for Valve - we're only a few days into 2021, but the company has once again broken its own record for the highest number of concurrent users on its digital PC platform, Steam.

This is the seventh time the record has been broken in 12 months, most recently when it hit 24,776,635 concurrent users in mid-December. Before then, the highest concurrent player count seen on Steam was 22 million users.

Steam saw an unprecedented number of players concurrently online back when the pandemic first surged, resulting in millions of people going into lockdown. Now, according to SteamDB (thanks, PC Gamer), Valve's PC platform has hit another record high, with 25,415,080 concurrent users on the service yesterday, 2nd January, 2021.

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The Uncharted movie has dropped four stills taken from its highly-anticipated upcoming film, giving us a peek at some of its mysterious sets and props.

"A new year. A new adventure awaits," the tweet says, and attaches four stills taken on set. Here they are, although let's face it - they tell us more about the prop department than the movie itself:

They're not quite brand-new, either; anyone who watches Nolan North - yes, that's the same Nolan North that portrays Drake in the games - revealed two of them just before Christmas on his Retro Replay YouTube channel. Altogether, though, they depict a couple of ancient maps, a shiny gold cross that also apparently doubles as a key, and a room that requires a damned good dusting.

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Ever since Cyberpunk 2077 came out in December, players have been experimenting with the game's various sci-fi powers to get protagonist V to run faster than anyone should be able to. Now, players are taking running fast in Cyberpunk to the next level.

Redditor Strikielol uploaded a clip of the glitch in action to the Cyberpunk sub:

Here's how it works: first, equip the Maneuvering System cyberware mod in a Nervous System slot (get the mod from Octavio's Clinic at Arroyo, Santo Domingo). This allows you to perform dodges in mid-air - or, as Strikie reveals, dash.

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If you've been playing Call of Duty: Warzone recently, you'll no doubt have encountered - or possibly even used yourself - the controversial DMR 14.

The DMR 14, a weapon added to the battle royale as part of the integration of Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, is currently dominating the Warzone meta. Dominating is too soft a way to put it - the DMR is considered essential to success, and it's absolutely everywhere.

The DMR 14 is a semi-auto tactical rifle, with increased fire rate and minimum recoil. It's devastating at long rage, maintaining reliable damage to down enemies in a blink of an eye.

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Age of Empires 4 - announced over three years ago - is still in the works, and progress is being made, Microsoft has said.

At XO19 in November 2019, Microsoft showed off a snippet of Age of Empires 4 in action (check out the video below), but we haven't heard a peep about it since then.

In a blog post summing up what's going on with the Age of Empires franchise, Shannon Loftis, studio head of World's Edge, said: "We are making great progress on Age of Empires 4."

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Magic Castle is an eye-catching roguelite made on the Net Yaroze platform by a handful of Japanese developers back in 1997. But it never came out - until now.

For the uninitiated, Net Yaroze was a Sony project that made available to hobbyist coders a basic version of the PlayStation dev kit for £550. Around 1000 units were sold in Europe, which effectively created a ready-made community of budding developers working independently on the PlayStation platform. (For more, check out Eurogamer's 2013 feature, The story of Net Yaroze, Sony's first indie push.)

A Magic Castle prototype was built using Net Yaroze, but unfortunately the game was never finished or released. In March 2020, NetYaroze-Europe.com interviewed the head creators of Magic Castle: K. Matsunami, a game designer who now works at Sega, and a game designer who goes by the name PIROWO, and in the interview Matsunami revealed Magic Castle was created in just eight months as a pitch to a game production company. Sony expressed interest, but asked the developers to work on another project at the company instead. They declined. Eventually, the team disbanded.

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The Binding of Isaac: Repentance comes out 31st March 2021, developer Edmund McMillen has announced.

The "sequel sized" final expansion for the hugely popular roguelike hits PC via Steam then, with consoles to follow later.

The announcement was made via a new trailer, below, which is packed "with nods to the past, present and future", McMillen teased in a post on Steam.

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Print can do some really good things. There's the ritual of browsing the local corner shop looking for something you fancy, the bizarrely thin paper that somehow smells bloody delicious, and front covers screaming at you to pick them up and give them a read. Walking past the magazine section at my local Asda, I got to thinking about all the super cool stuff made possible when you whack out the ol' presses.

One that immediately sprung to mind was Mad Magazine and its fold-ins. They used to have this weird back page thing where the reader folds the page to change one image into another. They've been hand-drawn by Al Jaffee since the '60s, and show two completely different scenes, telling a two-part story that will often subvert what you initially expected to see.

It might not be super deep, cutting satire - Mad's brand is more pointing out the obvious. You have the question posed at the top of the page - 'what frightening, ancient relic will be the focus of much attention and fanfare this summer?' with an accompanying image of an Indiana Jones style adventurer in an ancient tomb. However, folding the page in obscures most of the image to reveal the words 'John McCain', along with a goofy looking bust of the former Presidential candidate (this fold-in was from 2008). The content is simple, but the presentation is brilliant. It's like a game on the back of a magazine - a story is being told, and the reader is a part of it.

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2020 has been an extremely unusual year, so hopefully it's a bit of a treat to end it in our usual way - with the top fifty games of the last twelve months, as chosen by you.

What we said: "You can't call it a comeback when you've always been the king."

"It's early days, but this is as good as WoW has been for over ten years," says Kiliko. "So much content, no vicious gating, very alt-friendly, great looking zones. It feels similar to what I thought WoW 2 would be like back in 2010. A joy to see my friends list extremely active again."

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Hello! And welcome to a special article where a bunch of us sit down to talk about our game of the year. And for 2020, that game is Hades. We hope you enjoy this conversation, and we hope you're leaving such an unusual year with some good memories of the games you've played.

Chris Donlan: There are a lot of Roguelikes and Roguelites - what makes Hades stand above the rest? Is that even the right lens to be viewing it through?

Malindy Hetfeld: I have a counter question if I may. Just to clarify. I'm not sure what the roguelike lens entails, because that means we all have a fixed idea of what that genre is about.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

I love the ring in Ring Fit Adventure: the way it pulses when positioned correctly for a move; hitting the sweet spot, feeling it tug like a bump in the air. I love the tremble and buzz as you pull hard for a Bow Pull, or go low for a Squat (or a Wide Squat, or a Knee Lift Combo which feels suspiciously like a Squat). I love the main theme, and the track that sounds like Kylie. I love that the linear stages feel a bit Sonic with all their springs and jumps, and I love the first level's beat-drop as you burst into a vivid colourscape. From leader board competitions against friends (200 on Endless Deltoids!) to the custom workouts I made after injuring my Achilles (fuck you barefoot trainers!) Ring Fit has been a 2020 constant. And I never would have played it if the gyms hadn't closed in Lockdown.

Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

Bartending isn't glamorous, but it has its perks. You get to be a background character in someone else's story, listening, watching, sometimes leaning over with a word of advice. Fertile ground for a writer, or anyone looking to slip out of their skin. Coffee Talk is the only late-night coffee shop in fantasy Seattle. It's also an easygoing slice-of-life sim with low stakes and good vibes, the perfect substitute for the pub chatter I've missed all year.

For halting first date small talk, I'd heartily recommend the visual novel A Summer's End: Hong Kong 1986 . With pulsing vaporwave backtracks and a palette of dreamy, dissolving neon, Summer's End resurrects a city out of time - Hong Kong in the grip of the eighties. Two lost souls have a chance encounter. Then another one. You know the drill. It's a love story of awkward pauses and small revelations, where the tactile and the emotional intersect. Pop records, a cassette player, old operas on DVD, everything takes on a hidden meaning. Watching these characters learn how to talk to each other will soften even the hardest gamer hearts.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

In this unnaturally long year, I found myself seeking out games whose worlds were filled with quiet, relaxing, magic. It's the kind of magic that, rather than bombarding you with rules and consequences, slowly envelopes you until the barrier between it and what might be considered normal has dissolved entirely. These games helped me forget what was happening around the world for a while, transporting me instead to places where the wonderfully bizarre is commonplace.

In Spiritfarer I found the magic of discovery; nearly every island has something you need hidden away somewhere on its shores and I started keeping notes on which lands I hadn't been able to fully explore, so that I wouldn't forget to revisit them. Even the sea has its own secrets - I love sailing through the patches of endless night, because the music and change in atmosphere create the idea that, for a short while, you're gazing upon the true nature of this world. My favourite part of Spiritfarer, however, was, in a year where I've spent six months in the same room, it made me feel helpful. You're not just ferrying the dead, you're healing their wounds, soothing their demons and finding the perfect way to help their souls finally rest.

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From Tolstoy to Tolkien, sometimes it's good to go back and sample the classics. You know, for educational purposes. And when it comes to gaming, it doesn't get much more classic then Doom. Though it spawned in the early days of home console history, the series has proved enduring, with the most recent instalment coming out just this year.

Right now, Steam and Microsoft are both offering the original 1993 title for just £1.19. The port comes with the spooky Thy Flesh Consumed expansion pack, plus 4-player deathmatch and co-op. The multiplayer options are all local, which is a shame in these locked down times, but you can at least rope your flatmate / spouse / offspring in for some demon killing fun.

The port is available for PlayStation and Switch, though it's still full price on those storefronts. You can also get the crazily huge DOOM Franchise bundle for £35 on Steam, which includes all the classic games as well as the current bloodsoaked reboots. If you fancy a proper trip down memory lane, Doom Classic Complete (including Doom II and the severely misnamed Final Doom) is down from a tenner to £2.99.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

I never used to be particularly outdoorsy, but the passing of years seems to have graced me with an irrepressible itch for a sweeping vista and a curiosity for distant climes. No surprise then that Flight Simulator has been my safety valve in 2020, offering a welcome escape from the waning thrills and increasingly claustrophobic over-familiarity of my immediate locale.

The joy and genius of Flight Simulator 2020 is in its wonderful accessibility, meaning it's not just a game for aviation lovers, it's a game for those that love travel and discovery too. And its breathtaking digital Earth hasn't just sated my niggling wanderlust this year, it's stirred my curiosity, encouraging hours of blissful revery among the clouds, seeking out fresh geographical wonders, and giving me a whole new appreciation for the majesty of our world.

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As Christmas comes to an end and January sets in like a long, frosty headache, you might be looking for a way to escape reality - figuratively speaking, that is. If you've got the means to pay for it, a VR headset can be a great antidote to the lockdown blues.

Right now at Amazon UK, the PSVR Mega Pack is £22 off. Not a mind-blowing discount, but decent, especially considering that the bundle was only released a month ago.

For £277 you can get the headset, camera adapter, and four free games: ASTRO Bot Rescue Mission, Everybody's Golf, Moss, Blood and Truth, and PlayStation Worlds. The immersive tech is compatible with both PS4 and PS5. The offer will be live until late afternoon today, around 15:45, and can arrive as soon as tomorrow if you've got Amazon Prime.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

Can you hear that? It's the sound of video game composers, audio engineers and voice actors having an absolute blast. My favourite games of 2020 all have parts that are wonderful and parts that don't quite work, but they all have one thing in common: they sound awesome.

Let's start with Call of Duty: Warzone, which I spent much of the first half of 2020 playing almost exclusively. This isn't one for memorable music, but it is one for memorable sound. Infinity Ward did a cracking job with the sound of Modern Warfare and Warzone's weapons. They thunder from the middle of the screen! Sniper rifles boom and crack realistically, echoing across the Verdansk expanse. It's the zip of fire that races past your head, coming from the rooftop over the hill somewhere. And the footsteps. Oh god, the footsteps. At one point, when I was playing Warzone pretty much every night, I could hear the footsteps as I drifted off to sleep, above me or below me, getting louder or quieter. Warzone is one of the best-sounding shooters I've ever played. Solid copy, IW.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

Sometimes when I have trouble sleeping, I imagine myself climbing out of a vast underground citadel, stairways upon stairways following each other upward in the light of a single candle. I pass doorways heaped with dust and swivelling, gold-rimmed mirrors of the kind that often feature in Zelda puzzles. Reaching the top after many days I halt inside the entrance, listening to birdsong, my toes inches from a bar of sunshine. Then I rewind the daydream and start again. I fantasise that I'm some ancient creature roused from long slumber to right some epic wrong, but in the end, I don't really need to know what lies out there in the surface world. I'm in it for the suspense and serenity of the climb.

I haven't played Hades, the current Stygian adventure of choice, but I've spent a lot of time in virtual underworlds this year. You don't have to look hard for a real-life parallel there. Nor do you have to be an ancient Greek adventurer to know that underworlds aren't just places of death and disease. They are refuges for wayward imaginations, shelters and spawning vats for ideas swiftly killed by the harsh clarity of sunlight, the abrasive fresh air. The games that define 2020 for me understand this.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

I barely played any new games this year. It feels wrong to admit that, as a professional games journalist, even one who's not exactly on the frontline any more. It feels like an unforgivable lapse of curiosity. It feels like a retreat. And if I am honest with myself, it was a retreat that began before March - before everything in life became a retreat. I just couldn't bring myself to start new games, to enter new worlds. I wanted familiarity. As I wrote in May, "there was nothing new I fancied playing, or rather I fancied playing nothing new - I wanted the soothing feeling of old routines, patterns of thought and movement worn smooth with use."

Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

Of the five games that have had the greatest impact on me this year, four of them weren't even on my radar when the clock ticked over from 2019 to 2020.

I knew Assassin's Creed Valhalla was on its way, of course, but I was... indifferent, I suppose? Burned out on all things Creed, perhaps? I'd loved my time with Bayek, and had a lot of fun with Alexios, too, but I couldn't reconcile how an Assassin's Creed game could work with a Viking at the helm. Let's face it; Viking's aren't particularly renowned for their stealthy ways, and I couldn't work out how - or even why - the ancient brotherhood would court a warrior with a tendency to axe first, ask questions later.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

Something I've found myself doing more in 2020 is going back to old games. I spent my summer replacing my GameCube's disc drive with an SD card reader (and you thought next-gen load time improvements were exciting!) and the thing I was most looking forward to with Xbox Series X and PS5 was revisiting missed treasures through backwards compatibility. But looking back, even my favourite new games of the year have a hint of nostalgia to them. Maybe it's just one of those years where, without realising, I needed a bit of familiarity.

Like most of us, the game I've sunk the most time into this year is Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I've played every Animal Crossing since the long awaited PAL release on GameCube, and though I've thoroughly enjoyed each one, I never stuck with them. Whether it's on DS or Wii, three or four months in and my lofty ambitions at fully completing the museum falls by the wayside. I'm pleased to report I'm almost there with the Switch version, give or take some pier fish that stubbornly wouldn't spawn and are now out of season, which means I'll be forced to chip away at it until May of next year - something which I'm secretly delighted about.

Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

Where are games travelling? For me, this year, they were travelling inward. Spelunky 2, of course, heading deeper and darker, offering more complexity and more mystery, more dangers to think about down there, and more wonders! All of it driven by clockwork so brilliant that it does not need much in the way of additional complications. Inward for Umurangi Generations, too, a team exploring its own culture to thrilling and generous effect. Never has travelling inwards seemed like so much of a gift.

Onwards and inwards, though. How do you make a game about the inwards territory of death? If you're I am Dead, you make it anything but sombre. You bathe it in Clarice Cliff colours and send us into a pocket universe armed with a fearsome curiosity. How do the dead feel about the living? A kind of nosy envy, a greediness to understand the people left behind and make sense of their worlds, to touch the surfaces of the world one last time. It helps that being dead sort of turns you into an MRI and allows you to slice through objects to peek inside.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

I'm one of those unbearable people who will smugly tell you that my gaming tastes simply won't align with whatever's popular. In fact I did so for the top five games of 2019 on this very website. "I just can't help it that my tastes are so out there," my inner snob would sigh, utterly vindicated by a comment asking me to "stop it with the anime shit already".

To my genuine surprise, I did enjoy a lot of immensely popular games this year, and their popularity genuinely added to my enjoyment - the best example of that being Final Fantasy 7 Remake. The story of FF7R is one of continually growing excitement, both within the fanbase and myself as we went from "oh my god, it's a real thing" to "omg it's a real thing that will be with us soon". You'd think that by now we'd be used to the idea of full remakes, as rare as they are, but getting one of a formative, beloved game felt so special. I engaged in fan speculation and watched trailers frame by frame, and somehow still got a game that managed to surprise and delight, even just with how it managed to translate my memories to a modern format.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

The lines between work and play are always blurred with this job, which is often more a privilege than a problem. Playing things for a job is still a treat, of course, but this year the lines have blurred just a little more than usual, for obvious reasons - and so above all my favourite games have felt overwhelmingly not like a job at all and, instead, solely like play.

Despite everything, 2020 has been a big year for games. We've got two (three, technically) new consoles, and more people are spending more time playing games than ever before. Remember everyone going wild for Animal Crossing? Yeah, that happened. Elijah Wood even popped into someone's village for a turnip. Though, like, I'm sure someone grows those in the Shire, but anyway. Unprecedented: that's a good word for 2020. And I hope you've all managed to weather it OK.

Here, I've tried to bring together a year's worth of different pieces from all the voices we now have on the site. And I've done it in the hope you maybe missed something you now have time to read. So bookmark it and come back on your way to get cold leftovers from the kitchen, and discover something new. And if you like what you read, click on the author's name for more work by them.

Thank you to all of our contributors and to you for reading Eurogamer. Merry Christmas one and all.

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It's already been quite a remarkable year for Microsoft Flight Simulator, the technically dazzling, gorgeously detailed celebration of all things aviation taking the sim mainstream, but the best has been left until the very last. The much-awaited VR update which dropped earlier this week does everything you'd hope for, and a little bit more besides.

As it's getting on I won't be able to go into full details until early next year, and apologies for the lack of capture - I spent yesterday in a tangle of cables as I got involved in the fiddly business of setting up a new headset, as well as being tangled in strings of Xmas lights as I put up the tree - but suffice to say Flight Sim in VR works a treat, the immersion it adds elevating it all to the next level.

Having initially been slated to debut on the Reverb G2, on which I've been trying it out, it's commendable that the update is now available across all headsets. Indeed, convenience is baked into this update, with VR mode toggled on or off at any point with the press of a button. It demands a fair amount, of course - running on a 3070 I'm not able to come too close to the full resolution of the G2's optics while maintaining a steady framerate - but it's easy enough to find a sweet spot where the splendour of Microsoft Flight Sim isn't diluted too much.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

I never thought I'd be talking about Grounded as one of my games of the year. I thought it would be a fun-for-one-evening kind of game. But it's still there, still rigidly imprinted on my mind. And do you know what the memory looks like? It looks like a gigantic hairy spider.

I was obsessed with them; I was obsessed with it. It wasn't just that they were there, in the same way ants were there, or aphids, or ladybirds, or gnats, and that they looked incredible seen from a tiny perspective. It was that they were the menace. They were the villain in this familiar but alien backyard world. Their threat was everywhere (though they seem to be more orderly in recent builds of the game? I think they were more aggressive and active at the beginning. And I should add that playing the game alone makes for a far stronger experience where the spiders are concerned, than playing with the safety of friends.)

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

Looking down at my games of the year list, I quickly realised that finding an overarching theme was going to be a challenge. Everything I enjoyed had been so remarkably different, on a real range of platforms. It was then I realised that perhaps the theme was the variety. Having spent most of the year living and working in one room, with no chance of travel beyond the local ASDA, trying out different game genres has become a way for me to break routine.

One of these surprises came in the form of Crusader Kings 3, the medieval grand strategy made by Paradox. I'll admit I previously steered clear of grand strategy titles under the assumption they were dry and overcomplicated, and while Crusader Kings 3 is certainly the latter, that chaos is what makes it so compelling. The systems create personal adventures that are ridiculous and uncontrollable, and letting events wash over you as you navigate your family through the carnage makes for some unique storytelling. That and eating the pope, which is also an option.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

Every list and review of 2020 you're going to read will begin with the usual, expected and deserved rant about the complete shittiness we've all had to deal with, individually and collectively. And many of them, like this one, will tell you how grateful all of us should be for being able to enjoy the escapism provided by video games. For me, from a crude list of over 20, there were five in particular that stood out.

Guildlings made its debut at the tail end of last year on Apple Arcade and received a substantial enough update in October for me to include it here. It's a charming, upbeat game about Coda, who becomes stuck in a hand-me-down smartphone and convinces her sister and friends to use their special abilities to help set her free by saving the world. This involves tackling kitchen appliances, crabs and garbage bags, as they can become sentient obstacles during your journey. But you don't use violence in this fantasy world. In fact, a snide remark is just as useful as recharging your characters' phones during your "battles", as the only objective is to manage your guildlings' moods. It's so refreshing and unlike anything else in recent memory, but as enjoyable as watching weekend cartoons as a kid.

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During this weird and crappy Christmas, staying in touch with friends and family is vital, and one of the best ways to do that is through games. Whether you're tending the homestead together in Stardew Valley or beating the living crap out of gangsters in Streets of Rage 4, you'll need a Nintendo Online Membership if you want to stay connected over the Switch.

As well as unlocking multiplayer, Nintendo Online allows access to cloud data saving, member discounts, and a huge library of classic SNES and Super SNES games (including the original Legend of Zelda).

Right now, ShopTo are offering discounts on three different membership packages:

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Netflix has published page one of The Witcher season two script.

The page reveals the opening scene of the hotly-anticipated second season of The Witcher series.

It doesn't reveal much, apart from a rather gruesome killing of a merchant and his wife at the hands of some mysterious foe. The scene ends with their daughter heading off to a mansion, screaming for help.

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Can you hear it? The eerie descending slide whistle sound effect as your bank balance drains back down to zero? That can mean only one thing: it's the Steam Winter Sale!

That's right. On the crest of a great tidal wave of green rectangles, Valve has returned to save Christmas, Hanukkah, and December 2020 is general. But unlike years past, they're not the only digital bargain bin in town. The competition this year is stiff: GOG have been offering discounts since the start of the month, while Epic are literally giving away games (today it's Metro 2033).

But Steam are running a few special offers of their own to tempt us back to the storefront. Purchases earn points, and points mean prizes. What's the prize this year? Bird stickers. You can claim one every other day for the duration of the sale. They're quite cute, it must be said. Of course, the Steam Awards are also open for business. Members of the public can vote on categories like 'Best Game You Suck At' and 'Better With Friends'. For this act of good gamer citizenry, you can expect a random selection of trading cards. Such fun!

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The developer of Warframe has moved to reassure fans after it was bought by Tencent.

In 2014, Hong Kong video game company Leyou bought majority shares in Digital Extremes. Now, Tencent has bought Leyou, making the Chinese megacorp Digital Extremes' parent company.

"We will remain creatively independent, we expect no changes to Warframe or how our studio operates, and we will remain as dedicated ever to you, the community, who has been with us every step of the way since we launched Warframe," Digital Extremes said in a message to players published on its website.

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Cyberpunk 2077 has sold over 13m copies - even factoring in refunds, CD Projekt has said.

In a regulatory note to investors, the Polish company said its controversial blockbuster hit the 13m mark as of 20th December.

13m is the sell-through figure - that is, it's the estimated volume of retail sales across all hardware platforms, factoring in returns submitted by physical and digital shops, less all refund requests emailed directly to CD Projekt by the 22nd December.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

I've been trying so hard all year not to do it. Trying not to mention all the other stuff that 2020 has wrought, and trying to maintain games as a haven away from everything else. Looking back at the five games that defined my year, I've only just realised it's now impossible not to, so please accept my apologies, and I promise I'll keep it brief. It turns out the games I've spent the most meaningful time with in 2020 were all about giving me back some small semblance of normality.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons offered the most obvious substitute for what once was, and consumed the most hours. Coming just as the world turned, it was a warm and welcome retreat, a cushion-soft world for us all to flop into and an absolute hug of a thing. What a time for Nintendo's biggest-hearted series to deliver its most feature-rich, open-armed entry, and what a gift to be able to hold on to the simple pleasure of popping around a friend's house for a cup of tea and to admire their furnishings.

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Bird-flying game The Falconeer welcomes a significant, free, update today in the shape of The Kraken. This not only brings new content but important fixes and improvements too.

The new content revolves around what is underneath the water, and it looks as though you'll be able to go there in some kind of small submarine. Down in the depths, you'll uncover wrecks, temples, and sources of great wealth. But you'll also discover things that don't want you there. Things with many tentacles.

There are new locations to discover as well, and new guilds offering missions designed to push you to the furthest corners of the map.

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