Eurogamer

15 years after its initial release on PlayStation 2, Devil May Cry 3 is still among the best action games of its kind - but getting a decent remaster for modern systems has proven elusive, with the game receiving a procession of barebones conversions over the years. The good news is that with the game's recent arrival on Nintendo Switch, we do get an excellent rendition of this classic brawler, but the bad news is that it's still some way off delivering what you might call a perfect port.

There is a sticking point in terms of its value on the eShop. PS4, PC and Xbox One received an HD Collection back in 2018 that provided the trilogy in one purchase, while Switch users (outside of Japan at least) need to buy each conversion individually, amounting to a higher price tag overall. However, with DMC3 there is at least extra work put into the port, where you get Switch-exclusive features. There's limited two-player support via a co-op mode that has Dante and Vergil surviving waves of enemies in the Bloody Palace. Here, you can use the JoyCons held sideways if needs be, plus it even lets each player use weapon loadouts from the solo adventure. It's a neat arcade-style extra - one that but still, the main adventure is the big attraction.

Switch users also get a significant addition to the main single-player game. There's a new Freestyle mode, letting you change Dante's play style on the fly, available right from the start of the game - as opposed to choosing between Trickster, Royal Guard, Swordmaster and Gunslinger types between each level. With a burst of colour, the role of the B button changes, opening up options for even more lavish mid-air juggles.

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons is still several weeks away, but PAX East attendees are already uncovering new items and features thanks to a special demo at the show.

As rounded up by USGamer, fresh details spotted on the showfloor include the ability to tilt the game's camera so it offers a top-down view similar to the original Animal Crossing on GameCube. Be still my heart.

Toggling this option, spotted in the 20-minute GameXplain video below, is as simple as clicking in the right analogue stick. Skip to the 6:10 mark to hear the booth's staff member explain it:

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Five of the Best is a weekly series about the bits of games we overlook. I'm talking about hands, maps, cats, startup screens - things we ignore at the time but can recall years later because, it turns out, they're integral to our memory of the game. Now is the time to celebrate them!

It works like this. Various Eurogamer writers will share their memories in the article and then you - probably outraged we didn't include the thing you're thinking of - can share the thing you're thinking of in the comments below. We've had some great discussions in our other Five of the Best pieces. So come on, what are you waiting for? On we go!

Did you know the UK has the next dozen or so storm names already figured out? Following the rather mundane "Dennis" will be Ellen, then Francis and then Gerda, which is a great name! There are a few other bangers in there too: Iris (imagine the puns!), Noah (ironically reincarnated as the storm) and Willow (great to see her working again after Buffy).

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New files found overnight within Pokémon Go (by PokeMiners) reference two upcoming, unannounced ticketed events due to take place in-game next month.

These would be the second and third global ticketed events following last October's A Colossal Discovery Special Research, which granted early access to a forthcoming EX Raid boss. That felt just about worth the £8 entry fee - but there was some room for improvement.

The first upcoming event is currently titled "A Drive to Investigate", and is dated for 22nd March. A description for its ticket reads:

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If Infliction was a colour, it would be beige. If it was a biscuit, it'd be the tasteless disc of a Rich Tea. If it was a band, it'd play nothing but Coldplay tracks. Sure, they all have their fans and they all technically deliver on what's promised on the tin, but let's face it: you could probably live without them, too.

The big but here? For every sin it commits, Infliction has a saving grace. For every recycled cliche, it offers something fresh. For every cringey line of dialogue, there's another delivered with perfect timing and pathos. When you tire of picking through the contents of the same old rooms in the same old house, the game will unexpectedly toss you someplace new. And when you get bored with that place - oh, look! - we're back in the marital home again.

Consequently, I'm not sure what to think about this indie horror just yet. On one hand, that can't be a good sign; at the time of writing I've completed it three times (once on PC, and twice on PlayStation 4) and if that isn't long enough to form an opinion, then I don't know what is. But on the flip side, I didn't mind playing it the second or even third time, either.

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UPDATE 28/2/20: Zarude, the newly-revealed Mythical monkey Pokémon, had something of an underwhelming introduction yesterday when he popped up via in-game footage from Pokémon Sword and Shield. Now, there's a trailer for his movie debut - and it's much more of an entrance.

Of course, Zarude will be the star of upcoming Tarzan-inspired Pokémon film Coco - whose trailer below just casually drops in a Shiny Celebi too.

Zarude looks like he acts as a guardian of the rainforest - and him being a long-lost creature only found deep within it would fit his Mythical status. Here he is in action:

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The Double-A Team is a feature series honouring the unpretentious, mid-budget, gimmicky commercial action games that no-one seems to make any more.

You can catch up with all of our Double-A Team pieces in our handy, spangly archive.

I took the bus into town to buy LocoRoco when it first came out for the PSP, back in - crikey! - 2006. I remember this because I took the bus home, too. And I remember that because halfway through the trip, a grey day with low clouds and the promise of rain, I briefly pulled the LocoRoco box out of the bag to take a look at it - and it was like the sun had risen, all of a sudden, on the top deck of a 46 to deepest Hove.

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It's all go in the lead-up to Sea of Thieves' second anniversary next month. The two-week Hunter's Haul fishing challenge is currently underway, running in tandem with the Chests of Rage update, and Rare has now revealed a variety of activities scheduled for this weekend, as well as the devastating new Chain Shot cannonballs, coming to the game in March.

This Saturday, 29th February, Rare is celebrating 2020's "bonus" day with a special bonus event, rewarding double XP and gold in Adventure and Arena modes. It's also running two separate Twitch drops this weekend, and anyone that's linked their accounts will receive the Obsidian Fishing Rod and Ebon Flintlock on Saturday and Sunday respectively if they watch a partner stream (or, at the very least, leave one running in a background tab) for 30 minutes.

Rare's news trumpet has also blasted out a tease of some of the features arriving as part of Sea of Thieves' March update. One of these will take the form of a new Tall Tales story episode (presumably revolving around Captain Flameheart and the Masked Stranger, seeing as events in that particular storyline appear to have come to a head), and the other is the Chain Shot.

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Borderlands 3 will be waving goodbye to Epic Games Store exclusivity on PC and hello to Steam on 13th March, and it'll be followed by second paid DLC episode, Guns, Love, and Tentacles: The Marriage of Wainwright and Hammerlock, two weeks later on 26th March.

According to Gearbox, cross-play will be supported across Steam and the Epic Store come 13th March, meaning that all Borderlands 3 players on PC can knockabout in the same matchmaking pool. Unfortunately, there's still no update on cross-play between different platforms - that is PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One - a feature that Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford asserted would arrive "as soon as practicable after launch...on as many platforms as possible".

Following Borderlands 3's Steam release, Gearbox will resume its schedule of post-launch content, which has so far included free limited-time events such as Bloody Harvest, and the first paid DLC episode Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot.

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Larian has finally shown off some Baldur's Gate 3 gameplay, via their panel at PAX East today, and as you might have already read in our preview, it is very impressive.

But, impressive as it may be, there are still plenty of questions for Larian to answer. It's self-publishing the game, which is quite remarkable given its scope and reputation. It's one of the first major games to be releasing simultaneously on Google Stadia and other platforms - at this point just PC - and there's been an assumption amongst some that this would mean Google would have some kind of say in things, akin to a first-party relationship the likes of Sony and Microsoft have with some games on their own platforms.

And then there's, you know, the actual game itself. Larian's Divinity: Original Sin and Original Sin 2 garnered a reputation for brilliant turn-based action, but Baldur's Gate is known for its real-time with pause system, so how will they bridge that gap? How will they manage the darker tone when Divinity has been as much a comedy, in recent years, as a heavier fantasy drama? And will there be a Dungeon Master mode, what with Baldur's Gate being driven by the rules of Dungeons and Dragons itself?

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It's early days for Baldur's Gate 3. An end of year release window seems to have leaked but there's "no exact date" for when it's coming out, according to developer-publisher Larian Studios, of Divinity: Original Sin and Original Sin 2 fame. And when it does come out - simultaneously on Google Stadia and Steam - it'll be in early access first. Understandably, early access can seem a bit icky to some, but Larian's argument for it seems fair enough: the game needs en-masse testing from its own audience if it's ever going to come together, and having now seen a marathon, over three hours long presentation of live gameplay, I can see why. Baldur's Gate 3 is a game with an extraordinary level of systemic depth and remarkable complexity. Across the board it's a game that'll need time. Time to polish, time to balance, and quite a bit of time from the player, I'd imagine, to really get anywhere close to understanding and mastering its systems. But from what was shown of the game and what Larian has told us in our Baldur's Gate 3 interview, it'll be worth the wait - and then some.

Paradox Interactive's 4X sci-fi strategy game Stellaris will be getting its previously promised diplomacy boost next month, when fourth major expansion Federations arrives on 17th March.

This time around, the focus is on expanding players' diplomatic options and, to that end, Federations will introduce the likes of Trade Leagues, Martial Alliances, and Hegemony for those looking to "build up the internal cohesion of their Federations".

There's also a new galactic senate, which can vote on a wide variety of resolutions. Empires that hold a position within the senate can sanction those that defy its rules, enact a single galactic focus, or even "sway the senate to position [themselves] as a leader, trading favours and manoeuvring, doing whatever it takes to gain influence among schemers."

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After three years of livestream shows, Mojang is reviving its old MineCon live event format and taking its annual Minecraft celebrations back out into the real world as Minecraft Festival.

As was the case with Minecraft's MineCon event, which ran between 2010 and 2016 before its livestream replacement MineCon Earth took over the following year, Minecraft Festival will be a sizeable live affair, this time open to "thousands" of ticket holders.

Minecraft Festival, which is being organised by Eurogamer parent company ReedPOP, will be held from 25th-27th September at the Orange County Convention Center in Florida, and Mojang calls it "a celebration of the epic adventure we've all shared for the past 10 years". It promises interactive exhibits, competitive tournaments, and live entertainment, as well as panels and the opportunity to meet content creators and the Minecraft development team.

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Plague Inc., the real-time strategy sim about pandemics, has been abruptly removed from the Chinese App Store - and it's still unclear as to why.

In a blog post, developer Ndemic Creations said it had been informed that Plague Inc. "includes content that is illegal in China as determined by the Cyberspace Administration of China", although no further explanation was given to say exactly what was considered illegal.

"This situation is completely out of our control," Ndemic Creations wrote. "It's not clear to us if this removal is linked to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak that China is facing. However, Plague Inc.'s educational importance has been repeatedly recognised by organisations like the CDC and we are currently working with major global health organisations to determine how we can best support their efforts to contain and control COVID-19."

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Hideo Kojima will pick up a prestigious BAFTA Fellowship award this year, and follow in the footsteps of past recipients such as Shigeru Miyamoto, Will Wright and Gabe Newell.

Creator of Boktai and voice actor in Control, Kojima is also known for his work on the Metal Gear series, and for the PlayStation 4/PC game Death Stranding.

Kojima will pick up his prize at the 2020 BAFTA Games Awards, due to take place on 2nd April at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.

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It's rare that we review graphics card variants at Digital Foundry but in the case of the RTX 2060 KO from EVGA, we're going to make an exception. Nvidia's entry-level, feature-complete Turing card sat at a $349 price-point for quite some time - a touch pricey perhaps when the significantly superior RTX 2060 Super turned up costing just $50 more. However, with this new EVGA KO model clocking in at $299, it's time to re-assess the product and specifically, just how capable the card is in handling games using hardware-accelerated ray tracing.

Primarily, it's the RTX aspect of the 2060 that sets it apart from its nearest AMD competitor, the RX 5600 XT. Its ability to tap into the DXR API and by extension access the full range of visual options available in supported games is obviously a nice feature to have - and with ray tracing confirmed for the next-gen consoles, the broader adoption of RT is a case of not if but when. On top of that, the inclusion of Turing's tensor cores allows for the 2060 to access hardware-accelerated machine learning features with the AI-powered DLSS upscaling pretty much the only application for this technology in the here and now. This is all in addition to standard graphics power that's generally in excess of the RX 5600 XT - to the point that AMD had to deliver an 11th hour BIOS upgrade to bring its latest Navi release back into contention.

The Division 2 is available for just £2.50/$2.99 right now on the Uplay Store.

The offer is running over the next few days in the UK and US to coincide with The Divison 2's free weekend that got underway today. Access to the entire game has been granted to all on PC - as well as PS4 and Xbox One - and all of your progress will be carried over if you decide to buy the game during the sale or at a later date. I don't expect it to get much cheaper than this, though.

You get the impression that Ubisoft is trying to give the game a bit of a shot in the arm what with the Warlords of New York expansion due for release on 3rd March. This paid DLC sees the action return to the Big Apple - the setting of the first game in the series - as you hunt down a rogue agent.

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The 90s are back - as if they ever really went away - with the delicious looking Hotshot Racing that's coming to PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch this spring.

It's from Lucky Mountain Games, who can count the likes of Burnout and Midnight Club on their CV, with help from Sumo Digital - who've pretty much bossed the arcade racing genre over the past decade - with Curve Digital on publishing duties.

There's a heavy helping of Sega AM2 boldness to it all with blue skies and high-energy music, with some 16 tracks and eight different drivers to choose from, though the most pleasing figure being bandied around is the 60fps action that's promised across all platforms. There'll also be splitscreen and online multiplayer, and I'm sure a bit more besides.

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I'm not going to lie, watching this trailer gave me a real sense of dread - like when you think you've woken from a dream, only to realise you're just dreaming about waking up. Oh no.

Developed by Graceful Decay, Maquette is a first-person puzzle game releasing sometime later this year on PC. It's the newest game to be published by Annapurna Interactive, which has garnered a name for itself as a publisher of lovely and unusual titles; such as our 2019 game of the year Outer Wilds, along with What Remains of Edith Finch, Sayonara Wild Hearts and Telling Lies.

This one's set in a world "where every building, plant, and object are simultaneously tiny and staggeringly huge". You can move items to play with scale and navigate the twisted environment, with small cracks becoming vast chasms as you move from the miniaturised centre into the grand outer edges. The Steam description compares it to the work of artist M.C. Escher, who was known for impossible constructions and mind-bending designs.

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Updated on Thursday with newly discovered deals! Article continues:

Ebay UK is running one of its irregular 20 per cent off promotions right now, making it the best time to get up to £75 off your next big tech purchase. To see the discounted price, just use code PAID20 at the checkout before the promotion expires on February 28th*. There are a wider range of retailers than normal participating this time around, and we've been able to find deals on 4K TVs, PC hardware, console accessories and much more.

The offer is good for one item at £15 or more when you pay with PayPal, a credit card or debit card. See the full terms and conditions here for more details.

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Blizzard has provided an update on the in-development Diablo 4, and confirmed a number of changes following the game's initial showing at BlizzCon last year.

Diablo 4 will offer controller support on PC, Blizzard confirmed, with the option to switch between the two seamlessly. (The game is, of course, the first Diablo to be developed simultaneously for consoles and PC.)

The much-requested option to re-bind the game's primary skill to "anything but the left-mouse button" to separate moving from attacking will also be possible. In fact, any skill can be reassigned and have their keys rebound - something that will also be possible on a controller.

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Happy Pokémon Day! Yep, I had no idea this was a thing, either. Nevertheless, it turns out that 27th February marks 24 years since the launch of Pokémon Red and Green in Japan so a handful of events and offers are running a to celebrate.

Starting off at the Nintendo Official UK Store, you can enter the voucher code 'TEAMBLUE' to receive a water partner Pokémon mug or 'TEAMRED' to get a fire partner Pokémon mug for free with any Pokémon games and Pokémon console bundle. This includes both pre-orders for Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX or the Pokémon Sword and Shield Expansion Pass.

You can find everything that's eligible for the offer on their Pokémon Day 2020 store page. No massive reductions here, then. Just a neat little freebie to go with your purchase if you were considering picking up either anyway.

After receiving a huge free content update back in November, there's more good news for Stardew Valley fans: yet another free content dump is trundling its way towards players.

The news comes directly from Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone, who took to Twitter to announce that more free content is "currently in the works" - although there's currently no details on what this will include, or when it will be released. You'll have to wait until later to mark it on your kalender.

The previous free content update, 1.4, added a vast amount of content to all platforms: including quality of life changes, new rewards, items - practically everything you could think of under the Stardew Valley sun. It bodes well for the next free update, which hopefully will continue to improve and develop the already-brilliant sim.

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When Blizzard suspended professional Hearthstone player, Blitzchung, for expressing his support for Hong Kong on a very public platform - the Hearthstone Grandmasters stream - one thing it probably didn't account for was the outpouring of support and the furore that followed. Long-time players threatened to boycott Blizzard games. Employees staged walkouts with umbrellas, a key symbol of resistance in the Hong Kong protest. United States senators, Ron Wyden and Marco Rubio, as well as representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mike Gallagher and Tom Malinowski, signed a letter to Blizzard, requesting the ban be fully reversed. And in Hong Kong, an anonymous group of game developers witnessed the far-reaching impact of his actions and was inspired to make a game about being at the frontline of the protests against the barrage of attacks by the riot police. The result was the protest game, Liberate Hong Kong.

"The initial idea [behind] this game is the incident of Blizzard. Blitzchung Ng just said eight words, [and] it created a large influence over the world," one member of the team, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal from the authorities, told Eurogamer. "We want to replicate this effect to promote the protest in Hong Kong."

And it worked. Liberate Hong Kong was covered extensively in international media, from the BBC to Bloomberg, which helped draw widespread condemnation for the Hong Kong police's brutality against protesters.

UPDATE 27/2/20: Platinum Games has now announced the third of its four planned reveals - and rather than a new game, this time around it's a new studio.

The Osaka-based Platinum is founding a Tokyo team to tackle a new live service game for consoles. It's a big change from Platinum's traditional single-player action game focus.

"Our new Tokyo office will play a major role as we expand into live ops game development," Platinum studio boss Atsushi Inaba explained in a blog post. "The starting core members of our future live ops team who'll be working there are already a part of Platinum Games.

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If you've even briefly stuck your head into the PUBG subreddit in recent weeks, you'll have noticed things have taken... something of a downturn for the PC version since season 6 began. Multiple new bugs have been spotted, players have reported a severe increase in performance issues (particularly FPS drops), and one of PUBG's prominent streamers announced he would be "taking a break" as a result of the continuing problems.

One of the biggest complaints was a perceived silence from PUBG Corp on the issues - but the company has finally responded, and an official dev letter has been published to address community concerns.

"We know the last few months have had some ongoing issues impacting gameplay and wanted to take a moment to address everything," reads the letter on PUBG's Steam page. "We know the below issues have been extremely frustrating to deal with and we're sorry they've persisted for so long."

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This week's Anthem update, timed for the game's one-year anniversary, has at last removed its wintry decorations and, days from March, ended its Icetide event.

Flowers are now sprouting on trees in Anthem's overworld, while its Fort Tarsis hub now sports various potted plants in vases.

There's more to Anthem's 1.7.0 update, of course. This new patch, available now, sets Anthem off on a "recurring schedule" of rotating challenges and game modes that will keep the game ticking over until BioWare's fabled Anthem 2.0 relaunch - due at some undisclosed point in the future.

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It's hard to imagine the naming of a video game going more badly wrong than it has here. Sticking two vaguely dynamic words together, the makers of Overpass have stumbled - accidentally, I hope - on a synonym for a motorway bridge. Apart from sounding dispiritingly utilitarian, nothing could be less appropriate for a realistic off-road driving game that is all about navigating tricky terrain.

The game itself, though, has something going for it. As Donlan recently pointed out, it has more in common with Spintires or Lonely Mountains: Downhill - or even the hiking gameplay of Death Stranding - than it does with, say, Dirt Rally or MX vs ATV. Yes, it is a motorsport game, based on a real motorsport, and yes it is played against the clock. But it is not about racing. It is about route-finding, problem-solving, reading the ground.

Assassin's Creed is no stranger to other forms of storytelling, but among the series' shelves of tie-in books, stacks of graphic novels and lonely Blu-ray of the Michael Fassbender film, there's not been anything quite like Assassin's Creed Gold. An eight-part audio drama created and released by Audible, Gold is an enjoyable mix of the video game series' usual historical shenanigans - that feeling you're mixing with key historical figures - via a dollop of Hollywood talent to help things along.

Gold's starry cast includes Star Wars: Rogue One's Riz Ahmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Anthony Head, who respectively steal the show as blind assassin Omar Khalid and apple-loving scientist Sir Issac Newton. Together, the two tackle a counterfeiting conspiracy which has left a trail of bodies in its wake. Meanwhile, in Gold's present day storyline, Khalid's descendent Aliyah Kahn (No Offence's Tamara Lawrence) - acts as its protagonist, aided by familiar Assassin faces such as series stalwart Shaun Hastings (the ever-present Danny Wallace).

Kazuhisa Hashimoto, the man behind the legendary Konami Code, has died, aged 61.

Hashimoto joined Konami, then a primarily coin-op focussed company, in 1983, soon entering its console division, where he would work on the likes of Track & Field, Goonies, and the Mystical Ninja series. It was here that Hashimoto implemented his famed Konami Code, while creating the 1986 NES port of classic side-scrolling shooter Gradius.

By his own admission, Hashimoto found the arcade original "really tough", and so created the code - up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start - in order to grant himself a full selection of power-ups and more easily test the home console version.

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Shovel Knight's main adventure might be over, but that doesn't mean he's ready to sproing out of the spotlight just yet; developer Yacht Club Games has now unveiled the spaded-one's latest spin-off: "puzzle adventure mash-up", Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon.

Pocket Dungeon, a collaboration between developer Vine and Yacht Club Games, offers a colourful blend of falling-block puzzling and dungeon-crawling - the gist being that Shovel Knight can move freely around each top-down, single-screen stage, and must clear groups of adjacent enemies with a quick spade-thwack in order to progress to the next area.

"Group foes together for massive chain attacks while grabbing keys, power-ups, and potions to refill your health!", explains Yacht Club, with wrinkles on that core premise arriving in the form of new items, equipment, and boss battles. Additionally, a total of 10 playable heroes from the Shovel Knight universe are promised, each with its own unique power and play style.

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As February readies to make the transition from present to past, Sony has revealed that its Shadow of the Colossus PlayStation 4 remake and Sonic Forces will be available to download as part of PlayStation Plus in March.

Shadow of the Colossus needs little introduction, of course; originally released for PS2 in 2005, it's the second game from Ico and The Last Guardian creator Fumito Ueda.

It's an absolute masterpiece, telling the haunting tale of a young man who travels to a mysterious land to save his dying love. In order to do so, players must explore the game's beautifully desolate, melancholy world in order to seek out and defeat 16 mythical beasts known as the colossi, with victory over each requiring both platforming prowess and cunning.

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Destiny 2 director Luke Smith has released a new blog post on the state of the game, and given an update on how Bungie's shooter will change as it heads towards its fourth year.

No one realistically expected a Destiny 3 this September, the month Destiny's big releases regularly appear. But in Smith's latest Director's Cut blog, there are several mentions of Destiny 2 Year 4 as a thing the developer is already well into the planning stages for.

Destiny 2's future seasons will have less "FOMO" to them, Smith said, as Bungie rejigs its development time and resources away from activities which disappear when a season ends, and towards enhancements which evolve the core game.

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EA has permanently banned a prominent FIFA YouTuber and streamer from its games over toxic behaviour.

Outspoken ex-FIFA pro Kurt "Kurt0411" Fenech, from Malta, was banned for posting abusive and threatening messages and videos about EA employees and competitive players on social media, EA said.

"His messages have crossed a line of decency into very personal attacks and breach Terms of Service," EA said in a statement.

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Following the release of its short-term content roadmap yesterday, developer Crema has shared its mid-term plans for Pokémon-like MMO Temtem, which, among other new features, confirms a console launch next spring, with Battle Pass monetisation to follow.

Temtem's second content roadmap covers Crema's winter 2020 ambitions, then looks ahead to spring and summer of next year, with the same caveat as yesterday that all dates and features are subject to change.

As this winter rolls around, Temtem will receive yet another new island, Arbury, alongside 30 new creatures and a second Mythical Temtem. Crema also aims to deliver the second iteration of its ranked match and spectator modes, alongside Trading Houses and Dojo Wars.

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Well this is certainly unexpected: the latest third-party game to be represented in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is Warframe, as two characters from the space ninja game are joining Smash as spirits.

As part of Nintendo's Spirits in Black five-day event starting this Friday (not the Slayer song), players will be able to unlock both Lotus and her recently-transformed version Natah. To claim her, you'll need to beat Bayonetta in the Spirit Board. She's a two-star advanced, neutral, primary unit with three open slots, and as an enhanceable spirit will transform at level 99 (thanks, Siliconera). Here's a little preview of what she'll look like:

In keeping with the event's theme, players will also be able to catch up on a variety of other shady spirits they may have missed: including Darkrai, Bullet Bill, Infinite, Judge, Zekrom, Oil Panic, Raphael the Raven, Fire and Turtle Bridge.

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The previously-teased Plants vs. Zombies 3 has finally poked its head above ground to soft launch for iPhone and Android in Ireland, Romania and the Philippines.

We first got wind of PVZ3 back in July last year, when a pre-alpha build popped up for certain US Android users.

Now, EA has made the whole thing a lot more official - and released a Q&A blog post on what to expect when it does roll out worldwide.

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Where do you go after Guitar Hero and Rock Band? That's a question the music genre has been trying to answer for about 10 years, with varying degrees of success. Some games have looked to VR to replace the physicality of performing on peripherals, yet the platform still remains out of reach for many thanks to cost and space requirements. Others have taken risks with unique spins on rhythm-action - often brilliant in their own right, but none have captured the mass market like the guitar games of the 2000s.

Does the answer lie in user-created content? That's what Harmonix is betting on with its latest title, Fuser, a music-mixing game officially unveiled today. Part performance game, part creative tool, it's a far cry from the days of rocking out with a peripheral in your living room - instead favouring a Coachella-influencer vibe as players mix current tracks together to satisfy crowd demands.

"A lot of our traditional games - whether it's Rock Band or Dance Central, even some of the stuff we've done in VR like Audica - are very different in that those games are either a recreation of, or performance to, an existing song," Harmonix exec Dan Walsh told me during a preview session. "Fuser is a music-mixing game where you are creating things as opposed to recreating things."

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Need something to sate your demon-slaying desires before the launch of Doom Eternal next month? Why not go back to where it all started with some classic Doom games for just £1.20 on Switch?

It's the sort of money you'd probably find if you stuck your hand down the back of the sofa. Go on, take a look right now and see what you find - the deals can wait.

Find anything? If it's money you didn't think you had in the first place, why not spend it on a little treat for yourself to get the rip and tear juices flowing?

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Before I got properly into it, I was going to say that Fortnite's new superspy update is the closest we'll likely get to a Shadow Complex sequel. You know: you infiltrate an HQ or two, taking out enemy agents. There are vents and ductwork and complex door locks. It sort of fits.

But then I got properly into it. Oh man. The thing that oriented me, I think, the thing that got me playing in the right direction, is the voices. The latest addition to Fortnite plonks a bunch of spy HQs down at various points on the map. They're all beautiful bits of design, and they all have a vault packed with treasures that you can get into if you kill a boss and pinch their key card and manage to get it to the vault door without being taken out. There are disguises and mounted turrets and door scanners that you can bypass in various clever ways. It's all very tense and vivid.

But the enemy agent voices! Oh man. Baddies all have the classic espionage punctuation over their heads to tell you whether you've been spotted or not, but they also talk to each other. And the way they talk: it's just magical. It's every movie heavy in cinema reduced to grunts and muttering and the kind of noises you might make when you're moving a sofa. It's really charming and funny, and that's before I realised that one of them sounds like someone doing a Stallone impression, while another has a hint of Arnie to it.

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