The first major patch adds more convenience: private lobbies. In their update post, Petroglyph say that hosts will be able to set a passcode for private lobbies. Inviting friends directly to the game will bypass the need to enter it though. Hosts have other moderator-like abilities such as muting another player in the session. Petroglyph say they’ve also adjusted the difficulty balance in Hard Mode for Tiberian Dawn. “We’ve effectively split the difference between Normal Mode and the launch version Hard mode,” they say....

As a Call Of Duty multiplayer experience, Vanguard delivers. But what it delivers is a stop-gap. An FPS experience that isn’t concerned with pushing the series forwards, or taking risks. Fans will have fun, sure, but its deathmatches and dominations are stuck in the past. Not to mention Zombies, which is too eager to turn back the clock. Do something for me real quick would you? Pretend you’re a judge on the Great British Bake Off for a second....

Streamer Jack “CouRage” Dunlop tweeted Raven Software a list of changes he wanted to see in Warzone. Raven replied on Friday with a list of tweaks “coming soon”. One of which is an “adjustment to Roze”, and I’m thrilled about it. In Season 5 of Warzone last year, those who maxed out the premium battle pass would unlock the “Rook” skin for Roze. She’s clad in stealthy black gear, has a black mask on, black face paint, and sports a slender frame....

As with the original, Chivalry 2 puts you on battlefields full of other tin can-clad warriors all hacking at one another’s limbs. Torn Banner Studios say that the sequel will have you taking on battlefields with 64 other players. “Catapults tear the earth apart as you lay siege to castles, set fire to villages and slaughter filthy peasants in the return of Team Objective maps,” they say. It is grand to see more games announcing cross-play across every platform this year....

Here’s the launch trailer: Surviving The Abyss is published by Paradox’s new publishing label, Paradox Arc, but forms a trio of survival citybuilders alongside Surviving Mars (set on Mars) and Surviving The Aftermath (set in a post-apocalyptic future). Each of these three games is from a different developer, but they’re all about building a home in a dangerous place. You might not know it to look at it, but Abyss is set in 1976, and you’re tasked with constructing a deep sea research facility in the midst of the Cold War....

Today: sci-fi puzzle adventure Claire De Lune. Developer: Tactic Studios Inc Publisher: Tactic Studios Inc Release: Out now From: Steam, Epic Games Store (early access) Price: £31/€29/$40 You have a zappy non-violent gun necessary for navigating a series of platforming challenges. That’s… actually where the similarities end. Instead of the increasingly sinister laboratory and wry humour, Claire De Lune crashes you into an alien planet and asks you to reunite with your daughter while periodically getting a flash of sad backstory....

(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here). Well and truly cornered, the Sd.Kfz. 251 in SILVER dithers as Nemchik’s tank skirts the rubble heap searching for LoS. The indecision proves fatal. Predator locates prey and begins savaging it with MG fire....

It’s a game show in the vein of Total Wipeout, or possibly an extremely squidgy version of Takeshi’s castle. Players are whittled down from 60 as they get eliminated via various mini-games, then whoever’s left has to race up a hill, dodging obstacles in the hope of being the first to grab a crown. So far I’ve played two matches and wound up cackling in near constant delight - but for now I just want to show you some of the best Falls from the internet....

I’ve sometimes thought of Games Done Quick events as built on platformers and sure this had plenty of good’uns (including Celeste, Shovel Knight: King Of Cards, Sonic Mania, and Super Meat Boy) but they really do play all sorts. Other games which caught my eye on the schedule include Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, Max Payne 2, Alien: Isolation, Doom Eternal, Resident Evil 7, Baldur’s Gate, Mirror’s Edge, Halo: Combat Evolved, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD....

These new maps will be available in the Casual, Deathmatch and Scrimmage game modes, and you can take a peek at a gallery of areas you’ll be fighting in on the Counter-Strike blog. If you don’t fancy going over there, though, here’s a few I’ve picked out for you: Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like you can actually fight on those ships, they’re sorta sitting just outside the map. Actually, it looks like you might be fighting in a church....

Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time is a direct sequel to Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, which Naughty Dog originally released on PS1 back in 1998. Those old Crash games did have sequels on the PS2, but Crash 4 pretty much ignores those, and does its own thing with the series. Crash and his sister Coco are still fighting baddies and running away from giant boulders, just with new looks, in a new story and with new abilities to boot....

It’s one to use carefully when talking about a sequel. I’m prone to criticising games, particularly long-running series, for iterating gradually rather than taking bigger chances. I’ve bemoaned Tropico’s rehashes. I’ve whinged about everyone copy-pasting XCOM to a fault. I’ve sent guys to show GTA a picture of Saints Row before throwing it through a window. But here’s Creeper World 4, quietly releasing at the end of 2020 in an already busy month....

Today’s pin to the brow is that you can now buy NFTs based on Dead By Daylight’s in-game models of Hellraiser’s Pinhead. I can tell the difference between pleasure and pain, and this is pain. The Dead By Daylight Twitter account announced the news yesterday: You know something has gone over well with a community when an announcement tweets gets 486 retweets but 7207 quote tweets. To quote one example tweet, former Dead By Daylight gameplay programmer wrote that he is “strongly opposed to the spread of NFTs and extremely disappointed to see the game that I love associated with them....

His main inspiration was the “quiet moments” that he found throughout games, even in the first person shooters that he was studying. “A lot of the call to action feedback loop falls away and you’re just kind of left. There’s those moments of real stillness where it’s just you and the world, and they’re really, really, really powerful.” He wanted to know whether a game could be made entirely from these atmospheric moments....

In a recent blog post, assistant art director and lead character artist Jean-Baptiste Ferder shared a little bit of background on how Colt and Juliana were designed, along with some concept art showing various outfits for the stylish duo. It’s mostly just 60s fashion, right? But I’m not gonna do the whole, “Oh woe is me, I was born in the wrong decade” thing, because the 60s sucked for many reasons (and I quite like walking around with a tiny computer in my pocket)....

Unlike Diablo 2: Resurrected, Deathloop will launch with full support for ultrawide 21:9 monitors as well. Be warned, though, if you intend to play on resolutions higher than 1080p – while not unreasonable, Bethesda’s listed requirements are on the steeper side. Even the minimum specs for Arkane’s remarkably fashionable time looper-shooter ask for an Intel Core i5-8400 and 12GB – 12GB! – of system RAM. Behold the full list, which is separated into three quality tiers:...

But right now the most important news is that a player has created a custom banner editor. You can now fly your own designs on flags, shields, and even over your own castles. A Reddit user known as (sigh) “bizzfarts” shared the tool over the weekend, modestly calling it “kind of wonky”, instead of rightfully claiming the internet as their fief. The tool is available at their website, and while it is a tad cumbersome, with patience and a little trickery it’s possible to create a far greater variety of flags and medieval logos than the game normally allows....

White Shirt, Green Shirt, Big Hat, and Poncho - four gun-toting goons occupy a small, gloomy glade on the edge of malodorous Mississippi bayou. White Shirt notices some fresh tracks on a muddy path, goes to investigate, and does not return. A few seconds later Big Hat and Poncho slap their necks in response to mosquito attacks that aren’t in fact mosquito attacks. The ‘bites’ appear innocuous (the two men continue to scan the undergrowth) but have macabre repercussions....

So, Season 13’s story is that Caiatl stops by Earth seeking an alliance, but not an alliance of equals. We’re not dead chuffed about that prospect, so I guess we’ll all be lining up and shouting “Yeah? Come on! Come on, then!” Caiatl is already a right wrong’un in my books, having joined the coup against dear old decadent dad. Though I suppose she deserves indirect thanks because Calus’s exile on the Leviathan did lead to him encountering the Darkness and becoming enthusiastic about the end of existence, turning him into the planet-drinking monstrosity we know and adore....

‘Armour 2.0’ hit Destiny with the launch of Shadowkeep in October. Unlike than the old system, where armour dropped with a random small choice of perks, Armour 2.0 lets Guardians pick and choose unlocked mods from a big long list. It also lets us change the look of armour pieces with ornaments (a step below transmogrification). But it tied mods to different elemental affinities, so for example spacetrousers which dropped with Void affinity can only equip Void-affiliated mods - meaning no Shotgun Scavenger, no Submachinegun Dexerity, and so on....