Last night, Warner Bros shocked the industry when it was announced the closure of three studios, including Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor's Monolith Productions. Founded in the 1990s and part of Warner Bros since 2004, the studio was best known for Shadow of Mordor and its follow-up Shadow of War, which both used the studio's patented Nemesis system.
I knew going in to Promise Mascot Agency's Steam Next Fest demo that there was a high probability it would be absolutely my bag. Made by the same developers behind the excellent Paradise Killer, this is a game about a disgraced yakuza (voiced by none other than the same actor behind Yakuza/Like A Dragon's very own Kazuma Kiryu) who gets banished to a run-down, forgotten town out in the countryside during Japan's Showa Era, and is tasked with reviving the local mascot agency business to help win fans, promote local landmarks and lift a terrible curse that's been placed on this soft but stern former gangster. Check, check, check and check.
This is an unusual one: a survival game set in a flooded world that's maybe Earth, where you're a robot known as a Caretaker whose purpose is to grow humans in pods, imbibe them with memories and launch them into space (where they will presumably live). But there's an air of mystery over the whole thing. You appear to be, as the game's title tells us, the last Caretaker, and you've been reactivated at a point in time where you're not sure what, if anything, still exists. The sea-based facility you 'wake up' on is in disrepair and as you set about re-powering and repairing it, and boating around on the sea nearby, a bigger question forms: what is going on?
High-end AMD processors take top billing in our rankings of the best gaming CPUs, but most people should get the cheapest somewhat modern CPU that can fit into their system. .png?width=1920&height=1920&fit=bounds&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
Nine years after its release, Dark Souls 3 is finally a seamless co-op experience.
Monster Hunter Wilds is a good looking game, but its console iterations aren't perfect. The base PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X pack a lot of visual modes, but suffer from substantial image quality and performance woes while lacking the PC version's higher-end settings. Sony's PS5 Pro, though, should carry an antidote for these afflictions - with PSSR and ray tracing in the mix. Does Sony's enhanced machine comprehensively address Wilds' console failings then, or is there a deeper root cause? 
One of the great magic tricks of the Two Point management games concerns how the series tackles subjects that a lot of people struggle to agree on. You know, like healthcare and education. And yet, with a few chirpy cartoon characters wandering around, a bit of silliness in the detailing, a handful of goofy names in the resume stack and some light satire playing over the tannoy, the whole thing rushes past in a cheery blur. This time out we're looking at museums. Does Two Point have anything to say about this stuff? No and - sort of - yes, actually. It's interesting.
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