Decision In The Desert first arrived in 1985, and places you in the shoes of a commander leading troops in North Africa during World War 2. Crusade In Europe was released the same year, but focuses on the more famous WW2 scenarios, like D-Day. Finally, Conflict In Vietnam originally came out in 1986, and follows five major battles in the Vietnam War. Sid Meier designed the Command series with historian Ed Bever, and the games were developed by MicroProse....

Yes, I know skateboards don’t have training wheels. Shhh. Naturally, Skater XL couldn’t leave early access empty-handed. Easy Day Studios have inaugurated the game’s 1.0 release with a honking great ramp in the middle of the desert - perfect for screaming at your broken shins without the cool kids overhearing. We actually haven’t talked about Skater XL on the site, even back when list-goblin and professional OlliOlli esports star Brendy was flipping his trucks all over the office....

“We want to offer employees a great balance between work and life, while also offering the best opportunities to create great games with amazing people, sharing their creative work with tens of millions of players across the globe,” says studio CEO Stewart Chisam. “Our games are global, and we should be as well.” “This is a talent-based business, and we want to meet the best talent where they are as we build a culture of freedom and responsibility for our creative staff so we can achieve victory, together,” Chisam also said....

At 9:25pm on Thursday, the NYT’s Wordplay account tweeted that they were aware some players had their streak reset. The latest update came five hours later: Fingers crossed for your all-important streak, reader dear. While the NYT say that they haven’t changed the way you play Wordle, they might have changed something. Reddit poster “randybruder” says they compared the word lists (Wordle solutions are picked from a list you can see with a little technorummaging) and found the NYT’s version of Wordle is missing six words that were in the original....

Enter Speedy Eggbert, a budget-priced platform game that scored “the world’s first generous 4% review” in PC Gamer magazine. But I wasn’t aware of that yet. I was, though, aware of its big, shiny box on the shelves of Game, with its gorgeously embossed Eggbert and a reverse emblazoned with screenshots and features, including the most enticing few words I’d ever seen – “MAKE YOUR OWN LEVELS!” Now, this was a boast to be regarded with suspicion – just because the tools were present didn’t mean I’d have the wherewithal to use them – but this was a two-dimensional platform game, my stock-in-trade; I’d been designing them for long enough on paper, how hard could it be?...

As you may have already seen from my extensive hands on preview with Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Scarlet Witch is at the centre of this new story from Marvel and XCOM makers Firaxis. Her journey from hero to villain (and maybe hero again?) is one of the core plot points you’ll be exploring as you manoeuvre your team of supes through this turn-based tactics game. “Wanda’s story is the story of Midnight Suns,” creative director Jake Solomon told me when I went to play the game last week, although the Midnight Suns themselves (headed up here by Blade, Ghost Rider, Wolverine, Nico Minoru and Magik) will obviously still play an important role, too....

Fortunately Deck Nine successfully managed the tightrope walk of honouring the series’ existing DNA, while still taking the Life Is Strange world in new directions. To find out more about how it was done, I sat down with Philip Lawrence and Sarah Van Rompeay, respectively the Senior Narrative Designer and Senior Producer at Square Enix External Studios. One of the most important parts of Life Is Strange’s DNA is, of course, the supernatural abilities of its protagonists....

So it looks like at least some element of managing your weapons/shields power balance like in ye olde X-Wing and Tie Fighter games? With both Empire and Rebellion playable, Squadrons will have a singleplayer story set after the events of Return Of The Jedi. 5v5 multiplayer is coming with several modes too, supporting cross-platform play between PC and consoles. Also it’ll support VR, if you wanna get gogged off your face with Picard and the boys....

Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais explained how Steam Deck performance testing has been going so far during an IGN interview last week. Griffais followed that up over on Twitter over the weekend to explain that 30Hz isn’t the expectation for the Steam Deck, but the minimum. “The ‘30 FPS target’ refers to the floor of what we consider playable in our performance testing,” Griffais says. “Games we’ve tested and shown have consistently met and exceeded that bar so far....

“It’s pretty hard to grasp a number that big,” says the post. “But just for fun: 33 exabytes is about how much data you’d use if the 330 million people in the United States all downloaded a 100GB game.” That particular stat was offered up when talking about work Valve have done on their server infrastructure to make it more efficient. “For instance, upgrades to our servers in Los Angeles cut power usage there by 50%, even while delivering more and faster downloads to customers,” Valve say....

Valve wrote a ton of words on the subject today as they’re wont to do but really it all boils down to this: users and developers both get to assign tags to games but nobody can ever agree on an exhaustively correct list when there are so many redundant tags in Steam’s system. Lots of games are tagged as “RTS” but not all of those are also tagged with “Real-time” and “Strategy....

Steelrising is one of these Soulslike seeds hoping to sink into our screens, sprout, and take root not only in the innards of our Panasonics, but our minds too. From what I’ve seen, it stands a chance of survival in a saturated land. Steelrising is in development by Spiders, the same folks who brought us GreedFall (an RPG that Astrid (RPS in peace) thought was mediocre at best in her review)....

It doesn’t really matter what genres you’re into because there’s almost too much stuff to take a look at, even if you spent the whole week of Steam Next Fest downloading and playing demos. So far, I’ve plundered self-styled ‘decksploration’ card game Foretales, which has narration by Critical Role’s Travis Willingham, and a complicated-looking strategy called Terra Invicta from the devs behind XCOM’s The Long War mod. Red Candle Games’ Sekiro-like platformer Nine Sols is piquing my interest as well....

Super Auto Pets reminds me far more of Darkest Dungeon or Monster Train than auto-battlers like Dota Auto Chess or Teamfight Tactics. You buy and upgrade units from a random draft in the shop between rounds, like the big names, but arranging them so their abilities and stats best attack, defend, buff, and counter really scratches that line-based battling itch for me. Endless hours of fun building combos, optimising placement, and attempting to counter the strategies you might face from random opponents....

Out on November 11th, Tactics Ogre: Reborn will be the second tactics RPG coming to PC from Square Enix in as many months, following hot on the heels of the PC port of former Switch exclusive, Triangle Strategy. Given the close proximity of their respective releases, Tactics Ogre has definitely drawn the short straw when it comes to presentation here, as its blown-up pixel art simply can’t compete with Triangle Strategy’s crisp, HD-2D visuals and modern lighting effects....

Bloomberg (watch out for the paywall) report that the game, codenamed Volt, had been through several iterations since its inception in 2017. The most recent version had struggled due to “reboots, technical hiccups and challenges caused by Covid-19”. It would’ve been an entirely new game for Hangar 13, who previously worked the Mafia series, and would’ve reportedly featured superheroes competing online. Kotaku report that it was intended to be an arcadey, three-player, third-person action game “in the vein of Destiny....

This Rhoulder Temtem guide will show you the exact location for hunting down this incredibly rare Temtem. There will also be some descriptions about this creature’s base stats, and all of the neutral and earth type moves it has access to. Be sure to check out the rest of the Temtem list to see what else is available. Rhoulder location Rhoulder techniques Should Rhoulder be in my party? Rhoulder location This Temtem isn’t found until quite late in the Early Access build of the game....

But enough about school itself, a time in my life that I hated to an extraordinary extent and shudder to think of even now. We move to happier things, i.e. games, and in particular the assumption I’m making that now your kids are out of the house for most of the day, you’ll have more time to play games. Here are three new indie games that came out in the last month or so, that I feel are apposite for a back-to-school theme....

In fact, I’ve managed to pick three games that are so disparate in style and tone that I don’t think I could link them by a theme even if I really, really tried. I can start with a more topical one, though. Yes, it’s about vaccines. But like, in a fun way. I promise. Metavaxx Who’s it by? PUNKCAKE Délicieux! Where can I get it? Itch How much is it?...

This time though, you’ll need to use code FANCY15 to knock 15% off the price of the BoostStation, bringing it down to that alluring £93 price point once again. Get the Lenovo Legion BoostStation for £93 w/ code FANCY15 As we mentioned last time, the Lenovo Legion BoostStation can handle GPUs up to 300W (think an Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti or AMD RX 6800 XT). As well as working as GPU enclosure, the BoostStation also works as a nifty Thunderbolt dock, allowing you to connect three USB peripherals (think, mouse, keyboard, headset) as well as network cables....