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Intel have identified the fault behind reported stability issues with their 13th and 14th Gen Core CPUs, many of which have been failing after feeding themselves excessive voltages. The blame, Intel told PCG, lies with the same kind of pernicious force that fills your Twitter feed with pillocks, has turned Google into an AI-sodden shell of its former self, and keeps making Spotify suggest I listen to ninety different electroswing arrangements of Everybody Wants to Be a Cat. That's right: an algorithm.

Likely as a conspiracy to make me use the word boner in two different articles on the same day, campy horror shooter Shadows Of The Damned: Hella Remastered has received a release date - this Halloween, 31st October 2024. This spiffier version of the 2011 console game was announced earlier this year. Aside from a few costumes and NG+, it's basically the original package you know and - if you’re one of the fifteen people that bought the original - love.

"Do you fancy playing as a couple of skellies named 'The Boner Brothers' riding a bike and sidecar while chunky bastard-metal blasts out, also they’ve got a gun, also they can do tricks?" asked Motördoom, to which I became so instantly hyperactive I somehow worked out how to headbutt my own face. Of course I want to put a chainsaw on the front of my bike, Motördoom. Obviously I want a rougelike-able upgrade that perchance may set my demonic enemies on fire. Yes, I’d like to combine a sick manual with an action game killstreak for a very large combo, Motördoom. Is this what overly concerned parents thought PS1 games were actually like? If I got a disc with this demo on as a kid, I’d be significantly radder than I am today. Gnarly, even. Made of gnarls.

In the heyday of Sierra's adventure game years, there was a series called Space Quest that featured an intergalactic janitor named Roger Wilco. The series was more satirical than King's Quest, less preachy than Police Quest, and not quite as adult as Leisure Suit Larry. Spearheaded by Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe - a pair of devs who called themselves "Two Guys from Andromeda" - Space Quest was renowned for its humour, and there was a nice sense of progression throughout most of the series, with Roger Wilco leveling up from working class spaceman to the head of his own Star Trek ship.

Between Against The Storms’ critters, Manor Lords’s perfect oxen, and now Cataclismo, Hooded Horse’s roster of strategy games share a common thread that many guard-the-village-em-ups can fatally overlook: they present a civilisation that’s worth protecting. Even if the fallen culture you’ll defend against waves of gribblies offers fascinatingly few concrete details on its origins, there’s a lithe and impressionistic otherworldliness and use of colour in Cataclismo’s art that evokes unearthed layers of history. Also, everyone is just so gosh darn likeable, with their foppish hats plopped atop stretched bodies, and dialogue that remains resolute, chirpy, and eager, even when you’re click-marching these poor folk straight to their deaths.

Still, none of this will stop me will sacrificing every last man, woman, and child of these beleaguered warriors if it means preserving a single one of my immaculately crafted staircases.

I've not played Counter- Strike 2 in yonks, but I know a big update when I see one. That's right: Valve have added some new crates just outside of counter-terrorist spawn, near bombsite A. This means that players can now use these boxes to hop from CT up to catwalk with little fuss, where previously you'd need to use your teammates' heads as a springboard. What does this mean as a layperson who sort of plays the game sometimes? More than you might think!

A glance at comedy medieval medic sim Stretcher Men might have you believe it is a co-op game about co-ordination and teamwork. Not so! It's a singleplayer game in which you control not one but both carriers of a stretcher. You have to ferry a sick man over the hilly countryside, past muddy lake banks and over snowy mountains, all without dropping him on the ground. I can only imagine it controls a bit like Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, but with added ragdoll jollity. We'll know next week, when it releases on Steam.

One of the most memorable moments of Metro Exodus comes from a standoff with a giant catfish, who you have to avoid for a while (along with the cultists who worship it) before going "fishing" using an entire human corpse as bait. I didn't expect to see any rival catfish appearing in games after that, but now that I think about it - why not? They're a naturally freaky animal, perfect video game antagonists. And the developers of upcoming Japanese folklore 'em up Otoshi No Shima seem to understand this, having created a monstrous creature with a gaping mouth that follows the player at every turn. Come see.

Readers, something actually magical has happened! I’ve spent a non-zero amount of time this week compiling a wishlist for potential Stardew Valley-likes that also let me keep pets. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to play, but I knew I was burnt out on both stabbing and shooting, and wanted something light and colourful with a solid loop that I could veg out (pun intended) with at the end of the day. I even went to so far as to create a chap named Karrot King in Stardew before quitting in disgust because I couldn’t easily access carrot seeds.

I cannot in good conscious claim that I manifested such a videogame - that was the work of Skyreach Studio. However, this is the internet, so I will both take credit for it and offer you an exclusive discount on my course. While I’m waiting for your membership fee to arrive, I’ll be playing Critter Crops. It’s a witchy farming sim in which you grow odd pets and cast spells from flesh-bound grimoires. One of the verbs it offers on its Steam page is 'noodle'. Apologies to all the other games on my wishlist.

Baldur's Gate 3’s latest patch was due to launch in closed beta yesterday, but Larian have decided to give it a bit more time in the oven due to bugs. Namely, a bug that caused passive rolls - like those that detect traps - to stop working.

Happily, if you hadn’t already registered to take part in the beta, you now have more time to sign up. Scroll down a bit on the RPG’s Steam page and click the ‘Request Access’ button.

Tiny Garden is a puzzle game about planting flowers and crops you can then sell to buy seeds for new types of flowers and crops. That would be charming enough on its own, but your agricultural endeavours are set inside a Polly Pocket-style toy, with crops also able to be exchanged for furniture with which to decorate your diorama home. After blowing past its Kickstarter target, there's now a playable demo.

Fighting game tournament EVO 2024 took place this weekend, an annual event marked by fierce competition between the best players in the world and several update announcements for just about every fighting game going. The most exciting this year, to me: Lucy from Cyberpunk 2077 anime Edgerunners is joining the roster of Guilty Gear Strive.

MultiVersus development studio Player First Games has been acquired by the game's publisher, Warner Bros. The studio's co-founders will continue to lead the studio. The platform figher's second season is due to go live tomorrow, adding a ranked mode and new characters Samurai Jack and Beetlejuice.

Arranger is a puzzle game about moving, in both metaphorical and literal senses. Movement is the entire basis for the puzzles in Arranger, and is hard to explain without showing you (if you're able to watch the trailer that will be helpful). The world of Arranger is divided into a grid, and you don't move the main character, feisty misfit kid Jemma, across the squares. Rather, imagine that the row or column Jemma is on becomes a travelator, and you control the direction and speed of it. Jemma stands still and you move the ground, and anything on it left, right, up or down - like How To Say Goodbye but with more squares. It's one of those things that makes sense when you're doing it, trust me.

Heihachi Mishima, the mustachioed malevolence of the Tekken series, is going to be the next DLC character for Tekken 8. He was last seen with his loving son Kazuya, who threw him into a volcano. Of course, to be fully submerged in impossibly hot liquid rock is merely a long-running family prank for the cast of this 3D fighting game, sort of like forcing your granddad to do the ice bucket challenge, but with lava. Nobody truly expected the horn-haired headbutter to be fully removed from the series. But I am a little surprised to see him back so soon.

Fish! Tea! Time! Space! An ‘immersive horror sim’! Stopping the sun from not burning anymore but also not getting burnt in the process! Locally Sourced Anthology I: A Space Atlas does not, somewhat disappointingly, offer the infinite possible game concepts that space allows for. It’s got eight though, which I must say is a good start. Eight experimental indies from different developers, each equally taking part in space as the last.

Late last week, 241 staffers from Fallout, Starfield, and The Elder Scrolls developers Bethesda Game Studios announced a "wall-to-wall" union under the Communication Workers of America (CWA). Alongside Bethesda Montreal’s unionisation last month, and the union of Zenimax QA workers last year, this marks a historic moment in the US game industry labour movement.

Steve Sinclair, CEO of Warframe studio Digital Extremes, reckons publishers should give live service games more time to find their footing, and not see dodgy release periods as a "make or break" indicator of a game’s success. "It comes out, doesn’t work and they throw it away," Sinclair told VGC.

The below list of new PC games was communicated to me using smoke signals by two brave Advance News Scouts, shortly before the Maw's event horizon expanded by 100 metres. I have not heard from them since. I fear their souls are even now pigmenting the tides of Destiny 2 gifs that fill the Maw's lower intestines. Sergeant Shagbert, Corporal Pieface, I will avenge you in the only way I know how: by posting some words on a website.

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Something extra magical has happened! And by magical, I mean that I’ve bollocksed it up, yet again! I foresaw this coming, honestly, and should have addressed it last week. Alas, I dared to dream that I’d have sorted things out by now. Well, this is what I get for mild optimism!

Sundays are for getting dangerously into No Man’s Sky again. Before I go floating in a tin can, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

Microsoft have responded to the US Federal Trade Commission's assertion that the tech giant are now offering a "degraded" Game Pass experience, posing "exactly the sort of consumer harm" the FTC warned was possible in advance of the Activision Blizzard acquisition.

Nuh-uh, say Microsoft, who call the FTC's letter "a misleading, extra-record account of the facts".

I like my car combat to be focused on collisions not guns, and for the vehicular argy-bargy to be an additional layer of excitement and strategy upon a racing core. FlatOut, then. A series of bumper car racing which managed to impress with its crumple zones long before the era of Wreckfest or BeamNG.

Now FlatOut, FlatOut 2 and FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage have all received an update on Steam to add Workshop support, Steam Deck verified status, improved performance, and in the case of FlatOut 2, re-enabled online multiplayer.

Station wagon survival 'em up Pacific Drive has received a summer update which adds a photomode, new upgrades for garage machinery, a new sideways dodge manouver for the car, and a piece of paid cosmetic DLC. This is the first of a new roadmap of post-release updates still to come.

The skies roil. The forests burn. The oceans drink themselves, then throw themselves back up, then drink themselves again. That’s gross, oceans. Don’t do that. Wait. Wait. Sorry. I misread the memo. It’s not the end times, it is simply the end of the week. That’s much nicer. Weekends bring with them solid videogame hours, and perhaps even video game hours? We shall have to see. Here’s what we’re clicking on.

Ho, wayfarer! Beware slight spoilers for Alan Wake 2 in the passages ahead.

Deep in the Dark Place of Alan Wake 2 there is a forest that is not a forest - a zig-zag tunnel adorned with murals of a grisly woodland scene. Entering that tunnel, you find yourself sealed in at either end. But the mural suggests a way out: it changes when you turn around, following an unspoken narrative. It's a device as delicate as the graffiti elsewhere in the Dark Place is obnoxious. In hindsight, it feels like an example of "metsänpeitto", a concept from Finnish folklore about forests which, as writer Sinikka Annala explains, saturates the design of Alan Wake 2. It's a fascinating idea I'd love certain much larger, less intriguing video game worlds to learn from.

Our former editor Katharine "Thorsbane" Castle has long since quit these turgid shores for the sunny uplands of Eurogamer, where the consoles multiply like rabbits, but her legacy endures. For instance, it's thanks to her that I know and am excited about Roots of Yggdrasil, a roguelike deck-and-city-builder which casts you as a posse of vikings in a flying longship, touching down on floating islands to found a quick settlement and harvest some magic before the apocalypse - here known as the Ginnungagap, a swirling purple void - catches up with them.

Katharine called it "a real grower" before the early access release in January, likening it to both Dorfromantik and The Banished Vault - a chalk and cheese comparison if ever I heard one. Well rejoice, perverted chalk-and-cheese mixers, because Roots of Yggdrasil now has a 1.0 release date - 6th September 2024.

Right from the ungainly 3D face taunting me on startup like the Guardian, I had a feeling I was going to enjoy Dungeons of Blood and Dream despite myself. It is a baffling, bizarre thing that lives on the border of janky, retro, and punk (insofar as games can be punk, but that's another article).

You're trapped in a Mind Prison, your "hateful magics" neutered, your memory and understanding gone. Now what?

What’s that? You’re deeply interested in learning the esoteric factors that play into my weekly choice of supporter post topics? Glad you asked, Simon T. Rawman. While I cannot compare my inspirations to the no-doubt spontaneous communion with the cosmos that inspired Debussy to tinkle out Suite bergamasque’s esteemed third movement, I did experience a moment of joyous serendipity yesterday. By which I mean that Edwin wrote a silly strapline riff on a piece of music I was already thinking about because it features in Conscript, which I just got done playing for review.

Edwin’s been appreciating the acrobatic twist that Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn puts on the Soulslite formula, but not everybody’s magical zip-zooping has been going as smoothly. Following the Steam and PC Game Pass releases yesterday, there are widespread reports of heavy stuttering spoiling the fun; I’ve given both versions a test, and indeed, Flintlock does have a serious case of the framerate stammers. Especially the Game Pass build, which is significantly worse for it.