[Midnight Suns: Everything we know about the tactical Marvel RPG]

Marvel's Midnight Suns will be dawning before long, with a couple months left before the XCOM devs at Firaxis take us on a Marvel hero demon hunt. While the inexhaustible juggernaut of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is stuck in the throes of cosmic conflicts and maddening multiverses, Midnight Suns is Marvel exploring its occult era. We've got accursed tomes. We've got a haunted abbey. We've got Wolverine with magic runes etched in his tights. And because Blade is there, we'll have at least one vampire.

Drawing from team-up comics stories dating back to the '90s, Marvel's Midnight Suns is the kind of turn-based tactical RPG you'd expect from the XCOM devs. But here, you'll find hands of cards in place of aliens and hit-chance percentages. Since the game's unveiling at GamesCom 2021, we've been gathering everything we can about its heroes, gameplay, and story to prepare you for your gothic superhero moment in October.

Here's everything we know about Marvel's Midnight Suns.

Midnight Suns release date

What's the Marvel's Midnight Suns release date? 

Marvel's Midnight Suns will release December 2, 2022.

The Midnight Suns release was initially set for March 2022, but delays pushed the launch window back—first to the second half of 2022, then to an unspecified time "later this fiscal year." According to a statement released on Twitter after the first delay, additional development time was necessary to make it "the best game possible," with the extra months going towards adding "more story, cinematics, and overall polish." It was confirmed at the D23 Expo that it would release on December 2.

Midnight Suns trailers

Here's a Midnight Suns cinematic trailer

This Darkness Falls cinematic, revealed at Summer Games Fest 2022, adds Spider-Man to the roster of confirmed Midnight Suns heroes. Meanwhile, everyone's favorite goopy antihero Venom gets corrupted by Lilith to stand alongside her collection of demon-possessed Marvel bruisers—a collection that includes Scarlet Witch and the Hulk. Seems bad.

What other Midnight Suns trailers are available?

Marvel's Midnight Suns was revealed with a cinematic announcement trailer. It sets the deliberately spookier vibe of the game, and introduces its cast of Marvel headliners—we’ve got Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Ghost Rider, and others—as well as the player-controlled and customizable Hunter hero. We’re shown Lilith, Mother of Demons, the game’s primary antagonist (and enemy number one in the comic storyline that serves as one of the game’s inspirational touchpoints).

This gameplay reveal trailer was met with mixed feelings. Fans who were hoping for something closer to the XCOM model found instead that Midnight Suns will blend turn-based tactics with card-based mechanics. An official gameplay overview shows how the game will play both in and out of combat.

This VOD of a gameplay showcase livestream shows a brief mission playthrough against the X-Men villain Sabretooth, giving a more in-depth sense of the card-based tactics and how they reflect the flavor of the Marvel heroes you’ll be assembling. We’re given a look at the Abbey as well—your headquarters where you’ll be hanging out with your growing roster of superheroes between missions.

Midnight Suns heroes and story

(Image credit: Firaxis)

What's the Midnight Suns story? Who is the Hunter? 

In Midnight Suns, humanity is imperiled by Lilith, Mother of Demons, an ancient, powerful, and malevolent being who's about as pleasant as her name would suggest. Defeated and sealed away centuries ago, she's been resurrected by Hydra (surprise) and is apparently attempting to summon her Elder God master, Chthon. As with all things involving Elder Gods, that would probably be very, very bad.

Meanwhile, in Midnight Suns, you play as the Hunter, an original hero created for the game. You'll be able to choose between a male and female Hunter and customize their appearance. And, coincidentally, you're Lilith's child. It’s apparently not a warm relationship. It was you who defeated Lilith in the past, sealing her away before entering your own centuries-long slumber. And since Mom's back to try another apocalypse, you've been thawed out for a rematch.

Which other heroes are confirmed for Midnight Suns?

(Image credit: Firaxis Games)

As the Hunter, you’ll be fighting alongside 12 established heroes from Marvel canon. In the comics, the Midnight Sons roster (the original set was more dude-heavy) trends towards more obscure occult-themed heroes, with a few recognizable names like Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider, and Blade. For Midnight Suns, Firaxis is bringing Avengers and X-Men aplenty. These heroes have been confirmed so far:

• Captain America
• Blade
• Magik
• Iron Man
• Wolverine (voiced, as always, by Steve Blum)
• Doctor Strange
• Captain Marvel
• Nico Minoru
• Ghost Rider (the Robbie Reyes incarnation—he has a car)
• Spider-Man
• Scarlet Witch

Midnight Suns gameplay

(Image credit: Firaxis)

What will Marvel's Midnight Suns gameplay be like? 

While creative director Jake Solomon claimed that Midnight Suns would be “completely different” from XCOM, it’s still a Firaxis tactics RPG. But there are some big departures from the XCOM model—namely, that Midnight Suns is a card game. Instead of having an action bar with your characters’ actions laid out to use on cooldown, each turn you’ll have a hand of cards randomly drawn from a deck you’ll be assembling for each hero. These are how your heroes will attack or use their powers for utility options, like defense boosts and stealth buffs. Cover and sightlines aren't really a factor.

The cards use keyword mechanics like you’d find in Slay the Spire, Hearthstone, or Magic: The Gathering. Wolverine’s ability cards, for example, feature a lot of Taunt keywords, which draw enemy attention when played. It’s hard to pay attention to anything else when you’re suffering a small whirlwind of clawed, Canadian violence.

A Heroism counter builds as you play abilities, letting some cards cash in specified amounts of Heroism to gain additional effects. One Wolverine card gained a Lifesteal keyword when above a certain Heroism threshold, healing him for whatever damage he dealt with it.

Unlike XCOM’s grid-based gameplay, characters in Midnight Suns can freely move and target any point within a radius on their turn. There are no hit percentages to worry about. As the devs said in the livestream above, these are literal superheroes—they’re not going to give Captain America the opportunity to miss on a 95% attack roll. You won’t be dealing with permadeath, either. For better or worse, Marvel isn’t letting a basic enemy kill off Iron Man for good because you fumbled a turn.

(Image credit: 2K Games/Firaxis)

What can you do between Midnight Suns missions?

Between missions, you’ll retire to the Abbey, the Midnight Suns headquarters. You’ll be able to interact with your teammates, building friendships with them in dialogue tree conversations and hangout sequences. It’s also where you’ll manage and upgrade your selection of ability cards for your heroes. There’s mention of crafting, too, and some discoverable lore. It’s somewhere between the base management layer from XCOM and hanging out with your Normandy companions in Mass Effect, with some light exploration thrown in.

Because it’s a superhero game, there’ll be different costumes to choose from for both the Hunter and the existing Heroes. It’s unclear whether these are just unlockable cosmetics or if they’ll be tied to crafted upgrades. I’m hoping it’s the latter. I’d love for the arcane embellishments on the trailer costumes to be the product of whatever enchanted alloy I’ve fortified Iron Man’s armor with. No news on whether more will be available for purchase. Hopefully, there’ll be enough aesthetic options without having to spend more cash.

Other Midnight Suns info

What else do we know?

• According to the devs, the game will be pretty long. To give an idea, in the gameplay showcase livestream it was mentioned that you'll still be recruiting heroes to the cause—Wolverine, in this case—even after a dozen or so hours.
• In addition to customizing the Hunter’s appearance, you’ll be able to customize their living space in the Abbey.
• You have a pet hellhound named Charlie. She can help you find treasure. Yes, you can pet her.
• The comic crossover storyline Rise of the Midnight Sons is a major inspiration for the game. Running in the early 90s, it gathered together a bunch of Marvels’ goths to save the world from Lilith and her demonic children. The original team lineup included—no joke—three discrete Ghost Riders. The Midnight Sons have gone through a few iterations in the years since. It’s safe to assume any Marvel hero who’s some kind of night creature or occult practitioner has been involved at one point or another.
• There's also a new five-part Midnight Suns comic miniseries starting up in September, which rebrands the team name to bring it in line with the game and pulls some of the same roster additions, like Wolverine and Magik.
• You can secure an "Exclusive Nightstalker skin" for Blade by signing up for the Midnight Suns newsletter on the game’s website. There's a Doctor Strange skin available as a pre-order bonus, too.

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[Today's Wordle 449 answer and hint: Sunday, September 11]

The answer to today's Wordle is just below, alongside a whole host of hints, tips, and guides designed to improve your game and help to make the September 11 (449) puzzle—and every one after it—as quick and easy as you want them to be.

A too-early Sunday morning is not a great time to try and solve my daily Wordle, but there I was anyway, staring at my monitor in a slightly confused haze. I did get the answer before I ran out of guesses (just), but I honestly couldn't tell you how.

Wordle hint

Today's Wordle: A hint for Sunday, September 11

Think of a leg bone and you're probably a maximum of two guesses away from solving today's Wordle. There are two vowels to find today, although one of them is used twice. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:

• A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants. 
• A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
• The solution may contain repeat letters.

There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank.

Wordle answer

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

What is the Wordle 449 answer?

Almost there. The answer to the September 11 (449) Wordle is TIBIA. 

Previous answers

Wordle archive: Which words have been used

The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh.

Here are some recent Wordle solutions:

• September 10: LOFTY
• September 9: THEME
• September 8: CLASS
• September 7: LEERY
• September 6: TAUNT
• September 5: WHOOP
• September 4: INTER
• September 3: GULLY
• September 2: CHARM
• September 1: FUNGI

Learn more about Wordle 

Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them.

You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns ️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. means you've got the right letter in the right spot.

You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer.

After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below.

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 

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[Disney's 27-year-old platformer Gargoyles is getting remastered]

Tucked away in the middle of the Disney & Marvel Games Showcase from the latest D23 Expo—a biennial event for the official Disney fan club, named for the year of the company's founding—was a quick announcement that another sidescroller would be getting the Disney Classic Games Collection treatment. Just like the platformers based on Aladdin, The Lion King, The Jungle Book, the 1995 Sega Genesis game Gargoyles is getting remastered.

Gargoyles was based on a mid-90s animated series that became a cult classic thanks to the relative maturity of its writing and plotting, as well as its intelligent and well-motivated villains. It also had a solid voice cast, including Keith David, Clancy Brown, John Rhys-Davies, and a bunch of Star Trek actors like Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, who played the bad guys David Xanatos and Demona. Though canceled after three seasons, Gargoyles has since been resurrected in comic books, and clearly still has fans.

The videogame, a 2D sidescroller in which the gargoyle Goliath fights, climbs, and flies across 18 levels to destroy "an artifact of incredible power and evil" made by Viking sorcerers, will be remastered by Empty Clip. That's the studio behind 16-bit brawler spin-offs Dead Island: Retro Revenge and Streets of Kamurocho, which reimagined the Yakuza games as something more like Streets of Rage 2.

Gargoyles Remastered doesn't have a release date yet, but according to Disney's press release it'll be coming to PC "with updated visuals and controls". The D23 Expo's Disney & Marvel Games Showcase also revealed that Midnight Suns is back on track with a December release date, Amy Hennig's upcoming Marvel game will feature Captain America and Black Panther in World War 2, and there's a Tron visual novel coming next year from indie studio Bithell Games, previously responsible for Thomas Was Alone, Subsurface Circular, and The Solitaire Conspiracy. 

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[Ubisoft is giving away a free month of Ubisoft+]

It's been three years since Ubisoft launched its subscription program, called Uplay+ at the time, offering access to over 100 games for a fee of US$15/£13/€15/AU$20 per month. To celebrate the program's third birthday, Ubisoft is offering a 30-day trial subscription for free, which can be claimed between now and October 10.

Ubisoft+ includes access to the fancypants deluxe versions of Ubisoft games, complete with the expected season passes and expansions. You can also stream its games from the cloud if your PC isn't up to spec, and a subscription comes with monthly rewards like in-game items and boosters. It's not just Ubisoft games you can play either, with a handful of indie games like Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark and Lake included, though the indie games on offer rotate out of the selection rather than remaining forever, like Ubisoft's own games do in theory. At least, until the publisher reverses the reversal of its stance on decommissioning old games.

With a month's worth of Ubisoft+ you could probably finish Assassin's Creed Odyssey if you played for a few hours every day. Or you could power through a bunch of the shorter games available, like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, the two South Park RPGs, Immortals Fenyx Rising, and have time left over for Warlords Battlecry before canceling your subscription.

Not all games are available in every territory, but here's a list of the games you'll probably be able to play. If you were planning to motor through the Might & Magic series, unfortunately Might and Magic 9 and 10 as well as Heroes of Might and Magic 4 aren't available on Ubisoft Connect.

• Anno 1404: History Edition
• Anno 1503: History Edition
• Anno 1602: History Edition
• Anno 1701: History Edition
• Anno 1800 - Deluxe Edition
• Anno 2205 - Ultimate Edition
• Assassin's Creed - Director's Cut
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles - China
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles - India
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles - Russia
• Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry - Standalone Edition
• Assassin's Creed II - Deluxe Edition
• Assassins Creed Brotherhood
• Assassin's Creed Revelations - Standard Edition
• Assassin's Creed III + Liberation Remastered
• Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag - Gold Edition
• Assassin's Creed Odyssey - Ultimate Edition
• Assassin's Creed Origins - Gold Edition
• Assassin's Creed Origins - Discovery Tour
• Assassin's Creed Rogue - Deluxe Edition
• Assassin's Creed Syndicate - Gold Edition
• Assassin's Creed Unity - Standard Edition
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla - Complete Edition
• Beyond Good and Evil
• Brothers in Arms: Earned In Blood
• Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway
• Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30
• Child of Light
• Cold Fear
• Far Cry
• Far Cry 2 - Fortune's Edition
• Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon (Standalone)
• Far Cry 3 - Deluxe Edition
• Far Cry 4 - Gold Edition
• Far Cry 5 - Gold Edition
• Far Cry 6 - Deluxe Edition
• Far Cry New Dawn - Deluxe Edition
• Far Cry Primal - Digital Apex Edition
• Flashback Origin
• For Honor - Marching Fire Edition
• From Dust
• Heroes of Might and Magic
• Heroes of Might and Magic 2 Gold
• Heroes of Might and Magic 3: Complete
• Heroes of Might and Magic 5
• Heroes of Might and Magic 6 - Complete Edition
• Heroes of Might and Magic 7
• I Am Alive
• Immortals Fenyx Rising
• Imperialism
• Imperialism 2
• Might & Magic VII - For Blood and Honor
• Might & Magic VIII - Day of the Destroyer
• Monopoly Madness
• Monopoly Plus
• Ode
• Panzer General 2
• Panzer General 3D Assault
• Petz Horsez 2
• POD Gold
• Prince of Persia (2008)
• Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - Deluxe Edition
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
• Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
• Rayman 2
• Rayman 3
• Rayman Forever
• Rayman Legends
• Rayman Origins
• Rayman Raving Rabbids
• Riders Republic
• Silent Hunter 2
• Silent Hunter 3
• Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific - Gold Edition
• Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic
• South Park: The Stick of Truth - Standard Edition
• South Park: The Fractured but Whole - Gold Edition
• Speed Busters
• Starlink - Digital Deluxe Starter Kit
• Steep - X Games Gold Edition
• The Crew - Ultimate Edition
• The Crew 2 - Gold Edition
• The Settlers (1993) - History Edition
• The Settlers 2 - History Edition
• The Settlers 3 - History Edition
• The Settlers 4 - History Edition
• The Settlers 5: Heritage of the Kings - History Edition
• The Settlers 6: Rise of an Empire - History Edition
• The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom - History Edition
• Tom Clancy's EndWar
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier - Deluxe Edition
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands – Ultimate Edition
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint - Gold Edition
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six - Standard Edition
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3 - Gold Edition
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege – Ultimate Year Four Edition
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Blacklist - Deluxe Edition
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction - Deluxe Edition
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent
• Tom Clancy's The Division - Gold Edition
• Tom Clancy's The Division 2 - Ultimate Edition
• Trackmania Turbo
• Trackmania 2 Stadium
• Transference
• Trials Evolution - Gold Edition
• Trials Fusion - Standard Edition
• Trials Rising - Gold Edition
• Uno
• Valiant Hearts: The Great War
• Warlords Battlecry
• Warlords Battlecry 2
• Watch_Dogs - Complete Edition
• Watch_Dogs 2 - Gold Edition
• Watch_Dogs Legion Ultimate Edition
• World In Conflict - Complete Edition
• Zombi

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[How soon before release should a game be revealed?]

THE PCG Q&A

Find all previous editions of the PCG Q&A here. Some highlights:
- What should boomer shooters be called?
- If you were a videogame, what kind of game would you be and why?
- What do we want from Fallout 5?

The @FutureGamesShow Twitter account asked this question as a poll, providing three options: 1) You can play it now! 2) Three months out... 3) As soon as it's a project. You can check how the numbers broke down on the tweet, but let's see what you think. 

How soon before release should a game be revealed?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum. Future Games Show is also running a competition for folks in the UK and EU, who can win a Streamplify bundle including a microphone, webcam, and ring light. You've got one week left to enter.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I think purely as a consumer, if I wasn't a journalist, I'd be perfectly happy with publishers announcing stuff like three-to-six months before launch. Less lead time means less time for online communities to whip themselves up into a frenzy before launch, less time to wait if it's something I'm really excited for, and less super thin, pointless marketing beats just to pad out the preview cycle. 

But at the same time I think the layers of secrecy in this industry are often absurd. There's a lack of transparency around games development that gives players a distorted view of how things work, and negatively impacts the lives of studio staff—often for the sake of games we all know are being made anyway, thanks to regular sequels and leaks. So another side of me wishes we were a bit more like the movie industry—less secretive and less hung up on the initial announcement of a project as a big deal unto itself. 

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Two years, max. For the love of god, I wish they'd stop putting out 20-second pre-rendered trailers for stuff five years in advance. It's just kinda tiresome.

(Image credit: EA)

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: The rational part of me only wants to know about games a few months ahead of time for the same perfectly good reasons you've all given. The other part of me has been a Dragon Age fan for 12 years and has spent eight of those waiting for the game now titled Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. I don't like the tiny Hansel and Gretel scraps of information leading me on a painstaking journey through the Wilds to Morrigan's mum's cottage, but that part of me was happy to find out back in 2020 that the next Dragon Age game was happening instead of waiting for that confirmation until, well, a year or so from now probably.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: I like a bit of anticipation, speculation, a good teaser, a proper trailer... I'd say six months is a great amount of time between the reveal and launch, but even hearing about a game a year before it comes out is usually okay.

It does seem weird when something is revealed years before it comes up, but thinking about it from the developers' perspective, it would be kind of weird, maybe even a real problem, to work on something for years without ever telling anyone what it is. Once there's a reveal, at least you can mention it by name. It might be something of a relief to finally be able to admit what you spend all your time working on.

(Image credit: CD Projekt)

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: A month or two, tops. I'm tired of the extended hype cycle, I'm tired of developers creating games "in partnership with the community," I'm tired of knowing every little detail about a game before it's out, and frankly I'm tired of watching developers and publishers clown around with Big Secret Stuff only to have it leaked all over the internet like a blown brake line three days before the embargo.

It is possible that I'm not doing a great job of separating my consumer self from the guy who writes about videogame news for a living, I will grant. But honestly I'd be happy not knowing about them at all until one day I wake up and get clocked in the face with * N * E * W * * G * A * M * E *!!! I miss the days of walking into a shop, browsing the shelves, spotting something and thinking, "Holy 'frack', what is this?" I just don't have that sense of intrigue and excitement anymore. Is the endless parade of hype and info better for me as a consumer because I'm more aware of what I'm spending my money on, and less likely to sink it into something I end up hating? Maybe. But is it better for me as a gamer? Absolutely not.

(Image credit: Konami)

Jody Macgregor, AU/Weekend Editor: In an ideal world I'd like to know as soon as a game's being worked on. Avoid all the hassle of secrecy and rumors. Just get word out there and I'll pop it in the back of my brain, probably forgetting about it a month later.

We don't live in an ideal world, though. We live in one where internet fandoms are absolutely bug-'frell' and froth themselves into a frenzy of anticipation over the tiniest bits of information, then storm and roar and fall in a rage on whatever disappoints them. In this world, yeah, minimizing that with something like the five-months-ahead-of-release announcement schedule Fallout 4 had seems sensible.

From our forum

ZedClampet: I don't mind reveals that are years out, but I prefer them to be just a few months out like the Fallout 4 reveal, if I remember correctly. That seems really rare, though. But I actually got more excited about Fallout 4 just because it was releasing pretty soon.

Pifanjr: I'm fine with reveals years in advance, but don't expect me to actually get excited until maybe 2 months before release. Even then, I've experienced enough broken promises from developers/publishers that I my hype won't reach its highest point until the game has already been released and I can see what other people are saying about it.

Brian Boru: Years AFTER release, when:
♣ Whichever bugs are going to be fixed, have been—and I can decide if I can live with what's left.
♦ The DLC trickle has finished, and there's a real 'Complete' version.
♥ Mods have been updated for the final version, so I know if I can avoid the usually horrible intro half hour, and what bugs, UI and balance issues have been solved by the community.

What a reveal that would be! "Look everyone, our game doesn't mostly suck any more!"

(Image credit: Gearbox)

Colif: Reveals are only surprising if its a new IP. Otherwise its almost a given everything will get a sequel. I think a year or more before its due is too soon... looks at Skyrim 2. Duke Nukem Forever (lol). I won't include early access as you can play them... otherwise Star Citizen says hello. I feel Diablo 4 was too soon as its not out until next year... so I can just go back to ignoring it again.

Alm: I always love a reveal. Shadow drops are very exciting but any time I feel hype if it's something I'm interested in.

Kaamos_Llama: 3 months before sounds pretty good, at that point they'll have it working and you'll be able to see gameplay. I don't really like to follow things too closely or play betas, a general idea is enough and then keep the surprise intact.

So many great games already out there and easy to find surprises that I find I don't really get hyped up by new game marketing unless its a sequel to something I really, really loved.

mainer: Given those choices, I'd go with 3 months, though I think it's exceedingly rare to see a reveal that close to release. The best game reveal for me was Fallout 4 as @ZedClampet mentioned. It was revealed around June of 2015 and then released in November of 2015 and I was so psyched for a new Fallout game and knew I could play it in just a few months, and that's extremely rare these days. Plus, it had one of my favorite promo trailers:

Frindis: I used to love finding out everything about a game, even if it was a couple of years before the release. Now I am more interested in getting them as soon as possible and around the 3-month mark & what @ZedClampet referred to with Fallout 4. Fallout 4 was how it should be, straight down to the core of giving something to the gamers without having to milk every goddamn penny! Here is hoping Obsidian Entertainment might just do something similar with their upcoming RPG game: Avowed. Not heard any news for a long time, so it would just be perfect for them to say: Coming this Christmas!

Johnway: Personally I would like reveals for games when they are ideally months out to finish or at least a point of absolute commitment and in the works. What I DON'T want to see are trailers to hype (announcement trailers) or trailers with no ingame footage and just movies.

Too often I see games too early and it either dies or it changes from all recognition from the initial game and makes the previous hype/previews an absolute waste of time. Beyond good and evil 2 I'm looking at you. Do we even have a game or has money just been wasted hyping nothing?

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

DXCHASE: I like reveals within 3-6 months before release. If it's something I want, it gives me the right amount of time to plan on making time for it when it releases. Destiny 2 does a pretty good job with this.

Doing something like what CDPR did with Cyberpunk? No way, that was probably the worst approach to releasing a game I've ever seen. They started teasing it what? 7 or 8 years or something like that before it released? Nah, anything over a year or so I can do without. I guess maybe if its a remaster of a classic, I dont mind knowing a long time ahead of time because its something I already played. (Gothic remake/Mafia remake for example).

Now if the game industry could only normalize not putting a release date out so the anxiety of pushing back release dates goes away. Nothing more annoying about this than seeing a game being advertised (like cyberpunk) and having the date get pushed back several times. Just say its in development until its actually ready to be released.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

WoodenSaucer: The Elder Scrolls VI is the one that frustrates me the most. Do you guys realize they made that announcement over 4 years ago, and they still haven't even started on it? 

But I'll say this, at this point I think TES VI will come out before Metroid Prime 4, which was announced 5 years ago, and we've never heard a word about it since then, except that they had to scrap it and start over with another developer.

Kovanen: Typically 3 - 6 months, but prior to a properly finished release. None of this, it's got a million bugs & glitches but we'll fix them as we go along for the next 12 months.

I'd be interested to see games not be revealed and announced. You login STEAM one day and there's a "Today's Releases" page with the new games and nobody knows a thing about them. Obviously it wouldn't help with the marketing aspects, but would definitely have some fun surprises.

(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)

Sarafan: It actually doesn't matter that much to me. Usually I always enjoy a reveal of a game that I'm waiting for. However I don't like when a game comes out a few days after the reveal. There were a few examples of that (e.g. Fallout Shelter or Gwent: Rogue Mage). This doesn't build a proper hype and is simply less entertaining. If I'm waiting for a game, I like to watch some trailers before it's released, read about the gameplay, see screenshots, discuss all these things with friends etc. When a game is released almost instantly after the reveal, there's no room for that. Developers that release their games instantly resign from a free marketing campaign.

Krud: Depends on the depth of the reveal and how much work they've done on it already. If it's still in the concept/planning stages? Don't even tell us, because not only might it never come to pass, but its form may change drastically between the initial pitch/presentation and the release product. If you're mostly done and are polishing? A year is fine.

Just don't drop a trailer with what looks like a finished world two years in advance, or in the case of TES6, four or more years before the release.

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[Tender Loving Care, the FMV erotic thriller that wanted you to think it was intellectual smut]

From 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about rolling the dice to bring random games back into the light. This week, a trip back to a time when it felt like multimedia could do anything. And would often give it a try, whether it was a good idea or not...

Villains love to try and get inside your head. Tender Loving Care just does it for kicks. It's a game! It's a movie! What does that mean? That it's better not to get too excited, even if it did come from the creators of Uncle Henry's Mindblowers—a game said to have only sold 176 copies worldwide, and thus in the running for least successful commercial game of all time. Oh, and they also made The 7th Guest. That was cool in its day. This erotic thriller, though? Not so much, though it would at least hate for you to think it's just dumb smut. It's very intellectual dumb smut, damn it!

Tender Loving Care is the story of a struggling couple, Michael and Allison, in the wake of their daughter's death. Allison is incapable of even acknowledging the tragedy, insisting that little Jody is in her room and quite fine thank you very much. Michael is all too aware of the reality, but helpless to actually do anything. Enter John Hurt, the actor most famous for playing the comedy barman in Privateer 2: The Darkening, haunting their now long abandoned house with the help of a little greenscreen magic.

Hurt is Dr. Turner, a strong contender for the worst shrink ever, as well as both narrator and quizmaster for the game, asking deeply personal questions about everything from whether you like being watched during sex to what a cartoon bear should do when its cub poos in its nappy. That is not a joke. That is a thing that happens. All of this is done in-character though, with the big goal being to help him find out why Michael and Allison's story ended in tragedy.

"It's as much a mystery to me as anyone else," he sighs. "Perhaps you can help..."

Well, yes, Dr. Turner, I do believe I can. A struggling couple came to you for assistance, and your immediate suggestion was what I believe is referred to in the trade as Sexy Nurse Therapy.

Somehow, I suspect all will be revealed before too long.

Specifically, a live-in nurse called Kathryn is dispatched, quickly takes a liking to Allison, may or may not have an equal sexual interest in Michael, and for one reason or another this leads to murder and mental collapse. Eventually, that is. Not soon. TLC is longer-winded than a runner who finished a marathon only to be punched right in the stomach, and most of it is spent having variants on the following conversation:

ALLISON: "Kathryn is helping me!"

MICHAEL: "Kathryn is not helping! I hate Kathryn!"

KATHRYN: "I am so helping, and I will prove it with logic."

MICHAEL: "Your logic is surprisingly sound, but I'm still not buying it."

KATHRYN: "I also have boobs."

MICHAEL: "I find myself temporarily convinced by your arguments."

ALLISON: "I'm so happy Kathryn has finally given me a reason to live again!"

MICHAEL: "GET THAT 'witch' OUT OF MY HOUSE!"

DR. JOHN HURT: "Goodness, how intriguing. I had no idea. What do you think about all this?"

Rinse and repeat over multiple discs and hours of treading water.

John Hurt isn't the only actor who doesn't get naked, but is the one for whom that's the biggest relief.

It's also not really an adventure game as such, though there is a plot and there are choices that affect it. They're disconnected from the action though, taking the form of general comments on the characters and what you think's happening (not much, usually) and a set of "Thematic Apperception Tests", TAT for short, which take the form of endless questions that try to build a profile of your psyche as you play. 

The fact that we know going in that it ends in tragedy and there is nothing you can do about that perhaps speaks a little of the creators' own state of mind at the time. Or perhaps not. What would I know? I'm not a psychological adventure game. I am however fairly sure that for most players, the mix of 'erotic thriller' and 'interactivity' meant that Tender Loving Care's attempt at an exploration of the human psyche actually became an epic quest to get the sexy nurse's bra off. Tits for TATs, if you will.

Or, sometimes, two for the price of one.

That might sound a little cynical, but no. It's about two minutes before Kathryn is pushing Michael out of her room by pointedly taking her shirt off in front of him, as well as acknowledging that while therapists don't go around in slinky nurse outfits, she's going to be wearing one because... um... this case... really... demands it. Honest. Sigmund Freud would have worn a short skirt to deal with it too.

Tender Loving Care continues to plant its flag with the option to poke around the house in a way that's similar to The 7th Guest, only without the horror elements or being randomly asked to cut up an evil cake into pieces for no apparent reason. Its biggest oddity is that despite having an actual set for the movie portions, exploration is all 3D-rendered. Even more oddly, the characters are still around, despite this being a story told via flashbacks. Going into Kathyrn's room, she's standing there on a greenscreen taking notes, and confusingly aware of your presence but not her upcoming potential death.

"Who are you?" she demands. "And what are you doing in my room? Oh. Wait a minute, I see. You're the... viewer, right? I didn't realise you could just sneak up on me like that. You never know what I might be doing... You're probably going to snoop around my room, aren't you? Guess there's nothing I can do about it. Oh well. You probably won't find anything... too incriminating, I hope."

What's got a badly rendered cover and nothing to do with the plot? That's right...

Not. Suspicious. At All. And nor are the little details you can find when she leaves, including her conveniently unprotected diary. I'm not sure exactly how much details change based on decisions throughout the game, but I tried two radically different sets of answers to the opening questions and her opening entry didn't. 

First, she complains about a taxi driver: "He waited until we were on an isolated country road and out of nowhere he said that he noticed I wasn't wearing a bra and was wondering if I had any panties on." OK. Fair enough. What's the next paragraph? Oh, it's about Michael. I wonder what her professional opinion of him is after the three or so minutes they've been aware each other exists... an encounter which, remember, she ended by forcing him out of her bedroom by starting to take her shirt off. Not necessarily the most effective tactic, but still the one she chose.

"The way he looked at me," she begins. "Watching his eyes wander over my breasts and hips filled me with an unexpected rush of excitement. Part of me wanted to encourage those eyes. But the better part had sense enough to shut the door. I have to watch myself. This case is too important... too rich an opportunity to risk losing it over an attraction for my patient's husband."

You're never told if you're right. Like, with a flashback to her in a lobster costume, going "Kathryn, explain."

Uh-huh. Like most of this stuff, this isn't really brought up elsewhere because TLC doesn't keep track of what you've read. This means that plot elements like this, or Kathryn's marriage collapsing after she slept with Dr. John Hurt, go completely unremarked on, with the characters practically bouncing between personalities every time the director yells "Cut! That was crap, but better than the ending of 11th Hour!"

Sometimes that's OK. Michael is confused and guilty enough over, say, sleeping with Kathryn about 70 different times that it's not too surprising that he does the deed, then storms back into her room to try and kick her out of his life. Often though, scenes just don't connect that well.

Pulling things back to the psychiatry that Tender Loving Care longs to think it can do, it's time for the first proper TAT: staring at a copy of the (lovely) Hopper painting Nighthawks and being asked surreal questions about drawings and artwork that only occasionally tie directly into the story. A picture of two naked lovers for instance offering the potential name "Michael and Kathryn", along with "Mum and Dad" and "Mulder and Scully." In your dreams/fan-fic, Tender Loving Care...

Here's a couple of examples. How would you react?

Oh, and here's the first hint that this game has forgotten half the population. There are others.

If it's not obvious, this is a bizarre game. Tender Loving Care is about 60% absolute boredom, in which Michael and Kathryn discuss Allison's state of health, medication, and generally try to avoid mentioning that the daughter she thinks is in her bedroom is dead, with various levels of sniping and passive aggression. Mostly, this is a back and forth of wills, or to be more accurate, Kathryn's will and Michael's willy. 

Whatever options you choose, the psychology quickly gives way to scenes of her doing things like crossing her legs in her nurse's uniform, or him heading outside and spying on her standing naked in her window. Early on, that can be substituted with her simply being in her underwear. Later, it can step up to her squishing herself against it while licking the glass with malevolent joy, followed by John Hurt asking lots of incredibly personal questions about your sex life.

"Well, at least I'm doing better than that guy in Phantasmagoria 2."

But of course, Tender Loving Care is ultimately the story of a struggling couple trying to come to terms with the death of a child, the most painful experience that a parent can possibly go through, and their slow, agonising recovery. It's not simply about Michael wanting to put the O into Obamacare. That would be incredibly tacky and—

"The next TAT will be given in the bathroom," growls Dr. John Hurt. "Look for... the book."

Oh, right, yeah. Thinly disguised softcore porn...

To the TATmobile then!

Unconstrained by ridiculous questions, Kathryn sets about integrating into the family as cryptically as possible. She begins ordering Michael around in odd ways, like telling him not to mow the lawn because Jody is sleeping, and that Michael also needs to start playing along. His response, not too surprisingly, is to drive right down to Dr. John Hurt's office to ask, in a nutshell, "What the 'frack'? Why did you send that possibly literal witch to my house?" Dr. John Hurt's is to politely, very tactfully, point out "What I did, I did without choice. In the name of peace and sanity."

"But not in the name of the Doctor!" snarls Michael.

"Well, no," agrees Dr. John Hurt. "It's 1998. I won't be doing that for another decade and a half."

And then it's back to exploration, where he proves what a medical professional he is by letting you randomly poke around in his patient files for a bit, and then doing another TAT.

Dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner, TAT MAN!

Welcome to the... no, no. I'm sure they knew what they were doing...

With Kathryn still rocking the slinky nurse act, Michael resolves to become the biggest dick in the universe. Everything Kathryn seems to achieve only annoys him, whether it's getting Allison enough out of her depressive funk to help put away the groceries (gasp!) to breathing. We find out that there's guilt at the root of this, that Jody died of having ketchup splattered onto her head during a car accident, though whether Michael or Allison was driving at the time remains a matter for a pop-up question.

Michael's not as horny as he seems. He just has a thing for badly compressed video ladies.

The fight continues though, with Kathryn constantly pushing for Allison to get a pet for Jody, for Jody to have a TV, for Michael to learn how his mouth closes and practice it on a daily basis, and other things that are meant to be a little bit suspicious but actually seem reasonable enough. Michael is so cross, he doesn't even bother pausing for a decision point before charging back to Dr. John Hurt to accuse her of being clueless... discovering too late that she's in the room, with a new haircut, and overheard the entire accusation. Both point out that whatever Kathryn's doing seems to be working, Allison's mood changes being represented by a) smiles and b) not wearing a bra, and Michael has to reluctantly agree. And then instantly declare that it's not enough! After all, Kathryn's been in his house for, what, a whole three days and still his wife's complicated, two-year-long trauma isn't fixed.

"Would it cheer you up if we added a little lesbian subtext?" asks Kathryn.

"No!" pouts Michael. "OK, maybe. A little. But only if I don't get to see anything good!"

"Thanks." "No problem. All part of the fan-service."

Meanwhile, back in the Valley Of Endless Padding...

Goodness. It takes a lot to make Peter Venkman look professional, but you just did it.

"Why don't we dabble a bit in the realms of the psychic?" declares Dr. John Hurt, presenting a minigame in which you have to concentrate and use 'all your psychic abilities' to work out which card is hidden. When you get it wrong, possibly because psychic powers do not exist, he growls "Concentrate!" and "You're trying too hard!" Is it at least part of a more general point that actually involves psychiatry or the human brain in some actual way? Nope, because when you get it right, he declares it "Magnificent."

And then it ends. And is never brought up ever again.

Dr. John Hurt, I hereby revoke your fictional medical license.

In fact, I revoke it twice.

The main reason for things like that psychic test is that weird filler at least has a chance of obscuring how little is happening in the main story. There aren't many big secrets to be revealed, and the characters are too locked-down early on to develop in interesting ways. 

Tender Loving Care tries to mix things up with the addition of elements like that silly psychic test and the sound of a child crying in Jody's empty bedroom, but it's clear that there's no supernatural stuff going on whatsoever, with the possible exception of the fact that Michael's boss turns out to be evil Henry Stauf from The 7th Guest.

The most intriguing thing is its strange mix of boredom and PG-rated naughtiness, like the way it casually has Kathryn call Michael up to her room for a boring, pants-optional talk on his wife's psychological progress that's much more awkward than it is sexy.

"...and that's why your wife... what do you mean I forgot something?"

To compensate though, the TATs finally go all the way into the utterly insane:

Kathryn's game plan is also finally revealed: to bring Jody back to life in Allison's mind, physically represented by a doll, then recreate the accident by smashing it—hoping that this time the death will stick.

"Theoretically, I think it's brilliant," declares Dr. John Hurt.

Wow. I mean... wow, seriously? That's the plan? That's... Wow. I'm no psychiatrist or anything, but that doesn't seem like a plan with flaws so much as a collection of holes connected with dumb. But then, that's what you get when your therapist spends as much time writing lesbian erotica as doing her job.

"And then we totally do it."

As seen in her diary though, spending the entire game screaming and shouting and showing complete contempt for Kathryn on a personal and professional level doesn't mean Michael isn't in with a shot. Depending on choices, he can be invited to 'meditate' with her, in a scene that deserves its ironic punctuation. It's meant to be sexy, and is the most graphic scene on offer.

It's hard to focus on that side of it though though, when it's staged... well, like this.

I think the Kama Sutra calls this one "The Paperclip". Ouch

"It was only sex, everyone makes such a big deal of it," scoffs Kathryn next time you meet, explaining that the only reason she slept with Michael was to avoid being fired and thus unable to help Allison. Unfortunately for her, this is also the point that the story tends to decide she's a full on demon rather than merely a staggeringly unprofessional therapist with a taste for exhibitionism. 

Michael goes from acting like the victim to actually facing off against an arch manipulator, with the tone switching to full-on thriller mode—the details varying based on decisions. One of the three main characters kills the dog, though which is left vague. A dark night later leads to murder most horrid... exactly who being up for grabs. A hammer is sometimes involved. Other times, it's an accidental tumble down the stairs that takes one of the lovers out. In one, Kathryn ends up killing Michael and turning Allison into her puppet. In another, he lands the blow. In none do things work out well, as explained at the start.

Even so, with the differences often feeling more a question of explicitness than actual content, things can get seriously weird. One of Kathryn's final gambits involves encouraging Allison to take control, initiating sex with Michael for the first time since the accident... and that's a little creepy, since it's purely to prevent him sending her away. It gets creepier when she follows it up by bursting into the room and telling him that Jody has been calling for him... then climbing into Jody's bed naked, calling him Daddy, and making him promise never to send her away. And then telling him "You smell like a woman" and cheerfully ambling naked back to her room to roll around in manipulative triumph.

But who cares about that increasingly strained plot nonsense? More questions! More TATs!

It's hard to know what to make of TLC. On the one hand, it did try something genuinely new, even if you never actually get much control over the story beyond how it ends, and how often you see Kathryn's lady parts. On the other, it's a staggeringly self-defeating game, trying to be smart and intriguing while telling a Cinemax-level story that seems painfully aware its real selling point is having an actress willing to disrobe at a moment's notice. 

The rest is an absolute tangle of obvious plot twists, things revealed in notes around the house that you can't actually use (not least Kathryn admitting that she's slept with Dr. John Hurt, which would seem something worth bringing up during his regular appearances), and a perspective that constantly obscures the little control you do have. You don't tell Michael what to do, or even tell the game what you think should happen. You tell Dr. John Hurt how you feel about a range of random crap, and for the most part things just roll along on the same track until one of the scenes where they might get explicit, or it all ends. Though never soon enough.

It also seems somewhat irrelevant how you feel, since you start the game knowing that bad things happened, and everything is told in flashback. Despite you regularly bumping into Kathryn, dead at the end or not. Hmmm. Maybe she was secretly a ghost all along. That would be a twist.

The main purposes of the TATS is that once the story is over, TLC will build a personal profile of you based on your comments—a deep psychological investigation that would make astrologers mock the lack of detail. All you really need though is one of two things. Either a) You bought Tender Loving Care in the hope of an adult adventure, and were disappointed. Or b) You bought Tender Loving Care in the hope of seeing boobies, and probably weren't. If you played your cards right. 

Either way, you probably ended it feeling a bit depressed, and that's clearly a win given the type of story it tried to tell.

Pity it had to be so damn dull about it.

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[After all these years someone made a proper tank simulator again]

There are are plenty of games on the PC that let you drive a tank, but few of them these days aspire to simulator-level realism. They might have simulation elements, or use real life as a model, but ultimately most of the best games where you're driving a tank are either a decade old or ultimately beholden to multiplayer balance. 

Gunner, HEAT, PC!, or GHPC, wants to change that. It's an indie by a new studio called Radian Simulations. Focused on the cold war era, GHPC uses the popular theoretical battleground of Germany as its kickoff point. 

It's the kind of game that includes the dramatic tagline "DETAILED FIRE CONTROL SYSTEMS" in the trailer. I figure you now know whether you're interested, like me, or would like to move on.

GHPC's aim is to provide a simulator experience that's still fairly accessible and fun, something I'd describe as similar to the combat simulators of the late 90s and early 2000s. It'll include campaigns, randomized skirmishes, and cooperative multiplayer. Players will control armored vehicles like tanks and APCs, but there'll also be AI-controlled forces of other kinds.

"It's a weird time for fans of modern tank combat games," say the developers. "The straight-shooting simulator titles from the turn of the millennium are no more. As tank nerds, we need a game that gets right to the good stuff - modern tanks, realistic system and damage models, and a focus on fun over all."

GHPC touts systems like its projectile flight modeling and an armor penetration model that includes hit effects like armor spalling, fragmentation, and blast overpressure, as well as their effects on the crew. "A vehicle is only knocked out when injury, destruction, or conflagration force it to become combat-ineffective," say the devs.

As of now and its launch into Early Access, GHPC has a pretty basic campaign and a semi-random skirmish mission mode. There are just over a dozen playable units right now, complete with authentic gunnery optics and fire control, from IFVs and tanks to anti-tank missile emplacements.

You can find Gunner, HEAT, PC! on Steam for $30, 10% off until September 13.

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[Three brand new Assassin Creed games announced at Ubisoft Forward]

Three new Assassin's Creed games were announced at Ubisoft Forward 2022 on Saturday, including a new flagship open world RPG set in Japan, the witchy Codename Hexe, and a mobile game spin-off. Ubisoft also officially pulled the hood back on the recently leaked Assassin's Creed Mirage, a throwback to the more stealth-focused play of early Assassin's Creed. Valhalla will also be getting a final bit of DLC towards the end of 2022 that will tie up its main storyline.

After wishing on a star for the longest time, Assassin's Creed is finally heading to feudal Japan in Codename Red. The word "shinobi" was mentioned, but there's very little else to go on right now. It'll be an open world RPG, much like Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla. It's the next flagship game for the franchise, but likely won't release before 2024.

Codename Hexe was also announced with even less to go on. Given its witchy pagan vibes, I'll hedge my bets on this being set during 16th century Europe when accusations of witchcraft were rife—or maybe it'll have something to do with the Salem witch trials? Either way, Ubisoft says it's going to be something new for Assassin's Creed, but exactly what that means, and the scope of Codename Hexe, are unclear. It also probably won't be appearing before 2024.

Next is Codename Jade, which is set in China in 215 BC. This is an open world RPG on mobile, where you'll be able to customise your own assassin to jump back into history with. It'll also have the usual parkour and stealth mechanics you'd expect for an AC game, but on a phone. The trailer was captured using the in-game engine which actually looked really good, so it might be worth a go. Again, there was no release date mentioned for Codename Jade.

Finally, Ubisoft announced The Last Chapter DLC for Valhalla. It looks like you'll be chatting with Sigurd, cosplaying as Basim and meeting more historical friends and foes as you tie up loose ends and round off Valhalla's lacklustre ending.

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[Assassin's Creed Mirage: what we know about the new throwback stealth Assassin's Creed]

As part of the Ubisoft Forward 2022 presentation, we got a look at Assassin's Creed Mirage, which was leaked just a few days before the event. Mirage focuses on Basim Ibn Ishaq, otherwise known as Loki in Valhalla, in what was once predicted to be a major DLC for Valhalla. Instead, it's a new standalone game.

After a string of Assassin's Creeds that focused more on open world RPG gameplay than stealth, Ubisoft trialled infiltration-style black box missions again in The Siege of Paris DLC for Valhalla, which many fans of early games in the series welcomed. PC Gamer's Imogen wrote this week that she's desperate for a new stealthy AC game that focuses on the original trilogy's core tenets of parkour and assassinations, and Mirage promises just that.

There are still few details available for Mirage, but here's everything we know about it.

Assassin's Creed Mirage release date

Ubisoft has confirmed that Mirage will be launched in 2023, though there isn't a specific date announced yet. If it follows the pattern of the last few games, you can expect it in late 2023, but hopefully, it'll arrive sooner. 

Assassin's Creed Mirage characters

As I said earlier, Basim is your protagonist in Mirage, though how long he'll stay a good guy is anyone's guess. You start out as a common street thief who is spotted and saved by Roshan, a 50-year-old Persian ex-slave and your new mentor. She's voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo of The Expanse and Mass Effect fame, bringing a certain gravitas to the game.

Basim is plagued with nightmarish visions of demons and has a tragic past, so it's up to you to keep him on the straight and narrow path of the Hidden Ones to fulfil his destiny—or words to that effect. As is pretty common in Assassin's Creed, many historical and political figures will feature in the game, though none have been revealed yet. 

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Assassin's Creed Mirage gameplay

If you're a fan of real Assassin's Creed games—I mean the ones that focused on stealth and blending in with monks over going full rage and smashing everyone with a hammer—you'll be pleased to know that Mirage will feature the three key tenets of the original trilogy: stealth, assassinations and parkour. There are all new assassination and parkour animations to look forward to, the corner swing is back and you can use a pole vault to leap over gaps in buildings.

You'll also be able to interfere with scaffolding, set traps, use mines and blow darts to distract, stun and kill enemies, and the usual stealth options you'd expect as an assassin. Your assassin's tool can be upgraded and black box missions will be available for key targets.

Stealth has been reworked so that tracking who you're following—or who is watching you—is easier to see, and you can even slow down time to mark several targets at once for assassination. The story is linear and will be far smaller in scope than Valhalla and the recent open world iterations. There will be some quests you can complete in whatever order you like, but most aren't optional.

Assassin's Creed Mirage setting

Mirage is set in 9th century Baghdad—861 to be precise—during its peak golden age. Rather than traversing an entire country, you'll be limited to Baghdad and its four districts, including Karkh and the round city. It's in the same global region as the first Assassin's Creed but set in a new location, and you'll get to see the home of the assassins, Alamut. The fortress is still under construction, but you can properly visit it this time.

Samarrah was the location that inspired Baghdad in Mirage, as the city was destroyed sometime later and the version that exists now is very different. More districts will be revealed closer to Mirage's release date, so check back for an in-depth look.

Guess what, eagle haters?

The eagle can get shot down in Mirage. Take that, ya wee dick.  

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[Assassin's Creed is finally going to Japan]

Among the reveals at Ubisoft's Forward showcase earlier today we got our first look at the upcoming mainline Assassin's Creed game simply codenamed "Red" and set in Feudal Japan. The evocative setting seems like a natural fit for Assassin's Creed's never-ending drama of cops 'n robbers—er, Templars and Assassins.

The game got only the briefest of trailers at Ubisoft Forward, setting the mood with a striking sunset over castles and forests, with a ninja armed with a hidden blade and Japanese short sword landing on a tiled roof before cutting to the series logo and "Codename Red" title. Ubisoft veteran Marc-Alexis Côté described Codename Red as the "future of [Ubisoft's] open world RPGs," and the game is being developed by Ubisoft Quebec, the team behind Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

It really writes itself, doesn't it? Cast the shinobi clans of Iga province as some manner of Assassin Order franchisee, while the world famous warrior nobility of the samurai caste get to be Templars. Even though the historical ninja of the Sengoku period emerged long after the time of the Order of Assassins, that former group has really eclipsed the latter in the popular imagination. "Assassin" may be the Kleenex generic term for an infiltration-focused killer, but try to walk five steps without tripping over a movie, anime, videogame, or homebrew tabletop class paying homage to those covert warriors from Japan.

Ubisoft does face a unique challenge in that a historical Japanese Assassin's Creed has already kind of been made. It's called Ghost of Tsushima and it was released by Sucker Punch in 2020. That gorgeous samurai sim owes a lot of its combat, parkourey exploration, and collectathon open world design to Ubisoft's latter-day RPG-adjacent Assassin's Creeds like Origins and Odyssey.

There's definitely room for differentiation here, though, especially if Ubisoft embraces the astounding urbanism of premodern Japan. It does depend on what era Ubisoft plans to focus on, but Tokugawa-era Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto would all make for rich Assassin hunting grounds. Ubisoft's never been a slouch when it comes to creating virtual cities, and even the Paris of the much-maligned Assassin's Creed Unity is a feast for the eyes.

I've got a beautiful vision in my mind of a seamless rural-urban game world like the Witcher 3's Novigrad, and I'm excited to see where Ubisoft takes this concept. It'll be more of a wait, however—this Assassin's creed seems to be at least two years down the line, if not more.

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[Assassin's Creed Infinity is still years away]

Today's Ubisoft Forward 2022 presentation gave us a bit of a look at what's coming for the future of Assassin's Creed with Assassin's Creed Infinity, the game that will drive the future of the franchise as a single, huge live service that spans multiple historical settings. If past releases are any indication, though, it's probably not coming until 2025.

"Infinity is not a game per se, it's going to be the single entry point for our fans into our Assassin's creed franchise into the future," said Ubisoft's Marc-Alexis Côté. Ubisoft's people then compared it to the Animus, the fictional device inside the AC world that allows people to explore the memories of their ancestors.

"Infinity is going to be a hub that will unite all our different experiences, and our players, together in meaningful ways," said Côté. He also said that fans have been asking for multiplayer for some time, so they were currently exploring "how we will bring back standalone multiplayer experiences into the Assassin's Creed universe all connected to the Infinity hub."

The finale of the presentation showed off a Japan-set Assassin's Creed game codenamed Red, which is being made by Ubisoft Quebec. Ubisoft Montreal, meanwhile, is working on a "very different" and very witchy-looking Assassin's Creed game called Codename Hexe. All we got for that is... an Assassin symbol made of twigs. It's a bit odd to hear that, since we were told these studios would be working together in the future—specifically on Infinity.

They must be at least a bit, given that apparently both of those codenamed games will use AC Infinity. If we assume that a new AC game will come every year that means we've got Mirage in 2023, then maybe AC Red in 2024... but Assassin's Creed hasn't been reliably annual for a while. There were two years between Odyssey and Valhalla.

Otherwise we're still very short on information regarding Assassin's Creed Infinity, both as a service and as to why it's a single game hub rather than just... releasing games.

We first heard about AC Infinity in 2021, when a big leak in the wake of various Ubisoft scandals prompted a post from Ubisoft confirming that production on AC games would be merged across the Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Quebec studios as a project codenamed "Assassin's Creed Infinity."

Either way, I can't say I'm very excited for AC to be yet another game with seasons it wants me to keep up with.

You can keep up with the latest from Ubisoft on our Ubisoft Forward page.

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[Assassin's Creed Valhalla is getting a final, free DLC.]

Tucked into the sequence of Assassin's Creed announcements at Ubisoft's Forward event earlier today, the company announced that Assassin's Creed Valhalla will be receiving a final, free DLC following its recent expansion pack, Dawn of Ragnarök.

The trailer features Eivor discussing future plans while overlooking a Viking village, indicating that she may "set forth for distant shores and new adventures." The trailer then cuts to a montage of Eivor reconnecting with various characters and locales from the base game.

While prior additions to Valhalla have been more substantial, this upcoming addition, simply titled "The Last Chapter," looks to be a collection of quests and scenes more definitively tying up some loose ends from the base game. The concept reminds me of the Witcher 3's playable epilogues, and it seems like a welcome addition to the game. Assassin's Creeds can have a tendency to let their huge ensemble casts run away from them, and I've always wanted a little more resolution for some of the bit players throughout the series.

The game's post-launch director, Gareth Glover, did not fully elaborate on the extent or release date for The Last Chapter, simply stating that it would be out "in a few months time." 

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[Here's our first look at Assassin's Creed Mirage]

Ubisoft has officially revealed Assassin's Creed Mirage at the Ubisoft Forward 2022 event, giving a first look at the next Assassin's Creed game. Mirage is set in Baghdad during the golden age of the 9th Century CE, 300 years before and 850-some kilometers away from the original Assassin's Creed, but merely 20 years before AC Valhalla.

Assassin's Creed Mirage looks to be a return to form for AC as a stealth-focused series set in a sprawling urban environment. Mirage will focus on Basim Ibn Ishaq, the man known as Loki in AC Valhalla. Mirage will show Basim's initiation into and journey after becoming an Assassin.

In the trailer, we see a supercut of Basim's life before, and after, joining the order of Assassins. Narrated by Roshan, his mentor, it shows him as a thief in the streets of Baghdad and, later, as an Assassin taking down corrupt enemies of the order.

The primary speaker in the trailer is the inimitable voice of Shoreh Aghdashloo, who you might remember from The Expanse, Mass Effect, and Destiny. She'll be Roshan, a primary character and Basim's initiator into the Assassin community. Roshan is Persian, as is Aghdashloo.

The trailer shows off plenty of fights and parkour, climaxing with the removal of Basim's finger to complete his initiation as a hidden one. 

Mirage holds a lot of hope for those that want AC to be a stealth-focused series again, wrote Imogen Mellor. "I feel like I haven't had a proper AC experience in years," she wrote.

AC Mirage was once rumored to be a DLC for Valhalla, following leaks earlier this year, but a more recent leak that was subsequently all-but-confirmed by Ubisoft pointed towards Mirage instead being the next AC main-line game.

You can keep up with the latest from Ubisoft on our Ubisoft Forward page.

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[Ubisoft commits to The Division Year 5, gives first look at spinoff Heartland]

During Ubisoft's Forward showcase earlier today the company revealed its medium-term plans for the future of its post-apocalyptic looter shooter series, The Division.

The rest of 2021 will see Seasons 10 and 11 of the Division 2, with the former, "Price Power," launching on September 13. Price Power is set to include new difficulty levels for preexisting game modes, QoL changes, and apparel events. Season 11 looks a bit more substantial, with new manhunt targets, a fresh PvE mode, and a continuation of the game's main story.

Ubisoft also reiterated a "long term commitment to the future of the Division 2," more concretely promising a full Year 5 for the live service game.

The Division: Heartland is a standalone game from a separate studio, Red Storm Entertainment, and Ubisoft provided a brief first look at the game. Contrasting with the urban decay of the main series, Heartland will see players enacting their extralegal continuity of government mission in small town America. The game's creative director, Keith Evans, describes it as a "free-to-play survival action shooter," and it looks to sport similar third person shooter gameplay to the main games.

It will be interesting to see how Heartland differentiates itself from the Division 2. I'm particularly curious about its survival element, as well as what its multiplayer vs. solo play will look like. If you're interested in Heartland, you can sign up for upcoming playtests at the game's official website.

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[Welcome Valet2]

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[How to watch the Ubisoft Forward livestream]

Ubisoft is hosting its own games showcase once again and we're guaranteed some Assassin's Creed, among other Ubisoft game announcements. As things go these days, the existence of Assassin's Creed Mirage already leaked, and then was officially confirmed by Ubisoft, a week early. So we're definitely getting a proper reveal for the next AC game, which leaked reports have called a "return to basics" for the series.

Ubisoft's announcement calls that part of the show an "Assassin's Creed showcase offering a peek at the future of the franchise," which sounds like it may deal with more than Mirage. Perhaps we're due to hear about the live service game codenamed Assassin's Creed Infinity.

Here's what you need to know about when and where to watch Ubisoft Forward on Saturday so all the announcements don't sneak right past you.

How to watch Ubisoft Forward

The Ubisoft Forward livestream is scheduled for Saturday, September 10 at noon PT / 3 pm ET / 8 pm BST and you can watch it in the YouTube video embedded right above. You can also watch on Ubisoft's Twitch channel, where it will have Twitch Drops turned on to earn in-game rewards from a few games.

Ubisoft Forward premiere time: September 10, 2022

PST	EST	BST	CET	AEST
12 pm	3 pm	8 pm	9 pm	5 am (Sept 11)

In its announcement for the livestream event, Ubisoft also mentions "updates on upcoming games like Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope and Skull and Bones." The latter of which is finally docking on our machines on November 8 this year after years lost at development sea. An updated look at gameplay will be welcome as we approach its release date.

Beyond that, Ubisoft says it will be digging into the "latest seasons, characters, and content" for some of its live service games like For Honor, The Crew 2, Anno 1800, and Brawlhalla during the pre-show that begins 25 minutes prior to the official show start time.

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[Today's Wordle 448 answer and hint: Saturday, September 10]

You'll find everything you need to make today's Wordle gaming go as smoothly as possible right here, from a range of general tips and tricks to the answer to the September 10 (448) challenge under an easily accessed subheading.

I know it was mostly luck, but I like to think a little skill came into today's result too. After my opening guess I had one yellow to my name and nothing else, so the follow-up was pretty open—just about anything would've been a reasonable response. To my surprise the second go turned over a full row of greens. That was it—job done, time for a celebratory biscuit.

Wordle hint

Today's Wordle: A hint for Saturday, September 10

The solution to today's Wordle is all about height. Mountains, trees, elevated regions… even personal goals or standards can be described using this term. There's just one vowel today, so move on as soon as you've found it. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:

• A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants. 
• A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
• The solution may contain repeat letters.

There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank.

Wordle answer

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

What is the Wordle 448 answer?

Let's start your weekend with a win. The answer to the September 10 (448) Wordle is LOFTY.

Previous answers

Wordle archive: Which words have been used

The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh.

Here are some recent Wordle solutions:

• September 9: THEME
• September 8: CLASS
• September 7: LEERY
• September 6: TAUNT
• September 5: WHOOP
• September 4: INTER
• September 3: GULLY
• September 2: CHARM
• September 1: FUNGI
• August 31: PRIZE

Learn more about Wordle 

Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them.

You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns ️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. means you've got the right letter in the right spot.

You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer.

After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below.

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 

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[Welcome VM81]

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VM81 joined on the 09/09/2022.

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[One of Elden Ring's best choral songs wasn't sung by a proper choir]

Elden Ring's official soundtrack has been released on streaming services like Spotify today. The game's composer, Tsukasa Saito, shared some thoughts and development details to commemorate the occasion on the official PlayStation Blog.

The most fascinating tidbit to me had to do with the track "Song of Honor" that plays in Redmane Castle for the Radahn Festival. It's the haunting choral chant that plays during the event, when you're meeting your fellow warriors and listening to Slave Knight Gael lookalike, Jerren, give his rousing speech. I found it really helped set the mood, and it's a standout of the soundtrack for me.

The music for Elden Ring was recorded by the Budapest Film Orchestra, and Saito initially planned on having their dedicated choir sing for the track, but the composer had a better idea: "We realized that a gathering place for many mercenaries and soldiers wouldn't necessarily be filled with skillful singers." Saito continues, "We wanted to try a direction that wasn't specialized in vocal music, so as a hasty request, we asked the members of the brass section if they could perform the part for us."

That sort of lateral, out of the box thinking is something I appreciate from FromSoft's games more broadly, and I think it really paid off with "Song of Honor." It turns out the brass section of the Budapest Film Orchestra have got some pipes on them!

It's now easier than ever to pump some iron to the Godskin Apostles theme like the normal person you are, but this new addition to streaming services also comes with some bad news. It looks like Dark Souls' OST was removed from Spotify in North America as Elden Ring was added. No more openly weeping to "Gwyn, Lord of Cinder" at the weight room then. It's unclear if the removal of Dark Souls was intentional or permanent, and we've reached out to Bandai Namco for comment.

Just another reason to stock up on physical media. Besides, do you really want to see Spotify's Year Wrapped thing tell you your top genre is "Video Game Music" again?

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[Gloomwood is too good to play unfinished]

It's not often that I'm so immediately into a game that I follow its development as closely as possible, but that's the effect Gloomwood's demo had on me when it appeared on Steam in 2020. Good immersive sims only come around once every few years so I take what I can get, but that brief vertical slice convinced me that New Blood Interactive has something special here: a neo-victorian stealth game with the vibes of Bloodborne and the backstabs, shadow hopping, and constant vulnerability of Thief.

Now released in early access, I'm glad to say Gloomwood is shaping up to be great. New Blood has really nailed the basics—its opening levels are creepy, expansive spaces with multiple solutions and looming guards that are just the right amount of dumb. I love the lethality of my pointy cane sword, the click of the revolver as I check its ammo, and the satisfaction of stepping right past an unsuspecting goon in a pitch-black shadow.

What I don't love is that, right now, there's just not enough of it.

Sneak king

Gloomwood starts by throwing you in a nasty pit. You're an unnamed doctor (an "outsider," according to your captors) rotting away in a prison of fish guts. A shadowy figure quickly offers a means to escape and grab your gear, and that's essentially all the direction the game offers. From there context comes in scraps gathered from written notes and enemy dialogue.

There might have been some other interesting story bits shared by a blabbering guard, but if so, I was almost certainly distracted by tricky stealth encounters. Gloomwood is the rare stealth game that is happy to ding you for stepping too far into a patch of light or jogging when you should've been walking. It's a wake up call from modern stealth games like Dishonored, Watch Dogs, and Hitman that have trained me to feel basically invisible as long as I'm crouched. It's a good thing that Gloomwood includes its version of Thief's light meter—a ring always visible on the Doctor's hand that glows according to how noticeable you are.

The ring is a genius bit of immersive tech, but it's just one of Gloomwood's cool diegetic design choices. Possibly my favorite item in the game is the Doctor's briefcase which holds a grid-based inventory system. It sounds a bit silly to gush so hard about an inventory grid, but there's more to it than that.

(Image credit: New Blood Interactive)

Nearly every object that can be picked up lives in the briefcase as a 3D model, not a scribble of text on a list. To even see the inventory, the Doc needs enough space to set the case down in the world (either on the ground or a table). Time doesn't stop while fiddling in pockets, so something as simple as injecting a health syringe takes tactical consideration. Space is limited by grid size, but also by how good I am at inventory Tetris. At first I tried to keep a tidy case with a corner for throwables, a column for guns, and another for healing items, but within hours I'd let it turn to clutter (a fitting reflection of my actual desk). Even cooler is the ability to literally drag items out of the case and into the world as if the mouse is your hand.

I appreciate Gloomwood's commitment to the bit—the manual process of trashing objects one by one made me second guess later on if I really needed to carry another glass bottle when I already have three empty fish cans cluttering my case. Gloomwood shows just as little mercy when it comes to guns. The only way to see how much ammo's in the revolver is to hold R to open the chamber and count the bullets. This is cool as hell, except for the several times I wanted to check ammo only to realize that it's too dark to see the gun.

Appetizer

After my first playthrough I still have no idea what's going on in Gloomwood, but that made sense when I realized the three levels currently available are basically one big tutorial. Though the very first Fishery area is a perfect mix of multi-floor indoor spaces and outdoor exploration, the cave and cliffside areas that come after are noticeably sparser with fewer alternative routes. I hope later levels increase in complexity.

I was often distracted by the future during my Gloomwood playthrough. There's so much cool stuff going in the first few hours that the frequent reminders of its unfinished state grew to be annoying—the most overt, immersion-breaking example being a house in the third area that teases an encounter with a scary beast only to be greeted with a sealed door that says "under development."

(Image credit: New Blood Interactive)

The difficulty options are also too limited. There are normal and hard presets right now, but I really want to tailor the rules to my liking. The first thing I'd turn off is Gloomwood's strict checkpointing that only allows saving at specific safe rooms. Call me a normie, but no stealth game is complete without quick save/load keys.

Just as I was starting to get all the cool stuff like the shotgun and the multipurpose Undertaker pistol, it was already over. For now the town of Gloomwood visible in the distance is just decoration. Bummer!

I think this is a pacing problem that's unavoidable until there's more Gloomwood to play. It's good as-is, but unless you're truly desperate for an immersive sim fix, you're better off waiting until it's all out, which is exactly what I intend to do now. New Blood estimates that'll be "a year or two at least." Worth the wait, I reckon.

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[Welcome kizaki]

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kizaki joined on the 09/09/2022.

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[Meta axes internal team responsible for asking 'are we the baddies?']

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Meta has disbanded its internal "Responsible Innovation" team. The 20+ member group included employees of various specializations and backgrounds, including ethicists, and was tasked with investigating and responding to ethical concerns related to Meta's products. One example cited by the WSJ was how it advised Facebook Dating to not include a race filter as part of its services.

The Responsible Innovation team seems to have been established in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election, and has been active for several years. In 2021, Facebook VP Margaret Gould Stewart articulated something of a mission statement for the team titled "Breadth & depth: Why I'm optimistic about Facebook's Responsible Innovation efforts."

"These tools have generated a lot of good in the world," Stewart wrote of Meta's products, "but their very power requires a deep sense of responsibility and a commitment to making the most ethically responsible decisions possible, every day."

Meta has noted that most of the employees from the team will continue doing similar work in other departments. A Meta spokesperson told the WSJ that future work of this nature would be more "issue-specific."

Even with that taken into account, Meta strikes me as a company that could use more ethicists at every level. Meta's biggest products, Facebook and Instagram, have had far-reaching social consequences beyond their initial purviews.

Facebook's role in warping individuals' perception of reality through the content it algorithmically determines they want to see is well documented, with a 2021 Washington Post story noting that "news publishers known for putting out misinformation got six times the amount of likes, shares, and interactions on the platform as did trustworthy news sources" during the 2020 US presidential election.

According to Reuters, Meta is still facing a class action lawsuit from Rohingya refugees over the platform's sluggish response to hate speech and misinformation spread about the ethnic group. In 2017, Myanmar's military perpetrated a genocide against the Rohingya, one that was spurred on by hate speech hosted on Facebook, including sock puppet accounts set up by elements of Myanmar's military.

A 2021 report by the Wall Street Journal said that Meta's own internal documents reveal that it has been aware for some time of the staggering psychological toll Instagram can have on young people, especially teenage girls. One example was an internal Meta survey of teenage Instagram users which revealed that 40% of those who reported feeling unattractive attributed those feelings to the app.

Meta seems like a company in desperate need of a stronger Responsible Innovation team, all things considered. That's likely not in the cards from a fiscal perspective as the company loses $1 billion a month on its metaverse pivot-leading Reality Labs division. At least we can still get together and have a big laugh over that silly selfie Zuckerberg posted, even as the billionaire and aspiring mixed martial artist has already had his digital avatar thoroughly yassified. 

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[Official Steam Deck repair centers are now open]

Valve delivered good news today for Steam Deck owners who aren't sure what they'll do if they end up breaking their precious portable gaming machines: Official Steam Deck repair centers are now open.

"If you encounter an issue and need to send your Steam Deck for repair or replacement, devices will now go to one of our repair centers," Valve said. "Once there, our team will diagnose the device, repair if needed, then ship the fixed unit back to you.

"Repairs for issues covered by warranty are free of charge. If a Steam Deck comes in that is not covered by warranty, our team will reach out and offer to repair the device for a fee (if a repair is possible). This out-of-warranty repair service is completely optional, and you can ask for your device back if you prefer."

Valve laid out a couple of scenarios in which Steam Deck owners might find themselves in order to illustrate the sorts of things that are covered under warranty—intermittent button problems ("rare, but it sometimes happens"), which would be diagnosed, fixed, tested, and shipped back at no charge—and those that are not: "My dog chewed off my thumbsticks," which can be diagnosed, fixed, and shipped back to you, but you're gonna pay for it. That's fair, I think.

For those who prefer the DIY approach, Valve noted that iFixit continues to offer a range of replacement parts, repair kits, and guides. For a lot of Steam Deck owners, that will likely be the avenue of choice: A Steam Deck-owning friend of mine recently raved about the unit's ease of access and use of standard components, which makes it (relatively) easy to swap parts around. (He's the kind of guy who gets his hands on extremely expensive pieces of equipment and immediately tears them apart to see how he can make them "better," so he knows about such things.)

This out of warranty paid repair service is completely optional, and if you want to repair your Deck yourself (via @iFixit parts and guides, for instance), that's up to you! More details here: https://t.co/e0q4ytqQ9VSeptember 9, 2022

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"We're glad to get this service up and running," Valve said. "Most folks won't ever need to use it, but for those of you that do, we want to make sure you're taken care of."

If you have a Steam Deck in need of assistance and want to take advantage of Valve's repair centers, you can start the wheels turning by contact Steam Support.

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[Amy Hennig's upcoming Marvel game will feature Captain America and Black Panther in World War 2]

Amy Hennig's Skydance New Media announced in October 2021 that it was working on a new Marvel game, and during today's Disney and Marvel Games Showcase we finally got our first look at it—sadly, a very limited look.

We don't even get a title out of the teaser, just a glimpse at the heroes and setting: Captain America and Black Panther, who will apparently butt heads with Hydra during World War 2. Based on the promo art, we could be throwing down with Marvel's perennial bad guys in Paris, and perhaps even Wakanda.

Skydance New Media described the game in very slightly more detail as a "narrative-driven, ensemble adventure game" set during the Second World War, featuring four playable characters who will appear at different points in the story: "A young Steve Rogers, aka Captain America; Azzuri, T;Challa's grandfather and the WWII-era Black Panther; Gabriel Jones, a US soldier and member of the Howling Commandos; and Nanali, leader of the fledgling Wakandan Spy Network."

"We’re so grateful for all the enthusiasm and support we’ve received from fans, and we’re thrilled to finally unveil a first glimpse of the game during this year’s D23 Expo," Hennig said. "Marvel has been an incredible partner throughout the creative process as we develop an original story and build an exciting new team of characters. We hope fans are intrigued by this sneak peek, and we’re excited to share more down the road."

The game description notes that Hennig, who joined Skydance Interactive in 2019, heads up the studio, but it doesn't mention her specific role in the creation of this game. She's best known for heading up the development of the Uncharted series prior to parting ways with Naughty Dog and joining Electronic Arts in 2014, and she'll presumably take on a similar role for this Marvel project. But it's not the only iron she has in the fire: Earlier this year Hennig announced that she's also working on a new Star Wars game, which—much like this Marvel project—will be "a narrative-driven, action-adventure game featuring an original story in the Star Wars galaxy."

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[Midnight Suns is back on track with a new December release date]

Marvel's Midnight Suns has had a rocky year. The superhero-meets-XCOM-meets-card-game from Firaxis was meant to be out in March, but ended up delayed to October, and then to an unspecified time in publisher 2K's fiscal year ending March 2023. But now it looks like it'll squeak into this year after all: a new trailer for Midnight Suns during Disney's D23 expo dropped a fresh release date of December 2, 2022.

The trailer above shows familiar heroes, including Blade, Spider-Man and Wolverine in combat, and a few snippets of what you'll get up to in between missions, including chatting with other members of your squad. You'll create your own character in Midnight Suns, but most if not all of the big names from the MCU films seem to be here: Iron Man, Captain America and Dr. Strange show up in the trailer, too. 

I have to say that I'm unconvinced by the pre-order bonus Midnight Suns is shilling at the end of that trailer—I really don't need Dr. Strange's red Defenders skin, thank you. But I'm still curious about Midnight Suns, especially after the extra time it's taken Firaxis to get it out the door.

Aesthetically it feels like all the characters are stuck wearing the ugly 2003 costumes from some failed comic crossover, but Firaxis trying its hand at blending an RPG and a strategy game that's "the complete opposite of XCOM" sure seems like it'll do at least a few things that surprise me.

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