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Perhaps the Last Of Us TV show on HBO getting it right was the dawn of a new era of good TV based on video games, but I still approach each adaptation with trepidation. That includes Amazon's Fallout series from Westworld and Person Of Interest writer/director Jonathan Nolan, which just got its first trailer.

Stardew Valley developer Eric Barone, also known as ConcernedApe, says he is currently in "(self-imposed) extreme crunch mode" while working on the pastoral life sim's 1.6 update. When asked what motivates him to keep working on the already-beloved game, Barone called Stardew his "life's work."

Cyberpunk 2077 is finally getting the feature I most crave from every open world game: public transport. Update 2.1, due for release next week, is adding a fully-functioning metro system of the sort seen in Cyberpunk 2077's 2018 cinematic trailer - as well as new hangouts with your romantic pals, repeatable car races, and new accessibility settings.

Time to open the second door on our advent calendar. No doubt some of you will argue this entry is some kind of cheat, but this is our treehouse and you're wrong.

At long last, it is winter. All this week there's been a definite chill in the air that wasn't there before. No matter how many blankets I pile on top of my knees, it hangs there lurking, breathing down my neck, extending its icy mitts down my fingers until they're too frosty to carry on typing. I sometimes worry the cold will penetrate my very soul, a harbinger of something more sinister and oppressive. Oh wait. False alarm. It's just the cat giving me the evils out the corner of my eye because I've stolen their favourite woolen nap pillow. Nothing to worry about. Anyway! What are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on from beneath our duvets.

It's rare to see gaming monitors available for under $100, but that's exactly what Best Buy are offering at the moment. You can pick up an LG 24-inch IPS monitor with a 1080p resolution and 100Hz refresh rate for just $80 after a $90 reduction.

The NZXT H1 is a brilliant small form factor PC case that vaguely resembles the Xbox Series X, a portrait orientation design that minimises its footprint. This case originally retailed for $400, but today it's available for $200 from Best Buy. That's an excellent deal for a well-reviewed SFF PC case that also includes a 140mm AiO, a 92mm fan, a PCIe 4.0 riser cable and a 750W SFX power supply.

Ark: Survival Evolved remake Ark: Survival Ascended has seen its cross-platform PVP multiplayer temporarily turned off in an effort to crack down on PC cheaters.

Fortnite’s devouring of all pop culture into its gigantic maw continues apace, as leaks suggest that next on the menu for the IP-gobbling battle royale shooter is Metal Gear Solid’s Solid Snake and Family Guy’s Peter Griffin. (Don’t worry, The Maw is safe from the maw, for now.)

After offering up some of their accessibility inventions for free a couple of years ago - including the context-aware ping system seen in Apex Legends and code for a colourblindness tool - Electronic Arts are opening up even more of their accessibility features for anyone to use.

Surprise, surprise: Capcom are working on another Resident Evil remake in their successful series of ground-up rebuilds for the survival-horror franchise. As for whether we’ll barrel straight into Resident Evil 5 from this year’s RE4 Remake or jump back to Zero or even, uh, sideways to Code Veronica? They won’t say - yet.

With apologies to Bithell Games for the two-in-a-row smackdown of games they released this year, the next entry on my list of good things that didn't quite make my personal GOTY rankings in 2023 is none other than The Banished Vault. I'll put my hands up here - I really did intend to review this one properly when it came out back in July, and I regret never quite getting round to it. Time, as ever, escaped me in the run-up to Gamescom, but it was also one of the first games in a while where I felt I wasn't quite equipped to do it justice.

The first GTA 6 trailer will release on 5th December at 9am ET, 2pm GMT and 6am PT, Rockstar have announced. What's more, they've shared around the first piece of GTA 6 art. It's got palm trees in it. Seagulls too.

Let's open the first door of this year's calendar. Lock, load, and bring a buddy.

Let's get ready ready, let's get ready ready, let's get ready to Christmas! Is it just me, or did 2023 seem like it had more games than ever before? But look, don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened - and make the smile extra big, because, as we do basically every year, the RPS staff have worked hard (read: voted and bickered) to bring you our games of the year in beautiful, numerical form. Digitally open a new door each day and enjoy the magnificent The RPS Advent Calendar 2023!

I don't drive myself, and while that's mostly because I can't afford a car, don't really need one for work and have wibbly environmentalist sensibilities, it's also because the experience of driving, for me, has been thoroughly spoiled by videogames. I mean, just look at this trailer for Ironwood's Vandemeerian vehicle survival roguelike Pacific Drive. How am I supposed to be satisfied with some stupid road after watching that? What's the point of cars if there are no floating cryptid lifeforms, inexplicable walls of energy or lost research facilities involved?

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, previously described by Ed as "an exciting action-RPG mix of Elden Ring and God Of War" has a new trailer - and cat-lovers, you are in for a treat, because this game has a cat called Enki which you can use as a magic grappling hook and a handy source of lightning for your groundpounds. Enki has big cute ears and a beaver's tail, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's related to one of those awful, many-limbed gods Flintlock's protagonist Nor Vanek is trying to slay.

I'm sorry, it's my first time writing about Flintlock, and I realise the "OMG it has a cat!" ship has probably long since sailed. Only hang on, Ed thinks Enki is a squirrel, while Graham thinks it's a dog. Which of us is correct? Developer A44 Games describe Enki as "fox-like", further muddying the waters. There's only one thing for it: you'll have to watch the video and decide for yourself.

Homeworld 3 will launch on March 8th 2024, completing a development journey that began with crowdfunding back in 2019. To give some insight into that journey, developers Blackbird are going to release a documentary this December, a clip from which you'll find below.

Dwarf Fortress is best known as a colony sim, but the wonderfully detailed fantasy world's it generates can be played in different ways. Adventure mode is a procedurally generated RPG campaign in which you control just a single character, and it's now on its way to Kitfox's DF-with-graphics Steam release in April 2024.

I am late to walk the Path of Exile. Very late: the evergreen free-to-play dark fantasy action-RPG launched literal generations ago in 2013, the heyday of Bioshock Infinite and GTA 5. (It's still arguably the heyday of GTA 5. Bioshock Infinite, not so much.) It's my understanding that New Zealand-based developer Grinding Gears have released approximately one bazillion Path of Exile updates and expansions in the decade since, the latest of which, Affliction, is briefly detailed in a boxout down the page.

I am not your guy for blow-by-blow descriptions of what Affliction adds to Path of Exile. My cautious summary would be: lots of terrifying trees, and lots of modifiers. I am, however, your guy for a newcomer's snapshot verdict on the sequel ahead of the closed Path of Exile 2 beta on 7th June 2024. In a twist so far-fetched they might just pull it off, the new game is designed both for returning players and newcomers, and I think a lot of that is epitomised by the just-announced Mercenary class, which reflects game director Jonathan Rogers's desire to create combat mechanics that are at once more involved and more inviting.

Tonight's PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted stream may have been mostly focused on games we already knew about, but there were a couple of surprises hidden away in there, too. One of them was Spine, an upcoming action game that asks the question: what if Sifu also had guns? The new gameplay trailer shows street artist heroine Redline punching, kicking and shooting her way through a cyberpunk-themed world of thugs and armoured guards, and her fancy footwork and the equally agile camera framing looks like it could be quite the combo when it eventually comes out in 2025. Alas, the trailer doesn't give away much else, but I spoke to developers Nekki ahead of tonight's showcase to find more about it, and how it's taking direct inspiration from Sifu and John Wick to become the next big cinematic beat 'em up.

Hellish political strategy Solium Infernum will launch into Steam Early Access on February 14th. The news was announced with a trailer that explains its demon scheming and manouvering, as well as its asynchronous multiplayer - of which there will be a test in early 2024.

Islands Of Insight was described to me by Katharine earlier as "Talos Principle: The MMO", and yep, that seems about right. It's a "shared world" puzzle game with toga-wearing characters and architecture seemingly littered with marble columns. It also now has a release window of February 2024 and a new trailer, below.

Larian have released Baldur's Gate 3 patch 5, which they're calling the fantasy RPG's "most feature-filled" update so far, and glancing over the patch notes, it's hard to disagree. It's not just about shaving the cats, this time: the standout additions and fixes include a new story epilogue, two new modes, and some performance boosts aimed specifically at the game's ever-divisive third act.

This week on The Electronic Wireless Show podcast, we get a little bit removed from the rails, as it were. Things aren't looking great for Starfield - or at least, they're looking mixed, as in the Steam reviews, and verified but nameless devs are responding to negative reviews with comments that are basically like "no, our space game is fun and you're playing it wrong". We laugh about this (but also discuss the role of Steam reviews and devs replying to them). As well as that, the lads have been playing, well, the same sort of stuff this week, James brings us talk of mini PCs, and Nate makes us play Dracula or Russell Crowe. Extremely normal.

Capcom's fantasy action-RPG Dragon's Dogma 2 will sell for $69.99 - $70, if you disregard the usual "deduct one cent to fool silly left-to-right readers into thinking it's significantly cheaper" gambit - when it releases in March 2024. If you're in the UK, the figure is currently £53.98 on Steam. It's the first time Capcom have sold the base edition of a game for $70 in the US of A, and follows comments this September from a Capcom executive that videogames are priced "too low" these days, based on how much games cost to make.

Rome wasn't built in a day, but in sci-fi strategy game Stellaris Nexus, you can found, expand and fritter away a whole intergalactic empire in around an hour. In the case of my multiplayer hands-on, that empire was the Ix'Idar, a race of burrowing insect critters with a unique resource - pheromones. Boldly disregarding the PR's gentle advice that I start with an easier-to-master race, I set out to swarm the galaxy and immediately found myself at the bottom of the victory or "Succession" point scoreboard, with one player picking off my planets by means of espionage, while others stomped my fleets of stargrubs flat in no-nonsense space combat.

I did manage to briefly take possession of the titular Nexus, a throneworld which awards beaucoup Succession points to its owner, but it turns out fixating on the Nexus is a great way to set yourself up for a midgame dogpile - you pour resources into capturing it, sacrifice half your fleet to the first invader, then lose it all to the second. With my initially bountiful dominions rudely shrunk to a smattering of isolated planets, I took the coward's way out of the press event and said I had to be going because I had other work to attend to. I didn't at all! I just wanted to go and cry in the toilet. Alas for the Ix'Idar - not so much "lions led by donkeys" as an antfarm in the hands of a wilful toddler.

TimeSplitters studio Free Radical could be closed before Christmas, megacorp owner Embracer has reportedly told staff, as dozens of staff at the UK studio are said to be looking for new roles.

Cult of the Lamb devs Massive Monster seem to be staying true to their promise to bring a ‘sex update’ to the cutesy cultist roguelite next year, after their promise to satisfy thirsty fans ended up exploding more quickly than expected.

Troubled developers Creative Assembly will double-down on their strength in making offline real-time strategy games, following their failed attempt to break into the competitive shooter market with extraction FPS Hyenas.