It’s also one of the biggest departures from tried-and-tested expansion formulas for The Sims 4 in recent years. With a lot of new features and no previous-gen version of the expansion to act as a touchstone, it’s easy for even experienced Sims players to feel like they’re starting from scratch learning completely new mechanics. Tying a lot of these disparate elements - from the Freegan trait, new Civil Design and Freelance Crafting careers and a secondary currency called Bits & Pieces - together is the new Fabrication skill....

That’s in just the first week of going on sale on Steam. Loop Hero has an average user playtime of 12 hours. Its brilliant soundtrack is the fastest-selling in publisher Devolver Digital’s history. “Thank you all for your support and excitement for Loop Hero from all of us at Four Quarters!” the developer said. “Right now we’re working on patches with quality-of-life updates you all asked for, including a system for saving during expeditions, new speed settings, and a deck of traits gained from bosses!...

Hundreds of women will be featured on the Women’s History Month shelf on the front page of the platform, showcasing a diverse range of talented streamers. A social media campaign is also taking place using the hashtag #ItsNotTwitchWithout @CreatorName to further shout out women creators. Elsewhere, a number of events are taking place across the platform. Speedrunning community The Frame Fatales will be celebrating women in gaming on 26th and 27th March with the Month Mini Marathon....

Stats site Twitchtracker shows around a million fewer viewers were tuned into the streaming giant during its daily peak yesterday, when the platform’s average peak of 4.5 million concurrent viewers sat at around 3.5 million instead. Many streamers voiced their support for the protest yesterday, although there was squabbling among some channels which did continue to broadcast for various reasons, including some seemingly taking advantage of big names being offline....

Usernames with abusive terms are often used to harass streamers, particularly those from minority communities. Twitch has already removed many reported offensive names, but the new guidelines will set a stronger standard “to cultivate a diverse, inclusive global community on Twitch”, says a blog post on the policy. In addition to names containing hate speech, threats of violence, and personally identifiable information, Twitch will also remove reported usernames that reference sexual acts, arousal, fluids, or genitalia, as well as references to hard drugs (excluding alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana)....

As revealed in court documents (and reported by Vice), police officers Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell were fired for “wilfully abdicating their duty to assist a commanding officer’s response to a robbery in progress and playing a Pokémon mobile game while on duty.” The incident occurred in an LA mall in April 2017. A patrol supervisor asked Lozano and Mitchell to respond to an apparent robbery, but they ignored the call and instead ventured off to catch a Snorlax....

the traveller sings in his heart: I return from Syria neither as living nor as dead but as a scudding cloud that lightens the butterfly’s burden upon my uprooted soul’ At the antipodes of taste and good judgement lie the responses of the Parisian Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) and of Russian indie developers Cats Who Play. The former has used the Steam platform to freely distribute a virtual reality art installation created by Ubisoft as part of the 2018 exhibition Cités Millénaires as Age-Old Cities VR....

Since its release at the start of the year, Vampire Survivors has proven incredibly popular. It’s the third highest rated game on Steam and one of the most downloaded games on Steam Deck. The actual content in the release is still under wraps, but will be revealed advent calendar style from 7th October. Watch on YouTube Vampire Survivors - v1.0 Release Date Announcement What has been revealed so far are tweaks to balance, new achievements to unlock, and new language options, so the game will be playable in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Korean, and Japanese....

Based in the Pacific, the map will launch in the weeks following the release of Call of Duty: Vanguard. Though Warzone’s new map will be free for all players, those playing Vanguard will have 24 hours early access. Before that, as if the arrival of WW2 bunkers and Vanguard weapons weren’t enough this season, Warzone’s current map Verdansk will have several events teasing the arrival of Caldara. On this page: As for the Warzone Pacific map Caldera release time, it’ll be available for everyone at the following times:...

The bumper stream is set to last 50 minutes, so strap yourself in for plenty of information on the next six months of Nintendo Switch launches - New Pokémon Snap, Bravely Default 2, Monster Hunter… and hopefully some surprises. We’re due to hear about the next character for Super Smash Bros. (Birdo, your time has come), and hopefully find out a bit more about Nintendo’s plans for The Legend of Zelda’s 35th anniversary....

A press release accompanying today’s trailer promises a dramatic comedy story and 2D platforming, but it’s the game’s seamless transitions between dimensions which truly catch the eye. “Can’t reach a ledge? Bam! Switch worlds mid-air. Afraid of sliding around an icy environment? Alternate to another universe for firmer ground!” the game’s blurb reads. “Just be careful when messing with gravity…” What Lies in the Multiverse is due for launch early next year on PC, PlayStation, Switch and Xbox....

I still see Sorcery!’s gorgeous world maps in my mind - maps I now know are drawn by the superbly talented Mike Schley; I still hear Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis in my ears; and, perhaps more importantly, I still think about the situations the game presented me with - the unpredictability of their outcomes, the strangeness of the encounters, and the wonderfully sobering realisation the game wasn’t afraid to kill me for taking a wrong turn....

With both games’ maps and minimaps obscured with countless icons, a lack of pathfinding, and no meaningful landmarks, navigation in Pokémon’s ninth generation is, thus far, a nightmare. While this is partly down to Game Freak’s inexperience with open world games, it’s also part of a growing trend in the industry. Navigation aids, quest logs, objective markers - aspects of gaming with which we’re so familiar - are disappearing. Where once studios like Bethesda and Ubisoft drowned us in wayfinding, now its relative absence is disadvantageous to players....

The New Order takes players to an alternate universe 1960s. Here, you experience “storming a beachfront fortress on the Baltic coast, underwater exploration, player-controlled Nazi war machines, and much more”. On its release, Eurogamer gave Wolfenstein: The New Order a 6/10. “Wolfenstein: The New Order has moments where it tries to remind you that war’s chief consequence is suffering,” Paul Dean wrote in his review. “Among its furious gunfights and science-fiction slaughter, it introduces reflection, romance, sadness and sentimentality....

For the uninitiated, the aim of Wordle is to work out a daily five-letter word within six guesses. The fewer the guesses, the better - and if you fail to guess it at all, you’ll break your streak. The latter is why working out today’s Wordle answer is such a priority, as players pride themselves on keeping their streak going. So why gamble on a risky final guess when you can learn a few clues and, failing that, get the definitive answer?...

For the uninitiated, the aim of Wordle is to work out a daily five-letter word within six guesses. The fewer the guesses, the better - and if you fail to guess it at all, you’ll break your streak. The latter is why working out today’s Wordle answer is such a priority, as players pride themselves on keeping their streak going. So why gamble on a risky final guess when you can learn a few clues and, failing that, get the definitive answer?...

For the uninitiated, the aim of Wordle is to work out a daily five-letter word within six guesses. The fewer the guesses, the better - and if you fail to guess it at all, you’ll break your streak. The latter is why working out today’s Wordle answer is such a priority, as players pride themselves on keeping their streak going. So why gamble on a risky final guess when you can learn a few clues and, failing that, get the definitive answer?...

For the uninitiated, the aim of Wordle is to work out a daily five-letter word within six guesses. The fewer the guesses, the better - and if you fail to guess it at all, you’ll break your streak. The latter is why working out today’s Wordle answer is such a priority, as players pride themselves on keeping their streak going. So why gamble on a risky final guess when you can learn a few clues and, failing that, get the definitive answer?...

Developer Blizzard teases that players should “prepare to step into the brink and face Zovaal, the elusive Jailer and ruler of the Maw in Shadowlands before he rewrites the very rules of reality”. The latest update on the game’s official website doesn’t give much else away, but it does confirm Shadowlands’ PvP content will end on 21st February, after which it will “no longer be possible” to earn PvP seasonal rewards, titles, or rankings....

The news was part of a statement from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer as the company acquires Activision Blizzard. Once the takeover deal closes, both new and old Activision Blizzard games will be added to the service, which will increase its value for money considerably. “We also announced today that Game Pass now has more than 25 million subscribers. As always, we look forward to continuing to add more value and more great games to Game Pass,” says Spencer....