It's a great week for city builders

I was somewhere around Whiterun on the edge of Fort Greymoor when the skooma began to take hold. Things became washed-out and smeary, and then there was two of everything including me and my pet elytra—an odd kind of mantis-looking bug who I realized, seeing two of the bizarre insect beside me, probably wasn't the best companion to bring on a 10-skooma bender.

Nearly two decades on from release, Everquest 2 got a new system last month. MMOBomb reports that the devs at Daybreak introduced the "Personal Treasure Unlocker," which would let players reset the loot lockout timers on the game's bosses, effectively giving anyone with money as many shots at rare drops as they could stomach. Fans were not pleased. They were so displeased, in fact, that Daybreak axed the system in the same month it announced it.

Farewell then, E3. The announcement that E3 2023 has been cancelled is, make no mistake, the final act for what was until very recently gaming's showpiece event: The big summer extravaganza, the royal rumble where all the major platform-holders and publishers were crammed into the same space for a few days and had to directly compete with one another. This cannot be overstated: These companies alternately loved and hated the annual totting up of who had 'won', as well they might after having paid millions for the privilege.

The Great War: Western Front is not a real-time strategy game for perfectionists. World War I was infamously attritional, claiming the lives of 40 million civilians and military personnel. So, when you sound the whistle and send your boys over the top, dozens of them will be gunned down in the hellish muck of no man's land, with machine gun emplacements able to casually eradicate whole companies in a matter of seconds.

City builder fans have a lot of reasons to be happy these days—we're in a real boom at the moment, with lots of exciting-looking city builders(opens in new tab) planned for this year including the recently announced Cities: Skylines 2. Just look at what's coming this week: there are three (potentially four, really) new city builders coming to Steam just on Wednesday, April 5. That's a lot of builders crammed into the same day! And they all have different styles and represent different takes on the city building genre, from survival to puzzle to strategy and tower-defense.

You know Ashley? From Resident Evil 4? She's a mouse now. Yeah, I don't really get it either, but you need to clear any images you have of the President's daughter as an actual human woman from your mind, because the internet has decided she's an adorable, cheese-loving rodent no taller than your ankles, and now Capcom has acknowledged it too. I can only imagine a patch to the game will be forthcoming in the next few weeks.