The Garden Path begins with a message asking you to be careful when foraging plants in the real world and, as someone who spent their teenage years living in the middle of nowhere, trust me when I say this is good advice. (Sometimes you have to make your own fun, but eating too much marsh samphire can churn your stomach.) It's also fitting advice from a game where foraging plays a major role in cultivating your garden. You'll venture out into the storybook-styled wildness, snipping plant cuttings or collecting flower buds, before finding the right place to plant your seedlings and watch them grow.

Though, even with this knowledge in mind, the first hours of The Garden Path do feel a little directionless. Sure a tutorial will pop up occasionally and there's a hint about a mysterious note, but neither provide much overall guidance; the tutorial only appears when you encounter a relevant mechanic and the note being, well, a mystery. Due to this, I felt more like I was lost in the woods rather than exploring them when I first arrived in the garden, so I decided to craft my own path. In my inventory lay a pair of broken secateurs and on my map sat three question marks, making my quest one of investigating these three locations to see if any held the answer to fixing my tool.

It didn't take long to reach my first location where I met Augustus - a bear who happens to be a park ranger, which is odd considering I always thought bears like to eat those. Maybe Augustus is a vegetarian. Thankfully, it was a good thing I ran into Augustus because he had the other half of my secateurs and, for the price of some bracken sprigs, he helpfully fixed them! From there I ventured further into the garden where I met Larto, a buffalo who taught me how to fish, and Thom (strong Tom Bombadil vibes here) who sells seeds.

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The Nintendo Direct for June 2024 has been and gone! Sure we had to wait over a month (and were then only given 24 hours notice, classic Nintendo), but it was worth it. Well worth it subjectively, I'm sure there are some disappointment people out there. (Look, we'd all like to play Silksong. Hopefully it will be out next year. Or the year after that...) Anyways, in case you missed June 2024's Nintendo Direct or simply want to revisit the announcements - look no further as you'll find it all below.

The Nintendo Direct started in pure Nintendo fashion with Mario and Luigi Brothership. We got an excellent look at the cel-shaded style graphics, combat and all the platforming fun this game has in store for you.

Mario and Luigi will be released on the Nintendo Switch on 7th November 2024.

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The Ubisoft Forward 2024 showcase has drawn to close. Don't worry if you missed it, though, as we're about to go over everything which made an appearance during the showcase. From major releases to updates for existing titles to Assassin's Creed - because this is Ubisoft Forward and there has to be Assassin's Creed news. It's the law.

You'll find all of the announcements below, along with their accompanying trailers, for everything shown during Ubisoft Forward 2024.

While the Ubisoft Forward 2024 pre-show actually began with a dicussion about Skull and Bones water mechanics, the first proper game trailer we got was for Rocksmith+, a game designed to teach you how to play the guitar. Well, it can now also teach you how to play the piano. You can try RockSmith+ for free on PlayStation 4 and 5.

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The Xbox Games Showcase and Black Ops 6 Direct 2024 is over! As usual we gained some insight into upcoming Xbox titles through a selection of new reveals and updates for released titles. Much like last year with Starfield, the showcase ended with an extended look at one special game - and this time it was Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

Alongside Black Ops 6, we also got a look at Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, Avowed, Dragon Age: The Veilguard and South of Midnight. And, as you'd expect, many of the games shown are going to be available from Game Pass from day one. Now, let's stop messing about and get the trailers started!

The Xbox Game Showcase began with the campaign trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Set in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War, it promises to bring guns, action, conspiracies and motorbikes (at least in the cutscenes.)

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Summer Game Fest 2024's opening livestream has come to a close after bringing us trailers for upcoming games, updates for released titles and a couple of surprises too! No fear if you missed the showcase though as below you'll find everything announced during Summer Game Fest 2024.

Before we get started though - no, there was no new GTA 6 trailer. Sorry, nothing I can do about that. With that out of the way, let's take a look at what did make an appearance.

Summer Game Fest began with Lego Horizon Adventures showing off how you can play as Aloy from the Horizon series and transform the robotic wastelands into a Lego paradise. It will arrive on PC, PlayStation 5 and even Nintendo Switch during "holiday" 2024.

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Memory is one of the mind's greatest mysteries. There's no consensus on how it works or what memories even are. I once read about how a memory could simply be a recollection of the last time you thought about that memory. It struck me as being a very sorrowful idea, and one that combines neatly with a personal belief: true death is when the last person who remembers you dies. Sure, someone can read your name on a gravestone, but it's that living memory which is truly you, and it's oddly terrifying to think it could be a fabrication. Even as I write this, though, I'm sure you can find a scientific paper which disagrees with the theory. It's like we all have a puzzle box trapped inside our heads but, since our minds are unique, every solution is different.

One thing is true though: unlike a computer, we can't simply switch out our brain when it's running out of space. Instead, it feels like our memories are crammed together, fighting for attention, until the weakest start to dissolve. Slivers might remain - a name without a face, a walk on the beach with a shadowy companion, a house lacking an address - but over time even those might begin to fade. Even if you try to hoard all those precious memories, there's a chance every recall in unknowingly erasing something important. It's this dance of memory loss and recall that the game No Case Should Remain Unsolved uses to craft its story.

A text-based detective game, No Case Should Remain Unsolved follows the retired Senior Inspector Jean Gyeong, who finds herself reexamining the disappearance of a girl named Seowan. Rather than investigating new evidence, though, Gyeong can only relive her memories of interviewing three suspects, Seowan's parents and the man who confessed to the kidnapping. Though the gameplay does heavily focus on reading the dialogue, there is a point-and-click element as you organise it by speaker and timeline. While time has broken these conversations down into mere fragments, within the pieces lie words which unlock lost sections of the interviews themselves. These recovered memories can have an odd tone though; some lack context, referring to events seemingly unconnected to the case, and others sound like they're being spoken by another person entirely. Slowly, it becomes clear the story of Seowan's disappearance reaches far beyond the initial three suspects.

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The Xbox Partner Preview showcase offered us a look at a number of the third-party games heading to Xbox Series X/S this year. We were shown a variety of trailers during the 30-minute presentation, including a taste of the Japanese mythology inspried Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess and the announcement of The Sinking City 2.

Whether you missed the presentation or want to revisit one of the spotlighted titles, there's a roundup of everything shown during the Xbox Partner Preview showcase below.

The showcase began with a look at Unknown 9: Awakening from Reflector and Bandai Namco. This body-hopping adventure will be arriving in the summer of 2024. Unknown 9: Awakening has a very strong Assassin's Creed vibe, so, if you're an Assassin's fan, this might be one for you.

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Nintendo's February Direct Partner Showcase has come and gone. This presentation was focused around third-party games so, as expected, there was no news on any homegrown Nintendo titles or the Switch 2's expected arrival in early 2025. However, the broadcast was still full of annoucements for games headed to Nintendo Switch from other publishers over the coming six months. Here's a roundup of everything which appeared during the 25-minute show.

Fresh from Microsoft's confirmation it was bringing more of its Xbox console exclusives to other platforms, the show began with a look at Obsidian's Grounded - where you have to explore a massive garden as a tiny human. Grounded will support online cross-platform multiplayer on Switch when it's released on 16th April.

After this, we entered the dying world of Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist. You take on the role of Lilac as she explores the landscape alongside a homunculus (Fullmetal Alchemist vibes anyone?). Ender Magnolia Bloom will be released on the Nintendo Switch later this year.

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I've always found the concept of immortality to be horrific. How, as the years churn by, new memories and experiences drown the ones which lie at the foundations of your personality, eroding them until a new person inhabits your skin. You are not yourself anymore. Vampire mythology adds a physical stake to this curse - to be a vampire is to be a monster in body and appetite, but whether you become one in spirit is up to you. Do you try to preserve your humanity or indulge in the hedonism your new form makes so easy? Or become a creature trapped between the two? It’s these questions Cabernet, an upcoming narrative RPG, seeks to explore through its protagonist Liza - recently deceased.

While Cabernet may begin with Liza's funeral, she doesn’t truly comprehend her new vampiric nature until witnessing a fellow creature of the night transform into a bat. From here on, the outlook she takes on her undead existence is in your hands, with many of the dialogue choices and actions Liza can take raising either her humanity or nihilism metre. The differentiation between the two is clear: speaking honestly and treating people kindly increases her humanity as you try to preserve the person Liza once was, while revelling in her new powers and treating humans as mere playthings sees Liza embracing the darkest aspects of being a vampire and, in return, raises her nihilism.

The impact of Liza's choice - on both her and those around her - is clear even in the short demo. One vampire asks Liza whether her new status as a vampire has changed her view on the value of human life: is it more important, equal, or less than her own undead? Returning to this vampire later on, she explained the new understanding my answer gave her, no matter whether I had decided to be cruel or kind. I'm yet to discover if this decision has lasting implications, but one I do expect to have them comes when Liza hypnotises a human. Once again, she's given a choice: encourage the man to drink less, start stealing or, what Cabernet makes clear is the worst option, drink more.

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I've always found the concept of immortality to be horrific. How, as the years churn by, new memories and experiences drown the ones which lie at the foundations of your personality, eroding them until a new person inhabits your skin. You are not yourself anymore. Vampire mythology adds a physical stake to this curse - to be a vampire is to be a monster in body and appetite, but whether you become one in spirit is up to you. Do you try to preserve your humanity or indulge in the hedonism your new form makes so easy? Or become a creature trapped between the two? It’s these questions Cabernet, an upcoming narrative RPG, seeks to explore through its protagonist Liza - recently deceased.

While Cabernet may begin with Liza's funeral, she doesn’t truly comprehend her new vampiric nature until witnessing a fellow creature of the night transform into a bat. From here on, the outlook she takes on her undead existence is in your hands, with many of the dialogue choices and actions Liza can take raising either her humanity or nihilism metre. The differentiation between the two is clear: speaking honestly and treating people kindly increases her humanity as you try to preserve the person Liza once was, while revelling in her new powers and treating humans as mere playthings sees Liza embracing the darkest aspects of being a vampire and, in return, raises her nihilism.

The impact of Liza's choice - on both her and those around her - is clear even in the short demo. One vampire asks Liza whether her new status as a vampire has changed her view on the value of human life: is it more important, equal, or less than her own undead? Returning to this vampire later on, she explained the new understanding my answer gave her, no matter whether I had decided to be cruel or kind. I'm yet to discover if this decision has lasting implications, but one I do expect to have them comes when Liza hypnotises a human. Once again, she's given a choice: encourage the man to drink less, start stealing or, what Cabernet makes clear is the worst option, drink more.

Read more