Microsoft has confirmed the next batch of titles headed to Xbox Game Pass for the latter half of August: Atlas Fallen, Core Keeper, and Star Trucker.

Then there's that little known game called Call of Duty Black Ops 6. You'll be able to participate in the early access open beta when it kicks off for Xbox Game Pass subscribers on 30th August, 2024, with pre-downloading available from 28th August.

"Sure, it takes itself way too seriously and the loot chase can get monotonous, but everything outside of the monster-slaying is just an excuse to get right back to the monster-slaying. Or make the monster-slaying cooler with upgrades," we said in our Atlas Fallen review.

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Katharine (RPS in peace) thought Dome Keeper's blend of tower defence and mining was both "meditative" and "perfectly formed" in her review. So it comes as great news, then, that the devs have somehow taken that perfect dome, expanded it and polished it to an even greater sheen. We're talking about new guild assignments, new gadgets, better world generation, a new world, new monsters. The list is enormous and designed expressly around improved replayability - take that, Las Vegas Dome.

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Katharine (RPS in peace) thought Dome Keeper's blend of tower defence and mining was both "meditative" and "perfectly formed" in her review. So it comes as great news, then, that the devs have somehow taken that perfect dome, expanded it and polished it to an even greater sheen. We're talking about new guild assignments, new gadgets, better world generation, a new world, new monsters. The list is enormous and designed expressly around improved replayability - take that, Las Vegas Dome.

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I liked Fights in Tight Spaces. It mashed together two things I'm fond of: Roguelike deck-builders and badass secret agents. FITS gave me a turn-based experience that made me feel like Jason Bourne, punching and kicking and weaving my way around enemies on cramped battlefields. I stepped around their punches and redirected them back at them. I slammed their heads into walls and tables. I dodged bullets - whoa. I even booted people off the wings of aeroplanes. I survived insurmountable odds. FITS did what it promised and fulfilled my hand-to-hand spy-fight fantasy. But where does the series go from here? Well, the answer is hundreds of years back in time, to medieval times, to Knights in Tight Spaces.

KITS swaps suits for suits of armour, guns for bows and arrows, and stark primary colours for a more wood-carved, tavern-table look. Underneath, though, the core is more or less the same. It's still turn-based, still grid-based, and you're still fighting in tight spaces and building a deck with card-based abilities. And it's not just a reskin. KITS has changed the formula in ways that make a surprising difference.

The biggest difference is the game no longer revolves around one character - you are no longer the lone spy infiltrating an enemy base. Instead, and as in the grand tradition of fantasy role-playing games, you now do it with a party, which makes for a fundamental shift in gameplay. There are a few elements to this.

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It’s been almost a decade since Rebel Galaxy ably picked up the sci-fi trading and exploration mantle handed down by Freelancer, but it looks like a successor to the serene galaxy-venturing vibes of both is finally upon us. Star Trucker is exactly what it sounds like, transplanting the chill A-to-Z courier journeys of Euro Truck Simulator to the interplanetary, uh, roads of space. It’s out this September, and it looks wonderful.

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Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week we return to an old series to see how it's evolved, we go to the underworld and play with the gods, and we go back to the Arkham game that started it all.

What have you been playing?

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

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I regret not covering Skald Colon Against The Black Priory when its developer told us about it 2019. I'd get to be so smug now.

Skald is terrific. I've tried to come up with a clever angle on its journey, but they all wind up saying the same thing: For all its retro stylings (right down to party portraits taking up an unnecessary quarter of the screen at all times), it's an accessible, charming treat, and the best modernisation of 80s RPGs that I've ever played.

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Look, I certainly wouldn't call myself a trucking nerd - I'm not even sure I could tell the difference between a carburettor and a carbonara - but I do like to truck. American Truck Simulator has long been my equivalent of one of those mindfulness apps that whisper gently evocative nonsense at you in the dead of night; a world of seductively monotonous rhythms and repetitions set against a soothing soundtrack of engine drones and indicator clicks. And for the eyes, the majesty of nature: lakes, mountains, forests (or at least a decent enough facsimile thereof), sprawling from hard shoulder to sky. So imagine my delight when I stumbled across Star Trucker – all that calm and the most expansive natural vista of all: space!

Ordinarily, these X meets Y comparisons feel a little trite, but in Star Trucker's case – going on the evidence of its Steam Next Fest demo, at least - you're going to struggle to find a more apt description than 'American Truck Simulator in space'. This is big rig cargo hauling on an interstellar scale, a stately back-and-forth between pick-up and drop-off set against an ever-shifting canvas of shimmering nebulae and screen-filling worlds.

For all its fanciful sci-fi flavour, though, Star Trucker plays the whole thing surprisingly straight, grounding its slightly ridiculous high-concept premise in the minutia of the mundane. Which isn't to say it doesn't have bags of personality – this is the far-flung future by way of Route 66, with an ever-present country and western twang on your radio, an incessant southern drawl on your CB, and just enough quaint Americana to give the endless void a distantly familiar sense of place - but its eye is firmly on the road, not on the stars.

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Look, I certainly wouldn't call myself a trucking nerd - I'm not even sure I could tell the difference between a carburettor and a carbonara - but I do like to truck. American Truck Simulator has long been my equivalent of one of those mindfulness apps that whisper gently evocative nonsense at you in the dead of night; a world of seductively monotonous rhythms and repetitions set against a soothing soundtrack of engine drones and indicator clicks. And for the eyes, the majesty of nature: lakes, mountains, forests (or at least a decent enough facsimile thereof), sprawling from hard shoulder to sky. So imagine my delight when I stumbled across Star Trucker – all that calm and the most expansive natural vista of all: space!

Ordinarily, these X meets Y comparisons feel a little trite, but in Star Trucker's case – going on the evidence of its Steam Next Fest demo, at least - you're going to struggle to find a more apt description than 'American Truck Simulator in space'. This is big rig cargo hauling on an interstellar scale, a stately back-and-forth between pick-up and drop-off set against an ever-shifting canvas of shimmering nebulae and screen-filling worlds.

For all its fanciful sci-fi flavour, though, Star Trucker plays the whole thing surprisingly straight, grounding its slightly ridiculous high-concept premise in the minutia of the mundane. Which isn't to say it doesn't have bags of personality – this is the far-flung future by way of Route 66, with an ever-present country and western twang on your radio, an incessant southern drawl on your CB, and just enough quaint Americana to give the endless void a distantly familiar sense of place - but its eye is firmly on the road, not on the stars.

Read more