Hyper Sports R is designed to pull on your nostalgic strings, but it ends up clinging to them a little too tightly.

At E3 2018, I got the chance to briefly grill game designer Matt Scronce and senior producer Yale Miller for some answers regarding Blackout, and what exactly Treyarch is aiming for with this ambitious entry into a highly competitive genre with this year's edition of Call of Duty Black Ops IIII.

Last week, we skipped out on a Friday debate because we were still incredibly busy with E3 coverage, so I suppose it’s time to ruminate on this year’s show. Overall, I thought it was a little lacklustre, but that’s to be expected as we come into the tail end of a generation. That said did anything tickle you?

There is one other way to celebrate the other side of the globe’s festival season, and that’s by living vicariously through the Steam Summer Sale. Because what better way is there to appreciate the warmest quarter of the year, than by staying inside and playing video games.

The US games retail-tracking company the NPD has released its figures for last month, showing that Sony’s PlayStation 4 remains the best-selling console in the US. As is usual, their analysis includes hardware, physical copies of games sold at retail, and some (but not all!) games sold digitally.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a proper first-person experience, complete with all the action and hacktivism that you’d expect it to have. Why the change in perspectives though? What does it add to Cyberpunk 2077? A lot more in terms of storytelling and immersion according to Cyberpunk’s father.

My Arcade is bundling 20 games from yesteryear into one handheld gaming console. Of course it happens to also look incredibly adorable.

Hitman 2 may not be changing its formula, but it doesn’t need to. Running with the momentum that 2016’s Hitman provided, IO Interactive’s return to a world of assassination is pretty much the game you remember…but better. Agent 47’s got a new bag of tricks, and there’s a ton of quality of life improvements present that makes the entire experience feel smoother, more refined and even more confident in its sandbox approach to mucking things up.