Right now artificial intelligence is too busy painting and giving factually spurious answers to basic questions to pose much of a threat to humanity, but in video games, AIs have gone further

GLaDOS is surely video games’ most recognisable megalomaniacal AI, the creatively sadistic robot with a soothingly monotone, heartily evil voice that has been left in sole charge of a lab for far too long. Let’s be honest, her cheerfully murderous attitude towards humanity isn’t entirely unjustified.

Prosecutors are reportedly seeking a prison term and a near-£1m fine for ex-Sega developer Yuji Naka

One of Sonic the Hedgehog’s creators is facing possible jail time and a fine of close to £1m for his alleged part in an insider trading scheme, according to a court report by Japanese media.

Yuji Naka, who co-created Sega’s blue-spiked mascot, was arrested in November last year over allegations he traded in stock with privileged information for a significant profit.

PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC; Blizzard Entertainment
Behind the screams and stunningly-costumed demons, this is escapist junk food for gamers – which may be exactly what you’re after

Diablo 4 wants you to know that it’s very serious indeed. From its gripping introduction, evoking Blizzard’s Warcraft 3-era heyday of best-in-class cinematics, to the richly macabre backdrops that host its continuous loop of demon-slaying ultraviolence, this is a game with a mission statement: please don’t make fun of us for being too cartoonish, like you did with Diablo 3.

It’s done well, for the most part. The writing harkens back to Diablo’s original two outings; a gothic, low fantasy miasma of hopelessness and intrigue. Most impressively, this version of Diablo’s world feels, well, like a world again; a place with history and tension, rather than a collection of maps strung together to facilitate dungeon delving.

CEO Stephen Kick tells the eight-year story of his firm’s ambitious reboot of a lost sci-fi horror gaming classic

“Anxious. Excited. Terrified.” That’s how Stephen Kick, chief executive of Nightdive Studios, was feeling when I spoke to him last week, before the launch of System Shock. A remake of the 1994 cyberpunk shooter that inspired lauded games from Bioshock to Deus Ex and Dead Space, System Shock was announced in 2015, but was delayed again and again; at one point it was started again from scratch. So Kick is justifiably nervous. “We don’t yet know how this is going to be received,” he says. “Because it took so long … financially, it was the most expensive project that we’ve ever done.”

Happily for Nightdive Studios, when System Shock was released this week, it became an instant top seller – and critics liked it, too. But this was never a sure thing. Even though video game remakes are enormously popular, as demonstrated by the success of this year’s reimagining of Resident Evil 4, spending eight years rebuilding another studio’s game is a considerable commitment. For Kick and Nightdive, System Shock is more than just money-spinning digital necromancy. It is one of the reasons for the studio’s existence.

In this week’s newsletter: Exploring maps and finishing side quests isn’t wasting time – it’s making memories

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When the reviews for Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom went online earlier this month, I started to panic. Almost every critical reaction seemed to contain the same sentence: “I’ve been playing for 60 hours yet I’ve barely scratched the surface”. Like Breath of the Wild before it, the latest title in Nintendo’s role-playing adventure seriesis a vast odyssey with an intricate narrative constructed from dozens of quests, supported by a fully functioning world. Like many other gamers my age, I thought to myself, that would have been great when I was 25, but I’ll get an hour a day on this thing at most. Is it all too much?

About 10 hours into the main campaign – which, as ever, revolves around a quest to track down the eponymous royal but somehow also manages to be mind-numbingly complex, like Middlemarch with monsters – something important happened: I let go. Without a deadline to finish it (thanks Keza, for taking on the review), I could just enjoy it in my own way. For several years, I’ve been writing about how experiences such as Fortnite and Minecraft are no longer games to play but places to be (hang out with friends, build some stuff, whatever), and I was finally able to apply this sense of freedom to a big role-playing game. I decided I was never going to finish Tears of the Kingdom, and that was such an immense relief. Now I could have fun.

PC; Prime Matter/Nightdive Studios
Lovingly remade, this game is no longer the trailblazer it once was, but there is an enduring majesty to the design of its space-station setting

Originally released in 1994, System Shock is best known through the games it inspired. Its blend of first-person shooting, sci-fi roleplay, and survival horror made it a touchstone for Deus Ex, BioShock, Dead Space and Prey. But it never enjoyed the success of its descendants; it lives in the shadow of its children.

The greatest accomplishment a remake could achieve, then, would be to afford System Shock the credit it deserves. Nightdive Studios’ remake does this, but not in ways you might expect. The things that made System Shock so radical back in 1994 are not necessarily what make it great to play today, and for everything the remake improves, its smartest decisions are found in what it doesn’t change.

PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series S/X, PC (version tested); Capcom
With a flashy new array of combat moves and ‘modern’ controls that even beginners can use to create masterful moves, this is an addictive TKO

When Street Fighter V – the previous entry in this instantly recognisable fighting game series – launched in 2016, it was missing a laundry list of standard features (although it did eventually get better). Street Fighter 6, on the other hand, feels heartily robust from the word go. It’s bursting at the seams with things to do, assured in its gameplay, and wrapped in a stylish, colourful, confident swagger that the game can absolutely back up.

This time around, the basics are properly accounted for: there are versus and arcade modes, an options-rich training room, and some respectably detailed tutorials that dive into the nitty-gritty of fighting game fundamentals. A new addition is World Tour, a sprawling single-player mode that lets you create your own (potentially horrifically proportioned) fighter and lets them loose into a universe where just about everyone is ready to throw down at the slightest invitation.

Dominik Diamond finds himself, once again, on the fringes of the gaming conversation, as the world is taken over by Zelda-mania

I have absolutely no interest in Zelda: The Tears of the Kingdom.

Phew. That’s the Band-Aid ripped off in one go. Hairs clinging to it like memories of bad decisions. I’m just not into Zelda generally. It’s not you, Link, it’s me; I’m obviously some kind of joyless sociopath.

A new experimental game demo full of sophisticated AI characters has some game writers worried about their jobs. Is AI really going to improve games, or the games industry?

Corny dialogue has been part of video games almost since they have existed. From 1989’s Zero Wing spawning the decades old “All your base are belong to us” internet meme, to the clunky translations of the pre-remake Resident Evil games (“the master of unlocking”), to Skyrim’s infamous adventurer who once took an arrow to the knee and never shuts up about it, non-playable character (NPC) dialogue has rarely been exactly Shakespearean, and the frequent repetition doesn’t help. But could AI tools change that, enabling a world full of characters that respond believably when you talk to them?

In collaboration with Google, a team of researchers from Stanford have built a game demo called Smallville that integrates the AI writing tool ChatGPT. Instead of just walking into walls and setting themselves on fire like the classic Sims characters we all knew and loved, the game’s 25 characters can instead comfortably discuss topics such as local politics and composing music, pulling from ChatGPT’s enormous database.

In about a year and a half, we could see this type of technology being used in smaller indie games, with wider adoption coming in about five years

It always sounds like the dawn of a new age, but tends to end up being disruptive and demoralising

PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PC (version tested); Daedalic Entertainment/Nacon
A derivative, uninteresting and fundamentally broken stealth action adventure that fails to capture anything interesting about Tolkien’s fiction

This game never looked especially promising, and now it’s out, it’s about as riveting as listening to a huddle of ents discuss the finer points of deciduous shedding. It’s a technical disaster, at least on PC, and even when it does work, it feels like an extended forced stealth section from a game where stealth is just one of 50,000 other systems. It’s watery, janky, broken, alternately frustrating and frictionless, completely without tension or pathos, and squanders a great concept.

We are placed in the shoes – well, in the pallid, bare feet – of Gollum AKA Sméagol, the pre-pandemic blueprint for the trash goblin that now lives inside us all. At various points during the (too frequent, mostly boring, school play-tier) dialogue, you’ll be able to choose how he acts, in ways replete with such delicate moral nuance as “crush the harmless insect” or “don’t”, and so guide the creature down one path or another. I’m all for ambient dialogue in games, but here you are prevented from interacting with anything while a conversation is playing, which is a lot of the time.

Lord of the Rings: Gollum is out 25 May; £42.99

Campaign to raise awareness of issues reports that 80% of those affected receive messages that are sexual in nature

Millions of women who do online gaming experience harassment and have received inappropriate messages, often of a sexual nature, a report has found.

A survey into online gaming reveals half (49%) of British female gamers have suffered abuse online, rising to 75% among those aged 18-24. Of those affected, 80% said the messages they got were sexual in nature. Over half (52%) of women said they felt worried about harassment.

Sony announces a portable streaming device for PS5 that lets players play games over wifi

Sony concluded its livestreamed PlayStation Showcase event on Wednesday with a 12-minute-long slice of Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man 2, PlayStation 5’s major game for 2023. It showed the heroes of the previous two games, Miles Morales and a symbiote-suited Spider-Man, working together to fight villains Kraven and the Lizard across an extensive swathe of New York scenery.

The game will be out this autumn, joined by Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage on 12 October, the latest in a long-running series of historical action games. Epic Games’ Alan Wake 2, a sequel to 2010’s Stephen King-inspired horror game, was also confirmed for 17 October.

CMA says it is defending cloud gaming market, but Microsoft says moves ‘discourages tech innovation and investment’ in UK

Microsoft has filed an appeal against the UK competition watchdog’s decision to block its $69bn (£56bn) acquisition of the Call of Duty creator Activision Blizzard.

The US tech company confirmed that it had formally lodged an appeal against the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) verdict against the deal last month. Its case will be argued before the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).

In this week’s newsletter: I suck at fighters, but the delightfully camp latest in the franchise is deliberately designed to be easy on new players – for once

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When I got my first job on a games magazine, there were a few games on constant rotation at my grubby office, and at after-pub gatherings in the even grubbier flats my colleagues and I lived in: Pro Evo, Bomberman, and Street Fighter. Unfortunately, I sucked at all of them. Street Fighter was especially embarrassing for me, as an eager-to-prove-myself 16-year-old, because I could just never get my hands around the movesets and controls for all the different characters. I was a perennial button-masher, and I was humiliated so regularly that it put me off fighting games for life.

That said, I have always greatly admired Street Fighter, and its players. It is a stunningly energetic game full of stylish caricatures whose movement and swagger are fascinating to look at, especially in the hands of skilled competitors. I have watched fighting game tournaments in awe, and seen winners demolish opponents with deft combinations of reaction speed, on-the-fly strategising and seemingly unnatural powers of foresight. It is the perfect esport: matches are easy to follow, over in just a few minutes, and thrilling to behold. The stylistic flourishes that Capcom is so good at – flamboyant animation, moving backdrops, the outfits – only add to the spectacle.

Microsoft is betting on winning business with its subscription service, Game Pass, and looking beyond markets in western Europe and east Asia

Microsoft has been in the video game business for over 20 years, but its Xbox console has been the perpetual runner-up. 2020’s Xbox Series S/X console is being significantly outsold by Sony’s PlayStation 5 – in keeping with its predecessor, 2013’s Xbox One, which was outsold more than 2:1 by the PlayStation 4. It’s currently suffering from a lack of big-ticket exclusive games, and its most recent, Redfall, was a critical disappointment. What’s more, its huge $70bn merger with Activision Blizzard, a deal that would go a long way towards solving its content problem by buying it Call of Duty and much more, is currently being held up by UK regulators.

Looking rather downtrodden on a recent episode of gaming show Xcast, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said that he was “not in the business of out-consoling Sony or out-consoling Nintendo”, intimating that the long-running console war between Xbox, Nintendo and PlayStation was a losing battle for Microsoft. Instead of touting Xbox sales figures, for the past few years the company has presented its subscription service Game Pass as its metric for success: how many games it has, how many subscribers, how many hours they have played. It is betting on a post-console future, on being able to play games on any screen with the help of cloud servers – a streaming and subscription-centric future that has already transformed music, film and TV.

Nintendo’s new record-setting Zelda game allows players to get creative and make madcap vehicles and contraptions. Readers share their favourite experiences so far

The best thing is doing something random in the game – climbing up something, fighting something big and boss-like – before you’re actually supposed to in the story. I have been playing games since I was four, and I’ve always loved Zelda games for the freedom you get and the feeling you’ve done something you’re not supposed to that isn’t found in many other titles. I’d say so far – and I’m only a few hours in – there are two favourite moments for me. One is when cooking and hearing Link humming music from the series. The other was climbing a Skyview Tower, assuming I had to so I could see the world map, and reaching the top only to find ... nothing. Then moving along in the story and finding out what it was actually for! As always, pre-empting what I’m supposed to do in a Zelda game. Tom Fogden, 43, France

Composer Brendan Angelides was cautious about agreeing to write the soundtrack for the latest edition of Ubisoft’s blockbuster. But then he met Palestinian composer and orchestrator Akram Haddad

“I think, initially, Ubisoft approached me because of my electronic music background – my live career, my albums, my touring. But I didn’t know if I was the right person for the job, you know?”

Composer Brendan Angelides has never worked in video game music before. You might know him better as Eskmo or Welder, or perhaps as the mind behind the music of TV shows 13 Reasons Why or Billions. When Ubisoft approached him to be the composer for its sort-of reboot of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, Mirage, he had doubts. The game is set at the height of the Islamic golden age, and centres around Baghdad: a hub flowing with the lifeblood of a changing world, a cultural centre of art and science, old and new.

PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch; Visual Concepts/2K Games
The open world racer where beautiful environments are crammed with delightfully destructible Lego goodies, will have kids smiling while they play

You know you’re at the mid-point of a console generation when the family-friendly racing titles start to arrive. Developed by veteran studio Visual Concepts, Lego 2K Drive is essentially Burnout Paradise mixed with Lego City Undercover, an open world drive ’em up providing four environments to race through, all crammed with Lego buildings, scuttling minifigs, and of course, a lot of zany vehicles. In a clever play on the endless remouldability of Lego models, your vehicle can instantly transform, so circuits quickly swap between road, offroad and water sections. There are even jetpacks later on.

The career mode puts you into the fireproof boots of a rookie driver competing in a series of competitions to eventually claim the golden Sky Cup Trophy. Each of the locations provides a world crammed with mini-quests and driving challenges, and between circuit competitions you can choose to, say, battle skeleton armies, destroy invading robots, deliver flowers to a character’s crush or see how far you can jump from a mountain ledge. Wherever you drive, there is a little task or challenge to discover; most are diverting and pleasingly silly.

In this week’s newsletter: The Zelda sequel’s all-encompassing approval says something about how important games have become in our cultural lives

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You’re playing Tears of the Kingdom, right? Everyone seems to be playing it. Even people who I didn’t even know were into video games have asked me if it’s as good as they were hoping. I was on the BBC News at Six talking about it, which delighted me because, for many, many years, the BBC didn’t pay attention to video games unless someone had claimed they were destroying children’s lives or deemed them opaquely responsible for a violent event. I had a fun conversation about it on NPR’s Consider This. I’ve written about five articles about it in the past week and, apparently, I still haven’t exhausted the topic.

It is pleasantly surprising that the world at large has taken such an interest in Tears of the Kingdom, because for most of the 30-odd years that I’ve been playing Zelda games, they have been the nerdy connoisseur’s choice from the Nintendo canon. When I was a teenager, the only other people I knew who loved Zelda were fellow geeky kids who were into fantasy novels. A huge proportion of game developers and critics love Zelda, but the games have never been bestsellers. Indeed, before Breath of the Wild, the leading Zelda game was the 2006 emo-era classic Twilight Princess (my least favourite, don’t @ me), which sold around 9m copies.

In his new memoir, Before We Go Live, the Twitch and YouTube star pulls back the curtain on the world of pro game streaming – and details some of the toxic behaviour he says he has witnessed

Stephen Flavall – or Jorbs as he is known on YouTube and Twitch, where he has more than 100,000 followers – rose to fame streaming strategy games such as XCOM and Slay the Spire, a game in which he has achieved several world records. He’s considered a high-ranking Twitch streamer, with a soothing monotone voice and an infectious laugh. He’s very consistent. When you watch Flavall’s Twitch channel, you know exactly what to expect: funny and cerebral anecdotes, informative strategy tips and a supportive community.

But his new memoir, Before We Go Live, does something unexpected: it pulls back the curtain on the back end of professional game streaming – which, as anyone who follows online gaming culture knows, is rife with rampant toxicity, abuse and harassment. It’s a chilling wakeup call for the industry, from the top down.