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When HP Lovecraft wrote the definition of the genre he more-or-less invented, he did it with the understanding that weird fiction was always going to be a niche taste. In his 1927 essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, he declared that: "tales of ordinary feelings and events, or of common sentimental distortions of such feelings and events, will always take first place in the taste of the majority; rightly, perhaps, since of course these matters make up the greater part of human experience." Barely able to generate an income, chewed up and spat out by the pulp magazines, and finally, dying painfully of untreated stomach cancer ten years later, Lovecraft could reasonably have expected to be forgotten.

As Sea of Thieves' draws ever closer to release on March 20th, Rare is steadily filling in the remaining blanks regarding the features that wannabe pirates can expect to see at launch. Latest on its list are further details of customisation, both of the personal and ship variety.

UPDATE: Blizzard has issued a statement addressing its tweet that heavily suggested Diablo was coming to Switch.

Grand Theft Auto 5 - a game that came out four-and-a-half years ago - sold over 1m copies in the UK alone in 2017.

How best to chart 12 months in which Nintendo returned to the frontlines, and stirred up a frenzy not seen since the phenomenon that was the Wii? For a console that's uniquely personal - one that will follow by your side wherever you go, allowing video games to slot in all those gaps in our everyday lives - it's 12 months that have been defined by some truly magical moments.

Bungie has detailed the addition of 6v6 competitive multiplayer to Destiny 2's Iron Banner event - and it sounds exactly the same as how Crucible worked in Destiny 1.

Brawlhalla is an up-and-coming free-to-play platform fighter - a game like Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. where you try and knock opponents off a stage. It's a big hit on Steam and PlayStation 4. And, as of now, it's owned by Ubisoft.

Donald Trump apparently wants some face-to-face time with members of the video game industry following the tragic Florida school shooting last month.

There's a new update for Xbox One - rolling out today to those in the Insider program - which adds a form of Remote Play with PCs.

Hearthstone's ranked play mode has now been offline for 24 hours while Blizzard battles a major bug.

It feels like only yesterday we were sequestered in Birmingham's impossibly huge NEC building for the biggest EGX show yet - which makes it even more strange to consider that we're now only just over a month away from the expo's trendy, laid-back sister event, Rezzed.

2018's Battlefield game will be set in World War 2, a new Venturebeat report states.

Who's copying who now? Paladins president Stewart Chisam has raised an eyebrow at Overwatch's newly unveiled hero Brigitte Lindholm, because she looks more than a little like his game's hero Ash.

The 4X game is the Sunday papers genre: you spread out, prepare yourself for the long, luxurious haul, and tackle this glorious unwieldy thing, thick with features wanted and unwanted and packed with colour and far-flung intrigue. Your favourite part in it will be some aspect you were not expecting, and yet the whole thing is wonderfully awash with calming familiarity. I am still surprised that the new Civ does not drop a leaflet for life insurance when you pick it up and shake it.

Myst developer Cyan has revealed first details on its rather mysterious new VR game, Firmament, alongside a surprisingly lengthy new trailer.

Ron Gilbert's wilfully retro point-and-clicker Thimbleweed Park might be excellent, but it's not - thanks to its precisely structured narrative - an experience that felt like it would benefit from additional story DLC. Which is probably how we've ended up with Ransome *Unbeeped*.

Nintendo has announced that Goby Arena - the brand-new, basketball-themed Splatoon 2 map that it revealed last month - will arrive on Switch tomorrow.

Propelled towards mass popularity by virtue of its superb Battle Royale refresh, Epic Games' Fortnite has recently been enhanced still further with the inclusion of an optional 60 frames per second mode - a potential game-changer for a fast-paced shooter like this. Now, we've seen a range of 'performance' modes in the past that target 60fps on Sony and Microsoft's enhanced consoles, but generally, they fail to deliver. The good news here is that Epic's work is the real deal - and it's by no means exclusive to the more powerful consoles, with owners of the standard models getting an equally impressive boost.

If you've been been missing the roar of the waves and the sway of the ocean this week, and generally suffering from severe Sea of Thieves withdrawal, there's some excellent news: Rare is holding yet another beta-style Scale Test on PC and Xbox One this weekend.

UPDATE, 1/3/18: Fortnite's 3.1.0 update is now here, bringing with it the usual bug fixes and improvements. As expected, however, it also introduces a few new goodies, including Battle Royale mode's previously teased Hunting Rifle and Lucky Landing point of interest.

Forget Sea of Thieves' boats and check out Pillars of Eternity 2's! They're a whole new feature in the sequel and there's a lot more to them than I expected.

As the Beast from the East freezes Europe to a standstill, and scientists worry this could be the first of many climate change anomalies to come, 11 bit Studios' imminent city-building game Frostpunk looks oddly prescient. It asks how far you would go to ensure the survival of the last human settlement on a frozen Earth.

PlayStation 4 exclusive Detroit: Become Human launches on 25th May, Sony has announced.

The WarGames video game reboot launches later this month.

In the late 90s, when Tomb Raider was at the height of its power on PSone, Lucozade snapped up Lara Croft for one of the most famous video game-related TV ads of all time.

There's a new, better trailer for Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, the smartphone game which lets you become a student at JK Rowling's magical school.

The heist is on! Payday 2 has arrived on Nintendo Switch, making it by default the first truly portable version of the game. Based on the editions released for PS4 and Xbox One three years ago, the port goes further, incorporating a wireless four-player option for nearby Switch users, along with other tweaks and DLC added since its last-gen launch. In most other respects, the game's core remains the same as before, which begs the question - to what extent can Nintendo's hybrid match the 1080p30 experience of the existing current-gen versions?

The noise of flies fills your ears as you step down from the highway in search of shade. The body of a great white bull lies sprawled in the dirt among bits of rope and broken board, his hide blazing in the sunlight. You approach, covering your mouth, and recoil. The bull's chest - it's not maggoty flesh but beaten metal, held together by rivets the width of your thumb. Through tears in the beast's flank you see swarms of tiny brass pistons, shooting back and forth in a blur. The bull raises his head abruptly to regard you. Then he clambers to his feet, creaking like a furnace, and ambles back onto the road. The buzzing rises to a peak. When the air clears, the animal is gone.

The first games I played were games of memory. My English grandfather was full of them. Parlour games, mainly. There was one in which each chair in his living room became a station and his family became trains. He would stand in the middle of the room and direct the trains between the stations, and you had to remember which train you were and where the station you were headed to could be found. At five or six, I found it overwhelming, but also intoxicating. (At 39, I now look back and suspect my grandfather wished he hadn't spent his life as clerk of the local magistrate's court.) Then there was another game - I've since learned that it's called Kim's Game, but as a kid I assumed my grandfather had invented it - in which he arranged a tray with bits and pieces from around the house, gave us a minute to study them all and then covered the tray with a cloth and quietly removed one item. When he uncovered the tray again we all had to spot what was missing.

Do you still play Dragon's Dogma or Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen on Xbox 360? If so, hello, both of you. Capcom has bad news.