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Somebody once told me that the earliest piece of writing archaeologists have yet discovered is a rant complaining that all the great tales have already been told. This story's almost certainly apocryphal, but it certainly feels like us, the human race. It sounds like the sort of thing we might say.

UPDATE: The Valve voice actor who last week suggested Half-Life 3 was not currently in production has retracted his statement.

An orange-rimmed circle hangs in a black, spherical space, its contours momentarily described by neon-blue hatch lines that pulse in the dark. Hold two thumbs to the screen and light streaks between them, joining up to create a throbbing beam that bisects the darkness. The monolithic lettering 'MENU' appears.

Rockstar's achievement/trophy list for Grand Theft Auto 5 has been posted online.

Infinity Ward has said the difference in terms of visuals between the current-gen and next-gen versions of Call of Duty: Ghosts will be clear for all to see.

New release Payday 2 has strong-armed itself to the top of the UK all-format charts and dethroned Minecraft's Xbox 360 Edition for the first time in three weeks.

There's a mission about halfway through Splinter Cell Blacklist where everything clicks into place. You're on foreign soil without permission, you need to break into a military building to steal vital intelligence, and if you don't pull it off then the whole world goes to hell.

Video games are in a unique position as a medium when it comes to restoration and reproduction. Unlike other major forms of entertainment, such as music and film, games have the inherent capacity to be dramatically improved upon without compromising the original vision - hence the arrival of HD re-releases for modern consoles. At their best, these compilations allow us to preserve classic games and experience them in a way that was previously unattainable. Unfortunately, even the best intentions often fall prey to poor business decisions and result in collections which fall short. Zone of the Enders HD Collection - released almost one full year ago - was one such release.

My favourite type of game is the first-person melee fighter, which is an unfortunate preference because the good ones are rarer than Fabergé eggs. Only a handful of games feature first-person brawling or swashbuckling at all, and in many of them like Skyrim, Dishonored and Dark Messiah it's only part of the overall experience, mixed together with magic and stealth. Games which rely on the mechanic almost entirely, such as Zeno Clash and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, are scarcer still.

Last week, Digital Foundry reviewed the Nvidia Shield - a highly impressive, state of the art piece of technology, somewhat under-utilised by a catalogue of software designed with much less capable hardware in mind. Compare and contrast with the PlayStation Vita - long since left behind by more powerful tablets and smartphones, but where the games just keep on getting better. Somehow, Sony has managed to miniaturise the PlayStation experience into a handheld form factor, creating a platform where traditional mobile games can sit side by side with cross-platform triple-A titles and impressive original games from the biggest collection of first-party studios in the world.

Hello again from across the pond. If you missed the first one last week, Letter from America is a regular weekly blog written by old gaming geezer Jaz Rignall, an ex-pat who runs Eurogamer's star-spangled American sister site, USgamer.net.

Welcome to your weekly dispatch from the Outside Xbox video mines. We began the week in a melancholy mood, mourning nine promising games that will never see the light of day. These include BioShock studio Irrational's SWAT-based zombie shooter Division 9, Disney's open-world pirate caper Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned and LucasArts ill-fated Star Wars 1313. Join us in remembrance with the video below.

My daughter's due date was this Thursday. There's no sign of her so far but, like any father-to-be, I've spent the last few days slightly awestruck by the responsibility I'm facing. I look at the trees outside of the office window and think, cripes, she's not going to know what trees are. Somebody's going to have to tell her about trees. And parliamentary democracy. And Tabasco sauce.

Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson has released a new free browser-based score-attack zombie first-person shooter entitled Shambles.

Dead Island developer Techland is opening up a new studio in Vancouver, Canada to assist on the development of its open-world zombie parkour game Dying Light.

UPDATE: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers' European release date has been pushed back a week from 13th September to 20th September, publisher NIS America has announced.

Sci-fi author and former writer and story consultant for Microsoft Game Studios, Eric Nylund, has joined up with Amazon Game Studios as its new director of narrative design.

Edios Montreal's Thief reboot is slated for a 28th February release in Europe and PAL territories, with North America getting it on 25th February, publisher Square Enix has announced. It will be out on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, and PC.

Sega's downloadable remake of Mickey Mouse game Castle of Illusion is coming out on 4th September - on PC, PSN and XBLA - priced £10 (1200 MSP).

By selling 3 million copies in nine months, Guild Wars 2 has been crowned - by research company DFC Intelligence - the fastest-selling Western MMO of all time.

Jennifer Hepler, the BioWare writer harassed by fans for her work on Dragon Age 2 - and for comments made years earlier about wishing to skip combat sections in games - this week left the famed RPG studio to work on a book and pursue some freelance work.

Hello! If you've read Dan's review, you'll know that Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons draws a lot of its power from its killer ending. Hopefully by now some of you will have had a chance to play through that ending for yourself.

Games Workshop has okayed another one - Russian developer HeroCraft has unveiled a trading card-centred, turn-based Warhammer 40,000 game for PC, Android and iOS. It's called Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf.

Codemasters has fully revealed the classic content that's going to play a part in F1 2013, the latest instalment of its officially licensed series, and it brings legendary names such as Mario Andretti, Mika Hakkinen and, er, Satoru Nakajima to the game.

Choice is a powerful thing. It's what differentiates video games from other mediums of entertainment. Outside of watching alternative endings on DVD, the outcome of a movie cannot be influenced by the viewer; likewise, a great album's track listing can be randomised, but the songs remain the same. In games, the player is able to directly impact the world with their own actions. This liberating and intoxicating sense of involvement was also central to the appeal of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy line of interactive gamebooks, first established in 1982 - ironically, a time when the video game industry appeared to be tiptoeing dangerously close to oblivion.

OK, hands up if you thought that EA would be the big publisher to launch a free-to-play game that doesn't gouge the player? That Plants vs. Zombies 2 manages to use in-app purchases in a non-abusive way that doesn't nerf the game design is perhaps its most surprising feature, but there's more to it than good business practice. This is a long overdue sequel that evolves a winning formula in fun and challenging ways.

Fine fighting game Persona 4 Arena is to get a sequel, Japanese mega-mag Famitsu has blurted (via Polygon, Shoryuken).

If you've been following my series of Daily Challenge videos, or if you read my Spelunky PC review, then you're already aware that Spelunky is one of my favourite games of all time. I will never stop playing this game.

Sorcery! Part 2 - Kharé, Cityport of Traps - is coming to iOS platforms in late September/early October, developer inkle told Eurogamer this morning.

Lucid Games isn't making Project Gotham Racing 5. You've had a couple of months to let that sink in, and to do with the information what you will, whether that be mourning or just seeking solace in Forza 5's bright, urban spaces that suggest Turn 10's muscling in on the patch left absent since Bizarre Creation's demise. The game that is being created by a group of veterans from the Liverpool studio that brought us one of the best arcade racers should be of interest, though - according to Lucid, its new game 2K Drive could be some of the best work in the careers of its illustrious staff.