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. Not content with simply taking over a space station, System Shock's Shodan supercomputer gets into genetically mutating humans with pathogens of her own devising. These two sci-fi horror classics have you confronting this watchful, malevolent AI in space and cyberspace. A remake of the first game was released this week.

Valve's brilliant shooter dumps scientist Gordon Freeman on a dystopian Earth crushed by the evil Combine alien invasion force. The visuals are wonderful, the physics are astonishing and the Orwellian setting of City 17 provides a nightmarish backdrop to the tense story of rebellion, sacrifice and shooting stuff. Set in an alternate post-second world war period in which an alien race known as the Chimera has infected and enslaved most of humanity, Insomniac's shooter series has the gritty muted look of a 1950s British sci-fi movie, and is notable in that it starts not in New York or London but in … Grimsby, a town criminally overlooked by mainstream action adventure games. The legendary X-COM series of strategy games has players controlling small squads of soldiers touching down at alien invasion sites to destroy the monsters and gather their artefacts for research. Combining tense tactical fights with resource management, the game was utterly gripping, and the reboot series has revived the turn-based combat genre for a whole new generation.

Card of Darkness is a deceptively difficult card game from designer Zach Gage (who made the Wordle-like puzzle game Knotwords) and "Adventure Time" creator Pendleton Ward. Available through Apple Arcade, Card of Darkness tasks players with cutting a path across a grid-based game board populated by decks of cards. To make it to the exit, players need to exhaust the decks in front of them by either picking up all the item cards, which include weapons and potions, or fighting the cards in the pile that represent deadly enemies. Once you've picked up a card from a deck, you have to defeat the whole deck, which can lead to some complicated choices: Do I pick up a much-needed sword or health potion at the top of the deck, knowing I may be opening myself up to several enemy cards underneath?

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Welcome back to Talking Tech. Brett Molina's off today, but I'm being joined by our colleague, Tech column's Marc Saltzman.

Do you like to keep your mind busy with numeracy, literacy and memory games? If so, Dr Kawashima's Brain Training for Nintendo Switch could be a great way to give your brain a workout, even if you don't normally play video games. Whether you played the original version on the handheld Nintendo DS console in 2006 or you're new to the series, this updated Nintendo Switch game, which was released in January 2020, offers classic and new exercises to help strengthen your mind. The £22.99 game features a series of daily exercises that challenge your information processing speed, short-term memory and self-control to calculate your brain age. Dr Kawashima's Brain Training could be a great way to give your brain a workout You can also play multiplayer and challenge friends and family by using one Joy-Con each.

Powerful and continuing to grow, the mobile market has never been bigger and more demanding of great games. Android continues to prove itself as a strong contender in this challenging market. With Unity 3D, great games can be made for Android quickly and easily. With its great deployment system, the Android platform is now only one click away. Unity Android Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide dives straight into making real, fully-functional games, with hands-on examples and step-by-step instructions to give you a firm grounding in Unity 3D and Android. Everything necessary for creating a complete gaming experience is covered and detailed throughout the course of this book.

Amid the news-packed chaos that is the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- or E3 for short -- TIME caught up with Doug Bowser, the president of Nintendo of America. Our conversation followed a busy day for Nintendo, which on Tuesday announced a sequel to the much-loved The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and revealed more details about Luigi's Mansion 3, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and more. Unlike some of its competitors, however, Nintendo was tight-lipped when it came to hardware, using this year's E3 to instead focus on new games for its console/mobile hybrid Switch platform. Speaking via phone from the E3 floor, Bowser discussed Nintendo's latest news, the company's efforts to appeal to a wide range of gamers, and how it can help address crunch and burnout among video game developers. The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Kingdom Come Deliverance is one of our top picks for the Steam Summer Sale this year. The Steam Summer Sale is upon us and PC gamers everywhere are racing to part ways with their hard-earned cash. So long, wallet, we barely knew ye. While there are tons and tons of great deals during this sale, I've gone through and picked some of my top picks. I started out with five, then moved to 10, then decided on 12 as a reasonable compromise.

The new replay tools offered in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds are so much more than standard video-capture technology. In fact, it isn't video capture at all -- it's data capture. The 3D replay tools allow players to zoom around the map after a match, tracking their own character, following enemies' movements, slowing down time and setting up cinematic shots of their favorite kills, all within a 1-kilometer radius of their avatar. It's filled with statistics, fresh perspectives and infinite data points to dissect. This isn't just a visual replay; it's a slice of the actual game, perfectly preserved, inviting combatants to play God.

Cosplayer dressed as Aloy (left) and Spanish actress Dafne Fernandez present the "Horizon: Zero Dawn" video game on Feb. 15 in Madrid, Spain. Cosplayer dressed as Aloy (left) and Spanish actress Dafne Fernandez present the "Horizon: Zero Dawn" video game on Feb. 15 in Madrid, Spain. There is a certain kind of look I get when I tell people how much I love video games. It lies somewhere between "You're not serious" and "Oh my God, you are serious." And by "people" giving me these looks, I mean adults of a certain age and outlook.