Hello, Circle friends! Jon here, with my last Circle Roundup for a while. J-school is amazing but very, very time consuming, so I’ll be stepping down from my Roundup duties.

But it looks like I’ll be going out with a bang! A lot has happened this week!

Age of Empires 4 and Biomutant were revealed and WoW 7.3 got an official trailer. A new game convention, Play NYC, happened right here in New York. Microsoft is talking to Sony about crossplay. Overwatch released a new short. We reviewed some games, new and old, you should check out. The GOP tried to use (emphasis on tried) Zelda as a metaphor for the American Tax Code.

It was fun and weird.

And with that, the Roundup!

Michael Andronico reviewed Madden NFL 18: Longshot, the single-player story mode. The tale of prospect quarterback Devin Wade isn’t good for a football game. It’s straight up great. In fact, Mike called it one of the best gaming storylines you’ll experience this year. Read Mike’s teary-eyed review here.

Samit Sarkar reports that Age of Empires 4 is coming, and you can thank Relic Entertainment for that. Relic is famous for several RTS franchises such as Homeworld, Company of Heroes, and most meme-worthy of all, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. Greekgodx, you are jebaited no more. Read Samit’s report here.

Christopher Byrd reviewed Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, a spinoff from the main series starring Nathan Drake’s frenemy, Chloe Frazer. Uncharted has become a success because of a strong formula: humor, charm, high adventure, and great action set pieces. With The Lost Legacy, Naughty Dog has proven that they can make the formula work with or without Nate. Read Chris’ review here.

Jordan Minor attended the very first Play NYC, a new videogame convention from Playcrafting, a game dev education company. And if that wasn’t New York enough for you, most of the games featured there were made in New York! Check out Jordan’s favorite games of Play NYC here.

Matt Gerardi reports that the Republican Party published, and swiftly took down, an article comparing the US tax code and The Legend of Zelda. The article erroneously claimed that Nintendo was founded in 1985. Nintendo was actually founded as a card company in the late 1800s. Then it started talking about how the 1986 tax code reform and the fake founding of Nintendo are related somehow. Read Matt’s (who is just as confused as you are) report here.

And now for news outside of the Circle. . .

World of Warcraft released its latest cinematic trailer for Patch 7.3: Shadows of Argus. It’s poetic that I get to cover this on my last Roundup. Shadows of Argus will send adventurers to Argus, the ancient homeworld of the draenei and homeworld of the Burning Legion, to defeat the dark titan Sargeras once and for all. Sargeras has been the principal antagonist of the Warcraft series Warcraft: Humans & Orcs in 1994. Patch 7.3 marks the end of a 23 year old storyline. Watch the trailer here

Microsoft and Sony are in talks to establish cross-play. I’m riding high on the Warcraft metaphors today, so this is basically like the Horde and the Alliance teaming up for the greater good. Watch the scoop from Gamereactor here.

Overwatch released the first short of this cycle, this time featuring Mei, the climatologist who cryogenically preserves herself to survive a snowstorm and awakens in a very different world. Get your tissues out, fam. This one’s another tearjerker. Watch it here.

Biomutant was officially announced, the first game of developer Experiment 101. The title is self-explanatory: players are put in the role of an anthropomorphic raccoon fighting mutated animals. The game is a third-person action RPG with a customizable character, skill trees, comic book pop-up noises (POW!!), and English accents. Check out the gameplay trailer here.

And that’s all he wrote! Tune in next week for another Roundup. See ya, guys! It’s been a blast!