And Two Point Campus certainly is fun, not least for its gameplay. If you’ve played a management sim before, then you’ll know what to expect: you lay out the rooms and furniture of a university; hire teachers to do the teaching, janitors to do the maintenance; then try to keep everyone happy — especially the students — while making some money along the way.

It’s also fun because, well, it’s fun. Like its ward-based forbear, Two Point Campus has a colourful look and a lightly sardonic sense of humour.Your establishment’s tannoy will blurt out advice like: ‘Students are reminded to set reminders.’ And rather than a redbrick, you’re more likely to be setting up a castle-like school for knights, with classes in jousting.

‘This is the funfair, exactly like you don’t remember. With every game hooked up to innovative RFID wristband tech, and a bespoke app that logs gamers’ scores, tracks leader boards and takes bragging rights to a whole new level.’

Mr England smashed a glass into the side of Kim Graham’s face after the pair got into an argument during a rugby match between the British Lions and South Africa at the Wolfpack pub (pictured) in Fulham, west London

People using Stadia will still to be able to access to their game libraries, including Pro games if you had an active Pro subscription as of Thursday. In an email sent to players, Google warned that publisher support for games may vary, and it’s possible that your gameplay experience may be affected during the shut-down period (suggesting that some games could vanish or lose features early). 

«A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia,» he said in the blog post. «And while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.»

Explaining the move, Stadia vice president and general manager Phil Harrison noted Google’s investments in gaming through its Google Play digital distribution service, its cloud tech and YouTube streaming.

Even when Marvel’s Spider-Man threatens to be like other games — sending you to some part of the city, so that you can beat up some goons, so that you can upgrade your skills — there’s always its amazing take on simply getting around.

This makes your university a joy to zoom in on, to get a closer look at its cartoon weirdos, with names like Dennis Gutterflake and Synapse Periwinkle, Poker pkv as they handle rayguns in science class or flirt near the statue of love.

It appears that Google didn’t tell many developers about the shut-down prior to the public blog post. Destiny 2 makers Bungie tweeted on Thursday about coming up with «a plan of action» in the wake of the announcement. Assassin’s Creed developer Ubisoft intends to allow players who’ve bought its games on Stadia to bring them to PC through its Ubisoft Connect digital distribution service, it said Friday. 

While Stadia will shut down on January 18, 2023, we’re happy to share that we’re working to bring the games you own on Stadia to PC through Ubisoft Connect. We’ll have more to share regarding specific details as well as the impact for Ubisoft+ subscribers at a later date.

That’s because I’ve been playing Two Point Campus, the new game from the delightful people who brought us Two Point Hospital. Both are management simulations, which is one of the most misleadingly anodyne names in all gaming.As people who grew up playing Theme Park in 1990s will tell you, managing things can be tremendously fun.

I’m doing this because of a recent(ish) change of policy at Sony. They used to be very guarded about their ‘PlayStation exclusives’ — which is to say, games that could only be played on PlayStations and not any other console.

This is partly because of its blockbusting scale. Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe struggles to compete with this grand comic-book story, told across about 20 hours, and full of both spectacle and (brilliantly voice-acted) character work.

That tech will also be made available to Google’s industry partners. Sony gave its own streaming service a headstart in 2015 by buying the patents of OnLive — an early game streaming service — shortly before the once-promising startup shut down.

Cloud gaming service Google Stadia will shut down on Jan. 18, the search giant said in blog post Thursday. Google will refund all Stadia hardware purchased through its Google Store, along with all games and add-on content purchased from its Stadia store.

Without the enhancements for PC, Marvel’s Spider-Man was a stunner. With them, it’s, er, splendiferous. Its version of Manhattan Island is a crystalline complex of light rays and reflections that sometimes had me gawping rather than gaming.

But I was soon back to gaming, thanks to that swinging mechanic. Press a button to send Spider-Man Tarzanning through the air, release it to have him drop. Up, down, up, down, with a few embellishments along the way. It’s a masterpiece of momentum, and it never gets boring.