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Didn't you hear? Collectible card games are all the rage these days, what with Blizzard's Hearthstone sporting over 20 million players, Magic: The Gathering going through some kind of renaissance, and publishers like Bethesda definitely not trying to cash in on the whole thing with games like The Elder Scrolls: Legends. And so at this year's E3 we have yet another entry in the genre from developers CD Projekt Red, a Witcher 3 spin-off called Gwent. The difference is, Gwent is far more than just a collectible card game. This one has an honest-to-god proper storyline. There's even an open-world map to explore.

For the uninitiated, Gwent was originally a collectible card game embedded into the vast world of The Witcher 3. Only, as player data began to trickle in, CD Projekt Red discovered that many players were spending hours roaming inns during quests just to play Gwent. Some even ignored the main game entirely. This was more than enough incentive for the developer to spin Gwent off into its own free-to-play game across PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. And in true CD Projekt Red fashion, it's gone a little overboard in the process.

Instead of just pitching players against each another in one-on-one card battles, Gwent features several single-player campaigns, each of of which has its own unique storyline and lead character, is fully voice acted, and is brought to life via some highly stylised 2D drawings that gently slide across the screen. There's even an overworld map where, in the demo I was shown at least, you control a cute 2D Geralt to explore and find hidden snippets of story, or extra cards to add to your deck. Each campaign is said to last a whopping 10 hours or so too.

I Am Setsuna is all about nostalgia. Sure, it doesn't rehash a familiar franchise, or dig up a cast of long forgotten characters, but it does serve up a mixture of PlayStation-era graphics and storytelling that harks back to the classic '90s RPGs that came to the West from Japan. The result, from the few of hours I've played, is a game that feels reassuringly familiar without being gratuitously mercantile in the process.

The story begins grimly, taking a more adult approach than is typical of the genre. You play as Endir, a warrior born into a tribe that pays its way through the world by offering mercenary services to whomever needs them. Following Endir's impressive feat of heroism in saving a girl from a monster (a sequence that acts as tutorial for the turn-based combat system), he is commissioned to kill another girl, Setsuna, who is about to turn 18.

Without straying too far into spoiler territory, it turns out Endir's mission is part of a series of regular sacrifices that are made to prevent monster attacks on settlements. Those attacks have been becoming more frequent, leading to more sacrifices. Before you can kill Setsuna, which Endir is more than ready to do given his sell-sword lineage, you're stopped by a small group seeking to end the cycle of teen killings. After some negotiation Endir becomes a reluctant member of the group.

(credit: shiftstigma)

Electronic books should be treated just like physical books for the purposes of lending, an advisor to Europe's top court has said.

Maciej Szpunar, advocate general to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), said that public libraries should be allowed to lend e-books so long as the author is fairly compensated.

A 2006 EU directive says that the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit rentals and loans belongs to the author of the work, however countries may opt out of this rule for the purposes of “public lending,” provided that authors obtain fair remuneration.