Microsoft News Roundup: Starfield reviews, Pokémon's gothic cousin, WordPad getting killed, and Labor Day deals

This past week was about more than Starfield, though that's clearly the biggest thing in tech right now.

If you're anything like our team of writers, you've spent the entire past week reading about Starfield or enjoying early access to the game. You've probably forgotten to do some things, like water your plants or go to your day job. My guess is you also missed some news stories while exploring the cosmos. Luckily, I am here to help you catch up on the biggest stories from the past week.

Starfield

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Starfield is one of the most anticipated games of the year, and some lucky folks can already play it. Early access for the game launched on September 1, 2023. Reviewers also had the chance to explore the expansive universe of Starfield.

To be honest, summarizing Starfield in a few paragraphs doesn't do it justice. I'll leave you with a snippet from our Managing Editor Jez Corden and point you toward his Starfield review:

"Reviewing Starfield was a mission. It's unnecessary to emphasize how big it is. Bethesda's new IP spans a large quadrant of our Milky Way galaxy, with hundreds of star systems and planets loaded with potential gameplay. Starfield pushes its Creation Engine to the absolute limit, and cracks of age are indeed beginning to show. While aspects of Starfield's design could've used more iteration, it's one of Bethesda's most impressive cinematic titles. With incredible writing, its slow-burn stories snowball into immense moments, and tight RPG/FPS combat thrills in spaceship battles, grounded firefights, and zero-G death ballets — Starfield is a landmark experience with a bright future ahead of it."

Gothic Pokémon?

Pokémon is one of the most popular franchises in the world. With decades of new games and an ever-expanding list of creatures, Pokémon stands in a league of its own in many ways. While there are other games within the same genre, you could argue that the Pokémon IP is so popular that you can't directly compete with it. Instead, some companies create games with similar elements that have some key differences. That's the case with The Thaumaturge, a game that's set to come out later this year.

The Thaumaturge is an RPG that play testers compared to a dark, gritty, and gorier version of Pokémon. That may be just the game older Pokémon fans want. The game's protagonist has a gift of taming ethereal creatures. It features turn-based combat, which is part of the reason testers compared the game to Pokémon.

Lenovo Legion Go

(Image credit: Windows Central)

When Valve launched the Steam Deck, the company sparked interest in the handheld gaming console. Since then, several companies have unveiled their own portable PCs, with Lenovo being the latest. The Legion Go runs on an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor, which is the same chip seen in some other handhelds like the ROG Ally.

What stands out is that the Legion Go has a pair of detachable controllers. The Legion Go can also charge up to 70% in just 30 minutes, thanks to Super Rapid Charge support.

Windows 11 is at the heart of the Legion Go, which allows the device to play games from Steam, Battle.net, Epic Games Store, Xbox Game Pass, and more.

Bye bye WordPad

(Image credit: Windows Central)

WordPad has been around since the days of Windows 95, but it will soon go away. Microsoft hasn't updated the app since Windows 8, but the company has continued to include WordPad in Windows. WordPad will be deprecated and removed from Windows in future releases of the OS

"WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt," said Microsoft.

The company did not specify when WordPad would be removed, but it will likely happen by the release of the next major version of Windows, which is expected in 2024.

Samsung gives second life to TVs

(Image credit: Future)

Samsung wants you to be able to stream games on just about any device, at least that's what it seems like. The company announced that it will add game streaming apps to its 2020 smart TV. While the older televisions won't receive the entire Samsung Gaming Hub, they'll receive standalone game streaming apps.

Samsung didn't specify which apps are on the way to its 2020 TVs, but presumably Xbox Cloud Gaming and NVIDIA GeForce Now are on the list.

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