It’s often pointless to wish a game series would come back once it’s been thrown on the great pile of dormant names. I try, and regularly fail, to stop myself yearning too forlornly for a new Midnight Club, a new Motorstorm, or a new Burnout.

Mostly because it means that when a game like Wreckreation comes along, there’s a temptation to go into it with lofty expectations inflated by a rose-tinted longing for something the game more than likely isn’t. Despite drawing plenty of elements from the anarchic arcade racer and the Criterion credentials of devs Three Fields Entertainment, Wreckreation isn’t Burnout, coming home after all these years getting takedowns in the wilderness.

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Warning: Spoilers for Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds 2 lie ahead.

Fallout: New Vegas has been an elephant in the room when it comes to my experience playing The Outer Worlds 2. Game director Brandon Adler and creative director Leonard Boyarsky have respectively called it a "natural comparison" and a "touchstone" in their latest game’s development.

"It had a lot of the elements that we knew we wanted to push forward: the deeper RPG, the more omnipresent factions and how they fit into the world, the type of open story that we wanted to tell, and even just the exploration of the world itself," Adler told GamesRadar back in August. "We even have a bunch of people at the studio that have already worked on [New Vegas]. It just really matched the values that we were trying to hit on this next game."

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Europa Universalis 5 is a forever game. Insofar as you might be able to play this grand historical strategy forever, but also because - my god - it takes forever to play. After a mere 45 hours of conniving, trading, battling, and scratching my head at menus, I have just about scraped my way through 150 years of Neapolitan history. I have yet to come across a single pizza with buffalo mozzarella on it, but there are approximately 250 years left to find one. This is the blessing and curse of a typically dense playthrough of Europa Universalis. Paradox's trademark blend of intricate geopolitical clockwork, hands-tied confusion, and "one more year" compulsion is all here. You just need to set aside a few centuries to enjoy it.

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My dearest Hedwig, I write to you from the churning battlefields of King Friedrich II's campaign to reinforce Silesia against the lurking Gallic aggressor. I regret to inform you that the French Hussars are kicking our Hussarses. We just engaged what our scouts from the 17th Pop-Up Tutorial Squadron promised was a "light" patrol of ill-trained musketmen and cavalry, just outside Hildesheim. French equestrians appear to be made of different stuff than our Prussian chargers. They cleave through our Landmiltz like wheat. Meanwhile, our horseguys can't take a single bayonet to the gaskin without turning for home.

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Brethren! Cease your prattling and pick up your GameCube controllers. It is time to start playing Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem at an unhealthy velocity, while funding lawyers to uphold the legal rights of LGBTQ+ people in the USA.

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You head down to the pet shelter in Fortnite. It's full. Woof, says one invincible banana dog, I barely see my owner because they wanted me to be a banana dog who regularly changes colour. Alas, this cannot be, so they've had to spend their V-Bucks on a small army of invincible banana dogs in a variety of hues. You try to cheer up this Sidekick by telling them that their owner can at least change their name and hat at any time. It provides little comfort.

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A question I often ask game developers when I've run out of real questions is: what was the hardest part of making your game? Which is a terrible line of inquiry, because it's like asking somebody with their foot in a hornet's nest which individual hornet they dislike the most. As Arc Raiders executive producer Aleksander Grøndal told me in a chat last week, "I can probably sit here and talk to you about all the problems we've had for hours on end, but yeah, game development is always tricky. That's what I can say. There's nothing that comes for free - everything is a constant struggle."

Still, the question often gets an interesting response, because as readers of Alex Wiltshire's old The Mechanic series will know, big problems may necessitate inventive solutions. So, what has been the hardest part of making Arc Raiders? Perfecting the slides? Avoiding mandatory player progression resets from season to season? Dealing with reports about the game's generative AI usage? According to Grøndal, it was trying to create an economy of loot and crafting materials - ranging from all-purpose Mechanical Components to rare or uncommon ingredients for specific guns, sometimes found in special field depots - that isn't too "punishing" and which doesn't just feel like accumulating "cash value".

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Existing PC vampires of Seattle, you should now have access to the expanded wardrobe Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 devs Paradox and The Chinese Room have rolled out for Halloween. The free update's fresh hairstyles, makeup styles, and eye colours were only on offer to folks who started fresh saves initially, something that it turns out wasn't intentional.

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Onion Games have released the English language version of Stray Children, a "bittersweet, fairytale RPG" I hadn't heard of till Oisin wrote it up in June, and then became very excited about.

Created by Onion Games, the developers of Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, Stray Children takes place in a world of kids besieged by monstrous adults. The kids live in a stronghold, while the adults, aka Olders, roam the landscapes beyond, each "carrying the heavy load of their own inadequacies, self-doubt, and all of the grievances that grown-ups gather".

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Apex Legends is rolling out its Season 27 update next Tuesday, November 4th, and RPS has been furnished with an overview of its meatiest rejigging work. I haven’t playtested this megapatch so unlike with Season 25, I can’t say from experience how any of these changes will get you killed. Still, since it tweaks my favourite map, my favourite playable Legend, and> my favourite hovercar, I feel uniquely qualified to declare without evidence whether they’re good or not.

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