Doom: The Dark Ages has encouraged us to redirect our booting utensils away from Rematch's leather balls and into the vital organs of Hell's revolting soldiers. Along with various punches, flail strikes, and shield thrusts, most of which aren't even allowed in football. But could the manner of their delivery also be cause for a critical kicking? The Dark Ages notably replaces the lavishly animated glory kills of recent Dooms with faster, simpler melee strikes, so reviewer Nic and I sat down for a gentle argument over whether this was a change for a better.>

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I couldn’t offer many Steam Deck-specific insights in my look at Doom: The Dark Ages’ PC performance last week, because a crashing issue was inconsiderately – dare I say, rudely – blocking me from even reaching the main menu. Over the weekend, however, a purpose-built SteamOS Preview update stepped in, making the brawly sci-fantasy shooter playable on the handheld. Just in time for its launch on the 15th, no less.

I’ll confess that as I set about parrying imps between my plastic-calloused fingers, the "playable" part was still dropping minor bombshells. My main complaint with how The Dark Ages runs on desktops is the mandatory ray tracing effects that have, compared to the hardly much uglier Doom Eternal, slowed it right down. The Steam Deck can run many things, but it usually reacts to traced rays by curling up and sobbing until they go away. Still, maybe I should have had more faith in the series that essentially brought functional RT effects to the Deck in the first place, as this most recent, most demanding instalment can still run around a playable 30fps. Without resorting to its lowest settings, too.

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Among the first terrain fixtures you discover on Dune: Awakening's Arrakis are moisture seals: puffy wads of fabric that fill cave entrances to create makeshift microclimates, where travellers can escape the constant threat of dehydration. Awakening's moisture seal are, in practice, the paper lid on a tube of wilderness Pringles: poke through with your dagger to find resources and the occasional hostile NPC. But what if you could place your own moisture seals, rather than just tearing open the ones left by NPCs? I'd love to play a game in which you are constantly reading the barren landscape for the shallowest of shady depressions that can be plugged and converted into shelters. Think of the attentiveness it might teach, the sensitivity to the geometry of a world that can drain your O2 bar dry in moments.

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Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! I'm currently reading Dorothy Parker, who did more for the language than I'd previously though. I'm having quite regular moments of "oh, she> said that". More proof, if any were needed, that the soul of wit is as much depression and alcoholism as it is brevity.

This week it's game city design expert and author of Virtual Cities, Konstantinos Dimopoulos! Cheers Konstantinos! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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Sundays are for enjoying the second heatwave of the year, but what are you going to do outside if not read? Exactly, so read these.

Aftermath interviewed video game trailer maker Derek Lieu for his take on the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer and why it's not very good.

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Bit miffed this week. I bought a new electric toothbrush and it oscillates so fast it does that thing where my whole mouth feels unbearably itchy. Blech. Balancing this experience against the existence of hundreds of thousands of videogames to play, and I reckon the universe comes out of it with a roughly neutral standing.

Anyway. As much as I know you all love hearing about my current oral situation; here's what we're all playing this weekend!

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Dbrand has launched a new "Big Short" sale that includes sizable discounts on its Killswitch cases and more for the Steam Deck and other devices.

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I’m liking Doom: The Dark Ages more than local reviewist Nic does, possibly because spending most of 2024 remoulding my brain to learn Elden Ring has unduly engorged the part that appreciates a good parry-and-riposte. C'est la vie demons, and colleague. There is one issue that bothers me, though: why, of all the games on Bethesda’s production lines, was this chosen to be the next game that follows Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in making ray tracing effects compulsory?

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I am rewriting the history of Korea, and there are blotty ink stains everywhere. Europa Universalis 5 was announced yesterday, the official unveiling of a grand strategy game that has been an open secret since April last year, thanks to a long-running dev diary. As reveals go, it was less a cloak and dagger ambush and more an elephant charge that everyone in Europe could see coming from fifteen countries away. Still, elephants are always nice. I got some hands-on time with an early build of the map-happy historical simulation, and I'm delighted to report that the kingdom of Korea is struggling. After instituting many new laws, the leader of the nation has passed away. He was steely, noble, robust, and will be remembered as much for his kindness as his strength. He died of the common cold.

It's okay, the computer will clean all this up.

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Humble's Doom and Wolfenstein Mayhem Bundle is an easy win if you're even remotely interested in first-person shooters. For $28 / £21.16, you get fifteen titles spanning decades of FPS history.

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