There’s an old saying in gaming monitor circles that once you’ve gone ultrawide, there’s no going back. Indeed, having had the vast Samsung CRG9 hogging my desk for a bit last month, I’m inclined to agree. But what do games actually look like on a screen this wide? It’s one thing looking at lovely wallpapers, but another thing entirely to have a game occupy your entire field of vision.

To find out, and more importantly show you>, I’ve rounded up all the very best ultrawide PC games, complete with pictures of what they actually look like in the flesh, plus oodles of lovely GIFs so you can see how it works in action. If you thought playing Red Dead Redemption 2 in 5120×1440 was impressive, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

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You’ll ocassionally find someone on the internet sounding off about how the strategy genre is dead. If you see such a person in the future, send them this list of the best strategy games ever made.

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Everything you thought you knew to be true has been undermined by the Great Revelation. Please read on to learn about your new role in society, and how this affects the games you will be allowed to play.

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On the night of Friday 30th August, at PAX West in Seattle, RPS will raise the dead. Using techniques too dreadful to comprehend, we shall puncture the mortal veil like a sheet of wet tissue paper, and drag something back from the other side. That spirit will be Ghoastus, the Roman Ghost: our first fully spectral staff writer, and the site s occasional historical strategy correspondent. He s erudite, he s wise, and he s in no way a person draped in a sheet and a replica centurion s helmet.

Ghoastus will be interviewing a panel of strategy gaming s leading lights: Ed Beach, lead designer for Civilization VI; Adam Isgreen, creative director for the Age of Empires series; Peter Nicholson, content designer for Imperator: Rome; Jeff Spock, narrative director of Amplitude’s just-announced historical 4X Humankind; and Nicholas Tannahill from Stronghold developers Firefly. From within his circle of chalked wards, Ghoastus will ask them how they mix reality with fiction when making historical games, and how they ve kept well-loved franchises fresh over the years.

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Following the sci-fi 4X strategy of Endless Space and fantasy 4X of Endless Legend, the next strategy game from Amplitude Studios has an even stranger setting: human history. They’ve just announced Humankind, a 4X strategy game which I will crudely describe as “sounding like Amplitude’s take on Civilization.” By which I mean it’s a turn-based 4X strategy game where galleons can be sailing around at the same time as submarines and all that. I’ve long wished for a contender to strut menacingly around Civ’s turf and I’m doubly keen to see what Amplitude will do there. Here, watch the announcement trailer below.

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In Vectorpark s Sandcastles, you build fantastic towers and watch the waves erase your work every 10 seconds. It s a very direct metaphor for the global climate crisis that threatens to flood coastal cities and exacerbate natural disasters. Sandcastles confronts us with our totally predictable watery doom, but we also find fun and expression in our totally foreseeable destruction. When the planet dies, at least we ll be entertained.

Before you commit to starving and drowning, you should probably understand how and why it ll happen. To imagine this nightmarish hellworld, readers can flip through climate fiction novels ( cli-fi ) and movie-goers can watch a big unprofitable climate disaster blockbuster every few years. But us mouse-clickers, we obviously don t read books or watch movies. Instead, we play with climate. Behold, the climate crisis game.

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Ah, 2010! Lady Gaga and Beyonc were tearing up the dancefloor with Telephone, Inception was fuelling one million drunk ‘philosophical’ conversations, Jackass had gone 3D, and Civilization V had yet to reach that point in every Civ game’s lifespan where it’s declared superior to its successor. If you wish to party like it’s 2010, you might enjoy a new Civilization VI mod made by actual Civ 6 art director Brian Busatti. It aims to make Civ 6’s landscape, buildings, and units look more like Civ 5, less vibrant and more ‘realistic’. Yeah, but like, what if we’re still dreaming we’re playing Civ – does the game ever stop or will “one more turn” keep going forever? Makes you think, maaan.

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It’s a little harder to kill the planet in Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm today, but it’ll kill you back twice as hard after today’s major update. In today’s Antarctic Late Summer update, Firaxis have heavily revised how fast climate change sets in, but greatly increased the damage it can do to the planet if you let it escalate too far. For those who want to see the world burn without having to spend any fossil fuels on it, there’s also a world creation slider that lets you increase the frequency of disasters, just for funsies. You can see the full patch notes here, and a video summary below.

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John had the presence of mind to take today off, after flying back from San Francisco on Sunday. Young Matt and I got a red eye that took off on Friday night and landed on Saturday afternoon. I didn t sleep for 30 hours, then slept for 12, was wired for the next 16, and then slept for another four. Which brings us to today, when I am writing these charts, unsure which meal I should be having next and shaking off a lingering dose of The Fear, which I get from long haul flying more than I ever did from hangovers.

With that in mind, it s me, back once again with the ill behaviour, to fill in doing the Steam Charts. I m very much flying by the seat of my pants here, so let s see what I come up with, shall we?

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2K Games have taken the curious and welcome step of explaining what data Civilization VI collects about you, your computer, and your play – and why. It’s fairly common for games from big publishers to report back, but rare for publishers to say what it’s doing and why. The license we have to agree to ostensibly gives them permission, after all. Most evidently don’t think it’s in their best interests to be open, which is unfortunate because it is in ours. Whether you’re okay with how much data they collect, ah, that’s up to you; at least now we can make a more-informed decision.

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