Back in 2010, when it was first announced, I was as excited about Grim Dawn [official site] as I was about any other game in production. It’s the work of Crate Entertainment, a studio made up of Iron Lore Entertainment veterans, and Iron Lore were the team behind one of my favourite ARPGs, Titan Quest. When the other kids were slaying demons in Blizzaro-Land, I was carving a path through myth and legend. Despite Grim Dawn’s availability in alpha form for some time now, I still haven’t played. The latest release, which adds a deity Devotion system and the first part of the final act, is awfully tempting though.

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Can even the Four Horsemen survive an apocalyptic event? Nordic Games hope so. When THQ went down in flames, Nordic bought up Darksiders – but not its creators, Vigil Games – and (naturally) declared that the hack ‘n’ slash action-RPG was not dead. While some assumed this would mean a Darksiders III, Nordic were a little vague, and the first we saw of DS again was the revamped Deathinitive Edition of Darksiders II – which hit PC last week. Worry not, they do indeed want to make a third game, and hope this re-release will help them with that.

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The ‘Deathinitive Edition’ of Darksiders II [official site] will ride onto PC tomorrow, publishers Nordic Games have announced at awfully short notice. It took them ages to even quietly confirm a PC version of the open-world hacking-and-slashing action-RPG’s revamp and now boom, here, it’s out tomorrow. (John really dug its original release in 2012.) Expect improved graphics, a rebalancing, and a fair bit of confusion over whether current DS2 owners will receive it as an update or not.

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Expansion packs were once a core part of playing PC games, but they can often feel less essential in a world of constant updates and microtransactions. Original game Alec, expansions Adam and Graham, and brief DLC Alice gathered to discuss their favourite game expansions and why they still think the model works.

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Books! They’re like films without pictures, or games that are all cutscene. Old people and hipsters really like them, teenagers think they’re like totally lame, and quite frankly we should all read more of them. There are countless games inspired by books – most especially Tolkien, Lovecraft and early Dungeons & Dragon fiction – but surprisingly few games based directly on books. Even fewer good ones.

Perhaps one of the reasons for that is that a game can, in theory, cleave closer to what a book does than a film can – with their length and their word counts, their dozens of characters and in some cases even their own in-game books, they can to some degree do the job of a novel. They don’t need to be based on books – and often they can do so much more, thanks to the great promise of non-linearity. Of course, the real reason for the dearth is that novels are so rarely the massive business a movie is these days. You might get a forlorn Hunger Games tie-in here and there, but suited people in gleaming office blocks just aren’t going to commission an adaptation of the latest Magnus Mills tale, more’s the pity.

I suspect that, over time, we’ll see the non-corporate side of games development increasingly homage the written word, but for now, these ten games (and seven honourable mentions) are, as far as I’m concerned, the best, and most landmark, results of page-to-pixel adaptation to date.

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Alec has already told you to play XCOM this weekend if you haven’t, seeing as the full game’s free to try on Steam. It’s “one of the best games of the last few years” says he. Aye, maybe it is, and maybe you could. However. If you fancy real-time smashing rather than turn-based tacticisicing, have a bash at the superpowered open-world antics, shenanigans, and – dare I say – bants of Saints Row IV [official site], which is also holding a free trial weekend on Steam, as is Saints Row: The Third.

SR4 is the best action game on PC, according to John.

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You probably like action games. But which ones should you like best?! We’ve narrowed it down to 25, and then put them in the unimpeachably correct order. Read on for details of the best action biff-zap-collect-me-do gaming you can stuff down your trousers.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Ooh, I like me some Darksiders II [official site]. Yet another tragic victim of the collapse of THQ, the prospects of a third game in the series seem ever-far away, with current owners Nordic Games still saying such a thing is yet to start. But with a remake of the game coming up later this year, now couldn’t possibly be a worse time to recommend it to you.

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An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC RPGs ever released. Covering the entire history of computer role-playing games is a daunting task and attempting to place the best games in such a broad genre in any kind of order is even more daunting. Thankfully, we are equal to all tasks and below, you will find the best fifty PC RPGs of all time.

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What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we’ll be offering our picks – based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 10 of the sale.>

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