Hello youse.

Last week I started talking about Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, the new big box board game release from Games Workshop. Actually, it’s not a board game. Oh, it is. But it’s a strange hybrid thing, where miniatures from further into the GW line can be incorporated into the game, and characters from the board game can be used in the GW miniatures game Age Of Sigmar. It’s an interesting product, incorporating a classic design ethos and fusing it with modern marketing sensibilities. That’s why I continue to tell you about it this week.

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Few sci-fi games embrace the menacing strangeness and indifference of the universe as you find it in Kubrick, Tarkovsky, or even Scott’s original Alien. Space, and the far future, tend to be familiar analogues to the everyday conflicts we see around us. The aliens are never too> alien, and new worlds are never too> new.

The Solus Project maroons the player beyond the outskirts of comprehension. It’s a survival game with a little more guidance and sense of purpose that you’ll find in the million other survival games jostling for attention on Early Access. It’s also about a hundred times more polished, which is fitting for a game fast-approaching its full release. But its gorgeous graphics and clever diegetic interface are all in the service of a story of isolation and suspense on a deserted alien world.

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Everything I love about Dark Souls is everything that makes me want to scream in Salt and Sanctuary [official site]. … [visit site to read more]

Never one for the conservative approach, Just Cause 3 [official site] is getting another batch of ostentatious DLC that’ll see protagonist Rico Rodriguez pilot powerful mechs and get to grips with an antigravity gun.

Mech Land Assault follows the Sky Fortress DLC expansion and marks the game’s second offering of additional content. Publisher Square Enix have now announced it’ll launch on June 3 (this Friday) for Season Pass holders, and June 10 for everyone else. Its big features include:

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

The Last Door [official site] is an episodic point and click adventure horror game series. I enjoyed the first season, in spite of the fact that I got stuck on a couple of obscure puzzles, and I’m going to make time for the now-finished season two at some point in the near future. Creepy, creaky (the sound design is fantastic>) and sedate, it’s an effective game and the lo-fi graphics serve the sense of mystery well.

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Okay, so in a situation which rapidly escalated I started off admiring someone’s recreation of Seattle in Cities: Skylines, ended up browsing some of the Steam Workshop mods and assets and am now trying to build a clown retirement community complete with clown cemetery.

Here is the awesome Seattle thing:

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It’s tough being hip nowadays, what with all the mobile cellular telephones and social medias and streams and memes. Another fad that seems to be becoming increasingly popular is 360 degree “interactive” videogame trailers. I like these and the latest Hitman [official site] number takes us to Marrakesh, should you wish to visit the Moroccan city before getting your hands on Agent 47’s latest outing that’s out today.

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Overwatch’s [official site] Play Of The Game feature is one I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about since I started playing way back in closed beta. Blizzard has done a lot of work refining the systems involved and trying to find an automated way to pick “cool” moments from across a range of playstyles but the results are still hit and miss (literally in the case of some utterly tedious Widowmaker POTGs I’ve sat through).

But more and more, I’m thinking that one of the best ways forward would be to have two-player Play Of The Games.

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The other day I sat down to clear out an old bills basket and realised The Godfather trilogy was on the telly. “I’ll stick it on in the background,” I naively thought to myself and, needless to say, I didn’t get as much done as I’d first planned. Until part 3. Because no matter how much I want> to like it, it’s garbage compared to its forerunners.

Luckily, third-person crime fest Mafia 3 [official site] doesn’t appear to be suffering from the same tri-entry tedium if the latest trailer is anything to go by. Visiting its fictionalised slant on New Orleans, New Bordeaux’s alligator infested swamp area, industrialised docklands, and jazz-touting wharf district suggest number 3 is shaping up rather nicely. Look, see:

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We’re not even at the halfway point and 2016 is already one of the best years for PC gaming that I can remember. XCOM 2 and Darkest Dungeon already seem like distant memories, and this month alone we’ve had Kathy Rain, Stellaris, DOOM, Salt and Sanctuary, Overwatch and Total War: Warhammer. Today there’s another Hitman episode incoming and after the joy of Sapienza, I can’t wait to get stuck into Marrakesh. I’ve been starved of games for half of the month thanks to holidays and press trips so I’ve undoubtedly missed some splendid releases, so I put it to you, dear readers: what was May’s best game?

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