RPS has received criticism recently for covering Arc Raiders, an extraction shooter, using writers who don’t normally like extraction shooters. Allow me to rectify this, by instead bringing you an appraisal of Arc Raiders on the Steam Deck as someone who doesn't know how to aim with thumbsticks.

My actual excursions into these robot-conquered wastes have thus been going terribly. And yet, it’s still abundantly clear that Arc Raiders is about as good a fit for the Deck – and, by extension, most handheld PCs – as you could realistically expect from a modern, high-fidelity, Unreal Engine 5-powered multiplayer lootshoot. Even if, at first, it doesn’t seem like it will even launch.

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Original Saints Row design director Chris Stockman is talking to the hellgods at Embracer Group about making a prequel open world game, possibly set in 1977 and containing absolutely no dildo bats. This comes almost two decades after Stockman left Saints Row development studio Volition, and a couple of years after Embracer closed Volition amid wider cuts.

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We were late to the party with the last big horse game, Umamusume: Pretty Derby (I confess, I avoided it because I'm not that keen on gacha, though I do watch Gold Ship/Michael Jackson crossover memes on the toilet), so I'm getting in on the ground floor with Sha Beast Dressage.

It's sure to be the next global hit. Who doesn't want to parade around on a horse that looks like it's made of ancient Egyptian embalming tools? Who doesn't want to be trapped in "a perpetual cycle of non-consensual reincarnation" by a god of torture, forced to train up hellbeasts for exhibition to earn your freedom? Who doesn't want to make the Nuckelavee do a croupade?

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November is here. The sunny uplands are far behind us. The great gilded procession of Videogaming trundles and cavorts through the deep forest. The bells of the indie jesters are muffled by fog, and the CEOs peer anxiously from their carriages of scarlet and bronze, instructing their guardsmen to beware the union organisers concealed in the undergrowth. Keep watching the trees. Everytime you glance away, they become a little more like placards. Do you see the moths, idly winking on boughs? They are the Maw's eyes. Those distant, whistling spirals of pine, somehow immobile behind the foreground trunks, in defiance of the rules of perspective? They are the Maw's lungs. Those squirrels having shouting matches with magpies? Erm. The Maw's thrombocytes, maybe.

Listen! The crunch of twigs and leaves under hobnailed boots. Approaching torches. It is a refugee party of freshly released PC games. Let us pick the heartiest or strangest from their ranks to bolster our forces, before the shadows close in for good.

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The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed a new name recently carved into the wall of the RPS treehouse. Callum Williams quietly snuck in earlier this month as a Guides Writer, and his energy and enthusiasm is already proving infectious, despite the best efforts of us grizzled and miserable veterans. Please welcome him in the comments below!

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Sundays are for sleeping off your fourth 10-hour flight in two weeks, assuming you in fact can> sleep, and have not exacerbated your physical disintegration by staying up late on Saturday putting together a list of interesting games and not-games writing. Why not do it earlier, you ask? Daft question. You were busy with those flights.

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