Politics, horror, rampant cloning and a living will – October is off to a very good start. So as you gather the harvest (or pop to Tesco to buy cans of frozen veg), and prepare your costume for Halloween (I'm going as Kay Burley, the fabled Sky News monster), don't forget to unwind with a webgame or two. We've collected the week's best below.

Legend of Pandora by Francisco Ferreres Play it online here.



On the games-that-are-a-bit-like-Zelda scale, Legend of Pandora is peeking over the top. Don't let the weirdly Conan-esque title screen fool you, or the character portraits (ripped from RPG Maker). Despite a few concessions to the RPG genre, this is a Zelda clone through and through. Luckily, it's also a well-executed and fairly enjoyable one, even if lacks an identity of its own.

Turnament by Nitrome Play it online here.



Nitrome's turn-based Roguey puzzle game put a stupid grin on my face after about three seconds. I think the trick to eliciting that hideously rictus face is to combine blown-up little pixel people with a beautiful chiptune soundtrack and at least one interesting game mechanic. The diminutively lovely Turnament twists the roguelike into a smart little puzzle game, shoving a surprisingly emotive tune over the top. Turn your attention to it forthwith.

Strategery 2012: Right Makes Might by Silverware Games Play it online here.



If you missed the great Romney/Obama debate the other day, you can catch up via this strategy... er, strategery game, which recreates the event exactly as it went down, as a series of Advance Wars-style turn-based battles. It sounds like a lightweight comedy game but it really isn't; it's more like a flawless cover version of Intelligent Systems' classic strategy title, with an additional layer of political lampoonery. Dedicate a bit of time to this one, because it's well worth it.

Deep Sleep by scriptwelder Play it online here.



If Lone Survivor put you in the mood for more grainily pixellated indie horror goodness, then Deep Sleep should scratch that itch. It's an adventure game that has you exploring a creepy, abandoned house that – twist! – appears to reside inside your head. Saying much more would spoil it, but special attention must be paid to the wonderful sound design, which accounts for about 90% of the atmosphere.

Living Will by Mark Marino Play it online here.



There's some great stuff being created for the 18th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition, including the beautifully written Howling Dogs, but a particular highlight is Mark Marino's Living Will, which uses the form of an interactive will to tell a story. It's a novel approach, and one that begs multiple replays as you deal with the bequeathments from a number of a different perspectives. There's also a good Downton Abbey joke buried in there somewhere, which we don't get to say often enough.

Arenanet have started talking about legendary weapons, super-rare items that can be forged from other rare items at the mystic forge in the middle of Lion's Arch. The precise formula for each weapon is secret, but Arenanet have been watching adventurers carefully and reckon that we'll "begin to see some ambitious players wielding Legendary Weapons in game very soon."

Apparently there are clues hidden throughout quest zones and PvP areas. But why go to the edges of the planet for these legendary weapons? What makes them so legendary anyway? Wait. What's this, a great sword made of night that's gains shimmering red nebulae when the sun goes down? I play a Necromancer. I can't even use a great sword and I want that thing. The nightblade is just one of the items on show in the new legendary weapons video below. Read on to see a lion-man wielding a giant bubble blower that sheds water with every swing, and a shield with a glowing book chained to it.

Find out more about legendary items on the Guild Wars 2 site.

Mario on PC Gamer? Mario on PC Gamer?! But wait - before your temporal artery explodes from the side of your face in sheer exasperation at this tainting of our pure PC space, let it be known that this is a Skyrim mod and thus legitimate PC news. Honest!

In fact the mod itself avoids crossing the streams too much - you can install it without affecting your Skyrim game. Instead of replacing anything in the icy lands of the Nords, Super Skyrim Bros introduces a separate kingdom, accessible via a bed in an abandoned house. It's all a dream, you see, so the Skyrim lore is preserved - phew!

It's a dream that involves kidnapped princesses, fire flower staves, collectible coins, talking toadstools and all the other trappings that make the Mario games an oddly narcotic experience. There's even a sidescrolling platforming section.

It does depart in some ways, however - you have to kill Goombas as you would any Skyrim beastie, rather than simply bouncing on their heads, and you won't grow in size when you eat a mushroom. Still, there's five worlds and between one and three hours of play. It's recommended you are at least level 20 before entering.



For more awesome Skyrim mods, you should have a look at our 25 best Skyrim mods feature.

I just can't seem to master lobbing splodes in Borderlands 2, but this devastating Legendary MIRV/Bouncing Bettie Hybrid grenade mod might just help my inept throwing arm. Spotted over at Kotaku, the "Rolling Thunder" mod is a loot drop from Wilhelm, the boss at the, uh, end of "End of the Line". Video within!

"As you can see the mod is designed to make a single grenade bounce multiple times (up to 15) while creating an explosion on each impact," says the mod's discoverer, 5haow5. "Once the grenade is finished it will detonate and scatter the smaller grenades in a circle."



Yep - I think even I might hit something with that. What have you found in the game? Got any faves? Post details of your outlandish mods and spectacular shooters in the comments!

Adventuring ain't for everyone. Why bother smashing dragons to bits with a mace possessed by a malevolent Daedric Prince when you can farm turnips from a frigid field? Now the Skyrim Hearthfire DLC has launched on Steam, the domestically-inclined Dovahkiin can do that and more with a massively expanded range of home-making mechanics.

For the sum of £3.49/$5, the DLC allows you to buy land within the game, plan and build a house with arduously-quarried stone and settle there for the rest of your days. Buildings can be as simple as single room cottages or sprawling mansion complexes, to which you can add armouries, alchemy towers, trophy rooms, greenhouses, fish hatcheries and more. But some will look upon your creation with lusty eyes! You may find yourself having to defend your property from home invasion by bandits, kidnappers and even swarms of skeevers.

You can even fill your property empire with a horde of adopted children, which is definitely in no way sinister.

Wherever I lay my horned hat is my home, I say.

Adventuring ain't for everyone. Why bother smashing dragons to bits with a mace possessed by a malevolent Daedric Prince when you can farm turnips from a frigid field? Now the Skyrim Hearthfire DLC has launched on Steam, the domestically-inclined Dovahkiin can do that and more with a massively expanded range of home-making mechanics.

For the sum of £3.49/$5, the DLC allows you to buy land within the game, plan and build a house with arduously-quarried stone and settle there for the rest of your days. Buildings can be as simple as single room cottages or sprawling mansion complexes, to which you can add armouries, alchemy towers, trophy rooms, greenhouses, fish hatcheries and more. But some will look upon your creation with lusty eyes! You may find yourself having to defend your property from home invasion by bandits, kidnappers and even swarms of skeevers.

You can even fill your property empire with a horde of adopted children, which is definitely in no way sinister.

Wherever I lay my horned hat is my home, I say.

Wargaming's epic MMO tank battler has received an update which adds a slew of new steel monsters and visually overhauls a number of battle arenas in which to test their mettle. And their metal. World of Tanks patch 8.1 introduces players to the expansive armoury of Britain's Royal Tank Corps, with its 22 new behemoths including the likes of the Vickers Medium Mk I tank, the Centurion Mk. I-IV, the Centurion Mk. V-XI, the Matilda medium, the FV 214 Conqueror and the Churchill.

The new British fleet is intended to span the many and varied qualities of tankitude, from zippy, heavy-hitting tanks for lightning strikes, to lumbering giants, designed to plough implacably forward through a hail of fire. Apparently, a later update will also bring self-propelled guns and tank destroyers. In the meantime, however, you could always snap up some of the new premium tanks on offer: the Soviet SU-11 44, the German PzIV Schmalturm VI and the Panther M10.

Also in the update is a rendering and lighting refit of the Province, El Halluf, Dragon Ridge, Abbey, and Prokhorovka battles arenas. Sparkly.

The British invented the tank, so seeing them roll into Wargaming's eternal battle is a fitting a testament to Blighty's dubious death-engineering talents. I suppose a fleet of Spinning Jennies wouldn't be much cop against the amassed might of the Panzerdivision.

The Mass Effect 3 Retaliation pack is set to be the biggest update to the multiplayer mode yet. The chitinous villains of Mass Effect 2, The Collectors, will return. Praetorian, Scion, Abomination, Trooper, and Captain variants will form a new 11 wave assault. Kill them, get cash, buy boxes and open them to dramatic inception "BWAAAARM" noises. If you're lucky, you might unlock a new class like the Turian Havoc Soldier, or the Turian Ghost Infiltrator, or a new collector-themed weapon.

Six of Mass Effect 3's multiplayer maps will suffer environmental hazards and traps. It's not clear how these will affect the maps precisely, but the announcement post on the Mass Effect 3 site mentions "Acid, Lightning, Meltdowns, Sandstorms, Swarms and Whiteouts."

Retaliation will also add more powerful ammo mods and introduce a challenge system that'll reward milestones (a certain number of kills with a certain gun, for example) with points that can be spent on banners that you can flaunt in the player lobby.

Retaliation will be released for free next Tuesday, October 9. Here's a rousing trailer set to music that's really far too exciting for this time of the morning.

Dishonored’s release is so close I can almost taste the sizzling whale-fat candles which conveniently fail to illuminate its sprawling levels. And just how sprawling they be! The latest trailer is one of those fancy branching Choose Your Own Adventure types, allowing you to poke through many, many permutations of the game’s challenge. Will you choose to be the slinky staboteur or simply a massive ninjasshole?

But, be warned: being a pretty comprehensive extrapolation of a mission’s multitude possibilities it’s inevitably pretty spoilerific.



What did you do? I bet you did that thing with the thing, right? Gruesome. And these are just some of the manifold options that emerge from Dishonored’s grab-bag (stab-bag?) of tricks. Watch out for our review in the wee small hours of Monday.

News fountains on tap today: Of Orcs and Men shows green people bicker just like us, the stone-faced Agent 47 of Hitman: Absolution shows off his creativity for the kill, and Mass Effect 3 gets its biggest multiplayer update yet. I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite "read more" segue on PC Gamer.


Of Orcs and Men's newest trailer proves orcs and goblins become quite argumentative over the wholesale slaughter of evil humans. Sort of like presidential debates.
Hitman: Absolution's equally new trailer reveals various options for snuffing out a life, including murder on the dancefloor and a swagger away from an explosion with an expression hard enough to cut diamonds. Confirmed: Disco actually kills.
Mass Effect 3's Retaliation multiplayer DLC releases for free on October 9 and adds environmental hazards, new weapons, and the return of the Collectors as an enemy faction.
Blizzard plans to ease up on World of Warcraft's sometimes lengthy reputation grinds by bestowing rate bonuses for alternative characters once your primary hero reaches revered with a faction. "Hey, now that you practically worship the ground I walk upon, do you mind hooking up my buddy?"
Skyrim's Hearthfire DLC sits on Steam for $5 and lets you become this guy while you simultaneously yell dragons to death.
This is probably the most accurate depiction of my experiences in Mists of Pandaria thus far.