The Silent Hill 2 remake is only out today, but it’s been nearly two years since the first system requirements appeared, immediately distressing our PCs so badly that they started having their own nightmares of fog-smothered towns and James Sunderland in an uncomfortably high-poly nurse outfit. Those requirements have since lowered and> risen, and now we know for sure that nu-Silent Hill 2 is one tough customer for performance – albeit one that benefits greatly from just one or two key settings tweaks.

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Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! It’s a double feature this week - Zach Barths and Matthew Burns of former Zachtronics fame! (Do read Edwin's interview with Zach on their unrealised 40K factory game). Cheers Zach and Matthew! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelves?

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Sundays are for more Space Marine 2 operations. Ah, I see you’ve combined incredibly slow progression XP with worthwhile upgrades, forcing me to play for hours. I hate you for this, but I will not stop. Before I pour yet more of my life into making a fake number go up, let’s read some of this week’s writing I personally found interesting about videogames (and game related things!)

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Greetings, friends. Do you have a moment to speak about our lord and saviour, the electric heat pad? My spine now resembles a splinter of charred wood, but oh, so worthwhile. It's an absolute godsend as the days get brisker. My flatmate keeps telling me I shouldn't keep the window wide open if I'm getting cold, but he doesn't understand. I need the airflow. I can handle the chill, but if the air's too still, things go downhill!

So, now that we're all sitting comfortably atop our heat pads: what are we all playing this weekend? Let's take a looksie at what we're all clicking on here in the treehouse.

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We pitch our tents outside Constantinople and crack open the ale. In the light of the campfire I examine my travel companions as they party. There's an Ashkenazi rabbi, a Saxon serf, some French knights, a Czech spy, a German dwarf, and a pair of inseparable Italian peasants. This rowdy band of roustabouts I've collected in the Crusader Kings 3's Roads To Power expansion has the feeling of a found family, each fellow wanderer sporting their own ambitions and quirks. They won't all make it. Many of the people I'm looking at in the glow of these embers will fall on the road, victims of robbery, landslides, and animal attacks. One of them will sacrifice their life to save the rest of us. All will bring me a step closer to my goal: I am walking from Ireland to China.

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I do not wish to dwell overly long on the incredible stop motion sheep in the trailer for folk horror game Daemonologie, because it’s got so much else going for it - from the gorgeously haunting vocal and string melodies to the extremely dark character interactions that offer your witch finder the choice between 'talk' and 'torture'. And yet, living in Wales for the last decade must have rubbed off. The sweet sheep, they sing to me. The relative rarity of stop motion and other practical effects in horror media is surely one of the greater tragedies of our age, although not too surprising given the incredible amount of work it takes. Flock toward the trailer below, and I’ll see you on the other side of the pasture, hopefully as deeply altered by the experience as I was.

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Finding the best Steam Deck dock will be high on the priority list for any of us portable PC gaming enthusiasts. Even Amazon’s October Prime Day right around the corner, this deal is looking pretty unbeatable at the moment.

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When the trailer for steampunk RPG New Arc Line released in April, I was immediately taken in by its premise. To my shame, I’ve never gotten around to the social tensions and magic-meets-technology world of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. A newer, shinier journey to a similar setting sounded like just the ticket. After spending a few hours with the preview build, I do have at least one bit of very positive news to share: I’m definitely going to play Arcanum now, because despite some fetching environments and potentially interesting social systems, New Arc Line just isn’t doing it for me.

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Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! I’m currently reading Brendan Keogh’s The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist. It’s interesting enough that I’m only mildly pissed off about the added academic book tax. Paying the academic price> is funny if you say it like paying the iron price>. Although, again, not quite funny enough to soothe my awful uni flashbacks of books that cost a week’s worth of groceries each. This week, it’s writer on Tomb Raider, Mirror's Edge, BioShock Infinite plus loads more, and host of BBC Radio’s Mythical Creatures - Rhianna Pratchett! Cheers Rhianna! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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Sundays are for squishing nids. I...was at least 35% wrong about Space Marine II. The new patch and a trick I learned to deal with Zoanthropes means I can play on Veteran now, and a lot of the issues I had with feeling overpowered have been sorted. I still think the guard are more interesting, but it's a very fun bit of smashy. Before I continue to never be wrong about a videogame ever again, let’s read some writing that I personally found interesting about games (and game related things!)

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