Occasionally I have these moments where I can’t stop thinking about Dishonored 2. They come in fits and spurts, when I’m playing a game or I’m ordering a takeaway or I’m reading a book. I think to myself, “this just isn’t A Crack In The Slab though, is it?”

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Seven-day speedrunning marathon Awesome Games Done Quick 2021 has ended, raising a brilliant $2,758,847 million (around £2 million) for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. It’s the second-highest amount ever raised at the event, right behind last year’s winter marathon, which is pretty good going considering this year was the first fully digital AGDQ.

Despite not having a roaring crowd sat behind them, the speedrunners still put on an excellent show from the comfort of their own homes. Here are a few of my fave runs from the week.

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Get your speedrunning shoes on and prepare your glitches: Awesome Games Done Quick has arrived for its yearly speedrunning extravaganza. As with previous years, the charity event is raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. It’s been live since yesterday evening and runs until this Sunday, and there are already some fab runs in the likes of Mirror’s Edge and Dragon Age: Origins to catch up on.

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Ultrawide gaming monitors are the kind of hardware that might seem too excessive, maybe even a bit too gamer> to bother with for playing games on PC, especially when their demanding resolutions often require powerful graphics cards to make the most of them. Once you try one, though, there’s no going back. I’ve been a big fan of ultrawide gaming monitors for years now, mostly because supported PC games just look fantastic on them. And that’s why I’ve put together this list of the best ultrawide games on PC – to show you exactly what they look like in the flesh, complete with GIFs and photos of them running on an ultrawide monitor so you can see them in motion with your own peepers.

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Update: Microsoft say they’ll “keep the commitment” to bring Bethesda’s Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo to PS5 as timed exclusives. More below.>

Microsoft just announced they’ve bought ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda. The developers of games such as Skyrim, Fallout, Dishonored, Prey, Doom, Quake and all those classics are now technically Xbox Game Studios. Xbox boss Phil Spencer made a post welcoming the developers, in what he calls a “landmark step” for both Microsoft and Bethesda.

What a year.

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QuakeCon At Home is live this weekend on Twitch, though it really should be called BethFest when you look at the schedule. The event has moved wholly online thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the rescheduled celebration of id’s and Bethesda’s games has an intriguing schedule. Here are a few of the highlights.

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Hubbish bubbish, rhymes are rubbish, eye of newt and blah blah blah. Gosh, magic is a chore. If only we had a catalyst to… Oh, hello reader, what are you doing here? Well, as it happens, yes, you can help me out. Just stand over here while I scratch these runes around you. I’m trying to summon the 9 best magic spells in PC games, you see. Stand still, please. You won’t feel a thing.

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Break out the party poppers – Prey and Dishonored developers Arkane Studios turns 20 years old this year. Well, sort of. The studio may have been founded in ’99, but who am I to ruin a party? To celebrate two decades of sneaking, stabbing, and all-round immersive sim’ing, Arkane are dusting off the oldest book on their shelf by giving away free copies of the studio’s 2002 fantasy debut Arx Fatalis.

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Dunwall is renowned for its striking dystopian aesthetic, blending blinding walls of light with spindly steampunk stilt walkers. But the most memorable part of gorgeous action-assassin hit Dishonored has, for me, always been the boozer where you hang out with your pals between missions: The Hound Pits.

It’s a lovely looking pub, for sure. But coming from Dublin, where subversive relics of independence like The Confession Box are open about the intertwining nature of pub culture and rebellion, my interest is rooted in more than just the aesthetic. It makes sense to me that The Hound Pits is where Corvo and co meet to discuss their next political assassination. So, I reached out to Arkane Studio’s Harvey Smith, co-creative director for Dishonored, and chatted about the reasons why pubs make class revolutionary bases.

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Times are strange and frightening. But one point of great solace for me has been hearing people celebrating things in their lives. It feels especially important right now to hold on to what makes us all proud about what we do and who we are. And what I really love is people showing off things they’re proud of making.

So I’ve been asking a bunch of developers to pick out something they’ve created that brings them pleasure to look back on. And here they are, including Harvey Smith remembering his input on Deus Ex and Dishonored, Derek Yu on one of his first-ever games. There’s pride in doing something for someone else’s game, in the power of details and in little inventions, and ah gosh, shut up, let’s just tuck into a big slice of escapist positivity. (more…)