It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to go see my friends. We’ve tried, like everyone, to make things fun whilst remaining remote, from the classic Zoom quizzes to jumping on PokerNow and Monzoing each other tiny buy-ins. After enough sessions of this, and losing thanks to my lack of skill and somewhat wild playstyle, it became clear that while it's fun as hell, maybe I’m just not cut out for poker.

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Sundays are for discovering that coffee bags exist and having to sit down for a moment to process the news. Let's have a brew together and read the week's best writing about videogames.

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It used to be fairly easy to split PC games into three categories. There were the good games that everyone had played, the bad games that were rightfully forgotten, and a small pool in the middle of good games that never got their due.

This middle category were the games destined to be cult classics. They're the kind of games people like me love to write about: good enough that you might care about them, but not the mega-hits you're already sick of hearing about.

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I do love a long read about how things went wrong on a videogame, and Amazon Game Studios have gone wrong on several now. The latest report of dysfunction at the makers (and cancellers) of Breakaway and Crucible is over at Bloomberg, and it mirrors a lot of what had been reported previously, including that the executives in charge don't understand games, and the games designed to meet corporate objectives without much heed paid to what people want to play.

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I've been on a puzzle game kick recently - or for the entire past year, really. The calm, methodical solving of pretend problems is exactly what I need while I'm stuck indoors listening to podcasts. The latest is Hexceed, a Minesweeper-ish hexagon clicker that's free to play on Steam.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator's 3rd update was due to give the UK some spilt and polish this past week, but it was delayed into February. This hasn't stopped developers Asobo from talking about its fourth update, which we now know is planned for the end of March and which will focus on France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

There's a brief teaser trailer for the UK update below, which is filled with castles and hills and piers, just like the real Britain and Ireland.

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A class action lawsuit has been filed in Calfornia federal court this past week against Valve and several game developers, alleging that Valve "abuses the Steam platform's market power" to prevent other game distribution platforms, such as the Epic Games Store and Microsoft store, from competing on price.

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Get in losers, we're not going shopping, because we can't go anywhere still. Luckily, Hitman 3 has come out, which is what approximately all of us are playing, apparently. Also, I forgot to give myself enough time to figure out how to format these posts in the new website, or to source our headshots, so I have quickly improvised this extremely ugly version for this week. Look, the relevant info is all still here, anyway. Bet Ian Hitman knows how to source a headshot though, wahey!>

What are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!

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Monolith's Lord Of The Rings games Middle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor and Shadow Of War are fun action stealth 'em ups that deserve praise just for their combat. What really makes both worth mention though is the nemesis system that turns procedurally generated baddies into your own personal antagonists the more you encounter them. Why haven't more developers tried their own take on the nemesis system in the last six years? Because Warner Bros. patented it, turns out. That sucks.

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If you need more Total Warhammering in your life, well don't despair, you'll certainly get more. Creative Assembly have posted a new teaser video today indicating that something> Total War is coming, though exactly what it is remains a debate. More Total War: Warhammer 2 DLC? Or a cryptic teaser for Total Warhammer 3?

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