What did you play last week?

Broomstick League
(Image credit: Blue Isle Publishing)

Christopher Livingston has been playing Broomstick League, a game that is best summed up as a cross between Quidditch and Rocket League. There's no snitch or any of that nonsense,  just a big glowing ball you have to get through a goal to score points. Blast spells and a short-range teleport called blink are the main complications, but it doesn't seem like anybody falls to the ground, breaks their bones and has them magically vanished so their arm flops around like jelly.

Rick Lane has been playing The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners, which to my surprise sounds like an essential VR game. His description of trying to ram a knife through a zombie's skull has me wanting to try the same horrific thing myself. The way it simulates physical acts, from reloading a revolver one bullet at a time to wrapping your arm with bandages, seems like a boon both for VR and the kind of game where a zombie is probably bearing down on you at all times.

Emma Matthews has been playing Street Fighter 5, keeping up a training regime that sounds an awful lot like work. It's paid off, however, and now she's got a new obsession. Jake Tucker has been putting just as much effort into Escape From Tarkov, but with the end result that he's rich in imaginary Tarkov-bucks.

Andy Kelly played Table Manners, a comedy physics game that's basically Surgeon Simulator Goes Dating. He wasn't impressed by the reactions of his dates, who didn't seem particularly fussed by his clumsy attempts to disrupt dinner even to the point of setting them on fire.

I've been playing Speaking Simulator, which seems like a more effective vehicle for physics-driven comedy than Table Manners. The difference is that Speaking Simulator casts you as a robot pretending to be human, and draws humor from your clumsy attempts to disguise the fact you're here to take over the world even as you stumble through talking to your boss or Karen from HR, your robot eyes bugging out and teeth spraying everywhere. Like a lot of slapstick it's funniest with an audience, and I recommend enjoying it with friends.

Enough about us. What about you? Have you given Daemon X Machina a shot, or maybe "Hitler's rise to power simulator" Through The Darkest Times? Let us know!

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.