What did you play last week?

Lauren Morton's been playing Outward with her partner. Given that it's the kind of unforgiving RPG where you're not supposed to defeat every random bandit you encounter, and her boyfriend is an attack-on-sight kind of guy, their adventures have been interesting. There's a lot of running away. I think I might play this one alone for fear of being That Guy.

Andy Kelly gave Assassin's Creed 3 another shot in its remastered form, but found that even with some improvements it remains his least favorite of the series. On the other hand, returning to Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis seems to have been much more rewarding.

Bo Moore played Calico, a game about cats that are cute. Obviously, all cats are cute except for those hairless ones who look like fucked bats. But in this game about magical girls running a cat cafe, the cats are outrageously cute. And you can ride one? Money down.

Of all the units in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, it's the King who has intrigued Christopher Livingston the most. Not the viking landships, not the hobbits—the guy in the crown who says doopty-doo nonsense while swinging Excalibur. Watching these gifs, I see his point.

James Davenport finished Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, using a cheat to defeat the final boss, and sent half the internet into a tizzy. The idea that "robbing" yourself of a challenging experience is some kind of moral failing is a strange idea, wrapped up in "there's one true way to play games" nonsense. Bah.

I've been replaying Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines for the third time. Some of the boss fights are rubbish (make sure to buy the flamethrower as soon as it's available, it helps), and so are some of the stealth bits, but I still love it. It's moody and gothic, and some of the sidequests are as detailed as the main ones. I just defended a cemetery with a zombie problem while the gun-toting caretaker grabbed a six-pack, then followed the crew of a ghost-hunting show through an abandoned hospital. Fingers crossed the sequel is lavished with as much love, and less jank.

Enough about us. What about you? What did you play last week? Has anyone else fallen for the charms of Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, or given No Man's Sky a go in VR? Is anyone out there playing Bloodlines for the first time? If so, don't play a Nosferatu or a Malkavian, that's my hot tip.

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.