What did you play last week?

Wes Fenlon has been playing his favorite Halo 3 mode, Rocket Race. Teams of two compete to hit checkpoints that spawn in random positions, one player driving a mongoose ATV and the other firing rockets from the back. What makes it interesting is that the vehicles are indestructible, so flipping one with a rocket is only ever an impediment. As Wes says, it's a mode that's still fun today.

Emma Matthews played the Marvel Avengers beta and was underwhelmed, to put it lightly. The demands of a typical live-service game, like balanced characters and a gear grind, seem incompatible with the needs of a superhero game. Thor shouldn't need to upgrade his hammer, and Hulk shouldn't be causing as much damage with a punch as everyone else. I don't remember HULK SMASH PUNY HUMAN REPEATEDLY TO REDUCE HEALTH BAR being a part of the comics or movies, and it's odd to see in a game.

James Davenport played Teenage Blob, a bundle of minigames structured like a punk album. James has been making videos like this for a while now, and I love how short and chill they are, in contrast to the loud and long videos that YouTube encourages. Even when he's recommending a punk game he's relaxed about it. Anyway, Teenage Blob sounds rad.

Christopher Livingston has been playing Kill it With Fire and trying not to destroy his house. This is a game about freeing your home from spider infestation with over-the-top weapons including a machine gun, dynamite, and a lot of fire, but you can also go low-tech like Chris does. Still, there's enough physics action that not trashing your pad is harder than you'd think.

Rachel Watts played the demo for Dap, a creepy game where you're a forest spirit. The woods are infected, and you have to rescue your fellow daps from whatever spookiness is blighting the place. It's got a real Princess Mononoke vibe, lush and adorable and spooky all at once.

Enough about us. What about you? Have you been trying to see your house from here in Microsoft Flight Simulator, or hugging out the afterlife in Spiritfarer? Maybe you're dying and dying again in Mortal Shell? Maybe you're trying to figure out when the best time to give up on a game is? Let us know!

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.