What did you play last week?

Everyone but me has been playing Apex Legends this week, it seems. I do like the sound of a multiplayer game where the ping system's good enough that people are actually going to use it, because I got pretty sick of being the only person pinging in Vermintide or Battlefield or whatever. Anyway, here's James Davenport on why he's into Apex.

Samuel Horti has been playing a multiplayer VR mech game called Vox Machinae. He's really into the way it lets you honk the horn like you're in a big rig. I like the sound of the way other characters pop up in the corner when their player is talking over the radio, complete with basic lip-sync.

If you've been wondering about that Dota Auto Chess thing all the Dota people have been going on about, Jonathan Bolding's played a bunch and written an introductory guide. I watched a video and still have no idea what's going on but then that's always been true of anything Dota-related for me.

Subnautica is one of the best survival games around, so it's good to hear that Below Zero, its standalone expansion, is shaping up nicely too. Philippa War has tried it out in Early Access and it seems like Subnautica But Real Cold is just as enjoyable as the original. I'm baffled why they didn't call it "Sub Zero", though.

I've been playing some Wargroove, the indie Advance Wars-a-like from Chucklefish. So has Wes Fenlon, and here he is on how neat its asynchronous multiplayer is. I've been sticking to the singleplayer campaign so far and although it's fine it hasn't hooked me in the way Advance Wars did. Maybe it's the fantasy setting? The cutesy take on tanks and planes felt fresh, but I've seen cutesy pixel fantasy art before. Still, when Cesar the dog rolls over on his back as the crossbowmen fire that's pretty great.

That's enough from us. What have you been playing? Has the latest battle royale blockbuster won you over, or are you deep in a singleplayer game? I've been wanting to hear from someone about Spinnortality, the cyberpunk management sim, before I dive in—has anyone given that a go?

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.