In our first sessions with the game, we both concluded that A) deer are incredibly athletic; and B) we’re the most impatient people, perhaps ever. More than that, though, we hadn’t realised how important it was to fixate on your prey. Not like, track them down. But like, track them down, you know?

But look on the work as a whole and Strenegades glitters in its own way. It’s Octopath Traveller with fewer cares, more self-awareness and angrier automatons. As a member of the turn-based, roguelite family it is far from perfect. But, I tell you what, it’s got moxie. For starters, it doesn’t take itself even slightly seriously. Your solar system is under threat by a dimension-hopping cyborg army out to end all opposing universes....

Below Zero is set one year after the first game and returns to the same alien planet, this time to an arctic region rather than tropical seas. We’ll play a scientist sent to study its wonders when, oh no, disaster, it’s time to once again explore and craft and build and survive. While Subnautica is sandboxy, it does have a story leading to a conclusion, which is nice. New seas mean new life, new biomes, new tools, new vehicles, and… I’m not really sure beyond that....

“Our goal was always to bring both Subnautica and Below Zero onto unified versions of Unity, and with today’s update, that goal has been achieved,” devs Unknown Worlds said. “By doing this, we’ve been able to implement several quality of life features, fix many outstanding bugs, and introduce some performance improvements that were already available in Below Zero.” Handily, the devs have pointed out that you’re welcome to roll back the update using the legacy beta on Steam if you’re using mods on your save, or have other reasons to opt out....

“Codemasters has a renowned history of creating some of our industry’s most beloved and commercially successful racing franchises, and we believe that their offerings will be highly complementary to our sports portfolio and enhance further our organization’s long-term growth,” said Strauss Zelnick, the chairman and CEO of Take-Two. “Moreover, we look forward to welcoming Codemasters’ senior management and development teams into our Take-Two family, and sharing in our vision to deliver the highest quality entertainment experiences and aim to be the most innovative, creative and efficient company in our industry....

I’d want it that way, after all. Now, Dontnod’s episodic schedule has been historically erratic, with Life Is Strange 2 taking a whole year to wrap. But two weeks after Episode One’s debut, Tell My Why is done and dusted and ready to be finished. Our Alice B dove into supernatural small-town Alaska for her Tell Me Why review and reckoned that, while it may not be their most dramatic game, it’s still a perfectly fine entry with plenty of too-relatable sibling hijinks....

As you may have noticed, we’ve been throwing a Rezzed Digital party over the last few days, and were inundated with demo and preview builds for a whole plethora of interesting indie games. We weren’t able to play them all - but we played a lot. As is our way, a few of us got together to share our pick of the bunch, which coincidentally turned out to be a nice round 10!...

Here are four games about cats, presented for your gaming pleasure. Whether you’re snuggled up with a loved one, or the remains of a Celebrations tub, I hope there’s something for you to enjoy. Hidden Cats from Andreas Wilcox Swedish-based developer Andreas Wilcox made Hidden Cats for their girlfriend’s brthday, which is probably one of the sweetest gifts I can imagine. She loves cats and she loves Hidden Folks, so it seemed only natural to bring the two together....

Suzerain is the modern successor to Hidden Agenda, an ancient political simulator I once described as “possibly the greatest political simulator ever made”. A fictional nation still bleeding from civil war has just overthrown a dictator, and elected you to lead it into whatever future you think is right, just as the world begins to light up with the countless devastating proxy wars of the 1950s. It is superb. The game, I mean....

Let me explain. In the game and the book, Sam’s BB, or Bridge Baby, is often described as “a piece of equipment”. They’re tools porters use to detect the presence of dangerous BT ghosts that could potentially cause a massive nuclear explosion, or ‘voidout’ in the game’s parlance, if they come into contact with the living. It’s a weird concept, to be sure, but it’s one that sits at the heart of the game’s story, and its overall design....

Warlords Of New York will take you to new districts of the city that have been ravaged by a hurricane, and there’ll be new and old threats to deal with as you travel through. The game is also raising the level cap to 40, though if you’re a new player you can jump straight in at level 30 so you’re not too underpowered for the New York action. “The only way to stop a city-wide bio attack is to hunt Aaron Keener down,” Ubisoft say....

We go through quite a list of things, and I’m sure we’ve missed some of your favourites, so feel free to chime in. All in all I think we saw some cool stuff; good work to video games. You can listen above, or on on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or Pocket Casts. You can find the RSS feed here, and you can discuss the episode on our Discord channel, which has a dedicated room for podcast chat....

Tangents this week include, fairly obviously, whaling and what whales might taste like, what role Matthew would have in a whaling operation, and events we have attended where actors have been dressed as video game characters. Also: Matthew reaffirms he didn’t eat any fruit as part of his main Christmas meal. You can listen above, or on on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or Pocket Casts. You can find the RSS feed here, and you can discuss the episode on our Discord channel, which has a dedicated room for podcast chat....

Pre-empting Steam’s inevitable Halloween Sale, the Epic Games store kicked off its own seasonal sale today - and while it’s missing all the weird monetised meta-games that have come to define its competitor’s events, there’s still a good range of great games going dead cheap for the next few weeks. Now, at this point, I’m entirely burnt out on these blowout sales - but they’re still a good shot at grabbing some big recent games at a bargain....

Courtesy of the Future Games Show at Gamescom, a demo for The Garden Path is currently on and I’m glad I dug into it. Like Animal Crossing, it syncs with your system clock so that the in game world follows real world time. Also like AC, I appear to be collecting occupants for my garden. The first is a friend with a tomato for a head called Otto. The Garden Path starts out as these things often do: someone hands you a tool and teaches you to plant seeds with it....

The Great Ace Attorney games send you a century back in time to debate crimes in historic fashion long before the days of your usual finger-pointing objection-haver. “Join Phoenix’s Wright’s ancestor, Ryunosuke Naruhodo, as he takes his first incredibly nervous steps into a courtroom in Meiji era Japan to defend his very first client: himself,” Capcom say. After learning the rules in Japanese court, Ryunosuke heads overseas to Europe where he’ll take on new cases and a new style of courtroom debates....

I would not bring this up, except the extremely breathy deadpanism of Arquette’s very-sincere-while-saying-outlandish-things delivery did remind me of the performances in The Medium. And honestly, The Medium comes out on top here, both in terms of its performances and its story coherence and general originality. But it’s also about exactly as horrific. If that sounds like damning with faint praise, it is. But I still enjoyed The Medium a lot....

Take the fella who goes by “n00bplatformer”, for example. He recently created an “Assist Mode” for run ’n’ gun action game Cuphead. It makes simple tweaks to some of the game’s systems, like granting players six hitpoints instead of the usual three, and boosting weapon damage an extra 50% so that boss battles don’t drag on so long. N00bplatformer says that he bought Cuphead around its release, but initially stopped after reaching a difficulty spike....