I perished in the flesh pipes of Darktide's Depths of the Damned update, and you will too

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide continues to cling tightly, perhaps even aggressively, to my Steam installations, my occasionally waning interest repeatedly re-sparked by the addition of akimbo-autopistolling chem fiends or haughty toasterpeople. A live service sucker, it makes me. Today's Depths of the Damned update, the grimdark co-op shooter's biggest since the Skitarii rocked up, continues the trend: it's centered around a massive new mission that's as revolting as it is compelling.

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"A quite beautiful compromise": The LEGO Skylines devs did consider brick by brick building, but decided it was too much fuss for players

LEGO Skylines is the new plastic city-builder from Cities: Skylines 2 and Surviving the Aftermath developers Iceflake Studios, published by Paradox Interactive. I've played an hour or so of a preview build, just long enough to devise a circular highway of coffee shops, glass-fronted houses, unaccountably cheerful farms, and playgrounds poking up haphazardly like fungus. Kind of like the M25, but more rustickal. There's a park in the middle that can't work out which century it's in, with an ornamental fountain every ten paces to baffle the casual stroller.

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The Witcher 3 Remastered has scuppered an ambitious cut plague quest restoration mod, but there'll be "something extra" in the update that gets it working again

Today, September 29th, The Witcher 3 is back on the path in Remastered form. With that remaster bringing a host of tweaks to the decade-old RPG, there was always going to be an adjustment period for the RPG's established mods. One that won't work right out of the gate is the WAR Project - an ongoing effort to restore a plague-themed questline CD Projekt Red abandoned prior to release.

However, the modders behind it have made clear this is just a temporary bump in the trail and promised "something extra" for the update that brings their demo up to remastered spec.

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Fright Train is the best Call of Duty Zombies alternative I've played in ages, despite starring a dog

There's been a wave of furry horror games with surprisingly elaborate tactical simulation elements, and when I say "wave", I mean that I'm aware of two. One is Casualties: Unknown, a 2D misericore spelunking experience with an injury system so byzantine it took Oisin multiple paragraphs to work out how to die. The other, somewhat nicer game is Fright Train, a swish B-movie survival shooter in which you are a literal dog soldier, the magnificent Doug Barker.

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This week in PC games: new Ace Combat, Transport Fever 3, and a System Shock-alike set on a disco space station

Happy this week all! ...Ugh, you are all still here. When I went on holiday last week, I was hoping that I'd return to find that the whole "videogame journalism career" thing was just a fleeting delusion brought on by excess consumption of unripe pears. Perhaps I've actually been a wealthy gentleman gadabout this whole time, free of any need to keep the hellmouth topped up with layoff reports in order to stave off deprivation and disaster.

The one consolation - other than EIC Julian's many encouraging facial expressions and hand gestures – is that people are still making new PC games, and a few of them are actually quite interesting! Here's the latest list of new releases.

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"We clearly handled that responsibility poorly": Paradox ban Discord profile pics of historical figures born after 1800, after bust-up with Hearts of Iron 4 players over Atatürk banning

Hearts of Iron 4 developers Paradox Interactive have prohibited the use of Discord profile pictures of historical figures born after 1st January 1800, save for official in-game portraits, amid an uproar caused by a moderator banning somebody for using a photograph of Republic of Turkey founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Discord server members are still free to "use any official Hearts of Iron IV in-game portraits, including those from after 1800, with the exception of prominent leaders of Nazi Germany," according to a Discord post attributed to game director Laszlo "Batya" Pieper (copied to Reddit). In the same post, Pieper notes that "Paradox never aims to review history or take positions on political figures, and we clearly handled that responsibility poorly."

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for recovering from the friend-of-a-spouse’s wedding you attended on Saturday while suffering from an acute case of Old Person’s Back. Unfortunately, the time for recovery has in fact passed, as you have already moved to the more immediately satisfying phase of assigning blame. Possible suspects: your swivel chair, your mattress, the PC monitor you had to laboriously re-box for transit, your sofa, and that most connviving, spine-bending bastard of all, light walking. Spoiled for choice, you sit down in your untrustworthy chair and begin to read some of the week’s writing highlights instead.

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