Steam Charts: all I play each night is Prey
Pray for Prey
In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion checks to see which ten games sold best on Steam over the past week. He just can't sleep until he knows whether Prey made it to number one or not.
10. Outlast 2
A big drop for the OH GOD THAT DOOR SHUT BY ITSELF horror sequel, which predictably did well last AAAH DID THAT SHADOW JUST MOVE week as All The Right People made videos NOOOO A RUSTY WHEELCHAIR IN THE DARK screaming at it. If you want a good scary game, given Scanner Sombre a spin instead. My review will be up later today, in fact.
9. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands
(I don't know if that's appropriate or not, I haven't actually played this but it's very much now GIF o'clock for it).
8. NieR: Automata
Every time you tell me to just turn the difficulty down and replay the hour-long tutorial that the game demanded that I repeat because I died towards the end of it, the more my resolve to never return strengthens. I know the main game is supposed to be fantastic, but on principle, I shouldn't need to do bollocks like that to get to it.
I will play it once my child goes to university and I begin to have free time in abundance. My child turned four today, by the way, so I look forwards to playing NieR: Automata at 32K resolution in the year 2030.
7. Grand Theft Auto V
The old monolith has been sporadically dropping out of these charts in recent months, and, truth be told, I've almost missed it. There's Stockholm Syndrome for you.
And maybe if I start being nice about Rockstar games again they'll give us Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC?
6. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
Well lah-di-fus-ro-dah, look who's back. A $20 sale saw the mildly rejiggered Skyrim make a return to the charts, prompting a big whack of people who weren't entitled to or missed out on the free upgrade offer last year to finally pick it up. I haven't had the chance to revisit the SE since release, but I know that the modscene is in full swing
by now, whereas at launch the SE was something of an exercise in compromise as it lacked some of the more essential third-party add-ons.
5. H1Z1: King of the Kill
The H1Z1/PUBG war is very real now. For that reason, devs Daybreak have doubled down on promises - bug-splatting, new features, that sort of thing. Where once being the battle royale game with the most money behind it was enough to ensure success, now it has to work hard to be competitive with the fan-favourite Battlegrounds.
I wonder which major publisher will be the first to release a battle royale game? Or we wait it out until 2022 when Blizzard surely release one that demolishes all else.
4. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III
I'm glad to see it doing well because, like, I want all the races and stuff, but I must admit that I've bounced off this one pretty hard. I hear multiplayer's where it's at - though even then, divisively so - but I was never in it for that. The campaign, however, is proving dreary indeed, and now the wonderful Prey is on my hard drive too I've felt little call to return. I'll be back when they stick Chaos or the 'Nids in, I imagine.
3. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
2. Prey
I like Prey a lot. A lot more than I'd expected to, too - I played two chunks of it at preview events and came away with a not entirely accurate impression, because time limits meant the urge to progress-progress-progress annihilated my usual explore'n'packrat mentalities.
Playing at my own pace, I can go Full Kleptomaniac, spending an hour figuring out how to get into this one room, plus doubling-back to loot early sections of the space station later on thanks to new powers, Metroid style. Really, I've wanted a more expansive Metroid Prime-style game on PC far more than I've wanted another super-polished take on the 'Shock formula, and this is very much it. So far, anyway - I'm 'only' ten hours in, and John reckons the navigation puzzle element starts to decline in favour of more open heroics fairly soon.
Question is, will Bethesda be happy with a number two, or did these need to be a chart-topper? Reports that, after a huge amount of promotion, it failed to dislodge Mario Kart 8 on Switch from the console top-spot might also mean squeaky bums in the fanciest chairs at Zenimax HQ.
1. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
Still in full-on snowball effect mode, and reportedly it's steadily becoming a better game over time too. Battlegrounds looks set to be unstoppable for some time to come. UNSTOPPABLE: