What we've been playing - noiry crime scenes, clouds above fields, and scary towns

26th October

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we wonder if being a detective would have been a reasonable career choice,we embrace new technology to drive a car in space, and we enjoy watching fresh eyes play a horror masterpiece for the first time.

What have you been playing?

Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.

Nobody Wants to Die, Xbox Series X

I was in Lidl earlier this week and was amazed to see whipped yoghurts. So shocked I was by this sight that I took to the EG Slack to ask if anyone had actually tried these possible wonders. No one had, so that's not a great story, sorry, but this curiosity made me think outside of the box. Just like the yoghurt people had attempted something new, I would venture forth and try a game I didn't really have much of an appetite for.

Step forward, Nobody Wants to Die. Eurogamer (that's this website if you're still thinking about the whipped yoghurts) called it "a noiry cyberpunk tale," and that is accurate. Problem being that this isn't the kind of game I'm usually into. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Bladerunner just as much as all the wannabe film critics on Twitter do, but Nobody Wants to Die is a slow, dialogue-heavy, clunky bit of storytelling that I can't quite lose myself in.

I love a lot of what is on offer. I've just finished watching BBC smartarse show, Ludwig, so now obviously fancy myself as a bit of a detective, and Nobody Wants to Die delivers on that front. There's a lot of piecing things together and looking at evidence, plus some far-out future tech, but I found myself drifting off a little while looking over the crime scenes, wondering what those whipped yoghurts are like.

-Tom O

Starfield, A Nice Comfy Bed

You may have noticed a lack of Yours Truly over on the Eurogamer YouTube channel of late, because I’ve been cooped up in bed following an absolutely rotten reaction to this year’s seasonal jabs (at least I know they’re working, though: get those doses when offered, folks!)

Fortunately, we live in an era where having to stay in bed for a few days is a situation well catered for with endless entertainment options, like browsing Ebay (Netflix for bargain hunters), Kindle Unlimited (Netflix for book lovers), and Netflix (Netflix for people who like their shows getting cancelled after one season). And Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is Netflix for people who aren’t currently where their Xbox is.A recent upgrade to 1gb internet and a pilfering of my wife’s Steam Deck on the grounds that I’m unwell set the stage to do some serious testing of what cloud gaming is actually like now: a contentious idea that I’ve been dabbling with ever since that fabled Eurogamer Expo where OnLive gave anyone with a blog one of their sleek micro consoles and a press account. At the time, I managed to finish the first Space Marine over a 6mb ADSL line, playing in block-o-vision with a full second of controller lag. But it was the future and it was cool. And just several lifetimes later, I’m happy to report that cloud gaming is… mostly OK now.Xbox Cloud Gaming, still in what seems like an endless public beta phase, is very good. Your stuff is all synced across your other Xbox platforms: I’ve now seamlessly played the same Starfield character across PC, console, and Steam Deck, running semi-officially on the device’s built-in web browser. Some jiggery-pokery is required to get it working, but Microsoft themselves have produced their own guide to doing so.

Over my nice Virgin fibre connection and brand new Hub 5 with its snappy WiFi 6 protocol there is only the slightest whiff of input lag, barely perceptible. Busy visuals can get a little muddy, with a lot of Starfield’s fine environment details getting smudged up in the real-time encoding, but on such a small screen as the Deck’s it really doesn’t matter too much. What it is is a perfectly playable, perfectly good representation of a big home console game running via the technological equivalent of two tin cans and a bit of string, on a device that isn’t really supposed to carry it. I’m impressed, frankly. Cloud gaming really has arrived, albeit as a supplemental service.

What else? Oh, er, Starfield? Yeah, it’s fine. I am a big Bethesda simp, but Starfield tested my resolve a lot at launch. After a lot of updates and additions, though, I can confidently say it’s one of my favourite space games ever. The addition of a rover, for example, hasn’t turned a 7/10 into a 10, but it has fixed my major bugbear with it in that it was a game about exploration in which exploring was bloody tedious. At least now you can skid about in a wee motor and clear the vast distances between those points of interest in a fraction of the time.

Starfield sucked as a walking game but, as it turns out, it sucks one hell of a lot less as a driving game: serving as yet another example of human civilisation being vastly improved by the humble automobile.

-Jim

Silent Hill 2 Remake, Twitch

Well, I say I've been playing Silent Hill 2 this week. What I've actually been playing - since completing Bloober's remake myself last weekend – is my new favourite, slightly obsessive game of 'watch streamers who've never played Silent Hill 2 before run the emotional gauntlet of its final hour and completely disintegrate into a blubbering mess by the time the credits roll'.

Silent Hill 2 has been one of my absolute favourite things since I first played it almost a quarter of a century ago, when it confidently strolled onto the scene announcing to the world that, actually yes, video games can treat their audiences like grown-ups. The fact that 25 years later, I'm still pondering what it all means and waking up at 2am with new theories, that Theme of Laura - the perfect encapsulation of Silent Hill 2's forlorn rawness - still gives me shivers, is testament to Team Silent's phenomenal work.

And Bloober's remake is equally phenomenal in its own distinct way, a brilliant reimagining of a genuinely ground-breaking classic that evolves, expands, and improves on the original in, mostly, all the right ways. It remains as chilling, horrifying, and emotionally devastating as ever; arguably more so, given the sterling work of its stellar new cast and some canny upgrades to familiar moments, including that astonishing new Abstract Daddy fight, and an ingeniously choreographed prison sequence that's easily one of the most unremittingly suffocating, harrowing bits of horror I've played.

It's been a rare treat to be able to experience one of my all-time favourites again with fresh eyes and in such a beautifully considered new release. But it's also provided the perfect opportunity to watch a whole new generation (distilled into a cross-section of blubbering streamers, admittedly) discover its secrets for the very first time, and to see that nearly a quarter of a century on, Silent Hill 2 hasn't lost any of its incredible power.

-Matt