The evenings are starting to draw in close, the weather is on the turn, the Eurogamer Expo is coming at the end of the month and oh yes, Grand Theft Auto V is coming out this week. If there is one title which might serve to keep the limelight off the new console launches in a couple of months, it will be GTA which I am sure will still be all over the place. Be that for the right or wrong reasons, that isn’t for me to say. I do know though that Our Week in Games next Sunday will see me talking about the game. Back to today, hit the jump and see what we have been playing.

Chris

I’ve been carrying on with Rome II, but I covered that for now in my Verdict. I have however just started to play the Beta for Democracy 3 which is looking quite nice. I need to play it when not hungover to provide any serious thoughts, but it is coming across really well so far.

Ahead of GTA and the new consoles taking over our lives, I just want to touch on some stories showing how the digital marketplace is really starting to gain traction against retail. First up was news that Payday 2 has already sold 1.58 million copies across PC, 360 and PS3 but that more pertinently, 80% of those sales were digital. It might be worth taking it with a pinch of salt as there are murmurings on the MVC comments that it was extremely difficult to actually find any retail copies which might have pushed people into going digital when they might not normally do so.

The other big story is that Rome II would have taken the UKs number one spot in the all formats chart if digital had been counted. The PC mainstay sold 32,000 copies at retail compared to 73,000 digital sales. Pretty impressive figures I have to say.

This might all just be a factor of poor retail availability for Payday and the more digitally trusting PC user-base for Rome, but it is good to see. I would never want to see games retail disappear, but I do think digital has a large part to play in the future of the industry, hopefully we will see people embrace it even more with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Jon

She glares at me with a look that says; “I know you know, and I know that you know, but our true love can never happen, not until we get off this rock”, while she says something else about me not rescuing her, and being an idiot for not having a way past the Sith blockade yet…

You wouldn’t think that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic would work well on the iPad, but my god, it’s brilliant. The controls are good, the graphics somehow, look better on the retina display and well, the voice acting was always excellent.

It’s an absolute joy to revisit a game that I only had a fleeting encounter with first time around, and what’s even better? I can play it in the front room, on the sofa, with my headphones in while the wife watches X-Factor. I call that a serious win…..

Nick

Tick.

What is meat, other than flesh deemed no longer necessary?
We are surrounded by it; cooked in the heat and sweat of crowds,
marinated by contact with each of their selfish lives,
they who fatten on the fruits of others, snuffling in the mud and grime,
rutting in the filth of their existence.

Endlessly turning, spinning out a thread of greed and lust,
mechanically repeating, repeating its commands
to produce and grow more of the same.
More of the glut and the flesh.

What is this world, other than just a Machine for Pigs?

Tock.