What we've been playing

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: war, space adventures and a bit of robbery.

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

I really liked Until Dawn and what Supermassive has done with this idea of horror party games, and how they’re events for everyone in the room, like horror films, not just the person with the controller. But I bounced hard off Man of Medan, the follow-up. It came across as really shoddy to me, and tacky. I couldn’t stick with it. So I was nervous about House of Ashes – hopeful, but nervous. And when I realised it was in the Iraq War, and I’d be playing as a bunch of yee-haw US Marines, I scrunched my face up so hard I almost ate my nose.

But House of Ashes has a secret weapon, one that actually exists, and it’s Salim. He’s an Iraqi soldier fighting against Americans, and he’s another of the characters you play – the only one not from the American camp. And including him opens this whole other perspective in the game. Now, when the two sides are having a shootout, you’re playing sides. Sometimes you’re literally shooting at a character before you pass the pad and they take their turn and respond.