It’s the weekend yet again, and that can only mean that time is passing way too damn fast and that we’re all hurtling towards our undignified ends like a runaway truck that’s on fire.

Speaking of dying and dead things I’ve been playing Hitman 2, the virtual murder simulator designed by a bunch of psychopaths and then passed off as a video game. I’ve fed people to a hippo, stabbed targets with a tattoo gun, blown various folk up and strangled a lot of innocent people in order to steal their clothes. I’m going to be doing a full review so I won’t spoil all my thoughts here and now, but basically, I very much feels like Season 2 of the episodic plan that 2016’s Hitman began rather than a proper sequel with few new features to tout. But on the plus side, the Hitman formula is still amazingly good fun and the new levels are rather good.

Other than that I wrapped up my review of Steel Rats, a decent little platformer/racer/combat game where you get to ride around on a bike while crashing through robots made of junk. I couldn’t outright recommend it due to some control issues and iffy design choices, but there’s something enjoyable there and I wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel.

And unsurprisingly, I’m still puttering through Red Dead Redemption 2 because there’s just so damn much to check out. Between that and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey I’ve really been appreciating the art of good side-quest, and some of my best moments from both games have come from these potentially skippable missions. Take one quest in Odyssey that riffs on a Greek legend; here you have to find the sword and shield of a man who firmly believes he’s going to kill his mother and father thanks to the Oracle telling him so. To prevent this he locks himself in a cage then asks you to fetch his sword and shield for his parents so that they may protect themselves from his wrath. So off I trotted, and in the process wound up killing someone and then having sex with the local blacksmith in return for the sword, which I didn’t have to do but it felt like the fun choice for my Kassandra. Anyway, arriving back with the items in question it was revealed that the boy’s mother and father weren’t actually his biological parents and that, in fact, the woman I had killed was his true mother and the blacksmith I had…er, canoodled with was his dad. Talk about an awkward situation, eh? So, in the end, the Oracle was sort of right, I suppose. The point is I haven’t laughed that hard in a while, and then on the opposite end of the scale we have Red Dead Redemption 2 where a series of side-missions altered a later cutscene so that it included a different character whom Arthur has a deep conversation with, a conversation that punched me squarely in the emotions. I won’t ruin it, but suffice to say it was a highlight of the game for me and it wouldn’t have come around if I hadn’t stopped off to help Brother Dorkins.

I do want to quickly mention that one of my favorite games of the whole year, Frostpunk, is getting its new Endless mode within the next week or two which will also allow you to swap between an easier mode or a much more gruelling challenge. If you’ve not played the game yet I highly suggest you do, or at the very least go read my review of it.

I don’t have much more to say as it has been a relatively quiet week. So I’ll just sign off here and ask some questions; what have you guys been playing, reading or watching this week?