Here’s a rewritten version of the title: “Recent Gaming Adventures – Plant-Based Challenges, Unavoidable Hauntings, and a Spontaneous Sales Pitch” Let me know if you’d like further tweaks!

22nd March

Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing. This week, Bertie rekindles a career as a travelling salesperson; Tom Orry struggles to get his WiFi working; and Tom Phillips enjoys a refreshingly animal-friendly game.

What have you been playing?

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

Avowed, Xbox Series X (and briefly on Geforce Now)

I’m still loving Avowed, albeit in very small doses as I’ve been preoccupied reviewing Atomfall this week. To my shame I got a little bit distracted by Avowed visuals again, this time spending far too long spinning around to look at the ghosting on my wand as I moved. Now I’ve seen it I can’t unsee it, and it’s a real blight on an otherwise lovely looking game, and also impacts the grass and other parts of the world. I think it’s to do with the use of FSR to make the image look sharper, but it falls down badly when you move. Oh well, it’s not as if I’m going to stare at this forever and let it ruin an otherwise great game, is it.

Speaking of ruining things. I used all my free time one evening earlier this week trying to get my Samsung OLED TV to connect to my router’s 5 Ghz network instead of the 2.5 Ghz in the hope it would make Geforce Now more playable over WiFi. Long story short, I failed and the TV just won’t find the 5 Ghz network despite being able to see my neighbour’s. My hope was that 4K Geforce Now Avowed would look better than the Series X version. My quest continues, but I refuse to plug in the 5 metre network cable I used before as it became a health hazard.

-Tom O

Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Xbox Series X

Ubisoft’s latest Assassin’s Creed might involve a lot of stabbing humans but, as far as animals are concerned, it’s surprisingly vegetarian friendly. It’s something I only realised yesterday, while chatting with a Eurogamer reader about the game in our launch Q&A, but it’s something I’m really grateful for.

Shadows’ world is teeming with animals – cats, dogs, monkeys, birds, deer, wild pigs and many more. But all of them are there to be appreciated as part of the environment around you, rather than as something to be hunted, skinned and turned into a leather upgrade.

Interactions with animals consist of either petting them – which often unlocks the creature for your homestead – or drawing them, an activity that requires you approach carefully to avoid scaring them off. The end result is an attractive Sumi-e painting you can hang up in your homestead, rather than the creature’s head stuck up on the wall like in Valhalla.

As a historical series, it’s natural that Assassin’s Creed has featured hunting over the years. Our first steps as the Native American Ratonhnhaké:ton, otherwise known as Connor Kenway, involved learning how to hunt animals as a young boy. Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, which was more grisly, saw us harpooning whales as Connor’s grandfather Edward – something I wonder about Ubisoft keeping in the upcoming, still-unannounced remake.

Shadows, then, shows that video games can do more with animals than make them a target or a resource to be farmed. It’s a small thing in an enormous game, but I appreciate it.

-Tom P

Slice & Dice, Android

Another trip away, another chance to play Slice & Dice – the dice-rolling, turn-based, fantasy battler I’ve talked about a few times. But this time was slightly different: this time I was in the company of other games journalists. Cue dramatic music as we cut to Bertie’s suddenly startled face.

There’s extra pressure on a mobile game in this situation. For years, Slice & Dice has been my guilty pleasure – a game I chanced upon that I unexpectedly kept returning to. I’ve admitted to myself that I love it, now, but I was self-conscious about Slice & Dice for a long time. And here I was on a plane sitting next to another journalist who turned to me and asked, directly, unblinkingly, searchingly, “What are you playing?” So I panicked. They were playing Balatro on their phone, which is a rock solid, uncriticisable choice. What would they think of mine?

I cleared my throat and turned to them and launched into what I now realise sounds like my Slice & Dice sales pitch. “Oh this? Just a dice-rolling game I’ve had on my phone for a few years that I’m now convinced is brilliant.” And look, I don’t get commission but perhaps I should, because by the time we were on the return flight home, they’d ditched Balatro and installed Slice & Dice, and I did the pitch to a few other press people, too. Every convert counts.

I even had my own good fortune in the game while on the plane home, carefully strategising my way to the final battle, only to blow it all on the way home with a few bum rolls. (I never thought I’d write “bum rolls” on Eurogamer.) Slice & Dice isn’t as fun in those moments, nor are the inevitable consolation runs I begin afterwards. This, I maintain, is a game best dipped into sporadically over many years, as I’m starting to believe I will, as long as creator Tann continues to update it.

Incidentally, because of my obsession, I got in touch with Tann to see if they wanted to talk about the game, but to my surprise they didn’t. They thanked me for my kind words (I said nice things) and then they disappeared back into the ether, to being an indecipherable genius in the dark, magically shortening every journey I take.

-Bertie