Here we go, let the silly season commence. Blair Witch, Astral Chain, Man of Medan, World of Warcraft Classic, Control, and Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey all launched within the last week alone, and things are only going to get madder as we head into September, one of our favourite gaming months, truth be told.

The upshot of this is that we’ve all got heaps to play,  and to look forward to (as you can see in our Biggest Games of September feature). 

Jon - Things have already got immensely busy for me on the gaming front. The end of August has delivered the goods for me, Halloween has come two months early. I’m a big fan of horror-adventure games and getting two on the same day is spoiling me somewhat. Thankfully, Blair Witch is a freebie for me thanks to Game Pass and I suspect it’s a game I can smash out in a lazy morning this weekend. The other is The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan. I can’t understate how fantastic I thought the first half of Until Dawn was. As ever with horror, dragging it out over the length of a 10-hour game numbed the thrills somewhat by the time the credits rolled. Going in an anthology direction, Man of Medan sounds as if it’s going to be a much more focused experience for me, and I’m hoping all the stronger for it.

As well as this, Control's arrived, of course (RTX Benchmarks, GPU Benchmarks), so I'm eager to keep messing around with that. I'm loving what I've played so far and it's certainly should be a game high on your radar if you were a fan of Alan Wake.

I probably can’t see myself playing much else, to be honest, although it may be time to fire up some Rainbow Six Siege and get back into the swing of things before the new season arrives next week.

Felix - I couldn't help myself, I got the itch and loaded back up Total War 3 Kingdoms. I picked up an old save and was faced with the reason why I put a hold on things a few months back. I had saved at the start of a big battle, where my main army (its also my longest serving army) was significantly outnumbered.

Looking over the pre-battle figures to compare the two opposing armies data I realised that I could still win the battle, as long as I fought it myself and didn't auto resolve. I would have known that when I saved last, but I would have also known that to win will take about an hour to play the battle through carefully. Interestingly, my temptation to auto resolve a battle like this is because of how long it will take to play the actual battle. Weirdly the prospect of a lengthy battle can put me off TW 3K and lead me to press that auto resolve button, even though I know I will take more casualties auto resolving than I would if I ran the battle myself.

Other than that I will be playing a bit of Control to see if it has what it takes to capture my interests. Its got a fair bit of hype, but my initial introduction to the game didn't massively enamour me. Its fine, just not my type of game, and although the graphics look great and some of the animations are good, i found some of the other rag doll animations to be a little lacklustre. Interestingly, I think that feeling is enhanced because the game looks so good. If it looked worse you might be more inclined to forgive it the occasional sub par character animations. Anyone else played it as I would love to hear your thoughts and whether you felt it was worth giving it a run through.

It's been a busy few weeks for gaming recently, what have you recently picked up? Or are you tucking into some of your older games this weekend? Let us know!