One guest cancels, but his shoes are ably filled by Gameshark's Todd Brakke as Troy, Julian and Rob hold forth on the game that has already eaten Troy's life - and he has to keep writing about it for at least another month.

Listen as the team talks about their favorite innovations in Civ 5, how the map brings the game to life, why the AI's failures are so disappointing, social policy vs civics and hopes for the future.

And Julian is on drugs.

This week, Rob takes the lead and sings the praises of RUSE, the new WW2 RTS from Ubisoft and Eugen Systems. Troy and Julian push him on the differences between the single and multiplayer components, whether it uses real deception and some rambling bits about World War 2 games in general.

Rob's review at Gameshark

Rock Paper Shotgun RUSE discussion

Unavailable when we needed him, but still game for a show, Victoria 2's lead designer Chris King joins Troy and Rob for a discussion of Marxist economic models, why they are so many rebels and why he bothered redesigning Vicky in the first place.

A terrible launch of a game I wanted to love turns what should have been a "WOW" show into another opportunity for Brad Wardell to explain how Stardock screwed up. Listen how imperfect QA practices, overconfidence, groupthink and not taking every beta crash report seriously turned one of the years most anticipated new IPs into a lesson for developers

And also, how Stardock commits to make things right - including refunds. (Ask them. I have no idea what the mechanics are.)

Rob's review

Troy's review

Tom's review

This week, the sound is terrible again mostly because my wireless refuses to cooperate. Big promise to fix this next week - I thought I had the problem solved.

But if you bear with us, you will hear Troy and Rob answer some questions from listeners about logistics, making losing fun, why games are released unfinished and a dozen other topics.