Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh baby, it’s time for another Weekend Whammy, my friends! This week it’s a short one, but I’ll be chatting about Death Stranding, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and Medievil. Oh, and there’s a free code for Europa Universalis IV on Steam. The first one to use it gets the game.

My Switch Lite has been getting a workout over the past week or two thanks to the awesomeness that is Luigi’s Mansion 3, the long-awaited sequel to the 3DS game and the even longer awaited follow-up to the original game on the…Gamecube? Seriously? Jesus Christ, I feel old. Anyway, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is charming and fun and beautiful and…comfortable. I didn’t use that last word in my actual review but I think it fits the game well; Luigi’s Mansion 3 is comfortable to play. I can grab my Switch Lite and just sort of melt into the couch like some sort of gloopy liquid, not unlike Gooigi himself. It just feels so damn good to play, and so enjoyable. I reckon it was worth the long wait.

Hopefully you also caught my other review which was for Asgard’s Wrath, the big new VR game that is an outstanding example of what VR can do. What’s sticking with me the most is the sense of scale you get when you’re exploring the world. Cliffs tower over you, massive doors Loom with a capital L. I’ve played normal games where you feel dwarfed by the environment, and they are impressive, but Asgard’s Wrath takes it to the next level in VR.

The next game coming out that I’m pretty excited about is Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, but I don’t know if I’ll be reviewing it yet. The simple truth is these days it’s harder than ever to get review code, especially from the big companies, and both EA and Activision don’t speak to me at all now, and indeed I have an insider who has told me I’m straight-up blacklisted over at EA. So when it comes to the likes of Modern Warfare and Luigi’s Mansion 3 I’ve been breaking open the bank account, and I may have kinda spent too much and wound up hitting my overdraft like an idiot. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to find the money to grab a copy of Fallen Order on launch yet. I’ll let you know. If you do happen to want to help out you can hit the button at the bottom of the page to help support the site via Paypal.

But I will be reviewing MediEvil, the PS4 exclusive remake of the old PS1 game. Personally when I was a kid I was a lot more familiar with the sequel, but I’ve played MediEvil a few times over the years and have a deep love for it. The idea of a remake was pretty exciting. So do I like it? Er, yeah? Sort of? MediEvil is an interesting example of whether a remake should be loyal to the original vision, or be allowed the freedom to update certain aspects of the game. There are some big problems with Medievil that frustrated me and almost all of them are aspects of the original game design. But more on that in the full review.

I’ll also be reviewing the new Scuf Syndicate controller, although I don’t know exactly when the review will be published as I’ve run into a few issues with the controller and have to decide how I’ll be handling them.

On top of that, I’ve got a few of HyperX’s new headsets in to check out as well.

In my last Weekend Whammy I touched on Death Stranding and how I was very curious to see how people were going to react to it, even if I personally don’t have a strong desire to play it. I’ve not been let down because the discussion around Death Stranding have been fascinating, as has the divide between players. Some are loving its sense of isolation and the way in which you can build structures to help players you’ll never meet on their own journeys. Others are simply saying that it isn’t fun for them, and from what I’ve seen of the game both perspectives seem absolutely fair. Death Stranding is an experiment, an experience that not everyone is going to enjoy. It’s important for games like this to exist, though, for different things to get put on the market and tried.

I’d highly recommend checking out Easy Ally’s Frametrap podcast where they spend a lot of time chatting about Death Stranding, its gameplay, its ideas and its community.

I’ve gotten back into playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey this week. I’m not sure why, I just started craving the loot and the adventure. I can’t believe how much sheer game I have left – it’s bloody huge, and while I did a lot for the review there’s still so much more left to explore and check out. I’ve not even considered the DLC which got some pretty solid reviews. I suppose in some ways Odyssey is an example of some games being too big for its own good, but the benefit is you can come back months later and still have loads to do. I’m looking forward to picking away at it, sticking in a few hours here and a few hours there.

I’ve got the Outer Worlds sitting on my Xbox, too, and I want to get into it. I feel hesititant jumping into a massive RPG that is going to need a lot of time to properly play for a review, though. It’s like a commitment, isn’t it? Maybe I just need to get those first couple of hours in so that it can hook me.

And that’s all for this week folks! If you fancy supporting the site, hit the button below to donate via Paypal! Here’s your game code.

FREE EUROPA UNIVERSALIS IV CODE: RKRW4-04266-K6DIZ
Redeem this code via Steam to download the game.

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