Welcome back to another Weekend Whammy, my fair folk! This week I’ll be talking about Game Pass being the perfect multiplayer destination, Sony shutting down the PS3, PSP and Vita stores, new research on whether loot boxes constitute gambling and much more
Charm. It’s a word I perhaps overuse and one that you’ll certainly see again throughout this article. And yet, it’s also the perfect description of this little point and click adventure from Pewter Games. This scrappy, short adventure is sweeter than a sugar-covered strawberry and more charming than a rogue that’s sunk every single experience point into charisma. As the old saying goes, good things come in small packages. At least, that’s what I like to tell m
With Microsoft now owning Zenimax, and therefore Bethesda, it seemed only right to pick out a Bethesda title from Game Pass to highlight this week. The game I chose is a personal favourite and comes from the excellent minds at Arkane whose talent for designing awesome levels has made them a developer I love and adore. Yep, my choice for this week is Dishonored, the first-person stealth ‘n stab adventure where ever playthrough starts with me promising to avoid killing before inevitably turning into the kind of blood bath that would make Sub-Zero go for a bit of a lie-down.
As the first exclusive game available on Microsoft’s latest consoles, The Medium has been an enticing prospect. It also put a bit of pressure on Bloober Team, the developers of such horror/psychological games as Layers of Fear, Observer and Blair Witch. A lot of eyes were always going to fall on The Medium as people were eager to get a taste of the first exclusive, albeit an exclusive also available on PC due to Microsoft’s business model. So, is The Medium a worthy reason to rush out and buy an Xbox Series S or Series X? No. Not really. And not just because you can’t find any Xbox Series consoles, anyway.
Things are going from bad to worse for CD Projekt RED (CDPR) and the highly-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077, which for many was the biggest and most exciting launch of the year. Thanks to their success with The Witcher 3, CDPR were riding high atop a wave of love and were valued at around $8-billion, making them worth more than even Ubisoft. They were the darlings of the game industry, and somehow in less than a week they’ve burned it all to the ground.
Today, my fellow squishy beings, is my birthday. Therefore I will be requiring you all to worship my divine brilliance for at least five minutes before you read the rest of this week’s Weekend Whammy. Start worshipping. Done? Alright, we can get on with this, then. Joking aside, as always I hope you’re all keeping well, staying safe and getting to play loads of games. On this Weekend Whammy I’m going to tackling Insomniac’s announcement that they’ve recast Spider-Man. I’ll also be talking about what I’m playing and planning on review. So let’s do this!
It’s surprising and even arguably a touch disappointing that despite being a Minecraft spin-off, Minecraft Dungeons does not contain a single instance of building or digging. It does, however, look and sound exactly like Minecraft in every possible way, from whatever the hell that noise is when you eat something to the Creepers. And yet when you watch a couple of Creepers explode into a billion little Creeper pieces without altering the terrain it feels fundamentally wrong. In this sense the whole thing is like a very basic reskin of a standard ARPG. The actual Minecraft part of Minecraft Dungeons is missing. Despite this, there’s still a fun and accessible Diablo style isometric dungeon-crawler here.
I’m not saying that the pressure of lockdown forced me to the tape my family to the ceiling, but I am saying that I need to repaint my ceiling. Yes, I’m back, back again (and listening to some Eminem) and lockdown is a confusing mess as Boris Johnson says one thing and Wales, Ireland and Scotland say completely different things. Should people go back to work or stay at home? Can you drive places or not? Is being in the park okay or will you get yelled at by the police? Nobody knows! So I think I’ll just stay inside and play more games. Seems like the safest choice, really.
I guess it’s not surprising that a game about slamming huge meat-slabs into cover before gunning down Locus translates so well into genre that’s about slamming into cover and gunning down bad guys. It would be easy to write it off as nothing more than a basic XCOM reskin if Splash Damage hadn’t done such a damn good job of making it feel like a Gears game through and through. The production values for a game within this genre are nothing short of lavish, with cutscenes being up to Gears 5 standards and actual gameplay being able to pass itself off as one of the main games when it zooms into an over-the-shoulder viewpoint. From the stellar sound design to the way special abilities mirror the main series, Gears Tactics feels like a lot more than just some cheap XCOM clone wearing bulky armour and running around with a chainsaw strapped to a gun.
Hello dear readers, you have entered a world of magic, of love, of unending beauty, of…uh, stuff. Yes, it’s time for a another Weekend Whammy that isn’t remotely near a weekend! YEAH! This week, there’s no damn games! But there is some stuff to talk about in regards to the next-gen consoles, their costs and their power Oh, and the Coronavirus. That as well.
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