March 29 - April 4

Section: 

IMAGE(https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/pictures/pictures/picture-13445.jpg)   Felix “Earth, Wind & Fire … and Techno-guy” Threepaper

Welcome folks, and happy “Jackie Mitchell’s birthday” week! Jackie Mitchell was the second woman to play in baseball’s minor leagues. In 1931, at 17 years old, she pitched in an exhibition match against the New York Yankees and struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Her contract was cancelled by the Baseball Commissioner the next day. You may all celebrate by playing a game where you get kicked out for being too good.

The big AAA release this week is Outriders. It’s a looter-shooter with some wowtastic powers for your space-battlemages to pick from. The tanky rock dude cannonballs around, impaling enemies on stalactites. The pyro torches everything in sight. The rogueish trickster warps in and out of groups, temporally slicing them. And the support techno-guy drops turrets, missile storms, and heals. With powers like these, who cares about what guns you’ve got? The combat looks amazing, like they put all your favourite powers from other games into one game, but the jury is still out on what the grind is like. Devs, People Can Fly, have spent many years around big names like Gears of War, Fortnite, and Bulletstorm; this is their first time as the lead of their own AAA game.

Hitman 3: Seven Deadly Sins - Greed is the first of an expansion series with, yep, 7 parts. Greed will modify Dubai for a new contract that will allow you to keep items between the three stages of the map. Not much else is known, except that there’s new gear. The heavy “greed” theme reminds me of that famous movie quote about greed: “I have the need, the need for greed”. And no, I’m not looking it up.

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut is Disco Elysium with all the voice acting put in. The devs have spent 17 months painstakingly casting and directing the nearly 300 characters who are getting voices, including voices for your different skills. They found a retired jazz musician to do the narration. A few questlines around your political belief choices have been restored. The best bit is, if you already own the game, it’s a free update! This sounds good enough to warrant a second playthrough. If you haven’t played Disco Elysium yet, this is a great time to do yourself a favour. Unfortunately, in Australia its release has been blocked due to being refused classification for its depiction of “sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, and violence.” Meanwhile, you can watch way more depraved depictions of all of those things on Netflix. I thought we were done with this classification crud 15 years ago, but here we are.

Speaking of Netflix, FMV psychological thriller I Saw Black Clouds looks like an interactive Netflix show. There’s also a whole bunch of Kingdom Hearts coming to PC.

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut would be my GOTW, but in a very Disco Elysium way, it has been disqualified on a bureaucratic technicality. That gives Outriders the GOTW. The powers make for great highlight reels; let’s see if there’s enough other game there to keep people around.

Here's the list, now in release-date AND alphabetical order!

PC

  • 03-29

  • DARK AROUND YOU
  • Endline
  • Extreme Peg Solitaire
  • FPS Tactics
  • Knights of Grumthorr 2
  • Lacuna/Draft
  • Maze
  • Neon Dimension
  • Neptunia Virtual Stars
  • Shattered Slime
  • 03-30

  • Aron's Adventure
  • Ball Challenge
  • Be Hero
  • Best Miner
  • Blind Shot
  • Disco Elysium: The Final Cut
  • Eggcelerate!
  • Evil Genius 2: World Domination
  • From the darkness
  • Hitman 3: Seven Deadly Sins - Greed
  • Holy Chick!
  • Iceland South Coast
  • Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue
  • Kingdom Hearts HD I.5 + II.5 Remix
  • Kingdom Hearts III - Re Mind
  • Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory
  • Mastho is Together
  • Narita Boy
  • O.V.N.I. Abduction
  • Red Laser Z
  • Red White Yellow
  • REFICUL 666
  • Robin: Race!
  • Slaughterhouse
  • Sol Blanka
  • Things That Bounce and Explode
  • VR Fighter Jets War
  • World War 2 Craft
  • 03-31

  • A.V.A
  • Aero Battle
  • Ant simulator
  • Apollyon: River of Life
  • Arkan Tower
  • Baby Dragon Rancher
  • Conductor: Creative Joy Engine
  • Draginsanity
  • Drive Buy
  • Eternal Secret
  • Future Fortune
  • Goblins!
  • i Have Powers!
  • Insanium
  • Junkyard Simulator: First Car (Prologue 2)
  • Kitchen Island VR
  • Loopomotive
  • Magnace: Arena
  • Mysticism
  • Nemesis: Race Against The Pandemic
  • OH! MOCHI!
  • Outright
  • Play The Fox
  • Rumours From Elsewhere
  • Sausage Fiesta
  • Submorse
  • The Binding of Isaac: Repentance
  • The Mansion
  • times infinity
  • Wildfire Swap
  • Wind Angel II
  • 04-01

  • Crash Dive 2
  • Debatto: Delivery Battle
  • Dee-6: Dice Defenders
  • Destroids
  • Floor Plan 2
  • Fruit Sudoku
  • Jardinains!
  • Jigsaw Pieces 2 - Shades of Mood
  • Keeper of the Day and Night
  • Melrose Academy of the Arcane
  • Minigun VS Swarms of the Zombie Apocalypse Simulator
  • Outriders
  • PAPER TANKS
  • Piozila
  • SUSPENSE
  • The Rebellion
  • Totally Reliable Delivery Service
  • Weed Shop 3
  • Yarne
  • Your Chronicle
  • Zombie Friday

Xbox Series X

  • 03-30

  • Hitman 3: Seven Deadly Sins - Greed
  • 03-31

  • Tennis World Tour 2
  • 04-01

  • Outriders

Xbox One

  • 03-30

  • Hitman 3: Seven Deadly Sins - Greed
  • I Saw Black Clouds
  • Narita Boy
  • 03-31

  • A Hat in Time: Nyakuza Metro
  • A Hat in Time: Seal the Deal
  • Escape from Life Inc
  • 04-01

  • Outriders

PlayStation 5

  • 03-30

  • Disco Elysium: The Final Cut
  • Hitman 3: Seven Deadly Sins - Greed
  • 04-01

  • Outriders

PlayStation 4

  • 03-29

  • DOOM 3: VR Edition
  • 03-30

  • Disco Elysium: The Final Cut
  • Hitman 3: Seven Deadly Sins - Greed
  • I Saw Black Clouds
  • Narita Boy
  • UnderMine
  • 03-31

  • A Hat in Time: Nyakuza Metro
  • A Hat in Time: Seal the Deal
  • Outbuddies DX
  • 04-01

  • Outriders

Switch

  • 03-29

  • The Game of Life 2
  • 03-30

  • Afterpulse
  • Balloon Girl
  • Hitman 3: Seven Deadly Sins - Greed
  • I Saw Black Clouds
  • Narita Boy
  • Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2: Bush Rescue HD
  • 03-31

  • Drive Buy
  • Escape from Life Inc
  • Rainbocorns
  • Squad Killer
  • Storm Tale
  • 04-01

  • A Long Way Down
  • Dungeon and Puzzles
  • Moorhuhn Kart 2
  • Stick Fight: The Game
  • Train Station Simulator
  • What Comes After
  • 04-02

  • C14 Dating

Comments

Evil Genius 2 doesn't even get a mention?
How the mighty GWJ has fallen!
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Elysium, Goodjer of Goodjers:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

If Disco Elysium nails its 'Final Cut' additions, it's going to cement its place as one of the greatest games of all time. I rarely replay adventure games (and I consider DE more of a point-and-click than an RPG), but I'll probably make an exception for this.

Scanning down the rest of the list, Narita Boy is a promising retro-styled 2D actioner if you like that sort of thing (I don't), and the Binding of Isaac DLC is going to be exciting for some people (not me).

Oh, and Stick Fight has been around on PC for a while and looks like tons of fun. I'll most likely grab that on Switch for some couch-multiplayer shenanigans.

Narita Boy has my interest piqued. DLC for A Hat in Time looks good, as well.

Coldstream wrote:

Evil Genius 2 doesn't even get a mention?
How the mighty GWJ has fallen!
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Elysium, Goodjer of Goodjers:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I didn't even know the game existed. Or I forgot.

Why is it a pc only release? That seems like a huge missed opportunity for sales. Guess that'll be coming down the pike, eventually.

garion333 wrote:

I didn't even know the game existed. Or I forgot.

Yeah, I sort of snuck up on me too. I'm a big fan of the original, so I'm delighted that there's a sequel. I hadn't heard anything out it being developed until about a month ago, but then again I'm not as plugged into game development as I used to be. It drops today, so I'll put my initial impressions here. The timing is great to get a month or two with this before Subnautica: Below Zero drops.

I've tried to remain cautiously optimistic for Disco Elysium: The Final Cut. Nevertheless, I may have leaned toward excitedly optimistic. I'm working from a pinch of intrigue and a tidal wave of praise, amidst very little in-game detail (for purposes of fresh discovery).

The interactive aspects, you know, the gameplay, being likened to a point and click adventure has stirred concern for expectation management. Hopefully there be puzzle solving and threat assessment, perhaps related to character build, to balance any pixel hunting and/or page turning aspects, or I'll come crashing down from that 'new game' high.

RnRClown wrote:

The interactive aspects, you know, the gameplay, being likened to a point and click adventure has stirred concern for expectation management. Hopefully there be puzzle solving and threat assessment, perhaps related to character build, to balance any pixel hunting and/or page turning aspects, or I'll come crashing down from that 'new game' high.

I'm the one who likened it to a point and click, and I can reassure that there is no pixel-hunting and no "use inflatable noodle with statue of Lenin"-type nonsensical puzzling. It's all well-paced and straightforward and very few frustrating moments.

It reminded me of an old-school point-and-click in the respect that you can't die (well... you can, but it's easily mitigated), and there are no fetch quests and no combat system - both of which I associate with RPGs.

I think its safe to continue being excited.

I own the release version so will presumably get the free upgrade. I bounced *hard* off of it though, so I'm hesitant to try it again. Perhaps if I get drunk and maudlin enough at some point in the future.