August 29 – September 4

Section: 

That’ll teach me.

Last week I complained about the lack of anything for anyone who was not a fan of Adam Jensen or Gronk. This week I find myself in the opposite position. Indeed, I could purge the list below of every game I had no interest in and still be faced with a significant challenge in selecting just one to present to you all as my game of the week.

Allow me to demonstrate (deep breath):

Battle Knights, Featherpunk Prime, Four Sided Fantasy, God Eater 2: Rage Burst, Ian's Eyes, Livelock, Redout, Reset 1-1, Seasons After Fall, and Talent Not Included.

And that’s just my top ten! Imagine how many more I could count to if I had all my toes! (Spoiler: it's 12)

Since I don't want to bore you a bazillion words explaining why all of those games are awesome and deserve your money, I shall have to do the work of picking the one that I’m most excited about.

This week I think that would have to be Featherpunk Prime. It’s one of the few games out this week that doesn’t suggest that multiplayer is a significant part of the experience, and the idea of playing a cybernetic flamingo on a mission to rescue your fellow flamingos from bondage by defeating evil cybirdroids. (Yes, they call them that in the game. Squee!)

Also, the game boasts a killer avian disco soundtrack. Who can say no to that?

Felix “Raiders of the Lost Park” Threepaper

Disclosure: Between Fallout 4 and Metal Gear Solid V, I’m yet to actually play a game from the 2016 pile. Except for XCOM 2, which I bounced off harder than Speedball when he took on Thing.

As such, I’m most excited for Fallout 4: Nuka-World. It’s set in an amusement park and, just like real amusement parks, makes some big claims about how awesome it’ll be. At least it’s a chunky new area with chunky new quests, new factions to join (and make choices about), new beasties, new gear and new crafting options, sprinkled with Fallout goofiness. Those of you who bemoaned Fallout 4’s lack of evil roleplaying options will appreciate being able to join Raider gangs and get your Thunderdome on. If it’s up to the calibre of Far Harbor, it will further prevent me from playing any actual new games for weeks to come.

Chris "C" Cesarano

We may as well just rename this week to Otaku Week, given some of the releases hitting shelves and hard drives. Attack on Titan pulls the highly popular comic and anime of the same name into the action-game genre. God Eater 2: Rage Burst was originally an action-RPG for the PSP and now has an anime based on it. Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X has players rhythmically mash buttons to their favorite vocaloid holo-performer. And XSeed unleashes Corpse Party onto Western shores, a horror game where you get to control Japanese school girls.

That's about all I know about it, at least.

Unfortunately my game of the week is hunting down a new car to replace my now deceased one, which means at best my budget is limited to the Resident Evil 4 rerelease. Otherwise, I'll be aiming this particular dart for the God Eater 2: Rage Burst portion of the board, as that's the one most likely to appeal to my tastes.

Erik "wordsmythe" Hanson

Do you like the Portal games, but wish there were fewer portals? Enjoy films where solitary humans wander around space outposts, but wish there were more puzzles involved? Then you might love The Turing Test! Snark aside, the art and sound teams have layered in atmosphere and mystery thickly, and in successive layers. It's enough to intrigue me.

This week:

PC

  • Agent Walker: Secret Journey
  • Alpha Decay
  • Battle Knights
  • Black Hole Hazard
  • Champions of Anteria
  • Cliff Hanger
  • De-Void
  • Destiny of Ancient Kingdoms
  • Don't Crawl
  • Earthlock: Festival of Magic
  • Fall of Civilization
  • Fallout 4: Nuka-World
  • Featherpunk Prime
  • Four Sided Fantasy
  • Frantic Freighter
  • God Eater 2: Rage Burst
  • Grid Legion, Storm
  • GunGirl 2
  • Hack, Slash & Backstab
  • Hue
  • Ian's Eyes
  • Kapsul Infinite
  • Kuboom
  • Le Havre: The Inland Port
  • Livelock
  • Magnetta
  • One Day: The Sun Disappeared
  • One Piece: Burning Blood
  • Pozzo Jello Crusade
  • Pulse Shift
  • Redout
  • Reset 1-1
  • Seasons After Fall
  • Second Coming
  • Sisyphus Reborn
  • Super Destronaut
  • Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire
  • Talent Not Included
  • The Final Station
  • The Lords of the Earth Flame
  • The Turing Test
  • The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition
  • Toadled
  • Windscape
  • World of Warcraft: Legion
  • Zero Gravity

PS4

  • Assetto Corsa
  • Attack on Titan
  • Binaries
  • Claire: Extended Cut
  • Fallout 4: Nuka-World
  • The Final Station
  • Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X
  • God Eater 2: Rage Burst
  • One Way Trip
  • Resident Evil 4
  • Seasons After Fall
  • Strike Vector EX
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition
  • Verdun

Xbox One

  • Armello
  • Assetto Corsa
  • Attack on Titan
  • Binaries
  • Earthlock: Festival of Magic
  • Fallout 4: Nuka-World
  • FreezeME
  • Hack, Slash & Backstab
  • I, Zombie
  • Killer Instinct Season 3
  • Mahjong
  • Resident Evil 4
  • Seasons After Fall
  • Shiny
  • Tumblestone
  • The Turing Test
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition
  • Verdun

Wii U

  • Axiom Verge
  • Panda Love
  • Shooty Space

PS3

  • Attack on Titan

3DS

  • Adventure: A Labyrinth Story
  • Corpse Party

Vita

  • Attack on Titan
  • Claire: Extended Cut
  • God Eater 2: Rage Burst
  • Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X

RIFT

  • Redout

Vive

  • DragonBlast VR
  • Frantic Freighter
  • Redout

Comments

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain looks freakin' amazing.

The original 1982 Fighting Fantasy choose your own adventure book sprung to life in a gorgeous diorama setting. Looks like a blend of the actual FF "choose A, B, or C" mechanics and TBS fighting.

Man, I hope this one delivers.

Nary a mention of WoW's expansion. Oh how times have changed.

God Eater 2: Rage Burst for me, eventually. I picked up God Eater Resurrection recently as it was only $20. I like the Monster Hunter-lite on display here.

Verdun is coming to console? I might have to check that out since I loooooooooove the Red Orchestra series and Verdun is in a similar vein.

Aaron D. wrote:

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain looks freakin' amazing.

The original 1982 Fighting Fantasy choose your own adventure book sprung to life in a gorgeous diorama setting. Looks like a blend of the actual FF "choose A, B, or C" mechanics and TBS fighting.

Man, I hope this one delivers.

Woah. Looks like they're 'borrowing' heavily from Inkle's FF: Sorcery series - and that's a good thing to be borrowing from.

Big week for Miku! Project Diva X is out in NA, her 9th "birthday" on the 31st, and her Vocaloid4 voice pack comes out too!

IMAGE(https://chinesefontdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/29.png)

Legion is coming and I... am not prepared.

The combat of Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire, particularly the art and animation style, looks dangerously close to that of The Banner Saga.

Cliff Hanger

A couple of notes about this one: It was released 5 years ago, and is just now getting a Steam release. Also, as the Steam page alerts, there is no English in the game. It's only Japanese.

GunGirl 2

This was released (for free) 6 years ago, and is getting a Steam release, also for the price of free.

Pulse Shift

Another Steam release, this was originally released 3.5 years ago.

Sisyphus Reborn

Another free game coming to Steam, this one was released 1.5 years ago.

MeatMan wrote:

The combat of Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire, particularly the art and animation style, looks dangerously close to that of The Banner Saga.

Heck, the combat looks insanely similar.

Tahira and Firetop are definitely going on my wishlist.

garion333 wrote:

Nary a mention of WoW's expansion. Oh how times have changed.

We poked Elysium in case he wanted to throw in for it. That would have made two weeks in a row, though. (I think he wants to avoid feeling like he's throwing his weight around.)

wordsmythe wrote:

Do you like the Portal games, but wish there were fewer portals? Enjoy films where solitary humans wander around space outposts, but wish there were more puzzles involved? Then you might love The Turing Test! Snark aside, the art and sound teams have layered in atmosphere and mystery thickly, and in successive layers. It's enough to intrigue me.

I do like Portal games!

I do enjoy films where solitary humans wander around space outposts!

I fricking love puzzles!

*goes to Steam's page for The Turing Test*

Steam page for The Turing Test wrote:

The Turing Test is a challenging first-person puzzle game set on Jupiter’s moon, Europa. You are Ava Turing, an engineer for the International Space Agency (ISA) sent to discover the cause behind the disappearance of the ground crew stationed there.

Ava Turing? AVA f*ckING TURING?

Just call her "$name ComputerBabe" and be bloody done with it. Urgh.

It's not quite as bad as Johnny Depp's character in Transcendance being called Will Caster, but it's not far off.

Get it? She's being tested!

MeatMan wrote:

The combat of Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire, particularly the art and animation style, looks dangerously close to that of The Banner Saga.

Probably the only thing I'll get this week. There's others I might want, but there's just too many of them and I'm already inundated with games.

And I already paid for Tahira via Kickstarter.

Oh, and Nukaworld, because of the season pass...

I picked up the WoW: Legion CE this week. I was pretty happy they released it a day before launch. I remember midnight runs to stores to pick up the game, and then rushing home to install it.

I just learned about Redout today, but agonizingly have actual work to do and can't just watch videos of it all morning. Formula Fusion has been on my Steam wishlist for a while, and I've been loving Distance, so Redout has my attention.