August 14 - 20 | Gamers With Jobs

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IMAGE(https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/pictures/pictures/picture-13445.jpg) Felix “Ecstasy of Gold” Threepaper

Welcome folks, and happy “327th Anniversary of the Henry Every Proclamation” week!

On 18 August 1696, the King of England made a proclamation that offered a 500-pound reward for the capture of the pirate Henry Every. Henry Every was the most successful pirate you’ve never heard of, because he got away with it. He took over a flagship in a mutiny, then led a crew for 2 years, capturing ships and loot, culminating in a raid of gold-laden treasure ships from India. He and his crew fled to the Bahamas, split the booty, and managed to disappear into the Americas and Europe. By the time the proclamation was made, he was already in the wind. Every’s success inspired many more famous pirates to take up the Jolly Roger. You may all celebrate by playing a game where you pull off a perfect heist.

This week, it’s a sports game that used to be good but has recently become a bit bad and ugly, a fistful of indies and a few remakes more.

Madden hasn’t had a great run in the PS5/Series X generation. So, for Madden 24, they’ve looked back at when Madden was king—the PS2 era—and reintroduced a bunch of features from that time. As such, training mini-games are back, as is Superstar Mode. There will be a bunch of high-fidelity features available on the PS5/Series X version that are not available on the PS4/Xbox version. The most marketed new feature is that all the players, coaches and even spectators have newly redesigned skeletons, which apparently helps with animations. And, for the first time, there’s crossplay. Mostly. Just not in Franchise Mode.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is by Mimimi Games, makers of Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and Desperadoes 3. Like those games, Shadow Gambit is a stealth strategy game where you control a group of differently-skilled characters in isometric maps, sneaking past vision cones and getting up to shenanigans. The setting is fantasy Caribbean, awash with pirates, ghost ships and undead magic. In order to promote more complexity of player plans, there’s a new pause feature where you can pause, set up everyone’s actions, then unpause for them to execute their actions simultaneously. The characters have some pretty cool and different abilities, such as the cannoneer who can put a friend or foe in her cannon and shoot them to another part of the map.

Moving Out 2 is a sequel to the popular slapstick party game about wrangling furniture, even if the rest of the house gets demolished as a result. This time you can play online co-op and the levels take a turn for the absurd, with interdimensional portals affording whole new categories of obstacles and challenges.

Everspace 2, the starship dogfighting game, also makes its way to consoles this week. It’s more of a looter-shooter than a space sim, with a gameplay loop of fight-loot-upgrade. It’s good value, if you feel the combat doesn’t get old.

Sony continues its project of upscaling PSP titles for PS4/PS5, and titles like Ape Escape, Pursuit Force and MediEvil are this week’s fruit. I’m not sure how well these games hold up on bigger screens, but they sure do fluff out the catalogue of “free” games that you get at higher PS Plus subscription tiers.

I’m keeping my powder dry for console Baldur’s Gate 3, but Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is my favourite this week. Mimimi Games has been carving a niche for itself in the stealth strategy space. Each of its games gets better, packing in more interesting features, while also inching closer to biting the bullet and just having a turn-based mode. GOTW.

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