Something For The Weekend – 12/01/19

The games industry is back with a bang this week, with demo releases, plenty of game events, game delays, announcements, trailers, and even a little bit of scandal to get people gossiping! It’s good to be back, even if I’m missing the nice holiday break and calm.

In the News This Week

We start the news this week with the three-part saga surrounding SpatialOS and Unity:

• A Change To Unity’s Terms Of Service Could Force Games To Shut Down
• Improbable And Epic Set Up A Fund To Help Devs Swap Unity For “More Open Engines”
• Improbable Issue Final Statement On SpatialOS Feud With Unity

While the rest of the week was packed with demos, announcements and more:

• Bungie Announces Split From Activision, But Keeps Destiny In The Divorce
• You can try Resident Evil 2 Gets A “1-Shot Demo” This Week
• A New Devil May Cry 5 Demo Is Coming Out Next Month, And It’s Coming To PS4
• The PlayStation 4 Passed 90 Million Sales Over Christmas, And One In Ten Buy Marvel’s Spider-Man
• OlliOlli Switch Stance Is Coming To Switch For Some Valentine’s Day Grinding
• Dead Or Alive 6 Delayed Until March (And The Slightly Less Improbable Boob Beta Is Now Live On PS4)
• Yoshi’s Crafted World Is Out On Switch In March
• Alien: Blackout Is Not Related To Isolation, “More To Come” Say Fox
• I’m Sorry Ms. Jackson, THQ Nordic Have Bought Outcast
• Red Dead Online Updated With Gun Rush Battle Royale Mode

Giveaways & Competitions

You’ll have to be quick for this one, there’s just one hour left to enter our huge Big Crown Showdown giveaway! We’ve got fifty – five, oh! – copies of the game on PlayStation 4 to flog, so make sure you get your entries in before the 1PM cut off.

Games in Review

As we head into 2019, we’re catching up on the tail end of last year with some of our reviews, as well as bringing new things to the table. In particular, we have our first comic book review, coming as a new feature called The Pull List, which will run most Wednesdays. Our first one returned to Max and Chloe after the events of the first season of Life Is Strange.

• Atari Flashback Classics– Switch – 8/10
• Kingdom Two Crowns– PS4, XBO, Switch, PC – 8/10
• Red Matter– PSVR, Vive, Rift – 8/10
• Tales Of Vesperia: Definitive Edition – PS4, XBO, Switch, PC – 8/10
• New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe– Switch – 7/10
• London Detective Mysteria – Vita – 6/10
• Battle Princess Madelyn – PS4, XBO, Switch, PC – 4/10
• Life Is Strange #2 – ‘The Pull List’ Comic Review
• Nintendo Switch S-Charge – Hardware Review

Reviewed platform in bold.

This Week’s Features

It was really all about the reviews this week, but you can expect the previews and other features to pick up through the rest of the month. That said, we still had some space and time to take a look at the state of Battlefield V right now and how much work DICE have ahead of them to make the game truly great.

For newcomers to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, whether you got it at launch or over Christmas, Jason has some smashing tips on how to improve your play and how to get the best out of the game by embracing its chaos!

Finally, What We Played features Onimusha: Warlords, Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, and Monster Hunter: World.

Trailer Park

Panty Party is not the game you would expect…

The Walking Dead: Final Season’s Broken Toys Episode Has A Trailer

Sega Ages has brought the classic Out Run to Nintendo Switch

Here’s the multiplayer trailer for Ace Combat 7

Your Achievements

Time to see what the community have been playing in the new year:

• MrYd pushed himself to finish off Spider-Man before starting on Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which has clicked for him much more than Origins did.
• ron_mcphatty finished Chapter 6 in Red Dead Redemption 2, and has nothing to say except “wow!”
• Giving a second chance, aerobes has also clicked with AC Odyssey and would now put it in his top three from 2018.
• Ever on the hunt for trophies, Crazy_Del booted up his PS3 to dig into Amplitude and his wife has been playing Tokyo Jungle. He’s also thoroughly enjoyed the Resident Evil 2 demo and can’t wait for the final game.
• It’s mostly been The Persistence in PSVR for TSBonyman.
• Just in time for NSMBUDfNS, tactical20 finished Captain Toad’s Treasure Tracker.
• Eldave0 has dashed through the Battlefield V campaign and mopped up multiplayer achievements, sround through Resi6 and started on Resi 4, and subbed to Game Pass to savour Forza Horizon 4 until Resi 2 is out.
• camdaz is just a handful of trophies from the platinum after beating Just Cause 4.
• Andrewww has spent the rest of his holiday time with Horizon Zero Dawn.

If you want to be included in this section, make sure to comment on What We Played of a Friday evening.

The Week Ahead

2019’s barely begun, but we’re already getting a ton of games coming out in what’s going to be an absolutely rammed start to the year.

• My Time at Portia – PC – 15/01
• Onimusha: Warlords – PS4, XBO, Switch, PC – 15/01
• The Grand Tour Game – PS4, XBO – 15/01
• The Walking Dead: The Final Season – Episode 3 – PS4, XBO, Switch, PC – 15/01
• Vane – PS4 – 15/01
• YIIK: A Postmodern RPG – PS4, Switch, PC – 17/01
• Ace Combat 7 – PS4 (PSVR), XBO – 18/01
• Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes – Switch – 18/01

That’s it for this edition, have a good weekend and we’ll see you again soon!