Making games is a brutally difficult task at the best of times, but when expectations are heaped upon you and you’re venturing into the choppy waters of “games as a service” with a pseudo MMORPG looter shooter? It’s nigh on impossible to get it right on day one. It’s no surprise at all that Anthem has come out of the door a little bit wonky, but here’s hoping they’re able to quickly round off the edges and let us enjoy the best of what this game has to offer.
In the News This Week
- Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime announces retirement, Bowser becomes President
- Founder of Avalanche Studios announces he will be leaving company soon
- Dreams’ Creator Early Access will be available in select countries soon
- Production of the PlayStation Vita is coming to an end
- The Battle of Hannut Grand Operation is now out for Battlefield V, and Rush returns
- At last, Anakin Skywalker is coming to Star Wars Battlefront II next week
- Paradox Interactive and Microsoft launch an independent cross-platform mod platform
- Darkest Dungeon II announced, but can it be even darker?
- The next game from the creators of Furi is Haven, an RPG about love
- The Anthem day one patch improves long loading times and fixes bugs
- Layoffs Confirmed at ArenaNet and EA
Games in Review
So Anthem was the biggest game of the week, but sadly it wasn’t the best game of the week by far. It also wasn’t the worst!
- Dirt Rally 2.0 – PS4, XBO, PC – 9/10
- Stellaris: Console Edition – PS4, XBO – 8/10
- Project Warlock – PC – 8/10
- Death end re;Quest – PS4, PC – 7/10
- Anthem – PS4, XBO, PC – 6/10
- Fight of Gods – Switch, PC – 2/10
- Shovel Knight by David L. Craddock – Book Club review
Reviewed platform in bold.
This Week’s Features
There was a good grab bag of features this week, starting off with a look at the rather promising A Plague Tale: Innocence, which takes an interesting French setting wracked by the Black Death and gives it a supernatural twist.
Five years on from the PS4’s Japanese release on Friday, Alan Wen looked back at a Yakuza game that the West never got: the Japanese period drama Yakuza Ishin.
Meanwhile, off in outer space, Nick went hands on with the 4X expansionism of Age of Wonders: Planetfall, and Tom battled weird looking aliens in the very heavy metal Valfaris.
Miguel and Jason teamed up to give us a quick & dirty guide to all the characters in Jump Force, and finally, What We Played featured Anthem, Titanfall 2 and Dirt Rally 2.0
Trailer Park
The Division 2’s Endgame trailer pits the agents against the Black Tusk
Take a look at some of the highlights from the Dreams beta
The new Detective Pikachu movie trailer includes cute Bulbasaurs and a gross Lickitung
Left Alive’s latest gameplay trailer takes you through the warzone
Check out ten minutes of gameplay from The Occupation
Your Achievements
Time to see what the community have been playing this past week:
- Crazy_Del’s platinum hunting saw him get his 500th headshot and #368 platinum in Firewall: Zero Hour last weekend. He’s also gone back to SoulCalibur V and is hoping to get the plat for Vikings: Wolves of Midgard.
- JR. played Resident Evil 2, and while he loves it, he doesn’t love it as much as the original. He wrote a lot of words.
- It was more Kona VR for TSBonyman, and he also jumped back into Driveclub VR.
- Also racing in VR was Camdaz, but in Dirt Rally VR. He’s still disappointed that Dirt Rally 2.0 doesn’t have VR.
- The Division 2’s beta convinced Andrewww to go back and play the first game, where he found all the changes made it tricky to get back into it.
If you want to be included in this section, make sure to comment on What We Played of a Friday evening.
The Week Ahead
There’s actually quite a bit coming out next week, so long as your a racing, empire building or Lego fan, anyway!
- Dirt Rally 2.0– PS4, XBO, PC – 26/02
- Stellaris: Console Edition – PS4, XBO – 26/02
- The Lego Movie 2 Videogame – PS4, XBO, Switch, PC – 26/02
- Trials Rising – PS4, XBO, Switch, PC – 26/02
That’s it for this edition, have a good weekend and we’ll see you again soon!
