It’s a slightly funny situation for sports fans to see cricket in England played in lovely sunshine, while there’s rain regularly sweeping through Spa-Francorchamps threatening the Belgian Grand Prix weekend. Only one of these events is living up to stereotypes this weekend, though the weather gods have chosen the correct sport to barrage with the wet stuff – F1 can actually handle a bit of rain, as proven by today’s Sprint qualifying and racing.
There’s a new F1 Manager out now – early access as of Thursday and a full release next week – but before we get to that review score, let’s catch up on this week’s gaming news.
In the News This Week
- Final Fantasy 14 is finally coming to Xbox in 2024! – Dawntrail expansion announced
- Get £80 off PS5 consoles & discounted DualSense in big PlayStation summer sale
- Mortal Kombat 1 beta dates revealed for pre-order access
- PS5 passes 40 million console sales just slightly slower than the PS4
- Life By You Early Access release pushed back to March 2024
- 60 player kart racer Stampede: Racing Royale is running a playtest
- Suikoden successor Eiyuden Chronicle delayed to Q2 2024
- Tencent acquires majority stake in Dying Light developer Techland
- Check out this leaked video of Project Q, Sony’s streaming handheld
- Trine 5 is coming out in August
And we can catch up on some subscriptions and freebies:
- PS Plus Essential August 2023 games confirmed with PGA Tour 2K23
- These games will be free on Epic Games Store from August 3rd
- August 23 Prime Gaming includes PayDay 2, and The Force Unleashed 2
Games in Review and Featured Articles
There’s one outstanding game that came out earlier this month in the form of Remnant 2, but there’s also some solid and fun games to be had elsewhere this July, and F1 fans will have something to fill the imminent summer break.
- Remnant II – PS5, XSX|S, PC – 9/10
- Exoprimal – PS5, XSX|S, PS4, XBO, PC – 7/10
- F1 Manager 2023 – PS5, XSX|S, PS4, XBO, PC – 7/10
- Full Void – PC – 7/10
We also had a solitary hardware review:
- Turtle Beach Stealth Pro – PS5, PS4, PC – 9/10
I also went hands on with Blue Protocol, the upcoming anime MMORPG coming from a unique partnership between Bandai Namco and Amazon Games. It’s got an intriguing role-less set of character classes, and there’s plenty of splashy combat mixed in alongside some classic anime storytelling. Out now in Japan on PC, it’s coming to PC and consoles in the West in 2024.
Finally, What We Played featured Remnant II, Midnight Suns, and “playing” Pokémon Sleep.
Trailer Park
See 10 minutes of Armored Core VI gameplay in new preview trailer
See 20 minutes of Lords of the Fallen gameplay with “uninterrupted” co-op
Starfield animated anthology introduces The Settled Systems
See the FF14 Dawntrail teaser trailer
Your Achievements
Let’s see what you’ve been playing:
- willbuchanan has completed “most” of the story in Doom, and now just needs to find a way to finish the first chapter on Ultra Nightmare difficulty, “which is easier said than done.” On the plus side, he’s found that NFC tags do work on Lego Dimension, so he’ll be playing that this weekend, and hoovered up the platinum trophies for Stroke The Beaver and Stroke The Dik-Dik, “which amused me far more than it should!” and Thunder and Autumn’s Journey. A productive week!
- MrYd’s stuck with his usual games on PS5, adding Samurai Warriors 5 from PS+ to the mix. He’s also been enjoying Switchback VR, which he won from our giveaway last weekend. Of course, with his shiny new PC and game pass, he’s been diving into all manner of other games as well, including Exoprimal, “which I’m already bored of due to the complete lack of content” – our review would disagree, it’s just that you need to play far too much of it to get to the really good stuff!
Have a good weekend and I’ll catch you all soon!
