What, if any, of the big action games of the week are you picking up? The Blood of Dawnwalker has that Witcher-esque open world promise, Onimusha: Way of the Sword is reviving the series with a more modern style, there’s still Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy from last week (which somehow already feels like a long time ago), or are you saving yourself for Wolverine?
It’s a truly mad period in gaming right now, so obviously I’ve decided to roll back the years and play some Kingdom: Two Crowns this morning. Obviously.
In the News This Week
Sony’s State of Play was the big highlight of the week with a fresh batch of announcements and trailers. Here’s the biggest bits from that and the rest of the week.
- Final Fantasy VII Revelation launches in April 2027 – check the big gameplay reveal
- Rhapsody in Scarlet is all 1920s jazz and demon battles
- Maneater 2 has been announced
- Until Dawn 2 has a new trailer and a release date!
- Metro 2039 confirms February release date and 60fps with ray-tracing on consoles
- Final Fantasy Resonance demo is out now – Sephiroth features in latest trailer
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe gets 8-player split-screen with free Switch 2 update
- El Prez announces that Tropico 7 will release January 28th
- Alien Deathstorm will have two player co-op, Rebellion confirms
- Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct & a regular Nintendo Direct both announced for next week
- Xbox limits Game Pass Cloud Gaming to just 15 hours a month
Games in Review & Featured Articles
It was a busy big game week in the reviews, but the bulk of our features were previews out of Gamescom. Let’s start with the critical scores, though.
- The Blood of Dawnwalker – PS5, XSX|S, PC – 8/10
- Onimusha: Way of the Sword – PS5, XSX|S, NSW2, PC – 8/10
- Orbitals – NSW2 – 8/10
- Serious Sam: Shatterverse – PC – 4/10
Dom also dipped into the Switch 2 version of Onimusha and found another good rendition of a big home console game from Capcom.
On to the previews and I started the week with a look at Total War: Warhammer 40,000, which will be very exciting for fans of both the grand strategy series and the tabletop games. Another big collab is LEGO Skylines, adapting the city builder to a more bespoke bricky rendition.
Next up are a pair of side-scrolling games, with Warhammer: Age of Sigmar – Deathmaster a skittering flea-ridden stealth game, and Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse a fantastic reinvention and continuation of the beloved series. And speaking of reinventions, there’s Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, which promises the original story with modern flourishes and reconsidered design.
Final Fantasy Resonance blends the HD-2D visual style with classic JRPG style and plenty of Final Fantasy callbacks, while Exodus could well be the new peak of the Mass Effect-like sci-fi RPG.
And then we descend into the horror games. Saw: Genesis adapts the torture-fest film series into an asymmetric multiplayer game, Alien Deathstorm does what it says, with a more action-horror tone, and the fog finds its way to Scotland in the sublime Silent Hill: Townfall.
There’s plenty more previews in the offing for the next week or two, but for now, we wrap up with What We Played featuring Orbitals, Onimusha and The Blood of Dawnwalker.
Trailer Park
See FFVII Revelation combat and exploration in action
Rhapsody in Scarlet mixes jazz and monster battling action
Crimson Desert: Charting the Unknown promises castle building and laser robots
See the first trailer for Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance
Your Achievements
Let’s see what you’ve been playing
- Andrewww trekked to Gamescom last week and, while his kids looked after themselves, he queued up for three hours to play a bit of Alien: Isolation 2. Thankfully he loved it! “The game looks, sounds and plays fantastic, I’m glad they don’t seem to change that much. It was more of the cat and mouse in close quarters, and I managed to escape the level, as much as that was possible. I loved it, will get it on day one.”
That’s the round up for this week. Hope you have a great weekend and we’ll see you back here on Monday!
