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Metaphor: ReFantazio is either a high-fantasy Persona or a Shin Megami Tensei with cool fonts and a warm heart. Edwin dug its hybrid combat system, while James was moved by its mad libs monster design. It has an October 11th release date, but you don’t have to wait until then to begin plotting it and you along these various axes. There’s a demo you can play out now.
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The AssCreed faithful have waited a thousand years for a sequel set in feudal Japan, birthplace of ninjas and samurai. Woe unto ye dreamers of Ubisoft takes on Tenchu, for you must carry that candle for a little longer. Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been delayed till next year. It was due to launch on 12th November 2024 – now, it will release on 14th February 2025.
Not technically an Indiescovery-type deal, this, as Edwin already called attention to breathless FPS Echo Point Nova back when the demo came out. The full game has just released, though, and as someone with such chronic Titanfall withdrawal that I’ll ingest anything with a decent wallrun, I’ve bought it, played it, and am here to tell you why it rocks.
There is an absolute carkfest of a headline to be written here involving the words “head” “not” “enough” and “giving”, but I am a journalist of grace and discretion, and will resist. Treyarch, Raven Software and Activision have popped up a note-to-players covering a range of improvements they’re making to Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 in the aftermath of August’s beta. Specifically, they’re tweaking the damage from bullets to the cranium, while trying to ensure that bullets to the cranium don’t “significantly affect the consistency of time to kill”.
If you’re a nerd of a certain age, I apologise – that headline has probably caused you to rupture something in the wizened meat of your lower back, or the swampy catacombs of your cerebellum. If you aren’t, let me explain: Zachtronics are or were a US-based video game developer founded in 2000 by Zach Barth, who put the studio on ice in 2022 and now works at Coincidence Games, a “flexible business framework” involving many former Zachtronics devs. Zachtronics have thrown together all kinds of things – Infiniminer, a block-builder from 2009, is probably the single greatest individual influence on Minecraft, while Eliza is a tremendous visual novel about AI chatbots and labour politics. But if there’s a type of game they’re known for, it’s engineering puzzles and factory games.
Hey, remember Lost In Random? I reviewed it way back when and thought its Burtonesque setting and story were top notch, but it felt a bit reliant on samey fights. Moonhood Studios, founded by the creators of LIR, just announced The Midnight Walk at last night’s PlayStation State Of Play showcase. And it looks to continue their appreciation of the dark and the strange. Case in point: it’s a first-person adventure where you play as The Burnt One, who must steer a hideous pot creature through a twisted universe.
A week ago, while belabouring the nuances of Arco, I expressed a wish to play more bullet hell games with time freeze mechanics, the better to savour the intricacy of their projectile patterning. Now here’s Moon Watch, a Vampire Survivors-ish pixelart shooter in which you have a watch that stops time when you stand still. Snug within that frozen instant, you’re free to laugh in the gurning faces of the living dead while you idly choose and aim garlic grenades, stake launchers and bouncy ice comets.
Dead By Daylight developers Behaviour Interactive have announced that they’re acquiring Red Hook, the creators of Darkest Dungeon. This is the same Behaviour Interactive who recently laid off a bunch of people, cancelled a game and closed a studio, Midwinter Entertainment, after snapping up a bunch of developers (the others are SockMonkey, Codeglue and Fly Studio) over the past two years. Darkest Dungeon is a horror game like DBD, so I guess the acquisition chimes from that perspective. All the same, my snap judgement is “yikes”.
I don’t like to brag, but it turns out that running a museum is actually well easy. Within an hour of sitting down to play Two Point Museum at Gamescom last month, I was running a modest monthly profit, educating the masses about one-fifth of a dinosaur skeleton, and most importantly, had not ordered a single staff member to their death.
Like a samurai poised patiently for an opening in their opponent’s defences, Shogun Showdown understands that focus and finesse are the means to delivering an impactful blow. This rare roguelike distils the genre down to its purest components, all in favour of amplifying its dizzying combat that plays gracefully with the concepts of positioning and patience. Highly refined, stylish and complex, Shogun Showdown is a delight.
