Berserk Boy is the legally distinct lovechild of Sonic The Hedgehog and Mega Man X, on account of how it fondly emulates the Blue Blur’s speedy momentum and the Dorky Mega’s various power-altering suits. That anatomically tricky relationship is enticing by itself, but even if those retro action platformers just register as historical relics in your memory, Berserk Boy does enough that’s new and interesting that it doesn’t need to rely on aping its inspirations. My only beef is that credits rolled before I was properly given a chance to test my newfound robo-bashing muscles.
Considering it’s one of the most gawwwwjuss games you can get one o’ them PS5 machines, Horizon Forbidden West’s upcoming PC version has some pretty fair-looking system requirements. The newly released specs, which you can find below, suggest that pushing the open world, robosaur-slaying sequel to its most extreme settings will take a burly graphics card – but likewise, lower settings and resolutions can get by with much creakier hardware.
As someone who finds games about cars wot go fast only intermittently interesting, I’d expect a game about cars wot go slow to be positively soporific. Speed is, ultimately, the modus operandi of a car. It gets you where you need to go faster than a horse, and doesn’t do annoying things like pooing on your patio or dying (also, potentially, on your patio). Surely, then, playing a game about cars moving at the speed of a dead patio horse defeats the point, like playing a first-person shooter where all the guns fire backwards.
Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game demonstrates this not to be the case. This bouncy, slimy offroading simulator is the most fun I’ve had with an imaginary car since 2018’s Jalopy. This is partly because it is as much a physics puzzler filled with limitless conundrums as it is a game about driving, but also because, like Jalopy, it envisions the car as something more than a way to boost egos by doing a big circle.
Crema, the creators of much-liked Pokemon-like Temtem, are teasing a new untitled game set in the same universe – the mystifying Project Downbelow. It isn’t Temtem: Swarm, aka Temtem Vampire Survivors, nor is it Temtem 2. But it will “try out new things we would love to see in a hypothetical Temtem 2”, including a new combat system running on a “stronger” game engine. The tease accompanies news that Crema are making significant changes to Temtem as part of the game’s update 1.7 – for one thing, they’re getting rid of the whole microtransaction system. Temtempetuous times indeed!
Suika is the puzzle gift that keeps on giving. The viral Watermelon Game that launched a thousand non-Switch-exclusive clones has added another promising offering to its line-up of Suika-like twists on the simple fruit-merging game.
When we first meet The Thaumaturge‘s hero Wiktor Szulski, we’re told he’s a man cursed by the vice of pride. It’s a trait that sits at the heart of his personality, and in this particular alt-history telling of Polish turmoil in Warsaw at the turn of the twentieth century, such ‘Flaws’ can also attract the attention of otherworldly beings called Salutors – vicious creatures of myth and folklore who follow their quarry around like dark and gloomy shadows, amplifying their worst qualities and, in many cases, driving them to emotional, and often violent, extremes. It’s these outbursts that Wiktor will be investigating over the course of this curious detective RPG from the makers of Seven: The Days Long Gone and the upcoming The Witcher 1 Remake, as fortunately for him, Wiktor comes from a long line of storied Salutor tamers, his thaumaturgic know-how allowing him to see these monsters made flesh, exorcise them from their human host, and use them for his own gains.
He’s a man that’s ultimately made peace with his own arrogance, then, but considering everything he goes through during The Thaumaturge’s 25 hour-odd run-time, I reckon his pride is pretty justified. Not only is he able to brush off multiple stab and gunshot wounds and clubs to the face when he gets in a fight, but he also achieves several feats of thaumaturgy that we’re repeatedly told are thought to be nigh on impossible. Indeed, at the start of this game, his connection with his original Salutor Upyr is hanging by a thread, his worst instincts having got the best of him in a recent attempt to tame and capture a second beast from the ether. By the end, however, I had six Salutors at my beck and call, out of a total of eight. Wiktor is very much a force to be reckoned with, and he makes for a highly compelling lead as you navigate the branching storylines in Warsaw’s political hotbed.
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, despite Twitter throwing a wobbly and doing its best to keep me from taking a good look at the tag, I still found plenty of interesting and attractive indie games to admire. Check ’em out!
The fast-paced flag-capturing FPS series Tribes will return from the dead once again next week with the early access launch of Tribes 3: Rivals. Over the weekend, developers Prophecy Games announced March 12th is the date, with the full launch to follow after up to a year. Prophecy are spun off from Hi-Rez Studios, the folks who who made Tribes: Ascend, which officially shut down a few years back. I hear this next one’s pretty fun.
As any fool knows, the age of girlies bulk-buying silver wire and making their own crystal jewellery at home is over, but EA always arrives precisely when it means to. This weekend saw the release of the Crystal Creations Stuff Pack, a DLC for The Sims 4 that takes the ability to find crystals (already in the game) and straps on your Sims making them into semi-precious, semi-magic jewellery that can be charged up by the moon. What I find more interesting is that this launched with some official IRL Sims plumbob jewellery that you can buy and wear around your own precious, swan-like neck.
