This week in games
hello, hello everyone! What a busy week gaming has had; from the Xbox + Bethesda showcase event earlier in the week, to the Capcom, PC Gaming, and even an extended Xbox + Bethesda showcase, we’ve got you all covered here.
We’ll start off with the biggest of them all, The Xbox + Bethesda Showcase:
You know what, I was pleasantly surprised by this showcase. I honestly wasn’t expecting too much, but when it all finished up I left pretty excited for the next 12 months of gaming on Xbox + PC. Because in a change of pace, Xbox + Bethesda only showcased games that were releasing within the next 12 or so months (pending no delays which is common these days). This new trend of only announcing things that are just around the corner is great. Fans don’t get their hopes up so high that they physically cannot wait for a game any longer, and devs are given a lot less stress about meeting those ever increasing demands. But any who, lets get into the announcements, cause we’re going to be here a while:
We got our first good look at Starfield:
This is Bethesdas newest IP and…. it really looks like Fallout in space. But the scope of this one seems a lot bigger than anything Bethesda have done in the past, with over 1000 planets to explore, crafting and base building, hiring employees to man those bases, building and customising your own ship down to the itty bitty details, Starfield looks to have it all. Honestly, it looks quite daunting. How am I ever going to fit everything in, I feel like I’ll be playing this game forever.
Hideo Kojima is working with Xbox now?
In a strange announcement, Hideo Kojima called in to announce that he was working on a brand new game with the lovely folks over at Xbox Studios. What is this game you might ask? Well, we have no idea. Neither Kojima himself or Xbox gave any indication about what this game might be, when its releasing, who is involved in it, anything. It was an announcement, for a future announcement. Does this mean I am any less excited? Not at all. Kojima is a brilliant creator, and I absolutely loved Death Stranding, even if I didn’t fully understand it. Or did I? I still don’t know. There was a lot of “Xbox cloud gaming” thrown around during this announcement too, so you can be sure that it is going to be a totally unique experience similar to Death Stranding, in the sense that it will more than likely be a cloud only game, or something like that
High on Life is a new game from the creator of Rick and Morty (you can really see the influence in the trailer), and looks about as strange as you can imagine.
This brand new game from Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland is going to be wild. From the short trailer, we got an introduction to some of the worlds you’ll be navigating through, a slurry of interesting characters, all with their own charm, and a look at the very colourful world design. This one looks quite interesting, and I’ll defs be keeping my eyes on it.
Forza Motorsport got its first trailer, and man does this game look good.
I feel like with every console release, whether it be Sony or Xbox, they always have to release at least one first party racing game that looks absolutely incredible. First it was Sony with the latest Grand Turismo, and now its Xbox’s turn with the latest entry to the Forza Motorsport franchise. The trailer they showed looked absolutely beautiful, and was showcasing the fan favourite Maple Valley map. They payed close attention to the real time weather effects, like the time of day changing on long range races, as well as a 48x improvement to the physics engine. So when you inevitably smash your Porsche into the barriers trying to take a hairpin turn at 200km/h, the car is going to look a lot more smashed than usual.
Overwatch 2 is FREE TO PLAY???
In what I would have never guessed, Blizzard have announced that Overwatch 2 is Free to Play? In what was once going to be basically a carbon copy of Overwatch 1, with a couple of new characters and a slightly altered game mode, for $60, they’re now going to give it to you for free. Which is honestly, pretty damn cool. I was a relatively big Overwatch player before I moved on to bigger and better things, and was half interested in what they were doing with Overwatch 2, but wasn’t prepared to drop $60 on it for what was going to be practically the same thing. Bu this announcement has my ears perked, cause I’ll definitely be playing it now.
Yes your eyes didn’t deceive you, that was Vin Diesel in the trailer for Ark 2
I honestly hated the first Ark game. I thought it was buggy, unintuitive, and there are infinitely better survival games out there. But somehow, they’ve managed to make a new one, and with an even bigger somehow, Vin Diesel was enough of a fan of the first Ark game to want to involve himself in the second one. We have no idea what his character will be doing in the game, because they didn’t really announce anything other than you can find it on Gamepass when it releases next year, and thats about it.
We got a gameplay reveal for Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn:
A third person action adventure game where you explore and slash your way though a variety of locations with your axe and pet fox? Dog? Thing? Oh and you also have a flintlock gun which you use for those sweet pew pew slash slash combos. Looks kinda interesting, and is also hitting Gamepass day one, so its one that I’ll be keeping my eyes on as well
Minecraft Legends is a brand new entry into the Minecraft world
I got really excited when I saw this trailer. I had no idea that the folks over at Mojang were working on another Minecraft spinoff game following Minecraft Dungeons (which is great might I add). But Minecraft Legends is an action/adventure/strategy game set in the Minecraft world, and it looks beautiful. We don’t know too much about it, but we’ll keep you posted as soon as we hear anything because it honestly looks great.
Lightyear Frontier is the newest addition to the survival crafting genre
Lightyear Frontier looks kinda like a blend of Farm Simulator and any of the survival crafting games that are already out there. I say that because you play as what looks like a piece of farm harvesting equipment that lands on a planet and must farm and craft to survive, all whilst uncovering what seems to be a story that you will follow along and progress alongside. You can play it with up to 3 other friends, and it looks like its going to be a nice calming farm type game, so I’m excited for it.
For a brief second I though that Redfall was going to be The Morbius Game.
Not really, but man I feel like there are a lot of vampires on the return these days. Redfall is another release from Arkane/Bethesda that is an up to 4 player co-op vampire hunting action adventure game, and it looks like a bit of fun. We got a look at some of the combat that you can expect, the main cast of characters and weapons/abilities you’ll come across, and it seems like its going to be best with a group of friends. Doesn’t really feel like the type of game to play solo, think of it like a Left 4 Dead kind of situation where is more fun with a group. This was (I think) one of the only games with a release longer than 12 months away, but is still expected to come out sometime in 2023, so not too long away.
Now if all those Xbox announcements weren’t enough for you, don’t you worry, because both Capcom and PC Gamer have you covered as they’ve also had some showcases where they each announced a TONNE of stuff yet to come. The Capcom event wasn’t all that exciting as they we’re basically just doubling up on things that had already been announced, so we’ll start there:
Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak got a new trailer, and it showed off a couple of new locations that you can hunt giant creatures in, and they also released a demo for it which you can play right now!
Resident Evil: VII finally got its DLC announcement that players have been waiting for. ‘Shadows of Rose’ will follow Ethans daughter Rose as she enters the consciousness of the megamycete to discover the truth about her powers. On top of this, we’ll also get to play as fan favourite Lady Dimitrescu herself, as well as a third person mode. It’s a good time to be a RE:8 fan.
We got another look at the Resident Evil: 4 remake that is hitting our consoles early next year. Now, not a lot was shown that we didn’t already know, but the director and producer of the game gave us a look at the story and more of a look at proper gameplay footage to give us an idea of how the Remake plays.
On top of the other Resident Evil announcements, Capcom weren’t done and they announced that they are releasing next-gen updates for RE:2, RE:3, and RE:7 if you already own them on console AND PC. The updates are free and bring support for 4K, higher framerates, and raytracing to top it all off.
To wrap us up for the week, we’ll go over some of the more exciting announcements from the PC Gamer showcase, cause man they announced a lot and we could be here for a while if we were to go through everything. Lets get into it:
The Invincible is an upcoming sci-fi game from none other than CD Projekt Red and Techland devs, and it looks like a space version of Firewatch from what I can tell. In the first look at gameplay, we follow the main protagonist as she explores a desolate planet and communicates with another character off screen, who you can respond to with a variety of prompts. I’ve got no idea if there is going to be any ‘action’ in the game, but if its anything like Firewatch its going to be incredible.
The Constructors is a Sim City like game that looks to have more of a focus on the actual building rather than the city management. Think of it like another entry into the ever increasing sim games like Train Sim, Truck Sim, Farm Sim, etc. Might be kinda fun if you want to have a 9-to-5, after your actual 9-to-5.
Deceive Inc. is a cool 60’s spy inspired, deception and hiding game, kinda like a mesh between Among Us and Prop Hunt. It looks like it would be a blast with friends, so get a group together and jump into some deceptive sneaking early 2023
The Alters is another survival game that is set in space, and although the reveal trailer was just a pre-rendered we did get some info from the lead developer on-top of the trailer, and they seem to be differentiating themselves from the slew of other survival games out there by making this one a trip.
ARMA 4 fans finally got some info on the upcoming game, as the devs were there to shine a little light on what they’re taking away from the Early Access version of ARMA Reforger.
The System Shock remake peeps from Night Dive Studios were there to give an update on their work, and it looks really good.
If you’re still waiting on that rumoured Goldeneye 007 game that keeps popping up on my news feed, then maybe Agent 64: Spies Never Die might hold you over until Xbox finally pull their finger out and give us what we want. This looks like Goldeneye 007, without being Goldeneye 007.
To top it all off, Half Life: Alyx was also in the presentation, but not in the way you might expect. Half-Life Alyx: Levitation is an upcoming user made mod, and it looks like its from a triple-A studio. Half-Life Alyx: Levitation is going to see the return of fan favourites G-Man and Russell, and is hitting Steam Workshop sometime later this year. You can catch the gameplay below, and man I can’t reinforce how good it looks.
Welp, if you’ve made it this far, well done. You deserve a medal. This is just a small selection of what was announced this week, and is mostly the things we’re personally excited for. We’ll keep you posted on updates to the things in this list as they pop up, so be sure to check back to the site and like and subscribe to the YouTube for more vids as well as gameplays!
