Everyone loves a good action game. It’s the driving force behind so many of our favourite PC games, but only a few can lay claim to being the best action games of all time. That’s why we’ve compiled this list – to sort the pulled punches from the bestest biffs that PC has to offer. Whether it’s the joy of pulling off a perfect combo, riding the wave of an explosive set-piece or the hair-raising thrill of dodging enemy attacks in slow-motion that gets you going, there’s an action game here for you.

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The yearly speedrunning event AGDQ is nearing its end but there are still a lot of PC runs to watch tomorrow, many of them new releases from 2019. The week-long winter edition of Games Done Quick is always fascinating even for older games with established speedrunning strategies. For new PC games, it will be a treat to see the earliest methods and discoveries that speedrunners have concocted.

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The winter half of the yearly charity speedrunning marathon Awesome Games Done Quick kicks off this Sunday, January 5th. Donations to Games Done Quick will benefit the Prevent Cancer Foundation. The week long marathon will cover a bunch of speedrunning mainstays along with some new additions from 2019.

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When a game s cutscene begins and the dialogue starts spooling, I can t help it. My phone comes out and I m scrolling. From being active I ve suddenly become passive, and rather than stay engaged, my brain impulsively turns to Twitter, Reddit, anything>, to feed its pathetic desire for reward through light interaction.

But I don t during Katana Zero s cutscenes. When this action game halts its razor-fine combat to tell you its story, I sit forward. That s down to its interrupt system, which lets me choose whether I want to hear NPCs out, or whether I want to tell them to shut up. I honestly hope more games adopt the interrupt system, if nothing else because it just feels like a much better way to tell stories, developer Justin Stander tells me. It s less reading and more doing. (more…)

Katana Zero has the juiciest text boxes I’ve ever seen. During dialogue, words can imply the pace of speech by appearing letter-by-letter or thumping on screen one word at a time. Words and phrases can be highlighted in different colours, and can further suggest intonation by animating wavily or by each letter shaking as if terrified. When in conversation, there’s a timer during every player choice, and new dialogue options might open up at different points during that countdown. You’re also able to interrupt every line said to you, whether to bypass the story or to roleplay as a rude jerk, and doing so causes the text of the person speaking to scatter like smashed glass.

All of this is important, because it turns out story is as much the appeal of this 2D platformer as its propulsive, Hotlime Miami-like ultraviolence.

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Katana Zero was a lovely game — a side-scrolling samurai Hotline Miami — but perhaps a little on the short side. Ending on a maddening cliffhanger, developer Askiisoft says there’s more levels and story in the works as free DLC. Until then, they’re putting players through the wringer. Two new modes were added in a big patch yesterday, Speedrun mode and Hard Mode. The former offers a cutscene-lite deterministic playing field. Hard Mode, unlocked after beating the main story, is designed to murder you in a thousand fun new ways. Oh, and you can pet a cat now.

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Katana Zero is much more than it first appears. And it first appears to be plenty. A side-scrolling reflexy beat ’em up, painted in very pretty pixels, with a character who cannot take a hit. It’s a surprisingly interesting weakness to give your ninja-esque mass murderer, who is fast-paced, all dashes and slides, rolls and manic combat. And yet on top of that there’s the temporal meddling, some peculiarly introspective downtime, a novel and fascinating conversation system, and the fact that your incredibly vulnerable character is in fact, um, immortal.

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There are few thrills as videogamey as weaving through a barrage of very deadly bullets in slow motion. Katana Zero looks to have that in spades, plus the never-not-cool ability to deflect bullets with your sword, back to their unwitting owners. Askiisoft’s samurai platform slasher has been on my radar for a while now, thanks to looking like a blend of Hotline Miami and Samurai Gunn, and today’s trailer has me itching to play it. The pseudo-80s ‘neo-noir’ aesthetic may be a well worn groove at this point, but synths, swords and slow-mo still makes a potent cocktail. Take a peek below.

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