As soon as the world starts to open up, some noteworthy video games come out in an effort to keep you indoors. Such is life in 2021. But, before I get onto all the lovely games you can buy over the next four weeks, I'm going to recommend going outside before the seemingly inevitable Lockdown IV happens. I went to The Outside recently, and I have to say I came away very impressed. It has things like trees and cows and Fiat Puntos.
Capcom, bless their hearts, have some funny ideas. They're releasing a demo for Resident Evil Village this weekend, but it'll only be playable for a week and will have a hard time limit of 60 minutes total. Heaven forbid people freely play a demo. But I'm still up for it because I'm well up for Village, so how handy that we can now preload the demo and be ready to get stuck right into our... limited fun?
Everyone knows that kicking grunts intro traps in Dark Messiah of Might & Magic is one of the greatest pleasures in videogames. Radio Viscera looks like a game entirely about that feeling. Played from a top-down perspective, you wield an air cannon that can blast holes in walls and punt peeps into meat grinders.
Europa Universalis IV's latest expansion, Leviathan, adds new ways to enrich your historic empire. Unfortunately it seems a slew of bugs has led to it becoming the worst rated game on Steam with 90% negative reviews.
I like a good "platformer but you can't jump" game. VVVVVV remains the gold standard, but Super Magbot's playable demo suggests it has a magnetic appeal of its own. Instead of jumping, you navigate its deadly, single-screen levels using a magnet ray that can attract and repel you from certain surfaces. I played it and liked it.
A big part of Evil Genius 2's design revolves around Super Agents. These dangerous do-gooders infiltrate your lair with the aim of wiping you out, and you need to balance the risks of leaving them be with the costs of taking them out.
If you've already mastered those decisions for the stock selection of heroes, here comes Evil Genius 2's first DLC to mess again with your perfect crimes. The Cabal Pack, out now, adds Espectro, who has a dome-head filled with red mist and the ability to make clones of himself.
Steam's Golden Week sale is live now, offering discounts on thousands of games from Japan. A quick glance shows plenty of great games in the mix, including Death Stranding at 60% reduced and Ace Combat 7 at 75% off.
Microsoft have announced plans to decrease the cut they take from sales of PC games on the Microsoft Store, with devs soon to get 88% instead of the industry standard 70%. That will bring them exactly in line with the Epic Games Store. While the Microsoft Store is undeniably rubbish as a store, this can only increase pressure on Valve to offer devs a bigger share of sales through Steam.
Next week, Apex Legends' ninth season arrives, and with it comes new jetpacking character Valkyrie and the 3v3 Arenas game mode. I gushed about both of these excellent upcoming additions in my preview earlier this week, but today I can show you a video from my time with Arenas so you can get an idea of just how much fun it is. And, like many skirmishes I seem to have in Respawn's FPS, one of my best rounds ended with fisticuffs.
Back once again with a topic that I suspect we may have done before, it's the Electronic Wireless Show podcast. This week we're talking about the best water in games, but we also take the time to discuss what we think counts as a sandwich (we are surprisingly on the same page with it).
Digressions, apart from the sandwich thing, are surprisingly few, although we make time to talk about what Andrew Ryan would be like if he took a trip to the London Aquarium with Matthew, and there's a pretty off-topic Cavern of Lies in there too.