In a rare turn of events, it seems a Final Fantasy game has been recorded in English before Japanese. Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has reportedly said that Square Enix are focusing on English voices with British accents for the upcoming action-RPG. If you've seen the reveal trailer from last year, it makes a fair bit of sense. The game is set in a ye olde fantasy setting, and everyone knows that people only spoke in English accents in medieval times. And of course, we can't forget that very English protagonist, Clive.
Nate is excited about HighFleet. Graham was excited about HighFleet before he became head vampire, or whatever. I was excited about HighFleet.HighFleet is exciting. It is also very frustrating.
We're at the point where we need a good shorthand for games built around a diagetic interface. HighFleet's puts you in the sky-shoes of an admiral poring over an electronic map display ringed by analogue radar-tuning dials, chunky buttons, a dangling telephone receiver like your gran's, and a big level to pull when it's time to land. But there's a weird divide going on.
I remember being blown away by Dead Space when it first game out. It's partly the movie Sunshine, partly the movie Event Horizon, and I guess a bit of Alien and a bit of Resident Evil. I just really loved that creeping horror reveal, as you slowly discover that the ship you're on, the Ishimura, is empty and then discover that actually it is not> empty at all, which is so much worse.
It was recently revealed that Dead Space is going to be remade "from the ground up" by Motive (who previously did Star Wars Squadrons and Star Wars Battlefront II). I assume this means that it's going to have, just, loads of lightsabers in it, and the main character is now Baby Yoda. My boiling hot take is that they should only really bother redoing that first bit - the cut off their limbs section - because that's the best bit anyway.
The man you behold in the picture above is Dominic Myers, professional money git and, somehow, zoo owner. Dominic is the antagonist of the campaign mode in my beloved Planet Zoo, and he comes as a bit of a surprise. In the campaign, you play as a trainee zoo manager taking his first jobs under the mentorship of warm-hearted, chuckly old geezer Bernie Goodwin. A few missions in, however, Myers comes out of nowhere, buys out Goodwin's zoo franchise from under him, and abruptly becomes your boss.
Myers is a hedge fund director, and an utter sod, obviously. He'd sell a truckload of tiger willies if it made him a tenner, and laugh about it afterwards. He'd make a crocodile eat a big hot anvil made of poison, while people threw pennies into a hat. He doesn't care about animals. Far worse, he has no interest in them. But despite this, as I've been pottering along with the campaign during quiet evenings in recent weeks, I've come to find him a strangely welcome, refreshing presence.
The beta for Amazon's upcoming MMORPG New World is in full swing now, and it finally seems as though they have a game on their hands that might not need to be un-released. On Sunday, over 200,000 players descended into New World, and it's currently sat in the top ten most-played games on Steam. For reference, that's about eight times the number of players Amazon's ill-fated hero shooter Crucible ever had (before it eventually got canned).
Viking-y action-survival-RPG-majig Tribes Of Midgard is out tomorrow, and if you were asking me for an elevator pitch I'd say, "Think Valheim meets Diablo meets Hades," which is a pretty decent pitch as these things go. If the idea of those three games mashed into one has whet your appetite, then you're in luck. Developers Norsfell have given us an exclusive sneaky peek at some of the late-game megaweapons and magic god armour you'll be able to get yer angry mits on to really stick it to the game's pesky giants.
At the top of London's Old Bailey sits the Statue of Justice, a woman with a sword and scales in either hand. It's a familiar sight to any London tourist, but in The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, the Victorian-set prequel to Capcom's much beloved Phoenix Wright games, those scales take centre stage right inside the courtroom. Up and down they go as the jury deliberate on your client's innocence, pronouncing their verdict by chucking balls of flame into two enormous torches either side of the judge's head. Only it's not the judge sweating over these literal hot takes. It's Phoenix Wright's ancestor Ryunosuke Naruhodo (Phoenix Wright was known as Ryuichi Naruhodo in the original Japanese) feeling the heat here. If he fails to uncover the contradictions in the prosecution's case it's the noose for his clients, and a bleak end to his fledgling legal career.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics kicked off last week, and, as with many worldly events, Google have made a lovely Doodle on their homescreen to celebrate. It's not just a pretty picture though, it's a full game complete with an adorable anime-style opening. Named the Google Doodle Champion Games, you play as a little cat who competes in lots of sports-themed minigames. Naturally, speedrunners are beasting through the Doodle, and one person has already managed to complete one minigame in just 11 seconds.
Sundays are for watching the Tokyo Olympics and turning into an armchair critic who's actually an expert on every sport. Before you say "I could probably do better than that", let's read this week's best writing about games.
Battlefield 1 is free to play on Steam right now and until the end of the weekend. All of its expansions are free, too.
If you like it and you're a subscriber to Amazon Prime? Then until August 4th you can grab it free to keep.