It’s been an interesting week — heck, it’s been an interesting month. We’re wrapping up the busiest time of the year in the games industry, when the major companies have all come out with, if not their entire slate of upcoming games, then at least their games for the rest of the year. Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and everyone else at Summer Game Fest has had their big show. However, there was apparently one more group of games that had something to show us: The VR crowd. As such, we got the UploadVR Summer Showcase this week, and it was one of my favorite parts of the week.
The games on offer were fairly diverse — we got Pencil!, a mixed-reality app that teaches users how to draw; By Grit Alone, a horror FPS set on a derelict spaceship; and Hide the Corpse, a 70s-aesthetic game in which you must … well, hide a corpse. My favorites were probably Maestro, a rhythm game where you’re conducting an orchestra and Cold VR, an inverse Superhot where time moves when you stand still. Usually I’m fairly bearish about VR’s prospect’s generally (and the rumors that Sony’s interest in PSVR2 is dwindling don’t help). But it’s hard not to feel cheerful when the people who make VR games have created such ambitious and varied trailers.
So what else happened this week? Well, Baldur’s Gate 3 won another Game of the Year award — I’m not even going to pretend to be surprised. Also, I got to interview Activision Blizzard’s head of inclusive game design, Adrian Ledda, about Pride month celebrations and the joy of feeling accepted and included in the games industry, both as a gamer and as a person who works at a major studio. Dead Rising and Resident Evil are also making a comeback — in the form of a remaster and a release on GOG, respectively — so it seems it’s the time for zombies right now.
In personal news, I feel like this week is the beginning of a calmer period in the release calendar for me. That’s not to say there aren’t interesting new games coming out — I’ll be playing the Riven Remake, for example. However, this also seems like a good opportunity to go back and either finish games I’ve already started this year, but to also catch up on releases I’ve not yet touched. For example, I’ve still got several titles on Xbox Game Pass that need my attention. As for Shadow of the Erdtree … I’ll get you one of these days, Messmer.
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What to play this week
What’s new:
- Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble
- Riven Remake
- Spy x Anya: Operation Memories
- Until Then
- Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit
- City Bus Manager
- Beyond Good & Evil Remaster
- NeoSprint
- Frogun Encore
New on subscription services:
- EA Sports FC 24 (Xbox Game Pass)
- SteamWorld Dig (Xbox Game Pass)
- SteamWorld Dig 2 (Xbox Game Pass)
- Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders (Xbox Game Pass)
- Deceive Inc. (Prime Gaming)
- Tearstone: Thieves of the Heart (Prime Gaming)
- The Invisible Hand (Prime Gaming)
- Call of Juarez (Prime Gaming)
- Forager (Prime Gaming)
- Card Shark (Prime Gaming)
- Heaven Dust 2 (Prime Gaming)
- Soulstice (Prime Gaming)
- Drug Dealer Simulator 2 (GeForce Now)
- Resident Evil Village (GeForce Now)
