How many games do you hear about in a given week? With more platforms, and more ways to find games, than ever before, keeping track of the flood of games, never mine their quality, can feel impossible. That’s what we’re here for. Every week, we’ll pick out five games that stand out above the rest. And this first real release week, we’ve got some interesting games in the pipe.
Pick Of The Week
Pit People, Tuesday, Xbox One and PC
The Behemoth — made up of Newgrounds alumni if you remember those days of the internet — has had three excellent games in a row: Alien Hominid, Castle Crashers, and Battleblock Theater were deft examples of their genres while offering a unique art style and a quirky sense of humor. So while this game is Early Access, the idea of this crew tackling a co-op turn-based strategy game has a lot of promise. Also a snide god telling his blond hero “tough tater tots” is just too funny to pass up.
Sylvio, Friday, Xbox One
Stroboskop’s throwback to the early days of PC horror gaming features a heroine wandering around a creepy abandoned amusement park and studying Electronic Voice Phenomena, or EVP. Yep, you’re recording ghosts and solving the mystery of what happened in this creepy park, while hiding from or otherwise gunning down some creepy ghosts. It’s an interesting idea that translates well to console, and we’ll have a review later this week.
Cold Vengeance, Wednesday, PC
If Ikari Warriors had ever gone 3D, it might look a bit like Cold Vengeance. The unabashed throwback features run’n’gun action and a plot that seems mostly to exist to justify running and gunning, so really that’s a hard mix to argue with.
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Future Tone, Tuesday, PS4
Over in Japan, synthesized singing voices called “vocaloids” have such a cult following, they can carry entire series of arcade games. So Sega has collected all those arcade games in one place with a PS4 game, so you too can try them out. Aside from the unusual origin, these are fairly straightforward J-pop rhythm games, and if your pile of games has gotten a little on the heavy side, this should be a good palate cleanser.
Arcade Archives NeoGeo Fatal Fury, Thursday, PS4
Finally, this unusual sidebar in gaming history is coming back. Fatal Fury arrived around the same time as Street Fighter II and was developed by Takashi Nishiyama, who created the original Street Fighter. As a result, it felt dated almost instantly as Nishiyama’s style was a bit more leisurely, as you can tell from the above video. Still, it spawned the King Of Fighters games, and it serves as a fascinating contrast between where fighting games went and where they could have gone.
Anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!