Every week, more games for more platforms arrive, making it tough to know where to spend your gaming dollar. So every week, we pick five games out of the release schedule that stand out, including no less than three games out to gobble up every last scrap of free time you have.
Pick Of The Week
Horizon: Zero Dawn, Tuesday (PS4 Exclusive)
While the very concept of Horizon: Zero Dawn — you play a post-apocalyptic human hunting down robot dinosaurs — pretty much sells the game, there’s a lot more to it than that, which we’ll feature in our full review tomorrow. For now, suffice to say that not only does Guerrilla Games deliver on the basic concept, but they flesh it out with a lot of gameplay variety, an interesting overworld, and a better thought-out world than the “middle-schooler doodling on a Trapper Keeper” concept might suggest.
Torment: Tides Of Numenera, Tuesday (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
If you like your future worlds isometric and a bit more fantasy-heavy, or if you just fondly remember Planescape: Torment, then Torment might be more your speed. Set a billion years in the future, you and a doughty band must figure out why you used to be the can a god walked around in, before he dumped you and erased your memory into the bargain. We’ll have a review later this week, but RPG fans may want to call in sick to work. And if that won’t do it.
The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Friday (Nintendo Switch, Wii U)
Oh, right, and then there’s the next entry in one of the single most beloved franchises in the history of modern video games. That should probably merit a mention on here. Joking aside, Breath Of The Wild is shaping up to be a radical departure from what we expect from Zelda games, which is a good thing. The real question is can it sell Nintendo Switches, which since it seems impossible to find one, the answer is probably yes.
Ghost Blade HD, Tuesday (Xbox One, PS4)
But if all that sounds too complicated for you, or if perhaps you don’t have a hundred hours to sink into an RPG, instead you can play this bullet hell shmup and possibly enjoy a seizure into the bargain. Joking aside, yes, they fill the screen with bullets, but while the original Ghost Blade wasn’t a revolution, it was a fine and fun demonstration of the form. And also sometimes you just need to blow the hell out of something, y’know?
Suikoden IV, Tuesday (PS3)
Finally, in this week’s weirdest release, JRPG fans should dig out their PS3s, because Suikoden is back… but only on the PS3, for some odd, poorly explained reason. You’d think Konami would want this on the PS4, but we’ve long since given up figuring out what’s going on with the gym franchise company that happens to own a bunch of video game properties. Really we should be grateful these games are back at all.
Any games we missed? Let us know in the comments!