This week is good. Yeah, you heard me. No smug jokes. No long winded rant. It’s just good. And Spoiler Alert, but next week is looking to be pretty good too.
Naturally however, there are going to be re-releases, they’re more common than actual new games now. Still, at least this time the two big remasterings are justifiable, with Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (Xbox One) and Dishonored: Definitive Edition (Xbox One and PS4) both arriving on the 28th. Both come with prettier visuals and all of their original DLC, and both are fantastic games in their own right. So there’s nothing reprehensible here. For those unaware of the originals, Dishonored is an open ended, stealth-action game that has you control an assassin in the fictional, plague-ridden industrial city of Dunwall. It also has a fantastic cast providing the voice work as well! Including Susan Sarandon, Brad Dourif, Carrie Fisher, Michael Madsen, Lena Headey, and Chloë Grace Moretz. Meanwhile Gears of War is a big shooty game, with big macho men who yell a lot. It also revolutionised the third person shooter genre back in 2006, so there’s that too.
Madden NFL 2016 is a sport game of some kind that has you play the corresponding sport until you win. Okay I couldn’t get through a ‘This Week in’ without some of my signature sarcasm, but as stated before, sports are something of a mystery to me. Still, Madden is a long running series (more than a decade old) with no competition to speak of, which is nothing to be sniffed at. EA have boasted that the newest installment in the American Football series will be one that will win over lost fans, with a new focus on aesthetics, new player spotlights, and dynamic goals and animations. The game is released on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on August 27th.
Until Dawn: This one has the potential to be something quite special. Until Dawn is a survival horror/slasher game designed to be replayed multiple times. Throughout the game, players will have to make difficult decisions which all come to play in the “Butterfly Effect” system. This system allows for many different paths and scenarios, as well as numerous endings. What is especially unique about Until Dawn’s branching storyline is that it will have a strict auto-save system, designed to prevent players from reloading a previous save file to an earlier point in the game, should they regret an in-game decision. This should make all of those moral dilemmas all the more urgent and stressful, as for the first time ever, there’s no going back. Until Dawn is a PS4 exclusive and is released on 28th August.
With Marvel and Star Wars now under their control, along with their own creations, Disney have effectively cornered the entire market of human beings in every demographic. In celebration of their global takeover, they have released Disney Infinity 3.0, an update of the startlingly popular Disney Infinity. The most exciting new characters for the game come in the form of Ultron, the Star Wars lot and the emotions from Inside Out. If Disney could just acquire the rights to Game of Thrones and the Hunger Games they’d probably be the only company to ever make money again. Disney Infinity is released on August 28th on PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, Xbox One, Wii U.
