Every week, it feels like more games arrive for more systems arrive every week. Last week saw two huge open world games and an entirely new console, to boot. But, if for some reason none of those caught your fancy, there’s another open world game that could use your steel, as well as four other games that you should play this week.
Pick Of The Week
Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Tuesday (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
We know that trailer has nothing to do with the actual game, but come on, it’s a cat video from the director of Die Hard! For that alone, this game deserved a china cabinet full of awards. Anyway, the actual game combines the squad based tactics of the Ghost Recon series with a huge open world, giving the franchise a nice shakeup and feeling a bit more like Far Cry if Far Cry were less creepy and more of a team sport. We’ll have a review later this week.
Nier: Automata, Tuesday (PS4)
Taking place thousands of years after the events of cult hit Nier, this game pretty much hits every point on the action JRPG checklist: Robots, enthusiastic voice-acting, over-the-top plotlines, and an overly grim story about humans and aliens fighting each other via robots. That said, this is Platinum Games. And if you were wondering if you were experiencing deja vu, you aren’t: There was another open-world action JRPG that was a PS4 exclusive from an edgy Japanese developer noted for over-the-top action sequences that came out two weeks ago. Named Nioh. We’ll have a review of Nier later this week.
LEGO Worlds, Tuesday (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
LEGO finally makes a Minecraft competitor. Really, is there anything else we need to say? Brickfiends are probably already waiting at GameStop for this one.
Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey, Tuesday (PS4, PS Vita, PC)
Why, yes, this week is rather JRPG heavy! This one, however, has among other factors an interesting time limit; you have a goal to achieve within a year of in-game time, and then the rest you can finish at your leisure. The problem? Nothing, in tabletop parlance, is a free action; any moving you do, items you build, or fights you get in eat up some of your time limit. Considering most open world games desperately need something like this to give them a little focus, one hopes more developers are paying attention.
2Dark, Friday (PS4, Xbox One)
Finally, there’s this game arriving on consoles, after coming to PC. Designed by the creator of the first Alone In The Dark, Frédérick Raynal, it’s a creepy top-down survival horror game as you try to sneak your way through a series of traps, mazes, and other horrible ways to die while not alerting the various killers and nutjobs in the area that your tender flesh is available for eating.
Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments!