Happy Monday, friends, and welcome back to This Week In Games Australia.
This week, the prelude to what would normally be the flood of E3 has some launch surprises. There is a new expansion for Elder Scrolls Online that takes players to a location that none of the previous games have ever visited. Nintendo is coming to the field in Mario Strikers: Battle League. And Supermassive has suspended its episodic Dark Pictures Anthology to release its first full horror game since Until Dawn.
Without further ado, here’s what you’ll be playing this week.
June 7
The Elder Scrolls Online: High Isle (PS5, XSX, PC, PS4, XBO)
There’s a new expansion for The Elder Scrolls Online this week, and I’m interested in it because I’ve basically heard nothing about it. There’s usually a marketing bombardment around a new TESO expac, but this time I didn’t see as much as a pre-YouTube trailer.
High Isle is set in the Systres archipelago, a region of Tamriel that has not yet been explored in any of the major games. So far, the area has only been mentioned in Redguard in 1998, and again in the TESO Deadlands DLC last year. I guess that was going to happen to TESO eventually. When your expansion model is based, well, on map expansion, you’ll eventually run out of canonically explored land mass to include. Will it look like a suitable Elder Scrolls location? Will it be enough to keep any of you away from Final Fantasy XIV? I guess we’ll find out together.
Spellforce 3: Reinforced (PS4)
Spellforce 3 is a hybrid RPG / RTS between Diablo and Warcraft Classic. The elevator: create an army with your own design and use them to do caving. The sound you just heard was the ears of Diablo 2 left-wing players around the world getting up at once because that’s all they’ve ever wanted.
June 8
20 minutes to dawn (PC)
Vampire Survivors clones have already started arriving. 20 Minutes Until Dawn doesn’t seem to do anything significantly different from VS, but it has a great aesthetic and takes a more arcade approach to character selection and background. If you’ve reduced your VS to 100% and you’re looking forward to more while waiting for the next patch, here’s where you can get it.
June 9
Tour de France 2022 (PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO)
Some of you may be wondering why I included this in our weekly list. The fact is that I have a lot of love for games like this. They are aimed at an incredibly small and specific audience, and they go to great lengths to emulate in a video game something that very few want to do in real life. But for people who care about the Tour de France, and imagine themselves participating in it, I hope this gives them everything they want and more, frankly. There is no difference between me being excited about F1 22 and someone else being excited about it. We enjoy our strangely specific video game sports simulators together.
June 10
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles (NS)
This is a retail release of the game Demon Slayer. The friends who played there told me it’s pretty good! I haven’t seen Demon Slayer, though these same friends assure me it’s also very good.
The Quarry (PS5, XSX, PC, PS4, XBO)
The latest horror game to choose your own Supermassive adventure (Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures Anthology) is about an American summer where there are strange and murderous things. The cast of the game, like Until Dawn before, contains some real Hollywood names like David Arquette (Scream), Ted Raimi (Ash vs. Evil Dead), Ariel Winter (Modern Family) and Brenda Song (Dollface). Like Until Dawn, the main attraction of the game is that it simulates classic horror movies while allowing the player to affect the outcome of the story.
This will be my selection of the week. I loved it until dawn, and I hope to love that too. I’m not usually the type of person who likes fast-paced games, I’m an acquaintance who doesn’t like Quantic Dream and everything that David Cage has produced. But what Supermassive games offer is a unique and deeply enjoyable co-op experience on the couch. Get a few friends on Friday or Saturday night, start a super-massive game, give everyone a character to take care of, and pass the controller when their segments show up. I promise you will have an absolute ball.
Mario Strikers: Battle League (NS)
Speaking of absolute balls, Mario Strikers: Battle League comes out this week and finally gives me a sequel to my favorite Mario sports title. The beauty of Mario Strikers isn’t that it’s a football game, it’s the football equivalent of Dark Souls shit. Mario Strikers Charged is still one of the toughest sports games I’ve ever played, and if you can get close to Battle League, I’ll be a very happy kid.
That’s all for this week! Do you see something you like? Something we missed? Let us know in the comments below.