The drought has broken. Sort of. This week Blizzard releases its first console game. That should, by all rights, be a very, very big deal indeed. The game is Diablo III and, by most accounts it’s a pretty good port. I’m calling it early: the Christmas rush begins here. The flood is coming. Gird your wallets.
Chess 2: The Sequel (PC)
What is it? Probably the most ridiculous name for a game ever. Sure, make a weird version of chess, but call it something different. Why the hell would one of the oldest and most refined board games in the history of man need a sequel?
Should you care? I suppose it looks alright. Hard for me to get over that title!
Commando Jack (PC)
What is it? An award winning tower defence game, originally released on mobile devices.
Should you care? I’m sure it’s great, but this is a crowded genre on PC…
Detective Grimoire (PC)
What is it? An indie adventure game with a dazzling art style. Sort of like a PC Professor Layton.
Should you care? You should definitely care. It looks good. Great characters, solid puzzles.
Diablo III: Reaper Of Souls (360/PS3/Xbox One/PS4)
What is it? It’s a Blizzard game on consoles!
Should you care? I care a lot. I missed on Diablo III, I think I’ll try it on console.
Hotline Miami (PS4)
What is it? It’s the best. It’s just the best.
Should you care? I’d say you should get this on the Vita if you can, but any format is good. Such a great game.
Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare (PS3/PS4)
What is it? It’s the shooter thing that’s based on Plants vs Zombies, now on PlayStation.
Should you care? This is pretty good. We’re still waiting on the big guns coming through. If you have money to burn — why not?
Shadowgate (PC)
What is it? A ‘re-imagining’ of the NES classic on PC.
Should you care? Fans of the original game really seem to love this.
What are you buying? Let us know in the comments below.
Comments
86 responses to “This Week In Games”
Chess 2: The Sequel
Best game name ever.
I wan’t to review the patch notes…
If they haven’t done something about nerfing how OP queens are…
Pathfinding on Knights is terrible.
Half the time they glitch through other pieces, where as other times they don’t.
Also that en’ passant rule is straight up bullshit.
Shadowgate? How am I only just hearing about this? Already too late to preorder booooo
Doesnt tales of xillia 2 come out tomorrow @markserrels
Thursday
Ahh that sounds more right I went into my local jb and they said it went on sale Tuesday to me which sounded abit weird maybe they got mistaken
I’m currently about 99% of the way to deciding to grab Diablo 3 on PS4. Anybody able to nudge me that last 1% of the way? Is it really that good?
It has been my addiction since it came out on PC, bought it again for 360 and getting it again for XB1. It’s that good 100’s of hours of gameplay, just buy it won’t regret it
It plays very, very well while retaining that great Diablo taste. 4 player on-couch co-op is the cherry on top.
Is it still good single player? None of my friends seem particularly interest in getting it, so I’ll probably be going solo.
Still Good but loses sooo much when playing solo, multiplayer is just mayhem of the best kind, especially late game.
I’ll be your friend braaains!
It’s Diablo- kill dudes, get loot. All the same, but the controls are nice- powers are mapped to different buttons, you can direct them pretty well, sweet dodge roll to get out of trouble. Pretty well optimised for PS3 (that’s what I have it on)
If you like Diablo, you’ll like Diablo. If you don’t, you won’t.
Whoa whoa whoa Diablo III on consoles has couch co-op?
That might have just sold me a game I otherwise had zero interest in. I’m gagging for couch co-op titles because my friends are terrible at Halo, racing games and fighters and there’s only so much Castle Crashers we can take.
It does, works quite well.
Only real issue is that inventory management and fiddling with skills has to be done one at a time, though you can do quick inventory stuff. The actual gameplay is well implemented- you have characters each with a signature colour, and can hit R3 at any time to ping your char.
Might discuss that one with the wife then. I wouldn’t play it by myself but it’s something we can do together.
PS3 or 360 or next gen? If you grab D3 on PS3 I’ll jump in with you.
If I do grab it it’ll probably be on Xbone, but i’ll keep it in mind. I definitely don’t plan to get any more online multipalyer on 360 gonig forward, I let my gold sub lapse after we got an Xbone since I can just family-share my wife’s gold sub.
Just curious does anyone know if this comes with Diablo III as well as the expansion? Just dont want to buy it then find out i need another copy
@mikevil86 probably too late to be helpful but yes, the Ultimate Evil Edition that launched on PS4/Xbone this week includes the base Diablo III and the Reaper of Souls expansion.
you and me both. This has now just shot up my interest in this, especially 4 player co-op too
I heard if you’re a hardcore Diablo fan you’ll be disappointed. But, they did upgrade the game a lot since that was true, and this is a whole new expansion… so perhaps it’s not that bad any more.
It was the first Diablo game I have played and I played it on Xbox 360. Well worth the spend.
I enjoyed it enough on 360 that I’ve decided to get the PS4 version so I can play coop with @Longjocks. The additional content combined with the promise of coop and the format shift to a contemporary system was just enough of a motivator to make me buy the same game again rather than badgering him to buy the standard edition on 360 like I normally would so I could save money (unemployment sucks).
Single player was a really good bit of fun for me so it’s not like it’s hampered by the lack of other people but I imagine it’d be more fun with others to take the piss out of when they screw up.
I have D3 on PC, and never really played it – I’m a fan of playing these sort of games with proper controller support. The new controls, plus a dodge function and all the other dressings are what makes D3 on the consoles appealing – so I got it 😛
So controller support, this dodge thing, etc… aren’t coming to PC? What kind of bullshit is that?!
I don’t own a console but I’d love to couch co-op D3 with mates (I have my PC piped through the wall down to my TV). Are they adding couch co-op to the PC version?
Nope – last I checked it will never come to PC, despite outcry for a long time now. Doesn’t make sense at all to me, but this is Blizzard, they do what they want.
Been playing vanilla diablo 3 on ps3 non stop for the last month. My first diablo experience as well. The expansion pack will add a lot to the vanilla version as well as the promised patch support in line with the PC version. Couch co-op is awesome. You can copy your character on a usb stick and bring it to play on a friend’s game (ps3 at least). Highly recommended.
I second Tales of Xillia 2. First game I’ve pre-ordered this year. Needs as much media attention as it can get!
Just a point of pedantry, Reaper of Souls is actually the second console game released by Blizzard, with the original Diablo III having been released previously and this being to Diablo III what Dargon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen was to the original game.
Also didn’t Blizzard already do Lost Vikings and its sequel, back on SNES?
Rock and roll racing was snes.
Classic Diablo was ps1 aswell..
So this is very far in their console ranges.
Starcraft was n64..
I’d say the author is too young to remember the old games or just just incompetent – yer it’s much more likely as he also missed that d3 has already been released on ps3 and x360 last year.
I’m glad others picked this up because it sticks out like a sore sore thumb
I didn’t buy Diablo III on 360, I’m certainly not getting it in Xbone!
The drought continues…
(except for Playstation owners – enjoy Garden Warfare – that’s a brilliant game!)
Forgot warcraft 2 on ps1
Also Blackthorne, and Diablo 1, and Starcraft 64,
Forgive if I’m wrong, but how is it blizzards first console game? Diablo 3 already came out on last gen
Well it’s still the same game, just with more stuff so in a way it’s technically kind of correct if you don’t count the older console games blizzard did release including the first diablo on PS1 (though those might have been blizzard games ported by other companies)
Diablo 3 came out on PS3 and 360 consoles last year. Tales of Xillia 2 comes out Thursday.
Try harder.
Didn’t the original Diablo come out on PS1?
Yes it did.
Cd copy ofcourse.
Not to mention the snes games they did and Starcraft on n64…
Hardly ever their first and once again kotaku’s poor reporting.
I’m still ever so pissed that Surgeon Simulator never made it to AU via PSN because the damn thing isn’t rated… fuck knows if they are planning to actually get the game rated.
I wondered what happened there – I saw somebody on my friends list playing it the other night, but I couldn’t find it on the store. Guess they must have got it off the US store.
All Playstation owners, I highly recommend getting Plants Vs. Zombies, it’s a lot of fun.
Oh shit, is it on PS4 already??
According to the EB Games site, it’s out on Thursday.
https://www.ebgames.com.au/ps4-202477-Plants-vs-Zombies-Garden-Warfare-PlayStation-4
Ah, yeah. I have it on 360 and played a bit, it’s awesome fun. Sadly not much time lately so haven’t touched it in months. 🙁
Xillia 2!
Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment is coming out on the Vita this week. if anyone cares…
Been waiting for this, now I just need to remember where I left my vita
I’m tempted to give Diablo III a shot. I’m not a huge Diablo fan but next-gen is still a little dry and I (finally) got around to Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm last week, which really has me in a Blizzard mood.
I’m suprised people are interested in Diablo 3.2. I was sure Diablo 3 caused a lot of angry comments.
Personally I thought it was boring and I have no interest in picking up the expansion if it’s just going to be the same AOE spamming corridoor shooter again.
Reaper of Souls overhauled the game quite substantially over vanilla Diablo 3. It’s not a different game, but it’s close.
The console version of Diablo 3 was also an overhaul that improved the game. It didn’t stop me from getting bored.
That wasn’t Reaper of Souls. But it sounds like your mind is already made up. Carry on.
Hey, I’d like it to be an upgraded version where fights last long enough for debuffs and buffs to be effective and loot drop is less common but usually gives you something worth picking up.
But if it’s going to be 30 zombies running at you, dying instantly to your AOE drop and leaving behind 10 pieces of armour that are 1/50 as good as your current armour then I’ll pass.
Reaper really did fix the game by large margin, Loot is much much much better even over the D3 console version which had better loot than D3 On PC
Hmm, but how are battles played out. Will my attack that decreases their attack speed by 20% be useful? Or will it kill the enemies in one hit?
What difficulty do you play in?
@wintersoldier
I think only Normal mode because the other difficulties were locked.
If it is anything like the pc version you can select expert mode straight from the bat, but have to progress through the story to unlock master and inferno difficulties, and yes on the higher difficulties it really is a better game I thoroughly suggest giving it a go. It really adds so many more tactics to overcome the situations you will get into, thus making your skill runes matter.
I think loot drops became better once they gave up on the forced-rareness in a misguided attempt to get people to use the real world auction house. Once that was killed off, they made it worthwhile as a dungeon-crawling loot game like it was always intended.
@markserrels: you missed:
– Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment (Vita) (19th US, 20th EU, digital-only)
– Tales of Xillia 2 (PS3) (19th US, 21st EU)
Also I think that Hatoful Boyfriend, that wierd dating sim where everyone is a pigeon, is out on Steam this week.
This level of journalism from Mark is appalling. Time for another email to the CEO.
Getting all three 😉
Blizzard’s first console game had to have been The Lost Vikings! Or Rock n’ Roll Racing!
Release dates would of made this article better. When does Diablo come out on console?
August 19. Holy crap, that’s tomorrow!
Damn, I have tomorrow off, but I’m a tight arse so have to wait for US release for 30% cheaper pricing haha.
And links to the steam pages / retail listings…
Unlocks 10pm on the 18th on PSN according to the countdown on my PS4.
I’ve got Diablo III ready in my download queue, PS4. Not really sure what to expect from a personally ‘like’ point of view. I know I like fantasy, l00t, dungeon crawling affairs…so….hopefully it’s my kind of bag.
Does the download queue tell you how big the download is? The store shows it as something like 64 gb which seems a bit on the high side. Apparently that’s a mistake but I’m not sure what it’s actually supposed to be. Might kick it off tonight when I go to bed so at least it’ll go against my off-peak quota.
Of note there are two separate files – 37.8GB and 20.5GB. I assume one is the original and the other is Reaper of Souls expansion?
Wow that’s pretty big. Pretty sure its not over 20gig on PC including the xpac
It’s 15GB on PC including the expansion. No idea why it’s so big on console.
Because… Master Race…
(•_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
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Deal with it
I think it is because of all the different language packs that come with it which there are a few at 2.5gig each.
If I understood the PSBlog staff comment on it, that’s the combined file size of all the language versions, but we will only download our specific version (ie the English one). So it should be substantially less.
That’s a shame, I would have liked trying it in a Buzz Lightyear-style Spanish version.
As an abstract… the changes to Chess 2 sound damn interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_2:_The_Sequel
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-03-chess-2-the-sequel-how-a-street-fightin-man-fixed-the-worlds-most-famous-game
Not the first Blizzard game on console there champ. Not even the first Diablo on console
Anyone know when D3 releases on the Aus x1 digital store?
WARNING: Garden Warfare has exploitative microtransactions.