It’s a surprisingly light week as far as new releases go. But what the week lacks in number it makes up for in size — because this week, Battlefield and Civilization are back.
Civilization VI (PC, Mac, Linux)
What is it? The latest instalment in the turn-based civilization building franchise.
Should you care? There are some pretty big changes this year. But I can see a lot waiting until the first expansion.
Batman: Return to Arkham (PS4, XBO)
What is it? A remaster of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City on Unreal Engine 4.
Should you care? Only if you’ve not played Arkham Asylum. Arkham City wasn’t that fantastic.
Mordheim: City of the Damned (PS4, XBO)
What is it? A digital recreation of the Games Workshop tabletop game.
Should you care? Without friends to play with, no.
The Bug Butcher (PS4)
What is it? PS4 release of a side-scrolling shooter/platformer.
Should you care? You’d have to be a fan of the genre.
Exist Archive: The Other Side of the Sky (PS4, Vita)
What is it? An RPG created by Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean alumni.
Should you care? You might have to buy this with a US PSN account. Won’t be for most people.
HoPiKo (PS4)
What is it? A hyper-fast platformer
Should you care? I kind of like the music, but otherwise probably not.
Jackbox Party Pack 3 (PC, PS4, XBO)
What is it? The latest 5-pack of party games from the creators of You Don’t Know Jack, Fibbage and so on.
Should you care? I’m a big fan of the Jackbox games. I’ll let you know what I think as soon as I get my hands on some code.
The Keeper of 4 Elements (Vita)
What is it? Tower defence, with magic!
Should you care? This used to be a browser game, much the same as Kingdom Rush Origins.
LEGO Harry Potter Collection (PS4)
What is it? A duo-pack of the LEGO Harry Potter games.
Should you care? Your kids would probably rather play Minecraft instead. But the LEGO games are good fun for a while.
Franchise Hockey Manager 3 (PC)
What is it? Imagine Out of the Park Baseball, but ice hockey.
Should you care? Nope.
Battlefield 1 (PC, PS4, XBO)
What is it? DICE delivers their take on Battlefield 1, complete with pigeon missions and 64 player multiplayer.
Should you care? Liked Bad Company 2? Then yes.
Eagle Flight (Oculus Rift)
What is it? Fly as an eagle, with multiplayer!
Should you care? This should be good fun.
Rock Band Rivals (PS4, XBO)
What is it? An expansion for Rock Band 4 that introduces playable rock documentaries.
Should you care? With the problems Australians have been having with Rock Band DLC, I wouldn’t.
SportsBarVR (PSVR)
What is it? Imagine a pub with a bunch of different games — pool, air hockey, and so on.
Should you care? Yes. The current level of VR tech does this sort of game — short activities grouped together — very well. Big crowd pleaser.
Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour (PS4, XBO)
What is it? Duke Nukem brought back to life on modern consoles. Again.
Should you care? No. Duke Nukem 3D was great, but you’ve already played through this.
Pixel Gear (PSVR)
What is it? A 3D shooter that only requires one Move controller.
Should you care? Don’t know about you, but I’m quickly losing interest in these sorts of shooters.
Battle Worlds: Kronos (PS4, XBO)
What is it? Turn-based strategy inspired by Panzer General and Advance Wars.
Should you care? How did a game inspired by those two things end up on consoles again?
Rhythm Paradise Megamix (3DS)
What is it? A collection from the Rhythm Paradise series across GBA, Wii and DS.
Should you care? The megamix has games that were previously only available in Japan, so sure.
So that’s all the big items for this week. Picking anything up? Playing something older? Did I miss something you cared about? Let us know below!
Comments
40 responses to “This Week In Games: A Civilization’s Battlefield”
My wallet… hnnnnggghhhhh
Arkham City was great, I won’t have any of that!
I’m an unabashed fan of Duke 3D too, but really am going to be cringing through the hot-takes and ‘was it really any good’ talk we’re no doubt going to see. Nor doesn’t warrant ‘protection’ from keyboard terrorists who probably born after it came out as well.
I say that as someone who doesn’t think the franchise will ever reach those lofty heights again.
I feel like the Arkham City comment was put in there just to rankle people, the way it was stated as fact not opinion ;).
All of the “should you care” comments are opinion. How can you tell someone as a “fact” whether they should care about something?
Yeah, no harm done.
Although Alex is clearly wrong about the migratory patterns of the Tasmanian kookaburra circa European settlement,
And he bloody well knows it.
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You’re offering recommendations as to whether we should care or not. It isn’t “Do I Care?” from the perspective of the yourself. General concensus was that AC was good. To me it wasn’t either, I actually gave up without finishing it, I was that not into it. But I understand that I was one of the unusual when it came to that game, and so “Should you care?” to the general public is is what should be kept in mind.
And the sentence “Arkham City wasn’t that fantastic” is completely passing it off as fact. It’s not “I thought Arkham City was not that fantastic”. You wrote it as a statement, not an opinion.
Exist Archive is coming to Europe as a digital only release so shouldn’t need a US account. Also out this week:
Jazzpunk (PS4)
Neverwinter: Storm King’s Thunder (PS4/XBO)
Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls (Vita)
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunter: Special Gigs (Vita/PS3/PS4)
Ooh Eagle Flight.
OH FUCK YEAH RHYTHM HEAVEN!
Omg, Rhythm Paradise!!!
High five!
I heard the Batman wasn’t being released until 10 November now?
That’s the physical EB-Games-exclusive release. The digital copy is still out this week far as we know.
Is Jackbox 3 on XBO actually coming out in Australia? The last two were PS4 only for some reason.
They’ve all been released for XBO, but the second pack wasn’t available to Australia. I’m chasing them up this week about the Australian XBO availability, all the same.
I’d like to know this too, I had to suck it up and buy Vol.2 on PS4 after it was a total no show on Xbone (just like SUPERHOT).
And Oceanhorn… And Turing Test… And Castle Crashers Remasterd… And like a billion other high-profile, digital-only games. Mostly ID@Xbox ones.
Cool. I wound up buying the 1&2 bundle on PS4 for a pittance a few weeks back, but not for lack of trying to buy on Xbone before discovering Jackbox 2 was never released on Xbox One here. I’ll probably just buy 3 on PS4 anyway since that’s where I have the first two, but I’ve never gotten any explanation for the lack of an Xbox release of 2 despite reaching out to the developer directly.
Yeah. Like I mentioned before, I reached out and hadn’t gotten an answer. I’ve emailed them again this week, and I’ll keep chasing it down. Its absence is really, really weird.
Getting BF1 on launch day. Here’s hoping it launches in a better state than we’ve come to expect.
Fool of a took! We all know launch is a mess for BF titles 😛 By next week it’ll be fine though!
Next week?! I like your optimism!
I think Ash meant next year*
… As in 12 months time, not January
No I did mean next week hahaha. And by fine I don’t mean perfect, I mean you can connect to a damn server 😛
Haha fair point.
Just teasing ;P hey if battlefront can pull it off, I’m sure they’ll be fine.
I’m out, I’ll keep pew pewing with World of Warships 😛
I’m trying to remember if BF: Hardline & Battlefront has severe launch issues…. I want to say they didn’t (or maybe just Battlefront)
Either way, I want it I want it I want it I want it I want it I want it I want it I want it
I actually kinda gave up after BF3 and BF4. Didn’t like the way the gameplay felt anymore, I can’t really describe it well 😛
Yeah, I get what your saying. HL was a bit disappointment, I liked the idea (and the weapons) but the delivery was poor… I would have much preferred an 80ties a t h s e t i c Miami themed cops & robbers
OMG yes, that would have been amazing 😀
Battlefront’s servers were fine after the first 12 hours; Hardline was as smooth as butter, but then it just reminded everyone that BF4 was a) better and b) working fine, so the majority of people just switched back to that.
Personally, I’m pretty confident BF1’s servers will be fine. But then hackers could DDoS the snot out of them again, or something else could fail. I’m hoping to get hands on with the game this week; if allowed, I’ll stream at least the PC footage and you can tune in and see how it holds up.
I have 1000+ hrs in BF4 so it better have been good :p
Hardline had very few problems. Launched pretty well flawlessly.
Battlefield Hardline despite it’s mediocrity, had a flawless launch. The devs said they learnt alot from BF4’s trouble.
FYI Bug Butcher isn’t actually a ‘platformer’ – it’s a really neat take on Pang!
I’m nearly at the end of my 10 hour trial of Battlefield through Origin Access. Not a bug to report, loved every minute of it. Here’s hoping the servers can cope with the flood of players on day 1.
I don’t think many Civ fans will be waiting for an expansion pack before picking up Civ VI since it’s not really big changes ‘this year’. There hasn’t been a core-series Civ game released in 6 years. The fans are hungry.
And no, Beyond Earth doesn’t count.
And this Civ seems to be the most complete at launch compared to the rest. Really looking forward to it.
If you think CIV fans will wait for the first expansion before buying it, you don’t know CIV fans haha
Yeah I keep saying I’ll wait. I’d put money on me having it before Christmas 😛