Welcome back to This Week In Games Australia! This week: Saints Row commences the end-of-year rush (or what remains of it) with a crew of odd little indies in tow. There are Aussie games, old favourites returning or finding new homes, and a few interesting new indie yarns as well. Here’s what you’ll be playing this week.
August 22
Pocket City (PC)
Pocket City was a mobile city builder for iOS and Android that launched around four years ago. Now, as it makes a push to complete a sequel, it’s coming to PC. This is a very chill, pared-back city builder, the kind you can click away on for hours when you want to turn your brain off. I also quite like the art direction. It feels like it captures what Sim City was going for all those years ago, without the jagged pixelation of the era. Worth a look if city builders are your thing.
August 23
A Clumsy Flight (PC)
Did you like Lufthausers? If you did, play A Clumsy Flight, a game that recalls the best of classic arcade shmups and shooters. This is absolutely going on my list of games to check out this weekend.
Guild Wars 2 (PC)
Yes, you read that correctly. Guild Wars 2 is back. Specifically, because it’s finally coming to Steam after all these years. Now free-to-play and still pumping out regular content, if you’ve never played Guild Wars 2 before (or maybe didn’t want to because who needs another launcher?), now you can just add it to your Steam library.
RITE (NS)
RITE, the platform puzzler by Adelaide’s Pond Games, makes its way to Switch. It initially launched on PC in 2020. Did you like Celeste? You’re going to love this.
Saints Row (PS5, XSX, PC, PS4, XBO)
Volition is bringing its beloved Saints Row series out of cold storage. Saints Row is the series that took GTA on at its own game. Rockstar’s brand of satire was always about crooked people at the intersection of the mundane and the insane. Volition’s take is the same if it were viewed through the lens of a Tex Avery cartoon. The series is silly, and its cast of characters all have about three brain cells to share between them. The studio has been quiet after its SR spinoff Agents of Mayhem landed with a thud, a commercial failure that saw Volition lose quite a few staff to redundancies and cost-cutting. Will the rebooted Saints Row be the fresh start Volition needs? Find out on Tuesday.
August 24
Dying Light: Definitive Edition (NS)
If you still haven’t played Dying Light yet, and would like to do so on the lowest-powered video game system available today, here you go. It’s a great game! But I have to imagine it will look and run like mud on the Switch. I hope that I’m wrong about that!
August 25
SD Gundam Battle Alliance (PS5, XSX, PC, NS, PS4, XBO)
I still don’t know what the hell this game is, but the trailers are certainly very weird. Bandai says SD Gundam Battle Alliance is an action RPG where chibi Gundams venture out into the G:Universe, a version of Gundam canon that twists established events and distorts in on itself. Your job is to restore Gundam canon to its rightful order, by bashing tiny Gundam robots into each other like action figures. Look, if you’re a Gundam fan, I need you to get in the comments and explain this game to me. Are you hype for it? What exactly is it? I need your help with this one.
August 26
Arcade1Up Dragon’s Lair Cabinet
I don’t usually include things like hobby arcade cabinets in TWIG but I’m willing to make an exception for Dragon’s Lair. This game is such an artifact of the arcade era: very expensive, wildly ambitious, and notoriously fiddly to play. A proper relic of a time when Don Bluth Animation was taking its fight to Disney on multiple fronts. Some may only have seen the kids from Stranger Things play this in the show’s second season. For many Gen-Xers and Elder Millennials, a core memory has just been unlocked. You can now bring this cursed/beautiful game into your home, if you wish. You can order it online or get it from EB Games.
DEEEER Simulator (NS, PS4)
DEEEER Simulator is what happens when someone decides Goat Simulator isn’t doing enough.
I Was A Teenage Exocolonist (PS5, PC, NS, PS4)
A game about growing up in humanity’s first-ever colony on another world. It’s a game about discovery, both personal and planetary, and about the relationships you forge with a group of people stuck on a new world together. I like the art design, and I like that it’s taking a chance on a weird genre mishmash. Fully expect Ruby to be excited for this one.
Midnight Fight Express (PC, NS, PS4, XBO)
The latest in a string of 2022 games about kicking the absolute hell out of a room full of stuntmen, Midnight Fight Express lets you live your John Woo movie, fight-eight-guys-at-once fantasies.
Pac-Man World Re-Pac (PS5, XSX, PC, NS, PS4, XBO)
For the five people in the world thrilled about the Pac-Man World Re-Pac remaster, good news: it’s out this week.
Shin chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation — The Endless Seven-Day Journey (PS4)
This one was included in TWIG last week, but was ultimately bumped to this week. Plenty of people have gotten their hands on it in the time since, and it looks like a really cute, cozy, uncomplicated little game that people seem to really like. Maybe put it on your radar if cozy games are your thing.
Soul Hackers 2 (PS5, XSX, PC, PS4, XBO)
Soul Hackers 2 is an Atlus JPRG, the sequel to Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers, and the fifth game in the Devil Summoner series, which is perhaps the most JRPG franchise title evolution imaginable. War has broken out between the Yatagarasu and the Phantom Society, which are opposing Devil Summoner factions. The story follows Ringo and Figue, two ‘Aion’ beings, that ‘descend into the human world from their birthplace in the data steam of information, in order to avert a cataclysmic event that they predict will doom humanity.’ That is about as anime as it gets, and should tell you right away if this is a game you’re interested in playing.
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