Gaming can be one of the most rewarding hobbies there is, but can also take some serious cash to wade through the new releases. Sometimes new games will blow your mind while others either can’t or don’t live up to their hype and you feel like you wasted your money. To you avoid that second thing, we’ve compiled a list of the best new video games from the past few weeks.
Fallout 4: Nuka World
Fallout 4 is a divisive game and Nuka World isn’t going to be any different. Just like the base game, where it’s strong, it’s really strong, and where it’s weak, it’s disappointing. In our opinion, Nuka World’s strengths outweigh its weaknesses and is a strong last DLC (even though “last” might not be exactly right). It has the chipper yet sinister atmosphere we’ve come to expect from Fallout and feels like a Coca-Cola meets Disney World meets Project MKUltra. It’s in exploration that this expansion comes alive, so expect to spend a few hours ignoring quests and running from theme park to theme park discovering America’s dirty little secrets. There are also some good Fallout 3 callouts in line with what we saw in the base game, so fans of previous installments should get a little more out of this DLC. All Platforms
Bioshock: The Collection
Our first trip to Rapture had us looking for a way to get our submarine to take us back to the surface, frantically tapping X anywhere that seemed like it’d get us away from the mutant with glowing hook hands. Now, we get traumatized all over again, this time with updated graphics. Bioshock: The Collection is also a great place for people who have never played to get all three games without having to worry about them showing their age. The best part of it is, if you already own the original releases, you won’t have to shell out for these. For PC, that is. It also promises collectibles that unlock game director Ken Levine’s commentary, and if we could understand how that guy thinks, we’ll all become better storytellers. Console | PC
Dead Rising
You recognize Dead Rising because it’s the zombie survival game that went less for “horror” and more for “what in this mall vaguely resembles a weapon?” For a long time, the improvisational weaponizing of America’s shopping centers was a console exclusive, but as of September 13th, PC gamers can finally get in on the original. Sure, PC gamers had the two sequels, but the release of the original is a welcome update for people who didn’t or couldn’t get in on the dismemberment of animate decaying corpses from the early aughts. Plus, it’ll feel good to revisit a time when zombies in pop culture still felt relatively fresh. PC
Batman: The Telltale Series
In light of the enormous success of the Arkham series, what amounts to a choose your own adventure Batman point and click might seem like an unlikely addition. But Telltale emphasizes story over action packed gameplay, as anyone who’s played their Walking Dead or Game of Thrones series can tell you. Batman: The Telltale Series promises a closer look at Bruce Wayne, which is something games, movies, and even comics rarely deliver. They’ve only released one episode so far, but they’re enjoying quite a bit of buzz and success. If they maintain, then Batman promises to be one of the more valuable and lasting volumes of Batman’s mythos. Console | PC
Quadrilateral Cowboy
Hacking has a bad rap in pop culture. Too many shows have featured animated boxes with investigators staring open-mouthed at the screen while geeks slap their keyboards in fits of nerd rage. Quadrilateral Cowboy seems to love all of that while also wanting to be faithful to what hacking actually is, which is computer coding. You type commands into a laptop while also moving around in weird cybernetic environments. Think Mr. Robot meets Cyberchase and we’re getting somewhere close. It’s a PC exclusive, so we’d give our condolences to the console crowd, but Playstation and Xbox already have excellent exclusives, so we’re really not that sorry. PC
Obduction
We’ll get our PC exclusives done at the same time so the console guys can just skip one section instead of two picks. Obduction comes from the same guys who made Myst and Riven, so you can expect headache inducing puzzles and the general feeling that this is probably creepy but you’re not quite sure why. Just like its predecessors, there’s more emphasis on story and exploration, two things games are getting increasingly good at. It’s a good reminder that just because you’re playing from a first-person perspective doesn’t mean you need a gun in your hand. In fact, there are times where it’d be more rewarding not to. PC
Inside
If you’re familiar with atmospheric sidescrolling indie games (it’s totally understandable if you’re not, as there’s a lot of off putting crap in that genre), your first thought about
Inside is it looks a lot like Limbo and you would be wrong. It comes from the same company and follows some of the same motifs. Young main character is drawn farther down the dark rabbit hole while tension increases. But Inside takes what Limbo did and expands it, taking something great and making it better. Playdead are clearly good at what they do and, for the good of humanity, they need to keep doing it. All Platforms
The Turing Test
It’s been speculated for a long time that if there’s other life in our solar system, it’s on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, and in terms of space hypotheses, that’s not the craziest thing we’ve ever heard. It was also only a matter of time before gaming got in on the Europa action. In
The Turing Test, you get your science tool and solve puzzles while an AI talks to you. The central motivation is, you’re trying to find out what happened to your crew and what exactly they’re hiding from. Our money’s on aliens, since if it was the AI it would basically be a Portal prequel and Bulkhead seems smart enough to not blatantly rip off one of the most popular puzzle games this side of the year 2000. We’ll let you know once we finish it. Xbox One | PC
