While the trailer doesn’t delve into the new game’s plot, it could be quite useful to those among you looking to see what the fuss is all about. It provides a quick recap of Styx’s motivations with the game’s signature style and fourth-wall-breaking antics on full display.

For those of you returning from the previous two games, you might be excited to know that Blades of Greed puts our favorite thieving goblin in charge of his own crew aboard a zeppelin, along with a handy gliding tool that lets him traverse the larger world he’s exploring with ease. You can learn more about what’s new right here, and perhaps make an informed decision about whether you’re picking up a copy ahead of its February 19 release for the PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

As a first-person title, Hardspace: Shipbreaker is set in the far future where players control a shipbreaker for the Lynx Corporation. Their job is to investigate procedurally generated derelict spaceships and recover any valuable salvage. Different tools, like a laser cutter, are necessary for the job but one must also be careful of cutting through the wrong wire and causing an explosion.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker is currently exclusive to PC and playable on PC Game Pass. It’s also in development for Xbox One and PS4, though no release window is available. In the meantime, Blackbird Interactive is also working on Homeworld 3 for Gearbox Publishing and Minecraft: Legends in collaboration with Mojang.

Having left early access, Hardspace: Shipbreaker now features the final act of its campaign, bringing its story to a conclusion. Aside from the campaign, Hardspace: Shipbreaker has a few other game modes, including the R.A.C.E. game mode where players can compete with each other through the leaderboards, or even the Freeplace game mode that aims to offer a calming, meditative experience.

Thanks to its exit from early access, Hardspace: Shipbreaker now also has Ship Saving, allowing players to save their in-progress salvage for later. The game has also revamped its progression, with balancing based on feedback and data.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a game about salvaging old, derelict spaceships for a massive, uncaring corporation. The game leans heavily into its dystopian trappings, having players juggle their budgets, as well as their debts and quotas. It got a following thanks to its unique gameplay that emphasised the puzzle-solving nature of its shipbreaking.

Developed by Blackbird Interactive (which is also developing Homeworld 3), the story sees you playing as a salvager in space. You’ll explore various derelicts and cut them open in order to salvage valuable materials. Be careful though – it’s entirely possible to cause a chain reaction, destroying everything in the process.

Update 1.0 will feature Act 3 of the Campaign and conclude its story (though one can still continue playing afterwards). Another highly requested feature is Ship Saving which allows for bookmarking a ship that you’re currently working on and returning later. Progression is being smoothed out while bug fixes, optimization and improvements to stability are also being made. For more details, head here.

Originally released in April 2020, Streets of Rage 4 takes place 25 years after the previous game and sees classic fighters like Axel Stone and Blaze Fielding return. Along with a gorgeous new art-style, the beat ’em up features 12 stages and three additional characters to play with. You can also choose 13 alternative retro fighters and access some secret levels that pay homage to the original games.

For the mobile version, support for cloud saves, a redesigned UI that caters to touch-screens and Achievements are being added. Multiplayer won’t be available at launch, instead releasing as a free update afterwards. For more details on the base game, check out our review here.

The Phalanx’s shield can be toggled freely and absorbs damage from the front, making it idle for narrow paths. This doesn’t make you immortal though as acid from Xenomorphs and explosions, along with attacks coming from behind, can still hurt you. While the class is restricted to hand guns and other close encounters weaponry (like the shotgun), their passive allows for increased damage for each attack blocked.

Another useful ability is Shock Pulse which will deploy an electric pulse and stun nearby enemies (which makes it great against Synthetics). You can either increase the damage or the duration that enemies are stunned. Aliens: Fireteam Elite is available now for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS4, PS5 and PC. Check out our official review here.

Focus Home Interactive has been officially rebranded as Focus Entertainment, the company has announced. It says the new name is “representative of the desire to diversify its games, products, services and revenue streams” and also “emphasizes the ambition to offer players around the world unique experiences, supported by an editorial policy that stands out thanks to innovative concepts, inventive gameplay, and original worlds that transcend the boundaries of video games.”

Focus Entertainment recently acquired DotEmu, co-developer and publisher of Streets of Rage 4. Focus Entertainment’s currently known catalog of upcoming games includes the likes of A Plague Tale: Requiem and Evil West.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite is a co-op survival shooter set in the world of the Alien IP. The source material is the posterchild of inconsistent output with titles such as Aliens: Colonial Marines which was abysmal in many ways, and Alien: Isolation which was a true gem, with both of them occupying two completely different ends of the quality spectrum. Aliens: Fireteam Elite does a great job at capturing the aesthetics of the source material, with what seems to be a pretty authentic representation of the Alien universe that lore buffs would have a great time with.

"Aliens: Fireteam Elite has some good stuff going for it, but none of it really stands out in any particular way."

The game is set more than 20 years after the original Alien trilogy and sees players controlling a custom character titled Marine. As a soldier under the UAS Endeavor, players will be tasked to rid planets and installations across alien planets of well, Xenomorphs, all the while uncovering a larger narrative involving hideous experiments, synthetic robots, and whatnot. The story isn’t exactly front and centre for Aliens: Fireteam Elite, but the game manages to pull off a respectable job with its writing and voice cast. I particularly enjoyed the hilarity provided by commanding officers and other officials, which share some funny banter among themselves. It’s nothing spectacular, but this does lend a sense of authenticity to the overall vibe that makes listening to these conversations endearing.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite has 4 separate campaigns, each with a set of 3 missions that players can take part in as a group of 3 people or with AI bots if matchmaking doesn’t get you partners in time. The game has a handful of different classes to choose from – Demolisher, Gunner, Technician, Doc, and Recon. Each class has 2 special abilities that operate on a cooldown timer, as well as class-exclusive perks that players will utilize over the course of their playthrough. Most of my time with the game was spent with the Demolisher, who has a flurry of rocket blasters and a firecracker of sorts that stuns enemies in a given radius. Other classes have grenades, health stations – all of which can be pretty useful at times. There’s a decent variety amongst the classes, and using abilities in tandem with each other is pretty enjoyable.

"Gunplay feels solid, with great sound design and feedback that gives each weapon the heft it should carry. "

The majority of the gameplay revolves around fending off enormous hordes of increasingly tough Xenomorphs and Synth soldiers. Gunplay feels solid, with great sound design and feedback that gives each weapon the heft it should carry. However, there is a big issue with the camera, it feels that it’s jutted so close behind your character that peripheral vision remains quite limited. It’s quite common to continually get backstabbed by a Xenomorph, which can become quite annoying at times. The controls can also feel equally sloppy at times. Rolling in general is accompanied by a pervading sense of clunkiness and unresponsiveness at times. What makes this issue more egregious is that most Xenomorph types will continually rush towards your position – making rolling an essential part of the combat loop.

When it comes to Xenomorphs and Synths, there is a fair bit of variety in the roster of enemies but in the heat of the battle you don’t necessarily need to be tactical in your approach, and everything just essentially boils down to pumping Xenos with hot lead until they stop moving. The AI can glitch at times, with some enemies getting stuck on cover or terrain which makes finding them an annoying ordeal after a stressful encounter. The Synths, on the other hand, are bullet sponges for the most part. Defeating them involves taking cover and exchanging gunfire, which gets stale pretty quickly due to the aforementioned sponginess. The heavy synth variants are even worse offenders in this regard, and their gargantuan health pools make them feel more like a raid boss than an enemy meant to fight alongside a horde of marginally weaker enemies.

"The heavy synth variants are even worse offenders in this regard, and their gargantuan health pools make them feel more like a raid boss than an enemy meant to fight alongside a horde of marginally weaker enemies."

A neat trick up Aliens: Fireteam Elite’s sleeve is that most fights against these hordes will have a preparation phase before it – where players can choose to install their line of defence using a number of sentries and mines. It’s quite satisfying to see this preparation bear fruit when the arena gets filled with dozens of different kinds of enemies.
As mentioned before, Aliens: Fireteam Elite has some great art direction, and the levels look great from a purely aesthetic standpoint. However, the rooms that players will fight through to get to the end of each stage just feel bland with repetitive layouts and visual designs, which when combined with repetitive objectives make getting through levels a slog at times. Undoubtedly, the biggest factor contributing to this front is the lack of mid-mission checkpoints.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite doesn’t feature any mid-mission saves.

A mission can last up to 40 minutes or even more, and failure will set players back to the starting of each stage. This makes the game extremely unforgiving and bland at the same time. This issue becomes even more painful when the aforementioned litany of bugs and glitches come into play. Furthermore, during my time with the game, I experienced a number of glaring issues – such as getting kicked out of sessions even when my internet was working completely fine and the game refusing to open doors even when all teammates were present at the spot. During one mission’s finale, the audio would completely cut off making dealing with a humongous horde an exercise in pain.

"A mission can last up to 40 minutes or even more, and failure will set players back to the starting of each stage. "

There’s also a progression system in the game, where you have to fit a number of perks such as stat boosts and upgrades in a frame. It works in a similar way to NieR: Automata’s chip system, and there is some potential to push for specific builds. The same mechanic is present for weapons, whose individual parts such as muzzles and magazines can be swapped out for better ones which provide some added benefit. From what I experienced, the effects of these perks didn’t feel impactful except my arbitrary combat rating kept going up. Much like Valve’s Left 4 Dead, players can choose challenge cards for a particular mission – which is an interesting concept executed well enough in Aliens: Fireteam Elite. One particular run with a Challenge Card reduced our health pool significantly, but gave the team health regeneration ability provided that we didn’t take damage for a certain while.

There isn’t a lot left to do once you beat the campaign. There’s a Horde mode which tasks your Fireteam to fend off these same enemies in increasingly tough waves. You could always go back to the campaign and beat it on higher difficulties or with challenge cards, but from what I experienced – not a lot of changes with every new run. Enemies spawn in exactly the same location as per my observation, and the number of revives per teammate decreases with increasing difficulty levels.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite has some good stuff going for it, but none of it really stands out in any particular way. There’s some clunkiness within the gameplay loop, which becomes more aggravating when coupled with a number of bugs and glitches. It’s not impossible to have fun with Aliens: Fireteam Elite, but doing so requires putting up with several annoyances such as no checkpoints. For fans of the Aliens franchise, Fireteam Elite might serve well as a co-op shooter but for others – there are better options out there.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

As for Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut, it dropped from first to ninth place with sales decreased by 50 percent week-on-week. This could be due to the availability of PS5 hardware in the region. Other titles like Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart also dropped to fifth and 12th place respectively despite seeing huge bumps last week.

No More Heroes 3 was the other new title for the week, releasing exclusively for the Nintendo Switch at 16th place. Check out the complete Gfk top ten for the week below.

Season 1 of Hood: Outlaws and Legends, titled “Samhain”, is kicking off on September 2, and it’s going to be adding plenty of stuff to the game. There’s Eidaa, a new Outlaw with her own abilities, moveset, and customization options. Also being added are new maps for the aforementioned PvE mode, new cosmetics, and a reworking of the winch system, which will now allow both teams to winch for the treasure chest. Meanwhile, the game’s first battle pass is also being introduced.

Get a sneak peak of some of the new content coming with Season 1 in the trailer below.

Hood: Outlaws and Legends is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC.