Xbox Game Pass keeps winning plaudits left, right, and centre, and rightly so, but PlayStation Now has been doing similar things for a while as well, and though it doesn’t make similar waves, it has been growing at an impressive rate. Sony’s cloud subscription service is going to expand its catalogue of games once again soon, and it’s been confirmed that new games will be added to that lineup in May.

Starting right now, PS Now is going to offer Team Ninja’s Souslike action RPG Nioh, Bandai Namco’s manga crossover fighter Jump Force, and Dotemu, Lizardcube, and Guard Crush Games’ acclaimed brawler revival Streets of Rage 4. Jump Force will be available until August 2, while Streets of Rage 4 will leave the service on November 1.

Those are three solid additions to the PS Now library. Jump Force is a bit inconsistent, but an enjoyable enough game for fans of the many properties represented in it. Streets of Rage 4 is legitimately great, combining nostalgia and modernization perfectly. Finally, there’s Nioh, an excellent and challenging RPG that needs to introduction. Pretty good deal for PS Now subscribers all in all.

There’s no shortage of great games in the Xbox Game Pass library, and soon, even more of these will be coming. Microsoft has announced the next wave of games that are being added to Xbox Game Pass on console, and there’s some really good stuff in there.

To start off, on September 19 – which is tomorrow – will see the addition of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – an accomplished metroidvania title and an excellent spiritual successor to some of the best Castlevania games ever made – and Jump Force – an ambitious anime/manga crossover that is sadly, somewhat disappointing.

Following that, September 26 will see the arrival of Codemasters’ excellent rally racing simulator DiRT Rally 2.0 on Game Pass. On the same day, open world title LEGO Worlds and real-time tactics roguelite Bad North will also be added to the service’s library.

The value of Game Pass continues to expand. If none of those games seem interesting to you, there’s plenty of other stuff already in the catalog to grab your attention, including – but not limited to – recent heavyweight additions like Devil May Cry 5 and Gears 5.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

SNIPER ELITE V2 REMASTERED

Sniper Elite V2 was a solid entry in the stealth franchise back when it first launched, but with its subsequent instalments, it made plenty of improvements to better the quality of the experience. The remaster, released quite recently, had the opportunity to elevate the original title by introducing some of these changes, but sadly, it ends up showing how poorly Sniper Elite 2 has aged. It looks decent enough, sure, but if you’re looking for the definitive Sniper Elite experience, there are much better options out there.

Without further ado then, let’s begin.

MORTAL KOMBAT 11

People have been looking forward to Mortal Kombat 11 for some time now, and after much anticipation, it’s finally almost here. Typically, it looks absolutely incredible. Promising much gore, Brutalities, and Fatalities, combined with what’s looking like a strong roster, as well as the kind of strong campaigns NeatherRealm Studios usually delivers, Mortal Kombat 11 is undoubtedly very close to the top of many most-anticipated lists.

There have been quite a few of the latter this generation, and in this feature, we’ll be taking a look at fifteen of those. Do note that you might find a few titles mentioned here that actually manage to turn things around eventually thanks to great post-launch support- but for this feature, we’re looking only at the state of these games at launch.

FALLOUT 76

What a colossal screw up this was on Bethesda’s part. Let’s just ignore all the things that went around the game, and focus on just the game itself- because even that was bad enough to leave a terrible stain on Bethesda’s reputation. Fallout 76 was a broken mess of a game at launch that was lacking in any kind of a souls or identity, and felt like a hastily put-together cash grab that failed to understand what Fallout was all about. Bethesda are making efforts to turn the tide, and they’ve got some new things planned for the game in the coming months- let’s see how it pans out.

Spike Chunsoft’s Jump Force received a fair amount of hype before launch. Suffice it to say that the final game could have been better, especially considering the properties crossing over, like One Piece, Dragon Ball, Naruto, and much more. The development team and publisher Bandai Namco are committed to post-launch support though, releasing a roadmap of expected features in the coming months.

While April will see a Vertex Event, new avatar costumes, and a clan feature added for free, May will see the release of the first paid DLC character. Yu-Gi-Oh’s Seto Kaiba has been confirmed, but there will be two additional playable characters as well. There will still be free content though, including an online link mission, raid boss event, and the World Tournament Stage as a new area.

June and July will see more events and avatar costumes added. Three paid DLC characters will be coming in August, along with new avatar costumes and a new stage, The Valley of the End. All post-launch characters can be acquired with the Characters Pass at $29.99, but it wouldn’t be odd to see them purchasable standalone as well.

Media Create has released its latest weekly charts for video game software and hardware sales in Japan, and the results are honestly quite surprising. For the week ending February 24, BioWare’s recently released looter shooter Anthem has topped the charts with three days on the market, selling nearly 80,000 units. That’s surprising, because Japan isn’t usually a market where looter shooters (or BioWare/EA titles) do exceptionally well. In comparison, Jump Force, a game pretty much tailor made for Japanese audiences, sold less on its debut last week than Anthem has done this week. Jump Force, meanwhile, is down to fifth place, with over 17,000 units sold this week.

Anthem, incidentally, also topped UK sales charts, but in spite of that, it performed quite poorly, selling half as much as Mass Effect Andromeda did at launch, and managing only 10% of the sales that Destiny did back when it came out in 2014. The fact that it has managed to sell better in Japan than in UK is somewhat surprising. Then again, Japan is a market that gravitates towards physical copies- much more so than the UK, at any rate, and the UK charts didn’t include digital sales, so we don’t exactly have the full picture here.

Meanwhile, the recently released NieR: Automata – Game of the YoRHa Edition also enjoyed a good debut, ranking fourth in the charts with over 21,000 copies sold. Ace Attorney Trilogy – which is out now in Japan and will be coming West soon as well – managed to sell less than 4,000 copies in a poor showing, debuting at eighteenth place. The likes of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, and Kingdom Hearts 3 all continued to perform well.

On the hardware front, not much has changed. The Switch is still the highest selling console, in spite of a drop of roughly 12,000 units in sales as compared to last week, with over 53,000 units sold this week. The PS4, meanwhile, is holding steady at around 17,000 units sold (base model and PS4 Pro sales combined).

You can check out the full hardware and software charts below.

Software Sales (followed by lifetime sales)

1. [PS4] Anthem (Limited Edition Included) (Electronic Arts, 02/22/19) – 77,938 (New)
2. [NSW] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe (Nintendo, 01/11/19) – 23,235 (455,006)
3. [NSW] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Nintendo, 12/07/18) – 22,430 (2,883,416)
4. [PS4] NieR: Automata Game of the YoRHa Edition (Square Enix, 02/21/19) – 21,326 (New)
5. [PS4] Jump Force (Bandai Namco, 02/14/19) – 17,471 (94,365)
6. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III (Limited Edition Included) (Square Enix, 01/25/19) – 14,258 (770,068)
7. [PS4] Far Cry: New Dawn (Ubisoft, 02/15/19) – 12,384 (38,668)
8. [NSW] Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! / Let’s Go, Eevee! (Bundle Editions Included) (Nintendo, 11/16/18) – 11,057 (1,501,846)
9. [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo, 04/28/17) – 9,308 (2,142,329)
10. [NSW] Super Mario Party (Bundle Version Included) (Nintendo, 10/05/18) – 8,770 (1,027,695)
11. [NSW] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition (Bundle Version Included) (Microsoft, 06/21/18) – 8,380 (615,882)
12. [NSW] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Limited Edition Included) (Nintendo, 03/03/17) – 7,748 (1,299,813)
13. [NSW] Girls und Panzer: Dream Tank Match DX (Bandai Namco, 02/21/19) – 7,651 (New)
14. [PS4] Catherine: Full Body (Limited Edition Included) (Atlus, 02/14/19) – 7,031 (58,855)
15. [NSW] Splatoon 2 (Bundle Version Included) (Nintendo, 07/21/17) – 5,962 (2,938,590)
16. [PS4] Resident Evil 2 (Z Version and Limited Edition Included) (Capcom, 01/25/19) – 5,781 (344,273)
17. [PS4] Metro Exodus (Spike Chunsoft, 02/15/19) – 5,187 (22,701)
18. [NSW] Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (Capcom, 02/21/19) – 4,419 (New)
19. [PS4] Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (Capcom, 02/21/19) – 3,783 (New)
20. [NSW] Super Mario Odyssey (Limited Edition and Bundle Versions Included) (Nintendo, 10/27/17) – 2,724 (1,954,432)

Hardware Sales (followed by last week’s sales)

1. Switch – 53,270 (65,958)
2. PlayStation 4 – 10,632 (11,792)
3. PlayStation 4 Pro – 6,956 (7,892)
4. PlayStation Vita – 3,600 (1,767)
5. New 2DS LL – 3,388 (3,358)
6. New 3DS LL – 1,052 (1,254)
7. 2DS – 113 (142)
8. Xbox One X – 51 (55)
9. Xbox One – 21 (13)

[Gematsu]

BioWare’s Anthem made its debut last Friday for all platforms worldwide, and has managed to top sales charts in the UK according to Gfk Chart-Track/UKIE (via GamesIndustry). Though it isn’t the fastest-selling UK title of the year, it still sold better than recent games like Far Cry New Dawn and Metro: Exodus. The PS4 version accounted for 54 percent of sales, while Xbox One made up 40 percent. Sales for the PC version accounted for the rest.

A couple of things to keep in mind here: Gfk Chart-Track/UKIE only tracks physical game sales. Digital sales are unknown, and so looking at overall sales numbers for Anthem in the UK isn’t possible (for now, at least). Still, we’ll probably find out in good time if it can hit publisher Electronic Arts’ estimate of five to six million units sold by March 31st.

The rest of the top ten remains relatively the same. Far Cry New Dawn sales dropped by 43 percent week on week, while Metro: Exodus sales declined by 55 percent. Jump Force went from fourth place to 17th place, suffering a drastic 64 percent drop in sales. Crackdown 3 similarly tumbled, dropping down to 26th place after sales declined by 51 percent.

Check out the full Gfk Chart-Track/UKIE top ten for the week ending February 23rd below:

1. Anthem
2. Far Cry New Dawn
3. FIFA 19
4. Red Dead Redemption 2
5. Metro: Exodus
6. Forza Horizon 4
   
7. New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe
8. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe
9. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
10. Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Anthem isn’t the only recent major third party release that manages to run at a native 4K on the Xbox One X. Jump Force, Bandai Namco’s crossover fighter featuring characters from the multiple properties represented within Shonen Jump!, also manages a full native 4K on Microsoft’s superpowered console, Windows Central reports.

While Jump Force’s art style is a bit problematic leading to uncomfortably ugly graphics, higher resolution images always lead to clearer IQ as a whole, so it’s not like one can actually complain about this. Additionally, an analysis by Digital Foundry (which you can view below) suggests the game runs at 1080p across the board on all other consoles—including the PS4 Pro, oddly enough. This means that as long as you are playing on consoles, Microsoft’s machine is the only place to get a 4K experience—even checkerboarding isn’t available for the PS4 Pro version of the game.

That said, Jump Force isn’t exactly the best game in the world (nor is it the best looking one anyway), so I suppose most people won’t really care about it resolution, at any rate.

Just as the most recent weekly sales charts for UK were dominated by the slew of recent AAA releases, so too are the latest charts for video game software sales in Japan, released by Media Create, for the week ending February 17. Jump Force, Bandai Namco’s shonen jump crossover fighting game, debuted strongly, taking the top spot with nearly 77,000 units sold. Catherine: Full Body was another new release, coming in at second place with almost 52,000 in sales.

Far Cry New Dawn and Metro Exodus also debuted in the top 10 for the week, with the Ubisoft game selling over 26,000 units for a fifth place finish, and 4A Games’ post-apocalypse shooter taking the seventh spot with over 17,000 units sold. Kingdom Hearts 3 and Resident Evil 2 are both still in the top 10, at sixth and tenth positions respectively (selling over 19,000 and 11,000 units).

Other recent mainstays of the charts such as New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Eevee! also continued to chart, while evergreen titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Super Mario Party, and Splatoon 2 continued to exhibit strong legs as well.

On the hardware side of things, the scenery remains mostly unchanged from last week. The Nintendo Switch was once again the highest selling console of the week with sales of over 65,000 units. Meanwhile, the PS4 collectively sold roughly 20,000 units as well (base model and PS4 Pro sales combined).

You can check out the full hardware and software charts below.

Software Sales (followed by lifetime sales)

1. [PS4] Jump Force (Bandai Namco, 02/14/19) – 76,894 (New)
2. [PS4] Catherine: Full Body (Limited Edition Included) (Atlus, 02/14/19) – 51,824 (New)
3. [NSW] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe (Nintendo, 01/11/19) – 34,541 (431,771)
4. [NSW] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Nintendo, 12/07/18) – 29,843 (2,860,986)
5. [PS4] Far Cry: New Dawn (Ubisoft, 02/15/19) – 26,285 (New)
6. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III (Limited Edition Included) (Square Enix, 01/25/19) – 19,265 (755,810)
7. [PS4] Metro Exodus (Spike Chunsoft, 02/15/19) – 17,513 (New)
8. [NSW] Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! / Let’s Go, Eevee! (Bundle Editions Included) (Nintendo, 11/16/18) – 15,287 (1,490,789)
9. [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo, 04/28/17) – 12,249 (2,133,021)
10. [PS4] Resident Evil 2 (Z Version and Limited Edition Included) (Capcom, 01/25/19) – 11,636 (338,492)
11. [NSW] Super Mario Party (Bundle Version Included) (Nintendo, 10/05/18) – 10,942 (1,018,889)
12. [PS4] Nobunaga’s Ambition: Taishi with Power-Up Kit (Koei Tecmo, 02/14/19) – 10,326 (New)
13. [PSV] Catherine: Full Body (Atlus, 02/14/19) – 9,241 (New)
14. [NSW] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition (Bundle Version Included) (Microsoft, 06/21/18) – 8,905 (607,502)
15. [NSW] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Limited Edition Included) (Nintendo, 03/03/17) – 8,235 (1,292,065)
16. [NSW] Splatoon 2 (Bundle Version Included) (Nintendo, 07/21/17) – 7,193 (2,932,629)
17. [PSV] Kin’iro no Corda: Octave (Limited Edition Included) (Koei Tecmo, 02/14/19) – 4,585 (New)
18. [PS4] Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (Limited Edition Included) (Bandai Namco, 01/17/19) – 3,758 (231,659)
19. [NSW] Dragon Quest Builders 2 (Square Enix, 12/20/18) – 3,758 (231,659)
20. [NSW] Nobunaga’s Ambition: Taishi with Power-Up Kit (Koei Tecmo, 02/14/19) – 3,705 (New)

Hardware Sales (followed by last week’s sales)

1. Switch – 65,958 (61,280)
2. PlayStation 4 – 11,792 (11,583)
3. PlayStation 4 Pro – 7,892 (8,111)
4. New 2DS LL – 3,358 (3,216)
5. PlayStation Vita – 1,767 (1,475)
6. New 3DS LL – 1,254 (1,070)
7. 2DS – 142 (138)
8. Xbox One X – 55 (129)
9. Xbox One – 13 (16)

[Gematsu]