Blasphemous 2 Collector’s Edition will include a Steelbook case with exclusive art, a game manual created by the developers with a thank you letter from the studio, a Marca del Martitio metal coin, three art cards with new illustrations, two CDs of the game’s music encased in a collector’s CD case, a code to download the digital soundtrack of the game, a game guide with more than 60 pages of lore about Blasphemous, an album of illustrations, and a certificate of authenticity. All of this will be housed in a premium collector’s box.

The game was released on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch back in August, with a release on PS4 and Xbox One coming in later in November. Blasphemous 2 puts players in the shoes of the Penitent One as he finds himself in a creepy new location and must once again pick up his weapons to try and find answers to the game’s lingering mysteries.

Dredge: The Pale Reach is the first bit of paid content being released for the game, and brings quite a bit of new content to Dredge, including a new biome that will need players to invest in additional equipment. The new biome will be an icy expanse, and players will have to deal with traversing freezing depths and crystalline canyons.

When it comes to the core fishing gameplay of Dredge, The Pale Reach will bring with it 11 new fish and crab species to catch, as well as new aberrated counterparts for the new targets.

Dredge was slated to get The Iron Rig DLC later this year, but the studio announced back in September that it will be delaying the expansion to some time in 2024, stating that it needed more time with the next expansion.

Check out our review of Dredge.

Hell Let Loose doesn’t waste much time before thrusting you into its mix of first person shooting and real-time warfare strategy. Once on the ground, you’ll want to immediately begin and sustain constant communication with as many of your squad mates as possible, as the most organized and efficient team of 50 is often the winner of the game’s 2 main modes; Offensive and Warfare. Both of which are basically centered around the concept of a huge map where up to 100 players compete for control of the map’s handful of zones scattered throughout the area while a timer ticks away. As previously mentioned though, communication is the main key here. One can voice chat with their designated unit, with whoever is near their current location, or of course commanders can functionally talk to the entire army by talking directly with leaders of each unit. Soldiers within each 6-player unit are tasked with carrying out their specific duties whether that be medical, engineering, assault, support, or other focuses. All of which have their own unlockables that slowly fall into place as you use them. But everyone also needs to be able to think on their feet and pick up players’ slack at a moment’s notice, and this is where a lot of the spice of Hell Let Loose comes from. When a rigid strategy comes into conflict with unexpected complications, your team’s mettle will be tested, and you will either sink or swim together.

"While its unforgiving nature might be an acquired taste for many, and it likely won’t really click with you until you’re several hours in, this particular road to hell is likely worth traveling for those looking for a truly hardcore World War 2 simulator."

Respect for the game’s general concepts and themes aside, on a technical level it’s a bit more of a mixed bag. The environments are generally well-crafted and highly detailed with dilapidated fences, partially-incinerated houses, and other ravages of war abound. These pockets of highly engrossing areas don’t encompass the majority of most maps though. Most of what you’ll see as you traverse the landscapes on your way to your next destination are large empty fields lined with the same bushes and trenches that you saw in the last map, and while this is probably more realistic than loading up each map with all sorts of interesting locations, it also can make long stretches of gameplay feel a bit dry as you will spend a rather large chunk of your playtime crossing big swaths of the map.

This is especially true when you’re first starting out or when you end up on a poor team since you’ll be dying more often. This can of course be alleviated with vehicles, but then you pay the price of being a massive target for enemy forces. Even when you’re in one of the game’s more visually interesting spots there’s rarely anything to find there anyway. In fact, they can draw the eye of the enemy as well, so your team really shouldn’t hang around in them for long anyway, unless of course your strategy specifically requires that. Customization of your soldiers’ attire is similarly full of respectably accurate options but nothing special. The flipside for the game’s visuals being a bit barren and plain is the game running pretty well most of the time and setting the mood effectively with nice lighting on top.

From a wider view of the game, those drawn-out segments of traversal and strategy are really just the connective tissue between the game’s brutal firefights where one wrong move can alter the course of the entire battle. It’s in these moments – where you and your opposition are finally having it out – the most prepared and efficient team will almost surely prevail, and all of the buildup of strategizing and execution comes to a head. The nuts and bolts of the combat are about as basic as it gets though. Holding R1 will bring up your unit-specific options like health packs, grenades, mines, or binoculars, but the rest of the controller layout is standard FPS fare. Although I do appreciate the ability to sprint while crouched – which you don’t see every day. While I never found any major problems with the combat itself, and support for the DualSense’s adaptive triggers was nice, I have to admit some of the basic actions are a little too slow and chunky for their own good.

"From the arrhythmic snaps of distant gunfire to the iconic ping of an MI Garand’s final bullet ringing out, Hell Let Loose’s atmosphere is brought together nicely with a vast array of authentic sounds that engulfed the many battles of World War 2."

Ducking behind a wall to avoid incoming fire, or going prone in the grass to avoid being seen by an enemy soldier as they’re coming around the corner feels like it takes an eternity in those tense moments, and in a game that punishes mistakes so heavily by taking you all the way back to one of your claimed spawn points, that can be a real bummer at times. Still, everyone you’re fighting against has to deal with the same things, so I suppose it’s technically not unfair. It’s just moderately annoying in those moments, and it doesn’t help the already prickly gameplay go down any smoother. Getting killed by enemies you never even see and having very subtle – if any – indication of where their fire is coming from are also things that are should be filed under the category of “effectively realistic but at the cost of congeniality”. Fleeting moments of frustration can quickly give way to the game’s many satisfactions if you luck out with a great team, but the opposite can be said if you don’t, unless you have at least 40-ish friends who are all as good at (and dedicated to) the game as you are. But I think for most of us that won’t be the case.

The game’s sound design brings an extra bit of shine to the overall experience. From the arrhythmic snaps of distant gunfire to the iconic ping of an MI Garand’s final bullet ringing out, Hell Let Loose’s atmosphere is brought together nicely with a vast array of authentic sounds that engulfed the many battles of World War 2.

Hell Let Loose is something that most online multiplayer shooters are afraid to be. As any misstep in unbalanced map design or overpowered classes could result in an instantly broken experience for everyone. Despite some clunkiness with finer movements, some stretches of dullness that go on a bit too long, and the inevitable inconsistencies that any online game is destined to deal with, Hell Let Loose often adds up to a good time, and sometimes even a great one. It doesn’t do much to go above and beyond, and its deficiencies might be enough to stop some from enjoying its strong points, but for the players the game is clearly aimed at, its flaws are mostly forgivable.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

Overcooked is the quintessential party game series and Overcooked: All You Can Eat! includes pretty much everything. Both games along with their DLC are included and remastered, providing hundreds of different levels to co-op in, both locally and online. Hitman 2 is the follow-up to Hitman (2016), providing more sandboxes for Agent 47 to assassinate his targets along with new modes, the new Sniper Assassin mode and much more.

As for Predator: Hunting Grounds, it’s an asymmetrical multiplayer shooter from IllFonic, the team behind Friday the 13th: The Game. It sees four players, armed to the teeth with military weapons, completing objectives while being stalked by the Predator. Despite a rough launch, it’s received a number of updates and improvements overtime.

Worms Rumble has three modes at launch – a classic deathmatch, a battle royale style mode, and a team battle royale mode. Each of these modes work exactly how you’d think from those descriptions, with up to 32 worms duking it out against each other in some rather zany maps, and with some delightfully imaginative (and differentiated!) weaponry. Last Worm Standing, the battle royale mode, pretty much has your involvement end once you’re killed – and with a low TTK, this can be the quickest moving mode. Whether or not that’s a good thing ultimately comes down to your personal skill level. If you’re good at the game, quickly being able to mow through other players to nab the gold for yourself is probably an empowering and thrilling prospect. If, like me, you suck at the game, then your involvement in a Last Worm Standing game will be over pretty quickly. This, of course, is true of all battle royale games, but dedicated battle royale games usually have full fledged rules and maps dedicated to that style of play which help keep things nuanced and interesting even for less skilled players. Worms seems to be less compelling in this mode (or in the Last Team Standing variant of this mode).

"Worms Rumble is a surprisingly fresh and enjoyable multiplayer game, with a unique and quirky spin on several multiplayer tropes."

The true star of the game, in my estimation, is the deathmatch mode. Much like he battle royale modes, this mode works exactly how you expect – you and the other worms spawn on one of the game’s three maps, and then you duke it out against each other until the timer runs down. This is where Worms Rumble’s mechanics and finely honed design chops truly get to shine. See, since a single unlucky (and inevitably quick) death doesn’t spell the end of your time in the game, this mode is where you truly get to enjoy Rumble’s delightful map design (replete with shortcuts, multiple levels, dynamic elements, nooks and crannies to set up ambushes, and more), and this mode is where you get the chance to really try out the full range of weaponry that Worms Rumble has to offer, given that you actually have the time (and impetus, in case the one you have isn’t working for you) to experiment.

The weapons themselves are great – while you have your standard and conventional ones such as  a shotgun (which is great) or an assault rifle (which is less so), as well as stuff like grenades, you also get some truly off-kilter armaments to wreak havoc with, including a plasma rifle (which has the ability to shoot charged shots, and go around corners – a superb advantage on a multi-tiered, vertically oriented game such as this one), and a gun that shoots out sheep that, I kid you not, then proceed to chase any worm in sight, until they catch up, at which point they explode, dishing out massive damage.

The delightful weaponry, coupled with the really imaginative and clever map design, really help games feel dynamic and frenetic, helping every match feel different in how it flows and how you progress. This kinetic variation across games is, to be frank, necessary, since Worms Rumble has a shockingly low amount of content at launch – the three modes I mentioned, and only three maps. While, as I mentioned, those maps are really well designed, and should end up giving players a lot to work with over the course of many, many games, even the best designed map of all time will eventually get repetitive, which is a risk Worms Rumble runs three times over. Worms Rumble does try other things to keep you coming back, to its credit, including the requisite leveling system for your profile, as well as each individual weapon you play with, all of which works towards unlocking more cosmetics for your character and profile banner – but that kind of thing works better as a supplementary reward rather than being the primary, or even sole, motivation for a player to invest dozens of hours into something. I can only hope that this, as well as the other content issues plaguing this game, is alleviated in some future update.

"Worms Rumble has a shockingly low amount of content at launch."

In spite of the radical departure from other games in the series, Worms Rumble does retain some elements of the older titles’ identity. The controls, for instance, retain the franchise’s trademark floatiness to some degree, which actually ends up working well with the game’s verticality. As you may already have picked up on, the game also retains some visual motifs and nomenclature that has been pervasive through the series in the past as well.

We were promised that Worms Rumble would be the first 3D game in the series, and that was only true in the most technical sense – while the graphics are undoubtedly rendered in polygonal 3D, the actual gameplay takes place entirely on a 2D plane. On the whole, this ends up being strongly in the game’s favor, however, since keeping the action 2D helps it stay simple and brisk (not to mention the sidescrolling view’s ability to give you a view of a larger portion of the map at any given time, helping you prepare for springing or avoiding ambushes based on the rather clever and intriguing possibilities that the design and camera angles can provide for). In spite of the relative simplicity that this 2D format can provide, however, I did find Worms’ controls to be finnicky on console – especially aiming, which seems to lack finesse (the game compensates for this by not demanding a lot of accuracy from you either).

If you’re not sold on Worms Rumble because you balk at the very notion of real time Worms, playing the game will probably be all that’s needed to make you at least start to come around on the idea. As mentioned, Worms Rumble is flawed and lacking in a lot of areas, but the core gameplay and design works, and works remarkably well, to the point that the primary complaint you can lob at the game is very literally that there isn’t more of it.

That’s a pretty good base to build from.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

Late last year, Team 17 unveiled its next big title in The Escapists universe called The Survivalists. As the name implies, you and other players are trapped on abandoned island, and must scrounge together resources to survive. The beta is currently available now on Steam for a limited time and there’s also new gameplay trailer to check out below.

The Survivalists is all about building one’s base, crafting tools and equipment, and contending with the various threats on the island. As the new trailer showcases, you’ll also explore hidden dungeons and unearth treasures. And if things get to hairy back home, try training some monkeys to help you out.

With support for up to four players in co-op, The Survivalists looks like it offers some decent survival crafting fun. It’s currently scheduled to release for Xbox One, PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch in 2020. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

Sony has announced some new big-name exclusives that will be joining PlayStation Now in January 2020. They are Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn, Naughty Dog’s Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and Ghost Town Games’ Overcooked! 2. All of these titles will be available to play until April 7th 2020 (though Overcooked! 2 hasn’t been allocated a cut-off day, we can assume it’s the same date).

Each game has been critically acclaimed in its own way. Horizon Zero Dawn won praise for its combination of exploration, story-telling and combat in a vibrant and unique open world. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy took the franchise in an interesting new direction by starring Chloe and Nadine (and adding some open world elements).

Overcooked! 2, meanwhile, adds new challenges and mechanics on top of the established cooking gameplay. Couch co-op and support for up to four players online is also possible. Just try not to strange your friends when things go awry.

Those looking to play some great PS4 titles now on the service can still check out Persona 5 and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, which are available till February 2020. There’s also Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, F1 2019 and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds which are live until March 2020.

Ghost Town Games’ Overcooked 2 has received new content with the Surf ‘n’ Turf DLC, which went live earlier today. A new trailer has been released to showcase some of the gameplay, and as the name indicates, it’s about tropical parties and dishes. Check it out below.

Along with the return of Chef Boof from the first game, there will be other new chefs to play as as well. Two new recipes, kebabs and smoothies, are also being added, along with some new kitchens taking place on beaches and rafts. Overall, there will be 12 new story levels and two new Versus levels for players to indulge in.

Though the overall price hasn’t been revealed on Steam, Overcooked 2 veterans can expect the New Game Plus update to be available for free. Launching today as well, it will add a new Expert difficulty for an additional star. The update will also bring new features, like changing chefs in the Pause menu, level previews on the world map, and much more.

Yoku’s Island Express is one of the stranger indie darlings on the horizon. It’s not every day that you take a 2D exploration based platformer and introduce pinball like mechanics. However, beyond that intriguing concept, the characters that Villa Gorilla show off with this new character might just win over some new fans.

The trailer, which can be found just below, highlights many of the quirky supporting cast of the game, such as Willo, an eccentric character that will take in special items, the ravenous Sin and some weird mushroom people, one named Rinri, that gives me serious Return of the Jedi flashbacks.

The player’s goal in Yoku’s Island Express is to get in touch with Mokomana, through platforming and pinball mechanics. This trailer is decidedly lighter on showing off those elements, but does highlight a new grappling ability we haven’t seen before. Are you excited for the game? Let us know in the comments below.

Genesis: Alpha One is certainly an interesting and distinctive game that is being developed by Radiation Blue. The game mixes a number of genres together such as Roguelike, First-Person Shooter, Survival, and more. Now, a new trailer has been released for the game which showcases the planetary landing system.

In the game, players are in charge of a crew of clones and these also count as the player’s lives. We can see this aspect of the game at work when one player character dies and another clone is promoted to be captain. When players land on a new planet, they  can mine the planet for valuable resources but they will also have to be wary of hostile extraterrestrial life forms. The game certainly looks very interesting and it seems very ambitious in its scope.

You can check out the newly released trailer below. Genesis: Alpha One is set to release for the PS4, Xbox  One, and PC in 2018.