Welcome to the first weekend of August! The weather is still hot in various parts of the world (like, way more so than it’s been lately), so what a wonderful time to stay the hell in doors, in front of an air conditioner, with some video games.
This week we’ve got a healthy selection of new and old games alike for your consideration.
Psychonauts 2
Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Windows (Steam Deck: YMMV)
Current goal: Experience one of my favorite games again
Psychonauts 2 is a pretty great game. When it was released in 2021, it became everything to me, and that’s coming from someone who played the original and thought it was just a fine, if ambitious, game. My love for the sequel hasa lot to do with the heart and sincerity with which it talks about people who are a little chipped and broken in ways intimately familiar to me. It was the hug I needed at an otherwise difficult point in my life. I bawled over Psychonauts 2 numerous times throughout my playthrough, and it’s been tough to revisit it outside of that window.
However, about a year and half after it was released, a documentary on the making of Psychonauts 2 was released, and that somehow gave me an even deeper appreciation for it and the team behind it. It is, by my estimation, the single greatest look at the development of a video game, and should be a foundational piece that we refer back to whenever we want to talk about the intricacies of making one. It is both ugly and utterly magical, and thinking about the work that went into Psychonauts 2 always makes me want to pick it back up. Recently, the makers of the documentary released a feature-length epilogue of sorts that sent me down the rabbit hole again, and I just finished rewatching the doc. Considering the game’s third anniversary is coming up later this month, now’s as good a time as any to dive back in and let Psychonauts 2 utterly ruin me one more time. —Moises Taveras
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II
Play it on: Switch, Mobile platforms, Windows (Steam Deck: YMMV)
Current goal: Test drive the game on a Pixel tablet
This weekend, after a really shitty few weeks, my little three-piece family is off to the seaside. We booked it yesterday, a weird-looking shed thing with two bedrooms, ten minutes from the beach, but isolated and in the woods. Perfect. The beach has tons of fossils to find, we’re going to snorkel, it’s going to be just fine.
There’s also apparently no phone signal and terrible, intermittent wifi, so I will probably die.
My plan is to depend on my Pixel Tablet, and play games it can cope with. And my aim is to get some time with Knights of the Old Republic 2, a game I haven’t played since it first released, in its most broken, buggy form. I am interested to see if it’s a feasible game to play on a touchscreen, but will be packing an Xbox controller in case. Because I’m broken. I’m going to the woods and the coast, and I could be reading books or staring wistfully into the horizon, but NO, SCREENS, NEED SCREENS. — John Walker
Marvel Rivals
Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows (Steam Deck: N/A)
Current goal: Try to nail down my mains before the beta ends
Marvel Rivals seems like a pretty okay Overwatch clone so far. I’ve put a dozen or so hours into the beta and I think I’m gonna play some more before it closes on August 5. But I’m already falling into my old habits of becoming a one-trick who only plays their favorite character. I did this in Overwatch, as well, which is why Soldier: 76 has several hundred hours more of playtime than other heroes in my play history. I’m instalocking Star-Lord every time because I have to play as the zippy, quippy, dual-pistol wielding bisexual king. But these games are about adaptation, swapping heroes for a situation, so you can’t rest on just learning one character. I mean, you can, but your team will probably hate you. So I’ve got a few more days to determine which Marvel heroes I’m gonna get real good at. Rocket Raccoon has become my go to support hero, but I’m still struggling with who I want to use as a tank. I gravitate toward Groot because I generally gravitate toward the Guardians of the Galaxy, but Magneto is also there, and I’ve been in an X-Men mood recently after ‘97 and Deadpool & Wolverine. I have decision paralysis. But that’s what I’m gonna try to figure out during the rest of the beta phase. — Kenneth Shepard
Unavowed
Play it on: Switch, Windows (Steam Deck: OK)
Current goal: Continue pursuing a demon across New York City
Like a lot of folks, I was a point-and-click adventure nut in the late ‘80s and much of the ‘90s, as Lucasfilm/LucasArts produced a pretty steady stream of genre masterpieces. And though point-and-clicks no longer get the mainstream attention they once did, for nearly 20 years now, Wadjet Eye Games has carried on as one of the genre’s standard bearers, making well-crafted new adventures that have earned the studio a loyal following of genre enthusiasts. I confess, however, that despite the fact that I count many point-and-clicks among my all-time favorite and most formative gaming experiences, I’ve rarely made time for such games in the 21st century. That may be changing now, as a friend has gifted me Wadjet Eye’s fascinating 2018 game Unavowed, and I find myself playing a little more of it each night.
Unavowed is a gripping tale about a secret society of mages and other arcane agents operating in modern-day New York City, where they work in the shadows to protect its people from demons and other threats from beyond the veil. You play as someone recently possessed by a demon, who spent a year wreaking violent havoc across the city while it occupied your body. Recently freed from its grasp by members of the Unavowed, you’re working with them to find out just what it did while it had you under its thrall and what its plans are now that it has escaped.
As with so many of the best adventure games, what’s really captivating me about Unavowed is its setting, story, and characters, all of whom are terrifically voice-acted. Though the story is full of jinns and fire mages and demons, it also feels authentically New York, making great use of real-world neighborhoods and actual landmarks, and its characters have rich histories that make getting to know them a little better each night as I curl up to play on my Steam Deck before bed a treat. Point-and-click adventures may not be the mainstream blockbusters they once were, but the genre is still as capable as ever of pulling us in with memorable writing, characters, and atmosphere. It’s good to be reminded of that. — Carolyn Petit
Dungeons of Hinterberg
Play it on: Xbox Series X/S, Windows (Steam Deck: OK)
Current goal: finish the Glacial Galaxy
I didn’t like Dungeons of Hinterberg at first. Very pretty but too much talking, and the gameplay felt a bit too simple and familiar, like The Legend of Zelda on a budget and training wheels. But the early dungeons have been just bite-sized enough that I kept toiling through them, adding one badge after another to my travel book, feeling satisfied and accomplished with each new completion. Then the rest of the game started to click for me as well. I started to grow attached to the town and its quirky but lifelike residents, chatting with them about the mundane and magical in equal measure, building up relationship meters both in the game and in my imagination.
It turns out a burned-out information worker going on a weird vacation to explore dungeons that remind me of Dark Cloud on the PS2 is actually a much more relatable and engaging experience than I originally gave Hinterberg credit for. And like its carefully partitioned levels, I’ve also come around on its Persona-style calendar system. It fits my own daily grind perfectly, letting me briefly escape into its magical realistic fantasy for 15 to 30 minutes here and there as work, house chores, and screaming kids allow. I’m not sure if I’ll end up liking it as much as its biggest champions, or if it will make my GOTY long-list, but it deserves a second or even third look from anyone who might have initially overlooked it or bounced off early on. — Ethan Gach
The Crush House (Demo)
Play it on: Windows
Current goal: Don’t get canceled (not the kind you think)
If there is one thing I love more than nerdy shit, it’s reality TV. I find that consuming something so low-brow is a sort of salve for my loud brain, so I’ve watched hundreds of hours of The Real Housewives, Vanderpump Rules, Rock of Love, and more. The trashier, the better. Crush House is an upcoming game about producing a successful reality TV show, with a dark twist that I won’t ruin for you. There’s a demo of it available now on Steam, offering a lovely little slice of just how absurd, messy, and fun this game is. It’s absolutely worth checking out this weekend, which I will be doing during a charity stream I’m hosting, to see if I could make a successful reality TV show after years of research. — Alyssa Mercante
Final Fantasy VIII
Play it on: Original: PSX, Windows. Remaster: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Windows (Steam Deck OK)
Current goal: Figure out if I’m gonna reset my current playthrough or not
Final Fantasy VIII is and always will be my favorite one. The scale and scope is wondrous. It is graphically ambitious. It has some of the best pre-rendered backdrops in the series. And while its music doesn’t bring the tears like FFVII’s soundtrack does, it’s wonderfully diverse, from the chill vibes of the overworld music to the endearing mood of “Fisherman’s Horizon” and “Fragments of Memories.” We also can’t forget the driving force of “Force Your Way” and “Only A Plank Between One and Perdition,” the haunting melodies of “Succession of Witches” and…okay, I’m gonna have to stop, otherwise I will link the whole soundtrack.
FF8 was somewhat of a polarizing entry with FF fans. Its Junction system is a little peculiar. Its narrative can be tricky to fully understand. But that’s what makes it unique in my book.
I had been running through a playthrough recently until life’s responsibilities got in the way. This weekend, I’m returning to that playthrough. And as I’m soon looking at some substantial time off of work, I think I’m going to resist using the speed-up options included in the remaster. My time off comes with a major shift in my life too, one that I think will benefit from the presence of this beloved game.
Heck, I’m gonna have a lot of time on my hands. Maybe I’ll just start this playthrough over from the beginning. — Claire Jackson
And that wraps our picks for the week. Happy gaming!
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