Hello! Welcome to the latest Geeky Brummie Gaming Roundup!

This week, two anticipated sequels, two games starring a man named Jack, and pro wrestling.

It’s gamescom week! However, there aren’t that many surprise releases (unless someone stealth drops something during the day this goes live) but it is an interesting week. At least four of this week’s games are heavily marketed, although only half of them appear to be any good, unfortunately. It’ll be very clear which games I’m talking about. One of them is Game of the Week, in fact!

A bunch of interesting indie titles this week too. Not a fan of wrestling personally, but I have to admit that WrestleQuest is a fun concept for those who are. Also, both Early Access games were candidates for Game of the Week but were disqualified due to a new, arbitrary rule where I won’t select Early Access games for the award. But they do both look rad, especially if you like 90s anime.

New Releases

Two games about space are releasing into Steam Early Access this week, both with completely different approaches. Jumplight Odyssey is a management sim set in a 1990s spaceship anime, while Whisker Squadron: Survivor is Star Fox set in the vaporwave dimension.

In smaller PC-exclusive releases, Chicken Journey is a side-scrolling platform adventure starring a chicken. Sprawl is a boomer shooter that was shadowdropped during Gamescom, set in a cyberpunk dystopia. Finally, Don Duality is a management game set in a seedy world of gangsters.

Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out (PC) is a combination of strategy games and interactive fiction. You are in charge of a small clan at the end of the world, bargaining with the remaining gods to survive.

WrestleQuest (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) is a top-down RPG where you gather a party of pro wrestlers and become the champion of the world. A bunch of officially licensed classic wrestlers show up such as Macho Man Randy Savage and Jake the Snake, so fans of sports entertainment are sure to have a great time.

Fort Solis (PC, PS5) has been sold heavily on the presence of Roger “Red Dead Redemption” Clark and Troy “Every Other Game in Existence” Baker in its voice cast. It hasn’t been sold on much else, because from all accounts, there isn’t much of a “game” in here. Expect a lot of walking down corridors, apparently.

Speaking of bland, forgettable games with protagonists called Jack, Immortals of Aveum (PC, PS5, Xbox X/S) is a first-person shooter with magic powers instead of guns. You play as a battlemage called Jak who is fighting to save some land or something. Look, this is AAA game trope central, my attention drifts in every trailer, my brain even refuses to process its name properly. But they are pushing this hard. Read some reviews, I guess. Personally, I only want to play as someone called Jak if they have a wise-cracking weasel named Daxter on their shoulder, so I’ll give this a miss.

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon (PC, PS5, Xbox X/S) is the latest in the Armored Core series of mech action RPGs. Developers FromSoftware have been busy with some other series for a while but they’re back to their mechs. There’s a lot of positive buzz around this one although admittedly some of that is coming from people who are expecting Dark Souls with robots (it is not). Definitely the true star of the week despite the previous two games’ best (misguided) efforts.

Game of the Week

Game of the Week this week is Blasphemous 2 (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox). The sequel to 2019’s brutal Metroidvania promises more of what made the first game so great.

You once again play as The Pentinent One, a haunted figure trapped in a world of misery. After being displaced after what he thought would be his final rest, he finds that he now must fight off a new set of foes in order to rid the world of the curse that’s befallen it.

I was always fascinated by Blasphemous when it first game out. I love a good Metroidvania and the art style is fantastically highly detailed and gruesome pixel art. While I have yet to play through the original myself, I can’t deny that the sequel looks just as awesome as what came before.