Time to look back on the week we’ve just had! What did the weekdays look like for our writers? What was the biggest news from the week? and what are we looking forward to playing during the upcoming weekend? Our Eyes on the Week article will answer all three of these questions!
We’re curious about your opinion and played games, so be sure to share your stuff on our social media channels!
Victoria
After reviewing Syberia – The World Before, I managed to go back and clean up the few achievements that I missed or couldn’t obtain in one playthrough. Highly recommended for current fans and newcomers to the series. You can read my review [HERE]. I then started my next review game called My Fantastic Ranch which has just been published and can be read [HERE] – perfect for children and younger people wanting to learn simulation and the basics of management. I then had a look on Xbox Games Pass and tried Insurgency: Sandstorm with Lewis. It’s safe to say I wasn’t impressed with the thirty minutes I played. The gameplay all felt rather clunky and not fulfilling in the slightest. Of course, we went back to our safe space game of Dead by Daylight to get some achievement progress and further prestige our survivors. I am currently known as the HEX Hunter as that is my goal right now; to bless every HEX totem I find, no matter what! Finally, I started Glass Masquerade which uses stained glass imagery that is separated into pieces and needs to be put back together like a jigsaw puzzle; a game I can happily relax with.
Most exciting news of this week: New December medals have been announced on TrueAchievements which gives me something to work towards for the remainder of the month. Also related to TrueAchievements, seeing a new ‘Achievements 3.0’ has been mocked up is interesting to see and I would like to see how this design progresses and becomes alive in the current system.
Looking forward to playing: Dead by Daylight, Bravery and Greed, Firewatch, and perhaps some Apex Legends.
Dae Jim
I’m back behind my Xbox after some troubled times. I’m now rushing through the games that I have to review. So you’ll be able to read a few interesting things next week. I’m mentally preparing for the Holiday period and looking forward to Glühwein too!
Most exciting news of this week: Nothing to report this week.
Looking forward to playing: Nothing to report this week.
Robby
I kept playing Goat Simulator 3 and Pokémon Violet, just like last week. Goat Sim is the perfect pick-up-and-play game to mess around in for a bit and get your daily achievement. Pokémon is buggy and has lots of visual flaws, but damn if I’m not having the best time ever with its gameplay loop. Also started playing Godbeast MkII, a Belgian indie game that mixes Suda51’s Killer7 visual style with some nice tactical action where you have to take out all the enemies at the same time.
Most exciting news of this week: Pokémon selling 10 million+ copies in just 3 days is pretty insane and puts other franchises to shame.
Looking forward to playing: Diving back into Wavetale now that it’s out on Xbox and this weekend I’ll get my hands on The Callisto Protocol. And nice surprise: Crisis Core: FF7 Reunion just arrived in my digital inbox!
Aaron
In usual amazon fashion, my copy of The Callisto Protocol arrived today so I’ve already managed to put in a couple of hours of the Game, and so far, it’s my favourite game of 2022. The game is so visceral and there is some fantastic use of audio & lighting that really sets the tone of the game. Robby is reviewing the game for the site, so stay tuned for that.
The rest of this week I’ve mainly just been playing Evil West which you can read the review of [HERE]
If you love Devil May Cry & God of War, you’ll love Evil West.
Most exciting news of this week: As a fan of Cyberpunk 2077 it was good news hearing that it has now broken sales records of over 54.6 million with the help of Edgerunners. According to CD Projekt Red, we will be seeing even more Cyberpunk content.
Looking forward to playing: More The Callisto Protocol.
Colombo
I tried out Insurgency: Sandstorm thanks to Xbox Game Pass and I found it pretty interesting but I only played one match against bots and my team failed miserably. Still, I’m willing to try playing it more in the future. I also played Gunfire: Reborn which I’m really enjoying; it feels similar to Immortal Redneck but still different, and that was also pretty good to me.
I tried out Two Point Campus and unsurprisingly enjoyed it, but I only started it now because I needed to get an achievement on one of ten specific games, so I’d get some points from the Microsoft Rewards app. Finally, I continued playing GTA IV The Lost and Damned, Dead by Daylight, and played a bit of Overwatch 2 again.
Most exciting news of this week: Warhammer 40k Darktide releasing.
Looking forward to playing: More GTA IV The Lost and Damned, Dead by Daylight, Gunfire Reborn, and game(s) I will get to review.
Thomas
*tap tap* Is this thing still on?
I’m back from a month of travelling the land of the rising sun. Maybe I’ll regale you with my tales from the distant shores of Japan someday, but for now, this was my week in gaming.
Like the rest of you, I’ve spent a good deal of time on Pokémon Violet. Variable performance aside I’ve been having an absolute blast galavanting across Paldea, building my team and working my way through the storylines. I’m coming up on the sixth gym, lake titan and final herba mystica.
I also renewed my Final Fantasy XIV subscription as I aim to continue the adventures of the Warrior of Light into the Shadowbringers expansion. Before I kick that off, however, I want to do the Omega raids, and Alliance raid questlines for Stormblood.
On the plane back home I also played a couple of hours of Lonely Mountains: Downhill, an indie mountain biking game I’ve had a Limited Run physical copy of for a while now. It’s got a trial-and-error vibe to its gameplay which turns skill based rather quickly. It’s been a while since such a simple game in concept felt so well executed to me.
Most exciting news of this week: Elite Dangerous Odyssey had its update 14 on Tuesday in which the community dubbed “Stargoid” anomalies finally reached human-inhabited space. To absolutely no one’s surprise, it’s the Thargoids, and they’re looking for a fight instead of just acting in extended self-defence and light probing. Humanity got itself into this mess, so time to remember what happened in Buenos Aires and beat the bugs back.
Looking forward to playing: I’ve got Persona 5 Royal and Lemnis Gate waiting in the wings to get started on any day now. The former is for a playthrough on PC, and the latter is to play matches against a buddy who picked it up on sale recently.
Stu
This week I have tried some new games. I started Mind Scanners which is in the vain of Papers, Please but Mind Scanners is much darker and more psychological. Vampire Survivors which I have found to be incredibly addictive, Soccer Story which I started thinking it was a football game and it ended up being a football-based RPG game. And capped off with some achievement hunting.
Most exciting news of this week: The Smash Pro tour/Panda Cup Nintendo controversy which has erupted on YouTube. I don’t play much smash but the videos of people being mad on YouTube has been hilarious.
Looking forward to playing: I have a game for review that I’m looking forward to starting. Also, I’m going to start on Persona 5 Royal Edition which I’ve noticed has dropped on Game Pass.
Missi
I thought I had been playing a lot this week, but looking back, I didn’t. It is a crazy time at my work around this Dutch/Belgium holiday and with Christmas around the corner, so hopefully next week I’ll be able to play more.
I’ve been playing on Steam Vampire survivors and got the 2 new achievements. And I played Bear’s Restaurant and I commissioned some bees (advent). Bear’s restaurant is a very emotional story that started off a bit too much judgemental for my taste but I’m glad I kept playing as I enjoyed the story a lot more than I would expect in the first 15 minutes of the game. And the Bees game is another “search for many bees in beautiful artwork”, this developer made a few of those games already but this one has 25 pictures instead of 10 with a nice Christmas theme, it is still a lot of fun to search for the Bees.
With Xbox PC Games Pass I played Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator just before it left the service and enjoyed that a lot more than I expected.
Most exciting news of this week: That Hello Engineer will come to Pc, it was a Stadia Exclusive. I don’t like the horror genre, so the Hello Neighbor games aren’t my thing, but this one looks great!
Looking forward to playing: The first on my “next to play list” is Astronite which looks great with its 1-bit art style, after that, I will be playing Wavetales & Lil Gator Game, both games look so awesome and I can’t wait to play them.
Hello, I’m Victoria. I’m from the UK and have been playing video games for as long as I can remember; back on DreamCast. I’ve pretty much fallen for Xbox since I was around eight years old and remember BioShock being my first game on the Xbox360. Although I find it thoroughly enjoyable to not only experience gameplay, I also find comfort in getting lost and engrossed in the online worlds that sometimes differ greatly from what we know. Another side of my Xbox passion would be achievement hunting and gamerscore. I thrive when I hear the little sound of one popping up on the screen and I’m always finding ways to work on my backlog when possible. Horror is my favourite genre so if you have any recommendations, don’t be afraid to send them my way!