Happy Saturday eve! As always, at the end of the week, we’re here to offer up our suggestions for games to dive into during your time off. And even if you know what you’re going to play, hopefully we can suggest something new and exciting to consider.
Continuing with our spooky October suggestions, I’ve got two horror recommendations for ya’ll: A throwback to the GameCube era and a jumpscare-free experience spent wandering in strange, unknown spaces. But we’ve got more than just eerie hallways and virus-carrying zombies for you. This weekend we’re chilling in Pokémon-packed (infested?) cities and the abandoned remnants of civilization, hanging out with armed ducks (you read that right), and more!
Let’s get to it.
Absolum
Play it on: PS5, Switch, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Playable”)
Current goal: Defeat Azra
I’ve always had a weakness for fantasy-themed beat ‘em ups. I just think pulp fantasy with barbarians and wizards lends itself really well to a genre in which you walk along, pummelling or zapping enemies from time to time, so I quite enjoy the likes of Golden Axe and Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara. This subgenre has been deeply underserved in recent decades, but at long last we have a pretty damn good one again. Absolum has roguelike elements that set it apart somewhat from the pure beat ‘em ups I mentioned before, and I have mixed feelings about that. I understand that such elements can draw players to a game and keep them playing for longer than they otherwise might, and I’m not immune to the allure of persistent progression myself. But I also enjoy it when a beat ‘em up feels purely skill-based, and here in Absolum, I’ve known since I started playing that my character would be too weak initially for me to win the game no matter how well I played. I’d have to grind my way to plenty of persistent upgrades first.
However, the world of Absolum is rich enough, and hides enough characters, stories, secrets, and alternate routes, that I haven’t much minded the requirement to fight through it again and again. That’s primarily because the actual beat ‘em up action is just so damn good. Did you play Streets of Rage 4? Do you remember how incredible the hits felt in that game, how much oomph it had when your attacks connected? Well, that’s equally the case here. Perhaps owing to the genre expertise of Guard Crush Games which worked on both this and Streets of Rage 4, the clobbering here is top-notch and definitely does reward skill, even if the various trinkets and abilities you collect over the course of a run can also contribute heavily to your success. Absolum is also visually gorgeous, at times making me feel like I’m playing a Ralph Bakshi cartoon from the 1970s.
It’s great to have a satisfying new fantasy beat ‘em up after all this time. Now I just hope next year’s He-Man game is good, too, and keeps the trend going! – Carolyn Petit
Pokémon Legends: Z-A
Play it on: Switch, Switch 2
Current goal: Lock in
God, I knew I was jonesing for a new Pokémon game, but I’m even more aware of it now that I’m actually playing Legends: Z-A. It’s almost like I’m manually breathing and hyperaware that oxygen is in my lungs again. Doctors and mental health specialists, don’t read that last bit.
I’m about six or so hours into Z-A, and after some adjustment to the game’s real-time combat, I’m so glad to be back in the Pokémon world. I still don’t have much sense of the grand plot because I’ve been too busy playing dress-up and using the photo mode to take sick pics of me and my party, but I just encountered my first Rogue Mega Evolution, and fighting a crazed Pokémon in its most powerful form really shows you how well this new battle system works. It’s surprisingly challenging and has me rethinking everything I once knew about Pokémon battles. I hope to have a bunch of Mega Stones by the end of the weekend so my party can face these foes on equal terms. I feel like I could marathon my way to the endgame pretty quickly, but I know I should savor this ride because the Mega Dimension DLC is still months away. Mega Raichu, my beloved, I wish you were here now. — Kenneth Shepard
Dreamcore
Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: officially “Unsupported” but seems to run well)
Current goal: Finish the “Eternal Suburbia” level
Today I wrote about a wonderful surprise I came across on Steam; it’s called Dreamcore, and if you love liminal horror without jump scares, you can read more about it here.
Read More: One Of The Creepiest Games Of The Year Is Pure Vibes, No Jump Scares
I want to talk about two things here that I didn’t mention in my impressions earlier today. First, I have to give a shoutout to the art direction in this game. Not only are the environments impressively sterile while still having a sense of personality, but the VHS-style fizziness that permeates the screen helps to sell the eeriness of everything; that soft blurriness with gentle chromatic aberration just makes this game feel like some old piece of found footage that maybe you’re worried about watching too much of.
Secondly, this game just wonderfully gets into your head. I was playing it for the first time on Steam Deck in a public place, navigating the game’s first level when I started to hear things. I wasn’t sure if it was in the game or not so I started staring around the room before my eyes absently rested on someone I know. “Everything okay?” my friend said to me. “Yeah,” I replied, “this game is just fucking with me.”
I still don’t know if the sound I heard came from the game or the reality around me, but that’s what makes it so fun. It’s good food for your mind to encounter art that plays with your senses. – Claire Jackson
Resident Evil 0
Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Unsupported”)
Current goal: Survive
In my quest to prepare for the dreadfully good time I anticipate Resident Evil: Requiem will be next year, I’m jumping into the RE titles that passed me by (though I still might skip 5 and 6 because of everything I’ve heard about those games). I slept on Village, so that’s on my radar, but it made sense to first go back and play the prequel that originally launched on the GameCube back in the aughts.
Read More: I Miss Old-School Camera Angles In Horror Games
And! Well, the jury’s still out on this entry for me but I am recommending it here because it already feels like classic Resident Evil. Much of that has to do with the camera angles, which though suitably retro, feel like a breath of fresh air in today’s RE4-inspired, over-the-shoulder world.
If you haven’t played 0, it’s definitely a neat little experiment in RE’s history. Instead of choosing to play as only one character the whole ride through, you can swap between protagonists Rebecca and Billy as you navigate the zombie-infested maps. It can lead to a little bit of weird item management, but it’s still a neat twist on the RE formula that came before. And I really am enjoying the campiness of this legacy era of RE, which make for a nice change after the very serious tone of Silent Hill f. – Claire Jackson
Arc Raiders (Server Slam)
Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Unknown”)
Current goal: Be a menace and get away with it
Arc Raiders is running its “Server Slam” test this weekend and if you love extraction shooters, go download it right now and start playing. Even if you don’t love extraction shooters, you should still give this one a try. Who knows if this will be the game that finally helps this genre reach critical mass, but it certainly plays well, has a solid post-apocalyptic premise, and just might devour all of my free time when it launches on October 30.
I’ve only jumped in for one match. I died, but I had a good time harassing some poor soul who was also dealing with the antagonistic robots that patrol the game’s abandoned wastelands. It has the intensity I love from this genre, and feels capable of creating the kinds of emergent, unexpected moments of intensity that spontaneously pop up when multiple players are all trying to make it out alive. Hostile showdowns, unexpected alliances, plenty of WTF moments? I’m here for all of it, and Arc Raiders feels damn promising for this style of game. Especially now that DMZ in CoD has stopped getting updates, I could really use a new extraction shooter that isn’t going to be as punishing as Tarkov. Let’s gooo! – Claire Jackson
Escape From Duckov
Play it on: PC
Current goal: Make the rest of the birds pay
I did not take Escape from Duckov seriously until this week. A looter shooter starring a duck? No, thank you. I have no patience for games riding high on the brilliant gimmick of giving an animal a gun. But Escape from Duckov, contrary to its name and marketing, is way more than just a gimmick. It’s a top-down, PVE, loot-based extraction shooter that controls well and has a ridiculously compelling progression loop of collecting junk, completing quests, and upgrading your hideout. I don’t know that I’ll stick with it long-term, but it only took a couple of sessions to convince me it has the goods. If you’ve been tempted to give the extraction shooter scene a try but find it too complicated, overwhelming, and sweaty to parse, I recommend giving Duckov a quack or two. It gets at the chaos and appeal but on a smaller, more casual scale that’s easy to grok. I mean, it’s intense for sure, but in a fun way. — Ethan Gach
A bunch of Steam Next Fest demos
Play it on: PC
Current goal: Check out some cool games
I couldn’t narrow down my entry to one game, so I’m just lumping a bunch of Steam Next Fest demos together and calling that my entry. I can do that. You can’t stop me. Just like I can’t stop myself from downloading and installing more and more cool-looking demos. So far, I’m planning to check out typing battle royale Final Sentence, the new 3D SpongeBob platformer, that new Bubsy game, and many more. Will I enjoy them all? Probably not. But I’m just excited to stuff myself silly from Steam’s video game buffet. Though the last thing I need right now is even more stuff to play. My backlog is never going to get smaller. – Zack Zwiezen
And that wraps this edition of the weekend guide. What are you playing?
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