At a time when everything is so crazy, it’s nice to harken back to a simpler time, a better time…a time when Williams was still making new pinball tables. Which is what you get, virtually speaking, with Williams Pinball: Volume 10, which has virtual versions of their iconic pinball tables Diner, Fire!, and Comet for Pinball FX (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, Switch), Pinball FX VR (Meta Quest), and Zen Pinball World (iOS, Android).
One of the most important decisions a game developer can make is deciding what the buttons do. It’s a consideration I thought a lot about while playing Saros (PlayStation 5), a rogue-like, bullet hell, science fiction third-person shooter that’s engaging and exciting, but could’ve been even better if the good people at Housemarque that made it had configured the buttons differently.
While I always appreciate when someone tries something different, I don’t always like it. When it does work, though…well, that’s when you get something rather special. And it’s in that sweet spot that we find Pragmata (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, PC), a science fiction third-person shooter that gets weird and wild but also works oh so well.
Like a lot of science fiction movies that came out in 1997 (Event Horizon, Gattaca…), Paul Verhoeven’s military sci-fi movie Starship Troopers didn’t get its own video game. At least not at the time. But if it had, it probably would’ve been a lot like Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, PC), an old school first-person shooter that, fittingly, is as fun as some arcade-ish sci-fi shooters that actually came out in the ’90s.
The Resident Evil series has occasionally split focus between multiple playable characters. Resident Evil 2, for instance, had you playing largely the same game as both Leon S. Kennedy and Clair Redfield, while Resident Evil 4‘s add-on Separate Ways sent Ada Wong on missions that intertwined with Leon’s from the main game. But Resident Evil Requiem (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Switch 2) is taking things even further by having you play as two characters in the same story, albeit in rather different scenarios and with different skill sets. Though it’s how seamlessly they work together that makes this work so well.
One of the best parts of the Dead Space games was when you flew through space and had to avoid slamming into debris while sometimes shooting mines. But while that’s all you do in the unrelenting, arcade-style first-person shooter Aerial_Knight’s Dropshot (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Android), what makes it so much fun — and not at all redundant — is how ridiculous it gets.
The original God Of War came out in 2005. And in honor of Kratos now being old enough to drink (mazel tov), Sony are not only remaking the first three games, but also a TV show for Amazon Prime. But for those who can’t wait for the show or the remakes, we can celebrate Kratos becoming a man…by going back to his childhood in the third-person side-scrolling action game God Of War: Sons Of Sparta (PlayStation 5).
One of the unfortunate side effects of Zen Studios upgrading their pinball platform Pinball FX — which made it native to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, while still being available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC — is that many of their earlier tables got lost in the shuffle. Thankfully, Zen have just resurrected the three in 2019’s Bethesda Pinball (as in Bethesda Softworks, not the city in Maryland) …and they work just as well as they did back in the day.
Much like the Borderlands games (if every gun talked, and was as goofy as Claptrap), the original High On Life was a snarky / satirical first-person sci-fi shooter that had you visiting strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly shooting them like they’ve never been shot before. And like Borderlands 4 compared to its predecessors, High On Life 2 (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, PC) has everything that made the first game so much fun…and then some.