Share of the Week: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2

Includes PS5 Game Disc and Voucher for PS4 Game** In-Game Credits – 1,100,000 CR Toyota GR Yaris with country specific Livery  30 Manufacturer / Partner Avatars The Music of Gran Turismo Official Soundtrack Toyota Castrol TOM’S Supra Mazda RX-VISION GT3 Concept (Stealth) Porsche 917K Living Legend Again, this is a limited-edition physical release so be […]

Following the release of the Gran Turismo 7 trailer from the PlayStation Showcase last week, we are excited to finally share details of Gran Turismo 7 pre-order items and the 25th Anniversary Edition! Pre-Order Items and 25th Anniversary Edition Pre-order at PS Store and get a pre-order bonus of the following in-game items: • Toyota […]

When Phasmophobia first hit Steam as an Early Access title last year, we emphasized that it was the perfect Halloween game. More than that, if you’re ever looking to live out any paranormal investigator phantasies alongside a crew of gutless pals, then the ghost-hunting “detective” game is for you. I scare easily and have still put dozens of hours into Phasmophobia, slowly creeping through its haunted domestic and liminal environments. From sudden temperature drops to flickering lights, the atmosphere is always intense, and death waits for you in every vacant classroom or unassuming bathroom. In celebration of its one-year anniversary, Phasmophobia is allowing players to explore (and, hopefully, survive) by themselves in a new single-player mode. Our one year anniversary update is now out! I would just like to thank everyone for their amazing support over the past year. It has been an incredible time! You can read the full patch notes here: https://t.co/CFpUQyo1rK#Phasmophobia — Phasmophobia (@KineticGame) September 18, 2021 The Anniversary Update patch notes can be found on the game’s Steam page and come with noticeable and small-scale tweaks alike. For instance, a journal overhaul means that keeping track of environmental clues and poltergeist tendencies is more accessible than ever before. You can cross off evidence on the ghost evidence page of the journal. At the same time, a complete redesign makes information more understandable so that you can spend more time getting scared than standing in the middle of an abandoned living room with a book out.  The new single-player mode comes attached with an option to play offline; you won’t be connected to any servers. The loop remains the same – grab a bevy of equipment from the van, venture into a spooky locale, jot down any suspicious activities while avoiding a one-way ticket to the afterlife, and submit your final verdict on the type of supernatural entity that you’ve encountered. Cooperative play will still be Phasmophobia’s bread and butter, but if you’re raring to jump in even when your buddies aren’t around to watch your back (madness, I say!), then that option is finally available. For more details on the update, click the link above.  Any Phasmophobia fans here? Have you been dying to play solo? Have you already tried out the Anniversary Update? Let us know what you think in the comments!

Click to watch embedded media Publisher: Ember Lab Developer: Ember Lab Release: September 21, 2021 Rating: Everyone 10+ Reviewed on: PlayStation 5 Also on: PlayStation 4, PC From the moment Kena’s staff ignites with magnificent magic, the world around her sizzles with excitement, creating an enchanting atmosphere for one of the best adventure games I’ve played in recent memory. Kena: Bridge of Spirits is Ember Lab’s debut game, but it hits with the sophistication and beauty you’d expect from a studio that’s been doing this for decades. With environmental puzzles around almost every bend and secrets waiting for those who can solve them, Bridge of Spirits has a strong heart for adventuring. That heart constantly pounds as new areas are discovered, each beat pulling you in different directions to unearth hidden treasures and items that will help rejuvenate a fallen society. Kena (pronounced “Kay-nuh”) is an inexperienced Spirit Guide who must locate wayward souls that are reluctant to leave this mortal coil. Before sending them on their way, she needs to learn about their lives, and ultimately what happened to them. By exploring the land, their pasts are unearthed, and you learn of their triumphs and hardships through brief flashbacks that make the story sing in intriguing ways and help flesh out its key players. Many of these revelations play out within beautifully animated story sequences that swell with emotion and are amplified by an outstanding soundtrack featuring traditional Balinese music. I found myself humming along to the excellently composed low-key melodies, some sung by Ayu Larassanti, the same actress that brings Kena’s voice to life. How cool is that? The serenity of the experience extends to the world. Be prepared to enter photo mode numerous times during your playthrough. Bridge of Spirits is as beautiful as games come, and that beauty encourages exploration – you’ll want to see all of this fantasy kingdom. Ember Lab’s artists make every little detail pop, whether within the sprawling forest Kena journeys through or the little creatures she meets along the way. These adorable tiny blobs are called Rot and are one of the game’s most sought-after collectibles. They play a massive role in both the gameplay and story, but more importantly, they wear cute hats (another item to track down). You don’t know what the Rot are or why they are helping Kena, but you keep gathering them (up to 100 in total) and hope they continue to be your allies as the story unfurls. As Kena bounds through the sun-soaked forest, she’ll come across areas of corruption littered with thorns, muck, and gray vines leading up a red, pulsating blob called a Tangled Heart. When Kena enters these locations, enemies materialize from red mist and combat ensues. Throughout the entire game, Kena only uses her staff to take down these foes, but this simple weapon is about as adaptable as they come. Kena’s movements are swift, and the staff’s melee strikes land with a satisfying wallop. She can evasive roll, block, and perform parry’s to stun her adversaries. These battle sequences hum with intensity, are loads of fun, and expand with complexity when Kena learns to use the staff in new ways. Some of the staff’s augmentations unlock through purchase, but the most significant additions are earned by making progress in the story. Along the way, Kena learns how to turn her staff into a bow and channel its powerful energy to create bombs. Tagging an enemy with a carefully placed bomb is good fun, but the bow is the true star of combat. It feels incredible and is designed with pinpoint precision in mind. When Kena leaps into the air and pulls back the bowstring, time slows, allowing for an arrow to hit the exact spot you want – whether it’s a small weak zone on an enemy's chest or a hanging lantern below a galloping behemoth. Landing these shots is an empowering experience, and you are tasked to do it constantly. It's such a satisfying gameplay hook. Click image thumbnails to view larger version                                                                                                               The Rot, those adorable companions I mentioned earlier, also play a significant role in combat. They can heal Kena, stun enemies, and are game-changers against bosses. These conflicts turn the difficulty to 11 and demand near perfection in your timing and strategies. Don’t be surprised if these bosses throw you around like a ragdoll, and you die often. The leap in difficulty is surprising and is one of the areas where the game struggles a bit. The difficulty setting is switchable at any point, but with unsatisfying results – moving from blistering intensity to cakewalk. Bridge of Spirits also leans a little too heavily on the same puzzle mechanics, especially in the late game where almost every vertical movement pushes Kena to throw a bomb and detonate it with an arrow to create a path forward. While I appreciate how clever the puzzles are and how fluid the platforming is, using the same motions gets tiring and saps some of the fun out of the exploration. Click here to watch embedded media Ember Lab was upfront about Kena’s length going into release, saying it could be completed in a weekend. Given how much I adore this experience, I wish it would last longer, but the shorter footprint works well, especially for seeing all the world has to offer. The final act is the only aspect that feels rushed. The story wraps up nicely (in ways I didn’t expect), but a few of the big reveals and conflicts come and go in a flash and aren’t given the same level of care as other moments in the game. Bridge of Spirits stumbles a little in spots, yet confidently sprints into the heart of the adventure, rewarding the player with secrets galore and visuals that are almost always worth admiring. If you love Zelda-like games or are just looking for an experience that will make you smile every step of the way, you can’t go wrong with Kena: Bridge of Spirits. Score: 9 Summary: Ember Lab's debut game is a hit that you don't want to miss. Concept: A rewarding adventure that encourages exploration and hits hard with combat and puzzles Graphics: A beautiful journey that catches your eye with its stylistic characters, lush forest, and jaw-dropping next-gen lighting. Little touches like seeing the Rot find places to relax add a playfulness to the already impressive visuals Sound: Composer Jason Gallaty and the ensemble group Gamelan Çudamani made a score that hums from start to finish. The voice acting and adorable Rot mumbles are also fantastic Playability: Combat and environmental puzzles deliver plenty of thrills, but repetition is a problem in the final act Entertainment: The world is fun to explore, and your time is rewarded with secrets galore and hats for your little Rot followers Replay: Moderate Click to Purchase

With the confirmation of Jackbox Party Pack 8’s release date, we decided to take a fond look back at some of our favorite games from previous entries. However, we all know such a list would rightfully devolve into a Quiplash/Drawful/Trivia Murder Party lovefest, so we’re focusing on the best games to only appear once. Besides highlighting some fun one-hit wonders, maybe this list will entice the Jackbox team to revisit them in future installments. If any of these entries ever gets a “2” next to them, you know who to thank. Instead of ranking these games from best to least best, we're arranging them in numerical order of the Pack they appeared in. Tee K.O. Jackbox Party Pack 3 Creating crude doodles always garners a laugh but Tee K.O. ups the ante by making players pair their terrible art with equally humorous phrases. Players write slogans and draw pictures that are then shuffled and distributed for everyone to pair together on a t-shirt as they see fit. Two shirt designs are pitted against each other and players vote on the best/funniest. In a way, Tee K.O. blends the artistic creativity (or lack thereof) of Drawful with the fill-in-the-blank comedy of Quiplash; pairing a pre-school caliber portrait of Sonic the Hedgehog with the phrase “Sex Symbol” can have parties in stitches. Best of all, the game lets you order any created design as a real shirt – as in one you can wear in real life – to immortalize your favorite responses. Mad Verse City Jackbox Party Pack 5 Rap battle insults are hilarious because the lyrics are either genuinely witty or so corny that they’re fun to laugh at. Mad Verse City is both by letting players dunk on each other under the guise of robot MCs. Players craft raps via a combination of choosing keywords, with the game generating lines around them, and writing wholly original sentences. Ideally, you want the last word in each to rhyme but being hilarious is more important than being the second coming of Rakim. Hearing an emotionless text-to-speech voice vocalize (and sometimes mispronounce) your absurd freestyle only makes it funnier. Since the game tells you who you’re facing, it’s probably best to play with good sports or friends whose relationships you consider bulletproof. As mean-spirited as it sounds, the game is at its funniest when raps go for the jugular via goofy personal insults. Patently Stupid Jackbox Party Pack 5 Do you have a great idea for an invention? Patently Stupid lets you share your “brilliant” ideas with your friends. Players take turns creating a unique problem that everyone else has to solve. You then draw an invention meant to address these dilemmas, including naming it and giving it a tagline. Your ridiculous concoction is probably funny enough to garner some laughs, but the fact that you have to present and justify your dumb invention to the group Steve Jobs-style can send the game over the edge in the best way. If that’s asking too much, the game can do it for you via a nifty presentation tool. Split The Room Jackbox Party Pack 5 In hindsight, Party Pack 5 is quite a package. Split the Room is an interesting game in that it tasks you with filling the blank of a hypothetical “would you rather” style question to garner the most divisive response possible. Here’s an example: “You’re the President of Pizza and learn that pepperoni will cause _____ to 5% people who eat it. Do you ban pepperoni as a topping forever?” Whatever word you fill that blank with, you want it to “split the room” as evenly as you can. Thus, Split the Room is a much more cerebral game, but that’s what makes it satisfying. It’s also a creative way of learning how your party guests like to think while allowing for plenty of laughs depending on how ludicrous players get with their responses.  Talking Points Jackbox Party Pack 7 Who says PowerPoint presentations can’t be fun? Talking Points divides players into teams of two, with one person in charge of improvising a speech based on slides chosen by their partner. The kick is that the slides are strange, hilariously out-of-context stock photos, but the challenge is to stay on topic while incorporating whatever weird thing pops on screen in a way that makes sense. The audience then votes on how engaging your speech was, with custom-made awards doled out at the end. Talking Points can lead to awkward trainwrecks, but that’s what makes it shine, so does watching someone smoothly think on their feet and deliver a killer presentation. That said, the game isn’t for everyone. Like Patently Stupid, it requires improvising a speech in front of an audience which can be nerve-wracking for some, even if it’s a joke. But when Talking Points lands, it’s a riot. Which Jackbox game is your favorite? Share your picks in the comments!