New Games

Last week brought a bunch of new games and demos. Pragmata was my favorite and will be a day one purchase for me.

SONY DSC-RX100M7A · 9mm · ƒ/2.8 · 1/30s

The Pragmata Sketchbook Demo was great. I love the mix of exploration, combat and light puzzle mechanics. It’s a blend of Dead Space, The Surge and Resident Evil. I played it through cloud streaming and Remote Play on the PS Portal, worked well.

Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! was fun, the demo has one open-world level and it’s from the developers that did Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. Runs well on Steam Deck.

REPLACED was fun too. Jasper describes it as a mix of Inside, Half-Life and Prince of Persia, that’s pretty accurate. The game crashed on the Steam Deck before I could finish it but I can see myself picking it up at release.

God of War: Sons of Sparta I’m going to refund. It doesn’t feel right, something I can’t pinpoint makes it feel off for me. This should have been a PC handheld / Steam Deck game and gone through Early Access with more end-user testing incorporated.

Mecha Force I didn’t like. It feels unfinished and incoherent.

Blizzard released a Diablo 2 expansion after 25 years: Reign of the Warlock, with a new class, the Warlock - a hybrid of Sorceress and Necromancer, my two most-disliked classes in ARPGs.