Skip to main content

This week in gaming: Answer the Call of Duty in this new Nemesis DLC pack

week gaming answer call duty new nemesis dlc pack of 2
Image used with permission by copyright holder
The summer dead zone is almost behind us! August is here, which means we’re in the home stretch before a blizzard of holiday releases descends. We start to see some of the bigger players emerge this week, with the arrival of both Sacred 3 and Ultra Street Fighter IV. There’s also a handful of very promising indies to suit a variety of tastes. Here’s what’s new in gaming for the week ending August 8.

Sacred 3

PC/PS3/Xbox 360 (August 5)
Sacred 3 revives a series that’s been absent for going on five years, but with a new publisher (Deep Silver), developer (Keen Games), and gameplay, it’s not the same Sacred you remember. The previous Sacred games, from Ascaron, were relatively deep, stat-heavy RPGs with lots of systems and moving parts. Sacred 3 takes more of a mainstream-friendly approach with its hack & slash gameplay. We haven’t tried the game yet, but reviews so far have not been entirely favorable, particularly among fans of the earlier games.

Sacred 3 2
Image used with permission by copyright holder

For more info on the game, head over to Sacred 3‘s official website.

Ultra Street Fighter IV

PC (August 8)
The arrival of a new Street Fighter variant is always confusing, and Ultra Street Fighter IV doesn’t do anything to break away from that. It’s an add-on pack that introduces five new fighters, some new fighting mechanics and rebalancing, and an “Edition Select” feature that allows players to swap between rules for the different versions of the game. The add-on was actually released earlier in 2014 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but it comes to PC this week as a DLC upgrade.

You can read more about what’s new in Ultra Street Fighter IV on the series’ official website.

Call of Duty: Ghosts – Nemesis DLC

Xbox 360/Xbox One (August 5)
Here comes a whole new set of maps for Call of Duty: Ghosts. The Nemesis DLC pack is the game’s fourth and final add-on offering (a free download for Season Pass owners). There are four maps for the game’s multiplayer mode, including one — called Showtime — that revives the fan-favorite Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare map Shipment as Smash TV-like fighting arena. There’s also the fourth and final chapter in the game’s Extinction mode, which pits players against waves of invading aliens in a story-driven survival challenge.

Call of Duty Ghosts - Nemesis 4
Image used with permission by copyright holder

You can find more detailed descriptions and first looks at each map on the official Call of Duty website.

Metrico

PS Vita (August 5)
Metrico is a sharp-looking puzzle/platformer from developer Digital Dreams that features an art style inspired by the look of infographics. It’s not a game that is easily described, as level designer Roy van de Mortel admitted in a July 2014 post on PlayStation Blog. The game shows well in trailers though, and we’ve got high hopes for positive marks on our coming review. Maybe this trailer will give you a better sense of how it works.

Not enough? Try checking out the game’s official website for more details.

The Swapper

PS3/PS4/PS Vita (August 5)
The Swapper is old news for PC gamers. It’s a puzzle/platformer that is largely built around the use of a handheld cloning device that allows up to four clones of the main character to be created, all in the name of solving puzzles. Rules that govern how the clones can move around tweak the complexity of the puzzles even further. The PC version of The Swapper won the praise of many critics, and it’ll presumably end up with similar accolades when it launches this week on PlayStation platforms.

The Swapper 2
Image used with permission by copyright holder

For more info on The Swapper, head over to Facepalm Games’ official website.

Road Not Taken

PC/PS4/PS Vita (August 5)
Spry Fox’s Road Not Taken, an interactive interpretation of Robert Frost’s famous poem, is a game of survival and growth. You goal in this puzzle-driven game is to venture through an ever-changing forest as you hunt for children lost in a recent winter snowstorm. In the style of other recent, experimentation-heavy survival games like Don’t Starve, the expectation in Road Not Taken is that you’re failing frequently, but you’re learning from your failures.

You can find more details on Spry Fox’s efforts on the game’s official website. You can also check out our recent preview right here.

Editors' Recommendations

Adam Rosenberg
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…
Call of Duty: Warzone season 4 kicks off next week
call-of-duty-warzone-season-4-begins-this-june

Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops Cold War season 4 begins on June 17 and will come as a free update for all players. A new trailer for the game was shown at Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest Kickoff Live presentation on Thursday.

Season Four Gameplay Trailer | Call of Duty®: Black Ops Cold War & Warzone™

Read more
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War/Warzone Season 3 brings new maps and weapons
call-of-duty-black-ops-cold-war-and-warzone-season-3-roadmap-revealed

Activision detailed what to expect from Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War/Warzone Season 3, giving the community a road map featuring plans for a hefty amount of content. The next season begins on April 22, 2021.

Most notably, Cold War players will get new multiplayer maps and modes, along with additional Zombies offerings, while Warzone is getting a map update and new weapons.

Read more
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble is as fun to watch as it is to play
Monkeys race one another in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble.

I couldn’t tell you what the last Super Monkey Ball game I played was, but I can still talk your ear off about the series. That’s thanks to the speedrunning community that has formed around the franchise, making it into the most exciting game to watch when it's played at a high level. After spending close to a decade watching old games turned inside and out, I’m ready to finally dig into a new entry for myself.

Thankfully, I’m getting that chance on June 25 when Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble launches on Nintendo Switch. The latest entry in Sega’s precise platforming series comes loaded with content, from an adventure mode with 200 stages to multiple 16-player multiplayer modes. That’s all exciting, but my attention was on one question when I sat down to demo all of that last week: How fun will it be to watch players master it?

Read more