Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

This week in gaming: Fan favorites come in all shapes and sizes

Adam Rosenberg
By

week gaming fan favorites come shapes sizes fifa 15
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Now that we’re a couple weeks removed from Destiny‘s September 9 release, some of the heavy hitters are peeking out at the sunlight. Fans of video games have some choices to make this week, and hard ones if they’re on a budget. We’ve seen some big launches, but this week is just overrun with them. Which will you be going with?

Hyrule Warriors

Wii U (September 26)
The Legend of Zelda meets Dynasty Warriors. We can’t make this stuff up. Hyrule Warriors sees publisher Tecmo Koei sending Warriors series developer Omega Force after Nintendo’s beloved Zelda franchise, and the results are actually pretty damn great.

Recommended Videos

Play as Link, Zelda, Ganondorf, Impa, and an assortment of other fan favorites as you take on armies of creatures inspired by the classic Nintendo series. But it’s still a Warriors game, which means you’re one lone soldier (or two, in local co-op) fighting against thousands upon thousands of easily bested enemies in a light combo-driven brawler-style game.

FIFA 15

PS3/PS4/PS Vita/3DS/Wii/Windows/Xbox 360/Xbox One (September 23)
Whether you refer to it as soccer or football, late September is the time when EA Sports releases its popular annual sports sim to an army of fans. That’s as true this week as it ever is, with FIFA 15 coming to virtually every platform you can think of.

FIFA 15 makes some tweaks to the way the game’s Ultimate Team mode works. There’s also a new iOS app specific to that mode. In addition, the devs at EA Canada made a number of under-the-hood changes geared toward giving each AI-managed player on the pitch more of an emotional investment in the game. Their performance changes throughout a match based on how good and bad play swings their emotions.

Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes

iOS/PS3/PS4/PS Vita/Wii U/Windows/Xbox 360/Xbox One (September 23)
Disney Infinity stepped onto the scene in 2013, thumbing its nose at Activision’s Skylanders as a proper competitor in the small-yet-growing physical toys-meet-video games genre. Beautifully modeled figurines based on popular Disney franchises make nice conversation pieces, but you’re also able to transport them directly into the game using a USB-connected hub.

The second Infinity at last takes advantage of Disney’s access to the Marvel archives. Marvel Super Heroes is a fresh take, injecting an assortment of popular heroes and villains into the game as well as new gameplay systems that take advantage of their unique superpowers.

Gauntlet

Windows/SteamOS (September 23)
We haven’t seen a whole lot of developer Arrowhead’s revival of the 1985 arcade classic Gauntlet, but the little we have seen looks promising. The original Gauntlet was pretty much unopposed when it first came out, helping to establish the dungeon-crawler genre in the wake of PC-only oddities like the ASCII-powered Rogue. 

This new one arrives in a post-Diablo world, and one wonders how Arrowhead might innovate in the wake of the many genre staples that have emerged since the original game first arrived. The game uses a mixture of pre-designed and procedurally-generated levels, it supports four player online co-op, and it’s got much more depth than its ’80s predecessor.

What else is coming:

Slender: The Arrival (PS3/Sept. 23, Xbox 360/Sept. 24) – A horror story born on the Internet is now the subject of a video game. Okay, several video games. But this one is now coming to consoles, compliments of publisher Midnight City. In Slender: The Arrival, you follow a proverbial trail of breadcrumbs as a terrifying figure stalks you in the darkness. Don’t turn around, don’t even look, or the Slenderman will get you.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PC/Sept. 25) – This one has all the earmarks of being a horror game, but it’s more of a mystery adventure. Ethan Carter is a young boy who has disappeared. You play as a detective who received a letter from Carter in which he claims he’s in danger. What led to the vanishing of Ethan Carter? That’s for you to discover.

Fenix Rage (PC/Sept. 24) – Fenix Rage is a gorgeous lo-fi 2D platformer from Green Lava Studios. It looks like it takes a page from the Super Meat Boy and N+ playbooks, then sprinkles in a little bit of the tap-based flotation of Flappy Bird. Just don’t break your controller while you play it.

Flockers (PS4/Sept. 23) – Released for PC on September 19, Flockers comes to PS4 just a few days later. It’s a game from the same folks behind the Worms series, and it’s similarly split between adorable cuteness and relentless violence. It’s a puzzle game in the vein of Lemmings that sees you guide an army of poor, disposable fluffy animals to safety.

Neverending Nightmares (PC/Sept. 26) – A Kickstarter success that was born out of an idea to create a game informed by creator Matt Gilgenbach’s own struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression. The beautiful hand-drawn game sends players off to explore a series of disturbing nightmare scenarios as they attempt again and again to wake up.

Topics
Adam Rosenberg
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…
One of 2023’s best indie games is getting a movie starring LaKeith Stanfield
James descends on an elevator in El Paso, Elsewhere.

El Paso, Elsewhere, one of Digital Trends' favorite indie games of 2023, now has a film adaptation in the works.

Variety reports that LaKeith Stanfield -- an actor known for his work in films like Judas and the Black Messiah, Knives Out, and Haunted Mansion, as well as TV shows like Atlanta -- is going to star in and produce the film. The adaptation is in the works at Di Bonaventure Pictures, the production company behind the Transformers, G.I. Joe, and The Meg film franchises. Little else is known about the film at this time, although we'd presume it will be a fairly direct adaptation of this intense story-driven game.

Read more
Get in on the action: Helldivers 2 for PC is 15% off for a limited time
A soldier in silhouette in Helldivers 2.

If you are a fan of Starship Troopers the movie, you'll really love Helldivers 2. It takes that hyper-militarized world and the excellent satire and completely immerses you in it, providing for a thrilling and absolutely hilarious experience overall. It's also been a massive hit, and it often has well over 100,000 concurrent players at any given moment, even though it's a couple of months past its launch date. As such, if you want to dive into the fun, then you can grab the game for much for 15% off at CDKeys, which brings it down to $34 from $40.

Why you should buy Helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 is a big upgrade on the previous game, taking you to a fully 3D world to bring Managed Democracy to the rest of space. That primarily means that you get to either fight bots or bugs, with some actually great gameplay differences, and Arrowhead, the studio that made the game, even creates major orders that the whole player base is supposed to work towards. As a player, though, you can group up with three more people and dive into the hell of future space combat against alien species. You get tons of weapons and armor to pick from and even orbital stratagems that you can call down from your destroyer spaceship, which are very cool.

Read more
The best Fallout 3 mods
An alpha deathclaw enforcer attacking in Fallout 3.

Right alongside Skyrim, Fallout 3 is one of the most modded games of all time. Bethesda took this series and transformed it into an open-world adventure that had never really been seen up to that point. As much as there was to do in that base experience, there was a limit to what could be done. However, dedicated fans didn't let that end their fun and began modding the game with new features, quality of life improvements, and new content to extend the life of Fallout 3 to the point where you can still play it today and have an amazing time. Now that modders have had well over a decade to work with the game, there are potentially thousands of mods you can try out, but these are the best ones we've found.
FWE - FO3 Wanderers Edition

Let's kick things off with a bang and talk about the FWE - FO3 Wanderers Edition mod. Calling this a single mod is kind of a misnomer since it actually integrates over 50 other mods into one massive package. The purpose is to rework the balance and depth of the game to be more fair and give players more opportunities to role-play. This mod does make the game intentionally harder than the base version. Combat is faster and more determined by player skilll. Also, which perks and skills you have make a bigger difference. Injuries need to be treated more carefully, over 40 new weapons and pieces of armor have been added, AI has been enhanced, and dozens of other changes were implemented to make the game more immersive. It's the simplest way to give another playthrough some spice.
Fellout

Read more