This week’s new gaming releases offers up head-scratching puzzles, tense mysteries, and explosive thrills. The line between portable and living room games is also thinner than ever, with new titles like Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars and OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood all available both for consoles and handhelds, catering to a wide range of gamers. Like last week, some of this week’s new games also hearken back to the 1990s, with Mario vs. Donkey Kong calling back to the classic Lemmings.
What will you be playing?
Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars
3DS/Wii U (March 5)
Guide an army of wind-up toy Marios safely to the exit of each level. Like lemmings of old, the toy characters are helpless to navigate on their own, walking in a straight line until obstacles dictates otherwise. Using the Wii U or 3DS touch screen you can draw lines between fixed points, creating platforms or walls to nudge the automata through the level to safety.
This is Nintendo’s first cross-buy title, meaning that purchasing the game on either Wii U or 3DS will get you a download code for the other platform. Players can also create and share levels. Tip someone with stars you’ve earned if you like their level, which they can then use to purchase components for designing more creative levels.
Resident Evil Revelations 2: Episode 2
PS3/PS4/Vita/Windows/X360/XB1 (March 4)
Taking the chapter structure of the previous Revelations and spreading it out over a series of weeks, the classic survival horror of Resident Evil is now an episodic experience, encouraging fans to discuss each chapter’s events while waiting for the next.
The mysteries run deeper in episode 2, as Claire, Moira, Barry, and Natalia must now reckon with this strange and dangerous island on which they find themselves trapped.
OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood
PS4/Vita (March 3)
Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Canabalt had a baby, and it’s the 2D skater OlliOlli. Skate, grind, and jump your way through a series of fantastical levels while trying to rack up the highest score from tricks. This sequel adds larger, more complex levels, local multiplayer, and a wider range of tricks for you to pull off.
Although this entry is a PlayStation exclusive for the time being, the original OlliOlli will be coming to 3DS, Wii U, and Xbox One at some point in the next few months with Curve Digital developing the ports.
ScreamRide
X360/XB1 (March 3)
Elite: Dangerous developer Frontier Developments follows up with a very different, but no less compelling game with this spiritual successor to RollerCoaster Tycoon. Build massive, Rube Goldbergian amusement park rides from the ground up, solving engineering problems with a robust physics engine.
The real fun begins, though, when you want to bring those creations crashing down. Set that physics engine loose with rampant destruction, earning points for the amount of chaos and terror you can cause by creating cataclysmic structural failure.
What else is coming:
- Helldivers (PS3, PS4, Vita/Mar. 3) — Magicka creator Arrowhead Games has created this top-down, twin stick co-op shooter, in which players must complete a series of objectives throughout a procedurally-generated open world.
- White Night (Linux, Mac, PS4, Win, XB1/Mar. 3) — Set in the 1930s, this is a survival horror mystery with plenty of puzzles and a stark, black and white aesthetic.
- Shiftlings (PS4, Win, XB1/Mar. 3) — Play solo or co-op in this colorful platformer about two dim-witted alien janitors on a quest to clean up the galaxy.
