Mortal Kombat X reigns supreme this week, bringing the iconic fighting game series’ bone-crunching, gut-spilling action to the latest generation of consoles for its best entry in years. Gamers with a more indie sensibility, but looking for no less of a challenge, have Titan Souls, a pixelated lovechild of Shadow of the Colossus and Dark Souls that delivers on every bit of the promise from invoking those two gaming shibboleths.
What will you be playing this week?
Mortal Kombat X
PS4/Windows/XB1 (April 14)
NetherRealm Studios set a new high bar for over-the-top gruesome action with this latest entry in the venerable fighter franchise. Series regulars like Sub-Zero and Baraka return with favorite moves and a few new surprises, fighting alongside a new generation of kombatants like Cassie Cage.
Beyond just nailing the essentials of masterful evisceration, Mortal Kombat X also introduces new elements to freshen things up for longtime fans, such as new challenge modes, multiple fighting styles for every character, and a connected, faction-based social metagame.
Titan Souls
PS4/Vita/Windows (April 14)
“A pixelated Shadow of the Colossus meets Dark Souls” is a description that will get many gamers salivating, and Titan Souls really delivers on that promise. Explore a mysterious environment and battle more than 20 uniquely challenging bosses in this elegant, focused, and puzzle-like adventure.
The game started its life as a Ludum Dare challenge around the theme “you only get one.” In this case that means you are only armed with a bow and single arrow, which you must retrieve between shots. Each boss requires a single shot to kill, but like a good Souls game, these unique challenges will require a lot of analysis, trial, and error to get the strategy and timing just right.
Available at: Steam
Grand Theft Auto V
Windows (April 14)
Long-anticipated, this definitive version of Rockstar’s 2013 opus finally brings all of its open-world shenanigans to PC gamers, loaded with all of the extra features and content that have come out in the intervening years. That includes the cooperative heists, just recently added to the game’s online component, and the first-person perspective gameplay mode, a series first.
Allowing for the higher ceiling of PC processing power, this iteration features a wide array of visual options and settings to show off your hardware, including support for 4K monitors running at 60 frames per second.
Goat Simulator
XB1 (April 17)
Following the growing success of prosaic simulator games like Euro Truck Simulator, Farming Simulator, and City Bus Simulator, Coffee Stain studios created this joyously strange tribute to how broken, strange, and pointless video games can be. You are a goat exploring an open world and racking up points for destroying everything and everyone around you, as goats are wont to do.
First released for Windows in 2014, it was subsequently expanded with the free Goat MMO Simulator DLC, giving the ragdoll sandbox insanity a new frame that parodies the tropes of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games.
