If Remakes Are The Safest Bet, Why Close The Studio That Does Great Remakes? - Beyond 935

This week we dive into why we're loving the newest Star Wars games, Galactic Racer and Zero Company. Why the food looks so good in Ace Combat 8, why taking work meetings while driving is probbaly a terrible idea, the resident evil books, and why crashing a dune buggy while playing Ghost Recon might have disasterious environmental side effects. But before all of that, Max and Brian share an important update on the future of the show and look back on some of their favorite memories covering PlayStation at IGN. Until next time, Beyond!

We've played Wolverine and we have a lot to say. From its combat and much more, it's just not quite what we were hoping for after the sky-high bar set by the three excellent Spider-Man games that came before it. We go into detail on our thoughts of the game and what we loved and weren't too hot on. Then after that we get into why Blood Dungeon is becoming a problem in the best way possible. Beyond!

Gamescom is rapidly approaching and this week, we run down a handful of games we’re looking forward to seeing more of there: returning faves like The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past DLC, Alien Isolation 2, Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, and Mega Man Dual Override, plus No Law, the new FPS from The Ascent’s developers, and of course, some weird or ambitious-looking indies caught our eye including Bad Magpie, Skinface, and Blackwood. In other news, Rockstar’s move to have GTA 6’s gameplay reveal be a Netflix exclusive for 6 hours isn’t that big a deal (in the metaphorical sense, it was definitely a BIG DEAL literally) but we can’t help but wonder how that kind of a marketing move would be received if any other publisher or developer did the same thing. Kingdom Hearts 4 got a bunch of new gameplay shown off at D23, and as two people who don’t particularly like Kingdom Hearts, we don’t have much to say, but we try our best to unpack it. Mostly, it’s just funny that Tetsuya Nomura designed a character with normal sized shoes and a reasonable number of belts. Oh, and we’ve been playing silly video games like Pro Jank Footy, the bonkers Australian–rules football roguelike, and PowerWash Simulator 2’s new Star Wars pack. We also reveal the winner of last weeks poll "Which classic Spider-Man game needs a remaster?". You are never going to guess who won. Beyond!

This week, we’re joined our old pal Mitchell Saltzman, who’s the best there is at what he does - and what he does… is play video games with Wolverine in them, apparently. Mitchell breaks down what he learned from several hours of hands-on time with Insomniac’s Wolverine, giving us some details on how the combat feels, stealth sequences, and what we’ll be doing when we’re not fighting, plus whether it feels like the kind of killer app the PS5 has been lacking lately. Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is also out, and Mitchell shares his final thoughts from his 9 out of 10 review, explaining why it’s a winning formula, whether you’re a hardcore competitive player or a casual scrub who wants to watch Deadpool do funny poses from other fighting games. In other news, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 sold 8 million copies when it was recently ported to PS4 and PS5 - can this success pave the way for more games stuck on the PS3 getting re-released for modern consoles? We have a few we’d like to revisit – but hey, at least Metal Gear Solid 4 is finally making its way out of PS3-jail.

Look, it’s a hectic time of year for us, and we’re a little scattered, so this week we’re taking the show on the road and off the beaten path in Big Walk, the new co-op indie puzzle game from House House, the studio behind Untitled Goose Game. It’s an obtuse, meditative social experience that feels somewhere between The Witness, Journey and those “friend slop” games, but a bit less chaotic.