What we've been playing - horrible villages, outlaws, and parties
A few of the things that have us hooked this week.
24th January
Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing this week. This week, Bertie finally remembers to include Jim's piece about his Christmas game; Victoria's household gets unexpectedly tense while playing a game billed as a family game; and Tom hides under the bed. And I think he's still hiding under the bed now.
What have you been playing?
Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.
Star Wars Outlaws, PC
Star Wars Outlaws was my Christmas game, a warm stack of 8/10 Ubisofty profiteroles that I can pop in my gob of an evening for a momentary rest from the chaos that is the holiday season with a toddler, and their toddler cousins, and their three grown up siblings who require gifts a degree more bankrupting than the sort of giant wooden jigsaw guff you can fob a baby off with.
Perhaps I am the baby to Outlaws' Stacking Ring Puzzle. Perhaps I am absolutely fine with the fact that it is highly derivative, a bit basic, and not especially challenging. What it is, though, is a gorgeous buffet of Star Wars stuff, which treats a certain familiar galaxy like Assassin's Creed treats historical locations: with the appropriate reverence, and with enough authenticity and attention to key details that you feel like a tourist visiting a place you've seen in pictures. And seeing it from different angles, beyond the framing of those images, adding new context and breathing new life into something that has existed forever.
I feel like that's what a Star Wars game should do, above all else.
-Jim
Super Mario Party Jamboree, Switch
Picture the scene: it's Sunday afternoon and you and your family have just come home from a frosty dog walk. You put on the kettle and get cosy. 'This is nice,' you think to yourself as you sink into an armchair. 'How can this afternoon get any better?'
Your son has a suggestion: let's play something together, he says. Of course! A family game. How wonderfully harmonious this afternoon is turning out to be. We are the Waltons.
But fast-forward 25 minutes and things have changed. Battlecries are heard as your now feral family bellows like a herd of angry mastodons. Allegations are thrown and your arms are pinned by your side as you try to take a turn. You realise - somewhat suddenly - how sneaky your innocent-eyed children have become. Who raised such creatures?! You throw an accusatory look in your partner's direction; it wasn't you. Well, this was my afternoon playing Super Mario Party Jamoree.
Things began pleasantly enough. We chuckled as Daddy rolled a one on his first go; my daughter enjoyed looking through the wares in Koopa's shop; and my son smiled as he rang the bell to make Wiggler move around the map. But as soon as the first star was won, the red mist descended. Joy-Cons were wielded with increased ferocity as we tried to claim flags scattered across a giant sphere, or to photograph the precise moment between two Toads on a bench. Duelling gloves were thrown. Piranha Plants attacked. Allies were won and lost. It was chaos.
In the end, my son took the Mario Party crown, thanks to a mixture of Boo-assisted thievery and sheer dumb luck. Can you believe he was awarded two sympathy stars at the end even though he was already in the lead? Two! I needed those stars, not him. I was outraged. But my, if it wasn't a hoot.
-Victoria
Resident Evil Village, PS5 Pro
I read all the comments and I saw some people talking about how I'd come to regret my words when I got to House Beneviento. Well, I'm there now, and, OK... I'll never look at slugs the same way again. To say any more would be a big spoiler of a really cool sequence, but in short I did have to put the controller down for a bit while my character hid under a bed - which we all know is the scariest place anyone can choose to hide.
I put my PS5 Pro into rest mode so technically Ethan is in a state of suspended reality at the moment, motionless under the bed. But is he aware? As I write this, Ethan has been in this state for 16 hours. Does he know what's going on? Is he thinking, 'What have I done? What have we all done?' How many Ethans have been condemned to this ground-level purgatory?
Don't worry, Ethan, I'm coming to save you. I absolutely, definitely, won't get distracted by another new game and come back to you in six months. No chance.
-Tom O