Bursting out the gate is Capcom’s remastered wonder, Resident Evil. Re-touched visuals with support for optional widescreen, as well as new controls (also optional) let you experience RE differently, or traditionally. The choice is all yours. Citizens of Earth is a brand new RPG tasking you to, you guessed it, save the day as the world’s Vice President. Go around town and recruit a myriad of townsfolk with unique skills to complete your mission. You’ll also find more new great titles this week, including Saints Row IV Re-Elected on PS4, tactical card game Ironclad Tactics, Hatsune Miku add-on content and more. And before I go, do check out all new deals featuring games from 2K Games, a variety of neat indie titles and The Crew as deal of the week. Citizens of Earth – 10% off, ends 28th Jan Ironclad – 20% off, ends 28th Jan Resident Evil (Cross-Buy until 3rd February) Saints Row IV: Re-Elected (out 23rd January) Saints Row: Gat out of Hell
Saints Row IV: Re-Elected & Gat out of Hell (out 23rd January) Not available in Australia Best of Arcade Games Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Free Trial Resident Evil (Cross-Buy until Feb 3rd) Saints Row: Gat out of Hell (out 23rd January) Star Wars+: Racer Revenge (PS2) Not available in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine Appli Archives IDAC Escape Game Pack 2 Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F 2nd The Crew – Was £54.99/€69.99/$99.95, now £29.99/€49.99/$69.95 The Crew Gold Edition – Was £69.99/€94.99/$129.95, now £44.99/€64.99/$92.95 Platinum Crew Credit Pack – Was £39.99/€49.99/$75.95, now £32.99/€39.99/$59.95 I have a whole new appreciation for the art of game design after watching Rodney Thompson and Mike Selinker inspect and construct Thornwatch. I knew I had a cool idea and some genuinely new mechanics but I had hit a wall.
Rodney came in and looked at what I had done and saw all the little problems, but more importantly he saw what I wanted the game to do. He cut out old rules that only hurt that game and built new rules to support the Thornwatch I wanted. When Rodney isn't working at Bungie or… You'll be playing Horizon: Zero Dawn soon enough here, but since you need to manufacture practically every shot you fire from your weapons, it might be worth keeping an eye on what you're putting out. Sony's had fairly strenuous limitations on streaming the product, much more strenuous than you might think for a game whose reviews came out a week ago and are all incredible. I asked them, actually, because I wanted to stream it last Wednesday with Mr. Gribbz. The Banner Saga 3 Promotion ThingyI backed Banner Saga hard, like, so hard that I got to write a Godstone for the sequel and create an item and stuff. I was asked to help with a promotion for The Banner Saga 3, and I know the second one was a rough ride for the studio so I said yes several times in rapid succession.
They said that I could make three to five items for Banner Saga 3, but if I could make five items instead of three, why wouldn't I do that? So let's go with five. Also: Twitch Prime is setting up a… Horizon: Zero Dawn comes out on the 28th here in the States, and March 1st in Europe. My feeling is that you should buy it. The introduction has a few very interesting moments, and my daughter Ronia was there for all of them; when the game begins, there are many games it could be. I like the one that it chooses, but they take their time to let things breathe in this unformed space. They allow the center to bake through. Horizon is clung-to by incredibly strange ideas; I have never seen a Western quite like “Slow West.” From Michael Fassbender’s opening snarls of dialogue, there’s a touch of romance and magic to the film that gives it a defining whimsy, even in its darkest moments. This is not the wild west of John Wayne, but that of Jay Cavendish, “Slow West’s” charming but frightfully naïve hero played by a lanky and enchanting Kodi Smit-McPhee.
The feature-length debut of writer-director John Maclean, “Slow West” follows 16-year-old Jay on his romantic quest to reunite with his ladylove (Caren Pistorius), who fled their Scottish homeland for a new start in America. Astride a beautiful horse weighed down by luxury items like changes of clothes and a full porcelain tea set, Jay rides ever west, “a jackrabbit in a den of wolves” blithely unaware of the dangers that lurk around him. One such danger is instantly embodied by an absinthe-swigging brute named Payne (Ben Mendelsohn, reveling in the Western oeuvre). Luckily, Jay first crosses paths with Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender in full-on smolder mode), a hardened bounty hunter who offers to play bodyguard for a hefty fee. Together Silas and Jay make for a mesmerizing Odd Couple. One is rugged and jaded, the other gentle and idealistic. At first, Fassbender’s Alpha Male rejects all attempts at camaraderie or conversation that young Cavendish dares to offer.
But before long, Jay’s wide-eyed wonder at the world around him becomes infectious, rekindling a long lost sense of hope and purpose in Fassbender’s lonely outlaw. The visuals of “Slow West” are similarly driven by Jay’s rose-colored worldview. Rather than the desolate vistas of Monument Valley, the wild west of this young lover is alive with color, flush with yellow fields of grain, peppered with purple flower patches, striped with white trees, and topped with sheets upon sheets of sparkling stars. It’s radiant and gorgeous, true to its Western roots. The cinematography from Robbie Ryan is not only captivating, but also is imbrued with humor, an element laced throughout “Slow West.” Early on, it seems the wry sort, subtle and sophisticated. But as Jay and Silas embrace their evolving buddy comedy, things get silly — and in the best possible way. Slapstick is folded in with a dark streak of comedy that hits its finest moment in the third act with an idiom turned action that had this critic positively howling.
But part of what makes the humor in the film so rich and rewarding is that its stars never lean into the jokes. “Slow West” is full of fine performances. Fassbender and Smit-McPhee’s chemistry crackles from their first introduction. The doe-eyed ingendude makes the picture perfect babe in the woods, while Fassbender nestles deep into the sultry sex appeal of his rogue, then finds new colors in his regrets and fragile hope. When Mendelsohn enters the mix, threat and adrenaline come with him, along with a bad guy so damn charismatic it’s criminal. All this builds beautifully to a finish that is dizzying in its impact; an action spectacle that is in turns thrilling, funny, heartbreaking and surprising. It’s the kind of sequence that should have studios taking notice and calling Maclean in for meetings about helming summer blockbusters. This Scottish first-timer shows remarkable skill and talent here, creating a pastiche that is both respectful to the long history of Westerns and determinedly modern, unafraid of taking the genre in new directions.