What We Played – Gex Trilogy, Maestro & Ninja Blade

The week has built itself into another UK heatwave, and while I know some people will be loving all the sun, I’m honestly a little bit over all the heatwaves we’ve had this summer. I wouldn’t mind getting back to a bit of slightly drizzly misery for a few weeks. Either way, we’ve been able to stay out of the weather and play plenty of games.

Since previewing the game a little while ago, I’ve been continuing my ground-slapping adventure in Donkey Kong Bananza, which you’ll hear all about when the review embargo lifts before launch next week. I’ve also joined Miguel for some tactical SWAT action in Ready or Not… which you’ll also hear about when embargo lifts next week.

So let’s move on rather swiftly from all that secretive stuff and pay a visit to Steve’s den of gaming. He’s been playing FromSoftware classic Ninja Blade, initially starting with a German edition of the game before finding the German text unworkable and switching to an English version. “It’s not a good game,” he says, “but by God its one of the most video gamey games to ever game. You haven’t lived until you’ve played a FromSoft game in which a ninja called Ken pulls off a sick kick flip on a missile in mid air.”

He also played through all the Gex Trilogy games, dabbled with ReCore to meet his Xbox Rewards box-ticking, and started Space Marine 2 with his co-op buddies, which is “satisfyingly visceral”.

Jason’s journey into Switch 2 gaming has seen him playing more Mario Kart World and being impressed by the update to Pokémon Violet – “I can’t stress enough that it’s still not a great game, but at least it works now.” That really was one of the most transformative free Switch 2 patches, I agree.

For Aran, he’s been finding Wild Hearts a more relaxed take on the Monster Hunter formula, while Ade has been playing some Eternal Strands, with awesome boss battles wrapped up in by-the-numbers exploration and combat. Oh, and he’s started to review Wuchang: Fallen Feathers which, true to its name, has an awful lot of feathers in it.

Jim game Blue Prince a try, but “while I like the concept there’s a bit too much cerebral busywork going on. My current casual gaming habits don’t exactly dovetail with roguelike puzzlers that require a healthy attention span and copious notetaking.”

Laura has been enjoying Islanders: New Shores, which is a city-builder that’s brought some zen state relaxation to her life. “I’ve never reached the top of a gaming leaderboard before so I felt I’d achieved a (slightly sad) life-goal by becoming no.1 on the Islanders: New Shores worldwide leaderboard. It only lasted so long as I was competing with the small number of other pre-release gamers, but I’ll take it!”

Dom has had a bundle of very different games on the go, with the rhythm-action warfare of Patapon 1+2 Replay getting that game’s chanting lodged in his game once more, and Ra Ra Boom having some real beat ’em up potential.

And we’ll wrap things up with Gamoc, who played Chains of Freedom and then waves his arms around for Maestro’s review. He’s also played “an ungodly amount of Terraria with three mods that are so big I needed a fourth mod to get them to work together. And then twenty more mods. Then two more mods to improve storage and expand my inventory because there’s so much loot. It’s fantastic.”

Now then, what have you played this past week?