What We Played – Revenge of the Savage Planet, Sea of Stars & Blades of Fire

What a hectic week this has been at TSA Towers! There’s been three separate events on the go, and I’ve travelled to Krakow to take part in Digital Dragons, a celebration of the Polish games industry. While I was there, I played an absolute bucketload of stuff – seriously, the games were sloshing out of my pail. I’ve already started to tell you about them, and they include Vale’s Echo, War Mechanic and XYZ – Tear Them Down, all of which showcased the talent nestling in Poland’s borders. Alongside that, I’ve finished off playing the excellent Roadcraft, and I’m ready for more vehicular action with F1 25 this weekend.

From the team, we’ll start the week with Aran, who played and rather enjoyed Blades of Fire, where he got to play as himself, Aran de Lira. It loosely falls into that Soulslike bracket, but the action RPG combat is mixed together with a fun weapon forging system where you do some pretty literal blacksmithing, and there’s a really nice, supportive relationship between the game’s two leads. Definitely check out the demo if you’re curious about it.

Tuffcub has played something that isn’t Destiny 2 this week, hopping onto a very slow Eurostar to Paris to go hands on with RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business and Hell Is Us… and that’s all he’s allowed to say about that right now, but keep your eyes peeled if you enjoy cyborg cops and mysterious Soulslikes.

Gamoc has continued playing Oblivion and Split Fiction this week, but his strong recommendations led to Ade playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. “From the first few hours onwards I’ve been totally hooked, it’s an absolutely brilliant game. And that ending to chapter 1… Oh, wow!” He was also enticed to play Revenge of the Savage Planet from Dom’s review, saying, “it’s a terrifically fun and delightfully silly game, and the very good local co-op option is helping to fill the Split Fiction shaped hole in our lives.”

Steve is still taking his time with Doom: The Dark Ages, doing just one level each day. He did manage to finally mop up the 100% in Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, “which is a huge relief after it became a chore by the end.” The weekend ahead has him looking forward to diving into a ton of indie games from the Endix indie game convention.

Also still on the Doom train is Miguel, who played some of that and a bit more of Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. He’s also been getting back into Synduality: Echoes of Ada with Season 2 starting today, a bit of the cutesy co-op bunny farming game Cinnabun, and a random replay of Metal Gear Solid V.

Jim played his very first Civilization game with… Civ 6, because that one’s much cheaper than Civ 7 right now. “I can definitely see why Civ has a reputation as a “just one more turn” kind of game though, as with the Total War series, I find that engaging in the diplomacy system is boring and yields little benefit compared to being a brutal conqueror.”

And after that cheerful note, Tef rounds out this week having played a good chunk of Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker, the free DLC for the rather great RPG. And he’s also been hands on with a trio of Sega’s upcoming Switch 2 games, with a solid port of Yakuza 0 getting a barmy multiplayer mode, the upcoming Raidou remake, and then a frankly very odd Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 re-release where the main addition is some wonky mouse controls. So… that’s nice?

Anyway, what have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments below.