Seven years is a long time to wait after a cliffhanger ending, but as Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 ably proves, it takes a good long time to make a game, these days. Warhorse Studios found great success with the first game, selling millions of copies to allow them to grow both in their ambitions and as a studio. Picking up right where the last game ended, the adventure that awaits Sir Hans and Henry is bigger, more deadly, and will take you from the countryside and into the big city.

Spending several hours with the game, we got to experience the opening region and the events that kick this new narrative arc into gear, before jumping ahead to the big city and some of the politicking and possibilities that this region provides. There’s a pretty stark contrast between the two, most notably in terms of the environment that you’re exploring, but also in terms of pacing.

Dubbed ‘Bohemian Paradise’, the opening area is full of lush greenery and small villages surrounding the hilltop Trosky Castle, but we had only a glimpse of this amidst the narrative upheaval that greets Henry and his lord Sir Hans. They have been entrusted with delivering a message of peace to Lord Bergow, though as they get close, they’re greeted with suspicion and hostility from guards on patrol. There’s bandits in the area and they’re immediately suspicious of you, not least because of the respective allegiances in the war between King Wenceslas and the upstart King Sigismund.

That initial interaction starts to define who your version of Henry is. This is a fresh start from the first game, and Warhorse Studios describe it as a new arc – KCD was Henry becoming a man, while KCD 2 will be him becoming a warrior, but still seeking revenge for the murder of his parents, like he’s starring in a Shenmue game. Seeking to back Sir Hans up and express the honourable nature of our mission, I put my foot in it while trying to navigate the conversation with the guard’s captain, until Sir Hans steps back in and resolves the issue – of course, I doubt you can really start a fight at this point, but it lets you emphasise whether Henry will be a smooth-talking envoy or a strong, battling soldier that will fight to resolve issues, rather than talk too much.

You never make it to the castle, though, those aforementioned bandits ambushing your group and sending Sir Hans and Henry fleeing through the woods with just a pair of britches to hide their modesty. Thankfully the old lady who eventually takes them in, all battered, bruised and bleeding, doesn’t mind their lack of clothing, but once you actually reach Trosky, reality bites hard at Sir Hans, the brattier side to his summery character driving a wedge between the two. Also, you’ve got to go and find your dog, who went missing after the ambush.

It’s a compelling opening hour or so, giving a rather linear introduction to this game, providing you with some fighting practice, a bit of stealth, and revisiting a few of the key plot points via flashbacks, so you can enjoy this and understand Henry’s origins without having played the first game. However, it’s not a true representation of the more than 80 hours that will follow. That will be much more open and free for you to explore as you see fit, with gameplay and quest design that builds upon the style of the original. It’s when we leap ahead to explore Kuttenberg (now known as Kutná Hora in Czech) that we get to see this side of the game play out.

One of the most important cities within Bohemia at the time, Kuttenberg’s reputation was largely built on the silver mines that gave it so much wealth. This was a major economic centre because of it, with a minting press clanging away to produce currency, and people drawn to the area because of this.

Kuttenberg has been recreated in fantastic detail here, with Warhorse getting a lot of support from the city to help them build something authentic to the period. Leaning upon historical references and records, they’re able to peel back the centuries and restore buildings and structures back to what they would have been like – a walking tour through the city lets us see the comparison between the modern and preserved streets and structures, and how they look in the game, as well as educated guesses like an astronomical clock that they know was there, but have modelled after the world famous clock in Prague. While you might have a mental image of a world filled with muddy browns, Kuttenberg’s wealth was shown through colour, artistic construction and finery.

And naturally, with a large population centre, politics come to the fore and create conflict. Menhardt the master swordsman – a Fechter – has come from Frankfurt with a license from the king to found a brotherhood and spread his artistry in combat. But as he arrives in Kuttenberg, he finds another brotherhood from Prague has established itself, and the city council siding with them. All Menhardt wants – you’ll gather from his mixed English and German dialogue (in that Hollywood way that people never actually speak in when using foreign languages) – is the opportunity to fight and prove that he should be allowed to establish a brotherhood, but as they refuse to fight him, he hatches a plan with Henry to steal the Kuttenberg Sword from the local brotherhood and place it at the town hall to open them up to challenges.

There’s bound to be a bunch of ways to pull this off, but by far the easiest and most obvious is to sneak into the brotherhood’s house at night and steal the sword – people have routines through a 24-hour cycle, so you can skip forward to get to the point in time that you need. Nighttime is dictated by rules like needing to walk with a lamp or torch, so that you are above suspicion of being a thief, but you’ll encounter locked doors that need careful (and most importantly quiet) picking with a tricky, but enjoyable minigame, that can alert the people inside. Thankfully, if you are caught, then there’s still a way to trigger the duel and competition, just with the odds in the tournament being stacked against Menhardt and his brotherhood that you can join up to.

There’s been some significant improvements to the combat in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, though it’s building on the same foundations as the original game. You still have the five-pointed star reticule when fighting an opponent, giving you the ability to attack and block from either side, from above, jab down the middle or attack from below – these upward swings are now combined instead of being separate directions. I found it a little easier to grasp the basics in this game than with the first, learning a bit better how to parry and open an opponent’s guard, or to string together a flurry of blows. Don’t get cocky, though, because this is still a tricky style of combat to master.

Is there that much of a difference between Menhardt’s German school of combat and the Prague brotherhood? I couldn’t really say, but with their success and growth over the past seven years, Warhorse has grown the animation team from basically a single person, to having someone dedicated to each weapon and combat style. There should be greater distinction and nuance between them, letting your specialise.

But maybe you don’t want to be up close and personal? Fighting from afar will be perfectly viable, and maybe even preferred when the pitched battles can be much larger and more grand than before. You’ll see full-blown castle assaults, man the ramparts with a crossbow in hand, as opposed to a bow and arrow, and KCD2 will feature the earliest of firearms, including boom sticks that are basically a tube on a stick that you shove gunpowder and a bullet down, before making it go… well… boom!

There’s plenty more aspects to the game, all building upon the original, such as the public perception of Henry which shifts depending on your actions – so if you’re a thief, you’ll be branded as such and treated as one – or the in-depth alchemy system that has you physically mixing healing remedies. Oh, and of course there’s a fun game to sink your time into, though in this case it’s a historically accurate game of dice. It’s actually surprisingly addictive – well, I had to keep playing if I wanted my dog to have a sausage for dinner! – as you roll a bunch of dice and try to find pairs and runs with which you can score points and then keep rolling, but you importantly need to know when to quit, otherwise you’ll end up with no points for a round.

Put it all together and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is shaping up to be a real showcase for how much Warhorse Studios has grown, evolving their take on the historical setting and their approach to role playing games in general.

Our hands on time with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 came thanks to a press trip to Kutná Hora, the modern day Kuttenberg, with travel and accommodation provided by Warhorse and Plaion.

There’s a fair bit of trepidation for what Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will actually be like as a game, in particular with the first person view switching to third person at times, and the blend of combat, puzzling, exploration and other gameplay ideas. It’s ironic that, with Tomb Raider and Uncharted having been compared countless times back to the classic Indiana Jones films, now an Indiana Jones game cannot escape their shadow.

MachineGames are charting their own course, though, taking inspiration from their own history, going back to the founding group’s history at Starbreeze Studios and the similar perspective shifting of Chronicles of Riddick. When viewed in that light, and seeing more and more slices of gameplay, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle starts to make more sense.

Of course, there’s one area that MachineGames doesn’t really have much say in. At Gamescom 2024, the studio has finally confirmed that yes, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to PlayStation 5 after all, despite Microsoft’s best efforts to dodge the leaks and rumours. It’s still coming to Xbox Series X|S and PC first – it’s out in December there, as opposed to Spring 2025 for PS5 owners – but it’s another capitulation in the console rivalry.

Gamescom is also where we visitors can watch a gameplay theatre presentation, which we were privy to (with some exclusive extras) before hand.

Indy might have a roguish tendency to pull a fast one with a pistol, but he’s always been a brawler more than a shooter, and that’s what he seems to be here, mixing together punches, whip strikes and occasional pistol shots. You’ll be able to make use of the environment, whether that’s using a knockout combo to finish a bruising enemy, shoving them down a level in a dig site, or grabbing a rolling pin from a nearby table to clonk them on the head.

All of this will take place in first person, keeping you rooted within the character, but there’s then shifts to third person when climbing or swinging across gaps on Indy’s whip.

I can’t help but wonder if the game might be better to stay in first person the entire time. We’ve had games like Mirror’s Edge which have integrated fast and fluid parkour with a first-person view, and I’m not entirely sold on the value that switching to the third person for a few seconds offers. Especially when stealth, which might benefit from shifting to the third person to give better spatial awareness, and sliding down a slope don’t make the switch. I hope it comes together for the full game.

Indy’s adventure will challenge him with more than just platforming and fighting. Taking place in 1937, between Raiders and The Last Crusade, we have peak Indiana Jones and a fresh Nazi threat to undermine. The story will see Indy piecing together some kind of fanciful archaeological shenanigans surrounding a great circle of temples and historical sites that rings the globe, landing himself in a race against Emmerich Voss. Along the way, he’ll team up with investigative reporter Gina Lombardi, who has her own reasons for trotting across the globe.

And globe-trotting is what they’ll do, with the journey taking them to the Vatican in Rome, the Sukhothai temples, Egyptian pyramids, the Himalayas and more – all created with reference material from the period, when places like the Sukhothai temples were still completely overgrown. All manner of ancient traps and puzzles await within these, and there’s some fun nods back to iconic moments in the film, such as Indy lifting a big statue from a plinth and initially being pleased that nothing bad happens… until sand starts pouring into the floor, forcing a struggle to get to a hatch high up in the wall. Alternatively, it could be Gina that triggers the bad things to happen.

Some of the puzzling will be immediately familiar from action adventures, such as directing beams of light with mirrors, and whipping at weakened stone in the environment to let loose a stream of water, but other puzzles have more of a point & click adventure feel – pour a bottle of wine into an offering plate before a statue and see a number revealed in red, giving you the answer for levers in another room.

Sometimes the puzzles will rely on using a camera to take photos of points of interest to reveal a clue or the next step, and those photos will fill out a journal, creating a record of your journey so far, collating information and thoughts on the adventure, and more. It’s a neat nod back to The Last Crusade, and can be seen as a naturalistic hints system.

Throughout all of this you’ll earn Adventure Points, which feed into the Adventure Books that you can find and unlock abilities with. These can include things like ‘True Grit’, which gives Indy another chance after losing a fight, just so long as you can crawl across the floor and pick up his hat.

Stealth and subterfuge will also play a significant part. On the one hand, sneaking allows you to choose when and how to start a fight, luring enemies away with distractions and then taking them out quickly and/or quietly to even up the odds. Other areas might need you to blend in, donning various disguises like you’re Agent 47 and then trying not to stand out and get noticed when walking through closed-off areas.

These disguises will generally be determined by the flow of the story – dress up as a clergyman to get behind the scenes at the Vatican, for example – but this isn’t a purely linear adventure. There will also be broader environments and places for you to explore and side quests that can take you off the beaten path a little. You will be able to journey back and forth to revisit previous places, potentially put disguises back on if you need them, and discover more Adventure Books and Points.

While MachineGames aren’t putting a figure on the length of this game, they are confidently stating that it’s longer than any game they’ve done before.

A recent Sega trademark filing could point towards the title of the next game in the Yakuza franchise. According to Trademark Watch (spotted by our friends at Gematsu) the Sonic the Hedgehog publisher trademarked the name “Yakuza Wars” late last month.

Details on the next Yakuza game are pretty sparse for now, but with TGS 2024 fast approaching (taking place between the 26th and 29th of September) Sega is expected to make a new Yakuza reveal. What we do know is that the team at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio are teasing another surprise twist for the popular series, potentially introducing a new setting or protagonist, or maybe even shifting genre. The name “Yakuza Wars” suggests more of a strategic focus, perhaps allowing players to manage their own Yakuza clans, recruit famed gangsters, and war for territory.

When did Yakuza become so popular?

After years spent shrouded in obscurity, the Yakuza series witnessed a sudden burst of popularity among western gamers around a decade ago with the launch of Yakuza 0 and a much-requested English port of Yakuza 5. Sega was quick to harness this momentum, releasing “Kiwami” remasters of the first 2 games, which originally launched exclusively on PlayStation 2.

For the seventh mainline instalment, the developers decided on a drastic change of direction. Yakuza was known for its frenetic action-fuelled combat, immersive open world, and bizarre humour, but the team at RGG Studio wanted to change that formula. Not only did Yakuza 7 (titled “Yakuza: Like a Dragon” in western markets) introduce a new player character – Ichiban Kasuga – it featured traditional turn-based JRPG gameplay. This year’s sequel, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth would refine this new template but whether Sega will triple dip for the upcoming Yakuza Wars (or whatever the next Yakuza game will be called) is a mystery for now.

Looking to get into the series? There are a few good entry points with Yakuza 0 being a solid prequel for those wanting to kickstart the full Yakuza timeline. You can also skip ahead to Yakuza Kimawi which is a remaster of the first game or, if JRPGs are your thing, then Like a Dragon may be geared more towards your tastes.

The upcoming Amazon Prime series should also serve as a handy primer, though we’re not quite sure just how much it will deviate from the video games. That will be launching on October 24th.

Ever thought to yourself that Ace Attorney, as a series, has far too much courtroom shenanigans and that the investigation segments felt bland and formulaic? Well, if you’re this very specific and hypothetical person, boy do I have the games for you: Ace Attorney Investigations Collection

The latest remastered game bundle, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection’s twinned games star fan favourite and cravat enthusiast Miles Edgeworth after the events of the third game in the main series, and they off with an investigation of several cases around an underground smuggling ring. As this is set in the same continuity of the main series, mainstays such as Dick Gumshoe return to support our prosecutor protagonist, with the addition of new characters such as the plucky “master thief” Kay Faraday.

Instead of trying to win a court case, the focus of the gameplay in each case is to unravel the mystery through a variety of investigative techniques. The simplest of these is exploring the crime scenes to gather evidence and talking to witnesses and your allies to uncover facts or questions about the case at hand. This evidence will then either take the form of tangible evidence or clue-like prompts, but more on those in a moment.

Some interactions with characters result in Rebuttals that see you hear a character’s testimony about the events, which can be a witness statement or a character’s opinion on what happened. You can press individual statements to garner more information, and then expose contradictions between what they say and the evidence by presenting the correct evidence. Do this successfully and you can garner more information and inch ever closer to the truth. Get it wrong and your little life bar in the top right takes a little hit while you regroup to try again.

If this sounds familiar to you that’s because it is essentially a cross examination from the main series right down to the similar aesthetic flair of the cut-ins focusing on the eyes. But, if it ain’t broke, does it really need fixing?

Where the Ace Attorney Investigations games deviate is with the Logic mechanic. As I mentioned, you gather a variety of clue-like prompts related to the case as you investigate, which often relate to elements of the case that stand out oddly or question other aspects of the facts. Using Logic, you can piece together two of these clues to gather new information, which is a clever little wrinkle on Ace Attorney’s gameplay.

Like the Rebuttals, you get a penalty for getting these links wrong, but it’s incredibly satisfying when you nail it. Also, some of them lead to that classic Ace Attorney mainstay of turning your thinking entirely on its head. The only criticism I have from the early cases I’ve been able to play for this preview is that these do tend to be a little easy to work out.

This criticism – in fact – I would extend to the whole experience so far. It might change as I go deeper into each game, but nothing I’ve seen so far hasn’t really been a challenge to get through. Though, I must admit, sometimes an easier game is hugely welcome.

A big thing for this release that I have made a concerted effort to check out is the revised visuals and sound. The collection has had new HD visuals of the characters created, and you can switch between the original sprites and these new models in the Options menu. To be honest, the sprites have held up well and I find the chibi-like style of the HD models a little off putting, but the option to switch between the styles is great.

The revised soundtrack is also pretty good and allows the same option to switch back and forth between it and the classic version for the discerning gentleman prosecutor. Also, this collection has the trimmings that these collections have generally had, such as a Gallery, but I’ve not delved too deeply into the bonus content here to avoid spoilers on how to receive the accolades for achieving specific criteria in the games.

At my current point in the games, this shaping up as another excellent collection from the Ace Attorney series, especially as it brings the first of the two games to the West for the first time. It’s also good to see Edgeworth display the discerning eye and quick wit that was only hinted at with a superb (but unevidenced) ego in the main series. I’m looking forward to getting deeper into the core mysteries of both Ace Attorney Investigations games and – hopefully – I’ll have more of a challenge getting to the truth of them.

As proudly individual as each game in the SteamWorld series is, sometimes you just want a good old fashioned sequel, a game that goes back over familiar ground and tries to make things bigger and better. With close to a decade since the original, it feels like high time that Thunderful return to one of their most popular entries with the side-scrolling turn-based action of SteamWorld Heist 2.

Where the first Heist was a space-faring jaunt in junky steampunk ships, SteamWorld Heist 2 throws you right into the midsts of a great ecological crisis threatening its watery world where boats and subs are the order of the day. Oh sure, it’s already just a fragment of a planet hurtling through space, but where now Steambots are struggling to find clean water, afflicting them with Rust, and there’s literally just one ship’s captain who’s got a hope of unpicking the mystery of what’s going on. Captain Leeway steps into the breach – no, not “Krakenbane” herself, but her son – or at least, he would do, but at the start of the game, he’s very much down on his luck, his inherited submarine having been confiscated and having lost his good arm for shooting.

So the game opens with an introductory mission with his last two trusty crew members embarking on an audacious mission to steal his submarine back, facing off against the Dieselbots of the Royal Navy to do so. This personal task successfully completed, and Captain Leeway is thrust into continuing his campaign against the Dieselbots, the mysteriously bony Rattlers, and trying to get to the bottom of what’s giving all the Steambots a nasty case of Rust – hint, it’s the salty water.

Just as before, SteamWorld Heist 2 is XCOM given the Flat Stanley treatment. Instead of commanding your handful of crew members through 3D spaces, you’ve got a side-on view of every combat location. It’s a nice and permissive kind of turn-based tactical battling though, letting you aim and shoot through the cover you’re hiding behind and past allies, through thinner gantry-like flooring, and using ricochets to hit enemies who are in cover themselves. And instead of aim being a percentage based roll of the dice, it’s more like Worms in that you have to line up your shot and then time it with the natural sway of the weapon – It helps greatly that one of your first characters is a sniper, which gives you a laser sight that even shows bullet bounces.

SteamWorld Heist 2 comes with a new Jobs system for classes, though, all dependent on which primary weapon is equipped. There’s no limitations to Job switching, and as soon as you’ve gained a level in one role, those skills can then be unlocked for another role by assigning Cogs. The Flanker and Brawler are easy to synergise, giving a melee character much enhanced movement, while you could turn your Sniper into a backline support with cover building and team healing abilities from the Engineer.

The deeper you get into the game, the more weapons and gear that you’ll earn, and there’s further avenues to upgrade your characters and roster as a whole. Higher levelled weapons will dish out more damage, and there’s also Epic weapons with special effects, like a sniper with electric discharge, or a crossbow for the Reaper instead of an SMG.

There’s some great nuances to explore here, especially as you need to make the very most of every advantage your get on higher difficulties, and there’s missions that will hew toward one style of play or another. Compared to the original, level layouts are now fixed, but with randomised cover and enemies, so you have much more repeatable experiences than the more broadly procedural levels of before. That leads to missions where, confronted with countless Rattler totems and a secondary objective not to destroy any of them yourself, you’ll need precision and minimal ricochets – it took me a few tries. And then there’s just stages that are designed for varying team sizes.

Another big area that SteamWorld Heist 2 improves upon is with everything between missions. Yes, there’s downtime at safe havens and bars, where you can rest up to get to the next day, shop for better gear and chat to NPCs – you’ll also get the luxurious vocal harmonies of the original songs by Steam Powered Giraffe stuck in your head – but then there’s the neat open world to sail around to get to each location, and enemy ships to battle.

The submarine is pretty weak to start off, but with weapon mounts to the side, front and top, as well as more unlockable slots for upgrades, it can become a pretty fierce little thing, capable of taking on enemy capital ships. That’s especially true because of how agile it is with responsive arcade handling, not to mention the upgrade to let you dive beneath the surface – where you’ll come to find other subs and mines. It’s a fun diversion between the sometimes gruelling battles.

By default, the game comes at you with the Experienced difficulty level, and through the opening regions, that’s pretty straightforward to handle. However, the Rattlers can really swarm you and levels often have enemy spawn points that make you scramble and rush just to survive – by the third or fourth region the difficulty had really stepped up a few notches. Thankfully the difficulty is customisable beyond the fistful of presets, and a checkpoint system mid-level lets you roll back up to two turns if you want to slap yourself for a dumb move or fluffed shot.