tldr videogame curation
melbourne, australia

Platform: Xbox Series X|S

Ahead of Alan Wake 2 releasing on October 27th, Epic Games have unveiled a clever promotional tie-in, in the form of a playable custom Fortnite island. Alan Wake: Flashback is a ‘reimagining the iconic story’, available now with island code 3426-5561-3374. We’ve seen these sort of collabs before, but this is a bit more involved, substantial and creative. Perk of a good relationship I s’pose!

The latest from Jeppe Carlsen, lead gameplay designer of LIMBO and INSIDE - COCOON is just as intriguing, creative and moreish. The puzzles are really nice, and all a good level of challenge. Everything else, from the visual and sound design to each little interaction wouldn’t be misplaced in a ‘Satisfying Aesthetic ASMR Compilation’ video. Really cool.

As far as non-FromSoft soulslikes go, this is the real deal. It’s not doing anything revolutionary, but it has enough compelling new ideas, and a level of polish that elevates it beyond its otherwise decent contemporaries. It also commits so hard to Timothée Chalamet Pinocchio Bloodborne that you kind of forget how silly that actually is.

Simple but charming & chaotic party game with warm, wonderful graphics and characters. Could have easily been a derivative Gang Beasts or Fall Guys clone, but its creative maps and modes quashes that immediately to forge a uniquely endearing identity of its own.

An interview with Bandai Namco EU CEO Arnaud Muller might hint that the upcoming Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, is set “to release soon”. No release date has been provided - ‘soon’ could mean anything - and it might just be presumptuous phrasing by the author, but… let’s gooo!

Let’s get it out of the way: the game has fun moments. The visual and sound design are great, the music is really nice, and of course there’s lots to do. Unfortunately… none of it is revolutionary - far from it - and it has many, many problems (not helped by Todd still telling sweet little lies). I wish the experience was more freeform and seamless, because the overshadowing of dated systems & what it could have been are hard to look past.

FROM reinvigorate mecha gaming with their masterfully honed pedigree, elevating the genre to new supreme heights. The world is enthralling, the garage deep and addictive, and the combat tight and impactful. What can one say - they’ve done it again.

Just a few hours out from release, FROM and Bandai pull the hypetrain into the station with the Armored Core VI overview trailer. Let’s gooooo!

Continuing their recent press push, we got another look at Black Myth: Wukong, in a new official trailer. Game looks gorgeous, super creative and really fun - can’t wait.

A new trailer for the Phantom Liberty expansion to Cyberpunk dropped, and in spite of the base game’s flaws (and not to encourage the same hypetrain mistakes again), this looks pretty fun! Credit to CD Projekt for reworking fundamental stuff, not ‘just’ expanding the world: all players will get the Cyberpunk 2.0 stuff, whether they purchase the expansion or not.