Welcome to You Should Play, a series where we highlight all of the video games that you should be playing this week, from big-budget releases through to little-known indie games.
This time of year is typically known as “Call of Duty week,” because – as you may have guessed by the name – it’s the week in which a brand new Call of Duty game is released. As such, it’s relatively slim pickings in terms of other games to play, with most developers choosing not to release their brand new game in the same week as Activision’s juggernaut. However, there are still a couple of other titles worth checking out this week, even if the majority are going to be too busy playing soldiers in Black Ops 3 to notice.
Check out what You Should Play this week:
Poncho
Delve Interactive’s Poncho looks to be the closest thing we’ll get to a Fez 2, though it certainly has enough of its own unique appeal to make it an intriguing prospect in its own right.
An open-world puzzler, Poncho tasks players with traveling through multiple dimensions in order to save humanity, and will reportedly be so massive in scale that you’ll never see all that the game has to offer. In terms of gameplay, players can move seamlessly between 3D parallax layers in order to make it through Poncho‘s environment, and rather than consisting of a series of levels, it instead places you at the center of its world and lets you choose your own path.
Each area in the game features its own randomly generated ecosystem of creatures, with players being able to interact with them all. If that wasn’t interesting enough, the main goal in the game is to eventually meet “The Maker.” Yes, in Poncho you’ll actually be able to meet God. What else do you want from a video game?
Why You Should Play It:
- It gives the player a tremendous amount of freedom.
- Meeting God!
- Minimal hand-holding.
Need for Speed
The latest Need for Speed game is nearing its release date and few people are talking about it. This is undoubtedly concerning, but first impressions from those who have got a chance to play Ghost Games’ reboot of the veteran racing franchise are good, and it seems that it could live up to the expectations held by fans of the series.
However, with this Need for Speed being always-online, it remains to be seen how it fares at launch. Despite that concern, though, many signs point to this being a worthy addition to the series, mixing slick visuals with tight gameplay and the option to link up with other racers on the fly, challenging them to races as you encounter them in similar fashion to Forza Horizon 2‘s dynamic multiplayer.
If Need for Speed can manage to pull off a successful launch and not face the server troubles typically associated with an always-online game, this could well prove to be a sleeper hit.
Why You Should Play It:
- Gorgeous visuals.
- Extensive car customization.
- Arcade-style gameplay.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3
The biggest release of the week, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 sees Treyarch returning to the mammoth franchise and hopefully brushing off a little of that “CoD fatigue” many fans of the series are suffering with.
With an increased focus upon the Titanfall-esque free-running introduced in Advanced Warfare, Black Ops 3 emphasizes the importance of player movement more so than ever before, and combines it with an array of futuristic weaponry in both its multiplayer and single-player modes. Speaking of single-player, Black Ops 3 will also boast a 4-player co-operative campaign, the first time the series has done so since World at War.
For Call of Duty fans, picking up the next entry in the series will likely be a no-brainer. However, fans of Titanfall who have grown a little disillusioned with Activision’s military shooter may want to reinvest in it this time around, with Treyarch hopefully mixing up its tried-and-tested gameplay enough to entice weary soldiers to make their way onto the battlefield once again.
Why You Should Play It:
- 4-player co-operative campaign.
- More freedom of movement.
- That classic CoD multiplayer, now with added Titanfall.
