We’re back with a brand new Now Playing! We’re smack in the middle of not-E3 season, with all the attendant gaming news and reveals. Our team is still finding time to actually play games along with everything else, so enjoy and let us know in the comments what you’re playing and what news has you excited for the future!
Ben Cantrell
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
Right now I’m playing through Team Reptile’s Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, which to me feels like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 and GTA III had a slick, stylish baby and raised it in a futuristic mash-up of Tokyo and New York. It’s got this chaotic energy that pulled me in, and the traversal system is just plain fun. Grinding rails and pulling off trick chains feels super satisfying, and the whole thing runs silky-smooth in 4K.
Team Reptile, who also made the fun cel-shaded fighting game Lethal League Blaze, clearly has a deep love for that early 2000s aesthetic and absolutely nailed the “Jet Set Radio Future unofficial reboot” assignment. I’ve loved everything this studio puts out.
You start off rolling around on a skateboard, but later you’ll unlock a BMX and classic inline skates too. The skateboard feels the best by far, with a satisfying thwack when you land a trick. I love the BMX bike too, although, in the earlier stages, you mainly play as the skateboarding protagonist. You can switch between riders at any time by heading to dance-off locations and summoning any of the three characters, which keeps things fresh when you’re exploring and chaining combos around the city.
I love how the trick system and graffiti mechanics go hand in hand; you’re not just skating around for the sake of it, you’re out there hunting down rival tags and spraying over them. After you’ve tagged enough, the rival gang shows up and challenges you to a trick battle. You’ve got to outscore them to win, and that’s when all the practice pays off. There’s no fighting or anything like that, just style and skill. Except when the police show up and you get a GTA-style wanted meter. Then things get chaotic, and yes there’s some fighting involved. But most of the time, it’s all about movement and rhythm.
The soundtrack is amazing as well. Proper future funk, house, and 90s hip-hop vibes gave me flashbacks to that early 2000s French house era, and it fits the game perfectly. I must confess, though; I’ve muted the music a few times just to cruise around the city and practice tricks with SoundCloud beats in the background. It’s that kind of game.
All up, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a blast. It’s not huge or super deep, but it knows exactly what it wants to be. It’s got a clear sense of style, solid mechanics, and enough goals to keep me coming back. It’s the perfect mix of chilled-out skating and stylish challenges. I’ll definitely be finishing this one.
Alexander Joy
Game & Watch Gallery 2
My parents have taken an interest in döstädning (the practice better known to English speakers as “Swedish death cleaning”), and as a result, I’ve been rescuing – and revisiting – the old game cartridges that have surfaced from their basement’s depths. The game I’ve played most this month, consequently, has been Game & Watch Gallery 2, a mainstay of my Game Boy Color era.
It has been stranger to return to this title than I expected. I generally find that I’ve grown more skilled at the games of my youth with time, even after long stretches without playing them, as if my brain has been quietly working out techniques and strategies in the interim. Not so with Game & Watch Gallery 2. I’m still terrible at Parachute and Vermin; still skilled at Chef, Helmet, and Donkey Kong. Lord knows why there’s such a discrepancy since all the games fundamentally involve the same skill: triaging objects by the speed at which they move and positioning yourself to dodge or intercept them as the game’s rules dictate.
It’s sad to say, but Game & Watch Gallery 2 doesn’t feel as much fun as it once did. Now that I know some basic programming, the simplicity of the games causes their seams to show. But I find that, by the same token, I have a greater appreciation for the imagination behind their original LCD editions. Every Game & Watch title is a demonstration of how an elementally basic, unchanging formula can be repackaged in such a way as to produce appreciably different experiences. And it really does seem like a lot of love was put into each game’s “Modern” version, with its bright, appealing graphics and earworm background tunes.
In the meantime, this excursion into the past has awakened my inner collector and makes me wish Nintendo would release the entire Game & Watch catalog in a single package. It would be especially welcome as a mobile game. Wouldn’t it be nice to have every iteration of Mr. Game & Watch in your pocket? It could even utilize the device’s clock to provide the “watch” aspect of the experience. Oh well, a man can dream.
C.S. Voll
Steins;Gate: Linear Bounded Phenogram
I feel conflicted after finishing Linear Bounded Phenogram. On the one hand, some of its stories really push overlooked characters into the spotlight; on the other hand, it puts certain characters in some situations that don’t feel authentic to who they are as individuals. The tonal whiplash between each chapter might also distract some players, depending on the order they choose to play them.
The little touches are where it shines, though. Each character has a different cellphone, for instance. They have different screensavers and ringtones on their phone too, which further highlights the personality of each character. Throughout its story, Linear Bounded Phenogram attempts to give us a better understanding of each character’s inner world. We get to see sides of them that we didn’t in the first mainline entry. Since timelines play a role in the series, they allow the stories to be as weird as the writers’ imaginations can stretch — and they can stretch very far, I assure you.
Suzerain
After my time with Steins;Gate, I started another playthrough of Suzerain. I’m being far more cold-blooded this time around. It’s fun playing as a Machiavellian leader who’s unlike me in almost every way, but the game is smart enough to punish my ruthless choices as well. Will my character survive? Will the country descend into chaos? All of that I don’t know yet. We’ll have to grit our teeth and make some difficult choices again.
The game received its vaunted 3.1 update a while ago. As far as I can tell, this mostly focused on the Rizia DLC game, which I’ll check out again after playing the Sordland campaign. I’m excited to see what the developers changed in the DLC and what remained the same. Perhaps I’ll actually be a good king when I take another crack at it!
CJ Wilson
The Precinct
I’m currently playing this top-down police procedural that feels similar to GTA where you drive around the map doing missions, but as a police officer. The story is fairly straightforward; you play a rookie cop whose father was a police chief who was killed under mysterious circumstances. You get to choose your daily shifts, responding in real-time to the crimes you want to pursue while performing assignments like on-foot patrol or checking parking violations. Many of the crimes will have you taking down criminal gang members through car chases or stopping street fights. Whenever you arrest someone, you need to make the right choices of which crimes they committed, as picking the right ones will earn you more experience points. Upgrades are available for helpful things, like the ability to regain your stamina with well-timed button presses.
Sometimes your choices might seem right when you make an arrest, such as seeing someone litter the streets with trash, but the game thinks you made an unlawful arrest. So far I’ve only experienced one game-breaking bug where I fell through the ground, but otherwise, it plays well, especially on Steam Deck. What’s keeping me going is wanting to take down the criminal gangs that are present along with solving a string of murders that are happening in the open-world city.
Deliver At All Costs
I’m also playing another game on my Steam Deck that is similar to The Precinct. called Deliver At All Costs. You play as Winston Green, a delivery driver for a company called We Deliver set in a 1950s Americana setting where you perform deliveries in wacky situations. Most of the missions will have you dropping off items, but things quickly go in a zany direction. You’ll be giving balloons to customers while all that helium is lifting your truck off the ground, or having to take photos of UFOs within a time limit before it’s done abducting cows. Missions like these give the game an off-kilter vibe that reminds me of the Destroy All Humans games, with similar character performances and story progression.
Much of the story focuses on Winston utilizing his genius intellect to good effect, allowing you to slowly uncover his shady past as a former scientist. There are side activities and collectibles to find, such as money crates that allow you to buy resources and blueprints to upgrade your truck. While the handling on your vehicle seems floaty at first, you get used to the game physics as you try to complete each delivery to move the story forward, and the aforementioned upgrades help as well.
Part of me is wondering when I will have time to do some free roaming since I feel like I’m just only able to continue the story along with no breaks in between. But then maybe I’m just not letting myself explore the world. I imagine there is free roaming once you beat the main story, but I’m just interested in seeing what else this game has to offer in terms of creative and wacky situations while the story plays out.
Cat Webling
Projected Dreams: Nostalgic Puzzling
I’ve been playing Projected Dreams, an absolutely adorable puzzle game from Flawberry Studio. The calm, cozy, nostalgic feel of this game, where you piece together the shadows of various childhood toys to tell a lovely story about growing up, gives me vibes reminiscent of Unpacking. I love it dearly; it’s a great way to relax and sink into a fun little world.
Lawrence Adkins
Right now, I’m bouncing between Lies of P and Stellar Blade. Despite both games employing a handful of Soulslike genre conventions, their unique aesthetics translate these gameplay ideas into a new light. Stellar Blade’s world is one full of people struggling to survive, and as a result has become more militarized due to the ongoing conflict of humans and Naytibas. ‘Bonfires’ in this game are old military camps that need to be reactivated and are stocked full of supplies for Eve to buy before heading out to battle. NPCs have donned abandoned military gear and are almost all equipped with some sort of technological body modification. Eve even heals through small bullet shaped capsules instead of drinking out of an estus flask.
Stellar Blade’s combat is much more action-oriented, utilizing a wide range of attack combos and skill trees, with quick time events to make the game lean more into cinematic action. Perfect parries and dodges also make an appearance, providing unique follow-ups for certain attacks. Everything is quick, color-coded, and packs a punch. While it deviates a good bit from the formula, I consider Stellar Blade to be an “accessible Soulslike,” having its skeleton built around the genre but made to be more digestible for audiences who might be a bit wary of diving into FromSoft’s catalogue.
Lies of P on the other hand has a more traditional approach to the genre. The aesthetics are much more grim and visibly dark, giving the impression of a sick world rather than one that’s gone through war. Stargazers, the bonfire equivalent of this game, are small objects that are essentially energy magnets. While they still function similarly, they don’t offer the same level of comfort that bonfires or Sites of Grace do. They look like delicate, fragile contraptions made of steel and porcelain that need to be carefully assembled.
The approach to combat here is more rooted in the trappings of Bloodborne’s well-regarded mechanics, focusing on parries (Perfect Guards) as the main defensive mechanic to gain the upper hand in combat. Weapons can also be mixed and matched, and what interests me the most is how parts scale with different stats. I play a very balanced build in most games and am very early in my playthrough (only 4 hours at the moment), but I’m super excited to experiment with this more!
Jahanzeb Khan
They say life is like a box of chocolates, and you can tell a lot about a person from the shoes they wear…. and from the Switch 2 games they picked up at launch.
We have a new Nintendo console. I participated in my first midnight launch in many, many years. As I was lining up I paid attention to what titles people were picking up as their first.
My Switch 2 starter pack, like many, includes Mario Kart World. It would have been amazing to see Donkey Kong Bananza ready for launch, but a new Mario Kart makes sense to get as many people as possible to play together, not to mention taking advantage of the console’s new chat and communication features. Many first-day buyers likely opted for this particular Switch 2 bundle, owing to Mario Kart’s massive popularity. I don’t ‘love’ the series but it is a fun one to jump into and it’s likely going to get plenty of playtime with friends. I regularly play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe even to this day, so I’m looking to my gaming group to upgrade their Switch systems in due course.
We may not have a new Donkey Kong or Mario platformer ready for launch, but Sonic sped his way into the Switch 2 launch lineup. Indeed, Sonic was one of four SEGA titles ready for day one, a reality no one could have fathomed during the great console war of 1995. Sonic x Shadow Generations feels amazing to play on handheld as the framerate is just unbelievable. It also features bonus content starring the Keanu Reeves version of Shadow the Hedgehog from the movie. So not only do we have four SEGA titles, but two of the console’s launch titles star Keanu Reeves (Cyberpunk 2077 being the other). 2025 is pretty wild that way.
Having a fighting game at launch is a time-honoured tradition, and Street Fighter 6 lands the perfect KO. Playing the next-gen Street Fighter in handheld mode feels pretty spectacular, like a homecoming in many ways.
And finally, the classics: three GameCube titles including SoulCalibur 2 (with the coolest guest fighter ever: Nintendo’s own Link from The Legend of Zelda). I also picked up Ridge Racer because… you know… it’s Riddggeee Racccceerrr.
I even paid for the interactive instruction manual. Welcome Tour absolutely should have been free software, but to be fair it does have some fun mini-games and is a much better introduction to the system than 1-2 Switch was for the preceding system. The asking price for Welcome Tour is measly, but on principle, it’s still a bummer. I like it for what it is if I’m being honest. I’d love to see what Switch 2 games my fellow SJ writers picked up at launch.
A big thank you to our writers for dropping by and to all our loyal fans for being here to check it out! Be sure to tell us what you’re playing in the comments and check back next month for more of what our team is getting into.
