Ghostwire Reviews and Witcher 4: The Best Gaming News of the Week - March 27, 2022

Howdy folks, it’s me, your friendly neighborhood Caro. I’ve rounded up the week’s biggest gaming news in a new recurring segment I’m calling… “The Best Gaming News of the Week”. We’ll start off with highlights from the past week and end with a look ahead to the most notable games releasing in the week ahead. Enjoy and happy gaming!

A New Witcher Game!

The biggest news this week was CD Projekt Red’s announcement of a new game they’re working on: a new installment in The Witcher series. The news whipped the internet into a frenzy and led many to speculate that the studio is abandoning trying to salvage Cyberpunk 2077. A game with such a broken, disastrous release that Playstation eventually pulled it from their store. There is, sadly, no release date for the newest game in the much lauded franchise, but pretty much everyone agrees it probably won’t be out for a few years. Especially after the game director Jason Slama said on Twitter that horrible crunch and poor treatment wouldn’t happen while he’s in charge. We’ll see about that. The game will be using Unreal Engine 5, the cutting edge software which will allow for more realistic and immersive graphics than ever before. The reveal of the new series came in the form of a single image, a lynx medallion buried in the snow. The School of the Lynx is not in the previous games or books. Interestingly, this also marks the beginning of “a new saga”. Could this mean we’ll get a game where you design your own witcher and take them through training at a new witcher school? Like Howarts Legacy but with more blood and elf brothels?! Only time will tell.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is a Mixed Bag!

Ghostwire: Tokyo released this past week and reviews have been fairly mixed. Players seem to love the lore in the game and its fascinating ties to Japanese mythology and storytelling. But are decidedly less into the combat, which many critics and players seem to find a bit dull. (Light plot spoilers follow.) It’s a mixed horror adventure game that takes place in a Tokyo overrun by terrifying, otherworldly forces. The city’s population has vanished, leaving you, a guy named Akito, to go out and save the city. Your powers, which are a mix of martial arts and ghost-fueled magic, are given to you by the ghost that’s possessing slash helping you, a detective named KK. Released by powerhouse gaming publisher Bethesda Softworks and developed by Tango Gameworks, Ghostwire: Tokyo has a lot of people split on whether the game is good… or absolutely bad. Only one way to find out for yourself…

Netflix Mobile Gaming!

Did you know Netflix has a whole gaming section with ad free games you can play with a Netflix subscription?! And that you can play them on your phone?! On March 22nd, Netflix announced new games available on Android and iOS. One of them is even promoting a good cause! In collaboration with Charity: Water, developer Frosty Pop crafted a story driven puzzle game called This Is A True Story. The game is absolutely gorgeous, with hand painted backdrops telling the true story of a woman in Sub-Saharan Africa and her perilous journey to get the most precious resource of all, water. If you’re having decision paralysis about which game to play next, or don’t want to shell out sixty bucks for a new game you probably won’t even like, then spend some time and check out the wide array of games from different genres right there in the Netflix app on your phone.

Xbox Controllers Are Out of Control!

To promote Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Xbox is giving away some nasty looking fur covered controllers and a not at all nasty looking new Xbox Series S. Check out pix and more details by reading my write up on them here.

Next Week’s Releases! 

This coming week has some pretty exciting drops, or as a very serious journalist told me they’re called: “releases”.

March 29th is a time for courtly rejoicing, as Crusader Kings 3 is coming to Playstation 5 and Xbox S|X. If you’ve never heard of Crusader Kings, or you’ve been King-curious for a while, this is your sign to jump on this series. It’s a fascinating gameplay loop that sees you leading a dynasty through many generations and hundreds of years. The game has been available on PC for a while, but the immersive, intrigue driven emergent narratives and devilish strategy won’t lose any luster when played on console.

March 30th will see the release of the director’s cut of Death Stranding. The original version of the game was released all the way back in the innocent, maskless days of 2019. And the story of a lone, back broken delivery man stumbling through a desolate, haunted American landscape was just fiction. Then that became the reality of every Amazon delivery person. The game was overwhelmingly beloved by critics, and plenty of fans too. But for many, the grueling first few hours of gameplay and sheer difficulty (which was definitely intentional storytelling on producer and writer Hideo Kojima’s part) turned off some players. The director’s cut will remedy some of that, making the game more accessible and adding some handy quality of life features, like a shooting range to familiarize yourself with weapons and new gameplay options to make deliveries a heck of a lot easier. If you haven’t played the game, this may be a great time to pick it up.

March 31st is the final, for realsies, true release date of Weird West from WolfEye Studios and Devolver Digital after its delay from the original January 11th release. Much respect to devs who actually wait to release a product they believe in rather than pushing out a game before it's ready. This game blends bizarre and horrible monsters with classic Wild West tropes to create a truly unique isometric RPG game. Players will play as five different bounty hunters, whose decisions and actions will permanently affect the world and stories in the game. This is the game I’m most excited about this week and I can’t wait to saddle up and get weird.