20th June

Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about the games we’ve been playing. This week, Victoria perseveres and finally sees the end of Split Fiction, and is delighted she has done so; Bertie seems a little obsessed about mating, which is a sentence I thought I’d never write; and Sherif doesn’t seem terribly convinced about the new Onimusha after playing a demo for it.

What have you been playing this week?

Here’s another question: do you remember what you were playing last week? You don’t have to! The What We’ve Been Playing archive has you covered.

Split Fiction, Xbox Series X

Guys, we did it. After having to replay about 80 percent of the game after that pesky corrupted save file, my husband and I finally finished Split Fiction last night, and oh my goodness was it worth retreading all that old ground. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like those last few boss sections in a game before. My senses were twisted beyond belief – which is a compliment! – as we made our way through the ever-changing scenes before us.

Actually, I can’t stop thinking about it. I even got on my phone to talk to Katharine Castle about it, who reviewed the game for Eurogamer. “Oh man, so good!” Katharine said. “Properly blew my mind.” Mine too, Katharine. Mine too.

-Victoria

BioEden, PC

How’s this for retro inspiration throwback: Viva Piñata. Remember that game? Remember when Eurogamer – and by Eurogamer I mean then-editor Tom Bramwell – was really into it? It was the animal-mating game from Rare, although you’d probably call it a game about managing a garden so as to attract animals and then have them mate. But it did have mating in it. God, move on, Bertie.

Well, that’s what BioEden is about – what it’s partly about anyway. The other half of the game is like planetary clean-up strategy game Terra Nil. The idea is that you touch down on an alien landscape somewhere, harvest resources – but not too many resources – and extract animal DNA from the area. Then you build a dome biome where you’ll recreate these species and provide them the things they need in order to mate. And no I don’t mean sexy Barry White songs but the correct plants and food, and that sort of thing.

It’s a bit fussy – I played BioEden a few weeks ago and there’s a demo you can try now – and maybe the ideas need pairing down a bit, but there’s a good pedigree here. Or rather vintage. That’s because it’s being made by Broken Arms Games, the Italian studio that made enjoyable wine-making simulation Hundred Days. Give it a go!

-Bertie

Onimusha: Way of the Sword demo, PC

Of all the demos one might decide to play from the current Steam Next Fest, I’ve opted instead to return to a Summer Game Fest demo I’ve been meaning to play. The Mortal Shell 2 beta was my shadow-drop demo of choice for that event, but now that I’m done with that, I have time to spend with the other demo shadow-drop, that being Onimusha: Way of the Sword.

The Capcom demos of recent years have always been brief, but I was still taken aback by just how short the Way of the Sword demo is. It took me under 45 minutes to see the whole thing through, and part of that time was spent optimising settings, as is tradition on PC. As an aside, HDR continues to look uneven in RE Engine games, and Way of the Sword is no exception.

It’s difficult to judge a game based on such little time, but I won’t pretend it didn’t severely dampen my enthusiasm for it. It’s not often that an action game of that style has such extended, belaboured animations, but Capcom clearly thinks they’re a good idea here. It was never clear where my inputs ended and the animation began, and often felt like the game was playing itself with how excessively flourished each move is. The challenge was minimal, too, which certainly didn’t help.

I hope the final game has more precise combat and aggressive enemies. There’s some level of mechanical density here that’s easy to ignore in the demo, so I hope the full version creates situations where that density can be explored.

-Sherif