We’ve also got details on one of the biggest games of recent years currently on sale for half price.
Welcome to JOE Gaming Weekly, your weekly round-up of all things gaming.
Or, specifically, the one big game you should play this week, the one big piece of gaming news you need to know about, and the one big deal available to purchase this week.
So, off we go!
MUST PLAY OF THE WEEK
NORCO
Two things are going to turn off 99% percent of players immediately here: (1) NORCO is currently a PC exclusive, and (2) it is created entirely in pixel art.
However, if you can push beyond the fact that it isn’t the most graphically cutting edge game of all time, you’ll actually discover the visual representation is actually kind of incredible, even more impressive when you consider the restrictions that the game’s creator put in place for themselves when making this point-and-click gothic detective adventure.
Set within the sinking town suburbs in southern Louisiana, under the looming shadow of a huge oil refinery that may be slowly poisoning everyone in the vicinity, you’ve headed back here to find your brother, who has been missing since your mother recently passed away. However, as you begin making your investigations, you slowly begin to unravel something much bigger – much more otherworldly – appears to be at the centre of everything…
To say much more would give the game away, so all we’ll say is that if you happen to have a PC and you’re looking for one of the best narrative-based games of recent years, then this is absolutely for you.
NORCO is available on PC right now.
BIG NEWS OF THE WEEK
There has been an update on Portal 3 (sort of…)
Portal and Portal 2 are, without a doubt, two of the very best games ever made, but much like Half-Life, another game made by developers Valve, fans have been begging for a threequel, with no signs of one ever arriving.
In a recent interview on the Kiwi Talkz podcast, Portal and Portal 2 co-writer Erik Wolpaw gave an update on that threequel:
“I am not getting any younger. We are reaching the point where it’s crazy to think [that we’re] literally going to be too old to work on Portal 3, so we should just do it.
“As much as it seems like Valve often [is] just a bunch of people sitting around sipping gin and tonics by a pool, everybody’s working. They’re working all the time, it’s just you don’t always see the [result], it doesn’t always end up coming out, or it comes out years later, it gets turned into something else. So everybody is accounted for, I guess is what I’m saying. People are all doing something.
“The problem is, you would make money, but what kind of money will you make? Are you gonna make Counter-Strike: GO money? Probably not. But having said that, maybe every game doesn’t need to make Counter-Strike: GO money, you know, Gabe [Newell, Valve president], if you’re listening.”
Doesn’t sound exactly hopeful, but you never know…
DEAL OF THE WEEK
Cyberpunk 2077
Yes, when it was released, it was quite broken, but even under all of that roughness, we could still see some glimmers of the diamond beneath. With the patches and updates and upgrades that have arrived since, Cyberpunk 2077 is now much closer to the modern classic that it should’ve been when it was first released.
Sure, there is still some work to be done, but the developers have openly said that they’re still actively expanding and deepening the world of Night City, so there’s still plenty more to come from this game.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available to purchased in the PS Store, marked down from €49.99 to €24.99, until Wednesday, 27 April.
Clips via Xbox & Cyberpunk2077
