With SDCC 2017 being only a few hours away, Telltale Games took us unawares by announcing not only one, but three new titles that we didn’t see coming so soon. With one of them set for an August release, and the rest for a 2018 launch, here’s a look at what Telltale has struck us with.

The Dark Knight rises

Batman: The Enemy Within – The Telltale Series

The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series – The Final Season (working title)

The Wolf Among Us: A Telltale Games Series – Season Two

The day most Destiny fans have been waiting for is now here. Today marks the beginning of early access to the Destiny 2 beta on the PlayStation 4. Tomorrow, July 18th, is the beginning of early access for players on the Xbox One (10 am PDT). The open beta for Destiny 2 will begin this Friday July 21st. The Destiny 2 beta features a variety of activities including the opening story mission, Homecoming, and cooperative and competitive modes.

For more on Destiny 2 and its beta, stay tuned here at That VideoGame Blog as I’m sure we will be covering it in the near future.

You can’t beat a good brawler. There’s nothing like a competitive punch up to relieve a bit of stress and get the one up on your mates. With this being said, Arc System Works have just announced that a new heavy weight will be entering the ring next year in the form of BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle.

So, what can you expect from the latest installment in the BlazBlue franchise? Well by the looks of it, there’s going to be quite an interesting roster of characters coming to this colourful 2D fighter. Waiting in the wings will be Ragna the Bloodedge from BlazBlue. Stepping up to join him will also be Yu from Persona 4 Ultimate Arena, Hyde from UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH, and Ruby Rose from the 3D animated series RWBY.

Other than this tantalizing bit of information, we’re kind of waiting to see what the ins and outs of this little brawler are going be; we don’t even know which platforms we’ll be finding this on yet. This is just enough to wet the old taste buds but that’s about it for now.

One thing I can tell you is that Arc System Works have also announced that one of their up-and-coming illustrators Konomi Higuchi is going to be the game’s lead character designer.

This is certainly a bit of interesting news and as we learn more you will too. This is much better than the proverbial slap in the face but definitely keep your eyes peeled for further installments in the future.

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There’s nary a person, gamer or otherwise, who was alive during the mid-90s to mid-00s that hasn’t heart of Crash Bandicoot. The spinning, box-jumping, polar bear-riding, heart boxers-wearing orange marsupial first crashed (sorry) onto our Playstation consoles in 1996 courtesy of Naughty Dog. After everyone fell in love with the wonderful little platformer, they released Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back in 1997 and Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped in 1998. The Crash Bandicoot series stayed with Naughty Dog for one more entry, the better-than-Mario-Kart (even though it’s almost certainly just a ripoff of Mario Kart) kart racing entry – Crash Team Racing (CTR). After CTR, the series changed hands, and past the point of the fifth unofficial party game entry, Crash Bash, I lost interest with the series and have some strong feelings about what followed all the same. However, that’s not why we’re here.

Activision has teamed up with Vicarious Visions to create Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy, a complete remake of the original trilogy of Crash Bandicoot, Cortex Strikes Back, and Warped. In addition to the enhanced graphics and remastered sountrack, you can now play as Crash’s sister Coco in all three games rather than just select levels in the third game. Fans have been clamoring for a remake of their favorite Crash games for years, so the news was huge, but I was among the skeptics for a long time. Remaking a classic that has dominated the childhoods of so many gamers is a dicey move that requires very strict adherence to tradition and updating but not changing the original medium. The more gameplay I saw pre-release, the better the N. Sane Trilogy was beginning to look. The game started to sell out left and right in my local stores and once I was finally able to get my hands on a copy of the N.Sane Trilogy, I was very keen to start spinning through a few crates.

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Ah, the first Crash Bandicoot game – in my unbiased opinion, the best one. My childhood experience with the original was pretty limited because I didn’t own it, but some close friends did and had already unlocked or discovered elsewhere the code for 100% completion. We would flit between particular levels, picking up hidden swarms of free lives, and then we’d go get booted off a wild hog ride a few times before going back and collecting lives again. Occasionally we’d actually attempt to complete a level ourselves, but we were six or seven years old and predictably terrible at actually doing things ourselves. I played through the game about a year ago with my boyfriend and I was subjected to how truly clunky and brutal the game is.

Four of us stepped in, ready to take on the challenge that was and is Crash Bandicoot. All of the music has been remixed to varying degrees, but is typically pretty easily recognized, albeit a little softer in some cases. The sound effects, not counting voices, are more or less the same as fans would remember – the sound of breaking open boxes, the spin attack, and the sound of jumping on enemies remains more or less unchanged. Some sound effects sound a little different, such as collecting wumpa fruit, but the difference is negligible. The sound when you obtain a gem has been changed from a cash register ding (or similar) to the harmonious “Aaahhh” of Crash 3 fame. I’ll admit that while it was petty, that did niggle me a little because it felt a bit out of place, especially when they had gone to the trouble of keeping most of the other sounds similar to the original.

As for gameplay, I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t much, much easier to control Crash compared to the clunkiness of the original. However, I do have a very, very big caveat and complaint to register alongside this praise – the hitboxes and collision detection. I was warned by my friendly neighborhood game store employee that the hitboxes for Crash and Coco are now a very neat pill shape. This means that edges are now weird. Maybe it’s decades of conditioning across the four of us from the old games, but we missed so many jumps in the exact same place, and got hit by the same enemies that we swear we weren’t close enough to get hit by. Not to mention slipping and sliding off things that we were bouncing or standing on.

On a final niggly note that will stretch across my review of all of the remade games, I have to say that the wumpa fruit don’t seem to (for lack of a better term) suck into you as quickly as they used to, and it doesn’t feel as satisfying to pick them up anymore. I feel like I just float through them and they happen to appear in my inventory. For some reason that really niggled at me the entire time I was playing, and it was worth mentioning even though it was particularly petty. Furthermore, I’m fairly sure the game takes a bit too much pity on you in some cases, and not enough pity in others.

The Crash Bandicoot games have, to my knowledge, always featured a few pity handouts. Die enough times and you’ll respawn with a mask, or you’ll receive a checkpoint a bit closer to your location. Sometimes we would respawn with a level two mask in a place like The High Road, where masks are more or less irrelevant. In one of the rolling boulder levels, we were continuously flattened (I’ve never had any trouble outrunning these boulders in the past, so I think they may have been sped up a little), and after quite a few deaths we suddenly managed to outrun it so far that it was out of view. Too much help, Activision. Too much help.

In Summary…

It’s hard. It’s so hard. They’ve updated the game to make it easier to save, but they’ve just made it harder to get through the goddamn levels generally. Aesthetically, the remake has stayed true to the source content, but they somehow managed to make the original Crash Bandicoot even less palatable to me. I hope I never have to look at this evil, evil game ever again. Crash Bandicoot, played purely for progression and not for collection of gems and keys, will keep you busy for at least three hours, but it took us more than four.

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Hello, old friend. Crash Bandicoot 2 was one of the first two games I received with my very first Playstation as a little kid. I absolutely adore this game, I know it back-to-front, and this was the one that I was hotly anticipating from the N.Sane Trilogy. Getting to finally play Crash 2 after the slog that was Crash 1 was a dream come true because I knew how the difficulty sharply declines between the first and second games and assumed it would be the same in the remakes. And it was…to an extent.

My thoughts on the sound effects and sound track remixes from Crash 1‘s remake carry over to the remake of Cortex Strikes Back. However, I was made painfully aware of how Activision were clearly trying to make Crash more accessible to a general, uninitiated audience with a new addition to the visuals. Crash Bandicoot 2 originally had two collectibles – gems (clear and colored), and crystals – one for each level. In the original game, Crash would leap out of a level door into the central hub – the warp room – and fling the gems and crystals up to their hollowed-out spaces near the level name.

In the remake, he produces the collectibles from various places on his body. I was on board when he tapped on one ear and a gem popped out of the other. I could even get over the exaggerated gagging sounds he made when producing a crystal from his mouth. But now I’m sad to say that Crash actually reminded me of something as lame as a Minion, of all things, when he reached behind him and into his pants to grab an item.

The Crash Bandicoot series didn’t shy away from a bit of cheeky humor, but this inclusion kind of seemed unnecessary, and not in a prudish way. While Crash was always a game that was meant for people of any age, I never got that “kid’s game” feel from it before now, and I was a bit disappointed as a result. On the same note, and this is present for all three of the games, the loading screens now feature Aku Aku floating in and out of frame (sometimes quite creepily), which I’m fine with. What I’m not fine with is the hints that are displayed on every single loading screen. Excuse me while I grab my angry old lady hat, but back in my day we had to use trial and error to figure things out. I don’t want to read boss hints before I’ve even had a chance at a boss.

Obviously I already knew what to do for the bosses and the levels, but I feel like they’ve made things too easy on the new players for no real reason. As a general note on visuals, all of the levels were lovingly recreated and looked great, even though the developers made some small, weird changes like making an existing level an “afternoon” level for seemingly no reason. Also, Polar looks really weird, like they tried to make him look too realistic. Not keen.

It seems that the N.Sane Trilogy isn’t partial to masks and lives, because while we fared much better in Crash 2 than the original, we still reached a few points where we were constantly tumbling off edges or being spiked by enemies that had no business being able to reach us. I received my first Crash 2 “game over” since I was six years old and I was not pleased. I really wasn’t exaggerating when I say that I know this game inside-and-out and back-to-front.

I knew what I was doing and the new physics were absolutely against me. I don’t think we even gained the power of invincibility at all during our time in the remake of Crash 2, and just once at the start of Crash 1. Once we hit our first game over, there was seemingly no way of getting back to our former stock of lives that we had in the early game. I don’t think we ever broke 30 lives during our time in the game, whereas in the original I would have an even 60 for levels at a time. The N.Sane Trilogy is stingy as hell when it comes to masks and lives, dammit.

Two final niggly notes: Firstly, when did the bees in the bee levels become so goddamn fast? They weren’t a challenge necessary, but they were downright lazy in the original and they now act like they’re on speed. Secondly, crouching is so delayed now. It takes forever for Crash to bend down, as though he has bad knees or something. I’m not sure why this suffered in particular, but I miss the responsiveness of the original.

Crash Bandicoot 2 is less brutal than Crash Bandicoot‘s remake, but still way rougher than it needs to be. I blame the physics again, because if there was any Crash remake game I was going to try to 100%, it would have been this one. However, I’m not sure I even want to now – I think I’d rather pick up the original again for the hundredth time. Crash Bandicoot 2, played purely for progression and not collectibles, took us about 2-3 hours, which is a little bit over what it would have taken in the original.

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In my opinion, barring a few new level types and some new powers, Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped didn’t really offer many upgrades from Crash 2, and that’s not a bad thing. Crash 2 was wonderful and Crash 3 didn’t really need to try as hard to improve things. Honestly, I think they added more annoying level types (the plane levels, bike levels, and jetski levels) in 3, but that may just be my Cortex Strikes Back bias at work.

Crash 3 had a warp room – this time known as a time twister, which led to separate hubs made up of five levels and a boss. Each level threw Crash (or Coco!) somewhere back in time, whether to the medieval period to beat up frogs and knights or to a gloopy prehistoric area with lava and dinosaurs aplenty. Crash 3 also introduced the time relic feature, where players could revisit levels and take time trials to earn relics (sapphire, gold, or platinum). Crystals were still required for level completion, and colored and clear gems were still around as well.

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the Crash 3 remake was tackled last, because it’s by far the best in terms of controls and replication of the source material. The same issues with collision detection and hitboxes apply in Warped‘s remake, and there are a lot of “riding” levels (tiger and jetski levels for Coco, dinosaur, underwater machine…thing, and bike levels for Crash, and plane levels for both) where these issues were the most annoying. In some cases (i.e. the bike levels) the controls didn’t seem to have improved all that much, although I did find said levels easier to manage than the originals.

The jetski and tiger controls are honestly a bit too quick when accelerating, and it feels like they’re a bit floatier as well. With regard to general platformer levels in Warped, I felt they were a bit kinder than those in Crash 1 and 2. In addition, Crash just feels nicer to handle in the remake of the third game and the aesthetics are much closer to that of the original, albeit with a nice, new coat of paint. While I’m on the topic of aesthetics – Pura looks right, which leaves me wondering why they gave Polar realistic fur and not Pura.

The difficulty in Warped is also significantly less than that of 1 and 2. I regularly encountered lives and masks, and had a healthy stock of 30+ lives at last count. As a veteran Crash fan, this isn’t even a whinge about unfair difficulty and wanting handouts, it’s just me wanting what has already been established in the originals. Also, Crash crouches properly and in a timely manner in Warped. Thank god.

This one is definitely the best one out of the three remakes, no question. It dredges up all that nice nostalgia and the controls feel much nicer than in the previous two. That said, all the riding levels make the hitbox/collision detection issues really obvious, even when the platforming levels seemed to do away with a lot of that jankiness. The decrease in difficulty is also a huge bonus. Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped took a little less time to complete, while not collectible-hunting, than Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back.

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I have to give it to Activision and Vicarious, because they have done what the fans have been howling after for years and years. They have clearly taken a very careful hand to their recreation of Crash Bandicoot, Cortex Strikes Back and Warped and it shows. With some notable exceptions, every box and item is exactly where it should be. The audiovisual elements have been recreated, for the most part, with respect to the nostalgia factor that fans will have bought the game to re-experience. However, the difficulty spike in both Crash 1 and Crash 2 is unforgivable.

The first two remakes suffered greatly in the hands of the new physics and allegedly changed hitboxes. Combined with a lack of the usually abundant lives and masks, I’ve never felt so angrily frustrated with a Crash game in my life, and I’ve spent hours trying to get every platinum relic in Warped. I honestly don’t think these issues sprung from poor development. The N. Sane Trilogy set out to remake classic games from the PS1 era and is a wonderful product, but the gameplay did not fare well in the transition. That said, I would never hesitate to recommend the N. Sane Trilogy to hardcore Crash Bandicoot fans. It’s worth playing through each game to see just how beautifully each level and character has been recreated for the PS4 era and get excited when your favorite levels come up to bat. By all means, go ahead and play the N. Sane Trilogy, but be sure to bring a lot of patience when you do.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is available now, digitally and physically, on PS4!

It finally happened. The moment we (mostly I) have been waiting for. Ever since Dragon Ball FighterZ was announced in June I have been waiting for the actual technical prince of all Saiyans to make his grand appearance. Trunks has been my favorite character in the franchise since I first saw him tear Frieza apart. It was a no brainer to add him to the early rooster and, with this confirmation, he joins Goku, Vegeta, Teen Gohan, Cell, Frieza, and Majin Buu as the first playable characters. We will possibly be able to take all of these guys for a test drive in the closed beta that is happening soon. Until then I’m going to rewatch that sweet trailer posted below.

Dragon Ball FighterZ is slated for an early 2018 release.

As a launch title for the PS4, Resogun was a fantastic addition to that initial lineup and one that wowed reviewers and players alike. The intense shooter action mixed with some of the most amazing particle effects yet seen on a next-gen console helped to effortlessly propel the PS4 to the top of the pack. Now, Housemarque has dipped their toe into voxel infested waters once again and released their newest title, Nex Machina. The game is set in a time where humans are too connected to their electronic devices to notice that the robots they created to make their lives easier have become sentient and decided to wipe out their creators. This is the ultimate top-down voxel shooter where everything can be blown to pieces so you can free the human race.

Never a company to rest on its laurels, Housemarque wanted to create something new that was based in the history of the medium. In order to do that , they reached out to famed designer Eugene Jarvis (Robotron, Smash TV) to help them get the feel of this game just right. Nex Machina is a top-down twin-stick arcade shooter that features fast-paced, in-your-face action with tight controls and oodles of replay-ability. You take on the role of the unnamed protagonist as you race to save the hapless humans before they are assimilated by the robot infestation. Sometimes you can save them all, but you will often have to decide on your survival over theirs in order to make it through the levels.

Gameplay is exactly what you would expect out of a twin-stick shooter. You control the direction the protagonist runs with the left stick while controlling the direction that he is firing in with the right stick. You need to have your thumb on a swivel because the robots will come at you from all directions. You start with a normal powered blaster but as you dispatch of the robot hordes, they will drop weapon power-ups such as a spread gun and a laser gun just to spice things up. In addition, there are also secondary weapons that you can find in the environment like the rocket launcher that can hep you out of a tight spot or add that extra punch when fighting the more powerful foes in the game.

While there is a bevy of different primary and secondary weapons to choose from, your character also has a few features of his own that can help to get you out of a tight situation…literally. While you can shoot at the disenfranchised robots in 360 degrees, you also have a run boost ability to help you get away if the walls start to close in on you. Having this ability saved me on many occasions as the enemies will often materialize in a complete circle around you and you will only have a split second to make a safe escape. Being that the robots are using energy weapons in an attempt to take you out, that run boost can also save you from them as well. While you are boosting, you are impenetrable to any energy weapon discharge which will allow you to pass through energy barriers as well as oncoming fire from enemy robots.

I can assure you that Nex Machina has an amazing solo-campaign but what good is a shooter game, ultimately, if you can’t play co-op? You will be thrilled to know that this game does indeed feature a fully fledged arcade campaign that can be played solo or in local co-op with a friend. In addition, if you should happen to need a break from the intense action in the main game, you can try out the intense action in the other mode in the game. There is a continually changing Challenge Mode called the Arena that allows you to return to your favorite locations in the game in order to face-off against different enemies with faster speeds and other fresh modifications. This mode will undoubtedly lead to some fierce leaderboard competitions between you and your friends.

I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t talk to y’all about the amazing visuals in Nex Machina. Nobody does pixellated explosions like Housemarque. One of the features that struck me initially about Resogun was the cool voxel effects that happen when you blasted an enemy to bits. Keeping with that same motif, when you blast one of the attacking robots in this game, they bust into hundreds of tiny, colorful voxels piles and then quickly fade away. Depending on how much whoop-a$$ you are handing out, you could actually have tens of thousands of voxels on-screen at once. This game is beautiful in every respect and will be considered as one of the best games to launch when Game of the Year discussions start happening in the fall.

Make no mistake, you are going to die and die a lot. However, no matter how many times I died, there was something that keep me trying just one more time to clear a particularly stick level. I haven’t played a game in a long time that made me drop the F-bomb as many times as I did while reviewing this game and I think that I probably broke a record or two. Nex Machina offers four different difficulty levels and I started my review on the Normal level which is sufficiently challenging, however, the Easy level was only just slightly easier, to give you an idea. This game is VERY challenging in a way that is VERY fun!

The late 90s to early 2000s was an interesting time in children’s television. Kids were running around with giant robots, playing cards, and metal tops to save the world. Giant monsters duked it out every weekend. Spandex was the strongest clothing known to man. Yes, it truly was a great time to be alive. Among those spandex heroes was the wildly popular Power Rangers series; based on the Super Sentai series from Japan, Power Rangers combined the morals and lessons of an after school special with over-the-top action to make a show that both parents and kids approved. With action-packed plots lines that had kids dealing with bullies, parent’s expectations, and feeling like you don’t measure up, Saban’s long-running series still holds a special place in many hearts, a fondness that Chroma Squad is more than willing to tap into.

Behold Studios’ Chroma Squad is a tactical RPG geared towards rehashing the fun and cheesiness of the first season of Power Rangers. When a bunch of stunt doubles realize that they do all the work and receive little reward, they ban together to make their own Power Rangers-inspired show. Complete with an abandoned warehouse, cool props made out of cardboard, and some silly dialog, the Chroma Squad is born! Your goal is simple, take your indie start up theater and make something amazing with it that the fans will love. Then, hope the fans will share it with their friends.

The main thing that you are going to be doing in Chroma Squad is producing episodes of your TV show in order to get more fans and more funding. This element of gameplay plays out with you getting sponsors, running ads, and setting up campaigns in order to keep your fandom happy. After every battle or “episode,” you can upgrade your rouge stuntman with better body suits, weapons, and abilities. Adding stuff to your studio will upgrade everyone’s skills.

Early on in the game, you have to pick your team of five rangers. Each ranger has different skills, bonuses, and play styles that changes up the dynamic of your team. It is a good idea to have a combination of ranged, brute force, and healing classes in order to have all of you bases covered. Make sure to buy the correct weapon for each ranger or you will be going into each battle at a slight disadvantage.

Combat is one of the most interesting things about Chroma Squad; the spotlight is on teamwork and strategic gameplay. Every battle takes place on a grid, and each of your rangers have two actions in their turn. Combination attacks can be preformed by moving your team in front of an enemy and having them wait by using the “teamwork” action. The more rangers you have using teamwork, the bigger the combination attack. However, you have to remember that this is television, and you have to keep the audience happy. I did notice that is was a little difficult to see who you had selected sometimes as the environments tend to be colorful. You will have directors notes during every episode that you can follow to get extra fans and items. But you have to be mindful of the actions you take as doing something like launching a finishing move that doesn’t kill an enemy can backfire on your ratings.

Getting better ratings and making it to later seasons of your show will unlock new options for your studio; additionally, random events can change the course of your show and the money that you make. All that coupled with the bite-sized nature of the story and what you’re left with is a game that is perfect for the casual and hardcore gamers alike. Chroma Squad is a fun trip to the 90s wrapped in all the Super Sentai goodness that you remember. And, with it also being on iOS, you can take all that action on the go.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.

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Citadel: Forged With Fire will be hitting Steam this month. The game is a sandbox RPG focused on wizards and is being made by indie developer Blue Isle Studios, who previously made Slender: The Arrival and Valley.

The following trailer shows off gameplay of the upcoming game.

Games for Change is opening the doors to their annual festival celebrating games’ potential for inspiring real, tangible change. The festival will see just how games influence developments in education, healthcare, social issues, and research with an additional day devoted to all things virtual reality! Every year the organisation also sets the stage for some of the most influential games in these areas, and 2017 will see heavy competition as some truly ingenious games go head to head to be crowned Game of the Year at the 14th Annual 2017 Games for Change Awards.

Gaming industry leaders will be judging the finalists in their respective categories while every game will be put forward for the Games for Change Awards Game of the Year award. To win the top honor, the winning title will have to exemplify every category up for awards overall. So, let’s get straight into the categories and their nominations.

Best Gameplay

Minecraft:Education Edition

The Education Edition of the indie open world sandbox that took the world by storm has been targeted toward traditional classroom environments. Students use the program to explore their own creativity and develop important problem solving and social skills. The version of the game features a design to make Minecraft more accessible and effective within the classroom setting, adding an in-game camera and extra security settings.

Sea Hero Quest

Sea Hero Quest sees you navigate the open seas, avoiding dangers and collecting photographs of sea monsters in order to save your father’s memories. What sets this game apart from other quick fix mobile releases, however, is what it does with the data collected.

Your navigational skills are charted, and cross referenced with your age and gender to contribute to global research in spatial navigation. Following developments in dementia research that link these navigation skills to the likelihood of the disease, Sea Hero Quest was developed to collect large scale data. Each minute of gameplay can generate the same data as hours of research, and considering the amount of players currently signed up to the game, the potential for this title is astounding.

Tracking Ida

An educational ARG developed to combine historical education with present day social issues, Tracking Ida was first piloted this year in Watts. The journalism of Ida B Wells inspired the videogame, and players are tasked with discovering the details of Wells’ own crusade against lynching by unlocking archives within the game and solving puzzles, spreading awareness by introducing players to the process and power of media while also highlighting social injustice issues prevalent today.

Most Innovative

Epistory – Typing Chronicles

In an origami world, a young girl rides a giant fox in a battle against a horde of pesky insects. This atmospheric action adventure title sees the world around you literally unfold with the storyline, as the power of language itself is revealed.

Everything

Staying true to its name, Everything is a simulation system in which the entire universe can be recreated or altered. Designed to highlight the amazing explosion of life and growth occurring all around us, and throughout the history of our species, you are in charge of this reality from its smallest insect to its largest galaxy.

PRY

A single character’s consciousness is portrayed through cinema, games, and literature in this introspective experience seeking to reimagine how we interact with stories, and pry. Moving seamlessly through these different mediums, each with their own distinct impressions, allows the player to delve into the character’s many levels of consciousness in an eye opening exercise in understanding.

Most Significant Impact

Liyla and the Shadow of War

Based on actual events of the Gaza war, this game takes players through the story of a little girl living in the warzone during its most dangerous period of 2014.

Walden, A Game

The life and times of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau is explored in this first person simulation of self-reliant living. Players are tasked with balancing their own survival needs while connecting with the sublime during their journey through the forest.

Minecraft:Education Edition

Minecraft:Education Edition returns in this category due to its widespread application in classrooms. Educators have been able to purchase the application for a little while now, and so far its impressive new features have yielded intriguing results.

Best Learning Game

1979 Revolution: Black Friday

Survive the dangerous streets of Iran during the late 1970s in this choice driven narrative title. Players play the role of Reza, a young photojournalist capturing images of the warzone and navigate the life and death decisions that lurk around every corner.

Dragonbox BIG Numbers

This children’s game aims to teach kids the art of ‘big numbers’! Long addition and subtraction are taught through the dynamic and diverse world of the Nooms, as players develop key skills in strategic thinking and resource management.

At Play In The Cosmos

One of the biggest potential uses for videogames in the classroom is to show students elements of the world that cannot easily be explained without tangible demonstration. At Play In The Cosmos provides students an in depth journey through space, where players are tasked with building their own understanding of the universe itself through the tools real astronomers use and the laws of science they adhere to.

The awards ceremony will take place Monday July 31st, so we’ve not got long to wait for the big reveal! More information can be found on the Games for Change official website.

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Oh yes, you read correctly. The inaugural entry into the famed Yakuza series first shed light on the seedy underbelly of Japan and the organised crime that lurked there in 2006, all the way back on the Playstation 2. In the original Yakuza, players were first introduced to the “Dragon of Dojima”, Kazuma Kiryu, who takes the fall for the murder of a crime boss, only to emerge from prison ten years later to a completely changed world. In 2017, Yakuza Kiwami takes us back to the origin of the series, completely rebuilt for PS4 from the ground up.

Yakuza (PS2)

Yakuza Kiwami (PS4)