Games for a holiday cheer

With only radio contact with mission control as your aid, you will have to use your sharp mind and to assemble space telescopes, maintain delicate solar arrays and research cosmic botany. [Courtesy]

It is that time of the year. Festive cheer is all around and shopping centres are adorned with twinkling lights and goodwill to all.  On the other hand, there are other big video game titles that are yet to drop. For the whole year we have seen some amazing franchise titles. As we near the end of the year, let’s look at some of the hottest titles. 

Dauntless

Dauntless is a multiplayer action role-playing game where you team up with other ‘slayers’ to hunt down powerful creatures called Behemoths. Here, you get to explore the farthest reaches of the shattered isles as you fight to take down increasingly dangerous foes, all while forging your legend as a slayer of Ramsgate. The high action combat sees you sprint, dodge, and dash off combos with a wide range of action-packed weapons.

Platform: PS5

Solar ash

Solar Ash is the second game from Heart Machine, the creators of the award-winning 2016 game Hyper Light Drifter. Here, you get to control the main character Rei, a voidrunner within a black hole, through a bright-neon coloured, three-dimensional landscape, avoiding obstacles and attacking enemies with a sword, as Rei tries to save her planet. The game focuses on less combat and more on movement.

Platform: PC, PS4, and PS5

Final fantasy xiv: endwalker

This is the fourth expansion pack to Final Fantasy XIV, a multiplayer online role-playing game. Players directly confront the Garlean Empire, an expansionist power that threatens the players’ homeland and allies. Zenos, the mad son of the former emperor, has murdered his father and now seeks a confrontation with the player’s Warrior of Light. He is aided by Fandaniel, an Ascian who aims to destroy the world and thereby end his immortal existence.

Platform: PS4, PS5, Microsoft Windows, macOS

Heavenly bodies

This is a game about cosmonauts, the body and the absence of gravity. Here, you get to discover the ever-changing intricacies of weightless motion as you move your cosmonaut’s arms with the left and right thumbsticks to push, pull and clamber through simulated scenarios aboard a scientific research station. With only radio contact with mission control as your aid, you will have to use your sharp mind and to assemble space telescopes, maintain delicate solar arrays and research cosmic botany.

Platform: PC, PS5 and PS4

White shadows

This is a cinematic puzzle-platformer where you play as a little Ravengirl trying to escape a brutal foundation founded on oppression and violence that puts her at the bottom of its hierarchical social ladder. Composed of a vast network of towers rising from the void of post-catastrophe darkness into the sky above, the city our young adventurer seeks to escape is a dangerous place to be. She will travel to the city’s brightest highs and delve to its darkest depths on her journey, discovering her destiny among the last free people alive.

Platform: Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows, MacOS, PS5

Halo infinite

This is a first-person shooter. The game’s campaign mode features a semi-open world structure; players can freely explore parts of the setting, the ringworld Zeta Halo, which are segmented off from each other and initially impassable. The new multiplayer mode comes with the added ability for pickups, which allow a player to activate a special power a limited number of times, such as dashing, active camouflage, and “repulsor” charges that can knock enemies and projectiles back.               

Microsoft Windows, Xbox 1 Xbox Series X/S

Loop hero

This is an endless RPG that begins after the world has ended. You as the hero is set up for many expeditions as you kill enemies and slimes that periodically spawn along the path. On the way, you meet other survivors who either assist you in trying to reconstruct the world or who, in despair, consider you lost and attack you in an effort to further their own survival. Most of the game takes place on one of the randomly generated paths.

Platform: Switch

Wytchwood

This is a crafting adventure game set in a land of mythical fables and fairy tales. As the plucky old witch of the woods, your travels will take you through fantastic forests and spooky swamps to encounter a cast of deceitful characters and wondrous creatures.

Platform: PS4 and PS5