Game Observer

Remedy Entertainment has officially confirmed that Control Resonant has reached the Gold stage, meaning the main development of the game is completely finished and it is now ready for distribution. The digital release is still going ahead as planned. Control Resonant will launch digitally on September 24 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. The Deluxe Edition on PS5 will also exclusively include 48 hours of early access.

Legendary game designer Warren Spector has announced his retirement from the game industry. A pioneer in immersive sim games, Warren Spector posted a statement to his LinkedIn page announcing his retirement from game development. Spector cited “age and health (my business) catching up with me” as key reasons for the decision.

PlayStation has ended its development and publishing agreement with Ukrainian indie studio Ternox Games without giving the developer a clear reason. The decision means STONKS-9800: Stock Market Simulator will no longer be released on PS5, even though the port was already in development, while 13 Ternox Games titles will be removed from the PlayStation Store after August 23.

We’ve reached a bit of a cooling off period in the game release calendar this year, as studios are working desperately to ship out their projects in September and October before the kaiju that is Grand Theft Auto VI comes to swallow the video game industry whole in November.

Once again, many gacha players’ eyes are fixated on the Holy Grail War. Nevertheless, Konami’s JRPG comeback and the latest entry of a popular Korean mobile game series are also making waves across the ranks. This week’s charts cover August 10 to 14 and are based on estimated top-grossing rankings from Sensor Tower and AppMagic. Note that the figures below combine estimates across both Android and iOS.

Fantasy Network in an odd duck in many ways. It’s main character, Lyn, wouldn’t feel out of place as the mascot of a 16 or 32-bit console in that she’s a teenage, blue-haired anthropomorphic Lynx who wears roller blades and fingerless gloves literally everywhere she goes, and also fights with an umbrella. Fantasy Network is also the first metroidvania to incorporate social media as a progression mechanic, along with racing, cooking, dancing, gaming, and fashion mini games.

Comic books are an amazing source for fighting games; they have a huge roster of ready made characters with a thousand and one excuses to get into fights with each other and all sorts of feats and powers to turn into moves. Enter Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, a four-on-four team fighter featuring 20 Marvel heroes and villains as they duke it out in a battle against the villain du jour, the Champion, a character created just for the game.

Want to play as The Champion in Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls? The Champion is the secret 21st playable character and the main antagonist of the game, but you need to complete Episode Mode before you can use him. To unlock The Champion, you must fully complete one story campaign in Episode Mode. Each campaign has 11 chapters and normally takes around 60 to 90 minutes, although you can finish it in under 30 minutes if you skip the story scenes and get through the fights quickly.

SFB Games, made up of brothers Tom and Adam Vian, began their career as indie developers creating flash games in the 2000s, which includes a Phoenix Wright-inspired detective mystery game, Detective Grimoire. This served more as a proof-of-concept in the long run, and the first official canonical entry in Grimoire’s series came in 2014. The current character designs and overall art style came about in Tangle Tower in 2019 with the increased involvement of artist Catherine Unger.

I have been personally following WARDOGS since its announcement. The game promised all-out warfare gameplay in a new integration of the King of the Hill mod from Arma 3. The mod is one of the most popular custom games in Arma 3 to this day, with hundreds of players still actively playing. My interest was even more piqued when the team announced that they were working with the creator of the mod itself, Sa-Matra.