The Justice League dies, Nunu sings a song and more in a blockbuster week for gaming!
The final week of January 2024 has arrived, and boy is it a good one for gaming. Two games we’ve been keeping an eye on are finally out this week: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Persona 3 Reload, the former because it’s Rocksteady’s big-budget follow-up to Arkham Knight and the latter because it’s a remake of a classic Persona RPG. DC superheroes or dark supernatural high school shenanigans? The choice is yours.
What we’re playing this week
I’m spoiled for choice this week, personally. Rocksteady’s looter-shooter Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League launches on February 2, charging players with killing off members of an iconic superhero squad to save Metropolis from an alien invasion. The game’s Destiny 2-like gameplay loop might not be what players expected from the creators of Batman: Arkham Knight, but time will tell if Rocksteady has what it takes to stand out in a fairly competitive genre.
Persona 3 Reload (February 2) is a much less risky buy, seeing as it’s a largely faithful remake of an already-beloved PRG. Atlus has remade the title in Persona 5’s stylised image, so it should be perfect for fans of the game to jump into. One of Riot Forge’s final games before its shutdown this year, Song of Nunu, is also hitting Xbox and PlayStation consoles on January 31. While we’re on the topic of ports, Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding: Director’s Cut will also launch on iOS and Mac devices on January 30. The game is getting a sequel and a film adaptation, so now’s the time to catch up.
On February 1, another much-anticipated RPG launches: Granblue Fantasy: Relink. The fantasy game lets players form a party of four to fight their way to victory in either solo or 4-player co-op multiplayer.
What we’re watching this week
The year’s first major blockbuster arrives on February 2: Argylle, a spy-comedy that follows a writer who gets roped into international espionage when her stories somehow begin to reflect real-life events. Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Dua Lipa, John Cena, Bryan Cranston and Catherine O’Hara lead a pretty stacked ensemble cast here, directed by Matthew Vaughn (Kingsman).
For something a little lighter and cosier, The Holdovers is also playing in cinemas this week. This is one of my favourite movies of 2023, so I can’t recommend it enough. The plot follows a grumpy lecturer at a prep school who has to babysit a group of students over Christmas break, as none of them have anywhere else to go. He begins to form a bond with one of the students and the school’s head cook, all of whom spend the holidays together despite their shared reluctance.
On TV, Amazon Prime Video’s TV adaptation of Mr. and Mrs. Smith also premieres on February 2, following a couple of spies (Maya Erskine and Donald Glover) who impersonate a married couple to execute missions together. Is it a rom-com? An action-comedy? All of the above? We’ll find out later this week, I suppose.
