20th June
Hello there, and welcome back to our usual roundup of the games we’ve been getting into. This week, Victoria kept at it and finally finished Split Fiction—much to her satisfaction. Bertie seems rather hung up on reproduction; it’s a sentence I never expected to type. And Sherif isn’t showing much confidence in the new Onimusha after sampling its demo.
So, what have you been playing this week?
Quick follow-up: can you remember what you were playing last week? No stress—our What We’ve Been Playing archive is ready to help.
Split Fiction, Xbox Series X
We did it, folks. After my husband and I had to rerun roughly 80 percent of the game because a corrupted save file threw a real wrench into things, we finally saw Split Fiction through last night—and honestly, it was absolutely worth trudging through familiar territory again. I genuinely can’t recall experiencing anything quite like those final boss sequences in a game before. My senses were twisted beyond belief—compliment or not!—as we pushed through the constantly shifting scenes around us.
Seriously, I can’t stop thinking about it. I even grabbed my phone to speak with Katharine Castle about it—she’s the Eurogamer reviewer. “Oh man, so amazing!” Katharine said. “Completely blew my mind.” That’s exactly how I felt too, Katharine. Same here.
-Victoria
BioEden, PC
Need a blast from the past? Try Viva Piñata. Remember it? Do you also recall how Eurogamer—yes, that Eurogamer, and specifically then-editor Tom Bramwell—was so clearly taken with it? It was Rare’s animal-reproduction game, even if you could just as easily describe it as creating a garden that draws animals in, and then getting them to mate. Still—mating was part of it. Come on, Bertie.
That’s essentially the idea behind BioEden—at least to a degree. The other side of the game echoes Terra Nil’s planet-cleanup approach. You arrive on alien ground, collect resources (but not in excess), and pull animal DNA from the surrounding environment. From there, you build a dome biome to bring those species back and make sure they have what they need to reproduce. And no, I’m not talking about romantic Barry White-style soundtracks—just the right plants, food, and so on.
It’s a bit temperamental: I played BioEden a few weeks ago, and there’s a demo available for you to test right now—and maybe the ideas could use some tightening, but there’s definitely a strong foundation here. Or, more accurately, classic DNA. That’s because Broken Arms Games—an Italian studio behind the charming wine-making simulation Hundred Days—is developing it. Give it a try!
-Bertie
Onimusha: Way of the Sword demo, PC
With so many demos available during the current Steam Next Fest, I chose to revisit a demo from Summer Game Fest that I’d been meaning to play. The Mortal Shell 2 beta was my go-to “shadow-drop” demo for that showcase, but once I finished it, I had time to check out another shadow-drop option—Onimusha: Way of the Sword.
In recent years, Capcom demos have usually been pretty short, yet I was still caught off guard by how quick the Way of the Sword demo feels. I cleared it in under 45 minutes, and some of that time went into tweaking settings, as you often do on PC. Also, a quick note: HDR still seems uneven across RE Engine titles, and this one doesn’t behave any differently.
It’s hard to judge a game after such a limited taste, but I won’t pretend my interest wasn’t dampened. It isn’t typical for an action game of this kind to include animations that run this long and drawn out, yet Capcom appears to think that’s the right direction here. It was frequently unclear exactly where my inputs finished and where the animation began, and the combat often felt like it was moving on its own, given how lavishly detailed every strike is. The difficulty was also fairly low, which didn’t do it any favors.
I’m hoping the full release delivers sharper combat and tougher enemies. There seems to be a layer of mechanical depth here that’s easy to miss within the demo, so I’d like to see the complete version set up moments where that complexity can really come through.
-Sherif