TA Team Picks (April 8th)

Xbox’s big Spring Sale has arrived and it’s offering a large selection of titles with nice big discounts. We, the TA news team, like to think of ourselves as relatively adept bargain hunters, so we’ve pooled our selections here…

I’ve watched The Batman recently — the one with R-Batz playing a socially-detached Bruce Wayne like his character from the Safie brothers’ classic, Good Time (it works really well) — and that has me in the mood for more. Now, I’m aware that all three of the Rocksteady series are on sale in the collection, but I need ammo for other sales picks so I’m just picking out the final one, Arkham Knight. It gives you Gotham City in all of its depressing, rainy, grimy, crime-addled glory and opens the skies to more verticality than both the grounded (in the literal sense) Arkham Asylum and the two-storey Arkham City. The story sees a mysterious new villain enter the scene while Bruce is haunted by the events of the previous entry. The story is good, but not quite as tidy as the previous two games. Much like Nolan’s The Dark Knight, it spreads its narrative net a bit too wide and while it lands some big and incredible hits, it lets the smaller details slip through the holes sometimes. That being said, it’s still gripping and manages to create scenarios that use open-world Gotham to staggering effect. A level set on an airship stands out as being particularly strong with the narrative and location coalescing perfectly.

It then also gives you the Batmobile for ground action, with the destructive four-wheeled force proving to be a sure-fire divide between those who like and those who dislike the game. Aesthetically it’s near-perfect, growling around the streets like a terrifying black boar, but the gameplay associated with it is sometimes a bit clunky and breaks the slow-paced brooding tempo that Rocksteady had used successfully previously. The combat on foot, though, is still a best-in-class combination of combo-chaining arcade brawler and 3D action game. It’s tense, frenetic, and full of depth that rewards dedicated players. The Batman: Arkham Knight achievements are a fun, but occasionally tricky, batch — do check our TA walkthrough if you need it! The game looks stunning, feels great on foot, and has more than enough Batman to satiate you for the many hours you will spend glowering with adrenaline after sitting with Matt Reeves’ film.

I’ve been looking to try out this spellbinding adventure game since it released late last year, so seeing 40% lopped off its price in the Xbox Spring Sale was the perfect time for me to pull the trigger. It’s a point-and-click-style game based on Scandinavian folklore, with young Tove out to rescue her little brother Lars from a pretty gnarly monster. Not all monsters are mean, mind, and those you help out tend to repay your kindness by helping you get ever closer to getting your brother back — think Labyrinth, only snowier. So far, puzzles have been pretty logical and creative (the genre can all too often be cryptic or even completely obtuse with its solutions), and the bold art style and fascinating theme make for beautiful scenes and surprises around every corner. The Röki achievements don’t look especially taxing bar a few missables to watch out for, so I’m looking forward to working through them some more — after hitting a bunch of huge, deep games hard, this charming adventure is exactly the change of pace I needed, so I can’t wait to see what other kinds of Nordic mysteries and creatures are still to come…

You don’t need me to tell you how good The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is. It’s won numerous awards, topped countless best games lists, and is beloved by many. The reason why I’ve chosen The Witcher 3 for my Spring Sale pick is because of the game’s upcoming free Xbox Series X|S upgrade, and its incredibly low price. The upgrade, which is due to launch sometime in Q2 2022, will be free to all who own a previous-gen copy of either the standard or the GOTY version of The Witcher 3, so if you have never played it (you really should), no longer have a copy, or just want to own it digitally, it makes sense to pick up The Witcher 3 from the Spring Sale — while it’s at its cheapest ever price — for $7.99/£4.99/€5.99. The Series X|S upgrade, dubbed: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition, includes both the Blood and Wine and Hearts of Stone expansions and makes a raft of visual and technical improvements, including ray tracing and faster load times. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition will be sold as a standalone, but you might as well pick up a previous-gen copy now for much less now.

Thief, in my opinion, is one of the unsung beauties of the Xbox One generation and highly underrated. It features some pretty solid stealth mechanics and robust difficulty modifiers, which allows you to really tailor the experience to your tastes. Whether you want the challenge of not killing anyone, permadeath, or any other mechanical modifiers to make your time playing easier or harder, there’s a host of neat options. While its storyline isn’t particularly memorable, it does help string the journey along, introduce some interesting characters, as well as open new locations and keep things moving at a steady pace. It’s a shame that Square Enix never attempted a follow-up, really, but one can only hope that the future holds a new adventure for Garrett. It’s currently at its lowest price ever of £2.39, rocking an 85% discount, which makes it a great time to explore The City if you haven’t already. This reminds me; I haven’t unlocked all of the Thief achievements yet, so I should probably get that sorted.

I couldn’t very well drop a sales pick without mentioning that The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood is also on sale this week, with a 67% discount. It includes all of the Chapter expansions to date, and will set you up perfectly for the launch of the High Isle chapter in June. I highly recommend anyone that’s interested in the game to grab it while it has such an awesome discount.

Will you be picking up any of the games listed here, or are you still giving your backlog a spring clean? Let us now down below!