Kotaku’s Weekend Guide: Bid Farewell To June With 5 Great Games

Play it on: PC, PS4, Switch
Current goal: Save the digital world

“Ken, didn’t you write about Cyber Sleuth for last week’s KWG?”

Sure did, disembodied voice. And I’m gonna do it again. I have convinced at least a few dozen people to try out the best Digimon game ever over the past couple of weeks, and if you were on the fence about it, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth and its sequel, Hacker’s Memory, are on sale for $5 on Switch right now. That’s an insane deal for a really great duo of games that have immaculate vibes, deep monster-taming mechanics, and a really compelling, multifaceted mystery at the center. Going back to play one of my favorite games from 2016 has given me several hours of Digimon goodness to devour. I’m still only about midway through the original Cyber Sleuth, but I want to see both it and Hacker’s Memory through to the end once more before Digimon Story: Time Stranger comes out in October. These games rule, and they’re cheaper than a trip to Starbucks. Join me and the dozens of others who are heading into the Digital World this month. You won’t regret it. — Kenneth Shepard

Play it on: PS4, PS5, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Verified”)
Current goal: Learn to be more careful with my hands

Sometimes it’s probably better to leave well enough alone. Ellie had to learn that lesson pretty harshly. And it seems I do too. But whether it’s revenge or a need for answers, there are some things that just yank you into stressful, dark, and complicated situations and before you know it, you’re standing in the wreckage, the fallout of something destructive. It ain’t fun.

For the most part, I feel I’ve gotten my fill of TLOU’s various moral conundrums for a lifetime. But after a recent cab ride during which I reflected on my own bruised knuckles, the result of me punching a wall after I pursued a kind of emotional closure that was never going to happen anyway (don’t look at me that way. It’s not like I shot up a hospital or something), the first thought I had was “well, I guess it’ll be hard to play guitar for a while.” The second thought was of The Last of Us: Part II. If you’ve played that game to completion, you know what I’m talking about. At least I still have all my fingers.

To be honest, my world’s kind of on fire right now. And the focus that The Last of Us: Part II demands, especially on higher difficulties, might be what I need. And maybe I do need a lesson about repeating cycles of pain and how to stop fucking chasing something that won’t ever give you what you want anyway. I’m not quite sure if I have the appetite for the story of this game again, but I still have yet to play the remastered version’s roguelike mode. That works for me as the gameplay of TLOU was often the aspect I found most appealing. And right now I just need to shut my brain off with some video games.

— Claire Jackson

Play it on: PC
Current goal: Finish the advanced tier

I was going through my Steam wishlist this week, having noticed that it was over 400 games long and featured games that haven’t shown an update since I added them in 2018. So I had a bit of a clear-out, and in the process noticed a fair few games I was interested in that have since come out, but that I’ve never played. And among them was pure-logic puzzle game Nurikabe World.

Oh my goodness, I cannot recommend it enough. I’ve reviewed it over on Buried Treasure, where I also take a stab at explaining a very visual puzzle game in very inadequate words. I won’t trouble you with that. But know this takes a very ordinary pen-and-paper puzzle and brings it to incredible life, not just by creating a rationale for its internal logic by having you carve rivers through land, but also by featuring gorgeous animation and music. It’s delightful.—John Walker

Play it on: PC, Mobile
Current goal: 7 wins in my next draft

It’s been years since I last played Magic: The Gathering Arena. This week I couldn’t stop trying to sneak in matches wherever I could. That’s because of the Final Fantasy Universes Beyond set. In addition to being a beautiful homage to one of my favorite RPG series and a nostalgia trip that hits hard, it’s also just a lot of fun to play. I’me having a great time trying to put together Cid artifact decks and watching my summons completely flip momentum and break stalemates late in the game. (No, the Arena app still isn’t great on mobile but it’s good enough.)

I’m trying to get some more time to play IRL with other FF freaks, but in the meantime Arena is the perfect substitute, especially the limited draft modes where there are material stakes for winning/losing and less pressure to net-deck and roll with the perfectly optimized strategy. I do occasionally check draft guides but then a card like Garland, Knight of Cornelia pops up and I still try to craft a deck around it to embrace my 1980s NES homesickness. —Ethan Gach

Play it on: PS5
Current goal: Start repairing connections

Oh, hi. It’s me again. So after wrapping up some much-needed venting through the perilous violence that is The Last of Us Part II, I’m gonna need to wind down and start envisioning a reparative future. And thank heavens Sam Porter Bridges has just such a task ahead of him.

I came to adore the original Death Stranding after a few playthroughs. It’s a dense piece of video game fiction if there ever was one, and there’s so much I still don’t understand about it, but in a good, mysterious way. I look forward to a new chapter of this wonderfully weird, sometimes too weird, Kojima fantasyscape.

The first Death Stranding did a remarkable job of fusing large, real-life themes such as human connection to its own wonderfully outlandish concepts like extinction entities, using them together to explore how our efforts to defy or control death can lead to unexpected consequences. That’s exactly the kind of thoughtful, stimulating, grounded yet escapist thing I need right now given what’s going on in my life and frankly, given the horrors of our world, too.

Hideo Kojima has repeatedly spoken about how he had to rewrite Death Stranding 2 after the pandemic, this time with a script that’s more focused on asking, “Should We Have Connected?”

It’s a question I’m asking myself a lot. I don’t know if Kojima’s going to give me the kind of answer I want to hear, but I’m certainly in need of spending some time in his mind right now to think about it. — Claire Jackson

And that wraps our picks for the weekend! Happy Pride and happy gaming!