Best of EGX 2016: What Should You Play This Weekend?

Boxer

Play it at: The Leftfield collection. Hall 7

Boxer's a local co-op game, so you'll need to bring a friend. You and that friend will have to touch gloves, using thumbsticks on each controller to bring your fists together in the time honoured mark of respect shown by all boxers. You and a friend will then proceed to punch the ever-loving hell out of each other.

Punches in the game are loosely directed using the analogue sticks, and while trying to punch your opponents brain out of the back of his skull, you're also trying to deflect his punches with your big awkward fists.

It's simple; there's just a single screen with endless punching but, you know... it's good punching.

Dishonored 2

Play it at: The Bethesda booth. Hall 20. Good luck though, the queue was 90 minutes long all day today and will only get busier.

Dishonored 2 is silky-smooth. Opting for my playthrough to control the former empress and former damsel-in-distress Emily Kaldwin, I was thrown into the mansion of a somewhat deranged inventor. Hitting switches in several of the rooms would change the entire mansion's configuration whether it's just a handful of furniture or an entirely new room.

Luckily, I had a handful of magic powers and an incredible movement engine to help me through. I say incredible because, genuinely, the way you can navigate the changing rooms without clipping issues or accidental glitches even as you're climbing up walls as they're pulled into the ceiling or teleporting through a corridor as it merges into the basement is incredible, there's no other words for it.

The stealth still works, combat is fun when you mess up and have to murder a room full of people, but for me, the real draw is the way you move. Clambering up walls or sliding across the floor feels fantastic, and for a game where you spend so much time dashing about, it's reassuring to see they've nailed that key part.

Tokyo42

Play it at: Mode7 have a Frozen Synapse 2 and Tokyo 42 booth near the exit to Hall 7.

Tokyo42 is a top-down action game tasking you with becoming an assassin. This difficult moral quandry isn't the crux of the story though - after being framed as a murderer by an assassin, you quickly escape from a squadron of guards and then agree to become an assassin to try and get closer to the original assassin that set you up for assassinating. Right.

Instead, the game focuses on the fun stuff - tossing grenades at targets, sniping them from range, or fighting off a series of angry mini golders with a katana. One really cool feature is your jumps. You don't take fall damage in this rooftop battleground, and as a result you're free to throw yourself around with little thought for your own safety. It feels satisfying to dash away from overwhelming odds and toss yourself off a tall building, hoping you'll make the landing on a quiet rooftop 30 feet away.

Tokyo42 isn't going to set the world on fire but I can see it getting a solid cult following if the rest of the game lives up to this promise.