Wow, a LOT of summer gaming news dropped recently since we last talked. Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo all had plenty of announcements, Summer Game Fest happened, and we even had some news of our own: using Discord voice chat on PS5 is WAY easier now. 

We’ve pulled Matt, Alex, Emi, and Cody (hi) away from their beachside tanning sessions to tell us what they’ve been playing. 

Somehow, Matt is NOT the one with the big list this month! 

It’s officially summertime! What have you been playing in the last month? 

Uhhh.. it’s probably nothing I mentioned last month. Nine Sols carried over into June and I highly recommend it if you’re looking to scratch that Silksong-shaped itch. Other than that, I’m farming like crazy in Elden Ring to finally beat Mohg which gets me into the DLC club.

We’ve made it through June’s huge slew of gaming news! Did any new game announcements catch your eye?

That Xbox & Bethesda Showcase felt like the most E3 moment in a long while. Excited for all of the content they shared but eagerly awaiting some dates. Especially Doom: The Dark Ages.

Discord is easier to use with cross-play games than ever before. Do you use Discord to talk with friends on other platforms, such as PlayStation 5 or Xbox, while playing games or just chillin’? 

Now that Discord is easier than ever to use on PS5, similar to what we achieved with Xbox a couple of years ago, I exclusively take all my Discord work meetings on both consoles now. (To my manager: this is a joke. Mostly.)

It’s officially summertime! What have you been playing in the last month? 

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Switch Remake), catching up to Dragon’s Dogma 2, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, and Final Fantasy XIV. I’m actually always playing FFXIV, but never thought to mention it. Mentioning it now since the new expansion, Dawntrail, is coming out on June 28th for early access. Nothing else too surprising here though, if you’ve been keeping up with the blog.

Some of my friends at work also recently got me into the Nancy Drew games by HeR Interactive, which are point-and-click mystery adventures with a cult-like following. The 34th installment, Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys, just came out in May and is the first of the series that has free navigation instead of point-and-click. I picked that one up and also played Nancy Drew: The Phantom of Venice.

We’ve made it through June’s huge slew of gaming news! Did any new game announcements catch your eye?

Infinity Nikki. Listen. I genuinely think this is going to be one of the greatest applications of the “open-world” setting in an RPG. I do not like most “open-world” RPGs because the “open-worldness” often clashes with the underlying story. “Make haste to cut off the villain before they obtain the magic thing that’ll help them destroy the world! But also… go collect 1000 pine cones for this rando in the starting village. While you’re at it, go play 100 hours of this fishing mini-game in all bodies of water throughout the world.” 

It makes me feel like I’m constantly off-task (not a feeling I enjoy), and I get taken out of the immersion of roleplaying a hero who was tasked with mankind’s safekeeping. (I can hear the echoes of Matt screaming at me to just play Infinite Wealth already if I want an open world that makes sense with the story). Infinity Nikki might finally be the one where I feel okay and even motivated to stop and smell the roses and gather the 1000 pine cones. 

The executive producer for this game is Kentaro Tominaga, who actually directed the Champions’ Ballad DLC for Breath of the Wild and served as staff for various other Zelda titles like Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, and A Link Between Worlds, which makes me think this dress-up game, open-world RPG might be something serious. 

And some others include:

• Kingdom Hearts 4… is what I would have said if there was any news. :( I thought Geoff was just faking us out when he explicitly warned us not to expect news on this.
• Hello Kitty Island Adventure - This is another one that sounds like an ironic pick but is something I’m actually so excited for. As a lifelong Sanrio and Animal Crossing fan, this game seems like the perfect collab-in-spirit for me.
• I might play FANTASIAN Neo Dimension, if not only to support Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu, the “fathers of Final Fantasy.”
• Mecha Break - “Did you ever play Zone of the Enders?” a friend asked me when the trailer for Mecha Break started up at Summer Games Fest. Yes, of course I did. And I also imported and played the heck out of Gundam Breaker 2 and 3. And I will play Mecha Break.
• Metaphor: ReFantazio - I see Atlus and the Persona and SMT director, artist, and composer; I play the game. Simple.
• Kunitsu–Gami: Path of the Goddess - I recently took stock and realized I like a lot of Capcom games. Idk.
• Metroid Prime 4: Beyond - It’s Metroid. It’s 3D Metroid. It’s been 17 years since the last one.
• Disney Illusion Island - I’ve really enjoyed Disney games in the past, going back to Castle of Illusion on the Sega Genesis or Epic Mickey (also, of course, Kingdom Hearts). I’m really interested in the light detective aspect of this game.
• Super Mario Party Jamboree - I always like Mario Party games.
• Mario & Luigi: Brothership - While I haven’t played the other Mario & Luigi games, I like the other Mario 3D platformers. The combo moves seem like a fun challenge.
• I probably won’t pick this up because I played so much of the Wii U version, but Switch owners should pick up Donkey Country Returns HD if they didn’t play the original. It’s an amazing successor to the original DKC series on the SNES.
• This wasn’t an entirely new announcement, but Monster Hunter Wilds confirmed finally being crossplay is revolutionary.
• Most of this list has been from the more established names/teams/publishers, so I want to shed light on some of more indie titles like MIO: Memories in Orbit or Neva (the team behind Gris, so maybe not as obscure as they were before Gris made waves).

I’m looking back at my list and realize you can probably guess most of what I’m going to play by figuring out my unwavering loyalty to certain people, teams, or franchises.

Discord is easier to use with cross-play games than ever before. Do you use Discord to talk with friends on other platforms, such as PlayStation 5 or Xbox, while playing games or just chillin’? 

I WILL be playing Monster Hunter Wilds crossplay finally. Now, if I’m the PC or PS5 player for this game, we’ll have to wait and see.

While I was playing Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth in March or Final Fantasy XVI last year, I’d often be on calls with a couple of friends who were playing Smash or something else. Of course, join-from-console wasn’t available back then, so I would futz around with my phone. But I’m excited to do this more often now that it’s easier.

It’s officially summertime! What have you been playing in the last month? 

It’s been a party! Well, specifically, there's been a lot of Super Mario Party and Pummel Party. I think my friends and I are just in the mood to test our minigame skills and the strength of our friendships.

We’ve made it through June’s huge slew of gaming news! Did any new game announcements catch your eye?

I’ve been all over the place with what I want to play first, but here’s a list of a few!
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
- The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
- Super Mario Party Jamboree (nobody is surprised after reading above)
- Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Discord is easier to use with cross-play games than ever before. Do you use Discord to talk with friends on other platforms, such as PlayStation 5 or Xbox, while playing games or just chillin’? 

Oh definitely. For games like Call of Duty: Warzone, I’m usually on my PS5, but my Warzone friend group is split between PC/PS5 players. Between games, we just hang out, chat, and catch up on life. Most of my game friends live pretty far away, so I like the chill chat time as much as the time spent playing. 

It’s officially summertime! What have you been playing in the last month? 

If you read the last Staff Picks I was a part of (over here), you might remember I was playing a whole lotta Rock Band 4. Now, I’m playing mostly the same type of game, except in Fortnite.  

A new season of Fortnite Festival’s kicked off and I’ve been grinding my Festival Pass nearly every day since. They seem to have also boosted the amount of XP you get from playing Festival in general, so all my Fortnite Festival playing has also contributed to my main Fortnite Battle Pass. 

Also, the new Battle Stage? A battle-royale-like PvP rhythm game? Absolutely sick idea. 

After three months of waiting, I also received my PDP Riffmaster, and wow — it’s SO nice to use a newly created guitar controller. My existing Rock Band 4 guitars are nearly nine years old (and my drums are 15 years old), so it’s nice to have a more modern controller with Type-C charging instead of swapping out AA batteries. 

We’ve made it through June’s huge slew of gaming news! Did any new game announcements catch your eye?

I legit screamed when Gears of War: E-Day was announced. I played SO MUCH of the original trilogy — I remember spending hours and hours playing Horde mode late at night with friends, trying our best to survive with barely any ammo and screaming in terror when things got almost too much to handle, yet we still pulled through.

Also, Dom was in the trailer. It was pullin’ at my heartstrings a bit, ya’know? Those aren’t tears, I swear.

Discord is easier to use with cross-play games than ever before. Do you use Discord to talk with friends on other platforms, such as PlayStation 5 or Xbox, while playing games or just chillin’? 

I do, actually!! I usually just chill in voice while playing unrelated games — the last time I did that, Killer Clowns from Outer Space just came out. While others were having slightly more serious conversations, I’d blurt out things like “THEY ACTIVATED THE KLOWNPOCALYPSE.” 

My cousins also like to play games with me on occasion, even though one is local and one lives further away. To let our longer-distance cousin watch us play, we played The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope’s couch coop mode in person while streaming from my Xbox over a Discord VC so she could watch! Its choose-your-own-adventure style gameplay is great to spectate — it’s like she was watching a movie with us, except when one of us died, we got ALL the blame.

Crossplay All Day, Game Through the Summer Nights

There’s a TON of game releases to look forward to through the rest of the year, and that’s not even including the games that our contributors mentioned! If there’s a particular game that was announced that Matt, Emi, Alex, or Cody (hi again) should check out, let us know on Twitter (as it will always be known) or Instagram. 

And if you’d like to try out Discord voice chat on your PS5 or Xbox next time you’re playing a game that supports crossplay, check out our recent How-To Blog about using cross-platform voice chat using Discord! You should share it with that friend who keeps insisting on starting a video call just to their phone on the floor on speakerphone instead of using Discord.