The Wrapp - Gritty tomb raiding, musical cats, and pixelated deerstalkers

Hello! And welcome back to another instalment of the Wrapp, where we discuss our gaming plans for the weekend every Friday. This week, Will tussles with tech as he tries to find a device that can run Tomb Raider (2013), while Catherine is off making music with cats. Elsewhere, Shaun and Iwan are dusting off their deerstalkers in preparation for some investigating.

Will Quick

Freelance Writer

Okay, there's a dilemma: Tomb Raider is returning to mobile, and it's looking pretty big. If you think the device you got for your loyalty to your internet provider is enough to support it, you'd be wrong. Now's the time to start asking friends and family for their phones and tablets, hoping one of them has kept up with the model progression. If that's not the case, then be ready to hit the secondhand tech stores to find them.

This is what I'll need to be doing if I hope to give the new Tomb Raider a fair shake. It's just unfortunate that there are no tombs to raid for the latest tech… or are there?

Toni Oisin H.C.

Freelance Writer

I’ve spent the past day or so getting my feet wet on Starsand Island, a new cosy life sim that’s just entered early access. There’s a lot I still haven’t explored yet, like ranching and agriculture, so I’ll probably spend most of my weekend getting to grips with that.

Catherine Dellosa

Reviews Editor

I feel partially responsible for setting Will off on a tomb-raiding mission across the town’s tech stores, so I’ll be atoning for my sins by taking valuable life lessons from a sleepy cat - Ren the Cat, in particular. Atmospheric puzzler Cadence is out now, and with perfect timing too - because with the way things are going lately, I need all the philosophical truths I can get.

Dann Sullivan

Editor in Chief

I have an incredibly busy weekend ahead, but one thing that I’ve set time aside for is the Pokémon Go Meowth Gigantamax day on Sunday. Meowth is one of, if not my, favourite Pokémon, and this is the debut for its newest form in PoGo. I’ll likely spend the rest of the day trying to trade good ones off of people, assuming I don’t pop a shundo in the raids.

Shaun Walton

Staff Writer

This weekend, my cup doth runneth over. To start, Darkside Detective 2 is free on the Epic Game store, and I love the look of it. A few short mysteries to solve? Sign me up, I very much enjoy detective games.

Additionally, I reviewed Blue Protocol: Star Resonance before it was released, and I loved it. However, when it officially released, they really messed up the controller settings. It was perfect pre-launch, then just horrible after. So, I've been checking periodically to see if they fixed it, and yesterday it appears they have. So, a bit of RPG fun between cases for me this weekend.

Iwan Morris

Staff Writer

While it’s not been the best week for me, I am still glad to see that Darkside Detective is making its way back to the Epic Games Store as another freebie! I’ll probably be taking some time to myself over the next couple of days, not least because I’ve got a ‘bromantic’ date lined up for me and my bachelor friend to drown our sorrows on Valentine’s.

Yet in the meantime, it’ll be business as usual. But here’s a teaser for what I’ll be working on next: it’s a peripheral that very much evokes one of the classics of the portable gaming genre. So stay tuned for one of my rare hardware reviews!

Stephen Gregson-Wood

Deputy Editor

Even though many interesting games launch every week on mobile, sometimes I prefer to kick back and play something familiar. This week, one of those old haunts will be Pokémon TCG Pocket. I've created a deck based around the undisputed best Pokémon, Chandelure, that sees you using Supporter cards with reckless abandon to boost the damage Past Friends can do. It's not a top-tier deck by any means, but with my boy being semi-viable, I feel like I'm obliged to commit to the gimmick. 

Elsewhere, discussions with Shaun have pulled me back into Retro Bowl big time. Whenever I have a spare five minutes, I'll squeeze in a match. I've currently built New Orleans from a lowly rated team to a roster with a chance at the titular Retro Bowl. I just have to hope I don't bottle it like I did the previous season. The pixelated pressure proved too much in the finals, and we went home as the first losers.