June 24: wallet threat level Burch

High Moon Studios has been doing yeoman’s work with the Transformers games. Can they rise to the absurdity required for a good Deadpool game? We find out this week.

Nintendo’s latest collection of Wario minigames comes out for the Wii U under the name Mario & Watch. I’ve played the multiplayer, where I found exactly one mode worth playing more than once. It’s a Super Monkeyball style game where you and other players try to land your pieces on scored targets. I mainly like this mode because I don’t have to dig out any Wiimotes to play an old copy of Super Monkeyball. Otherwise, I don’t see the appeal of Wario & Game for anyone who isn’t a Wario completionist.

Endless Space, a strategy game without an AI, gets DLC called Disharmony. Among the additions is an “Adaptive Multi-Agent Artificial Intelligence System”. I didn’t make that up. The developers made that up. That’s actually one of the new features. In my experience, the fancier the name for the AI, the dumber the actual AI. But I’d love to be wrong. Endless Space is far too stylish a sci-fi game to be left to languish brainlessly.

The DLC I’m really excited about is the dedicated Tiny Tina add-on for Borderlands 2. Or, as I like to call it, the Burches are back. The conceit is that Tiny Tina is dungeonmastering a session of Bunkers and Badasses. I just failed my saving throw to resist.

This year’s Magic the Gathering release, Magic the Gathering 2014, gets a new sealed deck tournament and more flexible deck-building. These seem like fine additions to an already fine game. At this point, the biggest drawbacks to these digital versions of Magic the Gathering is that you’re still only playing Magic the Gathering. I can think of about a dozen other card-based games I’d rather play.

If you like your vampires in hoodies, Dark is an action/stealth RPG from the German studio that made a Dungeon Keeper clone called Dungeons.

Finally, Company of Heroes 2 is out this week. Have you played the original Company of Heroes? If so, you’re good to go.