What to play this weekend: Demos and Demons and Dwarves oh my!

Last weekend’s Summer Game Fest and this week’s Steam NextFest have conspired to give us a ton of demos to try out this weekend. In addition, the most recent entry in the Shin Megami Tensei franchise has gotten much bigger and a lot less platform-exclusive. Let’s check out what there is to play.

New Release of the Week: Shin Megami Tensei 5 Vengeance

Shin Megami Tensei 5 was released back in 2021 exclusively for the Nintendo Switch. While generally well-received, there was a sense among some players that the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in an underdeveloped product. Flashforward to now, and SMT5: Vengeance is now available not only for the Switch but for Playstation 4/5, Xbox One and Series X/S, and PC. Vengeance adds a completely separate story track while also updating the combat and play for the original version. The only negative is that Switch players who have the original do not have an upgrade path and have to repurchase the entire game.

For those unfamiliar with SMT, this is the series that led to the popular Persona franchise. The turned-based JRPG takes place in a modern Tokyo that intersects with a post-apocalyptic Tokyo where demons and angels battle. Both the original game path and the new Vengeance path are around 80 hours long, so there’s a lot of bang for your buck.

Demos! Demos! Demos!

There’s a lot of new Demos available this weekend across all genres of gaming due to Summer Game Fest and Steam NextFest so we’re going to be spending many hours devouring upcoming games in bite-sized chunk. We’ve covered 15 Demos we’re trying out earlier this week, but that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of all that can be enjoyed.

DLC of the Week: Alan Wake 2 Night Springs

2023 Game of the Year candidate Alan Wake 2 got its first DLC this week. Night Springs features three new self-contained episodes that branch off (but contain spoilers for) the main game. Like Alan Wake 2 these stories are in the suspense and survival horror genre, and spotlight side characters in Alan’s world.

Night Springs is only available via the Expansion Pass contained in the Digital Deluxe edition of Alan Wake 2; if you’ve purchased the standard edition you’ll need to upgrade to deluxe to access it. Alan Wake 2 is available on PC, PS5, and X-box Series X/S.

Diggy Diggy Deal of the Week: Deep Rock Galactic

To celebrate the launch of Season 5, the world’s most popular Dwarf-centric FPS Deep Rock Galactic is having a big sale on the base game and DLC for the next two weeks — 67% off. In addition, this weekend you can play for free if you haven’t had the chance to fight off aliens with your Dwarf friends yet. Deep Rock Galactic is currently only available on the Steam platform, but will be releasing on Xbox and Playstation at the end of this month.

Now tell us, Watchers — what are you playing this weekend? Be sure to point out any Demos you’re excited to try!