Developer: Afil Games Publisher: Afil Games Release Date: January 13, 2026 Available for: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch (version reviewed) Beetle Shock could be described in a sentence written in crayon on a napkin, and you’d lose nothing in terms of detail or value prospect. That’s not entirely a criticism, either – it is exactly what it looks like on the tin, short and slight yet adequate enough as a game to make the question of whether it’s worth your time more subjective an inquiry than normal. What we have here is a mascot platformer that owes part of its design to A Boy and His Blob , minus the jellybean-infused powers of a shapeshifting companion. Like the Boy of that game, Beetle Shock’s titular protagonist is limited in their mobility options; they can only run forward and back, jump, and perform a mid-air ground pound that smashes through breakable bricks and increases the height of jumps when hopping on mushrooms (this game's version of bounce pads). The Beetle...
When it comes to the Game Awards, there’s an unspoken understanding of how events will progress and how we inevitably will respond. It goes something like this: everyone get hyped up to see their favourite games get a nod (or pissed as hell because something they loved was snubbed), the speculation runs rampant as to who or what takes the prizes for any number of reasons, and then on Award Night we all get worn down by the slow pace of the show itself, the abundance of product placement and advertising, and the growing realization that a lot of awards are destined for the normiest of normie titles that best posture as outsider art. Credit where it’s due, host/showrunner Geoff Keighley and company have this down practically to a science. But if we must engage with the Awards – and barring anything else compelling happening during this mostly frigid, empty, and miserable time of year – then we can at least have some fun attempting to pre-game the show itself. Yes, I’ve decided to partake...