It’s time for our weekly round up on what we’ve been getting up to in the gaming sphere.
Hunt: Showdown
I mentioned last week that I’d been back playing Hunt: Showdown a lot more recently. I put together a video on my YouTube channel from a recent win with myself and Ross. Check it out below.
New Genres New Experiences
I also spoke about how I’d been recently getting stuck in to some new genres and how I came around to trying them out. If you want to read that then head over here.
Shakedown Hawaii
Shakedown Hawaii is the 2nd game from Vblank Entertainment, famous for Retro City Rampage. Much like that game, Shakedown Hawaii takes inspiration from the classic top down view shenanigans of Grand Theft Auto 1 with a very similar graphical style.

It’s been out for a while digitally, but as you’ll be aware by now, I love my physical editions, so I awaited the limited run from the vBlank store.
The objective of Shakedown Hawaii is to rebuild an empire that is going bankrupt thanks to advances in technology and the world in general. While set in what seems decades ago (the 80s) there are gags and references to technology and things used today such as online shopping, spam, DLC for video games etc.
You purchase assets that are floundering in the hope that you can restore them and add them to your portfolio of schemes to get you back to the top. You have a ‘guy’ overseas in charge of taking over farms that produce item required for your businesses like some form of knock off coca plant to make cheap chocolate.

To ensure you’re businesses continue to improve you can assist in various manner of ways like blowing up vans delivering parcels to ensure your brick and mortar shops make money, and robbing coffee delivery vans and taking them to your owned coffee shops to ensure you get the best coffee beans to charge more for your coffees by acquiring the beans for free from your van robbery.
You can buy housing estates and pump up rent, supermarkets and ensure you sell only ethical grown produce which whacks the price up which all goes to increasing your daily revenue.

It is so damn addictive. So far it seems the story you are progressing is only based on the rebuilding of this empire while coming up with hair brained schemes from stumbling across things you’d never heard of on TV shows or internet adds. It’s all really amusing stuff.
I urge you to all give Shakedown Hawaii a go.
– Murr
Reviews & Recomendations
Sometimes sadly, discoveries can be made upon the back of tragedies. I’m sure the majority of you would be aware of the despicable act that occurred in Kyoto recently with the tragic burning of KyoAni studios with a devastating loss of life.
Upon reading into Kyoani after the horrible event, I began looking into what the studio had produced and its not in anyway going to help what happened, but I felt compelled to watch some of the their stuff.
I’ve gone with what they have on Netflix currently Violet Evergarden.

From what I can ascertain thus far, there was a huge war that appears to now be over. The titular character Violet was in the war and close to her major. After the war Violet is without memories of events and as to how she obtained her injuries. She is taken into care from Claudia Hodgins who helps bring Violet back to the current world and help her retrace her memories.
Now, I could be wrong and this might not end up being what will happen at all, but without reading the plot and based from the first bits I’ve watched thus far, this seems to be the case. I’ll probably be writing an apology to the fans next week as I’m massively off the mark.
That aside, what I’ve watched so far of it has been really captivating and I’m enjoying it. I look forward to carrying on with this and looking into other outputs that Kyoani have created.
– Murr