Games roundup: 'Dakar Desert Rally,' 'Resident Evil Village: Winters' Expansion, 'Gas Station Simulator'

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Here's a look at the slate of recent game releases:

BREWMASTER: BEER BREWING SIMULATOR

Auroch Digital delivers a satisfyingly stagnant, easygoing sim that allows craft beer fans to put together the concoctions of their dreams and win virtual acclaim.

Approaching its subject with firm seriousness, the game grants you an unlimited supply closet with which to tinker and manage at your whim.

You also need to keep your operation humming smoothly by making sure your crafting area and tools are clean and well-maintained. There is plenty of room for experimentation, and occasional bugs stall your progress.

Geared toward those with deep interest in beer craftsmanship, the sim's dryness may chase casual gamers away.

DAKAR DESERT RALLY

The Amaury Sport Organisation's vast global rally race takes center stage here, with the desert vistas of Saudi Arabia providing the unforgiving backdrop for a racing battle of attrition.

The map features more than 12,000 miles of desert terrain in which the two-week, 14-stage vent plays out.

As much about endurance, strategy and optimization than raw speed, success depends on your ability to adapt to the demands of the terrain and varied competitions.

As you progress through the game, you build up an arsenal of vehicles, including cars, quads, SSVs and trucks. The solo campaign is engaging, but it's the four-player multiplayer mode in which the engine truly revs.

FINAL VANTASY VII REMAKE: EPISODE INTERmission

Once you give into the hype and buy a PS5, your first destination would be a return trip to Midgar, the corporate dystopian setting of Final Fantasy VII. Joey Greaber's review of the base game, approaching two and a half years old now (which is hard to believe) is pretty much in agreement with how I feel about VII.

It's a corny, cutscene heavy, over-the-top remake of the original game with great combat, loveable characters, and absolutely gorgeous graphics even on a last-gen system. I knew one of the first things I needed to play on the PS5 was INTERmission, a short DLC that puts the focus on Yuffie, a young Wutai ninja who hasn't yet met Cloud and the gang and is stealing Materia from the Shinra corporation during the events of the first game.

Yuffie is a hyperactive, chuuni teen who you'll instantly either love or hate. She's loud and silly and plays herself up as some sort of superhero. Using her giant shuriken you get to solve puzzles, break boxes from afar, and her ninja agility provides some fun parkour moments. Combat remains pretty much unchanged from the base game — and so do a lot of the maps. Hope you like the Sector 7 Slums because they're back! But you do get to reacquaint yourself with familiar side characters and play them in a bizarre strategy minigame that was actually a lot of fun — I hope it returns in future installments.

Across the four hour-ish story you get to see the events of the main game from a different perspective and it builds to a heartbreaking ending. The $20 price tag may be too much for the tiny amount of content but what is here is tight, gorgeous, and a lot of fun. Yuffie's going to be an amazing addition to Cloud's team and I can't wait for next year's second game in the remake trilogy.

GAS STATION SIMULATOR

The wacky game sets you lose to manage an abandoned roadside gas station, fixing it up, drawing customers and adding amenities.

Some of the tasks are humdrum and tedious, but the overall progression toward your grand visions is intoxicating. It helps that there is ample humor at play, much of it poking fun at rural lifestyles.

Developer Drago Entertainment manages to fuse the necessities of a micromanagement simulator to those of a silly first-person game. You'll find yourself clambering up rooftops, breaking through boarded-up doors and dealing with strange characters and random threats to keep things humming.

The game takes a fairly grounded look at the act of starting and maintaining a small business, but never lets things get as dry as the broken-up boards that characterize your operation.

RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE: WINTERS' EXPANSION

A year after the spectacular horror game's release, 'Winters' Expansion" gives you plenty of reasons to retrace your steps through the Capcom creep-fest.

The expansion allows you to replay the game in first-person mode. New animations are also included, with just about all of them helping to amplify the terror.

"The Mercenaries Additional Orders" adds in a slew of new characters from the series' expanded fiction, such as Chris Redfield, Lord Karl Heisenberg and Countess Alcina Dimitrescu. Each character boasts varied special abilities that allow them to team up to solve puzzles and dispatch enemies.

Also new is "Shadows of Rose," which builds off of the original plot. Set 16 years after the ending of the mainline game, a grown-up Rose Winters frantically searches for a way to get rid of the dark powers that she has been cursed with. Journeying through a torrent of her own fears, memories and psychoses, she faces down monsters real and imagined as she tries to avoid devolving into evil.

While the expansion may not be a full-fledged sequel "Village" fans dreamed of, it sweetens the pot enough to merit a look for the game's fans.

Publishers provided review codes.