Rise Of Incarnates Punches Out Of Early Access

Bandai Namco's Rise of Incarnates [official site] is a 2v2 multiplayer 3D brawl-o-fighter. Don't be put off by them calling it a "battle arena", don't go thinking it's a MOBA, it's not: it's a game where you and a pal duff up someone else and their buddy. They're not Heroes, Champions, or Lords, they're Incarnates - they don't need AI-controlled creeps to help dole out kickings.

If 2v2 manpunching sounds like a lark to you, head on over to Steam, where Rise of Incarnates has now left Early Access and is free-to-play.

Those eponymous Incarnates are humans who've come into mythical powers, and now are beating each other up in melee and ranged combat. I understand it's a bit like the Gundam VS series, and its dev team includes Gundam VS, Tekken, and SoulCalibur folks.

Rise of Incarnates launched into open beta via Steam Early Access in February, where it found a frosty reception due to character unlocks only coming as pricey microtransactions. Bandai Namco have since added a way to unlock them with virtuacash earned through playing. It's a bit of a grind to get them, but hey, that's F2P monetisation for you.

All twelve characters are available to try for your first two weeks, so you can check them out. After that, you can pick one character for free and get a second at a discount. After that, they cost about £5.50 each. You can buy cosmetic bits too.

Here's a trailer from back when it arrived on Early Access: