Well, the yearly hype machine is coming to a stop with Steam sales for the missing titles in many collections while game of the year listings are the only thing most websites have to do. So there was not a whole bunch of news, but enough for a post after waiting two weeks. Yet, a third of this is just from a Nintendo Direct and my very abridged version of it.
As somebody who has been buying a few too many titles on Steam over the past few months, there have been a few titles where I wish I could remove them from my library and get some breed of money back. Well, after Origin offered its own take, Good Old Games will now allow for 30 Day Refunds… Yes, you can beat a game, return it, and get all your money back… GOG is completely insane from a business perspective, but this is a policy so nice that I can only hope people don’t treat this like Amazon’s drones and ruin the nice things that could exist in a perfect world. AKA, why communism did not work.
Well, this is the holiday season, so let’s dish out some soft news. MGSV part one is arriving sooner than I expected on March 18th, hopefully a PC version gets announced, and somebody patches it because Konami would undoubtedly make it be amazingly terrible. I mean, they’re delisting Skullgirls from XBLA and PSN in what I consider a bag of worms that is not fit for an apple cheeked young lass like me. Though it will apparently be fixed by a rebranding under the subtitle of Encore. However, I am anticipating Fallout 4, which trademarks demand to exist, and, well, three Fallout titles were being given away for nothing, which seems like some nice spotlight to let a reveal loose.
Makers of Bloodrayne and that Walking Dead TV show tie-in title from earlier this year is gone with the wind, though I’m hardly surprised. Tales of Zestiria is coming out of the PS3, and will be about dragons. Shame I didn’t understand how Symphonia’s gameplay worked, so my interest is minimal, and that the game will act as another reason to keep the PS3 out and cluttering up your TV space if you’re one of the however many who bought a PS4. Which reminds me of one of, if not the first Gen8 titles we were aware of, Rainbow 6: Patriots. Long story short, the development went very bad at some point and the game has been effectively scrapped. When this happened, and what the results will be, however, is currently unknown.
What is also unknown is how many people Obsidian actually employs, which makes me rather upset as I feel like their recently announced plans for an April bound Kickstarter have been expressed. Though even if they do have loads of employees, the move is a shaky one, as they already got four million for a project that is incomplete. Though, they likely just don’t want to deal with gathering a license so they put out a buggy finished product, and they can instead make the game they really want, which is cool beans.
Delaying Watch Dogs sure as sugar didn’t seem to be cool beans, but according to Ubisoft, it just might have been. Saying their actions were inspired by the GTA V. Or to spin it in a way I find delightful, they want to polish the crap out of it or else they will lose oodles of money. Just like I’m guessing people would claim Volition to if they stopped making Saints Row games, especially when you consider that a voice actor claimed to be working on a new one. The question if this returning voice actor viewed some DLC work for a proper new game is worth asking, but about as much as asking what Volition’s other team is doing right now. Deep Silver spent about five million for the Saints Row IP, so I guess I should have expected them to try and milk that sweet-ass cow.
Oh, but an early Christmas present came from Nintendo, with a Nintendo Direct. Which showed more of Kirby: Triple Deluxe, which looks kinda standard, as its most unique features come from Mutant Mudds and making a rhythm game with Dedede. Though, the game is oddly being delayed in North America, to just 2014, when it is more or less done for its Japanese release in under a month. Yoshi’s New Island still looks kinda crappy to me despite the inclusion of one of the heads behind the original, though I also was not keen on the original… Collecting stuff wasn’t very fun. That, and the models used look infinitely worse than their accompanying backgrounds. Instead, I’ll likely be using my 3DS for Pokemon Bank, which will now come with a free Celebi, and a Bravely Default demo that gives you goodies in the main game while telling a side story.
Meanwhile, I was a little on the fence about the recently announced Chibi-Robo 3DS, due to how it uses that augmented reality thing I grew tired off in April 2011. Yet, when Iwata mentioned, “Singing Sponge Bears” I knew I’d be getting this title sometime after January ninth. Before that, the Wii U has some new toys in the form of NES Remix, a series of challenged based off of old NES titles, which was released right after its announcement. Alongside Dr. Luigi for the Wii U, which is what you would expect minus a mode that seems like it was added in under a week, coming on New Year’s eve. Sonic: Lost World is getting some DLC added to its questionable hide, with some Yoshi’s Island and an unknown surprise that is Kirby themed until further notice. That golf game from the Wii U reveal that I’ve probably seen footage from a good forty times is going to be a reality, which is an uninteresting aspect of it to me, but hey, people can now flaunt that if they are so inclined.
Though the big announcements were Rosalina in Smash, as revealed in a trailer that made everybody want Kirby in the delightful looking Mario Kart 8. As for why she was included? I’m not sure, but I’m guessing there may be a Galaxy 3 in the future. Certainly more likely than mash-up between Zelda and Dynasty Warriors… which happened. Yes, Hyrule Warriors is the tentative name for this… thing, and I am more curious about this hybridization than anything. I mean, last time this happened, we got the very good Pokemon Conquest. Resulting in a very potent Nintendo Direct that still did not have all of my Nintendo Dreams… Which include Nintendo backing down on console development as a whole in 2016, launching a successor to the 3DS that will be their supported system for the next seven years, and more or less dominate the handheld scene with a system that is super mega awesomely good. See you Christmas-ish.