Okay, so following a, well, a year sparse in terms of great games, at least in terms of what I’ve been playing, I both revisited The Walking Dead and visited what I dub the fifth tier of indie games, titles that nobody knows about, have little information given, and are for the majority of the cases, just bad. Well, that’s where I stumbled onto Press Switch, a Ren’Py made visual novel that is the most overly ambitious and pandering appearing thing that effectively blew me away by offering a barrage of content, and quality stuff at that. Now, I am naturally bias as I am part of the subset of people who are fond of transformation, gender alteration, and body swapping in terms of fiction, as if you couldn’t tell by reading my novel, The Body of Raiyne. Yet the fact that I found something that is both a visual novel and a quality one at that is nothing short of amazing. Downside is that the game’s choices are difficult to track, to the point where a flowchart is necessary. It is also made from a subset of Japanese visual novels by the name of Bishop, and the creator made sure to use as much as they could from them, including several sex and masturbation scenes, some of which include rape… Yeah, not a fan of that in the slightest. Still, third best game I’ve played in 2014 after The Stanley Parable and Persona 4 Golden… take that, game industry.
Oh- um… industry news, right… some delays happened, I guess, both from EA. Battlefield Hardline is now due out in Q1 2015, as the last Battlefield game has taken months to get to an acceptable state. While Dragon Age: Inquisition is now due my birthday, November 18th due to polish, which is always nice to hear. Also likely because November is very light in terms of releases this year, which is certainly odd. About as odd as a proper The Last of Us sequel sounds in my ears, despite having difficulties being taken in by the game, and if Naughty Dog’s community strategist (what?) is to believed, that is not happening. Instead, it is still likely that Uncharted Remastered will be a thing and that a new IP is in the works that will be a trilogy.
That’s likely the plan, anyhow, and the plan for the Steam Controller was to have it out in a few months from now, yet the fourth(?) redesign was just unveiled. How does it look? Like a normal controller with two extra back buttons and only two menu buttons, when you could squeeze five in… at least I think so. Still, would love to see it be wonderful and replace my 360 gamepad, which should be easy judging the face button layout. I am bitter when it comes to changing fundamental things like that, yet I am not opposed to change in general, as I think Bioware can pull off a horror game, which they teased with a meh live action thingie. Hell, even the game’s name is vague as it could be Nightmare, Shadow Realms, or You Have Been Chosen based on the little information provided. Now if only I placed any value in terms of horror media…
When you get down to it, you really shouldn’t report on things until there is enough information, except for how news is made minute by minute, and it is not up for the people whose lives are based on pageviews to make sure they do extensive research. I previously implied that Crytek was going to go under or be in a heap of feces financially, yet they finally issued a statement that is both sterile and canned sounding while basically saying, nah man, we’re fine. Much like I am sure Capcom will be if their recently released plans are any indicator, as they claimed to hope that sequels come out once every 1.5 years, shortened from their former, and still reasonable, 2.5. Their plan is to have thirty core people be leading a project and then bloat up after development gets rolling, although thirty people still seems like small potatoes considering these are the chaps who put 600 people on Resident Evil 6.
Not even all the sure why I care, as I can’t recall the last console Capcom game I cared much about that was actually made by them. Well, other than Dragon’s Dogma, which was denied a PC release for some reason. Yet one can recover from mistakes, much like how WayForward hopes to with their third Adventure Time game, The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom, it finally got some gameplay, and it is Zelda. No ifs, ands or buts about it, they made Zelda… which is good. Much like how I find it is good that Telltale’s The Walking Dead is getting a season 3, even though I will likely be groaning if it surpasses the five mark, as it would have likely been around for a decade at that point.
Man would I love to make a visual novel. I hadn’t even thought of using assets from others, but that is partially because I’d want to make a game with somebody else, as I lack the motivation and determination to do something of that size on my own time for nobody but myself. Writing though? I plan on writing a trio of interconnected 40-50 page stories over 6-12 months for as long as I enjoy writing them. Speaking of which, the draft for The Transformation, Ascension, and Degeneration of Terra is done and now needs to be edited, meaning it shall be released sometime in September.
Oh, and here are the slow charts I made for this blasted game:
