I am not in the mood to write an intro right now. I am hindered from a lack of sleep, am finishing up this semester of school, and am trying to get myself to edit A Vile Doohickey, when I keep on searching for distractions. I’ll edit chapter five after this goes public, so… here is an unimportant blurb about two mid-sized events in the video game industry.
If you have not been following the grapevine, you may be surprised that the Xbox One sold… pathetically in Japan. I think the exact number was under 40k since its launch, but that doesn’t stop them from wanting to try and appeal to the market, though not with Visual Novels, but rather with JRPGs. Granted, they could be developed by a bunch of Canadians for all we know, and never receive a Japanese localization, but it does give some more reason to own the device that does not look like a VCR to me, as I was born too late to see the really big ones. Hell, I learned about Laserdiscs because of internet videos.
Yet my age seems to be on par with that held by the audience of Pokemon, ‘cos it keeps getting older. If you look at my ORAS review in next week, you can likely assume that I see this news as a reason for GameFreak to maybe rethink certain details about Pokemon, namely remove so many time wastes, as kidults like me don’t got time for that shit! I do however have enough time to play massive 60 hour JRPGs with grinding being an inevitable, like I am sure I will with Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 2, as it is coming to PC, or the ESRB leaked it, as they did with part 1, which has yet to be properly announced for PC, but will be my platform of choice… because I really do not like playing handhelds in comparison to using a controller.
Granted, I do prefer handhelds over mouse and keyboard controlled real time gameplay for anything more complex than Papers Please, with Arcade Sticks being… something I never actually used. From that you can grasp I have little interest in the revealed Street Fighter V, coming to PS4, PC, and, well, obviously Arcade… no XBO though, which is weird. Kinda like how they decided that they should make Dragon’s Dogma Online instead of porting the main game to PC and making a proper sequel. What is not odd is another Assassin’s Creed, just that the… nth title, Victory, was revealed less than a month after Unity… You do realize you need to make the next title begin with W, right Ubisoft? Then X, Y, and Z… You are dead to me if you do not appease my Aspieness… Boy does that look phallic when written.
On the subject of phallic, the awards show that is a sequel to the one wherein a man was teabagged for talking too long had a sequel… It was a lot better. I mean, the musical bits, actual awards, and even some of the premiers were a bit lacking. And then there were the awkward performances that, combined with a script that sounds very… awkward. In fact, it comes across as far more genuine, but still far from as quality as I feel the medium deserves… I mean, why were Boogie2988 and iJustine there to introduce an award for “Trending Gamer”. But I feel as if I will be sent to the despair mines if I do not go through most announcements from The Game Awards.
Well, things began with Miyamoto speaking English, sounding rather discomforting, justifying why he is often dubbed over while speaking Japanese, to show Mario Maker, which still looks neat, especially because it has Mario 3 and Mario World assets. But not as neat as Metal Gear Solid V, which really means means Metal Gear Online 3. I honestly have little interest in the mode, but just seeing more MGSV footage, plus an item that is a hypnotic stuffed animal, is enough to make watching this worthwhile. Also, mech hijacks and kicks confirmed!
But things were getting dry, so the first full reveal was shown, in the form for a teaser for Fullbright’s next title… you know, the Gone Home guys. Their successor to a title that I, well, thought was bad due to a story story which did not do its subject matter justice or… end, just stop when things were getting interesting, and having zero resolution. But they showed Tacoma, which is far more sci-fi and abstract with its world design than a 1994 home, so if the story actually does involve the mental breakdown of somebody with OCD undergoing Gender Dysphoria, all may be right with the world… Yes, that was honestly what I thought Gone Home would be about… Fine, I will give it another chance if I find the time… Ya pricks
On the subject of second chances, I’m giving Dark Souls another go, which transitions to Bloodborne well, and the game looks… a bit too hard and grim for my liking, but the fast pace is a stark contrast to my original experience with Dark Souls. Yes, those are pretty barriers, but without them I would have far too many games to play. Which is partially the reason why I do not really care for The Banner Saga, and by extension the announced sequel, as the permadeath, lack of safe management, and hour later result of choice really sound like they will make my skin itch.
On the subject of skin irritations, Peter Moore revealed that the EA had created a new Indie studio from the core team behind Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, who are now Hazelight studios… a group in the early stages of making a game about… boxcar hobos smoking cigarettes in the moonlight. Which is better than some Far Cry 4 DLC about yetis, as it just has to be DLC, and be a Ubisoft game. Adr1ft is obviously not, and is a space horror game where you are constantly losing oxygen, floating through space, and is ideally played with Oculus or Project Morpheus… so not my thing.
Okay, this is getting ridiculous, so I’ll just plow through the rest. Codename Steam, The Order 1886, Destiny’s Expansion, No Man’s Sky, Evolve, and that PS3/PS4 Godzilla game were all shown, and I have nothing to say about them. Battlefield Hardline looks dismissible, if not for the fact that in reality, a lot of police commit hate crimes, and get away with it. AMD bought a radical violin dancer for Dragon Age Inquisition just so they could represent. Facepunch Studios, the Garry’s Mod guys, announced Before, a caveman sim which I forgot about because of its title. Witcher III is getting another player character, but I will need to try 2 again to decide if I would spit up the Wild Hunt and piss on it.
Shovel Knight won best Indie game, which they totally deserved because they did. King’s Quest looks like Ni No Kuni X The Wolf Among Us with a generic fantasy vibe, and reminded me of how the creators of the series may as well be dead, ‘cos they aren’t doing anything worth noting again. Human Element looks like Borderlands, but worse, and I already think Borderlands is trash. Dragon Age Inquisition won the GOTY, and I will pick it up when it hits $30. Reggie was upset by the lack of Smash Brothers love, so he decided to show the world Zelda! With Star Fox arriving beforehand, and Majora’s Mask before that! Yep, Nintendo won, the end!
But Playstation decided to have a 20th birthday bash, with their day long showing of new titles during the one weekend where I have to write a paper… So I did not watch the live feed, and picked up the pieces later. Uncharted 4 quickly fell to the bottom of the news feeds by being first, and looking pretty darn good. Granted, I only played the first hour of part one, but the demo looked good, and only made me scratch my head as Nathan Drake killed the people who more or less phased into the world. Maybe they’re doing the Spec Ops thing, who the blazes knows?
Kill Strain was next to it, and sounds very… much like something I can ignore, as free to play and multiplayer tie together far too often for me to even give the former a chance. Plus, nothing was shown. What was shown is Yakuza 5… Wait, what? Yes, the game is confirmed for a Western release, though it will be Digital only… And I think Sony paid for Sega to bring it over… Please do it with Yakuza 0 now, as that looks amazing! What is not amazing is how Sony just threw some Vita ports out there for people to chew on. Yes, Drinkbox’s Severed was announced for it, but touchscreen games are inherently flawed in my mind, as your hands are the biggest detractor to one’s enjoyment.
I will say I like the game’s style anyways, but I also like Orphan‘s style, as it looks like Limbo mixed with retro 1930s sci-fi, and you have a laser shooter thing so enemies aren’t as destructive. Certainly more substantial than the tease of Final Fantasy VII Returns, which is just the game slightly remastered, at least visually… Where it does not hold a candle to, say, Skytorn, another retro-looking Metroidvania, but this one has the flare to catch my interest, and procedural generation could be cool.
Though it is far above Fat Princess Adventures on my coolness radar, as the title looked far worse than the first one, at least visually. In terms of gameplay, I really never found team-based anything to be appealing. So no real interest in David Jaffe’s Drawn to Death either, sorry. Even then, the lack of color in the notebook-esc environments, and even the character designs really rub me the wrong way. Oh, and then there was an announced remastering of Day of the Tentacle… Which I never played… Along with any LucasArts game… Also Suikoden II is finally coming next week… I think I’m done… bye! *Dies*