Yeah, there will not be a review this week, as no game in my backlog grabbed my attention, and I felt into the Dark Souls New Game+ pit. I’ll try to get something up next week though. Cool, thanks, bye… Wait, not bye, because I have a rundown of things that I wanna talk about in the game industry.
I talked about Project X Zone back in 2013 when I used an unconventional scoring system and did not place a picture at the end of each paragraph, and was less than impressed by what it offered, never beat it, and claimed that, “I felt like everything I wanted to see had been shown to me hours before I put the game away, likely to never touch it again”. So, the announcement of Project X Zone 2: Brave New World hardly raises my expectations above the most tepid of levels. I would be psyched if there was going to be, say, an anime with a similar premise, but the game was boring, loved throwing in several waves of enemies in every stage, and had a plotline I could not follow due to how much downtime there was between storylines.
So yes, it’s not going into my 3DS, as I plan on picking up a New 3DS the day a blue one gets released in NA. As it seems to be far better, and has unique features like Unity support, which further makes me wish that Nintendo had not been trying to shove their head up their butt around the 3DS launch and made the New 3DS instead of the regular poopy 3DS. Although, they would have probably still region locked faceplates, the pricks. On the subject of pricks, Microsoft were ones when dealing with the Phantom Dust developers, as they wanted more work to be done with no budget increase. Heck, it would not have even taken them that much money to get the game finished, just another two million or so, which is a lot of money, but is nothing for Microsoft.
Two million, however, is probably hard for Tri-Ace to get its hands on, but they somehow managed to get the funding for Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness, which will actually be set in between parts two and three. That may sound pointless and irrelevant but Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time, ended up retconning the first two Star Ocean games into being in-universe video games played by aliens. I get what they could have been going for, but that just devalues the first two games. On the subject of devaluing, Activision removed all value from Guitar Hero as time went on, but hopes to revive it with a platform in the form of Guitar Hero Live. It should be a platform rather than a single iteration, and hopefully Activision, who I always forget about nowadays, will not release Guitar Hero Live 2 in a year and a half.
So, Idea Factory International held a press alcohol event where they announced that they were bringing over the visual novel that is in no way related to the horror franchise of a similar name, Amnesia: Memories. However, it will also apparently come out for PC shortly after its August 2014 release as a download exclusive Vita title. Also coming to PC is Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 3, coming to Vita this June, with Neptunia U: Action Unleashed coming to the Vita this May, as there is too much Nep-Nep for anybody to maintain, and I want it all on PC. I mean, the PC is the best gaming platform out there in my humble opinion, and it’s no wonder that Game Arts is interested in dabbling with it, and is asking what games people want to see ported. I say put everything out on PC, but I have no idea how hard or expensive porting a Sega CD Lunar game to a modern OS is.
I’m sure it’s several times easier to port an iOS title to PC, although I doubt that anybody really would want WayForward’s Apple Watch title… No, really, Watch Quest is a Shantae spin-off that will be released later this month. Either Apple is paying devs to focus on their new device, or WF is hoping to make bank on people who want to try out something on their completely unnecessary device. On the subject of keeping a bank account clean, 2K Australia is closing. That may sound minor, but they helped out quite a bit with all of the Bioshocks that will exist for the next decade and a half. Plus, they are one of the few Australian developers I heard of, and their loss certainly won’t stop Australia from being a third tier country in the eyes of the game industry.
While the US is the god tier country in regards to most game publishers, such as EA, who are likely getting wet over the idea of making Star Wars money from their revitalization of Battlefront, which got another CG trailer. I could gripe about that, but I am more irritated by how I cannot view the game’s logo as reading anything but Star Wars: Battlefront – EA. It looks gaudy and I see little point in adding your company name into a game’s title. I mean, is this an original Xbox naming situation where the codename (DirectX Box) was more or less the final name because all of the proposed names were terrible?
I could make a really obvious transition to Mass Effect from that, but I don’t want to even gaze at a festering horse that has been beaten to an unrecognizable lump of maggot infested flesh. Besides, new trilogy, new story, and some leaked details make it sound pretty cool. No more big bad threat to the universe, instead just a bunch of minor threats to a developing sector of space that is far removed from the original trilogy, and will make the most of the well crafted universe. Also, you now have jetpacks, which sounds pretty neat.
What is also neat is whenever Neo Gaf decides to go on a wild goose chase and finds more than just some bird shit. In short, they are trying to debunk Kojima’s sugar frosted brand of bullshit that stemmed from a scientist looking like a guy from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. It’s deeper than that with head transplant based operations, books talking about the pursuit of immortality and having very… lavish chapter titles, pictures that are more than a little brow raising given the context, and just a lot of connections that could mean something. Or it could be complete BS and chance, with Kojima having nothing to do with anything that happened. Heck, he could have made it so the internet would freak out about absolutely nothing.
I know I talk about Neptunia news a lot for a person who played one game and gave it a 6.5, but I really am fascinated by it, and I am unsure as to why. The premise is not executed all that well, but there is something that I cannot help but find to be appealing about its world and characters. Plus, I genuinely feel as if this series should not exist. I mean, it makes annualized AAA franchises look controlled and restrained in comparison. Just look at this list of the NA release dates:
15/2/2011 – Hyperdimension Neptunia
28/2/2012 – Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2
21/3/2013 – Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory
03/6/2013 – Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection
26/8/2014 – Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1: Original Generation
27/1/2015 – Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 2: Sisters Generation
30/1/2015 – PC Port of Re;Birth 1
24/2/2015 – Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart
19/5/2015 – Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed
19/5/2015 – PC Port of Re;Birth 2
30/6/2015 – Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 3: V Generation
Q3 2015 – PC Port of Re;Birth 3
2015/2016 – Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II
2016 – Hyperdimension Neptunia vs. Sega Hard Girls: Hard Wars
2016 – Tag Team Blanc + Neptune vs. Zombie Army