Yeah, yeah, reviews are coming, Verde’s Doohickey will be out in 2015, I’ll start watching another anime soon, school is ending so I’m a bit busy, etc. I forgot to do this introduction until I was about to hit post, so… here you go, Guyvers. As a Vita owner for the past year or so, I am a bit upset at how little planning Sony appeared to do when preparing the system. It’s proprietary memory cards, glossy finish, and pretty abysmal launch that… do I even need to bring up its original PS1 game compatibility and the hoops one had to go through to play Parasite Eve on that thing? It’s fairly low ten million total ten units makes me cynical to the point where I do not believe that a Playstation Vita 3000 is even real. In a perfect world the Vita would have probably been designed as a companion piece for the Playstation 4, while the Playstation 4 was designed to play Vita games so developers would not be discouraged to develop for it, as their handheld games would be available to a console audience. They could also have some upresing, 60fps, and maybe some anti-aliasing thrown in to make the games look nicer, but instead it is likely Sony’s final foray into the handheld gaming system space. And I don’t trust that Nintendo’s next handheld will have a resolution above 480p, if that.
Keeping the bitterness going, there is a new Adventure Time game, which is not a 2D throwback developed over the course of a year by WayForward, but is rather a 3D adventure involving Finn and Jake doing… stuff that may or may not look trashy as it is coming out for everything excluding the Vita… I actually wrote that before I checked what it’s coming out for. Ouch. But at least the Vita is getting old PSP games that for whatever reason are still being translated, specifically Summon Night 5 And Class Of Heroes 3, complete with physical limited editions that are for the people still rocking a PSP and collecting their UMDs. Yay for media whose name is a complete and utter lie! Also, yay for the potential PC ports of Summon Knight 5… Which I’m likely not going to be interested in.
On the subject of JRPGs, despite originally being the bigwig in the genre, Square Enix barely makes them, and it’s not that likely they will show much during their recently announced E3 conference. It will likely just focus on Eidos titles, and maybe Bravely Second and Dragon Quest Heroes, with some Final Fantasy XV mixed in, but that is it. I can see Deus Ex: Mankind Divided being given a bit of proper gameplay, but I’m not expecting anything all that special. I also was not expecting for the teaser trailer for Black Ops III to look a lot like Deus Ex, but it did to the point where Eidos acknowledged it. Actual gameplay as detailed by a proper reveal trailer, however, not so much. The series has been in a weird space ever since Ghosts came to poop in its bed, but as they’ve been heading towards the future, I’ve actually been fairly interested in the titles. Granted, I’m guessing I would still find a lot to dislike in a single player campaign, but at least the games are introducing robots, drones, and jetpacks in addition to metal arms that become machine guns. All stuff that I am totally cool with.
It’s weird to see this sort of thing happen, but it’s also weird to see Steam supporting paid mods, as there is quite a bit that can go- oh, wait, somebody already stole assets and put them up for $2 and Valve pulled the mod? That was fast. Also, this shows a very… odd price disparity I witnessed after I thought about going through the Mass Effect Trilogy on PC, where the DLC was about six times as expensive as the games. Games pretty much all reach $20 eventually, if not lower, but a DLC pack for $10 when the game was new will probably always be $10. I dunno, it just bugs me when a Skyrim companion mod made by some guy costs as much as Skyrim does that weekend.
It also bugs me when a creator needs to leave a company to work on a project, but then has the company come back and steal their project while giving him the boot. That is the story of one of the head of the original Assassin’s Creed, who was working on a project with THQ called 1666, but is now given the cool sounding name of, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. It is described as a “third-person action-adventure survival episodic game”, which sounds like a randomly assorted genre that tells me nothing other than Ubisoft probably decided to cut the game into pieces for giggles and guffaws.
I expect such reasoning also being why Telltale is working with Marvel for a game due out in 2017… Meaning that the deal was probably just made. Can you try to keep your mouth shut until you have something to show next time, please? Overlord: Fellowship of Evil at least showed some of its gameplay with its announcement. Although, I never was particularly interested in the franchise, and the co-op hack and slash gameplay is not really my thing, so I’m moving on. Where to? Well, not to a Wii U certainly, and not only because I just went through my credit card bills for the past two years and came away pretty disappointed in myself. But because they’re apparently moving away from SNES virtual console support. Remember, they redid their library from scratch with the Wii U, so there are a couple dozen great games that people would like to purchase, but apparently Nintendo does not like going through the legal hassle to put ROMs up on their storefront, because they are just ROMs.
Seriously, it’s not that hard, and if it is something is being done very stupidly over in Nintendoland. Remastering a game, however, that is pretty tricky, but Microsoft is very likely doing it with original Gears of War. I honestly feel nothing towards the series but disinterest and apathy, so I simply wonder if people still care that much for a game that inspired so many bad trends in the seventh generation. However, all of this could just be a ruse, like that rumor about a Conker game being rejected by Insomniac, which I brought up a while back… Or maybe not as I can’t find the post with a quick search. Anyhow, it turns out that this very believable rumor that was verified by Reddit as being the real deal was actually completely fake and done solely for the purposes of school work. Effectively proving that people can be easily fooled by this kind of stuff, and that most of what the world believes to be true is just a lie, meaning that the cataclysm is near. Yippie!
As one final tidbit, NeoGaf threw an article my way about how video games should be more expensive, explaining how a lot of older games were 80+ dollars back in the day, and how so many AAA games are being chopped up to maximize revenue. I’d honestly be all for games being more expensive but have a higher level of quality and more consistent content that makes up a single great experience, but that’s not going to happen. I’m pretty separated from the AAA game buying space as of late, as you can tell by what I’ve reviewed over the past few months, but when you throw in how few people beat games they buy, the short shelf life a lot of AAA games have, and how some people really don’t care about player enjoyment optimization as much as they probably should, I have doubts in this even being viewed as a possibility for most AAA publishers. ‘Sides, I’d just buy them on sale for $10 even if they launch at $80. I don’t care if I need to wait two years.
Also, Konami’s pulling the plug on PT, meaning that Silent Hills is probably canceled… Actually, yeah, it totally is cancelled. Meaning that the company may as well leave the US market after Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Bad stuff, but here’s good news. Gengar’s in Pokken Fighters! …Gengar is my favorite Pokemon design after Haunter. After that… Dragonite, Metang, Mudkip, Gardevoir, Togekiss, Hydreigon, Victini, Inkay, Braixen, Aigeslash, and Miltank. I could do a formal top fifty or something, but that’d eat up too many of my time gems.