In my dumb brain, companies like Idea Factory International, NIS America, Atlus, Aksys, XSEED, Sekai Project, MangaGamer, JAST USA, Carpe Fulgar, and anybody I’m forgetting all work in the same building located somewhere in California. The building is based off of the one blueprint that was used to build every high school in Japan circa 1950, and it is a complete mess. With random unlocalized games everywhere, old bootleg VHS tapes of “the hottest Japanimation”, a locker full of PSPs, this one incredibly disturbing classroom filled with full scale figures and body pillows, and dirty laundry that piles up every week until Jimmy clean up their blankets and graphic tees over the weekend. Then there’s Nana, who is just sad after spending three thousand hours a year playing everything this company produces, and is flat out disgusted by the tropes at this point.
This week held a rather spectacularly enticing rumor, one that set the plains of the game industry’s pride and joy, NeoGaf, on fire as they were faced with the realization that Nintendo’s seventh major home console, codename NX, final name Nintendo Experience, will be an Android based console. This was revealed by the Japanese news provider, Nikkei , who is pretty reliable from what I heard, but the entire thread is more or less moot because Nintendo said that was a lie. The OS may be Android-esc or be compatible with Android games, but for now we are back to knowing nothing about the NintenX or the Wii Thrii.
We do know a bit more about upcoming 3DS games thanks to a Micro Nintendo Direct released on Monday, which involved a sour detail about that Chibi-Robo game, namely how the Amiibo will only be available as a bundle. Also, the gameplay for Project Treasure was ultimately not shown, when they said it was up on their YouTube channel. Instead they showed off a licensed game for an anime that I guess was localized, under the name of Little Battlers Extreme… Which reminds me of a worse Custom Robo, but Nintendo probably doesn’t care about reviving the Custom Robo. At least they’re bringing Bravely Second over for those who somehow found the first game to be more enjoyable than picking at scabs. Oh, and while I’m cleaning house from last week, Lego Worlds was released, as an Early Access Steam title, with no fervor or announcement behind it for some reason.
On the subject of Steam, they just dropped a bomb with the announcement that they will offer full refunds on any purchase for any reason if the purchase was made within two weeks, and the playtime is still at the point where it would display itself in minutes. Also, the Steam Controllers, Steam Machines, and Steam link are also all coming out on October 16th, and are available for purchase. Now fix Greenlight, add some blasted quality control, offer DRM-free downloads for all publishers who would be okay with that, implement some of the features featured in the Enhanced Steam browser mod, try and improve your store page, and we will be bestest buds, Steam-tan. Yes, that list is quite large, I know, and that’s just for Steam as a service. Heck, they’re a company I like, whereas Konami has to at the very least cleanse themselves of their foul management much like one cleanses themselves of feces, as they are apparently pricks to the point where a man (Akira Sakuma) canned his beloved series (Momotaro Dentetsu) out of his irritation and anger towards the company.
I still have some irk about Capcom over how poorly they handled the past few years, especially the whole Mega Man debacle, but they are apparently going to try and revive the series, as is evident by the announcement of a new animated series. They have been doing comics for a few years now, but this is a nice gesture, but not enough to make me forget about the lack of a Mega Man Legends 3 demo. I don’t care about the game itself, I just hate the idea of not releasing a finished demo. Somebody send Unseen64 that shaz! I’d certainly be more interested in seeing that than Mighty Number Nine, as the near final footage shown in the most recent trailer doesn’t inspire much confidence in the game. It looks like a pretty run of the mill XBLA game with some less than ideal shaders and lighting, and seems like something made by fans of the original series than something that came from the creator- especially after their team received four times their requested Kickstarter goal. That’s one of the problems with Kickstarter, you are ultimately selling your game to people when it is not finished, and if the concept art you showed looks way, way, way better than the final product, you done effed up, boy.
That said, if you budget things and have something already built and have a better idea of what you will need to do from the get-go, that is a different story. I believe that Memory’s Dogma, a cool sounding visual novel that involves future science in the form of digitized memories and by extension memory thieves, and also blade arms, falls into this category. As the game is done, and simply needs a localization, and it is from a company who has experience doing so in the form of Sekai Project. While We Happy Few had a very appealing Pax demo a few months ago, and the developers already shipped a game in the form of Contrast, which was received well enough.
Just for the record, I’m not plugging these because I backed them, I just think they look cool. I try to be thrifty with my purchase and buy games at 50% off or more, even when they look promising like Witch and the Hundred Knights Revival and Gust’s new RPG, which lacks a name that people can agree on beyond the original Japanese title. I’m sure it’s coming over to the Vita fans of the west regardless, hopefully like the Squid Girl costume for Splatoon, which is perfect as far as I am concerned. I mean, it should come over, as the series was dubbed, not that I would recommend it over the original Japanese due to some casting choices, but if Hatoful Boyfriend’s sequel, Holiday Star is leaving its home nation of Japan and coming westward this fall, this should not be a region exclusive bit of DLC. Services on the other hand, I get being region locked, as the internet in a lot of places is utter street trash, which makes the concept of Gamefly wanting to launch a game streaming service. I get why this is a thing- or they want it to be, but this technology is not ready yet, and has a lot of problems to overcome, at least in the US, where the internet is stupidly expensive and hard to get. Hell, I’m pretty sure it is not much better in Canada.
XCOM 2 is coming, and it has snake people, blade users, involves a futuristic setting where mankind united with those from other planets, and generally looks like a neat PC exclusive before it is brought to consoles along with the expansion. That is all great is great for those who enjoyed XCOM: Enemy Unknown, although I cannot say I am one of them as its gameplay mechanics were, like those found in most turn based strategy games, very manipulatable. Let me explain. On turn 1, the game assigns a random value that will dictate your success of hitting an enemy, and of getting a critical hit, same with the enemy. The game only counts so far ahead, and by changing your attack order and manipulating the game’s save system, you can often figure out what the game’s bare minimum for a successful hit is. Or to be blunt, it’s mechanics are very easy to manipulate, but despite increasing the player’s success rate, it decreases their overall enjoyment, and bumps up their playtime substantially.
You know what else “decreases their overall enjoyment, and bumps up their playtime substantially”? Pretty much every Bethesda title, but some people still cream their jimmies over them, like the collective society did over the recently announced Fallout 4. And it is up for Pre-order with a 23% discount already. The game also looks far more colorful and stylized, which is such a relief as Bethesda produced a decade of games that aged like fruit. It has airships, a dog, and may have a 2015 release date, meaning the real version will be out in 2017, because nobody should play a Bethesda game at launch, as they need a year’s worth of modding to be worth investing a full week into.
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is coming to PC, after it was leaked by MSI, while Lightning Returns will still come to PC, it just has the problem of being made of twigs, crumbs, and vegemite. Dark Souls 3 is rumored to be revealed at E3, which sounds really unwanted if you ask me… but I guess I can go screw myself with a wrench, because it got leaked, and is coming in 2016 for XBO, PS4, and PC. There will be sacrifices, a world about the size of DS1, and some other BS I will figure out come 2017 at the soonest. The heavily rumored Uncharted Remastered trilogy was accidentally leaked, as one would expect, as Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection by Sony’s own website. As such, it was properly announced, with Bluepoint handling the project, as they are quite good at this sort of thing.
While XSEED is good at the translating, hence why they have a nice office in the Japanese localization building shaped like a school that they definitely work in. And they resoundingly threw their hands up, unzipped their pants, and presented the western world with an announcement of Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel I & II and part one is hitting the ground running in 2015. But if that bomb was not enough, they’re also bringing over Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair for PS4, Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders From Planet Space for Vita, and PopoloCrois: A Story of Seasons… Okay, so PopoloCrois is based on a manga series of the same name, but it was made by the Harvest Moon sector of Marvelous AQL, who owns XSEED- a company that is technically named Marvelous USA nowadays. They did not own the rights to the name of Harvest Moon, and rebranded it to Story of Seasons. However, Natsume still plans on using the name of Harvest Moon, as they announced Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories for Wii U, PC, and mobile… So, um, XSEED, can all the good little children of the world expect to see PC ports of these Trails games and maybe EDF? I have no idea how you got Akiba’s Trip out on PC, but a Falcom rep said the company liked the idea of porting their games to PC, and it has a larger install base than active PS3 users and Vita owners. Also, somebody will figure out how to mod EDF, and it will be amazing!
Okay, this is getting crazy- Tales of Berseria was announced for PS3 and PS4, and I do not really care. From what I heard the series has actually been getting worse with its tropes and lack of improvements. So the only JRPG schlock I’ll actively partake in playing shall continue being Nep-Nep. On the subject of schlock and things I believe are maintained by only a few thousand dollars in the bank at any given moment, you know Desura? That “Indie Game” storefront with zero quality control? Well, their current owner, Bad JuJu fell into some Bad JuJu themselves in the form of bankruptcy. I cannot help but shrug and say, “whatever” and look to the future, which involves Amazon getting their schlongs knee deep into the video games by announcing a big PC title with a bunch of talent behind it. Neato, will look forward to it in two years, when I have long since forgot about this announcement. I mean, you are still requesting for veterans to move to Seattle, the nightmare hole of the world if you don’t enjoy the idea of homeless people beating each other up in the rain. If you do, get used to masturbating in public, ya crazy duck-man!
Thus, those are all the PRE3 (Press Releases pre-E3) bits I found interesting enough to string together in one of my larger Rundowns. I mean, I normally don’t hit the second page break, but here I am going past number three… Okay, G’d Night!