Steam Summer Sales started serenely and sadly my selection of specific software ‘s selling-price stayed- screw this shaz. I keep a list of reservation prices I keep for certain games, which I adhere to well, and there were not a ton of games whose selling price dropped beneath the reservation price. So far I got Metro Redux and Epic Fantasy Battle 4 because I have some nostalgia for mid-ots Newgrounds. I will get Momodora III, Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos, and DreadOut as the sale ends, but will wait to see if there are any dailies. I set myself a limit of $100 to spend, which is harder because I need to now pay taxes on Steam purchases…
As a quick note, I did invest quite a lot towards Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which managed to net a total of… about 5.7 million dollars. That is insane, and looking at the numbers in a very blunt and reductive manner, their budget, which Deep Silver provided most of, effectively doubled thanks to this campaign. However, if this is bad, if the developers mess this up somehow… I don’t even know. I will be furious, and will likely never get truly excited about another video game ever again.
Okay, so Oculus had an impromptu press event that I completely missed on Thursday, but I watched an archive of the event and I figured it would be a good warm-up for the biggest event of the year aside from my announcement of wanting to go to a therapist to see if I have the Gender Dysphoria and Social Anxiety, which will hopefully result in me getting some Hormones and some Electrologist appointments… But then all of this leaky news came seeping through the cracks, and I wanted to go through image files while listening to 2 Mello’s mashups, because they are pretty awesome. So I did not watch it, but at the same time I have very little interest in VR.
I have spoke in the past about how I dislike peripherals and any sort of gaming related interface that is beyond a screen and a controller or keyboard. The Oculus Rift, and VR in general, all attempt to substitute the screen with a visor, but your playtime will be limited to 30 minute chunks if you value your vision, and… calling this VR is complete and utter bullcrap as far as I am concerned. To me, Virtual Reality is removing your consciousness away from your body and into an entirely new simulated reality. It is complete sensory deprivation, and does a lot more than block out two senses. An additional motion based controller doesn’t serve to help it, and seeing as how the consumer version, launching next year, will be bundled with an Xbox One controller, I would really take a nice monitor over it any day of the week.
That out of the way? Good, because there is a lot of ground to cover, and I will get through the first half with a leak based rundown of the E3 2015 conferences, at least as of the time this post is published. First up is Microsoft, who instead of waiting until E3 proper, Microsoft revealed that Quantum Break, Scalebound, and Crackdown will all not appear at E3 2015, and the later two were pretty much the only games I was interested in seeing more of. They did, however, reveal a Revised Xbox One, with a 1TB hard drive, and a better controller without proprietary headset jack. Perhaps they realized the information was leaked, much like the Forza 6 details, which I did not really look over, as I have zero interest in the franchise, but the fact that it is coming out this year means the series has become annualized. Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare will likely never be annualized, but oddly enough it is strangely getting a sequel teased for the Xbox conference. I guess the first one was more successful than I thought it was…
It won’t be shown at the EA Conference if that is the case, at least I would assume, but said conference will definitely show off Mirror’s Edge 2, or rather Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst, as it is a reboot of the series and not a proper sequel. Not interested in it either way, as I thought the game represented everything bad about first person cameras, and its minimalistic visual style was super boring in its execution. Also boring is their line-up as a whole aside from the Mass Effect news I am expecting. Even a remastered version of the original trilogy would be enough for me to become a giddy school girl. Just bundle everything together and give it controller support on PC, and I’ll be good.
Keeping along with this theme, Sony showed off Ratchet & Clank 2016, which is not its official name, but it is a reimagining of the first game, and apparently subtitles do not encourage sales. Anyhow, based on the gameplay shown along with a new trailer, the game looks pretty darn good, and doesn’t strike me as a remake of a PS2 game at all, when I was honestly expecting that. On a smaller note, likely to only be included in a montage during the show proper, Super Meat Boy is heading to Vita and PS4 after Edmund McMillen was pretty much forced into having his breakout hit be relegated to the Xbox 360 and PC. Better late than never and nice for those who wanted to revisit the title on their Vita, but SMB is a game I have no interest in despite owning it on Steam… I just realized the acronym of is the same as Super Mario Brothers, so Nintendo transition-a-go-go.
So, a showstopper from Nintendo was stolen by devious criminals whose butts smell like pineapple wine, namely the reveals of Roy and Ryu from Smash Brothers. Good news for people who own Wii Us, and those who enjoy playing Smash Brothers more than they enjoy thinking about it Hyrule Warriors 3DS was also leaked, and will feature the King of Hyrule from Wind Waker along with Tetra as new playable characters, probably in addition to a female Link who uses a crossbow, as a model similar to the concept art for the crossbow was seen in the trailer. I say this is nifty, but man do I hope they put out a definitive version of Hyrule Warriors on Wii U. Even though you can get everything on the Wii U version, I want a complete package that I do not need to buy DLC for, is that understandable?
It is certainly more understandable than the decision to make Sonic Boom: Fire and Ice for 3DS. Yes, the first 3DS title’s developers have apparently taken a lot of the criticism to heart, but I doubt that anybody will care when the game launches alter this year. Also, likely launching this year because the Q4 is not crowded enough is that nifty looking sprite based Dragon Ball Z fighter, Extreme Butoden, is being brought westward, as confirmed by the Australian Ratings Board messing up, as they do sometimes. Also being localized, and acting as something that people thought may be left on Japanese shores is Legend of Legacy, which Atlus picked up. I would make a transition about how the game looks like a Square Enix title, at least in its art style, but they are likely focusing more on Western titles at this western trade show coming up.
Despite that idea, Square Enix of Japan revealed Figure Heads, a semi-realistic third person multiplayer shooter about robots killing robots, but is about a bunch of kids having fun with these robots in this dystopian future, and customizable 3D anime girls. Also, it is free to play, and has only been confirmed for Japan. On the subject of Robots and Square Enix, according to a leak, Front Mission is coming back after it was outsourced to Double Helix as a third person shooter, and killed off the franchise. I have heard high praises for the earlier turn based strategy titles, namely Front Mission 3 and its dual campaigns along with its super fleshed out pseudo-internet. This title will have a producer from Armored Core, which is a the opposite of Front Mission in regards to pacing.
Continuing down this robot trail, it was announced that Platinum will have a gameplay reveal for a new game at E3 2015, Activision revealed the slick looking Cross-gen Transformers: Devastation, and due to an error on a retailer’s part, they were revealed as a developer… Nobody can keep secrets anymore, can they? It’s good news regardless, as Platinum has work, and is getting to play around with licenses. Also, technically acting as good news, is Mega Man Legacy Collection, a compilation of the original six Mega Man titles that will be released on XBO, PS4, PC, and 3DS this summer. This is ultimately fine, but why is Capcom being so stingy about the contents of this supposed collection? Seriously, if you want to do this properly have Mega Man 1-10, the GameBoy titles, Mega Man and Bass, Street Fighter X Mega Man, and whatever the else you feel like including, like the fan-made 8-bit versions of Mega Man 7 and 8. I mean, you could just bump it up to a full retail price then.
On the subject of budget priced titles, Ready At Dawn will self-publish their work from here on out and regardless of what is said, it is likely due to how The Order did not do as well as expected, and Sony is not keen on funding a sequel. That said, they proved they have talent and built some great tools over the years, so I’ll just pretend to be surprised when they show off a game in about a year and a half. Also being self published by a talented developer is Hellblade, which got its first proper trailer, and despite being a terribly named video game, it actually does have some stuff going for it. Okay, the story went in one ear and out the other, the graphics are what I dub “those that shall age poorly” and the over the shoulder camera is my least favorite camera position after a straight on overhead view where you cannot view any sort of depth… Also the gameplay, from what I heard, will try and be super aggressive, punishing the player a lot, and based on the trailer, there is no hud, so… Ah, shit, sorry, guess you’re off my wish list, Hellblade. Bye!
Jonathan Blow’s second and final video game before he renounces the medium and lives in a cabin where the angry young man that Billy Joel sang about comes to murder him after a decade of solitude, The Witness, also has a tentative place on my wishlist. Why? Well, the game will apparently take 70 hours to (fully) complete… I recall hearing him talk about removing all forms of bad repetition and focusing on a well handled concise and quality experience, but 70 hours is pretty much always twenty hours too long in my Big Dumb Book of Game Design. Also in that book, page one would say that you should not announce a game until it is mostly done, as is the case with Trails of Cold Steel, as the title is done being translated, and ~10,000 lines will be dubbed in English. And as if Marvelous USA’s plate was not already filled with enough food to last a week, they are localizing Nitroplus Blasterz, a fighting game featuring the best/worst character, Super Sonico, and one of the Senran Kaguras.
Speaking of games about beating up waves of enemies, Arc System Works acquired the rights to the Kunio-kun and Double Dragon, an announcement that came out of nowhere, but seeing as how these properties have been handled over the past two decades, I’d say this may be for the best, and that Aksys will be bringing the Kunio-kun (River City Ransom) titles over from now on. Yay. Also, yay to the idea of Toy Soldiers: War Chest, which is the repurposing of a pair of two RTS XBLA titles that I thought had the creative appeal of an old rag, but will now act as a catalyst for toy licenses such as He-Man and Gi-Joe. Nifty idea, but not one I wish to partake in.
…Is that it? No? Ah hell- Dota 2 will be reborn, very likely in Source 2 and will undergo a massive update in the foreseeable future. While the reboot of Shadow Warrior will be getting a sequel, naturally entitled Shadow Warrior 2. I still have the first one waiting to be played, but the ranking system makes the game at large sound pretty unappealing. Nice news for those who enjoyed it though.
Kay, gonna go to bed nice and early, ‘cos I have been staying up way too late lately and am going to do some late night writing the next couple of days. Peace, laters, seeya, bye!