“Hallo Natalie, wie geht’s?” Why thank you for asking Maple-chan. I just finished community college, completely failed at talking to another human being for about two hours after paying for their company, and am going to come out sometime next week. “…Sometimes I wonder why I exist, and then I remember that it’s because some Aspie conjured me in their corrupted mind.” Shut up Maple-chan, it’s time to talk about video games. “Because people care so much about what you think about banal video game news.” …I may decide to kill you off in your upcoming story, Maple Loves Senpai after that comment.
It’s taken about a month, but GameFreak and the Pokemon Company finally put together a proper trailer for Pokemon Sun and Moon. Two in fact. One in the form of a straight forward English trailer, and a Japanese trailer where Pokemon is the catalyst for a Japanese boy who moves to an English speaking country. Even though Pokemon names, particularly the older ones, vary wildly from Japanese and English, but whatever. There was some real heart to it despite how pompous you could interpret the trailer to be.
Anyways, the games are set in the new region of Alola, a Hawaii inspired tropical paradise, even though the five new Pokemon shown don’t really fit that theme. Rowlet is a grass owl who makes up for a terrible type combination by being totally adorable. Litten is a tsundere cat who will probably become a fire and dark jungle cat who I’ll name Ryuko Matoi. While Popplio is a cute circus seal, whose novelty is a bit undermined by how I simply like Seel’s goofy and simpler design more. The box art Pokemon of these regions are a sun lion and a moon bat, both of whom continue the trend of awesome looking legendaries who I will catch but never use.
I kid, but all the designs look neat, the world is far more dynamic looking than the tileset based layout of X and Y, you can play as a darker skinned black girl with a stupidly cool hat, and the game is coming out on my 22nd birthday, November 18th. There’s a pretty good chance the final product will disappoint me, but I’m looking forward to an adventure through a whole new world with Owl Jolson, Ryuko Matoi, Mystic Popo, and a cool as of yet unannounced ghost Pokemon, because ghost Pokemon are my favorite.
Moving on, Ubisoft announced that they are not satisfied with their current line up or titles, and will be debuting another AAA IP within the fiscal year. My apathy towards anything done by the company in recent times aside from Rayman should be evident by now, and my output of game reviews should picture my tastes as different than those that Ubisoft traditionally serves. Still, this could always be cool, and at the very least will probably make a few million people happy.
What doesn’t really make anyone happy are deaths of large projects, such as the end of Disney’s console game publishing, including the end of Disney Infinity and the death of the game creation platform Project Spark. I don’t quite understand the death of Disney Infinity, as the series appears to have been notably successful over the past three years and there are so many content unlocking figures in circulation that I’d assume there was a lot of money to be made. Project Spark though, I barely heard anyone talk about it aside from the upsetting Conker content from about a year ago. So I just feel sorry for the people who spent a lot of time working with that toolset. Sad times, man. Sad times.
In happier news, a PC port of Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remastered was both properly announced after being leaked in December, and then released three days later. Which is great. I prefer stealth launches over any other launch, and will probably review this collection of two dumb but heartfelt games when it’s on sale.
Also, Wild Guns, the classic SNES gallery shooter about cowboys fighting robots, is getting an updated version in the form of Wild Guns Reloaded. Developed by Natsume, the game will add new playable characters, levels, and a four player mode. All of which sounds cool, if a little odd. This is an obscure game that probably had to be recreated from scratch in order to be updated like this. So why go to the trouble?
My only guess is that Natsume doesn’t have any major brands to their name, and needs to fall back on something. After XSEED was purchased by Marvelous USA they became the publisher for the Rune Factory and Bokujo Monogatari series. For those unaware, Bokujo Monogatari is the series that was originally localized under the name Harvest Moon, but is now called Story of Seasons. That said, Natsume is now developing their own Harvest Moon games, as they own the IP. Video games can be pretty weird.
Fan Art Sources: Stocky 6493 and Zelc-Face