I’m not going to disclose details on this, but after a lengthy period of loneliness, I finally made a friend with someone on the internets. All because they sent me an email asking about transwoman stuff. And my goodness does it feel wonderful to have someone I can talk to about the minute details of my life, and someone who is comfortable enough with me to do the same.
Lettuce begin this week with a rundown of news that only I care about in all likelihood. Zero Escape 3: Zero Time Dilemma will be arriving on PC on June 29th, a day after the Vita and 3DS versions. Meaning I will be reviewing the PC version, and will cancel my preorder with the watch. Yes, it would be a neat thing to have, but it would just go in a box somewhere, as I learned that tchotchke stuff does not bring me joy.
Also, the cheesecake zombie killing action game Onechanbara Z2: Chaos launched on PC, both two days after it was abruptly announced and on the day after another boob filled Tamsoft game, which is a somewhat redundant description, Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus. Why exactly did this happen? Well, Tamsoft actually expressed interest in creating PC ports of some of their games, as mentioned in an interview with XSEED executive vice president Ken Berry. Fair enough, but why are these games coming out the same day, and why exactly is the game published by its Japanese publisher, D3? If I were to guess, poor planning and licensing agreements respectively, but is nevertheless a peculiar happenstance.
Another Japanese game that will in all likelihood find its way to PC is Akiba’s Beat, a successor to Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed. You know, that game about beating the clothes off of young Japanese people (because they’re vampires) in a faithful recreation of Akihabara. Except none of those elements carried over, as Akiba’s Beat is an action RPG set in a world where a Sunday is eternally repeating itself, and it’s up to a college dropout and his friends to save the world by venturing into daytime delusion dungeons to engage in some Persona styled dungeon spelunking… I’m just going off the reveal trailer, but the game actually looks pretty neat, and I hope XSEED localizes it. That’d be pretty cool.
So far I’ve talked about licensing agreements and franchise successors… Okay, time to talk about this next game. In the mid eighties and early nineties, there was an action platformer series known as Wonder Boy, which was briefly synonymous with both Hudson and Sega. The series eventually became known as Monster World before it petered off along with its sister series, it’s complicated, Adventure Island. There is a spiritual successor to Wonder Boy and Monster World called Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom. Which is built off the remains of a colorful action RPG platformer called Flying Hamster II. I bring that game up because I initially confused it with this newly announced title.
There is a remake of Master System and TurboGrafx title Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, also known as Monster World II: The Dragon’s Trap, with the remake entitled Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap. The game is being developed by the French studio Lizardcube and published by DotEmu. DotEmu are the people behind the crappy official NeoGeo emulators and likely stole illegal ROMs instead of making new ones. But it’s cool ‘cos SNK said it was.
Why did I bring this all up? Because this game has a distinct and cool 2D art style and will probably be pretty good since it’s taking a classic game and giving it a new coat of paint along with some gameplay revisions. Also, I wanted to remind you about how silly the video game industry can be at times.
Speaking of which, there will be a Metal Gear Solid Pachislot game. Some are surely peeved about this, but it is to be expected, and its existence means that we now have Fox Engine footage of cutscenes from Metal Gear Solid 3, which I think we can all agree is the best game in the series. Heck, if Konami plans on reusing these assets and remaking Metal Gear Solid 3 in the Fox Engine, complete with mechanics from The Phantom Pain, then I’ll recount my stance against not supporting them, because would be so freaking awesome!
I could make a cynical jab towards Pokemon, but I’d rather talk about the new trailer for Pokemon Sun and Moon, which confirmed a couple of things. The Pokemon animations and models from XY and ORAS will be recycled here, including some of the bad ones. The box art legendaries are named Solgaleo the Psychic-Steel lion and Lunala the Psychic-Ghost bat, the Alola region takes place on four large islands, and this time your Pokedex has a Rotom in it for some reason. It’s pretty piecemeal stuff, which could be interpreted in many ways, but I’m still anticipating the game regardless. It’s the one reason why I’m looking forward to my birthday this year.
Okay, sure, I’ll get some money after talking to my many grandmothers, money that I will mostly save and spend the rest on games that I will eventually review, but only technically own a license to. Yes, that is one of the most worrying thing about digital distribution, the fact that the distributors could become utter tripe. It’s why I look at the ability to now link your GOG account to your Steam account in order to receive free DRM free copies of a select few titles as a truly wonderful thing. Sure, it’s only a small step of giving a person ownership of a game through multiple services, a one way transfer that only applies to a few dozen titles, but a step nonetheless. So smiles all around!
Anyhow, time to talk about two games that were announced right before the gluttony of E3 news that would devour their announcements. Activision is continuing the Skylanders series after Disney Infinity ended for undisclosed reasons. This time, they’re adding RPG elements, character classes, character creators, and a fantasy vibe to the series with Skylanders Imaginators. While Ready At Dawn, the people behind The Order 1886 are working on a polar opposite of their realistic and story driven single player game with Deformers. A multiplayer game about a bunch of animal balls bumping into each other and knocking them into a great abyss. While also growing in size. I would compliment both of these if I really cared about either product.
Oh, so I’m ending this week on an apathetic note then? I guess I am, as Techland, the people behind Call of Juarez, Dead Island, and Dying Light has existed for quite a while as middle of the road game creator and now the company hopes to branch out into the game publishing business and release two titles every year. They have some publishing experience in Europe and hope to handle global distributions of all their games, and presumably the games of other developers… Yeah, I feel nothing for this studio, I do not care for their output, and while I admire their spirit, I don’t admire anything else about this.
I shall return next week with a pre-E3, or a PRE3 Rundown as more information is revealed other than how Nintendo will be showing more than just Zelda. Because they are not that absurd of a company.