So, Mass Effect: Andromeda is almost out, and the consensus from the people who played the game is far from positive. Apparently the story indulges in many trite tropes and fails to feel distinct while the animations are somehow remarkably worse than the stiff animations Bioware used in their games over the course of the seventh generation, to the point where it is genuinely remarkable anybody thought some of this way okay. I had high hopes for this game after going through the Mass Effect trilogy this past year, but from the sound of it, the game is not very good. Though, considering how closed off the development has been, how the lead writer position for the game changed three times, and how many people left the company since the release of the last Mass Effect game, I guess I should not be too surprised. Still, this is quite upsetting.
After working out a presumably large number of legal disputes, Capcom has announced The Disney Afternoon Collection, a digital compilation of some of the company’s licensed Disney games released for the NES, namely Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2, Darkwing Duck, DuckTales, DuckTales 2, and TaleSpin. The compilation will offer a few extras like time attack, a boss rush, a rewind ability, a CRT garbage filter, and an art gallery. It’s what a retro game collection should be from the sound of it, and it is coming out on April 18th for the very reasonable price of $20. Or alternatively you could just emulate these games and look up some concept art from the shows. Same difference really.
A PC port of the Vita tactical RPG, Lost Dimension, has been announced by Ghostlight, much to my surprise, as that game very quickly fell into obscurity shortly after its initial release. For those who don’t recall, the game is centered around a group of 11 teenagers who are sent to investigate a mysterious tower where they need to gradually sacrifice their team members in order to advance and seek out the traitors existing in their ranks. It was a novel concept that was not very well executed from what I heard, and resulted in a pretty alright game, but not the sort of thing people would be clamouring to revisit on PC.
Speaking of Vita RPGs, a sequel to the acclaimed Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth has been announced in the form of… and this is a mouthful of a title, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memory. The game will take place in the same world as the prior entry in what has become a new subseries, feature 320 Digimon out of the god knows how many that currently exist, and will release sometime in 2017 in Japan for PS4 and Vita. I would say I am quite excited for this, but much like with the other recent Digimon RPGs, I don’t want to play the Vita versions when there are superior PS4 versions, and I do not own a PS4. I probably never will come to think of it…
Almost a year after the official announcement, Sega has revealed additional information on the ominously named Project Sonic 2017 and gave it the final title of Sonic Forces. As was expected, the game follows in line with the gameplay of Sonic Generations with the modern and classic Sonic stages, but beyond that, the most people have to go on are vague concepts about forces of good and evil joining together for a massive battle. I am probably more excited for this than Sonic Mania after drudging through the Genesis-era Sonic games (1, 2, 3 & Knuckles, and CD) but hopefully both of these titles will be good so I can feel less bad about having an attachment to this series that has remained for the past 16 years of my life.
Also, it has occurred to me that some people thing Sonic Generations controls worse than the original Genesis games, and I have this to say to them: You can have whatever opinion you want, and you chose to have a bad one.