Over the past two weeks, I’ve been picking away at Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme, and I’m honestly dreading the review I’ll have to write for the game, more so than anything else I ever had to review in the five years I’ve been doing this schtick. The reason for that being just how bad and good the game can be. Some part of it are genuinely good, interesting, or funny, while others are poorly constructed, nonsensical, frustrating, or just saddening. It’s really hard to say anything definitive about any aspect of the game because of this, and I’m dreading how long my review of the game will be when I review it on April 12th.
April 1st was yesterday, and you know what that means. A whole bunch of game companies went out of their way and put so much work into making a joke that they may as well have made it an actual thing. The most upsetting ones for me were the fan project that could have been Danganronpa Re:Birth, which showcased an interesting cast of characters who will never be used in anything, and the male rivals in Yandere Simulator, which sounds like a legitimately interesting gameplay mechanic that would further complicate the art of murder. The only good thing that came out of this is how Bayonetta may be coming to Steam, which would be nice, but that could have been announced at literally any time.
Continuing off of last week, Atlus held an event this past week that offered a look at three of their upcoming, and potentially last, 3DS titles. Beginning with a closer look at Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology, including a trailer that confirms how, despite this game being marketed as a remake, it’s more akin to a Persona 4 Golden sort of affair as an enhanced version of a preexisting game. This approach is being used on another proclaimed Atlus game with Shin Megami Tensei: Deep Strange Journey, an updated and expanded version of the DS title Shin Megami: Strange Journey. A title I always held some interest in, and will probably check out when it is inevitably localized. While the only new game of the bunch is Etrian Mystery Dungeon 2, a cross section of niches that was apparently successful enough to warrant a sequel, and is just slightly ajar from the sort of thing I would be interested in checking out.
On the other end of the spectrum, three games from Activision Blizzard also reared their heads this past week, and going in line with the publisher’s output, I can’t say I care for any of the announced titles, even though they will all likely be very successful both critically and commercially. The first game is the long rumored StarCraft Remastered. A mostly visual update to the heralded space RTS that is likely being made for two reasons. The first being that, despite the game’s’ quality, StarCraft 2 was not the smash hit that Blizzard had originally intended. The second being that StarCraft is still immensely popular all over the world, especially in South Korea, and they will potentially migrate over to this updated version in what, from an outsider’s perspective, looks to be the country’s most played game of any variety.
After its development has been known about since the first game was even released, Destiny 2 was formally announced with a trailer that had me really question the tone of this game given how the original was telling a fairly serious sci-fi story. It naturally revealed nothing about the gameplay, and concluded with pleas for pre orders because AAA gaming is like that. Regardless, the game will release for PC, PS4, and XBO on September 8th, and will hopefully take what the developers learned by building up and improving the original Destiny after launch. However, they won’t ever capture the awe and wonder Activision was trying to clamour when the game was first revealed.
The third game was not so much announced as it was leaked, and it’s unsurprisingly the next installment in the veritable cash cow of the Call of Duty series, with the boringly titled Call of Duty: WWII. A title that looks to be clawing its way back to the series’ roots in order to reclaim potentially relapsed fans who were not too keen on the whole, which it may or may not achieve as it’s entirely likely that once loyal fans were dissuaded from the series and may not return. Which I’m honestly expecting, as a decade’s worth of varying levels of disinterest towards the series has led me to become increasingly tired of its mere existence.
That’s about all I accrued for this week, and now I’m off to think of ways to use the cast of Danganronpa Re:Birth in some of my future stories. Because if you aren’t going to use perfectly good character concepts, I’m going to take them for myself.