“Say Natalie, what was the most interesting element of your week?” Funny you should ask, voice in my head. In my not-uncommon late night perusing of sites that I probably should not check out as often as I do, I stumbled upon a thread about male breast enlargement, or busty boys. In that thread, a man claimed to be growing his own breasts by taking herbs (fenugreek and saw palmetto) and showed off a series of photos of them. They actually looked quite nice, and marked the first instance of breast envy I ever experienced. “You’re a weird duck, Natalie.” You’re darn tootin’ I am.
Speaking of breasts, a new Senran Kagura title by the name of Shinobi Refle was announced for the Nintendo Switch. But instead of being a brawler with a fascination with large breasts, the game is something more akin to Summer Lesson, as the game is a “pure and wholesome” title built around features unique to the system, such as HD rumble, as the player interacts with Asuka, the main character of the series. The game will also be comedically stupid according to the downright bizarre press release for this game, which makes me curious, but not enough to investigate further. I mean, sure, I just admitted to pursuing a thread devoted to the fetish of male breast enlargement, but I’m not going to touch the fanservice riddled franchise the coined the phrase “Tits are life, ass is hometown”.
Over the past week, Bandai Namco has constructed a strange staggered reveal of Code Vein, a “dungeon exploring-type hard action RPG” being developed internally and by many members of the God Eater team, which is odd considering I thought those games were developed by Shift. Following a curiously intriguing teaser trailer that contained the tagline “Prepare to Dine” many assumed this to be the best game from From Software, but while what was revealed certainly does take influence from Dark Souls, it is more reminiscent of what one would expect from developers of God Eater.
As detailed a few days after the trailer went live, Code Vein is set in a post-apocalyptic setting involving a customizable protagonist and their AI controller support character as they venture through the destroyed land, fighting off undead creatures looming throughout it with a customizable moveset consisting of various oversized melee weapons. Main characters are called Revenants, and they need blood in order to prevent themselves from becoming one of the undead Losts, which they extract from the Losts by using body and face encompassing tendrils known as Blood Veils that suck the juices from their fallen foes. Also, the teaser trailer was misleading about the game’s art style. As it looks closer a darker God Eater, which certainly scratches an itch for me that I didn’t even know I had.
The game is coming out in 2018 for undisclosed systems and will likely try to market itself as being more akin to Dark Souls whereas God Eater was always positioned as a parallel to Monster Hunter. Regardless of what game this title is taking inspiration from, what was shown looks and sounds promising, and I’m guessing that Bandai Namco’s slightly deceptive marketing tactics already employed for the game will allow it to succeed as an “Anime Souls” if it were. Also, I think it’s safe to say that Freedom Wars will never receive a sequel at this point. Which is a shame because that game had a lot of potential.
Though, that is far from the only game as of late to take much inspiration from Dark Souls, with a far more obvious example being Sunless Chronicles, an Unreal Engine 4 game being developed a single person. Despite being in an “extremely early state” the title is very, very promising, and also very, very Dark Souls. As in, aside from the aesthetics, which looks to be comprised of default and store bought assets, the game really and truly does look like a Souls game, which should be considered a resounding compliment. The developer, Far South Creations, claims the game will be completed this year, which sounds awfully optimistic, but what was shown looks promising enough to follow this game for as long as necessary.
The inevitable Star Wars Battlefront II was announced this past week, or rather EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II with a CG story trailer despite the fact that the game is a sequel to a game that adamantly did not have a single player component at launch. Regardless, the story centers around a high ranking officer of the Empire as she goes on a quest of revenge and redemption over the 30 year span between part 6 and 7 of the film series. A seemingly interesting sounding choice spiced up by how this story is indeed canon, and how this high ranking military officer is a woman of a darker complexion, so props for putting her in a leading role like this, especially since she’ll be about 60 by the time the story campaign is over.
As a follow-up story to the discontinuation of the NES Classic Mini, Eurogame has reported that the company is currently working on a Super Nintendo based successor to the incredibly popular plug and play system. A move that sounds rather enticing considering the breadth and excellence of the Super Nintendo’s library, but will likely once again be an undersupplied system with some obnoxious draw back like the cords being too short, and people would have a better time if they bought a Raspberry Pi, a case, two controllers, and downloaded a bunch of ROMs onto it.
This is all such a shame, because I really and truly do enjoy the concept of a microconsole like this, and think that Nintendo could have handled this whole situation so much better. For example, what if they produced a wide array of “Classic Mini” systems that came with a respectable library of the system’s games, but could also be connected to one’s Nintendo Account and could have additional Virtual Console titles added to the system’s library? Heck, take it a step further and allow people to access games from other systems on the things. 
I’m just thinking of a hypothetical GameBoy Mini with the ability to play NES, SNES, GameBoy Color, GBA, Genesis, Turbografx and Neo Geo games, all of which can be bought via the Virtual Console. It would need additional buttons, yes, but it would probably do super well for Nintendo. They could even mark it up to a benign price point, like $100, if they wanted to, and it would still sell like crazy. But Nintendo is memetic for their ineptitude, and that will likely never change.
Moving away from such a rant-inducing topic, the fifth entry in the Momodora series was recently revealed through a teaser trailer, showing how the game will mark a major departure for the series of obscure Japanese action platformers by being fully 3D. Developed in Unity, the game certainly looks promising for a title that presumably has only been in development for a short period of time, but the transition between dimensions looks a bit janky at this stage. I actually reviewed the fourth game in the series, Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, a few months ago, and while I was not as keen towards the title as others, it was a promising enough title for me to remain interested in in where the series is going from here.
Settling away from the more substantial news and to the PC Port Report, I feel that it is complementary to mention that after being released on the Windows 10 store, Microsoft has released another game from one of their marquee franchises on Steam with Halo Wars: Definitive Edition. A move that means very little on its own, but can be seen as a sign that Microsoft is willing to submit to the fact that their storefront is a load of soggy pants and their games would generate more revenue if released on the platform with the majority market share over the PC gaming space.
Returning to things I personally care about, Wild Guns Reloaded was announced for a PC release via Steam this past week, which is certainly good news to hear as it both marks another niche title arriving on the platform, and another Japanese company, Natsume, dipping their toes into the PC waters. However, I remember the dialog and criticism that surrounded this updated version of the SNES cult-classic, and am very much curious if things like the immense difficulty and restricted stages will be altered by the time the game arrives on the platform. If not, then I think it would be hard to justify checking this game out, as I’d probably never clear the second level on my own.