Some might be wondering if I will be reviewing Sonic Mania soon, as its PC version will be coming out on August 29th, but I am not planning on reviewing it for quite a while, as I often wait for games to go on sale and such. I will get to it eventually, and will hopefully enjoy it, despite it being pretty obvious by now that I am part of the generation who genuinely prefers the 3D games over the 2D games. I mean, I like them so much that I have done some concept work for a story that “homages” Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, and I was more excited to hear this new track from the rapper behind the Knuckles stage themes for Sonic Adventure 2 than I was for anything pertaining to Sonic Mania. I guess you could say a weird Sonic fan that way.
Starting this week off, Bandai Namco unveiled a teaser trailer on Monday morning for a title by the name of Projekt #1514 from Japanese developer Dimps. But rather than waiting for a while to let speculation grow, four days later Bandai Namco revealed that this is just Sword Art Online: The Final Bullet, a game set in the post apocalyptic Gun Gale Online from the second season of the show. Normally I would just ignore this announcement, as the first season of Sword Art Online is legitimately one of the worst shows I have ever watched, but based on the gameplay shown in a leaked trailer, this game is the closest thing people will get to a successor to Freedom Wars, a hunting game co-developed by Dimps, that had a lot of room for improvement. Shame it is attached to one of the most poorly executed intellectual properties in existence. The game is due out for release in 2018 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Another far more interesting announcement is that of the next name from SWERY, the eccentric director of Deadly Premonition and D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die. After establishing White Owl Inc. late last year, his first independent project was announced in the form of a “Debt Repayment Life Simulation RPG” by the name of The Good Life, a game that centers around an American photo journalist investigating a tranquil town in the British countryside wherein all of its varied and SWERY-esque denizens transform into cats during the night.
While that alone would be enough to sell me on this game, the game’s announcement came alongside with a Fig crowdfunding campaign that is asking for 1.5 million dollars… Yes, $1,500,000. In a climate where even the spiritual successor to Gitaroo Man and Parappa The Rappa failed to get much more than $200,000 in funding. This project also did not come with any form of gameplay demonstration, instead choosing to simply break down the mechanics in fine detail and almost misleading potential backers as to how the game actually looks due to the abundant use of concept art that genuinely looks better than the developer’s attempt at creating a low-poly 3D world. I am genuinely very skeptical of this game’s success when it comes to this campaign, but I really and truly do hope that this game can become a reality.
After a series of leaks have popped up over the past few months, Microsoft has finally announced ReCore: Definitive Edition, an enhanced version of the 2016 budget title with the contents of a previously unreleased expansion, a new robot friend, and Xbox One X support. And it is coming out on August 29th, after being announced by the game’s appearance on the Microsoft store. You know, I realize that this game will not make them much money, but they could at least try to promote it. I have not seen a game sent out to die with such little effort since Blades of Time, a 2012 game that Konami announced a week before its release, and was not available in most stores until a few days afterwards, while doing basically no promotion for it, at all. Goodness, has Konami been sucking for the past 5 years.
Three notable leaks came creaking through the brittle hull of the S.S. Gamindustri, starting with a Steam Database entry for a freemium currency for Destiny, or rather Destiny 1 s it will henceforth be referred to. This is rather perplexing due to how Destiny 1 never released on PC and how Activision intends on publishing Destiny 2 on PC exclusively through Blizzard’s Battle.net service. Also, Destiny 1 is a service based game that had a tumultuous development cycle and had to gradually improve itself through the release of a multitude of expansions and regular updated provided by the developers. Why would anybody return to a service game after it had basically been abandoned by the developer through the introduction of a sequel? Especially when it looks notably better. Maybe it is just leftover from a PC version that was never released. Who knows.
The next entry on the leak list comes from Laura Kate Dale, who spoke to verifiable sources from European game retailers to discover that Capcom intends on re-releasing the cult classic Clover Studios title Okami for PS4 and Xbox One this December. Seeing as how Capcom has been reaching into the re-release well quite often over the past few years, this would not be surprising, as the game had garnered a strong following, and I’m sure that many would be willing to purchase the game yet again, such as myself, simply for the convenience of playing it on a modern system and at a super high resolution. Also, a PC version is likely coming as well, but a game retailer would not know about it.
The third and final one comes from a German games magazine of all things, which ran an advertisement for an Experiment 101 and THQ Nordic title by the name of Biomutant, a “post-apocalyptic kung fu fable” centered around a little animal creature with an eyepatch, a big sword, a cyborg grasshopper friend, jetski, and flying dinosaur buddy. While my interest in open world games has decreased proportionately with their popularity, and the game does look a bit too realistic for my weird tastes, I love everything about this edgy little rodent boy, and want to see what kind of scrambles he will get up to. Biomutant is set to release for PS4, Xbox One, and PC in 2018, and will probably be formally revealed at Gamescom next week.
That’s all for now. I’ll be back on Wednesday with a review that has been irking me for quite some time now.