Over this past week I have been making my way through Danganronpa V3 while my significant other has been doing the same. We have been discussing the game in detail as we continued our parallel playthroughs, and during that discussion, they revealed that they did not know that you could save during a class trial. They assumed that a massive portion of a game, one part of a portable game series, would arbitrarily prohibit saving, and require players to rush through the entire 2+ hour trial in a single session. They somehow never figured this out despite playing Danganronpa 1 and 2, as theynever opened the menu over the span of 20+ hours of class trials in those games. This baffled me so much that I could not stop myself from sharing it.
With a brief “Hunie Direct” from HuniePot, developers of HuniePop and Hunie Cam Studios, that formally announced the next two titles from the developer. The first being The Spiral Scouts, a puzzle adventure game with a pop-up book aesthetic and colorful visuals, that still has the undercurrent crassness that I found oh so delightful in the developer’s prior games, despite it being completely at odds with the art style. It certainly would capture my interest on its own, but knowing the developer’s background makes me all the more interested. The Spiral Scouts is set to release sometime later this year, or perhaps early 2018.
The other and more pressing announcement was HuniePop 2, the long awaited successor to the 2015 dating sim and match 3 puzzle game. Unlike the prior game, no gameplay footage was shown, and instead it was simply announced that three new characters from Hunie Cam Studios will be returning, and there will be a new character in the form of a “repressed slut” born into a conservative and traditional Muslim family. Which probably upset some people, but I have never found the Hunie games to be offensive or some such thing, so I’ll offer the developer the benefit of the doubt. HuniePop 2 is currently set to release sometime during the latter half of 2018.
Continuing off of the Koei Tecmo port kerfuffle from last week, the publisher has announced that they are bringing the much beloved PS4 souls-like title, Nioh, to the PC as part of a complete collection also releasing on PS4, simultaneously on November 7th. Knowing Koei Tecmo, the port will likely have more than a few share of issues, but knowing the Souls community on PC, it will only take a short while before fixes start appearing. Or at least I hope so.
Capcom have announced Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition for release on January 27th, 2018. The game will be little more than a repackaging of the original Street Fighter V, but released alongside a collection of new features that will be added to the initial release, and with all extra characters and stages already unlocked. This is likely an effort on Capcom’s part to desperately renew the casual interest in Street Fighter V following the game’s underwhelming initial release, where the game was devoid of most features people would expect from a major modern fighting game. I hope this fares well for Capcom, if only because they have been going through a rough patch, after their new engine proved to be a non-starter, and because they are still a talented developer capable of putting out high quality titles.
With Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon only a few weeks away from release, GameFreak has released a new trailer for the titles, showing off more of what makes these new entries unique. Cross dimensional travel! Yes, unlike Sun and Moon which only involved a single trip to the world of the Ultra Beasts, including a world occupied by a new antagonistic force, the Ultra Recon Squad, trainers who use Ultra Beasts. As I said in the prior trailer, the game is shaping up to be worthwhile, although I am keeping my expectations pretty low, as GameFreak can only do so much in a year. Also, I just figured out why they are called Ultra Sun and Moon….
After establishing themselves with 2012’s Dust: An Elysian Tail, a great metroidvania action game barring a few of its… quirks, developer Dean Dodrill has finally spoken up about what their next project will be, and it is absolutely nothing like Dust, or the Elysian Tail film that Dodrill was also working on. Instead, his next title, Never Stop Sneakin’ is an intentionally ludicrous affair about a man who travelled throughout time to steal all the US presidents, and can only be stopped by an elite government agency of supersoldiers. The actual gameplay is a combo based endeavor where players must rapidly and fluidly traipse around obstacles, taking out enemies, and avoiding detection, with an expected level of bombast thrown in.
As for how the game functions as a retro throwback, it resembles an N64 or PS1 title with its low poly and texture aesthetic, while not shying away from more modern particle and lighting effects to give the game a nostalgic yet not necessarily dated look. Especially considering how the overhead perspective makes it harder to realize how low poly most things are. While the game does look to be promising, it is certainly a colossal departure from the beautiful hand drawn worlds of Dust, and while it does not look bad, I am more than a little confused as to why Dodrill chose to embark on a project like this. Never Stop Sneakin’ is due to debut this holiday season exclusively for the Nintendo Switch, before it is inevitably ported to other platforms.
After being teased several times, and being pretty obvious given the series’ history, Bandai Namco have announced God Eater 3 as the next entry in their hunting game series. The game will be developed for modern consoles, meaning that it features a rather dramatic visual boost compared to the first two games, which were originally PSP titles. The reveal trailer showed little beyond some landscapes a scrambled flurry of gameplay, so little can really be gathered from the game, other than how it looks a lot like Code Vein with its destroyed environments. Which is unsurprising seeing as how the games share staff and likely the same basic innerworkings. As somebody who played and enjoyed the first two entries, I am interested to see where the series will go, and foolishly hopeful that this shift to a console and the need to garner a larger audience will remove some of the meddlesome mechanical minutia found in the first two entries.
Also, I will not have my review of Danganronpa V3 ready for next week. Because the game is surprisingly long, 50+ hours from the look of it, and instead I’ll be reviewing something… else.