Something that has become very obvious to me over the years is how disconnected I have become from various other aspects of “nerd culture” to the point where the only thing I follow is video games, occasionally catching wind of an anime, show, or film, while rarely ever partaking in any of those. This was not a conscious decision, I simply just lost interest in many of these things and let them be as they were, focusing more on the few things I care deeply about, and trying to make time for them as I gradually gain more and more responsibilities. I bring this up mostly because it is Comic Con, and there is much fervor about various announcements, most of which I really couldn’t care less for. Well, except for the trailer for the Invader Zim movie, which looks pretty cool.
One of the larger stories from 2016 was the release of No Man’s Sky, a heavily anticipated open world game with a universal scale that heralded as one of the true “next gen” titles after it was announced back in 2013. Yet at launch, the game has numerous issues, and generally did not live up to the overzealous hype and fervor that the gaming populus attributed to the title after viewing several enticing looking previews of the game that showcased an experience that many found to be misleading. Since then, the developer, Hello Games, have stayed quiet, and continued to work on No Man’s Sky over the past two years in hopes of creating a title of a scale and quality needed to satiate those who felt they were misled by this game. All of which culminates with the upcoming release of No Man’s Sky Next, an updated version of the game that includes a plethora of changes that all transform the game quite dramatically.
That itself is a somewhat warming tale, aside from the middle part, where the backlash was nothing short of abhorrent, as one would expect from the breed and flavor of discourse that flourishes amongst many modern online communities. With death threats, bomb threats, and rampant harassment being levied at the developers all because certain… beings felt as if they were lied to and were of the woefully wrongful opinion that harassing someone over a video game is ever justified.
With the Digimon game series being more or less annualized at this point, it is unsurprising to hear about a new title coming out, though I cannot say I really expected this. Digimon Survive is, as the name implies, a survival RPG about a young man who was displaced into the digital world and must both survive in its harshness while looking for a way home with the aid of his Digimon companions. However, the actual gameplay seems to be more akin to a strategy RPG based on the images shown, depicting Digimon as 2D illustrations placed on a tile based 3D world, not unlike the Disgaea series. While I do gravitate away from survival mechanics, I have been meaning to get into the modern Digimon games for a while now, and with this game coming out on PS4 and Switch in 2019, at least in Japan, I may give it a whirl if the buzz around the game is positive enough.
Anything else? Well, more details were given about CyberConnect2’s Trilogy of Vengeance, which continues to look like an incredibly edgy series of concepts that fall directly into my wheelhouse. Just to reiterate, Fuga is a game about a bunch of orphaned dog and cat people who pilot a tank as a means of seeking vengeance for those who killed their parents and must think strategically, lest they are forced to sacrifice a 4-year-old as ammo for the soul cannon. Tokyo Ogre Gate is a high speed parkour action game about dashing through early 20th century Japanese cityscapes in order to gain the speed and force needed to everserate the transdimensional ogre meaneace. While Cecile is a horrific boss rush action game about commiting fratricide with a shapeshifting demon umbrella. These are easily among my most anticipated games at the moment, and they are due out for a simultaneous worldwide release on PS4, XBO, NSW, and PC.