Rundown (7/07/2024) Student Transfer Ad Infinitum

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This Week’s Topics:

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Transfer Students Ad Infinitum

After delays due largely to bad ‘planning for the unexpected’ on my part, my Student Transfer V8 review went live this week, meaning I am free from the responsibility of game reviews for another spell. …Except I’m going to do a bonus review of the original Murder route sometime SOON™, just for fun. 

For as much as I love Student Transfer… I have put it on a pedestal over the years, assigned it a lot of importance, and desperately want it to be as good as possible, so I tend to get really bummed when it falters. I get paranoid and worry that it is an impending sign of bad things to come. That the quality will drop and the game will stop being the one I love. That the project will just fall apart, grow lethargic from a lack of invested developers, and die with a paltry whimper. And that the good times it represents will just, one day, come to an end.

I want Student Transfer to be great, for it to keep seeking ways to improve itself and for it to continue on and one, updating and fixing things, for as long as possible. But after writing my review… I’m just straight up shaking with concern over what could happen. Over the fallout over my more negative remarks on the game. Over getting a nasty response from the devs. But, most of all, of nothing happening and my perceived problems with the game only worsening.

Edit 7/7/2024: There was a phrasing error in this section when I was talking about my fears when the ST V8 review was about to go live. For clarity’s sake, I was contacted by two current devs regarding how I credited them, and two former devs did contact me regarding the project, but nobody was being nasty to me or anything.

This is a problem that I don’t really have with solo devs, or devs who are more organized. I trust Trigger to keep working on Press-Switch, as he has fostered a community around the game and has worked on it for, like, 15 years. At this point, it’s just part of him. I trust CaptainCaption to work on re:Dreamer until they are on their deathbed— just like Osamu Tezuka. And I trust Cinnamon Switch to keep doing… whatever I patronize them to do— I keep myself in the dark on purpose!

But Student Transfer? That is a collaborative group, most members have left or become inactive, and because most of the original developers have stepped away, I have far less faith in the project being stable for decades. And accepting that… just makes me so anxious, so worried, because I have played so much Student Transfer, dedicated so much time to it, that I do not want it to end, as it would be losing something dear. Something that I’ve used as a massive creative inspiration. Something that I could look forward to as a showcase of TSF creative excellence. So seeing it slip, seeing things just not be done, it… it genuinely kept me up at night while writing my review.

Akumako: “Uh… then stop being a bitch and join the dev team so you can be the change you want to be?”

First off, if the dev team accepted me, I would be even more concerned about their standards.

Akumako: “You know having a lack of confidence doesn’t make you a better writer, right?”

When I was 8, I planned on killing myself on my 13th birthday, because I thought I was too much of an invalid to live as a teenager, let alone an adult. And I was gonna do it— knife in hand— but I stopped ‘cos I was too much of a li’l bitch. Or to lay it straighter than a ruler, I have self confidence issues that cannot be fixed. 

…Also, I am just not a good pick for a project like that as my writing would stand out. I tried to cultivate a unique voice for myself as a creator— fucked around and found out how to mix and match styles until I found a voice that I felt comfortable adopting for myself. I think I am a decent-to-good writer, barring my general sloppiness, but I have never tried to conform to a style, and don’t really want to. I have my own ideas, my own vision, and I know that nobody could write the stories I wanna tell the way I wanna tell ’em.

Akumako: “Yeah, the dev team probably wants to avoid bringing on the writer of Weiss Vice: Glory Unto Genocide.”

As they should. Besides, the only route that I would even want to do… would just be IllMalice, and they would never greenlight that idea, because half of the characters would just be dead, a quarter would be disfigured, and everybody would be traumatized.

Akumako: “…What if they assigned you projects with unshakeable outlines and let you write under a vaguely disguised alias?”

Um… you do realize I need to write, like, 3 novels in the next 18 months, right?

Akumako: “…Then why are we even having this conversation?”

To fill up the preamble, and I think we just did that!

Akumako: “Oh, you cheeky little cun—”

DRDR: Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster Gameplay
(We’ve Got Nothing To Discuss This Holiday Week!)

The worst thing about doing a Rundown for these holiday weeks is finding things to talk about. And of course Chuckles here decided to divest TSF Showcases right before American Independence (For White People) Day. People were off work, not much was announced by the western end of things, so I need to scrounge for a topic and… yeah, lemme pick up the Dead Rising remaster again.

Capcom has released a proper trailer for the game, showing more of what the gameplay will look like here and… it’s pretty much what one would expect. The original Dead Rising (2006), but recreated in the RE Engine, with completely new visual assets, lighting, and effects. This inevitably changes the look and liveliness of the game, and does that ‘modern game thing’ of washing out certain colors with ‘realistic’ lighting at the cost of visual clarity. But as it stands, I think it looks damn good for what it is, and the only gripes I could have would be born from a one-to-one comparison.

Most people seem to be pretty fine with the visual facelift as far as I can tell, but there was some discourse over Frank West looking too old in this new redesign, but I would argue that his old design was lame. He just looked like just some dude before. This remastered interpretation looks pretty on brand for a 36-year-old journalist who has covered wars, kills people for fun, and is just more… marketable? Honestly if I saw a design that looked like the original Frank West in this game, and knew nothing of the original, I would think he was the default White dude create-a-character. I know my opinion ain’t worth much, as I was too much of a coward to try the series, but I would be down with this new rendition… if they didn’t change the voice acting.

As part of this remaster, they are redoing all the voice acting. The original did not voice all optional or NPC dialogue, and this remaster aims to do just that, so they are re-recording everything. Fair enough. However, they are not bringing back the original voice actor for Frank West, Terence J. Rotolo. You know, the guy whose absence was a major source of controversy in the lead up to Dead Rising 4.

To a lot of people, Rotolo is Frank West. Hell, some of his barks have been bopping around in my head for over 15 years, and Capcom did not even contact him about doing this role, presumably because he’s in a union and they don’t want to pay union rates. This strikes me as egregiously petty in a way that I cannot really understand, especially when the game is receiving brand new dubs into nine different languages. They’re willing to pay for Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, French, Italian, German, Castilian Spanish, and Russian dubs… but not bring back the most recognizable voice actor? The ONLY voice actor for Frank West for a decade? Absolutely boneheaded move.

There’s also the matter of pricing, which I always think is a tricky balance for re-whatevers of older games, as DRDR is carving out what would be standard in-game content in the halcyon days or yore, charging roughly $10 for it, and giving the base game a $50 price tag. Bringing the actual price to $60, for a gussied up version of a $10 game.

I get why they are doing this. Because you cannot raise the price of a digital release, this is a semi-niche product, and customers with a lower reservation price or, like, $20, can pick up the game during a sale in 2026. However… I just don’t think it’s right to charge what is basically a full retail price for a facelift remaster like this. It’s not as bad as Nintendo charging $60 for ports of games they re-released as $20 budget titles, but… I also know that gaming audiences are not as price conscious as they used to. 

Part of this is the gaming audience growing older and gaining access to more disposable income. Part of that is due to how everything has gotten more expensive over the past 20 years. And part of this is due to the entertainment value of games being higher than just about any other form of media. A movie is $20 or more and you’re done with it in two hours. Nobody but freaks like me buys albums anymore for $10 to $20 a pop. And a night out with friends costs like $30 per person at a minimum. Accordingly, a lot of game likers just buy titles at launch, maybe hit up GMG or whomever for a discount, and complaining about a price being too high… simply does not affect the sales of most titles. If a major game from a sizable publisher fails to sell well nowadays, it’s either due to a lack of quality, a lack of attention, or an oversized budget.

Anyway, I’ve lost track of the topic, so I’ll just wrap this up by saying that Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster launches for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on September 19th.

A Lost Planet History Rundown… Because I Don’t Know
(Gotta Bulk Up The Word Count)

Seeing the Dead Rising remaster got me wondering if Capcom plans on doing this same approach with their other MT Framework games of the 7th gen. They made a lot of games in that engine, but the best candidate for a remaster is… probably Lost Planet? …Is now a good time for a mostly impromptu retrospect on this short-lived yet highly remarkable series? Yeah, I think so.

The thing that’s wild about Lost Planet is that it only lasted for four games, all released over the span of 7 years. And every game was completely different, only unified by the loose theme of being a sci-fi shooter in the same space planet.

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (2006) was an early title for the Xbox 360, buoyed by its position as an exclusive, and its position in the history of that generation is… odd. It was one of the last real gasps of a Japanese-grown shooter to not be touched by the burgeoning influence of Gears of War (2006) and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007). This meant the game was doing a bunch of weird, different things that would quickly come to be seen as dated or clunky based on rapidly developing standards. Which sucks because the game was pretty dope.

It had wide open environments where the player fended off against a harsh snow swept climate frothing with vicious indigenous monsters. There was a persistent mechanic about maintaining warmth, or T-ENG, to survive in these extreme conditions. The game had that sorta janky pre-COD4 and pre-Gears PS2-like aiming system that, looking back, I find to be efficient and charming. And the game even had a grappling hook mechanic, which was a bold choice for a game using a brand new engine

You had mech fights featuring multiple different models with unique mobility features. Standard on-the-ground shootouts against thuggish goons. A decent amount of variety between industrial sectors, the wide wintery wilderness, deep caverns, what look like discarded civilizations. There were a lot of impressive setpieces that made its campaign a remarkable one. And the game also had a requisite multiplayer, but I don’t think it was that big.

Lost Planet (2006) is a game that I think is easier to appreciate in retrospect, and one that I think is due for some wider evaluation, now that people are almost 20 years removed from the original release. Because it’s one of those ‘next gen’ games that still manages to feel, in some ways, ahead of its time. As it was trying to do its own thing.

Lost Planet 2 (2010)… was freaking weird. Capcom clearly took a look at the rise in the popularity of multiplayer-driven shooters and the end result is more like a bizarre mishmash of Monster Hunter, Gears of War, and a bit of… Earth Defense Force. 

Rather than return to the arctic climate of the original, this game was set in a warmer, loosely jungle-themed, setting. Instead of being a lone soldier on a mission to kill creeps and bug monsters, it was a squad based affair with more of a military aesthetic. You had factions, you had character customization, you had big girthy guns, and you had mechs that were, once again, a vital part of the game loop. The game was broken up into a series of missions that could be played solo or with friends, making it wicked easy to replay or just drop in for a few rounds. It had a persistent progression system, encouraging people to keep coming back to the game. And there was enough content there to keep them entertained for quite a while.

The game was, by all extents, a great cranked-up time that, in a different world, could have been a major multiplayer success and cemented a series. In practice though, the game got a more mixed reception. Some critics liked it, but more thought it was just another unremarkable sci-fi shooter that they had to play through this week, with a bunch of inferior Japanese-isms. (The western gaming scene was high-key racist against Japanese games for a decade, it was embarrassing.) The game was actually doing something different than contemporary shooters of its era, but they just were not able to see the game for what it was, and viewed it more on the merits of what it was ‘ripping off.’ 

The game has seen a slight resurgence in interest, but Capcom never bothered to patch the PC version that required Games for Windows Live, so they wound up delisting it. I want to say it would be an interesting remaster, but so many assets would need to be remade and the online mechanisms would likely need to be updated to align with modern players’ expectations. So… maybe not. At that point, you may as well make an all new game like… Shit, was Lost Planet 2 a predecessor to Exoprimal? …Yes! …Kinda. …Maybe?

Then there was Lost Planet 3 (2013), a game developed by Spark Unlimited, who were tasked with doing something completely different with the series. The title was a prequel that shifted back to the dismal arctic wastelands of the first game, but was a far less… glamorous affair. Instead of stopping immense threats and engaging in action movie antics, the game was a lot slower, more cinematic, and more character-driven than anything the prior games attempted. It was a western-style third-person shooter built in Unreal 3, that… pretty much lacked any of the gameplay DNA of the original two titles. 

The camera was way closer, and navigation was largely limited to running to chest-high walls and using the grappling hook more as a ladder than a grappling hook. The battle-ready war mechs were replaced with excavation equipment, capable of combat but not really built for it, and they were in first-person, likely for technical reasons. While there were still some quality actions set pieces, you can tell they played worse just by looking at gameplay footage. Simply, it was not what fans of either camp wanted. 

LP3 was seen as a dull, repetitive shooter that came out as a last gasp for an ending console generation, and it warranted precious little fanfare. Critics did not like it, fans were not crazy about it, and its particular breed of sci-fi felt overdone at the time of its release. It was, or at least seemed, so dreary and grounded it was hard to get excited for it. However, the game did excel with its story, telling a narrative of working class struggle about a guy trying to make enough money for his family to get a good life, and fighting corporate avarice. Its narrative was so strong that many members of the narrative team later went on to Santa Monica studios to work on God of War (2018). 

Lost Planet 3 got a frigid reception, failed commercially, and was largely written off in its time. The game had some merits, and if given more time and resources, it could have been something better, but with tight deadlines and constant crunch, it’s frankly a miracle that Spark was able to release this game at all.

And thus, Lost Planet came to an end, never to receive a new addition, and being relegated to the Capcom vault of dead IPs. …Though, there was one spin-off that I was holding off until now, because I’m still salty about this shit!

E.X. Troopers (2012) was a Lost Planet spin-off made exclusively for a Japanese audience, which never made any damn sense. The title made a strong first showing with its cel-shaded visuals, fast-paced shooting, vibrancy, and unabashed anime-ness. It was announced for Nintendo 3DS and PS3, and looked like something that was sorely lacking in the games industry at the time. …But it was also more than that. 

You see, this game was announced about a year after Keiji Inafune, the man responsible for ‘the Dark Age of Capcom’ and shepard of the Mega Man series, left Capcom. Following his departure, Capcom put the entire Mega Man series on ice and canceled multiple games, including the 3DS exclusive Mega Man Legends 3. This stung for a lot of 3DS early adopters, as this was supposed to be a big game for the system, and actually was set to release a prototype demo sometime this summer. Not only was Mega Man Legends 3 canceled, but its prototype demo— which was fully finished— was never released, and has not leaked out of Capcom HQ.

Mega Man Legends 3 was a third-person shooter that looked suspiciously similar to E.X. Troopers, leading some people to believe that MML3 became EXT. Was that true? No. But it felt true, and sometimes feelings are more important than facts. 

And to really twist the knife, Capcom said they had no plans to bring this fully new in-house creation outside of Japan. Why? Because “all of the text is ‘hard coded’ as actual art.” Which was… just a bad development practice.

Fortunately, there are brilliant, ambitious people in this world who did the work and translated the game into English anyway. It took 10 bloody years, but these dastards actually did it, and the end result is DOPE!

Even to this day, it’s a little unreal to see this sick-ass bomb-ass game running at higher resolutions, in English. It would be a cult classic if Capcom decided to localize it, and instead… it sold like butts in Japan, scraping past 26,000 units in its first week in Japan. Meaning it did not make any money.

In conclusion, Capcom should do an RE Engine remaster of the campaign of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (2006). That game was a unique animal and I think people would connect with it if given modern production values and snow effects. And they should do a regular remaster of E.X. Troopers, as its style is already great and the game would be lauded if introduced to a new audience.

Akumako: “And when they release it, you know what they should call it? Super E.X. Troopers!”

And that’s the joke!

Keywords Studios Has Been Acquired
(Private Equity Wants To Ruin The Games Industry For £2.2 Billion)

Keywords Studios is a developer that nobody with a casual understanding of the games industry would recognize, as they barely develop any titles on their own. However, they are one of the biggest and most prolific game developers in the entire world, with over 12,000 employees. What games have they worked on? Everything from Alan Wake II to Super Mario Bros. Wonder to Contra: Operation Galuga to The Talos Principle II. Keywords Studios is a pillar of the games industry, providing just about any and every service to developers. They are THE de facto support company of the games industry, and if they were to just disappear, then the industry would be fucked.

They have grown horrifically fast over the past 26, made oodles of acquisitions, and now… they are getting acquired by a Swedish investment firm by the name of EQT AB. 

I’m just going to say this once: This acquisition should not happen. Corporate consolidation is a bad thing, even in unrelated industries— especially in unrelated industries. EQT is the third largest private equity firm in the world, and if there are any sane people in the Swedish government, or the European Union, who can stop this thing, they should. Private equity is a terrible thing that exists to siphon away financial value from companies while steadily destroying them, their culture, and making life worse for the people who work at them. Private equity is one of the main antagonists of the capitalist shithole that we are currently trying to get out of, and they should not be allowed to just buy such an important company.

It will not be an immediate disaster— things might actually look good for a while, but eventually, this will go to shit, and I don’t want to see that, let alone report on it, in the next decade. I fear that the relative obscurity of Keywords and the surprisingly low price point (Keywords does not own many valuable IPs) will cause this to slip under the radar. Shit, the only game sites who picked up on this that I could find in a few minutes were GamesIndustry.biz, GameDeveloper, PocketGamer, and Game World Observer. It barely got any attention on Reddit. And it did not even get a ResetEra thread. Very few people in games are paying attention to this, and that makes me feel insane for reacting like this. Because this is important.

Akumako: “America just stopped being a Republic, and you’re freaking out about the games industry?”

With America, that’s pretty easy to fix. Just kill the bad members of the Supreme Court who have outed themselves as being anti-democracy with their utterly radical reading of the Constitution, kill the front-runner of the GOP, and say that the recent rulings never happened, because they were enemies of the state, because they fucking are.

Akumako: “Natalie, again, you cannot advocate for people to kill people.”

I’m not advocating for shit, I’m just saying that if people die, then they stop being a problem! That’s a fact! And here’s another fact for you! If killing someone saves lives and improves the quality of life for millions of people, it is not a crime, it is justice. And to hell with whatever ‘orderly system’ disagrees with that!

Akumako: “This fucking fuckhead is gonna get me killed one of these days…”

Progress Report 2024-07-07

Guess what the headliners for next week’s Rundown is gonna be!

2024-06-30: Finished up the Magic Allie route. It was great, and a good way to end my time with STV8. Stayed up until 2:00 AM writing out some initial thoughts.

2024-07-01: I got busy with work due to an obscene IRS crypto audit. They said the client owed 7 million USD, and my boss and I (mostly me) managed to debunk 1.9 million USD in a single day. IRS don’t know what the fuck they’s talkin’ ’bout. Didn’t do nothin’ for Natalie.TF

2024-07-02: I think I just wrote 5,000 words for my Student Transfer review in a day. I just need to finish the Kiyoshi Wish segment, write the conclusion, edit it, and get the 40-ish screencaps from my segregated folders. FUN! Threw out the 800 word Preamble to distract myself as it neared by bedtime of 2:00 AM. …That I often break.

2024-07-03: Finished the draft of Student Transfer V8 review, because it had to get done. Then I realized I needed to edit it the same day, and I HATE doing that. I like to let my thoughts sit for a day and know I do a bad job editing things I just wrote a few hours ago. Wrote 2,600 words for the Rundown, mostly for padding and to fulfill an autistic tangent quota I have, in my brain. ST review wound up being 10k words long, so… I guess I wrote like 2.5k words for that today and 2.5k words on Sunday? I dunno. I don’t do daily word count checks as often as I should. I’ll do the screenshot selection on the morrow.

2024-07-04: Had to go shopping for a mattress and do some work, despite it being a national holiday. Finished getting screenshots for the Student Transfer review, got his Rundown ret-2-go, and played some Zenless Zone Zero for next week’s preamble, as I was quite interested in that game and it’s been 19 months since I did crack, so I felt I could justify some nibbling.

2024-07-05: Played more Zenless Zone Zero, treating that as my primary thing for the evening, along with some DMs and comments for the ST review.

2024-07-06: Did chores, watched anime with Cassie and the dog friend, read Requited Change and took too detailed notes for the TSF Showcase next week. Yeah, I need to adjust my schedule so I finish TSF Showcases as part of Rundowns, like I used to. Or just do TSF Showcases in bulk. Absolutely zero PS 1988 progress this week. FUCK!

Psycho Shatter 1988: Black Vice X Weiss Vice
Progress Report:

Current Word Count: 0

Estimated Word Count: 88,000

Words Edited: 0

Total Chapters: 14

Chapters Outlined: 14

Chapters Drafted: 0

Chapters Edited: 0

Header Images Made: 0

Days Until Deadline: 122

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