The artstyle in this looks a lot like Poi, that totally-solid 3D Platformer that came out on PS4 recently (and Xbone? And launched out of Early Access onto Steam proper earlier this year). The characters and world look super similar in style, but the visuals here and the actual rendering & lighting in Yonder make Poi look positively last-gen.
Seriously, same type of characters and cute, vibrant world, but the actual visual quality is night and day (no offense to Poi - I think that game was made by 2 people): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coHWgO7g5Rw
I would've loved Yonder years ago. But such a "relaxed pace" kinda game with a focus on fetchquesting and crafting is definitely not for me. Not this year, with so many amazing games on PS4 to go through - I just can't see myself carving out time for a game with such a relaxed pace. But this IS a really pretty version of this kind of aesthetic. It looks awesome. Hope it finds its audience.
Sweet. Good review. Sounds fine for an indie production to me; rough and/or minimalist in spots but sports some interesting, unique systems & ideas - I quite like the looks of the choice system and the combat in this.
With so many backlog titles to chew through that are massive, massive timesinks, a little "bite-sized adventure" like this is a perfect little complement to all the Horizons, NieRs, and Toukiden 2's I'm currently going through.
He also was hired initially to make the first Resident Evil movie, and got far enough to complete a script, before Capcom - ever the brilliant entity they are - fired him and hired Paul W.S. Anderson and unleashed their own plague upon the World in the form of that horrible movie series.
@WanderingBullet Yeah, Fantasy Strike is currently crowdfunding. Not on Kickstarter, but its been running on Patreon for months and is on Fig now - that Double Fine "investor platform" thing. So... I dunno, I feel like its doomed? The only successful Fig campaigns I can think of are Double Fine's own.
I don't know how much Dave Sirlin is an ex-Street Fighter dev though - I don't know how much any Western developer has been involved in Street Fighter, or to what capacity, and I'm too lazy to look it up Localization? Something with Udon? Something with the port houses that did games like Super SF2 Turbo HD Remix? They don't develop games in the West so * shrugs * But he's been working on the game's universe for some time - its got a card game already called Yomi. And Fantasy Strike IS kind of interesting... Remember the Super Best Friends showed it off recently and its got some cool ideas for sure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f9x_jj6v60
Its a shame it looks so rough currently though. Like, 2 months ago they decided to slap a cel-shader on there, and it looks not great right now.
I dunno. Those big, harsh, pure black shadows right now... it just reminds me of games where, they look around and think they can't compete visually with other titles, so they turn on the cel shader and say its a "graphic novel inspired aesthetic" or whatever. Real mediocre, forgettable stuff like that vampire game "Dark" or "The Darkness 2" (which is an okay game, but the cel shader implementation sucks). This kind of implementation is a million miles from really well-crafted cel shaded visuals like in Dragon Ball FighterZ, Guilty Gear Revelator, any Naruto game, etc. Its real lazy.
Fighting Layer is dope af and this new one looks fantastic. SO HAPPY to see Arika making killer-looking fighting games again, after years of being wasted under Nintendo making stuff like Dr.Luigi and ports for the 3DS for the past decade :/
That being said, it looks like this has switched from fully 3D like it was a few months ago to fully 2D in gameplay, which is a little disappointing if true. There's only Tekken 7 (and to a lesser extent since its quite old now, DOA5) that are dealing with 3D fighting now - sidesteps, 8-way runs, etc. Literally EVERY other "serious" (non-One Piece, Naruto or Seven Deadly Sins) contemporary fighter is 2D in nature, so if this is just another one... that'll be a bit a bummer, not gonna lie.
I mean, this looks like different gameplay here, yeah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2x8c-RFGnA
Now, it looks locked to 2D, pretty much. They pulled the camera back, made the jumps faster & higher, seemingly got rid of the sidestepping sidestepping, etc It still looks good, and like a(nother) strong "2.5D" fighter, but it looks a bit less intense than it did a few months ago.
This and Arika's Fighting Layer EX (which is apparently still untitled, for whatever reason. Guess they want to self-publish it, and Namco owns the Fighting Layer name?) are by far the most exciting fighting games coming up. Super excited to see BOTH have a killer showing at EVO right now, and BOTH announce a beta - especially with Dragon Ball's coming way sooner than expected! SO EXCITED! If I could, I would pre-order this right now. Dragon Ball filtered through Guilty Gear Revelator is a dream-come-true! This just looks hotter and hotter every time they show it (though I really can't wait until they get the English voices in there; I can't stand the Japanese DBZ vocals, mostly because of "Old lady" Goku's voice)
Honestly cool to see ArcSys take on Ecole/French Bread's Under Night universe, but I'll be honest, seeing Ruby show up was just the pleasant surprise I needed to get really hyped for this! Which is great, because I - unfortunately - just can't drum up that much enthusiasm for Blazeblue on its own. Probably because they never number it, so none of the entries seem like good jumping in points. They all just seem like more "Super Turbo" iterations looking from the outside in. But this is definitely fresh enough to jump in, I figure.
Though, for real, they better get my girls Yang & Nora (from JNPR) in there to help represent "Team RWBY" in this. And from Under Night, I'm crossing my fingers Yuzuriha & Gordeau make it in.
Such an awesome announcement! Although I am baffled why SNK does this kind of thing - first Mai guesting in DOA5, now Geese in Tekken 7. Are they trying to call attention to the fact that King of Fighters XIV looks way worse than other fighting games?
Oh well; on the flipside, maybe its giving them a good visual target to shoot for with the next game. Maybe Samurai Shodown VII will run on Unreal 4 and look as good as their competitors' games? One can dream crossing fingers
Still, its hard to find a guest character both as cool as Akuma and someone who could seriously threaten Heihachi and Kazuya in this World, but Geese Howard is an EXCELLENT choice, and I'm definitely looking forward to checking him out in the future!
Beat Dragon Quest Heroes 2 finally, and beat Momodora IV Reverie Under The Moonlight too. Probably gonna ignore gaming for the rest of the weekend so I can finish up some work. When I do hop back into a game, I'll continue with NieR Automata, Tales of Berseria and/or Rayman Legends, which I finally picked up recently when it was $13 or something during the PSN Mid-Year Sale. Who's bright idea was it to put "run" on the R2/L2 Triggers, Ubi Soft? Cripes, that game hurts my hands to play it for too long. #OldManGamerProblems
I mean, I don't know if its in other regions, but there's no region lock on the PS4 so might as well poke around whichever PSN you want and take advantage of that, y'know? The ACA releases across regions - and across systems - are annoyingly inconsistent. Freakin' Switch owners get Waku Waku 7 and we don't? grumble grumble
Honestly didn't know this was being promised for 2017
Its an RPG, its gonna be huge, they haven't shown that much in Gameplay demos yet (choosing to mostly focus on boss fights, which may just be because its hard to demo an RPG at a place like E3 but whatever) I just ignored any mention of a release date I guess because c'mon, its just super unrealistic. So's Xenoblade 2. So's other obvious things, duh. I don't get why some gamers complain about games getting delayed and then take away nothing about how long it takes to actually make games from all the delays.
I'm fine with this personally - and the lack of multiplayer, another note I must've ignored entirely. Listen, I'm already sold on NNK2, so I was focused mostly on soaking up other games Namco brought to E3, like Code Vein and Dragon Ball FighterZ. There's so much jRPG love on PS4 this year that it doesn't need Ni No Kuni 2 honestly; people will be playing Tales of Berseria, Toukiden 2 and Toukiden 2's f2p version, Dragon Quest Heroes 2, Persona 5, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, .hack//G.U. Last ReCode, God Wars, Yakuza Kiwami, Ys VIII, Valkyria Revolution, Summon Night 6: Lost Borders, etc. all year long.
Pushing to 2018 makes sense in terms of polishing this up (especially for Level 5's FIRST PC title) and also to be the biggest RPG of 2018... at least for a little bit. IF it comes out the gate in January, which I also doubt Just make a killer game, Level 5. This is literally the only thing they got on their plate that I'm interested in at the moment because they seem utterly preoccupied with propping up Nintendo's ancient handheld otherwise, and farting out mobile games. No matter how charming Snack World or Lady Layton look, the fact that they're just mobile games makes it impossible for me to care about them. Make sure Ni No Kuni 2 is good, because its going to be the only console production from Level 5 for awhile... and that bums me out.
Paladins rules, but I had already played it for 100+ hours on Steam before it hit consoles. And it was ROUGH on Playstation, at least in the beta, with some of the worst, most sluggish aiming I've ever seen in a console shooter. It was shocking; very disappointing. Maybe I should give it another shot - haven't played it on PS4 in forever, and haven't played it on PC since Mauve was added. I'm behind by months
I'm gonna miss Mark Hamill's voice. I mean, going with the Japanese dub just makes sense - I get that, Sega. But for that ONE time they did an English dub, for the first game, hearing that crazy Joker voice come out of Majima's mouth was perfect
@ellsworth004 They're action-RPGs. Except the World isn't a fantasy land with made-up regions; its the Yakuza version of Tokyo and its multiple regions. Areas that are based on real regions, but slightly fictionalized, not that people can tell if they've never been. So they usually take place in the red light district of Tokyo - a place in real life called Kabukichu iirc - but in the games' equivalent area is called Kamurocho.
Shops exist, but they're actual shops like convenience stores instead of potion shops. You run into random battles, but its crazy people who want to pick a fight with you that emerge from crowds (and you get money for beating them up just like in RPGs; they're usually throwing money at you to get you to stop beating them up, lol). You level up and there's skill trees to use and newer/better things to purchase... there's breaks for conversations and cutscenes... and loads of minigames to check out... its just an action-RPG.
The combat feels like an arcadey beat 'em up too. Moreso than say a Tales game or whatever. When it transitions into combat it feels sort of like what a modern Streets of Rage or Fighting Force might feel like. Very fun (even early on before you have much that you can do), very flashy, and very satisfying. Particular the slow-mo, and the brutal moves you can do, and the money that flies out of people when you hit them.
The maps are large and free-roaming with NPCs wandering about, but its not technically open world like, say, Sleeping Dogs. Its somewhere between Sleeping Dogs and Shenmue, though. You should just pick up Yakuza 0; they're super fun games.
@Mega-Gazz I hate that the Wishlist is only a function on the Web version of the PS Store and not the actual one you access from the Playstation too. I don't even use visit the PS Store via browser and use the Wishlist anymore - I end up throwing games into a shopping cart just so I'll remember them. Then X'ing out ones I'll purchase later when I DO finally get something, and frantically going back to look for those games to add to my Cart again before I forget them. I'll have, like, 6 games, than drop 5 to purchase one of them, then go and hunt down those 5 again to throw them back in the Cart so I can remember them. Its a bad system, but its the best I can manage sometimes.
Also hate the lack of gifting. There's way too many games these days, and gifting is a great way to spread awareness for awesome titles.
Its crazy that these 2 basic things aren't standard features on all digital storefronts currently.
This generation feels like it just started, even though we're 3 years into the PS4 (c'mon gang; you never count year 1 since its just a month-and-a-half usually). Its crazy to seriously talk about PS5 at this point. There's no way anything in 2019 or 2020 will look appreciably different to games now. Particularly stand-outs like Horizon, that are super cutting edge.
This is stupid. Developers and publishers are just getting used to current gen production pipelines and really cranking out some amazing stuff NOW. There's still many indie teams, middle tier teams, and AAA teams who are nowhere close to maxing out the power of what is available. And they definitely suck at optimizing it when they hit it, judging by install sizes ballooning out of control. Beyond faster... well, more stable frame-rates, and a bump in resolution - something very few consumers care about - this really seems worthless. Especially with the mid-gen refreshes we're seeing with the Pro and X. Especially for console manufacturers constantly struggling with balancing price vs. component cost; a new console is one they're gonna eat losses on. Why would they want the existing machine - getting cheaper to make every year - to die prematurely?
I bet its more likely we'll see ANOTHER refresh for the PS4 by then instead. A successor to the Pro, one Sony gets more serious about marketing probably because they'll definitely wanna walk wanna move away from the base specs by then. Something with marginally better horsepower and hardware to pump up the framerates, resolutions and storage space for the small amount of devs complaining about it and the microscopic audience buying it. But a full-blown PS5 by 2019 or 2020? Yeah, right. C'mon Pach... until there's a huge enough leap in tech to justify a full-blown new numbered Playstation, its way too early to speculate about it. The precedent has been established with the Pro; if its marginal improvements you want, you just make a new version of the existing console. Sort of like a subset of gamers buy new video cards/ram/hard drives for their PCs annually.
I picked up NUNS2 like 2 years ago, mostly because of where it was in terms of story - covering Pain and the Akatsuki arc, you know? Toonami was just getting back into Naruto and they're only now just finishing up that stuff. Seemed like a good game to jump into then. Unfortunately, Ninja Storm 2 is terrible.
For real, something about that Substitution Jutsu (or as I call it, "Ninja Log Dodge") really sucks until UNS3 or Revolution. The timing on it is... well its random. It just doesn't work most of the time, probably to prevent spamming, but its a stupid way of doing it that CC2 abandoned with 3 or Revolution when they figured out a better way to do it. As a result, the fighting in it just feels kind of awful. A lot of dial-a-combos, and pacing that amounts to "I'm doing my combo, okay now you do your combo, okay now me again" since you can't break it up effectively. Unless you count frantically mashing on the counter button, hoping it will actually activate, as something to do while getting hit. It still wasn't that hard, but it was just very unsatisfying.
I really don't see why you'd go back to the original games. They play worse, they feature worse rosters, they look worse (not that they will ever look bad. Until Guilty Gear Revelator, CC2 had the best looking cel-shaded games on the market right here)... its all bad. And in terms of breezing through the Naruto Shippuden story, its got a boring story/adventure mode anyway (most areas are just hand-drawn or pre-rendered backgrounds with cinematic camera angles, like an old-school survival horror title, and all you can interact with are things to pick up). Not to mention, its truncated as heck, cutting out all sorts of "mini arcs" (UNS2 doesn't feature Sora at all for instance; the artificial Jinjuriki who can sort of transform into/summon a Ninetails like Naruto. And how he leads that one group of Shinobi to an assault on the Konoha Village? Its a cool chunk of episodes & story... completely ignored. That arc takes place... like right in there too. It should've been 40% of the way through the story mode or something. They also skip over the Three Tails' arc entirely)
I really don't know who this is for. At least if you pick it up you can get UNS4 + Boruto. So really, I guess the trilogy is just a bonus for picking up the newest one now? That still doesn't change the fact that the oldest ones kinda blow to actually PLAY in retrospect.
Haven't played Overwatch in quite awhile (and I liked Paladins more after that launched on Steam, anyway), and I likely won't head back to it until I knock off a good chunk of RPGs from my backlog. I literally couldn't fit the game on my Hard Drive probably at the moment.
I am interested in Doomfist and Terry Crews though, so I definitely wanna see what's up with whatever they're teasing.
Man, they really - and I mean REALLY - need to get onboard the non-Naughty Dog games already. It makes so much less sense to include Jak X than it does to include another ACTUAL PLATFORMING ADVENTURE, regardless of if Ready at Dawn (a studio formed by ex-Naughty Dog members) and High Impact (ex-Insomniac) did them. Are Daxter and Lost Frontier as good as Jak 1, 2 or 3? Probably not, but they're absolutely both worth playing, and people missed out on Lost Frontier when it was released on PS2 back in the day. I'm tired of hearing people cry out for Jak 4 when it came out over a decade ago - time to expose more gamers to it, Sony.
There's a weird cult-ish attitude around Naughty Dog growing. I don't like it. People seem to only respond to, like, 3 studios and they put them all up on a pedestal and its stupid; stop getting so weird about very few studios and start paying attention to more talent instead, yeah? Naughty Dog is becoming like Kojima...
@rjejr Well remember, with PS4 they were trying to launch DriveClub as the Project Gotham (and now Horizon) to Gran Tourismo's Forza, as it were. A sister series that could take some of the load off of Polyphony Digital, who infamously takes their sweet time between releases instead of working on any sort of annualized schedule. But, as we all know, Driveclub struggled to hit its launch date, disappointed people, took a lot of post-launch support to get up to shape, and resulted in the closure of Evolution (though some people remained with Sony to continue to work on updates and post-launch support for Driveclub, and most everyone else was acquired by CodeMasters to bulk up their racing game studios).
So yeah, its been awhile since GT was a priority for Sony, but that's a little extra pronounced this time because they tried to launch DriveClub as a second premier driving sim franchise in the meantime.
Why doesn't Limited Run Games make these types of things? I'd snatch up a retro PS1-style physical edition for Crash, or Tomb Raider (remember when SOE did that for Rise last year?), or anything else that warrants it. Sh**; Namco should've printed a retro-style case for Tekken 7. Or Sony Liverpool for Wipeout Omega. Lot of potential retro love to spread around Playstation-Land these days.
Seriously, Limited Run, get it together!
That being said, this doesn't look like its that hard to do. Grab some templates from VGBoxArt, screw around in Photoshop for an hour or so, print it out on some decent quality photo paper and cut it out, go find an old jewel case and BAM! I could have this done myself. Might be a fun project to mess with this weekend, actually...
I'd be more interested in Zodiac Age if I didn't have a massive backlog or RPGs to burn through already. Between Tales of Berseria, Valkyria Revolution, Dragon Quest Heroes 2, NeiR Automata, Yakuza 0, Wild Arms 3 & Arc the Lad via PS2 Classics and more, I don't got time for it now. I'm kind of interested in Fallen Legion since a) it looks like Grand Kingdom, which was fantastic and a game far too many people slept on completely, and b) the founder of Siliconera is working on that game. I like that site. He seems like a cool guy, and it seems like a really interesting game design, honestly. For example, the two versions of the game are different games. The PS4 Fallen Legion (Sins of an Empire) is different from the Vita one (Flames of Rebellion). But like nobody knows that! There's hardly any preview coverage on it, though - if it weren't for him chatting about it on Siliconera, I would've had it flying under my radar entirely, probably.
Generally though, July is a quiet month and I'm looking forward to NOT getting anything new probably and working on backlog games from earlier in the year, Crash N-Sane Trilogy, and various PC games from Steam and GOG's Summer Sales. 2017 is a great year for gaming, but a terrible year for actually finishing any games boy...
I was gonna ask why there are always previews for the trailers you're going to watch now in the first 5 seconds, but I think I actually know. Its because they're designed to run on Youtube and they want to grab people's attention before the 5 second timer that lets them skip the ad finishes, isn't it?
GamesRadar made me throw up in my mouth a little. I mean, ffs, a challenging game - and the Crash games were always challenging, as were many games from the 90's - that kills you a lot DOESN'T make it a "roguelite". Holy sh**. If a reviewer can't even identify a game's genre correctly, throw their "opinion" in the trash.
They must have zero perspective on the gaming industry at large if they're so honed in on some current trend that they'd type that. They probably also misidentify 3D models as "sprites" or vice versa, and confuse FIRST-person shooters with third-person; the kind of dummy who doesn't know what they're talking about, but has heard words that sound important and are 50% confident they know what they mean through context, so they try to sprinkle throughout whatever they've written. Roguelite... that's absolutely disgusting to read that term in a Crash Bandicoot review in 2017.
1. Agents of M.A.Y.H.E.M. - I can't believe how low-key it is. Saints Row and now MAYHEM have been outdoing Crackdown's thing for years now; its really weird people aren't more excited about this. THQ Nordic needs to hire some new PR people. Volition are open world action game masters, this has a vibrant, awesome looking art style now, and Hero Shooter team mechanics... its gonna be rad and I honestly am baffled so many people aren't paying attention to it. Especially when SR3 and IV are so beloved. Its weird.
2. Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom - It looks amazing! Level 5 returning to this franchise and really nailing the Ghibli feeling (I'm totally fine just having their character designer and composer; that's clearly 99% of what we want anyway), while fixing the terrible combat from the first game and adding in the city building from Dark Cloud while also having squad-based combat on the World Map a la Final Fantasy Type-0 HD or Little King's Story. It really seems super exciting to see such a great game just come together; I'm really looking forward to it.
3. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus — just look at it. Glorious. And Machine Games is maybe the only developer who has a great core grasp of shooters and doesn't ignore that sh** when world-building. Arkane makes janky, unsatisfying shooters that they throw into cool settings. So did Irrational with Bioshock. They were disappointing shooters to play. But Wolfenstein? Nah; that was a great shooter WITH a cool world too. This new one is gonna be great too.
Those are my top 3. But I'm also definitely looking forward to Crash, I just won't waste a top 3 spot on it when it comes out tomorrow. That doesn't feel like a second-half-of-the-year game. Everybody's Golf will be a blast too, but obviously not Earth-shattering. I have barely played Yakuza 0 so far too, so I'm not exactly excited for Kiwami, though its going to be awesome and I'll pick it up anyway. I hope Ys VIII will be good, but being honest, its pretty janky. Falcom is working literally 15 years behind the rest of the industry, and the demo showed that it still feels like a PS2 title. In a post-NieR Automata world (as well as many other titles), Falcom's brand of ancient, clunky action just feels... unacceptable?
Hopefully Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, Sonic Forces and Evil Within 2 will be good & interesting, but I gotta see more of all of them first. I'm keeping an eye on some indie games like Fallen Legion, Children of Zodiarcs, White Day, Absolver and Red:Out too. But there's lots of questions about some games.
Genuinely don't know what Jenny is playing. "Code Realize" just takes you to PushSquare's page for Code Vein when clicked
Playing more Dragon Quest Heroes 2 myself. Close to beating it, but holy sh** is it getting frustrating. Game was clearly balanced for multiplayer and online grinding; story missions always yield one of 2 outcomes. You fail, or you get by by the skin of your teeth and don't feel good about it. Mostly because your friendly AI is as useful as a sack of bricks and the drop rate on Sentry-type Monster Medals is abysmal in the sequel (stupid Summon-types). Its really bugging me. Absolute shame people slept/are sleeping on the title, as its super high quality in every way and is super fun online when I have been able to get games going.
Barring progress there, I've got plenty of other RPGs to dive into. And Tekken to keep playing Treasure Battle with. Or online matches, I guess, but c'mon. Who cares about climbing the Kyu/Dan ranks? The reason to play T7 is to get them outfit pieces
I was really happy to see a nice variety from Ubi Soft, with new IP and non-Ubi brand™ Open World games making up the bulk of their presentation. I really can't stand their "AAA" garbage most of the time, so seeing nothing like Ghost Recon or Watch_Dogs made me happy. And even though I won't personally play Assassin's Creed, I do really love that setting. Not nearly enough games take place in Ancient Egypt and that's a shame. Same thing with Far Cry 5, Steep and Crew 2; for people who like those games, glad they're making somewhat interesting looking entries next.
Starlink was a complete surprise, and actually seems pretty cool. The story stuff seems to be around Star Wars Rebels quality visually, which is great for kids, and the ship toys look kind of rad. Meanwhile Mario x Rabbids seems crazy and its super bizarre that Nintendo's fine with giving them hand cannons and having everyone communicate with monosyllabic expressions, but it LOOKS really nice (like, visually, I like those colors and that renderer on everything, and the animations all around are fantastic) with some cool-looking turn-based combat. And South Park, as always, looks pretty great.
But just seeing Beyond Good & Evil 2 made my day. Don't care if its pre-rendered; seeing it again is fantastic! Its such a cool world, and its so great to see the modern realization of that world. Same junky hover vehicles, same people/anthro animals mix, same afro-futurist-meets-cyberpunk setting... it just looks LOADS better now. And while I'd normally be down on barely seeing Jade (well, we saw her eyes at the end there, I guess) and no Pey'J at all, you GOTTA love Knox. Monkey dude with a grapple hand? C'MON! They saved the best for last, it was a genuine surprise considering Ancel said we'd only maybe see it later in the year (and to be fair, he may have been referring to in-game, real-time stuff), and I'm thrilled to see Ubi re-commit to the title, big-time.
They had a good number of things to show and a lot of it were pleasantly surprising. They had the best press conference so far, easily, ahead of Microsoft and WAY OUT ahead of EA and Bethesda (who were both kind of snooze-fests). Color me impressed.
Can't wait for an official announcement. As far as I'm concerned, making an HD console version for Playstation 4 is the biggest indicator that this is leaving Japan - the 3DS version is the one for them. I just want Square to make it official and really dedicate to getting this hype train rolling - with no new Final Fantasies on the horizon or Kingdom Hearts, they kind of HAVE to finally focus on establishing Dragon Quest in the West.
Don't blame the visual style (DragonBall Z and Chrono Trigger are beloved worldwide; the problem isn't Akira Toriyama), don't blame the gameplay rooted in the old-school (if you can move 1 million+ units of Bravely Default, you can't blame old-school influences anymore); just figure it out, Square. Dragon Quest does fine in the West, but XI needs to do much better than (the criminally under-the-radar) Heroes 2 or even Builders which surprised a bunch of people.
Square hasn't really tried to push a Dragon Quest since VIII or maybe IX back in 2010. I really, REALLY want to see Square announce Dragon Quest XI at E3 and start the hype train right!
I like arena games, but don't like off-brand Tron-style visuals. They always end up being eye-killers these days (anyone remember that ASCII, Brut@l?), mostly because bright neon lights against black backgrounds tends to do that.
Not sure about this. And with a lot of arena games coming up from indies, like Games of Glory, Hyperbrawl Tournament, Blade Ballet or Metagalactic Blitz, I don't know if this will be any better or worse than any of those. I grew up with stuff like Ball Breakers, Blast Chamber and Pit Ball, so I like seeing more entries in the genre. I just hope this plays better than it looks.
Oh awesome! I was actually really interested in ArcSys' first DBZ game, Extreme Butoden... except it was on 3DS, where, like, no one wants to play games outside of Japan :/ But it was super gorgeous. I'm actually surprised - super pleasantly so - that Bandai Namco is throwing another DBZ game at them instead of going right back to Dimps right now. As someone who's not a fan of the free-roaming DBZ fighting engine in games like Xenoverse, I'm SO DOWN for a nice, focused, up-close fight. Especially if ArcSys is doing it
Hyper Dragon Ball Z was super awesome earlier this year, but that was fan-made and BNG definitely can't be shown up by that. Set a high bar though, and I'm sure ArcSys will set an even higher one!
Another Gundam game, and still no G-Saviour? C'mon; how long must I wait for my Canadian live-action TV-show pilot/made-for-TV movie Gundam to be represented!?
For real though, this is a lot of Gundams. Game's gonna be fun; hopefully Bamco will have an English trailer for it at E3.
Love the theme (this is why I wish Farm 51 were working on a new "Deadfall Adventures" game instead of "Get Even"), but I look at this and I just see mediocrity. Remember "God Mode" or "R.I.P.D."? And definitely the Wii U's infamous "Lost Reavers"; definitely glad someone else mentioned that. This looks like that kind of design to me, instead of a bigger/more ambitious co-op game.
I'm hoping I'm wrong, but its Rebellion, and while they did right by Battlezone (the remake of the '98 one on PC. I've not yet played the VR one, though that looks good too), they're still known more for mediocre titles than great ones. It just really looks like another one of those types of games... with a really killer theme draped over it.
All the influences go back to System Shock. Which goes back to Alien and The Thing. So... y'know, Dead Space was not exactly a bastion of original ideas, nor can you say this looks influenced by those games specifially in lieu of those things many games (including Dead Space) already pulled influence from.
Lets not be super precious with Dead Space; EA wasn't when they turned it into a bro-friendly co-op shooter, after all We got Prey and we're getting two new System Shocks anyway (the remake of the first one from NightDive, and System Shock 3 from Otherside Entertainment), so EA can keep Dead Space on ice for as long as they want so long as that team delivers killer Star Wars games. Which, man, we better finally see what EA Redwood/Visceral is up to with that at E3, shouldn't we?
I ordered Tekken 7 but not received it yet (I don't care about Amazon Prime, and as such, they punish us "normies" with slow deliveries), so I'ma be sticking to pushing more into a combination of Dragon Quest Heroes 2, Tales of Berseria, Toukiden 2, and I'll try to catch a screening of Wonder Woman too. That looks fantastic
Hope this rumor is BS. Capcom is generations behind where Toukiden 2 is. Even God Eater is cooler. And both Koei Tecmo AND Bandai Namco have long-since woken up to the fact that people want these experiences on consoles, because they've already brought their monster hunter titles to PS4. And Steam.
Like, if you want this experience, you have better options available people. Stop sleeping on games like Toukiden 2, people who like these types of games.
Too many gamers are lazy consumers. Support more choices, not less. Monster Hunter can stick to Nintendo all it wants; its slower, more boring, lacks major features from, and is less visually interesting than literally all of the other "monster hunters" out there... except for maybe that one PC title, Dauntless. That one looks bland af.
Dragon Quest Heroes 2 online stuff, and diving into my long-ignored Toukiden 2 finally (I love Toukiden Kiwami, but just have too much to play). Taking a break from Tales of Berseria, Yakuza 0 and NieR Automata to do it, but eh... 2017's been brutal like that. I don't know when I'll next finish a game, but I sure as heck got a lot of great stuff to play
Online on DQH2 is a blast when I've been able to connect so far; wish more people were playing. I'm sure that far too many people slept on T2 to make that community too vibrant so I'll see if I can find anyone but I'm not holding my breath. Hope people don't sleep on the upcoming f2p version of it, especially since you don't need PS+ to play any free-to-play game on the PS4.
@stueyd67: Battles are turn-based. Mostly. Its like an actioney... turn-based... hybrid thing. A bit. Sort of. But its optional?
They recently (this past week) put out a video showing a lot of gameplay, including turn-based, menu-driven combat. But its in real time (its turn based because you gotta wait on cooldowns between picking actions from your menu). This form of combat's also got free movement, at least for the main character, so everyone in your party stands around like they do but purple guy there can run around for some reason. Its the first fight in the video. But then in 3:45, after messing around in the menus, we see another fight that's just straight up turn-based. No moving around, cinematic cameras, picking your actions from menus - just like the classics. The guy playing seems to have just turned all that real-time, free-movement stuff off. We really need an official English announcement & translation to explain things
Also, if you're on a horse, you can just run over small enemies and avoid fights entirely
In Dragon Quest X, they also had a hybrid system. You pick stuff from menus and it was turn-based because of cooldowns on actions. I know in that game you could all move around in combat (but, it is an MMO, so everyone in your party is controlled by other people) for strategy reasons. For example, while someone was casting a healing spell, some of the warrior class people could run up to an enemy and push them away from the Spellcaster before they could interrupt their spell. I'm gonna assume that's what the purpose of the more actioney/movement stuff is in DQXI's combat as well, but that's just speculation. Gameplay looks gorgeous though.
Had Valkyria Revolution preordered since I checked it out on Amazon a month or so ago and saw it was only $40 Guess SEGA's not feeling super confident about it... but while its obviously got some "terrible anime"-level of storytelling going on, and a subpar/cheap-looking presentation courtesy of Media Vision (I like MV, but Valkyria deserves better; SEGA should've contracted Level 5 to make this), I actually really liked the combat in the demo from the JP PSN. Its actually really fun to play. So, for $40, I'll get it no problem. I'll just be hitting that Skip button during conversations a lot, lol.
Also finally preordered Tekken 7 two days ago; wanna get that Eliza. And I love, love, LOVE fighting games. Plus, its Tekken. And its clear T7 is a return to a really, really good - and really, really inspired entry for the big fight franchise (no offense to Tekken Tag 2; that was actually fine. But Tekken 6 and 5 and 4 were all kinda... non-events). I've missed Tekken. I'm ready for this.
Got my eyes on Crash, God Wars (Which I believe is for June, but isn't on this list. Btw, Valkyria is on twice) & Summon Night too, but I got enough games on my backlog to get too much next month. I'll see about picking those up eventually though. Things are slowing down, but I'm not going through the 2017 backlog fast enough to keep up with it - I'm going through Dragon Quest Heroes 2, NieR Automata and Tales of Berseria, but also just started Horizon and Toukiden 2
Gonna be trying to get in some Dragon Quest Heroes 2. I could - and should - also play some NieR and Tales of Berseria, but I'm just plain enjoying DQH2 more. Probably because I don't care for the music much (no offense to Koichi Sugiyama; its great if you're in a retro/nostalgic mood), so I can play this while listening to podcasts and junk. Seems like something I can burn through pretty quickly too, which is good, so I can pick Horizon, Toukiden 2, or Yakuza back up. Mostly though, I won't be gaming - I'll be finishing up work I gotta do
Looking forward to what you have to say about Dark Rose Valkyrie, Jade! I think it sounds & looks kind of interesting. I definitely like that Compile Heart nabbed some Tales talent to help make it, and as you said, the investigation-to-find-who's-a-traitor part sounds like a good idea. It certainly elevated Lost Dimension up quite a few notches. But, well, it is mostly a Compile Heart RPG still so there's always the chance it'll just be mediocre . Who knows though? I'm crossing my fingers!
Personally, with my backlog as well as titles like God Wars, Summon Night and Valkyria Revolution coming up next month, DRV is something I won't be able to get to until later in the year at the earliest anyway. But I'm defintely interested in seeing how it does. Hope you enjoy it.
Considering the visuals, this soundtrack is terrible. It clearly needs something more fitting... perhaps, just play this song nonstop? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAD6Obi7Cag
Weird. I've been playing Grand Kingdom recently (In preparation for the oncoming glut of SRPGs the PS4 will soon be blessed with - Summon Night 6, God Wars, Valkyria Revolution, etc.), and this looks a lot like that game. At least from screenshots here - gonna have to hunt down a trailer to see if this actually plays anything like Spike's excellent, underrated title.
Either way, the art style & quality alone has put this on my radar now
Dragon Quest Heroes 2 and Tales of Berseria are my main focus(es?) right now... maybe some NieR Automata. I want to get through F.E.A.R. also - had it on my PC for awhile, and I want to pick up a new FPS, but I figure I should go through some of the stuff I have already before dropping change on a new title. And FEAR's pretty cool, I played it before, just never beat it.
Also, as far as my retro collection goes, I bought Spyro: A Hero's Tail & Rumble Roses from LukieGames this week, so I'm hoping I get those in the mail. I got Rumble Roses since there's no arcadey wrestling games out there these days (not until Chikara Action Arcade Wrestling comes out, anyway), and I needed a cheapie to get free shipping I also just wanted to play a new Spyro game, despite platformers like Snake Pass, Yooka Laylee and soon Skyler & Plux coming out these days, so I decided to pick up Eurocom's PS2 Spyro. Seems to be the best non-Insomniac one, and Eurocom was a pretty good team. Figured its time I check it out!
@Splat: SO MANY! Man, this is something that's so frustrating about Kickstarter - except for putting backer names in the credits, crowdsourced games don't advertise the fact that they're kickstarted (or Indie Gogo'd, or whatever) EVER. Its like they're hiding it, which is stupid, because they let the entire perception of crowdfunding be determined by stuff like Yooka Laylee, Mighty No.9, Bloodstained and Shenmue III - games that have massive PR. That's not cool, because then the failures get blown way out of proportions.
Literally, no one keeps track of these games among mainstream sites. Luckily, Kickstarter does! https://www.kickstarter.com/play
Kickstarter games seriously make up like 80% of the indie and "AA"/middle tier part of the industry! A ton of awesome games that, unfortunately, most people haven't heard of (again, that's the problem with indies "hiding" their crowdsourced origins and letting stuff like Yooka Laylee dominate the conversation around Kickstarter)
>Shantae: 1/2 Genie Hero
>River City Ransom: Underground
>Obduction (the successor to Myst)
>Earthlock: The Festival of Magic
>Duelyst
>Superhot
>The Flame in the Flood
>Torment: The Tides of Numenera (the successor to Planescape Torment)
>STRAFE
>Jotun
>Satellite Reign (the successor to Syndicate Wars)
>Shadowrun and Shadowrun Hong Kong
>Pillars of Eternity
>BattleTech
>Skullgirls 2nd Encore (Indie GoGo)
>Indivisible (Indie GoGo)
>Banner Saga
>Freedom Planet
>LastFight (the successor to Power Stone)
>Wasteland 2 and 3 (via Fig)
>Code: Hardcore (which is coming to PS4 via their Chinese indie program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ip-lJg52Ro)
>Praey for the Gods (Which Bethesda recently forced to change their name since they apparently own the word "Prey" now)
>Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs
>Legrand Legacy (which any fan of Baten Kaitos, Shadow Hearts, or Legend of Dragoon should be keeping an eye on)
>Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom (PushSquare review here: https://www.pushsquare.com/reviews/ps4/shiness_the_lightning_kingdom)
My God, there's so many. There's so many! Crowdsourcing has made SO MANY awesome games possible! Seriously, look at that list. Follow indie sites too, and just look at some of the cool stuff that pops up constantly. Its so important, especially nowadays, where "AAA" publishers focus on 4 or 5 genres and say "F**k it" to everything else, indies and AA productions literally make games for 99% of genres that are being ignored. And tons of them are good, too. TONS.
This seems dumb. Like, why wouldn't you just make it so that you were sitting as, like, a spectator in a Pro-Wrestling or MMA Match or something? You sit there, but you're controlling the action? That seems like the obvious view to try to emulate if you're doing gameplay for a fighting game in VR.
Just having Jin and Akuma fighting in an endless space void while you floppily turn your head around to watch them from a too-close view is real dumb, gimmicky and awkward. I'm disappointed; they should've learned more about VR experiences from Summer Lesson, although I guess since that was all up-close stuff the Tekken 7 model viewer will benefit most from that experience. Yeah, I suppose they learned nothing about mid-range and long-range experiences from that game, dangit :/
Still, I guess its not as dumb, gimmicky, awkward and worthless as that first person mode Street Fighter is doing for the Switch, so... that's... a victory, I guess?
Maybe they'll learn more about VR from Ace Combat 7, and I presume, a new Time Crisis or Ridge Racer for PSVR after that. Fingers crossed, eh?
Enjoying the heck out of Tales of Berseria and NieR Automata, while kind of sad I can't also play Horizon and Yakuza at the same time - gotta stay focused though! I also picked up Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom and played a bit - that seems like a fantastic title, but until I crush Tales, I can't dive into it for real. I just wanted to support Focus and Enigami, because they've made an awesome game (especially for a Kickstarter) and hardly anyone has noticed.
Btw, thanks Robert. You reminded me I bought Toukiden 2 and have to put THAT OFF as well until I finish something on the backlog. Auuuggghhh. Plus I got Persona 5 sitting on the shelf. AND this week will bring Dragon Quest Heroes 2... this backlog needs some serious crushing. Hope you're enjoying Toukiden 2, though!
Also trying to finish up Yooka Laylee, but I'm not really having fun with it. I don't care about the camera and a lot of issues in the negative reviews are not there and/or far too harsh. Frankly, I just think its boring wandering around. Like, they're too slow or something. There's just something fundamentally lacking in Y-L's character or world design, and while it gets better as you pick up some moves, I've yet to play an objective that's really engaging or cool enough to make slowly traipsing aimlessly across a big, boring world to get to it "worth it".
This is a sad article all around. Of course I didn't forget this one - Saints Row 3 and 4 ARE AMAZING games.
Look: its super simple. F**k marketing. People shouldn't care about games because they're being louder than other games (aggressive marketing is the only reason turds like Ghost Recon find success, I figure). People should follow **talent**. If Volition announces a new game, I REMEMBER IT.
I've been looking forward to this since it was shown off at IGN's E3 thing last year. You guys worry me sometimes, Pushsquare....
The idea of a Descent Hero Shooter is a great one, especially for VR. But man, the focus on multiplayer is insane to me. There's such a small pool of VR owners out there in general - why double down on the "nichey"-ness of your potential success by then also being a multiplayer focused title too? When something like 4 out of 5 of those, to be conservative, bomb and die off quickly? The people at White Moon Dreams are really, REALLY gambling with this...
Man, Persona 5, Dragon Quest Heroes 2, Yooka Laylee - gonna have to cut it off at those 3, which are more than enough. But man, another pretty brutal month for releases; definitely adding LEGO City, Wonder Boy, Puyo Puyo Tetris, and Little Nightmares to my "gotta buy later" list. Sidenote: Sony really has to implement the Playstation Store's wishlist feature on the actual PS4 version of the store, instead of keeping it exclusive to the web version.
I just hope people pay attention to DQ Heroes 2 this time. Toukiden 2, bizarrely, seemed to surprise quite a few sites when it came out recently since it just killed it with reviews (yet far too many outlets seem obliged to keep focusing on "AAA" garbage from crap publishers instead of good games) - guess its pretty apparent that many simply ignored Kiwami before, otherwise it wouldn't have been surprising at all. Like with that series, Omega Force also delivered an amazing first game with DQH1 too, but too many places didn't notice. Its far too often dismissed as a mere Musou title - which are more often than not good these days anyway - when its a legit action-RPG with some serious ambition and execution. I get it; people missed out on Omega Force's PS3 action-RPG Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll and blindly assume Dragon Quest Heroes is a musou game instead of the successor to that underrated title. Just get up to speed already, because their Heroes series is a different, and excellent, beast that seriously deserves more attention.
The less places chat up turds like Ghost Recon Wildlands and the more they highlight great games who's only crime is having less marketing dollars thrown around, the better off everything will be. There's way too much awesome stuff coming out this year so far that isn't getting attention at all because everyone still feels like they HAVE to focus on the same crud from EA, Ubi Soft, and the other big publishers. Its getting to be real annoying when there's a bunch of gems frickin' CRUSHING the "AAA" disappointments routinely from everyone who's not part of that.
Comments 102
Re: Review: Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles (PS4)
The artstyle in this looks a lot like Poi, that totally-solid 3D Platformer that came out on PS4 recently (and Xbone? And launched out of Early Access onto Steam proper earlier this year). The characters and world look super similar in style, but the visuals here and the actual rendering & lighting in Yonder make Poi look positively last-gen.
Seriously, same type of characters and cute, vibrant world, but the actual visual quality is night and day (no offense to Poi - I think that game was made by 2 people): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coHWgO7g5Rw
I would've loved Yonder years ago. But such a "relaxed pace" kinda game with a focus on fetchquesting and crafting is definitely not for me. Not this year, with so many amazing games on PS4 to go through - I just can't see myself carving out time for a game with such a relaxed pace. But this IS a really pretty version of this kind of aesthetic. It looks awesome. Hope it finds its audience.
Re: Review: Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire (PS4)
Sweet. Good review. Sounds fine for an indie production to me; rough and/or minimalist in spots but sports some interesting, unique systems & ideas - I quite like the looks of the choice system and the combat in this.
With so many backlog titles to chew through that are massive, massive timesinks, a little "bite-sized adventure" like this is a perfect little complement to all the Horizons, NieRs, and Toukiden 2's I'm currently going through.
Re: Gaming Greats Pay Respects to George A. Romero
R.I.P. Mr. Romero
Lets remember his greatest DIRECT contribution to gaming - the super cheesy (but AWESOME!) Japanese ad for Resident Evil 2 he shot!
Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vSlRrL689Y
Short documentary on the ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDP1ZFg2cvc
He also was hired initially to make the first Resident Evil movie, and got far enough to complete a script, before Capcom - ever the brilliant entity they are - fired him and hired Paul W.S. Anderson and unleashed their own plague upon the World in the form of that horrible movie series.
Re: Street Fighter EX Dev Bringing Brand New Brawler to PS4
@WanderingBullet Yeah, Fantasy Strike is currently crowdfunding. Not on Kickstarter, but its been running on Patreon for months and is on Fig now - that Double Fine "investor platform" thing. So... I dunno, I feel like its doomed? The only successful Fig campaigns I can think of are Double Fine's own.
I don't know how much Dave Sirlin is an ex-Street Fighter dev though - I don't know how much any Western developer has been involved in Street Fighter, or to what capacity, and I'm too lazy to look it up Localization? Something with Udon? Something with the port houses that did games like Super SF2 Turbo HD Remix? They don't develop games in the West so * shrugs * But he's been working on the game's universe for some time - its got a card game already called Yomi. And Fantasy Strike IS kind of interesting... Remember the Super Best Friends showed it off recently and its got some cool ideas for sure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f9x_jj6v60
Its a shame it looks so rough currently though. Like, 2 months ago they decided to slap a cel-shader on there, and it looks not great right now.
This is what it looked like before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD5IjWgdmto
This is what it looks like now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpakPZJplEk
I dunno. Those big, harsh, pure black shadows right now... it just reminds me of games where, they look around and think they can't compete visually with other titles, so they turn on the cel shader and say its a "graphic novel inspired aesthetic" or whatever. Real mediocre, forgettable stuff like that vampire game "Dark" or "The Darkness 2" (which is an okay game, but the cel shader implementation sucks). This kind of implementation is a million miles from really well-crafted cel shaded visuals like in Dragon Ball FighterZ, Guilty Gear Revelator, any Naruto game, etc. Its real lazy.
Re: Street Fighter EX Dev Bringing Brand New Brawler to PS4
Fighting Layer is dope af and this new one looks fantastic. SO HAPPY to see Arika making killer-looking fighting games again, after years of being wasted under Nintendo making stuff like Dr.Luigi and ports for the 3DS for the past decade :/
That being said, it looks like this has switched from fully 3D like it was a few months ago to fully 2D in gameplay, which is a little disappointing if true. There's only Tekken 7 (and to a lesser extent since its quite old now, DOA5) that are dealing with 3D fighting now - sidesteps, 8-way runs, etc. Literally EVERY other "serious" (non-One Piece, Naruto or Seven Deadly Sins) contemporary fighter is 2D in nature, so if this is just another one... that'll be a bit a bummer, not gonna lie.
I mean, this looks like different gameplay here, yeah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2x8c-RFGnA
Now, it looks locked to 2D, pretty much. They pulled the camera back, made the jumps faster & higher, seemingly got rid of the sidestepping sidestepping, etc It still looks good, and like a(nother) strong "2.5D" fighter, but it looks a bit less intense than it did a few months ago.
Still looking forward to seeing more though!
Re: Trunks Blasts into Dragon Ball FighterZ, Closed Beta Announced for PS4
This and Arika's Fighting Layer EX (which is apparently still untitled, for whatever reason. Guess they want to self-publish it, and Namco owns the Fighting Layer name?) are by far the most exciting fighting games coming up. Super excited to see BOTH have a killer showing at EVO right now, and BOTH announce a beta - especially with Dragon Ball's coming way sooner than expected! SO EXCITED! If I could, I would pre-order this right now. Dragon Ball filtered through Guilty Gear Revelator is a dream-come-true! This just looks hotter and hotter every time they show it (though I really can't wait until they get the English voices in there; I can't stand the Japanese DBZ vocals, mostly because of "Old lady" Goku's voice)
Re: BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle Announced, Crossover Fighter Featuring Persona Characters and More
Honestly cool to see ArcSys take on Ecole/French Bread's Under Night universe, but I'll be honest, seeing Ruby show up was just the pleasant surprise I needed to get really hyped for this! Which is great, because I - unfortunately - just can't drum up that much enthusiasm for Blazeblue on its own. Probably because they never number it, so none of the entries seem like good jumping in points. They all just seem like more "Super Turbo" iterations looking from the outside in. But this is definitely fresh enough to jump in, I figure.
Though, for real, they better get my girls Yang & Nora (from JNPR) in there to help represent "Team RWBY" in this. And from Under Night, I'm crossing my fingers Yuzuriha & Gordeau make it in.
Re: Tekken 7's First Guest DLC Character Is Geese Howard From Fatal Fury, King of Fighters
Such an awesome announcement! Although I am baffled why SNK does this kind of thing - first Mai guesting in DOA5, now Geese in Tekken 7. Are they trying to call attention to the fact that King of Fighters XIV looks way worse than other fighting games?
Oh well; on the flipside, maybe its giving them a good visual target to shoot for with the next game. Maybe Samurai Shodown VII will run on Unreal 4 and look as good as their competitors' games? One can dream crossing fingers
Still, its hard to find a guest character both as cool as Akuma and someone who could seriously threaten Heihachi and Kazuya in this World, but Geese Howard is an EXCELLENT choice, and I'm definitely looking forward to checking him out in the future!
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 177
Beat Dragon Quest Heroes 2 finally, and beat Momodora IV Reverie Under The Moonlight too. Probably gonna ignore gaming for the rest of the weekend so I can finish up some work. When I do hop back into a game, I'll continue with NieR Automata, Tales of Berseria and/or Rayman Legends, which I finally picked up recently when it was $13 or something during the PSN Mid-Year Sale. Who's bright idea was it to put "run" on the R2/L2 Triggers, Ubi Soft? Cripes, that game hurts my hands to play it for too long. #OldManGamerProblems
Re: Surprisingly Gory Fighter Samurai Shodown V Special Slashes onto PS4, Vita This Summer
@Dan_ozzzy189 You mean this Bomb Jack? That was put on the PSN in 2015? https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-us/games/arcade-archives-bomb-jack/cid=UP0571-CUSA00975_00-HAMPRDC000000001
I mean, I don't know if its in other regions, but there's no region lock on the PS4 so might as well poke around whichever PSN you want and take advantage of that, y'know? The ACA releases across regions - and across systems - are annoyingly inconsistent. Freakin' Switch owners get Waku Waku 7 and we don't? grumble grumble
Re: Surprisingly Gory Fighter Samurai Shodown V Special Slashes onto PS4, Vita This Summer
@dok5555555 Still in beta, which started last month. You can sign up to get in here: https://www.flyingpowerdisc.com/
Re: Bugger, Ni no Kuni II Is Delayed into 2018 on PS4
Honestly didn't know this was being promised for 2017
Its an RPG, its gonna be huge, they haven't shown that much in Gameplay demos yet (choosing to mostly focus on boss fights, which may just be because its hard to demo an RPG at a place like E3 but whatever) I just ignored any mention of a release date I guess because c'mon, its just super unrealistic. So's Xenoblade 2. So's other obvious things, duh. I don't get why some gamers complain about games getting delayed and then take away nothing about how long it takes to actually make games from all the delays.
I'm fine with this personally - and the lack of multiplayer, another note I must've ignored entirely. Listen, I'm already sold on NNK2, so I was focused mostly on soaking up other games Namco brought to E3, like Code Vein and Dragon Ball FighterZ. There's so much jRPG love on PS4 this year that it doesn't need Ni No Kuni 2 honestly; people will be playing Tales of Berseria, Toukiden 2 and Toukiden 2's f2p version, Dragon Quest Heroes 2, Persona 5, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, .hack//G.U. Last ReCode, God Wars, Yakuza Kiwami, Ys VIII, Valkyria Revolution, Summon Night 6: Lost Borders, etc. all year long.
Pushing to 2018 makes sense in terms of polishing this up (especially for Level 5's FIRST PC title) and also to be the biggest RPG of 2018... at least for a little bit. IF it comes out the gate in January, which I also doubt Just make a killer game, Level 5. This is literally the only thing they got on their plate that I'm interested in at the moment because they seem utterly preoccupied with propping up Nintendo's ancient handheld otherwise, and farting out mobile games. No matter how charming Snack World or Lady Layton look, the fact that they're just mobile games makes it impossible for me to care about them. Make sure Ni No Kuni 2 is good, because its going to be the only console production from Level 5 for awhile... and that bums me out.
Re: Big SMITE and Paladins PS4 Updates Announced and Detailed
Paladins rules, but I had already played it for 100+ hours on Steam before it hit consoles. And it was ROUGH on Playstation, at least in the beta, with some of the worst, most sluggish aiming I've ever seen in a console shooter. It was shocking; very disappointing. Maybe I should give it another shot - haven't played it on PS4 in forever, and haven't played it on PC since Mauve was added. I'm behind by months
Re: Yakuza Kiwami's 'Majima Everywhere' System Sounds Completely Nuts
I'm gonna miss Mark Hamill's voice. I mean, going with the Japanese dub just makes sense - I get that, Sega. But for that ONE time they did an English dub, for the first game, hearing that crazy Joker voice come out of Majima's mouth was perfect
@ellsworth004 They're action-RPGs. Except the World isn't a fantasy land with made-up regions; its the Yakuza version of Tokyo and its multiple regions. Areas that are based on real regions, but slightly fictionalized, not that people can tell if they've never been. So they usually take place in the red light district of Tokyo - a place in real life called Kabukichu iirc - but in the games' equivalent area is called Kamurocho.
Shops exist, but they're actual shops like convenience stores instead of potion shops. You run into random battles, but its crazy people who want to pick a fight with you that emerge from crowds (and you get money for beating them up just like in RPGs; they're usually throwing money at you to get you to stop beating them up, lol). You level up and there's skill trees to use and newer/better things to purchase... there's breaks for conversations and cutscenes... and loads of minigames to check out... its just an action-RPG.
The combat feels like an arcadey beat 'em up too. Moreso than say a Tales game or whatever. When it transitions into combat it feels sort of like what a modern Streets of Rage or Fighting Force might feel like. Very fun (even early on before you have much that you can do), very flashy, and very satisfying. Particular the slow-mo, and the brutal moves you can do, and the money that flies out of people when you hit them.
The maps are large and free-roaming with NPCs wandering about, but its not technically open world like, say, Sleeping Dogs. Its somewhere between Sleeping Dogs and Shenmue, though. You should just pick up Yakuza 0; they're super fun games.
Re: Star Wars Battlefront II's Multiplayer Beta Kicks Off In Early October
@Fandabidozi: Just most of EA's games these days. And Ubi Soft's.
Re: Review: Black The Fall (PS4)
@Mega-Gazz I hate that the Wishlist is only a function on the Web version of the PS Store and not the actual one you access from the Playstation too. I don't even use visit the PS Store via browser and use the Wishlist anymore - I end up throwing games into a shopping cart just so I'll remember them. Then X'ing out ones I'll purchase later when I DO finally get something, and frantically going back to look for those games to add to my Cart again before I forget them. I'll have, like, 6 games, than drop 5 to purchase one of them, then go and hunt down those 5 again to throw them back in the Cart so I can remember them. Its a bad system, but its the best I can manage sometimes.
Also hate the lack of gifting. There's way too many games these days, and gifting is a great way to spread awareness for awesome titles.
Its crazy that these 2 basic things aren't standard features on all digital storefronts currently.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 176
Too much gaming last weekend, plus Fourth of July/Birthday stuff... I gotta ignore stuff now, buckle down, and catch up on work
Stop taunting me, backlog! I'll get back to you later in the week!
Re: PS5 Is Likely Coming in 2019, Believes Analyst
This generation feels like it just started, even though we're 3 years into the PS4 (c'mon gang; you never count year 1 since its just a month-and-a-half usually). Its crazy to seriously talk about PS5 at this point. There's no way anything in 2019 or 2020 will look appreciably different to games now. Particularly stand-outs like Horizon, that are super cutting edge.
This is stupid. Developers and publishers are just getting used to current gen production pipelines and really cranking out some amazing stuff NOW. There's still many indie teams, middle tier teams, and AAA teams who are nowhere close to maxing out the power of what is available. And they definitely suck at optimizing it when they hit it, judging by install sizes ballooning out of control. Beyond faster... well, more stable frame-rates, and a bump in resolution - something very few consumers care about - this really seems worthless. Especially with the mid-gen refreshes we're seeing with the Pro and X. Especially for console manufacturers constantly struggling with balancing price vs. component cost; a new console is one they're gonna eat losses on. Why would they want the existing machine - getting cheaper to make every year - to die prematurely?
I bet its more likely we'll see ANOTHER refresh for the PS4 by then instead. A successor to the Pro, one Sony gets more serious about marketing probably because they'll definitely wanna walk wanna move away from the base specs by then. Something with marginally better horsepower and hardware to pump up the framerates, resolutions and storage space for the small amount of devs complaining about it and the microscopic audience buying it. But a full-blown PS5 by 2019 or 2020? Yeah, right. C'mon Pach... until there's a huge enough leap in tech to justify a full-blown new numbered Playstation, its way too early to speculate about it. The precedent has been established with the Pro; if its marginal improvements you want, you just make a new version of the existing console. Sort of like a subset of gamers buy new video cards/ram/hard drives for their PCs annually.
Re: Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 1, 2, and 3 Leap to PS4 Next Month
I picked up NUNS2 like 2 years ago, mostly because of where it was in terms of story - covering Pain and the Akatsuki arc, you know? Toonami was just getting back into Naruto and they're only now just finishing up that stuff. Seemed like a good game to jump into then. Unfortunately, Ninja Storm 2 is terrible.
For real, something about that Substitution Jutsu (or as I call it, "Ninja Log Dodge") really sucks until UNS3 or Revolution. The timing on it is... well its random. It just doesn't work most of the time, probably to prevent spamming, but its a stupid way of doing it that CC2 abandoned with 3 or Revolution when they figured out a better way to do it. As a result, the fighting in it just feels kind of awful. A lot of dial-a-combos, and pacing that amounts to "I'm doing my combo, okay now you do your combo, okay now me again" since you can't break it up effectively. Unless you count frantically mashing on the counter button, hoping it will actually activate, as something to do while getting hit. It still wasn't that hard, but it was just very unsatisfying.
I really don't see why you'd go back to the original games. They play worse, they feature worse rosters, they look worse (not that they will ever look bad. Until Guilty Gear Revelator, CC2 had the best looking cel-shaded games on the market right here)... its all bad. And in terms of breezing through the Naruto Shippuden story, its got a boring story/adventure mode anyway (most areas are just hand-drawn or pre-rendered backgrounds with cinematic camera angles, like an old-school survival horror title, and all you can interact with are things to pick up). Not to mention, its truncated as heck, cutting out all sorts of "mini arcs" (UNS2 doesn't feature Sora at all for instance; the artificial Jinjuriki who can sort of transform into/summon a Ninetails like Naruto. And how he leads that one group of Shinobi to an assault on the Konoha Village?
Its a cool chunk of episodes & story... completely ignored. That arc takes place... like right in there too. It should've been 40% of the way through the story mode or something. They also skip over the Three Tails' arc entirely)
I really don't know who this is for. At least if you pick it up you can get UNS4 + Boruto. So really, I guess the trilogy is just a bonus for picking up the newest one now? That still doesn't change the fact that the oldest ones kinda blow to actually PLAY in retrospect.
Re: Doomfist Teased as New Overwatch Hero Yet Again
Haven't played Overwatch in quite awhile (and I liked Paladins more after that launched on Steam, anyway), and I likely won't head back to it until I knock off a good chunk of RPGs from my backlog. I literally couldn't fit the game on my Hard Drive probably at the moment.
I am interested in Doomfist and Terry Crews though, so I definitely wanna see what's up with whatever they're teasing.
Re: Jak & Daxter Tetralogy Nearing PS4 Release
Man, they really - and I mean REALLY - need to get onboard the non-Naughty Dog games already. It makes so much less sense to include Jak X than it does to include another ACTUAL PLATFORMING ADVENTURE, regardless of if Ready at Dawn (a studio formed by ex-Naughty Dog members) and High Impact (ex-Insomniac) did them. Are Daxter and Lost Frontier as good as Jak 1, 2 or 3? Probably not, but they're absolutely both worth playing, and people missed out on Lost Frontier when it was released on PS2 back in the day. I'm tired of hearing people cry out for Jak 4 when it came out over a decade ago - time to expose more gamers to it, Sony.
There's a weird cult-ish attitude around Naughty Dog growing. I don't like it. People seem to only respond to, like, 3 studios and they put them all up on a pedestal and its stupid; stop getting so weird about very few studios and start paying attention to more talent instead, yeah? Naughty Dog is becoming like Kojima...
Re: Sony Foresees a Big Year for Its Japanese Studios
@rjejr Well remember, with PS4 they were trying to launch DriveClub as the Project Gotham (and now Horizon) to Gran Tourismo's Forza, as it were. A sister series that could take some of the load off of Polyphony Digital, who infamously takes their sweet time between releases instead of working on any sort of annualized schedule. But, as we all know, Driveclub struggled to hit its launch date, disappointed people, took a lot of post-launch support to get up to shape, and resulted in the closure of Evolution (though some people remained with Sony to continue to work on updates and post-launch support for Driveclub, and most everyone else was acquired by CodeMasters to bulk up their racing game studios).
So yeah, its been awhile since GT was a priority for Sony, but that's a little extra pronounced this time because they tried to launch DriveClub as a second premier driving sim franchise in the meantime.
Re: Sony Awarded PlayStation Employees the Coolest Crash Bandicoot Gift
Why doesn't Limited Run Games make these types of things? I'd snatch up a retro PS1-style physical edition for Crash, or Tomb Raider (remember when SOE did that for Rise last year?), or anything else that warrants it. Sh**; Namco should've printed a retro-style case for Tekken 7. Or Sony Liverpool for Wipeout Omega. Lot of potential retro love to spread around Playstation-Land these days.
Seriously, Limited Run, get it together!
That being said, this doesn't look like its that hard to do. Grab some templates from VGBoxArt, screw around in Photoshop for an hour or so, print it out on some decent quality photo paper and cut it out, go find an old jewel case and BAM! I could have this done myself. Might be a fun project to mess with this weekend, actually...
Re: Feature: The Promising PS4 Games of July 2017
I'd be more interested in Zodiac Age if I didn't have a massive backlog or RPGs to burn through already. Between Tales of Berseria, Valkyria Revolution, Dragon Quest Heroes 2, NeiR Automata, Yakuza 0, Wild Arms 3 & Arc the Lad via PS2 Classics and more, I don't got time for it now. I'm kind of interested in Fallen Legion since a) it looks like Grand Kingdom, which was fantastic and a game far too many people slept on completely, and b) the founder of Siliconera is working on that game. I like that site. He seems like a cool guy, and it seems like a really interesting game design, honestly. For example, the two versions of the game are different games. The PS4 Fallen Legion (Sins of an Empire) is different from the Vita one (Flames of Rebellion). But like nobody knows that! There's hardly any preview coverage on it, though - if it weren't for him chatting about it on Siliconera, I would've had it flying under my radar entirely, probably.
Link: http://www.siliconera.com/2017/05/18/fallen-legion-launches-playstation-4-playstation-vita-july-25/
Generally though, July is a quiet month and I'm looking forward to NOT getting anything new probably and working on backlog games from earlier in the year, Crash N-Sane Trilogy, and various PC games from Steam and GOG's Summer Sales. 2017 is a great year for gaming, but a terrible year for actually finishing any games boy...
Re: How Can You Tell Sony's Making Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle?
I was gonna ask why there are always previews for the trailers you're going to watch now in the first 5 seconds, but I think I actually know. Its because they're designed to run on Youtube and they want to grab people's attention before the 5 second timer that lets them skip the ad finishes, isn't it?
Re: Round Up: Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy PS4 Reviews Spin In
GamesRadar made me throw up in my mouth a little. I mean, ffs, a challenging game - and the Crash games were always challenging, as were many games from the 90's - that kills you a lot DOESN'T make it a "roguelite". Holy sh**. If a reviewer can't even identify a game's genre correctly, throw their "opinion" in the trash.
They must have zero perspective on the gaming industry at large if they're so honed in on some current trend that they'd type that. They probably also misidentify 3D models as "sprites" or vice versa, and confuse FIRST-person shooters with third-person; the kind of dummy who doesn't know what they're talking about, but has heard words that sound important and are 50% confident they know what they mean through context, so they try to sprinkle throughout whatever they've written. Roguelite... that's absolutely disgusting to read that term in a Crash Bandicoot review in 2017.
Re: Talking Point: What Are Your Most Anticipated Games for the Second Half of the Year?
1. Agents of M.A.Y.H.E.M. - I can't believe how low-key it is. Saints Row and now MAYHEM have been outdoing Crackdown's thing for years now; its really weird people aren't more excited about this. THQ Nordic needs to hire some new PR people. Volition are open world action game masters, this has a vibrant, awesome looking art style now, and Hero Shooter team mechanics... its gonna be rad and I honestly am baffled so many people aren't paying attention to it. Especially when SR3 and IV are so beloved. Its weird.
2. Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom - It looks amazing! Level 5 returning to this franchise and really nailing the Ghibli feeling (I'm totally fine just having their character designer and composer; that's clearly 99% of what we want anyway), while fixing the terrible combat from the first game and adding in the city building from Dark Cloud while also having squad-based combat on the World Map a la Final Fantasy Type-0 HD or Little King's Story. It really seems super exciting to see such a great game just come together; I'm really looking forward to it.
3. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus — just look at it. Glorious. And Machine Games is maybe the only developer who has a great core grasp of shooters and doesn't ignore that sh** when world-building. Arkane makes janky, unsatisfying shooters that they throw into cool settings. So did Irrational with Bioshock. They were disappointing shooters to play. But Wolfenstein? Nah; that was a great shooter WITH a cool world too. This new one is gonna be great too.
Those are my top 3. But I'm also definitely looking forward to Crash, I just won't waste a top 3 spot on it when it comes out tomorrow. That doesn't feel like a second-half-of-the-year game. Everybody's Golf will be a blast too, but obviously not Earth-shattering. I have barely played Yakuza 0 so far too, so I'm not exactly excited for Kiwami, though its going to be awesome and I'll pick it up anyway. I hope Ys VIII will be good, but being honest, its pretty janky. Falcom is working literally 15 years behind the rest of the industry, and the demo showed that it still feels like a PS2 title. In a post-NieR Automata world (as well as many other titles), Falcom's brand of ancient, clunky action just feels... unacceptable?
Hopefully Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, Sonic Forces and Evil Within 2 will be good & interesting, but I gotta see more of all of them first. I'm keeping an eye on some indie games like Fallen Legion, Children of Zodiarcs, White Day, Absolver and Red:Out too. But there's lots of questions about some games.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 174
Genuinely don't know what Jenny is playing. "Code Realize" just takes you to PushSquare's page for Code Vein when clicked
Playing more Dragon Quest Heroes 2 myself. Close to beating it, but holy sh** is it getting frustrating. Game was clearly balanced for multiplayer and online grinding; story missions always yield one of 2 outcomes. You fail, or you get by by the skin of your teeth and don't feel good about it. Mostly because your friendly AI is as useful as a sack of bricks and the drop rate on Sentry-type Monster Medals is abysmal in the sequel (stupid Summon-types). Its really bugging me. Absolute shame people slept/are sleeping on the title, as its super high quality in every way and is super fun online when I have been able to get games going.
Barring progress there, I've got plenty of other RPGs to dive into. And Tekken to keep playing Treasure Battle with. Or online matches, I guess, but c'mon. Who cares about climbing the Kyu/Dan ranks? The reason to play T7 is to get them outfit pieces
Re: Talking Point: Did Ubisoft's E3 2017 Press Conference Bedazzle You?
I was really happy to see a nice variety from Ubi Soft, with new IP and non-Ubi brand™ Open World games making up the bulk of their presentation. I really can't stand their "AAA" garbage most of the time, so seeing nothing like Ghost Recon or Watch_Dogs made me happy. And even though I won't personally play Assassin's Creed, I do really love that setting. Not nearly enough games take place in Ancient Egypt and that's a shame. Same thing with Far Cry 5, Steep and Crew 2; for people who like those games, glad they're making somewhat interesting looking entries next.
Starlink was a complete surprise, and actually seems pretty cool. The story stuff seems to be around Star Wars Rebels quality visually, which is great for kids, and the ship toys look kind of rad. Meanwhile Mario x Rabbids seems crazy and its super bizarre that Nintendo's fine with giving them hand cannons and having everyone communicate with monosyllabic expressions, but it LOOKS really nice (like, visually, I like those colors and that renderer on everything, and the animations all around are fantastic) with some cool-looking turn-based combat. And South Park, as always, looks pretty great.
But just seeing Beyond Good & Evil 2 made my day. Don't care if its pre-rendered; seeing it again is fantastic! Its such a cool world, and its so great to see the modern realization of that world. Same junky hover vehicles, same people/anthro animals mix, same afro-futurist-meets-cyberpunk setting... it just looks LOADS better now. And while I'd normally be down on barely seeing Jade (well, we saw her eyes at the end there, I guess) and no Pey'J at all, you GOTTA love Knox. Monkey dude with a grapple hand? C'MON! They saved the best for last, it was a genuine surprise considering Ancel said we'd only maybe see it later in the year (and to be fair, he may have been referring to in-game, real-time stuff), and I'm thrilled to see Ubi re-commit to the title, big-time.
They had a good number of things to show and a lot of it were pleasantly surprising. They had the best press conference so far, easily, ahead of Microsoft and WAY OUT ahead of EA and Bethesda (who were both kind of snooze-fests). Color me impressed.
Re: Dragon Quest XI Promises at Least 50 Hours of Adventure on PS4
Can't wait for an official announcement. As far as I'm concerned, making an HD console version for Playstation 4 is the biggest indicator that this is leaving Japan - the 3DS version is the one for them. I just want Square to make it official and really dedicate to getting this hype train rolling - with no new Final Fantasies on the horizon or Kingdom Hearts, they kind of HAVE to finally focus on establishing Dragon Quest in the West.
Don't blame the visual style (DragonBall Z and Chrono Trigger are beloved worldwide; the problem isn't Akira Toriyama), don't blame the gameplay rooted in the old-school (if you can move 1 million+ units of Bravely Default, you can't blame old-school influences anymore); just figure it out, Square. Dragon Quest does fine in the West, but XI needs to do much better than (the criminally under-the-radar) Heroes 2 or even Builders which surprised a bunch of people.
Square hasn't really tried to push a Dragon Quest since VIII or maybe IX back in 2010. I really, REALLY want to see Square announce Dragon Quest XI at E3 and start the hype train right!
Re: Laser League Is the Latest from OlliOlli Dev Roll7
I like arena games, but don't like off-brand Tron-style visuals. They always end up being eye-killers these days (anyone remember that ASCII, Brut@l?), mostly because bright neon lights against black backgrounds tends to do that.
Not sure about this. And with a lot of arena games coming up from indies, like Games of Glory, Hyperbrawl Tournament, Blade Ballet or Metagalactic Blitz, I don't know if this will be any better or worse than any of those. I grew up with stuff like Ball Breakers, Blast Chamber and Pit Ball, so I like seeing more entries in the genre. I just hope this plays better than it looks.
Re: An Incredible Looking 2.5D Dragon Ball Z Fighting Game Is Coming to PS4 in 2018
Oh awesome! I was actually really interested in ArcSys' first DBZ game, Extreme Butoden... except it was on 3DS, where, like, no one wants to play games outside of Japan :/ But it was super gorgeous. I'm actually surprised - super pleasantly so - that Bandai Namco is throwing another DBZ game at them instead of going right back to Dimps right now. As someone who's not a fan of the free-roaming DBZ fighting engine in games like Xenoverse, I'm SO DOWN for a nice, focused, up-close fight. Especially if ArcSys is doing it
Hyper Dragon Ball Z was super awesome earlier this year, but that was fan-made and BNG definitely can't be shown up by that. Set a high bar though, and I'm sure ArcSys will set an even higher one!
Re: New 15 Minute Trailer Showcases Every Playable Mobile Suit in Gundam Versus PS4
Another Gundam game, and still no G-Saviour? C'mon; how long must I wait for my Canadian live-action TV-show pilot/made-for-TV movie Gundam to be represented!?
For real though, this is a lot of Gundams. Game's gonna be fun; hopefully Bamco will have an English trailer for it at E3.
Re: Sniper Elite Studio Reveals 1930s Themed Strange Brigade
Love the theme (this is why I wish Farm 51 were working on a new "Deadfall Adventures" game instead of "Get Even"), but I look at this and I just see mediocrity. Remember "God Mode" or "R.I.P.D."? And definitely the Wii U's infamous "Lost Reavers"; definitely glad someone else mentioned that. This looks like that kind of design to me, instead of a bigger/more ambitious co-op game.
I'm hoping I'm wrong, but its Rebellion, and while they did right by Battlezone (the remake of the '98 one on PC. I've not yet played the VR one, though that looks good too), they're still known more for mediocre titles than great ones. It just really looks like another one of those types of games... with a really killer theme draped over it.
Re: The Persistence Is Dead Space for PlayStation VR
All the influences go back to System Shock. Which goes back to Alien and The Thing. So... y'know, Dead Space was not exactly a bastion of original ideas, nor can you say this looks influenced by those games specifially in lieu of those things many games (including Dead Space) already pulled influence from.
Lets not be super precious with Dead Space; EA wasn't when they turned it into a bro-friendly co-op shooter, after all We got Prey and we're getting two new System Shocks anyway (the remake of the first one from NightDive, and System Shock 3 from Otherside Entertainment), so EA can keep Dead Space on ice for as long as they want so long as that team delivers killer Star Wars games. Which, man, we better finally see what EA Redwood/Visceral is up to with that at E3, shouldn't we?
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 171
I ordered Tekken 7 but not received it yet (I don't care about Amazon Prime, and as such, they punish us "normies" with slow deliveries), so I'ma be sticking to pushing more into a combination of Dragon Quest Heroes 2, Tales of Berseria, Toukiden 2, and I'll try to catch a screening of Wonder Woman too. That looks fantastic
Good gaming everyone!
Re: Is Monster Hunter Finally Coming to the PS4?
Hope this rumor is BS. Capcom is generations behind where Toukiden 2 is. Even God Eater is cooler. And both Koei Tecmo AND Bandai Namco have long-since woken up to the fact that people want these experiences on consoles, because they've already brought their monster hunter titles to PS4. And Steam.
Like, if you want this experience, you have better options available people. Stop sleeping on games like Toukiden 2, people who like these types of games.
Too many gamers are lazy consumers. Support more choices, not less. Monster Hunter can stick to Nintendo all it wants; its slower, more boring, lacks major features from, and is less visually interesting than literally all of the other "monster hunters" out there... except for maybe that one PC title, Dauntless. That one looks bland af.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 170
Dragon Quest Heroes 2 online stuff, and diving into my long-ignored Toukiden 2 finally (I love Toukiden Kiwami, but just have too much to play). Taking a break from Tales of Berseria, Yakuza 0 and NieR Automata to do it, but eh... 2017's been brutal like that. I don't know when I'll next finish a game, but I sure as heck got a lot of great stuff to play
Online on DQH2 is a blast when I've been able to connect so far; wish more people were playing. I'm sure that far too many people slept on T2 to make that community too vibrant so I'll see if I can find anyone but I'm not holding my breath. Hope people don't sleep on the upcoming f2p version of it, especially since you don't need PS+ to play any free-to-play game on the PS4.
Re: Feast Your Eyes on These Adventure-Filled Dragon Quest XI PS4 Screenshots
@stueyd67: Battles are turn-based. Mostly. Its like an actioney... turn-based... hybrid thing. A bit. Sort of. But its optional?
They recently (this past week) put out a video showing a lot of gameplay, including turn-based, menu-driven combat. But its in real time (its turn based because you gotta wait on cooldowns between picking actions from your menu). This form of combat's also got free movement, at least for the main character, so everyone in your party stands around like they do but purple guy there can run around for some reason. Its the first fight in the video. But then in 3:45, after messing around in the menus, we see another fight that's just straight up turn-based. No moving around, cinematic cameras, picking your actions from menus - just like the classics. The guy playing seems to have just turned all that real-time, free-movement stuff off. We really need an official English announcement & translation to explain things
Also, if you're on a horse, you can just run over small enemies and avoid fights entirely
In Dragon Quest X, they also had a hybrid system. You pick stuff from menus and it was turn-based because of cooldowns on actions. I know in that game you could all move around in combat (but, it is an MMO, so everyone in your party is controlled by other people) for strategy reasons. For example, while someone was casting a healing spell, some of the warrior class people could run up to an enemy and push them away from the Spellcaster before they could interrupt their spell. I'm gonna assume that's what the purpose of the more actioney/movement stuff is in DQXI's combat as well, but that's just speculation. Gameplay looks gorgeous though.
Here's the videos. I'll throw the 3DS version in here too, just because it looks so retro-cool.
PS4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lKTMFme9u0
3DS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai8D3xuEq5I
Re: Guide: June 2017 PS4 Release Dates
Had Valkyria Revolution preordered since I checked it out on Amazon a month or so ago and saw it was only $40 Guess SEGA's not feeling super confident about it... but while its obviously got some "terrible anime"-level of storytelling going on, and a subpar/cheap-looking presentation courtesy of Media Vision (I like MV, but Valkyria deserves better; SEGA should've contracted Level 5 to make this), I actually really liked the combat in the demo from the JP PSN. Its actually really fun to play. So, for $40, I'll get it no problem. I'll just be hitting that Skip button during conversations a lot, lol.
Also finally preordered Tekken 7 two days ago; wanna get that Eliza. And I love, love, LOVE fighting games. Plus, its Tekken. And its clear T7 is a return to a really, really good - and really, really inspired entry for the big fight franchise (no offense to Tekken Tag 2; that was actually fine. But Tekken 6 and 5 and 4 were all kinda... non-events). I've missed Tekken. I'm ready for this.
Got my eyes on Crash, God Wars (Which I believe is for June, but isn't on this list. Btw, Valkyria is on twice) & Summon Night too, but I got enough games on my backlog to get too much next month. I'll see about picking those up eventually though. Things are slowing down, but I'm not going through the 2017 backlog fast enough to keep up with it - I'm going through Dragon Quest Heroes 2, NieR Automata and Tales of Berseria, but also just started Horizon and Toukiden 2
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 168
Gonna be trying to get in some Dragon Quest Heroes 2. I could - and should - also play some NieR and Tales of Berseria, but I'm just plain enjoying DQH2 more. Probably because I don't care for the music much (no offense to Koichi Sugiyama; its great if you're in a retro/nostalgic mood), so I can play this while listening to podcasts and junk. Seems like something I can burn through pretty quickly too, which is good, so I can pick Horizon, Toukiden 2, or Yakuza back up. Mostly though, I won't be gaming - I'll be finishing up work I gotta do
Looking forward to what you have to say about Dark Rose Valkyrie, Jade! I think it sounds & looks kind of interesting. I definitely like that Compile Heart nabbed some Tales talent to help make it, and as you said, the investigation-to-find-who's-a-traitor part sounds like a good idea. It certainly elevated Lost Dimension up quite a few notches. But, well, it is mostly a Compile Heart RPG still so there's always the chance it'll just be mediocre . Who knows though? I'm crossing my fingers!
Personally, with my backlog as well as titles like God Wars, Summon Night and Valkyria Revolution coming up next month, DRV is something I won't be able to get to until later in the year at the earliest anyway. But I'm defintely interested in seeing how it does. Hope you enjoy it.
Good gaming, everyone!
Re: Special Delivery Is Paperboy for PlayStation VR
Considering the visuals, this soundtrack is terrible. It clearly needs something more fitting... perhaps, just play this song nonstop? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAD6Obi7Cag
Re: Action RPG Fallen Legion Brings a Branching Story to PS4, Vita in July
Weird. I've been playing Grand Kingdom recently (In preparation for the oncoming glut of SRPGs the PS4 will soon be blessed with - Summon Night 6, God Wars, Valkyria Revolution, etc.), and this looks a lot like that game. At least from screenshots here - gonna have to hunt down a trailer to see if this actually plays anything like Spike's excellent, underrated title.
Either way, the art style & quality alone has put this on my radar now
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 167
Dragon Quest Heroes 2 and Tales of Berseria are my main focus(es?) right now... maybe some NieR Automata. I want to get through F.E.A.R. also - had it on my PC for awhile, and I want to pick up a new FPS, but I figure I should go through some of the stuff I have already before dropping change on a new title. And FEAR's pretty cool, I played it before, just never beat it.
Also, as far as my retro collection goes, I bought Spyro: A Hero's Tail & Rumble Roses from LukieGames this week, so I'm hoping I get those in the mail. I got Rumble Roses since there's no arcadey wrestling games out there these days (not until Chikara Action Arcade Wrestling comes out, anyway), and I needed a cheapie to get free shipping I also just wanted to play a new Spyro game, despite platformers like Snake Pass, Yooka Laylee and soon Skyler & Plux coming out these days, so I decided to pick up Eurocom's PS2 Spyro. Seems to be the best non-Insomniac one, and Eurocom was a pretty good team. Figured its time I check it out!
Re: That Leaked Red Dead Redemption 2 Screenshot Isn't the Real Deal
@Splat: SO MANY! Man, this is something that's so frustrating about Kickstarter - except for putting backer names in the credits, crowdsourced games don't advertise the fact that they're kickstarted (or Indie Gogo'd, or whatever) EVER. Its like they're hiding it, which is stupid, because they let the entire perception of crowdfunding be determined by stuff like Yooka Laylee, Mighty No.9, Bloodstained and Shenmue III - games that have massive PR. That's not cool, because then the failures get blown way out of proportions.
Literally, no one keeps track of these games among mainstream sites. Luckily, Kickstarter does! https://www.kickstarter.com/play
Kickstarter games seriously make up like 80% of the indie and "AA"/middle tier part of the industry! A ton of awesome games that, unfortunately, most people haven't heard of (again, that's the problem with indies "hiding" their crowdsourced origins and letting stuff like Yooka Laylee dominate the conversation around Kickstarter)
>Shantae: 1/2 Genie Hero
>River City Ransom: Underground
>Obduction (the successor to Myst)
>Earthlock: The Festival of Magic
>Duelyst
>Superhot
>The Flame in the Flood
>Torment: The Tides of Numenera (the successor to Planescape Torment)
>STRAFE
>Jotun
>Satellite Reign (the successor to Syndicate Wars)
>Shadowrun and Shadowrun Hong Kong
>Pillars of Eternity
>BattleTech
>Skullgirls 2nd Encore (Indie GoGo)
>Indivisible (Indie GoGo)
>Banner Saga
>Freedom Planet
>LastFight (the successor to Power Stone)
>Wasteland 2 and 3 (via Fig)
>Code: Hardcore (which is coming to PS4 via their Chinese indie program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ip-lJg52Ro)
>Praey for the Gods (Which Bethesda recently forced to change their name since they apparently own the word "Prey" now)
>Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs
>Legrand Legacy (which any fan of Baten Kaitos, Shadow Hearts, or Legend of Dragoon should be keeping an eye on)
>Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom (PushSquare review here: https://www.pushsquare.com/reviews/ps4/shiness_the_lightning_kingdom)
My God, there's so many. There's so many! Crowdsourcing has made SO MANY awesome games possible! Seriously, look at that list. Follow indie sites too, and just look at some of the cool stuff that pops up constantly. Its so important, especially nowadays, where "AAA" publishers focus on 4 or 5 genres and say "F**k it" to everything else, indies and AA productions literally make games for 99% of genres that are being ignored. And tons of them are good, too. TONS.
Re: Get a Closer Look at Lili and Crew in Tekken 7's PlayStation VR Mode
This seems dumb. Like, why wouldn't you just make it so that you were sitting as, like, a spectator in a Pro-Wrestling or MMA Match or something? You sit there, but you're controlling the action? That seems like the obvious view to try to emulate if you're doing gameplay for a fighting game in VR.
Just having Jin and Akuma fighting in an endless space void while you floppily turn your head around to watch them from a too-close view is real dumb, gimmicky and awkward. I'm disappointed; they should've learned more about VR experiences from Summer Lesson, although I guess since that was all up-close stuff the Tekken 7 model viewer will benefit most from that experience. Yeah, I suppose they learned nothing about mid-range and long-range experiences from that game, dangit :/
Still, I guess its not as dumb, gimmicky, awkward and worthless as that first person mode Street Fighter is doing for the Switch, so... that's... a victory, I guess?
Maybe they'll learn more about VR from Ace Combat 7, and I presume, a new Time Crisis or Ridge Racer for PSVR after that. Fingers crossed, eh?
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 164
Enjoying the heck out of Tales of Berseria and NieR Automata, while kind of sad I can't also play Horizon and Yakuza at the same time - gotta stay focused though! I also picked up Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom and played a bit - that seems like a fantastic title, but until I crush Tales, I can't dive into it for real. I just wanted to support Focus and Enigami, because they've made an awesome game (especially for a Kickstarter) and hardly anyone has noticed.
Btw, thanks Robert. You reminded me I bought Toukiden 2 and have to put THAT OFF as well until I finish something on the backlog. Auuuggghhh. Plus I got Persona 5 sitting on the shelf. AND this week will bring Dragon Quest Heroes 2... this backlog needs some serious crushing. Hope you're enjoying Toukiden 2, though!
Also trying to finish up Yooka Laylee, but I'm not really having fun with it. I don't care about the camera and a lot of issues in the negative reviews are not there and/or far too harsh. Frankly, I just think its boring wandering around. Like, they're too slow or something. There's just something fundamentally lacking in Y-L's character or world design, and while it gets better as you pick up some moves, I've yet to play an objective that's really engaging or cool enough to make slowly traipsing aimlessly across a big, boring world to get to it "worth it".
Re: Saints Row Dev's Agents of Mayhem Makes Mischief on 15th August
This is a sad article all around. Of course I didn't forget this one - Saints Row 3 and 4 ARE AMAZING games.
Look: its super simple. F**k marketing. People shouldn't care about games because they're being louder than other games (aggressive marketing is the only reason turds like Ghost Recon find success, I figure). People should follow **talent**. If Volition announces a new game, I REMEMBER IT.
I've been looking forward to this since it was shown off at IGN's E3 thing last year. You guys worry me sometimes, Pushsquare....
Re: PlayStation VR Shooter StarBlood Arena Goes Gold
The idea of a Descent Hero Shooter is a great one, especially for VR. But man, the focus on multiplayer is insane to me. There's such a small pool of VR owners out there in general - why double down on the "nichey"-ness of your potential success by then also being a multiplayer focused title too? When something like 4 out of 5 of those, to be conservative, bomb and die off quickly? The people at White Moon Dreams are really, REALLY gambling with this...
Re: Feature: The Promising PS4 Games of April 2017
Man, Persona 5, Dragon Quest Heroes 2, Yooka Laylee - gonna have to cut it off at those 3, which are more than enough. But man, another pretty brutal month for releases; definitely adding LEGO City, Wonder Boy, Puyo Puyo Tetris, and Little Nightmares to my "gotta buy later" list. Sidenote: Sony really has to implement the Playstation Store's wishlist feature on the actual PS4 version of the store, instead of keeping it exclusive to the web version.
I just hope people pay attention to DQ Heroes 2 this time. Toukiden 2, bizarrely, seemed to surprise quite a few sites when it came out recently since it just killed it with reviews (yet far too many outlets seem obliged to keep focusing on "AAA" garbage from crap publishers instead of good games) - guess its pretty apparent that many simply ignored Kiwami before, otherwise it wouldn't have been surprising at all. Like with that series, Omega Force also delivered an amazing first game with DQH1 too, but too many places didn't notice. Its far too often dismissed as a mere Musou title - which are more often than not good these days anyway - when its a legit action-RPG with some serious ambition and execution. I get it; people missed out on Omega Force's PS3 action-RPG Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll and blindly assume Dragon Quest Heroes is a musou game instead of the successor to that underrated title. Just get up to speed already, because their Heroes series is a different, and excellent, beast that seriously deserves more attention.
The less places chat up turds like Ghost Recon Wildlands and the more they highlight great games who's only crime is having less marketing dollars thrown around, the better off everything will be. There's way too much awesome stuff coming out this year so far that isn't getting attention at all because everyone still feels like they HAVE to focus on the same crud from EA, Ubi Soft, and the other big publishers. Its getting to be real annoying when there's a bunch of gems frickin' CRUSHING the "AAA" disappointments routinely from everyone who's not part of that.