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Digital Down-Low for 01/31/2025: The Cartoon Animal Chain of Command goes Mouse - Cat - Dog

Octopus Prime

Mystery Contraption
(He/Him)
Honestly, I'm *way* more impressed at a spider that can spell legible human English than I am by whatever the heck that pig was doing that was so damn impressive.

It only makes sense to go through the new releases in the order the thread title implies them, so that means we're kicking things off with Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter! The long awaited *squeak*uel to Tails of Iron! Thats because, yes, this is a game about l'il mice with swords and shields, like a Redwall. Or at least the first one was like a Redwall (albeit with way more graphic violence), this one is more of a Game of Thrones, but specifically the John Snow parts. You're a l'il mouse guy who is assigned to guard a massive wall that keeps the north pole seperate from everything south of it because there's too damn many monsters in it and *yep*, now there's big Chilly Monsters causing a ruckus.

I liked the original Tails of Iron, albeit not enough to finish it and this looks to be More of That.

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Next up is, what else, but a game about a cat. And why settle for *any* cat when you can have access to a small child who is simply not a cat. Taht's right, it's Hello Kitty Island Adventure, starring a normal girl who has whiskers and has cat ears and is three apples tall. Like any child. I infer it's an Animal Crossing-em-up with Sanrio characters. I refuse to investigate any farther as I still resent Hello Kitty for taking the worlds most popular cat title away from Felix.

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Speaking of cats that are obviously girls, obviously, we have Cuisneer, which is a game about a catgirl who wants to get back into the family business of running a restaurant for all the critter peeps in town. And, naturally, decided that the best way to get the freshest and best ingredients for her restaraunt is to go farm-to-table. Farming rare drops from dead monsters, that is. That's right, you've got a whole Hades' worth of randomized monster dungeons to plumb the depths of and make tasty filets sliced out of the loathsome denizens therein.

It's like The Bear, except a cat and also if the Bear made hamburgers out of the racoons he found behind the restaraunt.

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And now that we're done with cats it's time for dogs! Well... coyotes, I guess, but I'm not sure if coyotes count as dogs and nobody else is either; it's impossible to find out. In any case, we've got Laika: Aged Through Blood, which is an Excitebike-troidvania where it's Mad Max times, you're a critter and you've got a dirtbike, a shotgun and a real hankerin' to take your own particular interpersonal grievances out on both a fascist militia and the nuclear monsters of the wastelands.

The eShop specifically mentions that you reload your gun by doing backflips and *dammit*, that is how you sell me a video game.

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Speaking of ladies on motorcycles, gun violence and mutated dog monsters, we ALSO have Neptunia Riders vs. Dogoos, which is a Neptunia game so I will assume it is not nearly so critically lauded. It kind of looks like Twisted Metal, except it kind of looks like a mess.

But it's one of those "Weird that it happened twice" situations with regard to "ladies on motorcycles inflicting gun violence and mutated dog monsters" so... probably best to mention it regardless.

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Now let's breach away from tense, fast paced action games (and... umm... Hello kitty Island Adventure) and talk about the OTHER highly anticipated game this week; Citizen Sleeper 2, the long awaited sequel to the Sad Robots on a Spaceship game! I only played the original Citizen Sleeper long enough to safely determine it's Not a Very Octo kind of video game, but that was more than long enough to see why peeps loved it. It's a dice rolly style of RPG but instead of bashing Gremlins all your dice rolls are to see how successfully you can talk to people or perform menial tasks so your rapidly decaying artificial body can keep on going. Kind of like Disco Elysium, if you were Halley Joel Osmond from AI instead of Nic Cage from Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans.

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Now what if you don't want to talk to people. In fact, what if "avoiding people at all costs" is what you're in the mood for. Well, we got you covered on that front too; we've got The Stone of Madness, and darned if that ain't a video game entirely about being presented with the concept of interacting with people and saying "Not me, thanks!"

Now, in this particular case that's because this is a Tactical Espionage Action/Darkest Dungeon game set in a church prison you'd really *really* like to not be inside anymore even if it *didn't* have a bunch of murderous ghouls inside it. And also they're having a bit of difficulty keeping their sanity in check as a result. It's from the same peeps as what made Blasphemous and it looks... umm... *pretty frickin' rad*, so much so that it went from "disregard" to "directly into my Wishlist" before I finished watching the trailer.

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If leading the condemned and despairing out of a heavilly fortified monastery gulag doesn't do it for you, how about playing a nice game of cards. But this ain't your daddies cards! We ain't playing pinochle, we're playing Vnocle, and that V stands for Vanguard! Card Fight Vanguard Dear Days 2, that is!

It's a Yugioh!

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Moving on to RPGs, we've got a... pretty surprising sequel; after... like... twenty years, there's a new sequel to Phantom Brave; Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero. It's an SRPG where you're a necromancer who has the power to shove ghosts into random crap on a battlefield and have THAT become your army. Also, because "Necromancer" isn't, like... a socially accepted occupation, everyone freakin' hates this kid no matter how sunny her disposition is.

I remember the original game being incredibly mechanically robust, even by NIS standards, at the time so... expect more of that.

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If you want a more traditional RPG experience, they don't get more traditional than Wizardry, and that's a relief because we've got Wizardry: The Five Ordeals (either alone or in a bundle with its three DLC campaigns), a rerelease of the 2006 Wizardry of the same name! I'm not enough of a True Doom Wizardhead to know... like... much at all of series, but I do know enough of Dungeon Crawling RPGs to know that this series is why we have them and they had *way* more staying power in Japan than they had here.

Anyway, being a Wizardry game, expect it to be really freakin' hard as you explore a monster infested murder dungeon with a bunch of soon-to-be corpses.

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And finally we've got another NSO update. And in keeping with tradition for the SNES games on the service, it's largely culled from games I could rent from my local corner store; Super Ninja Boy is a combination of beat-em-up and RPG and platformer and it couldn't do any one of those very well (or... remotely well) but I sure as hell rented it enough to be able to finish it over a weekend. Fatal Fury 2 was the *vastly* improved sequel to the original Fatal Fury that decided to base itself on Street Fighter 2 instead of 1 and Sutte Hakkun is... a puzzle platformer of some type. It never left Japan and barely left the Satelliview so my information there is scant.

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Violentvixen

(She/Her)
Now let's breach away from tense, fast paced action games (and... umm... Hello kitty Island Adventure) and talk about the OTHER highly anticipated game this week; Citizen Sleeper 2, the long awaited sequel to the Sad Robots on a Spaceship game! I only played the original Citizen Sleeper long enough to safely determine it's Not a Very Octo kind of video game, but that was more than long enough to see why peeps loved it. It's a dice rolly style of RPG but instead of bashing Gremlins all your dice rolls are to see how successfully you can talk to people or perform menial tasks so your rapidly decaying artificial body can keep on going. Kind of like Disco Elysium, if you were Halley Joel Osmond from AI instead of Nic Cage from Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans.
I am SO EXCITED. We're heading out of town this weekend so I may wait to start playing until we're back since I'll be playing this on Gamepass but can't wait.
 

q 3

here to eat fish and erase the universe
(they/them)
Sutte Hakkun is very good, glad to see it return and go global for the first time (officially). Get ready to suck and blow.
 

WildcatJF

Feel
(he / his / him)
Squid Alpha reporting in with the latest in arcade archival news!

Get ready to roll out some thunder of a Taito variety, as their take on a Rolling Thunder like, Thunder Fox, is this week's reveal. Included on Taito Milestones 3 ahead of time, this is a grittier spin on the concept with Contra-like shirtless soldiers and a military aesthetic versus the suave spy vibes of its inspiration. You can also take control of a jeep, so that's something. And shoot em up levels!


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That'll do. Til another week of Arcade Archive announcements!
 

q 3

here to eat fish and erase the universe
(they/them)
Also apparently this week also had Cho Aniki Collection which seems to be Switch only? The first two games in the series, seemingly emulated with a few of the usual perks like rewind... $45?? Must be the cost of all that protein.
 
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