Big List, Full Coffee, Can't Lose
Okay, we're kicking things off with the premier name in open world COOL SKATEBOARD TRICKS (not involving the unidentifiable man in the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series); Olli Olli World, which I infer to lean more on the Skate or Die side of the Rad Skateboard Simulator genre. Or maybe T&C Surf Designs, if it weren't atrocious. Customize your favorite skate-boy, and tell him "see you later, boy" as you kickflip your way through a just absolutely preposterously elaborate obstacles courses.
Next up is the most pleasant surprise this week (and lemme tell you, there is no shortage of things that made me stop and go "OH MY YES!" this week, Ziggurat 2! Which I didn't even know was in development, but here it is, in the eShop. And Also in my Switch specifically, because I wasted no time in buying an eShop card as soon as I saw it. Much like the original Ziggurat, it's a *real corking good* roguelite wizardy-FPS, like someone made a Heretic randomizer, but this time it's a whole bunch of relatively short dungeons, instead of one gargantuan one, and each playable character actually feels different instead of just having one single differentiation between them. Run through dungeons and explode every damn carrot man and gerblin inside and then die and do it again with a new dungeon because THAT'S ROGUELITE, BABY!
Death End re;Quest 2 is another Idea Factory JRPG! This one has a horror element to it where you've got a haunted town to escape, even though the first one was about someone who got Tronned and had to break out of a rapidly degrading video world. Which I feel is kind of a step down in terms of interesting premise, but hey, that's Video Games for you.
Next we've got Point and Click Adventure Games! SO MANY OF THEM! Like, just a bananas number of point and clickers. Aiming at tiny babies too little to understand the perils of any kind of mansion, and the Maniacs who may live within them, we've got re-releases of Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When it's Dark Outside and Pajama Sam: Thunder and Lightning aren't so Frightening, Putt Putt Saves the Zoo and Spy Fox: Dry Cereal. All of which I understand to be in the upper tier of Adventure Games for Wee Peeps. Also I've never been sure if "Dry Cereal" was supposed to be a pun or what, always felt awkward for a title. And skewing a bit older, we have Backbone, which is a gritty murdery noire detective story where everyone is varmints and also British Columbian and full of Sartre's existential philosophy. If you want your emotions-heavy adventure games to skew a bit farther away from "Grim Sad Raccoons", we have Welcome to Elk which is half Weird Town full of People to Talk To, and also half "No, really we interviewed people and you play out their life stories" and we also have Letters which is instead about taking control of a small child by hijacking her letters to a pen-pal (but in a charming way, not a bad way).
If you want more FANTASY HAPPENINGS in your adventure games, we've got About an Elf, which appears to be somewhere between a Tim and Eric sketch and Xavier Renegade Angel. I could not parse any-damn thing about it from the eShop, and also there's Pendula Swing, which is set in a jazz-punk monster kingdom where you're a dwarf lady what has to track down her stolen battle axe before Shenanigans befall, and also hang out with the ghost of your ex-wife, because apparently they split on amicable terms pre-humously.
Well, that was a whole lot of complicated games to try to puzzle through descriptions of, glad I don't have to do that again. So next we have... Oh God Dammit...
Sigh
...
So next we have Kingdom Hearts HD; 1.5+2.5 ReMix compiling Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, Chain of Memories (which I believe is a remake using the KH engine instead of the GBA version), Birth By Sleep and the remastered cinematics for Re:Coded and Kingdom Hearts: About 6 Months or So. And also
Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, which is a HD remaster of Dream Drop Distance, a movie thatexplains the backstory that none of the other games felt worth commenting on and a l'il mini nugget of a game that is 0.2: Birth by Sleep AND FINALLY, Kingdom Hearts III + Re mind, which is a relatively straightforward Kingdom Hearts 3 and also its DLC. These three are also available in a bundle, if you feel like saving a bit of scratch, but also all three are Cloud Exclusive games, which makes sense for KH3, since the Switch is not up to the task of handling that game, but feels unnecessary for KH 1 and 2.
Anyway... go meet your friends from Final Fantasy and Disney and use that friendship to beat up a bunch of Norts who want All Teens to Be Moody.
Okay, the rest of this weeks thread is relatively easy going; commencing with the thing that was formerly the game I was most excited for this week, before Ziggurat 2 came out and complicated that competition; Egglia Rebirth, an SRPG from some of the same peoples what made Legend of Mana. And it looks like Legend of Mana. To an almost litigious degree. It originated as an FTP mobile game, but then it got re-squiggled to ease out the FTP aspects in favor of feeling more like a Fee To Play game, and Rebirth squiggles things up farther, which will hopefully just make it a To Play game.
Anyway, rebuild a buggered up fantasy kingdom one territory at a time, and then wander into newly manifested areas and solve everyones problems with the power of incredible violence.
Are you excited for The Big Game on Sunday? Of course you are; media tells me that everyone is. Well if you're too darn impatient to wait until until the wekeend when the Puppy Bowls only real competition is airing, or if you wanted to pretend to be one of those wonderful running boys yourself, may I instead introduce you to Americas New Favorite Pasttime; Retrobowl, which appears to be for all the peeps who had fond memories of Tecmo Bowl and said "I want to play that but I don't want to blow into an NES cartridge a bunch." Like Johnny Mads always said; "Football is one of the Ones Where You Shouldn't Bounce the Ball"
Next up is Castle Morihisa, which appears to be Slay the Spire, but with the subtle difference that nobody involved with Slay the Spire was consulted with the creation of this game. And if you look carefully, you'll notice that nothing of the plot indicates that there's a spire that requires slaying.
Oceans Heart looks to be just as clearly inspired by an extant video game I already love, HOWEVER, I'm not immediately dismissive of it in this case; because it looks like Zelda, and I've gone on record as saying "Zelda? More like... HELL YEAH-da". I may have never said that before in my life, however its a sentiment I aspire to embody to the best of my ability, every day.
Anyway, you're a gal with a sword, and a monster infested puzzle-island and a desire to use one (a sword) to address the problems presented by the other (monster island).
And speaking still of Games What Look Like Games I've Already Said I Enjoy, Often and Loudly, Rise of the Third Power is one, and it looks like Octopath Traveller. And also that title coupled with the fact that the eShop description says it's "loosely based on the political climate of Europe in the 1930s" makes it pretttttty clear what historical events its inspired by.
Hopefully it's... not in favor of those events.
If you're hankerin' for some Old Timey Games that aren't actually new games trying to trick you LIKE A DAMN LIAR, we have Valis: Fantasm Soldier Collection, which is a bit of a misnomer as it's only three Valis games out of... so many. And it was one of those games where different ports of the same game were drastically different. In this case, I *believe* it's the PC-Engine ports of Valis 1-3, all of which received new English localizations, so it's a pretty extensive, but hardly comprehensive compilation.
Anyway, don your sparkleiest metal bikini and administer SWORD to MONSTER until every monster has been sufficiently bifurcated, and enjoy cutscenes by the truckload!
Noel the Mortal Fate is another Older Game Localized for the First Time (but this time it's from, like 2016, and it just looks like an SNES game), and it also begat comics and novels and the like, because peeps just love that Noel and all the fatal mortals she meets. It's specifically set between seasons 1 and 7 of the... whole... thing, if that's a deal breaker for you Noel and the Mortal Fate fans out there.
All I know about this whole franchise is that it has a cool looking crow guy as one of the protagonists.
One more Old Game Re-release is Powerslave Exhumed, an FPS from the golden age of Doom-clones and which, to my knowledge, has nothing at all to do with Iron Maiden. I guess the monster on the cover kiiiiiiiiinda looks like Eddie, if he were a dragon instead of a crypt-keeper. Visit scenic Ancient Karnak, and explode EVERY ALIEN (which are uniformly, like, mummies and scarabs and anubises and the like) using all the BFGs you can carry.
Okay, now you'd think that would be enough for one weeks thread, but there's a Direct scheduled for tomorrow so it's actually not enough.
And if you're curious, that full coffee disappeared midway through the Kingdom Hearts write-up
Okay, we're kicking things off with the premier name in open world COOL SKATEBOARD TRICKS (not involving the unidentifiable man in the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series); Olli Olli World, which I infer to lean more on the Skate or Die side of the Rad Skateboard Simulator genre. Or maybe T&C Surf Designs, if it weren't atrocious. Customize your favorite skate-boy, and tell him "see you later, boy" as you kickflip your way through a just absolutely preposterously elaborate obstacles courses.
Next up is the most pleasant surprise this week (and lemme tell you, there is no shortage of things that made me stop and go "OH MY YES!" this week, Ziggurat 2! Which I didn't even know was in development, but here it is, in the eShop. And Also in my Switch specifically, because I wasted no time in buying an eShop card as soon as I saw it. Much like the original Ziggurat, it's a *real corking good* roguelite wizardy-FPS, like someone made a Heretic randomizer, but this time it's a whole bunch of relatively short dungeons, instead of one gargantuan one, and each playable character actually feels different instead of just having one single differentiation between them. Run through dungeons and explode every damn carrot man and gerblin inside and then die and do it again with a new dungeon because THAT'S ROGUELITE, BABY!
Death End re;Quest 2 is another Idea Factory JRPG! This one has a horror element to it where you've got a haunted town to escape, even though the first one was about someone who got Tronned and had to break out of a rapidly degrading video world. Which I feel is kind of a step down in terms of interesting premise, but hey, that's Video Games for you.
Next we've got Point and Click Adventure Games! SO MANY OF THEM! Like, just a bananas number of point and clickers. Aiming at tiny babies too little to understand the perils of any kind of mansion, and the Maniacs who may live within them, we've got re-releases of Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When it's Dark Outside and Pajama Sam: Thunder and Lightning aren't so Frightening, Putt Putt Saves the Zoo and Spy Fox: Dry Cereal. All of which I understand to be in the upper tier of Adventure Games for Wee Peeps. Also I've never been sure if "Dry Cereal" was supposed to be a pun or what, always felt awkward for a title. And skewing a bit older, we have Backbone, which is a gritty murdery noire detective story where everyone is varmints and also British Columbian and full of Sartre's existential philosophy. If you want your emotions-heavy adventure games to skew a bit farther away from "Grim Sad Raccoons", we have Welcome to Elk which is half Weird Town full of People to Talk To, and also half "No, really we interviewed people and you play out their life stories" and we also have Letters which is instead about taking control of a small child by hijacking her letters to a pen-pal (but in a charming way, not a bad way).
If you want more FANTASY HAPPENINGS in your adventure games, we've got About an Elf, which appears to be somewhere between a Tim and Eric sketch and Xavier Renegade Angel. I could not parse any-damn thing about it from the eShop, and also there's Pendula Swing, which is set in a jazz-punk monster kingdom where you're a dwarf lady what has to track down her stolen battle axe before Shenanigans befall, and also hang out with the ghost of your ex-wife, because apparently they split on amicable terms pre-humously.
Well, that was a whole lot of complicated games to try to puzzle through descriptions of, glad I don't have to do that again. So next we have... Oh God Dammit...
Sigh
...
So next we have Kingdom Hearts HD; 1.5+2.5 ReMix compiling Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, Chain of Memories (which I believe is a remake using the KH engine instead of the GBA version), Birth By Sleep and the remastered cinematics for Re:Coded and Kingdom Hearts: About 6 Months or So. And also
Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, which is a HD remaster of Dream Drop Distance, a movie thatexplains the backstory that none of the other games felt worth commenting on and a l'il mini nugget of a game that is 0.2: Birth by Sleep AND FINALLY, Kingdom Hearts III + Re mind, which is a relatively straightforward Kingdom Hearts 3 and also its DLC. These three are also available in a bundle, if you feel like saving a bit of scratch, but also all three are Cloud Exclusive games, which makes sense for KH3, since the Switch is not up to the task of handling that game, but feels unnecessary for KH 1 and 2.
Anyway... go meet your friends from Final Fantasy and Disney and use that friendship to beat up a bunch of Norts who want All Teens to Be Moody.
Okay, the rest of this weeks thread is relatively easy going; commencing with the thing that was formerly the game I was most excited for this week, before Ziggurat 2 came out and complicated that competition; Egglia Rebirth, an SRPG from some of the same peoples what made Legend of Mana. And it looks like Legend of Mana. To an almost litigious degree. It originated as an FTP mobile game, but then it got re-squiggled to ease out the FTP aspects in favor of feeling more like a Fee To Play game, and Rebirth squiggles things up farther, which will hopefully just make it a To Play game.
Anyway, rebuild a buggered up fantasy kingdom one territory at a time, and then wander into newly manifested areas and solve everyones problems with the power of incredible violence.
Are you excited for The Big Game on Sunday? Of course you are; media tells me that everyone is. Well if you're too darn impatient to wait until until the wekeend when the Puppy Bowls only real competition is airing, or if you wanted to pretend to be one of those wonderful running boys yourself, may I instead introduce you to Americas New Favorite Pasttime; Retrobowl, which appears to be for all the peeps who had fond memories of Tecmo Bowl and said "I want to play that but I don't want to blow into an NES cartridge a bunch." Like Johnny Mads always said; "Football is one of the Ones Where You Shouldn't Bounce the Ball"
Next up is Castle Morihisa, which appears to be Slay the Spire, but with the subtle difference that nobody involved with Slay the Spire was consulted with the creation of this game. And if you look carefully, you'll notice that nothing of the plot indicates that there's a spire that requires slaying.
Oceans Heart looks to be just as clearly inspired by an extant video game I already love, HOWEVER, I'm not immediately dismissive of it in this case; because it looks like Zelda, and I've gone on record as saying "Zelda? More like... HELL YEAH-da". I may have never said that before in my life, however its a sentiment I aspire to embody to the best of my ability, every day.
Anyway, you're a gal with a sword, and a monster infested puzzle-island and a desire to use one (a sword) to address the problems presented by the other (monster island).
And speaking still of Games What Look Like Games I've Already Said I Enjoy, Often and Loudly, Rise of the Third Power is one, and it looks like Octopath Traveller. And also that title coupled with the fact that the eShop description says it's "loosely based on the political climate of Europe in the 1930s" makes it pretttttty clear what historical events its inspired by.
Hopefully it's... not in favor of those events.
If you're hankerin' for some Old Timey Games that aren't actually new games trying to trick you LIKE A DAMN LIAR, we have Valis: Fantasm Soldier Collection, which is a bit of a misnomer as it's only three Valis games out of... so many. And it was one of those games where different ports of the same game were drastically different. In this case, I *believe* it's the PC-Engine ports of Valis 1-3, all of which received new English localizations, so it's a pretty extensive, but hardly comprehensive compilation.
Anyway, don your sparkleiest metal bikini and administer SWORD to MONSTER until every monster has been sufficiently bifurcated, and enjoy cutscenes by the truckload!
Noel the Mortal Fate is another Older Game Localized for the First Time (but this time it's from, like 2016, and it just looks like an SNES game), and it also begat comics and novels and the like, because peeps just love that Noel and all the fatal mortals she meets. It's specifically set between seasons 1 and 7 of the... whole... thing, if that's a deal breaker for you Noel and the Mortal Fate fans out there.
All I know about this whole franchise is that it has a cool looking crow guy as one of the protagonists.
One more Old Game Re-release is Powerslave Exhumed, an FPS from the golden age of Doom-clones and which, to my knowledge, has nothing at all to do with Iron Maiden. I guess the monster on the cover kiiiiiiiiinda looks like Eddie, if he were a dragon instead of a crypt-keeper. Visit scenic Ancient Karnak, and explode EVERY ALIEN (which are uniformly, like, mummies and scarabs and anubises and the like) using all the BFGs you can carry.
Okay, now you'd think that would be enough for one weeks thread, but there's a Direct scheduled for tomorrow so it's actually not enough.
And if you're curious, that full coffee disappeared midway through the Kingdom Hearts write-up
