Okay, there's a Direct that's airing in the middle of me writing this thread, so *for ocne* I feel like I won't be blindsided by a surprise release after the fact.
We're kicking off with not one, but two Deck Building Roguelites this week, and, both alphabetically and by release date, that emans kicking things off with Balatro, a video game that dares ask "what's the *most* you can cheat at Poker?" And, of course, the answer is "actually quite a lot, as it turns out". Its a game about changing up the rules and mechanics of how poker hands are calculated, and adding in some extra cards and just straight up playing House-rules Calvin-Ball with Texas Hold'em to try to get as high of a score as possible.
Based on second hand accounts, it's "Hella Great" and "The tops" and I don't think people would lie to me on the internet.
The very idea makes me shudder.
The other deckbuilding roguelite plays things much more safe, as Yohane the Parlehion: Numazu in the Mirage is straight up Slay the Spire. Except it's based on Love Live Sunshine, which I presume is an anime I haven't watched. Furthermore, it also has much higher fidelity visuals than Slay the Spire. I wouldn't say "better", because I love StSs aesthetics, but it's definitely much more Fancy Looking.
Anyway, it's got all the Slay the Spire stuff, but it's tied in to a media franchise I'm not familiar with and I consider StS to be the apex of the genre, so... I don't doubt it's amazin'.
Speaking of things that aren't strictly for me, and based on a franchise I'm, at best, ambivalent about, we have another League of Legends spinoff with Bandle Tale, which, in this case, takes the form of a Starman Farm Game, featuring little Smurf-guys that I infer to be a whole thing in LoL proper. You've got yourself a real knack for knittin' and use that talent to help the various very-narrow-focused Yordles in town with interpersonal problems as you rebuild the town after the last bunch of l'il weirdos dun broke up the village by merit of being Weird Scamps.
Explore scenic "Yordle VIllage" and fix it with the power... of YARN AND FRIENDSHIP!
Speaking of... umm... textiles (?) next is Inkulinati, which is not spelled "Inkluminati" no matter how much I want to keep typing that. It's a turn based strategy game where you command the weird little freaky animals and critters who medieval scribes slapped into the margins of ancient documents, like a Sergio Aragones comic written in the middle of toiling in serfdom.
Finally prove whether or not a small snail can defeat a rabbit with a trumpet for a bum!
Another strategy game full of weird goblins is Tenderfoot Tactics, but the Weird Goblins are the stars of the show in this one. It's an open-world SRPG where you've got a team of fully customizable Goblins on a quest to stop an environmental cataclysm by wielding elemental powers that... honestly... probably aren't helping matters any. But I guess an uncontrollable wildfire is easier to deal with than a supernatural murder-fog
And one of the surprise "Releasing LATER TODAY!" announcements from the Direct is Pennys Big Breakaway, from the same peeps as what made Sonic Mania, now taking a stab at doing a 3D Sonic Game, but... without an existing license attached to it. Nope, this is Sonic but with Original Characters! And with a yo-yo instead of a spindash.
It looks *pretty rad*, and Sonic Mania is exemplary, so I have high hopes for it!
Next we have an NSO update and it's entirely Rareware. So much so that at first I thought that Rare Replay was getting a port. Alas, we're not that lucky. But this collection is nothing to sneeze at: On the NES we have RC Pro Am (the surprisingly good early NES isometric racing game) and Snake Rattle and Roll (which is also isometric, and otherwise, very, very difficult to summarize in terms of gameplay), on the SNES we have Battletoads in Battlemaniacs (the remake/sequel to the original Battletoads that is technically much more friendly in terms of difficulty) and Killer Instinct (the fighting game that has a werewolf and a skeleton and a dinosaurman in it) and on the N64 Blast Corps (Which is the video game adaptation of Wages of Fear, except you see it and go "Hell yeah!")
And speaking of old video games, which we were, this week has another PC-98 release with EGG Console: Hydlide 3: THE SPACE MEMORIES, which is the third, and by all accounts, best, entry in the Hydlide series. Certainly the one with the best title of that series. I mena; it's no Brandish 2: The Planet buster, but there's no shame in a silver medal.
Anyway, it's a much more elaborate and robust experience than the original Hydlide, which more people are familiar with and has you contend with things like armor weight and job classes rather than whether you're focused on Hurting Bad Guys or Not Being Hurt By Bad Guys. And I suspect the lack of an English translation is less of a hindrance here than it was with Ys.
That's it!
We're kicking off with not one, but two Deck Building Roguelites this week, and, both alphabetically and by release date, that emans kicking things off with Balatro, a video game that dares ask "what's the *most* you can cheat at Poker?" And, of course, the answer is "actually quite a lot, as it turns out". Its a game about changing up the rules and mechanics of how poker hands are calculated, and adding in some extra cards and just straight up playing House-rules Calvin-Ball with Texas Hold'em to try to get as high of a score as possible.
Based on second hand accounts, it's "Hella Great" and "The tops" and I don't think people would lie to me on the internet.
The very idea makes me shudder.
The other deckbuilding roguelite plays things much more safe, as Yohane the Parlehion: Numazu in the Mirage is straight up Slay the Spire. Except it's based on Love Live Sunshine, which I presume is an anime I haven't watched. Furthermore, it also has much higher fidelity visuals than Slay the Spire. I wouldn't say "better", because I love StSs aesthetics, but it's definitely much more Fancy Looking.
Anyway, it's got all the Slay the Spire stuff, but it's tied in to a media franchise I'm not familiar with and I consider StS to be the apex of the genre, so... I don't doubt it's amazin'.
Speaking of things that aren't strictly for me, and based on a franchise I'm, at best, ambivalent about, we have another League of Legends spinoff with Bandle Tale, which, in this case, takes the form of a Starman Farm Game, featuring little Smurf-guys that I infer to be a whole thing in LoL proper. You've got yourself a real knack for knittin' and use that talent to help the various very-narrow-focused Yordles in town with interpersonal problems as you rebuild the town after the last bunch of l'il weirdos dun broke up the village by merit of being Weird Scamps.
Explore scenic "Yordle VIllage" and fix it with the power... of YARN AND FRIENDSHIP!
Speaking of... umm... textiles (?) next is Inkulinati, which is not spelled "Inkluminati" no matter how much I want to keep typing that. It's a turn based strategy game where you command the weird little freaky animals and critters who medieval scribes slapped into the margins of ancient documents, like a Sergio Aragones comic written in the middle of toiling in serfdom.
Finally prove whether or not a small snail can defeat a rabbit with a trumpet for a bum!
Another strategy game full of weird goblins is Tenderfoot Tactics, but the Weird Goblins are the stars of the show in this one. It's an open-world SRPG where you've got a team of fully customizable Goblins on a quest to stop an environmental cataclysm by wielding elemental powers that... honestly... probably aren't helping matters any. But I guess an uncontrollable wildfire is easier to deal with than a supernatural murder-fog
And one of the surprise "Releasing LATER TODAY!" announcements from the Direct is Pennys Big Breakaway, from the same peeps as what made Sonic Mania, now taking a stab at doing a 3D Sonic Game, but... without an existing license attached to it. Nope, this is Sonic but with Original Characters! And with a yo-yo instead of a spindash.
It looks *pretty rad*, and Sonic Mania is exemplary, so I have high hopes for it!
Next we have an NSO update and it's entirely Rareware. So much so that at first I thought that Rare Replay was getting a port. Alas, we're not that lucky. But this collection is nothing to sneeze at: On the NES we have RC Pro Am (the surprisingly good early NES isometric racing game) and Snake Rattle and Roll (which is also isometric, and otherwise, very, very difficult to summarize in terms of gameplay), on the SNES we have Battletoads in Battlemaniacs (the remake/sequel to the original Battletoads that is technically much more friendly in terms of difficulty) and Killer Instinct (the fighting game that has a werewolf and a skeleton and a dinosaurman in it) and on the N64 Blast Corps (Which is the video game adaptation of Wages of Fear, except you see it and go "Hell yeah!")
And speaking of old video games, which we were, this week has another PC-98 release with EGG Console: Hydlide 3: THE SPACE MEMORIES, which is the third, and by all accounts, best, entry in the Hydlide series. Certainly the one with the best title of that series. I mena; it's no Brandish 2: The Planet buster, but there's no shame in a silver medal.
Anyway, it's a much more elaborate and robust experience than the original Hydlide, which more people are familiar with and has you contend with things like armor weight and job classes rather than whether you're focused on Hurting Bad Guys or Not Being Hurt By Bad Guys. And I suspect the lack of an English translation is less of a hindrance here than it was with Ys.
That's it!
