Just being on vacation is no reason to shirk my video game chores. Also, typing this on my iPad, so it’s safe to say we’ll be enjoying some spelling and formatting errors with this one.
So we’re kicking things off this week with the latest Switch 1 game to get a Switch 2 upgrade, Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Switch 2 Edition! Besides giving this one the expected resolution and frame rate boost, there’s new side quests for new recruitable Blades and new (considerably nicer) outfits for Pyra and Mythra as well as a new minigame.
You’re a scuba diver who accidentally found a sentient weapon of mass destruction and now has to deal with a resultant whole kerfuffle
Speaking of greatly gussied up re-releases of games that came out nearly a decade ago (…that doesn’t sound right…) we have Blue Reflection Quartet, which is a… pretty darn robust variety of titles, Blue Reflection and Second Light are two Persona-y RPGs about magical girls having all kinds of emotions and relationships while sometimes turning into magical girls to fight cyber dragons in Astro-dungeons. Ray is a condensed version of the anime adaptation that uses in game graphics, Machinama style and a remake of the mobile game that uses the game engine from Second Light.
So if you’ve ever been curious about yammering-heavy RPGs about teens who have Big Feelings and discovering that the bonds of friendship are even stronger than the laser of a giant cyber-dragon, then *hoo nelly*, you’re eating well this week.
Conversely, if you’re like me and the idea of RPGs with entirely too much yammering is anathema, good news, because we’ve got the best kind of Counter Programming this week! Dungeon Antiquia, is an NES-y throwback RPG with a plot no more complicated than “Here’s a dungeon, perhaps you’d like to crawl through it”. It looks like a combination of Final Fantasy 1 and Wizardry, and it’s from the same publisher (if not developer) as Crescent Tower, which I adored for much that same reason, so I feel pretty confident about it being the game I’m most jazzed for this week.
Now, if you played Hotline Miami and thought “this is fine, but I wish that besides having animal masks, I wish these guys had an animal-rest-of-their-body too” and, while we’re at it I also would prefer not to get motion sickness from playing it” well GOOD NEWS, we’ve got Kusan: City of Wolves! It’s a Hotline Miami-em-up set in a varmint filled Cybercity in the year “Violence”. It kind of looks like they saw the video for Magnum Bullets and said “Well, let’s just make a video game out of that”
Speaking of games that resemble inspire darlings, we have Constance which the trailer leads me to associate with Hollow Knight. But instead of a bug with a needle, you’re a gal with a paint brush. And the world is decayed and dying because it’s a projection of your mental state because she’s got a brain full of problems.
Luckily, this is a video game so the path to mental health is “go into your subconscious and beat it up with the power of violence”.
And finally, what better way to run a country than with the unceasing, pitiless gaze of an omniscient monarch with micromanagement issues? None, I bet, and that’s good because we’re wrapping things up with The King is Watching! An RTS where you’re the monarch of a kingdom of slackers, where nothing actually happens to develop your town *until* you turn your eyes on it.
OKAY, GO TO BED
So we’re kicking things off this week with the latest Switch 1 game to get a Switch 2 upgrade, Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Switch 2 Edition! Besides giving this one the expected resolution and frame rate boost, there’s new side quests for new recruitable Blades and new (considerably nicer) outfits for Pyra and Mythra as well as a new minigame.
You’re a scuba diver who accidentally found a sentient weapon of mass destruction and now has to deal with a resultant whole kerfuffle
Speaking of greatly gussied up re-releases of games that came out nearly a decade ago (…that doesn’t sound right…) we have Blue Reflection Quartet, which is a… pretty darn robust variety of titles, Blue Reflection and Second Light are two Persona-y RPGs about magical girls having all kinds of emotions and relationships while sometimes turning into magical girls to fight cyber dragons in Astro-dungeons. Ray is a condensed version of the anime adaptation that uses in game graphics, Machinama style and a remake of the mobile game that uses the game engine from Second Light.
So if you’ve ever been curious about yammering-heavy RPGs about teens who have Big Feelings and discovering that the bonds of friendship are even stronger than the laser of a giant cyber-dragon, then *hoo nelly*, you’re eating well this week.
Conversely, if you’re like me and the idea of RPGs with entirely too much yammering is anathema, good news, because we’ve got the best kind of Counter Programming this week! Dungeon Antiquia, is an NES-y throwback RPG with a plot no more complicated than “Here’s a dungeon, perhaps you’d like to crawl through it”. It looks like a combination of Final Fantasy 1 and Wizardry, and it’s from the same publisher (if not developer) as Crescent Tower, which I adored for much that same reason, so I feel pretty confident about it being the game I’m most jazzed for this week.
Now, if you played Hotline Miami and thought “this is fine, but I wish that besides having animal masks, I wish these guys had an animal-rest-of-their-body too” and, while we’re at it I also would prefer not to get motion sickness from playing it” well GOOD NEWS, we’ve got Kusan: City of Wolves! It’s a Hotline Miami-em-up set in a varmint filled Cybercity in the year “Violence”. It kind of looks like they saw the video for Magnum Bullets and said “Well, let’s just make a video game out of that”
Speaking of games that resemble inspire darlings, we have Constance which the trailer leads me to associate with Hollow Knight. But instead of a bug with a needle, you’re a gal with a paint brush. And the world is decayed and dying because it’s a projection of your mental state because she’s got a brain full of problems.
Luckily, this is a video game so the path to mental health is “go into your subconscious and beat it up with the power of violence”.
And finally, what better way to run a country than with the unceasing, pitiless gaze of an omniscient monarch with micromanagement issues? None, I bet, and that’s good because we’re wrapping things up with The King is Watching! An RTS where you’re the monarch of a kingdom of slackers, where nothing actually happens to develop your town *until* you turn your eyes on it.
OKAY, GO TO BED
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