What's the correct way to eat a candle? Big bites, like an apple, or nibbling on the side type-writer style like with corn on the cob?
Speaking personally, I feel like it's best to kick off this weeks thread with The Spirit and the Mouse, on the grounds that it is the first game I am aware of being released this week in the New Release tab of the eShop. It's a walky-based adventure-em-up about an electric mouse what has a whole quaint French village to restore power to. It possess no similarities to any other electric mouse games you may be thinking of. It does, in fact, look super rad, way moreso than the eShop description lead me to believe. Stickin' this guy in the wishlist, I am.
And speaking of delightful adventure games starring a varmint, we also have one of the front-runners for being my Game of the Year, finally on the Switch where it truly belongs; Tunic! Which is OG Legend of Zelda, except made with Polygons instead of pixels, and with a localization that is a made-up fantasy language instead of having to adhere to the technical limitations of an NES game in 1986. Also a lot of the games macguffins are just torn out pages of the games instruction manual and *that's about all I'm gonna say about that*.
It's also been compared to Dark Souls, but that's mainly because you can somersault in it, and can retrieve your lost money if you can catch up to your corpse when you die.
Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero is the latest entry in a series I've been both assured is very good, and which would be anathema to me; as they are pretty slow paced and *VERY* yammer-heavy RPGs. This one I assumed wouldn't be because its an RPG with a much more... I'unno... Upscaled PS1-y visual style and most of the screenshots in the eShop were Monster Fightin' and town explorin', but I've been told that, nope, it's just as Yammer-dense as the rest. So... if you are in the market for a Yammerin' heavy RPG that kind of looks like an upscaled PS1 game which I am assured is very good, and/or already like the Trails of Cold Steel series, this one is for you.
I'll just be sitting in the cold, looking in, humming "Somewhere, out there" under my breath.
Moonscars is a Troids-em-up starring a lady what be made of mud and sticks and stuff who would like to figure out what, exactly, is up with that. And, naturally, the answer is somewhere near the top of a monster-infested castle. I got some real Blasphemous vibes from it, but with less Hieronymous Bosch-y visuals.
On the opposite side of the aesthetic spectrum, we have Touhou Shoujo Tale of Beautiful Memories: Super Touhou RPG, which is one of the rare Touhou games that is in a genre I like playing (in this case, RPG) and moreover, is clearly inspired by one of my favorite games in that genre (in this case, Super Mario RPG, as the title subtly implies). I don't know a dang thing about the Touhou characters, except that they generally dislike one another and express this fact by doing lasers and karate at one another and... this is that, except Super Mario RPGier.
Picross S8 is a new Picross game on the Switch.
Moving on.
Moon Dancer is a Shmuppy type game, which I am shining a light on as it looks very much like a demake of Rayforce/Layer Section/Galactic Attack, just based on TG-16 hardware instead of Sega Saturn. And I've gone on record as saying that particular series is among my favorite of the Shmuppy genre, so this had me go all "Oooooh".
True story. That really happened!
Dropsy is next and it's... not surprising to learn it's a Devolver published game. It's a Point and Clcky adventure game where you play as a Pennywise, exploring an idyllic small town and... being super nice to everyone, despite the fact that you are a nightmarish clown-monster with a skull for a head. It's also pretty open-ended for an adventure game, letting you wander through the town making everyones days a little brighter at the pace you want, while also, again, being a nightmarish clownmonster.
Next up is Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris, which, like many of the other games based on Sword Art Online, is a video game based on Sword Art Online. And there's a lot more of them than you'd think as the premise of this series is "Yo, this video game will literally kill you, and everyone who plays it now has deep-seated PTSD as a result (I have seen, like, three episodes of the original anime and that was the plot of two of them). That being said, the video games based on the cartoon about a video game have been, on average, pretty solid. And they will *not* result in your IRL brain getting incinerated if you lose all your HP.
Which really should be a selling point in most video games; I just need to have that confirmed sometimes so I can enjoy myself, y'know?
And bringing up the rear is Airohearts, which also looks a lot like The Legend of Zelda. And normally, that's enough to make me go "Oh, okay!" but this is a week with flippin' Tunic in it, and if you're coming at the king, you best not miss.
Well, that's all you're getting out of me.
Speaking personally, I feel like it's best to kick off this weeks thread with The Spirit and the Mouse, on the grounds that it is the first game I am aware of being released this week in the New Release tab of the eShop. It's a walky-based adventure-em-up about an electric mouse what has a whole quaint French village to restore power to. It possess no similarities to any other electric mouse games you may be thinking of. It does, in fact, look super rad, way moreso than the eShop description lead me to believe. Stickin' this guy in the wishlist, I am.
And speaking of delightful adventure games starring a varmint, we also have one of the front-runners for being my Game of the Year, finally on the Switch where it truly belongs; Tunic! Which is OG Legend of Zelda, except made with Polygons instead of pixels, and with a localization that is a made-up fantasy language instead of having to adhere to the technical limitations of an NES game in 1986. Also a lot of the games macguffins are just torn out pages of the games instruction manual and *that's about all I'm gonna say about that*.
It's also been compared to Dark Souls, but that's mainly because you can somersault in it, and can retrieve your lost money if you can catch up to your corpse when you die.
Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero is the latest entry in a series I've been both assured is very good, and which would be anathema to me; as they are pretty slow paced and *VERY* yammer-heavy RPGs. This one I assumed wouldn't be because its an RPG with a much more... I'unno... Upscaled PS1-y visual style and most of the screenshots in the eShop were Monster Fightin' and town explorin', but I've been told that, nope, it's just as Yammer-dense as the rest. So... if you are in the market for a Yammerin' heavy RPG that kind of looks like an upscaled PS1 game which I am assured is very good, and/or already like the Trails of Cold Steel series, this one is for you.
I'll just be sitting in the cold, looking in, humming "Somewhere, out there" under my breath.
Moonscars is a Troids-em-up starring a lady what be made of mud and sticks and stuff who would like to figure out what, exactly, is up with that. And, naturally, the answer is somewhere near the top of a monster-infested castle. I got some real Blasphemous vibes from it, but with less Hieronymous Bosch-y visuals.
On the opposite side of the aesthetic spectrum, we have Touhou Shoujo Tale of Beautiful Memories: Super Touhou RPG, which is one of the rare Touhou games that is in a genre I like playing (in this case, RPG) and moreover, is clearly inspired by one of my favorite games in that genre (in this case, Super Mario RPG, as the title subtly implies). I don't know a dang thing about the Touhou characters, except that they generally dislike one another and express this fact by doing lasers and karate at one another and... this is that, except Super Mario RPGier.
Picross S8 is a new Picross game on the Switch.
Moving on.
Moon Dancer is a Shmuppy type game, which I am shining a light on as it looks very much like a demake of Rayforce/Layer Section/Galactic Attack, just based on TG-16 hardware instead of Sega Saturn. And I've gone on record as saying that particular series is among my favorite of the Shmuppy genre, so this had me go all "Oooooh".
True story. That really happened!
Dropsy is next and it's... not surprising to learn it's a Devolver published game. It's a Point and Clcky adventure game where you play as a Pennywise, exploring an idyllic small town and... being super nice to everyone, despite the fact that you are a nightmarish clown-monster with a skull for a head. It's also pretty open-ended for an adventure game, letting you wander through the town making everyones days a little brighter at the pace you want, while also, again, being a nightmarish clownmonster.
Next up is Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris, which, like many of the other games based on Sword Art Online, is a video game based on Sword Art Online. And there's a lot more of them than you'd think as the premise of this series is "Yo, this video game will literally kill you, and everyone who plays it now has deep-seated PTSD as a result (I have seen, like, three episodes of the original anime and that was the plot of two of them). That being said, the video games based on the cartoon about a video game have been, on average, pretty solid. And they will *not* result in your IRL brain getting incinerated if you lose all your HP.
Which really should be a selling point in most video games; I just need to have that confirmed sometimes so I can enjoy myself, y'know?
And bringing up the rear is Airohearts, which also looks a lot like The Legend of Zelda. And normally, that's enough to make me go "Oh, okay!" but this is a week with flippin' Tunic in it, and if you're coming at the king, you best not miss.
Well, that's all you're getting out of me.
