Woah, did you see that cat?
Partying in through your front door like a guy made of Disco this week is Long Gone Days, and BOY, was that an inaccurate introductory statement this week. This here is an RPG about a guy conscripted into a clandestine military force who, a little late in the game, realizes "Oh, wait... this sucks actually. I don't enjoy any part of this?". It's much more First Blood Part 1 than Rambo 2, but also just the parts where Rambo is Very Sad.
Speaking of RPGs with unconventional narrative conceits, next up is Terra Alia, which swings real hard in the opposite direction of traumas of war, as this is basically Duolingo with Puzzle Solving and Wizard Combat! You've got to track down a missing WIZARD SCHOOL teacher, but with the slight handicap that you do not speak the local language, let alone speak it well enough to use any magic to bust up monsters with; so you've got to get yourself some ESL classes to learn to speak with people and then get busy WRECKING HOUSE on munsters.
This is... one of the coolest concepts for a video game I think I've ever heard?
Astebros is a fair bit less innovative, but that's by design as it's a 16-bit throwback platformer where you've got randomized dungeons to traipse through with one of three kinds of peeps. It's a spinoff of Demosn of Asteborg, as the title and similar aesthetic kind of implies, but that wasn't a super well known game so me mentioning it might not move the needle on whether or not you're interested.
But what MIGHT is that it looks kind of like if someone smushed Castlevania and Cadash into a blender!
Another thing that looks like something old is River City: Rival Showdown, which is partly because it uses the tried and true River City art style AND ALSO because it's a gussied up remake of the 3DS game River City Rival Showdown whichw as, itself, a MUCH MORE gussied up remake of the original River City Ransom; this time with a much greater focus on exploring an open world, and a greater need to not spend overly too much time on exploring it since you have a strict 3-day time limit to figure out what the trouble (that's right, trouble, with a Capital T) is in River City, and then solve it through a judicious application of blunt force trauma in one side of their face and out the other.
Track down the Frat Boyz and beat them until you see pavement through their sternum! That'll teach 'em to be in a gang!
But that ain't all in terms of Old Video Game Remade For Modern Audiences; we can find a game that's even older and made even gussier; Haunted House is a remake of the Atari 2600 game of the same name! But now brought up to... I dunno, Xbox 360 level? As in the original, you've got a spooky mansion chock-a-block with THE SPOOKY UNDEAD and this time everything is randomized each time you play because *that's roguelite, baby!" and also the visuals are vastly less abstract because it's not built on 1970s hardware no more.
Rounding out Gussied up re-releases of Old Games (this time; far more recent and far less dramatically changed visually) is Dementium: The Ward, a remake of the DS game that said "Well, what if Silent Hill was a First Person Shooter, and also on a platform that really wasn't build for first person shooters!"
Which, for the record, did work *way* better than you'd expect; I know that statement sounded factitious, but it was one of those "How the heck did they do THIS? On This platform?!?!" kind of deals.
Anyway, this looks to be... just the original game, fuzzy pixels and all, but on an actual console that can play an FPS comfortably. It looks Pretty Heckin' Rad.
And heck, why not one more, but this time it's not a Brand New Game built out of the design concepts of an old game; it's a BRAND NEW GAME for a BRAND OLD console; Traumatorium, a roguey dungeon crawler based on Fighting Fantasy and designed for the Gameboy (there's a physical cart and everything, but I presume that's more than the four dollar asking price in the eShop)! Read some words *like a champ* as you go into dungeons and pound the bajeepers out of a monster army as you try to kill enough monsters that "Too Many Monsters" ceases to be a pressing concern!
Salt Sea Chronicles is a yammer-heavy adventure game where you're a bunch of the Non-Kevin Costner people from Water World trying to track down a peep what dunn got kidnapped while also dealing with the troubles that come from being on a Water World; like pirates and managing the crew in such a way as nobody else gets killed. Also some conpiracy uncovering; why not!
Not like you have anything else to be Chronicling on this Salty Sea!
And backing up the rear we have The Grinch: Christmas Adventure, which I mainly mention because... umm...
Y'all... y'all could have taken another gander at the calendar for when this one was scheduled to come out.
I'm not saying there isn't a worse time to release a video game adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but I AM saying that Halloween is Grinch Night.
Partying in through your front door like a guy made of Disco this week is Long Gone Days, and BOY, was that an inaccurate introductory statement this week. This here is an RPG about a guy conscripted into a clandestine military force who, a little late in the game, realizes "Oh, wait... this sucks actually. I don't enjoy any part of this?". It's much more First Blood Part 1 than Rambo 2, but also just the parts where Rambo is Very Sad.
Speaking of RPGs with unconventional narrative conceits, next up is Terra Alia, which swings real hard in the opposite direction of traumas of war, as this is basically Duolingo with Puzzle Solving and Wizard Combat! You've got to track down a missing WIZARD SCHOOL teacher, but with the slight handicap that you do not speak the local language, let alone speak it well enough to use any magic to bust up monsters with; so you've got to get yourself some ESL classes to learn to speak with people and then get busy WRECKING HOUSE on munsters.
This is... one of the coolest concepts for a video game I think I've ever heard?
Astebros is a fair bit less innovative, but that's by design as it's a 16-bit throwback platformer where you've got randomized dungeons to traipse through with one of three kinds of peeps. It's a spinoff of Demosn of Asteborg, as the title and similar aesthetic kind of implies, but that wasn't a super well known game so me mentioning it might not move the needle on whether or not you're interested.
But what MIGHT is that it looks kind of like if someone smushed Castlevania and Cadash into a blender!
Another thing that looks like something old is River City: Rival Showdown, which is partly because it uses the tried and true River City art style AND ALSO because it's a gussied up remake of the 3DS game River City Rival Showdown whichw as, itself, a MUCH MORE gussied up remake of the original River City Ransom; this time with a much greater focus on exploring an open world, and a greater need to not spend overly too much time on exploring it since you have a strict 3-day time limit to figure out what the trouble (that's right, trouble, with a Capital T) is in River City, and then solve it through a judicious application of blunt force trauma in one side of their face and out the other.
Track down the Frat Boyz and beat them until you see pavement through their sternum! That'll teach 'em to be in a gang!
But that ain't all in terms of Old Video Game Remade For Modern Audiences; we can find a game that's even older and made even gussier; Haunted House is a remake of the Atari 2600 game of the same name! But now brought up to... I dunno, Xbox 360 level? As in the original, you've got a spooky mansion chock-a-block with THE SPOOKY UNDEAD and this time everything is randomized each time you play because *that's roguelite, baby!" and also the visuals are vastly less abstract because it's not built on 1970s hardware no more.
Rounding out Gussied up re-releases of Old Games (this time; far more recent and far less dramatically changed visually) is Dementium: The Ward, a remake of the DS game that said "Well, what if Silent Hill was a First Person Shooter, and also on a platform that really wasn't build for first person shooters!"
Which, for the record, did work *way* better than you'd expect; I know that statement sounded factitious, but it was one of those "How the heck did they do THIS? On This platform?!?!" kind of deals.
Anyway, this looks to be... just the original game, fuzzy pixels and all, but on an actual console that can play an FPS comfortably. It looks Pretty Heckin' Rad.
And heck, why not one more, but this time it's not a Brand New Game built out of the design concepts of an old game; it's a BRAND NEW GAME for a BRAND OLD console; Traumatorium, a roguey dungeon crawler based on Fighting Fantasy and designed for the Gameboy (there's a physical cart and everything, but I presume that's more than the four dollar asking price in the eShop)! Read some words *like a champ* as you go into dungeons and pound the bajeepers out of a monster army as you try to kill enough monsters that "Too Many Monsters" ceases to be a pressing concern!
Salt Sea Chronicles is a yammer-heavy adventure game where you're a bunch of the Non-Kevin Costner people from Water World trying to track down a peep what dunn got kidnapped while also dealing with the troubles that come from being on a Water World; like pirates and managing the crew in such a way as nobody else gets killed. Also some conpiracy uncovering; why not!
Not like you have anything else to be Chronicling on this Salty Sea!
And backing up the rear we have The Grinch: Christmas Adventure, which I mainly mention because... umm...
Y'all... y'all could have taken another gander at the calendar for when this one was scheduled to come out.
I'm not saying there isn't a worse time to release a video game adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but I AM saying that Halloween is Grinch Night.
