This holiday season, please try to avoid being bitten in half by a shark.
So we've got a gigantic thread list this week, so let's put our best foot forward with one of the games I'm most jazzed for as a matter of course; Marvel: Cosmic Invasion, the follow up to Tributes earlier, exceptional, Shredders Revenge. This time looking to make as good of a follow-up to Konamis X-Men game as Shredders Revenge was to the TMNT games. It's a beat-em-up loosely based around Marvels 2006s crossover storyline Annihilation, and with a playable roster that includes a Lunatic Gun Varmint, Foul Mouthed Hell-Skeleton, Cool Astro Sword Lesbian, MUSCLE LADY and Beta Ray Bill.
It is scientifically impossible to make a video game that appeals to me more than that.
Me? I'm going to tear Annihilus inside out and SAVE THE DAMN UNIVERSE. What are *you* doing?
Speaking of bringing peace to the galaxy by unleashing incredibly violence upon every weird bug creature inside it, we've got the other BIG DOG, HOO NELLY release this week; the long, long *long* awaited, frequently delayed, and I had assumed "quietly cancelled" Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is actually out this week! It's been... nearly 20 years, and three Console Generations since Prime 3 and I am consequently *fairly excited*, but it's also December so I'm not going to be able to do anything but sit here and stare at it for another three weeks. I've waited this long, I can wait a bit longer.
Anyway, it's a Metroid game, so Samus finds herself alone on a hostile alien planet, alongside the remnants of a long lost alien race to upgrade her ability to fight and explore and probably is going to wind up blowing the planet to smithereens at some point. But this time she has a cool bike!
Now if you're in the mood for a sprawling adventure game but you think "Old" is a better setting than "Future", but you still want *some* science fiction nonsense, you know, as a treat. Well, good news because the Switch also got Assassins Creed: Shadows, perhaps considered to be the second most highly regarded open world game set in Feudal Japan released this year, and the second most anticipated open world Ubisoft game ported to the Switch 2 this autumn.
That's... uh... all I know about this one. That and that a bunch of jabronis were up in arms about it for disregardable, stupid reasons.
Now if that sounds pretty good but your of the opinion that Cowboys are Cooler than Samurai, good news, because here's Red Dead Redemption: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, a gussied up port of the port of the original Red Dead Redemption, which the eShop helpfully points out was the predecessor to Red Dead Redemption 2. And I... didn't play any of the RDR games, but I know they're popular, and I'm *more* likely to play them than GTA.
Git yerself a bad case of the yee-haws and saddle up for some rootin, tootin' and a l'il bit of shootin'.
Keeping with the theme of sprawling open world adventures, but more of a turn based RPG, we've got Octopath Traveler 0, which is a vastly expanded and upgraded remake of the mobile game Octopath spinoff that I did not know existed. And now I need not bother rememebring it again since this one completely outmodes it. Procrastinating saves the day again!
This time the Octopath you Octo-walk is a bit more guided than usual since there's a single main guy you're Octotravelling with, instead of a team of A Bunch of Dorks you're dividing your attention between, and you've got a destroyed home town that needs rebuilding, and a continent spanning adventure to embark upon to get that job done. And, as usual, the game looks amazing and every boss fight is against a normal ass guy who looks normal sized on the map and is , like, three stories tall in battle.
Speaking of mobile game ports, we've got a WHOLE BUNCH of them, but luckily they're all safely contained in the same place courtesy of Simogo Legacy Collection which collects 7 of Simogos puzzle and platformer games for iOS and Android released between 2010 and 2015, including Kosmo Spin, Bumpy Road, Beat Sneak Bandit, Year Walk, Device 6, Sailors Dream and SPL-T.
I have no familiarity with any of those, but I think I've heard some praise heaped upon some of them; no idea which ones benefit from being playable with a real controller, and which are hindered by it, mind.
If that's not enough Weird Puzzle Game action for you, we've also got Viewfinder, which I at first thought was a Find the Hidden Picture game, since... that's what the title implied, but NOPE, it's a head scratchin' walky style puzz-em-up where the photos you take of the landscape with your Weird Camera can become physical objects that weird up the landscape; taking a picture of a door and implanting it in a wall to let you pass through it; it's like a combination of Portal and Duck Amuck
Brok: The Brawl Bar is the follow up to the earlier beat-em-up/point-and-click em up hybrid Brok the Investigator, but this time the adventure game elements have been removed in favor of mini-games. Most of which are, themselves, based around beating the absolute hell out of an army of burly critter-peeps. I can not say how the act of Burly Critter Beating holds up here compared to the aforementioned Shredders Revenge or Fight n' Rage, but it's nice to have options, I suppose.
Speaking of games that look enough like things I already love that I can say "Well.. here's another one, can't complain about that", we have Nightmare: The Lunatic, which appears to be Dead Cells, but with a hooded guy instead of a Heads on Fire guy.
And finally, we've not only got a gussied up re-release, but we've got one from Nightdive! Blood: Refreshed Supply is a gussied up remaster from the Best in Class when it comes to gussying up forgotten 90s FPSs. I've never played Blood before, but I've heard a lot of praise for it, and this version, besides Nightdives usual tremendous efforts of remastering the presentation to a ludicrous extreme and making sure to include all the DLC has two new campaign packs added to it as well.
Anyway, it's a Doom where you're a Gun Pilgrim in a Fantasy World and figure "Welp... best get to blastin' all these Video Monsters"
OKAY, GO TO BED
So we've got a gigantic thread list this week, so let's put our best foot forward with one of the games I'm most jazzed for as a matter of course; Marvel: Cosmic Invasion, the follow up to Tributes earlier, exceptional, Shredders Revenge. This time looking to make as good of a follow-up to Konamis X-Men game as Shredders Revenge was to the TMNT games. It's a beat-em-up loosely based around Marvels 2006s crossover storyline Annihilation, and with a playable roster that includes a Lunatic Gun Varmint, Foul Mouthed Hell-Skeleton, Cool Astro Sword Lesbian, MUSCLE LADY and Beta Ray Bill.
It is scientifically impossible to make a video game that appeals to me more than that.
Me? I'm going to tear Annihilus inside out and SAVE THE DAMN UNIVERSE. What are *you* doing?
Speaking of bringing peace to the galaxy by unleashing incredibly violence upon every weird bug creature inside it, we've got the other BIG DOG, HOO NELLY release this week; the long, long *long* awaited, frequently delayed, and I had assumed "quietly cancelled" Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is actually out this week! It's been... nearly 20 years, and three Console Generations since Prime 3 and I am consequently *fairly excited*, but it's also December so I'm not going to be able to do anything but sit here and stare at it for another three weeks. I've waited this long, I can wait a bit longer.
Anyway, it's a Metroid game, so Samus finds herself alone on a hostile alien planet, alongside the remnants of a long lost alien race to upgrade her ability to fight and explore and probably is going to wind up blowing the planet to smithereens at some point. But this time she has a cool bike!
Now if you're in the mood for a sprawling adventure game but you think "Old" is a better setting than "Future", but you still want *some* science fiction nonsense, you know, as a treat. Well, good news because the Switch also got Assassins Creed: Shadows, perhaps considered to be the second most highly regarded open world game set in Feudal Japan released this year, and the second most anticipated open world Ubisoft game ported to the Switch 2 this autumn.
That's... uh... all I know about this one. That and that a bunch of jabronis were up in arms about it for disregardable, stupid reasons.
Now if that sounds pretty good but your of the opinion that Cowboys are Cooler than Samurai, good news, because here's Red Dead Redemption: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, a gussied up port of the port of the original Red Dead Redemption, which the eShop helpfully points out was the predecessor to Red Dead Redemption 2. And I... didn't play any of the RDR games, but I know they're popular, and I'm *more* likely to play them than GTA.
Git yerself a bad case of the yee-haws and saddle up for some rootin, tootin' and a l'il bit of shootin'.
Keeping with the theme of sprawling open world adventures, but more of a turn based RPG, we've got Octopath Traveler 0, which is a vastly expanded and upgraded remake of the mobile game Octopath spinoff that I did not know existed. And now I need not bother rememebring it again since this one completely outmodes it. Procrastinating saves the day again!
This time the Octopath you Octo-walk is a bit more guided than usual since there's a single main guy you're Octotravelling with, instead of a team of A Bunch of Dorks you're dividing your attention between, and you've got a destroyed home town that needs rebuilding, and a continent spanning adventure to embark upon to get that job done. And, as usual, the game looks amazing and every boss fight is against a normal ass guy who looks normal sized on the map and is , like, three stories tall in battle.
Speaking of mobile game ports, we've got a WHOLE BUNCH of them, but luckily they're all safely contained in the same place courtesy of Simogo Legacy Collection which collects 7 of Simogos puzzle and platformer games for iOS and Android released between 2010 and 2015, including Kosmo Spin, Bumpy Road, Beat Sneak Bandit, Year Walk, Device 6, Sailors Dream and SPL-T.
I have no familiarity with any of those, but I think I've heard some praise heaped upon some of them; no idea which ones benefit from being playable with a real controller, and which are hindered by it, mind.
If that's not enough Weird Puzzle Game action for you, we've also got Viewfinder, which I at first thought was a Find the Hidden Picture game, since... that's what the title implied, but NOPE, it's a head scratchin' walky style puzz-em-up where the photos you take of the landscape with your Weird Camera can become physical objects that weird up the landscape; taking a picture of a door and implanting it in a wall to let you pass through it; it's like a combination of Portal and Duck Amuck
Brok: The Brawl Bar is the follow up to the earlier beat-em-up/point-and-click em up hybrid Brok the Investigator, but this time the adventure game elements have been removed in favor of mini-games. Most of which are, themselves, based around beating the absolute hell out of an army of burly critter-peeps. I can not say how the act of Burly Critter Beating holds up here compared to the aforementioned Shredders Revenge or Fight n' Rage, but it's nice to have options, I suppose.
Speaking of games that look enough like things I already love that I can say "Well.. here's another one, can't complain about that", we have Nightmare: The Lunatic, which appears to be Dead Cells, but with a hooded guy instead of a Heads on Fire guy.
And finally, we've not only got a gussied up re-release, but we've got one from Nightdive! Blood: Refreshed Supply is a gussied up remaster from the Best in Class when it comes to gussying up forgotten 90s FPSs. I've never played Blood before, but I've heard a lot of praise for it, and this version, besides Nightdives usual tremendous efforts of remastering the presentation to a ludicrous extreme and making sure to include all the DLC has two new campaign packs added to it as well.
Anyway, it's a Doom where you're a Gun Pilgrim in a Fantasy World and figure "Welp... best get to blastin' all these Video Monsters"
OKAY, GO TO BED
