Friday! Video games! Let’s talk!
I’m still spending at least half of my day tucked away in the office while taking care of the recovering kitty, so there’s plenty of gaming to be had. Thankfully, this is her last weekend before she gets her stitches out and can freely roam the house again. My ass is so sore from sitting on the floor. I can’t wait.
Anyway, video games.
Yesterday was a pretty meaty Nintendo Direct, which I’d rather get into with a deeper dive article later on. Lots of stuff to look forward to.
This week I managed to knock out reviews for the absurd 2D platformer MEMBRANE, the equally buggy and cryptic first-person narrative adventure NORTH (two games stylized with all caps!), the abysmal long-awaited revival of Fear Effect, and the excellent Switch port of the nearly five-year-old horror title Outlast and its stellar Whistleblower chapter. It’s been a busy week, for sure.
On deck, I have Switch reviews incoming for the JRPG-inspired Earthlock, Peter Molyneux’s studio’s mobile-to-PC-to-Switch port of the beloved The Trail: Frontier Challenge, and some weird Japanese title I know very little about called WorldNeverland: Elnea Kingdom — yes, there’s no space there. I also have to finish up Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf, but I’m not feeling it. It’s half storybook, where you read some very well-written narrative pieces, and half turn-based combat. The combat is the part I don’t like. The game buries you under every single combat tutorial in the first battle, which lasts all of two turns. I learned absolutely nothing and I’m struggling to remain more interested than frustrated.
I typically juggle a personal game along with my reviews, but nothing has been holding my attention. I jumped into the visual novel *slash* magical basketball world of Pyre and while I dug the art style, music, and the aforementioned novel aspect, I didn’t care for the actual game parts. After that, I hopped into a magical girl RPG on PS4 that I got for Christmas called Blue Reflection. It wasn’t bad, really, but I just wasn’t in the mood for an overly verbose, generic JRPG about high school drama.
I had a $15 Best Buy coupon coming up to expire and I saw they dropped both Utawarerumono games down to $23.99, so I snagged both. They (being Atlus JRPGs) arrived yesterday so I may check out Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception this evening. They’re both visual novel/strategy RPG hybrids that I’ve heard good things about, so here’s hoping Mask of Deception sticks. If not, I’m sure I’ll figure something out.
With so many games announced for the Switch that I want to play, plus the upcoming God of War, Detroit: Become Human, and Spider-man on PS4, my plate is pretty full for the rest of the year. I’ve slammed on the breaks once again and stopped accepting review keys, so my goal is to finish what I have left and start working my way through the last few games I bought (both Utawarerumono titles and Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology).
What about you, folks? Have any gaming plans this weekend?
Cheap Boss Attack 
I plan on finishing up Lion’s Song, catching up with the rest of the world on the Batman: Arkham Series and, if you count board gaming, I’m going to a party based entirely around that concept tomorrow.
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Nice! Gaming is gaming, right?
I got into the Arkham series pretty late, but I really liked Asylum and Knight. Still have yet to finish City. How far have you gotten in them?
Not sure I’ve heard of Lion’s Song.
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I just started Asylum. There was an issue, so I had to take a break from Batman games for awhile. The Lion’s Song is an indie interactive historical fiction story game you can buy off of steam.
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Historical fiction and narrative games in general have my attention. I’ll give it a look!
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Either I’ll play more of the Fortnite campaign, or restart the campaign of XCOM, but most likely I’ll play more of The Division again. Decisions.
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I saw Division 2 was confirmed and Niad and I haven’t even installed our copies of the first game. Has me wondering if we should just sell them and wait for the sequel.
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If you haven’t opened them maybe return them but give the game a go through otherwise. The campaign isn’t great yet still good but there is a lot of side stuff to fill in story parts
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Time for a few short ones before starting the next big one. Dusted off the Xbone just to finally play Halo Wars 2. They entirely changed the OS layout yet again. I don’t know why they keep doing that…
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I couldn’t get into Halo Wars. I feel like I’m too dumb for RTS games lol.
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It’s pretty simple for an RTS, it just seems worse than it is because of having to play it on a controller. You just can’t do effective micromanagement at high speeds in a game like this with a controller. Luckily you can win with mostly brute force.
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Well Another Splatfest is going on, so after working I’ll try to get in some more time with Splatoon 2. If possible I’d like to stream Ion Maiden again. It’s an upcoming game from 3D Realms in Early Access. What’s interesting about it is they tweaked their Build Engine for modern computers, and are making the entire game through it. So it’s being made with the same tools they used to give us Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Shadow Warrior. So far it’s cool, but I ran into performance issues. If they’ve improved it I’m going to try to stream it again because the early build is pretty cool so far.
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I saw Giant Bomb play Ion Maiden and it looked pretty rad! Enjoy the Splatfest!
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