Deliver Us The Moon: Because It’s There, Right?

Posted on February 19, 2020 by geelw

That’s going to be a hefty Amazon bill, but shipping might be free, at least if you use Prime.

I’ve yet to play KeokeN Interactive’s fantastic-looking Deliver Us The Moon, but it’s a title I’ve been following since about a year back when I stumbled upon it as a PC game. Now coming to consoles in April (PS4 and Xbox One) and Summer 2020 on Switch courtesy of publisher Wired Productions, this epic adventure game looks like the it’s right up my alley.

Well it’s also the closest I’ll get to leaving the planet anytime soon and going to the Moon, but one would guess at this point that any space travel is going to fall outside of the very, very wealthy or those interested in mostly scientific pursuits, as space isn’t for totally clueless people because of too many variables (such as “Hey! Let’s play in the airlock!”) preventing them from a successful trip there and back.

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Survey Says (Ding!): Gothic Remake Is a Go, Won’t Be Ready in 2020

Posted on February 19, 2020 by geelw

The people’s choice, indeed.

Well, 43,111 people participated in a little extensive survey THQ was taking and the verdict is in: We’re getting a Gothic remake at some point, just not this year. PC and next-gen consoles are the targets here, so it seems at least the game will have a very similar visual fidelity across anything it’s eventually released on.

If you have Google Drive, you can see and download the results of the survey here in PDF form (it’s a whopping 21 pages):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uNuvngHrTZ3AVpNEdoXS-E8rKlwVdhlX/view

Here’s the press release as well, below the jump.

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Sakura Wars: It’s About Time, Sega

Posted on February 18, 2020 by geelw

Boom time for Sega continues!

I think it was about 1998 when a friend visiting from Japan gave me his used copy of Sakura Wars as a gift after he found out I really liked strategy games and had made my way through a few Japanese games with a bit of effort and persistence. Well, I ended up picking up Sakura Wars 2 a few years later, but never played either game thanks to thinking Saturn games would all be successfully emulated and/or localized at some point and I wouldn’t need to learn any more Japanese other that what little I picked up from a few dictionaries and games over the years. Well, that and yes, I was a bit lazy to my great disadvantage (Or not that lazy, as I finished four Front Mission games, two FEDA games and a few other imports with not too much hassle). Anyway. with 2000+ games in the library here, I never got around to to playing either title.

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Persona 5 Royal/Persona 5 Scramble: Catching Up With a Beast Is Tough

Posted on February 14, 2020 by geelw

The gang’s all here, and then some…

I need more time!

At my ancient age, a new Persona game is something I look forward to with both a sense of awe and dread. Awe because the very expansive Megami Tensei and Shin Megami Tensei titles and their assorted spin-offs on a few platforms are one of the best and has been for decades, and dread because well, there’s so much to do in each game that it’s easy to lose track of time when playing them. The series is well known for some intensively lengthy games even back on the Famicom and Super Famicom systems up to today on the PS4, especially if you’re playing more than one game for just journalistic purposes. Heck, it took me almost three months to play Persona 4 way back on the PS2 and I’m here to report that I’ve been taking my time with the brilliant Persona 5 because of so many other games in my backlog to cover.

Well, that and the game is pretty and spectacularly dense in terms of depth and story and well, I bought it somewhat late (I think it was early last year when I made the plunge for a retail PS4 version). Even if I were to concentrate solely on the game, that’s about 60 or so hours without any shortcuts and that’s probably the basic story elements and a bit of leveling up for good measure.

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Let’s Go Gothic For A Bit, Shall We?

Posted on February 11, 2020 by geelw

Hmmmm. But I give it a thumbs up, with reservations…

I still have my boxed copies of Gothic and Gothic II here and got the non-Piranha Bytes developed Gothic 3 on a disc with two other games, so this news of a playable teaser got me thrilled the series is in a comeback mode of sorts. THQ released a demo of what their team in Barcelona is working on a few months ago and is very wisely asking for user feedback and whether they should continue with the project. In a nutshell, it’s a big YES from me despite some huge problems from the start, and yes, I have some notes to offer as a fan. Constructive criticism time:

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TT Isle of Man 2: Make or Brake Time

Posted on February 10, 2020 by geelw

I haven’t played a TT Isle of Man game since two solid games way back on the PlayStation 2, so I’m sure I’ll wreck quite a lot while I try KT Racing’s new PS4 game TT Isle of Man 2 and guess what? I’m okay with that. I’m gathering from the videos I’ve seen that it’s not going to be a simple “jam down the pedal and go” kind of game some may want or think is coming, and to me it’s clear KT has been refining a bunch of elements over the last installment they did that should appeal to fans of the sport while getting novice players to want to go riding like the wind. Here’s a look at a few game footage trailers and a brief interview:

Both of these classic bikes are available as pre-order content across all systems by the way:

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Preview: Aluna: Sentinel of the Shards

Posted on February 10, 2020 by geelw

Well, I just discovered two things buried in my ever-packed email inbox: Ember (reviewed here in its PC incarnation) is on Switch and I need to get this at some point because it’s a good game worth a few replays. That and developer N-Fusion has teamed up with another indie developer, NY and LA-based Digiart Interactive to bring the comic-based game Aluna Sentinel of the Shards to PC and console players. It’s set for release this year on PC and consoles, but I’m just getting to seeing the news and yes, I’m sharing.

Soon to be everywhere you get your games (and thankfully in a physical release as well as digital)

Here’s the trailer in case you haven’t seen it yet:

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Pathfinder Finds Its Path With 30 Days Remaining

Posted on February 9, 2020 by geelw

Kind of like bowling, isn’t it?

Geez, You take a few days away from things to get a clearer head and all manner of interesting stuff happens. Owlcat Games’ Kickstarter for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous not only made its target on $300,000 in a single day, the game is still raking in a load of money, with as of this writing, over $860,000 being raised and a few nifty stretch goals added with 30 days to go. Wow. Here’s some rather nice title music from the developer to celebrate and yes, they’re still taking pledges and adding some mice stretch goals.

There was a developer live stream a few days back that I missed, but here it is if you want to check it out:

So far, the game is looking pretty well-packed with things to do and see, so kudos to the team at Owlcat for all their hard work so far.

-GW

Random Film of the Week: The Navy vs. The Night Monsters (1966)

Posted on February 9, 2020 by geelw

“You’re gonna stay in this picture and LIKE it, Mister!”

From looking at this list in comparison with these much longer ones, it seems to me that in the 1960’s, science fiction flicks exclusively made in the US were in a bit of a rut. You can also see from those longer lists that horror films have fared far better and you can probably name quite a few memorable fright films from the era off the top of your head from Carnival of Souls, Night of the Living Dead, A few Herschel Gordon Lewis flicks, Rosemary’s Baby and many (many) more. Let’s just say that truncated list in the last sentence was about 20 or so films before common sense made me edit it down.

The reason I’m focusing on US-made films is simple. As other countries were just more prolific and innovative in their sci-fi films and during this time, the US seemed not to know what to do well despite kicking off and ending the decade with some pretty solid films (1960’s The Time Machine and 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey). Which brings us to one of the less stellar efforts of the decade, 1966’s The Navy vs The Night Monsters. The film looks and feels as if it was made a decade earlier and interestingly enough, the best thing about it is the actress playing the requisite eye candy, Mamie Van Doren. “Best” meaning she plays her role as straight as can be does it without chewing the scenery or mugging it up for zero laughs like some of the guys here do. Stripped of its silly jokes, it might have been a decent “B” flick, but hey – some things just won’t die a natural death.

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The Heavy Lifting, Courtesy TCM

Posted on February 6, 2020 by geelw

(TCM)

I was a bit under the weather yesterday, so I was offline resting my brain and had no idea Kirk Douglas had “left the building” as they say until very early this morning. Needless to say, that wasn’t a good thing to wake up to. Still, at age 103, you could safely say the man lived quite a long life and as an actor, producer and person of some talent and merit for a good deal of those years. Turner Classic Movies has posted two videos about Douglas so far today, but I bet there will be more on a few performances from his individual films at some point.

I don’t have a favorite role of his, but the first film that comes to mind is the monumental and powerful Paths of Glory, which kept an entire theater silent when I first saw in at a Stanley Kubrick retrospective a few decades ago. There are a good deal of other films and performances of his as well to consider, but I’m too weary to cover more here at the moment. I’ll bet on a blogathon of his work in the future that tosses in a few films will likely help some in discovering or recalling the man’s work, but let’s wait and see, shall we?

(TCM)