Idea Factory, Compile Heart and seemingly ever busy Onechanbara developer Tamsoft team up once again to bring you what’s looking like another fun chase & chop experience set in the multi-game Hyperdimension Neptunia universe. Now, I missed out on Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed last year thanks to a stupidly busy backlog and me not paying attention to a bunch of games I should have played. But there’s no way I’m going to pass up this *new* guaranteed guilty pleasure called MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune VS Zombies.
Set to hit the Vita April 26 (North America) and April 29 (Europe), the game will feature 1-4 player action, a cast of cute gals versus not so cute undead and plenty of unlockable customization options. Continue reading →
While it’s not perfect, fans of Compile Heart’s offbeat and often gal-filled JRPGs should find Trillion: God of Destruction right up their respective alleys. Actually, you’ll probably need to travel through at least one of those alleys and hope there’s a game shop located somewhere at the end of that trip so you can pick up a retail copy if digital isn’t your thing. The game feels like a hybrid that mixes Princess Maker-style mini-games, nice art that looks quite like a Disgaea spinoff (former team members from that series worked on the game), and core gameplay that’s akin to a Mystery Dungeon game meets Vandal Hearts 2 but with a more awkward camera that will mildly to moderately mess with your mojo.
After the titular titan Trillion bumps off Zeabolos, the Supreme Overlord of the Underworld, his brother and about a million minions, it’s up to his female Overlords to get revenge on that massive one plus a dozen zeroes HP creeping terror before it lays waste to their home. Poor Zeab is revived and reconstructed to the best of her ability by a lady with an appropriately Faustian name (Faust) who makes him an offer he can’t refuse. She creates a single ring that the Overlords can wear that will boost their powers considerably provided they also train while Trillion sleeps parked near the gates to the Underworld. Of course, Faust’s deal comes at the cost of Zeab’s soul once the big baddie goes beddie-bye for good. But whomever defeats Trillion instantly becomes his successor and new Overlord of the Underworld with all the riches, sweets and other treats that entails. Continue reading →
Thank you, CD Projekt RED for *magically* getting water to shoot out my nose earlier today. It’s a definite April Fool’s gag, but I’d more than gladly pay that five bucks for talking horse DLC just for the chance to have an option to have Roach talk in a Mr. Ed voice. Okay, back to work here – I’m up to my wet nostril hairs in stuff to do.
Relaxing yet somehow terrifying, Morgondag‘s RymdResa is one of those great game experiences open to all who give it a shot. The atmospheric space exploration game where no combat is s key feature is also one of the more compelling games you’ll ever play and at $5.99 for the next week, an even better bargain. If you stopped reading this here and went to check the game out, my work here is done. Everyone else, keep reading.
Gameplay is both zen-like and creep upon you intense as monitoring dwindling resources and shields while trying to survive everything from asteroid collisions to ominously massive space creatures of assorted origin trying to stop your travels cold makes for a great means of killing a few hours at a time. The game is also great for shorter play sessions as well, given that one can level up relatively quickly (within a few minutes), save, quit and pick up later on with no trouble.
Also, Morgondag is working on a new game called Imprint-X, a cosmic-themes puzzler where players need to solve what’s on screen in as few moves as possible. It looks pretty neat and yes you should go sign up on the game’s page when you can.
“Here am I floating round my tin can. Far above the Moon. Planet Earth is blue. And there’s nothing I can do…”
While PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and VR-enabled PC and PS4 versions of threeonezero’s ADR1FT are still in the works, PC gamers with Steam accounts and rigs with decent specs can now purchase the game for $19.99. Even without the added virtual reality functionality 505 Games has a hit here that should go along way in convincing even the most ardent skeptic about the viability of VR for certain gaming and entertainment purposes.
Of course, getting past the new breed of hard-core internet skeptics who dub these sort of first-person experiences “walking simulators” (Bleh. There’s no “walking” here, as you play an astronaut stranded on a partially destroyed space station who needs to figure out what happened) will be the game’s biggest hurdle with the second issue for some being the estimated 4-6 hours it takes to complete the game. Length really isn’t something to whine about here as the game has enough elements to make it replayable as well as a conversation piece to show off for the outstanding Unreal 4-powered visuals.
And if you really want to show off something even more physical, you can boogie on over to iam8bit.com to check out their cool online shop and snag one of those cool ADR1FT Collector’s Edition boxes for $54.95. That price nets you two digital codes for the game (PC and Oculus Rift VR versions), one of two different 756 piece jigsaw puzzles, a nice embroidered HAN-1V patch and a pack of “tasty” astronaut ice cream, all in a big box for safekeeping (but probably not guaranteed to survive being sent into actual space).
It’s somewhat surprising that with so many RPGs available on the Nintendo 3DS, the old-school dirt simple hack & slash sub-genre is somewhat underrepresented. Granted, you’re probably not going to get a fancy looking Diablo or Torchlight-style game up and running on the 3DS hardware without some miracle coding skill and Nintendo completely missed the boat on localizing the fantastic DS game Soma Bringer to the west some years back. Thankfully, Rising Star Games has taken up the chase ‘n chop mantle with Ishi-Sengoku-Den “Sadame” (heretofore shortened to Sadame for the remainder of this review).
The game takes the basic formula found in Blizzard’s classic franchise and adds a feudal Japanese setting, simplified gameplay and multiple routes through four acts that feature multiple routes which add replay value if you want to explore every inch of the maps. While the results aren’t flawless, gamers with more open minds and a willingness to deal with a few quirks will get a lot more out of what’s here than those who come in with a load of expectations. Continue reading →
The game is a cornucopia of doom and cuteness that features a single titanic enemy with that titular trillion hit points that needs to be stopped before it stomps all over the six layers of the Underworld after its ruler is severely incapacitated. Players can expect a hybrid of the classic Princess Maker with a shake of Disgaea-like humor and a initially daunting battle system where you pit sassy female Overlords against Trillion after training them in assorted skills pre-battle. There’s a lot more, but this isn’t a review as you’ll see when you read the next sentence under that screenshot below.
Guess what? Yours truly is currently in the process of reviewing the game, so I’ll have to keep you all in suspense for a wee bit other than to note quite an entertaining time is being had here. Back with more on Trillon shortly.
Thanks to so darn many indie games dropping from the sky these days (it’s a digital monsoon at times!), I’d never even heard of the one man show called Roland Studios or its wild PC game Daydreamer until I got word that Atlus was handling the PS4 (May 31, 2016) and Xbox One (June 3, 2016) publishing in North America. Updated with enhanced features and now called Daydreamer: Awakened Edition, all you need to do is ogle that mind-bending weirdness above and you know you’re in for a trip and a half.
If you like reading a bit more and that laser-eyed bunny above hasn’t freaked you out too much, here’s what to expect in the updated console version:
Daydreamer: Awakened Edition features:
• Twitchy Retro Gameplay – Those who live for intense side-scrolling, platforming, and shooting action will feel right at home, because players will shoot, whip, shield, jump, and warp their way to the Earth’s core. The design choices in the game harken back to gaming’s arcade classics!
• A Varied Combat System – With a dearth of different weapons and abilities at the daydreamer’s disposal, she will eradicate aliens with energy, homing, ray, helix, and flamethrower blasters, and melee mutants with her whips. She also has the abilities to shield against damage, warp to hard-to-reach areas, slow down time, and more. But they don’t come cheap—players must hunt for Psymatter in order to buy the weapons and items that will aid her along her hazardous journey.
• Powerful Pets – Psymatter also can be used to purchase/sustain a loyal pet companion to stay by your side to the death (or until you run out of Psymatter). From fuzzy turtles to vicious weasels, pets will offer invaluable support in varied forms to the daydreamer.
• Frightening Bosses – If normal aliens, mutants, robots, and bugs aren’t bad enough, the bosses of Daydreamer: Awakened Edition are truly terrifying to behold. The disturbing Mr. Smiles, the repulsive Grimeboy, and ferocious, but still kind of cute, Rabies Rabbit are just some of the creepy boss monsters brought to life in the game.
• Numerous Improvements – Since this is the Awakened Edition, that means there are a multitude of improvements and additions to the original release. Besides gameplay tweaks and balancing, there are now more difficulties, enhanced controls, improved combat, a ranked mode/leaderboard for the competitive, world map function, a brand new ending, and much more.
That sounds like a plan to me, folks. The strangeness will commence on those two newer platforms on the dates noted above. Hopefully the PC version will get the same updates as I know some gamers who only do their thing on PC will want what everyone else is having.
While Crate Entertainment’s completed release version of its ARPG GRIM DAWN has been officially out on Steam since February 25, it’s just arrived on gog.com at a slight discount off the already low $24.99 price. The game has been in development for a while and while I’ve been tracking its progress from the shadows, I didn’t participate in the pre-release playable versions because I wanted to wait until the game was actually done and ready to buy. Some of the handful of folks on the dev team also worked on the great Titan Quest, so it was a no-brainer that GD would be flat out superb. Well, the problem now is if I buy it NOW, when the heck will I find time to PLAY it? My backlog is pretty massive as it is and I still need to pick up Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen for PC because I want to see how well it runs at 60fps and it was absolutely one of my favorite games of the previous console cycle.
Hmmm. Time for a coin toss, it seems. If it lands as it should, I may never see the light of day again. Well, for a few months at least.
Well, it looks as if the console world (or at least the PlayStation 4) is getting its big VR headset at a surprisingly small price point of 399.00. Granted, many industry insiders (and thoughtful dopes like me) figured Sony wasn’t going to break gamer wallets too much. Let’s see now, A PS4 is about $280 or so depending on the model you buy, a PS Camera is $59.99 and with that PS VR headset, you still come in way under the price point of a gaming PC upgrade and one of the pricier VR solutions. Granted, PC gamers are scoffing at PS VR because they have scalable rigs thy can tweak to no end and most likely higher frame rates with overclocked systems burning holes into wherever they’re placed. Still, Sony promises a plug and play experience with frame rates up to 120fps, so we’ll see what’s what soon enough as the games roll out.
As for games, some 230 are in the works for PS4 from first and third party developers. My current favorite just so happens to be the return of a classic arcade and home game, this time coming from the folks at Rebellion:
Yes indeed, this one will be awesome even if it’s not running in VR (and yep, it’s playable without the headset, folks). Hokay, off to start saving those pennies.
"DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!" 