Only alittle bit longer until the end of the world…(almost).
The only other game I’ve preordered this year gets a slight shift in its release date window, as developer SANDLOT and D3Publisher’s upcoming title has moved from a Spring to Summer 2024 release.
“D3Publisher Inc., a leading Japanese games publisher, has announced that Earth Defense Force 6, the latest entry in the popular action-shooter series, will now be released for PlayStation®4, PlayStation®5, and PC via Steam in summer 2024 for Western audiences. Previously announced for a spring launch window, developer SANDLOT and publisher D3PUBLISHER have decided to extend the launch window to add finishing touches and finalize preparations for its Western launch.“
As a long time fan of the series since 2003, I don’t mind the date shift at all if it gives the game a bit more of what it’s well-known for: chaotic solo or co-op action, mass destruction on a huge scale, the offbeat humor of the AI squadmates and the storyline that gets increasingly more dramatic and doom-filled as things get worse for humanity. It took me close to a year to complete the last installment, (EDF5), a game I still revisit every so often when I need that fix. The rather huge amount of weapons for each character makes for plenty of on the fly strategy as each level requires learning the ins and outs of your chosen loadouts.
This will be the first time I’m not picking up the import version first because the game’s DLC won’t be compatible on PS4 or PS5, but I love going into things cold.
YouTuber cenorexia even put together a really great English translation of the first mission/tutorial that’s well worth checking out:
I think the entire game is on that page, but, I’m a spoiler-free dude, so beware!
If you love “old school” throwback video games with something of an almost unbeatable edginess,Demon Lord: Reincarnation is going to quickly whip you into submission and perhaps give you an appreciation for relearning a bit of cartography. This game wants you deader than a crate of rusted door nails and is more than willing to oblige especially if you think it’s just another garden variety Wizardry clone (it’s not). Although I’m a big fan of the genre, this was a totally random purchase for me. But that $7.99 (plus tax) made this a pretty solid deal on the PlayStation Store. (the game is also available for Xbox, Switch and PC on their respective sites).
First things first, if you’re going in cold, stop for a few minutes and please READ THE (digital) MANUAL! Yes, it’s 29 pages long. But it’s also important to understand that you’re going to need to break out the graph paper and make your own maps as the dungeon randomizes every time you start a game. You can try NOT making maps, but the extra brain work gives you something to do with your hands before (and while) the game kindly puts your party out of its misery for the umpteenth time. If you’re a ragey type, the random nature of the gameplay might seem a wee bit unfair as the RNG seems to almost always roll in favor of the enemy and you just can’t get a break. Then, something clicks and you manage to survive (most) of a floor intact and your remaining party gains new skills and manages to survive for at least a few minutes longer. You’ll be replacing dead party members with new ones and I think the supply is endless, with new members gaining levels appropriate to the surviving party.
“This is where it all ends…”
Death comes for your team pretty much as soon as you venture downstairs to the first floor and you’re unprepared to the assault about to take place. You’ll stop to check the map you’re (hopefully) carefully making and get jumped. You’ll try and take a quick nap in the game to get your party’s health topped up and get jumped. Basically, almost every time you think you’re safe and it’s quiet, yep, there’s an enemy lurking around waiting to bonk you upside the head. Unfair and often in the most humiliating manner as some of the game will have you laughing as it describes flatulent foes getting in surprise attacks and more. Each floor is quite the challenge, but that Demon Lord has been working out and definitely doesn’t pull any punches (at least he doesn’t pass gas, or didn’t when I fought him!)
The trial and error nature here, plus the plain-looking but very nicely rendered visuals manage to hold interest and the old-school music is pretty nifty for what it is, so I have no complaints on that front. The only thing I’ll say in the game will solely cater to the more masochistic, persistent player that craves the challenge and doesn’t mind a lot of extra work right from the get-go. So, it’s not going to floor the graphics fiends at all and it’s not for every taste. But it does what it does quite well and keeps its focus all the way through, which gets a thumbs up from me.
They’re baaaaack. Full motion games developer D’avekki Studios has made the big leap to self-publishing with the digital release of Dark Nights With Poe and Munroe,($12.99) which is now available on the PS4, Xbox and soon, Switch. The game comprised of six episodic tales of a somewhat supernatural nature, with ghosts, a werewolf, a hungry painting demon, a bizarre love triangle and more. Although the game features a few toe-dips into light horror, it’s more of a creepy dark comedy where a bit of previous homework with Davekki’s earlier titles goes a long way in explaining some of the quirkier aspects found here.
Poe (Klemings Koehring) and Munro (Leah Cunard) first appeared in 2018’s great little gem The Shapeshifting Detective and they return in this standalone set where we get to know their characters a bit more, but yes, there’s even more mystery going on in the small village of August, which seems to be a magnet for offbeat supernatural occurrences. In “Frankie” the pair need to deal with a persistent stalker with surprising results. Let’s just say Poe has a way with a knife but we haven’t heard the last of Frankie in this game.
“In Bed with Poe and Monroe” is next, and it’s about a 24-hour radiothon where the two characters need to raise funds to keep the station afloat by staying in bed together (not THAT together) while broadcasting live. Well, it’s about so much more, as a sleepy Munro discovers a few times. Poe also makes a few discoveries that are equally revealing as a jealous ghost (Ayvianna Snow) appears to make his love life even more complicated. This episode has a few scenes like the first where shocks drop in and affect the outcomes of paths to wonderfully different results. More of this strangeness will come.
In Episode Three, “Green With Envy”, the pair are racing against time to find a kidnapped and drugged student (Warrick Simon) before his time runs out. Time is of the essence as the duo’s decisions in this chapter affect the ending and all depends on how you choose to investigate the case. There’s a pair of laugh out loud innuendo bits here when Munro visits guest house owner Violet (Aislinn De’Ath) and a little De’ath goes a long way when Munro misinterprets some simple queries before asking her own. Poe gets his way (sort of) with a pretty teacher (Ashleigh Cole) who may be a suspect, but who’s the mysterious Yvette who calls into the show to say she’s the kidnapper?
Episode Four, “Everybody Changes” brings a hypnotist into the studio, Madame Baratsky (Lara Lemon), who puts Munro into a trance where she relives a past life and tells a disturbing tale of murder. As mentioned above, playing that chapter made me go see the Doctor up close and personal (I bought the game last year on the PS4), an experience I highly recommend. In any event, this episode made me want some sort of Doctor Dekker followup, or at least the desire to replay that game again a few more times.
In Episode Five, “Many Happy Returns”, it’s the day before Munro’s birthday, there’s a full moon and a caller rings in to note he may have almost run over a werewolf. Guess where out two intrepid adventurers are headed? If you guessed “Why, to find out if that’s true, but not before a possible time traveler named Kaspar (Vincent Gould) calls, then shows up to the studio!” Well, you need to be in your own game, as you’re psychic. Like all the episodes, there’s a set-up of events and situations here that definitely hints at more. This give players a hint that the sleepy town of August is quite the nexus for bizarre happenings (like the sudden rock, paper, scissors game in this chapter).
Finally, Episode Six gets truly freaky with “It Started with a Wish” where we get a soul-eating canvas demon named Rose (Rachel Cowles) who lives inside a painting. She grants Poe a wish, which he has to pay for by having Munro hide nine capsules as prizes for ‘lucky’ listeners to find. Those capsules are supposed to have museum tickets inside, but (surprise!), they have a less pleasant gift awaiting. You’ll see. Poe’s wish has very huge consequences both he and Munro have to deal with and there’s a sort of David Lynch meets Night Gallery thing here when the characters have to deal with the results.
As noted, the game teases very much that there are many more August takes to be told, and I like that Poe and Munro’s relationship goes where it does in different ways depending on your choices. In terms of production, this one’s pretty solid. Without fancy effects makeup or gore, the game still conveys an eerie, scary vibe when it needs to, But it’s also funny, sexy and mature where it matters. Some may feel the vignette nature of the episodes might be better served as a single story arc. But I found that a game where time travel seems a quiet reality, dryads may actually exist and so many possible outcomes from charming to deadly are at one’s fingers that I’m all aboard for more. Recommended.
The Chaos Engine, or Circle of Life in action, if you will…
Well, this one’s a pleasant and goofy surprise. Sometimes the silliest and most simple games ideas just work and Mediatronic’s Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout ($19.99 on Steam for PC, Free this month on PSN) reinforces this perfectly. The 60-person enter, one person wins element is pure battle royale insanity (a genre I usually avoid), it’s weaponless mix of puzzle, sporty and trap packed levels offer up some tough and hilarious navigational challenges and overall, it’s just about as good as it gets for a game of its type.
Sure, there are micro-transactions here, but they’re not at all necessary to jump in and start playing. You can get some cool cosmetics with currency earned from just playing the game, or you can pay real money for stuff if you’re in a hurry to look cooler as you fall or get knocked off assorted hazards multiple times. In other words, there are no performance-enhancing purchases here (so far and I hope there won’t be in the future). Besides, the developer and publisher need to make SOME money with this one, but it’s actually nice that PSN users at least get to more or less play free and not choose to pay… well, until they need some of the stupidly cute skins and outfits that pop up.
It’s all fun and games, especially if someone gets cartoon hurt.
A constantly rotating set of 24 levels means you can’t predict what’s coming, but loads of dying and plenty of practice await. You just need to hope you can survive the chaos as it happens. Yes, there are some super-skilled players out there who can dive and dash through areas and as you play, some tasks get easier to plow through than others. But the lack of voice chat thankfully keeps one’s ears from burning off from what I’d imagine is some hefty amount of creative cursing taking place at some ignominious last second defeats. Although, yours truly actually screamed “Oh, Bugsnax!” at my TV after one terrible but funny loss because I’d exhausted every curse word I knew and that upcoming PS5 game’s name just popped into my head.
Then again, this is a game where you’ll watch someone winning a match and then lose it by accident when a platform vanishes suddenly, or they get beaned by a falling slice of parachuting fruit. Some players seemingly try to take out other players by lurking near an exit (grrrr!) and lunging at them or maybe hoping to be as threatening as a giant jellybean in a funky getup can. It’s all good though – sometimes you get the last laugh (well, until you lose in a future round) when the game decides to drop random survivors at the results screen to get the next stage kicking.
You can’t be afraid of no ghost when you have the ability to use a nuke as an option.
I’d like to think that Matt Glanville (@crowbarska) has a working time machine permanently set to 1983 he’s not telling anyone about, as his games I’ve played to date all look and play like solid arcade hits of around that time. Switch ‘N’ Shoot is still one of the more thrilling and flawless uses of single-button gameplay I’ve experienced and now you have two more retro-inspired titles to blast away with, both quite good and deceptively simple on their surfaces, but each will have you hooked in for as long as you’re playing.
Ghost Grab 3000 ($4.99) is a nifty shooter that’s a hybrid of bullet hell and strategic shot placement as its lead character needs to line up or gather well-armed ghosts and blast away as many as possible while trying to survive each round. There are a couple of weapons to whip out in an emergency situation, plus a nice upgrade system with over 100 combinations allowing you to tailor your ghost grabber as you like. Part of the fun is buying those upgrades and enhancing your character, as you can create a hero that makes the game easier or, if you want to play with as few upgrades as possible, harder. That’s a bad idea, by the way – go buy and use those upgrades, I say.
In the load of stuff I need to get to in this current crazy time, review code for a little game called Soul Searching popped up in the inbox a while back and you can say I’m intrigued by the project enough to move things around and play for a bit. I’ll get to the main story mode later in this post, but let’s talk minigames for a bit. There are seven ‘Short Stories’ as the game calls them, and they can be accessed from the menu and played in any order you like. but the game will run them consecutively if you start from the first one and complete each minigame.
Publisher nakana.io has released a few unique titles so far where its different developers’ personalities are on full display in each work, so there’s a lot going on in each game, from the art styles to the approaches to gameplay. Soul Searching is brim full of weirdness as the simple pixel-heavy art in the main game gives way to some rather intense slices of mind from its developer in minigames that feature assorted visual styles ranging from simple childlike scrawls to vector graphics and crude polygonal characters. In those brief segments, you almost get a sense that indie developer Kayabros (Talha Kaya) is working through some of life’s problems and you’re along for the ride for better or worse.
The latest pairing from COWCAT and Diabolical Mind, Demon’s Tier+ ($9.99, buy it!) is an excellent example of a really good game that got much better with a slew of quality of life improvements. While the game follows a clear Gauntlet meets Diablo style of play, a strict time limit and intense difficulty combined with randomly generated levels make for quite the thrilling, replayable ride.
This isn’t a simple “one and done” trophy hunt at all. Rather, the game is an equal to Diabolical Minds’ other retro-inspired pixel-packed releases, Riddled Corpses EX and Xenon Valkyrie+, two other solo or two player co-op team-ups worth a look. It almost feels like the developer has captured a trio of long lost late 80’s arcade machines in these three titles, all of which demand practice and patience to master, just like the old days.
Story:
Thosgar, a hated king attracted by demonic rituals, turned into a dark and diabolical being… destroying almost all of humanity and flooding the world with monsters. This story became a legend and peace returned to the land.
A thousand years later, a mysterious pit appears in a village after a huge earthquake where an evil aura emanates from…
Will you be the hero to save this world?
Don’t you hate it when that happens? Well, good. Grab your PS4 controller or Vita, and let’s send those demons back to where they came from, pronto.
Here come two more fun little arcade style titles from Matt Glanville, the maker of Switch ‘N’ Shoot, a cool and challenging single button retro-inspired game you should also get, by the way. Ghost Grab 3000 is a game where you trap and zap ghosts while trying to avoid their shots and get that high score. Singled Out has you identifying and neutralizing Galactic Supercriminals with a sniper rifle and yes, there’s a family friendly mode where you can cage those goofy-looking space aliens instead. Both new games are now available for pre-order on the eShop with a limited 10% discount and a July 2nd street date for both, but if you already own Switch ‘N’ Shoot or any of Matt’s games on the eShop, that discount becomes 15% off.
Go get these, I say. I’m playing through both games as we speak and can report they’re both fun little games that play and feel like they’re been transported from the 80’s, but don’t try and look for a coin slot on your Switch.
…And some gifts just sit right down on the nearest loveseat when they walk out of the box. Yikes. I saw this Death Stranding Collector’s Edition on sale at a local shop when I was poking around on ebay listing a few games I’m selling and yes, the price was right, so I bought one. The shop actually wasn’t the lowest priced one I saw, but Best Buy RAISED their crazy low price of $89.99 before I could buy it. I literally slept on the deal and thought about it, decided it was a go the next morning, but I was surprised to see them jack the price back up up to only $30 off the original 199.99 MSRP. Oh well. Adorama, you have my thanks for keeping your deal where even with tax, I made out all right and got free shipping in the process. Oh, and a LOT or air packing bags in the rather huge box, too.
I still need to find time to play this, but with a copy now on hand, it’ll happen sooner than later. Actually, I need to find a space for the box as it’s so huge, it takes up more room than I thought it would. At least Sony put the steelbook right on top so when the box in opened, it’s separate from the other goodies inside. Back in a bit – I need to go find out where I’m going to put this thing.
So yeah. The PS4 looks like an overstuffed fancy sandwich on Wonder Bread, there’s no way to get around it. Well, it also looks like it can hold the Eye of Sauron when it’s standing upright, or it looks like a building in a big city (Dubal, as a friend suggested). No price was revealed for either the disc-based or digital-only model, but the disc-based model I’m looking as as we speak also looks like it’s about three months pregnant and showing. Fortunately, it can lie on its side. where it looks like an over-baked pastry still three months pregnant:
Well, this one’s a pleasant and goofy surprise. Sometimes the silliest and most simple games ideas just work and Mediatronic’s 
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