Yeeeaahhh…weekly.
It’s almost time for Game of the Year season, and HippoChippies will be having more awards than ever before. I’ve been planning some big things that will be happening soon, so if you like seeing the greatest achievements in the industry rewarded with heaps of praise, stick around. And, as usual, the normal posts about weird indie games and other nonsense will be popping up. So if you hate GotY stuff, there’s still content planned for you. (more…)
Games still keep coming fast, and the next few weeks will continue to be just as busy with Assassin’s Creed, Dragon Age, Far Cry 4, and too much more to remember. I’ve been picking favorites out of the bunch of new releases, and still always coming back to Hearthstone and Fantasy Life. I’ve actually finished some games for once, which is a relief when you’re trying to get hands on with everything.
So last week’s update turned into a lovefest about The Evil Within. Whoops.
Not much has changed on that front, The Evil Within is still great. I’m slowly working my way through it, along with about a half-dozen other great games. There’s so much out this month and next, it’s impossible for me to play all the way through everything I want too right now. I’m a slow-burn player to begin with, and will spend two months playing through five games at once, even if they’re all probably beatable in a week. But there’s so much out right now, it’s hard to help myself.
I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying The Evil Within. If you know me, you know that I love Resident Evil 4 above almost all other games. Imagine my surprise when I realized how closely it resembles Shinji Mikami’s masterwork, the best survival horror game of all time.
It isn’t perfect by any means, and the story doesn’t make the slightest effort to make sense. But the gameplay is there, and it feels closer to Resident Evil 4 than anything since. The extraordinary combat is back, along with RE4’s quirks, like shooting in the knee for a smartly timed, ammo-saving kill. Except now, instead of suplexing zombies, you’re lighting them on fire, and using well-timed fires to instakill other nearby creatures. You’ll always have several options to work around each combat encounter, and figuring out each tiny combat puzzle is just as satisfying as I’d hoped. Almost every encounter seems meticulously planned, and some later stages will definitely lead to moments where you’ll ask friends how they tackled each room.
Here’s one example: I came across a pitch-black room and could hear enemies inside. I chose to shoot a weapon at the ground that produces light, and electrocutes enemies. From there, I backed onto a ledge and waited to pick out the shadows of enemies against the light on the wall, and picked off their heads with a sniper rifle. I missed one, which then tried to crawl onto the ledge I was hiding on, so I pulled my shotgun out and blasted his head off before he could stand up and feast on my tasty body. That was one segment that took about 5 minutes. There are several sections like this throughout the game, and you can tackle each of them in numerous, equally satisfying ways.
I loved exploring the environments in Resident Evil 4 for treasure and ammo, and most of that is still well represented here. Most areas have a series of optional paths to explore, usually while you’re being chased by an ungodly creature or two. Exploration will reward you with much-needed ammo caches, new weapons, new traps to use against enemies, and more. Even though you might have only found 2 shotgun shells in that abandoned house, you feel immensely more prepared for the next fight now that you found them. I watched a friend play, and he discovered a couple entirely new scenes than I found, just by exploring a new location that I never saw.
The story jumps erratically between locations, almost forcing you to question what’s going on and what you’ll see next. I can see why this is a problem for so many people, but it’s strung together like a series of horror vignettes, rather than some globe-trotting adventure story. I don’t mind having a quick burst of ideas until they run out, and immediately jumping into a new set of obstacles. Sure, I would rather there be a good story tying the events together, but the main reason I’m here is for the tension. That’s why short series like VHS and Yamishibai sit so well with me; they never have time to get boring.
Since Resident Evil 4, I’ve been waiting for someone to perfectly capture the essence of what made that game so good. Dead Space was very close, and was brilliant for different reasons, but made you too powerful to capture that same helpless feeling. If you’ve been waiting for the return of survival horror since 2005, I haven’t played something as true to the genre as this.
So I still like platformers, huh? Once again a great platformer is taking the month’s spotlight, and I’m pretty excited about that. This month was pretty surprising for several different reasons. Another great platformer from a developer I didn’t know before the month began. A great first-person shooter that bucks the trend of boring combat fests with non stop action and no characters. A Kentucky Route Zero game that didn’t immediately draw me in, but I’m still gonna have to get back to that at some point. Mario Kart, which wasn’t really a surprise that it was so good, but more of just a comfort that it’s just as good as it ever was. These Summer months are usually pretty slow for new games, but good stuff has been coming at a pretty consistent pace. Let’s hope it stays that way. (more…)
While there may not have been as many mind-blowing surprises as last year, the sheer amount of quality games shown at this year’s E3 more than makes up for that. Each huge conference this year was filled with great games, and the worst thing I can say about them is that Sony wasted about 30 minutes of an otherwise excellent showing. Here are my picks of what I’m most excited to play in the coming year or so:
This one really came out of nowhere. I’ve been a huge proponent of Kirby Canvas Curse since it launched back in 2005. It was a creative new take on the Kirby formula, and was filled with tons of secrets and unlockables. It’s been one of my favorite DS games since, which is a bold claim considering how many incredible DS games there are. Rainbow Curse looks really great so far, and the colorful claymation art style makes me want it even more. Nintendo has a penchant for inventing more wonderful, colorful worlds to play around in, and Rainbow Curse looks like another step in the right direction.
Every time I see this game, I hope that one day it’ll actually come out. If you aren’t blown away by each new trailer of this, I’m curious what you’re wanting from video games. No Man’s Sky is one of the most ambitious games I’ve ever seen, and I hope that ambition eventually leads into a working product. It seems too good to be true, and we still don’t even know what you’ll actually be doing in the game. For now, the concept of flying seamlessly through an infinitely spanning space is enough to keep me excited, and hopeful.
So Aonuma has learned to say all the right things, but will it actually be as refreshing as he describes it? Prior to A Link Between Worlds, I probably wouldn’t have believed him. A huge open world where you can go wherever you want in any order, without limits? No Zelda game has felt that open in over a decade, but A Link Between Worlds was able to recapture some of that feeling just last year. If the lessons learned from the 3DS game (no lengthy tutorial, no annoying sidekicks, actual freedom and rewards for exploration) carry into a 3D space, we may be looking at something incredible.
New Dark Souls, huh? As little as we’ve been able to see so far, I’m still incredibly excited that it exists. After Miyazaki’s departure after the Dark Souls 1 DLC, he’s been working on a secret project, and it has finally come to light. Dark Souls is one of my favorite games ever, so of course I’m going to be excited about the next game from it’s mastermind. With new weaponry and a heavier emphasis on darkness and close quarter combat, I’ll be the first in line when it (hopefully) launches next year.
I was so happy to see this at the Sony press conference. One of my favorite games from last year and a winner of Ludum Dare 28, it’s a tiny game that combines what makes my favorite games great. It’s a boss battle fest about discovering huge creatures in a large lonely world. The new version will be hitting as a much larger package than it’s original release (around 20 bosses!!!!!), and it’s a tiny game that’s more interesting than most games a hundred times its size.
Super Mario 3D World was great for a lot of reasons. The Captain Toad levels were the icing on the cake. Can Nintendo turn that icing into a full course meal? The short levels from 3D World were a highlight of that game. You steer a Toad through an isometric puzzle environment to discover hidden paths and items. The first trailer for this game makes it already look like they’re heading in the right direction, with bigger levels and huge boss encounters. For now, I’m very happy to see more of Captain Toad by the end of this year.
You can steal a car while you are driving another car and ramp that car off a hill and fly off a mountain in a wingsuit and have your friend fly a tiny helicopter over a bunch of exploding elephants.
Imagine if LittleBigPlanet were better than a cool idea, and actually a really fun thing to play? I’ve never found the controls in LBP very satisfying, but the idea of millions of people creating and sharing playable ideas is fascinating. What if that idea was paired with the best platforming mechanics of all time? Out of all of the new surprises from E3, this is one I want my hands on right now.
CAN YOU FEEL IT. IT’S HAPPENING. PAC-MAN. PUNCHING. JUMPING. MIIS. CHARIZARD. IT’S ALMOST HERE AND I CAN TASTE IT. Smash is gonna be good, and I don’t know what they could do at this point to not make me buy it on day one. There wasn’t even a ton of E3 stuff to say about Smash other than a few new characters, but I’m just so excited to see people playing and enjoying it as much as I plan to as soon as I can throw that disk into my Wii U.
A few sequels, a few brand new ideas, and hopefully a lot of fun to come in the next year or so. I had a ton of fun watching E3 and discussing it with everyone, and this E3 seemed to spawn less hate than usual. Each system has a ton of games coming, both exclusively and multiplatform, and I can’t imagine someone not having at least a few things to be looking forward to. There are lots of other games that I didn’t pay much attention to that were being shown at E3, because I already am sure I’ll enjoy them. Games like Axiom Verge, Shovel Knight, Below, Danganronpa 2, Sunset Overdrive, Cuphead, The Binding of Isaac Rebirth, and more are heading our way, and we’ll be playing them soon enough. Here’s to another excellent E3, let’s hope we play these games sooner rather than later.
hippochippies 