insidetheglitch

[insidetheglitch]

E3 2017 Recap Part 3: Sony & Nintendo

The last part of my E3 2017 recap, when it comes to the sheer press conferences. Technically Nintendo didn’t even have a press conference, but just a showcase live stream. Doesn’t matter to me though. Let’s jump right in!

Very early in the morning of the 13th (at least for me in Europe), Sony started their highly anticipated press conference and I wasn’t let down in the slightest:

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8qzBkHjk_0

This time around, Sony didn’t show gameplay, but a mashup of different cutscenes from the Uncharted spin-off. The adventurers Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross, both of which should be familiar to Uncharted players, are trying to step into Nathan Drake’s and Sully’s footsteps. And judging from the trailer, it might actually work out!

Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds (DLC):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5xsS1WZA54

Horizon’s newly announced DLC show’s Aloy back in action, this time in a snowy winter environment. A welcome expansion of the main game, which noone will complain about.

Days Gone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uED22JERB8

The new gameplay trailer shows off some cool tactical use of the environment, allowing the player to kill off a whole human enemy territory by blasting away a safety fence and letting the zombies take care of them. Sweet!

Monster Hunter: World:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE_FnuD9zJc

As a complete surprise to everyone, Capcom announced a completely new Monster Hunter game during Sony’s press conference. And it looks amazing! I’m not that much of a Monster Hunter fan myself, but that caught even my interest. Using stealth gear, setting up traps before the fight and fully using the environment for offensive and defensive actions is a huge step into the right direction in my opinion. It looks like it’s truly gonna be a monster hunting game for once, instead of just purely killing off monsters to collect resources.

Shadow of the Colossus: Remastered:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdZQ98mWeto

Oh my god! Just look at that! I don’t even know what to say about that one. It’s just downright amazing. Period.

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM6LgkpO2-0

I’m surprised to see so many characters from Marvel’s cinematic universe in there, but at the same time, the looks they’ve choosen resemble their respective comic book origin. Sony later on also showed some gameplay. It doesn’t look like it’s gonna change the formula, but I’m interested where they are gonna go with the story mode.

Call of Duty: WWII:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kA0UmXsJoM

They called it a “multiplayer reveal trailer”, but it looks more like a potential coop story mode to me. Either ways, I’m not particularly interested in Call of Duty, so I’m just gonna let that one slip without a comment.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uelzOUIksk

Probably the 10th or so Skyrim release, but this one, I’m actually interested in. I haven’t played the game long enough to actually get sick of it and as a owner of a PS VR, I can’t wait to fully dive into it again! I’m especially excited about the implementation of move controls. If they do work as they are supposed to, this could be one of the best VR experiences so far.

Star Child:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRKiFsXvdyw

Another VR title. This one seems to be a 2D-ish platformer sci-fi game? I’m not sure what to expect, but I’m always happy to see some new VR games on the horizon.

The Inpatient:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5r-sl4yQQE

Supermassive Games announced yet another VR game connected to Until Dawn, this time about the Blackwood Sanatorium and playing over 60 years prior to the happenings of the original game. I’m hooked!

Monster of the Deep: Final Fantasy XV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP_OZsUQwEs

While most of the people are completely let down by Square Enix deciding to make a VR fishing game in the Final Fantasy XV universe, I’m actually kinda looking forward to it. It looks fun to me, so I don’t see a point why they shouldn’t do it.

Bravo Team:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nDdbO7X4Jk

Another thing from Supermassive Games, this one is a multiplayer VR shooter game. That’s pretty much all the trailer gave away, so we gotta be patient for more informations.

Moss:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FguiwVNCs0

The last VR game that Sony showed was this colorful looking mouse adventure. At first glance it looked like a platformer to me, but I later realized that it’s the shiny orb that the player controls to even the way for the little mouse warrior to progress. I like it!

God of War:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOE2BVRCUkM

Yeah, now this is just great. You can basically feel the impact, that each of Kratos’ strikes delivers and it must truly feel fantastic to play this game! Sadly, the game will not release this year anymore.

Detroit: Become Human:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfCbw8wfdXk

My most anticipated game since it’s initial announcement back in 2015. I love the story telling in Quantic Dreams’ games and I can’t wait too watch Detroit’s story unfold by my decisions. I really hope the game will stick to it’s promises of decisions having an impact on the game world and story progression.

Destiny 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGq6534NB4U

With the trailer teasing an interesting story mode, Destiny 2 might actually stand out from it’s predecessor and offer a larger and more complete experience.

Spider-Man:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4zm30yeHHE

Giving away a Batman Arkham-ish feeling, this 9 minute gameplay trailer for Marvel’s PS4 exclusive Spider-Man game blew my mind. I’m relatively certain that this explicit part of the game was designed as a showpiece to show off Spider-Man’s amazing potential, but if Insomniac really manage to keep this level of action throughout the whole entire game, them I’m sold without a single doubt.

And with this last bomb, the Sony press conference came to an end. For a lot of people, Sony is the clear “winner” of the E3 2017, but of course, Nintendo’s showcase still had some awesome surprises for us in it’s sleeve:

Xenoblade Chronicles 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjpao-nD5YU

I’m a little let down by the fact that a lot of the textures in this otherwise cool trailer looked very blurry, but I’m certain that Monolith is gonna deliver a very solid game here.

Kirby:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc3PAAije0Y

A yet-to-be-named Kirby title was announced by Nintendo, looking very similar to Kirby’s Adventure Wii. By taking a closer look, one could see that in this game, Kirby can create up to three companions, even in single player mode and can combine their abilities with his own. This is a very interesting concept and hasn’t been seen since Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, which was an excellent game.

Pokémon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SJdDe8fElc

Not a trailer but just an announcement of Tsunekazu Ishihara , the president of The Pokémon Company, that Game Freak began to develop a core RPG Pokémon game for the Nintendo Switch. Awesome!

Metroid Prime 4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFbDmTjS_MI

Again, not really a trailer, but just a morphing image, stating that the highly anticipated Metroid Prime 4 is now in development for Nintendo Switch. The hype is real!

Yoshi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx_C9jJ0AlA

An also yet-to-be-named Yoshi game by Good-Feel, the developers of Yoshi’s Wooly World, is coming 2018 to the Nintendo Switch. It features a cardboard art style and the ability to switch to the backside of the level. From the trailer alone you can also see, how much love Good-Feel once again put into their game. 

Fire Emblem: Warriors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8Ia_PCKPpY

This time around, Koei-Tecmo showed off a pure story trailer for the Dynasty Warriors-like Fire Emblem game. Similar to Hyrule Warriors, the game features an original story and some original characters, fighting alongside famous Fire Emblem characters like Marth and Corrin.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Expansion Pass (DLC):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1GakpHZFpg

Eiji Aonuma showed further details for the first expansion of the Breath of the Wild universe as well as a teaser for the second expansion, featuring the four champions of the core game. He also announced a new line of Amiibo figures of aforementioned champions. Neat.

Rocket League - Switch Version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5YyUA525tI

The amazing car soccer game Rocket League comes to the Nintendo Switch this holiday, including exclusive Super Mario cars and customizations, as well as cross-platform online play. 

Super Mario Odyssey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGQHQc_3ycE

The final trailer of the E3 2017 press conferences was also one of the best ones. Not only giving a sooner release date as expected (27th of October, 2017), but also blowing everyone away with the abilty to control enemies and objects and just generally showing more of this fantastic-looking game. Bravo Nintendo, you really pulled it off again!

And with that, E3 2017′s press conferences came to an end. Of course, this doesn’t mean we’re done with the announcements and trailers for this year, so keep tuned as I will continue with some more games and surprises that found their way to the public some other way.

End of Part 3.

Next Up: More interesting games from E3!

[insidetheglitch]

E3 2017 Recap Part 2: Bethesda & Ubisoft

Continuing to look at new game announcements and fresh trailers from the various press conferences of this year’s E3, we’re now looking at Bethesda’s and Ubisoft’s presentation and are up again for some neat surprises!

A couple of hours after Microsoft finished their great press conference, it was Bethesda’s turn to introduce their newest creations in gaming:

DOOM VFR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYOasB6aI_A

The show kicked off with a first look at a DOOM VR version. It seems to be the newest installment with additional VR features like movement controls. There certainly lies potential in this game, even though it has yet to be seen if the very fast paced DOOM is compatible with a limited VR teleportation movement.

Fallout 4 VR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jspdtha3t1k

Following right through is another VR title, this time with actual fluent movement but without visible hands. I’m still very eager to try this out myself!

The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-legjoLKDY

Well, where to start here...? Morrowind got added as a new playable area in ESO, but damn this trailer is annoying. I’m sorry Bethesda, but don’t put Let’s Players in a trailer for a serious game. Please. Same thing goes out to you EA, why the hell was iJustine one of the commentators for Star Wars Battlefront?! Jeez...

The Elder Scrolls: Legends - Heroes of Skyrim:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_37vi96t1Y

It’s an expansion for the Elder Scrolls online card game. Yep. Cool beans.

FallOut 4 and Skyrim “Creation Club”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRkrascT_iM

In a nutshell: Bethesda will refine mods and then make you pay for them. What.

Dishonored 2: Death of the Outsider (DLC):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQuHpdUbq6U

Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten around to play Dishonored 2 yet, but apparently it’s a DLC in which you set out to kill some outsider. Is that bullying?

The Evil Within 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7JbFBq4NAo

You could’ve just started with this, Bethesda! Fantastic! The cinematic trailer looks amazing and they later on followed it up with some gameplay. It doesn’t seem to have changed too much since the first game, but I don’t think it should’ve. Great stuff!

Quake Champions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6IEq0Aswg4

Some new maps and other features got announced, but I’m not deep enough into the matter to make a smart comment about that.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvEW4DHbkwE

Props to Bethesda for providing the funniest trailer of this year’s E3! I laughed tears at the beginning, but they somehow managed to turn that amusement into absolute awe and excitement for the new game! This looks like a blast!

Pushing out their biggest announcements at the end, Bethesda’s sort of short showcase came to an end. One day later, on the 12th, there was a PC Gaming press conference, which I will not recap here due to the lack of interesting titles. I will mention some of them later on though. For now, we look at the Ubisoft presentation, that was held on the same evening:

Mario & Rabbids: Kingdom Battle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bvUwoBXOyc

There were rumors about this beforehand. I laughed at them. I thought: No way that they put Rabbids and Mario into the same game. I’ve never been so wrong.

I’m not sure who came up with this, but they must’ve been on one hell of a trip. Take two completely unrelated franchises and bash them into a game genre that none of them have ever had a game in. Out comes this weird-ass Mario and Rabbids XCOM adventure game. And it doesn’t even look half bad. I still can’t believe it though!

South Park: The Fractured But Whole:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiayfb1rrs0

December 6th! Mark the date! I’ve been waiting for this game for ages now. Mixing the freaky South Park universe with the idea behind Marvel and DC superhero franchises is phenomenal. HYPE TRAIN!

South Park: Phone Destroyer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycFbnXSpX9c

The same game formula, but on mobile devices? No objections here!

The Crew 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXN1nmL-DQU

Expanding the MMO racing game onto all sorts of vehicles makes the game so much more interesting, that I’m actually hyped for it. Dang!

Transference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjw1DHJWhTA

When I first saw this, I was hella confused and wasn’t even sure, if it was a game at all. All I know, is that it’s apparently a VR thriller game. And Elijah Wood seems to have something to do with it. Interesting.

Skull and Bones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9YYYVG0YQI

It looks like it’s Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag’s sea battles, put into an online multiplayer mode and removing the rest of the game. I mean, alright I guess, but I’m more interested in Sea of Thieves to be honest.

Just Dance 2018:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KytGiJr-eXQ

Saw that one coming. The above is not the trailer they showed on the show floor, but instead they decided to show no trailer at all. Just some people dancing and singing three different songs I had all never heard before. Okay?

Starlink: Battle for Atlas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpTlQG6c3lE

It’s a SciFi-Spaceship-Shooter, which requires you to put a miniature toy of your spaceship onto your controler? It’s just getting weird at this point, but I’m gonna go with it and give it a chance. It’s on the Nintendo Switch as well, so that’s cool.

Far Cry 5:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX_h8rneDxU

First gameplay for the upcoming Far Cry title. The new setting is pretty cool and now you got a dog! Wuuh!

Beyond Good & Evil 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L449s9bVdeM

And there it is. The big bomb at the end of the Ubisoft presentation. After all those years! A close-to-4-minutes cinematic trailer for one of the most anticipated games of this years E3. Just watch it!

And so the next presentation ended, leaving only two major showcases to look at. But that will have to wait until the next part.

End of Part 2.

Next Up: Sony & Nintendo

[insidetheglitch]

E3 2017 - Recap Part 1: EA & Microsoft

 Just like every year in the middle of June the Electronic Entertainment Expo opened it’s gates for thousands of fans to enjoy the newest games the industry has to offer. Here is a recap of all the big press conferences and also some smaller side-announcements made at this year’s E3!

At the 10th of June EA marked the beginning of this year’s press conferences with their company’s line up:

Madden NFL 2018 Longshot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsDpZbqPFfs

I can’t say too much about Madden, since I never touched it, but it seems like one of those yearly reappearing titles similar to Fifa. The trailer seemed to focus on a story mode, which looks interesting to be fair.

Battlefield 1 - In the Name of the Tsar (DLC):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3zza3ofZ0Q

Starting out with a variety of YouTubers and Twitch Streamers praising Battlefield 1, EA announced an upcoming DLC for the game. It’s gonna be released in September and features two new “night maps”, six new maps playing in Russia and some new gear and characters.

FIFA 2018:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mEKGuqqbko

It’s FIFA ladies and gentlemen. I’m not even gonna comment on that.

A Way Out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzPFhv5S5Lo&t=58s

Damn son! This is by far the most interesting game EA showed this year. It’s by the creators of Brothers - A Tale of two Sons and it looks incredible. I’m really hyped to see more about this in the future. Do yourself a favor and watch the trailer!

Need for Speed: Payback:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-5EdHZ0hBs

And of course, there’ll be another Need for Speed game. Nothing surprising on that front. It seems to be focused on heists again, which is a good thing in my book, but it remains to be seen if it’ll actually step up the racing game or if it’ll just be filed into a seemingly endless stream of other mediocre NFS games.

Star Wars Battlefront 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MVQAwR2L8A

After the mixed to negative reviews of Dice’s first Battlefront game, it’s to be taken cautiously, but the new trailer for Battlefront 2 looks good. There’ll be droids in the game, which is cool. Dice also announced that all DLC coming for Battlefront 2 is supposedly to be free, which would be a major step, considering that the first game was missing more than half of it’s content without the 50$ season pass. We’ll see if EA actually won’t be a dick about the upcoming one.

And with that, the first press conference of E3 2017 ended. EA actually teasered another new game during their presentation, but the actual interesting part of that was shown later on during the Microsoft presentation, which is also up next due to it being held on the 11th of June:

Xbox One X:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-gp-Voq6MQ

Not a new game, but their next console; Microsoft revealed project Scorpio to be the Xbox One X, which isn’t an actual next gen console, but more like a half step, just as the PS4 Pro was on Sony’s side. It features native 4K resolution gaming and has ramped up specs in comparison to the regular Xbox One. It’s also a lot smaller! All Xbox One games are of course still playable and additionally some newer games will feature One X enhancement. The name of the new console is also a smart wordplay: X Box One X.

Forza Motorsport 7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dokpy_KIuyA

The 7th installment of the Forza series was announced to be released on October 3rd. Yay.

Assassin’s Creed Origins:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX0fd4q0baQ

For some reason, Ubisoft was okay with giving away the reveal of their new AC title to Microsoft, even though they had their own press conference only one day later. The announcement trailer also actually consisted of gameplay, which is unusual for the Assassin’s Creed games. The new game is located in Egypt, featuring a new egyptian assassin and his falcon working together to ... well ... kill people. Who would’ve guessed? To be honest, the gameplay looked rather underwhelming to me. Even though I like the egyptian setting.

Metro Exodus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEuEOugOXcc

Next up: A make-believe gameplay trailer for the new Metro game. It looked amazing, too amazing for me to buy that that’s actual gameplay. Very promising nonetheless.

State of Decay 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ljRGIDGdwU

A second installment of the semi-popular zombie survival game State of Decay. Very brutal, very cinematic. I can’t say too much about the actual game though, it seems to be a story driven experience to some extend though.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kPSl2vyu2Y

Wow. In a beautiful, yet melancholic trailer, including live piano play, Microsoft announced a sequel to Ori and the Blind Forest. It looks emotional and stunning at the same time. There wasn’t much content information, other than the story apparently revolving around an owl. I’m really looking forward to this one!

Sea of Thieves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbE8BnO6oug

In the middle of the presentation Microsoft showed a 9+ minutes gameplay session of Rare’s upcoming game Sea of Thieves. Some shown features like shooting yourself with a cannon and being able to actually dive into the sea make the game look very promising indeed. It’s gonna be one hell of a multiplayer ride!

Crackdown 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_9fG8hPCi0

A trailer of Terry Crews talking about action for over one minute, followed by rap music of people shooting each other. Well yeah. Looks fun.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOrqEC8IoTs

A lot of shown gameplay for the upcoming sequel of Shadow of Mordor. Including funny orc accents. Nice!

Life Is Strange: Before the Storm:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q68LGOjpRHI

YES! Dontnod announced a prequel to Life Is Strange, revolving around Chloe’s life before Max’s reappearance in Arcadia Bay. Fantastic. It’s gonna have 3 episodes, the first of which releases already on August 31th.

Cuphead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-1n15aIgsE

A very short, but completely satisfying trailer for Cuphead, announcing that the game will launch on the 29th of September. Hopefully it will work out this time, as I’m unhealthily hyped for this old-school cartoonish piece of awesomeness!

The Last Night:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE8dd1bRL5E

This short teaser of a game was shown during an all-indie part of Microsoft’s presentation and looks really interesting in art style and concept. I’m looking forward for more information on it.

Anthem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVnO58s0YPU

BioWare really kicked it out of the park with this new IP they announced. Anthem is a futuristic multiplayer open world RPG, featuring exo-suits, which let you fly through it’s vast open world. It looks absolutely incredible and I can’t wait for more information about it!

And with this, Microsofts presentation came to an end. There were some smaller announcements and trailers, which I will come back to eventually, but for now I will end this part of the recap and I hope you enjoyed the ride so far!

End of Part 1

Next Up: Bethesda & Ubisoft

[insidetheglitch]

Orwell

A new take on the “Big Brother is watching you” conspiracy in form of a game, that puts you into the position of monitoring web activity and phone calls, in order to save the lifes of many. But will you make the right decisions? And what exactly is “right”?

Orwell’s interface is designed like a PC interface. It begins with creating an account, just as you would do when signing up for a website membership. Playing the game feels like working with a PC. You can scroll through articles, click on links and just like that find information about your case.

Your goal hereby is to find information about different people who might be involved in a terrorist bombing, which takes place at the beginning of the game. You start out with a single target and slowly build up a net of articles that are somewhat related to that person.

The twist here is, that all the information you’ll find regarding that person can be uploaded to Orwell, which is the name of the surveillance system that you are a part of. And while you have access to all those articles, the people that are actually in charge of making a move and for example arrest someone, will only know as much about a person, as you upload to the cloud. And while a lot of information is necessary to progress the case, you should always be aware that false or vague informations can heavily alter the outcome of your investigation.

There might even be some contradictions within the information you’ll find. You will have to choose between two contradicting pieces of information. Which one will you forward to Orwell? Often there is no explicit statement that proofs one of the two information snippets to be true or wrong. You’ll have to trust your intuition or find out more about the target and eventually rule out one of the two pieces as less likely to be the truth.

Whatever you upload to Orwell can’t be undone and you’ll have to accept the consequences that your provided information will trigger. If you make the wrong decisions, the game will go on, but the events might turn out badly,

Orwell is a fantastic game, with a refreshing concept and definitely shouldn’t be missed by anyone, who loves story driven games and isn’t afraid of a little reading.

It’s available on Steam and the Humble Store.

[insidetheglitch]

Why the old Resident Evil and Silent Hill games are adored for their flaws and why people are always upset about the newer titles of the franchise.

Many gamers played Resident Evil and the original Silent Hill in their childhood or early adulthood. But apparently there is something more than sheer nostalgia to those games, as new releases of the same two franchises are usually bashed on upon release for not being as scary as the original games.

Here’s why!

We’ll begin with Resident Evil. The premise here is a group of characters, who investigate a mansion filled with zombies and other “scary” creatures. And while it looks terribly ugly for nowadays gamers, it actually had some terrifying imagery for people back in it’s time.

Leaving out the story, since it’s not quite relevant for our case and directly cutting to the part where it gets interesting. Let’s take a look at the core elements, which are supposed to create the suspense and horror the game is famous for. 

While sound design certainly does it’s part, it’s the constant state of running low on ammo and the feeling of actual danger originating from enemies, which a lot of players will mention as the number one selling point, that segregates the original from it’s sequels.

On first thought, this makes perfect sense. But why would Capcom drastically change their winning formula for future releases? The obvious and yet easily ignored reason is simply the evolution of video games in general. You can’t sell the same game twice. Gamers expect a sequel to have improved in graphics, features and core mechanics. And that’s exactly what Resident Evil did.

While the original RE featured fixed camera angles, a poor collection of weapons and a generally terrible battle system, future releases improved all of those points. Take a look at Resident Evil 6:

Third person camera perspective, a decent amount of different weapons and the most important point: 3D aimable shots! Give an enemy an headshot and it’ll take extra damage. You couldn’t do that in the original game. Instead, you were struggling to even aim and shoot at your enemy at all. If you managed to land a hit (doesn’t matter where your bullet hit it, the game wouldn’t let you choose that anyway), you were better off to break your flow, turn around and build up some distance, since actually seeing an enemy often meant to stand only a few steps away from it, thanks to fixed camera angles.

This is certainly identified as bad game design in our present time, but it’s also what apparently made the game memorable for generations to come.

Now of course the battle system isn’t the only thing that’s changed, but when you think about it, it’s the reason why a lot of things changed within the game. The slow paced style of the game, zombies slowly creeping towards the player, that all wouldn’t work in later installments, simply because of the way the battle mechanics work now. The tight controls take away the challenge of defeating a single enemy, that’s why Capcom had to either increase the mass of enemies or make them stronger/bigger, both of which they did.

Seeing the Teaser for Resident Evil 7 (which is planned to be released in early 2017) only shows that Capcom still cares for fans of the original Resident Evil. Due to a change in perspective (RE7 will feature an ego-perspective), they go a new way to attempt to bring the horror back to the franchise.

Now let’s take a look at the evolution Silent Hill has gone through. The original game was released in 1999 during a wave of hype for survival horror games originating in the initial release of the first Resident Evil game.

Graphics and story aside, what exactly has this game, that makes it scary and why do fans dislike newer franchise releases for their lack of horror?

It’s the same answer as before. Silent Hill had terrible core mechanics. Fighting was a pain to do and you were usually better off to just avoid battles entirely. This added a feeling of survival to the game. Instead of going on a rampage and killing everything in sight, players were forced to avoid and fear their enemies. You never felt prepared for upcoming battles.

In addition, the limitations of hardware in it’s time forced Silent Hill to make use of a fog system, which only let the player see for a couple of feet, before completely cutting off sight. And even though this was more of a limitation than a feature, it added to the creepy atmosphere of the game.

Newer releases of the game overhauled the fighting system (Silent Hill: Homecoming), which led to it being called an action game, or completely removed it (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories), which led to people complaining, that it’s not a real Silent Hill game anymore. It’s really the same case as Resident Evil was: There’s really no way to please fans of a flawed core system, because leaving it as crappy as it was, wouldn’t have been an option as well.

So next time you are about to complain about changes to a franchise you like, try to ask yourselves, why the developers chose to do them!

[insidetheglitch]

LISA

An Earthbound-esce, tragy-comic RPG, which looks weird at first, stays weird throughout the whole entire game and you’ll love every bit of it! LISA revives the joy of playing Earthbound-like games with little but effective changes to the formula.

Everyone talks about Undertale these days, and how it revolutionized the RPG genre and this and that. Barely anyone talks about LISA and that’s a mystery to me. But today it will receive at least a small part of the glory it deserves right here at this little spot on the internet.

The story of the game starts off a certain amount of time after an ominous event took place, which is believed to have eradicated all female human beings on earth. But without further explanation our “hero” Brad one day finds a baby lying on the ground in the middle of nowhere and carries it home.

The tragedy starts to unfold as he realises, that the baby is a girl. He raises her on his own, while being in a constant struggle with his own drug addiction and father complex. This already sounds pretty dark for a game, that looks colourful and simple-woven from the outside, eh?

Things go deep downhill, when a brutal street gang finds out about the girl, kidnapps her and kills the rest of Brads friends. He goes out to find her, not for reasons of revenge, but just for the safety of the girl he raised just like a daughter.

LISA is stuffed with references to games, movies and probably close to everything else there is to reference. Not a few of them are Earthbound references, which is not surprising, since most of the games inspiration must’ve come from Nintendo’s SNES hit game. Just take a look at the following scene, which is a screenshot of the very first in-game battle:

Nothing unfamiliar here.

The battle system is strongly oriented on classic RPGs like Earthbound or the early Final Fantasy games. Brad can collect a ton of companions to fight alongside him, with the first one he meets being a tragedy on his own.

Terry Hintz, who is good at praising himself, but completely worthless at battles, joins Brad for a small part of the game, then helps to introduce a very interesting feature of LISA: Permadeath of companions.

The game confronts you with choices and actions, that will permanently kill companion characters, if chosen. This brings up morality questions like: “Do I just kill completely useless Terry for entertainment reasons and keep my belongings or is that wrong? Maybe he get’s stronger with time? Eh, probably not...” 

I’d certainly do it ...

In conclusion: If you like funny, dark RPGs with an unusual depth and both classic and new RPG elements, then this game is a blast!

LISA is available on Steam.

Guess there’s only one thing left to say ...

[insidetheglitch]

Master Reboot

A game that can only be described as a mysterious and stunning horror experience! It’s surreal during every second and still manages to tell a great story!

It’s hard to describe what’s so special about Master Reboot, without ruining part of the experience. One part of the greatness is created by the story, but only if you are observant enough to find all the little scraps of it, which are spread out in the different areas.

The second and even stronger part of the experience is created by the broad range of different areas to explore, solve and survive.

Master Reboot has the player visit various memories, which are all represented by different areas and usually require to wether solve a puzzle or survive the circumstances.

The game features a ton of different settings, all connected by a hubworld, to which the player will return after beating a specific memory.

The third and final addition to the experience, is the horror part of the game. Some, if not all memories are infected by Seren, a virtual reality bot, that haunts the player in different ways.

While some of her appearances are of a pure visual nature, there are also actual dangers coming from her.

And as if that wasn’t enough already, after beating a row of memories, the player has to overcome a special level, which is even more surreal than the normal memories.

I recommend this game to all experimental horror fans and fans of exploration games equally! It’s available on Steam, check it out! And watch your step!

[insidetheglitch]

American McGee's Grimm

Do you know what's so beautiful about the old brothers Grimm's fairy tales? The happy endings you say? Wrong, it's the fact that you can turn them all evil and bloody in American McGee's Grimm!

In American McGee's Grimm you play as ... who could've guessed ... the Grimm! A small, bearded guy who hates fairy tales, which are too bright and colourful for his taste. So he sallies forth to change those colourful tales into gruesome, gory reflections of themselves.

The "game" is actually a collection of single episodes, which can be bought in season bundles via Steam. A total of 23 episodes, which each feature a different more or less popular Grimm tale to corrupt.

Each episode is split into multiple scenes, which play like seperated levels and contain different areas and objects to turn evil. Goal of each of these levels is to corrupt specifically marked objects or persons in order to progress the story.

To do that, Grimm first has to corrupt a specific percentage of the level in order to be able to spoil his goal. He does that by simply walking close enough to objects, while being disgusting enough to turn them evil (= already turned enough of the level evil).

The more Grimm corrupts, the bigger grows the circle of mutation around him. It also makes him jump farther and corrupt even bigger objects. Even after the needed level of disgust is reached, you can still play on and try to turn 100% of the area evil, which will also lead to a gold medal.

Since the game doesn't want to make it too easy for you, there are certain obstacles and dangers to overcome in some scenes. There might be little jump 'n' run parcours or people cleaning up behind you to reduce your corruption level.

There are also different power-ups in some levels and a total of 10 hidden coins in each episode, which you'll need to find and collect in order to unlock the object gallery of the episode. Players looking for a challenge can also try to beat each level's gold time trial.

The controls aren't the best at times and the game seems repetitive at first, but it's really fun to watch all the areas and complete tales to take a dark and evil twist. And despite the colourful and childish art style, this game features a lot more blood and dead bodies than you would expect.

Buy it, if you want a game that you can play to pass time in a fun way!

[insidetheglitch]

Hand of Fate

A close to be perfect mixture of a card game and a hack-n-slash action game! Hand of Fate left the Early Access today and has a lot to offer. Collect tons of different cards in this rogue-like indie masterpiece!

Hand of Fate is hands-down one of my favourite indie games out there. It masterfully combines the joy and random factor of a card game with a nicely developed real time battle system.

The game is split into two ways of gameplay. The "plot", progress and encounters are shown on the table at the end of the world. The protagonist moves on a path of face-down cards. Those cards are so called encounter cards, which have different challenges for you in charge.

Some of these cards might lead to a fight. The game then puts you into an arena of sorts, in which you got to fight against various enemies. The battle system works similar to the one of the Batman Arkham games.

By winning encounter cards you are sometimes rewarded with equipment cards, blessings, food or money. Those will help you on the way and ease your struggle to eventually get to the boss you have picked at the beginning of your play.

By winning specially marked encounter cards or defeating your recent boss, you can unlock more encounter- and equipment cards. These can be used in the deck builder before starting the next round.

When starting a new round you can choose the boss enemy of your run out of a total of 12 (partially unlockable) bosses. Each of these has not only a final enemy to defeat, but also special circumstances and curses you'll need to overcome.

Additionally after beating a row of 3 bosses, you'll unlock new starting conditions as well as power-ups for enemies, to keep them up to date with your raising skills.

The most valuable resource in Hand of Fate might just be food. Every time the player moves on to the next card, one food is used in order to restore health points (if necessary). Once all food is used, every move you make will not only not restore, but actually cost you 10 health. In order to prevent starving, you can either hope for encounter cards that will provide food or get some at a shop in exchange for money you have collected earlier.

All in all this game has a lot to offer, tons of cards to unlock, many encounters to overcome and a generally great feeling to it. For the people that aren't challenged enough by the already hard Story Mode, the game also comes with an unforgiving Endless Mode.

If you want to play a really good developed rogue-like game, that is both a challenge and fun to play, then go ahead and grab this game on Steam!

[insidetheglitch]

Ziggurat

One of the best 3D rogue-likes out there! Featuring fast paced battles, tons of weapons and a clever unlocking system. This game is a hit!

The final challenge for wizards, who wish to become part of the mightiest wizard circle in the world, is to enter the Ziggurat and to survive the dangers, which lie ahead. It's a dungeon full of evil creatures and traps.

Ziggurat features randomly generated dungeon floors, with different kinds of rooms. Normal rooms spawn minions, which all have to be defeated in order to progress to the next room. There are also a lot of special rooms, providing new weapons, bonuses and other stuff.

The player's goal is to find the Portal Key of each level and then find the boss room, in order to spawn and defeat the recent floor's boss enemy. These are randomly chosen out of all bosses available for the recent kind of floor. With ongoing process, the bosses that'll spawn will get harder of course.

The game features different kinds of weapons. The normal wand is depending on which character (from all yet unlocked ones) is selected. It has unlimited ammo, but is generally weak and needs to recharge after a series of attacks.

Additionally there are 3 kinds of mana, which will provide ammunition to weapons of their kind. One of those weapons can be found at the beginning of each floor or in rare special rooms.

Blue mana is used by weapons with special effects, green mana is used by rapid-fire weapons and red/orange mana is used by explosive weapons with bigger attack areas.

Ziggurat also features a level-up system, which let's you choose one out of two perks for each level-up.

If you die, Ziggurat follows the basic concept of rogue-like games and you'll need to replay everything from the beginning of the first floor. Your attempt wasn't pointless though, since each death will unlock new weapons or level-up perks.

You can also unlock new characters by fulfilling special requirements.

The fast paced battle system and the wide range of weapons make this game outstanding in the rogue-like mass and it's still getting more or less regular updates with new content. I don't see a point why you shouldn't give it a try!

[insidetheglitch]

Stick It To The Man!

A masterpiece in both art style and humour created by Zoink Games. Stick It To The Man! is an awesome example for unique puzzle games, that both involve fun gameplay and an interesting storyline!

Stick It To The Man! is what can be called a perfect game in my understanding of the subject. It simply has everything! Let me show you what I mean:

The Story

The game starts with the protagonist Ray getting hit on the head by a container with an alien inside. The container breaks and the alien decides to use Ray's brain as it’s host.

Since that moment, Ray has a pink spaghetti arm sticking out of his head. Seems weird at first but ... well, it kinda stays weird for the rest of the game.

Soon a mysterious character only known as "The Man" finds out about Ray and tries everything to stop him and to get the alien out of his brain!

The Gameplay

Ray can use his pink arm to grab and pull himself to pins that are spread upon the levels. He can also use it to grab stickers from the environment and stick them to whatever spot they are needed.

Ray also soon discovers, that the arm grants him the ability to read other people's (and animal's) minds. This becomes very helpful in order to solve puzzles and progress with the story.

To spice up the challenge, there are agents and other people chasing Ray in different sections of some levels. Ray has to find a save way to outsmart them!

The Art Style

Ray lives in a cardboard universe. Every character and prop is a printed 2D cardboard object, while the floor and some special objects are still 3D-modeled!

The whole art style creates a beautiful atmosphere and different gameplay elements like stickers, pins and printing machines (which function as checkpoints) are perfectly bound into the cardboard theme.

The Humour

Since the game focuses a lot on reading people's minds and satisfying their needs, there is a lot of monologues and dialogues spoken by various good voice actors!

The characters in this game have the funniest personalities and believes, which makes it a fun time to read their minds and listen to their conversations. And the game features a ton of different characters, more or less involved into the storyline!

Besides the humour used by the characters, there are also a lot of situational jokes, which are just automatically created by the weird storyline and the creative use of stickers.

The Soundtrack

Nothing truly outstanding, but always fitting the situation. Everything in this game shouts DISCO TIME!! at you and that's a good thing!

And finally the game is available on PC (Steam), as well as Mac, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, XBOX One and Wii U.

Get it when you can, it's really worth it!

[insidetheglitch]

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

After the huge success the original Binding of Isaac brought to Edmund McMillen and his team, their newly released game The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is basically a much larger version of the original game, which also features a new art style.

Originally released in 2011, the ever-famous game The Binding of Isaac got it's successor in November 2014. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth feels like the original rouge-like game, but has a ton of new bosses, items and rooms to offer!

The Binding of Isaac ... what is that?

In case you have never played or heard of the game, you are probably new to the gaming scene. TBoI can be described as the most popular randomly generated rogue-like game on the market. Isaac, a little boy, who lives with his fanaticly christian mother, is forced to enter the basement below his room.

He tries to escape the claws of his mother, who got an order from god to kill her son. The basement turns out to be just the beginning of a labyrinth of rooms below his house. Since Isaac is still a little child, the only way to protect himself is to shoot his own tears at the enemies. Collect power-ups, helpful items, bombs, keys and much more to overcome the challenge waiting for you in the depths! 

What is new in Rebirth?

The first noticable change is the change in the art style. While the original TBoI was completely made in a flash style, Rebirth's art style is more pixelated and detailed. This basically means that the overall art style became more edgy, but it also shows a lot more details of monsters and environment.

Additionally, the game adds a lot of new enemies, bosses, items, trinkets and special rooms to the already big collection from the original game!

Another new feature are the bigger rooms. While TBoI only featured rooms of the same size, Rebirth adds long rooms (1x2) and generally bigger rooms (2x2).

Rebirth finally offers controller support on the PC version of the game and with that comes a brand new multiplayer mode, in which the second player plays as a randomly chosen baby, which all have different attacks and abilities. Since it's a drop in/drop out multiplayer, the second player will use one of the first player's hearts each time they die and choose to drop in again.

There is also more secret content to unlock, including 3 new playable characters and a new chapter to play in. The game also features a new hard more, in which enemies are stronger, to raise the challenge for experienced players!

Other new things worth mentioning:

New possibility to enter seeds, in order to play specific scenarios

20 instead of just 10 challenges

Possibility to save on 3 different slots

A new boss that is literally just poop...

Now go and get yourself killed ... a lot! (And don't forget to have fun!)

[insidetheglitch]

Grim Fandango Remastered

Double Fine Productions finally released the long awaited remastered version of LukasArts classic adventure game, which was originally released in 1998. It's available for PC, Playstation 4 and Playstation Vita.

What is Grim Fandango?

Grim Fandango is a highly praised adventure game, which takes place in the land of the dead. The main character Manny Calavera starts off as a salesman, who offers freshly died souls ways to get faster into heaven in exchange for the money and goods they have been buried with.

But betrayal lies in the air and Manny always gets the poor and unworthy clients. Manny eventually starts taking his faith in his own hands, but destiny has other plans for him and he loses an important client in a row of misunderstandings. And that's when his journey starts, to get back his client and perhaps finally get access to heaven himself.

What is new in Grim Fandango Remastered?

All character models have been re-textured in high resolution and look a lot sharper now. The game also features an orchestrated version of the original soundtrack and dynamic lighting effects. Even though the static background models stay the same as in the original game it looks a lot better than before.

Also worth mentioning is a new audio commentary by the developers, which can be activated to play alongside the game in the options menu. The remastered version also features a concept art browser and the possibility to switch back to the original look of the game at any time via the options menu! That's a nice fan service for people that like to keep it oldschool.

Conclusion

The new graphics make the game a lot more ... bearable for the eyes, even though this game is definitely nothing for graphic fanatics! For all those who can enjoy a good adventure game with decent humour, good voice acting and an interesting storyline: Go for it, you won't regret anything!

[insidetheglitch]

Dream

Exploration perfectly blends in with clever puzzles in this beautiful experience of a game. Explore the depths of your dreams, which will lead you to a bunch of strange and wonderful places!

In this first person exploration adventure you will face three different main dreams playing in the most dissimilar sceneries. Each of these will also have hidden paths to enter even more bizarre side dreams (of which all but one are already implemented in the current version of the game).

As long as you are not dreaming you are inside your flat in the real world, which is also the place to which you'll return once you finished one of the main dream's challenges. You won't actually be awake though and everything might turn into some creepy nightmare version of your actual flat.

The main focus of the game lies on the dream worlds though. These will provide huge areas to explore, secrets to uncover and puzzles to solve. The puzzles aren't like the ones in your everyday puzzle game though, they are innovative and sometimes not even that easy to solve.

One thing that'll keep you going to try solving the puzzle is the reward you will get for your progress, which is not only more beautifully designed dream worlds to explore but  it also might end up in giving you a change of pace in the current dream you are visiting.

Every dream includes multiple symbols, which can be interpreted by using the information you can find hidden in each area. The game has an overly great atmosphere and each level looks fantastic and contains a lot of details.

If you decide to buy it, here is a tip for you:

Don't just run through it and try to complete it as fast as possible, or you'll miss out on the best part of the experience!

[insidetheglitch]

Mercenary Kings

Good indie coop online games are rare. Good thing Mercenary Kings exists! A classic 2D side-scrolling shoot em' up game by the creators of Scott Pilgrim VS the World: The Game with beautiful pixel art graphics, a ton of content AND the ability to play 4 player coop both online and offline. What could possibly go wrong?

Released in the middle of 2013 into Steam Early Access and officially released early 2014, this game is a blast! The controls are tight, customization on weapons gives a broad range of variety and the animations look great!

There are a lot of collectable items to gather and later on use to build new weapon parts or to upgrade your health. The more missions you accomplish, the more parts will be available in the crafting menu! Costumize your weapons to do ice or poison damage, make it super strong or have it contain a ton of bullets per magazine!

The game offers a great variety of missions. Rescue hostages, eliminate enemies, secure a landing place for the helicopter, take down or even capture a boss! Beating specific missions will upgrade your rank and allow you to operate in new areas to fight even more enemies and gather new materials.

But don't take the game as easy, kids! The game is not easy at all! No matter how many players are playing, every time somebody dies the mission's reward will be reduced. Dying 4 times will also lead to a failed mission. You can't just run and shoot everything, you gotta take cover and play as a team (or alone I guess ...).

No matter if you play alone, with friends in your living room or with people from around the world, Mercenary Kings is a great game and deserves a lot more attention. 

Now get the game and MOVE OUT!

Note: This game is both available for PC and Playstation 4

[insidetheglitch]

Crawl

Currently in Early Access v0.3 this game offers a whole lot of couch-coop fun for friends and people that'd like to know each other's gaming behaviours a little better!

With the v0.3 update comes the second massive content addition to the already amazing multiplayer dungeon crawler game. 

Enter with up to 3 friends and/or bots into the deep dungeons of Crawl and fight for salvation! One player gets randomly chosen to play as the hero, while all other players control ghosts, which can possess traps and summon (controllable) monsters to stop and defeat the hero. Once the hero loses all his health, the ghost, which landed the final strike, will be revived as the new hero.

This procedure repeats until one player eventually finds the exit and enters deeper down into the dungeon. Now it's time to upgrade your creature repertoire! For each level one of the other players rises, you'll receive upgrade points to evolve your creatures into stronger monsters!

For each time a player gets killed as a monster, he/she will also receive blood points, which can be used for special sacrifices or to get money at the shop. This money can then be used to buy better equipment, special artefacts or new moves.

Once a player hits level 10, he/she can access the final fight versus one of the two (and more to come) boss enemies. Those special boss fights are the most fun in 4 player matches, since each boss can be controlled by all 3 ghosts at the same time.

The game's two boss enemies that are currently in the game are:

Kourok the green tentacle ... thing ...

and Ghidraak the hydra!

And now go, buy the game, gather some friends and ...

FIGHT FOR SALVATION!!

Warning: The game is not featuring online gameplay yet!

[insidetheglitch]

Life Is Strange

Episode 1 released by Dontnod Entertainment a couple of days ago!

This gem of a game offers really authentic characters and adds an interesting twist to the storyline by giving the main character the ability to reverse time!

Judging by only the first episode I can already tell that this game will have a heavy impact on the gaming scene. I had a ton of fun playing the first chapter of the game and I have high anticipations for the upcoming ones.

History

Until now only the guys at Telltale Games were splitting their games into episodes (e.g. The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us). After Telltale's huge success with their episodic titles, Dontnod Entertainment, who were already well known due to their first released game "Remember Me", eventually decided to produce an episodic game themselves.

Decisions

You can tell that they tried to refine Telltale's formula by giving the in-game decisions an heavier impact on the on-going story. And so far it works perfectly! Every choice has advantages and disadvantages and you can never make it right for everybody.

Content

The main story aspect of the first episode doesn't take long to finish, but there are so many side activities and people to talk to, that it still took me more than four hours to get through it. And I'm far from having found everything. There are a total of 10 hidden picture spots in every episode. Finding each one will also give you a Steam achievement. Not all of them are search and find objects, some require to talk to someone to get a specific outcome or to fulfill a side quest of some sort. You see, there is plenty of stuff to do!

Music

The last aspect I want to talk about is the soundtrack. Since the main character is an art student, they are making use of a cliché by mostly using indie music in the soundtrack and that's great because it totally fits the game! I'd love to buy the OST seperately if that was possible!

Overall

Bring it on, Dontnod! If you keep up your standart, this game will be joining Heavy Rain in my personal list of story-telling masterpieces!