The Café

My first thought: "What the hell is Celeste?"

This is the first I'm hearing of it. Looks like a another balls-to-the-wall hard puzzle platformer, in the vein of Super Meat Boy. Not my jam, really. I don't mind failing several times because I'm not getting the puzzle too much, but I don't much care for the pixel perfect precision stuff.

Wait a second! Is that a Ninja Turtles reference? That underwater part looks very reminiscent of that infamous Turtles level. One, I'm proud to say I beat as a kid. ...Only to get stomped flat in the next section.

Celeste is (I think) one of the first games of this type to feature some pretty innovative difficulty variability. In this case, I hear it has some optional assist functions which make everything far smoother than you'd probably expect from how it looks and the "difficult" tag on the Steam store.

Despite appearances, it's probably way closer to something like Braid (or even Guacamelee?) than Super Meat Boy or Iconoclast, another early 2018 release of note. I definitely don't get the impression that it's going to attract a horde of grognards yelling "git gud" at anyone who isn't 100% optimal at it - one of the raisins I have zero interest in Cuphead.

Hmm. That sounds better. I might have to look into it more. Granted, some of Guacamelee is a bit hard, too, but not too much so. Except for that one part...

I haven't played Braid, even though it looks interesting. I've already had the story spoiled, so I likely won't. The downside of a low budget, I'm afraid. Or, in that game's case, me not playing PC games at the time.

Anthem was delayed, but a couple other things on my 2018 watchlist are looking pretty damn good. Monster Hunter World is probably the first Monster Hunter that looks anything remotely like something I'd wanna play, and Sea of Thieves could be a crazy fun time with the right squad. (Squad.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FBxha_cpD8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmUwf9SFm3E

The Tropico people are doing some kinda Mars survival sim with Paradox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3swV4JJKAc

One of the older Civ guys is doing something potentially pretty cool with Starbreeze called 10 Crowns.

https://www.polygon.com/2018/2/5/169765 ... -10-crowns

The concept art makes it look how I wish Civ VI looked: city center and city district tiles melding together to form a more contiguous piece.

If they can pull off that art style it's going to be one hella sexy game.

Cities Skylines is free on Steam at the moment, perhaps one of you geniuses could tell me how I'm supposed to actually play it.

I don't exactly know the best way to play it, your first city for sure should just be haphazardly throwing districts down around the place, and figuring out stuff like the wind map for placing turbines and the land quality for farming.

Those basic parts of the game are fun and rewarding, where the trouble comes though is distributing services, managing traffic flow, setting bus routes, and making your city beautiful

It's for sure a good podcast game though, most of your time is waiting for the money for your next development, planning the next district you're going to add, or trying weird (and typically bad) solutions to your traffic problems, such as this road cutting through the middle of my roundabout:

Outta nowhere SWERY has announced a new game with ArcSys called The Missing, due out this year.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/ ... remon.html

He's also taking another shot at crowdfunding his cat RPG, The Good Life, on Kickstarter instead of Fig, sometime in March.

Square ported the mobile port of Chrono Trigger and dumped it on Steam for $20. Like the mobile-to-Steam ports of various older FF games, buy at your own risk.

that said while I totes understand people's issues with the port-of-a-port and the pricetag, anyone buying it "to support the Chrono series" just to leave negative reviews with 0.2 hours played really oughta find better uses for their time and money

Yeah, waste of time and money. The port is hot garbage though.

I thought the DS port was pretty good. Re-porting that one for the 3DS or Switch would make more sense than mobile to Steam...

Has Square ever stated why they've never continued that franchise? Given the 90s are entering peak nostalgia time, they have to know any non-awful sequel would rake in money.

Into The Breach is getting glowing reviews pretty much everywhere. Advance Wars + FTL + mechs seems like a winning formula. A very John Layfield game for sure.

Now that's how you do a collector's edition.

Oh wow. Might be time for me to check that series out...

Having watched a ton of Yakuza 0, I think you'd probably love the plot, characters, and especially all the buckwild sidequest stories, but I wonder if the combat would drive you nuts or not.

It's been recommended to me before, but the combat is why I've skipped it. I know nothing about it other than it's not turn-based, though. That said, I can hang with action RPGs like Tales of.

Seems Squeenix is continuing the nostalgia roll with Valkyrie Profile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtX05ZJ95jA

Presumably this is a port of the original game, which to be honest is probably better than any kind of remake. VP is one of my favourite games of all time.

Oh wild. I didn't play much of either of the first two games but I mostly really liked what I saw. A modern VP could be a hella cool thing.

There's a Nintendo Direct on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t_RE35K5Zo

Anyone hear about Squeenix's new JRPG, Octopath Traveler, coming to the Switch in July? Very, very intriguing:

A little bit. I don't plan on getting a Switch, though.

Looks kind of like an old PS1-era RPG. I'd probably like it, but I don't plan on getting a Switch until SMT V is coming out.