The Café

There's a part of me that worries about Hellblade 2 (and the new System Shock) but they both have promise.

Senua's Sacrifice didn't have the greatest controls, but the narrative and acting is top notch. Also, they aren't fucking around with those content warnings.

re: Hellblade 2 and Falcon's music posts, Heilung is apparently on the soundtrack. Maybe doing the whole soundtrack? One of those two. Either way that owns

That Dark Alliance trailer was hot garbage. Nothing about it worked. Also no Regis. How do you leave out a halfling named Regis?

Delthazar wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 13, 2019 5:13 pm

re: Hellblade 2 and Falcon's music posts, Heilung is apparently on the soundtrack. Maybe doing the whole soundtrack? One of those two. Either way that owns

Yeah, watching that trailer not from work it definitely has Heilung's sound. Interesting to see the direction they take that story. Dark Alliance does nothing for me, and I'd forgotten the previous games in that series existed.

hey uhh Hunter (?) I think yer the only one here at the center of the "Phantasy Star enjoyer" and "Xbox One haver" venn diagram, so go get yerself in the closed beta

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/12/16/ ... ne-2-beta/

Really? I'm the only one here who's gonna be playing PSO2?

No one else here has an XB1 unless they're being very quiet about it.

I'll play it when the PC version launches. The XB1 version seems on track to hit first, since that's how it was announced and that's where this first closed beta is happening, but supposedly it'll have Xbox/PC crossplay when both versions are live, so that's nice. I'm guessing the PC closed beta isn't far off and I wonder if it'll overlap with XB1.

If they follow the Japanese version there should be PS4 and Switch ports eventually but I ain't waitin' that long if the PC port is functional.

e: HUnewearls get in

...Come to the forest...

bring all ur meseta

I love how dramatic they are about a closed beta announcement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWgobsO37Qc

Epic is giving away a game a day for twelve days starting now, the 19th of December. Today's freebie is Into The Breach, a fantastic rogueish tactical strategy banger from the folks wot did FTL. It's easily one of the best games of 2018. Go get it, now, before it vanishes, which it will, tomorrow, the 20th. Of December.

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p ... reach/home

(It's also a perfect Switch game so maybe grab it there if it goes on sale.)

Uh, yikes, today's Epic freebie is fuckin' Ape Out, a very well reviewed release from just this year. 2019!

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p ... e-out/home

Go get it just to add one more thing to y'all's GOTY consideration.

Today's freebie is Hyper Light Drifter, another game I've heard good things about. Epic is also giving a $10 coupon during this event, which stacks onto any other discounts on their store. It's a good time to buy a game to play over the break (I bought Subnautica for $6).

Hyper Light Drifter is amazing, one of the best games of... 2016, I think. Tight play, absolutely killer atmosphere. Not really much else out there like it. 100% recommend.

The soundtrack is on Spotify and still in heavy rotation over here.

Falcon Critical wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 27, 2019 12:00 pm

Epic is also giving a $10 coupon during this event, which stacks onto any other discounts on their store. It's a good time to buy a game to play over the break (I bought Subnautica for $6).

I should give Subnautica another shot. I dug what I played of it, but at that time I was kinda burnt-out on survival-ish games, so I didn't last long. But now it's been a while since I played something like that, so maybe it's time. Or, I'll wait a bit more and jump into the expansion when that hits.

I'm thinking of using my coupon on Outer Wilds since that's been getting so much buzz.

I played like 15 hours of Subnautica on the first day haha, it's a great one to play in front of podcasts (like GOTY).

https://twitter.com/Harada_TEKKEN/statu ... 5520352257

So apparently there was talk of remastering the Xenosaga series but it failed, because they figured it wouldn't be profitable enough. That's a shame. I think that was a great series with a lot of problems, but also potential, and an overhaul could have fixed a lot of things. I would certainly buy all three games again if they were remade properly (though II would need an entire battle system overhaul).

I played Xenosaga back in the day, I remember it had some good concepts and setting but holy fuck it was long. I managed to get off the ship you start on, but not a lot further I don't think. Never played Xenogears.

The Xeno games were a complicated mess. Xenogears and Xenosaga were both good, but half finished(literally, in Xenogears case.) Xenosaga II was rushed and had some really shitty mechanics. Xenosaga III was actually really good. Definitely worth checking out at some point, although you'd have to be prepared to spend a few hours reading the codex to catch up on the back story.

^ Those raisins you listed are all why I'd love a well-done remake. Seriously though, II needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. I'm surprised I even played III after that mess, but I'm glad I did.

A full proper remake would also give them the opportunity to pick one (1) character design style and stick with it, rather than ending up with three distinct looks in a three-game series.

But I liked the compromise Xenosaga 3 settled on, so updated versions of those models would be fine. (bonus points: put the Xenosaga 3 character models in Xenosaga 2's costuming)

...unfortunately, I don't really trust the current crop of Xeno artists to do anything like that based on some of these Xenoblade characters, woof

That was the era of people complaining about cutscenes being way too long in RPGs, particularly JRPGs. As someone who loves cinematic games, Xenosaga 1 and 2 are among the only games ever that I really did agree had too many/long cutscenes.

Now, if they were to fix that (and other stuff), great! I'd definitely pay attention.

A FF7R demo has leaked and been datamined for material outside the scope of said demo, and a good amount was found in its code, so beware spoilers from here on out.

I dunno when the demo is actually going up on PSN for real. News of its existence broke on Christmas Eve but wasn't 100% corroborated until now.

Ooh, definitely curious about the battle system, so when the demo is live, I'd love to know.

paging C6: Disaster Report 4 now has an April 7th release date and a new trailer.

https://youtu.be/86pd9Kg3gE0

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/0 ... ease-date/

As we reported previously, this installment of the Disaster Report series was scrapped in 2011 by the original developers, Irem, in the wake of the earthquakes that hit Japan due to the game’s subject matter. It was later picked up again by Granzella, a team made up of former Irem devs, and localised by NIS America.

Brace yourself for some jank.

...oh, and go figure, since we were just talking about this: Act V of Kentucky Route Zero is finally out on January 28th. That's seven years from start to finish if you've been keeping score.

https://youtu.be/MjBUVdT-f1U

Console editions will launch with it.

Perhaps it's time to actually play KRZ, has been on my radar since the first ep came out.

Polygon put up a good list of 2020 indies, some new to me, some with trailers I haven't seen or forgot about. They're new if you haven't seen them yet. They're reminders if you needed them.

https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/9/210587 ... box-switch

Best Friend Forever, or... what if Dream Daddy, but you're dating dog owners instead of dads, maybe

https://youtu.be/luQvV8sWEcI

Calico: renovate a cat cafe, be a slave to cats

https://youtu.be/qvP4Xtsi1MQ

Haven has been kicking around a bit but I think I missed this particular gameplay trailer. Dig that it's a big soundtrack kinda game, as Furi was, but carrying a totally different tone befitting it's different themes. This one gets a little higher on my 2020 list every time I see it.

https://youtu.be/ragUUT9bsFQ

Inkulinati, for those of you really into medieval art and Monty Python noises.

https://youtu.be/lqFL3KAjKFI

Luna, a point-and-click with a great look.

https://youtu.be/X9mWcIfCJwU

Way to the Woods is something I know I called out before but forgot about 'til now.

https://youtu.be/TDjbZyvvyu0