Sixty Does Stuff

Unfortunately, my Kitty Horrorshow ideas fell apart with Haunted Cities Vol. 3.

BUT there's always another game!  Thus I'm playing OverBlood for a spooky classic bit of survival horror.  And robot love.

Two Kitty Horrorshow games today!  Because they were both quite short.  And one isn't even kind of scary. Anyway, enjoy Scarlet Bough and Roads!

It’s time to finally come clean... about my latest obsession...

This past weekend I started playing a dice-based roleplaying game called Beast Age.  It’s a campaign cooked up by one of my best friends (one of the two “best people” at my wedding, in fact); we are using the Fantasy Age ruleset, which is a variation of the tabletop Dragon Age ruleset.  And I am dying to tell folks about my character.  If you want to read more about his process and what’s going on in that world, he’s got a blog going that details the world and he’ll also be writing up what happens each time we play, partially as a refresher for us players.  You can check all of that out ( https://innsmouthbear.wordpress.com/category/beast-age/ ) but I’ll give a bit of quick context:

Nothing.  I am only casually interested in Super Smash Bros. and that is almost literally the only thing they showed.  I can’t get excited about Super Mario Party.  I’ve wanted to dive into a Fire Emblem game but this new one probably isn’t the place to start.  The trailer for Daemon X Machina was cool, but not knowing what that game actually isn’t didn’t get me.I don’t actually know what Pokémon Let’s Go is like?  Maybe they showed it, but the deluge of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate information erased it from my brain.

What’s going on with the proper Pokémon game?  What about your online service, some details on that would be great.  New Animal Crossing, please?  Wasn’t there a Metroid Prime game announced?

Okay, honestly, this would be a shorter post if I list what I’m not excited about.  Part of that is hanging the majority of their presentation on four games, The Last of Us Part II, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, and Death Stranding.  And I honestly only came in looking forward to three of those games.  But ended the presentation with a different three I was excited about...

So, let’s start from the top.  The Last of Us Part II.  The first game is a top contender for my favorite game, like ever.  I feel confident in saying in the Top 3.  So I’ve been very excited for this game since the moment it was announced.  And I love, love the music.  I bought the soundtrack for the first game, so I was very impressed to have Gustavo Santaolalla playing a song live to kick off the demo.  Watch at least his performance, if not the entire presentation (I’ll link the gameplay trailer, ‘cause tumblr won’t let me embed it, but be aware the gameplay trailer is very violent.)

Ghost of Tsushima also opened with a musical performance from a white guy dressed in traditional Japanese dress playing what I’m guessing is a traditional Japanese instrument.  So, a little weird, but it did sound beautiful and the gameplay trailer afterward looked fantastic.  I’m very excited to get into this game set in Japanese history.  Warning: A lot of violence in this video, as well.

I came in to the start of this looking forward to Death Stranding.  However... I was not impressed by their showing this year.  It honestly felt like a lot of the same mystery from the last trailer and just weird for weird’s sake. There was some interesting potential game play... but it didn’t get me hyped.  I still really want to play it, though.  I’m into weird for the sake of weird and bizarre mysteries, it just didn’t grab me again like last year.

The inverse of that, I came in with no interest in a new Spider-Man.  I’ve enjoyed playing previous games with Spider-Man, but they also felt very same-y.  And it was always just for the joy of playing the game, the story was always meh, at best.  However... watching this gameplay trailer got me very excited to play Spider-Man.  With a fun little teaser.  And I like the look of... Negative Man?  Mr. Negative?  The Inverse-oid?  He looked cool.

I want to briefly speak about the conference itself.  Ubisoft conferences are always wild and I love it.  Even for the games I don’t care about, they can do something to pique my interest.  For instance: I don’t care at all about Just Dance 2019.  But, holy crow, I love the way Ubisoft presented it.  Let’s just enjoy that together.

Another great presentation?  Trials: Rising.  Loud Finnish man riding a dirt bike in and then prat falling through a podium.  But aside from that, I’m actually very interested in this.  I skipped out on Trials: Fusion, so I feel ready and happy to try another one of those games up to the point that it’s hair-tearingly frustrating and I call it quits.

Transference is a game that seems like it may make me cry.  But it’s intriguing enough that I want to play it.  However, the hashtag includes the letters VR.  So... I dunno if I’ll ever play it.  Maybe if VR ever gets cheap enough for me to afford?

And finally, the biggest thing to me from the Ubisoft conference was Beyond Good & Evil 2.  I came to the first game very, very late, late enough that I could not understand the love for Beyond Good & Evil.  But this trailer gave me some chills.  If the game actually has cut scenes like this and the rest of the game shares this aesthetic?  I’m way on board.  And I kind of want that pink and blue chess set.

I’m back in to E3 2018!  I just needed some developers from a little further East.  I just need RPGs.

I have never played a Dragon Quest game.  But I get so excited at the prospect of playing one.  The trailer is very boilerplate RPG story stuff, but those games always look so cool.  So, yeah... I want to play Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age.

And continuing with RPGs, Babylon’s Fall didn’t impress me so much with the game but with the story it’s telling.  Plus, I’m always intrigued by PlatinumGames, they make some fun stuff.

And one more.  Octopath Traveler.  This is not a new game announcement, this has been kicking around a while, but it looks cool, sounds cool, and has a name that I don’t exactly understand.  Is it a traveler who takes 8 different paths?  I just want to play it.  I feel I’m often let down by attempts to recapture the 8-bit and 16-bit RPG era of games, but I’m always willing to be hurt again.

But the weirdest game that caught my eye is The Quiet Man.  There’s just so much mystery.  What is it?  It looks kind of like a janky brawler, those animations are not impressing me.  But it opens with live actors.  Is it an FMV game that transitions to brawling video game people?  Gods I hope so.  And what’s in the bag?  I just don’t know!  But I want to!  This is me ignoring the obvious racial stereotypes presented in the trailer and hoping it’s just some poor casting and not reflective of the game.  Please don’t let it be reflective of the game.

Nothing.  Nothing got me excited.  Actually, that’s not true, Starfield was very intriguing, but there was almost nothing there.  I just like space games.  See for yourself just what they showed:

Doom: Eternal got my attention, but it’s difficult to get excited for another shooter.  Playing them throughout my 10s and 20s, I’ve grown tired of first-person perspectives and shooting things, in general. I still haven’t found the time to play the last one from 2016, even.  It does look pretty cool, though, and I have a real soft spot for the franchise.

Everything else is not for me.  I’ve never been into Elder Scrolls or Fallout, the big things from Bethesda.  And again, these are multiplayer-focused games that you technically can play solo, but how hollow is that experience?

Honestly, it was an hour into the conference before I was excited.  Similar to the EA conference, there were several things I was curious about (like Devil May Cry 5, Kingdom Hearts III, and Halo: Infinite) but it was a little game called Tunic that got me excited for the first time.

I have been looking forward to this game for a while, since it was called Secret Legend, and I’m so excited for this super cute Zelda-style game.  On Steam, because I don’t have an Xbox One.  Thank you Play Anywhere initiative!

There wasn’t much said about Gears Tactics at this conference, but, this quick gameplay shot makes it look like an XCOM sort of game, which sounds all right to me.

Perhaps I’m most excited about Cyberpunk 2077.  That game has an aesthetic that I am feeling HARD.  Every viewing there’s a new aspect to see and enjoy.  Watch it a couple times.

Sea of Solitude. Cornelia Geppert, the writer and creative director, completely sold me on it, even if this wasn't a very mysterious, creepy trailer. A story exploring loneliness that literally turns people into monsters? I'm intrigued.

And... that's honestly it. Nothing else from this show really hit. I'm curious about Unravel Two but I never actually played the first game, so it's difficult to be excited. I've found over the last few years that I've become much more selective about what games I want to play and the move in the gaming market to always online, multiplayer focused games is leaving me in the cold, as well.

For instance, I'm also curious about Anthem; I love Bioware games and it looks super, super cool, but I'm only going to play it if there's a strong singleplayer component. It's the same thing that pushed me away from Destiny.