In the ashes of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, amid the bloat and pretense of the games industry, always must there be a presentation... always must there be game trailers... and always must there be those who commentate. So it is we find ourselves in the aftermath of this year's collected summer showcases, a cavalcade of announcements and information to parse in its wake. For my part, I set forth to once again note the games (and, occasionally, people or moments) that stood out - for good or ill. Today, we tackle that which was displayed at Sony's State of Play, the OTK Games Expo, and the Summer Game Fest... Sony State of Play The High Point: Astro Bot Is it nakedly playing off of lingering nostalgia for various Sony properties, current and forgotten? Yes. Is it unmistakably taking cues from other more successful platformer series? Absolutely. Nevertheless, the team at Sony seem to have nailed the charm when it comes to their robot mascot, which is half the battle for cr...
Last time, we talked about the least good looking games set for release in 2023. This time, it's more hopeful as we examine the handful of titles that - based on available visual and written information - appear primed for success this year. Starting from the bottom...
The FOURTH MOST PROMISING: Killer Klowns from Outer Space
Releases sometime in the first quarter of 2023
The Basic Premise: We know at this point that it closely resembles the 1988 sci-fi comedy of the same name, bringing with it the unique design of the clowns themselves. Beyond that and the basic concept of a competitive multiplayer game being at its core, not much is readily apparent.
How Am I Feeling?
I'm newer to the fandom for this particular 1980s cult curiosity, but I adore its goofy digressions and visual gags that serve to give life to an otherwise familiar monster movie structure. Killer Klowns is delightfully singular in its twists on well-worn sci-fi horror tropes, and it runs exactly long enough to get a lot of mileage out of its premise without growing grating.
From the looks of it, the game appears to be distilling an already lean concept ("What if a formula mid-century alien invasion flick was unabashedly goofy and knew it?") down to the property's particular aesthetic choices and the basic clowns-versus-humans conflict. Though normally I'd worry that such an approach would leave the game adaptation with little of substance to build from, the choice to make this an asymmetric multiplayer game (Dead by Daylight having a lone killer hunting a team of survivors would seem to be the most obvious point of reference) feels fitting for the material.
The THIRD MOST PROMISING: Pikmin 4
Releases sometime in 2023
The Basic Premise: It's sometime in the distant future (maybe), Earth (or a planet that looks an awful lot like it) is long abandoned, and other species have begun to take notice of the untapped resources (read: our junk littering the planet's surface) waiting to be plundered. In the last three games, this meant a string of diminutive protagonists landing - or crashing - onto Earth and taking command of the titular Pikmin, plant-like creatures with an odd willingness to aid strangers in carrying off all manner of valuable items.
How Am I Feeling?
I'm obliged not to put this any higher on the list because we've only seen limited screens of this game and don't know specifics regarding its plot, mechanics, and overall feel. Otherwise? It's a Pikmin game, it ain't a hard sell.
This series has trucked along since the GameCube days, retaining a solid following thanks in part to wrapping a distinctive level design aesthetic of oversized yet mundane human detritus-as-apocalyptic set dressing around a solid real-time strategy foundation. Given Nintendo's track record for finding new wrinkles to a given formula and turning out compelling sequels for their franchises, I'm confident this will work out just fine.
The SECOND MOST PROMISING: Blood Bowl 3
Releases February 23rd
The Basic Premise: In a world where mythical races like elves and orcs (begrudgingly) coexist, the sport of Blood Bowl unites them all in brutal yet cathartic competition. You manage one of the teams in the Blood Bowl league, handling the dirtier corporate side of the business while commanding your players to win matches through clever - and possibly unethical - play.
How Am I Feeling?
You could never pay me enough to care about the labyrinthine lore and oft upsetting worldbuilding of the Warhammer tabletop game, let me make that clear. Yes, some visual aspects of the various factions look nifty. Yes, I like collectables as much as the next lore-obsessed white dweeb. No, that is not sufficient to give grimdark nonsense (or the portions of the fanbase way, way too into that sort of thing) the time of day.
Yet somehow, improbably, Blood Bowl 2 got me to give a damn. A loosely connected spinoff of Warhammer that basically only retains that game's various fantasy races and nothing else, Blood Bowl offers a fascinating proposition: what if football was a turn-based strategy game and also cartoonishly violent? Add to that a sports storyline that riffed on both the football business and fantasy cliches, and you have the makings of a pretty good time in my book (glitches and game crashes notwithstanding).
Blood Bowl 3 is looking, from all the promos, like a solid continuation and refinement of that same setup. The action seems in line with the previous game's flow, the acerbic humour is present and accounted for, and I remain endeared to the look of the various creatures making up Blood Bowl's teams. Hopefully it'll actually come out this time and not make me and others look like overly optimistic fools.
MOST PROMISING OF ALL: Like a Dragon: Ishin
Releases February 21st
The Basic Premise: At the end of Japan’s Edo period, as the country shifts ever closer to modernity, a lone samurai named Sakamoto Ryoma is nearly assassinated in an attack that kills his teacher. Upon recovering, Ryoma sets out to Kyoto under a false identity in search of answers…
How Am I Feeling?
It still astounds me that Sega, the company that's all-in on milking their blue hedgehog cash cow for all he's worth even at the expense of quality control, would manage to put out as consistently good a series as Yakuza. Granted, Yakuza's strong showing owes more to the tireless diligence and thoughtful design of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, whose almost two-decade stewardship of these games is damn near legendary.
The key to RGG's success, or at least a piece of the puzzle, is that they're smart about how they reuse assets and locations in their games in service of experimentation and evolving design. Yakuza games might always find themselves back on the lively streets of Kamurocho, but no two entries are exactly alike in their combat systems, their storylines, their assortment of quests and minigames, or even more incidental details.
So it's wild when a game in the wider Yakuza canon breaks away from the familiar urban trappings and plays with formula, as was the case for 2014’s Ishin. That game moved the action to the rural villages of 19th century Japan, pairing its new setting with a greater emphasis on sword and firearm-based combat than that of past entries. Alas, though the resulting entry was well regarded, its appeal was limited by a Japan-only release.
Near a decade later, however, the rest of the world finally gets to experience Ishin in its new and improved form. Carrying over most of Ishin’s core experience, this remake will introduce some of the newer Yakuza cast members into its historical lineup and tweak certain features like the Battle Dungeon quests, as well as giving the visuals a polish by way of the Unreal Engine 4 toolset.
Some may consider the fact that I am optimistic and respectful to this remake but not to the Dead Space one an act of profound hypocrisy. I counter that with three points: first, that the apparent effort put in to refine Ishin and make it available to the entire world is a great deal more impressive than the creative laziness of Electronic Arts' endeavour; second, that RGG has more than earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their productions; and third, that this is my goddamn list so fuck you.
-FIN-
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