Indie title Tales From Windy Meadow launches this very day on Steam. It’s an interactive slice-of-life visual novel about choosing your path and living in a community.
We’ve been told that the developer‘s goal was to create a story blending cosiness and melancholy, exploring anxieties that – he believes – many of us can relate to.
Here’s that trailer for you:
We reviewed the developer’s first game, The Tavern, and said the following:
‘A lone tavern shrouded in mystery, filled with enigmatic characters in the depths of a dark land amidst a war, The Tavern places itself among few others in the adventure category of video games…’
PlayStation Europe has released a video highlighting the range of games and experiences on offer with PS VR.
From Moss to Resident Evil 7, Beat Saber to Tetris Effect, Firewall: Zero Hour to Astro Bot Rescue Mission, the two-year-old platform is shaping up rather nicely — if we do say so ourselves.
Are you hoping to receive a PS VR this festive season? If so, what experiences are you interested in trying out? Or, have you no desire to get one? Let us know below.
The neon platformer RAZED, a game that ‘rewards quick thinking, precision and creativity’, is out today for Switch and PS4.
The title sees you rush through levels, dodge obstacles and fight your way to the top spots in international online leaderboards. It combines boss fights, unlockable abilities and the option to quickly reset your runs as well.
Additional features include:
Non-stop escalation – Sprint through 60 dynamic levels spread across six unique worlds, each with a distinct visual style, unlockable abilities and pulse-pounding boss battles.
Fuss-free speedrunning – Nobody wants to wait around while striving for perfection. Falling short of your target time? Simply jab the restart button to return to the start of the level without any loading times.
Secret challenge levels – Employ all your different skills and abilities to find RAZED’s toughest maps and tackle them head-on.
Online leaderboards and ghost data – Challenge the world via online leaderboards, and race against friends’ ghosts in a game of asynchronous one-upmanship.
Chart your own course – Veer off the beaten path and carve your own way through levels to achieve seemingly impossible times and unlock the S ranks.
With today’s two releases, RAZED, from UK developer Warpfish Games, is now available for Steam, Xbox One, Switch and PS4.
The release date, for the second episode of Life is Strange 2, has been revealed as January 24th.
The new episode titled ‘Rules’ will see Sean and Daniel’s difficult story continue. On the run from the police following a tragic incident in Seattle and the manifestation of a strange supernatural power, the two brothers struggle against the cold.
Daniel gets increasingly ill and Sean decides that they must take the risk and make their way to their distant grandparent’s house to recover and seek shelter.
‘The reaction to episode 1 has been fantastic and it has been great to read all the comments and feedback from players.
‘So many people are falling in love with Sean and Daniel, and we’ve only just begun their journey. There’s so much more to come in Life is Strange 2.’ Michel Koch and Raoul Barbet — Co-Creators.
We’ve also been treated to a new live action trailer for the game, which you can watch below:
There’s a bit more available on the story for episode 2 as well, but why not just play it when it releases instead?
VR adventure game A Fisherman’s Tale will launch on PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality on the 22nd January next year. Luckily for us, it sounds rather intriguing too.
In A Fisherman’s Tale, you live a cosy, isolated life — until one day, you realise you’re just a little wooden puppet trapped inside the model of a lighthouse.
Worse yet, the model is replicated inside and out on an infinite recursive loop. You quickly find out you can collaborate with none other than yourself to solve the multi-dimensional riddles that pave the way to discovering your true reality. You can check it out here in a 360° video:
A Fisherman’s Tale is developed by Innerspace VR — we’re already loving the premise of this.
A new Nintendo Minute has been released which features hosts Kit and Krysta joined by the one and only (Nintendo of America’s) Reggie Fils-Aime.
In the video, Reggie reacts to some of the key moments of Ultimate’s marketing campaign, from the initial reveal of the game to its release. Light-hearted takeaways include:
Reggie admits he’s a bit rubbish at Smash and can’t stop falling off the stage — he ‘mains’ Ridley to stay alive that bit longer.
He talks about director Masahiro Sakurai being not just a student of Nintendo games, but games in general. Sakurai’s sheer passion for gaming made it possible.
Reggie discusses the reaction to Joker from Persona 5 being in Ultimate and says it was ‘phenomenal’ to watch. He can’t wait for the next DLC character announcements, (which he clearly has knowledge of).
The remake (yes remake, not remaster) of MediEvil on PS4 has finally shown itself. The game is a complete transformation of the PS1 classic from the ‘grave up’. It’s certainly been a long time coming:
Impressive, right? MediEvil is out next year, but that’s all we know for now. We’ve been told to expect more details in the coming months. Stay tuned and Happy Halloween!
Variety is reporting that TV network AMC, and Korean developer Smilegate, were in funding talks with Telltale Games shortly before the mass layoffs — that have shocked the games industry — occurred.
The Walking Dead: The Final Season Trailer — From Telltale Games
It’s said that Telltale even held a meeting to tell its employees that negotiations with AMC ‘were going well’. Both companies ended up backing out for unknown reasons.
Capcom has announced, via their TGS stream, that the original Ace Attorney trilogy is coming to Switch, PS4, PC (Steam) and Xbox One.
A great time to jump in if you haven’t already, the trilogy will feature upgraded HD graphics and is set for release early 2019:
In other Ace Attorney news, Capcom announced the Ace Attorney Concert 2019 and showed off a new trailer for the second season of the anime — which is looking vastly improved from the enjoyable first season — based on the third game in the series. Godot, of course, makes his entrance in a suitable style. The broadcast begins October 6th (via CloverWorks), here’s the teaser:
Although, disappointingly, there was no Ace Attorney 7 to show. Capcom seems to be saving that title for another day…
Capcom has teased Ace Attorney fans by saying the panel at the Tokyo Game Show this year is something they will definitely want to see.
Ace Attorney News Inbound
The panel for the sublime legal series will be held on Saturday the 22nd of September from 16.00 JST (3.00 EDT, 00.00 PDT, 8.00 in the morning BST) and will last for around 40 minutes. Capcom said the panel is simply:
“Unmissable for Ace Attorney fans.”
What’s more, Ace Attorney series producer Motohide Eshiro and game designer Shinsuke Kodama will indeed be attending.
Motohide Eshiro.
With 40 minutes to play with, Capcom will most likely bring some goodies along. Those goodies are expected to be the first six games in HD, across two compilations, serving as an introduction to those unfamiliar with the series, followed by what sounds like Ace Attorney 7.
Nintendo Direct’s featured a terrific one-two last night, starting with the unexpected announcement of Luigi’s Mansion 3 and ending with the insidious Tom Nook rather effectively revealing Animal Crossing for Switch.
Between these two points, games like Diablo 3: Eternal Collection, Game Freak’s new RPG, simply called Town, Yoshi’s Crafted World, Starlink: Battle for Atlas and Daemon X Machina all impressed. That wasn’t the problem.
The Nintendo Switch Online service launches next week, September 19th in the UK, and this was the company’s chance to really sell it to us, to convince the sceptics. Unfortunately, as some might have expected, Nintendo proved once again that their understanding of the online space is limited — to say the least.
Come on now.
The Direct, essentially, gave us a few new details on the basic features. Firstly, it’ll cost £17.99 a year or £3.49 a month and for that:
You can play games online.
You’ll be able to play NES games each month. NES games are added every month.
You can back up your save data to the cloud.
The smartphone app enables voice chat.
There are exclusive offers for members
So, let’s examine each of these:
It’ll cost £17.99 a year, or £3.49 a month
That’s a good price. Xbox Live comes in at £39.99 and PS Plus at £49.99 for a year. But…
You can play games online
Nintendo has taken its time to launch the service, so, by removing something people have already grown accustomed to — playing games like Splatoon 2 and Mario Tennis Aces online for free — they are almost always going to feel cheated unless value is added elsewhere. Does the extra cost improve the online gameplay with better servers, for example? We don’t know and we should do by now.
You’ll be able to play NES games each month. More NES games are added every month.
Cool? I find it hard to believe, considering the duration the service has been worked on since the Switch’s launch, that NES games are all Nintendo can offer here. The idea of playing ‘80s games with added netcode is novel but hugely insignificant in this day and age. Nintendo has the option to create a low-cost Netflix-style service with access to an incredible library of games across the SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii etc. Few could do that, and yet here we are.
What’s more, you’ll need to connect at least every week in order to guarantee access to these NES games — even if your subscription is a long way from expiring. It’s just not practical for travel at all. PS4 and Xbox let you play offline as long as the games are downloaded first.
What’s more, Nintendo will not keep your cloud save data if your online plan runs out. These are kept for six months after a user’s subscription lapses on PS4. Xbox goes one better and keeps them indefinitely.
The smartphone app enables voice chat
You need a companion smartphone app for voice chat. It’s awkward and overly complex. Enough said really.
There are exclusive offers for members
Sounds good, like discounts on games? What are they? ‘We’ll have more to announce in the future’. But it launches next week, shouldn’t some offers be ready to announce? ‘Here are some NES Controllers’.
The Online Proposition
I feel like the Nintendo Direct, instead of selling the online service, reinforced the idea that it offers little of value, and that’s probably why it’s cheap. In that case, what’s the point of it other than for a quick monetary boost?
Let’s alternatively, pretend, that Nintendo offered the following service:
You can play games online with more robust servers – for those that want a premium online experience.
You’ll be able to play a selection of NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube games each month with online added in. Achievements for these titles are an optional extra that can be enabled.
You can back up your save data to the cloud for all games. Cloud data is stored indefinitely.
The smartphone app has been deleted from history. You can talk to friends via the console itself. Friend codes have also been deleted from history.
Custom themes, menu music and folders are available as part of the service.
There are exclusive offers for members, including discounts on games and a free Switch game every month.
Does all of that sound entirely unreasonable, given the time they had? I personally don’t believe so. They could even raise the price to reflect this — most would pay a little bit more for it, I would think. I’m aware that all of this could be added in the future without much difficulty, but I get the feeling we’ll be waiting an awfully long time. And they’ve had plenty.
Wise Yet Strangely Naive
The truth is: I’m not even particularly bothered by online services in general. When I get chance, I spend a great deal of time playing deep single player games, or games locally with others. It’s more the fact the offering from Nintendo is so uncharacteristically poor when compared to their usual workmanship.
I imagine Nintendo to be a master artisan when designing games; inspiring, bold, passionate perfectionists that are almost peerless in their craft. It’s telling that the video they presented to us, with the use of Mario characters to explain the online service, was, on a creative level at least, the best part; Bowser and his son playing together, Lakitu being the literal cloud save data:
The Switch itself is a smart portable, a cool slice of tech for console quality gaming out and about. It’s a great proposition and the sales show people are engaged with it. When it comes to online infrastructure, however, I imagine Nintendo as a bumbling, misplaced clown that has lost the ability to make people laugh. Genuinely speaking, I don’t understand why they find it so hard to get right. It’s like the department for online services at Nintendo is from a different company altogether, with computers still running Windows XP.
The internet is an entitled, odd place. It has its daily, often wild rants, the mutterings or cries of ‘I want this’, things are either absolutely terrible or absolutely amazing. There’s no real logic or sense of balance. I could digress. In a nutshell: this piece shouldn’t come across as one of those — I’m just stating it would be really quite nice to see an online service worthy of Nintendo’s name.
