Now that Mary has dealt with Marguerite, it's time to move on to Lucas, possibly the jerkiest jerk of any video game jerk. Ever.
In the episode above, Mary Kish finds the Snake Key and makes her way into the attic, in search of Oliver and his decomposing body (not really, but Mary doesn't know that yet). Mary also returns to the basement, finds a trap door, and runs into Grandma again.
To catch up on previous episodes of Resident Kinevil, the Let's Play series where former video producer Mary Kish and current producer Mike Mahardy play through every numbered Resident Evil game, go to the show's GameSpot page here, or to its YouTube channel here.
Over the years, Playstation Experience has been a premiere event for fans of Sony's gaming brand to see the next big games. In addition to several first-party offerings, including God of War, Detroit: Become Human, and Final Fantasy VII Remake from past years, there's also an assortment of other games from third-parties and indie developers that manage to make their mark on the show floor. During PSX 2017, however, things looked to be a bit lean when it comes to first-party titles. Because of this, many other games managed to have more time in the spotlight, allowing fans to try something they wouldn't have otherwise.
After PSX this year, we put together a list of games that left an impression at the show. Sometimes all it takes is a cool idea, creative visual design, or innovative gameplay mechanics to stick out, but it also helps to let your game be weird and quirky where it counts. Here are ten games coming to PlayStation 4 stuck with us after our tour of the show floor at PSX 2017.
Guacamelee! 2
DrinkBox Studio's Guacamelee was a rather odd, yet compelling title that blended Metroidvania design with the mystique and gravitas of Luchadore action. With Guacamelee 2, which was revealed at Paris Games Week 2017, the developers return to the bizarre and vibrant worlds of the living and the dead, but it has substantially upped the stakes this time. Picking up sometime after the original game, Juan and his Lucha compadres confront a new bad guy in the form of an egotistical casanova-type named El Mineco, who is one of several new bosses. While the original Guacamelee had co-op, the sequel doubles down on it, now offering up to four-players locally. While much of the exploration and traversal is in familiar Metroidvania style, Guacamelee 2 refines much of the fighting mechanics and grappling skills-- Juan's chicken form, for example, is now ready to go toe-to-toe with anyone thanks to its pecking combo-attacks. We expect to return to the exotic world of metaphysical Luchadore action when it releases sometime in 2018.
Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition
After a rather rough launch, the fifth entry in Capcom's long-running fighting game series is finally hitting its stride. Coming January 16, Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition will launch as a free update for those that have a season pass, and as a $40 release for those coming in fresh. This add-on features an assortment of new modes, costumes, and stages that pay homage to the 30 year history of the series. And with enhanced fighting mechanics--including updated moves and new V-Triggers for every characters--Street Fighter V is ready for its biggest expansion yet. The standout feature coming to SFV is the new Arcade Mode, allowing players to revisit different eras of the Street Fighter saga in six unique paths modeled after the core entries of the series. Street Fighter V has seen continual improvements, and as one of the most popular fighting games at tournaments, seeing the game in action with top players is always a joy to watch. With new Season 3 characters--including Sakura, Cody, Sagat, and Blanka--revealed at Capcom Cup 2017, it looks like the seasoned fighter is getting finer with age.
The Gardens Between
First confirmed for the PS4 at Sony's Paris Games Week event in 2017, The Gardens Between is an unique puzzle game with a time manipulation mechanic at its core. As you progress through the game's stylized levels, you'll be able to rewind and forward time, affecting the environment around you and helping you solve it's key puzzles. There also seems to be an interesting story being told in The Gardens Between, with the two main characters being best friends trying to explore their shared experiences growing up. And from our brief playthrough at this year's PSX, The Gardens Between looks like it might be an evocative if a little sedate puzzler. It is set for release on the PS4 sometime in 2018.
Tiny Metal
There's been longing for an Advance Wars-style game for quite sometime. Though Nintendo has gone without releasing a new entry in the strategy game series since 2008, the developers at Area 35 are looking to fill that void with Tiny Metal. Set for release on December 21, the world of Tiny Metal focuses on the conflict between warring nations as they battle for territory and resources. Despite the cartoonish visuals, the story delves into some rather serious themes, taking inspiration from real-world conflicts such as the Syrian refugee crisis. When you get down to it, Tiny Metal plays like a more modern version of Advance wars, with players as a commander in control several unit types, and tasked with capturing bases by flanking enemies around the field. From what we've played, this little strategy game evokes the familiar sense of tactical foresight and quick thinking, which will channels the same satisfaction you get from Nintendo's classic strategy series. With a free multiplayer update coming later in the Spring, Area 35 plans to support Tiny Metal for quite sometime after its launch.
Donut County
The eccentric Donut County has been making the indie game preview rounds for several years now, so it's great to see that this charming and affable little title will also make its way to the PlayStation 4 sometime in 2018 (running at 60fps to boot, as this latest trailer slyly boasts). In Donut County, you play as a… hole, with your task being to swallow up everything on the screen. Your diameter starts off as being fairly small, and the more you swallow, the bigger you get, allowing you to ingest even larger objects. You'll also have to solve some environmental puzzles along the way, too, as well as delve a little deeper into the stories of the people and animals you've, ummmm, swallowed along the way. It's all very silly and charming, and with gameplay that's equal parts surreal and oddly meditative, it's one that we're definitely looking forward to in the new year.
Anamorphine
In Anamorphine, players go through an introspective journey of one person's struggle with mental illness. As a largely reflective game--with its story told without any dialogue--each level or key event takes place within a memory, where you'll be able to learn more of the regrets and anxieties your character faces. With several perspective-skewing moments throughout, including a number of interesting occurrences diving into one memory, and suddenly finding yourself within another emotionally evocative moment in time--Anamorphine definitely hits the right notes when it seeks to convey a particular character's struggle with overcoming their past and the ensuing regret. Coming next year on January 18, Anamorphine isn't shy about wearing its emotions on its sleeves. If anything, it wants you to know the type of experience you'll find yourself in--which could make the journey, and the ensuing revelations that follow--all the more cathartic.
Wattam
Wattam is yet another indie darling long in gestation, having been first shown way back in 2014. Since then, the game has shed its PlayStation exclusivity and been picked up by a new publisher: Annapurna Interactive. But what's been consistent throughout its long journey is how utterly delightful this game is to play every single time. Created by Keita Takahashi (the mind behind Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy), Wattam is a colorful and endearing little title where you play as a variety of extremely cute characters who like to hold hands and occasionally explode. While that description sounds exceedingly strange, the game exudes an amazing sense of joy as you (and another player) explore your surroundings and the characters that inhabit it. From each of the characters' joyful utterances as an explosion rocks them into the air, to how the game continues to delight and surprise with small revelations, Wattam looks set to be one of those games that's guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
Mulaka
In Mulaka, you take on the role of a young Shaman exploring the wilderness of Northern Mexico in days long past. Using his magical spear and other abilities, the young tribesman transforms into spirit animals to traverse regions of the world, and defeat larger than life foes in order to bring balance to the land and its many inhabitants. As an action-adventure game, players must scavenge and battle dangerous creatures in the wild to survive, all while interacting with the many villagers and characters you come across in your travels. But what's interesting about Mulaka, above all, is its respect for the culture and setting of the game. Pulling from Northern Mexican folklore, particularly from the Tarahumara culture, Mulaka brings a level of authenticity to its setting, channeling some mysticism and unique fantastical elements that leverages the medium to great effect. The developers even travelled to areas of Northern Mexico, where the descendants of the Tarahumara tribe still live, to learn of their culture first-hand. Set for release in early 2018, the developers at Lienzo embraced the world of their game, which will make it an interesting one to fully explore.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
After its four years in development, the crowdfunded action-RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance is finally set for release next year on February 13. As an open-world Medieval-era adventure, players will be able to interact with historical figures during the time, pick fights with bandits and rival factions, and lay siege to enemy encampments throughout the land. How you choose to go about your travels is up to you, and Kingdom Come gives you free-reign in how you explore the land and its many regions. Moreover, combat in Kingdom Come takes steps further to offer more tactile and elaborate mechanics to match its setting. Presenting a system that tracks real positioning and angles for your sword strikes, you'll have to ensure that you make all your moves count. Ditching fantasy for realism, Kingdom Come: Deliverance looks to offer something quite unique for its open world setting--which many students of the era will want to dive into.
The Adventure Pals
Let's get this out of the way. Your main quest in The Adventure Pals involves saving all the world's old people from being turned into living, angry hot dogs. It doesn't seem like things can get any more absurd than that, but that's only the tip of the iceberg for the bizarre adventure you'll go on. With the main character and their trusty giraffe companion, players will travel the world, meet local mailmen and insecure whales, slay deadly kitten monsters, collect cupcake loot, and of course, free the many aforementioned old people from their meaty forms of imprisonments. Developer The Adventure Pals manages to ramp up the absurdity by several degrees with each passing stage, and with local co-op play, you'll be able to share in these quirky and strange moments with friends. Coming early 2018, this throwback action-RPG game looks to have a lot of fun with its setting and gameplay, which definitely comes out in the right ways.
In 2013, the Kickstarter campaign for the strategy-RPG game Project Phoenix launched. Proposing to bring together talent that previously worked at Square-Enix and Blizzard, including Final Fantasy music composer Nobuo Uematsu, the ambitious project built up a great deal of anticipation from strategy fans looking for a new game that delivered large-scale combat, with a dark and mature storyline.
The crowdfunding campaign was a huge success for director and producer Hiroaki Yura, passing its modest $100,000 goal to reach a final tally of $1 million. Unfortunately, work on Project Phoenix stalled, resulting in fewer updates on the game and lack of communication for its nearly 16,000 backers. Eventually, the director formed a new studio called Area 35, bringing the stalled game with them to his new venture. In November 2017, former Area 35 developer Tariq Lacy publicly accused the studio of misappropriating funds from the Project Phoenix Kickstarter to work on Tiny Metal, a different strategy game. Area 35 has vehemently denied this accusation, however.
The developers from Area 35, including game director Hiroaki Yura, came to PSX 2017 to show off the latest build of Tiny Metal, which launches on December 21 for PS4, Steam, and Switch. During our talk, the subject of Project Phoenix came up, and the director was eager to clear the air on it.
"So we're still working on Project Phoenix, but basically until we finish [Tiny Metal] and produce good results with it, we can't get more funding from our investors," he said. "What we can say is that the allegations are untrue, but we've been warned by our lawyers that we can't talk s*** about other people. Even if it's untrue, [[we can't] because we could be sued for libel or defamation."
During our meeting, Area 35 shared several documents with GameSpot showing contracts made with private investors and the planned budget for Project Phoenix, including all financials therein. Unfortunately, the developers are not at liberty to share these documents publicly, but their hope was that showing them with the press would offer some added perspective and transparency on the matter--which Yura wishes to provide in light of the recent accusations from Lacy.
"What we came to [an] agreement on was that [the investors] were going to throw some money to finish [Tiny Metal] off, and then if this succeeds, we will basically resume on Project Phoenix," Yura said. "That's how we finished off most of the work on [Tiny Metal], and then Sony approached us and we finished off with full voice-over, and other expenses that we couldn't even begin to afford. We were first introduced to Sony during the work on Project Phoenix, and though this is not official, verbally we agreed that if Tiny Metal does well, then we will probably work on Project Phoenix. So, what Tariq did to us was pretty bad. I mean we can't go ahead and show this kind of evidence because it's [under a non-disclosure agreement]. I mean, we can't show this to our backers; people are likely to always side with the employee. It's a bit messy for us."
Despite all that has happened with the Kickstarter campaign, Yura and the developers at Area 35 are still passionate about what Project Phoenix can become. The director went on to describe his passion for the MMO genre, and how that fueled his desire to put together the campaign for Kickstarter. Still, he admits that he was overwhelmed by the rush of attention that came to the game.
"This is going to sound a bit dirty, but I'm a World of Warcraft player," Yura said. "I worked with Blizzard during the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, and getting about 40 people together and doing raids was a tedious task--and actually getting people to follow the raid leader was annoying. What I thought might be fun is if you could control all your people, and yourself--and basically it's a single-player raid in an RTS mode. That's basically what Phoenix is all about. I've got lots of friends who've worked on the AAA side of the industry, and when I spoke to them about it, they wanted to do it. And then they all pointed to me to produce and direct it, because I'm bilingual. But the thing is, I've never delivered a game, but I've had backing from Uematsu-san, several key artists from Square-Enix who've worked on Final Fantasy, people from the Warcraft team--it was just sort of overwhelming."
The director also spoke about several key moments in the development of Project Phoenix that severely hampered its growth, which he claims were his biggest missteps throughout production.
"This biggest failure I've done is basically because I didn't see the dangers of production that I couldn't really anticipate. My programmer back then was a genius named David Clark, and he was also working on a game called Ori and the Blind Forest. Fortunately for David, Ori was a huge hit after its delays. But he couldn't leave Moon Studios--as they were already talking about a sequel. He's also my friend, and he was succeeding and I didn't want him to lose his momentum, so he couldn't make our game. So we were stuck programmer-less for a few months until our friends from A1 Studios in Germany--they do the models for Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm--told us they could lend us a programmer for a few months so we could at least finish prototyping it, which we did. And that's where we stopped. So we got all the assets for Act 1, all the characters, all the enemies, the environmental assets, and all the animation effects to do Act 1."
"But as you can understand, already being able to do that within a million dollars--also with Uetmatsu-san to write the music--was quite complicated. Obviously we put in a lot of money ourselves, and we have to keep money for the rewards and all that, but at that point I wasn't very happy with the look of the game. It wasn't A1's fault, but I think the visual design was too 'chibi,' like super-deformed. It looked too immature, and the content of the game was much more mature than that. So we were running out of budget, we were running out of time, so we announced our delay and we started planning for [Tiny Metal] to try and make money for Project Phoenix."
Yura is still confident that things will pick up for Project Phoenix after the launch of Tiny Metal. While there's still a sizable amount of work to be down on the Kickstarter game, the developers are pleased with how Tiny Metal turned out and plan to continue support on it for some time after its launch. Still, Yura is aware of the frustrations from his backers on Project Phoenix, and hopes that they can resume work on it soon.
"I mean I'll be very upset if something for Project Phoenix was used to make Tiny Metal," stated Yura. "Just one thing I want to say is that we're very proud of what we've done with such limited resources and manpower for Tiny Metal, and it was really hard. We want to do so much more, but we can't because of a lack of resources. Of course, Sony can't make something out of nothing. So we'll need to produce results before we can proceed. But I'd like to press upon the players that this isn't going to stop here. For Tiny Metal, we'll keep working on the game and improving upon it until we're satisfied. Not to the extent of busting the banks for it, but we know this isn't where we want to be for Project Phoenix, but this is the best we can do for now."
In a cuddly twist of fate, Monster Hunter: World's latest trailer shifts its eyes away from the scaly beasts of New World and onto friendlier, more familiar faces: the title's feline companions, palicos.
Palicos are not new characters within the Monster Hunter universe, but returning ones. Aside from being the perfect monster-hunting assistants, these felines are fully customizable from the color of their coats, shape of their eyes and ears, and the clothes on their backs. These useful little guys will help you out in the wilds by carting you back after a battle gone awry, and prepare you lots of absurdly beautiful meals.
If you just can't wait and need some MonHun right meow, a second beta is coming to PS4 on December 22. This second-wind will wrap up on December 26, and you won't have to have PlayStation Plus to get in this time. Those who participated in the first beta won't have to redownload the client either.
Monster Hunter: World will launch on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on January 26. And to make the deal a little sweeter, Capcom has already confirmed the title will be getting some free DLC from player gear to new monsters.
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