After nearly a decade in development, Carbine Studios’ WoW challenger WildStar officially launches tomorrow. Also; Murdered: Soul Suspect, Hyperdimension Neptunia: PP, Tomodachi Life, Worms Battlegrounds.
Last week saw two massive releases in the form of Watch Dogs and MarioKart 8. This week is slightly quieter, although there are still some noteworthy titles hitting shelves, including WildStar and Murdered: Soul Suspect.
Here’s what’s coming out locally:
Murdered: Soul Suspect (PC, PS3, PS4, 360, Xbone)
What is it? An action-adventure game from Square Enix where you play the role of a ghost solving his own murder in Salem, Massachusetts. Whooooo, etc.
Should you care? If you enjoyed Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective this could be worth a look. But we doubt it’s going to blow anyone’s socks off.
WildStar (PC)
What is it? A future-tinged fantasy MMORPG from ex-Blizzard outfit Carbine Studios. Nearly ten years in the making, it looks to be a more action-orientated take on the traditional dungeon crawler, with a range of athletic moves at the player’s disposal.
Should you care? If you’re an ex World of Warcrack addict, WildStar could provide an irresistible high. Also, it has hot anthropomorphic bunnies, for people who like that sort of thing.
PlayStation Vita Pets (Vita)
What is it? PlayStation Vita Pets.
Should you care? It’s PlayStation Vita Pets. So that would be a probable “no”.
Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection (Vita)
What is it? This is a western release of a four-year old JRPG, featuring the same mix of dungeon crawling, embarrassing sexism and reams of on-screen text.
Should you care? Probably not. The original game reviewed poorly in western markets. On the other hand, die-hard manga fans who enjoy reading more than gaming might dig it.
Worms Battlegrounds (PS4, Xbone)
What is it? Everyone’s favourite apocalyptic invertebrates are back for another round of turn-based warfare on the PS4 and Xbox One. The game features an extensive single player campaign spanning 25 story missions, but as always the draw card is multiplayer.
Should you care? The franchise remains one of the best party games on the market and veteran gamers are sure to go all gooey-eyed with nostalgia. But $70 seems a bit steep for what you’re getting.
Pixeljunk Shooter Ultimate (PS4, Vita)
What is it? It’s Pixeljunk Shooter again, but with sexier visuals running at 60fps. Hurrah!
Should you care? If you like Pixeljunk Shooter, you’ll like this. Natch.
I’ve Got To Run (Wii U eShop)
What is it? I’ve Got To Run is a randomly generating autorunning platformer available from the Wii U eShop. The goal is to beat other players’ high scores from around the world.
Should you care? If you’re a leaderboard junkie, I’ve Got To Run should provide a few hours of addictive entertainment.
Tomodachi Life (3DS)
What is it? It’s basically The Sims, but with Nintendo Mii characters living on a tropical island.
Should you care? If you like twee sandbox games filled with cuteness and customisation, Tomodachi Life will be your sickly-sweet jam.
Comments
58 responses to “This Week In Games: Embrace The (Ex) Blizzard”
Why do I get the feeling that I’m not going to be looking forward to new releases until maybe next year?
Even if I finally upgrade to next-gen it doesn’t seem like there’s much on the horizon.
Yeah, there’s pretty much nothing decent coming out except Destiny, Shadows of Mordor, Evil Within, Evolve, Dying Light, Arkham Knight, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Far Cry 4, Sunset Overdrive, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Alien: Isolation, Tom Clancy’s The Division and Quantum Break.
Only a couple from that list are worth looking into, the rest still have to prove themselves. Watch Dogs came out, and while the reception has been positive, nobody is really saying it’s a “must own”.
Well if you use that logic there’s literally no game worth buying until you yourself make a value judgement based on how much you enjoy playing it, so the entire process is a paradox.
Those are the games that have my attention at present, hence something to “look forward to”. Part of that interest is seeing how well these new games do prove themselves, especially the ones that are exclusive to the new generation of console hardware.
Oh stop being a smartass 😛
There are previews and reviews, as well as trailers and such to see if it’s worth your attention. If it’s something as simple as a voice over talking on a black screen then the games title/logo appears, or if it’s a FMV of the game there’s very little to get excited about. Yeah, it can backfire. I was super excited for Brink for example…
But I don’t really think I can get excited over something like the Battlefield 4 announcement trailer.
I think given the issues that continue to plague BF4, it’ll be a long time before I am remotely interested in anything under the Battlefield label. But that’s me. There are people pretty excited for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, but I personally soured on the franchise after the awful story of BlOps and the disappointing multiplayer of MW3.
When we’re talking new IPs from successful studios, or continuations of successful IPs, what more do you want to decidde whether it’s worth a punt? Watch_Dogs might not be GOTY material, but it’s definitely worth checking out. Better than complaining that there’s nothing to look forward to, anyway.
I’ve been out of the CoD hypetrain for a long time. I actually enjoyed Black Ops 2 because of how different it was. I have no interest in Advanced Warfare but I’ll at least check out what people are saying about the game come release.
I’m not dismissing Watch Dogs so quickly, it just seems like I can wait a bit until a small price drop before picking it up. I did the same thing with Thief.
I’m just saying that there’s nothing really of interest for me to invest in a next-gen console just yet. If the Xbone had a kinect-free version from the start I probably would have picked one up for Titanfall. But I’m already hearing that people are losing interest in that game. So now I’m less interested in a multiplayer game that by the time I get around to buying I probably can’t play.
Out of that list, what does interest you?
For me, Arkham Knight and Alien: Isolation. Though I can’t guarantee I’d actually buy (or pirate) either.
When it comes to games, I’m super slack.
Batman, although I haven’t felt it as bad as most people are claiming, I am feeling a little bit of Batman fatigue. Had to skip Origins because I know it would kill all incentive.
Destiny somewhat as I see it as Bungie finally moving on from Halo and doing something new. They have nothing anchoring them back, nobody can complain about changes from a franchise that doesn’t exist to them, and they can ignore the annoying vocal community because they have no ground to stand on. But on the downend of the hype, there’s nothing in the previews that makes me that overly excited.
Dragon Age, but again, I’m worried they might pull an apology game for the vocal people complaining about Dragon Age 2. Where it’s designed to make up for that game, rather than moving the franchise forward.
Good thing you skipped Origins… I was incredibly disappointing.
Knight on the other hand looks like it will be great.
Call it pessimistic but a good chunk of those probably won’t make it this year.
I believe 3 of them are expected in early 2015, the rest should hit by Q4.
Wait until after E3. If the games there aren’t showing much gameplay then there’s a good chance they’ll be delayed.
Man, I’d forgotten we had an E3 coming up. It feels like all the big game news tends to solidify around the various PAXes lately.
Maybe it’s also because a lot of game news are being leaked early. We’re already hearing big news, so unless E3 can top that then maybe E3 can come off as pointless.
Games from this list that aren’t coming out this year
– The Division
– Dying Light
– Quantum Break
– Arkham Knight (Rumoured Delay)
Still looking forward to them though.
Down voting because this made sad.
I can guarantee the large majority of those won’t be note worthy, and that The Division is going to be terrible.
The only ones worth keeping an eye on are Destiny (Only because I’m a Bungie fan, from a neutral standpoint it’s covered in warning flags), Shadows of Mordor (because AssCreed in Middle Earth looks fun), Far Cry 4 (even though it will be identical to Far Cry 3) and Alien: Isolation (I WANT TO BELIEVE).
In regards to The Division, what they’ve stated about the game can’t exist on the PS4 or the Xbone, it’s as simple as that, and what’s sad is that it’s going to follow directly in the steps of games like Watch Dogs, and drag the PC release down with them.
Interesting facts to back up your claims, what exactly can’t exist about The Division on consoles? While their goals are extremely lofty and probably won’t meet expectations I’d hardly condemn it as impossible.
depends what you’re into, I guess.
I love me an RPG, so I’m pretty hyped for the rest of this year.
I like RPGs too, but I can’t really think of any except for Dragon Age. But then again, I’m worried about that game as well. Seems like it’s coming off as an apology game.
Alongside DA3, there’s Wasteland 2 & Project Eternity. & though they’re not necessarily confirmed to be this year, there’s FFXV, Monster Hunter 4. Shame about Witcher 3 though…
I don’t know what Wasteland 2 or Project Eternity is. I never got into Monster Hunter. As for FFXV… well, 13 is my reason. Witcher 2 is still sitting on my shelf… waiting to be finished.
Don’t forget The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC is coming to Steam!!! (mid-year) There’s also Tales of Xillia 2 coming in 3 months. Or we talking western RPGs?
I just looked that up, apparently it’s 10 years old.
Yeah, but the SC is finally getting it’s English Release!
Be picking up Murdered: Soul Suspect, and Worms: Battlegrounds this week.
I’d love to know if you think Battleground is worth the $70. I want a new worms game to play with friends but $70 is a lot of money for Scorched Earth HD, no matter how many ways I can weaponise sheep.
Really, $70, shit, I thought it was gonna be one of those $20-$30 digital only games. If that’s the case, I think I’ll pass.
Its is like $30 digital on ps store and xbox store
phew, I was thinking that’d be the most expensive Worms game for years. Might consider it for $30, for $70 there is no way.
No it isn’t. PP is a spinoff from the kind of crappy (they got much better over time) dungeon crawler. It’s an Idol management game in the vein of The Idolmaster (and it’s fair to assume if you don’t know roughly what that means, you’re probably not in the target audience).
There is a Vita remake of the first game coming, but IIRC it’s not out until July, that might be where the confusion comes from.
this is why you’re my go to guy for anything foreign that I’m not sure about,
That’s a very good summary. The first HDN game was absolutely terrible, but the second one was sort of playable and the third a slight additional improvement. None of them were remotely classics, however; I don’t know how the franchise has gained so much traction. Maybe an indication of how much the market was starving for good JRPGs a few years ago.
I looked into PP and considered it but there’s bound to be rhythm action sections and I’m terrible at those.
The Vita remakes use the third game’s engine so they might be playable at least.
As for why it’s still around, I don’t know if this is true, but the anecdotes I’ve heard suggest that the series somehow sells better in western markets than it does in Japan. So it’s our fault. 🙁
EDIT: Also I bet they don’t take very much money to develop, especially when Idea Factory basically churns out a new game with some minor iteration on the same engine every 9-12 months.
Mugen Souls Z also comes out this week.. broke it unofficial street date as well since I got a call to pick it up.
On a side note looks like Hyper Dimension Neptunia PP is already out.
June 3 US and June 5th AU/EU unless it broke street date.
Is it any good? I was fairly unimpressed with the first one, so much so that I didn’t preorder, which I do for almost all JRPGs. (This has resulting in me having a lot of terrible JRPGs.)
Incidentally, is it just me or after Persona 4: The Golden do we suddenly have a rash of dungeon crawlers? Conception 2, Demon Gaze and MIND 0 have all come out almost back to back. If Mugen Souls Z is similar to the first one, the dungeons aren’t quite as tightly structured as in the other games, but still…
Wildstar wooo! Might be an idea to get a kotaku clan going – the more the merrier.
Exile or GTFO.
Collaborate with @pupp3tmast3r I believe. 🙂
YESSSSSS!! @geregh
Myrkalus server Dominion =p Should have the guild up and running by this weekend (fricking 10 gold for guild registration -,- daylight robbery!)
I’m on that server – but I’ve rolled Exile.
WHAY?! They’re ugly! Empire > Rebels any day =[
Tomodachi Life for MrsBS and myself this week. My copy of Mugen Souls LE shipped a while back from NISA 😉 Now seeing as I’ve just finished with Conception II should I move on to the Neptune idol sim…. hmmmm
Some minor launch issues aside, wildstar early access has been good, logins failed for about an hour for most if not all people, pre-order and delux items played funny buggers for teh first day but that seems to be mostly ironed out.
games heaps of fun, lots of hilarity, and very pretty worlds so far.
Widow is the “unofficial” oceanic PVP server, queues are fairly large atm and some areas have mob density problems, but overall rather nice and relatively smooth.
I would go as far as to say its probably one of the best launches in recent years.
Regarding Worms Battlegrounds, DO NOT BUY RETAIL!!!!
Retail Price = $69
PSN Digital Price = ~$30
If you want the game on disc, wait for it to hit the sales.
I’m of the opinion that the price set by stores is actually a placeholder price that has never been updated with a “real” price, because no one from the publishers actually confirmed a RRP for stores, either that or they said fuck it, let’s try and fleece the customer!
I’d consider Worms to be a digital title anyway. Hopefully the Xbone Marketplace title will be as fair as the PSN… ah who am I kidding.
I actually want quite a lot of whats on this list.
I’m interested in Vita pets….
Why always gotta be so cynical?
He might have assumed that Vita fans had had their fill of virtual pets from Aabs Animals (although the few reviews I’ve found have declared it to be uniformly terrible.)
Can confirm Wildstar is awesome.
Also this week – Dark Souls is free on the 360 people – download that sucker and get some souls!!
Sooo…. did Chris actually *bother* to check what Neptunia PP was about or just copied and pasted what his thoughts on the original Neptunia? =/
Seeing as PP is actually spin-off Idol Maker/Project Diva game… and afaik has very little if any “dungeon crawling” and more like “idol training/diary organising”.
If your gonna bag it out at least bag it out properly will you?
Played Wildstar in closed beta on and off for 6 months or so and it did not grab me one bit. First big mmo release in the last 10 years I have not played at launch.
Next!