Hello! Welcome to the latest edition of the Geeky Brummie Gaming Roundup!
This week, Nintendo Direct, Cyberpunk details, an excuse to talk more about Control, and all the latest releases!
NINTENDO DIRECT
A couple of days ago, Nintendo released their latest Direct giving all the latest announcements for the Switch. A lot of it was announcements of ports, but there were a few notable things beyond that.
After months of speculation, SNES games are finally on Switch. 20 games are coming to the launch of the new service (full list here). Appropriately, the original SNES launch titles – Super Mario World, F-Zero and Pilotwings – are in there, along with classics like Super Metroid, A Link to the Past, Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario Kart and Star Fox. A surprisingly good lineup. I expected much worse. And as I reported on a few weeks ago, there will be an optional SNES controller released for use with the service.
Banjo & Kazooie saw a surprise release in Super Smash Bros Ultimate alongside the Direct, along with the announcement of the fourth DLC character. It’s a slightly divisive one, as it’s Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury, a character choice that’s causing excitement with the hardcore fighting scene and indifference from everyone else. It’s some good representation of the SNK family of fighters, so there’s that. In addition, the Home Run Content mode is back, and a new Mii Fighter costume has been added based on Sans from Undertale, along with the Megalovania music track from the same game.
New info on Pokémon Sword and Shield was also revealed. There’s going to be full character customisation for your trainer, including clothes and hair, taking customisation further than before in the series. Two new Pokémon were revealed, including a bird Pokémon called Cramorant and a…haunted teapot called Polteageist. Polteageist will let its trainer drink its tea under the right circumstances and honestly that sounds kinkier than I like Pokémon to be, so I’m uncomfortable with this revelation.
Did you see that, Zack? D…P…on the Switch? If you listened to our recent Games of the Decade show, you’ll know that my game of 2010 is a quirky little title called Deadly Premonition. Good news then, as Deadly Premonition 2 is happening, and will be out next year. It sees Special Agent Francis York Morgan (please, call him York, that’s what everyone calls him) revisiting an old case in New Orleans. Here’s hoping it’s as bonkers as the original. I’m super excited for this, and never saw it coming. Life is beautiful.
Ages ago, Nintendo revealed that Pokémon developers Game Freak were also working on a title known only as Town. It was a cutesy RPG set in, well, a town that you had to defend from monsters. It disappeared off the radar since then but made a surprise reappearance at this week’s Direct, now called Little Town Hero, and will be coming out on 16th October.
Here are a bunch of other announcements that are less important than Deadly Premonition 2:
- Overwatch is getting released on Switch next month
- A free-to-play Kirby game is out now, where four players all play as Kirby to battle bad guys
- Nintendo and Atlus collaboration Tokyo Mirage Sessions is coming to Switch, reducing the number of reasons to buy a Wii U even further
- Xenoblade Chronicles is getting a remake with a polished art style
- Doom 64 out on Switch in November, bringing the whole series into one place
CYBERPUNK LATEST
Speaking of announcements, there have been quite a few details about Cyberpunk 2077 revealed over the past week. First up is the fact that the character creation has done away with traditional gender selection, as mentioned in an interview with Metro. Instead of selecting male or female at the start of the process, your character’s gender is determined by the choice of body type and voice, and if you want to mix these around, you can. In a game featuring bodily augmentation it makes perfect sense, although that hasn’t stopped certain reactionary parts of the Internet getting mad at it for no reason.
Other details include the confirmation that all cutscenes in the game will be in first person, to maintain immersion through the whole game. In addition, there will be multiplayer, after recent reports that they were still working out if they could even make it work at all. No details yet as they’re only now hiring for it, but they seem determined now.
Finally, the presence of Cyberpunk doesn’t rule out more Witcher titles in future, as CD Projekt Red will be splitting into two teams, each one handling one of the separate franchises. So if you want more Witcher stuff in the future, you’re in luck!
CONTROL PROBLEMS GETTING REMEDIED
Earlier today I posted a full review of last week’s Game of the Week, Control. Spoilers: I quite liked it. However, one criticism I level at the game in my review is how poorly it runs on a technical level sometimes. Playing on a base PS4 sees slowdown, stuttering, freezing and in some cases, full-blown crashes. These problems are fairly universal, which has prompted developers Remedy to issue a statement.
Remedy aim to fix the performance in future updates, from console performance to map issues to ray tracing problems on PC. This is excellent news, as it’s a major hindrance to a game that is otherwise brilliant. No concrete date on when we’ll see the changes, but it’s good news all the same.
ALL THE SMALL THINGS
- In news that rivals Deadly Premonition 2 in importance, Untitled Goose Game will be honking onto PC and Switch later this month
- The Outer Worlds has shown off a new location in its latest trailer
- Former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime is set to become a lecturer at Cornell University in New York. Let’s hope the student body is ready
- Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Discovery Tour is coming next week, so you can explore the historical setting without any of that assassin stuff in the way
- Dave Bautista will be in Gears 5, for some reason
- Yooka-Laylee & The Impossible Lair, the 2D sequel to Banjo-Kazooie spiritual successor Yooka-Laylee, will be out in October
- Obtuse platformer La Mulana is coming to consoles soon
FREE STUFF!
It’s the now-monthly free stuff roundup!
If you’re subscribed to PlayStation Plus, you’re getting Batman: Arkham City and Darksiders 3. So that’s pretty good, especially as the Arkham series is so highly praised.
If you’re getting Xbox Games with Gold then you’re getting We Were Here and Earth Defense Force 2025, which is fine I guess, but more importantly, you’re also getting the much better Hitman and Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is my favourite Tekken game, and Hitman (the 2016 one with no subtitle) is also an excellent choice.
And of course, Nintendo’s handing out the SNES stuff I mentioned above.
So this month, everybody wins!
NEW RELEASES
In new releases this week, we’ve got a couple of smaller titles in the form of Conan Chop Chop [PC, PS4, XBO, NS] and Fit for a King [PC]. Conan Chop Chop is a very real co-op brawler that people thought was an April Fools joke. Based on the Conan franchises, it asks the question, what if Conan was a stickman? Fit for a King, meanwhile, is a Tudor king simulator that lets you go mad with power. Execute your bookcase and knight your horse? Apparently this is all possible.
Two games got significant remasters this week. First up is Catherine Full Body on PS4, which is a remaster of Catherine, some anime nonsense from Atlus originally released on PS3. I love me some anime nonsense sometimes, but even I’ve never been able to figure out what Catherine actually is, but people say it’s good?
Then there’s Final Fantasy VIII Remastered, released for practically everything, thanks to Square Enix finally finding the game’s source code down the back of a sofa somewhere. If you’ve never played this 20-year-old classic, now’s the best chance. And in my personal opinion, one of the best Final Fantasy games (although nowhere near as good as IX).
In new games, there’s River City Girls [PC, PS4, XBO, NS], a spin-off of the River City Ransom series by Shantae developers WayForward. The usual series protagonists Kunio and Riki have been kidnapped, so it’s up to their girlfriends, Kyoko and Misako, to save them. What follows is a retro throwback brawler in the same vein as River City Ransom, with a cute anime art style and an awesome synthy soundtrack. Looks like a lot of fun.
GAME OF THE WEEK
My Game of the Week this week is Creature in the Well, launching on Steam, Xbox One and Switch today. It’s a dungeon crawler about a robot venturing into a deep well to reactive some life-saving ancient technology. But a creature has taken up residence in the caves to make this task trickier. What makes Creature in the Well look so interesting, however, is that its dungeon crawling has been crossed with ball games like pinball and Breakout. So expect a lot of brick-bashing and bumper-bumping as you slash energy balls with swords to solve puzzles and fight against the creature’s challenges.
And that’s it for this week! I’ll see you again next week with more gaming news and releases!
Find Leigh on Twitter at @TheCheapFerret and on YouTube at Bobthepetferret
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