More Games, Less Time

No intro. There are actually some scraps to talk about this week and we love games. That is all.

RGG Studio Can’t Miss

Like a Dragon: Ishin is set to drop on the 22nd but reviews have already come out, and the reception from gamers and critics is excellent. Not that the reviews matter because to each his own, but I knew this game was going to be a solid release this year. I understand that this game is a remaster but to the West it’s new. I love everything about the Yakuza series and its spinoff: Judgement. Everything about this game just looks good. I’m a fan of the 1860s Japanese setting and the combat looks fun with the pistol and sword combination. The story will be interesting because all the characters are renditions of mainline Yakuza characters in terms of their looks. I can only assume they’ll play the same roles in their respective stories. I’m glad this one it doing good because it’s on my list of pickups and I can’t wait to play it. – XmanFiles

Little Brother Rather than a Clone

I’m always paying attention to games in the same genre as Monster Hunter (MH) so this one had my attention from its announcement. I want to have more alternatives to MH in the gaming market and this one seems to fit the description (from a gameplay perspective). I don’t think anyone thought Wild Hearts would even come close to the same experience the MH provides and what I’m seeing is that’s not the case. I think this could be a new franchise for EA and Omega Force. The building aspect of the game was a point of intrigue and I’m glad to see that it’s also a strong addition. The monsters look really cool but I read that the environments get kind of bland which isn’t a big deal for me because you’re there to hunt the monster not to observe the setting. Overall the game seems like a fun game to play. The flipside to the game’s fun is that it runs like crap. To be fair Omega Force is working on this issue rather quickly with the game only having been out for 3 days but if we as consumers are paying a premium we should have a much better experience with this product. Once again I’m happy to have this on the list of end-of-year purchases as it’s doing fairly well but I’m also glad I didn’t get this upon release as the poor optimization would have been frustrating to see. – XmanFiles

More Mutants in the Metro

Metro Exodus is another game that I intend to play this year. After playing 2033 and Last Light (twice) I can say I’m a fan of this series. All the games are gritty and suspenseful due to the monstrous creations from the nuclear fallout and the groups of people who want whatever you have. The story (of the first two) was actually kind of good too, both are games that a recommend anyone who likes post-apocalyptic settings to play. I’ll revisit this topic after I play Exodus and give my input on where I think the story should/will go. This was very pleasant news and I think an announcement could be fairly soon with the game being fully playable from beginning to end. – XmanFiles

5 New LOTR Games…

I’m super late on this topic but oh well. Embracer Group, who could easily be one of the biggest third-party publishers this gen, said that there’ll be 5 new LOTR games released by March 31st of next year. I’m pretty confident that 3-4 of these games are going to be on mobile. I can’t see these being fully committed LOTR games with no announcements or talks about them at this point in their development. With that being said, I really hope the one or two games that could be console releases are actually worth playing. I would like a rerelease of LOTR The Third Age or War in the North because those are the only two that I’ve played and they’re really good. I really want more reporting on this topic and its validity or they could just be holding their cards close to their chest and be waiting for the summer shows to announce them. We’ll have to wait and see. – XmanFiles

Aliens in April

Alien Day is on April 26th and I can’t wait to see what they have to offer. I love this universe but it doesn’t have the best games. The top 3 coming to mind are Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Alien Isolation, and AVP in no specific order. Last year we got the announcement of Alien Dark Descent which will be a top-down tactics shooter and haven’t heard much since, but I want to know so much more about this title because it looks like it could be good. There was also a report saying a new survival horror Alien game would be seeing a release this holiday season in addition to the development of the assumed sequel of Isolation being made by Creative Assembly. These are all really good things if you like Aliens but I still want to see a good first-person shooter from this setting because if done right, it would be amazing. April 26th, my ear will be to the ground. – XmanFiles

Lies of P is on the Horizon

The Lies of P release trailer has dropped and is striking intrigue into viewers who’ve seen the full trailer. While many people are still focused on Elden Ring and its incredible replayability, others are ready for the next souls-like gameplay experience. Enter, Lies of P. Initial gameplay and graphical impressions are highly impressive with excellent animation and character models. Gameplay looks set to deliver challenging experiences. All expertise levels. I am not a soul’s life fan but incredibly interested in trying this game. Perhaps a demo will give me a taste of the full gameplay experience prior to its release, set for this August. – JusBernard

Games in Full Effect

This Weeks games are fairly solid picks in many aspects and I couldn’t wait to talk about them. Last week I picked up the Scuf Instinct Pro and it’s easily my favorite controller to play games with ever. It also made me look into picking up the PS5 counterpart, the Reflex Pro. I’ll see how I’m feeling in maybe a month who knows? On to the games. As I said last week this year I want to clean up that backlog and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m not the biggest fan of the Elder Scrolls series (at least I wasn’t before) but this week I beat Oblivion for the first time and I had so much fun. Playing through this game had the same effect on me as Elden Ring did which is funny because it came out in 2006. I fast-traveled as little as possible stopping at various caves and ruins on the way to different quest objectives. I didn’t do any of the guild quests but that just gives me a reason to revisit it in a couple of years for a more in-depth playthrough. All in all the game gets a solid 8/10 from me. The only things holding it back were a few dated mechanics and the absolute drag of a chore it is to get rid of vampirism (man that was so annoying). I’m also playing Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and it’s probably going to be my next obsession. I didn’t play a lot of metroidvanias growing up so I’m a noob to the genre but a couple of years back I played the first Ori game and that piqued my interest. Bloodstained sees me fully immersed in that genre as I’m looking through my library to see what else I have in the same league as well as more games to add to my list that are just as intriguing. The characters, the environment, the gameplay, and the story are all really solid here. I can only imagine this is how people felt playing Castlevania for the first time. Continuing the theme of Spooky Month for February, I’ve been playing Resident Evil 2 and Dead Space 2. It’s amazing to me how I cant play 2 games so far apart in age that feel so similar and give the same feeling. I love both of these games. Since I won’t be playing the remake of Dead Space 1 until the end of the year I decided I’d play the other 2 in the meantime. This one is so much fun. All the different ways to dismember the zombielike aliens and all the encounters that force precise aim or creative thinking in addition to an interesting story make this game an enjoyable experience. Plus, playing it on my Series X means I get to utilize FPS Boost making this game run at 60 frames making it feel relatively new. This is my fourth playthrough of the Resident Evil 2 remake but this time I’m playing it on hardcore and I love it even more. With the console generation update, this game is just as flawless as it was the first 3 times I played it. Lastly, I got the urge to add a hack-and-slash to the list after Hi-Fi Rush left the rotation (because I beat it the same night I posted last week’s blog post) which led me to Darksiders 3. This game is fun but there are a few frustrations like the stiffness of Fury and the shallowness of the moves she can do with the weapons but I still like this game. The souls-like combat is okay I guess, nothing to write home about but isn’t a bad thing either. I think it adds some tension to the combat which is always a good thing in these kinds of games where I want to feel powerful because I took the time to learn the enemy’s movements and my combat options not because they’re just weak or I’m just absurdly overpowered. I like challenges in my games. That’s all for this week’s “Games in Full Effect”. Let me know what you’re playing in the comments as well as some recommendations for me to add in a week or two.

Thanks For Reading This Week’s Blog Post We’ll Have Another One Next Week

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