As of today I will be officially leaving Video Game Choo Choo.

Truth be told, I let John know a while back that I wouldn’t be able to continue contributing to the site. Today just happened to be the day I decide to rip the band-aid off. I’m so grateful to everyone on the staff, it’s been a pleasure to work with you all. It has been such a pleasure to see how the site has grown, and keeps growing.

Thanks again to everybody here, and to everybody who reads the site, I genuinely believe that there’s something special here and it warms my heart to see it being supported. Take care everybody, and never, ever forget this one simple thing.

“Goku should be in Super Smash Brothers.”

The post Andi’s Goodbye appeared first on Gamesline.

Alongside Youngblood, Bethesda announced a VR title, Wolfenstein Cyber Pilot. Though no footage was shown the game was described as a hacking game where you take over Nazi robots and turn them on their masters. No release date was given for Cyber Pilot and Wolfenstein Youngblood is slated for release in 2019.

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Got a minute? Niall and Michael had a few so they could check out Minit!

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Skol! Niall and Michael spread their blue Knuds all over Scandinavia in Northgard!

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Andi and Michael hop into their favorite mechs and get ready to pound some aliens in Into The Breach.

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Michael and Rose take a peek at the new trading card game based off Peter Molyneux’s world renowned chicken chase simulators.

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10. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

Look, Wolfenstein 2 is an incredible game. It’s well written, and it looks great, but if I’m being honest the main reason I liked it so much is simple: I got to throw like… 400 hatchets into hordes and hordes of Nazis. It was like getting an injection of pure catharsis: a healthy outlet for the anger I had with the state of the world. As much as that’s all surface level, especially when things get dire for the Kreisau Circle, it was the rage fantasy aspect of The New Colossus that made it one of my favorite games of the year.

9. Picross 3D: Round 2

A little disclaimer: this technically came out in December of 2016, but it would be disingenuous of me to not include it on this list. Picross 3D: Round 2 was consistently one of the most relaxing things I played this year. I feel like we spend a lot of time acting like games built purely for relaxing and taking up a short period of time are less important than games with narratives or challenging gameplay, but games like Picross 3D are important because they’re not that. It reminded me of the importance of calm, to take some time out of my day just to solve a puzzle or two so I could recharge my batteries, and I think learning how to do that is one of the most important things to happen to me in 2017.

8. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Breath of The Wild is one of those games that I’m probably never going to touch again. On the surface, that probably comes off as an insult, but I mean it in the exact opposite way. With how the game is made, it’s almost impossible to emulate the experience I had the first time I played through it. From the giddy excitement I had the first time I snowboarded down a mountain, to the quiet calm of wandering through a small forest tucked away from everything else, almost every minute I spent with Breath of the Wild completely enveloped me with wonder and joy when I found myself sorely needing it.

7. Heat Signature

The moment I fell in love with Heat Signature was a moment where I thought the game broke. Without reading the text for a mission I loaded in and found myself floating in space with no ship, slowly suffocating. I restarted a few times assuming it was a glitch, before I realized what I had to do: propel myself through space with my shotgun, land on a nearby ship, and take out every last guard onboard. It was exhilarating, and it was the first of countless incidents like that. It wasn’t just missions that had predetermined challenges, but almost every random mission I accepted had at least the opportunity for me to do some harebrained, hotshot stunts. With seemingly hundreds of procedurally generated roguelikes inundating games, it’s Heat Signature’s dedication to actually letting you do whatever buckwild nonsense you can think of that makes it so special.

6. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

As much as I can appreciate the anime ridiculousness of the Fire Emblem series, I’ll be honest and say I was getting pretty burnt out with it’s direction. I just wasn’t clicking with Fates and the new standard it was setting for the strategy franchise. Fire Emblem Echoes, however, barely feels like a mainline Fire Emblem game at times. Doing away with franchise staples like the weapon triangle and favoring systems that feel more like a traditional JRPG progression-wise did a lot to make the game stand out among the franchise. Not to mention that it’s got a surprisingly good voice cast,  and branching stories that feel different enough to keep things fresh, but not so much that you have to keep relearning the game. I truly think Shadows of Valentia is a hidden gem during a banner year for Nintendo, and I can only hope that they put just as much of it in future Fire Emblem games as they will with the pieces of the past few successes they’ve had with the series.

5. NieR: Automata

I don’t think I’ve ever had such an intense love-hate relationship with a game before. I’ll just get it out of the way: I’d say a good 60% of the time I was actually playing NieR: Automata I just straight up hated it. Combat felt clunky, and the hacking segments were a slog. All that said, NieR: Automata has one of the best stories I’ve ever experienced in a game. It uses the medium of interactive entertainment in a way that I haven’t seen since the original NieR, and although I didn’t have as much fun playing it as I’d hoped, I think it would be foolish to not recognize how NieR pushes the medium when it succeeds, and how, nine times out of ten, it’s trying something unique, even in failure.

4. Persona 5

I wrapped myself in Persona 5 like it was a cocoon and I didn’t emerge until I was a weird butterfly that spent way too much time trying to fuse Satan. Clunky metaphors aside, Persona 5 was a game that I was able to completely submerge myself in. There’s something comforting in being able to play a few days of Persona just screwing around with your doofus friends inside the bizarre world of palaces and Mementos that made the game special to me. While I loved the dungeon crawling and the main thrust of the plot, I found myself revelling in little moments. Whether it was getting ramen with Ryuji or going book shopping with Makoto, it was the tranquil, everyday mundanity of the friendships in Persona 5 that made it shine.

3. The Sexy Brutale

I’m a sucker for time travel shenanigans, and I’m also a sucker for murder mysteries, so Sexy Brutale letting me more or less play as the time travelling Columbo I’ve always dreamed of being was nothing short of a delight. Every single thing about this game oozes charm. From the swinging soundtrack to the bizarre otherworldly murders that you have to prevent, I found myself grinning at every twist and turn that got thrown at me.

2. Super Mario Odyssey

Super Mario Odyssey is probably the happiest game I’ve ever played, it’s like if someone took the concept of childlike wonder, and somehow made it into a physical object. That object is Super Mario Odyssey. I think if you zoomed in on my brain, much like a Jimmy Neutron “brain blast”, while I was playing you’d probably see little Cappys on every cell in my body. I’m not quite sure what sort of black magic Nintendo evoked to make something so fueled by nostalgia not feel like a cloying, boring rehash of the past, but they did it. Not only that, but they also managed to top almost every other 3D platformer out there with one of the most intuitive, fresh takes on the genre I’ve ever played.

1. Yakuza 0

Yakuza 0 owns.

That’s really all you’ve got to know. You should have already bought it after you saw that sentence, but seeing as how just writing three words won’t cut it, I’ll elaborate a little. Yakuza 0 manages to be one of the funniest games I’ve encountered, while balancing that with deeply heartbreaking moments throughout. Admittedly, part of this is because of my long running attachment to the series, but seeing the reaction that this game’s been getting from people who’ve never touched another Yakuza title before has me feeling pretty confident in recommending it. I spent so much time just inhabiting the world of Yakuza 0, not even advancing the main plot or my side businesses, instead just wandering around the two towns in the game, doing some karaoke, trying to learn mahjong (I’m still not great) and getting Kiryu absolutely blasted on way too expensive whiskey. It’s a testament to how full and vibrant Y0 feels, that I could spend a few hours and make, ostensibly, zero progress but still walk away feeling fulfilled. Couple that with a story that legitimately had me in tears towards the end and some of the most entertaining substories to ever exist in the franchise, and you have not just only my favorite game of 2017, but my favorite Yakuza game ever released.

The post Andi’s Top 10 Games of 2017 appeared first on Gamesline.

Enjoy the calming lights of a man we paid to dance endlessly, as we give an exhaustive look at the punk squats in Party Hard Tycoon. #NoCops

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Over the PAX West weekend, we had the opportunity to sit down for an interview with Suda about Travis Strikes Again and No More Heroes as a whole. During our conversation, it came to light that Travis Strikes Again — while still in the world of No More Heroes — is not exactly the follow-up to No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle most assumed it would be.

“While Travis Strikes Again isn’t a numbered sequel, it is still part of the same series.” Suda said through his translator. “That being said, it isn’t exactly a direct sequel to No More Heroes 2. So as far as No More Heroes 3 goes, that would be a completely different game.”

He went on to explain that he doesn’t see Travis Strikes Again as a spin off nor a sequel, but as the beginning of ‘a new battle’ for Travis, as well as something of a stepping stone towards No More Heroes 3.

When asked if he intends to follow up Travis Strikes Again with No More Heroes 3, Suda confirmed as much. “Yeah, if this succeeds I definitely want to put out a 3 some day,” he said.

You can find Video Game Choo Choo’s full interview with Suda 51 here.

The post Suda 51: Travis Strikes Again is not No More Heroes 3, plans to continue the series appeared first on Gamesline.

That was off the record, my bad.

Video Game Choo Choo: So, the first thing I want to talk about is that it’s the tenth anniversary of No More Heroes, and it’s been a while since we’ve last seen Travis and the world of No More Heroes. What’s it like coming back to it after so long, and has the time away affected how you look at Travis’ story?

Suda 51: It’s been a while since I was able to visit Travis myself even. I’ve been wanting to revisit the characters and the series for a really long time but with everything going on with Grasshopper over the years with our other titles and everything, either the timing wasn’t right or we were too busy at the time with other priorities. So as the years went by I had been feeling more and more that I wanted to go back to revisit [Travis] and not really reboot the series but go back to the series and instead continue it.

Last year I came to PAX West for the first time and saw a bunch of different games and all the cool things people were doing. Right around that time was also back before the Switch was even called the Switch, when it was still the NX. I had the opportunity to check it out in person and I checked out the hardware and saw what sort of things the system was able to do with its controls. I decided that things had calmed down at Grasshopper with the titles we had been working on, I had been thinking more and more about bringing Travis back and thinking about what I wanted to do with Travis all the time. So, with the hardware that was available and with all the ideas I had such as where he was living now, what kind of situation he was in, it just felt like everything seemed to come together and I decided, “Okay, now the time is right. Let’s do it, let’s go back to the series.”

A big theme you’ve shown in Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes so far is this incorporation of video games into real life, we’ve seen games in the No More Heroes universe before, Bizarre Jelly for example, are there any plans to bring those back as well alongside the announced collaborations with titles such as Hotline Miami and Shovel Knight?

I’m happy you asked about this! So, as you can see, especially if you watch the trailer is that Travis is a gamer, he’s always been a gamer. One thing we want to accentuate with the upcoming game is that he’s not just into AAA titles but he’s into indie games. At this point all that I can say about the collaborations with Hotline Miami, Shovel Knight and other titles is that there’s going to be what we’re calling the “T-shirt Collaboration”. In the game Travis will have t-shirts featuring different, real-life indie games, like Hotline Miami, like Shovel Knight as well as a handful of others.

As for what we did with Bizarre Jelly in No More Heroes 2 when we had the game within the game, it really felt like it was it’s own proper game. It was a very fun shooter with proper animation and everything. This time it would probably be pretty difficult to do a full on collaboration like that with some of the titles you mentioned so there’s definitely nothing I can promise for anything like that just yet. However, I am seriously considering ways to possibly incorporate the characters from some of these indie games, for example Jacket from Hotline Miami. I’ve been talking to Dennis [Wedin] and Jonatan [Söderström] from Dennaton Games, trying to figure out some way to work him into the game. Again, I’m not sure at all how that’s gonna work yet or if it will work out but it’s definitely something that’s being considered seriously right now.

Let It Die was the last release from Grasshopper as well as a big success for the studio, is there anything you’re taking from the development of that and incorporating it into the Travis Strikes Again team?

As far as the actual development teams themselves are concerned, the teams working on Let it Die and No More Heroes are completely different. Once Let It Die calmed down a bit I split off from it myself and formed a much smaller team to work on [Travis Strikes Again]. So there’s basically two teams right now, there’s the Let It Die team and the No More Heroes team. This team is much smaller, and basically completely segregated from the other. That being said, as far as ideas and concepts go one of the main overlaps between Let It Die and Travis Strikes Again is the theme and concept of not only ‘in-game games’ but also the character in the game entering into the world of these ‘in-game games’.

So, this game console is the ‘Death Drive Mk. II’ and in Let It Die there was a console called the ‘Death Drive 128’, where the player was able to load up the game and go into the game world, so we kind of took the concept from that and applied it to this. The ‘Death Drive Mk. II’ is the predecessor to the ‘Death Drive 128’ from Let It Die, and again, the player puts the game in, turns on the console and gets sucked in, then they have to fight their way through there.

So this character here (At this point Suda points to a piece of concept art that we unfortunately aren’t able to post), is a character called Doctor Juvenile, who works for a company called ‘Hazure’ and she was the creator and designer of the ‘Death Drive Mk II’ and the ‘Death Drive 128’. So, the ‘Death Drive Mk. II’ has six games available for it, and she’s the designer/creator of all these games as well as the console. These are the games that Travis will be loading up on the console, going into and fighting his way through in Travis Strikes Again, anyway, that’s just sort of the backstory of where the console and these games came from.

With the recent remaster of The Silver Case and the upcoming re-release of The 25th Ward, are there any past Grasshopper Manufacture games that you’re looking at for a similar treatment?

Do you mean creating sequels to old games or just remastering them?

I mean, we can talk about both if you’d like, I’m pretty curious about both.

As far as sequels go, with Silver Case and No More Heroes, those were two titles that for a really long time I’d wanted to bring out a proper sequel to, and while Travis Strikes Again isn’t a numbered sequel, it is still part of the same series. That being said it isn’t exactly the same as a direct sequel to No More Heroes 2 so as far as No More Heroes 3 goes, that would be a completely different game.

There aren’t any other titles right now that I’ve got any concrete plans to make sequels for, aside from this obviously, but as far as remasters go, one game that I’ve really wanted to bring back for a long time, that’s really hard to play in it’s original form these days is Killer7. Killer7 has always been really popular with fans, I’ve always been a big fan of it myself and a lot has gone on with it over the years. Recently more and more I’ve been thinking that I really want to do something to bring it back and present it not only to newer and younger gamers who haven’t had a chance to play it yet but also to people who played it in the past and want to play it again for example through Steam or something along . There isn’t anything that can be concretely stated at the moment but that’s definitely something where I want to do whatever I can to make it happen.

So, the talk of sequels leads nicely into my next question. How exactly does this tie into No More Heroes 2? Obviously a lot of time has passed and Travis’ situation has changed a lot, but you just said it’s not quite a direct sequel. Will Travis Strikes Again address what’s been going on with Travis since the events of No More Heroes 2 or will this be more of a self contained story?

Well again, it’s not a direct sequel to No More Heroes 2, though they are directly related and take place in the same universe. Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes takes place seven years after the events of No More Heroes 2. As you’ve probably noticed it’s “Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes”, so “No More Heroes” is more a subtitle, there’s not a number on it. This isn’t a direct sequel and it’s not No More Heroes 3, but it does address some of the things that happened in No More Heroes 1 and 2. While it is sort of a continuation of that stuff, it is not a direct sequel partially because No More Heroes is about one assassin against other assassins, and this isn’t like that. This isn’t exactly a spin-off, or something like that, and while it’s not a direct sequel it is something of a stepping stone on the road to No More Heroes 3. So the way I’d like people to think of this game is like the beginning of a new battle for Travis, a new series within the series.

So then there are intentions to follow up with a numbered sequel to this then?

Yeah. If this succeeds I definitely want to put out a 3 someday.

Alright, this is kind of a fun question, you got your start in games with the Fire Pro Wrestling series and that’s sort of making a comeback now as well. What’s it like seeing that make a comeback at the same time that No More Heroes is making a comeback of it’s own?

It’s really kind of a strange and mysterious feeling, seeing this game that, like you said, was my debut series come back after all this time. Not only that but seeing it finally able to get out to the rest of the world and not just Japan. It’s really great to be able to see that, all these new players, and all the people who play it. I’ve been participating a bit in production, sort of overseeing and getting involved here and there, and I’ve been really happy with how it’s gone so far. The director, Matsumoto, he’s a really great director, knows what he’s doing, and I’m really excited to see exactly how it turns out, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s reaction to it since people who have never had a chance to play before are finally going to get a chance to try it out.

The next question I have is, I guess, a bit of a technical one? So obviously it’s been some time since the original No More Heroes that was on the Wii and motion controls were a big aspect of that. Have the joy cons really changed how you’re looking at that at all? Or is it still kind of similar enough that you can transfer that original gameplay and feel to the new game?

There’s definitely going to be some new things, but there’s also definitely going to be some elements that I’m going to bring back from previous games, like recharging for example. The way that the Switch is set up with the two joy cons, I think there’s a lot of possibilities for those, both possibilities to bring back stuff that was in previous games, but also possibilities for completely new things as well. One thing I’m really excited about is, you know the Switch has two joy cons, we’ve made it so the game will be completely playable with just one of the joy cons. This doesn’t mean the other one is just going to sit there useless, there will definitely be some things you can do with it (which we can’t really get into now). As far as playing with one goes, not only is it going to make things more compact and easier to play with, but also there was one big reason that made me decide to make the game playable with only one controller. I feel that, if the game is playable with one joy con, that will make it easier to one day put Travis in Smash Bros. So I’m sort of just waiting for that invitation to join the series from Smash Bros. to come.

That was actually one of my questions! My Editor in Chief who’s a big fan really wanted to know if there was any hope to get Travis in Smash Bros. so I guess you kind of answered that for me!

By all means please offer your support for that. The more voices that come up saying “Hey put Travis in your game!” the closer it comes to reality.

So last question: the style of No More Heroes is very distinctive. It’s always sort of mirrored Travis’ personality of very aggressive. I’m wondering what sort of influences there have been on the style since the last few games, and if there’s anything directly influencing the aesthetic and story of Travis Strikes Again?

There actually are a few things. These are characters in the game. There was this guy named Yusuke Kozaki who was the character designer, he designed Travis, and most of the characters up until now.

Probably the most major element I’ve been inspired by that actually had a big influence on the game is the UK artist Boneface. Boneface designed these two new characters with Yusuke Kozaki, and they’re sort of a collaborative effort between the two. The way I found out about Boneface was one of my staff members a few years ago had this cell phone case with some really cool art on it. I was like hey what’s that and they said it was by an artist named Boneface and I was like awesome and checked him out online and was immediately like “hey I’d like to work with this guy.” So we tried to get a hold of him, see if he knew who I am maybe see if he wanted to collaborate sometime. I contacted him and it turned out Boneface had actually played some of my games, and was a fan of mine!

It was a while back but now with this newest game the times all sort of lined up so we said “Ok let’s see if we can do something together.” So I went through and saw a bunch of his art, exchanged ideas and all those sorts of things. Not only did we get Boneface to design these two characters and several others as well, but his art in general has definitely had an influence on my work over the last few years two. So I’d definitely say out of all of the things I’ve seen and heard out of the last few years the most influential would have to be Boneface.

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We’ll have more coverage of Travis Strikes Again in the coming months.

The post We talked to Suda 51 about Travis Strikes Again, Super Smash Bros. and Fire Pro Wrestling appeared first on Gamesline.