Alas! My reasons for doing so are very personal, but I nonetheless hope you understand. Being here has shown me that VGCC really is not just one of my favorite video game sites on the web, but one of my fav video game communities as well, and the people I’ve met and interacted with through here, both staff and fans of VGCC, are wonderful. I’ll always treasure the site, and continue cheering it on! You can find me on the website currently known as Twitter, and of course in The Game Zone (Dot Zone!). Stay strong, remember that Mahiru Koizumi just wants you to smile, and as a wise man once said, we all “live and die by the meme”.

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Gods and Monsters, an upcoming video game from Ubisoft and not the Lana Del Rey song, is a lush-looking cartoony game about mythology. Not much information was revealed, except that you will supposedly control an adventurer who helps out the gods of the world. The game, not the 1998 film from Bill Condon, will release February 25, 2020 on consoles, PC, and Stadia.

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The light will guide you home. Way to the Woods is coming soon to Xbox Game Pass for Console! #XboxE3 pic.twitter.com/W1s7Z53rn3

— Xbox Game Pass (@XboxGamePass) June 9, 2019

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Learn how to say goodbye. Spiritfarer is coming to Xbox Game Pass for Console! #XboxE3 pic.twitter.com/60lzBYNrmn

— Xbox Game Pass (@XboxGamePass) June 9, 2019

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A whole bunch of new character customization features are presented, all island and getaway-themed. Not only that, but you get to make your Sim a mermaid. Mermaids have their own range of customizable options too, allowing you to make them as wondrous as you want. But you can’t have mermaids if your Sims can’t go in the ocean, so this getaway pack introduces an all-new feature: ocean gameplay! For the first time, your Sims can actually get in and out of the ocean like a regular-ass person, meaning you can’t kill them off in the go-to way anymore. From swimming in the ocean, to diving, and even playing with impressively shiny dolphins, your Sim can finally feel like a regular human being.

Of course, your Sims also have to work jobs to survive, as no one can escape the capitalist machine. Jobs this time have flexibility, allowing you to work whenever. If you want to move to the island, your Sim can even be a conservationist, working to protect its ecosystem and habitat. Whenever you’re not working or goofing off, you can also interact with the locals of the island, or as the press release puts it, “immerse [yourself] into the Sulani lifestyle by learning local folklore, tasting traditional delicacies, dressing in tropical garb or decorating their new oasis with objects inspired by the local culture.” It reeks of appropriation, coming off as if said culture is just a costume or something fancy to try out for a moment.

In the same vein of good intentions coming off sourly, The Sims is partnering with the It Gets Better Project to bring exclusive It Gets Better and other pride in-game clothing, including a gender-neutral bathroom door. All companies like to show their half-hearted support with this sort of content, and EA is no different, but as this stuff is rolling out over the next few months (instead of all coming out this month), one has to wonder how serious EA believes in its declaration of support, especially combined with the weird colonialist undertones presented before. If the content has to be paid for instead of given out for free, that’d show total insincerity. We’ll have to wait and see in the coming months.

The post Take your Sims on a Not-so-Vacationy Getaway with The Sims 4: Island Living appeared first on Gamesline.

5. Katamari Damacy REROLL

Despite being just a high-definition remaster of the original, Katamari Damacy REROLL still manages to feel just as fresh and exciting as it did when it first came out. Colorful, fun, and full of bangers, the game has such a unique charm to it that it feels impossible not to love. Even the bizarre controls help give it character and wonder, somewhat dated and frustrating as they are in 2018. It’s a bold move to not update the controls or change some of the levels for the remaster, but even so, my enjoyment of the game hasn’t diminished. Katamari Damacy still feels like a game that could have been made today, and is always welcome to charm me far into the future.

4. Girls’ Frontline

Gacha games are a special type of genre, usually one as overwhelming and flashy as possible to give you some semblance of actual gameplay and (hopefully) .pngs of characters you like in exchange for luck and/or money. And yet, the more time I spend with Girls’ Frontline, the more I can’t help but be charmed by it. It’s precisely because it doesn’t feel as overwhelming or flashy (even if it still is, by nature of being a mobage) that I learned to appreciate it a whole lot. For a game where you collect android gun girls to fight evil robots and other androids, Girls’ Frontline moves at a nice, steady pace. Whether strategizing how to move across a level’s map or engaging in real-time battles, there wasn’t much stress or pressure felt throughout, nor did I even feel remotely pressured to spend money to get better gun girls. I never would have expected to actively look forward to playing more of a gacha game in the coming years, but if there was going to be any of those games to do it, it’d be Girls’ Frontline.

3. The Missing

SWERY has always been a master of creating odd, yet charming games that always defied both expectation and common sense to create unique experiences. The Missing manages to be something else altogether in those areas. Controlling J.J. Macfield and experiencing the surreal traumatizing hell that her camping trip turns into is an emotional rollercoaster in of itself, with even game mechanics doing an incredible job of reinforcing the game’s themes and narrative. The writing is particularly well-crafted and shines as SWERY’s strongest writing yet. The Missing blunders in some key areas at times, but the genuine sincerity and care put into it shows and transforms it into one of the most memorable games I’ve ever played.

2. Deltarune

The spiritual successor to Undertale, Deltarune follows up on much of that game’s unique style and flavor with a lot of its own. Despite being a fraction of the length, it still feels as warm and friendly as ever, with wonderfully-written characters, inspiring music, and a fun take on the combat system of old. For being only the opening chapter of a much larger story, it manages to do a hell of a lot right, finding its footing just as quickly as Undertale did and not letting up until the end. Whatever Deltarune has in store for the future, I’m excited to see how it all plays out.

1. Groove Coaster for Steam

Groove Coaster feels like a sugar rush as a music game. The soundtrack is varied and heart-pounding, which is very fitting for a high-paced game like Groove Coaster tends to be. The visual aspect of playing through each song, as busy and overwhelming as it can be, is very well-crafted and enhances the flavor of the game to truly make it shine. Every track feels like a world of its own, and even the less-interesting or less-fun-to-play songs offer unique experiences that still draw me back to them time and time again. As a strong selection of DLC continues to be offered, I keep digging into Groove Coaster and happily lose my time trying to climb in the leaderboards and learn how to master ridiculous charts. No other game this year caught my attention and held it as much or as strongly as Groove Coaster has.

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For the most part, it does! Instead of tapping a screen or using the cabinet’s boosters, you can simply press corresponding keys/buttons on different sides of whatever you’re using to play to hit notes. Players must hit many types of notes, such as holds, directional notes (or slides), dual notes, scratches (wiggling a booster back and forth, or in this case, mashing two different buttons on the same side), beats (rapidly hitting different boosters), and variations thereof on some of these. While it’s a lot to take in at first, gameplay becomes intuitive pretty quickly, feeling enthralling as you learn to master what Groove Coaster tries to throw at you.

Groove Coaster‘s soundtrack is an absolute delight. The nature of the game suits it best for fast and blood-pumping dance music of all kinds, with many different genres represented. It’s not just limited to electronic music either, with a few rock songs sprinkled into the mix that help appeal to a wider audience than those into loud EDM. Artists represented in the game aren’t going to be that well-known to those who aren’t already following Groove Coaster or Bemani‘s numerous rhythm games. This isn’t an issue, as each song has its own flavor and identity, with even slower or mid-tempo songs in the mix. These help ease you into the game and the kind of music you can expect to encounter, and a lot of them are great in their own right. As every song is bite-sized, even the few songs that feel like filler are over quickly.

The game encourages playing at your own pace, with 32 of the game’s 36 songs being unlocked to play right from the start. In order to play a song’s higher difficulties however, you need to clear lower difficulties, an obvious holdover from the iOS version of the game. This allows you to learn a song and get accustomed to the game, although this can become an annoyance as you get better at the game. Considering how vital it can be to not only learn a song’s chart, but its course as well, this isn’t too much of a drawback in the long run.

Charts gradually get harder with each difficulty, trickier combinations or note types being introduced, which often forces you to change your approach to any given song. This introduces a weird quirk with some songs however. Throughout a song, notes don’t just correspond to synths or keys; they can also be mapped to a song’s percussion, as well as its vocals. Higher difficulties can often be more difficult than a song’s lower difficulties may indicate due to mapping notes across multiple instruments. On the flip-side, lower difficulties can end up being harder at points due to odd instances of undercharting, or having you play along to another instrument in a jarring manner because of undercharting. This isn’t a persistent issue, and the added challenge on higher difficulties often keeps songs fresh to play, while any weird undercharting is rare enough to be nothing more than minor bumps when learning the game.

One of Groove Coaster’s most dazzling and creative features by far has always been its song courses, still just as wonderfully realized on PC as they are on phone or arcade. The course line twists, turns, and zags as you play; the background shifts in color and intensity to match certain parts of the song; the camera can pull in and out on your icon flawlessly in certain sections. As someone who gets nauseous easily during intense or vividly-colored sections of movies or games, I’ve never felt sick playing Groove Coaster for Steam. Even during the over-the-top or indulgent moments of a course, everything still feels comfortable to take in, and I didn’t have to worry about songs becoming incomprehensible. It’s dazzling, even making songs being played for the 50th time a rush.

Unfortunately, Groove Coaster has a few prominent flaws. With 36 songs, there’s not much diversity. Songs rarely break the 2:30 mark, meaning you’ll go through nearly all the content in the game real quickly. While the soundtrack as a whole is pretty great for someone who is generally into fast and hard electronic music, if you’re not, the game can become more of a chore than anything else. Coupled with an inability to restart songs (you need to quit to the song select screen and then find the song you were currently playing, if it wasn’t your last completed song), and the game starts to feel like a grind if you don’t pace yourself.

This issue is most prevalent in how the game handles leaderboards. Your position on a song’s leaderboards is determined on the cumulative score you have across every difficulty on said song. If you’re looking to edge out a few more points, you will inevitably run into the issue of restarting a song over and over again, meaning you’ll lose more time than you’d like to simply navigating the menus repeatedly. Even if you accidentally pick the wrong difficulty of a song, you’ll still have to navigate back to the song you’re playing just to pick the right difficulty. True, completing the song you want to grind first is one way to circumvent a chunk of pointless menu navigation, but it still isn’t preferable to a restart option, and makes the game more of a hassle than it should be.

However, the biggest problem Groove Coaster has by far is a lack of feedback on how well you’re actually doing. It’s never quite easy to tell when you’re hitting a note accurately and when you’re a little off, especially as you get into faster and more difficult songs. You can adjust the calibration in the settings, but because it’s all manual, and that there’s no way to accurately get the calibration you want without a lot of trial and error, doing well in the game can require you spend a number of runs simply getting a feel for whether or not your calibration is good. Even then, that won’t always be the case as calibration can only be adjusted in half-seconds. This will generally work, but incredibly fast charts can’t be accounted for in this way, making the process an uphill battle.

This can result in the most difficult songs of the whole game being a pain to go through under the worst circumstances. Hitting weirdly-sequenced charts, nailing dual slides, or even hitting a bunch of fast notes can be a challenge if you’re still not sure you have the best calibration settings, and no way to tell how accurate you’re being. This makes aiming for certain ranks or even clears on the hardest songs an uphill battle. Pair this with the lack of a restart option, and the late game can end up more tedious than anything else.

Even through all of its negatives, no flaw has kept me from diving into Groove Coaster again and again. I’ve consistently wanted to learn all of its tricks and persistently get better at it. From the aesthetics and layout to how it feels to play, everything about it is wonderfully addictive. While best played in short bursts, I can’t help but go back to it for long sessions, chipping away at my scores again and again and having a blast for most of it. Despite the issues it has, I can’t help but adore it all the same when the positives heavily outweigh the negatives.

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Transference sets you in the shoes of a young boy, strapped with an uncomfortable headset, as you explore puzzles and off-kilter environments that promise to constantly make you feel unnerved and uncomfortable. Part of the game is in FMV, taking full advantage of its self-aware nature as a game, a movie, and the fact that its in VR in order to constantly set you on edge and susceptible to many of the game’s tricks. It seems to fully relish in its P.T.-esque nature with claustrophobic hallways and shadow-y, barely human monsters.

Transference will be released in Fall 2018 for Xbox One and PS4, in addition to VR for Oculus, Vive, and Playstation VR. Should make for a fitting Halloween party game!

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In the Knowledge Base area of hitRECord’s site, under “How did you come up with $50,000 to pay the contributors of the BGE2 x HITRECORD Production?“, more information is given:

Typically, HITRECORD splits all the profits of a production with the community 50/50 — 50% of profits go to the Contributing Artists and the other 50% go to HITRECORD.org LLC.

 

For this partnership with BGE2, HITRECORD is only working on certain elements and parts of the full game, so ‘profit’ as we’d usually define it doesn’t apply. Instead HITRECORD has set aside the community payment sum of $50,000 as an item in our budget. That amount will be spread across all the finished songs and visual assets that we deliver to Ubisoft Montpellier for inclusion in the game.

 

If at some point down the line we expand the scope of what we’re making, we’ll earmark additional dollars to pay the community, and of course, we’ll keep everyone in the loop.

A video is provided at the end with more information.

Boy, Ubisoft really pulled out all the guns with that one huh?

Ubisoft followed up Just Dance 2019 premiere with more information on Beyond Good & Evil 2. First was another cinematic trailer, showcasing more gorgeous footage of the different characters in their daily life, as well as Jade, who is truly beyond evil. The stakes only seem to get higher and higher with each new reveal. We also got to see pre-alpha gameplay footage, featuring the vast city of Ganesha.

However, the most unique reveal comes from what Ubisoft has called the Space Monkeys Program, bringing out good old Joseph Gordon-Levitt to explain. Partnering with hitRECord, a for-profit company, Ubisoft wants fans worldwide to contribute their talents for Beyond Good & Evil 2, such as music, artwork, original content, and possibly more unspecified assets. According to hitRECord’s site, contributors will get paid for their work if it gets approved. Looking at hitRECord’s help page, this is the information those wishing to contribute to the program can expect as far as payment. From their “How are Profits split?” question:

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