She’s an Icon, She’s a Legend, and She Is the Moment

Confirming leeks leaks, Hatsune Miku officially joins Fortnite as the Festival Season 7 Icon.

The virtual singer will not only arrive to the stage with appropriately themed outfits, instruments, and even more songs, but she will also be joining the game at the same as the arrival of a pair of iconic kaiju for an upcoming Godzilla x Kong collaboration.

Ubisoft’s Unending Issues

Ubisoft announced another delay for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The game, originally due out November 15, 2024, was initially pushed to February, and is now rescheduled again to release on March 20, 2025.

Ubisoft also stated that they have “appointed leading advisors to review and pursue various transformational strategic and capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders.” This sounds like a good thing a healthy company does (John writes with sarcasm).

Because meanwhile, Indonesian support studio Brandoville Studios, who have been instrumental in Shadows’ development, have been outed by allegations of workplace abuse in a report by People Make Games. The support studio ultimately shuttered in 2024, and an Ubisoft spokesperson otherwise expresses their vague “condem[nation]” of the accounts.

The Los Angeles Wildfires

The ongoing Los Angeles wildfires have destroyed numerous homes and displaced hundreds of thousands of individuals. With LA being a sprawling point of the United States’ entertainment industry, a few celebrity homes and landmarks have been destroyed, and several anticipated events have been postponed.

Located near an evacuation warning zone, Riot Games has closed its Santa Monica office for all but “critical functions”. CEO Dylan Jadeja writes that, “Riot will be ready to stand up for Los Angeles and give back in every way [they] can.”

Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role has also postponed broadcast, with many of its performers based in impacted areas. The company has donated to a wildfire recovery fund.

As the path of the fire continues to be actively monitored, neighboring communities also continue to be subjected to smoke and strong winds, as Insomniac Games senior writer Nick Folkman comments.

This is a list of several funds you can donate to that aim to help support the victims of the fires.

For Californian residents, here’s a spreadsheet compiling numerous resources and local community hubs that are offering free necessities and shelter. Sorted by location, some of these spaces are seeking volunteers as well. The sheet is being updated and maintained by the Mutual Aid LA Network and are receptive to feedback.

Medical suppliers like Planet Halo Health are also taking requests for free respirators and face masks for community-based or individual distribution.

Through 211 LA, Airbnb is also providing temporary housing for those displaced.

In other news…

A remake of The House of the Dead 2 has been announced. Due out in Spring, the latest return to the light gun franchise will release on Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, and GOG.

Splash Damage’s co-op shooter Transformers: Reactivated has been canceled.

Sony has announced Horizon: Zero Dawn and Helldivers films, which means they’re pretty much just remaking Starship Troopers at this point. The second season of HBO’s The Last of Us series is also starting in April.

RetroRemake has announced the “first affordable FPGA gaming console” with the SS One, a device modeled after the PS One. The console will support PS1 games, memory cards, and controllers, and can also do anything the MiSTer can handle. The first run will cost $149, and future runs will be more expensive, but with a promise it will be at or under $220.

FuturLab, developers of PowerWash Simulator, has announced that support for the VR version of the game is going on indefinite hiatus. In the post announcing this, their CEO Kirsty Rigden said that the VR version wasn’t breaking even, and when job openings for the non-VR version became available, the decision was made to move the VR team over to those jobs so they could have job security.

This year’s Evo lineup has seemingly leaked thanks to an accidentally uploaded YouTube thumbnail. The games this year will be Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, Under Night In-Birth 2, Mortal Kombat 1, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, and Marvel vs Capcom 2. The thumbnail may have been out of date, so this may not be 100% accurate, but it makes sense.

And finally, bunch more of Switch 2 leaks happened, and Nintendo still hasn’t announced the friggin’ thing. Sources are claiming the console will be announced on the 16th, with a release sometime in May or June.

They did, however, announce that a LEGO Game Boy kit will release in October.

The post The Bulletin: Miku Monday appeared first on Gamesline.

Tsurumi Island is the major piece of upcoming content, finally completing the island nation of Inazuma that was released piecemeal starting in July with the 2.0 version of the game. With it are supposed to come the new Rifthound enemies, meant to be the first enemy type able to bypass shields and address some balancing concerns players have had with the end game content.

For PC and mobile-only players, this update will also allow them to receive the free 5-star crossover character Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn, which PlayStation players had received at the beginning of the previous update.

Barring a small new dungeon by the name of Moshiri Kara, minor bugfixes, and quality of life improvement, the only other permanent additions to the game are two new hangout events with the new Inazuma characters of Thoma and Sayu. These are usually charming and short, hour-long day-in-the life segments with the featured character, in which you have the ability to go through several story paths and endings for very modest rewards.

On the gacha side of things, this period is set to consist entirely of rerun 5-stars in the form of Tartaglia and Hu Tao. The former of which is on his 3rd run in less than a year, and finally being released alongside a bespoke 5-star weapon. While fans have theorised that this third occurrence is meant to align with his death or his addition to the game’s permanent banner in light of his low sales, no comments have been made on the matter. Tartaglia does not have a new story quest in 2.2, but he seems set to play a prominent role on the eponymous limited time event.

Hu Tao is also not set to release alongside a new chapter in her story quest, and whether or not she will be accompanied by the infamously overpowered Staff of Homa on the corresponding weapon banner remains to be seen. She will, however, come with the first playable appearance of Inazuma’s own Thoma, as a rate-up 4* on her limited banner.

Many fans seem to be regarding 2.2 as an opportunity to take a break from the game given the lower amount of new activities, or simply to save resources for upcoming limited banners. Personally, I have been under the weather lately, so the slower content is a great opportunity for me to catch up with all that I’ve missed. Plus, as a big fan of the featured characters in this patch’s banner, I will be spending some resources trying to level them further, since I didn’t feel compelled to roll for most of the new Inazuma characters.

And finally, I’m really looking forward to my favourite character in the game, Xinyan, finally getting some attention as one of the poster characters for the new patch. She has gained a reputation as the most neglected character in the game, relegated to being a gacha-only character. She had not been featured in any story cutscenes up until a brief conversation in the recent anniversary event, so I’m most certainly excited to see more of her.

The post Genshin Impact to Release 2.2 Update on October 13th appeared first on Gamesline.

As I played The Last of Us Part II, one of the things that really stuck out to me, amongst my many issues with the game, was my incapability to find the notion of its female main character, let alone one that was openly gay, even remotely compelling. I’ve played plenty of bad games in my time, and even at their worst, I’m usually able to at least appreciate when something’s making bold strides in either representation or diversification. However, here, Ellie didn’t really register to me as gay, despite me loving her lesbian antics in the Left Behind DLC for the first game. At the time there was far too much else going on with Part II for me to really nail down this lack of resonance, but after some time away I know exactly what’s going on.

The main lesbian relationship between Ellie and her girlfriend Dina, isn’t contextualized by the nature of their personalities, or their love for each other, but rather by their obligations as a daughter and a mother respectively. Ellie’s motivations throughout Part II are driven by her feelings towards the death of her surrogate father Joel, and Dina is swept up along with her out of support for her partner. However, for some reason, the writers of the game decided that it wasn’t dramatic enough to have a messy relationship on the basis of filial revenge, so they decided to throw in the wrench that Dina is pregnant with her ex-boyfriend’s child.

At first, I’d be inclined to give Naughty Dog points for the all-too-rare case of a character being bisexual, as well as the notion that somebody in a lesbian relationship could be pregnant without that invalidating it. However, it quickly becomes clear that those are not the reasons for this development. Rather than expanding the relationship between Ellie and Dina, the game becomes secondarily about the father of her child, who crosses hundreds of miles and manages to find them almost instantly. From then on, things aren’t about Ellie and her girlfriend, but rather about Ellie and her revenge quest, and about her pregnant girlfriend’s involvement with the father of the child. If that wasn’t bad enough, even when the game later suggests that Ellie and Dina do get married to raise this child, the relationship may as well have put traditionalized labels on each of them for “Dad” and “Mom”.

This type of situation, where representation doesn’t end up feeling like actual representation, is increasingly prevalent throughout the medium of games, and almost entirely because of who exactly is given the job of writing them. While The Last of Us Part II is co-written by a woman, it takes all of 5 seconds to find director and lead writer Neil Druckmann talking about his feelings on becoming a father and how that affected his writing of Ellie and even the characters of other Naughty Dog games. He’s not the only one, either; the aforementioned God of War was lauded specifically for its molding of Kratos into more of a father figure, while the game itself positioned each of its women into the role of a mother. That one was also written by a guy, in case you were wondering. In games, fatherhood has become almost entirely conflated with maturity, despite the failings of these games to even begin to reconcile with their treatments of the roles of women.

To consider another heavily praised female lead, also written by a man, there’s Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn. Aloy’s initial motivations in Horizon come from the murder of her father. While in the grand scheme of things it’s largely inconsequential to the plot, it is nonetheless the entire reason she sets out on her journey in the first place, immediately placing the primary role of Aloy as, yes, the protagonist, but also as a daughter. While Aloy does gradually get fleshed out more and more as her journey goes on, it’s hard to forget that the driving force behind her adventure was limited by the idea that she wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t because of her father.

There are countless other examples of this, even more obviously in games focused on a male lead. For Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar used strong imagery of Bonnie MacFarlane, one of the only women in the game, brandishing a gun throughout promotional material, in contrast to their more sexualized advertising for Grand Theft Auto. In the actual game, however, while she’s ostensibly a rough and tumble character, her entire personality is shaped around the notion that she’s a surrogate wife for John Marston, as well as tied to the ideas that her father represented. When making Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar decided that this dictation of the woman’s role was too subtle, so they made nearly every woman in the plot a stationary NPC at a camp who does nothing but act as a therapist for Arthur, calling him a good man and comforting him on command.

Video games aren’t made by one person obviously, and in all of these cases there are more than certainly several women involved in the creation of each of the games I’ve complained about. However, as is so with every industry, systemic sexism and power structures put a wrench in what change is readily attainable. As we’ve seen throughout the years with Blizzard, Riot Games, and most recently Ubisoft, the world of games is trapped in the inherent mindset that men must be in power, and powerful men tend to believe they’re always in the right.

There are plenty of games across multiple decades that showcase the sheer difference of women being in more direct control of a game, and just how different it can be. Kim Swift directed Portal, arguably one of the most iconic works of the medium, and it and its sequel are driven by the conflict of two women. Every Yoko Taro game has been primarily written by women, with Drakengard 3 being a particular standout for showcasing a more blatant sexuality for its female lead, without absolute fetishization.

When I think about some more of my favorite works, it should be no surprise through reading this article that many of them focus heavily on women; games like Bayonetta, Fate/Grand Order, and Final Fantasy XIII. However, when it comes to most games, especially those in the AAA sphere, it’s particularly hard for me to resonate with nearly any of the characters because of that limited lens through which women are seen. To me, these works I adore resonate because of the dynamism afforded to the women they’re about.

The thing that gets me about these games is that they’re not games written by women, or even particularly for women as their main goal: Bayonetta was penned by Hideki Kamiya; Fate is penned at times by women, but generally by Kinoko Nasu; and Final Fantasy XIII is even written by a dude who self-admittedly fell in love with Lightning. Yet somehow, each of these works take into consideration the notion that a woman can be driven by multiple things and become who they want to be, rather than having to be defined by their relationships with a male character.

Bayonetta is a story that, yes, places its lead character in both the role of a mother and daughter, but at the same time uses those roles to contextualize the trauma she’s experienced in her life while letting her flaunt both sexuality and personality in spades. Fate/Grand Order is sourced from a visual novel that gradually attempted to show that women are capable of doing countless things beyond what men generally expect, and takes that further by transforming the notion of certain historical figures into not just hot anime women, but hot anime women with both independent agency and purpose. The Final Fantasy XIII trilogy is in part about Snow trying to find his fiancee, Lightning’s sister, but the game quickly makes it clear that he has little to do with these women’s characters, and as things develop he is driven more by their actions than they are by his.

The problem with AAA gaming isn’t just that it’s men leading the conversation, but rather that it’s one specific type of man consistently being rewarded by other men who see themselves in each other. If big games want to make a difference with their diversity, then the identities they’re championing need to be more than just assumptions. Games shouldn’t be held back by such a myopic lens, and the sooner we broaden the perspectives and groups behind them, the better we’ll all be for it.

The post For Women in Games, You Can Be a Mother or a Daughter appeared first on Gamesline.

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The post VGCC Episode 295: Toilet Fairy appeared first on Gamesline.

Support us on Patreon! Follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @YourPalNiall, and @solonface, and don’t forget to rate & review the show on iTunes, as well as tell a friend! You can also send questions, comments, and concerns to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com or find us on Tumblr! You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

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The post VGCC Episode 236: The Macbeth of Video Games appeared first on Gamesline.

Johnorable Mention: Horizon: Zero Dawn

My affection for Horizon: Zero Dawn primarily stems from the love I once had for the CW’s excellent sci-fi young adult series The 100, a show which trafficks in the same kind of post-post-apocalyptic creole that at once relaxes me and grabs my imagination. It’s a reverse-fantasy situation, transforming advanced technology into a new kind of magic. The worldbuilding becomes a game where the player tries to guess which piece of fantastical terminology will map onto a recognizable piece of tech and what that could mean for the state of the world. Horizon’s depiction of 31st century Western America is well realized, and even a chance to spend more time in that world is worth any weaknesses this game might possess – but to be fair, those weaknesses are few.

10. Destiny 2

Destiny 2 brought games culture to an absolute standstill earlier this year in a way I had occasionally seen but rarely been able to participate in. This year, this time, I got to be a part of the zeitgeist. I got to be in on the joke, and I loved it. I understood the memes. I devoured every Destiny-centric news story and planned my weekend around the first Xur. I consumed. And sometimes that feels good for a while, only for you to remember how we all got into this hyper-capitalist mess in the first place and eventually you snap out, but for those couple weeks it feels so good.

It still does, not in the same ways, but in all the ways that count. The game plays like a dream and the loot is meted out in a way that feels like a legitimate loot game rather than an incomplete title. Almost every problem I had with the first Destiny has been fixed, which is really all you can ask from a game where the sum total of its appeal is watching some numbers tick up.

9. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

2017’s most delightful surprise, Resident Evil VII: Biohazard is both moderate reinvention and statement of purpose. The series needed to find its way home in order to start a new chapter. Back to the familiar sense of dread, to the more restrained location, to grossing out players with all the gore and violence a videogame-ass-videogame could muster. Biohazard’s dedication to its own mechanics and systems almost feels retro, with no desire to obscure the man behind the curtain. There’s an inventory-ass inventory. There’s a drink-based health system. There are over-the-top boss fights. There’s a chainsaw. You’ve seen this all before, but rarely executed quite like this. Resident Evil VII is all craft.

8. Emily Is Away Too

There’s an important distinction between people who grew up with the internet and people who grew up on it – I’m absolutely in the latter category. I didn’t go to a traditional high school, and I wasn’t exactly prone to making friends in a hyper-masculine sports-focused part of New York State, so I found that all-too-essential human connection online instead. I remember so much about my first online relationship: visiting her high school in Ohio, talking with my friends about my relationship troubles over the same program I used to chat with my girlfriend, and ending the relationship over the phone. I literally couldn’t do it in person, so my only recourse was the ultimate coward move. I know plenty of other people who have been through something similar. Even if we took different paths, there are just certain things you understand about your first online love.

Emily Is Away Too is built on that shared emotional language. These people and their lives feel recognizable, because how could you ever forget them? You lived those lives and met those people – at the very least you should be able to recognize the broad strokes. The scene where you’re trying to keep two very important chat windows going at the same time felt so authentic that I could believe I was replaying a scene from my own life. Emily Is Away Too’s sharp writing makes this game worth a look, but I suspect a fair number of my fellow millennials will find meaning in the game’s pitch-perfect mimicry.

7. Puyo Puyo Tetris

I’ve been playing Tetris for about as long as I can remember. For me, Puyo Puyo Tetris was a way to hone my block-stacking skills in front of my friends, who traditionally have been on the receiving end of a good thrashing. The campaign is a really fun way to explore both Tetris and Puyo Puyo, and the plethora of inventive arcade and multiplayer modes were enough to keep me coming back to Puyo Puyo Tetris in the months since release. But that core – that sweet, sweet Tetris – is a perfect realization of arguably the most iconic video game ever made.

6. Night in the Woods

This was a good year for games that spoke very specifically to Mike Cosimano. I guess if you’re going to release a video game about a self-loathing college dropout returning to their dead-end hometown, all the while dealing with unspoken parental disappointment and the very real specter of mental illness, you could pick worse years for said release than 2017. I don’t need to recap everything that bummed people out this year, especially when everyone has a completely disparate list of 2017’s worst moments.

Night in the Woods feels like a (capital g capital n) Graphic Novel, in that it has all the hard drinking, cursing, and existential dread of a first novel but with the extremely clean anthropomorphic animal aesthetic of an experimental modern-day Disney cartoon. One way or another, these creatures are gonna work though their emotional stagnancy via snark and band practice! If you’re in the mood for Night in the Woods’ particular brand of bittersweet, there’s a good chance this game will speak to you as well.

5. Heat Signature

Heat Signature feels like a really good sophomore album. It’s an artist coming into their own; synthesizing the pros and cons of their debut into a sort of road map for the future. Designed by Tom Francis, the man behind Gunpoint, Heat Signature is a strong follow-up to 2013’s best game, with the same emphasis on improvisation and failure state recovery that first captured my imagination when those tenets were stapled onto a man with super jumpy pants.

Although the transition from Gunpoint means Heat Signature loses my all-time favorite setting (sci-fi neo-noir), it still benefits from my all-time second favorite setting (grungy space), crafting a world so deeply lived-in that your very presence feels like a trespass. Finally, a game where I can truly become the scheme-ruining goblin I was born to be.

4. Persona 5

It’s a shame that 2018 has already been officially christened as The Year of Corky, because 2017 brought the video game stuff I do like. Games like Heat Signature or Zelda brought the open-ended improvisation, while games like Night in the Woods or Persona 5 fused genre trappings with larger thematic content in the most obvious way possible. I love a subtle message as much as the next person, but there’s something I truly adore about a work completely defined by its ideology.

From every angle, Persona 5 is about co-operative rebellion. In some way, it feels like a Japanese Watch Dogs 2 – this game taps into the unspoken fears, hopes, and beliefs that come hand-in-hand with growing up in the 2010s. Your weird friends will be the only hope and solace you have in the coming days. You don’t have to suffer institutionalized abuse. Take that hope and that solace and use it to shove your brilliance down your foes’ respective throats.

Aesthetically, Persona 5 is a curious hybrid of in-your-face punk and improvisational jazz, but like every other game in the series, it’s really about the scope of human connection, both on a macro and micro level. It may not be as fresh nor magnetizing as Persona 4, but it’s still one of the best games you can buy on a PlayStation.

3. PUBG

I have an anecdote from playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds that perfectly summarizes why I love this game so much.

I was moving towards one of my favorite hiding spots (a house on the right side of the map) when I heard gunshots behind me. The dirt exploded around my feet as I made a break for the house, only just barely making it inside. With several minutes left before the map was set to shrink, I figured I could regroup inside and come up with some plan of attack. I poked my head out quickly to get a grasp of where my rival had set up shop…but I didn’t count on another player in a nearby car spotting me.

I had only one choice. I hid inside the house. The car had managed to spot me, but not the sniper hiding in the grass with a rifle trained on my house’s front door. Of course the player in the car wasn’t going to get out when they had a rolling death machine at their disposal. Of course the other player hunting me wasn’t going to reveal their spot when there was a rolling death machine kicking around. Of course I was going to sit inside that house grinding my teeth.

The person in the car began to taunt me, driving in circles around the house and revving the car’s engine as a sort of Warriors-esque “come out and pla-ay”-style taunt. Eventually I had to get out of the house, or I would’ve been trapped outside the blue circle. I zigzagged it out the front door while the car was on the other side of the house, in the hopes that I could get some distance before my opponents had time to react.

My plan actually worked. The car rounded the house and made a beeline towards my future corpse, accidentally running over the prone sniper along the way. I popped two shots through the windshield, killing the driver. In my panic, I left the car abandoned and booked it over a nearby hill. PUBG rules.

2. Super Mario Odyssey

I could play Super Mario Odyssey pretty much every day of my life. Everything about this game is so finely crafted that I feel confident putting it at the very top of any sort of Mario ranking. The worlds in Odyssey are brilliant, constantly rewarding the player for experimentation and exploration at every skill level. If you’re just poking at Odyssey while you’re on the toilet, you’ll be entertained. If you’re sitting down for a multi-hour session, you’ll be entertained. I found Power Moons to be one of the most addicting collectibles in recent memory. I agonized over each hidden Moon and delighted in the Moons that I just kinda tripped over.

Games like Mario Odyssey are the reason why we still buy Nintendo consoles, no matter how wild the pitch. No other game company could make a game like this, because there’s an implied quality to major first-party Nintendo titles. You expect games from the people who gave us the unqualified classic Super Mario Sunshine to be good. Super Mario Odyssey is better than good. It’s great.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

A lot of people don’t understand exactly why we as a culture still talk about Citizen Kane. That’s fine! Not everybody should have to suffer through film school. If all you know about Citizen Kane is that it’s considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time, then you’ve at least nailed the broad strokes. What made Citizen Kane important – what made it formative – was its technique. It expanded American cinematography on the eve of the noir boom, popularizing and expanding a filmic visual language that people still use to this day. It’s not that Citizen Kane hit some objective checklist to become the Best Movie or even that it got people to take American cinema seriously.

Citizen Kane is Citizen Kane because its crew found new ways to use the tools they had been given.

We as an industry talk a lot about the Citizen Kane of videogames. At first some of us did it sincerely, now all of us do it ironically. I’m here to make an illegal u-turn and whip this discourse back into the sincerity lane. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the Citizen Kane of video games.

Breath of the Wild isn’t a literal 1:1 to Citizen Kane because it expanded game cinematography or something like that. Yes, the game looks gorgeous, but visual direction is not the primary language of video games. Interactivity is how games communicate with their players; Zelda redefines that interaction by creating a world where every aspect of post-apocalyptic Hyrule interacts with everything else. If you have enough patience and a solid understanding of the game’s mechanics, there is no limit to what your imagination can accomplish.

By giving players a box of easily accessible tools and a physics ruleset that feels recognizable and logical, the game actively encourages you to sequence break, hairbrained problem solving becomes the norm. There’s no more glitching around mountains trying to avoid another long trek like in Skyrim. Now you can just climb over that mountain, all the while looking for places where Link could rest when his stamina gets weak. That’s noteworthy because it feels real. It’s human. Breath of the Wild is the greatest fantasy simulation ever created because Link as a physical object starts with all the limitations and skills of your average person.

Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule feels like a real place, not because it’s populated with a horde of NPCs following a set path or because it’s got the best god rays, but because I can get those apples by chopping down that tree. Yeah, it’s still a beautiful game filled with whimsy and thrilling adventure, but its willingness to experiment with things we take for granted is what makes Breath of the Wild so magnificent. Zelda redefines the basics in order to elevate its ephemera, so obviously it’s gotta be my Game of the Year.

Congratulations to Kentucky Route Zero, 2018’s Game of the Year.

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

10. Out of the Park Baseball 18

Intense management, an old ass sport, and a ton of menus? That’s me in a nutshell. Despite enjoying Motorsport Manager, I didn’t think this dryer, less graphic based cousin would do anything for me. I grabbed Out of the Park in a Humble Bundle and instantly realized this was my kind of shit. I would normally spend a season or two in a sports game trying to live out my own team dynasty. Out of the Park puts more of that control in my hand, more “realistic” information on the screen, and makes me feel like a real baseball manager. I’ll gladly take my menu based fantasy fulfillment.

9. Cook, Serve, Delicious 2

Despite the long hours, the low pay, and the less than grateful customers, a part of me enjoyed the challenge of cooking up as many damn sandwiches I could manage. Cook, Serve, Delicious manages to reintroduce that stressful challenge that actually feels like a rewarding practice. It’s what I imagine gym rats feel like after a good workout. The actions might be rough, but the mental reward outweighs the pain. No pain, no gain. Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 may have been light on some of the original’s features, but it still managed to change things in just the right way. I feel like this sequel expands on how I, personally, wanted to play Cook, Serve, Delicious.

8. Persona 5

The JRPG has firmly spun off into its own genre. While it holds the hallmarks of all other role-playing games, the Japanese style maintains a stalwart attachment to a rigid way of approaching things. That’s where the Persona series, and especially in Persona 5, seeks to solidify and undermine those expectations. For every piece of Persona that feels cliche there’s another part layered with so much style, and care, that it becomes impossible not to feel joy. I didn’t walk away from Persona 5 fulfilled like I had with Persona 4, but I did enjoy the ride they placed me on. In a world where a developer must follow up their most successful title I did not expect Atlus to step so far away. And yet they did, and did so with an wonderful game.

7. Cuphead

Video games have a great power to transport us wherever the creators choose to go. Cuphead does that with powerful ease. It’s obvious at a glance why Cuphead is so special. When we all first glimpsed this early 1900s cartoon styled game we knew this would be something to behold. Despite endless delays and worrying changes the end result is nothing short of spectacular to watch in motion. Cuphead’s cartoony style conveys it’s artistic whimsy with just a devilish hint of difficulty that really rears its head by world two or three. I personally have never enjoyed intensely hard platformers or shooters and yet I came very close to beating Cuphead. Its style and presentation was enough to grab ahold of me and force me to approach a genre of game I’d never touch otherwise.

6. Pyre

Pyre is painstakingly beautiful. A simple game that starts with some form of basketball that’s surrounded by story was able to, over and over, leave me filled with astonishment. I frequently had to stop playing and take screenshot after screenshot so that I would never forget how Pyre looked. You’d do yourself a service for play, or even watch, Pyre play out. It’s a feast for the eyeballs that drags you into a unique world the likes of which I had never seen before. Games all too often limit their art to a handful of appealing moments when the developer knows you’re looking. Pyre simply layers it all in and lets you unfold it like a blooming flower.

5. Zelda: Breath of the Wild

One of my first intense moments with any video game was in Zelda: Link to the Past. I’d hop into my older brother’s saves in order to see the end game spells and items that I’d never get around to earning. It felt like Hyrule was a real place I could walk around and explore. I never felt that away again until Breath of the Wild. There’s a sense of loss and exploration, of pristine and damaged beauty, all around Hyrule. And what really hooked me in, after a few hours of floundering, was the openness of it all. I had no restrictions, no places I wasn’t allowed to go. Everything was open for poking and prodding until I either found a way inside or was rebuffed enough that I moved on to the next interesting point on the horizon. I’m so happy this will be the final cap for my Wii U’s lackluster life as a gaming system. A remarkable send off with a remarkable game.

4. Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds

It’s probable that I ignored nearly a dozen emails about Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds. Each one touted this new game from the maker of Day Z mods and revealed screenshots that, honestly, never impressed. It all fell onto deaf ears and even after seeing a growing segment of players enjoy their time in this Battle Royale simulator I was still apprehensive. I thought it would be a waste of money and time. But there’s something about PUBG. Alone it’s a nervous wreck simulator, with a group it’s a wacky comedy, and in a duo it’s somewhere in between. All based around a ridiculously simple premise that’s still somehow enjoyable to replay on repeat. PUBG’s enjoyment comes from a perfect combination randomness and skill, or your own personal skills with the guns you do (and sometimes don’t) find. PUBG shouldn’t have 20 million players, shouldn’t be so fun to hop into, and shouldn’t have been this successful and yet here it is.

3. Horizon: Zero Dawn

Horizon had sold me the instant they showed robot dinosaurs. Some not-so-dormant internal child woke up and took ahold of all my decision making abilities. Thankfully, even with the long wind up, Horizon was able to deliver on the goods. Wrapping a wonderfully unveiled science fiction story around robot dinosaur combat was exactly what I was hoping for. I found myself seeking out every new piece of story and lore that would help fill in the background of Horizon’s world and Aloy’s past. Every new answer always yielded more questions and by the end I was left completely satisfied with the story I was told. Typically I’d be all for a standalone game that tells one good story and leaves the stage with the crowd endlessly cheering. However with Horizon I’m chomping at the bit to jump back in and begin lobbing some arrows at more robot dinosaurs.

2. Fire Pro Wrestling World

Do you ever remember, as a kid, walking down a toy aisle and spotting an absolutely too large box filled to the brim of toys? Some set from some franchise that included a ton of characters, accessories, and even a chunk of plastic land to fight over? They were glorious, pieces of heaven expensively left in that aisle for us to hem and haw over while our parents explained how money worked. Fire Pro Wrestling World is that wonderful toy box. It’s bare when you open it but thanks to the inclusion of the Steam Workshop you can quickly fill it up. My wrestling toy chest now contains a legion of my favorites. Even better, you can organize and place your wrestlers on digital shelves, choosing which fantasy bouts you want to recreate and when. I’ve already lost hours to this fantasy booking paradise and I expect 2018 will feature the same.

1. Divinity: Original Sin 2

At a glance, Divinity Original Sin 2 is a game and a franchise I would ignore completely. It appears to be another entry in an uninteresting fantasy role-playing series that needed to be Kickstarted just to come out. It looks to harken back to typical PC role-playing games with its isometric camera and fantasy setting. While none of those assumptions are necessarily false, they were all buried underneath the immense wonder and affection I built up over my time with Divinity Original Sin 2.

The old school approach is enriched with turn based, Dungeons and Dragon like combat that feels more strategic and decisive. That fantasy feel is accented with a knowing humor and wonderful writing. Divinity feels like a labor of love from developers who were having fun putting together an immense, occasionally intimidating, but approachable game. Even the little touches like choosing a specific instrument to play during battle music or getting to meet the pre-made characters during your adventure really strengthens my attachment to the game. It really feels like my personal version of Divinity Original Sin 2 every time I boot it up. Divinity is dense yet light, complicated yet accessible, overwhelming yet friendly. It’s been such a wonderful bright spot of a game to sink into and experience and turns out that’s what I needed in 2017.

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

The footage features a mysterious man regaling Aloy with the legends of the titular Frozen Wilds, all while cold and dangerous images of the mountain pass by. It’s quick, but visually stunning and very intriguing.

The DLC lacks a release date, but we’ll keep you updated as news comes in. There’s no word when that’ll happen, but The Frozen Wilds certainly seems like an appropriately grand addition to Horizon Zero Dawn.

Check out the trailer below:

The post Sony Details Horizon Zero Dawn DLC appeared first on Gamesline.

Follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @JohnMichonski, @horngal & @SocksMahoney, and don’t forget to rate & review the show on iTunes, as well as tell a friend! You can also send questions, comments, and concerns to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com or find us on Tumblr! And don’t forget to join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Engage the brand with Chooch via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download or you can listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 169: Brands Are Everything appeared first on Gamesline.

Follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @sewerpeak, @horngal & @finaldasa, and don’t forget to rate & review the show on iTunes, as well as tell a friend! You can also send questions, comments, and concerns to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com or find us on Tumblr! And don’t forget to join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Eat brunch with Chooch via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download or you can listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 168: My Brunch 2: With Andre appeared first on Gamesline.