As always you can support us on our patreon, and follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, and @JudgementScythe.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

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

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 332: Disgraceful Beast appeared first on Gamesline.

Niall took a grind through the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 remakes, and Rose took a dive into the strange with The House in Fata Morgana and the Alan Wake expansion for Control.  We also wonder if Duke Nukem practices kisses on his hand and we talk about Vtubers.

As always you can support us on our patreon, and follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, and @horngal

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

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

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 327: The Angry Vtuber appeared first on Gamesline.

Set in a fictionalized take on Southeastern Asia, Indivisible follows hot-headed teen Ajna as she runs around shoving a diverse cast of comical characters into a magical, fully furnished realm inside her head. With the aid of her new friends (known as Incarnations), she goes on a quest for peace and revenge across various cities and environments, with the ultimate goal of dealing with a deity who has been sowing dissent for decades.

While the plot may seem outlandish, most of the character interaction in Indivisible is down-to-earth and easygoing. Each Incarnation is wildly different from the next, ranging from pretty standard stuff like a large buff woman, to more specific archetypes like a depressed jungle witch or healer aunt who will not stop talking about how cute you are at any given time. While the main story plays with more serious themes at times, it’s clear that the intent behind the game is a more lighthearted appeal. Characters rarely linger on a problem, and conversations often devolve into tangents, with personalities playing off of each other being the focus.

Though it might have been more compelling for Indivisible to lean heavier on topics like fascism, corporations’ roles in the drug market, or the values of an isolationist state, using them as largely inoffensive set dressing to deliver more charming engagements between the cast is still effective. Not every character receives the same amount of focus, but each individual appearance is welcome, and you really feel like you’re seeing a group of eclectic friends hanging together as their individual story arcs play out. Even if these narrative bits aren’t exactly Pulitzer-worthy, they provide enough of an endearing hook to help fluff up the appeal for whatever characters you end up liking. 

The story only needs to put in half the work of drawing you in after all, because even as a Metroidvania-style RPG, Indivisible is oozing with fighting game spirit. Every Incarnation you come across plays differently from the others, and each have their own combos or gimmick mechanics to really set them all apart. On top of this, the combat really encourages perfect blocks, grappling, juggling, and all the other sort of tech that one might expect from a Street Fighter or Guilty Gear, just presented a little differently. 

I was amazed by just how different each character’s tech could get too. Most of the characters feature a pretty standard up, down, and neutral attack, but they all utilize these inputs in wildly different ways. For example Kampan, the steampunk thief with a heart of gold, uses her down attack to load her robotic fist with a bunch of explosives, which makes her next attack do a lot more damage. This makes playing Kampan a process of choosing when to launch an enemy, and when to reload her fist, which is a different sort of engagement than the more basic gameplay of the scarf-wielding Tungar, whose attacks are all raw multi-hit damage. With even more gimmicky options like Lanshi the dog’s kit that’s focused entirely on petting, or Ren the horny-on-main assassin’s penchant for traps, it really is like picking a set of fighting game mains for your party.

Outside of battles, however, Indivisible really is an honest to god Metroidvania. Featuring large interconnected maps, traversal upgrades, and even hidden unlockables, everything you’d expect from the genre is here. The platforming can require some precision at times, combining things like air dashes and wall jumps, but it doesn’t get that grueling until you get towards the end of the game, and you’re more familiar with all of your options. A neat touch I appreciated with the upgrades were how all of the later ones made Ajna more demonlike, giving standard-fare stuff like a super dash or double jump so much more style. 

Indivisible in general is an incredibly stylish game, mostly thanks to the 2D linework Lab Zero has become known for. Each frame of any given character’s animation is hand drawn like an animated show, full of fun smears and tons of details no matter where you stop and look. While 2D animation like this isn’t as novel as it was back when Skullgirls first came out, Indivisible manages to remain aesthetically impressive and unique, with an explosive style befitting of the myriad cast of characters it’s home to.

When it comes to the problems with Indivisible, they can be pretty much be sourced to the game’s origins as a crowdfunded game. Working with a limited budget, and becoming indebted and obligated to the various backers who helped make the game possible, are both issues that hold the game back from truly becoming the best game it could be. It’s nowhere near as dire as a Mighty No. 9 situation, not even close, but there’s still a handful of unfortunate realities that really drag everything down.

The first is just how rough around the edges the game can be. The user interface, although full of options one would be hard pressed to find even in big budget games, is full of half-documentation and vague directions. Indivisible’s characters are endearing and fun, but the story they’re placed in is little more than set-dressing at best. As I said before, this can work absolutely fine as a backdrop, but the game’s world is ultimately dictated by what happens in that main plot, and it can often be frustrating. 

For example, Dhar is the first Incarnation you get in the game, and he sort of serves as a deuteragonist for a majority of your playtime. Narratively, the game isn’t quite sure whether it wants to vilify Dhar, or have him be some sort of Shadow the Hedgehog style redeemed edgelord. Even though his arc is tied so closely to core narrative, and Ajna’s motives, it moves incredibly fast, and at a certain point it feels like they just sort of throw it all away entirely. This was especially disappointing for me as I had really come to love Dhar, and having his character just arbitrarily become unimportant with little to no fanfare was a real bummer.

Though I enjoyed each of the other characters’ individual stories, actually getting to the locations on the map they took place at was way harder than it had to be. Almost all of the quest markers for these side-missions are bugged, meaning that you’ll have to flail around a lot when it comes to vague location hints like “Mount Sumeru,” which may as well be an entire country wide. With no quest log to keep track of all your objectives either, you’re gonna be stuck running back and forth between the various friends in your brain, and hoping that the dialogue they have at the moment will point you in the right direction. 

This is another issue very prevalent throughout Indivisible: backtracking. Though the Metroidvania genre is famous for this feature, usually in an endearing way, Indivisible struggles with using this concept far too often. Most of the sidequest objectives take place far away from the two different entry points to any given zone, meaning a lot of running back and forth across the same specific stretches of map for no real reason, over and over again. Even in the main story, the game forces you to go through the same large sections of the three major zones in the game multiple times. You’ll end up backtracking through a zone you’ve nearly completed, to go somewhere else and get a new traversal upgrade, only to then have to backtrack back to the original zone you were in and backtrack your way back to where you were and even writing this has gotten me as tired as I felt doing all of it.

This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if there was a reason to go through these areas over and over again, like grinding enemy encounters or finding new sidequests. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much of a purpose to grinding in Indivisible, since the most important upgrades to your party come from the limited and easy to find upgrade material found in the overworld. While it’s fun to actually do the battles, there’s little reward for doing so outside of personal pleasure, which while normally fine, does ultimately make these bits where you’re backtracking feel completely and utterly pointless. There aren’t even sidequests in the game outside of those related to your party, or the less than a handful of Incarnation recruitment quests, so it’s not like these moments encourage engagement with the world.

Engagement with the game’s world is equally curbed by Indivisible’s origins as a crowdfunded game as well, since the game is host to maybe the most intrusive in-game backer representation I’ve ever seen. Almost all of the NPCs you’ll run into across the various locales in the world are painfully and obviously an Indiegogo backer’s original character. This isn’t too surprising for Lab Zero since Skullgirls’ own crowdfunding campaign led to a slew of backer representatives popping up in the background of stages, but it’s far worse when they’re almost all of the speaking characters in an RPG.

I enjoy seeing people’s creativity and original designs; I think there’s even a charm to be had from seeing people’s heartfelt representations appear in a video game they love, but Indivisible takes it too far. When I reached the Iron Kingdom, an area spoken of in the game’s lore as oppressive and Victorian, I really didn’t expect nearly every member of the populace to look like a youtuber’s rantsona complete with custom outfit and a quirky one-liner. While parts of the narrative are trying to drive home just how dire this world ending situation truly is, the rest of it ends up feeling like an anime con meetup. If they had even forced the backers to come up with something to say that fit the tone of the environment they were being put in, or some sort of message that was relevant to the plot I could be way more into it. As is, I’m looking at Nyanners trying to convince me to visit her maid cafe, right below the porno artist who’s making a joke about sex.

Even though these aspects were infuriating, they didn’t stop me from bursting my way through Indivisible with what was mostly abject delight. For most of my time with the game, it felt like actually playing a game in the vein of anime like Gurren Lagann or Kill la Kill (which is not too surprising since Lab Zero had Studio Trigger do the animated opening for the game). There hasn’t been much like Valkyrie Profile in the last decade either, so I’m extremely grateful if this can help encourage more Metroidvanias or RPGs to really play with their format in a way they haven’t been for quite some time. Indivisible might not be perfect in every way, but it accomplishes enough with such style and aplomb that I’m extremely excited for whatever Lab Zero is planning next. 

The post Indivisible (PS4) Review appeared first on Gamesline.

After a grueling 57 days, it finally happened… #IndivisibleRPG is funded! From Lab Zero Games, thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

— Lab Zero Games (@LabZeroGames) December 2, 2015

The campaign was cutting it close, with only three days left now that the goal has been reached. While they had partnered with publisher 505 games, Lab Zero had said that the game would be canceled if the $1.5 goal wasn’t reached, with the fundraising on Indiegogo acting as both a way to fund the game and proof that people are interested in it. 505 games will be adding a further $2 million to Indivisible‘s budget now that the goal has been met.

The post Lab Zero’s New Game Indivisible Reaches Funding Goal on Indiegogo appeared first on Gamesline.

Lab Zero’s Peter Bartholow gave us the rundown on Skullgirls’ future in another PS Blog post. First up, the newest addition to the roster, Beowulf, is dropping for free on April 17th. The Wulf is an ex-wrestler who comes out of retirement to beat the Skullgirl and claim his ultimate championship. He can play to the “crowd” with well placed taunts to power up and elongate his combos.

The previously announced port of Skullgirls Encore to PS4 and Vita is also being renamed to Skullgirls 2nd Encore, as the developers wanted to stress how important the new features this version will bring are. 2nd Encore will include all of the new characters and will be cross buy between PS4 and Vita. If you have the PS3 version, you’ll have to buy it again.

And to round the news up, Robo-Fortune, a robot version of Ms. Fortune, is “nearly complete”. A release date for her should come in the coming weeks.

The post Skullgirls Takes the Stage for a Second Encore appeared first on Gamesline.

At the time of posting, Xbox 360 users can download the Eliza patch. DO NOT DO THIS. It was released before it was ready, and will remove all of your other DLC characters (Squigly, Big Band, and Fukua). It’s unknown when Eliza will be releasing on 360, so please be smart and don’t download anything yet.

Once Skullgirls is updated on the 30th, PSN will also be releasing a collection of ten Skullgirls themed user avatars. Make sure you download her soon, because if you don’t, she won’t be free!

The post Skullgirls’ Eliza Wises Fwom her Gwave on Sept 30th appeared first on Gamesline.

“…people [have been] asking us to bring the game to PS Vita and, more recently, PS4. We read your comments, we took them to heart, and we’re finally making it happen: Skullgirls Encore will be coming to PS4 and PS Vita later this year!” wrote Bartholow on the PS Blog. He goes on to state that the version released on these platforms will be the “complete” editions, with all of the DLC characters, stages, and costumes. Work on Eliza is nearing completion, with Beowulf and Robo-Fortune beginning soon.

Lab Zero will also be going to Evo, where there will be a Skullgirls side tournament. LZ and Autumn games have put 5000$ into the pot, and PS4s will be given to the first and second place winners.

The post Skullgirls Encore Coming to PS4, Vita appeared first on Gamesline.

According to a post by Peter Barthalow on the Playstation Blog, the first Skullgirls male character will arrive this upcoming Tuesday. The post also goes into detail on some of Big Band’s moves.

Big Band’s a high risk / high reward sort of character – he has a versatile and powerful moveset for just about any situation, but many of his attacks will leave you vulnerable if you miss or misjudge your opponent.

Big Band will be released with a new stage and a full story mode for the character. He will be free for a limited time.

Also added to the roster is Fukua, Lab Zero’s April Fools character. What began as a typo spiraled into a repurposing of old Filia assets to make fun of Ultra Street Fighter 4’s “clone” character Decapre. Fukua will not be getting a story mode. Fukua will be added “in the coming weeks”.

Finally, the article covers Eliza, the Egyptian songstress that attacks with blood.

Eliza’s blood control powers lead to some really creative attacks, with blood hippos erupting from the ground to sanguine wings carrying her into the air. Eliza’s attacks and animations are brimming with references to Egyptian mythology, such as her summonable bodyguards, Albus and Horace, who are based on the Egyptian gods Anubis and Horus.

Eliza is still in pre-production, so it is unknown when she will be released. However, she will have a new stage as well as a full story mode.

Big Band won’t be the only free character when he is released. Squigly will still be free (on PSN) until May 6th, but you must pay for her if you’re playing on PC. According to the Skullgirls Twitter Big Band’s Xbox date will be confirmed “early next week”.

The post Big Band DLC Drops April 22nd on PSN and PC appeared first on Gamesline.

There were trailers, but it seems they have been removed. I’ll put them back up once they’re uploaded again.

The post Skullgirls Encore Returns to PSN February 11th appeared first on Gamesline.

Mike Z also confirmed that Encore is complete and will be sent into cert soon. For now, we wait for the certifiers to return from holiday break. Good luck, Lab Zero!

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