First was an Indie World!

Witcher 3, Vampire Survivors, Dave the Diver, and Among Us crossover cards are all coming to Balatro in a free update later today.

The creators of GRIS have a new game, Neva, and it’s out October 15th.

Moth Kubit, a unique RPG starring a moth working in a bizarre office, drops Spring 2025.

Toge, devs of Coffee Talk, are making a new Coffee Talk game, Coffee Talk Tokyo. It’ll be ready for tasting in 2025.

Sea of Stars is getting a DLC, adding a new carnival area, new classes for the main characters, and a new character who is just Robo from Chrono Trigger. It’s out next Spring, and it’s free.

PowerWash Simulator is getting a paid DLC where you get to clean up locations from the Shrek series. It’s dropping in Fall.

Morsels, a rougelike shooter with gorgeous pixel art and strange character designs, got announced. Its release date is February 2025.

Date Everything!, a game where you can date everything in a house by Team 17, launches October 24th, 2024.

Peglin, a game based on a game jam experiment from 2019, is fully realized. You play as a lil goblin and play pachinko to do damage to enemies. It’ll be out today on Switch as a timed console exclusive.

Wobbly Life from Rubber Band Games lets you live a goofy lil life as a yellow guy. It’s out in December.

Pico Park 2 is a puzzle game where you have to stack and aim up to eight players to clear rooms. It’s out later today.

Montage time. Shovel Knight Shovel of Hope DX (2025), Europa (October 11th, demo out now), Cuisineer (January 28th, 2025), On Your Tail (November 21st), Metal Slug Tactics (Fall), The Plucky Squire (September 17th).

To round out the Indie World, Pizza Tower is finally coming to Switch. It’s out today.

Fangamer will also release a physical version of Pizza Tower.

Now onto the Partner Showcase!

For the 40th anniversary of Tetris, Digital Eclipse is putting together a Tetris collection called Tetris Forever. It has Tetris Battle Gaiden! And Hatris, which is hilarious. It’ll be out this year, and Tetris will be on Switch Online this Winter.

Star Overdrive is a third person adventure game where you surf around a desert planet on a hoverboard. It’s out in 2025.

Goat Simulator 3 will let you harass an entire island with you friends on Switch digitally today. The physical release will be in November.

Another montage. Trails in the Sky 1st (2025), Star Wars: Hunters Season 3 (September 26th), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Legends of the Zone Trilogy (November), Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition (September 26th), and a new event for Disney Dreamloft Valley.

SpongeBob Squarepants: The Patrick Star Game, is confirmed. You play as Patrick and flop around Bikini Bottom, as the game is focused on physics and interacting with the environment. Out October 4th.

Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer, is coming soon. I don’t know why we need this, as we have the Miku and Fist of the North Star versions, but I guess some people have NO TASTE. You can get this lesser edition on December 5th.

Capcom Fighting Collection 2, including Capcom vs SNK 1 and 2, Project Justice, Capcom Fighting Evolution, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper, Power Stone 1 and 2, and Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein. It’s out next year, and that rules.

The Marvel vs Capcom Collection is out September 12th, with a physical out November 22nd.

There’s a new Atelier game, and they got a dragon voiced by Kiryu’s VA in this one. It’s called Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories and the Envisioned Land, and it’s out in 2025.

The Suikoden remasters are still happening! The first two games will be released in a bundle March 6th, 2025.

The Dragon Quest III remake will have a new Monster Wrangler class. It’s out November 14th.

The DS Castlevanias are getting a compilation, and it also includes Haunted Castle and a reimagining of the notably rough arcade game. It’s out later today.

Civilization VII will be on Switch. It’ll be out February 11th.

Tales of Graces f is getting a remaster for the series’ 30th anniversary. It’ll have combat options and all the DLC from the original release. Out January 17th.

MySims returns, in a bundle containing the first game and the Kingdom sequel. It’s out November 19th.

Five Nights at Freddy’s…..They’ve got a new Help Wanted coming, and you have to help those robots run the show. Out Holiday 2024. There’s also a new DLC for Security Breach this Holiday.

Montage again. Disney Epic Mickey Rebrushed (September 24th), Tales of the Shire (Holiday), Just Dance 2025 (October 2024), Funko Fusion (Holiday), EA Sports FC 2025 (September 27th), Lego Horizon (Holiday).

Rune Factory‘s got a new style, where you play as an “Earth Dancer” and use magic to grow crops super fast, and also kick some ass. Guardians of Azuma is out next Spring.

Yakuza Kiwami is getting a Switch port. Looks like it’ll be a pretty straight port, but hey, Kiwami‘s great. Out October 24th.

The post Bulletin+: Indie World and Partner Showcase 8/27/24 appeared first on Gamesline.

It’s been a big news week with Super Mario Brothers selling for over 2 million, Capcom showing off the final Street Fighter V DLC character, and Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds adding BattleGrounds to their name to become PUBG: BattleGrounds. We also dig into the deeper stuff with Steve Gaynor’s abusive behavior at Fullbright, J. Allen Brack stepping down from Blizzard, and Unity making it a whole lot more expensive if developers want to put their game on console.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, @solonface, and @Scottblah.

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.

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From all of us at Chooch, have a great new year, and let’s make 2018 wonderful to live in.

10. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle

After the initial surprise washed over me at E3, Mario + Rabbids looking as good as it did became a fact of life. We all started talking about it excitedly, hoping it’d deliver on its promises. It did, and then some! M+R has stellar combat, a cute sense of humor, and a fun score by the great Grant Kirkhope. Big setpieces push the game over the edge from fun novelty to Switch classic, and I really hope Nintendo allows for more cross promotion like this in the future.

9. Cuphead

 Cuphead doesn’t just execute on its concept well, it knocks it out of the park with A+ gameplay. Every minute detail of Flescher-era cartoons Cuphead is readily emulating (minus the racism, thank goodness) has been meticulously preserved here. Not only that, but it’s an Alien Soldier/Gunstar Heroes inspired run and gun? You couldn’t ask for much better. Thanks to tight controls and a perfect representation of a timeline of art, Cuphead delivers.

8. Pokemon Ultra Moon

I feel a little weird putting this here, as overall I found Ultra Moon to be lacking. The story is a massive downgrade from Sun/Moon’s heartfelt tale, but otherwise it’s a great overhaul to the previous game. Ultra Space is a fun new way to catch shiny Pokemon, okay? Otherwise, it’s still the best game in the series, with a few neat features to tide you over for the Switch entry. Yes, this is on my list mostly because I’ve caught a lot of shiny Pokemon recently. It’s fun, leave me alone.

7. Yakuza Kiwami

Kiwami wasn’t the best Yakuza game that came out this year, but the fact that I can say that is a real blessing. Yakuza Kiwami is a solid remake of the original game that started the legend, and Kiryu’s tale is just as good the second time around. Majima Everywhere is a fantastic addition, letting you interact with everyone’s favorite snakeskin wearing villain more often than ever before, even gleaming some bits of backstory that previous games missed. After playing Yakuza 0, Kiwami is a smooth transition into the series at large. Let’s hope Kiwami 2 comes out overseas.

6. Night in the Woods

2017 was an absolutely brutal year for the marginalized youth in the United States. Night in the Woods gets that, it feels your pain, and wants you to know that there are people who understand. Weaving a story about mental illness, poverty, and fear in the millennial age, NITW delivers a relatable tale. There’s still fun to be had, however, with adorable mini-games, enjoyable side quests, and unique characters you can’t help but love. This was a hard game to get through, but at the end, I felt a ray of hope, not just for me, but for my friends, and for the world.

5. Puyo Puyo Tetris

It’s two of the best puzzle games ever made, but at the same time. Don’t even try to say anything negative about Puyo Puyo Tetris or there WILL be problems. PPT has so many options and so many play modes it’s nearly impossible to go wrong. There’s a cute story mode, fun music, and the Switch version being so portable is icing on the cake. Just sit down, relax, and battle ferociously with your friends, testing your relationship on the battlefield.

4. Persona 5

Persona 5 is slick. Every animation, every menu, every song, all slick as hell. Not a second goes by in that game that isn’t punctuated by a smoothness previously unknown to humanity. Even if the plot is a little confused at times, Persona 5 touts fun character writing and tight battle mechanics that keep you engaged, with a satisfying conclusion that knocks the socks off its contemporaries. 

3. Yakuza 0

I very recently became a Yakuza fan after playing 4 through PS+, which is a great entry point for newcomers. However, Yakuza 0 is even better in that regard, and somehow still pulls ahead to become one of the best games in the entire series. Yakuza 0 has all the charm, humor, and drama each entry has, but fantastic writing and new minigames including Majima’s cabaret club and Kiryu’s real estate management sim push it ahead. It helps that playing as Majima is a worthwhile experience that gives context to his character in future games, Kamurocho has also never been so full of amazing characters and sidequests, including Miracle Johnson, Nugget the Chicken, and the infamous Mr. Libido. Yakuza 0 is a treat to explore, and it shouldn’t be written off as just a GTA clone.

2. Super Mario Odyssey

Hey, it’s the new best Mario game! Super Mario Odyssey plays like a dream, and the cap-ture mechanic allows for unique exploration of many exciting environments. Mario games have always excelled at level design, so Odyssey having great worlds isn’t a surprise, it’s more how perfectly the mechanics compliment the world and everything you do in it. Almost every single puzzle and challenge is worth experiencing, purely from a gameplay perspective. There are so many ways to tackle each moon you attempt to nab, and all of them are fun. Super Mario Odyssey nails what makes Mario great, then evolves beyond that to produce something special.

1. NieR Automata

Yoko Taro changed my life this year. NieR Automata wrenched my heart from my body, sat it down, gave it a stern talking to about the meaning of human cooperation, then set it free. Nearly every bit of NieR is a bounty of quality, from its music, character design, gameplay, and writing. Every single detail of the game accentuates something about the world, you could pour over the game’s script and find nuances in nearly every line. NieR also can claim to have the greatest ending of the year, bringing the player themselves into the story by letting you decide how things shake out, not just in game, but in a small blip of real life. Nier is a story that could only be told as a video game, and it does it with aplomb.

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

Ryan, Andi and Niall have gathered around to spend a couple hours laughing at John! The gang talk Seinfeld, Metroid, Destiny, Everybody’s Golf, Paul Giamatti, John’s distaste for K-pop, Danganronpa, Hellblade, Yakuza, MvC’s bonkers story, NBA 2k18’s garbage microtransactions, Randy Pitchford being Randy Pitchford, Tokyo Game Show, and Tigger’s Numbers.

Follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @JohnMichonski, @sewerpeak, @YourPalNiall, & @captaintrash, 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!

Count Tigger’s Numbers with Chooch via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download or listen below!

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Enter Yakuza Kiwami. Kiwami’s goal was to provide a beefed up version of Yakuza 1, and it specifically succeeds without issue. The game runs on the same infrastructure as 0, looking and playing nearly identical. Kiwami’s story takes place directly after the events of 0, with Kiryu and his oath brother Nishikiyama making headway in the Tojo clan. However, Nishiki guns down the family’s patriarch and Kiryu, taking the blame for his partner’s actions, is sent to jail for ten years. Now free on parole, Kiryu arrives back in Kamurocho and is immediately thrust back into a dramatic turn of events. Kiryu’s fighting styles return from 0 as well, with his late game “Dragon of Dojima” style unlocked from the get go. This leads to Kiwami’s biggest new addition, Majima Everywhere.

During his stint in jail, Kiryu’s skills were dulled. His Dragon style is nearly useless, and he needs to learn even the most basic abilities from the ground up. Luckily, everyone’s favorite eye patch wearing Yakuza, Majima, challenges Kiryu to a trial by fire. Majima will appear randomly during your travels, battling you over fast food orders, cheap alcohol, and other goofy goings-on. Each time you defeat Majima, a new ability is added to the Dragon style’s repertoire, eventually bringing Kiryu back to his former glory. Interactions with Majima are the highlight of the game, as it’s filled with more modern Yakuza writing as opposed to the original’s dated dialogue.

And therein lies the main issue with Yakuza Kiwami: Its origins. The original Yakuza is a dated game, and even with all the graphical and gameplay improvements, the one thing the development team couldn’t touch was the writing, and it shows. Additional cutscenes were added into the script to fill in small plot holes created by Yakuza 0, and they all have better pacing than anything in the rest of the game. All of the new dialogue, which boils down to Majima interactions and flashbacks showing Nishikiyama’s backstory, far surpasses anything from the original game, and even feels disjointed when those characters show up in cutscenes that were in the original release.

The sub-stories in this game also feel vastly inferior to the ones in any of the recent Yakuza titles, with nothing memorable like the living statue in 0 or Saejima’s interactions with cats in 4. Most sub-stories amount to “this man stole something from someone, I must beat him up.” There are also a few sub-stories featuring the series’ unfortunate consistent mistreatment of trans women, usually using them as an excuse to do combat against a female character model like Poison from Final Fight. No, it doesn’t magically make it okay that Kiryu’s fighting a lady just because she “used to be a man”, it’s just a different kind of gross. Surprisingly, Kiryu himself is openly understanding to the LGBT characters that appear in-game. It would be nice if the developers could listen to their own character and back off from the transphobia for once.

A more positive consistent thing in the Yakuza series are its distractions, and Kiwami has all the staples. Karaoke, billiards, darts, and hostess clubs all make their return and are just as fun as they were before. Pocket racing from 0 also comes back, with a brand new side story about the Pocket Fighter trying to retire that had a lot of the previous game’s charm. There is one new minigame called MesuKing, a parody of the Japanese tradition of capturing beetles and pitting them against one another. Instead of actual bugs, sexy women in insect-themed bikinis wrestle while the outcome of their fight is decided by rock-paper-scissors. It’s goofy and fun in an embarrassing way, but the best part is seeing Kiryu interact with the children who play the game, urging them to play fair and make new friends. I’d pay full price for a game about Kiryu working at Sunshine Orphanage after seeing how heartwarming he is with the kids here.

Yakuza Kiwami may not be completely new, but what is modern is tons of fun. There’s still plenty to see and do, lots of fun minigames, and lovable characters you’ve come to expect from the franchise. It just pales in comparison to the last few entries, and probably won’t make series veterans care much. For newcomers or people who REALLY want to wallop Majima, there’s a good amount of fun to be had, especially at the discount price the game is going for. However, for those who need a full, sprawling Yakuza adventure with better humor and drama, 6 is on its way.

The post Yakuza Kiwami Review appeared first on Gamesline.

Follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @JohnMichonski & @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! You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Down some mayonnaise soda with Chooch via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download or listen below!

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