August 7 – August 13

Section: 

IMAGE(https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/pictures/pictures/picture-5877.jpg)Greg “DoubtingThomas396” Decker

I share a house with a seven year old and a ten year old, which means that toilet humor is a regular staple of my comedy diet. Of course, it was a regular staple of my comedy diet before they moved in, so it's totally unfair of me to dump this on them. It would be like blaming my wife for my love of puns. She's not an enabler; she's an audience. What does this have to do with The Week Ahead?

This week sees two releases related to toilets and the doings therein. Gotta Go is a game about a regular office worker with a regular office problem: his coworkers are interfering with his … regularity. He needs to get to the restroom, but everybody wants something from him on his way there. How will he deal? Will he politely excuse himself? Will he tell them to shut up and get out of his way? That's up to you.

Gotta Go gets my nod for having a novel premise and the willingness to give it a go. Also, because pooping is actually pretty funny, if you stop and think about it.

IMAGE(https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/pictures/picture-111373-1483294321.jpg)   Chris "C" Cesarano

The answer for me is a simple one. I wish I could say I have been a long-time fan of Ninja Theory's work, but sadly I've only played through DmC: Devil May Cry while the highly acclaimed Enslaved sits silently in my Steam library, awaiting installation. They may not be the best studio out there, and goodness knows DmC could have used a much less juvenile creative director or writer or whomever it was responsible for Dante being a dick. Even with DmC, though, I could see this studio had something special in the game design and narrative department.

I've been following their developer diaries for Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice since near the beginning, and I must say it has at the very least appealed to the wannabe game-designer in me. You get to see the game transform in every way, from the complete rebuilding and restructuring of the combat to the choice to completely change protagonist Senua's design. Their efforts to prove there's room for games between AAA and indie are fueled by creative tech solutions and deep research into the psychological conditions from which the protagonist will be suffering. Whether Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice will be a good game or not I cannot tell you. However, it is ambitious, and I feel inclined to support ambition.

IMAGE(https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/pictures/pictures/picture-13445.jpg)   Felix “Ssshmokin” Threepaper

Now that we live in a world where nearly 100 PC games come out every week, I suppose you need help curating your purchases. You could get Early Access to All Walls Must Fall, an indie “tech-noir” tactical RPG set in a 2089 Berlin where the Cold War never ended. Or there’s CliffyB’s latest, the maxtremely vertical multiplayer shooter Lawbreakers. Just don’t bother with Ruthless Safari. Trust me.

My GOTW? Masquerada: Songs and Shadows – an isometric RPG that combines the “real time with pause” combat of Baldur’s Gate with hand-drawn art reminiscent of Banner Saga, but in a Renaissance setting. It’s also “lore rich”, which can be a blessing or a curse these days, but I’m a sucker for any fantasy setting that isn’t Tolkien-esque. ‘90s me is loving the isometric revival.

This week:

PC

  • 36 Fragments of Midnight
  • Achievement Hunter: Overdose
  • All Walls Must Fall
  • Animal Crush
  • Around the Words
  • Asteroids Millennium
  • Attack of the Gooobers
  • Baseball Mogul 2017
  • Batman: The Enemy Within - Episode 1: The Enigma
  • Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series
  • Beyond the Wall
  • BlockDude
  • Bump+Smack
  • Bunka no Kenkyu: Revival of Queen Leyak Pushed out two weeks
  • Cat Quest
  • Clutter Infinity: Joe's Ultimate Quest
  • Code 7
  • Construct: Embers of Life
  • Crashday: Redline Edition
  • Cube Link
  • Cutthroat Gunboat
  • Dark Empire
  • Dead Horizon
  • dead_file.exe
  • Downloaded: Fragments of a Forgotten Soul
  • Draw Your Game
  • Drive Isle
  • Dungeon Marathon
  • Edges
  • Edges 2
  • Evil Genome
  • Fictorum
  • Flux8
  • Foxfolk
  • Gotta Go
  • Graceful Explosion Machine
  • Gun-Running War Dogs
  • Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition
  • Hearing
  • Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
  • I Want Toilet!!!!!!
  • ICY: Frostbite Edition
  • Last Soldier
  • Law Mower
  • LawBreakers
  • Lobster Empire
  • LOGistICAL: British Isles
  • Lost Technology
  • M1: A Death in the Desert
  • Mercfighter
  • Monsteria
  • Nightmare at the lighthouse
  • No Lights
  • Occult Raise
  • Pepper's Puzzles
  • Peregrin
  • Phantom Trigger
  • Piece of Memory 2: Prologue
  • Radical Spectrum: Volume 2 Pushed to next week
  • Ruthless Safari
  • ShadowCalls
  • Shark Dating Simulator XL
  • ShineG In The Zombies
  • Shuyan Saga
  • Sine Mora EX
  • Singularity Roller Pushed to next week
  • Sketchy
  • Sketchy 2
  • SOLITAIRE ULTRA
  • Spears 'n' Spades
  • Spiral Splatter
  • Squish and the Corrupted Crystal
  • Startup Company
  • SturmFront: The Mutant War - Ubel Edition
  • Sudden Strike 4
  • Supermagical
  • Tetsoidea Eternal
  • The Journey: Bob's Story.
  • The Myth Seekers: The Legacy of Vulcan
  • The Rodinia Project
  • The soldier in the mine
  • Time Recoil
  • Tiny Rails
  • Triangulate
  • Twin Brothers
  • West of Loathing
  • Willful
  • Z69

PS4

  • Armello Deluxe Edition
  • Batman: The Enemy Within - Episode 1: The Enigma
  • Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series
  • BLACKHOLE: Complete Edition
  • Comet Crash 2: The Kronkoid Wars
  • Graceful Explosion Machine
  • Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
  • Icey
  • LawBreakers
  • Masquerada: Songs and Shadows
  • Mega Man Legacy Collection 2
  • Neon Drive
  • Neptune Flux
  • Sine Mora EX
  • Sudden Strike 4

Xbox One

  • Batman: The Enemy Within - Episode 1: The Enigma
  • Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series
  • BLACKHOLE: Complete Edition
  • Jump, Step, Step
  • Masquerada: Songs and Shadows
  • Mega Man Legacy Collection 2
  • Sine Mora EX

Switch

  • Ironcast

3DS

  • Elminage Original

RIFT

  • Dream Coaster VR
  • Electro Pong VR
  • REGENESIS Arcade
  • Synthetic Dreams

Vive

  • Deadly Rescue
  • Dream Coaster VR
  • Electro Pong VR
  • FormulaVR
  • Gravity Tunnel VR
  • REGENESIS Arcade
  • Rift Coaster HD Remastered VR
  • Super Ultra Monster Smash!
  • Synthetic Dreams
  • TimeLock VR

Comments

I'm just skipping the pc release list anymore.

I don't think I'm picking anything up this week, but will be checking out those diaries for Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

West of Loathing for me this week

Also, does anyone know if Armello Deluxe Edition has cross-platform play with PC?

garion333 wrote:

I'm just skipping the pc release list anymore.

And to think people were expecting the list to get shorter once Steam Greenlight got the red light

I've also been following the development of Hellblade pretty closely. As it happens, the game was one of the reasons I got a PS4, so I have high expectations. I hope the game delivers!

shoptroll wrote:
garion333 wrote:

I'm just skipping the pc release list anymore.

And to think people were expecting the list to get shorter once Steam Greenlight got the red light

And it would have gotten shorter, if not for Greenlight being replaced with Steam Direct, which still only costs $100 to use and can be recouped.

Masquerada: Songs and Shadows says it released Sept. 30, 2016... was that just early access?
Also, as much as I want it, I didn't finish either Banner Saga or Transistor, so maybe I should learn my lesson and not grab it.

Taharka wrote:

Masquerada: Songs and Shadows says it released Sept. 30, 2016... was that just early access?
Also, as much as I want it, I didn't finish either Banner Saga or Transistor, so maybe I should learn my lesson and not grab it.

It came out on PC back then, but wasn't on our release list. This week it comes out on PS4 and Xbone AND I actually noticed it.

garion333 wrote:

I don't think I'm picking anything up this week, but will be checking out those diaries for Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

Good reminder for me to go dig up the thread so I know where to post impressions.

shoptroll wrote:

West of Loathing for me this week

It's great that this is getting released -- these guys should've made a Kingdom of Loathing style single player game years ago.

So who's running a Patreon to get some poor soul to actually play all the games every week?

Well, doubtingthomas already has the TL;DP series, so...

MeatMan wrote:

Well, doubtingthomas already has the TL;DP series, so...

Hey, now, I'm already planning something special for next year's run of TLDP articles.

MeatMan wrote:
shoptroll wrote:
garion333 wrote:

I'm just skipping the pc release list anymore.

And to think people were expecting the list to get shorter once Steam Greenlight got the red light

And it would have gotten shorter, if not for Greenlight being replaced with Steam Direct, which still only costs $100 to use and can be recouped.

So now anyone can put a game on there and doesn't even have to make a bunch of fake accounts to vote. Great.

garion333 wrote:
MeatMan wrote:
shoptroll wrote:
garion333 wrote:

I'm just skipping the pc release list anymore.

And to think people were expecting the list to get shorter once Steam Greenlight got the red light

And it would have gotten shorter, if not for Greenlight being replaced with Steam Direct, which still only costs $100 to use and can be recouped.

So now anyone can put a game on there and doesn't even have to make a bunch of fake accounts to vote. Great.

As the person who volunteered to vet the list every week, I fail to see a problem. I love that pretty much anyone who wants to publish a game can do it. Sure, there's a lot of junk, but as I have said many times before: everything has at least one person who loves it. If the price of more people loving things is a cluttered front page on steam, I'm cool with that.

Put another way, if the choice is between more bad art and fewer people making art, I'll go with more bad art.

Code 7 is really cool and everyone should at least try the demo on steam!

Also batman season 2 episode 1 is pretty great as well.

Felix Threepaper wrote:

It’s also “lore rich”, which can be a blessing or a curse these days, but I’m a sucker for any fantasy setting that isn’t Tolkien-esque.

Have you ever poked your head into the JRPG thread?

shoptroll wrote:
Felix Threepaper wrote:

It’s also “lore rich”, which can be a blessing or a curse these days, but I’m a sucker for any fantasy setting that isn’t Tolkien-esque.

Have you ever poked your head into the JRPG thread?

Yes, but I have a Sands-like aversion to JRPGs, despite there being a lot to like about them on paper.

OMG.

I never got around to playing Kingdom of Loathing, so although I had *some* idea of what it was like, I wasn't quite sure what to expect going into West of Loathing, but so far it's been extremely entertaining

and I don't think I'm ever going to turn off the 'silly walk' perk.

pyxistyx wrote:

I never got around to playing Kingdom of Loathing

It's never too late to start!