March 11 – March 17

Section: 

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

Welcome all, and happy “8th anniversary of Mars Needs Moms” week! You may all take a rocket to the uncanny valley.

It’s relatively quiet this week.

RICO bills itself as a procedurally-generated, action movie FPS with local or online co-op. That should be all you need to know to either have a look or steer clear.

The Elder Scrolls Online: Wrathstone hits the Xbone and PS4 this week. While I’m impressed that ESO keeps keeping on, I can’t help but wonder if its long legs are delaying the arrival of Elder Scrolls 6.

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 is the biggest release this week. Ubisoft has made a lot of noise about how it improves on The Division, with particular focus on end-game content, so as to keep players sticking around. There’s been some positive buzz coming out of the recent private and public betas. It certainly looks to have improved on the mechanics, but I’m not so sure about the story. Either way, why should Fallout 3 have a monopoly on post-apocalyptic imaginings of D.C., or on the ability to shoot grenades in mid-air? GOTW.

Here's the list, now in release-date order!

PC

  • 03-11

  • Don't Escape: 4 Days in a Wasteland
  • Cannon Fire
  • 30 days to survive
  • Velocity G
  • The Gameshow
  • 1001stHyperTower
  • El Taco Diablo
  • Zombie Apocalypse
  • Ecchi
  • Cyborg Ninja vs. The Third Reich
  • Pursuer
  • Muniky VR
  • Hentai! GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS
  • Eli Girls
  • Project Centauri
  • BubbleGum-Push
  • Fat Prisoner Simulator
  • Greed 3: Old Enemies Returning
  • Pirate Cannons AHOY!
  • MultiplayerFPS
  • Warrior Hinora
  • GRAY
  • Figure Quest
  • Professional Thief
  • Find the Oil Racing Edition
  • Its Simple, SHOOT
  • 03-12

  • Trancelation
  • Truberbrook: A Nerd Saves the World
  • Hypnospace Outlaw
  • Factory Town
  • The Caligula Effect: Overdose
  • Blades of Worlds
  • TheVeryHardPuzzleGame&Editor
  • Exocraft
  • Lofi Ping Pong
  • Space Smash
  • ELSWORD JAPAN
  • Mad Gun Range VR Simulator
  • NOTE : a Composer and a Note
  • The Mercenary Rise
  • Running Ninja
  • Dissidia: Final Fantasy NT - Free Edition
  • 03-013

  • 99999
  • Fight the Horror
  • New Year Simulator
  • Crash Landed
  • Space Adventure TD
  • Sacred Grove Solitaire
  • Prison of Word
  • BIOSZARD Corporation
  • Let's Learn Japanese! Katakana
  • Tankorama
  • Junkyard Wizard
  • Prison Escape
  • 03-14

  • RICO
  • Willowbrooke Post
  • Night Crisis
  • Legend of Girl Friend And GDC
  • Mortadelo y Filemon: Una aventura de cine - Edicion especial
  • Monster Hunting... For Love!
  • SuccessorOfTheMoon
  • Cyborg Invasion Shooter 3: Savior Of The World
  • Puzzle 101: Edge of Galaxy
  • Grand Dude Simulator
  • Let's Worm
  • The Fall of Life
  • Tiger Fighter 1931 Tora!
  • Asteroid Hideout
  • Mad Princess: The Great Gladiators
  • Hard Core Puzzle
  • Nyasha Winter
  • Ping Pong Trick Shot EVOLUTION
  • iMemory
  • Tricky Cat
  • 03-15

  • Coloring Game
  • 1248
  • Snake vs Snake
  • Wartime Prologue
  • Our Children - Escaping Earth
  • Balance Roll
  • Poggers
  • Hentai Strawberry
  • Defection
  • Virtual Battlegrounds (CyberDream)
  • Full Pitch
  • Refight:The Last Warship
  • Brrrainz: Feed your Hunger
  • I Support Breast Cancer Research
  • De'Vine: The Card Battles
  • Data mining 7
  • Nyasha Beach
  • Massive Air Combat
  • Stoppa!
  • The Childs Sight
  • 03-16

  • Space mining clicker
  • War Theatre
  • Tree Simulator 2020
  • Hentai Babes - In Public
  • Destruction (2019)
  • 03-17

  • Jellyphant escape

PS4

  • 03-12

  • Tom Clancy's The Division 2
  • The Caligula Effect: Overdose
  • RICO
  • Ghost of a Tale
  • LEGO Marvel Collection
  • MX vs. ATV All Out: Anniversary Edition
  • The Elder Scrolls Online: Wrathstone
  • Dissidia: Final Fantasy NT - Free Edition
  • 03-13

  • The Arcslinger
  • 03-15

  • One Piece: World Seeker

PSVR

  • 03-12

  • The Wizards: Enhanced Edition

Xbox One

  • 03-12

  • Tom Clancy's The Division 2
  • LEGO Marvel Collection
  • The Elder Scrolls Online: Wrathstone
  • 03-13

  • RICO
  • 03-15

  • One Piece: World Seeker
  • Blood Waves
  • Sephirothic Stories

Switch

  • 03-12

  • The Caligula Effect: Overdose
  • Claybook
  • BombFall
  • 03-13

  • Baba Is You
  • 03-14

  • RICO
  • Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker - Special Episode
  • Golf Peaks
  • Motorsport Manager
  • 03-15

  • Blood Waves

3DS

Vita

Vive

Comments

Worth noting The Division 2 is Tuesday for "Gold Edition" or higher, which is the base game plus year one DLC. The regular, standard edition is Friday.

Not a new release, but of note to the VR heads - Beat Saber (on PC) is dropping an update with new music and "campaign mode" whatever that means.

I'm all over The Caligula Effect, warts and all.

I'm also happy to see Ghost of a Tale getting the console port out the door and hope it does well for them.

Oof, One Piece World Seeker is this week? Cripes. Gonna have to dig deep if I want to pick that up. I really enjoy the One Piece world, it's silly and fun.

Ooh, clay book hits the Switch this week?

That might be worth a buy.

I’ll be waiting on more reports on Division 2. I don’t love that my only choices for buying it on PC are Uplay and Epic, but if I hear good things about the story then I might dip in regardless. I’m leery of any Tom clancy property since Clancy passed, for the same reason I don’t watch any Muppet productions made in the absence of Jim Henson and Frank Oz: you can paint by all the numbers you want, but the soul is gone and everyone knows it.

The Division 2 has a story? Why? Lol

Seriously, wouldn't environmental storytelling be enough of a hook?

I've had my eye on Baba Is You for a while too. Looks like one of those games that breaks your brain somewhat:

garion333 wrote:

The Division 2 has a story? Why? Lol

Seriously, wouldn't environmental storytelling be enough of a hook?

Yeah, that went over so well with fallout 76.

Give me that Calliga Calliga Effect... Calliga effect ... now on Switch.

Jonman wrote:

Not a new release, but of note to the VR heads - Beat Saber (on PC) is dropping an update with new music and "campaign mode" whatever that means.

Excellent! New music sounds good, and I’m curious to see what the campaign mode is...

My copy of Caligula Effect should arrive tomorrow. And then it will surely wrestle with DMC5 for a bit for my attention.

The Elder Scrolls Online: Wrathstone hits the Xbone and PS4 this week. While I’m impressed that ESO keeps keeping on, I can’t help but wonder if its long legs are delaying the arrival of Elder Scrolls 6.

ESO is made by a totally different studio. The main Elder Scrolls games are made by Bethesda, and ESO is made by Zenimax Online.

garion333 wrote:

I'm also happy to see Ghost of a Tale getting the console port out the door and hope it does well for them.

It's been out for awhile on Xbox One, going back to when it was in early access. I had no idea it was actually finished. :/

ClockworkHouse wrote:
The Elder Scrolls Online: Wrathstone hits the Xbone and PS4 this week. While I’m impressed that ESO keeps keeping on, I can’t help but wonder if its long legs are delaying the arrival of Elder Scrolls 6.

ESO is made by a totally different studio. The main Elder Scrolls games are made by Bethesda, and ESO is made by Zenimax Online.

Yes, but resource management might not be the reason for the delay in the next Elder Scrolls.

Isn’t ESO already just a Games-As-Service version of The Elder scrolls series? It’s not like they’re going to update the engine or overhaul how quests work. They would have done that by now if they were going to. It seems to me that a big, Single Player Elder Scrolls game would just cannibalize their ESO market, and for what? So a bunch of people can complain about the new bugs and the new mod-monetization scheme and m the lackluster story compared to their dreams of what ESVI was going to be? Where’s the upside for Bethesda?

ESVI would be a very expensive undertaking for that would likely underperform in the market, or would perform well at the expense of a product they’re already selling. Don’t spend money you don’t have to.

Skyrim: Special Edition was a best-selling release on consoles at full price 7 or 8 years after its release. ESO's player population did not subsequently dip. The market is obviously there and interested in single-player Elder Scrolls games, and it doesn't seem to come at the expense of their multiplayer release. I don't think the two really conflict all that much.

ESO isn't really a GaaS version of Elder Scrolls. It's an MMO, with all the good and bad that brings with it, but it's also a distinct experience. This all reminds me of the concern that the Final Fantasy MMOs would be the death of the single-player Final Fantasy games, which has yet to happen. (Maybe it should, but that's a different topic. )

At least we will get TES 6 before Warcraft 4...

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Skyrim: Special Edition was a best-selling release on consoles at full price 7 or 8 years after its release. ESO's player population did not subsequently dip. The market is obviously there and interested in single-player Elder Scrolls games, and it doesn't seem to come at the expense of their multiplayer release. I don't think the two really conflict all that much.

ESO isn't really a GaaS version of Elder Scrolls. It's an MMO, with all the good and bad that brings with it, but it's also a distinct experience. This all reminds me of the concern that the Final Fantasy MMOs would be the death of the single-player Final Fantasy games, which has yet to happen. (Maybe it should, but that's a different topic. )

Thanks for writing a quicker summary than I was coming up with.

If anything, Elder Scrolls games bankroll ESO.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Skyrim: Special Edition was a best-selling release on consoles at full price 7 or 8 years after its release. ESO's player population did not subsequently dip. The market is obviously there and interested in single-player Elder Scrolls games, and it doesn't seem to come at the expense of their multiplayer release. I don't think the two really conflict all that much.

ESO isn't really a GaaS version of Elder Scrolls. It's an MMO, with all the good and bad that brings with it, but it's also a distinct experience. This all reminds me of the concern that the Final Fantasy MMOs would be the death of the single-player Final Fantasy games, which has yet to happen. (Maybe it should, but that's a different topic. )

Again, why spend money you don’t have to? They can print money by releasing Skyrim re-re-remastered on the new consoles that are sure to be announced at E3, and it will sell as well as, if not better than, ESVI.

For the record, I’m not saying my theory is true, but it doesn’t have to be. My theory only requires that the decisionmakers at Bethesda believe it’s true.

And I think it’s more likely that they believe they’d be competing with themselves (either by hurting ESO sales, or by wasting money on ESVI when ESV will still sell.) than that they believe they don’t have the resources to make a new Elder Scrolls game.

Of course, it could be that they are working on one and just have been exceptionally good at staunching leaks to that effect. That would look the same as them dragging their feet because ESO and ESV are still golden geese.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Of course, it could be that they are working on one and just have been exceptionally good at staunching leaks to that effect.

… You do know that they actually announced Elder Scrolls 6, right? Like, it's a real thing they're making, and they've talked about how they're making it?

Aside from that, they've been saying since Fallout 4 released that they had two other "Elder Scrolls-sized" projects they wanted to work on before they released Elder Scrolls 6. One of those appears to have been Fallout 76, and the other looks to be Starfield.

But if you want to blame the delay on anything, blame Fallout 76.

I think it's clear Fallout 76 didn't use up any time from Bethesda's main campus, right?

Starfield is the main reason ES6 is coming after it. The main team at Bethesda's Maryland office does one game and moves on while a smaller team does bug fixes and DLC. They, essentially, have one game in development at a time.

F76 clearly took away resources but we don't really know how much it delayed anything else because most of the groundwork was laid by Fallout 4.

Starfield is what they're doing now, that we know for certain. Assuming Fallout 76 hasn't caused them to massively change the way they do development, then Starfield will take a couple years, then ES6 a few years after that.

Perhaps Starfield wouldn't have been greenlit if ESO wasn't out there, but we'll never know. Fallout 76 likely messes with the financial side of things, but who knows to what degree, if any?

garion333 wrote:

I think it's clear Fallout 76 didn't use up any time from Bethesda's main campus, right? ;)

It was developed by the QA team.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
garion333 wrote:

I think it's clear Fallout 76 didn't use up any time from Bethesda's main campus, right? ;)

It was developed by the QA team.

Props to them for increasing their own job security.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Of course, it could be that they are working on one and just have been exceptionally good at staunching leaks to that effect.

… You do know that they actually announced Elder Scrolls 6, right? Like, it's a real thing they're making, and they've talked about how they're making it?

Yeah, but Nintendo said they weren’t working on Labo VR, and then BOOM.

Basically I believe nothing that comes from a company press release.

Also I don’t read company press releases.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Of course, it could be that they are working on one and just have been exceptionally good at staunching leaks to that effect.

… You do know that they actually announced Elder Scrolls 6, right? Like, it's a real thing they're making, and they've talked about how they're making it?

Yeah, but Nintendo said they weren’t working on Labo VR, and then BOOM.

Basically I believe nothing that comes from a company press release.

Also I don’t read company press releases.

You also clearly don't watch E3 presentations. Bethesda confirmed it on stage at E3 in 2018.

Granted, you can still go ahead and not trust it, because we've seen Project HAMMER, Fable Legends, and Star Wars Ragtag on stage at E3 and they all got canceled. But if Bethesda were the sort to cancel games then I imagine Fallout 76 would have been first in line.

ccesarano wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Of course, it could be that they are working on one and just have been exceptionally good at staunching leaks to that effect.

… You do know that they actually announced Elder Scrolls 6, right? Like, it's a real thing they're making, and they've talked about how they're making it?

Yeah, but Nintendo said they weren’t working on Labo VR, and then BOOM.

Basically I believe nothing that comes from a company press release.

Also I don’t read company press releases.

You also clearly don't watch E3 presentations. Bethesda confirmed it on stage at E3 in 2018.

Granted, you can still go ahead and not trust it, because we've seen Project HAMMER, Fable Legends, and Star Wars Ragtag on stage at E3 and they all got canceled. But if Bethesda were the sort to cancel games then I imagine Fallout 76 would have been first in line.

I suspect you’re right.

76 is, after all, the first Bethesda game I’ve actually enjoyed since Wet.