January 14 – January 20

Section: 

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

As usual, there’s something for everyone this week. I know you’re busy coming up with reasons why you’re not following your New Year’s resolutions, so let’s get right down to the list:

If you liked Punch Club but couldn’t relate to a character who spent that much time at the gym, dev_me might be for you. It’s a life sim/time-management sim about being an independent videogame developer. Find time to eat, sleep and code, and always remember that 18-hour days are OK as long as you work for yourself.

How Mosquitoes Became Human takes the concept of Shark! Shark! and brings it out of the water. You’re a mosquito that wants to relinquish its spot on the top of the food chain to become a human, and doing that means eating progressively larger animals until you become them. Eat enough frogs, and you become a frog. Eat enough birds and you become a bird, and so forth. It’s so delightfully nonsensical that I can’t help putting it on the list, but it looks like they make some interesting decisions with what animals can traverse what obstacles, nearly bringing it into the realm of Metroidvanias.

Koi is a game about being a koi on a grand adventure through the world’s waterways. I put it on this list only because I hope that it’s so addictive that my wife will have to demand that I stop playing Koi.

Space Mayhem looks like another attempt to bring the Luftrausers formula into space. Cycle 28 already did an admirable job at that, but I’m always up for new places to fly around and explode things.

Unsung Warriors – Prologue doesn’t look fancy. In fact, it kind of looks like a jumped-up Flash game. But that didn’t stop us from liking Castle Crashers, and Unsung Warriors is free. Enjoy hacking and slashing through dungeons at no cost to you!

For my game of the week, I reach into the wayback machine to one of the Wii games that I missed. Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes was a game that I skipped at the time for the same reasons I initially skipped Bayonetta 2: The controller for the system it appeared on looked like it would be a hard detriment to enjoyment. Now it’s shorn of that limitation, and portable, so I have a second shot at trying Grasshopper’s particular brand of over-the-top action. Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is my game of the week.

IMAGE(https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/pictures/picture-103324-1484747184.jpg)   Erik "Wordsmythe" Hanson

It's a weird time to be reading these lists. It's the week after CES, in the shadow of what once was a meaningful-for-videogames expo, but the hype cycle was almost certain to be dominated this week by a walking car or somesuch. January otherwise might offer stuff that slipped past its target date in December, but \the bigger projects hopefully had a strong enough management presence to schedule out more than a couple extra weeks when they realized they'd miss the holidays. So watch this space in the coming couple months!

Dying: Reborn: Nintendo Switch Edition seems like the setup to our usual jokes about Nintendo puling content forward onto new or undying systems. I can't leave it just at that, so I looked it up: creepy things everywhere. But on the plus side, it has what looks like a high-res model of a fish person from Bojack. Tagline is "Welcome to the banquet of your repentance. This is your eternal trial." Maybe the Bojack similarities go even deeper?

I couldn't let DT's third entry above go in without noting that the entire existence of the entry on his list is predicated on a scheme to amuse the rabble. That's right: It's a koi ploy for the hoi polloi.

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

PC

  • 01-14

  • AXE:SURVIVAL
  • Crazy Archery
  • Cube Defense
  • Desolate City: The Bloody Dawn Enhanced Edition
  • dev_me
  • Elf Epizode One
  • Golden Key
  • How Mosquito Became Human
  • Isolated Island
  • Kaidi, armed with a cat
  • Manipulator Of Figure
  • Quantum Gate
  • Rift Keeper
  • Space Viking Raiders
  • TAKANARIA
  • The Jekoos
  • Tunche: Arena
  • 01-15

  • BLASK
  • Chocolate makes you happy: Valentine's Day
  • fat battle
  • Final Islands
  • Lights Out
  • Nibu
  • Onimusha: Warlords
  • Panda Hero
  • Ravva and the Cyclops Curse
  • The Spell - A Kinetic Novel
  • The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - The Final Season Episode 3: Broken Toys
  • Unsung Warriors - Prologue
  • 01-16

  • Away From Earth: Moon
  • Bloody Spell
  • Box: The Game
  • Cube Mission
  • Hello Emoji: Drawing to Solve Puzzles
  • Hentai Like a Boss
  • Korvux
  • Vision Soft Reset
  • WildKids
  • 01-17

  • Atlas Protect Your Planet
  • Becalm
  • Blood Island
  • Bounty Hunter
  • BrawlQuest
  • Hentai Jigsaw
  • Koi
  • Mojo XXX
  • Near Bird
  • Pantsu Hunter: Back to the 90s
  • Road Trip USA - Jigsaw Puzzles
  • Skyland: Heart of the Mountain
  • Space Cruise
  • Space Mayhem
  • Taptiles
  • Urban Justice
  • Who Is This Man
  • YIIK: A Postmodern RPG
  • 01-18

  • Age of Fear: The Free World
  • Artist Idle
  • AWAKE - Definitive Edition
  • Bitworm
  • Butterbies
  • Cartel Smash
  • Chishiki Runner
  • Defense corp - Earth
  • Evil Maze 2
  • Fairy Picturebook of Hero and Sorceress
  • Girls Free
  • Hero Masters
  • In The Ember
  • Incandescent 2
  • Monster Trampoline
  • Pull Ball
  • Shinen no Tansaku Mono
  • Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet - Dissonance of the Nexus
  • The Legacy of Music
  • TRANSIT: Post-apocalyptic indie game
  • 01-19

  • Pale Man!
  • 01-20

  • Lucky Of Love

PS4

  • 01-14

  • Panda Hero
  • 01-15

  • Asdivine Hears II
  • Holy Potatoes! We're in Space?!
  • Onimusha: Warlords
  • Smoke and Sacrifice
  • The Grand Tour Game
  • The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - The Final Season Episode 3: Broken Toys
  • Vane
  • 01-16

  • Planet RIX-13
  • 01-17

  • Hell Warders
  • YIIK: A Postmodern RPG
  • 01-18

  • Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
  • Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet - Complete Edition
  • Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet - Dissonance of the Nexus

PSVR

  • 01-15

  • Kingdom of Blades

Xbox One

  • 01-15

  • Onimusha: Warlords
  • Smoke and Sacrifice
  • The Grand Tour Game
  • The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - The Final Season Episode 3: Broken Toys
  • 01-16

  • Planet RIX-13
  • 01-17

  • Alvastia Chronicles
  • Hell Warders
  • 01-18

  • Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
  • Farm Together
  • Guacamelee! 2
  • Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet - Complete Edition
  • Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet - Dissonance of the Nexus

Switch

  • 01-15

  • Onimusha: Warlords
  • The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - The Final Season Episode 3: Broken Toys
  • 01-16

  • Bash The Bear
  • Planet RIX-13
  • 01-17

  • Asdivine Hearts II
  • Bedtime Blues
  • Build a Bridge!
  • Crazy Strike Bowling EX
  • Dying: Reborn: Nintendo Switch Edition
  • Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force
  • Feudal Alloy
  • Gunman Clive HD Collection
  • Hell Warders
  • Holy Potatoes! We're in Space?!
  • Left-Right: The Mansion
  • Mega Mall Story
  • Octahedron: Transixed Edition
  • The Office Quest
  • The Shrouded Isle
  • YIIK: A Postmodern RPG
  • 01-18

  • Fight of Gods
  • Mars of Die!
  • Old School Racer 2
  • Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes

Vita

  • 01-15

  • Asdivine Hears II
  • 01-16

  • Planet RIX-13

RIFT

  • 01-14

  • Be A Lord
  • Gun Beat
  • 01-15

  • Mosh Pit Simulator
  • Rainbow Reactor
  • 01-16

  • Fun VR Farm

Vive

  • 01-14

  • Gun Beat
  • 01-15

  • ASCII Wars
  • Mosh Pit Simulator
  • Rainbow Reactor
  • 01-16

  • Fun VR Farm
  • Guardian Master VR
  • 01-18

  • Thalu: Dreamtime is Now

Comments

I'm sorry to tell you this, Greg, but you didn't miss Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. You might have missed its predecessors, but Travis Strikes Again is a new game. That said, being that it's a top-down twin-stick action game you might be driven to enjoy it anyway.

I want to be interested. I want to support it so we can get a full sequel to No More Heroes. But every trailer I see draws nothing but apathy for me with a side of disappointment, though I think the latter is primarily in wanting to be interested and failing to be.

So even if you play this one, it's not the games you missed.

ccesarano wrote:

I'm sorry to tell you this, Greg, but you didn't miss Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. You might have missed its predecessors, but Travis Strikes Again is a new game. That said, being that it's a top-down twin-stick action game you might be driven to enjoy it anyway.

I want to be interested. I want to support it so we can get a full sequel to No More Heroes. But every trailer I see draws nothing but apathy for me with a side of disappointment, though I think the latter is primarily in wanting to be interested and failing to be.

So even if you play this one, it's not the games you missed.

Top Down Shooter, you say?

Ok. I’m still in.

One of these weeks I might take the time to do actual research beyond confirming release dates and forming loose impressions from trailers.

But not this week.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzx

Calm before the storm

Erik "Wordsmythe" Hanson wrote:

It's a koi ploy for the hoi polloi.

IMAGE(http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/06/bravo.gif)

Eh. You didn't miss much with No More Heroes on the Wii anyway. Tedious nonsense, with a heavy lashing of misogyny typical of Suda 51.

There's a po-faced reading of it that's satirically critical of the hypermasculinity of the hero's journey, but when the satire is dripping with the same misogyny it's trying to criticize, it's a fine line between criticism and celebration, and Suda 51 seems to entirely lack the subtlety to ride that line.