PSVR gets a discount, Persona 5 gets an App, & THQ gets, well, everything else.
We are 8 weeks into 2018 and the slow news weeks are starting to happen. That can only mean one thing; E3 approaches! Tickets went live last week and I don’t really know how many have been sold but it’s that time. I couldn’t let you guys down though so I had to dig real deep. And dig deep I did, here are the reasons you should feel like a Lucky Gamer this week:
1. No Hearthstone on Switch.
Straight to the point. Despite numerous ambiguous teases and tweets from Blizzard that may have felt promising, the game’s designer Dean Ayala has provided a firm “no”. It’s weird because Hearthstone is such a perfect fit for Nintendo Switch as a platform. The only speculation I could make at this time is that they don’t feel confident with the online infrastructure of the Nintendo Switch. Even that doesn’t entirely make sense for me because Splatoon 2 plays great. Maybe there are things about video game you can never understand from just playing. What are the odds?
2. No Hearthstone but at least you get De Blob.
One of the most amazing 3D platfomers of the last consoles generation is getting remastered for Nintendo Switch. De Blob, originally released back in 2008, will be coming to the Switch at some point in 2018 as tweeted by THQ Nordic. Last year we saw the release of the remaster on PS4 & Xbox one with the sequel coming sometimes this year. De Blob is one of those fun games that can serve as a cool party experiences to introduce new people to gaming. Given Nintendo’s recent track of cool additions to games, it will be really exciting to see what kind of bonus features De Blob will get. Maybe we’ll be able to dress up De Blob as Pikachu or link.
3. It’s the return of the purple dragon!
If someone would have told me that Skylander’s was not going to be the end of Spyro the Dragon, I would have laughed in their face. In fact I think I actually might have. So to anyone who’s face I laughed in, well I apologize. Much like I did when Crash Bandicoot made his remastered trilogy return. It turns out that was enough to push Activision and/or Sony to stop playing with our emotions and give us back our playstation mascots! That realization led us here: Spyro the Dragon Trilogy remaster is in the works and potentially coming to PS4 in Q3 of 2018. To put that in basic terms: Spyro is coming for Christmas, people! The trilogy is rumored to have the first three Spyro games remastered with brand new everything. Textures, assets, and all the other boring stuff. The real exciting news, which may come as a surprise to most, Crash and Spyro are potentially timed exclusive deals which means they may come to other platforms afterwards! This is going to be huge for two of the most iconic characters in video game history. Looks like the Gamers win again.
4. US government is against loot boxes, maybe.
It turns out it’s time for the government to get involved in video games again. It’s been a long while since the US government felt the need to step in and take stand in the video games industry. Fear not however fellow gamers, this time it appears they are on our side. At least thats what it looks like. US Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire has issued a letter to our friends over at the ESRB establishing a strong outline of concerns regarding micro transactions. More specifically regarding Loot Boxes and Loot Box Systems. Her concern is primarily surrounding “in game purchases for surprise winnings” because they may be highly addicting. This comes hot on the heals of the World Health Organization update which adds “gaming disorder” as a diagnosable mental disorder. All of this follows Hawaii’s recent proposal of bills which specifically target Loot Boxes as a form of “illegal gambling”. Now that we have reached the end of this topic, I am no longer sure who’s side these people are actually on.
5. The Devil May Cry for free occasionally.
February 27th marks the day of the beast. Actually, I’m not sure if that is true at all. Something that is completely true is that starting on February 27th Devil May Cry HD will be available for free to all PC players with a Twitch Prime Membership. With Capcom running this promotion for an undisclosed length of time, rumors floating around of a Devil May Cry 5 on the horizon are staring to feel real true. Couple the free give away with the upcoming release of Devil May Cry HD releasing on March 13th for PS4, Xbox One, and PC makes for a powerful argument. I personally had nothing against the rebooted Dante for the most recent game, but I can’t wait to go back to hanging out with cool Dante. I also really hope the rumor of a new Devil May Cry is true regardless which Dante we get. Speaking of devils and demons, did I mention that Persona 5 is getting an official Mementos App? Well, in Japan at least.
6. Missing? Who’s missing?
There is only one name in the video game industry that evokes more confusion than the question “is a hot dog a sandwich?”. That name is Hidetaka Suehiro. Actually, no it’s not. That’s the man that evokes confusion, however the name is Swery. And there you go, your hold world just flipped thinking bout what this guy has done now. Now let’s be very clear: Swery has provided absolutely no information about this game beside the fact he’s working with Arc System Works, and it’s called “The Missing”. Also, the game will “blow your mind” when it releases late this year. On the topic of Arc System Works and missing things, the first two DLC characters for Dragon Ball FighterZ have leaked and I can’t wait to (spoiler alert) play as Broly & Bardock.
7. THQ fills their shopping cart and PSVR hopes to fill yours.
THQ Nordic heard about the Lucky Gamer Recap and said “We are going to do something to get us on that damn list twice in one day!”. You read about De Blob remastered but that’s not all. It looks like THQ Nordic might have gotten their tax returns back early because they just made a very big purchase. In a roughly 150 million dollar deal, THQ Nordic just purchased Koch Media. What does that mean? Well let me give you an idea. Koch Media is the holding company of Deep Silver (Dead Island, Metro), Volition (Saints Row), and Dambuster Studios (Homefront). Ultimately this deal really just means that the THQ we remember watching fold in 2012 is getting right back up. With no plans for restructuring any of the current business plans, it seems some great things may already be in the works. On the flip side because its tax season, and in honor of big purchases, I have to share that PSVR will be $100 off from today (technically yesterday) until March 3rd. Looks like its time to jump on one of those bad boys, hey Chet!
Let me get this straight, THQ goes Bankrupt > Gets bought by THQ > Become THQ Nordic > Deep Silver buys Saints Row > THQ Nordic buys Koch Media > Koch Media is parent company of Deep Silver > THQ now owns Saints Row again. What kind of timeline is this?
This isn’t the multiplayer game you’ve been looking for.
I really cannot restate enough how disappointing Star Wars Battlefront II was to me. I knew based on all of the feedback from the beta and the pre-release reviews that it wasn’t going to be great. But I specifically wanted to give DICE and/or EA the benefit of the doubt and see if it really was just as bad as everyone said it was. So I played it. And… it was worse than I even imagined.
Many people would come to the website and think we are trying to be edgy with the score we gave to this game. Not quite. While the language I personally used was lost bashing, it was a very inspired brand of bashing to say the least. After hearing so many negative comments and so many negative reviews (AKA 6/10s, the mainstream games journalism equivalent of “bad”), I went in with rather low expectations, and not even those were met.
I stand strong in everything I said and don’t think I was being harsh. To shortly reiterate the review, I found that story was particularly abysmal in its stupidity. The audio was a snorefest of generic music with lazer noises and bad soundalikes. The gameplay really wasn’t all that fun with its needlessly confusing starcard system. And then the loot box fiasco was just the icing on the cake. Fun fact, Ubisoft recentaly globally rolled back all their scheduled 2018 releases and I have a slight suspicion that they intended to implement loot boxes but are now backpedalling. I have no proof of this, just merely a speculation.
So, you may be asking yourself, what’s the point of this article? Are you just here to kick SWBF2 while it’s down? Well, no. This is because it’s not “down” at all since it appears to somehow still be a successful release. But as much as there were many great games this year, there were also 3 major titles that were massive disappointments.
Sonic Forces came out recently and I harped on that being only good for the soundtrack. But would I play that game over playing SWBF2? Yes, this buggy, poorly slapped together mess of a game is still a better and far more entertaining experience, made doubly so because it’s short. And well, that soundtrack, hot damn.
Mass Effect Andromeda was a huge letdown across the board thanks to janky animations, clunky combat, and god awful scripting. But it’s still Mass Effect and as much as I like to joke that SWBF2 was Star Wars game with mass Effect assets, one thing still stands. Andromeda does have substance. By now, Andromeda should also be fairly patched (I hope) to a point where all the multitudes of bugs and glitches have been fixed.
What else was a letdown? Agents of Mayhem, Volitions spiritual successor to Saints Row, was quite mess. It was buggy just like Andromeda, but only half as much. The way the script and character design was made, I genuinely have no idea what audience they had in mind when they made this game, it’s all over the place in tone and script. But after finishing the campaign, I still had stuff to do, and time permitting, I would have done it because even with all the repetition, it was at least playable. A weird design, but playable.
And that’s just 3 examples. I’m not saying that Star Wars Battlefront 2 is the worst game of the year, the game runs ok, the graphics are good, and at its core there’s potential for improvement. This, on the otherhand, is a heavy letdown because it didn’t have good press before it came out, and was even worse for wear on release date. But to all the fans who are angry at the bad reviews, you ire is misdirected. Don’t get mad at the reviewers for giving your bad game a bad review. Refocus your attention on EA and ask why, oh why, did they make the decisions they made for the game. You deserve more and you should be asking for more.
Agents of Mayhem is a third person shooter with RPG elements developed by Volition and published by Deep Silver. Volition’s last full release, Saints Row IV was released by Deep Silver after THQ, the original publisher was unable to stay in business. This final game (plus the Gat Out of Hell standalone expansion) left the series with little room to move on. So, this game serves as a spinoff to the Saints Row series by taking all of its gameplay and adding some interesting new tweaks. It’s a single-player-only experience, yet you play as a squad of 3 and just swap in and out of all 3 characters. Does it work? {Reviewed on Xbox One]
GRAPHICS: 1/2
It feels like Volition is always just a little bit behind everyone else in the area of graphics. Adding a slight amount of cel-shaded flair and some decent visual FX, it’s their best looking game to date. But unfortunately, ‘their best’ is a game that looks like a launch title in the graphics department. Or, at the very least, it’s a former last gen game that was hastily ported to next gen for Xbox One and PS4. The design of Seoul, the city the game takes place in, looks quite nice artistically. Aesthetic highrises, building zones, factories, and a shipyard, they made them all look decent. But, in terms of technical prowess, it’s just not up to part with the more modern games it’s lining up against. There’s also a fair bit of asset reuse going on here. Because of that, you see the same signs and buildings multiple times if they aren’t part of the set-piece structures. There will be more about this later on in the review.
STORY: 1/2
The plot of Agents of Mayhem was so banal, it was entirely forgettable. The titular agents of M.A.Y.H.E.M. are put up against the nefarious L.E.G.I.O.N. in order to stop them from creating a super weapon. If this sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon, that’s because it’s framed as one. Tons of 2D animated cutscenes play before and after missions. This game manages to mimic that look, albeit way more raunchier and full of F-bombs. But, like I said, the story is forgettable. What is memorable is the array of colorful characters that interact with each other. Every single mission and major side-mission is loaded to the brim with radio chatter, often engaging as much as 5 or more people in the group gabbing it up while you’re fighting. The case contains 12 agents, 5 major NPCs in your home base, and 5+ enemy characters and they all do their fair share of talking. This is multiplied if you play the game with your favorite squad loadout. You definitely won’t like all 12 agents but you’ll find the ones whose humor aligns with yours the most. Bonus points do have to be given. The enemy NPCs have a metric ton of lines that are specific to whichever agent you’re currently playing as (“It’s Hollywood, get him!” or “Oh sh*t, it’s Braddock!” etc). One more thing that bothers me more though, is that they decided to make Saints Row mainstay Johnny Gat into a pre-order only DLC from Gamestop. I am dumbfounded as to why they decided to do this, so I chose not to pre-order and pick up the game elsewhere.
AUDIO: 0/2
Complete disaster. The audio is littered with multiple small glitches like sounds being interrupted, missing sound effects, and lines getting occasionally cut off. There were also numerous times where leaving the game running and coming back later mutes the entire game, forcing you to restart it. Games running in the background are a staple of all the new consoles, so it’s a pain in the ass when your enjoyment is interrupted because you have to restart the game. The voice acting was mediocre for the most part. Nobody really stood out, but nothing was terrible. The music though? Boring. The cars didn’t even have radio stations either, music just clicks on any time you enter a vehicle. I said in our video that the music sounded like generic “royalty free” music you can purchase at a lower cost than licensed music. Given Volition’s usually propensity for absolutely nailing scenes with well-times songs, it’s just depressing that they couldn’t be bothered to come up with something more interesting.
GAMEPLAY: 1/2
The gameplay in AoM is hectic, as you jump around attacking various enemies in either wide open spaces or closed in dungeon-type areas. It’s sort of an overhaul from Saints Row IV but optimized to suit a squad-based combat system. Some team members are better at taking down certain enemy types than others. It’s pretty easy to make a well balanced teams since they all have handy little logos indicating what their specialty is. Some break through armor, some break shields, other can hack, others do more damage against leaders. This new depth actually made the game exciting to try out different characters while playing the missions. However, all of the gameplay is completely marred by bugs. I’ve gotten stuck in scenery, textures not loading, my car getting trapped, and an enemy boss accidentally teleporting outside the map, forcing me to start the whole bass battle over again. It’s stuff like this and the aforementioned audio bugs that really bring this game down. Even worse is the mission design. Every other story mission or major side mission has you perform a menial task followed by assaulting one of Legion’s underground lairs. Except it’s the same lair. EVERY. TIME. The game tries to make up for this by having you travel to different sections of the lair per mission but its done so frequently that it doesn’t help it at all. One more thing: another detriment to the game was the lack of a minimap, making the buggy GPS system and driving confusing on many occasions.
FUN: 2/2
So, here’s the rub. Despite all of AoM’s problems with glitches and bugs, the game is an absolute blast to play once things get going. Though I’m not a fan of the recent uprising of every game turning into a sandbox game, I can’t say it doesn’t give you plenty of things to do. This is also helped by making the map not really that big. In a market full of games that are continually trying to outdo each other by size, this game had the guts to say NO. This game takes place in one city, not of the missions or activities is all that far away, and the activities are free form so you have that old-school freedom to do whenever you want. The best way to play this game is in short bursts. Playing the game for review forces me to tire of the repetition but if you use it as a time killing game and decide to go around, shooting some stuff up, and causing general MAYHEM, you’ll be in for a good time.
Bugs, glitches, and lackluster soundtrack really hampered the overall quality of the experience of this game. It could have been better had it not been for seemingly lazy mission design. Doing the same thing over and over again can be annoying but not in short bursts. A wild idea arose while writing this review. I think this game should be on the Nintendo Switch. This game looks like it could run on it, and this game would be great to have as a portable title. So if you really like your sandbox games, you could do worse. But for a full price release? Forget it, wait for a sale.
Vega and Chet from Hard Mode Gamers talk about Agents of MAYHEM. In Agents of Mayhem you fight the nefarious LEGION by doing random things and go into their underground lair. After that, you do more random things and then go into their underground lair. After that, you do more random things and then go into their underground lair. After that, you do more random things and then go into their underground lair. After that, you do more random things and then go into their underground lair. After that, you do more random things and then go into their underground lair. After that, you do more random things and then go into their underground lair.
