So as I said previously, 2019 is going to be the year of horror games for Identity Gaming, both old and new. So I'm gonna kick off this horror festival by talking about some upcoming horror games that I think look pretty good.
First I wanna start with World of Horror, pictured above. Here's the trailer
It looks like some kind of retro-style point and click adventure horror title and I can't wait to play it. The game is still in development but you can download it for free from the website (https://panstas.itch.io/world-of-horror) and then support it by donating to their patreon!
The one thing that the game seems to be very proud of is it's inspiration from a Japanese manga artist called Junji Ito. He's famous for writing things like Uzumaki, Tomie and the profoundly strange Gyo, which is about sharks that grow robot legs and attack people on land. I'm a big fan of Junji's work so any game that takes inspiration from him is one that's worth watching out for.
I know it's free and I can download it now but I'm gonna hold off for a bit and see if it gets a full release soon so I can play a full version straight off the bat.
Someday You'll Return is another one that I'm keeping a close eye on. Here's the trailer
While it doensn't look like there's any combat, from what I've read it seems like surviving in the mountains is of paramount importance and hopefully there will be some puzzles that will help separate it from being just a walking simulator. You can also see some clear Silent Hill inspiration in the trailer with shifting realities and the game is about a dude looking for his daughter and where have I heard that one before? There isn't an exact release date but it's scheduled for 2019 and I for one am rather excited.
Supermassive games, responsible for Grim Dawn (a game I've not played but will be buying very soon I think) is back at it again with The Dark Pictures Anthology. It looks sort of similar to what I've seen of Grim Dawn only this time its on a boat. To be honest I'm just a huge fan of the trailer and the British man giving us an ominous synopsis of the game.
Finally there's The Sinking City, a clearly Lovecraft inspired horror games by those guys that did those Sherlock Holmes games. "Lovecraft inspired" is a term that makes me roll my eyes as much as games about zombies does nowadays but there's something about the trailer that gave me a little shiver with how cool it was when I watched it. Also deep water and anything involving deep water freaks me the fuck out so this game will probably get right under my skin. Even just entering the water temple in Zelda kind of makes me feel uneasy and while horror games don't usually freak me out too much this one has a good chance of breaking through my barriers. Here's the trailer if you wanna see it
And of course I'm looking forward to the Resident Evil 2 remake but I don't really feel like I need to talk about that too much since the hype surrounding it is fairly large. If there's anything else I should be keeping an eye on, lemme know in a comment!
Usually when there's a big upcoming release I try to not get myself too excited for it. Call me elitist or snobby or whatever but big AAA games, while enjoyable, don't usually live too long in my memory after all the release hype has died down. However if there's one thing that does consistently impress me with every release it's From Software and it's Souls games. Now from what I gather Sekiro isn't STRICTLY Souls, but it plays close enough for me.
Just straight off the bat I love the setting and the general look of the game. Not because it's all Samurai and I'm a huge weeb (that much is only partly true) but I kind of like the idea of having a From Software covering as many thematic bases as possible. We've got the high fantasy setting of the Souls games, the Euro-Horror feel of Bloodborne and in Sekiro we get a nice eastern touch, it's pretty cool. Ni-Oh was great and all but now we have an ACTUAL Souls type game in an eastern setting rather than just a souls flavored action game from another company.
Setting aside though, I heard that this game has no real kind of leveling system which excites me greatly. Some might lament the loss of this but as much as you might hate to admit, stats play a HUGE role in the way a Souls game progresses. Sure, you CAN go fight those skeletons at the start of Dark Souls 1 but you're going to die in 1 hit and deal no damage in return just because your stats aren't there. With Sekiro it sounds like it really is a true test of skill. No more complaining about "artificial difficulty" if that's even still a thing, if you suck at Sekiro it sounds like it'll be because you ACTUALLY suck and now you have no excuse.
The feature that seems to have replaced straight up leveling is the prosthetic thing where you can equip different arms that do different things like a sort of grim-dark samurai Megaman. I've been avoiding stuff because I want to experience as much of it for myself as possible but there seems to be one item in particular that acts like a grappling hook. That alone is interesting because Souls have never really had much verticality so how the level design changes to suit this new found mobility is really exciting.
If you've never played a Souls game before then you should go try one. If you can't be bothered trying to get into a series 3 games deep then Sekiro (or Bloodborne really) might be a good place to start. Fingers crossed that From really knock this one out of the park.
Usually when I'm flicking through Facebook videos and something gaming related comes up it's usually some kind of thing that I'll close out of pretty quickly. Some kind of meme video, top 10 or people getting their jollies off whatever big AAA game du jour is. However when the trailer for this little unheard of title crossed my feed I felt compelled to watch it all the way through.
From what I can tell, My Friend Pedro is a game about a man who seems to enjoy cosplaying as Deadpool a little bit taking instructions from a sentient banana to go into buildings and kill a bunch of bad guys. As far as the premise in concerned it's not going to win any awards for best writing but let's be honest, with a tagline like "blood, bullets and bananas" were you really here for the plot in the first place?
The game play on the other hand is where this game looks absolutely mental. With the main character flying around the room blasting dudes like he thinks he's Dante from Devil May Cry or some shit. There seems to be a big focus on environmental kills as well utilizing explosive thingies or having your bullets ricochet off certain surfaces to kill dudes from the safety of a nearby wall. There's a part in the trailer (which I'll post at the end of this post) where he throws a frying pan in the air and has his bullets bounce off it to clear an upper room of guys.
The big reason that this game piques my interest is it has a very sort of Hotline Miami vibe to it but only now it's a side scroller rather than a top down game. I get the feeling that while there is a lot of high octane action My Friend Pedro will probably, like Hotline, be more of a puzzle game with action elements rather than a straight up shoot-a-thon. Lot's of strategizing and probably a lot of dying with quick restarts is what I envision for the first time player (just speculation) but either way it looks like the kind of game I will get very into very quickly.
Here is the trailer if you want to check it out for yourself, it's really fuckin' cool
