Welcome back to games you might not have tried everybody
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It's been a long time since we featured a bunch of console games on here
So let's do that today, like always all of these games are interesting
They're not necessarily all good
But they do all show off some intriguing
facet of design or tell a story in a new and novel way they've all got something we can learn from but
Sometimes that means that we recommend them here with the hope that some other team will learn from them and then deliver on that
Potential in a more polished or effective way also since we're talking about console releases here these games aren't necessarily obscure
They're just the kind of game that might have passed you by amidst the tidal wave of hits we've been seeing lately
So caveats aside let's get to it
Let it die
This is a new James favorite right here
It's grasshopper studios at their best it has that wonderful punk-rock
In-Your-Face feeling that most studios shy away from to play it safe. It's over-the-top
Ultraviolence supports the feel of the world and the setting rather than simply being there to pander to Player's bloodlust
It's got an intriguing story and the world that you'll want to know more about
Its combat may not be on a dark souls level, but it'll still have you white knuckling your controller most of all though, it's got
Microtransactions done right the game is a roguelike in which you try to ascend this tower full of enemies
and it's entirely free to play but
Being a rogue-like you have to survive long enough to make it back to an elevator
Or you will lose all of your progress which can be just as harrowing as making it back to a dark souls bonfire
But if you do die the game gives you the option to pay Roughly the equivalent of 25
Cents to get back up and keep going just like an arcade
They give you a few credits for free every week and back when James was playing a ton of it he found himself paying maybe
75 cents a week for continues. Usually due to stupid mistakes or overconfidence now
I'm a hundred percent willing to pay
75 cents a week for something that gives me hours of entertainment and return. I wish more games would approach free-to-play like this
Oh and somewhere buried in the Playstation store menus
There's a one-time for a five-dollar starter pack that gives you several months worth of starting credit
So you know if you like the game? That's probably worth getting
Yakuza 0
If the two times we already name-dropped this game weren't recommendation enough. Here is the official games you might not have tried endorsement
We've wanted to recommend the yakuza game forever, but none of the games were ever quite there. This time though
I feel like they nailed it Yakuza 0 presents an interesting take on open-world design
instead of giving a huge open space with vast swaths of empty landscape
They have a very compact open-world with something interesting to find every few feet. More than that the story is awesome
the side stories are some of the most endearing you'll find in modern gaming, there is so much style to everything and their representation of
80s Japan is
phenomenal there are also so many
many games that I don't even know how to describe them if you want to play shogi or mahjong there are full and complete
versions of each of those games in there you want to do some batting practice?
Bowling? Race slot cars? Sing some karaoke? Those are all in there
And I am only scratching the surface
Heck there are fully emulated sega games packed into this, not to mention a real estate minigame and running a nightclub
minigame that each have their own storylines
And you could easily pour hours into each of those if you wanted. So if you're looking for a fun tough guy with a heart
of gold story that is dripping with style. You can do a lot worse than Yakuzo 0
Oh, and it's a prequel, so it's the perfect place to jump into the series
Everything
What do you want to be name anything?
Literally anything
Okay, this game is batty
You can literally be anything. You want to roll around as a goat?
Gotcha covered; plop down a level and you can waddle around as a beetle or as a patch of grass
Pop down one more time now your must drop down one more and now you're playing a bacteria or
maybe go the other way go bigger become a continent or a planet or a
Galaxy there are literally hundreds of things to discover and become all accompanied by the pseudo mystic lectures of Alan Watts
One of the first things which everybody should understand
Is that every creature in the universe that is in any way sensitive and in any manner of speaking conscious
Regards itself as a human being. Of course as you've probably noticed to include basically everything that's in this game
They had to cut some corners on the animation. It's art in the gameplay, but come on. It's everything
It's not only that every little organism which exists depends on its total environment
The reverse is also true that the total environment depends on each and every one of those little organisms
so that you could say this universe consists of
an arrangement of pattern
in which every event
is essential to the whole thing.
NieR: Automata
I guess games that let you do a lot of things has sort of been a theme today and NieR: Automata is no exception
Sometimes this game is an open-world action RPG sometimes it's a single stick shooter sometimes it's a twin stick shooter
Sometimes it is a pig riding simulator, but most of all it is a tragedy. It may not seem that way at first
But it's got more
Heartbreaking moments than the rest of the triple a scene delivers in a year and these moments aren't the sort of forced
Tearjerkers that you see in so many RPGs where a character you love
Sacrifices themselves for the greater cause. These are smaller tragedies tragedies that feels much more real
Tragedies that really stick with you. Did you play NieR?
Okay then you know what I'm talking about. And if you haven't played NieR, go play NieR too.
Sexy Brutale
If eight hours of murder and mayhem sound A-okay to you?
Then let's talk the Sexy Brutale. Now this isn't the type of mayhem, and murder you might be expecting though
This is really the Groundhogs Day of murder
It's sort of an adventure, puzzle, stealth game where you're trying to stop a wacky series of murders in a mansion where you can hop
back in time and
while some of the ways hopping back in time work can be a little irksome (like having to re-pick up all the things you
just picked up). It's actually the generous approach to stealth that intrigued me with this one. The rewind mechanics
take away some of that
arbitrary punishment
feeling that a lot of stealth games can give especially if you're the impatient type. Now this game is not without flaws
but if you're looking for an adventure with a solid
Morbid writing that revels in its Poe and it's Edward Gorey, you better check out Sexy Brutale
And finally Resident Evil 7
Granted I know it's a little weird to put a game that sold umpteen million copies on this list
But this is about games you might not have tried, and I know that. I almost didn't try this one.
What can I say, I had gotten a little tired of the action shooter series that Resident Evil had become. But if you have the
same reticence that I did don't fear or
do fear because this is the first Resident Evil game in a long time that returns to its horror roots. Moreover
it does so in an interesting way.
I was amazed that to see a Japanese studio totally nailed what I call
appalachian horror. This weird American sphere of primitive, almost atavistic families
isolated in the vast backcountry of the United States and
in an interesting twist that I hope doesn't spoil too much they managed to slide in just the slightest bit of
commentary by having this family
We're supposed to be afraid of not actually be degenerate or evil until they come into contact with a certain unambiguously evil megacorp
Resident Evil is good again y'all. Make some time for it
And with that I will leave you hopefully something here will help you get through those summer doldrums. See you next week