15/9/2022 0 Comments A Nintendo Direct and A State Of Play on The Same Day? - Here Are My Highlights!So the 13th of September was certainly an exciting day for gaming, we had the Nintendo Direct at the start of the day and at the end of the day, we had a State of Play from Sony. There were lots of things announced from both events but as usual, I’m just going to go through my personal highlights from both events, starting with the first event of the day which was the Nintendo Direct. The Nintendo Direct1. Fire Emblem Engauge – I’m an extreme Fire Emblem Fan, I’ve played through the majority of the games and I’ve always enjoyed the story, the characters and of course the battle system. This is an all-new story with a new cast of characters but it also has some characters from past games. The game seems to be centred around machinic where you summon older characters from the series like Marth to aid you in battle, which honestly sounds quite similar to what’s in the FE mobile game Heroes, or like how gambits worked in Three Houses, I just hope that it fits into the FE combat smoothly. The game also looks like it will have a semi-open world to explore like the Monastery in Three Houses, which I’m glad is returning. The only problem I have with the game so far is the name, it doesn’t sound as cool as some of the other names in the series. People have also pointed out online that the game looks very colourful, but I honestly think that the GBA games were full of colour so I think it might be the series pulling from its roots a little. I’m really excited about this one! 2. Octopath Traveller II – I was very surprised to see a sequel to Octopath Traveller announced because I thought that Octopath would just be a one-time thing. I don’t know too much about this series because I only ever played the demo of the first game, but I have to say I enjoyed what I played of it and would defiantly like to pick up both of these games in the future. The thing that I love the most about these games is the HD-2D art style, I think that it looks gorgeous, it was the game that popularised that art style for games after all. 3. THEATRHYTHM FINAL BAR LINE – Rhythm games have always been a genre for me that I’ve liked but never really put the time into, however, this game combines Final Fantasy Music with a Rhythm game which honestly sounds like something I could happily sink hours into. I don’t know much about this series either but it might be a game that I pick up in the future. 4. New Nintendo 64 Games on Nintendo Switch Online – I’m just going to list the New Nintendo 64 games announced here as one category because they were under one heading in the Direct as well. So the Games that are coming are Pilotwings 64, Mario Party, Mario Party 2, Mario Party 3, Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon Stadium 2, 1080º Snowboarding, Excitebike 64 and then the BIG ONE, 007 Golden Eye! I never got the chance to play any Nintendo 64 games growing up due to the fact that I only had my dad’s old PS1 and I never owned an N64, the closest I got to the console was playing it at a friend's house. The N64 is a console I’d love to add to the collection, but it's great that I can use the Nintendo Switch Online Service to play some of the most iconic games from the console before I buy them. I’m seriously looking forward to playing Goldeneye for the first time as well as playing the Mario Party Games online if I can get enough people. 5. Mario Kart 8 Booster Course Pack – Two New tracks were shown at the Direct and one of them is one of my favourite tracks from the Mario Kart Series and that track is Peach Gardens from Mario Kart DS. The other track that was announced was Merry Mountains from Mario Kart Tour. I didn’t play a lot of Tour when it was released, so I’m not familiar with any of the tracks from it, especially not the ones that are being put into the Booster Course Pack. I think that must have been the case with most people because Nintendo seems to be porting lots of them to the booster pack, maybe so that the money spent developing them isn’t wasted due to the low player count of Tour. 6. Master Detective Archives: RAINCODE – This one looked very very cool! I liked the world that this game was set in and how the setting was dark but also had some pops of neon colouring. The game is co-developed by the same team that made Danganronpa, which is a series I’ve always had an interest in trying but I have no idea where to start with it, however, this game seems to be a whole new IP and idea, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a detective game set in such a quirky and fantasy setting before. I’m very interested in learning more about this game so I’m hoping we’ll see more gameplay soon. 7. Crisis Core - Final Fantasy VII - Reunion – I haven’t played any Final Fantasy spin-off games and I will admit, I’ve only ever played a teeny tiny part of FF7 so I have a lot to catch up on before I can play this, however, I’ve heard really good things about Crisis Core and I’m honestly really glad that this remaster is coming to Switch because it’ll be great to have it handheld like the original PSP version. I thought that the combat for this looked fun and the music was very cool, I only had one gripe with this game and that is I thought that the voice-over sounded a little off in parts, still super excited to try this out, after I get finally get through my ever-growing Backlog of RPGs. 8. Tales of Symphonia Remastered – This is another RPG that I’ve always wanted to try out and get into because it’s another one that I’ve heard really good things about, however, to buy the original game on the GameCube would cost me an arm and a leg, so I’ve never been able to get into this series, however with this getting a remaster I should now be able to start the series and maybe get into some of the other games. They didn’t show too much gameplay of this but what they did show looked very good. 9. The Legend of Zelda – Tears of the Kingdom – The first ever Zelda game that I played was Breath of the Wild, I played and finished it last year and even though I was late to the party I really enjoyed the game. I wouldn’t say I’m the most hyped for a new Zelda game but I am a little disappointed that we haven’t seen more gameplay of this, however, the game isn’t being released until May so I’d say Nintendo is going to do a Zelda direct or a Tree House nearer to the release date so fully show off the key features of the game. What we have of the game so far looks like an improvement over Breath of The Wild which is defiantly a good thing, I’m also glad that we have a title as well but I am surprised that it didn’t have a Breath of The Wild Prefix since it is a sequel, but because I’m quite new to the Zelda series I’m not sure whether it’s common for the games to do that or not. Overall I thought the Direct was very good, a lot of people online seemed to complain that there were a lot of farm RPGs, which I will admit there were A LOT of farming RPGs but I feel like there were enough announcements from the event to balance everything out. I felt like a lot of the smaller games could have just been shown in a short flash reel but I also appreciate how every game had its time to shine here. The Sony State Of PlayIt is hard not to get hyped for a State of Play with the Music that they use before the events! This was a shorter event so there were fewer announcements here, but even though it was shorter the event was packed with some awesome announcements, so let’s get into my highlights. 1. Tekken 8 – Tekken on the PlayStation 1 was a game that I played so much as a kid (I even played it again recently on stream, I still suck) but I’ve never gotten the chance to play any of the new ones. I recently got back into fighting games when I played Mortal Kombat 11 and I’d love to try out more of them. This trailer was a great opener for the event and I’d honestly love to get into the newer Tekken games so this might be one that I end up picking up in the future. I’m defiantly a very casual fighting game player because I can never remember the combos and tend to just block and hit, so let's hope that Tekken 8 is beginner friendly for a filthy casual like me. 2. Like a Dragon: Ishin – This game might be one of the most interesting games that Sony showed off at this event. The Yakuza series to an outsider like me is so confusing, I’d argue it’s just as confusing as Kingdom Hearts at this point. This Yakuza game is a big deal to people though and for good reason, it’s a samurai spin-off that was only ever released in Japan because at the time the Yakuza series wasn’t selling well in the west (This Article Explains everything in more detail - https://www.eurogamer.net/heres-why-like-a-dragon-ishin-is-a-big-deal). Yakuza is a series I would love to get into and a Samurai spin-off set in Feudal Japan is 100% something I’m interested in, so it might be my gateway into the series. The Combat looked really fun and the story looked very wacky too which is honestly one of the key reasons I want to get into the games. 3. Steller Blade – This is a game that I’ve been following since I saw it at another State of Play last summer, but it was announced before that back in 2019. It was originally named Project Eve but the name has since been changed to Steller Blade which I honestly think is a fantastic title for a video game. We got to see more gameplay and characters for this one, as well as a release date which is exactly what I wanted to see from this game, it looks like a hack-and-slash sci-fi RPG and it looks like it'll be a ton of fun to learn about the world and see how the story of the game is, I’m not sure if the story is trying to be serious or just light-hearted fun. Some people are comparing this game to Bayoneta but I think that gameplay-wise they look quite different and I feel like this game is going to be its own thing. 4. Rise of The Ronin – This is another Samurai game set in 1860s Japan, during the start of the Bakumatsu period specifically. I do feel as though the rise in popularity of games set in historic Japan is due to how popular Ghost of Tsushima was, I learned so much about Japanese history and culture from Ghost of Tsushima so I honestly don’t mind more games being set in similar periods of Japan’s history. Everything I saw from Rise of The Ronin looked beautiful but I think what really sold me on the game was the combat, it looks like you’ll be able to play with more weapons than just samurai swords, it looks like there will be guns from that period too. I think that this might be my favourite game from the event and the more I read and see about it the more I want to play it. 5. God Of War Ragnarök – This one honestly came out of left field and surprised me a little bit, I’ve never played any God of War games (Honestly at this point take a shot every time I mention games I haven’t played…) and it wasn’t a series that I was really interested in getting into until I saw this trailer, it was THAT GOOD! The game looked stunning, the combat looked fun and the story looked like a wild ride, I honestly couldn’t fault that trailer and I have no doubt that Sony Santa Monica will deliver on everything that was shown here. I’m pretty excited to eventually get to this game once I catch up on the series. Even though this State of Play was short I think that the event was well-paced and there was something here for almost any type of gamer, whether you wanted to see more VR, Third Party or First party games. I don’t think we’ll ever see a Nintendo Direct and a State of play side by side again outside of an E3 setting. There was also so much more announced in both of these events than what I covered so if you’re interested defiantly check out the full events. I’m very happy with what was announced and I’m excited to get my hands on some of these games in the future! What were your favourite announcements from the events this week?
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