Things were already going to slow down in the wake of the release of Final Fantasy VII Remake, but with May coming up, and everyone’s favorite virus, COVID-19, still going strong, you should expect the upcoming slate of games to be less than..er, stellar. Need an example of how low we’re going to sink; an expansion for Fallout 76 is the top release of the week.

Fallout 76: Wastelanders (PC – including Steam/PS4/Xbox One) – Releases Apr. 14^th

A year and a half ago, back in October of 2018, the world was given an early lump of coal in their stockings, the abysmal Fallout 76. While there were some players who enjoyed the game, including a few here in our ‘Cado community, the majority of the world took one look at the game and told it to kick rocks. Bethesda took a once loved franchise and ruined it (and to some, this was the second time they did that, re: Fallout 3), replacing a deep, robust open world with a vast, empty wasteland that was just as boring to explore as it was for me to write this sentence. One major gripe that players had (of, well, many gripes) was that there were no human NPCs in the game, with all of your missions given out by computers. Even the lore of the game was told through journal entries, letters, etc., all from the glow of the computer screen. It was less than ideal, but Bethesda “heard you loud and clear” and promised to have human NPCs in the game by 2019…and then it didn’t happen. The team needed more time to get it right, and now here we are, a year and a half later, and you can finally talk to another (fake) human being. Will this new addition to Fallout 76 help save the game? If you ask legacy players they’ll tell you that, over time, the game has gotten gradually better, iterating itself several times over to make it more of an enjoyable experience. At the same time, however, it is still an MMO, with all the grinding that entails, and comes with the baggage of dickhead players who just want to troll you, and everyone’s favorite weapon, the nuclear bomb, being used as a super fun game mechanic to constantly nuke the map for loot, just like the builders of the bomb intended.

Billion Road (PC/Switch) – Releases Apr. 16^th

Tired of playing physical board games with your family while stuck in quarantine? Don’t wory, now there’s a digital board game you can play with them! Check out Billion Road, a game just as boring (if not more-so) than Monopoly, but without all that clean up at the end when someone eventually flips the board out of frustration. The game bears a striking resemblance to Fortune Street, a popular series of digital board games that have been around in Japan since the days of the NES, however I can’t find any info on if this is related in any way. Whatever the case, it looks cute, but so did Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival and that game was so bad it killed the Wii U (okay, not really, but we need to blame somebody).

Drug Dealer Simulator (PC) – Releases Apr. 16^th

“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttt, this looks fucking TIGHT!“

– Brandon Thomas, 7th grade

The Fox Awaits Me (Switch) – Releases Apr. 16^th

Based on the content of this trailer I assume your goal is to bang as many of these…”women”…as possible, in the creepy bamboo forest. Just another fun game for the whole family on Nintendo Switch!

“MOM, THESE GIRLS ARE ALL OVER 18, IT SAYS SO IN THEIR BIOS, DID YOU READ THEM LIKE I ASKED YOU TO??!!! ARE MY TENDIES READY YET??!!!!!???”

– Brandon Thomas, 7th grade

Hellpoint (PC/PS4/Switch/Xbox One) – Releases Apr. 16^th DELAYED to Q2

What happens when you take Hellraiser, Event Horizon, Dead Space, and Warhammer, then throw them in a blender? You get Hellpoint, an action RPG that is, surprise, modeled after Dark Souls. This feels like something I’d get in a Humble Bundle three years from now and never install, letting it slip deeper and deeper into the void…

Everything else:

Path of Giants (Switch) – Releases Apr. 14^th

Galaxy Warfighter (PC/Switch) – Releases Apr. 16^th

Later Daters (PC/Switch) – Releases Apr. 16^th

Save Your Nuts (PC/PS4/Switch/Xbox One) – Releases Apr. 16^th

Purrs In Heaven (Switch) – Releases Apr. 17^th

Notable Releases from 10, 20 and 30 years ago:

We’ve got three diverse titles to discuss this week, from a surprising Wii exclusive, to a forgotten fighting game entry, to a game that would go on to influence some of the most important RTS games in history.

Monster Hunter Tri (Wii) – Released Apr. 14^th, 2010: Wiki Link

After two releases on the PlayStation 2, Capcom decided to eschew the PS3 and release the third game in the series on Nintendo’s highly successful Wii console…giving them their worst sales numbers on a home console to date. Why, though? It’s not like the game wasn’t good, in fact it got overwhelmingly positive reviews, even garnering a rare perfect score in the notoriously picky Famitsu magazine, being only the eleventh game in the magazine’s history to receive such a score, and was the THIRD Wii title to get one (for those keeping score at home, those other titles were Super Smash Bros. Brawl and…428: Shibuya Scramble). For those unfamiliar with the series, you play the role of a monster slayer, and as such you are dispatched to various villages and towns in the world by the Guild, doing tasks for both them and the people you are assigned to protect. These tasks, not surprisingly, are usually related to hunting monsters. By venturing out into the surrounding areas, you will come across creatures both big and small, slaying them with impunity on a never ending quest to get better gear. The game can be played solo, but to tackle really tough monsters you can take the game online and match up with fellow monster slayers for epic battles. New features added to the third entry included underwater areas to hunt monsters in, as well as voice chat, done through the Wii Speak peripheral. Despite the low sales, it is still one of the best selling third-party titles on the Wii, and a subsequent re-release on the 3DS boosted the title’s sales numbers, positioning it as the third or fourth best selling in the series’ history, so it wasn’t a complete loss. It also came out on the Wii U, a system I’m not sure actually existed, despite having one presently hooked up to my television.

Samurai Shodown: Warriors Rage (PlayStation) – Released Apr. 18^th, 2000: Wiki Link

After three fairly successful 2D fighting games in the Samurai Shodown series, SNK decided to go the 3D polygon route, and remove the numbering in the title, with the release of Samurai Showdow 64 in 1997 (surprisingly, this was not on the Nintendo 64, but instead on the Neo Geo 64 arcade system). This would be followed by Samurai Shodown 64: Warriors Rage, also only released to arcades, and then finally the PlayStation exclusive, Samurai Showdown: Warriors Rage, which, while still 3D, is NOT a port of the arcade title bearing the similar name. The naming convention was so confusing to players that it is now mostly referred to as Warriors Rage 2 in fighting game circles. Featuring an almost completely new cast of characters, Warriors Rage centers on a young samurai named Seishiro Kuki as he is drawn into a quest to rescue a young woman with some kind of supernatural powers (this same story is pretty much the same for all characters in the game, but Seishiro is the canon protagonist). Battling your way through multiple fights, including some marathon matches that really test your skills, this game is tough but fair. I was able to get through Seishiro’s story in about an hour with only a couple of save scrubs along the way (I have no shame). This is a really fun fighting game, but is it great in a competitive sense, eh, I don’t know, didn’t play it two player, but as a solo experience I had a wonderful time with it. Yet, despite how fun the game it, it had a very poor reception outside of Japan. On top of the confusing title, the game was also released just a few months before the launch of the PS2 in North America, meaning that all of the hype was heading in that direction, and a janky looking PSX game from a series that most people had ignored since the mid 90’s wasn’t exactly going to set the world on fire. After this title, the Samurai Shodown series would go back to 2D, and to be honest, while Warriors Rage is 3D, you fight on a 2D plane, so it was already starting to get back to this format anyway. Pretty much every character from this game never made another appearance in the series, aside from maybe brief mentions in other character’s bios, and has not seen any kind of re-release in North America, which is too bad.

Herzog Zwei (Genesis) – Released Apr. 1990: Wiki Link

A few weeks ago I discussed two early RTS games, Military Madness and Conflict. While neither of these titles blew up in North America, there were still a few hardcore war gaming enthusiasts who took notice, particularly the team at Westwood Studios who would cite Military Madness and this week’s featured title, Herzog Zwei, as a major influence on their equally influential title, Dune II. Other games said to be influenced by Herzog Zwei include, Warcraft, Command & Conquer, Starcraft, War of the Rings, and Brutal Legend, according to Wikipedia. With this kind of legacy you would think that Herzog Zwei would have been a massive success with tons of glowing reviews…sadly, that was not the case. The lone North American review I can find is from EGM in their May, 1990 issue in which they gave the game a 4.25 out of 10, stating that it was “Only for die-hard gamers who want strategy in their shooters“. As far as sales go, it was a flop, being seen as too obtuse and complicated for a system that was best known in its early life as a machine that ran arcade ports. Alright, so what the hell is this game anyway, you might be asking, well, in simple terms, it’s an RTS game with shooter elements. When the game starts you pick a map and scenario, then you are just dropped in with very little guidance on what to do. Long before the internet was at our fingertips, you had to figure things out the old fashioned way, by reading the manual, or talking face to face with another human being that had already played the game. The objective of Herzog Zwei is to annihilate your opponents base by building units and securing forward bases. Unlike later RTS games in which you’d build a structure and then generate units from them, in Herzog Zwei you must manually move your units with your flying mech, carrying them to various points on the map. In another twist, once built, you are not able to command your units, that must be done during the build phase. Need someone to guard the base; build a tank that is ordered to sit still until it sees the enemy. Need someone to patrol a section of the map; build a motorcycle soldier that is ordered to drive around in a small circle. Need to take over the enemy base; build infantry units who are ordered to walk towards the base and not stop until they get there, even if it means ignoring other enemies while they get shot. It’s not a perfect game, and doing all of this on a controller is a bit cumbersome, but for die-hard games who want strategy in their shooters, this is a really fun game that goes out of its way to test your limits. Being such a commercial failure has kept this game from ever being re-released, so chances are you’ll need to either find a rare physical copy out in the wild, or play it through emulation.