Category: Games

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I know Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee have only just been released, and I’ve enjoyed diving back into Kanto all over again, but more than anything else that journey has just made me crave a brand-new adventure. Seeing old creatures brought to life in ways we’ve not seen before with the Switch‘s superior graphical capabilities was thrilling, and while the nostalgia Kanto carries with it is welcome, I feel a new region with all-new monsters would help use the Switch’s hardware in a more interesting way. It’s for that reason I can’t wait for the “core” Pokemon game for Nintendo Switch.

I’d also welcome the return of the traditional catching and battling mechanics, as well as the slightly more strategic elements omitted by Let’s Go, such as abilities. Forgoing random encounters in favor of physical Pokemon in the overworld was a masterstroke though, so I hope that remains in the “core RPG” Game Freak is working on for Switch.

Plus, how great will it be to play a proper Pokemon adventure on your TV? Being able to take a Pokemon game on the go has always been great–and of course, that will be no different on Switch–but I’d always dreamed of exploring Johto or Hoenn on a bigger screen with more powerful hardware.

Right now, we don’t know a huge deal about the upcoming Pokemon game for Switch. The Pokemon Company has confirmed the title will launch during the latter half of 2019, and that it’s working on a method of transferring old monsters to the new games.

“We’re definitely always thinking of that kind of forward-moving functionality, especially since we’ve introduced [Pokemon transfer service] Pokemon Bank,” Pokemon director Junichi Masuda told GameSpot in October. “Now, up to Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, you’re able to store your Pokemon, and we know they’re very important to everyone. I mean, obviously, people would be very sad if they couldn’t use their Pokemon in a future game. So, it does get complicated when you talk about the details and we’re still figuring it out, but we do have plans to find ways to let players use their Pokemon in the next game.”

Neither The Pokemon Company nor Game Freak have actually stated whether the new Pokemon game will be a brand-new entry–or entries–in the series, signaling the start of generation eight, or if it will simply be a remake or “upper version” of a previous game. However, since Let’s Go Eevee and Let’s Go Pikachu are Pokemon Yellow remakes of sorts, and the previous games, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are upper versions of old games as well, it would be a surprise if the upcoming RPG was not a totally new game. With any luck, that means we’ll get to explore a new region with all-new creatures in just a few months! Roll on 2019.

Campo Santo’s Firewatch is one of my favorite games in recent memory. It tells a memorable, heartfelt story, exploring solitude and human relationships through a unique premise–You’re a fire lookout in 1989, and the only emotional connection you have is restricted to a single person on the other end of a walkie-talkie. Its art direction is superb, its music is evocative, and the way it comes together to tell its story is unforgettable. We heralded it as one of our top games of 2016, and perhaps unsurprisingly, a film adaptation is currently in the works.

Naturally, my love for Firewatch makes me incredibly eager to see the kinds of interesting things the Campo Santo team are going to attempt with their next title, In The Valley Of Gods. Revealed at The Game Awards in 2017, its sole trailer depicts another fascinating premise–Set in 1920’s Egypt, you play disgraced explorer and filmmaker Rashida, who is taking one last grand adventure to try and document the discovery of the tomb of Queen Nefertiti (which still remains undiscovered to this day). Rashida is joined by her former partner Zora, whom she has troubled history with.

On its face, the setup already reveals a relationship that I’m eager to see unfold–there’s a dynamic of codependence and trust required by two people who presumably have some serious issues with one another. I’m also curious to see how Campo Santo uses physical space and body language to explore this relationship. Creating compelling physical performances is going to be a new challenge for the team, for one, and the fact that you’ll presumably be in close proximity to Zora the majority of the time has me keen to see how the tension and dialogue ebbs and flows.

I’m also curious to see how the backstory is revealed and dealt with–if at all. Company founders Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin were directors on Telltale’s The Walking Dead, and the way that seminal first season handled the mysterious past of its protagonist Lee in the first few episodes made for an interesting dynamic–you had to embody and converse as him, despite not knowing anything about his past. Needing to paint your own a picture of him in your head with your own assumptions was a neat way to get invested.

Then there’s the overarching plot–I’m eager to see how the more grounded, historical mystery unfolds. Firewatch’s chronology was fragmented and told over a long period of time, and I’m presuming that the expedition of In The Valley Of Gods will be more concentrated and uninterrupted. Campo Santo have said in interviews that they’re aiming to take into account the real-world happenings in history, archeology, and technology of 1920, which I also look forward to learning more about.

The trailer revealed some kind of cinematography aspect to the game–Rashida and Zora are filmmakers, of course, and they’re documenting events with a 35mm camera. I’m curious to see how that mechanic ends up being implemented, and I’m eager to see what kinds of new dimensions that might add to what you might typically expect from a daring archeological adventure. Will players be able to frame the events of the adventure differently, and how might that impact the narrative and relationships between the characters?

Though the slated release window for In The Valley Of Gods changed from 2019 to “TBD” at some point, I’m still hoping to learn more about it next year. Campo Santo has been busy in the meantime, however. The studio was acquired by Valve Corporation (you know, the company behind Dota 2, Half-Life, and Steam) in April of 2018 and relocated to Seattle. This means that In The Valley Of Gods will be released as a Valve game. The team also worked on bringing Firewatch to Nintendo Switch, which released in December 2018.

Exploring ancient civilizations isn’t a unique premise in games, the Tomb Raiders and Uncharteds of the world have reveled in making the concept exciting and action-packed for a number of years. But In The Valley Of Gods looks like its take will be more grounded, where the major conflicts are more interpersonal and less… fatal, I hope. I know the team is capable of creating fantastic narrative adventures, and I can’t wait to spend time with Rashida and Zora.

We’re giving away free PS4 and Xbox One codes for Subnautica to twenty (20) lucky fans! (Scroll down to enter below.)

Subnautica is an underwater adventure game set on an alien ocean planet. A massive, open world full of wonder and peril awaits you!

This is not an instant win. No purchase necessary. Competition ends at 12:00 PM PT on January 7, 2019, in which 20 winners will be chosen at random and emailed a code for the full game (MSRP: $30).

Enter below:

More about the game:

Subnautica lets PlayStation®4 and Xbox One players discover a breathtaking, but perilous underwater world. An unexpected crash on a mysterious planet tasks explorers with scouring an alien ocean to locate vital resources, while escaping terrifying creatures who dwell in the deepest, darkest crevices of the sea. Each player’s journey through this immersive underwater world also allows them to catalog alien wildlife, craft equipment needed for survival and build a customized underwater base of operations

Few games wear their inspiration on their sleeve as proudly as Battle Princess Madelyn does. From the moment you lay eyes on its detailed pixel artwork and see the titular armor-clad Madelyn throwing lances at the creeping undead in a murky marsh, you’ll immediately have flashbacks to the classic Ghosts ‘n Goblins series. That’s not a knock against the game–if you’re going to take inspiration for your retro-styled platformer, you may as well take it from some time-tested classics. And when Battle Princess Madelyn is at its peak, it really feels like a worthy successor to those games.

Unfortunately, that fiendishly fun and challenging action game is only half of Battle Princess Madelyn. The other half is a botched attempt to shoehorn large-scale levels filled with traps, tough enemies, and tricky platforming into a Metroidvania formula.

Battle Princess Madelyn finds our rough, tough royal recovering from her family being kidnapped by a wicked sorcerer. In the wake of such tragedy, she sets out to find and defeat the fiend… but she’s not alone, as the soul of her deceased dog Fritzy is there to fight alongside her and help revive her when she falls in combat. She’ll explore creepy crypts, sprawling caves, volcanic peaks, haunted fields, and dangerous waters in her quest to save her loved ones, and it certainly won’t be easy. It’s a simple premise, but an effective one, and the ghost dog gimmick adds a nice little dash of originality.

There are two play modes in Battle Princess Madelyn: Arcade Mode and Story Mode. Both options follow the same story but present it in a different way. Arcade Mode is short on dialogue and cinematics and long on fierce action, while Story Mode goes far more in-depth, featuring a semi-open world, story beats to progress through, items and secrets to uncover, and NPCs to interact with. Movement and action in both modes are similar, though in Story Mode, Madelyn has to find items needed to progress and gain abilities; in arcade mode, she has the necessary abilities from the start (aside from optional weapon drops from enemies).

Arcade mode is where you can most clearly see this game’s Ghouls ‘n Ghosts inspiration. The one-hit buffer of your breakable armor, the various weapons like lances and axes, the unending waves of creeping zombies that make it hard to stay in one place for too long–heck, even Madelyn’s running animation looks like they referenced several of Arthur’s frames. It does improve on the GnG formula in some key ways, though. Madelyn’s double-jump is much easier to control, and her life force–powered by Fritzy’s ghostly magic–can be replenished by slaying enough enemies. She can also spend a little bit of Fritzy’s magic to perform a homing attack on an enemy, which is a great aid in some of the trickier areas. While the game doesn’t really explain these controls to you, you should know well what to do, especially if you’ve experienced simple 2D platforming before.

The Arcade Mode is easily the best part of Battle Princess Madelyn. It’s a tough action-platformer that rewards careful, thoughtful play and features memorable environments, tricky platforming, and some really cool encounters with gigantic bosses. Yes, you do have to restart the whole level if Fritzy’s life-giving magic power runs dry, but that’s part of the old-school experience. At least there aren’t limited continues! Rounding out the retro experience is a great chiptune soundtrack that really helps make the game feel like a forgotten relic. (You could change it to an orchestrated version, but why would you?)

While Arcade Mode is a great experience for challenge-seeking action fans, Story Mode is a pretty heavy disappointment in comparison: a fumbled effort at trying to fit a patient, precise platformer into an exploration-based gameplay mold that often fails in incredibly frustrating ways. Unfortunately, Story Mode is also the default mode, meaning that most folks are going to play it first… and likely have a bad taste in their mouth from it.

Story Mode tasks you with exploring several interconnected areas based on similar design concepts to the ones seen in arcade mode, but with very different layouts. Your abilities are extremely limited at the beginning, and in order to progress, you need to scour these sprawling areas to find routes, items, and NPCs that will help you on your quest.

The problems with Story Mode become obvious from an early point, and only worsen as the game progresses. For starters, the extremely large, hazard-laden areas feature little in the way of checkpoints, meaning that losing all of Madelyn’s energy results in a complete restart from the area’s entrance–a tolerable setback in a linear arcade mode, but infuriating in an exploration-driven game. In addition, a lot of these areas tend to look very samey in terms of props and backgrounds, so unless the level you’re in features a very linear path, you may have some serious trouble figuring out how to get back to a specific location.

In addition, a lot of things just aren’t hinted at or explained well at all. One way the game tries to guide you is with a bony skeleton hand that will sometimes pop up to point in the general direction of important items, but it’s less useful and more frustrating when the means to get to said items are difficult to discern.

Sticking points like this come up often, particularly when you have to start backtracking to reach previously inaccessible areas with new abilities and especially when you have to do quests for NPCs, some of which are necessary to proceed. It’s easy to forget what character needs which macguffin, or who needs to be rescued where, and there’s no quest log or intuitive way to remind you of what’s needed. Compared to the skill-testing action-game challenges of Arcade Mode, Story Mode’s challenges are frustrating in a far worse way: they often fail to tell you just what the heck you’re supposed to do, leaving you to wander aimlessly through huge, dangerous maps in hopes that you might find or trigger something.

Battle Princess Madelyn looks and sounds fantastic, and half the game is a delightful spiritual throwback to a beloved action game series. It’s a shame that the other half drags down the whole package–and performance issues on Switch like slowdown and stalling when moving through menus don’t help, either. There’s at least one great game in the Battle Princess Madelyn package, but it’s hard to fully recommend it when the game mode that’s presented front and center drops the ball royally.

With 2019 right around the corner, we’ve polled GameSpot’s staff to find out what games they are looking forward to most in the new year. To be eligible, a game must simply have a release date currently planned for 2019. Of course, we all know nothing is set in stone; there’s always a chance some games could slip into 2020. When you’re done reading this entry, follow along with all of our other end-of-the-year coverage collected in our Best of 2018 hub.

Kingdom Hearts 3 is set to conclude the Dark Seeker saga, a story that began with the original Kingdom Hearts way back in 2002. Kingdom Hearts 2, the last numbered entry, came in 2005. Over the past 13 years, the series has seen numerous spin-offs across multiple console and handheld generations, and the story has only gotten bigger and more complicated. Kingdom Hearts 3 has the unenviable task of wrapping up 16 years of lore, and for that reason, I cannot wait to play it.

This will be the first time our Avengers-esque team of heroes is fully assembled. Childhood friends Sora, Riku, and Kairi; Keyblade trainees Aqua, Terra, and Ventus; and even Mickey Mouse himself are gathering for a final battle against Xehanort. And if those names mean nothing to you, you can see why over a decade of games has made the lore a bit convoluted.

It’s not just the conclusion of a story that has me excited for Kingdom Hearts 3, though. We’ll be revisiting fan-favorite Disney worlds like Pirates of the Caribbean’s Port Royale and Winnie the Pooh’s 100 Acre Wood, and we’ll also be exploring a host of never-before-seen levels. We’ve seen worlds inspired by Frozen, Tangled, Toy Story, Big Hero 6, and Monsters Inc., and each one gives our heroes a new look and set of special attacks.

Speaking of which, combat has a few new hooks in Kingdom Hearts 3 as well. You can run up walls a la Dream Drop Distance, and Sora can even summon Disney theme park rides like Thunder Mountain Railroad and the Spinning Tea Cups to deal heavy damage to the Heartless horde. This is on top of unique weapon transformations based on the Disney world you’re currently in. I’ve enjoyed Kingdom Hearts’ fusion of real-time combat and menu-based spellcasting in the past, and based on my time playing the Toy Story and Hercules stages at E3 2018, I’ll add that it feels better than ever.

That show was the last time we went hands-on with Kingdom Hearts 3, but we’ll get a chance to experience the whole adventure on PS4 and Xbox One on January 29, 2019. If it’s the complete saga you’re after, you can grab Kingdom Hearts: The Story So Far and experience the entire franchise. And if you’d rather spend far less time getting hyped for the new one, you can enjoy the game’s opening song, courtesy of Skrillex and the returning Utada Hikaru.

Ever since its reveal back at E3 2018, Devil May Cry 5 has continually impressed me with every new trailer and detail we learn about it. Sure, it’s sticking close to the classic formula of battling legions of demons with gloriously over the top and somewhat impractical weapons, but Capcom’s action game series has always been in a class of its own when it comes to high-flying, stylish combat. This all works thanks to its likeable cast of characters, including lead protagonist Dante and his familiar devil-may-care attitude that’s just too fun to roll your eyes at. That sort of confidence in its identity, even after all these years, is something I’ve always loved about the series, and Devil May Cry 5 certainly aims to make up for lost time by offering the most refined and visually stunning outing yet.

Of course, fans who’ve been keeping up with the series will no doubt notice the obvious elephant in the room when looking at this game. Ninja Theory’s 2013 reboot, DmC: Devil May Cry, was a valiant effort that offered an interesting twist on the DMC mythos, but Capcom decided that there’s still more to be said with the original series. Though DmC is among my personal favorites–and I wish more players would give it a fair shake–there is something rather special about seeing classic Devil May Cry back in action, especially when many of the trailers and playables demo show that it hasn’t missed a beat since its hiatus.

With three playable characters in Devil May Cry 5–Dante, Nero, and newcomer V–and a larger campaign that can bring them all together for co-op gameplay, the next game will be upping the ante in a more extravagant way. It’s also especially satisfying to see that DMC5 has taken several cues from the stylish and modern flair that Ninja Theory brought to the series. This is most apparent with the return of dynamic battle themes that ramp up based on performance topped off with the slick slow-mo finishes to the end of an intense clash.

One of the things I’ve been really enjoying from our early looks at Devil May Cry 5 is that it seems to be keenly aware of its place in the series. Directly referencing the original games, the anime and manga, and even acknowledging the black sheep Devil May Cry 2 in some form–the next entry is aiming to be the title that brings many of the events and characters from past games full-circle. It all seems fitting for Capcom’s next stylish-action game to look back on its lineage as a whole, as it plans to finish the main story of the Sparda saga. Whether it’ll close things proper, or if it’ll lead into the next phase of the series remains to be seen, but Devil May Cry 5 will no doubt revel in the time it has–and it’ll definitely look good while doing it.

If you’re in need of a refresher with what’s new in DMC5, check out our feature on everything we know about the game so far.

I’ve been a bit of a slow convert to From Software’s work throughout the years. While I’m still learning to love Dark Souls, Bloodborne remains an all-time favorite of mine and the first (and only) game from the studio that I ever beat. Its moody gothic setting and speedy tactical combat resonated with me more than the slower, more defensive Dark Souls. But it seems the studio’s latest, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, just might dethrone Bloodborne for me in 2019.

I won’t lie to you, I’m a big fan of feudal Japan as a setting, so you can imagine why the mere sight of Sekiro has me excited. I can’t wait to experience From Software’s fantastical interpretation of Sengoku-era Japan, as well as see how it chooses to reimagine both history and myth. In addition, the premise of playing as a nameless shinobi with a weaponized prosthetic arm seeking to save his lord and get revenge appeals to me in its resemblance to ancient Japanese myths and legends.

Similar to Dark Souls and Bloodborne, Sekiro challenges you to make repeated runs through dungeons packed with fierce enemies and hidden traps. But what I find alluring about Sekiro is how it appears familiar but totally reevaluates all the mechanics you generally associate with From Software games. Absent are many of the RPG elements you’d expect, such as character creation, classes, and equipment upgrades. Instead, Sekiro is an entirely new experience set apart from the studio’s previous work that emphasizes action, stealth, and platforming.

It’s thrilling to see your progotanist use a grappling hook to string together acrobatic jumps from one ledge to the next. The emphasis on split-second attack deflection and hit-and-run assaults in combat is refreshing and exciting. Sneaking around and stabbing foes while their guard is down provides variety to your modes of attack. And then there’s the new resurrection mechanic where you can purposefully die to trick enemies, and return when their backs are turned to inflict a lethal surprise strike. There’s a bold confidence in the new mechanics From Software introduces in Sekiro, displaying a willingness from the studio to step away from its near-decade-old Soulsborne formula.

Not much more has been revealed about Sekiro since its most recent showcase at Tokyo Game Show 2018. One of the most notable news stories to come out about the project was the fact that it started life as a Tenchu game, From Software’s long-dormant stealth-action ninja series. This fact alone was more than enough to seal my interest in Sekiro, as I have many fond memories playing Tenchu in the early 2000s. Regardless, more news is bound to come in the new year–likely once we get closer to the game’s March 22 launch.

For a brief rundown on everything there is to know about Sekiro, be sure to read our feature highlighting all the essential details.