This Week in Games

Stars Align

Oh boy, oh boy, Halloween's in a couple of days! I was thinking I should do something super spooky for this week's column, but then I saw Facebook's promo reel for the “metaverse” and now I'm pretty sure no imaginary demons summoned from the netherworld can ever be as frightening and evil as big corporate tech ideas of the future.

Speaking of big corporations, though, there's a big ol’ rumor going around that Warner Bros. is making their own Super Smash Bros.-like crossover platformer with Netherrealm Studios (of Mortal Kombat fame), featuring characters from the firm's film, TV show, game, comic, and animation offerings all thrown together into a platform fighter. A supposed screenshot was even tweeted out by pro Smash player Hungrybox on Twitter, showing a select screen with the likes of Bugs Bunny, Steven Universe, Gandalf, Batman, Rick & Morty, and others… which WB took down with copyright claims. Mighty suspicious!

Assuming this game exists (it probably does), it's the second major crossover Smash-like based on a massive corporation's IP holdings to be announced this year after Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. And it's probably not the last we'll see in the near future, either! I'm sure plenty of media executives saw how much social media buzz accompanied every single Super Smash Bros. Ultimate character announcement and said, “Holy smokes, people sure do care about this silly game! We need to do that too, but with more Brands™ for the zoomers to connect with!”

Mark my words: In the next 3 years, we'll probably have a Smash clone where you can play as the Geico gecko, the Pillsbury doughboy, the Michelin Man, and Mac Tonight. The videogame equivalent of Foodfight!. This is the future, everyone. Isn't it terrifying?

Anyhow, most of this week's news comes via Sony's short State of Play broadcast from earlier this week. Let's take a dive into what was shown:

THERE'S ANOTHER STAR OCEAN COMING, TO THE SURPRISE OF MOST EVERYONE

Perhaps the most unexpected announcement of Sony's State of Play conference was a new installment in the long-running science-fantasy series Star Ocean. Here's the trailer for Star Ocean: The Divine Force, coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and PC:

The online reaction to this trailer can be summed up as, “oh, huh. A new Star Ocean. Didn't see that coming. …Huh.”

I mean, yeah… the trailer doesn't look awful, even if the character models have an unsettling glass-eyed look to them, but Star Ocean as a whole doesn't seem to inspire much excitement in folks anymore. Lots of folks played and loved Second Story, got to the infuriating plot twist in Till the End of Time, and then simply didn't care about everything that came afterwards.

The tepid reception of Integrity and Faithlessness in Japan and the West, along with the doomed mobile game Anamnesis (it died incredibly quickly in North America, held on for a while in Japan, but eventually petered out there too) made me think that the series was done and Tri-Ace would primarily become a development support studio. Guess not! Somebody at either Square-Enix or Tri-Ace really, really wants to bring Star Ocean back to its glory days, but I don't think that's going to happen. Even so, there's a good chance it'll at least be better than the previous game.

Meanwhile, us Valkyrie Profile fans are sitting here like

KING OF FIGHTERS XV GETS A NEW CHARACTER, A NEW TEAM, AND A PUBLIC BETA

Another big showcase at the State of Play was King of Fighters XV. SNK took their opportunity in the spotlight to introduce another character: the fresh-faced, braided and be-spectacled Dolores. Let's check out her trailer!

Hmmm, yes, definitely seeing the Angel influence in her outfit, what with all of those impractical-but-stylish cut-out bits. She's got quite a menacing air about her, too, which stands in stark contrast to her sexy costume design. Yeah, I dig it.

Dolores will be joining Isla and Heidern on Team Rival. Why is Heidern on a rivals team? Who knows! We'll just have to wait for the official lore. Still, definitely an interesting mix.

But perhaps even more exciting than the character announcement is a public online beta, set for next month! This is going to be a surprisingly full-featured test drive, offering online casual and lobby matches as well as offline versus and training modes. The downside is that the beta won't feature the whole cast (only Kyo, Iori, Chizuru, Yashiro, Shermie, Chris, Shunei, and Dolores) and is only available on PS4 and PS5. SNK gotta get that sweet Sony promotion somehow, I guess.

Still, this should give us a chance to see if KoFXV's netcode is up to snuff compared to current online king, Guilty Gear Strive (and if it isn't, give SNK time to fix it up before release). The beta doesn't require any pre-registration or pre-orders, and will be live from November 19 to 22. If you wanna play some beta KoF, mark those dates down!

DEATHVERSE: LET IT DIE EXPANDS ON A FREE-TO-PLAY SLEEPER HIT

GungHo Online Entertainment is best known for their long-running mobile hit Puzzle and Dragons and the Capcom-flavored digital card game Teppen, but in recent years they've been branching out to expand their free-to-play offerings to consoles. Let it Die and Ninjala are among their F2P games that, while not massive smashes on the level of, say, Fortnite, have managed to earn themselves a solid playerbase and audience.

It seems that GungHo was clearly pleased with the performance of Let It Die, as one of the highlights of State of Play was the announcement of a Let It Die… spinoff? Sequel? I'm not entirely sure how to classify this, but here's the trailer:

Yeah, that sure looks a lot like Let It Die with some Running Man-esque theming mixed in! It's described as “Player vs. Player vs. Environment combat,” meaning there's probably (definitely) some Battle Royale-ish elements in there, seeing as how that's the thing these days.

So where's Grasshopper Manufacture, who worked on the original Let It Die? Well… not here, it seems! Deathverse is being developed by Supertrick Games, who are related to Grasshopper but not actually Grasshopper. Here's my understanding: GungHo bought Grasshopper, worked with them for a while, Grasshopper head Suda51 butted heads with management and effectively took back and reformed Grasshopper as an independent studio with a smaller staff, but the former GungHo-owned Grasshopper staff who stayed on became Supertrick. And now the new Grasshopper has been bought by Netease, where the whole process could likely play out again because Suda51 will not take your shit and might make an entire game about what an asshat you are if you piss him off.

Suda51's not involved, is what I'm saying. But there's definitely some of that Grasshopper feel in the visual stylings, especially in the NPC design. Will it be any good without that Grasshopper magic? We won't really know until Deathverse releases in 2022.

• Upcoming indie title Little Devil Inside got a new trailer. It looks to be shaping up quite well, and I'm really digging the overall visual style. There's currently no release date, but I'd say 2022 looks likely.
• Longtime Atlus composer Shoji Meguro is leaving the company. If you know him for anything, it'd be his work on the Persona series, but he's done plenty of other work for Atlus over his career. Interestingly, he's leaving to pursue indie game development. He'll still be composing on a freelance basis, though, so any future Persona titles will still bear his compositions.
• Legendary retro developer and port producer M2 is 30 years old! They did a lengthy interview with Famitsu (summarized in this tweet thread), and it includes a very small glimpse at Ubusuna, the long-in-the-making follow-up to Treasure's shooter classic Ikaruga. M2 also announced their second re-release compilation pack of Toaplan's classic 80s and 90s arcade shooters: Hishouzame! Zame! Zame! This contains the games Hishouzame (Sky Shark) and Same! Same! Same! (Fire Shark), along with a to-be-announced non-shooter Toaplan game (please be Knuckle Bash).
• Activision-Blizzard has, unsurprisingly, decided to cancel Blizzcon 2022 in the midst of the shitstorm their company is currently in. I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you of the hilarious incident from earlier this year where Twitch had to replace the music of special performance guests Metallica on their official company livestream channel to avoid DMCA'ing themselves.
• Super Robot Wars 30 is out now on Steam. Just a friendly reminder!

Well, that wraps things up for this scary spoopy week! What are your thoughts on the State of Play presentation? Does the Warner Bros. Smash-like exist, and if it does, will it be any good? Are you eager to give the KoFXV open beta a whirl in a little under a month? As always, the forums (link below) are always open to share your thoughts on the gaming world's going-ons. Take care, stay safe, and don't feel bad about giving the yellow Starburst lingering in your candy bin out to trick-or-treaters. Later!