While The Game Awards were mostly disappointing, Microsoft surprised many by choosing that stage to announce the name of their next generation console. Previously called Project Scarlett the new console from Microsoft which will launch during the holiday season in 2020 is called Xbox Series X and is designed in a more unique manner as it once again works like the Xbox 360 where players can choose to store it both vertically, as it was presented, or horizontally.
Alongside the new console the company also revealed that the controller has been given a bit of an update as it now features an additional “Share” button that makes capturing screenshots and game clips easier and they have also re-designed the D-pad to be similar to their Xbox Elite Series of controllers and it will not only be compatible with the new console but older ones as well.
The company also revealed some technical standpoints by stating that the console can present “4K resolution at 60 frames per second, with possibility of up to 120 frames per second, including support for Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), and 8K capability. Powered by our custom-designed processor leveraging the latest Zen 2 and next generation RDNA architecture from our partners at AMD, Xbox Series X will deliver hardware accelerated ray tracing and a new level of performance never before seen in a console. Additionally, our patented Variable Rate Shading (VRS) technology will allow developers to get even more out of the Xbox Series X GPU and our next-generation SSD will virtually eliminate load times and bring players into their gaming worlds faster than ever before.”
Transport Fever 2, the next chapter in the Fever sim franchise, has launched on Steam and GOG. The game is priced at $39.99 US/$64.95 AUD. A special launch week promotion is running until December 18th that knocks 10% off the regular price. On Steam, this can be combined with a 15% discount given to owners of the original Transport Fever.
Transport Fever 2is a modern take on the classic transportation sim. Players can take their company through 170 years of changing transportation technology in sandbox mode or tackle specific logistical challenges from a certain period. The game comes with three story campaigns and over 200 realistically modeled vehicles. Extensive mod tools, map making tools, and full Steam Workshop support are available on launch.
Dragon Quest Builders 2is now available on Steam. Originally launched on PlayStation 4 and Switch in July,the PC port comes packed with the base game and all DLC previously released on the PlayStation 4. For those on the fence, Steam is also offering a demo set in the Isle of Awakening and the village of Furrowfield. Any progress made in the demo will automatically transfer over to the full game.
Players will start their game on the Isle of Awakening. The Children of Hargon cult has destroyed all things and outlawed the creation of anything new. Players take on the role of a builder that has managed to escape the Children of Hargon and joins Malroth on a quest to save the world from the evil cult.
Dragon Quest Builders 2costs $59.99 USD/$89.95 AUD on Steam. Those who purchase the game before 6 January 2019 will get six sets of decorations for their world.
After some delay Sega has now announced that they will be releasing Two Point Studio’s Two Point Hospital on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on February 25, 2020 where it will be available on all platforms both physically and digitally. Players will be able to build their own healthcare empire in the atypical world of Two Point County, by customizing your hospitals, researching 119 different strange illnesses, curing patients and training staff.
At launch, Two Point Hospital on consoles comes with the first two critically acclaimed expansions ‘Bigfoot’ and ‘Pebberley Island’, which gives players a total of 21 regions to explore. To ensure the best gameplay experience across all platforms, the developer has rebuilt the original PC control scheme to allow for ease of play no matter what platform players choose to play on.
Following the popularity of the company’s The Escapists series Team17 has announced that they have another new game on the way that is a little different, called The Survivalists. The Survivalists is described as a strategy “survival-lite” sandbox game that combines crafting, building, and even monkey training that will see players battle against the forces of nature across procedurally-generated islands filled with different and perilous biomes, and uncover the riches, and puzzles, in temples filled with loot.
Featuring islands teeming with life and adversaries, The Survivalists takes place in a rich world that never stands still, with a day/night cycle, a broad range of animals including boars, big cats, and sharks, as well as deadly fanatics highly skilled in combat. To help with survival, the game includes a mimic system that allows players to train the local monkey population to gather resources, build structures, or even fight off threats, while a deep and comprehensive crafting system offers tantalizing objects and weapons to unlock and develop.
In addition to surviving solo, The Survivalists dares players to work together in collaborative and session-based, online co-operative multiplayer.
D3 Publisher has announced that they will be bringing Shade‘s unique third-person shooter called Bullet Girls Phantasia to English audiences on PC through Steam sometime in early 2020. Originally released back in 2018 in Japan for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita with no seeming chance of a localization, this marks the first appearance of the game on PC. While no price for Bullet Girls Phantasia was revealed so far, the company did reveal some gameplay details.
Players will take control of fourteen different characters to battle against enemies using swords, magic, and firearms but if they are hit, their armor will be destroyed. An announcement trailer and some screenshots were also revealed alongside this reveal and can be found below.
A new trailer and set of screenshots for Langrisser I & II has been released by NIS America and this time around the focus is placed solely on Langrisser I and its story and characters. In Langrisser I, there was a terrible war long ago over a legendary sword said to grant its wielder unlimited power. The blood of those who vowed to protect it and those who sought its power for themselves permeated the battlefields of El Sallia. That sword is known as Langrisser. Of those who swore to protect it, the royal family of Baldea has safeguarded it from the world for many generations. Thanks to Baldea, tales of Langrisser soon faded from memory.However, Baldea’s sworn duty would be called to action once again.
Motivated by power and the conviction to rule the world, Kaiser Digos and the Dalsis Empire he commanded invade Baldea, seeking the enticing power of Langrisser. Ledin, the prince of Baldea, narrowly escapes the invasion, and devises a way to avenge his father, who had been killed by Kaiser Digos.Now, Ledin must reclaim Langrisser, which his ancestors fought so valiantly to protect—thus beginning his journey that will test his loyalty to the Light.
You can check out the trailer and screenshots below while the game itself is set to be released in North America on March 10, 2020 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch with Europe getting the game on March 13, 2020.
It has been some time since the gaming world last saw the Super Monkey Ball series and even then it was only through handheld devices did the series continue to live over the past decade. Now Sega has revisited the series by taking the 2006 Wii release of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz and modernizing it a bit in a remastered release that removes the motion controls that the Wii used but holds true to a number of other additions that were made back in the day. With Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD being a mix of changed features and a classic game, is it worth visiting once more?
Gameplay
Players are given a number of different primates to choose from, or even a certain hedgehog once unlocked, that have a variety of different stats that determine how fast they can role and how high the can jump, and then toss that monkey into a capsule that will roll through a hundred different levels spread across ten different worlds. For the most part the style of gameplay remains the same as before, roll the monkey of your choice through a hazardous stage and reach the goal without falling off too many times.
What has changed is the way the game’s controls work, for both better and worse. Rather than relying on motion controls, players now have far more precise control thanks to the use of the analog stick. Now for those unfamiliar with the series, players don’t have direct control of the monkey ball but instead are tilting the stage that it rolls on, and this analog movement can allow for some high levels of finesse when maneuvering around a difficult stage which is a real delight. Along those same lines though the return of the jumping mechanic also comes into play and feels like a double-edged sword.
Jumping in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD is a simple affair, as it is handled with a single button press, but also a complicated one. On one hand, some stages that players can tackle are trivialized through jumping properly but on the other hand stages that require specific jumps or rely heavily on platforming can be a disaster to approach. This is thanks to the odd decision to give the player zero control over the camera which is instead locked a set distance behind the monkey ball. This leads to trying to jump in a 3D space often being more of a leap of faith than anything else and far too many failures and restarts as a result. To make matters worse, this uncontrollable camera can also lead to some incredibly disorienting moments where it will whip around to hold position on a rapidly moving ball changing directions at high speed.
While this does work to create a nice bit of a challenge at times, this challenge often feels more like battling game design than the actual levels themselves. In fact, players will find that Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD struggles with finding a sweet spot for its difficulty curve as the initial half of the game features plenty of simplistic stages that players can blitz through, especially if they have played an entry in the series before, only for it to spike heavily near the end. A bit past the halfway point a sweet spot is managed where players will feel challenged and rewarded for conquering a difficult stage only for levels past the three quarter mark to be brutally difficult that make it far more frustrating than enjoyable and while this challenge is something that eventually does feel rewarding once completed, a smoother curve would have been nice.
At the end of every world players will find themselves facing off against a boss creature. Bosses generally play out the same way with players needing to target a weak spot on their body and jump into it all while trying to avoid being knocked off of the stage. Once again thanks to the lack of camera control many of these boss battles feel far more annoying than actually difficult and can lead to a few “late game” being a breeze compared to a few earlier ones simply due to these systems.
Outside of the core single player mode players will have access to time trials as well as a number of multiplayer mini-games though the number has been drastically cut down this time around. As opposed to the fifty that were found in the original game Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD instead provides only ten, though it is clear that these are probably the best mini-games that worked without the Wii’s motion controls. What is on offer here are a mix of some great games, especially Monkey Target, and a few duds that don’t hold much value and still control terribly. That being said, there is a decathlon mode that allows players to go through all ten mini-games in a row if they want to but this mode only drives home how bad some of them happen to be.
Visuals & Audio
Thanks to the colorful and cartoonish style of the original release Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD manages to clean up quite well for modern consoles. The character designs for the various monkeys are memorable while bosses are unique enough looking while the stages have a nice crisp feeling to them with there being plenty of variety throughout the hundred stages that they rarely feel repetitive outside of the initial world.
It is odd to see, though understandable due to possible licensing issues, but many of the game’s original songs have been changed in this release. The music that has replaced these tracks are solid enough but don’t quite live up to the original pieces. This is noticeable whenever a classic track that was kept intact plays and is noticeably better than the newer pieces.
Overall
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD struggles with finding a balance between providing a challenge and being fun at the same time while trimming back on some of the extra content that may have made it more worthwhile. While there are moments of greatness that see the fast paced gameplay work amazingly alongside the player’s new precise controls over the stage, these moments are few and far between in a game that feels a bit barebones and a rather odd choice considering the other games in the series that could have been given the HD treatment.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
After more than their fair share of leaks Capcom has officially announced at Sony’s State of Play that Resident Evil 3 is on the way and will be released worldwide on April 3, 2020 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC as well as including the previously announced Resident Evil Resistance as part of the package.
In Resident Evil 3, S.T.A.R.S. member Jill Valentine, flees a city being consumed by zombies and other horrifying creatures. Built with Capcom’s proprietary RE Engine, Resident Evil 3 uses modernized gameplay to combine action with classic survival horror in vivid high-definition.
Jill’s harrowing experiences in Resident Evil 3 take place in the nightmarish hours leading up to and following the events in Resident Evil 2, shedding new light on the plight of Raccoon City’s residents. Every hope of escape is cut off by another star in the Resident Evil franchise: the towering Bio Organic Weapon Nemesis. This brutal yet intelligent monstrosity uses an arsenal of high-powered weaponry to indiscriminately eliminate any surviving S.T.A.R.S. members in the city–with Jill being his final target.
A yet to be priced “Premium Collector’s Edition” will be relesed alongside the standard edition and include a physical copy of the game, a statue of Jill Valentine, a printed art book, double sided Raccoon City map/wall poster, and a digital soundtrack and those who pre-order the game in general will receive classic costumes.
During Sony’s State of Play Square Enix announced that they were once again working with Platinum Games to release a new action game by the name of Babylon’s Fall. Details about the game’s plot are slim but the company did announce that the game is being developed for the PlayStation 4 as well as the PC with a planned release sometime in Summer 2020.
Accompanying this announcement came a teaser trailer that gives us an early look at the “fluid action gameplay” and the new “Brushwork Filter” that is used to provide the game with a unique art style that will hopefully be touched up in the future.
