It’s almost distressing to think that the Switch was released in 2017. It still feels brand new to me, but then, time has lost all meaning since I got old. But now we’re all waiting for the big reveal of Nintendo’s successor, and you can kind of feel that with the big releases this year.

Going to be real with you, this was a much slower year for the handheld, which feels like a weird thing to say when it saw the release of a new Zelda game. However, it was a subdued Zelda game, like it’s been a subdued year for the console. But regardless of that, we still got plenty to play on the little hybrid.

It’s time to name the best of those games. As with every year here at Destructoid, the window of eligibility for our nominees runs from the beginning of December 2023 to the end of December 2024 (sorry, Uncle Chop). We also have a rule that a game can only be included in one category, so if something seems missing from this list, you might find it in another category.

Here are the nominees for Destuctoid’s Best Switch Game of 2024.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

Yeah, one of the nominees this year is technically a GameCube game, but Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was one of the best on the console, and all of that charm is retained for its glow-up. Largely, it’s just a remaster of an already great game, but also, it’s an already great game. Everything on top is just gravy.

Star Wars Hunters

Star Wars is no stranger to online games, and Star Wars Hunters grows its footprint with a hero-based Overwatch approach to PVP. Despite recent high-profile failures in the genre (such as Concord), Star Wars Hunters found its audience and is thriving.

Steamworld Heist II

It’s hard to believe Steamworld Heist II arrived eight years after the original, but the wait has been worth it. The sequel takes the 2D, turn-based tactical gameplay even further by taking it to the high seas. It’s incredible that any game could even top the satisfying feeling of Steamworld Heist. Or, as Jamie Moorcroft-Sharp put it, "SteamWorld Heist II is a phenomenal title that offers you the best when it comes to short, tactical encounters with thrilling turn-based gameplay."

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition

I’m never far from an NES (it’s a few feet away in my living room), but it’s well-trodden ground for me. I always love finding new ways to interact with my favorites in its library, and Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition does just that. A series of concise time trials give you the chance to compete on the world stage in miniature speed-running. It’s a celebration of the company’s roots.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

A Zelda game actually starring its titular character has been on quite a few wishlists, and this year, it finally arrived. It may not have the grandeur of Tears of the Kingdom, but it makes up for it with inventive gameplay centered around summoning whatever you want. Lots of problems can be solved with beds, but it takes more than a mattress to save the kingdom.

Super Mario Party Jamboree

Mario Party games can be very hit-and-miss, but this year, we got a direct hit. There’s nothing insanely mindblowing about Super Mario Party Jamboree – it doesn’t completely change the recipe – but it combines the best parts of Super Mario Party with the classic formula and comes away with one of the best games the series has seen since its inception.

Athenian Rhapsody

It’s hard to describe Athenian Rhapsody, so I’m just going to quote the developer, “a souls-like platonic dating simulator with cooking-mama and WarioWare style battle mechanics... and by that, I mean it's a choose-your-own-adventure action RPG with the ability to trade ENTIRE PLAYTHROUGHS between friends!!” I’m sure that answered your question. What you really need to know, however, is that it’s offensively good. Hence being on this list.

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Team17 has announced that they’re teaming up with Radical Forge to trim the greens for Golf With Your Friends 2, a follow-up to Team17 and Blacklight Interactive’s 2020 (technically 2016) party golf game. It’s planned for release in 2025 on PC and console.

Where’s Blacklight Interactive? I dunno. I’ve done some legwork to find out, then I followed-up with Team17’s PR. If I find out, I’ll let you know. It is important to note, however, that Team17 lent quite a lot of support to the development of the first game, as much as it was often said to be the work of three people.

Radical Forge seems like a reasonable substitution, as their previous game was Bright Paw, and they’ve been working on Southfield. The latter title was delayed from its Early Access release this past June due to performance concerns with a new release date not yet set. Picking up work from another publisher may be a way of making ends meet while getting their other project off the ground, or it might just be a cool opportunity. I don’t know! Just speculating here.

Anyway, Golf With Your Friends is actually more of a mini-golf game where you and as many other people as you can rope in compete to put balls in holes. The twist is that you’re all teeing off at the same time and trying to brute force your way to par. Courses also tend to twist reality in ways that it wasn’t supposed to bend.

I never played Golf With Your Friends because I don’t meet the requirements outlined in the title. It got lukewarm reception from critics, but everyone I’ve talked to who have played it always said good things. Maybe all critics are like me and have trouble getting anyone to sit in the same room as them. Or maybe it’s just the sort of thing that is more fun when you aren’t taking it too seriously. Speculating again.

Golf With Your Friends 2 looks like more of the same, as far as I can tell. The trailer doesn’t really show gameplay; just a short skit followed by a slow pan of a course beneath the logo. Screenshots also just show courses. We’ll have to use our imaginations to visualize balls. It will be starting in Early Access, and is said to be planning a six-month stay there. It will start at two courses, and by 1.0 release will have six.

Golf With Your Friends 2 is coming to PC and “consoles” sometime in 2025.

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It feels like it wasn’t so long ago that I was playing Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, but already we’re hearing of a new game from Happy Broccoli Games, Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping. It’s coming in 2025.

Oh, right. I just remembered what “glamping” is: glamorous camping. The opposite of roughing it. This time around, things get a little supernatural, as the detective investigates a haunting at the campgrounds. The trailer also makes a big deal about his bread addiction and related divorce. Poor guy. How else is he supposed to make sandwiches?

As the name implies, you play as a duck P.I. named Eugene McQuacklin, who investigates things. You gather clues, then put them together to make a clear picture of what went down and make some “deducktions.” Last time, it was an office theft that blew up into a bigger case, which is relatively mundane compared to hauntings. I’m wondering if it’s going to be one of those rubber mask Scooby Doo situations.

To be honest, I didn’t dig The Secret Salami all that much. It was fine. Mostly, I felt that the worldbuilding, characters, and dialogue could have been better, which is all things that can be improved in a sequel. It’s not surprising to see one so soon since it’s likely that Happy Broccoli Games have all their tools together and learned lessons from the last project. I’m just hoping that The Ghost of Glamping has a bit more meat on its bones.

Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping will release on PC sometime in 2025.

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It’s that time of year when we collectively look back at the flaming wreckage that we somehow managed to live through. It’s been a tough one, but at least the indie market has continued to flourish with the release of all kinds of experimental and artistic titles.

As with every year, the window for eligibility in our awards are December to December, so games released in December 2023 are valid, but not games in December 2024 (Sorry, The Thing: Remastered). We also have a rule that each game can only be nominated for one category, so if you don’t see something here, we may have stuck it in with a console-specific one if it feels like a better fit.

If you felt like you had nothing to play this year, you need to think smaller budget, my friend. Indie games kept me busy this year. Very busy. Too busy. Portions of my year are just blurs of unique art styles, narrative depths, and casual experiments. But there are some amazing standouts, and myself and the Destructoid team have been able to narrow them down to just a handful.

Here are the runners for Destructoid’s Best Indie Game of 2024.

Mullet Mad Jack

With only 10 seconds to live, you have to kill robot billionaires (robillionaires) on livestream to get the sweet, sweet endorphins that come with amassing likes on social media in order to add precious seconds onto the clock. After all, internet adulation is the only reason to keep living. Mullet Mad Jack is a never-stop-moving murder-sprint of a roguelite laced with a ridiculous but strangely believable depiction of the future as interpreted by the 1990s. Fast and furious in the back, thought-provoking in front.

Anthology of the Killer

Technically a compilation of short-form indie titles going back to 2020, Anthology of the Killer rolls up several tales, presents them in one complete package, and puts on a bow. Following the exploits of BB, a young woman trapped in a surreal city so packed with serial killers that they’ve just become a fact of life. Its dreamlike horror is so effective because it’s impossible to really get hold of anything resembling reality, with only its effective sense of humor keeping panic at bay.

Crow Country

It’s not uncommon for horror games in the indie sphere to invoke a PS1 aesthetic to take us back to the youthful days of survival horror. But despite the well-trodden territory, Crow Country presents something fresh. Featuring an effective art style that allows its environments to look pre-rendered while actually being real-time and a surprisingly unconventional and haunting narrative, Crow Country is among the best games the genre has seen in years.

1000xRESIST

Clearly, we here at Destructoid have an inappropriate level of affection for unconventional narratives, because that’s exactly what Steven “Cinderblock” Mills feverishly rants about in his review for 1000xRESIST, going as far as calling it a “narrative masterpiece.” Beyond that, it finds gameplay hooks beyond its adventure roots to keep you engaged, as if you needed more reason to lock in.

Animal Well

While Animal Well can be pinned as a metroidvania title, at every turn, it seems to try and subvert and surprise in a way that is rarely seen in the genre. Both minimalistic and detailed, Animal Well uses its focus on secrets and exploration to drive hooks into your innate curiosity to keep you fixated.

Balatro

Perhaps the only game on this list to reach indie-game escape velocity and find a mainstream audience. It’s easy to see why. Balatro boils down the deckbuilding roguelite genre into its base elements to provide an absorbing perversion of Poker. It could easily be a perfect snack game, but good luck just playing a few short rounds.

Buckshot Roulette

All the fun of the classic party game with less chance of removing your frontal lobe with a slug. Buckshot Roulette is a deceptively simple game of shooting yourself in the face with a shotgun. You face off with a creepy stranger, using whatever tricks you can to keep yourself from eating lead breakfast. Short, but disturbingly engrossing.

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One of the worst things about the industry today is that there are just so damned many games coming out at any one time. One of the best things about it is that there’s no end to the variety between them. A game can be about basically anything, and developers are constantly exploring how far they can push “anything.”

I’m not sure Jake Clover's Cape Hideous is about anything. I’m not even sure it’s about something. It could be! Maybe I’m just too daft to see it. However, from what I can tell, it’s just one really strange slice of life told with an extremely ugly but captivating art style.

You’re dropped with little explanation on a ragged but massive ship on the ocean. You play as a woman who smokes three pipes simultaneously; an impressive feat, to be sure, but you’ll soon meet those who can juggle more. The ship is headed toward a nasty-looking storm, but whether they’re going toward it intentionally or not isn’t really revealed, even by the end. However, the ship is in extremely rough shape, so there’s work to be done if it’s going to weather it.

You aren’t told what you should be doing, but you can only move on a 2D axis. Pick a direction and see where it goes. You’ll eventually find a knife, and then you’ll find that you can climb the mast. Along the way, you’re treated to the sights and sounds of the other inhabitants of the ship as they work away. There’s not really any indication that you’re the ship’s captain or anyone important, or even if there is a captain at all. You’re just left to explore.

The most striking thing about Cape Hideous is that it’s, well, hideous. The whole production looks like it was created in MS Paint with a trackball mouse. The fill bucket has been worked hard. However, it doesn’t demonstrate a lack of artistic ability. On the contrary, the ship is alive with fine, elaborate detail. There are a lot of moments where it makes great use of perspective to give everything a surreal quality. Its lo-fi, almost childlike art style is no doubt deliberate.

The goal of the game, if you can call it that, is to simply explore. As you do, the protagonist will start pulling down flags from the mast. She’ll also meet characters, and while many of them are ignored, there are some exchanges, as well. There is no dialogue, however, and the surreality is often at its peak during character interactions.

You’re never directed where to go, at least not explicitly. There are only so many places you can go (you’re on a boat, after all), so if it’s not obvious what you’re supposed to do at that point, you’re never far from figuring it out. The fact that you’re never told what to do but never left wandering gives Cape Hideous a much more organic feeling than you’d probably expect from any 2D walking sim.

Which is perfect since Cape Hideous is entirely vibes. The quiet ambient sounds of work, wind, and the sea can be heard beneath an acoustic guitar-heavy soundtrack by magicdweedoo (of Dryft City Kyngs fame). The store page also suggests in all-caps, “BEST EXPERIENCED WITHOUT DISTRACTIONS, WITH NOISE-CANCELLING HEADPHONES.” I didn’t do that, but I can see where that would be beneficial.

But when I say that Cape Hideous is entirely vibes, I mean that it’s entirely vibes. If you haven’t picked up by now, it’s not a game aiming to provide a challenge or some unique gameplay hook. It’s a 2D walking sim without any sort of puzzle element. I hate that, and that’s something I need to warn about, but I understand that even among people who enjoy these sorts of games, there’s generally a mood for it.

It’s also a very weird and art-forward game. As much as it looks thrown together, there’s a substantial amount of depth to its aesthetic. Repeated playthroughs allow you to glean more information from the environments, and the sound design meshes with what’s going on so well that it might as well be a scripted cartoon.

Because it so deftly handles its presentation, it works as more than just an art project. You don’t have to fully grok any sort of message from it or even understand the story that is being told. You can simply immerse yourself in the gelatinous vibes of maybe pirates. There might be substance abuse involved. I’m not sure. I’m not entirely confident that I understand what the hell is going on in Cape Hideous.

Which is fine. It took me just North of a half-hour to get through it, and I have no regrets. It does what it needs to do, provides a unique and memorable experience, and then sets sail again. The best part about the state of game development right now is that games can be about anything. And Cape Hideous is certainly anything.

The post Cape Hideous betrays its name by being strangely captivating appeared first on Destructoid.

Itch.io has taken to Bluesky today to report that their domain was taken down by Funko, creators of the ubiquitous Funko Pop toys. However, the domain was later reinstated by the registrar. This was allegedly caused inadvertently by Funko’s use of AI-powered anti-phishing software called BrandShield.

The post specifically refers to the software as “some trash ‘AI Powered’ Brand Protection Software called Brand Shield” and reports that it “ created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar, iwantmyname.” They also state that the registrar ignored their response to the software’s claim and disabled the domain. Something tells me that once they regain control of their domain, it’s going to be transferred to a different registrar.

BrandShield is a service that “proactively monitor(s) digital landscapes for trademark infringements, phishing attempts, brand abuse, and counterfeit activity.” If itch.io’s allegations are accurate, then the service is accusing them of appropriating Funko’s name to try and scam people who think they’re purchasing from Funko. Which, to a human like you or me is ridiculous. A toaster, on the other hand, could be fooled. Clearly.

As itch.io is a rather open indie-game marketplace, it’s possible that a game on it references Funko either directly or indirectly, which may have drawn the attention of the BrandShield refrigerator. That seems to be the case, since in a follow-up post on Twitter, itch says that they reacted to the claim by taking down the “disputed page” as soon as they got the notice. The suggest that the takedown was done by the registrars automated system, “since no one read our confirmation of removal.”

The situation ticks off a lot of boxes on the nausea card. You have a corporate giant built on the back of functionless gewgaws attacking a small, barely-for-profit marketplace for independent creators. You have AI working outside of legal norms on behalf of that corporation. And then, just to top the whole thing off, you have a company turning a deaf ear to one of their customers and acting without due consideration.

However, the happy ending (I guess) is that the site wasn’t down for long. After several hours, the registrar responded to the notice and reinstated the domain. As of right now, the site is once again accessible. Neither company has released a statement about the situation since the site returned.

Human error is a hell of a thing, but at least there are repercussions for the person responsible. AI and similar automated services are like a child that the parents refuse to discipline. Their behavior is not corrected, nor do they face any scrutiny. The people holding the leash just shrug and let their little monster become everyone's problem. But at least itch got their domain back.

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If you’re wondering what SVP means in Marvel Rivals, I’m going to do what I’m not supposed to do in these sorts of articles and just give you an answer: it means Second Valuable Player.

So, if MVP means Most Valuable Player, then SVP is the runner-up: the Second Valuable Player. Another possible acronym could be SMVP or “Second-Most Valuable Player,” but I guess that doesn’t look as flash.

I don’t have much else to talk about, so let’s explore that. SVP is already a fairly common acronym. I don’t know if you see it much in other countries, but here in Canada (even the English-speaking parts), we see it as S'il Vous Plaît, which is French for please. In business, it is often seen as an abbreviation for Senior Vice President. In a legal sense, it’s sometimes applied to… Well, you can look that up if you want, but it’s a little dark for this subject matter, so we’ll leave that there.

In Marvel Rivals, the MVP and SVP are picked based on a number of factors, including KDR (Kill-Death Ratio), damage output, and damage healed or blocked. To boil it down in the most obvious way, it’s how much a person contributed to their team’s success based on metrics. I just felt like stressing that, since – and this is absolutely just hypothetical – someone being really encouraging over voice chat and keeping morale up on their team could – and again, this is hypothetical – have had the greatest positive effect on their team, but there’s no way for the scoring system to know that.

And really, some people may let chasing score get in the way of their sportsmanship. If someone is selfish chasing higher numbers at the expense of their team’s strategy or the enjoyment of others, then they could become MVP or SVP. The scoring system would be able to tell either way.

But I digress. If you scrolled down here figuring the answer would be at the end, I’ll give it to you again: SVP means Second Valuable Player.

The post What does SVP mean in Marvel Rivals? Answered appeared first on Destructoid.

One common problem people have been bringing up with Marvel Rivals is getting told that “DirectX 12 is not supported” when trying to load up the game. This isn’t a bug, DX12 is required to run the game, and there’s no way around it.

The obvious reason for the error is implied by the error: your system configuration can’t handle DirectX 12. DX12 isn’t exactly new, but it’s new enough that some might still be running hardware before it was a thing (it launched in 2015). In fact, a lot of games still support DX10 and DX11, and it’s less common for a game to require DirectX 12 like Marvel Rivals does. So, if this is the first time you’ve seen something like this, then that’s why; DX12 isn’t universal.

You’ll want to note that the minimum system requirements state that DirectX 12 is required and states that NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 / AMD RX 580 / Intel Arc A380 are the oldest/slowest cards that you can run the game with.

If you’re uncertain, type dxdiag in the Windows search on your taskbar. It should show you an app with an icon that looks like a yellow X on a blue circle. Open that up and run it, you’ll be given a brief look at your system specs. At the bottom, it will tell you the DirectX version you’re running. It should read “DirectX 12.”

How to fix the error if your card supports DX12

Okay, so what do you do if you know your graphics card supports DX12, but this error is still happening? Well, it’s possible that your CPU has integrated graphics that don’t support DX12, and the game is defaulting to that instead.

It’s a bit harder to tell you how to fix this because there can be a lot of causes. For example, it could be physical. You may want to ensure that your monitor cable is plugged into a port on your graphics card and not your motherboard. If you’re on a laptop, this won’t be the issue because you probably only have one monitor port.

Another cause has to do with power settings. You can open Power Settings with the taskbar search, but you’ll have to dig into advanced settings. If you’re in a power-saving mode, it might switch to integrated graphics. Just to be sure, you’ll want to change this to something like High Performance (sometimes under “Hide Additional Plans” in the menu.)

There are some stating that you can force DirectX 11 in Marvel Rivals with the -dx11 launch command, but that doesn’t seem to be true. Others suggest that you try updating Windows and your graphics drivers, which is a good thing to do and can’t hurt, but it probably won’t solve the issue. Verifying the game files or uninstalling/reinstalling also won’t likely do anything, but you can try it anyway. 

The truth is, this is a legitimate error with little room for false positives. If you get this error, there’s a very good chance that you don’t meet the minimum specifications. As I covered, it’s possible that it’s trying to use a CPU-integrated graphics driver, but I’d say that’s an outside chance. Check your hardware and ensure it meets the minimum requirements. If it doesn’t, then you’ll either need to upgrade or check out the game on one of its console ports.

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Yesterday was really busy, so I didn’t get around to telling you: Priest Simulator: Vampire Show has finally left Early Access. The launch version hosts a slew of improvements and comes alongside, strangely, a small DLC expansion.

If this sounds familiar, maybe it’s because I looked at Priest Simulator back in 2022 in an Early Access review before it had its subtitle. I remember it clearly. It came in a non-descript press that I would have normally ignored. I looked at it, realized it was way more bizarre than I had envisioned, and subsequently picked it up to try out. Even at that point, it was good.

If you’re like me, the name Priest Simulator (even with its strange subtitle) suggests a premise where you join the clergy and spread the word of God. Instead, you play as a demonic vampire who gets ejected from Hell and has his super powers taken away. He’s desperate for internet fame, so he’s willing to do whatever necessary to get his powers back, and basically everyone around him (especially the church) hints that they can do just that if he does a few favors for them. 

It’s a small open-world game where you sometimes maybe do a few priestly things like confessional and exorcisms. At that time, I said that the game was already pretty impressive but felt like it was blocked out in a few areas. As in, there seemed to be placeholders that were waiting for someone to come and finish them. I haven’t kept a totally close eye on the game along the way, but from what I can tell, it’s those bugs and placeholders that have been addressed.

I’m looking forward to jumping in and seeing how things shook out. From the last few posts, it seemed like the developer has essentially got it to where they wanted it and has tied a bow around everything, ready to move on. If I manage to put in some significant time, I’ll be back with a formal review. Otherwise, know that it’s probably still worth your time.

Priest Simulator: Vampire Show fully released on December 5, 2024 on PC. The Priest Simulator: Her Ghost DLC released alongside it.

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I remember reading a preview for The Thing in a magazine back before its release. The game, I mean, not the movie. It’s certainly a game that sounds interesting on paper. So, it’s been stuck in the back of my mind for decades, but I never really made the move to play it.

Why would I? I hadn’t watched the movie, and reviews at the time of launch were lukewarm. I knew it developed something of a cult following since then, but even among fans, I heard the same thing: The whole psychological element was too ambitious and didn’t actually work very well. I’ve been left to imagine its failings.

But I rarely miss a remaster from Nightdive Studios, and since they’ve taken on the task of polishing up The Thing, then the stars have certainly aligned. I even went and watched the movie while running a fever and cuddling with my dog, just to make things memorable and a little awkward. But you don’t necessarily need to have watched the movie to understand what’s going on in the game. I think you should, though, because then you will truly appreciate how completely daft this game is.

The Thing: Remastered (PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch)
Developer: Nightdive Studios, Computer Artworks
Publisher: Nightdive Studios
Released: December 5, 2024
MSRP: $29.99

The end of The Thing: The Movie was left pretty ambiguous. I don’t really want to spoil it for you beyond that. It’s a great movie. And since its ending was left so open, a narrative follow-up had a lot of room to breathe. A story could be really delicate with things and even heighten the mystery of the original. That’s not what The Thing: The Game does, however. It stomps right up to the movie and starts breathing down its shirt. The only mystery it heightens is how this wrecking ball got here.

This was 2002, and the standards for video game storytelling couldn’t get much closer to the floor. This is especially true for shooters. It was a time when Half-Life was still naively hailed as having spun a tale rivaling Citizen Kane. So, I probably shouldn’t have expected much, but The Thing: The Game has the sort of narrative I would come up with off-the-cuff if I was trying to make fun of the concept of a sequel to The Thing: The Movie.

You play as Captain J.F. Blake who sounds so much like Kyle Travers from Final Fight: Streetwise, I actually had to look up the voice actors to convince myself it wasn’t. It takes place right after the movie, so it’s still the 1980s, but he has one of the most popular hairstyles of the late ‘90s, right down to the spiked-up bangs. He’s Special Forces, and that’s all there is to him. He’s the only competent person in the universe, and he knows it. There isn’t an ounce of humanity to the guy; he’s just a brick. A big, grumbly block who wears forest camo pants in Antarctica but won't put on a hat because it would mush down his hairdo.

It starts off interestingly enough. Blake’s Team arrives at U.S. Outpost 31 from the movie and start sorting through the wreckage. It’s a very understated time in the game, as it mostly just introduces you to the concepts of the game while allowing you to visit set pieces from the movie. It’s kind of quiet and tense, which is so uncharacteristically restrained for the game in hindsight.

The team did consider what made the movie great when they came up with the design. The one thing they added that I think works well in the game and doesn’t get enough credit is the fact that you can’t linger outside for long. It’s winter in Antarctica and nobody brought a toque. You’ll freeze if you don’t find shelter. This gets squandered when 80% of the game is in tight concrete corridors, but the hostility of the open air is a nice touch.

What gets the most marketing hype is the trust/fear system, which is just… I get why they’d focus on it in advertisements, because it’s something that makes the game unique, but it’s so poorly implemented that it might as well not be there at all. The Thing: The Game is a squad-based third-person shooter, and the idea is that you need to keep your squad from freaking out when any one of them could be a thing in disguise. The idea is that you, as a player, don’t know who to trust.

The fear aspect works the best, but it’s not very impactful. Your squadmates start getting nervous when they’re around gore and dead bodies, but the problem is that the areas you traverse are absolutely lousy with corpses, so it's hard to tell when you're in a fear zone. It usually only becomes a bit of a problem if you stand around in a room with a mess on the floor. Once (and only once), I had to physically push a squadmate out of a room so he could get a breather and get a grip. So, it kind of works; it's just really clumsy.

When I completed the game, I got an achievement that said I never let a single squad member reach maximum fear level. That means I actually don’t know if something cool happens when they completely lose it because I was apparently a really soothing presence for those around me. Maybe it’s because I constantly live in fear and anxiety, so I know how to empathize with others feeling it.

The trust system is completely pointless, though. Sure, some dudes will refuse to follow you because they think you might have a thing in your pants, but getting them to come around is just a matter of shoving ammo into their pockets. Their trust is only between you and them; squadmates always trust each other unless it’s for story reasons. They don’t need to kiss and trade ammo. For that matter, it's hard for them to distrust you once you've loaded them up. They’ll only start feeling iffy again if you keep shooting them. They don’t seem to think it’s weird that you obsessively check every notepad and carry an armory on their back. Ammo is the only thing they trust.

The whole idea that any one of them could be a thing is the least meaningful layer. It’s true, some of them will sprout tentacles. You can do a blood test to see who’s human, but it doesn’t really work. Like, at all. Dudes you already tested might turn out to be full of things anyway. That doesn’t matter though, because the moment they start to change, all your teammates will suddenly snap and start shooting at them before they’re even done transforming. Even if they didn’t, the friend-things aren’t any tougher than any normal thing. They aren’t a threat. So, who cares if you can trust them?

That’s the biggest problem with The Thing: The Game’s superfluous systems; it doesn’t try for tension. You play as some generic good guy. Practically a super-hero. At the best of times, The Thing: The Game is a dumb shooter. It smells like the early ‘00s. It’s not really a horror game; it just has some gross bad guys.

Your squad isn’t consistent, either. They get swapped out at almost every loading screen. They don't have charming personalities to get attached to. It doesn’t matter if Simmons exposes his thing. Simmons wasn’t special. There’s an identical dude down the hallway.

It’s a good remaster, though. Absolutely solid. You can tell the tech folks at Nightdive had fun working on a post-millennium game since they loaded it up with all kinds of fancy lighting effects. True to their M.O., they kept it looking like something you’d expect from the era, but it’s not hard to see and appreciate the glow-up. It also ran flawlessly on my PC.

There isn’t as much in terms of extra material as a few of their previous releases. You can view the game’s original trailer and there’s some concept art, but not a whole lot that’s insightful. I was kind of hoping that a game that looks to have fallen apart in production would have more of a story to tell, but if it does, it won’t be found here.

They clearly couldn’t do anything about the game’s weaknesses. That would take more than a remaster. It’s not just that the fear/trust/infection systems were buggy or weren’t fully implemented. No, the original developers had some high-concept ideas and tried to put them into a dumb shooter, and they didn’t fit. The dumb shooter was the prevailing force, and there’s no undoing that.

I also ran into a lot of glitches. I’m not sure which ones were already there and which were introduced in the remaster. I’m also not certain which ones will be fixed by the time you’re reading this since I got to touch The Thing early for this review. And really, the glitches I ran into were mostly just hilarious. I did have to load a recent save to undo a bug a couple of times, but more often, they were just funny, benign things.

The best one happened early. Your squadmates will sometimes throw up when they’re in a bad situation. I can relate; anxiety makes me throw up, too. However, one dude apparently started the puking process right as a cutscene started. The camera snapped back to show the two of us walking into frame, he continued the process of throwing up, but it wouldn't interrupt the animation. Instead, it played the retching noise, and all the vomit came out from between his legs, so it looked like he was violently evacuating his bowels onto the floor. I laughed so hard. I still giggle whenever I think about it. I caught it in my gameplay capture, and I keep watching it.

Really, as much as I think The Thing: The Game is kind of terrible, I did find it entertaining. The story is just so braindead and full of cliches that I wanted to see more to find out if it was going to be so obvious the whole way through. It definitely has reverence for the source material, but it wasn’t exactly gentle when it came to building on it. To be fair, I would have been surprised if it had even come close to matching the movie in terms of storytelling, so it’s maybe what I should have expected from a 2002 licensed title.

I still applaud Nightdive for this remaster. They’re the only ones with the guts. Regardless of how I feel about the game itself, they gave it the same loving attention that they normally do. More importantly, it’s a licensed game, and those tend to be the most unlikely candidates for a re-release.

Part of me wishes their effort was spent on a better game, but the other part is happy that I got to experience the absolute mess that is The Thing. I know it sounds weird to hear, “This is a mess; you should totally check it out,” but that’s what I’m saying. The Thing is a fascinating cluster of missteps, and a completely unconvincing facsimile of its source material. But it’s hard to look away when it turns itself inside out.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: The Thing: Remastered appeared first on Destructoid.

During the PC Gaming Show, Nightdive Studios announced that – Surprise! (Maybe) – The Thing: Remastered is out on PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. That means right now! You can play it now!

The Thing: Remastered is an update of the 2002 game, The Thing, which is based off the 1982 film, The Thing. The game is set up as a sequel to the movie, taking place just shortly after the story of the film ends. It involves an antarctic research team dealing with a shapeshifting, people-cloning alien that has infiltrated their ranks. It’s tense and concise. And it’s really good! I hadn’t seen it before, so I watched it in preparation to finally play this game.

In fact, I’ve got a review of the game that should be going up simultaneously with this article. I’m not going to spoil the review in case you want to go in without knowing how you’re going to feel about it.

The Thing: The Game attempts to tie in the themes of the movie to the sequel narrative that it’s going for. There’s a trust/fear meter that affects all your allies. You have to gain their trust either through a blood test or by loading them up with ammunition. Their concern is that you might secretly be a the thing, but it’s them you need to watch out for. Any of them could be infected and can transform at any moment.

The fear system is a lot more straightforward. Your squadmates are rightfully nervous, and they’ll snap under pressure if you don’t take care of them. Largely, this just seems to be an issue if you hang out in a room with a huge mess in it. You can get them calm again just by leaving the problem area.

Also, don’t stay outside for too long. It’s winter in Antarctica and protagonist J.F. Blake did not pack a hat. You can only remain out in the open for a short amount of time before you need to take shelter and warm up.

Nightdive has done a lot of work cleaning up the graphics. In particular, the lighting is much more advanced thanks to their continuing work on the KEX Engine. The Thing: Remastered is their most latterday remaster, the first that originated from the new millennium, if I’m not mistaken. However, the fact that it’s a movie-licensed title and the fact that early-Windows games have a lot of issues on modern hardware means that this is in important release.

The Thing: Remastered is now available on PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

The post Nightdive’s The Thing: Remastered stealth releases, which seems appropriate appeared first on Destructoid.

Strange Scaffold has recently covered emotional abuse in El Paso, Elsewhere, voyeurism in Life Eater and Clockolding, and violent power fantasy in I Am Your Beast. Given that trend, I would not have guessed their next game would be a turn-based tactical game with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles licensing.

Uh, yeah, so as part of the PC Game Show, Strange Scaffold has announced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown, which is exactly as I described: turn-based turtles. “I get to make a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game where the very first lines of dialogue establish that Shredder and Splinter are dead. Who else can say that?" said Xalavier Nelson Jr. Bummer, dude, but the turtles have met Batman and the Ghostbusters. Can you say that?

That means a new antagonist has the job of harrowing the turtles. That at least means that the enemies don’t have to exclusively be the Foot Clan, but, from what’s shown, it’s just Foot Clan. Also, each level shows off only one turtle on each level, rather than having you control all four of them. That strikes me as a bit weird, but the press release seems to imply that each turtle has their own storyline.

The actual look of the game is very Strange Scaffold, which is to say, low budget and creative with its resources. The characters are shown as small figurines, and the environments are small spaces with psychedelic backgrounds.

Considering the fact that the big-budget games space has now become so expensive that companies will only take a risk on big established licenses, it’s nice to see these sorts of games fall to fans at smaller developers. We still get more cash-grabby licensed games, but at least that’s not the only way.

There’s no announced release date for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown, and thus far, only PC has been announced.

The post Can’t say I expected Strange Scaffold’s next game to be turn-based Ninja Turtles appeared first on Destructoid.

How good are you at following instructions? How about while you’re under a timer? What about when your life depends on it? Me? Maybe not so great. Maybe.

Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop is probably the last game I’ve been anticipating for the year. Well, that’s assuming a couple of them that have been quiet for a while aren’t going to drop. Anyway, playing the demo, it’s hard not to fall in love with its tricky diagnose-replace-repair gameplay laced with dark humor and a severe potty mouth.

So, I voraciously ate into it when I finally had it in my hands for this review, but after all the time I put into it, I still haven’t hit the credits. After, urgh, 25 hours, I still haven’t found the bottom of Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop, but I’ve seen enough to tell you that you should definitely play this game if you think you can withstand the punishment.

Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop (PC)
Developer: Beard Envy
Publisher: Kasedo Games
Released: December 5, 2024
MSRP: $19.99

Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop is, on the surface, a game about repair. Folks drop in with their ailing spacecraft, and it’s up to you to diagnose problems and make repairs. Each ship is separated into modules, and each craft has a random variety and number of them. The modules range from fuel, oil, and oxygen to AI, reactors, and just one big lever. You’re told what needs fixing, so you don’t need to figure out which of them is broken, but each of them breaks in different ways, so it’s up to you to figure out what needs to be repaired and what it looks like when everything is working.

This is all handled through a tactile interface where you pull levers and push buttons. Once you find something broken, you have to head to the store (right next to the repair bay) to buy a replacement and slot it in. You can get a welder that will restore shattered parts, but I found it somewhat unnecessary, as parts are relatively cheap. It’s a game that feels similar to Papers, Please, but with less paperwork and more refilling blinker fluid.

To help, you’re provided an all-inclusive instruction manual that goes over everything you need to know… mostly. You usually don’t have context for what is going on until you’ve seen the module itself and have gotten to know the various parts. Even when you do, it’s not difficult to make a mistake. You might get a pancake wrong or forget to close a hatch when you’re finished. Personally, I’ve never gotten to the point where I’m completely confident in front of a reactor. But then, if you get a step wrong, they blow up in your face and take, at the very least, you along with them. Possibly the neighborhood, as well.

You play as Wilbur, a hapless guy with a four-eyed fox head. He’s just the latest in a line of mechanics employed at Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop. Hints are dropped at what happened to the previous ones, but you can probably guess. You’re given free rein of the shop. Most of the profit you make is yours, but every three days, you need to pay Uncle Chop R.E.N.T. to maintain your employment.

However, before you even really get grease on your hands, some dude shows up and blows your (fox) head off. It’s a good indication of how things will go from here.

You’re saved by a coworker who also happens to be the living personification of death. You’ve made an impression, so he will “zoop” you back to the start of your employment every time you screw up bad enough to die. The purpose of this isn’t completely clear at the start, but it’s nice to have job security. Also, yes, this is technically a roguelite.

There are two modes of play in Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop. The first has the day passing by in real time, leaving you to try and fit in as many jobs as possible before bedtime. This means there’s a lot of pressure, and you’ll have to flip through that manual of yours pretty quickly whenever you’re faced with something you’re not completely familiar with. It also leaves more room for mistakes.

The second way of playing removes the time limit. You’re given room to complete three jobs and can take as long as you want on them. Making a mistake (or “fucking up,” as the game puts it) results in heftier penalties. However, in my experience, it’s a far easier way to play. When you’re given as much time as you need, it’s easier to complete a job without any mistakes whatsoever.

It doesn't necessarily feel like the intended way to play. However, it also feels like a necessary compromise. Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop is brutal. It throws new stuff at you all the time, practically smashing you directly into a wall. It can be cruel about it. Just wait until the first time you see a reactor. Yeah, you read that manual in advance. Go ahead. It won’t help. You’re one forgotten switch away from nuking your face off.

Sometimes, after the first R.E.N.T. is taken care of, a dude will land with pipe bombs strapped to his ship. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got the day timer going, you’ll have one-and-a-half minutes to deduce what wires you should snip using the Venn diagram from hell. I got really good at bomb defusal. I’m a wiz at reading Venn diagrams.

Even when you’ve got all the time in the world, one fuckup can be all it takes to gutter a run. Some customers have the “Perfectionist” trait, which means that if you make a single mistake, it will completely negate everything you got correct and leave you out of pocket. It’s a gamble since you only need to leave one too few shots left in their identification module to lose all your hard work. If you miss R.E.N.T., your job being terminated is the least of your concerns.

There’s also the chance that a customer will show up requiring a fix you can’t provide. This sometimes happens before you have the “Pancake” machine required for building specialized parts, but I also had one that needed a fuse that wasn’t available for me to purchase yet. I’m not sure this is intentional design. The game will sometimes let you know when you don’t have the machines needed to fix a ship before you take a job, but it doesn’t work every time. I’ve learned to just buy the Pancake and Encoder machines immediately at the start of the first run and avoid rebreathers on the first day.

But even still, my last run was ended because I took a job from an armed customer. He tried to rob me, but when I refused to empty my pockets, he shot my brain off. This is Fuck Around and Find Out: The Game.

It’s okay, though. Every time I got my run nuked, I’d just slump my shoulders and decide if I had time for another run. The only aggravating part about it was that my deadline was coming up and I like to have a game beaten before writing the review since you never know when something will shake apart at the last minute. However, I think I’ve gotten to what is essentially an end (there appears to be multiple). I just know that there’s a tonne left hidden because the places you can stick your fingers to find secrets are on display at all times.

What made it so hard to stay mad at it was that, even after restarting dozens of times, I was still being presented with new stuff. Not necessarily modules; I know how to fix a rebreather in my sleep. It’s the interactions with customers and coworkers. Every time one gets out of their ship, you never know if they’re going to give you a hug or complain about how you smell like wet dog. Visiting the speakeasy before or after work also gives you the opportunity to see more of the station’s denizens and pick up side quests.

But it’s maybe the fact that Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop doesn’t lean entirely on cruelty to Wilbur that makes it more tolerable. As much fun as it is to see a hapless protagonist suffer, and it feels appropriate in a workplace environment, it can get tiresome. Instead, most of the characters have a softer side. Droose, especially, outwardly seems to care about Wilbur, and some moments with him are endearing. He and some of the customers will offer frequent words of encouragement, even if others are deliberately trying to blow you up.

Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop is a lot. It’s a lot more than it has to be. While its design is tight and well-executed, it offers an obscene amount of variety and seemingly endless things to see. Which is good, especially if you’re like me and you find yourself in a hellcircle of 11th-hour fuckups that prevent you from witnessing the final clock out. And I think it says a lot when, despite how badly I’ve been savaged by its unforgiving nature, I’m happy to start up a new run and try again.

It’s pretty clear that not everyone will think that way. A game about throwing levers and getting blown up repeatedly isn’t going to gel with some. And while there is some permanent progression, the only thing you carry over between runs that will help you is what you were able to learn. A fondness for troubleshooting will get you far.

But regardless of whether or not this is the type of game you think you’d enjoy, it’s clear that Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop is exactly what it wants to be. It’s an expert mix of cruel work-a-day tinkering and dark, vulgar humor. A bottomless well of savagely comedic moments, beckoning secrets, and puzzles that require Ikea furniture-level manual comprehension skills. If you’ve got room in your skull for some truly useless knowledge and can tolerate having your face stomped on a few times, you’ve got a friend in Uncle Chop.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop appeared first on Destructoid.

As a sysadmin I used to work under used to say, “Everything works until it breaks.” That goes for live service games which are reliant on various, well, services and servers to function. The Bazaar is no exception, so here’s how you can get the latest for when it’s down.

Currently, The Bazaar is more vulnerable than most, as Tempo’s hero builder is still in its closed beta period as of October 30, 2024. To even get access to it, you need to have purchased the Founder’s Pack.

The game goes down frequently at this point in time due to maintenance. At the time of writing, it was down up until a few minutes ago following 2-3 hours of work being done to patch the game. So, it’s not uncommon to see a message when trying to log in that you are unable to connect.

How to check if The Bazaar is down

Right now, Tempo doesn’t have a site setup to track the status of its services, so there’s no real-time tracker of problems. So, that sucks. But there are a few sources that you can turn to that should have recent-ish information on them.

The first is through the developers themselves (or spokespeople), who post on both Twitter and Bluesky. Their updates are rather frequent and timely, at least when it comes to planned maintenance.

But perhaps the best place to check is The Bazaar’s Discord server. You can use this link here or search for “playthebazaar” to connect. This is sometimes the better choice since you’re not merely relying on the developer to announce when outages happen, since you can ask the community if anyone else is having issues at that moment.

The post Is The Bazaar down? How to check the server status appeared first on Destructoid.

This one soundtrack every Monday on the Nintendo Music app is killing me. And last week, it was Brain Age? With respect to the soundtrack, it feels like a wasted week. Thankfully, this week is one that appeared in my list of 10 Game soundtracks that need to be added to Nintendo Music, Splatoon 2.

We already got Splatoon 3, which is fine. It features some songs from fictional band Off The Hook. However, Splatoon 2 features the most songs from Off the Hook since that’s the game that the duo, Marina and Pearl, MC’d. I like the Squid Sisters, I’m not big on Deep Cuts, but I love Off the Hook. And now, based on the artist playlist (because the app credits fictional artists but not the real composers), we’re at 36 minutes of Off the Hook, which is probably as good as we’ll get until Splatoon 4.

Beyond Off the Hook, there are also prominent contributions from Wet Floor and Dedf1sh, as well as some great smaller acts. The series keeps building off what was done by the games before, but in isolation, Splatoon 2 had an incredibly solid soundtrack. I think it’s where the series’ aural universe really started finding itself, so the composers were able to really think about the world and characters they were trying to communicate. It felt less like it was designed as background music and more as though it was created to be a curated selection of the works of fictional artists.

It’s still a bummer that we’re getting a single soundtrack once a week. It’s such a Nintendo thing to do. When the Wii launched with its Virtual Console, we’d get about three games every week (until later in the lifespan when it slowed down), and a lot of people already felt that was pretty slow as they waited to see their favorite classic hit the service (though, in retrospect, that’s a pretty reasonable rate). The NSO retro apps don’t even seem to have a schedule; new games just drop a seemingly random times. It just feels like it will be quite a while before I can conveniently open the app and find whatever I’m in the mood for.

At the same time, I really enjoy the service. I could load up pretty much any of the soundtracks on YouTube, but the sound quality is less consistent and it’s harder to find playlists for what I’m looking for. Plus, I enjoy the organized playlists and, while I haven’t used the feature yet, the ability to extend any song is a useful one when it comes to video game music.

Anyway, the Splatoon 2 soundtrack is now available on Nintendo Music, which you can download for free and use with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

The post Scratch one: Splatoon 2 soundtrack added to Nintendo music appeared first on Destructoid.

While the embargo for this preview lifted today, I was provided access to Two Point Museum on my birthday. It’s really nice of Sega and Two Point Studios to have remembered, especially since it’s one of my most anticipated games. As, truly, any game in the Two Point series probably would be.

It’s not that I particularly love museums, either, though I do enjoy them, as should anyone who enjoys massaging their brain matter. I just really love the Two Point games. Two Point Hospital was a terrific modernization of/apology for 1997’s Theme Hospital. Two Point Campus was a deft continuation on a new subject matter. As far as management games go, Two Point Studios’ feel ripped from the golden age, which makes sense, since many of the developers there worked on some of the best ‘90s and ‘00s genre staples.

And having put nearly eight hours into Two Point Museum, I can readily say that it continues the level of quality that the studio is known for.

If you haven’t heard of the series, they’re management games set in a fictional county full of hapless people. Capitalism is ruinous to the poor sods, but as long as they get their fill of nutrient-deficient snack food and are able to watch the most mass-marketed movie filth, they don’t seem to mind. Not even when it results in their demise.

This entry continues the theme of institutions that money should have no factor in with museums. You’re the latest fool to be brought in to run the county’s museums. This not only means curating exhibits, but sending out even hapless-ier fools into the world to plunder treasures for you. You also need to balance the books by encouraging donations, hire staff, run a gift shop, and (much later on) prevent thieves from making off with your rightfully plundered assets.

There’s a lot of the DNA from Hospital and Campus here, but it also feels like it leans a lot further in a Tycoon-style direction. The gameplay loop is more about acquiring better and better attractions to bring in the crowds, whereas the previous games had a focus on efficiency. You send out your expedition crews, then place whatever they bring back around your museum, ensuring that they’re appropriately decorated and amid other related exhibits. For extra profit, you can also set up guided tours, which is surprisingly intuitive and easy to do.

The main complaint that I always had with the previous games is that their missions are very isolated. You’d build a hospital, complete the objectives, then move on to the next to start all over with different parameters. Campus was very similar in this regard. It made it so that there was no need to continue after you’d gotten three stars. There was no advantage to playing on and just building the best institution possible. You'd just moved on. It could get a bit repetitive.

Two Point Museum has a similar level structure, and certain elements are still isolated. You can’t, for example, collect artifacts in one museum and plant them in another. However, any place you unlock on the expedition map will be available elsewhere. Also, there are different types of exhibits, and you may need to have first played in another museum to be able to recruit experts for new ones. There is a lot more meta-progression overall.

More importantly, you can only progress so far in one museum until the game asks you to improve your reputation before it gives you any more tasks at that location. You can only get a single star on the first museum, and if you want to progress beyond that, you’ll need to go work on another museum for a while and complete objectives there. I’m not sure this leveling system was fully implemented in the build I played since the criteria to advance wasn’t quite clear.

However, I did get a taste for it. The preview gave me three museums to progress through, each with a different primary theme. Two of them only allowed progression to the first star, but the first museum allowed me to obtain two stars.

Even within the first museum, I got a lot of room to play. It introduced botany as a secondary exhibit type, showed off how you set up tours, and gave me the rundown on how to prevent theft. There’s a surprising amount of depth as you work to maximize the impressiveness of your collection. Celebrities will visit, school trips will invade, and people will be turned into clowns.

I found myself constantly reconfiguring my exhibits when new ones would come in or if I collected enough of a theme to create a guided tour of them. The build system is more freeform than it was in previous games. There’s still the block-based room tool for things like bathrooms and staff lounges, but you can also just set up walls in the negative space between them to create an aesthetic separation between groups of exhibits. It’s not even all aesthetic, either, since placing decorations increases the buzz of the exhibits in the area, so there’s plenty of reason to not just leave everything bare walls.

It’s simple. Even if you don’t really care about aesthetic or have an eye for it, getting the buzz on your exhibits to perfect is cake. There’s usually one particular decoration that gives an exhibit extra buzz, and it’s easily viewable in the information pane. Guests don’t seem to mind cramped spaces, so you can just load up.

There’s one place I’m iffy about, and that’s when it comes to studying artifacts. You eventually get the ability to research for a better understanding of the various exhibit types. You do this by just dragging a spare (preferably duplicate) exhibit into a big machine and having one of your experts work on it for a while. This destroys the exhibit but gives you experience in that field. But the reward for researching is new decorations.

New decorations are cool and everything, but each time you pass a milestone, you get one new thing. And you’re lucky if you get one milestone out of a research project. It can sometimes cost quite a bit of money to send out an expedition, but more importantly, it takes a chunk of time. So, you start off with an adequate but limited set of decorative objects, and then you need to work to get anything really cool. It’s just a little trickle of new stuff.

It’s not a bad use for your doubles whenever an expedition comes back with an artifact you already have. But selling extra displays is the best way to make up for any budgetary shortfalls. You can’t do that when you destroy them for research. The best solution is to grind out shorter, cheaper expeditions to feed the machine, and that kind of sucks. It’s mostly optional, but it’s still a nuisancesome distraction for not a lot of reward.

I’m happy to say that the DJs are back. Also, the Tannoy Voice, but I’m more interested in the DJs and ads. After all the straight hours I put in the demo, the segments have all kind of blurred together for me, but the original trio of Harrison Wolff, Sir Nigel Bickleworth, and Ricky Hawthorn all return (all voiced by Marc Silk). The student radio hosts didn't show up in the rotation, which makes sense with the change of settings. However, a new archeologically aligned host has been added.

All the humor of the previous games is intact. Children (the first time they’ve been represented in the Two Point Universe) are represented as creatures of chaos that you need to keep distracted. The botany exhibits seem to be especially hazardous to your patrons, as many are carnivorous. The first that I received would turn people into clowns, revealing the source of Two Point Hospital’s Jest Infection illness. Speaking of which, there are plenty of callbacks to previous games.

Another of my favorite facets that are returning is the pleading blurbs you receive when you attempt to fire employees. They’ll tell you how their life is dramatically falling apart and how this is an awful continuation of the pattern or, inversely, agree with your decision because they sucked anyway. When I spoke to the team the last time I previewed Two Point Museum, I asked if they were afraid that this would hit differently in a climate where we’re all out of work or scared of losing our jobs. The reply was essentially that they try to be ridiculous enough that these statements would never be taken seriously, which I’m personally grateful for since the core of the humor here is that these people are dumb and must suffer.

I don’t have any major concerns about Two Point Museum. At the same time, it hasn’t exceeded my expectations. It is exactly the kind of game I expected from the series. That’s not a bad thing; that’s how it should be. I mean, it would be great if it was also some sort of revolutionary experience, but also somewhat unrealistic when regarding a game about running a museum. Two Point Museum is a really good game about running a museum, and that’s pretty rad.

At the same time, I can see the loose threads that need to be tightened before release. The preview wasn’t an uncomfortable experience, but it does need some gentle balancing. Considering we’re still a few months from release, I have no doubt that Two Point Studios is more than capable. Unfortunately, that also means I have a few months left to wait. Ugh.

Two Point Museum is planned for release on March 4, 2025, for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

The post Hands-on Preview: Monetizing history in Two Point Museum appeared first on Destructoid.

GOG has announced that on December 13th, both Warcraft and Warcraft 2 will be delisted from their storefront. This is no doubt due to the recently released Warcraft Battlechest, which will include the two games alongside some godawful-looking remasters. However, this has caused GOG to append their Preservation Program promise.

Yeah, poor timing. The Warcraft I & 2 Bundle is part of GOG’s newly launched Preservation Program, which has the storefront take responsibility for ensuring a developer/publisher’s games work on modern hardware. That kind of goes up in smoke if the publisher chooses to delist a game anyway so they can (probably) charge more money for a different version. So, in response to that, GOG is updating its manifesto to state that it will ensure compatibility with modern hardware even if the game gets pulled from the storefront. After all, if you bought the game before it was delisted, you still have access to it; they just can’t sell it anymore.

Speaking of which, GOG is providing a coupon to pick up the games before they are delisted. Entering MakeWarcraftLiveForever at checkout nets you $2 USD off. That’s not necessarily impulse buy territory, but as I understand it, GOG still needs to pay the customer, and they can’t choose themselves when to discount something. Also note that this is not a sponsored post, I’m just passing along the info.

As mentioned, the delisting is likely due to the Warcraft Battlechest, which was released last month and includes Warcraft 1, 2, and 3, alongside their remasters. The remastered versions of 1 and 2 kind of suck. Their updated graphics look like terrible, flat, cash-in mobile titles, and tweaks to the gameplay have unbalanced the games. But, I mean, the first two are available, and as far as I know, they’re at they were. So, at the very least, that means that the games are still available, even if you have to deign to use Battle.net.

So, it sucks, but maybe not the end of the world. It’s the worst when a remastered game replaces the original (such as the Grand Theft Auto: Definitive Editions). That’s not entirely the case here. However, it is nice to see that GOG is saying, “We can’t make money off of it anymore, but we don’t want to leave you with an inferior product.” That’s a bit bold, considering they can’t predict the future of Windows, but the courtesy is there.

The post Original versions of Warcraft and Warcraft 2 are being delisted from GOG this month appeared first on Destructoid.

I really enjoyed the grab bag that was Taito Milestones 2. It featured some predictable hits but then flanked them with some hilariously dreadful games, or, as I put it in that review, “bad in an almost impressive way.” So, I’ve been looking forward to Taito Milestones 3 for another injection of titles.

This collection is dominated by a coalition of the Bubble Bobble and Rastan series. But, like before, there is also a smattering of more obscure titles. However, this time around, I wouldn’t say any of them are “impressively bad.” But rather than just talk about them vaguely in the preamble, I’m going to take the approach I’ve started doing with arcade collections, and I’m just going to do a short review of every game in the collection. There are 10, so brace yourself.

Taito Milestones 3 (Switch)
Developer: Hamster
Publisher: Inin Games
Released: December 10, 2024
MSRP: $39.99

Bubble Bobble

Bubble Bobble is the best game that lets you play as a bubble-blowing dragon that can turn people into corndogs. It’s the most known quantity in this Taito roundup, one of their longest-lived properties. I have a certain affinity for the game, having owned the Game Boy version (where the hell did it go?) and encountered it in arcades a few times, once at the hockey arena in Bobcaygeon of Tragically Hip fame. Another time was at the Toronto Union Station, where it beckoned me from across the arcade with its chirpy music.

The only problem with Bubble Bobble being on Taito Milestones 3 is that it’s one of those games where you might already own multiple versions of it. Few Taito-related collections drop without its inclusion. That’s not an issue for anyone who doesn’t own it already. If you’ve somehow avoided it, you should totally have it in some form. If you already own it, it's a bummer that it’s taking up room here. If you’ve never played it, wow, guy, get on that.

It’s great with two players (in fact, if you want the best ending, you have to beat it with another person). However, if you’re used to the console versions, you might find the lack of continues to be a bit jarring. There’s actually a secret to avoid starting over. To continue, you need to cram more credits into the machine, then hold the start button as you’re losing your last life.

Rainbow Islands

Rainbow Islands is technically the sequel to Bubble Bobble, but they’re rather dissimilar. Following the events of the first game, Bub and Bob have been transformed from radical corndog-conjuring dragons into diminutive Fatty Arbuckles who piss rainbows. And rather than try and process every monster on the map into food, the rotund twins have to climb to the top of a series of platforms.

You can use your rainbows to walk across, and stacking them up is the key to climbing. However, if you jump on them, they shatter, but this can take out enemies below you. Directly hitting enemies with rainbows will also just remove enemies; they’re deadly. Throwing rainbows at certain spots will spawn food. I haven’t seen a corndog appear, which is unfortunate.

It’s a pretty solid game, except for the bosses. The bosses just suck, barely putting up a fight and following patterns that are typically easy to exploit. The two-player mode is also alternating instead of Bubble Bobble’s simultaneous cooperative, which is extremely lame but not the collection's fault.

Rastan Saga

Rastan does not feel like a real game. I’ve described a couple of games like this previously, but pretty much every cartoon in existence had an episode where the protagonists get sucked into a video game, and it’s always way off when it comes to video game logic. Like, it’s obvious that the writers and animators know nothing about video games aside from vague concepts. That’s Rastan, except it’s a real game.

Which isn’t to say it’s bad. It’s just the fact that the protagonist is a generic, muscled, Conan-like barbarian who walks with a stiff upper body and swats at enemies with various classic weapons. The music is good, but it’s crunchy and meanders about. 

But for something that is so generic it’s almost surreal, Rastan is a pretty fun game. Its usage of pester enemies, especially during platforming and climbing sections, can get pretty vexing, but it has good flow and pacing. The bosses are surprisingly entertaining, as well. It’s not the best game, but in terms of the shirtless barbarian genre, I can dig it.

Rastan Saga 2

I think Taito Milestones 3 heard me making fun of Rastan Saga’s appearance, so it came at me hard with Rastan Saga 2. By that, I mean that Rastan Saga 2 is magnitudes worse than the first game. I’m not sure what happened. They made the sprites bigger, which was how 2D arcade games tried to flex back in the day, but they’re all low-detail and dopey looking, and there are only a few frames of animation to most actions. The bosses are all ridiculous slapfights, and the hit detection is just cruel.

But the level design is horrendous. Unlike the various scrolling methods of the first game, these are all flat and cut out of big blocks. What really ground my goat was some of the jumps they expect you to make. There are places with a ceiling directly above your head, and you’re expected to jump up and over a pit. This means that, to not hit your head and stop all upward motion, you need to scooch out until you’re hanging on the ledge by a pixel, then jump up and over. 

After making one such jump on the second level, I realized I had to play through to the end of the game in that sitting because I wasn’t willing to suffer it a second time. Unfortunately, that’s not the only instance of those shenanigans getting pulled in this game.

Champion Wrestler

I left Rastan Saga 2 in a frustrated daze, so if I’m a little too positive on Champion Wrestler, that’s why. It’s great! Well, kind of. It’s a pretty typical setup of shortening your opponent’s health bar before going in for the pin. What I like best about it is that it’s really mashy. When you get pinned, you mash the two buttons to try and get free, and when you pin, it’s the same thing. I think that’s what makes a good arcade wrestler: enthusiastic mashing.

It also has Rastan as one of the characters, so I got to beat him up a whole bunch. It turns out I’m actually really good at Champion Wrestler (at least on its default settings). After getting a feel for the controls, I didn’t lose again until after winning the title. Maybe it’s just easy, but if that’s the case, don’t tell me. Let me have this.

Each round is capped off by a detailed portrait of the winner and loser. The winner always gets to do things like drive around in a sportscar with a bikini-clad woman and rub themselves with money, while the loser often finds themselves picking through the trash. It’s, uh, sometimes kind of depressing.

Cadash

This is another one that I had prior experience with because Cadash is rad. Well, okay, Cadash is kind of basic and clunky, but it ties in RPG systems like stat building. In a way, it feels more like Dungeons and Dragons than the actual Dungeons and Dragons game that Capcom put out. That’s partially because the levels have some degree of exploration to them and there are NPCs to talk to. It satisfies arcade operators by keeping you on a timer you can replenish using items and spells.

The original version supported four players, but only by linking two cabinets. Pulling off in this version would have been impressive, but the extra mile wasn’t taken here. However, the two-player mode can still be fun if both players understand that there may be a bit of grinding required to stay ahead of the game.

I like Cadash. It has that classic tabletop RPG feel. It’s extraordinarily clunky and has a habit of screwing you over, but its inclusion of stat progression makes it a welcome change from straightforward action games. The timer system, as much as it's there to make you empty your pockets, is lenient enough to not feel rushed. It’s not the most intricate game, but it has it where it counts.

Thunder Fox

It’s easy to get some real Rush’n Attack/Green Beret vibes from Thunder Fox. It’s a run-and-stab shooter, mostly, but there are a lot of little side vignettes where you fly dopey-looking vehicles or ride them across the water. It’s, uh, not quite as good as, like, any number of games I could compare it to, but it’s also not awful.

It’s so unremarkable I’m having trouble thinking of anything else to say about it. Yeah, I guess we’ll leave it at that. It’s a pretty generic cross between Contra and Rush’n Attack.

Runark (Growl)

Weirdly, the title screen presents this game as Runark (the Japanese title), but when you launch it, it’s Growl (the international title). I guess it doesn’t matter since I don’t think there are any major differences beyond the title, but it struck me as a bit awkward.

In any case, Growl is a wild game. It’s a beat-’em-up where you play as a ranger trying to violently stop poachers. Up to four players can rip their shirts and join in, and it is chaos. Growl throws heaps of bad guys your way, and the rangers aren’t afraid to pick up guns to use them in the service of protecting animals. Just hordes of dudes and these women who are dressed like they’re using their bare legs to climb the corporate ladder.

Absolutely hilarious. You walk through a series of same-y backgrounds, freeing wild animals who will then assist you. Enemy limbs can be liberated from their bodies with a well-placed explosion. There are some incredibly funny digitized voice samples. It’s really not the best beat-’em-up, but it makes up for a lot of its deficiencies with its ludicrous premise.

Warrior Blade: Rastan Sage Episode 3

Taito really went all-out for the third game in the Rastan series. It was originally available as a double-monitor arcade cabinet, like Taito’s own Darius 2. The characters are huge, which, as I’ve already said, is the way arcade developers like to flex their graphical horsepower. And the sound and music were clearly mixed around the idea that you’d be sitting on a subwoofer.

Surprisingly (especially after playing the last game), it’s also quite decent. Rather than being an action platformer, it’s a straight belt-scrolling brawler. There are three characters to choose from, and you get to pick from four levels to decide your route through the game. The combat itself isn’t varied, so instead, you’re put through a lot of different set-piece levels where you ride on a dragon or fight while sliding down a hill. The hit detection is a lot more fair, and the bosses are huge.

Even more surprisingly, it isn’t all that difficult. That might be because the cabinets it would come in would often charge more than a dollar to play, but that didn’t stop Darius from being tough. Warrior Blade might not be the best beat-’em-up I’ve ever experienced, but it’s enjoyable in its own right and a welcome apology for Rastan Saga 2.

Dead Connection

Here’s an interesting one. Its inclusion is a special treat since, if I’m not mistaken, this is the first time that it’s been ported or re-released. It’s also a somewhat unique game, as it’s a single-screen shoot-’em-up where you run around movie set-like dioramas gunning down thugs. Apparently some FBI agents have had enough of crime and have decided to just take down Marlon Brando’s lackeys using whatever force necessary.

If I saw Dead Connection in an arcade or laundromat (and I never did), I’d definitely slot a quarter. There’s something captivating about the way it’s zoomed way back from the action. Your bullets tear through the scenery as enemies pop up behind cover. You’re free to roam as necessary to flank your foes or just explore.

The main downside is that aiming sucks. It’s eight-direction, and you need to rely on its auto-targeting since there’s no nuance between those directions. It’s also hard to tell when your shots are going to collide with obstacles, and sometimes, it feels like your bullets are lodging themselves into thin air. Enemies don’t have that issue, so you just have to keep diving to avoid incoming shots while trying your best to find good vectors. It can be a bit frustrating, but it’s something you get used to with repeated playthroughs.

I almost forgot to mention, the version here is the Japanese release. I don’t know why, but it means the text isn’t in English. This doesn’t matter when you’re in-game, but it does mean that the cutscenes are still in Japanese. That’s lame. It’s possible they’ll patch it on launch day, but I’m not certain.

The Collection

As it was last time, Taito Milestones 3 is actually just a collection of games in Hamster’s Arcade Archives series, some of which aren't yet available individually. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I don’t have much to complain about with Arcade Archives. Except maybe the price, and Taito Milestones 3 relieves that a bit by allowing you to buy in bulk.

But what I'm trying to stress is that the collection is a launcher for individual games with the Arcade Archives wrapper. It’s a bit awkward, especially since the emulator itself has gone through a few iterations, and that’s reflected here. They’re consistent enough, but some of them have a softening filter by default that you need to turn off if you want crisp pixels. Unlike an individual Arcade Archives release, you don’t get all the regional versions. This is the strangest when it comes to Growl, which is called Runark on the title screen, and Dead Connection, which, for some reason, uses the Japanese version. Weird stuff.

Despite that, I’m happy with this iteration of Taito Milestones. It’s nowhere near Capcom Arcade Stadium in terms of features and content, nor is it as robust as past collections like Taito Memories. But I’ve played enough sub-par collections recently that I’ve come to appreciate this level of care.

The post Review: Taito Milestones 3 appeared first on Destructoid.

After ruling the home console roost for almost a decade, the mid-nineties were a turning point for Nintendo, and not in a “they finally quit cocaine and got their act together” kind of way. After creating their own worst enemy by screwing Sony in an effort to make a CD expansion for the Super Nintendo, they were struggling with getting their own next-generation console to the market. A lot of other companies were touting their fancy 32-bit monstrosities, and Nintendo needed something to convince people that they were still on the cutting edge. Otherwise, they might turn to Phillips, Atari, or 3DO to satiate their need for extra bits.

So, they turned to the inventor of the Game Boy, Gunpei Yokoi, had him put a bow around that virtual reality thing he was tinkering with, and shoved it out to market. The hardware wasn’t ready. Developers weren’t ready. The public wasn’t ready. Nintendo wasn’t ready. So, the Virtual Boy was swept under the rug in less than a year, and we were all politely asked to forget it ever happened.

But then, there are jerks like me who won’t let undetonated warheads lie. We have to just keep poking them, waiting for the safety mechanism to fail. We pull it apart, trying to see what makes it tick and if we can make it tick again. It’s in the name of science or something, I don’t care, let’s just light this candle.

And now I've updated the list to include every (North American) release on the Virtual Boy instead of just 10. You may be asking, “there were more than ten games?” Yes, but only barely. I, personally, own all fourteen games. Why? Well, for one thing, they were cheaper when I started gathering them. Gosh, I'm glad I shelled out for Jack Bros. while it was just stupidly expensive and not ludicrously expensive like it is now. So, I have intimate familiarity with these games. You can normally trust me with these rankings, but for this one, you can super-trust me.

Here is the entire (North American) Virtual Boy library ranked in order of "quality." Note that this doesn't include Japan-only releases. Maybe if I return to this list in the future I'll slot them in.

14. Waterworld

Waterworld may be at the bottom of the list, but even it’s not terrible. One theme you’ll see on this list is that the games are often some shade of acceptable, but they’re also insubstantial. We never got out of the tech demo stage of the console. And that’s totally Waterworld. You essentially sail around in your boat, blowing up other boats to allegedly protect people. It’s round-based, like an arcade game, so it doesn’t really have an ending. You just aim to set a high score. And that’s it.

Personally, I’ve never seen the movie. I mostly know it based on its reputation as a tremendous flop. The funniest thing about the game is the fact that you don’t pull survivors into your boat, you just have to make sure the bad boaters don’t get them. So, the whole time, these people are just flailing in the water while you cruise around all nice and dry in your boat. For all I know, this is a really accurate translation of the film’s premise to a video game. If that’s the case, good job.

13. Virtual League Baseball

Here’s Virtual League Baseball. It’s baseball! And it doesn’t have a career or league mode. There’s a pennant race, which is kind of like a career mode, but not really. If the Virtual Boy was a handheld platform rather than one that is just an allegedly portable console, then this would maybe be passable. But since it’s a largely home-locked console, it needs to compete with established series on the Genesis and SNES. And PlayStation, for that matter.

It’s perhaps most similar to Major League Baseball on the NES where all the fielders move in unison. That’s it. That comparison is the nicest thing I can say about Virtual League Baseball. I have nothing else.

12. Golf

Golf is golf. It’s golf. Just golf. Driving. Putting. It’s the whole 9. Well, 18. It’s not a particularly bad version of golf. It’s not a very exceptional version of golf, either. I’m not really sure what I’d add to the game to make it better. Mario, maybe? A career mode? A golf cart to ride around in? It just doesn’t seem like a good sport to play while sticking your face into a pair of goggles.

To be fair, it has a somewhat unconventional shot power/direction mini-game that I’ve never really been able to get the hang of. I get the jist of it, I just can’t seem to figure out how to really optimize my shot. So, in that sense, there’s at least a satisfying learning curve.

11. Galactic Pinball

What a choice of subject matter for Intelligent Systems’ only contribution to the Virtual Boy’s line-up. Galactic Pinball isn’t a bad game, but it's not exactly the most exciting take on pinball. In fact, it's not even a ball; it's a puck. It functions decently, but the tables are incredibly sparse and unimpressive. It's not even trying to emulate real pinball tables, so it doesn't even really do much with the fantasy angle.

Like, look at it this way: In 1988, Rare did a decent port of the classic table, Pin-Bot, on the NES. In 1993, Hal Laboratories found a hit with Kirby’s Pinball Land on Game Boy. These are much less powerful consoles running more impressive games of pinball than Galactic Pinball, and they don’t require you to hurt your neck and your eyes playing them. They also have actual balls.

10. 3-D Tetris

3-D Tetris belongs to the category of Virtual Boy games that were novel ideas that didn’t work out but no one had the heart to cancel it. Tetris is fun, cubes are great; on paper, everything should be pastries and gravy. 3-D Tetris almost works, and it even has a great aesthetic with some ‘tuded up tetrominoes watching you from the sideline.

The main idea is that rather than just building solid Tetris walls, you’re filling in a cube. This is a fine idea, but it fails in a few key areas. First, the controls take a lot of practice. Tetris succeeded in its easy-to-learn, difficult-to-master gameplay, so telling someone to manipulate blocks on three-axis is a big ask. Second, while the added depth helps with figuring out where your blocks are going to land, the fact that the tetrominoes fill as you set them down means you’ll never be given a full view of the gaps in your structure. Well, unless you learn to read the 2D diagram on the side of the screen, but that seems to miss the point. This slows things down substantially and makes it very difficult to course correct after making a mistake.

I’m not sure the formula ever had a chance to work, but it was a reasonable experiment. It's just not one that really yielded results. I’ll stick to Tetrisphere.

9. Mario Clash

We, unfortunately, never got a true Mario platformer on the Virtual Boy. Instead, there was Mario Clash, which was sort of like the original Mario Bros. arcade game (before they were super) if it was single-player and had the obligation to have an X-axis. You ascend a tower, floor by floor, eliminating baddies to proceed. The enemies are all impervious to Mario’s boots, so you need to first jam some koopas back in their shells, then fling them at their more resilient comrades. Some can only be knocked out by hurling the hapless lackeys into the foreground or background, making use of the 3D depth.

Mario Clash isn’t a bad game, but it suffers from a problem that I've already mentioned you’re going to see a lot on this list: it’s insubstantial. There are 99 levels, but they all play out essentially the same. When you clear them, you’re sent back to level 1, but the enemies are faster. I can’t imagine having the attention span to burn through the entire tower, let alone replaying it. While it’s fun for a while, it wears thin long before you get to the penthouse.

8. Vertical Force

Another category of Virtual Boy is the “why is this even on the console” game. Vertical Force is a fine example of that. It’s sort of like Star Soldier, another of Hudson’s shoot-’em-ups. And, that’s it. It’s like Star Soldier. The end.

Okay, what I mean by that is that it’s a vertical shoot-’em-up. It’s extremely basic, aside from the fact that you can move into the foreground and background. It’s not even a particularly exciting shoot-’em-up, nor is it a good showcase for the Virtual Boy. 1995 saw the release of Capcom’s 19XX: The War Against Destiny in the arcade, and you want to tell me that this is the best the Virtual Boy can do?

Just to top off the disappointment, like custard instead of whipped cream, Vertical Force is extremely short at five levels. Okay, that makes it sound similar to most vertical shooters, but they're short levels.

7. Red Alarm

Speaking of “not bad, but insubstantial,” Red Alarm is one of the games on this list that actually feel like a complete concept. But, like 3-D Tetris, it should have become obvious during development that it wasn't working out quite right. You fly your ship through wireframe corridors, shooting down enemy wireframes. The fact that objects aren’t filled in by solid textures can make it difficult to figure out what is a hole and what is a wall, but overall, it generally works fine. The problem is that there are 6 levels, and they all take about 5 minutes to complete. Math was never a strong subject for me, but I imagine if you put those numbers together, they don’t make a very big one.

6. Nester’s Funky Bowling

Bowling is a fun sport since you can usually do pretty well without being in shape. Athletes shouldn’t have all the fun. Nester’s Funky Bowling is a decent-ish representation of the sport, but there’s not much to it. While there’s a 2-player mode where you hand the crimson goggles back and forth, there’s no progression, career, or even a tournament mode to keep you hooked. I'm not sure what it was about Virtual Boy sports games and not having any sort of progression. The bowling pin physics are also rather underwhelming, and the bowling itself is pretty basic. It’s not the worst bowling game I’ve played, but far from the best. At least it has Nintendo Power's Nester in a title role.

5. Mario’s Tennis

A Mario Kart game would have been a good fit for the Virtual Boy, but we never made it that far. Instead, Mario’s Tennis would add a new sport to Mario’s proficiencies. Like Nester’s Funky Bowling, this isn’t a bad approach to the sport. Using a sprite-scaling Tennis court, Mario’s Tennis gives you a behind-the-back view of all the ball smacking, which makes good use of the Virtual Boy’s stereoscopic depth.

However, tournament mode is your only feeling of progression. They're just typical eliminatio-style competitions, and they’re incredibly basic. Once again, there is no career mode. There aren’t even various cups you can win across different terrains. It’s another game that just doesn’t have enough content to make it look like anything other than a tech demo. It does have the excuse that it was packed in with the console, which is something these other games can’t hide behind.

4. Panic Bomber

Originally released in arcades in 1994, this is technically the only time Panic Bomber was released in the West. That’s unfortunate, but at least it isn’t the only way to play the game. Importing the PC-Engine version would be a better option. Panic Bomber is a rather solid match-3 puzzle game with a Bomberman twist. That’s about it. I enjoy it for what it is, and Hudson did try to use the 3D effects to jazz up the graphics a bit. Still, it really doesn’t benefit from added depth. However, in terms of puzzle games, this one rules the roost on the Virtual Boy.

3. Jack Bros.

It’s said that Jack Bros. is the first game of the Megami Tensei series to be released outside of Japan. Before you get too excited, it’s a pretty unrelated spin-off. You can play as Jack Frost, Jack Lantern, or Jack Skelton, and their goal is to go through a series of mazes collecting keys. It’s nice to have a more adventurous game appear on the list, but Jack Bros. isn’t very compelling. The only use the depth has here is displaying the next level below the one you’re on. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not something you couldn’t find on Game Boy.

2. Teleroboxer

Now we get to the first game on the list that I’d actually recommend. Teleroboxer is, as the name implies, a boxing game. However, it stars giant robots. Of any game released, it’s the one that makes the best use of the hardware. The graphics keep the headset in mind, giving you a first-person perspective on the combat. Meanwhile, the movement makes use of the Virtual Boy’s unique controller, having you manipulate your fists with the symmetrical d-pads.

It’s actually a great little title, packed full of personality. Something of a mix of Punch-Out!! And Battle Clash. The only problem is that it’s very difficult. To date, I think I’ve only barely cleared the third fight. Maybe that’s for the best since there are only seven battles. On the other hand, there are only seven battles. Still, it’s worth checking out for the unique control scheme and fun personality.

1. Virtual Boy Wario Land

The fact that Nintendo has never re-released Virtual Boy Wario Land is criminal in the most uncool sense of the word. The Wario Land has never really stuck to one particular convention of gameplay since its start as the third Mario Land title on Game Boy. This is the nearest continuation of that introductory title. However, it’s more focused, expanded, and while it could be done without the 3D effects, it does make the effort of utilizing the Virtual Boy’s unique features.

It’s also as tight as a pair of leather pants and as solid as a Christmas cake. It’s perhaps not the most unique platformer on the plantation, but it’s polished to a mirror sheen. Plumbing the levels for treasures feels great, and Wario’s unique mannerisms shine through. It’s one that shouldn’t be missed, which makes its exclusivity to the Virtual Boy nothing short of frustrating.

However – and maybe you can predict this shortcoming – it’s very short. It still feels like the most feature-complete and well-rounded product in the Virtual Boy’s limited library, but at 2-3 hours, it’s the shortest in the Wario Land series.

The post Every Virtual Boy game, ranked appeared first on Destructoid.

Good news! Oh, wait. No. Bad news. Devolver Digital has announced the delay of three games that were slated for 2024. The games are Stick It to the Stickman, Baby Steps, and Skate Story. They’re now all coming in 2025. Maybe.

I feel like patting myself on the back, because when the Devolver Delayed Awards 2024 stream was announced, those are the games I guessed. But then I realized that I guessed them by going into Steam, looking at what games Devolver still has slated for 2024, and listing them off. There was absolutely no guesswork there, so I should probably have a little modesty.

However, I’d like to point out that Stick It to the Stickman and Skate Story are both returning champions from the Devolver Delayed 2023 stream. At this point, they might as well keep delaying them for the shower of accolades it nets them every year.

I don’t really have a horse in this race. I’m rarely disappointed by delays these days because I’ve always got too much to play, both at the present and in the future. And the only game of the three delayed I’m really all that interested in is Skate Story. That’s because I like Skate. and this game is clearly trying to do something neat with the formula. However, it’s not, like, at the top of my priorities. If it’s at the top of your priorities: bummer.

Stick It to the Stickman, Baby Steps, and Skate Story are all set to release sometime in 2025. You can check out the Devolver Delayed stream over here.

The post Devolver Digital heroically delays three games into 2025 appeared first on Destructoid.

Are you counting down the days until the release of a Devolver Digital-published game? If so, you might be tacking on some more waiting, since tomorrow will mark the return of Devolver Delayed, the stream in which the publisher announced which games aren’t going to hit their planned release date.

‘Tis the season, by which I mean, it’s nearing the end of 2024. Games marked “Coming in 2024” are running out of year to push things out the door. Everyone is firing up their PR machine to update their schedules, and, as usual, Devolver has the most ostentatious way of doing it with a stream dedicated to pushing things back. Kicking them down the field. So on.

What games are on the docket? I don’t know! According to Steam, Devolver has three games that are still slated for 2024: Stick It to the Stickman, Skate Story, and Baby Steps. Could be any of them. Could be all of them. Two of them are defending their titles from last year. Maybe they’ll get creative and delay a game that hasn’t even been announced. Perhaps they could push back a game they already released. They could delay a game that they aren’t even publishing. Such power!

If it’s anything like last year’s stream, it will be short. Devolver Delayed 2023 was three minutes. Would you rather that your hope sprung eternal? Well, then, they’ve also coyly added, “And who knows, we might even show you something new.” They might! It’s a possibility!

Devolver Delayed 2024 is airing on November 27, 2024 at 10 am PT (1 pm ET). They gave me this link to give to you.

The post Prepare to be disappointed, Devolver Delayed stream returns tomorrow appeared first on Destructoid.

Creative Assembly has announced the next DLC expansion to their already sprawling strategy game, Total War: Warhammer 3. It’s good news if you’re a fan of the Khorne, Ogre Kingdoms, or Orcs & Goblins (not me) because the Omens of Destruction has you in mind. In addition, all players will receive a content update.

Like Thrones of Decay, the DLC comes in three packs, which covers each of the factions listed above (Khorne, Ogre, Orcs & Goblins). Man, this game is a tangled mess of terminology. I’ve put well over 200 hours into the series, and I still can’t really figure out exactly what this press release is trying to say. All right, I’m going to make myself look like a fool, so I’ll just paste what the press release has written:

SKULLTAKER, THE HERO SLAYER (KHORNE)

Khorne’s immortal champion and the greatest of all Bloodletters, Skulltaker is ever seeking worthy skulls for his master. Scanning the battlefield for the enemy’s greatest champion, he bellows his challenge before moving in to end yet another storied life.

Campaign Feature:

• Cloak of Skulls: Skulltaker must seek out and defeat powerful enemy lords across the heroic pantheon of the Warhammer World. With each skull added to his cloak, powerful new abilities and traits can be earned and upgraded.

Battle Playstyle:

• A force of daemonic destruction, Skulltaker excels at hunting down and dueling enemy lords before cleaving through ranks of troops with his two-handed Slayer Sword. His Cloak of Skulls passive ability grants increasing spell resistance and ward saves the more he kills.  

New Units:

• New units from the Blood God’s domain enter the fray, including two legendary heroes; Skarr Bloodwrath and Skyla Anfingrimm, followed by a host of acolytes, including the Bloodspeaker, Slaughterbrute, Bloodbeasts, Wrathmongers, Skullreapers, and Khorngors.

GORBAD IRONCLAW, THE BRUTAL UNIFIER (ORCS & GOBLINS)

One of the most infamous of all Orc Warbosses, Gorbad Ironclaw knows but one language, and that is war. Unique amongst his race due to his rare mix of brain and brawn, he has become an inspiration amongst his kind for "invasions done propa."

Campaign Feature:

• Da’ Plan: A tenacious tactician (for an Orc), Gorbad must experiment with unique battle strategies for his armies to employ, granting a deadly of exotic battle bonuses and army compositions that can overcome any challengers.

Battle Playstyle:

• Riding into battle atop his fierce Warboar, Gnarla, Gorbad penetrates the enemy lines with devastating charges before engaging in close combat with his mighty axe, Morglor ‘the Mangler’. His ‘Da Great Leader’ ability which activates when troops are in his vicinity, granting increased melee attack and defence.

New Units:

• New units joining Gorbad’s Waaagh! include the legendary hero Snagla Grobspit accompanied by warriors such as the Savage Orc Great Shaman, Night Goblin Big Boss, Black Orc (Axe & Shield), Mangler Squiqs, Colossal Squig, Arachnarok (Flinger), and Bolt Throwa.

GOLGFAG MANEATER, THE MERCENARY (OGRE KINGDOMS)

One of the most successful Ogre mercenaries of all time, Golgfag Maneater forged a reputation for the Ogres as fearsome killers for hire long before they became a relatively common sight in the mercenary armies around the world.

Campaign Feature:

• Mercenary Contracts: Ever keen to lace his pocket with gold, Golgfag helps clients throughout the Warhammer World settle their warring disputes by taking on all wars they’re involved in and conducting hostile actions against their enemies for handsome rewards.

Battle Playstyle:

• An anti-infantry blender, Golgfag tears through hordes of infantry with the aid of barbaric weaponry. His globe-trotting nature also gives him access to a variety of exotic abilities, such as Dead Eye, which allows him to take a powerful shot from his pistol, causing huge damage.

New Units:

• New units joining Golgfag’s mercenary brigade include the Legendary Hero Bragg the Gutsman as well as the Ogre Paymaster, Bruiser, Golgfag’s Maneaters, Pigback Riders, Blood Vultures, Yhetees and Thundertusks.

Thanks, press release. You’ve always been there for me. I don’t play as any of these factions, though. Or, at least, I haven’t yet. I mostly play the Dark Elves, Vampire Lords, or Beastmen. They haven’t received any love for a while, so maybe the next DLC will be looking at me.

Regardless of whether or not you want to buy any of the DLC, everyone will be receiving a free content update in patch 6.0. To once again quote the press release, this contains, “Legendary Lord, Arbaal the Undefeated, the champion of Khorne who has seen thousands fall beneath the crimson arc of his axe. Alongside this, a faction update will arrive for the Ogre Kingdoms, Khorne, and Orcs & Goblins.” Cool! Neat, I guess.

Honestly, after a lot of player outcry, Creative Assembly revamped its DLC strategy starting with Thrones of Decay, which was delayed a few month into earlier this year. They promised to make their DLC more meaningful and worthwhile, and it would appear that worked, at least from a community perspective. A lot of their earlier DLC and expansions sit with Steam ratings of Mixed or Mostly Positive, whereas all the Thrones of Decay packs are at Very Positive. Hopefully, the Omens of Destruction will continue this goodwill.

Total War: Warhammer 3’s Omens of Destruction DLC packs and bundle will arrive on December 12, 2024.

The post Total War: Warhammer 3’s next expansion bolsters the ranks of the Khorne, Ogres, Orcs, and Goblins appeared first on Destructoid.

Crossbows are excellent fallbacks for your party in Baldur's Gate 3. When the enemy is just too far away, or maybe when you want a little distance, they're always there for you. And the Hellfire Engine Crossbow adds some heavy artillery to your Baldur's Gate 3 arsenal.

This special crossbow can be crafted in Act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3, once you've reached the Lower City. It's tied into the quest to Disable the Steel Watch, but before you go blowing the place to smithereens, take a tour through the factory. The Hellfire Engine Crossbow is very much worth picking up, especially for the ensuing fights in the Foundry.

Where to find the Watcher Crossbow blueprint

The Watcher Crossbow Blueprint is the key part of the Hellfire Engine Crossbow DIY project in Baldur's Gate 3, and you can find it on a desk inside the Security office at the back of the Steel Watch Foundry (X: -333 Y: -157). The tricky part is that while you can read it, you will actually need to pick it up. Open the options menu on it (right-click for PC players) and opt to add it to one of your party member's inventories.

Next, we'll need the materials. They're scattered around the factory's ground floor, so you don't need to advance further just yet to find them. You will probably want to finish the fight on the ground floor though, just to make life easier.

The parts you're looking for are:

• Targeting Module (X: -307 Y: -157)
• Steel Watcher Arm (X: -280 Y: -165)
• Watcher Crossbow Blueprint (X: -333 Y: -157)
• Table

The first two are scattered around the factory's main floor. However, they are well-marked with plaques right beside them stating what they are. While the Watcher's Crossbow Blueprint is in our possession already at this point, and the table is located on the opposite side of the Security office, near the stairs.

How to make the Hellfire Engine Crossbow

Now, head to the table and interact with it. You should have the combining screen show up. Open your inventory, and drag-and-drop the Steel Watcher Arm, Targeting Module, and Watcher's Crossbow Blueprint onto the slots next to the Table.

Hit the Combine button, and it will eat up the components and spit out the Hellfire Engine Crossbow. Congrats!

This special Heavy Crossbow has some nice bonuses. It hits hard, comes with a +2 Weapon Enchantment, can perform several special shots including one that reels enemies closer, and gets Lightning Arrow as a spell. It's a very handy weapon in the hands of someone like Karlach, giving her a much more effective ranged option than a normal, boring crossbow.

Hellfire Crossbow Stats and Information

The Hellfire Crossbow is considered a heavy crossbow. That means it can be equipped by Lae'zel and Karlach only, from the origin companions. It is classified as Very Rare.

The post How to make the Hellfire Engine Crossbow in Baldur’s Gate 3 appeared first on Destructoid.

There are many great companies working to keep old PC games going. Some, like Nightdive Studios, work to remaster them for modern audiences. Others, like Ziggurat and SNEG, keep older games updated and functional on newer operating systems. Good Old Games has always done that to an extent, but now they’re making a greater commitment with the GOG Preservation Program.

In essence, the program simply means that GOG’s staff has checked into a game and ensured that it runs fine. As they put it, they are essentially taking over ongoing support from the original developer. For some games, such as the Resident Evil series, untangling some of the bugs in the original Windows version can take a lot of effort. In fact, truly, if there’s one thing I want to see from this effort, it’s that more Windows games from the late ‘90s to early ‘00s are touched up, as they tend to have the worst pains when it comes to getting them running again.

Truthfully, I found the launch of the program to be somewhat underwhelming. Going through the changelogs of a lot of games in the list shows that the most recent update was simply for staff validation and the addition of cloud saves in some instances. I was hoping for more ambitious adjustments and patching. I maybe just had too high of expectations for the launch.

Nonetheless, the program is heartening as someone who plays old games just as much as new ones. GOG was founded as Good Old Games with the intent of making classic games digitally available. However, the company later shifted focus to creating a marketplace for all games in a way to rival steam. So, to see them announce that they’re going to make an effort to go back is, at the very least, a step in the right direction.

But I have a lot of lingering questions about the program. Thankfully, Marcin Paczyński, Senior Business Development Manager at GOG, was willing to answer some of them. This interview hasn’t been modified in any way. The trademark symbols are all him.

Zoey: A lot of DOS games on GOG still seem to use DOSBox as a backend. That’s a trusted and reliable solution, but it often requires a lot of fine-tuning for different system environments (resolutions, mouse acceleration, game controllers). Is GOG tweaking it in any way to make it more one-size-fits-all?

DOSBox is, indeed, an amazing open-source solution that we’ve been using since GOG's inception in 2008. All DOS games are fine-tuned with a bespoke configuration, so it is rarely one-size-fits-all. Even more, we have a custom version of DOSBox that allows us to support cloud saves in DOS games. This feature is exclusive to our platform.

Marcin Paczyński, Senior Business Development Manager at GOG

Zoey: From what I understand, some publishers do not allow GOG to modify a game’s build to address bugs or alter it for modern environments. Is that still a barrier? Is GOG planning to renegotiate agreements for certain games?

In the case of classic GOG releases, we are allowed to modify the game’s build to ensure compatibility with modern systems. Additionally, we often collaborate with the publisher’s technical and QA teams to achieve this goal. There may be some edge cases, but we’ll do our best to include those games in the Program as well. It might take a bit longer for some titles, but we’re confident that, in time, we’ll be able to add every game to the Program.

Marcin Paczyński, Senior Business Development Manager at GOG

Zoey: Are there any games that GOG decided not to put on their storefront that might have another chance under this program?

Truth be told, some games in our pipeline have been waiting in the queue for a long time, because there are always more impactful classic titles that we need to be focusing on. With our new focus on game preservation, we hope to be able to release classics as soon as they are signed. More importantly, we really hope that with the Preservation Program’s success, we’ll be able to bring more amazing classic games (and not only) from the GOG Community Wishlist — titles we’ve been working to resurrect for years.

Marcin Paczyński, Senior Business Development Manager at GOG

Zoey: Is GOG planning to work with fans who may have already created a solution or patch for a game’s modern problems?

Yes, we already had a chance to work with the communities on many great releases on GOG, and will continue to do so. That being said, the GOG Preservation Program aims to preserve the original game and make it playable on modern machines. This means being very careful with any modification that might alter the original experience. We also want to avoid passing the responsibility of maintaining the game’s quality on to the community, as it wouldn’t be fair to them. We do have plans for 2025 to work even closer with the communities and build upon the GOG Preservation Program by adding a feature that would allow gamers to enjoy all of those amazing community updates in an easy and secure way. It would be optional, of course.

Marcin Paczyński, Senior Business Development Manager at GOG

Zoey: If players are reporting additional bugs, concerns, or inconveniences with updated builds for games under this umbrella, will GOG offer support, workarounds, or updates?

We’re going to actively listen to the gaming community – their feedback is the most valuable for us. If we missed something that they notice, you can be sure we’ll take it into account and provide fixes as fast as possible.

Marcin Paczyński, Senior Business Development Manager at GOG

Zoey: Will GOG be working to restore multiplayer functionality to games that have lost it? For example, games that use Gamespy (such as Medal of Honor: Allied Assault) as a backend can no longer browse for servers and require fan workarounds. Is GOG able to address this?

This is a complicated topic but the short answer is: yes – we’ll be trying to. Just not yet; currently, we’re focusing on adding new games to the program as fast as we can. We’ve already done something similar in STAR WARS™ Battlefront (Classic, 2004) and STAR WARS™ Battlefront II (Classic, 2005) but it’s a complicated process that will take time. However, some of the games have communities that have worked around this issue and maintain a great multiplayer experience. So right now, I see us addressing this issue by connecting with those communities and trying to find a way for us to work together on this. I was part of a few such online communities and the quality of the experience was amazing.

Marcin Paczyński, Senior Business Development Manager at GOG

It sounds like 2025 will be an exciting time for retro PC gamers. I know that I have a wishlist of many classic games that I’d like to see hit the platform. SimGolf, for example. Battlefield 1942 as another example. I could keep going. Extreme Paintbrawl. See? Want me to stop? William Shatner’s Tekwar.

And while I’m not looking for modified experiences – not everything needs to be remastered in the way Nightdive does it – I would like to be able to start a game up with minimum fuss. I don’t want to have to look for fan fixes myself since that can be a nightmare. So, I look forward to seeing the games that start landing under its umbrella. Their FAQ says that the team wants to add hundreds of games by the end of 2025. Let’s hit the gas.

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Strange Scaffold has launched a number of new levels in the form of an epilogue onto their power fantasy FPS I Am Your Beast. This comes in the form of what they’re calling the Support Group Pack and, oh, I just got that reference.

There are nine new missions being stamped onto the back of the game. It’s an epilogue, but it’s not about Harding moving on and living a fulfilling civilian life full of brunches and pottery classes. Instead, it’s about the survivors of his rampage trading inflated stories about Harding’s exploits.

I think the press release sums it up better than I could, “With an unreliable narrator at the helm of the story, not all is what it seems. Players will experience gameplay effects enabled to this over-the-top framing, such as receiving extraordinary abilities (i.e. superhumanly punching someone’s head off) and undergoing extreme situations not seen in the base game.”

I love superhumanly punching someone’s head off. I Am Your Beast already allows you to pull off some pretty amazing feats of agility, and I think the only way to go from there is to make things even more ridiculous. I can dig it.

I reviewed I Am Your Beast not long ago. I noted that, while it does feature some significant weaknesses, it nails the core gameplay mechanics with such accuracy that it’s hard to imagine another game doing it better. Of course, constantly tempering my words with things like “significant weaknesses,” is probably why I rarely ever get quoted in accolade trailers. An inability to show enthusiasm is a genetic trait.

I Am Your Beast is available now for PC. The Support Group Pack expansion is also available right now.

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Curious about the game that Destructoid (well, I) put at #9 on the list of top 20 N64 games? It could be your chance because physical N64 cartridges of Battletanx and Battletanx: Global Assault will be up for preorder on Limited Run Games starting tomorrow.

This is, unfortunately, a rather understated release. There are no special editions of the two games, so it looks like you’ll just get, at the very least, a box and a new cartridge. Battletanx comes on a green cartridge, while Battletanx: Global Assault is on sort of a dark grey. They look like they might have a metallic reflection to them, but the store pages say very little, for some reason. The Global Assault page even has a mistake, saying that it supports “up to two” players; it’s four-player. Clearly, their copy person never played it. Or they made a typo. My fingers sometimes say things contrary to my knowledge because I type faster than I think.

But even if Limited Run Games’ copy person didn’t play Battletanx, you should. I put Global Assault on Destructoid’s best N64 games list for a reason: it’s one of the best games on the N64. Clearly, since LRG is launching it in such a modest manner, it’s an underappreciated game, as well. It deserves the pomp and prestige of something like Rocket Knight's Ultimate Edition. It is full of insane destruction, fast and fun multiplayer, and lots of small details that make it exciting to play.

Full disclosure: the main campaign is really short. But there are bots for multiplayer, if I remember correctly. Hold on, I’ll just get up and check. Yes, there are. So, you can enjoy all of the many different multiplayer modes by your lonesome.

As I said, this is a pretty understated release with no additional swag. Not even a combo deal. That’s disappointing for someone like me who already owns the games. They’re also not the priciest games on the collector’s market, so if you want authentic cartridges, it would most likely be cheaper. However, if you’re eying up the Analogue 3D, you should definitely have these games in your collection. Getting a brand-spanking new copy off the production line isn’t a bad way to go about it.

Preorders open for Battletanx and Battletanx: Global Assault tomorrow (November 22, 2024) on Limited Run Games. They are expected to ship in August 2025.

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Atari has announced that they are bringing the PC classic mega-hit RollerCoaster Tycoon to Switch on December 5. RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic will contain both the first game, its immediate sequel. I’m going to assume it also has the second game’s expansions, Wacky Worlds and Time Twister, but the PR doesn’t say it. Uh, yep. Says so on the store page.

It’s funny timing. My sister texted me the other day telling me that my nephew has a new interest in roller coasters and asked if I had any recommendations for one on Switch or iOS. I recommended RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Complete on Switch, but now that the original is coming I… probably still would recommend RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Complete. He’s 12, he doesn’t care about the real classics. Yet.

I actually spent a lengthy amount of time in the late ‘90s playing RollerCoaster Tycoon. It’s one of the rare times my parents bought me a PC game (they were afraid I’d fill up the “memory,” which I probably would have). I remember quite a few mornings being vegetative in front of the screen. It’s also the game that taught me the word “queue.” I still play it occasionally, but did you know Parkitect is a pretty great successor?

RollerCoaster Tycoon is a management game where you’re given the task of building and running amusement parks. It’s a lot like Theme Park, but much deeper and with a set of tools that allow you to design your own roller coasters. It was programmed by the legendary Chris Sawyer and is interesting in the convincing way it simulates physics, right down to the G-force that the passengers are feeling. It was initially released in 1999, but the only place you can feel that beyond the graphics are in how slow it can sometimes feel to progress.

Each area you build on has an objective to complete, which is usually “Have so many people in the park” and “have this park rating” in a set number of years. You have to not only manage how profitable you rides and stalls are, but also your reputation. If you kill a bunch of people on a poorly conceived ride, some will be hesitant to visit. My favorite was creating one of those drop towers with too short of a shaft and cranking up the thrust to send the riders screaming into space.

As for how it will adjust to console controllers. According to Atari, “Our partners at Graphite Lab did an amazing job translating RCT Classic’s detailed keyboard-based controls to controller input.” I can see it working fun, since it’s grid-based. The only thing I’m having trouble imagining is the terrain deformation tools that allow you to grab and raise specific corners of a tile. We’ll see, I guess.

RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic is coming to Nintendo Switch on December 5, 2024 for $24.99. It is currently available on PC and mobile platforms.

The post RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic is coming to Nintendo Switch in December appeared first on Destructoid.

The second key in Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake is the Magic Key, and while I’d argue getting the Thief’s Key is pretty straightforward, the Magic Key is less so. Not in a way that you’re likely to miss it, but it’s totally possible to make it more complicated by overthinking things. If you’re ever going to get a ship in Portoga, you need the Magic Key, and this is how you get it.

The Magic Key is a key (heh) requirement to even getting to Portoga. If you want to head directly West from Romaria and continue the story, you’re going to need it. The Magic Key is located in the Pyramids North of Ibis. To get there, you go East from Romaria, across the bridge, then south. You’ll hit the town of Asham, then head West.

Eventually, you’ll find a big desert. In the South of the desert, you’ll find Ibis, while in the North is the pyramid. Climb the pyramid, defeat the boss, and you’ll get your key.

How to complete the Pyramid in Dragon Quest 3

In order to complete the pyramid, you’ll first want to look out for false information. Even figuring out that the key was located there, I had to ask around. I found Ortega had been looking for it in Ashram. A person in Ashram told me a guy living in a swamp between there and Ibis knew where it was. He told me the pyramids. Total waste of time since obviously I was going to the pyramids eventually. It’s one of the most conspicuous spots on the map! I just figured I’d need the key, but clearly not.

Anyway, one bit of information you should get is some children in Ibis Castle who have a rhyme that, initially, might not have any meaning to you, but relates to a puzzle in the pyramid. You’re hear already, so you might as well not worry about it, but I got through it by guessing, so it’s not absolutely necessary, anyway.

In general, the pyramid isn’t too mind-bending. You essentially just want to make sure you’re going upward, but feel free to grab any loot you can get your hands on. There’s a side door west of the entrance that takes you down into a chamber where you can steal some treasure. It’s also where you’ll land if you step on the scales in the first area. Speaking of which, don’t step on the scales symbols on the floor. The floor will give way and dump you into the basement.

On the third floor is the puzzle the children are singing about. East and West of the stairs are two sets of two buttons. They look kind of like manhole covers. Basically, you want to press the outermost buttons. So, on the West side, hit the Westmost button. On the East side, hit the Eastmost button. The game will comment that you heard a sound (along with the sound), which signifies the gate in the center has dropped.

Go through the gate, and you’ll find a little stage with an evil dude and two chests. The dude (Ripper of the Rift) will enter battle flanked by two Kyllas. I recommend you prioritize taking them out first, as they will keep healing the main boss. Defeat them, and you'll be awarded with the Magic Key.

What do you do with the Magic Key

The Magic Key can be used to open silvery-blue doors. In particular, you’ll want to use it at the checkpoint West of Romaria to proceed to Portoga. If you’ve made note of other impassable doors, you may want to go back to them, but there is still one key left to go.

However, before you leave the pyramid, you’ll want to check out the fourth floor. In there is a statue with a large number of chests around it. Obviously, this looks too good to be true, and it sort of is. Each time you open a chest, it will trigger a battle. However, the battles you’re put through aren’t anything harder than the random ones you’ve been dealing with while climbing the pyramid, so open away. Once you’re done, you can exit via the stairs and slide down the pyramid to escape.

You may also want to return to Aliahan to raid their storeroom. There’s a door there that can be opened with the Magic Key, and the room behind it contains six chests. There’s a guard there that says he’ll turn a blind eye, so just help yourself!

The post How to get the Magic Key in Dragon Quest 3 appeared first on Destructoid.

I really wish Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake was released in a different month (absolutely any other would do). If I hadn’t already pushed through multiple 20-50 hour games in the past few weeks, I probably would have been prepared for it, but I’m out of push. There’s no way I could burn the midnight oil to get a review ready in any reasonable timeframe.

I settled on playing as much as I could and giving my impressions instead. I played through the four NES titles in the Dragon Quest series (Dragon Warrior as they were at the time here in North America) a few years ago, and Dragon Quest 3 was my least favorite of the bunch. I recognize its immense reputation in Japan, and even over here, but it wasn’t the one for me.

So, I was sort of lukewarm about the prospect of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, but also somewhat excited to see if another lap around might make it click with me. Imagine my surprise when I put in well over a dozen hours during a busy weekend.

The first thing you should probably note about Dragon Quest III is that it was before the series got more of a focus on narrative. There’s little introduction before your mom tells you to go make friends and kicks you out the door. Your party members aren’t really characterized beyond their profession and whatever backstory your imagination might come up with for them. They’re just drones that will make up the muscle or support of your party.

It’s somewhat refreshing in a world bloated with exposition. The JRPG format generally favors a storyteller’s touch, but just being able to explore and loot the world without getting interrupted by other people’s problems at every turn can be a welcomed change.

That’s not to say there isn’t a story. You’re the child of a legendary hero named Ortega, who set out to defeat the Archfiend and never came back. People you meet will tell you what an awe-inspiring dude he was, so you’ve got a lot to live up to. And that’s exactly what the game is about; finishing what your father started. Like most JRPGs, this is done by traveling from town to town and righting wrong.

This isn’t the first time that Dragon Quest 3 has received a remake. A lot of the systems from prior remakes (Game Boy Color, SNES, and if you count it, mobile) have been held over, such as the personality systems that affect stat growth. Also, the Thief class, which is important for reasons I’ll get to.

But this is the first full remake since the ‘90s, and it’s a lot more lavish than what you could pull off on those platforms. Another new class (Monster Wrangler) has been added, which gains abilities based on which of the (also new) friendly monsters you locate. I think the monster locating/battling system of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remaster is kind of poor, consider me underwhelmed, but if you’ve played the game a million times before with every class configuration possible, a new one will probably be welcomed.

The graphics got the most prominent overhaul. I do enjoy Square Enix’s HD-2D style and the way it tends to respect a game’s retro roots while giving something more visually splendiferous to chew on. It does look pretty great here, except the sprites are a bit more detailed than I would have expected.

Considering the simplicity of Dragon Quest 3’s original art style, a lot had to be reimagined. Buildings now look like buildings, environments are a lot busier, and the world map feels a lot larger. It looks good, but it’s give and take with how it affects the actual game. It forces a reliance on your mini-map much of the time to know which building has what function, and that can dissuade exploration. It’s also harder to tell what’s interactive in the environment, which can lead to humping everything in search of the interact prompt.

The enemies all look familiar and still follow the palette swap system, but they’re nicely animated. However, that’s the best thing I can say about the battles themselves. I don’t know what’s going on, but the default speed for battles is ridiculously slow. Between the animations, the dialogue crawls, and strange bits of hesitation between, I can feel the frustration creeping in. Who has time for this? I cranked the battle speed up (it can be done on the fly, thankfully) and still found it to be a bit too slow.

You can set your party to use “tactics,” which essentially hands control over to the AI. I found this very useful, since exploring the overworld in the original Dragon Quest 3 usually just boiled down to me mashing the confirm button to make each member of my party use “attack.” Now I can just set the whole party to "Fight wisely," press a button, and doze off until the next turn. I kind of feel like I’m skipping a major part of the game, but I was technically doing that originally, just with more button mashing.

One downside to the bigger world, however, is that it makes the encounter rate feel extremely high. Whether or not the frequency of random battles is actually higher than the original, I can't tell for sure. However, they certainly feel more common, and that's bad enough. At least if you have a thief in your party, you can use one of their abilities to bypass enemy encounters for a time, but then you're not gaining experience, which will just bite you later on.

As I said, the whole package is a bit give and take, but personally, I feel that the modernizations really help Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake taste a little more palatable. I like the early Dragon Quest games because they feel very streamlined, keeping the action simple so the spotlight can be put on exploration. A lot of that is carried over, even if some concessions have been made that feel more like a waste of time than a worthwhile addition.

The most insulting part for me is that there’s an option to turn on objective markers. I’m sure that there’s a subset of players who find this to be a necessary feature, I’m not trying to invalidate anyone’s preference. However, I feel like if you extract the wandering and exploration from Dragon Quest 3, you’re not left with a whole lot.

And really, I find that the updated graphics make exploring the world more worthwhile, heightening that all-important layer of gameplay. It’s that part that drew me in and kept me playing for as long as I have (so far). Beyond just wanting to see areas I recognize from the 8-bit original reimagined, the visual variety of the art style just makes it feel more like an adventure. I’m looking forward to hitting the seas in Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake. More than that, however, I’m excited to see how the extra shine enhances the first two games sometime next year.

The post Impressions: Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake enhances where it really matters: the wandering appeared first on Destructoid.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake is fairly loose about its objectives. While the remaster makes things more straightforward with optional quest markers, it can still be unclear on what you should be focusing on. One of your first tasks is to get the Thief’s Key.

The Thief’s Key will grand you access to red doors that dot the early areas of the game. You won’t even be able to get off the first continent without it. Thankfully, it’s in an incredibly conspicuous spot. Chances are, if you spend any time exploring, you’ll eventually make your way there.

The Thief’s Key is located in the Dreamer’s Tower, which could be considered the first dungeon of the game. To get there, you first want to head North from Aliahan (the starting town). You’ll see a bridge, so head West over it. Once across, start making your way North until you hit a town called Reeve. You’ll probably want to visit for some rest and shopping.

Once you’ve had your fill of Reeve, head South to the forest. There’s a clearing there with a square building. Enter that location and take a look around. There’s a small opening tucked away with a stone archway. Step right in.

You’ll find yourself in a passageway. Head straight south down a long corridor and you’ll find a set of stairs leading up. There are passages going East and West, but to get the Thief’s Key, you’ll want to take the stairs. This will lead you to the Dreamer’s Tower.

Getting the Thief’s Key in the Dreamer’s Tower

The Dreamer’s Tower is a rather straightforward dungeon in Dragon's Quest 3 HD-2D Remake. There’s no boss, and all you need to really keep in mind is that you should be climbing up. The first floor has an Inn, so if your party was battered on the walk here, then you should take the opportunity to heal up. Across from the inn is the stairs to the second floor.

If you’re looking for the direct route to the Thief’s Key, you’ll want to go south once you arrive on the second floor. Follow the south side of the tower, then, once you hit the end, curve back up Northward to find the stairs to the third floor.

On the third floor, you’re looking for a spiral staircase near the center of the map. Just head north, and then east into a hallway. You don’t have to go far before you can head south into a room with the central staircase.

This will take you to the fourth floor, right to a rooftop penthouse with the guy you’re looking for. He has the Thief’s Key and will happily hand it over to you. As I mentioned before, there’s no boss in Dreamer’s Tower. If you headed straight to the top, you may want to spend some time poking around for treasure. Some extra experience from battles wouldn’t hurt, either.

What should you do with the Thief’s Key?

As mentioned, the Thief’s Key is used to open red doors. Did you take note of any of these doors while you were looking around? If so, you can head back to them for extra treasure. However, the important reason for having the key is so you can reach the guy who makes wrecking balls in Reeve.

Of note, there was a red door in the corridor near the entrance to the Dreamer’s Tower, south of Reeve. You can also head back to Aliahan to pop open some doors around the castle. Note that the key is not used up when you open doors. It never breaks, so you can use it as often as you want.

Once you’re done kicking around, head back to Reeve. There’s a house there that’s locked with a red door. Within it, you’ll find an old man upstairs. He makes wrecking balls, which are essentially just bombs. Once you have one, head East and then South around the island and you’ll find a shrine. Within it is a blocked passage. Blow it open and head through the teleporter. You’ll arrive near Romaly, which is essentially the start of the wider adventure.

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