Oct 12, 2022

Monthly Gaming Column: New Games to Play


Welcome to “what to play this month”, this column will be from the author’s personal point of view, for everyone to select, introduce some of the new release of this month’s game works / content, mainly covering PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, PC and iOS / Android and other mainstream platforms, look forward to there are good things that can arouse your interest, but also sincerely thank all friends who like this column.

1. Splatoon 3
After five years of waiting, we finally waited for the third generation of the Splatoon series, and unfortunately did not match the launch of the next-generation NS hardware as I had originally expected – we should expect this opportunity to belong to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kindom.

For readers who are not familiar with the series, the main gameplay of the Splatoon series is third-person shooting, but the gun is not loaded with bullets but ink, ink is not only used to kill the enemy, but also used to cover the various terrains in the scene, players can sneak in their own ink, swim, stand on the enemy ink is difficult, continuous damage; Each generation of this series has a single-player, multiplayer mode, of which multiplayer mode is the core driving force of each generation of works active for 3 to 4 years, including a variety of PvP, PvE rules, an average of a few minutes of battle is generally filled with fierce head swaps.

The new game not only brings a new single-player campaign mode, but more importantly, it opens a new round of operation cycle of multiplayer mode. This game continues to improve the multiplayer combat experience based on the second generation, not only routinely expanding the map, weapons and equipment, skills, upgrading the festival and part-time play, but also improving the well-known multiplayer shooting games such as “Overwatch” and “Apex Legends”, including but not limited to modifying the ranking mechanism, optimizing the matching waiting experience, and increasing the viewing mode (the cyber warfare infrastructure of Splatoon 3 is a little closer to the contemporary mainstream.

Since I have already completed the single-player campaign “Hero Mode” (unfinished hidden level), I would like to mention a personal feeling:

The hero mode of this game obviously continues the design style of the previous generation of DLC “Octo Expansion”, which has higher requirements for the player’s combat skills and proficiency, and the overall puzzle solving is interesting, and it is still a qualified multiplayer mode “military training”, but some of the high difficulty levels are demanding, very patient, and it is tedious to engage in too long;

Boss war, the plot of the notification criticism, personally feel that in addition to the final boss battle there are some new accidents, the rest of the boss battle seems to be too “go the process”, the author did not upgrade the hero equipment throughout the process, nor did I feel too much challenge fun, the plot is even more confusing, the disappearance and return of the big catfish is very mysterious, I can only understand that it leaves a considerable imagination space for the DLC.

In short, the activity of Splatoon 3 has just begun, and I hope that Nintendo will spare no effort to optimize the network and let us play more confidently.

2. The Last of Us Part I

The The Last of Us is an open-world action-adventure title, the original game landed exclusively on Sony’s PS3 platform in 2013, produced by Naughty Dog, a first-party studio that worked slowly, and was the team’s first new IP since the Uncharted series. The original game of 2013 is definitely a squeeze out of PS3 function, and the next year the HD replica version landed on PS4, and now this classic is once again reborn.

Originally created a deadly apocalyptic scene as a player, the outbreak of some kind of biochemical disaster led to the transformation of humans into zombie-like aggressive creatures, but the remaining human survivors apparently did not “obediently” twist into a rope, but split into a large number of small groups that fought each other; In this post-apocalyptic context, Joel and Ellie, the protagonists of the young and old, embark on an adventure with a special mission and choice.

This game uses the new process of The Last of Us Part II in 2020 to comprehensively remake the first work, not only to unify the “Part” suffix in the title of the series, but more importantly, to make the two generations 7 years apart more closely connected, and the development team based on the later deeper excavation of the “Last Survivor” world view, made all aspects of the original game, from technical details such as light and shadow to the image remodeling of some important characters.

3. NBA 2K23

The basketball-themed New Year goods released by 2K are still developed by Visual Concepts Studio, which is responsible for 2K’s WWE and NBA series in recent years.

There is an important topic in the player community of this series, that is, the choice of cover players, here we also briefly review the situation of “NBA 2K23”: the cover star of the normal version and digital deluxe version is the Phoenix Suns scoring guard Devin Booker; Coinciding with the number “23” in the title of the game, 2K invited Michael Jordan, a legendary star who was once famous for his number 23, to launch the Michael Jordan version and the collector’s championship version with him on the cover; 2K added a new version this year called Dreamer Edition, featuring J. Cole, who is known as a well-known rapper and is actually one of the top professional basketball league players in Africa and Canada.

Of course, there are also content corresponding to these special covers in the game: Jordan Challenge Mode returns, which is the first time since the “NBA 2K11”, which is also the cover star of Michael Jordan, players will immerse themselves in reviewing the passionate moments in the career of the flyer, and with the blessing of contemporary development technology, the filter of this mode will be very close to the picture effect of the live TV broadcast that year; J. Cole will play an important NPC in the MyCareer mode, and artists such as Elite and Bas, who belong to Dreamville with J. Cole, will also accompany the player.

4. EA SPORTS FIFA 23
Football and basketball come together this month, and this competitive soccer game produced by EA will also be released at the end of the month. Just like the classic New Year style of play, this game continues to polish the technology and expand the content on the basis of the previous generation: the first introduction of women’s football clubs, improved the Hyper Motion technology based on motion capture data machine learning, debugging actions, adding more realistic tactical actions, and so on.

Due to the expiration of EA’s brand partnership with FIFA, the series will be renamed “EA SPORTS FC” from next year, and it is not known who will be credited by FIFA next.

5. Isle of Arrows

Gridpop, an independent developer led by Daniel Lutz, who served as creative director of Square Enix Montreal’s Hitman GO and Lara Croft GO, focused on making elegant, abstract puzzle games. Gridpop’s first production was Deco: Minimalist Design Puzzle, which landed on mobile in early 2021, a fresh, moderately challenging board game, and after nearly two years, Daniel pulled out a more addictive new tower defense work, “Island of Arrows”.

This game continues the minimalist design style that developers are keen on (you can go to his home page to feel it), on the basis of the tower defense gameplay, added random building placement, map expansion: players can choose their own items in the randomly generated pass rewards, there are defense towers with different functions, there are also plots used to expand the scene – I feel a lot like the “Mini Metro” in the regular reward car, bridge and the like, in short, research out of strange situations It is necessary to plan the position more efficiently and wait for some luck, which also brings some compound and repeatable fun.

6. Shovel Knight Dig
The well-known cross-board action series Shovel Knight Dig was born in 2014 and was launched by Yacht Club Games, an American independent developer with a strong nostalgia. The previous works in this series have adopted the audiovisual style of 8-bit console games, but Shovel Knight Dig is a new look, and it was jointly developed by Nitrome, a British independent developer who focuses on pixel style, making this game “become” a 16-bit game. In addition to a fuller audiovisual experience, the game also enables the Roguelike gameplay framework, allowing interested players to repeatedly challenge the colorful program-generated dungeons, gradually upgrade skills and outfits, etc., and will be new and old friends in the “Shovel Knight” universe.

7. Grounded
After more than two years of being launched in Early Access mode, the survival action game “Confinement Survival” from Obsidian Entertainment will finally be released this month, and according to the development team, as of February this year, the game has accumulated 10 million players.

According to relevant interviews, the development of this game began with the release of Obsidian “Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire” and was acquired by Microsoft, and was influenced by movies such as “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” and “A Bug’s Life”. Compared with the content volume of the first release of only 20% of the planned design, more than two years of updates have greatly improved “Confinement Survival”, riding on the official release of the East Wind, the development team will also add new regional courtyards in version 1.0, as well as Orchid Mantis, Black Widow and other bosses, as well as more equipment updates, interactive optimization.

Finally, to the unsuspecting reader, if you have Arachnophobia, but are still interested in this game, you can rest assured that the game has the option of cartooning spider limbs.

8. Serial Cleaners
Top-down dive action from Polish independent developer Draw Distance, the theme is as the name suggests, players will play as a professional who specializes in cleaning up the scene of the murder, using the unique skills of different characters, executing their favorite action strategies, finding and cleaning up the evidence in the scene divided into a large number of rooms, while avoiding the police and retreating from the whole body. As the second part of the series, the original title is only more than the “S” at the end of the “Serial Cleaners” compared to the previous game, and the gameplay framework is also highly consistent with the previous game, but the picture style has been upgraded from 2D comic style to 3D fidelity, which can provide a sense of immersion that should be stronger than the previous game.

9. CROSS DUEL/Yu-Gi-Oh! CROSS DUEL

Konami’s new CROSS DUEL IP game landed on the mobile platform earlier this month, focusing on networked four-person battles. According to 4Gamer.net’s interview with the producer and related promotional content, the gameplay of this game is very different from the usual “King of Games” card game, not simply based on the classic OCG rules to delete, improve the molding, but designed a four-person table symmetrical chessboard, turn-based gameplay, each player’s own field has three monster card placement areas, leading to the other three players’ venues, the summoned monsters will attack along the line between the venues, so players need to pass the monster effect , magic trap cards and other means to resist attacks and dry other people’s LP to 0.

If you are familiar with the CROSS DUEL adaptation of the game should be able to guess, this game is still the love card to fly, we can see the series of four signature characters on the main visual map, as well as their respective ace entourage, there are a bunch of characters, cards waiting for players to pay for the game, and the currently implemented monsters are modeled; Correspondingly, there have been complaints in the community that kryptonite is highly positively correlated with intensity, and readers are asked to take what they need.

10. VALKYRIE ELYSIUM
The VALKYRIE series was founded in 1999, and the previous four works in the series were all RPG gameplay (including a mobile game launched in Japan in 2016), and when it came to this game, it was through interviews with the producers It can be learned that the team obviously wants to change and seek innovation in the first restart of the main series 14 years later, they have enabled the new title suffix “Elysium”, and boldly abandoned the recognizable command combat mechanism of the VALKYRIE series, and replaced it with the ARPG gameplay that they think is more in line with the trend after research, with the 3D of the picture, it can indeed make people look forward to the future growth of this series, but whether it can stand out in the huge and mixed ARPG category. It remains to be tested by this generation of players.

11. The DioField Chronicle
It was first announced at Sony’s State of Play event in March this year, and was developed by Square Enix in conjunction with Japanese small and medium-sized manufacturer LANCARSE, which has a long history of outsourcing development, and has jointly developed “Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey” with Atlus and is responsible for the combat part.

This game focuses on strategic wargame gameplay, focusing on the strategy mechanism called “Real-Time Tactical Battle System (RTTB)”, canceling the map grid, and the action instructions are similar to the “UFO (XCOM)” faction. Since the official battle gameplay is the focus of publicity and also provides a demo, interested players may wish to try it directly.

Published by YooCare Editor & last updated on October 12, 2022 2:15 pm

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