Day Two of EGX 2015 just happened and today I played some Nintendo games & indies as well as having a sit down with some chaps.
I started my day by heading to the Nintendo booth and to Star Fox Zero which in till now I’ve been hearing things like it looks like a N64 game and the controls are awful. Well it doesn’t look like a N64 game but it’s not best thing I’ve seen on the Wii U but I’ve certainly seen worse but that doesn’t matter if it controls a bit ropey.
Now this is where it gets interesting as I found them fine, you only have to move the gamepad slightly to aim and everything else was quite straight forward RT was fire that sort of thing. I said this is where it gets interesting as they were fine in till, I came to the boss fight as the game locks to the boss and to take out the weak points you have to be more accurate with your shoots that you end up looking at the game pad and trying to aim instead of steering the Arwing this felt really awkward and took me out of the game, as I didn’t feel I was fighting this big boss on screen but more focused on aiming.
It was still fun but if there is an option for a more traditional control scheme, I’m going too opted for that over the gyro controls.
After Star Fox I moved on to Mario Tennis Ultra Smash where I played a doubles match against a gentleman & his CPU partner, I was Princess Peach, he was Mario and about 5 minutes later I had one 2 games to nil. The game was fun but not sure it get can fill the void left by Star Fox Zero this year.
Talking of this year, I then moved on to what has to be the big Wii U game now this year in Xenoblade Chronicles X. I got to have a go on the big screen of this, going into it I only played about 5hrs of its predecessor which I didn’t really like. Because of that I wasn’t sure if I would like this or not, I started of my 10minutes in field heading towards a way point along the way fighting massive monsters whilst on foot. I somehow ended up on a beach but whilst heading there I engaged in a few battles and it was actually enjoyable as whilst my character called Paul was shooting , I could move around let my arts refill and plan what I was going to do next.
It was excellent and has justified that collector’s edition preorder I put in last week.
The next sort of big game at Nintendo’s booth I played which was one of the easiest games to go try was The Legend of Zelda Tri Force Heroes which is a Zelda series spin-off running in the same engine as Link Between Worlds. The difference between this and a Zelda in the timeline is it’s 3 player CO-OP based in dungeons only with each player taking a different role, at the start of the game you could dress your link up and each costume does different things but I went for the Zelda dress and when the dungeon started the bow & arrow where the other two both had bombs.
Over the course of the dungeon we had to work together like they had to destroy stuff with their bombs which would allow me to fire my arrow which would light a fire which in turn open the door and this continues in till the end boss which we had to make a totem to be able to throw bombs into the bosses weak point.
It was fun to play and if you’re playing over the internet there is icons on the 3DS touchscreen like come here, well done etc to communicate with your comrades.
I did get to have a quick go on Chibi Robo: Zip Lash which was okay, nothing special about it just a simple 2D platformer.
After playing Nintendo’s own line up I moved on to what is known as Nindies staring of with one of the games from Nindies at home promotion during E3 in Rive as I had played before Collin van Ginkel a Designer from Two Tribes showed me a demo of it running on PC as the title is coming Steam as well as Wii U. I got to play what would have been after the asteroid field in the demo back during E3, but with a few bits unlocked before they should of.
It was thoroughly enjoyed to blast enemy robots and solve puzzles, the core game did remind me of metroidvanias but unlike those this is linear game, so there is no real back tracking just moving forward to the end of the story which from what Collin was telling me should be about 5hours long and should be out early next year.
The next Nindie I played was SteamWorld Heist which I gather is in the same universe as SteamWorld Dig, Heist plays very different to Dig as it’s a turn-based game set in space. It started off with two character’s which you can move into cover or advantage points to shoot the enemy but if you move to far you will use all your turn up and won’t be able to shoot the enemy. I got to what I think was a boss and gained a third character, all three controlled different the main character had a laser sight on his pistol the third a SMG which had no sight & seemed to have recoil but it shoots more than one bullet. It comes to 3DS first I believe and from what I played should be worth downloading of the eShop.
Then came the nearest thing to a new F-Zero in Fast Racing Neo which as you can gather is a futuristic racing game with space ships. I played two player split-screen and 4 races as part of a cup, it seemed very much like F-Zero as it even had boost sections but unlike like F-Zero they were different colours and you had to switch between them to gain the boost from the sections. It was fun and should fill the void left by F-Zero on the Wii U.
Next up was 2D platformer called Poncho in which you play as Poncho who seems to be a little robot, from the outset it seemed very basic but it has Fez like elements as to traverse through the level you have to jump between the foreground & background as objects might be blocking your way in one of paths.
The last of Nindies was Shadow Puppeteer the easiest way to describe it being what if you took Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons & Contrast put them in a blender and let Tim Burton do the art style of it. As you can gather form that it’s very much a CO-OP game but can be played single player with each stick controlling a character, which there is two one a boy the other his shadow a and like contrast the shadow can only jump & interact with certain things and vice-versa that it comes down to puzzle solving & working together. Me & one of the Nintendo demonstrators breezed through the level but still was interesting and worth keeping an eye on when it comes to the Wii U’s eShop but I think it will be better if you got someone to it with.
After spending a lot of time at Nintendo, I headed off to the rezzed area which has most of the indies in to checkout Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide which is 4 player co-op game set in the warhammer universe in which you must battle hordes of relentless rat-men, known as the Skaven. I’m a fan of warhammer in general, so I was looking to forward to playing this but when I got there I had to use a mouse & keyboard which is something I never use especially in a first person game. I think I did okay going around beating up Skaven with my hammer. Thankfully the game is coming to console and hopefully is something I will checkout in the future.
After talking to the guys behind Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide, I went to meet Tyrone the PR Manger at Rising Star Games whom I know as the publisher that brings over things like Fragile Dreams from Japan. Now they just don’t bring them over they also help smaller developers follow their dreams by publishing indie titles alongside the Fragile Dreams of this world.
They had six games on show including what is the first and likely last VITA game of EGX, I’ve seen in SUPERBEAT: XONiC which you might gather from the name is rhythm game in which you use the VITA’s touch screen to hit the notes in J-Pop tunes. It was nice to see something on the VITA and making use of the consoles features.
They had Poncho there as well which I played earlier in the day on Wii U, the rest were Lumini, One Upon Light, I Want To Be Human and there big title of the show Lumo which is a love letter to the 80s British game development with things like Knight Lore which isn’t a coincidence as one of the designer’s used to work for RARE.
As time was getting late I decide to spend my last hour or so resting my legs but going to checkout Rock Band 4 and spending the time sat on a beanbag whilst watching some bands play Elvis to Paramore to Tenacious D’s song Tribute a good three times but it is the best song in world.
That was Day Two for me; tomorrow I plan to check out the likes of Square Enix, Ubisoft and catch Shuhei Yoshida's Q&A session before going to the community party in the evening as that won’t finish in till about midnight, Day Three will have a slight delay along with Day Four where I should be joined by Luke “Buskalilly” Summerhayes.