Remember Japan? That country that used to make all the games you love? Good news: They're still making lots of interesting stuff. You may not hear about those games as often these days as you do big-budget, high-profile Western titles, but that doesn't mean nothing worth reporting is happening over there. That's why every week I'll be rounding up the most interesting events, news, and releases to come out of Japan. Such as....
One big name hit shelves in Japan this week: Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix brings the original Kingdom Hearts and its side-story re:Chain of Memories from the dated PlayStation 2 and onto the soon-to-be-dated PlayStation 3. For the record, this makes the re:Chain portion of this package a remake of a remake. At this point, Kingdom Hearts lead designer Tetsuya Nomura's refusal to bite the bullet and finally make Kingdom Hearts III makes the wait for Street Fighter III in the '90s seem like a mere blip in time.
In other news, Apollo Justice (the Coy and Vance to Phoenix Wright's Bo and Luke) will be putting in an appearance in Ace Attorney 5. According to Tiny Cartridge, he's either been injured by a bomb or has been transformed into a mummy for this sequel. I'm hoping for the latter. It would be great to see Capcom exploring new undead tropes in their games; vampires and zombies are so played out.
Cavia has announced a second sequel to its oppressively grim RPG series Drakengard. This one features a heroine with a robotic arm and a flower growing out of her eye, because it's just not a Cavia game unless it's really weird. The previous Drakengards have more or less died on the vine in terms of sales, but this one could prove to be a breakout hit thanks to the word-of-mouth success and subsequent good feelings for the studio's 2010 action RPG Nier. At the very least, the soundtrack is guaranteed to be so, good.
Obscure cult platformer Umihara Kawase (almost but not quite localized a few years ago as Yumi's Odd Odyssey) will also be receiving its second sequel in the form of a 3DS game called Sayonara Umihara Kawase. This one's notable for reuniting the original dev team, which practically guarantees quality. Umihara Kawase remains remarkable to this day for its commitment to pure gameplay -- it lacks anything like power-ups or character progression, leaving success entirely contingent on player skill from the beginning -- but I do worry that the art surrounding the game and its young heroine could take a turn for the skeezy.
Curious? Enjoy The Kacho's heartbreaking effort to master the insanely difficult original in this Game Center CX episode.
Spike has announced a sequel to its PSP RPG Conception: Please Have My Children, which also sounds kind of skeezy. Actually, though, it's a lot less awful than the name would suggest. Conception was a fairly well-regarded dungeon-crawler RPG whose main hook was that you could fall in love with a party member and have kids with her, who would then fight alongside you. Dragon Quest V did the same thing, and that wasn't gross at all. But then again, the Dragon Quest guys had the good sense not to make their game sound like some kind of softcore porn. The sequel promises twice the amount of content as the original and will be coming to both 3DS and Vita.
Compile Hearts' RPG series in which video game consoles and companies are brought to life as moaning, underdressed pre-teen girls continues to steamroll onward: Now it's coming to PlayStation Vita as God Dimension Idol Neptunia PP. No one actually understands what this title means, but you can count on the same mundane play mechanics and low-grade titillation you've come to expect from the Neptunia franchise. But now with the frightful possibility of back-panel touch mechanics.
On the U.S. side of things, yesterday saw the PlayStation Network debut of six Japanese PlayStation import games courtesy of publisher GungHo. Strangely, all six games are extremely text-heavy, yet none of them include localized language. On offer are text-heavy RPG Oz No Mahoutsukai (The Wizard of Oz), text-heavy strategy game First Queen IV, and text-heavy dating simulation Sentimental Graffiti. Time to finally buckle down and take that Japanese class you've been waffling about.
Finally, the coolest thing to come out of last week's bitsummit independent games event in Kyoto was the debut of Gero Blaster, a Contra-inspired shoot-em-up by Studio Pixel, the creator of seminal classic Cave Story. We checked out the iPhone version and found it surprisingly enjoyable (surprising in the sense that platform shooters don't usually work with a touch interface), but those who aren't sold on those promises may want to wait for the work-in-progress 3DS version.
Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com
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