Original link: https://markonreview.com/2023/03/25/2023-mar-upcoming-games/
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty / Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty
2023.03.03 / PS4, PS5, Xbox (Smart Distribution), PC
This work is published by Koei Tecmo and produced by its studio Team Ninja. It is a Three Kingdoms fantasy-themed ARPG work and will be officially released at the Xbox & Bethesda joint press conference in June 2022.
The impression conveyed by the initial announcement of “Crouching Dragon” can easily give people the expectation of “strong alliance”: on the one hand, it has been deeply cultivating “Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Romance of the Three Kingdoms)”, “Dynasty Warriors” and other famous IPs of the Three Kingdoms for many years , Koei Tecmo, who often plays with the elements of “ghosts and gods” in various works, the style of “Crouching Dragon” is obviously not difficult to control; on the other hand, the promotion PV of “Crouching Dragon” revealed its soul-like gameplay design The two co-producers Fumihiko Yasuda and Makoto Yamaji sent by Team Ninja for this work have produced two series of “Nioh” and “Bloodborne” respectively, which may make players feel better in terms of action experience. Have more imaginations.
Thanks to Toutiao Games for giving me the qualification to enter the PS5 version of “Wolong” several hours in advance, so that the author can share more feelings based on the actual performance of the game. This work has a set of level-based ARPG gameplay, one level is one chapter, and it is also a large map for free exploration, in which players need to find and challenge powerful enemies, collect various objects, develop character abilities, and fight on the whole journey. Encounter a large number of heroes from the Three Kingdoms period during the adventure. From the “Yellow Turban Rebellion”, one after another experience the historical events adapted by Team Ninja mixed with East Asian fantasy aesthetics-such as the official Hulaoguan “Three Heroes Battle Lu Bu”.
Further specific to the action mechanism that the community has focused on, “Crouching Dragon” should be regarded as another milestone in the exploration of Team Ninja’s soul-like games. In the old work of the same family “Nioh”, the development team introduced relatively complex operations such as switching between the middle and lower segments and “canshin”, which heightened the skill of the game, and “Crouching Dragon” may be a reference to “Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Die Twice)” draws lessons from it, grandly introducing the “momentum” and “resolution” similar to the “parry” in the latter:
- “Crouching Dragon” does not follow the unique “remnant heart” system in “Nioh” (accurately press the button after a set of actions to recover physical strength), and newly added the “momentum” mechanism. From left to right, from negative to positive, hitting the enemy can make the momentum gauge accumulate to the right, while using a higher-output momentum attack and taking damage will consume the momentum gauge to the left, both for the enemy and us; the more positive momentum , the stronger attacks that consume momentum will be more violent, and once the momentum gauge is pushed to the far left, the character will be stiff for a long time. In short, the core resources that players need to manage in offense and defense are unified into the momentum gauge.
- By predicting the enemy’s movements and pressing the button at the right time to trigger the “defuse”, the player can avoid damage, adjust the body position, and with the elegant script animation, the effect of four or two strokes is achieved; and “Sekiro” is significantly different. Enemies in Crouching Dragon will not “dissolve” the player, and all damage including terrain damage can be “dissolved” (as long as you press it correctly), which means that once the player has practiced “dissolve” perfectly, it will It can easily turn on the “unilateral violence” mode, and it will not be as difficult to deal with a group of extremely cunning opponents as in “Sekiro”.
To sum up, I think the core action experience of “Crouching Dragon” is relatively classic and closed. It includes Team Ninja’s years of experience in focusing on action games. Compared with the contemporary “Soul” series of games, players are familiar with various enemies and scenes. After all, “everything can be resolved” (the next best thing is to “defuse” while holding down the defense), which may make it easier for players to exchange their proficiency for the “cool point” of action content.
The above is one of the core action experiences of “Crouching Dragon”. After the opening chapter, it left a deep impression on the author. Full of expectations, that is, the extremely poor user guidance for this game. After the “minimalist” background introduction, the player almost abruptly started the highly complex “pinching” link. After the introduction of the most basic operations, the player is basically released, and the key content that seriously affects the battle, such as finding the flag point and using props, is passed by, and the separate combat teaching level is introduced before the bottom boss. Such practices show that the development team may default that “Crouching Dragon” is mainly aimed at fans of similar games, or have a slight lack of awareness, causing them to give up polishing the boot experience of this product, which may cause great inconvenience to players who lack specific game experience and frustration, it deserves a massive improvement.
Zero～The Mask of the Lunar Eclipse～ / Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse
2023.03.09 / PS4, PS5, Xbox (smart distribution), NS, PC
It is also a horror adventure work from Koei Tecmo. The original game was developed by Nintendo and Tecmo before it was acquired. The well-known producer of Grasshopper Manufacture, Suda Goichi, participated in the supervision. It was released on the Wii platform in 2008. In recent years, following “Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water”, there is another “Zero” series that has been reproduced in high-definition.
The “Zero” series was born in an era of survival horror games. Before it, there were already popular fried chickens such as “Resident Evil” and “Parasite Eve” on the market. They used high-strength battles, limited material acquisition, and relatively traditional stimulating audio-visual elements. players; and in 1999 after the creation of the above series, the first generation of “Silent Hill” took a different approach, relying on a relatively “relaxing” narrative rhythm and thought-provoking psychological fear to conquer the public and deeply influence Makoto Shibata, the producer of the original version of “Zero-Eclipse’s Mask-” and others (Makoto Shibata detailed in an interview with Keiichiro Toyama, the producer of the “Silent Hill” series in 2016).
All in all, it is against this background that the “Zero” series has developed a set of survival horror gameplay that has continued to this day: playing the role of a beautiful girl who has undergone meticulous sculpting, holding a camera that can identify and expel monsters, go forward Investigate the places where various supernatural events took place, and experience the exorcism stories with rich Japanese style immersively. “Zero-Eclipse’s Mask~” is the fourth main work of this series. It was described by the original producer Makoto Shibata as a work with a relatively independent story and suitable for entering the pit. The “mask” in the title points to the characteristic of this work. Mechanism, some of the characters on the stage have forgotten the past, resulting in a horror situation of face disappearing, and the rest basically follow the template of the series; compared with the original game, the remake version focuses on improving the picture performance (but there are also voices in the community that “emphasize the characters and underestimate the “scene” which leads to a sense of fragmentation), and added a photo mode and new costumes, which are obviously amplifying the selling points of the heroine.
WWE 2K23
2023.03.17 / PS4, PS5, X1, XS X|S, PC
This work is published by 2K and developed by Visual Concepts, which is mainly responsible for the NBA and WWE series of games in recent years.
The author is not very familiar with WWE, but I can recognize the cross-border star John Cena (John Cena) on the cover of this work. After “WWE 2K15”, John Cena was invited to be the spokesperson of the series again, and the players also In the Showcase mode of this work, you can re-experience some of the classic battles in his career, and listen to John Cena’s commentary and comments on the game. In addition to the cover star and related content, another major feature of “WWE 2K23” is the newly introduced WarGames mode, which provides a venue covered by iron and connected by two side-by-side rings, allowing players to play up to four players offline and up to eight players online. It is said that the development team has wanted to do this mode for many years, and it is expected that more characteristic gameplay elements will be added in the future.
Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key ~ / Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key
2023.03.23 / PS4, PS5, NS, PC
The third Koei Tecmo release game to be introduced in this article is still presented to us by Gust, who created the series. This is the twenty-fourth work in the “Atelier” series, and it is also the final chapter of the “Ryza” trilogy. The leisurely summer time will usher in the final chapter.
As the concluding work of the sub-series, “Atelier Ryza 3” has reached many new heights in terms of technology. In addition to improving the overall picture performance, this work also completely ended the need to load when moving between map areas. The situation has been improved into a seamless large map with a higher degree of freedom of exploration, and the switching between exploration and combat is more natural. According to the publicity information disclosed by the official, in terms of gameplay, the traditional exploration, collection, and reconciliation of this series have not changed much in this work (it is not a big change to be able to collect while running), but there are relatively more swords in the combat part. The game returns to more real-time command round battles, and for the first time on the battlefield there are two reserve players who can replace the front row, and characters who are not in the battle formation can also provide buffs, which generally makes the battle strategy more interesting.
Resident Evil 4 / Resident Evil 4
2023.03.24 / PS4, PS5, XS X|S, PC
The long-awaited new “Resident Evil 4” is finally here. According to the current official information, this high-standard complete remake will reconstruct the narrative while polishing the audio-visual and optimizing the operation (the total game time is the same) It remains to be seen how much refactoring can achieve, but at least the improvement in technology is gratifying. The RE engine has given the eerie and sinister Spanish village in the original work a more vivid expression, and the operation has also been fully modernized. Optimization, greatly reduced QTE, increased enemy threat, more real-time and intuitive combat.
If you feel uneasy, you can try the free demo first. Through the demo, you can intuitively feel the efforts of the development team to make “Resident Evil 4” more “action”. The more realistic and threatening attack when the enemy is close, the old players who have practiced the timing of key input in the original game should be uncomfortable at first, but the advantage of this change is that it makes the game experience more believable.
The original “Resident Evil 4” is the last series led by “Father of Resident Evil” Shinji Mikami. This work was released in 2005 and was first logged on the Nintendo GameCube platform. It is a new (over the shoulder) old (overlooking) work in the series The development team recalled the star character of the series, Leon S. Kennedy (Leon S. Kennedy) to play the leading role again, telling a new story that is highly related to the previous work but relatively independent-rescuing the president’s daughter who was hijacked by the secret order, To resolve the disaster of biological and chemical weapons, it not only carried forward the classic Galaxy City framework of the series, but also introduced the TPS shooting mechanism, strengthened the melee physical skills, and improved the mercenary mode (probably one of the most challenging and interesting mercenary modes in the series), All kinds of “masterpieces” have given “Resident Evil 4” a community appeal like a tsunami. Even the sequels such as “Resident Evil 6” (which the author considers refreshing but unbearably vulgar) have further elevated the historical status of the fourth generation, making quite a few players linger on the fourth generation. Of course, Capcom itself understands, painstakingly After many years of operation, “Resident Evil 4”, which was originally planned to be exclusive to NGC, has been continuously reproduced and cross-platform, and has gradually become a household name “only unexpected, and nothing impossible to play”.
According to the rhythm of Capcom using the RE engine to renovate “Resident Evil” in recent years, launching a complete remake of “Resident Evil 4” is completely logical and a good thing that can be welcomed by all parties. The previous two RE engine complete remakes have their own advantages and disadvantages. The highly regarded “Resident Evil 2” has set a new benchmark for “remake” in the industry, and “Resident Evil 3” has been criticized because the content volume is much lower than expected. The importance of the remake of “Resident Evil 4” should be much greater than that of the first two, because its gameplay itself is more comprehensive and much more modern. If the remake cannot open a sincere gap with the original, Even making a mistake of reversing the car will probably cause a considerable blow to Capcom’s revenue and reputation. According to the public information on the Internet, Capcom did not get dizzy enough to continue joking about the golden signboard. They started the development related work as early as 2018. In early 2021, they also took back the leadership of the project from the outsourced developer Studio M-Two. This remake should be as authentic as possible, and Capcom needed it to be more revolutionary.
As far as the author’s personal opinion is concerned, the gameplay of the original four generations is indeed at the forefront of the times, even if it is generally used today, it does not matter, but its story is indeed a bit outdated, especially “Resident Evil 7”. The author especially hopes that “Resident Evil 4” can take the opportunity to be reborn, replace the entertainment elements of the original work with more realism, create a stronger sense of immersion, and perhaps become the next “reserved program” that Capcom can always rely on.
The Last of Us Part I
2023.03.28 / PS5, PC
“The Last of Us Part One”, which was exclusively launched on PS5 in September last year, is coming to the PC platform. The playable content of the PC version is the same as that of the PS5 version. It includes the original single-player plot of “The Last of Us” and the prequel DLC “Left Behind” , as well as special modes such as racing and permanent death, and integrated photo mode, etc. In addition, the PC version adds some new audio-visual features, such as support for 21:9, 32:9 and other ultra-wide screens, and provides AMD FSR, Nvidia DLSS setting options, etc.
Let me briefly introduce this masterpiece: “The Last of Us”, which first landed on the PS3 platform in 2013, depicts the post-apocalyptic adventures of Joel and Ellie, a pair of young and old, with a special and important mission. People walk through the ruins of cities that have long been dilapidated and covered by natural erosion, fight against zombified hostile creatures, deal with incidents that occurred in survivor settlements, and experience one difficult choice after another. Although the original game almost reached the ceiling of the console games on the same platform and even the same generation in terms of audio-visual performance when it was released, the developer Naughty Dog still reluctantly took out this game with “The Last of Us Part II”. “The reprinted version produced by the technical specifications allows fans to experience the pictures beyond memory beautification, and also makes the connection between the two works of the series more closely, paving the way for future sequels.
(The pictures in the text come from the Internet)
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