Gamebox 2.0: 1st Rule of Punch Club
So E3 happened last week and although we weren’t there in person, we did get to check out a few demos courtesy of our friends at Tiny Build Games and also a couple of us finally jumped into the next gen with PS4s.
Punch Club: Punch Club was revealed at E3 by Tiny Build and is an 80’s inspired fighting game/sim where you control a former fighter’s day to day life as he trains, works odds jobs and gets into random fights. You have to keep track of your fighter’s various stats and build them up in order to beat the various fights you encounter with street punks, mutant ninja alligators and more. The fighting is unique in that you don’t seem to be able to directly control your fighter but you assign certain moves to try and counter your opponents moves, rock/paper/scissors style. There’s tons of great references to various movies and TV and it’s coming out sometime this fall to Steam and mobile platforms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwAvSsriqn0
Dungelot Shattered Lands: Also revealed at E3 by Tiny Build Games was Dungelot Shattered Lands, which is a unique twist on the fantasy dungeon crawl genre. Taking it’s inspiration from Minesweeper, you choose a hero and then reveal tiles on the various floors of the dungeon in order to find the key and make it to the next level. There’s treasure and items to find but also hidden monsters. It also seems to be very rogue like in that you are going to die eventually and you must use the gold and items you’ve acquired in your last run to level up and try to make it farther in your next run. I played as the Paladin in the demo and it looks there’s going to be a fun variety of heroes, including a werewolf, to play as in the full game. It’s coming to Steam and iOS later this year.
Counterspy: I had gotten it on PS3 and was pleasantly surprised that it transferred over to my new PS4. Counterspy is a stealth/action game where you play as an agent of COUNTER, who is trying to keep both of the super powers during the Cold War in check before one or both of them launches nukes at the Moon. You work through a series of days and at the beginning of each day, you choose which side you want to infiltrate and then you break into their base to steal secret plans, weapon schematics and other items. If you are caught or spotted by cameras, the Defcon level rises and you could cause a premature missile launch. It’s tons of fun and definitely worth a play on any Sony console you own.
Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes: Free this month for PS Plus members is the prequel(?) to the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. I don’t have any particular affinity for the Metal Gear Solid series but have respected it from afar and this was the first major “game” I’ve played in the series. Kiefer Sutherland is voicing Snake now, which pissed off pretty much every hardcore MGS fan but I thought he was fine. You are navigating a pretty massive US black site in Cuba to try and rescue a pair of young members of Snake’s FOX unit and there’s a bunch of side things to do and enemies to avoid. I’ll probably play it again but during my run through, things went to hell and Snake basically had to blast his way out and get onto the chopper with the base on full alert. It looks incredible on the PS4 and it definitely makes me want to keep an eye on the full game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9msyoZY6XiA
Space Sluggers: Smash TV is one of my all time favorite games, so I’m a sucker for any game that tries to emulate that style and Space Sluggers seems like a solid entry in that top down shooter genre. I got a demo from Surprise Attack games and it’s pretty fun but it seems like co-op is going to be the way to go when playing it. There are some overwhelming groups of enemies and some of the characters, like the sniper, seem like they need the regular machine gunner there for backup in order to properly take them all out. It’s coming out later this year on PC, Mac and Linux.