Part three of my Next Fest demo quick thoughts. Played an interesting variety of genres today, with a couple definitely landing on my wish list. I have enough for a part four, so keep a look out for that this weekend.
AI disclosure: I personally do not like the use of AI, and therefore did not play any demos that disclosed AI usage at the time of this writing. I checked every game’s description looking for a disclosure. I do my best to not support games that utilize AI.
Kaido Genkai
The racing is pretty simple, but feels solid enough. The graphics aren’t great, but it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the game. I found the checkpoint systems in races a little inconsistent, with checkpoints not being placed a few times where it properly directs you to the course you need to take. That problem cause me to restart races a few times when I blew past paths I should have taken instead. The music here is some really good sounding J-Pop, but it doesn’t let a song play continuously. Start a race? New song from start. Restart a race? New song. Finish a race? New song! It just cuts off the music and goes to another track. So I’d be enjoying a song and it would just be like, ‘too bad! On the the next!’ This game needs plenty of polish, but if it can clean up the checkpoint system and how the music plays, I could see myself checking this out down the road.
Kernel Hearts
The game’s characters and scenery looks fine, nothing that really stands out. Still I felt like the combat felt fluid and had some weight to it. Sometimes the indie games drop and the combat feels so floaty and has no impact when hitting enemies. The combos between light and heavy were nice and had some variety depending if you were on the ground or in air. The movement felt good too. I like when games let you move around quickly to your destinations. It’s a cool roguelike of diving into an area, collecting various souls needed to level up, finding relics and other power ups, and getting out before all hell breaks loose. It’s going to have online co-op, so as long as friends go in on it, I will too.
FantasyJourney
This is a really pretty pixel art game, and the combat feels good until I realize how much I suck at blocking/parrying. I probably should have read the description, but I picked it for its aesthetics. Sadly I am absolutely horrible at this game, but I think those that like Sekiro, and souls-lites should check this one out.
SiN Reloaded
I owned SiN and never played much of it back then. This remaster looks really good, and feels pretty good. It nails the feel of those late 90s shooters in terms of speed, a lit bit of floatiness, and gruesome deaths. I don’t think this is a launch day pickup, but I definitely want to give the reloaded collection a shot at some point.
Garuda Emblem
The game looks alright, but the gameplay ain’t hitting. A lot of this takes right from River City Girls. Yet there’s no weight or impact to the attacks, and as someone who was recently playing River CIty Girls games, it’s super noticeable. At one point I picked up a weapon and the weapon on the third hit of a combo kept swinging through the enemy I hit with the first 2 hits. I know this is a small dev team, but this game needs a lot of polish on the combat. Also having Remote Play Together and not actual online co-op does suck though. The game doesn’t invoke that same excitement of RCG, and I’ll be passing on this one.