This Week in Games

Special Feature: First Look At One Punch Man World Closed Beta

Welcome back, folks! It seems like last week's dual releases for Sonic Superstars and Super Mario Wonder really brought up the old Sonic/Mario rivalry... but as a Sega fan, it seems like Mario won this one? Not that Sonic Superstars is bad, especially with stuff like the Chaos Emerald powers or the cool graphical effects. But it feels like folks are hemming and hawing over it instead of, y'know, enjoying that we got a new Sonic the Hedgehog title that brought back some old characters and isn't loaded up with yet another darn rendition of Green Hill Zone and Chemical Plant Zone for the umpteenth time. But Super Mario Wonder would always be stiff competition; that game has brought in people who aren't even platformer regulars. It's amazing how much that one game has turned people around on Mario's sidescrollers after years of indifference from the New Super Mario Bros. games.

Speaking of games that came out last week: holy crap, Insomniac confused the Cuban flag for the Puerto Rican flag in Miles Morales' bedroom—a Puerto Rican character. Ignoring that I'm Puerto Rican myself: holy crap... man, this is as dense as just throwing up the Italian flag instead of the French flag because, hey, they look the same, am I right? It really shouldn't be that hard to check on this, man. You had time. At least they fixed it and apologized...

Hey, we have another classic VN coming to consoles! At this point, most folks probably recognize the name Muv-Luv from the various animated adaptations we've had in later years. VN fans can finally look forward to the first two Muv-Luv titles being ported to Switch in 2024! ...In Japan, that is—still no word on a U.S. release.

Muv-Luv is one of those complicated multimedia franchises that I don't know anything about; most of my interactions with Muv-Luv are me really, really liking Beatrix Bremer from Schwarzesmarken (as seen above) because Carnelian designed her. Any of my longtime readers know I'm a mark for Carnelian. But let me try: originally a spin-off of Rumbling Hearts (yeah, there's a throwback for you older fans), Muv-Luv tells the story of a gaggle of teenage conscripts dealing with an onslaught of invading alien organisms known as the BETA. Muv-Luv Extra had a unique twist. It's set in a high school with a rather conventional romance setting. The follow-up Muv-Luv Unlimited, however, takes our protagonist Takeru and drops him into an alternate universe where he is a recruit in an effort against the BETA, a creepy multi-armed species harvesting resources from the planet (including people). The upside is that all the people from the first game are back and essentially the same people. Also, because our hero is a prodigy at the in-universe version of Virtual-On (remember Virtual-On? Sega sure doesn't!), he's a natural at piloting the Tactical Surface Fighters (TSFs) that the surviving military factions use to fight the BETA. It's a surprisingly dark setting: humanity is reduced to a mere 1 billion from the overwhelming invasion of the BETA. Europe is mostly a hotbed of their hives, Canada is irradiated to oblivion, and most recruits only last eight minutes in their first fights against the BETA. Also, everyone goes around in these skintight combat suits (that do little to keep you from getting ripped apart by the BETA).

There have been a few animated adaptations of the Muv-Luv games, but I'm not the best judge of how good they are. I never actually watched them. As for these Switch ports, it's rather soon to tell if they'll ever come to the U.S. If they don't, however, we have options. The Muv-Luv games are available on Steam, albeit with their adult content excised (which shouldn't be too difficult for any enterprising player to correct). You can also catch the Muv-Luv anime on Crunchyroll.

Fans of the old .hack series received a bit of a shock this week when a new website bearing the series' name popped up on the web. On top of that, the website appears to bear a timer and a ton of floating hexagons.

What does it all mean? Your guess is as good as mine. Hexagons are part of .hack's iconography (they're used in all logos for the games, anime, and manga), so that's not much to go off of. The timer is set to run out on February 29, 2024, which, as far as I know, doesn't mean much outside of being a leap year. So, all we have left is speculation. .hack fans are rather hopeful; however, this past summer saw a lot of activity on behalf of CyberConnect2, the company that produced the .hack games in the past. Its CEO, Hiroshi Matsuyama, set the fandom abuzz by joking that a new project was in development but later recanted. However, he added that any development involving .hack would be up to Bandai Namco, as they hold the license to the IP. This led to a big push on behalf of both the fanbase and CyberConnect2's localization director, Till Stiehl, to tweet out an outpouring of support and nostalgia for the .hack series via the hashtag "#dothack". This was a pretty big deal for the fandom this past summer, as we covered back in July.

The real desire on behalf of the .hack fanbase would be a port of the original tetralogy of PS2 .hack games, known as the .hack//IMOQ games. Composed of four sequential titles (Infection, Mutation, Outbreak, and Quarantine—hence the "IMOQ" acronym), these games detailed the misadventures of a player named Kite who finds themselves embroiled in an ongoing mystery involving a fictional MMORPG named "The World" and a rash of unexplained supernatural comings-and-goings involving AI, ghostly creatures, and players being sent into comas upon encountering invincible monsters. These events, while not directly related to the events of the .hack//SIGN anime, were connected by the same setting, and there were even some cameo appearances from the cast of SIGN. The IMOQ games also led to the events of the .hack//Legend of the Twilight anime and manga. While not phenomenal, as the IMOQ games suffer from feeling like one game forcibly extended and split into four sub-games, the tetralogy is still beloved by fans for its story, characters, and music. Also, it's been locked onto the PS2 since the games were released in 2004; only the .hack//GU titles have been ported to other consoles, the most recent being last year's .hack//GU Last Recode ported to the Switch.

On the one hand, it's hard to imagine CyberConnect2 making a brand-new .hack game when the franchise has been otherwise dormant for so long, especially without a tie-in anime or manga to go with it. On the other hand... hey man, this year has been absolutely bugnuts for obscure games, a new .hack title wouldn't be the craziest thing to happen this year. That massive push for the IMOQ games also can't be denied. Since 2022 was .hack's 20th anniversary and last year was Last Recode's release (which added a ton of new content for the GU trilogy), there doesn't seem to be much else for fans to put their hope into... besides a possible IMOQ port. For what it's worth, Stiehl has been sharing a ton of .hack//GU trivia and behind-the-scenes info over on his Twitter. Not much else to do but wait until February 29.

That said, I'm gonna wag my finger here a bit. I can understand a countdown timer of one week for some kind of announcement. Maybe a month. But four months? That seems a bit excessive. Here's hoping for good news...

Well, that Metal Gear Solid collection came out and has disappointed folks. I don't think an old PS1 game needs to be updated entirely into 60 fps 4K UHD retina-burning quality; there's something to be said about old games being ported as they were, no frills attached. Maybe folks want the original version of a game with all the old spelling errors or translation gaffs. Maybe they want to be able to use all of the old glitches and exploits. I know that The Twin Snakes is a very contemptible remake among Metal Gear Solid fans precisely because of how much it changes, but even besides that, there's something to be said about there not being a legal way to play a version of Chrono Trigger with the old Ted Woolsey localization. Anyway, while we hem and haw about the old Metal Gear Solids, Konami has given the world a preview of the upcoming remake of the beloved Metal Gear Solid: 🎵Snake Eateeeeer~ 🎵. It's an in-engine look, too!

Mmm. Even after all these years, I feel like waving that your game runs off of some version of Unreal in our faces is one of the best ways of making me lose interest in your game. Not because Unreal is a bad engine, but because I do not give a rip what engine you use for your game. When I'm playing a game, the last thing I'm wondering is whether it's running on Unreal, Epic, Linux, Ubuntu, or what-freaking-ever. Engines don't make a good game. Good creative decisions make good games. And so far, the decisions in this project... are fifty-fifty for me.

Let's start with the good: the details are stunning. Considering Hideo Kojima isn't working on this remake, they showed some really particular details in this trailer—like the mud dripping off of Snake after he walks out of the water. Kojima's Metal Gear titles loved details like those; I remember an old interview with Electronic Gaming Monthly concerning Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty where Kojima talked about how it was possible to do things like make Snake sneeze if you shot a bag of flour too close to him. I can see that affecting stealth, like if an enemy soldier notices your mud trail while you're walking around. The aiming is much more in line with how Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain handled it; I'm curious how they'll handle it once Snake loses an eye (as losing an eye does change the camera in first-person view in the original Snake Eater). They've also included crouch-walking as an option; while I wonder why you're not just crawling if you want a quiet, stealthy option for moving around, crouch-walking seems to be a good new option.

Past that, however, the graphics are too clean. The original Snake Eater was a graphical stunner too, make no mistake, but it wasn't ostentatious. My issue is with how the Snake Eater remake feels too much like the Snake Eater equivalent of a Dragon Ball fight scene that's been uprezzed to 60 fps with motion smoothing. Here, let me explain:

So, yes, Metal Gear Solid Δ has much lusher graphics in greater detail—you can see individual blades of grass and individual leaves on tree branches. But all of that photorealism comes at the expense of the vibes. Metal Gear Solid Δ looks like a photo of a soldier in the woods. The original Snake Eater felt much eerier, with the forests of Tselinoyarsk being carpeted in the fog of war. And this fog helped the mood of the game: between Naked Snake's inner turmoil at having to fight against The Boss and the vivid emotions embodied by her bizarre Cobra unit (especially Fear, Pain, and Sorrow), it felt like Snake wasn't just trekking through a living, breathing forest: he was also navigating his trauma. Everything was tinted a hazy greenish-yellow as if we were playing Naked Snake's memories—to say nothing of the already dreamlike nature of a Metal Gear Solid game, where you could just as easily find an actual tsuchinoko hiding in a bush as you would a little croaking Kerotan doll.

The added detail is impressive on a technical level. But the haze of the PS2 version, while a technique to avoid obvious draw distance restrictions, is a stylistic one that helps Snake Eater look like Snake Eater. It's the same thing that happened to NieR (not Automata; I'm talking about Gestalt/Replicant). The original NieR used a lot of exaggerated contrasts in its lighting; some areas were blindingly bright... but this was to NieR's benefit, given its off-kilter tone and writing. It gives the game a dreamlike nature. The Nier remake has a much more detailed look, courtesy of its improved graphics... but it's all arguably to NieR's detriment, as all the graphical detail makes the world look mundane.

This is a problem that modern gaming is crashing into as technology continues to develop; the more detail added to a game's visual presentation, the more limited you are with how you can present the world. The recent Spider-Man 2 is a great example; famously, a tweet went around about a curious glitch in the matrix when they noticed two copies of the same NPC on two different floors of a massive building. Understandably, we shouldn't hold games to the standard of being a 100% completely immersive miniature world that is one-to-one representative of the real world, with countless randomly generated NPCs that are entirely different from one another... and yet AAA games aspire to that. Ignoring that anal-retentive attention to detail leads to inflated development times all so your game can have reactive horse testicles, it also makes your games look boring; it's harder to produce abstractions in your game when the entire thing has to be so bloody realistic. To be a bit spicier: if you're complaining about Mary-Jane not being "pretty" enough in Spider-Man 2, my brother in Christ, they can't make her look like an ethereal elf-goddess from a Korean MMO without seriously clashing with the realistic setting. Also, Spider-Man 2's MJ is plenty gorgeous as-is.

Attention to detail has always been a part of Metal Gear Solid's design ethos—but these were never graphical flourishes done for their own sake. Details in Metal Gear Solid were always in service of a greater system, be it for making you reexamine how you interacted with the world or for making a silly gaff (like when Venom Snake stinks too much). Remember: you can intentionally make Naked Snake throw up in Snake Eater by spinning him around in the medical menu... and this can be useful to cure Snake if he's gotten food poisoning from eating anything he's caught that's gone bad in his inventory.

All in all, Metal Gear Solid Δ feels like a post-Kojima Metal Gear game. We'll see how its development continues.

I was pretty surprised to hear that Princess Connect! Re: Dive was localized in the U.S. courtesy of Crunchyroll. It makes sense, considering it's a mobile game that inspired a somewhat popular anime that Crunchyroll just happened to stream. Still, I also didn't expect Crunchyroll to have the funds to localize a whole mobile game, what with reports of their cost-cutting measures and translator pay. Anyway, Crunchyroll is gearing up for another anime-based mobile game, but this time, it's based on an anime instead of the other way around—and it's based on One Punch Man. Now, there have been other One Punch Man mobile games, but One Punch Man: World seems primed to take the top spot among them all. I was lucky enough to sit down with OPMW during the closed beta last week.

The idea behind One Punch Man World seems pretty simple: give people a chance to play through the most memorable moments of the anime while also expanding upon the world of One Punch Man and the Hero Association. The game has a very multi-faceted approach to this, offering a variety of modes. There's Joint Mission mode, where you can go into a series of challenge-ranked missions in search of loot (more on that later). In my playtime, these tended to be reasonably simple affairs—usually dealing with teams of monsters led by a single boss. There are some "X"-factors, like getting better rankings and rewards in fights by beating them under certain conditions (like beating the fight under a specific time limit or with a certain amount of health remaining). These stages are essential, as you'll get the bulk of your upgrade materials for your heroes—more on those later. OPMW also gives people options for facing these missions; a Commission mode lets the AI take control of your team to clear a stack of missions. This last one seems convenient, as you can leave the mission playing on your phone while you do anything else, but having the mission play out feels a bit wasteful—if I'm playing a game, I want to play it. If I'm going to skip a mission, I'd rather skip it.

The other central element is the story mode. This is where players will experience most of the major beats from One Punch Man's plot, like the fight against the Beast King or Mosquito Girl. These are exciting fights, especially since they let you play with the bigger names in One Punch Man, like Saitama or Genos. But these also let players test more exotic characters and learn their gimmicks. See, each playable character in One Punch Man World has their own "shtick". For example, the SSR version of Genos used during the fight against Mosquito Girl's fight can swap between melee or ranged modes after landing a certain number of hits. Swapping modes is in your best interest, as it confers some buffs to Genos and grants him extra uses of his specials with each swap. Saitama can dodge attacks, with well-timed parries completely negating damage. This isn't just for the bigger-name characters, either; even low-rank characters like Smile Man or Lightning Max have their own gimmicks that make them interesting to use. In Lightning Max's case, he can charge up energy using a swing meter; better timing grants Lightning Max more energy to use in his combos and specials.

There's also the ability to "patrol" various cities in-game. This isn't exactly a massive open-world game, but they do give you large maps to explore with hidden collectibles to locate. These also allow you to play through fun side-quests that help flesh out the heroes in your entourage. These side-quests are written with all of the wit you'd expect from One Punch Man, and they do plenty to flesh out many of the smaller-name heroes in the game.

So, for the question on everyone's mind: what's the gacha like? The good news is, you absolutely don't need to sink any money into One Punch Man World. From my playtime, the story mode gives you plenty of chances to mess around with the main characters. And even without that, there are in-game resources you can rely on so as not to invest in tokens for rolling the gacha. I can't attest to the rates, as this is a beta test, and there aren't that many characters anyway. The gacha at least tries to be worth your while; the only things you roll for are characters and "Impressions": pictures that you can allocate to each hero to give them stat buffs. Plenty of Impressions are shared among all of the heroes, but some heroes—especially the rarer ones—have unique Impressions you can only unlock with rare drops from the gacha. And, of course, you'll want extras to max out your character. It is the same with rolling dupes of heroes: these can buff the base power of your heroes. Finally, your heroes' ranks can be upgraded with items from the Joint Link missions. You've got plenty of options for strengthening your heroes, at least—and plenty to do otherwise.

So far, One Punch Man World looks promising. The game is fun, the characters feel fun to use, and the various gameplay modes feel varied and engaging. For a beta test, the game is running pretty darn well with minimal errors. If I needed a frame of reference for it, it would be along the lines of the Honkai games—though a bit more like Honkai Impact 3rd than Honkai: Star Rail in terms of format. There are plenty of options to make the experience feel like a fleshed-out game, the characters feel meaningful in their execution, and it's possible to play without dumping money into the game. For now, there's quite a bit to look forward to. I do hope the full release doesn't quite go into "Oops! All Gokus!" territory; the beta already has a bit of that, as there are three versions of Saitama (office worker, pajamas, and "normal") and two Genos versions. I can already see a ton of Fubukis and Tatsumakis in various outfits and swimsuits. I hope they can make new "original" heroes like Smile Man or Lightning Max. Or, I don't know, a version of Mumen Rider with a motorcycle. Until then, One Punch Man is looking leagues better than that other One Punch Man mobile game...

Gundam Evolution is quickly approaching its scheduled End Of Service date (November 29). Its final season is underway—in true Gundam fashion, it is named "Last Shooting". Even the artwork for the season is on the money:

That'll do it for this week. It might be a bit early, but with how the scheduling lines up, I may as well take a moment to do it now: I'd like to wish my readers a Happy Halloween! I usually do a very crappy job of keeping up with Halloween, but I certainly won't miss the discount candy sales the day after! Halloween falls on a Tuesday this year, which sucks, but I hope folks are able to make time to enjoy some horror movies or spooky games. Or at least get into some cosplay; a good costume does wonders for your mood. So, from That Bitch™ at This Week in Games, I'd like to wish my readers...

Special thanks to my friend Aorora (heads-up: page has some NSFW) for the Halloween art of Izuna, Shuckle, and me. I wanted to do this last year, but the timing didn't work out. Thanks, Aorora! And thanks to you guys for joining us this week. Be good to each other; I'll see you in seven.