By Nelson Schneider - 05/03/15 at 06:08 PM CT
April Showers bring May Flowers, as the old children’s song goes. But what happens when the only precipitation in April took the form of ports and remasters? More of the same!
May will be bringing “Final Fantasy 4: The After Years” (the 7th Gen’s only good ‘Final Fantasy’ game) to Steam… but not the same version that graced WiiWare or the PlayStation Portable. Instead, it will be a new 3D-ified version that looks and plays like the unnecessary DS port of “Final Fantasy 4.” In other ‘Final Fantasy’ news, the PS4 is getting a remaster (unsurprising) compilation of “Final Fantasy 10” and “Final Fantasy 10-2.” The PS4 is also getting a port of “Arcania” (a.k.a., “Gothic 4”). Finally, as if as part of a concerted effort to prove that modern non-Nintendo consoles are just really lame gaming PCs, “Farming Simulator 15” is making the leap from PC exclusivity to PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and XBONE.
In multi-platform releases, the PS4, XBONE, and PC are getting “Project CARS,” a poor man’s ‘Gran Turismo,’ as well as the much anticipated final chapter of CD Projekt’s ‘The Witcher’ series, “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.”
In exclusive releases, Steam is getting a LOT of surprise Indie stuff that is difficult to keep up with, as well as a new era of the ‘Trainz’ franchise. The WiiU is getting “Splatoon,” a new IP in which Nintendo will ham-handedly attempt to capture the audience that loves online multi-player arena shooters, and fail horribly due to this new IP featuring cute, cartoony designs and the game itself being devoid of voice chat.
Moving onto handhelds…. wait… something seems to be missing. Where are the PS4 and XBONE exclusives? Surprise! There aren’t any.
Anyway, back to handhelds. The Vita is getting another ‘Hyperdimension Neptunia’ game, this time transforming the franchise from RPG to Action Beat ‘em Up. I may hate these weird moe games coming out of Japan, but I will give the country credit for at least having the decency to acknowledge when they change a game’s genre (*looks at ‘Fallout’ franchise*). The 3DS is getting 3 new releases: a new ‘Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor’ game, a ‘Super Mario’ edition of “Puzzles & Dragons Z,” and a disturbing diva game starring Japan’s synthetic pop idol, Hatsune Miku.
May may seem like another bad month, but at least it’s better than April was. I’ll be picking up the Steam version of “Final Fantasy 4: The After Years” and “The Witcher 3” once they get big enough discounts. I’m sure “The Witcher 3” will be too much for my old GTX 560ti to handle, so I definitely won’t be playing it until Nvidia reveals some more about their new upcoming GPUs that are rumored to support stupid-big (i.e., 32GB) quantities of VRAM. Other than those two, there’s nothing eye-catching this month. It’s no wonder PS4 and XBONE owners are so touchy and sensitive to trolling, considering how poorly their platforms’ libraries have been developing since launch.
Backlog Embiggened: +2
