By Nelson Schneider - 04/01/16 at 01:58 PM CT
April’s fools are out in droves, feverishly pre-ordering (or importing the Asian version) “King’s Field 8,” while simultaneously forming masturbatory circle-jerks in order to prepare their e-peens for the raw rubbing that game will give them. For the rest of us, April looks like yet another month of bland crap… except for 3DS owners, who will be seeing the most interesting single month of releases since the thing launched. The other upside of April is that every platform will be getting at least one exclusive! Yay?
No traditional shovelware again this month. An optimist would take this dearth as a sign that publishers have finally decided that preying on the fans of a given IP with a terrible game isn’t the best way to win a reputation… but I’m not an optimist. The only shovelware coming in April is an annual ‘R.B.I. Baseball’ release.
To make up for the lack of traditional shovelware, plenty of devs and pubs are shoveling games from platform to platform via ports and the 8th Gen’s most disgusting trait, remasters. “Tales from the Borderlands,” which was once an episodic digital game, is getting a retail multi-plat release and “Lichdom: Battlemage’s” PC-to-console port is coming after a short delay, as is a similar port of “DiRT Rally.” “Terraria” is moving to the WiiU, the ‘Assassin’s Creed Chronicles’ games are getting bundled into a trilogy for Vita, Sega is bundling a bunch of their old 8-and-16-bit classics for the 3DS, and Insomniac is releasing a remastered version of the original “Ratchet & Clank” for the PS4 (which will go nicely with the movie based on it). While I’m always quick to dismiss movie-game tie-ins, “Ratchet & Clank” is a phenomenal game series, and has always been the equivalent of a playable Dreamworks/Pixar CG cartoon, so I have a lot of hope that both the remastered game and the movie based on it will be great. Unfortunately, nobody seems to care about ‘Ratchet & Clank’ at all anymore… aside from me.
There are NO legit multi-platform releases, unless you want to count “King’s Field 8,” which I don’t.
In exclusives, PC is getting several strange-looking Adventure games and a Warhammer 40K space-based RTS, “Battlefleet Gothic: Armada.” The PS4 is getting “ETHER One,” an Adventure, and a stupid-looking game about undead Vikings called “Zombie Vikings.” Creative! The Vita is, surprisingly, getting new exclusives that aren’t crossplay with another PS platform, including a (craptastic) NIS RPG, “Stranger of Sword City” and the ultimate Chris Would Love That title, “MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune VS Zombies,” which promises to combine the annoying anime lolis of the ‘Hyperdimension Neptunia’ series with rotting corpses. I can hear him emptying his bank account to buy a Vita as I’m typing this… Moving on, the XBONE is getting “Quantum Break,” which will be coming to Windows 10 a bit later, and the WiiU is getting “StarFox Zero,” which may as well be a remaster it look so similar to “StarFox” and “StarFox 64.” Finally, the 3DS is having a busy month with a sequel to “Bravely Default,” a new release in the ‘Langrisser’ tactical series for the first time in 15 years, and a “Pokemon Rumble” sequel.
I am actually tempted by a few titles for the first time in months. If I was willing to put up with the discomfort of playing on a 3DS, I’d definitely pick-up “Bravely Second” and “Langrisser: Re:Incarnation Tensei.” Likewise, if I was as loose with my money as Chris and thus owned a PortStation 4, I’d pick up “Ratchet & Clank.” But since I don’t own either respective platform and have no desire to do so for so few games, I’ll pass. Anyone with a backlog like mine doesn’t need to go around buying more platforms for a handful of titles each. I probably will end up seeing the “Ratchet & Clank” movie in a theatre and will definitely buy it on Blu-Ray when the time comes.
Backlog Embiggened: +0 (almost +3)
