Operation Backlog Completion 2025

Astro’s Playroom is a Fun Little Platformer (and I’m Excited for Astro Bot)

 Reviews, Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Sep 092024
 

One of the few standout titles from the June State of Play for me was the 3D platformer Astro Bot.

Astro Bot came out a few days ago (on September 6, the same day as the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection!), but while waiting for it, I decided to play Astro’s Playroom, which came pre-installed on the PS5.

Astro’s Playroom part tech demo, part 3D platformer, and part PlayStation celebration.

It shows off various aspects of the PS5 controller while you explore 3D platforming stages as a cute little robot and collect coins and collectibles related to PlayStation’s history. There’s a room in the central hub where all these collectibles go on display.

Stages are mission-based rather than the more open collect-a-thon style I prefer (with one exception), but they’re still a lot of fun, with a lot of little secrets to find. My only complaint is that I didn’t enjoy the parts that were heavy on motion controls very much.

In addition to finding collectibles, there’s an additional set of collectibles you get through a gacha machine by spending coins found in the levels. Unlike real gacha, this is fun. For one thing, there are no duplicates. For another thing, coins are pretty readily available.

And the collectibles made me so nostalgic. Seeing an old PlayStation console or a PS2 controller made me think back to the days when I used to play those all the time. It was a nice trip through PlayStation history.

Astro’s Playroom is a short game and only took me a few hours to play. But those were a fun few hours, and it left me excited to see what they’ve done with a full game in Astro Bot.

Bakeru Coming West on September 3, Demo Available Now

 Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Aug 142024
 

Last year, Otogi Katsugeki Mameda no Bakeru came out for the Nintendo Switch only in Japan.

It’s a 3D action platformer developed by Good-Feel, the company behind games like Yoshi’s Woolly World and the recent Princess Peach: Showtime, and is seen as a spiritual successor to the Ganbare Goemon series.

(The producer of that series founded Good-Feel.)

Set in “Fairy Tail Japan,” you set out to defeat the evil spirits and save Japan, using drums for combat and transforming into different forms to use different abilities.

And it’s coming west!

Titled simply Bakeru for its western release, the game will be out on September 3 for both Switch and PC. A couple new attacks and a new enemy have also been added, which is interesting.

Sadly, it appears like it will be a digital-only release in the west.

I’ve never played the Goemon games, but there’s a demo available for Bakeru, so I gave it a try. It seems like it will be a lot of fun! It’s stage-based, which I don’t enjoy as much as the more open collect-a-thon style of 3D platformers, but it still seems like the sort of game I’ll want to play eventually.

Are you interested in Bakeru?

New Banjo-Kazooie Rumored to Be In Development

 Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Dec 292023
 

It’s rumor time again!

The latest rumor making waves is that a new Banjo-Kazooie game is in development.

Hope for a new Banjo-Kazooie was revived earlier this month, when Phil Spencer touched on the possibility of reviving past games in an interview with Windows Central and said “You’ve seen from our history that we haven’t touched every franchise that people would love us to touch — Banjo fans, I hear you.”

This acknowledgment, while not confirmation of anything, was enough to spark hope that our beloved 3D platformer series might still have a chance to return.

Now new rumors have come from a supposed insider who claims a new Banjo-Kazooie game has been greenlit.

Banjo-Kazooie is one of my all-times favorites. That’s why games that try to evoke a similar style, like A Hat in Time (which I enjoyed) and Yooka-Laylee (which I still need to play) always catch my interest.

I absolutely loved Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, Nuts & Bolts was one of my primary motivations for getting an Xbox 360 and was quite enjoyable despite being so different, and I even enjoyed the GBA spin-off Grunty’s Revenge. A new Banjo-Kazooie would be a day-one purchase for me for sure.

2024 is already shaping up to be an amazing year for new game releases, and a Banjo-Kazooie announcement would make it even better. In the meantime, I have some of those spiritual successors like Yooka-Laylee to play, while I wait with fingers crossed for the real thing.

Do you think we’ll actually see a “Banjo-Threeie” after all this time?

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