ASTRO Gaming, a leader in premium video gaming equipment, today revealed additional details surrounding the studio’s highly anticipated official Nintendo Switch™ A10 Headset. ASTRO Gaming confirmed the upcoming headset will feature The Legend of Zelda™: Breath of the Wild, celebrating a critically acclaimed title within one of the most iconic franchises in videogame history. ASTRO plans to reveal the new headset at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles, June 12-14 (MR-307) with availability coming later this year.
“With our new wired headset for the Nintendo Switch, we celebrate the iconic gaming experience that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild delivers to a new generation of gamers,” said Cris “Soup” Lee, head of licensing & partnerships, ASTRO Gaming. “We worked closely with Nintendo to create a stylish, uncompromising audio experience, with a special new chat adapter designed specifically for the Nintendo Switch. With the Nintendo Switch Online smartphone app, players can chat with their friends while playing compatible games at home or on the go.
ASTRO Gaming’s development of the new Legend of Zelda-themed Nintendo Switch headset stems from an exciting multi-year agreement with Nintendo announced in April. As part of the deal, ASTRO Gaming will develop a variety of special edition headsets, speaker tags and accessories celebrating some of the most iconic characters and franchises, including The Legend of Zelda™, Super Mario™ and more.
Aquaman is the Embodiment of “Fine”
REVIEW | The Punisher Season 2
Sub Cultured Heads to PAX South 2019!
REVIEW | The Batman Who Laughs – #1
Sub Cultured is Heading to DakuCon 2018!
Don’t be fooled by the whimsically beautiful, hand-drawn aesthetic Smoke and Sacrifice. Set underground and spanning multiple biomes, Smoke and Sacrifice is a wonderfully crafted survival adventure with an engaging story and an infuriatingly steep learning curve. This game goes from cutesy and innocuous to immediate psychic scarring in the span of its own intro scene. How is that even possible? Might have something to do with the player taking an active role in sacrificing the main character Sachi’s first born child upon an altar surrounded by sun-worshiping religious acolytes. Maybe.
The only reason I decided to play this game, out of a choice of several others, was purely visual. So, being the habitual lazy mug I am, instead of doing research along the lines of watching the entire YouTube video, reading about Solar Sail Games, or, you know, doing literally anything at all before just jumping into this, I… just jumped into this.
And once you jump in, the real nightmare begins. Flash forward seven years; the lights go out, the smoke pours in, and the monsters come into the village. Taking control of Sachi, the player will use the ensuing chaos, wrapped in a thick blanket of panic, to check out the temple and alter where Sachi gave up her child, only to be teleported to a hellish landscape of terror and smoke shrouded danger.
Look, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the brightest lighthouse on the coast, and I generally like my games fast and simple. But, had I taken the time from the outset to pay attention to the background environment, I probably wouldn’t have died 20 something times before making any significant progress in my first play-through.
Without the player ever being involved, the ecosystem of this world carries on with it’s bad self. Polyps (little jellyfish enemies) mate and produce offspring, plants swallow glowbugs and emit protective light, anglermoles eat fireflies and belch flames at you. Why does any of this matter?
Actual transcript of this fight: F***. This game is hard… No wait, I got it… Nevermind, I’m dead again.
See that monstrosity in the picture up there? That was the first big enemy I was tasked to kill. And how many times did he annihilate me instead? An embarrassing amount. It wasn’t until I accidentally brought him too close to that wasp nest that the coin finally dropped. The wasps killed the boar, I killed the wasps, and I then applied that lesson to every other big-bad in the game. Paying attention to the environmental interactions are the key from taking Smoke and Sacrifice from impossibly frustrating to an enjoyable experience.
Even the sound design is amazing. Flapping insect wings, gnashing teeth, screen rumbling explosions, and prosaic music all contribute to a perfect symphony to accompany you on your quest.
Of course, no game is without its flaws. However, in this particular case, for Smoke and Sacrifice they are few and far between. Sometimes items you try to pick up are inaccessible because of the placement of permanent objects and how items drop. Also there’s… um… well, actually, that’s about the only bug I found. Other than the wasps.
Fans of diesel-punk, the crafting elements of Ark, and games like Penny Arcade’s On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness should definitely give this one a go. From perfect visuals and incredible audio, not a tedious amount of grinding, Smoke and Shadow is a visually perfect game with incredible audio and a plot that gave me actual nightmares. I cannot wait to play more.
PS: SAVE.
PPS: SAVE OFTEN.
Editor’s Note: This review was written in conjunction with Jon Calise, a contributor to Sub Cultured. You can find more of his writing on his personal blog, Petting Zoo Rejects.
REVIEW | Salt and Sanctuary
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
REVIEW | Spider-Man PS4
Review | Re-Exploring No Man’s Sky Next
REVIEW | Downward Spiral: Horus Station
In an industry that is filled with space marines, bald military types, and professional killers, stepping into the world of Deer God, by Crescent Moon Games, was incredibly refreshing.
Deer God starts off laying down the story hard as an omnipotent Deer God requires the player, a young fawn, to right the wrongs of the crimes against nature. But you are no ordinary fawn. Through some sort of soul transference, the player is actually a hunter who died in a accident while shooting an awe-inspiring stag and is reborn as a fawn. And only when you have gathered enough karma will the Deer God return you to your human body.
The gameplay will remind you of endless runners like Canablat, or other roguelikes where environments are procedural generated. However, the first thing you are likely to notice is the pixel art style graphics. The art style is very pleasing, with good use of color and beautiful detail in everything you come across in the environment. The foreground showcases some great lightning techniques and particle effects, and there is a nice collection of critters to encounter, help, fight, and defeat.
The Deer God talking to your puny mortal human soul
Galloping around as a four legged fawn feels different then controlling a humanoid runner. The game will have you monitoring a hunger meter as well as health bar. Food is dropped all around the stage for you to keep that bar full, but lurking predators, hunters, and other animals will seek to deplete your health bar. They are pretty standard mechanics and function as they should.
There are other abilities to acquire, most of which you will get from solving basic environmental puzzles, or just found about in the world. What starts as a game with just a single button tackle, ends up being a mad dash of accumulating powers such as fireballs, planting bouncy mushrooms, and lightning bolts.
As you keep your furry avatar alive, the fawn will begin to grow into an adult, increasing its speed and strength. This is where the roguelike features come in, because once you die, you will lose the growth of your deer when you respawn. In the Normal difficulty mode, you will find yourself respawning as a newborn fawn at checkpoints, whereas in the Hardcore mode all you will find is perma-death. In true roguelike fashion.
Deer God does have boss battles as well to use your newfound powers on. Most of these bosses seem to be found randomly in the world, so you may not run into the same ones at the same times through different play throughs. Fighting the bosses showcases some of the more tactical moments in the game, whereas fighting regular enemies felt shallow.
The biggest enemy of Deer God is repetition. Sure, this genre calls for a certain amount of it, but after a few bosses, a few puzzles, and a few deaths, I found that the fun had diminishing returns. The procedural generated moments could cause some confusion or stress as well. If you have certain goals or ideas in mind, the progress may become hindered due to the procedural environment not quite working with you or giving you what you need.
As you defeat enemies, your karma bar will increase. The goal of Deer God is to get that bar completely full. You have to be careful of what you are doing as you can accumulate bad karma as well. Bad karma has many functions from unlocking different abilities, to punishing you for killing innocent animals. Acts such as furry genocide may have you returning to the world as a rabbit or another small animal that you will find useless in combat. You will need to do something special in game to revert yourself back into a fawn, so all is not lost.
There is a multiplayer mode in Deer God as well, where two players can work together to solves puzzles. The idea is to just survive as long as possible. There are no quests, and if one of you dies, the other one has to mate with another deer to create a fawn. If both player’s deer die, the game comes to an end. It was fun enough for a short while, but with nothing guiding you or no real goals, I found multiplayer to be a one and done experience. The woes of repetition unfortunately follow into this mode as well.
Deer God is a pretty and inoffensive runner, but it also feels a lot like many mobile games I have played. If you need a calming title to play on the Nintendo Switch, Deer God‘s identity shines through with its focus on nature and playing as a fawn.
REVIEW | Salt and Sanctuary
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
REVIEW | Spider-Man PS4
Review | Re-Exploring No Man’s Sky Next
REVIEW | Downward Spiral: Horus Station
“Gaming does not respect my personal time,” is a mantra I have been saying for weeks now. We truly live in the best time to game, and this may be among the greatest years of releases in the whole industry. That being said, I want to make a declaration:
I want to enjoy my other hobbies too, but The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Horizon Zero Dawn wont let me.
Jesting aside, it is not often that we are hammered with such a collection of releases in Q1. Sure as the years have gone by, big Q1 releases have become more and more commonplace. However, I don’t think I have ever seen it to this extreme. Let’s break 2017 down a bit.
The year started off with January’s smash success Resident Evil 7 as the big must see attraction. February boasted For Honor, and PlayStation’s two new exclusives, Nioh and Horizon Zero Dawn. If you think it stops there well buckle in for March’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the release of Nintendo’s newest console, the Nintendo Switch, Neir, and Mass Effect Andromeda. Oh, but you can’t stop planning for after that because April will see Persona 5, with Prey also coming out in May. Every single month has a can’t miss title that you…well…can’t miss!
Among all the listed titles above, two are going to battle it out in the same week, head to head, for our free time. Both games are large open worlds, with lots of inspirations from previous open world games like GTA, The Witcher 3, and Skyrim. They are also both an exclusive pillar in two different franchise lineups. That’s right, it’s time to break open the time seizing terrorists: Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Sony’s Horizon Zero Dawn.
Horizon Zero Dawn Open World
Horizon Zero Dawn will launch February 28th, and after the collective praise of every review copy of the game, it seems like it is one not to be missed. However, this title is going against a juggernaut of a franchise, the widely known Legend of Zelda.
The Legend of Zelda will be releasing with its new hardware on March 3, leaving just about 3 days in between the two huge releases. How does one even begin to choose what to put time into? This is a battle of old versus new, known versus unknown, and of course, Sony versus Nintendo.
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild Open World
The lifelong gamer in me is of course screaming for Legend of Zelda, as I know that it will be a nice nostalgic trip into a franchise I love, all the while showcasing that it has been paying attention to other games, and what would be best to take inspirations from. The other half of me who loves all things new is of course hollering for some Horizon playtime. A normal person would just choose one or the other, but in my constant battle with FOMO (fear of missing out) I have chosen to step up to the Tale of Two Open World’s challenge to tackle both simultaneously.
Now if you have a lick of sense about you, one game will suffice. Only occupying one world will guarantee an extra layer of immersion as you aren’t constantly unlearning mechanics from one game to relearn them in the other. I have high hopes after plenty of investigating that both will offer vastly different experiences despite being mechanically similar.
GAMEPLAY
Sure, two big titles from competing franchises that are both 3rd person adventure coming out with only a 3 day gap, an open world format, and each boasting a skilled archer as their hero doesn’t necessarily mean these titles are similar in every way.
Except both games will have a map unlock system via towers, not unlike Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry. Each game will have a crafting system, as well as a focus on hunting local fauna in as well. The Legend of Zelda and Horizon Zero Dawn are both sure to be north of 40 hour experiences, depending on how deep you explore all the content. In those hours you will notice that they both have a focus on combat and exploration, as the world unfolds around you.
STORYLINE
If the mechanics alone aren’t enough to convince you of the similarities, take a look at the plot; Zelda and Horizon both focus on immersive worlds that have suffered from some sort of calamity, a mystery that you are slowly uncovering in the story. In Horizon, the player occupies a world that was once theirs, taken by nature and guarded by a slew of animalistic robotic guardians who occupy the lands. In Zelda, the player occupies Hyrule, a world that has suffered a fall of civilization… where robotic guardians now live.
The Legend of Zelda’s Robot Enemies who Prowl the Land
Horizon Zero Dawn’s Robot Enemies who Prowl the Land….Also
I fear that playing Zelda and Horizon simultaneously would create a dance filled with much toe stepping. Obviously each game will be different, but they will feel similar in terms of moment to moment gameplay and mechanics. That is not a slight on either game, but more so just the realism of the situation. While they are similar, we don’t believe that one is a copy of the other, and at this point one is not lesser than the other. Their similarities are not a negative aspect. If anything, the immersive experience that both these titles offer showcase that the open world genre, a genre constantly being called “overwhelming, overused, and oversaturated,” is in fact healthy and still ripe with opportunity for churning out Game of the Year contenders.
BUT WHICH DO I CHOOSE?
Either title you pick will be its own experience, and a great one. Ultimately, it comes down to what is speaking to you more right now in this moment. The battle of old versus new is a tale as old as time, and in the end it will be your choice. The main question you will have to ask yourself is what type of experience you are looking for.
The Legend of Zelda has 30 years of cannon, references, characters, and locations to draw from. Zelda will surely rely on the old tried and true methods as it tugs on our strings of nostalgia, but don’t count out its innovations as well. With new mechanics such as weapon/armor drops, cooking, and horse breaking, the experience is sure to feel fresh, and unlike any Zelda you have ever played before. It will dance the line of new and familiar.
Zelda also has the novelty of launching with a new system to explore. You can always snag The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild on the Wii U, but the real attention is being shifted towards their new system, the Switch. It makes this release that much more special that we are getting this a Zelda with new hardware.
Horizon on the other hand is setting up an entirely new world and isn’t restrained by anything from the past. It is creating its own foundation for a potential new franchise, and that in itself is very exciting. Exploring a new world like Horizon has will be a main draw as you figure out the nuances of this storyline.
Horizon launches on the current PS4 as well as the PS4 Pro systems. If you have a PS4 Pro, this is the game that tests the true limits of that new hardware. Because of this, Horizon may be the best looking game on the market… in the history of ever. While Zelda players on the Switch may be distracted with new hardware, Horizon players will already be immersed in this new world.
Link Don’t Play Games
Robot Dino Hunting…Just like the Cavemen Used to Do
This will be a hard decision for some of you that are in the “either or” camp. Thankfully, I’m evading this eternal debate in turn for conjuring issues of my own based on that decision. See ya later free time and social life! For me, I will have two or three solid days with Horizon before the Switch launches that Friday. Come Saturday, what will end up sitting on the shelf, and what will end up getting my full attention? The overzealous gamer in me says, “You will beat Horizon before Zelda comes out,” but the adult in me says, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”
What will you be choosing? Do you plan on playing both? Don’t forget to check out our Twitch channel, where we will be streaming both games!
Aquaman is the Embodiment of “Fine”
REVIEW | The Punisher Season 2
Sub Cultured Heads to PAX South 2019!
REVIEW | The Batman Who Laughs – #1
