(Here are the rest of the notable games from April 2016 to June 2016!)
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Nintendo Reality-
Justicar: Absolute Verdict
One of two Justicar games released in May 2016, Absolute Verdict is an FPS/RPG title centered around a new protagonist, Mikhail, and tells a spinoff sidestory to the main Justicar universe. As the first game in the series to be released for consoles, it features the best graphics in the series to date, and an extensive online mode, while its plot follows Mikhail's journey to destroy a group of rebels known as the Dark Order. The game's plot is connected to that of the Connect companion title, The Wasting Of The Ways, and this game takes place before that one by ten years. As Mikhail roots out and destroys the Dark Order, the player realizes that things aren't everything they seem, but the quest continues until Mikhail wipes out the entire Order, despite their clearly morally good intentions, and the game ends with Mikhail renouncing his title as a Justicar to become a shiftless wanderer. The game is praised as one of the Reality's better FPS exclusives of 2016, and tells a story in the series that heavily contrasts that of the noble Damon, while also tying in extremely well with the Connect game. It would see moderately good sales, and would ultimately sell more copies than its handheld companion.
Excitebike Reality
Excitebike Reality is a motocross video game featuring races and stunts, and though it's a fairly basic experience, with only a small amount of extra modes, the actual racing is quite fun, and the stunt gameplay, which allows players to ride around a track or race in one of numerous open dirt areas, is exhilarating and exciting. The racing itself features 16 tracks with varying difficulties and features, while there are a total of 14 stunt arenas and tracks to enjoy, with more of both types of tracks available through DLC. There's online gameplay, and the game also makes good use of the Reality's VR features, making this game a fairly complete racing package and leading to strong reviews in the 8.5/10 range. Sales aren't huge, but the game does moderate numbers around the world and makes back its budget by a healthy amount.
Shantae And The Seven Seastones
Shantae And The Seven Seastones is an action/adventure title for the Nintendo Reality, and is a blend of traditional Metroidvania style Shantae gameplay with some fun Zelda-like dungeon crawling. The game sort of plays like Zelda II: The Adventures Of Link, with sidescrolling in both towns and dungeons alike, as Shantae ventures the world to gather up seven stones to save her friends. She starts out the game battling Risky Boots, but eventually the two end up working together, as they face a common foe in the powerful sorceress Grimoria. Shantae and the Seven Seastones is a fun game with gorgeous graphics, and though it doesn't really take advantage of the Reality's features, the animation is incredibly beautiful and the game has a lot of funny and heartfelt moments.
Apple Virtua-
Impact Radius
A futuristic third person shooter about an elite team of strike troops who must drop into a besieged city to liberate it from rebels and robots, the game gets immediate comparisons to The Covenant, but is significantly faster paced and features more energy weapons. The rebels in question are a group of anarchists seeking to strike at the galactic government by holding the city's mayor and city council hostage (with one of the people on the city council being the protagonist's girlfriend). Meanwhile, the anarchists have invaded a robotics factory, causing a multitude of powerful AI robots to begin attacking humans wildly. The game mostly consists of missions where the player needs to get from point A to point B, killing everything they see along the way and not really going off the beaten path. Impact Radius has a big budget (with excellent graphics that pop spectacularly in VR, and a voice acting team stacked with big names), and it's generally a good game, but does get criticism for being relatively generic, limiting review scores to around an 8/10. Sales, however, are quite good, ensuring that a sequel goes into quick production.
Mega Man: Chip Quest
A traditional JRPG based on the characters from the original Mega Man series, this game sees Mega Man team up with allies including Protoman, Roll, and several other friends he makes along the way, as they battle the diabolical Dr. Wily, who is attempting to build the most powerful robotic monster ever created. In lieu of level-ups, players instead install chips onto their heroes, with chips found from defeated enemies or in treasure chests, or purchased in shops. Of course, bosses drop the biggest and most powerful chips (usually), and there's also an element of RNG to what chips drop where and when. As far as RPGs go, it's decent enough, and has lots of allusions and references to keep Mega Man fans satisfied. It's no Super Mario RPG, but it's a solid 8/10 game and sells decently well, especially in Japan.
Superhot
ITTL, this innovative first person shooter relying heavily on time manipulation and careful strategy is funded by Apple, and thus is exclusive to the Virtua (but benefits heavily from improved graphics and a larger game overall). It becomes a digital indie sensation, and is extremely well reviewed, while at just $10 MSRP, it sells a lot of copies to become one of the Virtua's top digital exclusives of the year.
Vectorman: Twin Motion
This console-based Vectorman title launches at a budget price of $29.99, and is structured fairly similarly to other recent titles in the series which have appeared on the Gemini. The game's graphics are of course a step up from those titles, while the game also includes new motion controls allowing the player to raise their arms to directly control Vectorman, allowing for a new range of rotational movement and some really innovative platforming. The game's plot, involving a pair of diabolical scientists who modify their bodies and attempt to take over the world, is fairly simplistic (though the scientists themselves, a pair of young and talented prodigies whose personalities call to mind Troy and Tyreen from OTL's Borderlands 3 minus the streaming element, are quite popular amongst fans), and the game is a smidge shorter than Omega Factor, but it's still plenty fun and makes some of the best use of the Virtua's motion controls to date.
Google Nexus-
Mystery Of The Mirror
Intended for younger players, this game is essentially LA Noire meets Nancy Drew. A young girl becomes a detective and has to help her friends stop some very real criminals (not really violent criminals, just fraudsters and thieves, though they do resort to some violent threats and kidnapping as the young sleuth and her friends close in) in this action packed but ultimately kid friendly story that achieves decent sales and reviews.
Shadowrun Tactics Hexadecimal
The sequel to the acclaimed Shadowrun Tactics, it's much the same game as the last in terms of basic gameplay, but includes some hacking and puzzle elements, making it one of the more innovative SRPGs in recent memory, with players given the choice of attacking enemies straight on or subverting them through hacking, and it's entirely possible to win the entire campaign and all the side missions with hacking and social engineering alone, without a single attack (this becomes a popular speedrun category as well). One of the best tactics games of its generation, with incredible use of the Shadowrun lore, it's one of the best reviewed games of the year, and though it makes a profit, its sales are far below what it deserves.
The Metallurgist
One of the year's more innovative games, this game is all about crafting, starting with stone and ending up with futuristic super materials. It's basically Civilization for material scientists, with a bit of Doodle God thrown in, and it's pretty fun. It's a budget title, released for $19.99, and becomes a digital store sale staple.
Crashlands
OTL's silly action RPG title combining elements of games like Diablo with lots and lots of crafting is a Google exclusive ITTL, and becomes one of the better received digital titles of the year, thanks to some strong promotion and a few interesting guest characters that the game's affiliation with Google makes possible. Eventually makes it to other consoles, but is a Google exclusive for several years.
Stardew Valley
The hit farming title from OTL also makes it to TTL in much the same form as our reality, only ITTL, it's Google who steps in and offers to help creator Eric Barone with production rather than Chucklefish. With Google's money and development resources, the game expands somewhat, and like Crashlands, benefits from numerous guest characters as well, while also being promoted more by Google initially than by word of mouth (though word of mouth does come later). It comes to both the Nexus and the Nexus Companion, and later gets a port to Android phones, though unlike Crashlands, it never comes to other platforms (Google buys the rights to the game outright, realizing how good it is). Despite being a budget indie title, it's as acclaimed as it was IOTL, and becomes a major driver of Nexus console sales, regarded as one of the Nexus' best titles of the year.
Nintendo Connect-
Works Of Arte
A Nintendo-developed JRPG about a group of heroes who emerge from paintings to save the world from a great evil. Each hero has a different aesthetic, based on a different style of painting. A very fantastical JRPG with rather traditional gameplay (it's turn based, and there's not a huge amount of attack variety, though the game does have some unique timed-hits type systems to spice up battles a bit), the game does have a rather long and epic quest, and features memorable characters and dialogue spiced up by some solid voice acting and good graphics and music. This is probably one of the better RPGs of the year, and a solid new IP for the Connect.
Captain Shock
A superhero/Metroidvania title about a superhero who can blast bad guys with different types of lasers, this gets a lot of comparisons to the recent Vectorman games (and also the Star Siren series, though it's not quite as fast paced and combo heavy) but is somewhat more humorous. As Captain Shock progresses through the world, he gains new powers, and new bad guys emerge to challenge him, while old ones rear their heads, giving Captain Shock a nice little rogue's gallery that will keep the player amused the whole way through the game. A fun little adventure title, this becomes a cult hit.
Justicar: The Wasting Of The Ways
The fourth mainline title in the Justicar series sees Damon on the trail of a strange new group of enemies, while finding clues vaguely hinting at the destruction of a group of soldiers some time before, which turns out to be the Dark Order from Absolute Verdict, ultimately leading Damon to the wandering soldier Mikhail and the truth about his own squadron. The Wasting Of The Ways is more of a traditional FPS title than either Justicar 3 or Absolute Verdict (both of which blend RPG elements with FPS elements), and features a slick new combat system allowing the player to switch between four weapons at once or combine their effects. It's quite a fun and fast paced FPS title and one of the best looking Connect games to date. It ties in well with the Reality game, though not everyone will be willing to spend 100 dollars on both.
SNES Remix
The “Remix” game we never got IOTL, this minigame compilation brings together elements from 60 classic SNES and SNES-CD games, both first party and third party alike, and gives players challenges based on them. With 15-40 challenges for each game, that means there are well over 1,000 challenges in all, making this one of the most robust experiences for the system, and a whole lot of fun for nostalgia junkies and new players alike. It would ultimately see better overall sales than NES Remix, though it doesn't quite sell enough to be considered a blockbuster.
Apple Gemini-
Porcu-Pining
A sidescrolling platformer about an anthropomorphic porcupine who falls in love and must complete a series of increasingly convoluted tasks to win his dream girl. It's a fun and cute game, albeit a bit short, and manages some decent reviews. It does decent sales as well, helped out by the fact that it's a budget title, released at $19.99 MSRP.
Railstorm 2
Railstorm 2 is the long-awaited sequel to 2012's killer app Gemini hit, and this game is much the same as the first: an FPS focused on big, heavy weapons and lots of dakka, bringing back supersoldier Hotch and his companion Elle to do battle with the forces of evil. This game sees invaders from the sky in the form of giant space crustaceans that seem to operate off of a hive intelligence, with Hotch tasked with fending off the invasion and making his way to a glowing object in space that seems to be the center of the hive intelligence. Compared with the original, Railstorm 2 is a lot crazier, with huge enemies the norm (though the space crustaceans also spit out human-sized enemies that lumber on two legs and wield weaponry). The plot is a bit silly, though Hotch is still his normal, soft spoken self. There's another ally character, Winona, who is a general of the human armies and who doesn't like the way Hotch operates, the two frequently clash throughout the game, though she eventually does come around once she realizes he's getting results. The game is an exhibition for the Gemini's graphical capabilities, with smooth animation, polish everywhere, and lots of destructible objects and flying crab parts. It's not as well received as the first game, but it's still really fun and is one of the most critically and commercially successful handheld games of the year.
Multiplatform-
Batman: The Tender Toxin
The follow-up to 2013's Batman: Dark Legend, Batman: The Tender Toxin centers around Poison Ivy, and her plot to kill several prominent businessmen in Gotham to crash the stock market and destroy funding for a project that would cause immense destruction in the world's rainforests. At the same time, Poison Ivy is also looking to find a way to help Harley Quinn escape from jail. Batman, separated from Nightwing and Batgirl (who are on their own after Dark Legend, and who star in their own DLC coming out later in the year), must protect these businessmen from Ivy's plot, though as he investigates the murder attempts, he stumbles upon shady dealings in the city. This is more of a detective-centered game than an action title, though it certainly has plenty of action and fighting, with a more nuanced combat system than Dark Legend, relying on more counters and deliberate strikes. Ivy is usually just beyond Batman's reach, and she's very nearly a dual protagonist in the game, as we get to hear and see her plotting alongside Batman's search. We also get some snippets of Harley Quinn, who is still recovering in jail from her time with the Joker. The game features the voice work of Kevin Conroy as Batman, and in a pair of debuts, Julie Ann Emery as Poison Ivy and Sarah Stiles as Harley Quinn, the first time someone other than Tara Strong or Lyssa Fielding has voiced the character since Arleen Sorkin stepped down from the role in the 2000s. Both Emery and Stiles are highly praised for their performances, while Kevin Conroy does an outstanding job as he usually does. The game itself gets strong reviews for the storyline, though the gameplay is seen as a bit boring, and the game becomes one of the best selling titles of April 2016 (when Virtua/Reality/Nexus sales are combined, only Animal Crossing: Welcome To Suburbia and Strikeback sell more).
INSIDE
OTL's puzzle platformer comes to consoles, handhelds, and mobile, and is pretty much the same game as it was IOTL, receiving similar praise and similar sales, while becoming acclaimed as one of the year's best titles. There are a few plot changes, obviously some of the level hazards are different, but the overall plot and the gameplay itself are the same. The Reality and Virtua versions add some interesting VR effects, while the Virtua allows for full motion controls and also for force feedback once those accessories are released, making it probably the best version of the game.
Tale Korinthia
The latest entry in Game Arts' acclaimed Tale series of action RPGs follows eight heroes and heroines with elemental powers based around a specific color. The primary protagonist, Arch, is a knight with the power of light energy, symbolized by white, while other members of his team have various powers based on plants (green), ice (blue), water (violet), earth (orange), metal (silver), fire (red), and electricity (yellow) respectively. The villain is a sorceress named Queen Maricela, who opens an object called the Black Book that grants her incredible dark magic, which she immediately uses to launch a campaign of conquest across the world. While the plot is fairly straightforward (there's no real villain twist, Maricela is the villain for the entire game, save for the end when the Black Book itself becomes the villain), the game's plot is mainly character based, with each of the heroes and Maricela herself enduring their own struggles to control their powers. Maricela does redeem herself in the end by sacrificing herself to weaken the Black Book so the heroes can destroy it, and the world is saved, though the eight heroes end up relinquishing their elemental powers at the end to restore balance and peace to the world. Tale Korinthia, with its huge world, epic quest, and detailed characters, is considered the best game in the series in quite some time, and is considered one of the best RPGs of the year. It's released for the Reality and the Virtua, skipping the Nexus, though it achieves strong sales on both consoles it does release on. The series has fallen a long way from Phantasia in terms of mainstream popularity, but still consistently pumps out popular RPGs that players generally enjoy.
Viricle: The Subversive
The sequel to the moderately successful 2013 spy action title, Viricle: The Subversive centers around the protagonist's efforts to infiltrate an organization of assassins, while maintaining a network of contacts on the outside. Missions generally involve sabotaging an assassination in some way, though rarely, the player is forced to carry the assassination out to maintain their cover. Though the protagonist is a new character (once again customized by the player), many characters from the original game, including double agent Alice Summers, show up at various points, with Alice being a late game assassination target who ends up saving the protagonist after an attempt to protect her goes awry. The final series of missions has the player infiltrating a large prison to rescue Alice after she's captured attempting to take the villainous organization down, and the player will need to use all the skills they've picked up to complete their final mission. Viricle: The Subversive is a bit of a disappointment, both from a gameplay and a plot perspective, not quite as innovative or exciting as the original, and resorting to hackneyed tropes a lot more often than the original game. As a result, sales are fairly disappointing, and the series ends up being canned after this title.
A World Away
A horror/shooter title and a sequel to 2015's game, A World Away had one of the quicker production turnarounds for a modern shooter, with production rushed after the first game's success. Despite this, the game manages to be a fully realized and polished game, largely thanks to its smaller scope than the original, taking place mostly in two locations: a government facility and a parallel horror world directly linked to one another. Protagonist Rick Carver returns, after enduring months of interrogation in a government facility as agents try to discover the horrors he saw in Caster City. The only reason he's being kept alive is so scientists can figure out how he was able to survive the horrors of the city, but as he's taken from his cell to be experimented on, an explosion rocks the facility, and Carver ends up in a hallway, surrounded by terrifying mutated creatures, while heavily armed military soldiers attempt to hunt him down. As Carver kills the things trying to kill him, he learns more and more about the experiments that have been conducted over the past few years, both at Caster City and at this facility, and it's eventually learned that something from a parallel dimension made it to Earth and that scientists have been attempting to use its DNA to give special abilities to humans. Eventually, he's thrown into an opened portal by the game's main antagonist, the scientist leading the project, Dr. Veld, who was the one who initially began conducting experiments on the monsters that crawled out of the portal. Carver then explores a parallel facility in this strange horrorworld, and learns that this is the world of the dead, and that the dead have opened up a portal of their own in an attempt to resurrect themselves with the flesh of the living. Carver must explore this facility until he finds the device to shut off the portal, but Veld has pursued him, and injected himself with the flesh of the dead to make himself immortal. Carver eventually defeats Veld and uses him to destroy the portal, sealing him up in the device and escaping just as the portal closes. Carver has been successful in saving the world, and he stumbles out of the government facility, but doesn't know that one living being injected with dead cells still roams the world, and has begun experimenting on others to spread its contagion. A World Away, despite its quick turnover and fairly short length, is about as highly praised as the original game thanks to its intense horrors and solid shooting mechanics. Sales are quite good as well, considering the success of the original game, and a third title enters production for release in 2018 or 2019.
Bully 3
An open world school-based sandbox title, Bully 3 got a slightly lower budget than the last two games, as much of Rockstar's development resources at the time are focused on Grand Theft Auto Online and Doggerland, and indeed, Rockstar actually brought in another studio to assist with development on this game. Despite that, it still manages to be a content-rich game featuring all of the fun gameplay and classic humor that the series is known for. Unlike Bully 2, this game's protagonist is always male. He's a “nerdy” student named Josh who arrives at a technical school for highly intelligent people, but even at a school full of nerds, there's still a social pecking order, which Josh learns fairly quickly. There are some interesting science-based minigames, and more “weapons” than ever before (nothing lethal, just potato guns and the like), while the player ends up tasked with solving a cheating conspiracy that goes all the way to the school's administration. Unlike the last two games, the main villain isn't a student, but instead, is a psychotic professor who frames students he doesn't like for cheating, while extorting those students he helps into helping him down the road. While Bully 3 isn't as highly reviewed as the last two games, and features an overabundance of geek humor and memes, it's a solid sandbox title and scores excellent sales.
Ex-Military
An FPS about former soldiers down on their luck who go on a crime spree, this title is somewhat of a dark take on a Call Of Duty-type game, and one of the more controversial titles of the year. You play as Hud Ellis, a former Silver Star recipient who suffers from PTSD, who gets in with a criminal gang also consisting of ex-soldiers suffering from various traumas or financial hardships or both. The gang decides to commit a bank robbery, but things go horribly wrong, and as a result, the four end up taking hostages and going on a county wide crime spree that includes murder and shootouts (though much of the shooting in this game actually takes place in flashbacks to their time in the war). It's a dark, intense game, with protagonists that can best be described as a “slightly more sympathetic Kane and Lynch”, and a story that addresses trauma in a darkly realistic way while also not excusing the protagonists' actions. With its uniquely dark story coupled with some of the best shooting mechanics of the year, Ex-Military splits critics, with some calling it brilliant and others giving it surprisingly low scores for how high quality it is. It ends up being a high profile sales disappointment, though with price drops it ends up doing better than its initial launch window would indicate.
Pankration
A 3-D fighting game based on the ancient Greek wrestling sport (with a combat system best compared to the OTL UFC games with a lot more brutality). Has a bit of an RPG element of needing to work up the ranks and train. It's as brutal as the real thing and has a surprisingly heartfelt storyline, focused on a low-class family man who goes into the sport after the tragic death of his wife and young child. He starts out with a death wish, but as he rises through the ranks and gains more fans, he finds a new purpose on life, but also draws the attention of powerful enemies. The game becomes a critical success, though the sales don't quite reflect that.
Quixsters: The Grabblegrass
The bite-sized action franchise returns with a huge cast of dozens of heroic kids working together to stop an evil plant menace from taking over the universe! Challenges mostly revolve around yanking or cutting down vines that are ensnaring innocent bystanders and trying to ensnare you, and the game features some hilarious animation of the little brats being flung around the screen, yelling and making loud smacks against the walls or the screen itself, a lot like the animations in Super Smash Bros. Of course, being as competitive as they are, the kids are also attacking each other, racing to stop the plants first and get all the glory. It's as wild and crazy as it sounds, and the game gets fairly high marks, though not quite as high as Enter The Maze. Sales aren't quite as good either, though the game is a big hit on the Nexus, and also does well on the handhelds, where the bite-sized levels and challenges can be played in quick bursts.
The Tavern District
An old school crime-based sandbox game, with some similarities to OTL's Mafia III. Features a somewhat politics heavy storyline, with race and economics playing majorly into it. The game is a bit polarizing, with great reviews from some critics and disappointing ones from others, and ends up being a bit of a sales disappointment (in that way, it draws a lot of comparisons to Ex-Military, another high profile but highly polarizing game, though The Tavern District isn't quite as controversial).
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Top Selling New Console Games In North America (in terms of sales over the first four weeks of release):
April 2016-
1. Strikeback (Apple Virtua)
2. Animal Crossing: Welcome To Suburbia (Nintendo Reality)
3. Quantum Break (Nintendo Reality)
4. Batman: The Tender Toxin (Nintendo Reality)
5. Batman: The Tender Toxin (Apple Virtua)
May 2016-
1. Battle Buddies (Nintendo Reality)
2. Impact Radius (Apple Virtua)
3. A World Away (Apple Virtua)
4. A World Away (Nintendo Reality)
5. Brothers (Nintendo Reality)
June 2016-
1. Tales Of The Seven Seas: To The End Of The World (Nintendo Reality)
2. Railstorm 2 (Apple Gemini)
3. Bully 3 (Nintendo Reality)
4. Bully 3 (Apple Virtua)
5. Stardew Valley (Google Nexus)