Super Adventures in Delisted Games Part 4: Race Driver: GRID, Anthem, Poker Night

It's Super Adventures' 15th anniversary today and to celebrate I'm taking a break from Dungeons & Dragons! None of this week's games are an RPG, they don't have dark elves, or clerics, or magic missile spells. One of them had actual missiles I think, but it's not really the same.

This week on Super Adventures, it's been 19 months since Delisted Games Part 3, so it seemed like a good time to get back to whining about games being removed from online stores due to licensing issues. And not just racing games this time! (To be honest, I'm just using this as an excuse to write about some games I probably couldn't get a full length article out of.)

I've found some fun covers here. The first game has Games for Windows on the top, the second has 'DOWNLOAD ONLY' written on it and a bunch of tiny text warning you that a persistent internet connection is required, and the third didn't even get an empty box with a download code in it. As far as I know.

But things aren't as bad as they seem! GRID doesn't have the actual Game for Windows Live DRM on it, that logo only means that the game runs in Windows. Meanwhile, Anthem and Poker Night... actually things really are bad for those two. They're really really bad.

Anyway, the first game is Race Driver: GRID, sponsored by eBay.

Katana ZERO (PC)

Developer:

Askiisoft

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Release Date:

2019

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Systems:

Win, MacOS, Switch, XBOne

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Katana ZERO, a game I know next to nothing about. It might star Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel for all I know, or maybe it's 100% sugar free. I just saw it there on Game Pass and figured I'd give it a look.

Wikipedia claims that it's a 2D action platformer, which sounds good. Though it also says it's made in GameMaker Studio 2 and that doesn't seem so great... at least that's what I thought before I did the research and learned that Hotline Miami, Undertale and Deltarune were all developed in GameMaker. So I guess I should fix my broken assumptions and raise my expectations.

I definitely didn't expect this neon title screen to feature a gentle melancholy bluesy piano track. The game's described as being neo-noir and right now I can believe it. It might also have a bit of a story to it but I'll try not to spoil too much of it for you as I play through the first hour or so.
 

Superliminal (PC)

Developer:

Pillow Castle

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Release Date:

2019

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Systems:

Win, MacOS, PS4, XBOne, Switch

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing SUPERLIVINAL.

I played a demo of this ages ago and made a mental note back then that I should write about the full game sometime, because it's interesting and worthy of attention. Well, that's what I thought at the time anyway, maybe I'll hate it now. Maybe the demo was the only good bit and it's all downhill afterwards. It happens sometimes!

A few years before that demo there was a tech demo, and that had the name Museum of Simulation Technology, but I think the title they went with in the end suits it better. Plus it's got the word 'super' in there, and that's always a plus in my book.

Anyway, I have a vague memory of how the game starts, but I'm sure I'm eventually going to reach some gameplay weirdness I don't expect. I mean I hope so, as it'll be a shame if it just repeats the puzzles in the demo over and over. Oh, I should probably warn you that I'll be giving a few of the puzzle solutions away. Only a few though, I won't be going through the whole game.

YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG (PC) - Part 2 - Guest Post

Previously on the self-explanatory Y II K: A Post-Modern RPG, childhood buds Alex and Michael encountered a spooky ghost in an abandoned factory and freaked the heck out! Are you ready to see the photos they took?

You are invited to review the game's Content Warning in Part 1. Oh, and don't forget to click the screenshots to enlarge!

YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG (PC) - Part 1 - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, indie guest reviewer mecha-neko is giving under-rated indie RPG YIIK a fair chance to impress him. Uh, I don't mean it's underrated because people aren't giving it a high enough score, I mean it's gotten fewer ratings that you'd expect for a game so notorious. 186 user reviews on Steam, 35 user ratings on Metacritic; it's like people don't even want to play it for some reason!

I don't know much about the game myself, though the title claims that it's a post-modern RPG, which I guess is a bit like a post-nuclear RPG except without so many super mutants. I'm sure mecha-neko will bring us all the facts.

Developer:

Ackk Studios

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Release Date:

17th January 2019

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Systems:

Windows, PS4, Switch

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Take a seat and enjoy the strange, warbling, echoing elevator muzak. It is time for our minds to be expanded and our preconceptions to be obliterated as we begin Y II K: A Post-Modern RPG.

Other than knowing it's an RPG set in the modern day (yaaay!), I'm completely oblivious to all things YIIK. Some people can't stand it. Maybe I'll like it! There's only one way to find out:

Click the pictures to enlarge!

YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG (PC) - Guest PostPart 1 - Part 2

Disco Elysium (PC)

Developer:

ZA/UM

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Release Date:

2019

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Systems:

Windows (PS4 + Xbox One later in 2020)

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Disco Elysium, a brand new game that's the opposite of obscure. Everyone's heard about it, everyone knows about it. But I have to write about it anyway, because it was a surprise birthday gift and I'd be some kind of ungrateful monster not to. It's a bit of a roll of the dice though, seeing as I could end up writing a whole essay here on why it's bad and I hate it. Which would be awkward.

Fortunately the game's got immense critical acclaim, so it seems like a pretty safe bet. In fact I often hear it compared to The Outer Worlds, which came out shortly afterwards and deals with some of the same themes. Or, to be more accurate, I heard people saying "Outer Worlds' biggest problem was that it came out right after Disco Elysium instead of right after Fallout '76". It's apparently narratively masterful in a way that makes the writing in other video games look like video game writing by comparison, plus it's got a name that sounds like a boat in a James Bond movie.

It originally had the title No Truce with the Furies attached to it, but that was apparently only ever supposed to be the project name. Personally I think they made the right choice going with Disco Elysium, as it's got a nice sound to it, it's distinctive, and it's a lot quicker to type. Plus 'disco' is also a Latin word meaning 'I learn' and the game's all about learning things, so it's being clever.

Okay, this is a story driven detective game based around mysteries, so this article is inevitably going to be full of SPOILERS. But I'm only going to play it for exactly one in-game day, so I hopefully won't ruin too much of it for you if you haven't played it yourself. Plus I'm going to pick all the boring options to ensure there's no risk of anything interesting happing and preserve all the wondrous fuck ups for you to discover on their own.

I should also mention that the game is full of bad words, depressing themes, gruesome descriptions, and opinions about politics, just to let you know what you're in for. Not that you'll necessarily see much of it in my article.

Indivisible (PC)

Developer:

Lab Zero

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Release Date:

2019

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Systems:

PC

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Hey, guess what I'm writing about on Super Adventures this week! Okay maybe the title screen makes it a little obvious, but I didn't see it coming. Here's a life hack: get amazing friends who'll occasionally drop a brand new game on you with no warning or explanation.

The least I could do in return was write about it, and I'm all about doing the least I can do, so here's my review of Indivisible, the latest game by the makers of Skullgirls. I don't know much about Skullgirls as I only play fighting games when I feel like mashing buttons and being humiliated, but I do know it's got some fancy cartoon animation so I'm coming into Indivisible with the preconception that it's going to look fairly pretty as well. I also know it's a bit of an action RPG inspired by Valkyrie Profile, but other that that I'm fairly clueless about it.

Ion Fury (PC)

Developer:

Voidpoint

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Release Date:

2019

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Systems:

PC, Mac

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This month on Super Adventures, I've only got the one game for you, and it's been reviewed and streamed by everyone else already! In fact it was in Early Access for months, so a whole chapter of it's been around for everyone to play for ages. What I should've done is hang on for a couple of decades until the game's properly retro and write about it then, but I'm impatient.

Ion Fury is the second Duke Nukem spin-off starring Shelly Harrison after 2016's Bombshell, except not really as the character never actually turned up in any of the Duke Nukem games she was intended to appear in. This worked out for 3D Realms though as it means they got to keep her when they sold the rest of the Duke IP to Gearbox a few years back. They can't make Duke Nukem games anymore but they can make all the Bombshell sequels they want. Or a prequel in this case.

Bombshell was a top down shooter, but this is a bit more like Duke Nukem 3D. In fact it's a lot more like it, as it was made using the Build engine that powered the last of the great 2.5D games like Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior and Blood. Why did they go back to such an archaic game engine? Same reason that Baldur's Gate got an expansion made recently in the Infinity engine I guess: because the developer had already updated the engine for new systems and knew people were nostalgic for it (Voidpoint is run by the guy who made the EDuke32 source port). Plus they wanted to.

I'm immune to nostalgia though, as I never really left the 90s (or the 2000s). In fact I played a few levels of Doom II, Quake and Duke 3D while I was waiting for the final version to go live and the download to start, so all it has to do is be better than them and I'll be impressed.

Darkwing Duck (Demo) (PC)

Developer:

Headcannon

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Release Date:

2019 (or never I suppose)

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Systems:

Windows, Mac, Linux

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Darkwing Duck! Not the NES game, I played that already way back in the first year of my site. In fact it was so long ago that I'm scared to check what I wrote about it. Probably best to forget I told you about it actually. (It's not the Game Boy or Turbografx game either by the way.)

What this is, is a 1 level prototype demo thing inspired by the NES game, developed as a pitch to Capcom and then released to the world for free last month when that didn't work out. There's so many amazing AAA games in my Steam backlog, so many indie games fighting for exposure on Steam and Itch.io, and yet I'm spending my time playing a game that won't ever exist.

The demo was developed by at least one of the people who worked on the similar Sonic Mania, though it uses the Headcannon Game Engine instead of the Retro Engine. Incidentally the original Darkwing Dark on the NES was basically built on Mega Man's engine, so there's some Wikipedia trivia for you I expect my past self completely neglected to mention in his article back in 2011. In fact I bet that article is just him spending like 30 minutes failing to beat the first stage, whining a bit about it being too hard and then quitting.

Speaking of running into unexpected challenges, for classic platformers I usually display my screenshots at exactly double the resolution to keep them sharp, but the game has too wide a resolution for that so I had to decide whether I wanted to leave the screens tiny, make them a fuzzy mess, or crop them. Or make the site wider. I figured that cropping them would be the least painful of those options so I went with that, but if you click an image the original uncut screenshot will pop up.