by Jessica Ham
This month only one super exciting game has been released, and because of this, I have taken to trying some older games to pass the time. One of those older games is the popular Stardew Valley, released on February 26, 2016. I downloaded it when it was released, but I never really tried it until about a month ago. I am hooked on this game and its simple brilliance. Anyway, this month has been pretty dead for video games, but there is still some exciting stuff to discuss.
On April 17, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life was released, almost two years after the release in Japan. The game continues where the last game left off, with Kazuma Kiryu in the hospital after the injuries he suffered from the previous game. He is arrested and spends time in prison as to not cause more drama for his family. The love of his life, he finds out, is in a coma and has given birth to a boy. He decides to raise the child and discover what happened to his love during the time he was in prison. Games featuring parenthood are popular this gaming season. The average rating of the game from U.S. critics has been a 4 out of 5. This game is the ending to the series, wrapping up the series quite nicely.
Sony has finally released a brand new game in the God of War series, the first since 2013. The popular series features Kratos, a demi-god turned god, who has a lot of rage issues. He has lost his family, and in this game, has a new family in his son Atreus. The first set of games focused on Greek mythology, but this one focuses on Norse mythology (Thor, Loki, and the like). The previous games were a hack and slash type with a story of sorts, but this new one promises more of a focus on story and a more complicated combat system. The game was released on April 20, 2018, and already there are people praising it. It has received nothing but positive reviews.
Nintendo Labo, the cardboard interactive extensions to Nintendo games, became available in stores starting April 20, 2018. The product has been receiving surprisingly positive reviews for bringing back childhood to long time devoted Nintendo fans. Andrew Webster from The Verge calls it, “An incredible learning tool that’s a blast to play.” The process of building is like that of Legos, but with cardboard. I am curious to see how long the excitement over this lasts.
April has been a pretty slow month for video games, but the excitement for God of War has helped keep it from coming to a full stop. Once June comes around, video game news will be non-stop, with all of the game announcements that will be coming out of the E3 conference. I can hardly wait to see what the developers are cooking up for June.
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Good column as always, Jessica. And congrats on your graduation.