5 Under Hyped Games We Want to Play
Happy Q4 gamers, October is here and we’re finally on the eve of the release of one of our most anticipated games this year, the tragically named Warhammer: The End of Times – Vermintide, yet no one seems to care. Sure the game launched on PC a year ago and its mashup of Left 4 Dead in medieval times left many reviewers scratching their heads, but Co-Optimus gave it a perfect coop score so we’ve been waiting for this day for some time.
But we have been actively tracking this game, waiting for its arrival. It’s not splashed across our PSN profile page (though it should be for all of the hours we’ve logged in L4D, Payday, and hell even the Witcher putting us right in the sweet spot for the intended audience of this game). Perhaps marketing dollars are tight. Perhaps the game will be a dud when it launches tomorrow. Perhaps after a year that brought us the disappointing No Man’s Sky or Recore or lackluster gameplay of the We Happy Few beta or even a tepid retread that was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, gamers are feeling a bit burned by hype.
It’s a shame because for all of the newscycles those games have dominated over the past months and years, there are many other games we want to see that largely don’t get covered by major gaming sites. As we countdown the hours to finally crack open Warhammer: TEoT – V (seriously, couldn’t shorten the name at all?), here now are 5 Under Hyped Games We Want to See.
YIIK
We first covered this quirky RPG when we saw it back at 2014’s PSX Show in Las Vegas. From the small two brother dev team that coincidentally brought us Two Brothers, YIIK (pronounced “Y2K”) is billed as a postmodern Japanese RPG style game set in the late 90s as a group of friends try to track down a missing woman. What we saw in person looked like a fantastic mashup of the familiar RPG tropes of Undertale, the batshit insane logic of No More Heroes, set at the birth of the hipster movement in the late 90s replete with flannel shirts and turn tables.
Possibly due to the limited dev team behind this one, it’s rarely made headlines so we were surprised when writing this to find out there’s actually a playable demo of the game here. In regards to its actual release date, well unfortunately it seems that family illness has affected the release schedule. Of course we’re excited to finally get our hands on this game, but we completely understand and sympathize with the developers who are making the right call to manage that situation for now. We hope nothing but the best for their family and will be happy to try this game when it makes sense to launch it.
Here’s hoping the keytar on the ground is a playable weapon
River City Ransom: Underground
Few games have had the lasting impact of Techno Japan’s 1989 beat-em up River City Ransom but for completely understandable reasons. At the time when NES gamers were rescuing princesses from castles or awaking princesses with golden triangles, a game where you beat up thugs and use their money to buy things like hamburgers or dragon kicks will stand out. Even better it offered an open world and the entire lengthy campaign was cooperative. Besides Double Dragon, this was as good as it got if you had a friend over.
So the fact it’s taken nearly 30 years to get a sequel is nuts. Finally after Technos Japan refused to deliver, it appears that the indie development community has picked up the slack through a Kickstarter that acquired over $200k to see this sequel get its day. There’s a great trailer out there you should check out.
Unfortunately we’re still waiting for more updates from the team — especially disconcerting perhaps to the 5k financial backers of this project. Officially they have not announced anything since July 1st stating that while the game is complete they are working on a few issues in regards to operability on Steam. The trailer has us salivating though so perhaps one day this will actually become available on Steam and we will sit back to wait for the inevitable rush to get a version to a console so we can play with our friends like we used to 30 years ago.
School’s falling apart over the years but thankfully those parallel bars haven’t been affected at all.
Cuphead
We know, we know, Cuphead already gets a lot of press so it shouldn’t be on this list, right? But when was the last time you heard about this game? We know you want to play it. Just watch some of the footage and try to pretend this isn’t immediately interesting.
There were rumors about 2016 release dates and Xbox One exclusivity deals but little has been said about this game for months now. There’s actually a fairly active Reddit community out there crawling over any information they can possibly find though we have nothing else to go on besides 2016 which is quickly running out of possible launch Tuesdays.
Psychonauts 2
This one was a pleasant surprise. After seeing the upcoming VR experience, Psychonauts in Rhombus of Ruin in some recent articles, we became curious about one of our favorite Tim Schafer creations. We’ve actually completely played through the singular entry in the franchise (so far) five times over the years and always enjoy the experience, even the tonal shift at the end that turns the adventure comedy into a freakishly hard platformer in the finale act.
Apparently Double Fine’s interest in the game extends beyond just VR tech demoes though and they crowd-funded the possibility of a sequel and quickly acquired $3.8MM in backing from the hopeful gamer community. Since splintering from LucasArts at the end of 2000 we think Tim Schafer has done a tremendous job remaining a prolific developer with a distinct voice with Double Fine for the last 16 years. There were growing pains of transitioning out of big budget developer mode with games like Brutal Legend for EA but since Double Fine has found a good place focusing on smaller titles like Broken Age, Costume Quest, and Stacking.
The fact that so many people have trusted the team to build a game with an estimated release of two years from now says a lot about anticipation for this title. We just wish we heard about it more often.
We’re more excited about this long term prospect than we are the next Zelda.
Below
We’re sadly fanboys for Capybara Games. We’ve talked about them over and over on our site from their fantastic trippy iOS adventure game, Sword and Sworcery, to their adrenaline pumping hilariously chaotic Super Time Force, we are eager to see anything this group wants to do. Hell, even their web site with cute pixel art puppies floating helplessly in space is entertaining.
It’s no surprise then that we were REAL excited about Below and even give it pass for using the clichéd terms of “roguelike” and “permadeath” that have become so commonplace among the indie developer community. We’ve seen that a lot, but somehow trust Capybara to make it interesting.
Originally anticipated this past summer to launch with the games of summer on Xbox One, Capybara held off and stated in August they’re still making updates to the game. That’s it. No more news or press about this title. It’s in the oven to bake a little longer and all we can do is rewatch these amazing trailers with Jim Guthrie’s fabulous score.
What games are you looking forward to that no one is talking about? Let us know in the comments below!
