Top Story
Nintendo doesn’t want to be like Disney
Despite the considerable difference between their corporate structures, Disney and Nintendo have some basic similarities: Both are family-friendly companies who have been around for a very long time through ups and downs, and their core business revolves around a stable of highly recognizable mascots – and they’re both in the theme park business!
Nintendo is currently constructing a theme park in Japan, and they have finally gotten back into the movie business as well, starting with a brand new Super Mario movie. Does this mean Nintendo is taking cues from the House of Mouse to sustain their success and grow even more? Not quite, according to Nintendop president Shuntaro Furukawa.
When You Wish Upon a Switch
In an interview with TIME magazine, Furukawa denied that Nintendo looked to Disney as a model: “We’ve never tried to imitate any other company,” he said. “The idea of using our IP in things like theme parks or movies is simply an extension of the philosophy we’ve had all along.”
Whether or not Nintendo is trying to be more like Disney, the things they have in common seems to be both companies’ greatest strengths. The Super Nintendo World theme park will open next year in Universal Studios, Japan. If anyone knows how to get tickets for the opening, we’re all ears!
Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?
Which of these fictitious diseases do NOT appear in Theme Hospital?
- Slack Tongue
- Infectious Laughter
- Broken Heart
- Mucky Feet
The answer will be revealed at the end of this issue!
News Bits
Two Point Hospital on consoles delayed to 2020
Two Point Hospital, the spiritual successor to Theme Hospital, was released on PC in 2018 to high acclaim – but the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Switch versions have just been delayed until 2020.
“We want to make sure we deliver a game that can be enjoyed to the fullest on all platforms,” said game director Mark Webley. “This means we will need a little bit more time to optimise the game to ensure the best possible experience across all platforms.”
Daily Fact
Monolith Productions has only ever had one successful sequel
Criminally overlooked developer Monolith Productions – no, not the makers of Xenoblade, the other Monolith – are celebrating 25 years of game development this month. During its quarter-century in existence, the developer has knocked out some of the finest games ever made: Blood, F.E.A.R., Condemned and Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor to name a few – but the one thing the studio struggles to do is satisfying sequels.
While all the sequels to the games just listed were a bit disappointing, No One Lives Forever 2 was even better than the pretty fantastic original. It featured spectacular set-pieces, such as a fight against ninjas in a trailer park that gets hit by a tornado, making it a shame that it’s so difficult to play the No One Lives Forever games today, since they’ve stood the test of time remarkably well.
In any case, No One Lives Forever 2 remains Monolith’s only worthwhile sequel yet, and much like Valve they’ve never managed to produce a third game in any of their series. Oh, and yes – Aliens Vs Predator 2 is pretty amazing too, but Monolith didn’t make the first one, so the point still stands!
Game Spotlight
Postal 4 continues to deliver, for fans
(Running With Scissors – PC)
We need to get this out of the way early on… there are some games that you can recommend to absolutely anyone due to their sheer quality. Postal 4 is not one of those games, but it’s also not trying to be the perfect game for everyone. The target market for the Postal series seems as though it has been designed specifically with twelve year olds in mind, but that’s part of the charm that made the series popular in the first place. If you don’t understand what we mean, check out the trailer for Postal 4 before reading the rest of this Spotlight. When you see just how janky the developers have made the game look in the trailer, this is the aesthetic that they are going for because they know this is what their fans truly want.
Postal 4 is set years after the devastating events of Postal 2 which saw the destruction of the town named Paradise. Only two survivors remained after the carnage: Postal Dude and his Pitbull Terrier, Champ. Not long after having all of his possessions stolen following a brief gas station rest stop, Postal Dude finds a new home at the dazzling town of Edensin. At the heart of every Postal game is a sandbox waiting to be explored, and that has not changed in Postal 4. If you need something more constructive to do, players are tasked with completing a set of errands and side quests to unlock a myriad of rewards.
Running With Scissors, the developers of the Postal series, aren’t the type of people to succumb to the complaints of numerous parents who believe this game should be banned. While the developers haven’t toned down the violence in Postal 4, they have included pacifist options to avoid actually murdering anyone. There are brand new ammo types featured in the game to support peaceful confrontations, though the developers specifically state that these are less peaceful and are more on the side of non-lethal confrontations. Please don’t take this to mean that the series has turned ‘soft’, that couldn’t be further from the truth. This is the same game that allows you to pour gasolene over people while sending your army of dogs to tear those same people to shreds.
There are still plenty of features to come to Postal 4
Postal 4 has been built using Unreal Engine 4, finally bringing the Postal series into the modern age. We had no problems running the game on our PC (3900X & RTX 2080), but that is to be expected with a powerful machine. There have been reported issues of the game not performing well on systems that aren’t using a quad core CPU, so be aware of this before heading to buy a copy for yourself. Speaking of changes, Rick Hunter, the original voice actor of Postal Dude, was not available for this role so the developers brought in Jon St. John (known for his role as Duke Nukem) to take over. If you are going for over-the-top silliness, you might as well go all in by having Duke Nukem’s voice actor as the star of the show.
It’s important to remember that Postal 4 is an Early Access title, meaning there is plenty of room for the game to improve. Our time in the Arizona sandbox was met with a whole lot of walking around in search for things to do. The town of Edensin is surprisingly large, but the amount of space available certainly hasn’t been utilised correctly. This current build of Postal 4 features only a quarter of the planned final world, so that should give you an idea of how big this game will be by the time it reaches its full release.
The developers specifically built the game via the Steam Early Access route as they wanted to reward fans for showing their support on day one. Postal 4 could have easily become a Kickstarter title, but the developers wanted to show off the gameplay before coming to the community for money. Postal 4 will most likely be in an Early Access state for the foreseeable future. Running With Scissors has posted their roadmap of the features they want to implement and a rough timescale of when they’ll be added. To give you an idea of how involved the developers have been since the game launched last week, Postal 4 has already received five patches to add new features to the game in addition to bug fixing and engine optimisation.
With plenty of features still to come from the developers, there’s enough in this Early Access build to know exactly what you will be getting with Postal 4. The game is in a barebones state right now, but the developers are slowly adding pieces to each week that will see Postal 4 become the biggest Postal game yet. Right now you can purchase Postal 4 on Steam for £13.94 until October 28th. You can expect the price of the game to rise closer to the game’s launch as features are added, so if you want to buy Postal 4 for the cheapest price possible, now is the best time.
