New Releases for The Week of Heavy Things Made Light

Atelier Totori: The Adventure of Arland

In Atelier Totori: The Adventure of Arland, the player is tasked with locating the protagonist’s missing mother, through a series of challenging quests. The gameplay consists mostly of exploration of the game-world with occasional RPG-style battles. A major mechanic is also an alchemical system, by which the player gathers ingredients and crafts items for use in battle. The primary goal is to adventure enough to improve the character’s adventuring license, in order to gain access to more adventuring locations to explore, eventually getting access to the location where the character’s mother disappeared.

The Binding of Isaac

The Binding of Isaac is a disturbing RPG/adventure game featuring an adaptation of the ancient biblical tale. The player takes on the role of the baby Isaac, whose mother has been instructed by God to sacrifice her children. In the basement of their home, Isaac discovers the twisted, evil forms of his older siblings, and must defeat them to escape. The game looks a lot like an old Legend of Zelda game, with its room-by-room dungeon style. The adventure map is randomized so that Isaac’s adventure is always a bit different. With over a hundred different items to give Isaac various powers and attack abilities, fifty or so different enemy types, and multiple endings, there is likely a lot of replayability here for one who is not totally offended by the premise.

Rochard

Evidence of alien life has been discovered in Rochard. This puzzle platformer has a cartoony style and some fun puzzle elements mostly dealing with gravity manipulation. John Rochard must locate and rescue his asteroid mining crew who have mysteriously disappeared after the discovery of some alien artifacts deep in a mining asteroid. Add a space pirate attack, and you have the makings of a sci-fi story filed with tropes and cliches. It features the use of the Unity engine, and boasts a “groovy” soundtrack of southern/rock/blues electronic music, whatever that is.

X-Men: Destiny

The Icrontic spotlight this week illuminates the mutations of X-Men: Destiny. In this Marvel Comics game, the player controls a totally new X-Men character, who starts out at a Mutant rally in San Francisco, and travels a fine path during which he/she must decide between the X-men or the Brotherhood of Mutants. This role-playing game is an exploration of the character’s powers, their loyalties, and ultimately their destiny. Expect to have to make a bunch of morally ambiguous decisions, which will shape the story slightly with each change to the world and your character’s destiny. These decisions will also help shape the way the characters’ mutant powers develop, and lead the character to one of many possible endings. This is mostly interesting because of the inclusion of new characters and powers which we haven’t seen in the canon before now. This allows the story to be truly new and fluid, something we’ve never seen in a Marvel game before now. If you like superhero adventure games, but are a little tired of the same linear heroes and plots over and over, this would be a good one to give a shot.

Following is a full list of this week’s announced North American releases:

Windows

• A Game of Thrones: Genesis
• Air Conflicts: Secret Wars
• Dance! It’s Your Stage
• Dragon Nest
• Driver: San Francisco
• FIFA Soccer 12
• GundeadliGne
• Hitogata Happa
• The Binding of Isaac

Wii

• Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2012
• Dance! It’s Your Stage
• escapeVektor: Chapter 1
• FIFA Soccer 12
• Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles
• X-Men: Destiny
• Brawl Brothers – VC
• Super Adventure Island – VC
• Super E.D.F.: Earth Defense Force – VC
• The Ignition Factor – VC

DS

• ATV X-Treme World Challenge
• Challenge Me: Word Puzzles
• Solatorobo: Red the Hunter
• X-Men: Destiny
• ZhuZhu Pets: Quest for Zhu

3DS

• Brunswick Pro Bowling
• FIFA Soccer 12
• Summoner War
• Tetris Axis

Xbox 360

• Air Conflicts: Secret Wars
• Astralia – A Real-time Strategy Shooter Experiment
• Blur
• Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2012
• Crysis 2
• Fallout: New Vegas – Courier’s Stash
• Fallout: New Vegas – Gun Runner’s Arsenal
• FIFA Soccer 12
• Mercury Hg
• MLB Bobblehead Baseball Battle
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2012
• Resident Evil Code: Veronica X HD
• X-Men: Destiny

PS3

• Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland
• Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2012
• Castlevania: Harmony of Despair
• Child of Eden
• Dance! It’s Your Stage
• FIFA Soccer 12
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2012
• Resident Evil Code: Veronica X HD
• Rochard
• X-Men: Destiny

PSP

• FIFA Soccer 12
• Galcon Labs