There was quite a variety of eclectic games on display at XSEED’s E3 booth this year, from light party games to, well, Senran Kagura. I didn’t get a chance to try Senran Kagura this year, but the games I did play were pretty enjoyable. And they also didn’t have me instinctively checking for my parents over my shoulders, which is a plus.
First up was Burgertime Party, a lighter multiplayer take on the arcade classic Burgertime. Former Editor-in-Chief and current Radical Dude William Saw grabbed the other controller, and as two different-colored Peter Peppers, we set out to put some anthropomorphic condiments in their place. Burgertime Party’s style is certainly reminiscent of Cuphead, as it seems to take the same inspiration from Fleischer-era animation. The style works well with the colorful and suitably cartoony world of Burgertime, so I’m by no means complaining. Otherwise, it’s pretty similar to the Burgertime gameplay you know and possibly love. You can defend yourself with a limited-use pepper shaker, but you’ll spend most of your time dodging/avoiding angry condiments and ingredients as you step on hamburger and hot dog parts to make some tasty treats. One neat deviation is in the versus multiplayer mode, where you can play as the angry foods as you try to kill your friend. It’s nothing revolutionary, but Burgertime Party looks to be a lot of simple fun.
Next up is Heroland, a visually impressive small-scale JRPG. Heroland takes place in a theme park that lets its guests partake in your standard RPG activities: dungeon-crawling, fighting, loot-collecting, and more. I only got to play a very small slice of the game, but I found its writing to be quite charming, and its visuals to be its greatest asset. It helps that Nobuhiro Imagawa, who worked on Mother 3, is behind all of the game’s art. Mother 3’s art style is my favorite 2D style, and Imagawa-san doesn’t disappoint in Heroland. My one concern with Heroland is that its gameplay seems pretty uninvolved. It may have been the demo itself, or I may have missed something, but I really didn’t have to do much outside of the occasional special command. My party fought on its own, and could even be fast-forwarded. I hope the full game lets you do more, because everything else about Heroland is incredibly appealing to me.
Finally, I got to take another stab at Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. I played this one last year, but I didn’t mind giving it another spin. Sakuna is a side-scrolling platformer with combat that is notably inspired by Devil May Cry (which we actually confirmed in our interview with the two developers behind the game, which will go live this week). You fight using farming tools and a scarf, which can be used to grapple onto foes and surfaces alike. Outside of a couple of tiny bugs (I got stuck in a wall, but popped out of it pretty quickly), Sakuna is quite a lot of fun. Racking up combos feels good, especially when you catch more than one enemy in a particularly harsh flurry. Sakuna is set to come out this Winter for the PS4, Switch, and PC, meaning those last few bugs will hopefully get squashed by launch.
