On the Nacon stand, Kyotenshi and I tested three games which rather took us aback. So I'm going to introduce you to Clash: Artifacts of Chaos, War Hospital and Ad infinitum.
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos
Developed by the ACE Team and scheduled for February 9, 2023, the title is a rather special fighting game that borrows several codes from Souls type games or other action games. Taking place 10 years after Zeno Clash 3, we control a martial arts specialist who takes Boy under his wing, who arouses the lust of extremely ill-intentioned people.
The game offers us a combat system via combos and styles that brings a fairly fresh depth to combat, in addition to a Ritual system to handicap his opponent in case of victory (or ourselves in case of defeat) strongly well thought. We practice a game of dice whose result can be modified via seals. The fight itself can be done in third person or in a duel with an FPS view with rapid blows offering a powerful execution.
Everything is coated in a very beautiful hand-painted style which promises us a great trip for decor lovers. No loading planned in a connected world with only passages crossed out depending on the story, served by a really cool soundscape. Quite intriguing by its slightly strange nature, it could be a good surprise for many players, but I'm waiting for a final version and pure boss fights to really decide.
War Hospital
This game developed by Brave Lamb Studio SA puts us in control of a British field hospital chief during the First World War. In a decor executed with great care, where each zoom will allow us to admire the many details for more authenticity. Speaking of authenticity, this game has been recommended by The Imperial War Museum, for accuracy and precision throughout your campaign.
You will have to receive casualties from the front while managing the random events that will occur. The game also gives us very complex mechanics: medical histories between patients and specialists who will establish relationships with you, the research of technology which will help you save patients or even a kind of talent tree which will be very useful. for the sequel.
But more than that, you can follow your soldiers throughout the war via the medical history of the care you give them, which will allow you to make sometimes drastic choices. You will have to choose, too often, if a soldier will have access to care or not, or choices during complications during an operation, and the alternatives available to you. It will be very hard to choose, while paying attention to the morale bar which should never fall to zero under penalty of losing the game, one of the two possibilities of defeat, the second being the insufficiency of the soldiers at the front. You will only win when the war ends.
Healing, medical resources, random events that will have serious consequences on your story, the weather that can spread more disease during heavy rain sessions, or even the management of disabled people who will have to be evacuated by train, everything this will require very long-term work.
It is therefore a fairly complete game, planned for 2023, which offers a rich experience with many choices and constraints. It should appeal to fans of structure management, because it is close enough to this genre, or to fans of history. However, even if it has many qualities and is within everyone's reach, it will surely remain reserved for fans of a very specific genre.
To infinity
Planned for 2023, To infinity (developed by the Hekate studio) is a first-person horror game that takes place in a rather dark period of our history: the First World War. We embody a German soldier who makes his way through the trenches and tries to understand the experiments carried out by a mad scientist. You will have to avoid deadly traps, solve puzzles in the dark and avoid the horrible monsters that roam as soon as night sets in. The era makes it possible to forget the super-powerful flashlight! Here, we have a coil lamp, which we must charge to benefit from a light that lasts a few seconds at most... enough time to "flash" the horrors that lurk and allow us to escape. I'm not proud of it, but the atmosphere posed in the game is oppressive, and I shouted a little too high-pitched during the demo. Polite, the developers thankfully didn't laugh at me (at least not to my face). I'll tell you the same as them: the game seems to tick all the psychological horror game boxes and will work with fans of the genre. For my part, I ignore it, otherwise it is cardiac arrest that awaits me.
Conclusion
These three games offered by the publisher Nacon offer us diametrically opposed styles with gameplays that are just as much. Depending on their roles, they should appeal to a large number of players respectively, but are above all aimed at a rather mature audience who likes challenges.
