Friday, March 18, 2016

March 14 update: 39 new games added

This latest update to the Polyglot Games site includes 39 new games released on Steam since the end of December. Some of the new titles have begun to indicate their compatibility with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and I have included that information on the site as well.

Here are some highlights from the recent update:

Note: For convenience, I am going to refer to the combination of English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian as the Big 5 languages. They are the most common localization languages for Steam games, and they come as a standard set for many games. Russian is very close to overtaking Italian in popularity, though.

LEGO® MARVEL's Avengers

Very positive ratings. With voiced localization to the Big 5 languages, plus Brazilian Portuguese, it is tied with LEGO® Batman™3: Beyond Gotham and LEGO® Jurassic World for the most (6) voiced localizations in a LEGO® video game.

Rise of the Tomb Raider™

Crystal Dynamics and SQUARE ENIX have outdone themselves (and pretty much everyone else) here, with full voicing in a total of ELEVEN languages.

That's the Big 5, plus:
Russian,
Japanese,
Polish,
Brazilian Portuguese,
Korean, and
Mandarin!

That is huge. A big round of applause for the teams involved, and I hope we see more of this in the future!

As a side note, 2013's Tomb Raider had spoken Arabic as an option. I wonder — why didn't it make the cut this time?

It's Spring Again / И Снова Весна

This is an interactive, child-oriented story about the changing of the seasons. The fanciful artwork is accompanied by soothing music and lots of cute sound effects. You can play with either English or Russian narration. It's also available on Android and iOS.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 myClub

Ηερε'σ.... Oops. Here's a single/multiplayer soccer sim that looks beautiful. The in-game commentary is spliced together very nicely, sounding just like a game on TV. And the languages — goodness! There are 9 fully voiced languages, including some rare ones like Arabic and Greek. Also, it's free to play (though with microtransactions).

Be warned though, reviews are very mixed for the game on Steam. Lots of complaints about gameplay, soundtrack, menus, and online connection.

Pesadelo - Regressão

"Nightmare - Regression". This is an indie survival horror game by Skyjaz Games; the few reviews that it has are almost all positive. Though only voiced in Brazilian Portuguese, you can play it with either Portuguese or English subtitles.

NEKOPARA Vol. 2

People really like this game. I haven't tried it yet ;)

Voicing for NEKOPARA Vol. 2 is only in Japanese, but you can get captions in Japanese, English and Mandarin. What really excites me is that you can choose two captioning languages to be shown simultaneously! You can see that in the picture above.

Mesel

The title means "Parable" in Turkish. An indie adventure/horror/exploration game by Burak Dabak. Ratings are very good. Voicing is in Turkish only — you can play with either Turkish or English subtitles (and written materials in-game also correspond to your language choice).

軒轅劍外傳穹之扉 / The Gate of Firmament

A historical romance RPG with questing, mob fights, and lots of character dialogue cutscenes. Gets good reviews. Voiced in Mandarin only, with the choice of Mandarin, English, or Japanese captions.

Tom Clancy’s The Division™

A single/multiplayer tactical shooter from Ubisoft. Voiced in an impressive eight languages -- the Big 5 plus Russian, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese. Captions included. Well received by reviewers.