When I caught up with developers Image & Form at PAX East last month, I could tell they were excited to show me what they’d been working on. No, it wasn’t a brand new game, and no, it wasn’t DLC or a major update. Instead the team wanted to show me the HD port of their latest game, last year’s delicious SteamWorld Heist.
Let me rephrase that. “Port” is incorrect. This version, in HD and on the PlayStation 4, is what Heist was meant to be all along.
I’m not saying that the 3DS version is bad or subpar by any means; in fact, it’s one of my favorite games of this handheld generation and I still go back to it often. But seeing the game on a big screen in HiDef? Maaaaan that’s some good stuff right there.
What looked good on the 3DS’ little screen looks terrific on a 42-incher and higher. Details seem to appear where there weren’t any before, as the better visuals make everything much more clear. The plant in our home base has a name tag, for Pete’s sake! The characters still retain their cartoony design, but now thanks to the increased pixels they have improved shading and a sense of 3-dimensionality to them. Backgrounds have defined layers, neon glows in gradients, and robotic fingers now have segments. These may not seem like important aspects, but they add such a pretty shine to the game that it’s worth it move into a room and stare.
And that’s just what I found myself doing during my time with the PAX demo. The gameplay is identical to the 3DS version; there are no changes outside of which controller is being used.
This is one of those cases where being a fan of a game pays off when trying an updated version. Owners of the 3DS experience may want to get into the HD version simply to explore the details. “We’re still finding things,” Image & Form’s Julius Goldberg told me at the show. “There are things in here that we knew were there, but now it’s like seeing them all over again for the first time, with so much more meaning behind them.” Existing fans of the game may want to move over to HD versions for that reason alone, and new players will likely get a kick out of the visuals and excellent gameplay.
SteamWorld Heist launches May 31 for the PS4 and Vita, with other versions on their way later this year.
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