Welcome to Respawning’s Games Club! The purpose of this is to get a bunch of us together every Monday to allow us the chance to chat shit about whatever takes our fancy in the world of video games and discuss what we’re currently playing.

This week with the release of Metal Gear Survive we talk about our favourite spin off games.

Tom

I love Pokemon Snap. I’ve loved the Pokemon franchise for the past twenty-something years
now and nearly everything that comes from TPCI is gold, and this game is no exception. I mean,
what’s not to love about a janky old N64 game that lets you take pictures of Pokemon?

The thing is, it still hold up. I played it last Christmas with my girlfriend (who had never played it)
and we had the best time! It’s a short game, which was a bonus over Christmas as we could
complete it in one day but it’s fun nonetheless. It gave kids in the 90’s a chance to see Pokemon
in a new perspective: 3D models interacting with the environment and each other, as opposed
to the 2D sprites that required us to use our imagination. It was magical.

One of the best parts about it were the little secrets. Everyone that has played in the past
remembers knocking that poor Charmeleon into the lava and watching it emerge as a
Charizard, or sending that Magikarp flying across the map to a waterfall, making it evolve into a
Gyarados. Or those eggs that you could get to hatch into Legendary Birds Articuno, Zapdos and
Moltres that The Pokemon Company International instantly retconned when Gold, Silver and
Crystal came out.

What we need now is a remake. Not another port to the Switch like they did with the Wii and the
Wii U but a full blown remake. The original featured only 62 of the original 150 ‘mons, but now
there are 807 of them and I wanna see them all! The Wii U tablet was perfect for a Pokemon
Snap remake but the Switch is easily just as perfect. Imagine upscaled, HD graphics in the
world of Pokemon like we’ve never seen before, with all of the Pokemon across multiple stages,
using the Switch’s Motion Controls to take pictures of Pokemon a la Dream Radar. Sounds good
right? I just wanna pelt Pokemon with apples and make them dance with my magic flute again.
Come on Game Freak. Make it happen.

Javier

I really really enjoyed Metal Gear Rising, as I know a lot of people did. At the time I wasn’t sure what to expect and it actually took me a while to pick it up but when I did I blasted through it. I thought that the really different take on the metal gear series was refreshing, and they nailed the combat in this game. I didn’t overly care for the story but enjoyed it for the action game it was.

The other spin off games that really come to mind are nintendo ones (even though I currently don’t own anything nintendo). I used to love super smash bros, arguably the best gamecube game. As well as this cracker EVERY mario game is technically a spin off as he started in Donkey Kong, and god do I love that little italian plumber. Then there’s the spin off of a spin off – Wario. I don’t remember playing a bad wario game ever, you especially need to check out WarioWare: Smooth Moves on the Wii, insanely brilliant game. I will get round to playing some of the newer titles soon….

Salman

Image result for metal gear rising revengeance

Man sometimes spin-off games are just so fucking good. I believe in a previous club I stated that I like most of the Final Fantasy spin-off games than I do the mainline series. Stuff like Dissidia on the PSP and Theatrerythm on the 3DS. And I guess another spin-off that I adore is Persona. Yea, crazy to think that Persona is just an SMT spin-off but hey it counts! I gotta say my all time favorite spin-off game has to be Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Hell it’s even a spin-off of my all time favorite series. And man is that game amazing. Everything from the combat, the music, the comedy, the fan-service and the gosh darn boss fights. It kinda “respects” it’s source material in some way but it doesn’t out right cup its balls and lick its shaft. It knows what to make fun of and when to. If you haven’t played it yet go do so.

Joe

Regarding spin-off games, there are a good few that I’ve been a complete fan of over the years; games like Jak X, Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex and the obvious Warriors spin-offs from popular titles like The Legend of Zelda or Fire Emblem always sit rather well with me… However one spin-off that I’m especially a fan of has to be the line of Super Mario RPGs, starting with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga; these surprisingly challenging RPG’s fuelled my childhood, and introduced many new aspects to the dynamic duo – Following the adventures of Mario & Luigi throughout the Beanbean Kingdom, to facing the alien Shroom invaders, to even exploring inside of the titular antagonist Bowser himself, these RPG’s tread new ground and formed some of the most unique RPG experiences on the Gameboy Advance and DS.