So, I just barely have enough for a post this week, as it is the middle of January and people are still getting back into the swing of things after a holiday break. I do not have enough time to come up with a creative intro, as I’ve been trying to plow through the insanely large Assassin’s Creed IV. 27 hours in and I’m 39% done. I like myself a fine long game, but this is utterly nutterly buttery, Ubisoft. Other than that… screw it, wait for my review of that after Just Cause 2 and Marlow Briggs.
The quest for creating the most impressive set pieces and highest graphical fidelity possible is one that has more or less existed since the early nineties in video games and is something that always looks rather foolish. No matter how impressive your game is in whatever year it is released, chances are that it will look dated or be dated in terms of mechanics. So when it turns out that Capcom says that Gen8 games take 8-10 times the amount of work, I can’t help but tilt my head. Capcom is in a pretty lame financial situation, so any means of trying to max out what these machines can do seems rather foolish given how they are about two or three big misses from bankruptcy.
Yet when you are a giant, your every motion has more weight to it and a greater impact to the world around you than those beneath you, so making one mistake can take, oh I don’t know, six months of side development like it did with SimCity and obtaining its offline mode. A move that is questionable due to how most people have given up on the ill fated game. You only get one chance to shine in the real life, baby. That, and the game was apparently super hard to get working offline, as the online aspect was so integral to the experience, which was ultimately ruined because of the online. Though at least the lesson was learned, and it will only be repeated about ten more time over the next four years. Probably. Also, apparently the developer wanted to make it always online, so I guess just blame Maxis.
Testing is pretty much the most important thing to do with a game, or in the case of Valve, a device to play games. After a reveal and a larger group of testers, the Steam controller has been redesigned, a move that makes it look like a normal-ish controller, except for how there are no start and select buttons in between the two large circle thingies and button based diamonds. Though, I’m guessing the change will be amended beyond the picture shown, or maybe the buttons are on the back now, though that does seem rather odd, as this decision was made for backwards compatibility sake. A statement that I view as another way of saying they want the controller to work in a manner more expected by the masses.
Just like how I’d assume porting a SNES game onto a phone would be easy, but if Square Enix’s remake of Final Fantasy VI is any indicator, it probably is but they super duper mega space cock trooper raped the pooch. I could point to any assortment of screenshots, here’s Siliconera’s, and just from the manner in which the character sprites were upped in terms of resolution. Granted, the backgrounds do look rather nice, even some of the enemies look better when smoothed out, and the user interface for some of the menus looks to have been reworked in order to have slightly less clicking. But the player character models are among the worst I have ever seen. Yes, I’m just upset about it because I played the game recently and thought it would go from great to amazing if it got a good remake, and not one that is greatly inferior. Oh, and FFV apparently got the same horrible treatment. I’d care, but I’ve never played it.
Not that I would not want to, my bucket list of games is utterly massive, but I am willing to make a couple dozens exceptions. One title would be that Call of Cthulhu game for the Xbox Classic and PC. A game that needs its own distinction as there will be a Gen8 Call of Cthulhu. The game was a rather random announcement with the name of Frogwares attached to it, the company behind the modern Sherlock Holmes games. They also happened to make Magrunner: Dark Pulse, a first person puzzler that was also tied in with the Cthulhu mythos, clearly showing these people are the best fit for this game, or something like that.
In news that I care more about, and is among the more important of a slow week, Nintendo has basically cut back all of their sales forecasts, including their overall net income of 55 billion yen, about $527,285,000, to a loss of 25 billion yen, or about $239,675,000. With sheer quantity for systems and software being cut back as far as 68% in their revised expectations, and the company likely about to suffer from their second annual loss in history. In other words, things are looking pretty bad, but before the doom flag can be raised, it is their second annual loss ever. Nintendo could bomb at least two more systems before being in what a wise man would call deep shit. Yet, what will they do to avoid that possibility? They are supposedly working on that.
Oh, but I have one simple idea that I think would simultaneously ruin them, and make them the best. Wait it out until late 2016, maybe Q4 2017 if you want to max out the Wii U and 3DS’ capabilities. Then drop both systems at the same time and introduce The Nintendo, a $200 portable gaming machine that is backwards compatible all the way back to the DS, sharing its two screens obviously, yet lacking any form of 3D because who needs that stuff anyhow? Get the Virtual Console up and running and finally including GBA games, but see a massive price dip for all titles as F-Zero should be $3 instead of $8, you wackos. Yet, in addition to having a device with power near the Gen7 machines, include a box that will transmit the gameplay from the two screens onto a customizable display on one’s televisions. Customizable because, y’know, two screens. Do that, ship it with a voucher for some free games of all eras, make the eShop slick as hell, and get to work on pumping out about one game every other month, because they totally could. That is my Nintendo Dream, Santa. Do it or I will cum on your picture, or some shit like that.