Okay, GDC week, and it was pretty full of goodies, but I want to first highlight a Kickstarter that I cannot believe exists, and it is for an anime series by the name of Devil’s Legacy, and it looks like a complete and utter scam if you mixed it with a genuine and promising series. The amounts of ADHD that is poured into this mess of ideas and art that generally doesn’t look good, but was made by 20+ year veterans of the anime industry is staggering, but with a 149,000 Euro goal, I doubt that anybody would get the… what is it? A 8-10 minute short? Which are you promoting with some artwork that looks like it was done in 8-10 minutes, though I suppose that if you have “100 main characters” you should expect the quality to be spread thin.
Remember when Duke Nukem Forever looked like it would reinvigorate the franchise instead of kill it all over again, and ended up reminding people that some things deserve to stay in the trash bin? Well, there was going to be another Duke Nukem game, a twin-stick action RPG, but after some complications, the title developed by 3D Realms, or what they ended up becoming after being five guys for a couple of years. It was announced about a year ago, but now Bombshell is being shown beyond a teaser trailer, and I still am pretty indifferent towards it. The dialog, art direction, and what I can grasp from the gameplay seem competent, but the best part about this reveal is how the main character looks better, if only by a small amount. Speaking of old 90s franchises, the company who has been holding onto the Corpse and face of Interplay for the past few years has announced that Clayfighter is coming back in 2016… for some reason. …Okay, I guess.
Yeah, it seems like a long way away based on my warped perception of time, which makes me think that it has been five years since Metal Gear Solid V was first teased. Well, the wait is finally ending come September 1st, 2015 or September 15th, 2015 for PC users. Releasing with collector’s editions and such, and I have to admit that I will likely pick it up on day one, just because I really want to avoid much in the way of spoilage. I probably should play Peace Walker beforehand, but I frankly do not care to dig out my Xbox 360, which shall remain in a box until I decide to sell it when I go through my inevitable third-life crisis. 
I do try to keep the number of games I buy at launch limited, despite how I have gone against that mentality quite a bit over the past few weeks, but when it is a title like D4 (probably) coming over to PC, I pretty much need to support it day one. I was concerned that this may never happen, but seeing as how it is, I hope, I really do hope that A, the port is good, and B, the game sells at least 100k copies or however many are needed for a season two to be greenlit, because publisher backing. You know what doesn’t need publisher backing to be released? Firewatch, a title that some people are a bit confused by, as it is a time, exploration, and dialog driven adventure game about being a park ranger, which may have some mystical elements thrown in here and there, but unless it does the slight unnatural or completely bonkers routes, I will be greatly upset. And I have little reason to feel discomfort with the title’s quality beyond that, as the writing is sharp and natural, helped by how the lead writer of the first season of Telltale’s Walking Dead, Sean Vanaman, is the writer of this title. I suppose it could drag on for a bit too long, but given how much of a factor budget can be in games like this, I’m sure it’d be a short and sweet treat whenever it comes out… I’d guess August 2016.
Oh, but I am getting ahead of myself, as 2015 is still a youngster, and will have little bits of goodness such as Rock Band 4. which could very easily be a failure as far as I am concerned, but hopefully it serves as something closer to a platform than a single title. A stand alone $20 prequel to Wolfenstein: The New Order, which I still see an ad for every time I take the train home, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood. Also a crossover between Shovel Knight and the freaking Battletoads, because somebody is clearly bringing back the Battletoads, and MS probably wants the best version of Shovel Knight. It’s a nice gesture despite being a clear promotion for another title, but I would take a thousand of those over shutting down a studio who you ultimately controlled and directed for several years, like EA did, during the week of GDC, to Maxis Emeryville, marking the, what, tenth studio they closed down in five years?
On the subject of five years, I feel as if the Steam Machines and Steam controllers have been known for that long. Well, Valve did due on their promise and talked about a bunch of stuff. Steam Machines are coming in November, with SteamOS being worked on in regards to getting developer support, but if you do happen to have a Windows PC with a far more diverse library, then you can just use Steam Link to stream your PC titles to your TV, and enjoy a variety of games with the finally finalized Steam Controller, which looks to have been optimized for more games than originally intended. Oh, and they are also working on Source 2, which we knew about for a while, and if I had to guess based on a rumor of Portal 3, and the already unofficially confirmed Left 4 Dead 3, they are probably going to blow their trinity load all at once with the one title they left on a cliffhanger for nearly a decade now. 
Oh, but I suppose that even the little kids should get a spotlight when it comes to trying to make a console, as Nvidia is going from handheld to console with their revamped Nvidia Shield, which sounds like it could be decent, but largely unnecessary in a world of better options. Just get a console or PC, none of this $200 microconsole malarkey is that big of a deal. If you worry about games being expensive wait for sales, and don’t give into the hype around certain games unless you do have much disposable income… like I do for some miraculous reason.
I would rather spend my dollars on proper games, but it’s actually getting a bit absurd with how many neat looking games are on my radar. I have assembled and kept track of a spreadsheet for several years now as I have about fifty I am anticipating, and a hundred in total that I wish to purchase, and that’s just PC games. Yet the bar has been lowered as both Unity 5 and Unreal 4 are basically free until you ship a game and have revenue coming in, in which case they are super reasonable in their expenses. Oh, but even the $100,000 of revenue fee might take months to happen for quite a few small titles, as Steam is cluttered with new releases every day, and most people just skip past something that does not immediately look cool to them. Even your store page art needs to be good or else you will be forgotten and amass a lifetime total of 1,200 sales.
If you multiply that number by 10,000 you get what the Vita will have likely sold by year’s end, 12 million worldwide, which is rather sad for a system that is not bad and has exclusives like Danganronpa, which apparently sold 100k+ in the US alone, something I find to be quite the achievement, but the game is good enough to deserve over a million. If I had my way I would bring it over to PC, as even ports several years late to the party like Trails in the Sky and Record of Agarest Wars… No, really, these numbers seem legit. I mean, I was unfamiliar with a third of the top ten titles, so I feel bad about then, but it’s nice to look and see that such small games can be successful. 
It’s enough of a justification for all of those people proposing major fan remakes or tribute games to just do something original, like these people who wanted to make an open world FF7, although it is more akin to an expanded title with more mechanics and systems such as time, multiple parties, unique character abilities, and new events. It’s impressive that this was done on a PS1 title’s engine, but beyond that the project has been shelved, and honestly does not look very fun. Though, I did not enjoy FF7 and even hearing certain tracks from the soundtrack irritates me greatly.