Some people are excited about Fallout 4 coming out in a manner of days, but I am waiting until 2017 or so to play it, as I would rather enjoy a complete game with mods applied rather than a buggy game at launch. At the moment, one of my most anticipated game was just released this morning, Student Transfer. Student Transfer is a body swapping and transformation focused game that is made by the fans of Press-Switch, an unfinished title I praised in the past for being something of a dream game of mine, and I plan on reviewing come the next release. I would have already started playing it, but there are a few bugs that are being worked out at the moment, and I am only at chapter 6 in Neptunia Re;Birth3. Regardless, expect a post about Student Transfer, a game I could help create if I so wish to, but I don’t do well with group projects for the most part, and I want full ownership of everything I do.
Back to the AAA game industry bullcrap, after being formed, less than two years ago, Konami’s LA studio, the one behind the online portion of Metal Gear Solid V, had been shut down. I am not surprised, but this is still a shoddy practice regardless, and #FucKonami for doing it. Activision did the opposite of a studio closure, well, recently. They shut down nine over the past decade in case you forgot, and sold Massive Entertainment to Ubisoft. Activision also turned Radical Entertainment into a support team since Prototype 2 only sold a measly 2 million, and turned both Raven Software and Sledgehammer Games into Call of Duty machines. They also own Blizzard, but they are effectively separate companies from what I can tell. Like Sega and Atlus.
Sorry, I got distracted. Activision has bought King, the company behind Candy Crush Saga, that popular iOS title that some people like, I guess, a while after its heyday, for just shy of 6 billion. The amount is what surprises me, as I had no clue Activision had that much money saved up, and it implies that this one company is worth more than Star Wars or the entirety of Marvel… Also, Activision plans on expanding past the realm of video games by creating a film and TV studio. Starting with a Skylanders TV show and a Call of Duty cinematic universe… Okay, I guess this makes sense.
Ubisoft is doing a similar thing, and I would not be surprised if EA tries to turn their IPs into films and TV shows. But for now, they are putting out a reboot of Need For Speed, which will oddly not include any paid DLC, and will instead feature a plethora of free DLC periodically released. An unexpected move, but free things are nice, and I hope this absence of DLC does not make way for microtransactions, as microtransactions are bad. Devil’s Third was also bad and was more or less forgotten before it came out, and I am sure that the upcoming PC version of the Online component will have some awful pricing model attached to a game that already looks like a wet hot pile of street trash.
In conclusion, AAA games are not really worth looking at in these modern times, and I would rather play a game made used a freemium visual novel engine and a series of Eroge sprites ripped from ExHentai or a poorly optimized port of a JRPG about anime girls going on dumb adventures that sometimes relate to video games. Bye!