I personally am not a germaphobe or neat freak by any means, but there are two things that generally speaking freak me out whenever I see, and I see them frequently. People eating food with unwashed hands and people lounging around in their home in “outside clothes”. My reasoning for this stems from the fact that the outside world is filthy, everything is dirty, and while people lack the ability to fully control the unclean, they should take care to not ingest vile germs or bring them into their home. I have not gotten sick in a decade and want to continue that streak, and the idea of bringing germs into the home makes me want to immediately jump into the shower when I get home after work. Sure, I change my clothes and wash my hands, but my hair may as well have been dumped into a garbage bin.
Over the years game companies have really been improving their ‘press conferences’ by shifting their focus away from investors and more generalized publications and instead making them out to be events for the core gaming audience and gaming publications. It is something that I, and many others, have come to take for granted, and it is pretty startling how uncharismatic some press conferences can be if they are presented in a less direct or well structured manner. As was the case with this week’s Pokemon Press Conference, but at least they announced four new projects.
These new projects were a sequel to the 3DS Detective Pikachu game, which I am still surprised was not up-ressed and put on the Switch to serve as a movie tie-ins, and no details were revealed other than how it will be a direct sequel and will obviously release for the Switch. Pokemon Home, which is largely new version of Pokemon Bank designed for use with smartphones and Pokemon Go. Pokemon Sleep, a game that will do… something related to the player’s sleeping patterns. Honestly, it’s a lot more fun to make fun of the silly name, Orwellian nature of something that watches you as you sleep, and extend the name by making jokes about them expanding into dietary apps with Pokemon Eat, or something.
As for the final project, the Pokemon Company, in collaboration with DeNA, is developing a gacha mobile game by the name of Pokemon Masters which, rather than focusing on rerolling for your most favorite Pokemon that they made an SSR, will use the various iconic trainers of the series, as there is more inherent appeal to rolling for waifus and husbandos than colorful monsters. Only a brief snippet was shown, so I cannot really pass judgement on the game proper, other than it being a simplified and flashy 3 versus 3 Pokemon game, but it is coming out this year, and I may check it out. Yes, I swore off mobile games after my year with Fire Emblem Heroes, but I do truly love the feedback loop of these games, and I will make sure to drop it after two weeks. Plus, it’d fill a review slot while I’m chipping away at bigger games… like Pokemon Platinum.
Oh, but I suppose that maybe that should not have been the first story of this week, as, to follow up on a story from last week, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was formally announced with the predictable cinematic trailer and buzz going on about how the game is being optimized for generating headlines while being something of a military otaku’s wet dream with realistic gun sounds and photogrammetry enhanced war torn environments to better provide players with the glorious and just fantasy of being a child soldier and the ilk. It is a game meant to appeal to the mass market and boasts a level of contemporary warfare fetishization that I honestly cannot snuff, because especially in this current climate, there is a rabid audience for this sort of thing, and the name Modern Warfare does have a large amount of value behind it, and one that I do not think was hampered by the 8 year break between entries.
The product will be begin bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on its specified launch date of October 25th, 2019, where it will be available to people who own contemporary computer entertainment apparati such as the Playstation 4, Xbox One, or a powerful home computer running the latest Windows operating system. All of which will support crossplay, which is nice, as is the lack of a season pass. Can’t wait to see what new breed of bullcrap they introduce though. Probably patented and deceptive pay-to-win mechanics.
Cleaning the pallette with a far more substantial, or at least interesting, trailer for a game coming out this Q4, after approximately 3 years of cryptic trailers and patient waiting, Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding has finally been given a more elaborate story trailer that, while still not completely understandable without the aid of excessive analysis, does show the game to be an outlandish politically charged thriller rife with pseudo-scientific supernatural nonsense, so basically what Hideo Kojima is known for. But most noteworthy than any detail in the trailer is the fact that the title will release on November 8th for PS4, with no other platforms mentioned at this time.
Moving onto PC news, yet another ratings board let the existence of an unannounced PC port slip by, and this time it was Taiwan who let it slip that Spyro Reignited Trilogy will be coming to PC, by way of Iron Galaxy, who don’t have the cleanest track record, but have put out some quality ports. This is no real surprise, and I suspect the only reason why it did not launch on the platform at launch is due to the alleged crunch that surrounded the project, and how a bad PC port begets more and harder work than just delaying it and shipping it when it is fully functional. Personally, I was always interested in this game, given my a soft spot for 3D platformers, and will likely pin this game to my lengthy list of games to play. Seriously, if video games just stopped it would take years before I developed a desire for a new release.
But that was just a warm up to Microsoft’s announcement that the Xbox Game Pass is coming to PC, which they previously talked about half a year ago, but it’s nice to have some solid confirmation. Exact details will not be provided until their E3 conference, meaning that we’re going to have a PC section at an Xbox conference (woo!), but the company has promised to maintain its commitment to the platform, and to keep releasing games on multiple storefronts, namely Steam. Personally, I likely will not partake in this service, but I am quite keen on seeing more options be available to players, so long as the options themselves are not laced with rubbish, which Xbox has been distancing themselves from in recent years.
…Yeah, that about covers it. Next week is PRE3, so expect a hearty Rundown followed by a quartet of daily Rundowns.
Header image comes from the manga Inside Mari, which I barely even remember beyond the first few chapters, because my memory is poo-poo-banana-butts.