This Week’s Topics:
- Rundown Preamble Ramble: During My Vacation, I Wrote a Novel’s Worth of Stuff!
- Xbox Games Showcase Rundown (Games For Your Home Computer, TV, and Telephone)
- ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X Announced (The Xbox Handheld is Finally Here!)
- Xbox Reasserts Play Anywhere As A Key Selling Point (But Do People Actually Want It?)
- Super Meat Boy 3D Announced Super Meat Boy is BACK in the Third Dimension
- Beast of Reincarnation Announced (Game Freak’s AAA Action Game is Real!)
- Clockwork Revolution Re-Revealed (And It Looks DOPE!)
- Don’t Nod Announces Aphelion (They Are Also Running Out of Money)
- No Ghosts At The Grand Is a Baffling Musical Mystery (Magical Musical Negro Jumpscare!)
- Aniimo Announced as the Latest Big Budget Critter Collector (Too Bad It’s a Damn Live Service!)
- Persona 4 Revival Announced (The Only Reason to Remake Persona 4 Is to Make It Gayer)
- The Xbox Showcase Dribs and Drabs (Stuff I Don’t FEEL Like Propping Up, or Have Much to Say About)
- Splatoon Raiders Announced (And Natalie Complains About PVP Games Being Bad)
- Nintendo Switch 2 Sells 3.5 Million in Four Days! (Nintendo Switch 2 Da Moon!)
- Bloober Team is Remaking Silent Hill (1999) (Try Not To Be Too Shocked)
- Metal Gear Δ: Snake Eater is Getting A New Online Mode! (RIP Metal Gear Online…)
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
During My Vacation, I Wrote a Novel’s Worth of Stuff!
Hee ho, dontcha know~!
It’s time for the second part of the early June Segmented Summer Showcases… But I’ve pretty much said everything I wanted to say about them last week, so I have nothing to say here. Meaning I need another preamble ramble topic. Oh, what to make it, oh what to make it. I have been just so busy the past two weeks working on things and— Ah! That’s the ticket!
As I have mentioned before, I was put on a mandatory vacation on May 31st, because my boss was going on vacation and without him chasing clients, I have very little work to do. So I was looking at this set of two weeks with aspirations and ambitions. Planning on getting a bunch of bothersome stuff done. …But I wound up not doing that, and instead spent much of these past two weeks staring at Obsidian, writing stuff. In fact, doing some addition, I wrote 12,451 for last week’s Rundown, over 14,500 words for this Rundown, the 10,080 word Tribe Nine review, two TSF Showcases with a word count exceeding 17,000 words, and a couple thousand words, probably like 3,000/4,000 words for the Press-Switch review. Meaning that I have written over 55,000 words in about two weeks.
…What? How the hell did that happen? Well, I think it is just the result of timing. The big summer showcases happened, and I had a lot to say about them, a lot of tangents I indulged myself with. While I intended on keeping the upcoming TSF Showcase brief, I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff that happened throughout it, and that warranted commentary. My Tribe Nine review is going to be among the last reviews of that game ever written, so I wanted to touch upon many elements and summarize information while retaining my signature style. Also, as I have pointed out before, my writing is simply getting longer, filled arguably unwarranted flourishes, and miscellaneous stuff that I feel should be included to make my thoughts clear.
As should be evident by the sheer amount of effort that I have poured into Natalie.TF overs the years, I adore the act of writing. I consider writing to be my primary hobby at this point, and find it to be a necessary part of preserving what can charitably be described as my mental health. I love writing rundowns, reviews, and rambles. I love writing about things that I think are great or interesting. I just love writing, period. However, the past few months have been particularly frustrating to me because of how much time I have devoted to these particular activities, rather than writing my own fiction.
It is fun to say that I wrote a novel’s worth of stuff during a two week period, and I find that feat to be impressive on at least some level. However, I really, really bloody miss writing my own stories, something I have not been able to truly pursue beyond outline work for 7.5 months at this point. 7.5 months of my focus being forced elsewhere. Whether it be a game, a lengthy showcase, work requirements exceeding 200 hours in a month, or particular Rundowns proving to be ripe dastards to prepare, exceeding 10,000 words.
Plus, there’s still the bear that is Hundred Line lying dormant, ready to pounce when I resume playing it for a (partially written) review. Because of that, I will not be able to make serious progress on a story until July at the earliest. It all… It all makes me wonder if I need to cut back more, if I need to modify my hobbies to reflect my ever shifting life, and redirect my passions to achieve a better balance. This is, admittedly, something I have always struggled with. I deeply desire to be organized, to be regimented, and to break down my life into things that can be maintained and control. However, I am always surrounded by too many moving parts, too many exceptions, for me to commit to that.
I don’t work regular hours. I don’t live in a stable world. The act of creation, of making things, will always have a level of unpredictability and variance associated with it, no matter the person. When following a news cycle, things always move in unpredictable ways, with stories cropping up from the ether at the last minute. And no matter how much I want to achieve a strict, rigid, and regular balance for every and all things… I just could not make it work. Monthly TSF Series, monthly Rambles, annual novels, weekly game reviews, weekly TSF Showcases. These ideas and more were ones that I have tried to maintain over the span of Natalie.TF. But I have never been able to get them to last for more than a few years before complications emerged, and my schedule started to slip.
Being unable to change the world around me, the only thing I can manage/balance is myself. …Yet, I am not good at that. I am not a machine or someone skilled enough to schedule their day in advance, gauge precisely how long everything will take, and stick to that schedule. Even though I dearly want to. Instead, I live a life full of distractions and uncertainties. I cannot reliably state how long it will take me to eat lunch, despite eating the same things every day. I cannot determine how much time I will spend checking my various content feeds, as I never know what news or new releases will be released. A new story, new video, or new morsel of content could reschedule my entire day. Still, I try to do something substantial whenever I can, picking away at things in a loose order of importance based on scheduled release date. It technically works, but the inefficiency frustrates me whenever I think about it.
I want to make stuff, I want to write stuff, and I am routinely frustrated by my inability to do this, to achieve everything I want. …Even when I do well, even when I write 50,000 words in two weeks, I still feel that I am doing something wrong, as there is simply too much I want to do… and never enough time.
Xbox Games Showcase Rundown
(Games For Your Home Computer, TV, and Telephone)
At this point, I consider Xbox to just be Microsoft’s game publishing arm, and the fact that they even have their own bespoke games console is a superfluous feature. They have spent the past few years undermining the importance of their bespoke hardware, and the whole ‘This is an Xbox’ marketing campaign from last year pretty much sealed their fate. Their consoles have limited sales potential, there are few good reasons to buy an Xbox, and those who do typically avoid buying games. People can buy games for an Xbox, but sales are low, as the main feature unique to the console is Game Pass. They are going so far with digital sales that I would not be surprised if retail game stores just stop stocking Xbox titles at some point. Or if they just start treating retail as a way to distribute codes in a box. …Oh, wait, they are doing that now.
The fact they even have media conferences like this for games they are not publishing, acting like this is still 2016, and they are committed to being a home console manufacturer and publisher, is just a trifle bit silly. They are a horrifically massive publisher who could easily justify their own showcase for their own games, but they are committed to acting like they are bigger than they actually are. Not that I can’t really fault them for it. They are offering publicity to a deluge of titles, while also paying the publishers with their Game Pass deals. These deals are not as good as they used to be, but it’s still a money-maker. …I think.
Also, I should mention the ongoing backlash against Microsoft for providing tools to assist in the genocide of Palestinians to protect the interests of White imperialists who are determined to have a home base in the Middle East. This, combined with the intrusive and inefficient nature of Windows 11, has been spurring a larger anti-Windows pivot to Linux that I am tentatively intrigued by. …Except for the fact that I am a tax accountant, and accountants need to use Windows. Maybe I could get Excel and ProSeries to run via Proton, but I would feel like a huge sloppy asshole if I so much as tried to break that norm.
I was at a family function during this showcase— a first regarding E3-type activities— but I made sure to watch it after I got home, while skimming through the things I did not particularly care for. Overall, it was a pretty fine showcase, with the highlights largely being things that made my brain go coo-coo as I fell down rabbit holes. In fact, I fell down so many holes that I wrote over 9,000 words on just this showcase. So lemme delve into that, as I have a lotta other crap that I have to do! Seriously, for a vacation I’ve spent most of my time writing my fingers off. And not even on my novels!
ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X Announced
(The Xbox Handheld is Finally Here!)
Since the success of the Steam Deck and establishment of the PC handheld market sector, there have been discussions saying that an Xbox handheld was an inevitability. A discussion that Microsoft eventually perked into, repeatedly mentioning their intentions to make an Xbox handheld. However, with so many things in constant flux at Xbox, I was not sure if this would be a 2025 item, or something they would not venture into until it was time for their next hardware cycle in 2027 or 2028 or 2029. Instead, they are partnering with ASUS, makers of the leading Windows gaming handheld, the ROG Ally X, to make not one but two Xbox handhelds. The ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X. …You know what Microsoft, never change. Your terrible names have ceased being frustrating and have become endearing in their ineptitude. However, I will call these the Xbox Ally Cheap and the Xbox Ally Xtreme for sanity’s sake. Because there is no such thing as a Republic of Gamers. Gamers are either fascists or communists! No middle ground! Just like in reality! Because liberalism is dead! DEAD!
Both systems have 7 inch, 120Hz, 1080p IPS screens. Have the scattering of ports necessary for them to function as computers. Have modern Wi-Fi 6E. And come with a stand that is probably necessary for some, as these are girthy, heavy handhelds. In terms of specs, the Xbox Ally Xtreme is the clearly better product. With better shoulder triggers, a USB4.0 Thunderbolt port (compatible with an external GPU), a better (and actually modern) processor, 24 GB of RAM instead of 16 GB, 1 TB of storage instead of 512 GB, an 80Wh battery over a 60Wh battery.
Or in other words, the Xbox Ally Xtreme is basically a souped up refresh of the ROG Ally X, with a better CPU, twice the RAM, better control inputs, an Xbox button, rejiggered dimensions, and a bit more heft. While the Xbox Ally Cheap is probably not even worth trifling with, even though it contains various perks over, say the Steam Deck.
In terms of software, both Xbox Ally systems run on a modified version of Windows 11, featuring changes to the core code by the Xbox team to improve gaming performance. This includes approximately 2 GB of RAM in savings by not running unnecessary processes, like Windows Desktop, and I think this is a great feature. I don’t know how or why, but I swear modern Windows 11 uses up 8 GB of my system. I admittedly am using cheaper, older 3200Hz DDR4 RAM, but even on my brand new $1,700 gaming work laptop, just having my essential software running ate up half of my 32 GB of 4800Hz DDR5 RAM.
Both systems will be designed as general gaming hubs, prioritizing “the full-screen Xbox experience” as the main launcher, but supporting and, supposedly, syncing things from other gaming launchers, namely Steam and GOG. So it is not a locked down Xbox system, it is just a PC handheld with various improvements made so it can remain competitive with SteamOS alternatives. Additionally, while these performance benefits are launching with the ROG Xbox Ally line of systems, they will be made available to other Windows gaming handhelds sometime in 2026.
The Xbox Ally Xtreme and Xbox Ally Cheap will both launch in Holiday 2025 for an undisclosed price point, likely dependent on the tariff situation. Because the US is being run by a dumbfuck who would probably flunk out of a macroeconomics course. Gosh, I hope that the fall-out with Musk is just a prelude to a deluge of conflict over the next two years. Because right now, I’m not even going to think about 2028. I just want to see the country limp over to the end of 2026 with a wave of first-time 30-something Democrat candidates. …Sorry, politics have become such an intrinsically linked part of daily life that I transition to them without thinking.
Also-also, the Xbox Ally will launch after Hollow Knight: Silksong, confirming it will be a 2025 game. So… guess we know what the GOTY 2025 will be. A good sequel to an 8/10 Metroidvania.
Akumako: “…Is that supposed to be a joke or something?”
Yes. I liked Hollow Knight (2017), but a vocal subset have acted out of line, overstating its triumphs, and acting as if it invalidates the rest of the genre. I thought it was a good game, one with flaws and frustrations, same as any other. But nuance is not sexy when you are a dopamine addict. You need to deal with the best of best and worst of worst with no middle ground to keep a body like that erotic.
Akumako: “You’re going to be full-on incomprehensible in a decade, aren’t you?”
Eh, probably.
Also-also-also, I have remained skeptical toward the viability of this burgeoning industry of PC handhelds, and per an article from The Game Business, citing estimates from analytics firm Ampere, approximately 5.3 million PC handhelds were sold by the end of 2024. That is… good, but not a lot. Even if they expect that number to reach 7.2 million by the end of 2025, and 12.9 million by the end of 2028, that is still doing Wii U numbers. That is still a niche device!
I will agree with the article in that just being a new device that people can play games on is good for third-parties, as it means certain people will be gaming more, buying more. However… gaming will not be saved until we get rid of TikTok. Somebody should find the servers and pour gasoline inside them.
Xbox Reasserts Play Anywhere As A Key Selling Point
(But Do People Actually Want It?)
This is not really an announcement, but for me, a key takeaway from this showcase was their emphasis on Xbox Play Anywhere. This a long-standing initiative launched back in 2016 when Microsoft decided to start releasing all their titles on Xbox and PC. It was arguably the service that ended Xbox as a major player in the console wars, allowing players to buy a game once and get it on both their Xbox and PC. However, with the continued evolution of their cloud service, creatively named Xbox Cloud, they have chosen to redefined Play Anywhere to triple as a streaming platform. Meaning that a Play Anywhere title can be played on your PC, ROG Xbox Ally X, Windows laptop, non-Windows laptop, smartphone, or Xbox Series X|S.
It’s a good proposition, and an incentive to buy digitally for the convenience of both downloads and streaming depending on the device. …But I am too out of touch to know if people actually want or need this. I work from home and like to do everything on my desktop computer. I cannot imagine someone wanting to play a console game on public transit, just in general. Especially when they could just do their mobile game dailies during their commute and play games after they come back home, on their handheld, laptop, or console. I admit that there is a market for this. I just have no idea how many people are willing to pay to opt into this ecosystem, while dealing with the inevitable fuss that comes with trying to get things to work.
Actually, I think this is a good opportunity for a CALL TO ACTION!
What do you, my lovely readers, think of this Play Anywhere initiative? Where and how do you like to play games, what is your ideal set up, and what would your dream gaming ecosystem and set-up be? Do you want a handheld you can take anywhere that can play everything? Do you like the idea of device hopping for games? What do you think other people, your friends, your peers, want? I am genuinely curious, as this pivot to other devices is a narrative that I have been hearing for years and years, yet I don’t think it has played out like how some companies, like Microsoft, have envisioned it.
Super Meat Boy 3D Announced
Super Meat Boy is BACK in the Third Dimension
I do not have any fondness for the era of über difficult punishment platforms like I Want to be The Guy or Super Meat Boy. As someone who was never good at video games and always had reflex issues, who was weened on games via Action Replay, I just had no patience for them. It’s why I have continued to NOPE the hell out whenever something purports to being super hard, like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy or… really, anything involving the Bullet Hell genre.
However, I have a huge amount of nostalgia for the golden age of independent gaming from 2006 to 2012. …Well, I technically have nostalgia for that entire era, as it was a time where games of all scales and sizes were being produced. AAA console ventures featured production values and budgets that rivaled major motion pictures, pushing gaming as a medium forward in ways that we are still feeling over a decade later. Smaller AA ventures that hit the WIi, DS, and PSP struck a middle ground, delivering some of the most memorable and resonant experiences of the entire generation while having enough production value to see their vision through. Retro gaming was finally being recognized as a widespread viable alternative beyond grab bag collections and saw a resurgence with re-releases, revivals, and tributes.
But what really defined this generation, to me, was how independent gaming, something usually reserved for weirdos on forums, file sharing websites, and wack-ass shit like the Net Yaroze, was finally made mainstream. Xbox Live Arcade, while originally intended as a dumping grounds for older titles and, effectively, console versions of browser games, gradually grew into an alternative platform for creators. A place to release a steady stream of delightful, cheap, and ambitious endeavors from small teams that were released on consoles and PC. Games that were a beacon of hope and optimism in an industry that was expanding, pivoting to conservative safe bets, and shrinking under the weight of HD game development. …But if that was too mainstream, Xbox’s other alternate storefront, the XNA-based ‘community games’ channel, allowed for some of the most unhinged, stupid crap to scatter across the platform, all available for the low-low price of maybe three dollars.
This did wonders to expand the world of gaming for me, with the low price of these titles, and mandatory demos, allowed me to indulge in a tour de force of games spanning nearly every genre and quality metric to find games that expanded my understanding of what a game could be. With surprise releases cropping up every few months, and the legendary Summer of Arcade events, there was no shortage of fascinating and poignant indie games to name. …And Super Meat Boy (2010) was one of them. A simple yet captivating 2D platformer with a hyper-violent cartoonish art style, hundreds of levels, and positively rage-inducing challenge, and goopy yet slick controls. It was hyped up ahead of launch, was lauded when it finally came out, and became a definitive indie game of its era. …Then one of the key developers of Team Meat, Edmund McMillen, made lightning strike twice by making his next game, The Binding of Isaac, an even bigger success that helped flavorize the roguelike genre.
The other key Team Meat developer, Tommy Refenes, spent basically the next decade trying to build upon the success of Super Meat Boy, but the project was plagued by hang-ups, restarts, and shifting direction. McMillen left, leaving Refenes to eventually restart the project as a direct sequel, dubbed Super Meat Boy Forever (2020). A game I remember being announced, but do not remember being released, and I think I know why. The game just was not very good, or widely played, with a glaringly mixed Steam rating and a yellow Metacritic number. Why? Well, I was able to figure it out just minutes after watching a long-play of both games.
Forever tried to overcomplicate what Meat Boy was. Rather than be a game with four verbs— run, jump, wall hug, and wall jump, the game added a dashing punch that completely changes how the game is designed. The original featured an iconic minimalistic look with crude yet adorable flash cutscenes to tell its minimal story. Forever is determined to maintain a 2D animated look with fully animated cutscenes that simply lack the same humor and sensibilities. The levels in the original were deliberately short bite-sized challenges meant to be breezed through, while Forever layers challenges across far large levels, resorting to checkpoints between its challenges. The original kept its scope sensible at about 300 levels, which could be cleared in a few hours, while Forever boasts 5,000+ levels, insisting you don’t need to play the same one again, completely misunderstanding why people liked the original. Because it was hard, but also deliberate.
While Forever was clearly a game with a lot of effort put into it, I think it was just in development for so long that Refenes lost sight of his goals, and where the series should go. Another attempt was made with Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine (2023), a puzzle game, but it did even worse as far as I could tell. With the past ventures failed, but the IP too valuable to move on, the decision was somehow made that the next big step was to take this 2D series… and make it 3D, with Super Meat Boy 3D! It makes sense from a certain perspective, but series developer Team Meat is only listed as the second developer, with the primary developer being Sluggerfly. A developer best known for the raunchy Satantically charged 3D platformer Hell Pie (2022).
Though distinctly its own thing, and being more exploration driven, Hell Pie was ultimately a slightly raunchy 3D platformer with a strong emphasis on core movement— running, jumping, and grapple swinging— so I can easily see why they were selected for this project. …That, and Hell Pie was published by the same publisher behind Meat Machine, Headup Games.
To finally talk about the game itself, Super Meat Boy 3D is definitely a deviation from the original, with a distinctly bright and vibrant art style that is unlike anything the series has ever had before. The core gameplay looks to be an iteration upon Forever, given the return of a dash move. The camera is widely kept fixed and far away enough to give the player all the visual information they need. A depth of field obscures details in the background, but that’s arguably a boon, allowing the player to focus on the world before them. And even though the game could be mean by manipulating the available space, the SM3D seems committed to giving the player enough wiggle room with navigation so that deaths don’t feel undeserved. …Except for the literal last shot, where the player walks into the camera, only to get sliced by a surprise buzzsaw. No, bad, no cheap kills!
This game will live and die based on its controls and level design, but considering the fresh blood filling up mister Johnny Giblets here, I think this at least has potential. Will it ever achieve the cultural relevance of the original? No way in hell. But we could always use more diverse 3D platformers. Super Meat Boy 3D will be released for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC in early 2026. …And it will also come to Switch 2 if they have any sense in their brains.
Beast of Reincarnation Announced
(Game Freak’s AAA Action Game is Real!)
So, this is something I went a full year without thinking of. Back in 2023 Game Freak made the surprise announcement that they were teaming up with the 2K Games label, Private Division, to develop a vaguely defined AAA game, dubbed Project Bloom. …Then in 2024, Private Division was shuttered. For months, it was unclear what happened to the portfolio and who was publishing the remaining slate of projects. Apparently the buyer was Haveli Investments, a private equity company, who brought on the former staff of Annapurna Interactive in order to create a game publishing label. …And the name of that label, that has not been officially announced, is apparently Fictions, Inc. Shit name, but whatever.
Seeing Project Bloom, after two years of build up, was always going to be huge news, but I never would have guessed it would appear as part of the damn Xbox showcase. Nor would I have expected it to be an expansive open world, fully modern, realistically styled action game. Dubbed Beast of Reincarnation, the title is a Japanese post-apocalyptic action game set 2,000 years in the future. Mutated beasts roam the land, spreading a blight that threatens to destroy all. Robots from a prior era of humanity roam freely and wrought destruction, their original purpose lost to history. The plant life and nature of the world has been modified through fantastical and horrific ways only understood and manipulated by some. And humanity is on the brink of extinction.
In terms of general gameplay, the title appears to be taking a hefty number of cues from Monster Hunter. Deliberate movement, battles against giant enemies with only melee weapons, and enough flourishes to make the player seem empowered. Oh, and parries are a key part of the protagonist’s skill set, because modern action game. For a developer who has never made a 3D action game before, this all looks incredibly impressive, boasting oodles of unique moves and animations for enemies, a grounded yet lushly detailed world, and a careful interjection of the fantastical. Sure, you can point out how the framerate tanked during a visually intensive section, or how murky the ground looks from an unusual angle, but I think the game looks good, irrespective of who is behind it. …And I think it is great to see something like this from Game Freak. Because only by doing something new, by going beyond Pokémon, are they able to learn the skills needed to keep pace with the growing demands of the games industry and the demands of the hardware they are on. They have been trying and trying, but with this game… I think they have reached the status of a AAA developer.
I have gone on this tangent at least four times by now, but I’m a repetitive person by nature, so I’ll do it again, bigger, badder, and in more detail!
In order to build up studio knowledge, in order to grow a team, a studios needs to continuously pursue new projects and embrace new technologies. …Something that Game Freak really did not do during the pivotal years of the 2000s. By 2003. Game Freak was stuck chasing the trend of Pokémon, and rather than staff up and become basically part of Nintendo, the folks who made the company wanted to keep things small and maintain an indie dev type atmosphere. …Which was dumb. This desire to stay small and the continued success of the Pokémon IP meant Game Freak was just the Pokémon developer, making the mainline games while other devs handled side games, and not wanting to take apart the golden goose, they kept things overly conservative. Leading them to nudge things along in a more reserved direction in terms of both design and technical development.
Pokémon Gen III had loftier ideas starting out, but became largely a refinement of what came before, while cutting back various features due to genuine technical issues, like the lack of compatibility with Game Boy Color games. Gen IV saw them try to experiment with particle effects and technically 3D environments made to look 2D, but anybody who played Diamond and Pearl recently can feel the struggles that went into making these games, period. By Gen V, they finally understood the hardware and tried making larger steps forward with a fully 3D game, but ultimately chose not to, as this was the DS. Instead, they used what they learned of more detailed 2D world design, animation, and 3D environments to deliver an impressive DS game with a good blend of 2D and 3D elements… if you do not mind sprite warbling. Yeah, emulation definitely helps with a game like this. Too bad DS emulation is a mess!
Then, finally, came Gen VI, where Game Freak had to learn how to make a fully 3D game for the first time ever, and… they made a damn grid-based game. Like, not even a game with a world designed on a grid, but movement was on a grid. What in the hell was the intention behind that? They only got a true handle of making a 3D game with Gen VII in 2016. Sun and Moon used the 3DS’s technology very well, working around its limitations, and boasting some high quality models and scenic sights. However, the hardware was not much more advanced than the GameCube, and everything was only made for a 240p screen. Admittedly, these games actually run pretty well at higher resolutions, and cane be beautiful in their own rights, but the blocky character models and some lower resolution effect work meant that they would need to do a lot of work before they were ready to move onto an HD system… When they simply were not ready. They had to develop all their technology around this new hardware, update their internal engines, implement pipelines for new, and old, animations, and learning a brand new system with radically different architecture, again. And they had to do all that in… three years or less.
The Switch era of Game Freak is one that is highly criticized. But when viewing their output broadly, I can only see it as the story of a studio trying to manage an insane output encouraged by their stakeholders— to put out five games over eight years, while also releasing two full expansion packs. While trying to organically fill up the knowledge gaps between their development team. Virtually none of the people who worked on Sun and Moon, in 2016, had ever worked on an HD video game. To get everybody up to speed, to develop the knowledge needed to make what people were shouting for— a fully HD open world game— they had to learn and develop a lot.
Let’s Go was their attempt at making an HD game that used the new hardware, while capitalizing on the surprise craze of Pokémon Go. One that re-established the series on a home console that would attract lapsed Nintendo fans and small children, while also expanding the versatility of Pokémon with Walking Pokémon and Roaming Pokémon systems.
Little Town Hero was an attempt to just make something with new mechanics, a fully 3D world, and various systems that were avoided in Let’s Go by using a fixed lighting system. Also, alleviate Pokémon fatigue by making something new.
Sword and Shield was designed as a game with so much riding on it. The first new HD Pokémon game, filled with attempts to bring the artistry of the series to the next level. A decided online game, not just relegating such features to subsystems, but encouraging co-operative play in an open area far bigger than anything Game Freak had ever built. I actually think the game is pretty competent in what it achieved, especially compared to a lot of latter Switch titles with similar technical issues, but I’ve already talked far too much about that outrage.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus was them laying the foundation for more open world design, in having Pokémon battle in a broader world, rather than instances. All while incorporating more action elements into the series, introducing a robust movement system. It showed great evolution and a clear desire to expand what they as a studio could do with Pokémon… which was undercut by the fact it was sandwiched between some less enticing releases.
Scarlet and Violet wanted to be an evolution of what they did in both SWSH and PLA, but with a fully connected world that could be played with up to four players. That progression makes sense on some level, as does the decision to aim for a more realistic aesthetic higher fidelity textures, rather than the largely flat textures of PLA. There was ambition, and they were clearly trying to push the series forward. …And based on the sales figures, I would actually say they succeeded in creating a game that appealed to a wide variety of people.
From a developmental aspect, I can tell the developers had to make compromises. Even before evidence was found of a major graphical downgrade, the game featured downgraded textures and level of detail compared to even SWSH, and the reason why can be seen in its performance. As ambition grew, technical limitations were reached, and Game Freak simply did not have the time or expertise to fix this, as they tried doing so much in-house and internally. …Or maybe a combination of the pandemic and outsource studios fiddling with things prevented them from optimizing their software.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A is clearly their next attempt at creating a game with more dynamic real-time action, and evolve upon their urban environmental design… I think, and experiment with a real-time battle system, something fans have wanted for over 20 years at this point. I think the game has presentational problems— those damn windows— but when I look at footage of it, including on Switch 2, I see them trying to do what they are trying to do with every new release. Iterate on their technology, improve it with each new release, and try to learn things by doing.
Now, you could easily argue that the Pokémon IP is so big that Game Freak should not have taken this approach, and become a concept studio that merely direct projects. You could also argue that they should have put Pokémon on hold in 2016 and bunker down on HD game development. Then they could release the first Switch Pokémon game in 2021, and co-develop it with Monolith, to achieve a Breath of the Wild Moment™ by shipping a better version of Scarlet and Violet in that time. But for all the frustration these games have caused me, I cannot say that they were doing things the wrong way. Because I genuinely do not believe that studios with a similar level of resources and time could achieve dramatically better technical results. It took Nintendo EPD, one of the best developers on the planet, five years and external support studios to make Breath of the Wild. And it took them another five years to make a sequel to it.
Looking at it retroactively, this has been a decade-long process for Game Freak to become a true AAA game developer. A status they are cementing with Beast of Reincarnation. A title whose numerous lessons and technical improvements will inevitably carry over into the 30th anniversary, Generation X Pokémon game, I hope this decade of catch-up might finally be at an end. That Game Freak might be able to make a Pokémon game that meets people’s lofty and vague ideas of what a AAA title is. …Because I do not have the spirit needed to go through another generation of performance discourse.
Clockwork Revolution Re-Revealed
(And It Looks DOPE!)
Two years ago, Clockwork Revolution was one of the more promising games from the Xbox summer showing. However, I expressed some concerns over how its story was projecting to play out, mostly regarding the racial and gender dynamics of the antagonists and how that would be read upon release. Mostly because I had to say SOMETHING! The title was re-revealed here with a full five-minute trailer and it is so much more developed, it’s practically a different game. The late 19th century British steampunk aesthetic is still there, but with a more palpably zany personality.
The antagonists are a gaggle of rip bastards with their own awful exaggerated personalities. The robots are fully sapient beings with their own character. The world is full of open abuse from the powerful and discrimination between man and machine. There are talking dolls and silly little robot critter-folk. And rather than just sack the player with some boring White person, the game boasts a fully customizable protagonist, named Morgan Vanette. A true role-playing figure with customizable stats, unlockable perks, dialogue options, and points right out the get go for being someone who robs from the rich of their ill-gotten gains.
Despite the RPG core, the game is still a first-person shooter, and a pretty competent looking one per the trailer. With solid gunplay, customization and upgrading, along with a Singularity-esque time-shifting glove that lets the protagonist get crafty with enemies. Whether it be simply reviving themself after taking lethal damage, reversing enemy fire before it can hit them, or yank their bullets out of an enemy to make the wounds worse, and recover some ammo.
Really, the game looks to be doing about everything right. The eccentric, bitter cast of ripe bastards are the exact type of people one would want to make suffer with the power of time manipulation. The tone, per the trailer, does a good job blending comedy with serious issues of systematic abuse and discrimination in a considerate manner. My biggest concern, however, will be the story, as I am not sure how many branching human-made paths this game could offer. It’s definitely something to be cautious about, but if the folks at InXile can make it work, then I think Clockwork Revolution has the potential to be a modern classic.
…Still no idea when it will be done, but this sure looks like a 2026 game to me.
Don’t Nod Announces Aphelion
(They Are Also Running Out of Money)
Aphelion is the latest game from Don’t Nod, and it’s a climbing action following an astronaut after she crashes into an snow swept mountain range. With her ship in ruins, she must pilfer through it, uncover what resources she can, navigate through this hazardous icy terrain, and avoid a deadly storm of lighting and malice while finding some way to survive. It’s a cool concept, and from a developer with as many narrative, and climbing, chops as Don’t Nod, it sounds like it will be something worth taking a gander at when it launches in 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC. …Though, this game does remind me that I should be worried about Don’t Nod, and their market viability. Because they have been without a hit for many years.
Twin Mirror (2020) came and went without making back its budget, or if it did, it took too damn long. Their big climbing game, Jusant (2023), received great critical reviews, but it did not meet expectations. Same with Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden (2024), which… does not sound like a real video game, but looks solid at the very least. What was supposed to be their big splash with a true Life is Strange successor, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (2025), had a surprisingly mixed critical reception. Which just sounds crazy to me. Maybe it just didn’t get enough reviews because there are too many games these days and shipped n two parts.
Furthermore, Don’t Nod is 42% owned by Tencent, and while their capital infusion helped fund a lot of games, daddy is going to expect a return eventually, and their stock price has been declining since the start of 2022, currently at a little over one Euro. So, uh, if this game does not do well, or sales on other titles don’t miraculously pick up, the studio might be closed. I mean, they lost 64 million Euro last year, and that… that is a lot.
No Ghosts At The Grand Is a Baffling Musical Mystery
(Magical Musical Negro Jumpscare!)
No Ghosts At The Grand nearly made me fall out of my chair in sheer befuddlement. The trailer opens up with first-person American man protagonist Chris David after he has inherited a dilapidated hotel in England left to him by his biological father, or rather “real father”, and is now the rightful owner. A premise that reads as the most mobile-game-ass ad-based slop I have seen in a hot minute. Then the woman describing this scenario explains how there is an “eccentric” caretaker who has been “in the family for generations,” and it’s revealed to be a… Magical Musical House Negro whose shuckin’ and jivin’ is enough to revive the hotel to its former splendor. …And then this magical Black man hands the protagonist a magical gun capable of destroying, recreating, moving, and manipulating anything the game sees fit.
Afterward, the game then expands beyond the hotel, revealing that it is actually about assisting a whole small town that has fallen under similar disrepair. Meaning that they need this American bloke to rearrange things they are too lazy to repair themselves. Okay, so this is a game about repairing a small quaint town, right? … No! Because the next twist is that the protagonist is actually a double-agent who is merely using his status as the heir to this hotel to investigate this town, uncovering all manner of magical subterfuge and monsters. Information that they relay to their partner… a talking cat with a hair pattern that gives it a skull face.
Also, this game is a musical, and presumably every character gets at least one song. There are vehicle sections where you are riding on a motorcycle through a dreamscape. Bote sections. A damn kraken! And ghosts! Ghosts you can BUST! …You lied to me game! There are ghosts at The Grand! I’ve seen ’em! You showed ’em to me! YARG!
Akumako: “You done?”
Yeah, I’m good. Sorry, I was not expecting a Magical Negro jumpscare.
Akumako: “Haven’t you used that trope, like, 12 times at this point?”
They’re not Black people, they’re just in blackface! I only make Black people magical when use biological whiteface, because race change is the truest form of magic!
Akumako: “…What?”
No Ghosts At The Grand is the debut title from Friday Sundae, a Bristol-based studio who decided to seal off their website before announcing this game, but through the power of archives, I can tell they were a somewhat ad hoc developer who worked with brands, education, VR, and even some museum exhibits. So they are an established studio, rather than a bold new group of up and comers. Meanwhile, the publisher, Null Games, is a new publisher founded in 2022 that has focused on an eclectic grab bag of smaller titles, claiming to be a “developer-friendly publisher.”
No Ghosts would be their biggest publicly announced title by far… except they are not listed as the Publisher on Steam, nor are they mentioned much outside of the trailer itself, where they are just a little footnote. To further compound the confusion, No Ghosts At The Grand was only announced for Xbox and PC. Making me think that there may be some sort of exclusivity deal going on, something Microsoft has been shying away from. Very strange, and the game is slated for a release sometime in 2026.
Aniimo Announced as the Latest Big Budget Critter Collector
(Too Bad It’s a Damn Live Service!)
Despite all the legal snafus and minor changes to the game made to the game in response, Palworld (2024) has been a major success story throughout Gamindustri. It was one of the biggest games of last year, still attracts tens of thousands of daily players, and is continuing to sell very well. So I can only imagine that people looked at what it did— blend the aesthetics of Pokémon with something that Game Freak would likely never do— and decide that was a ticket to success. So when I saw a clear Pokémon derivative game as part of this showcase, I was not surprised. If anything, I was excited to see what this could be, enticed by just how high the production values were, depicting a lush and vibrant world, along with slightly generic but adorable creature designs. Then the gameplay kicked in, and I realized that this was a game where you not only collected these creatures, but you became them! HELL THE FUCK YES!
It’s a creature collector AND a TF game where you get to use all sorts of different abilities to interact with the world. Battling other critters, uncovering secrets, or using elemental powers to get goodies. …But you can also still play as a human character, The Pathfinder, and battle alongside your critter friends using exaggerated weapons. Like a giant hammer! Furthermore, the combat system seems considerably more deliberate than the more imprecise battling of Palworld, featuring the beloved RPG staple of breaking enemies, and several skills depending on the critter you merge with.
It’s all a very enticing concept, and I was excited to check it out… but what’s this called? …Aniimo? Aniimo! Pronounced Ah-nii-mo, which to me means that this game’s name is just anime with an O. Animo! Like Animu, but with an O! Aniimo! Ah, I am so happy now, what could possibly make this— wait. This is coming out for Xbox and PC. …Hold on, this… this is a real game, right? No, no, the UI, and Chinese-ness of the game, this… damn it, this is a free-to-play live service, innit?
Yes, it is, unfortunately. Aniimo is a game from the unknown Pawprint Studio, who I am assuming is a Chinese developer just based on the aesthetics and fidelity— game dev is cheap in China— Meanwhile, publishing is being handled by FunPlus, or more specifically their label Kingsglory. FunPlus is a pretty huge Swedish mobile developer/publisher with over 2,000 employees, but because of how vast the mobile game world is, I have never heard of them, or any of their games.
In searching up information about Aniimo, I saw that it will have a closed beta later this summer, before a release slated for next year. I actually signed up for the beta, but the specs are kind of bonkers. I thought I was set for a good while with my 12 GB RTX 3060, but this thing is recommending a 3080 and 32 GB of RAM! …And I don’t think my CPU is good enough to handle this game! I only have a Ryzen 5 5600X! My motherboard does not support anything past Zen 2! Damn you video games! I don’t WANT to get a new computer! They’re too expensive! ARGH!
Persona 4 Revival Announced
(The Only Reason to Remake Persona 4 Is to Make It Gayer)
For years at this point, there have been rumors about Atlus doing a remake of Persona 4 (2008) as a companion title to Persona 3: Reload (2024). This is something that makes some sense, as it is an opportunity to refresh an older title with a new coat of paint, but Persona 4 never carried the same baggage as Persona 3 (2006). Persona 3 is a game with no singular definitive version. Certain features and events are exclusive to Persona 3 FES (2007), while others are exclusive to Persona 3 Portable (2009). Atlus had the opportunity to appease people by re-releasing both version, but instead they chose to re-release P3P in 2023, and scuffed it up by using an upscaling tool on low resolution texture, making the game look like a dog’s wet ass.
Part of the reason why I was so viscerally upset at the game’s remake, Persona 3 Reload (2024), was that it had the opportunity to be the definitive version of the game, improving and enhancing things while staying true to the aesthetic and features of the original. …But it did not do that. It made numerous aesthetic changes and alterations that make the game into its own entity. If you enjoy the game— and I know you do, Skillet— then that’s great! I love it when people enjoy things! It’s da best of best! But as someone who has always held P3 in high regard, the DLC practices, lack of the female main character option, and various aesthetic changes struck a chord with me.
Persona 4, meanwhile, lacks this problem, as the only two major versions are the 2008 original for PS2 or the 2012 remaster, Persona 4 Golden for PS Vita. The PS2 release had more fog and an atmospheric color scheme, while Golden is a lot more neutral in its coloring and pulls back the fog. I personally think this works better in some instances rather than others, but I will routinely err on the side of clarity over stylization. I think that the addition of new content in Golden, regardless of whether or not you particularly care for it, is appreciated and makes the game objectively more than the PS2 original, adding something like 20 hours of new stuff, maybe more. There’s over another month of content, two new social links, new events, new animated cutscenes, and more. Which is before getting into the bevvy of mechanical improvements, including better persona fusing and difficulty options.
Some people prefer the original voice actress for Chie and Teddy. Some prefer the original more moody opening rather than the upbeat and optimistic one used in Golden. Some think the PS2 vibes are just better, man. These are fair enough opinions, but they are just that. Opinions.
In 2020, Persona 4 Golden was bought to PC with a quality port that, over the years, has been updated and upgraded into what is widely considered the definitive and best way to play Persona 4. That, or any of the console versions that came out in 2023. The game is modern enough, intuitive enough, and polished enough that I think it can be played and enjoyed by anybody interested in the title, with no prerequisite criteria. …Which is why I think a remake is neither necessary nor all that important.
If the remake changes barely anything, then there was little reason to remake it in the first place. If the remake makes bad changes, then Golden can still be pointed at as the de facto version. The only point of doing a remake of the game is if you want to change and improve things, which Persona 4 could definitely benefit from. The combat loop could be expanded with more subsystems. The dungeons could be upgraded from the vintage style they was rockin’ in ’08. But more than anything, I would want the developers to modernize all of the game’s half-baked gay shit.
Persona 4 has this unfortunate legacy as being a title that broke ground and explored gender and sexuality across some of its characters, namely Kanji and Naoto, but not going far enough, nor conforming to the modern ideals of a queer game. Homophobia, fatphobia, misogynous behavior painted as ‘boys will be boys’ antics, et cetera. There are a lot of things people can criticize about the handling of queerness and gender in Persona 4, and they have, every single line has been criticized at this point. However, it is vital to view this game as a cultural artifact. One that is not only depicting life in a distinctly rural community, but was created under the direction of straight thirty/forty-something Japanese men in 2008.
I was going to go on a tangent about how people, myself included, dropped gay like an insult all the time back in my teenage years, and I’m 30-years-old, but I will instead just say this. The rise in acceptance of queer characters and queer stories is a very recent phenomenon, and most non-queers in the 2000s didn’t understand shit, and didn’t want to push the envelope. They didn’t want to have characters outright say they are gay, lead a ‘homosexual lifestyle’ as that was seen as immoral. And any sort of gender exploration was often dismissed as mere experimenting. A phase to grow out of. So, instead, characters were written as confused, people who could be straightened out. …Also, as another reminder that time moves slowly, the push to localize gay marriage only began 25 years ago. Here in the United States, we are approaching the tenth anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges. And in Japan, gay marriage is still not recognized.
…And this is the only reason why I would want a Persona 4 remake. I want Atlus to have Kanji definitively say he’s gay, and he loves men. I want Naoto to not affirm that they are a woman at the end of their social link, and instead go the trans man route in this new game for a new era. (Even though I was fine with Naoto’s character in the original.) And I want Yosuke to be even more homophobic, but also canonically gay, like he was in that cut romance route. Not because I need to be validated, but because it would bring an end to over a decade of dumb discourse. …And result in more overtly queer characters, which makes awful people angry, and I like it when they get mad.
This all builds up to the actual story— Persona 4 Rewind Replay Revival has been announced! …With a trailer showing some static environments, not populated by any characters, before showing the protagonist walking down the main street of the game, shifting the camera once so you can see his back and front. …YEAH! That was the most pre-alpha looking thing I’ve ever seen! However, it does meet the bare minimum of showing gameplay when revealing a new game, and gives us a means of judging it. …And the lighting is too harsh, washing out the detail of the rest of the environment. …Oh, and there are also birds who run away when you get near them. Waow!
Persona 4 Revival is probably pretty early in development, but it will eventually come to PS5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam.
The Xbox Showcase Dribs and Drabs
(Stuff I Don’t FEEL Like Propping Up, or Have Much to Say About)
Yep, read the header. Here are the small fry, as you just read about the big boys.
The Outer Worlds 2 received another trailer and a full-blown Direct, as Microsoft seems adamant as treating this game as their big holiday title for 2025. Which makes sense, as there has been consistent effort by audiences, and publishers, to push Obsidian’s big RPGs as comparable to Bethesda’s offerings, but actually good. It’s what happened with Avowed earlier this year, launching as a successful title with a scattering of positive scores, and a few mixed, while garnering nearly 6 million players in its first month. Because with Game Pass games, we gotta measure things by player count! …And maybe Steam active users.
As for the game itself, I feel that Private Division, and now Microsoft, have never quite understood how to sell a story-driven game like The Outer Worlds, choosing to present it as a first-person shooter and feature the more overt anti-capitalism themes, selling anti-capitalism to customers for a brisk $80. So it requires these deep dives to delve into the more RPG-driven mechanics and grasps at a story. However, regardless of how much attention one devotes to the marketing, you cannot really grasp the storytelling of a 30+ hour game like this from just a few trailers.
A Plague Tale is a series that I passingly glanced at when it first debut in 2019 as a AA cinematic adventure about two children fleeing across 14th century France, trying to avoid people who wanted them dead and swarms of rats. Like, an absurd quantity of rats, enough to make the title the definitive rat game. I know it did well, spawning a direct sequel three years later that saw similar success, showing that there is indeed a ready market for people who want sub-20-hour narratively rich light gaming experiences. Maybe not more than a few million, but that just means you need to work smarter.
Just knowing what little I do from trailer and cultural osmosis, I was obviously confused when the next game, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, was announced as a spin-off action game set on Minotaurs’ Island. One that involves time traveling between the “Middle Ages” and “ancient Minoan times.” And features a pronounced combat system, going so far as to include the industry’s beloved parries. …I’m sorry? What? What the hell happened in the second title? I tried looking into it, and apparently this seemingly grounded series is full of curses and magic! I also gathered that the second game represented a definitive end for the story of the original setting, while implying a major time skip for the next entry. So, clearly, a shift was in order, but rather than delving into a wholly new era, the series is going backwards and focusing on a secondary character from the second game. …Okay!
Honestly, I don’t have much to say on the CG concept trailer used to announce this project, but I appreciate the developers gusto and desire to break away from the mold, expanding what their IP can truly be. Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is coming to PS5, Xbox Series, and PC in 2026.
Grounded 2 was revealed, and even got its own direct showcase, which was a surprise to me as I, pessimistically, considered Grounded (2022) to be a game pitched to keep the lights on prior to Microsoft’s acquisition of Obsidian. I was always sure there were passionate developers, as how can you not be passionate about making a game about killing giant bugs, but it was such a genre shift from the Obsidian brand, I thought it would be a one-off. However, the game evidently did well, and now it’s getting a bigger and better sequel, no longer held back by the Xbox One. Also, it’s going to be another early access game, debuting July 29, 2025 on Xbox Series and PC. Neat shit for those who liked the first game.
Gears of War Reloaded was shown off, as it would need to be, since the game was only announced with a PR statement and screenshots. Though, they reserved the actual comparison footage for a “podcast.” …When did podcast change from referring to an audio show to a video show were a bunch of people get around and yap about stuff? Anyway, as I said previously, I think the improvements made to the game are generally better, but there is definitely something being lost in transition. By adding color to such a drab game, something is being lost, the murky 720p low draw distance haze was a technical defect at the time, but it was part of the game’s aesthetic, and while I understand these changes… you know what? The original is backwards compatible on Xbox. It came out on PC before becoming abandonware. People can play the old version if they really want to.
At Fate’s End is the latest title from Spiritfarer (2020) and Jotun (2015) developer Thunder Lotus, and it is a 2D action game about a young woman, named Shan, harnessing the power of the God Sword to kill her family. As to be expected from the studio, the title features beautifully 2D animation and a reserved yet deliberate approach to color. It focuses on form over detail, as it gets the point across and allows the team to make games of an impressive scale while remaining a team measured in the dozens.
Structurally, the game balances side-scrolling action-ing with investigation, traveling through a large castle to uncover details about the Shan’s family, learn secrets, weaknesses, and how to defeat them in combat. With the player choosing how battles progress and how Shan confronts her family. What secrets should be unveiled, what their fates should be, that sort of thing. An intriguing concept for sure, though I have to wonder how the game is going to be structured. Because this concept, and the idea of learning greater family secrets, makes this sound like a game ripe for time loops, alternate endings, and killing someone to uncover a secret used in subsequent runs. …Or maybe I’m just getting anxious after having not played Hundred Line in weeks. At Fate’s End launches in 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC.
The popular comic turned animated streaming series, Invincible, is getting a 3 vs 3 tag-fighter, dubbed Invincible Vs, developed by Quarter Up, a newly formed subsidiary of Skybound Games that has never made a fighting game. The title looks like a decent budget fighter, with impactful strikes, oodles of blood, and snappy movement. However, as a game revealed days after Marvel Tokon, it looks like a cheap effort from people who were only given a slim budget. Because it probably is. The flat lighting, static backgrounds (aside from the fire effect) and framing of the supers make me think of Street Fighter IV (2009) more than anything. And while I am sure that the dev team has put in a lot of work, building new systems from basically nothing, the trailer just did not make this look like a premium fighter. I hope I’m wrong, but I know how fickle fighting games are. With no community, they just die. Invincible Vs will be released for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC in 2026.
Square Enix stealth dropped Final Fantasy XVI (2023) for Xbox Series during this showcase, bringing this contentious game about slavery and abuse into the forefront yet again, about two years after it first made a splash. While I am glad that the game is available to more players, I feel that FFXVI really came and went without the impact of a new FF game, and just seeing it fills me with worry for the future of the series. Because I do not see it as a fan pleaser or something that would get people invested in the IP. It simply deviated too much. …Also, Final Fantasy VII Remake is coming to Xbox this winter, which is neat, I guess, but I have to ask how many people held off on this game before it came onto the Xbox. Are you people real?
Double Fine announced their next project as Keeper. A game where you play as a walking lighthouse, guided by a bird, and travel through a bizarre bevy of locales. With travel here mostly meaning walking, shining the lighthouse at things, and having the bird interact with various puzzles since… lighthouses don’t have hands, and spider legs are not good for puzzles. There is truly no shortage of creativity on display here, with some truly awe-inspiring locales, lushly detailed and captivating at a glance. But as a title with seemingly no dialogue, no true humanoid characters, and no combat, I have to wonder what the player is expected to do. If this is a walk, look, puzzle, gauge, and guess type of game, that’s fine. But I don’t know if that really plays to the storytelling strengths of the folks at Double Fine. I am cautiously optimistic though, so I’ll try to remember to glance at the reception when the game comes out on October 17, 2025 for Xbox Series and PC
The showcase for this year was, predictably, capped off with the announcement of a new Call of Duty game, but presented in a way where you could be tricked into thinking it was its own IP. with robotic assistants, holographs, and magic butterflies that can turn themselves into data and phase through monitors. But no, it was all a preamble to revealing Call of Duty: Black Ops 7… which is a curious choice, as last year’s game was Black Ops 6. Oh no. Are they going to pull a Modern Warfare III (2023) again and release what was originally meant to be DLC as a full game while another team tries to finish up the next entry in the series? Ugh. They are aren’t they? My goodness guys, at this point just stop producing single player content that only a fraction of the playerbase will want and release these as strictly multiplayer games like you did with Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII (2018). Your budgets will go down, you will be able to focus more on the multiplayer, and you could fire all your narrative designers. I know that’s what you want to do.
Splatoon Raiders Announced
(And Natalie Complains About PVP Games Being Bad)
Splatoon is Nintendo’s latest big A-tier IP, and it’s one that I feel people are either really into, or they’re not. This is in part due to its inherent nature as a multiplayer shooter, a genre that requires investment in order to learn the quirks of various weapons, skills, and general techniques. If you aren’t on meta, you will be left behind and trounced by other players, and getting good requires engaging with a bespoke community who has taken on the responsibility of deconstructing the game down into its rawest data.
There is, of course, a single-player element to these games, complete with DLC campaigns with their own story, but to get the most out of them, one needs an existing familiarity and fondness for the overarching story, lore, and progression of Splatoon. Something that has been delivered in real-time for about a decade over a series of in-game events, spread across three titles. However, this fragmented nature, and the fact the first game is on Wii U, and the fact that each game tries to serve as a new beginning for new people, makes interacting with the series weirdly complicated. At least per my purview.
I have only briefly tried the second game, and did not really like it. Partially due to fixation on gyro aiming, a feature that I just do not find intuitive to use. (I’ve got some hand issues, and my hands shake when holding a controller. I did not even know that I did this until I was playing games with gyro aiming, and the jittering motion is quite unpleasant.) However, I also did not care for it due to its nature of a team-based PVP game.
I’m not competitive, I do not like letting people down when they rely on me, and every win for one team means a loss for another. I don’t like it, I don’t find it fun, and I think that the focus on PVP accounts for a drastic amount of toxicity in gaming. As toxicity and competition are more inner-linked than many people would care to acknowledge. Much of modern ranking-based and skill-based PVP systems are designed to encourage players to win, not to get better at the game, and not to have fun. Which is part of the reason why cheating has become more pervasive despite anti-cheat measures growing more sophisticated. Because when you make a PVP game, when you incorporate a ranking mode, you are providing an incentive for bad behavior.
Mind you, not every multiplayer game is like this— Nintendo is good at creating fun party-game-style romps that people don’t really play to win, like Mario Kart and Mario Party. But by being a shooter. But Splatoon is not like that, and on a certain level, PVP is strictly about maximizing metrics, and other players are enemies preventing you from achieving your goals. …Actually, that is a good way to put it. If a PVP game is all about giving players goals to achieve, rewarding them when they succeed and punishing them when they fail, then I think it is a bad game that encourages bad behaviors. This is partially why I have a carve out for traditional fighters’ PVP, as the goal is not to win, it is to improve your own skills. People play fighters to learn a complex system, to improve their craft, not dominate others. But stuff like MOBAs and shooters? Nah, those are games you play to make numbers go up.
God, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare really is the Canon game of 2007. It transformed shooters overnight, and gaming has been worse off ever since!
Akumako: “Natalie, this behavior is exactly why you aren’t able to focus on writing stories. Because you write 500 words of dumb unrelated shit before you get to the actual point of a segment.”
The actual story here is that, on a random Tuesday morning, Nintendo announced the first Splatoon spin-off, Splatoon Raiders. The Splatoon 3 idols, their emcee, Big Man, got in a helicopter accident while flying over the sea, causing them to crash on a deserted island full of junk, anomalies, mysteries, and miscellaneous stuff to investigate. Playing as the pilot/mechanic aboard the helicopter, the player must do the exploration and salvaging dirty work, but are joined with the assistance of a clunky little robot thing. All of which implies that this will be more of a single-player affair because, well, deserted island. And due to how this game is clearly built off of Splatoon 3 (2022), I have a suspicion this was just a single-player mode that Nintendo chose to expand into a full game, position it as a spin-off, and make it their latest Switch 2 exclusive.
No release window was given, but this is Nintendo, and they typically don’t announce new games unless they are going to be out within a year. Hell, it would not surprise me if this was a 2025 title. We still don’t have any dates for Kirby Air Riders, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, or Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. With Pokémon Legends: Z-A in October, I think that would make for a stacked holiday 2025. But why not also throw in a Splatoon game? Hell, throw in the Genealogy of the Holy War remake that has probably been done for a year at this point!
During the back half of this announcement trailer— like the last 60% of it— Nintendo also made various announcements regarding Splatoon 3 and its continued support, which is a topic deserving of some scrutiny. Splatoon is a series that warrants a hefty dose of criticism for how poorly Nintendo has handled the ongoing support elements of the game. Though, I suppose you could say that about most of their online-driven titles this past generation. When one has an online-driven, especially as popular as Splatoon, players need to be provided a regular drip feed of content to keep them engaged. New weapons, events, maps, side modes, whatever.
Yet Nintendo’s handling of new content in Splatoon 3 was very underwhelming, taking months to get what fans hoped to see in the game based on Splatoon 2 (2017), and not offering the amount of new content that was expected with a numbered sequel. Then, after two years of support, service on the game largely ended beyond “balance adjustments, bug fixes, and general improvements.” For a game that sold nearly 12 million units, it was a crummy level of support.
But now that the Switch 2 is out, they also announced they are going to resume updates. Surely they must have something big planned after the nearly year-long gap between content additions and— Oh. They just announced the return of a map from the first game, new cosmetics, a bunch of new variants of existing weapons, new badges, new challenge metrics to grind for, and Switch 2 performance upgrades. Yay.
Nintendo Switch 2 Sells 3.5 Million in Four Days!
(Nintendo Switch 2 Da Moon!)
Before the Switch 2 was even announced, analysts were acting like it was a surefire success even though that is not necessarily the case for successors of popular consoles. I mean, just look at the launch years of the PS3 and the disappointing launch of the Nintendo 3DS. The system was subjected to a more muted launch due to timing issues, websites’ inability to produce coverage in advance, and being an iterative console in terms of features, the system has been a record-breaking success. Within just four days, the Nintendo Switch 2 has sold over 3.5 million units. Thus making this the fastest selling games system of all time. Faster than the PS4, PS5, and any other system one could name, and that’s not surprising.
Nintendo has been stocking up these systems for month, producing them as fast as possible, and wanted to undermine the scalpers that have made the release of every new piece of premium tech hardware a pain in the rear to acquire. Though, they also didn’t overstock it, since the system is currently out of stock everywhere, and it will likely remain that way through the first holiday season. Despite all the (rightful) criticism, despite the fact Nintendo can just remotely brick Switch 2s, despite being a costly little bugger to maintain, and despite the maliciousness of Game Key cards, this is looking to be a clear success. …And none of this is surprising. There are too many diehard Nintendorks out there for the system to not amass a girthy install base, and with the inevitability of 2026’s next Pokémon game, the system will definitely move dozens of millions of units.
The only question now, and this is one that will take years to answer, is if they can get lapsed gamers who bought the Switch for a handful of games to upgrade, or if they will just… do something else. I think it’s crazy that some people will just rely on the likes of TikTok and AI chatbots for their top three tiers of needs, but gaming has been receding after the pandemic boom. And if people spend all their free time on Roblox, Fortnite, and whatever other crap, they won’t have a clear need to upgrade. Especially when they can spend the money on something else.
…Like a bunch of luxurious fast food. …Or a crappy vacation. …Or a newer, better phone after they dropped their old one, like a jackass. …Or sex so they can lose their V-card and call themself an alpha gender. …Or an AI powered dildo that talks to you and plays songs while you fuck it to the AI generated beat. …Or a gun so that they can commit hate crimes with their paramilitary Nazi uncle. God, I have such a skewed perception of reality, because reality is all fake at this point.
Akumako: “No, reality isn’t fake. You just forget what the sky looks like because you only leave your house once a week, you hikikomori fuck.”
Hey now, I have a job and make over $80,000 a year! I just work from home!
Bloober Team is Remaking Silent Hill (1999)
(Try Not To Be Too Shocked)
Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 Remake (2024) was a surprise hit that did well commercially, critically, and communally. While it was home to a decent deal of criticism, particularly those pertaining to artificial enemy encounters, fans old and new liked it and the game has successfully revitalized the series. With great-looking Silent Hill F coming out on September 25, 2025, the series is in a better spot than it has been in for… 20 years? Huh. Silent Hill’s golden years really were a flash in the pan, weren’t they? But it all went down with Homecoming, and Climax’s efforts could only do so much.
Anyway, Bloober has been rewarded for their success with the opportunity to work on another Silent Hill remake. It was obviously going to either be Silent Hill 1st (1999) or Silent Hill 3 (2003), but since SH3 does not really work without the first game, they’re remaking SH1. The title received a trailer that was tantamount to a press release, just a general series logo, repurposed theme music, and foggy background included in some stock effect library. Per the nothing nature of the trailer, I’d say that the game is easily a good two years away, because modern video games are woefully inefficient like that. (Damn 4K textures, iterations, and inefficiencies of scale.)
Now, I’m fine with this conceptually, but I once again feel the need to righteously wag my finger at Konami for how they are handling the original releases. They could work with a specialty studio to port the remaster/port the Silent Hill games to modern hardware— and I’d hope so, since the MGS Master Collection was… wrong in many ways. When you re-release the original version, without any major problems, I say you can do whatever remakes or transformative re-whatevers you so desire, because the original is being sold on the same shelf.
Or, if that is too lofty of a goal, I feel it’s a small cruelty that they have not given GOG to go ahead to re-release the original PC versions of Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3. They let them re-release Silent Hill 4: The Room five years ago. Both Silent Hill 2 (2001) and Silent Hill (1999) are topping the GOG Dreamlist, and Silent Hill 3 (2003)… only has half as many votes for some weird reason. If Capcom can partner with GOG for a series of successful re-releases of the Resident Evil OG trilogy, then Konami should as well. It’s not as good as a PC and modern console port that people can play on their Switch 2 while fleeing America forever, but it’s better than pushing people to emulate the games. I love emulation, but I’d rather do things the clean way.
Metal Gear Δ: Snake Eater is Getting A New Online Mode!
(RIP Metal Gear Online…)
For as much as the Metal Gear Solid titles are lauded for their story, characters, and robustly interactive game worlds, retrospectives often overlook another core component of these games— their online modes. While only present in Snake Eater, Guns of the Patriots, Peace Walker, and Phantom Pain, all these games had robust online modes that offered experiences distinctly different from other shooters at the time, showing off the complexity and nuance of their respective systems. However, the problem with multiplayer games is that it is hard to look back on them retrospectively, understand what it was like to play them in their prime, or comprehend the nuance of their systems. Because, inevitably, they are either shut down or reduced to ghost towns populated by drifters and people who want to live in a dust hole.
Metal Gear Δ: Snake Eater is poised to be a full and faithful remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, even featuring the Ape Escape crossover content that was omitted from the HD Collection and subsequent re-releases. However, many were wondering if this release would feature the coveted Metal Gear Online mode beloved by the aforementioned PS2 modem-using freaks. …And the answer is no. Instead, the team at Virtuos (and I guess Konami) is creating a new multiplayer mode dubbed Fox Hunt, which will utilize an adaptive cameo system similar to that seen in MGS4, but the character models just become piles of rocks and leaves.
Details were frustratingly vague for a game slated to release on August 28, 2025, and I am not a fan of this choice. The development team had the opportunity to reintroduce a type of online experience that an entire generation of game-likers never got to enjoy, and rather than spruce it up slightly while retaining the core, they are just doing something entirely new, put within a remake that is trying to minimize the amount of wholly new stuff. It’s just inconsistent. …Cripes, this might be a way for Konami to position this title as a stealth live service, filled with a bevy of microtransactions and other crap designed to exploit Metal Gear fans. They did it once before with Metal Gear Survive (2018), and look how that turned out!
…On a lighter note, the Xbox version of Metal Gear Δ will include a new Bomberman mini-campaign thing similar to the Ape Escape content coming to PlayStation and Steam. Grief, this is just like the exclusive Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014) content for PlayStation and Xbox. …Sony, just let them put the Ape Escape on Xbox! You don’t even respect the series!
Progress Report 2025-06-15
Goldarn it, I can be such an idiot when it comes to subtext sometimes. I didn’t get it until the damn trans flag!
Context! So, I used to be decently invested in the mashup scene throughout the 2010s, I followed a couple people who liked to mix various songs together, and that represented a decent chunk of the music I listened to in my late teens and early 20s. I was not really into music at the time, and spend the past decade or so accumulating a frankly absurd and ludicrous library of music, but I still keep tabs on a few people who made mashups. One of these people were Psynwav, formerly known as Psycosis, creator of bangers like In My G4 Over Da Sea, Jet Ill Radio, and the (harder to find) trigr warning quadrilogy. They also decided to mix the Hamilton soundtrack with Space Jam, because Space Jam mashups have been a meme in the mashup community for at least 15 years at this point.
This past week, they released their latest mashup album, Musical Transients, and also created a robustly detailed music video to go alongside it. So I gave it a watch, and it took me until the very fucking end to realize, oh, this isn’t just a bunch of funny musical ha-ha’s and nonsense. This is a goldarn journey about someone coming to terms with the fact she is transgender, and embarking on her transition. …While also being endearingly stupid and silly.
Now, am I surprised? No. There are so many trans people who make weird shit for the internet that I am not surprised when anybody who makes weird shit for the internet comes out as trans. This shit is just normal.
Also, shrimp is now another euphemism for estrogen. Heck yeah. I’ve got so much stockpiled estrogen in my cabinets, you call me shrimp-a-lie!
2025-06-08: 6,300 words on this Rundown, all Xbox stuff because I cannot control myself sometimes. And 500 words on TSF Showcase 2025-07. Good day, considering I had to be away for 3-ish hours so I could talk to people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s.
2025-06-09: 3,900 words on the Rundown, and with her 10k ass looking so dummy thicc, I decided to give her a nice slashing in the editing bay. …Wait, it was actually a stuffing. Goldarn it. Steam Next Fest was going on, so I decided to unwind with some demos, as it was like 20:30 and I was tired of looking at Obsidian all day.
2025-06-10: Wrote 1,100 words for Splatoon Raiders bit. 4,200 words for TSF Showcase 2025-07, wrapping up the draft and deciding to put the rest in TSF 2025-08. It will be a weird balance, and I may change this, but this is the current plan!
2025-06-11: Wrote 1,000 word preamble for this Rundown and 8,000 words for TSF Showcase 2025-08
2025-06-12: Wrote 1,500 words on Switch 2 and Konami bits. Edited the last unedited bits, and got this fish ret-2-go-go’s. Wrote 2,800 words for TSF Showcase 2025-08, and since the whole shebang would be 20k words… this is defo gonna be a two-parter. I could have started editing it after my shower but… I didn’t feeeeel like it.
2025-06-13: Edited over 20,000 words for the TSF Showcases. Now I just need to get… 110 images for this bloody thing? Oh SHIIIII—
2025-06-14: Got the 100-whatever images for TSF Showcases. That’s two showcases in the bag! Would have done more, but I was chatting up a storm in some DMs! Also, finally played Hundred Line again, and I finished the Slash Route… now I need to do a write up of two routes! YARG!
Whoa, I didn’t know about that Super Meat Boy 3D… But I gotta say, after watching the trailer, my thoughts are mixed. I mean, I hope it’s fun, but I just don’t like that 3D look for Super Meat Boy. The original Edmund style is such a big part of it for me, and even the logo still has it… This also reminds me of Enter the Gungeon 2 switching to a 3D look as well, which I equally dislike.
I can see why the artistic shift can be off-putting. The original Super Meat Boy had a very distinct visual style and still looks like its own entity even 15 years later. Forever glossed over a lot of it to make something that, strangely, looked more like a Flash game than the original. While 3D is, aesthetically, its own entity. The developer switch explains why the game looks so different, but it is always odd when an indie game sequel changes so much of its appearance with a sequel, particularly one meant to function as a throwback on some level.
Natalie really needs to cutdown on some of the things she does. For a start throw all that political news crap to the curb, it is bad for the SOUL. That will help both your mental state and productivity. You could even look into DNS Blocking that stuff to really cleanse the system. I can’t emphasize enough how bad this stuff is for a person in general with no benefit, the difference in my mental health when I read the news vs. just avoiding it is enough to put me out of commission for doing anything.
If that isn’t enough, I would recommend cutting down on rundowns and halving the no. of TSF Showcases you do.
Personally, I preferred the much shorter form versions at the end of rundowns when they were more like “shout-outs”. Especially if I consider that the evidence suggests these lead to the disappearance of TSF Series which is arguably my favourite Natto-content.
As cool as it is to get a more articulate and expanded Natalie viewpoint with bigger rundowns + TSF Showcases, I just don’t think you can have both this and your fiction writing too and I think the latter is better for making you happier. Which is by far the most important nowadays.
Darn it! Cassie is putting me on blast!
One, I cannot really stop looking into the political crap. It is easy to say that one should not look into politics, but politics are directly affecting my life and future, so I need to perform my duty and stay informed. Is it bad for my mental health? Yes, but it’s a poison that must be consumed to live in modern society.
I want to cut back on Rundowns and limit what I talk about, but I am a yapper, and tend to go in deep on topics that are of interest to me.
TSF Showcase’s mutation from shout-outs to full-on analyses is something that happened gradually over time, but I enjoy the longer-form format, and have reduced it to a monthly thing, which I think is reasonable. Sand, sadly, there are many behemoths that have yet to be slain.
TSF Series took a casualty in 2023 as I started focusing more on my novels. Novels that I KNOW you did not read, sweetie! :P
I’ll try to keep Rundowns smaller going forward, but no promises!
I’m blasting you because I love you!
Wake up Natalie, those roses do not need smelled and they have THORNS!
Eats the roses like a bunny rabbit. Cuts mouth on thorns.
In order to address this *flagrant slander*, let me just clarify: P3 Reload is *mid.* By the *real* definition of the word. It’s a fun enough game, a pretty enough game, it’s *fine.* I would not *stop* someone from playing it. It has a lot to offer, and no small amount of original unique content. I still think if you truly want to play P3, you ought to just play FES (even though I don’t like it that much), but like P3P before it, P3R is… worthwhile new content, because for some reason we’re in a hell where Persona is an annual franchise. All my summoning rituals in 2021 have gone thoroughly awry…
This won’t surprise you as much now, but needless to say, I am NOT looking forward to P4R. Like you said, the footage looks too pre-alpha to glean anything meaningful (but I’m not super thrilled by the blue-ass Inaba), the price point’s gonna suck, the title sucks, and I have absolutely zero expectation that they’ll *actually* change anything.
They altered a single transphobic scene in P3R, but frankly, P4’s poorly dated lines are just too plentiful throughout its script for surgical incisions and new implants like that. It’s really just a matter of how woke (positive connotation) the rewriters feel like being. And even though I find much of P4’s writing *irredeemable dogshit*, rewriting aspects of it definitely feels like it’s not the most pro “games-as-art” course of action. Oh, and they definitely aren’t about to make Naoto a trans man because the writing of the female characters in these games are fundamentally geared towards horny teenage Japanese boys and suggestive figure sales more than anything else, not unlike your average F2P gacha.
…
I mainly play games either at my PC or in bed, so there is *some* incentive for me to want device hopping. Back in the good ol’ COVID days, I found Fortnite’s cross progression so nice because it meant I could sit out in the living room on the PS4 for Serious Team Gaming Seshes, and still grind levels on the Switch while in online classes. (And on that note, Fortnite has ran like garbage on Switch for years, actually getting *worse* with each new chapter, so I’m sure there’s gotta be *some* kids out there for whom the Switch 2 will prove desirable for upgrades to that alone.)
Also, please tell me, am I crazy for getting deja vu seeing Outer Worlds and Clockwork Revolution just minutes apart? They seem like the same thing in different flavors!
And lastly (apologies for how out of order this all is), TikTok (or at least my FYP) is the best social media/short form video app by a fucking mile. YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels are *cesspools* by comparison. I wouldn’t say it’s a particularly *good* thing for society, and it’s got no shortage of concerningly stupid kids on it, but it just feels like there’s a lot more variety to be curated. So, in the interest of being overly dramatic… you can pry it out of my cold, dead hands!
Sorry! I must have misremembered our brief discussions on P3R when it came out, and how you were talking about it in the Press-Switch Discord. I have always been a P3P preferrer, as I don’t think The Answer makes the game better, and think the changes make for a more streamlined experience, just at the risk of lessening the sense of place of the fully 3D locales. Also, FeMC.
P4R is probably not going to make the changes I would want it to make, and per our private conversation, I can see why you are not interested in it. I’m sure the price will be burdened with a season pass, probably for some content included with P4G, which retailed for $40 in 2012. I’m guessing by the time it comes out, $80 will become the primary price for AAA games, and the season pass will be $40. Oh well. It will be available for $30 on a sale in about 2/3 years.
Right, you are of the generation where not playing Fortnite would be worse than not playing Call of Duty back in my day. Because Fortnite actually has a decent female playerbase. I wrote it off as a thing for kids when it was popping off, but the kids keep on growing up!
Outer Worlds and ClockWork Revolution are rather similar, and the answer why is somewhat simple. Back in the late 1990s, Black Isle was a fairly renown studio that put out PC games like Fallout 1, Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, and Icewind Dale. However, as was common during the era, a lot of teams and influential people started splitting off, and some of them went on to form InXile, developers of Clockwork Revolution. Then, when Black Isle was shut down, a bunch of developers went on to form Obsidian. Because what do you take from the Black Isle? Obsidian!
They are studios with a shared past, teams of people who are probably at least familiar with each other, struggled to find work as PC gaming went through a decline during the era of rampant piracy before Steam and online games took hold. They both launched Kickstarters for throwback CRPGs that were very well received, and both were bought by Microsoft in 2018 who, like other publishers, wanted them to make games with more mass appeal. Also, their offices are literally 10 miles from each other. So that’s why their games look so dang similar!
The TikTok comment was mostly referring to how TikTok is preventing people from playing games, per the Matthew Ball piece I have been refernecing since January.
Also, I have no real frame of reference for how people ACTUALLY use TikTok or how YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels (That should not be a name for a thing). Or how it compares to just leaving YouTube autoplay on (which sounds terrible). I don’t have younger family members to teach me these things, and I currently treat my phone as a thing to play long-form videos on while exercising, making phone calls, and 2FA.
I *was* more positive about P3R near release, admittedly partially for getting caught up in the hype, but I maintain that it does have a substantial amount of features that make it the most appealing version for Persona’s modern Gen Z audience, especially when it only needs to compete with P3P on digital store shelves. My opinion of it has definitely soured some with time, which makes me glad in hindsight that my big long spiel about it got eaten by the void a few months back. Although I do recall it also touching on P3P in a way I wish I still had written down, because P3P’s one of those game’s that’s “fine if you don’t know what you’re missing” (that being stuff from FES). Unfortunate because obviously I’m really fond of the female protagonist, but still.
Regrettably, I will *probably* still get around to P4R at *some* point though, depending on what they do with it, how deep a sale cut it gets, and where I am in life in two or three years. What a daunting thought. I sure waste a lot of time, money, and energy on this series I’m so deeply conflicted on!
…
Fortnite is a bad, evil, predatory game that I can say with absolute certainty you would not like and should never play. HOWEVER, with that being said, it (and by extension all generic battle royale games like it) provides a really interesting/ocassionally refreshing contrast to the types of shooters you complained about in the Splatoon section of this rundown. The “every man for himself” gameplay assures that you’re not really letting anyone else down when you lose, and of course, losing is way, way more “culturally” acceptable when your odds are 99-1. The fact that the map is so vast means that there’s a lot more downtime; it can be weirdly relaxing (or boring, depending on your investment/mood) to just travel around exploring and listening to licensed music on the car radios, and the avoidability of most encounters almost adds a sort of horror game flair to a sufficiently fearful player, wherein their only goal is to not be seen as the storm pushes their hunters ever closer. For these reasons it can be a surprisingly accessible casual party game, and arguably gets funnier the worse your friends are at it. Plus it helps that all the player-made modes have basically just made it knockoff GMod at this point.
In the absence of younger family members, I assert myself as the one to teach you all this stupid zoomer bullshit! And in return you shall regale me with the tales of video game studio lore drama that I was too not alive to remember when it happened.
I have deliberately avoided Fortnite for the same reason I avoided Call of Duty. Because while it is a major part of the gaming landscape, and an influential title, I can tell how malicious and cruel it is from afar. That, and the only online shooters I ever played were 10 hours of Team Fortress 2 for Xbox 360 and a two hour demo of Splatoon 2.
YES! Teach me, Skillet! ()
Honestly, I doubt the Xbox handheld will take off if they’re going to just…. allow smartphones that more powerful than the PS4 be able to run the games. I’m not really an Xbox person, even when they try to shove it down my throat on the PC, so I can’t really comment with anything at home. However, with gaming on transit, I noticed I really can’t play anything that requires a lot of focus while on a bus or train. Smartphone app developers have noticed that and perfected that genre of game, and making Xbox games mobile is not going to function on that front. The best market for a more mobile Xbox is during lunch breaks or other idle time, but that’s with fierrrce competition from the Switch (1+ 2) already.
This might age poorly but predicting Xbox’s failure is probably the easiest thing to bet in the last 12 years within gaming.
Sorry, I might not have made this clear. Xbox Cloud works on smartphones, but you cannot run the games locally on a phone, as there would be too much variation with phone specs.
I actually never could play games while on transit, but that’s mostly out of this weird desire of mine to not be seen doing anything ‘unusual’ while out in public. Which does not make sense, as people game on their phones and such all the time while on transit, and they have been for decades, but it hearkens back to this deeply instilled shame I had in expressing myself in front of strangers as a kid. But typing something on my phone (which sucks, since I cannot swipe type), that’s fine.
In my experience as a white collar office worker, lunch breaks are either not real breaks, or they are social outings. I always had my lunch at my desk, and worked on what I could while eating. It’s a bad habit I learned from my (10 to 40 year older) co-workers and my mother. Since I started working remotely for my boss, lunch breaks have either been imposed by him, because he’s an old man who needs breaks, or we had lunch together in the office.
Oh, Xbox’s failure could have, and was, predicted back on May 21, 2013. I was bitching about it then, put out a fiery post pissed about it, and then put out a less pissed post a day or two later. They handed the generation to Sony, their leadership bailed, and they became hated by their core demographic— even the military was pissed at this news! It, and the following E3, were so bad that I decided to not buy a PS4 or Xbox One, and bought the components for my first Windows PC. Because I could see the writing on the wall, and my computer was an iMac from like 2006.
Yo Nat, just making sure my comments work. One sec…