Rundown (10/26/2025) Open City Over Open World

This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Open City Over Open World
• The Depressing Reality of Decade-Long Sequel Gaps (That Feeling When Your Favorite Game When You Were 8 Doesn’t Get a Sequel Until You’re 18…)
• Kirby Air Riders Direct #2 (Modern Game Development is Not Sustainable)
• Halo: Campaign Evolved Announced (No 37-Year-Olds, This Won’t Make You Feel 12 Again…)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Open City Over Open World

This past week, I have invested over 40 hours into Pokémon Legends: Z-A. I have issues with it, and a lot that I want to criticize, but also a lot of huge improvements that make it a contender for one of the best Pokémon games so far. I expect my review to be well over 5,000 words knowing how much of a loudmouth I can be— a real yappenheimer— but that can all wait until… maybe next week? I sure HOPE I can get it out by next week. For now, I want to talk about certain nuances and minutia with this game.

Akumako: “So, what do you want to talk about? Are you going to talk about how negative some people are being about it? Missy seemed to think it was a good topic to cover.”

Oh, cripes. What’s there to say? The world if full of bad shit, things keep getting worse, everybody is carrying around a lot of anger and insecurity, and people are especially pissy when it comes to anything that feels like a personal slight. They don’t want to think, they want to feel, and anger is a highly addictive, reassuming, and pleasant emotion when shit fucking sucks. And shit does fucking suck!

• A fucking tyrant is in charge of the most influential global superpower, doing everything he can to erode the country, sell it for scraps, and enrich his class, because rich people understand class solidarity.
• People are in an adverse economic situation, struggling to pay for groceries, living paycheck to paycheck, and completely priced out of luxury goods.
• Corporations are consolidating and enriching themselves while raising the price on their goldarn entertainment subscriptions, and everything else.
• Game companies are putting out overpriced consoles and games due to international tariffs that exist to extract money from the poor to the rich via roundabout government subsidies.
• Data centers are being built everywhere to contaminate residential areas with noise and pollution while upping their electrical bill.
• Regulations are being cleaved off, hurting people in all places, revving up a domino effect of mass destruction.
• Healthcare is projected to go up by like 15% year over year, which is just terrifying considering how disgustingly expensive it is NOW.
• The economy would be in a de facto recession if not for the fact that private equity and rich investors keep pouring money into the AI. A technology meant to make us a bunch of dumb fucks, destroy the concept of truth, and to turn the act of creating into something that can be done by bots to deliver effective propaganda and brainrot alike.
• Outrage merchants have been having a long-ass field day since COVID brought a bunch of people online, desperate for validation and direction, only to be fed bitter engaging malice towards anything and everything.
• People are losing their jobs and struggling to find news ones beyond part-time gigs that leave them ineligible for unemployment and unable to sustain themselves.
• Companies lack workers but are unwilling to hire people, leading them to put more responsibilities and stress on existing workers.
• There’s a goldarn government shutdown, and the fucking tyrants in charge are threatening to just not pay people when the government is back in working order.
• The planet is dying because of crap most governments want to push off because it would upset their rich friends in the private sector. The real government in a lot of Western countries.
• The American Dream is 100% dead.
• The Gestapo are storming cities and loading up chemical weapons to use on people for being ‘anti-capitalist.’
• The American Century of Humiliation is looking like a legit probability at this rate. Because millions of hateful bigots want to destroy the world for the sake of destroying the world.

If you look at ALL of these reasons, remember the backlash towards Scarlet and Violet, and ask why people are so mad about the new Pokémon game… I don’t think I can help you. Build the Lego set yourself, bucko! The conditions for outrage are there, and I’d argue that some people have been HUNGRY to tear into a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive for about 6 months at this point. Some already have with Mario Kart World, as it did not resurrect their inner child or give them a new addiction. Shit sucks and some people’s special place, the place that makes them feel like you’re twelve, has not grown with them in the way they imagined.

Akumako: “They took the Caucasoid fantasy world and filled it to the gills with n***as, weird building textures, no voice acting, and it does not look as good as Donkey Kong Bananza.”

Yeah, those are probably four of the biggest gripes. However, this shit is boring to me, and I don’t want to talk about it. Because this all feels like the same ragebait shitfest, just on a larger scale that I have mostly ignored. Because I like to spend my time doing things I like, reading the news on a large scale, tasting the discourse, and trying to NOT get mad about things. Because when I get angry, I get scary fucking angry. If I lived in a soundproof bunker, and owned a baseball bat, I would show you all how fucking angry I could get. But I live in a condo and my mother insists that I not yell when I get angry… even as she yells all damn day while on her damn airpods.

Actually, here is a recording of me at roughly 70% anger. I am still restraining myself, pulling this off on command, and trying not to exert myself so much that I get a headache afterward.

What I actually wanted to talk about here was how refreshing I found the map design of Pokémon Legends: Z-A. How it is not an open world game like Scarlet or Violet or an ‘open zone’ game like Pokémon Legends: Arceus. It is an open city game, a term that I’m pulling right outta my butt, but I think should be added to a broader lexicon.

Open worlds are something that I routinely struggle to define, as there is not really any single type of open world. They vary drastically in terms of scale, density, general diversity, and overall progression that I struggle to articulate where one type ends and the other begins. Some open worlds feel large enough to be Midwestern counties, when they are really about the size of a decent city. While video game cities, conversely, tend to be far smaller than actual cities they are based on, and follow a drastically different approach to world design versus a larger environment. And it’s a world design that… I think is better in many respects.

Something that does not sit well with me is a disposable open world. An open world broken up into fragments you are meant to clear, move past, and be done with. Sure, they can be revisited, but in practical terms, they are glorified levels you are meant to consume, chew up, and then move on, like a cow through a narrow field. Once you’re done with all the quests in a town, cleared a dungeon, or found all of the collectibles, you’re done there, and don’t need to go back to it. There is somewhere new to explore, and the progression of the game, and narrative, directs you to there. Sure, you can go other places, but the game clearly wants you to go to certain places in a certain order, albeit with some freedom between destinations A, B, C, or D.

Now, this is not bad game design by any stretch. But I find this design to diminish the value of the world as an environment. Because you are encouraged to clear it, and not treat it as something more. For example, is there any reason to revisit The Great Plateau in Breath of the Wild once you are done? Not really. You just kinda explore it and move on. It’s a tutorial area as part of the game’s loose choose your level progression system. You can ignore entire sections of the map, never even pass them by, and that’s part of how the game is just designed. To be chewed through and digested.

I would argue that this does a poorer job of endearing the player to the world compared to something they revisit periodically. Such as, well, a large town they revisit throughout the game. A hub area they go back to. Or, my favorite option, a city where the entire, or majority, of the game is set. This is by no means a radical concept. Loads of games are set in cities and carry cities as core parts of their identity. Every Grand Theft Auto game or derivative. Any ‘superhero sandbox game’ from Infamous (2009) to the recent Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man games. Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City counts, at least for the most part. I’d say throw in the Like A Dragon games, even though many of those are multi-city affairs. Hell, most racing games built around a singular city apply just as well.

By being in a large environment full of NPCs, with multiple ways to get around, places you drive or run by regularly, it’s easy to become endeared to a city environment. You learn where shortcuts and secrets are, become intimately aware with its building placement and, ideally, how it functions as a city. The level design and world design gel, and it becomes far easier to navigate without even consulting a darn map. These are still open world by most definitions, but they benefit from their narrow scope, compact nature, and the fact that they can be understood and broken down in one’s mind. They feel significant, yet are compact enough where a trek from the furthest point on the map is just a couple minutes commute, without using fast travel or the like.

Furthermore, maybe this is just the fact that I am a suburbs kid who lives near Chicago, but I think that cities have better vibes than most other worlds. Cities are efficient, they are full of life, they are where life happens, where people thrive and prosper, and full of attractions aplenty. From general architecture to destinations to recreational activities. Pretty much every city of a decent size has something worthwhile or an identity, and that goes for fleshed out cities in video games.

They also encourage… how to phrase it? Smarter world design. In a city, or specifically video game city, everything needs to connect, it needs to feed back to each other, and there needs to be a consistent design language or approach. Space needs to be well used. With buildings being a prominent feature of cities, this also invites room for some level of verticality, of exploring interiors. From attractions giving way to blink and you’ll miss them caverns to being able to pilot aircrafts above the skies, or into buildings, for teh lulz, or be able to simply get on rooftops or get inside apartments.

When making a stretch of fantasy expanse, or a wasteland, you have a huge canvas to play with, things can be nudged about and make about the same sense, but that is not true for a city. You need to keep things deliberate, refine them, and focus on the core or else, well, the game will just be worse and less fun to explore, or navigate. All because somebody decided to add a fence here, or put an empty stadium for possible DLC over yonder.

Maybe this is just my inner 10-year-old kicking around, unwilling to die— no matter how many times I try— but there is something that I find intimately homely and familiar about being in a urbanized digital world. These places are more tangible, grounded in what I know, and full of people, even if they are just walking subroutines, or exist for aesthetics. Even if it is rendered in musky PS3 grays or varying levels of jank, there is something I find immediately comforting about these environments, where I want to explore them, see what they are about.

Going back to PLZA, I think the game’s open world largely succeeds in creating a fun to navigate and stimulating environment. Complete with distractions, collectibles, things to climb, and musky alcoves to uncover, with more popping up throughout the game. It’s a place that feels tangible in a way that Paldea never could, and feels more cohesive than the six? environments of Hisui.

However, it also fails what I call the Saints Row 2 (2008) test of making the city feel fully realized or populated. …Which is my way of saying that while I like PLZA‘s Lumiose City, there are not enough unique districts. Where is the marina? Where is old town? Where is little Hoenn? Where is the financial district? Where is the local university? Where’s the red-light district? Why do the buildings follow the same general architectural style when cities are not meant to be homogenous— wait, no, that’s just how most of Paris is IRL. It’s disturbingly homogenous. …Good thing this is fake Paris!

I suppose this raises the question of what makes for a good city in a video game, and I would honestly say that points of intrigue and interaction are the main drivers. The vibes are nice, but you need to do something, and PLZA largely succeeds in that by focusing on its gameplay. As part of their pivot to the Switch, to ‘home consoles,’ Game Freak has been creating recurring gameplay loops for their titles. Chain encounters in Let’s Go. The Wild Aera and its raids in SWSH. The catch, harvest, battle, and explore loops of PLA where you picked up regenerating resources while catching Pokémon for loads of money. The open world of farmable resources, and raids, in SV.

PLZA is probably the most engrossing loop so far, as it is built entirely around active gameplay. You run around the world, throw Poke Balls at wild Pokémon, battle them in real time, fling more balls at them when they are KO’d. You auto-pick-up trinkets on the ground, bash mega crystals lining the walls and floor, and grab an utter deluge of fixed items strewn across the ground. You can also travel verticality with a series of yellow ladders, shiny scaffolding, and janky jumping puzzles that lead into a secondary map of rooftops, something that I don’t think this game will get enough credit for. Rooftops are terrifying IRL, but there is something that I just love about figuring out how to get up someplace. How to travel there, find the secrets hidden from the ground, and the surprise encounters with rare Pokémon.

I love just exploring, messing around, and going through these environments over and over again. It is big enough that you would not want to explore everywhere in a single sitting, but there is enough to explore, to fiddle with, that I could easily imagine myself playing this game for dozens of hours. All that time just to see how many rare Pokémon are prime for the plucking. And hunt shinies, as it actually seems FUN this time around. Shinies don’t go away if you just don’t see them! I did not really care about them before, but knowing they will stay there if I don’t see them? That tempts me!

However, that is only part of the gameplay loop. The other is the fast-paced high octane stealth action with rougelite elements.

Akumako: “Bloody hell! Random effect cards, trainers, and locations do not make this a roguelite!”

The Z-A Royale is one of the greatest things that Game Freak has done with Pokémon battling, ever. When night falls, a district in the city becomes a BATTLE ZONE where trainers battle for experience and cash. Randomly generated trainers strewn all over the place, cash litters the ground there are oodles of cards that give extra cash upon doing X task Y times, and players are encouraged to seek out as many trainers as possible, use Kindergarten-ass stealth to one-up them, and take them out in no time flat, accumulating a killstreak of trainer elimination as one circles through the BATTLE ZONE, amassing plenty of victories before daybreak. All to get a coveted cash multiplier, loads of dosh, and a couple levels for their team.

ALL OF THIS takes place in the city. You are using the terrain, memorizing the layout, learning spawn locations, and climbing up, down, and all around to keep your victory streak going. This could, admittedly, work in a contained map, but the fact you can, and do, explore this terrain outside the BATTLE ZONE designation makes it feel more grounded. Like an actual part of the world, and not some abstract simulacrum of existing assets.

Everything is in the city, it all feels like being in a city, and you never forget that you are in the city. Ergo, a good city game.

…Admittedly, it’s as good as Neo: The World Ends With You (2021), but what is?

God, HOW did this become 3,000 words?

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The Depressing Reality of Decade-Long Sequel Gaps
(That Feeling When Your Favorite Game When You Were 8 Doesn’t Get a Sequel Until You’re 18…)

Something that I have referenced in the past is how long the gaps between major entries in legacy IPs has become. At least in the world of gaming. In there world of film, putting out a sequel every two or three years is still very much possible, while productions like books or albums are still coming out at the same pace they were twenty/thirty years ago.

In the world of prestige TV shows, things are pretty bad, as once annualized seasons are being broken up with three year gaps in some cases. Because serialized, non-episodic, television seasons are effectively 4 to 10 hour films. And when you do that, you kinda need three years to script, shoot, post produce, build sets, and gather the actors for a television show. Oh, and everybody needs to get some other job between seasons, because who wants to shoot two back-to-back 8 hour movies? Only crazy people! (We need to teach the Zoomies to appreciate weekly soap operas, they’d love the communal aspect of that shit.)

However, I want to talk about games in particular, as I find the way, pace, and general frequency of game releases to be bizarre. Throughout the 90s and 2000s, game production was, from the outside, very expedient. Developers could put out projects after as little as a few months of dev time. While some games were in development for three, maybe four years, it was expected that new entries would, and should, come out regularity, that series would be served, and the narrative of a 1, 2, or 3 year dev cycle took hold. Developers would work their asses raw on a title in a new IP, and hopefully get some time off to recover. Then, if the sales are good, they will get shuffled over to a sequel, set to come out in however many years.

The year-long turnover between games like Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City was surprising, but not necessarily uncommon or unheard of. Series like Crash, Spyro, Ratchet and Clank, and Sly Cooper were putting out annualized titles. The six year wait from Super Mario 64 (1996) to Super Mario Sunshine (2002) or Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999) to Resident Evil 4 (2005) was seen as abnormal. And it was entirely possible for studios to release three games in a series on a single console generation. Series like Mass Effect and Saints Row putting out three and four entries respectively, along with DLC in the interim.

It was a good system that kept a lot of beloved, defining, or influential IPs alive, and ensured that people would not need to wait too long for the next entry in the series. It allowed people to form a connection with these series, gave them something to look forward to, and something they could check in every few years. An ongoing story, narrative, or general technological/mechanical progression that would follow them throughout their lives, being frequent enough to be notable.

Nowadays, there are still series and games that are cranking out games like it’s going out of style. Pokémon is nearly annualized. Call of Duty and Sportge are annualized. Battlefield games come out at a steady rate. Yet, the gap between entries, in general, are getting larger and larger. Generation defining titles are looking like they will just skip a generation outright. And fans of the IP, people who considered prior entries instrumental or deeply meaningful experiences for any number of reasons, are left to live their lives without this staple standby, making it harder for them to maintain this connection.

I know I might be making this sound dystopian, like it’s that vital for people to be connected to intellectual property. But they bring comfort and stability into one’s lives and keeps ties with a broader virtual community. New releases and the related build-up are events for them to get excited over in the lead up, something to invest oneself in over a few weeks, and something to reflect on. It is just media, but… people like media, they like art, and it gives their life some greater meaning. It makes them think about things, and that is what I want people do to more than anything else. Think about the things!

So, I have to ask why are the gaps between major entries only getting bigger? It’s been 9 years since Persona 5 (2016), so where’s Persona 6? It’s been 8 years since Dragon Quest XI (2017), so where’s Dragon Quest XII? Is Uncharted as a series just graved like most Sony IPs? Nier: Automata (2017) was a huge hit and arguably ‘saved’ the Japanese console game industry. At least some devs said that. But is there even a real sequel in production? Why has it been 8 years since the last major 3D Mario game— not counting Bowser’s Furry Fury (2021). How the frick has Bethesda dropped the ball so hard by not rushing out a Skyrim successor? And why don’t they have a Fallout in visible production to capitalize on the TV show? The last major entries came out 14 and 10 years ago respectively! Hell, the day after I drafted this segment, they announced an anniversary edition of Fallout 4, with zero word about a Fallout 5! Fallout 4 is a retro game by the ten year rule!

Akumako: “You’re ignoring the spin-offs, DLC, remasters, remakes, and Fallout 76 is actually—”

Shut your smegma-scented lips, you woman-making minx! You know what I mean!

From a business perspective, this is all just leaving money on the table. If something works, sells millions upon millions, a sequel should be greenlit ASAP, and the developers should try to build upon what came before. But we just are not seeing that. Why? Well, it is not so developers can prioritize new IP, or that they just want to wait for technology to catch up with new ambitions. They just need a lot more time.

From what I have heard from game developers, it’s because requirements of a AAA game are so high, so lofty, and expectations run so rampant that they cannot rush in and maintain a string of sequels in perpetuity. Either that, or it is some flavor of corporate politics at play. Development issues, reboots after reboots as corporate looks at the immense costs of modern game development and says they need to do better. Sometimes creators are just burned out and want to do something different after devoting themselves to something for years. But the fact that we went from new major entries coming out every 2 to 5 years to increasingly longer durations between major entries is, well, just kind of upsetting.

There are fewer things for fandoms to get excited about or fawn over. Fewer big tentpole releases to geek out about, and fewer opportunities for series to experiment, innovate, or do things differently. Because every new entry is the game for this decade.

This is not a huge deal for a lot of middle-aged people, as ages 42 to 52 are not really the most exciting leap. They’re probably in a career, possibly raising their damn kids, assuming they can afford them or want to bring a child into a world that may just blow up in 50 years! But if you were 8 when Super Mario Odyssey came out, you would be waiting until you are an adult before you get a full brand new 3D Mario game. That just ain’t right in my book, and I think this could have highly negative effects on a generation’s capacity for nostalgia, their ability to connect with IPs, and reduce the viability of building a multi-game IP.

If someone loved a game when they were 13, and the sequel does not come out until they are 23… they might be a different person in most ways. (They might not even be the same gender! I wasn’t!) They would have experienced so much that they might simply not care when something they once loved comes out because, well, they’re over it. The thing they liked existed, but it’s gone now, and when it comes back after so long, it will feel different, because the people playing it are… different.

Plus, expectations would go crazy. If it is too samey, it can be seen as a derivative and boring, unwilling to get with the times. If it changes too much, then it is Not My *Insert Name Here*. It is such a crappy situation, and the best solution is to… find a way to release new entries in cornerstone IPs faster. Involve new studios, branch off into leaner and more ‘agile’ teams.

If this does not happen… then I guess the idea of being a franchise fan, a part of an ongoing fandom or community, will just kind of die down. People might just hop over to whatever the latest hotness is. 2025 has been crazy good for smaller indie hits, and nearly every month I hear about some game made by 10-ish people that broke a million units sold. Like Megabonk or Escape from Duckov. Maybe that, maybe being a love of good games, if what people actually want. Maybe it was a mistake for them to become devoted to series, a few standbys, when they could branch out and explore a greater, broader, and bigger world.

A persistent narrative over the past five years, at least amongst the niche dorkholes that I muck with is this: While major series tentpole— or franchise tentpole, because at some point the meaning of the word franchise has been lost— are great, there are too many games out there to just like a few IPs. The world of indies, critically lauded hits, or even the viral ‘friendslop’ hits, offers just as much a sense of community, enrichment, and relevance, while offering more unique, and often meaningful, experience. And maybe meaning is what people truly crave.

This is getting easier thanks with Steam being the best storefront and actively encouraging people to buy a list of games curated for them. From Next Fest that exist for people to try more video games, for free. Discovery queue that shows you new games to check out and tells you why it is being recommended to you. And handy tools like a new calendar feature so you can visualize when new games are coming out, and find new games based on their release date. All while avoiding the fact that Steam is a dumping ground of shit games made for cynical reasons.

…Actually, the fuck am I saying? If regular series entries don’t come out at a reasonable rate for human beings— 2 to 5 years— then people will just drift over to whatever live service is running. Live services provide a consistent community, consistent trickle of characters, and something they can be part of at a pace and rate that is both faster and more regular than any sequel. Live services are just better at delivering larger quantities of content than a sequel, and while they have problems, they can remain a consistent part of someone’s life for seven years. Which is not much if you are in your 30s or whatever, but to a 10-year-old who became a 17-year-old? That’s their entire adolescence. Their entire real life.

Gosh, someone needs to sue Roblox out of existence, and Fortnite’s player data need to be wiped from their servers. That definitely would save gaming!

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Kirby Air Riders Direct #2
(Modern Game Development is Not Sustainable)

Speaking of sequels that took a decade, here’s one that’s taken TWO decades!

Director Masuhiro Sakurai hosted another Kirby Air Riders Direct— this one being over an hour long— and used this opportunity to show off the truly obscene amount of stuff that is being added to this game. The original Kirby Air Ride was not a sparse game, but it was a largely limited one that was interested in doing the few things it set out to do. Function as a unique, often experimental, racing game that featured a variety of modes, ways to play with friends, and an incentive to replay and grind what was present in the game to complete a great big to-do list. It was a game that had enough depth to keep players engaged for many a get-together with friends, spend a couple of weekends, and enough uniqueness for it to stand out next to a typical kart racer.

However, the word that I keep hearing when game developers bring up why game development is so hard these days is expectations. As I was saying in the last segment, the perception is that players are no longer content with good enough fun romps, and want every game to be jam-packed with content. If a game had swimming in a prior entry, but not in the latest entry, then that is not something that was never included because it did not fit with the game’s goals. It was a cut feature. Something THEY took from US. If it has less X than an entry that came out however many years ago, that is enough cause to stir up a controversy.

Controversy is something that developers, managers, and executives are concerned about, as while good controversy can be a boon, bad controversy just eats into the bottom line. And some people really want to stir up bad controversy, because they like seeing something close to them die. From people who have been holding a Nintendo hate boner since they announced the Switch 2’s price to online leftists who want to deplatform people who make video essays because… it makes them feel like they’re doing something.

So, how do you avoid controversy, how do you prevent the mob from wanting to destroy you for the slightest imperfection? Well, one answer is to give them everything, spoil them with content, stay true to the original in nearly every key aesthetic manner, and remove as little as possible. With remove being a misnomer as how can you remove or cut something when you are building it from scratch?

Now, the reason I am beginning with this diatribe is because the core takeaway from this hour-long bombardment of information is that Sakurai and his team feel the need to make this the ultimate Kirby Air Ride experience.

Top Ride, the number 3 of 3 mode in Kirby Air Ride, was originally assumed to be cut from Air Riders, but is in fact coming back, better, bigger, and fuller than ever. Complete with a new moving camera, the ability to use any rider and machine you please, and refined mechanics to make the races a bit less… humdrum. Why include this? Because Sakurai did not want fans to be disappointed at its absence, as it’s probably somebody’s favorite mode. Not sure if they’re still alive, or playing video games, but they probably existed.

Road Trip is a newly added premiere ‘campaign’ where the player chooses their rider and goes on a road trip through various challenges spanning the Top Ride, Air Ride, and City Trial modes, along with a deluge of other challenges. By choosing which challenges to pursue, the player gains resources and helpers to aid them in their journey, get past obstacles, and accumulate new machines you can switch between. It eliminates the complexity of choice and gives players a curated list of challenges with an end goal. You just select it, hop in, and go on an adventure.

All three pillars of the gameplay can be played online via the Paddock. An online lobby where players can much around, emote, call out to others, and of course initiate battles. Online performance influences their skill-based class and Global Win Power for matchmaking purposes.

All nine original Air Ride courses have been recreated from the ground up and, while different due to broader mechanical changes, are faithful renditions that capture the core of the vibes of the original. Sure, they look different, but Kirby Air Ride looked uncanny. I loved that game as a kid, but it was not fantastical. It felt like visiting an alternate dimension.

While they did not bring back the original City Trial map, they had expanded the new map with more items to use. There’s a more unified way to acquire buffs and bonuses. While an utter deluge of new Field Events promises to keep things interesting. The beloved Hydra and Dragoon machines have returned as collectible machines that can turn the tide of any match. And rather than just be a blind free-for-all, the online mode lets players pair off in teams for more intense multiplayer rivalry.

The Stadium events that cap off City Trial will feature multiple boss battles, including a Robo Dedede, a mechanical abomination that can turn into a car. Why would they go so hard on a boss battle when the 2003 original just had one boss battle? …And that boss battle was against a bigger version of another racer? Because Sakurai is crazy and wants this game to deliver in every facet possible.

A bunch of additional characters from past games are returning. Taranza is in and can use their webbing to give them an edge in a race. Lololo and Lalala pair up as a duo. Daroach from Squeak Squad makes a return, complete with the gimmick of stealing copy abilities from other racers. Rocky, Rick, Scarfy, Marx, and even Regular Waddle Dee are all here, and probably at least a few more.

The legendary checklist of the original Air Ride returns, but this time in a far more digestible manner. Every mode has its own set of 150 objectives— including 150 for online multiplayer. But rather than just tell you what the objective is, the game lets you partake in any visible objective just by pulling up the checklist and clicking a button. Need to clear a stage with this character without hitting any walls? Press a button and the game will send you right to the character select screen. Truly an amazing quality of life feature, and undoubtably a pain in the ass to map out and bug fix.

What do you get for completing these challenges though? New characters and new machines are the big ones, but this game could not be satisfied with just that. You can unlock characters through multiple means, and when you unlock them more than once, you get specials these characters. Waddle Dee can become golden and impervious. Gooey can become Mock Dark Matter. And pretty much every character can wreck shop, probably through some reference to the Kirby deep lore.

As for machine duplicates? well, that opens up the extensive customization options for machines, as you can deck them out in all manners of paints, patterns, stickers, and so forth, truly making them yours. These designs can be further displayed in one’s garage, functioning as a customizable gallery of their creations. But rather than just keep these designs for oneself, you can actually share them with others on the online player-to-player storefront, the Machine Market. There, the price goes up the more the machine sells, and you get a cut of every sell. Why is this here? What is the point of this thing? I dunno, but this was clearly a passion of somebody on the dev team.

Similarly, riders can be customized with the use of headwear that they don whenever not using a copy ability. Just to give the player another thing to collect and a way to make their racer feel like their own. It’s a pretty ho-hum feature, but when presented on top of everything else, it just adds another layer of complexity to this game.

On that note… they also added gummies to the game! By playing the game, by completing races, players are awarded with gummies based on their rivals’ machines, and they can use these gummies to… muck around! You cannot spend them or do much with them beyond toss them about in a physics simulator, ogle them, and collect them, because… this was clearly a passion of somebody on the dev team. And everybody had to pay for it!

There is just so, so much scope and so much stuff present here that it’s dizzying when comparing it to the original, and one of the best examples is the main menu. The Kirby Air Ride menu was a feat of graphical design, but it was also just a 2D menu, derivative of Smash Bros. Melee. It was slick, clean, readable, and cool. Meanwhile, the Air Riders main menu is a fully 3D menu where a Kirby figuring moves around and everything is modeled to look like someone they would find on a desk. It’s flashier, has more resources put into it, and is definitely better on multiple metrics. However, it also represents something Sakurai concludes the direct with.

Kirby Air Riders (2025) took ten times the resources it took to make Kirby Air Ride (2003). 22 years, ten times the resource. If the original was made for $5 million, this would have a budget of $50 million. While I can understand budgets doubling due to inflation and cost of living adjustments, this simply is not a sustainable level of growth, nor is this amount of iteration, polish, and feature deluge.

Everything that was presented here looks great. I can tell that the dev team’s goal is to create the ultimate and best Air Ride experience possible. Something they are not planning on expanding upon this with DLC or sequels, because this is it, this is their vision. …But for a quirky racing spin-off in a cute platformer series? This… this is just too much. I’m glad that this exists, but if the expectations keep on growing, if the required resources multiply by another ten within the next 20 years, then I think AAA game dev will stop being hard and start being practically impossible. …And all we’ll have are 24 enshittified live services that have persisted for over a decade.

…Maybe China will save the games industry by pioneering Actual 21st Century development techniques…

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Halo: Campaign Evolved Announced
(No 37-Year-Olds, This Won’t Make You Feel 12 Again…)

Well, this was a known secret for a while now. Microsoft Xbox has announced a full remake of the genre-shaping and trailblazing Halo: Combat Evolved. Or rather, its single player and co-op campaign, fittingly named Halo: Campaign Evolved. …It’s fitting, but it’s also pretty stupid sounding. This comes after the 2011 Halo Anniversary remaster, the subsequent updates to this re-release with the once awful yet now excellent The Master Chief Collection, and 15 years of series malaise.

While I am far from a Halo fan— I played an hour of Reach after getting a free copy from some beta test program in 2011/2012 and thought it was okay— I respect it. It was a gateway for many avid game enjoyers, shaped their preferences, likes, showed them what games could be, and I am comfortable in saying that the games are good. …Or, at least the ones developed by Bungie, back when they were a studio with real leadership. In the ensuing 15 years, Microsoft has been trying to keep the fires hot, get people excited, but it’s been a deluge of missteps.

Halo 4 really should have been an Xbox One launch title, rather than sputtering out in 2012 as yet another Halo game to the general consensus, but to the fans, it was a clunky step backwards that did not capture the tight design, story, and gameplay of the original. Halo 5: Guardians (2015) attempted to keep the series going along with another directional pivot, but similarly failed to capture the feeling of the original, and is generally forgotten about by the broader community. Or at least they don’t like talking about it. While Halo Infinite was just barely finished enough to get out the door and disappointed on both fronts. Its multiplayer failed to capture the shooter audience as intended and support dried up, while the campaign felt simultaneously burdened by past mistakes and visionless.

After Infinite, fans of the series basically lost hope for things playing out well, and there is a certain animosity towards the series. As if the fans wish that the series was kept alive solely with the Master Chief Collection, and that was ported to other systems. Microsoft could have done that, and I think everybody who cares about Halo would be happy with that. Instead, Microsoft decided that a remake of the original was in order. It’s not entirely clear to me if this is a full ground up recreation without the original code, or if it’s just another, more thorough, remaster. But no matter where it lands on the re-whatever spectrum, I don’t think it looks good.

Halo: Campaign Evolved carries with it many modern presentational ills.

Ill number one is an ill that has plagued games and is responsible for most instances of signposting, deliberate lighting, invisible walls, and yellow paint. The graphics. Halo: Campaign Evolved has good fidelity. I cannot say it looks bad or that anything about it does not look like the culmination of modern technology, skilled artists, and people who want to create something vividly detailed. But just knowing that this is a game from 25 years ago makes me think of how much clearer and cleaner this game looked with 2001 technology.

It is harder to differentiate enemies from the environment. While certain weapons, weapon fire, and enemies are affixed with glowy bits, that only highlights how dark the lighting often is. It is simply more difficult to parse out meaningful information.

The original pacing and combat flow was designed around how the game looked and ultimately felt, so seeing this game in motion, seeing how characters move, it looks a bit silly, and not in the good way. The way… army man just stands while firing the turret on the back of the humvee looks fine in the original, as the visuals are abstract enough that sliding is not seen as a big deal. Your brain is predisposed to gloss over it. But in the 2026 remake? Army man just spins around like an action figure on a rotating platform.

This also extends to how gun aiming, reloading, and shooting work, lacking the sense of weight that one would typically expect from a firearm in a realistic setting. This dissonance is also carried over to the enemy designs, looking positively toyetic in a manner that was downright sensible in the 2001 original, yet makes them feel out of place in a world designed for them. The game… the game ultimately looks like a realistic texture pack was applied to an old, not super serious, game from its era. The original art direction is replaced, while the underlying guts seem to resemble each other nicely. It’s the same person, but shoved into a more marketable skinsuit.

Also, they added a waypoint to assist with navigation which… I am completely fine with as an option. I think it is a great accessibility tool for people who get lost in or overwhelmed by 3D games. However, a lot of modern AAA flavored games are downright obsessed with waypoints and REFUSE to let you disable them or turn them off. Why? Because they think you’re freaking stupid and if you don’t know where to go, you’ll just open up TikTok and consume for an our or six.

But to provide a better answer, it’s because games are filled with such large worlds, so many things to do, and such complex visuals that game developers want players to be able to see through the noise. And a waypoint is a very clear way for them to see through the noise. Because, if you are looking at your screen, you will see the waypoint. If you turn the camera, the waypoint moves. You cannot escape the call of progress.

Looking at gameplay of the original, it is not as flashy or detailed as the 2026 remake, but it feels more fitting. It looks like a project with a clear vision that used the technology available to them to inform their vision. And while I can tell a lot of work was done here with this remake, I think it’s vision… kind of sucks.

Halo: Campaign Evolved will be released for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC sometime in 2026. …But they should have just released the Master Chief Collection for PS5 and Switch 2 instead. It would just be a port, yes, but what would you rather have? A collection of six games with multiplayer modes, over 120 maps, and a stage creation feature? Or the single player of the main campaign of the first game, but it looks like an Unreal ‘Nintendo, hire this man’ tech demo… along with three bonus prequel levels?

Personally, I would rather have the former, and I would be correct to want that.

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Progress Report 2025-10-26

GET INSIDE THE AUDINO, MISSY SCRUMPTIOUS!

2025-10-19: Watched The Princess Bride (1987) and The Princess and the Frog (2009) with the girls today. The Princess Bride is a damn essential movie in understanding the humor of elder millennials and late Gen Xers, with so many jokes, humor styles, and

2025-10-20: A Pure PLZA day, yay oh yay!

2025-10-21: Accidentally wrote a 2,800 word segment on PLZA outrage and city game design, getting real loose in my ramblings. Edited Milky Vampire’s TSF Showcase, which is 15,000 words. So today was a good day in terms of productivity.

2025-10-22: Added 200 words to cap off the preamble, wrote 1,800 words about decade long waits for sequels and other stuff. Played more PLZA because I was a good girl.

2025-10-23: Wrote the 1,800 word Kirby Air Riders bit, edited the Rundown, grabbed the images for Milky Vampire. Realized I had to make the fookin images too.

2025-10-24: Wrote the 1,100 Halo bit. Played more PLZA.

2025-10-25: Played more PLZA. Rolled credits, got to the superboss at the end, except it operates on different rules compared to literally every other battle in the game, so now I need to build a super team, but first I decided that I needed to fix my living dex, as I was running out of box space. I HAVE A CATCHING PROBLEM!

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