Rundown (12/14/2025) Natalie Tried Needy Streamer Overdose

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This Week’s Topics:

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Natalie Didn’t Like Needy Streamer Overdose

I’ve had Needy Streamer Overdose installed for a couple months now, waiting for the right time to play it per a request from Rain. I had to do this, that, and the other thing, delaying my playing of it. But with a small gap in my schedule, I decided to give it a whirl, play one complete run of the game, and see what all the fuss, hoopla, and praise was about for myself. After a bit over two hours with it, getting the standard (un)happy ending, I did not get it, and I did not want to play the game any further. Allow me to explain.

Needy Streamer Overdose is Japanese adventure simulation game about a mentally unstable young woman named Ame trying to become a famous live streamer. One with the goal of amassing a million followers in just 30 days. It’s ultimately a game about gaming social engagement, the existential dread that come with being a content creator on the modern internet, and trying to manage the mental state of someone who… needs professional help. And one’s enjoyment of the title is ultimately going to be directly tied to how much they get along with the central character of Ame.

The player adopts the role of the unseen and ungendered P-chan as they are tasked with managing Ame’s various stats and metrics in order for her to flourish as a successful streamer. Which mostly involve spending with her to bolster her mood and expand her interests. This gives her new topics to talk about on stream, while keeping the demons of stress, affection, and mental darkness at bay. There are various ways players can push Ame through these situations. Drugging her, fucking her, forcing her to post on 4chan, or taking her on day trips across Tokyo. And as a modern game about digital relationships, she also has a habit of texting P-chan, seeking validation.

The player is expected to do is some manner of variable juggling in order to achieve a desired ending, standard simulation game fare. But my initial reaction upon what this game had to offer, my first impression of this greedy girlfailure, was that I simply did not want her to succeed. I have had the misfortune of knowing a truly selfish and self-centered person who gauged her metrics as a human being based on made up internet points and a perceived level of communal importance. She wanted to be famous, to be an acclaimed medium-forging writer, and for people to always pay attention to her, because she was deeply miserable and felt she had no place in a country that was ‘abandoned by God.’ I tried to fix this girl, but it did not work.

Ame strikes me, as the same genre of person as this girl I knew. Someone with greed overwhelming who does not understand that success takes time. Not days, but months. And after trying briefly to help maintain her stats, I eventually reached a point where I decided to pivot to a bad ending. Forcing her to stream day after day, watching her stress hit 100, and even telling her to kill herself, because I wanted to see what would happen. Or maybe I am just a vindictive bitch. The jury’s out to lunch. However, this did not work, even after an interactive wrist-cutting game. (Side note, but wrist-cutting is a wannabe poser suicider’s way of looking cool. Real suiciders just take a razor to their jugular or a knife through the eye.)

Instead, Ame managed to recover from her suicidal tendencies after getting fucked by P-chan a couple times, and I was able to get her to a million followers by day 20. How? Well, the way followers work in this game is woefully detached from reality, and the best way to garner followers is to maintain a streak of daily streams. Day 2 has a 2x multiplier, while day 9 has a 9x multiplier, so you really just want to work Ame like a horse, having her stream every day.

I had her stream Twilight Syndrome and she somehow got 449,724 followers in a single day. This game don’t make no sense!

In my run of the game, she was incredibly stressed after reaching a million followers on day 21, and at the verge of exploding with affection for P-chan. So I had her take two days off and then worked towards 2 million subscribers, almost getting there, before reaching the (un)happy end. During this final week, there was no real drama, no concerns, just going through the motions, building up a chain, and doing new tasks that would lead to new possible stream options.

Right, the streams. As Ame’s producer, you serve as her moderator during streams, removing nasty comments from Chat and highlighting the Super Chats you want to her to look at during the end of the stream. It’s not a great portrayal of how livestreaming works per what I can tell— I grew out of livestreams during the Ustream and Justin.tv days. The main attraction is instead watching Ame, under her alias of KAngel, perform her manic pixie e-girl schtick before a captive audience. Talking about games, trying to do sponsorships, delving into conspiracy theories, or having wardrobe malfunctions.

It’s a fine enough concept, but I generally dislike how this game chooses to present its narrative. It is so fractured, variable, and opaque due to its sheer number of variations and the many ways it reiterates the same information. This is a criticism I have towards most simulation games of this sort. In fact, after playing Tokimeki Memorial earlier this year, I think I might just not like the genre.

If I am playing a game for the story, I want the story to be served to me, to be presented to me. I want to help solve a mystery, solve puzzles that are immediately relevant to the story and won’t influence opaque variables. You know why I have such a penchant for creating flowcharts for visual novels? Because I want to absolve these games of the annoying bullshit that is baked into their design. Both for myself and for others. I don’t play Student Transfer to mess with variables. I have Excel for that! I play it for the story.

Needy Streamer Overdose did not give me a significant story to chew on. Trying to build narrative substance out of it felt like trying to build a meal out of crumbs. It’s sustenance, might even be tasty, but it won’t fill me up like even a basic-ass sandwich (visual novel) would. Events come and go without lasting ramifications. And when I was waiting for the game to drop the needle and reveal itself as something greater, hoping that those scattered creepy ten minutes in my playthrough were a preview of something, I felt my patience for the game dry out.

You want to know why Doki Doki Literature Club hit it off as well as it did? Because it was linear-as-hell, and if you played it, you got the full experience, no repeat playthroughs needed. If anything, repeat playthroughs for 100% completion made that game worse.

I would have more patience for the story if I liked Ame, but I don’t. Per what I could glean from her personality, she is a needy, desperate person who does not want to change who she is, and does not understand what she wants. She’s in a shitty situation, but I don’t want to help her. She gives me nothing, I do not like her. I think her goals are fucking moronic. And the idea of being in a relationship with someone like her sets off way too many red flags in my mind.

I want to see Ame institutionalized, so she becomes someone else’s problem. I’ve done my time, paid my dues to society, give a couple thousand bucks to charities, and have tried repeatedly to help people who want to be helped. But her? She doesn’t want to be helped, she just wants validation and to have things handed to her. (Again, per my limited 2.5 hours of experience.)

In other words, this game commits a lot of personal faux pas for me, hits me in some sore spots, and while I can ultimately respect it, I do not like it as a narrative vessel. …And I also don’t like the way the game is presented in general.

I understand what the game is going for. It wants to take place entirely on a virtual desktop reminiscent of the golden era of Windows, Windows 95 through XP. For people ages 30 to 40, maybe even 50, this is a deeply nostalgic aesthetic that harkens back to a simpler internet and time when computers were simpler in general. Where people did not flip through 100 tabs, manage emails, spreadsheets, and Zoom meetings simultaneously, and simply lacked the screen real estate to manage things on the way people do in an HD post-Windows Vista era.

My problem with this is twofold. Firstly, this entire idea if deeply anachronistic in a way that grinds my gears. Livestreaming, streamer culture, and the idea of hanging out with someone chatting, sharing, and showing things are all concepts that developed throughout the 2010s. Well after the Y2K era evoked by the rest of the desktop, by the interface you view the game through. When checking Twitter, streaming on YouTube, chatting on Line, it all feels deeply wrong to me because I know this is not what computer use was like back in 2002. This was not how people used computers! This aesthetic does not mesh well with contemporary phone culture or lingo! I was there! I know what this was like. And I know that this is poisoning the minds of thousands of people by presenting an image of the past that was never true. But more than that… this interface kinda sucks for a video game.

From a game design perspective, Needy Streamer Overload is using its UX as a barrier and obstacle. The information the game needs to share with you could be arranged in a far more concise and contained manner if they used the entire screen, gave everything a place, and just kept everything in that place. No window dragging or resizing necessary. Instead, the main gameplay is fiddling around with windows, trying to arrange things in a way that lets you focus while changing window sizes and dealing with pop-ups. Nothing feels optimized, nothing feels comfortable, I feel like I am playing the game wrong when the fat-ass burger-ass stat window gets blocked by the livestream window. All while the borders of the screen taunt me, teasing me with the potential to have extra screen real estate.

As best as I can tell, the reasons for the 4:3 presentation are nostalgia, vibes, and to make the player feel more claustrophobic. And if so, I would say it succeeds in the worst ways. Older 4:3 simulation games knew how to use screen space effectively. They knew the importance of fixed UX elements and creating an interface that worked towards the game’s systems. Needy Streamer Overdose does not. The UX is your main tool, and your greatest enemy.

Though what really left me just unable to enjoy myself while trying out this game was the soundtrack. There are a lot of ways to make pleasant sounding music on 8-bit and retro gaming hardware, but when you get things wrong, it can sound like a bunch of beeps and boops, arranged to drive someone mad. Just listening to this main song go on for ten minutes was enough to destroy whatever patience I had with this game.

I feel like a cunt for saying this, but I just hated listening to this score. So I turned it off, threw on an album, and just played the game that way. It destroyed a core presentational pillar of this game, denied the creators a channel to present their vision. …But it made for a far better experience. Because I could actually play the game.

The best thing I can say about Needy Streamer Overdose is that I probably just don’t get what makes it good, and lack the right lens or experience to understand it. Which is probably the case here. The game looks dope and I like the idea of a visual novel where you need to help a passionate girl fulfill her realistic dreams. But that’s not what I was given here.

Postal: Bullet Paradise Announced and Canceled Within 48 Hours
(Because The Game Seemingly Used Generative AI)

Let’s begin the jam-filled week with an announcement that I would have covered last week if not for self-imposed word count limits. And to do so, I need to talk about a series that I have not mentioned throughout Natalie.TF’s 13-year-long existence. Postal. In fact, I have never used the word Postal up until this point. How peculiar.

Postal is an artifact of late 90s American cultural malaise and dissatisfaction following the hegemony and deregulation of the 1980s that enriched businesses but left people with stagnant wages and limited prospects. The 1997 original was a deliberately edgy game that glorified violence, spread through controversy, and became an international hit, or rather ‘hit’ because this was the 90s and anybody who wanted to play Postal knew how to torrent.

A sequel followed in 2003, trading in the mission-based isometric shooter gameplay of the original for a first-person sandbox where players could piss on anything, smoke crack rock, light things on fire, and be a public menace. This fixation on edginess makes it fairly easy for some to write-off Postal as being some game for disaffectionate edgelords who typically drift towards American Nazism in the current era. Though, I personally never really viewed these games as being so… politically narrow.

In the increasingly atomized, binary, and extreme political spectrum, it is easy for me to view a lot of late 90s and early 2000s counter-cultural movements as being inherently left-wing or pro-queer, even if they were clearly not. Postal 2 (2003) in particular served as an escape for a lot of disparaged teens during the nationalistic— and culturally regressive— Bush administration, giving them an outlet to be crude, rude, and literally piss on the establishment of American evangelicalism, consumerism, and politics writ large. Also, a lot of trans women tried to make masculinity work for them, during their adolescence, by cosplaying as edgy teenage boys before waking up in their 20s or late teens.

I have a wavering sense of respect for Postal series, as I recognize the value in providing people with a platform to indulge in their edgy indulgences. And compared to what these games could be— an overt pipeline White Supremacists that actively tries to create overly racist White men who kill other White people under the pretense of cleansing the world— I’m inclined to just shrug and give them a pass. There’s plenty to criticize, but I think it’s politics are positively pristine next to the wave of military shooters that, at this point, I’m considering ICE propaganda. If there’s not an ICE unit in Modern Warfare 4, then Microsoft is fucking up.

In recent years, the Postal series has been having something of a resurgence with Postal 4: No Regerts (2022), a sequel to the sandbox nature of Postal 2. Postal: Brain Damaged (2022) took the crude humor of the series and applied it to the framework of a ‘boomer shooter.’ And a re-whatever of Postal 2, Postal 2 Redux, is currently in development. Which is impressive for a series that could have just died out in the early 2000s. Or with Postal III.

As such, it was little surprise to see publisher Running with Scissors announce a new Postal game, Postal: Bullet Paradise. A first-person ‘bullet-heaven’ title with deliberately ‘retro’ graphics from developer… Goonswarm Games. Gosh, they’ll let anybody make an LLC named anything nowadays.

Side Note: Bullet-heaven refers to games inspired by or derived from Vampire Survivors (2022), meant to be a play on the genre of bullet hell shooting games. Other terms, like Survivor-like have been used, but I personally prefer the Japanese name for the genre, moving game. Because you are effectively turning your character into a ‘lawn mower’ that churns up enemies like the blades of America’s favorite finger choppers. And because I am a bitch for Japanese Soft Power, I use the term mowing game, just like how I have converted from shoot ’em ups or shmups to shooting games (STG).

A trailer for Bullet Paradise dropped on December 3rd, and was pretty swiftly met with accusations that the game was using generative AI for certain in-game assets. This snowballed into a viciously negative reaction, and eventually led Running With Scissors to publicly cancel the game on December 4th. Then, a day later on December 5th, developer Goonswarm announced that, after being established six years, their studio has shut down. They also denied that they used any AI generated assets, and seemingly did nothing to defend themselves by showing concept art, WIP assets, or evidence of work being done.

Personally, I did not see any obvious signs in the trailer that the game was using AI assets. The sprites look weird, but some people just draw weird. And while there were some sloppy mistakes that I have seen in compilations, there’s no obvious sixth finger or anything. Though, this key art I saw floating around does look hella AI to me. The fact that I could not spot anything made by generative AI in the trailer is slightly worrying to me, as it indicates that I might not be able to see obvious tells, or that generative AI’s product is getting more refined, as we know it will.

However, the cancelation of this game does set a good precedent in the public’s battle against AI, and this will likely be cited as an example across many studios as they leverage the market viability of using AI assets. If something as crass as Postal can be subjected to a backlash as severe as this over AI allegations, who’s to say that a larger game would be safe from this same overwhelmingly negative criticism?

…I mean, I guess you could point at the AI banners in Black Ops 7, but that’s not the reason for the game’s lacking metrics compared to prior entries. The poor performance is FAR more likely due to a cultural fatigue with Call of Duty and competing shooters that hit the market in the weeks leading up to it. If all your homies are playing Saudi Arabia’s Battlefield 6 or ARC Raiders, then who needs Call of Duty? Shooter fans are not as brand loyal as they might appear.

Katsuhiro Harada Is Leaving Bandai Namco
(Thus Ending An Era For Tekken)

Well, this was a surprising story to wake up to on Monday morning. After over 30 years with the company, Tekken director and producer Katsuhiro Harada is leaving Bandai Namco at the end of 2025. I’ve never been a fan of Tekken— I’ve never actually played a Tekken game to be honest. But I can recognize this as a massive shift for the series, and a shock to many who took his presence for granted. He has been an undeniable part of the Tekken series’ identity, inspiring its eccentricities and acting as the public face of the series for decades. He has been a prominent figure throughout the fighting game community since, well, since its beginnings pretty much. And he has been a rather memeable figure, earning him some respect and recognition within the general core gaming community.

At 55-years-old, it makes sense for him to step back and take on more of a higher level role within the company and across Bandai Namco, which he has. Shifting over to producing and marketing over down and dirty development. Hos decision to leave rather than coast in this high level position might seem odd, but it is reflective of a trend I’ve noticed across many prominent high-level (creative) professionals. They work at a company for decades, build up a lot of respect, have an impressive catalog of work, and then leave to pursue new challenges and ventures.

I would think that management would respect seniority and be willing to give a seasoned professional like him that level of leeway, but after working any job for decades, it’s easy to get fed up with office politics, corporate structures, and doing things in a similar way, around so many of the same people, all while other people leave or die. Stagnation and comfort can stifle the creative spirit, and creators who pride themselves on building things up sometimes want to cap off their careers by building something new. They often want to foster a final team, and spread their creative oats before fading into semi-retirement.

All of this is to say I’m sure Harada has some greater plans and will likely start up a company in the coming years, working on something new. No idea what, and he might not even be sure himself, but I wish him the best.

Paramount Skydance is Attempting a Hostile Takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery
(Because The Corporate Consolidation Must Continue)

Last week, I went on an unsophisticated scree about the nature of mega corporations acquiring one another to consolidate power, disempower workers, and give customers fewer options. And I also went on a tangent about Netflix offering $82.7 billion to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Well, the story has developed further, as Paramount Skydance, which is effectively controlled by techno feudalist billionaire Larry Ellison, has made a $108.4 billion counteroffer. (One that seemingly involves funding from Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners and Saudi Arabia.) All in order to merge two of the biggest film studios in the world.

And… I don’t know what I can add at this point.

I tend to get more than a little nihilistically bitter whenever talks of these acquisitions come up. I have seen how they worked, seen how they destroy value for the sake of financial gain, and how they make life work for workers and customers alike. Simply, I do not like them. I know they will keep happening so long as the US government is so lax about corporate regulation, but my immediate hope is that they fuck themselves over by becoming too big. It’s a somewhat ignorant, wistfully hopeful, desire.

Considering how abused it is, I want the American film industry to crumble to bits. I want American tech companies to be viciously outmoded by superior Chinese software developers. As time goes on, the more agreeable I am to the idea that in order for humanity to be saved, for the future to be bright, America needs to lose its spot as a global leader. In all industries, to ensure the demolition of the securities-based wealth of its wealthiest citizens. I mean, either that or someone could just find these people and remind them that they are naught but flesh.

I want to believe that a correction, that justice, is inevitable. That evil and greed will always be stopped. Even if it is through a catastrophic event that will scar tens of millions to billions of people. That people will ultimately emerge from this disaster more cognizant and smarter, determined to teach these lessons to future generations and prevent this from ever happening again. I need to believe this. That an inevitable peaceful and equal end state of humanity is a certainty, and we are in the middle of a prolonged decades-long resistance to this goal. It’s my dearest hope. And for as much as I bitch, groan, and bemoan the current state of things, I always hold this ideal high, refusing to give it up, until I see the world literally burn before my eyes.

…

Also, in terms of Warner Bros. Games, Netflix said that they did not even factor them as part of their offer, saying that “they’re relatively minor compared to the grand scheme of things.” Which, combined with how Netflix bailed out of the games space, hard, spells bad things for Warner Bros. Games. …Which is nothing all too new.

That entire arm of the company had a lot going for it… about 15 years ago. They had acquired remnants from Midway, were bolstering existing studios, opening new ones, and had a brilliant library of IP to explore. However, as WB main management changed, WB Games management changed, the publisher relationships got significantly worse, monetization and shitty practices were pushed aggressively. I mean, they always were— see the Arkham City Catwoman DLC— but they got worse and worse. And at this point, it’s hard to gauge what the value in the studios actually is.

Rocksteady suffered from a decade of making mid and probably had loads of brain drain. TT Games is trying to set themselves up to make bigger and better Lego games, but they have yet to prove themselves as functioning as a modern multi-project studio. Or that people actively want standard third-person action games but with Lego. Avalanche Software is just the Hogwash Lethargy company after that game sold like 40 million units. Pokémon RGBY numbers! So they are only attractive to feckless dastards without morals. NetherRealm’s games keep selling, they could be bundled with the Mortal Kombat license and succeed anywhere. And all the old Midway stuff could just go to whoever and be re-released via collections, as they lacked many B-tier IPs, let alone A-tier, worth reviving. I would have said Embracer a few years ago, but… NuAtari might be a good fit? God, I hate how we need to theorize which oligarchs will get stray scraps of value in this fucking industry.

Deus Ex Remastered Has Been Indefinitely Delayed
(Mo’ Like Deus Axed)

So, this is an odd story. This September, Aspyr announced that they were working on a remaster of the beloved Deus Ex (2000), one of the five good video games ever made according to the intolerables. However, their remaster work was harshly criticized for looking less like a modern remaster and more like a remaster from the the early years of the Xbox 360, shiny textures and all. Not for the fact that it was being remastered, but the fact that the new visual options were not to the tastes of fans of the original. Now, players could have just switched over to the old look if they wanted, and this re-release was primarily a way to get this game on consoles with a controller-friendly interface. But that did not seem to matter to a lot of people, who asked why this existed when they could just mod the GOG version.

I was pretty positive towards the remastered visuals. I thought they were generally faithful and looked a lot less diseased than the blurry faces of the original. But I was very much in the minority for that take, and history will assuredly see to it that I am punished for it. Aspyr, likely following discussions with Embracer (the rights holder), has chosen to indefinitely delay this remaster, refunding all pre-orders. The game is not being outright canceled, but I would not be surprised if it is, or if it comes back with better, but not exceptional, visuals.

It’s a calculated business move made to maintain the goodwill of fans, the value of the IP, and the reputation of all parties involved. And if it results in a better remaster, then I’m all for it. Though, if I hear one more person talk about how ‘they must give this to Nightdive’ I’m gonna… go figure out how to stuff a whole-ass library into a syringe or something.

Akumako: “There are only a few thousand people on the planet who could possibly get that reference.”

The Game Awards Rundown
(Advertisements and A Pseudo Awards Show)

I swear, every bloody year these things happen I just write the same old guff, and criticize myself for repeating myself. But what is there to even say about Geoff ‘how do I spell his last name’ Keighley’s tri-annual media events? Summer Games Fest, Gamescom Opening Night Live, and The Game Award are all extensions of the gaming press conferences of yore. Glorified justifications to show millions of people a barrage of advertisements of new games. New announcements, new looks at times, and paid spotlights of various live services meant to vampire away people’s precious time and money.

Now, I am a bitch for game announcements and gaming news, as it is something I have been passionate about for… the clear majority of my life. I love seeing where the industry is going, what games are being made, even though I fucking hate so much about the direction so many things are heading in. Call it an obsession, an abusive corporate relationship, but I am always going to be interested in seeing the industry progress.

That does not mean I actually bother watching The Game Awards and sitting through the crap. That does not mean I have an iota of respect for The Game Awards as an institution. You can put makeup on a pig, but it’s still a pig. And you can gussy up the Spike TV Video Game Awards all you like, but they’re still the Spike TV Video Game Awards in spirit, scent, and essence.

I actually watched about an hour of The Game Awards, as I wanted something to watch while I was exercising and doing the dishes, and this fit the bill. All I have to say about that is that Geoff Keighley canonically had sex with Miss Piggy. And it is no surprise that Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 won Game of the Year. I do not care about what a popularity contest says. But I care about how other people perceive this. Specifically people with communal sway and monetary power.

I worry that the success of Clair Obscur has and will lead gaming executives and investors to take away the wrong lessons. Why did it succeed as a turn-based RPG? Why, because it has parrying and action-elements. Why did it succeeds to earn acclaim not typically reserved for JRPGs? Because it looks like an Unreal Engine 5™. It aspired towards realism and flashy particle effects, rather than something more stylized or anime-adjacent. This is totes obvz what people crave, just compare the numbers of Persona versus Clair Obscur! Clair Obscur was made by a new developer as their initial title, making their technology and team from scratch, yet it cost less than $10 million to produce. So naturally an established team should be able to do so for $5 million and do so in 2.5 years instead of 5 years. That’s how math works!

It’s important to recognize that the wealth disparity of the world means that many of the people who fund games are necessarily sophisticated or insightful people. They might not know much about game design or development, may view the investment as strictly financial, and are probably viewing the industry through a wildly different lens than a developer or particularly devote enthusiast.

If I may stereotype, the realistically ideal investor is probably a 39-year-old man who grew up with money, grew up playing games, and plays the occasional video game, but moved away from shooters as he grew older. He would make over $300,000 at The Firm, have a net worth exceeding $50 million, and would happily pay a dollar for a banana at the airport. Someone who hears about the industry in terms of product launches and advertisement, enjoys the occasional video game, owns all the consoles, but does not know what a Xenoblade is.

People like this semi-hypothetical man simply do not have the understanding or desire to understand how the gaming sausage is made, and unless presented with data, will likely make worse decisions than any game dev. They want quick shortcuts, ways to cheat the system, and want to do things better, faster, and cheaper than anyone else. Evidently forgetting the Business 101 factoid that you can only ever have two of those things.

…That being said, I would love to see more games get funded with a scale and budget like Clair Obscur. We don’t need more $200,000 projects that come out to crickets and sell 2,000 copies in their first year. We need more $10 million products that cost a reduced rate at launch, get free marketing from publishing partners, and focus on quality and artistry over monetization. Sell a soundtrack as DLC, but that should be it!

Now, will ANYBODY take this lesson? Probably not. And I also do not honestly think Clair Obscur’s success can be replicated. There have been a lot of fancy AA productions of a similar scale, but Clair Obscur is likely a once-in-a-generation event. Sorry. I have seen how these things go, and the culture will not sustain one darling like this every year, let alone every few months.

Bradley The Badger Announced
(Genre-Bending Parody from Mario + Rabbids Devs)

Bradley the Badger was one of the more immediately eye-catching games of the announcement showcase, as it was something that few studios are willing to take a crack at. A comedic parody game that openly references other titles, makes pastiches of them, and at least appears to have something greater to say about games, the industry, and the act of creation. More specifically, it’s a game where a cartoon badger goes through various ‘unfinished’ thematically diverse worlds and manipulates them to achieve various goals. Stretching objects, changing their properties, possessing and enlarging things, and generally manipulating the world around them in a way meant to evoke what it is like to mess around in a debug mode.

There is something immediately quaint and cute about a colorful cartoon mascot being in a pastiche of Bloodborne, Cyberpunk 2077, or The Last of Us. But if there is one thing I learned from the likes of Conker and Matt Hazard (that is such a deep cut) it’s that to make a good parody/pastiche game, you need to do a lot right. You need to deliver the right type of humor, make a game that holds up even without the humor, and avoid making the game a pain in the ass to play. It takes a lot of skill, precise timing, and that’s probably why few developers pursue it.

Fortunately, the developer of this project is the recently formed Day 4 Night. An studio founded by Davide Soliani, the director of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (2017) and Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope (2022), along with various other Ubisoft Milan staff. …And it was funded in part by Krafton. Uh-oh. The developers have proven themselves as being able to make quality games over the years, and from this initial trailer, I have high hopes for this game.

Stupid Never Dies Announced
(Monster Mashing Action From Ex-Capcom Alumni, Funded by NetEase)

Stupid Never Dies is the debut project from the opaquely named GPTRACK50. A NetEase studio based in Osaka, Japan that was founded by Hiroyuki Kobayashi. A long-time Capcom producer who worked on a bit of everything over the years. But I think the most notable credits on his list are as a producer for the first four Devil May Cry games and the Sengoku Basara series. Kobayashi was around when Capcom was not afraid of making endearing dumb hyperbolic action games, something that has been on the decline over the past decade. There was Exoprimal (2023), Devil May Cry 5 (2019), and Dead Rising 4 (2016), but aside from that? It’s been a bit slim.

So I cannot say I am too surprised to see Kobayashi and a team band together to make a punk rock action RPG about a stupid-ass teenage zombie burnout battling lizardmen, werewolves, and other critters. It’s far more Sengoku Basara than Devil May Cry, but with a distinctly mid-2000s America aesthetic. Right down to the decision to begin the trailer with an in-engine music video of the protagonist, Davy, singing about his relationship with his cheerleader sniper girlfriend, Julia.

It actually has hints of something I would expect from a Grasshopper Manufacture game. In fact, if you told me this was being developed by them, I would believe it. However, looking at the trailer and store page in more detail, I have to ask certain questions about this game’s structure. Is this a level-based affair? A story-driven experience? What is the plot, the goal, and why are there these hordes of copy-pasted enemies all around? How will the body modification system work? Well, I have a theory. That this game is going to be a roguelike action game where the player goes from fairly generic battle caverns to battle enemies, grab new modifiers, and continue through their run. Something that can be played ad nauseam, was probably faster to produce, but might lack substance. I don’t know that for a fact, but it certainly smells like a roguelike.

…I’d circle around and try to compare Stupid Never Dies to Grasshopper’s Let It Die (2016), but upon further thought, that would be a bit of a stretch.

Stupid Never Dies will be released for PlayStation 5 and PC in 2026.

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic Announced
(Will Anybody Like Star Wars in 2028?)

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic was announced as the next and latest single-player Star Wars action RPG and… it was an absolutely nothing trailer. Just a pre-rendered mood piece that was probably farmed out to some third-party CG studio. We know that it will be directed by Casey Hudson, director of the Mass Effect trilogy and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) and developed by his new studio, Arcanaut Studios. But barely anything was said in the game’s announcement. It’s likely at least three years away. And I have nothing much to say about the game specifically other than a boilerplate ‘I hope the game is good.’ This announcement was made so companies can recruit people, Disney does not need to be worried about basic leaks, and people have something to look forward to. That’s basically it.

However, I want to stop and ask about the viability of a Star Wars thing in the modern era. After the fucking disaster that was Rise of Skywalker, the entire IP has been rudderless. Disney has been pursuing TV projects that have largely failed to get the public excited. There has been nothing bold or new to ignite the flame of intrigue that Star Wars warranted during the early 2000s of late 2010s. And the community has been overrun by people who… lack the 5th grade literacy needed to understand what Star Wars is largely about.

As a collective series, Star Wars is about the insidious nature of fascism. About how power structures corrupt over time, and how it’s, unfortunately, up to ordinary people to rebel, resist, and refute the destructive ways of galactic empires. The son must defeat their father after he falls to the dark side and starts doing things that are obviously evil, like planetary genocide. Even the boldest of heroes can lose their spirit and hope as loss, age, and war take away everything they know. But the next generation must always strive, always fight, to imagine a better future. …While also being about cool looking space architecture, beautiful ships, and dope-ass laser sword fights!

I am making it seem so simple when I say that, but the ultimate essence that makes Star Wars is what it is can be found within that. People fighting an evil machine and striving to create a better world. The struggle of people trying to do the right thing in a messy world of shitty politics and destructive superpowers is kind of the foundation. Yet Disney has chosen not to highlight that with their recent run of series, which have largely been vehicles for fan-favorite characters to come back and do… some stuff, I guess for 6 to 8 episodes, buried between existing continuity. All before accomplishing something, maybe. It was oversaturated, overproduced, and the only real gem that came out of this was Andor.

In terms of video games, things are also kind of a mess. Star Wars Outlaws (2024) was a solid open world action game that tried to buck the bad rep Ubisoft built over the past decade, but it underperformed, big time. Which is weird, as it’s decently close to what Visceral would have delivered if EA didn’t cancel their game. There is no new Star Wars shooter on the market, when shooters are a dominant form of gaming for a lot of casuals, as Americans enjoy pretending to kill their friends more than masturbation.

The Knights of the Old Republic – Remake, announced in 2021, shifted from Aspyr, who lacked the resources to make a modern remake of an Xbox game, to Saber Interactive, but it may be canceled. And a remake of KotOR II may also be in development. But those are not new Star Wars, they are just a repackage of old Star Wars, based in nostalgia. And while Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi series has done big numbers, there is reason to doubt the viability of anything Star Wars nowadays.

…Also, where is Quantic Dreams’ Star Wars Eclipse? It was announced at The Game Awards four years ago, and we have heard nothing about it. I don’t think it would be any good, but if there’s anything I can say about David Cage’s games is that they make for great comedy.

Also, also, I did not realize that Star Wars: Galactic Racer was announced until I was editing. I do not particularly care though, as I always found pod racing to be sorta boring.

Larian Announces Divinity
(No Subtitle or Number, Because Screw You!)

lol. lmao even.

Divinity was announced as the next project from the Baldur’s Gate III (2023) and, uh, Divinity developer Larian Studios. And much like with Star Wars FotOR, it was announced via a vague teaser trailer that, if the Baldur’s Gate III announcement was anything to go on, will have nothing to do with the final game. )Well, unless those squid people actually appeared in the final game.)

The trailer actually goes pretty hard into disturbing territory, featuring a guy burning alive in a giant wicker man, before his body body horrors and becomes a demonic monument. One that was part of a marketing campaign by The Game Awards. But, as per usual, what I find more interesting than the trailer itself is the context around it.

Larian started as a teensy computer RPG developer who moved past making pre-tendered overhead action RPGS with Divine Divinity (2002) and Beyond Divinity (2004). Titles that were easy to ignore given the limited distribution of PC games at the time and their more niche low-end nature. It was the 21st century, people wanted fantasy games that looked like World of Warcraft and Morrowind.

They finally caught up to those standards with Divinity II: Ego Draconis (2009), which is actually the only Larian game I have much experience with, and I loved it. Well, the updated Xbox 360 version, The Dragon Knight Saga, which came out in the US in 2011 courtesy of Atlus. It was a big girthy RPG full of voice acting, oddball comedy, side quests, a chimera homunculus flesh buddy companion, and the good kind of eurojank. Oh, and and you could turn into a dragon after a couple hours, giving the game two key ways to play and navigate its impressively large world, relative to the time. It was a dope ‘play it for 5 hours every day after school while consulting a printed out walkthrough’ type of game. God, that game was so jank in its progression and collectibles, damn near requiring a guide to find everything, but I loved it anyway!

After Divinity II did decently well, Larian decided to branch off and develop two games. Divinity: Dragon Commander (2013), an RTS game where you take the role of a military commander who must manage three pillars of gameplay. Broker political arrangements, determine general grand strategy, and partake in real-time aerial combat where the protagonist transforms into a dragon with a jetpack. It’s a peculiar game that did not get the attention it deserved, when it really should. I’m pretty sure Harris the Bomber Guy listed it as one of his top ten games of the 2010s, and he should probably make a video about how cool it is.

Following this, Larian released Divinity: Original Sin (2014) and Divinity: Original Sin II (2017). A pair of robustly detailed overhead RPGs that could be seen as an expansion of Divine and Beyond, but with a key twist. These games were designed as co-op adventures, letting players make their own characters, recruit NPCs, and play with friends. They laid the groundwork that Baldur’s Gate III built upon, were great RPGs in their own right, and by branching out to consoles, they became accessible to a whole new world of people.

For the past decade, Larian has been committed to building upon this foundation, and it has worked out wonderfully for them. Projects had to be canceled, but they went from making eurojank to making the defining game of 2023. However, this does raise questions for what direction they will take with their newest game… which they are simply titling… Divinity.

…Respectfully, go fuck yourself, Larian. You are an independent company, you can choose the name of your game, yet you decide to make it the name of the series of games you developed over the past 23 years? This will just make it harder for people to find information on this game. I know they never released a game called Divinity, but that is not how search systems work. People like to shorten titles down to as few words as possible. And I can almost guarantee this will lead to issues unless they wise up and add a subtitle. Just call it Divinity VII and nobody will ask questions!

Remedy Announces Control Resonant
(With a Weirder, Wider World)

Remedy’s Control (2019) was a game that I always viewed as a compromise that, somehow, managed to become one of the most celebrated games of its release year. After Quantum Break (2016) was a bust and Remedy ended their relationship with Microsoft, they did an IPO, became a publicly traded company, and worked their butts off to get a solid yet efficient shooter out. One that saved on resources by taking place in a bizarre brutalist office complex haunted by SCP critters. It was a success… but only based on internal standards, as while their name is respected amongst highly online game yappers, their games consistently sell, like, half of what I expect them to.

Anyway, after taking care of unfinished business with Alan Wake 2 (2023), Remedy moved back to working on a Control sequel, one that aimed to go bigger. And per their reveal trailer, they are clearly succeeding in that goal. Dubbed Control Resonant, the title sees the reality distortions of Control branch out beyond the New York City office building and into the island of Manhattan. Where this otherworldly force has warped and twisted reality in unnerving ways, filling the streets with all manner of humanoid mutations.

It’s a bolder setting with more striking iconography out the gate. Though, the most obvious takeaway is a change in protagonist. Ditching Jesse Faden— the hot redhead lady in a leather jacket with a transforming gun— for a disheveled-looking beardman who fights using melee combat with the help of two pointy metal sticks that can morph into various weapons. It’s different, though I have to worry that a new protagonist who just looks like some White dude— not even a legacy White dude— might turn some people off who don’t want to play as this new schmoe.

Akumako: “You say that whenever they switch from a female protagonist with a recognizable design to some dude in a jacket.”

Yes. And am I even wrong?

Control Resonant will be released for PS5, Xbox Series, Steam, and Epic Games Store sometime in 2026.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Atlantis & Tomb Raider: Catalyst Announced
(The First New Tomb Raider Games in Nearly a Decade!)

Tomb Raider has one of the more nebulous and confusing histories in the world of video games, yet it has remained a consistent pillar of the industry. The original run on PS1 was defining for the console, its generation, and gaming as a whole. A cluster of titles that truly pushed what third-person action adventure games could be… before Ocarina of Time showed up and broke the mold again. Angel of Darkness (2003) very well could have represented the end of the series, being an overly ambitious mess that not even a remaster could fix.

Instead, the series persevered throughout the 2000s, bolstered by the Angelina Jolie movies’ success and the fact that it was the cash cow that pulled Eidos through the 1990s. But the original developer, Core Design, was screwed over by Eidos, had the IP taken away from them, and was left denied the opportunity to remake their own game. Their relationship was severed, and the Tomb Raider IP was handed to Crystal Dynamics, who had put their flagship IP, Legacy of Kain, on hold after the last two annualized games underperformed. Crystal Dynamics shepherded the series for three years, delivering an annualized trilogy of titles, including a full remake of Tomb Raider (1996). However, Tomb Raider: Underworld (2008) failed to impress during the great financial crisis and remains one of the lowest selling Tomb Raider games to date.

As this was happening, Eidos was in the midst of being acquired by Square Enix, leaving Crystal Dynamics in a precarious predicament, as their new owners had new ideas for what to do with the IP. They played it safe with the co-op downloadable isometric banger that was Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (2010), a wildly different take on the series that I found pretty dang fun when I was 16. But the next big move for the series was to create a gritty origin story reboot simply called Tomb Raider (2013). This kicked off a wave of discourse as gamers and games writers had to grapple with Feminist Theory 101. …And if they were aroused by seeing a White woman get brutalized by shrapnel. (If you can’t masturbate to the Tomb Raider (2013) death animations, that’s a skill issue!)

The 2013 reboot, despite Square Enix’s moronic expectations, was a massive success, spurring a trilogy of games that continued with Tomb Raider: Rising (2015) and Tomb Raider: Shadows (2018). …What? Those are their correct names.

After this… crickets! Tomb Raider was a well-oiled machine at this point. The latest trilogy of games all sold over 9 million copies, Crystal Dynamics and co-developer Eidos Montreal had a system in place. But Square Enix held off on going forward with a fourth game, instead having the developers work on Marvel’s Avengers (2020) and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (2021).

The former was an unfortunate live service that the developers tried to make work, but was ultimately delisted. Partially because it did not have the characters from the MCU, partially because it was grindy as hell, and partially because a lot of people had already jumped off the Marvel train post-Endgame. Guardians was actually a great story-driven third-person action game, but it flopped because it also was not an MCU product, the marketing was not as big, and people were burned by Avengers.

Afterward, Crystal Dynamics started working with Microsoft and The Initiative on Perfect Dark Reboot which was announced in 2020 and canceled this past summer. While Eidos Montreal is helping Playground Games with Fable Reboot, which… at this point I think I just want to rejoice in the schadenfreude of seeing every Microsoft project get canceled. That would be hilarious and horrific! Kill them, Microsoft! Kill them all!

Oh, and in 2022, Embracer bought both Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal from Square Enix, in case you thought things seemed too stable at these studios.

Because of the combined mismanagement of Square Enix, Embracer, and Microsoft, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal are in a fuck-awful situation. They have no money, are struggling to ship anything of substance, and have undergone significant layoffs. Both companies are rapidly downsizing and having internal projects canceled as AAA game development grows increasingly unsustainable. And to make matters worse, in 2023 Amazon began leasing the Tomb Raider IP, planning on building a multimedia venture involving films, TV shows, and games. And if things continue going south, maybe they’ll just buy the IP outright. I don’t know at this point!

The only material Tomb Raider games to grace the world in the past seven years have been re-releases of the original Core Design titles, co-developed by Aspyr and Crystal Dynamics. Which are great remasters. But for fans of new stuff? Uh… Netflix just finished, as in this past week, a two season long animated series meant to bridge Tomb Raider: Shadows and Tomb Raider (1996), dubbed Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft.

So, with all of that context, let’s finally get into the actual story. At The Game Awards, not one but two new Tomb Raider games were announced. I guess you could call it a Two-omb Raider announcement, eh, eh?

Akumako: “That was awful even by your standards.”

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Atlantis is the second remake of Tomb Raider (1996), built upon the foundation of the 2010s’ Survivor trilogy, but is also remarkably different at the same time. Gone are the darker hues and more serious tone, and instead the game aims to harken back to the more experimental and tongue-in-cheek nature of the original Core Design titles.

Lara’s narration in the trailer is not full of quips or snide remarks, but she also sounds confident and experienced. The aesthetic trappings of the original are still there. Lara still dives back as she shoots at a red dino with dual pistols. She is back to wearing her iconic light blue tank top and khaki booty shorts, but her proportions are far more grounded in an actual person. And the acrobatic feats seem a lot more platformer-y as opposed to the more context-sensitive navigation of prior games. She leaps and moves like a gymnast. And the game is striking a pretty decent balance between realistic and colorful. With a lot of lights that make primary colors pop, which was often a problem in the Survivor trilogy.

Simply put, I think it looks pretty good, at least per a curated 90 second snippet. Though, I do need to raise an eyebrow at the fact this is not entirely a Crystal Dynamics joint. Instead, they are getting development aid from Flying Wild Hog, developer of the Shadow Warrior reboot series, Trek to Yomi (2022), and Evil West (2022). They are a competent and skilled developer, though I have to imagine that they were only chosen because they had an opening, were owned by Embracer, and were based in Poland. And Poland is WAY cheaper than the Bay Area, where Crystal Dynamics are based.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Atlantis will be released for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam in 2026.

Oh, and I do not care if this remake changes some things, as they just released a very faithful remaster of the original games. You can also just buy the originals on Steam or GOG.

Tomb Raider: Catalyst was also announced, in a move that I’m sure confused some people, as a new original entry in Lara’s story as the raider of tombs. It is positioned as a sequel to Underworld, moving the timeline forward, set in Northern India, and features a seasoned and experienced Lara, sporting a braided ponytail meant to evoke how she looked in the 1990s. She also dual wields pistols, which is FUN! The trailer revealed little else, but that might be the point. It’s a teaser, and Tomb Raider: Catalyst is not out until 2027. This gives people something to show, something to talk about, and helps drum up the hype machine. It gives the developers the ability to drop breadcrumbs of information over time.

Welcome back Lara. Now please stick the landing, or else Crystal Dynamics is going to get shut down.

Tomb Raider: Catalyst will be released for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam in 2026.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve Announced
(Ace Combat is BACK! Again!)

Ace Combat is a very strange series for me to look back on. From the first year of the PlayStation, it became the premiere plane game series for the platform, with titles that incrementally improved with each entry. The first game was was more like a test, while the third game boasted a robust multi-ending campaign with some absolute insane spectacles. This growth continued throughout the PS2 and PS3 generations, where the series became a pillar for Namco and later Bandai Namco, but it was something I never recall people talking about. …Pretty much just like Armored Core.

I think perception is more due to the time I began perusing gaming discourse in 2008. Right after Ace Combat 6 (2007) jumped ship to the Xbox 360, away from the series’ Japanese base, and before Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (2011) came out an marketed itself more as a military shooter, despite still being Ace Combat. While Ace Combat Infinity (2014)… was a late PS3 exclusive that I have literally never heard of. But it has a 54 on Metacritic, so there’s probably a good reason why.

To me, the series only really became a known modern entity with the release of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (2019). A critically lauded entry that was able to capture an international audience, becoming the most successful game in the series, bar none. Why? Because it was on modern consoles, on PC, had a social media presence, and entered a market where people were more receptive to flight combat games, given the existing popularity of games like War Thunder.

Which, coincidentally, is this week’s sponsor of Natalie.TF Rundowns! War Thunder is the most comprehensive vehicle combat game—

Akumako: “Shaddup, you! We don’t have time for your bits!”

Fiiiinnnneee!

Point is, Ace Combat 7, much like Armored Core 6 after it, was the most successful game in the series, introduced the series to a whole new generation, and was a damn good game. …Which is why I was befuddled that Bandai Namco didn’t fast-track a sequel. It has been almost SEVEN YEARS since the last game, I know Bandai Namco has been working with ILCA to set up an Ace Combat studio. …But they already had a dedicated team, so why not develop a game in-house with help from a newly made support studio? Or do Ace Combat games just take seven years to make these days? I know that’s becoming the norm for some AAA studios, but that is just a stupid amount of waiting. 7 years is a life changing amount of time.

ANYWAY! The story here is that Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve was announced for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC. And it sure looks like an Ace Combat game, meaning it looks like a Hollywood aircraft movie but with the panache, fixations, and overly exaggerated grandeur that I would expect of a team of seasoned Japanese creatives. I think it looks good, but I don’t actually know much about Ace Combat. I need to be given a good retrospective on the series, how it evolved narratively and mechanically, in order to really get it.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve will be released for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam in 2026.

Mega Man 12: Dual Override Announced
(Capcom Finally Remembered Mega Man!)

Why do I keep going back to the idea that publishers should nurture their franchises, appease fandoms, and give them fuel with regular new releases every 2, 3, or even 5 years? Well, because that’s how the games industry used to work. You put out games, build IPs, build a fandom, and use that fandom to help spread the games across more people. It is how things worked for years, before the concept of fandoms was even recognized or unified through the internet. Yet so many publishers seem to be shying away from the idea of regular releases that it’s damn maddening.

Now, there are reasons for this. We are still feeling the ramifications of COVID as it affected game development for a solid two years, messing up the timeline of everything. The games industry has been home to a flurry of cancelations, people are being fired from their jobs, studios are shutting down, and production costs are only going up. This means there are fewer quality legacy IP games coming out, probably fewer people to who are working on them compared to 2022, and investors are becoming a lot more specific with what they want to see from major studios. And games are now competing with years-old titles that exist on the same digital store shelf. Re-releases, games from a decade ago, and oodles of random similar junk all sit together on digital store shelves, and many titles are still selling even years after their release due to many reasons.

However, this still does not get at my concern that this is affecting the ability for games to retain a community, a fandom, and maintain the interest of people over the span of years and years. If a new game in your favorite series comes out every two years and gets some DLC in the interim, there is rarely ever a shortage of things to talk about with fellow fans. But if you go years without seeing anything, then how can a fandom even sustain itself? Well, often it cannot and just dies down to dribs and drabs. Or the type of people who would become fans will just flock over to some ethereal live service that will be dead in five years.

I firmly believe that people want to get invested in substantial properties that will be with them for years. They want movies they love to get literal or spiritual successors. They want shows to go back to the format of yore where they get 20 episodes a year instead of 8 episodes every two years. They want something to look forward to, something to talk about with other people. Otherwise, what else is there to talk about? The Epstein Files?

Capcom has to understand the importance of keeping series open and alive, yet seem to struggle with that. Ace Attorney has been on hiatus for 8 years while Capcom has re-released every game in the series. While Mega Man went from one of the most prolific series in Capcom’s portfolio to a damn afterthought. Mega Man 11 (2018) was meant to usher in a new era for the series. They built the foundation, and with a Mega Man game, you should not reinvent the wheel every time. They could have done anything for a new game, even started a new subseries, and people would have been pretty cool with it, especially with all the collections they have been putting out. But no, instead they took a series— a series that could easily be licensed to an outside studio, because it was— and put it on ice.

No, Mega Man X DiVE Offline (2023) does not count. It is a Mega Man gacha game that does not feel like Mega Man. I played it for 40 hours, I would know.

Fortunately, Capcom has decided to answer fans’ pleas by announcing Mega Man 12: Dual Override. Per the snippets of gameplay shown… it just looks like another Mega Man 11 (2018). Now, doing a quick eyeballing of some footage, I do not think that they are reusing a bunch of assets or anything. Mega Man’s movements are pretty uniform and the proportions are very different in Dual Override. The platforms have additional depth to them and look less like 2D assets, same with backgrounds, and the game generally looks better.

However, after 7 years of silence on a new game, expansion, or anything new, Mega Man, and video game, this feels a bit hollow. There’s not even any clear showcase of a new mechanic, though Mega Man can now open up parts of his body to reveal his glowing hot innards.

Maybe I am just a jaded former Mega Man fan who loved how prolific the series was in the mid to late 2000s. Maybe I took 10% of my humorous sensibilities from the acclaimed Mega Man fan comic Bob and George. But I am annoyed that we are 15 years after the Inafune era of Mega Man and still getting fed little but collections and 2.5D platformers that somehow take 7 years to make. I get that expectations are higher than ever. That The Gamers™ refuse to be satisfied, that the resources spent on a Mega Man could go to a Resident Evil. But I don’t care about such excuses. I just want people to get a new Battle Network game, a new Mega Man X game, and I know that there are 50 studios, literal thousands of game devs, who would jump at the opportunity to do either.

Mega Man: Dual Override will be released on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series, Switch, Switch 2, and PC via Steam in 2027.

Gang of Dragon Announced
(Nagoshi Studio Presents Like A Yakuza)

Gang of Dragon is the natural conclusion to a development that has been playing out over the past few years. Toshihiro Nagoshi was the creative lead for the Like A Dragon series up until 2021, when he left Sega and RGG Studios to establish his own studio, the creatively named Nagoshi Studio. This studio was funded by NetEase, who most likely asked Nagoshi to create a game like Like A Dragon. And, well, he delivered just that. Gang of Dragon is so similar to Like a Dragon that it would be considered a rip-off in any other context.

It’s a contemporary Japanese crime drama action game where a man gets in trouble with the local yakuza and is sent into some manner of conflict that involves a series of familiar touchpoints. High intensity sports car racing, bare-knuckle brawls, life-changing stabbings, the shooting of machine guns, katana battles, and exploding buildings! And if you look at the Like A Dragon series… you’ll find examples of all of these. Hell, the trailer ends by highlighting that the main setting is the streets of Kabukicho, which is the basis of Like A Dragon’s Kamurocho

I guess the art direction is a bit different— more muted— but per the cutscene compilation provided, it looks very derivative of prior works, and is mostly differentiated through the new protagonist. Shin Ji-seong, a Korean man who is larger in stature compared to Kazuma Kiryu. Not fat, but a man full of muscle who clearly enjoys himself a hearty meal. And between a gold necklace, gold watch, and gold ring, he’s clearly not as modest or reserved.

Naturally, I hope it all works out and can stand as its own thing, but I cannot help but be a little worried about how this game will play out. The screenshots on the Steam store page make the game look more like a third-person shooter than a brawler. Seeing this many guns in a game set within Japan just does not seem right to me. Some of the mooks have beanies down so low they completely cover their eyes. And seeing someone in a game like this fire a minigun is… just off-putting. It implies that the game will lack the most important element of Like A Dragon. The heart. The ability to balance earnestness with silliness into something deeply compelling and beautiful.

Oh, and no release window was provided, which was strangely common throughout this whole show.

Progress Report 2025-12-14

MADNESS MADNESS I AM THE MADNESS!
Yu-Gi-Oh GX S03E46

OKAY! Time for another schedule update, last one before the big Rundown schedule thing! Starting with the ENDGAME schedule for 2025:

  • 2025-12-??: Student Transfer Version 9 Review – WAITING FOR RELEASE
  • 2025-12-25: Needy Streamer Overload Review (Rain Request) – Done via Rundown Preamble
  • 2025-12-30: TSF Showcase 2025-14: Trans Venus – DONE
  • 2025-12-31: Natalie Rambles About 2025 (The Trial of Natalie Neumann) – WIP

Suicide to Salvation is NOT going to be completed in 2025 at my current trajectory, and I have decided that it will be too much of a murder-fuck story to be TSF Series. But I will not discard this idea.

My Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension Review/Ramble has been delayed until Legends Z-A received Pokémon Home integration. The DLC was pissing me off, telling me that I had to erase several dozen Pokémon in order to play the game that way I wanted to play it. And I would rather wait and offer a more positive piece than deliver something laced with spite and vinegar!

I am currently trying to come up with a compromise for my new schedule, and I think the best one I can offer is roughly one non-Rundown post a month, with the exception of July 2026, which will be dominated by Verde’s Doohickey 2.0.

  • 2025-01-20: Novella – Suicide to Salvation – Partially outlined, changed from TSF Series to its own thing
  • 2026-03-06: Natalie Rambles About Pokémon Black (Skillet Request) (15th anniversary of North American release)
  • 2026-06-03: re:Dreamer Review #6
  • 2026-07-01: Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp Act 3: Worldly Wonders – Outlined, just need to write it, damn it!
  • 2026-??-??: Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension Review/Ramble – Will cover after Pokémon Home integration is added
  • 2025-??-??: TSF Series #019: TBD
  • 2026-??-??: TSF Series #020: Chateau del Bitz
  • 2026-??-??: Fate/Stay Night Remastered Review (Shiba Request)
  • 2026-??-??: A Mirror’s Curse Review
  • 2026-??-??: Coffee Buns Review
  • 2026-??-??: Thread – A Tale of Identity, Monsters, and College Review
  • 2026-12-??: Pokémon Wind Review
  • 2026-12-29: Natalie Rambles About 2026

2025-12-07: Finished editing the Trans Venus showcase, so THAT’S DONE! Also, somehow added like 500 words in rewriting things that made no sense.

2025-12-08: Wrote 1,200 words for this Rundown, doing the Paramount, Harada, and part of The Game Awards bit. Got all 85 fookin images for Trans Venus’s showcase. Played two hours of Needy Streamer Overdose— it’s the original and better name— but could not arrange all my thoughts before bedtime. Me no likey it though.

2025-12-09: Wrote 2,100 word Needy Streamer Overdose preamble. Played Pokémon Legends: Z-A Mega Dimension for like 7 hours.

2025-12-10: Played another two hours of Mega Dimension before getting frustrated with how it handled some things and shelving it for now. JUST GIVE ME MORE BOXES GAME FREAK! Then I decided to work on the 2025 Ramble in earnest. Building onto about 1,000 words I wrote earlier, the Intro is mostly done, the America/politics part is drafted, for now, and now I just need to decide the structure for the rest of this. But hey, that’s 3,800 words in a night! Also, went to the office to set up a new PC, which is always FUN! God, Windows 11 is such a fussy operating system with all the crap you need to change. Fuck the new context menu, fuck the centered taskbar, and fuck that gross genie effect when windows minimize. And I had to do that THREE TIMES for each user, because I did not know how to copy settings across users! Orz…

2025-12-11: Cassie stole me for 6 hours of anime watching, because she is that kind of friend. Then I wrote about 500 words of clean up glue stuff for the 2025 Ramble. Then I wrote 6,300 words for The Game Awards.

2025-12-12: Edited this bloated cow and got her ret-2-go to the fair. Wrote like 500 words of extra fill-in for the 2025 Ramble.

2025-12-13: Wrote 3,000 words for the Ramble, watched 12 episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh GX with Cassie, finishing the whole-ass 155 episode series in just 6 weeks. Wanted to do more, but I was too tempted by spreadsheets.

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  1. Ouran Nakagawa 12/30/2025 Reply

    Oomfie, you didnt play the true Needy Streamer experience. You needed to hop up on some fentanyl during each play session!