High on Life

That- uh- That'll do it.

There comes a time in each man's life where whether he intends to or not he'll end up confronted the path of the life he lived and challenge it against his own dreams. He'll ask himself why he is here and not there, how much he deserves what he has and if he deserves something different, and is there ever going to be a point in his life where he can escape the shadow of his successes to rove out in search of something new. I'd imagine it was one of these intrinsic drives that led to the creation of Squanch games, the games company owned and co-created by seasoned entertainment industry creator Justin Roiland attempting to add a layer of intractability to his signature styles of explosive and often crass humour mixed around a swirl of random to create the surprising. I can appreciate that, I can appreciate the visual style and I can certainly appreciate the diversity of the games they make; but my god am I getting a little tired of hearing the Morty voice in every one of their projects. Justin is a voice actor, right? He can do other voices, can't he? Heck, isn't he LemonGrab? Do that voice- anything else! (Never thought hearing something reminds me of R&M would make me roll my eyes so much.)

That being said, I meant the rest of my praise. This really is a studio that tries different approaches and ideas and genres pretty much everytime they sit down to make a game. And whilst that isn't to say they're remaking the wheel with each new project or anything (although they did slide in relatively early to the whole 'VR' thing), you don't have to in order to make an entertaining experience game. Which is how I'd pretty much sum up their style of games. Each are experiences, typically tipped towards random humour. (I would say 'surrealist'; but that term seems a bit strong for their decidedly more focused, yet still absurdist, comedy content.) They don't have the eye-watering mind distorting insanity of 'Cruelty Squad' or even that game which melted my frontal cortex a while back, 'Parasight'; but they do send you on loopy experiences pieces that typically present funny voices for funny looking people having prolonged conversations that get funnier the more you endure them. 

Which is why I'm both quiet surprised that this latest game of theirs is a shooter, and the fact that it took so long for them to get here to an FPS in the first place. Shooters are like the first game ever made by industrial man; you'd have thought this lot would have wiggled their way around to parodying this style of game a tad sooner. But to be fair, if what the trailer we've seen of this work is at all indicative of the scope and scale of the game they intend to deliver; High on Life could very well be their most ambitious game that Squanch games have ever made. Which is to say that this trailer revels in vibrant and diverse environments that look supremely open and encouraging to the 'investigator' style of player, in the same sort of way that odd school level-based FPS' might have been had their design principles made it into the modern era of gaming. I get real old-school Halo 'curated safari' vibes from the footage I'm seeing right now.

Following the showcase of Redfall was a little unfair for Arkane's first bout into multiplayer action given the forced funny of that game clashing against the natural humorous vibe that High on Life enjoys woven into it's very concept. I mean stopping an intergalactic Alien drug cartel from kidnapping and converting humans into their product is morbidly absurd from the get-go, even as an excuse to have the player flit about with guns that speak back to them in unique personalities with their own firing mechanisms. It's a decidedly novel concept that invites creativity in the same sort of way that Oddworld Stranger's Wrath did with it's bug-based weapons that fired similar themed ammunition; I wonder if there might be a bit of the ol' creative inspiration spawning from that end of the development world.  

What I'm immediately impressed by, just watching the trailer of this game, is the quality of the visuals as they are. I mean sure, Squanch games have always had a high quality of visual presentation that matches the best of 3d animation at times, but again those games have always been undemanding from a game performance standpoint. (Barring the ritualistic sacrifices required to get a functional VR set functioning. I always source the wrong breed of goat.) I would have believed that an in-your-face action game might demand concessions but I would be very wrong, the environments pop with vibrant full colours fitting this toy-box aesthetic not unlike how I'd imagine a 3d iteration of Roiland's iconic show looking. And the animation department does the rest of the work to make this gameplay look AAA quality from the visuals alone. 

Though it might seem a little hairbrained to compare the two, right now I'm seeing High on life gameplay and am mentally comparing it to a goopier and cuddlier version of DOOM, albeit in more of a 'broad strokes' sort of way. By that I mean you've got the decent paced action in distinct looking environments, enemies that, from a moment's glance, seem visibly diverse enough to support some decently varied combat encounters and keep the level-to-level play feeling fresh, and there's even a goreless version of that ultraviolence which is sure to make a few people wince regardless of the lack of blood. That shot of the knife digging into that one Alien's giant eye and dragging it out of his skull is pretty much as visceral as your typical DOOM execution as it is. If the developers can live up to that level of FPS gameplay fun then there'll undoubtedly be a very special game on our hands.

What is interesting to me from a business stand point, is that this game is actually going to be a console exclusive to the Xbox, which apparently means it's going to come to everything but the Nintendo and Playstation ecosystem despite Microsoft's apparent great relationship with the big N. And when I say everything, I very much mean the last gen consoles as well because for this moment at the very least Microsoft seem utterly unwilling to leaves the Xbox One behind in any situation where they can help it. I wonder exactly what High on Life is taking advantage of for next gen machines in order to look at good as it does and what of that is going to be sacrificed in order to have a working last gen version. (maybe some raytracing, I did see some pretty reflective puddle technology.)

High on Life looks like another solid game out of Squanch games which is a bit of a slap in the face to me because I fully expected this whole company to be one of those short lived experimental groups who come together to put out one game and then just sort of exist for a while until they get snapped up by a bigger conglomerate and are never heard from again. That seems to be the safer route for a fledgling game company to go, but Squanch really wants to make a go of his whole 'indie' thing and I commend them for it. With every success they put out they're slowly establishing themselves as a high quality alternative to a lot of the big studios and we've been missing sort of disparity for a long time, good on the team and I hope they keep smashing away at hit after hit as their dreams grow to meet their talents.

Starfield is going to love modders

 Building Buildings here.

When it comes to Bethesda games, the lifecycle of how their titles evolve is somewhat atypical compared to your usual game's life span. There's the initial high bump of release and the steady holding pattern of your typical week ever supplemented whenever DLC releases, but then there's the near unending second-life granted by the release of the modding tools and dumped in the lap of the community. Players who just love these games so much that they want to expend creative efforts on stamping their own minds within this play space, and those are the kinds of players who will keep these games alive for as long as they can, each flock to make and remake new and old gameplay systems constantly. Which is why every Bethesda game sort of needs to take it's best swing at designing itself for the modder tomorrow as well as for the player today, making sure there's enough free canvas to be worked with as well as completed vistas for everyone to love. Pretty much what the perfect launch of any live services should be, except even Bethesda themselves managed to screw that up with their drop of 76. (That genre of game is just deeply cursed, I swear.) 

Starfield, providing it comes out and is every bit the game that Bethesda is selling it as which is absolutely not a guarantee, could be one of the greatest gifts to modding that Bethesda had provided yet, with a base game absolutely splayed out for the hand of the community to toss around and shape like silly putty. Though some games typically end up scoring more fan love than others, sometimes due to the pull of the genre and sometimes just the preference of the game itself (as well as how easy it is to inject new stuff into the world) I think that Bethesda's newest IP has a real chance to give them all a damn decent run for their money. New Vegas and Skyrim may have more mods than should be humanely possible to create, but I think Starfield might be the middle ground which can unite the passions of both utterly insanely creative communities. Again, provided the base game knocks it out of the park.

My first evidence for this is the most obvious; the size of the game proposition. It's no secret at this point, Starfield is going to be an ungainly huge game with over 1000 apparently full-sized interstellar bodies for the players to explore, with a makeup balance between procedural generation and handcrafted goodness that we can only speculate on for the time being. But even with those tipped scales, Todd Howard has come out to inform us all the world that this will not be a galaxy of equals. What we're looking at is an expansive and sprawling playspace for sure, but that doesn't mean we're not going to have some empty planets out in the stars that exist as mere resources heaps for players. We absolutely will have those. Just as we'll have mass stretches of empty nothingness on even the big populated planets just begging for stuff to fill their empty spread, and you can likely imagine how this attacks a big problem for modders.

Almost every mod-loved game suffers from the lack of space to stick their new stuff in, and as such overlap in a given. New Vegas had the 'Goodsprings' problem, where most every new mod was spawned in that tiny sleepy settlement in such a way that it made this tiny settlement seem like the most rambunctious, bizarre place in the wasteland, and even Skyrim had a smaller scale version of this issue with a lot of it's mods dotted typically on the road between Riverwood and Whiterun, making that early game sprint one of the most hazardous for those preferring peaceful low-level strolls. Fallout 4 seemed to be better for that, and I imagine Starfield won't be immune to it; but the novelty of seeing two edited cells in the exact same place is going to be a story worthy of the forums rather than just an annoying inevitability. Except for the dozens of city reworks coming for the game's big four. Those are obviously going to stepping on all of the same toes.

There is also a very wanting combat system, which is certainly a bit of a dampener for the players but a boon for the prospect of the modders. One of the first things a modder has to confront is deciding exactly what to add to the game they're faced with, and when such a huge problem like a snore-worthy combat system is present that issue practically presents itself to them. It's a challenge, glaring and obvious screaming 'Fix me! Fix me!'. There are always mods to try and rebalance damage outputs, given how Bethesda seem hardly interesting in intelligent balancing of their end (No shade to their developers; it's just been over 20 years and I've never played a game of theirs which was well balanced.) But some games lend themselves better to the modder's brush stroke than others. A melee game like Skyrim is a difficult nut to mod ontop of, you'd need new animations and everything to make a real dent, but a shooting game? Change up the weapon loot list, throw in new guns, arm up the badguys; Fallout 4's modding community have shown how this is pretty much a blank check to screw around for mod lovers everywhere.

Then there's one of Fallout 4's best vectors for mod insertion also making it's way to Starfield, the build menu. Is there more elegant a way to slip in a new work station, or just a new craftable? It certainly makes for a better choice than the Skyrim standard for modders who haven't got the time to stick in a crafting recipe: Just use the Console! (For those mods I typically just add in my own crafting recipe, it only takes a couple of minutes on the creation kit.) Injecting new items to be built within the workshop has enabled countless great additions to the player's build repertoire and ended up being the basis for a whole mod series in the Fallout 4 modding scene called Sim Settlements as well as three of Bethesda's most bad value DLC ever; so there's a precedent that has been set here, to be sure.

And another great angle for modding, in my opinion, is the trait's system in character creation, and the backgrounds. Both allow the fundamental makeup of a character to be shifted and thus players can get a little creative with buffs or debuffs they mod in for new characters to adopt. Plus the background system almost sounds like a ready-made framework for the 'live another life' mod to inhabit. (Although I think Todd did say that regardless of background all players start in the same place so maybe they'll still need to insert their own take-over menu.) On a more overall level, the inclusion of a Perk system is going to prove a superior way to insert custom effects on the player over the fiddly effects bar that Skyrim had which listed all permanent and temporary effects under the same menu so you couldn't easily look through them. This is a boon from the Fallout school of doing things that'll make custom perk placing just that tiny bit more seamless.

All of that is just speculation, of course, but I hold it to a high degree of certainty given my excessive exposure to what works and what doesn't work for modders, that Starfield is airing towards the systems they love rather than those they hate. Of course, making a mod worthy game starts with making a great game and who can say where Bethesda are heading on that one given how little we understand about this game's makeup despite the things we've seen. Providing everything goes right, however, we may just have the new modding site hit on our hands for the next time some visionary like Trainwiz wants to pop along and shove Randy Savage or something into the models files. Because that's the sort of stuff which makes modding worthwhile.

Starfield versus No Man's Sky

 Is there going to be room for both?

What's that they're going around calling it? No Man's Starfield or something equally as unimaginative? Meme as they might, the people of the Internet do have something of a point, the game that Bethesda purposes to be capable of making bares some very striking similarities to the Hello Games opus that struggled to get where it is today. It's no passing resemblance either, gameplay systems, design interfaces, even a rough resemblance in the framing device of the story. (although 'trying to solve an intergalactic mystery by diving into abandoned relics' isn't exactly all that creative on it's own. And something tells me that Starfield has no interest fawning itself over 'Simulation Theory' in the same way that NMS lionizes.) So I guess the question I'm coming to ask is whether or not this game has any chance of cutting into NMS' market share and if there might be a space for both of them when it is all said and done. So this might not necessarily be a comparison per se; especially given that one of the games I'm talking about isn't even nearly released yet, but more a supposition identifying potential to-be-stepped-on toes.

First off; wow, Bethesda pretty much stole NMS' basic premise word for word. Jumping around the stars to track down planets which you can mine for resources to help you keep moving. Starfield even utilises a similar scan interface and mining laser, the only real difference I can see off the bat is that there won't be any terrain deformation at all in comparison to the little that Starfield offers. Tablescraps of world deformation as it were. And Todd himself even mentioned how some planets in the game are going to just be resources dumps without anything interesting or useful on them, similar to 99.9% of the landspace in No Man's Sky. At least I can say that Starfield doesn't appear to be billing itself up as a survival style game the way that NMS does (that CO2/O2 gauge appears to just be a stamina bar) which means that resource hoarding might not become a key stable of the gameplay loop as it does with NMS. However we do know that our spaceships actually run on fuel, so maybe there will be a bit of never ending resource hunting...

The sizes of the playspaces are similarly mind boggling, if not actually similar in scale. The 1000 worlds of Starfield does sound more enticing than the 18 quintillion of No Man's Sky; simply because we know Bethesda and their history with procedural generation technology has a better chance of making that 1000 feel at least a little interesting to explore. Maybe I'll visit ten before the loop makes me bored instead of the two I experienced in No Man's Sky. Although we don't currently know how well those systems will be implemented until we get ourselves a trailer detailing all of that, which Bethesda assures is very much on the way at some point in the near future. Still, the implication is that procedural generation is the backbone of these worlds and where No Man's Sky lacked in this department thanks to the sheer scale they were simulating over, Bethesda's much smaller chunk of space could, theoretically, support their dreams.

One manner in which No Man Sky is largely superior to Starfield is when it comes to the freedom of ship travel, in that ships in NMS can fly from the surface of a planet and into space through a completely seamless transition; which is absolutely not the case with Starfield. We will pick our landing locations from a free picking menu screen in orbit and consequently struggle to find the same place twice without slapping down an outpost or map marker. There's definitely a sense of instant gratification which NMS offers that Starfield is willingly missing out on for the sake of their ailing tech, and I just know that my decision to land on certain planets that have nothing of actual interest to be is going to be highly affected by that loading screen. Even if it's only a few seconds, like it hopefully is, that segmentation is a momentum killer, and that kind of sucks.

On the complete other end of the pendulum, we have combat. Yes, we've all commented on how wooden the Starfield combat looks, especially with that pathetic excuse for a combat slide; but lest I need to remind you, NMS combat is an afterthought of game design. The same mechanics that go into using your mining laser are retrofitted into a clunky feeling gun system that, after several years of patches at this point, I'm convinced is far beyond help. At least if things in Starfield are shored up to the level that Fallout 4 was we can expect to have the odd thrilling gun fight under the right circumstances because F4 is a half decent shooter at it's best moments; No Man's Sky makes ground combat a chore and flight combat, though slightly better feeling, doesn't yet have the depth to sustain dedication play. And the word 'yet' is a key to my next major point.

Hello Games has no other real obligations beyond No Man's Sky. We've heard trickle that they have a new ambitious project in the works, but NMS is their baby for now and presumably the distant future. That means it is a live service, constantly evolving and improving whilst Starfield only really has one moment to stick it's landing. There will be DLC probably, and patches to fix the most glaring bugs, but the makeup of the world is unlikely to significantly change from the actions of the developers. NMS has it's limitation of what it can be, and I think Starfield will forever be a better combat game, but the future for NMS is limitless whilst Starfield has a coming finish line ahead of it before Bethesda have to move onto their next game. Fingers crossed they pull a Skyrim and make a game worthy of being played for the next decade; but that is a tall ask for a brand new IP even made by a big company. If you want future prospects, maybe NMS is more the way to go.

And finally there's the interaction with the world and fiction of the game world. NMS falls hard on it's face here and I think it always will. There is no sense of cohesion anywhere in the galaxy and there's no real place to insert lore or character in a world designed to be given value almost solely by other players. Just like with Fallout 76, the limit of NMS is the society that players create, only there's considerable limits to exactly what players can establish. Can we set up ingame ecosystems? No. Build trade outposts? Nope. Found bustling towns? Negative. There will never be a semblance of a world to immerse yourself in within the fiction of NMS, beyond the fantasy of being an intrepid explorer with no plateau ever in sight. Starfield has that fictional world, with it's factions, cities, history and people. There's something to immerse yourself within in the Starfield world and that slight reaching out by the game to meet the reaching from the player is probably going to make a world like this more appealing to those who like their immersive worlds to lose themselves in.

So there are similarities between the two games and Bethesda themselves seem to be trying to sell Starfield as a successor to NMS, whether they acknowledge that or not; but I believe that the two games are built to serve differing consumer bases. NMS feeds a gameplay loop of exploration, not always for exploration's sake (when the resource table is concerned) but it offers little more than that. Bethesda is making more of a world to interact with and care about, something that plays at, although I suspect will fall short of, an expansion on the Freelancer formula. Which yes, in a way means that if it ever is actually made, there will be a place for Star Citizen in this new ecosystem of space games too. In conclusion, there's no reason to butt the heads of games that can be totally perfect neighbours in the industry to come.

So now the clock turns on Diablo IV

 And the wheels turn on the Last Chance

Diablo Immortal has finally arrived and caused a much bigger splash then I ever expected if I'm being fully honest with you. I always expected Diablo Immortal to be one of those games that you see blink in and out of existence for a split of a second, active for a summer and then shut down before it's first anniversary because of lack of interest, the sort of tile that becomes a footnote in somebody else's 'series retrospective' video. But it would seem that I was woefully misjudging the impact it was carrying behind its one-two-punch because the rest of the world just can't stop talking about what a landmark moment this is for Blizzard as a company and mobile games overall. It marks an absolute lie, as a game sold on the heart of it being fair and equitable to non-paying customers, only for a technicality allowing the team to sell power directly to it's consumers through the gem-buying storefront. It is a capitalistic hellhole run by the biggest whales who feed off the little non-paying plankton for whatever sustenance they can before the F2P players reach the end of their masochism sticks and move onto the next F2P gaming ecosystem that treats them like human waste. But in the eyes of Blizzard it was a success.

Yes, Diablo Immortal is one of the worst user-rated games of all time, something which isn't at all related in the reviewer score because review copies of the game issued and judged on a version of the game without the money store turned on, but even then- it has been a cultural touchstone. People have talked about it, which means people have played it, which means whales have flocked to it, which means that Diablo Immortal has made enough money to keep it's lights on for the first year at least. Now they can go through their well-laid-out-in-advance plan to slowly pull back on the absolute deluge of Pay to Win systems so that they can go "Sorry, we didn't know that people liked to play their games without spending their live savings every thirty minutes just to stay competitive!" and they can try and farm the good press points that generates once they're praised for flipping the switch they've had ready months before launch. We've seen it before and we will see it all again.

Which brings us to Diablo IV, a game with the gall to show itself off and announce a release window just a week or two after Immortal has scourged the earth before it. There's definitely some level of bravado involved with a decision like that and no doubt Immortal was pushed into such a time frame to try and score as much money and press, good or bad, that it could before 4 dropped like a reset switch and reformatted the brains of fans. But the question that really should be on everyone's lips right now is whether or not a company that allowed Diablo Immortal to exist with their brand's name on the box is the sort of company who is going to make the best out of Diablo IV? Or is Immortal the prelude to a game which is likely going to be a lot less blatant, but no less insidious in the manner the team go about staging its monetary systems?

And yes, I acknowledge well the much repeated talking point that 'Diablo Immortal wasn't made by the same team yada yada', but that isn't the point here. Diablo Immortal was greenlit and approved by the same people who are overseeing the production elements of Diablo IV. The same eyes that looked over everything that Immortal was doing and put their thumbs up to say "This is okay" is judging the design elements of IV to make sure it lives up to their standards. And if those standards are 'money hungry blood sucker game that exists for the motto: Here for a good time not a long time', then it behoves us to be forewarned about what might be heading our way before that game hits the digital shelves. Oh and for the record; I absolutely blame the Immortal team for everything that has gone wrong with that game. Either they've planned meticulously for all this backlash and their proceeding apology tour to try and have their cake and eat it for scamming their audience and getting the good karmic points after reversing course; or the team are so utterly incompetent that they really thought a game with over 20 in-game currencies, and which loot-box-ifies random dungeons, isn't going to become a pay to win hellhole within five minutes. Either way, they're not a team fit to be making anything else in the gaming world without totally new and stringent oversight.

During the Xbox/Bethesda Conference we got a chance to really take a look at Diablo 4 once again, this time apparently running of the Series X, and it looks spectacular. Obviously. I can't get over the visceral nature of the combat nor the spot-on mood of the setting and ambient atmospheric touches to the visual and sound design or the squelch of the bigger monster as they pop into puddles of blood. It's one of the reasons why I think Diablo has maintained it's spot as the best ARPG of it's field despite POE surpassing it in all manners related to actual gameplay. These games just feel right, and this one feels even more right than that! The final member of the base release classes was revealed with the Necromancer, who I'm going to have to prevent myself from playing because I'm almost always a necromancer in these games, and now all we have to do it wait for that 2023 release window to come to us. Then we can finally dive into all the new open world with it's random events, world bosses, and semi-MMO connected world design.

Or at least that would be all we have to wait for. But unfortunately the bad taste of Immortal left in our mouth mandates that we must also remain vigilant for what is going to happen with Diablo IV, because the law of common business sense makes it so. Are we really supposed to believe that all the money that Immortal made ripping of it's consumers isn't going to affect Diablo IV's design in the slightest? The developers are begging us to believe that over twitter, but the director of Immortal claimed the very same thing in the lead-up to that game. As it turns out he misled us through a technicality, and right now the Diablo IV team are telling us everything except "You can't buy any gameplay effecting items in the cash shop." Why not? Is it because they're hoping to wiggle by on the 'technicality' clause again?

At the end of the day, Diablo IV and the discourse around it is the consequence of a company who has killed itself and just doesn't realise yet. Building an empire on the back of player trust and that utterly cutting all that off in a single fell swoop has left people feeling on-edge and antsy to the point where they can't trust a single word out of Blizzard's mouth. (Very much the same sort of reputation that Bethesda is heading towards if it doesn't nail it with Starfield.) They can show us hours of gameplay with content that is markedly better than Immortal, which was only an average ARPG at best I might add, (I literally don't understand people who think it would be a brilliant game without the microtransactions. It's utterly barren of challenge until the paywall hits.) but none of that is going to matter if the world doesn't believe they're rich enough to wring the sort of fun out of the game that they're looking for.

And so the clocks turn on Diablo 4, as the team have to really sit back and wonder if this is really the game they're selling or if they maybe need to make some adjustments to the premium currency systems that the game already has ready. Because make no mistake, they are waiting to catch us in the bear trap. Immortal is the practice run for what is supposed to be a more subtle and artful con game in IV; but I wonder if even their own predictions foresaw just how hated Immortal would become in it's brief time available. If I were Blizzard, I would mark well the backlash and take to heart the excuse that 'it's just a mobile game' doesn't exist in my repertoire anymore. I would call this Blizzard's last chance, but the truth is that they spent that chance long ago; this is just the flailing of a diseased beast which once resembled a storied game company, now languishing in a puddle of it's own ignominy.

Okay, you got me. I'm excited for Starfield

 Ya happy now, Todd?

Fool me once and all that crap stands for nothing I guess, because I've been lined up to be fooled once again. However I am approaching everything with the caveats ready to mind, which I think adequately preps me for a game which at least at one point it's life was described as 'The Next Cyberpunk'. Yes, we all know that has led to a substantial delay but just let me remind you; Cyberpunk was delayed for half a year. Remember that? And also don't forget, Cyberpunk's big issue was not that the thing was buggier than the Aussie outback, that was the garnish on top of the cake, the problem was that the game oversold its features in a bad-faith advertising campaign to try and succeeded in brainwashing the public. And compound on top of that the fact that Bethesda have done similar lie campaigns, although not quite on the same scale as CDPR, for their 'Fallout 4 Wasteland Workshop DLC' (The flagship feature didn't function as implied and was never patched to work) and 'Fallout 76', who's many shortcomings are a matter of wide public record at this point. But taking all of that to heart... I'm still excited.

God, do you want to know how pumped I am for a new Bethesda RPG? I've literally been playing my heavily modded Skyrim save throughout the past two weeks, that game still has me hooked all these years later. I even tried to hop around to the numerous other big games I need to finish, and Skyrim just pulled me back in with it's tenacious grip. When they do it right Bethesda can craft the sort of playgrounds you just absolutely cannot put down and Starfield is a chance for that to hit the drawing board once again with an entire franchise! Something utterly disconnected to the worlds of Fallout and Elder Scrolls, and we've gone through these release footage clips with fine-tooth combs; everything is new, if there are any recycled assets the team are hiding them well. I may not agree with every choice the team made from a design standpoint, such as to go more 'science fiction' over 'science fantasy', (I guess Fallout is pretty 'science fantasy' on it's on, huh.) now it's finally revealed I can at least appreciate that their vision doesn't totally suck. At least not as far as I can tell right now.

The big problem right now is the fact that the gunplay looks bad. Actually, it looks really dull, as in, more dull than Fallout 4's combat; which doesn't make sense to me. I think that may be somewhat because Fallout allows itself to be gory and from what I can tell, Starfield absolutely does not. We see one character blasted in the face with a shotgun and they barely squirt a bit of blood, and another is rocketed into the air and blows up, only for his body to go ragdolling into orbit. I understand that this is yet another example of the ways in which the various Bethesda franchises aren't just one series wearing different skins, (like Ubisoft games) that each series has their own styles and artist choices, but if you're going to take away the satisfying responsiveness of location based damage causing dismemberments, you have to replace that with something! Punchier guns, better sliding, compressive hit detection; I know that Bethesda aren't actually the kings of combat but there's no reason we need to start become complacent in that department to the point of mediocrity. Work it out team!

But of course Bethesda pick it up with the world building because that is what they do best. Many are going to have trouble latching onto what was shown in this trailer and identifying the character and personality in it for a big reason; this is perhaps Bethesda's least flamboyant fictional world. Rather than focusing on the sweeping grandeur of high fantasy or the stylistic pastel tints of Science Fantasy, they want to emulate the gritty earthiness of near-future space flight with realism and Science Fiction taking a precedent. MrMattyPlays himself spotted what very much looks like a NASA probe in one of the video snippets, detailing clearly how much this game is trying to take it's world seriously, to be point of introducing elements of reality. That isn't going to pop off the screen so much, but for those that have taken the time to watch the copious numbers of lore videos that Bethesda have been putting out over the months (Which, I'll be honest, before this reveal I had no interest in) you'll know there's still some substance to this universe. As it stands the game is set during a stalemate in the Colony Wars, a major anchoring event in a ecosystem brimming with cyberpunk-style corporations, brand new churches preaching space religions and dangerous space pirates who you can absolutely sign up with. So far I'm just wondering if the general aesthetic of the people in this universe is going to stick rigidly to the neat-cut prim-and-proper style we've seen on pretty much every promotional material so far, or if they'll be some diversity with the grittier punkier elements on the further reaching systems. (I really hope for the diversity angle.)

Exploration is going to be huge chunk of the gameplay focus, in fact with the meh combat it could very be the most focused on angle of the gameplay. Scouring the 1000 different planets in search of interesting locations to delve, places to build a settlement and resources to keep the research crew of your ship fuelled. I like the idea of ship building but I love the idea of crew building, I hope there's personality to the people we hire, maybe not quite to the levels of Mass Effect's deck crew, but at least approach that greatness. I worry about the 1000 planets. Obviously there's going to be a lot of procedural generation involved in making that play space, but there's needs to be a sculptor's hand too in order to hand place enough exciting elements to make a significant chunk of those planets worth exploring. And I don't just mean 1 event per planet; they need to ensure that the world generation tools can create play areas all by itself whilst the real special places are handcrafted by them. That's the least of what they could do, but it's about the best I can expect considering this is just Bethesda still working with the Creation Engine here. 

We did get a chance to taste some of the narrative and I think the words hanging off near everyone's lips to describe it is: painfully derivative. A galaxy wide hunt for groups of mysterious relics left by some precursor/forerunner/prothean/TheOnesWhoCameBefore civilisation that hold the secret to changing the course of humanity as we know it... wow! Oh, and you get visions by touching one of the artefacts? Commander Shepard called, he/she wants their schtick back! Seriously, I can't fathom a more cookie cutter premise to sell your game on, and just like every other game that came before the relics themselves look like total garbage. I'm so sick of these games where some nutjob floats a shapeless chunk of metal in my face and expects me to praise it as a fragment of beauty's very essence. It looks bad. And whatsmore, this story sounds trite beyond reasoning. Unless the reveal at the end of the game is that other sentient Aliens exist, and we get to interact with them in some significant post-game way; this is going to be a disappointment from a main narrative front. Which is why I'm really hopeful for the world simulation elements.

Whilst browsing through every text box shoved in our face during the character creator I came up with some interesting conclusions regarding how the player will get to interact with the world. First off, there appears to be some rudimentary form of a reputation system given that players can pick starting classes that gives them access to one type of vendor whilst denying another. There are space religions that you can join, such as the one which asks you to jump everywhere for a health boost or stop bouncing for a health penalty. There's some sort of debt system tied with one of the background paths that gives you an early starting house, just in case you want to make this into space Animal Crossing. (No word on if there's wider money lending system in the game.) And one of the starts gives you parents, who are apparently actually interactable in the game, and whom steal 10% of your income in whatever you earn. (Wait, where's the benefit there? You have parents who expect you to visit and they take money from you? That's worse than starting as 'Deprived' in Dark Souls.)

Weighing up the pros with the cons, the possibilities with the probabilities, and the base building mechanics against the ship building ones; I think I've agonised enough over Starfield to be officially excited for it. This isn't blind hype, and I very much hope and expect to see more of what the game has to offer before we enter the death march of development stage, but the dream I was just sold on stage is one I want to experience. Whether Bethesda can achieve that dream is up in the air, people say that Microsoft will give them the extra resources to make it, but those clowns can't even manage a Perfect Dark Reboot without it falling into development hell just over a year after announcement. We know that right now the game is an unplayable mess that has been likened to Cyberpunk 2077, we can just hope that the extra half a year is enough to conjure the game everyone is in the waiting room getting pumped for. (Didn't Cyberpunk take a full year to reach a playable state though...) 

P-persona 5 on PC? Is it really you?

 Is this a Persona 5 I see before me? Royal pointed toward my hand.

Starfield- Smarfield, who cares about that when the real standout of the Xbox/Bethesda conference was freakin' ATLUS! Of the turnbuckle and out of the shrouded abyss, ATLUS swept in when not a soul was expecting them to drop the absolute slam dunk knock-out punch to the conference that had us all shook, the announcement to end all announcements; Persona 5 Royal is finally coming to the rest of the world, Hallelujah! And not just Persona 5! But Persona 4: Golden (which Steam users already had but Xbox Users now get in on the goodness) and Persona 3 Portable! A game which Persona fans insist is another masterpiece in a franchise full of hitters. And you know what that means; everything which is coming to the Xbox will also be heading for the PC. Whether that means I get to play it on Steam or have to settle for the Windows Store (I really don't like the Window Store layout so I'm holding out for a Steam launch) I can finally play the game I fell for almost 9 years ago. God I hate exclusivity deals.

But let's just brush past the hanging question mark left over by the fact that the game still doesn't have a Steam release date technically; I seriously cannot even address that right now I need to just pretend that it does for my own sanity, and talk about what a move this is for Microsoft! For years now they've been promising they'll be right on the heels of Sony with their first party studio stuff and they've let us down year after year as things get pushed back or scaled down or just refuse to stand up to anything that Sony has cooking. And now it seems they've finally figured out the formula: Just temp over all the Japanese Studios, they'll bring the meat for your cookout! Seriously though, seeing the ATLUS logo at a Microsoft event was enough to stop my heart for a second as I tried to let myself down easily for how this wouldn't be the one thing that I've waited for almost a decade.

They couldn't have hit us stronger than with the Persona games. Okay, well maybe if it was an announcement bringing over all the Yakuza games to Xbox, but they've already got those games so this is the next best thing! The Persona games are a powerhouse for intimate character-driven stories that fly in the face of the loud yet distant high-fantasy role playing games of the Western world. They explore the sorts of relationships and conflicts that western story tellers would never do, either because they wouldn't know how to even approach such a topic or because they slather gaudy excess over the over-egged message until a flawless narrative motif garnish distorts into a full steak dinner service with a stand-by band for good measure. ATLUS are masters of their craft, simple as, and creating a slice-of-life series that dabbles into the supernatural on a regular basis but remains utterly and deeply grounded in addressing the human question is a signposted testament to that. (Seriously, Druckmann; this is how you do it.)

This is a clear and present message to Sony that Microsoft has full intention to encroach on their territory. I mean sure, they're doing that encroaching at a snail's pace and picking off from the biggest franchises first, but some year or other those warning shots are going to angle down and strike the heart of Playstation completely. And who knows, maybe such a prospect will be enough to shake Sony into realising that they need to expand their net of influence out from their own ecosystem and allow more PC ports. That's literally fantastical levels of logical leapfrogging, I know, but if I can't have dreams than I might as well just shrivel up and die. Literally every prediction I've ever made about Playstation had dived right off a cliff, but I can't be wrong again, can I?

Persona 4 is a game I am so excited is going to the Xbox simply because I want everyone to play it. A game that takes a dreamy nostalgic look at a summer full of adventure and personal growth on the cusp of adulthood that I never had. This game made me nostalgic for a life I never lived in a town on the otherside of the world from the one I grew up in! It focus' around a murder mystery but spares no effort in bringing the troubles of it's teenager cast into the forefront without losing focus on that narrative, and it wields it's supernatural elements with analogous deft to propel and compel the narrative to us, the players. Whenever I get paralyzed with self-doubt over my inability to write anything resembling quality, it's scripts like Persona 4's which rocket around my head festering those concerns into full grown neuroses. Thanks Persona 4, you give me depression!  

Persona 3 is a total mystery to me, in that I know little to nothing about what it's about or who it stars, except for the apparent fact that the main protagonist is apparently a sufferer of suicidal thoughts, which might make it even more relatable for me than even Persona 4 was. Taking such a heavy topic matter and turning it into a JRPG would just be a recipe for foot-in-mouth cringe with bargain-bin poetry sessions and eye-wateringly poor symbolism for most game developers out there (or if I wrote the thing) but I just know that ATLUS are more than equipped to blow me away with a touchy and exciting adventure with great characters and meaningful discourse. These guys don't disappoint in the toughest environments so I'm just as pumped for Persona 3 as I am for the more known elements.

Persona 5 is the big boy though. From the very first moment I saw the teaser reveal trailer for this game, completely without context, nearly 9 years ago, I was smitten. I said "I want to play that" and I have been hungry ever since. To try and quantify that sensibly for ya'll; an entire console generation has come and gone in that time, and only now is that game coming to the rest of us. Thank god it is too, because Sony's backwards compatibility department is so lax that blockbuster games like Metal Gear Solid 4 are completely unplayable past the original PS3 release. I mean sure, there was a remake of Persona 5 that technically did make it to the PS5, but that original is lost to the ether thanks to people trusting Sony to protect their back catalogue.

Needless to say I'm chuffed. Beyond chuffed, actually; I'm damn near ecstatic. Putting one's faith in any of the new games teased throughout the conference is a gamble in a losing game, but playing a great you missed from yesteryear is a guarantee. It feels so nice to be able to get excited over anything without there being some massive hanging caveat. From here all that really needs to be said is thus: Please bring Persona 5 to Steam, the Windows Store sucks like crazy, they hide the files of the game so you can't easily mod the thing, it's infuriating. Oh, and can we avoid all of this come Persona 6 by just releasing to everywhere? That'd be super nice, thanks. (There are so many Japanese RPG's heading my way. I'm going being eating good throughout 2023!) 

Dragon's Dogma 2 is confirmed

 Get in!

It takes something very special to have me writing in stereotypical football hooligan slang; and Capcom popping out a Dragon's Dogma sequel is certainly something 'very' and 'special'. That is a game which is easily one of the most underappreciated role playing games of all time, and I do not use that term lightly or often, because it means a lot to me. For something to be 'underappreciated' by my standards, it needs to be deprived of an interest it should have gained because of factors outside of its own control. That doesn't mean it should have been the biggest game ever made, or that it launched in a broken mess and lost momentum before it was patched back into a working state, I'm talking about a game that was fit and primed to be a moderate hit before a tiny game called Skyrim rolled around and totally robbed all the air from the Role Playing community room. Any game that launched back then should be asking for it's marketing money back from Bethesda.

From day one Dragon's Dogma was doing things that no other RPG of the time was doing and what few dare to do even now, such as actually making the act of travelling from A to B a gruelling proposition due to the vast dangers and scale of the road, climbing and scaling huge terrifying beasts for the bonus of locational damage spots and having a companion system that is designed and maintained entirely by the online community. And these weren't just half-assed experiments that tried a few cool things and ultimately didn't amount to much; Dragon's Dogma cohesively and successfully pulled of so many interesting mechanics in its body that the rest of the world just refuses to acknowledge thanks to the slight oddness of the package itself. It's graphics look dated, it's world seems bland and largely flat, the monsters are traditional European fantasy beasts instead of wild fantastical originals; and apparently that's grounds to write the whole game off. Well I say 'nay' to that, good sir! Nay!

Because everything that makes Dragon's Dogma seem like another generic stone on the road is merely freckles on the face of a unique masterpiece in its own right, a game which plays like no other RPG I've played before or since; and I'll stand by that. The enemies based off of European fantasy: that's unique in a space that so often borrows those vague names and attaches them to hardly representative derivatives, Dragon's Dogma is the only game that takes them right from the storybook and devises ways that their storied characteristics can be utilised in a gaming formula. That world of mostly flat greenlands, serves as plains from which to exemplify the scale of the journeys you embark on so that at any point the player can look back or forward and take in the distance they've gone or the road they have left. And the dated graphics are just indicative of the time. Dragon's Dogma doesn't have a megalomaniac game director rereleasing it every four years, it's had to make do.

Where Dragon's Dogma excels for me in the places that matter the most for an action RPG games; such as the combat and levelling. It's split into a comprehensive job system that takes the basic classes we're all used to and gives them vastly different playstyles, unique equipment, evolutions and even advanced hybrid classes so that you can make a character who is in themselves unique, but still at the top of their game. Something I'd love a Bethesda game to be able to commit to, instead of their forever march towards character hegemony that their late game dichotomy always demands. Which is something I'm even hopeful that upcoming Action RPG games learn from, such as Avowed. (Looking at Starfield's levelling system, I figure they're already long past such an evolution.)

And then there's the Pawn system which to my eyes lacks an equal in the entire genre. Essentially players are tasked with hand designing their own personal side kick to roam the country side with, and to fill out their party with other player's personal side kicks. And when you aren't playing the game, your sidekick will travel with other players and learn from them. That's not just lip service either, they actually learn! Which is to say that as they fight new enemies or complete quests, that companion will remember the weaknesses of those foes or the locations needed for that quest and chime in to help the other players or yourself when they return and are put in those situations again. Admittedly, this learning system is the only flagship feature that feels a little experimental and maybe not utilised to its fullest potential especially on the quest department. (Given that most quests are excessively straightforward) But with a sequel who knows what could happen with systems like these!

What I'm hoping for, if I let me imagination run wild, is actually decently robust. (I've had a long time to think about this.) First I want a new location to explore, one where the central city is as much a playground for action as the wilds because I know there could be an incredible dragon set-piece battle set in a city, and I would love to see it. And I want to see a completely new dimension bought to the combat theatre, which in my mind could be the water. There's so many cool European fantasy monsters who live and dwell exclusively under the depths, and the ability to interact and battle them in a meaningful fashion would be awesome. I can just imagine grapping onto the scales of a some fast-moving aquatic abomination and holding tight as it torpedoes through the waves, all the while thrashing and flailing as it tries to shake me off- That's how you push this series further forward.

Additionally, from a narrative standpoint I hope the team learns from the mistakes of the first game, namely in how reductively vague and non-committing the core narrative was. Everything that happened after the wrap of the main story, including the epilogue and Dark Arisen, were absolutely great fertile grounds to build a franchise off of; but the main story felt so generic that people who value great and challenging stories were immediately turned away from the project. So I encourage the writing team to lean into the darker elements, explore the nature of the Dogma more, and maybe give the player a chance to flesh out the personality of their main character if that isn't asking for too much. (Although it definitely might be given how some JRPG protagonists act. Looking hard at the Dragon's Quest rooster here.)

Last but by no means least, the music. I feel like this goes without saying, but maybe it doesn't; the main theme that Dragon's Dogma launched with was trash. Dark Arisen reintro-ed the game with a perfectly apt track that evolved from a medieval old English ditty into a sweeping adventure orchestral love song to epic fantasy. You don't need to break it down piece by piece, especially when I've already done that whilst talking about my love of the game in the past. So whatever Dragon's Dogma 2 brings to us, let it be more in tune with that second song rather than the first, let us know that this new game will be firing on every cylinder. All of which is to say I'm ecstatic that Dragon's Dogma is back after it's extended exclusive stay in China and I just know that this time the game can go that extra distance to establish itself in the history books that exact same way which circumstance denied the first game from doing... unless history repeats itself and this game lands at the exact same time as Avowed... Please God, don't let that happen.

Sega: Gamers just don't understand!

 "It's not a phase, Mom!"

To be a fly on the wall of the SEGA all-hands meeting once it became clear that the brand new open world game they were so excited to be showcasing is getting slammed and mocked for being a barren waste of a tech demo. I mean that's got to be a knock to the ol' confidence, right? To have something you believe so heavily in as a testament to your best talents be laughed off as a bad joke. I imagine there were a fair few heartbroken faces in that board room in the days following those gameplay snippet reveals. And I know that SEGA both meant their footage with the utmost sincerity and took the reaction to it personally, or as personally as a video game company that I've inexplicably personified can. It's all summed up in their official response to the mass fan reaction, which is something along the lines of "You just don't get the art of it, man! You're a stinkin' poser!"

I understand, and darkly respect, the desire to throw all responsibility to the wall, disregard all critique and proudly declare that everybody is the wrong one here. "The mirror lies, the whole world's wrong but me." It's certainly a lot easier than coming to terms with the fact that everyone thinks the hard work you've spent the better part of your last two professional years working on is an Internet joke. I mean that's got to be somewhat similar to the feeling that the team behind Morbius had the second they realised that the world wide praise they were receiving was hilariously tipped scorn for how utterly unapologetically awful their movie was. At least, that was the case until they jumped the shark and tried to profit off the meme by rereleasing that movie in theatres only to end up with perhaps the only movie in history that flopped twice during consecutive theatrical runs. I'm trying to think what the Sonic Frontiers equivalent of that would be, and I can only picture the exact situation that Anthem 2.0 ended up doing but with Sonic's furry gob stuck on the front of the news story next time. (God, that would be a disaster, wouldn't it?)

And to be absolutely fair to SEGA, there is a breed of apparently real gamers out there who look at Sonic Frontiers and think it looks like a real game. Indeed, I was very surprised too. Apparently Japanese gamers are, for the most part, receptive to SEGA's footage as it's shown on Twitter and apparently some Japanese players just want to pay money for tech demos. Which they absolutely can do to their hearts content if they want to, heck I'm pretty sure you can download some free Unreal engine demos and donate money to their company at the same time if you want to. As for the rest of us, we have slightly different standards when it comes to assessing the worth of our money; and I, for one, am in favour of the strange idea that games I pay full price for should somewhat resemble games. You know, with design elements and polish and a working executable. But that's just my two cents on the matter, everyone has their own tastes.

Am I laying into SEGA a little much? Maybe, but what else can I do when I'm confronted by a game company telling me, to my face, that I'm too much of a troglodyte to comprehend the moving pictures in front of my face. I'm a literal brainless child, clawing stupidly at my mobile believing myself to be a interstellar god sweeping away the stars. I mean I must be right, for mine and everybody else's sound and detailed criticism to be brushed away with; "You just don't understand." I wonder how far this will go? I wonder if we just won't understand if the game drops as a barely functioning pile of drivel. I wonder if we still won't understand if the game goes onto be a commercial flop. Will we still be lacking the basics if SEGA are forced to downsize Sonic Team for wasting their money on the industry's most dead open world? How about Sonic is the laughing stock of the next generation? Are we too simple minded for the genius over at SEGA? Heck, maybe they're ahead of their time!

Yes, if you're wondering; I am taking this seriously, because this has to be one of the most affrontingly defensive stances I've ever seen an established gaming icon take. To be clear, this comment comes from an interview where director Takashi Iizuka attempts to tell the world, with a straight face, that Sonic Frontiers is utterly incomparable with any other open world game in existence and thus is categorically beyond our reproach. In so many words. Now I wish that were true, I think Sonic could truly be the foundation of a truly unique 3D action game if only the right creative vision was helming the project; but you cannot show us your ridiculously derivative 'Breath of the Wild' with furries concept, complete with a reveal trailer that literally borrows beats from the BotW gameplay reveal, and tell me your being completely original. That is completely dishonest and I'm actually a little affronted that you would just lie to me like that.

Sonic Frontiers is a traditional 'climb this tower', 'solve this puzzle' and 'fight this boss' style open world, there is nothing unique about that basic formula. Which is why when we see what those games do and apply the obvious short comings of those systems in our analysis of Frontiers, that is the very definition of 'informed criticism'. And is our man about to turn around and tell us that Sonic Team's prevalent pop-in issue caused by the game's limited render capabilities is just a bold new direction in game design? How about the lack of transitory animations between walking speeds which makes Sonic look like he's gliding? Another supremely transformative artistic choice that our primitive monkey brains can't decode? Get the heck over yourself, man; be a director.

What gets me is that there is a totally non condescending way to tell people that you aren't going to listen to their feedback unless it's positive and are totally refusing the communities olive branch. Just do what every other company under the sun does and say 'This is an X months old build and all it's bugs or shortcomings are totally not indicative of the game right now'. But instead he went the high road, picked his hill and declared this was a battle to the death; all for a game that looks like a total snoozefest. I'm sorry your gameplay reveal sucks, I know that might have hurt your feelings, but if you go around surrounding yourself in abject denial the only people who are going to end up being hurt are the members of Sonic Team when their work falls apart in the eyes of critics.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we're all wrong. Maybe Sonic Frontiers is a secret ritual to summon from the dark depths a Cenobite from the labyrinth that will unlock a new sensation of excitement beyond the deepest layer of mediocrity; a key to the lock in our head that will make these objectively dull gameplay snippets into the most transformative, high octane, video game experience of our lives, if only we agree to be tortured by a sado-masochistic pin-headed demon for the rest of our natural lives. If all of that just happens to be true about Sonic Frontiers, I will readily concede my utter intellectual inferiority to Iizuka, the man who rewrote the very concept of dull and pastiche for us all to see. But if that doesn't happen, and I have my doubts, then I withhold full rights to, as I insist right now, say 'I told you so' if this game doesn't get delayed and turns out to be pile of garbage. Deal? Deal.

Oh there's a new Alien game!

 I wonder how good it's going to be...

You know, after seeing the trailer for Prey and finding out that the Predator franchise was trying something a little bit new to it's approach and set-up, I got to thinking about Alien and how underutilised it was in the gaming world. Not to say that there have never been Alien games before, of course there have and some of them have been great; but in the great renaissance of horror we're on the cusp of, wouldn't it make sense for one of the most stylistically and artistically influential movies of all time to sit up and get a truly knock out adaption? And then Alien Dark Decent is thrown at me, oh god I'm so happy! I remember playing the old Alien Vs Predator game back in the day and being absolutely in love with the three-way campaign and all the different ways to be scared stiff by the things in the dark. And then there was Alien Isolation! Innovative and incredible right the way through, a true successor to the first movie that film could never deliver. And now we've got a new Alien title that shamelessly rips off the subtitle of one of the most famous horror games of all time? (The first Amnesia, come on guys...) The mind boggles at the possibilities! I mean, I didn't actually watch the Summer Games show with all the reveals but I bet I'm just going to love this...

Why. It's not even a question I know why. Because it's easy. Because to actually sit down and study the masterful control of atmosphere, of pacing, of terror that Alien Isolation created and to try and live up to that is too much work. Just do another game with big stupid marines and their big stupid pulse guns because we haven't had enough of that yet! >Cough< Alien Colonial Marines, Alien Fireteam, Aliens vs Predator >Cough<. I'm so bored of mindless shoot-a-thons against what are supposed to be the most intelligent and deadly species in the galaxy. Even in the movie, the Xenomorphs of Aliens never lived up the example of the 'ultimate lifeform' built up in Alien. They just sort of swarmed over each other and died like stupid worker ant drones. If it wasn't for the Alien Queen at the end I honestly think that film would have left feeling a lot more hollow than people would have expected. And for some inescapable reason, that movie is the sole influence of all Alien game media. It's so tiring.

I mean I know why the other Alien movies aren't worth a damn. Because they're bad. Who wants to play an adaptation of Resurrection where you go around kicking jello Xenomorphs out of airlocks? (Yes, I know there really was an adaptation of that movie. I actually played through it back when I was a kid.) But why is the apex so untouchable? Why is the closet we've gotten to a proper true-to-form Alien game 'Isolation' and the Dead Space games? It can't be out of respect for it's accomplishments, because god knows game developers don't have an ounce of respect for themselves, each other or their customers. (Else 'Diablo Immortal' would have never been allowed to happen.) I can only assume it's laziness overriding that otherwise unbearable call to be hubristic. I bet it disturbs the very core of companies like EA whenever they can't think of a way to actively taint and ruin an Alien adaption so they have to look elsewhere.

It's a twin stick shooter. I don't know how I can sugar coat that, so I hope you were bracing for some cold water. Okay, I guess I can't say outright whether or not it controls with a twin stick system, but its a top down hoard shooter with point and shoot, if that game doesn't have a twin stick control scheme it's replacement is probably a detriment. Not that I have anything wrong with that style of game but damn it, why is this worth a fully developed decent quality CGI tee-up animation just for the wet fart of a twin stick game. It's not even multiplayer, it's a single player game. (Although maybe that's for the best, 'multiplayer' is codeword for 'excuse to sell microtransactions' these days.) To live in a world where we have more shooter based Alien games than we do horror based ones... where did this version of the timeline go so wrong?

Okay let's look at all the positives here... I'm drawing a blank. I'm sorry but even whilst trying to take the game for it's own merits and not punishing it for being a game that its not, I find it hard to wipe the bad taste from the mouth I was left with after that trailer. Was 80% gritty cinematic off-set by colourful explosive shooter gameplay? That is deceitful, I'm sorry! You're describing a Nectarine to me but feeding me an apple, sure the outside is pretty much the same but the inner substance it totally distinct from one another! There's no way that's down to complete ignorance, is it? They knew they had a bargain bin of a game here and so wanted to limit the amount of shown gameplay as much as humanly possible so that their cutscene can do all the marketing heavy lifting, didn't they? Am I close to the mark? I feel like I am.

If the developers don't have the faith in their game to present it honestly how I am I supposed to approach it with anything other than rank suspicion? It might seem a little unfair, but it's been invited from score after score of Alien games that just hasn't been what people want. Okay that's not entirely fair, some people have been waiting for a great squad-based Alien shooter game for a while now, even if they're not me I can't deny their existence. But 'Extraction' is more a disposable party game with too much of a budget, and this looks even more low grade, although it at least has a more sensible scope to match the concept. Why not just give us an all gameplay action trailer so as to not accidentally lure in people who might otherwise be excited and end up hating themselves? Why is the art of advertising games still so mysterious to the modern game developer even with an audience who will literally dictate exactly what it is that they want?

Damn it, I'm supposed to find a positive! Okay so this game is apparently having some development done by Focus Entertainment, the creators of Plague Tale, which is a strong backbone to build off of, no doubt. That game had great atmosphere and tension; I just wish that literally any of those design lessons made it into the development process of this game, but I digress. It's apparently a single player squad based game, which could hold some interesting elements to it depending on what angle they take the gameplay. Although I can but speculate on that angle because Focus preferred to waste all of their budget on an entirely unrepresentative animated trailer that told us nothing about the gameplay. It's isometric and I tend to like isometric games. That's kind of a vapid point but I'm grasping at straws by this point. Nah I can't do it. I'm more excited for Fable 4 than I am for this game, and this blog was mostly made out of pure spite.

So am I salty? You bet I am! It's been years and no one wants to step up and make a new Alien game which highlights the strengths of the franchise in question. It would be like if we had spent the last 5 years receiving nothing but Deus Ex racing games out of Eidos Montreal, it would be content, sure, but at some point you'd have to stop and ask if we're ever going to pause this silliness and get ourselves properly back on track. This is another stone off the beaten path and at this point I can't even make out the main road anymore, and who can say if there's any operational company left actually interested in a proper Isolation sequel or successor. So consider this my appeal to the powers that be to let Alien be itself again- oh, and for the love of god don't steal the 'Dark Descent' subtitle without living up to it's horror routes, what are you guys, taunting me?

Palworld

 Team Rocket has made some dark changes in direction lately...

They're locked in a cages during the night and released only to work the production lines in the day. Bending and weaving shapeless metal into deadly firearms on a ceaseless conveyer belt of arms and death, driven by the knowledge that should they ever falter in their daily required numbers, if their wardens should ever find them wanting, their next duties would be getting strapped to a table having pieces cut out of them. What is this I describe? Some ghoulish prison camp run by the worst of the worst? Actually it's my best guess at what I can see from the daily goings-ons in the indie Pokémon-style game which recently flaunted its wings; Palworld. Yes, you read that right. Those battered and bereaved? They're Pokémon-like creatures. No, I have no idea what kind of weird dreams have to be running through your mind in order to even conceive of an idea like that, but I can't lie and say I'm not fascinated to learn more. Even if that's morbidly so.

Palworld is a proposition by Pocketpair who seem to be an indie studio with a penchant for making these grand and unfocused mismatch products that throw everything at the dart board in order to see what hits it's mark. It's an admirable approach to the development process for those that can pull it off, even if it typically suffers from your age old 'jack of all trades master of none' conundrum. Independent games have a licence to veer off wildly exploring any avenue that catches their fancy, or stick their fingers in whatever pies they happen to stumble on, and that can be as much of an developmental  exploration to witness as a user as it can be for the creatives behind the lines of code. Craftopia is one such example of this, as their last game to be inundated with all these hunting, farming, base building elements standing as a backbone for the detritus of their whirlwind imaginations. Who knows where a new project by these minds could end up?

Now it is important to say that Palworld is coming later this year and likely in an early access state, which mirrors the state that Craftopia launched in back in 2020 and very much still is in. Now that's red flag number one when it comes to indie products, starting the next project before you finish the last one, however apparently the team at Pocketpair do have a separate studio working on that last game before they move onto their next. (Or at least they say that they do. Whether or not you believe such a proposition is your own provocation) But if you're willing to accept a brand new Pokemon-style game featuring monsters (or 'Pals' as their called here) firing guns and fending off slavers, then do I have the trailer for you and your hyper-specific preferences!

From all I can tell Palworld's trailer presents an adorable and colourful openworld buzzing with cheery delight and some genuinely cool and/or sweet looking 3D monster sprites. It's not as easy as it may seem to create brand new monsters to the quality of what the Pokemon devs do (That is, on their good days. Even Gamefreak get lazy sometimes and just slap a face on a pile of actual garbage.) but the Palworld developers are certainly knocking at their door with some of their characters, although there's also some of that oversized teddy-bear vibe from Doraemon in some of these designs too. If I'd have to criticize the designs it would only be for the fact that right now I can only see them in relation to their probable inspirations than for their standalone merits as their own property. A distinction that veers on problematic for some designs in the recently released trailer.

The player inhabits this open 3D world as a 3rd person explorer armed with nothing but an eye for adventure and their cadre of Pal followers. (And an M16, of course.) Much of the exploration of this world takes obvious cues from, go figure, Breath of the Wild and similar free exploration games, but mixed with a Flimstones-style utilisation of creatures that we've always wanted from a proper Pokemon game. I'm talking gliding with flying monsters, building large structures with small and long-necked monsters serving as manual labour and even using big bodied, and hopefully sturdy, monsters as bullet shields against gun-toting hunters. Oh, and then there's the Monster who shoots explosive eggs out of it's rear end. He's pretty cool too.

I have to say, whilst there's undeniable hint of independent mania implied by the scatter-gun approach to themes and concepts in this premise, sometimes the presentation alone seems to elevate the trailer to something more than the sum of it's parts. That shot alone of the player riding a flying stingray Kyogre look-alike into a gorgeous sky citadel balanced on various mountain tops is absolutely magical, and gives me hope that the ambition of the game can carry this title a little more into the mainstream than Craftopia ever was. Marry that with the expressive open world, solid design work, and pretty engine, and I think there really might be something special amidst all the weird and wacky. A vindication for developers who I suspect have been told their ideas are a little too hairbrained one too many times in the past.

However in order to get to that point there is a matter of plagiarism I want to touch on, because beside the premise (which I think is fair-game; reiterating on an established premise is how we push our mediums forward) there are a few creature designs that hit a little too close to other recognisable figures. On the lower end we've got the female protagonist of this trailer who reminded me of some one for the longest time until I finally placed her and now I can't unsee it. That's Aloy, isn't it? They nicked Aloy's outfit and stuck it on a girl with different hair so we wouldn't notice. Well I did! Oh, and there's the Kyogre look alike. I know, this new guy as a halo, but come on- that is so Kyogre. And then at the end of the trailer, in the Pal showdown scene which looks beat-for-beat like the reveal trailer of Pokemon Unity, that is literally Zoroark. They gave him new hands and rubbed off the eye-paint, but that is close enough to raise a lawyers eyebrow. The team might want to work on differentiating their designs up. Just a little.

I'm happy to see another potential Pokemon competitor step up to the plate, even if this one bought a machine gun instead of a bat. Game Freak have been in the midst of a reimaging campaign for their flagship series, and it's pressure of these competitors which is driving that innovation. If this game manages to convince the Pokemon series to throw in stealth action elements, we might be on track for the legendary Metal Gear Pokemon crossover game that both franchises were born to do! Or at the very least we might one day get a truly packed RPG Pokemon game with enough weighty kick to it that it lasts longer than a single year in the public eye. If Bethesda can do it year after year than why can't Gamefreak? And if they won't, then Palworld will because everything I've seen from this game is that it has heart. It's a diseased and misplaced heart, but it's beating. That's got to count for something. 

The Callisto Protocol looks like the real Dead Space sucessor

 In space, no one can treat your horrific body protrusions.

If Resident Evil is the old school king of horror back to take it's crown, then Callisto is the nephew born of Horror's illegitimate affair with sci-fi, because everything I see of this game makes me fall in love with the horror genre all over again. Not since Dead Space 2 have I found myself drawn to something so unabashedly fuelled by gluttonous body horror carnage, and maybe I'll be able to approach it this time without being scared into an actual heart attack. Yes, I think I'm better off now. More grown and experienced. I'd never let a franchise shake me to my utmost- oh wait, didn't I get shook silly when playing Outlast a couple of years back? Yeah, I guess there's absolutely no hope for me then, and this allure I find from Callisto is my darkest psyche trying to clue me into to my latent masochistic tendencies. (Wait, I 100% Blasphemous, I guess those tendencies aren't entirely latent, are they...)

And of course I'm going to be drawing Dead Space comparisons when this game is being created by one of the co-creators of that EA space-horror franchise. Compare this game's offerings with whatever it is EA is cooking up in the labs for that Dead Space remake and I'll take the new story and setting anyday of the week, Dead Space is a little played out by this point. (Unless they want to tell a Dead Space story in a completely different environment. That might work.) And that's because whilst I love Dead Space and think it's one of the best action games every made, that just so happens to also be a horror; there's only so much you can do with one universe. We need to change things up, throw out the old, rocket in the new; revivify and resurrect. Callisto looks just fine and sharp enough to be that total shot in the arm that I'm looking for to remind me why I loved being torn to shreds by horrific body horror monstrosities all those years ago.

Now apparently, and this is a shocker to me; The Callisto Protocol actually started life as an expanded universe game for the PUBG brand. Which is just... what? So apparently PUBG has a universe with lore and something, and the developers who made Callisto, Striking Distance Studios, were created to try and create subsidiary games to broaden the horzions of the Battlegrounds. Which means that for a decent chunk of time the PUBG guys were completely kosher with SDS running off and making a sci-fi horror game until- I guess maybe Brendon Greene stuck his head around the door and went "Huh, I guess this isn't really anything like PUBG, is it? You know what, make it standalone." At that point why even bother? Just stick a terminal in the game about how a couple hundred years ago some nutters used to host death tournaments on earth and call it a day, universe expanded.

But even if this studio failed to hit their intended mark with their founding principals, I'm glad the project itself isn't being scrapped because right now this game looks fire. Running off the PS5 and looking glorious for it, we can see all the hallmarks of what makes a game like this great. Dark corridors with intense sparking fixtures, tight claustrophobic camera work that sticks just close enough to bring the viewer into each gross scene and, of course, horrific abominations of the natural order that look like silly-putty humans melted in a microwave and shoved through a blender. (Why the hell did that make me google what happens to digits stuck in a blender? What is wrong with me?) Oh, and there's some normal looking zombies thrown in there too for the balance of the universe, I guess? I don't know, they seem kind of out-of-place next to all the imaginative horror monsters here, like the Possessed in DOOM; they look utterly purposeless. (Oh, unless they're supposed to be the first stage in the post-death life cycle as they get turned into true body horror demons!)

For me one of the coolest things about seeing this game right now is seeing a sci-fi horror game that is AAA quality, so clearly of the Dead Space stock, and evolved from the baseline of a copyright-free Alien. Now don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Alien and the aesthetic grunge of truckers in space that movie created bought a vivid reality to sci-fi that has rippled in the hearts of numerous sci-fi projects. But my god did old Dead Space cling to the design principals of Alien like a clutch. The Ishimura was expressly designed to feel like the Nostromo, Titan station had elements of LV-426 in some of it's location design until that game just ended up going right back to the Ishimura. And when the franchise finally moved on in 3, you could feel a lack of artistic direction which made some of the visuals outside of set piece moments forgettable. They needed a break to take the lessons they learnt from that game and create something all of their own and I'm seeing it right now with The Callisto's world.

What I must give them a hard time for, and I'm going to do this to every horror game until some gets the memo; it's giving us another forgettable protagonist. It's not like they don't know their main character is under designed, if they have trouble figuring out they can just stick him in a crowded room, turn the lights off for a couple minutes than switch them on and try to find him. Seriously, this guy has less distinguishing features than bloody Isaac Clarke out of his suits, and I only remember what Clarke looks like because he was sporting that atrocious hair model which looks like a mushy mix between black and grey hair. Is it that hard to give us a horror game character who isn't just 'Square jawed action man in jumpsuit'? Can't you just give him a big nose or something? Just a big old honker right between the eyes. That'll give us something to remember him by.

Also, I'm not quite feeling these monsters as much as I was the Necromoprhs; they don't quite look twisted enough to look truly alien. Which is probably an artistic choice. The Necromorphs were so brutalised that it's very easy to look at them and not even really see the root of the body underneath it until you actually get to watch the transformation happen in front of you, which in turn allows the brain to separate the human form from the Necromorph body. By keeping enough of a recognisable human shape in their design, perhaps the team are trying to draw the eye to the horrific transformation that they've undergone so the gross fascination stays with us for longer. It's really a matter of taste and what we prefer at that point. Oh, and how we want to be brutally murdered. I'm happy to see this game is keeping up the Dead Space tradition of brutal death animations; now if they get anything to match the squeamish-provoking intensity of the eye-gouging scene from DS2 they'll have truly made a worthy successor.

The Callisto Protocol looks great. A return to form for a horror market that has begun to lose it's edge with endless fluffy toy games, joining the greats like modern Resident Evil and... wow these really are the only two modern horror games going in the AAA market right now, huh? You'd really think there'd be some sort of cosmic horror franchise or something, but nope. (Apparently 'Call of Cthulhu' was pretty mediocre) But I have been burnt by a horror game that looks promising before, what with The Medium being a boring slog, so I'm going to reserve kicking and screaming no matter how much the primitive ape in me wants to. I'm happy that one of my favourite horror games ever is getting some sort of revival at least. (Aside from the Remake. Seriously the original looks and plays fine, why do we need a remake?)

What is up with Fortnite?

 Even the giants must quiver

In full honesty I have never been too much of a Fortnite head myself, just as I've never quite gravitated towards online ecosystems in general. I never Prestiged at a single COD game (Although I got very close in COD 4 for Wii) I never hit the active level cap in an MMO (Although again, very close in ESO) and I've never stuck with a Battle Royale for more than a month. I don't know what it is. Maybe I just can't stand the idea of playing the same map over and over trying to squeeze new experiences out of the same basic building blocks. Does that make me a reductionist? Perhaps. And of course it means that I haven't felt the regular cycle of Fortnite content bouncing around the already jumbled mess of my subconscious. Although that hasn't made me a total clueless dunce as to its going ons. Indeed, I could hardly have my finger on the trigger of the industry without feeling the rumblings of that lumbering titan as it moves. Which is why I can speak from an informed position when I say that Fortnite isn't making the waves it once did, I want to examine why that is and speculate if there is anything the game can do to shoot up its profile once more. 

First off it's a given; Fortnite ain't the headline grabbing apocalyptic event stealer it once was. Former Zodiac killer Senator Ted Cruise even aimed at video games in a recent unfocused rant about the causes of gun violence, and didn't even think to mention its name! Do you think that would have happened three or four years back? Hell no, the news networks of America and Britain would have been flooded with special segments about the dangers of the ultra violent cartoon shooter game. I know because three years ago those were the sorts of specials floating around. But today Fortnite has fallen so far from the public zeitgeist as the laymen's singular point-of-reference for all things gaming that it's no longer the go-to badguy in the cultural war against fictional violence! What have the alarmists and fear mongers to villainize now? Elden Ring? They don't even know what that is!

But we can be more numerical about this, by using that most typical of general interest gauging tools; Google Trends. Popular cultural items get googled often and so we can assess the active popularity of Fortnite by checking it's graph, seeing it had the most search traffic around October 2019, and see how the subsequent spikes in popularity, usually occurring around big events in Fortnite history, are shrinking in their size. The last spike at the end of 2021 was exactly half the size of the all time peak, which isn't exactly a death knell to hear but it does indicate a trend downwards in popularity that hasn't yet steadied itself out. The decline is very gradual given the sheer weight of the franchise we're talking about here, but it's consistent; Fortnite can't score the headlines like it used to. (I should note, however, that the baseline of searches outside of big events has remained remarkably stagnant. The game isn't heading to dropping off the face of the earth anytime soon.)

And it's not as though Fortnite hasn't had it's share of huge events in the time since it's heyday. There were the live concerts with huge stars, the movie premiers and even several big season and chapter end moments. In fact, have you figured out what big event caused the biggest surge in Fortnite search traffic in October 2019? I give you a clue, it's really obvious when you stop and think about it. It was the big Chapter 1 end when the game shut it's self off for a couple of days and scared kids were left scouring the Internet wondering if Fortnite had died before their very eyes. A funny time to be sure, but is that really the highlight of their publicity stunts they want to go down in history most for? Not hiring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson to star as one of their characters, not having a Ariana Grande concert play in their game? Not having a cameo crossover with the biggest and highest grossing film ever made, at the time? Nope, trolling the kids takes the podium position apparently.

What has happened since within the game itself? Irrelevant of gaffes and stunts, how has the gameplay of Fortnite remained competitive? By keeping competitive within their own studio, as far as I can tell. Epic Games constantly rewrites the very foundational blocks of the Fortnite core game loop in order to keep the cycle fresh and somewhat exciting for those who stick with it, the perfect development cycle that a live service demands. (Which we see so many wannabe pretenders totally fail at; Halo Infinite!) Mech suits get swapped out for fishing gameplay, large sections of the established map get reworked or removed altogether, new gimmicks are shoved into the mix; playing Fortnite is like delving into the active mind of an utterly indecisive perfectionist, and that rollercoaster ride is difficult to get tired off entirely. And yet somehow people still do, but I think there's still some methods and avenues left for the development team to explore in order to properly confront and combat that Fortnite lethargy.

For one, and I know how this sounds but bear with me, I think Fortnite should pull back a little on all of the crossover promotions. I know, I know; those are the stamps of premium exclusivity that single out Fortnite from the crowd! But there's nothing to prove anymore from the Epic Games team. Fortnite has crossed over with every major fictional brand on the Earth and become truly mainstream, there's no need to establish nor maintain appearances; and nowadays it feels like the bulk of Fortnite's online coverage is dominated by an exhausting and unexhaustive parade of crossover deals. It's obnoxious. And whatsmore, it takes away effort from development into real content that might spruce up the experience in a substantial way that will make those who have long since put down the controller turn around and go "Oh, what's going on there then?" 

So what sort of crazy proclamation can I throw out and declare is Fortnite's singular path to success? Well nothing concrete, I can't claim to be the industry whisperer by any stretch of the imagination, but I wonder at what a total seismic shift to the playstyle of Fortnite might achieve. What if, through significant map reworks and content redesigns, Fortnite was to host, if not a whole chapter than at least a single season, itself in first person? Seems drastic, but it's something different and would change the flow of the game substantially. They might throw in a more casual death match style gamemode, if that concept doesn't sound too trite for their tastes; or maybe, and I like this idea the most, a large scale warfare battle royale gamemode. I'm talking single life, huge teams of up to twenty, battle for supremacy at the centre of the map. They just need something drastic to draw in headlines and transformative to lure in readers.

I don't think the sun has set on the Fortnite empire, not yet and not even nearly. Games like Fortnite have a tendency to linger well past their prime and fester into sores on the industry if left unloved, and I don't want to see the Industry's darling Battle Royale turn into a Blizzard-level stain on the medium. They've stumbled, but they haven't fallen off yet and I think Epic Games have exactly what they need to weather the knife's edge for a few years more before they do. At least ride the storm until you've got a sufficient Fortnite successor, Epic, you owe Generation Z that much! And to Apex Legends, and all the other Battle Royales that circle the Fortnite supremacy like starving vultures, I encourage the competition knowing that only through bitter contest can the finest warrior be minted. Let's forge the best Battle Royale the industry can muster