There's a Tintin game now

And nobody told me.

I'd wager there currently a decent amount of folk in the world right now who have no idea what a 'Tintin' even is and finds the assumption that they should know as somewhat condescending. But as a boy who grew up reading Tintin, watching the cartoon, and always thirsting for more of Hergé's work ever since; I find it a little insulting that anyone would not know who Tintin is. Because you see, Tintin is a rockstar. Not really, he's a journalist. But he's a world famous, investigating, deep sea diving, gangster battling, space exploring, kick ass hero of a journalist; all of which makes him even more rock and roll than a rockstar in my book! He, Snowy and Captain Haddock are also the front characters to one of the most enduring and beloved old comic series' to grace the entertainment medium, telling genuinely well drawn, funny and sometimes even quite poignant stories during his world adventures.

A brussels born native, Tintin's adventures would regularly take him all over the world to the middle of civil wars, dense jungles, snowy alps, sandy dunes and, as I hinted, even the surface of the moon. And his wide reach would not just be limited to the realms of the books; Tintin is a hugely recognisable 20th century icon for his and Snowy's iconic spotlight silhouette, a fame indicative of his vast appeal across the borders of culture and language and unto the future. So well was he renowned that Steven Spielberg, apparently the only man that Hergé ever considered correctly talented for an adaption of this work, made a great 2011 adventure movie about Tintin called 'The Secret of the Unicorn'. And then Steven subsequently disappeared behind the dozens of other projects he signed himself off to work on, and at this rate we're likely to see an adaptation of poxy 'Ready Player Two' before a sequel to that well animated and just all around fun first Tintin movie.

But if there is one medium that Tintin has never made a significant splash in, it's video games. For better or for worse, the realm of gaming has been largely devoid of the Belgian reporter's charming spirit throughout the rise of the entire gaming industry. There have been the odd outings here and there, but nothing that enters the lexicon of gaming. You'd have thought that in the decades of people plumbing every bloody fictional property to make some stupid tie-in game, we'd have gotten some 80's incoherent mess of a game that is attributed to Tintin's brand; and there is. Although 'Tintin on the Moon' does actually do a decent job of capturing his visual appeal, I'm actually rather chuffed with it's looks.  Outside of the movie tie-in game there hasn't been a single adventure game dedicated to really nailing the overall eclectic appeal of the Tintin stories. I suppose the franchise rights holders had the good sense to at least try keep the franchise respectable. Which is more than can be said for the Godfather rights holders. (I cannot believe there's two Godfather GTA clones; and that I've played and owned both of them.) Still, as gaming grows the powers that be were going to get their grubby mitts on Tintin sooner or later, so I guess today should not be as much of a surprise to me as it still, inexplicably, is.

Because yes, recently it was announced that there is a Tintin game in the works looking to adapt 'Cigars of the Pharoh'; I would say that's one of my favourite adventures but, cheesy though it is to say, Tintin goes back to such a pure part of my youth that quite literally every adventure has parts to them that make it a contender for my favourite. The developer behind the project, Pendulo Studios, seem like a scrappy little Spanish studio that have a tendecy to specialise in games that land better for Steam critics than Metacritics; and the publisher, Microïds, haven't been shy about announcing their delight for working on a property like this. They've gushed about the honour and promised to do it justice by the beloved fans of Hergé's work, which is all anyone really wants from a game like this. Yes, they do sound committed, that Microïds. Hmm. Microïds... Where have I heard that name before? I think- I think I've written that name in this blog before... yes, I have! And just what was that article covering again... Oh. Oh no.

So... Microïds. They're the guys behind the 'XIII Remake'. Yeah, that 'XIII Remake'. The one which screwed up the fundamental style of that comic-book based game, the general smoothness of the gameplay from a technical level (It was buggier than the Amazon) and the basic controls of shooting in a shooter so badly that the original XIII started to trend and sell more on Steam. In fact, it was this whole chaos that drove me to go out and buy the original, and it was a ton of fun I should add. Although to be absolutely fair to Microïds, they were involved in publishing the thing rather than developing it. (Although that does very much mean they're happy selling a god-awful product.) Actually, no. That's unfair. Microïds have dedicated themselves to funding a remake of that remake out of their own pocket to make things right; which is a hell of a lot more than a lot of bigger studios end up doing in times of disaster. You want a good comparison case? Take a very close look at how Volition are about to handle the next few months after the embarrassing Saints Row launch; you'll see the distinction.

Divorcing the unfortunate circumstance of the publisher from the game being made, I do wonder what it is that Tintin can bring to the format of video games that it hasn't already to other mediums. I mean what style of game is this even going to be? The video game tie in to the Spielberg movie was predictably low-concept, with the game being more about punchups and platforming; but I think there's a real potential for a Sherlock Holmes style investigation game here to be bought into the loop. Tintin is no stranger to action, of course, he's traded bullets with criminals and punch-up brawls with sailors. But he's more of an adventurer and investigator, not so much a pugilist. Or even a reporter, really. The intrigue of his stories are what brings a lot of them to life, as well as the exploration of various worldly locations and secrets. In a way, Tintin is the original Lara Croft and/or Indiana Jones. Although Indiana Jones did rather intentionally, have ties to old adventure pulp comic as well.

I think there's a decent case to be made that a Tintin game should balance itself between action and investigation gameplay in a manner beholden of, but not aping, the L.A. Noire model. Wherein you had specific scenes of mystery solving and mechanics built to flesh out that experience and well as some built for gun-fighting and how that played out. Of course, they maybe could tune down the open world aspects, but there's a game to mimic in those confines somewhere. And the cool thing is that when they manage to get a balance of gameplay that feels about right, there's literally dozens of great books to pull stories from that they can focus on next. If the team manage to pull this off they could go down a rabbit-hole of adapting as many great Tintin stories as the team can handle, improving their craft and riding off that strong name at the same time. It really is a dream licence to work with.

As a fan from childhood, I'm going to have a higher level of expectation than your average fan; but that's not born out of snobbish prejudice against anyone daring to touch my childhood, but a love for a set of stories that I really think could make a splash with a whole new generation through the medium of video games. I'm not expecting anything revolutionary that's looking to break any banks or rewrite what it is to be a game, but a special blend of excitement and intrigue that conjures up the charm of the Belgium reporter and his adorable dog's adventures would be more than enough to elevate any game experience like this into an idea worth paying attention to. I just pray they don't take the low route and make this an arcade game but looking at the devs I see a hearty dev team looking for their break. This may just be it, and I really hope that it is.

Sony is being sued

 That's a hefty chunk of change!

I am a pent up little cur, let me tell you. Just a bundle of vile distastes and wrapped up enragements that pops and boils over into making these little blogs as my outlet because I don't agree with the concept of psychiatrists. Wait- no actually I don't agree with the implementations of psychiatrists in our current ecosystem, which in a round-about-way is a product of manner in which they were conceived. (Potato/Potatoe) Which essentially is my way of saying that I complain a lot, about everything and anything under the sun in order to make myself feel better. I don't expect any of the issue I complain about to have consequence or to be shared by literally anyone else in the world. So when I start hearing talk about an bubbling Sony lawsuit to the tune of 5 billion; well, it surprises me; especially when it's for the reasons I myself hold issue with Sony.

Now of course, when it comes to Lawsuits like this, the name of the game is to throw some big stupid number out to try and scare the target into a settlement if they're susceptible to that sort of strong arming or, as is more likely in this case, drum up so much publicity that the march of public pressure can push on Sony to... reach a settlement. 5 Billion isn't even remotely on the table and it's a bit silly dangling that around headlines like it is. Also, I've been watching a simply obscene amount of Better Call Saul recently, so I can't help but find the prospects of such a lawsuit very pessimistic if it makes it to trial, which I don't even think it will. Whoever the lawyer who jumped ontop of this class action is definitely wants to get their quick payday before the coffers run dry and maybe see their name in a headline or two. I doubt anyone inside or out the industry is really taking numbers like this seriously; but at the very least this is forcing the start of a conversation.

Because you see, Alex Neill, the suit's Champion, is swinging around the big guns in rhetoric by accusing Sony of breaching competition law through abusing it's vast industry powers to impose unfair terms and conditions on publishers and developers, forcing up retail prices for consumers. And, well... she ain't wrong. I mean isn't it Sony (and their friends over in, aspiring-morons, Square Enix) that are pushing hard for a new standard of video games retailing at $70 brand-new? So much so that we're looking at a cash grab remake of The Last of Us that literally adds nothing significant to the experience aside from visual upgrades and yet is somehow going to release more expensive than the original game was when it launched. If that doesn't kick you in the gut and make you wonder exactly what the hell it is you're putting up with, then maybe it's about time you start reassessing the leeway you give video game development companies.

Of course, as with every class action dispute in gaming these days, the root figures are drawn from exorbitant market cuts. Sony takes 30% from all purchases made through their API, squeezing every developer for all their worth. Alex Neill knows the sorts of pressure points to push on, her being a professional complainer herself with her company 'Resolver group'. She also wants to rope in literally anybody who has purchased anything from the Sony store since August 2016; which is a very broad brush to paint with, as I'm sure she knows by pulling up such a ridiculous figure to argue with. Of course the real kicker, the reason why this does have a significant 'hearts and minds' angle that Alex and her legal advisors are wisely addressing, is the fact Sony's expensive machinations are heating up the most right now, in the middle of a global cost-of-living crisis. Heck, if theses guys hire their own Saul Goodman to the case they could even twist this angle into making out Sony as unintentional war profiteers! It would be bad faith as heck, but it sure as hell would make a great headline!

But even with boring real lawyers there is definitely a case for this suit to try and drag Sony's name in the mud whilst bringing it's more brow-raising practices to the public light. Honestly, that's the only way we're going to really be able to address some of crap Sony has been pulling in a way that effects change. They're already trying to pave over the claims that The Last of Us Remake is a cash grab by claiming those complaints come purely down to some critic on the work ethic of the game and not the flagrantly over embellished price tag that they pushed for in the first place! And Square Enix have really shown their weak belly after recent, very public, internal failures in management; if this lawsuit can do something similar to Sony there's a real chance of knocking the wind out of this "Current gen means 70$" normal that these ghouls want to try and establish whilst everyone is riled up about 'NFTs' and 'Metaverses'.

Honestly, I have been worrying somewhat about the bad habits that Sony were perpetrating, because the truth is that if anyone can force a bad trend into becoming an industry standard, it's the folks that are currently leading the push of quality in one key half of the industry. Sony are single-player leaders, their games reach a standard of quality that is very difficult to match, and they maintain that standard with exclusionary privilege. (Just ask the Days Gone directors. After they're finished blaming their fans for not being rich enough, of course.) And that goes for the standards set for in-store cuts as well. As we move into the anti-physical age, actual boxed copies of games are becoming more and more reserved whilst online stores are seeing more and more traffic. Ruling that ecosystem today is going to lead to profitable avenues in the future, so setting a line of standard in the sand now will do wonders to protect developer and publisher rights as well as consumers in the very near future.

Still, there is an allergy to frivolous law suits that makes me recoil at the very prospect of this suit. I can't really judge if there's any actual legs to these filings or if they're just headline stealers; and does this even have any hope in hell of seeing a settlement? I have significant doubts. It seems these days that the burden to starting a class action specifically is ludicrously low, but the actual percentage of resolutions are minimal. If they want to, Sony could absolutely paint this as the frivolous rantings of a seasoned complainer who's entire existence is just to stir up trouble on other's behalf. And if they do then all of the actual real issues that are being addressed will be buried on a counter smear campaign, allowing the grifiters in Sony management to continue leeching off the industry like actual slugs. No, I don't have a lot of respect for that breed.

When consumer hands are tied and bound to a rock brick over a waterfall that Sony is threatening to send plunging if only we'll listen to them rant about the definition of insanity one more time, it can start to feel like only the most drastic of actions can claw back a common medium of sense. Sony were the one's who pushed the boundaries far past decency and elevated this into a discourse of ridiculous numbers matched with zero accountability, such to the point where people can look at an insane £5 billion lawsuit and go "Yeah, that's more my wavelength then whatever the hell Sony is trying to push." The overall message should be clear, Sony need to wake up and remember they live in a real world with real consequence that effects that markets they're trying to squeeze blood out of. If they want to push prices up during the times as they are, or any other time considering how bad faith their reasoning has been, well; I for one am going to side with the crazy litigating lady. 

Dr D's Deadrop

 The prescription is here

It's a very common dream, for those that immerse themselves in the world of video games, to become a video game creator. It is, however, largely just a dream. Because the realities of making video games is that they're are arduous and painful works that take the combined talents of dozens of different skill sets in order to come together. Nowadays one would need a significant amount of capital, access to creatives, and a damn good idea to get a game together and most people just plain don't have that. A lot of the time you might hear about gaming content creators working on their very own video game only for the topic to dry up once sense drops and the actual scale of that investments comes to reality in their minds. Or the game does come out and it's terrible. One content creator, however, believes themselves not just an exception to that curse, but a worthy challenger to the ranks of AAA game development, as hugely laughable as that sounds. And if you know the scene, you probably know who I'm talking about. (Or you just read the title.)

Dr Disrespect is not a streamer I've ever really watched but I get the shtick. Roleplay as a sweaty, self absorbed, asshole 'gamer' stereotype and try to pretend that you're still 'in on the joke' five years later when you're still playing the same tunes. I get it, it's funny. Kind of. But there comes a time when all the false bravado starts to leak out of the protective container you keep it in and starts to rot the rest of the brain; and that's a proven fact. Actors talk about it all the time, Hugh Laurie gave himself an actual limp by pretending to have one for years filming 'House', Charlie Cox almost gave himself serious eye issues by purposefully unfocusing his vision whilst acting as Daredevil; these are the dangers of lying to yourself for prolonged periods; you start to make it come true. So when Dr D spends years playing the entitled idiot who overestimates his own abilities and worth just because he's good at a few video games... well, it ain't no surprise we're looking at a game like Deadrop.

All this is being developed by The Midnight Society; (as far as video game studio names go, I'll give that a 6/10. Lost points for obvious plagiarism.)  which is Dr D's own studio that's apparently using it's vast wealth to tap some actual industry talent into their confines. But the reason I'm still a pessimist even despite that fact, is because of their 'revolutionary idea' to 'turn the game development process on it's head'. Which essentially means that they sell you the game before they make it. So Kickstarter, then. Except wait... it's not like Kickstarter because, for One: Dr D promises you that there will be a game on the otherside of this (for what little the promise of an Internet influencer is worth) and for Two: you'll be buying into the game on the blockchain through the purchase of an NFT- oh godammit! Can I just go one full week without having to read about something connected to bloody crypto currencies in our video game space? What's next; is it a metaverse too? (Seriously, though; I bet he does that.)

Midnight Society is all about integrating NFTs and Blockchain integration into the ecosystem of their games in order to 'give ownership back in the hands of the players.' In an interview with Paul Tassi the head of the studio, of ex-COD fame, correctly identified the problem with the digital only future we're moving to and the licensing issues it brings up, but presents crypto as a sort of 'back door' solution rather than confronting it with meaningful policy changes and heck, maybe even litigation! But in the effort of being fair I guess you can put this as a 'I'll seek my solution you seek yours' sort of situation; and he was smart enough to put out that their games will not be NFT exclusive or blockchain exclusive. Although I find the idea of two versions of an online game, one off the blockchain and one on it, monumentally moronic. As if split player bases aren't already an issue: start literally cannibalising each platform.

The fruit of this little experiment was the annoyingly named 'Deadrop', which is not another fast food app or a mystery box delivery service; it's an FPS, baby! And it's an FPS that currently looks rougher than sandpaper for it's first snapshot. Oh but don't worry, that's all part of their 'full transparency philosophy' whereupon the team are devoted to putting out playable demos at each significant development milestone so that people can see what they're up to and provide feedback, the whole nine yards. Seems fair, I just wonder why they didn't bother making a really bang-up framework of a game first before going down the Early Access route. I'm just saying, Larian really laid the groundworks for how something like this should be handled. Because what Deadrop currently has going for it looks about 1 step above amateur.

The animations for movement are unrefined, gun handling animations look okay, the 'unique' gun design of that M16 that's doing the rounds looks laughably ugly- seriously, they look like how a 15 year old would redesign a firearm in order to make it look more 'cool'. The firing effect is... I think intentionally poor; because I can't conceive a team of ostensible industry vets slapping that in a game and calling it presentable. I can only think they were rushed to reveal and literally put a stock effect on the weapons, that's the only feasible explanation. Graphically it looks a fine but creatively dull; although that could be the very limited demo that is currently given that impression. Frankly it looks unambitious; which is ideal for a first project from a team that's just starting to get it's footing, but a bit disappointing from a project that the Doc is selling as the game changer industry disrupter which is going to make COD tremble in their boots.

Getting a demo to run alright with pretty reflections does not a make great game. In fact, I'm pretty sure there's vast contingents of gamers out there who will attest that graphical fidelity is literally the last aspect of a game that should be worked on just short of bugfixing and maybe VO work depending on how important narrative and performance is to your particular game. You want a game feeling good, playing well and maybe even sounding well early on, because if any of those elements is wanting you'll have enough time ahead of you to work on that before you bake in systems and engines that are incapable of being manipulated into whatever it is you're looking for. Deadrop is starting from the bottom and just crossing it's fingers praying that everything comes together by the flipside. I'm telling you that is a very difficult order to design in and it might end up dooming this project to be not as solid as it otherwise could have been, but then what did we really expect?

From the word 'jump' the good Doctor has been singing songs about how this will show screenshots that make Call of Duty weep; he's always been about the style of his upcoming shooter over the substance behind the controller. Which is galling when COD has a literal stranglehold on solid shooter controls that it has maintained for over a decade now. You cannot surpass COD on graphics alone and expect to siphon off it's audience, it doesn't matter how big and important you think that you are. Most other shooters bring in unique twists and mechanics to try and live alongside COD, but aside from the weak sci-fi blood running through this game's basic aesthetic, Deadrop has yet to prove it has any good ideas up it's sleeves ready to shake up the play space. So that's a pretty disappointing reveal for Crypto-gaming's alleged golden boy; let's see which way the wind blows come the next milestone. 

Dead Island 2 is back from the dead

 Who woulda thunk?

In 2011, a video game called Dead Island was released to raised eyebrows, mostly due to the fact that the game sold itself on the strength of an initial CG reveal trailer that revolved around heartbreak, emotion turmoil and the tragedy indicative of a zombie apocalypse, only for the game to throw most of that away so that it could focus on the silly and inane style of zombie slaying that video games can't seem to shy away from. It wouldn't be until the Last of Us that we got a game that would live up to Dead Island's initial promise. None of which is to say that Dead Island 1 was a bad game, per se; it just wasn't really the game that many people were expecting it to be. When expectations were adjusted however; Dead Island turned out to be a perfectly fine and fun zombie game, that absolutely got stale before it's second half but which is otherwise a decent enough time.

I think that the focus on melee combat alongside a morbidly well realised gore system that allowed players to bash zombies in pretty modular and satisfying ways allowed for the game general flaws to be swept aside under the pure fun of just playing the thing. In fact, I'd say that Dead Island's zombies, with the ability to actually slice off chunks of flesh was pretty much the height of industry zombie gore design until Resident Evil 2 Remake came along with it's RE engine, that pretty much nailed locational damage down to the specifics. And the resort island setting certainly made for a very unique visual setting to slay monsters in, keeping the premise feeling fresh for about as long as the narrative could manage. However, the game never really got the sequel that so many thought it deserved. There was some quite lacklustre DLC content, a spiritual successor in Dying Light which bought the game closer to the scary and emotional-charged angle that the original was hinting at, but no real Dead Island 2.

That was until that teaser trailer from what feels like a whole generation ago, wherein we got a little look at a game much more in-line with what Dead Island represents; campey, gorey fun. I think that whole 'jogger going down Venice Beach' trailer slowly became more infamous than famous as it became the posterboy for games that never come out, however. Dead Island 2, this time it's in LA, crept out of industry show line-ups for years as the game underwent set-back after set-back, at least one total reboot of development, and enough team shakeups to make any sensible onlooker sceptical. Personally, I was starting to look at this game as modern day vapourware. A promise of something that would never really come into fruition, and certainly not in the way that fans were dreaming for. A disaster package waiting to drop on our heads. And you know what? I may be eating crow on this one.

Dead Island 2 is not only a real game that was shown off with a gameplay trailer this time around proving it's legitimacy, it actually looks pretty good. It's not an industry changer by any stretch of the imagination, and it hasn't made any grand promises as of the scope of what the game will offer, but in a way I can very much respect that restraint. Whereas Dying Light 2 tripped over itself to rave about the scope of adaptiveness within the game world, shifting to attune to your specific choices, only for the real game to fall, predictably, flat on that promise; Dead Island 2 wants you to kill zombies in horrific, brutal, and at times in a nearly DOOM-esque fashion. That is something that can be proved already from the gameplay we have, and it's a promise that the team seem capable of living up to in gusto. So much so that Geoff Keighley had the Gamescon version of the trailer censored. Which turned out to be a cheap gimmick just to funnel people into watching the uncut trailer on Youtube; there was literally nothing any more objectionable in the 'censored' clips.

What we seem to have is a deliciously violent celebration of all that Dead Island 1 got right rendered in a scale-up to modern standards that I certainly wasn't sure was possible after a development period this strangled. I mean this game looks good, although that is an easy bar to clear after the recent release of Saints Row. (Sheesh.) You have the reflections, high poly zombie models, great looking blood and gore effects, and a real sense of scale now that we have the city of angels to explore. Even though I think you have to squint mighty hard to call Los Angeles an Island. I guess it's part of an island, but only if you're willing to call a continent an Island and personally I'm not. Honestly, I'd feel more comfortable calling a zombie game set in Manhattan an island, because that would technically be true.

But I suppose we're all about capturing that lazy vibe of the sea-side resort bleached in sun and vacation vibes; for which I must say that Dead Island 2 is really holding up it's end of the bargain. The second half of Dead Island 1 took us into the city and then onwards to the jungle, both environments that weren't really what fans wanted and thus those parts of the game pretty roundly sucked. Dying Light went on to explore those environments and how to make them fun, leaving Dead Island 2 to lean further into the resort vibe from the first half. Of course, we'll no doubt have to explore the residentials in the Hollywood hills, and the busy streets of downtown, but being able to see the ocean at practically any point is going to soothe that claustrophobic spirit before it can rattle too hard.

Dead Island's biggest problem, in my opinion, was how stringently is appealed to it's RPG formula to the point where the game turned into a looter style title in it's later chapters. Yes, that means you'd have levelled weapons and gear that suddenly grew ineffective because these enemies were too powerful. You could save all your guns for the big dangerous moments, only to find out that they hardly did any damage whatsoever. When you have zombies as the chief enemy of your game, it kinda rubs raw having them become bullet sponges because of some arbitrary damage formula which decided not to work your way. Maybe the many years in development has given the developers time to effectively consider this, or maybe they'll just throw in another annoying overly RPG'd system. Who knows at this point.

If this game actually does come out and is as fun as the trailer says, then we might have to totally rewrite the fundamental rules about how vapourware functions in the modern age. The commonly understood pattern is: game is announced, game gets vanished, game resurfaces, game is bad. I'm not saying that Dead Island 2 is primed to break that pattern, but it certainly wants us to believe that is can and screw it, I wanna believe. We may not exactly be starved for zombie games but after Dying Light 2 kind of let me down a bit in the story department I welcome another approach to a big budget zombie hit because hey, there's just something special about zombie killing in video games, ain't there? Do I suspect that the game is going to slip over itself in it's attempt to differentiate itself from Dying Light? (Even after Dying Light 2 lost the mood of the original game) Yes I do... but what's hype with a dose of reality swinging over us like a guillotine? 

The Mortuary Assistant

How bad could it be?

Indie Horror videogames are more plentiful than stars in the sky, as everyone and their recently deceased grandmother can see the appeal in designing what is ultimately more of an 'interactive experience' than an actual 'video game' what with a carefully designed balance of features and all that junk. Nah, it's so much easier to stick a player in a maze and throw a half-distorted 3D model after them that screams really loud when it touches them. I would call it a hold-over from the runaway success of the Slender games, but the truth is that Slenderman actually had a unique mechanic which makes it stand out from it's successors even today. You had the monster who only moved when you weren't looking at it, however looking at it caused you to slowly die. That's actually a brilliant balance of give-and-take where you're capable of having painfully close encounters without having a bad guy breathing down the player's neck for an entire game. So it's probably safer to say that indie games have learnt from a mixture of the greats, Five Nights, Slender and often a little of PT for good measure. And maybe they'll have a new maestro to aspire to with the release of The Mortuary's Assistant.

Okay, to be ultimately fair the Mortuary's Assistant is still a relatively niche title within the community of horror game fans, but it has done the rounds in that community for being a rare polished treat amidst the sea of honest, but undeniably rough, indie efforts that this genre is so often inundated with. Heck, we got here a game with actual decent quality voice acting, a solid graphical scope for the small scale of the game, a suitably morbid gameplay loop with dynamic puzzle elements and just a bunch of endings. Because if you have a video game with anything less than five endings, the community will reject it as a vile pretender to the horror game throne. That and Souls-likes for some reason. We just can't live without an arbitrary reason to play through the same rough game we just did again, huh. (Ah, I'm not hating on multiple endings. And this game does a decent enough job with them anyway.)

The game focuses on taking over the role as the night-time Mortuary's Assistant, which means pretty much what it sounds like. The player has to work to prepare bodies that will be placed in the wake and then buried, with an eye-popping amount of detail. Aside from the fact that the bodies are all clothed, for everyone's sake I can only assume, there's an excessive amount of realism and detail put into the simulated process of sewing shut mouths and draining blood from the bodies; so much so that it crosses that barrier of fiction into natural discomfort as you address the fact that this is a common set of procedures that happens everyday, to everyone eventually, even you. Some day that slab of lifeless meat on a mortician's slab will be you, getting poked with syringes and the like. And I'm pretty sure that opting in for cremation doesn't save you from all post-mortem poking either; I don't know for certain but I feel like stuffing a body that's still full of blood into a furnace is a disaster just waiting to happen.

But what if I told you that the actual horror of preparing a human body for it's viewing is only the window dressing? Then I'd be lying. No, I'd say it's the morbid duties that are the meat of the game here, whilst the excuse for spooks comes from the fact that the player is currently going through the process of being possessed by some sort of demon and thus is haunted for the entire night. Match that with the actual job ahead of you and there's a surprisingly effective concoction of uncomfortability feeding into scares that then settle you down, but right back into an uncomfortable base state. At least for your first two or so go arounds. You might assume that seeing these two different styles of horror, realistic and fantastical, would work to cancel each other out but no. Either by random happenstance or careful intention; they shake hands together well.

One way in which they do this is through the gameplay puzzle, which challenges the player to identify which of the bodies for the night has been taken over by the spirit of a demon and the name of the demon in question. This means exploring the environment, studying the twitching's of the dead and working under something of a time limit as the demon nears itself to taking over the player's body. This is not a foundation for a modular spooky system, however, this isn't 'single player Phasmophobia' or anything like that. Every demon seems to act exactly the same as one another with the only difference being their name, but such is understandable when the Dev is really using the demons as a vehicle through which to explore Rebecca's past trauma. And in that respect the game does wholly fine. I think from a writing standard it does teeter on the edge of 'overly dramatic fictional character drama', when I think a premise like this could have easily facilitated a real gut-wrenching realistic story of a trodden down human, with all her inadequacies and failures heightened into grand sins through the lens of her supernatural tormentors.

Still, for what's there the dev did a great job laying this out as a narrative of clues, which is one of my favourite methods for video games to tell their stories. I know so many people out there just want their cutscene and explanation, and The Mortuary' Assistant will reward you with clarification if you reach one of it's specific endings, but I love the uniquely videogame-style presentation of a story that needs to be unravelled and deduced through various flashbacks and hints here and there, before the kicker arrives to slot everything together. It's the Dark Souls effect, the more it troubles you to put the pieces together, the more you start to really connect with the pieces as each takes on a life of their own. Of course, that is only slightly marred by the fact that as you take on subsequent nights it won't be long before you really start to recognise the same specific scares, and thus have to witness the same extended story beats. 

Now is it the most scary game in the world? Well that depends entirely on your own subjective view of what you find scary. The game does give a decent number of jumpscares, a lot of which it telegraphs and most of which are tied to a randomly selected sequence of scares, so on multiple runs you've very likely to run into the exact same set up for a scare you now know is coming. However, the game does a better job of using it's already grim set-up to unnerve you with movement out of the corner of your eye, knocking outside where you don't expect it, voices calling for you; everything you'd expect from a decently constructed horror experience. The only problem being in the endgame, when you start to realise that none of these dangers have any substance to them and they just become distractions between you and the only real threat for the night, the ticking clock.

I would consider the Mortuary's Assistant as a pitcher of fresh water dunked atop a genre that has been thirsty for something new for a very long time. If not perhaps a world changer by any stretch of the imagination, the Assistant is still a very solid indie experience put together largely by one very talented developer, which can go quite a way to reminding us all that there's sometimes very special experiences that lie outside the churning machine of big studios with their deeply ingrained patterns on how the world should be run. Would any big studio have funded a game where you go into detail in preparing a body for the morgue? Hell no! And now those of us who have had that unique experience can go about the rest of live with the process of how our bodies are going to be treated after death burned into our psyches to haunt us. What bliss.

So Sony is the underdog now?

 How the turns table.

Sony and Microsoft are the like dual antagonists of the world's most repetitive anime, one that is rife with filler episodes that are stuffed with petty disputes where Twitter memes are slung back and forth, to huge arc enders where one side decids to try and get the other totally destitute and destitute. (Huh. Kind of like the relationship of the McGill Brothers from Better Call Saul now I think about it.) We've had a lot of the former kind of ribbing through the recent years as the big spokemen from both companies have gritted their teeth and sung the 'We're all in this together' song from High School Musical. It's always been a façade, though; the world sees straight through it. And in fact we got our chance to get a major ending arc moment when Sony tried their darnest to get official government regulators to block a huge potential Microsoft acquisition by taking a huge slice of 'hypocrite pie' and characterising themselves as scrappy underdogs under big-bad-Microsoft's shoes.

Now there is obviously no doubt about it; Microsoft does indeed have a simply scandalous amount of money at it's disposal and it's more than Sony could ever hope for in order to play about with. But you must also bear in mind that this is because Microsoft owns the single most popular Operating System in the world and is deeply entrenched in just about every part of the tech world whether directly or through subsidiaries. Sony has it's TVs. Pretty much any other angle they've tried to branch out in hasn't really amounted to much apart from their phone business. I still hear fond memories of the Ericsson here and there, for those that still use phones. Although not to distance them too far apart as competitors; Xbox is a minor division of the Microsoft whole, they are beholden to their corporate masters just as Playstation is; only if Xbox are really good boys and do all their homework on time, they get a slightly bigger allowance that Playstation would in the same scenario.

Such an allowance that could lay the ground for a 68 billion dollar buyout which still makes me wince to consider. Where does that money even actually go? I mean I know it goes to Activision; but where from there? I'm sure they roll some of that into the studio but come on- that isn't evet going to be anywhere near to a billion. Lawyers will take some vile cut of the pot, but then do the executives all go off and buy themselves private islands or something? Retire twenty years early? That's enough money to make every single employee, from the managers to the janitors, millionaires and still have too much left over to know what to do with. That's just simply too much money to throw around bloody game development studios. I can understand why Sony might look at those numbers and decide there's some shenanigans going on. (Someone did the money hack in real life.) But only if it gets through regulatory bodies of office.

We aren't privy to the regulatory hearings that such a process is subject to unless we get all litigious, but thankfully thanks to the international scale of Microsoft we were bound to run across a legislation with more lax rules on in-house conversations. Through this we've managed to get a ear into the process through which regulators reach out to other big players in the game's industry to get their perspectives on the deal taking place and to see if they believe it to be too monopolistic. For the Activision Blizzard deal in particular, one big point of contention was the ownership of the Call of Duty franchise and how that might effect the game's market if it were to become a sudden platform exclusive. Such is not the plans for the series currently, as COD is committed to at least three more releases on all applicable platforms but after that contract is up... well, Microsoft would be crazy not to put the screws on the kings of exclusivity deals, wouldn't they?

And so regulators turned to Ubisoft to ask them how they'd feel about an ecosystem ruled by COD exclusivity. "It's no biggy" Ubisoft said "We've got 'Rainbow Six: Siege'". "Ditto" said EA, "We've got Battlefield" and so on and so forth; all the way up until the conversation turned to Sony, want to guess what they said? "It's not fair" they said "Microsoft is cheating, COD is a game so huge it becomes a category of game unto itself, it cannot be realistically competed against. Whatsmore, Microsoft is trying to create an environment that no one can profitably stand up to them in." (For the sake of transparency I need to disclose that none of those were direct quotes but rather summations of points.) That's right, Sony believe that by taking COD from Microsoft they are going to irrevocably tilt the console wars in their favour because 'COD is a game that informs people's console choice'. Ain't that peachy? Imagine a video game company relaying and draconian exclusivity contracts to try and tilt the public's console choice? Well I never...

Of course that's exactly what Sony have been doing for years upon years! They've built and maintained a cadre of studios dedicated to creating the most polished single player games in the industry and then jealously maintains their exclusivity for years before giving them up to PC. They've also tried to use this monopoly on the cutting edge of the industry to try and push the retail price of video games up by another $10, all the while Microsoft is offering first party games day one access on Game Pass. That last bit is what's really getting under Sony's skin, because no matter how they cut it they're not willing to try and compete with that service and so are doing anything they can to sour that deal. Including, according to Microsoft themselves, locking devs in contract that prevents them from showing up on Game pass. The mind boggles at how ridiculous that is if there's any actually fire to that smoke. (Which isn't that hard to believe given this blocking attempt by Sony.)

Now it's very unlikely that Sony's words had any real effect, given that all of their peers seemed utterly unabashed with the buyout, it would be surprising if regulators took Sony's sole, clearly biased, condemnation as sacred. However this has unleashed something of the ill will between the companies which has been somewhat kept at bat until recently. Microsoft has already made a shot back across Sony's bow about those alleged contract lock-outs, and everything is looking like console wars 2.0 after years of 'will they won't they' about cross compatibility. (Another pro-consumer step which would be so easy to implement if not for Sony dragging their heels.) I'm not one to take sides in a war of corporate interests; but I will say that Sony is certainly looking more wrong out of the options available.

To be clear, Sony seem to be a bit up their own ass recently trying to paint themselves as a company on the brink when they are the leading console developers in the world right now. They have a very competent line of exclusives ahead of them and a huge headstart in popularity. There are no underdogs in a story like this, and maybe if Sony were a bit more honest with the way they formed their arguments I would have an easier time taking them seriously. As it stands they've got me rooting for Microsoft's deal to go through just for how bad faith this argument was, despite me not liking the overall market consolidation of developers in general considering we have a lot of evidence recently that the bigger the company becomes the worse their games end up being as everyone loses sight of what they've even making in the first place. Long story short: shut up, Sony.

I hate: Ice Wraiths

 And they hate me too.

Skyrim is one of most well travelled games of all time on account of being ported to every system under the sun. I know we joke about how many editions of the game exist but to be frank, it's a stellar game that thanks to the work of modders has a handle of genuine immortality without being necessarily built to facilitate that sort of game. There's no rougelite systems or decent cyclical play loops; but fans refuse to let the game die by modding in any and everything they can think of. Just recently Skyrim got itself a multiplayer mod and a Nemesis-style system straight from Shadow of Mordor. (Better watch out for a cease and desist on that one right there. Who knows how petty Warner Bros are willing to get.) What I'm trying to say is that this a game that has had everything in it torn apart and put back together so well that most players know it's landscape better than Bethesda's developers do. We should considering the amount of times we played through the darn thing. By all rights we as consumers should be surprised by nothing in this game, it should be incapable of rustling any jimmies. And yet...

I have a deep and enduring hatred for the enemy known as Ice Wraiths that I've had since the game first launched in 2011, and retain to this day. I despise their stupid wisp-like design of being bright shining blue, which clashes with their usual spawning environment; ice sheets. I hate the noise they make like a rattling cobra, loud enough to alert you to imminent death but nowhere near clear enough to indicate where the danger is swiping from. I hate their sweeping attack pattern which is nigh on impossible to dodge with how far it travels. And I hate the ice-wall effect they create on the floor with every swoop they make, essentially turning every encounter into a hardly visible minefield thanks to the fact that they spawn in snowy environments and again, the snow floor clashes with Ice Wall. In essence; I think they're most annoying enemy in the game and I hate them.

To be clear, Ice Wraiths are not the most deadly, nor the most one-shot capable in the game. Without turning off kill animations those dubious honours would probably go towards Dragons who, thanks to a badly programmed kill move parameter, can literally cutscene kill you at full health on the highest difficulties. Or maybe towards the Dragon Priests who are pretty much the only other creature in the game to make use of the borked 'wall' spells, that apply constant damage at such a ludicrous rate they can melt your health bar in about five consecutive seconds unless you immediately move, whereas the same amount of time spent in concentrated fire would do a fraction of that damage. (I think it's because of overlapping damage sources that hit you simultaneously, if I were to guess.) Those enemies are both bearable for the sole reason that slaying them is worthwhile. That life-or-death struggle is the demand of a serious boss encounter at the end of a dungeon or a epic ambush from a flying dragon. Are they poorly balanced? Sure. But getting that kill on the otherhand feels like all the more of an accomplishment because you faced that unfair wall. But what of Ice Wraiths?

They're trash. Pitiful forgettable worthless trash mobs so useless they're not even really afforded any substantive lore snippets explaining what the hell they even are! I guess they're just 'elementals' as nebulous of a title that is, but they aren't tied to any quest that really puts any amount of attention on them or their function because they aren't supposed to have a function. Yet somehow they're one-shotting demons. Off the top of my head I can think of only two quests in the entirety of vanilla Skyrim that will pit you up against Ice Wraiths, on any of the major critical paths. You have the route up to High Hrothgar, where they serve as obstacles that can feasibly just be run past. The game doesn't explicitly force you to fight them. And then there's the introduction quest to the Stormcloaks, which pits you against three of them to 'prove your worth'. A funny hazing ritual given that it is single handily the most dangerous task you'll embark on in the entire Civil War quest line. Does every Stormcloak have to kill three Ice Wraiths in order to join? If they did the army would consist of no-one but the Dragonborn.

The problem here is a clash of aesthetic and design, one that I can assume is driven worse by any of the numerous ENB mods that players choose to install given their tendency to up bloom to JJ Abrahams levels in the pursuit of 'beautification'. Bethesda designed an enemy with a jabbing stab range melee attack that does vicious levels of damage on it's own; a split second timing thing if you want to try and side-step it; but they made it damn near invisible thanks to their translucent icy body that slips right inside the already gleaming white of the ice caves and/or sheets they spawn near. They also tend to spawn in packs, meaning you can suffer an heavy infestation of invisible death snakes flying through the air at you for any given time without knowing it before your death.

And this is coming from a guy who actually loves the winter world of Skyrim. In fact, I like all depictions of winter as long as it come from the distance of a plasma screen. Yet for the Ice Wraiths that very theming is it's death. Not to mention how the things are damned sturdy too! Skyrim in general has a pretty piss-poor elements system where elemental weakness or strengths are pretty inconsequential in combat, and nowhere is that more frustrating then when facing literal ice monster that hardly feel it when being blasted with fire spells. They're also resistant to straight physical damage, which makes them a small tank and a canon; guess god really did the min-max stats when coming up with these guys on their character sheets; huh.

I welcome any number of ice-tainted Skyrim beasts over the bloody ice wraiths. Ice Trolls; annoying for their regeneration abilities but at least they're slow enough to make sense for the power behind every swing. Ice wolves; sturdy but easy to ultimately overwhelm. Frost Giants; so overpowered they literally break the physics engine but still good for the odd laugh. Everything else has some saving grace to them but the ice wraiths. I don't even think they're visually all that interesting; you know, in the brief moments you can even actually see them. Their design of spikes upon spikes just sort of brings to mind memories of the Prometheans from Halo 4; messy overdesigned garbage that melts into the scenery. It's just a good thing that Ice Wraiths are only a single rarely used enemy instead of an entire third of the running time. (God, Halo 4 made me weep.)

Many people flock to mods for Skyrim looking for some sort of mod to disable the spiders from their game because they've allowed their phobias to grow so bad they literally can't function if a badly animated one is on screen. (To be frank, I also have a phobia with spiders. If you think Skyrim's are bad, you would suffer a heart attack playing 2001's Resident Evil.) What I need is a mod that erases all Ice Wraiths for the game entirely so they be neither an eye nor brain sore ruining my good questing time any longer. A great exorcism of every Frost Snake from the border of Hammerfell to the Sea of Ghosts. Maybe a Saint Juib-style figure who drives all them from the land in some heroic act of self sacrifice. I don't care about the excuse behind it; it just needs to be done. No more Wraiths!

What is currently up with The Wayward Realms?

 The waiting game

I consider myself deathly allergic to the disease known as hype, and for very good reason too. Hype has bought me nothing but pain and disappointment my entire life, usually in scaling measure; the more hype, the more disappointment, the more pain. Any time I've been optimistic or hopeful or expected anything more than the worst outcome, it's been for naught and I've been more the idiot for not expecting it. Hype stinks and I hate it. Which is why I find it so damn unconscionable that I'd currently be tickled by the damn bug and on a game that we know so very little about. I'm talking stupidly little. We haven't even got any real substantive gameplay and reading some of the development teams rhetoric on the game makes me think they've actually never heard of a sandbox RPG; which is pretty freakin' worrying to hear when you're looking at a team that's proposing to make one! But beyond my utmost better judgement; I want to believe in The Wayward Realms.

If you've forgotten what that even is then I do not blame you, afterall the developers have announced the thing, released two trailers and gone radio silent across the board. That's because they're busy making a game that in their own words is going to break new grounds across the RPG genre, although by every other perceivable metric appears to just be a largely ambitious sandbox RPG. These developers are said to be key figures on the original Elder Scrolls games, which gives them quite the soapbox to launch this new project upon. Although 'project' might be putting the thing a little above its station for the moment, for as far as I can tell these folks are just a small team for the moment working on developing a working proof of concept, presumably to try and lure in some sort of publisher. Yet, even in this early stage the team went the route of gauging interest with an announcement, and you can consider myself an interested party. Potentially.

Of course as we're so early in the days of what The Wayward Realm even is, rhetoric has been quite general and geared more towards sparking the imagination than tempering a defined edge for the mind's eye. Such is a dangerous time to start dreaming, because the perception you create in your head is forever going to surpass what reality can conceive. And additionally, depending on the scruples of the developers in question, entering such a state can make you a prime target for manipulation into believing the coming game is everything you want it to be, just so long as you kick back some support to papa developer. It's something of a growing concern across the indie development space recently given the rise of Crypto concepts leaning on the already delusion-ridden crowd funding scene. I can already count two legendary developers who have cashed in on their reputation to try and grift their audience with obvious schemes; although to be fair, anyone following and trusting literally any word that comes out of Peter Molyneux's mouth at this point probably deserves to be scammed. Natural selection has clearly marked them inadequate.

All that being said, there's some tangible concept being worked on here which actually seems to lean into the wheelhouse of the development talent working on the game, so I want desperately to be optimistic this is a real idea that's just starting to spin it's wheels. The Wayward Realms is a wide open RPG that is focused more on the creation of a functioning setting and world than the journey of some nebulous fantasy hero character. Similar to games like Kenshi, the appeal of The Wayward Realms appears to come in making your character and then setting them loose in a wild world where they attempt to survive through whatever means they can. Not by scrounging for food and water, unless that's how you want to play it, but by becoming a mercenary or a pirate, or any of those other 'make ends meet' kind of professions in an exciting and opportunity writhe fantasy setting. And those are the sorts of games that I like.

What we've seen of little snippets that we can perceive to at least be early composites of gameplay features 'paper doll' style sprites walking the world space, not unlike Arena and Daggerfall had all those years ago. Again, a sensible measure given the purposed scale of a giant archipelago's worth of interconnected factions and kingdoms and traders all interacting with each other independent of the player. One of those overly ambitious titles would throw their weight around with garish claims of 'top of the line graphics' and deep engaging combat with procedural aging and death and children and- so many features that sound utterly pointless. Wayward Realms is keeping it simple and classic, playing to nostalgia no doubt, but presenting a believable vision. And I really want to believe. A more modern take on Daggerfall's style of gameplay sounds charming even to consider, and if those original directors can truly summon up that presentation in a wider and more open world space than I think excitement only makes sense.

Of course the most important question we should really be asking following a genre style of game like this one is about the world and what type of universe we're going to immerse ourselves within. I mean the fact that it's going to be fantasy is a given, it has orcs in it. But is this going to be simple high fantasy, maybe a bit edgier dark fantasy, maybe a peppier colourful fantastical fable world? I think the general sentiment seems to be shifting towards more darker fantasy universes in the vein of some of the most popular fantasy properties such as Game of Thrones, The Witcher and even popular fantasy anime like Berserk or AOT. There's an appeal to diving into some of the most grim and dark worlds that specialise in serving up everyone as supper for the cruelties of that unfair world, and a game where there are no heroes but only survivors seems like an ideal fit for a world like that. Then again, these developers have their experience in TES, which is more high fantasy without that edge; so I guess it depends on the way the winds blow for the team, if they want to try something new or iterate on the classics. (Although knowing the modding community for games like this, I imagine it'll eventually be modded into whatever style of fantasy you want it to be. Providing the game takes off, of course.) 

None of which is to say that The Wayward Realms is a sure hit flying our way. Sandbox RPGs aren't exactly plentiful because of how difficult they are to make work, and The Wayward Realms is shooting for a pretty ambitious goal even within that troubling subgenre. Crafting a working and breathing world for the player to interactive within takes a ludicrous amount of independently functioning parts, the likes of which would make a AAA studio blush, and ensuring that they shake hands in a manner that allows for dynamic and meaningful evolution can be the difference between any old Sandbox RPG and the really special ones. Kenshi has a system of factions pinned together by leader characters. Should such characters be taken out of action, their faction loses prevalence in that neighbourhood and another faction might take over. Through that system it's quite possible to upset the balance of a very violent nation of zombie-like Hiveless and have them spread over the entire map like a plague. That is the kind of reactivity Wayward Realms should be trying to replicate, the kind where we can play world breaker with the right careless actions. Like Hitman 2016- a clock of working gears waiting from the player to jam their foot and break it all.

Currently the Wayward Realms devs are spending their days slowly updating an online library of in universe lore books which seem to mostly serve as short story experiments as well as hiring a team to get together that working proof of concept of theirs. A very humble position to sit in for the moment and hopeful a portent for great things in the future. As you can likely tell I have some significant expectations rolled up into the Wayward Realms, both for what I think the game is capable of and what I want that final game to be. Whether they wanted to or not, the team have sparked a real fire of curiosity over here and I would simply love to find our more about the process they're working. Heck, I'd sign up to the team if I had any UX experience or character design work, for that's what they're looking for right now. (Actually it says they're looking for 'volunteers' but I'm assuming that's a error and they're looking for contract work at the least. Right?) Fingers crossed there's a future for this one, I want to see it.

'Divinity 2: Ego Draconis', perfectly mid

As all things should be

Larian is a studio that has had something of a meteoric rise; in the sense that they have gone so far, not that they've been rapidly granted success they haven't worked for. Because Larian have worked for it, bitterly and long from the beginning top-down RPG gameplay of Divine Divinity to the action adventure stylings of Divinity 2 and the strategy virtual novel game 'Dragon Commander' before finally nailing their style with the CPRG legend: Original Sin. That last couple of games were, of course, the slam dunks that won the team the dream contract of developing Baldur's Gate 3 which they have done with a unique attention to the source material which makes me so gosh-darn glad that these are the guys working on the game. Could you imagine how dry Baldur's Gate 3 would be if WoTC bought back modern Bioware to make it? I shudder to even ratify that thought with a serious contemplation.

But in their journey towards the CRPG genius that was Original Sin, Larian did take the short detour into more accessible action RPGs like the rest of the industry did. And the result? Well that would be 'Divinity 2: Ego Draconis' and it's second part 'Flames of Vengeance'. Now as is the case whenever a big studio lives long enough in the spotlight, the modern fame has attracted new eyes to rock up to the devs and analyse them, usually even going back and assessing their past catalogue to see if their modern success story was ever hinted at in the games that came before. Video game archaeologists with a shotgun approach to digging out any old game that still functions and immediately declaring it an unsung classic of it's age. Well, although I did not have the chance to follow this trend, I did actually get around to playing all the Divinity games around about the time that Original Sin was coming out. (With the exception of Beyond Divinity because I hated that game so much it made me quit after the first act.) So lacking the rose-tint of a dumpster diver; what can I really say about the Divinity 2 game that treats it honestly?

My god was it average. In all the best and worst ways. Whereas so many fantasy RPGs of the age were falling into dime a dozen heap in an attempt to emulate the greats of Oblivion and... well, Oblivion; Divinity was taking it's inspiration from Oblivion and... making it worse in an attempt to do something different. Look Larian had ambition, and if I tell you that this was a game where you balanced fantasy adventuring with regularly transforming into a fire breathing dragon then you're going to imagine something incredible, right? Well hold your nose for that cold water because Divinity 2 was one of those titles that was a tad too ambitious for it's own good. And yet, even then the game isn't a total dumpster fire like most 'too ambitious' projects are. It sort of hovers in this nebulous space of a game that I wouldn't ward you away from like it's the plague, but also one I don't really have any reason to recommend either. Like a double edged dagger, my critics balance themselves.

For positives I think that Divinity 2 has a simply great music scape, one that can almost trick you into thinking you're playing a more epic game than you really are. And that disparity is probably best bought up in the combat which is an open-action no-turns affair without stopping for tactics or any of that noise, and an ever present adjustable ability bar akin to an MMO or CRPG that becomes a little cumbersome to navigate in real-time action combat scenarios. (Unless you memorise your favourite moves and just tap the corresponding hotkey, of course.) The narrative shirks the stuffiness and over-seriousness that plagued some of the most boring fantasy RPGs of that generation, unfortunately Larian's humour is still eye-scratchingly dry by the development of 'Ego Draconis'. ('Flames of Vengeance' actually marked the first time Larian started to swing more hits than misses in their scripts.) It's like I said, every positive has an equally balanced negative.

Divinity 2, which is strangely the third game in the Divinity series, is a linear action adventurer game with pretty weak combat that is justified through the veneer of RPG slapped ontop of it. Enemies are lock on and slap-to-death affairs and most fights end up being no more skillful than 'make sure you have more health before you start so that you can win' affairs. Dragon sections, and you can only dragon-out in very specific areas, are a bit more dynamic and free-reign, but they suffer from a monotony that the game maintains throughout it's design for it's first half and fires into turbo mode for it's second half. Every dragon section is defined by turrets and air-mines that you have to blow up methodically and boringly. Most of the time you'll be ducking out of the action to wait for abilities to recharge, and most of the largest 'explorable' places you get to check out are literally copy and past challenge towers. Not the most inspired of design choices. In fact, every dungeon space in the whole game stretches on far too long without any significant visual disparity to keep the eye from getting bored, and are populated full of mindless hit sponge enemies that you'll end up groaning at everytime you see a group of them.

In fact, the entire world design of Ego Draconis seems cursed from probably being a linear set-up that was wrung together out of a proposed open world, which I think took hints from Oblivion. Not least of all because this game has it's own version of Oblivion gates, only so much worse because they are forced Dragon high-level sections set out across giant floating islands that are entirely flat to walk across aside from randomly scattered enemy patrols who litter it. Larian hide their indie status very well given the sheer quality of their craftmenship in most cases, but Divinity 2 was them at their most 'experimental'. Which is to say the game's garish design decisions stuck out like a sore beaten thumb. 'Flames of Vengeance', by the very nature of being much more linear, has a better time feeling like a professional product throughout, but not enough where I could consider the game a classic of today or of it's time.

And yet I would not call the package an awful game. Actually the fact the whole thing is standable is despite it's flailing rather than because of them. The raw beats of the story are fine, not great or good but merely fine. The environments are... actually rather ugly but ambitious. Larian tried to cover a lot of ground and it really did not work out for them, especially for some of their more open locations in the game. I despise some of the creature design, mainly their utterly bizarre goblins, and find the Dragon form to be more cumbersome than empowering. Seriously, you're more like a flying blimp than a soaring being of destructive might. To be absolutely honest, I do not know if I would have made it through the entire game if I hadn't had Original Sin waiting for me on the otherside. (And thank god I did. That masterpiece was a perfect palette cleanser.)

So was Divinity 2 some lost gem of the 2000's that we turn our noses up at unwittingly? No! Duh, have you been reading this thing? It's a largely mediocre game propped up by slight flashes of potential and the odd good joke in the second half. It's not particularly fun, nor memorable outside of it's soundtrack; and in fact I'd honest recommend Divine Divinity over this one for holding some great piece of early Larian charm in it's construction. As they sit now, Larian are an incredible RPG developer who are currently iterating on some of the most robust gameplay systems in all of CRPGs, without exaggeration. Divinity 2 was a stepping stone on that journey, no doubt; but in all honesty if we were to compare that place with where they are now, it would look like a pit in the road rather than a shining milestone. 

'Dragon Age : Origins ' the old gold standard

 Respect for your elders.

The year is 2009 and Bioware is about to release one of their greatest, and most terrible, achievements. Because you see, 'Dragon Age: Origins' is a game that would shoot the already accomplished developer into the spotlight once again on a golden horse of quality, and would unfortunately be the absolute peak of their life from which the studio would spiral into ignominy. Every success they make from then on would be compared and contrasted to it, every failure would be heightened in the knowledge that they once made this; the entirety of Bioware history would be whittled down to before 'Dragon Age: Origins' and after. At least in the eyes of some. I'm someone who still remembers that this is the studio who bought both Knights of the Old Republic (an arguably better game) to the world and the Baldur's Gate Trilogy; an actual classic masterpiece. None of which is to say that Origins isn't another masterpiece for their shelf, because it absolutely is; but when I see people heralding it as the unbeaten gold standard for RPGs I can't help but roll my eyes. 

'Dragon Age: Origins' is a spectacular RPG, not least of all because it's the only RPG I can think of which has managed to create genuinely impactful origin story set-ups so that the character you make in character creation is firmly cemented in the world. Cyberpunk 2077 even tried to copy that feature, and ended up screwing it up because they forgot to add the follow-up main narrative tie-in which makes the origin stories impactful! Origins also balanced its narrative between several big self contained stories with their own climaxes that all leant towards the bigger goal, so that by the time you reached the credits you really felt like you'd embarked on a world shaking adventure novel the size of a Tolkien book. It presented a simple RPG system which, whilst lacking depth for a game of it's genre, provided a very fun set of tools to navigate the world with. And it also toyed with action and consequence in a manner that felt like it had impact, even if as-a-whole it sort of feels a bit like the whole 'Mass Effect 3' style story where you shore up allies for some big final battle at the end because you need the numbers rather than because you're shaping the specifics of the future.

All of which I lay down in praise, because Dragon Age has been one of my favourite fantasy worlds almost exclusively through of it's stellar introduction in 'Origins'. (And that's still the case after watching that Cassandra Anime which that convinced I'm the only one who has ever watched. So that goes to show you how much of a fan I am.) Thedas succeeds in being a fantasy world lacking the backing of a well established book franchise to lean on or any of the other dozens of helping hands that some game devs rely on, and is still pretty interesting and cool, apart from the elves who are cookie-cutter cliché fantasy elves. And that isn't a given, by the way; lest I remind everyone of Larian's Divinity and that total sewer of a fantasy world so rotten that Larian literally reimagines the entire world canon every game or so. But in Bioware's failure to really nail the formula of Origins again, or to try and supplant it with something better like they've tried to do twice now, I think it's safe to admit to ourselves that the golden boy of 'Dragon Age' is no longer at the top of the pecking order for RPGs anymore. Well, unless you're looking specifically for a mildly deep, narratively formulaic, fantasy cliché ridden, role playing game. By Bioware. If you want those specifics; then 'Dragon Age: Origins' is your king. But if you're looking at the buffet that is RPGs; the genre has moved and branched beyond what that old classic can offer.

Rather than just living in the world of the RPG. Or the western RPG and the JRPG, if you're cultured. We now have the RPG and the CRPG. And for what it's worth, I think that CRPGs have effectively overtaken the western RPG market and made those old titles largely irrelevant, at least from a gameplay standpoint. (Origins will forever be well written, afterall.) These CRPGs harken back to the old days where RPGs existed to adapt robust and expansive board game rulesets into the digital landscape, which provided vast swathes of gameplay potential as they were designed to do. Bioware came at a time when RPGs were smoothing out a lot of those complexities in an effort to become more widely playable, and at the time that made the most sense; but we're leaning back towards an industry of niche and specialisation, such that those old games that tried to balance the fence just don't really cut in comparisons anymore.

Pillars of Eternity was the big return to form for a lot of people out there, as Obsidian slid into the space left behind my the death of the original CRPGs to remind everyone what we love above board-game based RPGs. Options. So many options and builds and styles of play beyond the bog standards 'rouge, mage or warrior' that everyone and their mother usually does. Although for me it was Tyranny which really tipped the cart over on DA:O's shoes. Their unique narrative presentation of being someone who serves the dictator sparked to life that world in a manner I hadn't felt for a new RPG in a very long time, that same spark which had gone stale for Dragon Age after two entries that felt like they weren't giving themselves to the world building quite as much as they could. (What the series needs is a single globetrotting action RPG that really highlights the beauty and diversity of Thedas, rather than redesigning a whole race and telling us to just go with for the third time.)

But what about that unique structure which DA:O rocked? True enough, no matter how many other RPGs you find which get the individual bits and pieces down pat, none quite capture that epic feeling of a total adventure told in one great stride. DA:O is really the successor to the Baldur's Gate trilogy in that regard, only without the ramp up in challenge to match the stakes of the narrative. Except... Pathfinder Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous give it a damn good try, don't they? Both adaptions of entire adventure campaigns, those Owlcat Games titles go even further than 'Dragon Age: Origins' to tell branching and intricate epic journeys that feel like a whole sweep of novels by the flipside. They haven't perfected that formula just yet, and there's still some ways to go for Owlcat but they're not stopping improving their craft. Unlike Bioware they aren't moving away from that style of RPG, they're embracing it and expanding it to create games that challenge RPG diehards. Whilst Bioware let the mantle rot and fester.

Ah, but I can't extol the virtues of Bioware RPGs without talking the cinematic presentation that they alone have possessed and perfected for all these years, now can I? Unless... oh, Larian is in the process of nabbing that crown of excellence with their work on the upcoming Baldur's Gate 3; a game which is a follow-up to Bioware's own legacy work too, which has got to be something of a double whammy. Soon Bioware won't even have the façade of epic narrative storytelling to hold up as their saving grace, which is going to end up leaving the studio practically bereft of virtues to call their own. And that's probably because in the years since DA:O came out, the game development industry has grown and involved in ways that version of Bioware could never imagine. 

Some games really do stand the test of time and remain the shining beacon that everyone looks back to for inspiration, but they are very rare exemplars of their genre. With how busy the RPG genre is, it shouldn't really be news to anyone that even a classic like 'Origins' isn't going to remain the top-dog golden standard forever, this medium evolves too quickly for that. None of which is to say there isn't still lessons to be learned from Origins, specifically in it's still unmatched character origins mechanic. (I really would have thought Larian would have managed to trump that one in the years since, but no such luck.) But even legends need to be put to rest, lest we leave them on the pedestal as more of a curtsey and it just becomes an embarrassment, like giving Martin Scorsese an Oscar for Gangs of New York instead of Goodfellas; it's just unseemly. So sing of how good Origins was during it's time all you want, but don't pretend it's still the king of the crop. Give it the respect to let the game rule it's time, why dontcha? 

COD and plagiarism

 They can't keep getting away with it!

It's funny that COD should in the centre of so many competing crosshairs as big console manufactures argue about whether or not the game is fundamental to competition across the FPS market. It's funny because whatever way you look at it, this conversation is placing COD at the top of a very influential pedestal where almost everyone can agree it is a model to aspire to for continuing success. So all eyes are constantly on them when they have a month like the one they're living through. You know, the sort of month where you get continuously pulled up for plagiarism again and again to the point where you look like hack amateurs with absolutely no quality control department whatsoever; meanwhile giants are wrestling over who gets to stick you on their shelf to be their golden trophy. That's what you get for having idols and role models, I guess.

To be clear, accusations of art theft are a pretty hefty chunk of mud to sling around and are so hard to prove in most cases, almost as much as it is to find. With so many artists in every field, more than at any other point in history by several orders of magnitude, content is being developed incessantly and constantly, everywhere that you look, so if someone wants to steal a little idea concept from some small corner of the internet, who the heck is going to know? To be fair, the COD design artists are probably look at this as 'taking inspiration' from the work they see everyday; which there is nothing wrong with as long as you put enough of your own special juice in it to transform the final product. This month has presented an Activision that were very lax on the whole 'changing up the homework in the assignment' part of the equation.

It started with a posted advert for an upcoming COD Vanguard skin, the worst performing COD game in a very hot minute, in which one of the coming skins had a very eye-caching and interesting design to it. It was a heavy winter suit with the head of a Samoyed dog thrown over the player's usual boring human head; making the player approximately 15% all around better. Honestly it was a striking design that would have been really cool if it wasn't a paid cosmetic... oh, and bastardized from a random artist on the web! An Artist called 'saillin' took credit for the design and compared the COD dog with his own military canine design in some side-by-side comparisons. The concept itself was already pretty novel enough to inspire a raised eye-brow or two by those already in the know, but after that comparison; with how closely the military gear the dog is wearing matches up with what COD were planning: there really is no question, so shenanigans were taken here.

To their credit Activision did move to remove marketing materials featuring that dog and later announced that particular skin would be scrapped (Instead of, I don't know, maybe just paying the original artist to use their cool design. That would have worked even better in my opinion.) And to take away that small credit, they had to be mocked and ridiculed in order to do so. Had no one really made a fuss about this and the situation still be bought to Activision's attention; they would have helpfully ignored it so that they could continue their money raking unabashed; because that's just the kind of company that the COD creators are. Although, I wonder how this backlash might shake the structure of their content development departments going forward considering that, as I mentioned, this was not the only significant case of plagiarism that has been bought up this month.

 

Yet another upcoming skin for Warzone and Vangaurd featuring future-tec glowing pieces, has ended up drawing comparisons to a truly vapid upcoming game, leading myself to wonder if the COD plagiarists have literally no shame. Because at some point you have to grow some standards, and I'd feel that would come at some point before ripping of designs from the Dr Disrespect's Crypto FPS 'game' he's trying to tote up: Dreadrop. Although to be fair, there is a bit more nuance to this one. Not least of all because the aggrieved party is actually an ex Infinity Ward manager. He has taken it 'on the chin' by joking that Activision should name the skin after him (Ha Ha- they're never going to do that.) but even then I have to throw up a little bit of doubt to how much this one quite constitutes plagiarism. 

Oh the designs look similar alright! Damningly so, in fact. But COD's Malware Ultra Skin is just a guy in neon blue techy-armour with a hood on; it's not exactly the most inspired armour design ever invented. Of course not, they're being compared with freakin' Deadrop; a game dripping with unoriginality, this dispute really just raises concerns about the trite thematic elements fuelling both design processes. If it hadn't been for the more obvious dog-skin rip-off, people would probably be making more of a fuss about the big design variations, such as the skull face and glowing exo-skeleton design elements of the COD game versus Deadrop's decidedly more boring hexagonal urban camo design. Both skins do use pretty much the exact same colours, however; which doesn't help Activision's case at all. 

And then people just entered 'Twitter cancellation mode' where they comb through your entire history looking for a smoking gun to hang you with. They found it in the prospective logo for a COD mobile game that doesn't even have a title yet; it's just known as 'Project Aurora'. Well Aurora recently got a new slick logo featuring a sharp and spikey stylized 'A' at a slight slant which certainly looked cool- probably because it was allegedly ripped from Amuro Ray's personal emblemage on his RX-93 v Gundam from 'Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack'. (Thank you, Animenewsnetwork, for being so complete in their coverage of this story.) Again, one could argue this as a coincidence since the logo is quite literally just a stylised A; but it just doesn't make for a very good look, does it? 'Confirmation Bias' is turning into 'Confirmation Prejudice' at this point.

All of which goes to paint COD, one of the biggest franchises in the world, as a lazy corner cutter who cares nothing for the sanctity of art. Although to be fair there is a perfectly rational explanation for a lot of this; pressure piled on by time constraints as a result of failure. Remember, 'Vanguard' pooped the bed as far as COD games go, shipping less units than the franchise has suffered in about ten years. That reflects badly on the team who are then flipped into a rush to hurry out content that might win people over, rushed employees start ignoring due diligence or just ripping off ideas full kettle in order to keep their jobs, and the potential media backlash for any of these screw ups is so unlikely because no one ever pays attention to this stuff. Until the day that they did, and now their bad position has probably become much worse as their indolence has been characterised as incompetence. Let this be an example of the snowball effect of big company run development studios where stopping to take stock is a crime punishable by redundancy. 

Arkham fans have lost it

 How about another joke, Murray?

What do you get when you treat a rabid fanbase with years worth of cold shoulder before turning around and slapping them with a product that gets wrong most everything they were most excited about? Well, then you get a situation like that which has inflicted the Arkham series subreddit, a group of passionate fans of the stellar Batman Arkham series, a game who's lasting legacy set a new standard for games of it's ilk and genre. (Hell, Marvel's Spiderman's combat is a huge homage on it's own.) However when 'Arkham Knight' came about promising an end to the series... well, it seems that the devs really did take that seriously. Although, their fans certainly weren't ready for them to just walk away like that, and with old passions being stirred since the announcement of the follow-up to the Arkham games, which has nothing to do Batman, and Gotham Knights, where you play every bat family member except for Batman; something was going to give.

To be fair with the fans, their desires aren't totally out of left field. Afterall, WB apparently had a Project Sabbath in development which was a concept for an Arkham Knight sequel before that got scrapped. (The apparent reason why is deviously ironic.) The main theme of the game was all about legacy and passing the torch, as such the apparent Death of Batman from Arkham Knight would had led to the ascension of Damian Wayne as Bruce's successor. Concept art reveals a new generation Poison Ivy, after Pamela sacrificed her life during Arkham Knight, and a new Black Mask because the old one has a bullet in his head thanks to the Red Hood DLC for Arkham Knight which is apparently canon now? (I thought they were just bad challenge maps, to be honest.) It was going to be set in an apocalyptic Gotham which has fallen since Scarecrow's takeover and Batman's retirement, and the team weren't going to just throw up their hands and do 'The Dark Knight Returns' like everyone else who tackles an 'old Batman' story ends up trying. Frankly, it sounded bloody brilliant; so of course it was cancelled because WB weren't sure that a Batman game without Bruce in the cowl would sell... wait... then why are the hell are we getting Gotham Knights in it's stead?

I don't hate Gotham Knights, I just think it looks like a game caught between a concept and a execution that aren't shaking hands together as well as the team wants. They want some loot-based action game, but they also want a co-op fighting experience on-par with Arkham of old. By trying to compromise they've given us a little bit of column A and a lot less of column B. Also, in comparison to Knight this game looks uglier than first Sin; why in hell does this need to be a current gen exclusive game? Setting that game up as Knight's successor is dooming it to ignominy in exchange for some early sales boosts from the implied association. (Even though the associated team is actually busy working on 'Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League'. God, that's a mouthful.) All of which is probably why the Arkham Reddit fans rejected that game entirely and decided to celebrate their own.

That is, their own Arkham game that they pretend exists, all so that they can extol it's fictional, and often-contradictory, virtues to one another; Morbius-style. To their eyes 2019 was the year that Arkham World was released, a best selling follow-up to Knight that featured a boss fight with the Mandalorian, an upcoming Guy Fieri DLC, the Batcopter and the Batwing for some reason, and several dozen sequels already. It was obviously the best Arkham game ever realised, yet it also simultaneously seem to exacerbate every annoyance-point that everyone had about the vanilla series, such as overuse of vehicle sections. (Which I found to be an overblown criticism anyway once I finally got around to playing Knight. But that's just me.) Of course, the denizens of the Subbreddit have accepted this change in direction for the Sub gratefully considering that for the past five or so years the Reddit seems to have consisted of nothing but 'Hey guys, Arkham Origins got a bad wrap' posts. (Which- yeah obviously it did but you're really preaching to the choir there, you know?)

Apparently this is all a big reference to the Titanfall reddit community who, apparently dissatisfied with the allegedly in-universe spin off success Apex Legends (I've yet to see one person who can point out the connections between those franchises in a significant, not surface level, fashion) had taken to convincing themselves that Titanfall 3 had released and that it was god tier. To be fair, however, theirs is a sadder story because Titanfall 2 was apparently a total masterpiece that was screwed by EA through godawful release windows that benefitted nobody. Their game probably did deserve a sequel, as opposed to Arkham Knight which finished the franchise, and Bruce's story, satisfactorily enough on it's own. We don't really need ourselves an encore right now. (Although, again, I would have welcomed one if it was a concept as cool as how the late Project Sabbath sounded. Damian Bat would have rocked.)

This break from reality does highlight the fact that nothing on the current, inexplicable, busy slate of DC games really carries on the legacy of Knight. Gotham Knights is just... like a Ubisoft-brand version of the franchise, and Suicide Squad feels like an entirely different style of game altogether. I know it's intentionally designed not to be, but it kind of feels like a multiplayer only romping title to the point where I, huge Arkham fan that I am, don't feel like the target demographic anymore. (On account of having no friends.) Now to be fair, Marvel has pretty much picked up that baton and run with it on their ongoing Spiderman series; but sometimes you just want to be a guy in a batsuit, you know? Preppy and positive Spiderman doesn't have the same weight as non-nonsense thug-disabling Bruce Wayne on a bad day. The series' could comfortably exist being active in the same market, is what I'm saying.

But at the end of the day we always have to make do with the hand dealt to us, or slip into a fantasy land where everything we wanted to have happened did and much more. (I support either route, to be honest. Go with whatever's most real to you.) Maybe somewhere down the line, after Gotham Knights comes out to 'whelm' us all, and WB are done with their exploration into other DC properties; maybe we can convince the team to roll on back to Arkham with the lessons they learned to give the old Bat one last go around. Maybe they can go back to that Damian Wayne concept and use it to give Damian something of a real send-up of his own to launch that character into the heavy hitter he's totally capable of being. And maybe we'll get an Injustice 3 one day... Oh god, now I'm slipping into fantasy land, aren't I?