Whatever happened to Hello Neighbour?

 

I had one of those gross thoughts you try to forget ever having this morning. I though about Hello Neighbour. No, not actually playing the thing, what do you take me for? Just the game itself. That was enough to illicit the 'ick' and have me gagging. Because to be clear; simply envisioning the head scratch that is 'Hello Neighbour' is punishment enough- some titles should exist entirely within their fanbase, because the common human mind was not meant to struggle comprehending them. Like an eldritch cult hoarding forbidden knowledge and twists and warps the curious outsider peering in through the dusty window cracks- it is the curious and incautious who are the authors of their own cognitive decline. The bizarre nature of the Hello Neighbour cult should ward me off, but my fatalistic attractions have led me to my undoing.

Hello Neighbour is what happens when you land on one solid gameplay mechanic and totally blank on the ways you can use that single idea to flesh out a wider game. What genre to integrate it into, it's narrative implications, any of the meat of an actual video game- and as such decide to pile atop the crap until the overall package seems kinda full. And that might seem a bit heavy handed of a definition but I have to be honest here- Hello Neighbour is just a puzzle game stretched around a basic and largely forgettable gimmick. And to be clear, many horror games and even horror franchises start out in that exact same fashion and then expand. (Even though I might doubt Hello Neighbour's membership into the 'horror' genre, the shoe kinda fits.) Five Nights as Freddy's ran on the strength of it's gimmick alone for four games straight- but I just don't think what Hello Neighbour had was ever strong enough to last even a single full-length game.

The game relied on a hide-and-seek mechanic wherein the computer supposedly learns from your mistakes and buffs itself out from the player's intrusions each time they are caught. This could be by boarding up a window you smashed to get in through, laying down bear traps in areas you frequent, stealing items and hiding them in different locations, setting up cameras in important areas that alert the Neighbour to your presence. Dynamic gameplay like that. But these system never really left their beta test form, in which they just felt like half-assed 'complications' placed by an unseeing AI overseer rather than an intelligently reactive AI. I never brought the claim that the game actually marked your path into the house, and feel like the devs just pregenerated traps in obvious chokeholds. Which might be completely offbase, but if they can't make the system as least feel natural, then that is a missed mark of success.

Hello Neighbour 2 pulled off an even worse prank, by selling itself on the strength of a dynamic pathing upgrade to the original system which would theoretically have made chasers feel like the breathing characters they weren't in the first game. Only that system was... well, they just didn't do it. They never announced the feature was discontinued, they just stopped talking about and the game shipped without it. Making the end game AI every bit as unimpressive as the original, although spread across much smaller environments which made enemy chasers a decent bit more effective than the Neighbour from the original game. In the original it was all too trivial for the Neighbour to get lost trying to navigate his own house, scaling things down and separating the puzzle areas into separate houses deftly mitigated that issue.

But the game never really settled into a niche for itself. It was always trying to capture a zeitgeist, follow the footsteps of the other big horror-adjacent franchises. Fnaf did a lot of games, so they did a lot of games. Asymmetrical multiplayer is a staple of horror, so you bet they chucked on of those on the pile! As for the build-a-vehicle Stadia exclusive game they put out? Yeah I... I don't know what that was about... Youtube creator's were incredibly influential to the spread of the first game's popularity, given that it lacked compelling enough gameplay to enforce that naturally- so of course the developers went e-begging of Matpat. (Rest in Peace.) And of course, the book series. When I tell you that I could not imagine a franchise less deserving of a spin-off book franchise, I absolutely mean it with gusto when it comes to Hello Neighbour. I cannot imagine how they squeezed seven books out of such a nothing narrative. (At least Fnaf's books are anthology horror tales!)

Though it's very hard to kick up reliable sales figures to compare the rising success of the franchise, there's a 2018 Gamesrank article that credits their initial games sales to 500,000- which is lightly sickening when you acknowledge the absolute state of that game. How many distinguished passion projects got overlooked for the social media darling trainwreck game? As for 2, I can see a VG insights article (a source I've never heard of before so I have no idea where they get their stats or how trust worthy they are) who seem to think the sequel snagged around 72,000 on Steam. Now Steam is surprisingly this franchises least performing platform, so let's triple that number and round up to account for the other big consoles. 222,000 is a lowball estimate, it could be as high as 300,000- but that's still a downwards trajectory, implying (should these suspicious figures be reliable) that the big Hello Neighbour 'franchise' is running out of gas like there's no tomorrow.

Now it is important to point out that incredibly, the game is actually still being updated by the developers every now and then, which I'm sure is exciting for the 20-30 players who engage with it on the average. Seriously, there must be something deeply wrong with these numbers because the Steam all-time player peak is 570, less then half of the first game's 1399. (How can so many people buy these games but not be playing in the same moment? I struggle to comprehend how that's possible.) If it weren't for the 30,000,000 downloads that the team brag about, I would honestly wonder if the fame of these titles is entirely fabricated. But you don't get a seven book deal without the number to justify it. (Those console numbers have to be holding up the bulk of the fandom, I guess.)

Hello Neighbour is a franchise that is struggling itself to be. Like many other flash in the pan horror games, it had its moment in the sun and is chasing that high aggressively. What Fnaf has achieved with it's evergreen success and movie franchise is anomalous and should probably be captured and catalogued by the 05 Council. Hello Neighbour never quite sparked that note in pop culture, and given the general incoherence of it's ideas I kind of think that's for the best. The last thing we need is a game like that to inspire a trend of discordant singular gameplay ideas stretched into full blown games with dental floss and bad dreams. Still, if you think this franchise breathed it's last with the obviously disappointing performance of 2- well, you are a more optimistic fellow than I. (But not for a while yet. They're working on a 'story expansion' for 2 right now, which is nice. About time this franchise got itself a story...)

The Palworld craze is real

 

What is the biggest slap to the face that one can receive in the creative arts? It it condemnation? The ridicule of your supposed target demographic? Perhaps it's just feeling that you've failed to live up to your own lofty expectations for yourself, in that kind of 'I'm not mad at myself- just disappointed.' Because after watching the absolute state of Palword in the face of Pokémon- I think it's having someone else try their hand at a monopoly you've held for decades and garner so much success in their very first go at it. According to their own numbers, Palword managed to sell 5 million copies in just three days; no doubt assisted by the fact the game was selling for half the retail of your typical Pokemon game, on top of the fact that it is a game available pretty much everywhere that Pokemon isn't! (Except Playstation. Xbox seems to have manoeuvred a little bit of limited exclusivity in that regard.) Which is still a ways off from the 23 million that Scarlet and Violet, the most successful games currently in the franchise, has scored- but it's a shot across the bough. 

Could it be that Palword does so much better than Pokemon in a fashion that is waking people up to the fact that The Pokemon Company haven't been trying their best for years? The game seemed like such a simple and disposable premise when it was first announced- Pokemon using guns to fight against poachers- (or sorry, 'Pals') adding just that little sprinkle of juvenile mature content that Pokemon is deftly afraid to touch at. But for whatever reason it seems to have taken off in such a way that if this developer was even considering doing one of the industry-standard 'release a project only to dump it' grifts they would be straight forced to reconsider their efforts. This is a golden opportunity rarely afforded to anyone- to slide into an otherwise iron-clad game genre and put the screws to the one underserving master once and for all.

I think part of Palword's initial popularity (I'm in serious contention over whether or not this game will be able to maintain it's interest for longer than a month) comes from the fact it was released just a few weeks after the end of Pokemon's Scarlet and Violet's final event- which presented no significant endgame prospects in the way that Pokemon Sword and Shield did. In that generation, we were given a rougelite minigame where we could grind for significant shiny Legendary Pokémon potential, whereas all of Violet's end-of-generation Legendries were stubbornly Shiny locked. Pokemon fans are already reverting back to Gen 8 for something to do. They are thirsting for more Pokemon style action. So throw a whole new game their way? You bet Palword was going to have some biters right out of the box. We need anyone to keep our interest in these dire times!

Because when you really break it down to brass tacks- Palword is actually somewhat basic on when it comes to the actual world it sets out. Having played it myself for a bit, Palword appears to be your standard 'dropped into a largely characterless survival world' template which is all too common in indie games, only with a more stylised artstyle, a mercifully forgiving hunger system (which still doesn't need to exist) and a somewhat sensible integration with Pokemon like mechanics. There's no comprehensive world to explore here, with culture and personality and Palmon integrated into everyday aspects of life- in many ways it is a Minimum Viable Product to prove this idea even has a market. If Pokemon were in the market of providing robust open worlds, and not still just dipping their toes into that idea- I don't think Palworld would have much of anything worth bragging about.

I don't think Palworld is an exceptionally well made game. It's not a steaming mess, don't get me wrong, but the bar of quality is not what is bringing people through the door. It is the concept, plain and pure. The idea of capturing cute monsters, training them up and battling- that alone is a game seller- and it's for that concept that folks have put up with The Pokemon Company's endless crap for all these years. The dual games for every generation with the absolute bear minimum of effort put in to make those versions at all distinct, (This generation they couldn't even bother with different version trainers.) the quality of life accessories we have to fight tooth and nail for such as being able to access the Boxes anywhere. (That wasn't a thing until Gen 8!) The lacklustre approach to narrative design that makes each game still feel like they're being written entirely for a child audience in the 2000's- ignoring how widespread and multifaceted the franchise has become since then. Palworld solves none of these issues directly (Well, there isn't a 'version exclusive' Palworld yet) but just by existing the way is open for others to come and challenge the pain points of the Pokemon franchise in the future.

Of course, the game is not without controversies. There are those who think the game has been ripping off parts of Pokémon in order to make their pals, Frankenstein stitching together design elements from popular mons like 'Lucario' and 'Skitty' in order to make their 'OC don't steal's. Now, there are currently just over 1000 Pokemon in existence and Gamefreak are already repeating themselves in places. (That Bouffalant somehow isn't a regional variant or evolution of Tauros is insane!)  That some design elements might be shared with Palword is no great shock. I wouldn't even call that a conceptual issue. They borrow the same basic design philosophies, similarities will happen. Then come the accusations of the game being made by AI which, as far as anyone can tell, have been pulled out of thin air. Okay, so the CEO mentioned being interested in AI on a few occasions and experimented with it. But if you think AI is capable of slapping together coherent 3D models- I'm sorry that you're so ill informed.

I suspect that the way the Palworld life cycle is going to is thusly. This initial surge of interest which we're currently in will plateau pretty quickly, then people will start to grow bored of the survival building aspects and start nagging the developers to add something else to do in the game. The developers will fumble about trying to stick to their vision (which I suspect will be further leading into the Pokemon design template. AI trainers, generated gyms/dungeons etc.) and meet player demand. The public will turn on the Palworld team for not being quick enough to implement everything within a 'reasonable' time frame, and come December the game will be another forgotten title of the year. I hope i'm very wrong with that prediction, but I'm decently confident judging from what I've played and how I know the industry to act.

Palworld is a craze, of that there is no doubt. But I have to say it's not quite the game I hoped it would be. To this day I am waiting for a game that takes the world we saw teased in the Detective Pikachu movie, a Flintstones-esque monster-harmonic society, to life. Building Palmon camps and watching them scramble about desperately trying to fulfil your work orders is fun an all, but there's a big chasm between the 'we've made a world' approach and the 'we've given you the tools, make it yourself' paradigm. Sure, the game is in early access and I'm sure the team expect to buff up the package in the months to come, but we're just going to have to see if the audience are willing to stick around for that long.

So is Palworld... sticking around then?

 

I've already introduced the rampant excitement over the existence of a real competitor to Pokemon veering it's face, providing players with something they haven't had from the big N in so long- some damned variety! I still think the game is mid, but I despise Survival games and Palworld retains that eye rolling demand for keeping your 'food bar' full so... I was never going to love it, now was I? But with the eyes on it that doesn't just mean the furor is reaching it's zenith, but the backlash too. It is surprising how many go to bat on Nintendo's behalf, a company that would suck out your blood and crush your bones for compost if you got somewhat in it's way. Don't get it twisted, Nintendo despises it's players for anything more than their wallets. If they could lobotomise everyone in a global campaign of tyrannical terror they would giddily jump at the chance, just to avoid hearing us lesser bein gs dare to espouse the names of their scared properties with our unworthy lips. 'Play the games and shut up', is the memo at Nintendo HQ.

In fact, the only people who don't appear to be trying to balance atop Nintendo's 'hubris' are the inexplicable animal right's activists that rally against Palworld for the 'support of animal abuse' that it 'promotes'. Which is to say that the game allows the player freedom to beat Pals to death, shoot them, or literally grind them up for resources. Terrible things to do to real animals. Good thing this is a game! This is a pathetic and wasted argument by children who never developed their frontal cores enough to differentiate between fiction and real life. They're the kinds of scum to rattle on about their virtuous mannerisms and then send off barrels of vitriolic hate-filled fan mail to actors who played mean people on a show they watched. They're idiots, not worth the time of day or the right to be listened to.

 

The 'Palworld AI' theorists on the otherhand, lean on something concrete. They allege a world wherein Palworld used AI to make it's game or design it's Pals and drum up fears in the rampant take over of non-human run tech other throwing creativity. Which is a genuine concern born from the belief that those with no idea what art is about are reading to turn it up in factory to the detriment of the very idea of art itself. And if a game championing that suddenly became popular- what does that mean for the industry? Except... that is total vibes based assumptions at this point. Not a single verifiable accusation has been made, and not even a convincing example proving the influence of AI has been uncovered. The CEO mentioned interest in AI technology in the past, but that doesn't mean it had anything to do with Palworld. And if AI did suddenly learn how to code coherent 3D models, I would be shocked.

One popular thread on Twitter alleged that the Palworld team were literally stealing assets from Pokemon, leading to a lot of the familiar feeling Pokemon we've seen. Primarina was the poster child of this one, with a wireframe model of hers compared against Azurobe's hair piece. The comparison is absolutely crazy... until you learn that the Twitter user in question literally malformed these models in order to make them seem identical. Why? Because of the animal abuse thing again, she doesn't like 'the promotion of animal abuse' and decided to create actual deformation. And why come to Pokemon's defence, a game which "sanitizes cockfighting" as one Twitter user put it? Well... she thinks that's bad too. (You can tell from her vacant expression, the lights are not all on upstairs.)

The next accusation? That Palworld is stealing the designs of Pokemon and changing them up in small ways. That one actually has some legs, there are some Pals that look eerily similar to popular Pokemon in such a fashion that 'copying' can be pretty safely called. Similar design elements are one thing but literally switching and swapping out parts, such as Snorlax's iconic face design with the teeth switched downwards, is pretty blatant. That being said, it's not all the Pals who suffer from these issues. It's not even the majority of them. And the validity of this issue has been watered down by critics who literally slap up non-sequiturs like the two Penguin monsters from either franchise, both with designs based off of nautical imagery. You mean they made a Penguin into a sailor? How could they ever think of that without copying Nintendo's homework? 

But the crazy part of all of this? Nintendo has said next to nothing on the issue to anyone. All we ever got was a 'we're looking into it', and zilch. Nintendo even knew about this game for at least a year, and they've yet to take action. And yet when a Pokemon mod was teased for Palworld, Nintendo shut that down before the creator could even upload a full video showcasing it, yet alone release the thing. Even former Nintendo employees seem confused, with one former copyright department employee remarking how they are surprised the game made it this far. Which kind of implies that something is in Nintendo's way right now. Perhaps Palworld really has managed to wiggle it's way out of the path of copyright infringement by the absolute skin of it's teeth!

Which really brings me to the pertinent question in all of this- Is Palworld actually safe then? Is this the kind of game that is going to last long enough to be a staple of this year, or will it be gone in a month from a takedown notice? If I were being a realist, I'd say that the only reason Nintendo haven't taken this down is because they're so upset that they're busy compiling the personal details of everybody who worked on, advertised for or distributed the game so that they go after all of them individually in separate lawsuits- because that is the kind of people Nintendo are. As I've said before, if Nintendo could legally fire bomb the homes of people who are too outspoken about their love for Nintendo franchises, we'd be dealing with world wide wildfires every other week. 

So, my advice is to all that are interested in an Ark Survival clone that actually plays like a game and not a glacial breeding simulator tied to a wallet milking machine- get yourself a copy of Palworld right now whilst it's still for sale and, considering it's an online only game as far as I can tell, squeeze as much entertainment as you can muster from the game before big bad Nintendo comes knocking. Merely the concept that people are having fun within a subgenre they thought they had monopolised is enough to drive the murderous rage in Nintendo's cold heart, and if they can't win in a legal case I wouldn't but it past the team to go door to door visiting vengeance on all those who betrayed Pokemon for this pretender. But personally, I hope Palworld stays. And I hope it's just the start of many more creative offshoots of the monster collecting concept that push Nintendo to get their act together and revitalise the Pokemon franchise to actually, oh I don't know: be competitive in the modern game design space? Wouldn't that be something?

League-Squad: out of jokes.

So I was in a good mood yesterday and posted something about a topic that I love. Which I don't get to do so very often because the good in the world only really gets to be highlighted in one brilliant blaze in order to stand out and speak entirely for itself, whereas the spinning wheels of burning trash are unfortunately destined to draw attention to themselves. And even though I don't think that Suicide Squad is going to be as pathetic of a failure as it probably deserves to be- I know it's going to crash and burn just as well as anyone with their head on straight does. But as this is such a universal slam fail- it's constantly surprising to me the extents that Warner Bros are going to convince, at this point only themselves, that they have a chance in hell to steer a game that no one wants through the storm. After pretty much showing their hand and proving everyone so resounding right.

Firstly, I remember a comment made a scant few weeks ago about the direction of Rocksteady in the future and how they were committed to this new Suicide Squad direction- you remember that? 'Don't hold your breath for the next Arkham game!' they said 'we really do kill the Justice League!' A bold sentiment, and an attempt to try and get those that love the Arkham universe to subscribe to this new status quo, to see where the game goes narratively if nothing else. But I immediately saw through that and said the team would be walking back that stance and making this an Elseworld's story in no time flat. Seems my only mistake there was assuming they would have to release the game before turning tail, because as it turns out we didn't even have to wait that long. Suicide Squad has tipped its hat as an awkward Elseworld's mismatch of ideas where, just like in the worst multiversal comic stories you can imagine, nothing matters!

In showing off their endgame potential, Rocksteady has laid the groundworks for all the worst narrative tropes that hold back Live Service games. This coming from a formally narrative championing company who's strongest critical praise so far was that despite it's rudimentary and repetitive gameplay content, people were curious to see if the story went anywhere. Apparently it doesn't. Just like with Gotham Knights, in the post game the bad guy hasn't been fully stopped, but going even further than Gotham Knights, the post game throws you into the multiverse in order to stop various crisis on other earths. Which is a sound concept for a coherent Live Service style DC game to follow, mind you. Injustice 2 made the same premise for it's endgame. But for a sequel to a narrative championing franchise- you've just presented a story with no conclusion that drags itself on for eternity, which is exactly what people were afraid of.

Rocksteady Batman games used to be the kind of thing that you would play through, have a blast with and put down. What we're seeing of the brand right now has me deeply confused in that we're being presented with an infinite play scenario whilst being told that Rocksteady 'aren't creating a game that will take over your life'! That's right, according to the team they want people to play for just a little bit and not dedicate their every waking hour to levelling. Well in that case- why devote yourself to a medium that lives and dies off constant engagement? That- is- dumb! And probably a lie, were I to guess. How the hell can a game justify 3-5 years of constant development for a fanbase who dips in an out everytime there's a content drop every six months or so? Unless they charge the price of a full game for each expansion- which is a wonderful way to divide a fanbase right quick. Financially their statement has to be false, because overwise this is self destruction playing out in real time.

But the most bizarre thing is thus. The game will soon be hitting its strangely sizable Early Access period wherein a bevy of people who paid a stupid amount for the right edition of the game will be able to play the title as the servers go live. And reviewers won't be getting their review codes at this point. Now that doesn't mean for the full launch reviewers will be pushed out of the process, but it doesn't exactly set the best precedent for that eventuality, now does it? At the very least people will have made the irreversible purchasing decision of buying a crazy elite edition version of the game without being informed about the extent of what the game does via a review- and regardless of the actual impact that genuinely had, it's pretty poor form.

Because let's be honest- no one who has already spent 100$ on the game is going to listen to the raw opinions of a game's reviewer who doesn't like they game they are already fully sold on. I genuinely believe that the decision to lock out reviewer in this pre-release period benefits nothing to the game beyond throwing up yet another one of those endless red flags that the developers seem to spawn out of nowhere with every preview. (They seem to actually build some trust when they leave the gameplay at home. Then they show us footage and it just knocks out the room!) They aren't battling for the allegiance of their most loyal customers, they're fighting for the sceptics- and this- this is not how you win over the sceptics!

League Squad the killening is in a precarious position right now, wherein it kind of feels like they're treating this pre-release period as another opportunity to farm so positive early impression before their big February launch. And in that light it's actually rather genius. The best reviews they had up until now where from the sign-ups to the Alpha test from last year, and it's the grumpy old critics who found the game forgettable and threw it away like trash. This gamble, relying on the general public for a little more support, could either really work out to get the game looking presentable on launch day, or trash the game's reputation even worse. But to be absolutely fair to them, what do they have to lose? This game is a pariah right now anyway- what reputation are they risking?

I know what you're thinking, 'another blog about this game' but what can I say- the topic fascinates me! Not as a video game, but as a study of behaviour and desperation as one is pushed further up against the wall without any easy way out. Rocksteady bit off this piece of gum a long time ago and pretty much missed the boat on the genre's popularity during the production phase- every decision made from now on is being done in pure survival mode and it's making them entertaining to watch as an outsider with no skin the game. At this point I'm genuinely curious if they can squeak out a success, however slight, from a game no one wants. Just how powerful can social manipulation really be when your livelihood is on the line. So by all means- go off, Rocksteady. I'm fascinated. 

Hazbin Hotel Season 1 (Midway thoughts)

 Yes, this will be fun!

So you know how video games... well you see when a video game... the thing about independent animators... Yeah, I got nothing. Look, I just want to talk about a show I really love- it don't gotta be no deep thing, right? Hazbin Hotel has finally started dropping after the four year wait since the pilot first graced our screens and in that time we've really seen the independent animators of Youtube pop and show what they can do. Incredible 3D animations bringing Warhammer 40k to life in a way no one could have imagined, other indie teams creating their own pilots for perspective series' and the creator of Hazbin, Vivziepop, even developing a companion show for Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, which has been chugging along in the background over the past couple of years whilst we've all waited. But now that the show has an animation studio and a star studded cast- was it worth all that waiting?

Hazbin Hotel is an adult animated show set in the raunchy recesses of the pits of hell, just like Helluva Boss. Unlike the slice-of-life antics of Blitz and his gang of murderers for hire, however- Hazbin has a grander world to frame whilst navigating the crass yet ultimately exceedingly human and empathetic stories of Hell's most curious denizens. Therein lies the real strength of the show. It's never just a full blown comedy intent only on kicking your funny bone, nor is it some grim melodrama about the endless broken citizens of the universe's dumping grounds, hell. Rather, Hazbin Hotel presents a look at the ugliness of people and their relationships squeezed through the drama of hell and fluffed up with healthy doses of debaucherous humour and the occasional sweet moment of connection to make it not seem all so hopeless.

I think that aspect of the hope and the rebuilding of one's self is really what makes Vivziepop's content more watchable than your typical decent into the extreme worsts of man. If Helluva Boss merely told the story of a brash and flawed Imp who revelled in burning bridges with everyone in his life and carried on doing that forever, repeatedly self destructing, then the shtick would ever get old or depressing fast. (Just watch any CW show for an example of what that feels like. They all fall that exact foible.) If Angel Dust was merely a sex worker with the 'horny' dial turned all the way up with nothing more to him- he would be a one dimensional and forgettable character. Vivzie's team are great at finding the relatable flawed humans underneath these larger than life characters in order to highlight how everyone, even the most hopeless, is trying to be better- and there's always a way to rebuild burnt bridges.

Perhaps that guiding philosophy is what makes the lead of Hazbin Hotel, Lucifer's Disney-coded daughter, so entertaining. The endless optimist floating on an endless sea of hope, Charlie embodies the exaggeration of perfect innocence, highlighting sweetness and purity to a frankly unrealistic degree given the flawed and human denizens she works with. But rather than Heaven who use that deficit as a rod to punish, Charlie finds endless purpose in her efforts to fix and help her people. And of course, Charlie herself is not perfect. The bleeding heart always addresses herself least. She's naïve, inexperienced often foolhardy, but she's not a quitter. I once thought that Hazbin would mount an opposite trajectory to Helluva Boss and tell the story of a hopeful character who loses her hope to dream (which would also mirror the apparent loss of her Father's hope) but I'm coming to realise that would drive a dagger through the heart of the show. Charlie is heart, and for the premise to survive she can never break. She can be shaken, but the moment Charlie breaks irreparably, the show betrays itself.

Angel Dust is probably the most diverse character in this regard, balancing his own many traumas and personal faults with disarming over-sexualisation, placing up smokescreens and illusions to make himself seem stronger than he is- but in placing all those walls he also forces out people who could get close and come to work at the real him. He is a very raw character in that sense, that touches a lot more people than many would like to honestly admit. You don't need to be as broken and abused as Angel is to relate to his coping mechanisms and self destructive spurs, but it can make some people uncomfortable to see themselves reflected in an unflinching mirror like that. I suspect that is why he has also become one of the most controversial characters on the show by people who seem desperate to carve away his breadth of character and chalk him down into a pithy facsimile that can be ridiculed and discarded.

Hazbin is also a musical, and rather distinct from the way that Helluva Boss endeavours to wind it's songs naturally into every episode as 'within the box' performances, Hazbin balances atop a more 'musical theatre' sensibility both in the style of songs it creates and the arguable non-canonicity of the songs themselves. I can only imagine that Velvette did not break into a confrontation song against Camilla during the meeting of the Southern Overlords, but when it aids the humour of the show to nudge the forth wall a little and acknowledge the sudden vocal range of every hellish denizen, I appreciate the wink to the camera. Funnily enough this is another aspect of the show I've seen critiqued by traditional published reviewers who seem unimpressed by the straightforward nature of each song. Which is strange, because this is musical theatre. Every song has to push the plot along, that would be difficult if they coated themselves in poppy allegory and abstract conceptualism. (I suspect reviewers are choosing not to bother engaging with 'another adult animated show'.) 

The one general thematic compliant I think is clear comes in what I like about the show the most- it doesn't present an open hand to the viewer. In that, it's not really the kind of show you can stick on for an uninterested party and they'll find themselves gently invited into the world. Hazbin Hotel has a grand world it wants to present and it kind of expects the audience to give themselves into the premise a little from the get go. If you are hostile towards the show, everything will just seem a little chaotic to you. If you want to engage with it, you'll find a lot of richness of substance somewhat uncommon from animated shows of this ilk. (Then again, how many Animated shows are the product of several years of world building, stories and head canon deciphering?)

By the time this blog is out I will not have seen every episode, afterall the last two don't air until next week, but barring some colossal screw up I don't really think I'm going to change my general opinion on Hazbin Hotel. I love the show. I think it's emotionally intelligent, irreverent and entertaining- which is all the show really needed to be. Perhaps the humour is not quite as snappy as the pilot was, and the animation takes less self-indulgent gallivants into impressive excess- but the heart of what made that pilot work all those years ago is totally intact and that is what matters when it's all said and done. I really like the show, I hope for more like it and I pray it finds it's audience despite the lax amount of advertising Amazon has afforded it. (The Hazbin universe has self advertised itself for this long, I suppose.)

Dragons Dogma 2 approaches

 

Sooo... turns out I'm really bad at keeping schedule with upcoming releases, given that for some bizarre reason I expected Dragon's Dogma 2 to be a January release- Whereas instead I'm going to be waiting a few more months before getting my hands on the game I've waited a near decade for. Still, it's gratifying to see the surge of interest in this, new series, which I've always held to the highest regard- seemingly in spite of it's forgotten nature. Ever since it was brushed under the cultural wave which was the 'Skyrim' release, I knew Dragon's Dogma would be a series that needed to fight for it's attention, and given that the game originally won out my attention over the equally as brilliant Borderlands 2- the game was as much a heavy hitter in my book as any other generation defining console game. I just never realised it managed to worm into the headspaces of any other player like it had with me until reading all the equally as unhinged players desperate for a bit more of that unique ambrosia once again.

Dragon's Dogma impressed originally with it's sense of scale of how that actually factors into it's gameplay systems, rather than existing as a visual representation of power and scale. You could feasibly beat a dragon by stabbing at it's toes as in any other RPG on the market, but it would be much more effective to scale it's back when it isn't looking and plunging your sword into it's eye socket before the lizard can throw you off. Grappling feels like it should be one of those gimmick concepts that totally overshadows the breadth of the rest of the game, but the sheer utility it affords you, dynamically creating memorable battle moments, justifies the mechanic all on it's own. We've already seen, with their Colossus of Rhodes inspired boss, how this is legacy that the Capcom team recall and are feeding into. Team Ico should be proud of the solid foundations they no doubt inspired.

Of course, the 'box' feature which most people remember the game for would be it's Pawn system. The online system within which players share their personally built companion character with the world in such that they enter other people's games and share the knowledge of their experiences, as well as their combat vocations, with the team. A very diverse way of creating a party slightly sullied by the fact that every pawn feels roughly similar, like emotionless dolls who fight because they're told to- rather than members of a collaborative party who are working towards the same goal out of shared interests. That's probably why I don't remember them as fondly as everyone else. Once you've the same voiced character, with a slight octave change, in the same party- the magic starts to fade.

As such I find the proposed improvements to the system coming with Dragons Dogma 2 to be interesting, but ultimately not something to rest my hopes and dreams on. In a developer interview we've seen acknowledgements from Itsuno that Pawns used to repeat themselves too often, and how that is something they've tried to address directly with more voice actors and repetition redundancies. There will only ever be so far a system like this can feasibly go towards making these AI controlled companions feel unique, and I suppose my heightened cognisance of that reality dampens any hope I want to have about what they might achieve. At the end of the day, without relying on some incredibly complex AI generative system, all we can rely on is the recreation of appropriate 'Game Feel', a variable totally impossible to judge without hands-on playtime.

Just hearing the testimony of the developers however manages to paint a very confusing image of what it even is that they are going for with this game- to the point that I wonder if Dragon's Dogma 2 is even going to resemble the same play structure as the title I love. For example, just their comments on the dynamic nature of NPC interaction has me head scratching, as I'm trying to decipher exactly what is meant by 'affinity' interactions that can lead to NPCs 'fighting over you'. They tease systems wherein relationships between NPCs can permeate your good deeds, so that doing a good turn for one person makes you friendly with all their acquittances too. And apparently when two people who come around your house "to play" as part of this system (god knows what that means) "A fight might break out." Is this what a game like this even needs?

Personally hearing confusing testimony like this brings to mind memories of of early days of FABLE, when we heard stories about acorns that could grow into trees over the course of the game- despite there being no functional purpose for an idea like that existing. Such ideas became whittled down and removed as the game can into clearer focus, which made a liar out of the man who babbled about it in Interviews. (That's Peter M, of course.) The same happened with Hello Games and No Man's Sky. These comments are being made in the months before DD2 drops, so it really does seem like we're fast past the stage of experimental feature pulling- but do I really believe in some complex system of NPC affectations that lend nothing to the core fantasy of the Dragon's Dogma product? Honestly, I don't know. It certainly sounds roundly bizarre.

At the very least the forest isn't being lost through the trees; everytime I here Itsuno sit down and talk about the things that matter I nod to myself hearing the thoughts of a man who gets it. This isn't one of those wonder games that was made by an accidental collision of conflicting ideals that no one in the team quite understands how to live up to or replicate, like Saints Row 2- Itsuno seems to know what made that original great. Even just his comments on Fast Travelling made me smile. Yes, there are slightly more ways to get around the world for this new game, but actually going on the journey on your own two feet is the ideal way to get around. "Travel is boring? That's not true. It's only an issue because your game is boring. All you have to do is make travel fun."

Dragons Dogma 2 sits at the conflux of a lot of elements, and I do wonder whether or not the game will live up to the promise we all have held in our hearts all this time. I know that myself I wanted to see our interactions with boss monsters get a focus for a sequel, so already this game isn't quite what I had envisioned all those years. (I wanted to see aquatic mythical beasts get brought to life. Maybe next time around, eh?) At the very least I know for certain that Itsuno is working on the game he always wanted to make, which is worth quite a lot considering this is the game who helped bring the Devil May Cry Franchise into the cultural eminence within which it currently resides. Slip a little bit of that grandeur and style our way, and I'll be one happy dragon slayer!

Fntastic- when you don't deserve a second chance.

I fortunately know a lot of bullsh--, it's a talent that I always did posses!

I thought I was done with the day before. Nay, prayed that I was done with the thing! I thought- 'the game is done, it's shutdown, no one cares anymore!' Sure, I heard that the brothers behind the project were scaring up talent for their next, considerably more sensible, project- but that was next year's problem. Today the game is dead and buried. But there's a curious scratching behind the walls, can you hear it? I swear, no one else believes me but I know it there. Rustling and clawing like a hundred tiny clawed feet fighting over each other behind the plasterboard. But only to my ears. The cats, oh they believe me. They prance about the walls eager for prey, but the assailants? Invisible. Uncatchable. Incessant. And what be these cursed vermin that lay beyond my eyes? The rats in the wall that are Fntastic- throwing one last pathetic Hail Mary to exonerate themselves, the slimes!

In fact, would you be surprised to know that their latest statement has flown out of the woodworks to divert the blame for the utterly incomprehensible pathetic dumpster fire of irredeemable composted spew- on me? In a roundabout and all-inclusive way, at least. You see, 'content creators' are the architect's of Fntastic's demise in their extended Tweet through which they literally pull an Ursula on us. ("I know that in the past we've been a nasty, they weren't kidding when they called us, well, a hack!") And yes Fntastic, whom many are starting to suspect are actually the same company as Mytona, as supported by the fact that in an apparent 'gotcha' the publisher changed their name to 'Mytona Fntastic' to prove they weren't at odds with on another, do the ultimate boomer move of calling their dissenters 'bloggers'. This isn't the 2000's anymore, you can't call everyone online a 'blogger' and expect to be taken seriously. (Apart from me, I actually am the sole blogger.)

Their first point of this formally worded document hits strong. Fntastic claims they never deceived their players, never took player money through crowdfunding or kickstarters and even returned all the money forcibly even to those who didn't request refunds because that was the only way to completely avoid a slam dunk false advertising lawsuit- I mean, that's what a really trustworthy company does! In their words "What kind of company does that?" They struggle to exclaim whilst bent over forward with their member halfway down their own throats. Or to translate, 'yes, we've had the odd complaint, but on the while whole we've been a saint- to those poor unfortunate souls!' And as for their sneaky little brag about being a company since 2015 and operating honestly all that time? I'm sure those abandoned games they've left in their wake might disagree. >cough<Propnight would love an update>cough<.

I've already touched a little on their next point- about being such brilliant friends with their publisher that they literally share the same name now- (Might have oversold the part a little there, to be honest.) their next shot is across the bough of all the many employee leaks we've had over the years. By all regards Fntastic is an absolute trainwreck of a company to work with run by two semi-literate monkeys in clown make-up that trip over more feature creep than Chris Roberts experimenting with magic mushrooms during a screening of Dune- the brother duo lack any semblance of vision, directorial talent, management skills, and basic cognitive ability- according to these many reports. They may be less skilled than the Island Boys. In fact... they might actually be the Island Boys! Have we ever gotten confirmation they're not? >Google search< Upon review it seems they are not actually the Island Boys. But they could sure give them a run for their money!

Anyway, the defence to the many takedowns of their character is plain and simple. They straight up deny that those reports come from real employees. They make a bold claim that they weren't only on good terms with their team, they were actually saints. They paid extra non-working days, paid for vacations, helped with mortgage payments and kept such a 'Fnastatic' working environment (not sorry) that half those who left the company returned with open arms! Quite the distinction from the claims that the brothers fired anyone who made their one shared brain cell feel slow. 'You'll find that nowadays, We've mended all our ways. Repented, seen the light and switched the track!" And as someone who loves to hear different sides of a story and try to envision a world were both sides can be true at the same time- (Because 99% of all 'falsehoods' are never full fabricated, but carefully shared glimpses of a wider truth) it's quite difficult reconcile the pure bad image of the company with these apparent records of their caring conduct. So strong words, I must admit. (If not for their history of blatant false advertising, but we'll get there.)

But then, who are the real villains if not Fntastic? Isn't it obvious? The bloggers who "made huge money by creating false content with huge titles from the very beginning to gain views and followers." And, well, I hate to be the grammer nazi here- but if the content exists then it can't technically be 'false'. That's grammatically incorrect. And on a more substantive note, this claim is 'rather ironically' factually incorrect. The Day Before received huge aplomb upon it's release from everyone who wasn't me, because I had already seen enough zombie games for one lifetime and found the promise of a survival MMO utterly abhorrent. (Were it that we even received that!) And besides all of that it should be noted that personally, I didn't get paid a dime- I do this for free baby, oh yeah! But of course we didn't suckle at Fntastic's teat and therefore we become the bad guys, or to paraphrase: 'Now it's happened once or twice, Creators wouldn't pay our price, and we're afraid we had to rake 'em cross the coals!' 

And the best part? Is when the other shoe drops. If you've been hanging off of every word, wondering where they're going with this, listen up. Because Fntastic claims they never lied to customers, if you look- you'll see that everything they ever advertised made it into the final game sans some small features they had to disable for bugs! Bold claims, that cannot be directly verified considering Fntastic themselves delisted all of their own trailers- dang! (I wonder why they did that?) Oh wait, we can actually see the IGN reuploads and... oh... yeah, those city streets look way more detailed than the actual game... and the realistic mud deformation doesn't exist... and the responsive shooting didn't make it to the final game... and it looks like a totally different product all together... but yeah, aside from literally everything that appeared in every trailer- I see what they mean, the resemblance is uncanny!

In fact, Fntastic insist that unbiased sources who have no financial incentive to lie like me- I mean, Dr Disrespect- actually liked the game and just said it needed a few patches! (Which is funny because that's not what I saw when I watched a bunch of clips of him stonefaced glaring at the boring gameplay of the dumpster fire in front of him. But I'm sure all those moments of praise were reserved in the moments that people didn't clip. I would check his Stream and see if he has any comment on this but... well... I'm not going to do that to myself.) In double fact, with some patches, the game received some positive reviews apparently! "Unfortunately, the hate campaign had inflicted significant damage." And they aren't kidding about that! Apparently the hate was so extreme it deleted the majority of those positive reviews and left only the sarcastic ones from what I can see- you know the kind that exposit variations of "The best part was getting the refund!" (And I can't seem to find any patches after the first one, which was released the same day the game came out. So I guess the hate deleted that too. Powerful thing, that hate.) I can only assume that those positive reviews were not made via Steam but rather telepathically espoused the developer's way rather than actually verbalised, and Fntastic must have silently patched the game to be really good for all those grateful fans, leaving no changelogs on even third party tracking software because: 'Gamers aren't all that impressed with conversation, true gamers will avoid it when they can. But they dote and swoon and fawn, on a dev who's all withdrawn, it's the team that holds their tongue who gains a fan!"

In their grand masturbatory delusions Fntastic recounts "people wrote to us that bloggers had deceived them and they liked the game, and they asked for access." And everybody clapped, I presume? First off, if they liked the game so much why did they need to ask for access? The game only went offline on January 22nd. Secondly, Bloggers? They used the term 'bloggers'? They would have said 'Youtubers' you utterly pathetic lying worms! We may have found the 1%- those who truly fabricate lies out of absolute nothing. There's no truth to any of this, is there? Bold faced liars and proud! Also "we heard that petitions were created to continue development" No there weren't. Google exists you numbskulls. "And on the black market, the game's price exceeded $200, and some even began to make their own mods!" Okay, second point first. The Day Before is not listed on Nexus Mods, the ModDB page has no mods and there isn't a single forum post or news story mentioning any mod apart from a rumoured 'play offline' mod that I can't corroborate. As for the first part of that? 'Black market'? These clowns don't even talk like developers for F- sake! It's the Grey Market! Steam keys are traded on the Grey Market! And I haven't bothered check if any 3rd party key sellers were charging that high for their fascinating artefact of trash they call a game- but why should I? They lied about literally everything else. They don't deserve the benefit of the doubt, they don't deserve a second chance, they don't even deserve a damn business licence at this point. These clowns deserve to be run out of the industry, and all industries, so they can go back to making a living stealing pennies out of the cups of blind homeless people or wherever these cretins came from.

And the kicker at the end of the rainbow? The final seal of crap to end this all off? Fntastic forget that they went bankrupt. Actually that was kind of a vibe running through the entire post, that they didn't seem to remember that they weren't supposed to actually exist anymore and even tweeting under the company tag was a bit bizarre. Let alone changing their publishers name to pretend they were close partners all this time. (And not just one and the same, which explains so much about why Mytona never dumped their poorly performing asses.) Fntastic sign off with a threat. "subscribe to our social networks-" (Oh my god, just say 'socials' you absolute relics!) "-to know what will happen next." Happen next? You're... still going to make games? On these accounts? So... all this gaslighting... that was your attempt to make these accounts seem credible in the future? Yikes, probably should have just started fresh, guys- this stink is going to stay with us. But if it really is attention they want, it's attention they'll surely get. Or to phrase it more appropriately. "If you want to see us wreck, my sweet, endure this rigmarole! Take a gulp and take a breath and keep addicted to our scroll! Dr', 'Tona, now we've get 'em boys- Your boss has lost control! Of this Poor Unfortunate Soul!" 

Hazbin has been

 

I've always found myself tickled by the prospect of Independent content, as though the creation of such was itself an implicit call to action of the availability of the creative world to everyone. Even when the obvious talents involved are so transcendent, such as they are for Vivzepop's adult animation hell-themed series, that she might as well just be an underfunded animation studio in her own right. What, in talent and presentation, separates the likes of Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss from any other 2D animated series in the world? Nothing but the delivery venue. And in fact, given that Hazbin Hotel has just dropped it's full first season on Prime, even the delivery venue is no longer 'underground' and 'for the people'. Still, it carries that magical word 'independent' and that somehow cements the series as belonging to 'one of us' as it were.

Adult animation is a criminally underserved sector of the animation industry, with most of the money and focus for animation falling into desperate shots for slots in the handful of kids channels out there. But one of the very few advantages of our new age of media, controlled by streaming services constantly at each other's throats, is that finally there's a place for these commonly shunned genres of media. No longer does every Adult Animation product have to fight for a place on Comedy Central or FOX, they can go get themselves proper distribution! And in this vein I am very happy to finally see the Helluva Boss universe get it's expansion with Hazbin Hotel, even if Hazbin Hotel was actually conceived of before Helluva Boss was. (Or at least, it made it to be actually developed before Hotel was.)

The Hazbin/Helluva universe is something of a celebration of the possibilities of high quality traditional 2D animation when uncoupled from restraint and plunged into an often juvenile extreme of adult excess- although what keeps me coming back is the fact that show never loses itself to meaningless shock factor drivel, but contains something of a battered and abused heart that it nurtures every now and then between meaningful character relationships. Also the songs are great. So good! It's quite rare to have a show that forces a musical into every episode to not become annoying after a while, but Helluva has managed to make their songs highlights of every outing. I can't think of any other show I would give that same praise. Except... maybe Phineas and Ferb?

Of course, with the coming of Hazbin, and the presumed high barrier to success that the product is juggling with- what with the 97 million odd views on Youtube that the pilot racked up over the years, so too come those stories leeching off the fame of the property. As is their right, I should affirm. There's nothing wrong with recognising the moment and seizing upon it. Why do you think I write so often about red hot topics? It's what scores the interest. But every now and then you get someone who either takes things a little too far, or just far enough to steal away attention from the big event in all the wrong ways. Or right ways, if you are indeed a greedy little clout goblin like so many are nowadays. (That has to be the number one profession of the current 'young generation'.)

There is, in the infinite expanse, one Youtube Channel known for cutting it's teeth on a grind of 'animated rap battles' that you might have seen clipped and cropped over the years on meme channels. Or heck, perhaps you're a regular viewer! The guy as been around long enough to warrant that sort of respect on his channel's name. Verbalase is not a low-effort content creator by any stretch of the imagination, producing fully animated evergreen videos that have earned him 10's of millions of views of the years. Expensive projects, no doubt- although none quite so expensive as a video he commissioned three years ago that has finally seen the light of day. One that the Internet has been flabbergasted over trying to figure out. An AMV that features the star of Hazbin Hotel, 'Charlie Morningstar Nee Magne', thirsting over Verbalase's OC self-insert and 'sensually' dominating him. (It's essentially fullblown Softcore.)

Now Vivziepop has always designed her characters with a certain amount of sexual appeal, that has been a cornerstone of her design philosophy since before she blew up for her animated projects. I don't think there's anything deeply abnormal about finding one such character attractive, but commissioning a $47,000 personalised animation? That's at a different level. In unconfirmed leaked Discord messages, this was apparently a big project for his secondary channel that he ended up just... never posting... for some reason. Well, given it's nature the video would no doubt get flagged as adult content by Youtube, affecting his second channels' CPM- but at least his $50,000 odd investment would start getting some returns, right? That's better than burying the thing for years until someone leaks it over discord, right? Unless... unless that wasn't the point...

It really is anyone's guess what this man was doing with a tailor-made sexually charged $47,000 animation sitting on his hard drive. Especially one that seems to feature some version of him in a story where an attractive fictional character is psychotically obsessed with him. But most who claim to have some sort of connection to the project at any time (not the animators themselves. They're keeping sensibly quiet in all this.) seem decently convinced that this video, produced somewhat more expensively than his typical rap vids which apparently cost $10-20 thousand, was a personal project. I'm sure it saw a great many plays over the years at it occupied an honoured position within the hell-themed goon cave.

Okay, enough speculation. As funny as it is, no one will ever likely know the truth as Verbalase seems happy to just ignore this entire situation until it washes away under the tide of the Internet. And I'm not going to roast the guy. There's plenty of people who pay for their 'entertainment'. (Not sure how many pay quadruple digits, but I guess my man has expensive tastes.) At the very least, I'll bet that Vivziepop got a good laugh out of all this. She seems like the type to see the humour in such deeply coated cringe. Although... one has to wonder. If this came out after being hidden for so long... who knows what other projects are still hidden on the darkest places of this man's hard drive? Probably best we never go digging, eh?

The dissolution of retail

 

So after recently completing my dis-track against all thing retail- which is to say penning my blog about the failures of retail in regards to the isometric genre of games from the viewpoint of old school isometric legends - you'd have thought I would be done talking about brick and mortar in the gaming space for a while. Afterall, it often seems like the rest of the industry is good and happy to leave physical retailing middle men in the past as an inconvenience of the yesteryear totally redundant in this new digital age within which we live and 'thrive'. If you count 'thriving' as shivering in abject terror over the possibility that everything you have can be snatched away in the blink of an avaricious eye. (And people wonder why we're so standoffish about new markets entering the selling space, as though we don't see entire game catalogues vanish often enough to be worried.)

Digital is far from being the ideal front of ownership thanks to frankly lax laws pertaining to digital ownership, but as legislators around the world slowly become more familiar with the bare basics of the Internet, I personally squeeze my fingers together and pray a come-to-Jesus moment will shake some sense into those areas of lawmaking sooner rather than later. In the meantime, however, we have publishers like Ubisoft eager to take advantage of the frank disconnect that currently exists between game ownership and game sellers through it's newest initiative- changing the name of Uplay for the one hundredth time! (Seriously, I stopped keeping track of the name at least two console generations ago.) This shift counts attempt number umpteenth of Ubisoft pushing for 'innovation' in an anti consumer fashion.

Subscription services for access to games in a manner similar to gamepass but with a much reduced library and a presumed inability to access this media elsewhere. (Ubisoft does like their platform exclusivity whenever they can pull it off.) All in an attempt to get consumers familiar with this style of delivery, as their head of subscription rather frankly conveyed in an interview on the matter. "That’s the consumer shift that needs to happen.- it’s about feeling comfortable with not owning your game." About as damning as a sentiment can get, and fairly bare-faced in the manner to which Ubisoft want to overpower the right of the audience to play what they want, when they want. Because afterall, that is how a mediocre vampire of a publisher like Ubisoft can continue sucking the blood out of the playing public for the right to play their games.

But retail doesn't seem like it wants to put up a fight as it goes extinct to the meteor, or at least that's the impression I'm left with after witnessing the announcement that the UK retailer 'GAME' is moving to discontinue their second-hand game business entirely! In the past people could pass their games in at Gamestop and proceed to be robbed blind by the shocking trade-in value there- but at the very least somebody like myself, more interested in amassing a collection than being thrifty, could pick up a cheap second-hand game from the shelves. Recent developments have made that an increasingly less worthwhile pursuit, not least of all for the fact that nowdays second hand physical titles from GAME retail for about the same amount as a fresh copy, and the fact that buying from Amazon is generally cheaper and more convienet. (Jeff Bezos looking like he's about to murder another retail store right now!)

There's not a lot in the way of competition when it comes to GAME down here in England, outside of regional franchises and private owned gaming enthusiast stores. The only reason GAME could possibly have for shutting itself up in this way would have to be the lack of income available to be able to make such a market work- presenting clearly the disappearing market of Second Hand. We all forsaw this, all warned about it, but now with the chaos happening before our very eyes there is little else to do but stare on in sad horror as the fortold comes to pass. Soon digital storefronts will have even more power over the consumers then they already, lamentably, do- and there's nothing worse for consumers than to be caught beneath a monopoly. Except, perhaps, to be caught between the pulling weight of two monopolies. Yes, that does sound worse actually...

And on the far end of the spectrum we have the sad story of Gamestop, who found itself insnared within the very same trap that saved them all those years ago. We all remember the rags to riches tale when a bunch of memers managed to out-short a firm betting on Gamestop's demise and make thousands in the doing. But we try to forget the fact that Gamestop then pivoted to making themselves all about cryptocurrency and decentralised markets and, lamentably, the NFT trend. That's right, in an act of transparent desperation, Gamestop tried to launch its own chain of mindless NFTs in the hope it would pop off and make millions for them just like... hardly any of these NFT collections actually do. They might as well have gone gambling on the stock market for all the good it would do them.

That they actually lasted this long before pulling the plug on their NFT collection is actually a little bit scary. The market completely crashed, several exchanges well pulled over in the wreck and Bitcoin plummeted to insane lows. In fact, Bitcoin was actually on it's way back up (Relative to it's cataclysmic collapse) by the time that Gamestop realised the NFT market was well and truly dead, demonstrating a shocking lack of awareness of the world around them. Heck, maybe there were a couple of Reddit Stock-advice chuds feeding the project just enough to justify it's existence before going broke and leaving Gamestop high and dry. Who knows?

Ultimately this isn't exactly the healthiest doctor's check-up on the absolute state of the retail market in 2024. As Jeff Bezos prances slowly through the streets with his reaper's scythe, eyeing up his next victim, it's seeming more and more likely that highstreet game stores are just offering up their neck begging to be put out of their misery. And maybe while we're at it, perhaps we might sneakily slap Ubisoft's painfully redundant storefront on the chopping block too? You know, clean up the market, so to speak? At least we have the championing efforts of people like Sven Vincke to impress that even if physical does end up lamentably going the way of the dodo- some vague image of ownership exists within digital purchases. And who knows, maybe with people like him staving off the greedy ghouls long enough, we might get some of those law reforms we need so badly.

The Apex Prophecy

 

Back in the age when Apex Legacy was very much still the doe-eyed fresh kid on the block trying to prove himself in the rough-and-tumble market of Battle Royale games, I was actually one of the early adopters happy to see a title with a bit of quality in the field that didn't subdue it's main focus under an obnoxious building mechanic. (I have nothing personally against Fortnite's building, I just never had the patience to get half decent at it.) Apex Legends looked great, felt better and glittered with that special spark of promise very few stars in the sky can muster- it was a game that felt like it was going somewhere in a style of online titles that was already edging toward oversaturation even back then. Somehow everyone could tell this would the type of game to float to the top of the pack and stick around for a while. Did I know it would be this much of a contender? No. But I did have an experience with Apex that not only knocked me out of the stupor this game presents, but gave me a crystal clear picture of the legacy the game was headed towards. Let me call it the... Apex Prophecy.

I am of course referring to the early days of the game where the bare basic game was still keeping enough of us hooked to be curious and inquisitive about upcoming content. We had not reached that point of the Live Service lifecycle wherein the fanbase are so starved that they gobble up any and all content without so much as a second thought- we still had some vague sense resembling 'self respect' left over for ourselves. Whatever that's worth. And it was in this very volatile window of the game's life cycle that the development made their first, and in my case their only, mistake. It the event through which Apex attempted to differentiate it's fresh Season 2 events from the largely forgotten Season 1 "Legendary Hunt" event which no one for the life of them can remember.

"The Iron Crown" Which I'm pretty sure is also the name of a Paradox Pokémon from Gen 9, threw up players against the endgame of events: a series of limited time collectables wherein the top most reward was not wrapped in a challenge of skill, but monetary devotion. You had to overcome the pitfalls of sensible budgeting and sink at least £147 into microtransaction lootboxes in order to get the honour of wielding... an axe skin. That's all it was, a skin for your axe. It looked pretty, kinda. But £150 worth of pretty? (Nah.) That was where I got off the Apex train. I saw what the team thought of their player base and how they wanted to point the direction of this game, heard their pretty pitiful apology wherein the team threw up their shoulders and went "Whoopsie- that was a goof!" and bid the Legend farewell as I rode off into the Sunset.

At the time I really did think a controversy like that, so early into Apex's career, would be detrimental to the growth of the game. I wrote about as much on my blog covering the topic all that time ago. But if that were the case then none of us would be here right now- would we? Apex was just so solid of a game underneath that veneer of exploitation that people gauged their options and went "Where else am I gonna get an experience like this?" Which pretty much lands this title into that ever enviable role of 'too big to fail'. And you know what happens to franchises that land there, don't you? They start releasing absolute trash with a vague precursory glance at potential problems in the knowledge that as long as they somewhat redeem themselves the next time around by putting a little bit more effort in, the mark won't go down in their permanent record. This cycle forms the basis of the Apex Prophecy.

What should validate my paranoia more than hearing about their latest grift attempt in collaboration with Square Enix to try and cross promote Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth- otherwise known as 'The Game where Cloud will get an emotion'. What could possibly go wrong there? I mean, Square even had their own Battle Royale based on the Final Fantasy 7 property for a few months before it inevitably petered out and was shut down, so they should understand the ecosystem a bit. Just throw together a few skins that people can grind towards in some sort of event and maybe tie in some of the big, character morphing, skins to the cosmetic store for a reasonable price. There you go, cross promotion done, I just saved you the entire marketing team's budget, Square- you're welcome. But... of course that's all just too bloody easy, now isn't it?

As covered and broken down by incensed fans, slightly tired of having to go through this every other month, the spread of awards are tied up so insidiously to the monetary packs that this could very well be the most expensive event in Apex history. Which is just a great way to celebrate such a financially lucrative advertising opportunity within their platform, right? By taking those earnings and then demanding more earnings from their users! The top most heirloom of this event requires the collection of 36 paid cosmetics under it- each of which require purchasing a box with a standard price of $16. As lovely as I'm sure that sounds to folks out there. Now there will be a few freebies handed out, some given as challenge rewards, but you're crazy if you think there's anyway to unlock everything without spending at least triple digits on the game.

And here's the thing- the cosmetic aren't even good! Just taking a glance over at the various character themed outfits that have been doled out, based on the various members of the FF7R cast, what the Apex team have made of these skins is honestly shameful! I understand that there's a certain balance to be struck between the style of Final Fantasy and that of Apex, and this franchise has a slightly glimmer of integrity to not just shove any old model that's easily rendered into their game- (Like Fortnite would have) but there has to be a point at which the compromise is just so ugly you go for a redesign! At the very least, if things are this bad, stick masks on the characters so you don't fumble about trying to match aesthetics quite so desperately.

Those with the money to spend will of course blaze through everything and nail the one-of-a-kind 'One Winged Angel' themed Deathbox, and I will indeed snatch up my bragging rights for knowing this would be the direction that Apex would end up going all the way back when I wrote my first blog on their event skiving. Because there's nothing more 'fun' then seeing your free-to-play game slowly divvy up it's base between the overly funded and the casual pleasure players- that's never led to any conflicts within the playerbase ever before, now has it? Then again, I guess Apex had lasted long enough to sweat out all the normal players by this point- now they are just milking the addicted who are too invested in the grind to even realise other games have come out in the years since Apex ruled. 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

 

With the latest Microsoft Xbox developer conference we have ourselves another year of promises from the industries most battered and disgraced 'leaders'. Microsoft has taken so many knocks on the chin when it comes to their first party delivered titles that it's becoming a little bit of a joke whenever something is announced as Xbox bound- being that it's 'exclusivity' is a punishment, not a community boon. To see their big show stopper of last year turn out to only be 'alright' was a huge disappointment, even if the game itself did ultimately perform well in the monetary department, I would be very surprised to find out that Starfield has even half the life span of your average Bethesda game. But we're not talking about Bethesda today. Instead let's talk about the brand new game that the company are throwing their crossed fingers and whispered prayers behind. Let's talk about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

We've all known that Bethesda have had an Indiana Jones game up their sleeve for the longest time. So long, in fact, that I don't even remember if the title was ever actually officially announced or if it just 'became known' at some point and everyone just rolled with it. Like how Starfield got leaked back in it's conceptual stages and just became the unspoken badly-kept secret Bethesda was poorly shying away from at each conference. Machine Games wasted no time with announcements when it came down to it, just shoving their work in our face after all this time in hopes it lives up to the dreams and expectations and I have to admit to being somewhat interested in the game. But maybe it's my grumpy suspicion or perhaps just the clarity of space from the Xbox ecosystem over the past few months, but I'm not exactly blown away.

Which doesn't mean anything real, I hasten to add. There are a great many games that would never knock off my socks until I get behind the controller and spend a few hours getting into the game, experiencing the story, feeling the gameplay- there's no substitute for playing a game, provided it's marketing can do enough to get you in the door in the first place. For Indiana Jones, the game has done it's job. I very much want to play it and will happily jump into the game when it launches in the mysterious miasma of 'sometime' 2024- which I suspect is code for "The absolutely best guess gives us a 2024 release, but reality says we're probably getting delayed until 2025." Heck, we had two 'Fall 2024' announcements, there's only so much further on this game can be to not even get a release season announced! (I guess I just thought that after all these years we'd be a bit closer to launch for the reveal.)

Machine Games are of course best known for their brilliant work bringing the Wolfenstien series back from the graveyard and turning it into a genuinely cinematically compelling alternate history epic... which seems to get further and further away from the possibility of having a satisfying conclusion with every passing year lacking a finale reveal. With that legacy behind them I was actually quite excited to see the team try something different, which is why I was genuinely shocked to discover this game looks so much like Wolfenstien. The first person perspective despite having a visual icon as their protagonist, the stealth action gameplay sections, the in-your-face combat and well-composed but plastic-model cutscenes that painfully scrape across the unreal valley line in a manner that shifts from atmospheric to unnerving largely depending on the lighting of the scene. (I kind of hoped they would have upgraded a little by now to be honest.)

Now again, Graphical fidelity that matches the true-to-life sheen of your average PS exclusive isn't the be-all end-all of game development and no Wolfenstein game before this has ever been sullied by the old weird looking character model- I just would have thought we'd be seeing Xbox generation leading games that can at least match what PlayStation has been achieving since the late PS4 days. The slightly-below-top-shelf look is becoming something of a sad-trademark of Xbox and I, for one, don't like it! But I guess the characters are recognisable enough as Indiana Jones, and maybe if we get a half decent performance out of whoever it is the team have doing a young-Indy impersonation, maybe I'll forget all about it. (Who knows.)

What The Great Circle seems to be going for is a later Tomb Raider style of game, with exploration mixed with puzzle solving and peppered with action/stealth sections. However with the pedigree of Machine Games I do hope that action is quite a bit better than what the Tomb Raider Remake games proposed, given how fiddly they always tended to be. (Although it's really hard to tell right now.) Personally I still hold fond memories of the level based third person adventure of 'Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb' from 2003 and hope for an experience something akin to that. Going first person doesn't destroy that dream, but there were some really dedicated platforming sections and environmental puzzles that stood out well in that old game, I'm not sure a forced first person perspective can fully take advantage of the full breadth of adventure gameplay like we might want.

'The Great Circle' does not give the sense that it was designed to be a showstopper game like I kind of always assumed it was all those years in production. But maybe what we have here is one of the quiet monsters that hides it apocalyptic impact beneath an unassuming form. I still think there's just enough wistful sentiment towards the Indiana Jones franchise that a half decent outing will win over a sizable audience provided it hits the key gameplay sectors like it wants to. (And Machine Games proper have yet to make a dud so I would be genuinely surprised and shocked if they didn't.) I mean it won't ever be a 'Hogwarts Legacy' sized hit, in my humble estimations, but maybe slightly sore feelings after 'Dial of Destiny' can be relieved with another crack at Indie in his prime!

I think that's a strangled and garbled way of conveying mixed sentiment towards what we witness with just the slightest bit of disappointment for not being blown away. But I suppose at this point Xbox just really isn't the company for delivering bangers anymore, are they? Unless they pull a reverent miracle and somehow manage to revive and seize control of the KOTOR Remake, as some have begged them to do, I don't see Xbox 'retaking' the generation anytime soon. Every year it seems we get told how Xbox are investing in studios, letting their eggs nest, waiting for that hatching- and year after year we either get mediocre spreads or scatterings of 'decent' games- I'm hoping that The Great Circle is a little bit better than 'decent'. I'm not holding my breath.

Let the R's fight

 

Max Payne. The great equaliser. A video game about a cop on a journey to avenge the murder of his wife through copious amounts of murder on his own end. A gaming classic, slathered in moody melodrama, heavily black and white colours and comic panel theming and the genesis of the much renowned 'Bullet Time' mechanic. It's also the major point of contact through which the struggling juggernauts of today intersect before now. Because you see, both Remedy and Rockstar games had their chance to touch the franchise with their own games for it. Whatever you have to say about Max Payne 3- Rockstar did throw their weight behind trying to continue the franchise that Remedy currently couldn't. So you might think a silly little dispute like this could be swept up in the background between companies with enough points of contact to settle this sensibly. You'd have thought incorrectly.

It seems that Remedy and Rockstar have entered into contention over the ownership of the letter R. Yes, it is a very valuable and useful letter, resplendent yet reserved, regal and rambunctious- but to be clear the actual contention is over the branding of these studio logos. Take a quick look at Remedy's logo, then mosey on over at Rockstar's. Both very minimalist, as is the style with modern day company iconography, and both featuring that all important consonant. As is ever the case with hyper-active lawsuit filers, this 'of course' means you need to be terrified over the ever present possibility of the moronic public eyeing the two brands and assuming one is the other despite- you know- the very distinct and noticeable difference in colour, the echo effect on Remedy's logo and, you know, the fact that Remedy's logo literally has the word 'Remedy' under the R. That's uh... a pretty explicit difference right there. You'd think the issue would be wrapped up by that alone.

But to be fair, I'm pretty sure the big legal departments of these massive studios are kept on tentative retainer on the expectation that they will proactively justify their own existence wherever possible. Of course, sometimes there are internal departments that are just chomping at the bit to exercise their power, flex them sore muscles. I can't appear to spot any apparent legal Department listed in Rockstar's key executives, but I'm sure I'm just missing them tucked away under someone else. Maybe Marketing. Either way, it's pretty obvious that this is a Rockstar or Take Two aggressor because in situations like this it's always them running to the court house. (And, you know, no one would be stupid enough to try and take on Rockstar in court. Except for the Florida Joker. That guy already made enough poor choices to get the fame he has, threatening to sue the most litigious company in gaming is just on-brand at that point.) They must have a tent up in the courtroom or something for often they're there!

And Remedy weren't a problem for all the many years they were nose-to-the-grindstone, trying to make Alan Wake 2 the best it can be. But show up to the Game Awards, get a little celebration under your belt and suddenly it's all "These guys are going to dilute our brand! You have to stop them!" Were we in a world of sense and logic this would be a frivolous waste of time- but Rockstar have both the size and the connections to outlaw such a world in their proceedings. If there were any legal precedent for suing people into a death sentence, Rockstar would be in contention for America's leading cause of death after drunk driving incidents- they are a company as obsessed with mastering the intricacies of game design as they are with the brusque art of legal beatdowns.

Let us not forget the time that Rockstar went out of their way to hunt down and digitally eradicate all traces of mods for Grand Theft Auto's III through to San Andreas, after facilitating something of a quiet relationship with many of the bigger mod developers beforehand. Or how about when they banned TPain from playing GTA RP because he is apparently helping with Grand Theft Auto VI's soundtrack. Why, because the guy can't be trusted with a simple NDA? You have to ban him from interacting with the community as well? Or is it because if TPain is acknowledged as being involved with GTA VI and is seen having fun in his own personal streaming career, then that might be construed as a quite approval for this unofficial way of playing GTA V? Mayhaps that be the issue?

It seems all of Rockstar's legal prickliness stems from their xenophobia over anyone experiencing their products in a way not tactically intended by the developer and it's oddly reminiscent of Nintendo's view on all things related to their properties. Only- Nintendo has the rather flimsy excuse that they're trying to protect the family friendly image of their brand from anything they don't explicitly control, which is also their excuse for debuting a modern video game console without any form of voice chat, by the way. But what's the excuse for Rockstar? They aren't shrinking violets when it comes to adult content, they court controversy with every breath and as they are happy to demonstrate in an overly zealous manner, any genuine breaches of their conduct could be surgically removed with a well-aimed lawsuit if they pleased. So what's with the scorched earth policy?

Many are eager to sprint to their defence and declare innocence on behalf of Rockstar, because all these evils are actually the purview of their parent company Take Two- but I think there's something of a misunderstanding here about how subservient Rockstar are to the boys upstairs. If Rockstar wanted to tone down the zealous nature of their image they have the power and influence to get that done- they are the single most well received video game company in the world right now and if they make a suggestion then any money-minded executive with their head on straight is going to follow the directive. Take Two's overzealous nature when it comes to these take downs is either due to rank indifference on Rockstar's end, or a harmonious conviction to lock up the IP to the public.

There's enough space in the world for two company's with largely different names that happen to share the same first initial and distinct logos. Just as there's enough space for two producers with strangely similar names such as 'Take Two' and '2K'. The reputation of fear so eagerly stoked with this muscle flexing is the same aura of terror that makes Rockstar so standoffish, which makes it so inaccessible to the public, which sours the next generation of developers who might otherwise aspire to one day lend their talents to the heroes who's games they used to take apart and backwards engineering back in the day. I just hope Rockstar fully comprehend the extent of the persona that they're building for themselves, because it's one hell of a doozy if they don't see it coming.

Gotham Knights Review

If you're watching this, I'm dead.

Once upon a time there a video game. And it was a damn good one. Batman's Arkham franchise revolutionised third person action adventure games with it's every refined breath and quirk, bringing a startlingly comic lean gothic world together with one of the most influential hand-to-hand combat systems ever devised by man. I'll bet that if we track the strings of 'influence' that the punch-and-counter blueprint of Arkham has had on gaming, we'd map ourselves webs stretching to just about every single genre game with specific character controls in the past decade, outside of dedicated shooters. Arkham was such a staple icon of what video games even are that anyone with the sheer hubris to exist within that shadow would have themselves one heck of a legacy to overcome. Such was the unenviable position that Gotham Knights volunteered for.

While not actually a sequel to the Batman Arkham series in any significant fashion, Gotham Knights was a Batman themed Warner Bros. Published open world hero crime fighting game set within ostensibly the same city- and yes, with a combat influenced, at least in some small esoteric way, by the foundations that Arkham laid all that time ago. The connections pretty much made themselves, even if the team of developers themselves were not Rocksteady. WB Games Montreal are not a team as big as Rocksteady, nor as celebrated or resourceful, and thus throwing them in a cage fight with the kings of the genre was never going to turn out favourable in their direction. It would be like trying to compare the Mafia games with Grand Theft Auto- of course one side is going to show up worse, the comparison dooms the other. What Arkham presents and represents, however, is perhaps an idealised version of everything Gotham Knights wanted to be ontop of itself.

But enough beating around the bush, what is Gotham Knights? Well, it proposed to be the first Batman game to discard the scowling brooder and place his extended Bat family in the spotlight for a change. Well, four of them at least. In a narrative that threatened to touch on one of Batman's most significant modern era villains, the freemason/illumnati-esque 'Court of Owls', we would be presented with a murdered Batman which would set a grieving combo of Barbara Gordon (Batgirl), Tim Drake (Robin), Dick Grayson (Nightwing) and Jason Todd (Red Hood) on a justice seeking journey to avenge their fallen father figure. As the concept would regularly present, this means a co-op centric adventure tale sprawled across Gotham as you and three friends struggle to- huh? It's only 2 player co-op? But... but there are four heroes... why would- okay, already starting to see the cracks...

Co-op was always going to be a deviation from what people expected from a successor, spiritual though it may be, to the Arkham franchise- although any potential controversy or support it might have gained was soon washed away when trailers and gameplay revealed the real serpent hiding in this garden. Enemy levels, gear drops, rarity colours- this was another damned Looter Game! They're like a black plague sweeping across game design, sucking the life and hope out of everything they touch! God, I'm so sick of these awful games and endless integrity compromising design decisions and mindbending systemic concessions always bent in pursuit of keeping people playing for as long as possible, rather than in making those moments in which they are playing as good as they can be! Seems WB realised this too, because the final game isn't actually a live service like all these systems would prelude. Instead it feels as though such a corrupted heart had been ripped from the game sometime late into production and it's jagged, gore-strewn scars mark the rough edges of the imperfect package which is Gotham Knights.

Now, when I said that Gotham Knights was inspired by Arkham in an esoteric manner, what I meant to say was despite sharing a publisher with the Arkham games, Gotham Knight's gameplay shares about as much DNA with it's spiritual predecessor as any other action adventure game on the market does. You have basic and heavy strikes, dodge markers and counters. It all- functions. There is none of the effortless fluidity and dynamic situational depth of what Arkham achieved, but there is a basic serviceable flow that you might find replicated in any pretty good action adventure combat system out there. There is even a little bit of input depth sprinkled atop with stringent dodge time windows and a damage boosting 'perfect hit' mashing system which I could never quite get down right. And then you'll start unlocking momentum abilities that present flashy group attacks or heavy beatdowns or power support abilities. It's all above average stuff, which makes it a full head above the barely functional trite modern Assassin's Creed presents as 'RPG gameplay'.

Perhaps the greatest compliment to this system that the development team made were to invest heavily into the uniqueness and number of their combat animations, because they make a lot of the difference. Having every character animated in a totally distinct fashion with all of their own popping strikes and takedowns makes their combat feel more distinct and fresh than perhaps it might actually be. And though Red Hood might be the only Knight who actually plays genuinely differently from his comrades, (to debatable success. I found him way too slow to enjoy but I know some people like his gun-kata stylings.) the rigid judo of Batgirl's takedowns compared to the flipping acrobatics of Nightwing's knockouts tickle the thirst for combat variety in the most basic pleasure centres of the brain, providing the most basic illusion of distinction. (Devil May Cry this is not. But it's no fumbling trainwreck either.)

On the other end of combat, however, is the actual gear system which influences the damages and stats of your chosen Bat-vigilante as they patrol the streets in the night-by-night setting of this game. You'll end up in the Belltower before missions, crafting yourself new sets of 'bigger number' armour using a bevy of totally forgettable coloured materials that you picked up off the bodies of beaten thugs for some reason, and slap them on so that you can keep up with arms race of ratcheting levelling which plagues the early game of all level based gear games. This is the reason I hate this design. It always devolves into slapping together new gear with a higher arbitrary 'combat rating' in order to keep the same basic damage output you did the night before when enemies were a slightly lower level. And sure, when you start messing around with the hilariously unsophisticated modding system you'll slap together gear that trivialises most enemies- but does that really sound like ideal power scaling to you? And don't even get started on the way that, unless you b-line the main story, you'll find your character out-levelling the instance-based story mission areas in a matter of a couple hours. Either barely scrapping by to keep up or dominating over everyone with ease? It's a mess of an output scaling problem caused solely by the existence of the gear system in the first place.

And all of that is assuming you manage to last with this game long enough to parse it's ugly mess of menus to being with! Gotham Knights features an exceptionally messy flood of crafting menus, resource windows and tabs that will leave the newcomer fumbling and head scratching at every junction. I couldn't even reliably tell what equipment I even had equipped when I first started playing the game, which made me check out of the gear system pretty much immediately. And though I like the idea of the 'day by day' patrol framing device which characterises the game, there's a strange disjointed narrative flow which arises because of it. Forcing the player back to the Belfry in order to equip field-crafted equipment kind of feels annoying when doing so automatically ends the night- even though you're incentivised to clear the map of crimes every night so that you gather enough clues to generate crimes to solve for the next night- meaning that you'll likely craft an upgrade when you need it, but then suffer through the rest of the night grinding away at frustrating content with suddenly spongy enemies that have outpaced your gear for the rest of the night before you can equip it. A bizarre cycle there.

But let me not slide too far past the concept of dynamic map crimes which generate at the start of every patrol night, because they are a concept worth talking about. There is an array of possible crimes that pop up across Gotham as decent little side activities to keep the aspiring vigilante preoccupied between the larger investigation to solve Batman's last case. For the most part the variety of possibility scratched that same 'crime fighting itch' you look to resolve in any superhero game, even if there's a systemic similarity in a few of them. For example, stopping an illegal hack and saving a witness are conceptually distinct, but in practice they both involve fighting off waves whilst protecting a single point- all that really changes is the venue. You'll also find the same indoor locations repeated as crime spots, but I realise there's only so much possible variety in locations. We can't have everything. (At least there's more variety than in Watch_Dogs Legion, as faint praise as that is.)

The narrative of Gotham Knights promises a dive into the machinations of the Court of Owls, and in that pursuit the game does an admirable job of piling on the mythos and mystery of the secretive cabal of blue bloods who guide the powerful of Gotham from the shadows. They build up their mystique and the fear that those who know of them have of running their mouths, and they lay the foundations of a detective story the likes of which even Arkham never quite committed to with it's focus on cinematic eye-popping set pieces. And then Gotham Knights squanders all of it's own work by spitting out a half-digested 'bad big org' that feels no more interesting or nuanced than all the other thugs who roam the Gotham streets.

There really is no understating just how painfully self-sabotaging this is to the story they were building. The power of the Court is in their influence and connections, their memberships consist of the oldest and most powerful families in Gotham- and yet they don't seem to be anything more than goons getting in scuffs with Martial Artists in Bat costumes. Their grand plans are easily, almost accidentally, unravelled by the Knights barely a mission after stumbling upon then, and then the story gets tired and decides to swap them out for the League of Assassin's at the end. Another ancient order that is trying to influence Gotham through the use of monsters created using the Lazarus pit- making the switch utterly meaningless from a narrative perspective.

The death of Batman is intended to be treated with the weight such a loss would have, primarily by giving each of the Batfamily their own interpersonal side missions that touches on how they step up to fill the void that Bruce left by leaving for the milk one day- I mean dying. They are all fine nudges at the characters of the Knights, although I found some of them a little undermined by the fact that a few of the back and forths with Alfred only change up the Knights dialogue, not his. Which means that if you're switching between the heroes in order to hear ever story, you can have the same conversation with Alfred four times where he responds exactly the same to each individual Knight. It's kind of like how Saints Row does it's multiple voices, except these are supposed to be emotionally interrogational scenes wherein Alfred reaches inside and pulls out the inner hero of all of these traumatised heroes- except he's recycling his own material, the cheap bastard!

If you go in expecting a decently deep interrogation of the various Knight's personalities, as one would hope for in a story of these heroes 'coming into their own'- well, prepare for disappointment. Most of these characters are given surface level arcs that mostly chalk up to 'I'm having trouble being a member of a team despite the fact I've been doing this for years now', and these issues are dealt with exclusively in exclusive-to-the-main-plot optional cutscenes that feel entirely divorced from the central events of the game. Slightly missing the point of having character development, by declaring quarantine around all the actual 'development'. And when the Knights are actually working together for the core plot, they are written to the level of your average Dick Wolf cop show. Everyone gets their say, surface level characteristics are pandered to and the most simplistic conclusions are stitched together with such a song and dance you'd have thought the group had just finished decoding Dan Brown's DaVinci Code at the end of every conversation. I may never forget the 'brain rush scene' which required every Knight developing on each others ideas in order to come around to the startling, cyclical, conclusion that the Key one of them discovered last mission- probably opens a door. They just need to find the right door. I kid you not, someone wrote that. With all the preppy, quirky ghosts of overtold, cop-com jokes glittered on to salt the wound. (Just call this 'Law and Order: Gotham Knights'.) 

The end of the story achieves precious little to resolve the events of the story, given that the Court are still active (albeit wounded) and the League are still hopping about- (albeit sans one Lazarus pit) almost as though someone was hoping this game would just be the framework through which they could stick on additional narratives with new factions ad nauseum. You know, like in a Live Service. (Which is another example why Live Services jeopardise the integrity of their games.) The only real event of impact is the very definitive death of Batman who is now very dead for good. And that... pretty much means the game starts where it ends. I suppose that given the ending speech wherein your chosen Knight monologues about their dedication to the city, in a bizarrely singular fashion as though the other Knights don't exist, you might also say that the Knights came into their own as heroes but... they each had years of Vigilante work under their belt before the beginning of the game. Committing to continuing exactly the same sort of work they'd already dedicated their lives to is semantics as best, redundant at worst.

There are exactly three side-quests to keep you busy outside of the main content, and luckily they are decently beefy quest chains. Although to justify their length that means in this game about the Gotham Knights stepping up to face the duties of protecting Gotham, only three villains from the Rogues Gallery bother show up. Harley Quinn is promoted to gang boss in an attempt to show her 'growing up' from the Joker in the evil direction, whereas she's usually portrayed becoming a sort of anti-hero. This Harley retains the basic air-headed sillyness you know whilst touching up the psychotic menace just a little- and there might have been something to her where her overall plan not so... flimsy. The content is serviceable and her set-piece moments rival some of those from the main missions, but I would have expected a bit more of a substantive plot from the girl's grand major villain debut.

Mr Freeze was a mistake. I believe that well and truly. In an attempt to 'evolve' the character, the writers made the inspired decision to just pluck out his humanity. You know, the one thing that made his character more compelling than your standard villain-of-the-week nobody? Yeah, they just got rid of that. Totally arbitrarily, too. It's not like they establish that Nora died, or Freeze's condition is worsening or the Blackgate dinner lady got his lunch order wrong one day- he just woke up one day and decided he was fully evil. He might as well go around with a heavy Austrian accent making 'Freeze' puns, at least that would give me some interesting aspect of his personality to... well, mock- but... that's something! And thus was born the most boring iteration of Mr Freeze ever conceived. Good Job, Gotham Knights?

And finally there's Clayface, who I'm certain was conceived of in reverse. No one in the writing room had a compelling reason why this would be a perfect villain for the new Batkids, rather the animation department thought they could pull off a really sick looking clay webbing effect and wanted to show it off. And it does look good, those set pieces shine! but Clayface's entire narrative is based around a traumatic injury he suffered facing Batman and how he blames him for the incident. And without Batman there to be confronted with the consequences of his actions, intentional or otherwise- or even to defend himself, it just sort of goes nowhere? It's also the shortest questline too, by a considerable margin, as though the team genuinely couldn't come up with a complete narrative for the guy. (Shame too, his story was the most interesting that I wanted to see explored.)

As for the actual boss fights that round out all of these side quests? Yeah, they're pretty generic. Just simple attack cycles and huge health bars. There's no mechanical thought put into the construction of any of these battles beyond the occasional need to grapple up in order to avoid Freeze's AOE attacks. And there couldn't really be, could there? Because these battles had to be made possible to be completed by every Knight, alone or in pairs, limiting the scope of mechanics the team could work with. Which isn't to say there's nothing they could have done- MMOs pretty much present blueprints on how to create interesting fights that aren't just 'mash attack until the thing is dead', but Gotham Knights doesn't have that patience and it doesn't expect it's player to either. Which is probably wise, I probably wouldn't have the mental fortitude to withstand a Harley Quinn raid boss. 

Gotham itself is a huge wasted opportunity in Gotham Knights, offering up a generic city scape that lacks all the gothic personality of practically any iteration of Gotham that has ever existed. From a distance, atop rooftops, it can look a little atmospheric (although not a patch on the Arkham games) but the streets are barren, the city interactions surface level and the spread of content agonising. I don't think any serious consideration went into the placement of generated crimes during the daily patrol, for the actual minutes worth of pointless downtime you'll have to endure just going between objectives.  Traversal options are pretty pathetic aside from Batgirl's glide and Dick's paraglider and the mini-activity for unlocking fast travel points is so mind-numbingly pathetic I'm convinced it was created as a sole example of everything not to do in game design. It's a  'scan the drone' objective that has you wait around, without moving, for several minutes as you watch drones go about pre-programmed paths and land in front of you in order to recharge. I don't know what genius conceived of a gameplay mechanic where you do literally nothing, but they might have finally topped the 'Ubisoft tower' as the most tedious open world-side activity. They must be so proud.

As you push on forth towards the latter of the game and start hitting level plateaus at significant junctions- or the cap nearer to the end- just as is the case with every gear-score inspired game, the actual build crafting can begin. And this is actually where Gotham Knight's combat starts to feel pretty good. There aren't really a comprehensive list of abilities or effects for the gear you equip, it's just damage scores and elemental bonuses, but the bonuses themselves are really visually fun to proc and satisfying to match up. Changing up your elements towards an enemies weakness, such as switching to a full pyro kit to burn out Freeze's regulators, builds into the fantasy of the equipped well-planned hero, and mixing and matching so that your Batarangs freeze whilst your baton stuns with electricity can evolve small fights with just enough tactical variety to feel fresh again. 

Unfortunately late game is also where the variation enemies start appearing, and unfortunately the team did not seem to borrow from the legacy of it's spiritual predecessor here. The first variation that all the factions get, the heavy, is simple and comprehensive. Large health pool, heavy windup attacks, they're about as fun to deal with as your build is tight. If you have a solid build, they're the highlights of the battle, if you're just winging it, they're painful timesinks. But every other variant is a pain in the ass. The Assassin's from the League hone in far too much with their attacks stealing your situational awareness to only focus on them during sword flurries. The Owl Talons can only become vulnerable after hitting them with a charged range attack, as opposed to Arkham variant enemies who would typically feature a range of options to make them vulnerable, most of which flow into general combat. (But then, flow was a lot more important to the design philosophy in Arkham.) And the super special talons they introduce in the late game? I literally only fought them in that introduction fight. I don't know if the team just forgot to insert them into the remaining few case files or if spawn rates are random and I got unlucky- but that felt like a missed opportunity. Ultimately, combat enemy variety was attempted, but to a sad and unimpressive presentation.

For it's endgame content, which also doubles as the only worthwhile multiplayer content beyond just general city wondering or double teaming missions that don't feel like they were especially designed to challenge two people at once, Gotham Knights proposes only it's raids that skewer the gear level system up a bunch of levels and teases a special something new that is never quite lived up to. When I read the teaser email from Wonder Woman presenting the Raid as taking on Starro- I got a little excited. The giant Starfish of legend would surely be a crazy fight, and I was only sad the game's playerbase had dropped off so much there was no way I'd get to play it. (Unless I was crazy enough to grind the dozens of floors to get there solo. Assuming that's even possible.) Thankfully the Internet saved me this embarrassment by revealing that the final Starro encounter is merely a Starro-controlled Manbat. Manbat being the same painfully overused miniboss the game throws at you four times in it's last two chapters. Shameful. The only other raid just delivers a boss rush of all the main game villains at the same time. Neat concept, but uninspired content recycling.

Conclusion

Gotham Knights suffered under the weight of its design philosophy, which sacrificed so very much in order to be a Live Service back for the very brief years when that was in vogue. Though we were saved from that dark reality, the scars of that design foundation haunt the final product to this day. And yet, even if we were to exorcize all those elements and take the final product for what it is- Gotham Knights is solidly average. It's combat can be pretty solid when everything comes together, with the majority of the game already behind you, but Gotham is empty, the story is a mess and the writing is both bland and inauthentically quirky in the same breath. Oh, and did I mention that this game starts with a twelve minute cinematic? That's right! Rag on Kojima games all you want, but at least he progresses the story in his belated cutscenes! Knights drags out the death of Batman into a 12 minute slog of fighting and explosions before you've ever even touched the controller, and expects you to be blown away from the admittedly high quality animation. I was starting to get Kingdom Hearts HD collection '358/2 Days' flashbacks from that intro, what in gods name where they thinking?

The game drags itself down to the territory of mid so solidly that actually don't think I can recommend this when everyone of the Arkham games eclipses this title in all but Netcode. Because none of those games had it. Wait... actually, Origins had a kickass asymmetrical multiplayer which was supremely underrated- so I guess Arkham even had better online services than Gotham Knights. So go buy the Arkham series. Seriously. They're so much better. Gotham Knights is one of the most middle of the road games you can buy, but for the glimmers of something better here and there I managed to dig out- I can just about eek out an extra third of a mark in my ultimate score. Which means Gotham Knights earns a C+ grade in my arbitrary rankings. Lets hope this is the most mediocre that a modern Batman game can be- although I'm seriously starting to wonder given what's on the horizon...