The forbidden remake

 

Anticipation is a potent spell. This magic is known well to any marketing executive across the planet- it's their very reason for being- to deftly place the pellets that lead an audience to "ohh" and "ahh", ideally over a promise not spoken. Otherwise I consider marketers little more than glorified showgirls, putting up lavish displays of actual achievements. No, it's those that conjure tapestries from mist and rumour from direction which earn my respect. Anyone can make a great looking game shine if they have enough pool, only a talented marketer can sell the essence of a game on whispers and hype. Of course at some point the world become receptive to their techniques and then the conversation changes. No longer do we assume the unspoken is unbidden- because now what is unsaid must be charged! Why not speak of a much requested product. Because you make it in secret of course!

And this way of thinking doesn't stem from nothing, mind you- we have precedent. Hollow Knight Silksong fans have been led by the neck for years on the promise of a sequel that seemingly will never be made. Each passing day expanding the gulf between anticipation and deliverance. Then we have the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Remake which entered horrific production troubles but all behind the scenes away from any official word. Just recently we heard that whoever caught the hot-potato of development responsibilities promises with their pinky out that it's still being worked on- trust! And let us not forget about Beyond Good and Evil 2- a game delayed so horrifically long that every interesting idea it once presented has been outstripped by various other titles across the two console generators since. We used to dangled promises from the abyss.

Which is why I can presume there is an inexplicably movement out there utterly convinced of the single most unbelievable production ever- the secret development of a Bloodborne Remake/Remaster from the Sony devs. Now of course, Bloodborne is a much beloved Souls game that is considered to be among the best by those who had the fortune enough to play it during that original release for the PS4. But seeing as the game has never once been ported to newer platforms, nor to PC, nor patched to run above 30 frames per second- it might seem as though the franchise has been abandoned by any and all. But don't tell that to the faithful. They'll call you a liar and forge forward with the belief of madmen- emboldened by the viscous, saccharine syrup called 'Anticipation'.

It doesn't matter that Sony have rather aggressively avoided maintaining anything related to Bloodborne as part of their image unless they're really pulling for scraps, such as for Astrobot. It doesn't matter that the literal creators of the game themselves, FromSoft, claim to not have any control over the franchise and what happens to it. It doesn't matter that Sony's goto remake developing studio, Bluepoint Games, are currently wrapped up on what they insist is an original title; (and they aren't really of the size to be multi-tasking) people will accuse them of making Bloodborne 2 if it'll aid the anticipation! (Which is utter nonsense; who would be insane enough to make a sequel to a FromSoft game without Fromsoft? Madness!)

At this point people are willing to conjure any reality imaginable, just so long as within that fantasy space they have a semi-modern release of Bloodborne to keep them busy- but Playstation's hold of the franchise in a limbo state seems less like 'playing with anticipation' and more like 'fumbling the bag.' What I think truly has Playstation's nuts in a vice is their simply insatiable thirst to ruin the playability of their ports in order to squeeze out pointless subscriber numbers that they can flaunt for investors. So why haven't we got a Bloodborne port yet? Because Playstation are on a totally different wave than we think they are right now.

You'd think this is all a business and it's about making money- so just give us our port and make that bread- but whilst that makes sense to literally anyone else within this spinning globe of ours- Sony want something else. They're not just putting out games to make a buck, they're putting out investments on PC to spruce up their numbers. Forcing players to sign up to PSN for literally no benefit- sometimes even lying about 'moderation' or 'user experience' to secure their bag and then making off with your information. In some places that makes these products straight up impossible to buy because of no PSN coverage- in England that means that Sony are literally scoping for our damn Passports so that for their next hack our country can see a handy spike in identity thefts- thanks for that one! And for everyone else this adds an 'always online' functionality to otherwise entirely single player games that Sony have no right messing with.

Bloodborne, on the otherhand, is this antiquated little niche title that didn't even sell gangbusters when it originally released and would struggle under the weight of forced online requirements. (Even though all FromSoft games have some form of optional online anyway.) It just doesn't slide in neatly enough with Sony's image to warrant doing. Does it matter that they've been hassled about it forever at this point? How about the fact that Souls-Like's have ballooned into big business? Well... maybe they would have considered changing their view if the Demon Souls remake had taken off- but whether due to poor PS5 sales or just general disinterest; that didn't pan out too well either. More and more, as they rise, the bottom line is really starting to form the heart of Sony.

It's just a shame how Sony grew from this allusion to player first attitudes into this voracious beast that everyone has to struggle against in order to get the basic most morsel of food. That's what happens when you give a studio no competitors, allowing their greed instincts to take over. And Bloodborne fans join the ranks of us Silksong clowns, beating our head against our computer screens every big event praying for an impossibility out of the cold husks we call companies. It's a self defeating circle of embarrassment. 

   

The open casket autopsy of Concord

 

So the fall of the Concord as it was shot out of space is a well documented disaster we've all had our fill of. Some may call it morbid and destructive how giddily people latched on to the downfall, as though we are now celebrating failure more than success- but I think such a viewpoint wontly forgets what the product we're talking about represented. As a live service, that stuck of the cynicism of corporate pandering and trend chasing- the success of Concord very much was pitted to make waves across the industry. Just like how the success of Fifa introduced the medium to harmful practises, if Playstation's push for a Live Service future had it's chance to cement that would have led to wide spread stunting of the development of this art as a medium. Heck, some might argue the stunted development of this generation in particular is tacitly due to Live Service trash shackling the leaders of our Industry. Personally I think the cause is the Series S, but that's an argument for another blog.

What I want to talk about today is not so much the Concord we got, but the Concord that was dreamt about by sweating executives up in their ivory towers. What was it about this seemingly inoffensive franchise game that made everyone totally immune to the readily apparent truth that the audience this title was gearing itself towards had moved on elsewhere. Personally I think any aspirations of an Overwatch clone should have entered some serious doubt stages when the Steam launch of Overwatch 2 was met with overwhelmingly negative reception. Although I guess an optimist might see that as an opportunity to leapfrog the competition with a well placed successor. Truly there is no black and white with these sorts of projects.

Now before Sony Firewalk Studios was a Washington based asylum for refugees of Bungie and Activision that came together with an image in mind for high quality multiplayer experiences outside of the purview of the big studios. They put their talents to work on a successor game to Overwatch and nurtured that baby with an eye for cutting edge fidelity and uncompromising quality- very high bars set by industry professionals who thought they knew what they were doing. How, with that experience behind them, they ended up manging to bloat their development to 200,000 million (reportedly) is beyond me, as those are the kind of numbers that would make a big publisher blush. Outside of one incendiary and explosive new podcast mention there doesn't really seem to be any other journalist who can validate it- let alone what Playstation put in afterwards.

Because yes, Sony saw the game, what they made and decided to throw another 200 million to get it finished- which were needed because the game was not in a pretty state back then. Now should we take these highly contentious numbers as true, and I personally veer to disbelief simply for how nonsensical that even is as a proposition, then this would make Concord one of Playstation's biggest spends of all time. Not including the money to buy the studio, of course. But saying it is all true, the question would have to be asked of 'why'? Why did Sony spend some much money on this game, why did they acquire the studio and most importantly, and confusingly, why did they bitterly refuse to market the thing when it came to launch?

As the stories go, Playstation saw something in Concord that no one else in the planet could see- they saw the future. Their future. Concord was the embodiment of everything that the company was building itself towards in all of it's gangly and gaudy life service ignominy- whatsmore as a new franchise with the promise of heavily sci-fi world building- the analogy to this being a new-age Star Wars was dropped which, in a vacuum, kind of makes sense. How you could realistically compare what Concord had to offer with a pop culture phenom like Star Wars is a bit more questionable but I guess when you live and breath corporate speak overinflation is a way of life- isn't it? The point is that Concord was a bet that Playstation thought it was their duty to take- hence the heavy investment in buying up the studio and ensuring the product made it to ship.

But with that much pressure in the tank, with big boy Sony itself kneeling on your back, it can become all to easy to slip into that pattern of 'this has to come out no matter what'. With everything that was said to be riding on Concord, dissent was less seen as constructive critique and more roadblocks to the future that everyone was striving towards. The term 'Toxic positivity' has been coined for environments such as these, where cracks and issues are smoothed over and undue praise is visited where perhaps it isn't deserved allowing for missteps to be ironed into stone. As much as I consider the sourcing vague and unsubstantiated in this matter- this would go someway to explain how feedback as clear as the pathetic performance of the game's open beta sparked on alarm bells whatsoever for how the full, premium priced, product would perform.

The only question that these revelations don't answer- and in fact the one they just draw a bigger underlining mark under, is what the heck Sony were doing with their marketing! I mean sure, they funded a Concord exclusive episode in Amazon's upcoming 'Secret Level' series- but that doesn't assist the launch! Honestly if this game were at least given the typical banner ad + Advert barrage marketing push it would have at least crossed the 5000 player mark on Steam. The fact that no one knew it was coming out from outside of the circle of industry followers- and we didn't care for it- was just the perfect nail in the coffin for this game's chances. Unless Sony really believed the product was strong enough to promote grass routes marketing. It wasn't.

Before this I assumed that Concord was a relatively low stakes investment outside of those invested in the studio itself and that this game would see a quiet free-to-play rerelease in December and fade into the background with a small audience that would stick with it for a year until the plug is pulled. That was my assumption. Now I wonder if Sony even has the hubris to admit that this never had the potential that they thought it did and give it a solemn and toned-in launch. At this point it really is an insult to their bottom line not to push this game into becoming their next multimedia empire and if it can't be that- it would be better off cancelled altogether. But how does one cancel a game that was already released and then un-released? These next few months are really going to show us the face of Sony in crisis and how well they react. (Can't be worse than modern Xbox, surely?)

Playstation lost their minds

 

For all the many faults with Xbox as it has been run there is at least on gratis that they've always held- they are run by a human being- at least for the time being. Spencer isn't just personable, but he's an active stakeholder in the business that he runs, acquiring a platform that he wants to play on just as much as his various customers do- and that counts for a lot when fighting the 'out of touch' allegations. I don't know if Sony has ever had that as they've traded across a conga line of AI-generated business suits with equally outlandish views in what other humans even are let alone what they do- and these past few weeks alone have done a startlingly effective job of demonstrating how three different generations of these ghouls fail the Turing test.

Chris Deering led the computer company through some of their formative years, 1995 to 2005, during which they managed to wrangle some of their most important status defining victories over Nintendo and stand as a competitor in their own right. And yet during a recent podcast the man really let his ass be shown when speaking about recent lay offs which he insists have nothing to do with Greed. Yeah sure, man- afterall it's just adjusting for the recent over-hiring right? But then- I wander what emotion was ruling various gaming companies when they tried to overstock their staff to take advantage of a short-term global measure? What would you could opportunistic short-sightedness like that then, hmm? Maybe brief spouts of abject madness?

The worst part was Deering's proposed advice to the laid-off. He said they should 'move somewhere cheap and live on the beach for a year'- which is just... wow, this man wouldn't survive a week in the real world, would he? First off 'move somewhere cheap' is just wild. Because 'Somewhere cheap' for a tech company job typically out-of-state, which would just disqualify you from the jobs you are trying to secure- and good luck trying to buy yourself back into the state after the market has calmed down when you haven't worked for a year. As for 'living by the beach'- I don't know what this man lives off of but most people can't afford to sustain themselves on savings for an entire year on a video game developer's budget- guy must think they're movie stars or something!

But that's just the start of it. We've had to deal with Jim Ryan's reign over Sony which mandated the proliferation of Live Service games in the mad gamble that one would become a smash hit- which has led to him literally eating so much crow that Sony scored the dubious title of biggest video game flop in history thanks to the horrendous performance of Concord- dead in 2 weeks. Trying to squeeze a camel through the eye of a needle, Ryan had to have his plans stepped over time and time again leading to a legacy that is remembered largely for detestation than for his brilliant strategy- and the idiot probably hopped off to his next position on a Golden Parachute because the upper echelons of this industry is run by clueless vermin in desperate need of extermination.

Which brings us to the PS5 Pro, where the savings are passed down to no-one. The mid-generation upgrade which is meant to bridge the gap between what this generation has offered and what the next generation will aspire to has managed to hit the very soul of 'out of touch' with their reveal presentation. Bizarrely Sony themselves admitted that performance was the highest priority for most gamers out there- with the choice usually being actively taken for games to play on performance mode over quality mode- before debuting a console almost specifically designed to shoot for as high fidelity as possible whilst forgoing potential improvements to raw performance. Oh sure- we've got virtual frames now- but if this can achieve anything close to Path Tracing I will eat my hat. This is a minimal step towards what players want.

And it's important to establish how minimal this has been in improvements so that you fully accept the absolute aghast with this the audience suffered the reveal of the price. $699 in America- and it is cheapest by far in America. Over here in ol' blighty- land of the all around poor being trampled on by rich nationals? Yeah, we're being charged £699- which is roughly about $900 in conversion. In Canada they're looking at north of a $1000. Cry about import tariffs all you want- this is utterly unassailable to most level-headed on the planet and feels driven from a place of pure malice. Afterall you're looking at an extra 80 for the disk drive (which is apparently selling out- showing you were priories lie) and another 30 for the bloody vertical stand! The game doesn't even come with the pro controller- so that's another 100+ dollars for full package!

The general consensus appears to place this at the feet of the current interim COO Totoki and some sort of insane chase of margins so tight that the Playstation pro is literally a backwards investment in the medium. Honestly, at that price I currently have a PC that is one graphics card upgrade away from being a superior choice- and I only haven't upgraded because of the headache of switching the card around. That Set-up would last a heck of a lot longer than the 3 or so years that Sony expect this console to last whilst they work on the PS6 to replace it entirely. The market for a console like this is two fold- either the stupid or the rich will flock to this- and that latter audience I could care less about- they can buy whatever they want but the former audience- this is going to be a drain of their trust for the console market that I think Sony aren't fully cognizant of.

Already we commonly ask what the purpose of the console market is in the modern age and as the years tick by that purpose appears to be drying up. They're no longer a cheaper alternative, they're no longer as seamless an alternative. Games are slowly starting to be put out as a more consistent quality on PC and Console, (Except for those by Rockstar) how long we be able to justify these excesses for the way things are going. Xbox are too far up their own ass to take advantage of this, I expect their pro console to be only marginally better- maybe they'll throw in the pro-controller seeing that's it's not as tech-packed as Sony's equivalent. Either way, this generation might be shaping up to be something of a wash with no real standout moment- and that is a crying shame. Thanks Sony.

Yeah, Concord ain't gonna make it

 

Now I don't like to rag on a game for the sake of ragging on it- actually, I like to find a diamond in the rough if a game has something special that very few out there can see. On the flip-side I very much do like to step on the face of game that heaps in undue attention and threatens to spread it's filth if left un-disgraced- such as Assassin's Creed Valhalla- regrettably the most successful Assassin's Creed game to date. (But how many of those buyers actually finished the thing, eh?) All that being said there's something of an underdog slant to Concord that makes me wince everytime I hear a negative headline about it- because this is just a small team of developers given a shot at the big leagues and collapsing under the weight of mandates that probably didn't even come from them. 40$ entry fee in a free-to-play market? Oh, that just reeks of Sony!

That being said the studio are industry veteran refugees from across the space- which is probably what lends to the systematic robustness of what Concord offers- it is not an amateurish game by any stretch of the imagination and that is what probably gave Sony the confidence they needed to charge an arm and a leg for entry fees. It offers quite the gorgeous pastel pallet that stands out just that slightly from other space-themed games that either go full neon colours or the duller gun-metal standard. It's almost drawn from a pulp magazine out of the fifties- and if that style kept up to presentation and perhaps even to performance and narrative that alone could have been a blinding identity to build a brand upon. Modern retro space-opera; that could have really worked! But... we don't live in that world.

See whilst it works, and it looks nice- Concord just doesn't have that special something else to justify a higher barrier to entry than literally all it's over competitors on the market right now. There's very little functionally distinct about what the game offers and that which is distinct don't really feel like leaps forward but rather design choices that are proving highly contentious with genre regulars. The choice to have characters in Ranked becoming locked off after a single round won almost feels like a shot in the arm to mainers- whilst a slap in the face to competitive team builders. Also, strange point here, but isn't this a solved problem? Don't all Ranked modes in hero shooters do 'ban' phases? I don't really know what they were getting at.

People aren't really gelling with the maps either, which is a shame because I always think back to how iconic the original map rotation for Destiny was back in the day and wonder why more people don't set their shooters on alien planets. I guess the art of map design is a lot more complicated than we give it credit for given how recurring of a critique that appears to be- particularly in a game that is solely focused on being a good shooter. You'd have thought that scattered industry vets would know what to focus on but I guess not. Hell, even Overwatch got a slate of memorable locations and those were mostly just a world tour to vaguely famous locales with tech boosts here and there.

But you've got to bear in mind at all times the thing about Concord- it's at the very beginning of it's journey. Only way from here is up. And yet- in order to put yourself on the path on constant improvement you have to hit the track on your feet. Which is exactly what this game hasn't done, launching with player numbers that are poor enough to make your mother cry. I'm talking a worse peak player count than Gollum. Freakin' Gollum! Doesn't that show you the power of disaster tourism? The most players that this online-only game has ever seen at the same time is just shy of 700 players, and it's currently scrapping less than 200 which at the time of writing, is less than a week after launch.

Now concurrent players and current counts aren't everything, of course we don't know console numbers, but what we're looking at here is a game that Playstation paid over a hundred million to acquire the studio for- failing to scrape the kind of players you'd see in a half decent free-to-play title from a team of indie devs. From a failure of optics to an absolute disaster of marketing on the part of Sony- (I'm not sure how they expected people to know this game was coming- freakin' telepathy?) this big budget title with a gigantic promise of support behind it had dropped like a stone in freshwater and those who did bother show up are reporting something either not good enough to recommend or not bad enough to point and laugh at. Perfectly, depressingly, mid.

And beyond the gunplay you have the feel of the game- and I don´t need to tell you how little work is being done in that department. Not a single character in this game has the kind of staying power that Overwatch's cast has- their designs feel derivative or uninspired- like background characters from a scene in Guardians of the Galaxy. (I'm pretty sure 'Star Child' was literally a miniboss in the 'Guardians of the Galaxy' game.) People don't feel attached to this game and thus the one unique selling point of Concord- weekly cinematics to flesh out their cast, falls on entirely deaf ears because no one cares enough to listen.

All this is to say that Concord is not going to survive. It won't last that long stretch of time to build up a core audience capable of sustaining it and I suspect that the studio are probably going to have holes fired in them by Sony as they try to recoup this mess. And that is a shame. It's a shame because these are talented devs, this game is decently competent and there are dozens of other projects far more deserving of being the Internet's punching bag right now- just look at Dustborn. I wouldn't call it a 'tragedy' that Concord never found itself, it's still a reinforcement in the lamentable war to convert everything into a damned live service, but I certainly don't feel good watching it burn in that grave- for what that's worth.

The next Concord

 

Following the smash hit that was Concord- game of the decade- many are wondering what will come next in Jim Ryan's great plan to introduce Live Services' into the conversation when talking about Playstation's commitment to quality. Because yes- whenever a new one of these are announced the marketing statement makes sure to dust off that old gimmick about how these are yet more experiences that can- only be played on Playstation. (And PC, of course- because they'll never say no to a bit of extra money.) We've already seen the mandate for a dozen Live Services straight up get rejected by Naughty Dog, an internal studio big enough to get away with publicly spitting at the hand that feeds them without being ripped apart in retaliation, so we know that the right hand ain't always clapping with the left over at team Playstation- but that doesn't mean the mandate is going to stop.

Afterall we have 'Marathon' coming at some point. The franchise resurrection of an old Bungie title that is said to be the progenitor to the original Halo- a legendary studio to those who's gaming days go back to 1994. (I wonder how many such people still remain at Bungie in the current age?) I'd call that probably the most intriguing of these mandate given the pedigree of the studio involved as well as the prospect of bringing such an antiquated brand back from the dead. But in the meanwhile there are likely to be a few more... Concords to wade through. You know- riffs on other popular brands that feel like they were cobbled together less because someone on the team was struck with a great idea but rather because Sony are footing the bill and that's the kind of cheque you do not turn down. (Oh, and Concord doesn't have that excuse, by the way- they were making that game long before Sony rolled around.)

Jim Ryan doesn't strike me as the kind of executive who is lock-step with his community, but rather the kind of hardhead that has done the numbers and knows that if he sacrifices a dozen studios at a nowhere project that will sacrifice jobs and investor dollars on nowhere ventures- all he needs is one success to cover all the failures. Like a gambler he just can't help but dump quarters in the one-arm bandit because "Next pull baby, that'll be the one! The wife has left me and several different criminal organisations are waiting outside the casino haggling ownership over my various organs- but when I hit it big everything will be solved!" Yeah, how did work out for Adam Sandler in 'Uncut Gems' again? I forget...

Well wouldn't you know it we actually have the next Live Service game lined up and ready to go because it turns out that Sony were already overlapping these projects atop of each other as early as last showcase! That's right- who remembers the competitive heisting game from ex Ubisoft devs? No one because it was revealed with a bloody CGI trailer which is already questionable for a single player game but turns into straight useless for a multiplayer one! It gives us a rough approximation of the art-style and some suppositions on how the team hope the game will play with the tools they provide- I ain't engaging my faculties to analyse someone else's hope-ium!  

Fairgame$ as far as anyone can tell is a punky millennial-coded wet dream of young adults waging audacious heists on the ultra rich whilst... shooting other crews attempting the same heists? (There's a bit of cohesion problem amidst the disenfranchised, it would seem.) To this end these trendy hipster-types are adorned with lightly sci-fi colourful tech like heavy duty ziplines, purple paint loaded carpet sprays and laser refracting shield walls- admittedly decently cool looking tech- slightly hampered by nose-wrinklingly try-hard 'Anonymous'-lite imagery. Kind of like a less pathetic iteration of Watch_Dogs' Dedsec. Same wannabe style- but these guys actually walk the walk.

It's... confused from a messaging angle. Kind of lightly New Saints Row coded with a sliver of originality some might construe as hope, but I would remind them that the original CG trailer for Saints Row didn't look totally awful- we had to wait until gameplay before the real concern started to settle in. This could be a similar case. Also, I don't know what angel swooped down to prevent the script writer for the trailer from penning the dreaded cliche line of "Student Loan debts" but I fear even Metatron itself would struggle to stay their cursed hand for the entire development cycle. I can just smell the 'this is what the young people yearn for!' dripping from the deranged mouths of the scenario writers and it pains me to see these ex-Ubisoft devs carrying the 'uncool' out the door with them.

And the masses seem equally non-plussed. I actually think there's a lot less outward hostility then Concord received, largely because there's clearly a bit more of an original identity to this idea that some are interested to see play out- but I still wouldn't call the general consensus 'positive'. In fact, I'd say people might have just laid off this game because they were preparing to gorge on the carcass of poor Concord- and now that meal is done they very well might turn Fairgame$'s direction with ravenous abandon. The heavily commercial anti-corporate live service game does invite the same sort of mockery in it's conception afterall.

My prediction is that this game will do a lot better than Concord did- simply because there's more of an idea with this game- but it's still under the purview of Sony and Ryan so there's a good chance that any momentum this game might have earned will be crushed under the weight of a 40$ price tag. Unless the game is really unique- that ain't gonna cut it in the modern landscape and seeing as we have yet another giant Live Service style game brewing over the corpse of Concord- Valve's 'Deadlock' with it's 100,000 concurrent players during the unannounced playtest- the amount of room this industry still has for more competitors is squeezing ever-so tighter. I wonder if there's room anymore for anything less than exceptional?

Indiana Jones and the console wars

 

So with the rapid coming of the new Indiana Jones game, we have a lot of uncomfortable confrontations to... well... confront given the very apparent nature of what the game represents and how Xbox studios are choosing to handle it. All that without even mentioning my trepidations about the game itself and how actually good it will be considering the absolute rafters that Machine Games are known to usually be shooting for- I want it to be good, but I'm not getting those sparks of wonderous excitement. I have a feeling that next years Indiana Jones is going to end up as yet another Xbox first party studio that is smothered so far under controversy that the wider and more pertinent conversations are lost until the next age wherein we look back unburdened by the politics of the time. Can't wait for the "Starfield was actually pretty good" video essays in a couple of years- like clockwork.

Firstly, I don't think Indiana Jones looks like a bad game. This isn't a Ubisoft scenario where we're observing the team struggle against their own innate mediocrity to make something that isn't total bloated hogwash- Machine Games are respectable developer with an impressive cattle in their yard. Farm yard? (Stop letting me use metaphors, I'm terrible at them.) The modern Wolfenstein games propelled that boomer shooter into one of the most fun alternative history dramatic bullet-rain games on the market- and though they're made some curious steps in that franchise recently- ('New Blood' was a choice to be sure) no one dares doubt their pedigree. Plus, rumour has it they've had plenty of time to make the game so we're not going to stumble upon a Cyberpunk at launch debacle. Hopefully.

But it's hard to shake the feeling that this Indiana Jones game isn't quiet seizing an identity all of it's own- at least from the previews. When we heard that Jones would be getting the Machines Games treatment there was off-hand joke about "Oh what, are they going to turn the game into a first person shooter with a fedora on top". and whilst that might have been conceived as facetious... umm... yeah, that really does seem to be what they're doing. Only this looks slower and clunkier than Wolfenstein, with bizarre leaps between first and third person so that you can watch Indie swing with his whip or climb down a ladder? Nah, that hybrid stuff doesn't work. Pick one of or the other, it looks goofy otherwise!

Add to that initial unease that fact that Machine Games appear deeply insecure about the choice to go first person for one of the most iconic characters in movie history and keep trying to justify it whenever they open their mouths. They even had Troy Baker insist how immersive and quintessential it was in the latest trailer- how about letting the game talk for itself? (Ya'll ain't scared of that, are ya?) I'm just not sure if this game is going to sit right in the hands of the players- which is a shame in a studio that were once so very good at gamefeel. Maybe that's what makes them so conscious of it in the public limelight? We'll have to see. Besides, arguably the more substantive story here relates to the publishing plans for this highly marketed Microsoft first party title.

It's coming to Playstation. Tucked away to no fanfare at the end of this trailer was the realisation that this game would be launching on all platforms seemingly without even so much as an exclusivity date. Which means that in this console war of ours, within which Hardware specifications have grown so insular that only exclusives count for anything anymore, Xbox has fully dropped the ball on exclusivity without gaining literally anything in return- essentially murdering the last reason anyone has to own an Xbox over a Playstation. At the very least they could have held this release over Sony's head to try and twist their arm into an exclusive port of something. The Final Fantasy VII Remake, God of War, Horizion Zero Dawn- literally anything. Instead- they've given all the rest of the ground that they have.

Xbox is hurting right now, but only in the sense that exists in the punishment rooms of perverted executives. Microsoft is not on-the-dole, they aren't struggling to pay their staff, they aren't even worrying about being able to afford their next mutli-billion acquisition- they are Microsoft. But just like separate law enforcement agencies in a cop drama- that all around strength is not shared with every branch of Microsoft. Sure Xbox exists under them but if Xbox has had a few shaky years, like they have, then Microsoft have no trouble treating them like a particularly disobedient plague-dog who peed on the carpet. And like a self fulfilling prophecy this flagellation of a company that had the sheer gall to exist during an international global financial downturn is now feeding into terribly regressive practices that further stunt the studio.

Sony, on the otherhand, are growing fat and careless on the failures of their biggest competitor- to the point where they don't even consider Xbox to be their chief competitor anymore and are now setting sights on- I dunno, the entire PC market? (Certainly feels that way.) It truly is horrific when Xbox lack faith enough in the size of their own userbase that they're pimping out a first party game to Playstation in order to make a profit- seemingly ratifying the odious Sony sentiment that they are 'The best place to play.' What's next? Are we going to see a Starfield port to Playstation as many have already speculated? Is the next Halo going to go limping over to the blue-side with their DMR between their legs? Are Xbox going to retire as a console company altogether? (They better bloody not!)

Downplay it though they might Indiana Jones is shaping up to be a battlegrounds that is surely going to overshadow the efforts of the team and it's because Microsoft can't get their damned self-competitive crap in check. Although that is the nature of the corporate world, is it not? Bite down and gorge on your own tail until you reach the point of hurting yourself, and then keep going into you go up like a raging inferno of stupid choices. And while we're at it, screw Xbox for getting themselves in this position to begin with, and screw Sony for goading on the collapse of the console market as though losing Xbox wouldn't shudder the ground beneath them too. God, I hate this industry sometimes.

Bungie and the no-win scenario

 

Sometimes it feels like Bungie has been the luckiest and unluckiest video game company for the exact same play they made- creating their timely split into their own twisted Kobayahsi Maru. Although, I guess maybe the five years of burning success so powerful it lead the rest of the industry off a cliff in pursuit could be considered an undeniable grace period. Maybe atrophy truly is the inevitable path of all and we shouldn't be surprised when the thing we love rots and fades to dust. Which can be evidenced by how many series and franchises run out of steam and become unbearable the more they stick around, whilst the graceful bow-outs remain beloved in our hearts and minds. Star Wars is a cringey joke and Avatar the Last Airbender is considered a timeless masterpiece. But I'm getting off track here.

On one hand, Bungie were responsible for one of the most influential First Person Shooter video game franchises of history. Twice. Halo proved to be the progenitor of many of the standards of online competitive shooters that are still sought after to this day, establishing an unforgettable protagonist and branding for their partner console developer for the foreseeable future. They rode that franchise for over a decade, ending with what many consider to be the pinnacle of the franchise as their last main line entry (Halo 3) and what I think is the pinnacle of the campaigns in their side-game release. (Halo Reach) Literally one exact entry before the franchise started going off a cliff with the rough-narrative of Halo 4, affixed with that terrible new faction that marked the beginning never ending spiral of Halo. So 'Lucky Bungie', right?

'Destiny' was Bungie's next port of call and it proved to be their smash hit slam dunk for years, until they decided to throw it to the wayside in order to drum up Destiny 2... which was an even bigger success story! It truly cannot be overstated how influential Bungie were during this period of their life, either. Destiny created the Live Service meta that we're all living under today- with the exception of the battle-pass standard that was borne from over exposure during the 'Fortnite' days. Bungie created the idea of the pseudo-MMO, which didn't over stuff itself with all the 'complex connective infrastructure' or 'social connection facilitating' of a proper MMO but leveraged the constant support and updates to keep an engaged audience coming back and feeding into the product through microtransaction purchases.

But now it seems that very same industry that Bungie helped kickstart is turning into such a minefield that it might have just blown up Bungie themselves. Just as we've seen from the studio after studio twisted into pathetic attempts to copy them, from Avengers to Suicide Squad, this really is an industry of 'all or nothing' that puts everyone on the edge of their jobs with each new release. We've seen companies scarred by their time trying to kick off a Live Service, and the lucky one's get to brush themselves off and slip into an entirely new project stained with only the failure of their time in the mud pit. Destiny, on the otherhand, might just have taken the spirit of Bungie with them if we read most gloomily into the newest developments.

I am talking of course about the several hundreds of layoffs that Bungie, a not-particular giant developer, suffered just very recently under the provision of Sony and all the chaos that has occurred in it's wake. Bungie has lost staff from every corner of their company, stripping economically from every team in a wind-down that couldn't come at a more un-opportune time considering they are, following the competition of Destiny 2's core narrative, moving on to at least two new games in the near to near-distant future. This really the time they should be bulking up, but whether at the insistence of Sony or internal pressure from Investors- Bungie is losing that which gives it that iconic identity- it's talented staff.

Much has come out in the time since- especially considering everyone has had their hands on their hips wandering why exactly this is happening in the wake of Destiny's latest update 'The Final Shape' which by all accounts was a slam-dunk finale for the franchise. Well, it would seem that 'The Final Shape' comes in the aftermath of 'Lightfall', which was the update for which I tried to get back into Destiny only to realise how hopelessly anti-newcomer it was and dropping the thing after a couple of days. (And I played Destiny 1 literally religiously back in the day- they screwed the on-boarding process beyond relief!) Lightfall was an absolute disaster that decimated public sentiment and although it sold, the lost value from it's reception ended up scarring Bungie further than we could have ever imagined.

Reports now say that no matter how well 'The Final Shape' performed, Bungie was due for serious cuts to it's staff anyway. In essence they only kept people around long enough to complete their work on the game before kicking them to the curb with the power of god- creating another horrendously bizarre visual of a seemingly successful product resulting in mass layoffs. (Thanks for starting that trend, Microsoft!) Now I'd say public sentiment is more shaky than it has ever been before, with people wandering if there is even a future for Destiny from this point forward- or if the game is going to enter a holding pattern of no expansions for the foreseeable future. And to be honest- doesn't that seem like exactly what they're planning? Keeping the team around just long enough to finish the narrative and then gutting them? Sounds like 'wrap up' behaviour to me!

Of course in this most volatile time it's easy to point fingers. Fingers at the fans for not supporting the game at a troubling time and instead jumping on the reactionary train, fingers at the executives for refusing to take paycuts in hopes of saving some of the layoffs because (I quote) "We're not that sort of company", (yikes!) and fingers at Sony for being the paymasters that should really be taking care of one of their biggest currently in-house studios instead of putting them to task like this- especially considering they simultaneously expect Bungie to be leading their online-gaming efforts for the foreseeable future. (Or does Sony really expect Concord to pop off? A game of such negative rizz I had to look up it's name? Fat chance there!) But at the end of the day, maybe we should point the finger at karma itself- for coming to reap what it's sown.

Is it too late for Days Gone 2?

 

Days Gone was a zombie game I didn't really expect to like when I picked it up. Open world and narratively linear- I was kind of expecting the 'Ubisoft' of zombie titles that was going to burn me out as surely as every other recent Ubisoft game unfailing has. What I found instead was an impressively well realised character driven story that focused on grief, purpose and flashes of redemption. Perhaps not as impactfully as Red Dead Redemption 2 did it, but solidly enough to win my surprised recommendation when I reviewed the game not very long ago. And considering how that game ended with a cliff-hanger- the question has been asked now and then whether or not the game is truly ready for a sequel follow-up in the coming years.

Of course, the not-so stellar critical reception of the game when it first released might have been the kibosh on that particular train of thought. Sony didn't particularly want a game that couldn't hit the perfect scores of their other high-premium first party titles and thus made it decently clear to Bend Studio that a sequel wouldn't be on the table anytime soon. Similarly, the game director of Days Gone has made it a not-so-secret that the game did not quite sell as well as it come have; particularly with the man drunkenly lambasting everyone who doesn't pick up games full price in the first week as untrue fans who don't care about supporting developers. Which I guess makes me a freakin' war criminal in the games industry because I pick up about 1 full price game every two years or so. 

But recently it seems like Days Gone can't really stay out of being in the news, despite the apparently 'dead in the water' status of the franchise. That former studio director recently scored headlines by saying the head scratching cliffhanger of the original game was set-up to lead into a trilogy of games, not just a boring old sequel- which sparked up questions about whether or not such a plan could really be in the drain like everyone says. Bend Studio had to reaffirm that the franchise was dead, they're moving on to new IP and even took the time to sneak-diss their old Director by claiming this was all being drummed up for likes. Not that I blame them, to be honest- he does come off an a whiny dick in a lot of his diatribes. 

So it would seem that the official word is good and said no matter how many times that director tries to impress "never say never!"; but if there's one thing we've come to learn about Sony, the real people in charge of making decisions around here, it's that they don't have a backbone when it comes to public pressure. They folded like a deck of cards when it came to Helldivers 2, pulled back on their Live Service hellhole plans when The Last of Us developers straight clowned on them and I'll bet that if enough fan fever is drummed up they will turn around and un-cancel this franchise. In fact, I'll bet that is what the Director is low-key drumming for with all of these breadcrumbs he keeps dropping. And it wouldn't be the strangest heel-turn that Sony has ever done. Remember when the Internet tricked them into re-investing into placing a critical and commercial bomb of a movie back in theatres because meme culture convinced them it would be popular? (Morbius remembers.)

The original Days Gone game presented itself as a showcase of technical ability presenting giant hoards of zombies moving as one that were actual threats the player had to face. There were times when these served as simply background set-pieces to story moments and others when you would literally be diving in a cave, visualise the sound around you (as you can) and spot several thousand bodies rushing through the caves directly coming for your head. It was tense, dramatic damn near terrifying at times. It also wasn't a half-bad third person action game featuring really punchy shooting, entirely serviceable melee and a bike combat minigame that... existed. I guess.

There was certainly room to grow in terms of scale. Living out in the sticks were could only hear about how insane the cities were under the hoards of the undead, but imagine actually getting to see that in front of you! It would be like living in an actual World War Z game with bodies climbing over other bodes in order to scale walls. Skyscrapers stuffed with enemies. Big explosive weapons to deal with them- they hadn't reached the apex of what this idea provided, not by a long shot! As for Deacon's personal journey- that I'm less sure on. There would have certainly been room to expand if, you know, the third act of this game hadn't happened. But it did, and in doing so sort-of inexplicably resolved all of Deacon's personal issues. They really could have saved all of that for at least the sequel.

But of course we would have to ask ourselves in that much more abstract way- is the world really down for more Zombie games? The situation is not as dire as it were- zombies games aren't hitting the shelves every other day and most of those do look pretty interesting. Even State of Decay 3 looked pretty damn easy on the eyes. But that doesn't mean there isn't a certain subset who just absolutely do not want to hear about it when it comes to the rotting and I can't exactly sit back and pretend there haven't been one too many zombie franchises in the gaming world. Do we really need another one? One that explores character motives does hit a little a differently than your standard fair I would argue, but realising that would take people actually playing this game to learn that it's different and... most people just didn't want to.

I think it really would take a miracle for Sony to suddenly throw Days Gone back into sudden production but I suppose stranger things have happened in the house of blue. I just think most people have really moved on from this game and in doing so enfranchised a belief that the original game was 'mid', when I would most certianly assist it is well above average by most every estimation. But who is going to take the time to check? Still, I will say it's smart of the director to try and apply pressure on Sony themselves because we know just how out-of-touch those guys can be on the best of days. If he really wants to make this happen- those are the right feathers to rustle. And if the impossible does come to pass- you can bet I'll pick up my copy... provided it actually comes to PC day one this time around, of course... 

Sony and the self-immolation of their ports

 

Sony are a peculiar case of a game company. Sitting at the top of the adult console market, chest to chest with Nintendo, you'd have thought they would have a strong grasp on what it takes to succeed. But as Microsoft starts shooting itself in the cranium, I think we're becoming more and more privy to the fact that Playstation has only be getting a foot up because Xbox so regularly falls on its' face providing a step from which to move up from. If the Microsoft Xbox brand were competent, controlled by people who knew what they were doing, extracting the right games out of the right studios and making a name for themselves, Sony would be the donkey of the free right now for how utterly moronically anti-consumer they always insist on being. Of course, in such a reality Xbox would have no reason to play nice with consumers either so they would be just as big of monsters. There really is no winning when you play with corporations, is there?

And we can see this clearly in Sony's bizarre first party direction, which to this day hasn't changed from the Live Service mandate of yester year. Despite their successes in buying single player developing studios that have secured award after award for the company, even going on to secure and award winning show from one of their first party produced properties- Sony wants to chase after the biggest no-where prize in gaming: Live Services. What is the point? As this point it's a more likely best to take your money to the high-rollers table and bet on a hand of Blackjack, the odds are actually better to make a profit doing that then investing in a Live Service- given their horrific failure rate. Helldivers 2 may have skewered perceptions for Sony a little bit, but if they really invest in this direction as much as they're threatening to, in 5 years time habitual Poker Players will be more in the black than they are!

But that's the old news, how about that Helldivers 2 situation, eh? Remember when that all transpired and Sony tried to wiggle their account requirements upon a game that provably functioned just fine without them- twisting PC players into creating PSN accounts just to play the game they bought. Of course, the team themselves cared very little about the comfort of their playerbase before discovering that due to various countries not having PSN countries, some of their players would be actually unable to keep playing the game. Funny how it changes the conversation when "I'm actually not comfortable doing this" turns to "I actually can't keep invested in your ecosystem if this continues." But my surliness regarding Arrowhead and their backpedalling aside, why was such a system even a Playstation mandate to begin with?

Rumours abound but the most likely idea I've heard brought up is the ol' hotshot exec wants to show how much of an impact he's had excuse. It's the classic. Change the brand logo to something objectively less clear and worse to prove you've effected something worth sticking in the CV. This was just a case of a guy wanting to talk about the big new sign up numbers that PSN has received, even it was at literally gun point in order to play the hit new game. The requirement was suspended upon the rocky launch, but when the game blew up that drove the heat under the execs collar for that sweet praise from his sugar daddy bosses. That seems to play out perfectly in my mind explaining all of this to an unfortunate T. But whatever the truth of the matter, whether it was Sony pushing this or Arrowhead, the results were perplexingly bad for Sony.

Ignore the PR hit for a moment, if you can. Logistically the shrinking of your current most popular user base is an active assassination of the PC port to an unreasonable degree. A desecration of basic profit making principals in an age of the games industry ruled by the almighty dollar bill. Steam ended up pulling the game entirely from storefronts outside of the purview of the PSN, cutting off entire countries worth of customers for absolutely no real gain. There's so lip service about making moderation a little easier on the team's side because they can just ban a PSN account rather than work to ban IPs- but is that alone worth cutting off thousands of customers? Who then will be granted refunds by a surprisingly understanding Steam?

Of course the story has that happy ending where the big bad Sony were told off by a user base who review bombed the game, got the decision overturned and now have a shiny new cape to show off the great meta-war: but those regions are still blocked from buying the game for whatever reason. It seems some degree of the damage has been done, and nothing of consequence was gained. Whatsmore, absolutely nothing was learnt either, because Sony are doing the exact same crap again for the port of Ghost of Tsushima, and one has to wonder whether or not there's one sycophant in charge of PC ports that no one at Sony is keeping a close enough eye on, because financially, this makes no sense!

Now Ghost is a single player game primarily, meaning the decision to not sign into a PSN account isn't going to invalidate the entire game suddenly. But the game did get a post-launch online mode which, according to folk from the time, is supposed to be pretty fantastic. Oh, but what's that? Ghost of Tsushima has also been blocked from purchase in all regions that don't have PSN coverage. Which... actually makes no sense whatsoever! The game doesn't need online connectivity whatsoever, there is no reason to take a torch to everything like this! Is this just the cost of working with Playstation? Having them kneecap your product out of misguided caution over a non-existent backlash because they're too stupid to employ any amount of critical consideration to the situation?

Sony have always had a strange and icky relationship with porting their first party games, almost as though they're terrified of people realising that the only value the PS ecosystem holds is it's exclusive games and without that they're just an average console developer who made a few lucky studio investments back in the day. But it's only recently they've demonstrated an unhinged level of frank disconnection with the reality around them to an absolutely dangerous degree. And for those that sold their studio to the Sony machine, they can just sit back in perplexed horror as their hard work is stamped upon for absolutely no good reason as Sony flails around striking out at phantoms. Is this what it means to experience cognitive company decline?

Dropping the bag: Sony Edition

 

I feel like I've been reiterating the same few points over and over of late, so allow me to reiterate a slightly different one today- VR has it's problems! Yeah, somehow the VR scene still really isn't where it needs to be in order to be considered a viable vector for game development despite us having actually reached the point where worthwhile experiences can and have been developed for it's exclusive use. No longer do we just have VR ports of popular titles to go off of- there's Half Life Alyx and Boneworks and Walking Dead Saints and Sinners and probably others, I'm sure... but the conversation around VR never seems to stick around for long and these experiences are flashes in a very tiny pan enjoyed by some small microcosm of the wider gaming community that have access to such tech. So the problem is accessibility? Well then in comes PSVR, right?

PSVR should have been the slam dunk solution to the VR problem and you know what- maybe if the thing wasn't a Playstation exclusive machine it actually might have been. Inexpensive VR tech that can hook up to any piece of hardware- (apart from an Xbox- but that's no surprise. Xbox is never allowed to be part of the cool kids club) I could see that really popping off for the PC crowd. But keeping the machine purely without the Playstation library? That seemed to not really be the best move. It limited the amount of games that were available on it- no third party developer was really encouraged to take the risk with it and with no games, nobody was recommending them and they slowly died. What a shame. Lessons learned. At least they pulled it together for the PSVR 2, right?

PSVR 2 has been rocking around for just over a year now and it's slate of worthwhile software has been a little limited. Resident Evil 4 developed with an exclusive compatibility mode for it, which was nice- there was the Horizion tie in game that probably dropped the same day as a moon landing or something (knowing how those developers work) and... um... Saints and Sinners? Still there's a lack of people developing experiences for the VR scene and that just leads to all the hype around new hardware going wasted when there's nothing badass to try it out on! No Man's Sky VR can only keep you invested for so long until you remember you're playing the largely meh space survival game No Man's Sky- which itself is a fate I'd wish on nobody. (The game isn't that bad, but it's nowhere near as good as people say nowadays, either!)

So what would be the next step from here? Well were I Sony and were I really invested in making this thing last- I would dedicate my first party studios who can spare a project towards making something dedicated to PSVR with one of their flagship IPs. Heck, you could even try and entice some third parties to get in on the fun. Anything to create the impression that there's actual gold down this mine once these exclusives start dropping and attention turns towards this side of the market. Then the ball will roll down hill and pick up momentum from there. But Sony have to at least push it first! For the love of god- someone has to make the effort! But no, I guess gambling your reputation and the next few years of labour of all your studios on a Live Service initiative is a better use of time, huh?

Oh, also the 'affordability' is no longer a factor in play. The PSVR 2 costs about 500 smackaroo's, which makes it more expensive than most medium-end VR headsets out there today- making those the direct competition only- well- they have more options. And to rub salt even further into the wound, because this is a Sony product and they hate you, the PSVR 2's library is not compatible with the PSVR library- so adopters have to rely on ports for PSVR 1 games that they liked, and then buy full price for those ports once again. At this point in time PSVR is eering dangerously close to hilariously destructive 'Stadia' methods of business- it's not quite as bad, of course, but it's on that road- and that is galling. It's also unsustainable.

As of now we've heard perhaps the most embarrassing news one can receive in terms of console manufacturing- that Sony have ceased production of the PSVR 2 whilst still sitting on their huge stock of unsold units. That is just about the kicker in the nuts you want least of all, because if anything you'd expect Sony to at least be pushing an average number of peripheries out, if not the targets they want to hit! This is following a period of scarcity for the PS5 that ran so rampant that they couldn't remain in stock for more than a week at some times- a total polar opposite as if to highlight the absolute absurdity of the player interest divide between core console and the VR add-on. Pile this ontop of massive layoffs that have trickled through Sony, and there's no doubt that the VR team would have lost some of it's operational capacity- right when they're in a crisis mode and need to figure themselves out.

If you'd have asked me a few years ago I would have chuckled and thrown up hands saying 'that's about the way things work out with nowhere tech'; but after witnessing literal nowhere tech rise and fall under the name of 'NFTs'- I've amended the way I look at VR. There is so much potential in VR at it's best to achieve things totally impractical in the traditional space. Fascinating logic puzzles, visceral in-your-face combat encounters, transformative locale transitions- a great artist can paint a fantastic piece on this canvass! The PSVR was a valiant attempt at harnessing that potential and I'm a little scared it's going to fizzle up and go the way of the dodo if nothing drastic changes in the VR marketplace.

Sony had themselves a monopoly on the VR space away from the PC crowd, and they've managed to squander it excessively to the point of parody. If ever that company knows where to spend it's resources, one might wonder why they ever dabbled into something they weren't prepared to fully invest towards. Or even more so, why they did it twice. I wouldn't at all be surprised if this is the last significant update we hear on the PSVR 2 for the rest of it's natural life cycle- and given how things worked out I can't even be sure that such an end would prelude a PSVR 3. Overall- what else can you say other than that Sony dropped the bag on this one- shame as it is to say.

Spider-Man 2 and value

 The eternal question

The collapse

 Thy name is Jim

It's all over.

 The Dark Side wins...

The Last of Us Part 2 Remaster

 There's a LOT of Last of Us...

Hallelujah Hippokrates

 Someone needs to buy themselves a mirror!

Whilst the world moves on, there is one company stuck very much in the same war they've waged for over a year now, standing up with the FTC to argue for what they consider to be inalienable rights. That's right, Sony are still very much staunch in their battle against Microsoft to prevent the Activision acquisition that the mega-company put up the money for an age and a half ago- dragging out proceedings far part their seemly natural span. As we are now the UK are bulging out their eyes at the Microsoft purchase as though this country has any amount of power when it comes to the Entertainment industry. We already saw them balk and cower when it came to sticking any sort of regulations on the 'Lootbox industrial complex', now we're going to believe that this government are going to risk Activision, the publisher of some of the biggest titles in the country, skipping out from the market? In this proto-recession? As if.

But still we have to play along with the presumption that the world is 'one bad day away' from cutting off Microsoft from Activision in fear of that 'one big monopoly' eventuality that most industries sail away just happily with. (I guess gaming hasn't paid enough blood money to the corruption machines yet. But that topic is neither here nor there for the moment.) In truth, the very spirit of this injunction spits in the face of 'fair competition' for squeaking out an interpretation of the current industry completely anathema to the reality that rest of us actually live within. There is obviously a huge line to cross whereupon Microsoft would certainly make themselves monopolists to cross, buying a popular studio when they are the least popular console on the market right now is certainly not it. And the fact that the leaders of the console market right now are supporting these blocking attempts should really spell that out in plain text.

Microsoft have been very explicit in their promise that Activision absolutely won't be pulling any upcoming Call of Duty games from the Sony console following the purchase. But rather bask in the good grace of that compromise, the Sony executives have done nothing but whine and cry incessantly about the fact that anyone else gets to dive into the world of exclusivity instead of them. Despite the fact that Playstation cut its teeth and securing high quality exclusive titles that established their platform as the only place to enjoy the pinnacle of gaming art- they can't seem so stomach anyone else even hinting at becoming competition. As though embodying a new-world Odysseus who's hubris led him to swipe away Athena's Olive branch: Sony have declared that they will straight up refuse to tell Activision the specs of their follow-up console if the deal goes through, essentially forcing Activision to go exclusive for Microsoft somewhere down the line. Is this self-destructive behaviour at this point?

And more recently Sony have decided to weaponize the recent reveal of Starfield and it's many exciting figures as a prime example of Microsoft exploiting their powers to rip away Bethesda products from Sony, ignoring the fact that Sony have been a thorn in Bethesda's side for over a decade at this point! Bethesda games never seem able to run with any consistency on Sony hardware leading to tidal waves of bugs that slowed down everyone other platform in the bustle, Sony staunchly spat back at cross-play and cross-progression which halted any such plans for ESO or Fallout 76 and Sony fought back against the idea of player built mods so much that painful stipulations had to be laid on new player-built assets, download limits and all the fun stuff when it came to modding for Fallout 4. What a great 'relationship' to jeopardise.

However it would seem there's a little something more personal working behind Sony's vitriol in this sector. Some might remember the way that Sony acquired the rights to Deathloop for an exclusive year, and as it turns out that wasn't the only Bethesda product they had an eye on. Also in their crosshairs was Ghostwire Tokyo, which I always thought looked more like a Sony-geared game, and... hang on, Starfield? That's right, Sony was apparently in talks to buy exclusivity rights for Starfield and that triggered Microsoft to jump in and buy Bethesda for fear of losing one of their closet friendships. Sony are now crying the 'exclusivity alarm' thanks to a deal they themselves were eyeing up before it was snatched away from them! Pot meet kettle, I think!

This alone opens up a whole new world of dread because just think: what if PlayStation actually managed that deal? Xbox would be sunk, literally! All of their deals over the years have been to purchase studios that appeal to niches, but nothing with large mainstream appeal that could be considered a system seller. The best of Bethesda's best have always held that accolade, but if the dominant system had snatched it away then there would be no competition between Xbox and Sony whatsoever- the Series X, for all of it's apparent technological advantages would essentially be an oversized paperweight that exists only to play Halo Infinite. And if you're lukewarm on Halo? Nothing at all. But to be fully honest, that isn't the reason why I dread. I dread for Starfield' s future.

Because perhaps the most exciting thing about Starfield is the possibility for the modding community to go wild on the game after it launches. Tear it apart and put it back together again with the kind of mods that will challenge the very limits of what the game is and can be; I honestly think this will end up as one of Bethesda's most heavily modded titles. But what if Sony got their grubby mitts on it? Their best titles have fought for actual years to make it onto any other platform, by the time Starfield made it's way to the real fans (and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Bethesda would only ever had agreed to a limited term exclusivity; it would actually moronic to do anything else.) the wind would be lost from the sails and the allure of modding Starfield would have dulled. There would have been a community anyway, of course, but just look at Fallout 4's meagre modding scene as proof that when the game doesn't land as it should, the flower just doesn't blossom.

I'm not one for the wants of the megacorporations, and I could care less for Microsoft's monopolistic tendencies, but I hate a liar and a hypocrite even more. Sony builds it's condemnations on waifish foundations that wither to the slightest introspection, but they cower behind the false veneer of 'toughness' that paltry regulators feel it's their duty to put up. Microsoft should have judgemental eyes on how they choose to expand, and regulating power of injunction should be wielded if they go too far- but maybe those injunctions should wait until Microsoft declares any intent to actually deprive Sony of any of this content their terrified about losing. You know, the same way they've bought exclusive content from Activision for years before this deal? Here we are again, arguing about two companies playing a game that hurts the consumers most of all; gaming summarised neatly.  

Is console gaming ever going to evolve?

 That's feeling like a solid- 'no', right now.

Console gaming is forever improving and reiterating upon itself thanks to the push to improve hardware that each manufacturer is drawn to by merit of their competition. Unless your name is Nintendo. They... they don't care about their hardware. The whole eight-year cycle that consoles go through is actually increadibly slow considering how often tech improves and changes, what with maximum processing power doubling every year, but that does mean every new iteration of a console has the potential to be a huge step forward in capability; which is typically why these huge companies end up selling at loss from cramming all the latest boards and cards in their power house machines and make up the change on the otherside through leeching customers for subscriptions or first-party high quality games. It's also why all those start-up companies that want to make their own competitive consoles really don't have a chance to compete before they've even started planning; what kind of start-up can eat those same sorts of production costs? Not one lacking a vast portfolio of investor's, that's for sure.

Yet some surprising how, despite this procession of new console iterations that are constantly being pushed out of the door, it always feels like console gaming is holding back the potential of the industry from where it could be. As if the hardware limitations are the shackles around the ankles of developers trying to redefine genre's but having to play by the rules of rendering available to them for fear of getting into another 'Cyberpunk 2077' situation where no one can play their damn game for half a year without a supercomputer attached to their rigs. Even this current generation of stupidly expensive glowing trite consoles somehow has it's teething problems when it comes to what should be the basic requirement of modern gaming- getting it's software to run at a consistent 60 frames per second. Not even 120- but just bog standard smooth 60. So what's going on?

Already we've had a plethora of miffed reactions to Arkane's vampire shooter game, but no so more when it was revealed that Redfall was going to be launching on Xbox without a 60fps mode at all. Two play modes, neither are smooth enough to match modern day gaming standards. And it's not as though the game is incapable of reaching 60 frames, considering Arkane have already promised a post-game patch adding in such a mode. Such really does demonstrate the order of prioritisation considered by modern day developers, who consider their games done and fully shippable before they can achieve a descent framerate for a console crowd. 60 frames, in their mind, is a bonus that such a crowd should be lucky and thankful to receive. A perception we should be very familiar with after the similar situation with Arkham Knights. 

Modern consoles seem to have standardised the concept of 'Performance modes' which are versions of the game where the higher graphics settings are automatically down-tweaked in order to reach the best possible performance. (A practice that just about any PC gamer out there is probably more than familiar with.) But this does betray the gulf of separation between getting the most visual appeal out of your games and making them play to the highest quality; such that previously unheard of graphic options are not available to console players! That's how impossible it is to combine these two extremes of performance with console technology! I'm not sure about you but personally I can't help but find that to be a depressing middle ground.

We're currently in an age of gaming dominated by computer component superiority, during a recession of said computer components. Of course it's nowhere near as bad as it was, thanks to the collapse of the crypto market killing off the desire for people to seize up graphics cards for mining purposes; but the greed-driven arm of industry has firmly stamped it's foot down on the basics of market negotiations. The last few years of gaming computer components have gotten prohibitively expensive for causal gamers and there's no possible chance of these components becoming more affordable with time, as was usually the case with literally everything else in the world. Meaning that at it's current trajectory, high level computer gaming is only going to become more and more elitist with less people being able to fully enjoy them without spending a ridiculous amount off the bat to get started. Which sucks.

Which kind of makes it seem like I'm praising the idea of throttling the development of software industry-wide to fit the confines of the console market's hardware... and yeah, I kind of am. Left to their own devices, the wild arms of development would probably see a wild variety in the styles of games developed; with some built to cater for the highest end computers of all and some, probably those made by big companies with an interest in actually making money, would try to match the general wave of tech. But there would be a distinction. We would have more games like Crisis, out there; optimised so badly that computers 10 years on from it's release couldn't run the thing in max settings. With the kiddie gloves of the console industry to base it's advancements around, software can be standardised to reach the most people, keeping the gaming community together and allowing it to grow as a unit. See- stronger isn't always better for everyone.

Of course, it's only ever comparative. Consoles will never be able to match what PC's can do at anypoint in their lifespan. The time it takes to design and mass-produce any sort of console to the market is enough time for a whole new series of graphics cards to be released, meaning that anyone looking for top-of-the-line in the console market is always, even on the launch day, going to be at least one generation behind. Every year that divide widens until the breaking point where games physically cannot improve anymore and a new generation has to begin. PC builds have that inherit upgradable superiority about them and there's no real way of matching that in a standardised level- unless we do something with consoles that no company has been able to manage before.

I've said it before but STADIA was it's own reaper, because the ground it walked on was solid enough in concept. A 'console' that really just connects to a top-of-the-line mega console that really runs the games is pretty much the only way that the console generation could ever reach the heights of PC- and that's evident in the way that Microsoft and Sony are both committing efforts to realising their own game streaming platforms. Honestly, the future of console gaming is probably going to be in the cloud, and when that happens it's going to be a total shift in fortunes as the market of computer upgrade parts will be the limiter of software development. Console gamers will surpass anything the PC market can feasibly reach- and the elitism will switch like a light switch because everyone has to be looking down on someone. Bliss.

Are the handheld wars starting up again?

 I hear the war horns already.

Just the other day my brother randomly asks me if I think Sony will ever get back into the handheld's game, whilst I was remarking on the fruitful life of the Playstation Portable. I had one of those back in the day, and in the absence of any other console that little piece of plastic was the absolute light of my life- the cornerstone of my busy little day. I couldn't imagine any extended break away from schoolwork without whipping out that badboy and getting lost in a compressed adventure and hardware so stressed I could hear the machine frantically whirling to keep up with me in the back of the little buddy. But in my hubris, I thought on those as days of the past and handwaved away the possibilities. "No" I said, literally 10 minutes before the next Playstation handheld was revealed on my feed apparently due to hit later this year. So much for all this 'industry watching' that I do...

Now we have the pearl white visage of the 'Q Lite' looming on the horizon, a codenamed, highly secretive, model for Sony's aspiring handheld efforts they've written up to jab back at the overbearing dominance of the Nintendo Switch for that market. The unfettered dominance that the Switch has enjoyed, hardly marred at all by the decidedly more niche Steam Deck, (thanks to the wildly different audience) seems all but geared for a competitor to light things on fire. For a time it felt as if the Handheld world was being slowly wrung dry with DS after 3DS after WII U- (Even though that last one wasn't technically a handheld... I think) but the Switch reminded everyone how useful it can be to have quality games in the palm of your hand, as long as the console can run them.

Coincidentally enough I was brought back to the first PlayStation handheld which found any mainstream success, the PSP, by a totally unrelated incident. I just finished Persona 4 Golden and though I had previously vowed to move onto Persona 5 after my over half a decade wait- I wanted that shining beacon on my horizon for a little while longer, so I impulsively brought Persona 3's Steam port instead. And what has been my reward thus far? A port of a PSP port that was once gutted down thanks to the limitations of the PSP hardware- jettisoning me back to the age when I was an avid PSP player who regularly endured lower-rent versions of popular games thanks to the weakness of the overheating piece of plastic in my lap. Which is to say, I'm a little miffed. 

PSP has a lot of quality of life features to turn the actual gameplay into something resembling a modern day RPG, but it sacrifices a heck of a lot to do so. All the animated 2D Cutscenes are gone, and all open world navigation is reduced to static screenshots and menus; it's all rather depressing. And it reminds me of the hilariously scaled back version of the Transformers console game we had, which felt like a budget mobile title instead of a licenced product. That, I think, was the PSPs rope around it's neck, which only grew tighter as the company fattened up on profits. The console sold like wildfire, but the ever improving standard of the industry made the PSP platform impossible to develop for before too long- cutting off the lifespan of the console before it could bloat to DS lengths.

Of course Sony had it's sequel ready to pick up, the surprisingly powerful PSVita which would have absolutely revived the handheld scene had it managed to see the same success as it's younger brother. Unfortunately, the higher specs ended up being a problem for development just as much as the restrictive specs were for the old console; which meant fewer games could be developed to support the Vita. Additionally, marketing dropped the ball resulting in a lower adoption rate than Sony had hoped for and paving the way for the console to go forgotten about by all but the most niche developers until support was killed for good once Sony did an inventory and remembered they were still paying for server support. (I'm sure they saved a whole 20 dollars a month by cutting that off- what big spenders they are!)

As you can imagine, that whole debacle left something of a bad taste in the mouths of handheld fans, and for pretty good reason. Those who bought the bullet with the Vita found themselves happy with a genuinely powerful console that was treated to high quality first party exclusives when it first dropped and was fresh. It also got Assassin's Creed Liberation, but we don't need to talk about that. These people were believers and zealots in the Vita project, and maintain to this day that Sony were never invested enough in the platform to guarantee it's success; so why would that same crop of people be suddenly won over by this new handheld prospect all of these long years later? Well, seeing the already lukewarm reaction to it- I'm guessing there is no reason and the gloves are off with a mistrustful public against an optimistic corp that promises 'this time will be the time'!

But let us not forget the fact that Sony already launched a new console- kind of- this year. The PSVR 2 headset launched almost entirely devoid of any sort of killer app to sell the thing, demanding a heavy price tag for an unnecessary piece of tag-on hardware. Of course, now the platform is out there, so to speak, and so now we just need to wait for an aspiring world changer to take advantage of that opportunity, but on the books the lower sales of the VR2 just doesn't look very good. Remember, corporate offices, and headline browsers for that matter, don't care about the quality of the figures, only the quantity. This crop of VR users have themselves something of a closed and relatively small community until the hype picks up (and the prices drop a little) so hopefully they can remain committed to the device long enough to see that dawn. 

Sometime, and the time may be fast approaching, Sony and Nintendo will meet on the battlefield of destiny, on the cusp of the darkest hour betwixt dusk and dawn, to wrestle once more for supremacy. Nintendo has the tenure, and the headstart in establishment- but already the Switch is threatening to become long-toothed and Nintendo are too scared to replace it for fear of shattering their good thing like they did with the Wii U. Sony, on the otherhand, will carry the best of the best in minature hardware, and I have a feeling they're going to want to hit the ground running with launch title blockbusters. So who will win; the staple or the upstart? Find out on the next episode of- Handheld Ball Budokai Z Remix Master-class Recooked-and-repasted Ultimate Edition 365 and a half Days!

Days Gone nuts

 Not again...

Art is tough. Painful, even. Some have compared the act of creating a piece of art to show to the rest of the world like cutting off a piece of your flesh and serving it up, whilst others consider it like killing your own child. If you're wondering why these comparisons and allusions are always so maudlin and fatalist, remember these are the musings of artists. As such, one can only imagine the pain of publishing a piece of work that doesn't receive the reverence of it's peers, in fact; a game that can seen as something of a black sheep among certain circles. It must sting. But such is the brunt of what artists bear, it's the risk with bearing yourself like that, and what you need to learn from such circumstances is how to learn and grow from criticism. What doesn't help, literally anyone, is going on a massive spree of blaming literally everyone else in the world but the product itself. It's the fans- no, it's the critics, no- it's the little green men who live in my head and call me rude names in their unspeakable language!

Believe it or not the director of Days Gone, Sony's lukewarm zombie survival game, has actually managed to make himself look a little silly with his ravings once before; although that time it was aimed at fans. If you remember, the director screamed about how fans who don't buy games on the first week, totally blind, at full price, without waiting for reviews or second opinions, are the poison to modern games. He argued that those who don't contribute to week one sales just are letting down the games companies and those who seek out sales before making their purchasing decisions are the reasons why games they like don't get sequels. Now to be fair to the man, he was working in the higher echelons of AAA where competition is extremely tough and every little last ounce of success you can squeeze out benefits your chances of remaining near the top. And at such a point, sure; I'd imagine your fans do start becoming nothing more than numbers on a spreadsheet.

That being said, blaming 'lazy fans' for Days Gone not being a smash hit, thus scuppering the chances of Sony ordering a sequel, is a bit reductive; isn't it? When I introduced 'Days Gone' as 'Lukewarm', that wasn't just a perception I pulled out of my head, that was the general consensus by critics and audiences. Which isn't to say there aren't people that really loved its style, of course there were; but no one seems to have been really blown away, by what Days Gone had to offer. Now that shouldn't have really been a problem but again; Sony are particularly demanding pay masters. They demand excellence and success at every turn and if you can't deliver that for them, they'll start trimming fat. And Days Gone was somewhat formulaic, it was rough around the edges, the loop started to drag around about the mid-point of the game, the narrative was fine and not particularly satisfying; it was a good zombie game, but it wasn't a Sony platinum.

And when you really address these common complaints and seek out the root cause of them, well at some point you're going to have to come back to the process of making the game. Now no one outside of the development studio can tell you what happened in there, if conceptual ideas weren't particularly strong or if technology just couldn't keep up with their grand ideas; all we have is the final, 7/10, product. A responsible and self-confident game director would likely own the difficulties and problems of such a scenario and not let that define them or their team. A great game director would take on all of those issues as areas from which to improve to ensure that the next project, however big or small it may be, is the slam dunk you wished that last one to be. What neither of those theoretical would do, however, is whine about how it's still everyone else's fault.

The reason why a director wouldn't do that, is because it fosters a kind of uncomfortable environment where those sorts of sentiments trickle down and take route, ultimately creating an unpleasant work space to be a part of. (I've been inside such a crappy unit myself once.) Point in case with another big member of the Days Gone team who recently went on a little Twitter rant about the unfair treatment of Days Gone in the review circuit; a title which even I will admit was overshadowed perhaps a bit more than it should have been; but it was a zombie game at a time when that genre was squeezed all but dry, so that might have something to do with it. This key development member responded to how the PC port scored better than the console version, subtly hinting that the better scores were due to bad code of the original being cleaned up. Passing the buck again, this time onto his former colleagues. (Very professional...)

He also went the truly humorous route of blaming the lack of 'household name' status for the game on reviewers who couldn't be bothered to play the game, or that were too 'woke' to take a 'badass biker who stares at his girlfriend's ass'! So if you're finished choking to death on the lethal levels of cringe in that sentence, let's dissect. Our man seems utterly oblivious to the fact that people could have played his game and found the gameplay loop to be repetitive and tedious; I can say for myself I've seen people play the thing and make that observation live with no contributing stimuli, but I guess in his head that's a false criticism conjured up by a coordinated class of reviewer who couldn't push themselves through a zombie survival game. If these same outlets managed to endure Watch Dogs Legion, I'll bet they had a blast rocking through Days Gone.

As for the 'wokeness' allegations; come on. Honestly, the take away that I found most had to the whole romance subplot was that it felt emotionally stoic and unmoving. People didn't really care about the girlfriend character or where she was, and seeing as how that was supposed to be the emotional backbone of the main character, players failed to get fully invested in the stakes of the plot. At least in 'Dead Space' the fate of Nicole was shrouded in intrigue and semi-cosmic mystery. But sure, I guess it makes him happy to think that everyone was just so utterly upset by how much of a 'manly man' mr generic protagonist was that they got their woke liberal agendas twisted up in the prissy 'my-little-kitty' panties; because that is what everything in life whittles down to, doesn't it? The imaginary clashing war of moralities that exists entirely within the heads of emotionally stunted weirdoes. Ah, to be an abject moron; what oblivious bliss that must be!

To his small credit, this developer did turn around in a later statement and declare that he didn't mean to throw his fellow programmers under the bus. He was merely highlighting that the Days Gone project was far above their weight class and the team did an admirable, if messy, job in meeting their ambitions; to which I would agree. Technologically; Days Gone's systems work fine. If only the ideas forming those systems were more interesting. Then he did what all tough Twitter folk do, and privated his account for the backlash he got on that public forum he entered. (If you can't take the criticism; why post it on Twitter?) Such is the quite surprising backlash from a decent Sony exclusive that I honestly thought would have done a mint, but which has unravelled more in the years since than it's spotty launch had done. Maybe let the art speak for itself next time, maybe that way your legacy would be a bit less muddy.