The Quidditch Game

 

If you cast your mind back just a little ways, it might surprise you to learn that the single best selling game of 2023 was actually Hogwarts Legacy- despite all the supposed discourse drummed up around the game, it seems that people just really want to live in the world of Harry Potter- despite what it's crackpot inventor has to say on really any matter. And why wouldn't they flock to that game? It had it all, from a real-to-fiction recreation of the grand Hogwarts castle that we've all dreamed about visiting, a really fun and simple combat system, (Which of course has since drawn smug side eye from the same crowd obsessed with equating 'simple' to 'bad'. Assassin's Creed 2 says hi.) and a somewhat endearing cast of characters, all of whom were overshadowed by Professor Garlick because of course.

But do you know what the game didn't have? Well, it seems the team just couldn't find the time to sit down and make a proper quidditch game to squeeze in there, which in hindsight is decently understandable considering literally everything else that the game covers. (It is humungous.) But still... not even a Quidditch DLC? Of the vast lore that makes up the Harry Potter universe not all of it is created equal. The makeup of the wizarding world verges on mathematically unsustainable at points, career options after school are laughably underexplored, the Ministry of Magic verge so widely across the franchise in their capability that they shift from utter footnotes to INGSOC-grade surveillance state. But through all of that- we just want to play Quidditch.

Made passingly interesting within the books in what felt like a passing attempt to be obfuscatingly quirky before giving up and devising an actual football-esque game with one giant drawback which arguably renders the entire sport pointless- (Enough shade has been thrown at the golden snitch summon a Babadook) only to be made into a visually arresting and memorable set piece of the films. Flying around on brooms always looks cool, doing it whilst following a vaguely coherent sport is exhilarating! Then there's the prospects of leagues and broom comparing and metagames. There is potential, is what I'm saying, in there being a real knock out Quidditch minigame to the scale of a 'Like A Dragon' addition! Shame they didn't go that direction, then.

Instead we're getting a standalone video game and that inherently gets my heckles up. Hogwarts Legacy did such a good job being a straight-up game utterly devoid of nickel and diming and all the other swarmy crap which certain companies, particularly Warner Bros, think they can sneak under us without anyone noticing. We all know they killed Suicide Squad kill the Justice League on the planning room floor by allowing it to be made as dollar signs shot through their eyes. Can't they just stop trying to rock the boat and make that Shadow of War sequel they teased? (I'm ranting.) I just know exactly what's coming in a standalone game of a competitive sport. We've been through decades of Sports games at this point, the 'prestige' is inevitable and awful.

First off I think it's worth saying that those who were jumped on the visual fidelity of Hogwarts Legacy will need to dial back those expectations quite a bit. The game looks as plastic and cartoon-stylised as a half decent mobile title- it far collapses before the standards that Legacy set. The trailer did not even do all that good of a job making the gameplay look... well... dynamic. Honestly the game looked about as 'on the rails' as the old Quidditch Minigames used to in the bad Harry Potter tie-in-games. They've even borrowed the 'fly through hoops' thing from the famously bad Superman game. I'll be honest- this doesn't appear to be what we were hopping for at first glance. But looks can be deceiving and first impressions are not everything.

First off this does appear to be a game receiving the honour of the sports game treatment- namely, a competitive Multiplayer, necessitating some form of dynamic gameplay, and a single player career mode! Now, one simply has to wonder what other stables of this genre they had adopted? I mean, this does take place within the 'Harry Potter attending Hogwarts' period of school, which means despite the fact we have customisable characters there have been shown to be series staple characters too. Will they be freely available? Is there some sort of 'Ultimate Team' system in the works, as there exists for Fifa? You might scoff at such an idea and call it ridiculous. "There's not enough characters in all of Harry Potter Lore to constitute such a mode. Let alone Quidditch players!" To which I would simply say- we got an XCOM mobile game with loot boxes- I wouldn't put it past Warner Bros., of all companies, to do something similar. 

The promise of what a Qudditch game could provide if everything is done well is truly immense. I mean, if I was being an absolute delusional crank with this I might theorise an entire 'My Journey' style campaign where players get to follow the whole journey of a player from being part of the School team to actually playing professionally at the Tri-Wizard Tournament or something. What a really cool way to provide some of that outside-of-school world building the J.K Weirdo absolutely refused to do during her tenure with the franchise! Give us a look at international wizarding communities, lets see what organised sports festivals look like for a secretive society- go outside the comfort zone of this franchise for once!

But at the end of the day what we're looking at is a 40$ fantasy sports game, so who knows what's going to wind up in the game. A complete package is rare for that price tag and I'll get that insider money people are already putting out feelers trying to gauge how much people are willing to pay for cosmetic microtransactions. Bet you they'll be a battle pass. Bet you they'll be a roadmap. Bet you that roadmap never makes it to term. Bet you that Warner Bros learned absolutely nothing from 'Suicide Squad Killed the franchise' and will make all the same mistakes over again. Meet back here in a few months when all that comes true? Sounds fair.

Multiversus is released?

 

Some time ago there was a new entrant to that rare space of the video game online sphere- the Smash Bros alikes- to use a reductive label- The Warner Bros. Multiversus. Piggybacking off the inevitable success of Space Jam 2, this was a game that smashed as many licences as the team could get their hands on together into a fighting game smorgasbord of personalities and sass. It was a simple idea on the face made impressive by the level of detail needed to make stock-based fighting games feel right. Game feel is so important with fighting games and I have to say, Multiversus gave Smash Bros a run for it's money some times! Although that may just be because I was playing Multiversus with an actual controller, whereas for Smash Bros I'm forced to use the godawful Switch nunchakus that are terrible. Either way, I had a lot of hope for the title.

I mean sure, there's something undeniably corporate-driven about a game that chucks Aria Stark, Lebron James and Velma onto the same screen in a desperate bid for cross promotion- but honestly the crossover multiverse ideal actually gelled a lot better in games than it did for the movie. It almost feels natural to want to sneak all these brands together in a casual party game setting, instead of cramming them into the running length of a supposed narrative to score 'Oh look!' points. And honestly, with all the quality of life features the game offered, it really did feel like the team were taking a serious leap at keeping the game as player friendly as possible. As long as corporate greed remains only in the casting- that effects me so very little I can't even consider it an entity.

And then the game went quiet. After a few updates and releases of new characters and bug fixes, Multiversus just stopped being updated and eventually the community started to drift away. Smash Bros. may be able to get away with months of silence but that was an established franchise with an entry fee that people are invested with- Multiversus still had to prove itself to keep players around and it was largely failing too. Thus the begrudging drying up of matches and eventually the game just sort of unceremoniously stopped being open to play. "Well, that's it." I thought. "Another font of potential drained in a mad spurt of throwing everything out up front and leaving nothing to drip feed over the coming months. A live service journey underestimated once again." And now I'm being told that I'm completely off base with that thought and the original Multiversus was a beta?

Yeah, that wasn't the release of the game at all but a very early access version of the game, presumably to gauge interest, which was why no real updates schedule was committed to? Did anyone know that going into the supposed 'Beta'? Weren't they actually accepting store purchases during that Beta? (I can't quite recall but I vaguely recall a store.) And the game had absolutely no set boundaries of a beta-play period... I'm starting to think the team is lying to save face and this is actually a total relaunch. Afterall, the original game was pretty feature complete on a basic level, it was just lacking in content to use all those features on. This extended year of silence has flown by with barely any anticipation besides some odd rumours of a Multiversus 2 being on the horizon, because that's how it was always discussed online. Mighty suspicious if you ask me...

But strike my misgivings from the record and rejoice- Multiversus is here and done! Or so it would seem at first glance. Now we have a full release of the game with many more characters to toy around with, one of which being a Mark Hamill voiced Joker because this game has been on the back burner for so long that some of these characters were voiced back when Kevin Conroy was still alive! (Which is sad, but a nice reminder of the legacy of a legend- I suppose.) God knows why some of these characters were chosen, however. Banana Guard from Adventure Time? (My Beloved?) Gizmo from Gremlins? The most hench looking Jason I've ever seen in my life? Oh, and the kept Reindog. Of course. (Also, I am astounded that their Velma still doesn't have a Mindy Kaling variant skin- what's the matter, HBO? I thought you stood behind the series!)

Oh, what's that? Multiversus drama? The game is apparently less feature complete after all this time than when it released as a beta? There's that cooperate meddling I was expecting! You sure kept me waiting! Yes, there are quite the grumblings from folks online who claim that several steps were taken backwards in making Multiversus pop, perhaps because the 'beta' was so well received that the team released they didn't need to sacrifice so much in order to generate goodwill with their fans anymore. For example- why allow players to play offline when that doesn't directly assist their active player numbers? No more offline play! Why let players try out any not-unlocked character in training and run the risk of them not liking how a character plays and not grinding for/ outright buying them? No more free training trails! And now there are no end of match stats and leader boards because... actually that one makes no sense to me, is that just an oversight?

What strikes me is the way that Mutliversus, like many other modern online games, seems to have pitted itself so directly against solo play in the most perplexing way. As though stopping players who don't hop on with a large group of friends is the same as driving away an undesirable element from your neighbourhood. The entire competitive multiplayer genre is undertaking vast cultural gentrification and I can't stand it! No offline play, no player versus AI, no trial characters, no co-op - they've even taken away Battlepass progression through basic matches in order to force you to play their challenges so they direct the way you play- including one particularly insidious challenge that asks you to go into combat with someone else which, lacking co-op, means you have to convince someone else to install Multiversus to play at the same time as you. Crafty.

It is perplexing that Multiversus has taken such an aggressive stance with their playerbase, (and ironic for a developer called 'Player First Games') and a testament to the confidence of Warner Bros. that they think such a stance will pan out for them in the long run. To be fair, the game launched exceedingly strongly, hitting just over a hundred thousand at drop and regularly seeing 10's of thousands as the day's wax and wane. We'll see how many stick around as the problems start to compound and Multiversus agonisingly relearns the lessons that every other game in these genre's have already learnt on their behalf. Such as not lacking Battlepass progression to challenges, not blocking offline play- you know, the absolute bare basics! I hope they get it together before people just leave for the second time. 

SSKTJL Won't give up

 

You know by now what a sick, morbid, puppy I am. Drawn to the swirling void of the decaying like a vulture circling it's crinkled cadavers roasting to a fine boil in the midday sun. I'm a scavenger bird, ravenous and opportunistic, pouncing on weakness and gorging myself on it's last struggling gasps gurgled betwixt the plunge of my razor beak. Sure, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice league is a dead thing, we've all pronounced it and are happy to see the thing go- (except for Paul Tassi, the Live Service fiend who subjects himself to this torment like a true sadist)- but my god will I savour in the struggle! And with evert failure turn back around on an industry so eager to hop into this same wide-open grave with the vindication of practicality- mama-bird didn't rear no chump!

The latest news is... less than ideal. Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League managed to scare off those that stuck around the rough launch with- lo and behold- an even rougher first season that managed to get everyone at their lowest and ensure them that there was nothing more in the team's bag of tricks. The Stronghold missions that were dangling over people's heads turned out to be more endlessly recycled content, all of the Joker's narrative scenes were shown off in the trailers because there was that little to him as a character. Brainiac still hasn't figured out that if he really wants to kill the Justice League he should try, I dunno, using any strategy that the team haven't already been documented as being able to defeat?

Making any Live Service works requires that it's services actually be partaken in my a regular stream of players who are willing to engage with the the various skins and paid MTX that are released throughout it's lifetime. It's the reason why most Live Services are developed specifically to ward away large crowds a few weeks after launch, because the smaller group they maintain are the dedicated who can be squeezed for all their worth without kicking up a fuss everytime they drop something extortionately overpriced onto the storefront. See the big review bomb landing on the Tekken 8 thanks to it's post-release dropping of an MTX store? That's something that Live Services manage to avoid by keeping such a tight knit team of players. (Why do you think you never hear about Fallout 76's badly priced MTX? It ain't because they stopped, I can tell you that much!)

But the kind of numbers that SSKTJL is seeing, at least on PC through Steam tracker, look too low even to sustain that. Hanging between the sub-thousands is not really where any aspiring service game should be planted, and although we know their numbers are better on Console- the general consensus is that the game dropped the ball. Of course, this is a spiralling downfall because if the game cannot generate a sufficient enough revenue then the team cannot justify funding significant enough revenue to transform their lacklustre snooze-fest into a game worth generating an audience, thus the game sinks lower and lower into the metrics until it gets swallowed under the wave of better, less pricey, games. Although what if I told you that the stubborn lunatics over at Rocksteady are thinking of riding this one far past it's prime?

According to unconfirmed reports from the kind of folk who are digging through source code in order to drum up reveals of upcoming character additions- there is apparently enough evidence to indicate that Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League contains the framework to release 5 whole seasons of content before the abject failure of the product catches up with them and Rocksteady are forced to shut the thing down. That's just over a year of 'support' wherein we can morbidly watch how they keep the game updated with no money coming in and a skeleton crew of player keeping cobwebs out of the servers. Which makes it actually a heck of a lot more ambitious then I ever suspected the team of managing. Who could have forseen Suicide Squad escaping 2024?

Now we've already seen some silhouettes of the first year of content, and seeing how little effort went into bringing the first season to fruition, it's probably save to assume that Mrs Freeze up to Deadshot have already been developed to some degree internally. We've already seen that their lines have already been recorded. (For what little that's worth. Joker currently has the least amount of lines of any member of the team by a country mile. Seems the DLC content is just kind of plopped into the mix instead of thoughtfully integrated.) I suspect that the maintenance team, whom I'm going to be courteous to the core Rocksteady and assume already have control over the game, which is why season 1 was so pathetic, only really have to keep the servers running and perhaps polish off a few last minute bugs before throwing these last members into the game. Actual new development probably won't be covered in the 5 seasons.

Of course, we already know that this live service narrative is all going to be about course correction as we revive the Justice League and restore the world yadda yadda- (Will that include Wonder Woman? She was killed pretty much outright, without being a Brainiac pawn.) but will it fix the inherent disconnect between the Arkham universe of games and this totally bizarro iteration pretending to be it's successor? You know, this world where the secretive Batman who killed himself publicly as soon as his identity was revealed would just join a public facing Justice League and jauntily recall his adventures for the Justice Hall museum? A world where the writers seem to have gotten their psychotic and Joker-loving Harley mixed up with the modern iteration from the Harley Quinn Show- lacking any connective tissue bringing that character from one end to the other? How about the Deadshot thing? There really is no patching this leaky ship, is there?

But 'Suicide Squad Kills Rocksteady's Reputation' appears to not be giving up and that is morbidly commendable at the very least. There at least won't be a total abandonment of the hot mess like was originally most likely- they'll try to clear their name and at least won't leave an empty unfinished story in this game's place. Of course, we'll save the back pats for whether or not the team go out of their way to patch in an 'offline mode' so that the game doesn't become a glorified drinks coaster once support stops. Only after that can we have our drinks, pop those pills and forget this game ever existed as, ideally, Rocksteady get back to making knock-out single player masterpieces again. Pretty please? 

Suicide Squad's one chance

 

So I think it's safe to say that Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League hasn't exactly had the smoothest of possible launches ever. In fact, some might even go so far as to call the game's release something of a tragedy that betrayed everything fans were looking for out of Rocksteady, innovators of third person action combat, which a generic and uninspired looter-shooter that ignored the strengths of the team and the IP they had been given. Sure, there have been some people who gravitated towards Suicide Squad despite it's lack of originality, I presume it's hard to shoot for creativity when you are a fan of a genre distinguished by everyone trying to copy each other as much as possible- but for the large part Suicide Squad has slipped past it's place in pop culture far too quickly for the anticipation everyone had placed on the game. Or the investment that went in to bringing it to life.

For most the game was dead on arrival, portraying not an ounce of potential that could be worked on later to make the game that people longed for. (Were people longing for a Suicide Squad game? I certainly wasn't.) But as it's always been said when it comes to Live Services- 'You need to wait until the content starts dropping'! Personally I always think this to be a redundant argument, as if the game cannot drop in a satisfying state why would we expect the following updates to suddenly raise the bar to a worthwhile degree? There's no way the team are going to magic up a masterpiece from their basement- now are they? But be that as it may; the rest of the world were willing to chalk the coming season up as Suicide Squad's last chance to impress. And I sighed knowing the cycle- the first content drop would be marginally interesting, people would thus attach themselves to the release cycle eager for a total one eighty that would never come because the team is slowly shrinking as Rocksteady reclaim their talent to work on the next proper game, and disappointment ensues over the course of the next years.

Maybe Rocksteady saw that writing on the wall too, because rather than follow that tried and true method of disgrace- they speedran directly to the destination and decided to just push Season 1 out the door as a tried and true disaster. I gawked in genuine disbelief when I learned the absolute state of Joker's debut into the Suicide Squad, not just for it's laziness but for the inability for literally anyone with their head on straight to speak to it's defence. Not even Paul Tassi, defender of Live Services the world over, could swallow his convictions long enough to give Suicide Squad the benefit of the doubt after season 1. Not even the most staunch Youtube defence squad for the game could stomach the embarrassment. Rocksteady told every well and truly, they did not give a crap about supporting this game.

Firstly, Season 1 obviously told the story of beating the next Brainiac- although 'story' might be a strong turn of phrase. Turns out that Rocksteady grew out of love with presenting the 'story' of Suicide Squad and preferred to have the next arc of their story told entirely through repetitive side content culminating in another recycled boss fight from the main game. Essentially the team developed nothing new at all for the gameplay. No new enemies, no new bosses, nothing. All we had was the new Joker to play around with, because of course this franchise couldn't go more than 2 months without caving and going for the most obvious Suicide Squad member addition first. (Good luck getting people excited for the future when you blew your load out the gate.) But that was not the end of any troubles. 

The fact that Mark Hamill retired his Joker just as Kevin Conroy died means that we have to deal with a new interpretation of the Joker from an actor who took an... less than iconic direction with him. The Joker is a very difficult character to play, many have tried and many have flopped trying to mix and match here and there- the actor here unfortunately ended up in the list of failures. Particularly given that technically, even though this is a multiversal variant, this Joker ended up in the Arkham verse- which basically means the Joker can be compared directly to this- Jonkler. Of course, his writing also leaves much to be desired- the team had a whole one cutscene to flesh out this character and decided to go with 'unpredictable' which is the lowest form of character writing. They didn't even let him chat with Harley Quinn. It's shameful.

Of course, that one cutscene is only rewarded for those that grind up to level 35 'Fear' on all characters in order to unlock the Brainiac fight- in a levelling pool that was designed specially for this season. That proceeding 9 hour grind, of recycled content from the main game, before a boss fight, which is recycled from the main game, in order to unlock a character who, let's be honest, was probably developed along with the core game and gated off surreptitiously. Essentially making it so that by the time you've unlocked the Jonkler, you've run out of content to use him on because you've bored yourself silly playing the same crap for the past 10 hours. Oh, unless you fork up an additional 10 dollars to unlock him off the bat, because yes- they offer a 'time saver' pack on top of their $70 game. The absolute sweethearts. I remember feeling confused leading up to launch how the team would handle reshooting all the scenes for the game with drop-in replacement Squad members added every 100 days. Now I know- I was a fool to expert that in the first place! These idiots will be lucky to get screentime let alone be integrated into the core story paths! When you have to go to these extremes to pad out what little content there is, no one is going above and beyond to remake a bunch of cutscenes no one is watching.

Beyond that the team threw in some extra skins, a few new weapon series' based on even more DC heroes and villains- one that actually has a gun this time! And that is... it? It almost makes you shiver to think this is a release from Rocksteady games, like you're feeling the veil of the Rocksteady that was passing over the grave of the Rocksteady that is. When all the cards were on the table and all eyes were on them, Rocksteady made a legitimate shot for the weakest Live Service support effort ever put out across the Industry. I'm wracking my mind here- I really am- but I can't think of anyone who achieved so pathetically little! Diablo 4 at least did the bare minimum to be considered acceptable in it's first season, Fallout 76 took a while but they dropped focused content packets in various areas of the game- Suicide Squad took no time off to wipe themselves off from the debris of the crash that was this game's launch, and scared off all survivor with this mistake. What are they doing?

Truly, I knew that the writing was on the wall and Rocksteady's heart wasn't in it when they made this game- that much is obvious. In fact, I hear rumours that it was actually a different studio's project to begin with, but they ended up being shut down or something and it was passed on to Rocksteady. (Which makes all their marketing fluff about this being their 'dream game' and 'vision' sound like bunk, if it's true.) I think now we've seen the bubble burst. When Suicide Squad just gives up with an update like this, there really is no going back. I thought Helldivers might revive the subgenre, but they've honestly just revealed how much effort is needed to make something like this work- and most studio producers out there don't have what it take to support a game like the Helldivers team do. Let Suicide Squad die.

Zaslav and Games

 

There are only a couple of reasons why a CEO would become a name well known across the user base of his companies, and both are reasons of great concern for any shareholder that has interest in their investments actually going somewhere. Either that CEO had done something so egregious to warrant the mainstream media to drag their name publicly through the mud before a ousting can be done, or our man is responsible for so many bad decisions that their name becomes shorthand for screwing up. Zaslav is currently going through the latter arc right now, popping up as the fault behind many strange direction choices for the Warner Bros. conglomerate that one has to genuinely wonder whether or not the man isn't a corporate spy sent specifically to ruin the future prospects of Warner Bros from the inside before he can be caught out and canned. Hell, I believe the conspiracy on this one!

David Zaslav is probably best know in the world of movies currently, for the way that under his rule Warner Bros has become a graveyard for creative projects to such an extent that future distributor searchers are backlisting the company. Which, naturally, is a pretty bad state of affairs for the longterm growth of a company built around the entertainment industry! But how else do you expect people to react to the fact that Warner Bros. has allowed the development of two movies to reach fruition only to cancel them before distribution for what we only assume are tax purposes. The Batgirl movie was originally said to be 'too bad to be seen', but I think it's pretty clear that was merely an excuse to get away with it since 'Coyote Vs Acme' met with the same fate- and that one was a critical darling around the preview circuit- and yet it died all the same.

What lesson does this teach us? That properties aren't safe under the provision of Zaslav and his squad of goons who will happily quash creative works for the slightest smidge of profit. And sure, that's not exactly a rare trait in the corporate world, but boy does Zazzy apply a certain aplomp to his work that truly cannot be rivalled. It takes a special kind of delusional to be the leader of an entertainment company brand and think you can actively make hostile moves towards every creative alive without any substantive backlash upon your bottom line. But it takes a truly brave and powerful man to admit when they're wrong and go back on their stance, and Zaslav strikes me as a bit more of a cowardly cretin- what do you think? Certainly no 'industry hero'.

But where does the Warner Bros. conglomerate intersect with games, I hear you plea! Well, wouldn't you know that for a good many years one of the largely forgotten about side-projects of the Warner Bros. world was their video game development department whom they simply funnelled money towards and allowed to do their thing. That largely hands-off direction from management allowed for the collation of a quite talented team who put together and helped publish genuine powerhouses of the gaming world. The Arkham games, The Shadow Of Mordor titles- heck, they even helped publish Hitman 2! Real, genuine games! And because this side of Warner Bros. made a tidy profit, it never aroused the attention of the higher-ups and thus was permitted to continue prioritising their good work. That all changed last year.

Not because some great downturn ruined the studio and has the gaming division put up on the chopping block, mind you! We're not in the 'Disney' era wherein the company are too desperately afraid of over-investing in another industry that will soon grow sick of them and thus they refuse to get involved outside of licensing management. We're currently in the 'post Hogwarts Legacy' world- wherein a Warner Bros. video game became such a phenom that it was the best selling game of last year, despite not getting a nomination for a single award. That is the kind of activity that will catch the eyes of management, and that has been the catalyst sparking little Zaslav's descent into video game industry infamy- a whole new frontier of distaste!

Because yes, not even one year after the release of Hogwarts Legacy, a single player slamdunk that flew across the world accruing a stupid amount of traction and player numbers- Zaslav has decided he wants to start leaning into the video game world a bit more whilst learning none of the lessons taught to him. Single player game made money? Of course that means there should be a hard push for Live Services! Yes, this idiot decided to make himself an 'expert in the field' and missed out just about every single bit of usable momentum that the Portkey Games team handed his way. At very least he knows to take better advantage of the properties under his belt which means we may finally get a Game of Thrones game- only several years after the series has lost the majority of it's popularity- not a moment too soon!

Of course, any intelligent mind taking a look at the trend of the industry would know it absolutely insane to start getting into Live Services now. Those who are currently locked in on the train typically started the journey years ago when this was looking like the future of the industry, but following a plethora of high budget disasters, one of which is playing out under the Warner Bros. brand right now- conventional knowledge would be to think a bit harder about this direction. But Zaslav isn't the kind of mind of runs on conventional knowledge. Zaslav has the kind of thought process that runs parallel to the Du Pont approach, threatening total self harm to himself and everyone around him if he can't magically manifest the ends that he wants.

You may think I talk a lot about Live Services on this blog, particularly lately, and the fact is that I do- but it's only in response to the absolute torrent of new Live Service adjacent ideas that are raised like battle standards every other week despite overwhelming evidence that is a battle already fought and lost. When companies come to their investors with their tails between their legs complaining about the rising costs of development, they often leave out the fact they wasted several tens of millions chasing pipe-dream Live Service games in an oversaturated market that isn't even currently healthy for most of the already established entries. These people are gambling away their money on frivolous crap and then passing those costs onto the consumer- I just need to make sure everyone is aware of the grift that makes up this industry nowadays. Because it's only going to scale ever worse.

Desperation thy name is Suicide Squad

 Feel like that title is one word away from spreading an entirely different message

I must admit that even though I personally held no faith in Suicide League Gank the Justice Squad- I did think myself pretty firmly in the minority in this matter. I mean sure, the circles through which I travel, the people with whom I speak and share fandom with, they all agree that an online Live Service Suicide Squad game from the Arkham team that maintains very little of what made the original games work in favour of soulless trend chasing is a bit of an L for a once legendary development team. But that is kind of the nature of circles and cliques, right? They have something of the same opinion to one another. Outside of what I know, I remember hearing that Destiny 2 was beloved for a very long time. (I have trouble backing up whether that is a worthy adoration given that fact that Destiny 2 has some of the worst early game roadblocks of any online game I've ever played.)

Live Services are somewhat popular in the mysterious cadre of online games. That bizarre species of people who like to play through the same rough game day in and day out, competitively grinding their heads in the same matches chasing the same awards and dedicating large chunks of their freetime to keeping up with the weekly updates of a video game- which to me sounds like a hellish proposal, but what do I know- right? Of all the Ubisoft games that I regularly mock ruthlessly, the only one I can't touch because I simply know nothing about it, is The Division- which seems to maintain a pretty favourable relationship with it's runners. There is an audience, is what I'm trying to establish. So I thought my own feelings about the trash that was Suicide Squad would have some sort of push back.

Recently the Warner Team tried their luck at throwing together a working marketing campaign given their overall failure to make the game any sort of clear for those that actually wanted to get a read on the thing. I mean, being unable to tell whether or not the game is even an open world game is something of a red flag for any marketing department, almost as much as the constant clowning that every reveal event has had where people rag on the repetitive look of the enemy design, the barren open world, the identical looking playstyles and just the general lack of a worthwhile excuse for this game existing in the state that it does above and beyond- "That's the easiest way to monetise it all." Which, let's be honest, is probably the culprit behind everything at the end of the day. No need to get the Scooby gang in on it, we've wrapped this one up and unmasked the perp all by ourselves.

It was with some confidence, then, that Warner Bros. reached out to a bevy of popular video game journalist publications to get a review event underway. It would have to be a confident move given that the scared usually NDA impressions until the day of release. But perhaps a little healthy fear might have done this team some good because: 'uh oh!' First impressions aren't good! In fact- they're really bad! (By the standards of a VG publication) As it transpired the event was beset by networking issues that limited what would have been something of a full gaming day down to a couple of hours, and judging from the feedback received- this hear is not the kind of game that wins you over in a couple of hours. In fact, many of the impressions seem to echo all the surface level vibes that the gameplay trailers were giving us all.

Outlets found the game to be generic, uninspired, repetitive- every epithet under the sun. In fact, the only consistently positive point of note was the cutscenes. People seem to think that the tiny snippets of narrative they received would pertain to an entertaining narrative, but I have to question that in the long run. Afterall, we know the team are planning to throw in new DLC characters to sell to us, so presumably all of these character moments are just puppet work performed with easy swap-in-swap-out characters, essentially resulting in an impossibility of setting up meaningful character stakes or interactions because you need to be able to swap out Deadshot for Deathstroke at a moments notice in the script. There's only so far you can go to make a script like that carry any sort of weight, and I'm not sure that this game is going to be the one to crack the code.

Honestly, I haven't seen previews this scathing since I myself was involved in the early Beta for 'Homefront: The Revolution'; although that game was much more of a trainwreck than Suicide Squad could ever possibly be. And I can just bet that WB marketers were seeing the same impressions we were and just freaking out. They were tearing out their hair, crying and shaking, and then they made a drastic decision. A distraction measure. They suddenly released the NDA for the game's beta back in November in the hope that the impressions of the general public would be softer on the ears than what the stubborn and grumpy critics were dishing out. And to their absolute marketing credit, they were right! For the most part.

The average joe-schmo who specifically signed up in order to get the chance of being in specific beta tests was of course going to have a higher tolerance for mediocrity than the seasoned game critics who were dragged along to a scuffed event. Plus, said-joes even got to spend an extended amount of time with the game in it's early hours, giving them a chance to feel out the game and it's style. Which is probably why we have people that were very excited about their time with the game, praising the punchy shooting and flashy bursts of effects, eager to get just a little bit more of the game in their hands. But then there were those with cautious optimism that found the whole experience deeply unengaging. It seems that we've got another Marvel's Avengers on our hands, where those that want to love it find it easy, and every else just rolls their eyes and tries to deal with it.

On average, it seems that critical perception has finally shifted against the Live Service model of business in it's very spirit, and the general public might be someway along the path of doing exactly the same. You'd have thought companies would have learnt from the failures of their contemporaries where this path leads, but just like an old wrinkly fish trying to cross the street, it's time we load up our fists and teach this lesson again. Rocksteady should have known better. WB should have known better. And rather than double down in headscratching interviews telling everyone not to hold their breath for the next Arkham because, quote: "We really do kill the Justice League in this game!"- maybe it's about time the team start cooking up some elaborate 'Elseworlds' narrative excuse to get out of the franchise assassination which is happening here.

Suicide Squad go missing with the Justice league

 "Reports finger a likely culprit in the salaciously, scandalous, scruple-less shrew: Spider-Man!"

-Thanks for that correspondence from insider and fellow Journalist- J.J. Jameson.

Hogwarts Legacy Review

Just because you can exterminate darkness, that doesn't mean that you should.

I am a millennial. That is my charge and my punishment. And being that most cursed of generations, just below or above Gen Z depending on who's doing the judging, it is pretty much a given that I have sat down and consumed the conglomerate mega-titan that is Harry Potter within my lifetime. Either by reading the books or watching the movies, everyone of my age bracket found themselves hopelessly bewitched by the tales of J.K. Rowling to such a degree that I know for a fact many of my contemporaries (and myself) found themselves severely upset when they reached the age of 11 and their Owl did not arrive. I was a reader, consuming the entire book series through at least twice, but I was enough of a Potter addict to watch most of the movies as well. (Still haven't seen Deathly Hallows Part 2) As well as play all of the move tie-in games that I could get my grubby little mitts on, of course.

But even with all the might of the media conglomerate machine that was the Harry Potter empire in it's prime, there was always this ever present longing wrought in my flesh wanting to be closer to the world of Potter. To climb into the pages of the book and live the world of attending 'Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry'. As with any good fiction, those urges transcended the realm of imagination and clung like a fever throughout the years. Games are typically the medium to feed and relieve such stresses- but Harry Potter games did have an unfortunate tendency to be... move tie-ins. To be fair, the Potter games were better than your typical tie-in trash that other movie franchises subjected the industry to- but I wouldn't call any one Harry Potter video game itself exceptional. The first two are classics, no doubt; but more for the nostalgic connotations than the strengths of their fibre.

When Hogwarts Legacy was announced, first as a rumoured MMO than later as a single player RPG, all the words seemed to fit perfectly into place to describe the sort of game every Potter fan wanted, even if they didn't realise it. Free open world exploration of Hogwarts? Putting my own character in the game and experiencing the process of learning magic? Progressing along several lines of deep RPG levelling systems to create a wizard or witch unique to us? Why, that's something the Harry Potter games, by definition as adaptations, could never have offered us! To say that expectations surrounding the delivery of this game were high seems like a gross underestimation- perhaps it would be more apt to label them Everest-ian. As in- only the absolute best of the best could so much as dream of reaching the peaks necessary to pay off the promise of that pitch.

And yet for whatever twisted reason it would appear that I had faith in the team at Avalanche Software from the word go. That's the only way I can explain why I decided to pre-order the game from the moment I saw it hit store fronts, an action I never do unless I'm sure of the quality of the product. With Hogwarts Legacy however, I was disquiet. I wanted to believe in the hype train the community was riding, but at the same time I kept hearing disappointing blows to the image of the 'full immersion Hogwarts experience' that I dreamed of. It would only be focusing on a Fifth Year instead of running the gambit from First to Seventh, there would be no playable Quidditch, lessons would be events rather than obligations, there would be no house points system, and for perhaps the first time in the entire franchise- chocolate frogs wouldn't be collectibles! (The horror!) When the date finally arrived, I'll admit I did my best to temper my excitements with the realities fed to us.

Today not only is the game out, but I have played it from start to finish- completing enough of the game to have experienced every activity the game offers and actually coming a few shy hairs of 100%-ing the whole thing: which I don't typically do. With that level of experience I can properly introduce Hogwarts Legacy as an open world game mechanically in the same vain as those checklist Ubisoft open worlds that have become the bane of the industry, and yet this specimen comes doused with some curious splashes of personality to such a degree that the material is elevated above it's station. Until I reached the literal final few hours of play I never felt the chore aspect of being waylaid from a mission objective in order to solve a Merlin Puzzle, or hunt after a Field Guide Page that I heard tinkle on the edge of my Revelio cast; I enjoyed the chase, even more so than the rewards. 

I think the key to why exploration works is a key point to focus on when it comes to Hogwarts Legacy, because when I strip the package away to it's core most USP: (Unique Selling Point) I land on the prospect of exploring one of the most legendary fictitious locations in cinema and modern literature. That alone cannot really be understated because, obvious though it might seem to say, before this game Hogwarts never really existed. I mean of course it existed within our minds, built from the power of wordcraft and the magic of movie sets, but between neither of them was a coherent and cohesive layout of a place ever established. It almost seems adversarial to the castle itself to try and limit it's dimensions to any sort of comprehensive degree. Almost as though if I could rationalise the place, it's many halls, indecisive staircases and endless dozens of secrets, the magic of imagination that bought the place to life would fade from the stones. Like the anti-Tinkerbell, believing in the place felt like it would be the death of it. Overcoming that feeling took a very special ingredient which I think this game packs in droves: personality.

Creating a vast fictional Scottish castle sitting atop a lake is one thing, but imbuing the layout, colours, residents and furniture with the personality of Hogwarts would take nothing less than a team possessed by the demanding demon of exacting detail. It would take the mechanical excellence to visualise the work of the movie and slot it together in a way that made sense and was intuitive to play through. The bravery not to scale down on the task, but to commit to cramming the castle's every nook and cranny somewhere into the explorable game world. And of course the creativity and initiative to design a plethora of random encounters between rabble-rousing students, duelling attic ghosts, one banister-sliding poltergeist and a now-famous pair of sentient suits of armour- in order to breathe a degree of life into those halls.

I can happily report that the achievement of Hogwarts alone is every bit the wonder I hoped it to be, and that when I bought the game expecting the worst I had convinced myself the price of admission would be worth it for the virtual tour of Hogwarts alone and I still stand true to that assessment. I understand it's another symptom of irrational nostalgia to get all fuzzy-hearted when walking out into that courtyard where Professor Umbridge would one day aggressively eject Trelawney from the castle, just before walking out across that famous crooked bridge atop which Ron would one day turn around and say "Who are you and what did you do to Hermione Granger?" I have these memories close to that pale diseased throbbing thing I keep locked behind my lungs, and their warmth responds to seeing these locations faithfully brought to digital life with a fluttering whimsy probably unique to others like myself. I understand if that doesn't quite translate to the older generation who approach this game, nor the newer, but I can recognise that twinkle in the eye of another around my age who spots that one special moment they remember so well because in that moment they, like me, get it.

Of course, for whatever reason this digital tour game had an RPG attached to the package, so I might as well get around to reviewing that as well, eh? Right away the first thing the game places in front of the player... is actually the accessibility options screen. (They just shove those options right in your noggin, it's quite the jumpscare.) But after that we get to character creation and as far as finally realising my dream of being my own Wizard in the Harry Potter mythos- the customizer if fine. Nothing great, but better than Destiny. The character models themselves all look exceptionally high quality, which is good considering the player character's mug is slapped centre screen for the majority of the run time, but I was very surprised about the apparent lack of body size options. (My dreams of roleplaying as Gandalf Cartman have been shattered!)

However as far as 'Role Playing' goes, character customisation- which extends to wand choice, picking your house and later playing fashionista, seems to be the extent to which the developers wanted to explore that genre. (Outside of the levelling tree.) If you're hoping to mould the personality of your unique Witch or Wizard through branches of meaningful choices that have rippling consequences throughout the runtime- you're going to be caught very dry. What few choices the game provides are largely inconsequential or simply just mission reward extortion choices that also don't appear to have any consequences. Nearer the end you do get a few choices, some that actually would have an impact if this game had any sort of epilogue showing them off, but I suppose that empty space is being left open for the sequel that Warner Bros. seems very enthused to embark on already.

From the outset of the narrative you are introduced as a late-inductee fifth year to Hogwarts, and just like your character the game very much expects you to catch up to the pace of the plot without much prior explaining. You would have thought that the writers would use the excuse of a new kid haphazardly thrust into the world of Wizards and Witches to deftly introduce them, and the players, to the state of the wizarding world in the 1800's. (A setting totally alien to all Potter fans before this game) But instead we get a rather hasty "Follow me and figure it out" style introduction. It was about five hours into the game before I accepted a side quest in which a goblin character was kind enough to lay out who this villainous Ranrok even was and his whole deal. Which seems a bit like a misstep for the storytellers. Shouldn't I know the most basic details of the main villain- what is this, Dark Souls? (These references are getting out of hand. I'm going to have to get a 'Miyazaki' jar in my room if this keeps up.) 

Exploring the world and trying to piece together the basic lore are only two pillars of the Hogwarts Legacy package: Combat is the third. Hogwarts Legacy uses a vaguely Arkham inspired system of attack and response with basic casting, blocking and rolling: It's a deceptively simple set-up that can quickly spiral into chaos when surrounded by 15 goblins all chucking arrows and slashing for your throat! Where the systems blossom out a bit is with the specific named spells that you can learn throughout the game by attending school quests and completing cleverly designed 'school assignments' that nudge the player to try out newly introduced systems in combat or open world exploration tasks. These spells are pretty much the lifeblood pumping through the combat system which makes fighting an army of wizards feel so alive and dynamic.

Spells are freely mapped to a four-piece quick select (with further quick select options unlocked in the RPG tree) and operate on a cool-down timer; to compensate, these spells all have thematically appropriate unique effects on opponents in battle. Accio summons enemies to float helplessly before you, Depulso does the exact opposite- sending those same enemies flying, Arresto Momentum pauses them in a brief stasis, Diffindo shoots violent slices through the air; all these spells operate in a unique fashion. Now at first the only purpose of these spells is really to break through specific magical 'Protego' variants on enemies, which are handily colour coded with the 'category' of spell needed to shatter them. But as you become more powerful and unlock more talents some of these spells become specifically useful to certain situations requiring an almost intrinsic knowledge of which spell is mapped to which slot in which set of quick spells.

For example, Descendo is used to pick up enemies and slam them roughly into the ground, however you can also use it on a giant spider at the moment it rears up its head for an unblockable attack in order to take advantage of it's momentum and bury it's head in the ground, rendering it completely stunned for a flurry of free hits. The giant toads can be caught in the middle of their jabbing tongue attack with a quickly timed 'Levioso' which suspends them by that appendage, and if you follow that up with a cruelly timed Diffindo you'll slice right through that suspended tongue pretty much instantly killing them. These dynamic combat opportunities don't readily present themselves with handy button prompts or scripted action sequences, but are rather encouraged with dynamically spawning combat challenges and left up for the player to discover and exploit; conferring a sense of real intuitive ingenuity when you pull them off.

Of course, like all games with a combat style of it's ilk, Hogwarts Legacy does feature it's own 'press to do cool thing' meter; and this time around it's called the 'Ancient Magic' skill. Ancient Magic is essentially a finisher move built up by securing a combo in the tens and then collecting the glowing particles that shoot out of the enemy as a result. (which is a little bit of a clunky way to fill a special meter in my opinion, I shouldn't have to break my combat flow to work up towards a finisher.) The reward is a flashy and exciting burst of 'Ancient Magic' which can do anything from summon a bolt of lightning on the enemies heads to permanently polymorphing them into poultry, to just straight blasting them off into the middle distance. All mostly horrifically lethal ways for a school child to handle their battles, but as long as there's no blood (and there isn't) we can just brush by the brutality of it all. (Although some of the post combat flavour text does imply that we are knowing and happily killing these goblins and dark wizards. There's no Yakuza-level "As long as I don't acknowledge they're definitely dead, then maybe they're not!" No, these fools are buried.) 

Now one of my favourite aspects of the Hogwarts Legacy package is the fact that the very same diversity in combat I boasted about thanks to the variety of spells, is present in exploration thanks to these same, versatile, spells. The checklist open world of Hogwarts Legacy is littered with puzzles and challenges that all require understanding and manipulation of your spell list to conquer, and most of the time whenever you're up against these challenges the game has enough faith in it's systems and how it has introduced them to the player for it to just leave us without any hints or overly telegraphed solutions. Some of these puzzles, between the Merlin Trials and the Magic hot spots, and even just some randomly dotted caves, feature really free-form puzzles to test your understanding of your magical toolkit, from figuring out where to levitate certain objects to become floating platforms, to working out what statues should be blasted apart and which should be repaired, to figuring out shadow-based locks and fire-urn patterns. (This world has a lot more puzzle variety than any Elder Scrolls game has boasted so far.) As a card-carrying Hitman lover, I simply adore that level of mutually shared player-developer trust. This is how open world games should handle puzzles.

Unfortunately, the rewards for a lot of these puzzles, or at least the puzzles not specifically tied to a Field Guide challenge to increase Ancient Magic slots or Inventory spots, tie into what I consider to be this game's weakest aspect: it's loot. Yes, Hogwarts Legacy features a looting system borrowed right out of Destiny or any number of those 'gear power level' styles of games with their endless pointless rarity systems and level-locked stat increases and bonus effects and more development effort then was really required to a system that adds nothing to the core experience. Hogwarts Legacy has mechanics for improving gear and slotting enchantments and all that 'Live Service' guff, but it's all functionally meaningless in action because the combat is already neatly balanced. You do appropriate damage to creatures your level and most every overworld enemy scales to your exact level anyway; rendering skill scores largely redundant. Occasionally you'll meet an open world boss who's scaled higher than you, but in those situations your little buff to your legendary school robes doesn't do much of anything- should you choose to engage in that fight, (And I suspect that the main campaign alone requires you to fight a few enemies far above your level) you're just in for a slog fest against a sponge-tank whether you like it or not.

The one aspect of loot which is worth collecting, however, is the fashion aspect of it. All loot is formed as clothing- (except for gold, some potions and some enchantments) and that clothing can be utilised to fashion your Hogwarts student however you wish. Lending itself appropriately to the theme, Hogwarts Legacy features a totally free 'Transmog' system so you can change the appearance of any piece of gear to look like any clothing item you've acquired in the past; and with dozens of some decently high quality and varied options to choose between, Legacy actually offers a surprisingly varied pool of customisation options, making the fashion aspect of loot more interesting than the gear stats. Some quests in the game seem to acknowledge how much more significant visual appeal is, with the recovery of some legendary piece of clothing rewarding the player with the Transmog option for that clothing rather than some quickly out-levelled hunk of gear itself. (The only annoying aspect of Transmog is that it doesn't transfer when you put on a new piece of gear which is a bit of a headache in a game that expects you to gear swap as often as this one.)

Whilst we're on the topic of 'weak points', I'd like to highlight one of the most annoying openworld elements being the 'Demiguise' collectibles and how 'Alohomora' works. The unlocking spell is frustratingly tied to the recovery of dozens of these tiny Demiguise statues that are scattered across the world inside and out of Hogwarts and can only be collected at night. I've scoured locations said to contain them, but because of how small they are even the Revelio charm seems to have trouble highlighting the things for collection, making them already a hassle to collect. Then when you get your reward, the ability to open locked doors, you'll be disappointed to learn that Alohomora is simply a gateway to a lockpicking minigame! The minigame itself isn't hard, but it's just a unnecessary roadblock to the progression of your spell-crafting process. Isn't the spell supposed to be doing the lock-picking for me? Why slow down exploration for the benefit of no one? 

At least the team made up for that with the freedom of traversal options, particularly that of the broom. The first time you get on the broom and zoom around Hogwarts with the swell of the orchestra, it really does hit on all the right notes to be a truly magical moment. That spectacle may not last, but the acute beauty of this game world from the skies does warrant an appreciative pause and nod even at that game's twilight hours. Truly, giving the players freedom to whip out that broomstick and take to the clouds at nearly any moment was the right decision. I only wish that some of the outdoor walkways at Hogwarts had more take-off and land options; its' annoying having to search for a courtyard to go sky surfing. As for the other modes of transport, flying mounts and ground mounts- pretty unremarkable, honestly. They're too slow to be worth it and the creatures don't display the level of personality that, say, Red Dead animals do- so I'm not as attached to my summonable Thestral as I am to my old-school broom.

But the creatures of this world do have a purpose other than riding thanks to the extensive 'Room of Requirement' metagame built alongside the rest of Hogwarts Legacy. This space for base building and potion crafting acts as more of a base of operations than the player's house common room does. (The common room is actually surprisingly underutilised throughout the whole game.) You can build spells to buff or heal you in combat, grow plants to whip out as consumable combat accessories or, yes, rescue magical creatures from poachers and store them in your 'Fantastic Beasts' inspired Vivarium. I do think the range of potions and plants available to the player is a little meagre, but combat already had enough going on I suppose, keeping potions and plants simple was probably a mindful exercise in restraint.

The Vivarium collection of creatures is really one of the larger side activities that Hogwarts Legacy has to offer, with the wider open world just covered in animal dens and poacher camps and questlines that touch on some of rarest magical creatures around. There's not so much depth that the player is ever at danger of being lost in these systems, and not quite enough rare and hidden magical monster for my tastes, but being able to care for and breed the creatures available is enough to feel appropriately involved in this aspect of the Wizarding world. Plus, interacting with a variety of cute beasts is fun in any game under any circumstance, which is probably why this game also features a 'pet' button for the many cats scattered across the world. (No dogs from what I saw. Guess the preference war landed with the felines this time around.) There is certainly room to expand upon this feature in a sequel, perhaps with greater creature variety or valid habitat preference, but what's there is entirely serviceable.

In narrative, Hogwarts Legacy attempts to pay homage to the source material with a largely mystery-based story revolving around just how special the player character is for some reason they don't quite understand. It's quite formulaic and lacks in surprise, and the villains have very pond-deep levels of depth about them- but neither really detracts from the true wonder: living out the life of Hogwarts. You'll meet and interact with a variety of students and teachers and come to really care about a few of your closet friends through questlines that are extensive and decently interesting. I found Natty's backstory to be quite heartfelt and charged and I think Sebastian's story is actually more interestingly written and executed than the main campaign itself! However the lack of a meaningfully defined main character for these well written characters to bounce off does make this emotional outpours feel a little one-sided a lot of the time. There's only so many times I can hear my character perform the "That's awful" platitude voice before it starts to grate at me. I also wish some of the teachers were better explored with their own questlines and backstories, as most don't really have any interactions with the player beyond their class. Of course, I also know there's a certain sector of the community who further wishes we got the chance to explore Professor Garlick a bit closer, if you catch my meaning.

In spectacle I think the main narrative does a fine job cementing itself in the moments it wants to, the extended puzzle dungeons were a little dry but the 'Deathly Hallows' storybook scene totally scrubbed the floor with the typical 'dream sequence' Ubisoft moment that every open world is beholden to since Far Cry 3. However the core questline stretches itself to last over the school year and many times the only excuse for putting the main story on the back burner is literally "I have an appointment in London so please put your destiny on hold until I get back" or "Give me a couple of months to research that painfully vague clue you were just given." Some of the companion side questlines borrow this formula too, and whilst format-wise I appreciate the way this approach relieves pressure on the player and permits them to go exploring, it feels like a lazy crutch for halting momentum and tension.

There are boss encounters in the game, but a lot of them are reused and lack any really creative element to them beyond animation sets; which seems almost criminal considering the amount of spells on hand in combat. Why not have a boss in an impenetrable metal encasing that can only be hurt once the metal is heated up, or a dive-bombing winged boss who needs to be forcibly dragged down to the ground atop their own payload in order to damage them? There is incredible potential for boss creativity that just goes utterly wasted and I'm genuinely shocked the team didn't bother go down this route even once. At least the final boss is memorable for mere spectacle alone- if the rest of the bosses had a bit more going on with them, I would have been largely happy with that as the finale anyway.

Now a topic I don't usually cover in these reviews is the technical issues, and that's because my computer is a relic from the Antebellum age and any issues I encounter are typically not representative of the general audience. That being said, I happen to know I'm not the only one who had to sit through a prolonged 'Shader Compiling' sequence whenever I launched the game. I know there's already a mod that skips it, but it's amazing to me that the shaders aren't locked in after the initial launch- and that we still get shader stutters in game! (Although the stutters might just be a me problem) The game also has some basic progression bugs in some of the questlines too, usually the ones that require a cell switch. Most of them can be worked around, the 'abandon quest' function is helpful for restarting after a sequence gets broken which I had to use once or twice; (Specifically with Sebastian refusing to spawn in the Undercroft on certain occasions.) but I wouldn't call such sporadic roadblocks 'endemic'.

Summary

Hogwarts Legacy is in many ways the game that we dreamt about playing in the highs of the Harry Potter age and yet in some other ways it still falls just that bit short of the perfect image we all imagined. What makes me so passionate about summarising it is simply that with everything the game commits to, in it's exploration, combat and side activities, the developers at Avalanche excelled in creating robust mechanics that feel fun to interact with and learn from. Playing through Hogwarts Legacy leaves me with the feeling that all the correct tools are in the toy box to create that legendary game, but the team literally just ran out of time to put it all together; which is a prospect that makes me ever so excited for the sequel that has all but been announced thanks to the runaway success of Hogwarts Legacy commercially. The game I played was genuinely great, but with a more daring narrative, greater choice and consequence, deeper side activities and more creative enemy design- I genuinely believe this series could reach sheer excellence on it's next go around. As it stands, the game I played will sing to people nostalgic of the source material, whilst probably falling just short of it's potential for those without those rose tinted spectacles equipped. Potter lovers have to buy this game, it's simply a must- but others should temper their expectation for an above-average open world title with some great ideas in some places and a few wanting ideas in others. Ultimately this makes for a difficult title to appropriately rate, which is why I would have to revert to the classic cheap-out of double scoring. Potter fans should treat this game with all the respect that an -A Grade demands, whilst others are probably looking at more of a B Grade game on my arbitrary and increasingly esoteric rating system. Hogwarts Legacy is one of those games I never dreamed would ever be made back in the day, so it feels almost callous to want for more still but I know the muddy bones of a potential masterpiece are buried in this solid game. Still, now I feel empowered to vie for the realisation of some of my other dream projects: fighting game that crossovers every single fictional pop-culture character in existence with appropriate power levels and embracing how broken that would be, when?

Again with the Suicide Squad...

 The crystal ball didn't lie.

I've been trying to be a lot more positive this time of year. Does it show? I don't know, but I want to see the silver lining clutching to the edge of every rain-cloud, or some such nonsense. (Seriously, what kind of cloud has a silver lining? What kind of visual delusions do I have to be under to perceive mineral silver glittering in the sky?) That is getting very hard with the more we see of one game that I had quite a lot of excitement for once upon a time. One game that was the much anticipated successor to the beloved Arkham Batman franchise, and which was going to remind the super hero genre of games how to do it right after two prominent live service failures- well, I guess we can't call 'Gotham Knights' a 'live service' can we? It was just a game which had it's online live service elements haphazardly gutted at the last moment and acted like it never happened so we could all be shocked in five years time when the developers reveal that secret during a behind-the-scenes documentary. (I think we may be a bit ahead of schedule on that one.)

We knew this was coming ever since the leak of the new Rocksteady Suicide Squad game a few weeks back hit 4Chan and everyone's spine shivered with a cold dread: gear qualities, item scores, lobbies, Battle Passes; everything terrible about modern gaming crystallised into one truly cursed genre. I wouldn't mind so much if the Live Service genre knew how to stay in it's lane, but nowadays we're seeing every other game adopt these pitifully redundant and under-designed gear equip systems that drip with miniscule effects and stat buffs that have no tangible effect on a gameplay model not at all built to cater for them. For all of it's success', even Hogwarts Legacy has a haphazard Gear score system! And guess what; it's totally inconsequential meaningless trash where all you do is pick the gear which makes the 'gear number' get bigger. Not that you even notice the improvement, because you never do in these games. It's a fundamental design principal adopted by so many game designers that have no clue what made it work in the first place.

Even if everything else about Suicide Squad was perfectly spot-on for a co-op superhero/villain power fantasy; and that's looking like a very questionable hypothetical right now, the gear scores alone would be little more than excess fat ontop of the package. RPGs pioneered the concept of incremental gear power growth in order to create a sense of physical progression beyond levelling and abilities, but even then the best RPGs of yesteryear knew how to temper the amount of loot and gear available in order to keep new pieces feeling relevant and special. Action RPGs changed up that balance to shower players in loot, but presented the collection and modification of loot as an intrinsic gameplay mechanic. By the endgame for those ARPGs, those tiny stat increases mean all the difference in the world and that's what makes the gear grinding loop of those games feel rewarding. Live Services have always struggled to reach that level of synergy, from their very inception to now; to the point where even at a mere glance the public feels utterly familiar with the oncoming systemic disconnect without having ever picked up a controller. And why would they need to? Nuance has been lacking from the start.

But again, the gear system is just the cherry ontop of the cake. The fact is that Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League was pitched as a co-op team based supervillian game where every character played uniquely according to their own abilities and move-sets, creating a collaborative smorgasbord of experiences to share between you and your three friends. If that is indeed the case, why are Rocksteadr struggling to display that uniqueness? In the most recent gameplay trailer we've been witness to supercuts of all 4 protagonists swinging through the air with floaty, weightless abandon firing boring guns at glowing purple weak points in what almost feels like a reskin of Anthem. Why am I getting Anthem vibes when watching a trailer for Suicide Squad? That is absolutely not what I should be taking away from this game during the home stretch of marketing! Btu at least we've still got those great Arkham-level cutscenes to propel a hopefully compelling story, right? Well... actually, maybe we don't...

Because get this, unlike Gotham Knights; Suicide Squad is a live service through and through. (Except the team refuse to come out and say it, probably because they're embarrassed to admit it out loud. Always a great sign for how much everyone believes in the dream, no?) We already have confirmation that the team is already going to support this game post launch with a battle pass, probably some more cosmetics and... new characters? Wait a second... so how can we possibly expect a well rounded narrative touching on the four player characters... if they can be easily swapped in with upcoming DLC characters? This is sounding less and less like a Rocksteady Superhero game and more like a Square Enix Superhero title as we go on.

What seems to have astounded pretty much everyone up until this point is the fact that almost universally the public appears settled on the fact that this live service approach doesn't appear to work with these superhero properties. And yet we keep receiving them. This piece-meal 'the story is never quite over' style of presenting the narrative has, historically, only really had a shot in RPG games with custom generated characters that players can place their theoretical psyche within and carry on across countless stories. Actual characters have a bit more nuance and wear to them, even when they're bullet fodder in the Suicide Squad. Although, even then that's no guarantee with a genre as prone to failure as this one. Anyone remember 'Babylon's Fall'? Like... anyone at all?

And I know the hatred isn't completely universal. There are people who love the idea of a co-op superhero game that must find the prospect of a continuously developed one just tantalising. I've also heard scattered praise for the character movement which I personally do not echo. I agree that it looks smooth animation-wise, but without hands-on I think it's impossible to say whether float-guiding whilst shooting is any sort of fun. I didn't particularly think Anthem's iteration of that exact style was all that long lasting and effective. I just wonder how it is that Warner Bros. can justify sinking so many years of development through a beloved single-player studio to create a game in a genre tailor-designed to alienate all single player lovers. It seems like a frankly backwards philosophy, which only leaves me confused.

I do know that the Rocksteady Team originally had another Batman game lined up, which was going to feature a playable adult Damian Wayne and a much older mentor Batman; for which I will be forever mournful we never got. Rumours are bubbling now that Rocksteady had actually moved on to that Superman game everyone claimed they were making all of these years, only Warner Bros. forcibly pulled them off that project and moved them to this Live Service mess of a project instead. Honestly, that makes a lot of sense- but also sounds like too neat and tidy of a story to be the whole picture, like the kind of narrative a disgruntled former fan would concoct in their morose musings. Personally I hope the game beats the odds and becomes that runaway hit Warner Bros. must be desperate for at this point, but either way I'm going to be parting ways with one of the most beloved action adventure game developers that used to be around so the well wishes are bittersweet to taste.