Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

 Warning: This blog is 98% whining

Okay, which one of you lot cursed me? Out with it, I wanna hear it straight. Which one of you sick people thought it would be funny to imbue me with an unrequited love for a video game series that just seems to hate me for some insane reason? And while we're at it, who tasked ATLUS with porting out every bloody game in their back catalogue apart from Persona 5 Royals? Why does this Japanese company want to conspire against me and exactly me? What have I done to them? ATLUS have been toying around in what feels like a personal slap in the face competition against just me for actual years now and I can't wrap my head around it. No one can come up with a good explanation for why we're being strung along, only die hard Playstationites seem happy with the idea of Persona 5 being a console exclusive until the seven rings of Hell collapse and reality comes to an end, Persona 4 Golden actually sold pretty well on Steam, what could possibly be the hold-up next?

I know this is a story that I've told before, but it honestly bears repeating, because I was actually there when this new Persona game was announced. I was watching the game awards Pre-show, if you consider the act of 'watching' to consist of allowing it to play in the background whilst I was playing Hollow Knight. Thus I was hardly paying attention when the presenter claimed that the next reveal was one we 'didn't see coming', and just off-handily joked that it was Persona 5 Royals for PC. And then the ATLUS logo dropped. When I say you've never seen a controller dropped faster in your life I mean that the final ravens in the London Tower were finally scared off by the force of the impact. London is currently undergoing it's apocalypse consequentially. (Which is either a zombie invasion or an infestation of Edo Period Japanese spirits, depending on which historical document you prefer out of ZombiU or Nioh.) And the payoff? Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. Good god- the song that announcer was referencing 'Last Surprise' wasn't even in existence at that point, it was created specifically to be the title for Persona 5. Someone delights in jerking me around and I can't take it anymore!

So then what is this game that is coming our way if not a PC adaptation of one of the finest RPGs of all time? (Or at least that's what I'm told. I'd be able to back that up if I could actually play it.) Well, Persona is never the sort of series to keep things constrained to a single box when they can multitask and try to be every genre at once, or at least that's what I think the reasoning behind the spin-off games in the series is. Think the kind of stuff that Yakuza always sticks into their gameworld, just cut off the main game and fleshed out into their own fully fledged title. (Actually, I guess there's a lot of Japanese series' that do that, huh? Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball comes to mind) This iteration is a fighting game in the traditionalist sense, with a flat 2D arena space, combo moves and summonable Persona's to make the Jojo comparisons simply unavoidable. (This port will make for a good place to store all those ripped Eyes of Heaven models that people seem to love so much, if nothing else.)

Now I'm not much of one for fighting games, the only one I've ever really given the time of day was Killer Instinct, and that's only because that game has a special mode which allowed me to do combos without having to move. (Seriously, someone explain to me how you're supposed to move and keep the target infront of you if that deviation instantly breaks the combo: it makes no sense!) Visually I will admit that what I'm seeing is actually pretty cool, characters seem to have an almost cellish look to them that faintly reminds me of the guilty gear games, so I already want to see more of the game at the very least. As for whether or not I'm going to like the controls, well that remains to be seen but these sorts of games tend to be decently well received by fighting games fans which bodes mildly well. (If they love it then it means the skill ceiling is too high and I'll never get into it.)

So I'll be honest then; as a fan of Golden, there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance when I glance upon this mere concept for a game. As you've likely picked up from the many thousand times I've droned on and on about Persona and what I love about it, the key is the laid back atmosphere and the juxtaposition between RPG death battles and figuring out what you want to do at school for that day. I find all of that super laid back depth to be relaxing yet somehow invigorating to balance, so a part of me feels like there's an essential missing piece of DNA in the Persona formula with a straight arena game, but then I suppose that's just what spin-off games are for, isn't it? Changing things up so drastically you find yourself wondering if this was a good idea at all. Also, the Boxart of the protagonist ripping his shirt off like a Yakuza protagonist is just weird, it has to be said.

At the very least is can be said that the Persona library is making it's way to the PC, albeit slowly. At this rate ATLUS will literally have no choice by to get to Persona 5. Except there's the dancing game inbetween. And then they'll probably go back to 3, first. Let's be honest, the only point at which they'll port 5 to PC is going to be the sameday that they announce Persona 6 to the world so that they can ride that hype. I've tired to convince myself that won't be the case, but it's basic logic. So that's, what, an entire year away probably? Is this fighting game really going to keep people satiated in the mean time, knowing that we're gnawing off limbs for an RPG? Hell, are fighting game fans even going to be satisfied considering the sheer amount of other fighting games out there in the world? Am I going to buy it anyway? Probably. But I'm a rube, of course I'll buy anything with Teddy on the box.

But I'm having a hard time reconciling all of this... I wonder why- oh, maybe it's because Persona 5 Strikers was released on PC months ago. Strikers. The sequel to 5. Comes out before 5 does. It hurts me to have to ask this, but is everyone over at ATLUS okay? Like- they haven't all had suffered a simultaneous psychosis and are trapped in a hellish upside down world of insanity, are they? Because I feel like I'm inside of that world right now, and it's making me queasy. I'm half waiting for the NFT series of the 5 cast to drop around the corner, just to really drive that shank into the ribcage, you know? I may scour the ends of the earth, down it's deepest recess and up it's shimmering peaks, through the veil of reality and atop those waving golden shores of dreams, and some super-deity might meet me and grant the world's wisdom in the pinprick of a needle, and the ATLUS PC port release schedule will still remain life's tormenting mystery.

And you know at this point I don't even care about Persona 6. Seriously, I don't. They could announce the game tomorrow and my response would still be "Cool- where's my 5 port?" Because here's the thing, I've been kicking around this block long enough to know that in this industry, it doesn't matter how big you are, how many hits you've made, how stellar that game record is, one day you're going to take the biggest turd in your career and it'll stink worse than most of your successes. The way I see it, the more great games you make, the more you're just building up bulk and that almighty, world-ending, dump is somewhere along the way. That Doom Clock ticks ever closer to midnight. And the Persona games have had 3,4 and 5 be labelled as classics, so as far as I'm concerned 6 is radioactive material to me. Once more ATLUS, in as much energy as I can still generate in this flabby failing frame: just give us that port we want to pay you money for: Please.

Star Wars Eclipse

 That went from 100 to 0 real quick.

Okay so I usually know what I'm in for when it comes to a game reveal, I can typically identify what the game is or what it's about within the first frame of footage and from there I've pretty much made up my mind with expectations: am I more likely to be happy or is this trailer going to have to put the work on me? I'm signalling out myself but the truth is that we all operate with this level of informed instant judging that makes our situational awareness so rapid. So rare it is, then, for a game reveal to not only keep me guessing as to what it is, but take me on a rollercoaster of emotions from the highs to the bittermost lows. I feel like I'd been through my very own anime arc when I was on the otherside of this trailer and I've just got to convey a bit of that journey with you today.

So it started with the reveal of the Lucasfilm games logo and my knee jerk reaction was that we were finally seeing that Indiana Jones game that Bethesda is said to be working on. Of course, in hindsight that's a ludicrous expectation what with their efforts split between Redfall, Starfield, TES VI and post release support for Deathloop, but that was where my head was at. And I wasn't at all shaken by the scenes of shirtless men pounding on suspended metal dishes with a drone groan to compete with the clarion call of the Sardaukar. Heck, that ain't so out of ordinary for Indi, The Temple of Doom had stuff like that going on. But then we saw a busy market street with Duros wondering around and I figured that this might actually be something else instead. Fair enough, but that was my mildest emotional twist.

Because the thing about this trailer, and I've watched a few times since to make sure that I wasn't giving it an unfair shake; there's no story to it. And I'm sure someone out there is going 'duh, it's not a story trailer', but to them I'd say that you might be misunderstanding me. When planning out a video of any sort, a trailer is no exception, you make a storyboard in order to inform which scenes go where, how they might look, that sort of thing. This just naturally makes it so that there's some flow, even if not a traditional narrative, to most trailers; every scene has a purpose, usually to get you hyped and involved in the trailer and to move from quickly digestible action sequence to another so that everyone can keep up and have some understanding of what sort of experience they're being sold. But somehow this trailer had none of that. Scenes just happened. Yoda in the throneroom, some Jedi with lightsabers, more Jedi but they're fighting this time, now a space battle, back to the bald guys, or look there's an eclipse happening. It felt more like a pitch for a potential Star Wars game than a trailer for a specific game.

And of course, that left me totally clueless. Heck, for a moment I even thought that this is a first look at that KOTOR remake which is being made, despite knowing that story back to front and not seeing anything familiar here. I mean there was the Jedi council in Courasant, but then there was a yellow saber, (much more typically scene in the Old Republic era) nothing was adding up. Maybe it was Fallen Order 2? Nah, Yoad wouldn't be in that! Some wild thought even considered that this might be the announcement of KOTOR 3 that we never thought would happen, but alas we were short-changed. I spent the entire trailer totally lost and bewildered, especially since the recognisable Star Wars visuals seems era-confused with bits from everywhere being haphazardly thrown together. And then we saw the title; Star Wars Eclipse. Oh, a brand new Star Wars game! Well I always love to see this universe in a new l- by Quantic Dream?- well that goes all of that optimism.

I know that sounds sudden, but this is a David Cage game now. Nothing can save it. For years Cage has been this loveable goofable that just wanted to marry together the disparate areas of video games and movies. Oh, not in a revolutionary way that pushes forward both mediums, but in a gimmicky way where 'your actions have (typically limited) consequences' and all the characters are rendered in as uncanny valley as current tech can manage. I mean I hold no ill will to that sort of game, I like a few of them quite a bit in fact, but then Cage started to take himself a little too seriously. Somewhere between 'Beyond Two Souls' and 'Detroit: Become Human' he adopted that surliness that all 'artists' get when they see themselves as better than their piers, and thus he developed this perception that traditional games were 'backwards' or 'unevolved'. Just read his thought back in 2013 where he claimed games need to 'grow up', or 2012 where he called for an 'Apocalypse now' type shooter. (In his defence, 'Spec Ops The line' only came out a couple of months beforehand, so he was just behind the immediate times when he made those comments.) He's a guy with a high opinion of himself.

Which led to him making 'Detroit: Become Human', a paradigm to race relations in America where black people are replaced with slave robots- wait what? Yeah, Cage has tried to back pedal and claim that he wasn't trying to say anything whatsoever with his premise, despite railing other games for years because they didn't have enough to say, but his work speaks for itself. The analogies are deliberate and obvious, and they are as ham fisted and cheesy as you might expect. It was brave, in a way. I wouldn't even dream of writing that story and I've actually grown up in and around at least one black community all my life, so kudos to this French musician for at least making the attempt, but maybe he should take proper account for his glass house the next time he's planning to go brick juggling. Oh, and that's beside the fact that Detroit's premise was as trite as this setup could have possibly been, at key times narratively incompetent and is held up by the performances of it's actors. Who all did fantastic, by the way, I have nothing against them. Just David. And any game he touches from now on. Like Star Wars Eclipse. Yikes.

Still, I took solace in the fact that David isn't going to swing above his weight with a story anytime soon (or at least, not so soon) and kind of grew attached to the idea of a narrative based Star Wars game with AAA quality graphics and presentation. The story doesn't need to be great, we're talking about a Star Wars story, it just needs to feel fun and immersive. But that new hope lasted all of 15 seconds before Geoff Keighley took the top belt in order to successfully power bomb all dreams I might of had about this project into the dirt. It's setting has been announced to be during the High Republic. Eww. Disney's personal little vanity project for Star Wars. Guess that explains why the visuals seem like an unsteady tightrope between Old Republic and Clone Wars stuff, no one really came out to create a solid vision for this era, huh. I'm very much yet-to-be-sold on this era, and it's been putting out content for nearly a year now so that's not a good sign.

So Star Wars Eclipse is certainly not landing on my 'most anticipated' list anytime soon, although I am glad that more stuff is being done with the Star Wars licence and that studios outside of EA's backyard stable are jumping aboard the ride. Whilst personally I yearn for the more action oriented Star Wars titles with their great combat, exploration and replayability, I'm sure that this game might be good for watching a playthrough off at the very least. As far as 'bringing new sorts of games to the Star Wars universe' goes, I guess this scores some vague points for trail blazing, although a solid RTS would have been just as appreciated. Oh, or a Turn based strategy game! OH, or a Persona-like! (Okay, I've got a problem.)

I'm gonna rant about GTA online for a bit, forgive me.

 You probably wasn't even born!

So it's been a while since I've talked about GTA Online, and even longer since I've played it. And that's because I've well and crossed that inevitable point where a game just evolves so much that it isn't the same one you remember. Heck, back when I used to play the game the key grind spot mission of the whole game was still Rooftop Rumble. And I remember it back before the nerf, now I hear that the game was removed from the mission rotation for 'tweaks' only to never return! How the heck am I supposed to return to a game where I can't blow up a garage full of nobodies in 5 seconds flat and then quickly snipe the escape car that spawns with that same flick of the thumb I'd rehearsed a million times previously? (It's practically not even the same game at this point!)

But like my very own quipu, my time with the game hangs around my neck and the knots in it's strings are testaments to the days I must have killed grinding it's shores for the next released supercar. (Never realising at the time the sheer astronomical buy-in prices each subsequent expansion would release with, to the point where that approach would eventually become untenable.) But even though that is a past long behind in a game I now actively wish for the demise of (because that's the only way we're getting GTA VI and we all know it) I still find myself keeping an eye on the old grounds there, just to keep up with the good old days. (Every past day is great when you actively choose to forget the bad.) That's how I knew about the casino update, that's how I've second-hand experienced the eye-roll worthy Cayo Perico heist, and that's how I've heard of this new update coming our way.

Yet I feel it's important first that I introduce GTA Online to you, as a story. I know, I know, you're thinking "What story? It's just online mishaps loosely tied together my missions and updates" And whilst that is largely true, there's actually something of an origin narrative many forget about. You see, GTA Online tells the story of a low level thug who gets thrown into Los Santos before the events of Grand Theft Auto V and finds themselves quickly (and somewhat unnaturally) swallowed up by the criminal underworld. (Seriously, how the hell does Lamar personally know every criminal in Los Santos? That's straight uncanny!) This is important as a set-up, because it gives players a sense that everything they are experiencing is separate from the main game world, not just in character but in time too. Setting it before the story is important to, because with how much of a starring role GTA cities always have in the narrative, the world after the story is invariably one shaped and owned by that game's protagonist. So it has to be set before in order to give online criminals a chance to make their mark.

And how do we know for certain that this online mode is set before the events of GTA V? I mean, aside from Rockstar remarks made at the time of release indicating such, we actually have verifiable evidence from the sorts of missions that you take from certain people. (Spoilers for GTA V, one of the most played games in the world, ahoy) For one, we take on Martin Madrazo as a client for some of our missions, and he's supposed to be in hiding after the events of GTA V for fear of Trevor cutting him up into little pieces and eating him. Then there's the fact that the player character of GTA Online is referenced by Lester in GTA V, when he claims that he knows someone who might be helpful for a heist set-up but then dismisses that idea as they are "Too unpredictable". And then there's the bunch of base Online-game run-ins you have with character's from the single player game which wouldn't be possible after the events of the story. Trevor, for one, given the fact that the multiple endings of GTA allows you to pick who lives and who dies, so if this Trevor was from after the events of the main game then that would sully the illusion of that ending choice. (For which, if we're being honest, Ending A makes the most sense and is probably the most poetic way for the narrative to close out. B makes no logical sense whatsoever and C is too fan-fictiony.)

So why is any of this important? Well, it becomes relevant with the brand new GTA content drop which is finally returning a character to the franchise that the stories have felt naked without: Doctor Dre. (I just don't know how anyone can justify playing GTA without 'Ain't Nuthin' But A G Thang' in the background.) No, actually it's Franklin Clinton, the middle child of the GTA V main characters and the only person who canonically survives the events of the game no matter which ending you choose. And this isn't prequel Franklin, oh no; he is explicitly portrayed as a successful retired criminal for several years that is looking for a little more excitement. This is clearly a return to the character, indicating that all the time since GTA V has passed in the game world and the next expansion is set in current year. (huh, I missed the Covid update.)

In fact, the implication that things were going this way was first bought up to me with that Casino update I talked about earlier, which introduced a whole new skyscraper to the Los Santos skyline as though that's something no one would have noticed in the main game. And then there was the heist from that very update wherein a careless piece of dialogue with a side character from the main game reveals not only that this story had jumped several years beyond the events of the main game at some undetermined point, but that she was 'nearly killed' during an action scene that only occurs in Ending C. A double confirmation to side up with the Smuggler's Run update, during which Trevor is referred to as being alive (Only in Ending C) and the update before that had someone directly state the year as being 2017, which is four years after when the GTA main story is canonically set.

So does this mean there's some sort of clever narrative manipulation behind the scenes that is deftly being wielded by ingenious world builders? It doesn't really feel that way, does it? A slip-up bit of dating here, a misplaced character there, directly stating which ending is canon thus robbing emphasis out of your main story somewhere along the line. It all comes across as a little... accidental. One might even go so far as to say 'incompetent'. Which would match the quality of effort put into keeping the GTA Online ecosystem going, at least when it comes to all of those polishing details that make every new Rockstar game near perfect masterpieces. If you'd never played a Rockstar game outside of GTA Online you would seriously struggle to understand why this company is considered one of the best in the industry today. And that's not just because of the rampant tech errors or the server issues or the cheating menu problems. It's just the presentation. The gameplay is fun, go figure considering it's largely just recycling the building blocks that the main development team left over, but the story writing, world development and characters verge from average to mediocre caricatures of lobotomised lab mice.

I think that this upcoming update is the literal first time that Rockstar have just come out and confirmed that GTA Online is now set in modern day, although by featuring Franklin it almost seems like they're trying to maintain some illusion of 'the multiple endings are still real'. Why bother? Just call up Steven Ogg and Ned Luke already for one of your silly unrewarding Online heist missions, bring the gang back together. (Although, after stealing several hundred million out of the Union Depository, one might wonder why they'd get together to do a much more dangerous heist in exchange for two or three million at most.) Still, at the end of the day we may mock the sometimes amateurish job that the Online team does of handling GTA Online, but when they do a job right they do it right, and finally bringing back everyone's favourite GTA character, Chop the dog, is definitely a job done right. So good, maybe job, perhaps team.

The Expanse: a Telltale Series

 There's a subtitle I never thought I'd see again.

Do you know what I hate? Being led on by a string. It's perhaps the most dehumanising process a fan can be tricked into prior to a game coming out, as what can begin with a genuine excitement might quickly descend into a robotic process of rising and clapping on command like clockwork. You announce the game, and it's all great with the sunshine and roses, and then you come back a whole year later and talk about it again and I'm supposed to be the same rapid raving mess I was 12 months ago? No, the situation has changed, maybe I've changed, and perhaps you announced the game just a tad early. It sucks, because you want to be excited all the time, but that can't always just happen on a dime. And why am I mentioning this, because I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to feel any excitement at all by the time we hear more about The Wolf Among Us 2, or if I'm going to just grunt in satisfaction that 'something' is finally here. (And no, merely saying "you'll hear something soon" isn't enough. I'm grumpy.)

But at the very least I can be somewhat interested in the fact that Telltale, the video game company who was said to be dead, seems to be back in business. That is to say, they were killed off via bankruptcy after a string of unfortunate decisions topped off by a gamble gone sour at the exact wrong moment. When they were shut down, Telltale were very much embroiled heavily in the gaming market with their titles seemingly everywhere, only for them to just slip away in the space of a week to the shock of everyone, not least of all their employees. Outside help was called in to finish the rest of Telltale's hanging commitments to fans, and I just assumed that would be the unceremonious end to their journey. They had showed up, made interactive storytelling fun for a while, milked the formula a little too hard, and then got hit by a freakin' meteor and vanished. But alas I was foolish.

Murmurs and whispers had slithered by for years that cogs were turning in the background to revive this seemingly dead brand but... I mean we've had years of GTA V single player DLC rumours for even longer and nothing ever came of that. (The upcoming Franklin update for Online has sent those rumours into the stratosphere) Honestly, even when I saw that slam dunk reveal of Bigby Wolf for another series of The Wolf Among Us (Which is my favourite Telltale game, FYI) I just assumed this was a Microsoft team that were taking over from Telltale's work. But nope, this Game Awards proved that the name has indeed been reinstated, and they've even gone to try and emulate the same visual style that made them bucks all those years ago. As for how many of the original staff are even back in the office, well I can't say that much. (I know that if I were unceremoniously let go with one day's notice, I'd have a lot of reservations about so much as looking at anyone I once worked with in the eye again. Actually, come to think of it I have been in that situation before, so I attest with experience.)

This time around they seem to be back to their old tricks of securing big brand deals with properties and 'adapting' their work into the Telltale formula. I don't think they've ever been given the trust and respect to make a canonical addendum to anything they've worked on, (I'm not sure how Fables feels about The Wolf Among Us being a prequel. Maybe they accept that, at least.) but they've had the chance to work with Marvel, HBO and The Walking Dead in their prime, so this song-and-dance is practically old-hat to the team by now. This time around the lucky series is The Expanse, and good luck on figuring out whether that's based on the popular and lauded TV show or the ongoing novel series. (Actually, we don't need to play that game this time like we did with The Walking Dead game. It's the TV show, they even recycled one of the actresses to play the lead.)

Now I unfortunately have never watched The Expanse, but hold off before you execute me so that I can provide my pitiful excuse! Okay? So, I don't watch much TV that isn't either gaming related, Anime or just straight trash that I can make fun of. (Why do you think I've watched almost every episode of Supergirl?) So I'm no expert on what this show is, although I've heard it described as Mass Effect set before the First Contact War (The event which marked humanity's first contact) and so if that sounds as interesting to you as it does to me than you'd probably think this show sounds pretty dope too! And that description was offered by Pucci himself, and who is rightly more trustful and has better taste than a Floridian Preacher with a 100-year old, bisexual, cult-leader, vampire fetish?

What I do have a lot of familiarity with, conversely, is the tried and tested Telltale formula, which is the thing that some believe led to their downfall all their years ago. You see, Telltale make choice based storygames where the bulk of the gameplay is making decisions or OTE sections. Not exactly the most riveting stuff on it's own. What's more, the obsession with their moving-comic-book aesthetic that management swore by, as well as the heavy pressure to put out new games at an excessive rate, meant they were forced to use a game engine with a lot of development drawbacks, such as absolutely no physics in it whatsoever, making every scene a painstaking animation process. I don't know if any of that has changed in this Phoenix Downed reiteration of the name, but I can already see they're at least mimicking the old visual style, albeit decently updated, which makes me a little uncomfortable just for knowing all the headaches that the original was tied to.

I'm not one to wag fingers without evidence (What a total lie) but I wonder where exactly this new Telltale is placing itself in order to, you know, not go the way of the old Telltale. I remember hearing about a lot of ideas floating about to change up the formula so that the games would retain their narrative heart but actually embrace different types of gameplay, and that sounds great! Only somehow I don't think they've taken any of that to heart. (Call it a hunch, but I feel like that would be the very first thing that Telltale would be announcing about their big return if that were the case.) That being said, I am insanely happy to see this style of game resurrected, because in their absence the only real alternative company we've had to fill the void has been DONTNOD, and... yeah... those games are great and all... but I want something more fun.

Still, at the end of the day the reason I'm here is for the Bigsby Wolf return. Anything to do with The Expanse is cool and all, maybe I'll try to catch up with the series before this game comes out so I can enjoy it, (five season? Whew, I've got some binging ahead of me!) but I need me some Wolf Among us and this isn't going to cut it. This I say even when I know in my heart of hearts that they won't honour that niggling cliffhanger at the end of the first season. I just know that they won't. But having played it again just recently I can't shake the tantalising mystery just delicate enough in inflame anyone's curiosity; who exactly is it telling everyone that Bigsby is bad? Seriously, it ain't cool to talk about the man behind his back like that.

Final Fantasy XIV: Suffering from Success

My golden crown is to heavy!

Something whack is in the waters as far as multiplayer games are concerned, because they are in a verifiable rut nowadays! Call of Duty is underselling worse than it has in 10 years (guess we won't be seeing 'the boring squad' return in Vanguard 2) Battlefield is a total disaster (When you have to beg the developers to put a scoreboard and persistent servers in their online war simulator game, you can just tell that something fundamental has snapped in the universe's fabric) and World of Warcraft is a social pariah that's even more embarrassing to have on one's 'recent played' list than Fortnite. And I don't need to remind you the way that most of the gaming world outside of that specific community thinks about Fortnite playtime. It's funny considering so many companies hop up and down to make their big online games, only for the topic to fall out of favour within a year and the game to be dropped like a flaming bag of chips. I mean just take Gears POP for example. Hmm? You don't remember Gears Pop? Well just as well then, because the thing did so poorly that it's been discontinued. But of course there is but one Grey Prince of the industry still proving that online games have a place in our ecosystem even in the midst of all this chaos.

Final Fantasy XIV, the second MMO of the long running FF franchise, has had a meteoric rise at the same time as WOW had her latest fall, in fact some might say that FF14's boost was directly due to people jumping ship from World of Warcraft. (And a lot of  anecdotal evidence and testimony seems to back that up.) And we mustn't forget how this was a game which, once upon a time, was so troubled that the developers decided to do an Anthem and reboot the whole thing; an event that was represented in the game by a gigantic meteor crashing down into the world and wiping it clean. (Talk about extreme measures!) Contrary to Anthem's ill-fated Phoenix Down tactic, FFXIV managed to come back slowly, steadily, but with a proud and stable spine from which has grown one of the most lauded MMOs of it's age. Even New World, once the lustre of that new release wore off, has shed it's base to FFXIV. For  Massively Multiplayer fans, it seems that all roads lead to Hydaelyn. (Hang on, the world is called that? I'd heard of Eorzea, but Hyda- whatitsface? Not sure I like that name... it doesn't roll off the tongue so nice.)  

Now you know that I'm a huge Role Playing fan, so it would make sense if this game was all my jam as well. Unfortunately I have a deep seated allergy to MMO games spawned from my inherent fear of social interaction and my distinct lack of stable internet. Which it to say, I've actually never played the game. But apparently I'm the absolute minority in this field because everyone else is hopping through expansions, grinding their little catboi toons up, and wrestling tooth and nail for those all-important que slots so that they can spend one more all-important day in that special world. I do sympathise, back when I was involved with an MMO, I was right in that nigh-on addictive stage of "have to do these dallies in this exact order and then run this specific dungeon whilst making time to prepare some PVP time!". It's all encompassing. But what if that very factor, usually a boon for any online game, was it's greatest foe today?

This year saw the drop of FF14's long awaited Endwalker content, an update which had been hyped up and delayed, and has courted much positive feedback now that it's finally here. Once again, this particular Square Enix division is doing the heavy lifting to keep public sentiments high whilst behind the scenes the higher-ups try to screw with gaming economy by selling FF7Remake on PC for £70. (Yeah, I saw that little tidbit in the news cycle which the majority of folk just brushed over. That is totally unreasonable and I will not be buying a single game at such a scandalous mark-up.) I can't say I know a great deal about it's story, and Square are genuinely pathetic at putting together their own marketing material, so their trailers are nigh on incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't already play the game. (Which makes them a tad moot as 'interest raisers', doesn't it?) What I do know, however, is much like the title implies this does represent the game's first culmination of a major narrative arc and thus it's safe to say that everyone with a stake in the story is raving to see where things go next.

But it's that very fervour which has been the issue of late, hasn't it? Because even from far outside the fandom I can't help but see calls for new server worlds and que time improvements as it bleeds out of that community and to the rest of gaming in general. People can't seem to get into this game, as in: they can't actually enter the servers, and that's likely because every square inch of online space is crammed full from the vast influx of attention that the game has been enjoying. It's arguably a good problem to have, but also it's not because people want to play the game who can't and when we're talking about a subscription-based MMO, time lost is money wasted. Now the team, angels that they are, have already swooped in to slap some free weeks on people currently playing, so that they're not losing any bought time during these sordid server stumps, but its bandaids on a fracture at this point. Something has to be done about all of this player congestion.

Drastic measures have to be taken for the good of community and it doesn't matter how- woah, they stopped selling the game and halted commercials? That's- wow, that's pretty drastic even for a situation like this! Imagine selling your non-perishable product so well that you have to actually close up shop from the ravenous hoards trying to smash through your store window and snatch some of that sweet game up. I think in marketing that would be considered a rather flagrant break down in the supply-demand equation, but I guess that's nothing we're not used to in this day and age, huh? For me, I just find it adorable that, in an industry where every development team wants to think they've created the next Minecraft and so overstuff their resources to creating online infrastructure that will never so much as hit half capacity, Square's apparently modest expectations have been utterly drowned out and now they're struggling to keep people happy. It's almost sweet.

Austere those the 'lockdown on new players' may be, it undoubtedly demonstrates a distinct willingness to have the team stretch themselves thin in order to do whatever needs to be done for the good of the game, even if it's limiting their own momentary sales so that the platform can be stabilised. And make no mistake, this all comes back to the good of the game. When the director played through the Endwalker content and decided to delay it just so that it would meet the standard he'd built up for it alongside the community, that came from a place of love. It's so rare to see someone with that level of integrity in the decision making positions at video game companies, and one just writhes at the prospect of more studio heads that gave a damn about their reputation. Imagine what sort of game Cyberpunk 2077 would have been if there was any integrity in management. (Heck, it probably still wouldn't be out; and that might have been for the best.)

Of course this is a dilemma that'll be measurable in days, not weeks, and I'm sure FFXIV is going to be back on sale presently. (Else it becomes a mad-max style commodity as rare and sought after as fuel, leading to an apocalyptic breakdown of RPG society.) I just think it makes for a funny anecdote to share, 'The game too successful for it's own good', slap that on the box! At least this marks a positive (depending on who's side your own) story out of the AAA side of this industry, which has proven to be more and more rare over the years. So for the sake of all of our collective sanities, may FFXIV carry on long into the future and keep the smiles on our faces when everything feels crummy and bad. Yoshi-P's always got our back.

FNAF Security Breach

 He always comes back

Indie games are a huge part of the gaming ecosystem, as in it's literally the foundation of its backbone- holding up the rest of the industry on taut and lofty shoulders. I have a feeling that supporting structure is destined to only grow wider and take on more customers as the years go by and more talented chunks of gaming's best break off and start forming studios of their own, likely coinciding with the wider gaming audience slowly being driven further and further away from big studio's thanks to their constant death march towards ideas and systems that ruin everyone's good time. And it would make sense given the absolutely ludicrous heights some of these franchises have grown to, some of which now rival those AAA funded titles that are supposed to be the bread and butter of the industry. Point in case: just look at all the excitement now that 'Five Night's at Freddy's: Security Breach' it out, the latest entry in a ludicrously successful indie swangsong!

It seems almost disingenuous to think of FNAF as an indie series even though that is what it ostensibly is, so as long as you can divorce yourself from the fact that your supporting dollars might end up in the pocket of the next political megalomaniac American moron, (I'm being a little bit unfair there, but I stand by the harsh tone of the sentiment) you too can bask in the mirror gleam of the newest face of this long swinging franchise. I remember the whole journey, all those years ago when this was just an ingeniously different sort of horror game that was contained almost entirely within, I think we're far enough along for me to say it without being struck dead by the omnipotent fandom, a single pretty ugly parallax scroll. Now we've got a much more traditional sort of horror experience, but one with a layer of professionalism that makes it nigh-on indistinguishable alongside many of it's esteemed peers. (sans a few prominent technical difficulties)

And the reach of this franchise has been long- insanely long. There's supposed to be a movie in the works, although Nick Cage already managed to get ahead of that with a parody movie he stared in. There's been countless short stories written on the universe, a continuous book series, more fan games than one person could feasibly play in their lifetime and, of course, a stupid number of mainline entries. One my favourite from the pile of fan games was The Joy of Creation, for the way in which it transported the formula into a sort of minigame gauntlet weaved into a loose horror narrative with meta strings slipped in there. It was simply spectacular as far as I'm concerned, and now that's kind of what the main series itself is getting around to with their most recent games from Sister Location onwards. And Security Breach is absolutely no exception.

Much of the fun of these games comes in the speculation. The months of build-up before the fact where marketing sets up their own online ARGs in order to tease the brainiacs who theorise on the overly convoluted lore of these game. You'll get your screenshots with secrets in them, cleverly put together teaser trailers, and a vague in-universe video series that features strange glitches that, when taken a screenshot of and aligned in a grid alongside every other screenshot in a particular order, makes up the face of the series' newest antagonist, Vanny. (As you can likely tell, I did not make that up at all. These pre-release secrets go wild) In that sense, the release of the game itself is almost like the lesser part of the ride, the destination of the journey now reached, which doesn't quite excite like windingly perilous journey once did. With the express exception of Ultimate Custom Night, which kept itself going for months after launch thanks to the absolutely insane challenge it proposed people complete. (Almost like the end of Hollow Knight Godmaster, which I've only just rocked up upon. Pray for me.)

Security Breach ditches the static camera operator position that almost every other Fnaf game before it has at least made reference to and instead has a full blown exploration of a new eighties-themed animatronic facility in the after hours. For which I must say that the visual design is fantastic, overly neon and impractical, sure, but you just know that if an animatronic restaurant had anywhere near this much revenue to make a real restaurant in this manner, they totally would. In relation to gameplay and exploration, however, I will admit that this latest map is perhaps just a tad too open for it's own good. The main floor in particular just stretches out a bit further than I think is necessary, which isn't a huge problem by any means but horror game environments tend to stick out a lot for their various successes and failures, so it's a nitpick that can stick with you.

The characterisations of the animatronics themselves is perhaps my favourite part of the game, made popular by the almost polar opposite approach to how these versions of the popular animatronics are presented compared to how they were in the origins of this series. Previously the animatronics have been haunted Chuck.E.Cheese style robots with a presentational focus on the mystery rather than how they actually move and react. In fact, in the original game only Foxy moved, the rest where stalking puppets that blinked from room-to-room when you weren't checking on them, which meant that mystery was a big part of who they were. In such a horror-primary setting, it makes sense for these characters to be more scare-delivering devices than actual characters without personalities and the like, that changed when the humour snuck into the game.

Pizzeria simulator was the start, with it bunches of joke animatronics, but since then we've really had the characteristics of these animatronics take front and centre. Now this time around we're seeing their AI play out fully with standouts like the desperately narcissistic Roxy, the bully-girl Chica and the blundering well-meaning Freddie. Although my favourite has to go to the Sun/Moon animatronic who has a split personality depending on which celestial body is prominent on it's dome. The sunny side is overbearing and friendly in a creepy way, whilst the moon side is sinister and altogether traditionally creepy. The voice talent is great around the board but I think these two in particular are just spectacular, I loved their little maze arena just for the vocals alone. (Especially since the task at hand wasn't the most imaginative and fun concept ever devised by the creative team.)

The only drawback is, I think, with the gameplay; not that it's bad, just that it plays things mostly safe. Most horror games are guilty of either this or being obnoxiously slow and obtuse, and I definitely prefer the former over the latter, but there's still a certain individual charm which is missing from the picture here. I enjoy a decent horror title, but I don't see this being the world shattering standard for the genre like the original Fnaf game became after it's stardom. I wonder if future Fnaf games will have that sort of courage to try something new and wild, or if we're going to see things gradually grow trite from here on out until the team get struck by a sudden wake up call in the middle of the night and decided that they simply must cast an 8 ft vampire lady in the next game. Actually... now that I mention it that wouldn't be all that bad, would it? Animatronic Dimitrescu- I can dig it.

NFTsoft

 Non Fungible Guillemot 

If there is one thing this year will be known for, more than anything else, it's going to be the unending rug pull crypto scams that have been enabled by the rise and almost instantaneous fall of NFTs. What was originally marketed as a cool way for artists to be credited and rewarded for their hardwork, something has been notoriously abused in the age of the internet, quickly devolved into endless get-rich-quick schemes by unscrupulous asshats without a talent of creativity left in their bones. In 2021 alone there have been a staggering number of high-profile and seemingly obvious pump and dump schemes, I mean 'Squid Game coin'? Really? How do these people dress themselves in the morning? Okay so yeah, maybe that was actually wasn't technically NFT reliant, but how could I not mention the Squid game coin? How about the Lazy Lions and Bored Apes? Yeah, that's a literal scheme to turn objectively ugly art into priceless collectibles that no one outside of these overly optimistic ecosystems are going to want to buy from. (That's a lot of perceived value going nowhere) And what has come from all of that narrow-box success? The mindbogglingly inept Internet show: 'Red Ape Family'. Just perfect.

But where am I going with this, you may ask? Good question. So whenever it comes to things that could generate bunches of money it's obvious that the vultures over in the gaming industry are going to start circling the wagons because this medium is like a vacuum for funds. Steam had to put their foot down early about not allowing any of these sorts of NFT schemes on their platform, likely on account for how real-life value trading nearly got Valve wrapped up in international wire-crimes back with Counterstrike. But some aspiring developers have in-kind expressed some ideas of wanting to make games featured around NFTs, and they're always very careful with such statements too, in order to ensure that they always sound like benign curios, simply enchanted by the wonder of it all. (As though they'd give this even the slightest time of day if people weren't becoming millionaires off it.)

Even hearing of these ideas makes me cringe in thinking how games might be purposely compromised in order to fit in some NFT mechanic. Using Blockchain-ownership to justify some onerous design choice that actively encourages the purchase of some vague NFT, having bidding wars on special assets just because the team did a particularly desirable colour swap on this particular one, (a total Assassin's Creed move) or maybe something totally unhinged and moronic like I read about from one idiot who has no idea what games even are. This was an idea wherein he proposed a Mario Kart player where someone buys the character of Mario, makes him able to win every race and then rents access to Mario for other people to play as him. I would do you all a disservice to explain how mind-shatteringly stupid that even is as a concept, so I'll let your own sanity just do backflips with trying to get to grips with that primordial sin which is that idea. 

Yet what if I told you that this was no longer the realm of fiction and speculation? What if I told you that there was one video game company which actually went the distance to set a trend by announcing their own imminent NFT efforts, and what if I then blew your mind by saying that it was Ubisoft. That's right, Ubisoft. The kings of 'We lack the balls to take any risks so we've been trend riding for the past ten years with all of our games', the 'we've adopted and weakened the open world genre, but will actually attempt to take credit for the entire movement we didn't start when Breath of Wild becomes popular' company. Those guys were ahead of the curve on something! Or rather, they were ahead of their big name competition, the small companies announced their plans months ahead of Yves and his gang of buffoons. And another reason might be because the other companies considering this are actually looking for a unique way to use NFTs, whilst Ubisoft's proposal is, fittingly, logically bankrupt.

Ubisoft wants us to close our eyes and imagine a world where Ghost Recon Breakpoint is enough of a game to justify being the pioneer of the NFT trend. Yeah, Ubisoft still aren't brave enough to stick this onto an actual upcoming game and risk a launch, so instead they attached it to an rotting cadaver of a a game to see if it manages to resuscitate the corpse. My hopes aren't high. (Actually I don't know, as of time of writing this blog the biggest Breakpoint Stream on Twitch is a French woman with 14 whole viewers, so maybe this game is ripe to pop off and I don't even know!) And how are they going to change the world? Can you guess? It's the most bare bones basic way possible: assets you can buy off their store that'll be imprinted with a random serial number that you will 'own'. That's it. I'm not kidding.

It's not clear if any of these assets will be unique in model, but from the Youtube video which Ubisoft dropped, it seems to be a system where these assets will be sold in limited degrees with these numbers attached to each sale, but considering that's how limited time marketplace sales work in games anyway, there's nothing special about that. In fact, even the idea of having a gun with unique numbers that tracks the owners who used it isn't special, Team Fortress 2 has been doing that for a while. Both these empty sales points are said to be tools to help make players 'part of the game legacy' whatever that means, but neither require the blockchain to function and thus sound more like excuses. Throw this ontop of the fact that Ubisoft's best foot forward for the NFT craze is to propose more microtransactions, and it's not hard to see that we've stumbled upon another plain example of 'greedy soulless machine wants to convince us that it's trying to save the world'. At least they said they won't use Ethereum, so the carbon footprint won't kill us alongside making us cringe.

The only part of this proposal which is actually unique and could only be done through the blockchain is the whole idea of reselling these assets. Well, not the idea, but rather the mandatory bitcoin kickback that Ubisoft will receive with each transaction. (Which is the point of all this) Steam have allowed ingame marketplaces in the past, and as for how transferrable these special NFTs will be across games, well that depends on how willing Ubisoft are to actually support this. Are they going to model these ingame items for every future Ubisoft title? Are we going to running around ancient Japan with a tactical camo helmet in Assassin's Creed Infinity 3? And what about other non-Ubisoft games- okay, that's not even a question- no competitors are going to waste their time modelling someone else's content into their game to satisfy some vapid NFT chase. Undoubtedly this will all be entirely closed ecosystem trading and showcasing, which defeats the whole purpose of NFTs and makes this proposal redundant at every level of it's implementation.

We take Ubisoft bashing here for granted, whilst always making sure that we give credit where it's due and never point a finger without having an evidence-backed reason to do so. That's only fair, I think. And yet consistently I've been unable to say anything else about Ubisoft but 'wow, that's stupid'; because time and time again the Ubisoft creatives are proving themselves to be some of the literal dumbest human beings in art. They are either dedicated to squandering ideas championed by their more talented subordinates, or writing up elaborate plans for clueless concepts that have no future before they've even left the boardroom. Thank god, at least, that the public has seen right through their blind optimism and downvoted this trailer to death. Literally, Ubisoft killed the trailer after the response they received. Which is doubly impressive when you realise that Youtube just removed dislikes. (Although through some extensions you can still find the score and see it was ten of thousands into the dislikes. So people are still willing to let their displeasure known as long as it hurts someone.) Will they go through with it anyway? Probably. Ubisoft management are about as competent as a room of goats with suitcases.

Who remembers the OG WWE games?

 Even Vince must feel nostalgic.

Showmanship. The beating heart of the world of wrestling that has made that singular virtue such a solid staple of those who love to spectate wanton violence guiltfree for the last few decades. Gone are the days of gladiatorial bouts, slaves fed to lions and football played with human heads. (Was that actually a real sport? I've yet to see someone with actual qualifications attest to that, but that doesn't mean they're not out there) Here are the days of flashy names, bulbous personalities and surprisingly ingrained interpersonal lore which isn't all that necessary to enjoy the spectacles but it paints the 'why'. (As though wrestling matches need a 'why' in order to exist.) With all that pomp and mirrors, why it's almost as though this was a sport made for video game adaptations.

Those who are familiar with the more recent wrestling game offerings, the 2K WWE games, likely have a very skewered perception of what a wrestling game is even supposed to be. They probably think they've always been barely functional freakshows that exist merely as a shoe-in for all of the reject gimmicks that didn't work for all of the other sports games of the year. (That physics update we wrote turned out to be totally non-functional in the basketball game? Slap it on the WWE title, no one'll notice.) But those of you will just have to believe me when I say that there was a time when these games were the games. The sorts of titles you could bet you'd see in just about anyone's collection, because no better video game party icebreaker existed for those of us who had outgrown the true bloodsport game: Mario Party. (How many lives have been lost bickering over the uncaring Party die? When will this travesty end?) 

When I think back for myself, closing my eyes and envisioning the most holy of holies, the title which comes to mind is WWE Smackdown. (Which I'm seeing here was also entitled 'Here comes the pain'. Don't remember that bit) Although true wrestling game fans have catalogue knowledge that predates even that, and maybe some favourites that even span back to those prehistoric WWF games. Wait, both of those games have the subtitle 'Smackdown'. Oh crap, which one did I play then? Umm... I remember the Rock being in it, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was in both. But he's actually on the front of WWF Smackdown... was it that one? Damn, I'm learning on the job with this one. Look I played a Smackdown game, it doesn't really matter which because they were all bloody good, in stark contrast to the near unplayable train wrecks we receive these days.

Again it's going to come down to passion for the craft which made these old games so great, as it always does with artistic endeavours. And these wrestling games were a simple and addictive premise to sell, picking and playing as one of the many charismatic wrestling superstars in order to recreate your very own matches of 'capture the briefcase', cage match' or just simple beatdown grudge match-ups; it sells itself. I don't remember a royal rumble mode being in the game, so either I didn't play it or perhaps that event wasn't in circulation around the real WWE back then, but pretty much everything else you could ask for out of current games was present all the way back in the early 2000's. Which is really what a lot of sporting fans keep gawking at when new Sports games arrive with missing features. ("You're being outperformed by almost twenty year-old software? Really!?")

Of course, the big difference between the video game wrestling and the real thing is that in the games you really are trying to beat your opponent to a pulpy mess of viscera. Actual 'showmanship' was an assumed by product of the targeted violence, which is the one feature I can actually say that the 2K games have started to improve upon. In modern wrestling games you'll have certain modes where you're encouraged to actually stage a show as you brutalise your opponent, remembering that this isn't just another bloodsport in tight underpants. But there is still a simple fun to be had when you pick up a table and whack it around the head of your opponent, throwing away the truth that this is all for funsie's and actually seething for that knockout. The illusion is heighted, there's no doubt about that.

Something that I keep being surprised by, when I come back to look at these games, is the level of detail that goes into the presentation. Yes, by today's standards we're looking at a collection of amorphous blobs stacked atop on another, but squinting through the eyes of a 2004 (or around those years) game and it's pretty on par with what the best where capable of around about that time. Character models were mostly recognisable when placed next to the star they were meant to depict, and these games weren't afraid to prove that by having actual footage of the real star play behind these models during the entrances. Some are better than others, obviously, but the overall job is definitely praise worthy, and probably a big part why these games were so popular when fans could truly but into the fiction.

As the entries went on I seem to remember the games getting better and better, with even some model damage being thrown in there during the 'vs RAW' days, so I can't pinpoint where everything went wrong. I mean, the obvious answer is to say 'the second 2K slapped their name on the box' but it can't be that cut and dry, right? I remember Smack-Down versus Raw feeling like a whole new generation of games, and by that point I'd personally lost interest in the series, but somehow between that and the 2K acquisition everything started to stagnate. Not get worse, just starting to feel very similar. But then, what can one really do with wrestling games to make them any better? When the formula was pretty much nailed in the early 2000's where else in there to go? But similarly, if there's nothing to improve upon then that probably means we didn't need another new entry every bloody year for the past two decades. (No matter how many wheelbarrows of blood-money Vince McMahon was shovelling.)  

Of course, the obvious downfall of quality recently was no great mystery. 2K were getting bored living life on easy mode and decided to throw a curve ball at everyone by firing the legacy teams that were providing the status quo in order to give the project to a new team. All whilst expecting the new game to arrive in the same delivery window as the old team managed. (Yeah, obviously that was going to result in a mess.) But we could spend our lives bemoaning an old classic which is never going to reach the pre-eminence the series once enjoyed, or live with the numerous perfectly functional quality games we've had over the years. WWE is a curious series where even the early 2000's games are just as fun today as they used to be, and that's why I'm all in favour of killing the 2K wrestling licence altogether. Huh? That wasn't what this blog was about? No, I'm pretty sure that's what I've been leading to this whole time. You didn't see that coming? Well maybe you should have paid more attention!

Indiana Jones and The Emperor's Tomb

 It belongs in my game list!

Lara Croft is a very influential member in the pantheon of gaming. Not the first female protagonist by any stretch of the imagination (I believe that goes to Samus, though I may be wrong) and I don't believe she is the second either. (Zelda from Zelda's Adventure predates her by at least 5 years, although that game was hot trash so we may choose not to count that as an entry.) But still she blazed a path forward for adventure games, presentation and grand globetrotting adventure. I don't know if there was a game which sold the premise of seeing the unseen sights around the our planet's furthest reaches quite as well as Tomb Raider did for it's time. But for all of it's influential medals, Tomb Raider is itself a facsimile. A shadow of a property so famous that it has readily eclipsed the genre it was meant to pay homage to and instead evolved into a roaring, rearing revolution all of it's own. (George Lucas had a habit of being part of projects like that, huh. Just not with 'Strange Magic'. Poor 'Strange Magic'.) Of course, I'm talking about Indiana Jones.

All this time we've known that Lara was at least partly Indiana Jones gender-swapped fan fiction, but in the way we like to in the gaming universe, we accepted her fully as our version of the popular hero. The movies had Indie, we had Lara, an equal split. (Until Nathan Drake showed up to tilt the balance once more, but he's getting a heavily miscast movie in a few months anyway. The balance will correct itself.) But what if I told you that, somewhere along the way, unbeknownst to the annals of time, this delicate cold war slipped further towards the gaming camp with the release of an Indiana Jones game? No, I'm not talking about the crappy 'adventure' titles which were nothing more than reskinned Star Wars bargain bucket time wasters, I mean a real game. One with an original storyline, gameplay, graphics and no legal way to play it in this age because PS2 era game preservation is a myth? Well then I'd be no doubt talking about 'Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb'. (Because I haven't played 'The Infernal Machine'. Oh, I guess there's 'LEGO Indiana Jones' too)

When I was a kid, I was a big fan of the Indiana Jones movies and they still all hold a solid place in my nostalgia even if I perhaps haven't seen them too recently. Don't know if that umbilical link is enough to drag me to the theatres for yet another Jones outing, but it's enough that I'll at least watch some reviews to see if it's trash or not when it does come out. But back in the infantile years, oh boy I was all about the broad chinned, handsome, Nazi-bashing, 'archaeologist', who may or may not have had a fling with one of his students. (Pretty sure you get your teacher's licence revoked for that, bud.) As such it was only fitting that when an Indiana Jones game fell out of the pits of Lucasarts, I would be just as all over that game as I would be for the latest Army Men game, or a new Crash Bandicoot. Actually, in truth I think I may have received the game in one of those 'borrow but never return' type deals that used to be possible back in the physical age, but considering that the lender in such a case would have been my older Brother, I'm going to claim recollection-ambivalence on that.

Indiana Jones and The Emperor's Tomb was everything that I wanted the original Tomb Raiders to be. (So, crucially, not overtly frustrating) It was a unique story that delved into scouring the tombs of ancient China in search of a way to snatch a dangerous artefact or some such. There was globetrotting adventures, plenty of platforming pitfalls, boss puzzle rooms, genuine tension-filled scenes, and a perfect rendition of the Indiana Jones theme itself. (A theme I cannot, for stupid private reasons, hear repeated for extended periods in my own time. I cannot justify why.) What's more, the game had a sort of greatest-hits approach to borrowing concepts from the three films and turning them into games. From shooting at Nazi planes to making it through corridors of swinging death blades, you can tell that the people on this project were the sort who loved the films and really just wanted to 'play' them. Only we still lived in an age of middling artistic respect back then, so they made something different and unique instead of some awful adaptation.

One detail about the game I always remember and laud is the robust feeling of the combat mechanics, not so much the shooting (2004 wasn't the year we figured all of that out yet) but the crunchy punching moments. I'm sure that rose tinted veils have utterly blurred my perception on this, but I remember finding it really satisfying to get into the big hand-to-hand brawls with thugs atop ancient sandstone ruins, or decking a courtyard full of grey uniforms just outside a Nazi castle. (I may be conflating memories with Wolfenstein, but I'm almost certain there was a Nazi castle level) Seeing as how important a bout of fisticuffs was to the Indie character, nailing that was a big step to getting a game feeling right, although I guess I shouldn't be surprised how well a studio as provenly competent as Lucasarts was at nailing the basics. (So thanks for taking that away from the industry, Disney.)

Of course there are the problem moments that any game nearing it's twentieth birthday is going to have on modern audiences, just because that's the way that we can mark the evolution of the industry. (Unless we're talking about Snake Eater. That game will continue to be quality ahead of it's age in a hundred years when it's picked from the ruins of our doomed civilisation by the knobbly grey digits of Alpha Centurians!) And of course I'm talking about the game's attempt to mimic the famous boulder scene from the first movie. Yes, they do it. And yes, it's literally just a copy and paste from those awful Crash Bandicoot chase levels where the camera is fixed in some unhelpful angle and the player is forced to run away and make precise jumps whilst lacking actionable depth perception. Of all the many practices we've lost over the years, this gimmick of action adventure games is one who's passing I loudly celebrate. May it never return to our lands- and of course 'Crash 4: It's about time' has five of them...

What remains a shame is that we never had the chance to have any more Indie games, especially when this one alone proved how good such games could have been. I know I joked about stepping on Lara's boot toes, but I really think there was space for more historical, pulpy, action games about everyone's favourite academic in the gaming space. Heck, if anyone proved that it was Naughty Dog with the aforementioned Uncharted games, which charitably did exactly the same thing that Indiana Jones does with the only real twist being- it's modern now. Seriously, the characters of Nathan Drake and Indiana Jones are almost identical and the only shift might be that Drake is generally more rounded out in who he becomes, but that's more of a narrative style choice. Indiana is designed to be this iconic, almost mythical figure that can't really change else he'll stop being him, whilst Drake is designed to be at least a little bit of a breathing character, so human adaptation comes more naturally. 

Over the years there have been talks of some new Indiana Jones game, there was even one which made it to the advertising stage in the time of the Nintendo Wii, and in fact that game actually released. It was called 'The Staff of Kings'. Unfortunately, in one of the most bizarre occurrences I think I've ever heard of in the gaming world, that advertised game for the PS3 and 360 was never finished, but the ports for the lower gen versions of the game technically were. So you can play the inferior, unfinished lower gen versions of the game but not the prime version that was meant to show all the cutting edge tech like environmental reaction and destruction. How weird. Now, with another Indie game being worked on by Bethesda of all people, we can rest in the knowledge that maybe a good Indiana Jones title might come to the people who have been deprived since 2004. Unless... unless I lied to you earlier, and in 2018 Lucasarts reached into their vaults and pulled the Emperor's Tomb out to sell on GOG and Steam! Hell yeah, you can buy it now for a pittance and I would absolutely recommend it! (Thank Lucas for small miracles...)

Should action games have quiet sections?

Does the boom boom go well with the shush shush?

Games are all about action, right? Swinging in to save the day, blasting through rooms of waist-high objects, murdering hundreds yet still calling yourself the goodguy and maybe even looking a little bit over your shoulder for the front cover. (But not too much over your shoulder, you have to maintain the plausible deniability that you don't care about the attention) But of course, not all games are about constant action and, in fact, even the one's that are sometimes might not show action all the time, sometimes there are careful balances to be struck between when a game goes full violence and when it lets the tempo rest up a bit. And when we're talking about games, with their length, we leave enough room for these experiences to be more flexible with their pacing than one might expect an all-out shooter to typically be at first glance. But should a game that is dedicated to action allow for moments of quiet and calm, or does doing so detract from the package of the game in general? And whilst acknowledging that every game is obviously going to be it's own case-by-case scenario: what effect does action and it's proliferation have on the experience of the player?

To provide an example of such an 'effect' as well as demonstrate the difference in approach I'm talking about; I want to touch on two great open world games. Sleeping Dogs and... well, any Rockstar game can go here, although I should probably stick to just the open world ones, as they all share the trait I'm about to discuss. Rockstar allows their open world games to have times of action and times of characterisation, either for the city or the starring characters, whereas Sleeping Dogs sets a mandate of at least one action scenario in every single mission. I find this keeps things moving for the easily bored, but conversely makes things incredibly predictable. In GTA you can genuinely have a mission where you are introduced to an area and important people you'll need to get to know, such that you could spend a whole mission talking or listening to exposition. In Sleeping Dogs, you cannot have a mission without either a car chase (or race), a gun fight or a fist fight. (Usually more than one of those, but it's always got to be at least one.) What this means is that it becomes really hard for the story to surprise you at any point with any development, because as soon as someone says "Can you take me shopping?" or "Would you like to attend my wedding?", you know straight away that something is going to happen that will turn everything on it's head. Predictability robs all power from spontaneity, which I think hurts the lingering appeal of a story. 

I pulled back on saying 'all Rockstar Games' because of the follow-up example of a game that is even more full throttle than Sleeping Dogs. Because you see, as an Open World game, Sleeping Dogs needs to not be throwing death and suffering at you at some points, there has to be open world no-action driving sections for the sake of simply going places. But an action shooter like Max Payne, nah that can be as action packed as you want. (Just as most action shooters are.) Barring cutscenes, you're pretty much always spraying lead at someone whilst diving slow-motion through the air and it captures a very action movie-esque sort of atmosphere. I personally always looked upon Max Payne 3 as the Die Hard video game we never got (that top-down abomination does not count.) The toss up is that it can make you desensitised to the explosion that is action, requiring the game to use other methods to keep players interested. Something which most games achieve by changing up the challenge (new enemy types, harder sections, increased stakes), and others fail at.

Then, to shift gears once again, we have a sort of game which is built around action but could contain plenty of other content in it as well. I've picked Fallout for this example, but pretty much any RPG title could fill this space. We're talking games wherein it's just as likely that you'll spend a play session chatting or walking to places, as you might spend it gunning down bandits in the wasteland. These games can, when handled right, still maintain that adrenaline which action brings even to the last stages of the game, just from how segmented the action moments are. A title I'm playing right now which is wonderful for managing this balance would be Death Stranding, which normalises it's robust delivery framework so much that when you go awry and bump into a Beached Thing, it's never a comfortable encounter that you're familiar with. And in entertainment being uncomfortable is preferable to being bored. 

But what about games where action is the very last thing you manage, and not in the way that Death Stranding does it (where action is a surprise which could be lurking around every misstep) but in such a manner that approach the conflict gameplay willingly but sparingly? Of course, I'm talking about the Persona games here, wherein most of the game is spent living the life of the protagonist and choosing where they develop their skills and whom they kindle friendships with. The latter half of the game is the RPG fighting, and though much of what you do on the outside does improve those duelling skills, the draw of the audience is more towards living these lives and getting closer to these fictional people. The drawback of games like these is that the core spine of the gameplay, the actual RPG fighting, can start to feel like a mere obstacle between you and progression, because that's just not what you signed up for. Balancing this with making combat fun and varied becomes even more of an issue than it is for the full action games.

When it comes to the genre called 'action', I feel it's always important to maintain and develop the core of the action gameplay, but that doesn't mean it can't be just as important to have other dalliances too. The sorts of games that aren't focused on creating rounded experiences like that need to really nail their action premise in order to not feel vapid and empty, something which the Far Crys of the world can fall short of. I think that might be why we can have a game as beautiful and pulsing as Cyberpunk 2077, and still feel like we're walking around an unfinished Alpha. Life is more than just constant conflict, and though games are an embellishment of the life experience, avoiding the calm before and after the storm is an easy way to disconnect the audience from the world you've built. Again, unless the game is specifically designed to meld around that design, such as with your average FPS game. 

That being said, I do understand people who don't like any deviation from the straight action of the game as they feel it's just a waste of time. Red Dead Redemption 2 has it's detractors for that very reason, where time spent not shooting things and rocketing through the storyline can be aggrieving when the game is asking you to soak in atmosphere and enjoy the arcade-simulation of cowboy life. As such it largely comes down to taste, and that can be different for everyone. Some people like to spend as much time in these fictional worlds as humanely possible, whilst others want to power through at a break-neck pace so that they can onto the next one in no time flat. The only question is which kind of gamer you want to be.

I think there's always a place for quiet in action games, as the very concept of disparity is inducive to competent pacing. Even all out action first person shooter games, with all their chaos and explosions, can sometimes be best served with their moments of peace, or even just quieter variations of that action. (Such as how in 'Halo: Reach' one of the best missions is the stealth one) For me, the ability to take your audience on a journey is the prerequisite to all great entertainment and pacing is the key instrument through which you can work this magic, which is why no matter where I am in life, how busy everything else is, how little free time I personally have, I'll always make space for the Death Strandings and Red Dead Redemptions on my play docket.

Prince of Persia is potentially back, maybe

No one is quite sure.

Do you remember: Assassin's Creed? I'm being facetious, of course I am, right now you are probably one of thousands of people out there who actively wishes that they could forget Assassin's Creed, what with it's overflowing homogenisation of quality. It's hard to truly quantify, for a laymen who hasn't experienced it themselves, why exactly it is that Assassin's Creed is such a cursed series now, but all us fans seem to agree anyway. The games are competently made, except they're awfully designed and bloated. The setting are imaginative and spacious, except they're derivate and underexplored. The story promises so much scope and potential that builds with each entry, except it's building to nowhere and has been since Assassin's Creed 3. Trying to wrap your head around the state of Assassin's Creed is dancing a Waltz whilst walking the Samba with a Rumba's hips and a Charleston's swivel. Which it to say, it's a totally confused mess.

But do you remember the Assassin's Creed before Assassin's Creed? Do you remember the game which took up the historical climbing simulator timeslot before the heads at Ubisoft booted it for something new and, eventually, trite? I have no doubts in my mind that were fortunes reversed, and Assassin's Creed got dropped, then we'd be sitting around bemoaning the crapness of the Prince of Persia games anyway, so perhaps its for the best. Oh, I was talking about Prince of Persia by-the-way. A game which felt like Ubisoft's personal answer to Lara Croft, adapted from a 1989 platformer of questionable quality into a 3D action adventure title for the age. I'm not going to lie, I found Prince of Persia to be really exciting back in the day, to the point where I even bought the entire trilogy collection for myself, (about 50% sure I never completed a single one of those games) but looking back on it I may have been a bit of a fool towards myself.

I can't speak for the general reaction to the game, as besides from the decent scores there wasn't a lot of credible journalism happening the industry back then so no-one was really talking about which series' were blowing up around the world. But I seem to remember really finding the controls, especially for combat, to be absolute cowdung. And remember that I played this game as a kid, and when you're a kid you don't really question things like 'are these controls poorly designed', because that's how games just were; so if something stood out to me as a kid, then you know it was an issue. I just remember this really stiff feeling of being locked into single-file combat which made any groups a chore to have to face and the really flashy moves impractical to pull off. (Although if you could manage a wall launch slash, that would be the highlight of your day.)

The series went on for three 3D entries before Assassin's Creed came along to kill the steam out of that sail, but people seem to forget that the series had 2 more games from there. (Yes, I'm serious) One was a cell shaded game that was a total pioneer with that style (even if Borderlands would arguably do it better a year later) and it did one of the worst things a reboot could do- it 'reimagined'. I put that in quotes, because that's the emphasis I can just hear the person pitching this game using when trying to sell it to a board of totally uninterested Ubisoft execs. They 'reimagined' everything from the Prince (now he was just called 'The Prince' because he acted like a smug dandy) and the object of his affections 'Farah' was transformed into a Donkey he only sort of cared about. Honestly, it would have been just fine calling the game anything else, but it was a reboot of a series I kind of liked so you can bet I played it. And my assessment of the game? Troy Baker out of Ten. Which seems like a copout until you realise that it was actually Nolan North who voiced The Prince. Now what do you think of my score?

Then there was 'The Forgotten Sands', so called because even at the time the developer knew this game would forgotten in no time flat. And it was released to coincide with the the movie starring... oh my god, I totally forgot there was a movie! Freakin' Ubisoft, always trying to cash in on their un movie-able properties. And Jake Gyllenhaal was playing The Prince? I would comment on the believability of casting him as a Syrian, but it's pretty clear that Ubisoft never cared about that anyway, what with having Nolan North give the most American Troy Baker voice he could muster in the role. (Did he even know Troy back in 2008? Might have been his famous prescience kicking in.)  I've heard from second hand sources that the movie was alright, which wouldn't mean much but it was my Dad who said it, and he hates every newish movie. Maybe the game was fine too? I don't know, I didn't play it and neither did anyone else, it never got a sequel. And then there's  'Prince of Persia: Harem Adventures'. Oh wait, we're not supposed to talk about that game. But it is real. (Never forget.)

All of this talk is, of course, because of the announcement that Ubisoft are on their way to remaking 'Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time', the first proper action adventure title that stormed the world back in 2003. This series hasn't seen a continuation since The Two Thrones, (Forgotten Sands was an in-between prequel) and maybe that was partly because Assassin's Creed blew up so big, and partly because (as I realise now with much more hindsight on the rest of the industry) The Two Thrones really was a huge Devil May Cry rip-off. (Fight me, I can take it!) Coming back to the games after all this time feels a little bit like too-little-too-late, I can't imagine there's much of an audience left for a game this antiquated, but I'll still show up for it Ubisoft, I promise!

They use words like 'Remake', and whilst that technically is true, don't look upon this with the same bated breath you might for Final Fantasy VII Remake or Demon Souls; because it ain't in that sort of league. As far as we can tell, Ubisoft are going for making the same game as true to how it was originally, but looking like something releasable this generat- actually, judging from the screenshots, it looks barely passable for last generation. But it's got ray tracing! (Sort of, kinda, not really.) There's a few subtle bits about some new enemies and a new control scheme (it better have a new control scheme, damn!) but nothing crazy to justify the £50 price tag this game is destined to have. Still, how often do you really get a chance to see nostalgia this old dragged from the depths? For mere spectacle alone that might just be worth of price of admission. Maybe.

But the thing has to come out first. Oh damn, that's right! How could I forget that this is a Ubisoft title? The only games they can actually make these days are the ones which only require copy-paste hatchet jobs with the coding, anything new gets thrown out the door after a year in development. Yes, this remake was actually due for January. 2021. Now it's been delayed indefinitely. (That just bodes peachy, doesn't it?) Heck, maybe by the time this blog comes out (one week from writing) we'll have seen an update during The Game Awards and I'm fretting for naught, but something tells me that my Ubisoft experience is robust enough for me to suspect foul play behind the scenes. All I have to say is: just let the Prince come out to play, Ubisoft, he may not have the grandeur and charm he once had, he may not be able to draw the crowds like he once could, but damn it he's an old friend that I'd love to see face-to-face one last time. (Oh wait, the entire '2003 onwards' franchise is for sale on Steam! Nevermind, I don't need this remake anymore, feel free to dispose of him.)