Madden NFL 21

Here we go again

Hey, look at that there's a new NFL game out guys! I wonder if it's the pinnacle of the sports game genre and clearly pushes the genre to it's absolute limits, which would be fitting seeing as how this is the first game of the series that'll be imported over to the new gen. That means all of the fancy processing power of those consoles will be at the disposal of the Madden team to bring the art of American football to life like never before. I bet the team are really gonna bite at that opportunity, really string every ounce of power out of those consoles for the good of the game. I mean, they've got not reason not to, right? They've been making these Madden games for going on thirty years now, they must have gotten somewhat good at it, no? Or maybe, they are single handily doing their darnedest to reinforce EA's reputation amongst gamers as distributors of exploitative low-effort garbage that survives on the merit of being the only American football game on the market. Like a line of spec-op Salarians holding the line and preventing any remote inch of passion or respect for the consumer reach their game, the developers would rather die than deliver theirs fans a decent product. You've got to admire that level of commitment.

I'm being serious. I couldn't imagine having that level of general loathing for the people of the world around you, that's some supervillian levels of hatred that these developers hold in their hearts. They must do. To willingly regurgitate the same toxic dump out of their backdoors into the mouth of their 'fanbase', relying on the widely acknowledged stupidity of sports fans to turn a profit; there can't be a hint of respect around this entire studio. In fact, it has to beyond the fans at this point, they must hate game development, gaming and even the American football game itself to stomach this development process year in and year out. That is literally the only explanation as to why Madden still has a development team, and one that tries to defend the pathetic mess of their product every now and then, no matter how half-heatedly. How do you get to be that much of a misanthrope? Please, teach me your magical ways!

So if you wondered across this blog wondering if the new NFL is any good, and didn't pick up on by 'subtle' hints there, it's not. It's so not. But then, are you surprised? The games haven't been good in over a decade. "But what specifically is wrong with the game?", you ask, "give me flaws!". Well there's the problem with is, it's so hard to tell what the actual game is supposed to be anymore because the entire product is such a revolting, disgusting conglomeration of mediocrity and sloth that it's unrecognisable. But I guess I can try to pick some things out. Let's see, they've added another pointless empty mode with nothing to really do in it, the animations are still canned and regularly glitch into one another, the stands are still full of lifeless barely 3D PNGs, the AI seems completely oblivious to basic football strategies, (like a pile-on) the character customisation is unchanged- but tacked onto this new mode, franchise mode is unchanged, significant celebration animations are identical to ones that have been used for the entire last generation, camera angles for replays are nonsensical and often miss the play entirely, replays aren't even stored for a fixed amount of time but get recent whenever the field is reset, (as though this game is running on DS memory), and last but not least; they forgot to stick their NFL 21 logo over all of the spots with the NFL 20 one. Yep, for the second year running they did it again. What an embarrassment. (At least they didn't do an NBA and screw up the Ico file on the executable)

No, I don't just mean that their fumblings are embarrassing to the studio and the people working on the games, that's a given. I mean that it's embarrassing to the fans, the sport, the very industry that they work in, to be this unapologetically lazy. And sure, in the past I might have given these guys the benefit of the doubt and claim this was the steely grip of EA upon their studio, and that still very much is the case, EA's brass are not in the clear for this repeated trainwreck, but I can't just pretend the developers aren't complicit in this con-job anymore. Especially not after one tried to defend the misplaced NFL 20 logo by claiming this was a problem from the last entry that had been fixed. (It would have been so easy for him to check the asset himself and see the discrepancy. But that would have required a modicum of effort on his part and we know that's a no-no for these developers.) Shouldn't people with any conscious be too ashamed at this product to be a twitter-troll about it? Where's your humanity? Was it ever there?

But this goes back further, the disdain for the fanbase and the art of game creation, that is. I remember hearing a story someone told about one Madden developer's reason for why the Pro Bowl couldn't make it into their latest games and it was so inane that I couldn't believe it was real. The Pro Bowl, for those unaware, is a special game of NFL where the teams are made up of star players across different teams in the league, all sporting the colours and iconography of their home states and teams. It's a fun match where the best of the best square up against each other for a little bit of fun. (Although, in reality it tends to be a little more low-key due to the exhibition nature of the game alongside the fact that no one really wants to potentially cause an injury when every player is worth their literal weight in gold.) Somewhere, and I swear this is true, there is a video of one Dev who was asked straight-up why Pro Bowl couldn't make it into modern games, (because it was there before) and the explanation went something like this: the memory that went into loading the different helmet and jersey textures was too much for the console to handle... Seriously... are these 8k textures? Are you running it on MS DOS? Are you coding with an Etch-A-Sketch? Because one of those things has to be true for the words that just came out of your mouth to be correct. What an insult to the entire industry to claim something so stupid when the real answer is; "This isn't the year that we've scheduled to tout that as the gimmick, train again in twelve months." (He could have just said "Technical difficulties" and left it at that; these people must really hate the community.)

And yes, if you've been here any amount of time you'll likely have realised something odd about my rant on this subject, namely that I'm the one ranting. "Don't you hate and never play Sports games?" Absolutely true, I do and I don't. But the thing is, I know a lot of people of who do buy into these games year after year and just don't know any better. Family members who've been buying into sports titles for years and just don't know how to stop, because they don't know that they deserve better out of their gaming experience. And that's not to mention the fact that EA, and 2K with them, use the malleable sports fans as Petri dishes for the next insidious scheme they want to thrust onto the rest of the market, so if you want a little crystal ball into EA's next monetisation efforts you need merely pay attention to this sordid end of the industry. So in some ways this isn't any bit of my business and I have no reason to complain, but on the otherhand it's everyone's business and we absolutely should get on the forefront of this and push back everytime EA, or any other sports company, spits in it's fans faces.

Though one might argue, as they do, that EA don't have the time and effort to create a worthwhile sports game every year. (I mean, Ubisoft and Activision seem to manage, but for some reason everyone thinks that one of the biggest game companies in the world can't hack it.) So here's a solution; hire a second development team. Hell, hire a third. Do rotations on releases. And before you say, "Well that's asking for a lot out of EA" let me inform you that Madden games are a 4 billion dollar industry, (that's a stat from 2013, by the way; now it's likely higher) and then ask you again to say that EA don't have the resources to fund a healthy development cycle for these games. The only thing in EA's way is EA, because why should they bother putting in the effort when everyone buys their waste anyway? Every year the same cycle of 'put out crap game', 'get blasted for it', 'make money anyway' plays out in an identical dance of perpetuity and unless an obsidian plinth falls down from the sky to evolve sports-games fans to the point of being able to tie their own shoes laces, this is the way the dance will always go.

There is one difference for this year, and it's that the power of cancel culture has been awoken to battle the EA juggernaut. That's right, the hashtag "#NFLDropEA" has been doing the rounds under the assumption that it'll reach some sort of rapport with EA's licencors, but I have to be honest; that isn't going to happen. If people still think that cancel culture is a positive force, they are in for a rude awakening when they release that companies are immune to verbal assassination, they have sandbags stuffed with money, the flood of negativity doesn't even get their soles wet. But at least this has the potential to get to the eyes of the masses who buy NFL year after year and perhaps get them to think really hard about the game they're contributing to. Or maybe they'll just see a squirrel run past and immediately lose object permanency, it can go either way with these people. Okay, I'm getting crotchety, it's time to cool off...

What Happens when you make the entire game an Easter Egg?

One; cut a hole in a box-

We all love secrets don't we? Those little extra surprises and, sometimes rewards, we get for exploring and looking beyond the beaten path that developers signpost out for us. Who needs to walk the trodden path that everyone is going to go down when I can see into the tree's and shoot that little toy frog that someone left in the middle of the Russian wilderness for some reason, or jump down this elevator shaft to witness the carved face of one of the developers into the wall for some other reason. It's an integral part of the evolution of game design and thus, perhaps one of the most consistent ways that developers choose to tie some sort of intrinsic value to their games. Even if ultimately your work will only be truly experienced by a couple of thousand before a guide to scrawled up on the internet for others to mimic like a cookbook; those first entrants will really appreciate the journey and effort that went there initially.

But what exactly makes an Easter egg, and how far can it go? Well, common sense would dictate that it must be an evolution upon the simple puzzle, only with a lot of different philosophies intentionally thrown in there to illicit a different sort of reaction from the participant. A puzzle is designed to be solved, and in that sense there is usually a layout of clues and logical threads to pull on in order to reach your solution. These are designed to make the player feel clever or attentive at managing to pick up on the clues provided and turn that passive knowledge into action, the more obscure the clue the more profound the reaction. Easter eggs, on the otherhand, are usually exclusively ancillary secrets that are too designed to be solved, but often through ways that require no logic and offer no clues. They almost encourage a 'trail and error' approach wherein the solver isn't ever quite sure they're onto any secret whatsoever until they literally stumble into it. Sometimes not even then.

Easter eggs are, in their purest form, entirely devoid of any clues or logical thread to pull upon because they are specifically designed to almost not be found; or at least not without significant effort. Why wouldn't one want a secret intentionally hidden within the game to be found? Well, perhaps that's because the reward for doing so usually pertains to something that is outside of the 'magic box' of the game world you're building, such as references to pop culture or other brands, maybe even an inside joke every here and there. Of course, this can make the process of finding them rather frustrating for those more inclined to solving puzzles and the like as those, by definition, have to follow some sort of logic or offer clues to be intellectually satisfying in any sort of way; otherwise it just feels like you've stumbled upon the answer. In this way, one could compare the act of solving a puzzle as similar to 'moon logic' that one would be exposed to in traditional point-and-click adventure games.

'Moon Logic' is the term created to describe puzzles wherein the clues and logic you follow to reach your reward is usually very unlike the concept of 'logic' and how it's understood on Earth. Which is to say, these puzzles follow their own, nonsensical and often humorous, logic thread to take the solver from one end of the puzzle to the other. The biggest difference between 'Moon Logic' puzzles and Easter eggs is that there is, however obscure, some logical thread of events to be followed. Even in the most off-the-wall point and click, there's no point in presenting a puzzle that isn't fun to solve, therefore 'Moon Logic' puzzles often require immersing yourself into the thought process of the narrative in order to solve. Perhaps this means keeping abreast of pop culture, or taking idioms a little more literally, or just somehow understanding that in order to pass this goat you have to move quickly despite the fact that no other puzzle in this game has been time-based before. These are stories, afterall, and it's in the best interest of everyone that the player can actually progress through the story in a reasonable manner in order to fully enjoy it.

But what happens when you create a game that, whilst ostensible being a puzzle game, is, in itself, one prolonged Easter egg hunt? What I mean by that, is what if there was a game who's entire narrative, progression and reward was defined by the process of solving constant Easter eggs rather than solving puzzles? What sort of experience does that illicit and might that ultimately result in a more, or less fulfilling experience for the players in question? Afterall, one might be forgiven in thinking that the harder it is to solve a puzzle the more rewarding the resulting satisfaction must be, right? Well, lucky for us we actually have a test case for such a game; one that bills itself around puzzle solving whilst containing little to no actual puzzling in it, and that game is 'Hello Neighbour'.

Starting life as a streamer darling that immediately caught the eye of the FNAF crowd for it's masterful art in crafting a mystery too tantalising for people to just ignore; Hello Neighbour managed to stay on a lot of folks radar during it's developing stages due to the fact that the ultimate narrative was just so secretive and alluring. Each update seemed to drastically change up the game, and the act of working one's way through to the end of the WIP builds took hours of trial and error attempting in order to make any remote headway. It was as though each build was more a tech demo for what they wanted to pull off, and finding one's way into the mysterious basement was the surprise ending that few were expected to ever actually reach. Therefore no batted an eye when the solutions seemed devoid of logical deduction or reasoning, because the purpose of the product at that point wasn't to tell a story, but to hint at one. (And to play the game without completely bugging out, that to.)

But when the game finally released the other shoe dropped and things became unpleasantly clear for the first time. This wasn't the way in which the team were teasing their storyline; this, in the team's mind, was them telling their narrative. This is what they thought a puzzle-based game was meant to shape up like. And such the game they ended up making, the one that shipped to players, ended up feeling like a giant Easter egg rather than the giant Puzzle that it was marketed as. So what was the result? Well, there were task that needed to be done such a battling the game's poor physics system to stack boxes and reach certain rooms, sticking certain items in nonsensical places under the knowledge that what effects that object will effect the outside world, and whole host of keys to locks that seemed almost randomly placed for the lack of meaningful placement. Most resoundingly of all, the game just seemed unsatisfying to play.

Dynamic Pixels have very much formed a brand around making their games in this style, but there's certainly a question mark up in the air about how much legs this sub-genre off of Puzzle games will actually end up having. Hello Neighbour is already on the way to making their sequel, but the appeal of the 'mysterious storyline' has long flown the coop and now the only real appeal is seeing if you can survive the nonsensical logic of the game. (Which may just have it's own draw in the same sort of way that Dark Souls draws in the masochists.) So what happens when you make an entire game an Easter egg? You end up being less of a puzzle game than your standard action adventure affair, but does that make the game itself actually bad? Well, that's a lot more nuanced. I think that a sort of no-logic approach to design could work, in the right hands, but it's more a matter of whether that's the intent or if you believe your making something with more puzzling credentials. Hello Neighbour is, in my opinion, not that game. Maybe the sequel will be.

Crime pays- except when it doesn't

Dame da ne, Dame yo , Dame na no yo...

Back in the days of nearly a decade ago I used to be an avid and regular player of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V. For the time I think you could easily attest to it being the most played title in my entire library, with probably thousands of hours invested into it yet somehow not a dime beyond the base asking price of the game. This is astounding, when you consider that most of that time was spent lounging in Rockstar's incredibly lucrative online side-hustle; Grand Theft Auto Online; a product built and funded under the assumption that it could outpace simple folk like me and force me to spend money to keep up with the trend. (I guess that's when the industry learnt that people could grind quicker than their developers could develop, who'd a thunk) In-game currency, though entierly earnable ingame, is the premium currency that has shot Rockstar to one of the best earning entertainment brands in the world consistently, and the extent to which players are willing to go in order to earn these shadow upon real currency have often pushed past the boundaries of fair play and even legality. (But who reads those EULA agreements anyway, right?) What we have today is one such story of low down means to achieve the highlife, only with consequences. (And a whole lot of salty responses.)

When I played I remember a friend of the time telling me a theory about the sorts of players who indulge in Grand Theft Auto online, and the way that their methods and personality mirrored that of the game's protagonists. It went something like this: Those who are willing to play the game by it's own rules, struggle for every single milestone and grind themselves ragged, they were Franklins. Those that jumped at the chance to uses glitches or buy their way into the latest expansions and fast cars, well clearly they were Micheals. And those that acquired money not to indulge in the activities of the game but to fund their single man crusades against everyone else's good time, (see: Everyone who ever purchased a tank) there's your Trevors. I, being the sucker that I am, was always a Franklin, but I knew my fair share of the other two and so I'm familiar with the cycle of money making glitches that forever plagued the GTA Online community. (Or graced it, depending on which side of the fence you were on)

In my day it was the car cheat which, and forgive my hazy memory of almost 8 years ago, I think used the garage and so hot-switching to clone expensive cars that could then be sold off for considerable amounts of money. This was how a lot of people I knew made their fortunes off the game, all the while whilst I was grinding that one decently consistently paying mission over-and-over. What was that called again... That's right- Coveted. Oh, Coveted. This was the mission that everyone played in order to make the big bucks. I'm told that Rockstar have changed the mission reward structure since my time in order to discourage... legitimate play? (Seriously, you were getting the retention time Rockstar; what was the problem?) Rockstar were actually responsible for a lot of micro-transgression like this which kept punishing those that had found decent ways to make money in the efforts of pushing them towards newer content; which usually paid like ass thus demoralising people. What I'm saying is, Rockstar's Online didn't exactly incur the best relationship among the players in the community as everyone feared the patch boogey-man everyday.

Of course, since I was there for so long and saw so many of the cheats which swept the community, I also saw the repercussions when they landed as Rockstar (who had jokingly become known as the IRS) swept across servers rolling back funds of those who had sold a few too many identical cars for their own good. my friend, however, did manage to keep his garage full of identical supercars even after losing his wealth, so the team still weren't the best at honing in on culprits. (Pretty crappy IRS that doesn't even bother to check assets) I even heard some stories of legitimately earning folk who got caught in the wave of punishments, simply for the act of generating ingame income a little too quickly. (Not sure if that was actually truthful or just the guilt spinning a web, but the accusation is there.) But that was the cycle of the GTA Online world. A glitch would come out, a chunk of the community would exploit it, and Rockstar would crack down with wrist-slaps galore. I'm sure things are significantly newer and different these 2020 days!

Well recently the economy of the Grand Theft Auto Online world has been rocked by a glitch which has allowed folk to illegitimately make ludicrous amounts of money with very little effort on their part. All it took was buying some apartments, messing with the active game memory through application suspensions and overwriting those apartments with other apartments which forced a refund- or something; I'm not clear on the specifics. But, wait a minute... isn't this eerily familiar to the car glitch? And countless others from over the years? How in the world is Rockstar still falling for the same old tricks in 2020? Unless- No. That's too ridiculous. This must be a legitimate bug which popped up out of nowhere and unfortunately ended up in the hands of Redditors; the single most dangerous hands for any even remotely sensitive information to end up.

Thus the cycle did as cycles do; it repeated itself. People flocked like wildfire to get the money they felt they deserved after 8 years of hard grind, only to find themselves out of pocket when Rockstar swung around their might hammer of repercussions. (Oh Noe, who could have ever foreseen this?) Only, things are distincly- harsher than what I remembered. (Or maybe my memories just crap, that's wholly possible.) Because alongside the resets that have rocked the community, apparently Rockstar have rolled around issuing complete account resets. As in- having your character and all 8 years of your experience with them rolled back into nothing. (Scary stuff indeed) That would mean all the quest progresses, levels, cars, probably purchased money packs, all that has been flushed down the drain in a hard slash back from Rockstar mods. (Way to go nuclear)

And, it's safe to say, people aren't happy about this at all. I've seen a considerable number of tweets and images over the past few days of people absolutely melting down over this grave injustice upon their person. Some bemoaned the years of history they lost, others argued that they'd only bought cars with the money so therefore shouldn't have been punished as harshly (not following the thread of the argument there, but okay) and even some people have taken to wantonly flashing how they didn't get caught in the wave and that they still have their illegitimate funds. (What are those people, masochists?) One fellow even showed off a picture of his Xbox-One disc-copy of Grand Theft Auto snapped in three; symbolic of the way that he probably has the game on digital like everyone else. (Real powerful message there, buddy.) Most curious of all, however, is the people who declare their retirement from the GTA Online world, most commonly matched with a variation upon the phrase 'you messed up, Rockstar'. Yes, I'm sure the single most profitable gaming mode in the world is missing their, clearly non-paying, contribution to the infrastructure. How tragic of a break-up story.

But as I said, this sort of stuff happens every year so why, then, am I so interested about it today? There were stories like this last year, what's changed? Well the account wide bans got me thinking. Thinking about the regularity of these glitch waves, how they'd always rise in the Spring and be quelled by Autumn, how I always heard about them despite not being involved in the GTA world in the slightest. And how these glitches seem so similar to the ones from 8 years back. Like, seriously Rockstar- learn from your mistakes. And I've come up with a theory. That this is manufactured for regular publicity stunts. Now I'm not saying that the glitch isn't real, nor those who exploited and got caught; I just think the glitch was created to be found, in order to justify a ban wave and make the news. Think about it; why else would GTA Online be in the gaming news if not for deleting 8 year old progression. How could Rockstar miss so many folk if not just to embolden them for the next time GTA pulls this stunt? And why is it always revolving around the purchasing system? It may be conspiratorial for me to say, but we live in a bold world of marketing nowadays and it makes total sense to me. If it's true, then let me be the first to congratulate Rockstar for another job well done, you worm your way into the news cycle like no other. Your reward was this blog, hope you liked it.

Karen: An Outrage Simulator

Can I talk to the Manager?

I am a very non-confrontational person, perhaps you've realised this about me already, but thus makes me the kind of person who doesn't really react well in the company of those that are known as 'Karens.' (By which I mean I generally run and hide.) To those not in the loop, somehow, 'Karen' is a term used to describe an individual, woman or man, (typically middle-aged) who decides to take out all of their angers and frustrations on random folk whom they have no relation too, though again, most typically service workers. What makes a prime Karen, however, are the type of troublemakers who consume Facebook conspiracies all day to make up their primary source of education, communicate primarily in screaming and threats against others jobs, has a healthy dose of racism thrown into the mix, and, last but not least, sports the 'mom bob' haircut, more commonly know as the 'I'd like to speak to the manager.' Such people have been around forever, it seems, but during this pandemic it seems they've really come out of the woodworks to spread their troubling beliefs and really cement themselves in pop-culture history. And you know what happens when you make pop culture history? People make a game about you.

Here comes 'Karen: An Outrage Simulator' to really bridge that gap between the fully functioning homosapiens and the Karen primates, allowing us to finally immersively see how things function inside of those permanent buns of theirs. Truly this is the kind of opportunity that many Anthropologists would kill for, and it's exclusive to those who frequent the stores of Steam for the heavy asking price of around about the cost of a cheap Pizza. (Depending on how overpriced your local Pizza place is.) Though the question must be asked before anyone does take that plunge; do you have mental fortitude to step into the shoes of someone so twisted and vapid? Will the act of assuming such a role completely twist and scar you beyond all recognition? Will playing this game ultimately doom you to someday becoming a Karen? (Probably not but you never know.)

So we've got a game that purposes to simulate what it's like to be a Facebook knight, that's fine and dandy, but you might be wondering what are the milestones such a game would have to reach in order to achieve such a feat. Well according to the Steam page, that includes delving into 6 different scenarios that run the gambit of battling against the injustice forced upon Karen by store clerks, managers, waiters and just about anyone who comes in the way of the righteous indignation of the Karen. The Devs have taken the steps to whittle down Karen's divine powers to an understandable degree too, with three main avenues one can go down to fell any everyday person trying desperately just to do their job; breaking confidence, applying guilt, or whittling patience, all the while attempting to keep one's outrage in check least your powers spill out in a public meltdown that ends up on Reddit. Truly, a lot more thought and effort when into this joke then goes into you typical troll game.

And though the game itself is advertised as a mere 30 minutes, (totally worth the super-cheap asking price in my opinion) the developers intend to cover a lot of ground, not only by replicating all the environments where one can expect to catch a Karen in the wild, but by delving into the mythical past of the Karen. That's right, this is an origin story too, baby, and Vagabond Dog (the developer and publisher) want you to get to the very core of what makes a person as bitter and resentful as this. Move aside Thanos, we're sure to have an even more engrossing origin story in the works here. What more could you really ask for in a meme game created and published quick enough to rap on a current pop-culture phenomenon and have a Covid-related stage. (You can imagine how that one plays out, can't you?)

I always get a little excited whenever I hear about these joke games, as these are the times you really get one-to-one with the community of gaming and get to ride that ever-elusive public zietgiest which becomes a little lost on the bigger productions. I mean just look at the recently announced 'Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War', (most concise title ever) there's a game that bills itself as all about unchecked government powers, dividing wars of cultures and learning from the past so that you don't repeat it; and yet it releases 10 days after the event it's clearly winking and nodding too. Those bigger companies couldn't ride a modern event for the life of them, it's just impossible given their size and constantly evolving visions. Smaller indie studios, however, have the flexibility to make these little bite-sized games that can come out in a decently relevant timeframe. The bigger studios should leave it to them. (Especially if that means we won't get an incredibly cringey moment where Ubisoft try to dunk on Marin Shkreli again. God, that was so bad I wanted to roll up into a ball and die.)

One thing that I usually don't do when I look up games, unless it's a total train wreck, is read the reviews because they're generally ill thought-out and reductive; but seeing how this was such a short game that riffed off of real-life experiences I thought it might be fitting. I saw one extensive review the caught my eye from a player called 'Minty' who described the game as "Scarily familiar but also insanely ridiculous". Another user 'Erin' said of it "if you've ever worked a job in the service industry, all of your struggles will feel validated". And then there was 'ChannelMagnetic' who summed the whole thing up with "if nothing else, this is a great way to show a 'Karen' that you know how much they suck in real life'. (Which, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what they're recommending there; Should we force these people to play a game mocking them, but I understand the sentiment.)

As far as smaller games like these go, I think it's great to have these little joke games that are inexpensive and don't overstay their welcome. What's more, this also serves to bring attention to this studio, Vagabound Dogs, who seem to make their daily income by putting together these character driven stories on what looks to be the RPGM engine. (Which doesn't make the games themselves RPGs, I feel the need to point out as a lot of people seem to inherently get the wrong idea.) Honestly, had it not been for this silly title I might never had heard of them and thus I wouldn't have seen their indie game 'Always Sometimes Monsters' which appears to tell a story about relationships, choices and ethical quandarys; all things I really respect in writing. (Also, that is a fantastic title, I have to say.) So from the springs of funny comes genuine interesting games that I will certainly try my hand at someday. (Who'd a thunk?)

The concept of making a game about 'Karen' culture is ridiculously absurd, but thus is so apt in today's world that it's not even funny. (Except it is funny. The game is a comedy.) So much passes us by in life and culture that it's hard to look back on it all and really process it, take it from someone as lost and rudderless as I've been for the past few years. Taking the time to really look at the chaos around you and laugh is healthy, incredibly so, and though it may seem like I'm attributing a lot to a silly joke game the truth is this is something I've been pondering on for a while without a specif blog to unload it onto. (K:AOS doesn't mind being my conduit, does it?) It's just like that recent horror movie which takes into account this socially distanced current reality of ours, Host; having that almost entirely separate perspective on the life we're living can really help set things into perspective. I'm rambling, as I do, so i'll just wrap this up by saying; the game's a hoot and costs less than a fiver; Toss A Coin To Your Indie Developer.

Super Mario 3D Allstars

Another win for the scalpers

How many years has it been since Super Mario Allstars? 27 years! Can you believe that? Almost 30 years since we got that blinding collection of Super Mario remakes that bought colour to the early years of the mushroom kingdom! Getting the chance to play through all those classic Mario days with the presentation of Super Mario World to back it up (albeit, not with that title's arguably superior gameplay) was quite the revelation that any Nintendo fan would be remiss not to try out. (And in fact, Nintendo Switch owners can right now because Nintendo just added it to their virtual console line-up. Way to play to the crowd.) But it would take something of similar gravitas and value to justify Nintendo invoking that holy Allstars name once again, but what could possibly be the next step forward? The next evolution? What would become of the Allstars name if we stuck the Red Stone of Aja upon it's brow? Well you read the title, didn't you? It's Super Mario 3D Allstars.

I'm frankly shocked and a little appalled that this hasn't ever happened sooner, why has it taken up until now for Nintendo to put their full weight behind remakes of their beloved 3D offerings. These are games often touted as some of finest examples of 3D platforming ever constructed by human hands, so in the tail age of this 'age of remakes', why haven't we already received at least one of these titles?  Well I guess there's no need to split hairs over wasted past, because today we have an impending re-release of some of the greatest Mario games of all time to look forward to. I'm talking Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Sunshine, all together at last in one glorious package. All for the price of one full price triple A game. (Geez Nintendo, you sure know how to put a price on nostalgia!)

Yes, in the vein of remakes this does come with some improvements upon the base game, although nothing as drastic as a full recolouring like we saw from the base Allstars. Instead it's all just graphical upgrades with an additional soundtrack mode thrown in there for those mega fans who just cannot live without the music of their childhood. Now I'm not saying that Nintendo absolutely had to do some drastic here like throw in brand new bunch of stages or a a second Luigi mode for 64, but I guess there's nothing inherently wrong with a simple resolution update. The big news here is the availability of these games that Nintendo have made a habit of artificially stifling in order to drum up the value of the games in question. It's actually rather ugly when you think about it, to hold such a ransom on important pieces of gaming history. One can only wonder the battle that had to be won within the corporate boards to get this pack approved as one collection and not three separate full-priced HD remakes.


Of course, when the announcement hit the Nintendo lovers of the Internet went absolutely wild. These are the kind of folk, remember, who invented the 'Old is always best' model of fandom so they couldn't have been catered to in a more absolute way if Nintendo tried. I'm not even really a part of any of those groups and I've still been flooded with videos of excited fans recording themselves practically giving birth to this announcement. And good for them, it's nice to have something to be excited about in this crappy year and if Nintendo don't have any other big Mario game coming out in the near future than this makes absolute sense for them to put out. It's a wonder, in fact, that something inexplicably moronic and despicable hasn't been instituted in order to wholly sour this whole event. I mean, that would be on-brand for this year, right?

Oh wait, that's exactly what happened because Nintendo can't help themselves. (I swear, these people are the worst sometimes.) So what did they do? Well, do you remember all the way back in the days of Amiibo figurines when Nintendo thought it was smart to artificially strangle the market to create false scarcity and drum up perceived value, only to play it competely dumb when this gave rise to an age of scalpers? (Who could have ever guessed that 2+2 makes 4?) Well they've done that again by announcing that this impending collection pack, which is obviously destined to be in high demand, will only be available for 6 months. (That includes the digital versions.) And as you can imagine the scalpers are already up and about selling off their preorders. That's right, Nintendo have managed to make an unreleased game a collector's item. (Good job, Arses)

This really does anger me, as someone who want's so desperately to buy into Nintendo's image as the 'friendly face of the games industry'. They imitate this Disney-esque persona of kindness and wholesomeness and use it as a mask to obfuscate from all the draconian and anti-consumer practises that they propagate. What possible benefit does it give the Nintendo team to limit the copies of a game which just about every devout Nintendo fan on the globe is going to want? It'll light a fire under folks for some early sales, maybe shore up this annual's earnings a bit, but in the long run it's invented a brand new bottleneck that will result in overpriced scalping jobs for literal years to come. Good job, Nintendo, you're literally promoting some of the grossest practises in the independent market yet again. (Why not just produce to meet demand? Is that a crazy thing to ask for?)

Already markets are getting flooded with 200$ prices for preorders and things will only get worse in the months to come. It won't be long until the game comes out and then Nintendo Switches with it installed will start hitting Ebay; these guys probably won't even wait for the game to come off the storefront next March. If you can't tell, I have no love for scalpers and their culture, all I want is to play good games and whenever I see a company intentionally get in the way of that goal I can't help but scratch my head and wonder why. No, literally why? Is it for bragging rights? So they can boast to their investors about creating another false-scarcity crisis? Please, someone explain why it is that Nintendo can't just be a normal game company who bring out games. I need to know!

At the end of the day, this probably means that folk like me won't get the chance to pick up this game when it's available, as I never buy at full price and you can bet this title will never see a sale. It's a shame that these are the sorts of practises that Nintendo stand, and have always stood, for. I'm lucky enough not to be too big of a Mario fan that I'd fall for this, but imagine if the same thing happened for Zelda, I'd be a goner! I'd like it, one day, if someone at Nintendo could wake up and realise the many ways in which they've been a toxic force in a industry they should be champions in. Heck, maybe they do know and they just don't care. (That's a sobering thought.) Hey, who knows. Maybe this whole dumb decision will be reversed and the digital download will lose it's cut-date. (But I seriously doubt it.)

Halo Infinite

Infinite problems

Okay here's one I've been putting off for a while because I just don't really know how I'm supposed to approach it. For clarity's sake, I've never really been that much of a Halo fan and by that I mean I've never actually owned a single game from the main franchise, despite owning an Xbox. (I know, that's pretty much the height of hedonism.) That is not to say, however, that I've never played a Halo game, because I actually have completed a full playthrough of Halo Reach which I'll attest is actually a really solid and well made game. So then why haven't I rode that excitement to play the other games? I don't know, I don't have the money or time, okay? So the consequence of this is that I actually have no attachment to the beloved classic video game character of Master Chief or any of his journeys against the Covenant, or whoever it is he's fighting these days. I don't even really think of Noble Six all that much either. Neither of those characters quite hold that sense of gravitas that I think off when I consider a timeless game protagonist. Give me the Doom Slayer over these faceless nobodies anyday. (No offence to Halo fans, I'm sure John-117 is great once you get to know him.)

As such when the trailer first dropped for Halo infinite, or shall we say the teaser, all those years ago I could have yawned myself to sleep. What did we see? A dude wandering through the desert only to be overwhelmed by a sandstorm and turn out to be Master Chief. Great, that explained nothing, teased nothing and was ultimately nothing. (Way to waste a reveal.) Seems that the marketing team didn't learn from this nothing burger, however, because the next time we saw the title it was just a short cutscene of Master Chief being found in the midst of space by a junker and getting woken from some form of stasis. Seriously, that entire trailer was full of so much nothing-speak it made that final line from Halo 2 sound like the 'Tears in the Rain' soliloquy. ("I'm ending this fight!") So what's the solution? Now that Halo Infinite is actually within the grasp of gamers and they can start with an actual marketing campaign, how do the team correct the wrongs of the past two boring teasers which showed off nothing? Go the complete other direction of course! Show too much.

I typically try my hardest to catch these gaming events in their entirety, but when I cannot I don't really have the time to go back and watch the entire thing unless it's a conference I really care about. (I wouldn't miss a second of a CDPR showcase.) So I just pick and choose what I'm interested in without really investing myself in games I wouldn't poke a feces-covered stick with, which is to say that I didn't watch the raw Halo footage. And that might have something to do with the fact that the gameplay was just several minutes of wandering and shooting without anything really transcendent about this game to knock the socks firmly off. Fair enough, you might think, this was a game trailer made for fans to show them that this game is real afterall, it doesn't need to woo over someone who never really liked the games to begin with. Except, that wasn't how Microsoft billed it. For you see they made a big point about parading Infinite as the first unburdened showcase of 'The power of the Series X', basically throwing this game up against that supremely impressive and technologically stunning 'Ratchet and Clank' trailer. So how'd it end up faring? Well...

I'd be lying if I said that no one was excited by the gameplay that they saw. Fans had been edged on by this game for literal years now, so they went absolutely crazy for even the slightest glimmer of actual gameplay, but as for the rest of us; it was a nuke sized dud. The gameplay in question was just freeroam content showing off the brand new open world that Infinite was touting, but the act of exploring an Open world doesn't exactly make for the best trailer viewing unless that world is absolutely stunning like Cyberpunk's Night City or Metro Exodus' Russian Wastes. Without any real drive for the footage, setpeices to rally around, or substantial new gimmicks to showoff (no, the hookshot they stole for 'Ocarina of Time' doesn't count as 'new') it all made for a comparatively stale show compared against the chaotic action of 'Ratchet and Clanks' world hopping reveal footage. But those who were really invested found something further to gripe on.

Perhaps you've already seen the pictures doing the rounds, specifically the one of the Covenant brute's close up on his nonplussed face as he gets whacked in the face by a Spartan. This brute was dubbed Craig by the internet, and his low quality expression-less face has become the poster child of Halo Infinite whether the devs wanted that or not. (I'm going on a limb and assuming that they didn't. Wouldn't really make sense if they did.) It's a real kick in the nuts, I'll admit, for such an overly controlled marketing cycle to be completely derailed by one bad frame the second they decide to be more open, but it's indicative of a problem that ran throughout all the 'good' shots of this gameplay too; the game just doesn't look that good.

Let me be clear, I'm not just talking about a graphical perspective, although many have claimed that game doesn't shine in that regard either, I'm talking about pure creativity and exploring the unexplored. The footage we saw took place in the classic vista of the Halo ring, which was awe-inspiring back in the days of the original Halo but now seems somewhat sleepy and dull. It's lacks the dynamic range that I experienced throughout my playthrough of Reach, from the alien farmlands to the nightime raids. I'm sure the full game will be more exciting, it has to be, but perhaps if those more lively gameplay moments weren't ready to be shown than neither was this trailer. (But that's just my two cents.)

So what was the consequence of this wide spread disinterest for the new Halo? Well, much like one would expect, it was a bit of panic and, I'd imagine, some relief. This game was initially being propped up in the spot of becoming a launch title for the Series X, something to win over day-one consumers. Yet that's no longer the case as it's apparent the game won't be able to dazzle nearly as much as the company wants it to with that current schedule, thus the title has been pushed back giving 343 some room but leaving Microsoft in a bit of a pickle. What launch title do they have to replace it? The answer: seemingly nothing. I'm being serious, I can't find a single headliner that's going to land by this December and that is worrying. We all know that the worst times for a new console are those opening few weeks of no games, but the headliners are supposed to cushion that wasteland. Nintendo Switch broke that trend with arguably one of the best initial lineups of all time, but Microsoft look eager to pick up the slack with an impending disaster of a launch. 343 have really left them in the lurch this time, huh?

But at the end of the day, the state of the Series X launch it moot. I could care less what happens to the multibillionaire company's new hardware launch, and I'm sure that most people out there are similarly more invested in making sure that Master Chiefs' triumphant return is as good as it can be. (Especially after that widely criticised mess which was Halo 5 Guardians.) If the team need another 6 months to iron things out, then I say let them, what's the harm? Does this mean that Halo will become a game that I sign up to? No, but then I don't think anything would endear me to this FPS series short of a 10/10 must buy game, and I just don't think Halo has the steam to reach those heights anymore. For what it's worth, I didn't think Infinite's gameplay looked terrible, just boring, so perhaps there's hope for this game come launch. Whether the Internet which condemned it will ever come around to liking it, however, is another matter entirely...

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis

Is this just Phantasy?

Have I ever told you about my MMO days? Days of wanton excess they were, when life seemed to stop and end once I filled my quota of dailies in order to wrack up keys for chests to role for specific sets of armour that I didn't even really want all that much, I just thought they'd be cool. I even had a regular I used to log on with and even a little (incredibly amateurish) guild which would roll around completing world bosses with me. Easily the most sociable gaming days I've ever had have been within my active MMO sessions, and no other 'tactical' or 'communication based' game even compares. (I'd rather let everyone decide where I stand, and subsequently die, in 'Siege' rather than contribute my own worthless opinion) Thus it's with equal pangs of nostalgia and remorse that I witness the MMO world evolve and pass me by, in memorandum of the times I had and quiet acceptance that I'll never capture that again. And though my MMO of choice was the very Western; 'Elder Scrolls Online', I still have that slightly curious eye when I see an Eastern MMO barrelling its way towards next gen consoles; Phantasy Star Online 2.

Or should that be, 'Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis'? (Yes, there is apparently a difference. No, I don't get it.) Over in Japan, Phantasy Star Online is one of those franchises that you hear about just about everywhere, and that's probably because the SEGA publishers are every eager to market their huge MMO investment. Over in the occidental half of the gaming world however, we've been left largely out of the loop thanks to the distinct lack of any localisation effort over here. That seemed to be a big issue in the 2010's, with studios coming to the conclusion that it was more effort than it was worth to start porting things. I can't say what game it was that really turned the tide in this regard, but I do remember a big deal being made out of the success of the spectacular 'Monster Hunter World', so perhaps that had something to do with it. Either way, a lot of 'Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney' games finally got official ports, (though not all of them, still) Yakuza got some localisation and PC ports and, to celebrate the launch of the next gen, 'Phantasy Star Online 2' finally got announced over here.

So what exactly is Phantasy Star, and why should we care that it's finally out for us over the globe to get our hands on? Well, it's a Free-to-play MMORPG that performs the underappreciated task of combing two warring genres into one; that of Science Fiction and Fantasy. It's franchise launched all the way back in 1987 and it was a bustling RPG franchise for the SEGA of the day before it was bought to the online realms at the turn of the century. But you may naturally be wondering; "Okay, so which has the longer lineage, Phantasy Star or Final Fantasy?" One franchise clearly has a lot more games to it's name but which one began first, seeing as how they both count 1987 as their inception year? (What a year!) Well, as it turns it's Final Fantasy who launched their first game, get this, a whole two days before Phantasy Star in December. (To think, two huge RPG series spawned literally within the week from one another. FF on the Friday, Phantasy Star on the Sunday. Wild!)

Perhaps one of the best things about this series, something shared by just about every Japanese RPG out there but by practically no Western RPG, is the way that most of the games have no shared universe or even story from game to game; meaning new players can start anywhere they want to. The games share similar terminology and concepts, but the stories and worlds are fresh each and every time. (However, Phantasy Star does have a habit of leaning on it's previous games more than other similar RPGs, so that there's actually only currently 4 distinct Phantasy Star timelines as opposed to Final Fantasy's 15 for the mainline series alone. Or 13 if you still believe in the scrapped Fabula Nova Crystallis storyline like I sorta do.) The amount of freedom this opens up for creators when they enter the franchise is liberating, and it's no wonder why this franchise, Suikoden, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest all borrow from the same playbook in this fashion.

As for the game itself and what that is about; I'll be honest I'm a little out-of-the-loop myself. Growing up without these games in my half of the world has sort of allowed me to wholly ignore them like a heathen and now that they're here I really don't want to just read a summary or watch a lore-video to catch myself up. (I want to play it.) But from what I can see displayed simply by the trailer alone; this game propels players to a distant solar system full of strife against fabulous monsters and curiously familiar races that one might expect from a fantasy world, (I see them pointy ears!) with the added benefit of intergalactic strife thrown in there, I'm told. Honestly, though, the space-age tech doesn't set this game that far apart from Japanese Fantasy RPGs. (Have you seen the stuff Rex and Shulk lug around for Xenoblade? They might as well be space-hopping heroes.)

On the topic of aesthetics, I'd say that this is a game that pretty looks exactly as one would expect from this sort of game, heavily anime, with a rather curiously plastic-y aesthetic to the characters. I'm not going to lie, I'm not a huge fan of the direction this game has gone for realising the humans in this world, in that they seem to have been made with the right materials to look like they belong in the environment around them, but not the detail to exactly look like 'humans' in that world. That being said, I understand that this is an MMO so some concessions have to be taken regarding the strain given to the engine, but even then; Phantasy Star Online 2's base game seemed to have better models for the characters.

But wait a moment, did I just refer to Phantasy Star Online 2 as a separate entity from this game? Well, let me explain. Phantasy Star Online 2 was actually announced for the western world in 2019 with a mid 2020 release date; meaning that it was already out by the time of the Xbox conference which inspired this article. So what exactly was the conference trailer about then? (Well ain't that just the question of the hour...) So, 'Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis' is a new release of Phantasy Star that appears to be set to launch simultaneously in the West and the East in an apparent effort to bridge this gap between the fans. The new release will bring a bevy of new updates including a graphical overhaul and an 'open field of play' to make navigation flow more naturally; but crucially is not a replacement for PSO2. In fact, this game takes place 1000 years later than that game. But it also doesn't appear to be a successor either. Confused yet? So am I. These games will co-exist, share avatars and apparently both be supported. (SEGA really want to run themselves ragged with this one, huh?)

There's only so much that can be said by someone like me, with little to no experience with this huge world, which is partially why I'm looking to get into the game before my next blog to understand it a bit better. (That, and I could really use a new MMO to be excited about again.) I'm always tickled by the prospect of weird Japanese fantasy worlds and will rarely miss the chance to jump into a new one when presented, call it my otaku side jutting out. Whether the game turns out to be a huge new thing for western players or stumbles under the weight of it's Microtransactions (Which I've heard some grumbling about already) I'm always happy to see new perspectives enter the market and am still waiting for a PC Suikoden port. (That's besides the point, but I'm adamant.) In the year or so between now and the launch of 'New Genesis', maybe it'll be worth throwing an hour or two away to a game that just might be different to any other Massive Multiplayer title you've played before. (I know I will.)

Biohazard Village. (Not that one)

Well you're out early

Imagine my surprise when there I was, looking through the headlines this morning, and I heard that Biohazard Village had released. "What?" I thought "A surprise release out of the blue, well that seems pretty hasty, even for Capcom!". What a huge shock it was, afterall, for the latest Resident Evil game to drop on September the first with absolutely no fanfare, for less than 2$, and sporting the traditional Japanese title of the series rather than the international one. Why, if I didn't know any better I might even be suspicious of such an out-of-nowhere release, especially coupled with the curiously low effort Steam page. It's almost as if someone- Yes, of course this isn't the actual Resident Evil, but boy did I know the second I heard of this ballsy attempt at identity theft that I had to cover it in another of my favourite little rabbit-hole dives.

I had to move quick for this one, because more than just looking like a badly made game, 'Biohazard Village' had the boon of sharing a title with a game which is undoubtedly trademarked in Japan at least. I mean, I'm not expert on legalities or anything like that but even I could tell this title wasn't long for this world, and that's likely why the game was never more than 1.20$ on steam. (Of course, with a launch-day discount.) Yet even with me looking this up literally the second after I read of it's existence, on September 2nd, I was too late. (Stream certainly is fast when the shovel-ware crap actually has some legal paperwork against it, ain't they?) Lucky for me, some incredibly foresightfull folk, some Library of Alexandria-level preservationist, managed to capture a late hour snap-shot of that page on the wayback machine, so we can do a little bit of time-travelling to look back ourselves. (What a wonderful world we live in; where nothing is ever forgotten and all is eternal in memory if nothing else. And we wonder why The Patriots wanted to censor the influx of 'useless' information that they saw as detrimental to the evolution of humanity, what short-sighted fools.)

So what can we see straight up about this blatant Resident Evil rip off without having to engage any remote brain power; well how about the logo which, alone, would be enough to set off the nervous chattering of litigator's teeth. So the devs used the trademark-neutral Biohazard warning sign for their logo artwork, completely fine if appropriately unoriginal, but then they decided to spell out the title with the Roman Numerical VIII superimposed over the word 'Village' which just boggles my mind. Why even bother do that? This isn't the eight entry of your franchise, that just highlights the connection! And this wasn't even a holdover from the team ripping off the artwork for the original game either; it's in a different font with different colouring than the Resident Evil VIII logo, meaning they specific made this title card to infringe on Capcom's copyright as much as humanely possible. (Great publicity move, I'm not gonna lie.)

But what is this game about, honestly and truly? Because maybe this just a highly suspicious and hilarious mistake, and this game actually is about a village in the middle of nowhere that suffers from a toxic waste leak. That would be fine, if it were. The game would still be subject to one hell of a slap back from titling but at least one could conclude the mistake was innocent. Let's look to the description: "BIOHAZARD VILLAGE - This is a third-person shooter in which you will play as a girl fighting against a zombie in a town where a man-made disaster has occurred. People turned into zombies" Oh. Okay then. 'Man made disaster' - 'zombies', this is certainly stacking up in the wrong direction I'm not gonna lie. Also, the description said 'town' when the title clearly states 'village'. (Those are different things, if that even needs to be said.) "There is only you, your weapon and a huge number of zombies in the post-apocalyptic village. You must win to survive." Sounds like a lot of thought and effort went into constructing this little masterpiece, doesn't it?

And as though to dig that final nail into their own custom-tailored coffin, for some unfathomable reason 'Forest Games' thought it clever to literally have the protagonist's model (for this is a third person game) literally be Claire. That is Claire Redfield; instantly recognisable and beloved Resident Evil protagonist who's mere silhouette is enough to set off every single copyright infringement alarm at Capcom HQ. Again, this is a choice that makes no sense given, as far as we know, Claire doesn't even appear in Resident Evil VIII, making the bait even weaker. Unless the Devs were literally hoping for that base recognition to kick in before any other logical part of someone's brain did, impelling them to buy without a second look. Or thought. (Surely this cost more to put on the Steam Store than it was ever gonna earn in pity purchases.) Also, for some reason it's Resident Evil 2 Claire, but in the original's garb rather than just ripping off the model for the New Claire which has been exported for over a year now. Why bother with any pretence anymore? Why not just literally steal Capcom's assets? In for a penny- as they say.

What are the selling points for a game like this, you may wonder, how do they plan to rope in the unexpected consumer who, by the grace of all the gods, might not have heard of the most popular horror franchise in the world? Well the Steam page has some blinding sales points right there to pull literally anyone into it's gravitational magnetism. You have 'Third Person'; yeah, already noticed that one myself, but they might be trying to tell us all that this is a retreat back to the more personable days of recognisable and fleshed-out horror protagonists that don't just exist as analogues for the player. I dig it. 'Cinematic Picture'; okay, this one is less apparent but perhaps they wanted to hint at a the cinema inspired eye of the auteurs who framed this piece of art, taking cues from classic cinema in an almost Kojima-esque manner. And then there's 'Post-apocalyptic atmosphere'; which isn't so much a feature... but could be indicative of the unflinching manner in which Forest Games seeks to explore the raw symptoms of the human condition by stripping away the pomp and obfuscation of life, allowing that crass, rough, real body to be revealed through it all. Truly these people are visionaries, give them their medal right now.

You might be wondering about this 'Forest Games' and who they are, well for one I can say that they have an absolutely terrible studio name if they intend to ever actually be taken seriously. (Which I'm not entirely sure they do.) Try to look them up and the first thing you're going to see is the very popular horror video game 'The Forest', meaning I had to go through their publishing tag to even find them. All to find out that the studio had literally one other game, (Or at least, one other surviving game. Who's to say how many copyrights they breached?) which appears to be another horror game released literally half a week before this one, boasting what looks like entirely paid-for assets and story about a pandemic. (hmm... I wonder where that plotpoint came from?) To be fair, at least that game, 'Panic Station' doesn't appear to be a direct rip-off as far as I can tell, and doesn't feature a 'More like this' bar that literally links searchers to the series they are imitating. (Come on Steam, what are you doing?)

Now one could, and has, argued (down in the reviews) that this is likely just a joke game and thus is worth cutting a little bit of slack. However, this is a joke game that requires a fee to entry, and once that happens it becomes a little bit more of a questionable affair when it's a game made to emulate the appearance of another anticipated title. (Even if it costs barely a pittance.) I almost see this like the video game equivalent of those straight-to-dvd films that are made to look as similar to another movie as possible in order to siphon off of it's popularity to make quick buck, not as the harmless parody that it was perhaps meant to be seen as. All that being said, with the speed at which Steam cracked down on this game I think it's safe to say that they probably didn't break even, hopefully discouraging a potential cottage industry before it spawns. (or encouraging them to be more crafty in the future.) But hey, even if this was a serious attempt to capitalize on other's successes, at least it spawned a funny story or two along the way. Still, have to rate the game a 2/10: "Not enough Chonkers Chris."

The Medium

I can see both sides of the coin

I've laid into them before but I have to hand it to horror-developers, Bloober team, they sure are determined to become the renowned horror developers of our time. (Good on them.) Honestly, the sheer quantity of content they've put out in the later half of this decade is quite humbling, I have no idea how they've managed it with a relatively smaller studio like they have. (Okay, they're more 'medium sized' with over 100 employees) That being said, I have to admit that they haven't managed to hit us with their 'defining' game yet and that does make me worry a bit. 'Layers of Fear' was okay, I've never even heard anyone talk about the sequel, Observer was underappreciated and Blair Witch was... look, each to their own but I hated Blair Witch. Be that their circumstance, the studio are still at it and perhaps their resilience will pay off once this latest title, The Medium, drags us all into its hellish dreamscape.

Now for better or for worse, this is a game that I've twice misidentified as a surprise reveal for the next Silent Hill game. But seeing as how the team have mentioned their influence by those games, perhaps such a comparison is flattering for them, because this team have certainly nailed the look of those games. (Perhaps a little too well, truth be told.) The Medium, pits itself as another psychological thriller (this studio certainly has a type) which looks to put players in the shoes of a young woman with the power to communicate with a demonic otherworld of spirits and, probably, demons. (There's always demons in these sorts of games.) In the vein of it's inspirations, this means that there'll be a lot of puzzle solving alongside the usual affair of running from deadly monsters and slowly piecing together the mystery that draws our heroine to this abandoned locale.

What really sets The Medium apart from all the other games which have this similar set-up, and indeed even Silent Hill itself, is the 'patented dual reality gameplay'. This is the system where the player, at any point in time, can enter the spooky world of spirits and see a completely different layout around them, in the effort to solve puzzles, learn more about the past that haunts this place and, though it's yet to be confirmed, I'd imagine dealing with some enemies. Now what this essentially means is that the game engine is simultaneously rending two environments at once as you travel around whilst letting the player glimpse only ever at one, which is a lot easier than trying to find a way to get the engine to load another area insanely fast. This is the gimmick that Bloober Team are really trying to sell The Medium on, and it is an impressive display of next gen technology, I will admit. (Even if I just have to pretend that cancelled Legacy of Kain game didn't think of it first.)

The benefit of such a system, as displayed in their recent trailer and toted heavily on the official website (perhaps even 'obnoxiously') is that it inherently creates two different gameplay experiences depending on what world you're in at what time. As we see demonstrated, the world you occupy actually carries over to cutscenes (I assume that's only some cutscenes, but it could be all of them) resulting in there technically being two versions of practically every scene in the game. Who's to say there aren't details that one might miss from being in the other world at the time? It creates an incentive for players to dive back into the game if they want to piece together the things that they might have missed, in a similar vein to the way that Metal Gear Solid totes perspective shifts during certain cutscenes to lure back in the ultra-invested. (Although I don't know if it'll add a dimension onto some scenes in the way that MGS3 does.)

Personally, the aspect of this game which really does get my attention is in the way it sort of regresses from the common formula of the modern horror game scene. Namely, how they shirk the first person perspective in order to withdraw back to the third person which we had back in the days of the early Resident Evil's and Alone in the Dark. Now don't get me wrong, I understand why first person horror has become such a sought commodity in the modern world. The best of horror is achieved when the viewer is bought into the shoes of the one in danger and the most intimate perspective is the first person for that regard, but I've seen this practice done enough times to know that this almost always comes at the cost of storytelling. 'Amnesia: Dark Decent' arguably birthed this trend with a narrative which revolved around identity and so behoved the main character having no face and merely being an outlet for the exploration of the player, but not every game which followed Amnesia's shoes have had that excuse and that's resulted in a generation of cookie-cutter horror protagonists. Tell me the difference between Miles and Ethan, from Outlast and Resident Evil respectively; there is no difference because they have no character! And I find it hard to engage appropriately with a story and enter the situation immersively when I'm just expected to play myself in every game. Sure it works for limited experiences but for entire narratives it can become a bit of a mess.

Bloober team are essentially going against their own formula to make this change of perspective for The Medium and I commend them for it. It allows them to make the environment the key feature of this world, much like Silent Hill does, whilst not taking away from the extraordinary nature of an individual who can relate to this world. For the Silent Hill games this is essential, as the town of Silent Hill itself exists as a morality construct that delves into the darkest recesses of the mind in order to face people with their unburnished selves, and perhaps that's the same sort of parallel they want to set up for this Marianne. Whilst ostensibly the game will follow her journey to uncover the truth behind the murder of a child, and I think a pregnant woman is wound up in there too, I'd be very surprised if this didn't loop around back to Marianne somehow and the powers that she has. If it does, then we have the benefit of perspective to really sell such a story.

Finally, I must commend the visual design of a game that straddles two worlds like this as it does have an interesting effect on the feel of the game. As someone who really likes to break down horror games (those he's brave enough to play) I recognise how important the presentation of each location is as well as the horror genres they each pay homage to. (Resident Evil is a series in particular that touches on a lot of different ones.) The Medium, on the otherhand, appears to be trying for the rare achievement of catering to two different styles simultaneously, again, through the boon of their dual-reality system. The real world seems to play to the isolation and fear of being in a place that's abandoned and vacant; informed by the unsettling visuals of places that should be bustling with life (fun fairs, Malls etc.) but which are now dead. The world of spirits, however, looks openly harsh and hostile with it's swirling orange skies and imposing almost-alien backgrounds. They are two very different styles, one active and the other static, which I think has the potential to result in an experience inherently difficult to grow fully accustomed to, which may just help the psychological horror set it's roots.

Ultimately, I'm not really the biggest fan of Bloober Team's work, but I recognise them as a studio that really tries everytime they make a game and as long as that remains true I will never write them off. They seem to have forged a trend for mind-bending, and I feel there's a lot of room in the market for a studio to specialise in that, thus I respect their efforts. Though I will admit, it is due directly to Konami's reticence to work on their amazingly broad-potentiated Silent Hill franchise that makes me interested in this game, otherwise my attention would be firmly driven elsewhere. (I just love the Silent Hill premise so much whilst this one just sort of interests me.) Be that as it may, I hope Bloober team can take this opportunity to really blow the horror market away, prove me wrong, and make their mark for this game, before Kojima really does the impossible and gets on that SH game he's apparently headed for. For the time being the stage is yours, Bloober, don't waste it.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2

Who goes there?

Remember when I called this the year for surprises? No? Well neither do I specifically, but I think I said that somewhere. And it fits doesn't it; everything that could go wrong has done this year and some of us are left wondering if there's anything left worth going on for. Well I don't rightly know how to answer that but at least there are some cool games coming out in the near to far future. One such is quite surprising indeed to little old me, because I didn't think anyone remembered that old game or it's sequels. Of course, I'm talking about the S.T.A.L.K.E.R franchise, a game series dedicated to hardcore FPS experiences, the likes of which hasn't been properly realised after this series with an exception only to 'Escape from Tarkov'. (An online title which has been given the reputation of 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R's spiritual successor.') Yet despite that, afterall of these years we're finally having a real sequel announced in S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2.

Now the original, 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl', purposed a scenario in which you play as a scavenger known as a 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R' who prowls the disaster-struck ruins of Chernobyl in order to find artefacts and uncover a mystery. Sounds simple enough, only there's a lot more stopping you from getting your scavving done then just the odd bout of radiation. You have various factions of hostile gunmen wandering the wastes with a shoot-on-sight policy, you have rapid animals ready and willing to chew the face off of anyone who wonders up unto their neighbourhood, traps everywhere hoping to take out your kneecaps- oh, and the horrifying mutants and deadly anomalies who defy reason as they pick you up and drag you across the map with telepathy. So in that light I suppose one could be forgiven for thinking that it all sounds a lot like Fallout.

Except it's not really like Fallout at all. For you see, whereas Fallout is a happy-go-lucky world of post apocalyptic survival and wacky commentaries on patriotism, consumerism and any other Ism that Bethesda's writing staff happen across that morning, S.T.A.L.K.E.R is dead-set on capturing the grim atmosphere of battling for survival in a land without rules. This means that, for one, their gunplay is leagues less forgiving than Fallout's, often turning a bout against 5 men into a deadly duel defined by positing, flanking and patience. On the highest difficulty, you can pretty much expect to be taken down by a couple of bullets, so tactical awareness becomes the absolute name of the game if you want to survive any length of time in the dangerous badlands known as 'The Zone'.

In place of RPG mechanics comes scavenging for ammo in a vein similar to the Metro games, however even those games a quite a bit less hardcore than the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games. (Though they are a lot more immersive, I'll never take that crown away from Metro.) Survivors will be required to pick ammo off of corpses, gauge the times to fight with the times to run and make use of rudimentary stealth mechanics if they want to get to the heart of The Zone. It really captures this almost Souls-ian vibe of being at the absolute bottom of the foodchain at all times, making each encounter stand out as a thrilling, hair-raising struggle for every inch of ground. All this was achieved by a game from 2007 which, and I'm being as fair as I can here, looks like total ass in today's world. Look past those graphics and somewhat clunky controls and you'd find a surprisingly solid survival game here that puts a lot of what the genre is today to shame. They didn't need any food or water systems to dictate the survival, just a hyper focus on the gameplay to a brutal degree. (There was a hunger system, but it was in the background, instead of the forefront.)

The legacy of the hardcore shooter game has become lost and diluted in the recent years of FPS', as everyone's tricked themselves into thinking that COD's arcadey shooting is the height of haptic fidelity, or that Battlefield's slower combat somehow makes it the arbiter of tactical planning. Where these games all fall short, however, is in that moment-to-moment feeling of being perpetually outmatched by your environment and one stray bullet away from death at anytime. As I mentioned before, only the online shooter 'Escape from Tarkov' seems to get the memo, and that's literally made by folk who were inspired by this game and at least two devs who worked on it. So not only has S.T.A.L.K.E.R been denied the widespread acclaim and recognition it deserves, but only a handful of people really even respect it's legacy. What a sad state of affairs.

The revival of the franchise, sporting just the name 2, was heralded with a suitably macabre, but frustratingly vague reveal trailer. Yes, it's amazing to know that S.T.A.L.K.E.R is back, but I want just the briefest of glimpses as to what that'll look like. Judging by the way that the newest game doesn't even have a prospective launch window, however, I think it's fair to assume that this new game might not be too far along in development. Hell, they might have just been cleared to make it the week previously, there doesn't even appear to be any in-game screenshots circulating around the web, just concept art. All the know is thus, that the game is going to be set in an open world, which does change things up for the franchise a little as they've always operated in open hubs up until now. But, not to be ungrateful, thus is expected in today's day-and-age, and I'd much rather hear about the ways that S.T.A.L.K.E.R intends to evolve in order to meet the demands of today's survival market, because I worry.

If I'm being brutally honest with myself, and I feel I must, then I have to admit that I think it's inevitable that this new S.T.A.L.K.E.R, especially with it's open world tag, will probably feature some sort of crafting mechanic. Previous games have alluded to the way that the Zone and it's uniquely mutated creatures can be used to sustain itself, but the player has never been able to really take advantage of that, as crafting is now a dime-a-dozen in every game it only makes sense for this one to get in on the action. (Although, I really must stress that Crafting is hard to get right and oh-so-easy to make feel like a redundant, tacked-on mess.) On a more positive note, however, the new game with it's new engine and open world setting could allow for the addition of cool new systems like dynamic weather effects and other little features that can help bridge that gap with the brutal realism we've come to love this franchise for.

At the end of the day, there's precious little to really talk about in regards to S.T.A.L.K.E.R, and that does frustrate me just a little. (Even more than the fact that this game is labelled 2 despite being the 4th in the franchise.) Yet in that same vein I must admit it's the mystery of these games and the worlds they contain which makes up for a lot of the allure, so I'm a fellow of two minds right now. We could have done with a release window, though. (Just tell us if we should be waiting 2 years or 5.) I'm glad to see Mircosoft giving this series it's due with an official reveal at their event, and I wonder if they'll be willing to ramp up on this admittedly niche title once development starts wrapping up. (You need these sorts of games, Mircosoft, don't leave them to the wayside!) Most of all, I'm just happy to see this franchise still kicking after all these years, I need something to replace the Fallout-shaped hole in my heart afterall...