Resident Evil is dead (The Netflix show)

 I'm crying and shaking right now

Wow is me, how could this possibly happen? How could the fates be so utterly cruel as to land upon my head with their violent rage? How could the thread of promise that was a Resident Evil series wherein Albert Wesker's daughter sarcastically wills 'Zootopia porn' into the canon of the franchise come undone in some executives chamber? And why is this the first time I've ever been given hope by the machinations of corporate America? Resident Evil, the Netflix show, has been killed off. Finito. Done. It's been shot directly in the brain box; this corpse ain't reanimating, and we've set the damn thing on fire so it doesn't pop up as a bloody crimson head either. It turns out in the spate of troubling business decisions by the Internet's latest raging dumpster fire, Netflix, they were going to get something right, even despite of themselves.

Resident Evil is the latest in the recent revolving door of video game adaptations that slammed right into the ground in front of everybody, but unlike it's cousin over at Paramount, Resident Evil had the good graces to bow itself out of the running. Yes, if you lack any sort of taste whatsoever you might have gone through Halo and then Resident Evil and asked "What's the big deal?" And 'the big deal' is that these properties are repeatedly being 'treated' to low effort, low ambition TV detritus that tries it's utmost to leverage the name of the brand it is associated with to try and secure fans without the hard work of making something worthwhile to begin with. Effort is hard, just take my word for it. Why not profit from someone else's effort? (That's literally what I do everyday. Without the profiting part. Damn, I really need to learn how to start making money off of the stuff I do.)

Halo series 2 is a go already, which I guess means we'll at least get to see a Halo before that raging cinematic bonfire eats itself out, but Resident Evil didn't even really have a game plan at all. They didn't try to play all that much to the locations from the game, they intentionally set themselves in a separate continuity to those games and threw off any and all attempts to establish anything interesting expanding the world of Resident Evil, which is really what step 1 of an adaptation should be about doing, no? Instead we got a lukewarm zombie show, not even worthy of sharing the same air space as The Walking Dead, even in that show's current state, that tries to provide little name drops here and there but ultimately gives up in favour of teen angst intercut with post-apocalyptic survival scenes, with each setting given just enough screen time that you are left invested in neither. Truly the talents of experts.

And the thing is, I had hope for this show. I had hope because there is a legitimate ground for a Resident Evil style TV experience to be good; if only anyone with passion were willing to attack it. Hiring Lance Henrikson in literally any role ever is a great idea. Hiring him as an Albert Wesker with practically no similarities to the overly campy leather-donning super villain from the games beyond one eye-poppingly lame dress-up scene is less so. Getting creative with the designs of the zombies is where this franchise makes its bread and butter; but setting most of the narrative away from those zombies is deeply questionable at best. Hiring CW grade writers for the show really just underlines the sort of audience you expect to be drawn to this; and I'm not sure if it's the same audience that are into a franchise as old as 'Resident Evil'.

I get it, I really do; there's that expectation among these TV producers that the fans of video games are others from the regular TV watching society. They're social awkward shut-ins who haven't seen the light of day for years and, as I sit here looking at my own drawn curtains, there is some truth to that; but there's also truth to the fact that quality tends to transcend audience barriers. You make a product that is good, and it will spread to people who aren't typically interested in that type of content. You make something that's bad, and it might just repel the people who typically are. Netflix has been immune to good or bad show production over the years, pumping out so much content that they honestly needed to bring the axe to some of their great ongoing shows for fear of running out of advertising space on their budget sheets. But now, with tighter belts, reputation is going to have more of a sting for the Netflix boys, and a pig's sty of a show like RE ain't going to be long for the world as it might once have been.

The problem with game adaptations are two fold; the money men don't want to put in the money and effort to make it work; and the ideas they choose to adapt don't make sense in the first place. They want to do a Metal Gear Solid movie? Why, so that we get an action-packed romp full of moments where Snake fails at being sneaky? A Last of Us show? So that the game which was designed to feel like a movie can be reverted into being a long form movie? Progressing us... backwards, then? And don't get me started on the Uncharted movie; I've done a whole bloody thesis on how fundamentally hairbrained that concept even was. Every step of the way we have projects destined for a nose dive, such that the community loses their mind when a video game movie manages to be not terrible. Congratulations Sonic the movie, for that most basic of accolades.

The Resident Evil movie franchise may have also been responsible for bastardising the licence so that the director could provide an action vehicle for his wife to star in; but somehow those movies ended up feeling closer the source material than this show ever did. Maybe that's a consequence of those movies actually taking us to areas suffering from a zombie apocalypse, rather than a high school where the characters get bullied. God; there was so much potential for a show like this... Imagine if they had just jumped in at a period right adjacent to the games? We could have done vampires and werewolves and mold monsters and all that cool stuff! Instead we got mediocrity. And cancellation. Well deserved, I might add.

The producer of the show, who also worked on Supernatural, almost seemed eager to egg on this projects demise. Before the first series was even out he was doing interviews talking about how he wanted this show to go on longer than Supernatural, "Resident Evil 10 seasons, Resident Evil a Hundred seasons." He was talking doing Lady D and Las Plagas; but only as a reward for enduring ten or so seasons of tepid crap, and I'm sorry but that's not how it works. If you can't deliver something palatable for the first dish, why the hell would I stick around for the thirtieth course? The man was begging to have the show cancelled. And now it is. Another death knell in the Netflix catalogue proving that the 'quantity over quality' model really is a losers game. But hey, maybe they'll be hope for the Fallout series? >Groan<.

What is up with 343 Industries?

 Wasted potential, mostly.

For many successful and excitement-filled years, Bungie were the custodians of Xbox's most recognisable flagship series; that of Halo. Such was their relationship that one could look as Bungie as just the game development arm of Microsoft proper, an appendage to the Xbox body, a hand guided by the Bill Gates brain. (And funded. Is that how hands work?) But their love affair could only ever last so long, and like two sweethearts leaving for different colleges, Bungie one day had to depart from Xbox and the baby they sired and nurtured together; young Halo, now coming into his teens and frighteningly promising. They had a new future with Destiny, and that's a whole can of worms I don't have the mental fortitude to open right now. But Bungie did not leave Halo rudderless. No. Instead they peeled off a piece of themselves, a contingent of faithful's that would bear the name of the Guilty Spark and adopt the role of 'Halo Custodian'. With their fanatic passion Halo would be on the verge of new horizons that the fans could only dream of; it would be the dawn of a new, golden age. And what the heck happened to that dream, eh?

I dramatized. Obviously. It's what I do, I'm a drama queen. But the basic facts are very much true. Bungie went their own way after the release of Halo Reach and 343 Industries was formed in order to fill that void; however I think that was more a move from Microsoft than Bungie. I can't even say how many of Bungie's staff remained with 343, if any; which is significant when it comes to answering the question: What in the heck happened to Halo? Because something absolutely happened to turn it from what it was, a powerhouse industry contender that helped shape the face of First Person shooting for it's time, to what it is today, a straggler in the pack trying and failing to imitate that which makes the other players of the industry filthy amounts of money and respect. But to hone in on where 343 today I want to take some short steps on the journey; starting with Halo 4.

Halo 4 had a lot to live up to in being the first Halo without Bungie, picking up on a story that was left largely completed with Master Chief floating through space after having defeated the Covenant and destroyed a threat to all life in the galaxy, and developing for a gaming industry that had moved on quite some way. And what did 343 do? Their best... for what little that's worth. Two years after the subtle story of a planet falling to ruin in 'Reach', 343 resurrected Master Chief and tried to erect a brand new narrative starring him that shifted the story away from an action-focused struggle of all humanity against a threat that totally overwhelmed them, to a wholly new, tonally distinct, story about the Chief being the latest in a long line of possible Space Jesus' who has been genetically orchestrated to kill this one big ugly super villain guy whom he eventually defeats by, and I'm not kidding here, punching him in the face and sticking a grenade on him. The entire human race was specifically orchestrated over millennia to birth both a man and the technology to arm that man, so that he could place a grenade on some dude. All in all, there was an attempt to evolve the story, at least.

But at the same time as that scathingly bad narrative set-up, 343 did try something very interesting and new, not just for Halo but for gaming at that time altogether. They tried to set up a live service! I'm not kidding, all the way back in 2012 343 were on that train! I guess some of Bungie rubbed off on the guys! Their idea was pretty cool too, an extra mode called 'Spartan Ops' where you played multiplayer co-op levels with your friends across a series of maps. Each map was predated with a hefty 10 minute cutscene and the needle of the plot slowly moved forward as you completed actions and objectives. And the 'Live' aspect came from the fact that the team would keep adding new levels and expanding the story all the way up until the release of Halo 5 Guardians. The only problem? The levels were trash! Yeah, it's not like you were playing levels that aped the quality of the main campaign, obviously not that would take too much time to develop; but these levels were literally just big arenas with endless waves of enemies attacking you at every objective. There was no nuance, no creativity and no reason to come back to this content week after week. 343 overpromised what the production rate of their studio was and ended up having to rush out low quality content just to meet their own deadlines. Sound familiar?

'Halo 5: Guardians' had none of those machinations as far as I can tell. And that's because the team learnt quickly about their limitations from Halo 4 Spartan Ops. And the fact that Halo 5 didn't need any help being bad. I'm slightly talking out of my arse here as, still, the MCC has not received a Halo 5 update and thus I haven't played the thing; but I did follow the game closely when it first launched; I remember the fan vitriol. I remember them bringing back the god-awful Prometheans and turning them into recurring boss fights. (which I now know to be more boss fights than Halo has ever had in the past.) I know the story was apparently a long process of spinning wheels with characters who don't matter as 343 tried to stretch the one plot point they had over the course of a whole game, and I remember there being some contention about how the multiplayer mode was handling customisation. My account my be sporadic and lacking detail, but by-and-large those are the failures 343 made with Halo 5.

And now we come to Infinite. Halo Infinite has received oodles of praise for its single player which proved to be 343's best yet. (You know, after they exorcized all the story elements and new faction enemies they added and returned to Bungie's framework franchise from 2010.) Infinite is said to have not taken any real risks with it's main story, and been somewhat lacking in terms of significant narrative progression; but the game is fun to screw about in and that's saying something after their last two outings. So where do the issues come in? Well it seems that 343 grew a little too big for the britches again when it came to providing for the other key pillar of Halo; the multiplayer. I'm not a big multiplayer guy so hearing all of these tribulations and discussions was essentially like overhearing your parent's arguing from the front porch. You don't know what it's about and you sort of don't want to. But eventually you'll find out that Halo just isn't what it once was for a lot of people, and is trying to be something more despite that.

Live service! It always comes back to live services for this team, doesn't it? This time they're much less 'ahead of the ball' however, but just as unprepared for the commitments of this style of content delivery. The base multiplayer package suffered from considerable progression problems that made 'challenges' the sole way to improve your rank instead of just playing the game how you wanted. And since then 343 have meandered at a snail's pace to try and update that multiplayer mode with such things as: a free-for-all mode trickled in bizarre placed production value in it's introduction belying a much more grandiose release of this content that had to be scaled back as their deadlines started rushing them. Several months are going by with absolutely no content at all; and players are falling off into MCC or just off Halo entirely as attention is siphoned off to much more regularly maintained competition. Which is everywhere, by the way. Halo may not be rudderless, but it's sure feeling like 343 is.

So what is going on with 343 I ask? Mismanagement and overpromising that has led to disappointment after disappointment. They have a nose for ambition shoved far further than their grasp for achievement and it's hurting consumer trust every time they reach short of implied potential. And it has gotten to a point where fans are growing sick of them and their failures. Halo has only shrunk in prestige since they've taken the helm, and though the name is loud enough to score a bad TV adaptation, it's not enough to earn a serious place in the 'actively played games' list anymore. Perhaps 343 was never truly up to the job of handling such a large franchise, and expecting otherwise was unrealistic of Microsoft, them, and us. But does that mean it's time for them to reassess their talents and direction, or time to make a change altogether? That, we will soon find out. 

Saints Row: the franchise of mids

 Sing it off to Valhalla; chuckie!

So Saints Row is dead, I think that's a truth without question in the eyes of most with the powers of basic observation available to them. Volition alienated their existing fanbase to cater to a new fanbase who, much to Volition's utmost surprise, expect fun and working products... which Saints Row... isn't. Luckily the game is going to get much more exposure and success than it deserves thanks to the brand it's borrowing from and the novelty of pointing and laughing at a trainwreck, but I think it's safe to say that after a mess like this no one with any industry sense is going to have any faith in Volition. Bare in mind that their last game, Agents of Mayhem, was another absolute misread of their target audience and how they should be marketed towards. That game sold as much as a Sunday market stand would, and whilst Saints Row is obviously going to do better than that on account of just how big this brand used to be, something tells me it's not going to change the trajectory of the downward graph investor's are looking at when they examine the Saints Row franchise.

Which all means we've lost the potential viability of a franchise that, to be honest, had already run its natural course and ended up in a pit of mediocrity. Whilst I've never been a screaming, raving fan of the Saints Row games, I have played every single one of them and absolutely remember a time when they could be considered a real contender in the market. I've enjoyed just about every game in the franchise up until 4 wherein I lost interest entirely; and there even a moment where I could have been nutto for the series; but even Saints Row 2 didn't quite live up to my expectations at that time. You see, the more I examine it, the more I come to the same conclusion; that the Saints Row games have forever been and will always be mid. Apart from this reboot which is apparently an actual poor quality mess. So if long term viability is up on the table to be cut into ribbons; I'm saying it ain't no big loss.

If we go back to the very first Saints Row, a game that many people have invoked recently as if recalling some long-forgotten masterpiece that once graced a dirty and dull world; the game was just sort of alright. It was an obvious clone of GTA that didn't even really lean into the humorous aspects the franchise would become known for too much. If anything, they attempted to lean into the same sardonic view of contemporary and thematic issues and topics that the Rockstar franchise does, only without the vast talented writing talent to make it nuanced and fun. The gameplay was as bad as every open world game's gameplay was back then. The characters were fairly one-note and predictable. Although, and I recognise that this is as substantial as waving your hand over your eyes and declaring you've spotted the 'x-factor'; there is a charm to the game. It's not a chore to play, at least not the first time. The clunky dialogue and performances fit their era; and the city of Stilwater has personality to it; which is more than I can say for literally every other open world game that Deep Silver Volition has ever made.

Saints Row 2 was probably the moment where this franchise really stepped out for itself. When GTA was edging more towards realism, Saints Row was pointing and laughing whilst leaning more towards the inanity of video game craziness. That understated side of the original was blown up into the driving force of Saints Row 2, and most all the rest of the minigames and activities that have become such mainstays of the franchise that the team are incapable of envisioning any more, were born for this game. It played significantly better than Saints Row 1, simulated a more complete open world and just generally provided a very malleable playground for destruction, much as you'd might expect from the team behind 'Red Faction'. There was also a point in time when people used to laud the story for Saints Row 2, (which is broadly just the exact same framework as Saints Row 1 refitted to slide atop 2) as the 'perfect balance between comedy and drama'. In hindsight I can certainly say there is a balance, and it is somewhat effective; but that title of 'perfection' seems laughable in a post Yakuza 0 world. Just like Saints Row 1, 2 has sort of shrunken with age and whilst I still think the game stands out as 'respectable'; it's not a generational masterpiece like the PS2 era GTA games are. One might even call it... mid tier.

Saints Row 3 was when the series got stuck. They tried to balance a tightrope with Saints Row 2, and that showed them their audience reacted best to the silly content, so they made a game leaning more into all the zaniness. Now it was all about throwing as much craziness as they could logic out: stripper assassins? We can make it work. Dildo Bat? Amazed we didn't do that earlier. Text-based adventure segment? It would have to be brief, but we could swing it! Zombie invasion? Oh, well that just sounds like a piece of cake! All of which resonated with a lot of people out there who saw Saints Row as the sillier brother to GTA, but which came at the cost of the open world. Steelport has been Volition's worst open world. A stale, grey, industrial block entirely lacking in character and distinction. And as the world became more boring to explore, the activities provided therein became more of a chore than a distraction. A check-list of 'do this for X reward' instead of 'do this because it's fun'. Progression in some angles, regression in others. Perfectly middling.

And then Saints Row 4 went off the deep end. Like your drug addict friend that you watch slowly lose all grip on themselves; Saints Row slipped into the crazy and went too far with it. Not to the point where it became offensive; but to where it became boring and predictable. Rather than be a great game in it's own right with comedic elements, Saints Row decided it was going to become a parody of it's own genre and mock any others it could get it's sights on too. Stakes stopped mattering, characters stopped developing, (which, as much as I knock Saints 3; they were still progressing as characters until 4) nothing had any weight to it anymore; which made the act of breaking the rules inconsequential. Heck, they blew up the earth and replaced it with a matrix-like simulation, subconsciously erasing all stakes and giving them the go-ahead to do whatever they wanted. And when logic doesn't matter anymore, the question then comes up about how crazy you can go; and Volition just aren't that creative. It was all pretty bland-silly, not head-churning silly, and to call the game 'mid' is honestly something of a glowup.

Agents of Mayhem is a curious matter. Created as a kind of clean break away from what Saints Row was becoming, whilst staying beholden to it's brand and a choice selection of its character's in a confusing display that made the marketing as convoluted as the Wii U's. The original pitch appeared to be that it was a television show set within the Saints Row universe, but that couldn't be possible because the entire earth was destroyed at the beginning of 4. And then Johnny Gat was in the show? How could that be? He was killed in the 'real world' which meant he'd have some trouble playing himself on TV. (Also, he was one of the gang that believed the celebrity-status was 'selling out', so he wouldn't star in a show anyway.) Basically, no one knew what Agents of Mayhem was supposed to be even contextually let alone in gameplay. (They kind of made it look like a hero shooter.) And so the game sold about five copies. I was not one of them, I can't really attest to if the game was another mid or not.

Which brings us back around to the reboot. Saints Row is not the golden standard of the industry so delivering a thoroughly average game is not, in itself, a betrayal to the shining ideals of the franchise. However, delivering a hardly functioning mess knocks an average down to a pitiable low. Also, I hear tell that Agents of Mayhem is still increadibly buggy five years after launch, so it's somewhat possible that Volition leave Saints Row in a decently shoddy state when they abandon ship from this cursed franchise. Does that mean we'll never get the masterpiece that Saints Row is capable of? Honestly, I don't think this series ever had itself a firm enough grasp on it's own identity in order to create that masterpiece. It's entire life it has existed purely within context of others. Saints Row 1 was Grand Theft Auto but scrappier and back to 'the streets'. Saints Row 2 was 'Gta but fun and silly again'. Saints Row 3 was 'your typical open world game but crude and wild where it's purpose is to make meta jokes on as many pop culture topics the team can think of', and Saints Row 4 was just an episode of Family Guy but a game. Maybe somewhere in the minds of Volition's the point of this reboot was to give Saints Row that identity, as the game that identifies with the modern struggling young adults; but they're fear of committing to a new direction, whilst simultaneously fearing associating with what came before, led to a final product totally pulled apart at the seams.

I've got it: Playstation are sabotaging themselves!

 How honourable!

I just couldn't piece it together! For the longest time I was sitting around scratching my dome about how it could be that Sony couldn't read the room and see how all of their recent decisions were stacking them up as the big bad guys of this console generation. I mean there's making some necessary decisions that are hard on the ear, and then there's violently strong-arming the industry to try and force a new standard of premium pricing so that your own price tags don't feel so scandalous. A price tag that, thankfully, the others of the industry seem to be stepping back from. Oh, and doing all of this in the middle of a world wide cost of living crisis isn't exactly a great look either, it must be said. But I've talked about all this before, what could Sony possibly have done since then to solidify my conspiracy theory that Sony themselves are orchestrating their public relations assassination?

It's something that has been bubbling up for a while but is now coming to a starling head. Sony are on the verge of, having officially announced this to be definitely real, bumping up the price of their PS5 console completely arbitrarily. Without offering anything new, without promising any improvements down the line, Sony want to slap another £30 on the price tag worldwide in a bizarre display of equipment becoming more expensive with the years instead of less. This is on top of them making their first party games all £10 more expensive, their competition to the Xbox Game Pass being a lacklustre and incomparable challenger, and the general sense that Sony are alone in this coming push to try and squeeze blood out of their already hurting consumer base. Aside from Square Enix, but they need the money because they just made several increadibly bad major business decisions in recent memory.

The announcement had been speculated on for a while and dismissed as wild speculation probably drummed up by console warriors looking to extrapolate on a worrying trend for hope of discrediting the competitors; but with the recent confirmation of validity I think everyone has become a bit stunned. Not least of all Xbox and Nintendo, who fired up their Twitter accounts to score the easiest PR wins of the generation by simply declaring that their consoles are going to retail for the exact same plan that they were already selling for. If Sony were looking to start a earthquake and hide behind the landslide, they failed and ended up being the lone fool shouting out their sins on the mountainside to the horrified despair of everyone watching. Microsoft probably don't even need to sweat making a choice like that, they can eat any potential cost that Sony is folding on, but Nintendo are really going outside of their comfort zone not immediately jumping on an opportunity to make a quick buck. They've made some real personal growth in the recent years, I'm proud of them.

How many liberties are Sony going to take before someone tells them to stop? I mean, someone who actually matters to the Sony folk, us nobodies are simply leaves blowing in the hurricane to them. Are they going to turn around and up the price of their game subscription service, ensuring it becomes even harder to match Game Pass? Are they going to start upping the tax of games going through their service by another 20%, making it totally untenable for indie devs to release on Playstation at all? Are they going to go through your back catalogue, spot every first party game that they've subsequently raised the price of since you bought it, and send you an invoice to make up the change? Ridiculous suppositions all, but so was price hiking their console several years after its launch. There's no such thing as 'too far' for Sony in their bold, brave, new face for them.

So I got to thinking about why it could possibly be that the golden boys of the last generation are so eager to set themselves up as today's pariahs; and I think I may have landed on the golden ticket. You see, I think that Playstation is on it's villain arc; on purpose! No I don't consider this one of those yin and yang scenarios where peace must always be balanced with chaos, not for fear of some great calamity but just because the natural balance of the earth unconsciously shifts our reality into equilibrium like that. I think that Sony have made the conscious decision to position themselves as adversaries to the consumer and the hard won market lead they spent eight years securing. Because otherwise they would absolutely moronic for their recent conduct and I refuse to believe a company as successful as Playstation would abide stupidity. Heck, they're a Japanese company; those loathe indolence of all kind!

Mayhap it's a question of honourable rivalry between Sony and Microsoft; wherein Sony saw that Microsoft took so many missteps in the last generation and deeply feels for their plight to get back in the running. In such a supposition, I might conclude that Sony are giving up their lead so that Microsoft can maintain on equal footing to them; maybe in the knowledge that equal competition encourages the most tangible innovation. But nah, that's starting to sound like the moral of a Hallmark movie; surely there's a much more cynical heart beating at the centre of all this. And I suspect the name of that organ might be something along the line of 'exit strategy'; because anyway I look at it, that's what I think Sony is trying to pave the way towards.

As the world is slowly moving far away from physical content and ownership, despite the mad cawing off old fuddy-duddies like me, the question has come up again and again of what Microsoft and Sony are going to do. Plenty of times the title 'The last generation' has been waved; which is more than a little alarmist given that the prohibitive price of PC gaming necessitates the development of more affordable consumer consoles; but that a coming deadline might be approaching the home console market is a possibility. Perhaps Sony are more than susceptive of this eventuality, and has weighed up the value of their current market dominance with the potential of an early adoption to the next stage of home system gaming. No, I'm not talking about WEB3 crap; I mean the actual future of gaming.

I can't pretend to know what that is right now, but Google were certainly edging in the right direction for what Stadia was purporting to be, rather than for the disappointment it ended up being before it's 'back burner' status that it has suffered for the past year or so. Playstation, however, probably know very clearly what it is that they want to shift their business model towards, and maybe getting quick bucks off the current market whilst it's nearing it's zenith is the best move for the future. Maybe every penny of Sony's capital is going towards a brand new venture that is going to ape the next evolution of gaming before its clear to anyone else. What else would you expect from market leaders who have been ahead of the consumer demands for nearly a full decade until the PS5 launched? I'm not calling Sony's recent antics a death spiral, not yet. I want to wait and see the picture swim more into focus.

So... Saints Row...

Haters gonna hate

Final Destination is a movie franchise run under the premise that a destined death fortold by fate gets waylaid by those destined to die getting a premature vision of their demise through some unexplored phenomena. Try as they might to save themselves, and occasionally even avoid the headsman's axe, there's no escaping the fate laid out for them. I'd like to think of what became of the Saints Row Reboot as a 'Final Destination' moment; where so many of the world had that vision of exactly what this game was before it launched,  and try as they might to warn the rest of the world that couldn't quite make it out, their troubles were written in the unchanging stars. From the moment they revealed the bold new direction of Saints Row; it seem Volition were destined for destruction, although just how far the final product ended up going off the rails is a damn surprise, even to me.

Remember that this is a game that was delayed nearly half a year into 2022 in order to make sure that the thing ran right. Well it seems we might be having a bit of a Cyberpunk 2077 flashback here because despite all that extra development time we have a shockingly broken game being sold for full retail price in the current market of gaming. I thought there were basic standards that games had to meet in order to be listed on storefronts; but apparently not considering that the Epic Games version of the game launched with a bug where the Exe sometimes doesn't load the game and you need to brute force try the launch again and again until the game accidentally lets you through. All things considered, that's probably a pretty dire warning as to what you can expect from Saints Row as a whole. (Even the game itself is trying its best to ward you away; maybe we should have heeded it's advice.)

And the bugs don't end there. You have glitching out character models, weird camera lock bugs where sometimes vehicles jolt the camera in super zoom until you get out the car and get back in again, civilian AI seems to have two modes: routine and run away, the latter of which sometimes has them run directly into walls or into the thing they're supposed to be fleeing from, there's at least one captured example of a UI text box with placeholder text, some reports of UI disappearing altogether for periods of time, NPCs that disappear into thin air right in front of you, traffic that pops into existence right in front of you, and just about everything short of CTDs. That doesn't mean there aren't any Crash to Desktop issues; I've just not heard about any of them yet. All of this evidences a game that, rather obviously, was not ready to drop at prime time and to such a degree that there's no way the team were not aware of this when they put it up on storefronts for that laughable price-tag. And it all should have been frighteningly obvious to whatever board was certifying gold status for the game. Maybe Volition pulled the old "Whoops, we accidentally sent you a month's old build" to get around scrutiny. (Funny how often devs screw up build versions that you'd think would be clearly labelled. We need to set up some sort of industry standard for this stuff.)

But of course, those are just the barriers to getting into the content that Saints Row Rebooted has to offer; but what about if you're mister 'lucky' himself, the man-with-the-plan, what if you have a flawless play session? Well... then you get enjoy one of the most dated, lacklustre, empty, and cringe-inducing open world games on offer yet. You experience that game that Saints Row 4 was shaping up to be, before the decision was made to scrap the direction the franchiser was headed and just do nonsensical space/super hero crap instead. Only even then, at least the series would have some semblance of the Saints Row charm to fall back on, for those that still get a kick out of the same things that Saints Row writers do. (I realised they were a bit beyond my generation when 4 threw a cameo from Roddy Piper into the game and just expected me to know who that was.) The name game is, quite simply, just bland. But if you're into bland, and judging by the copium IVs that half of the Saints Row Reddit are on that is a common desire for gamers today, then Volition have that milquetoast, vanilla flavoured, store brand, open world- just waiting for your purchase. 

It's not just the fact that Saints Row has the ingenious idea of forcing it's side activity content into the main narrative progression so that you never have that 'go out and do your own thing' feeling you got back in Saints Row 2 where they told you to just go out and make some money and just left you to your own devices. Nor is it really the fact that even after all of these years the Volition team haven't had a single damn epiphany about a game-mode to add to the standard list. You've got 'Insurance Fraud', exactly as it's always been, bounties, bodyguard, chop shop (only with the whole car collection being a specific mission so that you don't have it be a metagame in usual play like GTA figured out is a more engaging way to do it since Vice City.) It's really the lack of even casual ways to interact with the world around you beside driving over dull and brain dead pedestrians. Why is this game even an open world? How can it justify that effort? It can't.

And beneath it all is this utterly bizarre sense that Saints Row is trying to 'clean up it's act' and become 'distance themselves from their problematic past'. What is meant by this is that the Volition developers made steps to try and erase the accusations of deeply offensive parts of Saints Rows past such as "homophobia, racism and sexual violence against women". And yes, you may have noticed how that list sounds like a questionable line-up of accusations if you've ever actually played those old games, and yes, I did steal that list off of 'DenOfGeek'. The truth is that Saints Row built itself off the ideals of irreverence in a very crude fashion telling jokes that appealed to shock factor above everything else, which made some of them more more flashy and prone to aging badly than more clever formed jokes might have. You can choose to try and twist this into some deeply offensive past to characterise a past of vicitmising that Saints Row had never been accused of in the moment, but that would be a little bad faith and an aggressive damnation of fans who charm in that silly 'chuck it all at the wall and see what sticks' approach.

The problem is that the Saints Row Reboot also falls for this bad faith assessment and aggressively tries to distance itself from the free-spirited, hope this shocking joke gets a laugh, past; whilst trying to slide itself into what feels like a watered down version of that exact same style of game making one wonder what the hell the team even wanted in the first place. For example, they've removed jokes like the car shop being called 'Rim Jobs', or the burger shop being called 'Freckle Bitches'. Two jokes that are literally only offensive to those who are sensitive to rude words, and Saints Row Reboot contains one mandatory section at the beginning where the player character swears for two minutes straight during a drive home. It's this tonal dissonance that alienates old fans and then fails to recapture them with a half hearted 'do-over' attempt that just feels pathetic and non-committal. Like slapping someone and telling them they're a vile scumbag because you two used to joke back in highschool, and then telling them half-forgotten badly told knock-off versions of those same old jokes desperately hoping they'll find them funny and be your friend again. That is the reason that even hardcore fans can't look past the bad writing or substandard gameplay like they used to. (Although to be fair, the fact that the gameplay literally hasn't changed since Saints Row 3 doesn't help their case much either.)

Dated, is the term throne around again and again but it's really just a part of a fascinatingly flawed whole. The game is broken and dated in a way that repels potential new fans, charmless and dismissive in a way that rejects old fans, and uninspired and bland in a way that utterly precludes all illusions of possible respect you might have for it. Some stragglers still definitely lift up their head and declare "I'm having fun with it" or, increadibly, "Don't knock it until you've played it!" To which I say, try playing literally any other game of it's genre or even previous games of the same series and you'll find your expectations of what a fun-time can be will be vastly expanded, and, the point of reviews is to be able to make informed decisions without wasting your money. No one should have to waste $60 to realise a game isn't worth that money. Plain and simply, Volition pooped the bed, and after a colossal screw up this bad, I can't possible imagine any publisher giving them the funding to attack this franchise again. So for the foreseeable future, Saints Row is dead. Killed in most pathetic and bland manner possible.

There's a Tintin game now

And nobody told me.

I'd wager there currently a decent amount of folk in the world right now who have no idea what a 'Tintin' even is and finds the assumption that they should know as somewhat condescending. But as a boy who grew up reading Tintin, watching the cartoon, and always thirsting for more of Hergé's work ever since; I find it a little insulting that anyone would not know who Tintin is. Because you see, Tintin is a rockstar. Not really, he's a journalist. But he's a world famous, investigating, deep sea diving, gangster battling, space exploring, kick ass hero of a journalist; all of which makes him even more rock and roll than a rockstar in my book! He, Snowy and Captain Haddock are also the front characters to one of the most enduring and beloved old comic series' to grace the entertainment medium, telling genuinely well drawn, funny and sometimes even quite poignant stories during his world adventures.

A brussels born native, Tintin's adventures would regularly take him all over the world to the middle of civil wars, dense jungles, snowy alps, sandy dunes and, as I hinted, even the surface of the moon. And his wide reach would not just be limited to the realms of the books; Tintin is a hugely recognisable 20th century icon for his and Snowy's iconic spotlight silhouette, a fame indicative of his vast appeal across the borders of culture and language and unto the future. So well was he renowned that Steven Spielberg, apparently the only man that Hergé ever considered correctly talented for an adaption of this work, made a great 2011 adventure movie about Tintin called 'The Secret of the Unicorn'. And then Steven subsequently disappeared behind the dozens of other projects he signed himself off to work on, and at this rate we're likely to see an adaptation of poxy 'Ready Player Two' before a sequel to that well animated and just all around fun first Tintin movie.

But if there is one medium that Tintin has never made a significant splash in, it's video games. For better or for worse, the realm of gaming has been largely devoid of the Belgian reporter's charming spirit throughout the rise of the entire gaming industry. There have been the odd outings here and there, but nothing that enters the lexicon of gaming. You'd have thought that in the decades of people plumbing every bloody fictional property to make some stupid tie-in game, we'd have gotten some 80's incoherent mess of a game that is attributed to Tintin's brand; and there is. Although 'Tintin on the Moon' does actually do a decent job of capturing his visual appeal, I'm actually rather chuffed with it's looks.  Outside of the movie tie-in game there hasn't been a single adventure game dedicated to really nailing the overall eclectic appeal of the Tintin stories. I suppose the franchise rights holders had the good sense to at least try keep the franchise respectable. Which is more than can be said for the Godfather rights holders. (I cannot believe there's two Godfather GTA clones; and that I've played and owned both of them.) Still, as gaming grows the powers that be were going to get their grubby mitts on Tintin sooner or later, so I guess today should not be as much of a surprise to me as it still, inexplicably, is.

Because yes, recently it was announced that there is a Tintin game in the works looking to adapt 'Cigars of the Pharoh'; I would say that's one of my favourite adventures but, cheesy though it is to say, Tintin goes back to such a pure part of my youth that quite literally every adventure has parts to them that make it a contender for my favourite. The developer behind the project, Pendulo Studios, seem like a scrappy little Spanish studio that have a tendecy to specialise in games that land better for Steam critics than Metacritics; and the publisher, Microïds, haven't been shy about announcing their delight for working on a property like this. They've gushed about the honour and promised to do it justice by the beloved fans of Hergé's work, which is all anyone really wants from a game like this. Yes, they do sound committed, that Microïds. Hmm. Microïds... Where have I heard that name before? I think- I think I've written that name in this blog before... yes, I have! And just what was that article covering again... Oh. Oh no.

So... Microïds. They're the guys behind the 'XIII Remake'. Yeah, that 'XIII Remake'. The one which screwed up the fundamental style of that comic-book based game, the general smoothness of the gameplay from a technical level (It was buggier than the Amazon) and the basic controls of shooting in a shooter so badly that the original XIII started to trend and sell more on Steam. In fact, it was this whole chaos that drove me to go out and buy the original, and it was a ton of fun I should add. Although to be absolutely fair to Microïds, they were involved in publishing the thing rather than developing it. (Although that does very much mean they're happy selling a god-awful product.) Actually, no. That's unfair. Microïds have dedicated themselves to funding a remake of that remake out of their own pocket to make things right; which is a hell of a lot more than a lot of bigger studios end up doing in times of disaster. You want a good comparison case? Take a very close look at how Volition are about to handle the next few months after the embarrassing Saints Row launch; you'll see the distinction.

Divorcing the unfortunate circumstance of the publisher from the game being made, I do wonder what it is that Tintin can bring to the format of video games that it hasn't already to other mediums. I mean what style of game is this even going to be? The video game tie in to the Spielberg movie was predictably low-concept, with the game being more about punchups and platforming; but I think there's a real potential for a Sherlock Holmes style investigation game here to be bought into the loop. Tintin is no stranger to action, of course, he's traded bullets with criminals and punch-up brawls with sailors. But he's more of an adventurer and investigator, not so much a pugilist. Or even a reporter, really. The intrigue of his stories are what brings a lot of them to life, as well as the exploration of various worldly locations and secrets. In a way, Tintin is the original Lara Croft and/or Indiana Jones. Although Indiana Jones did rather intentionally, have ties to old adventure pulp comic as well.

I think there's a decent case to be made that a Tintin game should balance itself between action and investigation gameplay in a manner beholden of, but not aping, the L.A. Noire model. Wherein you had specific scenes of mystery solving and mechanics built to flesh out that experience and well as some built for gun-fighting and how that played out. Of course, they maybe could tune down the open world aspects, but there's a game to mimic in those confines somewhere. And the cool thing is that when they manage to get a balance of gameplay that feels about right, there's literally dozens of great books to pull stories from that they can focus on next. If the team manage to pull this off they could go down a rabbit-hole of adapting as many great Tintin stories as the team can handle, improving their craft and riding off that strong name at the same time. It really is a dream licence to work with.

As a fan from childhood, I'm going to have a higher level of expectation than your average fan; but that's not born out of snobbish prejudice against anyone daring to touch my childhood, but a love for a set of stories that I really think could make a splash with a whole new generation through the medium of video games. I'm not expecting anything revolutionary that's looking to break any banks or rewrite what it is to be a game, but a special blend of excitement and intrigue that conjures up the charm of the Belgium reporter and his adorable dog's adventures would be more than enough to elevate any game experience like this into an idea worth paying attention to. I just pray they don't take the low route and make this an arcade game but looking at the devs I see a hearty dev team looking for their break. This may just be it, and I really hope that it is.

Sony is being sued

 That's a hefty chunk of change!

I am a pent up little cur, let me tell you. Just a bundle of vile distastes and wrapped up enragements that pops and boils over into making these little blogs as my outlet because I don't agree with the concept of psychiatrists. Wait- no actually I don't agree with the implementations of psychiatrists in our current ecosystem, which in a round-about-way is a product of manner in which they were conceived. (Potato/Potatoe) Which essentially is my way of saying that I complain a lot, about everything and anything under the sun in order to make myself feel better. I don't expect any of the issue I complain about to have consequence or to be shared by literally anyone else in the world. So when I start hearing talk about an bubbling Sony lawsuit to the tune of 5 billion; well, it surprises me; especially when it's for the reasons I myself hold issue with Sony.

Now of course, when it comes to Lawsuits like this, the name of the game is to throw some big stupid number out to try and scare the target into a settlement if they're susceptible to that sort of strong arming or, as is more likely in this case, drum up so much publicity that the march of public pressure can push on Sony to... reach a settlement. 5 Billion isn't even remotely on the table and it's a bit silly dangling that around headlines like it is. Also, I've been watching a simply obscene amount of Better Call Saul recently, so I can't help but find the prospects of such a lawsuit very pessimistic if it makes it to trial, which I don't even think it will. Whoever the lawyer who jumped ontop of this class action is definitely wants to get their quick payday before the coffers run dry and maybe see their name in a headline or two. I doubt anyone inside or out the industry is really taking numbers like this seriously; but at the very least this is forcing the start of a conversation.

Because you see, Alex Neill, the suit's Champion, is swinging around the big guns in rhetoric by accusing Sony of breaching competition law through abusing it's vast industry powers to impose unfair terms and conditions on publishers and developers, forcing up retail prices for consumers. And, well... she ain't wrong. I mean isn't it Sony (and their friends over in, aspiring-morons, Square Enix) that are pushing hard for a new standard of video games retailing at $70 brand-new? So much so that we're looking at a cash grab remake of The Last of Us that literally adds nothing significant to the experience aside from visual upgrades and yet is somehow going to release more expensive than the original game was when it launched. If that doesn't kick you in the gut and make you wonder exactly what the hell it is you're putting up with, then maybe it's about time you start reassessing the leeway you give video game development companies.

Of course, as with every class action dispute in gaming these days, the root figures are drawn from exorbitant market cuts. Sony takes 30% from all purchases made through their API, squeezing every developer for all their worth. Alex Neill knows the sorts of pressure points to push on, her being a professional complainer herself with her company 'Resolver group'. She also wants to rope in literally anybody who has purchased anything from the Sony store since August 2016; which is a very broad brush to paint with, as I'm sure she knows by pulling up such a ridiculous figure to argue with. Of course the real kicker, the reason why this does have a significant 'hearts and minds' angle that Alex and her legal advisors are wisely addressing, is the fact Sony's expensive machinations are heating up the most right now, in the middle of a global cost-of-living crisis. Heck, if theses guys hire their own Saul Goodman to the case they could even twist this angle into making out Sony as unintentional war profiteers! It would be bad faith as heck, but it sure as hell would make a great headline!

But even with boring real lawyers there is definitely a case for this suit to try and drag Sony's name in the mud whilst bringing it's more brow-raising practices to the public light. Honestly, that's the only way we're going to really be able to address some of crap Sony has been pulling in a way that effects change. They're already trying to pave over the claims that The Last of Us Remake is a cash grab by claiming those complaints come purely down to some critic on the work ethic of the game and not the flagrantly over embellished price tag that they pushed for in the first place! And Square Enix have really shown their weak belly after recent, very public, internal failures in management; if this lawsuit can do something similar to Sony there's a real chance of knocking the wind out of this "Current gen means 70$" normal that these ghouls want to try and establish whilst everyone is riled up about 'NFTs' and 'Metaverses'.

Honestly, I have been worrying somewhat about the bad habits that Sony were perpetrating, because the truth is that if anyone can force a bad trend into becoming an industry standard, it's the folks that are currently leading the push of quality in one key half of the industry. Sony are single-player leaders, their games reach a standard of quality that is very difficult to match, and they maintain that standard with exclusionary privilege. (Just ask the Days Gone directors. After they're finished blaming their fans for not being rich enough, of course.) And that goes for the standards set for in-store cuts as well. As we move into the anti-physical age, actual boxed copies of games are becoming more and more reserved whilst online stores are seeing more and more traffic. Ruling that ecosystem today is going to lead to profitable avenues in the future, so setting a line of standard in the sand now will do wonders to protect developer and publisher rights as well as consumers in the very near future.

Still, there is an allergy to frivolous law suits that makes me recoil at the very prospect of this suit. I can't really judge if there's any actual legs to these filings or if they're just headline stealers; and does this even have any hope in hell of seeing a settlement? I have significant doubts. It seems these days that the burden to starting a class action specifically is ludicrously low, but the actual percentage of resolutions are minimal. If they want to, Sony could absolutely paint this as the frivolous rantings of a seasoned complainer who's entire existence is just to stir up trouble on other's behalf. And if they do then all of the actual real issues that are being addressed will be buried on a counter smear campaign, allowing the grifiters in Sony management to continue leeching off the industry like actual slugs. No, I don't have a lot of respect for that breed.

When consumer hands are tied and bound to a rock brick over a waterfall that Sony is threatening to send plunging if only we'll listen to them rant about the definition of insanity one more time, it can start to feel like only the most drastic of actions can claw back a common medium of sense. Sony were the one's who pushed the boundaries far past decency and elevated this into a discourse of ridiculous numbers matched with zero accountability, such to the point where people can look at an insane £5 billion lawsuit and go "Yeah, that's more my wavelength then whatever the hell Sony is trying to push." The overall message should be clear, Sony need to wake up and remember they live in a real world with real consequence that effects that markets they're trying to squeeze blood out of. If they want to push prices up during the times as they are, or any other time considering how bad faith their reasoning has been, well; I for one am going to side with the crazy litigating lady. 

Dr D's Deadrop

 The prescription is here

It's a very common dream, for those that immerse themselves in the world of video games, to become a video game creator. It is, however, largely just a dream. Because the realities of making video games is that they're are arduous and painful works that take the combined talents of dozens of different skill sets in order to come together. Nowadays one would need a significant amount of capital, access to creatives, and a damn good idea to get a game together and most people just plain don't have that. A lot of the time you might hear about gaming content creators working on their very own video game only for the topic to dry up once sense drops and the actual scale of that investments comes to reality in their minds. Or the game does come out and it's terrible. One content creator, however, believes themselves not just an exception to that curse, but a worthy challenger to the ranks of AAA game development, as hugely laughable as that sounds. And if you know the scene, you probably know who I'm talking about. (Or you just read the title.)

Dr Disrespect is not a streamer I've ever really watched but I get the shtick. Roleplay as a sweaty, self absorbed, asshole 'gamer' stereotype and try to pretend that you're still 'in on the joke' five years later when you're still playing the same tunes. I get it, it's funny. Kind of. But there comes a time when all the false bravado starts to leak out of the protective container you keep it in and starts to rot the rest of the brain; and that's a proven fact. Actors talk about it all the time, Hugh Laurie gave himself an actual limp by pretending to have one for years filming 'House', Charlie Cox almost gave himself serious eye issues by purposefully unfocusing his vision whilst acting as Daredevil; these are the dangers of lying to yourself for prolonged periods; you start to make it come true. So when Dr D spends years playing the entitled idiot who overestimates his own abilities and worth just because he's good at a few video games... well, it ain't no surprise we're looking at a game like Deadrop.

All this is being developed by The Midnight Society; (as far as video game studio names go, I'll give that a 6/10. Lost points for obvious plagiarism.)  which is Dr D's own studio that's apparently using it's vast wealth to tap some actual industry talent into their confines. But the reason I'm still a pessimist even despite that fact, is because of their 'revolutionary idea' to 'turn the game development process on it's head'. Which essentially means that they sell you the game before they make it. So Kickstarter, then. Except wait... it's not like Kickstarter because, for One: Dr D promises you that there will be a game on the otherside of this (for what little the promise of an Internet influencer is worth) and for Two: you'll be buying into the game on the blockchain through the purchase of an NFT- oh godammit! Can I just go one full week without having to read about something connected to bloody crypto currencies in our video game space? What's next; is it a metaverse too? (Seriously, though; I bet he does that.)

Midnight Society is all about integrating NFTs and Blockchain integration into the ecosystem of their games in order to 'give ownership back in the hands of the players.' In an interview with Paul Tassi the head of the studio, of ex-COD fame, correctly identified the problem with the digital only future we're moving to and the licensing issues it brings up, but presents crypto as a sort of 'back door' solution rather than confronting it with meaningful policy changes and heck, maybe even litigation! But in the effort of being fair I guess you can put this as a 'I'll seek my solution you seek yours' sort of situation; and he was smart enough to put out that their games will not be NFT exclusive or blockchain exclusive. Although I find the idea of two versions of an online game, one off the blockchain and one on it, monumentally moronic. As if split player bases aren't already an issue: start literally cannibalising each platform.

The fruit of this little experiment was the annoyingly named 'Deadrop', which is not another fast food app or a mystery box delivery service; it's an FPS, baby! And it's an FPS that currently looks rougher than sandpaper for it's first snapshot. Oh but don't worry, that's all part of their 'full transparency philosophy' whereupon the team are devoted to putting out playable demos at each significant development milestone so that people can see what they're up to and provide feedback, the whole nine yards. Seems fair, I just wonder why they didn't bother making a really bang-up framework of a game first before going down the Early Access route. I'm just saying, Larian really laid the groundworks for how something like this should be handled. Because what Deadrop currently has going for it looks about 1 step above amateur.

The animations for movement are unrefined, gun handling animations look okay, the 'unique' gun design of that M16 that's doing the rounds looks laughably ugly- seriously, they look like how a 15 year old would redesign a firearm in order to make it look more 'cool'. The firing effect is... I think intentionally poor; because I can't conceive a team of ostensible industry vets slapping that in a game and calling it presentable. I can only think they were rushed to reveal and literally put a stock effect on the weapons, that's the only feasible explanation. Graphically it looks a fine but creatively dull; although that could be the very limited demo that is currently given that impression. Frankly it looks unambitious; which is ideal for a first project from a team that's just starting to get it's footing, but a bit disappointing from a project that the Doc is selling as the game changer industry disrupter which is going to make COD tremble in their boots.

Getting a demo to run alright with pretty reflections does not a make great game. In fact, I'm pretty sure there's vast contingents of gamers out there who will attest that graphical fidelity is literally the last aspect of a game that should be worked on just short of bugfixing and maybe VO work depending on how important narrative and performance is to your particular game. You want a game feeling good, playing well and maybe even sounding well early on, because if any of those elements is wanting you'll have enough time ahead of you to work on that before you bake in systems and engines that are incapable of being manipulated into whatever it is you're looking for. Deadrop is starting from the bottom and just crossing it's fingers praying that everything comes together by the flipside. I'm telling you that is a very difficult order to design in and it might end up dooming this project to be not as solid as it otherwise could have been, but then what did we really expect?

From the word 'jump' the good Doctor has been singing songs about how this will show screenshots that make Call of Duty weep; he's always been about the style of his upcoming shooter over the substance behind the controller. Which is galling when COD has a literal stranglehold on solid shooter controls that it has maintained for over a decade now. You cannot surpass COD on graphics alone and expect to siphon off it's audience, it doesn't matter how big and important you think that you are. Most other shooters bring in unique twists and mechanics to try and live alongside COD, but aside from the weak sci-fi blood running through this game's basic aesthetic, Deadrop has yet to prove it has any good ideas up it's sleeves ready to shake up the play space. So that's a pretty disappointing reveal for Crypto-gaming's alleged golden boy; let's see which way the wind blows come the next milestone. 

Dead Island 2 is back from the dead

 Who woulda thunk?

In 2011, a video game called Dead Island was released to raised eyebrows, mostly due to the fact that the game sold itself on the strength of an initial CG reveal trailer that revolved around heartbreak, emotion turmoil and the tragedy indicative of a zombie apocalypse, only for the game to throw most of that away so that it could focus on the silly and inane style of zombie slaying that video games can't seem to shy away from. It wouldn't be until the Last of Us that we got a game that would live up to Dead Island's initial promise. None of which is to say that Dead Island 1 was a bad game, per se; it just wasn't really the game that many people were expecting it to be. When expectations were adjusted however; Dead Island turned out to be a perfectly fine and fun zombie game, that absolutely got stale before it's second half but which is otherwise a decent enough time.

I think that the focus on melee combat alongside a morbidly well realised gore system that allowed players to bash zombies in pretty modular and satisfying ways allowed for the game general flaws to be swept aside under the pure fun of just playing the thing. In fact, I'd say that Dead Island's zombies, with the ability to actually slice off chunks of flesh was pretty much the height of industry zombie gore design until Resident Evil 2 Remake came along with it's RE engine, that pretty much nailed locational damage down to the specifics. And the resort island setting certainly made for a very unique visual setting to slay monsters in, keeping the premise feeling fresh for about as long as the narrative could manage. However, the game never really got the sequel that so many thought it deserved. There was some quite lacklustre DLC content, a spiritual successor in Dying Light which bought the game closer to the scary and emotional-charged angle that the original was hinting at, but no real Dead Island 2.

That was until that teaser trailer from what feels like a whole generation ago, wherein we got a little look at a game much more in-line with what Dead Island represents; campey, gorey fun. I think that whole 'jogger going down Venice Beach' trailer slowly became more infamous than famous as it became the posterboy for games that never come out, however. Dead Island 2, this time it's in LA, crept out of industry show line-ups for years as the game underwent set-back after set-back, at least one total reboot of development, and enough team shakeups to make any sensible onlooker sceptical. Personally, I was starting to look at this game as modern day vapourware. A promise of something that would never really come into fruition, and certainly not in the way that fans were dreaming for. A disaster package waiting to drop on our heads. And you know what? I may be eating crow on this one.

Dead Island 2 is not only a real game that was shown off with a gameplay trailer this time around proving it's legitimacy, it actually looks pretty good. It's not an industry changer by any stretch of the imagination, and it hasn't made any grand promises as of the scope of what the game will offer, but in a way I can very much respect that restraint. Whereas Dying Light 2 tripped over itself to rave about the scope of adaptiveness within the game world, shifting to attune to your specific choices, only for the real game to fall, predictably, flat on that promise; Dead Island 2 wants you to kill zombies in horrific, brutal, and at times in a nearly DOOM-esque fashion. That is something that can be proved already from the gameplay we have, and it's a promise that the team seem capable of living up to in gusto. So much so that Geoff Keighley had the Gamescon version of the trailer censored. Which turned out to be a cheap gimmick just to funnel people into watching the uncut trailer on Youtube; there was literally nothing any more objectionable in the 'censored' clips.

What we seem to have is a deliciously violent celebration of all that Dead Island 1 got right rendered in a scale-up to modern standards that I certainly wasn't sure was possible after a development period this strangled. I mean this game looks good, although that is an easy bar to clear after the recent release of Saints Row. (Sheesh.) You have the reflections, high poly zombie models, great looking blood and gore effects, and a real sense of scale now that we have the city of angels to explore. Even though I think you have to squint mighty hard to call Los Angeles an Island. I guess it's part of an island, but only if you're willing to call a continent an Island and personally I'm not. Honestly, I'd feel more comfortable calling a zombie game set in Manhattan an island, because that would technically be true.

But I suppose we're all about capturing that lazy vibe of the sea-side resort bleached in sun and vacation vibes; for which I must say that Dead Island 2 is really holding up it's end of the bargain. The second half of Dead Island 1 took us into the city and then onwards to the jungle, both environments that weren't really what fans wanted and thus those parts of the game pretty roundly sucked. Dying Light went on to explore those environments and how to make them fun, leaving Dead Island 2 to lean further into the resort vibe from the first half. Of course, we'll no doubt have to explore the residentials in the Hollywood hills, and the busy streets of downtown, but being able to see the ocean at practically any point is going to soothe that claustrophobic spirit before it can rattle too hard.

Dead Island's biggest problem, in my opinion, was how stringently is appealed to it's RPG formula to the point where the game turned into a looter style title in it's later chapters. Yes, that means you'd have levelled weapons and gear that suddenly grew ineffective because these enemies were too powerful. You could save all your guns for the big dangerous moments, only to find out that they hardly did any damage whatsoever. When you have zombies as the chief enemy of your game, it kinda rubs raw having them become bullet sponges because of some arbitrary damage formula which decided not to work your way. Maybe the many years in development has given the developers time to effectively consider this, or maybe they'll just throw in another annoying overly RPG'd system. Who knows at this point.

If this game actually does come out and is as fun as the trailer says, then we might have to totally rewrite the fundamental rules about how vapourware functions in the modern age. The commonly understood pattern is: game is announced, game gets vanished, game resurfaces, game is bad. I'm not saying that Dead Island 2 is primed to break that pattern, but it certainly wants us to believe that is can and screw it, I wanna believe. We may not exactly be starved for zombie games but after Dying Light 2 kind of let me down a bit in the story department I welcome another approach to a big budget zombie hit because hey, there's just something special about zombie killing in video games, ain't there? Do I suspect that the game is going to slip over itself in it's attempt to differentiate itself from Dying Light? (Even after Dying Light 2 lost the mood of the original game) Yes I do... but what's hype with a dose of reality swinging over us like a guillotine? 

The Mortuary Assistant

How bad could it be?

Indie Horror videogames are more plentiful than stars in the sky, as everyone and their recently deceased grandmother can see the appeal in designing what is ultimately more of an 'interactive experience' than an actual 'video game' what with a carefully designed balance of features and all that junk. Nah, it's so much easier to stick a player in a maze and throw a half-distorted 3D model after them that screams really loud when it touches them. I would call it a hold-over from the runaway success of the Slender games, but the truth is that Slenderman actually had a unique mechanic which makes it stand out from it's successors even today. You had the monster who only moved when you weren't looking at it, however looking at it caused you to slowly die. That's actually a brilliant balance of give-and-take where you're capable of having painfully close encounters without having a bad guy breathing down the player's neck for an entire game. So it's probably safer to say that indie games have learnt from a mixture of the greats, Five Nights, Slender and often a little of PT for good measure. And maybe they'll have a new maestro to aspire to with the release of The Mortuary's Assistant.

Okay, to be ultimately fair the Mortuary's Assistant is still a relatively niche title within the community of horror game fans, but it has done the rounds in that community for being a rare polished treat amidst the sea of honest, but undeniably rough, indie efforts that this genre is so often inundated with. Heck, we got here a game with actual decent quality voice acting, a solid graphical scope for the small scale of the game, a suitably morbid gameplay loop with dynamic puzzle elements and just a bunch of endings. Because if you have a video game with anything less than five endings, the community will reject it as a vile pretender to the horror game throne. That and Souls-likes for some reason. We just can't live without an arbitrary reason to play through the same rough game we just did again, huh. (Ah, I'm not hating on multiple endings. And this game does a decent enough job with them anyway.)

The game focuses on taking over the role as the night-time Mortuary's Assistant, which means pretty much what it sounds like. The player has to work to prepare bodies that will be placed in the wake and then buried, with an eye-popping amount of detail. Aside from the fact that the bodies are all clothed, for everyone's sake I can only assume, there's an excessive amount of realism and detail put into the simulated process of sewing shut mouths and draining blood from the bodies; so much so that it crosses that barrier of fiction into natural discomfort as you address the fact that this is a common set of procedures that happens everyday, to everyone eventually, even you. Some day that slab of lifeless meat on a mortician's slab will be you, getting poked with syringes and the like. And I'm pretty sure that opting in for cremation doesn't save you from all post-mortem poking either; I don't know for certain but I feel like stuffing a body that's still full of blood into a furnace is a disaster just waiting to happen.

But what if I told you that the actual horror of preparing a human body for it's viewing is only the window dressing? Then I'd be lying. No, I'd say it's the morbid duties that are the meat of the game here, whilst the excuse for spooks comes from the fact that the player is currently going through the process of being possessed by some sort of demon and thus is haunted for the entire night. Match that with the actual job ahead of you and there's a surprisingly effective concoction of uncomfortability feeding into scares that then settle you down, but right back into an uncomfortable base state. At least for your first two or so go arounds. You might assume that seeing these two different styles of horror, realistic and fantastical, would work to cancel each other out but no. Either by random happenstance or careful intention; they shake hands together well.

One way in which they do this is through the gameplay puzzle, which challenges the player to identify which of the bodies for the night has been taken over by the spirit of a demon and the name of the demon in question. This means exploring the environment, studying the twitching's of the dead and working under something of a time limit as the demon nears itself to taking over the player's body. This is not a foundation for a modular spooky system, however, this isn't 'single player Phasmophobia' or anything like that. Every demon seems to act exactly the same as one another with the only difference being their name, but such is understandable when the Dev is really using the demons as a vehicle through which to explore Rebecca's past trauma. And in that respect the game does wholly fine. I think from a writing standard it does teeter on the edge of 'overly dramatic fictional character drama', when I think a premise like this could have easily facilitated a real gut-wrenching realistic story of a trodden down human, with all her inadequacies and failures heightened into grand sins through the lens of her supernatural tormentors.

Still, for what's there the dev did a great job laying this out as a narrative of clues, which is one of my favourite methods for video games to tell their stories. I know so many people out there just want their cutscene and explanation, and The Mortuary' Assistant will reward you with clarification if you reach one of it's specific endings, but I love the uniquely videogame-style presentation of a story that needs to be unravelled and deduced through various flashbacks and hints here and there, before the kicker arrives to slot everything together. It's the Dark Souls effect, the more it troubles you to put the pieces together, the more you start to really connect with the pieces as each takes on a life of their own. Of course, that is only slightly marred by the fact that as you take on subsequent nights it won't be long before you really start to recognise the same specific scares, and thus have to witness the same extended story beats. 

Now is it the most scary game in the world? Well that depends entirely on your own subjective view of what you find scary. The game does give a decent number of jumpscares, a lot of which it telegraphs and most of which are tied to a randomly selected sequence of scares, so on multiple runs you've very likely to run into the exact same set up for a scare you now know is coming. However, the game does a better job of using it's already grim set-up to unnerve you with movement out of the corner of your eye, knocking outside where you don't expect it, voices calling for you; everything you'd expect from a decently constructed horror experience. The only problem being in the endgame, when you start to realise that none of these dangers have any substance to them and they just become distractions between you and the only real threat for the night, the ticking clock.

I would consider the Mortuary's Assistant as a pitcher of fresh water dunked atop a genre that has been thirsty for something new for a very long time. If not perhaps a world changer by any stretch of the imagination, the Assistant is still a very solid indie experience put together largely by one very talented developer, which can go quite a way to reminding us all that there's sometimes very special experiences that lie outside the churning machine of big studios with their deeply ingrained patterns on how the world should be run. Would any big studio have funded a game where you go into detail in preparing a body for the morgue? Hell no! And now those of us who have had that unique experience can go about the rest of live with the process of how our bodies are going to be treated after death burned into our psyches to haunt us. What bliss.

So Sony is the underdog now?

 How the turns table.

Sony and Microsoft are the like dual antagonists of the world's most repetitive anime, one that is rife with filler episodes that are stuffed with petty disputes where Twitter memes are slung back and forth, to huge arc enders where one side decids to try and get the other totally destitute and destitute. (Huh. Kind of like the relationship of the McGill Brothers from Better Call Saul now I think about it.) We've had a lot of the former kind of ribbing through the recent years as the big spokemen from both companies have gritted their teeth and sung the 'We're all in this together' song from High School Musical. It's always been a façade, though; the world sees straight through it. And in fact we got our chance to get a major ending arc moment when Sony tried their darnest to get official government regulators to block a huge potential Microsoft acquisition by taking a huge slice of 'hypocrite pie' and characterising themselves as scrappy underdogs under big-bad-Microsoft's shoes.

Now there is obviously no doubt about it; Microsoft does indeed have a simply scandalous amount of money at it's disposal and it's more than Sony could ever hope for in order to play about with. But you must also bear in mind that this is because Microsoft owns the single most popular Operating System in the world and is deeply entrenched in just about every part of the tech world whether directly or through subsidiaries. Sony has it's TVs. Pretty much any other angle they've tried to branch out in hasn't really amounted to much apart from their phone business. I still hear fond memories of the Ericsson here and there, for those that still use phones. Although not to distance them too far apart as competitors; Xbox is a minor division of the Microsoft whole, they are beholden to their corporate masters just as Playstation is; only if Xbox are really good boys and do all their homework on time, they get a slightly bigger allowance that Playstation would in the same scenario.

Such an allowance that could lay the ground for a 68 billion dollar buyout which still makes me wince to consider. Where does that money even actually go? I mean I know it goes to Activision; but where from there? I'm sure they roll some of that into the studio but come on- that isn't evet going to be anywhere near to a billion. Lawyers will take some vile cut of the pot, but then do the executives all go off and buy themselves private islands or something? Retire twenty years early? That's enough money to make every single employee, from the managers to the janitors, millionaires and still have too much left over to know what to do with. That's just simply too much money to throw around bloody game development studios. I can understand why Sony might look at those numbers and decide there's some shenanigans going on. (Someone did the money hack in real life.) But only if it gets through regulatory bodies of office.

We aren't privy to the regulatory hearings that such a process is subject to unless we get all litigious, but thankfully thanks to the international scale of Microsoft we were bound to run across a legislation with more lax rules on in-house conversations. Through this we've managed to get a ear into the process through which regulators reach out to other big players in the game's industry to get their perspectives on the deal taking place and to see if they believe it to be too monopolistic. For the Activision Blizzard deal in particular, one big point of contention was the ownership of the Call of Duty franchise and how that might effect the game's market if it were to become a sudden platform exclusive. Such is not the plans for the series currently, as COD is committed to at least three more releases on all applicable platforms but after that contract is up... well, Microsoft would be crazy not to put the screws on the kings of exclusivity deals, wouldn't they?

And so regulators turned to Ubisoft to ask them how they'd feel about an ecosystem ruled by COD exclusivity. "It's no biggy" Ubisoft said "We've got 'Rainbow Six: Siege'". "Ditto" said EA, "We've got Battlefield" and so on and so forth; all the way up until the conversation turned to Sony, want to guess what they said? "It's not fair" they said "Microsoft is cheating, COD is a game so huge it becomes a category of game unto itself, it cannot be realistically competed against. Whatsmore, Microsoft is trying to create an environment that no one can profitably stand up to them in." (For the sake of transparency I need to disclose that none of those were direct quotes but rather summations of points.) That's right, Sony believe that by taking COD from Microsoft they are going to irrevocably tilt the console wars in their favour because 'COD is a game that informs people's console choice'. Ain't that peachy? Imagine a video game company relaying and draconian exclusivity contracts to try and tilt the public's console choice? Well I never...

Of course that's exactly what Sony have been doing for years upon years! They've built and maintained a cadre of studios dedicated to creating the most polished single player games in the industry and then jealously maintains their exclusivity for years before giving them up to PC. They've also tried to use this monopoly on the cutting edge of the industry to try and push the retail price of video games up by another $10, all the while Microsoft is offering first party games day one access on Game Pass. That last bit is what's really getting under Sony's skin, because no matter how they cut it they're not willing to try and compete with that service and so are doing anything they can to sour that deal. Including, according to Microsoft themselves, locking devs in contract that prevents them from showing up on Game pass. The mind boggles at how ridiculous that is if there's any actually fire to that smoke. (Which isn't that hard to believe given this blocking attempt by Sony.)

Now it's very unlikely that Sony's words had any real effect, given that all of their peers seemed utterly unabashed with the buyout, it would be surprising if regulators took Sony's sole, clearly biased, condemnation as sacred. However this has unleashed something of the ill will between the companies which has been somewhat kept at bat until recently. Microsoft has already made a shot back across Sony's bow about those alleged contract lock-outs, and everything is looking like console wars 2.0 after years of 'will they won't they' about cross compatibility. (Another pro-consumer step which would be so easy to implement if not for Sony dragging their heels.) I'm not one to take sides in a war of corporate interests; but I will say that Sony is certainly looking more wrong out of the options available.

To be clear, Sony seem to be a bit up their own ass recently trying to paint themselves as a company on the brink when they are the leading console developers in the world right now. They have a very competent line of exclusives ahead of them and a huge headstart in popularity. There are no underdogs in a story like this, and maybe if Sony were a bit more honest with the way they formed their arguments I would have an easier time taking them seriously. As it stands they've got me rooting for Microsoft's deal to go through just for how bad faith this argument was, despite me not liking the overall market consolidation of developers in general considering we have a lot of evidence recently that the bigger the company becomes the worse their games end up being as everyone loses sight of what they've even making in the first place. Long story short: shut up, Sony.

I hate: Ice Wraiths

 And they hate me too.

Skyrim is one of most well travelled games of all time on account of being ported to every system under the sun. I know we joke about how many editions of the game exist but to be frank, it's a stellar game that thanks to the work of modders has a handle of genuine immortality without being necessarily built to facilitate that sort of game. There's no rougelite systems or decent cyclical play loops; but fans refuse to let the game die by modding in any and everything they can think of. Just recently Skyrim got itself a multiplayer mod and a Nemesis-style system straight from Shadow of Mordor. (Better watch out for a cease and desist on that one right there. Who knows how petty Warner Bros are willing to get.) What I'm trying to say is that this a game that has had everything in it torn apart and put back together so well that most players know it's landscape better than Bethesda's developers do. We should considering the amount of times we played through the darn thing. By all rights we as consumers should be surprised by nothing in this game, it should be incapable of rustling any jimmies. And yet...

I have a deep and enduring hatred for the enemy known as Ice Wraiths that I've had since the game first launched in 2011, and retain to this day. I despise their stupid wisp-like design of being bright shining blue, which clashes with their usual spawning environment; ice sheets. I hate the noise they make like a rattling cobra, loud enough to alert you to imminent death but nowhere near clear enough to indicate where the danger is swiping from. I hate their sweeping attack pattern which is nigh on impossible to dodge with how far it travels. And I hate the ice-wall effect they create on the floor with every swoop they make, essentially turning every encounter into a hardly visible minefield thanks to the fact that they spawn in snowy environments and again, the snow floor clashes with Ice Wall. In essence; I think they're most annoying enemy in the game and I hate them.

To be clear, Ice Wraiths are not the most deadly, nor the most one-shot capable in the game. Without turning off kill animations those dubious honours would probably go towards Dragons who, thanks to a badly programmed kill move parameter, can literally cutscene kill you at full health on the highest difficulties. Or maybe towards the Dragon Priests who are pretty much the only other creature in the game to make use of the borked 'wall' spells, that apply constant damage at such a ludicrous rate they can melt your health bar in about five consecutive seconds unless you immediately move, whereas the same amount of time spent in concentrated fire would do a fraction of that damage. (I think it's because of overlapping damage sources that hit you simultaneously, if I were to guess.) Those enemies are both bearable for the sole reason that slaying them is worthwhile. That life-or-death struggle is the demand of a serious boss encounter at the end of a dungeon or a epic ambush from a flying dragon. Are they poorly balanced? Sure. But getting that kill on the otherhand feels like all the more of an accomplishment because you faced that unfair wall. But what of Ice Wraiths?

They're trash. Pitiful forgettable worthless trash mobs so useless they're not even really afforded any substantive lore snippets explaining what the hell they even are! I guess they're just 'elementals' as nebulous of a title that is, but they aren't tied to any quest that really puts any amount of attention on them or their function because they aren't supposed to have a function. Yet somehow they're one-shotting demons. Off the top of my head I can think of only two quests in the entirety of vanilla Skyrim that will pit you up against Ice Wraiths, on any of the major critical paths. You have the route up to High Hrothgar, where they serve as obstacles that can feasibly just be run past. The game doesn't explicitly force you to fight them. And then there's the introduction quest to the Stormcloaks, which pits you against three of them to 'prove your worth'. A funny hazing ritual given that it is single handily the most dangerous task you'll embark on in the entire Civil War quest line. Does every Stormcloak have to kill three Ice Wraiths in order to join? If they did the army would consist of no-one but the Dragonborn.

The problem here is a clash of aesthetic and design, one that I can assume is driven worse by any of the numerous ENB mods that players choose to install given their tendency to up bloom to JJ Abrahams levels in the pursuit of 'beautification'. Bethesda designed an enemy with a jabbing stab range melee attack that does vicious levels of damage on it's own; a split second timing thing if you want to try and side-step it; but they made it damn near invisible thanks to their translucent icy body that slips right inside the already gleaming white of the ice caves and/or sheets they spawn near. They also tend to spawn in packs, meaning you can suffer an heavy infestation of invisible death snakes flying through the air at you for any given time without knowing it before your death.

And this is coming from a guy who actually loves the winter world of Skyrim. In fact, I like all depictions of winter as long as it come from the distance of a plasma screen. Yet for the Ice Wraiths that very theming is it's death. Not to mention how the things are damned sturdy too! Skyrim in general has a pretty piss-poor elements system where elemental weakness or strengths are pretty inconsequential in combat, and nowhere is that more frustrating then when facing literal ice monster that hardly feel it when being blasted with fire spells. They're also resistant to straight physical damage, which makes them a small tank and a canon; guess god really did the min-max stats when coming up with these guys on their character sheets; huh.

I welcome any number of ice-tainted Skyrim beasts over the bloody ice wraiths. Ice Trolls; annoying for their regeneration abilities but at least they're slow enough to make sense for the power behind every swing. Ice wolves; sturdy but easy to ultimately overwhelm. Frost Giants; so overpowered they literally break the physics engine but still good for the odd laugh. Everything else has some saving grace to them but the ice wraiths. I don't even think they're visually all that interesting; you know, in the brief moments you can even actually see them. Their design of spikes upon spikes just sort of brings to mind memories of the Prometheans from Halo 4; messy overdesigned garbage that melts into the scenery. It's just a good thing that Ice Wraiths are only a single rarely used enemy instead of an entire third of the running time. (God, Halo 4 made me weep.)

Many people flock to mods for Skyrim looking for some sort of mod to disable the spiders from their game because they've allowed their phobias to grow so bad they literally can't function if a badly animated one is on screen. (To be frank, I also have a phobia with spiders. If you think Skyrim's are bad, you would suffer a heart attack playing 2001's Resident Evil.) What I need is a mod that erases all Ice Wraiths for the game entirely so they be neither an eye nor brain sore ruining my good questing time any longer. A great exorcism of every Frost Snake from the border of Hammerfell to the Sea of Ghosts. Maybe a Saint Juib-style figure who drives all them from the land in some heroic act of self sacrifice. I don't care about the excuse behind it; it just needs to be done. No more Wraiths!