Games Inbox: Is Tetris the best video game ever made?

The Wednesday letters page is impressed by the latest two Nintendo Direct events, as one reader looks forward to Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6.

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40 years, man and boy
I had a bit of a meltdown when I heard Tetris is 40 years old, because that seemed impossible. But then I remembered it was in the Soviet Union for years before it made it onto the Game Boy, etc. Still, a legendary game and I will be interested in this new compilation/celebration thing.

We sometimes talk about perfect games but in my opinion, Tetris is one of them. You might say that’s easier when it’s such a simple game but the proof of it is that it’s still being released and remade today with essentially identical gameplay and graphics to the original.

I don’t think there’s any other games being released at the moment that you could say the same of in 40 years. In my view it’s the best video game ever made.
Trespils

Return of the king
I knew the second that new Capcom fighting game collection got announced that GC would be over the moon about the return of Power Stone. I have to admit I loved it back in the Dreamcast days as well, but I’m a bit nervous about playing it again now, since it’s a 3D game and they don’t tend to age very well, even if its camera is pulled out quite far.

Of course, I hope this is a prelude to a new game, but I think the truth is probably that Capcom just see it as filler to justify another low cost/high profit compilation. I’m not complaining though, as this is what I’ve wanted to see for ages. Capcom can’t do any wrong at the moment and that even goes for their remasters.
Ollie

Be careful what you wish for
I’m glad to see that the Silent Hill 2 remake has turned out well and I want Konami to come back to the games industry, but they have got to do something other than remakes and remasters. Do we really need a Metal Gear Solid 3 remake? And a compilation of DS Castlevania games is so completely scraping the barrel. Just make new games!

I guess that’s a double-edged sword given how the current Silent Hill games have turned out, but they’ve all been very low budget so far. They need to bite the bullet and make a big budget Castlevania or Contra, or something like that. I keep hoping that’s what they’re building up to, but it never happens.
Zeiss

Star Wars ‘77
Interesting to see that reviews of Star Wars Outlaws have been highly varied, more than average for most big name games. Unlike usual I don’t see much of a pattern though, unless it’s whether the reviewer likes Star Wars or not, which GC made clear in its review but many others did not.

I am somewhat surprised though, as it sounds like the game is doing things at least a little bit different for a Ubisoft open world. It basically seems to be a sci-fi Assassin’s Creed and that consistently gets high reviews even though I personally lost interest years ago, as they’re all basically the same and far too bloated.

I will therefore be interested to see what scores Assassin’s Creed Shadows gets, as that definitely seems like the same old thing and I can guarantee its combat is not going to be as good as Ghost Of Tsushima, and certainly not Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Star Wars Outlaws has a 77 on Metacritic and that seems perfectly fine to me, in terms of something I’ll pick up in the sales. As a reader has already pointed out, Ubisoft games are always cheap on Black Friday and I doubt this will be any different.
Tacle

GC: 77 seems a pretty spot on score to us.

Calling you back
I hate to be the one to say it, but I think this year’s Call Of Duty is going to be really good. I know it’s not fashionable to like the games, and I certainly didn’t go anywhere near last year’s, but Black Ops 6 has looked great in everything I’ve seen so far.

The single-player looks like it’s going back to the dopey arcade style action of the original Modern Warfare and Black Ops games, and I much prefer that to the boring fake-seriousness of the reboot series. And now the multiplayer looks good too.

There’s only so much you can do with Call Of Duty multiplayer, before it becomes something else, but I’m failing to find any faults with it so far. I’m still not convinced Zombies has changed much but maybe I’m wrong on that. I’ll almost certainly find out by buying the game at launch though, and it’s a while since I’ve said that.
Rosti

Unique selling points
With the rumoured imminent PS5 Pro reveal I think we’re all wondering how Sony will market its advantage over the base PS5.

The PS4 Pro had upscaled 4K for people to take advantage of their new 4K TVs. I remember Digital Foundry being impressed with Horizon Zero Dawn running on it. I picked up my PS4 Pro with Horizon Zero Dawn on that game’s release day.

I’m wondering if Sony will go with another Unreal Engine 5 demo, like they did before the release of the PlayStation 5. Maybe whip out a PS5 Pro enhanced version of Black Myth: Wukong. Although not Unreal Engine 5 maybe a ray-traced enhanced PS5 Pro version of Cyberpunk 2077.

There’s a few rather lovely looking games they could use I guess.

I’m fairly intrigued by the thing and If its beefed-up GPU and ray-tracing, along with Sony’s version of DLSS, will make a noticeable difference.
Simundo

Natural end
I don’t care how good the graphics are in the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake, I just do not see the point in making Metal Gear games without Hideo Kojima. Even the Metal Gear Solid 1 remake, when he was still around, was rubbish, so I don’t see this one being much different.

Him leaving was the perfect excuse to just end the franchise there, but yet again we see that it’s impossible to let anything die or have a natural end. Everything must go on forever and even when it no longer sells it’s still dragged up out of the grave later anyway.
Gadfly

Frenemies for life
It really is bizarre to me how much Nintendo is killing it at the moment. This is the last full year for the Switch as their main console and yet every single one of their Directs have been good, even the indie one and this week’s third party one – which I thought they’d never have enough things to talk about with.

I found GC’s point about EA and Sega suddenly cosying up to Nintendo to be interesting though, but then I suppose neither has had much involvement with the Switch and if they want to be in on the ground floor with the Switch 2 it makes sense to start making overtures now.

I’ve little faith EA will make anything interesting for Switch 2 (or anything else) but I wonder what Sega might be thinking, since they’re planning to bring back so many of its old franchises at the moment.

Maybe the reason that we’ve not heard much about them for a while is a sign that they’re primarily aimed at the Switch 2? I’m one of those people that would’ve been very happy if Nintendo had bought Sega but either way I prefer it when the two work together.

Hopefully that will continue on the Switch 2 and hopefully it won’t just mean a bunch of Yakuza ports, although I bet that’s still part of it.
Cordon

Inbox also-rans
Power Stone is back, baby! I look forward to Capcom releasing it and then never mentioning it again for another 18 years. (Trying some reverse psychology here.)
Glottis

A reader asked what’s the next holy grail after Half-Life 3. Well, I’d say it’s Hollow Knight: Silksong. There’s now an actual chance of Half-Life 3 coming out first, which is crazy.
Sanda

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