The Monday letters page wonders if even Nintendo know when the Switch 2 will be out, as a reader enjoys early access to Indiana Jones And The Great Circle.
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A good year
I hope the rumours about The Game Awards being ‘a good one’ are true because we really could do with ending 2024 on a positive note. It really has been a terrible year for gaming and just about everything else. Yes, we’ve had some good games out this year, but that was all stuff started five years ago, even before the pandemic. As we start to get into next year and beyond I fear the number of interesting games is going to drastically decrease.
I really want The Game Awards to prove me wrong though, because it’s obvious that Sony can’t be bothered to calm fears on their own. But I just don’t know who’s going to swoop in and be the hero we deserve here. Who’s expecting Take-Two, EA, or Ubisoft to turn up with games so good they suddenly make everyone optimistic about the games industry again?
I just don’t know. Hopefully Capcom can do something, but I doubt Nintendo will be there. There’ll probably be a lot of indie games so maybe they can pick up the slack. No Man’s Sky was amazing when it was first unveiled, even if it took years to actually come good.
Reiko
Crazy year
It’s amusing to me that even Nintendo are reportedly worried about competing with GTA 6. I know we don’t know for sure what they’re planning for the Switch 2’s release date, but this talk of May makes sense while also smacking of being the absolute last moment Nintendo can release it, without doing it in the middle of the summer games drought.
I suspect everything is still up in their air though, as not only do we know nothing about GTA 6’s release date yet but it’s not clear if these Trump tariffs are going to affect the US price of the Switch 2 either. It may feel like fans are being left in the dark, but I’d be very surprised if Nintendo had a cast iron plan yet, given how crazy things are going to get next year.
Lumpy
Sleeping giant
With Sony and Microsoft seemingly losing the plot, a lot of people have wondered whether someone else will swoop in and become a big player in gaming. Someone like Apple, Google, or Amazon. All of these are very rich companies, but they’ve all had some involvement in gaming already and mostly made a hash of it. I’m not sure they really want to go for round two and even if they did, what’s to say they’d do any better?
But this news about possible Steam-based consoles makes me wonder if the next industry leader is already here, lurking in the background. More people use Steam than any console so they technically are the biggest format already, but if they did choose to make new, easy-to-use, hardware I do think they could make an impact.
I don’t know if that’s their intention – they don’t seem to push the Steam Deck as much as I thought they would – but they may be slowly realising that they have an opportunity and the competition is not looking too clever at the moment.
Colm
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Early payment
Well, I did what I said I would do and buy Indiana Jones And The Great Circle day one. I actually thought it was out next Monday for some reason. So buying it today, Friday the 6th, brings a tear to my eye as I wait for the 131GB to download. I did go all in and buy the Premium Edition, by the way. Xbox needs a game like this right now.
I’m a MachineGames fan, having loved the Wolfenstein reboots, so I’m glad it reviewed well and I’m happy to throw some money their way to support their game. I didn’t mind the last Wolfenstein with the girls, but it did get old before it should have. I played It single-player and I know it was meant to be played with a two-player team-up. It looks like they’ve learned from their mistakes at what went wrong with that anyway, with no mention of replaying areas with respawning enemies.
I look forward to playing when it finally downloads.
Nick The Greek
GC: It didn’t officially launch until today. The Premium Edition gave three day’s early access.
Too much of a good thing
I mentioned it earlier in the year, but Timemelters seems to fit the bill for your December indie catch-up: only reviewed by a handful of critics but seems to have some interesting ideas and has been well received by those who have played it (I bought it but haven’t even loaded it up…).
Since rediscovering PC gaming with the Steam Deck, I’m always amazed at the number of games being made. I was looking for a new indie boomer shooter recently and found about 10 I’d never heard of, all apparently very good. Can’t review ’em all.
Magnumstache
Blame it on Skynet
I can absolutely see what the reader is getting at with their Reader’s Feature about the Switch 2. I’m already worried about whether it’ll be unsustainable for Nintendo and other Japanese companies but trying to do anything beyond the PS5 Pro seems like such a pointless effort, that’s doomed to failure.
As dumb as most publishers seem to have been acting lately I can’t believe that they haven’t considered this problem and I keep coming back to that Microsoft comment about the next gen Xbox being the largest technological leap ever.
We have two options here: either they’re completely off their trolley and/or just straight-up lying or they have a plan. To me the only thing that comes close to making sense is AI, which Microsoft has lots of leeway with.
The quality of AI-generated videos seems to improve almost by the week so I wonder if that can be leveraged in some way to make games on the fly? That seems impossible but I really don’t know what else Microsoft could be thinking of. Having everything look 10% more realistic is not a technological leap, so what are they talking about?
Orion
Princely sum
Smyths currently has the Switch version of Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown for £9.99 and Xbox/PlayStation 5 versions for £14.99. Absolutely ridiculous price for a Game of the Year contender.
I can thoroughly recommend the excellent DLC too. I’ve already lamented its poor sales, meaning Ubisoft won’t be following up on it, but people get a chance to play a fantastic game for an incredible price.
Euclidian Boxes
GC: The Switch version doesn’t seem to be listed anymore, maybe it sold out.
Unintended bullet time
We expect a lot from video games these days.
We talk about constant high frame rates and complain when they drop in busier moments of play, often jarring that immersion that captivates us. But I remember a time, and maybe this was isolated to experiences I had with friends as a younger video game fan, where we would be quite impressed when there was so much going on in a game that everything slowed down for a couple of seconds while the console caught up with the action on screen. It was actually a joyous moment, and we often celebrated the event with exclamations.
In tougher moments there was a knack to taking advantage of the hardware’s limitations, using the gifted seconds to compose oneself, almost like it was a built-in perk to manipulate time. Because, of course, it was all the player’s doing, pushing the game to its limit. Or at least that’s how it felt, as no developer would intentionally try to crash their own game, would they?
For example, during a match in Street Fighter 2, you could send your opponent crashing through destructible background props and if you were proficient enough, already having jumped into a close quarters situation performed an uppercut, followed by a shoryuken before the game was ready – almost like you were using a programmable pad.
Or perhaps you and your buddy are raising hell in the alien-occupied streets of Contra 3 and let off a bomb while you continue firing in all directions. You can practically see your heroes’ pectoral muscles jolt as the gun recoils with each bullet, that leaves the chamber recreating something of an 80s Schwarzeneggar action movie with complementary slowdown for cinematic effect, your exclamatory yells ring out like a war cry.
The same can be said for a multitude of 2D shmups giving you some grace to contemplate your next move in bullet time, while the game behaves like a tranquilised sloth with zero ambition in life. Of course, slowdown wasn’t always helpful, but then neither is the solar powered torch I bought from Amazon, which worked fine until I really needed it.
I guess with the way the world is today, so many more people are tech savvy and your latest console better act like it because there are boxes to be ticked, when the truth is a steady high frame rate shouldn’t be noticed, just like an unsung hero doesn’t get sang at.
However, the reality is the complete opposite, we focus a lot on what a console can or can’t do for the games before it’s even released, regardless of what the games can do for the console.
I think this generation is a great example of that notion.
Bad Edit
Inbox also-rans
As a keen fan of the original I was wondering if you are going to review The Thing Remastered?
Dangeraaron07 (PSN ID)
GC: Probably not, no. Shadow drops are a very foolish concept, in our opinion, especially for lower profile titles, since it all but guarantees less coverage than normal.
The nearly £100 Digital Deluxe version of Suicide Squad on Xbox is now only £4.99. I’ve always loved Rocksteady’s games and I redeemed £5 voucher from my rewards points so got it for nothing. As much as I hate digital downloads, I got something for nothing.
Cassius2K
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The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.
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