Some game announcements happened. I guess I’ll go over what happened, at least as far as the stuff I watched or heard about. I didn’t watch half of the things so far either because I was either busy or not quite interested.
Sony has a bunch of PSVR2 stuff while the PSVR2 and technically PS5 aren’t entirely out yet. People would be quite excited about tall vampire women in VR. Also given how there’s REm4ke coming out next as well. Will it be a first or third person shooter? Maybe both? At least the Stray game about being a cat in robot city is closer to coming out, and the Spider-Man games are coming to PC. Rollerdrome has potential if it’s done right, the developer has a good track record apparently. Also I don’t really care much about modern Final Fantasy so 16 just looks weird to me. Very Western-looking but with anime characters and so many particle effects.
Naturally the Sonic thing was a bit empty like how Sonic Frontiers looks. It was mostly stuff for other games, phone games, and already announced games but not a lot to go on there. They also keep acting like Fall Guys is a thing. It’s barely a thing, and it’s slightly less barely going to be a thing when they pull the trigger on the free-to-play gun. I didn’t watch the UploadVR thing but I did look through and see at least not everything’s a Cockulus exclusive. And Among Us VR looking a lot like the VRChat version but official and not having strange meme avatars show up aside from Among Us itself.
On the big official stream thingy, Call of Duty sure looked like Call of Duty. Like hell I’m paying $70 for that. I only got a handful of older games at random for very cheap when I felt like playing through a cheap story action movie. I don’t know what Routine is supposed to be since they didn’t really show much. American Arcadia is a weird dystopian show setting of some type, however it plays. Goat Simulator 3, because skipping 2 is wacky, is unnecessary, and an actual 2 would have been as much. They really covered all they needed to in the original and its numerous updates and add-ons. And now there’s plenty of Steam games that can fulfill that shitpost level. The Quarry is an interactive horror movie from people who have made those before, so that might be fun to watch someone play.
They ended the main kickoff stream with Last of Us stuff. So much Last of Us stuff. I’m not even a fan of the series and how did it even take off like it did. I feel like it rode off of the Walking Dead. And now it’s becoming a show. They should have just done that. And now the first game gets remastered again. Or possibly remade, but it seems to be pretty similar. Somehow it’s old enough for that and so many other games are far older and not getting remade properly. Aside from Final Fantasy 7 since that whole remake saga is a huge deal.
Then a bunch of indie stuff happened. This is where things get more interesting in my opinion because you have fresher developers who aren’t jaded by the industry or purely cash-driven willing to put forth some absolutely crazy stuff. Things like playing as a fly to reflect average lifespans in countries to say something about society probably, arranging stuff in ways that somehow make sense while fighting a cat that screws everything up, and a bear managing a bed and breakfast. SCHiM looks like a cute puzzle sort of game about shadow hopping. Apparently cute shadow-based puzzle games are a thing I like, such as Felix the Reaper previously, but this one being less grid-based and involving something that looks like a frog. And then there’s a game called Birth about being alone but collecting spare organs and bones through a series of puzzles involving rooting through everyone’s stuff. That’s pretty indie and I like the sound of it.
Devolver wrapped up with their weirdness and commentary on the industry and came with what I feel were few but hard-hitting games. Cult of the Lamb looks part town manager part top down fighting things with lots of bullets game, whatever that second genre is. Anger Foot is aggressive shooting and kicking in a weirdly stylized environment. Card Shark seems to be a game about cheating at cards and maybe other things. Plucky Squire looks like one of those reality-crossing adventure type things from a book to a desk. Then there’s Skate Story. Definitely a strong finisher, the game has incredible visuals and soundtrack in the trailer, and it’s a skateboarding game. Maybe like Skate or Session, maybe like OlliOlli, probably not like Tony Hawk, as much as I’d really like another game in that style that’s not as horrendously janky as Skatebird. I’d like to see more on Skate Story for sure most of all.
I’m glad there’s still games to look forward to as the singularity approaches, and I’ll have to keep those in mind while the industry focuses on re-releasing Last of Us again and releasing games with the same name as previous ones that are somehow different and upping the price tag for games while still including the same pricey microtransactions that become far more than micro into macro. Also arbitrary blockchain threats.