I didn’t quite realize that the Sony Direct last week was essentially the big start to Not-E3 this year, but there’s been a lot of game announcements, and naturally I was elsewhere during most of them, so I’ve been catching up through various sites and their recaps, like that aptly-named Games Recap thing, and also sometimes the stream VODs of people I tend to watch at times. I couldn’t remember most of the announcements that happened overall, but I did look at a few random trailers here and there, more ideally if they actually had gameplay.
A number of indie games I’ve played and enjoyed are getting sequels, like Pikuniku and TOEM. Even though I did already know about the latter getting a sequel. And so are games that I’d like to play but haven’t gotten around to, like Cassette Beasts. And of course Nintendo brought the news of the next Deltarune chapter, in addition to the aforementioned Pikuniku 2 which was barely mentioned outside of the recap sites. Plus it turns out they’re doing a remake of another N64 game, this time Ocarina of Time, which apparently leaked ahead of the Direct but I’m so out of socials I didn’t even know. And that wasn’t even gameplay, it was a sleepy child render. It’s interesting Nintendo finally discovered HD graphics. Again. As seen in the Star Fox remake, which has a demo I’m getting to, hopefully before Steam unleashes the demo festival apparently next week because I’ll already be busy enough.
So a couple things I’ve noticed is that sometimes a game will show up with a trailer, then release its Steam page, and then due to a policy Steam has that’s kind of based on the honor system more than anything, will just happen to mention that they’re using that “AI” thing to generate stuff, thus making sure fewer people will be able to play the game due to people boycotting it as well as driving hardware prices further out of reach of anyone. But then there’s another thing where they don’t exactly mention it up front, but then people manage to spot some things in a trailer or demo or maybe even the full game itself that look a bit off, and then the company is all “oopsy poopsy we made a fucky wucky” and claims they “forgot” to take out the “placeholder” generated stuff. Long story short don’t trust anyone who ever makes that claim. Anyone with a shred of actual development experience, and not just having an algorithm vomit something out that might miraculously work although poorly, knows that if something’s a placeholder, it should obviously be a placeholder. It is far more efficient to just scribble something in a basic drawing program or even swipe something from an image search site and drop it in, yet the corpos insist on using this whole “AI” thing aggressively because they swear it’ll make them money somehow.
Another major thing I’ve noted recently is that games will move their release dates around to avoid even bigger games. A big example was Silksong, but coming up later this year, provided no further delays, is GTA 6. So therefore a bunch of games are crammed into September for whatever reason which is just going to make it harder on all of them anyway due to the onslaught of everything going on instead of just the one big thing. And I’m certain I’m not the only one who’s wondered what if GTA 6 completely bombs and takes the modern games industry with it, and somehow not just because of impossible hardware costs. I really doubt it’ll totally fail because it’s such a big game series, and Call of Duty just keeps doing fine despite each game apparently being worse than the last. I guess it’s unless they decide to actually go with a $100 USD price up front, which of course games are already at that price point in one way or another, either some special edition or DLC later on.
In Nintendo’s case, there’s the Pokopia DLC which pushes the “complete” package to $105 USD, and $70 USD was already a tough sell, even worse in CAD of course where it was already $100 and up. Yes, it’s a pretty good game that I’ve enjoyed and pretty complete on its own, but it’s still pricey, especially to someone who prefers to not spend over $20 USD on a game on average as the old adage goes. And of course Nintendo plans to gouge Fire Emblem fans by putting the next one at $80 USD, unless buying digital which grants a $10 USD discount on that price, which makes it seem like they do just plan to make their games more expensive anyway but shift the cost over to the physical versions for now until the console makers finally manage to get rid of that long-standing thorn in the side called the used games market by eliminating physical versions entirely. It’s honestly taken the entire mainstream console gaming market weirdly long in comparison to the PC market, given how much of a foothold Steam got to the point where the only modern physical PC releases that aren’t effectively just a code in a box are for cheap hidden object games or limited specialty releases.
Also, the new Fire Emblem game gets another special edition with art books or whatever they tend to include in those to bump up the price because of course. Part of me is glad I never really got much into that series, really the most I’ve played of those games is that one phone gacha game I messed with for a short time. I tried a “real” one with Three Houses and I didn’t really get it even though I can certainly parse a turn-based strategy game and find the genre itself potentially interesting, if not that particular series. Also Xenoblade keeps going. I mainly lost track after the first one and also whatever X was, both of which are already huge games I still have yet to really get back to. That’s what having a day job and a focus that constantly refocuses on other things does to someone.
So despite all my complaints above, there are some interesting games in the mix I’ll probably want to look into. It’s just that there’s a lot of games in general, so it’s likely I may end up missing a few that if I knew about them more I might be more interested in, because so much of the rest doesn’t grab me. And that’s what the demos are for. Many times now I’ve eventually picked up games I previously played a demo for, including the Steam Next Fest thing as it’s called. I also have a list on a site that tracks current and previous game prices on PC platforms, just in case I’m in the mood to spend on something I’ll ideally get to sooner than later or there’s a weird obscure fire sale on a particular thing. Then also hoping that the games I’d like to play most even come out in the first place. And if none of them come out, then there’s that backlog which I’m certainly getting back to at some point anyway.