Are you giving it up? (pic: Microsoft)
The Friday letters page thinks EA is wrong to cut 6% of its workforce just to save money, as one reader suggests a Rule Of Rose remake.
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Bad timing
For me, the end of the £1 deal for Game Pass is the point at which I bow out. To be honest, I haven’t been using it that much lately anyway, as I feel I spend more time deciding what to download than actually playing anything. The more you get for ‘free’ the less attached to it you are and there’s less incentive to get the most out of it.
Not that that would’ve stopped me at £1 but I’m not paying for another expensive subscription I don’t really need.
I feel Microsoft made a mistake too, by stopping the deal now before they had any decent first party games to prove how useful Game Pass would be. Maybe in two or three years, when their production lines are running at full speed, I’ll actually be tempted to pay full price, but my subscription will run till Starfield and that’s about it.
I have to admit, as well, that the whole Activision Blizzard business has started to sour my opinion of Xbox. I’d just rather not deal with them if it’s not necessary and without the £1 deal I don’t feel I’ll be missing anything.
Carbo
Hollywood synergy
John Wick 4 might be more like a video game than any other movie. Going from one set piece to the next, with clear tasks to progress, culminating in a final boss fight, it reminded me so much of a video game’s formula.
It’s silly and over-the-top, but it’s so much fun and a great departure from the usual superhero CGI fest. With superhero movies dying at the box office, John Wick’s timing couldn’t be better – and hopefully signals a new direction for action movies.
There is a John Wick video game in development, right? Long overdue, I say. If there is a more obvious fit for video games than John Wick, I can’t think of it.
Anon
GC: There is supposed to be a new action game but there’s already the excellent John Wick Hex, which everyone ignored because it’s an ugly-looking strategy game. The Mandalorian is still the most video game like in structure though. This season perfectly recreates the feeling of having beaten the game and not really knowing what to do next. Plus, all the fights are completely lacking in tension because you’ve already unlocked all the best weapons.
Tough times
EA has announced that it will be cutting 6% of its workforce due to internal restructuring. This news comes after their announcement of classic titles such as Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Kingdoms Of Amalur getting removed from digital store fronts. Many AAA companies, including Ubisoft, have gone through a number of changes over the past couple of years, pertaining to their employees.
This has been a trend for a while now and it’s sad to see this happening to team members who will be out of work for an unspecified amount of time. It makes me wonder how these companies stay afloat with projects getting delayed or cancelled. By making these business decisions I don’t feel like it’s going to do them any good if there aren’t any workers? How do things get done? I hope this trend ends.
Anon
GC: ‘If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease. I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world.’ – Satoru Iwata, former Nintendo president
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Infinite pockets
Add me to the list of people who isn’t really keen on breakable weapons returning to Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom.
However – as you pointed out – it does seem as if fusing is going to be a key dynamic of the game in terms of weaponry, which could create a significantly different experience. So, what I’m really hoping for is an overhauled inventory system because if experimentation is encouraged (which certainly seemed to be the case) then I’d like to be able to carry around a near-limitless supply of materials for any eventuality, rather than constantly dipping in and out of menus to change the quantities held.
If nothing else, I certainly hope there’s a more intuitive system for item management because it was so laboriously and archaically designed in Breath Of The Wild (pick up item – no room in inventory – drop item – open inventory – discard existing item – pick up new item) for such a core mechanic that it’s one of the reasons I could never consider the game a true 10/10.
Needlemouse
Rules of the game
RE: Weapon durability in Zelda: Breath Of The Wild. Singling out weapons functioning more like ammo rather than like permanent gear as the one stupid aspect of any game, especially one as whimsical as Zelda in terms of its abilities and mechanics, is one of those weird double standards I keep seeing.
Breath Of The Wild is essentially a resource based survival game, not a loot based one. It’s like saying the fact you don’t get unlimited use of the shotgun in Resident Evil is an unnecessary flaw. Except in the latter, people who explore just a bit, and who pick their battles, aren’t constantly throwing away inferior ammo because they find so many shotgun shells.
Come to think of it, nobody complains that it’s nonsense how the wolves drop ammo when you kill them in the Resident Evil 4 remake, because it works on the design terms set by the game, not out of some pointless appeal to realism.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m in any way delighted when my weapons break in Zelda, any more than I’m happy to lose a useful finite resource in any game, but it’s clear from the off that we’re not playing something like Dark Souls, where we’re expected to feel invested in role-playing based choices and can therefore stick with what we start the game with for the whole time.
Panda
Ruled out
Rule Of Rose is one of the very rarest video games. If you’d like to reserve a copy of this forgotten horror gem, you have to fork over more than £400. I’ve heard so much about the title. It came out decades ago, but in an age where Skyrim has been ported more times than I’ve watched Inception we’ve never seen a remake of this game, or a remastered port.
If Silent Hill 2 can be remade, and I’m bursting with excitement to pre-order it, Rule Of Rose deserves that same treatment. I understand that it is a controversial title, taking children and exposing darkness within them. It has horrific themes and was released in the golden age of horror games.
It can still be brought but £400 is overkill for a PlayStation 2 title, with dreadful controls and yesteryear graphics. A story such as Rule Of Rose deserves every opportunity to be told once more.
Shahzaib Sadiq
GC: We played it at the time, it’s not a very good game.
More please
Like most I was reasonably pleased with the gameplay reveal on the new Zelda. I have been expecting it to just be more of the same and that was certainly what was shown, but when that is more of the same of arguably the best open world game ever… who is going to complain?
I’m glad they’re leaning into the creative exploration side of Breath Of The Wild, amping up the loose randomness that gameplay allowed, to really make your own adventures. I was going to sit on it till the end of the year given the current gaming backlog but might be tempted to jump on it at release.
On a future Resident Evil 5… the obvious thing for Capcom to do would be what Activision did with last year’s Modern Warfare 2, i.e. make it an all-new sequel to the remake, not a remake of the actual Resident Evil 5. Or do what Squaresoft is doing with its Final Fantasy 7 Remake series and expand it to new sequels. Even call it Resident Evil 4 Remake Part 2 if you will.
Marc
New deal
Good news everyone, the Game Pass for a quid offer is dead! Long live the £10.99 offer! My last three years of Game Pass just ran out, so I was a little perturbed to see the news that things had changed in the world of Game Pass. Fortunately, the more things change the more they stay the same and double-digit inflation means that price increases of 1,000% seem almost normal so yes, you can still get all those cheap Game Pass kicks as before, but it’s £10.99.
I’m signed up for another three years of Game Pass Ultimate for less than £125 (3 x online key + £10.99). You could get it even cheaper if you can be bothered to muck about with VPNs, you cheeky monkey.
How long this deal lasts is anyone’s guess, so fill up if you can. Remember, you need to wait for your subscription to run out, turn off recurring billing, fill up on Xbox Live Gold (three years is the maximum), click on the dashboard ad (or go online) to activate the offer and that’s a bingo! (Resident Evil 4 not included.)
Boilingover
GC: Are you positive that still works? We don’t want people buying up loads of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions and then finding out that Microsoft has switched that off too.
Old argument
Oh boy, I really thought by the space year 2023 that graphics were going to be so good that it would take more than just that to impress gamers.
I think we are halfway there because the graphics actually are that good. Yet the argument over which game looks better is as old as time and actually really quite boring.
Yeah, Zelda: Tears Of A Kingdom is not going to pull up any trees as far as cutting edge graphics go but that was never the goal in the first place.
I wouldn’t even say it looks as graphically good as the short Wii U Link video demo at E3 all those years ago, that never materialised.
The sense of scope in that game is jaw dropping though and that’s what they where going for by the looks of it.
I guess Pac-Man Championship Edition, Ōkami or, dare I say it, Minecraft need a grilling too for not looking real enough?
My point is stylised graphics definitely age better over time.
Case in point the new Resident Evil 4 game needed a new lick of paint. Nothing wrong with the old one at the time and the new one looks absolutely superb. The reason for this though was that it was trying to look real at the time and doesn’t look so real anymore, as it wasn’t designed with HDTVs in mind.
The Wind Waker however was in a similar situation when it released on the Wii U and they hardly messed with the visuals.
So no matter what new TV comes out in the future I’m pretty sure Tears Of A Kingdom will always be as easy on the eye as it is today, no matter how good graphics on a phone get.
freeway 77
GC: As already pointed out, the amount of physics processing going on in Tears Of Kingdom seems extraordinary for the modestly powered Switch. There are much prettier games on both the Switch and other consoles, but we’d be surprised if any are as interactive – except maybe Minecraft, funnily enough.
Inbox also-rans
Not sure if I recall seeing why, but does GC know the reason for Resident Evil 4, being originally a GameCube game, not getting a remaster for the Switch?
Jonathan Foley
GC: Because the Switch would implode if it tried to run graphics of that complexity. It’s not a remaster it’s a full remake.
I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to find out that a £500+ VR headset with no exclusive games is not selling well. What an unexpected turn of events.
Royston
This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Tesla, who asks what video game franchise have you played the most entries in?
Many video game franchises have been going for 30 or 40 years at this point, with dozens of sequels and spin-offs, but which one have you played the most entries from? Is it because you’re a fan of the series and you purposefully sought them all out or was it more of an accident?
What put you off the entries you haven’t played and how much of a completionist do you tend to be about series you like? Do you like to keep the games and do you own any merchandise for them?
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The small print
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MORE : Games Inbox: Xbox Game Pass without the £1 deal, Resident Evil 4 DLC, and more Skies Of Arcadia
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The Friday letters page thinks EA is wrong to cut 6% of its workforce just to save money, as one reader suggests a Rule Of Rose remake.
