Is Crash Bandicoot going Xbox only?
The Wednesday letters page offers advice on the best place to buy physical games, as one reader is impressed by Erling Haaland in EA Sports FC 24.
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Beyond Call Of Duty
The whole Activision Blizzard thing seems to be all over now, bar the shouting, but I’m still not clear what’s really going on. So, Sony could’ve had a multiformat guarantee for 10 years on all Activision Blizzard games but because they tried to play hardball, and lost, they only ended up with Call Of Duty?
Does that mean that everything else is going to become an exclusive? Because that sucks. I think I remember them saying that Overwatch 2 would stay multiformat but what about Diablo, Tony Hawk’s, Spyro, Warcraft, and the rest? Most importantly, what about Crash Bandicoot, which I was hoping they would make more games for.
Like most people, I wish this whole thing had never happened but it’s Sony that’s come out of it worse, in every sense, as all they’ve done is make things worse for themselves and for gamers.
Eustus
GC: That seems to be what’s going on in terms of Sony, but just because Microsoft hasn’t promised to keep other games multiformat it doesn’t mean it won’t anyway. Especially for things like Crash Bandicoot, that are likely to sell much better on PlayStation and Switch than Xbox.
Dark horse
It seems to me that Baldur’s Gate 3 is quickly becoming an obvious contender for game of the year, given how well Divinity: Original Sin 2 reviewed. It was getting 10s across the board, including from GC, and no matter how good Starfield is I can’t imagine a Bethesda game getting 10/10 from anyone sensible.
Could Starfield actually end up as the third best game of the year, behind Zelda as well? Could Zelda end up behind Baldur’s Gate 3 if it manages to review even better? After all, Zelda was slightly impacted by the fact that it used the same game world and set-up as Breath Of The Wild, but Baldur’s Gate 3 is all new, in those terms.
Whatever happens, 2023 is clearly going to be go down as a classic year for gaming, and it’s only half over. Maybe they’ll be another contender by then as well!
Gooch
No excuses
174 hours of cut scenes really is mind-blowing for Baldur’s Gate 3. I can’t imagine the amount of work that would’ve had to have gone into that. I realise the number of endings is just minor variations and the cut scenes are likely to have duplicates for different characters but even so, that is a lot of work.
Somewhere at Larian someone has a cut scene spreadsheet with 17,000 entries on it and they have to check they’re all in working order. If the game launches without many bugs, which was the case with Divinity: Original Sin 2 then I will want to know what the excuse is for other companies with much less complicated games.
Tom Meadows
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Time sponge
I wasn’t timing at first but I’m pretty sure I’m round about 200 hours into Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom and it feels like I haven’t seen half of it yet. Between this and the news about Baldur’s Gate 3 it seems like these game are taking over your entire life.
I’m not necessarily complaining because it’s a great game but at this rate I could play it all year and have no time for nothing else. Baldur’s Gate 3 sounds like it’s going to be at least as big. Is this the new way publishers have found to make people spend money on their games and not others? Or it is just a coincidence that two such massive games should come out in the same year?
I’m not sure but I do know if there’s another 200+ hour one out this year I’ll be lucky if I even start it this year.
Jagger
Rear view
I was playing Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom over the weekend, when I thought I would visit the Gerudo Desert.
I do a lot of my exploration on foot, as it gives me time to look around properly.
Anyway, I was on top of some rocks and decided to have a look around through my Purah Pad, sure enough there was what looked like three hooded beings floating together in the middle of a field, one reddish in colour and the other two a blueish grey.
‘That’s a new one on me, it’s got to be worth checking out,’ I thought to myself. So I jumped off the rocks and continued to glide down to these three strange hooded beings.
It was only when I got closer I realised I got all excited about the back ends of three horses in a field.
Maybe I need some new glasses.
freeway 77
The times they are a-changin’
Reading about Tesco ending sales of physical games is no surprise. Going to my local store, it has always been on the first floor technology section, with a wide selection for all consoles. For the past couple of months or so it has been greatly reduced, moving down to the ground floor in a small area not far from the doughnuts and sandwich isle.
A GAME store in one of my local towns closed down and has moved into Sports Direct in the same shopping centre. The sight of the game section in one corner of the store now looks devoid and soulless. I know GAME has its critics but you could find good prices if you looked properly.
The only other good place left in my area, to buy physical games, is Smyths. There is also a Currys nearby, but their range is more limited.
I know it’s sad in a way, but I always call it a sign of the times when things move on from the past. And this is from someone who is buying more digital games these days from Steam, GOG, and the PlayStation Store. If you told me a few years ago I would be buying digital games like I am now I would have laughed, as I had always been a staunch advocate for physical media.
orionz25
Downward slope
I will laugh so hard if Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 doesn’t sell well, just as Microsoft buys it. I realise Activision has the potential to make a lot more different games but the fact is that it only really does Call Of Duty and it is not in a good spot right now.
Modern Warfare 2 was okay but full of bugs and the support, and the state of Warzone has not been good. Paying $69 billion for it seems crazy to me when we know nothing lasts for ever and it seems like Call Of Duty’s best days are already behind it.
Xane
More: Trending
J. R. R. ChatGPT
Games are possibly the one creative endeavour where I think AI can play a role, albeit as a tool of the creator, not as a creator.
I recently started listening to the Exploring the Lord of the Rings podcast, where Dr Corey ‘Tolkien Professor’ Olsen has been analysing The Lord Of The Rings books basically a paragraph at a time since 2017 (there are 267 episodes so far and they’re only around Caradhras in Fellowship Of The Ring. I’m up to episode 16.). It’s fantastic, if you haven’t had the pleasure.
At the end of every class, they take a field trip into Lord Of The Rings Online, and in one of the early episodes the Prof. mentioned how the game isn’t to scale, for various practical reasons around development and gameplay. But it got me thinking how much I’d love to be able to explore a 1:1 scale Middle-Earth like that.
This brings me to my point: I’d like to think that AI could eventually prove useful for something like that. It could render scenery, throw in non-player characters and wildlife, maybe procedurally generate some side quests/skirmishes. It would need to do this on human-built scaffolding of course. Even Morgoth wouldn’t have created the monstrosities AI has been producing lately.
FoximusPrime81 (gamertag/NN ID)
GC: That seems like a slippery slope, in terms of putting people out of work, but it probably would help.
Inbox also-rans
It now seems obvious to me that the reason they pic EA Sports 24 as the name is so they can still keep the acronym FUT, just now it’s FC Ultimate Team.
Chewy
I don’t know about the others but EA has managed to get their character looking a lot like Erling Haaland. That’s quite a feat, as he’s a weird looking dude.
Alfonso
This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Marbon, who asks what is your favourite type of role-playing game?
With Final Fantasy 16 just out, and Starfield set to be one of the biggest games of the year, the role-playing genre is as popular as ever, but few people enjoy all the many different types. It’s not just a case of Western and Japanese style role-players, with many other sub-genres, including action role-players, tactical role-players, and variants like dungeon crawlers, roguelikes, and massively multiplayer online games.
Which do you enjoy the most and which particular game do you think is the best example of its type? Which sub-genre do you wish was more prevalent and how would you like to see it evolve in the future?
Please note: Due to an error, the above Hot Topic description only ran on a limited number of days last week, so we’re re-running it this week. If you’ve already written in there’s no need to do so again, as we’ll use your letter this weekend.
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The Wednesday letters page offers advice on the best place to buy physical games, as one reader is impressed by Erling Haaland in EA Sports FC 24.
