Black Ops 6 is out very soon (Activision)
The Tuesday letters page asks for recommendations for police-themed video games, as one reader looks forward to Slitterhead.
Weird or cheap
I was kind of shocked when I realised Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 is out this week. I haven’t seen any advertising for it and I’m pretty sure there’s been no previews. I thought this one was meant to be good, unlike last year’s? I thought that Microsoft would’ve gone all out if it had turned out well, since their entire bottom line now depends on selling Call Of Duty and other Activision Blizzard games on PlayStation 5.
Maybe they’re just being weird or cheap, but this does not send a good message to me. It makes me assume the game’s got something to hide and not the good sort of surprise. Didn’t they decide not to do early access for the campaign as well this year? That’s another red flag right there.
I used to be a big Call Of Duty fan but they lost me in recent years and I was hoping this would pull me back in. Maybe it will but there’s no way I’m going to even try it without some good reviews and word or mouth. Here’s hoping!
Cranston
Mainstream lore
I always find it wild when people take Sonic the Hedgehog lore seriously and call characters like Shadow ‘cool’. I mean… it’s a cartoon hedgehog, how cool can it be? Clearly, it’s me that doesn’t get it though and you can’t argue that the games were hugely popular during the Mega Drive era.
I also find it interesting that Sonic’s general popularity doesn’t seem to have been affected by the movies at all. They were pretty big, but the games are just trundling along as usual. Astro Bot sold much more than any Sonic game and even that wasn’t a mega hit or anything.
I’m not having a go at Sonic or its fans, it’s just weird that a character and series we think of as being iconic isn’t actually that big. The movies are already bigger than the games ever were, in terms of the number of people that have seen them, and it’s strange to me that none of those people seem interested in Sonic’s origins.
Westron
Hot fuzz
I’ve completed Sleeping Dogs, L.A. Noire, and Battlefield: Hardline and have been re-watching The FBI Files and Forensic Files for the 100th time (on YouTube).
I’m looking to play similar games. I have already played both True Crime games to death.
Are there any other games like this that I’ve missed out on?
I only have Switch, Xbox One, and 3DS, if that helps.
LeighDappa
GC: There’s the flawed but interesting This Is the Police 2 or the excellent Return Of The Obra Dinn, which doesn’t involve police exactly but is the best detective game ever. It depends how unrealistic you’re willing to go though. How about Resident Evil 2 and Lego City Undercover?
Be prepared
I just thought I would give some helpful advice to Julian to finish Zelda: Breath Of The Wild’s final boss.
You can boost attack by making a meal using 3 x mighty bananas, 1 x mighty thistle, and 1 x dragon horn. You’ll have to shoot a dragon horn from one of the dragon’s heads with an arrow. This will give you an attack boost for 30 minutes, which will be plenty of time to defeat Ganon.
Make sure you complete all four temples, so that the final boss will start with half its life missing. Finally, take a ton of bomb arrows with you. You can do lots of damage from a distance this way, especially under the influence of the 30 minutes attack boost recipe. Don’t forget to wear top tier armour too, even though I doubt you’ll need it being so overpowered.
I don’t really like boss fights much, but I managed to defeat Ganondorf in Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom on my first attempt when I was fully kitted out during the end game.
I found the final boss in Tears Of The Kingdom to be more of a final showpiece rather than a tough boss fight and it was enjoyable.
Nick The Greek
Calm before the storm
GC asked if a reader was using food and elixirs before the boss fights in Zelda.
I can’t begin to tell you how much I hate having to prep like that before boss fights.
Especially when consumables and difficult bosses are involved. I’ll drink a potion or two if I happen to have one on me, not stashed away for when I really need it.
I don’t want to spend my time collecting mushrooms and firewood so that I can cook an attack buff.
P.Ella
GC: You could just buy them. We don’t think a couple of minutes of preparation is much to ask before the final fight in a 100+ hour game. It adds to the build-up.
Everything or nothing
Love It Takes Two and will automatically be interested in whatever the same team ends up doing next. Like everyone is saying, coach co-op is great, and I just don’t understand why they’re not more common. Yet another super successful thing (20 million copies sold!) that nobody tries to copy and yet the second Fortnite or NFTs or some other worthless fad pops up, publishers are on it in an instant.
I know, Fortnite is bigger than anything else, but 20 million copies is a lot, especially for a little game that doesn’t look like it cost that much to make. Plus, there’s a billion Fortnite clones and literally no It Takes Two copies or anything even remotely like it.
Surely it makes more sense to want to be a big fish in a little pool than to be going up against the most successful game in gaming history? Why must it always be all or nothing and why are publishers always shocked when it’s nothing? Are gaming CEOs all gambling addicts or something?
Mind you, it’s not even as if there’s that many indie couch co-op games, although that’s probably because they’re often focused on the PC, which isn’t very co-op friendly in my experience.
Bonsai
Cross-gen Nintendo
I’ve seen the images of the Nintendo Switch online game and I’m still not really sure what to make of it. Like you said though, the big takeaway is that it’s something major and seemingly quite complicated. This isn’t just StreetPass 2 or something.
In terms of it presumably also being on Switch 2, I wonder if this is Nintendo’s attempt to underline that the two consoles are backwards compatible and probably have cross-play too. That does suggest they’re not very different in power but then anyone expecting a portable PlayStation 5, or anything close to it, was always going to be disappointed.
Ghostly
No fear
Very interesting review of Fear The Spotlight, enough that I will likely buy the game when it goes on sale. But I have to register my disappointment that it’s yet another modern (even if it’s fake retro) horror game that isn’t actually scary.
I don’t necessary go into every survival horror with my brown trousers on, but it seems to me that most modern games are purposefully trying to be less scary on purpose, in order to appeal to a wider audience.
To me this seems so stupid. Unless they read a review people aren’t going to know any of these games are not scary. Almost any game with anything vaguely violent in it gets an 18-rating, so there is absolutely no way for casual gamers to tell what a game is like from just seeing it in a shop or online store.
And even then, I don’t think there’s a huge number of people wandering around who want to play a horror game but just one that’s not too scary. They either want to play one or they don’t, full stop.
The flipside of this is that people that actually do want a proper horror game aren’t getting what they want either. So in the end this new wave of games ends up appealing to even less people than ever before. And then they wonder why they fail!
All I’ve really got hope for now is Slitterhead, even though I’ve only seen a couple of trailers on it. Are you going to review it, GC?
Focus
GC: Yes, we’re playing it now.
Inbox also-rans
Personally, I’m hoping for some FromSoftware news at The Game Awards. The first trailer for Elden Ring was at Summer Game Fest, which is run by the same people. Only problem is they teased Elden Ring for ages before showing anything, so maybe it’ll end up being The Game Awards 2025!
Austin
I miss SSX Tricky. I wish EA would bring it back. I know they did once and no one bought it but I’d much rather they try again, with a more arcade style, than another Skate game. I find them too hard to play.
Goober.