Good day everyone and may I say, word up.
Now that we've got the formalities out the way let's look at some things and some stuff.
So the elephant in the online only hero shooter here is obviously the release and perhaps record take-down of Firewalk and Sonys, Concord. Sadly the title only lasted two weeks before the servers were shut down due to what seems mostly like just plain old bad timing. Very low sales meant the servers never got above ~700 players and with summer still being around for a little longer people aren't spending money on video games as much as they are travel and such. Not to mention there's a beta for a little game called Deadlock that pulled a lot of players even with virtually no advertising. Add to that the general state of the game industry roller coaster and the risks are pretty high.
I'm not a big fan of hero shooters myself but from what I saw of Concord the game play seemed pretty good. Nice looking level design with cool reveals and smooth looking movement. I've seen some basic complaints about a lack of character depth and less than stellar overall polish, but I can only imagine things would get better as the game matured. As I understand it steps are at least being considered to move to a free to play model and if that's the case Concord may be playable again in the foreseeable future. It's no question that most FTP models feel predatory and I think it's safe to speculate that with as hard a nose dive as Concord took it would be stacked to the roof with transactions under such a model. Still, it would be nice to give it a fair shot. After all people did work pretty hard on the project and maybe it deserves better than two weeks of up time.
Hello Games released another free update for No Man's Sky adding a brand new, highly anticipated expedition guaranteed to have everyone excited to start a temporary new save. For a limited time you and your friends can get together and sign up for... fishing? This is maybe the most boring way I could think to spend time in a game about galactic exploration, but it seems people are actually into it for some reason. My own opinions aside, there are actually aspects that seem kind of tempting. You'll get to catch and identify a bunch of weird aquatic life while you float lazily on your new fishing skiff exocraft. And you'll earn points towards a new nautical themed exosuit. New baits, new fishing rods and lots of friends together could actually be cool. Besides, fishing in video games can actually be made fun. I present Dredge and Stardew Valley as examples. So, if it interests you, just head to the old space anomaly and sign up. I hope you catch one "this big".
Space Marine 2 is just stomping its way through hordes of Tyranids for players who paid extra to start the game a few days early. I hate this kind of "early access" sales tactic. Pay us extra money (a lot by the way, 50% more in this case) so you can have access to a season pass and you can play a few days before anyone else. What a great deal!
This not only sucks but it's not a guaranteed good thing for players as we recently saw with Star Wars Outlaws. PlayStation 5 players who paid an extortionate extra amount of money to play four days early were forced to start new save files because Ubisoft were using the wrong version of the game. Those players lost dozens of hours of play time. I can't state enough that is play time people paid extra money for. And as compensation for losing those hours they were given a "special" trinket and 100 Ubisoft store credits. Credits that can only be given back to Ubisoft.
Let's be super clear here - If you're buying a game that claims to have an early access release date for a special edition you'll have to spend extra money for then that date is the release date of the game. It's playable and running on that date. Those who choose not to spend the extra money are being punished for that decision by being locked out of playing for a set period of time. It's not early access, it's late access and it's a bullshit sales tactic designed around FOMO to get players to spend extra money.
Regardless, I'm still very excited to play Space Marine 2 on Monday. In fact I've essentially blocked out my day for it. Sadly, PC players don't get a pre-load and even though my internet has been upgraded I'm still on a super slow connection so I'll have to download for two and a half hours before I can get to punching xenos with everyone's favorite Ultramarine, Lt Titus. But oh boy come noon, you can bet my chain sword will be soon screaming through space bugs.
I leave you today with Gamers Nexus conclusion to their expose about EK. I'll just toss a link here for that, it's worth the watch.
WTF are we playing?
AJ: Shelled out for (and received) the TurboGrafx-16 adapter set for the Analogue Pocket and I also picked up BloodRayne: Betrayal on sale on the PS5 Store so I'll probably give those a go this weekend.
Greywolfe: balatro-ing: i've got one more joker to get, but it's proving to be the trickiest one [which feels about right.] - you have to do so many correct things in a line in a game that's largely about the rng of the pull. so far, it's proving to be the least fun joker as a result. the most fun thing about balatro is building a pile that somehow works. sure. over many blinds, you can direct your game plan, but your game plan is often quite loose. having a joker that forces you in a very specific direction with a very particular build feels antithetical to the whole style of the game. other than that: started up a new ultima 3 file. just noodling around right now and figuring out where everything is again. [super belated update! i got the least fun joker! i had to be on that run until WELL past where it should have ended, but as the score was outpacing my ability to keep up, i got a couple of jokers that helped A TON.]
Scrooloose: I've been playing a lot of a really awesome SHMUP called Cygni All Guns Blazing and I'll probably just punish myself further with that. Monday is all about Space Marine 2. I'm also excited for Tiny Glade later this month on the opposite end of the spectrum.