Monster Hunter Wilds takes a lot of what makes the game and genre so great and capitalizes on it well, with the core gameplay mechanics showing how sharp their blade truly is. In terms of actually playing the game, battling the monsters feels nearly the best it has ever felt (a close second to the wonderful weight of every attack in World). The updated weapon move-sets add just enough to make most weapons feel fresh, and the new focus strike system is the BIGGEST star of the game. Being able to redirect attacks mid-swing makes weapons like Great Sword and Hammer feel significantly better to use, and the visual representation for wounds does streamline your plan of attack quite well. Coupling the focus system with being able to bring two weapons with you adds a significant amount of variety to the combat in the game, and with it loads of new tactics to employ while out on the hunt.

When it comes to Monster Hunter, the maps and monsters are the primary difference game to game. The new map designs are gorgeous, and they change in appearance and features over the course of the game as well. Each map, being as large as they are, have loads of environmental attacks to hit monsters with. You have things from vines you can pull from trees, to rock formations you can pull from hanging cliffs and geode walls, to even being able to use the weather to your advantage as tactics against your prey. The lineup of large monsters in this game is stellar — It never feels like you are hunting fodder, low-rank monsters. Fan favorites across multiple generations make an appearance in this one, even in low rank.

Capcom employed many quality of life features in this one, which are mostly welcome. For example, armor and hair are no longer gender-locked (Shoutout to all of my queer baddies out there (or people who like fun)! To help you get across the large maps, you have a mountable buddy again in this one (much like Rise) via the new seikrets species, and the game has a plethora of (now customizable) sub-camps all over each map to discover. Unlike in Rise with your palamute, seikrets do not take the place of a buddy or fellow hunter, so a full party of hunters can all still bring their mounts. Another highlight of the many QoL features for me is the ability to cook and eat a meal anywhere, in or outside of camps and hubs. Did you go on a hunt with your friends and realize after getting knocked out of the sky when you were just trying to do your cool insect glaive flips and shit that you didn’t eat? Now you can just waltz behind a tree while the monster rips your friends apart and eat a decadent looking meal to get those sweet, sweet buffs.

There are many, many things to love in Monster Hunter Wilds. For how sharp this title is, it is a huge shame that it is the largest double edged great sword around. Nearly every single aspect of this game that I gave kudos to has a direct negative effect, as well.

Lets start with the largest selling points of this title: Open World map design. The open world is cool in theory, but completely misses the point when it comes to how people play the game. When developing these large, sprawling maps, Capcom didn’t consider the fact that most people are questing with their friends, and each person playing the game likely has a different objective. Some people are crown hunting, some are hunting monsters for specific materials, some are finding hunts that will drastically raise their HR, some are doing event quests, and so on. When you throw four friends together in a party, all with very specific quest criteria, the open world suddenly doesn’t mean shit. I imagine the way Capcom envisioned people playing the game is that they would form a 4-player environment link, and run across the open world together, carving through or capturing any monsters in their path, giggling and swinging their feet off of their seikrets while it all goes down. I would wager that of everyone actively playing the game while you are reading this article, the vast majority of players are not playing the game like that and it completely misses the point of the core gameplay loop that makes Monster Hunter what it is.

The open world map design ties into one of the largest critiques you will see posted in forums online about this game: difficulty, or rather, lack thereof. Most hunters online find this game abhorrently easy compared to previous titles. My theory on how Capcom thought people would play this game compared to previous titles with its sprawling open maps is like a large factor in monsters being much easier with much less health. It would likely grow stale quick if you are running around the open world maps with your friends if each encounter took 20-40 minutes each. Additionally, although the large-monster list is full of bangers, the lack of smaller monsters causes the cool large monsters to have to take on that role as well. I know plenty of people who rarely upgraded armor well into high-rank, and played with new players who didn’t cart once until the final low-rank quest. Finally, another factor of the open world design, your mount makes getting around but easier, but the fact that it automatically takes you to the monster you are looking for basically auto-plays the game for you while you traverse these oversized and pointless set pieces, heat-seeking the monsters you are supposed to be hunting.

Aesthetically, for all of the cool environmental effects, fur, and lighting effects the game throws at you, it really does not feel like a 7 year jump over Monster Hunter World, but the performance requirements certainly make the game feel that way. The drop in performance does not remotely line up with the gain in graphics, and the fact it has taken Capcom a year to sort it out, only making it worse on some systems, is completely baffling — At this point, it is inexcusable, if it wasn’t from the beginning. I have to dock huge points from polish due to the fact that this game takes a supercharger to run well, and even then, it may still randomly crash on you or decide not to render in textures. What is the point of forcing me to start at my screen once every couple of weeks during a shader compilation, that takes anywhere from 5 minutes to 35 minutes mind you, for the game to fail to show me textures anyway?

Finally, the story. In my opinion, it was easier to be engaged with than in the base game of World. Natta’s story, although fairly predictable, was nice to watch unfold. However, in a natural pattern for this game, the story gets in its own way often. Monster Hunter World’s biggest issue is the fact that you have to start your assigned/urgent quest in single player, see the cutscene you need to see, and then you can invite others to the quest with you made multiplayer severely clunky, as everyone on the quest has to have experienced the cutscene at least once. The departure from this in Monster Hunter Rise was probably the biggest benefit that game had, as all cutscenes were optional, and players could just skip them or watch the cutscene together after taking the hunt. Unfortunately, Wilds goes backwards on this, where you have to get through an unskippable walking section at the beginning of nearly every urgent quest through low-rank before the game will feed you the cutscene and allow other players to join. This direction, again, tied to the open world design and Capcom wanting you to take in the scenery, rubs directly against what makes these games so special in the first place.

At the core, what makes Monster Hunter so special is jumping on, grouping up with your friends, and grinding out quests. Every aspect of Monster Hunter Wilds’ new design and concepts seems to be at complete odds with this. It’s hard — at the core, you have the most mechanically satisfying Monster Hunter title to date, but on top of it all you have a game that misunderstands what the player wants to do, and no matter how great the mechanics feel, an unoptimized game just means less players can enjoy their $70 dollar hunting game. I do enjoy the game when it lets me play it, but its hard to fall in love with it the way I did Rise when it’s constantly getting in its own way.

Score: 6.7

About our review system

• Gameplay: 30/40

• Polish: 8/20

• Aesthetics: 12/15

• Story: 10/15

• Contribution: 7/10

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Metal Gear Solid is easily the media franchise that means the most to me, by miles. Around the time I was 5 years old, as a wee (eventual queer) lad, my uncle allowed me to play on his PlayStation 1 while visiting him with my father. As a kid who had one at home and enjoyed randomly playing games with my older brother, stuff like Crash Bandicoot and various demo discs (rest in peace to PlayStation Underground discs), it was the only thing I wanted to do, and an easy way for my dad to get me out of his hair while he caught up with his brother. Well, my dad was bald, but nevertheless. I saw a game out of my uncle’s stack that caught my attention with it’s simplistic box art and very detailed screenshots on the back, and that game was Metal Gear Solid. Although it was rated M, my dad allowed me to play it, due to the premise of “Good Guy versus Bad Guy”, and oh boy, if only he knew how that would drive me both creatively and politically for the rest of my life.

I had never experience cutscenes like this game before, or mechanically deep gameplay like it either. Metal Gear Solid is the sole reason why I prefer story-based video game experiences now over any other. Eventually, my father got us a PlayStation 2 soon after this experience, and we ended up with a copy of Metal Gear Solid 2, and again, I was absolutely floored by the advancement of the medium and just how powerful interactive story-telling could be, even if I was too young to truly understand the story - Hell, I find new aspects of the series still to this day. Eventually, in my early teens I got to play through the final entry on the PlayStation 2 in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The camouflage system, the way you could see and fix actual damage to your body after fights, the espionage intrigue that, at least on the surface, seemed simpler than Metal Gear Solid 1 or 2, and the seemingly massive scale of the map, naturally split by loading screens (but I think this is something that needs to come back to instill scale!) Again, completely blown away by what Hideo Kojima and his team were able to accomplish on the PlayStation 2.

Snake Eater is easily one of the best looking games on the PS2, maybe next to Final Fantasy XII, and one that holds up incredibly today. The game holds up so well, in fact, that it has been remastered in HD and ported to the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One & Series, Nintendo Switch and PC. Any platform you could possibly be playing on today you can snag the game for and experience this incredible testament to video games as a story-telling medium and one of the greatest espionage thrillers from likely the greatest video game creator of our time. In my opinion, especially with it’s recent port to PC, PS5 and Xbox, I see no reason for a remake! Just keep polishing it and throwing it out as is to the next platforms so new players can enjoy - and that seemed to be the plan. However, Konami clearly had other ideas.

Before we talk about the Snake Eater remake coming up, lets talk about Konami and Kojima’s fall out, as well as the current company direction.

Hideo Kojima’s Kojima Production team originally started as an internal division of Konami Digital Entertainment, just to catch everyone up to speed on the origins on the studio behind modern behemoths like Death Stranding. Kojima worked on multiple titles with Konami, most renowned was Metal Gear, but he also had his hands on Silent Hill after some time, and was working on a reboot titled Silent Hills with a lot of the team he eventually created Death Stranding with before his incredibly messy, forced departure from Konami in 2015.

Since then, Konami has made many wrong turns, with a great example being Metal Gear Survive in 2018, and plenty of abysmal PC ports. Somewhere that Konami has seen money, however, is in remasters of older titles, such as the Castlevania remasters, which led them to create the Silent Hill 2 Remake, which has put them on a course of which I am personally afraid of.

Konami released the Silent Hill 2 remake in 2024 and struck gold. The game say incredible sales, with the game being developed by the Bloober team, who did so well on this remake that they are working independently on the upcoming Cronos game. Silent Hill 2 is sitting at an unprecedented 95% on Steam, a score Konami has not seen the likes of in a long time. Konami went on to announce a remake of the first Silent Hill, and of course, are soon to release the remake of MGS3, titled Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. You can see where this is heading. Their original releases have tanked, and outside of Metal Gear Solid, their titles between MGS4 and MGSV are mixed as well. Unreal Engine 5 remakes are also becoming more common, with a recently high performing on being The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. However, there is a distinction between TESIV & Silent Hill 2 compared to MGS3 - There isn’t a great way to easily play either title on modern platforms before the remakes.

Silent Hill & Silent Hill 2 have been ported before, with an HD port being released for the PlayStation 3, however, they are not on multiple modern platforms, and those HD remasters are hailed as the worst version of the games by a large margin. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, until it’s remake, was only available on PlayStation 3, Xnox 360 and PC, however, the PC port suffers from frequent crashes, and unlike titles like Final Fantasy XII or Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, its art has not aged well, especially in the character model department. For those titles, I can understand why Konami and Bethesda would want to remake them.

Metal Gear Solid 3, as mentioned above, is still to this day a gorgeous game. The game stood out on the PlayStation 2 so well that it has been ported numerous times, and is currently available on all modern platforms for the low price of $19.99, or $59.99 bundled with Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, Metal Gear Solid, and Metal Gear Solid 2 titled The Master Collection Volume 1. Although a messy port at launch, it has since been fixed, even carrying a Steam Deck Verified badge. Not only is it available on modern platforms, the Master Collection ports were released in October of 2023, less than 2 years ago! It is hard to imagine a need for a remake for either Metal Gear Solid 2 or Metal Gear Solid 3. But, lets talk about why Unreal Engine may be worse for the game rather than better.

Unreal Engine 5 specializes in high-fidelity, life-like graphical quality, sometimes to an uncanny point. It also, often times, is plagued with technical issues for users not on the most up-to-date hardware. Metal Gear Solid 3 was created around the hardware at the time - and the PlayStation 2 era is likely the one that relied on original art direction more than any other, unlike the PlayStation 3 generation trying to get realistic looking visuals.

Snake Eater is a saturated, lush, and sometimes eerie jungle crawl that has a very unique style many other games have failed to capture. With Unreal Engine 5, the jungles look full, sure, but they do lose that lush charm Kojima captured on the PS2, and plenty of the character’s faces look very different, with an example being Ocelot, who had this softened appearance, which lended to his true role in the game, now being replaced by a sharp, rough looking soilder. It is also srange to graft Third Person Shooter mechanics onto a game that was not meant to be a third person shooter, on top of it all, while keeping the game otherwise mechanically faithful.

Okay, so it loses it’s charm visually, losing its seemingly green backdrop, being replaced by a brown fog and an art style that aligns with modern games. It also gets control swapped to a third person shooter in sections of the game, which changes the perspective and feel - Big deal! It still has the story, which is the games selling point, so who cares? Well, Kojima does, apparently. You know, the guy who created all 10 canonical entries in the franchise and helped produce the non-canonical entries prior to 2015? In an interview, Kojima said he wouldn’t be playing the game, after a brief chuckle at the question. This makes sense, as Konami rushed the final canonical entry out the door, basically scorched the LA office of Kojima Productions to the ground, and then went on to release a horribly received zombie themed spin-off of Metal Gear Solid V. Oh, and the game is $70. Remember how I said the port of MGS3 is only $20?…

Konami has done everything they can to exile Kojima, while going on to torch Kojima Productions in 2015, cancel Silent Hills, bastardize Metal Gear in 2018, and now try to print money with remakes after the success of a (much needed) remake of Silent Hill. If Delta, does well, as does the remake of Silent Hill 1, I am sure that Konami’s next step, instead of crafting original I.P’s, will be remaking Metal Gear Solid 1, a task that, in my opinion, as been tried and failed before. If you really want to play this remake, I would advise not to fuel this remake train at Konami HQ, and instead play the port available for much less on your modern platform of choice, or to borrow it instead.

Maybe I will borrow Delta and see if my opinion changes, but at the moment, I can’t support this title or developers trying to find the Infinite Money glitch. I will look forward to creative, original ideas, such as Kojima’s upcoming espionage game with Sony titled Physint. I do think remakes have a place in the current video game landscape, however, I wish moving forward it is reserved for games unavailable on modern platforms, such as the upcoming Final Fantasy Tactics remaster/remake.

Also, Finn has a YouTube channel where they release let's play series with friends. Currently, they are playing Pokemon FireRed and Bioshock. Give it a sub if that sounds like your jam! 

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Fighting games, my beloved. My earliest gaming memories involve fighting games - when we got a PS2 as kids, my brother and I got Tekken 4 with our system and my love for fighting games hasn’t stopped since. There is immense satisfaction in picking up a character for the first time, slapping around the controller until you start picking up combos, and then seeing your own progress as you realize you are learning a character, and maybe eventually even mastering them. This core gameplay loop is only sweetened by the friendly, or sometimes overly-heated, matches with friends and family. To this day I still pop into fighting games with friends in either Tekken 8, Street Fighter 6 or Guilty Gear Strive for some laughs and screams while we pound on our controllers next to each other on the couch or miles away online.

It is easy to see why the fighting game genre exploded in arcades in the 90’s 00’s. I never got to experience this myself, as there wasn’t an active arcade scene where I grew up, but what better could there be to do on a Friday night as a teenager or young adult than pop into an arcade with your friends with a pocket full of quarters and have yourself a tournament for fun? Better yet, what about buying the game that cabinet is based on outright for your Sony PlayStation 2 and mashing it out with your fellow gamers, to then feel like increasing the stakes and gambling the college fund your parents hid in their closet that they saved years and years for, only to lose it to the neighborhood kids, which forces you to come up with an elaborate tale for your parents on why the money disappeared?

In America, there aren’t nearly as many arcade scenes around as there are over in Japan, but you can still purchase the game for $70 on your platform of choice and play with the gang across the world. $70 is a high cost of entry, but its a one-and-done fee at least. Right?….. RIGHT?
Alright, lets talk about things that Piss Finn Off™️with today’s segment - Greedy game publishers in the modern gaming era, highlighting the concept of double-dipping.

Possibly the most frustrating trend in gaming right now are battle passes, season passes, and microtransactions. Continued payment in the arcade makes sense. You load up your arcade card rather than coming with a pocket full of quarters, but the premise is the same, you pay-per-play on a game of your choice, and your friend can play across from you. You guys virtually beat each up to the ends of the earth until you are out of money on your card, and then you carry on with the night. You didn’t have an upfront cost that was marketed like a single time fee, and you can come and go as you please. In the home, it’s meant to be different - You pay for the video game, since you already paid for the hardware to play it on, as well as your online fee depending on your platform of choice, and then that’s it, you get to play as much as you want!

You bought your version of the arcade cabinet, that is to say your console or PC and gamepad, and then you paid for a copy of the software. If you are purchasing a game from a long running franchise like Tekken or Street Fighter, there is a chance you have characters you main who have been present for many games, and there are a few new characters for you to learn in the newest title. However, what if the game doesn’t ship with a character you loved to play as, like Sagat in Street Fighter 6 or Heihachi Mishima in Tekken 8? Oh well, it’s weird they didn’t include those long running characters, but you’ll manage. You bought the game, and you’ll play it anyway, as you love the rush of it’s gameplay loop and there are still plenty of characters.

Here comes Bandai Namco with a gigantic middle finger to you. Yeah, you bought the game. Yeah, you pay to play online. Hell, you even have the hardware you paid for. Well, now you gotta pay for those legacy characters you have played as your entire life. $8 a character or $40 for the season pass. Now, you have potentially just racked up a $110 price tag with your game. Don’t worry, I am sure they aren’t going to nail you with another pool of legacy characters in the next season who have been around for many titles in the franchise before this one for yet another $40!

This concept isn’t just Bandai Namco’s Tekken team either, Street Fighter and Guilty Gear both love to force you to bring your quarters with you every time you boot up the game, too. Every season pass, at least 75% of the characters they add are from previous titles. Hell, Sagat was just announced for Street Fighter 6’s newest season, and he has been a playable character since Street Fighter II in 1992! Go rob the f*cking swear jar(there, have a quarter), it’s time to play a character that debuted 33 years ago. Asking you to pay for fighters you have a deep love for is bad enough, but there is another piece of this capitalistic puzzle I have to touch on as well. Battle Passes.

If paywalling your favorite characters wasn’t bad enough, battle passes have to take the cake, at the very least from sheer annoyance. Every single time you play a few rounds online, you watch an experience bar fill up, offering you relatively meaningless rewards every time you compete enough, with the opportunity to pay for a premium edition of the system that will need you cooler rewards, like emotes, challenger screens, outfits, titles, and gear for your custom avatar. Honestly, Battle Passes wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t litter your screen with updates to them every 5 minutes, begging you to spend money on the premium pass every season. The arcade doesn’t even do that - smack you in the face with a near full-screen ad begging you for money - at least the arcade cabinet just charges you to play.

This is the art of what I like to call The Arcade Cabinet Model: You purchase the hardware, purchase the game, and you still have to put your quarters in to get the full extent out of the product you purchased. Fighting games are marketed as a single purchase and charged like a live-service. There needs to be another way, and I don’t necesarily think in the current landscape of games as a service that a single purchase is the only way - I understand for a competitive game to stay relevant that there needs to be continued support and content, and these greedy devs don’t want to give that out for free.

Let’s take a look at the current hottness on the block - Marvel’s Rivals by NetEase Games. Rivals is a Free-To-Play Hero Shooter, which due to it’s free-to-play nature, offers Season Passes and microtransactions every season. Something that stands out about Rivals, however, is the fact that all playable characters are FREE. You download the game, and all characters, current and future, will be available to you at no charge whatsoever. To supplement the game’s development cost, and hopefully make some money, they exclusively offer cosmetics for each hero that you can grind a battle pass for, pay for a premium pass, or pay for via microtransactions. This is a genius plan, as it doesn’t alienate any potential players. You can have the same experience as everyone else regardless of money spent, and if you want to throw some money at the dev. team, they offer you some of the coolest outfits and cosmetics of any game for a fee. The most important highlights here to note are that the game is extremely popular, is very profitable - earning over 130 Million USD in their first month, and the player never has to pay for a mechanical difference compared to any other player.

Seeing the success of Marvel’s Rivals and similar titles got me thinking - Why aren’t fighting game publishers doing that? See, fighting games were born from microtransactions - you throw in a quarter and get to gaming, and with the currently massive success of games like Marvel’s Rivals, Fortnite, Apex Legends, and more, why wouldn’t Tekken or Street Fighter see the same success in the home that they see in arcades? Other’s have tried and failed, to be fair. Multiversus tried this, however, had aggressive microtransactions where you had to buy characters, and most cosmetics were only available for a limited time.

If we take notes on where Multiversus failed, and look closer at how its failures are rooted in the opposite of what makes Marvel’s Rivals so successful, I think a formula can be crafted for a long-term free-to-play fighting game. One game is on the horizon that could shift the balance in the fighting game scene, and one I am very excited for after trying it’s Alpha test - 2XKO.

Riot Games is no stranger to free-to-play games, or how to be profitable and stay extremely relevant. 2XKO is their attempt at a 2v2 fighting game, of which they have announced is coming in 2025, is free-to-play, will feature crossplay and rollback netcode, and players will be able to unlock all heroes for free. This could be the future of the in-home fighting games business model. Offer the game for free, offer all characters for free, either outright or with a free unlock path, and charge for cosmetics, a premium battle pass, and a faster character unlock process. Mix that with the fact you can duo with a friend and fight others, an easy-to-learn / difficult-to-master fighting system, and the backing of a reputable company or dev team, and I really think we can see 2XKO become a top contender in the fighting games sphere.

I have my fingers crossed that 2XKO does well, and that Tekken, Street Fighter or Guilty Gear move to a similar system. There needs to be a change in the fundamentally anti-consumer concept behind publishers charging you for a full priced game while expecting you to bring quarters. There is a better way, and although I am bitter now, I am hopeful for the future of The Arcade Cabinet Model that is good for both the player and the developer.

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9.9.1999. A date those super cool blue blur nerds will remember well, and the beginning of the end. For those who don’t remember (or perhaps were not around for it) this was the US release of the Sega Dreamcast. The Dreamcast was the final Sega home console. Yes, that company who makes all of those games with Kiryu in them, where you will be going through the most explosive story set in the crime underworld of Japan (or now Hawaii?) to then playing Virtua Fighter in an arcade, or fist-fighting patriarch’s in baby diapers. This is also the developer behind the Sonic franchise - which, uh, could be doing better at the current moment. (Side note, should I play Frontier?..)

Once upon a time, Sega actually released consoles, much like Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox! Their most popular system was the Sega Gensis, where Sonic cemented itself as a worthy rival of that freakin’ plumber over on the ol’ Nintendo all of your friends had. They actually did quite well! In pure numbers, the Gensis sold more units than some of your favorite consoles did in their respective lifespans, including the Nintendo Gamecube and the original Microsoft Xbox. How is it, then, that The Sega Dreamcast only sold for 3 YEARS before its untimely demise, being the final nail in the coffin for Sega’s hardware division, and nearly the company as a whole, you ask? Also, how does that relate to the Xbox brand, Finn? Strap in, because we are in for a rocky ride (or read?)

We could start at the beginning of the Sega hardware timeline, speaking about their first home console, the SG-1000, which was relatively unremarkable. There isn’t much to talk about there (it released the same day as the freaking Famicom/NES in Japan…….) aside from the fact that this was the beginning of what I think is a very, very real problem and in my opinion, the ethos that carried their hardware division to its grave - Reactionary business. See, when Sega saw the obscene success of the NES(I am American, so, we are gonna go with NA naming conventions moving forward), they decided they needed to REACT rather than create something and be innovative. So, where does this take us?

The Master System. This was Sega’s answer to the NES at the time, and boy, did they give it the old college try. Even though this was significantly more popular than the SG-1000, Sega still couldn’t outperform the NES here. It was relatively unsuccessful everywhere aside from Europe, where it was deemed a commercial success. This glimmer of hope, and Sega feeling the need to react to everyone who looks at them strangely (no surprise this is who created Kiryu Kazama), this moves us to their new weapon to battle Nintendo with.

The Sega Genesis, their highest selling piece of hardware they ever created, and what carried them forward to create new consoles (and maybe, due to the franchises started here, what has carried them to where they are now) was Sega’s response to their original response to the NES. Take THAT old, side-scrolling Mario! The Genesis was a bit of a marvel at the time, it was more powerful than the NES, featured WAY more buttons on the controller, was an arcade-port phenom, and was where Sonic began. Sonic The Hedgehog, Phantasy Star II, EA games(remember when EA was respected at all?), Streets of Rage, and tons, and tons of arcade ports. Finally, you can pay with tons of coins up front, rather than every time you want to smoke-check your friends - and you got Sonic to boot! This console also saw they gain a large following in the USA, and expand their EU market greatly. With a high this high, and looking like they could actually COMPETE with Nintendo, what possibly went wrong?

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System has entered the chat….

Man, just when Sega was looking good, Nintendo decided to release the follow up to the NES, and this is when the original Console Wars truly ignited. I don’t need to tell you about the SNES - this console created ripples that are still felt to this day. It is one of the most iconic consoles of all time. Nintendo was back with a force that Sega truly did not know how to deal with, but as always, they needed to react to this. Their market share they just won was dwindling, as were their sales they JUST started to get. So, what did Sega do?

Well, instead of releasing a new console, Sega decided that since the Genesis was the almighty, all-powerful system that held them up when they needed it most, instead of releasing a follow up to the console, they would release….. add-ons…….

HUH? Yep….

This is where the decline of Sega really starts to show. Sega decided, to react to the marginally growing popularity of disc based games, they would create an Add-On for the Genesis, rather than an entire console. They created the Sega CD attachment for the Genesis, allowing it to play disc based games. There were some hitters here, like Sonic CD, a few titles from the Lunar series, and more arcade ports. However, Sega wanted to show their muscle, or at least attempt that, and released PLENTY of poorly received FMV based video games that felt like half-baked tech demos and nothing more, with some of the most horrific sounds and visuals you will ever see in your entire life if you decide to look them up. Due to the clunky nature of attachments, and the fact that the price point was THREE HUNDRED US DOLLARS IN AMERICA, it was mostly a dud. Sega shifted weight into the decision to work on their next console from there, the Sega Saturn - However, there was a snag on the road to get there. The ALMIGHTY and HIGHLY memorable console, the Atari Jaguar was slated to come out during development of the Saturn, and boy-oh-boy Sega just couldn’t have them taking over precious market share! They could see the future, and the future definitely was the Jaguar, who would go on to dominate the console space for years to come, pushing out both Sony and Nintendo before they could really take over…….. Oh wait, that didn’t happen. Hell, chances are, you’ve never even heard of that console. So, Sega released another add-on to compete with an ATARI console, titled the Sega 32X.

The Sega 32X was a cartridge attachment that was meant to super charge the Genesis, and be used as a transitional console for the 32-Bit era until the Saturn came out in the USA, their proposed SNES crusher and hopeful contender against Sony’s upcoming console. The 32X was one of the biggest “console” failures of all time. What a shot that one was. They were worried that while developing the Saturn, it would not come out in time to compete against the Atari Jaguar, so they released this. They did learn from their mistake of the CD attachment, and this one was nearly half the price of the Sega CD. However, something Sega failed to realize, attachments mostly target your current user base - It typically will not add on to your market share. Most people purchasing an add-on already has the console in the first place, so really, what are you doing by dropping these add-on’s? In hindsight, this is oddly similar to the PS4 Pro Xbox One X, a power-boost meant to be used as a transitional upgrade, so, kudos to Sega for planting that seed. But, it really didn’t serve them back then.

After the Sega CD, and the fact that they were hard into the development of the Saturn, they didn’t really make plan out the 32X very well. Obviously, their current user base WANTED it, so you needed the quantity there for them. Well, they sold about a million units around launch, but only had just over half of that ready to be shipped. This, plus the fact it was an add-on, plus the fact that people were just ready for whatever came next, and the mixed bag that the Sega CD was, led to the downfall of this attachment, and boy-oh-boy it happened FAST. The fact that third party developers knew the PlayStation, Saturn and N64 were coming soon across all territories, they didn’t want to develop games for the 32X, plus, the development kits for the dang thing rolled out later than needed for most game devs, leaving most of them to skip making games for it. Oh, did I mention this thing launched just a year before the Saturn in the US and one day before the Saturn in Japan? Oh, and WAY bigger bombshell here - ONE MONTH BEFORE THE SONY PLAYSTATION in Japan. Poor, reactionary timing. The focus probably should have been marketing the Saturn in NA and other territories, and sending full development power to it.

The Sega Saturn. What an odd fifth generation console this was. On one hand, it was a relatively solid system performance wise, and had ports of Virtua Fighter, as well as had games like Nights Into Dreams and Panzer Dragoon. It also sold very, very well in Japan at its launch (even with the weirdly timed 32X attachment for the Genesis) selling half a million units to Sony’s 300,000 PlayStation units. However, it was rumored that this was due to a higher sell-through rate of the PlayStation, meaning retailers were literally selling out of the PlayStation, leaving consumers to purchase the Saturn instead. The Saturn coming with Virtua Fighter was huge for Japan too, as Japan was very into Virtua Fighter during this period. However, the PlayStation began to overtake the Saturn in 1995 in Japan. Sony offered a lower licensing fee to developers, a more accessible development kit, and quicker ordering system at 7-10 days, which attracting more developers for the system, which led to more games for the PlayStation, so naturally the PlayStation would begin to overtake them in Japan.

The Saturn was slated to come out in the United States, a huge portion of their worldwide user base, in September of 1995. However, E3(rest in peace) 1995 came up, and Sega made a crucial mistake. After 50 Million or more in marketing, they decided it would be a great idea to announce at E3 that they suddenly shipped the Saturn to a few major retailers and that the console was available for purchase immediately. A surprise launch. After tons and tons of marketing for September, they release it months early. Why? To react to the PlayStation. Sega’s head decided that they NEEDED to release the Saturn before the PlayStation, and they needed to drop the announcement suddenly at E3. They announced a release price of $399.00, a bit pricey, but not outside of the norm for Sega. However, this was a massive mistake, as consumers were holding out for E3 before making decisions on what to do, most consumers who were going to purchase it already were planning for September financially, and then THIS happens:

E3 1995, Sony getting on stage to simply state the price of the PlayStation and nothing else, just to walk off stage to resounding applause. $299. The Saturn was over just as it began with this, and although the 32X could be analyzed as the nail in the coffin for Sega, but in my opinion, this was the start of the final hammer swing on their coffin’s final nail. At this point, what could Sega POSSIBLY do to compete? The PLAYSTATION, launching $100 cheaper in the USA, with better third party support, and a massive weight of excitement behind it. Sony has always just killed it with marketing decisions, like the above video. What a power move - Coming out, just KNOWING you’ve got it like that, uttering a price and nothing more. Iconic.

Sega just could not keep up anymore. The console’s surprise release hindered them, leaving some retailers to refuse to sell the Saturn later due to not being included in the original group of surprise launch retailers, plus people already being willing to hold out for the September release date. What a reactionary mishap THAT was for the Saturn. As time went on, Sony began to dominate the market, continually price cutting the unit to attract consumers further into its life, plus the N64 came out as well, both leaving the Saturn in the dust, where all Sega could do was continue to react by selling the Saturn at a lower and lower price point, shooting themselves in the foot with taking a loss on a system that was underselling to begin with. Before all was said and done for the fifth generation of consoles, Sega fell to an astoundingly low 12% market share, with Sony at 47% and Nintendo at 40%.

Sega needed to make one more move, which could very well be their final one. One more swing at the Sony and Nintendo.

It’s thinking………

And here we go. The Sega DREAMCAST. Sega’s final console, and the FIRST console of the sixth generation, coming out before the Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube or Microsoft Xbox.

Sega decided after the absolute failures that the 32X and Saturn were, after the Genesis being their best selling console of all time, they needed a redo. They appointed a new CEO for Sega, as well as pulled Sony of America’s former executive Bernie Stolar to be the new Sega of America V.P. and head of product development and third party relations. This is all while Sega reported their largest financial loss to the Tokyo Stock Exchange in their entire lifespan, a net loss of nearly 300 Million USD. Sega, with this restructure, announced the discontinuation of the Saturn in 1998 to focus on development of the successor to that console. They had not announced officially what that console was, but rumors had already circulated. However, here is on issue with all of that - Sega only held 12% of the gaming market share at that point, and between the discontinuation of the Saturn and the release of the Dreamcast, this left Sega without any new games for over a year. This definitely did not help.

Sega as a whole, but especially Sega of America, went hard on the marketing for the Dreamcast. This was the first sixth generation console after all! They leaned heavily into a futuristic, A.I. centric marketing approach (I know that acronym is nasty in this age, but hang in here with me). The tagline of their console was “It’s thinking,” painting the picture that the unit was so advanced, it had cognitive ability. Obviously, this was just marketing, however, it wasn’t without reason. Everything about the Dreamcast left the fifth generation in the dust, including the failure that was the Saturn. They stepped up from the Saturn’s 2MB of RAM and 1.5MB of VRAM to 16MB and 8MB respectively. They used two Hitachi SH-4 CPU’s, and a PowerVR2 GPU. The biggest thing it offered, which was nuts for the time, is broadband connectivity. This thing could connect to the internet. 1999. Online gaming. What of the fifth gen could hold a candle to that?

Sega spent obscene amounts of money on the marketing for the Dreamcast in hopes to repair the Sega brand. They even considered changed the hardware division of the company to a different name, similar to Sony’s PlayStation brand, just to completely get away from the name Sega. After much deliberation, they decided not to, and titled the console the Sega Dreamcast. They went on to spend US$50–80 million on hardware development, $150–200 million on software development, and US$300 million on worldwide promotion. Keep in mind, that although this was a bold, brave move on Sega’s part, this was a financially unstable company at this point. However, this marketing did help them. On top of this, Sega’s new executives went out to repair their relations with US retailers after their surprise launch of the Saturn leaving bad tastes in a lot of their mouths. Sega also wanted to keep cost down on development as much as they could, after the Saturn was both complicated to develop for and just expensive in general, dropping the cost of hardware used in the Dreamcast, which is what led them to choose the hardware I mentioned previously, with the Dual CPU architecture being cost friendly while still being more than capable of uphold 2D and 3D worlds.

However, after flipping back and forth between a more reputable GPU and the PowerVR2, they chose the PowerVR2 due to cost. It was rumored that it would be underpowered, and EA, the juggernaut of a developer and publisher they were in the 90’s and 00’s, announced that due to the “weird” choice of GPU, they would not develop games for the Dreamcast. Ouch. Can you imagine EA just skipping over your console entirely in that time, with sports games as unbelievably popular as they were.

The initial launch of the Dreamcast in Japan did not go quite as planned. Sega overpromised and underdelivered in the JP market, due to a high failure rate on manufacturing of the PowerVR2 GPU, leaving most vendors short staffed and many shipments delayed. In the marketing for the Dreamcast, they also intended to launch Sonic Adventure with the console, something that also got delayed by Sega prior to console launch, leaving many confused and not wanting to purchase the console. Sega used to have a huge market in America, and this would be where the focus would shift.

Sega’s American launch of the Dreamcast went well above their initial expectations, with very, very successful marketing of the console, and 18 launch titles available with the console. Peter Moore, Sega of America’s Senior VP of Marketing, was very confident in the launch of the Dreamcast. Speaking to Electronic Gaming monthly about the upcoming Dreamcast launch, he had this to say:

“Let's take the conservative estimate of 250,000 Dreamcast units at presage—that's a quarter of a million units at $200. We'll have a ratio of 1.5 or two games for every Dreamcast unit sold. That's half a million units of software. We think we'll be .5 to one on VMUs and peripheral items such as extra controllers and what have you. This could be a $60 to 80 million 24-hour period. What has ever sold $60 to 80 million in the first 24 hours?”

Was he right?
Well, the Dremacast sold an unbelievable 225,132 Dreamcast units in the first 24-hour launch window on 9/9/99 at $199. This, with peripherals(like their VMU memory card) and games (like Soul Calibur, NFL 2K and Sonic Adventure) left them earning US$98.4 million in TWENTY FOUR HOURS. Maybe Peter Moore was right. Within 3-4 months, Sega went from holding a declining 12% market share to a 31% market share in North America. Prior to this launch, Sega also dropped cost of the unit in Japan, which coupled with the release of Soul Calibur, boosted their shares by 17% in Tokyo. Sega looked like they were so back. Until they weren’t.

You see, even though Sega had record high profits for the first time in a very long time, Sony still held roughly 60% of the gaming market by the end of 1999 - This was with the Dreamcast exceeding Sega's expectations by a significant margin. Sony shared the first details of the PlayStation 2, with its new Emotion Engine, in March of 1999. As marketing increased for the upcoming PlayStation 2, Dreamcast sales sharply declined. The PS2 was supposed to be tremendously more powerful than the Dreamcast, and a clear generational upgrade above the then best-selling PlayStation. Everything, all the way down to the type of disc drive the unit used made the Dreamcast seem obsolete just months after release by the time the PS2's specs came to light. Many people decided to wait until the PS2 released while its marketing was ramping up, so sales continued to drop for Sega.

Once the PlayStation 2 released, Sega did what they did best - Price cuts and rebates. They cut the price of their console that was suddenly causing them profit losses. What did this do? Cause them more profit losses, duh! Sony, as well as the newly release Nintendo Gamecube, started to take more and more market share. Sega was banking on Sony's supply shortages helping them, as they thought consumers would just buy the Dreamcast instead of wait for the PS2, but all that happened was a freeze to the marketplace while people waited for more PlayStation 2's. Sega was losing sharply, and they needed to sell around 5 Million units by end of 2000 to stay afloat. Not only did they miss this number by nearly 2 million units, the cost decreased coupled with that helped contribute to a reported loss of $417.5 million. The market shifted to Sega only holding a declining 15% share. Microsoft was also around the corner, marketing the upcoming Xbox.

Sega spent so much on the American market to promote the Dreamcast, and although this helped them early on, they just could not take on Sony, so mixed with rapidly declining sales and significantly lower than expected sales overall, Sega, after restructuring their offices, decided it be best to leave the console business and focus on being a platform-agnostic third-party developer and software publisher. One of the only things that allowed Sega to do this was a friend of the company, who had loaned them a large sum of money leading up to the Dreamcast's release, passed away, and just before he did, he forgave the debt given to Sega, as well as returned a staggering amount of shares back to the company. Sega cleared out their Dreamcast inventory, all the way down to $49.95. The Dreamcast was dead, and Sega would live on as a (very successful) video games developer and publisher. Their horribly reactionary strategies early on in the console business, with the Saturn and 32X being prime examples of this, lead to their downfall, leaving them so far in the hole by the time the Dreamcast came that they really didn't stand a chance.

Let's jump into the future a bit, before coming back to just before the fall of the Dreamcast.

The Game Awards 2023. One of the few live gaming shows left, with a huge hole still left by E3 permanently closing. (No, I am still not okay.)

Everyone on earth could see who was going to win Game of The Year, with that game being Larian Studio's Baldur's Gate III. Due to this, I was most excited to see what games were going to win in the more specific categories. One game in particular, which spurred this article in the first place, was nominated for 5 categories - Best Art Direction, Best Score & Music, Best Audio Design, Best Action Game, and Innovation in Accessibility, winning Best Audio Design of The Year. That game was Hi-Fi Rush. Hi-Fi Rush was developed by Tango Softworks, who made other critically acclaimed games including The Evil Within and Ghostwire Tokyo. It was published by parent company Microsoft. With a game this hot, winning a literal game of the year award, what is the best way to recognize this studio of yours? Shutting it down. Microsoft, just months after winning a GOTY award, shut down Tango Softworks, a studio that was beloved by many fans and founded by Shinji Mikami, a creator that was listed in IGN's 2009 article of their Top 100 Game Creators, as well as director of Resident Evil.

You see, Microsoft and Sega share many of their worst qualities, with the main one being reactionary business practices. Also, striking gold one time and falling behind the pack every time aside from that. Much like we did with Sega, lets dive a bit deeper into the Xbox brand next time, and how there are two paths laid in front of them - with one of them likely leading them to be another Sega.

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Published on June 2, 2025 by finn.exe

Listen, I know games preservation is a hot topic here lately. From AAA developers thinking live service games should be the only way forward, to online-only single player games that the servers can be taken down for at any moment, emulation developers and fan-game's being C&D'd and/or sued left and right - gamers who like to own things have a lot to be upset about, most notable recently is Nintendo updating the terms of service for the Nintendo Switch 2, where if you do anything they don't like with the console or it's software, they can BRICK YOUR UNIT (a pretty harsh change from just deactivating your online account). Games as a service is something that comes up quite a bit during all of these points of not owning the games you play.

Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, EA and even Nintendo to a degree all have subscription services where you can play games on them like you watch shows on Netflix, with Microsoft specifically pushing for anyone, regardless of hardware, to be able to play their games just like you can watch your favorite episodes of Ouran High School Host Club on any device you own. While I think ownership is important so you can, ya know, play the games you own for as long as you live, and archiving game backups for future generations to enjoy after those games are no longer sold, I can't help but argue that Xbox Game Pass, a service is the fundamental opposite of those ideas, is inherently important to modern gaming, and that Xbox as a brand holds the line for budget gamers across the world.

Let me give you an example here. You are a teenager in a loving, working poor family. Your parents make ends meet, and that's about it. You are a GAMER. You want to a platform to play on. PlayStation seems great, but the console starts at $499.00. Nintendo makes incredible, innovative and fun games. The new Switch 2 starts at $449. You want to get into PC gaming, but a gaming laptop or desktop is certainly out of the question, and the 512GB Steam Deck is a staggering $549.00. But who is that you see up to street? Is that good guy Phil Spencer, holding a shockingly small white box to the heavens, with a baller electrum chain hanging from his neck that reads $379.00? Wow, and the console supports 1440p gaming? Well that will certainly run great on your 1080p TV in your room! Now what do you do about games? Your parents scrounged up enough money to buy the console itself, but $400 bucks is about the total budget for this gift that they have saved for months over months to get you. Game Pass Ultimate comes included with the console for 14 days, and your parents, although they can't give you a new $40-70 game every month, can certainly commit to a $20 allowance a month for you to get Game Pass Ultimate. Now, this is epic. You can get a revolving catalog of absolute bangers, from new Microsoft Studio titles day one, to games like Metaphor Refantazio, Clair Obscure Expeditions 33, and even some Xbox and Xbox 360 classics! Thanks Mom! Thanks Dad! Most importantly, thanks good guy Phil Spencer!

This example, although hyper specific, can translate to many other areas. Hell, if you can't afford a console but you have good internet and a beat up old laptop or a semi-modern smart phone and a controller, you can play the Game Pass library via cloud streaming, and it even works via cloud streaming on the Xbox One, which you can find for very cheap second-hand nowadays. If you live in an area with poor internet service but can save up over time, the cost of entrance is significantly lower than the competition.

Listen, I agree, we shouldn't allow companies like Ubisoft and EA to let their all digital, consumer-rights destroying plans come to fruition - But it is undeniable that Microsoft is the company who is holding the line for gamers who aren't as well off as others, and a god-send for people who can't afford the newest games every month, but can scrape up enough dosh for a Game Pass subscription and still get to see whats new, what's old, what's hot, and what's not. When it comes to consuming an art form, it should not be reserved exclusively for people in working class and higher wage classes - and for that Phil Spencer, we salute you. But maybe not for all of the other stuff Xbox is doing. I am still upset about Hi-Fi Rush.

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Posted on February 23 2025 by finn.exe

Growing up, one of the first RPG’s I ever played was Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic. The second game in particular is one I always think back to, with both my older brother and I clearing the game numerous times, just to create different builds and to make different decisions, the latter being something that Obsidian prides themselves on. Fallout New Vegas shared this to some degree, but man, KOTOR II really knew how to force the player into morally grey scenarios and force them to make decisions that genuinely alter the game. Role playing is something Obsidian rewards their players for, between dialogue and character build. Mentioned already, but Fallout New Vegas is a good example of this. Key players at Obsidian created Fallout 1 and 2, and they went on to create a CRPG named Tyranny that has garnered a bit of a cult following. Obsidian also created the Pillars of Eternity duology, which many nerds consider to be the greatest CRPG’s there are (well, that is, before Baldur’s Gate 3 released...). Clearly, Obsidian are the role-playing GOATS.

Obsidian announced Avowed in 2020, a game I have been eager to get my hands on since the first trailer debuted. Avowed was touted as a high-fantasy RPG set in the Pillars of Eternity universe (the world of Eora), which I have never gotten to experience the world of before but have always been interested in. In the debut trailer, it awed me with shades of Oblivion, and I, of course, immediately made the joke that Obsidian will do anything in their power to dunk on Bethesda. Starfield announced in 2018? The Outer Worlds in 2019. The Elder Scrolls VI announced? Bam, Avowed announced. Aside from the opportunity to be inside of the PoE universe, the Oblivion similarities in the trailer were what really pulled me in.

You see, once the PS360 generation rolled up, my brother and I got to play a game that has long stuck with both of us since – The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It is in my top 10 video games of all time – Yes, it is likely due to the rose-tinted glasses strapped to my face, however, Oblivion did a lot of things right when it came to Role Playing and the allure of high fantasy. The world was gorgeous, the lore behind the world as well as the guilds within it were intriguing, and the class system was incredible, which all of the above left plenty of room for role playing. It is a game I revisit at least once a year, and the magic of Oblivion is something no other western RPG has been able to capture for me since, especially not Skyrim, a game of which I felt just oversimplified Oblivion, while simultaneously smearing it with grey shit. Avowed coming out of nowhere, seeming to be the next Oblivion for me, has had me anxiously anticipating this game for the last 4+ years – and I am excited to report that after 8 hours in, I have.... uninstalled the game. Almost everything about this game falls flat on its face. Seeing how Obsidian simplified a lot of things for The Outer Worlds should have prepared me for this, but this is an oversimplification further than I could have imagined.

First, let's talk about this game from a mechanical standpoint, looking away from the fact that my system, a Ryzen 7 with an RX 6750 XT, struggled to hold 60fps at a native 1080p. Taking a CRPG like Pillars of Eternity and turning it into an Action RPG is a bold decision, especially after Baldur’s Gate 3 blew the world away, but it somehow feels right for Obsidian to go this direction with their current fanbase, especially after The Outer Worlds. However, in The Outer Worlds and Fallout New Vegas’ case, when you primarily use guns, you don’t really need too many fun animations for melee combat. Avowed has more melee weapons than ranged weapons, and is a high fantasy game, where a large number of players are going to be swinging sharp sticks around. Every melee weapon feels about the same – a weightless stick flailing around with around 3 animations each. Your boring, sharp stick comes with an unresponsive parry system too! Mixing these things together, you get a rather lackluster experience in combat overall. I quickly switched to using guns, because at least it's understandable when they do not need tons of animations and you are going to be at a range with them, but the novelty of using guns in ye olde high fantasy setting gets pretty boring pretty quick too. Even the impact from all of the weapons feel.... off.

There is a stagger system in place, but it doesn’t feel like you are causing your enemy to stagger with any of your attacks from gun, magic or melee – you just slowly fill up a bar, get a cool looking power attack when its full, then it’s back to business as usual. Your stamina bar depletes with every action you take in combat aside from casting a spell, so this includes melee actions of course, but also, strangely, guns and wands as well. This makes absolutely no sense to me; the guns in this game already have a long reload time between shots, as they are flintlock weapons, but you also must manage your stamina on top of that. Wands also deplete stamina, while spells deplete your magic instead of your stamina, which left me a bit baffled as well. Regarding your magic and stamina, these can be marginally increased with attribute points when you level up.

Upon leveling up, you also get perk points to put towards your skill tree in this game towards one of three classes. Yes, three classes – This game, an RPG that is in the Pillars of Eternity universe, which has more classes than I have ever even heard of before looking into that game, only has THREE classes; Fighter, Wizard, and Ranger. I still don’t understand why Obsidian simplified the class system to this degree. I could get removing some classes, like Chanter or Druid, but slimming down to three classes with skills that don’t even always make sense for that class feels extreme. Inside of the Ranger and Fighter class trees, there are no perks that add any moves to your melee move set whatsoever, leaving you with the same 3 animations while you trudge through any combat scenario the game throws at you.

You get companions to roll with that you meet throughout the story of the game, and in my 8 hours of playing, I met all 4 of these companions, and had 3 join me thus far. To continue on about the perk tree, much like in The Outer Worlds, your companions in this game have a perk tree as well. They have simplified this as well, with there being about 4 skills to choose from with 2 levels each. On top of the simplified skill tree for your companions, you also do not manage their equipment at all – The gear you meet them with is the gear they have forever, and you have no choice in the matter, unlike in The Outer Worlds. There is a very confusing component to this decision, because your gear’s quality level determines about everything when it comes to combat, so having no visibility to your companion’s gear level makes determining the difficulty you can handle hard to read. Additionally, not being able to equip your companions how you see fit, at least to some degree, limits both role playing, but also combat tactics. For example, one of the earlier companions in the game has both a bow and arrow, as well as a set of daggers. You cannot tell him when to use which from a tactical standpoint aside from telling them to use skills that have a cooldown.

I mentioned gear “quality” level up above. Every piece of gear has a quality rating, things like Common, Epic, Superb, etc. The absolutely asinine aspect of this, however, is what happens if you go up against someone who has a gear quality level higher than you. Let’s say I roll up on an enemy who is wearing “epic” quality while I am using a “common” quality weapon. When I attack said enemy, my weapon will do 35% less damage than it is meant to do, regardless of its raw damage. WHAT AN ABSOLUTELY FUCKING STUPID IDEA. Your level and how powerful the weapon or armor you have does not matter if the quality of your opposition’s armor is a higher quality rating than your weapon, or your armor is worse than their weapon. You literally take a significate percentage decrease in effectiveness over the quality level. I could have heavy armor on, but it will feel like light armor if my opponent has ONE rank higher in gear quality on their weapon. Not only is this problematic for you, but it also makes managing difficulty confusing for your companions as well, as you have no idea what their gear level is, and the game does not tell you.

Something else that disappointed me coming from Obsidian, albeit I only managed to make it 8 hours into the story, was the dialogue. From a developer who prides themselves on dialogue, it felt like it had the Fallout 4 problem of your dialogue choices not really mattering, outside of a few clear decisions. It felt as if, aside from some added flair in the response I would receive, whatever I said didn’t matter and wouldn’t change the intended outcome the game had for that scenario. To be fair, I hear there are some story decisions later in the game, but all other dialogue isn’t really going to change too much, dissimilar to something like The Witcher, Mass Effect, Fallout 1 and 2, etc. This lended to plenty of situations where I was just smashing buttons through the dialogue just to get it over with, something I typically do not experience in Obsidian games.

Avowed is an oversimplification of a lot of things. It feels like a simplification of The Outer Worlds in many ways, as the only other real example of an action RPG from Obsidian, which by extension means it is a drastic oversimplification from their all-time classics like KOTOR II, or even a game like Fallout New Vegas, and although I only have a few hours into Pillars of Eternity so far, a clear trimming of that series, and it left very few of the good parts. This game is consistently compared to both Skyrim and Oblivion by people online, and those comparisons feel cheap. Oblivion came out nearly 2 decades ago and is a clearly better game than Avowed in most ways. Although it feels like it was created for people who like Skyrim, another game that simplified the series it was a part of, Avowed feels far simpler than Skyrim, a game I loathed after Oblivion. I saw a review online that said Avowed is better appreciated as an action game firstly and an RPG secondly, but this game's combat and equipment choices are so poor that it would honestly fare worse with that comparison.

Avowed feels like playing a game with an identity crisis – It isn’t sure which its meant to be bad at – being an RPG or being an action game – It does succeed at being bad at both of them, however. Subpar combat, lackluster or downright strange character leveling and equipment choices, and poor companion writing left me feeling like I wasted my time during the 8 hours I gave Avowed the chance with – a chance Obsidian fumbled miserably. It made me realize two things – One: I should probably be playing Pillars of Eternity instead; and two: Obsidian probably shouldn’t be making “Action RPG’s”. Not only did Avowed miss the mark, but it also shows Obsidian at their worst, hampering even the aspects they are usually the best at.

Score: 4.6

About our review system.

• Gameplay: 16/40

• Polish: 8/20

• Aesthetics: 12/15

• Story: 6/15

• Contribution: 4/10

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Playing a video game is a therapeutic affair, whether you are predominately a story-based gamer like myself, or a quick-draw type of gamer who likes routine in sports, sandbox or multiplayer games. Therapeutic tools, devices and experiences ≠ therapy. These things are not meant to be a replacement for therapy, but a tool to be used alongside therapy(A lot of therapists are starting to integrate video games into their practices as a tool, as well). They are meant to assist in coping, assist in escaping, assist in processing feelings, or possibly even provide a relatable story to engage with; they are not meant to be your therapist. But, as I alluded to above, video games are a great tool to use when a therapeutic device is needed to assist in your healing process, and I firmly believe video games exploring topics of mental illness only strengthen that sentiment. The Hellblade series, focusing primarily on psychosis, is a prime example of how this can be done.

Now, onto what I think about the second chapter in the story of the warrior named Senua.

Senua’s story is one filled with strife and hardships of an unimaginable magnitude. If you are reading this article, I imagine that you either have played the first Hellblade game and are looking for an impression on the second game, or you are just an avid supporter of what I do; however, I will tread lightly to avoid any major story spoilers for both games to the best of my ability. To give an intro version, Senua was raised by a tyrant for a father who led her people through fear. He also convinced Senua that the voices she hears in her head, the symbols she sees and finds deeper meaning to, and the things she sees that no one else can see can only mean one thing - that she is cursed by the “Darkness.” She was banished from her land. Her people were enslaved by another group. Her loved ones slain, and her eventual lover, Dillion, sacrificed in an absolutely grotesque way. Senua is haunted by constant, split voices in her head(that she calls the “Furies”) and visions that may or may not be real. Senua suffers through what is now called Psychosis. In the first game, Senua is on a quest to Hel to find a way to put Dillion to rest, while the game’s impeccable audio-visual design shows the player her internal suffering along the way.

Ninja Theory worked with a team of neuroscientists, mental health specialists, and people living psychosis to ensure they were accurately depicting the condition, as well as integrating it into their game’s lead character in a respectful manner. I played the game back in 2019, and aside from some gripes with combat animations, lack of enemy variety, and monotonous puzzles, I loved the game. The story was incredibly unique, and seeing the work the team put behind bringing awareness to Senua’s condition that people deal with in real life and implementing it in an incredible audio-visual feat for gaming made it a game that left an impact on me. Needless to say, I was incredibly excited for the 2024 release of the sequel from Ninja Theory, now backed by Microsoft.

After the closure on the story in the first game, Senua takes a different approach in this sequel - She wants to stop the enslaving of her people, and vows to follow it to its source and cut off it’s head. Senua thought it would be a simple matter, finding a way straight to the leader of the slavers, and ending him. As you would guess, nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

This go around, Ninja Theory has opened up the setting quite a bit, with Senua leaving home on this quest, taking you to multiple locations on an island which are all geographically different. With a lot of the first game’s locations feeling the same, this is a change I fully welcomed as the game went on. You could be trudging through the sands of a war-torn beach, climbing rock faces in a mountainous area, trudging through waist high water, navigating in near darkness through caves, and more. It really drilled in the fact that Senua was on a much larger quest than it felt like in the first game for me.

Moving through multiple areas, you do encounter a few different groups of enemies. Combat in these games is simple on paper, but it feels so visceral in the weight of which you swing your sword, the speed (or realistic lack thereof) you dodge attacks, and the consequence of keeping your defense one-note in any situation you have to fight. My biggest complaint with a lot of action-based melee combat focused games is the lack of any freaking weight in your attacks, wherein you can just swing around your sharp stick like Nathan Drake on bath-salts; but in this game, there were plenty of moments where I felt like I had to be calculated in when to swing my sword because of the consequence of missing, or when to block/avoid a strike coming my way. My biggest complaint with the game in general relates to the combat, though - There is BARELY any enemy variety in this game. You basically have 3 types of enemies in each group you face in the game, and its pretty consistent across groups as to how they fight. As the game goes on, reading attack patterns becomes WAY too easy for a game where it feels wonderful to swing your sword around, so it's disappointing that Ninja Theory didn’t throw in a wider variety of enemies. It was a complaint I had with the first game, and unfortunately carries over to this one. The combat animations are much, much more fluid, with added animations this go around too, though!

As previously mentioned, something I felt like was very, very lackluster in the first game was the puzzles. They all felt mostly pointless and just broke up the story, with the only ones carrying any meaning were matching up symbols. This installment, the puzzles are better overall, however, there were some weird pacing issues. The best way to explain it would be that you will run into one of the easiest, mind-numbing puzzles you have ever encountered in a game before (ala “light this thing with your torch lol”) and yet immediately run into a puzzle the next section that requires a bit more reasoning and investigation to figure out. The ones that did require thought were mostly great - In my opinion, kind of the ideal video game puzzles. There were two I can remember wanting to bash my head against my desk over from how long they took to complete, and they just broke up the story bits all too much, but hey, that’s only two times I can remember! Small victories.

The highest point where this game shines is its story. Without giving away too much of this story for any of you that want to play the game, Senua is not wholly alone this time, unlike the first game. In the first game, you walked in Senua’s shoes, and you got to hear both how Senua saw herself, lensed by her trauma, as well as how the “Furies” in her head and the “Darkness” saw her(and therefore, how it affected her). This time, as the game goes on, you get to see both of those things now that the first chapter of her saga has concluded, as well as how the people she engages with through the story see her. It adds this entire layer, and the player gets to experience the development it has on the furies’ opinion as well as her own regarding herself, her curse, and the death that follows in her wake. You also get to watch these new characters, see their struggles, their plight, and their character development as the story goes on. In a game that is only about 7 hours to completion, the game makes you care about all of these things from the start to the end of the game, which I salute. The story, as one would guess, also becomes a much larger quest than simply finding one slaver. Although there were moments here and there where I could guess certain plot points, there were still plenty of surprises, beautiful set pieces, grotesque moments, plot twists, and HEAVY emotional moments, which left me crying at LEAST three times through the games short run time (and I am NOT complaining about a short run-time with the length of my backlog…..)

All-in-all, I think Ninja Theory achieved something great with this sequel. They took extreme care with the sensitive subject matter, and delivered a story that left me raw at multiple points in Senua’s journey, albeit with a bit to be desired out of enemy variety and puzzle pacing. I would highly recommend checking the game out if you enjoyed the first one. If you somehow never played the first one….. You definitely need to pick it up. I hope that more video game developers integrate themes of specific mental illnesses in their games with the amount of detail that Ninja Theory has in these two titles, as they truly have done something remarkable in that regard yet again.

Score: 7.7

About our review system.

• Gameplay: 28/40

• Polish: 16/20

• Aesthetics: 14/15

• Story: 12/15

• Contribution: 7/10

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Although I had played a few of the Devil May Cry titles (and love them), Metal Gear Rising, and other similar titles, I never had much of an interest in playing Bayonetta for some reason. It could be that it missed me at launch and I never sought it out, but, after a friend purchased it for me as one of their favorite games, I am happy to say I have been shorting myself for a very long time by not starting this game. This game has absolutely wowed me…

Bayonetta starts off at an absolute rocket’s pace - immediately throwing you into gorgeous cinematics, hilarious character banter, mysterious enemies, and the most over-the-top entrance of a protagonist I have ever witnessed. This is directly after a prologue fight where you fall through the sky, fighting tons of enemies with no explanation of control while an ominous narrator gives you the history of the world. The game does not relent after these opening sequences - the game is just full of rapid-fire, stylish hack ‘n slash combat, into boss fights, into phenomenally presented story with, respectfully, the baddest bitch of all time dismantling every situation with elegant combat skills and equally as quick and impressive verbal beatings with lightning fast, witty lines. She carries herself in a way that nothing can stop her the whole game, and unlike most games that handle this poorly and makes your character feel like their shit doesn’t stink - Bayonetta’s impeccably written personality favors this approach perfectly. It would be hard not to fall in love with the powerful, confident, razor-tongued heroin the game lets you fill the shoes of.

The story is presented over the course of the game, rather than up front, and the game gives you pockets of readable lore and collectibles through the game that helps you string everything together until late game when it is finally all pulled together, and this pacing helps keep the game intriguing the entire way, as you learn Bayonetta’s forgotten past WITH her rather than before her, which is where other games mess the ol’ amnesiac protagonist bit up. The only complaint I had in my playthrough was the QTE felt a bit inconsistent in timing window’s in the later stages of the game, but this could have been Kamiya’s idea of added difficulty.

This game’s combat doesn’t miss. This game’s characters don’t miss. This game’s story doesn’t miss. Where Devil May Cry propelled the Hack 'N Slash genre forward, Bayonetta nearly perfects it, with its stylish, sexy, hilarious and intriguing story and gameplay, making you want to see it through to the end, but alternately okay with playing inside the world forever.

Bayonetta is the culmination of the genre, as well as the golden standard. It easily has become one of my favorite games of all time.

Score: 9.5

About our review system.

• Gameplay: 38/40

• Polish: 17/20

• Aesthetics: 15/15

• Story: 15/15

• Contribution: 10/10

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Tekken is a series of games that have been in my life for….. well, as long as I can remember playing games. We had Tekken 3 for the PS1, and the biggest moment in my life for gaming was getting a PlayStation 2 in 2002 at 5 years old, and one of the first 3 games we got for it was Tekken 4. To say I have been impatiently waiting for the newest installment, Tekken 8, would be an understatement. I even voted for it as my most anticipated new game in The Game Awards 2023, over other games I care about nearly as much. Does this new title hit the mark, or was it a disappointment?

I am happy to say it blew my expectations out of the water!

Installment after installment, it would be easy to think “It’s a 3D fighting game, how far can you really take it in a new title this far in?” and, although I could easily point you to the absolutely insane story so far in Tekken, a game that at this point is as much about “The Iron Fist Tournament” as the Fast & Furious franchise is about illegal street racing(definitely stole that comparison from senpapigabe), where I feel Tekken 8 really shines is the way the game FEELS to play. Somehow, Bandai Namco has tweaked the combat to the point that everything, from every punch, every kick, every grab, and every combination has the PERFECT amount of weight to it. It is easily one of the most satisfying fighting games I have ever played in the way it feels. Add in the additions to the rage and heat systems, and the gameplay not only feels weighty, but also crazy fast paced, making for an incredibly satisfying flow of gameplay from one fight to the next. The cast of characters is pretty stacked, although at this point in the franchise, I am sure all the DLC characters will just be old characters not in the launch lineup(Todd Howard, this is your fault somehow).

Online gameplay feels great, connections in game are typically stable, and the new online Tekken Lounge is a fun way to see all the players who most definitely are about to demolish you. Unlike a lot of other fighting games nowadays, there are a lot of solid single player modes in this one too! The classic Arcade Mode / Character stories are there and are fun to blow through when you have a few minutes of downtime per run, and the new Arcade Quest, replacing the old ranked offline arcade mode, is so freaking fun, and although its cheesy in the way its written, its just cheesy enough and doesn’t force you to have your hand held. Speaking of offline modes…..

Good LORD, the story mode of this game is peak.

I don’t want to spoil anything about the story, but, it is a story that knows when to take itself seriously and when not to, explores the lasting effects on Jin’s mind after games’ worth of havoc, the beautiful father and son relationship he has with Kazuya(didn’t see that coming, did you?) and doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

Overall, Tekken 8 is marvelous, and one of my favorites in the franchise (and probably my favorite since the PS2).

If you are a fighting game fan, or ESPECIALLY if you are a Tekken fan, I definitely recommend picking it up when you can. I almost guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Pick up the game!

Score: 8

About our review system.

• Gameplay: 34/40

• Polish: 16/20

• Aesthetics: 12/15

• Story: 10/15

• Contribution: 8/10

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