Spirit of Christmas: An Epic Fail

I don't have a problem that Epic Games has its own digital storefront since its inception. I also don't have a problem with them offering a lot of cash to score exclusives for their platform - the only party you can blame there if your favorite games are not coming to your preferred game client would the developers and/or the publishers. Epic didn't do anything wrong there. Epic is just trying to be competitive. You can however blame Epic for missing the first free game on offer for their 12 Days of Free Games promotion that took off yesterday 12/19/2019 alongside their own Holiday Sale 2019 that is running concurrently with Steam's Winter Sale 2019.

The announcement for this event just arrived on my email this afternoon and imagine my horror when I realized that it is a day late and the first game they had on offer was Into the Breach - a strategy game that is on my Steam wishlist! I am quite upset about this. It would have saved me some cash by claiming the Epic Store version of the game. And no Epic. I may support what you are doing with the digital game storefront industry but that doesn't mean that I will keep your game client running on my PC 24/7 like I do with Steam just so that I won't miss any future promotions. I only use you when I need you. I know that Epic usually offers a free game on Thursday every week but I didn't know that this time, I needed to claim it immediately. I was too busy browsing discounted games on Steam yesterday. Someone at marketing is sleeping on the job...

This email should have arrived, I don't know... Last week?

Update Note: 03/24/2020 - It looks like Epic did learn their lesson from this mishap. They sent out an email today to announce their upcoming spring sale. Good job!

$1 Digital Rental Is A-OK

I have been mulling over this one for a while and I have finally made the jump. I have tried subscribing to GameFly a couple of times in the past with unfavorable results. I am a mood-dependent gamer. The games I play at any given point are as varied as my mood swings. It's almost impossible for me to focus on one game to play and see through it until the end unless the game happens to be incredibly good. This is why renting a game just doesn't work for me. But for $1? Just $1 to access the recently released The Outer Worlds? That's too good of a bargain to pass. Microsoft is gambling big here with their X-Box Game Pass for PC, which is currently in beta, by offering new subscribers a $1 first month introductory price and $4.99 promotional price after if one opted to continue with the service. Not only that, for them to include The Outer Worlds into the lineup plus the promise of all internal studio games will launch on the rental service? I was crazy to wait this long to take this for a test run.

The service includes plenty of games I already have, like Dishonored 2.

Would I be keeping the service after the first month? Probably not due to the dilemma I presented earlier. I rather just purchase games and then play them at my leisure without the fear of losing access to them because I don't want to pay a monthly fee. But there are several games on the current list that I am interested in, Gears 5 for example. It will be interesting to see how I am going to manage all this, especially after noticing that The Outer Worlds may not be Obsidian Entertainment's best offering, so far anyway, which means that it will be a struggle to stick with the game. Even if I decided to extend this subscription to a second month, the low price point makes that a non-issue. Microsoft and its competitors have been trying to make the digital rental as a major part of their business. Microsoft may not be able to keep someone like me hooked but I am sure a lot of people may find their offerings irresistible.

Collector's Edition 2020: We Have Arrived!

Remember the $99.99 Collector's Edition of Tales of Xillia? That was cute right? Dangerous... but cute. Then, there was the $119.99 Collector's Edition of Dark Souls II. We knew then things were getting creepy. Then, came the $129.99 Collector's Edition of Tales of Xillia 2. Yeah, it was all over after that. I was too exhausted to cover other awful, overpriced packages that came after, including the most recent offering in the form of the horrific Fallout 76 Power Armor Edition. Can you believe that people actually paid $200 for that?

Well, brace yourself for the new level of horror in the darkest depth of ridiculousness. You would think that such an overpriced item would accompany a major AAA gaming release but no. This new low is brought to you by the upcoming - take a deep breath - SpongeBob video game! And it's not even a new game, it's another remake in the form of SpongeBob Squarepants: The Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated! The F.U.N. Edition a.k.a. the Collector's Edition will retail at $299.99. Yes, $299.99. It includes the game, 3 figurines, key chains, stickers, lithographs and uh... a pair of socks. I get it, SpongeBoB has a huge following and I can understand why. I have watched some of the shows and it's one of those brilliant creations that's able to be intriguing to both children and adults with its wacky, crudely nonsensical humor. But $299.99? Oh yes, they went there. They know that there are plenty of people who would purchase this, judging from the fact that many gamers still happily pay money to get online multiplayer access and still go goo goo gaga over new consoles.

The fun of spending $300.

PS5: Console Gonna Console

So it has been recently confirmed that the PlayStation 5 is indeed a real thing and apparently there has been a lot of Mark Cerny quotes making rounds on the Internet, touting all the greatness that will be unleashed once the system is out supposedly sometime in 2020 - please don't get me started on that guy. You know that as soon as the PS5 hits the market, he will begin asking developers what they want from a PlayStation 6. You would think that with the success of their digital marketplace on the both PS3 and 4, plus their roll out of PlayStation Now, they would be smarter with their strategy leading into the future. But no. Do we really need an expensive new console at this point? We really don't. Consoles should start heading towards extinction and replaced with gaming services that can cater to multiple devices that are 1) readily upgradable, like the the Personal Computer or 2) readily accessible, like perhaps mobile devices AND current consoles - what a concept eh? You see, the problem with releasing new consoles is that they becomes obsolete as soon as they are released in today's fast-paced, ever advancing technological world.

4 PlayStations are apparently not enough.

Though many are skeptical, this is the reason why I applaud Google's Stadia. It's a bold fuck you to the console and hardware-based gaming industry. Please, don't tell me that it would not work. Remember OnLive? I used to beta test that and it worked great - there was no lag playing games off a server on the Internet. And that was like what? About 10 years ago? Sony liked it so much that they bought the company. Internet is way faster today so there is no reason for Stadia to fail. The only reason why I personally didn't subscribe to OnLive back then was because the graphics were mostly on medium settings for the more graphically intense games but that shouldn't be a problem anymore and Google even promised 4K for those with proper connection speed.

Microsoft is also guilty of this whole console conundrum because they should really work on their Windows Store to deliver the gaming goods. At least they have realized that they can easily profit from the PC market when they announced back in May that all of the games made by their internal studio will always see a PC release on Steam. But the real remedy here to move forward for the console side is - to abandon consoles altogether. Not to just throw them all into the fire, of course not, but the currently available, most recent consoles can extend their lives by implementing new exciting features, not by abandoning them altogether. Observe the following data from my Game Library:

PlayStation: 94

PlayStation 2: 470

PlayStation 3: 272

PlayStation 4: 78

PlayStation Portable: 111

PlayStation Vita: 34

It's sad isn't it? After the dramatic increase during the PS2 era, the amount of games I own for the following Sony systems dropped tremendously. What is the use of having access to something shiny and new that has less of what I want? I want games. More games! Less worry about the hardware, more focus on the games! This is why most of my games are on the PC these days - I have 4025 titles there as of today. With Steam recently announcing that they will allow offline multiplayer games to be played online via Remote Play, inspired by Nvidia Gamestream Co-op no doubt, is there really a reason to support new consoles coming out?  Excuse me, new consoles that now feature... SSD - oh brother - which is something that has been a PC staple for a while now and is not that earth-shattering, certainly not worth building a whole new console for? This new Steam feature is also free and doesn't require online play subscription like it normally would on the console side, which now includes Nintendo. Open your mind. Think. The console era has ended. Don't launch new consoles, launch new services. I don't mind installing a Nintendo or Sony client on my PC on top of Steam, Epic, Uplay, GoG, Origin, and the default Windows Store.

Steam Remote Play Together. Infinitely more exciting than any new console announcements.

1 Down, 5000+ to Go?

Well, this is surely a landmark event for my current state of gaming life - the state that celebrates my obsession with playing fast-paced, fast result games reminiscent of the early gaming era while pushing aside the one playthrough, long build-up style of game design that is so popular these days. It is funny however that quick payout games are making a resurgence with the battle royale and autochess genres dominating the gaming sphere but it's safe to say that the grandiose story heavy, progression heavy single playthrough games are still the mainstay in today's gaming market if the hype surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 is any indication. So what is the landmark event you ask? Well, I have reached the end of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc via Steam last night! This is all thanks to my recent commitment to focus on "completing" games instead of jumping around between them like a bunny, resulting in all of them being eventually abandoned. I don't even remember the last game that I fully completed... wait, maybe I do, I think it was Final Fantasy XIII several years ago.

Yup, that's an end credit!

As for the game itself, DTHH is a very interesting visual novel that halfway-through seems to have lost its strong, impactful initial direction. It's a copycat of the Phoenix Wright games but Capcom's popular detective visual novel series is truly superior in comparison. The tonal shift towards the climax is definitely rushed and nonsensical though thankfully, the ending is satisfactory enough. I am sure that the old me would have just abandoned this game when the shift happened but not this new version of yours truly! The game took 46 hours in total for my first playthrough and it looks like the hours can be extended even further for completionists. I am however going to skip these extra flourishes because I have so many games to get to! So, I don't know, maybe when I'm in my 60s I can come back to this game and complete all the student report cards and unlock all the monomono presents after I have fully visited all the other games in my absolutely huge, uncomfortably bloated Game Library?