January 5, 2024
Happy Friday! The new year keeps on rolling and so does this ‘Speedrun’ experiment!
First Up…
- Dr. Serkan Toto, a noted Nintendo expert (thanks, IGN), says that the next Nintendo console — Super prefex would be my preference — will be more of “an iteration rather than a revolution“ with a nice $400 price tag to start.
- Games are to follow suit in raising their base price to $70, as well; much like PlayStation and Xbox have adopted this generation.
- Of note? There was a Switch Pro dev kit making the rounds to developers said Kantan Games’ Toto, as much as Nintendo lied and told us that wasn’t the case.
My take: Nintendo’s new console iterations have been about 5-6 years apart in the past. It’s about time we move on. The stinky Switch — a disparaging moniker popularized by Last Stand Media — has reached the ripe old age of…eww. We need not look any further than how it can barely run exclusive, big-time titles like the latest Pokémon. $400 might be a pricey, but should be worth the price if it means we get more horsepower and not just a prettier screen like the SWOLED Edition.
Speaking of Horsepower…
The 2023 Steam Awards, as voted by the community, may have been the subject of some good ol’ fashion trolling as their awards went to some questionable entries:
- The Most Innovative Award: Starfield – A fine retread to a simpler Fallout 3 time…but not necessarily innovative.
- Labor of Love Award: Red Dead Redemption II – Great home-building simulator, but…hasn’t been updated since 2020.
Maybe Steam rebrands the accolades to The Irony Awards next year?
The Small Bytes…
- 🐍 PlayStation is doing all kinds of teasin’ and confirming for Konami in a new trailer. It — seemingly — confirms that we will be getting the Silent Hill 2 Remake along with MGS3 remake: Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.
- 📦 Kojima says his upcoming game OD will be just as different as his previous works. He cites former examples like “hide-and-seek” (Metal Gear Solid), “delivery games” (Death Stranding), and who could ever forget his Game Boy Advance classic “defeating vampires outside your house” game (Boktai).
- 🧑🎤 Cyberpunk 2077 expansion “Phantom Liberty” sold 5 million copies in just over 3 months. That’s quite an achievement and send-off for CD Projekt Red to move onto the next Witcher and a proper CP2077 sequel. It’s next on the docket for me to consider for We Got Comms’s Game/Expansion of the Year…
- 🍞 Make sure to match your Xbox Series X smol fridge with the newly announced $39.99 toaster. So elegant! So X-toasty!
Carlos, Watchu Been Playin’?
🔦 Having the done the (necessary?) prep of solving Control and Fortnite’s Alan Wake Flashback, I’ve finally made my way to Alan Wake 2. A trippy “horror story” — as the in-game meta refers to it — that does all kind of things when it comes to its story-telling presentation. There’s jump scares aplenty, but also brooding tension and general sense of dread throughout.
It looks incredible, as well. And the live action sequences are not as annoying or distracting as I thought they would be. They actually blend in very well with the rest of the visuals. The gameplay, though? It’s solid enough, but not exactly frictionless. It ups the tension when you’re fumbling with quickslots — as spooky games are wont to do — but makes an otherwise excellent True Detective-esque narrative less than seamless.
We Got Comms! 