February 13th Gaming Digest
Spelunking in space, will Xbox stop making consoles? A new Silent Hill game?! And more!
GOOOOD day, welcome to the latest edition of: WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON IN GAMING AND WHY DO I CARE? Brought to you by a lightly cynical and quite distractable human with a terrible curiosity and even worse memory.
This week saw the release of Helldivers 2, an interesting interview with Phil Spencer, and unfortunate news from SEGA regarding their financial projections, plus we have a myriad of interesting games releasing in the next week to look forward to as well!
Spelunking into Heck [edition 2]
Despite the fact i’ve mentioned it a couple times already, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy Helldivers 2 quite so much as I have. And apparently neither were many gamers, since the HD2 servers were massively overpopulated very soon after release, the rate limiters put into place to stop the services being DDOSd and taken down were working in overdrive, and the devs were struggling to keep up with demand, leading to a lot of people (myself included) being forced to wait as the servers incrementally cycled us in over the weekend.
The game is damn fun. Lots of fair comparisons to Starship Troopers (which… I will admit I haven’t actually seen) have been made, primarily because of the game’s absolute tongue-in-cheek nature and the constant references to the driving forces of dutiful patriocism that keep each and every one of us defending Super Earth. The theming is strong, the humour hits home and the gameplay is incredibly satisfying. The third person, slightly innacurate gunplay truly makes you feel like just another grunt of war and the Stratagems system is really cool - gotta coordinate those fingies to get those codes tapped in before your face is eaten off by Alien superbugs.
There’s also something to be said for the way in which the live-service type game is used here successfully to bring about a sense of community and one-ness that a lot of live-service games struggle to capture. You become acutely aware that yourself and your squad are just a tiny tiny miniscule part of a bigger picture in saving Super Earth - you are all contributing simultaneously to free planets from their respective threats and moving on together as a community. There are even stats that show how many collective deaths have been died, bullets have been shot, and more, that make you truly feel like just another piece of cannon fodder proudly saluting for a planet you’ll likely never see again.
The question is always, how long will the same loop be fun for, in games that largely hinge on inducing FOMO with an ever present list of threats to work through, a fatigue does begin to set in from doing the same thing over and over, so hopefully they manage to keep things fresh and interesting over time.
It’s very fun. Would recommend, but largely only with a few friends to play along with, since that’s where the game truly shines. Helldivers 2 has sold over a million copies already, so it seems to have arrived at just the right time to fill a little chaotic alien-shooter niche, at least I can certainly say that’s the case for me. It’s also only £35 on Steam!
[Please note I received a free code for Helldivers 2 from Playstation but I try not to let that affect my opinion or review at any point.]
Do XBOX want to continue making consoles?
Yes. The answer is yes.
In a recent internal meeting, Phil Spencer confirmed Xbox have no plans to stop making consoles anytime soon - despite them being well known to be loss-leaders. Back in 2022 at the WSJ tech live event, Spencer spoke about the fact consoles make around $200 loss per unit sold, but that their strategy was to recoup that loss through other services (with Xbox Game Pass in particular quoted as being a profit driver). It seems nothing is planned to change with the way consoles are used to introduce and keep consumers in the ecosystem anytime soon, with Spencer having been quoted recently as saying Xbox indeed has no plans to stop making consoles.
So really, a non-starter, but it remains refreshing to have that sort of confirmation out in the public to quash rumours, especially with consideration to the recent layoffs that were not merely limited to the recently acquired Activision-Blizzard arm, but also across the whole of the Xbox team and Zenimax.
Are SEGA in trouble?
With a franchise as big as !!SONIC THE HEDGEHOG!! you’d think, how could SEGA possibly be in trouble? But recently they issued a ‘financial warning’ following disappointing sales in the recent Sonic: Superstars title, among other offerings in the past few months that haven’t reached expectations. In Europe and the US, it seems there just hasn’t been enough interest in Sonic Superstars, in part due to the coincidental release of Super Mario Brothers Wonder just three days after Superstars, but I would hasten to say the lacklustre marketing strategy fills at least another small part of the puzzle. I wouldn’t have known about a new Sonic game if I hadn’t attended EGX earlier in the year and I certainly didn’t see any hype or marketing surrounding it at all. I could say the same for Super Mario Brothers Wonder, but that game had the benefit of being a Nintendo exclusive, Nintendo’s endemic ecosystem somehow works despite it really seeming like it shouldn’t - a closed off system on old hardware in a very ‘get what you get’ manner doesn’t seem like it would succeed, but it does, and Wonder sold very well in spite of again, very little marketing (to my eyes at least).
It feels to me as though Sonic, as a franchise, is suffering from the same thing I’ve spoken about with Pokemon: a lack of good diversification in the content leading to an overall stagnation in interest. Mario, on the contrary, seem to somehow keep a consistent product while pushing the boundaries where they can, keeping the gameplay fresh and interesting across a range of offerings. I’d love to see a cute Chao farming game for example, or just something that really continues what made Sonic Adventure Battle great (Sonic Frontiers was close, but not quite there), but alas.
SEGA as a whole are having a bit of a tumultuous time - Creative Assembly, a SEGA owned studio in the UK, were forced to can their new hero-shooter HYENAS just days ahead of its scheduled release which must have been a significant financial blow. On the flip side, Yakuza and Persona are now two of SEGA’s most hyped franchises, both drawing in major interest across western markets that has only grown massively over the last few years.
SEGA blame ‘inflation’ and ‘other factors’ for their tricky climate in the Western market, but truthfully I feel the Sonic offerings we’ve been getting are just no longer appealing enough to carry the franchise and to warrant charging full price for (a necessity with rising development costs). Superstars did likely suffer from releasing on the switch so close to the favoured Mario Wonder, and sales figures for Sonic haven’t actually been released, but Wonder had sold almost 12 million units by the end of December, and the best selling Sonic in over 20 years (Sonic Frontiers) reached about a third of that at 3.5million. With this financial forecast and lack of data, it might be fair to guess they sold way below that figure. Inflation and other factors haven’t seemed to have stalled the success of Persona or Yakuza, so is the Sonic gameplay just outdated now no matter what?
Silent Hill did WHAT?
You know, Silent Hill: Ascension, the unfortunate experiment in interactive media via an online and mobile app, is still going in spite of the less-than-mediocre response. But i’m not here to talk about that today, because Konami stealth dropped a free to download short horror called ‘The Short Message’ on January 31st and I ONLY just heard about it. I mean, granted, i’m not a huge Silent Hill fan or anything (despite how much I somehow seem to talk about it in this substack), but I was surprised by how that flew under the radar - it hit two million downloads last week so clearly it wasn’t exactly a secret, but hey! Maybe you didn’t know. And now you do.
According to some reviews it looks to offer a little world building, maybe a little lore, but is apparently light on the ‘gameplay’ aspect. But for a free game, well who really cares, if you like it you like it, if you don’t it’s only around 2 hours of wasted time at most, and if you’re a Silent Hill fan it’s probably worthwhile just for the tidbits.
We’re well into 2024 now, so what do we have to look forward to? Quite a big week for releases this week:
Today, February 13th sees the release of ‘Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior’. I had the opportunity to preview this game last year and thought it was really great - it makes use of a mechanic that feels very original; an interesting time-rewind system where you will complete a ‘combat’ strategically before time rewinds, and you fight alongside your ‘past’ self (or selves) simultaneously - meaning you have to think carefully about what pathing you take to ensure you and your past-allies don’t run out of time before all the enemies in the zone are dead. I found it fun and a good challenge. If you’re after something with that polished indie feel that actually does feel mechanically unique it might be worth your time. Currently £17 on Steam.
Tomb Raider 1-3 remastered drops on the 14th, so if your first one true love was Lara Croft you can get nice and re-aquainted on the day of love itself. It still retains that lovely classic feeling just with a new polish, updated effects and a better framerate by the looks of things. There’s even the option to choose between classic controls and modern controls, if you find the old-school to be too jarring almost… 28… years later… my God.
PlateUp! The co-op cooking chaos game comes to consoles on the 15th - if you enjoy Overcooked you’ll likely enjoy this too. I in fact prefer PlateUp overall due to the lack of overly-frustrating mechanics, but they both occupy a similar yet different tiny part of the niche.
Skull and Bones FINALLY releases on the 16th for consoles and PC - not much more to say about this one that I haven’t already covered, but due to the lengthy development time and HIGH cost, Ubisoft have apparently labelled this a AAAA game. The worlds first quadruple A game. Is it worth it? Maybe I’ll revisit next week to find out.
‘Furnish Master’, a relaxing little indie game about furnishing an apartment comes out on the 20th and looks all kinds of calm and cosy. If you enjoyed furnishing in The Sims you’ll probably enjoy this one too.
‘Titanic: A Space Between’, a new horror VR offering also releases on the 14th, and claims to ;cross over two unexpected James Cameron movie ideas’ as it offers ‘The Ultimate VR escape from Titanic’. I’m a weird Titanic fangirl, don’t ask me why, it was my obsession since I was young, and this just feels…. very bizarre. But hey, watch the trailer and make your own mind up I guess! I suppose if you wanted a ship escape game you might as well just use one of the most famous ship disasters to get people interested.
Well i’ve got more diving into Hell to do, and I’m also attending the Nier concert on the 14th for the second time, because that soundtrack has my entire heart. I hope your week is fulfilling and fun - lots to look forward to and talk about! If you enjoyed reading please subscribe for free to get a weekly update direct into your inbox and help support my writing - writing this does take some time so it’s always nice to see people enjoy.
Thanks!
Feels like a no brainer for MS to do their own take on the Steamdeck
I've been a MASSIVE Tomb Raider fan for as long as I can remember so to say I'm beyond excited for tomorrow's remastered collection release is a big understatement hahah! It's going to be such a blast to revisit these classics! (Also a very cool detail in these remasters is just like with the modern/classic controls, we'll also be able to switch between the remastered shiny graphics and the original ones in real time!)
Enjoy the Nier concert!! Make sure to stock up on them tissues!