First of the year! 2024 Gaming Roundup.

I would be remiss to gloss over the fact I DID promise a retrospective summary of all the things that happened in gaming in 2023 around the start of the New Year. And truthfully, seasonal depression clutched me closely in her lavender scented, microwave heated bosom and I’ve been forced to fight her with pathetic implements like limp spaghetti and other poorly-disguised metaphors for my fading willpower. But here we are, back on the wagon, catching up, hoping to write a retrospective still, but focusing on the future first and foremost.

Maybe it’s ok to just focus on the less overwhelming things sometimes.

So, gaming! Let’s crack open the year with a look at what has happened over the past fortnight and what we might have to look forward to in the near future. Winter’s hibernation has stymied any major dramas for now, it seems, but there are a few little tidbits we can look into.

Another handheld console enters the market…

Despite the buzz of the Nintendo Switch, it has taken a surprising number of years for the handheld console gaming market to really expand in earnest. The problems with the Switch aren’t confined to only the fact that as a Nintendo device, the gaming options are somewhat limited; the hardware itself isn’t exactly powerful, top of the line stuff, it wasn’t even when it released.

Valve’s release of the Steam Deck really whet the appetite for a more substantial device, something that could possibly play some meaty AAA games without too much difficulty, and with all of the steam integrations and support you’d expect from a tie-in device I personally think the Steam Deck is one of the best gaming investments you could make if you’re out and about frequently and want to enjoy those big narrative games on the go. Or just for Vampire Survivors (arguably the best steam deck game).

Look, it might not look like much, but most of those 18 hours of playtime were achieved in about 3 days on the Steam Deck. Appalling.

So, it goes without saying that shortly after the demand for the Steam Deck exploded, a few manufacturers saw some potential. The Steam Deck runs on a bespoke SteamOS Linux-based software system that many choose to make some.. ahem, amendments to, instead modifying the Linux install to allow for a wider range of versatility, so you can install Battle.net and play Diablo, for example.

ASUS brought out the ROG ALLY as a direct competitor, a device pre-loaded with Windows 11 so you can ‘Play All Your Games’, a viable option if you don’t wish to mess around with modifying anything in a way that may or may not void a warranty.

The Ally reviews well, too! At a price-point of £599 on their estore currently, it’s certainly more expensive than your standard Xbox or PS5, but it is portable, and it’s far more like a miniature PC than anything else, which is crazy when you think about it.

I did some sponsored work with Lenovo late last year to promote their answer to the market, the Lenovo Legion GO, and I was equally impressed with the device as I was my Steam Deck, the price was just a little eye watering (£699 ish), but this handheld had features like removable joysticks, meaning you COULD get real lazy and bougie and just stick your Legion GO on a side-board mounted clamp next to your bed and just play laying down all comfortable. Or just scroll through TikToks remotely, whatever it is you do while rotting in bed for 14 hours on a weekend. The only issue I really had with the GO was the battery life, which felt disappointing and would often randomly run flat, presumably because the device didn’t actually ‘sleep’ or woke itself up and drained while it was packed away.

I played F1 2023 while at the actual Monza track. If I don’t brag about this once a month I will explode, so please do excuse me.

Anyway, I digress. The actual news here is that during CES 2024, MSI announced their entry to the market, ‘The Claw’, shipping between $699-$799 complete with an Intel Meteor Lake Core Ultra Processor (which honestly, means little to the layman, we just have to see any presume that’s powerful? Right? Just me?) and 512GB of storage as a baseline. The storage is a good upgrade from the base Steam Deck, but these are all essentially clones at this point with mildly varying form factors, and slightly better screen offerings (now supersceded by the OLED Steam deck).

Truthfully, while there may be bias due to the sponsored content I did with them, I feel the Legion GO is the best competitor out there right now simply due to the work they have done with the detachable controllers and the HUGE screen I forgot to mention - plus the little trackpad on the right side which is surprisingly useful.

What factors would you consider when looking at a new handheld? Battery life seems fairly similar (both my Steam Deck and the Legion GO at least would run at about 2 hours on an intensive game, the SD gave me about 6 hours of Vampire Survivors at once though. Don’t ask how I know that.), and the out-of-the-box flexibility of the OS will certainly be draws, alongside the baseline memory, but But this wasn’t intended as a review or comparison, just a little dive into whats going on with the handheld market, which seems to be burgeoning at the very least, if we only take new releases into account.

The AI debate continues simmering…

Last year was a big year for unions in the US, the many-months long writers strike being the most prominent, but not far behind came the Sag-Aftra Actors union, fighting for more equal rights and representation in the face of streaming-giants and their miniscule residual trickle downs. A large part of this debate also involved the looming AI-factor. Games like The Finals are already showcasing the potential for AI voice acting in games, a sure sign for the future of the type of games you’ll see played competitively all over Twitch - because who really cares if the voice performances in your game aren’t bespoke if they aren’t the focus of the game at all?

It’s a true test of the willing of game directors to hire actors to provide a personality and consistent, directable voice, with the knowledge that those actors will cost much more in recordings and residual rights than an AI-alternative. And it’s wild to me that we’ve got here so fast, we’re already at a point of synthesized almost fully naturalistic sounding voices that can bark orders at you as background noise. I feel there is always going to be a need for human performance, the nuance and life that goes into making a character feel real, but there’s also something to be said for the generic battle royale copy-cat games and their flat characters, while the characters can play a huge part in the enjoyment of a game, when it comes to that particular genre, I’d hasten to say many gamers are far more interested in the gameplay, mechanics and utility than the actual characters. Despite this, I would rather see human voice actors any day of the week, but we are in a world speeding towards the eventual goal of maximum profits with minimum resources in every single industry, and sadly, I feel the widespread use of AI voicework is an inevitability.

This week the BBC reported that actors have felt blindsided by the promised deal being far from the great solution they were promised it would be. The responses to the SAG-AFTRA announcement were damning.

This new agreement paves the way for professional voice over artists to safely explore new employment opportunities for their digital voice replicas with industry-leading protections tailored to AI technology, allowing AAA video game studios and other companies working with Replica to access top SAG-AFTRA talent.

Actors are able to deny AI studios the right to use their voices in perpetuity without their consent, and are developing ‘fair, ethical solutions’ for digital replicas to be made of actors voices.

The announcement speaks of actors having choice over the creation of their digital replicas, but skirts around the elephant in the room - how much choice will actors have in actually accepting or denying these roles when the contracts may stipulate that agreeing to their voices being used in perpetuity is essential? How many actors, desperate for work, will take on a job that enables their voice to be used as such, making it more and more normal, pushing out the actors who disagree? Perhaps the main roles may remain ‘human’, but the side roles, the entry gigs, the potential to be discovered as a side character, all of that is in jeopardy.

While ‘Replicas’ approach to the collection of their AI library may feel more ethical than many other AI library collections, being that they require authorisation from the actors, again, we can read between the lines. People desperate enough to give authorisation will do so. The industry will march on regardless. Slowly, the art may be squeezed out of the artistry. A cynical outlook? Potentially. One I’m sure will be unpopular when the benefits may present as favourable to the gaming market at large, but as we slide down the profits>humanity slope together we may as well consider the view along the way.

SMITE… 2?

Despite the shiny hype, Overwatch 2 didn’t quite make the splash it needed to in order to fully revitalise the franchise. And the handling of the Overwatch franchise as a whole left many scratching their heads - what the hell happened? The burgeoning esport with millions of dollars poured into it, the incredible game that continues to spawn many a copycat, backed by one of the biggest dev-publisher giants in the world - the hype slowly died, and rather than chasing the dog as it left the house, it felt like Blizzard just watched it go, shrugged, and muttered ‘it’ll be back later’.

Ask a group of Overwatch players and the majority opinion prevails: Overwatch didn’t need a sequel. It needed love, it needed another coat of polish, some new content, it needed to shake things up. Perhaps the sequel was intended to be a fresh start, but it came with a myriad of stumbles, including but not limited to the announcement of the focus of the sequel being primarily on the PVE mode that was later abandoned.

So then, you’re wondering, what has that got to do with SMITE?

SMITE is a MOBA, similar to League of Legends, but in 3-D space instead of the top down view favoured by most other MOBAs. That aspect is what attracted me to the game in the first place - a third person MOBA was far more attractive to me as somebody who never played top-down or isometric titles, so I sunk a lot of hours into it.

A lot of hours. And money. And mental wellbeing. So much so in fact, I eventually gave away my account because I became more toxic than whatever is likely secretly spilling into the Atlantic Ocean as we speak that won’t be discovered publically for another 5 years.

The cool thing about SMITE, to me at least, was the way it was themed around Gods of all cultures, you played as Zeus or Janus or Amaterasu or Bacchus

Or Kawaii-pop Bastet, meeeeow

and you all faced off in the Battleground of the Gods. Except, other than the release of increasingly gimmicky skins, the game was slowly dying: a toxic fanbase and a strange treatment of what was actually a growing esports scene at one point, before it moved exclusively to Mixer and later Facebook (never, ever a good move) meant the playerbase was dwindling. So it seems they’ve done an OW2. They’ve announced SMITE 2.

Now, redeeming features: SMITE 2 promises an upgrade for the game to Unreal Engine 5, along with adjustments and changes to the main conquest map (the typical 3-lane MOBA map) and some changes to the available Gods and all of that. It’s guaranteed to be a refresh of the series, bringing new interest, new players, maybe even a revitalisation of the esports scene (SPL), i’m sure to the hopes of the devs, and it might actually snowball if things go well. And they don’t destroy it the same way Hi-Rez somehow tanked Realm Royale.

Downside: Your skins. Those skins ain’t cheap these days, for a proper new skin, not just a recolouring, you’re looking at 1200 Gems, the equivalent of around £15-20, and the majority of those will not transfer over to SMITE 2. Hi-Rez have tried to remedy this somewhat by promising to provide ‘legacy gems’ as a new currency, every Gem you have purchased in the first game will become a ‘legacy gem’ in SMITE 2, which will give you 50% off most store purchases. This has proved to be rather unpopular, namely because you can’t even rebuy an actual, cheaper skin with these legacy gems, they’re just a vehicle to spend more money. This might be acceptable if the game experience is vastly improved - if the need for a sequel feels worthwhile because SMITE 2 is drastically different to SMITE 1 in terms of quality, function, form, perhaps these grievances will be eventually forgotten, after all, porting all 1600 skins into SMITE 2 is likely a lengthy, expensive endeavour.

And I do feel, if you get the equivalent of whatever you spent on old skins years ago, back in legacy gems, that’s not a terrible deal if you haven’t played for years anyway. You weren’t missing that cash.

But if SMITE 2 just feels like a slightly new lick of paint, or god forbid, is a worse player experience (and worse is subjective! Sometimes you grow familiar with something quirky and a bit broken and changing that feels weird too), it will feel like a major kick in the teeth for players who’ve stuck with the game for many, many years.

Time will always tell… but i’m getting the itch to play.

Upcoming Game Releases:

Whats coming up?

• January 18th sees the first release in the Prince of Persia franchise in over 14 years, with ‘The Lost Crown’ hitting all major consoles and reviewing well so far.

• The Last Of Us Part 2: Remastered (yes, we’ve been through this one in a previous issue), on PS5 on January 19th.

• Arclands, a cute little Kickstarter RPG title that looks like something Stardew Valley players may love, comes out on the 19th too, only on PC.

• Like a Dragon, the Yakuza spinoff with real-time combat, has a sequel ‘Infinite Wealth’ due out on the 26th on all major platforms.

Aaaaand i’ve rambled enough for now. I hope to shake off this cold snap and brush away seasonal depressions sweet embrace more competently going forward to deliver these digests weekly once more.

Leave a comment if you’ve enjoyed, don’t forget to share organically as that’s the best way to get eyeballs on these things, and thanks so much for reading!