Nick’s Game Diary Week of Feb. 4, 2024

A weekly diary of the things I’m doing and digging.

Feb. 5, 2024

New ep out now! Thanks again to Matt for coming onto the show!

Gamers are losing their minds over this the possibility of Indiana Jones and Starfield going multiplatform. Twitter is a mess. Comment sections are a in disarray. It’s been an especially good day to go spend time outside with your loved ones and get away from the screens.

My console broke up with me.

Yeah, console fanboys are taking it a bit too personal and parasocial relationships are bad, but I’m seeing a lot of heat being thrown at the fanboys and not so much of it being tossed at the companies exploiting parasocial relationships. Microsoft hasn’t been fanning the console war flames, but they’ve had no problem grabbing a skateboard and Steve Busceming their audience. Everything that’s going on is a perfect reminder that corprations aren’t your friends. You can be an Xbox loyalist or a Swiftie all you want, they’re never going to say that they love you back.

Hello, fellow gamers.

Feb. 6, 2024

The Xbox nonsense continues with rumors of Gears of War going multiplatform. As much as that pains everyone (my younger self included) Gears has always been on the edge of not being an Xbox exclusive. Every release, up until Microsoft bought the IP from Epic ten years ago, was constantly rumored to be heading to PlayStation 3. Gears Tactics premiering on the PC and not launching simultaneously on Xbox should have been a sign to us all that the series would start branching out. No one is excited about the Gears series anymore. The second trilogy of Gears games have stalled out for Microsoft. Every new release since 3 has failed to make any kind of impact. There’s nothing on the level of Mad World, sinking cities with a giant worm, or Horde Mode 2.0.

“But Nick, not every game in a series needs to be this big cultural thing.”

Except it does when you’re the size of Microsoft and are aiming for a $3-trillion evaluation. Games like Braid and Bastion could come out to a smaller audience in the Xbox 360 era, because you had goliaths like Halo, Gears, and Forza pulling everyone into the console’s ecosystem. When those giant games lose their identities and in turn lose a chunk of their audiences, the smaller games tend to slip away too. We’re lucky to have Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment, but those titles alone are not going to be able to establish new IP and carry a struggling console through the mud. Get these games out on everything. Grow those audiences. Make some sequels. Just don’t try to ride these out across multiple generations. I already know I’m asking too much of the c-suite big brains.

Feb. 7, 2024

Just got off recording this week’s episode with Mike and Jaymo, over at The Old Switch-A-Roo Podcast. Great episode (long episode). We went back and did a Flashback through 2000, following the old format we got away from late last year. We picked 6 games and some of the news from that year to chat about. It felt nice to return to that format for an episode, but I can’t say I completely missed it. Sure, those list type episodes are evergreen and folks can go back to them at any point. But I don’t want to do lists (outside of GOTY and GOTYSO). I know our current format is done to death, but man I think we’ve really found our groove with the three segments and the rotating guest chair.

Speaking of the guest chair, in this week’s episode Mike and Jaymo mentioned they were listeing to some Overthinking Games ahead of the show. That’s just neat! If I could change one thing about doing the podcast over the last two years, I would have started the guest chairs much earlier. Too many cool people out there to not have an open seat.

Them Switch Boys are at it again.

After tonight’s recording, Josh and I hopped on and played some Zombies Ate My Neighbors. We played on Steam and boy is it rough. Enemy movement seems a lot faster than it as in the console versions. It’s also missing the original menu/pause music. The creepy original tune is now replaced by some wacky song that sounds more like it belongs in a saturday morning Warner Bros. cartoon. The steam version of the game also includes its sequel Ghoul Patrol which should be wiped from this earth. I soloed the first level while Josh watched in horror. To run you have to hold the A button, shooting is also tied to the A button. You can slide, jump, and turn into the Grim Reaper, but it all feels so stiff. The radar is gone, in it’s place, “Help” appears on screen in the direction of a nearby survivor. The level I played had haunted books, trees, and all sorts of nightmares. There’s no pacing. It just throws every thing its got at you in one level. Who thought this was a good idea? And who thought it’d be cool to tack this game onto this steam version. It hurts. It hurts so bad. I’d rather take a hack saw to my arm.

So damn corny.

This fan made poster is the right kind of cheesy. Captures the goofy tone of the game perfectly.

Feb. 8, 2024

I’m trying to save all my Transistor talk so folks can hear it in the episode, but I can’t help myself. I finished the final boss right before yesterday’s recording and the game is still on my brain. It’s a beautiful game that seperates arts/ideas from the artist/thinker. When there are no creatives left, the creative endeavors dry up. All that remains are the things that have already been created, the rich owners of those created works, and the cashgrab spinoffs their creatively bankrupt noggins conceive.

I don’t want to get to into it (I feel a solo Transistor article in my near future) but the game’s also a call for collaboration. The abilities you gain throughout the game, called Functions, breathe new life into other abilities as you mix-and-match them to discover how they upgrade each other. I need to dig through the game’s codex a little more and learn about its auxillary characters. I’ll do that throughout my New Game+ playthrough. With Josh still needing to finish, I think we’ve got at least one more chat left on the podcast.

Cloud’s Cousin

Transistor is timely more now than ever.

Feb. 9, 2024

On review this weekend with three titles. I see a stretch of negative reviews in my near future. To be continued.