This article was originally published by Joy Alexis Barker on November 1, 2022
The gaming industry and gamers alike are in for the year’s busiest, most exciting month!
There’s a load of highly anticipated games for everyone to look forward to, some of which will finally be unveiled one by one, while others in multiples on the same day. Many shoppers will buy these as Christmas gifts, or just for themselves, this month.
Today, EA/Maxis’ The Sims 4’s Pastel Pop Kit was leaked along with screenshots that showcase never-before-seen content. There’s also an update that includes bug fixes for the base game and also for expansions such as High School Years and Werewolves. And just in case any simmers are wondering, improved babies won’t be coming until sometime in 2023 on a date that is yet to be announced.
The second interesting release is Harvestella, best described to be the love child between the married farming simulation games like Harvest Moon, and imaginative role playing games like Final Fantasy, is set to be available for PC and Switch when it launches on the November 4th.
Moving on to two games that peak my interest, Skull and Bones, and the open-world Sonic Frontiers, the latter coming to all platforms on the November 8th.
Unfortunately the former and highly anticipated Skull And Bones from Ubisoft has been pushed into 2023 for a March 9th release.
However, both of these games find themselves in somewhat of the same boat, as it’s clear from the reactions online that fans are skeptical of both of them. So it will definitely be interesting to see if these games defy expectations or if they end up being disappointments.
Garfield Lasagna Party, featuring multi generations of fans’ favorite chubby, orange, greedy, food scarfing cat, who they grew up with, as well as other notable characters, is coming November 15th.
The beloved and rambunctious Goat Simulator was so successful, it has a third sequel that will introduce four player cooperative mod. Goat Simulator 3 will break out into the world on November 17th for Windows PC, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PlayStation 5.
Nintendo fans will devour the next generation of Pokémon, known as Scarlet and Violet, on the November 18th.
And finally, Just Dance: 2023 Edition is bopping onto the floor to take it over on November 22nd.
These are only some of the overarching popular titles mentioned, and there’s more that wasn’t in this article, for the sake of sparing your time, but keep your eyes peeled passionate gamers for new games this month!
Earlier this month, Publisher, EA, and developer Maxis, revealed Project Renee, also known as The Sims 5, during the highly anticipated The Sims Summit Stream where devoted simmers old and new got a glimpse at the sneak peek. It was a monumental event in Sims history, marking the beginning of another era that will no doubt surpass The Sims 4’s.
It’s impressive indeed to see what’s been developed so far, and at this point, I’m absolutely certain that the final product a few years from now will far exceed the early previewed stages.
According to the Maxis team, the name ‘Renee’ represents their renewed dedication to and passion for The Sims, and that’s beautiful and heartening to hear because it seems like they’ll be taking this seriously. The developers will most certainly be putting their all into Sims 5’s design, with anticipated expansions to complete the game.
The Sims/Project Rene; Image credit: EA/Maxis
The Sims 5 will also outshine The Sims 4, as it should, in terms of graphics and gameplay so we will most definitely be taking a steps forward with its improvements, additions, and overall progression in the series.
Hopefully, there will also be less bugs and patches needed for The Sims 5, and it’s a lot more user-friendly for players. Thus to prevent this, Maxis knows not to rush it so the game is created efficiently in as much time as it requires to turn out a high quality product.
Now, there are numerous features I want to see in The Sims 5, some of which have already been confirmed, but others are still obscure.
The Sims 5; Image credit: EA/Maxis
I do think there are things that should already be in the base game; The open world; all life stages; maybe even additional stages like an infant stage after the newborn stage and before the toddler stage, and a tween stage which is the stage between the child and teen stages; more practical objects to buy; the color and design wheel in both create a sim and build buy mode; inclusion of different ethnicities and cultures; height adjustments; more personality traits; more venue types; the choose to play either solo or multiplayer; auto save; weather; seasons; townies that have their own lives going on without the player’s involvement, and I could go on all day.
I look forward to the next generation Sims game. It’s exciting to know that at this very moment as I type this, Sims 5 is in development. But for now, I will keep enjoying The Sims 4 which isn’t over yet and even after it has been replaced by the Sims 5, I won’t be abandoning it.
Today, people still play the Sims 3, 2, and even 1, although these are not the latest games in the series, and that’s because they bring good feelings of nostalgia, and they are timeless classics that have built the backbone of The Sims saga as a whole. Without these games, there wouldn’t even be a Sims 5 being developed, so our ongoing appreciation for these earlier games remains strong.
One night, last month, I remembered Sugar, Sugar, a game I used to play in middle school on the Cool Math Games website. Sugar, Sugar became one of the most unforgettable (in my opinion) games that I liked enough to revisit even during summer vacation because it was such a classic pleasure!
So I searched for it, found the first part out of three, and was delighted to see it again after so long. I seriously haven’t played it in years and it hasn’t changed one bit!
You may have never played it before. You could be younger, older, or in your early twenties like me, however old you are, for those of you who don’t know what Sugar, Sugar is, let me introduce you.
Sugar, Sugar was originally released in 1992 for the notable Super NES, and for Sega Genesis.
It’s a puzzle game where you draw lines (don’t worry if you don’t consider yourself artistically inclined, the lines don’t have to be perfectly straight, and you get to reset as many times as you need to succeed!) to guide a trickle of sugar in a timely manner to mugs that take count of how much lands in them, and when you fulfill that required number, you move on to the next level. It’s a relaxing, slow paced game that may not be up to every gamer’s preferences if you’re into something more fast paced and action packed.
Some people will get bored if it’s not their type of game, but for those of you who don’t mind a game with flexible, leisure time and room for thinking, Sugar, Sugar is a cozy computer game that you can play snuggled up to on the couch with a fleece blanket, with calming music in the background. When you’re in the mood for a game to unwind to at the end of a long work day, it suffices that need, and of course, it’s such an endearing the title, from the way the sugar snows from the comma at the top of the screen during a round, and the whole theme of this game, giving off coffee shop vibes where you presumably get pumpkin spice lattes, apple ciders, hot chocolates, or any warm beverage of your choice, and it brings to mind all of the baked glorious goodies that are to come with the fall season, and dare I suggest, even the following winter?
Yes I do!
Sugar, Sugar appeals to the sweet toothed, and to the homebodies whose ideal day is spent at home and whose favorite time of year are more than likely the fall and winter, when we’re more likely to be indoors than outside, where the temperature drops to frosty degrees and this makes sweaters, sugar cookies, and sedentary activities like video gaming all the more attractive!
I recommend giving Sugar, Sugar (all three parts) a try whenever you have spare time to dedicate to it, and if you think it’s suitable for you.
I must also note here that its sequels are more challenging and bring in new obstacles that are sure to sweeten up your experience!
We’re two months from the release of the new consoles, yet it already feels like Sony has won the generation.
For a while I thought this console generation would be different. Sony seemed to be floundering a little, barely saying anything about the PS5 while Microsoft pushed forward the narrative of the Xbox Series X being the most powerful console, Game Pass grew and grew, and huge acquisitions were made. Yet, even after snapping up Skyrim and Fallout dev/publisher Bethesda, now it’s hard to see how PlayStation won’t continue to lead by quite a margin – at least in powerful console space.
As I said elsewhere on the site, Microsoft has a lot to prove and isn’t doing much at the moment to calm fears, even though I’m pretty confident Xbox is in a far better position now than it was seven years ago. Sony, on the other hand, has stormed out of the gate with a string of superb PS5 games, a supposed less-powerful console that’s outperforming the on-paper more powerful machine, and importantly it has games that are known about and in-part dated.
Destruction All Stars, the competitive racing/running around game that got delayed from the PS5’s launch, arrives in February and is being included in PS +. It is a bonafide PS5 exclusive, but perhaps the least hyped game coming to Sony’s new console. Giving it away to all Plus members will at least ensure it has a decent shot at gaining an audience, and while I haven’t seen anything to suggest this will be the next Rocket League-style success story, it should offer some multiplayer thrills.
I reckon Returnal could surprise a lot of people.
Key for Sony is that the games keep coming, even if the first two aren’t especially big hitters. In March Sony is releasing Returnal from Housemarque. There’s a bit of negativity surrounding this releasing as a full-price game, largely because the studio’s previous titles have been arcade-like releases, but that seems hugely unfair on what looks like a gorgeous shooter from a team that has hardly ever put a foot wrong.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is the first so-called “big” PS5 exclusive to arrive from Sony in 2021, set to launch in the first half of the year. Insomniac has already managed to dazzle on the PS5 with the cross-gen Spider-Man Miles Morales, but Rift Apart should let the studio showcase what is possible on PS5 when only targeting the next-gen system – although year-one games rarely get the absolute best out of a new console. Footage has looked superb and the Ratchet & Clank games are always great fun.
May sees MS-owned Bethesda release Arkane’s Deathloop, exclusively on PlayStation 5 and PC. Arkane is known for delivering incredible game mechanics thanks to the Dishonored games, and this FPS looks to be equally inventive. At a time when the Xbox systems seem so short on Xbox Game Studio titles, the fact this is locked away is gloriously wicked. Ditto for Tango Gameworks’ more mysterious and supernatural Ghostwire: Tokyo, although that one is yet to be given a firm release date.
In the second half of 2021 Sony has a trio of absolute barnstormers set to release, with Gran Turismo 7, Horizon: Forbidden West, and God of War: Ragnarok. While Forbidden West is confirmed to be coming to PS4, too, and Sony hasn’t clarified the release platform situation with Ragnarok, there’s no denying that sequels to three of PlayStation’s biggest franchises all within a year of the PS5 launch is great going and sure to make fans extremely happy.
GT7 is likely to be huge for Sony and the PS5.
GT7 is set to be the first proper game in the series since 2013 and will arrive with huge expectations and the knowledge that Polyphony built up by supporting GT Sport as well as it did. What’s more, we might get Gran Turismo on PS5 before we get a new Forza on Xbox Series X, something most would have bet against. There was a sigh of disappointment when Sony revealed that Horizon: Forbidden West was also coming to PS4, a sense that we might not see Guerrilla Games able to flex its technical chops fully, but that debut trailer still looks pretty awesome if you ask me.
I still don’t really believe God of War: Ragnarok is releasing this year, but not because I’ve heard anything to suggest otherwise – I just didn’t expect a sequel to my favourite PS4 game to arrive so soon into the PS5’s life. If Sony Santa Monica can indeed get the game ready for the end of this year, even if it also launches on PS4, it will top what already looks like being one of the best in PlayStation history. And there’s every chance the year will deliver more, even without considering what games are coming from third-party publishers.
What I think Sony has done brilliantly is give PS5 owners and potential buyers a clear idea of the year ahead. As a PS5 owner I’m happy with the games I have, and there’s a steady drop of quality-looking titles scheduled over the months ahead. Can Xbox beat PS5? Maybe, but a turnaround of that magnitude in 2021 seems highly unlikely.
Cyberpunk 2077 has become a controversial topic to discuss since its release on December 10 last year, with its ‘fall from grace’ hitting major news networks around the world. After hitting a record-breaking 1 million concurrent players on Steam, CD Projekt Red’s futuristic RPG is now struggling to maintain 225,000 users less than 4 weeks after the game was released.
A fall in player base is to be expected of course, with previous games such as The Witcher 3 seeing a similar drop in users – though this took three months to occur.
For PC players at least, these numbers dropping at such an alarming rate are an interesting gauge for the satisfaction level of the gamers who purchased Cyberpunk 2077, and the potential future of the game itself.
Well that was quicker than expected
It’s easy to understand why we’re seeing such a dramatic fall in players when you look at the game issues documented by players across both PC and consoles, with bugs and hardware limitations rendering the game unplayable for some and unsatisfactory for many. A massive drop-off in player numbers is typical in video game life cycles and isn’t news in itself, but the speed at which we’re seeing gamers abandoning the game should concern CD Projekt Red.
Cyberpunk player numbers over the four weeks since release. (Image credit: GitHyp)
With recent history providing examples of games like Marvel’s Avengers and Anthem struggling to retain a player base, it’s not hard to see why developers should be looking to providing optimized products with replayable content.
Whilst not directly comparable as Cyberpunk 2077 is a single-player open-world game, consistent player numbers are important for future longevity developments like DLC and expansions.
The developer is currently working on a host of patches and bug fixes, and has already promised refunds for unsatisfied PS4 and Xbox One players after having admitted to not paying enough time on the version for the previous generation of consoles. CD Projekt Red’s diminished reputation may be a factor in the decline in players, so fixing the game to a better standard is keep to win back the trust that had previously fueled the years-long hype surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 prior to its release.
We’re hoping to see the issues ironed out over the coming weeks so that CD Projekt Red can salvage the situation and deliver a game that can be enjoyed by players across both PC and consoles. For now, we will continue to try and ignore the NPC’s T-posing in clubs and V’s pants disappearing during a gun fight.
The anticipation was big for “Cyberpunk 2077.” At 2019’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, attendees waited in line for a peek at the game from CD Projekt Red. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
by Todd Martens, Los Angeles Times
“Cyberpunk 2077” was always going to be hotly anticipated and highly debated. But now it’s a cautionary tale.
Since Keanu Reeves appeared last year at the Electronic Entertainment Expo to announce his participation in the title, excitement for the game has been at a level that greets a new Marvel film. And the fact that it would deal with topical subject matter — including arguably questionable looks at gender, race and politics — meant that fans and the media alike were eager to spend time with the game.
But the game is broken.
Sony on Thursday even took the drastic step of removing the game for the foreseeable future from its online store on PlayStation consoles. For those who have already bought the game, Sony is granting refunds. On Friday, Microsoft responded by offering fans a refund but is keeping the game available for sale on its Xbox consoles. The game’s developer, the fan-beloved CD Projekt Red, whose “The Witcher 3” remains one of the most celebrated games of the just-completed console generation, has pledged to fix the game.
Updates that would place the game in a desirable state are weeks and potentially months away. The Warsaw, Poland-based CD Projekt Red stated that by February the game should have enough patches to run adequately on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game is not without issues on the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X either (it has crashed on occasion for me on the former), but it works much better on the new hardware. Still, the new consoles, released just last month, are in short supply. For those playing on older consoles — the majority of gamers — “Cyberpunk 2077” exists in a too-fragile state.
Sony in its statement Thursday said the company “strives to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction, therefore we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ via PlayStation Store.” On Friday, Microsoft wrote, “To ensure that every player can get the experience they expect on Xbox, we will be expanding our existing refund policy to offer full refunds to anyone who purchased ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ digitally from the Microsoft Store.”
Forced to crunch
For much of the last week CD Projekt Red has been on an apology tour, even amid touting that the game received more than 8 million preorders. Media advances were given only on PCs, where those with high-end computers have experienced minimal issues. But the game looks and feels considerably different on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, leading to questions about how the studio previewed the game, and if the project it touted was different from the one it would sell.
“We would like to start by apologizing to you for not showing the game on base last-gen consoles before it premiered and, in consequence, not allowing you to make a more informed decision about your purchase,” read a statement attributed to company’s executive team. “We should have paid more attention to making it play better on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.”
Work-from-home constraints of the current COVID-19 pandemic are certainly presenting challenges across many industries, and “Cyberpunk 2077” was subject to numerous delays during the last year. To make its ultimate Dec. 10 release date, the company admitted that some staffers would be forced to crunch, that is work something akin to an around-the-clock schedule to finish the game.
Though the game is in a playable state for those with the most powerful, most expensive PC technology, the decision to push through with a wide release of “Cyberpunk 2077” simply heightens numerous questionable and unfortunate game industry tactics that have become the norm.
Chief among them: That it is OK to release a game in a near-finished state, knowing that in the coming months it would be a drastically different product.
Though it’s admirable that the game medium allows for constant updates, turning games into a livable work, this also takes fans for granted, believing they’ll still be there when the work is done. To oversimplify it, imagine a film released in an incomplete state, with the studio and the creative team simply expecting consumers to rewatch it in six months when it’s actually finished.
A screenshot from ‘Cyberpunk 2077.” (CD Projekt Red)
‘Early access’
Some developers embrace these challenges.
Games are a complex medium that stitches together art, technology and narrative components, all of them shifting based on the needs of the other elements and advancements in everything from computer power to game engine updates, not to mention user feedback.
There is the practice of releasing a game in so-called “early access,” providing a more transparent look at the development process. This year’s critically adored hack-and-slash game “Hades,” for instance, was available to purchase in a pre-release form for two years before it was properly finalized.
This can, however, deal a blow to any sort of publicity and marketing campaigns. The game industry is highly secretive, and often attempts to turn meaningless details such as the reveal of a character’s name into a news story. Early access destroys this careful build-up.
Additionally, when “Hades” came to the Nintendo Switch it may not have been seen as a brand “new” game. But also, by this point any underlying issues were worked out, and once people started playing the game word of mouth spread that “Hades” excitedly merged story and gameplay.
I personally avoid games released in early access. While it can be interesting to see how a game evolves, it simply makes more sense for me to wait until the game is at the state its developers want it. It’s safe to say “Cyberpunk 2077” isn’t there. Thus, at this point, it would be recommended for console owners to not play “Cyberpunk 2077” until its issues are smoothed out. The game that exists now will not be the same game that exists in a few months.
But the decision to rush “Cyberpunk 2077” before the holidays also points to long-standing and underlying issues about how the mainstream industry views its entertainment. CD Projekt Red was aware of the game’s hiccups, even admitting that it failed to show how the title ran on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. For all the supposed big ideas about the future of our world that the game possesses, this is evidence the studio ultimately considered it little more than a product, one that was so hotly anticipated that consumers would overlook the fact that it was not ready for prime time.
While The Times was offered interviews with the CD Projekt Red team for a story that could run around the launch of the game, I’ve increasingly grown skeptical of doing game features before having the ability to play the game in my home. Game events or previews are often carefully tailored to show a fraction of the title that runs mostly fine in a stitched-together state, with public relations reps interrupting interviews anytime the conversation strays from the specific moment of the game that the company has deemed as safe to cover — often detailed in nondisclosure agreements that The Times isn’t allowed to sign.
Instead, not having access to a PC that could run the game, we confined our coverage to an interview with Reeves. The actor was certainly interested in the power of the interactive medium, and spoke with curiosity on how user choice allowed him to essentially play multiple versions of the same character.
Reeves himself hadn’t seen the finished version of the game at the time we talked — and he acknowledged he would need a more game-inclined friend to show it to him. His interest in the game seemed fueled in part by the success CD Projekt Red had with “The Witcher 3” and in part to gain a better understanding of how games would impact all media.
“I don’t know where it’s going, but I know it’s going to be wacky,” he said. “It’s a good kind of puppeteering. Like, if I can play with the animation, I have more control.”
And yet it’s rare, as we just saw at the Game Awards this month, for a developer to be allowed to speak candidly about the art, the theories and the politics that inform every game. In such a climate, video games are handled with the cold precision of a new tech product rather than a work of entertainment. Thus, critical analysis around games is more vital than ever.
In turn, the legacy of “Cyberpunk 2077,” regardless of how it rebounds in 2021, will be that it is remembered as the work of a studio that disregarded the time its development team needed to finish the game — and in turn viewed its fans and the media with cynicism, even as it courted both with a product it specifically hyped as being politically edgy. It’s far from the first time this has happened, but rarely has it been done with such callousness.
Losing the rights to the thing you made is a surprisingly common situation in the games industry.
Obsidian Entertainment is one recent example—last year the studio released sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds after years of constant praise for Fallout: New Vegas, which it couldn’t continue. Elsewhere, Atari held the rights to Rollercoaster Tycoon, so Frontier corkscrewed right around them and made Planet Coaster. Two or three of these spiritual reboots pop up each year: Two Point Hospital, Phoenix Point, Yooka-Laylee. Further back, BioShock.
Left 4 Dead creators Turtle Rock Studios found themselves in this same license limbo over the last decade, having carried a genre-defining co-op zombie shooter to term in 2008 before passing their baby to Valve, who’s mostly slept on the franchise (there was a surprise community update in September).
In Back 4 Blood, you feel Turtle Rock’s pent-up passion for zombie co-op. The shooter unapologetically walks in the footsteps of what we played in ’08 and ’09. It’s is a more visually polished game, of course, but its basic parts are identical: four-player, run-and-gun shooting through criss-crossing urban and outdoor post-apocalyptica (in the first 15 minutes: apartment, rooftop, construction site, haphazard parking lot), conventional military weapons, and a procedurally-driven “Director” AI overseeing the action, pulling the strings. More Kubrick than Spielberg, this Director.
Atop that foundation, even finer Left 4 Dead details have been transfused into Back 4 Blood. When you heal yourself with a medkit, the camera pops out into third-person until the bandage-wrap animation completes. You can grab a defibrillator to revive downed teammates quickly and, if they die outright, they can be freed later on in the level to rejoin the team. The special infected include a wobbling vomit-launcher, a wall-crawling “Hocker” that can root you in place, and the Bruiser, whose swollen right arm creates almost the same silhouette as L4D2’s Charger. Saferooms are scrawled with fearful and funny graffiti. Even some of the same weapons are back for blood: Molotov, fire axe, machete, AK, M4, Uzi, a set of throwable firecrackers that draw common infected away from you.
Image credit: Turtle Rock Studios
It’s a long list of resemblances. After playing the imminent alpha for a few hours, one question I’m left with is how many new ideas Back 4 Blood will need to be a great, fresh experience. Will Left 4 Dead actually hold up well as a style of game in 2021? When I replayed that aforementioned community update in September, it surprised me how poorly some aspects of the shooter had aged. Sudden “crescendos” of action felt tedious. Guns lacked personality and nuance. My biggest gripe with Left 4 Dead in retrospect is that you’re shooting almost constantly from beginning to end, with only a saferoom finish line there to supply a moment of pacing. It can leave you with a rabid, frayed brain, something I felt in this early version of Back 4 Blood too.
It’s possible that Back 4 Blood could inherit some of Left 4 Dead’s lack of rhythm. The alpha did show a couple signs of this being an issue—on three occasions when I ran maybe 30 meters ahead of my teammates, I encountered absolutely zero infected, something that Left 4 Dead routinely punished. And in a big finale event on a massive, three-level cruise ship, my team had the opposite problem: infected streamed in non-stop, without a single break in the action. It was like swimming against the flow of a gushing zombie river.
But spawn behavior is the sort of thing that can be ironed out during development. Maybe the more critical question is what Back 4 Blood’s overall campaign structure will look like, and whether it’ll meaningfully differ from Left 4 Dead’s roughly symmetrical chapter-segments. Turtle Rock told me that Back 4 Blood will have a “bigger” story than Left 4 Dead, one not simply about fleeing the infected, but about taking back the world from them. You’re not a survivor, you’re a “Cleaner,” an immune fighter who’s seemingly working with a remnant military force.
We do know that Back 4 Blood won’t be an open-ended, globetrotting World War Z affair. The Cleaners are stationed in a stronghold called Fort Hope, the nucleus of the setting, and from there you’ll “take missions and go out into the city,” rescue people, and go out into the world, studio co-founder Chris Ashton told me. “There’s NPCs, there’s dialogue … You know at the outset of each mission what your objective is, and sometimes that objective goes all wrong … we’ve got intros and outros to missions, we’ve got radio communications, we’ve got our dynamic VO system.”
Image credit: Turtle Rock Studios
What I played was light on storytelling, but in the final chapter of the alpha a convoy of military vehicles roll up to a cruise ship terminal, guns blazing, asking us to run back into danger and blow up the cruise ship. I’m hoping there’s a lot more worldbuilding and storytelling moments to chew on like this—Left 4 Dead was plotless, relying almost entirely on light environmental cues to string together a theme. The best tool at Turtle Rock’s disposal will be the wider roster of eight characters, who the studio promises will each cast their own perspective on the environment, contributing some replay value through different voice lines.
Maybe the most novel mechanical trick Back 4 Blood has up its sleeve is a light card-based system, if you can believe it. It works almost like a soft pick-and-ban scheme that you’d find in Dota 2 or Rainbow Six Siege. Before each match the AI lays down a few cards (between two and four, in my sessions) that announce which enemies or conditions the next mission will include, like fog. In response, each player throws down a handful of their own modifying buffs, from straightforward boosts to ammo or health capacity to more interesting tweaks like healing on melee kills. When my teammates and I died, I liked that this system replaced some of the tedium of having to repeat a mission with strategizing—after each death, you can toss another card into play to improve your odds of success. These cards can be found hidden in levels or unlocked as a form of progression.
Two more smaller-but-significant changes shouldn’t go unnoticed: 1) you can sprint now; 2) guns have iron sights, partly to accommodate a new weapon attachments system. I still ended up playing Back 4 Blood mostly without ironsights—the missions I played didn’t exactly encourage us to stand still and aim. But the addition of modular weapon attachments you can find in the environment or purchase before each mission is welcome, partly because it’ll force more complex decisions than the rock-paper-scissors of Left 4 Dead’s rifle-shotgun-sniper weapon set.
How much Back 4 Blood does ultimately alter the experience it’s unapologetically resuscitating hinges on Turtle Rock’s promises of a bigger experience that plays out over the course of a campaign, almost all of which has yet to be revealed. We also don’t know if Back 4 Blood will be moddable, or how far down the “service game” path Turtle Rock and Warner Bros. will take it (will there be a season pass?), questions they weren’t ready to answer quite yet. You’ll be able to judge some of this for yourself very soon: the alpha just went live today, and runs through December 21st.
Xbox Series X, left, and Xbox Series S Source: Microsoft Corp.
by Jason Schreier, Bloomberg
The Xbox Series X is billed as the most powerful video game console ever made. But with a meager lineup of games this year, that promise won’t mean much for a while.
Microsoft Corp. released a new pair of consoles on Tuesday, kicking off the next generation of video games with better visuals and shorter load times. Bloomberg spent the last two weeks testing both products—the high-end Xbox Series X, which will sell for $500, and its smaller, less-powerful counterpart, the Xbox Series S, which will go for $300.
The consoles are sleek and easy to use. Games boot up almost immediately, even on the Series S. Loading screens aren’t completely gone, but they last a few seconds at most. Starting from the console’s home screen, there’s barely enough time to check Twitter before you’re off shooting aliens or raiding with Vikings. That’s probably the biggest selling point right now.
The new Xbox consoles and a competing product from Sony Corp. are the first major new game systems from these companies in seven years. Both debut next week, and expectations are high. The coronavirus pandemic has been good for video games and is expected to help lift spending on gaming products in the holiday shopping season by 24% from last year, according to research firm NPD Group.
For Microsoft, the new Xbox is a chance to redeem itself from a lackluster performance with the current console, the Xbox One. Although the company’s gaming sales have inched up in recent years, their share of Microsoft’s total revenue has declined. It was 8.1%, or $11.6 billion, in the last fiscal year. Compared with Sony, Microsoft is less reliant on games, and its stock is up 37% this year.
Another difference between Sony and Microsoft: The new Xbox arrives without a single exclusive. Every Xbox game set for release this year can be found elsewhere, whether it’s on the new PlayStation or the old Xbox. The most-anticipated game, Microsoft’s Halo Infinite, was delayed to next year. Its hero, Master Chief, is pictured on the back of the new Xbox’s packaging, serving as a glaring reminder of the game’s absence.
A lack of content is a typical issue for consoles in their first year or so on the market. Microsoft will try to balance that out with Xbox Game Pass, a subscription service akin to Netflix that offers access to new and old games for $10 a month. The Xbox Series S and X can play games that date back to 2005, when the Xbox 360 was released. For those who missed out on the best games of the past decade, like Red Dead Redemption and Dark Souls, this is a good way to catch up. Underrated gems like Nier Automata, Fallout New Vegas and Hollow Knight are also included with Game Pass.
Of course, you could stream all of that through Game Pass on a computer, smartphone or even on the Xbox One. Microsoft executives have said their new games will continue to be available on the Xbox One for the next year or two. And Microsoft’s recent $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda Softworks’s parent company will take years to deliver the kinds of exclusive, new games that sell consoles.
There are advantages to springing for the new Xbox, though. The Series X can run at least some games at 4K ultra-high-definition resolution and 60 frames per second. You need a fairly new television and a sharp eye to benefit from the former, but the latter makes a massive difference. With a higher frame rate, animations look smoother, controls feel more responsive, and the overall experience is far better. This may only matter to the biggest game enthusiasts, but after playing in this context, it’s tough to go back to old hardware.
A good showcase of the technology is Ubisoft Entertainment SA’s upcoming action-role-playing game, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. On the old Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, the game runs at 30 frames per second. The Xbox Series X stably doubles that capacity. Madden NFL 21 and Yakuza: Like a Dragon also run at the higher frame rate on the Xbox Series X. However, another Ubisoft game, Watch Dogs: Legion, does not, indicating that the experience will vary by title.
The cheaper Xbox Series S is a different story. It can’t display in 4K. The new Assassin’s Creed runs at the same slower frame rate as the old consoles, though Microsoft has said the hardware is capable of much higher. Otherwise, the Series S software interface looks identical to the Series X, the device itself is more svelte, and games load surprisingly fast.
But getting a video game console at launch is all about the possibilities. That is especially true for these new Xbox systems. For now, it’s only worth the purchase for those who really want to experience games on the highest-end console possible or those who didn’t buy a console last decade and want to catch up.
This November, Microsoft’s new Xbox and Sony’s new PlayStation are scheduled to go head-to-head in a competition for control over the next generation of video game consoles.
With that new generation comes the next major leap in graphics technology: Both the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X are boasting 4K-resolution games at a stunningly high refresh rate of 120 hertz. What that means in English is crisp image quality paired with smooth motion. Games on both new consoles are promised to look better than ever.
Websites for the Xbox Series X, left, and the PlayStation 5 highlight the visual capability of their respective consoles. Microsoft/Sony
Whether your television is actually capable of producing those visuals, however, is another question.
For a television to display 4K-resolution games running at such high frame rates, it needs to support those specs — and the vast majority of TVs do not, including many new sets that support both 4K resolution and HDR visuals. That’s because TVs with support for such high frame rates with 4K resolutions are still brand new, and most are still prohibitively expensive.
You’re looking at $950 on the low end — and much higher if you want something larger than 55 inches — for TVs that support those specs. Beyond producing 4K-resolution visuals at 120 Hz, TVs that fully support the next-gen consoles also need a new type of HDMI port to handle all that data: HDMI 2.1.
The latest version of HDMI is available on only the newest modern TVs — many existing 4K and HDR TVs don’t have it, and there’s no way to upgrade an existing port.
In so many words: If you want to take full advantage of the power of the coming PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, you’ll almost certainly need a new television.
PS5 pre-orders are being canceled as a result of retailers taking more pre-orders than their supply. This month, PlayStation makers Sony announced the PS5 price and the PS5 release date. The moment it did this, retailers — such as GameStop, Amazon, Walmart, GAME, EB Games, and Best Buy — immediately began to take pre-orders, and it looks like most of them took more pre-orders than they should. In addition to Amazon sending out emails warnings pre-orderers they may not get a console at launch, GameStop Ireland has warned some of its pre-order customers they won’t get their console until 2021. It doesn’t end there though.
VGC reports that UK retailer ShopTo will not be able to fulfill all of its pre-orders unless some customers begin to cancel their pre-orders. In other words, like other retailers, they don’t seem very confident they will have enough stock to meet demand, which begs the question: why are they taking pre-orders before they know how much stock they will have and what their shipping resources will be?
It’s only September 29. The PS5 isn’t releasing until November 12, which is to say these are the early birds getting out early as early birds do. More and more retailers are going to run into this issue. Whether it leads to canceling pre-orders or delaying delivery, the result is essentially the same thing. PlayStation players are getting pre-orders to ensure they have the console at launch. If it arrives weeks later, that hardly counts as fulfilling a pre-order.
If Amazon is anticipating stock and shipping issues, then it’s safe to assume every retailer is about to have the same issue, as Amazon likely has more stock than any other retailer, and it certainly has the greatest shipping resources.
Unfortunately, none of this is very surprising, as it happened with the PS4. And it’s going to happen with the Xbox Series X, because it happens with most modern console releases. And everyone knows this, yet retailers continue to ignore this reality to get that pre-order bump on their books.
The PS5 is set to release worldwide on November 12, priced at $400 or $500, depending on what version of the console you purchase.
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