1. My final piece of Uncharted 4 correspondence is up over at Videodame! Many, many thanks to Sara Clemens for indulging me in throwing thousands of words onto her site.
2. I know I’m somewhat slack in terms of regular updates here, but I was hoping I’d be able to finish ABZU tonight and then write about it tomorrow, time permitting. Alas, I’m going to be at a family thing in Chicago and will be away from all things computer-related; and even if I do finish ABZU tonight, I don’t know that I’m feeling that motivated to write about it. It’s certainly gorgeous and tranquil, which is something I could certainly use right about now; but it also remains somewhat obtuse, and I don’t have a sense if there’s anything under the surface just yet.
3. I’m finding myself in something of a holding pattern right now, given that No Man’s Sky is out next week and I’m sure I’m going to be all over it. I currently have it in my rental queue, which means I wouldn’t get it until next Thursday at the earliest; if the official reviews say it’s worth checking out, I might ditch the rental and buy it digitally in order to get my hands on it sooner. My boy Samit wrote up a thing over at Polygon about the pre-release hype and the rush to judgment based on one person’s 30-hour playthrough of an early-acquired copy; needless to say, I’m withholding judgment until I get my hands on it. I do worry about what might be an infinity of monotony, but I at least hope that there’s enough in the early going to propel me along.
4. Speaking of Polygon, they’re putting out a request for freelance reviewers. I’m posting this here mostly so that I don’t forget about it, though I think it’s time for me to admit that I probably don’t have a future in freelance journalism. Not if I want to finish this album before my son goes to college, at any rate.
5. Speaking of the album: it’s still slowly coming along, though it’s exceedingly difficult to maintain creative momentum. I did manage to record some vocals this weekend, for the first time in… oh my god, I don’t even know how many years it’s been since I actually sang into a microphone with intent. Even though it’s just a scratch vocal, it’s something.
1. Just a short while ago I’d mentioned that I was feeling pressure to complete my self-imposed Goodreads challenge. I’d go through my backlog and purposely pick shorter books, and read them a bit quicker than I’d prefer, just to stay ahead of the pace. As it currently stands, though, I’ve finished 29 of 35, and so I think I’m in pretty good shape. The last 5 books I’ve read since the last time I wrote this down:
A Doubter’s Almanac, Ethan Canin. Some phenomenally good writing here tracing the generational lines of a tortured mathematical genius, though I must admit that this Goodreads comment is spot on: “Deliver me from art about troubled men whose genius is used as an excuse for them to be assholes.”
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith. Very good prose, but the plot ran out of steam for me and I had trouble staying engaged with it.
The Fisherman, John Langan. Picked this up (among several others) on the advice of Unwinnable’s EIC Stu Horvath, and I’m very glad I did; this is a really well-written bit of cosmic horror that I couldn’t put down.
The Fugitives, Christopher Sorrentino. This is, according to my GoogleDoc, the second-least-enjoyable book I’ve finished this year. (The least-enjoyable book that I finished would be China Mieville’s This Census Taker, which was short enough for me to finish but long enough for me to swear off his books for the rest of my life. I also attempted to read Girl On The Train but gave up about a third of the way into it.) Anyway, there’s some marvelous writing here, but there’s also a ton of bullshit, and the final third is so confusing and messy and aggravating that I found myself incredibly relieved when I finished it.
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates. I can’t believe it took me this long to get to this. This ought to be essential reading for literally every person on the planet.
I’m currently reading Paul Tremblay’s Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, also from that Unwinnable list, and it’s certainly doing the same sorts of things to my brain that Stranger Things did, though I suspect this is going to not have as happy an ending.
2. I am very close to finishing Double Fine’s VHS homage to Metroidvania, Headlander, and I’m torn between really loving the hell out of it and also wanting to break my controller in half during some of the boss battles. Double Fine games are a tough thing for me to objectively critique; my love for Tim Schafer’s early work blinds me a bit, and so I’m willing to overlook a lot of issues. A lot of recent DF games are marvelously clever and beautiful and charming and whimsical, but they don’t necessarily play all that well? Headlander, on the other hand, is possibly the most game-y game they’ve made since Psychonauts, where the emphasis is very much on the actual gameplay and less on the writing. Of course, the writing remains very good, and the game’s audio/visual aesthetic is top-notch, as always; it’s just that this is (for the most part) actually, legitimately fun to play. (Except for some of the boss battles, which… aaaaaaaaaaaaa)
3. So, yeah; I’m still in somewhat of a cocooning phase, though I’m starting to feel better. It’s going to remain somewhat quiet around here, though, as the day job has installed some rather heavy-duty internet firewall stuff, and so I don’t really know how much I can get away with (and it’s a line that I’m not particularly willing to cross at this point in time). I’ll do my best to keep a somewhat regular presence here, of course.
It’s been a rough few days here at SFTC HQ, and I apologize in advance for being quiet. I’m not going to get into the details here, but suffice it to say that I needed a bit of a break from the internet / the world / people in general.
I’m still kinda in hibernation / cocooning mode, and so I expect it’ll be quiet here for a little while longer. I thank you in advance for your patience.
2. I’m busting outta the ‘burbs and will be at the NYVCC summer shindig at Barcade this coming Monday, July 25. If you’re in town, come on by!
3. I’ve been wanting to write about Stranger Things all week, but knew I should wait until I finished the season; my wife and I started on Sunday after the kid went to bed and pushed through 2 episodes per night, and so we finished it on Wednesday evening. I woke up later that night at 3am and had one of those middle-of-the-night timeless intervals trying to figure out what I wanted to say about it. Now it’s Friday and I’m still floating out to sea, somewhat. (There’s a reason for that, though.*)
If you don’t know what Stranger Things is, here’s my very abbreviated elevator pitch: imagine Steven Spielberg directing a Stephen King novel, with a John Carpenter soundtrack, in 1983.
This essay from Paste goes into a bit more detail, especially in terms of what exactly it’s stealing from; here’s a TL:DR excerpt:
If you were a child of the ‘80s and ‘90s, chances are you’ve seen Stranger Things before. An eight-part sci-fi spectacle and shiny new Netflix original from filmmaking brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, Stranger Things is spooky supernatural entertainment unashamedly in the 1980s popcorn mould. It won’t be a problem for today’s kids less familiar with that period in film, but for those that recognize the influences—anyone who’s been paying attention to pop culture over the last 30 years, probably—there’s nothing surprising about Stranger Things. In fact, there’s barely an original idea across its six-and-a-half hours. Instead, it constantly recalls old stories.
There’s an argument to be made that this is in fact Stranger Things’ ‘original’ concept: arranging shopworn ideas in a new and interesting way. Collaging is considered an art, and it no doubt takes talent to make a worthwhile season of television almost entirely out of borrowed parts. Which isn’t to say Stranger Things is like some scrappy mish-mash; like Quentin Tarantino, the Duffers only cadge ideas from the best, but are more importantly talented enough as storytellers to use those ideas in effective ways.
I don’t know if I would count it among the greatest seasons of capital-T Television I’ve ever seen, but it was incredibly fun, and I guess the thing I appreciated the most is how, while it’s obviously borrowing heavily from a lot of 1980s tropes, it’s also incorporating a lot of today’s story-telling methods. Let’s be honest – if you go back and revisit a classic 80s movie that you haven’t seen in a number of years, a lot of them haven’t aged particularly well; they are better in your memory of them than how they actually are.
A few key examples of this: the first Tim Burton Batman movie, from 1989. I saw this movie in the theater as a kid and LOVED it, but hadn’t watched it again until a few years ago. And for all its stylistic Tim Burton-ness, there’s just a whole bunch of nonsense that 14-year-old me just didn’t notice at the time. There’s a scene in the back half of the movie where Jack Nicholson’s Joker pays Kim Basinger’s Vicki Vale a menacing visit. But there’s literallyno reason for him to show up there. The scene doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s a fabricated excuse to give Jack and Kim a scene together, and when you watch this with the benefit of watching 20+ years of movies in the interim, suddenly it sticks out.
Or, alternately, Big Trouble in Little China, which I loved to death back in the day. It’s still fun, and it’s visually interesting, but the movie itself barely hangs together.
Anyway, back to Stranger Things. Here is a bullet-pointed collection of thoughts, which I am currently too distracted to properly formulate into an actual essay. (See the above-referenced footnote below.) It’s hard to be specific without getting into what are technically spoilers, but I should also note that this isn’t the sort of show where you’re being knocked over by plot twists; there’s a tremendous amount of forward momentum here and so anything spoiler-y is less about a BIG REVEAL and more about a moment of character development. Still, be warned.
This story could certainly have been told in a 2-hour movie. But by stretching it out to 8 episodes, we’re able to have these characters actually talk to each other. And, in what feels like a genuine first, we’re having characters have conversations where they actually say all the things I wish that characters would say. I don’t know if that’s a testament to the writing, or the acting, or if it’s simply that I am the target audience for this show and so I related to every single goddamned pixel on my television screen. But, like – it’s great to be able to follow Winona Ryder into what for all intents and purposes looks like a psychotic break, and to have her fully acknowledge to anyone who asks that yes, she is very much aware that she knows what she looks like, but for us to know that she isn’t.
How great is the casting? This is some of the best work Winona Ryder’s done in her whole career – and while casting her is no accident, she knocked it out of the park. The kids are great: the girl who plays Eleven looks an awful lot like young Wil Wheaton, wouldn’t you say? And of course the older brother looks a lot like young River Phoenix.
OH GOD THE MUSIC. Obviously one of the things that makes this show so great is how it mixes lots of 80s things together, but especially how it takes a Spielberg-ian look at childhood in the 80s but eschews the John Williams orchestra and instead goes for the John Carpenter minimal-synthesizer thing. I only wish they could’ve gone a little bit further and added some David Lynch/Twin Peaks weirdness, though I suppose having this story take place in an unusually strange town might’ve been pushing it a bit too much.
As noted above, I am the target demo for this show – a child of the 80s, thoroughly steeped in 80s movies and music and clothes and Trapper Keepers and D&D (well, in my case, piano lessons), and so I of course related to both the junior-high AV Club kids and the high school hormonal teenagers. (And on behalf of all the teenaged girls I knew when I was a teenager: I’m so, so, so sorry.) But I am also currently a 40-year-old parent, and I also thoroughly related to the adults on the show, especially with regards to how those parents care about their children. Like the scene between Nancy and her mother where the mother knows what just happened to Nancy and her boyfriend and desperately wants to reach out to her daughter because she’s been there and wants to be cool about it, and how heartbreaking it is for her to have the door shut in her face. Or the deep sorrow that Chief Hopper carries around with him in losing his very young daughter; I don’t know what that feels like first-hand and I hope I never do, but I can certainly imagine what it would like to lose my son, and jesus I have to move on because I can’t finish this sentence. Point being, I related to everyone, in intensely different ways.
BIGGEST SPOILER, SINCE IT’S ABOUT THE LAST TWO EPISODES: In the last two episodes, how great was it to have all the good guys, who’d previously been in their own groups, finally come together? And to also appear in completely different pairings than they’d been in for the rest of the season? It’s so nice when people don’t have to keep secrets from each other. The sense of relief the little kids must’ve felt when not only did Chief Hopper rescue them from the bus, but that he believes them.
I loved the show; you should watch it.
* This week’s been a shitshow – work has been busy, and the RNC is a waking nightmare, but on the lighter side of things I’ve also been pleasantly obsessing over music, which carries its own set of distractions. I know I’ve talked numerous times about how impressed I am at whatever algorithmic alchemy Spotify manages to achieve for the weekly Discovery playlist; the hit-to-miss ratio is more than acceptable, especially considering that the songs that qualify as “hits” more often than not end up becoming profoundly affecting. Part of the reason why I couldn’t write anything yesterday is because I spent, like, 5 hours just listening to the bridge in Moses Sumney’s “Everlasting Sigh”.
I am not playing Pokemon GO. But neither am I one of those cranky old fuddy-duddys who’s making fun of people who are.
I am, instead, one of those people who were simply born in that very specific date range where Pokemon means absolutely nothing to me whatsoever. I was too old when they first came out, and I was again too old when the videogames started coming out, and I remain too old and too limited in my free time to pay attention to it now. This is not me complaining; this is me simply being realistic.
Normally I get that “Fear Of Missing Out” anxiety when 90% of my Twitter feed is about something that I’m not actively participating in, but not in this case. Even if I were to download it – and I may still do it, just out of pure curiosity – I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do with any of the various Pokethings I might come across, nor would I bother looking for anyofthevariousPokemonGoexplainersthathavepoppedup.
I’m also not sure how long this mania is going to last. Remember just a short while ago, when Miitomo was all the rage? Has anyone even looked at that thing in, say, the last 3 weeks?
I must stress, again, that I don’t hate Pokemon GO; I just don’t care about it. I’m not reflexively angry about it, like all those idiots who hate the new Ghostbusters film without having seen it. To those of you who are currently obsessed with it – please, by all means, tell me about it. Is it approachable for the Pokemon neophyte, or do you have to already know how Pokemon works before bothering with it? And does it kill your phone battery as quickly as I hear it does? My iPhone 6’s battery is already starting to wither and die if I use it too much – like today, for instance, where I caught a 7:45am train with my battery at 95% and got into the office a little before 9:00am with the battery all the way down to 53%, and that was just because I was listening to Spotify and reading Twitter. I worry that if, by some chance, I did end up downloading it and starting playing it during my various walks, that my phone would simply catch on fire.
I know it seems silly to write up a blog post to announce that I’m NOT playing the thing that everyone else in the world is playing, but I felt it important to differentiate myself from the other various thinkpieces out there.
The voice acting is mostly taken from the movies, except each line reading feels strangely sleepy and deadened in its delivery; the action is relentlessly tedious, endless waves of enemies descending out of nowhere, for no particular reason except to pad everything out. Plenty of bugs. A whole bunch of puzzles that do not explain themselves at all, which is all the more frustrating because the game doesgo out of its way to explain the dumbest shit in agonizing unskippable camera swoops. I know, I know – I’m 40 years old, I’m at least 25 years past the target demographic, etc. This doesn’t stop a shitty game from being a shitty game. Remind me that I said all of this when Lego: Star Wars: The Force Awakens comes out in a few months.
Well, for some stupid reason I decided to rent Lego Star Wars TFA, and, lo and behold, everything I said in the above paragraph applies to this new game as well. I am no longer interested in having to repeat the same platforming exercise dozens of time because the game is too stupid to recognize where I’m jumping. And while it’s great that they added some new stuff to break up the formula – 3rd-person cover shooting, space combat – the new stuff is so poorly executed that I’d rather they kept it out. I barely got through 2 chapters before deciding I’d had enough. I’d rather watch the movie anyway.
3. I realize that I never updated my progress with respect to INSIDE. Well, I finished it, and… um… yeah. I stand by my initial assertion that it packs one hell of a first impression, and that the animation and sound design are particularly excellent. That being said, I have literally no idea what the hell happened there at the end, and I was left with a lingering sense of “what the hell did I just play, and why?” Hard to explain unless I get into spoilers, though even with spoilers it’s not like it gets any easier. Would be curious to discuss it with someone who got it. Otherwise, I’m starting to wonder just what it is about PlayDead and their fascination with child murdering.
4. I’m kinda drifting along through my gaming library at the moment. I should be focused on finishing Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, but that requires a time commitment that I simply don’t have right now; that’s not the sort of game that I can play for just 30 minutes and then log off. For some reason I bought the PS4 editions of Saints Row 4 and Gat Out of Hell, probably because they were stupidly cheap. I do kinda love how ridiculously dumb SR4 is; it’s the Crackdown sequel I always wanted. The PS4 edition barely qualifies as a “remaster”, but that’s not necessarily enough to ignore it completely; it’s a fun, dumb game, and I’m happy to mess around with it unless it completely crashes (which it actually did the other night). I’d never played Gat out of Hell, and after 30-45 minutes with it I’m not sure I need to. I am obviously going to start playing Red Dead Redemption again on Friday, once its transition to the XB1 is complete; I don’t know if I’m going to start over from scratch or just pick up where my cloud save left off, but all I really want is just to hang out with it again.
1. I’ve been continuing on my reading tear of late, and I’m sure it’s because I’m feeling pressured to make sure I hit my Goodreads Reading Challenge number for some stupid reason. And most of the books I’ve read lately are on the short side of things.
Since my last post, I’ve finished Emma Straub’s “Modern Lovers”, which I found somewhat disappointing, though I’ll admit that it may only be disappointing in that what I expected is not at all what I got. I should note that a lot of what I’m reading these days is stuff that I’ve picked in order to help me formulate some lyric ideas. And a book about middle-aged people who used to be in a band in college and reexamining their lives in light of their shared connection – well, that’s a topic that’s very much on my mind, both in terms of lyrics and just in general. “Modern Lovers” does not really focus on the stuff I’d hoped it would. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s without merit; it just means I was looking for something that simply wasn’t there.
Then I read Joe Haldeman’s “The Forever War”, which Amazon had recently featured in a Kindle sale for $1.99 or something ridiculous, so I picked it up. It is known as a sci-fi classic, and apparently you can’t describe it without mentioning its commonalities to Vietnam, of which Haldeman was a veteran. To that end, it presents a unique perspective of the soldier’s point of view, which is certainly worth absorbing. I was a little put off by his more far-out ideas of sexuality and eugenics, though.
Last night I began Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending”, and I finished it this morning, and WOW, WOW, fucking WOW. I’ve read quite a few good books lately, but there’s a difference between reading a good book and reading a good book by a great writer, and Barnes is absolutely magnificent. I am also perhaps a little ashamed to admit that I related to the narrator far more than I was prepared to be? In any case, this was the rumination on nostalgia and loss and remembrance that I’d hoped “Modern Lovers” would be, and now I want to read everything else he’s written. I think I’d been aware of this specific book for a while, but it wasn’t until the reviews came out of his latest book, “The Noise of Time” – a (fictional?) book about Shostakovitch – that I started looking over the rest of his work.
2. I stared playing INSIDE last night, the latest 2.5D game from Playdead, makers of Limbo. You can’t talk about INSIDE without referencing Limbo, and I suppose that might be part of the point – they’re both very moody and atmospheric, and both feature a child running away from something horrible towards something unknown but also probably horrible, and all the while platforming and puzzling around dangerous obstacles. And both games are not afraid of showing the gruesome fate of an ill-timed or wrong-footed step. I’m about 2/3 of the way through and am hopeful I can finish it tonight. I don’t want to say anything else about it except that it is, so far, absolutely stunning. Remarkably articulate animation (helped out by finely-tuned controls), astounding sound design, and a very pleasing use of physics manipulation where necessary.
1. First thing’s fuckin’ last: my first piece in Videodame’s Co-op Campaign is up, in which me and my buddy Sara start our discussion about Uncharted 4. I’d deliberately avoided talking about U4 in these pages because I knew this thing was going to start up, sogo on and give it a spin, why don’t you?
2. I’m in a weird place, gaming-wise. I’m not playing anything with any enthusiasm. Work has been killing me and my three-year-old is a vortex of I’m exhausted, for one thing, and so if I do end up playing anything it’s not for very long; I’m inching along in Witcher 3: Blood and Wine for this very reason. (Also, I appear to be wildly under-levelled for some of the sidequests, and so I’m kinda just treading water.) I gave up on Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, because it was hopelessly dumb; one particular side quest has a broken Runner’s Vision thing which kept sending me off a ledge too high for me to survive, and it’s not like I particularly cared about what I was doing. I’ve more or less given up on Trials of the Blood Dragon, because the off-bike stuff is soooooo bad. My rental copy of Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens should be arriving next week, but if the demo is any indication, it’s still the same old broken platforming bullshit that’s been plaguing this series for years.
I honestly can’t remember what else is on my plate at the moment. I beat the new Gauntlet mode in Swapperoo, my current iOS GOTY candidate; woo-hoo.
3. I’ve read a hell of a lot of books lately, though. Of note:
I finished Justin Cronin’s “City of Mirrors”. Among the few friends of mine who’ve also read it, I probably have the highest opinion of it; I think, if nothing else, that it ends quite well.
Victor LaVelle’s “The Ballad of Black Tom” is a very short Lovecraftian novella that inverts Lovecraft’s latent racist attitudes into something much more powerful.
Joe Hill’s “The Fireman” is a really interesting premise and an absorbing read, though I wouldn’t call it a horror novel.
Daniel O’Malley’s “Stiletto” is the 2nd installment of his Rook series, and it’s arguably more entertaining than the first entry; the premise is essentially if the X-Men were running the British Secret Service and defending the country from other supernatural forces. Very witty, very clever, and this 2nd book is very exciting indeed.
Sylvain Neuvel’s “Sleeping Giants” had been popping up in my periphery for a while, and I started it last night on the train and finished it this morning. If this is the beginning of a new franchise (there is at least one more book coming next year), consider me signed on.
And now I just started Emma Straub’s “Modern Lovers”, which is very much NOT action/sci-fi.
4. This eulogy for Other Music is hitting me in the feels. I might as well have written it myself.
…My scramble for self-identity was tied up in records, and Other Music was where I went to get myself sorted out. What did I like? What did I want? Which section did I want to start flipping through first, and what did that say about me? The classification of a person via her cultural preferences and proclivities—maybe that’s something we should be glad to wave goodbye to. One is no longer either a punk or a goth, In or Out; one merely is.
But it’s also why I think of Other Music as an integral player in my making, and why witnessing its end feels especially personal. We all experience some version of this dissociation a million times in a life: a drawbridge being raised behind you. The sense that you couldn’t re-create yourself now if you tried. When I needed it to, Other Music turned the whole notion of “Other” into something prideful—it forced me to make a choice about who I thought I was, or could be—and for that I’ll always be grateful, beholden.
And just like that, the day job is busy again. Until next time! [Exits, pursued by a bear]
I’d hoped to have posted my impressions of Sony’s press conference much sooner, but events have conspired against me. I suppose it’s for the best, since I have the benefit of hindsight now and I feel that I can be a bit more objective about what Sony had to offer.
Did Sony “win” E3? Was this “the greatest press conference ever”? I’ve seen several tweeted headlines that answer in the affirmative to both of these questions, but I’m not convinced. Again – I’m writing this a few days after the presser, so I’m not nearly as breathless with anticipation as I might’ve been during the actual event.
Sony’s actual press conference was certainly not the epic, no-doubt-about-it mic drop of a few years ago. (And when I look at that recap, I am simply stunned by what I managed to be stunned by.) I did find it much more substantive and tasteful than Microsoft’s, though that could’ve been the live orchestra.
More to the point, the games – or, rather, the portions of new games that were presented to us – seemed more mature, more sophisticated. This new, Norse-themed God of War reboot feels like a Naughty Dog game, with a nuanced relationship between a father and son. Horizon similarly looks quite astonishing, although it’s hard to know how to extrapolate a full game experience from that 7-8 minute demo. We have a 2016 release date for The Last Guardian, which is nice, even if I haven’t read any preview coverage that managed to get a clear handle on what it is.
Honestly, I’m mostly excited about the Crash Bandicoot remasters. And also the PSVR, which comes in at a price point that I can most probably survive.
This is all well and good, but now that’s it’s been a few days I’m more concerned about what we didn’t see – like No Man’s Sky (which I suspect was withheld simply because they’re in crunch time and didn’t have time to show anything without severely cramping their style). And of course Sony did not talk about the “Neo”, which begs the question – will my PSVR work better with the new hardware? Can I afford a Neo and a Scorpio while still paying my mortgage? Will my wife leave me if I buy them both anyway?
* * *
With regards to the rest of the show: I am the wrong dude to ask. Work has been crazy, and whatever free time I’ve had this week has been devoted to posting about gun control and how horrible Donald Trump is. But I can run off a few bullet points:
I bought Trials of the Blood Dragon after hearing about it at the Ubisoft presser because I love the Trials games, and after 15 minutes with it I can tell you that whoever decided to make a Trials game where you get off the motorcycle and engage in shitty platforming/shooting segmentsneeds to get fired immediately.
The South Park game looks awesome.
Ubisoft’s winter-sports thing looks promising, though I’ve heard some absolutely dreadful impressions.
I must cop to admitting that Call of Duty in space actually looks pretty neat.
I very nearly pre-ordered the ultimate edition of Forza Horizon 3 earlier today. I don’t know why, nor do I know why I stopped.
I’m willing to give that standalone Gwent game a look, though I never played more than the tutorial in Witcher 3 proper.
Speaking of which, I need to get back to that Blood & Wine DLC.
Also need to get back to Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, though to be honest I’m not enjoying it all that much. It feels like EA’s first draft of a Ubisoft open-world game, and you can take that however you want.
I don’t know what I wanted out of Microsoft’s E3 presser today. I barely touch my Xbox One these days as it is. Nearly everything that looked halfway interesting had a 2017 date attached to it, and there wasn’t necessarily all that much that looked halfway interesting.
In this frightening post-Burnout world we live in, Forza Horizon has become my favorite driving franchise, and Forza Horizon 3 looks pretty spectacular – I’ll definitely be picking that up in September.
I was hoping for some Crackdown 3 news or footage, and we got absolutely nothing on that front, and I’m not sure if that means I should be worried. And I suppose I’d also hoped for some big-name 360 games to become backward-compatible (*cough cough* Red Dead *cough cough*). There were other, obvious things that I figured we’d see – Gears 4 (which looks very Gears-y) and Halo Wars 2 (which isn’t my thing, but whatever).
The Xbox One Slim is a nice deal, but who in their right mind would buy it if the Scorpio – “the most powerful console ever built” with the “highest quality pixels” – is coming next year? And will developers have a collective nervous breakdown if they have to develop across all Xbox SKUs?
As per usual, the most interesting part of the press conference was the “indie showcase”, which is merely a montage of all the legitimately cool-looking games that I’m actually looking forward to checking out. Hard to get a feel for any of them with that quick-fire editing, though.
I can’t tell if I’m disappointed, jaded, or distracted. But I’m definitely not feeling as gung-ho as I’d like to be feeling right now.
As in E3s past, I will most likely miss the Ubisoft presser, just because of my evening commute. But I’m certainly very interested to see what Sony’s got up their sleeve. I’ll most likely be live-tweeting when that starts happening, and a more detailed impressions post will follow shortly thereafter.
Shouts From The Couch 