My hands are so jacked from all the writing.
Okay, I just watched the original Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049. I have no idea what I watched, but it makes me want to play Cyberpunk 2077 again.. Shit was mind blowing (woah I just swore).
Time to address the elephant in the room: my sporadic posting. I will always apologize, and I will continue to apologize (pretty sure I just said the same thing but in two different tenses). I’ve been taking on a load of new writing opportunities so it may hinder my weekly recaps, but I will try my best to keep posting. If I miss a week, the next article might contain older news with some new topics and probably be shorter (who am I kidding).
I also want to get back into reviewing games… but that requires I beat games… so… yeah..
Anyways, let’s talk!
Gaming
PlayStation Plus is launching in Asia and the origins of the Marvel partnership
So you’ve probably seen or heard already, but for those of you unaware, the revamped PlayStation Plus service has been launching in Asia giving us plenty of news on how it’s going to work.
The details come from YouTuber, Mystic, who’s done a video breakdown of a lot of the newer features such as:
- Some games will feature trophy support that is optional, for all of you avid trophy hunters,
- Different graphical settings and aspect ratios
- The ability to straight up purchase some older titles
- Multiple save states allowing you to save whenever you want
- A “rewind” feature allowing you to correct any mistakes you made in game
From what I’ve seen, it looks pretty good. I assumed this was going to be a cheap attempt to mock the Game Pass, but the features Mystic goes over look thought out and cool. Obviously, time will tell how well Sony is committed to make this project work out. One knock I will say is that there’s a list of games that are initially going to be a part of the revamp, and I do hope the list of older titles grows. I need me some Sly Cooper.
The next piece comes courtesy of an interview from an excerpt from Steven L Kent’s 2021 book, The Ultimate History of Video Games Vol 2, detailing how Marvel and Sony made 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man become a reality (you can find the full notes of the deal here).
Now, I don’t know if you remember, but Activision was once in charge of making Spider-Man games, with Treyarch carrying the Web-Head to spectacular heights in Spider-Man 2, as Activision had a deal with Marvel at the time. After Spider-Man 2, the games sort of nose dived in quality which made Marvel cut the deal short and seek out a better partner with executive vice president and head of Marvel Games, Jay Ong, sitting down with potential suitors Xbox and PlayStation.
Xbox wanted to focus on their own IPs so they decided to pass on the deal. Heading over to PlayStation, Ong sat down with two executives and said: “We have a dream that this is possible, that we could beat Arkham and have one game at least and maybe multiple games that could drive adoption of your platform”.
This prompted Sony to hand this project to Insomniac Games who’ve worked with Sony on many projects for PlayStation with Resistance and Ratchet and Clank being their star projects. Interestingly enough, the book referenced that Sunset Overdrive was also a selling point for this deal as it proved Insomniac could make a fluid parkour system fit for a Spider-Man title.
The rest speaks for itself as Marvel’s Spider-Man went on to make gaming history with the sequel targeting a 2023 launch and a Wolverine game having been announced a few months ago.
You know what the best part of this is? When Marvel took to cutting ties with Activision to find a better partnership, Activision wasn’t too pleased reportedly saying “Good luck finding your unicorn.”
Yeah I think it worked out pretty well.
Release Round-Up
Rapid fire segment where I recap everything that has been given dates or delayed!
- Double whammy for Bethesda fans; Starfield and Redfall have been delayed until the first half of 2023. Starfield hasn’t exactly caught my eye especially after playing twelve iterations of Skyrim, but the Redfall news kind of bums me out as I was somewhat excited for this one.
- The Witcher 3 next generation update is set to release in Q4 2022. Good news for fans of the title!
- The Dead Space remake is set to release January 27, 2023. THIS IS THE ONLY NEWS THAT MATTERS.
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) will launch October 28, 2022… yay.
- The Lord of the Rings: Gollum will be launching September 1, 2022.
Trailers
GreedFall 2
I SWEAR TO YOU THE FIRST GAME HAS BEEN ON MY LIST FOREVER. All caps aside, I heard mixed things about the first title, but review scores are actually pretty high so developer Spiders will be looking to perfect the formula with GreedFall 2.
Temtem 1.0
I totally forgot about this, but Temtem has been in early access all this time. It’s finally shifting to a full title (is that what they call it?) and will launch in September for the Nintendo Switch boasting a battle pass (yay) and improvements to the end game.
Destiny 2: The Witch Queen – Season of the Haunted
New seasons always catch my eye because of how hype these trailers are… then I sign in and realize I have to pay for the new season. Either way, for all the Destiny fans, the newest season launched Tuesday bringing new weapons, a rework to the Solar subclass and the Leviathan returns.
Fortnite in Unreal Engine 5
This floated around the internet a few weeks ago, but a YouTuber remade Fortnite using Unreal Engine 5. It looks just like Fortnite but better.
Esports
Winner’s Circle
Last week was a big week for Rainbow 6 Siege and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive fans as both titles held LAN events that saw two teams hoist international trophies
DarkZero wins the Six Charlotte Major
DarkZero took home the Six Charlotte Major W with a 3-2 win over Astralis. It’s been a WHILE since I’ve watched comp Siege with the last event I really payed attention to was the Six Invitational. I personally thought Oxygen was going to win the event, however kudos to the DZ boys for putting together a massive W!
FaZe win PGL Major Antwerp 2022
Alright as you can tell, I don’t know much about other comp titles besides Valorant, but I do know a tiny bit about CS:GO. The boys in red put together a strong showing as they won Antwerp with a 2-0 win over NAVI which kind of caught me off guard. Map 1 was an absolute banger in a back and forth manner as FaZe roared to a 7-0 lead on attack, but their defense was sus as NAVI stormed back eventually losing in OT. I think the biggest shock was the fact that NAVI crumbled under pressure in the face of FaZe.
Good stuff from FaZe as they become the first international team to win a Global Offensive Major.
Also, Portuguese streamer, Gaules made a killing off of co-streaming the event with his stream of the Imperial vs Cloud9 match hitting over 684,000 viewers. Lunacy for a dead game.
Memes
Other News
- A teen who was having a seizure was saved by his friend he was playing games with. The teen who was having a seizure lives in the UK, and his friend, who lives in Texas, alerted local authorities to save his life. This caught some good steam a few days ago on Twitter, and it goes to break the negative flack gaming catches.
- Multiplayer DLC has been leaked for Destroy All Humans! focusing on four player multiplayer action across six different modes.
- Rumor has it that EA is entertaining the idea of being sold. Sounds great, but the potential suitors have been Disney, Apple or Comcast which aren’t exactly known for being gaming first, at least in my opinion.
- Double whammy; Norman Reedus dropped a bombshell revealing that a Death Stranding sequel in is the works and leaked images (link to a recap article) have pointed to a new Silent Hill being in the pipeline.
- Another whammy; rumors are pointing to a PlayStation conference being held in September that may reveal a new Sly Cooper game and another inFamous title. I commented on this before in a previous post, but it seems to be picking up more traction now hopefully pointing to it being true.
- ALSO, there seems to be speculation that a Pro series for the PS5 and Xbox Series S/X are coming sometime in 2023/24. It’s going to be another bloodbath to get them if true.
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