The Weekly Gaming Report #1
Updated: Jun 3, 2020
Jesus it's been a week and a half for gaming hasn't it. To be honest I've had a lot I wanted to write about recently and couldn't pick one specifically to focus on. Then I thought, fuck it, why not do them all. I've been meaning to do something so I could upload to the website once a week and since I don't think doing a review for a game each week, due to the fact that some games can take a very long time to finish, I figured why not do a grab bag of the various headlines of the week that caught my eye. So here are the events that happened this week in gaming. Assassins Creed puts on a Viking skin, The ADL goes full retard, The Last of us Part 2 gets leaked and more.
Assassin's Creed Viking edition
Ubisoft announced the next entry in the popular Assassin's Creed series, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, will be coming holiday 2020 for both current and next gen consoles. Start savinng your money folks because the next console generation is upon us. The game will follow a Viking clan trying to re-establish themselves in England after being exiled from their homeland. While details on gameplay are scarce it will probably play similarly to the previous games in the series, so expect a large open-world with tons of stuff to do in it. Ubisoft have said they will be scaling back naval combat in favour of building up your settlement, adding in some new base buildind elements to the series. I'm going to be honest with you folks, I don't like what the Assassin's Creed has become. To me the Assassin's Creed series has become a bloated mess, so far removed from what it once was that it has become almost completely unrecognisable. This series started as an open-world stealth game with a focus on assassinations and now it's becaome an open-world, action RPG, naval combat, base building game about vikings. Is it so much to ask that a game called Assassin's Creed focus on Assassin's, at this point the name is completely meaningless. Even the trademark Assassin's Creed hoods have given up and fucked off. That's not to say the game looks bad, the premise looks interesting and with a whopping 15 studios working on it, good lord, it could very well be the biggest game in the series but at this point the Assassin's Creed moniker needs to die. Focus on creating new IP's instead of regurgitating the old ones. Because a new IP focusing on Vikings sounds far more enticing than continuing to water down an existing one.
Evo goes online
To the surprise of absolutely no one, the popular fighting game tournament EVO was cancelled due to the cotinuing COVID-19 pandemic. A shame but they did announce that they will be switching to a solely online tournament for this year's event and would refund any ticket sales. No details of how it will go down but there is some worry within the fighting game community over this decision due to the, less than stellar net-code of some of the game featured but at the end of the day this was their only option. I will still be tuning in and hopefully it all goes well.
Dorito Pope's summer mass
So Geoff Keighly, the Dorito Pope himself, announced that in lieu of an E3 event this year he will be hosting the Summer of Games, a four month long event with panels, game announcements and playable demo's that will be entirely online. This event intriques me. With E3 becoming increasingly unpopular and the reaction to their plans for this years event before it got cancelled being met with universal negativity, Geoff Keighly's Summer of Games could very well be it's replacement, the final nail in the coffin. Mind you this is assuming that everything goes well which it may very well not. What intriques me personally is the notion of playable content. The idea of being able to try these games out for myself instead of relying on videos and second hand accounts is an enticing one, assuming that's what it is but we still aren't entirely sure what they mean. Whatever happens I'm interested in learning more about it though the fact that Nintendo appears to be skipping this event is disappointing especially with the rumour that their Nintendo direct in June was cancelled. The one thing that worries me is the length. Four months is a long time to hold an event like this and that could lead to a lot of fluff and given last years Game Awards that's a distinct possibility. Still I want to wish Geoff Keighly good luck on this endeavour because if this event goes well we could see more events like it that gives information directly to gamers and anything that does that is good by me
The ADL hits intellectual rock-bottom
So there are users on Steam that are racist and according to the ADL, that's Anti Defamation League, took issue with this trying to claim that Valve was complicit in them spreading their bullshit beliefs. Suffice to say that this did not go over well with gamers who accused the ADL of attacking Steam and gamers in general. Let's do a thought experiment.
This is the ADL's logic: platform exists → racists use platform → platform must be racist. Now let's test this logic: air exists → racists breathe air → air must be racist
Do you see how stupid that sounds. This is what peak stupidity looks like. Yes there are racists on Steam but that doesn't mean the platform itself is racist. I've long maintained that an organisation that is wholly devoted to a single issue will inevitably devolve to the point where they will try to find and exaggerate that issue in anything and everything solely for the purpose of continuing it's own existence. Keep in mind that the ADL are the same blithering dumbasses that consider the OK sign as a symbol of white supremacy simply because white supremacists use it. The ADL are to fighting hate what PETA is to fighting animal rights, dangerously incompetent.
The Leaks of Us
I've seen a lot of disasters in gaming, I witnessed the release of Anthem, the decline of Sonic the Hedgehog and am currently bearing witness to whatever the fuck is going on with Bethesda but I never imagined Naughty Dog would ever make a shitshow to end all shitshows. Granted I always thought their decline was inevitable given the lack of any real gameplay innovation but never in a million years did I think the decline would happen this hard and fast. So to give you a quick summary, in March gaming journalist Jason Schrier wrote a piece for Kotaku detailing the working conditions at Naughty Dog and the crunch culture the company has. While I wouldn't call it damning, it was quite tame if I'm being honest, it was also not a pretty picture citing many problems with the company including a rather poor retention rate, specifically that the company had lost 70% of it's design team from Uncharted 4. Since the articles release more and more people began speaking out about the company and Naughty Dog's reputation was weakened somewhat in the larger gaming community. Then came the interview with Troy Baker, who stated that people should play The Last of Us Part 2 with an open mind. Folks I've seen communist rallies with fewer red flags than that statement.
You can see the storm brewing here, company gets put on blast, actor working on upcoming game implies game might be divisive, the warning signs were there but the true shitstorm did not fully kick in until this week when the etirety of The Last of Us Part 2 was leaked online. As of this writing we don't know who the leaker is but there is a rumour that it might have been a disgruntled former employee of Naughty Dog. Sony has reportedly found the leaker and claim that they aren't affiliated with either company, though if I may put on my tin-foil hat for a second this does come across as a bit of a cover-up, especially since they are being coy with the details. I will not go into the details of the leaks in question because I know there are people who are looking forward to this game and don't want to be spoiled but I will say that the reactions have not been good. People are not happy with what they've seen. Granted the full context for the leaks aren't fully known yet but I don't think the context will help. To make matters worse, Sony and Naughty Dog have gone nuclear trying to get the leaks off the internet to the point that they are flagging YouTube videos talking about them, not showing them mind you only talking about them. This is a dumpster fire. People are son angry that many are cancelling their pre-orders and Sony have been forced to release the game in June despite it being indefinitely delayed dule to Co-Vid 19. I doubt that the sales will be too negatively impacted by this given that normal people won't give a shit, but man has this been fun to watch. Sadly for Naughty Dog the damage has been done. As for me I'm going to make a giant bowl of popcorn, because if the reaction to the full game is anything like the leaks, it's gonna be a glorious ten-car pileup that you won't be able to look away from.
That's gonna do it for this edition of the weekly gaming report. This was a little experiment I was trying out and I hoped you liked it. If you did then please share it around and leave a comment. Until next time remember to stay safe and have fun.
Sources
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/05/geoff_keighley_announces_summer_game_fest_four_months_of_news_and_events
Keep up the good work jackson,