Weekly Gaming Report: 10/05/2020
So I started the weekly gaming report last week because I had a lot of topics I wanted to talk about since it was a very busy week. This week, not so much. We do still have some interesting topics to talk about though so let's get straight into this. So welcome to the Weekly Gaming Report for the 10th of May 2020. Cyber Punk adds customisable genitalia, Naughty Dog does damage control, Microsoft's complete cock-up and more.
Cyber Balls 2077
Hey gang have you ever played a game with a customisable player avatar and thought to yourself, “I want to customise my genitals”? If so then Cyber Punk 2077 is the game for you. According to recent ESRB information, Cyber Punk 2077 will allow players to “change their gender and customise their character” including “depictions of breasts, buttocks and genitalia, as well as various sizes and combinations of genitals”. Combinations of genital? I guess if you want to play as a futanari character, Google that at your own risk, then Cyber Punk 2077 is perfect for your incredibly bizarre needs. Some might see this as progressive but to me this is just hilarious. And yes, there are sex scenes in the game, though considering this is CD Projekt Red that shouldn't be a surprise. Cyber Punk 2077 was already looking like a beast of a game with tons of customisation I just didn't expect it to go this far. But hey I'm all for player customisation so seeing more of it is nice, even if it is a little ridiculous.
Naughty Dog damage control
So after the recent Last of Us Part 2 leaks, Naughty Dog has gone into full on damage control mode. I already briefly touched on this last week but I might as well bring it up again because of it's relevance to the topic at hand. After the leaks were out there several YouTubers started to discuss them, understandable given it was a big news story, only to have their channels struck with a copyright claim, even if they didn't show any footage in the actual leak itself. The claims were done by a company called Muso limited which seems to have ties to Sony so we know at the very least Sony is behind it but we're still unsure if Naughty Dog was, though given it was their game I'm guessing they were involved in some way.
This wasn't all they did as this week we got a brand new story trailer which revealed, very little actual details on the story other than it's a basic revenge tale. To make the situation even more fucked up, Naughty Dog removed both comments and ratings from the trailer in question. Comments I get given the spoilers but why remove ratings too? Then again the video by Neil Druckman saying the game had gone gold got down voted to hell and back so maybe they're trying to avoid that happening again. The whole situation with the leaks is confusing enough, with multiple different leaks out there now, and Naughty Dog's attempts to silence and ignore them is only adding fuel to the fire. Apparently they've never heard of the Streisand affect. We won't know whether the leaks are 100% legitimate until launch but until then I say grab some popcorn and enjoy the show. Dumpster fires like this are a rare sight indeed.
Nintendo got hacked?
So this is a story from last week that I didn't get to because it happened on Sunday and I uploaded the last report on Saturday, I will now be uploading on a Sunday to avoid this. But to quickly go over this, hackers dumped a load of files related to Nintendo including the source code for some of Nintendo's older consoles from the Nintendo 64 to the Wii. Now I'm not knowledgeable on hacking but it looks like this could help with gaming emulation, hell we just got a port of Mario 64 for PC, for five entire minutes before it was taken down by Nintendo. Apparently the leak was due to a deal Nintendo made with a Chinese company called IQue who reverse engineer Nintendo consoles for the Chinese market. I think, the whole thing is a little confusing. We won't know what will come of these leaks until much later but suffice to say Nintendo ninja's are going to be very busy for a good while.
Mortal Kombat story DLC
So this came out of nowhere. NetherRealm Studio's announced that Mortal Kombat 11 would be getting a new wave of DLC. That part isn't that surprising as most fighting games get at least 2 seasons of DLC but it's the contents of said DLC that are the actual surprise. The pack, dubbed Mortal Kombat 11 Aftermath, includes 3 additional characters, new stages, the return of Friendships and, most sunstantially of all, new story DLC. The story looks to take place after the events of the main story and feature Liu Kang teaming up with arch-enemy Shang Tsung to fix the Mortal Kombat timeline. This looks to be a decent story expansion with DLC characters having more prominence and with Cary Tagawa voicing Shang Tsung, it should be a lot of fun. The new characters are great too with Fujin and Sheeva making a return along with motherfucking RoboCop, voiced by Peter Weller no less. So if you've wanted to see RoboCop vs Terminator outside of comic books and Death Battle nows your chance. I wasn't big on MK11 but Aftermath looks like it will be a good expansion to the game and given previous NetherRealm releases it will likely launch as a definitive edition at some point in the future. I'm looking forward to the story if nothing else.
Microsoft's Massive Muck-up
So with the cancellation of E3, Microsoft decided to host a showcase of the first gameplay reveal for the Xbox Series X. On paper this is a good idea, Sony are still being coy with the PlayStation 5 and this reveal could give Microsoft the slight edge in the next console generation, at least at launch. In practice, Microsoft did what they always do and tried to pass off cinematic reveal trailers as actual gameplay and called it a day. Look there were a lot of problems with this event, the bizarrely awful technical mess-ups being the funniest of all, but the main issue was how it was marketed. This isn't a gameplay reveal, it's simply a showcase of the various third party games coming to the system. If they had marketed it as such the backlash may not have been so bad. UbiSoft didn't help matters either. They announced that the event would showcase the first gameplay of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, only to show up with a smattering of cinematics and brief snippets of actual gameplay thrown in. Well done Ubi. Even Microsoft themselves have admitted to that fact, Aaron Greenberg who works at Microsoft's marketing department said on his own Twitter that if they hadn't constantly said it was a gameplay reveal over and over again there wouldn't be as much backlash.
I always though this was the biggest problem with Microsoft. At every E3 they would always rely too heavily on cinematic trailers over actual gameplay but thanks to the E3 hype bubble they were able to get away with it. Now that the bubble has burst, their overreliance on cinematic trailers has become apparent and they are now receiving pushback for it. Hopefully Microsoft see the backlash and change their tune. Even then, this was still a major let down. Some games looked OK but most didn't look that much better than games on the Xbox One, which is a topic I might have to go into more detail on at a later date since it's aqn issue the next generation of consoles will be facing. Microsoft dropped the ball here, this was the perfect time to strike and they completely missed the mark. I am still interested in Xbox Series X because of the backwards commpatibility but this did very little to convince me any of the new games will be worth it.
Well that's the end folks. A bit of a slow week but we still had some interesting developments. If you enjoyed this please leave a comment. Until next time remember to stay safe and have fun.
Sources
The effect where trying to draw attention away from something inadvertently draws attention towards it.
What is the Streisand effect