Mid-February Roundup
Mid February roundup
Podcasts, Salt, Feudal Japan and Gameboy Advance
Thursday evening marked the long anticipated (at least for us) release of The Casual Gamer’s podcast! Myself and Bill have been in talks about broadening the platforms we release content on for a good while and having finally taken the plunge, thoroughly enjoyed ourselves with it. The recording/editing process from the perspective of anyone with any base-level sound technical knowledge probably had the same finesse as your nan navigating the amazon firestick menu but nevertheless, episode 1.1 is now available. Admittedly rough around the edges, it's something we will be putting some considerable time into from here onwards, so if you fancy a listen then feel free to leave us some feedback.
For anyone who intends on listening to the next episode(spoilers), I have since dinged the platinum trophy for Sony’s Spider-man (2018) and am now willing to admit that the challenge was not all so boring in the end, and I was probably moaning about the tedious elements a little too much. Overall I had a pretty good time with the game despite slating it for half an hour on the upcoming pod where I was possibly more than a bit salty about grinding out the clean-up trophies. Since then I’ve thrown myself straight back into an open world platinum hunt but with the very contrasting Ghost of Tsushima. Despite the great reception, GoT is yet another game I'm late to the party with. Sucker Punch Studios released it back in July 2020 and it topped sales charts in Europe, Japan and North America for most of the month. Spend just a few hours journeying the landscapes and experiencing the greatly satisfying combat system and it’s easy to see why. A full review may be pending, or perhaps I’ll just gush about it on a future podcast (did I mention we made a podcast?). It’s also one of the few times I've noticed the PS5’s haptic feedback has ever actually been of any immersion relevant prominence, opposed to its usual shoehorning in as a showcase or developer obligation. There’s an unsettling amount of enjoyment to be found in sliding protagonist Jin’s katana through a Mongol invader’s chest and feeling that slight grinding resistance in your hands as the movement happens. To top it off, if it wasn't a pretty enough game already it has a brilliant photo-mode so you can pause mid-strike and capture your gore shot with a sunset backdrop of feudal Japan in all its glory.
In some news this week, coincidently mostly related to topics we’ve covered lately:
Microsoft claimed that the Game Pass subscription model is negatively affecting sales of the games which are added to the service. This has been met with the general response of users: ‘well yeah, obviously…’.
Months of barrel-scraping cosmetic updates to Multiversus has left the player base dwindling evermore as it drops below a thousand concurrent players for the first time since its release.
Whilst exciting as a fan of the GBA, I can’t help but feel Nintendo’s announcement of Gameboy Advance games coming to the switch enforces a pattern of them seeming to favour looking backwards rather than approach options for the future of the Switch or alternative next gen potentials. Myself and Bill look to talk more about this in a future TCG podcast.
And That’s all for this short update!