The lows
Tom Senior: Ashes to ashes
Firefall, as we know it, is gone. It’s always sad when a game dies, but this was an uncommonly slow and protracted death for a game that never looked as though it would come close to achieving its vision. What’s particularly sad about Firefall, apart from the obvious point that lots of people have worked on it for years, is that the idea itself was good. But, with a bit of refinement and a lot of financial backing Destiny swept in and nicked Firefall’s biscuits.
Granted, they’re not quite the same. In fact, with its customisable mech suits and exotic environments Anthem could be the game that finally becomes what Firefall always wanted to be.
Samuel Roberts: Mario is missing
We'll file this one in the PCG folder labelled 'No shit', but Nintendo this week confirmed it has no plans to bring games to PC. Personally, I think this is a bit of a shame—not because I expect Nintendo to start undermining its console business by bringing releases to PC simultaneously, because they'd never do that. It's that to me, there's enormous potential in bringing their back catalogue to PC as cheap and legal downloads on the likes of Steam and GOG.
No one's buying Wii U games right now. Why couldn't Wind Waker HD be optimised for PC and sold for like $12/£10? Or SNES games sold in the fashion that Sega sells old Genesis/Mega Drive games? I feel like exploring mobile gaming but nothing on PC is kind of a missed opportunity. Like I say, it's not enormously surprising. Nintendo seems to take forever to re-release games from its back catalogue on its own hardware, never mind PC.
Joe Donnelly: Liberty shitty
When Rockstar and Take-Two shuttered the GTA 5 OpenIV modding tool, thousands of inventive player-made mods hung in the balance. Their subsequent reversal so far as single-player mods are concerned breathed new life in the game's creative community, however the U-turn came at a price. As as Andy said earlier this week—this silver lining has a grey cloud.
Because despite OpenIV's reinstatement, one casualty of the process was the the Liberty City in GTA 5 mod—an in-development modification, crafted by the OpenIV team, that aimed to reimagine Grand Theft Auto 5 in its forerunner's faux NYC Liberty City map. Supposedly due this summer, the project was a massive effort and its loss is a sore one for both its creators and the GTA community as a whole. Will we see an official alternative from Rockstar and Take-Two down the line? That remains to be seen, but one thing's for certain at this point: it's no longer happening on the OpenIV team's watch.
James Davenport: Hollowed out
Our bad, everyone. Hollow Knight is excellent and we completely missed it. We’ll make good on that soon, we promise, but holy shit, Super Metroid who? Symphony of the what? Hollow Knight completely elevates the 2D action exploration genre and sets a new standard for excellence in level design, art, theme, and it plays like a dream. To be fair, it’s My Kind Of Game to a T, but that makes me an especially big critic of them. There’s very little in Hollow Knight I don’t like, aside from an endgame collection marathon and a fast travel station drought (which should be fixed in a free update coming later this month). Otherwise, I’m chef kissing and I can’t stop. My coworkers emailed HR. It’s not looking good for me.
So why is such high praise in my low of the week? Well, I had such a good time with Hollow Knight all other games don’t sound interesting anymore. It’ll be a temporary drought for sure, and we can all benefit from a break here and there, but now should be prime time for tearing through my backlog. My SO just left for two months of study abroad and I have all the free time in the world to play games. I just don’t feel like it. Suggestions?
Tyler Wilde: Busy week gone quick
First of all, play more PUBG with us, James. Secondly, I haven’t had much time this week to watch Summer Games Done Quick, which barely qualifies as a ‘low’ but what the hell, I was disappointed. I know I can just watch the best speedruns after the fact (Steven has collected some great ones), but there’s something special about being there live, watching all the close calls and perfect glitch executions as they happen. It’s not over until Sunday, though, so I’m hoping to make up for my absence this weekend. At least when I’m not forcing James to play PUBG with me.
Wes Fenlon: Doomfist, shmoomfist
Everyone's excited about Overwatch hero Doomfist finally being revealed, and you can see all of his abilities right here. That's cool and all, but there's one glaring problem, here. When Doomfist melees, he uses his puny normal fist, not his Doomfist. Why the hell would you have a Doomfist and not punch people with the Doomfist? Amateur hour.
