Doomverse #27 - ID May Be Doomed

Unfortunately, thanks to a lot of terrible crashing in the gaming industry, a very large amount of employees in ID Software have been laid off. The layoffs came as Microsoft are continuing to lose support for the Xbox. Pretty much, after the Revelations DLC was released for Doom The Dark Ages, the ID Software studios are now down to less than half of their former numbers. This was in the wake of new Quake installment rumors floating around, even going so far as to tease a new project in future plans that are now heavily in question. 

Xbox announced that it was going to just keep chugging along with the layoffs, as ID Software is far from the only one affected by all of this. The gaming crash continues to destroy more and more studios. Developers and publishers are now finding out why they need their customer base. This is especially hard, considering ID Software was the one that consistently delivered amazing games. Doom 2016, Doom Eternal and Doom The Dark Ages brought players what they wanted. While TDA didn't perform quite as well as they hoped, they still took out a ton of game developing experience! They threw the baby out with the bath water, seeing has how ID Software was ready to keep going with what they were doing. 

Bethesda also had their big toy, Fallout taken away from them and handed off to Fallout New Vegas team, Obsidian. Judging by how well The Outer Worlds 2 turned out, I'm still not holding out hope. Xbox has been making so many consistent wrong decisions that it's basically too late to save it. To think that they could make a New Vegas sequel or Fallout Spinoff of any kind is rather laughable at this point. 

Sadly, this could also mean it will be a very long time before we get a proper Doom or Quake sequel, if ever. Other gaming franchises have gone ice cold over the decades and it's hard to believe that they would ever put Doom back into the freezer, but that has been the case for a lot of our favorites. The worst thing you can do is panic over this. In the end, it is not worth losing yourself over. Doom is legendary for a reason, as it is ageless. It is one of those fandoms that will always survive because it was made for the fans by true gaming geniuses that loved and respected their base of loyal subjects. However, this is not the time for giving up on it.

The game crash is hitting us where it hurts, but we still have our own libraries full of endless classic Doom levels, Doom 4 levels from the map makers, all of the games we've been collecting over the years are still within our fingertips and we do not need to give them up for anything because they're ours. Remember to keep Deathmatching, playing the single players and keeping the Doomverse alive through pure fandom. It may be a long road for the gaming industry to recover, but now it's time to hunker down and help each other like true gamers should. Either way, keep ripping and tearing, and get some old Doom ports. Then you'll Virtua Shred!!! 

And Then it Crashed...

Well, we should have seen this coming for a while, which we did, but it still isn't fun news. Playstation and Xbox have both decided to stop selling physical copies of games, basically destroying the market for used games, which is half of the market. What this means is a lot of suffering customers and suffering sales. The worst part about it is what it will do to physical outlets like Gamestop and Game XChange, along with many other stores that rely on used games for most of their profit margin. 

It's time like this that I hate when I'm right. I've pushed hard to physical copies and this is the very reason. Without physical discs, that leaves customers vulnerable with their collections being 100% digital from here on. This means that there will be no used games or new games for outlets even like Walmart or Target. All of it will be on their home stores and that is basically putting all of their eggs in one basket. Not only can they inflate prices however they want, they can also delete the games from digital accounts if they so wanted to, which they have made abundantly clear. 

Keeping used games in circulation is more important now than ever before. There's really no telling how long this whole scorched Earth tactic will go on. It could be done and done for, or there is always the chance that backlash and falling sales could change their minds. Either way, this means very bad things for the gaming industry. 

The article I released today was supposed to be released later this month, but instead I released it today because what I was writing about came very true. Again, this is a time to vote with your wallets and make sure that if you want physical media to come back, it's time to stop buying the digital stuff or at least cut down on the spending as a whole. If you're down with physical media going the way of the beeper, that's your little red wagon, but I am all for them stopping this horrible posturing like now they have all of the cards and are ready to deal them on the buying customer whenever they so please. Without the need to create discs and cases, they'll save millions within the first few months alone on game costs. Will we be seeing a duck in prices as well? Oh, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one just yet, Virtua Bro. 

Judging by the discourse against this blatant anti-consumerism that we've been seeing for years, it has reached a boiling point, and a lot of people are waking up to the fact that gaming industries really don't have their best interests or fun factor in mind. All they really have been after was your wallets and purses from the very start. While this was obvious, they at least went to some lengths to fulfill the customer's order. At this point, the industry is basically expressing nothing but contempt for their own audience, convinced that they are overly hard to please simply for having an opinion that their games shouldn't be glitching so bad as to make you fall through the Earth pixels every time you press right on the joystick.

Hopefully, you have some good games to fall back on in what will be coming. This dry spell is going to suck, but that's just the order of things at this point. Much like the crash of the 80's, this one is going to run its course for as long as it takes. Be friendly and be productive. If you don't play your old machines, sell them to a good home or sell them to someone who will give them one. Be thankful for what we are given but reject the things you don't want. As always, they need to earn their paychecks if they want to see their games stop flopping and until then, enjoy some old games. Looks like it's time to make a Virtua Return to the consoles that birthed this site. Keeping it mixed up, but mixing in some classics, as always. Help each other and we'll be fine. Virtua Peace. 

Top 160+ Favorite Games of All Time! (Pt 7)

 39 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

The Castlevania that coined the term "Metroidvania" with how much it influenced both the series and the gaming culture itself. This is where they introduced stats, weapons and gaining new powers and characters throughout. The bosses are iconic, the gameplay is very fluid and visceral. Playing as Alucard is literally a game changer and they pulled out all of the stops. You have brand new creatures, as well as many returning monsters, like that jerk of a skeleton that throws femurs at you as you pass. The castle is a whirling maze that can get you lost until you find that one door that leads to a whole new environment with all new horrors to face. There are ways to play as a Belmont, but there are also plenty of other ways to change up the gameplay as you search for Dracula and end him!

38 Panzer Dragoon Saga

A change to the series that changed everything except how awesome your opponents are. The monsters are still unique, the blast from your Dragoon are still beautiful and the setting is vast and beautiful. Every single main boss has a quirk that forces you to change your strategy on how to kill them. Some of them need to be worn down with your smaller attacks before opening up for your ultimate attacks. Some of them force you to move around to avoid their attacks while taking advantage of their lowered defenses. It can get tense and you can find yourself frustrated with some of these flying horrors, but it makes you want to figure them out and destroy them! This is a beautiful RPG that came from a railshooter series, and they made it work in a big way! Panzer Dragoon reached a beautiful peak in awesomeness, and this isn't even my favorite in the series! That's just how awesome it is.

37 Sonic the Hedgehog CD

Arguably the greatest game on the Sega CD, which is not exactly glowing praise by comparison, but they made Sonic as beautiful in graphics as it is in gameplay. The levels can get long and whirling to the point where you get lost, but it's still an amazing Sonic game. With a sudden hike in play room, the devs took full advantage and brought you this master class in platforming. You're still fast, you're still awesome and it still has a Casino Night level, which is among the greatest praise. With the advent of Metal Sonic, this game brought about brand new Sonic lore that is still in the series to this very day. This is a milestone for the series and gave credence to Sega CD's existence, however small. 

36 Virtua Cop 

One of the most awesome railshooters and it came out in the greatest console! With sprawling criminal undergrounds needing some shooting to take down, this game brought you through warehouses, parking lots and skyscrapers in order to take down the big baddies that corrupt Virtua City. The shotgun, machine gun and even your starting pistol are all feel-good weapons that make you want to shoot and reload. Even when the criminals attack you from the bottom of the screen, it never feels overly cheap. You just need to pay attention and aim your crosshairs right between their eyes, or on their legs and limbs to get live arrests. They still disappear but at least they're still alive, right? Fight the big bosses with missile launchers and take down their empire of evil! Virtua Evil!

35 Quake III: Arena

An amazing way to impliment Deathmatching directly into your game. Could it have used a story or a deeper way to play? Maybe. However, going against your friends and fighting the computer to get to the top of the pyramid is still run and gun fun! Weapons introduced in this game have gone on to be staples in the Doom universe, including a Doomguy named Phobos! You'll recognize a lot of these characters from former ID Software titles, and you can even customize your own character to take them down. You need to learn where the good weapons are, including the BFG 10,000 that packs a nuclear punch, kicking like a mule. From the doublebarrel shotgun to the awesome plasmagun, this game has you covered on how to kill your opponents and get that ULTRAKILL!

34 Mortal Kombat 9

A return to form that put Mortal Kombat on the map after a very divisive plunge into 3D. Bringing the game back to its roots with 2D fighting in a 3D backdrop turned out to be the exact right move. The story mode kind of sucks but it still brings the fans the matchup they want. It acts out the first three Mortal Kombat titles with a new canon that was still destroyed in future titles, but the thought was there. Even with killing most of its main characters in an unspeakably terrible way, the gameplay and the combat on top of these awesome graphics brought this game to new heights! With character designs that will poke your eyes out and backdrops that give you a new look at the world they exist in, this game has the goods to keep you fighting and earning those Krypt goodies. Don't forget to get a look at Freddy Kruger and Kratos and make them crush each other!

33 Diablo II

The first Diablo was fun, but also pretty mediocre as games go. All of the problems I had with Diablo, the sequel fixed wholesale. Not only was Diablo more challengning as a main boss, but the game itself was just more fluid as a result. This game does have it downsides: Some of Episode 2 just looked like a desert or a sewer for the majority of it, and sometimes the travel gets rather monotonous. Other than that, grab a barbarian character or a necromancer character and introduce the demons to their entrails! The ability trees are vast and beautiful (after some of the abilities were a little broken before nerfing) and the hordes are nice and meaty with a good crunch with your axe cleaving into them. You fight Mephisto and thanks to the expansion, you also crush Baal between your fingers! This is a wild ride with a whole butt load of replayability. Fight Hell and have a ball!

32 Half-Life

Before this game came out, you really couldn't have known that an FPS game could have one of the best stories in all of gaming for years! This is all when your protagonist is silent and the scientists will not shut up! First, there are tons of creepy ass aliens that will jump out at you from the dark and scare the hell out of you! They even attach to the staff by the head and turn them into zombies with serious walking problems. They were never a threat, but they didn't need to be, because the military was right around the corner and adding all kinds of horrible challenge to the mix. Not only did the soldiers continuously shoot at you from every angle, but they also forced you into that HORRIBLE RAIL LEVEL. This game had one of the worst final levels, but that still did not tarnish its legacy because it was just that good. Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classics, Gary's Mod (original Sven Co-op) all have this game's DNA within it. That may sound uncomfortable, but it's true. This game's name is extremely ironic, unless you count the third game's nonexistence. Now I just made myself sad. 

31 Life Force

Sometimes, the original games from your childhood just stick out in your mind like a sore thumb. This game has the fluid gameplay of flying through space in a jet. That may be nonsensical, but all of the illogic flies out the window when you get a taste of that beautiful soundtrack. This game is HARD from beginning to end, but you keep wanting to play it because it's just that damn good. There is bullet hell all over the place, random aliens flying at you from off-screen and protrusions of tentacles coming out of every wall! If you are anywhere behind a building up brick wall, you have lost a life! Some call this Salamander and call it that if you wish, but this will always be a Force of Life.

30 Mario Kart 64

There are times when a game just gets it right early. This was the second game in the series and I will die on the hill that it is the greatest of the bunch. This game is lean, free of unneeded fatty features with Mario characters and karts with a battle mode and 3D graphics, the end. There are not too many maps, not too many characters and it really didn't need anything more than that. It runs like a dream and it controls even better! This was the original game that people remember, as great as the SNES title was, it was just a great precursor to the main show! There are plenty of other gimmicks from the later titles, but this is where they truly got it right. If you disagree, then we will lose our friendship next time we indulge in this masterpiece! It's happened more than once.

29  Super Mario Bros 3

The very first game that was advertised at the very end of an entire movie. The movie had nothing to do with this game until the climax and the movie was absolute garbage, but it is also when gaming started to break into the mainstream media. Super Mario 3 introduced so many new powerups that became staples of the entire series. The feather and the tanuki suit have become iconic since then. The game can be skipped with the flutes, and often is, but playing it through all of the levels is a much more fulfilling experience. Out of the Super Mario World and Super Mario 3 argument, this is the title I covet the most. Though, Yoshi was another great staple, so World definitely has its place.

28 Alice: Madness Returns

If a game needs to go out, this is a good way to do it. It's not the greatest game of all time, but it definitely one of the better 3D platformers. The dark themes and the shock value bogged it down to some degree, but if you're able to stomach the material, this is the game for you. The imagery is very macabre and the landscape of the haunted Wonderland was some of the best you could... imagine. Alice herself has become much more of a somber character, stripped of her childlike wonder from the death of her family and aiming to set her mental state right. With a freakish looking Cheshire cat and a horrific cast of monsters to fight through terrorizing levels, it's just a shining example of what can be done with some of our favorite fairytales. Now, where's the Peter Pan horror lore?!

27 Burning Rangers

Some of the best games come out of nowhere and are found in the most unlikely of spaces. Burning Rangers is a bit of a unicorn in terms of Sega Saturn games. It's extremely expensive to buy physically, so emulating it is pretty much your best bet if you want to get some gaming experience on this beauty. The freeroaming, the gameplay of fighting fires with water lasers, and the natural 32 bit graphics that pushed the system to its limits, all of it is just fun to play. It can get rather hard to complete, especially if you're trying to rescue everyone and get all of the gameplay down, but it's a labor of love. Along with Panzer Dragoon Saga, this is considered one of the greatest titles on the console. This is for very good reason.

26 The Legend of Zelda

The original has to truly great in order for its franchise to flourish. Nowhere is this more prominent than with Legend of Zelda. It may be cryptic in its progression, and there are some difficulty spikes with the amount of enemies you need to fight all at once, but it's just so much fun. The soundtrack itself is legendary, as are its dungeons that you need to traverse. You know, those dungeons with the puzzles and secret entrances. The triforce is now a staple in gaming, and Ganon continues to be one of the most recognizable villains in the culture. Just remember, his name is Link, not Zelda. Yes, this was a common miconception for a long, long time. 

25 Virtua Fighter 2

One of the greatest fighting games in my library and I will never give it up. Virtua Fighter was good, but the sequel was when the franchise peaked. They rose to heights of quality that is seldom seen in fighting games and it went hand to hand against Tekken on every single front. Even if it is not as popular, the game is still awesome. The characters are charming, even if the boss battle is less-so. You just can't help but love Jeffry's craziness and Shun's very unhealthy drinking habit. Either way, the fighting mechanics are solid and the 32 bit graphics are beautiful. 

24 Master of Magic

It is very hard to learn a game with extremely deep mechanics. Unlike some strategy games, Master of Magic is not quite as complex, but it is extremely fun to learn and play. The game can get a little frustrating, especially when it has monsters constantly attacking you early in the game when you're getting everything set up and building your armies. You need to learn as many spells as you can and produce as many armies as you can in order to get more and more cities to get more and more units, both magical and regular. The 5 type magical system and the weird A.I. of your allies and opponents just keeps things interesting and unique with every play through, especially with a map that is always unique to each new game. 

23 Nights into Dreams

Very few times have games truly met and exceeded expectations. When I first saw Nights on commercials, my dreams of it were very real. I wanted this game more than anything. When I got my Sega Saturn in Christmas of 1996, that was the game I bought immediately after, along with a second controller. This game blew my mind with its beauty and high flying gameplay. It pushed the system to its limits because Sonic Team knew how to use both platforms of 3D and 2D, using both to make the game's background and foreground without lag or drops in frames. It is HARD to meet expectations to get at least a C average in order to get to the last level, but it is well worth it. Nights became the Sega Saturn's most recognizable title for a very good reason.

22 TMNT

One of the greatest beat'em ups in gaming, bar none. This is just beautiful gaming that coencides with the hit TV show that was still going strong upon its release. Whichever turtle you play has slightly different play style, but everyone has their own favorite. These graphics were beautiful and even translated very well into TMNT 2 for the NES. The levels are vibrant and the different types of foot ninja are plentiful. The first fight with Rocksteady in the burning building is iconic, as was the sewer levels where you face the Killer Pizzas from one of the best episodes in the show. Fighting your way to Shredder and Krang cost you an entire week's allowance but it was money well spent for one of the Triforce of beat'em up awesomeness. Heroes in a Halfshell, indeed.

21 Castlevania

If you want dark, gothic horror in 8-bit beauty, this is your go-to. The graphics are simple, but the gameplay is HARD. When you get hit, you fall backward. This could make you fall into a death trap or just fall into another monster that does immense damage. The level designs play into this hardship amazingly, even if it can get rather frustrating. The music goes with all of it so well, and it's just so much fun to see what sort of castles and catacombs you're getting into next. With creatures flying into you and big hulking monsters coming out of the woodworks, you won't get bored, but you will most likely die. Die, you will, but with a cringing smile on your face.

20 Team Fortress Classics

Live service games were not always the pitfall many of them are now. Back when games were great and made with the Halflife engine, it was just as simple as logging in and choosing a character. Heavy Weapons Guys are the most fun, but they are also one of the cheaper and easiest to play. They are also the weakest against snipers with weak long range and slow running speeds. There's also pyros, spies, medics, demolition, all of them have their quirks and awesome mechanics that add to the experience. Engineers building turrets and ammo stations aid players in killing and protecting their flags. All of its culminates in an all out war with simple maps that keep you running into opponents to fight. It's just a lot of fun and you can still play it to this day as there are several dedicated servers, bots and people who will play it even when it has a perfectly good sequel. This is worth celebrating and checking out for yourself. Kill well and remember to drink water.

Xbox One - How Greed can Poison a Gaming Company

Anyone in the videogame zeitgeist can tell you why Xbox lost the console wars. It was not because Playstation was a trustworthy company and it was not because any exclusive game for another console. Microsoft did it to themselves and they are still feeling the stranglehold of that failure years after the eighth generation had come and gone. From the day that it was announced, the Xbox One uncovered just how bad a game console could get even before it was released in 2013. It also showed gamers just how much control they could have over their gaming experience and it was a very disconcerting revelation that made the general public stop trusting Microsoft. 

This all began in April of 2013 when a Microsoft Studios employee, Adam Orth, confirmed people's dreadful rumor of the next generation console requiring to be always online. He posted on his Twitter account that a console always being online was not a big deal and that people just needed to accept it. This was the first very large nail in Xbox One's console and opened up an entire flooding of negative press and public backlash. He lost his job soon after making the comment, but this was only the beginning of a very long and dreadful launch of a machine that was now in question. 

Adam Orth

The following months only brought more news and more disbelief. It seemed like every single thing that Microsoft revealed about the Xbox One only drew more backlash and public hatred. They announced that this console was not going to focus on gaming and that it was more about being a replacement to your computer and your television. Rather than giving people new games with which to gain hype, they told people that it was going to play BluRay, have cable service and live streaming capabilities that far exceeded all of the others. Rather than a gaming console, they wanted to replace literally every other high level media in a household. The idea was that the Xbox One would be the center of an entire family's entertainment rather than just playing to the niche of gaming culture.

Unpacking this, it still feels like this was a brainchild of both mismanagement and poor planning. Either a family would be required to purchase a multiple Xbox Ones in order to fill every bedroom and living room, or they would have one for the entire family to watch movies, TV shows while also bearing the burden of being little Timmy's way of playing new games. In retrospect, the idea had flaws down to the very foundation. When was the gamer actually supposed to find time to play the newest releases for the Xbox system when the rest of the family was counting on it to play their movies and other forms of media? 

Then they decided to bury themselves in even more controversy and show their true intentions with the console. Not only was it required to be purchased with the Kinect, an item that was already condemned as a meaningless add-on, but it also had a program that would marry one game to one console alone. That's right, you can only play new games in this console and you could not loan out your used games to friends, nor sell them to game stores. GameStop took issue with this, obviously, since the vast majority of their revenue came from used games. Gamers were not all swimming in money. It was quite the contrary in most cases and many collections were filled with used titles that were marked down. Xbox doubled down on this decision, stating that if they wanted to loan a game to a friend, they would need to pay a fee in order to do so. These restrictions were clearly meant to strangle every single customer for as much money as they could, even when it came to reselling the game to "certain retailers". 

One of the worst parts about this was the announcement that this system was always supposed to be online. That may seem arbitrary to some, but there are many out there who do not have a very stable internet connection. If the game console goes offline, you immediately lost the use of the Xbox One and the games you have loaded on it, whether you had the physical copies or not. After an enormous bit of backlash from this, the CEO of Xbox, Don Mattrick, in all of his lack of intelligence, announced in an interview that "for people who do not have an internet connection, there is another machine, it's called the Xbox 360". Once again, more and more people decided to side with the PS4, stating that they got the message loud and clear. This was such a callous and thoughtless comment, it brought about the theory that he was actively trying to make this console fail. Of course, they went from always online to only needing to be online once a day to check in with the Xbox servers. 

Giving credence to the idea that Mattrick stopped caring about the Xbox One altogether, he left the company soon after the controversy hit critical. He hit the road and instead went to Zynga so that he could leave that company as well two years later. This is one very large, glaring issue with the gaming industry as a whole. If things aren't going their way and they find themselves between a rock and a hard place, they can just zipline out of the company while it burns to the ground, taking their ridiculous amount of money with them. Why this man was ever given an opportunity after this blatant show of stupidity is a mystery all its own. 

The Kinect also became a point of concern for many, as it was always required to be on. They said that this was only so that it could have its voice activation on call for when someone wanted to turn on the Xbox One verbally. People saw this as very suspicious and began to wonder how much information they were gathering about each individual customer through both audio and video feeds. To try and reassure people, they told them that none of the data they collected was going to be used for any nefarious things like selling it to outside sources. However, the data was, in fact, being collected. The demand to remove the Kinect from the console was in an uproar, but Microsoft said that the Xbox One and the little camera gathering data were part of the same machine by design and it could not be removed. This was an outright lie, as they did remove it later on after the highest peaks in the controversy. It also had the added bonus of removing 100 space bucks from the price as a result.

Playstation did not help matters in the slightest, when push came to shove. They came out in front of the public and told people all of their features for PS4, which were not even real "features". They were, however, vast improvements over what was being promised for the Xbox One. They didn't require to always be online, they told people that all you needed to do to share your video game is to let them borrow it, they were focusing on making great games for the console, and the price tag for the Playstation 4 was 100 space bucks less. They even made a show of it. Two guys went on the screen and showed you the only step that you needed in order to share your games with each other, and it was just a guy handing another guy a game and him saying "Thank you". Ouch. 

There was another very large nail in the Xbox One's coffin, the price. It was 500 smackers! This was a ridiculous price, especially with how much they were planning to price the games and all of the other accessories that were not included with its purchase. Every single announcement that Microsoft came out with only convinced customers that this was not the console for them and the backlash only got worse as time went on and Microsoft continually failed to see the forest for the trees. By the time they started making the console more affordable and implimenting different improvements and services for it to flourish, the damage was already done. 

They had to race to meet PS4's quality and they even improved it to the point where it had backward compatibility with the Xbox 360 in some of its games. They put in a service called the Game Pass, where people could have an entire barrage of games for a monthly fee and started to focus more on new games rather than every other type of media, but it was all for nothing. The launch for the Xbox One was such a disaster that it became impossible to keep up. The good will that the 360 brought to the community was gone and they were playing catch up years after the Xbone came out. It helped to some degree but they had already lost the console wars.

If there was any generation of consoles to win, this was the one that needed it the most. Not only was the gaming industry becoming more and more competitive, the culture of digital games was blooming and that meant a big shift in the industry as a whole. Xbox One missed the mark, and that meant that all of the digital games that were sold for the console were not going to be bought for the next generations of consoles. If you bought games digitally for the PS4, there was very little chance that you would even consider moving over to the Xbox Series X for the next gaming experience. The digital library is fairly locked in by this point and all of it was made playable on the PS5. All of that revenue Microsoft could have gotten for people buying a new console under the Xbox banner was up in flames. 

As of the writing of this article, the Xbox is still feeling the effects of this gigantic misstep. The gaming industry's greed is still ever present, but never has it been so clearly unmasked in the public eye. They did everything to try and make up for their attempts to syphon money from their customers, but they lost all of the trust they had garnered in the years before. No one can blame the public for siding with Playstation on this one. Sony may also be greedy and constantly lie to gamers, but at least they do it while selling a product people actually want. It's a very sad notion that we need to catered to by thieves but that's the reality we live in. The gaming industry is hitting a gigantic low point because of it, but all we can do is hope for a brighter future and remember to drink water.

The Age of Concord - How Bad Can it Get?

 I was not part of the populace that wasted money on this game, nor was I willing to waste my time in buying it while subsequently getting an obligatory refund for said game. I was one of the vast majority that watched this game come and go like a terrible fart in an elevator. It can hardly be considered a fart in an elevator, it was gone 11 days after its release! This should have been an amazing example of what not to do when creating a game, and yet it seems to be the example that so many developers and publishers have followed ever since. 

There are so many aspects of Concord that led to its extremely short lifespan: Catering to activists and their insecurities, releasing it with a $40 pricetag when its superiors were free to play, spending $400 million dollars and ten years to develop it and coming out on social media to shame their audiences for not wanting it, all of it should have been setting off alarms in Sony's head. This was a failure on such a colossal level, people barely even remember why we hated Atari's E.T. in the first place. This stomped every single competition on the road to the very bottom and it did so with such amazing ease that they never even bothered to rerelease it as free to play. 

No one has come to the conclusion that, perhaps, they should have been listening to the public. You would think that there was a PR department looking through the comments and gamer buzz to see what players were doing at the time. The problem was that this was all developed in the vain of Overwatch because of its amazing popularity and the fact that it made Blizzard all kinds of money. The fact that Blizzard still ruined Overwatch and fired all of its lead developers in the process doesn't even enter into the equation. The fact was that the moment they made the decision to try and remake Overwatch when it was popular meant that they were already behind the times. Gaming culture changes like the wind and waiting ten years to release a game to catch the "current" zeitgeist of entertainment is like trying to grab water on its way out of the faucet. By the time Concord was released, that ship had left the port years prior. 

The greatest games come about when a developer or a team of developers share a vision to bring something to gaming that wasn't there to begin with. Even if it's not an especially unique idea, if the vision is strong enough with the gameplay, there is a very good chance that it can be a huge success. These are games that come from a desire to exceed expectations in both design and aesthetic, making a vision come to fruition and polishing that game to a beautiful sheen. 

So, why is it that there are spiritual successors to Concord already? The game bit the dust and we're already seeing others come out of the woodwork that look eerily similar. Not only are they creating disgustingly unimaginative characters and boring as hell gameplay, but they are also doing the same cardinal sin of going after the gaming public that they need to sign their paychecks. If you do not have gamers playing your game, your game is going to fail. Period. 

Highguard made the same mistakes in spades. Every single aspect of Concord was brought back to the table, including the fact that they had no idea what gamers were asking for. They certainly weren't asking for a 3v3 hero shooter with gargantuan maps that they can't populate properly. Every single character basically plays the same aside from arbitrary abilities that unlock every so often. Beyond that, you get cookie-cutter weapons and ride horses that are astoundingly difficult to shoot from. The characters are unimaginative as ever. They either have modern day haircuts and/or look like they belong to other games, only made worse. 

Whoever is signing these developers' checks should make a clause in their contracts that obligate them to shut the hell up on social media! These people look so pathetic when they go on the internet and just whine and cry about how they wasted half a decade or more making this game. They will swear that the game they made was awesome, but then go into how they never got any outside influence of any kind, so they had no idea that no one was asking for it. After the ridiculous fallout of Concord, that should have set off some serious bells that this was all a very bad idea. Even if they were so deep into its development, they should have cut their losses or at least not put so much into it from then on. 

No one forced them to put the game at the end of the Game Award Show. They thought that including elements of every popular hero shooter was going to win them fans, but it just made it more generic. It made it fodder for memes and gamers coming out and calling it a sequel to Concord. This should have come as no surprise but it caused their development team to go radio silent soon after the Game Award announcement. All of a sudden, all of the echoes in their chamber started to truly doubt their creation. The release started with a promising 100,000 gamers playing it, but that number was brought down to a dismal 1,000 to 2,000 players within weeks. They accused gamers of not giving it a chance but that's all they gave it. The game was apparently so boring that people couldn't even make it past the tutorial which is REQUIRED at the beginning. It's evident that no one on the team had played a game in their lives or someone would have told them that this was a huge mistake. 

If one live service game wasn't bad enough, now they've announced the gameplay and character roster of Horizon Zero Dawn's new game, Hunters Gathering. In this post apocalyptic world, apparently it's fruitful enough for one woman to eat her way to a diabetic amputation. The characters still look amazingly generic and unappealing. Nothing was learned from Concord's cataclysmic failure. Of course gamers aren't going to give this game a chance, nor should they. It already released trailers and every single one of them is just getting disliked at an amazing rate. The publishers can stick their fingers in their ears and go LALALALALALA all they want, but no amount of blaming gamers for their failure is going to make up for the money they are about to lose. This is not making assumptions at this point, this is just common sense and gaming Darwinism at work. 

The boy can only cry wolf so many times before he loses his voice, and gaming companies are about to learn their lesson one game at a time. These games are not free to make and every single dollar may as well be burned for all it matters at this point. Give the money to charity if you want it to actually make a difference in the world. Stop wasting gamers' time. The only good thing coming out of this mess is the hours of content it is giving youtubers to make amazing videos. If that's the gift you want to give to the world, spend another 100 or 200 million dollars for our ironic entertainment. Stop torturing and crunching your developers and at least buy them some water. They're going to need it.

Stadia - How Consoles can Eat Themselves

When the console wars reach new generations, sometimes we start seeing some very strange runners in the race. Every so often, they can be mega billion dollar juggernauts that smash our faces with awesomeness, like Nintendo's initially questionable Switch console. However, sometimes, there comes a console that has everyone scratching their heads, wondering where people came up with these... things. Sometimes the consoles just... aren't there. They were so proud of the fact that you do not have the console in your home and you could play your... thing on any screen in your house. It could be any screen far away, in a hotel. Tablets, smart TV's, phones, anything with access to the internet and some sort of controller feature could be used to play the games you... well... that's another problem. 

Problems, that is a big word you can use when you talk about Google's new project, Stadia. Once the platform launched November 2019, all you needed to do was pay one monthly fee. Well, there was also a $129 bill on top of that, which had people a little confused. You see, this whole "no hardware" deal they had with the console was all based around freedom to play it anywhere, no matter what, so long as it met the specs. Now they're telling customers that there is hardware you need to buy, the controller for the console was still required to be Stadia hardware. This seemed foolish because people already had universally praised Xbox controllers that they hook up to pretty much anything and play. There were a number of ways Google could allow people to use their own controllers, but they still needed that, on top of a connection link that you needed to input. 

The whole idea was that you could play this anytime anywhere and use games from a distant server that held all of your games, now that idea was obscured. This did not look good on them, especially when the console launched and there were... other problems. Users were starting to see this distant server gaming idea as more of an issue than a feature, as connectivity to the controller was very lax. People's input when they pressed the button did not match what was on the screen and there was a half second, sometimes even two or three second delay, depending on connectivity. 

On top of this, the lagging issues with servers and the capability of hardware was starting to show its cracks in their sales pitch. People were seeing strong issues with not simply turning off the Stadia, turning around and switching on literally any other console or PC and playing that way. In a world where you can play classic, beloved titles from your phone, Google was trying to shove their ways into people's hardware with not only terrible connectivity issues, but also a very limited library. 

This Planet Virtua has talked about the issues with people being patient with consoles and building their libraries. Playstation 4 had issues getting games out quickly and that hindered some in their sales, not that it mattered in the end. Stadia, however, was coming out with a brand new "console" with only a handful of current titles, fifty or so older titles, and one single exclusive...  This is not even stating that they had twenty or so games when it actually launched. They needed to play catchup and it felt like they never got any steam going when it came to what people wanted: The GAMES! It was 2019 going into 2020 at a time when people were having to stay in doors and they couldn't pick up the pace to try and strike while the iron is hot. They were still "releasing" games from 2016! 

Gylt, Stadia's one real exclusive game, was a middling game with passable reviews, and that is the one single title that they are trying to sell us on? So, your server "power" doesn't really mean much if the hardware isn't up to specific requirements, that limits the consoles considerably. Then, your library is floundering from the start and never breaks a hundred until WAY into its lifespan and are played far better on other consoles. 

That was what kneecapped this system from the very start. It brought no innovation to the table, it was selling you back your old games, (which cost money, strangely enough) that people already owned and the experience playing on it was so wonky. One moment you're cruising no problems, then your game starts lagging and the controls go to crap. Stadia never truly fixed the control problems throughout its four year lifespan. The very idea that this bundle of horrible mishaps went on for four years is an abysmal notion. That's like dying from several bullet wounds but still trying to win the 5K run as you fade, this was not healthy for Google. Nor was it good for their cleaning bill.

They proved to be a terrible company, once again, upon Stadia's ending days. Google was going to pull the plug and they made the announcement public. Then game devs and people who worked at Google, on Stadia, found out about it along with the consumers, in September 2022. These people were going to be out of a job and they were given no prior notice to find another job. The console never reached any good heights, it never sold well, and even people who were dedicated to its success admitted that it never reached any real peaks. It was pretty much all valleys. 

They tried to tell us that this was just like Steam, that this was the platform you needed to get because it could be played anywhere on any screen, which made it better. This was going against a company and a platform that was tried and true from the get-go and started modestly, eventually turning into a gaming titan with its own issues. Stadia started out with issues and tried to show us gameplay that still needed processing and work. The technology sounded great on paper, but the execution was absolutely dreadful and unfinished. It just wasn't there. It officially became not there in January 2023. It's still not there. It's just not.

Goodbye, Playstation 4 - With a Fondness

As of October 6th, 2025, Playstation has officially stopped producing new games or new hardware for the Playstation 4. It really seems like only yesterday, they had just come into the market, and that was a little over ten years ago. Was that a long enough lifespan? Well, yes and no, but it was a long enough life to have some very memorable games come out for it in the generation. From Spider-man's greatest game to Resident Evil's seventh mainline entry, the memories are seemingly endless. This is the console that holds Doom 4 and Doom Eternal and those two games alone hold hours upon hours of gameplay in them. 

Now, I'm being sentimental, I know. I've already talked about my grievances with the lifespans of the Sega Saturn and its worthy successor, the Dreamcast. I'm no stranger to the death of great consoles. Playstation has had a long list of great consoles, despite my semi-joking mocking of the first console in the line. The Playstation 4 had some serious shoes to fill, given the awesome Playstation 3 and its capabilities. It succeeded. 

The eighth generation was very unique in several, SEVERAL ways, and that's mostly due to the Xbox One. While Playstation was going about business as usual, wrangling up all of their games and all of their game console features in line, Xbox was... not doing that. Instead, for some reason, Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to sell you a box that did television and movie streaming, music, basically anything a PC would already be more than equipped to handle. Oh, but THEN they were going to get to the games, you know, eventually. People were pretty baffled.

That's not even CLOSE to the worst part, though. They were starting to rattle off features like, ALWAYS ONLINE, the massive privacy camera on the front of the Xbone was always on, once you loaded the game from the disc into the console, the two were married now and you could NOT share your game with other console users. This meant that they were effectively erasing the used games aisle in every single gaming store. People saw this for what it was. While they were angling it as a more personal touch and a way to be closer to the customer, it actually came off like they wanted to get more money out of you so you could only buy new games, while also keeping you online to keep up full access to their online store while they watch you constantly with their camera and get all of the marketable information out of you they could. This was an absolute travesty of a mess. 

To say that Playstation 4 won the console wars for the eighth generation is underselling it. People went to Playstation straight from Xbox 360 and they started buying PS4 games, leaving Xbox in the metaphoric dust. This KILLED Xbox sales to the point where not even offering free digital games through their Xbox Live service could make them catch up. It helped them along for a little bit, but Playstation won, hands down. 

This spelled the absolute death of Microsoft's Xbox console, and we have been seeing its deteriorating state ever since. They almost straight up cancelled the Xbox Series X and the tenth generation console is still in heavy question. The problem was that the eighth generation was the worst generation to lose, and the Xbox lost so substantially, that it hurt their sales even MORE with the PS5. All of those PS4 games the customers had, both digital and physical can very comfortably be transferred to the PS5 with no sweat involved. It's takes a little over an hour and you are ready to play your old games on the new console that has already wiped the floor with the Series X system. 

Playstation convincingly put on the good guy mask in this situation and that immediately won them the war, even granting them victory laps. The video where they show how you can share games on the Playstation 4 has to be one of the funniest things they could have thought of and it probably sold them a couple million extra consoles as a result. The Playstation 4 came out on top because it focused on GAMING. Losing focus on gaming has killed many a console (though, I am hesitant to count the Philips CDI among them) because people are here for the sharpest gaming edge they can find. It gave us that and in great quantities. So, here we say goodbye to another console generation with the Playstation 4. It was a true gaming console, despite the other features. The Blu-Ray player, the streaming apps, playing old DVD's, all of it was there if you wanted it, but I'm here for GTA V because I have the urgent need to kill digital people! What? You all do it!

Remake for Panzer Dragoon II Zwei Announced

And the crowd goes mild. There is a very good reason why I have never really reviewed the Panzer Dragoon remake officially, and that's mostly because I forgot it existed. Seriously, this remake left such a huge non-impact on me that I never really even put finger to keyboard and stamped out any real thoughts on it. There really weren't many other than it was bland, ridiculously easy and flat out pressure washed the graphics to what looked like high definition, textureless polygons. The scenery was nice, but the Dragoon looked so generic. 

Panzer Dragoon, as a series, has left a huge impact because of its gameplay, its graphics, controls, enemies and vast, beautiful 32-bit terrains. It literally pushed the boundaries of what the Sega Saturn was capable of, and it's still celebrated to this day. Well, of course it is. Why else would they bother with remakes? The fact that they are making remakes for the Saturn is great, obviously, but I'm really hoping the Panzer Dragoon II remake doesn't go the same route as the first. The graphics should never be so smooth and flavorless. The grainy graphics were part of its real charm. 

The Quake remakes understood this. While it isn't a perfect job, they kept the core graphics the same, while making them look sharper. They never lost their dull edge, though. It still had the mud colors because of the graphics limitations it was presented. Going full 3D forced them to make the graphics more gothic and macabre. Much like Quake, Panzer Dragoon was rough around the edges in graphics, especially when it came to their horrific and amazing looking bosses. 

The next point is that, while maybe adding a difficulty meter is preferable, you should never make such a notoriously difficult game sooooooo blatantly easy. Panzer Dragoon itself is a very short game. The point is that you need to finish it in one sitting, but not at twenty minute sitting. It's made that difficult so that people can get more bang for their buck and require they try harder to beat a challenging game. Sanding off the edges of difficulty into rounded point plastic scissors barely able to cut a single construction paper is just taking away from the experience and often leaves one feeling like they could have spent their money elsewhere. 

Not everything about the remake was terrible, but it certainly didn't leave an impression and it's kind of a point of pride to say that Zwei has always been my favorite entry. The setting, the bad guys, the difficulty but also the adventure just gave the game life for me. Translating that into Steam and PS5 would be awesome, but hopefully they won't tinker with an already great game too much. It's great for a reason, and if you polish it to be too shiny you may ruin the paint! Do not make it bland and please give us a few more angles to look from, then this could be an amazing remake. We're keeping our Virtua Fingers Crossed. 

The Superman Video Game Conundrum

Superman is a double-edged sword, no matter how you look at him. One edge, he is kind, uses his strength to save the innocent civilians and does as little damage to the city as possible when he has very large fights. On the other edge, Superman is overpowered, his storyline has been booted and rebooted to the point where a "true canon" is nearly non-existant, and he is just a very hard character to write for. No matter how you look at it, being the first superhero comic book ever made Superman the equivalent to unmolded clay. He didn't even fly at first, he just jumped long distances. It was a later comic book writer who finally just said that he could fly. Then he got every single power known to man. He is powered by the yellow sun, almost completely indestructible, with super speed, super strength, X-ray vision and laser eyes. Some of his powers were brought from even more obscure places, like being able to hear from across the entire world, materializing brick from his "Brick Vision" on top of having a photographic memory, the ability to slow his pulse to make it look like he was dead while he healed and the list goes on and on and on. 

From a writer's standpoint, Superman was a ticking timebomb. It is nearly impossible to stay loyal to such a wide and expanding source material when not even the original company can't seem to get such a laundry list of powers right. It got to the point where they were pulling any power out of thin air in order to give Superman the edge, then his powers get rebooted and he either gains a new power or loses one of his powers he once had. 

With all of that in mind, try thinking up game mechanics around such a broad spectrum. Think about what would be considered thugs that could bring him down. The NES Superman game made him vulnerable to bullets. Maybe they were kryptonite bullets? There really needed to be some nonsensicle terms in order to get Superman on board without him flying into space and laserbeaming his opponent from orbit. Here was a superhero that can literally take down armies within seconds and you are now tasked to make a game that would be considered challenging with such a character. 

Superman for the Nintendo 64 came up with the very stupid idea of having Superman sent into a virtual world that looked like Metropolis (?) and the air is filled with kryptonite so you can't... do... powers.... Look, no one bought it when they devs said it. The real problem with this whole scenario is that Superman for the 64 is considered the worst game on the system, but there is a game of similar quality for the XBox/PS2, Superman Shadow of Apokolips. 

You fight robots but you can't use any attacks except for the attacks that hurt certain minions. They can't be bothered to come up with any reason to explain why Superman can't scrap this entire army of bots, it just gives you the jankiest controls with which to make the attempt. This game is a meaningless waste of time with the worst game mechanics and 3D cut scenes known to the Playstation 2. It really seems like one of the worst problems with Superman games is his flight. Where Nights Into Dreams and Mario 64 who seemed to get the flying mechanics down to a science years before, Superman games just can't seem to get them right. 

While there haven't been any stand-alone Superman games to reach critical or commercial success, the Justice League games involving him usually turn out pretty decent. Nether Realm Studio's Injustice games actually use him to much more of his potential. They just come up with the plot device of people taking super pills and being able to actually hurt him with their bare fists. Yes, this is the lengths they need to go to to sidestep that little problem of him being able to liquify them with a backhand. 

What needs to be done to create a Superman game that actually works, obviously there needs to be a good story, but there also needs to be an enemy that can hurt him while also being able to keep up with his speed and universally overpowered strength. Pulling off such dangerous opponents would be very tricky to write around without getting too violent. The whole idea is not to nerf Superman's powers to an inconsiderate rate. Using his powers that make sense while also having the power to demolish entire structures with a punch is what every Superman fan has dreamed about. Giving him short distant super speed and ice breath would also be a great bonus in this mechanic.

Bringing on Doomsday as a final opponent, or even Darkseid would be preferable after a long storyline, using them as a climax. Batman v Superman the movie could have worked as a video game if you added in some more main line DC villains. Brainiac has been a little over used as of late, but he could also be executed brilliantly in terms for a Superman adventure game. Without a very deep understanding of video games or a deeper understanding of the comic book super hero character, you're not going to go far with the fans. Mixing and matching storylines for a video game is acceptable, so long as you keep it fun. 

That's the key detail, whether the game is fun or not. If we don't feel like Superman, then the game takes a terrible hit. Perfecting Superman's power level in comparison to the villains is paramount but perfecting his character is equally as important. It's these huge, mounting details that befuddles video game developers to no end. This would require an entire team with a solid gameplan and a considerable budget to accomplish. It's this reason that makes it seem like you just can't get Superman right in a game while Batman has ever growing potential, given his brilliant and strong mortal status. It's Superman's own power that destroys him, ultimately, and the free wielding way comic book writers treated him like a literal god in terms of his infinite number of powers. Come up with a solid formula for him and you might be able to release something that will surprise everyone who said it couldn't happen. Until then, he still has an awesome animated series and a good number of comic book storylines. There's a ton of things that make Superman great already, I guess video games are just too magical a concept.