The main problem as always is that Microsoft the parent company knows nothing about what the Xbox division does and just wants to know how much money it makes.
They see Halo, Gears and Forza making money and assume the solution is to make more Halo, Gears and Forza. All the other things that build a platform people actually want to own are just unprofitable distractions to the people at the top.
I really thought the new Xbox CEO was making the right noises recently but it feels she’s just been steamrolled by the money men here.
There was some good stuff in there. I'm looking forward to the Xenoblade upgrades as I picked up 2 in a sale ages ago and have been waiting for a Switch 2 patch to actually play it (only played 1 previously). New Pokopia content is exciting (and looks quite sizeable). New Fire Emblem is shaping up well.
The little we saw of Ocarina had strong "shitty fan project made in Unreal Engine" vibes about it but I guess we'll see when more is revealed. The challenge is not going to be making it look pretty, but creating a version of the game that doesn't feel absurdly small and boxy by modern day standards. I played a bit of the N64 version earlier this year and it's still an astonishing achievement for 1998 but it really isn't like a modern game in any way, shape or form.
I'm still baffled that they haven't done anything at all with Mario Kart World since release, though. It's crying out for new tracks, modes, anything really.
The amount of remakes going on at the moment is ridiculous (I mean who really needed a worse-looking version of Rayman) but I'll be keeping an eye on the Code Veronica remake, it was always one of my favourites of the series and maybe the one that's aged the worst so a proper ground-up remake is well overdue.
I originally did the final dungeon as an 8-man back near release. Every other player skipped all the cutscenes and went charging off, leaving me to trudge slowly through an empty dungeon to the end after they’d killed everything. It was shit. I’m very glad they changed it.
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
This is "just" the original game portion of what has become a vast and sprawling MMO, but it's as lengthy as any single-player RPG and has its own storyline so into the Completed pile it goes.
It's a game of two halves really. The first half of this is still tremendous, it really goes heavy on the world-building as it leads you on a tour of Eorzea and introduces you to all its characters and nations. Alongside this you'll be levelling up a job (or two, or more) and they've all got their own little storylines as well. It's surprising how much gravitas the game gains by having its great Calamity as something that actually happened in a previous version of Final Fantasy XIV that was completely destroyed and which only now exists in players' memories and a handful of fuzzy YouTube videos.
The second half, where its plot kicks into gear, is less successful: the game's Evil Empire are laughably stereotypical bad guys, easily defeated by what appears to be six people plus Richard Branson in an armoured mech, and the whole thing is hamstrung by The Worst Voice Acting Ever, seriously it's so appallingly bad that they sacked the entire cast once they got to the first expansion and just started again with a whole bunch of new actors.
But it's all still been really fun, it looks great still, it's definitely been streamlined since the first time I played it and the fact you can now do the multiplayer dungeons with a team of NPCs if you want makes it all incredibly frictionless. Hitting level 50 has opened up a vast array of new stuff to check out plus I get to continue onwards towards the first expansion Heavensward. All of this is still well within the scope of the free trial so it's cost me absolutely nothing so far.
Garwoofoo