Concord: We Hardly Knew Ye
Plus Astrobot, Zelda Lego and Sonic anniversaries
Dearly beloved,
We are gathered here to celebrate the life of Concord, a PlayStation game you probably didn’t really hear about until it was cancelled two weeks after launch.
We’re also here to genuinely celebrate Astro Bot, one of the best things PlayStation has put out in a while (which is a high bar). It’s been a mixed week for PlayStation.
In addition to that we’ve got Zelda Lego, Sonic anniversaries and the games you should play this weekend. Enjoy!
Concord is dead now
By Alice
I’ve been meaning to get around to playing and writing about Concord, a live service FPS Sony exclusive. It came out two weeks ago, but surely a live service game would stay fresh enough to discuss in a week or two once the launch kinks were worked out?
On a related note, Sony is taking the game offline tonight. You can no longer buy it, and as of later, can no longer play it.
The worst corners of the internet are predictably blaming its demise on their latest boogeyman - DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), also known as the “ewww, cooties” cry, but for self-described alpha males.
Apparently, the game was not made exclusively by straight white men, nor does it feature only straight white men (with the occasional woman who looks like a sex doll thrown in for variety).
With how upset the he-man woman hater’s club was about this game, I half expected it to be a gamified version of The L Word: Generation Q (which I would 100% play, btw), but instead there was just a variety of ages and body types in the alien character models.
The games industry is still bad at diversity, equity and inclusion. It just is. A lot of that is down to the fact that companies are still pandering to these manosphere morons who want the entire world to continue to spoon feed them, while ignoring the rest of the world’s population which also has money to spend.
I don’t know if Concord was good. I do know it got barely any promotion, almost no one talked about it, and it launched in an already overcrowded space, which didn’t exactly set it up for success. I also know a bunch of fragile, pathetic weirdos decided it was bad before playing it because it dared to include female characters they didn’t want to have sex with, and that if we continue to pretend those people are worth listening to, this industry is only going to get worse.
What to play
It’s a new month and that means new games for the PlayStation Plus Essential catalogue. This month you can swing for the fences in MLB The Show 24, get spooked in creepy platformer Little Nightmares II, and become a competitive broom rider in Quidditch Champions.
New to Game Pass this week is Age of Mythology Retold. I remember loving this gods and monsters take on Age of Empires back when it first released 20 years ago, so it’s nice to have it returning with a fresh coat of paint and more content. Also on the service this week is rocket-powered big rig salvage game Star Trucker, and offroad scientific research sim Expeditions: a MudRunner Game.
Currently free on the Epic Games store is straight-up full-time job Football Manager 2024, and slow-mo testicle shooter Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts.
An Astro Bot review that does not mention any Nintendo franchises
By Tim
I adore Astro Bot. Pure 3D platformers are so few in the high-end blockbuster space, and here is one that’s both very confidently put together and running at a stunningly high resolution and framerate. The use of haptics in the controller is second-to-none, it has enough simple levels for kids to enjoy, hidden secrets for completionists and incredibly difficult optional challenges for sickos like me. The core running, jumping, punching and laser-booting rules, but there’s a constant flow of new gimmicks and powerups too, like a size-shrinking mouse that shows of the full fidelity of the world, and a slow-mo visor that lets you jump across bullets like you’re in a John Woo movie.
Along the way, Astro Bot sure does love to remind you that this is a PlayStation game. The coins have the PS logo on them, your spaceship and lander are literally a PS5 console and DualSense controller, and the developers have taken practically every possible opportunity to theme things after the four PlayStation controller symbols. This is all pretty inoffensive in the scheme of things, but it is strange how every time Sony tries this it comes off feeling forced and weird (remember PlayStation All-Stars, or that weird NFT-like collectible thing?), rather than nostalgic and charming. Adding to the strangeness in this case is that the whole setup ends up serving as a stark reminder of how few old-school franchises Sony actually has.
A big bulk of the call-backs in Astro Bot concern the collectible bots hidden in each level, many of which are cosplaying as famous game characters, a concept which I love. Every time you collect one you get a quick gag that will mean absolutely nothing to people that didn’t play the game in question, but can be quite funny for those in the know. As an example the one dressed as Joel from The Last of Us says: “Dependable Smuggler. Tells the occasional white lie”.
These little guys all go to live at your home base, and if you spend your coins in the gashapon machine you can unlock little interactive toys for each one of them to play with, also themed after their games. But walking around and playing with them all, I was struck by a lack of proper Sony properties. Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil are all represented for good reason, as franchises that were iconic on PS1. But Sony doesn’t own them. Why are Street Fighter characters here, and other Capcom people like the Devil May Cry crew? And oh yeah, how come no new great Sony franchises have launched in the PS5 era at all?
Still, for PlayStation’s few home-grown franchises Astro Bot does roll out the red carpet with entire themed levels that are an absolute delight, and overall I think this is a wonderful game. I’m just not sure making this character’s entire identity a metanarrative on PlayStation is the right way to go. Give Astro his own life please.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
This week saw the launch of the Great Deck Tree 2-in-1 Lego set and it’s gorgeous, breath-taking, and entirely too expensive.
For $449.99, you get 2500 pieces that allow you to either build the Great Deku Tree from Ocarina of Time or Breath of the Wild, forcing a Sophie’s Choice like decision onto longtime Zelda fans.
While I am gently horrified at the price (around 18c a piece, far more than my usual 10c a piece yardstick), I am taken by the beauty of this tree. The new moulded leaf parts are stunning (and will be utilised in many Brickvention MOCs next year if they’re made more available in Pick-A-Brick), but what I keep coming back to is how the colours of the tree is translated into bricks. It’s not just olive or brown, but a beautiful, natural mix. The face of the free is apparent, and the little plants around it are gorgeous.
I’m not a Zelda fan, so I’m not the target audience for this, but even I want one as a display piece.
The three different Link figures (BotW and OoT, as well as young Link) and the Zelda figure are really detailed, and are a must have for collectors (who can find it on sale in a couple of months. Remember kids, Lego is almost always 20% off somewhere).
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
This year marks the 30th anniversary of both Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. But while 1994 was clearly a big year for Sega's hedgehog, it's a different Sonic adventure from that same year I wanted to shine a light on today.
Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble is a fascinating 8-bit platformer released in 1994 for the handheld Game Gear. It sits a bit strangely in the franchise overall because of the differing proclivities of Sega's Japanese and Western arms, which is of course part of its retroactive charm.
In Japan it was called Sonic & Tails 2, which makes sense as it looks and plays very similarly to 1993's Sonic & Tails. As in that game you can choose to play as either hero, but levels are larger and more complex, with an aesthetic clearly inspired by the two major games launching on the Mega Drive that year.
The limitations of Sega's 8-bit handheld hold this game back quite a bit when it comes to colour, performance and screen real estate, but it's otherwise a notably full adventure. There's a new dash-attack-style move you can pull off after bouncing on springs, new unique powerups, and some very interesting settings, gimmicks and bosses. In fact throughout the game Sonic fights not only Eggman and his henchman Metal Sonic, but also Knuckles and new bad guy Fang the Sniper, a jerboa.
This excess of villainy clearly inspired the “Triple Trouble” moniker in the West, where Sonic & Tails was known as Sonic Chaos. In English Fang was also renamed Knack the Weasel (I guess to avoid the gun reference, although he still wields one in-game, and to avoid confusing Americans who had never heard of an echidna let alone a jerboa), but these days he's known globally as Fang the Hunter.
Triple Trouble is well worth a look, although with the closure of the 3DS eShop the only official way to buy it these days is as part of the Sonic Origins Plus collection on current consoles. Unofficially, I thoroughly recommend the excellent fan remake from Noah Copeland that you can play on PC, which imagines Triple Trouble as it might have existed had it been made for Mega Drive.