Do Game Pass changes undercut its value?
Plus another great Metroidvania, Burning Rangers and what to play this weekend.
Hello there! This week I’m flying solo (in case you were wondering why three quarters of the below images are so chunky with pixels), and I’m looking at the new Game Pass changes, a pleasantly steampunk Metroidvania, a forgotten cinematic action classic from the mid 90s and your new options on the subs.
But first I feel it’s only right to touch on the tough time Australian games media is having this week, with the sudden shuttering of the local Kotaku and Gizmodo offices. It’s been confronting not only due to the loss of outlets we love to read, and due to the impact on people we know and respect, but because of its cultural implications.
There are fewer and fewer games media outlets in Australia, and if something like Kotaku — with its incredibly talented local writers and dedicated readership — can’t survive, that seems unlikely to turn around. We need games media outlets to maintain interesting discourse and support a healthy culture, and local writers to tell Aussie stories and champion Aussie successes. Otherwise games media becomes more or less dedicated to serving global corporate interests, dominated by channels owned by publishers, or content aimed at the broadest possible markets, which is bleak.
The best Game Pass feature, inevitably, gets pricier
By Tim
If you’re a Game Pass subscriber, you probably got an email this week telling you the price of access is going up in September. This move has been long-predicted, as Xbox has clearly been under pressure to squeeze more profit after its impossibly expensive acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and the related Call of Duty cash-cow is set to arrive on the service for the first time in October. But the shuffling seems to have wider implications than just changing the cost of entry for those interested in Blops 6.
As the price of Game Pass goes up, the calculus that had originally led people to proclaim the service as “the best deal in gaming” becomes a bit tougher to balance. At the highest end, Game Pass Ultimate is going up by a full four dollars per month to around $23, or $275 per year. This tier of course gets you all of Microsoft’s games on day one, plenty of other games besides, console and PC access, and game streaming. But at around the cost of three full-priced, brand new AAA games every year, it’s not the slam dunk recommendation it used to be, especially if you don’t mind waiting to pick games up on sale.
Compounding the issue is that Microsoft appears to be making Ultimate the only way to get its games on console on day one; it will replace the current “Game Pass Console” with “Game Pass Standard”, a $16 per month tier that will reportedly only carry games which have been out for a while. What was originally the main promise of Game Pass — every big Xbox game on day one — would be moved exclusively to a very expensive tier, bundled with stuff many subscribers may not want.
Is it still worth it? For me, I can’t say any of the console tiers that don’t include day one access make much sense, but they might for new console owners who want an instant library of games that are new to them. And at $23 per month, Ultimate would need to have a big day one launch every single month to keep me engaged. I couldn’t see myself paying that much to keep constant access to older games, and access streaming.
What to play
This week on Game Pass you can grab The Case of the Golden Idol, an incredible point-and-click deduction game following a spate of connected murders set over a very long period of time. I’ve played through it on PC and iPad, and I’m not exactly sure how the gamepad controls will go, but it’s very much worth finding out. The service also gets Cricket 24, first-person action game Neon White and open world New Caledonia adventure Tchia.
The PlayStation Plus Extra catalogue gets Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion this week, as well as Remnant II, Mount & Blade II, Jack Box Party Pack 9, No More Heroes 3 and more. If you’re paying extra for Deluxe, you also get the excellent Job Simulator for PS VR2, as well as PS2 action-RPG Summoner and a pair of PSP classics: Ratchet and Clank Size Matters and tactical RPG Jeanne d’Arc.
Free on the Epic Games store right now is oceanic aerial combat fantasy title The Falconeer, which will switch out later this week with turn-based tactical deck-builder Floppy Knights.
Steampunky of the Night
By Tim
As an indie metroidvania sicko, I play a lot of demos and press builds trying to identify the games that “click”. It’s an amorphous kind of science, as you need combat and abilities that start satisfying but can be augmented by upgrades, you need a story that keeps you engaged without getting in the way, you need aesthetics that are interesting but also stand out as individual biomes to help navigation, you need an incredible map, and most of all you need design that feels complete at first blush, but reveals itself as riddled with hidden secrets when you return more powerful.
If the game is weak on any of these, it really needs to make up for it elsewhere to click.
The most recent game that has its hooks in me is Gestalt: Steam and Cinder, which is set for release next week and scores pretty well across those five categories.
Blending elements of steampunk, sci-fi and wild west frontier, the game wears its Symphony of the Night inspiration on its sleeve and at times feels like it could believably be a lost PS1 adventure. Elite mercenary Aletheia certainly looks the part as protagonist, with her long crimson hair, cowboy hat and inexplicably chest-first jumping style, but it’s her combat proficiency that really sold me; quick and gratifying sword swipes with an invincible roll dodge and a revolver for ranged attacks.
The story is dense but engaging, if filled with a few too many nonsense phrases. Echoes of past wars are returning to haunt the corrupt overseers of a mechanical city which is essentially humanity’s last refuge. If nothing else it’s a great city for a metroidvania; one minute you’re picking up bounties from a robot in a run-down town while the soundtrack plays something very close to Ecstasy of Gold in the background, the next you’re chasing mutants through a black market in the sewer and being distracted by one of the main hidden collectibles; lost corgis.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
Cinematic action games from the mid 90s can be somewhat inscrutable by today’s standards, with weirdo controls, early polygonal graphics and a tendency to pile in heaps of (generally poor) voice acting and unskippable cutscenes. However there are definitely some gems, such as one I’ve only played for the first time recently: Burning Rangers.
Released for the Saturn in the same year Konami put out Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation, Burning Rangers is clearly Sonic Team’s attempt to match the kind of action games taking off on Sony’s console. But although it features sick anime cutscenes, heaps of explosions, acrobatic moves and a number of futuristic industrial environments, the game is a massive departure from most action games in one important regard: you’re not killing or fighting anybody.
You play as a new recruit to an elite force of exosuit-wearing firefighters, and each level has you finding trapped civilians to warp out to safety before you confront the cause of the facility’s fire (an experimental weapon gone wrong, a huge mutated fish, the usual).
This is a chatty game, but I kind of love the earnest awkwardness of the dialogue. Plus it has a legitimately impressive navigation system; there’s no on-screen display, you have to press a button to ping your supervisor and they guide you to your object by saying something like “through that door and off to your left”. Is it as useful as a map? No. But I appreciate the swing for the fences.
The other interesting wrinkle is that the levels are randomised each time you play, with different combinations of rooms and paths, and different citizens to rescue. That may be a product of the fact that the game is very short and in need of some replay incentive, but these days I’m not so bothered by that.