Do you really need an Elite controller?
Plus Marvel Snap, A Little Wordy, and feeling the sand slip through the hourglass
Welcome back Button Buddies,
It’s Wednesday once more, in the middle of game season. Last week saw the release of A Plague Tale: Requiem, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, Gotham Knights, and New Tales From The Borderlands, while this week has Resident Evil: ReVerse, Bayonetta 3, and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. October is an absolutely stacked month of games, all of which are worth waiting for them to be patched and slightly discounted.
This week Alice dives into who really needs a pro controller (the answer might surprise you), and A Little Wordy. Meanwhile, Tim plays Marvel Snap and reminds us of the passage of time once more. Plus, all our recommendations.
Enjoy!
Who actually benefits from pro controllers?
By Alice
This week Microsoft made it so you can customise the Xbox Elite Series 2 controller in the Xbox Design Lab, and PlayStation announced pricing for its much anticipated DualSense Edge wireless controller. But given these controllers cost roughly half as much as the top-tier consoles they’re used on, one has to wonder how much of an audience there is for these.
The obvious answer is that they’re for pro players and people with money to burn on a controller that’s a bit heavier, with customisation features they will probably never use. That’s who they’re mostly marketed to.
But I actually see them more as overpriced accessibility aids for people who don’t quite need the Xbox Adaptive Controller, but would really benefit from being able to adjust the sensitivity of the sticks, dial up the haptic feedback, and use back paddles.
Friends, this is a controller for people with arthritis (aside from the being heavier bit).
The value of the Xbox Elite controllers was really brought home to me a couple of years back when I’d dislocated my thumb and it remained a bit sore and stiff after I put it back, but I still had to review a game. Being able to loosen up the right stick so I didn’t have to use as much effort, and employ the use of the rear paddles instead of travelling between the stick and the buttons meant that I could keep playing. It’s still the case that the only times I use the paddles is when I have somehow hurt my hand, but boy do I appreciate them when I do.
I haven’t had a chance to test the DualSense Edge yet, and that $339 price (around $100 more expensive than a customised Elite 2 without accessories) has me raising my eyebrows, but I’m keen to try it. I also definitely used the voucher I got from Xbox PR to customise a red and black Elite 2 controller that will become my new main controller, and I’ll be doubly grateful for it after my next gym mishap.
What to play
I’m (Alice) really looking forward to this week’s new Apple Arcade game: Stich. It’s an embroidery-themed puzzle that just looks so cute in the trailers. It’s like those colouring apps, but with a little more skill involved and a touch of simple puzzling. Mostly, I just really like the designs and patterns, and this will probably end with me taking up embroidery again…
You’ve only got a couple of days left to claim your Xbox Live Gold and PS+ monthly games, if you’re a subscriber, so don’t forget to do that. The standout from PlayStation this month is Injustice 2, which is an utterly brilliant fighting game if you enjoy seeing DC heroes do unspeakable violence to each other. There is also Hot Wheels Unleashed, which exists, I guess. On Xbox it’s Windbound and Bomber Crew Deluxe Edition, which is not great loss if you miss out on them, but still, you’ve already paid for them anyway. May as well claim them.
From the studio that brought you Devil May Cry came Bleeding Edge, a surprisingly fun 4v4 team brawler that everyone instantly forgot existed the week after release. JB Hi Fi currently has it online for $2. No, that is not a typo. Development has ceased on the game, so there won’t be any patches, and who knows if anyone is still playing. But hey, $2.
Bayonetta 3 is out later this week, and it offers exactly what fans of the previous games might have hoped; interminable cutscenes, endless lingering butt shots, a monstrous penny-farthing-riding Cheshire cat, and more or less the greatest combat system of any action game on the market. Alright so most fans only care about one of those things (it’s the combat you sickos), and there are heaps of new wrinkles here with more interactive demon summons, greater weapon variety and some super stylish strutting. The multiverse tale isn’t super satisfying as a narrative, but it is loopy as hell and that’s almost as good.
If you’re looking to get spooky for Halloween, check out Game Pass or PlayStation Plus Extra for some good inexpensive options. For example on GP there’s SOMA, Amnesia, The Evil Within, Costume Quest, Death’s Door, Dead Space, Quake, Scorn and State of Decay. On PS+ there’s Bloodborne, Friday the 13th, Until Dawn, Little Hope, Man of Medan, MediEvil, Observer, Observation, Goosebumps and The Medium. And both of them have Dead by Daylight, Hollow Knight, Inside and Secret Neighbour!
New to Game Pass this week are first-person-shooter roguelite Gunfire Reborn, and retro isometric survival horror Signalis.
A snappy card game
By Tim
Mobile collectible card games don’t have the greatest track record, especially when based on pop culture licences, and generally you can assume they’re a hive of gambling mechanics and pay-to-win microtransactions at the very least. But over the last week Marvel Snap has dug its hooks in me deep, and I’m pleased to report this is a very rare free card game that’s taking (thus far) a reasonable approach to monetisation.
The problem with a lot of similar games is that your progression relies on playing against and beating other players, which means you need the best or most recent decks or cards, and your only options to get them are to grind relentlessly or pay up. But that hasn’t been my experience in Snap thus far, where the options to pay money are almost exclusively related to aesthetic card upgrades.
It helps that this is also the wildest CCG I’ve played in ages, focusing on fun and surprise much more than competitive balance. You build a deck of Marvel heroes and villains, and during the course of a game you play them into one of three lanes, themed randomly after any of 50 or so Marvel locations. The twist is that location has a rule, which can be as straightforward as “No cards can be played here after turn 4”, or as disruptive as “Whoever has the least power here wins.” The three lanes are revealed gradually over the first half of the match, so your strategy needs to be very flexible.
On top of that, most cards also have special powers, like “+1 power for each opposing card in this location”, or “destroy a random enemy card”, and the most powerful cards (which you can generally only play in the final turns) have a tendency to upend the status quo entirely, particularly when paired with certain locations.
But all this would be moot if your opponents were able to buy entire decks of powerful cards while you were scrimping along with whatever currency you can earn. Instead, though Snap is filled with the usual multiple currencies, season passes and card-specific upgrade points, your ability to accelerate progression with money is very limited.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
After discovering a new love of Exploding Kittens recently (the game, not the psychopathic red flag), I decided to buy another game from the same makers. The good news is that the people behind Exploding Kittens are very prolific. The bad news is that they’re very prolific, so it’s hard to choose what to get next.
Both Hand To Hand Wombat and Bears Vs Babies sounded like fun, but it was A Little Wordy that I ultimately went home with.
A Little Wordy is a delightful word game, where two players/teams start by drawing 4 vowels and 7 consonants and then have to make a word of any length out of those letters, writing the word on their little whiteboard, keeping it hidden. Once the words are decided, you exchange letter piles and select clues from the face up cards in the middle to try and deduce the other player’s word first. The trick is that as well as guessing the word, you need to make sure you have more berries than the other player, and the better the clue you get from the other player, the more berries they get.
I have now played this game around 7 times, and its simplicity, word nerdery and focus on knowledge over random chance has already made it one of my favourite board games.
While the simplicity makes it easy for any English speaker to pick it up, it’s the knowledge and word nerdery that means it isn’t as universal as Exploding Kittens, because an uneven pairing or a particularly insufferable pedant could suck the fun out of it. But with the right person, like a partner who knows you far too well, it’s just wonderful.
It’s also not that expensive, at under $30 it’s positively reasonable for a board game in 2022.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
As another month draws to a close, it’s time to look back at the games that have had a major birthday in October, and stare wistfully out the window as age gradually comes for us all.
Now 15: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass The DS was three years old before it had its own Zelda, and for fans it was a first look at what the franchise might become in the era of quirky family-friendly Nintendo hardware. Time has not been kind to the touch-based interface that requires dragging and tapping to do literally everything, but overall it was a wonderful adaptation of everything that makes the series great, and a worthy direct followup to the venerable Wind Waker.
Now 25: Fallout Though it's now known as a Bethesda Softworks series of first-person roleplaying games, the original Fallout was a computer RPG from Interplay Productions, the same team behind the earlier Wasteland and Neuromancer (and, to tie into last week’s column, Mario Teaches Typing). What made Fallout special was the morally grey tone of its missions and choices, the complexity of its character creator and the fantastic delivery of its story, tenets that are more or less upheld in the series to this day.
Now 30: Mortal Kombat It would be easy to assume that the blood and hyperviolence of the original Mortal Kombat, along with the mainstream panic and controversy it caused, were solely responsible for the game’s epic popularity in the early 90s. But the truth is, it’s a very well put together game that offered a brilliant counterpunch to Street Fighter II. The blend of mysticism, ninjas and martial arts cinema influences made for a great aesthetic, along with the technologically impressive digitised photography artwork. The mechanics are easy enough to grasp, but the inclusion of secret fatality combinations — which give you no gameplay advantage but ultimate bragging rights — were a masterstroke of marketing.