The State of PlayStation and Nintendo Gets Direct
Plus why does Technic insist on sucking so much? And using a top-of-the-line TV to play ye olde games.
Welcome back Button Buddies,
This was truly the week of gaming companies hosting big live streams to tell us all about upcoming games, and to distract us from the quieter than usual games season by promising there is more to come next year. Ubisoft dropped all kinds o news about Assassin’s Creed and Skull and Bones, PlayStation talked about Japanese games and VR, and Nintendo Nintendoed.
In this newsletter, Alice takes you through the big news from PlayStation and why Technic just isn’t as good as Lego bricks, and Tim talks Nintendo and using a 4K TV to play retro games. Plus, all the recommendations you need to never go outside again. Enjoy!
PlayStation shows off games worth waiting for
By Alice
Today was a big day for gaming announcements, with both Nintendo and PlayStation having events.The hero of the PlayStation State of Play livestream was God of War Ragnarok, which got a new trailer and a controller. If you weren’t already looking forward to seeing the adventures of Brooding And Son, then this narrative trailer would have done the trick.
Atreus seems to be going through puberty, judging by the voice, which is difficult enough without having to wage war against the Norse gods with your dad who is incapable of wearing a full shirt. The game looks incredible. There’s a nice rousing speech from Richard Schiff (of West Wing fame), the combat looks engrossing, and overall it’s a masterclass in giving good trailer.
As well as the trailer, a new God of War DualSense controller was revealed in blue and white. It looks pretty slick, and I want one.
The other big highlight for me was the reveal of Rise of the Ronin from Team Ninja, makers of Dead or Alive (so you can assume there will be at least one boob with impressive jiggle physics). Rise of the Ronin looks beautiful, it’s an RPG set in 19th century Japan and has the vibe of a slightly more action-packed Ghost of Tsushima. However, it’s not due out until 2024, so it’s hard to say exactly what it’ll be like in the end.
The final highlight was the first look and deep dive into Tekken 8. So far it seems to be exactly what you’d expect from a Tekken game in 2022: all the men have physiques rarely seen outside Tom of Finland renderings, in 4K, yet with hair inspired by the poop emoji. The setting is epic, there’s sparks, and they’re committing unspeakable violence. Personally, I can’t wait, but we’ll have to for at least another year or two.
What to play
Do you remember The Animals of Farthing Wood? I (Alice) barely do, but the mere thought fills me with joy and grief, for some reason. Garden Tails: Match and Grow, coming to Apple Arcade this Friday, has nothing to do with The Animals of Farthing Wood, but the art style reminds me a lot of the 90s classic TV show, and that’s enough. It appears to be a match-three game, in the same vein as Fishdom and Gardenscapes. It’s going to be interesting to see how that kind of game fares without the predatory practices that seem inherent to the genre. As someone who enjoys match-three (don’t judge me), I’m really keen to check it out.
The PlayStation Store has some sales on at the moment Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Break Point which I (Alice) remember as being “fine” is 80% off at $19.99, as is Far Cry 5. If all the talk of Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones has you in the mood for an Ubisoft game with a ship, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag is also on sale for $9.98. This is a game that existed purely because one of the Ubisoft executives liked sailing, so you know it must be good. If you’ve somehow missed the Tomb Raider Definitive Edition, it’s now $3.74, which is a *bargain* and a must-buy if you don’t already have it.
Since we were laser-focused on GOTY talk last week we didn’t get to go over the new stuff included in your subscriptions for September. PlayStation Plus subscribers at any tier can grab Need for Speed Heat, anime fighting game Granblue Fantasy Versus and the PS5 version of monochrome photography adventure TOEM. On Xbox Games with Gold you get the underwhelming pair of dungeon-crawler Gods Will Fall and ancient coaster-builder Thrillville. But, from this weekend you'll additionally be able to grab the much more attractive Portal 2 and Double Kick Heroes.
New to Game Pass so far this month is racer GRID Legends, the early access version of Disney Dreamlight Valley, and the self-explanatory Train Sim World 3. Later this week you'll also be able to grab extreme top-down arcade racer You Suck at Parking, puny human fantasy army-making sim Despot's Game and melodic Doom-like shooter Metal Hellsinger.
Nintendo games washing up after waves of delays
By Tim
This morning’s Nintendo Direct had plenty of reveals to get excited about, but it also solidified just how much the pandemic has derailed the company’s in-house development pipeline, sending game release dates cascading into 2023.
The “one last thing” at the end of the broadcast was an extremely brief clip of the new Zelda and the reveal of a title: Tears of the Kingdom. This is a game originally teased at E3 2019, before development was presumably disrupted quite severely. We didn’t hear about it again until 2021, when it was given a 2022 release window. Now, Nintendo has given a firm date; May 12, 2023.
Also revealed was Pikmin 4, sequel to a 2013 game, which was confirmed by Shigeru Miyamoto as “very close to completion” in 2015. Obviously that was either an exaggeration or confused in translation, but given very little was shown off today and a vague window of 2023 was given it’s clear development has been somewhat troubled.
Fire Emblem Engage, follow-up to the incredibly popular Three Houses, looked substantially more finished in its reveal today and was given January 20, 2023 date. This wouldn’t appear to be something that was pushed back at all if not for leaks from early this year detailing an imminent new entry in the series featuring a blue-and-red haired protagonist, which was exactly what was shown in the Direct.
Presumably one or all three of these games was at some point earmarked for a holiday 2021 release, and then holiday 2022, potentially along with other MIA releases like Metroid Prime 4 and various remakes, but as it stands the only in-house developed game currently confirmed for Q4 is Pokemon.
Finally, content updates to Switch Sports, Mario Kart and Mario Strikers are coming but at a much slower pace than you might expect, while new games are being added to the Nintendo 64 app very gradually and the SNES and NES apps are all but abandoned.
Nintendo did confirm that GoldenEye 007 was headed to Switch via the 64 app, with online play, which is a feat of licensing as much as technology. But, again, this is something that was leaked as in the works many months ahead of time, and has been given no firm date.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
I think the time has come to acknowledge something: No matter how much I want to enjoy Technic, nothing can compare to the sheer joy of building a building out of traditional Lego bricks.
Technic can make many wonderful creations, some of my favourite display pieces rely on Technic at their heart - the Carousel and Ferris Wheel, for instance. The F1 McLaren car looks fabulous. Technic builds can be motorised and powered. Generally, they’re extremely cool.
However, they feel like work to build. They’re fiddly, they hate your nails, they possibly hate you personally and they’re not as much fun.
Arguably, the finished Technic build is cooler, and perhaps even more fun to play with.
But as someone who is here for the building experience and then putting the finished build on a shelf while I contemplate the fact that I’m no longer a child and don’t get the same joy from imaginative play, it’s just not as fun.
Building something like a modular building comes together so fast. You put bricks together and soon enough you have a beautiful display piece, ready to be part of a city.
Building a Technic set involves shoving together a bunch of pieces, getting the angle slightly wrong, using the slightly wrong piece in the wrong order even though it looks exactly the same as the correct piece, taking it apart with your teeth because it isn’t designed to be taken apart easily, swearing at it, and abandoning it for a month. Then coming back, repeating the process, learning new swear words, getting to the part where it’s suddenly easy, finishing the build, marvelling at your handy work, forgetting the pain of building, and getting another Technic set to start the pain again.
Both have their place, both are good. But as I’m currently in the “abandon it for a month” stage, I sure am missing the beautiful simplicity of bricks.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
I’ve recently welcomed a new LG C2 OLED TV into my home (on loan), and while it is nice that Dolby Vision movies look amazing and that every last fancy PS5 and Xbox Series X trick works flawlessly, I’m mainly chuffed to finally go back to a TV that can fully utilise my retro scaler.
At around $430 the Retrotink 5X Pro might seem pricey for a video digitiser, but it’s worth every cent. You can simply plug any console in using its original cable and get great 1080p output with no lag or jutter or aspect ratio weirdness or gross interlacing artefacts, which is way more complex and difficult than it may sound. But the best thing about it is that creator Mike Chi is constantly refining the software and pushing out new features for those who like to dive deep and tinker.
Connected to the right TV, the 5X can scale your games to a full 1440p resolution, which is a great option because you can get integer scaling of old 90s-era consoles (six times scale), the mid-2000s machines (three times scale) and even the early HD stuff (two times).
And it can adjust itself to match specific consoles and output modes; back in the analogue days it didn’t matter if a machine was outputting 320×240 or 256×240, but when you’re digitising it can really matter. If anyone’s tried to use a PlayStation 1 for example with a cheap HDMI adapter, you’ll find just going between a game and the pause menu can cause catastrophic issues, but with the 5X it’s smooth sailing.
A key benefit of scaling to such a high resolution is that the scaler can overlay a very fine pattern of grids or bars to simulate the appearance of an old CRT, breaking up the pixelated image to better reflect the developer’s intentions. But the downside is that heavy black scanlines can leave the image looking too dim. So when I updated my 5X in anticipation of the new TV, I was delighted to find Chi had added an option that triggers HDR output, and after some brightness adjustments it looks amazing on the C2.
Chi’s currently working on a 4K version of his scaler. And after years of just accepting that games made 20 or 30 years ago will look blocky or jagged on new TVs, the device could truly get us closer to having old games look the way they were supposed to without the need for an equally old 50kg TV.