The week that doesn’t exist is coming
Plus 120fps, board games that rely on physical comedy, and game anniversaries
Welcome back Button Buddies!
This is the second last Press Any Button of 2022, and the last with regularly scheduled programming until next year. Next week is all about Tim’s and my games of the last bit of the year.
This penultimate issue for 2022 is all about the week that doesn’t exist, 120fps, board games with props, and game anniversaries.
We hope you enjoy it. Let us know in the comments if there’s anything you’d like us to keep/change/add/whatever for next year.
What are you going to play this Christmas/Summer holidays?
By Alice
You know that weird week between Christmas and New Year’s? The one where time doesn’t exist, no one knows where or when they are, and all there is to eat is Christmas leftovers (or discounted food you bought on Boxing Day, if you don’t celebrate Christmas)? That week is what games were made for. Sure, you could go out, but that’s where everyone else is and also outside is the same temperature as the surface of the sun.
No, the week that doesn’t exist is the week of excessive screen time. The time you play all the games you’ve been meaning to (while intending to play even more games that you still don’t get around to).
A large part of my current plan are the games that were too broken at launch to bother with, but might hopefully be fixed by now. Pokémon Scarlet is at the top of that list because I’m curious to meet all the new Pokémon, but I wasn’t dedicated enough to stick with it at launch when it was a buggy mess. Has it been fixed? I don’t know, but I’ll find out.
I’m also going to properly get into Fortnite. I haven’t played in years, but hopped on with a few friends last week and was carried to four victories in a row, so I’ve decided to ride that wave.
Every New Year’s resolution needs a theme, and next year mine are all around creativity, so I’ll play some Rocksmith+ to see if I can finally become the multi-instrumentalist I always wanted to be.
Also, you still need exercise, even in the week that doesn’t exist, so my wife and I are going to jump into the new Just Dance subscription service and learn some routines set to some of the worst songs from Eurovision history.
It’s going to be great. Let us know on Twitter what you’re planning on playing over the break @_PressAnyButton.
What to play
This week the free games on the Epic Games store are Saints Row IV - Re-Elected and Wildcat Gun Machine. Saints Row is a pretty… specific franchise, but I (Alice) remember quite enjoying the ridiculousness of fighting the alien apocalypse as president of the United States. But, if you don’t like it, it’s free, so you’ve lost nothing. I have no memory of whether there’s anything in it that might have aged poorly, but there almost definitely is, because it’s Saints Row, and it was poorly aged the day after release. Those freebies end Friday, so get in quick.
This week’s Apple Arcade game is My Little Pony: Mane Merge, and I (Alice) think I’ve been on Tumblr too long, because my first reaction was thinking that putting Merge in the name is a bold choice. (My life was made worse by knowing about the existence of Bronies.) It looks like a fairly simple tile matching game aimed at children, but could be good for some mindless fun. It’ll be great for kids because it has no in app purchases or ads, which also makes it good for people who are tired of seeing those weird Match Mansion or whatever ads whenever they just want to mindlessly play match games on their phone.
It’s a pretty good week on Xbox Game Pass with comedy first person shooter High On Life from the mind of Rick and Morty’s Justin Roiland, tactile and satisfying alchemist simulator Potion Craft, and sweet 2.5D platformer Rainbow Billy. PC Game Pass is having an even bigger week though, with those three titles plus the long-anticipated integration with Riot Games. Use the Xbox app to link your Microsoft and Riot accounts together, and you can unlock all agents in Valorant, all champions in League of Legends, all Foundations cards in Legends of Runeterra and all champions in Wild Rift, plus a whole list of extra unlocks and boosts in those games and Teamfight Tactics. It's interesting to see Game Pass move into providing benefits for free-to-play games, and undoubtedly a big value for people looking to get started in League, but time will tell if we end up getting more of this kind of thing with other publishers.
Also on PC, GOG has kicked off its “Winter” Sale with discounts on 4500 games. Sounds easy enough to dig through. Mediaeval mouse adventure Ghost of a Tale is free, so that’s a no-brainer, but some other goodies I (Tim) spotted include X-COM 2 for $4.55, Psychonauts for $4.70, Disco Elysium for $14.29, Witcher 3 for $15.79 and Control for $18.
Smooth as a Dread Knight’s dome
By Tim
When the current generation of consoles launched, a big deal was made about their ability to display at 120Hz, allowing for PC-like framerates up to double the traditional ceiling for console games. So, after two years, has it turned out to be worthwhile?
First of all, this is a benefit that only people who’ve updated their TV fairly recently will be able to enjoy. You need a panel that supports 120Hz, preferably one that also supports variable refresh rates (or VRR) and at least one appropriately specced HDMI port.
Once you have all that, you might be disappointed to find that not a lot of games support 120 frames per second, and extremely few do so at 4K, but there have still been some really smart implementations of 120Hz tech.
Games like Resident Evil Village, Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart and God of War Ragnarok have an option to run at 40 frames per second for example. That wouldn’t have worked great with a 60Hz refresh, where you want to stick to 60 or divide evenly to get 30, but at a 120Hz refresh the maths work out great and you get a smoother experience. Displaying at 120Hz reduces input lag too, even if the frame rate is 30 or 60, which lots of games now take advantage of.
Some games do have full-on 120fps modes, but the trade-offs vary. Doom Eternal looks phenomenal, as does the multiplayer mode of Gears 5. But I found the resolution took far too big a hit in Halo Infinite; it would only be worth it on a small display. Other games including the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes have an option to unlock the frame rate, and in the case of those games it results in between 80fps and 120fps without much drop in resolution. It looks incredible on a display with VRR, but would likely have a lot of stuttering otherwise.
Where I’ve appreciated the technology the most thus far has been in indie games and older games, where the powerful new machines have the headroom to force a consistent 4K 120. Hollow Knight, Super Lucky’s Tale or Ori and the Will of the Wisps on Xbox are extremely fluid for example, and I’ve been replaying GRIS on PS5 at 120Hz which is wonderful. Some older games have been boosted algorithmically on Xbox to jump from 60 to 120 and work great, while remasters on either console can come with incredible results; Quake, Halo Master Chief Collection and Uncharted 4 all delight at 120.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
Every Christmas I see games about using tiny plastic hands to do things, or getting hit in the face with a cream pie, or putting stuff in your mouth to make you talk funny, or throw stuff at each other, and I always wonder if I’m the lone curmudgeon who hates these things. Don’t get me wrong, they seem like a laugh riot, once. Tiny Hands was quite fun that one time I played. But most of these games end up not being worth the set up, or the gimmick wears off quickly.
Take that Hasbro Pie Face game. It’s funny because no one wants to be hit in the face with a pie/cream. But also, no one wants to be hit in the face with a pie/cream, or clean up the mess, and definitely not do it more than once.
If a game requires too much set up, or relies on a gag that becomes less funny with repetition, then no one is going to want to play it more than once unless it’s incredible. Another example is Poetry For Neanderthals. It’s a great idea for a game – you have to give clues for things without using words that have more than one syllable. What’s less fun is that the punishment for using the wrong word is being hit with an inflatable club. This doesn’t work on two levels: 1. No one wants to inflate and deflate a club every time they play a game. 2. It’s easy to get too exuberant and hurt someone (either physically or emotionally) when playing a game like this. Luckily, the game still works perfectly well without the club, so it’s fine, but not all of these physical concept games escape their central mechanism so easily.
The lesson of this story is this: If you’re looking at board games for a gift, or to keep the family from murdering each other this Christmas, don’t go for the ones that rely on physical gags. And, if you do, make sure the game still works without it. That way when you get sick of the gag, you can still enjoy the game.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
Ordinarily I wait until the end of the month to celebrate anniversaries. But since next week is our big GOTY discussion and then we’re taking a brief break, I’m doing it now! Prepare to feel old!
Now 20: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker One of my favourite games of all time, Wind Waker is a stunning expansion of the design innovated by Ocarina of Time, with a huge world to explore, hilariously kooky characters, peerless dungeon design and an engrossing story. Its cartoon visual style may have been controversial in 2002 but it’s stood the test of time, and the now-obvious vestiges of a slightly larger game that was scaled down to release on time are forgivable when everything that is there — from the items to the music to the many hidden secrets — is immaculate. Where’s our Switch version Nintendo?!
Now 30: Ecco the Dolphin In an era dominated by flashy fighters and attitude-filled mascot platformers, Ecco is notable for its serene backdrops, chill synthy sound and realistic aquatic creatures. But as anyone who’s played it will tell you, Ecco is just as stressful as any hardcore adventure of the era. Your dolphin is fragile and will die without frequent access to air and food, everything in the ocean is out to kill you, and figuring out what happened to your missing family requires solving some truly brutal puzzles and also battling a race of all-consuming aliens. Play it on Switch Online; it has save states!
Now 35: Mega Man Called Rockman in Japan, this series was responsible for a half-dozen excellent platformers on the NES / Famicom, with tight action and anime-inspired visuals that stood out from the pack. Then, from the mid-90s on, it kind of exploded in all directions. The main series continued on the Super Nintendo and PlayStation, alongside the spinoff X series that dialled the anime up to 11. Then there’s the fast-paced Zero franchise, and a bunch of RPGs, portable spin-offs and a few alternate reality series that take place inside the internet. It’s a bizarre continuity to keep track of with more than 50 games. But for my money you can’t top those first six games, which are conveniently bundled together in Digital Foundry’s excellent Legacy Collection.