We're Doomed
Plus Nintendo Switch 2 predictions, Lorcana clearance and retro game anniversaries
Hello pals,
Yes, today feels a lot more like Tuesday than our usual Monday, but PAB was delayed this week for good reason: I (Alice) wanted to bring you this Doom: The Dark Ages preview and the embargo only lifted this morning. If you like your games both ultra-violent and very fun, you’re going to have a great time with this one.
As well as Doom, this week I’m looking into Lorcana and Tim is giving his Switch 2 predictions and making us feel old. Plus all the games you should be playing this week.
I’m Doomed
By Alice
The best songs, movies, games, anything really, know the importance of pacing. Knowing when to heap on the tension, make things seem impossible, and then when to allow that tension to pay off. When to allow a moment of quiet, and when to turn things up to 11 again. I kept thinking about this all through my few hours with a preview build of Doom: The Dark Ages, because the game perfectly nails that balance.
Fire fights would be intense, waves of demons trying to kill me, things would look bad, until I found the right rhythm and then I’d feel an earned victory, after that there was usually a moment to breathe before the next big fight. Flying around as a dragon in one level I walked that fine line of feeling in control and knowing that the next corner would likely change that. It was exhilarating.
Aside from the pacing, the other thing that I really enjoyed was the variety of weapons. The gameplay feels so different to Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, Dark Ages wants you to stand your ground, throwing your chainsaw chakram (aka bladed shield) so saw through demons, or use a variety of guns which will have something to suit many different play styles.
The spread of difficulty levels seemed pretty good, too. They have a mode marked as being easy for people who just want to experience the story, however that label is a lie. It’s just normal difficulty. In my session there were people who usually play on nightmare mode who had to drop down to the easy mode. The options are essentially: hard, harder, even harder, hardest, no chance of survival.
What I enjoyed most were the puzzles. They were a nice break from the gore, and challenging enough that they didn’t feel like a time filling afterthought.
Doom: The Dark Ages is out in May, and I’m looking forward to seeing the whole game in context to discover if it lives up to this excellent first glimpse.
What to play
Nintendo has added a quartet of games to the Super Nintendo Switch Online app, and if you’ve ever tried playing through the entire SNES library you’ll recognise them as some of “those games”; the strategy titles with huge amounts of text and moving dudes around, kind of like a Football Manager take on tactical warfare. It must have been a massively popular genre in Japan because Koei made a billion of them. Specifically, the four this time are Nobunaga’s Ambition, Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV, Uncharted Waters: New Horizons and Nobunaga’s Ambition: Lord of Darkness.
PlayStation Plus subscribers get access to the included April games tomorrow, and the lineup is decent but not as good as last month (reminder to get Dragon Age: The Veilguard right now if you haven’t already). The April games are hilariously violent first-person shooter RoboCop: Rogue City, asymmetrical online horror experience The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and cartoony RPG Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker’s Memory.
Free on the Epic Games Store this week are Cat Quest and Neko Ghost, Jump! If you like games about cats, this is really going to be a good time for you. One is a cat-themed action RPG, and the other is a somewhat janky-looking puzzler.
Last Minute Switch 2 Predictions
By Tim
It’s now less than two days until Nintendo’s Switch 2 Direct, and while we’ve already discussed our expectations for the hardware we’ve yet to take a decent dive into the possibilities for the games themselves.
The Switch 2 was revealed alongside a very quick look at a new Mario Kart, which would seem to be the most obvious inclusion for this week. Mario Kart 9, assuming it’s called that, has the task of measuring up against Nintendo’s best-selling video game of all time (not counting pack-ins), so I won’t be surprised if it takes a hard left turn into non-traditional territory. The initial peek seems to be strongly off-road themed, so maybe we could see an open world or MMO Mario Kart.
A fully new 3D Mario is the next most obvious move, since Odyssey was way back in 2017. We’ve had Bowser’s Fury since then, which could be a hint at what the team’s thinking. But this game is also likely to be a showcase for the hardware’s quirks and innovations, just like Mario 64 was for the analog stick, Sunshine was for the analog triggers, Galaxy was for the Wii remote and Odyssey was for the Joy-Con. What control qimmick will the Switch 2 bring? The only one we know so far is the mouse-like mode, but it’s hard to imagine how that could be integrated (unless the SNES Mouse Mario & Wario is returning!).
Tears of the Kingdom is still relatively new, so a big 3D Zelda would seem unlikely here. But we usually get a Zelda something every year and we don’t know what it is for 2025, so there’s a gap to fill. Could we see an Ocarina or Majora’s Mask remake? A port of the Wii U HD ports of the Gamecube games? Or maybe a brand new top-down game? It’s hard to say, but some Zelda news is all-but assured.
Given the enormous success of the Switch I think it’s safe to say that third parties will support Switch 2 in a big way, but the question is which ones Nintendo will choose to showcase. Microsoft could show up with its ridiculous roster of studios to demo Call of Duty, Forza, Halo, Diablo or even a new Banjo Kazooie. Sony was a surprise presence at last week’s Direct, so it could also be there with Uncharted or God of War. Imagine if both major platform-holders were there! More realistically, Capcom, Konami, Sega and Ubisoft all surely have Switch 2 games they’d love to show off.
And finally, rumour has it that Nintendo will be debuting the “Switch 2 Edition” branding for original Switch games that have an optional upgrade available. In an ideal world this would be free and automatic, but that seems unlikely for Nintendo. As much as it pains me to say (as a person with hundreds of Switch games), I anticipate each game will attract an upgrade fee to take full advantage of the new hardware.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
Disney’s Lorcana is transitioning out of big box retail and moving to purely hobby stores. Whether this was Ravensberger’s choice, or it was a mutual decision remains to be seen. But it also doesn’t really matter. While in theory stores like Kmart should be the perfect place to sell Disney trading cards, that also doesn’t really seem to be the audience Lorcana is going for. The makers of the game seem to want it to be the next Pokemon or Magic the Gathering. For it to become that, it needs to take off in primary school playgrounds, with kids trading valuable cards for trash, to keep up tradition, and for tournaments in card stores to be taken seriously.
While being in stores like Kmart is important for the primary school thing, it’s the show of support for the small game stores that will grow the tournament scene and make sure the cards filter from nerdy parents to future nerdy children.
The good news is that Lorcana being taken out of Kmart and Target means that it’s now on clearance at those stores. It’s now more affordable than ever to give Lorcana a go and see if you like it.
Most of the good bargains have been snapped up, but if you’re looking to get started, my pick of the sale are the Azurite Sea Starter Decks. It’s not a huge discount on those (the booster packs are 40% off, whereas these are only $6 off), but it’s the best introduction to the game.
As well as that, though, go check out your local game/hobby store. There are some really great ones out there (I recently went to the reopening of Larrikin Pop Culture out in Bayswater and it was glorious), and they’re the best place for community play and to make new friends with similar interests.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
It’s the end of another month and you know what that means; time to feel old as we look at some of the games that celebrated a major anniversary in March.
Now 20: God of War In many ways the original God of War trilogy has aged quite poorly. The embarrassingly sexualised female characters, the coital minigames, Kratos’ one-note angry manbaby act. But by 2005 video game standards the story in the original is mature and complex, and arguably a stepping stone to the much more nuanced storytelling we have today. And although you could blame the game in part for popularising the QTE in action sequences, it also exemplified the best approach for translating the edgy-grim vibe of the time into gameplay, with engaging combo-based fighting that inspired a golden age of narrative-heavy hack-and-slash adventures.
Now 30: Chrono Trigger The credits of this game read like a who’s who of 90s Japanese nerd culture legends, but it all started with three of the biggest; Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama. Together they developed the spark of an idea that — thanks to a very talented larger crew — would ultimately become one of the most beloved role-playing games of the SNES era. From the characters and combat to the visual design and score, not to mention the overall narrative and individual stories, Chrono Trigger remains one of the absolute greats.
Also 30: Panzer Dragoon Despite releasing in the same month, you could hardly come up with a game more distinct from Chrono Trigger than Panzer Dragoon. The Saturn was powerful and new, 3D movement was an unexplored frontier for game development, and this was a young and relatively inexperienced team trying to get it done in a seriously short amount of time. The result is an arcade rail shooter in the vein of Space Harrier, but in 3D and with armoured dragons. The ability to look all the way around you was a killer hook in 1995, but the game would ultimately be overshadowed by its own sequels, including the incredible RPG Panzer Dragoon Saga that would serve as a swang song for the Saturn just three years later.