You should play Forza Horizon 5
Plus The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Pokemon TCG Pocket, and game anniversaries
Hello, and welcome to Monday!
This past week has been a glorious one for excellent games being remastered or brought to new consoles. In this issue of Press Any Button, both Tim and I celebrate the ability to go back and play our favourites in new contexts, I succumb to Pokemon, and Tim makes us all feel old. Plus we have some recommendations for games you should play this week.
Forza Horizon 5 is on PS5 now, so there is not excuse not to play it
By Alice
It’s been a while since I’ve written about Forza Horizon 5, and that’s because I had to take a break from the game for a bit. The grind of the weekly challenges got exhausting, and started to feel more like a treadmill than an exciting challenge. I had to step away to keep my love for the game alive.
Coming back to it now it’s been released on PlayStation 5 has been wonderful for multiple reasons, even if there are a few niggling irritations.
For starters, the game looks incredible on the PS5 Pro. It doesn’t fully take advantage of the power of the PS5 Pro, you can’t get to 120FPS. But Performance mode on PS5 Pro is the best of both worlds of Performance and Quality on the Xbox - 4K 60FPS. It doesn’t have the same level of detail as the Quality mode on PS5 Pro, but it has the same details as the Xbox Series X Quality mode, while still hitting that high frame rate.
Secondly, I’m loving getting to go back to the beginning and experience the game anew. I’m making different order choices this time around, and using the Dual Sense Edge controller is making the game feel different. Even though the game doesn’t take advantage of the haptic feedback, I’m having to adjust my reflexes in a way that feels fresh.
I am frustrated that I had to link my PlayStation and Xbox accounts. I could see the benefit of that if achievements or progress carried over, or if there was a reward, but all I’m getting out of this is seeing my previous records whenever I do anything. It’s got the vibe of “oh, you think you did pretty well going through that speed zone? Well you went three times as fast on your Xbox save, so why even bother?” It’s not as motivating as I think they hoped it would be.
It also just a bit weird that an Xbox game looks, plays and feels so much better on PlayStation. I understand that Microsoft is trying to embrace the harmony of selling as many games as possible even if it can’t seem as many consoles, but it still feels like a weird choice to make it that one of the Xbox crown jewels just plays so much better on a PlayStation.
That said, it’s brought me back to a game that feels like home, and is allowing me to experience it all again, and for that I am grateful.
What to play
Poor Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The game was looking incredible, it locked in a very quiet launch window, and it had a day one Game Pass release. But then Bethesda dropped Oblivion. I was planning to get stuck into Clair Obscur last week but I ended up not even starting it, and I’m sure I’m not alone. But it’s on Game Pass and getting extremely good reviews, so fans of turn-based RPGs should be sure to check it out. Also on Game Pass in the next few days, look out for co-op action RPG Towerborne, which is still technically in early access, and Far Cry 4.
Microsoft is also having a sale over on Steam for the next week, if you want some Xbox goodies for your PC or Deck. My picks would be Battletoads for $3, Sunset Overdrive for $6, Tell Me Why for $7, State of Decay 2 for $10, or the entire Halo: Master Chief Collection for $15.
Over on the Epic Games Store, you can get Chuchel and Albion Online Free Welcome Gift for free. Albion Online looks like some nonsense. But Chuchel looks pretty adorable. It’s by the same people who made Botanicula, which was free a little while back and also looked adorable. I haven’t gotten around to playing either yet, but as a price, free is hard to beat.
Oblivion is not a remake, and that’s perfect
By Tim
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is one of my all-time favourite games. I have strong memories of gazing longingly at the back of the box before I even had an Xbox 360, marvelling at what appeared to be the most incredible graphics and most open-ended adventure I’d ever seen, and the actual game more than lived up to my expectations. I’ve gone back to it many times, but never managed to officially finish the Fighters Guild, Thieves Guild or Shivering Isles quest lines, so I set about cleaning those up with a new character this year. I had finally achieved this goal and got my 100% achievement rating last Tuesday, and rolled straight into the new Oblivion Remastered when it was announced and released on Wednesday, so I have a fairly unique perspective on the upgrade.
In short, it’s been an adjustment and I’ve been absolutely loving it. But it’s interesting seeing so many players exclaim that it’s more of a “remake”, when to my mind it’s the very definition of a remaster. The bones and structure of the game have been barely touched, with the bulk of the “newness” coming from the port to Unreal Engine 5, and the new graphical assets created by Virtuos. Some gameplay tweaks that modern players demand have been added, including the ability to sprint and dodge. And some new audio and visual flair added to combat makes things feel a bit more active. These are nice improvements, but they’ve been tweezered very gingerly on top of the Jenga stack of systems and content that’s been there since 2006.
Some of the additions are integrated in a way that makes it very clear how limited the developers were in terms of what they could change without risking the whole game tumbling down. The new menu system may look modern, but it’s less usable than the original and missing some functionality. Any added text (such as the instructions on how to dodge) is conspicuous. And though I’m very glad the previous DLC content has been included without an avalanche of notifications pointing it all out to new players, the solution is so sparse as to be unintentionally hilarious.
This remaster is clearly a labour of love and the result of a huge amount of work, and it’s absolutely the right approach to keeping Oblivion alive, welcoming new players and giving returning fans a nicer experience. All the jank and charm is still here, but the visuals are now something that could feasibly give players that same sense of awe I felt in 2006, which the original graphics no longer do.
But I think the reaction to the title is indicative of how we’ve been trained to expect the bare minimum from publishers rushing out “remastered” versions of existing games with barely an indifferent upscaling pass. Final Fantasy VII Remake is a remake; a brand new game, built from the ground up but inspired by a classic. Oblivion is a remaster, and one of a quality we should expect from every publisher trying to sell an older game again for full price.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
The time has come to admit it: I think I’m a Pokemon fan now? Like, a committed proper Pokemon fan, not the casual fan I suspected last time. I’ve been playing Pokemon video games since Pokemon Blue came out on GameBoy, and I got super into Pokemon Go, but I’ve never seen the TV show, and didn’t think I could count as a Pokemon player until I got into the card game. Well, with Pokemon TCG Pocket, I need to acknowledge that I am in too deep to now be anything other than a Pokemon player. I’m considering buying physical cards. I’m aggressively chasing a shiny Charizard. I have every diamond card in the game as of Shiny Revelry. This is happening.
Who even am I anymore? A millennial, I guess.
This is a great time to be a Pokemon TCG player, though. Not IRL, card shortages and scalpers have made the hobby less accessible. But in Pokemon TCG Pocket the player base seems more settled, and the addition of ranked made it feel more like a multiplayer game worth investing time in (I am blaming not getting out of Ultra Ball 2 with my Meowscarada/Arceus EX deck on covid brain fog, as is my right). Though, the pace of new sets being added is a bit intense. Having a new set every month means new players will never be able to catch up, and there’s no lull for older players to go back and roll the dice on rare cards from older sets. While it’s nice that there will be new cards on the 30th, an extra couple of weeks for me to grind packs and get to a shiny Charizard would be much appreciated.
The addition of rare candy next set, though, is going to turn the meta on its head, and I anticipate seeing a lot more three-stage decks in ranked. As a Mewscarada and Celebi player, I am thrilled. Though, as someone who is going to be coming up against a bunch of people who did pull the god Charizard, I am nervous.
Good luck in the new meta, friends. May the RNG be ever in your favour.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
As April comes to a close, here are three games that celebrated major anniversaries over the past month.
Now 20: Jade Empire Released smack in between Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, Jade Empire is one of Bioware’s most overlooked games. Originally exclusive to the first Xbox (and still playable on Series X/S), it’s a Chinese mythology martial arts RPG, with the same kind of progression, morality and romancing systems you’d expect given the developer’s other 2000s era outings, alongside some incredible settings, squadmates and storytelling. Ultimately Dragon Age ended up being a more marketable franchise, but there’s a parallel universe where Jade Empire is still getting new sequels today.
Now 25: The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask Decades before Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo pulled off a similar trick; take the world and assets of the previous Zelda game, remix them with some new mechanics and a handful of surprises, make it weird as hell and release it as a direct sequel. In both cases I personally prefer the original games but, like TotK, Majora has become a cult classic with Zelda sickos and provides experiences unlike anything else in the series. This game is dark and emotional, the time loop gameplay is unreservedly tricky, and it gave the world the horrible wonder of Tingle.
Now 30: Jumping Flash! Everyone talks about how Nintendo nailed the 3D platformer on its first try, creating a game in Mario 64 that was not only astonishing then but is still fun to play generations after the fact. Jumping Flash! is not like that. This was a tech demo for the original PlayStation that became a full game, and is one of the earliest commercially available 3D platformers. You play as a robot rabbit from a first-person view, with your huge jumps and ability to look straight down designed to make it easy to land where you intend. Mind-blowing then, but pretty tough to play now.