My running theory has been that the official release date is tied up in Microsoft marketing deals still. So I’m guessing we’ll hear the date from Microsoft during summer game fest.
Its hard to tell what exactly their MS deal is and it would be surprising if MS had much influence beyond “We are part of the first release date”
But 2025 is actually pretty plausible. Pure speculation, but if Silksong was in the polishing/padding stage in even late 2023 and Team Cherry are financially stable? Waiting for a new console release makes a lot of sense. ESPECIALLY the Switch 2 since…
Look. The Switch 1’s launch year was a fucking shitshow. Yeah yeah yeah, they had the greatest wii u of all time and blah blahblah. But the first party releases were pretty jacked up. It was “the Nindies” that carried the Switch 1. And it was ridiculously good for those indie studios who basically were the only games available for the latest Nintendo gameboy.
And Switch 2 is looking the same. That sizzle reel was almost all “We have a small DLC for the Switch 1 game!” and “This will be available in 2026”. So you can bet plenty of indie devs and publishers were in talks with Nintendo about when the release window was so they could decide if they wanted to wait or not.
I assume it will be on basically every subscription IGC.
Big lump sum to start with and guarantee they have a successful launch for any investors. And then people will buy it when it leaves the IGC in 6-12 months because they put it off or were waiting for a DLC or whatever. And then they’ll buy it on every single platform because Hollow Knight is that damned good.
But the actual price to get something in an IGC is not as high as people think it is.
When I played Half Life 1 for the first time, I almost immediately lost interest after getting to Xen. When I played Black Mesa, I almost cried when I got there. Best fan-made remake I’ve ever played!
They put a ton of effort into remaking Xen so that it blends better into the gameplay and story. I think I read somewhere that Half-Life took about an hour to slog through Xen, but Black Mesa, despite having around 4 hours of Xen gameplay, was actually really enjoyable.
I loved Black Mesa up to this point. They turned Gonarch into a RPG sponge in an arena full of hard to avoid clutter which makes it nearly impossible to dodge the attacks.
The key to having fun with the gonarch fight (and other huge chunks of Xen too, like the Gargantua chase and Nihilanth) is to discover that the jump pack is broken and if you hold your crouch key, it tricks the game into thinking you never touched the ground. So you never lose momentum and can infinitely slide around at a thousand miles an hour, boosting your speed every time the jump pack recharges a bar. If you’ve never learned Source airstafing, the wide open first stage of the gonarch fight is a great place to start.
I do agree the gonarch was changed to be a ridiculous sponge though. Its regular health bar is set a bit too high anyway, but on top of that it’s actually invulnerable through the whole sequence between the first and last stages of the fight. Which would be fine, except they didn’t do anything to communicate that to the player! It still bleeds, it still makes pain noises, and the only way to figure it out is to waste a bunch of time dumping ammo into it. Very silly oversight.
That scene where you’re fighting the dude and she swoops in and breaks his face and is like “GE DAH” and the music is fucking epic. They can take all the time they need, I’d rather it be good.
I still don’t use gog much. Last game I got there was free through Amazon prime, I think. It was Lego star wars episode 1, and while I usually really enjoy the Lego games, controller support was totally busted, so I ended up not giving it much time. 🙁
Keep on claiming those free games! Its my fav deal in gaming now - for the cost of a Prime subscription you get a whole bunch of games, each week! A lot of quality GOG games, alongside Epic and Amazon’s own.
You can’t lose by claiming them, each month suprieses me with how much I get for an add-on to a subscription I already use :)
I was hoping for an actual release date rather than just vaguely mentioning the year. They did say a year twice before IIRC and it still got delayed, an actual release date would feel more real.
Are games “destroyed”?: There will always be people making cool games in the same way that people will always want to make art. If you look at the releases from the largest studios that get the most public attention, maybe you could chart a downward trajectory in quality with some exceptions. In general capitalism kinda ruins everything, including the arts. When profit incentives are prioritized over all else, it’s not great for the outcomes. As the games industry continues to mature, there will continue to be cyclical massive layoffs, less investments in innovation, and more reliable “safe” bets that often results in bland content. Again, even within such a system, independent and smaller developers will always be making good stuff. The more the community embraces and supports independent development, eschewing AAA titles, the better the health of the art from, IMO.
Are there lots of positive reviews for bad games?: Certainly. I think this is more a symptom of the games industry maturing as a capitalist enterprise than a cause of bad games. Many review sites have a business/engagement model that requires they release reviews as quickly as possible, and so depend on access to advance review copies. Big budget studios aren’t going to provide early review copies to sites that might give them bad reviews when there are plenty of sites who basically guarantee that they won’t.
Indy studios can be just as bad as major studios. I didn’t mean to suggest that a smaller studio is definitely better. Even small studios can be run by people trying to extract as much as possible with little regard for employees. Even small studios run by well-intentioned people can do crummy things just to stay profitable (again, capitalism ruins everything). Ultimately, I think people should look into the studios they support, how they are run, and their philosophies. Maybe that is asking too much, haha.
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