Nintendo has rolled out Splatoon 3 widgets on Android and iOS for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.
Using version 2.3.0 of the Switch Online app, members can add the following three widgets for the recently released ink-based shooter to their mobile devices:
A photo album
Battle log to show recent wins and losses
A stage schedule to stay up to date on the upcoming rotations for various game modes
It’s a surprising move for Nintendo, as the company has historically been slow to adopt modern online features and is instead known for overly complicated practices like friend codes and locking voice chat behind a mobile app.
Splatoon 3 launched earlier this month exclusively on Nintendo Switch. For more on the game, check out our review.
In the latest PokémonScarlet and Violet trailer, we see a special showcase of the Pokémon World Ecology Society with various clips of a new Pokémon called Wiglett.
While it looks like the Diglett that’s been around since Pokémon Red and Green, Wiglett isn’t the Paldean form of the Pokémon, but a new species entirely. In the video, we see so much more of the Pokémon than we’ve ever seen of Diglett, revealing that the Pocket Monster likes to stretch from its hole.
Details are currently scarce, so we don’t know its type, abilities or anything else outside of its name. Hopefully, the Pokémon Company will fill in some blanks sooner than later.
The actual Diglett will be in the game as well.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet come out on November 18th.
That’s a question I find myself asking after the first full-length trailer for HBO’s The Last of Us series was released on September 26th. Quickly, people went nuts, proclaiming how great it looked and comparing it positively to the 2013 action-adventure game upon which it’s based. Me, though? I felt bored.
When the show premieres on HBO Max and Crave sometime in 2023, it will, effectively, be the fourth time this post-apocalyptic story about grizzled survivor Joel and plucky teenager Ellie is being told. Once in 2013 when the game debuted on PS3, a second time one year later on PS4, and a third earlier this month with a PS5 remake. That’s to say nothing of the fact that PS5 owners are straight-up given the PS4 remaster, easily playable via backward compatibility, through PS Plus at no additional cost. Four times in 10 years!
And don’t get me wrong, I love The Last of Us. Both the first game and its more polarizing sequel are two of my all-time favourites, and I’ve been enamoured with developer Naughty Dog’s works for most of my life. But there comes a time when seeing the same characters doing the exact same things just isn’t exciting to me, and I’m honestly confused why more people don’t feel the same.
Anecdotally, much of the conversation I’ve seen in my circle has been about how the show stacks up to the game. Even when HBO showed the first-ever footage from the show last month, people were losing their minds over beat-for-beat reenactments of key moments from the game, like Sarah’s death at the beginning or Joel and Ellie’s fight towards the end. With the most recent trailer, they’re doing the same, eagerly making side-by-side comparisons and beaming over the similarities. I even saw someone I know say that so much of the trailer looks like it was “pulled directly from the game” as if it’s some sort of crowning achievement. Many of the people I know who said things like this have played the game many times, too. I just don’t get it.
I’ve had two colleagues make the argument that this allows them to “share that experience” with friends and family who don’t play games. On some level, I suppose that’s fair, even if I do have fond memories of playing the original The Last of Us at a friend’s house and having his non-gamer mum enjoy the story passively as we went through it. But I do think you can’t truly share the experience because gaming is an inherently interactive medium. No matter how faithfully the story is recreated, narrative is just one of many elements in a game, and you lose a lot of that in a TV adaptation.
It also seems to ignore the fact that The Last of Us’ core “weary survivor protects a young child” story, while a leap forward for storytelling in gaming in 2013, was hardly novel on the whole. Only through the framework of a game was it elevated enough to feel fresh — a time-old yarn told in a unique way. It also seems to assume that the only way to capture what one loves about The Last of Us‘ story is through a near-identical retelling, as if a talented creator couldn’t find success in other approaches. And how will audiences who have seen, say, The Walking Dead or Children of Men or Logan or The Mandalorian even read The Road respond to the HBO series? Time will tell.
“…it’s when I see people say they’re crying over seeing the same shots from the game in a short live-action trailer that I get legitimately puzzled.”
But beyond that, I still see these same fans extremely excited for themselves. It’s one thing to be hyped to show The Last of Us to a mother or friend, but why are you so happy, personally, just to see all of these things that remind you of the game? You can say you’re glad to have the series for your non-gamer peeps, but your visceral reaction to 1:1 trailer shots shows how much you’re getting out of it, too. That’s what confuses me.
It’s like everyone’s only here to do the Leonardo DiCaprio Once Upon a Time in Hollywood “pointing at the screen” meme. The way the trailer carefully picks familiar beats from the game to the point of even reusing the same Hank Williams song just feels so cynical and manipulative, but people are feasting on it. Sure, some things in the show will be different, like Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets) playing a new rebel leader character, but on the whole, this will be the same Joel and Ellie story, yet again.
We’ve now seen this exact same shot on PS3, PS4 and PS5, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we also get it in the TV show.
To be clear, I don’t begrudge people for being excited. We all have things that do that for us, and that’s fine! I would never tell someone they’re wrong for looking forward to something like HBO’s The Last of Us. What’s more, the show seems well-made so far (reportedly, Canada’s largest TV production ever) and the cast (especially Pedro Pascal) and co-writers Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and Neil Druckmann (The Last of Us writer/director) are certainly talented. There’s certainly no reason to expect the show will be bad.
But it’s when I see people say they’re crying over seeing the same shots from the game in a short live-action trailer that I get legitimately puzzled. I’m not ashamed to admit I balled over many moments in Final Fantasy VII Remake, especially the opening CG trailer, itself a recreation of the one from the original PlayStation game. I think crying over art, games included, is meaningful and even healthy. The difference there, though, is that FFVII Remake is a dramatic reimagining of my favourite game of all time, nearly 25 years later — not just in terms of narrative, but gameplay, visuals, music and overall design as well.
And I totally understand the appeal of the warm comfort of familiarity, and so if I ever crave that, I can simply go back to the original Final Fantasy VII on pretty much any modern platform. But with The Last of Us, I see the same people paying full price for a remake that adds nothing substantive outside of accessibility and mere weeks later raving over the prospect of seeing that all again soon in a TV show. (Note: disabled people now being able to play the game is wonderful — I’m referring to the people who have always been able to play The Last of Us.) I even had someone tell me they’d gladly experience the story “over and over” while admitting he’s already played through the remake 2.5 times. They’re not content to just replay the readily available original game or its remaster if they’re longing to revisit this story.
Unless you’re a disabled gamer, the recently released The Last of Us Part I remake barely changed anything outside of visuals, but people didn’t seem to care.
And so I return to the question I posed at the beginning of this rant: when do we call it a day on The Last of Us? Since we’re clearly not ever getting a Final Fantasy VII Remake-style subversive spin on Joel and Ellie’s story, at one point will you be happy to move on from these two? When people continue to be uncritically accepting of the same thing, and we’ve heard reports that PlayStation boss Jim Ryan is so risk-averse, I can’t help but lament the message this all sends. When PlayStation sees how people continue to devour all of this, where will it end? Will we get a PS5 re-re-re-release of the original The Last of Us? What about a remake of The Last of Us Part II? When the show inevitably does well, will we get a second season that also re-tells Part II? Will we get additional seasons to let Druckmann realize every scrapped game idea? Will you enthusiastically turn up for all of these other hypothetical retreads?
“If you’re excited about HBO’s The Last of Us, I don’t want to take that away from you. I wish I could be, too.”
It’s especially disappointing to me because it doesn’t feel like it has to be this way. Nostalgia obviously sells, but projects like Final Fantasy VII Remake show how you can strike a fine balance between fanservice and meaningful iteration. Even beyond that, I look at adaptations like last year’s Arcane and the recently released Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Both were fresh and original takes on League of Legends and Cyberpunk 2077, offering plenty for fans and newcomers alike.
Rather than try to mould a particular game’s story into a TV show, these were first conceived as TV shows and made full use of the medium’s unique strengths. Even something like the surprisingly decent Sonic the Hedgehog movies mixed an original “found family” story with beats from the games. And even if PlayStation (understandably) wants to keep returning to the lucrative world of The Last of Us instead of doing something new entirely, couldn’t we at least get different characters and stories in that setting? Hell, even the seemingly neverending The Walking Dead has branched out with several spin-offs that aren’t all about the same central characters.
If you’re excited about HBO’s The Last of Us, I don’t want to take that away from you. I wish I could be, too. But after a certain point, I don’t need to keep seeing Joel and Ellie, especially when little is being done to make trips back to that world feel any different. Ironically, the “endure and survive” catchphrase from the original The Last of Us has proven rather prophetic. The same story will come at us, again and again and again, and all we can do is “endure and survive.”
Each month, PlayStation offers a handful of games at no additional cost to its PlayStation Plus subscribers.
It’s worth noting that these are only the games hitting PS Plus Essential, and PlayStation will announce its PS Plus Extra and Premium titles in the coming days.
With that in mind, here are the titles hitting PS Plus Essential this October: Hot Wheels Unleashed (PS4, PS5), Injustice 2 (PS4) and Superhot (PS4).
You can download any of these games for free from October 4th until October 31st.
“Bro y’all have to fucking chill out. It’s a fucking game my dude. Play something else if you hate it so much bro. Walk away from your pc/console if you’ve become so consumed by a game that you feel the need to threaten the ppl that work hard to make it. Chill bro
On September 22nd, Respawn tweeted that it has recently “seen increased harassment towards members” of the development team. “We welcome community input, however, the line between constructive feedback and the harassment of our dev team cannot be crossed.” The developer said it has a “zero tolerance policy” towards this behaviour and promised to “take appropriate action to ensure the health and safety” of the team.
Many people quickly shared the post to express support for the developers and push back against the abuse, and now, T-Pain has done the same. The rapper is an avid gamer, streaming titles like Apex Legends regularly on Twitch.
Unfortunately, the issue of developer harassment has come up often, especially in the past few months. In the span of a week over the summer, Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert decided to stop publicly talking about his new game due to hateful messages over its art style, while a Sony Santa Monica developer reported receiving unsolicited “dick pics” to get her to confirm a release date for God of War: Ragnarök.
It should go without saying that none of this is acceptable, and you need to grow up if it’s something you do. As T-Pain himself said, “it’s a fucking game my dude.”
A new camo-themed Xbox Wireless Controller has been announced.
The gamepad, dubbed the ‘Xbox Wireless Controller – Mineral Camo Special Edition,’ is Xbox’s fourth in its ‘Camo’ lineup, after ‘Night Ops Camo,’ ‘Arctic Camo’ and ‘Daystrike Camo.’
The Mineral Camo blends mineral blue, bright and dark purple and aqua into a camouflage pattern. Xbox says its unique ocean-themed tones were inspired by geode crystals.
Like all other modern Xbox controllers, the Mineral Camo can be used on Xbox consoles, PC and mobile devices. It’s available now via the Microsoft Store for $79.99 CAD. Razer is also selling a matching charging stand for $49.99 USD (about $68.50 CAD).
First unveiled during September 13th State of Play presentation, the controller sports a blue-and-white pattern that’s inspired by the cool colours of God of War: Ragnarök. It also features a wolf and bear insignia to represent the game’s two lead characters, Kratos and Atreus.
It’s important to note that while Ragnarök will be available on both PS4 and PS5, Sony has only produced a special edition controller for the latter console. On the flip side, this means it features all of the DualSense’s signature features, like adaptive triggers and haptic feedback.
Both the controller and God of War: Ragnarök will launch on November 9th. The highly anticipated action-adventure game is a sequel to 2018’s God of War and follows Kratos and teenage son Atreus as they seek to find answers about the latter’s identity while attempting to prevent the apocalypse and survive new godly threats.
Netflix is forming its first in-house game development studio in Helsinki, Finland.
The developer will focus on producing original games for the streamer’s nascent gaming platform, Netflix Games.
In a blog post, Netflix said it chose Helsinki because it’s “home to some of the best game talent in the world.” Some Finnish developers include Remedy Entertainment (Control), Housemarque (Returnal), Rovio (Angry Birds) and Supercell (Clash of Clans). The developer has also appointed industry veteran Marko Lastikka as the studio director of its Helsinki office. Lastikka previously worked at Zynga for five years and Electronic Arts for four.
While this is the first gaming studio that Netflix has built from the ground up, it does own three other developers: Helsinki’s Next Games (The Waking Dead: No Man’s Land), California’s Night School Studio (Oxenfree) and Texas’ Boss Fight Entertainment (myVEGAS Bingo).
That said, we don’t know much about what any of these teams are working on. As Netflix admits in its blog post, “it’s still early days” and “creating a game can take years,” so it will likely be a while before we see more.
On September 18th, Rockstar Games suffered a major hack that resulted in the leak of over 90 videos and images from an early build of the next Grand Theft Auto game, commonly referred to as GTA VI.
For any company, it would have been an astronomically large breach, and it was even more notable considering it happened at one as notoriously guarded as Rockstar.
In the days that followed, developers were quick to come forward and offer their sympathy to Rockstar. After all, its game was shown prematurely in a rough state and, consequently, faced intense scrutiny from gamers. Many people ignorant of the nature of game development wrongfully felt this was pretty indicative of how GTA VI will look at launch, and condemned the game as a result.
Of course, anyone who is actually a little reasonable will know just how ridiculous those comments were. The game wasn’t ready to be shown publicly and is expected to be at least two years out from launch. A lot of these gamers simply misunderstand how game development works.
But that’s a problem in and of itself. As I’ve seen all kinds of takes on the GTA VI leak percolate, one that I haven’t noticed much of is the fact that the gaming industry is too secretive. While so-called “fans” are often ignorant about a great many things when it comes to games, have we considered that gaming companies could maybe do a bit more to educate people?
Sure, you still get silly people who say unrealistic things like “Warner Bros. should recast Ezra Miller and reshoot all of The Flash” as if that’s comparable to what Ridley Scott did when he replaced Kevin Spacey in a supporting role with late Canadian actor Christopher Plummer on All the Money in the World. There will always be oblivious people. But on the whole, there’s at least a broader understanding of how movies are made, and a similar thing could be said about other forms of media.
…Except gaming, anyway. Admittedly, it’s a nascent art form, especially compared to literature or film. It’s somewhat understandable, then, that we aren’t given quite as many behind-the-scenes looks with games. Having said that, many companies don’t even try. As mentioned, Rockstar is infamously secretive, and it was only earlier this year that the company even acknowledged that GTA VI was being made. Elsewhere, we’ll have games like Final Fantasy VII Remakeand Bayonetta 3announced and then get nary a word about them for years. Of course, I realize that games are extremely difficult to make, and that no doubt presents a lot of delays. Not everyone does get that, though, so why not try to enlighten them? Even if you don’t have something major like gameplay show, can you not just have a developer talk about it or present some concept art? Consider Montreal’s EA Motive, which has held really insightful presentations on its Dead Space remake that provided clearly marked rough footage of the game with a lot of developer commentary. It’s a fair compromise between showing extensive gameplay demos and saying nothing at all. Would that be possible with every game? Probably not, but that sort of transparency goes a long way.
I always think back to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. The MMORPG’s original 2010 release was a disaster, and it was only after director Naoki Yoshida came in and, with the help of a talented team, painstakingly rebooted everything to significant critical acclaim. They’ve since built upon that foundation with a slew of beloved expansions and other updates. The end result is one of the most popular MMOs of all time that features a well-publicized positive community — something of a rarity in games.
It almost creates this notion that game developers are some mythical, foreign, unknown entity…
A big reason that all happened is that Yoshida and his team are so willing to be transparent. He openly speaks to fans. He constantly provides updates on the game’s progress. He shows humility and promotes other games. He and the game’s composer, the masterful Masayoshi Soken, even tearfully disclosed the latter’s private battles with cancer at a fan event. It’s something you don’t see with a lot of games, and it clearly makes a major difference. It shows people that real humans make these games, and can lead to a greater sense of empathy as a result. A similar loving relationship between developer and fans can be seen with Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai, who has since launched a game dev YouTube channel and, at the time of writing, racked up nearly half a million subscribers in a single month.
But on the whole, the video game industry treats nearly everything like a big secret, even in seemingly small and bizarre ways. In 2013, I was visiting family in Scotland with my mum. While there, we went to Edinburgh and, knowing GTA maker Rockstar North was there, I wanted to check it out. Much to my disappointment, then, when I wasn’t allowed in the non-descript lobby to take a picture even remotely near the big Rockstar logo. A colleague told me a similar thing happened with him in Amsterdam with PlayStation’s Guerrilla Games, the maker of the Horizon series. Hell, a security guard at Nintendo’s HQ in Kyoto frantically shooed us away when we took a few steps closer to try to get a selfie with the legendary gaming company behind us. (See the below picture for just how far we were from the actual entrance.)
To be clear, I’m not saying we’re owed entry, some sort of tour or the like. Companies are perfectly entitled to remain closed to passersby, especially when you consider how it could protect developers from harassment. But this fear of letting people even go into a lobby or other open space to take a picture is pretty baffling. Is there some sort of thought that we’ll break in and steal gaming secrets? Why is a fan taking a mere photo with your company’s logo seemingly such a big deal? It almost creates this notion that game developers are some mythical, foreign, unknown entity — sort of like a loot box. The global video game industry generates hundreds of billions of dollars annually, yet it’s treated like an illusive members-only club, almost like the Stonecutters in The Simpsons.
Forget putting a human face to the otherwise monolithic companies — you’re barely allowed to engage with the companies themselves. (Not to mention something like a selfie is basically free promotion in this day and age of social media). It’s in stark contrast to something like Hollywood. Companies like Warner Bros., Sony, Universal and Paramount all offer public tours of their studios. They openly invite people to come in and see where and how their art is made, and that’s pretty rad. Disney is a bit more restrictive, but even it offers tours through its otherwise non-public studios through its D23 membership program.
Now, to give credit where it’s due, there are developers who do things like this. Ubisoft’s Quebec teams, for example, allow schools to visit, which is a nice way to increase awareness of what they do while also encouraging more people to break into the industry. Ubisoft Toronto took it one step further in 2018 by participating in “Doors Open Toronto” to let anyone who registered ahead of time tour its motion-capture studio. In its own comedic way, the excellent Ubisoft co-produced Mythic Quest series also does explore various facets of game development. (None of this excuses the misconduct allegations Ubisoft continues to face, however.) We’ve also seen companies like Xbox and PlayStation occasionally put out surprisingly self-critical documentaries on things like the 360’s infamous Red Rings of Death and the turbulent production of 2018’s God of War. All of this is pretty rare, admittedly, but it’s certainly nice when we do get it.
“Graphics are the first thing finished in a video game”
If there’s been one positive to come from the GTA VI leak, though, it’s that we have seen a number of developers peel back the curtain just a bit. After one particularly clueless social media commenter basically said “graphics are the first thing that gets done” in development, all kinds of studios have taken to social media to provide specific examples of just how wrong this person was. Specifically, they’ve decided to share glimpses at early builds of development to give you an idea of how games significantly evolve over time. Some examples include Remedy (Control), Toronto’s DrinkBox (Nobody Saves the World!), Turtle Rock (Back 4 Blood), People Can Fly (Outriders), Media Molecule (LittleBigPlanet) and Massive Monster (Cult of the Lamb). Honestly, it’s so refreshing to see that sort of candor when it comes to games.
Now, you’ll always get people who are ignorant — that’s not exclusive to any medium. But it’s the general unwillingness to even try to inform some people that seems to be pretty unique to games. On some level, I understand why companies often opt to not engage with fans, especially when they can be entitled over something as frivolous as a release date or art style. But I also can’t help but wonder how this sort of behaviour could be reduced — even slightly — if companies didn’t treat their games as J.J. Abrams-level mystery boxes. It’s still early, but what we’ve already seen after the GTA VI leak is a promising first step towards improving that, and hopefully, we continue to see that in the months and years to come.
The title is available to wishlist on Steam and the Epic Games Store. It’s unclear how much the game will cost, but if Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered is any indication, it should be priced at $69.99.
For more on Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morale, check out our in-depth look at the PS5 version of the game.
