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Guess we didn't have a topic for this yet. This got announced a while ago but the first proper trailer was the one we saw at Sony's event the other day. It's the debut project from Unseen studio which is lead by Ikumi Nakamura, who worked on Okami, Evil Within and Ghostwire Tokyo in the art department (I think even a lead role for the latter two). So no surprise this has a lot of style, but the gameplay looks like a really interesting mix of character action with amped up movement options that remind me of some superhero games, or Sunset Overdrive on (even more) drugs. One to keep an eye on I think. The main theme is also very catchy.

5 mins to launch

Ok, so it's been out a while, think it had a period on Gamepass too (a while back) but I felt an urge to play it before I really tackled Call of the Elder Gods (which is now on Gamepass). And its distinctly...... okay. It's really just one of those 1990s click screen puzzle adventures presented in a first person world - each scene having no more than a handful of puzzles to progress together with story items to read. But it's not too complex, no convoluted combine x with y to do z, so predominantly reading the things that present the clues in your notebook to apply a solution - rotate this, press these in this order etc but some logical steps are needed at times. What is mostly missing is the compelling narrative - it's all a bit too vague and fragmented and if it wasn't my familiarity with HPL and CoC / Shadow Over Innsmouth, then I'm not too sure it really holds together that well, but is more a fan service for those who already know (inc. the odd document signed by Tillinghast, Dexter-Ward, Pickman etc) A pleasant enough stroll around, and the occasional swim, 8 hrs and probably about 3/4 of the way though it

Man, this is starting off strong. Code Veronica, Isolation 2, now Ueda.

But they can’t afford to do that. The quote is very telling “to be the number 1 publisher we need to be every where, but to be a strong platform we need exclusive content and services” What made Xbox the no.1 platform back in the day is they owned online gaming in the console space. In 2026 even the Switch 2 can do crossplay and rollback netcode. So the differentiator isn’t just how good is the utility but what makes it easier, welcoming and better to use\ And if it’s a boon for 3rd parties that Xbox enables better features from a hardware level they’ll make games for it, and would hopefully be the place people want to play and have good retention. She’s openly talking about how unhealthy the business is. There has to be some form of exclusivity, but it won’t be through big games. They need more than just good online. I’m not saying this will fix Xbox. But when talking about exclusive content and services. I think the content problem is obvious but what can they do from a services side? Thinking more from a services side, increasing how easy is it to socialise in games would be big and something the other platforms don’t do enough with

The 30% thing was definitely brought up before. Regarding the social aspect maf is talking about. You need to get people on your console and using your services to even discover that stuff though. The best way to get customers on your console/using Xbox is to give them amazing games they can’t get elsewhere. Then those features will retain them. Without the games though, you’re not going to get them using those features in the first place. Doesn’t matter how good that shit is if the games aren’t there.

Jesus Christ, it was mentioned here but the difficulty spike around chapter 41 or so is so ridiculous that it still caught me by surprise. It's like the game just suddenly changes Normal into Hard and Easy into Normal. It's so abrupt I wonder if it's on purpose or a balancing oversight, considering some other oddities I've already found (like that Checkpoint thing I mentioned). Will be doing the rest of the game on baby mode (which is still not very infant-friendly).

New book day... Mora's art is gorgeous... shame his run is already finished.