The Thursday letters page is worried about tonight’s Tomb Raider reveal, as one reader fails to find any sympathy for Activision’s Call Of Duty problems.
Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk
PLEASE NOTE: We are currently preparing articles to run over the Christmas and New Year break, so if you’ve been thinking of writing a Reader’s Feature now would be the perfect time to send it in. It can be on any subject you want, as long as it’s a minimum of 500 words long.
The big day
I’ve got a really good feeling about The Game Awards this year. Sometimes they can be a bit of a non-event but the amount of leaks and confirmations so far is well above what I remember from previous years at this same point.
Personally, I’m most looking forward to Resident Evil Requiem. I can’t wait to see Punished Leon and just everything I’ve heard about the game so far is very positive. After the minor disappointment of Resident Evil Village, I’m hoping this is going to be on par with the Resident Evil 4 remake and another win for Mr Floppy Hair.
I’m a bit disappointed the statue is apparently not Altered Beast, I was quite looking forward to that, and gutted that Total War is not Star Wars, but secretly hoping it is anyway. Would love if Mario Kart World DLC featured and we got a surprise or two from Capcom, but I know the rule of these things is to expect nothing and not be disappointed.
That said, as excited as I am, there’s no way I’m staying up to watch the thing. I’ll just catch the news in the morning on GC!
Cranston
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Place your bets
Looking forward to today/tomorrow and The Game Awards. I’m a bit worried that all the secrets have already been spoiled but I guess we’ll see. At the very least there’s always some cool indie reveals that come out of nowhere. I’m pretty sure this was where No Man’s Sky was shown for the first time?
I’m personally going to bet on Half-Life 3 not being there, but I could see Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 and we’re definitely getting Tomb Raider and Resident Evil Requiem. I hope that Tomb Raider is good and not just another remake.
The series is in a bad spot now and it really needs to make a mark again. I’m a big worried this is something that was ordered relatively recently, because the mainline game is nowhere near finished, but the last thing you need is a sloppily made remake that’s going to make newcomers wonder what all the fuss was ever about. I mean, we only had the remasters recently anyway.
Here’s hoping it’s all a good surprise and not the bad kind. At least we get to see Saros as well.
Sagat
Rest in peace
Sad to hear about another company going under, with Three Fields, as their game Wreckreation didn’t do well. I wasn’t surprised though as the game was clearly unfinished and they charged £35 for it. If they released it cheaper and in early access, I think it could have done better.
I have had some fun with it and I can see the potential it had, but it got me wondering who is responsible for pricing is it the devs or the publishers. If it’s the publishers then they have stuffed it right up, like so many other games. Shame, as I’m still waiting for another good Burnout game.
Rob
GC: Typically, it’s the publisher that sets the price, in this case THQ Nordic. With an effectively indie title like this though Three Fields may have had more input than if it was a triple-A game, so it’s hard to say unless they comment on the issue.
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Mission accomplished
I set myself a goal of a 100,000 Achievement score. I’ve got to 99,999. That’s basically 20 years of Xbox in my life. Now people are saying Xbox is dead. I’m not sure if I should be sad or happy. In one sense, this will free up time for PC and VR gaming. On the other hand, I don’t want the hideous PlayStation 5, the slim version isn’t any better.
I love my PlayStation 4 Slim, so I’ll have to make do with what I’ve got I suppose.
First world problems are the worst. Where is my TV ad?
Bobwallett
GC: Xbox hardware is dead, or at least dying. Xbox as a service, publisher, and brand is not.
Single product economy
I’m fascinated to see what Activision is going to do to make good on their promise to innovate with Call Of Duty, because I don’t see how they could possibly do anything in this short amount of time. These games take years to make so either next year’s is, coincidentally, supper innovative or they’re not even going to be able to respond to anything for two or three years.
I really have no sympathy. They dropped the ball long ago with Call Of Duty and got super complacent, especially after Black Ops 6 went down okay. That’s looking more and more like a blip though and there’s going to be blood on the carpet if Call Of Duty doesn’t recover fully. I can only imagine what Microsoft thinks of the situation.
Right about now, I imagine this £60+ billion company is wishing it had more than just one product to sell.
Denko
The Legend of Samus
RE: Close my eyes while Metroid Prime 4’s non-player characters are on screen. I’ll check if it has any accessibility options for the visually impaired and can be played like that.
But the game’s a treat for the eyes, it’s the unwelcome back-seating and asides that niggle. Sony’s recent games have been guilty of it too.
Give me Zelda: Breath Of The Wild’s surprisingly hands-off and hardcore approach any day.
But it did make me wonder if I could do the audio equivalent of closing my eyes and mute the characters, have no subtitles, and get a bit more of that isolation vibe from the first game.
It doesn’t sound like I’ll be missing out of anything. The story isn’t good, the characters aren’t good, and Samus is already mute. Scanning also provides loads of information.
I think I’ll give it a go. Be interesting to find out.
Simundo
Missing leaks
It’s not even out yet and already questions are being asked in Parliament about GTA 6. Although in this case I have to say I’m not exactly rooting for Rockstar. Who knows what really went on but if all these people were leaking secret company information… where is it?
It seems like years since we had any proper leaks about the game. It basically all happened before the first trailer and since then we’ve had basically nothing. Hope it works out for all involved.
Tenor
The rudest number
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about those Xbox Pornhub stats, especially the fact that the percentage drop was the most lewd number possible. But It really does highlight the trouble Microsoft is in. Pornhub hasn’t got any bias to formats or anything, they’re just reporting their stats, and they happen to show that people suddenly stopped using their Xboxes all of a sudden over the last year.
It’s obviously not just porn, I bet that people have just stopped using the console in general. Microsoft pretends it doesn’t care about this, but I really don’t see how they come back from it. It doesn’t matter what their new hardware is, nobody but the ultra hardcore are going to trust them again, and the loyalists are all going to slowly disappear over time anyway.
If the next gen Xbox is a PC then maybe it’ll sell (although I bet it’ll be too expensive to be mainstream) but where does that leave the Xbox brand? It wouldn’t be any different than EA or Ubisoft putting their name on a PC. There’d be nothing exclusive or special about it, anyone could make the same thing themselves if they bought the right components.
My biggest concern is that Microsoft, as we have seen before, is a bad loser and will take down much of the games industry with them. Owning so many studios now seems more dangerous than ever and I worry they’ll shut them down rather than sell them off.
Microsoft must be deeply regretting buying Activision Blizzard by now and I get the feeling the people above Phil Spencer have lost interesting in gaming already. It’s a sad end to the Xbox project.
Cuit
Inbox also-rans
Why do you think it’s OK to put game spoilers in your headlines? I’m looking at the article mentioning Leon will be in Resident Evil Requiem.
Anon
GC: It’s the box art for the game.
I’m getting worried we haven’t heard anything about Arkane’s Blade game since it was announced. I’m worried the legacy of Redfall is going to make it an easy target for being cancelled. Is there any rumour that it might be at The Game Awards?
Sully
GC: It’s not rumoured as far as we know.
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