Entertainment
Games Inbox: Uncharted: Legacy Of Thieves Collection rip-off, Ubisoft NFT worries, and Call Of Duty decline
Not the best value remaster ever (pic: Sony)
The Wednesday Inbox thinks a Zelda: Ocarina Of Time remake is a bad idea, as one reader celebrates getting an Xbox Series X.
PLEASE NOTE: As we get our own Christmas and New Year content ready for the end of the year, please consider sending in your own festive Reader’s Feature to run over the Christmas break. It can be on any subject but if there’s something you’ve been meaning to write in about, but never got around to, now would be a good time for it.
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And that’s what really hurts
Every publisher ends up being their own worst enemy at some point, usually multiple points, but Sony really are doing it to themselves at the moment. Not only have we not heard a peep out of them in months, giving Microsoft free reign over Christmas, but the one exception has been announcing the release date for Uncharted: Legacy Of Thieves Collection, which sounds like an absolute and complete rip-off.
Not only does it have no extra content it has less content than the originals! And despite being a PlayStation 4 game, which should be easier to run on a PlayStation 5, it still has to have three graphic modes to get in all the options.
If it was being released for £15 or so I’d let it slide, but £45?! Are Sony insane? And then they do the absolute worst thing of taking the originals off the PlayStation Store, while charging you £10 for an upgrade – if you’re even eligible.
I’m sorry, but anyone that buys this needs to have a word with themselves because this might just be the worst deal of the last and current generation put together. Shame on Sony for treating customers like this and trying to milk them and the game so blatantly.
Simun
Discord accord
I turned round in bed this morning, just in time to notice a Discord notification. It quickly took me straight through to Currys’ website where an Xbox Series X bundle was waiting for me. £679 obtained me an Xbox Series X, 1TB expansion card, and three months of Game Pass. Thankfully I was able to check out as a guest, as my password was not recognised even though I had reset it. Only thing is I’d ordered a cheaper 1TB expansion card a few days ago from eBay unboxed (but new) for £160 that’s currently on its way.
I’m assuming it’s mostly bundles that are available to bring in more money for the retailers and also to put off the scalpers who do not want to be stuck with £200 worth of accessories they can’t move on without a financial loss occurring.
Thank you and a shout out to Andrew J who helped me with the Discord app and another who helped out but I can’t quite remember their name. I’m hoping you know who you are and a big thanks goes out to you too.
Chaosphere616 (gamertag)
New before renew
I’m unconvinced about the need for a Zelda: Ocarina Of Time remake as it is but I definitely wouldn’t want it to look like that bland tech demo by a fan. I admire his creativity but it just looks too generic, with Link looking particular bad but also all the houses are just boring and lacking in personality.
I can’t believe Nintendo would do it like that but I’m also not sure there’s much to gain from a remake. The 3DS remasters worked very well I thought, and actually changed quite a bit in terms of tightening things up, including the graphics. That’s really all that’s needed I think, and I just keep re-releasing them or maybe just spruce them up a little bit.
The problem for remakes, to me, is it takes so much time and effort away from making new games. I’ve already played those games, they’re great, now I want to play new ones. Breath Of The Wild and its follow-up are a 100 times more interesting to me than the idea of a remake of any 3D game.
Glinch
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Change of name
The Platinum range for PlayStation 1 and 2 became the Essential range for PlayStation 3 and the Hits range on PlayStation 4, all offering a selection of games priced £19.99.
Meanwhile, the cyclic price reductions of games on PS Store means that gamers have a wide choice of being already able to purchase games at reduced pricing, with some PlayStation 5 titles already selling, on physical and digital formats, for much less than RRP.
Steve, South Wales
Regarding gaz be rotten and the PlayStation Platinum range. The Platinum range continued on PlayStation 2 and 3. I myself took risks on games I wasn’t sure of at this budget price and was so glad I did, as I discovered gems like Devil May Cry and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, which are some of my favourite ever games now. Then on PlayStation 3 it became the PS3 Essentials range (with a red spine, etc. instead of Platinum’s silver).
On PlayStation 4 it has now been labelled as PlayStation Hits (keeping the red colour) and a lot of top titles are now in this range including Uncharted 4, God If War and Horizon Zero Dawn, all available for between £15-20 (cheaper at times, like Black Friday!).
I’m guessing that Sony will continue this in some way onto PlayStation 5 when the games have been out longer, although I bet they won’t be under £20!
LastYearsModel
GC: That release of Uncharted 4 is especially notable, as it’s now the only way to purchase the game on its own.
Watertight show
Still not hearing much in terms of rumours for The Game Awards that interests me. Hellblade 2, Sonic Frontiers, some new game from the guy that used to make Battlefield… these are not reveals that I would put on a par with Elden Ring.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be bigger news on the site but if so it’s impressive that so many secrets have been kept, right up to the last minute. I makes you wonder just how many ‘leaks’ are really just plants by publishers for whatever reason.
It seems that when they do want to keep a secret they can do it pretty easily, and I wish they’d make the effort more often because I hate finding out about a game first through some potato cam footage or a T-shirt logo or whatever.
Sterry
Declining interest
Interesting to see that the player count might already be dropping on Call Of Duty: Vanguard, at least on the Xbox. TrueAchievements’ latest gameplay chart, which is based on a small-ish sample of 2.6 million active accounts, shows that Vanguard has dropped from 5th to 7th (overtaken by Minecraft and GTA 5) and Modern Warfare from 3rd to 4th (replaced by Fortnite). The latter is of course based on multiple people playing Warzone as well.
For balance, Battlefield 2042 has also dropped from 15th to 16th on the Xbox Series X/S and from 19th to 21st on the Xbox One.
Halo Infinite’s multiplayer has of course now launched and held firm at number 1, so I wonder if people have moved across to this.
I never really felt that Call Of Duty would be dethroned for a meaningful period of time, but all of the rumours and data coming out do seem to point to the latest iteration struggling more than most. I wonder if it can be attributed to the time period, though. I don’t think too many were clamouring for a return to WW2 again.
Big shout out to Lawn Mowing Simulator at 33 – it’s amazing what Game Pass can do for a game! It is even ahead of Evil Genius 2: World Domination at 37.
NatorDom
No more chances
I can’t get excited about a new Sonic game again, I just can’t. It might be a new idea but what you have to realise is that it’s always the same people making them. Sonic Team have proven time and time again that they cannot make 3D games and I’m not looking forward to that coming true again.
As far as I’m concerned the only Sonic games that should ever be made from now on are Sonic Mania 2 and a 3D game by an outside developer (preferably Insomniac or Nintendo, not that that would ever happen).
Calliope
More: Gaming
Horse armour part 2
I’ve just got halfway through a news story on BBC News online about Ubisoft launching its NFT ‘experiment’ and it sounds bad, worse than you might think.
I’ve only got halfway through the article, it’s a long read, but the gist of what I’ve read so far seems to be that gamers will be encouraged to link a crypto wallet to what I assume to be their Ubisoft accounts.
They will then be able to buy NFT in the form of skins and other cosmetics; here’s the kicker, the skins will all be identical, just like skins in Fortnite or whatever, but they will have a unique serial number that no other skin will have. Sounds great… no really.
The example given is that a helmet might have the one-off serial number stamped into it. So you get an item that is the same as everyone else’s but has a unique number, it conjures up an image of online shooter players standing around admiring each other’s unique helmets.
Players will be able to buy and sell different numbers and the serial number will have a list of who owned it previously, I imagine a celebrity of some sort would have a much higher price on their serial number than I would.
They say they have found a way around the environmental cost of all this but so far that’s all I’ve read and I’m sceptical. I seriously doubt Ubisoft give even the least amount of farts about the environment over how much money they are hoping to make through the NFTs.
I was going to say that I hope with this, gamers who don’t like it join together for a change and try to kill it off before it can make Ubisoft money and it becomes the norm. If it does take off and make them significant amounts of money it’s not going to be long before other developers decide they want a piece of the action.
Then I realised how ridiculous it was of me to hope gamers could come together in the first place. It never happened with horse armour or broken games being released at full price, with the promise of a patch later, and it’s not going to happen with these NFT things.
Mitchell
GC: EA and Ubisoft announced their interest in NFT a while back. Some publishers, such as Microsoft, have been more sceptical but if gamers allow NFT to become successful they’ll quickly become ubiquitous.
Inbox also-rans
Have you noticed the similarity between Halo Infinite’s home screen and a Bob Ross painting?
Dirtystopout
GC: We’ve never really understood who Bob Ross is.
Are Sony trying to do Microsoft’s marketing for them with this Uncharted stuff? And who’s in charge of these decisions at Sony? Dick Dastardly?!
Charlie
This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Korbie, who asks what game have you thought about the most while not actually playing it?
While stuck at work or school it’s common to daydream about what you’ll play when you get home, but what game has filled your thoughts the most and why? Were you planning out new strategies and tactics or just imagining what it’d be like to get further?
Have you ever literally dreamt about a game and how did that go? Did the dream place you in the game world or was it something related to the reality of playing it?
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The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.
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