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Games Inbox: The next Legend Of Zelda game, Concord banality, and Summer Game Fest 2024 pessimism-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

The Tuesday letters page laments the slow but inevitable death of GAME, as one reader looks forward to Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past artwork (Nintendo)

The Tuesday letters page laments the slow but inevitable death of GAME, as one reader looks forward to Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree.

To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Return to Hyrule
I’m intrigued by the thought of what the next Zelda game will be, since we know it won’t be a mainline sequel, since they were taking five years or more even back in the day of Ocarina Of Time. Twilight Princess or The Wind Waker ports are the boring and most probable answer but even if they’re literally the next ones there’s still got to be multiple new games between them and the new sequel.

I would welcome more remakes, as I thought Link’s Awakening worked well and any of the top-down games will be fun to see in a similar style. I’ve seen some people suggest a 3D remake for A Link To The Past but I’m not sure how that would work given how dense (and perfectly designed) that map is.

I’d definitely be up for a Wind Waker extended edition but I think the boat has sailed on that one (see what I did there?!). I would also be interested in some more smaller, more experimental games. Perhaps something in the style of Bowser’s Fury, which was bundled with the remaster of Super Mario 3D World.

I could see that as being how they introduce the idea of a playable Zelda and see how people take to that. Interesting stuff, I think, but I doubt any of it will be revealed this month.
Wendel

The people have spoken
Sad to hear about the end of GAME’s reward points system, which is surely the final step before the whole company is shut down. Maybe they’ll keep it going as a website but at that point why not just buy from Amazon instead?

It’s nobody’s fault. I don’t think there’s anything particularly incompetent about GAME leadership, their problems are simply that most people buy digitally now and even when they don’t they buy online, who needs a high street store? Or even one inside another shop?

If they still did second-hand games I think there’d be more of a reason to keep them going but even that was only going to deny the inevitable. As usual, convenience has triumphed over consumer benefits and while I’m mad about it I also realise there’s nothing I can do about it.
Corston

Tragically uninteresting
I didn’t watch the PlayStation State of Play until today and now I wish I just hadn’t bothered at all. I knew it was going to be a disappointment, but it was even worse than I thought. I didn’t realise Concord was literally half of the whole thing. That made it even worse, knowing that Sony thought everyone was going to be excited by it.

Generic doesn’t even begin to describe how boring it looked. And the whole skit in the diner, or whatever it was supposed to be, was awful. It wasn’t even painful, it just wasn’t funny. Not in a way that’s embarrassing or interesting just bleh.

And then when they showed gameplay that was just as bland predictable, like someone took all the first person shooters from the last 10 years, but them in a blender, and puked them up over the screen. Just tragically uninteresting stuff. PlayStation is truly lost.
Sharpie

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Big and small world
In response to the Reader’s Feature on game length, at the end of the day it’s about choice. I ploughed Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom for 200 hours, then moved to three relatively short games: Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown, Metroid Dread, and then Metroid Prime Remastered.

Following this I have just began Kingdom Come: Deliverance (yes, I know it looks like in some areas they filmed it using a Maris Piper on the Switch), which I believe will keep me going for at least 100 hours. And guess what? I’ve loved having the choice. For me I like the odd big game interspersed (Tears Of The Kingdom, Breath Of The Wild, The Witcher 3) with some shorter fare (those mentioned above and my annual play through of Alien Isolation, the best Switch port ever).
James Monnelly, Channel Islands

Poor show
Just when you thought 2024 couldn’t get any worse for gaming we get the non-event of Sony’s latest State of Play and now an admission that this year’s Summer Game Fest is going to be a dud too. Hopefully it’ll be better than PlayStation but they’re still clearly setting us up for it not being anything major.

Maybe Xbox can take advantage and have more to show off but while I expect it to be the ‘best’ of the bunch I still don’t think it’ll have much in the way of new announcements. It’s not even reasonable to expect Nintendo to steal the show, since they’re just treading water until the Switch 2.

Truly, the video games industry has met with a terrible fate.
Mimic

Slowing down
Although it’s good news to hear Naughty Dog is working on multiple single-player games I have to question when exactly any of them are going to come out. None of them have been announced yet, and probably won’t be this year, which means the earliest you could expect one to be out is late 2025 at the most – more likely probably 2026.

I looked it up and Neil Druckmann is 45 and he’s made a grand total of seven games, and only two in the last 10 years. By the same age Steven Spielberg had made 18 movies as director and despite being 77 he’s made six films in the last 10 years, plus dozens of producer roles.

Video games don’t just take too long to make, they’re draining the lives of developers away, to the point where someone that’s been in the business basically all of their working life has still only made a handful. No wonder he doesn’t want Naughty Dog to just be The Last Of Us factory, he doesn’t want that to be the only thing he does either.

That’ll be one reason why he put a stop to that Last Of Us Online game and I bet he resented all those pointless remakes too. If only every developer had as much power as he did, maybe things would be better overall for gaming – instead of everything worrying about what the shareholders will think.
Cody

Cold reality
I initially pre-ordered the PlayStation 5 VR2 set but cancelled the order after realising there were not many decent games available.

Has the situation changed now? I’m thinking of buying it cheaper – second-hand – but it’s still expensive and after Horizon, Resident Evil 4, Rez, Moss, and maybe Star Wars: Squadrons, what else is there?
Rave

GC: More than a year after launch, Sony still hasn’t announced a new first party title for it. There are plenty of good games, with Skydance’s Behemoth and the new Alien game featured during last week’s State of Play, but we’d struggle to recommend it for anything close to the official asking price.

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