Games Inbox: Best Star Wars video game 2024, Concord failure, and life after Half-Life 3-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

The best Star Wars game? (Lucasfilm Games)

The Tuesday letters page is keen for the PS6 to be a hybrid console like the Switch, as one reader hopes Black Myth: Wukong means more single-player games.

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Force sensitive
Very interesting review of Star Wars Outlaws from GC, seeing you struggling with whether to recommend a game that doesn’t do anything new but is elevated by being a good tie-in to what it’s based on. Although I think the other problem with appraising a game like that is that open world games have been perfected to such a science, in large part by Ubisoft, that they’re mostly all very competent and mostly all exactly the same.

I can’t think of any open world game that was actively bad, just lots that are very samey and this seems to be exactly that, with lots of things taken from different games – mostly other Ubisoft games. I will probably buy the game but only when it’s discounted. Ubisoft games always get massive price cuts and since we’re only a few months away from Black Friday now I am willing to bet good money it’ll be at least £50 by then, if not less.

The Star Wars Jedi game are okay but for me they’re too similar to Dark Souls and I don’t really feel that fits the universe. I really do think that Knights Of The Old Republic is the last time we had a classic Star Wars game and yet somehow there’s only two of them and no sign of either the promised remake or a sequel. I would’ve preferred that a hundred times over compared to a new Dragon Age.
Trench

Business logic
I’m not at all surprised to hear Sony are considering making a new portable console, especially after the success of PlayStation Portal. After the success of the Switch it seems only sensible that other consoles would become hybrids, especially as the technology to beam the screen onto the TV becomes easier.

I would be surprised if the next gen Xbox and PlayStation 6 weren’t both hybrids. It’d hardly be the first time they’ve copied Nintendo’s ideas, and it just makes simple business sense. The concept has been proven it works, normal console sales are going down, so the logical solution is to copy the success story that’s doing something different.

What interests me is what Sony and Microsoft are going to do about the decreased power that comes with a portable console. I don’t see how they can release something in two years’ time, or thereabouts, that is even the same power as a PlayStation 5, let alone more so. I guess if they charge thousands for them it could, but that doesn’t seem viable.
Xeno

Your announcement is in another Direct
I love that Nintendo are basically trolling us now with all these Directs. One for a museum, a new indie one, and a third party one. Were these really necessary for anything other than making people think the Switch 2 is going to be announced and then not doing it?

I doubt they were thinking of it like that, but I could easily see another one or two Directs for their first party games this year, which really doesn’t seem to leave space for the Switch 2. My bet was always for a January or February reveal and I’m sticking with that.
Johnson

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Bullet dodging
So, what I’m learning from the success of Black Myth: Wukong is that Chinese gamers are suddenly discovering the joys of single-player games. If this is going to lead to a sudden spike in them being made by everyone, I am not going to complain one bit. Surely Chinese developers will want to create similar games to try and win over the same audience, and Western developers will want to prove their expertise by competing as well.

With the failure of Concord, I really am hoping that the era of live service games is coming to an end and that it will actually have lasted a relatively short time, as long as you accept that the mega franchises like Fortnite will probably be around forever.

I think we’ve actually been pretty lucky really. Loot boxes never took over, NFT barely took off at all, and now the latest nonsense is hopefully coming to an end too. I’m sure there’ll be another scam eventually but hopefully we can have a least a few quiet years of just making great game instead.
Focus

Risk vs. reward
I couldn’t help agreeing with the Reader’s Feature about Concord. Its failure is so massive that it has got to change Sony’s thinking. As many have pointed out, a live service game can be a massive hit but more likely it’ll be a complete flop. Which is different to single-player games where it’s unusual for them to fail unless they’re really bad.

Sure, you can bet everything on a game being the next Fortnite but if it fails you get nothing. It’s worse because there’s no way to predict what will be big and what won’t, so it’s not like it’s a predicable logic you can follow or get right. Seems to me the sensible decision is just to go back to making single-player games.
Randy

Mask and flippers
Nice review of Star Wars Outlaws. I particularly enjoyed your nerdy nitpicks, which was exactly what it sounded like. But I do think you make a good point about how Disney has handled aliens. The George Lucas movies were filled with weird aliens. He obviously enjoyed adding as many as possible and making them up whenever some were becoming too familiar.

Nowadays though you hardly get any in any given show and even when you do they are, as you say, just very obvously a human in a mask. It annoys me that Rogue One and Andor, the two best post-Disney things, have hardly any aliens, while the worst ones, like The Last Jedi and The Rise Of Skywalker have lots. I guess Tony Gilroy doesn’t like too many aliens but J. J. Abrams does? It’s unfortunate it’s that way round.

It seems so strange that a video game would follow the same path and have only the more simplistic aliens, although from what I’ve seen Jabba looks the great. But kudos on knowing what a Chandra-Fan is anyway. I’m curious, what are the most common aliens, although I think I can guess based on the ones that are in the shows most often.
Dunstan

GC: We had to look up what a Chadra-Fan was called, but we recognised it immediately. The most common aliens in the game are Twi’leks, Rodians, Sullustans, Weequay, Mon Calamari, Trandoshans, Aqualish, and Quarren. So, yes, exactly the same as the most common ones in the Disney+ shows.

Free love
I was sat watching a relative play a platform game over the bank holiday, and they were talking me through what they were doing.

As they collected a heart icon, instead of saying they’d collected some health or life, they said they had collected some love. And I thought that was just wonderful!
Julian 

Own worst enemy
Amongst all the ‘Xbox is dead’ noise, both Indiana Jones and Avowed have previewed well. It’s a familiar scenario for Xbox to consistently undermine any positivity.

I recall when Microsoft purchased Bethesda, there was controversy over the prospect of games becoming Xbox exclusives. They created an expectation within the Xbox fanbase. A ‘case-by-case basis was the flimsy explanation. The FTC documents revealed otherwise, with many games being Xbox only. 

So now that dwindling console sales has altered their strategy, it’s become an embarrassing U-turn. Bethesda games remaining multiformat should have been the messaging from the outset. 

I do feel a timed-exclusive strategy (six month period) could have worked. But we have Indiana Jones And The Great Circle as a timed exclusive, whereas Doom: The Dark Ages is day-and-date on PlayStation 5. There is no consistency. Avowed will absolutely go to PlayStation 5 at a later date, along with Starfield. The Elder Scrolls 6 will probably be day-and-date. You can’t operate a business with such inconsistency. 

Do I think Halo, Gears Of War, Perfect Dark or Fable will go to PlayStation 5? It doesn’t really matter what the truth is. Phil Spencer has created uncertainty over their entire portfolio. I don’t think they appreciate how much it will backfire if the *full slate* becomes a reality. 

If the PS5 Pro is released, and you can play superior versions of games like Indiana Jones, that could be the tipping point for many Xbox fans. This year’s Call Of Duty could be very interesting. I suspect Game Pass day-and-date is at fault, which has driven this multiformat strategy to help subsidise it.
Si

Inbox also-rans
So, if Half-Life 3 does come out what is going to be the next dream game sequel? I can’t think of anything obvious, it’d be like having Nessie proven to be real.
LOK

Just an FYI but a Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver graphic novel just crushed it on Kickstarter, making more than 40 times its goal. Sounds like there’s a lot of eager fans still out there.
Boycie

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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.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

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