Author: A.K.H.

I played the latest update of Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League almost by accident. This update, which is Episode 2 of the first season, came out on May 23, 2024, and it just so happened that I didn’t have anything to do after work that day. If it had come out on May 22 or May 24, I would have probably found myself watching cricket, but on May 23, I was free. Also, my PS5 was switched on, and since my games update automatically, I noticed that Suicide Squad was recently updated. So I decided to have a look. And as it turns out, it was a happy accident.

As we get closer to June, it’s time to gear up for a month full of gaming announcements, demos and a general feeling of excitement for the rest of the year in games. June has been one of the most important months of the year for gamers for more than 20 years, because it used to be when the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, used to be held. The expo used to be the one-stop place to learn about all the big announcements about games, consoles and everything in between.

Then of course, the pandemic came around, and it became impossible to conduct the expo in its usual format. E3 2019 was the last in-person event, and E3 2021 was the first and also last online event, after which the expo itself was cancelled.

However, from 2020 onwards, we started getting used to another format of consuming news in June, and that is through the many digital streams conducted by publishers and event organisers. And for most of us, who have only ever watched E3 events online, this felt familiar. Actually, it was even better, because a lot of these new online events brought along with them demos and gameplay videos that previously used to be limited to those who attended E3 in-person.

So yes, while it’s sad to lose E3, what we have gained in return isn’t too bad. And let’s look at what we have lined up in 2024, which is gearing up to be one of the most financially challenging years in the industry.

This is not a review of the Hades 2 early access release, because we don’t know how much is going to change between now and the final release of the game. Instead, this video talks about a few early impressions about the state of the game as it exists in late May 2024, and whether this game really needed to exist in the first place.

On March 20th, 2013, Valve officially announced the early access feature on steam, the largest video game marketplace for the Windows platform. The first batch of early access games was a modest list of just 12 titles, out of which Arma 3, Kerbal Space Program and Prison Architect are the most recognisable ones. As of May 2024, Steam now has more than 11,000 titles in Early Access. It’s clearly a popular business model that has worked wonders for a lot of developers and publishers.

However, as recently seen in the case of Wayfinder, things don’t always work out.

Should we categorise games as Indie, only when the studios that make them have produced them without any external influence? This is difficult, since a lot of indie games are published by external studios, which provide funding and other support that helps the games come to the market, and in return they do have some sort of influence on the game’s production.

Halo Infinite will turn 3 years old later this year. And the game’s core audience seems…happy. The multiplayer section of the game, which is what players keep coming back for, has been receiving steady updates that have kept the loyal playerbase satisfied, if not extremely happy. However, it is fair to say that Halo as a brand is not as strong as it once was, and is struggling to attract new players. And it’s not as if we can blame only the newer games like Apex Legends or Fortnite for this; even Call of Duty – a brand that is almost as old as Halo (show 2001 vs 2003) has managed to reinvent itself to attract newer audiences and is now arguably coasting on its success by releasing half-baked annual games. The irony is that Microsoft now owns both Halo and Call of Duty, so I wonder how much longer the Halo brand can go on at this rate. Won’t it make more sense for Microsoft to simply retire the brand and focus on making more Call of Duty games? Only time will tell.

After four years in development, Brocula is finally here. This video is an early review, sort of my first impressions, after playing for around 4 hours. The developer has said that finishing the game will take quite long, more than 40 hours, so I wanted to take my time to play it instead of rushing it for a review, which I used to do with my game reviews last year. That was very hectic, so this time, I’m putting out this early review first, and will post a full review after I finish the game. There will be minor spoilers ahead.

AAA – what does this term even mean? Well, history indicates that the this term was borrowed from the financial industry, where AAA bonds are considered to be one of the safest investments, followed by AA, A and so on, all the way till C. Similarly, in video games, the tag AAA was attached to games that were considered to offer the lowest risk to publishers. All they had to do was advertise the game heavily, and the publishers could be assured of high returns. Since no one formally defined this term, over time, its definition began to change from “low-risk games” to “games made on a high budget by a large team”.
These days, AAA games are expected to offer best-in-class graphics, several dozens of hours of gameplay and much more, in order to justify their selling price of $70. In a lot of cases, they also have several higher-priced editions that offer extra content, most of which is considered unnecessary by the community.

But let us go back a bit to look at the originally intended definition of AAA games. Games that are considered to be safe investments by the publisher. That is certainly no longer the case these days, and in fact, it is quite the opposite. Making AAA games is a high-risk endeavour that requires hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, with almost no guarantee that you will break even, let alone make a decent profit.

Talking about Redfall almost feels bad. It’s like kicking someone when they’re down. A lot has been said about how Redfall had a terrible launch, how it became a joke for having a $70 price tag and how Arkane Studios essentially went radio silent after releasing the game. But this is not another Redfall bashing video. It’s more of a “looking back at the game after a year” sort of video. Yes, it’s already been a year since the game came out, and unless the developers announce something between the time this video is recorded and it is published, there doesn’t seem to be anything planned for the one year anniversary. Not that anyone is expecting some kind of celebration, but some people are waiting for Arkane to release the content that they promised in the more expensive Bite Back edition. That’s the bare minimum that the community is expecting – just to get the two characters that they were promised. Beyond that, I don’t think anyone expects to get any more support for this game.