Category: Season 3

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.

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.

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.

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.

We are living in the age of overflowing video content. Movies, TV shows, web series, satisfy the demand for long-form content, and we also have an endless stream of short-form content on social media apps. In this ocean of content is a niche that appeals to people who want to stay closer to reality – and that is the niche of Documentaries. There are documentaries available on nearly every subject these days, and video games are no exception. In this video, let us take a look at some of the well-known documentaries that cover the video game industry.

Warner Bros. Games is in a strange position. Last year, they published a game that managed to outsell Call of Duty, and this year, they published a game that is on track to becoming the biggest flops of the year. Yes, this video is going to discuss Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. This is not a review, because no one seems that interested to play this game anyway. This is more of a brief analysis at what happened with this game, and what we can learn from its mistakes. Heavy spoilers ahead, but if you haven’t already seen them, you probably don’t care at this point.