The GR Report is a weekly series that highlights the best news, features, comments, and more from GameRevolution’s readers and writers. Read on to see if you’ve been featured!
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News of the week
Stadia of Shite
Google’s Stadia was announced during GDC 2019, with the search engine giant revealing its plans to propel video games into the future with its cloud gaming service. Unfortunately, this leaves people like me behind, as my internet is currently powered by two hamsters furiously spinning on a wheel.
The Stadia looks impressive and all, but what about those of us with slow internet speeds and data caps? If this is why the industry is heading, it’s pretty depressing that it’s going to lock so many out of enjoying it. Tyler Treese addressed this in his feature ‘Google Stadia is the future of gaming, but it isn’t the now’ and our community had some strong thoughts.
“Oh god that really is the controller? It looks so uncomfortable,” GrimmyReaper commented. “Anyway, I doubt it. Google is a great search engine but they are also the people behind YouTube and the Google Play store. Both are fucking embarrassing in terms of how they handle it. Not inspiring much hope for this.”
“If this is the future of gaming, I won’t be gaming in the future,” Bufford concurred. “Sounds terrible. Not all of us have Silicone Valley grade internet…”
It seems that Google has a lot to do if it wants to prove to players that they should abandon their home consoles and move into a digital-only future.
Steam bombs its review bombs
News of Valve employing new policies to combat review bomb campaigns on Steam was controversial. While review bomb campaigns are always nothing more than impotent death rattles from the perennially outraged, GR users discussed how Valve’s vague definitions of what constitutes as “off-topic” reviews could be harmful.
“This isn’t a good thing,” DJJ66 commented. “According to the new rules pointing out DRM and EULA abuse would no longer qualify as a review, which is absolutely asinine and should be something pointed out to consumers who are unaware.”
However, there were some who pointed out that the absence of review bomb campaigns will be a net positive for video games.
“I think user reviews in general have become useless due to too many bad actors,” boba1701 said. “I never know if the issue is the product itself, something political, something petty, some sort of fanboyism, or what. I don’t blame Steam Valve at all for what they’re doing and anyone complaining about this is probably guilty of it in some way or other. For anyone else, just need to find a couple of professional reviewers they trust and stick with them. You’ll be happier in the long room than following faceless strangers who may or may not be bots.”
Reviews of the week
- The Division 2, by Mack Ashworth: “Ultimately, The Division 2 is a safe sequel for Massive Entertainment to have made and is a safe purchase for anyone looking to grind for loot in a well-paced, co-op experience set within a gorgeous open world.”
- Valley, by Alex Santa Maria: “Originally releasing in 2016, Valley recently made the jump to Switch. While its short length and level variety make it appealing as a handheld experience, the power of the Switch leaves this edition of the game lacking.”
- Left Alive, by Jason Faulkner: “With how little marketing Square Enix gave Left Alive, it is evident that they had no faith in it. And, they were right. This game is just not good.”
Features of the week
- How the God of War team made Kratos more mature, by Michael Leri: “…this journey wasn’t as easy as tempering Kratos’ bellowing and was instead a long, multi-step process that shaped the weathered warrior into a more down-to-earth human.”
- EVE Aether Wars was a great tech demo (and a terrible game), by Robert N. Adams: “While it made for a great tech demo, EVE Aether Wars failed terribly as a game. Players (and projectiles) vanished into thin air, shots never landed consistently, and the world was awash with rubber-banding. The “game” part of this tech demo showed that a lot of work needed to be done.”
- How Apex Legends evokes the Tetris effect and changes how you think, by Dave Aubrey: “How the Tetris effect expresses itself in Apex Legends works because of how it affects our procedural (or unconscious) memory.”
- From Software’s Best Games Ever, by David Lozada: “For over two decades, the studio has maintained its dedication to crafting the perfect action RPG. To coincide with the upcoming release of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, here are the studio’s best titles since 1994.
What to watch
On the latest edition of GameRevolution Radio, the GR editorial team discussed Minecraft creator Notch’s weird conspiracy theories, the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, and THQ Nordic’s ridiculous 8chan AMA:
What’s happening next week?
Tune in to GameRevolution next week for a bunch of exciting new reviews, features, and more.
- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice review: Jason Faulkner is hard at work playing through Sekiro. His final verdict will be published next week.
- New GameRevolution Radio: Another episode of our Twitch and YouTube show will may to GR on Friday, March 29!
- Keita Takahashi interview: Michael Leri sat down with the Katamari Damacy creator for a discussion about poop, embarrassment, and the guilt of charging people money for video games.
- Yoshi’s Crafted World review: We’ll have a review of the highly anticipated Nintendo Switch platformer.
