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The thing about Big Business these days is that when you get Big Numbers, that normally leads to Bigger Business, right up to the point the well has not only dried up, but turned to dust. So, when you have a game like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, now winner of many Geoff Keighleys and seller of many copies, you might assume that developer Sandfall Interactive would increase the size of their operations. Apparently, you would be wrong!
The end of a very short era is here! I guess, if you care about the life cycles of tech products made by multi-billion dollar companies. It appears that the days of the original LCD model of the Steam Deck is coming to an end, as a quiet notice from Valve suggests their focus will be with the slightly newer, shinier OLED line of handheld gaming devices.
I’ve always found PowerWash Simulator‘s Big Brand Collabs slightly odd, if a touch humorous. They don’t always make much sense to me, like the SpongeBob one, though I will admit that the Shrek one does feel like a good fit, even if I am loath to look at intellectual property. And now here we are with its sequel, PowerWash Simulator 2, with its first bit of DLC freshly announced, sending prospective powerwashers off to a distant land called Ooo from the seminal Adventure Time.
I mean, all you can do is laugh, right? You’ve probably already guessed at what based on the headline, but we’ll dig a little deeper into this all the same. Yes, Ark 2 has been delayed, the same Ark 2 that was revealed almost exactly five years ago, that was at one point in time promised to release in 2023, and then 2024, and then sort of half-heartedly slated for 2027, before landing where we are now, with the news that the game is currently planned for release in 2028. Uhuh!
I went into Dispatch with a goal in mind: Be a hard-ass. Seeing the trailers for Adhoc’s revival of Telltale’s signature cinematic, choice-focused story games, I figured it would be fun to roleplay its lead, Robert Robertson, as a straight-shooting boss who only deals in tough love.
I used to play every Telltale game with a character arc in mind, largely to see whether they could bend enough to allow my interpretation. And Dispatch’s world of superheroes caught in the corporate machine handed me the perfect set-up for my story.
Dave The Diver took over my PC around Christmas in 2023. I found Mintrocket’s wonderfully charming restaurant manager/ocean explorer a joy to flipper around the depths of, battling big fish, discovering ancient civilisations, and then returning to the surface to do some sushi waitering. I’ve honestly not thought about returning in a while, but the fresh look the devs have just offered at their upcoming In the Jungle DLC has me very much pencilling one in.
A platoon of Tingi, strange mutant babies that a goose with a very long neck keeps vomiting out, march along in Santa hats. As they crawl, fall, and drop into drinks which serve as orange-hued progenating pools where they merge with others to form bigger tingi, they earn money. Millions and billions of cash bills a minute at this point. It collates in a piggy bank far below, beneath the base of the goose’s neck, which just out of the stomach of a rather bemused beachgoer. Everything’s as it should be in Tingus Goose. Well, nearly everything.
The nights are heavy, the sun is frail. The mountain moans its hunger. The rivers are frozen scars and the trees are become hard flashes of black lightning. Bells haunt the wind and peculiar bearded men appear in the fireplaces, to be chased away with pies and brandy. The roses, strangely, are in bloom.
Put on your slippers. Stoke the embers. Pull up a chair. It is time to remember. It is time to renew. It is time to succumb to a growing addiction. It is time… to play Skeal.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted Command & Conquer to come back. Some things are just gone, a product of their time, your fondness for them tied to some ephemeral capacity or limitation long since stretched out or hammered in by time and, in the case of games, a wealth of fresher and more convenient alternatives.
But Tempest Rising is not C&C again. Even though I’ve summarised it as such in a few emails, given the clear similarity of its design and setting. It feels more like an original work made with modern tools by a second team with roughly the same remit, and while I don’t love it, I enjoy and respect it so much more than a flat remake.
Larian hope to offer “more insight” into their usage of generative AI via an ask me anything session set to take place in the new year. It’ll also be a chance to ask more general questions about Divinity, if you fancy. Naturally, this all comes after the Geoff announcement of the Baldur’s Gate 3 devs’ next RPG was swiftly followed by comments from CEO Swen Vincke which revealed the studio are making limited use of generative AI.
