“…find him, and close shut the jaws…of Oblivion.”
Holy shit, Patrick Stewart.
Did we give that man a fucking Oscar for best narration of a video game trailer?! Those lines still live rent free in my head to this day because of the gravitas Stewart can deliver with. God damn, I say! Dude could sell jet-skis to peeps living in the Sahara. Unbelievable. I yearn for trailers of that prestige in this day and age, something was definitely flowing in the water in the aughts for video game prerelease hype, that’s for sure. In any case, as amazingly fun as it would be to do a look back at Oblivion, I merely brought that old gem to the forefront, as it ended up popping into my head when I this article from Kotaku involving the hearty chuckle that was horse armor.
So young, much naive. Such armor. Wow.
The irony of article can’t be overstated, though I do take this moment to posit the notion this isn’t even like, new news. I swear I’ve read about these statistics before, maybe even from Kotaku as well. Not to knock their journalistic integrity or anything: sometimes one has to wheel out a golden oldie to remind folks of what was. To wit; horse armor selling well should surprise absolutely no one, as Oblivion was a massive game, DLC was basically a new concept, in many ways, horse armor kind of being the first attempt of even doing it on consoles (I know you could buy additional content online before this, hush), and it was soon after a massive launch and was dirt cheap. I know a lot of people can point their fingers and blame devs for abusing what they see as mercenary like practices for DLC, but it was ultimately gamers that used their wallets to set the standard. Reminds me of two interesting legacy articles I wrote about more than a decade ago on similarly related matters. Mad, innit?
Mad, innit?
Speaking of mad, IGN delivered some insanity with a new trailer and some screenshots involving an upcoming FPS entitled Bad Cheese, which looks to be some kind of psycho-horror romp based on the trauma of surviving an abusive household through the perspective of a mouse young-in who is attempting to survive a weekend with a dysfunctional guardian while the mom is away.
I will be shocked if hiding doesn’t play
a key element in surviving unscathed
The game has a hand drawn art style, and is animated like an old classic 16mm style cartoon film; almost like a mashup of the horror elements of the Binding of Issac, and the visual stylization of Cuphead. The screenshots and trailer available through IGN look to be positively ghoulish, so go give it a look. Though there is very little info on the title, the game is already of a worthy sort on my radar, and is the kind of game I wake up for in the morning, as the entire experience looks to be dripping with atmosphere and oozing with character. Definitely keep this one in your sights.
Speaking of hamfisted segways…
News about a new Bond game has me reeling, and mostly in a good way. The new title(s), code named “Project 007”, was first announced back in 2020 by IO interactive, the same developers that delivered upon us the stellar Hitman titles. IO CEO Hakan Abrak sounded confident in what the team was going to be able to deliver:
“What’s exciting about that project is that we actually got to do an original story,” said Abrak. “So it’s not a gamification of a movie. It’s completely beginning and becoming a story, hopefully for a big trilogy out there in the future. And equally important and exciting, it’s a new Bond. It’s a Bond we built from ground up for gamers. It’s extremely exciting with all the tradition and all the history there is there together to work on this together with the family of creating a young Bond for gamers; a Bond that the gamers can call their own and grow with.”
Honestly, it would be super easy to be all gloom and doom about a new Bond game, with any title in that series perpetually living in the potential shadow of the quality of Goldeneye to compete with, but I actually have a good feeling about this one. If for no other reason that the project is in the extraordinarily competent hands of IO Interactive, who went above and beyond proving themselves with the Hitman series, I think we’re all in for a treat when this one finally hits store shelves, and if we’re all crazy lucky, maybe the game will even rock hard enough to spawn a new franchise for us to be blown away by.
…
Look at that, I even finished without making a shitty Bond pun.
You said it 007
~Pashford
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