BACKLOG YEAR continues apace. BACKLOG YEAR is a state of mind. (June 2026)
This month, some bang up to date video games that Margaret and I have been playing, and ones that don’t exist yet but that look interesting.
Beyond being available on the electronic mail at cor@fastmail.jp, and on Bluesky, we're now listed on the Warp Point webring. Thank you to the maintainers for listing us. We're in good company; Retronauts, Mothership, and all kinds of cool independent games coverage are on there. Get it down you.
007 First Light review (IO interactive, 2026, PC, Multiplatform)
Everything about the new Bones Jones game has been seen and done before. The platforming is as finicky as in the 23-year-old Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. There are enough proximity hacking sections to have me go ‘oh, this is that bit from Ubisoft games like Watch Dogs’. Every combat area is littered with dynamite-red explosive barrels. It’s retrograde, in many ways. There’s more dashing from cover to cover to shoot things than I expected from a James Bond game.
However, although it doesn’t break ground, the individual sequences of First Light are strung together in the right way; this is intangible to explain, but it all makes for a satisfying James Bond game, enough that I reached a point where I put all comparisons out of mind.
The game is packed with thrilling set pieces, and subversive nods to other Bond media. There are sequences that had me go ‘oh, wow’, or, ‘oh, we’re doing this bit, are we?’ (complimentary). IO, known for the similar but usually less linear Hitman series, have created a game faithful to the excitement that a Bond film in the cinema can create. The game could be adapted for film, or TV, and work well. There are moments when the right music kicks in, or the game shifts gears into a wild action sequence, and it comes alive.
I enjoy that it’s a modern re-imagining of the Bond stable of characters. I love that it starts out with a slow-burning origin story, and moves onto your man going off on the globetrotting missions that make a James Bond adventure what it is.
I once read a Young Bond novel, Silverfin, from Charlie Higson (yes, the comedy writer and performer). It’s been a long time, but I remember how refreshing it was to read an alternative take on your man, from a part of Bond’s life that hadn’t been interpreted up to that point. First Light offers that same rush,; Bond’s recruitment by MI6 has not come up in any Bond THING that I’ve read or watched, and I love that it’s being imagined here.
First Light takes an aeon to get going properly, but is altogether engrossing. Bond starts off bad at all the things that he’s good at: combat, driving, situtional awareness, everything. That works so well as a video game tutorial, because I was also bad at all of that. It’s a diegetic training sequence, and I never thought thought ‘oh, this is a video game tutorial’. The transition between the training sections and the globetrotting and the BEING A SECRET AGENT is subliminal.
The tone is somewhere between Daniel Craig’s modern Bond (he’s not a pest, and when it’s implied that he gets his end away, it’s consensual, rather than a compulsion), and the Bond of yesteryear; there are artificially intelligent supercomputers, Android soldiers, and more crazed villains than are necessary. A character describes a piece of technology in the game as ‘science fiction’. The game gets the balance right between these two tones, and the game feels of the moment. The technology depicted in the game chimes with things that are happening in the real world regarding the retrofitting of AI into our lives and workflows and finding reasons for it to become necessary.
It might not age well, but in the time that we’re living through, the depiction of the overt marketing of AI systems versus their covert use and implementation is truthful, meaningful, and approaches a political statement; that, and how long the credit sequence is; and how many studios and people have worked on the game, makes me think that IO are not fond of generative AI.
The game is mostly linear; the levels are rarely open plan, and there are points where you have to do what the game is telling you to do with little room for maneuver. However, the game does give players more agency than I was expecting to have. There are various ways to tackle optional stealth sections, that the game drills into you in the opening hours, and even if you ‘go loud’, you can contain a situation and revert to stealth. There are occasionally choices to make under time pressure in otherwise linear sections; I had to run through a building to escape and there were shortcuts to take, or not take.
You don’t do a lot of shooting or driving in IO’s Hitman games, so it’s a pleasant surprise that both of these are satisfying in First Light. The combat is challenging, and I had to restart sections plenty of times. Fortunately, the checkpoint system directly after death is forgiving, though restarting from a checkpoint in the pause menu is less so, and I accidentally lost a lot of progress doing that a couple of times. Once I got into a flow state, I was popping groups of soldiers in the head with a silenced pistol before they could raise their alarm, and smashing their heads into wells and tackling them off ledges. It feels great to get all that right.
There are the parries, dodges, and counter moves that are wearily familiar from games immemorial, but enough ways to cancel enemy attacks without using those that the combat allows for creativity. The shooting is the best feeling bit; there are plenty of guns that all feel different. I found myself swapping between shotguns, semi-automatics, and sniper rifles with glee during combat, which I never do in a shooter.
Hitman’s now trademark Instinct view, that allows players to see enemies through walls, and interactive environment objects, has been refactored into a Q-Branch gadget, and is what allows you to use other gadgets. It’s a neat enough re-implementation, but it feels contrived to have to scavenge in a level for batteries and chemicals to restock gadgets. I also found it hard at times to differentiate between the icons for the different electrical gadgets, so I would distract instead of explode, or vice versa.
The most freedom you have while driving is in the opening section, and after that, they’re mostly on rails, with only the occasional choice to make, yet kept interesting by the outlandishness of what and where you’re driving. Not every driving section is speeding and crashing; a fair few will throttle your speed on purpose to allow conversations and other scripted events to play out.
There’s some frustrating scripting at times. There’s a sequence that you have to lose but you have to not-lose it long enough for you to lose and if you lose it before you’re supposed to you have to play it again until the game makes you lose at the time of it’s choosing. The game is good at getting the balance right between imposing linearity and letting you have your own fun, but this bit was a weak link. No spoilers, but BEEE.
In parts of levels that are more open, such as a company base in Antartica, or a hotel in Slovakia, you have various ways to accomplish goals that are best suited to social engineering. This gives the game replay value, even though it’s linear, because you’re not going to run through every narrative ‘opportunity’ (the game’s own term) in a single run of a level. These opportunities are similar to the ‘stories’ in IO’s Hitman games; optional ways through a mission designed to showcase narratives, introduce you to parts of a level, or guide you through tricky solutions. They serve as a loose role-playing mechanic; you decide how you want to approach things. The only thing is that, as a more linear game, First Light usually requires that you engage with at least some of them.
It goes on a bit, There were a couple of times where I thought, ‘oh, that’ll be it now, they’re sequel baiting’, and then it continued. They did end up sequel-baiting at the end of this, which, even though there’s precedent for that in the BONDULANCE series with Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, still feels wrong for a James Bond thing. The plot, for better and worse, is pure Bond. It IS science fiction, and there’s a ‘the agency is after me’ bit because IO love all that, and the ultimate villain becomes silly because it’s a James Bond outing so they can’t be just a person.
I rinsed First Light in three days. Steam says that I have 25 hours in it, but the figure is closer to 20 hours taking pause breaks and difficult sections into account. It’s an accessible-ish game; there are options to set toggles/holds for various abilities, and you can turn off quick-time events. I was playing it on standard difficult and found some but not all of the combat sections punishing with one hand and the Steam Controller.
An additional mode in First Light has you doing ‘immersive simulation’ training missions in MI6 that are all about meeting certain criteria and working through challenges as part of a progression system. It’s additional replay value if the setup (reminiscent of the progression in Hitman: World of Assassination, if you’ve played that) appeals to you. That was the draining part of WOA for me; what playing First Light has done for me is make me excited about going back to play Hitman and then reminded me why I don’t play it more; I always hit a skill ceiling because I play games one-handed.
I had occasional technical issues; cutscenes froze for several seconds, character models would pop up in cutscenes seconds after they were supposed to, and I saw considerable drops in frame rate in a firefight section on an island resort. These were temporary hiccups, but they lasted long enough to break the spell.
I wish I still had the screenshot of it, but the worst cutscene bug in any game has to be in Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2, where Peter Parker’s head was fused to his crotch. Incredible. This is not relevant, but what is relevant is that Spider-Man 2 and 007 are both games that I played at launch. I’m a mug, is what I mean.
I’m writing this paragraph a few days after downing 007 in one go over a few days, and I haven’t played anything else on my list of things to play since. (Several more hours in Buck Up and Drive don’t count). I may have slunk into a funk, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that said funk has slunk directly after playing a game that may as well be from 2012, mechanically. First Light has a good James Bond game narrative, but there’s only so much ledge hopping and dropping and yellow paint (I thought that yellow paint in games was a myth, a joke, not a thing in reality, but it’s all over the shop here) and crevices to crawl through that I can take before having to admit that First Light does nothing new with its gameplay, which increasingly rankles as I sit with my experience of it. There are two boss fights in this that are versions of the Mr. Freeze fight from Batman: Arkham City (Rocksteady Studios, 2011, multiplatform), where you’re sneaking around to set up different kinds of traps because the boss learns after one trap is sprung not to fall for it again. Rocksteady of old don’t have a patent for that kind of thing, but they didn’t do it twice in the same video game.
When games take as long to make as they do, mechanics that aren’t antiques when developers pull them out of a hat become antiques when the game goes on sale. I don’t know, if you haven’t played some or all of the games that IO are taking cues from, it won’t feel egregious as it does to me.
I maintain that I enjoyed the combat the most in this, and that even the familiar mechanics and sequences all hang together, pleasantly surprisingly, to be a fun James Bond game. The social engineering / bluffing system is immersive and stops everything from devolving into a fight, while being optional; it’s a role-playing decision that you make. If you want your Bond to be suave under pressure, it’s there. The lasting charm of First Light is in the moments of freedom that you’re given within its ultimately linear structure. It’s not a roleplaying game, but you’re playing a role. That’s why it’s good; plus how good it feels to smash people’s heads in, get lost in a spectacle sequence, or shoot a man’s shotgun out of his arms and then pop him with it.
The ancient platforming and the yellow paint can get lost, though. First Light is a fusty garden gnome of a game, aimed at a franchise’s outside fans who don’t play video games, and so much, but not all, of the gameplay can be boilerplate, because it’s a licenced experience first and a game second. As a multimedia exercise in reinvigorating James Bond as a character and a going concern, First Light is incredible. As a video game, it’s too familiar, and that is still nagging at me, and making me feel that BIG GAMES have set into a mode, a mould, and I don’t like how that feels.
As I played, the enjoyment I got was due to James Bond-related crumbs of recognition, or because the story and its setpieces are proper good fun, or because of the frantic, more-ish combat, which you’d expect from a company that’s been making Hitman since forever, only now you have an excuse to get involved in a fight instead of avoiding it.
I should think about what to play next that leaves a much more positive lasting impression on me.
While I do that, have some hardware.
Valve’s Steam Controller 2 impressions
It’s good! It fulfills the promise of the first Steam Controller by finally putting the Steam Deck controls into... a controller. For most people, the draw will be those, but what I like is that the sticks, d-pad and face buttons are all close together; they’re very easy to use one-handed. I didn’t use the back buttons a lot, and didn’t use the grips that can activate gyro. Look - it’s not aimed at me, not many gaming controllers are, but I did beat a game with it and find it comfortable. That’s not good enough to spend somewhere in the region of a hundred currency units on it; the 8BitDo Pro 3 at least has two extra buttons along the top that I can use, and is crucially tens of currency units cheaper at recommended retail price.
It’s not for me, but it may be for you. It’s the one you’ve all been waiting for, anyway. The magnetic puck for charging plus 2.4ghz connectivity is nice, and it’s lighter than I was expecting it to be. It looks like a wide, heavy slab in the marketing, but it’s with the bulkiness of the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller, which unfortunately is just too bulky for me when it comes to sticking buttons on the back that I’m expected to use to get the money’s worth.
For the rest of you; have a pop, why not.
Valve has since announced that the Steam Machine and Steam Frame are coming out Summer 2026 (which, you may noticed, unless you are reading this in the future, is... now?). It seems bonkers to launch hardware amid parts shortages, but Valve know more about the state of things than I do.
Buck Up and Drive! Android update and motor accessibility notes
I am going on with my bad self and talking about this again. The news is that there is no news; the developer, Fábio Fontes, told me that the first game was developed using GameMaker, an engine that they no longer support. The second game is being produced in Godot, though, which has native Android export (with some effort) built in. I’m drawing pentagrams in the air that an engine more capable at producing builds for ARM architecture will lead to me getting to play the sequel to my game of the year on a handheld.
Based on this, I can’t expect the whirlwind attacks in the first game to get accessibility updates so that I can bind them to single buttons either, but I live in hope for that in the sequel too.
Buck up and Drive is deeply a Capitalist Overlord Raccoons game in that I’ve played it to the point of taking skin off of my thumb, and, with this mini-column, have written about it two months on the trot. The gameplay loop is entrenched in my brain, and all I can think of when I lose is that the next run will change everything. That applies to everyone.
What I find liberating about Buck Up and Drive is that it’s a reflex-driven action game that I can control with one side of a regular controller. I can hold a controller by the grip with one hand and play comfortably. There aren’t many games like that for me; I definitely can’t name any right now. I’m getting my head around the whirlwind d-pad combination, and I just beat my first armored car.
If you don’t know the trial that that entails, then you haven’t played this yet. And if you haven’t played this yet, what are you playing at?
An additional discovery I have made is that Buck Up and Drive runs locally on ROCKNIX on the AYN Thor using Proton 11. More on this soon, maybe.
The Playstation State of Play presentation from June 3 2026, or, ‘he’s not worth it, Santa Monica Studio’
They say if you can’t say anything nice, then you shouldn’t say anything at all.
So a couple of things; I admire the creative decision to base a God of War game around Laufey, and, oop, that is one thing. Mind you, I saw that Ariel Lawrence from Santa Monica Studio came out and said that ‘[they] can’t not ‘tell stories’ about ‘the big guy’, a statement that I find loathsome because the studio is undermining an interesting creative decision by bringing the discussion back around to a familiar character minutes after their own reveal of said decision; ‘when Kratos is not on screen, the player should be asking, ‘where’s Kratos?’. I notice that great pains are being taken to exalt Kratos, but not Laufey. I resent the words ‘the big guy’ being used at all, but quintessentially in this context. It is emetic, and led by Santa Monica Studio believing the myth that they have to follow the horrendous stench of manufactured online garbage; bot farms and true believers with a massive wooden spoon over a dustbin. It is fictional, Ariel; it can’t hurt you.
With his words, Lawrence is smothering a novel creative decision, that he may well advocate and have advocated for, with stage-managed weasel words that assure superiors and shareholders not to panic, because the games will go back to being the same as they’ve always been. Santa Monica Studio, the studio that he works for, is making a game with a woman in it, which he is, wittingly or unwittingly, pitching as an unfortunate distraction from stories about ‘the big guy’; the guy with a cock and abs and a beard and a son he lives in contempt of that we clearly all love and want to take down the Dog and Cumshot for a pint, not like an icky woman who does the washing and that. With his words, Lawrence is undermining what may turn out to be the most creative turn in the God of War games by willingly engaging with this view, which I contend is the gossamer-thinly veiled subtext of this post by, um, Domino’s Pizza UK:
Source: Eurogamer
Before that, Santa Monica Studio creative director Cory Barlog does his best to pitch Laufey’s game as part of the broader God of War “tapestry”. It’s not that I don’t know what he means by that, and fair play to him for nominally trying to but it does make plain that his words are overcooked PR pablum, and him seem like a wanker.
"Faye, while it's a different thing, it's still part of the larger tapestry of what we truly want to explore - all of these different characters in there. But there's always going to be Kratos games throughout the whole history. We're super excited about that."
I’d hope that the developers would be the last people to undermine their own game by treating it as lesser and not a mainline title, but no. Log off, Santa Monica Studio.
Per the twenty-minute-long clip of gameplay footage tacked on the end of an otherwise risible State of Play, Kratos is in God of War: Laufey (a creative decision that is, uncharitably, designed to placate the implacable), but you can’t expect cunts pouring buckets of shit after their posts to acknowledge that, even when they’re well aware of it. I don’t know, if they had to wade in, why the mugs from Santa Monica Studio didn’t mention that.
Domino’s Pizza UK, I ask you. The mighty pen of social media intern of the intangible corporation.
Summer Games Fest tonight, on the day I am writing this. I go into these things optimistic, although I am subconsciously compiling a bingo card. Geoff Keighley is consumed by avarice and all of his endeavors are self-motivated. There will be capitalism. There may be, if we are lucky, a game in it to be excited about.
Oh! The second thing I saw that looked good and like something I want to play is Stuntman: Hollywood. I love Ignition, the game before that. I wasn’t anticipating a new one. It’s neat.
Other games that seem cool from other events that have happened this month
Tenebris Somnia (Andrés Borghi, Saibot Studios, 2026), a pixel-art survival horror game with a live action film inside of it, normally wouldn’t be for me, but I love the brazen execution of that. Bub (Paperfrog, 2027) looks like a beautiful, philosophical art game about NOO YOIK and mortality, and I need it. N Infinity Times Two (Metanet Software Inc., TBA) had me from the moment a developer came on screen and, genuinely, said ‘we are back on our bullshit’. Whomst among us, really?
I love a kart racer of any sort, and Super Yooka-Laylee Kart (Playtonic Games, TBA) looks like a terrific pastiche of the Super Nintendo aesthetic; I tend to struggle with the slippy handling on, for example, Super Mario Kart, and I hope Super Yooka-Laylee Kart plays tighter, but beyond that I’m excited.
Ithaca (The Pixel Hunt, TBA) is a road trip RPG, and has a playtest up on Steam right now; it’s mechanically solid, with choices that give you agency, and you have room to play the role that you want, so you can spec for skill checks easy enough, such that they don’t feel punishing; unlike Disco Elysium’s, they don’t fill me with dread when they pop up. You ought to be in the right frame of mind to play it, because it has heavy subject matter. I played it for an hour earlier and found that I was not equipped to deal with it at that time. I did enjoy one of the developers coming out and saying ‘we’re wannabe French existentialists’, and, fair play, he wasn’t kidding. A game that drains your soul away from within has to get credit for making you feel something, even if it is a deep loathing of existence and a swirling dread of what’s to come.
Vivarium is the most beautiful looking game in the presentation and Magicians: The Devil’s Deal has a neat hook of using stage magic as attacks to fight out of Hell. I plan to play them as soon as possible.
Vivarium is the most beautiful looking game in the Xbox presentation in the presentation, and Magicians: The Devil’s Deal has a neat hook of using stage magic as attacks to fight out of Hell. I plan to play them as soon as possible.
The wand in Magicians: The Devil’s Deal is the one with the white tip on the end, and the card trick attack animations look swish. I’m not usually into games that go YOU ARE IN HELL AND EVERYTHING IS BAD, but I have a soft spot for period olde-timey magic stuff, so they’ve got me there. The graphics are goofy, which takes the edge off for me, and I mean that in the best way; It’ll make the game palatable to me, as someone with a retained startle reflex. It doesn’t look jumpy-scary, more stylized spoonky.
A new Senua was announced for next year and then a week later Xbox announced it was shutting down slash cutting loose Ninja Theory, so who knows if that will happen.
Similar in the stage magic and steampunk theme, and the graphical style is Clockwork Revolution (InXile Entertainment, 2027, Xbox Series, PC), but that seems a bit more like a Bioshock game in execution; annoyingly, for a games writer, in a way that feels intangible, but I’ll give it a go:
It’s delightfully irreverent, character driven, and the combat relies on firearms that all creak and croak with bits and bolts. I’m up for the time travell element, even if, from this, there’s not much indication of how it works; it could well be a narrative element without the player having much control, but either way, it’s high concept, and it’s captured my imagination.
It was announced as an Xbox console exclusive, but with the announcement of Xbox studio closures, reports that Microsoft have considered ‘spinning off’ Xbox, and are considering ‘at least $1000’ as a price for the next Xbox (madness, in times of part shortages but also a a cost of living crisis), I can’t see it.
Vivarium is the one cozy game in the Xbox showcase, and the art-style, stop-motion animation, and music are all stunning. Part of me is aware that I don’t have time for a life simulation game, and even less for one like this that runs in real time, but I’m enamored with the presentation and I’m going to have to give it a go.
I’m enjoying the frog theme that cozy games are going through at the moment; I need Croakwood and Froggy Brews up me immediately.
Hidden Folks 2 is so stimmy in its sounds being just mouth sounds. Spiritstead is familiar town-builder territory but, like Vivarium, it’s elevated by the beautiful presentation.
Dressmaker is a delightful looking entry in the ‘you run a niche business’ sub-genre of cozy game, which might be my personal favorite sub-genre of cozy game, because I like the sense of progression that they have.
Hela is the co-op YOU ARE A MOUSE platformer that has come up before but was in this but there is STILL NO DATE. GET IT UP ME.
I remain a big fan of games with self-explanatory titles; even beyond some of what I’ve already mentioned, here in this category we have Japanese Rural Life Simulator, Pelican Post, Milki Delivery and Papaya Plaza.
My one lasting impression from the Wholesome Games Direct 2026 is Waterfall, subtitle ‘a tiny oasis builder’. It’s calm, graphically interesting, and I’m struck by the water physics. Water physics are good.
I have a few kinds of games that I find irresistible. Microgame compilations and games where the UI is that of an old computer. Enter Clowntown, which looks like Pico Park but with the pace of WarioWare: Get it Together, and Hack 95, a game I’ve already heard about because novelist and games journalist Keith Stuart is writing for it. I love Hypnospace Outlaw (Tendershoot, Michael Lasch, ThatWhichIs Media, 2019, PC, multiplatform), and, aesthetically, this is similar. I’m deckbuilder-ed out at this time, but excited to see what people make of it. Pipes.exe is too spooky for me, but I appreciate and admire the grungy ‘90s video game’ aesthetic.
The only game approaching the kind of game that ReVamp is that I’ve put any significant amount of time into is the now sadly delisted Dungeonland (Critical Studio, 2013), but I’m excited for the concept; you are Dracula, and you design a castle to derail vampire hunters. I should play Dungeon Keeper, but the possession mechanic is tricky for me on a mouse and keyboard. I don’t know if ReVamp has possession, because the given trailer is mostly an animated cinematic.
Maximum Thunderness (Berzerk Studio, 2026) gets points for its cartoon style, even if I am weary of its rogue-like structure (round-based, picking perks and abilities, possibly some persistent progression). Exo Rally Championship ( Exbleative, 2026) is more of a simulation than I go for, but looks pretty, and it’s already out, so fair play.
There are going to be remasters of 1998’s Thief: The Dark Project (a game that I have tried and failed to play on a controller, and a many-button gaming mouse) and the first three Hitman games. I am glad of this; I don’t think that the first Hitman game, Codename 47, has had a remaster ever, just a GOG re-release so that’s exciting. I have form for being all-in on middling remasters and remakes (XIII (2020), and probably the upcoming Aspyr Deus Ex one) because they make old games playable for me by introducing controller support and other motor accessibility measures. I am part of the problem. Though I do prefer emulating and running PC originals where possible.
I love the look of About Fishing, even though the Silent Hill code of it all gives away that it is absolutely not about fishing. It looks like another horror game that has intrigued me with its graphics and presentation. Against my better judgment, I will try this.
Into the Wind looks stunning. I might let it develop through early access, but it’s a delivery life sim like Lake with a bright Studio Ghibli aesthetic, that has the potential to be a true Capitalist Overlord Raccoons game by capturing my imagination completely.
That this is the Video Game Enthusiasm newsletter means that I don’t have to write about the abysmal June 2026 Nintendo Direct. BUT, I know that Margaret has thoughts on Pokopia, and will share them with you when she is good and ready. Oh look, here they are now.
Dr. Margaret Downs, PhD. On Pokopia (Game Freak, 2026, Nintendo Switch 2)
I didn’t grow up on Pokemon, so I wasn’t in a massive hurry to rush out and get Pokopia. But I was talking to coworkers and they suggested it as a cute, calm game that sounded up my alley. Thus, Chief Raccoon and I bought it as part of what we came to refer to as “Nintendozy,” wherein we spent so much money at the Nintendo store that they asked to see my ID to prove I was an adult and therefore presumably of sound mind.
Pokopia is a Switch 2 exclusive (in Chief Raccoon’s words, “finally a reason to own the bastarding thing”) and it fits neatly into my niche in the cozy corner. You’re helping restore a post-apocalyptic environment to make it fit for Pokemon to return, watering plants and arranging habitats just so to bring them back. Like with most open-world exploration games, I haven’t been sitting down with it for hours at a time, but it’s nice to have a selection of low-pressure tasks to complete. I'm trying to be patient as some tasks require things I don't have yet, and mostly I'm succeeding.
Fable New One Gameplay, June 10 2026
I’m up for this; the social life simulation stuff sounds like something that Peter Molyneux would overpromise on in 2007, but here it is. (Disclaimer: I haven’t played Fable 2 for any meaningful length of time and this is me having a giggle mate. In truth, Fable new one’s social mechanics seem like an extension of those already offered in Fable 2 (2008) )
I know that games have promised ‘living breathing worlds’ since forever, so I am keeping my expectations and excitement in check. We went through this with Class3, now released as State of Decay (2013, Undead Labs), and with Cyberpunk 2077, both of which promised worlds you could live in, and I know the average internet video game enthusiast’s memory and the memories of goldfish are broadly similar, but Cyberpunk launched in a state and both games never lived up to their promises, to the point that the developers, CD Project Red, changed the wording of the game’s genre to ‘action-adventure game’ on digital store pages. However, based on what I have seen with Fable new one, I can’t help but hope that the social simulation is as engaging to play with as it is to watch.
I’ve been thinking about it being pushed into 2027 to get out of the way of Grand Theft Auto 6, which is set to release in November 2026, and noticing that both games no longer have the creatives that oversaw the series’ to their greatest strengths at the helm. With Grand Theft Auto, this is concerning, but with Fable, it’s liberating. I’m more excited for Fable than I am Grand Theft Auto, and so it’s a shame that the latter has displaced the former.
Fable new one is vibrant, and the graphics and color scheme provide the sense of bottomless escapist wonder that makes for a fantasy game worth playing, but that has people wanting to play it. In this scenario, I am that people, but I can’t be the only one.
Can’t wait to have two saves, one where I am good to others and the other where I’m a landlord. If I act out the fantasies of being a landlord, I’ll be less inclined to become a landlord. Not really; I’ll never earn enough money to buy a house.
The thirty-minutes of gameplay shown here are centered on the life simulation features, apart from some combat at the end; there’s lots of facets to this game and they haven’t shown much else of it. I hope they show more, but I am, equally, READY.
Failing to review a game that I was previously excited for
I was expecting this issue to all be new games, but a game came out that I was super excited for that I now believe is not the revelation that I believed it to be. Being part of an established loose series, I’d seen the trailers and got the impression that it would be a step forward, a transformation, although a word somewhere between change and transformation is more what I’m looking for; a creative progression.
The game in question is funny, and clever, but the gameplay is at once familiar within the bounds of its series, and a functional facsimile of another set of games. I find it a delight to watch for the story and the jokes, but when playing it I’m aware that I’ve played what is is many times before. And that’s good sometimes, but in others, it feels wearying.
I liked the game. I just didn’t love it, and games cost a lot, and I’ve spent a lot of tine getting a feel for the game and looking forward for things to honest-to-gosh love about it, because, this is the video game enthusiasm newsletter, but I just liked it.
They can’t all be winners. Sometimes it’s a draw. Why yes, I am watching Ted Lasso.
Forza Horizon... 4 (Playground Games, 2018, PC, multiplatform)
I love these games, but between stumping for 007 and LEGO Batman, and a friend reporting crashes on Linux, I am yet to stump up for the new one.
I am playing the one set in the United Kingdom, though, and it’s providing what I imagine will be much of the same pleasure in my lizard brain. I feel like a bad game writer when I’m just like, brum brum car, but that’s the switch brain off feel that you want with these games. (Disclaimer: you should not switch your brain off when driving a real car). The game keeps asking me to pump the difficulty up and, though I initially took them up on that, I’ve dialed it down to a level that’s just about too easy, which is the best approach for me; I want to revel in the illusion that I’m a good racing driver.
I’m sure that Forza Horizon 6 is great; it looks great. I thought I’d be there day one, but that hasn’t happened, and there are practical things holding me back from buying in just now. My joy at the Japan setting makes me want to go all in on the Premium Edition (because, of course, it’s not just about buying a video game outright for one set price anymore), but it’s too much. I’m missing out on some of the weeklies for now, but when there’s a sale, sure.
For now, I love cranking up TIMELESS FM WITH DON THOMPSON, hosted by the world’s most miserable man. It’s great. Well, that’s unfair on Messr Thompson, he gets more into it as the festival goes on. His dry delivery is why I tune in, though, that and having no truck with a lot of the game’s other music. I’m told your man isn’t in Horizon 6, which is a shame, but I’m sure that, when I do buy in, I’ll like whatever other new classical station they have.
There’s a therapeutic element to going through the various racing series one by one. I’ve done the road racing in a Ford Focus, and now I’m doing the dirt racing in a sporty Ford Escort with a spoiler on it, which might be my favorite car to drive that I have driven in the game up to this point. It just glides. The game will end at some point, but for now, I’m putting in a few hours every other night and enjoying the infinite-seeming nature of it.
I’m told that Forza Horizon 6 puts an end to handing out credits and wheel spins like they’re going out of fashion. If true, that’s good, not bad like you think, because then you’re driving the cars that a rookie driver should be driving for longer, rather than cutting about in your supercar pre-order bonus. Am I going to buy this now to check? No. I am close, though.
Dr. Margaret Downs, PhD. on our trip to Scrappleland, a Brooklyn, NY-fokkin-C pinball bar
Embedded content: Beastie Boys' Hello Brooklyn
Chief Raccoon and I spent Memorial Day weekend in New York City, primarily to see a Broadway show, but we also had the chance to explore the city a bit. One of the recommendations from Mike Schubert, a podcaster I enjoy who is local to the area, was Scrappleland, a pinball bar in Brooklyn containing Peeps Kitchen, a Korean fried chicken takeout restaurant.
We weren’t staying particularly close, the train stations that would have been more convenient were not mobility-accessible so we were limited to buses, and it was raining intermittently. But we pressed on, lured by the promise of fried chicken and many pinball machines. And Scrappleland absolutely delivered on both fronts. There were at least a couple dozen coin-operated pinball machines, some of which we had a harder time with than others because they weren’t as forgiving with ball saves. In the case of Beetlejuice and Addams Family, though, we were willing to try and press on even as we accidentally got a ball stuck in the latter and had to call over an employee. To our delight, though, we found a Thunderball machine which is an upgraded version of our beloved Dr. No machine, of Versus Boston fame. We’ve realized we’re actually good at co-opping pinball, and I’ll again recommend it as a couple’s or friends’ activity. Versus still has my heart for their free play and wonderful staff, but Scrappleland was worth going out in the rain for.
Chief Raccoon addendum: Once again we were gazumped by American portion sizes because we ordered a medium-sized portion of chicken bites, because we were told they were bite-sized, and good gosh they were not, which has made us laugh no end. They're very nice though, and what we didn't eat made great leftovers.
Thank you for reading this month’s Capitalist Overlord Raccoons!
New games are fun to cover! There are some genres of game now that I can’t get excited about, but these month has seen announcements of games in those genres that have been announced have been redeemed in my eyes by their art-styles, so they’ve been discussed here, and you may hear about them in future. Next month will, in all probability, be back in BACKLOG YEAR mode proper. Or maybe I’ll be in soccer game mode, since I am currently stuffed full of WORLD CUP FEVER. We’ll see! I like that this project can be whatever I and Margaret would like it to be.
See you next month!