Nic Reuben for Rock Paper Shotgun:

According to internal memos obtained by Insider Gaming, the Manchester (game?) studio have mandated its workers to pull two seven day weeks in the leadup to Citizencon on October 19th.

This news should not come as a surprise to those who have been following the company. These are the same individuals who have, among other terrible things:

• Raised over 700 million dollars without shipping anything, resulting in backers taking the company to court for refunds.
• Denied a disabled employee’s requests to work from home and then fired them.
• Been accused of having a “highly toxic” workplace culture by a former producer.

Who cares how good Star Citizen is, assuming it’s ever finished, when the company making it is this rotten?

Jordan Middler for VGC:

Silent Hill 2‘s ending, as well as multiple secret endings, have been streamed on YouTube, with clips of the streams circulating social media [...] which will make stemming the tide of leaks virtually impossible.

One could argue that the endings were leaked 23 years ago.

Chris Scullion for VGC:

Kotaku’s sources say that around four out of every five employees at Reikon have been laid off, making for a total of “60 to 70 people”.

This is awful. I loved Ruiner. I think it was my GOTY in 2017.

Between this news, Microsoft earlier this morning letting close to 2000 people from Xbox go, Riot cutting nearly 600 people on Monday, combined with the dozens of other studios that have made cuts, in 2024 alone, I’ve read that roughly 6–7 thousand people working in the industry have lost their jobs. We’re not even through January, how much worse will it get?

Letting that number sink it, it’s hard to want to pick up a controller and play anything right now to be honest.

Andy Robinson for VGC:

According to two experienced AAA game artists who spoke to VGC, the model comparisons on X are likely evidence that Palworld’s character models were indeed based on Pokémon assets.

“You cannot, in any way, accidentally get the same proportions on multiple models from another game without ripping the models. Or at the very least, tracing them meticulously first,” one senior character artist told VGC anonymously, adding: “I would stand in court to testify as an expert on this.”

The video of the two models placed on top of each other alone is damning but I feel that the added analysis from other artists in the industry is the silver bullet.

I’ve had trouble reconciling the fact that a studio the size of Pocketpair could work on a game like Craftopia and then something with the scale of Palworld and not use tools like AI or repurpose assets from other games. In my mind, this is proof they’re doing one or both of those things.

That said, while we’re all here, I want to just point out that none of this (assuming any of it is true) justifies sending people death threats which Takuro Mizobe, the game’s director and CEO of the company, says the team has been getting.

If you’re following this whole saga and find it frustrating or upsetting, don’t buy the game. Most importantly, leave the people working on a video game alone.

Eric Van Allen for Destructoid:

Before Alan Wake was released in May 2010, there was a book called House of Leaves, written by Mark Z. Danielewski, and published in March 2000.

The book follows several characters through a meta-textual journey: a tattoo apprentice named Johnny Truant discovers a manuscript from the strange author Zampanò. It follows a documentary about Will Navidson, a photojournalist who discovers his house is larger on the inside than the outside. The story twists and turns as you read through both the document itself and several different layers of footnotes, as the text and book itself feel like they start to warp too.

Alongside House of Leaves, there is Haunted by Poe. The musician happens to be Danielewski’s sister, and Haunted can be easily seen as a counterpart and companion work to House of Leaves, including tracks like “Exploration B,” “5&½ Minute Hallway,” “Dear Johnny,” and “House of Leaves” – all references to the novel.

Long story short (but you should definitely read the story), Remedy Creative Director Sam Lake was clearly a huge fan of House of Leaves and, by association, Poe’s music. So much so that her song Haunted was used in the first game.

Lake and the team at Remedy approached Poe during work on the Alan Wake Remaster about doing a new song for Alan Wake 2, which was also in production, and the rest is history.

This Road, an original song by Poe, appears in the game at the conclusion of chapter 9. What a great thread to tie all of this together. Like I needed another reason to love these games.

It was remarkable how badly it went from the very beginning.

Steven Asarch for Kotaku:

The [announcement] event spent most of its run time hyping up the Xbox One’s capabilities as an all-in-one media box and its integration with television, in addition to being a gaming console.

Next to Nintendo’s Wii U announcement, this was the most confused I’d been as to whether or not I, a lifelong gamer, was the target audience for a console.

Graham Smith for RPS:

The player-voted Steam Awards have reached their conclusion, and the results are about as weird as the nominees. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the weirdest game possible won in several categories, such as Red Dead Redemption 2 for the Labor Of Love award and Starfield for “Most Innovative Gameplay”.

Back in the day, GameFAQs would run polls for the greatest characters in gaming (or something equally ridiculous). The users of the Something Awful forums would, en masse, vote for the characters nobody liked expected, breaking the entire thing and upsetting many teenagers who couldn’t bear to see Sephiroth lose to Bub and Bob.

This has that same energy.

This was a year of change. I leaned really hard into console gaming this year, specifically Xbox, after being pretty focused on PC and tried playing a handful of games on mobile too. Here are my favourites from a variety of categories.

Game of the year

Alan Wake II. I love what Remedy is doing with their connected universe and can’t wait to see where they go in the Night Springs and Lake House DLC.

Best DLC

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty added so much to the vanilla Cyberpunk experience and totally flipped the theme of the original game on its head.

Best remake

Dead Space was really good but I’ve got to hand it to Nintendo for Super Mario RPG. The nostalgia in that one hits real hard.

Game I need more time with

This one’s a toss up between Sea of Stars, which I loved but dove into on a whim just before a bunch of other games came out. Also, Baldur’s Gate 3, which was only released on Xbox at the beginning of December.

Weirdest game

Wanted: Dead. Seriously, what the fuck?

Most anticipated game

I think I’m equally excited to see where Square goes with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and I can’t resist anything by HoYoverse so Zenless Zone Zero is up there too. I also can’t wait for Dragon’s Dogma II. I can’t explain why but the original is a favourite of mine.

[game_list display=”grid” tag=”most-anticipated-2024″]

You can view all the games I played in 2023 here.

Gita Jackson for Aftermath:

In many ways I don’t think Control works without McCaffrey’s performance. His Trench gives the whole game an emotional depth that anchors it to reality, especially as the game becomes increasingly surreal.

Control was also the first game I thought of when hearing about McCaffrey’s passing. I’ve played all the titles he’s known for but his performance as Trench really stuck with me.

First, Lance Reddick, and now McCaffrey. Remedy’s connected universe won’t be the same without them.

I stopped playing Final Fantasy XIV sometime after Endwalker was released, but with the game finally coming to Xbox next year, that might be the perfect excuse to pick it back up.

I’m in a lull between games having finished Stafield and waiting for Alan Wake II. So far I’ve tried Sea of Stars, which is great, Daymare: 1998, which is significantly less great, and Bright Memory: Infinite, which was better than expected.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell for Rock Paper Shotgun:

[Lake] himself has difficulty setting aside hours for longer games. “[It’s] just struggling with finding time and you know, being interested in a story, wanting to see it through,” he said. “So it can even be daunting at times to start playing a game that you know is really, really long.”

I can definitely relate to this.

On numerous occasions while booting up Starfield I’ve felt that, while the game is good, it’s almost too massive for me to really dig into. I know I won’t get around to many side missions because I’ll be burnt out from the main quest and wanting to move on to something else in my backlog.

Comments like Lake’s are interesting coming from Remedy as they’re an example of a studio that produces tightly written, well-paced games that never overstay their welcome. I’m hoping that doesn’t change with Alan Wake 2, despite the noted 20-hour-plus playtime.

Kelsey Lewin for the Video Game History Foundation:

For accessing nearly 9 in 10 classic games, there are few options: seek out and maintain vintage collectible games and hardware, travel across the country to visit a library, or… piracy.

That Nintendo continues to crack down especially hard on emulators and ROMs while simultaneously shutting down legacy storefronts without a replacement for modern consoles makes this news particularly frustrating.

CJ Wheeler for Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

None of the developers who spoke out about being omitted from the credits felt that the situation was normal practice, and some claimed they’d been working under crunch conditions on the project.

Sounds like a great studio run by great people.

PlayStation Blog:

Through conversations with accessibility experts and incredible organizations like AbleGamers, SpecialEffect and Stack Up, we’ve designed a highly configurable controller that works in tandem with many third-party accessibility accessories and integrates with the PS5 console to open up new ways of gaming.

This is great. It’s nice to see both Microsoft, with their adaptive controller, and now Sony making video games more accessible for everyone.

Rich Stanton for PC Gamer:

While I enjoy a good grisly death animation, [The Callisto Protocol’s] protagonist here really does get ripped apart in horrifically detailed and gory fashion. You couldn’t skip past these and some of them genuinely make you wince.

A new patch has streamlined some elements of the game’s combat system, and added the ability to skip the death animations (seriously: some of these things feel like they take minutes).

The approach taken by Striking Distance and promoted during Callisto’s development always seemed antiquated or entirely incorrect to me, that the biggest reason people played Dead Space or games like it was to see their character or those around them be excessively, graphically ripped to shreds every couple of minutes.

For what it’s worth, here’s my take from when the game was shown back at Summer Game Fest earlier this year:

I thought I’d be more interested in Callisto Protocol but the aggressive focus on gore has turned me off from the game entirely.

To me, Dead Space was never about the blood and guts. The world you explored and the atmosphere of it all, the tension and dread, combined with an interesting (albeit repetitive) combat mechanic was what made it special. It really is one of the greatest atmospheric horror games ever made and the violence has little to do with it.

The fact that they’re adding the ability to skip through these scenes so soon after Callisto’s launch and that the game’s received lukewarm reception from players proves to me that, like Dead Space, violence was never what people wanted.

Graham Smith for Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

[Activision Blizzard] employees say that impossible deadlines, managerial indecision, and disturbing script revisions have led to employee dissatisfaction and high turnover.

What happened to releasing a game “when it’s ready”?

Andy Chalk for PC Gamer:

Tripwire Interactive co-founder John Gibson blamed what he called “social terrorism” for being forced out as CEO of the developer and publisher in 2021.

[…]

Gibson stepped down as chief executive of Tripwire shortly after tweeting support for an abortion ban in September 2021.

If he thinks being cancelled by “social terrorism” is bad, just wait until he hears some of the stories of women that, because of the ban he voiced support for, were forced into life-threatening deliveries, knowingly gave birth to stillborn babies, or delivered children fathered by their rapists.

I’m sick of old dudes blaming everyone else when, publicly and unprompted, they share their awful opinions and suffer consequences for it. Often these are issues, as is the case here, that don’t affect them (men) in the slightest but have life-altering consequences for others (women).

Andy Robinson for Video Games Chronicle:

Speaking to website Noisy Pixel, series producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi said that there were no concrete plans to develop a Resident Evil Code: Veronica Remake, but didn’t totally rule out the opportunity, stating that if the “opportunity comes, maybe.

I’ve felt for a while that if any of the games could benefit from a remake, it’s Code Veronica. Capcom’s decision to remake 4 makes financial sense but the game has been remastered and reworked to death on almost every platform imaginable. Do we need a top-to-bottom remake of it?

Why not give a whole new audience a way to experience one of the more under-appreciated entries in the series instead?

Nic Reuben for Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

If you’ve got any affection for PS1 survival horror, queer android love stories, cold war paranoia aesthetics, retrofuturism, or cosmic horror when people who aren’t Lovecraft do far more interesting stuff with it, Signalis is a must play.

I haven’t finished a lot of the games I’ve started this year but Signalis might be the best thing I’ve played in 2022.