Evening, pilgrim! Take a load off, stay a while. This is the Sunday News Round-up, the weekly feature that takes the big posts of the week, and adds some colorful insight. It’s the news you know and love, with the personality you didn’t ask for!
Friday night saw the industry at the 10th Spike VGA awards show. And you know what? This year’s show wasn’t a complete train wreck, as the past shows usually have been. While I still think watching people try way too hard to legitimize gaming is pretty embarrassing, the cavalcade of trailers that the show results in sometimes offsets the horrible feelings in my heart. And this year saw some great new reveals, including a new one for The Last of Us that showed off its fancy new release date (May 7). But leave it to Hideo Kojima, and his team of bandits, to leave us the most tantalized and teased we’ve been in a while. While the trailer said the game was called Phantom Pain, we all knew what this ruse was about: Metal Gear. Even taken as its own game, disregarding the blatant Metal Gear references, the trailer (to me at least) was incredible in its ambiguity. Why is this guy with no arm in a hospital? Why is everyone being exterminated? Why is there a giant fire whale? Hopefully, E3 will reveal all.
In the wild and wolly world of Call of Duty, sales seemed to have hit a little slump. In fact, this is the franchise’s first ever sales slump this generation. Does this mean people are starting to get a little tired of the same gameplay each year? Personally, I think it’s a combination of several factors. Yeah, the game hardly ever changes with each yearly installment. But is that really a bad thing? Look at every major sports franchise ever made. Every year, each game improves upon what made last year’s great. Same with Call of Duty. But people are apparently a little more critical of an FPS than they are of a sports sim. Couple that with an aging engine, and serious competition from the likes of EA and the free to play market, and Call of Duty needs to reinvent itself. 2010’s Black Ops was a nice departure, but it’s not enough. Hopefully, Modern Warfare 4 will be a launch title for whatever Microsoft’s next console will be, and blow us away just like Call of Duty 4 did back in 2007.
Fan of Mega Man? It’s been a rough couple of years, hasn’t it? The cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3 earlier in the year was pretty disappointing all around. But Capcom has got a card up their collective sleeves. The just announced Mega Man X Street Fighter is a celebration of both franchise’s storied 25 year history, and will be available for all come December 17 as a free download for the PC. I’m not that big on Mega Man or Street Fighter, and I probably won’t download this, but does Capcom really think this will be enough to tide over fans rubbed the wrong way by MML3‘s cancellation? It looks like a proper Mega Man title, and the new powers seem like a thing. But does that make up for a highly anticipated game that featured fan collaboration with the developers? I don’t really think so.
Well, that’s all I’ve got for this week. And as it turns out, I think I’m all out of cowboy pictures to ruin with my face. What should my next theme be? Robocop? Yeah, probably Robocop. As always, leave a comment or post on the forums. Or even better, let’s hang out on Twitter. I swear I only talk about The Tick on occasion.