A regular look at gaming-related stories from the past week or so whereby conclusions are drawn from anything and everything. These may be incredibly well reasoned based on events from the week. Alternatively, they may be highly speculative, drawn from very little evidence. More likely, they will be somewhere in between.
Conclusion One: Bethesda does bugs better than most
It’s kind of an in-joke these days, but Bethesda games are the buggiest on Earth. It’s frankly laughable the kind of things that can happen. With Fallout 76’s beta they’ve outdone themselves though.
For one thing, according to Criticalhit the whole 50GB install can be deleted by doing, well, anything . Perhaps more humorously though, it’s possible to outrun all enemies by just looking at the ground, as the in-game physics are impacted by framerate. Yes, it’s locked by Bethesda but anyone with a text file editor can change it, unlock frames and then if you have a really good GPU you’ll be able to win big time.
I suppose it is a beta, so things can change, but how easy is it to change this, or stop it in such a way that clever folk won’t work it out? For an online game things could get messy.
Conclusion Two: Failure is an option
Even if you’re the world’s fourth biggest games publisher you are still capable of failing. Whilst this is not a surprise given life works like that too, what is surprising that you can fail a second time at the exact same thing, even when you have a heap of experience and masses of resource.
This is what Ubisoft has managed to do with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and some planned events. You see, in the game, there will be periodic Epic Mercenary events whereby you can go and find the Epic Merc, take them down and collect your loot. It’s part of the endgame content for folks who have devoured the main game and all its surroundings and just want more. Or, it should be.
You see, the first two events have been cancelled because Ubisoft ‘can’t locate the bad guys’. Yes, that’s right, they can’t find their own digital creation. Ancient Greece is a big map, to be fair.
Conclusion Three: Sony’s PS5 will launch with classic games via emulation
It was previously announced that Sony would be releasing — on December 3rd of this year — the PlayStation Classic. This was not unexpected given the success Nintendo has had with similar releases, and the fact that pretty much everyone else (Sega, Commodore, Atari, Neo Geo) is getting in (or has gotten on) the act.
What did cause some consternation was the announcement this week of the twenty games pre-loaded onto the mini box of PlayStation memories. Where were all the Sony games? Things like Gran Turismo, or wipE'out"?
My guess is that they’re being held back to really pepper the launch of Sony’s own PlayStation One games remastered via emulation, as will be possible with new technology. If they aren’t doing something like this, then that list of games above is just downright peculiar.
Conclusion Four: The Switch is going from strength to strength
Nintendo had some news to be cheerful on Tuesday when it revealed that the Switch has outsold both the GameCube and the Wii U. An impressive 22 million units have been shifted in just over a year and a half.
An interesting addendum to this statement is that almost half of all Switch units sold have downloaded Fortnite. This will be great news for Epic Games whose free-to-play model has become the most successful of all time. Having your game on nearly 50% of all released units is especially impressive given that players have to actively download the game, unlike successful titles which achieved that position by being bundled with consoles, such as Wii Sports was with the original Wii.
Still, Nintendo aren’t missing out on revenue - they also reported that over half of all Switch owners had purchased Super Mario Odyssey or Mario Kart 8, while The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was owned by 44% of Switch players. These are full-price titles so it’s clear to see that the Switch has absolutely nailed its market position with both accessibility and portability, and put the misery of the Wii U far behind it. And with the Switch only being released back in March 2017, there is plenty of time for it to grow even more — in the short term at least, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is likely to be a contender for the must-have Christmas number one.
Conclusion Five: There’s a sting in the Undertale follow-up
Toby Fox this week released the surprise first chapter of the sequel to his lovely RPG Undertale. Sporting the anagrammatical name of Deltarune, it seems to be every bit as engaging as its predecessor. By the way, we strongly suggest playing Undertale before considering installing this one — spoilers abound.
Speaking of installation, the developer took to Twitter after it emerged there was a bit of a bug with Deltarune’s uninstaller.
Yes, it looks like using the uninstaller to delete the game deletes everything the uninstaller sits alongside. So if, heaven forbid, you thought it’d be a good idea to install Undertale at the root of your C: drive, you may be in for a nasty surprise if you try and uninstall the game.
You may find your computer has been Deltaruined.
No, I won’t apologise.
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