5 Conclusions - 23/03/18

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.

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Conclusion One: Monster Hunter: World gets bigger

Only a few months after Monster Hunter: World debuted we’re getting version 2.0. The tent-pole addition to this update is the below monster - Deviljho. An extremely violent killing machine, it will invade high-level quests, and after certain parts of the main story have been completed an assignment to go after this beast will unlock.

Alongside this headline, the update will bring with it reduced loading times, some helpful animation changes and a few more subtle additions. Basically though, there is more hunting of monsters in a bigger game which is absolutely massive across the globe.

Conclusion Two: The internet is now a handheld game

Emulation has been around for a very long time, and emulation in a box is becoming the thing du jour. What is also coming to play is emulation on the internet. Whilst also not new, what is new is the latest selection of games which can now be played through your web browser — namely all those handheld games which many of us will have had examples of (personally I recall Top Gun for sure, and something else similar but for the life of me I cannot remember exactly what) in the 70s, 80s or 90s. In fact some of us (myself included) could probably find the actual hardware in our lofts, or our parent’s attics. If you can’t, or can’t be bothered, this new way of playing them is a fabulous thing to have.

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Conclusion Three: God of War FTW!

Jump Dash Roll has already suggested that Kratos is going to be the first big hitter in 2018. Whether he’s the first or not, he definitely looks like he will be one of them. This week has seen new footage of the early game coming from all kinds of sources, and we now know that the game has a new camera making it look very much Uncharted-inspired (or Resident Evil 4 if you prefer) and absolutely bloody beautiful. Kratos has the hump as always, but with his son there’s a suggestion of responsibility and civility. We shall see. Whatever happens it’s abundantly clear that this game — out April 20th — is a must-have.

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Conclusion Four: Chicken dinner is now available on the move in the UK

Fancy a Battle Royale on your iPhone or Android handset of choice? Now you can, because PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds has gone mobile, on both iOS and Android.

Released in China in February it’s been hurriedly regionalised to ensure that Fortnite mobile doesn’t take all the glory in the realm of these winner-takes-all massively multiplayer battleground games.

For an online shooter, the job done by Tencent Games is remarkable given the constraints a mobile version of the game enforces. If you want a go you can get it here for your Google phone and the App store for anything Apple. We are promised “An authentic port of the PC version” according to the listing...

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Conclusion Five: Nintendo is entering the eSports arena

This week Nintendo announced that at E3 in June this year players will compete against each other playing Super Smash Bros. and qualified teams will do so in Splatoon 2. This is an exhibition tournament.

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Let that not fool you though, dear reader. This is Nintendo’s initial foray into eSports. Smash Bros. in particular is perfectly placed to become a major player. Two variants on the Smash Bros. series are already due to be part of the evolution fighting game championships — Evo — in 2018 and so why wouldn’t Nintendo tread the waters themselves with a view to having their own championship of some kind? The potential of eSports is massive and it is only going to become bigger and more popular over time. Nintendo wants a piece of that pie and has the games to enable it. This is them starting to make that happen.