This Week in Games

PlayStation Assimilation

Welcome to This Week in Games.

I LIVED, BITCHES

I MAY HAVE SURVIVED AN ABSURD HEATWAVE, BUT NOW MY EYES HURT. THANKS, SQUEENIX!

Living on the West Coast along with a freelancer's schedule (go to bed at 2, wake up around 10) means that sometimes I wake up and see that a particular topic has absolutely blown up my Twitter feed. A couple days ago, I woke up to everybody talking about the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, the first three of which now have a release date of July 28^th across Steam, Android, and iOS.

The good news: the debate over the redrawn sprites has mostly cooled off. The bad news: Hope you like squinting.

Remember back when HD consoles first debuted and developers were so eager to take advantage of the upgraded resolution that they made their in-game fonts ludicrously tiny? Remember how much that sucked? Well, Square-Enix sure doesn't! The moment these screens hit the web everyone was decrying the tiny, ugly font they went with. Just looking at that image above makes my head hurt. Now imagine playing that on the teensy screen of a mobile phone – likely the platforms most will download these games on – for hours on end. That sounds extremely unpleasant!

Besides the size and generic ugliness of the font, there's also the issue of the dialogue and battle windows having so much empty space, leaving bright white letters in the middle of a sea of bright blue background. I'm sure you'll be able to change window colors, but all of that empty space isn't great! In fact, empty space seems to be an issue overall in the combat scenes, with a whole lot of nothing between and surrounding your party and the enemies. It doesn't really feel as threatening when the sprites of Final Fantasy's Four Fiends only take up a small portion of the screen. Bigger sprites and text overall would be ideal! Perhaps the emptiness issue will get better when we get to the SNES-era games that had more complex, screen-covering backgrounds, but right now, I'm not liking what I'm seeing.

On the plus side, though, Square-Enix is finally removing the awful old FF5 and FF6 ports from storefronts. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

SONY GOES ON AN ACQUISITION SPREE

The past couple of years have seen Microsoft going on a big acquisition spree, snapping up promising and established development teams to fold them into the greater Microsoft Game Studios entity. This culminated with the massive Microsoft acquisition of Bethesda/Zenimax, the repercussions of which we'll likely be feeling for years to come. That must have rattled Sony some, as they've been recently going on a little shopping spree of their own. None of their deals have even come close to approaching the magnitude of the MS/Zenimax coupling, but it does give you a feel as to what Sony thinks will be important in the console wars going forward.

First up: Housemarque!

Finland-based Housemarque has been around since the Amiga's heyday, but they're fully in the PlayStation camp now! Much of their output has been arcade-y, action-inspired titles like Nex Machina and Resogun, but they recently dipped their toes into more AAA-gaming waters with the recent Returnal. I'm hoping we get more of the former type of game than the latter, personally, but I'm sure Sony would much rather focus on big marquee stuff than Robotron-inspired shooters. Alas.

Secondly, we have Nixxes Software, who… uh…. no offense to the folks who work there, who I am sure are talented and wonderful people, but I have never heard of this company before. Apparently they specialize in PC ports. That's probably why! We've seen a few high-profile PS-to-PC ports within the last few years, and it's a market Sony clearly doesn't want to ignore.

But there's more! Apparently when Sony of Japan tweeted out the Housemarque acquisition, they accidentally used the wrong image file, which displayed that they had acquired Bluepoint Studios.

Bluepoint are primarily known for their remasters and remakes of existing titles. They're the folks behind the PS5 version of Demon's Souls and PS4 remasters like Shadow of the Colossus and Gravity Rush. You can likely expect more enhanced versions of legacy titles out of them. If I had to make predictions, I'm sure that the excellent critical and sales reception of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart has Sony looking at revisiting that series's older entries on newer platforms…

Also on the Sony newsfront: Sucker Punch has announced a “Director's Cut” of last year's favorite Ghost of Tsushima. Much like Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, it's a good excuse to re-market and touch up the game for the PS5 – though, in this case, a PS4 version will also be available. All of the previous DLC is included, plus there's some added content, including an exclusive new island (Iki) to explore. If you own the original game, you can pay $30 USD come August 20th to upgrade to the PS5 version ($20 for the PS4), but if you're buying it new it'll run you $70 on PS5 and $60 on PS4. Makes me wonder if any other late-ish PS4 games will be getting the "let's add some stuff to justify a PS5 re-release" treatment.

To close out this week's Sony-related talk, we have to look at something a bit less positive. Quite a few indie devs and small publishers have been talking this week about the failures of Sony's indie support. Among the grievances: big fees for store promotion, lack of marketing support, poor communication (sometimes months between asking a question and getting a reply), and loads of paperwork and bureaucracy for every step of the publishing process. It's pretty damning, and reading through the various accounts makes it easy to see why the Switch has become the indie platform of choice for developers and players alike. This isn't just a Western thing, either: Doujin circle Platine Dispositif recently published their 2D action game Maid-san wa Migi ni Shooting Star on the Switch, PS4, and Vita, only to discover that their game wasn't being properly listed in the PS Vita storefront. They reached out to Sony to see what was up, and…

Yeesh. I know Vita isn't a big priority for Sony, but the remaining market is a devoted one that wants to support the games still being published. Hopefully getting all of this out in the open will force some improvement because right now it is not a good look for SCEI.

AIBA RETURNS WTH A NEW/OLD FRIEND

Hey, did you all play AI: The Somnium Files? I did, and it was great! I wasn't sure if it did well enough to warrant a follow-up, though. I figured if it didn't get a sequel, that's okay, it worked fine as a one-and-done deal story-wise. But hey, I guess it did do well, because publisher Spike Chunsoft just announced AI The Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative! (Very important intercaps)

nirvanA Initiative follows Mizuki, the companion and sort-of-adopted-daughter of Date from the original AI. It seems she's followed in Date's footsteps and is an investigator herself, armed with a LED-adorned lead pipe and Aiba, the complex robotic artificial intelligence that sits in its partner's eye socket. How did she lose an eye? Good question! I'm sure we'll be finding that out as we weave through another mind-diving, multi-ending adventure.

The game is up for preorder now across PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One for release early next year. It's also getting a limited edition package. I'm usually fairly picky on what limited editions I buy, but one surefire way to get me interested is a figure that I know is going to look nice. Good Smile Company is producing it, you say? Why yes, here is my money, thank you very much!

MANA CELEBRATES 30 YEARS WITH ANNOUNCEMENTS

Seiken Densetsu is 30 years old? Jeez, it feels like everything in gaming happened in 1991! It also reminds me that I'm basically a gaming grandma at this point. Pass me my Werther's Originals, because it's time to look at everything that got announced at the Mana series's 30^th anniversary livestream!

The first announcement is Trials of Mana for mobile platforms – probably not of interest to too many readers, as many of us have already played it elsewhere. The second announcement, however, is more interesting: Echoes of Mana, an all-new free-to-play mobile game releasing globally next year. The teaser trailer shows basically nothing in terms of gameplay, though the screenshots on the official website show some really nice-looking hi-res 2D visuals. There was also a bit of gameplay shown during the stream, which a kind soul has clipped and uploaded here on YouTube.

But here's a surprise: a Legend of Mana anime adaptation!

You can get more details on the anime's production staff at the ANN news writeup. I want to say positive things here, but… let's be real, the track record for video game anime is kind of awful, and I don't know if the meandering, heavily player-controlled plot of Legend of Mana is the best choice for adaptation. I hope I'm proven wrong, but I've been burned far too many times by this stuff over the years.

Finally, there's… a Mana game! Coming to consoles! No other info besides that it exists, and it's in production, and will come out… sometime! Not even a name beyond “New Mana Game.” Start thinking up your titling ideas now!

Alrighty, that brings everything to a close for this week! What's that? I'm not talking about Silent Hill rumors and Konami working with Bloober Team? Or Kojima working with Microsoft? Buddy, have you seen all of the conspiracy nonsense that shows up whenever someone brings up Silent Hill or Kojima lately? That's one can of worms I want to remain firmly sealed until we have an official announcement. In the meantime, how are you all doing? Hyped for more Mana? Giddy for more Ghosts of Tsushima? Needy for nirvanA Initiative? Tell us all of your gaming emotions in the forums to increase engagement! I'll be back again in another week with most of the industry news that's fit to print on ANN. Later, all!