This Week in Games

Award Hopefuls

Hello again! Folks, this is the textbook definition of a slow news week.

Oh sure, there's news happening: the Steam Deck and the boutique handheld Playdate got delayed, but we all know supply-chain and component production issues are a thing right now, so there's not too much else to be said there. Hardware getting delayed and being in short supply is expected right now.

Trailer-wise, we've got a new King of Fighters XV character reveal in Whip, a longtime fan favorite who hasn't really been around much since the NESTS era. Yeah, she was a DLC addition to KoF XIV, but she kind of felt like an afterthought in that game. Being a part of the standard cast puts her in a much stronger spotlight.

And then there's news about Jump Force. Oh, Jump Force. So much wasted potential for fanservice and gameplay, soon to be gone forever. Jump Force and all of its associated DLC is being delisted from online storefronts on February 7^th of next year. Later, in August, the online multiplayer servers will be shut down across all platforms, leaving only the single-player mode available.

Jump Force was met with tremendous excitement and a big push at E3 courtesy of Microsoft. A big-budget arena battler with characters from hugely popular series like My Hero Academia, Bleach, Dragon Ball, One Piece, Naruto, Rurouni Kenshin, YuYu Hakusho and others should have been a slam dunk, but an awful story, weird visual corner-cutting, obnoxious grindy progression, and wonky fighting mechanics left many fans disappointed. Despite this, Jump Force did sell quite well at launch before word got out that it was lackluster, which goes to show the power of Jump branding.

Anyway, even though Jump Force might be doomed to die, we can still always remember that time a cube went up Vegeta's butt.

So what else is there to discuss? Well, apparently the yearly event we all love to hate, The Game Awards, will be having a huge number of WORLD PREMIERES this year. At this point, they know people are only watching for the reveals, and all of the glitzy presentation, celebrity appearances, and musical performances are nothing more than an attempt to give the show some “mainstream” legitimacy… but they're going to make us sit through it anyway.

Since I'm pretty much obligated to watch through this three-hour “event” for all the latest and greatest gaming news – of which there will apparently be a lot of this year, sigh – I've been thinking about what I do and don't want to see on this year's show. Some of these ideas are likely to happen, some are unfortunately likely to happen, and some of it is a total pipe-dream. But without further ado:

THE GAME AWARDS: SINCE I'M GOING TO HAVE TO WATCH THEM WHETHER I WANT TO OR NOT, HERE'S WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE

I WANT TO SEE: NEW FIGHTING GAMES

2021 was a great year for fighting games, that's undeniable… but aside from King of Fighters XV, we haven't heard much about potential 2022 releases. Sure, there's that weird Arc System Works game based on Dungeon Fighter we haven't heard about for a while, but who knows what the status of that game is?

Aside from ArcSys and SNK, some of the genre's biggest names are quiet. Bandai-Namco is still diligently working on additional Tekken 7 characters, so their relative quiet makes sense… but it does also feel like Tekken 7 is getting a bit long in the tooth, and perhaps they should just move on. Netherrealm has also been eerily silent: Mortal Kombat XI did tremendously well, sales-wise, but official support for the competitive scene has fallen off and news on a follow-up Mortal Kombat or Injustice game is nonexistent. (Rumor has it Netherrealm is making that Warner Bros. Multiverse platform fighter, which I'm pretty positive will be shown at The Game Awards, but that's probably not the sort of game that fans of the developer want.)

And then there's CAPCOM. After Marvel vs. CAPCOM Infinite's high-profile failure, CAPCOM decided to stick all of their eggs in the Street Fighter V basket, producing no new fighting game content outside of DLC for their flagship title, allowing flashy games like Guilty Gear to woo over new and old fighting game players alike. With SFV confirmed to be reaching the end of its life, it's high time for Street Fighter VI or another high-profile CAPCOM fighting game effort to emerge and get the fanbase truly excited again, and The Game Awards would probably be the best venue to do it. (The best possible outcome for a CAPCOM fighting game announcement would be a new Darkstalkers, of course, but we've been disappointed so many times that we know not to expect anything.)

I DO NOT WANT TO SEE: CELEBRITIES WITH TENUOUS-AT-BEST TIES TO GAMING TRYING TO GET US HYPED UP FOR PRODUCTS

2021 has been the year where numerous major and minor celebrities have decided to show their entire asses with terrible opinions on social media – to the point where the usually celebrity-cameo-filled Game Awards will have to consider the potential PR nightmares that a popular face making a headass Instagram post days after the event would cause. My question is: why do we need these celebrities there in the first place? Shouldn't this be about games and the people who make them?

Yes, I know, there are celebrities who genuinely care about games: Conan O Brien's Clueless Gamer bits are always a delight, and wrestlers like Kenny Omega and Asuka have made their love of videogames very well known. But just because Chris Pratt is voicing Mario doesn't mean I want to hear him try to talk about the year's best platformers. This time is better used for recognizing people who don't live under a constant spotlight.

I WANT TO SEE: MORE NEW AND INTERESTING JRPG ANNOUNCEMENTS

Hey, guess what? JRPGs (and adjacent genres) are cool again! With the successes of games like the Final Fantasy VII Remake, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Tales of Arise, and Persona 5 in recent years – and the hype currently surrounding Final Fantasy XVI and Shin Megami Tensei V – JRPGs are flourishing once again. As someone who lived through the gaming internet's awful mid-late-2000s “JRPGs are trash” phase, this makes me very happy!

With JRPGs being a thing again, we've been seeing some unexpected surprises, like the Star Ocean announcement from a couple of weeks ago. Who had a new Star Ocean on their 2021 bingo card? Nobody! But the current market for JRPGs is strong enough to potentially support out-of-left-field revivals like that. Perhaps we could see the return of more dormant series? Skies of Arcadia, Grandia, Lunar, Lufia, Breath of Fire… there's so much out there that could be revisited with a fresh new take. Of course, I'd like to see some all-new, moderate-to-big-budget JRPGs be made, too!

I think that Final Fantasy XVI is quite likely to be shown once again at The Game Awards. There's also the follow-up to Yakuza: Like a Dragon that we know is currently being developed: with Lost Judgment released YLAD2 is probably the next game we'll see footage of from RGG Studio… though it still might be too early to show anything yet.

I DO NOT WANT TO SEE: NFT ANYTHING

Ah, the three letters we all love to hate. Just mentioning the term “NFT” on social media will get a bunch of weirdos in your replies trying to sell you an image of a sloth wearing a Rude Dog t-shirt while vaping. I don't have time here to go into all of the reasons why NFTs suck and are ripe for scamming and dropping in value, but there are plenty of places to read up on that. Gaming executives, however, seem convinced that NFTs are somehow tied to the future of gaming. How? They sure don't know, but they smell money, and they want it.

I want none of it. I don't want to hear anything about a game pushing NFT or blockchain. The push towards lootboxes and pay-to-win mechanics is terrible enough, but adding crypto BS into the mix is going to make already bad trends even worse. Fortunately, Game Awards emcee Geoff Keighley seems to agree, which is encouraging.

Of course, him saying this doesn't preclude EA from announcing Madden NFT Edition with tradable Madden Moment replays or whatever, but let's hope for the best.

I WANT TO SEE: ACTIVISION-BLIZZARD EXECUTIVES ONSTAGE GROVELING FOR OUR FORGIVENESS

As I have often repeated over the last few months, Activision-Blizzard is a shitshow. They have betrayed the trust of their employees and their consumers, and have fostered company cultures that delivered sub-par games, damaged peoples’ lives, and made the industry a worse place overall. They are currently embroiled in numerous legal troubles, but we all know how slow the US legal system works with stuff like this—and we also know that executives always plot to make it out with as little damage to their reputations and finances as possible.

Screw that. The higher-ups at Activision-Blizzard, who let this awful corporate culture fester for so long, deserve the kind of public humiliation you'd see in the Middle Ages. Trot them out onstage and watch them collapse to the floor, weeping, as we shout and make them feel as unwelcome and unsafe as a typical female Call of Duty player in voice chat.

I DO NOT WANT TO SEE: A BUNCH OF ACTIVISION-BLIZZARD PREVIEWS PRESENTED LIKE NOTHING IS GOING ON IN AN ATTEMPT TO SWEEP THEIR BS UNDER THE RUG

Of course, that's not going to happen. The best we might get is some faux-solemn corporate-speak apology and insistence that “we're doing better, we swear!” before quickly moving on to trailers showing you the hottest new footage and exclusive reveals of upcoming Activision-Blizzard products. They want you to forget and focus strictly on the games, not the painful experiences the people who made them had. Don't fall for it. We know the truth, and we're smarter than that.

How about you folks? What are you potentially looking forward to (or not looking forward to) from next month's Game Awards? Do you have any feelings about the inevitable end of Jump Force? Are you still waiting on your Steam Deck? Come and hang out in the forums, linked below, for some always-interesting conversation! Hopefully next week will have more news – we already know something Naruto-related is coming to Fortnite, so that should be worthy of extended discussion. See you all again soon!