Paul Smith / ポール・スミス

Aftermath always does a great job of putting news out into the ether that deserves to be covered in an authentic way.

I don't read their stuff every day but they are one of the sites that I love to support by tipping them whenever I read something I like that they have done.

It's my way of saying, "I wish I came around more but I love this thing that you are doing."

I downloaded the demo for Lifted after I saw it at Summer Games Fest. I liked the look of the game and there was something about the style that really drew me in too.

I finally sat down and played through the quick 30+ minute demo and really enjoyed it. I think I'll probably pick this game up when it comes out.

The most striking thing about the game when you first see it in action is the Rayman style character designs. The game keeps this motif throughout the game and I liked it. There is a part in the demo where the two protagonists meet up with a guide who is going to help them navigate Egypt and his camels also have no legs with feet attached. It was a cute thing that really helped endear this art style with me.

Something I didn't like about the art style is that Ari, the "slacker" who accompanies Professor Raventhorpe on his journey through time, looks too much like a Roblox character. This turns me off but I was able to get over it as I played through the demo.

If it isn't obvious so far, the story seems to be very reminiscent of Back to the Future. A young "Slacker" is befriended by a genius inventor and his time machine to travel through time.

The voice acting was very good. The script was adequate. I found myself enjoying some of the dialog but other parts I found lackluster especially in the humor department.

The demo didn't set up much of the world but there were some antagonist characters added towards the end which added a lot of fun to the story they were setting up. I thought the writing in this part was some of the best so I am interested how the rest of the story will play out.

Finally, the most important part about a platforming game, the gameplay was easy to control for most of the demo. There are two difficulty levels that the player can choose. I chose the normal difficulty. There were a few places in the demo where the platforms, which were very narrow, needed a few tries for me to finally get through them.

I don't think there is any issue with the controls but it was more of a learning curve for me, the player, to figure out where the designers made the models stick to the platforms. By the end of the demo, I was platforming with zero frustrations and found everything to feel really great.

Speaking of which, the demo finished off with a mine cart level where the Ari and the Doctor were running from the villains. Any gamer who grew up in the SNES or Playstation era will know that mine cart levels were quite a topic of discussion and flame wars but this part was perfectly fine and I didn't have any issues. I do hope they use it sparingly in the final product.

I enjoyed a lot of Syberia. I played the Switch port of the game. I thought the Switch version worked pretty well. There were times when the touch screen controls messed me up a bit because when my hand slipped the dialog that I was in would advance. Usually this isn’t a problem but during some of the more story based dialog the player won’t be able to replay the dialog. This is only a problem if you play in handheld mode.

I liked a lot of the characters in the story. Kate is a pretty well fleshed out character. Her friends the automatons were also fun. The characters who she interacted with via the phone were exceptionally terrible. Her mother was fun occasionally but she seemed vapid and self-absorbed especially during their first call. Kate’s fiance was just god awful from the beginning and the writer of the game really telegraphed how things would end up for Kate and him. I didn’t find that part of the story very satisfying. The same goes for her friend. And, her boss was also just awful to her throughout their conversations as well.

The characters that she met throughout her journey were fun. The Hotelier and the small boy in Validelien. She also met and put together the automaton who would go on to join her throughout her journey. She met some interesting characters during her time at the university. I found this part of the story fun especially the three presidents of the university were fun.

I got ground down in some of the adventure gaming bullshit during this part of the game. Most of the game didn’t give me much in the way of trouble. Most of the puzzles were straightforward. I didn’t get stuck often and I think I only looked online once to figure something out. This is an adventure game made for adventure game novices. Actually, the issue that I had wasn’t even adventure game bullshit it was HD gaming/pixel hunting bullshit. I couldn’t find a crank while I was in the third level in Russia.

The game seemed to wrap up quite well. I was actually surprised because it ended before I expected it to end. When she did finally meet Hans Vorelburg, I wasn’t satisfied with how they wrapped things up. It seemed too quick. I was ready for the game to be over for sure. I think my final playtime was nine or ten hours but I felt like Hans was plopped down on my lap.

Other than that one feeling, I was happy with how the game ended and it makes me interested in playing the second game.

The graphics were good. I think they hold up generally on modern machines. The in engine assets have that too crisp look that older games running in HD tend to have. The cut scenes look good but they have that old 3D CGI look to them and the quality is more muddy than the in engine stuff.

I generally enjoyed the music in the game. It added to the adventure. Some of the sound effects during the game got grating especially the bird sounds at the university and in the first Russian town.

The game play is pretty simple. Movement around the environment is intuitive. There are times where you won’t quite get in the pocket that will transition between screens but it didn’t annoy me that much. The inventory is easy to use. It took a little while for me to figure out who can react to inventory items and who can’t.

The cell phone was used in creative ways and I think that this is probably one of the most innovative aspects of the game play that made this game unique. The player will receive calls, make calls, and there are times when the cell phone will aid in puzzle solving. It was refreshing.

I used to really respect Jerry Seinfeld. I grew up on Seinfeld. It was one of the first TV shows that I watched week in and week out. I was such a Seinfeld fan that when I started watching baseball I chose the New York Mets as my team because I respected him so much.

I have always known that he is Jewish. I have always assumed that he probably practices his Judaism in some way or another. In recent years, I have also come to believe that he is probably a Zionist. None of these things ever interfered with my reverence for him as a comedian.

I loved his comedy. I was always astounded because he didn't need to use vulgar language in his stand-up routines and I respected him for that because it seems so difficult in comparison to working blue. I love blue comedians too don't get me wrong.

This video which was recorded during the festivities after the New York Knicks won the NBA championship has disgusted me.

He takes such glee in saying it that I completely changed my mind about Jerry Seinfeld. I have no respect for him any longer. To so flippantly erase an entire group of people from the world, tells me everything that I need to know about Jerry Seinfeld and his views on human rights and humanity.

I abhor what the Zionist state is doing in Gaza and Lebanon. I would never take glee in seeing this same thing done to the people of Israel.

おつかれさまです。好きに取って下さい。どうぞ！！

“Thanks for working hard. Take what you’d like.”

I've seen a lot of misinformation out there about this new policy over the last couple of days. So, I'm going to save my consternation until we are better able to understand how this will affect most users.

Anything that will take digital rights from players is bad in my opinion especially when players are purchasing the products. We are creeping closer to a day when the rights holders will be offering their products exclusively through a Netflix style portal and there will be no misunderstanding who actually owns the rights to these games.

Until that happens, we are going to see a lot of these micro aggressions from publishers to test the water on what they can get away with.

I still own my PS3. Actually, I own two PS3s now. Last year, my original PS3 started to go out on me. I would love to get someone to look at it but I just didn't want to spend time doing that instead I opted to purchase a used PS3 and just fill it back up with all of my PS3 purchases. It was an arduous task that still isn't finished but I feel much more comfortable having the downloads of those games on a hard drive because all too soon Sony is going to once again review the feasibility of keeping PS3 and PS Vita stores online and they will shut those stores down. At least with those games, I should be able to continue to enjoy them as long as my PS3 is still able to boot up.

The thing that every Star Wars fan has wanted for years is finally coming to fruition it seems. Ever since George Lucas came back and started messing with the formula, fans have been begging for something new, something different from their favorite galaxy far, far away.

I have heard so many people asking for Star Wars to move away from jedi and to tell less sci-fi based stories but more stories from other genres that touch upon the galaxy we all know and love.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer seems to be just that if we are to believe the pitch from the game's developers.

With the Empire gone and the galaxy rebuilding, The Galactic League is formed: an underground, unsanctioned circuit where syndicates bankroll chaos and champions are forged. No Force. No prophecy. Just skill, strategy, and the will to rise.

This sounds great to me. First, I loved Episode 1 Racer and I'd love another racing game in the Star Wars universe. It would be hard to shit the bed on that one.

Second, this game is described as a "runs-based, high-stakes reinvention of racing born in the lawless Outer Rim of the Star Wars galaxy." I think that sounds like a good way to approach a racing game based on a property like Star Wars. I hope Fuse Games is able to make this part of the game fun and engaging for players.

I think new leadership at Xbox is a good thing overall. Like many people in the gaming community, I liked Phil Spencer. While growing the Xbox brand in through Minecraft, Game Pass, and moving Xbox titles to other platforms to try and increase the reach of Xbox as a developer and as a brand, he also became the figurehead of a company that was razing the industry at Xbox and there were times when Xbox seemed to be mired in the old, plodding machine that is the Microsoft Corporation because it was unable to craft the consoles back-end into something more agile and user friendly.

I think there are ways where AI will help developers improve their ability to make games quickly. I think there are also a lot of ethical mines that those companies will need to dance around to appease audiences...for now. This leadership team seems equipped to help meet those goals.

The gaming public gets up-in-arms about a lot of things and people are constantly boycotting things for millions of valid reasons but those movements don't usually pick up enough steam to slow down huge machines like Microsoft. Take for example the current boycott of Microsoft for it's complicity in the genocide in Israel by the Zionist regime. It doesn't seem to be making a blip on the profit sheets for Microsoft. So, when this leadership change happened, there was a lot of anger aimed at this new focus from Xbox leadership. I am cautiously optimistic.

While I am interested in the future of Xbox, it's hard to feel much of anything from this article. The majority of the quotes are C-suite PR talk that read like motivational posters. They say things without saying much.

They acknowledged that users are frustrated. So, they at least know there is frustration and they know that frustration is partially linked to prices, PC ports, and console features and usability.

They acknowledged, "The model that got us here won’t be the one that takes us forward."

I would like to see if the Xbox in 3 years or 5 years feels any different that it does right now. It's still going to be a faceless monolithic company but will we see the changes that they are promising in that time.

One of the biggest factors that they want to address and I'm actually excited to see how they do so is affordability.

While Booty and Sharma don't offer much in the way of new insight into the next-generation Xbox, codenamed Project Helix, they asserted that the next era for Xbox "will be built to be affordable, personal, and open." With gaming consoles, computer components, and literally everything else getting more expensive, affordability is sure to be a key factor in the next Xbox.

It was announced that the new console would be much more expensive than the current generation hardware. Their handheld device was also more expensive than the current generations hardware. So, the only thing they could be talking about is making it easier to play Xbox and/or Game Pass more easily on cloud based hardware; TVs, current consoles, web browsers, etc.

The video game industry is still reeling from the announcement of Phil Spenser and Sarah Bond's ejection from Xbox. In hindsight, I don't think those of us who follow the industry are that shocked by the decision.

It is equally as unsurprising that Microsoft chose Asha Sharma to lead Xbox into the future. Like most companies, Microsoft has been adding Copilot and any other AI project that have brewing into everything they have their name stamped on.

The Game Informer article reports:

Although Sharma has no prior experience working in video games, she stated in an email to employees that she intends to “understand what makes this work and protect it.” She has also responded to fears of AI integration in future Xbox games (stemming from her former position) by saying, “Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.”

She said this to her employees, whose friends and coworkers have been fired en masse over the last few years, to calm the fears of the Luddites among them who haven't quite drunk their portion of the Kool-aid.

I don't think that her statement would have calmed me either. Much like when Trump was elected president (either time), he wasn't able to say anything to assuage many Americans fears that things would end up exactly how they have - especially since he isn't exactly a statesman and more just a pile of breathing conservative word vomit.

I have some hope that Sharma is able to bring her AI expertise into things like streamlining the game production pipeline or to make streaming game content easier (e.g. Microsoft Flight Simulator and Game Pass streaming).

I'd don't mind them using AI in ways that make mundane tasks easier for game production staff. I don't want to see AI writing game scripts, even if it's only barks. I don't want to see AI making art but I don't have any problem with it taking that art that has been made and making it easier to populate the game environments with those assets.

The next Xbox is going to play Xbox and PC games. Does anybody out there see this and think that the next Xbox is going to be a Steam Deck.

I'm sure it will still connect to a TV like the Steam Deck or the Switch but I would be surprised if there isn't a focus on making the machine less beefy than we've expected from consoles and something that will be built for streaming.

Now, I'm not saying it's going to be a streaming machine alone but I think this thing is going to be the Wii U for consoles. This is going to be the in-between step where Microsoft doesn't have the balls, technology, or infrastructure to make an only streaming device make sense but I think they are going to be moving towards that more with this device.

We have seen the amazing things that Geforce Now is able to do with streaming content running locally on servers.

I, myself, have had a lot of luck with streaming Microsoft games on Game Pass. I play Balatro almost exclusively that way. I have also enjoyed Marvel Cosmic Invasion, Persona 3, and other games through Game Pass streaming.

It turns out that I was right about these Switch ports of Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen. They didn't add much value to these releases so I won't be joining for the foreseeable future.

The changed include:

Fixing a glitch that made Psychic immune to Ghost

Sevii Islands - which include some Pokemon from other generations

A Trainer Tower on these islands that has difficult challenges

Birth and Naval Island which were only available during events in the first game

Also, trading is a local only affair which I can't understand. In this age where the internet is prevalent everywhere in our lives, why wasn't it added to this game to help facilitate trades?

It's heartwarming that Final Fantasy 11 is still around and kicking after all these years. Especially as America is setting fire to most of the world and burning it's own constitution in the process, I am glad to see so many people going back to a place that might feel welcome.

I've never played Final Fantasy 11 but I've always been interested from the periphery. I still longingly wish I had bought it with the hard disk for the PlayStation 2.

Last year, former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida shared his thoughts on bringing PlayStation-exclusive games to PC, saying the strategy was "almost like printing money", and had many advantages. It provided additional revenue to invest in other projects, he explained, and helped the company's franchises reach new audiences who do not own consoles – especially in regions where consoles are not as popular. This, he said, might convince them to purchase a PlayStation when a new entry in a series is released. It would appear Yoshida's position is no longer the predominant one within Sony.

I'm probably not as smart as some of the Sony executives who have made this decision but I'm sure that Shuhei Yoshida is.

I don't see how this makes sense. I understand that they want people to buy PlayStations but most of the people who were buying these PC versions of PlayStation games were never going to buy a PlayStation in the first place. So why not go back for more money?

Unless these games are selling so bad that they aren't even making up what it costs to port them to PC, I don't see why they don't continue putting out a focused number of these titles after the release on PlayStation to make more money and broaden their brand.

It is really hard for me to believe they aren't recouping their expenses on these because modern gaming architecture and PC architecture are very similar.