Blaze's UberFeed

Licensed games have a (often deservedly so) pretty naff reputation, especially in the GC/PS2/Xbox era. Are there any you’ve played where you’ve thought “Huh, that wasn’t so bad”?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

I mean the obvious answer here is Spider-man 2. I owned that for the Xbox, and played it on the 360 through backwards compatibility. That was, for the longest time, the poster child for "good licensed game."

But deep down I don't think that game has aged super well. The swinging is interesting, but the combat and mission design and just general overall polish feels incredibly janky nowadays.

Shoutouts to the lesser-celebrated Spider-man 1. As in, the game based on the first movie. That game plays like a direct sequel to Neversoft's PS1 Spider-man game, even moreso than Enter Electro, and is still shockingly very playable even nowadays. And since it's not open world, it's got a lot less jank.

The next one I always think about is Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. This is maybe the first Hulk game that really puts you in the shoes of the big green guy and he feels "right." Hulk feels like this out of control freight train and its a blast jumping around the city and running up buildings. Definitely made me want a Sonic game that felt like that.

I think a lot of people forget because it's such a natural fit and there's a bunch of them that are actually pretty good, but Dragon Ball games are technically licensed. Budokai 3 is my DBZ game of choice from that era, but I know a lot of people like Tenkaichi 3.

I mean, I dunno, there's a bunch of licensed games I think are at least considered "good enough":

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game. Some people swear this is a really "revolutionary" game. It's definitely pushing a lot of boundaries in terms of tech and design.
TMNT (2007). This is based on the CGI movie, and is developed by Ubisoft. From what I remember it's a very decent Prince of Persia type game, but you can swap between the four turtles.
Lord of the Rings: Two Towers & Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. The console versions are RPG-infused beat'em'ups as I recall and a lot of people were fond of them. The GBA versions are some of the best Diablo clones you could get on a portable back then.
The Simpsons: Hit & Run. Good enough that people are demanding a modern remaster. I never got into it, personally.
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II. I own this. I like it conceptually but Factor5 really makes you work for it. Their games are always a little too difficult. Presentation is basically perfect, though.
LEGO Star Wars. I mean, this is where it all started!
Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee. I've never personally played it but people swear by this game. And there's an upcoming remaster!
007: Nightfire. It's not as good as Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64, but I have a small amount of nostalgia for this game. But only the PS2 version. This is from the era of Electronic Arts developing the PS2 version in-house and then outsourcing completely different versions of the same game for all the other platforms.
James Bond: From Russia With Love. I've never played this one but I remember it getting LAVISHED with praise back in the day.
Disney-Pixar Cars & Cars: Race-O-Rama. These are surprisingly decent open world racing games. Their worst sin is being a little on the easy side.
Ghost Rider. I have been told this is a pretty decent Devil May Cry clone.
Monster Jam: Urban Assault. Perhaps the only good monster truck game ever produced. Sort of like with wrestling games, too many monster truck games want to be sim games. This is Monster Truck Burnout and it rules.
The Matrix: Path of Neo. I will die on this hill. This is a great game! It's barely holding itself together and hasn't aged super well, but it's insane in all the right ways. Parts of it can be a slog but the last 3 or so hours have to be seen to be believed.

My Controller is Still Broken | Fortnite

2026-06-24T06:07:14Z

Thoughts on Jeff Gerstmann’s 8-bit NES science list?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

It's neat that he got through it so quickly but to be honest I never really watched much of it. I've been trying to cut down on long ass streams because they eat up so much of my day.

It was bad enough when I was watching one hour of GiantBomb a day back during the Persona 4 Endurance Run era, now streamers will average 3-6 hour streams multiple times per week. For Jeff, it feels like he's often live three or four days a week, for the podcast, for ranking NES games, for streaming new releases, for whatever.

And to be clear: that's fine! I have nothing but respect for Jeff. The man is an institution. But I find myself trying to rationalize how anyone is supposed to get anything done like that.

Specifically because it's like, if you're a streamer that streams 3-6 hours a day, but you also want to support your friends that stream 3-6 hours a day, how does any of that add up?

The nearest I can tell, most streamers just don't actually watch tons of their own friends. They'll stop in for maybe 10 or 15 minutes a couple times throughout a stream but it's probably weird that when I load up a stream, my goal is to have it up until it ends.

And when I do that, it eats up like, a third of my entire day! I can't be doing that!

And if you miss a live show and watch a vod, then it feels even more awkward. Because you watch a vod to watch the whole thing, don't you? That's the point.

I should probably at least watch Jeff play Super Mario Bros. 3. I'm sure he recaps a lot of the list in that stream.

Brainrot did not exist until the rise of “Bug Studios” and the head-in-toilet man. It did not exist in the 80s or 90s. I wish it would stop existing.

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

You're just being ignorant, my guy. That kind of humor has always been with us. It's been infected by crummy AI garbage, but the core concept behind what "brainrot" is, it's always been here. You don't have to like it, I'm not saying that, but it's definitely not new. Everything is circular.

I keep making myself upset about stupid brainrot shows that I will never watch. I wish that those shows did not exist, but I keep getting upset about them because they are everywhere for some reason. Why is brainrot so popular?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

"Brainrot" is not new. Kids have always loved to confuse or weird out their parents. This was 1980's brainrot:

ALT

It's rebellion against conformity. Go look at the history of abstract, avant-garde, and outsider art. Particularly Dadaism. It's often a type of protest. In the case of Dadaism, it was protesting war and nationalism. It's taking a different form now, something modern, but it's always been here.

History repeats itself. History has always repeated itself. People were dealing with different forms of the same stuff before your grandparents were even born, and they had the same responses to it then. The method of expression changes, but the idea is the same.

Isn’t it like…a little weird that they’re not touching the Adventure games in the interest of “moving the franchise forward” while we had to spend like…a decade begging them to stop shoving green hill/chemical plant/sky sanctuary into every single game?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

It feels like there's some mandate from above that's preventing things. Takashi Iizuka just gave an interview recently where he said if it was up to him he'd have every Sonic game ever made released on every platform.

Also interesting to note that he says that the budget for a remaster is the same as creating a new Sonic game. I feel like you can read between the lines on that pretty easily, because remasters are usually treated like quick, cheap ways to generate easy money.

Like I've been watching some of Jason Schrier. If you aren't familiar with that name, he's one of the higher profile game press people, very smart guy, works at Bloomberg right now on their gaming side. So I would say he knows his stuff better than most people. But he's started a solo channel on Youtube where he talks about the game industry. Recently he did a video on game budgets and why games cost so much to make.

And he does some quick napkin math on how something like Marathon from Bungie costs an estimated 300 million dollars. The cost of living has gone up, the number of people working on games has gone up, so on and so forth. It adds up very easily.

So I think you can take a step back and say that on the cheaper end of things, 80-100 million dollars is a low end game budget for a AAA studio these days.

I do not think there is a remaster in the world that costs 100 million dollars. Let's look at NightDive. Now the Mobygames credits page for the Heretic/Hexen remaster lists more than 940 people, but in terms of the actual development team there was maybe 45 actual developers who put that remaster together, and maybe 19 of them worked for NightDive.

If you compare that to the credits page for Marathon, it lists 2,700 people in the credits and Jason Schrier says the actual number of people employed at Bungie is more like 400. So it's the same deal; big number in the credits, but a fraction of actual developers. And since some of those were still working on Destiny 2 during the production of Marathon, you could say around 300 people at Bungie made Marathon.

Versus 20-40 people on a remaster from NightDive, a company mostly known for some very high quality work. Some of the best, most robust remasters in the business today come from NightDive.

You see this at Digital Eclipse, too. Again: known for a very high bar of quality when it comes to remastering. Maybe 50 actual developers per project, and nowhere near the numbers credited on a brand new, big budget game.

That means that when compared to a brand new, big budget game, it takes maybe 10-20% of that to make a good, high quality remaster from some of the best remastering houses in the business today.

So when Takashi Iizuka says remastering one Sonic game costs as much as a new game does, he's telling on Sega, either on purpose or by accident. Especially given Sega's track record of bungling remasters. They are not paying top dollar for someone to do them correctly. They are being extra cheap.

It really comes down to someone in a department above his issuing marching orders and he's just trying to keep his job. And that person above him, whoever and wherever they are, they are not seeing the value in legacy content the way someone else might have felt 10 or 15 years ago.

No Sir I Don't Like It

2026-06-24T06:07:14Z

Do we know if SA2 could feasibly have a boss fight against Big Foot where it transitions into Hot Shot and then again into Flying Dog seamlessly as the fight progresses?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

I mean the difference is basically just the laser attack, isn't it? And i guess Flying dog doesn't have legs. I can't imagine it would be very difficult.

Why is Aaron Webber so disliked by some groups in the community? I know that his handling of social media and its very ironic character put off a lot of people, but I’ve heard that he’s said or done some pretty bad things.

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

I've heard a couple things through the grapevine. Anecdotal things, so I can't verify them for myself. But the main thing I've heard is that people in the press can't stand him simply because he was kind of annoying. I was told he basically had the heart of a 4chan troll. One of those guys who loved sharing foul memes of cognitohazard level garbage.

For that reason, apparently a lot of the press tried to avoid dealing with him, because off the record and in personal situations he was just the worst kind of irony poisoned internet gremlin. Exactly the kind of guy who would make "I identify as an attack helicopter" jokes on the official company social media account. Absolutely insufferable dumpster water sense of humor.

One story I did hear... again, anecdotal, but you know how the Sonic "brand" started having this weird rivalry with Game Grumps?

The way I heard it, Grumps were apparently not Sega's first pick. Aaron Webber supposedly bent over backwards to court Pewdiepie instead, and Pewdiepie refused to play ball with them. So they had to find some other influencer to torture and signed Game Grumps instead.

And to be clear: Webber was specifically looking for something antagonistic. They wanted it to be this kind of back-and-forth feud. A "friendly" rivalry. Which makes the years of claims that Arin hates Sonic look very different to me, because Webber was apparently encouraging him to be that way on purpose.

So, like, I don't think it's that this guy kicks puppies or is a Trump donor or anything too insane, but it sounds like people who interact with him generally find him deeply annoying and probably more than a little offensive. A pest, if nothing else.

Interested in the FF7 Remake series since they just revealed the final part of the Trilogy?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

This is a little bit funny to me, considering people who know me know that I am a gigantic Final Fantasy VII Mark. I put over 100 hours into the PS1 game, finishing almost every quest and mastering every materia without using a guide.

Final Fantasy VII Remake was maybe one of the last games I bought before things got really bad for me. It took me a while to work through because unless it's my Fortnite dailies or something I'm playing for review, I tend to work through games in fits and starts. But I did stream the ending about two years ago:

I think I did that in prep for Rebirth coming out, so people wouldn't spoil anything for me. Then last year I remembered I had a PS5 and I hadn't touched the Yuffie DLC, so I did a private friends-only stream for that.

In the interim, a friend gifted me both Crisis Core and Rebirth... last year? The year before? For my birthday and I just haven't started them yet. Part of that is indecision; I don't know if I should play Crisis Core first or Rebirth. Some people say Crisis Core, other people say Rebirth.

With Revelation announced I'd dive head first into Rebirth, but the problem is I started Final Fantasy 9 in September of last year and I'm still sluggin my way through that, bit by bit.

And I'd rather not juggle multiple Final Fantasies at the same time. Heck, I'd rather not juggle multiple JRPGs at the same time.

What this ultimately means is that I am kinda-sorta in the dark about Rebirth, and I have been deliberately avoiding even the reveal trailers of Revelation. I've also been forcing myself to focus harder on getting through Final Fantasy 9, because these games are typically ~30 hours long but I'm pushing 20 hours and I'm still on Disc 2 of 4.

I really loved FF7 Remake. Absolutely adored it. I love the idea that it's both a remake and a sequel, and a large portion of the game is sort of reckoning with forces trying to push the story in a new direction versus the phantoms of the past trying to keep things on track. Really smart stuff, really stellar characterization, just the absolute perfect adaptation.

The secret third reason I haven't started Rebirth is because I've heard people were a little colder about it than Remake, so I'm worried I'll like it less.

Outside of the stream, did you ever formally write out your thoughts on Final Horizon anywhere?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

I guess I did not, no.

The Final Horizon was... I mean, Kishimoto said he was trying to compete with modders, I guess, right? To show that Sega can do that kind of content. But I feel like he went too far. The Final Horizon kind of drags. They made a lot of content out of what is arguably very few assets and you can really feel that. It's a lot of cheap junk that only exists to fill time. Like the Episode Shadow DLC for Sonic Forces, but padded out to be even longer.

If they wanted to make The Final Horizon feel meaningful, they should have spent more time on the new final boss and then unlocked the playable versions of Amy, Tails and Knuckles as some kind of NG+ "what if" bonus mode.

But it's like, let's say you assign an arbitrary quality rating to the original Sonic Frontiers final boss. And that rating is a 4 out of 10. The new final boss in The Final Horizon is like, a 5 out of 10. It's better! But only very marginally. It's more climactic for sure, but the boss itself is really rough and still not very fun.

FYI PSA BBQ

2026-05-23T04:37:01Z

By the way! If you are unaware, eventually at some point bltn.net will be redirecting to...

You hear about Sonic Advance 3 SP? Have you played it yet?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

I've played it up to about Twinkle Snow. For those of you aren't aware, Tracker has produced two rom hacks, one of Sonic Advance 2 and recently one for Sonic Advance 3. The idea is to rebalance the games and kind of sand down the rougher edges.

Sonic Advance 2 SP largely just increases the number of SP rings in levels to make it less grueling to get the Chaos Emeralds, but Sonic Advance 3 SP makes much larger changes to the level structure itself.

And... it's not enough for me. He got rid of a lot of the instant kill pits, sure, but it's still an ugly game stuffed full of gotcha traps and pointless gimmicks. I think he wanted to maintain some sense of a light touch, to not alter the core of the game too much, but that's the whole problem for me. Sonic Advance 3 is a game that needs a lot of work. A lot more than this.

IF I KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT ROM HACKING, I'D:

Remove all Chao from the game. Sorry, Chao heads. To access special stages in Sonic Advance 3, you have to collect all the Chao in every level in a zone. Once all the Chao have been collected, they get replaced with keys, and keys can be spent unlocking the special stage hidden on the map. But that means you have to replay levels at least twice! Too many steps! Get rid of the Chao! Keys only!
Get rid of the variable acceleration mechanic. In Sonic Advance 3, your rate of acceleration is determined by how many rings you're holding. I think it measures from 0 rings (lowest acceleration) up to 70 or 80 rings (maximum acceleration). For speed run sickos this is great because there's a big skill ceiling that lets them go really fast if they can master it. For everyone else it's annoying because once you get up to around 50 rings characters start accelerating a little too fast, so it ends up feeling like a trap that causes you to make mistakes more easily. So get rid of it! Lock acceleration down to a fixed value!
Let you swap between characters like in Encore Mode. Partners are a big thing in Sonic Advance 3. Each pair comes with their own set of abilities, but you only ever get to see one side of that equation. So I think you should be able to press Select or L bumper or something and swap out for your partner and back.
Ideally, put at least one swap station in every level. Arguably this is going to be a lot harder because there's checkpointing to consider and all kinds of things, but being able to swap out characters entirely in the middle of a level would be ideal. Keep the partner swap button but also maybe you find some place that lets you go from a Sonic & Tails pair to Knuckles & Cream. Or maybe just character boxes like Encore Mode had.
Every gotcha trap has to go. ALL OF THEM. There are so many places where you're running full tilt, bump into a wall, stop dead, and spikes pop out of the floor just to humiliate you. Absolutely not. There are springs that launch you directly into enemies that are off screen. Get out of here. Reducing bottomless pits is only "step one." Go further.
Change or remove anything timer-based. Sonic Advance 3 introduces "puzzles" where you push a button to activate a spring or temporarily create a moving platform. Either double (or triple!) the timers or just replace them with normal non-timer based versions of those objects. The timers are annoying and don't add anything more "complex" to the game.

And My Controller Was Broken Too | Fortnite

2026-06-24T06:07:14Z

What do you hope to see from that new Spyro game that Toys for Bob is developing?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

Stick to just Spyro. I know for everyone who grew up with Spyro they probably want the monkey and the penguin and whatever else to come back but... like I said in the last ask, I got really tired of Crash Bandicoot 4 really quickly because it had the same problem as Sonic Mania for me.

It was just too much stuff. Levels were way too long. A level in Crash 4 often felt like 3-5 normal levels stapled together. And then they were like "Now play as Tawna! And Cortex! And Dingodile!"

And particularly with Dingodile I remember thinking his level felt reasonably short... and then it just transitioned into playing half of a level as Crash, and it was a level I'd already finished before. I just groaned.

And all the masks, too. Every mask segment was overly complicated and just a little too much. It's not that it wasn't fun, it's that everything felt like this endless marathon where every dial was cranked to 11. They expected you to lock in and stay locked in without any chance to rest, relax, or catch your breath.

Alternatively, it makes me think of that Calvin & Hobbes comic where Hobbes tries some of Calvin's cereal and it's so overwhelming it nearly kills him.

But then the final panel Calvin's like "actually, it's kind of bland."

I'm sure there are people out there who loved Crash Bandicoot 4 but I was not one of them and the game was overstimulating to the point where I deleted it off my PS5 and I have no plans to finish it.

I don't want them to do that to Spyro.

Why does everyone assume the new Spyro is a flight only game/open world when we only have 10 seconds of screentime? Why does no one stop to think that maybe the focus on flight is just a marketing ploy so people can know what makes this game different fro

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

If it's worth anything I don't think the game is solely focused on flight, but I do think it could potentially be open world.

Or maybe it's just like Crash Bandicoot 4 and they're making a game that's way too big and overstuffed with content, where all the levels take 20+ minutes to complete.

I'd believe that, too.

Why are game remakes more widely accepted than a movie remake? People understand that movies are art and don’t need to be remade to be enjoyed. There was a vision there. People want video games to be art, but then clap when a new Resident Evil remake happ

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

Games are very tech driven. Like specifically with your example of Resident Evil Remake, there are things in I think RE2 Remake that they wanted to do in RE2 but I think they were too limited by technology to accomplish. Disc capacity, RAM capacity, that sort of thing.

In some ways it's comparable to having a different medium entirely. Think of it like the difference between silent movies and "talkies", except that's happened 4+ times.

ALT

Now these are not remakes, but they are all Indiana Jones games. And you get what I mean, right? Mechanics get less oblique. Graphics get more expressive. Music becomes more evocative. You go from something that's almost totally incomprehensible to something that is basically the real Indiana Jones.

You also go from a game that basically uses a single button to a game that uses many buttons to a game that uses buttons and sticks, and finally buttons, sticks, triggers, and haptics. It is a significantly bigger shift than you get in film, where to some degree, a photograph is still a photograph.

More than most entertainment industries, video games have been revolutionized over, and over, and over, and over again.

It's also like... I think a lot about the PS1 and the Dualshock divide, right. Once Sony released the Dualshock, a lot of games were simply better with analog, to the point where some games re-released to add analog controls. Great sea changes like that have been common.

And this also happened a lot with the shift from silent film to talkies! A lot of silent films got remade to give characters actual spoken dialog once the technology allowed for it. It's just the tech for viewing films hasn't evolved in such a way to necessitate large quantities of remakes (even though we've also gotten plenty there, as well). Instead, studios can just re-scan the negatives and pull a new, native 4K image out of something they've already finished.

Games can't really do that, not to the same degree.

Whereas you can probably watch a movie made in 1987 on a 4K TV and get a better experience at home than you probably could at the theater in 1987, an NES game is always kind of going to look and sound like an NES game. And preservationists are fighting harder than ever to make sure games are presented in their original formats, warts and all, as accurately as possible.

Imagine if the only format Escape From New York released on was VHS. Didn't matter if it came out on DVD, Blu-ray, whatever. It was always VHS quality.

That's sort of what people want from retro games. And "retro" is a moving target continually encompassing larger and larger volumes of material.

And that's not even touching on the fact that a lot of old game developers were not very preservation focused. So a lot of that old code is simply gone forever, lost to the ages, and a modern developer might find it more pertinent to just remake the product from scratch. Especially when you consider that even if the code survives, it might be 30 year old machine code for a CPU that hasn't been manufactured since the Reagan administration.

And then there's the whole tangle of emulation, which may be too advanced for some users, may require extra hardware power the user doesn't have access to, and may not even run games correctly compared to real actual hardware. Things are getting better on that front all the time, but there are still thousands of games that are in danger of becoming inaccessible by time and hardware. That, too, is less true of movies, where as long as you have a screen that displays moving pictures, you can probably watch a movie on it.

There's just a lot more going on with games than there are with movies.

I do think there's a great value in keeping legacy versions of games alive and functional even in the face of remakes, though. Being able to play the original RE4 and then swap over to RE4 Remake is great. Making sure both things are distinct products but are still obviously connected is good, too.

I also sometimes find myself gripped by the perverse desire to see some movies remastered in the same way games get changed by tech. Mostly, movies from the mid-to-late 90's, during the first waves of the CGI takeover. I often wonder why they can't just replace the old terrible looking CGI with new, better CGI. I'm not asking for a George Lucas treatment, but I mean just... upgrade the textures. Improve the lighting. Use better hair simulations.

Like, the 1995 Jumanji movie, right. These CGI monkeys look awful, and they're even worse when you see them in motion. So don't change the shots, but just put better CGI in that doesn't look so old and distracting. Better motion blur, better lighting, better hair, but still the same shot. Just give them a Version 2.0 pass. Exact same movie, frame for frame, add nothing, subtract nothing, but the CGI characters look more like they belong in that world. That's all.

I know the hundred reasons that'll never happen, and I'm fine with that outcome too, but I still think about it on occasion.

Thoughts on the Nintendo Direct?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

A big yawn from me. I mean, look, I already don't have a Switch 2 and don't feel like I'll be able to afford one for a long, long time. The barrier to get me to care about a lot of this stuff is already pretty high.

And then the direct is a lot of ports or cross-gen stuff or DLC.

The One Piece restaurant tycoon game caught me off guard. It's KairoSoft, for whatever that's worth, so I don't know if it'll really knock it out of the park, but I'm all for One Piece games that get weird with it and aren't just punching pirates and military.

The JJK Vampire Survivors spinoff is ridiculous and I hope it's very cheap or even free. It kind of has the vibe of an advergame.

Square-Enix turning their Final Fantasy Brave Exvius mobile game into an offline singleplayer RPG is very funny to me. I'm glad, too. Games like this deserve to live on after their live service shuts down and for a lot of them there's nothing preventing them from becoming fully offline singleplayer games.

Rhythm Heaven Groove and Splatoon Raiders are what's got my interest most in this direct. I want to like rhythm games a lot more than I end up enjoying them in practice, but a new Rhythm Heaven always deserves to be on everyone's radar, I think.

And I really enjoyed the time I spent with Splatoon 1 and continue to miss playing it. The singleplayer in those games always struck me as something that could be expanded on a lot, too, so seeing them take a swing with a purely singleplayer Splatoon game has my interest for sure.

The elephant in the room is Ocarina of Time Remake. I'm reserving judgement on the visuals until I see more but it's deeply exhausting they only gave us a very small teaser. I feel like the Switch 2 is in dire need of a heavy hitter game right now after Mario Kart World was so divisive and Bananza has kind of come and gone.

I also replayed Ocarina of Time on the 3DS around the time of Breath of the Wild, and I was surprised at just how slow it felt and how bored I was by the game. If you want to sell me on an Ocarina remake, I need to see whether it's going to be a Starfox-level remake or something more dramatically different. If all you're going to show me is a costume change for Link and hint at there being more voice acting, that's not good enough for me. You can't softball that.

Also the whole Switch Sports Resort segment, especially when they had Koizumi demo the game, really gave me Wii Music vibes. He was weirdly super low energy and the game feels more like Nintendo going through the motions rather than doing anything interesting. The most aggressively "yeah whatever I guess" game Nintendo's put out in a while.

A real bland showing overall. Nintendo did not make me feel like I cannot live without a Switch 2. I absolutely can, and will continue to.

Thoughts on SGF and the Microsoft event?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

I did not watch SGF. I learned my lesson after The Game Awards. Instead, I hit up youtube.com/gametrailers, used it to make a playlist called "E3 2026," and sat down and watched an hour and a half of game trailers without Geoff or anyone from Microsoft talking between things.

And. Um. Doing that was exhausting.

You get so numb, so quickly, and eventually I even started to get angry at how many trailers open with cinematics that have nothing to do with gameplay. Or how many trailers are just entirely cinematic with no gameplay in them at all. It turned my brain to mush.

Into the Unwell makes me think of Whiplash for the Xbox, but with the rubber hose aesthetic of something like Cuphead.

I saw a lot of people buzzing about Tenebris Sombra and I don't get it. It kind of just looks like what Faith was already doing, but higher budget. You need to sell me on more than just "We spent more money than they did." But I suppose I'm being mean. Practical effects horror should be celebrated in all forms.

Shark Dentist looked insanely cynical to me. It's already kind of a strange concept, but then they so transparently jam "lore" into the mix that it just feels like bait. The epitome of "what if we did a game like..."

The back to back entries of N00b's Guide and Doomsday Diner just left me scratching my head because I'm not entirely sure what those games even are. Broadly speaking I get it, but I dunno. They feel like trailers that just washed over me and did a poor job making a case for themselves.

I thought I was still in the indie game section when I got to Exodus, which seems to be trying really hard to shake the fact it's trying to carry the Mass Effect 2 torch. It seems interesting but it mainly made me realize I've never put meaningful time into any of the original Mass Effect trilogy and I should some day.

A Star Trek horror game is an interesting twist but I'm still gun shy seeing the name Bloober Team. And again, a purely cinematic trailer. The "Halloween" singleplayer trailer has too much of the Rob Zombie version in it for my tastes, and their Loomis impersonator isn't great. But it's funny that they can get away not showing Michael's face because it's all third person.

I went out of my way to avoid including trailers for so-called "friend slop" and Cordura made me mad by sneaking in anyway. I was hoping Forever Ago had something more than just "you play as an old man" but it doesn't seem like it does. Gate Guard also kind of made me frown for how much it's just "a comedic version of Papers Please made for 100x more powerful hardware for some reason."

The opening line to Dog Pile said "roguelike deckbuilder" and I immediately hit the skip button. Sorry dude.

House Flipper 2: Pets is a contender for the worst trailer of the show. Shows absolutely nothing about what pets add to the game. Obviously you're going to be cleaning up pet messes, but is there more to it than that? There needs to be more to it than that. I watched your trailer hoping to see if there was more to it than that. Instead I got a cartoon that tells me nothing.

D-Topia wins the actual worst trailer though. The trailer has encoding errors and what can be seen of the game looks pretty boring.

Modern Warfare 4 had me scratching my head and wondering, "Didn't they do a MW4 already?" They have not. I don't play Call of Duty. This is for their extraction shooter mode, which I doubly do not care about. It looks so tightly scripted it makes me doubt it was even live gameplay. It looks like something somebody animated in Blender.

Clockwork Revolution was a surprise for me. I was ready to write it off, but the more I watched the trailer, the more charmed by it I became. A steampunk clockwork time travel shooter is an interesting concept and I get vibes of the good parts of Bioshock.

Gears of War: E-Day was maybe my favorite thing here. I'm glad to see Gears of War "back" and looking cool as hell. Microsoft knows it, too, because they're locking it down as their console exclusive. Probably the strongest thing they got. Unfortunately for them I'm not buying an Xbox for that game.

The Fable reboot looks too serious. I laughed that the Plague Tale spinoff (sequel?) is just a generic action game and there aren't even any rats. Sea of Thieves also seems like it's trying to become a Roblox. Ho-hum.

I really hated the Halo "new missions" teaser. It says a lot that Gears is an Xbox console exclusive but Microsoft is showing this thing around on a Playstation 5. This is the death knell for this franchise and it kind of spits in the face of Halo's entire identity. 343 was kind of awful at maintaining the Halo "feel" and this is them giving up entirely and going full Call of Duty or Doom 2016. And like I said on Bluesky, all the cutscenes have that plastic-y instagram filtered look like they were either AI generated or at least "AI enhanced." Foul. No thank you.

By this point in the playlist my burnout was becoming real and I started skipping big chunks of it because I was feeling the garbage overload, especially after Halo.

Stage Tour looks great. Indie Guitar Hero is exactly where this genre needs to go, and their roguelike campaign mode where you're on a road trip collecting power-ups and picking songs sounds awesome. I never connected with Guitar Hero as much as I wanted, so I'm glad to see it still getting some love.

There Are No Ghosts At The Grand looks pretty fun. Sort of a house flipper style game but as you renovate rooms you uncover clues to a wider mystery. Good concept, at least.

Exo Rally is very funny to me. It's like if they made a Mass Effect spinoff about doing checkpoint races in the Mako. That's not a complaint. I like off-kilter racing games.

Every time I see Company of Heroes I have PTSD flashbacks to the days before Steam, where my cousin bought me a retail disc of Company of Heroes and in order to play it with him online, I had to install 25+ patches in sequence, one at a time, on a 1mbps connection. It took more than a week. And we ultimately never even played it together.

Serious Sam: Shatterverse continues my hot-and-cold, on-and-off affair with Serious Sam. I've never liked it when this franchise gets too deliberately wacky, so I'm skeptical of this.

Thief Remastered is good to see. I do worry NightDive is spreading themselves too thin these days, though.

Ending on Duskers 2.0 was fitting given it is another mostly-cinematic trailer. I wasn't even aware there was a Duskers 1. Interesting concept, I guess.

Do you miss Sally Acorn?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

Specifically just Sally? I dunno.

I liked the dynamic Sonic and Sally had in SatAM. Sally wanted to plan everything slowly and carefully, Sonic wanted to rush in and deal with whatever came his way head-first. They completed each other.

That is not who Sega Sonic is. Sega Sonic is a guy who believes everyone deserves to be free. He seems like the kind of guy who cannot be tied down by anyone. Cannot be changed by anyone.

Sega Sonic is not a guy who has a girlfriend. Not Princess Sally, not even Amy Rose. Sega Sonic goes where the wind takes him. Chasing the horizon looking for something new. He's always on the move and nobody can keep up with him. Everybody knows of Sonic, but not many people know the real Sonic the Hedgehog, you know what I mean?

And Sega Sonic is not necessarily impulsive in the way SatAM Sonic was. If anything, the way he handled Perfect Chaos shows he's willing to look before he leaps and make calculated decisions. He does not "shoot first and ask questions later."

I can't see Sega Sonic getting along with Princess Sally. I'm sure they'd still be allies, friends even, but they wouldn't have chemistry like they did in SatAM. They wouldn't "complete each other." They would simply be two capable members of the resistance.

I do, however, miss the SatAM vibe. I still miss late-era Archie Sonic. I miss when the comics got to be this complex tapestry of weird stuff and were allowed to have more creative license. I miss when they got to have Breezie running a casino staffed by Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts as her bodyguards. I miss when Honey the Cat was this pop-star idol that Amy adored. I miss Professor Pickle and Uncle Chuck being buddies. I miss Bunnie Rabbot, Antoine, Rotor, and Nicole. I miss Knothole. I miss The Void. I miss Wendy Witchcart inexplicably being the sister of Ixis Naugus. I miss Snively. And, yes, deep down, I even miss The Dark Legion, even though they are connected to he who shall not be named.

I miss all of that a lot more than just Sally by herself. I miss what Sally was a part of. Even if it was a soap opera (a lot of comics are soap operas!)

IDW is getting better, though. I know there are IDW haters out there who are going to see a post like this and think I'm on their side. IDW had a rough patch around the release of Sonic Frontiers, I wasn't quiet about that, but that's because some of their A-List talent was working with Sega on the game. IDW seems to have diversified their pool of writers and there's not as much draw on the writing talent from Sega's end anyway. I loved the extreme gear tournament arc. I think what they're doing with Surge is really interesting. I'm totally hooked on who this big villain reveal is going to be (it's totally Franken-Starline).

Thoughts on… this?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

Not a fan! And the Sega Discord also apparently uses AI artwork in their header image too. I'm sure some of these things will get corrected eventually, Sega's just late to the party here in how the tide is turning harshly against AI, but it's still a bummer.

The Crazy Taxi World Tour trailer was bad, too. Paced very poorly. Felt like they shoved the Offspring song in there at the last minute and that things were paced around a different song instead. Very awkward.

Won't be hard to ignore it.

Flavor of the Moment | Fortnite

2026-06-24T06:07:14Z

It it a hot take to say shadow and sonic could have fallen in love with each other if circumstances had played out differently? I feel like they are only ones who could really see each other as equals and come to understand each other and exist comfortabl

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

Is it a hot take to suggest Sonic could handle Biolizard’s final form solo? I fully acknowledge this was born of my own character bias, but considering how quickly it’s possible to reach a weak spot (no, it’s not easy, but it can be done) and that Sonic f

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

I dunno. Sonic Adventure 2's plot is weird now. I'm still convinced the point of the story was that Gerald recreated synthetic versions of Super Sonic and Perfect Chaos from Echidna prophecy, and that the whole point is that Shadow would eventually realize he's lesser than Sonic. His death was meant to be this moment of defying Gerald's deathwish, honoring Maria's promise, and proving that even a copy could still do something right.

If you keep that in mind, yes, Sonic could almost assuredly solo Biolizard. All throughout The Finalhazard, Sonic is talking about how Shadow doesn't look so good and his Super power is starting to fade. And if you consider that the prototype textures for Super Shadow were Silver and not Gold, I think that's also tying into all this. That Super Shadow just wasn't supposed to be as powerful as Super Sonic.

Now the question is: let's say things play out exactly the same with Sonic soloing The Finalhazard. Can he generate a big enough Chaos Control on his own? I guess I question that. It's a good dramatic moment that Sonic and Shadow work together.

And I sort of get this picture in my head of the end of Dragon Ball Z, right. Spoilers for one of the most popular Anime of all time and an episode that aired 20+ years ago: Where Goku unites the entire planet in the biggest Spirit Bomb he's ever conjured and it's still not enough to kill Buu, so he has to give it one last little push to finish the job.

For some reason, if Super Sonic has to solo The Finalhazard, I feel like it's going to be the same sort of thing. He'll get close, but there will need to be an extra push from somewhere. That was Super Shadow. But if Super Shadow isn't with him, it has to come from something else.

Since Sonic Adventure 1 specifically shows the Chaos Emeralds completely depowered and the support of his friends (and the city) re-energizes them, maybe we get something similar. But instead of the people of Station Square cheering on Sonic the Hedgehog, we pan across all continents on earth (something we already see!) and everyone gives Sonic just a little more energy to push past the last 10% he needs.

Fortnite: Shattered Event (Ice King Side)

2026-06-24T06:07:14Z

Thoughts on the recent State of Play?

2026-06-23T18:09:31Z

I'm not really sure why we need a remake of Rayman Legends with CGI models instead of hand drawn art. Maybe the original game still sells well enough to justify a new edition but it feels super pointless to do this weird half step where they're adding another 20% to the game and completely redoing all the visuals.

And the new visuals are nice, they aren't as blasphemous as they could be, but I still dunno.

As I round the bend on what feels like the final encounters of Control, I am becoming very excited for Control Resonant. The first Control feels like Remedy throwing down their shackles and letting their freak flag fly in so many ways, and Resonant looks like a doubling down of that. I keep thinking of how they're sort of feeling like Hideo Kojima levels of weird without all the baggage of Hideo Kojima himself.

I want to see how far Remedy can push things.

Conceptually I like the idea of God of War Laufey. On Bluesky I compared it to Kill Six Billion Demons in the way it portrays the afterlife, and I say that favorably. In practice, the more I sit with what they showed of Laufey the less I like it. It's a very different tone for the series and the moment they introduced Phranque I completely checked out. The name sucks, all of his dialog is too quippy, it gives off the vibes of, almost like executive meddling, in a way?

Like somebody thought the audience needed a "normal" character to "ground things." Keeping in mind Phranque is a gelatinous cube, of course. "Cute" might be a better word. But there's something about him that feels very calculated and forced in a way that is a little yucky to me. There are other things that are rubbing me the wrong way, but I know they'll sound like nitpicking. For now I'm giving this game the side-eye. I'm suspicious.

Off the top of my head that's all I can remember from State of Play. I guess Wolverine was there? That looked exactly like I expected it would. Zero surprise there. I'm sure it'll be a very fun and polished game, but I could form a complete picture of what that game was going to look and play like in my head, and that's exactly what it is.

GRIP XR Prototype Demo Sampler Platter

2026-06-24T06:07:14Z

I guess Overwatch is here | Fortnite

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Perfect Dark - PC Recompile (1080p, 60fps, dataDyne Extraction)

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Despite Everything, it's Still the Infinity Blade | Fortnite

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The 150 Club | Fortnite

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F Zero VX - Mute City (VRChat)

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I think people are cheating at Fortnite Rivalries | Fortnite

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Buzz vs. Zurg | Fortnite

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Moon Child (Amiga, Unreleased) - Title Theme Restored

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Cold Ones | Fortnite

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Strange Encounters: Part Two (Podcast)

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The Definitive Way to Play Sonic Adventure 2

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It's Been One Year... Let's Talk Channel Updates

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Everybody Loves a Redemption Arc - Yooka-Replaylee

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Strange Encounters: Part One (Podcast)

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So I watch some degree of Jeff Gerstmann on Youtube. Not everything, I peek in on things once and a…

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The Xbox Everywhere System

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This has come up in a couple discords in the last 24 hours, following news that Microsoft is laying...

Listening for the Voices of the Void

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So It's Your First Time Playing Sonic Unleashed... (Recompiled)

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Crash Bandicoot 4: Part 1

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That Hedgehog Won't Survive

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