This Week’s Topics:
- Natalie Muses About The Objectively Greatest Games of All Time (And Why That’s a Fallacy)
- Natalie’s A Musical Dinosaur (Natalie Talks About Her Music Library And Gets Distracted)
- Can’t Escape From Crossing Fate! (Fate/Extra Record Announced)
- Dead At Dusk (Ready At Dawn Shut Down)
This past week, I’ve been on my first vacation in 16 years! Yes, as I’ve mentioned before, I have invited my best friend, and precious Natalie.TF contributor, Cassandra Wright, over to stay with me for 11 days. Also, her boyfriend tagged along, and he’s cool.
Now, setting this up, I was worried I would wind up hating Cassie after actually spending time with her in person. However… she is exactly the person who she appeared to be in text and voice calls. Right down to her weird hiccups. Which is great, because I love Cassie! She’s my best friend of all time, and while we are very different people in some regards, that isn’t a bad thing. She has her quirks, I have mine, and they gel together really well.
We have spent the past week going out, seeing sights, doing some shopping, and just lying around watching things together. We have ultimately been pretty darn busy, meaning I haven’t had a lot of time to focus on writing things for Natalie.TF, but that just means we’re spending more time together and having fun. However, none of this would be possible without my mother, who has been such a wonderful tour guide, driving us places, helping us with our schedule, and… basically being a mom for all three of us.
I tend to be a stay-at-home, do-little sort of person, and while this all is exhausting— and hell on my untrained feet— this has been some of the most fun I’ve ever had with other people. It has been a decade since I got to hang out with a friend in person, and I know that I’m going to miss them by the time next week ends. I’ll have a nice big ex post facto retrospective on this trip in the year-end Ramble, but for now, I’m going to leave it at that and get back to my vacation.
Also, I originally wanted to record a video of me and Cassie for this segment, but she veto’d that idea. So this is aaallllll you get.
A thing that will forever mildly frustrate me is when someone refers to games as ‘one of the greatest games of all time’. A highly loaded statement that implies that the ‘greatness’ of games is something that can be objectively measured. Likely through some quantitative method. Now, I am not opposed to the adoption of an agreed upon metric for a generally perceived quality of games— I reference MetaCritic scores all the time. I just find it frustrating when these scores are being conflated with a form of objective greatness, as if this is an ironclad scientific method. When really, it’s just the fastest and easiest method around.
However, I have seen many people attempt their own method of this, trying to use vague means of assessing quality, and in checking out a recent example of this trend, I had to pause and ask several pertinent questions. And not the questions of how should legacy be weighed in terms of something as daftly pretentious as ‘greatness’. It’s ‘should multiplayer-driven games be up for consideration in a list like this?’
Let me elaborate. When talking about most forms of established media— novels, films, episodic television series, albums, the experience of engaging with the material is largely the same. You read it, you watch it, or you listen to it. They are all selling an experience, and that experience should be identical irrespective of when and how they are engaged with. A unique and defining element of video games is, of course, that they offer unique experiences depending on the knowledge and skill levels of the player, as they can perform different actions. However, they are all ultimately the player going against the game. They see the player try to accomplish something within a fixed and regimented system, and roughly everybody playing a game will encounter the same challenges.
…Multiplayer games are different though. They rely, in some part, on players making their own fun with them, on the quality of the peers one is playing with, and without another player, then the games are simply not as good. If you only play a fighting game via its single-player offerings, you can still have an enjoyable time with it— I know I have— but anybody who is into fighting games will agree that multiplayer is the main allure. That competing against others is what makes fighting games great.
An MMO can rely on its playerbase and the quality of its community about as much as it relies on the quality of its world design, progression, storytelling, and gameplay system, combined. A party game’s quality is practically directly related to the quality of one’s friends. And the quality of these games, of the experiences they can offer, can also shift over time as the people around them develop. This is unlike a single player game as, while the tastes and preferences can alter, the game remains fairly static.
While the impact and technical details may be different, Half-Life 2 in 2024 is the same game it was in 2004. However, playing Street Fighter III: Third Strike with friends in 2000 bears few similarities to playing it on with random people online in 2024. Sure, the mechanics are the same, the graphics are the same— barring a different display— but the way people play this game, even on a ‘causal’ level makes it hard to really see them as the same experience. As such, how can one possibly hope to measure an experience with so much variability and variation?
What if a multiplayer game was considered one of the greatest at some point in time, but people simply stopped playing it and it became impossible to achieve the same ‘magic’ that made it the greatest? Should it be given a reduced score? What if the opposite happens? Should the score be increased? What if the game goes offline and cannot be played? Should it be removed, as the game no longer exists?
…Actually, here’s another question. How does one assess the quality of a live service game, and can a live service be considered one of the greatest games of all time, or merely one of the greatest games in its genres? World of Warcraft is featured in the above list, but what era was the objective best? Launch? Vanilla after patches? Classic? Wrath of the Lich King? Circa 2023? Destiny 2 has, from what I have heard, constantly flip-flopped in quality, so any objective scoring for it would need to fluctuate from year-to-year. And I know that my thoughts on Dragalia Lost ran the gamut during its development, as the game kept changing and new content kept being added. And now that game’s officially dead and only lives on via private servers. So… does it even get a spot on that list?
Hell, should retroactive updates and DLC affect a game’s ranking? Should a lack of DLC affect the ranking? Looking at the above list again, it has Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as its number one pick. Cool. Does that include all the DLC released for the game? Does that include the game with an Amiibo collection, including a wolf Link companion? Does Half-Life 2 include the two episodes along with Deathmatch and Lost Coast?
Versions are another matter, and what is better? Ocarina of Time or Ocarina of Time 3D? Or is the best version actually a modified version of the Ship of Harkinian decompilation with quality-of-life improvements? Does a game that was not authorized by the rights holder count? Should an objective assessment of Skyrim only acknowledge the base game and ignore the decade worth of mods made for the game?
I could go on and on about the problems and the more I go on, the less these become problems of assessing games objectively, and just assessing them. Generally, I view modern game reviews as only being relevant based on the time they are released. My review of Zenless Zone Zero is based on a small snippet of my experience shortly after its launch. Too many games get post-launch updates and expansions that I honestly view timely assessments of games as having a firm shelf life. I might have put a lot of time and effort into my ZZZ review, but I know it will be a relic in the next few years. Hell, my Palworld review is already dated and partially invalidated by many patches that have come out since them.
But packaged games? Games that received no updates and remain static, preserved forever as read-only code? Those games can, and should, be reassessed… but the games will always remain the same, and I think there is a certain beauty in that. They are easier to judge, easier to measure, and can be looked at ‘more objectively’. Super Metroid (1994) hasn’t changed one damn iota in 30 years and there’s something both annoying as sh*t and admirable as f*ck about that.
However, to fixate only on these games… would mean mostly focusing on old-ass games. Patches, DLC, and post-launch support make it hard to actually assess a game at launch, as issues could always be fixed, content could be added, and the game could change. Truly, a game can only be objectively measured in retrospect.
Which is why I think that the best way to determine a list of ‘greatest games of all time’ is just to have a council of people. Have them nominate and write essays defending and justifying their argument that a game should be indoctrinated into the council, and have rigid rules for live services and multiplayer games. Or, ideally, their own sub-categories to segregate them from games that are not beholden to the whims of a fickle and limited community that will one day die off or a corporation’s profit incentives.
…Or just accept that your options are not facts, get a damn personality, and like weird sh*t along with mainstream bangers. Like me! Yo, Akumako! Bring up my top 25 list!
This is from August 2023. Only thing I would update is replacing the original Paper Mario 2 with the HD remake, and the Dragalia Lost cover art I mocked up. I would also change Mass Effect 2 for a better cover, but all of that game’s covers kinda suck. Legendary Edition’s cover owns though.
This has been another meandering shower though turned into a 1,200 word essay from your local Natalie Neumann creature. Which includes and is not limited to Big-Eyed Shocked Nat..
Despite never using the platform, I semi-regularly see people talk about the music streaming service Spotify. When discussing it, they are critical of how it is using AI to avoid paying artists. Are paying artists effectively nothing. Have failed to expand and are looking like they will collapse. And have siphoned wealth to its executives, rather than the artists. Despite this… people also seem deeply complacent with the fact that music is streaming, and dismiss people who don’t stream music, which I just find… very narrow-minded.
Now, I understand why music streaming works so well for some people. You have access to a limitless library you can listen to. Anybody can upload just about anything onto streaming platforms, even if they shouldn’t. And for multi-device users, this keeps their music all in one place— an app. It works for some people, and I’ll never chagrin someone for wanting an option, as options are nice.
However, what I find frustrating is how people talk about any alternative to listening to music other than streaming. With just about any long-form essays saying something to the effect of ‘people don’t pirate or download music nowadays, they just use Spotify/YouTube.’
Which… first off, just because hundreds of millions of people do something, that does not mean ‘everybody.’ Do not generalize your perceptions across a population of billions and pretend that exceptions do not exist. Use weasel words like typically, generally, and mostly.
However, this sentiment bothers me as… I have never used a music streaming service. I started building a music collection when I was about 16, and have been building upon this library, taking things out, adding new things, updating them with higher quality versions, the works. The end result for me is a collection of 52.5 GB of music on my SSD, or 7,000 songs, or 17.4 days of music. Mind you, part of that is because I use MP3s, which I know are lossy and will lose their quality over time. But for me and my $10 Panasonic ErgoFit loving ass, they are good enough. …I should transition to 320 kbps Vorbis files, but that would be the kind of pain-in-the-ass sh*t work that an AI should do for me. Same with renaming and organizing my files…
Why do I do this? Because it is easy to lose track of music if it is on a streaming service. It could be delisted, things might be added or altered without your knowledge, and it can just be harder to find things. While having files is akin to having a collection. I am more likely to relisten to something when I see the album art, set my player to shuffle to find an album, or just let the player go through my albums alphabetically. By maintaining a collection of files, I have songs and albums that I have been listening to for over a decade. And… it’s nice to have a strong emotional connection to things.
I can pull up and find any song that I love and listen to it with just a few clicks. I don’t need to connect to a server. I don’t need to pay for a subscription that funds the pockets of a corporation. I am not being bombarded with new music that I don’t want to listen to. sh*t, I still need to get into A Tribe Called Quest and Del tha Funkee hom*osapien’s back catalog, because I just have not been in the mood for something like that.
I am similar with artwork, but artwork… is far harder to maintain a prolonged connection with, and I’ll be the first to admit that my collection has gotten out of hand. My digital paranoia has ballooned into a massive 66,000 file archive with over a thousand folders, spanning 97.6 GB. And that’s before getting into my comics directory, which is a resounding 99,256 files spanning 111 GB.
You might expect me to have some massive hard drive full of video as well, but… nah. I don’t really watch movies or anime outside of my time with Cassie. I have not watched a proper American TV show in a decade. And I mostly subsist off YouTube video essays and gaming stuff these days. Just check my subscriptions. Which is why the only non-Patreon subscription I pay for is YouTube Premium. …Which I guess is also a music streaming service, but I legit hate listening to most music on YouTube, as YouTube keeps recommending songs I listened to once five years ago.
…If YouTube wants to be Spotify, TikTok, and YouTube, they should at least have the decency to be DeviantArt too.
The Fate series is one I am really not interested in, as I don’t like its overall premise and something about several major character designs just seems ‘off’ to me. It is a bit of a blind spot for me, given how immensely popular the series has become as it has grown so unwieldy and expansive. However, despite whatever my impression of it is, I still respect the series and recognize it as something important to many people. It’s pretty much my same stance with Touhou.
Anyway, it’s been a pretty busy week for Fate. Fate/Stay Night Remastered was released on Switch and PC in English. It was bugged to hell and back, but they fixed it in like a day. A remaster of its sequel, 2005’s Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, was also announced and confirmed to receive an international remaster release, which will probably be based on the 2014 Vita port. This is pretty huge, as not only is this one of the most influential visual novels out in English, officially, but its sequel will probably be a 2025/2026 title for Switch and Steam. That’s dope, and you love to see it!
I thought that would be it… but then I woke up on Sunday morning to the announcement of Fate/Extra Record. …Okay, this is going to need a bit of a history lesson. In the Fate series, there are about eight video games that are important. And I had to verify what all of them are for the sake of what passes for my ‘sanity.’
- Fate/Stay Night (2004), a visual novel that established and introduced the series, creating the foundation of superstardom that Type-Moon currently enjoys.
- Fate/Hollow Ataraxia (2005), the less celebrated visual novel sequel to FSN. It never received an anime adaptation, which is just bizarre considering how most people enjoy Fate as an anime.
- Fate/Extra (2010), a single character dungeon crawling RPG with a rock-paper-scissors combat system from Imageepoch for the PSP. It was the first Fate game to ever be released in English.
- Fate/Extra CCC (2013), an alternate route version of Fate/Extra that is considered its own game. And just looking at footage of the two… yeah, it is. As a late PSP title, it never came out in English until a fan translation was released in 2023.
- Fate/Grand Order (2015), the gacha game that paved the way for many others. I don’t like or respect this one because of its terrible monetization practices and how it exploits the neurodivergent. When it EOS’s, I will just laugh, because this game has only made live services worse.
- Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star (2016), a Musou game developed by Marvelous for the Vita, and the first Fate game to receive a widespread international release on PS4, Switch, and PC.
- Fate/Extella: Link (2018), a straightforward sequel to The Umbral Star, this time made for HD systems. It was generally considered to be better than its predecessor.
- Fate/Samurai Remnant (2023), another Musou game, this time developed by Omega Force. But unlike the typical mission-based Musou, this one actually has a semi-large 3D world you can explore. Which I guess fits with the narrative that Omega Force is trying to meld Musou with the generally accepted principles of a modern Japanese action RPG. People seem to like this one a fair bit.
Now that I’ve done all that history… Fate/Extra Record (2025) is a complete remake of Fate/Extra (2010). One with redone visuals and models, a reworked combat system, and enough flair to make it look like a modern game. The game looks like a confident refinement of the original with its silky smooth 3D character models. The combat, while bizarrely card-based, seems a lot more intuitive and less luck-based than the original. And the game just has a cool virtual world aesthetic that, while a bizarre choice for what I always considered to be a fantasy series, looks pretty neat in my book.
I would ask if the game will contain the alternate route for CCC… but that will probably be part of a $40 season pass, if not a sequel in and of itself.
I would also ask why they are remaking a 15-year-old game instead of making a brand new one. But Fate has grown a bunch in the past 15 years. Game development is easier when you are remaking something complete that you can play and reference. And people who enjoyed the game back then and are still invested in the series… will wind up buying a remake. And Fate/Extra did not sell a ton of copies— it made money, just not MonHun money
It sold 95,298 units in Japan in 2010, but I doubt that Aksys produced more than 50,000 units for a North American release. And Ghostlight, who did the European release, probably didn’t make more than 25,000. So I’m going to loosely estimate 200,000 units as the total lifetime sales, as digital sales were low amongst PSP owners. More people than that definitely played it, because hacking the PSP was easy and PPSSPP has been good since about 2017. While Fate/Extra CCC shipped 85,000 units at launch, but might have had some decent digital sales? The Vita was already out and so was the Vita version of Fate/Stay Night. Who knows! …Type-Moon, that’s who, but they won’t give me this succulent data! Not even if I threaten to inject their babies with Ebola…
Meanwhile, Fate/Samurai Remnant sold about 410,000 units from September 2023 to March 2024, which is actually pretty good, all things considered. Niche anime games like this are lucky to get 200k Japanese sales and if the international market matches domestic sales, you cannot ask for much more. Especially when digital storefronts bring in a nice dividend over time, and you’re selling a $40 DLC pack for a $60 game. …I remember back when people freaked out at hugely expensive season passes leading up to Star Wars Battlefront (2015). And now it’s the norm of the world.
Akumako: “For a non-Fate fan, you sure love talking about its minutia.”
No, I just love talking about video game bullsh*t.
Well, this one just sucks. Ready at Dawn was shut down by Facebook this past week, meaning it’s time for a post-mortem history rundown.
Ready at Dawn was a studio founded by former Sony and Naughty Dog devs, who Sony assigned to create PSP adaptations of many of their biggest series. This includes Daxter (2006), the last good Jak and Daxter game. The short yet sweet God of War: Chains of Olympus (2007). God of War: Ghost of Sparta (2010), one of the last major PSP games published by Sony of America. The 2008 Okami port for Wii, which I feel was considered the definitive version for a few years, before the 2012 PS3 port and later the 2017 HD edition.
For the first few years of their existence, they were a reliable small-scale studio, and helped Sony sell at least a million PSPs. So, come the PS4 generation, they transitioned away from handhelds and began developing a Sony published PS4 game. A game that was one of Sony’s earliest exclusives, a big new IP that promised to be something big. Promised to be cinematic. And promised to be generation-defining. The Order: 1886 (2015).
The Order: 1886 was a 5-hour-long cover shooter about a bloke with a beard going around and shooting humans, werewolves, and vampires. The game was locked at a ‘filmic’ 30 fps in the first HD generation that could readily do 60 fps. And even those who liked the game had to admit that it mostly laid a good foundation. It ultimately failed to meet people’s expectations of what a next-gen game could be like, and it was promptly forgotten after Bloodborne (2015) released a month later.
After this fall from grace, Sony did not continue with The Order: 1887. Instead, Ready at Dawn shifted to their own IP and developed Deformers (2017). An ugly-cute brawler about deformed orb-shaped animal creatures bashing into each other. It was also a live service and didn’t even last 16 months before it was shut down. Also, it was published by GameStop, meaning every disc they printed is now utterly worthless! The game possibly could have been a bigger hit if it came out for mobile and had a bigger publishing push behind them, but that did not happen. …Also, the characters were too ugly!
Despite this, Ready at Dawn was seeing success with their VR series, Lone Echo, which they released games for from 2017 to 2021. It was so successful that they were acquired by Facebook in 2020 as part of their big VR initiative. However, Facebook has come to realize that VR is not the next big thang that they thought it would be. VR is ultimately less convenient, as is their whole metaverse concept. It’s a cool idea, but text, voice, and video are way easier and take up fewer resources than a digital world. VR is like an amusem*nt park ride. Fun, but a lot of work. As such, Facebook has been repeatedly gutting their VR division over the years.
Combine this with the fact that so much of its staff left over the years. And then throw in the fact that Ready at Dawn was based in Irvine, California, a fairly expensive city home of at least 5 other major gaming companies, and… closing them just makes sense. Facebook is most likely going to give up on VR. After the failure of PSVR2, I do not expect anyone to adopt the technology beyond a niche audience. And I expect this to be followed by further studio closures. Sanzaru Games (Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time), Twisted Pixel (Ms. Splosion Man), and Armature Studio (ReCore) are all on the chopping block as far as I’m concerned, and… that would suck, but I honestly wrote these studios off as dead when they were first sent into the Facebook gulags.
In conclusion, this is the logical and consistent way that far too many acquisitions go, and it sucks. Not only has three years of work gone to waste, but the entire dev team is now scrambling to work in the most hostile games job market in history. And no, I don’t think Facebook opening positions they can apply to is a good thing. They are still hurting people— hurting their families— with this action, and I think that’s just terrible.
Natalie went to a zoo and saw all kinds of animals! It was cool!
2024-08-04: Wrote 1,800 words for this Rundown. Got a bunch of stuff ready for my guests. Wrapped up PS 1988 Ch 5 with about 700 words. Started work on PS 1988 Ch 6, only to realize it is racially charged given the white supremacist riots going on in the UK. Got 500 words in before my head started to ache, so I went to bed early.
2024-08-05: Cassie arrived on the plane and kept me occupied for about 8 hours today with the settling in and other stuff. Afterwards, I decompressed with PokéRogue, my old vice, and tried to work on PS 1988, but only could add 700 words before I realized why making Margaret Thatcher a limerick spewing chicken was a bad call. It just makes the writing process soooo much slower!
2024-08-06: Another day of trip time with Cassie. We got together in the morning for breakfast, worked out the trip details for several hours, and developed a rock solid schedule. Then we hit up some clothing stores, got some frozen pizzas, went to a wet park to get free hotdogs, had a pizza dinner, and watched Bumblebee together. It was way better than the first three Transformers movies. A bit schmaltzy, but good, and you can tell it was directed by an animator. Visual language was strong, but good lord do I need subtitles for movies. …Then I started writing again at 23:00. I got 650 words in and stopped, because Mildred Hatcher is such an annoying, time consuming, character to write. Also hard to write in short bursts. I can’t wait until she dies. Also, I had to read the Patreon update from Cap.
2024-08-07: We went to the Art Institute. It was closed. So instead we just saw some local tourist sites, walked a few streets, hit up Lincoln Park Zoo, and visited Micro Center. All in all, a good-ass day! But then Cassie had shower troubles, so we didn’t eat dinner until almost 21:00. Wrote 1,900 words for this Rundown during my downtime— writing is easier when just following Frequency Vibrations. Made some images for this Rundown.
2024-08-08: Went out to the Art Institute. It was open. But the sculpture section was a LIE! Then went to the beach, then the store to get ramen cups for lunch, then the local mall so I could make Cassie wear cute clothes! In return, I got a skirt! Afterwards, we just had dinner, watched anime, and I was only back in my room after 22:30. Edited the Rundown and wrote a few little things.
2024-08-09:Today was a mellow day, and good thing because my feet were hurting! We explored a few local sites in my hometown, hit up the historical landmarks, checked out some houses, the 3D printer place, all that good stuff. Then we watched a boring anime for a bit, had a big dinner, and I tried to focus on my writing. Sadly, I only got 1,900 words in, as my mind kept wandering and the fatigue was catching up to me. However, I am now mostly done with this chapter, and tomorrow is another day!
2024-08-10:Wrote 2,000 words, finally finishing PS 1988 CH 06. We went to the Illinois Railway museum and rode in two trains. And goldarn are trains cool! I was kinda ambiguous about them going in, but seeing trains from decades past, gathered, decorated, and renovated to remain functional really does endear one into the artistry and design that goes into their construction! After this, we went to Walmart and Burger Kind to get an American experience. I did not buy anything, but my friends did. Then we went home and had a mellow evening, which I like.
sh*t, I’m running outta time on this one…
Current Word Count:30,447
Estimated Word Count: 88,000
Words Edited:0
Total Chapters: 16
Chapters Outlined:16
Chapters Drafted:6
Chapters Edited:0
Header Images Made:0
Days Until Deadline:86
