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E3 2021: What’s Looking Good, Everyone Else?

It’s hard to tell where Summer Game Fest began and E3 ended but some combination of those events took place over the past few days, so instead of trying to make heads or tails of the schedule I just figured I’d plop all of my miscellaneous conference highlights here. Sure we had big presentations from Microsoft and Nintendo, but a couple of smaller events bolstered the show by just announcing a deluge of games.

These announcements are only a small slice of the things that were shown in their respective digital events, which is my way of saying that this isn’t in any way a comprehensive list. I’ve broken the announcements down by which conference they were a part of, and not in any sort of ranked order. Enough caveats though, let’s dive in.

The first “conference” that I’m going to highlight games from is the Wholesome Direct, where chill vibes and good feelings were prioritized over the likes of guns and boobs or whatever. These titles are all very relaxed or peaceful, so consider that as we look at some games that are cozy as ~~hell~~…heck.

A LITTLE TO THE LEFT

Described as a “cozy puzzle game” about organization, A Little to the Left is supremely the kind of shit that I’m into. It’s colorful and charming, and seems incredibly chill. Also, it scratches that “mundane activity game” itch that I apparently always have, so that’s good. It’s planned to release on October 21st of this year.

BEHIND THE FRAME

I thoroughly enjoy the idea of using art to solve puzzles, and Behind the Frame looks like a game that will do just that. One could easily look at this game and call it a voyeurism simulator which in all fairness, it might be. I’m digging the art style and the general conceit of the game, but whether it all comes together in a cohesive fashion while telling a good story remains to be seen. It’s scheduled for a September 2021 release.

LAKE

Lake feels like one of those games that’s going to try and shatter me on an emotional level. Sure it may just look like a game about being a woman who returns to her hometown to take a break from her fast-paced city life, but I bet there’s going to be a lot of coming to terms with life in said small town that’s going to make me get real introspective. Those messages really resonate with me regardless of the medium of storytelling, so I’m fully expecting this to either destroy me, or literally miss the mark entirely. While no firm date is given, Lake will apparently release this year.

BUTTON CITY

Look at this game and soak in its borderline offensive levels of adorableness. I’m in love with the art style and music that’s on display in Button City, but I genuinely have no clue what the actual game is like. I’m guessing it’s an adventure game with some arcade-inspired mini-games, and that is very exciting to me. I look forward to trying it when it releases on September 12th of this year.

THE GECKO GODS

A puzzle-platformer where I play as a gecko? You can go ahead and add that to the list of things I never thought I’d say let alone want to play, until now that is. The Gecko Gods looks incredibly rad from top to bottom, although my only concern is how good it actually feels to move around and interact with the world as a gecko, but only time will tell if that concern is valid or not. It’s planned to release sometime in 2022.

PASSPARTOUT 2: THE LOST ARTIST

While not the deepest game I’ve ever played, Passpartout was an incredibly neat idea for a game that had it had a little more meat on its bones, I probably would’ve championed more when it came out. But apparently a sequel is on its way, and I’m more than willing to give this next installment a shot. I look forward to selling my shitty artwork to people who would rather call me avant-garde than actually critique my work. I just wish that I was able to pull off this exact scam in real life. I couldn’t find a release window for this game, but it’ll get here when it gets here.

UNPACKING

Hell yes, add it to the pile. Unpacking is another super chill looking organization-based puzzle game that I’m so here for. The music and the art seem to work in wonderful concert, all in service of providing the chillest vibes imaginable, and lord knows I could use more chill vibes these days. It’s planned to release at some point this year.

SOUP POT

I do love me a good cooking game, but since Cooking Mama decided to go the way of the dodo it’s been up to games like Soup Pot to fill the void. I’m excited for the chill vibes and all, but I’m also excited to check out a bunch of recipes from plenty of regions that I’ve never encountered before. Also, there aren’t any fail states in this game, so I don’t have to worry about burning my apartment down while making these recipes which is always a welcome bonus. Slated for August of 2021, I won’t have to wait much longer to play Soup Pot.

MOONGLOW BAY

There’s a voxel raccoon in this trailer which makes me incredibly happy to see because there just isn’t enough of that in games these days. But I guess Moonglow Bay has other stuff going on with it too. You are the bravest fisher in all of the titular bay and are tasked with reinvigorating the economy through fishing and cooking, while everyone else ostensibly cowers in fear of the monsters that occupy local legend. Seems cool and all, but that raccoon is mostly why I’m playing. It’s probably the main character too. I’ll get to chill with that raccoon at some point this year too.

PUPPERAZZI

The game is fucking called Pupperazzi, like what else do you want to know? It’s Pokemon Snap if it was about taking pictures of dogs, which I cannot believe doesn’t exist yet. Thank goodness that this game is coming soon because I need this exact sort of heat in my life, especially after bouncing off of the kind of underwhelming New Pokemon Snap. On Steam, the release date is listed as “woof bark bark,” so that might mean it’s coming soon, but I’m not as fluent in dog as I’d like to admit

VENBA

Family drama and cooking? I’m all about Venba and whatever it’s setting out to do. I don’t know anything about the game outside of what’s in the trailer but from what I can glean from it, it is absolutely the kind of game I would play. There sure are a lot of games that have great art styles, seemingly poignant stories, and some sort of cooking mini-games in them, aren’t there? Oh well, I’m game for Venba when it comes out this November.

Below is everything I found that was particularly interesting from the Guerrilla Collective Day 2 presentation. Please note that this Guerrilla is not affiliated with the Guerrilla Games studio behind games like Horizon: Zero Dawn and the Killzone franchise, which is something I had to look up to confirm. It makes sense, right? How would that even make sense? Anyway, here’s some more cool looking games.

AKATORI

Not only am I drawn to Akatori because of its great stylistic choices, but the combat itself looks fast and frenetic in a way that I’m drawn to. I feel as if it’s pretty hard for a pixelated 2D game to stand out these days thanks to the sheer number of them, but Akatori is speaking to me in a way that very few of these games do. Akatori is slated to release at some point in 2022.

ARCADE PARADISE

Arcade Mania looks like the kind of management game I can get into. While the term “management games” can illicit a certain sort of image in your mind, this one seems a lot more hands on and systems light in a way that I can get into. I really like the core gameplay loop on display here along with the general theme of the game itself. Setting high scores in order to wring more cash out of score-chasing consumers sounds like a blast. Arcade Paradise is allegedly releasing at some point this year.

FIREGIRL

There aren’t enough firefighting games out there which says to me that the gaming industry at large is fucking up quite severely. Luckily it looks like Firegirl is gonna do me up right and let me put out fires and save civilians in the most ridiculous and over the top way possible. There’s a part of me that really enjoys the farfetched nature of the game, but there’s also a weird part of me that wouldn’t have minded a slightly more realistic take on firefighting. It’s hard to judge from the trailer though, hopefully the final product will strike the right balance for me, when it releases sometime this fall.

ROBODUNK

You look at this trailer and tell me that I’m wrong for thinking it looks dope as hell. You can’t because Robodunk looks objectively cool. I’m into this wild robotic take on NBA JAM and hope to high hell that it actually plays as well as it presents itself. I also hope it’s the kind of game that can stand on its own without the need for other players, but that one might be a bigger ask. With no concrete release date or window to speak of, there’s no telling when I’ll be able to play Robodunk.

VENICE 2089

Why yes, I would love to hover-board my way through a climate change stricken Venice in the not so distant future. Thanks for asking. I’m all about these hopeful takes on dire situations, because while we will fuck this planet to the core via climate change, it’s very optimistic to believe that we’ll have hover-boards. I think Venice 2089 looks rad and is trying to tell a story that I personally haven’t seen in a video game before, all of which makes me very eager to try this one out. With no release date however, who knows when I’ll actually get to play it.

WHITE SHADOWS

In the trailer above, one of the designers of White Shadows describes it as less of a puzzle-platformer and more of a trip through a black and white dystopic city. That description is actually a pretty big relief to me because this game could have easily been a spooky game that I wouldn’t want to play, but instead I get to marvel at the ultra stylistic art without worrying if some monstrosity is going to try and make me piss myself. I look forward to not pissing myself on September 10th this year, when White Shadows releases.

And finally we arrive at the Future Games Show, the last of the conferences that I dug through to find games worth mentioning. This show may have been the lightest of the three in terms of games that resonated with me, but hey, not everything is made for my sensibilities and that’s okay… for now.

ESPORTS BOXING CLUB

Boxing is back, baby! Unfortunately it’s coming in with a pretty miserable name like Esports Boxing Club, but I can look past that if the game itself holds up. I feel like no one is making boxing games these days which is a damn shame, because those Fight Night games back in the day were really fun to play, even if you were like me and knew nothing about boxing. Here in 2021 however, I still know nothing about boxing, so everything is the same except I’m older now. Anyway, the boxing game looks cool and I wanna see the men fall down a bunch. Allegedly this game is planned to release into early access at some point this summer.

HAROLD HALIBUT

Look at this beautiful game. Really soak it in. Harold Halibut looks like a really interesting adventure game with some clever little mini-games sprinkled throughout that I would very much like to play as soon as possible. I think the world seems like a really interesting place I want to get know and explore, while the characters look pretty diverse and hopefully are backed by a quality script that does them justice. The weirdest part about looking this game up however, is Google is convinced that it came out in 2019, which I don’t think is the case. I have no idea when it’s coming out for real however.

OLLIOLLI WORLD

The first two OlliOlli games were these very stylish and fun 2D skateboarding games, that were fun little diversions in my mind. I was never head over heels for the series, but I maintain that they are supremely fun in their own right and deserve to be celebrated. That being said, OlliOlli World looks to build upon just about everything from the originals, 3D-ify them, and let them loose in an open world. That all sounds great to me quite honestly, and I am very much looking forward to do many McTwists in the future when OlliOlli World releases later this year.

TWO POINT CAMPUS

The follow up to 2018’s Two Point Hospital comes in the form of Two Point Campus, a very silly university management game in vein of the Theme games from the 90’s, like Theme Hospital and Theme Park. From just a thematic stance, I think I’ll enjoy running a goofy school much more than running a goofy hospital thanks to the trauma of still paying off a medical bill from 2016, but I’m willing to be that people with student loans probably will have a similar reaction to Two Point Campus when it comes out in 2022.

CONWAY: DISAPPEARANCE AT DAHLIA VIEW

And for our final game we have Conway: Disappearance at Dahlia View, a gritty-looking detective thriller set in England during the 1950s. Despite the painfully long and difficult to remember name of the game, I feel like there’s an excellent story lurking somewhere in there, and I am eager to experience it. Hopefully the gameplay side of things holds up its end of the bargain, but I guess I’ll find out later this year when it releases.

Wow gang, that was a lot of games that I had to barely write anything about and I’m already exhausted. I hope there was something in this article you came away with a newfound interest in, but regardless of if you did or didn’t, you should really look into all the games announced across both Game Fest and E3. because there’s a lot I did not include here.

With the world trying to get back up to speed with everything after last year, one thing was extremely evident: While AAA studios suffered big losses in terms of planned products slipping past their release dates, indie development seemed mostly unaffected. It makes sense that these smaller teams were seemingly less impacted by having to work at home and collaborate with their teams virtually than their AAA counterparts, because they’ve probably been developing games under these conditions the entire time. Indies really made the show and in a lot of cases, upstaged the bigger studios who didn’t know how to handle the transition, so a well deserved kudos to them.

Anyway, that’s going to do it for The Bonus World’s E3 2021 “coverage.” I know it was pretty light this year, but I think this struck a good balance for me in terms of my work load and just life in general. Thanks for the constant support, and thanks for taking the time to check out our handful of articles.

E3 2021: What’s Looking Good, Nintendo?

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Even though it’s been a few days since E3 2021 actually wrapped up and our collective consciousness is rapidly moving away from the event itself, there’s still a lot to say about what we saw on display. Today’s subject is none other than the purveyors of the plumber, the masters of the mustache, Nintendo.

It sure feels like every year people have their long lists of Nintendo “dream announcements” that never actually get fulfilled, and this year didn’t do much to allay that perception. Notably Nintendo didn’t talk about their long rumored new Switch model, nor did they talk about long awaited games like Bayonetta 3, Metroid Prime 4, or even games they announced last year such as Splatoon 3. Nintendo remains an enigma to me, but there was still some stuff they touched on that I’d love to highlight.

One thing I want to mention upfront is how weird it was to see literally nothing in the way of Animal Crossing: New Horizons content. I feel like the player base of that game, myself included, have been clamoring for something new or interesting to come along so that we can have a reason to return to our, undoubtedly overgrown islands. But it’s starting to feel more and more like Nintendo had no real plan in place for supporting Animal Crossing beyond its first year, so I hope y’all like Bunny Day, cause that’s all we’re gonna get apparently.

SUPER MONKEY BALL BANANA MANIA

It has been way too long since we’ve gotten a proper Monkey Ball game, and while we’re not actually getting a new one, we are getting this pack of the first three console games in the series: Super Monkey Ball, Super Monkey Ball 2, and Super Monkey Ball Deluxe. Now I have very little experience with the series because I never actually owned a Gamecube, but Super Monkey Ball was definitely one of the few games I saw on that console that made me really want that little purple lunchbox with the terrible controller.

I’m glad to see Monkey Ball return in some fashion though. Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania comes out this year on October 5th and according to some retailers, the package is listed at $39.99 which is probably the most I’d consider paying for this collection if we’re being honest. I’m actually surprised it isn’t more, but considering it is a SEGA property maybe that’s why the price is more palatable. We literally saw Nintendo do this not too long ago with the Super Mario 3D All-Stars bundle, where they charged full price for a collection of ports of “classic” 3D Mario titles. Speaking of Nintendo severely overvaluing their products…

MARIO PARTY SUPERSTARS

I really don’t actually give a damn about Mario Party or any of its many iterations, but Mario Party Superstars is probably the smartest move they could make with this miserable series. With remastered “classic” maps and mini-games, along with online play right out of the box, I think this is the way to properly capitalize on the misguided nostalgia people have for this series. Curiously however, there’s also online matchmaking which sounds like a good idea in theory, but man, I already don’t want to play Mario Party to begin with, but doing it with random strangers seems even worse somehow.

Incredibly, Nintendo is going to be charging the full sixty bucks for this one when it drops on October 29th of this year.

METROID DREAD

I’ve never been the biggest Metroid fan, but I’ve enjoyed a couple of the iterations that have come out over the years. I’ve never messed with the Prime trilogy, but I’ve dabbled with the original Metroid, Super Metroid and I think maybe I played a bit of Metroid Fusion, but I might just be imagining that last one. My point is that I’m way more onboard for a new 2D Metroid game than I am for Metroid Prime 4, a game that might never come out.

I suppose my biggest question is what genre of game we attribute Metroid Dread to, because it seems silly to classify a Metroid game as a Metroidvania, but like, it’s right there in the title. See these are the big questions I’m willing to waste a paragraph on as well as your precious attention span.

It has been a while though since I’ve actually strapped on my Varia suit and rolled up into a little bomb-dropping ball, but I think I can get my sea legs back in time for Metroid Dread‘s release later this year on October 8th. Damn Nintendo, you’re really stacking releases in October, huh?

WARIOWARE GET IT TOGETHER

Hell yes, now we’re talking. The last time I played a WarioWare game was when I was still in high school when the Wii was out there conquering the world, and WarioWare Smooth Moves had just come out. I don’t know if it was a good WarioWare game or not, but I do remember enjoying it quite thoroughly. It’s unfortunate though because the series mostly lived on handhelds, which is just not how I play video games. So the series mostly passed me by, but that dry spell ends this year.

I don’t know how I feel about the main conceit of controlling a little avatar that goes on screen and interacts with the micro-games using their unique abilities, but WarioWare was a series that always had a new hook from game to game, so I’m not surprised they went with a new gimmick this time around. It’s not surprising they went this angle however, considering they wanted to make a cooperative focused game that utilizes the unique aspects of the Nintendo Switch, namely, two people controlling the game simultaneously with a Joy-Con apiece. Hopefully it lives up to the legacy of the series, but we won’t know for sure until it drops later this year on September 9th.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD 2

I’ll admit that when Nintendo went to conclude their Direct by showing off Hyrule Warriors DLC, I turned the thing off entirely and moved on with my life. Little did I know, Link and his cool new hair were gonna be on display shortly after that deflating announcement. Now look, I loved the first Breath of the Wild, it was one of my favorite games of 2017 after all. I just hope that this sequel builds on the right aspects of its predecessor while ditching the shittier parts of the original. Namely, if they could maybe get rid of weapon degradation, that would just be so cool.

I know that weapon degradation is kind of a low-hanging fruit when it comes to criticism about Breath of the Wild, but in what I might consider the best Zelda game of all time, it really stuck out as an unnecessary pressure point. I’m not here to backseat develop, but that part of the game is what genuinely keeps me from wanting to revisit it.

While the trailer showed off some new powers, weapons and Link’s cool new hairdo, it was only a tease of what we might see later in the year or whenever they decide to show off more of the game. I personally would like to see a little more life out of the world this time around, like cities and such, along with some actual dungeons as opposed to the lackluster ones we saw in Breath of the Wild. Who knows what the final product will actually be like, but the fact that they’re building off of Breath of the Wild fills me with a lot of confidence that at the very least, I’ll get another game that’s at least as good as the original. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 will get a real name at some point that we’ll learn before it releases sometime in 2022.

I feel like every year the same conversation happens around the Nintendo Switch and its lineup. At the beginning of the year we lament the lack of confirmed releases for the holiday season, and then E3 happens and we all get put in our collective places. I’m pretty relieved that there wasn’t a new Switch model announced as well because Nintendo is terrible when it comes to utilizing their new hardware iterations, like that 3DS that came with the little nubbin’ second analog stick that I think like 2 games utilized. I also just don’t trust Nintendo to properly support two consoles at the same time, considering that even in 2021 we’re still out here using friend codes and trying to do voice chat in the most convoluted way possible.

But yeah, that’s what I saw from the Nintendo Direct that resonated with me in some fashion. I usually don’t have to worry too much about the quality of Nintendo games, but there’s always the chance that these games could turn out to be real stinkers. Here’s hoping that isn’t the case though.

E3 2021: What’s Looking Good, Microsoft?

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We should begin by laying out some facts right off the bat and acknowledge a few truths about the current situation as it applies to the video game industry, but more specifically E3 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic really hampered so much development by forcing it out of the collaborative spaces of offices and into peoples homes. It also severely disrupted supply lines and manufacturing pipelines to such a degree that every electronics company is grappling with component shortages. Also worth considering is the fact that E3 is a show that’s been desperately searching for an identity for quite some time now, only to really feel the pressure after not having a conference at all last year. Knowing all of that led me to believe that I should temper my expectations for this year, but despite the middling status of E3 as a show, some of the presenters brought some really interesting stuff that I’m actually pretty excited for.

Keep in mind, I don’t really have much of a structure or rule set in mind for how I’m picking these, but I’m going to try and focus on games that were more than a cinematic trailer. No offense to cinematic trailers, but there isn’t really much to talk about with those when compared to games that showed off some actual gameplay footage. So don’t get weird about it when I don’t mention Starfield or whatever. But anyway, here’s what I saw at the Microsoft press conference (are we still calling them that?) from E3 2021 that really piqued my interest.

BATTLEFIELD 2042

It’s been a while since I’ve actually enjoyed a Battlefield game, with Battlefield 3 being the last one that really resonated with me. But before my decline in interest with the series really took hold, I thoroughly enjoyed games like Battlefied 2, Battlefield 2142, and even Battlefield 1943, which doesn’t even mention my fondness for the Bad Company spin-offs. But here we are, staring down the barrel of the Battlefield gun once again, and while I don’t recall anything demonstrably new or revolutionary about this latest entry, I’m intrigued by the footage that seemed to focus in on map hazards like snowstorms, dust storms, and tornadoes. It looks like it could be a cool inclusion in these massive battles, granted it doesn’t become overly tedious after encountering these events a couple of times.

I don’t really know what to expect from Battlefield 2042 except for the fact that there will not be a single player component, which might make it a tricky sell for some folks. Hopefully this Battlefield entry is more welcoming to new and lapsed players, and not just be a cool training exercise for snipers who want to see how quickly they can snipe me after I spawn.

PSYCHONAUTS 2

Man, I loved the original Psychonauts and have been so very excited for the follow up to finally come out. Luckily, I won’t have to wait much longer because it’s coming out at the end of August this year, and will be on Xbox Game Pass. Judging solely off of the trailer shown at the briefing it doesn’t look like Psychonauts 2 is straying too far from the path, vis-à-vis the things that made the original so successful and beloved. The humor seems on point, the art looks just as weird and flamboyant as I remember, and the gameplay looks just as good as I remember the original did (hopefully it’s less cumbersome this time though). The only real difference that I could see was that the levels look a bit larger and more mechanically diverse than in the original, which is a welcome change.

I don’t know what you’re supposed to do to revitalize a long dormant franchise of a cult classic to make it appeal to modern gamers, but I do know that I’m totally on the hook for this psychedelic platformer. And hey, it’s only been like 16 years since the original released, so I’m sure it’ll live up to everyone’s totally reasonable expectations and no one will be upset about anything.

PARTY ANIMALS

Man, I don’t know who’s out there developing games with me explicitly in mind, but I want to thank them so much. Party Animals looks like one of my favorite multiplayer games of all time, Gang Beasts, but like, if Gang Beasts was a bit more polished than it is. I don’t know what else to really say that can entice you more than the trailer can, but if you like silly ragdoll-centric mayhem where everyone is dressed as (or is?) an adorable animal, then we have nothing more to discuss. It’s just a shame that Party Animals isn’t going to be with us until sometime in 2022.

HALO INFINITE

Maybe I’m a fool, but I still want a good Halo game to come out. I’ve enjoyed parts of the past two Halo games, namely some of the single player campaign from 4, and most of the multiplayer from 5, but I would just love to see Halo be the tour de force it used to be once more. Despite the misguided story stuff from 5 though, I’m still kind of invested in these characters and this story that’s spanned more than half of my life at this point.

So later this year we’ll see if all of the complaints and delays really made Halo Infinite a better product than its initial reveal led us to believe. The most exciting developments from the trailer this year easily include the versatility of the grappling hook, which allows you hook onto not only surfaces, but you can pick up weapons and equipment with it and jack vehicles as well. The story bits in the trailer were also real intriguing, with this fake-ass non-Cortana hanging out with my good buddy, Master Chief, as well as the usual haunting occasional narration from Cortana herself. I haven’t checked in on the multiplayer presentation as of writing this, but apparently it is going to be free-to-play, which seems like a smart move to me.

We’ll see if it lives up to expectations when it drops on Game Pass and in retail this holiday season. Because of course they didn’t give it a firm date.

SHREDDERS

Despite having arguably one of the stupidest names for a game, Shredders looks like an extremely chill snowboarding game that I might be into. I’m not a big snowboarder or even a big fan of the outdoors in general, but even I can admit that Shredders looks super fun in a low stakes kind of way. Whereas something like Steep was a little too annoying in that classic Ubisoft way, where like, everyone was making terrible jokes and quipping at you constantly, Shredders seems like it’s going for a more relaxed vibe, trading out chatty NPCs with abject silence, while focusing on a more realistic representation of what it’s like to “shred that gnar.”

Like most of what was shown at the Microsoft event, it too will be coming to Game Pass when it releases later this year on December 12th, just in time for me to be utterly sick of the snow.

REPLACED

I don’t quite know what happened to The Last Night, but if it never comes out which is looking more and more to be the case, at least we can look forward to something like Replaced which might actually come out. Listen, I’m always gonna be here for a cyberpunk-themed side-scroller, but man am I excited for this one. First and foremost, it just looks fucking incredible which would be reason alone for me to try it out, but from what little combat and platforming that was shown, it looks like it won’t just be all flash and no substance.

There isn’t much else to really glean from the trailer itself, but that hasn’t done anything to dampen my excitement or anticipation. And like I said, considering Replaced is slated for release next year and is a day one Game Pass game, I think I can more safely assume it might actually come out. So that’s something.

XBOX GAME PASS

Out of the 30 or so games that were announced and discussed at the Microsoft presentation, I think only like 4 of them aren’t going to be on the Game Pass service, which is really quite impressive. I don’t know that anyone who owns an Xbox would have a tough time justifying signing up for Game Pass before this presentation, but after what was shown, it kind of seems essential to the whole Xbox ecosystem. Obviously that’s the point of what Microsoft has been doing, but they really made a strong case for it the other day. With games like the new Dark Alliance dropping day one later this month, to Microsoft Flight Simulator dropping in July, Psychonauts 2 in August, and plenty of other big name titles headlining each month for the remainder of 2021, I just don’t know how you can resist hopping onboard the Game Pass train.

Microsoft did a big dump of games, and while not everything resonated with me, I was genuinely impressed with how stacked their lineup is, especially considering the kind of year the developers making these games had to endure. Consider me impressed Microsoft. Now if only you could provide some sort of expandable memory for the Xbox Series consoles that didn’t cost $220, that would be just delightful.

Blog: Me3 2021 – 06/16/21

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I feel like I just got slapped in the face with video games, which as well know can only mean that E3 has taken place once again. But don’t confuse that with Game Fest, a thing that I think started before E3 and is lasting long after it. We’ve got like a dozen game-focused events popping off all summer, so this whole thing is a lot clumsier than it normally is. It’s a mess that’s only gotten messier thanks to a certain pandemic, and will only get worse as E3 flails around trying to grasp at those precious last breaths of relevance. But until that day comes, I guess I’m gonna just keep looking at headlines and trailers and regurgitating that stuff back onto this site with that patented “Ari Spice,” which sounds grosser than I wanted it to, but oh well.

The oddest part about this whole clusterfuck of game announcements is that I’ve barely watched any of it. I don’t think as a hobbyist I can dedicate full days to sitting and watching press events about video games anymore, because it’s exhausting and unnecessary if we’re being honest with ourselves. Like, I didn’t need to watch whatever the hell Square Enix was doing this year, because I usually don’t tend to get grabbed by most of the games they make. I checked out that trailer for the Final Fantasy action game, Stranger of Paradise I believe is the subtitle to that one, and boy howdy did it look real dumb. They just kinda made the most generic looking protagonist who seems like he was pulled out of some middling 3rd person action game from the early 2000s, and said “good enough!” It truly reminds me of that terrible Shadow the Hedgehog game from the mid-2000s with how unnecessarily edgy it’s trying to be.

But whatever, maybe it’ll be great and I’ll be jealous of all the fun that everyone is having playing it. All I know for sure is that I’m really glad I didn’t have to sit through a press conference to see that, I’ve literally missed out on nothing by watching the trailer on YouTube a few days later with the exception of whatever tragedies were taking place in the live chat.

That’s kind of the beautiful side-effect of not checking or engaging with social media as much anymore, because I don’t feel this pressure to be on the cutting edge of what’s being announced or anything. The Bonus World isn’t a news site, and working my ass off to put up articles recapping conferences immediately after they end, doesn’t do anything for me or this site. So I’m just not bothering with it.

As far as actual E3 content goes, there will be some stuff that hits this week, but it’s not going to be anywhere near as comprehensive as it’s been in the past. I’m allowing myself to ease off the gas pedal a bit here, because I know that nobody is coming to The Bonus World for up to the minute game news. If that were the case, you’d be woefully out of touch with what the industry is up to and only know about weird simulator games I’m into at the moment. But that’s okay. I like the little slice of the internet that this site occupies, and I’m not going to overwork myself for literally no benefit.

So yeah, E3 is happening or already happened, I’m not sure anymore. And quite frankly, I’m happier this way.

Blog: Up Next – 06/09/21

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Existing in stark contrast to how I felt about games merely a few weeks ago, I’ve suddenly found myself with an overwhelming amount of games I want to play but haven’t made much time for just yet. Even worse is the fact that they didn’t miraculously appear on my various hard drives because I distinctly remember spending money on them, so I really should at least launch these games at some point. With that said, here are some of the games that are currently squatting on my hard drive, that I should probably address.

BIOMUTANT

I’ll just go ahead and just break the thesis of this blog immediately by saying that I’ve actually played some Biomutant already, a few hours worth if memory serves. I didn’t hate what I’ve played but I wasn’t necessarily blown away by it either. Although to be fair I did mostly just play through the terribly long and uninteresting tutorial, something that was apparently such a pain in the ass that the developers decided to address it, along with the overly mouthy narrator, in a patch.

I would hope that the patch also works on making the game look better when running on an Xbox Series S because at the time of writing this, it looks real rough. Honestly, if it wasn’t for how grimy the game looks on my particular console of choice, I’d probably be playing a lot more of Biomutant. Despite it not being a graphical powerhouse, Biomutant seems super interesting to me and is definitely something I’d like to spend more time with.

AN AIRPORT FOR ALIENS CURRENTLY RUN BY DOGS

Once again, I’ve already played a little bit of An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs so far and I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t know if that’s a good thing necessarily, because I’m not eager to play it because of how “good” it is, but I feel as if I owe to myself to play the entirety of any game with a title like An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs.

From what I’ve played of it, it’s absolutely fucking bonkers and I love that about it. What I think I love most about the game is the fact that the airport is indeed run by dogs, but not in the way you’re thinking probably. Sure dogs are working the various information stalls, ticket booths and concession stands, but it’s literally just a bunch of high resolution JPEGs of dogs that stare at you constantly as if they were enemies out of the original Duke Nukem or something. It’s so good and so weird and I need to play more of it.

There’s a story going on, but to be completely honest, that trailer above does a much better job at telling a story than the game has thus far. So maybe I just need to play way more of it to get those good story beats.

THE MAGNIFICENT TRUFFLEPIGS

Described as a “first-person, romantic, metal-detecting game,” there was no reality in which The Magnificent Trufflepigs didn’t find its way into my Steam library somehow. I haven’t launched this game yet, but I’m so intrigued to find out what it’s all about. Are these pigs truly magnificent? Are they good at finding truffles or are they some sort of pig, truffle hybrid monstrosity that’s going to be hunting me down throughout the game? Can I pet a trufflepig? These are the questions I need to answer to maintain my journalistic integrity… probably.

But it heavily reminds me of one of my favorite narrative-focused games, Firewatch, which did a fantastic job of telling a compelling and gripping story with the backdrop of doing a mundane job. I guess I really like the concept of the ordinary being thrust into positions of the extraordinary, and hopefully this ridiculously titled game can deliver on that.

BACKBONE

Raccoon detective. RACCOON. DETECTIVE. What else do you want me to say about Backbone, the game about a raccoon detective? The trailer looks dope as hell, boasting a pretty spectacularly detailed pixel art style and a lot of other humanoid animals beating the shit out of the raccoon detective. I’m not crazy about that last detail because of my love for the colloquially titled, trash-pandas, but it probably makes sense in the context of the story. I bet it ends with the raccoon detective finding their utopia somewhere in a landfill or something though. Also, it’s on Gamepass, so I have no reason to not play it.

Yeah, so that’s pretty much what’s on the plate at this particular moment. I really wanna get through some of this stuff because I’m anticipating playing a lot of Dark Alliance when it comes out later this month, and I’d like to have less things to juggle by then. Maybe this time I’ll actually play these games instead of turn around in two months and wonder why they’re still on my hard drive, then delete them as unceremoniously as possible, just like I did with Outriders.

Blog: Achievements & Site Updates – 06/02/21

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There was a period of time, specifically before 2016 when I built my gaming computer, that I was deeply invested in the concept of Gamerscore and the achievement hunting that came along with it. I primarily played on Xbox and the Pavlovian response of hearing that delightful chime and getting a functionally useless reward that indicated I had unlocked an achievement was very exciting and fulfilling for me. But once I gravitated away from consoles and onto PC, I had to shake that particular monkey off of my back. Unfortunately for me and my sanity, I now own a modern Xbox console and have their subscription service which essentially just blasts me with new games every few weeks to play, keeping me planted squarely back on the achievement treadmill whether I like it or not.

My strategy at the time was to just play as many games as possible and just get whatever achievements I could without too much effort or time sunk into any single particular game. I didn’t approach achievement hunting from that angle nor would I actually ever call myself an achievement hunter, because I just like to bounce from game to game and that’s how I racked up several thousand points without actually trying that hard. That approach probably still would work, but I’m just a hair more discerning about how I spend my money these days and won’t just buy every game that stumbles onto the storefront. Besides, I gotta save that money to invest in more TTRPGs that I won’t ever play.

But now that I have an Xbox again and have set it up in a way that makes it easier and more accessible to use than launching a game through Steam, I’ve found that my achievement itches are starting back up. My current setup involves two different HDMI switches that gather all of my various console inputs into one output, and have that go through another switch that indicates which monitor it’ll display on. While I’m fairly certain that neither of these switches will pass through a 4K signal, making my television functionally useless, the convenience of being able to just hit a button on my second monitor and be instantly at my Xbox dashboard has really been the catalyst for why I’m primarily playing on console these days.

Even better is how inclusive the Xbox ecosystem has become, providing seamless integration between console and PC players which has meant that I’ve been able to play a lot more multiplayer games with people, regardless of where they’re actually playing. I’ve taken to testing that cross-play system a lot too by expressly playing on console while my friends are on PC, and I gotta give it up to Xbox for making the process as painless as possible. I’m certain that it’s only that easy because we’re all still utilizing parts of the Xbox ecosystem, something that undoubtedly has made things smoother than if I was trying to play with someone from a PS5 or something.

Regardless of the ease of use it really has been a lot of fun to casually chase achievements again, although I don’t appreciate how Xbox likes to rub it in your face about how much better your friends are at achievement hunting than you are. It makes me want to be way more competitive than I actually am, which is usually always cancelled out by my inherent laziness. But aside from the stupid achievement rat race, I’m surprisingly really enjoying playing on a console again for reasons that I don’t quite fully understand.

While we’re on the topic of laziness, I want to mention the lack of diverse content on the site recently. It’s kind of just been blogs for the past few weeks, and I’m sorry for that. Honestly, I’ve just kind of found it hard to be motivated to do anything, let alone this site, but I’m trying to get back into the swing of things. I have some ideas for new Master of Disasters and Gut Checks, so those should be materializing soon enough.

But as for things like my annual coverage of E3 or whatever the fuck is going on this summer, I do not know what it’s going to look like this year or even if something will come to fruition in terms of coverage. Much like last year, it’s still very weird out there, and the concept of covering E3 is both an exciting and confusing challenge to me. We’ll see what comes of it all, but I’ve got the wheels in the ol’ noggin spinning in the hopes something actionable and interesting will come out. That rarely works out for me, but maybe this time it’ll be different. Only time will tell.

Blog: Knockout City – 05/26/21

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It’s no secret that I’ve lost my passion for online competitive games as I’ve gotten older, but that doesn’t mean this old man isn’t still capable of stepping into the virtual ring and wreaking some havoc from time to time. While most people are playing those gun-shooting games I’ve opted to spend my time with EA’s newly released competitive dodge ball game, Knockout City, as opposed to the more murder-centric games people usually play. Much to my surprise, Knockout City is actually a pretty fun, albeit slim offering that was well worth the price of “free with Game Pass.”

Knockout City is a free-to-play game that hasn’t realized it’s a free-to-play game just yet, as it’s currently retailing at $20 on just about every modern platform. I’m sure in a few months we’ll get a full “announcement” about how EA is making the game more accessible or something by offering it for free, but we’re not there just yet. Rest assured though, with the amount of free-to-play trappings that are already in Knockout City, I can’t foresee a future where it doesn’t go free-to-play eventually.

But hey, this one’s different, because you’ll be hurling cosmic dodge balls at your opponents instead of bullets, which somehow doesn’t make eliminating an opponent any less grizzly as they ragdoll off the side of a skyscraper. You and your team of two other folks will face off in a best of three, round-based death-match, where the first team to score ten eliminations wins the round. These rounds go pretty quickly, which is exactly long enough for me to almost get sick of playing Knockout City, but instead stick around for another match.

Balls spawn in various spots around the map, with special themed ones randomly selected before you start a match that will also spawn in some of these locations. For instance, one of my matches had explosive balls that are pretty devastating no matter which team you’re on, a fact that I learned the hard way. You basically race to these locations to grab a ball, then sprint on into the location of the map that has turned into an impromptu killing field, where you will either become a dodge ball god or immediately get knocked unconscious.

What’s neat about the game is how deceptively simple it is. What sucks about it is how little you’re told about what everything does. There’s a tutorial that I suggest everyone play, but even that doesn’t cover some of the more advanced maneuvers that you’ll need to use in any given match. For instance, you can turn yourself into a ball that your teammates can throw. How you do this is never spelled out to you nor why you would do this, but I assure you that functionality exists. The same goes for passing the ball to teammates, which seems like a pretty important thing for me to know how to do, but alas, that also wasn’t covered in the tutorial.

It’s probably super simple like the rest of the controls in Knockout City though. When you have a ball, you can hold the right trigger to simultaneously automatically lock on to an opponent and charge up your shot, followed by releasing the trigger to heave the ball. But locking onto an enemy alerts them that they’re being locked onto, so you have to basically mess with them by playing with the timing of your release. Sure a fully charged shot would be devastating but that’s what they’re expecting, maybe an early release will throw them off enough that they mistime their catch attempt. It’s a fun little meta-layer that involves you playing mind games with your opponent, and I appreciated that.

Your enemies aren’t just helpless however, because by timing a grab with the left trigger you can catch the ball and immediately fire it back at an opponent. When that happens, it leads to a lot of Dragon Ball Z styled air battles where two people are just bouncing this dodge ball off of each other in midair until someone’s timing falters. It’s always really cool when you get into one of these back and forth battles because these were easily the most tense moments I experienced while playing. You can also tackle an opponent which will cause them to lose control of the ball, popping it into the air for all of the other anime dodge-ballers to have a chance at holding. That tackle is one of three different dodge actions you can take, all of which probably do something different that I just couldn’t decipher before writing this.

Knockout City is actually a lot of fun, but I just don’t know how long the legs on this thing are. It feels more substantial than something like a Fall Guys, but it also lacks any of the personality Fall Guys had as well. The game has this weird retro-futurism vibe to it that really does nothing for the experience as a whole, but it doesn’t detract from it either, so there’s that I suppose. If you’ve got Game Pass and want to check out Knockout City, I’d fully endorse that decision. However, if you’re asking if you should pay $20 bucks for it, I don’t know that I could stand by that decision, especially when we all know and have agreed that it’ll be free-to-play in a few months anyway.

Blog: Down on the Town – 05/19/21

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I initially planned on doing this two months ago, but time is an illusion at best these days and I just kind of missed it, but now seems as good as a time as any to talk about Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Like I said, this would’ve been more apt had it been the 1-year anniversary of its release, but I feel like the things I wanted to say then are still applicable a few months on. So with that said, I’d like to go over my brief love affair with the game and where our relationship stands today.

Like many people, I found that Animal Crossing: New Horizons hit right when I needed it to, providing a pleasant escape from the misery of the newly imposed lock-downs that swept across the globe. Despite how I feel about it today, I still maintain that Animal Crossing: New Horizons was one of the most important games I played during 2020, solely based on how it helped prop up my relationships with others. Yet here in 2021, I might be able to give the game a half hour of my time every two weeks or so, at best. Where did it all go wrong between me and Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

Well it probably has to do with the fact that nothing substantial has happened over the course of the year. Every seasonal event that was rolled out was underwhelming and immediately forgettable, leaving me yearning for the bigger content updates that would never actually come. The events for the most part, all followed a similar formula of “collect this thing so you can craft a different thing,” and that’s pretty underwhelming if you ask me. Sure it follows in the motif of the game itself, where crafting and building are kind of the cornerstones of the entire experience, but sometimes you want to do something that grants you a reward that isn’t a crafting recipe. I just find the Animal Crossing: New Horizons failed to ever do anything with the momentum it built up, as if no one at Nintendo had a plan for if the game actually sold well or something.

The core issue isn’t that the events are underwhelming however, the real issue is that nothing has changed in a meaningful way whatsoever. Sure new items have been injected into the game here and there, but outside of that and the terrible seasonal events, there hasn’t been any real reason for me to spend time on my little island paradise. There aren’t any new buildings or NPCs to interact with, nor have there been any new shops to spend my dragon’s hoard of money in. No new functionality has been added to the game outside of being able to go swimming and diving for clams or whatever, so I’ve just been in this, “why bother?” mentality with the it all. Hell, none of my townsfolk ever have anything interesting to say anymore either. Just like real life, in Animal Crossing: New Horizons I’m just kind of going through the motions.

It’s an absolute shame too considering that a lot of the good will and praise that people heaped onto Animal Crossing: New Horizons when the pandemic started has almost entirely evaporated into thin air. Everything I hear about the game itself these days falls into one of two buckets: Either it’s an event from last year coming back much to the chagrin of the people still actively playing it, or how Nintendo patched out a glitch that people found because they wouldn’t want the game to be too fun.

I guess this is the part where I’m supposed to list things I’d like to see added to the game, but at this point I’d take anything. The game has gotten so stagnant and dull that even just a new store or mechanic could entice me to check in on my animals who refuse to do any manual labor, instead opting to let the town get overrun by weeds before actual getting their hands dirty. I remember rumors of cooking systems and more in-depth interactable objects like in past entries of the series, none of which have actually come to pass. Honestly I was kind of hoping that Animal Crossing would inject more Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley elements into it for the people who really wanted to stick with the game. Give players more things to do on a mechanical level and stop being so punitive when it comes to doing simple shit like rearranging the layout of your town.

It just sucks to think about because Animal Crossing: New Horizons helped me transition from a relatively normal life to the one I’m currently living without falling too deep into a pit of despair. Its positive, bright and cheery atmosphere was truly the pick-me-up I needed during some of the rougher parts of the lockdown. It was a way for me to keep in touch with my partner who lived far away at the time, as well as friends and co-workers. It was a lifeline during an incredibly bleak period of time, and to see it just be ignored after being so influential and beloved in the gaming space is incredibly disheartening. I hope something new comes into play soon, but I’m really not holding my breath.

Blog: Dinoslayers – 05/12/21

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When I think about horde modes in video games, things like Call of Duty’s zombies modes and the aptly named horde mode from the Gears of War series spring to mind. While I’ve never really resonated with them at all, it’s impossible to deny how popular and successful these modes have been, so much so that there are games that are completely built around the concept itself like Left 4 Dead and the upcoming Back 4 Blood. These games are not my jam at all, but somehow I’ve managed to spend a couple of hours with one of these styled games this past week. If you haven’t heard about Second Extinction yet, prepare to be informed by someone with a middling at best level of interest in the genre and an even shoddier level of knowledge about dinosaurs.

As the name might imply, Second Extinction is an objective-based horde-styled game where you and two of your buddies wander around a miserable planet, gunning down all sorts of mutated dinosaurs. In the early portions of the game you’ll mostly be shooting at raptors with a penchant for spin-kicking you, spitting poison at you, and turning invisible, just like I remember learning about in school. There are other, more interesting dinosaurs that will need a good bullet-ing as well, but the majority of what I faced early on were these shitty mutated raptors.

You choose a character to play as, each of which comes with their own suggested loadout of weapons and abilities but you can pretty much just make any character use any weapon you want, which is good considering you could end up like me and get fooled into using what can only be described as the “World’s Most Useless Sniper Rifle”. Not only is it hilariously inaccurate and ineffective, but the scope itself is fogged over and impossible to see through, making aiming through it bizarrely impractical. If you’re looking to play Second Extinction, do not use the sniper rifle.

My biggest complaint with Second Extinction was just how meandering the entire thing felt. I never quite knew what we were doing or why we were doing it, and some of the missions and objectives were either unclear, tedious as hell, or some combination of the two. But despite that we still had a pretty good time traipsing through the snowy landscape towards our next inscrutable goal, all the while utilizing our abilities and various equipment in something that resembled synergy. One friend would call in some ammo, while I would call in equipment or use a stun grenade or satchel charge to really stop a charging dino in its tracks. But it’s hard to tell if that’s something I can credit to the game or just to the fact that I like playing games with my friends.

I don’t think Second Extinction is a bad video game by any metric, and considering that it’s still in early access it certainly has a good foundation to build upon. My biggest hope is that the rough edges and bugs get taken care of, because the game is currently pretty buggy and crashy. Things like dead dinosaurs getting launched into the stratosphere can stay in the game, but the lack of any voice chat control in the game is wild. It must’ve taken us about an hour for us to figure out how to mute each other in the game so we could continue using Discord without hearing our voices doubled. Eventually we managed to mute ourselves through the Xbox app, but boy-howdy did that take way longer than it needed to. And maybe fixing that miserable sniper rifle could be something worth investing some time into.

But if you have Game Pass and two friends who are looking to do what the owners of Jurassic Park didn’t have the guts to, vis-à-vis just gunning down those rogue dinos, then I think Second Extinction might be worth checking out.

Blog: A Game of Chicken – 05/05/21

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There are moments in life when you’re absolutely positive that one thing will happen, yet against all odds, something entirely unexpected occurs. That’s basically the story of how I ended up purchasing an Xbox Series S in a nutshell. I recall months of following various Twitter accounts to clue me into stock drops at various retailers, only to see the “Out of Stock” message appear within seconds of clicking the link. I would have never expected to be able to purchase a next-generation console on a whim, but here we are, $325 later, and a new Xbox is on its way to me.

There was a few months where I was pursuing one of these plastic monoliths in a pretty obsessive way, but every time a notification would pop up on my phone and I clicked it, all I’d end up securing was a vast amount of disappointment. So one day I decided to scale back and just stop trying so hard. I stopped following every stock-checking Twitter account I had latched onto, turned off all notifications and moved on with my life. But I did continue to follow one account that posts deals from all across the gaming landscape and not just consoles. Turns out, that was right move.

I woke up the other morning and eventually got around to checking up on social media to see what horrors occurred in the world in the past 7 hours or so that was unconscious. I came across a post from this Twitter account that just indicated that Microsoft was selling the Xbox Series S on their site. Unfortunately that post was from 9 hours ago, so I probably missed out on it, but I figured I’d click anyway just to confirm it for myself.

The weirdest thing happened: The site didn’t say “Out of Stock” like it usually did, instead it just read, “Add to Cart,” which I earnestly assumed to be a glitch or something. Jokingly, I clicked it, all the while knowing that this would error out and show me the way out. But gosh dang-it, the site just sent me to the cart where one of these elusive consoles was just chilling and waiting for me. “This can’t happen,” I thought. “The listing went up last night, there’s just no way,” I continued to say as I signed into my PayPal account to finalize the purchase.

So I filled out all the information and pressed the final confirmation button, still fully expecting for this to not work. But lo-and-behold the transaction went through, and I was left sitting there, slack-jawed at the concept that I could, nine hours later, just purchase this console I wasn’t really looking to ever buy so easily. Surely an email would come in and say that my order couldn’t be completed or something, right? Nope, I have a tracking number and everything now and I still don’t believe that this actually happened.

*Finally, a “best value” option that’s actually the best value*

As of writing this, I don’t have the console just yet. It’ll allegedly arrive on the day this blog goes up, but that remains to be seen. This may not seem as buck-wild of a story as I think it is, but it’s important to contextualize it all with just how fanatical about finding a next-generation console I was. Maybe I just got lucky because no one is really frothing at the mouth for a Series S, but I literally don’t know if that’s even true or not, that’s just me spouting conjecture at this point. All I know is that I’m surprisingly excited to receive this thing, and terrified of the idea that it’s being shipped as is and not in a discreet box.

In preparation for my new toy, I’ve reorganized my entertainment center which was basically me unplugging the dust-covered Xbox 360 that was on it and chucking it into storage, as well as giving that severely neglected piece of furniture a good cleaning. I also decided to upgrade my Game Pass subscription from the overpriced PC only version, to the slightly more expensive Game Pass Ultimate, which upon further reflection, is an incredible deal. So yeah, that’s the story of how I played chicken with a website and lost so badly that I ended up $325 dollars poorer, but I do get one of them new-fangled viddy-James boxes out of it. Well, allegedly, I’m still not convinced it’s actually on its way to me. I’ll update this post either way when the time comes.

UPDATE: It’s actually here. Weird.