Newshit: 6th May

The world keeps on turning and shit keeps on happening. For as long as these two criteria are met, there will be news. This is that. Plus some other stuff.

Toothy fucking hedgehog

Let’s start with the horror show that is the Sonic adaptation trailer released last week. It was about as god-awful as I would have expected and does seem to finally answer the question “can I hate a comedy film starring Jim Carrey?”. The buddy-movie-cum-superheroes theme was cringey and the only positive was seeing Carrey visually transform into Robotnik at the end of the trailer… but it still wasn’t enough to make me want to watch the movie.

After the trailer dropped, the rest of the internet also seemed to object to it, given that they also have eyes. The enormous backlash sparked a change in heart from the director, Jeff Fowler, who told Twitter that Sonic would be changed (unfeasibly fast if it wants to keep the November release date).

Thank you for the support. And the criticism. The message is loud and clear… you aren’t happy with the design & you want changes. It’s going to happen. Everyone at Paramount & Sega are fully committed to making this character the BEST he can be… #sonicmovie #gottafixfast 🔧✌️

— Jeff Fowler (@fowltown) May 2, 2019

Whether some visual tweaks would drastically improve the film for me, I’m not sure. Those teeth need to go for sure, as well as some changes to the scale and proportion of his body. Whether the overall tone and storyline for the movie will be remotely interesting is unclear. I’ll be keeping an eye out for future developments though, just to see how wildly different it is for the final release.

The Boss Key

An unlikely candidate was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame for 2019 – alongside Colossal Cave Adventure, Mortal Kombat and Super Mario Kart – in the form of Microsoft Solitaire. While it might seem an odd choice at first, the game was installed on virtually every Windows PC for over 20 years means that billions of people may have owned or played this title.

The game also acted as training software for the newfangled mouse device which was all the rage at the time and had such simple gameplay that just about anyone could pick up and play. The game’s sneaky feature to quickly display a fake spreadsheet using the “boss button” was another bonus which endeared millions to this casual title (and which might have been considered bloatware at one stage).

Of course the other titles are more clearly identifiable as gaming giants – with Mortal Kombat currently riding the high of a new title and Mario Kart being one of the classic Nintendo staples nowadays – the nod to the classic Colossal Cave Adventure was also welcome.

What are your predictions for next year’s Hall of Fame inductees?

Epic Balls

This week also brought confirmation that Epic Games are acquiring Psyonix, the developers of esports ballsfest Rocket League. This prompted a wave of concern from fans who know only too well how Epic likes to operate. The developers rushed to issue a statement clarifying that Steam users would still be able to play the game and receive support… so Epic will probably wait a few weeks before making the game exclusive to their store.

Hi all! We wanted to clarify something for you after today’s news: Rocket League is and remains available on Steam. Anyone who owns Rocket League through Steam can still play it and can look forward to continued support. Thanks!

— Rocket League (@RocketLeague) May 1, 2019

Adding Psyonix to the Epic brand does make sense, as they are trying to capture the market and bring as many titles onto its store as possible. I completely understand the concerns of the player base though – Rocket League has had a rocky few years with issues surrounding cross-play on consoles – so adding in another potential split to the mix might cause lasting damage to the game’s appeal.

We’ll just have to watch this space though – Epic might handle this one well and let the game live on through the Steam as well as the Epic store… or possibly they have their sights set on the inevitable successor which could get locked down to their store alone.

What are your thoughts on the Rocket League news?

New Shit

Now we spend a few minutes taking a look at the new releases for this week – including a couple of funky re-releases for your enjoyment.

Title	Format	Publisher	Release Date
Shards of Infinity	An/iOS/PC	Temple Gates Games	06/05/19
Puyo Puyo Champions	NS/PC/PS4/XO	Sega	07/05/19
CookieRun JellyPop	An/iOS	Devsisters	08/05/19
Infected Shelter	Lin/Mac/PC	Dark Blue Games	08/05/19
Legend of the Tetrarchs	PC/XO	Kemco	08/05/19
Reverse Crawl	PS4	Digerati Distribution	08/05/19
Pax Nova	PC	Iceberg Interactive	09/05/19
Yakuza Kiwami 2	PC	Atlus	09/05/19
Blazing Beaks	NS	QubicGames	10/05/19
Dragon Pinball	NS	EnjoyUp Games	10/05/19
Goblin Squad	PC	34BigThings	10/05/19
Lovecraft’s Untold Stories	NS/PS4/XO	Badland Publishing	10/05/19
Reverse Crawl	NS/XO	Digerati Distribution	10/05/19
Saints Row: The Third The Full Package	NS	Deep Silver	10/05/19
TwinCop	Mac/PC	Finite Reflection Studios	10/05/19

The Wins

Finally a quick roundup of some other things that happened in the past week or so, all delivered via our customary stupidity filter.

Borderlands 3 hopes to win over players with promises that their hard-earned cash will only be wasted on shiny colourful shit
Wizards Unite gameplay mechanics only require a basic Masters degree in Combinatorial Mathematics to grasp
A game about killing off people repeatedly is now finally complete with the introduction of the actor who gets killed off repeatedly
Game developer pisses off Nintendo with a tiny code interpreter built into his game and gets it pulled from the Switch store
“Master Chief collection will be ready when it’s fucking ready”, cries the developer
Stardew Valley creator knows that your friends are thieving dicks
Bayonetta developers have a game idea you’ve never seen before – our bets are on an intense action game with scantily clad witches
The next Playstation “State of Play” update video will announce a new game – shockingly like every other console update – but won’t give more details on the Play5tation Cinco
Pokemon GO players rejoice as Detective Pikachu movie means they get the chance to catch a Pikachu in a slightly different ridiculous fucking hat
David Jaffe of God of War fame wants to scare your pants off
Irony seems to be lost on Niantic who celebrate their players wandering around the world picking up tonnes of crap