Newshit 8th April

This week’s gaming information service, beamed digitally through the airwaves like some sort of knowledge laser. Do not adjust your set, stay tuned, and we’ll be back right after this.

Super Meat Boy Forever … and ever… (and ever)

Some news which sounds bad on first reading, but turns into one of gaming’s good news stories when you learn the details. The headline: Super Meat Boy Forever, the highly-anticipated sequel to the punishing platform charmer which was due to release this month, is being delayed.

OK, so sad news – avid fans will have to wait a little longer for their next meaty fix.

Then you read the full press statement the developers posted and you realise that this is actually a very positive and mature step to take in the current climate.

We’re almost done, but not quite there yet. pic.twitter.com/vm7q10Xd0n

— Team Meat (@SuperMeatBoy) 4 April 2019

The team have realised that they would need to do the mother of all crunches in order to get the game into a suitable state to publish, taking a heavy toll on the team members who would need to sacrifice all of their time and energy to make that happen. So, they didn’t.

While many bigger studios (usually in the pockets of one of the MegaCorps of the gaming world) would have been forced to bend over backwards to get the game ready for the announced release schedule, Team Meat realised “hey, we actually don’t need to do that. We can give the game another month or two and complete the development with our team’s health and social lives intact”.

As a Super Meat fan myself, I applaud the team for this bold move. Yep, fans might be disappointed by the longer wait but… there’s a far higher likelihood that the game will be amazing.

Mario Snappy Snaps Party Royale

Some weird news this week – similar to previous weeks, I suppose – that there’s another entry into the gaming market in the form of Snapchat. For those of you who weren’t cool a few years ago, or those of you who are cool now, you might not remember Snapchat. Basically it’s a photo messaging app which includes filters – ya know, like how every single fucking service on the planet insists on shoving down your throats (except Snap was the first to hit the mainstream with it).

Now they’ve realised that everyone is sick of the photos of people with totes amazeballs cute AF doggie faces, they have decided to reel the users back in with…. competitive mini-games!?! Yep, that is exactly what I expected them to do next.

Snap Games will allow users to create a 3D avatar (think Mii) and play a series of mini-games against their friends. The games themselves look fairly fun, like Mario Party except without the joy of crushing your friends’ dreams while playing as Daisy. This is the Bitmoji Party game which they have shown in the newly-released teaser video, but they also appear to be working on a Battle Royale game for the service as well, probably because the market is absolutely desperate for another of those.

The catch? You will pay for your gaming time through mandatory adverts. It’s the usual free-to-play transaction but it could prove contentious for gamers wishing to play a quick round. It’s not clear whether the adverts will interrupt gameplay (forcing adverts to be played between rounds) or whether you just watch an advert before you start playing. We’ll have to wait and see how that works in practice.

Is this a feature tempting enough to get gamers to re-install Snapchat and start playing? Nah, probably not. It’s certainly an entertaining development though.

God of Award

The BAFTA Game Awards winners have been announced. Boy, God of War impressed the judges this year, taking home trophies in 4 big categories – Best Game, Audio Achievement, Music, and Narrative – with indie titles filling in most of the rest.

This came as a surprise, as Red Dead Redemption 2 was pipped for a huge number of categories and then ended up winning… none of them. While a major studio title has taken around half of the awards, it is still pleasing to see that indie titles are recognised for their contribution to gaming this year. In particular, Return of the Obra Dinn has taken the awards in both Artistic Achievement and in Game Design (which reminds me that I really should play that pixel beauty at some point).

Also getting the nod were Yoku’s Island Express for Debut Game, My Child Lebensborn for Game Beyond Entertainment, and Into the Breach for Original Property.

The full list of winners is below for your perusal, and you can read all about the awards on the official website.

• ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT – RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN
• AUDIO ACHIEVEMENT – GOD OF WAR
• BEST GAME – GOD OF WAR
• BRITISH GAME – FORZA HORIZON 4
• DEBUT GAME – YOKU’S ISLAND EXPRESS
• EVOLVING GAME – FORTNITE
• FAMILY – NINTENDO LABO
• GAME BEYOND ENTERTAINMENT – MY CHILD LEBENSBORN
• GAME DESIGN – RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN
• GAME INNOVATION – NINTENDO LABO
• MOBILE GAME – FLORENCE
• MULTIPLAYER – A WAY OUT
• MUSIC – GOD OF WAR
• NARRATIVE – GOD OF WAR
• ORIGINAL PROPERTY – INTO THE BREACH
• PERFORMER – JEREMY DAVIES
• MOBILE GAME OF THE YEAR (PUBLIC VOTE) – OLD SCHOOL RUNESCAPE

New Shit

Now we take a look at the newest shit which is plopping onto the shelves in the next week. Just remember, if your budget is a bit tight, selling valuables on eBay is a completely reasonable course of action.

The Wins

Finally we round off this week’s update with some other crap we spotted recently which happened (or sorta happened, or didn’t happen at all).

• Nintendo’s latest innovation provides new colourful worlds to give you motion sickness
• Steam finally takes action to remove thousands of (clearly fake) reviews for Half Life 2
• The Division 2 has puzzles using a secret coded language to distract gamers from the rest of the mediocre action gameplay
• Epic Games Store bags another exclusive game and keeps bribing gamers with free games, doesn’t understand why everyone still uses Steam
• Distraught gamer keeps getting banned from playing Apex Legends, doesn’t think it has anything to do with persistent cheating
• Rumours flying around that next Assassin’s Creed will focus on Vikings, Ubisoft already taking pre-orders for the “Norse God Loot and Pillage Ultimate Edition”
• Who cares if Rage 2 is a good game? It features Danny Dyer calling enemies “twat”
• Dragon Quest decides that gamers were never bothered with the RPG gameplay anyway
• Sean Murray pinky-promises that No Man’s Sky will get a fully-fledged VR mode this summer, tells gamers to ignore that his hands are behind his back with crossed fingers

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Robin Bates

Coaching for Geeks Overlord at Coaching for Geeks

Robin Bates is a 40 year old manchild who somehow ended up in charge of Coaching for Geeks. He has a penchant for gaming, dressing up, music festivals, and the Oxford comma. He is a terrible typist despite many hours playing Typing of the Dead.

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