Gaming Ramble Weekly

It took just 12 days of 2024 before the first overwhelmingly positive game reviews were in, and unexpectedly so.  If you’re anything like me, you probably didn’t pay too much attention to Ubisoft’s freshest approach to the curse that appeared to be the Prince of Persia franchise.  Stuck in the darkest corners of Development Hell, the Prince of Persia appeared to be almost dead.  A remake of 2008’s The Sands of Time was taken back to the drawing board after years of development, the project being not in-line with the initial vision Ubisoft had.

Then, in 2023, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was announced, to a mixed reception frankly.  Prince of Persia fans were unsure what to think, while this was a step forward for the franchise, this also represented and highlighted some of the problems the franchise was facing.  Not the remake that was expected, The Lost Crown is a 2.5D Metroidvania with a new protagonist, set in the world of the Prince of Persia.  It looked good, but for me it never felt like anything special.

Well then, on Thursday afternoon, the reviews started flooding in for the first major release of 2024, and to pretty much everyone’s surprise, The Lost Crown came in with a score of 87 on Metacritic, which in 2023 would have been enough to be in the Top 15 games released on PS5 and Xbox in 2023 (bearing in mind that 2023 has been heralded as a once in a decade year for gaming).  Reviews have been overwhelmingly positive for The Lost Crown, and for those sitting on the fence for this title, I wouldn’t be surprised that a purchase was made.  For me, I’m going to wait it out for now, with the Backlog still to be worked through (more on that later) and some big games expected to be released this year that I’ll be having my eyes on, I’m waiting for a sale for this.  It looks like a weekend’s worth of solid fun though, so here’s hoping that it’s received as well by players as it was by critics.

Tackling the Backlog

Last week, I spoke about the backlog of games I have waiting for me, as well as coping with some lovely gaming burnout.  Well, I’m sorry to report that much of those feelings of burnout still very much remain.  It’s been a very busy week for me, which has resulted in not a lot of time to sit down with the console in the first place, but any time I have had I’ve spent doing nothing really.  Gaming burnout really is such a strange feeling, and for me it very much manifests itself as a lack of enthusiasm and energy to play games.

I booted up a new game on Deathloop, which was one of the first games I had bought when I got my PS5 in October 2021.  I played it for about 8 hours, and had made decent progress.  For those that know about Deathloop, this was being given review scores of 10 across the board.  Reviewers were hyping this game to be one of the greatest timeloop games ever made, and there was a general level of enthusiasm for this title across the board.  When it released, it slowly became apparent that this was not hitting in the same way with the player-base as it did with reviewers.

Personally, I liked what I played at the time.  While not being particularly good at first person shooters meant I died a good bit (probably more than the average player), I did enjoy the concept of what the game was trying to achieve, while also slowly peeling back the curtain on the story being told in the background.  But it didn’t really hook me enough for me to want to keep going.  Seeing it on the backlog, I figured that this was probably the game to try to tackle the backlog.  A short enough run-time, and a relatively linear experience, I’m hoping that in the next couple of weeks I’ll be able to finish Deathloop and report back my thoughts.

Zelda’s Getting a Movie

Those who know me know that The Legend of Zelda is my favourite gaming franchise by a country mile.  It was the first game I was introduced to by my Grampa, and ever since, I have played as many of the games as I could.  2023 was obviously a big year for the franchise, with the release of Tears of the Kingdom, quite possibly one of the most anticipated games of the year.  The franchise is slowly moving in new directions, and with BOTW and TOTK reaching astronomical levels of sales, we are starting to see Zelda become more mainstream that ever.

Out of nowhere, on 8th November 2023, Nintendo released the below tweet, to let everyone know that they were officially working on a live-action Legend of Zelda film.  Firstly, I thought this was some sort of joke when I saw it.  Why wasn’t this announced on a Nintendo Direct?  Why is it being shadow dropped on a tweet?  But on reflection, with the movie in the very early pre-production stages, and with little to no information available, I guess all that was needed was a quick press release.

I bring it up now because this week, at Sony’s annual press conference, CEO Kenichiro Yoshida revealed, in another brief statement, that Sony were working alongside Nintendo to distribute and publish the Legend of Zelda movie.  There are big players working on this movie, which has apparently been in the ideas phase for the last few years. As a huge fan of the franchise, I feel pretty unsure about the movie.  Link has always been one of the most iconic voiceless protagonists in gaming, and the idea that he’ll be the lead role of a live-action movie makes little sense to me.  I’ll be keeping tabs on this one for sure.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this week’s blog, it really is great to be writing something much more personal for you to read every week!  If you did enjoy this, and want to be notified of the next posts, be sure to subscribe to receive email updates when the next post goes live.  And if you really really enjoy these, be sure to tell a friend of two!  Until next week, have a great week, and if you’re getting stuck into the new Prince of Persia game, I hope that you have a great time with it!