In Smash Brothers Ultimate, Pokemon are not just rivals fighters, but something unknowable, untouchable and even god-like with their terrifying ability to weaponise the sun or literally turn a world on its head, regardless of one’s skill.
Squareblind looks over an entire year of videogaming through the prism of social media. This is a year that saw legitimate questions about the human toll of an intense game development schedule in order to generate a commercially successful digital world that promises the lifelike spectacle of a realistic horse’s backside. Everything has a cost.
The original dozen characters in the first Smash Brothers game were a revelation in just how many played almost exactly as if they were an actual standalone Kirby, Yoshi or 2D Legend of Zelda game.
If a player acts abominably in a fictional digital world where citizens are ultimately just a piece of code, does it really matter? The open world of Red Dead Redemption 2 throws up some pertinent questions around expression and responsibility in games.
Overcooked 2, much like its predecessor, is a kitchen chaos simulator, yet the game is only tangentially about food. Its universal appeal is arguably more based on throwing a group of friends or strangers together and seeing the sparks fly as they fail to get the dishes done.
Unlike humans, genres arguably never die. But much like us, they do get older, adapting in unique ways to the rigours of time, while stubbornly sticking to other things they maybe should have let go. Out of this, greatness is sometimes haphazardly realised
IT was once common for every blockbuster movie to have a faintly recognisable videogame that tenuously tried to let you live out you own silver screen adventure in faintly similar ways. In celebrating 10 years of film journalism from our friends at Battle Royale with Cheese, we ponder where our rushed Black Panther game has gone.
