Here’s the thing, though: beyond ‘gaming PCs are far more expensive than consoles’, or ‘some people (myself included) just don’t enjoy gaming on PC’, I don’t really think pointing out that most Nintendo or Sony exclusives won’t come to PC makes a viable argument that PCs are a good way to ‘get around’ exclusives.

My only major concern on Deathloop is... well, the ‘loop’ part of the title; just personally, I’ve always found ‘you have limited time to achieve x goal’ more ‘frustrating’ than ‘tension-building’. Then again, I was really concerned about a similar mechanic going into ‘Prey: Mooncrash’ as well, and I thought it…

They were definitely a major consideration, for sure; I think Microsoft is very specifically trying to develop an identity around ‘we make all kinds of games that appeal to all kinds of different aspects of the market’ (since that’s part of the core appeal of GamePass) rather than ‘we make games that apply to as broad…

I don’t know that taking away paid exclusivity would inherently mean that the Playstation wouldn’t attract more Japanese developer games, though -Sony’s a Japanese company, after all; the reasons those games arrive primarily on that platform is that those developers are making games primarily for a Japanese customer…

I honestly don’t see that big of a distinction between first and third party games (Nintendo is an exception, you’re absolutely right, but I’ll get to them in a moment), especially given that - at this point - the majority of what we think of as ‘first party’ studios began as independent entities.

Exactly; I’m for sure sure that it was... something. Not sure what, exactly, but... something! (And no; no, it really wasn’t. It just looks like a solid half a dozen or so different somethings, all kinda smashed together.)

Yeah, best case scenario* for me is that is sells really, really well on PS5, so they’re already working on a sequel by the time I get around to playing it on GamePass, and I don’t have to wait as long in between installments!

Don’t you think it would be better, though - if exclusives magically went away tomorrow - to be able to pick which console you wanted to get based off of... well, anything else, really? Which controller you liked best; technical specifications; hell, which box you found most aesthetically appealing. The way I see it,…

Nope; not at all. I mean, even removing the financial consideration of buying a whole system just to play a handful of games - and that is a major consideration - I’d much rather be able to play every (console-capable) game on my platform of choice, with my controller of choice, with my interface of choice, etc. And…

I remember that (I think; I maybe have just read the first issue). As I recall, it carried ‘gritty sci-fi’ all the way into the realm of ‘horrible ultra-violence’, which was pretty popular at the time in comics. 

Bucky O’Hare, for sure, or something like Usagi Yojimbo, or some spinoff of the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles; it’s less that I think it’s some specific thing, and more that the whole aesthetic here - anthropomorphized, otherwise cutesy animals in a kind of grungy sci-fi setting with a little bit of a teenager’s idea…

Yeah, I could see that. (I played a bit of it, when it was on GamePass - as I recall it was fairly fun, as XCOM clones go, though I eventually hit a difficulty spike I couldn’t be bothered to get past.) And I think that one actually was based off of a tabletop thing from the same late eighties/early nineties era, the…

Entirely possible; I’m not sure what that is, but it sure sounds like exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about.

It’s not a genre that particularly appeals to me at all - mainly because I’m really, really, really bad at those sorts of side-scrollers and always have been - but... yeah. That’s exactly the sort of thing it feels like it should be an adaptation of. 

I swear to God, every time I see or hear anything about FIST, I think ‘oh yeah, that’s based on some gritty anthropomorphic animals thing from the early 90s I vaguely recall’, but I... don’t think it actually is? Everything comes back around eventually, I suppose.

Makes sense; I didn’t know 3 had shifted toward the GAAS model to that significant of a degree. (And admittedly, I don’t think I played 2 enough to ever both with the raids or the other endgame stuff - I played the DLC, but my approach to Borderlands was always more straightforward than with, say Destiny: ‘play until…

Do the Borderlands games fit the GAAS model, though? Admittedly, I skipped out on three about a third of the way into the main game, so I’m not sure how it handled new content, but 1 and 2 seemed to have much more of a ‘traditional’ approach to DLC, in that you bought relatively large blocks of new content, played…

Sorry, I could have phrased my question better: it wasn’t ‘do they require an initial purchase’, but more ‘do they charge for additional content, rather than charging to skip grinding or time-gating’. I tend to think of ‘paid content added over time’ as the hallmark of GAAS, which - to me - is different from the…

Yeah, I definitely think ‘a drip-feed of new content’ is part and parcel to the GAAS model; I was thinking randomization could be used more as a way to keep the base game viable as the new elements are tacked on. Most GAAS games don’t rely purely on the new content, after all - it’s usually some mix of ‘here’s actual…

I think that’s an interesting point; I guess the question is, ‘can Ubisoft tinker with the standard AC formula in order to make a GAAS model work?’ (Or, ‘are they willing to’, I suppose.) Again, as someone who hasn’t played an AC game in a while, it seems like there should be a way to add a certain level of…