Collector’s Corner – Don’t do it for the money

Earlier this week I read in some publications about how, after literal years of shortages, the current PS5 supply has forced scalpers to start selling off their stock below MSRP just to try and cut losses. A piece of news that has filled my gamer heart with joy.

I hope this serves as a lesson. If you want to make a living out of gaming, you better create something and not just speculate on someone else’s product leeching off the desperation of actual enthusiasts.

There’s a lesson, however, that isn’t just limited to hardware. Lately, I’ve been seeing on social media and YouTube many gamers recommending games to “invest” in. I need to talk about that. It’s not that I find it unethical (although it’s debatable), it’s that I think that’s straight up a bad idea. Let me expose my reasons why.

April 13th’s State of play

Just a couple weeks ago I was thinking how it was weird that we hadn’t got any of those State of Play events focused on a single exclusive game for a while. Well, that’s exactly what we got this week.

PlayStation announced a new State of Play stream and this time focused on the console-exclusive Final Fantasy XVI. And that’s really it. 20 minutes exclusively devoted to a single game that I’m anticipating very much.

Like with every of these streams, here I’ll be summarizing the stuff they showed, what I liked about it and what I didn’t like as much. Let’s go.

Top 10 PS4 Indies

I love writing top 10 lists. Above all, they’re a great excuse to bring up titles that I loved and I wish more people would try as well. Sometimes (or most times) the games featured in these lists happen to be pretty popular though, that’s why my absolute favorite lists are the ones highlighting “hidden gems”.

Today’s list isn’t exactly that but, being these small “indie” titles, I’m pretty sure the mainstream public hasn’t played most of these really. A mainstream public that won’t ever come across this blog post but oh well…

Game Releases: April 2023

Welcome to spring! Very magical month with lots of fantastic games coming out. April brings us anticipated games such as Dead Island 2, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Bramble: The Mountain King, Horizon Forbidden West – Burning Shores, Minecraft Legends, and Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak. Full list below.

E3 Got Canceled

To the surprise of none, 2023’s Electronic Entertainment Expo won’t be taking place. Everything we heard in the last weeks was pointing to it, rumors were already floating around the media and now it’s official.

You can’t have a big video game event without big video game companies supporting it, that much seems pretty obvious but, how did this all came to be? What does it mean for the future of the event? What we know and what I think, below.

Gaming Memories – Musou’s Awful First Impression

If you’ve followed this blog for a while now, you’ll know that I’m kind of a militant advocate for the Musou genre. I love playing them and sharing my love for this type of game that seemingly many gamers don’t really understand.

However, my appreciation for this genre wasn’t there from the start. You might be surprised to read this but, my first ever experience with a Musou game wasn’t a good one. In fact, I pretty much hated it. Today’s “gaming memories” is exactly about that.

Briefiew – Valkyrie Elysium

The announcement of this game in March of last year was truly a surprise to me. First because I wasn’t expecting this “dormant” franchise to get a new console game I could play and secondly for the kind of game that it was going to be.

Then again and, despite the original games being more “orthodox” JRPGS, this series has had a track record for being quite inventive gameplay-wise so, perhaps, turning its latest iteration into a full hack n’ slash game wasn’t so out of character.

We shall see if the change paid off in the review below.

Top 10 Iconic PS3 IPs

The PlayStation 3 is over 15 years old and that makes it (at least to my metrics), a retro console. However, it hasn’t quite reached what some might call an “iconic” status. I don’t think that’s fair. Being the least successful of all PlayStation home consoles, many consider the PS3 some sort of failure, completely disregarding the fact that it sold close to 90 million consoles and it being home to a massive number of fantastic games. Many of those spawned franchises that are still important today or perhaps are even regarded as classics.

Today’s top list will highlight ten IPs that were born in this console or during its era. The order of these picks won’t be their Metacritic score nor even my personal liking of them but more of my subjective take on their generational relevancy aka “how much PS3-era they feel to be”. Let’s begin!

Game Releases: March 2023

Hello friends, hope you’re having a fantastic day whenever you read this. Here is the list of PlayStation video games for this month!

February 23rd’s State of Play

PlayStation announced a new State of Play event this week. The last one they held was in September (five full months ago) but, considering the always intense holiday season, the wait in between the events hasn’t felt that important.

It also helped that the last State of Play was probably the best they’ve ever had. I wouldn’t mind getting updates less often if when they happen they’re that significant.

However, today I’m here to talk about the stream that happened this Thursday. Like always, I’ll run down all of the games that were presented and give my own opinion on what they showed. No spoilers but… this wasn’t September’s State of Play.