xyzzysqrl

So, a few days after the launch of the all-new Xbox One, I have finished one of the launch titles for the Xbox 360. Kameo was largely about wandering around very pretty landscapes... I miss when this stuff was next-gen, y'know? Bloom, light motes, radiance coming out of everywhere...

I left Kameo parked by a window for a little while to eat and came back and it looked like GOD WAS DESCENDING directly behind her, what with the beams of light and glow EVERYWHERE. Just ridiculous levels of visual effects. Armies of dragons flying through the sky, except really it's armies of dragon because it's just the same dragon cut/pasted out to infinity.

I have genuine nostalgia for this. I may need professional help.

Kameo also has one of the most abrupt ENDINGS of any game I've ever seen, as the main character's evil sister flips an evil-to-good 180 spin so fast it leaves sparks on the pavement, flashes back to about 20 pages of backstory we weren't actually told at any point in the game and heroically sacrifices herself to save the day credits now. It's almost like this game was made for two different systems before this and scrapped over and over and they just needed to get it the hell out the door before the launch window! Nah, that is silly.

What makes me sad, though... I was doing some research on this and found interviews with a Rare employee basically going "Yeah, she's not an elf, she's a fairy, we tried to sell a game about a fairy to 360 customers, that was stupid because this game didn't have shooting or anything, we should have just scrapped the entire thing." I also found a render for the sequel that looks kinda like Claudia Black doing cosplay. This was canceled. Now Rare makes Kinect Sports.

I feel... kind of bad about that. I don't know how to articulate why exactly, but it feels like it's just... part of the homogenization of the medium of games into GUNS GUNS GUNS BLUE AND ORANGE EXPLOSIONS.

Well. That's another one down. What's next?