Year 3: May Update

I didn't get a whole lot done in May with this being only the seventh post of the month. There was some Star Wars coverage for May 4th and with Star Wars celebration last month a large part of the April update was about that as well. Unfortunately, at the end of April we lost Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew. Of course, being a Wookie in all of the films his face never appeared onscreen in Star Wars so he may not be as recognizable as Carrie, Mark, and Harrison but all big fans of the franchise certainly know who he is. Also, today marks the 42nd anniversary of the first movie that debuted on May 25, 1977.

Peter Mayhew towering over George Lucas, Anthony Daniels, Mark Hamill,
and Kenny Baker at the Royal London Premiere of the Star Wars Special
Edition release in 1997 (Star Wars Insider #34).

I've tried a handful of games over the past month, such as A Plague Tale: Innocence, Days Gone, Rage 2, Rogue Aces, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Team Sonic Racing. Most I only briefly played though I did complete What Remains of Edith Finch which took maybe two hours which is too short for $19.99; fortunately, I received it for free earlier this month for being a subscriber to PlayStation Plus. Perhaps price shouldn't matter when it comes to length but two hours is very short. The story is unique, however, there isn't a lot to do in the game as the style of play is what some would call a walking simulator. I'll probably complete Team Sonic Racing's Team Adventure mode and should record a "Let's Play" video this weekend. At this point I'd say it's a solid kart racer and the new team aspect is a nice addition. There are plenty of tracks and a lot of items to unlock using gold rings collected during races. I do wish it was more than Sonic though as I miss the other Sega characters from Sega and Sumo Digital's previous kart racers.

E3 2019 is right around the corner now and I've not put anything together yet for that. I'll try to do some predictions though I expect this to be a rather tame show in that the current PlayStation/Xbox generation is winding down and Sony isn't even attending. I'm going to be posting Sony ads the Saturday before and after E3 so at least you'll get to see something of Sony that week. Microsoft news will likely dominate as it's a prime opportunity to show off the next Xbox. Some other gaming news since I last wrote includes the announcement of an Earthworm Jim game for the Intellivision Amico and a new handheld system coming next year from Panic, a company that assisted with Santo Campo's Firewatch. It's a tiny, yellow box called Playdate that plays digital games on a black-and-white screen. At $149 I'm not entirely sure of the market for this since smartphones can handle more advanced games so there will have to be some very unique experiences to gain a fair amount of interest.

In toy and game news Hasbro released its first wave of action figures based on Blizzard Entertainment's Overwatch. Back when the game released in 2016 I played for about two weeks and had fun with it but for myself it didn't have lasting appeal. There were plenty of characters then and more have been added since, though there weren't a lot of maps or modes, competitive mode hadn't been added yet, and I was playing with strangers which certainly didn't help. I expect it would be a lot more fun playing with friends where you can work together but also not take it too seriously. Some people were insulting even on day one as I'm sure they played the beta and for some reason expected everyone to be seasoned veterans at launch. My favorite characters when I played were Pharah and Lucio, and I played a fair amount of Reinhardt and Zarya too. In any case, the action figures look nice though at $19.99 each they are expensive and some are only available in $39.99 dual packs.

Thanks for stopping by,

Jonathan