Good Morning Folks. Happy Day After Silksong launched, if you celebrate it. So for those who were confused as to why pretty much every digital storefront died around 9 am CDT… Silksong the sequel to Hollow Knight was released and it was exceptionally anticipated by many. I enjoyed what I played of the first game and as such I had planned on picking up this release if for no reason to support its particular brand of indie development. Also they could have charged way the hell more for the game but are instead charging $20 for the game… $32 if you want to be fancy and also get the soundtrack. Essentially all digital storefronts cratered as the game released. I intermittently tried to complete my purchase and did not succeed until 12:30… and even then it errored out a few times before it finally went through. While I did not see it with my own eyes, I heard from friends that the Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation stores all were struggling as well under the weight of users. Why they did not have this up for pre-order ahead of time… is beyond me.
I think it is safe to assume that they sold several million copies when you factor in all of the platforms it is available on. We have zero data from Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, or GOG… but at least on Steam it held the top seller slot for most of yesterday. This is pretty freaking impressive for a $20 title, because the Steam sales charts are based on dollar amount of sales not volume of purchases which is why the Steam Deck is habitually listed near the top, and this morning Borderlands 4 reclaimed that spot with its $70 base version and $120 super deluxe version. Additionally it hit a peak concurrency of over a half million players. There are a couple of dozen folks on my Steams friends list who have purchased the game and quite a few spent most of yesterday playing it. Basically this is an instant hit, and will probably be the game of the year for many people.
I played a tiny bit yesterday just because I could, but I did not make it terribly far. I failed the first boss I encountered and will have to dedicate some time to get used to the diagonal slash instead of the down slash. I have to admit, this is not my favorite style of Metroidvania. I greatly prefer the games that are way more about exploration and gear acquisition, than the ones that are purely about mechanical aptitude. This is why I greatly preferred Bloodstained to Hollow Knight, but most of my friends are the exact opposite. My old man reflexes struggle anymore with some of the movement in these games. I love the artwork and the vibes though, so at some point I want to finish Hollow Knight and then play my way through Silksong. I think both are exceptionally cool, but also are not necessarily the thing I was dying to play like so many were. I did however want to join the zeitgeist at least partially, so threw them my $20. I also thought it was an interesting cultural moment because I cannot remember a time when a single game brought multiple storefronts to their knees.
I spent most of last night playing Path of Exile II, but I have also been noodling around with a mobile game. I am not sure when Destiny Rising officially launched, but I was briefly an alpha tester for it some time ago. Playing it on the phone was perfect cromulet, but also not really my jam. With the full release of the game comes a lightweight emulator option that offers some pretty good mouse and keyboard PC performance, as well as the option to play it with a controller if that is more of your jam. If you have not been around this blog for very long… you would potentially not know just how much of these pages I devoted to both Destiny and Destiny 2 until Bungie pissed me off with all of their content vaulting. When I saw that some of the more diehard Destiny streamers were picking up this game, I had to give it another shot, and honestly I am pretty surprised by just how good it plays.
There are significant differences in the way that this game works. Namely from a story perspective this is essentially an alternate universe version of the tried and true tale of the Traveler. More importantly however this is a hero shooter, and that means instead of playing a character that you create for yourself.. you are playing the character of wolf, a newly resurrected character where you can choose the gender and appearance for similar to many other Gacha main characters. The key difference here however is that this is a fully fleshed out character and seems exceptionally well rounded and not something you will immediately toss aside the first time you succumb to the lure of chasing a 5 star banner. Every character has a loadout with a specific set of super abilities, and a weapon pairing. This means that there are going to be characters that you might like the weapons for but hate the super and vice versa. The combo of hunter double jump, auto rifle, grenade launcher, and this big damned anime robot sword slash attack seem like a solid combo for a base character.
Because it is a mobile gacha game there are of course reward tracks and banners, but I have not made it far enough into the game to unlock the latter. In fact it has not really asked me for any money so far. I’ve essentially only been through the first few missions, but it seems like there is a challenge track that will unlock one of two premium characters. There is a training room that lets you test all of the characters and I am pretty much going to choose Xuan Wei because he is essentially what we would refer to as a Striker Titan. It is heavily Chinese influenced as are pretty much all Gacha games, and it also has chase Waifu characters that everyone seems to want. There is a Hot Goth girl with a Scythe attack that everyone seems to be talking about chasing in the online discourse.
What is impressive however is just how good the performance is for what is essentially an emulated android game. It feels like Destiny. They have nailed the gunplay and you can also pet the cats, which is the most important bit. Actually the whole cat thing seems to be a mini game in that each one you encounter wants some sort of food. I have no clue what you get for collecting the food and correctly delivering them to the right cats, but I am sure I will evetually do this thing. If you loved Destiny at any point and faded away from the mainline game for various reasons, I highly suggest you check out this particular brand of nonsense. It is pretty solid. I need to get used to the phone client though so I can add this to my late night daily chores gaming while waiting on falling to sleep. Right now I play a minimal amount of Pokemon, and AFK Journey… and could at least pick up the daily login rewards for this game if I did not play any of it on the computer.
Anyways. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will see you again on Sunday when I post the new AggroChat show.