Games Inbox: What’s the best video game due out in February?

The Friday letters page has a good idea for the next Horizon Zero Dawn sequel, as one reader has given up on ever tackling their video games backlog.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Busy month
Christmas and the new year is behind us now and while there’s not much out this month I’ve been looking through the release schedules and it does seem as if February is going to be pretty busy. I’m not that familiar with some of these games but by my reckoning the interesting ones are Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined, Nioh 3, Mario Tennis Fever, High On Life 2, Reanimal, and Resident Evil Requiem.

Now, the obvious big one there is Resident Evil, but I can’t help remembering reading that the games don’t actually sell that much, compared to really big games, so I wonder if High On Life 2 will outsell it. Call me a philistine but it’s the one I’m most looking forward to, just because I enjoyed the first one so much and it was so weird and funny. Resident Evil looks okay but kind of a bit too familiar for me, especially with Leon in it.

I think Nintendo has messed up Mario Tennis too many times now, for this new one to be a major hit, and I think the others will probably review well but not sell that much. So I don’t know what will be the best in terms of the highest Metacritic score but I do think High On Life 2 has the best chance of being my favourite.
Radar

Ticking clock
Although it’s fun to think there are GTA 6 rumours out there that are true I’m not sure there’s much point trying to guess which they are, because Rockstar is never in a million years going to say whether anyone was right or not.

With everything that’s going on I have to sadly admit that I do think a delay is looking more and more likely. I’m not going to pretend I know exactly how video games are made but if a year of polish is becoming common for really big games then GTA 6 is going to need at least that, and it already looks as if there’s not time.

Hopefully I’m wrong but I think the next few months are going to be telling. If we don’t hear anything from Rockstar then I think that’ll mean a delay, because it really is about time that they actually said something about what the game is and currently we know almost nothing.
Tacle

Console yourself
Interesting to see how console sales are starting to tank in the US. There’s no very obvious reason, to me anyway, other than high prices but you would’ve thought the Switch 2 would’ve been able to get around that as a special case.

I’m going to assume that luxury purchases of any kind are suddenly looking like not such a good idea over there at the moment, considering everything that’s going on. But if that’s the main reason then it’s a big problem for games companies, because it means things might not change for a long time. Worrying times.
Kouk

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Marketing 101
One key reason that Switch sales have done well, and something that doesn’t get mentioned enough, is that they’re the only company that seems to be marketing their console. Over the last two months especially, I’ve seen adverts selling the Switch 2 everywhere: on TV, at the cinema, or plastered on billboards and buses.

I’ve barely seen anything from PlayStation. Just a generic live action advert which didn’t mention any consoles, any games, or feature any franchise. Just the basic PlayStation brand. As bad as that was, it’s still better than Xbox. I genuinely cannot remember the last time I saw an advert for their brand. It’s amazing that Microsoft can spend billions every year, and barely anything on marketing. Surely that’s a basic tenet of any business. To let people know your product exists.
Motiman

No secrets
I bet that secret game for the Developer Direct does turn out to be something new from Obsidian, and it’s some weird indie game that everyone’s going to be massively disappointed by.

I think keeping it a secret is going to prove a mistake, because people are going to hype themselves up that it’s something good and then be horribly disappointed. I realise Microsoft didn’t announce that there’s a secret, but it leaked and absolutely everything always leaks for Microsoft, so they really should’ve assumed that from the start.
Gort

Broader Horizons
I’ve seen a few people wonder whether the next Horizon game is going to be a launch game for the PlayStation 6 and I’d have to say that does look pretty likely to me. It’s not been announced yet, which presumably means it’s at least a year or two away, and I would say that means it’s going to be cross-gen at the very least.

I’m interested to know what new direction they might take though because there was a big effort to push Horizon as the big PlayStation franchise, but that seems to have fallen off lately, after that Lego game flopped and no one played the PlayStation VR2 one.

I hadn’t thought about the series in a long time, which is what made me write this email, and I do feel that pop culture tends to forget things a lot quicker nowadays than it used to be. I would say that Horizon Forbidden West was generally well received but I also think it’s fair to say it didn’t really rock anyone’s idea of what the games are all about.

A lot has been written about how the plot and characters are all kind of boring, even thought the setting is cool, but I’m not sure how easy it is to fix that, beyond getting a different writer.

What I would do though is push for a new gameplay angle and let you control the robot animals. Making it so you can be the robots or giving you a cockpit to climb into would be great, I think. Have some real Mechagodzilla action in there. Just a thought but I think whatever they do it needs to be something major like that, not just better combat or more weapons.
Bojangles

Retirement plan
I can definitely understand where the Reader’s Feature about backlogs is coming from. I didn’t buy any new games last year, that were released last year, and I’m still close to a 100 behind where I want to be.

It’s such a stupid number, that only gets bigger over time, that I’ve pretty much resigned to never getting through it and just finishing it off when I retire or something. I hope by that point we can control games with our mind because I don’t know what the state of my hands is going to be by that point.
Kamen

Strange decisions
Very much agree with the Reader’s Feature about Nintendo and the Switch 2. I know Nintendo are unpredictable, but I find their whole approach to the console and its games to be weird and poorly thought out.

It’s not a disaster, especially when it comes to sales, but it seems sloppy and slapdash, even though they had years to get ready. What makes that really weird is that the Switch 1 was the opposite, and yet that was rushed out in a hurry… but it and its line-up turned out to be 10 times better.

Maybe they were hurrying to get things out before GTA 6, which was originally going to be out at Christmas, but that wouldn’t have been an issue five years ago, when they first started planning all this out. It also doesn’t excuse the weird choices in terms of what games they’ve released or explain why they haven’t announced anything major for this year yet.

There’s almost no decision they’ve made that doesn’t seem a bad idea. Like, why is Animal Crossing getting a Switch 2 Edition this month? Why wasn’t a new game a priority? I would’ve bet good money that it was, given how long it’s been since the last one. And why do we know absolutely nothing about a new 3D Mario, even though the last one was over eight years ago?

Everyone seems convinced that there’s going to be a Nintendo Direct next month, and there probably will be one, but I agree with the other reader, that they’ll somehow manage to make it as boring and predictable as possible. Remember, this is the company that gave Kirby Air Riders not one but two Directs, all to itself.
Cubby

Inbox also-rans
On the one hand I respect dbrands for their punk rock attitude. On the other hand… guys, you make console skins. Like GC said, isn’t there a better outlet for your anger than that?
Mesy

On gaming gifts, I got a Lego Game Boy for Christmas. Took its place besides its little brother now.
big boy bent

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