Plus 2K Games removes their game launcher and Tencent's new game looks a bit too much like Horizon
Pocket Casts: You can now rate the show on Pocket Casts, give us a five star review learn more by heading here https://pocketcasts.com/ratings
Apple Arcade: Enjoy unlimited access to over 200 incredibly fun games with no ads and no in-app purchases. From puzzle and adventure games to sports, racing, and multiplayer action games, everyone can count on finding something to love. Head to sifter.com.au/arcade to start your free trial* of Apple Arcade today and you'll be supporting independent video games journalism. *New subscribers only. AU$9.99/month after free trial. Plan automatically renews after trial until cancelled.
You can support SIFTER's independent gaming journalism by
☕ Tipping us on KoFi https://www.ko-fi.com/sifterHQ
👕 Wearing our merch https://sifter.store/
💬 Talking to us on the SIFTER Discord https://www.sifter.com.au/discord
SIFTER is produced by Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Courtney Smith, Adam Christou and Chris Button. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer. Thanks to Audio Technica Australia and Apple for their support of SIFTER.
KYLE: Hi I’m Kyle Pauletto
FIONA: and I’m Fiona Bartholomaeus
KYLE: Welcome to Walkthrough, SIFTER’s weekly recap on the biggest news in video games.
FIONA: This week 2K ditches it’s launcher on PC, is Sony getting back into the handheld game? And Tencent subsidiary studio raises eyebrows over their OBVIOUSLY Horizon Zero Dawn inspired survival game.
Here is the news for Sunday 1st of December. Let’s go!
—
PROMO: Join the SIFTER community on Discord at sifter.com.au/discord
—
FIONA: 2K’s game launcher is now a thing of the past after they pulled it from all their PC games this week.
This means that when you want to play Bioshock or XCOM2 on either Steam or Epic you just hit play and it loads immediately.
In a blog post the company said the change impacted titles slightly differently, for example the change will let you enable mods on the Steam Deck for XCOM 2, however they did say save games shouldn’t be impacted and you won’t lose access to any of your games as long as you bought them on Steam or Epic.
KYLE: Speaking of the Steam Deck, it makes you wonder if this and other handheld PCs were part of the reason, with third party launchers not playing nice with these popular devices.
Publisher launchers have been criticised for many years as it adds a couple more unnecessary steps for the player to get into the game and as an avenue to collect more data from players, so everyone else feel absolutely free to bin your launcher as well.
—
KYLE: The last couple of years has been a bit of a revival for the handheld console and now Sony is supposedly throwing its hat back into the ring.
They do technically already have their PlayStation Portal which is a local streaming based device and they have just opened up a beta to stream from the Cloud, but it’s been a long time since the PlayStation Vita launched in 2012
Bloomberg has reported that they're apparently working on a new handheld that you can take anywhere, and you'll even be able to play your PS5 games on it.
FIONA: That same report said PS Portal was originally supposed to be more like Valve’s Steam Deck and games could be played on it without needing the internet, but for some reason it ended up like the way it is, being a streaming based console.
We’ve heard rumours about a new Sony handheld for a while and with the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck still holding the lead for handhelds and Microsoft’s Phil Spencer confirming Xbox was working on a handheld too, it’s only a matter of time before Sony tried again.
—
FIONA: Tencent’s new game has come under a bit of fire this week for looking a bit too similar to Sony’s Horizon series.
Because it’s pretty blatant.
Tencent’s subsidiary Polaris Quest announced their game Light of Motiram as an open-world multiplayer survival game where nature meets machines, but those animal looking machines look a lot like those in Horizon and Horizon Zero Dawn.
The game also has a tribal character with a bow and arrow, which honestly any game can have, but with the rest of the trailer looking like it does, it’s making people talk.
The only difference seems to be survival elements like resource collecting and base building.
KYLE: The internet is comparing it to the Palworld Pokemon saga where everything looked just a bit too similar, and this game definitely has a similar art style and world setting.
Right now there hasn’t been a comment from either side, and with Nintendo and The Pokemon company trying to sue Pocketpair over Palword, people are wondering if we will see the same here too.
Light of Motiram is planned to be released on PC and mobile next year and will be free-to-play both solo or with nine friends….
But you can buy its prequels Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West on PlayStation and PC now.
—
KYLE: Good news for you Baldur’s Gate 3 pushers, now your mates who say “oh sorry we’re on a different device” have no excuse as the next patch brings in cross-play and cross progression.
The patch also brings in a bunch of new subclasses to mix up your next playthrough, one for each of the main classes in the game.
FIONA: There is also a new photo booth mode which lets you pose the characters and set up perfect in-game photography, with some cute and silly stickers and frames.
The new patch will roll out progressively in early January next year, which just as a reminder is a month away.
Where did the year go?
—
FIONA: That’s it for the big headlines, here are the games coming out this week, stick around to the later half of the week because that’s where the action is.
KYLE: Infinity Nikki is the open world dress up game, a spinoff of the INCREDIBLY popular mobile games coming to mobile and PlayStation on the 5th. If you like cute magical girl adventures with Breath of The Wild style open world gameplay this could be one for you!
FIONA: Marvel Rivals is the free to play third person hero shooter featuring all your spandex wrapped mates, beating the super heroics out of each other. The barrier to entry on this one is pretty low, but I guess we’ll see how much it ACTUALLY costs to play. Find on everything on the 6th
KYLE: And the action role playing Diablo-like Path of Exile 2 launches into early access also on the 6th. Kill baddies from a top down view, click and explode your foes, you know the deal. This is also free to play, and purchases are shared between this and the original Path of Exile which is cool.
—
PROMO: Articles to read, videos to watch and podcasts to listen to on sifter.com.au
—
KYLE: This has been Walkthrough by SIFTER, my name is Kyle Pauletto.
FIONA: And my name is Fiona Bartholomaeus, thank you so much for listening.
KYLE: As we approach the end of the year festivities and we look back at the games that were, make sure you’re locked to Drop Rate our review podcast and Lightmap our interview show. Give them a follow on your favourite podcast player, we’ve got our big game of the year show on Drop Rate, and a few more choice chats including soundtracks of the year on Lightmap. Find us on all your favourite podcast players and YouTube.
FIONA: SIFTER is produced by Kyle Pauletto, myself, Adam Christou, Courtney Smith and Chris Button. The episode is edited by both Senior Producer Mitch Loh and Gianni Di Giovanni who is SIFTER’s Executive Producer and also Walkthrough’s script editor.
KYLE: Thanks to Brian Fairbanks from Salty Dog Sounds for composing the Walkthrough theme tune, and Audio Technica Australia and Apple for their support of SIFTER’s podcasts.
FIONA: We’ll be back with more news next Sunday. See you then.
