Keeping Up with the Carapace-ians

I am really, really far behind on this blog, aren't I? First I miss discussing the announcements from Microsoft and Bethesda earlier this month, and now I miss the launch of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge. Well, here's a quick update on that... it's available on pretty much all the major formats, and it's roughly as good as you've heard, full of fan bait for Gen-Xers who remember the 1987 cartoon series, and exciting beat 'em up action reminiscent of the Turtles arcade games from the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

This Shredder-themed shredder came up
while I was searching for images for this post.
Thanks, Amazon...?

It's important to stress that Shredder's Revenge is influenced by those Konami arcade titles, but not a carbon copy of them, with pronounced differences between the available fighters and a more diverse move set. You know how in the arcade games, you'd try to do a specific throw or jump kick, but weren't really sure that's what would happen? That's not a problem here... attacks are performed with deliberate joystick and button combinations, not vague proximity cues, so the move you want is the move you get. You can even counter incoming strikes a'la Double Dragon Advance, but good luck nailing the timing!

So yeah, Shredder's Revenge is worth it. You may not even have to buy it if you've got Game Pass, or pay much for it if you're willing to do some virtual territory hopping on the Switch. (Best hurry, you don't have much more time to get the discount.)

What was the other thing? Oh yes, Microsoft's big bundle of game announcements made earlier in the month. I wasn't paying close attention, but ZDNet was (wait, ZDNet is still a thing?), and they've got a list of highlights from the showcase. You've got Redfall, a squad-based first person shooter with vampires as the villains, you've got High on Life, a snarky futuristic first person shooter with living guns as your weapons, and you've got Starfield, which hopes to raise the watermark previously set by the galaxy-spanning adventure game No Man's Sky. No Man's Sky didn't reach its lofty aspirations at launch, requiring several updates before it reached its full potential, and I suspect that the overreaching Starfield will likewise stumble out of the starting gate when it hits stores in 2023.

I wish I could say I was excited about any of these titles, but that's what we're getting, and I'll just have to get used to it. There's also a more deliberate effort by Microsoft and third parties to leave the Xbox One behind and force adoption of the Xbox Series, and I'm really not down with that. What can I say? I've grown weary of coughing up another three hundred dollars every five years to keep pace with this industry. Cloud-based gaming and its lower cost of entry is starting to sound more and more tempting... or would, if my ponderously slow internet could keep up with that. It's less "damned if you do, damned if you don't" and "damned because I can't do, and can't don't."