Wish List 2023

 

            Hello hello. It’s that time, my wish list of sadness that will never come to be. I normally go through games I’ve mentioned wanting and what the “status” of said games are but there’s too many now so I’m just going to remind you of some of my favorites. A new Armored Core did come out so that was exciting. I’m not a big fan of all the boss fights though. Most of the time it’s just, “shoot the thing with everything you got and try not to die.” Like, there’s not much strategy beyond that. A Marathon game, reboot, something, was announced but it looks like another battle royale which is disappointing. Visually and conceptually it looks cool as hell, I’m very interested in this world and the story behind it but if it’s going to be PvP only then my interest is lost. I still think my Monster Hunter fighting game is a great idea. I’m not going to harp on Waifu Division again, although I want to. It’s just the more I play Blue Archive the more cool things and abilities I see that I’m like “man this would be real cool in a third person shooter” but there’s a few games coming out soonish (I hope) that hopefully can scratch this itch. Girls Frontline 2, Zenless Zone Zero, Project Mugen. With rumors of a Switch 2 there must finally be a new Smash Bros. and Mario Kart coming. I still really like my Nintendo VS Sega Smash game and with Mario Kart Tour ending I can only hope that means a true, new Mario Kart soon. With all that out of the way, on to my new wishes.

I’ve made several posts in the past about Blizzard making WarCraft 4 or StarWarCraft and now that Chris Metzen is going back as creative director of WarCraft, maybe something might actually happen. (I can’t believe this post is one of the first ones I did.)  I’ve lost all faith in Blizzard but maybe there’s hope. Apparently Chris Metzen is kind of a big deal. In a video Asmongold made he was showing all sorts of art that Mr. Metzen did for WC and I instantly recognized it, most of it was from the WC2 game manual, remember those? So maybe there’s hope. Maybe we could get a new RTS from Blizzard. I think Overwatch is shit. I think Diablo is shit. In a poll from someone I sometimes watch on YouTube, he asked what people thought could get a revival if Xbox makes ActiBlizz do something and most of the votes were for StarCraft. Frost Giant, a group made up of mostly ex-Blizzard and StarCraft employees are making a game called Stormgate which is basically StarCraft. I’m so disappointed in that game. They had a chance to do something different but they’re making a SC clone. They even have the marine dance from SC2. And they just have to put in space demons, can’t seem to get that out of their system. So, a newish StarCraft is coming so instead of making SC3, I’m hoping for a new WarCraft. StarCraft got it’s sequel, Diablo has had TWO, it’s time for WarCraft 4. And like I’ve said before, because people will be like “WoW is still going on,” at the start of the game say “Set XXXXX years after the events of World of WarCraft” and go nuts. Put enough years in that we get new main characters. It’s like in the newer Star Wars movies, you have this giant ass universe yet you’re still centering around Luke, Leia and Han, why? Get past Illidan, Thrall, Jaina and make new heroes.

Or get really weird and go for the StarWarCraft where you have WarCraft in the StarCraft universe. Be creative, please! Share holders be damned! Use a smidge of the creativity you used in Heroes of the Storm. I just want space magic and more space Uthers. In my post of StarWarCraft I had five races. The Terran-like Kalimdor Alliance of Tauren and Night Elf, the Protoss-like Light Forged (for lack of a better name) of Draenei and Blood/High Elves, The Mech-anics of Dwarfs and Gnomes, the ravenous Chaos Orcs of the Laughing Skull, Bone Chewer and Bleeding Hollow clans, and the Old God corrupted Humans. There’s so much potential with all the new races that have been added to WoW that more races could show up in expansions. Like Dawn of War levels of expansions, like 14 expansions. I think Zandalari Trolls would be cool too, it’d be fun to see Aztec like temples floating in space as ships and used as base buildings. Since the Burning Legion has always been out conquering worlds they could be a race later on.

For either WarCraft 4 or StarWarCraft I’d like to see skins for the races. I've bought skins for HotS, I occasionally buy skins for Apex, I think they can be fun and I'm okay spending some money on them. I know in SC2 one or two units per race had different skins for instance; Protoss Colossus had a Purifier skin so just do that for the whole race, units and buildings alike. Give the Night Elves a Warden skin so all the units have a Warden look and the buildings have Warden symbols and motifs. Tyrande and Lunara in HotS have Warden skins and they’re sick as hell. Give the Orcs a Pandaren skin. All the Orc units have a Pandaren equivalent and the buildings be the Pandaren buildings. In StarWarCraft is where things could get real crazy. Take from some of the skin backstories and make race skins based on those. Nexomania, MechaStorm, Toys, Pirates, what have you! Go Crazy. Please. God damn, why do I not have fuck-you money? Gah I want this to be real so badly!!! Chris!!! Heed my call!!!!!

I’ve been in a very Power Rangers mood this year. Last year or so I started watching Dino Fury in the mornings with my dog and it’s not bad. The villains are silly and the banter isn’t terrible. There’s one part where this ship based monster is all “I’ll make you(ye?) walk the plank!” and the Red Ranger, who is an alien, is like “I don’t even know what that means!” It’s funny, cause he’s an alien, I like it. So I started watching Mighty Morphin and was planning on going through the rest of the series’ and/or watching the Japanese versions after each series but god damn, there is just SO much of Mighty Morphin I don’t know if I can go through it again so soon. But I got Battle for the Grid this year and it’s pretty neat. I haven’t played it a ton but it is super cool and I love all these Rangers I’ve never seen. There were some characters I was very confused about but I got the Shattered Gird comic and then it made sense, or the comic before it maybe, I don’t know the comics didn’t quite live up to my expectations. Like Ranger Slayer, I wanted to see her you know, slay Rangers but you just don’t, it just doesn’t happen, never see it, anyways, I wish there was some of the Dino Fury group represented in the game or even have their own game. It’s wild to me that they don’t, like everything used to get a game, it didn’t matter what the brand was it would get something and Dino Fury just doesn’t. I remember, way back when, playing Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on the Sega Game Gear, yes, the Game Gear and I liked it, it was alright. I don’t think you fought more than one enemy at a time but it was neat. Fight some putties, fight a monster, monster gets big, fight it with a robot, it was good. I think they could easily make a game like that or even use the Marvel Ultimate Alliance formula. I’d prefer something like TMNT Shredder’s Revenge but any beat ‘em up really would be just fine. Another option would be a Battle for the Gird like fighter but it be more about the Zords/Mega Zords and various monsters. My favorite part of the MMPR game was fighting as the Mega Zord or Dino Zord and I’m sure there’s a lot of cool Zords that just don’t get much love that could shine in a Zord focused game.

 In Battle for the Grid there’s some DLC of Ryu and Chun-Li (they are just whored into everything aren’t they?) of Street Fighter as Power Rangers and it’s pretty cool. I saw some mod that brought Ryu’s Ranger costume to Street Fighter 6 and I was like “that’s one way to get me to buy your game.” Spider-Man 2 has some special deluxe version that has a Power Rangers-esque suit for Miles, I believe, and guess who paid extra for that? This guy. Then that gave me the idea for Street Fighter vs Power Rangers or Capcom vs Power Rangers or anything vs Power Rangers really. Clearly I WILL buy it but I just thought SF vs PR would be cool if they did kind of the same thing, costume wise, as SF x Tekken where they gave each group the opposite games kind of take on the character. So Cammy had a King type outfit and Asuka had a ninja outfit like Ibuki. So the Street Fighter characters would get a Power Ranger makeover and vice-versa. Juri’s helmet could have cat like ears for her hair, cones? I imagine M. Bison having some kind of Lord Zedd look. Then the Power Rangers just look like, you know, normal I guess? I dunno, I’m more here for Street Fighter getting Power Ranger looks. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are getting a lot of love right now with Shredders Revenge coming out last year along with costumes in Street Fighter and some skateboard game as well as a whole game based on Last Ronin. Let’s spread a little of that love over to Power Rangers. Please. (Apparently there’s a mobile game called Power Rangers Legacy Wars that seems to be what Battle for the Grid was based on and it’s still being updated. Dino and Cosmic Fury are represented which is cool and apparently this is where Ryu’s suit comes from. The Green Ranger suit in that video looks sick and who is this dude at timestamp? I thought it was Lord Drakkon but I don’t know, he’s very armored. It seems like the ground work for Street Fighter x Power Rangers is already laid out to me.) Also they plan to reboot Power Rangers? Why would you do that? Sounds like a shit idea. Talk about running out of ideas, now they’ve got 30 years worth of material they can rehash.

So now I’m off to Ubisoft Land where they like to crush my hopes and dreams. In the same vein as Waifu Division, I’m gonna take some series and smash it with a different series. So, my first offer to you is a Predator game but similar to the RPG Assassin’s Creed games. You start off as a new Predator or Yautja, as they’re called, and you’re dropped off on like a training planet to test yourself. So you go through this planet and you get better armor or whatever and every now and then you’ll fight another Yautja. In Predators (third movie) one of the characters says something like “they have a hierarchy, the big ones hunt the little ones” so something like that. Sometimes you’ll come up on them because you’re supposed to and sometimes they’ll just show up like rouge agents in Division 2 or Taskmaster in Spider-Man and if you defeat them then you get some new ability or gear. I’d like it to be more like the Taskmaster fight in that if you don’t win the Yautja just takes off and it’s not like you have to spawn again and have the same fight/encounter like what happens in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for example. I’d like it if in the second zone there’s a cutscene when you enter and there’s a red laser pointing at you and you just get blasted and hear laughter in the distance so as you go through this area every now and then a laser shows up and if you don’t dodge or find cover you get wrecked. Maybe each zone could have a special mob to find and defeating that gives you a certain new ability. I’d like it if you didn’t have to 100% each zone before moving on to the next but I’d also like to see a percentage somewhere letting you know where you stand. I hate in Origins and Odyssey when I’m looking at the map and it’s like “did I do everything here? Don’t know, let me try to look for allll the checkmarks, I don’t know, looks good to me.” I’d like it to be kind of Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom where there are these things you should do but if you want you can get to the end without fighting other Yautjas. Maybe the final fight would be different like all the Yautjas you could’ve fought are there watching your final test or something. Or like in 40k Mechanicus, they have bosses you can fight as you play the game but if you don’t they show up in the final mission so you have to fight them all at once.

I’ve mentioned before the next Future Solider game should take inspiration from Ghost in the Shell but today I just want a full (I’m just going to call it Shell, seems better than GitS) Shell game. I’ve been watching bits and pieces of Shell again (there’s so much of it my god) and I think there’s a lot of good elements that could be used in a game. I naturally vote for it to be a third person action game. I’d like the combat to be a little fast paced even with cloaking. Pretty much any game if you cloak and move too fast you break it but in Shell they don’t. They straight up sprint and the Tachikoma’s drive cloaked so I think a faster pace would be fine. From watching the show I’d like it if the game didn’t rely on guns too too much. I’d like it to be more like, well, Ninja Gaiden in a way. I wouldn’t mind if there were some enemies that had guns that you could just point and shoot at to take them down but the majority of the combat would be hand to hand. I’d like to see some combos with dodging, a little quick hacking to disorientate enemies or lock up their weapons for a second along with some flashy finishing moves. I think Mirror’s Edge Catalyst had a move later on to stun enemies and I feel like Remember Me had some of these things too but it’s been such a long time since I’ve played that I can’t remember. I’d also like some missions driving/swinging from buildings with a Tachikoma. Just Ghost in the Shell but a game. You’ve got some scary mystery that needs to be solved, you got your espionage, you’ve got your sleuthing bits, you’ve got your trading blows with cyborgs, all that good stuff. Some Cyberpunk 2077 hacking/detective work but with Mirror’s Edge/Remember Me combat. What makes the anime so intriguing is you never know what’s real. You never know if what you’re seeing is reality or if it’s a hack and what’s scary is it seems to be the direction the world is heading. The more I see on the news day after day just screams “Sustainable War.”

Next is something I’ve probably mentioned here and there but some more Rainbow Six games. I know I’ve said this: There’s just so many characters in Siege that you can really open up the game to different genres to let more of them shine. I think an Xcom/Fire Emblem type game could work well. In John Wick 4 there’s a scene where John is in a building and it’s shot top down and he has some kind of gun that shoots fire and it’s pretty cool and I think a Rainbow Six game like that would be fun. Then there’s always you know, make Patriots or something similar to Vegas.

Okay, some new things. I’d like some more Splatoon things. Anything really. I love Splatoon a lot and I wish I had more time to play it but I don’t always want to play multiplayer. Yes there’s a single player bit which is fine but it’s basically just a bunch of challenge rooms and Salmon Run but being in a group of randoms isn’t always great. It would be nice to have some other types of games set in the Splatoon world. I can see it as an Xcom type, I can see it as a side scrolling beat ‘em up, I can even see it as a Monster Hunter-like game, I would just like to see it more. Maybe it’d be better if I had a couple more people to play with but I don’t so, more please.

I think a Panty & Stocking beat ‘em up like River City Girls 2 would be good too. While playing RCG I kept hearing lines from P&S in my head. There’s one episode where they’re fighting a bunch of zombies or something and they’re just beating on one saying things like “fuck, son-of-a-bitch, motherfucker, fatherfucker.” It’s just funny and I thought a P&S game like RCG would be a good fit. Since most things do have a game I went looking and it appears Panty & Stocking do have a game but I could not find anything about it, no gameplay, no videos, nothing on eBay so I don’t know, but with a sequel to the anime coming maybe we’ll see some sort of a game.

Another thing I’ve mentioned before is how you could take Aliens: Fire Team Alpha and apply it to pretty much any survival/horror kind of franchise and make a game out of it, be it Jurassic Park/World, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars. Well they are kind of making a dwarf game for Lord of the Rings about taking back Moria but ehhhhh. From what I’ve seen the gameplay is very slow. For co-op games I feel you need to be moving, you need to have a clear objective and it has to have a steady pace. Exoprimal does a good job of this, even Fire Team Alpha understood this, there isn’t much down time, it’s “go to this spot, defend it, go to this spot, defend it, get the thing, okay try to escape.” I’d just like to see combat be more prevalent in the dwarf game. Maybe something more like Vermintide although I’ve not actually played that, just what I’ve seen. I was also thinking that Star Wars could do something similar after watching the third season of Mandalorian. The Mandalorians have a big fight with stormtroopers and fight with some weird ape people like, yeah, there’s some stuff here to make a cool co-op like Fire Team Alpha.

One game series I’ve always liked is Crackdown. It’s just my kind of game. Go into the city, ou shiny agility orb, more orbs, fight some people, orbs, level up. I enjoy it. It’s too bad Crackdown 3 co-op isn’t stable. While playing Wildlands off and on it’s like “this is Crackdown just grounded” and Crackdown could do some crazy stuff with their vehicles that Ghost Recon just can’t or shouldn’t. Having a car that turns into a plane, or a car that turns into a boat when you get into water. There was teases of a sequel in 3 with one of the overvoices saying “it almost makes you believe the other rumors of them building a station, in space!” So I’d take a new Crackdown and a co-op that actually works.

            I’ve talked about Dragon Commander before and now that Layrien has made a boat load of money from Baulder’s Gate 3 maybe they can revisit Dragon Commander for me. Dragon Commander was a hodge-podge of things that weren’t great. When I first heard of the game in a tiny paragraph of PC Gamer I was excited. It sounded like Jedi Starfighter but you were a dragon, with a jet pack but that wasn’t quite what it was. I would like them to make a sequel where being a jet pack dragon is the main focus. They can have their RTS type element, just don’t make me be in charge of it. Do like Hyrule Warriors or something and have the armies auto fight and I can go aide groups as my jet pack dragon self. You can keep the political system thing but just put the focus on being a DRAGON commander, you know?

            Alright so what do you think? Anything you want to add? What are some things you want to see? I think more than anything I want Street Fighter X Power Rangers and StarWarCraft/WarCraft 4. (StarWarCraft would be better, just saying.) Let me know what you think in the comments and I’ll be back soon I’m sure. Bye-bye!

              @AztecSauce