Fear not, dear reader, for I have returned to guide you unto the shining light of excellence that is ME! Thou shall bask in my brilliance and my all-round awewsomeness at doing the video games. Seriously, though, welcome back guys and gals. It’s time for more random chatter. This week I’m talking about sushi, rising game prices and probably more sushi.

Y’know what I really miss right now? Apart from the obvious stuff like…uh, people, I suppose. But what I really, really miss? Sushi. Specifically, I’d willingly sell my various family members for some Salmon Nigiri right now. The way the salmon and the rice gently melts in your mouth, the beautiful flavour that is unleashed and the slight chew of the rice. Getting some sushi was one of my favourite treats, and for some daft reason it’s the thing I miss the most right now. The nearest place to get some fish and riced based goodness is 20-miles and it doesn’t open until the evening, so I’m trying to find some way to justify driving in.

Anyway, I put up a review for F1 2020 and called it the biggest and best F1 package Codemaster’s has made so far. There were a couple of little issues and the booting back to the Xbox dashboard needs fixed in a hurry, but overall it was excellent.

The other review I’m working on is for the most controversial game of the year so far, Somewhat ironically one of my biggest issues with The Last of Us 2 is its clumsy narrative structure, and one of the hardest things about writing my review is I can’t get the structure right. There’s so much to talk about and so much of it ties into various other elements of the game that I’m struggling to tie it all together into something that seems coherent.

I suppose in a lot of ways that’s the biggest compliment I can give to The Last of Us 2 – there’s a lot to discuss. Whether you love it or hate it, there’s so much to talk about. Most games don’t have that. Outside of their gameplay and maybe a few story beats they typically don’t have much that warrants in-depth conversation. Within videogames as a whole we have so few examples of games that can be picked apart and debated and examined compared to movies and books, so in that sense I view The Last of Us 2 as a good thing. I’m glad it exists. I’m glad that Naughty Dog did try to do something ballsy that they knew would divide people, even if they are now acting angry and offended that the thing they said would anger some people is angering some people. Imagine that?

In terms of upcoming stuff, I’m not sure of all my plans yet. I’m definately going to be reviewing the GT Omega Apex wheel stand and a new keyboard from HyperX. I’m also trying to figure out whether to review Ghosts of Tsushima or Paper Mario: The Origami King because I can’t afford to do both and neither Sony nor Nintendo speak to me. Not that I blame them – I’m a bit of dick. I’m leaning toward Ghosts of Tsushima, partially because the name reminds me of sushi but also because at the moment it’s just catching my attention more.

In some fun random news we got the first look at what PS5 game boxes will look at and they appear to be…well, box shaped. But with a white rectangle on the top! HOLY CRAP! Get excited people, we have truly arrived at the future of gaming.

On a more serious topic we also got our first firm evidence of next-gen game prices being higher than what we currently pay. The new FIFA title will cost £64.99 for the next-gen versions. In fairness, a price-hike has been a long time coming as the asking price has stayed almost static over the years. I don’t have a problem with the increase. Where I do have a problem is increasingly desperate attempts to monetize games that you’ve already paid full price for. FIFA is one of the worst for this. If you publish a good game I’ll happily pay £64.99 for it, but I don’t want to then be bombared with microtransactions and other crap. If you want to do that your game needs to be free or sold at a much lower price.

Thankfully there are calls here in the UK for lootboxes as classed gambling, so I’m very interested to see where that will lead. I’m not wholly against the concept of loot boxes or similiar mechanics, but I do think they are indeed gambling and should be treated as such.

It’s also worth noting that this increased price-tag might only apply to the really big titles, much the same way the £60 typically only applies to the likes of Call of Duty or the latest FIFA, whereas other titles like The Last of Us 2 get put out at £54.99.

Here’s one piece of news that is just plain awesome; Superhot: Mind Control Delete is going to be free for anyone who bought the original Superhot. According to the developers, Mind Control Delete started life as an expansion to Superhot but has since become a full-fledged game in its own right that has around 12-15 hours of content. Sadly this new game isn’t in VR, which is a shame because Superhot in VR is absurdly amazing, but even in regular ol’ flat-vision Superhot is excellent.

Now, the key is that you need to have actually bought Superhot to get Mind Control Delete for free. In other words, if you get Superhot through a Twitch subscription or a Xbox Gold giveaway you won’t get Mind Control Delete for free when it comes out on July 16th. If you did pay for the original game then Mind Control Delete will automatically be added to your game library. You can check out the official FAQ here.

According to the developers this whole idea means that roughly 2-million copies of Mind Control Delete will be given out for free. They said,

“We’re incredibly lucky and privileged thanks to you. The support of you and all of those customers like you allows us to keep the studio independent. You let us run it however we please, without care about bottom lines and profit margins. You let us do weird things – invest in crazy experiments that will never see the light of day, build things that are trying to help other video game studios, even directly fund and support beautiful tiny indie devs in SUPERHOT PRESENTS.

You’re allowing us to continue to do weird and wonderful things with our lives. It only seems fair that we try to return the favor. As a tiny token of our gratitude, we hope that coordinating this massive, complicated giveaway scheme helps bring a bit more joy into your life.”

That’s some amazing generosity, and I hope that the new game finds success in the paying market, too. They deserve it.

And a final piece of exciting news is that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is getting a remaster which will be released in September, with a brand new chunk of DLC called Fatesworn arriving in 2021. First, I bloody love Kingdoms of Amalur, so I’m uber-excited to get my hands on this remaster. But I admit to being a tad baffled as to why it was chosen to get remastered. Has anyone been asking for this? And it’s especially strange that it’s getting a new slab of DLC as well so long after the game originally came out. So yeah, but of a strange announcement but still a very welcome one, at least for me. If this does well enough maybe a sequel could happen.

Anyway, that’ll do it for this week, fine fellow folks. If you fancy supporting my gibberish even a little bit consider tossing a few coins into the pot using the donation button below. Whether you do or don’t, a big thanks for stopping by!