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Ring the bells. Paint a green ‘X’ on your door. Rejoice. The war is over. The recent news of Sony and Microsoft working together arrived like a sweet summer breeze late last week, ushering in a new era of calm, fostering peace and understanding, and marching us hand in hand into an enlightened future. Sony and Microsoft working together. What a string of outrageous blissed-out words. Of course, that image was shattered as the next few words floated in: ‘cloud-based solutions for gaming experiences and content-streaming.’ While I’m sure this will come as tremendous news to those persevering with PS Now streaming and looking for a slightly more bearable, looking to continue, I would rather consider the things that won’t happen, because they’re far better than the things that probably will.
The Forza: 1886
I would say that, on average, I think about The Order: 1886 every 2.74 days. This is ludicrous, obviously. It was a perfectly fine game, nothing more. Except that it was everything more: its world was delicious, the detail of its atmosphere was as gloomy and granular as Victorian soot. That it never got a sequel only fuels its mystique. If the only way to get one involved Playground Games applying its expertise to the golden age of horseless carriage racing, then so be it. For one thing, Forza is surely running out of exciting locales, and who would turn down a trip to an alternate past with werewolves and vampires skulking about? It could be the first Forza to include vehicular murder, while concluding the tale of Galahad and his glum chums.
Knack ThReecore
Knack wasn’t good. Miraculously it garnered a sequel, which also wasn’t good. ReCore, which had its own buzz before release, was damply received. Now then, what good is a partnership between two giants if it doesn’t yield improvements to the more moth-eaten corners of their respective libraries? Knack ThReecore could be a chance at hard-won redemption, retooling its respective games into an ungodly mixture of whatever it was you actually *did* in Knack (I vaguely remember some swirling Lego bricks) and whatever Joule, the heroine of ReCore, was up to (that, I’m pretty sure, involved a robot dog). The hope is, with Knack ThReecore, that a cramming of clutter and chaotic mechanics would provide some much-needed jolts of life. (It wouldn’t, of course.) There could also be a subplot about Knack falling in love with the robot dog because the robot dog reminds Knack of when he first watched Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco, and now Knack imagines the robot dog sounding just like Michael J. Fox and who wouldn’t fall for that. Just a thought.
Project Colossus Racing
An odd prospect, you might think, but this one has legs. Huge legs. Legs that tower into the heavens and care not for your petty races. Imagine the racing of Project Gotham, infused with a mechanic which has you avoiding roaming Colossi, as they march across the world’s major cities. What’s more, a co-op mode would support you teaming with chums to take down the beasts, in similar fashion to those levels in the Rogue Squadron games that had you tying up AT-AT legs with tow cables. Project Colossus Racing would be a wistful fusion of elegiac storytelling fuel-injected with joyous racing. It would also serve as a vague metaphor for pollution.
Lyttle Big Son of Rome
It would be a relief to see Marius Titus back in action, after Ryse was given so murky and middling a reception. Sadly, that’s not what we would get with Lyttle Big Son of Rome. Sackboy, the stitched and zippered sprite, was born too late – just after the golden era of funky mascots, like Crash Bandicoot and Banjo, ended and the era of more furious figureheads, like Kratos and Marcus Fenix, began. Lyttle Big Son of Rome would present a curious comeback opportunity: Sackboy would rebrand as a bloodthirsty brute, offering the people of Rome a violent spectacle in the colosseum and offering us a nifty level editor for some welcome platforming interludes to break up the brutality. Sadly Marius Titus doesn’t even get a cameo – he’s been sacked!
Haloy
I wouldn’t like Haloy. I am very fond of Halo, and I thought Horizon Zero Dawn was very good indeed, but for me Haloy would smack of dull design. The trouble is that the worlds of Installation 04, of Reach, and even New Mombasa are too similar to Horizon’s setting. It would be a lazy game. And why would Aloy, so handy with a spear, even need an assault rifle; likewise, the notion that she would partner with an eight-foot Spartan would be preposterous daft. The fusion of robot dinosaurs and covenant forces *and* the Prometheans, from Halo 4 (which I always assumed to be the result of a crossover between Halo and Lego Bionicle) is a laughable idea. Halo might have needed this crossover to refresh its staling formula; Horizon, on the other hand, should have gone without and settled for a straight sequel. Shame on them.
WipEdown
What’s stranger, or more repulsive: that a much-vaunted anti-gravity racing series would be lured out of retirement, or that it would entail incredibly ill-advised on-foot sections? This is the crossover that no one asked for. What would be even more bizarre with WipEdown is that its creators would stick dogmatically to the pun of its title, and actually having you wash the ships. It wouldn’t make any sense, and the purity of WipEout’s racing would be completely f***ed by gang turf wars that would break out mid-race, unable to find a happy fusion like Project Colossus Racing, say. Utter garbage and an insult to fans of both games.
Yakuphead
That Yakuphead would be hailed as an artistic triumph would be the watershed moment for Sony and Microsoft’s partnership. Yakuza is already a cartoon, and Cuphead is already filled with exaggerated violence. The fusion of anime, classic 1930s art, traditional graphics, and the stubborn clashing of jaunty vaudeville tunes with modern Japanese night life wouldn’t make any sense. But then a lot of Yakuza doesn’t, strictly speaking, make what we would call ‘sense,’ and it’s hardly high on Cuphead’s list of priorities (he has a cup for a head). Kiryu would make a return, of sorts, as a sort of dragon mug, and would forge a brotherly bond with the criminally underrated Mugman. Inevitably, it would be hailed for its unexpected emotional core, but shame on those people for not expecting that.
