Backwards compatibility is the most important next-gen feature.
The default tenets on gaming sites is that PC gaming is king, piracy sticks it to the man, free-to-play mobile games have merit, shopping online has any human redeeming value, nobody plays old games, and Gamestop equals bad. I do not subscribe to any of these thoughts.
I think irrationality on Gamestops business model comes from being broke and being young. Not understanding why your 8 year old copy of Madden isn't worth $59.98 or not understanding pre-orders is the forced "would you like fries with that," that any industry deploys in their unique manner. I really like walking into a Gamestop and being able to pick up older games pretty cheap. Their reward points are the only ones I care about in a sea of (much like the fries) every business has deployed.
So as you have more than likely aged and you realize the only way to get Tony Hawk (please do get the concept that using Amazon pre-quarantine is the same mindset of reclusiveness and anti-social behavior present mid-quarantine) in a sane society without walking into a big box story and getting the run around from Martha who is just covering electronics.
Another default opinion is that nobody plays their old games. That somehow old games aren't as good as their contemporary counterparts. I cry foul. There's more to be found in games like Red Faction 2 and my soon to be purchased Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb. There's more nuggets of history in the gameplay and the credits of older games. When games weren't made by committee or through a google doc internationally. Games haven't changed. You still are just turning corners for the next area to open up. You are still just collecting items and trying to navigate hard to discern locations. Nowadays there is inane online multiplayer that is really not worth caring about because you're playing a 5 year old that got his teen brother's hand-me-down ps4.
The problem with every contemporary [human] generation is that they think they are more relevant and complex than the generations that came before. Not true. In February 2003 Colin Powell was making his case for the Iraq War and this game was sitting on the shelves of Gamestop among games like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Mechassault. These are the games that were assuredly smuggled somewhere near the battlelines and were played under more duress than anything. There were no message boards cluttered with hot takes or some celebrity or boutique developers that made a name purely through networking. The games and not the faces were what mattered and 75-90% was good enough. Hell, Jason Statham is in this game. People were grinding to get their work out there. Now games are made on a calendar cycle and pushed out whether they are done or not. I will be getting a Series-S and not a PS5 because much like literature, music, and philosophy the contemporary stuff hasn't paid its dues and backwards compatibility is the most important part of gaming
Red Faction 2 is pretty decent. It really felt like a marriage between doom and goldeneye. It broke out of corridor shooters of the era in a pretty cool way. If i had played this at launch i would have spent hours combing for destructible environments in a similar way that people bust walls in Castlevania. I kind of hunger for licensed games from this era which is the reason I'm playing Indiana Jones and The Emperor's Tomb next. Some of the bosses were health bar nightmares, but not on the scale of Destiny bollocks. If this were a Commando, Predator, or Terminator game it would have been amazing. Played on Xbox One-S.
7.1/10
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