Reviving Classic Games and Introducing New Ones: Paradox Interactive's Latest Ventures and 'The Finals' First Impression
From Cities Skylines II to the Sims revival and 'The Finals' competitive shooter, discover Paradox Interactive's latest releases and the first impressions of gamers and critics.
Paradox Interactive: Reviving Classic Games and Creating New Ones
Today we get to talk about Paradox Interactive. For those who don’t know, Paradox interactive has been kind of “the peoples champion” the past few years. They decide to keep genres of game alive that seemingly no one else wants. They’ve been famous for holding up the 4X (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) banner for a long time with many series like Stellaris, and Crusader Kings. After the tragic and maligned launch of SimCity 2013 ,marking EA’s filicide of it’s child studio Maxis, Paradox arrived as the savior of the city building genre with Cities Skylines. It contained many of the improvements the genre had received over the last couple of years while stripping out the horrible money grubbing fat that EA had shoved into the game. Cities Skylines continued to be massively successful, and well regarded even up to today. So I am very excited to be seeing them show up in the news with two big announcements.
The first is a successor to the genre saving Cities Skylines. Creatively named Cities Skylines II. The trailer for the game that came out is entirely cinematic. This new game has some big shoes to fill, and I hope that they do a good job fleshing out this game, and allowing for more in depth city customization. I also hope that they figure out a way from the genre’s stereotypical idealization of mega cities, and allow for more flexibility in terms of city progression.
The second announcement is that they plan to revive another Maxis classic game. The Sims. Paradox released a gameplay trailer for a game called “Life By You” which looks like it aims to defibrillate the life simulator classic. The most recent sims game came out to mixed reviews at launch, but has a sizeable and steady community that has been playing it since it came out. The game has also been adorned with many additional updates and support by EA. It just recently went free to play. However in my opinion this franchise is due for an upset since EA seems to have grown tired of offering anything new and interesting in the franchise. They seem more than content to drain the pockets of the “mostly female” audience of the sims. So I hope that they get the support that they desperately deserve. Unfortunately from the trailer the game looks to be in rough shape right now. It appears to stutter often, and is missing more than a few coats of polish. Only time will tell if these get ironed out, or if the final game makes up for its lack of polish. Check it out for yourself.
Discovering 'The Finals': A Surprisingly Fun Competitive First Person Shooter
So another day has blessed us with it’s presence, so too has another game popped up out of the woodwork that has caught my attention. That game is “The Finals”. I saw a trailer for this some time ago, I can’t remember when. I remember thinking to myself. Wow another competitive first person shooter, I could not be less interested in this. Flicking off the advert, and forgetting about it entirely. That is until today. Skill Up a very great youtuber put out a video today of his impressions of some pre-release gameplay of “The Finals” and it looks. Surprisingly fun. Just when I thought I could completely pull gaming off of my laptop, (yes I did mean to say laptop) and convert fully to the cult of Gaben on steam deck this game shows up and asks me to pull out my competitive gaming rig with some friends. From Skill Up’s video this game looks like a blast, and I definitely will be signing up for future playtest. Maybe this publication will help me get some priority when signing up. Probably not. Provided below is the link to the steam page, where you can sign up for the closed playtests. So is the Skill Up video.
Sea of Thieves Season Update: A Closer Look at the New Ports, Quests, and Improvements
Here I was thinking that I’d be out of things to talk about today, when a trailer for the new Sea of Thieves season came out. Sea of Thieves definitely had its time in the limelight a year or so ago. It struggled to maintain a consistent playerbase due to their slow updates, lack of change in-between updates, and only allowing you to spend money on cosmetics. This season looks to be no different, except for a few things. They seem to have changed the look of many of the ports at this point to be much more interesting. They have also added a ton of quality of life improvements to the game. Including easy dropping of loot after hooking it. Also they seem to have added a ton of new quests to do for all types. When I first played Sea of Thieves I grinded hard. I solo’d my way to max rank while listening to lectures during the pandemic. To me, just existing in the game world is so much fun. So I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the updates waiting for a reason to come back to the game. Though they seem to still not be offering much in terms of gameplay changes. I think at this point enough has changed for me to want to go back and take a look. Check out the trailer here.