Month: September 2018

Forever alone.

For years now, developers and players have expressed frustration with Sony's consistent decision to not allow PS4 games to play nicely with versions on competing consoles. Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida, however, seems perfectly happy with this state of affairs, saying that the decision is based on what provides the "best user experience" for players.

"On cross-platform, our way of thinking is always that PlayStation is the best place to play," Yoshida said at last week's IFA conference in Germany (as reported by The Independent). "Fortnite, I believe, partnered with PlayStation 4 is the best experience for users. That's our belief."

Of course, where Fortnite is concerned, PS4 players are also blocked from using their Epic-run player accounts on other consoles after those accounts are linked to a PS4. So when Yoshida says he believes Fortnite is best when "partnered with PlayStation 4," that's apparently a belief his company is willing to impose on its customers using rather stringent technical protections.

Enlarge / Dragon Quest XI is a lot of things, but it's always nice to look at. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Even more than other long-running Japanese RPG series like Final Fantasy or Pokémon, Square Enix’s Dragon Quest is married to its own conventions. Even as the series’ visual presentation has evolved to take advantage of newer and more powerful game consoles, the series continues to use sound effects and visual cues and monster designs and gameplay mechanics that hearken back to the series’ earliest entries on the NES more than three decades ago.

For longtime fans, this resistance to change is part of the charm. The problem for the series, though, is that it doesn’t have a ton of fans in countries outside of Japan. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age is aware of that problem, and in some ways it’s a friendly entry point for new players. But the game’s efforts to attract new players doesn’t always mesh well with its efforts to please existing fans. For people with no nostalgic attachment to its well-worn mechanics, it’s hard to explain why it plays so much like a game from the '80s.

There’s a lot to like about Dragon Quest XI, especially if you’re already in love with the franchise. But even as someone inclined to grade the game on a curve, I’ve got to admit that I wish it offered a little more variety, both within its own 70-ish hours quest (of which I’ve played about 50 as of this writing) and compared to other games in the series.

Toyota

The crossover market is so dominant that some automakers will stretch their brand identities to include more crossovers in their lineup. Consider Toyota: for more than a decade, it has been a steady, unassuming, massively successful automaker. Their cars are safe, reliable, and predictable—the default standard for many car buyers. If Toyota cars were music, they'd be played in elevators. You can maybe remove Toyota's trucks from the equation, but boring success will remain Toyota's raison d'être (until they bring back the Supra).

So, it raises eyebrows when Toyota kicks a door in with an aggressive design. Even though the crossover market is crowded and heavily competitive, there's always room for something new and different. When Toyota trotted out the C-HR in North America for 2018, it ticked "different" off the list immediately. Broad, low to the ground, yet trim and sleek from nose to haunches, the C-HR was an obvious departure from the conservative design concepts of the mega-selling RAV4 or Camry.