There is a lot coming in the near future that I’m excited for. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is out in a matter of days, with LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga following soon after. Then there’s the new Test Drive Unlimited that I’ve already covered in one of these articles, and plenty more besides. With this volume of What I’m Waiting For, I’ll be crossing three off the list and adding two new ones to it.
Now, I had said I was hoping for the next-gen version of GTA V to be something other than a simple port or remaster, but that is all that this is. The 60FPS and slight graphical overhaul is welcome, but it feels… not needed. Maybe in time we will see if anything interesting gets added to it that the older consoles wouldn’t have been able to run smoothly, but as it stands, it was indeed a foolish hope I’d held onto.
In the last What I’m Waiting For, I had used it to propose two concepts for racing games. One for Microsoft and one for Nintendo. The Microsoft one was an on-foot racer, using the style of Crackdown as a base for such a game. The Nintendo one was all about being creative, allowing players to create their own racetrack worlds for Miis to kart race around. Both of these will get further coverage in a concept article during Racing Month.
Of course, it wouldn’t have been right to keep it to those concepts, so I also put some safer bets in there as well. Forza Horizon 5 had indeed been announced at E3 last year, taking the Horizon Festival to Mexico and providing another great map to be exploring. Giving our character voice felt a bit pointless, though did provide more natural sounding conversations during what story elements there were, so I’m not complaining.
With a lot of content already added to the game, and more to come – including the expansions, the game is not slowing down yet. I’m very interested in seeing what those expansions bring, as the first one has usually arrived by now, which leads me to believe they might be bigger than what we usually see. It’s entirely possible they could even be leaning toward a more story-focused experience to introduce us to them. Would make a change from the absolute freedom the series has continued to go down.
As for Mario Kart, there was no mention of it at E3. The rest of the year passed with no mention of it. Then, in the February Direct, the Booster Course Pass for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was revealed. 48 remastered racetracks from previous games releasing across the next two years in six waves. The graphics are a downgrade from the base game, but they’re still as fun to zoom around.
The bonus here is that we get tracks from Tour, meaning access to the real world inspired tracks on a proper control scheme. Since each of these tracks has variations, they’ve been fused together to make a racetrack that changes route each time. It’s something I hope continues with the rest of them. I could talk about my hopes for tracks I want to see, but that’s a long list. And there’s some I’d rather not see make a return so they can be done justice in the next Mario Kart game.
As for the two I’m adding to the waiting for list, I’m returning to my cores once again. Sonic Frontiers was announced too early, to the point we still don’t know much about it more than a year after its initial announcement. All we do know is that the series is reinventing itself once again, this time going for open-zone freedom in a new, mysterious land known as the Starfall Islands. There’s no gameplay to be seen, but what we’ve seen shows some very nice-looking locations.
It does seem as though Sonic Team have high hopes for this one, as Takashi Iizuka’s interview with The Sonic Stadium states that the goal was to develop a game that lay the foundation of the series’ future, much like Sonic Adventure did for the first foray into 3D gameplay. If development is being taken seriously, and the team want this game to make an impact in the gaming landscape, I’m excited to see more of it. Which hopefully will be very soon.
As for the other core, a Pokémon Presents revealed that Generation Nine is a go. Revealed as the one last thing announcement, Scarlet and Violet will bring the series to a Spanish inspired region (that we still don’t know the name of), which is said to be fully open world. The region looks great from what we’ve seen of it, and the graphics have certainly improved even over Legends: Arceus.
Just as with Sonic Frontiers, there’s a lot we don’t know with this one, but it does seem as though the fluidity of battle transitions – and even catching without entering battle, will be missing with this one. As long as battles aren’t too tedious – and if battle animations have further improved from Legends I can’t see why they would, it should still be a fun experience. As with Frontiers, I’m ready to see more, though I doubt we’ll get anything before May.
Images Taken From:
Forza Horizon 5 (Original Screenshot)
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Original Screenshot)
Sonic Frontiers Announce Trailer
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Announcement Trailer
