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Digital Trends
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Can we all just be normal about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for a second?
Whether or not it actually wins the award come December, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the Game of the Year. No 2025 release has sparked so many long-lasting conversations usually reserved for tentpole releases like Grand Theft Auto or Zelda. It has been gaming's main character for months, standing in as a shining example of what a modern video game should rise to. Yet for all the mainstream conversations that it has generated, so few of them actually seem interested in Clair Obscur. Instead, Sandfall Interactive's critically acclaimed RPG has been submitted as evidence in on-going litigations against what gamers paint as a stale industry in need of new blood. While there are meaningful conversations to have about what game studios can learn from Clair Obscur's success, the way that it has been weaponized and reduced to a piece of confirmation bias in any landscape-shaping argument it fits into leaves me hungry for more substantial dissections of the games we love. Recommended Videos It was clear that Clair Obscur was going to be a big talking point when it launched in April to a wave of glowing reviews. Critics and fans hailed it as a generational RPG that revitalized turn-based combat, delivered an emotional story, and crafted an astonishing original world. 'Game of the Year' talk came fast, which is par for the course when a new game breaks the 90 mark on Metacritic. But the watercooler chats didn't stop there. Soon, mainstream conversations yearned to place it in a broader gaming landscape. Its originality was painted as a shining light in a sea of perceived 'AAA slop.' It wasn't just a good game, but a blueprint for how a boring industry could be saved. Even this very site opined about that immediately following its release. That over-the-top idea only ballooned as the months went on. Sandfall Interactive's slim team size became a talking point. Articles popped up that praised the studio for creating such an accomplishment with only 30 people — a figure that was quickly debunked once critics started adding up all the external developers involved. That didn't stop the disingenuous factoid from setting the stage at Summer Game Fest, where host Geoff Keighly used the number to sell the idea that he was presenting viewers the future of video games. Tons of trailers for smaller games followed, with Keighly often pointing out how many people made them as an indication of quality. My growing frustration with that trend reached a boil this week thanks to a different debate that Clair Obscur has been unwittingly roped into. For years now, some RPG enthusiasts have lamented the death of turn-based games. That anxiety seemed to come most from franchises like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest experimenting with real-time action. Clair Obscur is a loud and proud turn-based game, which made it the perfect spoiler candidate for an industry abandoning a classic way of play. Never mind the fact that turn-based gaming hasn't gone away. Octopath Traveller 2, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio (a game that released just last year to similar praise) have all proved that major studios are still very much invested in the subgenre. And yet, the narrative persisted. It all came to a head during a Square Enix investors call, in which the company reaffirmed its commitment to turn-based games and acknowledged Clair Obscur's existence in the process. According to Automaton, those typical business responses were mistranslated and blown out into a larger story: Clair Obscur's success had convinced Square Enix to start making more turn-based games. Finally, the video game industry was saved. Mission accomplished! Every conversation like this is so riddled with holes that you couldn't get them across a puddle, yet they are inescapable. Fans want it to prove their long-standing theories about the video game industry right and treat its success like an irrefutable data point in every argument. It's not a new phenomenon either; this cycle tends to happen with lots of both successes and failures. Baldur's Gate 3 inspired a wave of talking points about what players actually wanted from games. That line of thinking was met with backlash from developers who cautioned against using a very specific win as a crusade. Black Myth: Wukong became a rejection of Western ideology. Concord was viewed as proof that live service games are dead. I both understand where this comes from, because I'm as guilty of it as anyone. It's fun to search for meta-narratives in the things we care about. I'm a football fan (go Pats) and I love nothing more than creating a story out of a Super Bowl matchup. This year's clash between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles became more exciting to me when I viewed it as the Chiefs needing the win to finally prove they were every bit as good as the Tom Brady era Patriots, but they'd have to beat the giant killers who previously thwarted Bill Belichick at the big game. That added stakes to a matchup I wasn't invested in, even if it was imaginary. This sort of meta-breakdown of video games follows a similar line of thinking. Sandfall Interactive becomes the Eagles circa 2018 in this story. As harmless as that can be in small quantities, its forced nature has become unbearable when trying to navigate conversations around Clair Obscur. It's not enough for it to be a great game. It has to be a masterpiece. It has to be a counterpoint to everything we don't like. It has to be the savior of the RPG genre. What's ironic is that none of those hollow platitudes actually tell us anything about the game itself. Engagement with what Clair Obscur actually has to tell us has taken a backseat to imperfect armchair analysis. That's a shame, because there's meat on that bone. Clair Obscur asks us to think about how we, as a species, push on in the face of mass grief. It's a story of sacrifice, where expedition after expedition fights in the face of extinction. Many die for that cause, but their sacrifices aren't in vain. Each one helps the next party get a little closer, asking us to rethink success and failure in the context of long-term collective action. It's a thematic cousin to Death Stranding and its sequel, games that stress the importance of human connection as a means of making the world easier to navigate in times of crisis. Perhaps that's just as much a reason why Clair Obscur is resonating with players as the fact that it's turn-based or made by an indie studio. There's a familiar trauma in it, as the fictional Gommage and its impact on the world can be connected to the Covid-19 pandemic. We just went through – and are still going through – a period of mass suffering. Those wounds are fresh. I still remember seeing the pop-up morgues on the streets of Brooklyn. I remember watching the infection rates fall and then spike again, ripping any hope I had for an ending from me. I remember how hopeless it all felt. But I also remember how many people put in hard work to stop it together. Even if some people refused to do their part, many masked, stayed home, kept six feet apart, and anything else they could to stop the spread. It was a collective effort built on selfless sacrifice. I feel all that fueling Clair Obscur's emotional resonance. It begs to be discussed, because what is the point of something being a generational classic if we take nothing else from it? One of the only meaningful conversations I've had about Clair Obscur came before it was out. I had been playing it alongside our reviewer, Tomas Franzese, at the time and we dissected its themes together in isolation. We both cooled on it significantly in Act 3, taking issue with its sudden pivot into a meta-reflection on the nature of art and its role as an escape from grief. It felt like a betrayal on its more human focus earlier on; a needless swerve into a piece of art evaluating its own importance. It was a memorable discussion that helped crystallize where I felt Clair Obscur worked best and where it ultimately fell apart. I hope that discussions like that become more common as the hype settles down. Just as I felt turned off by the 'art about art' pivot in Act 3, I am similarly bored by the tedious talk about how Clair Obscur is changing the industry. None of it does anything to honor Sandfall Interactive's vision, even if it is designed to gas the studio up. Real engagement comes from critics like Ian Walker and Kenneth Shepard, who respect the game enough to interpret what it has to say. It comes like podcasts like Girl Mode that aren't afraid to criticize where the story is ineffective. If you love Clair Obscur, really talk about it. Not what it represents, but the actual game in front of you. If you find that you don't have nearly as much to say about it as you do its influence, maybe it's worth questioning whether you love the game or just the idea of it.
CNET
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Netflix Noooo! One of My Favorite Games and 21 Others Will Get the Axe Soon
More than a year after Netflix added the award-winning game Hades to its gaming service, the streaming giant will remove the game from its service on July 1. No, I'm not crying, I just have something in my eye. Supergiant Games released Hades in 2018 to near-universal acclaim before releasing the game on Netflix. It won numerous awards, including Game of the Year and Action Game of the Year at the 24th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. It also made history as the first (and so far only) game to win a Hugo Award, an accolade usually reserved for science fiction and fantasy literary works, but which created a special category for video games in 2021. Despite the awards, accolades and its short tenure on the service, Netflix is removing the title from its gaming catalog. The gameplay is smooth and fun, the story of a broken family rebuilt one run at a time was great, and the different characters you meet on your quest have such interesting backstories that it was easy to root for them, even when you had to fight and beat them. Hades is one of my favorite games, and one of the only games I've bought and played on multiple platforms, and its removal hurts. I like being able to play this game on my iPhone whenever and wherever I want. If I want that same level of freedom after Netflix removes Hades, I'll have to start carrying my Switch with me everywhere I go, and I don't have big enough pockets to make that work. Hades isn't the only game Netflix is removing from its platform. It's removing about 20 other games, including the Monument Valley trilogy, which released the third installment in the series on Netflix Games in December. Here's a list of the games Netflix is removing from its service soon. Note the last day to play these games is July 14 unless noted otherwise. Battleship Braid, Anniversary Edition Carmen Sandiego CoComelon: Play with JJ Death's Door Diner Out: Merge Cafe Dumb Ways to Survive Ghost Detective Hades (iOS) — Last day is July 1 Lego Legacy: Heroes Unboxed Ludo King Katana Zero Monument Valley Monument Valley 2 Monument Valley 3 Rainbow Six: Smol Raji: An Ancient Epic SpongeBob: Bubble Pop F.U.N. TED Tumblewords The Case of the Golden Idol The Rise of the Golden Idol Vineyard Valley Netflix Games has been in a state of flux recently. The company previously announced that its first massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Spirit Crossing, as well as WWE 2K, would be coming to service later this year. But the company also canceled a handful of game releases on the platform, like Tales of the Shire. Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said in the streaming company's fourth quarter earnings call for 2024 that it would continue to adjust its games strategy, focusing more on narrative games based on Netflix content. "We want to do more recognizable, mainstream titles, whether that is licensed titles, like GTA…as well as home-grown titles based on our IP," he said. To that end, Netflix released the Black Mirror tie-in game Thronglets in April on the same day the company released the seventh season of the show. The game was featured in one episode of the season, and I felt the game gave more depth to the story the episode was telling. Games are included in the price of a Netflix subscription (starting at $8 a month). You can access the games through the Netflix app on your mobile device. Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment. For more on Netflix games, check out what to know about Spirit Crossing, WWE 2K and the Grand Theft Auto series on the service.
CNET
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Netflix Is Removing One of My Favorite Games From Its Service Soon
More than a year after Netflix added the award-winning game Hades to its gaming service, the streaming giant will remove the game from its service on July 1. No, I'm not crying, I just have something in my eye. Supergiant Games released Hades in 2018 to near-universal acclaim before releasing the game on Netflix. It won numerous awards, including Game of the Year and Action Game of the Year at the 24th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. It also made history as the first (and so far only) game to win a Hugo Award, an accolade usually reserved for science fiction and fantasy literary works, but which created a special category for video games in 2021. Despite the awards, accolades and its short tenure on the service, Netflix is removing the title from its gaming catalog. The gameplay is smooth and fun, the story of a broken family rebuilt one run at a time was great, and the different characters you meet on your quest have such interesting backstories that it was easy to root for them, even when you had to fight and beat them. Hades is one of my favorite games, and one of the only games I've bought and played on multiple platforms, and its removal hurts. I like being able to play this game on my iPhone whenever and wherever I want. If I want that same level of freedom after Netflix removes Hades, I'll have to start carrying my Switch with me everywhere I go, and I don't have big enough pockets to make that work. Hades isn't the only game Netflix is removing from its platform. It's removing about 20 other games, including the Monument Valley trilogy, which released the third installment in the series on Netflix Games in December. Here's a list of the games Netflix is removing from its service soon. Note the last day to play these games is July 14 unless noted otherwise. Battleship Braid, Anniversary Edition Carmen Sandiego CoComelon: Play with JJ Death's Door Diner Out: Merge Cafe Dumb Ways to Survive Ghost Detective Hades (iOS) — Last day is July 1 Lego Legacy: Heroes Unboxed Ludo King Katana Zero Monument Valley Monument Valley 2 Monument Valley 3 Rainbow Six: Smol Raji: An Ancient Epic SpongeBob: Bubble Pop F.U.N. TED Tumblewords The Case of the Golden Idol The Rise of the Golden Idol Vineyard Valley Netflix Games has been in a state of flux recently. The company previously announced that its first massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Spirit Crossing, as well as WWE 2K, would be coming to service later this year. But the company also canceled a handful of game releases on the platform, like Tales of the Shire. Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said in the streaming company's fourth quarter earnings call for 2024 that it would continue to adjust its games strategy, focusing more on narrative games based on Netflix content. "We want to do more recognizable, mainstream titles, whether that is licensed titles, like GTA…as well as home-grown titles based on our IP," he said. To that end, Netflix released the Black Mirror tie-in game Thronglets in April on the same day the company released the seventh season of the show. The game was featured in one episode of the season, and I felt the game gave more depth to the story the episode was telling. Games are included in the price of a Netflix subscription (starting at $8 a month). You can access the games through the Netflix app on your mobile device. Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment. For more on Netflix games, check out what to know about Spirit Crossing, WWE 2K and the Grand Theft Auto series on the service.
Geek Culture
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Culture
Daredevil's Charlie Cox Responds To 'Clair Obscur
Amid the hype for triple-A titles, it's always nice to have the underdog fight against the odds and find their place among the big boys. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a dark-horse favourite that has outshone some of the competition, selling two million copies in 12 days, and then, coincidentally, 3.3 million copies in 33 days. Suffice it to say, the RPG is in the running for Game of the Year, led by a strong ensemble cast that includes Charlie Cox, best known for his portrayal of Marvel superhero Daredevil. In light of the overwhelming praise, the Daredevil: Born Again star admits to feeling 'like a total fraud', which, well, isn't quite the expected response, but there's a reason for that: he hasn't clocked in a single minute of gameplay, as shared in a clip circulating social media. 'And people keep saying how amazing it is and congratulations and I feel like a total fraud' CHARLIE 😂 #Expedition33 #ClairObscurExpedition33 — Ann 👻 (@bursinxmurdock) June 22, 2025 'Apparently, the game is awesome — I'm not a gamer, I have no idea. I haven't played it,' said the actor during a panel at Washington State Summer Con, adding that he recorded most of his lines in about four hours as part of a voiceover gig set up by his agent. 'People keep saying how amazing it is and congratulations, and I feel like a total fraud,' Cox continued. 'But I'm so thrilled for the company, I'm so thrilled it did really well.' Talk about maximum aura points — four hours is lightning fast! Cox voices Gustave in Sandfall Interactive's debut entry, joined by Jennifer English ( Baldur's Gate 3 ), Andy Serkis ( The Lord of the Rings ), Ben Starr ( Final Fantasy XVI ), Kirsty Rider ( The Sandman ), Shala Nyx ( The Old Guard ), and more. The story follows a group of Expeditioners who have set out to destroy an entity called the Paintress, who paints a number on a monolith every year that dooms everyone of that age to death. Moving forward, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is set to explore new content, accessibility features, and 'all sorts of bits and bobs', alongside expanded localisation options. 'While we don't have specific timelines or confirmed languages to share just yet, we wanted to let you know that it's very much on our radar,' said the team then. Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth's theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia's greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
Metro
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
One of the best games of 2024 is free on PS Plus in May
Sony has announced the PS Plus line-up for May, and fans of dinosaurs, Warhammer, and deck builders will be very pleased. While it's usually possible to predict what the biggest games of the year will be at the AAA level, the best thing about indie titles is they can come out of nowhere and steal the conversation entirely. That was definitely the case for Balatro, a poker-themed roguelike deck builder created by solo developer LocalThunk, which went onto sell over 5 million copies and secure a Game Of The Year nomination at The Game Awards. If you haven't yet been ensnared by its addictive qualities, Balatro will be available as one of the free games for PlayStation Plus subscribers in May. The game will be available to both PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 owners from Tuesday, May 6 for anyone who is subscribed to the PlayStation Plus essential tier. While it's perhaps better suited to handheld devices like the Nintendo Switch and mobiles, it's worth taking for a spin on Sony's console if you haven't yet tried it – especially if you have a PlayStation Portal. More Trending Other games about to debut include Ark: Survival Ascended, a revamped version of 2017 dinosaur survival sim, Ark: Survival Evolved, in Unreal Engine 5. The game launched in early access in 2023 to a mixed reception, and based on Steam reviews it hasn't changed much since, but it supports up to 70 players online if you fancy some chaos. The final game on the May line-up is Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, a retro first person shooter which is a fascinating curiosity – even if it does get repetitive after a while. All of these games will be available to claim from May 6 to June 2, 2025. It's worth noting you can just add them to your library during this time and download them later, as long as you have a PlayStation Plus subscription. You still have until May 5 to pick up this month's games, which includes RoboCop: Rogue City, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker's Memory. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Titanfall 3 was 'almost finished' before 100 staff were laid off insists leaker MORE: Highest rated game of 2025 is already 20% off on PS5 and Xbox MORE: Seth Rogen coming to Call Of Duty in weed-themed DLC as Star Wars hits Fortnite
