The Critical Corner

More than a week ago, the gaming industry was shaken by the massive news of Microsoft entering an agreement to acquire beleaguered publisher Activision/Blizzard ( who for those who've been in the know, has been embroiled in a massive lawsuit over sexual harrassment and other horrid things happening within the company and at a top level ) in an all cash transaction of $68.7 billion dollars. Considering Activision Blizzard owns some of gaming IP's most lucrative franchises (mainly above all else, the "Call of Duty" franchise whose two most recent entries "Black Ops Cold War" and "Vanguard" where the top 2 best selling games of 2021), Microsoft buying this kind of publisher is the kind of thing that absolutely, definitively changes the gaming landscape forever. It absolutely removes a big third party vertical from the equation (in an even bigger way than when Microsoft acquired Zenimax and took with them Bethesda and all the studios they owned). When

Titanfall 2 remains to me one of the biggest tragedies of this console generation. Here you had a shooter that was as close to perfect as you could get: incredible mechanics, tight campaign, epic multiplayer. And thanks to publisher Electronic Arts deciding to release the game in the week between their latest Battlefield game and rival Activision's latest Call of Duty game back in 2016, no one played Titanfall 2 . For all intents and purposes, this new franchise from the original Call of Duty creators was potentially dead in the water. When leaks started happening the weekend of the Super Bowl that developer Respawn Entertainment was going to release a Battle Royale game set in the Titanfall universe, my heart sank. I was dismayed at the fact they were chasing what I now consider a fad that's been dominated by Fortnite for so long. With  "Battle Royale" being a genre I've tried to love but never have, I was ready to write off the Titanfall serie