Splash Damage

Ash Parrish is back, nitpicking one of the greatest games ever made—Elden Ring—because it doesn’t have enough hairstyles for black characters. We discuss her tendency to turn everything into a race issue along with Sony’s hypocrisy regarding nudity in Horizon Forbidden West, Age of Empires III new trigger warning, open racism against white anime voice actors, CD Projekt Red stopping sales in Russia, and a God of War director’s bizarre hypothetical.

Journalists are digging up the old criticism that Horizon Forbidden West is problematic because it features the aesthetics of Native American culture. We discuss how cultural appreciation is not appropriation along with references to racism in The Cuphead Show!, Kotaku being upset that attractive women exist in Lost Ark, censorship of Lost Ark for Western audiences, a female gaming pro being fired over a joke about men, and more.

Reviewers admit kung-fu action game Sifu is awesome, but games journalists can’t resist saying the game is problematic simply because it’s about Asian culture but made by white developers. We discuss how racist it is to gatekeep fiction by skin color along with PC Gamer’s embarrassing take on video game violence, Kotaku not realizing the irony of comparing Dying Light 2’s zombie pandemic to COVID-19, Sony’s censorship of Martha is Dead, Horizon Forbidden West’s endless accessibility features, Kotaku calling out Critical Role’s newest D&D campaign setting as problematic, racebending in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and more.

Kotaku threw us for a loop after writing an article defending gamers Cloud Imperium Games called “noisy” for daring to care about the development of Star Citizen. We discuss this ironic sentiment along with Sony buying Bungie, Waypoint calling Pokemon Legends: Arceus colonialist, a false copyright claim Riot Games made against an independent artist, how much the upcoming Halo and Lord of the Rings TV series are going to suck, Elden Ring’s difficulty, and more!

Indiana Black of the recently relaunched G4 went on a tirade about the sexism she faces in gaming, basically blaming her audience for the comments she gets because she is not as sexy as previous hosts. We talk about how Black has doubled down on her victimhood along with claims that Chinese company Tencent is influencing the races and breast sizes of characters in movies it funds, Dungeons & Dragons getting more streamlined and woke, censorship of Genshin Impact’s outfits, Elden Ring’s impending release, and a video game developer going above and beyond for a fan.

The collective internet mocked Kotaku after they published an article claiming that Halo: Infinite hurts players’ feelings by tracking individual scores. We join in on the mocking and also discuss Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard, people claiming it’s racist that a Dead by Daylight cannibalistic murderer wears a black victim’s face as a mask, Bloomberg’s complaint that games are sexist and Horizon Forbidden West is not because its hero is ugly, Kotaku’s angst that non-black people are making a game with a black protagonist, a G4 host’s tirade about sexist gamers, Polygon really wanting Frodo and Sam to be gay, and plenty more.

There have been recent changes to Dungeons & Dragons, stripping certain races and monsters of their lore because apparently even fictional evil is exclusive. We also discuss how The Witcher actor Henry Cavill seems pretty based, Splinter Cell getting rebooted, the decision to not include NFTs in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl, Back 4 Blood developer Turtle Rock selling out to Tencent, Cowboy Bebop’s failure possibly spelling the end of live-action adaptations of anime, and more.

An IGN editor last week tried to justify why the games media had not covered a PlayStation executive being caught soliciting sex from a minor. Meanwhile, games sites are quick to jump on “news” about conservative game developers simply existing. We discuss this lack of journalistic integrity along with Kotaku calling gamers “toxic a-holes,” highlights from The Game Awards, the mainstream media falsely associating video games with a Michigan school shooting, Kotaku being upset that a right-wing group agrees Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick should resign, Nintendo trying to hire more women for no reason, gamers’ hate for Ubisoft’s NFT announcement, PlayStation Spartacus, and much more!

With so many inexcusable problems in recently released blockbuster games, has the golden age of gaming come and gone? Will major games ever redeem themselves, or are we stuck with pathetic, half-finished cash grabs? We ponder this question and also discuss the heat rising around Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, Kotaku’s sad take on the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, IGN’s blatant paid advertisement for Battlefield 2042, sexualized costumes in Arcane and Cowboy Bebop, and more.

Call of Duty: Vanguard has gotten flack this past week, and not just for being another totally boring cash grab of a shooter. Kotaku and others called the game Islamophobic for daring to use pages of the Quran as set dressing, despite the fact entire games openly mock Christianity without so much as a complaint from anyone. We discuss this hypocrisy along with Kotaku’s ironic complaint that Vanguard is too woke, Animal Crossing: New Horizons fans’ bizarre and desperate desire to see two animal characters officially become gay lovers, trans people getting offended over Forza Horizon 5 “deadnaming” them, and GamesBeat’s surprising advocation for diversity of thought in the games industry.