After last week when we had four releases with three of them putting up scores on the board we are ramping down a bit as the month goes along, with just two releases in week Thirty-Five

The week saw some scores rolling in, and not all of them good, but first we’ll see where we ended up last time.

Week 34 Scores

That is where we started, but where would the week lead us?

The first thing to show up in Week 35 was a score for a game that released the week before, Lost Souls Aside, which finally hit the minimum number of reviews… though was that a good thing?

• Lost Soul Aside
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
  • Now has a score of 66.7

A reminder, scores below 70 earn you negative points, so this was a 3.3 point negative hit on Arhanta, who slipped back into 9th place.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Slightly Scuffed Studios (Kluwes)
    • Moved from 9th place to 8th place
  • Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)
    • Score has gone DOWN from 33.4 to 30.1
    • Moved from 8th place to 9th place

Okay, not great… but with only a few reviews in, every new review could change the averaged score noticeably… and new reviews did.

• Lost Soul Aside
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 66.7 to 62.5

Ouch!  But it was destined to be a bit of a roller coaster ride for the title as more reviews landed.

• Lost Soul Aside
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
  • Score has gone UP from 63.3 to 64.9

Back up a bit, but still in play.

• Lost Soul Aside
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
  • Score has gone UP from 64.1 to 65.2

And then down again.

• Lost Soul Aside
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 64.4 to 63.2

As you can see, the score movement started to settle down to smaller and smaller swings as more reviews showed up, and as we approached the 40 review mark it looked like nothing would rescue it from a negative score.  Arhanta was going to stay in 9th position for the week.

Then, on the “things from last week seeing score changes” we saw Gears of War Reloaded do a bit of a bounce based on new reviews.

• Gears of War: Reloaded
  • [Picked by Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 80.5 to 78.8
• Gears of War: Reloaded
  • [Picked by Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)]
  • Score has gone UP from 78.8 to 80.6

It ended being up by 0.1 points, so the movement did not impact the rankings.

Meanwhile, one of the two expected releases for the week, Hell Is Us, starting getting reviews and went on its own ride for a bit.

• Hell is Us
  • [Picked by Hare Brained Schemes (p0tsh0t)]
  • Now has a score of 82.1
• Hell is Us
  [Picked by Hare Brained Schemes (p0tsh0t)]
• Score has gone DOWN from 82.0 to 81.0
• Hell is Us
  • [Picked by Hare Brained Schemes (p0tsh0t)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 81.0 to 79.8

At least all of that was still a positive score, and once released Potshot saw his score go up.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Hare Brained Schemes (p0tsh0t)
  • Score has gone UP from 78.8 to 88.5

Not enough to overtake the leaders, but it keeps him in contention for at least second place.

Which brings us to Hollow Knight: Silksong.  This game was THE explosive announcement out of Gamescom.  Other indie titles moved their release dates to get the hell out of its way.  And when it went live on Thursday morning multiple online storefronts cracked under the rush to get a copy NOW NOW NOW.

Hollow Knight: Silksong… everybody gotta have it

A friend of my wife was over and mentioned her son had been trying to buy some new video game that morning and was having trouble and I was able to name the game, Hollow Knight: Silksong.  She was impressed that I had that answer straight to hand.

So yes, it went live, sold a million copies right away, has passed the 500K concurrent player mark on Steam, and has generally been a sensation with over 20K reviews on Steam that indicate an overwhelmingly positive response.

And all we got on FCL was this:

• Hollow Knight: Silksong has released!

No score.  Nothing on Open Critic.  Nothing on Meta Critic.

I think the reviewers are afraid to say something.

I mean, I know the gaming sites are PLAYING the game.  There is no end of guides and how to posts popping up trying to farm the enthusiasm for the game and turn it into some page views and ad revenue.  Hell, look at me.  I put it in the title of this post.

But no reviews.  Not that the game NEEDS any reviews at this point.  Reviews wouldn’t drive any more enthusiasm as far as I can tell.  I think the gaming sites can sense the danger of giving the title anything less than 100% and don’t want to get shouted down and have their comments turn into a dumpster fire because they only gave the game a 95 out of 100.

We’ll see.  They have to review it some day.  I know, maybe they didn’t get preview copies for day one reviews, but we’ve seen some pretty fast off-the-cuff reviews in the past.  Suddenly they don’t want to risk it?

As of me writing this on Saturday night, nothing has landed to give it a score.  Maybe next week the gaming sites will grow a pair?

Anyway, that left the scoreboard looking like this at the end of the week.

Week 35 Scores

Aside from the swamp between 8th and 9th place, the rankings remained the same, even if scores changed.  But that is probably how it goes as the year starts to fade and we’re mostly settled into our choices… except for me, with only three titles released so far.

There were two bids this week, that resolved as follows:

• Bids
  • Absolum
    • Won by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss) with a bid of $5
    • Dropped game Professor Layton and the New World of Steam conditionally
  • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment
    • Won by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn) with a bid of $1

Bhagpuss swapped out a title while Shawn filled out their empty slot.

There are still four empty picks on the board, including three for Kluwes.  They may get the prime end of year picks… we’ll see if patience pays off.

That leaves the upcoming releases looking like this.

Coming Up for Week 36

We have just ONE release coming up next week, though another big one, with Borderlands 4 landing on Friday.  Nobody counter picked that in this league, but I picked it and it got counter picked in another league I am in, so I am a bit invested in how it does.

And the, of course, we will have to see if Hollow Knight: Silksong gets some reviews finally.

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