There is no such thing as bad publicity…. right? (Sega)

in game picture from Crazy Taxi World Tour

A couple of gaming shows happened last week and one of my favorite publishers Sega made a lot of appearances. Sadly, 90% of them were in a bad way and mostly made for community reaction no matter the cost.

There are some obvious examples but the one that impacts me the most here is Sonic racing Crossworld. I’ve already talked about it before but this is a game I hold dear to my heart as its gameplay is truly something unique that I enjoy, but it does have a fair amount of negative aspects to it too. The game was featured in one of these and let’s say it was a real monkey paws curl moment for me, it’s getting an extra year of support which is something I wanted but the catch is that the only thing announced was more crossovers… It worked great for the show itself as it got many people to react to it and it went viral on social media, but that is kind of exactly my issue here. The dlcs in Crossworld seem to be all the game wants to show, they have problems though as they all lack voice acting for non-silent characters and some of the models are really rough to look at. The game has so much more to offer and they could have kicked off year two with a bunch of new stages, gadgets, and a new archetype of car or anything gameplay related. Sega would rather appeal to the people who will scream at their reveal, play the game for a week when said crossover character releases and then probably drop it because they weren’t there for the game anyway. As someone who loves this game beyond the crossovers, it really pains me to see Sega treat the game like this, but this is mostly my personal opinion and there is way worse to go through.

RGG, the studio behind the Yakuza games, has been catching a lot of deserved negative attention lately. They have a voice actor in kiwami 3 (Teruyuki Kagawa) who is accused of sexual assault and admitted to it, there is also clear proof about it, so with the trust of the studio in an all time low maybe they could try to steer back…. who am I kidding they’ve gotten worse. Stranger Than Heaven, got a new reveal trailer and showed more characters; of course they got some names that had the same social media impact as the Sonic racing Crossworld dlcs with people such as Snoop Dogg, Ado, and Tupac Shakur? We are just bringing back the dead now? An incredibly baffling decision which I guess did also make rounds online to show the game to more people, but this is just virtual grave robbing for attention. The PR tried to pass it as “don’t worry we have checked with the real estate”, said real estate who is currently being sued by Tupac’s sister which makes this statement completely meaningless. Regardless of all of that it is just disgusting to do something like this, like I don’t even have the words to describe it. I just feel like no matter who you are you deserve your eternal rest without having corporations using your image as a puppet to fling you around in different projects. Fortunately a lot of people have shown their disgust at this situation but it does seem that RGG has put one foot in their own grave with that decision. Unfortunately for us, the car crash does not stop here.

Did you know they are bringing Crazy taxi back? This franchise of arcade racing with some cool rock music, sick 2000’s aesthetic and somehow a very immersive driving experience as well as 3 games under its belt already. Crazy Taxi World Tour got announced this past weekend and it got people crazy about it, it is really cool to see old franchises like that come back into the light and see everyone online happy that it….. Oh almost the whole thing was inspired by AI ideas, reference art, and it visually looks like a mobile game as well as seemingly taking mini games from a Yakuza mini game? You guessed it this game also got a controversy attached to it and this time it’s AI, the steam page for it mention use of it, the higher ups behind the game say no AI is in the game but only been used as reference, though they make sure to keep it really vague. The whole situation is a mess and to not help, the game just looks bland and it’s sad to see, you’d think they would bring back this old franchise with grace but no they had to use AI, something that everybody hates hearing when it comes to any sort of art or creativity. At this point Sega can do no right and will just blunder their reputation with some stupid shit at any point. Sad to see the new opus of a dormant franchise seemingly just being a cash grab for nostalgic people who will buy “the new crazy taxi” regardless of the AI controversy.

They have also revealed other games that didn’t look as bleak, but I have lost all the goodwill I had for Sega at this point. it’s not a Virtua Fighter, a Persona game, or a new Sonic game on the horizon that might be good that will change how I feel about any of these baffling decisions. I’m just disappointed by them at this point and don’t want to engage with their products anymore. That was more of a big rant than what I’m used to do, but I felt like I had to do see so here it is, hopefully It’s the only time I gotta do that. More writing in the future!