Thq Nordic wants to be the heir of the double A spirit of video games

A few days ago I got nostalgic on Twitter. I suppose it is something that is more than natural that it is coming to me, as the arrival at 30 becomes more and more real. Be that as it may, I remembered the Strategy Saga for PC Imperivm. Many people told me about their memories of that game, and what is more important, of that stage of our lives.

• A review of the nomenclature
• Thq Nordic and Poat Group
• Three AA level proposals

I say this because by the hand of Emproivm they came, by association, many other memories of those years playing video games. Because if we now have tools such as subscription catalogs, offers and digital games, at that time the most accessible way to have a new video game was to go down to the kiosk and get a game of affordable PC.

We are in a tremendously polarized moment in the video game sector, paradoxically just when more titles are launched to the market. There are a few releases a year as an event, and a myriad of tickets to digital markets, the vast majority of them under the indie label. But everything is not like that.

A review of the nomenclature

The term AA is a nomenclature that has been standardized in video games for a couple of decades. It refers to those titles that are not made by a single developer, or a small group, and that in turn are below the budget of the AA. And we understand AAA for those great games, of enormous budget and that usually have the appellation of Vendonsolas; Powerful graphics, team of developers of more than 100-150 workers and everything you can think of.

The relevant thing is that, thanks to its concrete nature, The value of the AA games is that they provide variety to the catalog . They can afford to play with more ambitious ideas than the indies, but at the same time they do not have to offer systems that have dozens of hours hooked, or the latest fashions and conventions of the AAA, which has a very high sales objective to reach; and therefore the need for a public as wide as possible.

It is not that there is a crisis of this type of games, and we may have already passed the worst thanks to the subscription services, which need titles to feed every little time. I do not want to be that cock, do not think badly, but sometimes that past is missing in which the variety of studies creating ideas with some ambition, but without reaching the great exclusive.

Thq Nordic and Poat Group

A couple of days ago I could go to an exclusive presentation for the press of THQ Nordic. This company, which has been acquiring studies and franchises for a few years through its Matrix embarrass Group, begins to see the fruits of all these purchases. They have been a total of four video games, with which the following idea has reached my head: Thq Nordic also remembers the AA spirit.

One of them, specifically Alone in the Dark , is quite ambitious, I will not deceive you. But if we go to the other three games, we find very different proposals and that could not be triple A. We have a genre that already went through its best moments between 90 and 2000 such as RTS, a title of house management and construction, and one of cars, a genre that a few decades

Three AA level proposals

Space for Sale is one of those games that sound weird, but at the same time they have all the meaning of the world. Talking to my partner Rubén de Vidaextra, he told me the vitiate that his wife had to House Flipper, a game based on buying shattered houses and adapting them to sell them. I tried it (it is in Game Pass), and I understand that desire perfectly. Well, add that at crazy levels, incredible alien requests, and a resource collection system.

Tempest Rising arrives to bring us the nostalgia of the real-time strategy genre represented by Starcraft, but also had other great examples during that stage. Slipgate Ironworks seeks to inspire specifically in Command & Conquer, especially with its purely military aspect, and with key aspects such as the construction of bases.

Finally, Wreckread is the son of Burnout and Trackmania, but with an open world and the possibility of playing with friends. We can change the circuit in real time, adding all kinds of crazy additions. From loopings to ramps to jump, through a new circuit in full, ex criterion and EA, they bring a twist to a tremendously known genre.