Here we are at the end of week forty-three.  I accidentally pressed the “publish” button on this one when I started to sketch out the post on Wednesday, so somebody of you got a preview… sorry about that.  It has been a while since I have made that mistake.  I’d blame it on the end of daylight savings time today, but I did that way before hand.  Still, it was just the opener.  There was much I had yet to write about and scores left to arrive.

The previous week, forty-two, was kind of a big week for the league as it saw four titles launch in the same five day stretch.  Three of them went live and got scores as one would expected.  And then there was Dispatch.

Dispatch crossed over its launch date and was counted as live as expected.  But where were the reviews?

Dispatch – waiting for reviews?

A day later it only had three reviews on Open Critic, not enough to generate a score for the league.  That moved to six, then back to five, and then up to eight… and still no score.

Digging into the league FAQ, the following is necessary for a title to get a score in the league.

Open Critic only generates and displays an average score once there are at least three “Top Critic” reviews. This is the score that Fantasy Critic uses.

As of my writing this, Dispatch only has TWO top critic reviews… and even those are from sites you’ve probably never heard of.  None of the big names have opted to review the game so far.

While we have that hanging over us, let me get to where the week started with scores.

Week 42 Scores

First out of the game for the week was Outer Worlds 2, which started getting early reviews last week.  This title was both a pick and a counter pick, so was sure to have a double impact on the scores.

Outer Worlds 2

That continued as the launch closed in.

• The Outer Worlds 2
  • [Picked by Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)]
  • [Counter Picked by Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 83.0 to 81.6

That was a bit better news for Shilgrod, but when it hit its launch window it still shook up the roster, lifting up Shintar and pulling down Shilgrod.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)
    • Moved from 4th place to 3rd place
  • Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
    • Score has gone UP from 84.8 to 97.0
    • Moved from 5th place to 4th place
  • Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)
    • Score has gone DOWN from 98.3 to 86.1
    • Moved from 3rd place to 5th place

That was one title down.  But we had two more to go and the next one to get a score was the Dragon Quest remake.

• Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Now has a score of 86.6

That was enough to upset the rankings as well, with Shilgrod, who had started the week in third dropping down to sixth.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
    • Score has gone UP from 70.2 to 86.2
    • Moved from 6th place to 5th place
  • Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)
    • Moved from 5th place to 6th place

However, with a gap of just .1 between them, that swapped back fairly quickly.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)
    • Moved from 6th place to 5th place
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
    • Moved from 5th place to 6th place

Still, they got to the end of the week about a half a point apart.

And that left us with one more title, ARC Raiders.

Arc Raiders

We got the launch update.

• ARC Raiders has released!

And then it was crickets.  As with Dispatch, there were not enough top critic review in yet… nor very many reviews at all, given a title that had more than 300K players on Steam.

Meanwhile, the league bot let me know that I could have gone with better picks, like this one.

That game series is incomprehensible to me… but it has stayed around 87 for a score.

So I was left hanging for my pick of the week, and the scores ended up looking like this.

Week 43 Scores

The top four in the rankings all have one title left to go… though Potshot is still waiting for a score on Dispatch.  Bhagpuss looks pretty solidly in first place.  Below the top four most of us have seven releases on the board, save for Archey who has eight and Kluwes who has only six, and both of them have empty slots they could fill here in the last eight or so weeks of the season.

There were no bids this week, so the upcoming titles are now:

Coming up for Week 44

There is just one title due next week, and that should settle the tight race between Shawn and Shilgrod.

After that we have seven more titles with solid release dates.  Then it is the wild west of titles that are supposed to ship in 2025, but which haven’t declared a date yet.  I have a lot riding on Ultimate Sheep Raccoon as I don’t think we’re going to get Half Life 3 this year.  Damn that Valve rumor mill for drawing me in with the possibility of it happening.

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