Destructoid Changelog - Mutant animals, cat ears, and Skibidi Toilets

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Destructoid Changelog Newsletter. It’s my job to stick my hands in the content bucket and bring up big, dripping fistfuls of Destructoid’s best things you may have missed throughout the week.

This week has been quiet. A 6/10 on the weirdness scale, maybe. In the territory of “unusual” maybe. But there’s still some good stuff to check out.

If this doesn’t satisfy you, just visit Destructoid to keep up-to-date.

The mere suggestion of a cat-eared helmet in Helldivers 2 has caused a ridiculous amount of infighting

I don’t typically pay attention to community drama, but Jamie Moorcroft-Sharp does an excellent job explaining the issues they’re having with the prospect of a cat ear’ed helmet in Helldivers 2. In a way, I think the helmet is rad. However, I also see the concern some players have about weird cosmetics throwing off the aesthetic balance. In particular, they compare the possibility to Fortnite having a bunch of Batmans running around.

I see it as similar to a problem I have with Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed. I like to feel like a Ghostbuster with a utilitarian jumpsuit and cobbled-together nuclear backpack. However, some players like to have neon hair and barely any jumpsuit at all. This has only been helped by newer, weird cosmetics like a cardboard proton pack. It’s not the end of the world, and maybe I’m just boring, but that’s the way I like to connect with what I play. You really can’t please everyone.

Zoochosis is animal body horror by way of The Thing and it launches this September

Zookeepers have it easy dealing with hippos and lions. Zoochosis takes that safe and secure profession and injects some parasitic horror into it. You can live the life of a zookeeper as the animals mutate in ways that make your job more difficult. It looks interesting, if not somewhat similar to Zoonomoly.

The body cam, though. I thought chromatic aberration was bad, but I find this new trend among first-person games to be rather annoying. It feels like a cheap way to make a game feel more realistic for no stylistic reason. Nothing like viewing the game through a fish bowl.

Starstruck: Hands of Time has a release date after spending years on my wishlist

It’s true, I added Starstruck: Hands of Time to my wishlist back in 2021. It really amuses me that waiting three years for a game would have seemed like a literal eternity when I was in high school, but now that I’m old, it just feels normal. That’s unsettling.

Speaking of unsettling, Starstruck is a game about traveling back in time to prevent a cataclysm. It uses a diarama-like art style and portions of the game involve walking around as a giant hand wrecking up things. I mean, if you’re trying to change the past to fix the future, you might as well start changing everything. It couldn’t possibly make things worse, could it?

Dashcam has you driving to a parent-teacher conference to deal with your child’s evil gene

Parenting is hard, especially when it makes you have to get out of your car. So, don’t do that. Get out of the car, I mean. But if you can avoid parenting, I definitely recommend it.

I’m not sure why Dashcam has you never leave your car behind. You arrive at a parent-teacher conference, it cuts to the interior, and you still have a dashboard in front of you. I’m assuming it’s “because it’s funny” and by raising the question I look like a “square.” However, Dashcam would be amusing even without the perpetual motorist angle. Just don’t honk indoors, it’s impolite.

Top 10 most absurd video game controllers

I’ve got some pretty weird controllers under my couch, but they aren’t any of the 10 that Tiago Manuel listed. No, my Power Glove and Steel Battalion controllers have a place of honor in my household.

The list brings together weirdities from across the generational spectrum of video games. If I were to make a suggestion, it would be the PC Engine Pachinko controller that Coconuts made for their Pachio-Kun games.

Review in Progress: Earth Defense Force 6

I’ve been playing EDF 6 for days, and it’s hardly enough to make a dent in its mass. Strangely, this new entry in the long-running series is both way to similar to the previous game and interesting in the way it twists its narrative.

I’m still working toward a full review, but right now, I wish Sandlot would find a better way to shake things up. Earth Defense Force is great, but it hasn’t changed much over the years, even going back to its birth on the PS2. If they can’t see a path forward (I have some ideas), then maybe they should put the series aside for a while and give us what we all really want: a sequel to Robot Alchemic Drive.

Michael Bay is apparently working on bringing Skibidi Toilet to film and TV

No. Oh, please, no.