@MikeOrator They knee-jerked to the simple "fix" rather than dealing with the actual problem that makes those stealth sections more punishing than they should be; infrequent checkpoints/autosaves and no option to save manually during set-piece missions. Proper saves are all the game needed, instead of a system that would've felt out of place ten years ago.
@ZeroSum My thoughts exactly; I haven't played D2 in years, but from the outside looking in this just seems like one more way of trying to milk more money-per-user out of the ever-dwindling playerbase. I imagine the full package of expansions and season passes will cost substantially more than the equivalent 'full package' edition of Final Shape.
"I understand people are going to bristle at this article; they’re going to point to the calamitous launch of Concord and claim what Team ASOBI did here doesn’t count."
No, Sammy, we're going to take issue with you being a pedant.
Games receiving permanent updates or additions at no extra charge to players isn't what anyone associates with the term "live service" nor any of its connotations, so don't try to be clever - it's not the same thing. No more than Baldur's Gate 3 is "live service" by merit of its extensive patches. If you're to follow this argument to the illogical conclusion, you're suggesting that any game that does anything after launch is a live service.
@AverageGamer The thing is, given the choice, I would 100% agree with you and use manual saves. I regularly do for the more open-ended stuff, knowing that they'll put me mostly back where I want to be.
It was in fact through trying to manually save within the game's opening hours that I found that you couldn't - manual saving is completely locked out during story missions, which is why the terrible autosaves for them are such an issue.
Oh, right, one more thing. Never reload a checkpoint from the moment after making a reputation-changing decision; as it stands, it will tend to load you back to the moment before the decision, but will keep your reputation from the moment after... and promptly lower it even more.
@RubyCarbuncle Same here - as I say, it's decent and for the most part I've had a very enjoyable time with it. On a more positive note, the atmosphere and characterisation is very well done - the little character moments between Kay and Nix are probably one of my favourite things.
But boy, the game definitely had me grumbling "who designed this?!" under my breath in those opening hours, especially coming from other recent games that have handled checkpoints and progress so, so much better, allowed manual saves at all times, etc.
@RubyCarbuncle It's decent. I'd say for the most part it does feel less like "standard Ubisoft open world" and more like an Uncharted-but-space setup with the open areas there really just to connect it together and give you extra loot to find.
My main complaint about it would be that the checkpointing system for those missions is abysmal, particularly in the early sections and any forced-stealth setups. The game will not save your progress except for at very specific trigger points, and will quite happily throw away all your progress on completing challenges, looting chests, etc. Early on I had a moment of exploring the first (second?) city, accidentally falling into a pit in a side area... and suddenly found myself back outside the gates with the entire area reset to square one - and later spent quite some time meticulously stealthing my way through a large compound during a story mission, opened the Load menu to see if the game was keeping track... and the last autosave was over an hour ago. And even on loading the rare mid-mission checkpoints, it will do so while respawning every enemy in the location, relocking doors, etc - essentially reintroducing every obstacle that you'd cleared.
So, yeah, that's my biggest "buyer beware" warning if, like me, you prefer to fully explore areas and complete side content alongside the main quest.
It looks dire, frankly, but it has one advantage over Borderlands that will make it a success regardless.
Its target audience is children, who won't care about a cliche story and terrible script, because Jack Black as Steve will do a funny sometimes, and maybe even dance. And there will be at least one Creeper that explodes.
...Actually, yep, a lot of what made Borderlands terrible for the PG-13 market will make this perfect for one of Minecraft-obsessed children. Still, spare a thought for their parents.
@Boxmonkey Why should they? If it were a formal accusation from Microsoft itself, then yes, they should. But it's not, and they shouldn't. This is just a guttersniping journalist who pulled a rumour out of thin air, quickly had his "information" discredited by a number of his peers, and is now trying to draw non-commital corpospeak out of context to save face.
@PuppetMaster I mean., it occurs to me that if they'd merged the two ideas and made Concord into "light-hearted spacefaring Payday with hero powers" instead of... well, Concord, the game might have actually found an audience.
@Dalejrfanfreak "horizon forbidden west didn’t do as good as the first one, God of War Ragnarok not as good as the first, same for the last of us part 2."
In fairness, these have nothing to do with diversity and everything to do with the unwritten law of (high profile) sequels - they will rarely match up to the first entry, especially when they're a straight-shot continuation. With a sequel you're retargeting the same audience who bought in the first time, but in the case of a hit game that audience is generally going to shrink - people who didn't enjoy the first, decided that it was just "okay" or simply didn't finish it for whatever reason are much less likely to come back.
God of War '18 sold so well because it was a new take on the franchise; Ragnarok sold less (though still plenty) because, for better or worse, it was more of God of War '18.
@kuu_nousee "This is a huge negative dent into that and who knows might delay or take some single player games from AAA to AA quality."
Is a reduction from AAA to AA - however you'd quantify that - really such a bad thing, though? All this nonsense, ongoing price hikes on games and services, when the realistic answer to "games keep costing more to make" is probably to stop making your studios bigger and bigger, and stop burning time and money on graphics and gameplay features (Yes, you can pet the dog! And it has fully physics-modelled fur!) that don't add anything beyond a split-second of novelty.
Ultimately they're in the classic monetarist trap of continually spending more in the hopes of making more, and if they don't adapt to a more realistic model of making games the AAA industry will implode on itself sooner or later - whether from sinking fortunes into doomed projects like this, eventually pricing their own customers out of the market, or so on.
I feel like the only way that Concord could have been saved would have been for Sony/Firewalk to be more open about its development. If they'd shown off the game and talked about their monetisation approach earlier, they could have had time to take on feedback and course-correct to some extent.
"...but at least shows Capcom’s growing awareness of how messed up the premise of “let’s hunt to extinction Indigenous life in foreign lands” of past games has been."
While the gameplay loop often comes to that, you couldn't be much further from the overall story premise of why the Hunters and their Guild exist and what they canonically do.
I'm looking forward to it, warts and all. You know what you get with Ubisoft games, even if it it's just "variations of average".
That, and with the horrors that Disney continues to enact on the IP, the games are practically the last bastion of the franchise at this point. This won't be a scratch on Jedi Survivor, but just by merit of being average it'll be infinitely better than The Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker, and everything on Disney+ since Mando S1.
At this point it looks quite likely that the Steam sales won't even be enough to recoup the work hours and wages spent on the PC port, QA and testing, etc.
That must sting. As much as I expected the game to fail by merit of being... well, just a bit too boring compared to the competition before you even get to the price, that it is so much worse than I expected.
And with another looming competitor officially confirmed in Deadlock, I doubt they have any way back from this on the PC front.
@RoomWithaMoose "As for the pronouns... are those things even in Concord?"
I don't have a horse in this race, but yes, they are. Every character has their pronouns listed on their profile/customisation page - she/her, undecided, etc.
Ignoring the other part of the claim which was umm... yeah, not so evidence based on their part, I imagine.
@UltimateOtaku91 It would be more accurate to say that gamers are playing a small number of the multitude of available multiplayer games. For every one that finds success (before ultimately losing much of its audience to something else) there are several/many that will fail outright - present company seemingly included.
Also, to suggest that the currently-playing list is an indicator of singleplayer vs multiplayer/live-service games' success is quite laughable, given that only one of them expects and needs to keep people playing ad infinitum. Generally speaking, the one and only metric of an SP success (outside of those which creep in GaaS elements like premium currency and battle passes) is how well it sold, not how many people are still playing it.
Not any better than his last few outings, frankly, with the same games/developers/publishers saving it, too many cashgrab live service games paying/pandering for airtime (if that Cartoon Keighley trailer wasn't written up just to stroke the man's ego, I'd be surprised) and only a handful of genuinely interesting new announcements.
Of known games, just Monster Hunter really - and mostly for the less-than-subtle video countdown over the last couple of weeks that can surely only be leading up to a new trailer and a release date during the show.
I had to look up what the nerf to flamethrowers actually was... and it's just that it isn't overpowered against Chargers anymore, really? One enemy type is enough for people to whinge that much?
Please, stop reporting on the Helldivers reddit, discord, etc, they do not even remotely represent the playerbase at large.
"The most puzzling thing about this picture is how it managed to assemble such an all-star cast: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Jamie Lee Curtis..."
It's not the first and certainly won't be the last example of "paid enough to offset the shame". Not paid enough to pretend that it's a good movie or role, but when even the promotional posters, photos and official screenshots look like garbage, what can you do - a cast of solid actors (and Kevin Hart is there too) can't carry a bad project; if anything, having recognisable faces in uninspired cosplay just makes the whole thing more jarring.
@AndyKazama There is that, true! I'm nearing that point myself, sitting at 8/10 with a few Descendants that I'm close to completing. I was expecting the slots to be much more expensive honestly, at 80 pence a pop they're very reasonable.
(For my part to support them I've bought a few of the lower end cosmetics for my favourite characters, but yeah, as neat as some of the Ultimates and their shop outfits look there's just no way I could justify throwing that much money at them in one go.)
@AndyKazama Honestly, if you have the time, patience and continue to enjoy the game, there isn't that much of a f2p paywall. The main progression point in the end/postgame is Crystallisation Catalysts to 'prestige' your gear/characters to gradually optimise them and the occasional one-time Energy Activator for your favourites. You get a pretty reliable flow of the former so long as you're cracking open lootblobs for other blueprints, and the latter show up... well, very occasionally, but often enough. I imagine there are people who have bought them instead to dodge the farming/crafting times, but with those price tags I could only see it being the whales who already spent $100 on an early character unlock.
Edit: Had to remind myself how much those two items cost to skip via the store and... yeah, at £5 and £20 each, if and when you get to that point, the patient ingame route works just fine. xD
@glassmusic I'd agree with the others here and say ZZZ. Genshin is fun but it was quite bloated with content and the sprawling map at launch and that's only gotten better/worse since launch. What Star Rail did well, and ZZZ does even better, is cut down the bloat, refine the core of the game and make the whole thing more accessible.
I haven't played Genshin in the better part of two years now, but one of its most glaring and persistent flaws was in how many of its underlying systems didn't really respect your time; their subsequent games have done a much better job of letting the main game flow more smoothly while offering timesinks on the side - most notably in HSR's ever-expanding Simulated Universe and ZZZ's equivalent Hollow Zero, essentially pseudo-roguelite modes.
@DennisReynolds I'd say that's the real nail on the head right there - USPs and individual character; how well the game stands out from the competition, or how well it largely avoids competition by catering to a different audience.
The games that have survived after bad launches have largely done so because their execution was flawed but the core idea was still interesting and engaging. There's the argument there that yes, some games could have survived or even flourished with more dev time post-launch, but there are also many, many projects that were doomed long before launch just by fault of being too derivative, unoriginal, and too focused on poaching from other another game's playerbase.
a.k.a. the "you can't polish a turd" argument; a game can't be saved post-launch if there's nothing there worth saving.
Honestly, as much as it has managed to catch me in the compulsion loop for the moment, it's a 6/10 if I'm feeling generous, realistically a 5/10 - on the mediocre side of average.
What it does well is largely ripped wholesale from other games (most glaringly Warframe), but it borrows their worst elements too while bringing its own glaring flaws to the table - an absolutely godawful, terribly acted story being at the forefront, making it one of the first games in years that I've actively skipped cutscenes and dialogue for.
The difficulty scaling is atrocious from the midgame onwards - you initially hit a wall once your character hits the level cap while enemies don't, only overcoming it by falling into the cycle of grind, craft, wait, repeat to slowly optimise your module capacity and move the scales back in your favor; though after a few cycles, likely after reaching Hard Mode, the scales tip too far and remove all challenge from the game bar the extremely spongey, overtuned bosses which remain.
Unfortunately this cycle also makes for a horrendous new player experience at this stage, as many of those mid/late-game players are there farming materials all throughout Normal mode, either blitzing through missions leaving newbies to chase dust or dropping out once they kill the enemy that holds their loot. It was already starting to be a problem when I jumped in a few days after launch, but now its rare to jump into certain dungeons without a Bunny zooming off to murder everything without a thought for anyone else. This borrowed system worked in Warframe because the game structured itself very differently - you found what you wanted, carved out a route to it (often a long, optional one), and farmed it - but it being overlaid on a linear story path here really does not work.
One example given too much time, but symptomatic of the game at large - too many conflicting ideas slapped together with too little thought.
@BAMozzy To be fair, most live service and/or multiplayer games would kill to still have even 10% of their peak player count after nearly six months. Considering also that it was much, much more successful at launch than they expected, they're doing just fine.
...But they said all of this 3 weeks ago ahead of the trailers/showcase, in their own Bioware blog post, which you reported on at the time. This is about as far from a reveal as you can get.
Personally I'd almost be happier if the game wasn't open world, and was more of a refined largely-linear adventure, if it meant that the reportedly lacklustre elements (and visibly, as far as the gunplay in the gameplay trailer goes) in the missions could be given the extra care and focus that would really sell the space scoundrel fantasy.
But given that they're not doing that, if they're going to keep leading with the tagline and gameplay focus (of debatable accuracy, if you include MMOs) of this being the "first ever open world Star Wars game", choosing to forego the open world side in favour of some decidedly average linear gameplay in the first showing was definitely a bit of an own goal.
"heavy emphasis on stealth, and while it stuck with that formula for many games"
To be fair, that "emphasis on stealth" in the pre-RPG games was more a case of just "many stealth-forced missions that fail on detection".
But yeah, while Naoe looks fun and seems to have a lot of tools up her sleeve for both sides, Yasuke looks rather dull and like little more than a reskin of Eivor-minus-stealth. And so far seems to talk far too much in fluent Cliché. I expect, like Jacob before him, I would relegate him to "only played if/when the game makes it mandatory".
On the art style, it was quite jarring for me going from that initial scene of Varric and Harding and they look pretty much as they should, instantly recognisable... and then the other characters are shown with the more cartoonish facial features and just, what?
And yep, if this is that what they meant by the change in title better representing the focus that they wanted on the party... they were better off sticking to Dreadwolf, in both title and concept. (I do like the variety in the team and their roles though, all sark aside, so hopefully there'll be more of a Dragon Age feeling when they show us actual gameplay)
@Bez87 It definitely feels like a pretty firm response to the (accurate) "Xbox have no good games anymore" of recent years. Along with the buying in of third-party, multiplatform reveals/trailers - even if they refuse to allow "PS5" to appear at the end of the trailer - Microsoft have put both the State of Play and SGF to shame so far. Microsoft learned from it, Sony evidently didn't and fell into the same trap.
Will be interesting to see in the coming days/weeks, once their initial PR "play it on gamepass" push fades, which of their titles will be coming our way.
The biggest problem with the show was the same that's plagued the industry (and others) more and over the last few years; leaking culture.
The main would-be-surprise announcements - LEGO Horizons and Civ VII - along with some of the "meh" ones like New World Console, weren't a surprise at all. Civ VII had its lengthy cinematic which was clearly designed to build a growing thought of "Is it...? Oh, yes, it is!", but instead you knew 5 seconds in that it was the reveal that leaked the day before.
There's a drought of major titles right now for sure, and the AAA side of the industry - spending more and more on inflated game budgets in pursuit of the next super-profitable blockbuster, just to collapse and destroy countless studios and projects - takes full blame for that.
But christ alive, the leaking of so many intended surprises among what remains really strips so much of the fun out of these kinds of things.
Dreadwolf was a better, more fluid subtitle. Veilguard wouldn't have been too bad. But "Dragon Age: The Veilguard" really doesn't flow.
Minor gripe aside though, it'll be good to finally see something. While the IGN interview makes it sound like it's going further past Inquisition into a Mass Effect-but-fantasy gameplay style, where I would've preferred a return to something closer to Origins, if the time they've spent on it has been well used hopefully we'll have something neat to look forward to.
Just, please, don't pad the game with as much timewasting open-ish-world padding as Inquisition, or fluff it entirely as with every Bioware project since.
For people interested in it, it sounds like a good move. A high base price for a live service game that wants you to keep spending is always a bad look, so, fair play to them.
Though given that I only like live service done well, and loathe PvP-only games, I'd still rather spend that £35 on a complete, one-and-done singleplayer game on sale.
Count one more who thought this looked like it had a lot of potential, a varied and distinct group of playable characters, a distant tugging nostalgia at the back of the mind, the feeling that we don't see very many games of this style with more than one or two main, fully playable characters nowadays.
All that promise and potential in the trailer, for it to be a live service gacha. Urgh.
Welp, that's it then, my final results are in and Monster Hunter was the sole saving grace of the lineup.
My heart lept when I realised it was clearly Dynasty Warriors at play in what looks to be a solid engine and fluid motion. Maybe they could finally redeem themselves for the mess of DW9 after such a long wait.
Then my heart started to sink wondering "okay this new character looks fun to play despite his boring visual design, but when are they going to show someone else?"
And then they dropped the tale of the nameless protaganist and "Origins", the most trite of subtitles, and I simultaneously lost both hope and interest.
I honestly would have preferred a game more like their cinematic - a singleplayer game focusing on a lively, crew of space outlaws - infinitely more than what Concord actually is.
As it was, giving is an "in-engine cinematic" that will neither be featured in the game itself nor represents the experience in any meaningful way was one hell of a bum note to start on.
Sounds good to me. Hopefully it means that more of the known issues that have been tacked on to the patch notes for months can finally be addressed, and mean that fewer issues will slip through the cracks on new content/patches (new weapons like the Tenderiser releasing with intended stats, not having things like the visible red collision meshes on the horde maps or the "cloaked ships" accidentally creep into the live build, etc).
"We're not trying to be difficult", the PR guy says, while trying to avoid answering the question so desperately as to effectively answer it between the lines - it's not "yes, the studios are still running", but they don't want to say no.
If the studios aren't already shut down, they're either in the process of liquidation or only still "exist" on a techincality.
Comments 159
Re: Star Wars Outlaws PS5 Patch 1.1.2 Has Trophy Fixes, Easier Stealth Missions
@MikeOrator
They knee-jerked to the simple "fix" rather than dealing with the actual problem that makes those stealth sections more punishing than they should be; infrequent checkpoints/autosaves and no option to save manually during set-piece missions. Proper saves are all the game needed, instead of a system that would've felt out of place ten years ago.
Re: Bungie Commits to Destiny 2 DLC and Support Through 2026
@ZeroSum My thoughts exactly; I haven't played D2 in years, but from the outside looking in this just seems like one more way of trying to milk more money-per-user out of the ever-dwindling playerbase. I imagine the full package of expansions and season passes will cost substantially more than the equivalent 'full package' edition of Final Shape.
Re: Soapbox: Astro's Playroom PS5 Did Live Service and You Didn't Even Notice
"I understand people are going to bristle at this article; they’re going to point to the calamitous launch of Concord and claim what Team ASOBI did here doesn’t count."
No, Sammy, we're going to take issue with you being a pedant.
Games receiving permanent updates or additions at no extra charge to players isn't what anyone associates with the term "live service" nor any of its connotations, so don't try to be clever - it's not the same thing. No more than Baldur's Gate 3 is "live service" by merit of its extensive patches. If you're to follow this argument to the illogical conclusion, you're suggesting that any game that does anything after launch is a live service.
Re: Star Wars Outlaws, XDefiant Disappointments Pour Pain on Ubisoft's Share Prices
@AverageGamer The thing is, given the choice, I would 100% agree with you and use manual saves. I regularly do for the more open-ended stuff, knowing that they'll put me mostly back where I want to be.
It was in fact through trying to manually save within the game's opening hours that I found that you couldn't - manual saving is completely locked out during story missions, which is why the terrible autosaves for them are such an issue.
Oh, right, one more thing. Never reload a checkpoint from the moment after making a reputation-changing decision; as it stands, it will tend to load you back to the moment before the decision, but will keep your reputation from the moment after... and promptly lower it even more.
Re: Star Wars Outlaws, XDefiant Disappointments Pour Pain on Ubisoft's Share Prices
@RubyCarbuncle Same here - as I say, it's decent and for the most part I've had a very enjoyable time with it. On a more positive note, the atmosphere and characterisation is very well done - the little character moments between Kay and Nix are probably one of my favourite things.
But boy, the game definitely had me grumbling "who designed this?!" under my breath in those opening hours, especially coming from other recent games that have handled checkpoints and progress so, so much better, allowed manual saves at all times, etc.
Re: Star Wars Outlaws, XDefiant Disappointments Pour Pain on Ubisoft's Share Prices
@RubyCarbuncle It's decent. I'd say for the most part it does feel less like "standard Ubisoft open world" and more like an Uncharted-but-space setup with the open areas there really just to connect it together and give you extra loot to find.
My main complaint about it would be that the checkpointing system for those missions is abysmal, particularly in the early sections and any forced-stealth setups. The game will not save your progress except for at very specific trigger points, and will quite happily throw away all your progress on completing challenges, looting chests, etc. Early on I had a moment of exploring the first (second?) city, accidentally falling into a pit in a side area... and suddenly found myself back outside the gates with the entire area reset to square one - and later spent quite some time meticulously stealthing my way through a large compound during a story mission, opened the Load menu to see if the game was keeping track... and the last autosave was over an hour ago. And even on loading the rare mid-mission checkpoints, it will do so while respawning every enemy in the location, relocking doors, etc - essentially reintroducing every obstacle that you'd cleared.
So, yeah, that's my biggest "buyer beware" warning if, like me, you prefer to fully explore areas and complete side content alongside the main quest.
Re: Minecraft's Weird Live Action Movie Is Going to Be Massive, Isn't It?
It looks dire, frankly, but it has one advantage over Borderlands that will make it a success regardless.
Its target audience is children, who won't care about a cliche story and terrible script, because Jack Black as Steve will do a funny sometimes, and maybe even dance. And there will be at least one Creeper that explodes.
...Actually, yep, a lot of what made Borderlands terrible for the PG-13 market will make this perfect for one of Minecraft-obsessed children. Still, spare a thought for their parents.
Re: Black Myth: Wukong's Xbox Delay Isn't Due to Platform Limitations, Says Microsoft
@Boxmonkey Why should they? If it were a formal accusation from Microsoft itself, then yes, they should. But it's not, and they shouldn't. This is just a guttersniping journalist who pulled a rumour out of thin air, quickly had his "information" discredited by a number of his peers, and is now trying to draw non-commital corpospeak out of context to save face.
Ignore him, blacklist him, job done.
Re: Internal Sony Fairgame$ Chatter Is Reportedly Quite Positive
@PuppetMaster I mean., it occurs to me that if they'd merged the two ideas and made Concord into "light-hearted spacefaring Payday with hero powers" instead of... well, Concord, the game might have actually found an audience.
Or at least more of an audience.
Re: Random: Gearbox Founder, CEO Compares Company to The Beatles, Gets Roasted
The Beatles: Strawberry Fields Forever
Randy Pitchford: Duke Nukem Forever
Re: Reaction: PlayStation Needs to Take a Long, Hard Look at Itself
@Dalejrfanfreak "horizon forbidden west didn’t do as good as the first one, God of War Ragnarok not as good as the first, same for the last of us part 2."
In fairness, these have nothing to do with diversity and everything to do with the unwritten law of (high profile) sequels - they will rarely match up to the first entry, especially when they're a straight-shot continuation. With a sequel you're retargeting the same audience who bought in the first time, but in the case of a hit game that audience is generally going to shrink - people who didn't enjoy the first, decided that it was just "okay" or simply didn't finish it for whatever reason are much less likely to come back.
God of War '18 sold so well because it was a new take on the franchise; Ragnarok sold less (though still plenty) because, for better or worse, it was more of God of War '18.
Re: Sony Flop Concord Axed Two Weeks After PS5, PC Release
@kuu_nousee "This is a huge negative dent into that and who knows might delay or take some single player games from AAA to AA quality."
Is a reduction from AAA to AA - however you'd quantify that - really such a bad thing, though? All this nonsense, ongoing price hikes on games and services, when the realistic answer to "games keep costing more to make" is probably to stop making your studios bigger and bigger, and stop burning time and money on graphics and gameplay features (Yes, you can pet the dog! And it has fully physics-modelled fur!) that don't add anything beyond a split-second of novelty.
Ultimately they're in the classic monetarist trap of continually spending more in the hopes of making more, and if they don't adapt to a more realistic model of making games the AAA industry will implode on itself sooner or later - whether from sinking fortunes into doomed projects like this, eventually pricing their own customers out of the market, or so on.
Re: Talking Point: Can PS5, PC Shooter Concord Be Saved?
I feel like the only way that Concord could have been saved would have been for Sony/Firewalk to be more open about its development. If they'd shown off the game and talked about their monetisation approach earlier, they could have had time to take on feedback and course-correct to some extent.
At this point, the damage is done.
Re: Preview: Monster Hunter Wilds on PS5 Feels Like Another Generational Leap Forward for the Iconic Franchise
"...but at least shows Capcom’s growing awareness of how messed up the premise of “let’s hunt to extinction Indigenous life in foreign lands” of past games has been."
While the gameplay loop often comes to that, you couldn't be much further from the overall story premise of why the Hunters and their Guild exist and what they canonically do.
Re: Round Up: Star Wars Outlaws PS5 Reviews Are Hit and Miss
I'm looking forward to it, warts and all. You know what you get with Ubisoft games, even if it it's just "variations of average".
That, and with the horrors that Disney continues to enact on the IP, the games are practically the last bastion of the franchise at this point. This won't be a scratch on Jedi Survivor, but just by merit of being average it'll be infinitely better than The Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker, and everything on Disney+ since Mando S1.
Re: Rumour: PS5 Pro Still Planned to Release in 2024, State of Play Coming in September
Sorry, but putting "Jeff Grubb" and "reliable" in the same sentence made it immediately impossible to take this article seriously.
Re: Site News: Where's Our Star Wars Outlaws PS5 Review?
An understandable delay, though fronting late reviews for three high-profile releases in a row isn't the best look.
Re: Things Are Getting Worse for Floundering PS5, PC FPS Concord
At this point it looks quite likely that the Steam sales won't even be enough to recoup the work hours and wages spent on the PC port, QA and testing, etc.
That must sting. As much as I expected the game to fail by merit of being... well, just a bit too boring compared to the competition before you even get to the price, that it is so much worse than I expected.
And with another looming competitor officially confirmed in Deadlock, I doubt they have any way back from this on the PC front.
Re: PS5, PC FPS Concord's Poor Player Numbers Have Predictably Gone Viral
@RoomWithaMoose "As for the pronouns... are those things even in Concord?"
I don't have a horse in this race, but yes, they are. Every character has their pronouns listed on their profile/customisation page - she/her, undecided, etc.
Ignoring the other part of the claim which was umm... yeah, not so evidence based on their part, I imagine.
Re: PS5, PC FPS Concord's Poor Player Numbers Have Predictably Gone Viral
@UltimateOtaku91 It would be more accurate to say that gamers are playing a small number of the multitude of available multiplayer games. For every one that finds success (before ultimately losing much of its audience to something else) there are several/many that will fail outright - present company seemingly included.
Also, to suggest that the currently-playing list is an indicator of singleplayer vs multiplayer/live-service games' success is quite laughable, given that only one of them expects and needs to keep people playing ad infinitum. Generally speaking, the one and only metric of an SP success (outside of those which creep in GaaS elements like premium currency and battle passes) is how well it sold, not how many people are still playing it.
Re: Poll: What Did You Think of Gamescom Opening Night Live 2024?
Not any better than his last few outings, frankly, with the same games/developers/publishers saving it, too many cashgrab live service games paying/pandering for airtime (if that Cartoon Keighley trailer wasn't written up just to stroke the man's ego, I'd be surprised) and only a handful of genuinely interesting new announcements.
Re: Poll: What PS5 Games Do You Most Want to See at Gamescom 2024?
Of known games, just Monster Hunter really - and mostly for the less-than-subtle video countdown over the last couple of weeks that can surely only be leading up to a new trailer and a release date during the show.
Re: More Spicy Helldivers 2 Drama as Freedom's Flame Backlash Boils Over
I had to look up what the nerf to flamethrowers actually was... and it's just that it isn't overpowered against Chargers anymore, really? One enemy type is enough for people to whinge that much?
Please, stop reporting on the Helldivers reddit, discord, etc, they do not even remotely represent the playerbase at large.
Re: Movie Review: Borderlands - As Bland As the Brand It's Based On
"The most puzzling thing about this picture is how it managed to assemble such an all-star cast: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Jamie Lee Curtis..."
It's not the first and certainly won't be the last example of "paid enough to offset the shame". Not paid enough to pretend that it's a good movie or role, but when even the promotional posters, photos and official screenshots look like garbage, what can you do - a cast of solid actors (and Kevin Hart is there too) can't carry a bad project; if anything, having recognisable faces in uninspired cosplay just makes the whole thing more jarring.
Re: Free-to-Play Hit The First Descendant Treated to First Big Update Today
@AndyKazama There is that, true! I'm nearing that point myself, sitting at 8/10 with a few Descendants that I'm close to completing. I was expecting the slots to be much more expensive honestly, at 80 pence a pop they're very reasonable.
(For my part to support them I've bought a few of the lower end cosmetics for my favourite characters, but yeah, as neat as some of the Ultimates and their shop outfits look there's just no way I could justify throwing that much money at them in one go.)
Re: Free-to-Play Hit The First Descendant Treated to First Big Update Today
@AndyKazama Honestly, if you have the time, patience and continue to enjoy the game, there isn't that much of a f2p paywall. The main progression point in the end/postgame is Crystallisation Catalysts to 'prestige' your gear/characters to gradually optimise them and the occasional one-time Energy Activator for your favourites. You get a pretty reliable flow of the former so long as you're cracking open lootblobs for other blueprints, and the latter show up... well, very occasionally, but often enough. I imagine there are people who have bought them instead to dodge the farming/crafting times, but with those price tags I could only see it being the whales who already spent $100 on an early character unlock.
Edit: Had to remind myself how much those two items cost to skip via the store and... yeah, at £5 and £20 each, if and when you get to that point, the patient ingame route works just fine. xD
Re: Urban RPG Zenless Zone Zero Is Totting Up Tons of PS5 Playtime
@glassmusic I'd agree with the others here and say ZZZ. Genshin is fun but it was quite bloated with content and the sprawling map at launch and that's only gotten better/worse since launch. What Star Rail did well, and ZZZ does even better, is cut down the bloat, refine the core of the game and make the whole thing more accessible.
I haven't played Genshin in the better part of two years now, but one of its most glaring and persistent flaws was in how many of its underlying systems didn't really respect your time; their subsequent games have done a much better job of letting the main game flow more smoothly while offering timesinks on the side - most notably in HSR's ever-expanding Simulated Universe and ZZZ's equivalent Hollow Zero, essentially pseudo-roguelite modes.
Re: Publishers Bail on Live-Service Flops Too Quickly, Says Warframe Boss
@DennisReynolds I'd say that's the real nail on the head right there - USPs and individual character; how well the game stands out from the competition, or how well it largely avoids competition by catering to a different audience.
The games that have survived after bad launches have largely done so because their execution was flawed but the core idea was still interesting and engaging. There's the argument there that yes, some games could have survived or even flourished with more dev time post-launch, but there are also many, many projects that were doomed long before launch just by fault of being too derivative, unoriginal, and too focused on poaching from other another game's playerbase.
a.k.a. the "you can't polish a turd" argument; a game can't be saved post-launch if there's nothing there worth saving.
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give The First Descendant?
Honestly, as much as it has managed to catch me in the compulsion loop for the moment, it's a 6/10 if I'm feeling generous, realistically a 5/10 - on the mediocre side of average.
What it does well is largely ripped wholesale from other games (most glaringly Warframe), but it borrows their worst elements too while bringing its own glaring flaws to the table - an absolutely godawful, terribly acted story being at the forefront, making it one of the first games in years that I've actively skipped cutscenes and dialogue for.
The difficulty scaling is atrocious from the midgame onwards - you initially hit a wall once your character hits the level cap while enemies don't, only overcoming it by falling into the cycle of grind, craft, wait, repeat to slowly optimise your module capacity and move the scales back in your favor; though after a few cycles, likely after reaching Hard Mode, the scales tip too far and remove all challenge from the game bar the extremely spongey, overtuned bosses which remain.
Unfortunately this cycle also makes for a horrendous new player experience at this stage, as many of those mid/late-game players are there farming materials all throughout Normal mode, either blitzing through missions leaving newbies to chase dust or dropping out once they kill the enemy that holds their loot. It was already starting to be a problem when I jumped in a few days after launch, but now its rare to jump into certain dungeons without a Bunny zooming off to murder everything without a thought for anyone else. This borrowed system worked in Warframe because the game structured itself very differently - you found what you wanted, carved out a route to it (often a long, optional one), and farmed it - but it being overlaid on a linear story path here really does not work.
One example given too much time, but symptomatic of the game at large - too many conflicting ideas slapped together with too little thought.
Re: Relief as Helldivers 2 Players Unearth Anti-Tank Stratagem That Isn't Mines
@Nakatomi_Uk Does it count if every weapon with backblast in the game already does that?
Re: Gacha Sensation Zenless Zone Zero Surpasses 50 Million Downloads Across All Platforms
@Mikey856 ...It is an almost entirely singleplayer game though...
Re: The Obligatory Helldivers 2 Isn't As Popular As It Was Headlines Have Started to Emerge
@BAMozzy To be fair, most live service and/or multiplayer games would kill to still have even 10% of their peak player count after nearly six months. Considering also that it was much, much more successful at launch than they expected, they're doing just fine.
Re: PS5, PS4 Indie Sensation Dave the Diver Takes a Titillating Twist in NIKKE Crossover
Featuring Dave and Bancho...
I suppose a tie-in with the Gunsmith would have been a bit too on-the-nose, true.
Re: GTA 6 Fans Nervous As GTA Online Locks Crucial Quality of Life Feature Behind GTA+ Sub on PS5, PS4
Sounds like standard Rockstar at this point, unfortunately. Milking money out of the multiplayer is and has been their main priority for years.
Re: Dragon Age Name Change Reflects Game's Focus on Your Party Rather Than Solas
"key figures at the studio have revealed"
...But they said all of this 3 weeks ago ahead of the trailers/showcase, in their own Bioware blog post, which you reported on at the time. This is about as far from a reveal as you can get.
Re: Criticised Star Wars Outlaws PS5 Demo Merely an 'Amuse-Bouche' of the Full Experience
"but not the open world experience"
Personally I'd almost be happier if the game wasn't open world, and was more of a refined largely-linear adventure, if it meant that the reportedly lacklustre elements (and visibly, as far as the gunplay in the gameplay trailer goes) in the missions could be given the extra care and focus that would really sell the space scoundrel fantasy.
But given that they're not doing that, if they're going to keep leading with the tagline and gameplay focus (of debatable accuracy, if you include MMOs) of this being the "first ever open world Star Wars game", choosing to forego the open world side in favour of some decidedly average linear gameplay in the first showing was definitely a bit of an own goal.
Re: Preview: Assassin's Creed Shadows' Two Characters Will Satisfy Both Old and New Fans on PS5
"heavy emphasis on stealth, and while it stuck with that formula for many games"
To be fair, that "emphasis on stealth" in the pre-RPG games was more a case of just "many stealth-forced missions that fail on detection".
But yeah, while Naoe looks fun and seems to have a lot of tools up her sleeve for both sides, Yasuke looks rather dull and like little more than a reskin of Eivor-minus-stealth. And so far seems to talk far too much in fluent Cliché. I expect, like Jacob before him, I would relegate him to "only played if/when the game makes it mandatory".
Re: Dragon Age: The Veilguard Reveal Has Utterly Torn Fan Opinion as Trailer Gets Slaughtered
On the art style, it was quite jarring for me going from that initial scene of Varric and Harding and they look pretty much as they should, instantly recognisable... and then the other characters are shown with the more cartoonish facial features and just, what?
And yep, if this is that what they meant by the change in title better representing the focus that they wanted on the party... they were better off sticking to Dreadwolf, in both title and concept. (I do like the variety in the team and their roles though, all sark aside, so hopefully there'll be more of a Dragon Age feeling when they show us actual gameplay)
Re: Xbox Really Wasn't Happy with PlayStation's Call of Duty Marketing Deal
Disingenuous and hypocrytical. Phil, Phil never changes.
Re: Metal Gear Solid 3 PS5 Remake Given New Trailer, But No Release Date
@Bez87 It definitely feels like a pretty firm response to the (accurate) "Xbox have no good games anymore" of recent years. Along with the buying in of third-party, multiplatform reveals/trailers - even if they refuse to allow "PS5" to appear at the end of the trailer - Microsoft have put both the State of Play and SGF to shame so far. Microsoft learned from it, Sony evidently didn't and fell into the same trap.
Will be interesting to see in the coming days/weeks, once their initial PR "play it on gamepass" push fades, which of their titles will be coming our way.
Re: Reaction: Summer Game Fest 2024 Showcases AAA's Endless Winter
The biggest problem with the show was the same that's plagued the industry (and others) more and over the last few years; leaking culture.
The main would-be-surprise announcements - LEGO Horizons and Civ VII - along with some of the "meh" ones like New World Console, weren't a surprise at all. Civ VII had its lengthy cinematic which was clearly designed to build a growing thought of "Is it...? Oh, yes, it is!", but instead you knew 5 seconds in that it was the reveal that leaked the day before.
There's a drought of major titles right now for sure, and the AAA side of the industry - spending more and more on inflated game budgets in pursuit of the next super-profitable blockbuster, just to collapse and destroy countless studios and projects - takes full blame for that.
But christ alive, the leaking of so many intended surprises among what remains really strips so much of the fun out of these kinds of things.
Re: Poll: Was Summer Game Fest 2024 Great or a Letdown?
They managed to make the State of Play look good.
Or at the very least, more respectful of our time.
Re: Showing a Trailer at Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest Reportedly Costs $250K for One Minute
"Please wrap it up, we don't get paid for speeches."
Re: Dragon Age: Dreadwolf Now Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Full Gameplay Reveal Next Week
Dreadwolf was a better, more fluid subtitle. Veilguard wouldn't have been too bad. But "Dragon Age: The Veilguard" really doesn't flow.
Minor gripe aside though, it'll be good to finally see something. While the IGN interview makes it sound like it's going further past Inquisition into a Mass Effect-but-fantasy gameplay style, where I would've preferred a return to something closer to Origins, if the time they've spent on it has been well used hopefully we'll have something neat to look forward to.
Just, please, don't pad the game with as much timewasting open-ish-world padding as Inquisition, or fluff it entirely as with every Bioware project since.
Re: Sony's New PS5, PC Shooter Concord Confirmed as a $40 Game
For people interested in it, it sounds like a good move. A high base price for a live service game that wants you to keep spending is always a bad look, so, fair play to them.
Though given that I only like live service done well, and loathe PvP-only games, I'd still rather spend that £35 on a complete, one-and-done singleplayer game on sale.
Re: Ballad of Antara Offers 'High Fidelity' Free-to-Play RPG Action on PS5 in 2025
....Ah. Well.
Count one more who thought this looked like it had a lot of potential, a varied and distinct group of playable characters, a distant tugging nostalgia at the back of the mind, the feeling that we don't see very many games of this style with more than one or two main, fully playable characters nowadays.
All that promise and potential in the trailer, for it to be a live service gacha. Urgh.
Welp, that's it then, my final results are in and Monster Hunter was the sole saving grace of the lineup.
Re: Dynasty Warriors Origins Could Be the Comeback Fans Have Been Waiting For on PS5
My heart lept when I realised it was clearly Dynasty Warriors at play in what looks to be a solid engine and fluid motion. Maybe they could finally redeem themselves for the mess of DW9 after such a long wait.
Then my heart started to sink wondering "okay this new character looks fun to play despite his boring visual design, but when are they going to show someone else?"
And then they dropped the tale of the nameless protaganist and "Origins", the most trite of subtitles, and I simultaneously lost both hope and interest.
Re: Concord Is Sony's Answer to Overwatch, Launches August, Beta Test in July
I honestly would have preferred a game more like their cinematic - a singleplayer game focusing on a lively, crew of space outlaws - infinitely more than what Concord actually is.
As it was, giving is an "in-engine cinematic" that will neither be featured in the game itself nor represents the experience in any meaningful way was one hell of a bum note to start on.
Re: Helldivers 2 Updates Set to Slow Down as Dev Shares Concern Over Patch Quality
Sounds good to me. Hopefully it means that more of the known issues that have been tacked on to the patch notes for months can finally be addressed, and mean that fewer issues will slip through the cracks on new content/patches (new weapons like the Tenderiser releasing with intended stats, not having things like the visible red collision meshes on the horde maps or the "cloaked ships" accidentally creep into the live build, etc).
Re: GTA Publisher Claims It 'Didn't Shutter' Roll7, Intercept Games
"We're not trying to be difficult", the PR guy says, while trying to avoid answering the question so desperately as to effectively answer it between the lines - it's not "yes, the studios are still running", but they don't want to say no.
If the studios aren't already shut down, they're either in the process of liquidation or only still "exist" on a techincality.