The Xbox GOTY is baffling. You had Dead Space, Pentiment, and Hi-Fi Rush as the nominees and they picked Starfield? I get it’s the most popular but all three of those were way better. Hi-Fi Rush got scammed.
The rest of the rewards seem good. I’m glad Cocoon got some recognition.
All the people I’ve seen playing it don’t seem to show any specific way to do mixed use, so if it does exist it’s probably just a thing that happens automatically on high density housing units
It gets unlocked later and the embargoes were staggered so they couldn't show certain milestones in the game. The newer videos will have it now, so look at those to see everything, including how their computers are chugging even with brand new hardware on high settings.
Are they still working on buffing the shit out of the same modern day protagonist as before or what? I only got about halfway through Odyssey (but looked up the ending) and skipped Valhalla.
At this point I agree. I loved the modern day stuff up until the end of 3. But then Black Flag just made it a boring slog with maybe one or two good ideas.
I can’t believe they didn’t create any mods for BF, could easily have been like Skyrim in terms of longevity. People would have added full on trading and fleet mods like the old school Syd Meyers games. What a waste of dev time to create so much potential and justet it die.
Ubisoft did finally make a stand alone version that’s in beta right now. Skull and Bones. They promised all the cool stuff we wanted and it’s totally separate from assassin’s Creed, but unfortunately they seemed to have botched it and there’s even fewer features than in Black Flag. Ubisoft just doesn’t seem to be able to make anything else except progressively worse AC games.
Oh I loved Black Flag but I wasn’t excited for it like the previous titles and the present day stuff was just kinda spinning it’s wheels while making meta jokes about Ubisoft.
Very fair! I go back to replay it with excitement and it always drops off my face when I remember how god awful the present day stuff is… can’t believe it took until Odyssey to give us an option to skip
There’re definitely roster updates and other little stuff that gets added and tweaked in the new versions as much as people like to meme about “same game”. The old versions don’t update so that’s how they get new sales. Kinda bullshit but that’s what it is.
PC gets a special short straw though and is the last gen version of the game despite PC being on par or better than the new consoles. 2K knows where they make the money and do the least everywhere else. That part is definite bullshit.
Sports games are one of the few genre where it might make sense as a gaas approach. Make 1 game for the console generation and sell roster updates every year. Add in micro transactions for the dumb stuff and it seem to be a win win all around. The game gets cheaper meaning more people will likely buy it. No one has to complain it's the same game every year because it would be by design. And devs wouldn't have to crunch every year to get the game out.
Totally agree. Shoot, even when I was still buying them I’d wait til they dropped to like $20 mid-season. It’s more of a DLC at that point which makes more sense considering what we get
Many people do. Yes, there are those that buy every year but I genuinely think they are the minority. You gotta think, even if only 1/3 of all the 2k NBA fans buy every three years, that's... still a lot of sales.
Is that really the only important aspect? That it has the NBA or Madden or FIFA brand? Does the actual game not matter at all? Because if so, I think sports gamers made their decision and have no right to complain about it’s results.
It’s the definitive basketball game and objectively does the job when it comes to that. It has its quirks for sure but the popularity speaks for itself. And given the choice, people would rather play as Lebron James as opposed to some random generated Jebron Lames; they want the real thing as seen on TV.
Now, 2K being dicks about having last-gen on PC after so many years. That’s definitely something to complain about and the reviews are deserved.
Wasn’t NBA 2K20’s trailer disliked to hell because it dedicated more time to show off the roulette wheel, pachinko and slots than basketball? That really doesn’t look like the definitive basketball game, dude. Multiplayer seems to work well enough but most of the complaints are over single player features, at least you can play a different game for that aspect.
I didn’t really encounter all that when I played and I stuck to the single player. But I don’t think that detracts from the core concept: 2K is THE basketball game when you ask most any fan or even NBA players. These guys are coming in for face scans and concerned for their in-game rating so yeah, popularity speaks for itself.
That said, the micro transaction stuff is terrible but it’s more of a thing that got slapped onto the game out of greed. I wouldn’t say it defines the game itself. Hence the complaints; mine included.
Blitz the League came out at a different time, Madden was still a beloved series by this point. You have two sports games, both are good, but one of them has the NFL license and the other doesn’t. I wouldn’t fault anyone for looking at Madden as a no brainer in such a situation.
Times have clearly changed, how many times did Angry Joe made videos ripping the Madden of the year into pieces? If the game is really that bad, giving up on the roster seems like a good compromise if it means a good game. But according to Madden players roster comes first, so I don’t know what they are complaining about.
I get that a good sports game that has the players you know and support isn’t much to ask but it’s what it is.
Never met a sports ball fan? This shit isn’t negotiable. Having working multiplayer (last years always get shut down) and up to date accurate rosters is crucial.
EA/2K got these people by the balls because there is no competition due to exclusivity. It’s really fucked up and sad for sports ball fans.
I’m a nba fan though, and I just stopped playing basketball games because I got tired of paying for roster updates. And now monetization is even worse so genre is dead to me. So as a former fan of 2k I don’t understand having to play the games so badly that people keep paying for it every year.
That applies to any game or franchise. If it gets bad enough that I detest it I’d just move on from it even if no option pops up. Especially one so predatory on top of being an annual release.
Nah modern game development is fantastic. Y’all just dont remember getting 2 good titles a year and the rest being garbage. There are more great games out there than ever before.
I actually agree. If you don’t just focus on the tippy-top AAA/AAAA live service / gambling simulators / hi-fi vapid adventure, then there are some incredible games coming out all the time.
Arguably, the “triple-I” Indies and AA mid studios have taken over the culture/price-range/innovation niche vacated by the big studios climbing over each other to impress shareholders.
Name a year that only had two AAA games come out that were any good.
Now, we just have great access to a bunch of lower budget indie games that put gameplay over graphics, so they can take more risks and some of those games are fantastic. But there hasn’t been “just two” good games a year in the past 30 years.
Unlike many people in this thread, I actually have heard of the game. The makers of a podcast I follow loved it, and had the head of the studio on their show for a pretty frank interview, too. When I learned that there was a free demo, I decided I would give the game a try some time.
And in light of the overwhelming negativity in this thread, I did so last night. And what can I say? I spent an hour and change going through the prologue, the training and the first battle sequence, and I really enjoyed it. Movement and shooting slinging magic are great fun, with a diversity of spells available pretty much from the get-go. Just shoot, or throw a massive armor-breaking spell at a wave of enemies, or use a lash to pull a remote enemy close and whack them. I wouldn’t have know what to expect from the ‘CoD with magic’ premise but it’s really enjoyable so far.
The voice acting is very good, and while the facial animations are a bit uncanny valley, I am enjoying the snarky dialogues and matching facial expressions. Gina Torres has presence, and the rest of the cast so far blends in fine.
I will definitely spend some more time with the demo, and if it doesn’t annoy me too much, I might just buy this. And that seems to be the feedback the devs got from many people - once players actually get their hands on it, they actually enjoy it. According ton the studio head, sales have picked up towards Christmas, and they’ve been getting a lot of conversions from the free demo.
I think the problem is just that, the game is… okay, not bad or good, just okay, unremarkable and forgettable.
If you want good sales you need to do something innovative and interesting, or something cliché but really well done.
Taking a look at Doom 2016 (also a single player shooter) we can see the core gameplay: Shoot demons, Pick up ammo, Shoot more demons. But it’s crafted so masterfully that you spend dozens or hundreds of hours doing just that.
Now with this game that I actually forgot the name mid comment, It’s… well you get the ideia.
Why does a game cost that much to make? I’m not saying every game should be an indie, but given what indies can accomplish it’s a little ridiculous to spend $125 million.
If I had to guess, texture quality and graphical fidelity is really high, plus this was one of the first games to run in UE5. A mix of extreme amounts of manhours invested into graphics coupled with slow progress due to having to get used to everything.
And rampant corruption at EA, I bet. 40 million marketing my ass, the game barely had any marketing!
Marketing and payroll are always the two biggest, and yes they can get to those numbers easily at AAA scale. AAA games are as big of productions as big budget movies these days. Hundreds of people involved. Graphics of that level are also extremely expensive and time consuming. Everything has to be motion captured, and the fidelity just takes a long time. Every single piece of trash on the ground has to have a full PBR material stack.
With graphics it’s kind of an exponential thing. The closer you get to absolute realism the more time it takes exponentially. That’s why so many indies are embracing retro graphics these days. It lets you spend a lot more time on the gameplay and content. AAAs are expected to look this good as a baseline, and that already pigeon holes a lot of design choices with the deadlines they’re working with. A truly innovative game that looks AAA quality would take more years to make than these studios are willing to devote to them.
And finally there’s the marketing. Mainstream casual gamers, which are who these companies are usually targeting, is the most expensive group to market to by a long shot. They can really only be reached by huge marketing campaigns on TV, social media, and physical signage. Those types of campaigns can easily get into the millions. They’re also probably spending a large amount on having influencers play the game on stream. The big guys I’m sure cost hundreds of thousands, though I have no idea the actual numbers.
Wait, didn’t EA had their in-house engine Frostbite? They botched Mass Effect Andromeda because they moved from UE to frostbite (not the only reason) .
Yeah and for a while it was mandated to be used for ~everything IIRC but after years of struggling to retain programmers and designers they finally relented on that mandate.
Well you see managers need to be paid more than everyone else and theirs lots of managers. Plus headcount is in the hundreds to pump out all the features and art assets within a few years
There’s no propaganda, the studio is in Russia and the game was released shortly before the special military operation by coincidence. They wanted to release it on Defender of the Fatherland day since that’s a pretty patriotic day which fits the game pretty well but Putin also wanted to release revenge on that day so now it’s all muddled.
I’ve played it and the game feels more like a parady similar to Fallout so if you count fallout as propaganda then Atomic Heart is also propaganda
Only bad thing really about it is Denuvo (properly implemented it doesn’t make the game run like garbage, but I still like to run my game whenever I want without online verification and excessive load times). I might buy it when it’s DRM free on GOG and discounted.
You don’t even have to go that far for the joke. An official Bloodborne PC port releasing first would be a miracle. God do I pray for that port release 😭
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