Thank you! The CEOs’ children need Maseratis, boarding school, college, jet fuel to pedo islands, and so many other necessities! We can’t let them suffer!
I feel old. Remember when a brand new, highly anticipated, AAA game was like $40?
Not they are $70, plus $20-40 for preorder deluxe directors cut extra content bonus versions. Plus $10-30 for “season passes”. Plus online subscription services for the game itself, the online service the game runs on, or both. Oh, and don’t forget ad placement in the game. A giant billboard for house insurance in every cutscene. Drink your monster energy to refill your sprint meter…
That doesn’t include greedy mobile games that require vast amounts of money to remove artificial restriction, such as daily energy meters to act. Or cosmetic DLC that costs half the price of the game itself.
And don’t even get me start on the constant tracking, spying, or actual malware some publishers implement in their games.
100% agree we should not trust Konami. Especially with a sloppy ports we just got. That being said I think they are looking at capcom and how the company is making money off single player games and high quality ones at that and want to do the same. Will it work who knows.
Well, they never really did. They just more or less stopped making A-AAA games and got rid of Kojima. The Castlevania remasters and the pachinko shit continued. I want to say their football game also continued?
But… they are getting back into “gaming”. So even those who “remember” no longer have anything to complain about?
The other aspect is their nasty break-up with Kojima. Which was VERY much amplified because of how many game journos are massive Kojima fanboys and how the rest more or less said “Well, labor rights are good to care about”. Because, ignoring the Kojima love fest, Konami:
Stopped funding someone who wasted massive amounts of money motion capping horses and making women strip down so he could motion cap them in the nude (yup)*
Finally let said problematic asshole recast the fan favorite voice actor… but didn’t give him an unlimited budget so Jack Bauer only got paid for like six lines of dialogue (in fairness, the audiologs had a LOT more Kiefer).
Fucked around with security and opsec to make it really hard for staff that would soon be laid off to find new jobs on the company dime. This is fucked but “only kind of fucked” by Japanese corporate standards.
Released a game without the last mission. Because The Island of Eli or whatever the fuck has no indications of being this massive “half the game” that people claim and was likely going to be about 5-20 minutes of gameplay and cutscenes comparable to when mother base got zombied.
But also? People still get super excited for a quantic dreams, ubisoft, or blizzard game. So worker abuse and sexual abuse are not factors in terms of whether a publisher/dev is “good”.
So yeah. Getting the fan favorite back is going to go a long way. The MGS1-3 remasters are god awful (and somehow worse than the HD Collection a decade or so ago?) but considering the big complaint people have with MGS-Delta is “the color balance is not warm enough”, time will tell.
*: Seriously, I think the absolute best thing that ever happened to Kojima was that he was mostly “heads down” during the #MeToo phase of the pandemic. Although, part of me REALLY wanted him to get a Silent Hill just because, of the ideas we know he had, it would lead to the greatest holy war of all time as the Silent Hill fans and the MGS Fans fight it out. And Bloober would still be too stupid to stay quiet and would catch all the strays.
The MGS1-3 remasters are god awful (and somehow worse than the HD Collection a decade or so ago?)
Konami has been clear from the beginning that the Master Collection is mostly just the HD Collection but on modern systems. It was always referred to by them as a rerelease and not a remaster. I think the announcement of Metal Gear Delta: Snake Eater got people confused about the scope of the Master Collection.
Edit: From the initial press release when Konami announced the Master Collection: "The Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection allow fans to play the games as they were, as first released on the latest platforms."
I feel like a lot of these problems could be fixed with proper management. Just because Kohima creates interesting worlds in video games, doesn’t mean that you should let him do everything he wants. It seems like Konami themselves creates that environment. But also, maybe they are actually going to try hard to recapture what MGS meant for a lot of people. I personally like the mixture of very serious plot with completely insane elements, like zombies, vampires, ninjas, and a white haired black guy with a monkey addicted to coca cola that sells you guns.
Personal note: in that last linked article, they compared BG3 vs SF to Disco Elysium vs Outer Worlds, and I think this is hilariously just showing how much this is about their predilection for narrative-core games.
I like Disco Elysium. I like BG3. They are much better narrative RPGs. I also feel absolutely no desire to go back and replay them.
I go back to Outer Worlds and Starfield. They are much better open world RPGs.
Like, chill PCG. It’s a good game, enjoyed by lots of people. If your staff is more into narrative-core RPGs with linear progression, that’s cool, but you don’t need to demonize Starfield to enjoy BG3. The worst Bethesda game? Worse than '76? Come on.
FO76 had a rocky start for sure, but they have made a ton of updates. It is easily better then Starfield now. If you compared them release to release then FO76 would be worse, but I think they are comparing current state.
Personally, hard disagree. I don’t find FO76 fun at all. The world feels small, the characters are boring, and finding zany houses sprinkled around breaks any versimility of the world, which is the cornerstone of Bethesda’s games.
I think the houses fit in the world, but the world is definitely small. I still enjoyed my time in it a lot more than my time in Starfield, which is mostly open fields with the occasional settlement/work site/lab dropped in. I don’t think Starfield is a bad game, just not an exciting one.
Fallout 76 is a lot better than what it was at launch but it’s still nowhere near close to Starfield. It’s a weird mesh of ideas that don’t really fit together but are still enjoyable separately.
I like Disco Elysium. I like BG3. They are much better narrative RPGs. I also feel absolutely no desire to go back and replay them.
Really? This is crazy to me. I get Disco, but outside of intentionally regenerative games (such as roguelikes/lites), I don’t think I’ve had my hands on a more replayable game than BG3 in years. There’s so much you don’t see in a given playthrough.
I don’t doubt it has new events, new ways that things can pan out, etc… but it’s the same characters, the same goblin camp, etc.I am very big on exploration, and without a world large enough to find places I haven’t seen, or at least places that it’s been so long since I saw that I don’t remember it, I bounce off games very fast.
Yes and no. My second play had countless new characters–three of them playable–several new zones, and a ton of new gameplay. I was constantly finding new places, new encounters, new conversations. I know there are still several zones I haven’t poked around in.
The main story beats don’t change much but there are still a lot of branching paths to get to them. Hell, you could even completely skip the goblin camp if you wanted.
Game studios just don’t do the kind of extra work to cover player choice like Larian did here. It’s why the game made waves in the industry. I’d say unless you really went over it with a fine comb the first time around (125 hours or more), it’s absolutely worth revisiting at some point.
So make something new. Microsoft is in desperate need of defining series rather than Halo and Gears of War, both of which are the types of games he’s criticizing here.
My first viewing I did mostly take it at face value. But in my defense, I was a dumb 11 year old kid. It wasn’t until Neil Patrick Haris came out in full SS uniform that I started asking questions.
RTS games demand so much time and patience from the player to learn. What’s the proper build order? What’s the best unit composition? How many workers should get allocated for each resource? These things aren’t always obvious. And you don’t have time to read all descriptions because the time is ticking.
Not to mention good APM and battle tactics.
Shooters are much easier to understand: aim and shoot. You don’t need to follow YouTube guides to understand that.
Shooters are much easier to understand: aim and shoot. You don’t need to follow YouTube guides to understand that.
They demand so much time and patience. Whats the best weapon load out, where to move to be safe from fire, how to avoid enemy snipers, trying to figure out the excessive complexity of what WSAD does.
RTS games are much easier to understand. You drag a box around your units, and click the enemy and watch them blow up. You don’t need to follow youtube guides to understand that.
My point is that there’s usually an easier level of entry for other types of games. You aim and shoot, and you get instant feedback if you succeeded or not. You don’t need to understand advanced meta to get this, although it can help.
For many RTS games it can all be dependent on how fast you expanded your economy, not on how you play your units. You can fail the entire game because of bad gameplay early.
You don’t meed to have any advanced meta knowledge to play most games. There are options like playing against easier ai’s or similarly skilled players.
Look at some Low Elo Legends from the game Age of Empires 2 on Youtube from T90. Most don’t use advanced meta.
Heck, I as a kid never used advanced meta and had loads of fun.
The internet TELLS you that the latest meta is necessary and that you play suboptimally. But they’re just optimizing the fun out of the game for you if you’re not that kind of player.
This mentality is even worse in competetive shooters. People playing the latest “meta” even though they don’t realize they don’t even have the skill to pull that meta off. I wish the “internet” would just let players have fun in their own way. And that playing games “suboptimally” can still be just as fun and rewarding an experience.
I think the key difference is that it’s “easier” to apply a meta to a RTS game. In shooters, the meta often involves quick reflex decisions, where to hide, where to shoot etc. This is hard, and requires practice. It also means there is a significant number of players not applying it, or doing so sub-optimally.
With RTS games, the metas are easier to apply. This means that, in human Vs human games, the newer players often get flattened. It also means that far more complex metas can be developed and applied.
Shooters tend to back load the difficulty curve. It’s easy to get into them, and not do badly, but hard to do well. RTS games tend to front load the difficulty. You need to get over the initial hump to get “ok” with it. Once over the hump, the curve smooths off and you get good fairly rapidly.
One of the big differences between nerds and normals is that nerds enjoy punching through that wall. The difficulty is seen as a challenge, not an impediment. Most people want a faster feedback loop on the dopamine reward. FPS type games deliver that extremely well.
Important addition: the majority of people isnt equipped for this kind of game. Patience and ability to grasp this kind of thing is what makes the computer nerds the computer nerds.
Programming and sysadmin stuff isnt really popular either for that express reason.
The title and the article are overdramaric. On PS5 it’s working great. The issue looks to be messing with mods (which had been expected), not breaking the actual game.
I’m not sure what exactly is the point of installing this update on PC other than a questline and some cosmetics? As this update was mainly targeted for consoles to increase framerate and resolution - which it did better than I expected - and PC players could already do that without the update.
Works fine for me on Xbox Series X with the exception of a couple of crashes over the course of 3-5 hours. The only issue I see is this should have been an optional upgrade to give the modders time to fix their stuff.
I only experienced framerate drop in the prologue (in the house in 2077 and in the Vault) and 1 crash during it. Once I was out in the open world, tha game has been flawless.
The only thing I expected from this update was 60 FPS and - if it’s not too much to ask - higher resolution. They delivered that and more. Game runs smoothly and looks much better than I expected, more detailed (and much better than FO76). They also threw in some new content which I haven’t discovered yet so cannot vouch for it. The Enclave paint look great on everything though.
And remember, this is a free update. So I think people are going a bit too hard on Bethesda this time (I know it’s the trendy thing to do). They pissed me off when they delayed the update just to sync it with the show. But looking back from their perspective it was probably the right call since everyone is now more hyped to play the games.
EDIT: And exactly as you say - modders just need some time to update their mods. But you cannot expect Bethesda to have their update checked for compatibility with every mod out there.
You may not agree, but they are right. We are not most people. They want, and they have, that sweet “lowest common denominator” market, and they will take advantage of that until something else generates more cash. The “lowest common denominator” demand more CoD and whatnot. They don’t care if it’s bad, because them and all their friends will buy it and perhaps even have some fun. The big studios converging on vapid cash grabs instead of creating interesting content is depressing, sure, but hardly surprising in a world where morals and ethics don’t matter, where you can get away with the absolute most heinous, reprehensible acts, and suffer zero consequences.
I don’t really care though. The indie scene is unaffected by this, and has only gotten better every year for as long as it has been around. It’s fucking GLORIOUS already, and it’s not going anywhere because it’s not run by an oligarchy of publicly traded shitfactories.
Yeah. I’m of the same mind. I was here to witness the resurgence of Boomer and Movement Shooters. Now, we’re in the cusp of the resurgence of RTS. I am very much happy with the state of gaming, without having to focus on sequels.
The last game published by 505 I played were apparently Indivisible, which was trash. I never played Ghostrunner nor Control which basically eliminates most of their notable recent output. I think I can safely say I’ll be fine with my continued ignoring of them as a publisher.
It’s very well done! It wasn’t really on my radar, but I got it for free from epic, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Ditto Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I think the only things I’ve paid for on the epic store are the dlc from those gems.
Yeah i think we’re in a golden age of indie games. When i want to find a new game, i search youtube for “best indie games of 2018” or 2017, 2021 or whatever. So much great stuff to play made in the last 5-10 years. And so much more affordable. And it feels great to give my money to these devs.
If someone told me 4-5 years ago, that the year we got really incredible sequels to both Breath of the Wild, and that cool new Spider-Man game on PS4, my most-enjoyed game would be an indie Lovecraftian light-horror fishing game, I wouldn’t have believed them.
Also, making a good game is always a risk, it’s an intersection of tech, business, and art. Control e.g. sold only a few million copies, depsite being widely praised.
If you however want be sure, you invest a lot in marketing and monetisation, targeting a wide audience as you said, and can take a lower risk to make back your investment. Absolutely hate this of course, but luckily there are still good games, as long as e.g. Sony is willing to take that risk to sell more PS consoles, or we get wonders like BG3
Not polished as it’s still in early access, not amazing graphics, but turning out to be a damn good game that most “AAA” developers wouldn’t even try to make, that was made by one guy (and now a small team of volunteers/contractors lol)
Hypothetically I don’t see a problem with things like a new entry in Elder Scrolls. The problem (to me) seems more like constantly remaking Skyrim into new editions and for each new console.
That’s pretty much Starfield in a nutshell, Skyrim in space. Don’t get me wrong it’s a fun game but it’s basically reskinned Skyrim with a few new systems bolted on. I’m also noticing some reused assets from Fallout, pretty sure the noise the scanner makes when opening is the same as opening the PipBoy.
From time to time, I feel bad for all the people who don't enjoy crafting, fishing, or farming elements in their games now that those things are in every game.
Then I remember that I love them so much that I just get back to enjoying them.
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