I’d say peak Bethesda publishing was with the Wolfenstein The New Order (2014) by Machine Games, Doom (2016) by id Software, and Prey (2017) by Arkane Austin. Bethesda managed to put in one mediocre -in comparison- game in 2015, Fallout 4.
Wolfenstein The New Order was coupled with a short but rather good prequel The Old Blood, and The New Order managed to pull in quite good semi-linear progression mechanic with weapon upgrading interjected to make a good game. Latter games marketed with “Lets blast some Nazis, HELL.YEAH BROTHER” kinda zealous and soulles propaganda machines rather than being games, imo.
Bethesda squandered the critical acclaim of Doom 2016 with rgb sales of Doom Eternal imo. 2016 was a pretty novel entry in Doom series, and they went with all the controversy of soundtrack composing, stat-based difficulty, all-color ui shit that distracts from gameplay, pretty unconnected region/planet jumping, cheesy orbital station upgrading/unlocking, etc.
Even though I had not played the first Prey game, I’d still say the most and only bad thing about the Prey 2017 is its name. The name is forcibly put into the game in one memo and isn’t mentioned anywhere else, as if the hardest part of making that game was coming up with a new name and they just gave up, using an old IP. The game was so good tho, that it really could rival Half-Life if it had a couple more intriguing elements. Other than that, the gameplay area, enemy, weapons and utilities designs are spot on. Interconnectivity and reuse of old maps with new designs were excellent. The different mechanic of zero gravity environments really shone with the outside of the Talos I, with how good they implemented the feeling of going into empty space, skirting the station, etc. There wasn’t much to do outside, but the empty scenery was breathtaking anyway. The contrast of the opening of the game and its slow connection to the rest of the game, environment design with every bit of elements fitting the current space station environments, while adding the old Soviet style that the station was taken from, the weapon and ability progress that matches the same good mechanics from Wolfenstein and Doom, how the story is well written and flows very nicely even though the game is actually open world, which in turn changes a lot with respect to the story, etc.
I haven’t played since the first couple months it came out in Early Access. It was a lot of fun, but there was nothing to do in the end game. I’m curious if they’ve added end game content that keeps it replayable.
The Sonic fandom continues to amaze me. For every mountain of lewd fan art and crappy original characters created by fans, you get an incredible fangame that absolutely trumps official efforts from Sega themselves.
Pulling off a kart racer in the Legacy DOOM engine of all things is a seriously impressive feat.
This gives me hope that all gamers won’t just roll over and take it. But Capcom could react in different ways, they could do better or they could just quit releasing games on Steam. Wonder if they have already asked if Steam could disable reviews for them?
I just watched the trailer and downloaded the demo. Excited to give it a try. The art style looks very unique and gameplay reminded me of an old Xbox game called Metal Arms: Glitch in the System. Speaking of which I never even owned that game but sunk hundreds of hours into the demo lol.
Never heard of this but incredibly excited! I already spend a lot of time playing random 8-bit games, it’ll be nice to have a set with modern quality of life features.
Hopefully we get a game crossover with TW:Troy like in the Warhammer series. It’s a pretty similar time period and uses all the same resources, so I could see Agamemnon doing battle with Ramses.
One plan that we’ve always had since the early stages of development on PHARAOH is to expand the size of our campaign map as a free update, and to introduce even more factions and cultures to the game.
and one has to assume that Greece would have to be one of the expanded parts... But that was the original intention before Pharaoh fell on its face so who knows if that's still on the table.
It was mainly due to them embracing rollback net code and being part of EVOs line up during covid. Problem is that the big fighters revised their netcode since then and it’s been relegated.
Nah, even out of the gate, it's done far better than the likes of Punch Planet, for instance. They just made a good game, and people paid attention; perhaps not as much attention as they wanted or needed. If you ask me, they appeared to have started overscoping once they got their initial success. The Salt Mines mode seemed like a big money sink that had a detrimental effect on the matchmaking, for one.
I mean, the game is good, but you can see the spike in steam charts right at the point it was announced for EVO. Like outside the initial release, the game averaged under 20 players. After that they spiked and then just slowly got back to averaging less than 20 players the last few months.
I like the game, but it’s not comparable to the other successful indie titles like UNIST or Skull Girls. Yeah it kills punch planet, but outside the first few months it released to may 2021, it did similar numbers.
UNI and SG are themselves far more successful than most games. So yes, not as successful as those two, but still more successful than most. Evo is also a kingmaker, and you can see spikes in all of the announced Evo games when they're announced and present at Evo.
Beta tester for the last few years here. Game is great and a ton of things were added/fixed by the lone dev left. It’s definitely a time capsule UI/performance wise but it’s way deeper then you’d think from screenshots or a description.
On May 24, 2011, Gearbox announced that Duke Nukem Forever had “gone gold” after 15 years.[16] It holds the Guinness world record for the longest development for a video game, at 14 years and 44 days,[17] though this period was exceeded in 2022 by Beyond Good and Evil 2.[18]
I assume that the reason that the Guiness Book of World Records doesn’t accept Beyond Good and Evil 2 is that they probably require an actual release.
Duke Nukem Forever was released on June 14, 2011, and received mostly unfavorable reviews, with criticism for its graphics, dated humor and story, simplistic mechanics, and unpolished performance and design. It did not meet sales expectations but was deemed profitable by Take-Two Interactive, the owner of 2K Games.
Beyond Good and Evil 2 has been referred to as vaporware by industry figures such as Jason Schreier due to its lengthy development and lack of a release date.[3] In 2022, Beyond Good and Evil 2 broke the record held by Duke Nukem Forever (2011) for the longest development of a AAA video game, at more than 15 years. In 2023, the creative director, Emile Morel, died suddenly at age 40.
I’ve been playing it with my wife for years, so it rankles me when people show up with the “will it ever release!?” takes. Go play it and see for yourself; they have free-fly events every quarter, so you don’t even have to buy anything.
“Will Eve Online ever release? They haven’t shown us any progress on Walk In Stations in years!” /s
Yet I suspect that if SC released now as a 1.0, and then continued to add stuff for 20 more years in order to reach a comparable number of game systems as Eve has now, you’d be critical of it.
I doubt you played Eve back then (if at all), but it had fewer game systems than SC has now.
Does SC feel like a $70 game ready for release and formal critical/audience review?
Compared to plenty of other AAA games? In terms of game loops, yeah absolutely.
Eve was a complete game with a complete gameloop.
What gameloop was that? There was no endgame back then. There was mining, manufacturing, and combat. That was about it. But I’m sure you in all your infinite knowledge and totally-not-just-talking-out-your-bum experience with Eve know that, right?
I’ll copy from another of my comments:
“Last night I did 2 ‘bunker missions’ (infiltrate facility, kill bad guys, loot), and salvaged 3 derelict ships. Night before that I was doing bounties on NPCs and running bomber support for some guys who had gotten pinned down by another group of players at a planet-side wreck site (Ghost Hollow). I don’t do mining, or cargo hauling, or drug running, or ship or ground pvp, or player-rescue medical missions, or racing, or investigations, but those are also in there.”
A game is either a full release or it isn’t.
This is an absolute gas. Other people in here talking about how AAA games all release incomplete nowadays, so they don’t trust that SC will be complete on release, and you in here going, “no guys, games that are releasedARE complete, and ones that aren’t released aren’t.” I’m not claiming SC is complete, but claiming that a game saying it’s released is the arbiter of it having a complete experience is just hilarious.
What’s the over/under on how much this guy paid into the “game” so far? I’m gonna say with this level of defensiveness, at least a few hundred dollars. Considering he plays with his wife, probably double that.
It’s more about time. I’ve been here since the beginning, and back in 2016 it made sense for people to be like, “this is way over-scoped and they don’t have a lot to show for it”, but 7 years later there is a ton to show for it (I’ve spent far more time playing it than Starfield, and I sank 120 hours into that in a little over a week, to give you some idea of how much I play games), but people gonna bandwagon just to feel smart I guess…
The Guinness Reason is actually because Beyond Good & Evil 2 was teased in 2008 as a prequel to a game from 2003, while Star Citizen was known in 2012. Both haven’t released.
Has there even been video or screenshots of BG&E2 to prove it has even been in development at all? I thought it was simply a joke or a rumor since I haven’t seen anything even being shown off.
So far I believe there have only been 3 or 4 pieces of media related to it. The 2008 car breakdown teaser, the gameplay teaser shortly after where she's running along the rooftops, then the 2018 trailer with the monkeys or whatever and like a gameplay overview or something around that time. There hasn't been anything of note since 2018 (i think) and I believe the creative director actually died this year.
It's basically the most cursed project in gaming at this point. Very disappointing too. BG&E was an absolute masterpiece.
The good news is that work on the game is still under way. The bad news is that its actual release date is just as unclear as ever.
For those keeping track, that means it’s been almost fifteen years since Ubisoft released its first trailer for the game, which is longer than it took to get gaming’s other development-hell classic Duke Nukem Forever out the door.
The company made a big splash when it released a new trailer for the game at E3 2017, but at the time director Michel Ancel cautioned that the team was still at “day zero” of development. Following his departure from the company in 2020, reports emerged that Ancel was under investigation for his allegedly toxic management style.
It sounds a lot less like a joke and more like enormous project management problems.
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