They could have done nothing and been okay because Paradox apparently put their competitor Sims game on indefinite hold so we’re still stuck with just EA’s bullshit instead of having a choice of which life sim with an outrageous amount of paid for DLC we want to play.
Paradox seems to be having some problems at the moment. No idea what is going on.
I think it is just an issue that management is greenlit to many projects simultaneously and now there aren’t enough resources to go around (shockingly), so they have to suspend some stuff so they can focus on other stuff.
Personally I don’t really mind the DLCs in paradox games.
The DLCs fund the smaller free updates and they are optional. If you want to regularly get more content for the games you love it might be worth the 20 euro (or whatever) and you absolutely don’t need to buy every single one just the ones with features and content you like.
Basically the options are: more new paid features and some new free features or no new features.
I don’t mind DLC that’s done right for games I love. I just know it’s a common complaint for Paradox games to have a lot of DLC. That said, there are games that have produced a ton of free updates with very little DLC, like No Man’s Sky, Terraria, Minecraft, etc. So, I don’t know that it’s always necessary to have a ton of DLC to support ongoing game development. It’s all very subjective and varies a lot from game to game.
Good on dunkey for publishing such a good game instead of trying to profit on his popularity with mediocre one, I hope he continues giving the spotlight to more amazing indie games
All I want is someone to make an open world Sims 3 like game with 64-bit support and better multicore support. Can’t wait to see if Paralives and Life by You will deliver
Sims 3 was best, no? I feel like it was the full package and mostly complete right out of the box. Didn’t have the same feeling in 4 at all. Been some years since I tried 4, but when it launched I remember going back to 3 almost immediately after a couple weeks.
I did the same thing. It may have been because there weren't as many dlcs and expansions, but it just felt really dull. Plus it didn't have the completely open world like 3 did. Sitting through all those loading screens every time you wanted to go somewhere was a pain.
I tried playing Sims 3 again recently and holy hell is the performance bad. Like the FPS is running at whatever I cap it at but there are constant freezes and stuttering with no FPS drops even with all the recommended performance mods. I then remembered I stopped playing for that very reason ages ago and now my desktop is like 100x more powerful.
For a game that’s been out for nearly ten years, I’m not expecting over much in the way of actual work from this team. It would be nice as I do miss playing the Sims 4. I suppose this is only happening to reach a larger audience since the move of making The Sims 4 free to play and the packs their cash cow. Which most users have been happily buying despite these packs being glitchy and broken on launch, and for most of their existence.
Billy Basso is a protean talent. He built his own game engine and did AFAIK all the work on Animal Well, which on release was closer to its vision than any of the critically acclaimed games I’ve played from this decade.
I wish I could cloister myself for three weeks just to play AW. It is rich.
The “owner” of Animal Well’s publishing company, Big Mode, is a well-known YouTuber called videogamedunkey who makes gaming-related comedy video. This is a reference to one of his videos
Sims 4 released in 2014. They had plenty of time to address bugs in-between the millions of stupid updates, but they didn’t bother. Who honestly expects any real work from these guys at this point?
If I’m given a choice between some fixes and no fixes, I’ll take some. You know they’ll dump the code like a hot potato once Sims 5 starts rolling out micro expansions.
I think the real news is that they are no longer making new content cause the new mainline game is now all hands on deck with whoever’s leftover just working on minor updates for 4 now
I don’t even know how I feel about this. On the one hand, it’s great we’re moving away from 4 which was always a shitshow to begin with, on the other hand I have no faith whatsoever 5 is going to be even on par with 4.
I’m both hopeless and optimistic at the same time. I want it to be good so I’ll reserve judgement until we get actual concrete info.
Yeah, I got sick of the way they dealt with dlc for 4. Early on it was still kind of annoying but if you were of a certain persuasion you could look past it. But compared to how it ended up being, the early days of 4 expansions now look like heaven.
Instead of playing 4 I’ve been messing around with XP and playing 1, 2 and the Stories games. I’m sad the series had ended up how it is but I’m glad of the earlier games still though and they bring me endless joy.
Where did you see that they are no longer making new content for Sims 4? The article doesn’t seem to say so and the last I heard they planned to release content for Sims 4 alongside Sims 5. FYI, I would prefer they stop with Sims 4 content.
Oh okay. A while back, their VP Lyndsay Pearson explicitly said they plan for Sims 4 to continue to exist side by side with Project Rene (aka Sims 5). I was wondering if that had changed. My cynical take on the plan to keep both going is that Sims 5 is probably going to be a live service abomination, which they wanted Sims 4 to be, so keeping Sims 4 might be hedge in case Sims 5 fails hard. Of course, they could also have been lying.
It’s funny how as soon as two competing projects (Life By You and Paralives) start to get closer to release they suddenly care about improving stuff they’ve ignored for 10 years lol
I can’t help but think of that scene in Grandma’s Boy where JP is working on his game and it just shows a 3D animated model doing a walking animation and literally falling apart like a crash test dummy while he whines “WHY ISN’T THIS WORKING?!”
Edit: it sounds like they are actually delaying to ensure a more polished release. Given the massive scope of the game, this seems totally reasonable. I wish Paradox would push deadlines more often honestly, given the sorry state of their most recent titles on release day (CS2 and Vic3 in particular) Though I am still disappointed we won’t get LBY sooner.
Supergiant Games is probably my favorite studio out there but I just can’t do early access anymore. If I play it now, I know I won’t go back when it’s released to see the stuff that changed…
Feel free, I think it’ll be a great game when you check back in.
I’m a big Hades 1 fan, and played that game in it’s early state as well. Hades 2’s early access feels roughly 90% or more complete, it’s missing pictures for some items (placeholders for now), some character portraits of some of the lesser-interacted-with NPCs. I think there will be another weapon because there’s a slot for it, and there’s seemingly some more boss content. Gameplay, basically at 100%
So if you’re likely to finish and not check back in, definitely wait because the game should be in pristine condition by then, with it being this polished already. Love this studio, love this game
I hear you, but I caved lol. You will NOT be disappointed. EA is such a weird choice for this one. It’s where I’d call it well past beta (a true beta, not the marketing betas that we usually see where there’s no time to fix anything). Like it truly is “early access” but we’re so used to that term meaning “somewhere in dev”.
If they’re targeting 2025 release this thing will be incredibly polished by then.
I know, I know. Supergiant can’t miss so I’m positive I would love it…it’s just that I don’t ever replay games like this and I’d rather wait a year for the polished version than get my fix now.
Is the story or voice acting done tho? It was my understanding with the first one that basically all the story and stuff came as hades completed early access. I feel like you can’t call it even 90% if the story isn’t there or its going to change or is incomplete. And what i loved most about the first one was the storytelling. I’m pretty sure thats why most ppl loved it.
I don’t know when the person above you played, but I didn’t notice any of that (got it last week, binged it, 35ish hours). I didn’t notice any missing graphics, and yes there are some spots where you can tell somethings coming, but it doesn’t feel janky, it feels exciting. With game loop being all about upgrades, you can tell there’s a few that aren’t available, but there’s so much meat their absence feels like part of the loop not part of the dev cycle.
The voice acting is all there, the mechanics are all there. I think I had like… One line of repeated dilouge? There’s a good breadth of characters and they’ve got that same slow, well thought out progression they did in Hades I. With only one exception that I can’t mention due to spoilers, you could tell me this a complete game with free DLC inbound.
Bug wise it’s almost entirely free. I had some crashes but I think that was due to a bad HDMI cable repeatedly becoming unstable, and making the game freak out as to what screen it should be on. I haven’t had an issue since I fixed the cable and it’s the only bug I encountered.
Several characters, all keepsakes, all fish except, I think, one, at least one background element…
The voice acting is all there
I’d be very surprised if the number of voiced characters isn’t significantly higher in the finished game. And, of course, we’re missing the top end of the relationship interactions with all characters, which will definitely be voice acted.
the mechanics are all there
I wouldn’t be surprised if we get some new mini games in certain parts of the map we can’t access yet.
Apart from these minor nitpickings, however, I completely agree (well, except that I haven’t had any crashes or significant bugs); I’m already enjoying the game as much as the first one, and I definitely feel I got my money’s worth, which is sadly quite unusual for too many supposedly complete games these days.
The only crash like I said was almost certainly due to a multi-monitor display and one monitor disconnecting and reconnecting. I didn’t even bother submitting a report.
And yeah there’s definitely going to be a few extras. Its wild, like I never play games at launch, specifically because they always ship broken, and here this thing is with the stones to call itself early access when it’s so polished narcissus would gaze at himself in if.
There are parts of the story and maps we simply can’t get to because they aren’t there yet (I imagine about 30 to 50%), and there’s a limit to how much we can improve our relationship with the various characters (which means that there’s probably a significant amount of voice acting we can’t hear yet), all of this clearly indicated as provisionally cut content (“you might be able to do this in the future”, “can’t go there yet”, “what happened after this is, for now, literally indescribable”, that kind of thing).
There’s also what’s clearly provisional concept art from time to time, and plenty of placeholder character models and art (plus keepsakes, and fish, the later even having generic descriptions), and there’s almost certainly missing gods and characters (though there’s no indication of which those might be and in which number).
So, yeah, it’s not complete, by a long shot.
That said, I’m fairly certain that there’s already as much content and story as in the complete first game, if not more, or at least it feels like it. And it’s just as fun.
Supergiant is probably the only studio I’d still buy an early access from, even day one. Even when I end up not liking it that much (like Pyre), it is interesting enough to be worth the asking price.
To this day, Hades is still my most played game on the Switch (I even managed to get a physical copy), and I will probably do the same with Hades II… Maybe on the Switch 2, who knows 😆.
I’m going to use this as an excuse to go back and play Hades 1. I bought and binged it when it first released EA, and never went back to play the released version.
Frankly given what they’ve promised and what’s already in there it could easily go to 3x. It’s fucking bananas. I was 30 runs in, and still finding new NPCs and events.
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