Pre-ordering existed for the customer’s benefit back when all games were physical and you wanted to guarantee you’d have a copy available for you at launch. At some point, companies realized that they could use it to forecast success or, more nefariously, entice you to buy a stinker of a game before you’ve had time to hear that it sucks. I haven’t bought physical games in a while now, but when I did, the last time I had a hard time acquiring one at launch was more than 20 years ago (I remember Halo 2 being the mile marker for when companies got to be pretty good at meeting demand). In the digital space, it makes even less sense. They still do pre-order incentives sometimes, for the same reason as above, even when the game is good, but the bonuses are so throwaway anyway that it usually doesn’t matter. Digital storefronts on PC have a pretty good refund policy, so if you’re diligent enough, you can pre-order the day before it comes out, get the bonus, let the dust settle on review scores, and decide if you want to keep the game with the pre-order bonus or just refund it. There’s very little risk in that. Without a pre-order bonus, there’s absolutely no reason to bother, and quite frankly, I don’t feel good about supporting those bonuses in the first place.
I have no issue with early access games, especially if the game lends itself to the model, which would be anything sufficiently sandboxy that can be heavily modified by changing some variables or adding a single mechanic. Larian’s RPGs are very freeform in the ways they let you solve problems and can be upended by different powerful abilities and whatnot; roguelikes are perfect for this model, because you’re replaying them a lot anyway; regardless of genre, the ones that would catch my eye are the ones that are looking for gameplay feedback and not outsourcing QA for finding bugs to a bunch of paid customers. The real problem with early access for me now is that there are so many finished games coming out all the time that look interesting that it’s difficult to justify playing one that’s not done.
Definitely no preorder, I’m not buying a cat in a bag for no real benefit. Kickstarter is a bit different because the game might not be made at all if you don’t back, but in that case I’ll definitely research the people involved to get a better picture on how reliable they are and if they really need Kickstarter-style funding in the first place.
For early access, I try to judge whether the current state of the game is already worth the price. Games like Minecraft or 7 Days To Die provided great value even before their 1.0 version.
(continued) For your example, I’d be too worried about whether the game does the book justice to preorder. Maybe if the developer and publisher have a really good track record. But I don’t like to get invested like that, especially considering that I only play on Linux - even a really cool developer might release a game that is a bitch to get working on my system, even if their previous games worked great.
Never. If it’s something I really want or from developers I respect I may buy it on release. Otherwise we wait for sales.
I could be open to kickstarter or something, that’s how Divinity Original Sins 2 got funded, but there’s a level of transparency and trust there that isn’t quite the same as preordering. Perhaps this is a silly distinction to make, I havnt really thought about it very hard, but preordering feels like being scammed nowadays and supporting something on kickstarter simply doesn’t.
I don’t really care for early access because i already don’t have enough time to play all the games I want to play so…there’s no extra room for me here. I will simply go play something else until your game is ready 🤷♀️
We had a fighting game on NES. Japanese game, and we didn’t even speak English (okay, maybe a few words), let alone Japanese.
There was literally nothing to quote in my search, apart from just using descriptions. It was frustrating, because otherwise it was one of the best NES games I have played.
Years later I somehow ran into it. It was something like Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu.
Technōs had a whole line of sports games in this ‘super deformed’ style and with outlandish mechanics, as offshoots of the ‘Kunio-kun’ series. The games I know are lots of unadulterated fun.
Yes, these are the ones! I think I’ve seen the football one from afar, and I also played the ice hockey one. Considering the average level of NES games, I think they were rather interesting and full of combinations. I can’t say much of the balance, but we were still kids, so heck knows.
What was that one where you were a stationary turret shooting at UFOs flying in? At some point the turret upgrades to a helicopter. I remember playing that on win 98 or something.
Are you looking for story or gameplay? Chaos Zero Nightmare is relatively new and is a roguelike deckbuilder with really good gameplay. Lots of synergies, lots of combos, lots of variations of every card letting you craft very specific decks that can make almost anything work if you just get lucky with finding just the right pieces and upgrades during a run.
The story is ass though (but at least there is a fast forward button) and some of the character designs do make me roll my eyes with how absurdly gooner-baity they are.
The Danmachi game recently went offline forever. They released a standalone version to play at home. I’m told its tuned to be a bit more fun and you can get all the stuff. Not sure if its been mirrored somewhere.
For me the best ones were Final Fantasy Brave Exvius and Love Live School Idol Festival. Currently playing Umamusume Pretty Derby and it’s fine but it’s kinda brutal if you’re trying to catch the meta as F2P.
Also gacha games are fine at launch (and maybe just before they close the doors forever). Other than that they’re just whalefest, especially if they’re popular.
No idea how long I’m gonna stick to Umamusume but I feel it won’t be years.
I’d go with Wuthering Waves and Zenless Zone Zero. Those two probably have over 100 hours of main story and character stories to play through. Where Winds Meet is new and popular. Haven’t played much but it seems good
bin.pol.social
Aktywne