For me, I couldn’t get behind the battle royale thing… It’s just too much pressure. Don’t get me wrong, I like intense gunfights, but for a win to be only when you’re the last team standing of everyone on the server using only the random loot you found … that’s a lot of pressure.
On the graphics front, things have changed a lot over the years:
I actually think it looks pretty decent personally and it keeps getting better. It’s not Hunt Showdown: 1896, but it’s still pretty nice visually (just more of an animation than photorealism focus).
The game looks better and better, but the performance just keeps getting worse On my PC I can’t get the game to run properly since they switched to UE5
I get what you’re saying, but I’ve been upgrading my PC over the years and still noticed that with games of big game companies, they care less and less about performance. I firmly believe that publishers, in an attempt to cut costs, tell the game studio to not prioritize performance, while trying to rely on software like super resolution algorithms, to make their games run. In some instances they reused old game Engines for a new and bigger game, for example with Cyberpunk, Stellaris and Elden Ring. Smaller developers are doing everything they can to make a game run smoothly. The best example for this is Factorio. That is my opinion and I totally understand your point of view.
I firmly believe that publishers, in an attempt to cut costs, tell the game studio to not prioritize performance
So, I agree there’s some amount of that. You also have things like Dice (the studio that makes Battlefield) where they lost their veteran development team to poor internal management.
There are also some (now fairly large) studios that are just absolutely terrible at game performance like Studio Wildcard (makers of the Ark games).
while trying to rely on software like super resolution algorithms, to make their games run.
There’s definitely some of this too. I believe the bigger issue is that games have gotten so much bigger and more expensive to develop. Making and shipping a game that runs with 4k textures, dynamic (possibly ray traced) lighting, variable rate shading (instead of manual level-of-detail systems), etc is a lot to get right.
A common thing with any software development is to take advantage of newer abstractions that make your life easier. For instance, I’m fairly confident Hunt Showdown 1896 has moved to some form of variable rate shading instead of level-of-detail (in pre-1986 when you zoomed in on some of the trees they’d literally change shape when they flipped between the models in the worst case; I’ve yet to see that post-1896). Not having to make a bunch of models and having the software “just figure out” good lower-poly models for things that are sufficiently far away is presumably a huge productivity boost. Similarly, when ray-traced lighting becomes the standard a lot of game development will get easier because setting up lighting won’t (per my understanding) require as many tricks. In both cases, it’s both less work for developers and a better result for players with the hardware to run it.
In some instances they reused old game Engines for a new and bigger game, for example with Cyberpunk, Stellaris and Elden Ring.
Old engines aren’t necessarily a bad thing (if they’re appropriately updated) and I think people focus too much on the engine vs the game play. Take Starfield, I’ve heard a lot of people complain about it on forums for copying a similar formula as some of Bethesda’s past titles.
The issue almost certainly isn’t the engine used, but the design choices associated with using that engine (and the decision to not make new things work).
Linux, Darwin (MacOS), Windows, Chrome, Firefox, etc are all long running software projects (as are Unreal Engine, Unity, Source Engine, CryEngine, etc). Occasionally, someone throws out their current product entirely and replaces it, but normally there are incremental upgrades made to provide the new functionality that’s desired.
Smaller developers are doing everything they can to make a game run smoothly. The best example for this is Factorio.
The performance profile of something like Factorio vs Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, or Hunt Showdown is extremely different.
I got in a week or so ago and immediately started walking a ton more than usual. It was also great timing because I’m in Paris at the moment, so I’m walking so much every day and leveling up like crazy as a result.
I’d love to buy the game if it was free software. What license does it use? I can’t find one on the site so I’m assuming it’s an all-rights-reserved situation.
It’s not really viable to run a game studio with developers and artists who work full time to create free games.
I’m not asking for people to make their games free as in price, but rather free-as-in-freedom. Osu for instance is an open source game and they’re thriving. So it is possible to do so.
I’ve been wanting a game like this for years!! As soon as Pokemon Go came out I thought it would be awesome to have a similar game that was offline or less Network dependent that modern AR games.
Like you level up and gain experience by walking around but you don’t have to live in a city or busy area to play. You don’t have to have the social element of say Pokemon Go or Wizards Unite to play and have fun.
The entire point is to have a game that ties the fun elements of gaming with the real world effects of exercise!
Thank you for this I’m excited to keep up with the progress 🙂
Then if they’re gonna whine about it, but pay anyway, they’re basically saying the company can do whatever they like and they (the players) will just suck it up. So what’s the use of whining then?
I don’t give a shit about RuneScape. But being vocal is how people give their feedback. For the players, it’s better to give feedback before the price changes, in hopes of making a difference.
If you whine about the pay increase, but pay it anyway (or continue to pay it now)…the feedback you’re giving is that it’s actually worth that price to you, and your words are effectively meaningless.
I consider any mission that starts with an unskippable cut scene, especially one that lasts several minutes, to be bad. Needlessly wasting the player’s time is unforgivable.
I consider any mission that instantly fails if you step outside an invisible and unstated boundary, especially in an open world game, to be bad. Punishing the player for creative thinking is unforgivable.
I consider any mission that presents a challenge, and then cheats to force failure when a skilled player is about to succeed, to be bad. Breaking the physics of the game world in order to artificially cancel excellent play is perhaps (barely) forgivable, but terrible game design.
So I guess I don’t get to be in your gang. But I’m glad you had a good time!
(P.S. The game world was beautiful, at least. Props to the folks at Rockstar who did that.)
Make your cut scene compelling, or at least interesting, and people will slow down and experience it willingly. Once.
Force players to slog through your cut scene whether they enjoy it or not, and you’re just being self-indulgent, ignoring the fundamental purpose of a game (entertainment) in favor of your own ego. If you want to do that, make a movie, not a game.
Forcing them to do it again after they’ve already watched it (during a subsequent play-through, or after your game crashed during the mission, or because they made a mistake and want to retry) is well beyond game designer arrogance; it’s just plain bad software design. How would you feel if you had to read and click through time-consuming new user help screens whenever you launched an app, and not just the first time you used it, but every single time?
Red Dead Redemption 2 is particularly bad in this area, as it has cut scenes as long as ten minutes, and not only forces them down the player’s throat, but also makes it impossible to save the game just afterward, so fully restarting a mission requires slogging through the cut scene again.
Note that the emphasis here is on unskippable. Cut scenes on their own are fine. Even slow ones.
The story is pretty dumb. I wouldn’t say it’s bad necessarily, I just think it’s dumb how often we get into whole town shootouts, amd then just pay 80-90 bucks to make it go away. Oh, and fuck Micah, that guy can get lost.
Except… for the combat. By the end of the game, they need 50 bad guys to even pose a challenge to our Max Paine protagonist. But not in the cut scene, of course. By mid-game, you’ve killed more cowboys than cholera.
There is a beautiful quick-draw mechanic that’s only necessary in 2 (optional) side quests.
Wouldn’t even be in my top 10. I loved the world, I just wished the story would go away and just allow me to experience it by myself. To. Me it felt like amazing technology being wasted on a decidedly average game
I agree. Stunning. It’s not for everyone, but, those who can appreciate the slow, beautiful, revealing beauty and enjoy taking their time, this game is as good as it gets.
Those that mash buttons to skip cutscenes, may as well give it a miss and try something else
Haha, currently playing rdr2 again right now. There are plenty of terrible missions in the game. Depending on if you’re talking regular missions or story missions, some of the story missions where you shoot up the whole damn town are stupid, and then you just go pay a bounty and it’s all okay. But, you can’t enter Blackwater under any circumstances or tye calvary comes in and shoots you up, dead within 10 seconds of stepping foot there.
Lots of essentially fetch quests, especially the ones where you go shake down people for loan money for strauss.
There are missions you can fail for venturing too far away from people, but you’re never told that until you’re too far away already. This is just what I could think of off the top of my head.
Sorry for the double post, but I DID play something new this week: The demo for the Casting of Frank Stone.
LOVED IT.
It’s a narrative horror game and those tend to be out of my price range at the start, because I only buy a game if I get at least an hour of play time per dollar spent, but still, it’s spooky and fantastic.
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