I enjoyed playing around with it for a few weeks last year. I liked that they had voice acting and context-sensitive dialogue like Velma saying, "Let's see who's really the world's greatest detective" when Batman was on the enemy team.
It's also just fun to speculate about all the characters that could show up (but probably won't). I'm still rooting for Granddad "Bitches" Freeman to join the roster.
Holy shit if they added The Boondocks characters, I might actually lay this game and try to look past all the bullshit. And I’d stick with it too, and they’d be my mains. I’d honestly love to play as Huey and fuck some shit up with kung fu and the Black Power Fist. Maybe Riley has like a baseball bat and his giant Timbs or something. Grandad would of course use his belt to fight.
Shit, now I’m getting hyped for something that’ll never happen.
ETA: with the death of John Witherspoon, however, I don’t think they would or could do the character justice.
I would like to see investigations into embracer being opened for fraudulent acquisition of companies and IPs and therefore market manipulation. I‘m obviously not thinking they did commit a crime there but it should definitely be illegal. Or were all those companies on their last legs? I cant imagine they were.
I can’t give you an answer to the legality question, but some additional information I heard in a podcast: The acquisitions came at a time when money was cheap and people were playing a lot more video games because of the pandemic. Unfortunately, they miscalculated because money is now much more expensive again and the gaming industry has not been able to retain these players across the board. Only 4 games that have come out since then have brought in much more than the production costs, which then had to finance the remaining ~15 (all from my memory, but it should be in the order of magnitude). That didn’t work out and so now cuts have to be made to avoid burning even more money.
If you understand German, I can send you a link to the podcast, if you’re interested.
Thanks for clarifying though. I feel like this should still be illegal. As a CEO, you are expected to analyze and somehow predict what is gonna happen, by market observation, paying experts, etc. If your company goes bankrupt, you‘ll get investigated to see if you made obvious mistakes you shouldnt have made. Dont ask me where I know this from…
In any case, embracer destroyed so many companies due to their foolishness, they should definitely get this treatment and get dismantled if they were acting reckless - which isnt a big stretch imo.
I just realized it’s Laura Bailey who voiced her! 😮 The Laura Bailey. Jaina Proudmoore! Wow!
There was a time window around 10-15 years ago where it felt like not a single AA-AAA game released where she didn’t have a voice role in. Absolutely legendary talent!
It’s interesting because I swear I buzzed by an article the other day with some eye roll complaint about there being too many games, and that’s why it was hard for games to sell.
There are a lot of games, but it means that people want to engage with games that are actually fun and aren’t soulless cash grabs or half baked early access with no real value or fun.
It’s just the basic “quality versus quantity” principle. Instead of shoveling out crap like Rise of Kong, Gollum, The Day Before, etc etc, just focus your efforts on a single good game. The only recent exception to this rule I guess would be Starfield, but that’s for Bethesda to figure out on how to salvage.
Speaking of salvage…at this point I think Bethesda themselves might be worth salvage value at this point. If they were willing to release a turd like Starfield, imagine what they’ll do to TES VI.
I’ve started turning more and more to indie games now, and I’ve found quite a few games I’ve loved that way. Deep Rock Galactic, Streets of Rogue, Valheim (before realising it’s abandonware)…honestly, good fucking riddance to the consoles who make it impossible to enjoy games by smaller studios.
Same. Indie games and emulators is what I’ve been putting a lot of my time into. I’ve learned that “AAA” studios are a lot like their alkaline counterparts - basically obsolete.
Valheim I agree. I did get a ton of enjoyment out of it on release, so it’s not really a matter of disappointment in the sense of fun per dollar, just disappointment in the glacial pace of updates. My feeling is that the Devs got their bag, then decided to just coast. It makes me wonder that if it didn’t explode in sales at the start, would they have put more effort into updates or would they have just given up. Guess we’ll never truly know
I think that’s going to be the big one in terms of changing the pattern of early purchases. It will also make it much harder for future indie devs to sell their games, which really fucking sucks.
One thing I read (a lot, oddly) is that GamePass is ‘really popular’/the most popular ‘subscription’ service, but I have never met anyone who uses it.
I checked the numbers of people using GamePass, and it seems the numbers have gone:
2021 - 23 million
2022 - 25 million
2023 - there was a brief post on linkedin saying 30 million, but it was removed.
If even the most popular service is struggling to pass 30 million users, how exactly is Ubisoft going to compete? There’s what, 120 million people with Xbox subscriptions, and they can barely get 1/4 of them to use GamePass?
It’s interesting to watch ‘AAA’ studios absolutely faceplanting every year now, hopefully we can make a full indie-sweep soon.
The reason people I know tend to give for not using GamePass is you’re essentially paying for demos (which still exist on PC pretty often. I just bought Roboquest because of the demo.)
EDIT: Also, $12/month is a huge amount of money for me to spend on something like that. Just shy of 150/year for games that aren’t good enough to own, but are good enough to play, doesn’t strike me as valuable.
2 other people play on my account from sub accounts on the console. They each play multiple games per month. $12 is less than $60, so even a single new game each month saves me money.
Paying for demos? I’m not sure why you think there aren’t any good games on there. Halo, Starfield, Fallout, Cities Skylines, Forza, Mass Effect, Tomb Raider, Far Cry, Assassins Creed, Yakuza, Dead Space, blah blah blah.
And that’s not including all the smaller games my kids have found. Human Fall Flat, Rubber Bandits, Donut County, Frog Detective are all games we found that we otherwise would never have spent money on.
I don’t support subscription only models, but that doesn’t mean some aspects aren’t a good value.
If the games stayed I’d check it out, but having a game for a few months isn’t something I find value in, which tends to be what people I’ve spoken with about it. Especially since you don’t choose the games.
Also, seriously the PC app is absolutely awful. The games work worse on it than on steam. It crashes, has terrible performance, and break installs constantly.
You also can’t mod a lot of these games, which particularly on PC is a pretty large missing piece.
That’s also not to mention the cost has doubled in two years.
You’re allowed to enjoy it, but I think it’s also clear why it isn’t taking off.
My issue with getting into indie gaming is I have no idea where to start. I always end up with some frantic platformer that doesn’t do anything for me. But I just want games that aren’t a mess on release and everyone says to go indie.
I just go by reviews, usually from people I know. The only real difference between AA/A and Indie titles now really is marketing budget and size of team. Not much else is different. You also run into issues about what counts as indie now: it used to mean without a publisher, but it seems to have morphed into ‘a smaller company.’
But yeah, just look up reviews. Games like FTL, Hades, and so on tend to become known by word of mouth.
You have the same problem with Steam already for years.. I mean you do not have a physical copy anymore. In fact if Steam is down, you might not be able to download, play or play multiplayer. So you own nothing and be happy - WEF.
I did thought you were crazy in the past indeed. Since digital is the future, right? It might still is, but for some reason all game studios, producers and distributors like ubisoft or steam just create bad software/games. Where you need 24/7 internet connection and doesn't allow you to own a digital offline copy of the product. It's not just games.
Steam is different, though; many games have no DRM and even more just have Steam’s DRM that’s already been cracked globally and is super quick to patch. They also maintain access to paid games even after they’re delisted.
AFAIK, the only problems with maintaining access to Stream games are software-as-a-service games when servers go down (MMOs and multiplayer servers, basically) and music with expired licenses (fuck the RIAA and copyright law for that one; not much Steam can do about that.) I have many delisted games in my library and I can download them any time I want.
Sure, Steam could go down, at some point. Maybe. But it’s not a big concern.
Nope.. Some games will fail to start if the "main" server is down or some authentication server or whatever server it nowadays might depend on. So even if you install a game now and let it rest of years, the changes it will start again over 10 years is very low. I'm not even talking about multiplayer, since multiplayer will be definitively broken by then. And LAN features are no longer implemented by game devs.
I do agree that gamepass will only make matters worse.
I think this model can work, and has its benefits (like with Game Pass). To be clear though, Ubisoft’s offering is shit and not worth the price they’re asking. And one thing I absolutely hate is the (sometimes timed) exclusivity on some of these platforms. The Lost Crown looks great for example, but Ubisoft are trying to force people to use their service by not offering it on Steam.
Personally I don’t really mind not ‘owning’ the game in most cases. 9 times out of 10, I’ll play a game and be done with it. Short, linear indie games for example are perfect for a Game Pass type model. What we don’t need is 10 similar subscriptions with their own exclusives.
This. I already don’t own my music (Tidal, Spotify) or my movies (Netflix, etc) and I already have been using Gamepass for years just fine.
But movie streaming is a HOT MESS right now. I looked up the X-Men movie franchise the other day for some reason. No joke, it’s split across 3 or 4 different streaming services! And next month, it could change. There are streaming services like Peacock or Paramount that have absolutely NOTHING worth watching except one or two shows (e.g. Parks and Rec or Picard) and I really want to watch it but there’s no way I’m throwing down money for a streaming service just to watch one fucking show. All it does is piss me off.
If the same garbage happens with gaming where everyone thinks making their own is the way to go, instead of just using a few big ones, it will not succeed. Ubisoft making their own is a bad idea. It’s bad for us for the reasons above and it’s bad for them because we won’t use it.
But movie streaming is a HOT MESS right now. I looked up the X-Men movie franchise the other day for some reason. No joke, it’s split across 3 or 4 different streaming services!
a bunch of my retro gaming friends talked me into it awhile back and now I got a CRT hooked up to a mini PC with n64 controllers, I definitely see the appeal
Over the years I’ve seen a lot of articles about former Bioware devs leaving to form their own studios but nothing has ever really come of it. Whatever magic they had in the 00’s just seems to be lost.
Stray gods came out back in August and is currently sitting at very positive on steam, it’s by David Gaider’s new studio, he was former lead writer on dragon age.
They started out pissing off Steam users with Metro Exodus going exclusives and pulling it from Steam. Not a great first impression and a lasting one at that. Not everyone will care and will buy from epic, but alienating a whole bunch of Steam’s core users off the bat is probably going to ensure they’ll never win them over.
I claim games from epic and have bought from even origin and uplay, but I’ll probably never spend any money at epic.
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