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.
There's a port of the game that runs on Quest and Pico VR headsets that's dope as hell. Officially comes with the demo version and requires pulling files from the PC version to get the full game which is a bit difficult to get legit at this point, though there are other ways. https://github.com/lvonasek/PreyVR
We were going to be badass BOUNTY HUNTERS on an ALIEN PLANET and it would’ve been so fucking cool! I loved the original game, I love Prey 2017, but I’m salty we never got the 2 they revealed.
It really did fuck things up which is depressing. The game was a masterpiece of an immersive sim and the atmosphere of the whole game is like no other. With a different name, I think it could’ve sold better. Even I avoided it because I was mad about Prey 2 being canned and the reused name, until I saw Markiplier play it and fell in love almost immediately. Such a beautiful game that deserved better.
Good choice, a favorite of mine as well. In the middle of the night when I’m supposed to be sleeping with a theme that often makes no sense in reality but I’m bought in 100% anyway until my alarm goes off.
Exactly! I spent an entire night playing a football game over and over in my head that didn’t happen and wasn’t important to the team. But John Elway just could not throw for a first down to save his life…
One of my all time favorite games. The only thing that would have made it better for me is a time-based story a la Dead Rising. Though that would have probably made the game even less successful than it was.
Prey was the true successor to Deus Ex and system shock. Its a miracle of technical design with one interconnected world that the gamers always say they want. Fun powers, a trippy story that demands to be seen through.
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.
Oh damn, I didn’t realize this was out of EA. I impulse purchased it a couple years ago and it felt pretty lackluster, but I recognized it had a lot of potential so I shelved it rather than refund. Looks like they’ve added a ton of content and gameplay changes, so I’ll definitely check it out again. Hopefully they implement native controller support, as it seems like a perfect candidate for Steam Deck (yes, I know about Steam Input configs, but those are sometimes pretty hacky and don’t feel all that great in a lot of games).
Currently, mine just says it can’t connect to Steamworks and gets no further. Anyone else having that issue? I would expect the game to fall back to offline mode at least, but even with Steam in offline mode, I get the same error.
Even if I have the EOD I really hope EFT gets dumped and new games of the same genre come alive. I fucking hate the devs, they are even worse than EA or UBISOFT in terms of caring about the game more than money. The old prices were already a fucking scam.
Their netcode is trash, the game is full of hackers on wipe starts and mid wipe (basically were the fun is). Plus if you aren’t a fucking streamer that plays 15h a day the game you are pretty much fucked up.
Reminds me of the Volkswagen boss when their emission cheating leaked. He said he didn’t know. Wow, you earn millions for managing a company that big and then claim to not know about something. The fuck did you do then? So either he was lying or admitting that he didn’t do his damn job. Both cases should have lead to him having to give back whatever he “earned” in his position.
I'm sure he got a bonus instead. The "C" in C-Suite stands for Certifiable. Literally divorced from reality. Needless to say they don't earn their pay at all but all the wannabees on the board keep throwing money at them because they want their shot to be a do-nothing, too.
I used to play EFT, and he would periodically say stupid shit like this regularly. Like reliably 2x a year at least.
He’s extremely out of touch with the fan base, and gets upset at the “toxic community” for complaining that the “early access” game (for what, ~8 years now) has major game breaking bugs still, and most importantly, has been overrun by hackers for many years.
Imagine an MMO where all the epic loot is randomly spawned in a free for all battle ground, and the hackers can see all items on the map, vacuum it up remotely, and leave the lobby before legit players could even sprint there in a straight line.
And then the lead dev says “man, you guys whine so much, get over it”
I believe it. Multiple friends of mine updated to play and see the streets changes when this press cycle hit, a few even shared footage of suspicious noiseless head/eyes deaths while they were in enclosed spaces. If it has been long enough, just the words escape from tarkov will send some fans back, negative experiences suspended.
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Aktywne