I was so excited for the game that I got ahold of a leaked alpha before the game released and played that. And then of course pre-ordered the game and played it immediately when it released.
As long as the delayed time is actually enough to fix fundamental issues, usually a short time of a few weeks, or even months, is hardly enough to fix core issues with a game.
The article says it’s about the network infrastructure. Which frankly seems like something pretty significant for this kind of game. The 3 weeks delay makes it sound like it’s not an easy “just upscale the server capacity” fix, so hopefully it’s nothing too complicated that cannot be fixed within that time.
That said, I would rather that studios would just stop publishing release dates if they don’t even know if they can uphold the deadlines. I know it’s become part of the hype culture and pre-sales and everything else pre-release, but I had much preferred that games would only get announced when they’ve practically gone gold, and worst they’d need to do is to iron out some imperfections.
It’s like moving release dates has become part of the project development and PR in the past decade, just to hit players with that “We wish to deliver the best experience possible, so we decided…” yadda yadda. Some might be genuine, but a lot of games still release in an absolutely garbage state after being delayed (multiple times even). It just gives the impression they do it to drive up pre-orders and hype. Like I wouldn’t be surprised if Rockstar would hit us with that crap sometime next year, and move GTA6 to late 2025 or somewhere 2026 or something.
“The current obsession with nostalgia and remake culture is easy to understand when you realize that it’s a symptom of a culture that isn’t allowed to imagine a future.”
No satire here; I genuinely think it’s a great example of a remake done well.
There are some major breaks from the original plot, which in itself would be neat, but they introduce an entire plot element that interacts with this derivation. The spirits I was talking about, “Whispers” (had to look up the official name, tbh), appear whenever the story attempts to break from the original story from the original release. In universe, this is explained as pre-determination, or destiny. Thanks to our meta knowledge, we know in reality that these spirits are attempting to maintain the timeline from the original release.
As an early example, after the events at the first Mako reactor, Cloud decides to collect his pay and go his own way, which is not the original intended path of the game. To correct this, a group of Whispers attack the party, and ultimately injure Jessie, preventing her from going on the mission. Needing another body, Barrett is forced to rehire Cloud for Avalanche’s mission to the next reactor. Without spoiling specific details, the whispers slowly become a form of antagonist as the characters try harder to get away from the original plot of FFVII.
This is interesting in a few ways. First, we’ve introduced a new major conflict in the form of the characters fighting against a physical embodiment of destiny. They do not want the outcome of their struggles to be predetermined, particularly as that predetermination involved the death and suffering of some specific characters. This is, in my opinion, an interesting new plot element beyond being “the same game again.”
Second, stepping back, and examining this with a wider lens, we can look at the Whispers for what they are to us, the players, rather than what they are to the characters. We know they are not maintaining “destiny,” but instead trying to reestablish the original story we loved. As a result, I see the Whispers as the collective voice of the “change nothing” remake ideology. When a community asks for new content of IPs they love, there will always be diehard essentialists who want their loved stories to remain untouched; the Whispers, then, are these people.
So if the Whispers are a physical representation of the “change nothing” remake ideology, then what is there to make of the fact that they’re largely an antagonist? This seems to me that the writers were critical of this culture, so much so that they ask you to fight it to earn the different take on the story. Of course, it’s far from the only derivation from the original game, but that’s exactly my point: FFVII remake was so far divorced from the conceptual, soulless “let’s pump out the same game again” remake that they literally wrote that culture into a new antagonist.
Part of the issue is that modern games are usually getting fixes right up to release. Pre-release reviews tend to focus on things that aren’t likely to ever change significantly, like design and writing.
It would be nice if they gave a summary of issues they saw with a disclaimer that they may get fixed instead of omitting that information entirely.
This sure seems to indicate coaching on catchphrases. As for conspiracy theories, this isn’t a conspiracy, it’s pretty obvious. IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku, and Polygon have a long history of rating games higher based on their budget and publisher influence. Standard review outlets are inconsistent, and since 2010 have been the butt of many jokes. This seven year old video from Dunkey albeit, satire, rather well breaks down the inconsistency between review outlet staff even highlighting their own subjective contradictions from individual reviewers (look at the bit about the Sonic game in this one).
When you look at the first wave of reviews given by those issued pre-release review copies, the trend speaks for itself.
I mean, I played all of them as they released, at least from 3 onward. I picked up GTA2 for PS1 from a discount bin way before 3 was even announced which is what had me so hyped for 3 in the first place. Though for 3 I waited until it was on PC as I didn’t have a PS2 then; but by VC I had a PS2 and had SA on pre-order (I still have the bandana bonus from it somewhere).
My recollection of when things happened is fuzzy AF though lol
Pre-empt: Everything I say is in regards to the original release. I have not played the pristine cut.
It is definitely intended to be deeply uncomfortable. It has a very “cosmic horror” vibe to it, while playing on themes of relationships, love and romance. Both the player and the princess will die, repeatedly, in sometimes gruesome ways, and sometimes absurd ways. Body horror will happen. You will read descriptions of flesh and bone seperating. But despite all that, it ultimately is an emotionally endearing experience.
It’s good, but not great. The story is impactful and meaningful, and it does a great sort-of incidental meta commentary on literature.
An opinion which I find most players don’t share with me: the ending was incredibly weak, to the point that I felt it really detracted from the experience, which led me to my “not great” assessment. It has a bad case of “the only decision that matters is the last one,” which isn’t the way I like these seemingly heavily malluble visual novels to go, and none of the endings feel genuinely satisfying. Worse, my first ending set up for something of a second attempt towards a “golden ending” of sorts, only to pull the rug out from under me and just kind of… end, instead.
The storytelling is great, the writing is engaging, the voice acting is fantastic, the art is gorgeous… There’s a lot to like about the game, so I don’t want to make it sound “bad,” because it’s quite good. It just sold itself to me as a kind of “choices matter” game, where I’d find myself digging for information and answers, so I can learn more and make better decisions on multiple, short playthroughs. I hoped to eventually either discover everything I want to discover and feel good about my explorations, or use my growing knowledge to find the “right” ending, whether that’s a “golden” ending or an ending that I find satisfying and rewards me for my effort. But, for it’s variety choices, it’s not really that kind of game. It is, at its heart, a linear game, with some variation in the experiences you have between where you start and where you end up, with a couple choices in the last moment determining which page you flip to before the credits roll.
Maybe I expected too much, and the problem is with me. I can’t deny that my opinion could be based on a failure of expectation. But, I restate, it’s good, but it’s not great.
You can’t really gauge its Steam reviews because there are only 13(!) total so far, reflective of a game that has launched with just a few hundred players. 224, as I’m writing this article. Sub-Concord levels. Yes. Concord is a unit of measurement now....
Same here, and frankly, what kind of title is “Unknown 9: Awakening” supposed to be? That reads like an internal Codename they forgot to change pre-release:
Yeah I played so much pre 1.0 but never really got around to it after release. I knew how much I would be addicted if I really got into it again so I never really got around to it. I really need to get some time to try the base game as released before doing this expansion. But man, I really want to.
Sooo, since I have you as an enthusiast here: The only Silent Hill I’ve ever played was Shattered Memories way back when (I actually have a rare pre-release press copy). Clever game and equally scary. Which game should I pick up first if I wanted to seriously get into this series? This new remake of Silent Hill 2? The original Silent Hill? Shattered Memories again?
I’m in no way condoning Nintendo’s behaviour, but the idea that they don’t make any money from their back catlog is rather misleading given that they have re-released a large number of their older titles to either buy or rent on every console since the Wii, along with releasing mini versions of their older consoles with the titles pre-loaded. It’s not like they locked those games away never to be seen again.
Just a correction: the sequel was released in 1999 as Battlezone 2: Combat Commander. It was a AAA release and picked up the original alternate history storyline 30 years after the events of the first game, with all Earth-based factions now forming an official alliance and fighting a new common threat. It was insanely cool for a teenager back then.
While the sequel was technically far superior, I did miss the cold war tone of US vs Soviet conflict that was present in the first game.
I also loved the interpretation of Greek mythology through the “ancient aliens” lens (Hercules Brigade and all the other stuff, quite along the lines of what Stargate SG1 was doing at the time) that was revealed to you through briefings and pre-mission voiceovers. I think this was also more pronounced in the first game.
I’m chuffed it’s a one-time purchase. Before release I only had the option to pre-download and I was a bit fearful of inevitably sinking cash on microtransactions (despite the dev being vocally against predatory practices)
Update: Transaction declined! They really are considerate of taking my money!
Yea I recall it being like 20 something. That’s why I never pre-order. Without having poof I would assume they got refunded if it stopped development, it’s epic games. I do recall it did get released eventually but I had lost interest by them.
After the massive blunder of Starfield, I cannot see how Elder scrolls 6 could possibly be successful. Everything points to the fact that they knew that the game was not even half finished, in my opinion, with major glaring issues, and they decided to just send it off anyway. The difference between this game and Oblivion is that...
A 1 out of 10 for Starfield is ridiculous; either hyperbole, or you haven’t played many video games before to see what a 1 out of 10 would truly be
I’ve played 20 years worth of games. My criteria is actually very logical. What is the scale of the company and their resources, the budget, past releases, and then finally, the game itself: How many hours do I get out of it? How linear is it? How believable is it? How captivating? Replayability? I give Starfield a 1.0/10 in all of these. Keep reading if you’re curious why
Linearity: This game is almost entirely linear, despite being called a “sandbox”. There’s no point whatsoever to wandering around away from the main storylines. Unlike Skyrim, Oblivion, hell even Fallout 76… You can’t just go wander off and find some new awesome area to do interesting stuff in. You find a new area, but it’s bland, has nothing interesting, or is very short-lived. So you’re basically coaxed back to just go finish the main story, with is such a linear and plain slog.
Believable: There are so few important choices to make, none of them really feel meaningful either. Also, the story just feels so cheesy. It’s so bad. You’re wandering around with a cowboy and his pre-teen daughter shooting people in the face, really? Yeah, that makes sense. All your companions are judgmental and never STFU with the ‘holier than thou’ attitude, forcing you to basically be good, or to be lectured constantly and nagged. Towns feel pointless and unbelievable. Not a single town I visited felt like a real place. For example, the western style town felt like Westworld. It was so clowny.
Replayability: Once you’ve done the entire storyline, there’s literally no reason to replay the game. It’s such a linear and unimaginitive story that there’s really nothing worth going back and seeing again
Now why is this a 1.0 out of 10? Taking the company size, their past projects, their capabilities, their support network (the entire mod community of all their games)… They had the potential to make SOMETHING better than this, but it was clearly rushed. It’s also highly unlikely they’ll give it the Cyberpunk or NMS treatment, leaving it bland, boring, broken… for $70. Unbelievable. The fact that a multi-million dollar company backed by Billion dollar Microsoft could produce this is just ridiculous.
Minus the pre release hype, this was how I felt about shadow warrior 2. The first one was so good with the retro updated FPS feel, and even made your starting sword relevant throughout the game. Then 2 came out and it was a bullet spongey, bad craft system crapfest. I didn’t even make it a couple hours after the dozens I spent in the first.
Unless a game is sold as “pre-order for open beta access” or the more modern equivalent “early access”, I still expect games to be “complete” in terms of core content on release date. Bug fixes and quality of life changes later are ok, (but it would be nice not to need them) and games that never stop being updated are an exception (e.g. Minecraft).
Neither of those games was really “incomplete” on launch in terms of core features. Cyberpunk had some bad bugs, but the core of its controversy was poor performance on older consoles, which (as I understand it) was never really fixed. No Man’s Sky was missing multiplayer on launch, but the core of its controversy was people didn’t like the core gameplay loop and also didn’t like the randomly generated terrain and creatures. NMS has received a lot of content since then, but it hasn’t really changed its core gameplay loop and has only slightly improved the quality of random generation.
Over and over and over and over the gaming community has been screwed over by Publishers so I’ll stop grave dancing when Corpos stop being so horrible
Requiring a third party account to play a game months after it was released and after selling it to customers who can’t legitimately make an account because you don’t feel like their country can make you enough profit. Helldivers 2
Attempting to take away peoples digital “purchases” of media because you can’t be bothered to pay licencing. Sony
Changing the definition of “purchase” an established word in English and not defining your new definition until page 22 of a EULA that you know nobody is going to read. Sony, and everyone else
Shutting down a server and rendering a game with a whole single player aspect completely useless and not telling consumers this at the time of purchase. The Crew (www.stopkillinggames.com)
Selling a terribly incomplete game filled with glitches for the price of a full game. Cyberpunk 2077 and so many others.
Selling Pre-Purchases to let people play the game early but really its just another way to get people to pay to be Guinea pigs in your buggy game. That new Star Wars game and so many others.
Adding so many stupid “micro transactions” to games to milk players as much as possible for useless skins and camos etc. Diablo 4 and so many more.
Adding a “Season Pass”??? I don’t even understand what this is??? Buy a full priced game and then buy a subscription to that game??? But still not have access to all of the content and then be shown a magic glove that costs €500, why is this not part of the subscription or is it??? I hope it is. New COD and probably others
“Making” a game and selling it to people but really its just a scam where they got “volunteers” to work on the game for free. Then shutting the game down instantly. That zombie game with Will Smith.
Something, something Overwatch 2 is a totally brand new game.
Shutting down third party mods for an unsupported and dangerous game just after the sale for that game is over. Fine, they didn’t own all of the assets used but they did fix the issue where people could infect your system with malware. COD
Increasing the prices of all of your subscriptions and making those subscriptions worse by offering less while your parent company is posting ~$20 Billion profits in the most recent quarter, yes quarter, thats like 3 months…
Btw all of these examples have happened within the last 4 years. Its pretty sad that I can list these off the top of my head. I only play single player games and I only got back into gaming a couple of years ago after ~10 years of not really playing anything
The so what is that this writer for the verge will likely never be trusted with NDA type pre-release access for any other games going forward, and this may even impact all of the Verge.
This isn’t just a one and done kind of issue, this will be seen by the entire industry as a “can’t trust that guy with pre-release access”
More of the World of Warcraft Pre-Expansion Event. Like last week, I leveled a bunch of characters to max, just because it’s easy, even if they’ll never see the light of day again (until the next event like this).
Then, the new Diablo 4 season started, and in less than a week I’ve basically progressed as far as the whole of last season. I went with a Sorcerer this time, currently running a Chain Lightning build, and it’s a lot more fun than the Minion Necromancer last time. However, now I’m at the point where it’s not just easy upgrades all the time, but grinding for those drops to feel a real difference, so the honeymoon phase might end soon. The new season mechanic seems pretty neat, although I haven’t done a whole lot of it yet. It’s a pretty simple wave based mode in a small room, where you just get to slaughter tons of demons and a boss fight afterward. This mode has different tiers or difficulties, most of which I haven’t tried yet, so I don’t know how much things change, if at all, but considering I’ll probably only play another two weeks at most (until the Warcraft expansion release) I don’t see it getting old.
They are going to add Linux support the game is in alpha.
That’s not day 1. Why do I need to say it over and over again? It’s not like I spelled it out already: CS2 had a Windows-only pre-release and the Linux port was only added to the formal release, resulting in the Linux port being very buggy to this day! Their own platform needs to be the top tier development target from day 1. How is that difficult to understand?
Terraria hits over 60 million sales with Terraria 1.4.5 shaping up to be another big update (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
Path of Exile 2 is getting delayed again, but only for 3 weeks | Digital Trends (www.digitaltrends.com) angielski
Nostalgia and remake culture (lemmy.sdf.org) angielski
“The current obsession with nostalgia and remake culture is easy to understand when you realize that it’s a symptom of a culture that isn’t allowed to imagine a future.”
Dragon Age: The Veilguard | Review Thread angielski
Game Information...
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas release 20 years ago today. angielski
What do you guys think about it?...
Slay the Princess - The Pristine Cut is OUT NOW! (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Completely forgot about this but I’m excited to update and check out the new routes.
‘Unknown 9: Awakening’ Arrives To 200 Steam Players, Poor Reviews (www.forbes.com) angielski
You can’t really gauge its Steam reviews because there are only 13(!) total so far, reflective of a game that has launched with just a few hundred players. 224, as I’m writing this article. Sub-Concord levels. Yes. Concord is a unit of measurement now....
Factorio: Space Age - Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Silent Hill 2 (2024) Review Thread
Game Information...
Ryujinx emulator GitHub repository currently down (gbatemp.net) angielski
Random Screenshots of my Games #7 - Battlezone 98 Redux (lemmy.world) angielski
For you older gamers out there, I’m gonna take you back a bit today....
Balatro is now available on mobile! (apps.apple.com)
Finally, the ultimate weapon against boredom while waiting
"Concord servers are now offline. Thank you to all the freegunners who have joined us in the Concord galaxy" angielski
Is this the fastest video game death of all time? Not even Lawbreakers died this fast.
Is Elder Scrolls 6 doomed to fail? I can't see how it will work angielski
After the massive blunder of Starfield, I cannot see how Elder scrolls 6 could possibly be successful. Everything points to the fact that they knew that the game was not even half finished, in my opinion, with major glaring issues, and they decided to just send it off anyway. The difference between this game and Oblivion is that...
Higher difficulties in every single RPG. angielski
Star Wars: Outlaws being a "AAAA Game" for 3 minutes (www.youtube.com) angielski
I knew it was bad but this is hilariously bad.
Daily Screenshot Drop - Kay Vess (Star Wars: Outlaws) (lemmy.world) angielski
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/19272648...
Just one more time (lemmy.world) angielski
The eagerness to grave dance on unpopular games has become a bad habit (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Black Myth: Wukong - Review Thread angielski
Game Information...
Modern Warfare Remastered climbs Steam charts as MW2 multiplayer mod prepares to launch [VGC] EDIT: C&D by Activision, so nvm i guess (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
The Verge Under Fire For Publishing Info About ‘Deadlock,’ Valve’s Secret Shooter (www.forbes.com) angielski
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of August 11th
Whatcha all playing!...
Deadlock (Valve's Unannounced Title) Passes 12k Peak Players in Closed Alpha angielski
steamdb.info/app/1422450/charts/...