This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes people want the same kind of game with a different flavor. Maybe they don’t like the PUBG art style and would rather play Fortnite instead, or perhaps they don’t like Overwatch because of Blizzard and are okay with Marvel Rivals from NetEase instead.
I don’t believe that games should exist with no real competitors. That’s how you end up with games like Dead by Daylight, where community sentiment plummets but the developers have no real reason to do anything about it because where are the players going to go?
Yes, it is still 343. “Halo Studios” has most of the same people working at it as 343. Literally 343 wearing Mustache Glasses.
They changed their studio name because the 343 reputation was so bad, they needed to try to trick consumers into thinking the next Halo game wasnt made by them to get any sales.
I have been using it since 0.0.2 dropped a while back, but when I first looked into it I thought it was a straight up malware masquerading as a Switch emulator.
They kinda always were, tbh. Just with some kind of unique limitation specific to each console that prevented them from being used for any purpose other than playing a specific brand of video game.
Please note that the genre is PvEvP Extraction Looter Shooters. So some games, like Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2, are missing from the list because they do not fit that category.
I have tried to play (ie, only played a few hours each, not like multiple days):
The Cycle Frontier
Escape from Tarkov
ARC Raiders (the closed beta in June 2023)
Dark and Darker
Delta Force Hazard Ops
Lost Light
Marauders
Hunt Showdown
Gray Zone Warfare
Incursion Red River
Games that I tried that don’t exactly fit the genre but are close enough I feel like I should include them:
Steel Hunters (the closed playtest in March 2023)
Sea of Thieves
SYNDUALITY: Echo of Ada
Dungeon Stalkers
Its not that I haven’t given the genre an honest go.
I hate that death means I lose not only the items I picked up, but also the items I brought into a match. The behaviour of players in this particular genre is almost always peak toxic. I am thankful that the genre exists, because it is a sponge taking some of the toxic people from other games. The people that derive fun and pleasure purely from ruining someone else’s game experience (like cheating, harassing, etc.) It is not a genre of game I enjoy, because some other players always ruin the fun.
Some games had a PvE mode, which was fine but the loot was limited to be basically useless. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just have separated inventories, and perhaps allow transfers of items below a set gear level to keep the PvP economy balanced.