Eh, I thought it was perfect. I hate how modern Pokemon games have become quasi-MMORPGs, in staleness of core design, lack of combat depth and also their desire to have you spend every waking hour doing absolutely mindless rote activities.
This was nice. Strictly superior oldschool Pokemon clone with fantastically punny names, really cute characters and a nice runtime that’s still longer than the old Pokemon games but not as bloated as modern ones.
I’ll be honest compared to many of the main FF games like X, XIII or XVI, XIV’s story from ARR->EW, especially once you’re in the last segments of ShB and EW, easily outdoes them. It’s slow as molasses since it has to fit a whole MMO with 2y release cycles into it, but it’s also damn good.
The less exclusives, the better. We don’t need lock-ins, we need open platforms and open systems. If I want a plug&play gaming experience I can buy a console, if I want maximum performance and quality in a more maintenance and setup intensive package I can build my own PC.
Yeah this seems to be something people are missing. These tests sometimes prohibit all reviewing and commenting in their NDAs (including positive ones). It’s a playtest, not a beta, review copy or pre-release.
Prey retroactively devaluaed Dishonored for me - as amazing as those were at their time, Prey showed what really could be obtained from the formula, and perfected every aspect of it.
Not even that, but usually this comes with the actual big target on your back: Being publicly traded.
Now of course, you can be publicly traded without being a big corp, and you can be a big corp that is held privately. But usually these big corpos are the ones that are on the stock market, and yes, the moment that happens everything becomes secondary to your actual responsibility: To the shareholders. Line must go up! And an easy one is to fire more workers.
Yeah the studio put out nothing but nice games. Sure, Ghostwire in particular wasn’t stellar, but it was also enjoyable and pretty well done. Evil Within was dorky, but in just the right way. Hi-Fi was phenomenal, and that alone should have seen them physically behead every single higher manager at Bethesda before they tough anyone at Tango.
But alas, apparently if it ain’t Fallout: Ghostwire or Fallout: Hi-Fi, then it doesn’t matter. Manager bonuses ain’t going to pay themselves (hrm… come to think of it, they do?), line has to go up!
Because the indie space is also a graveyard. Investors are increasingly wary of funding anything but a “guarantee” and plenty of studios have had to shutter because the funding they were promised was rescinded.
Maybe gaming has become too bloated as a concept if no company can ever produce a product with their own money any more, instead always listening entirely to investor cash.