Alan Wake 2 was by far my standout choice for GOTY last year. I’m still bummed it didn’t win more awards, particularly narrative ones as I think it handily beats BG3 in that department. I love Remedy and Sam Lake, and I love them pushing the envelope of AAA games. It’s one to add to the example list of “video games as art” in my opinion.
I’m glad the DLC was great, I’ve been trying to hold off until I can play both at once but maybe I’ll need to cave soon…
I’ve been wanting a new, proper Splinter Cell for years. Michael Ironside is cancer free now and still alive for a couple more years (hopefully). I dream of Sam Fischer getting a final send-off with the correct voice actor. “One final job” with him old and grey. But yeah, Ubisoft wouldn’t make it right, sadly.
Valve is not a normal company. As far as I know they still have their fluid work structure in place where projects are dictated by what the devs themselves feel like doing and are inspired by.
Icefrog (who was the lead developer of Dota 2 - and Dota 1 for many years before that) is lead developing Deadlock as I understand it. It has his fingerprints all over it, at least. It seems enough other people at Valve liked his idea of a twist on the MOBA concept to turn it into a full project.
I feel your frustration but there isn’t really any opportunity cost lost here. It’s not that they decided to make “a game” and chose this one out of all available options. If they felt like they had enough ideas to make Half-Life 3 (or any other single player game) then they would have. It’s just that this is the game they want to make right now.
Having the game streamed by all these huge channels before it’s even officially announced is kinda crazy. Everyone wants to play Valve’s “secret game” of course, so it’s free marketing. Pretty clever.
Yeah I agree. Feels very anticlimactic after the long wait. I’d be very curious to see what the original concept played like. I heard it apparently involved controlling an enemy hero briefly so you could for example waste their ult.
I haven’t seen Rayman Legends mentioned, so I’ll throw it out there. It’s a pretty flawless game for what it tries to be, and it’s a lot of fun to play with a friend. The musical levels are just extraordinarily crafted. Definitely recommended if you’re into platforming at all (and even if you’re not it’s worth a shot!)
It’s such a terrible shame that we had Brian Mitsoda and Rik Schaffer back and actually working on a sequel and none of it will see the light of day. Say what you want about Mitsoda’s thin-blood protagonist idea (I’m not a fan) but watching the trailers of https://youtu.be/6PM0vb8UCzM" version of the game you can at least see the lineage of the original.
Yes, it’s very very silly and is basically the complete opposite of what it should be. It should be the Olympics for Esports, not a bunch of mobile games tangentially related to existing olympic sports.
Oh I might have forgot to put it in my post, but the original writer/lead and composer got kicked off the project when they dumped Hard Suit labs and gave the project to The Chinese Room. That - combined with the latest trailers - is why people who like the original have very little hope of the sequel recapturing the magic.
Metacritic is not the good gauge for the original, given the circumstances of its release. The game was made on an alpha version of Source without any devkit as Valve were developing Source/HL2. Its development was also troubled, and ultimately pushed out the door before it was ready. It’s a miracle the game even runs at all. Not only is the final third of the game notoriously lacking compared to the early parts, but the game is literally unplayable without the fan made unofficial patch. You run into a bug that hard locks your progression like 80% of the time and cannot finish the playthrough.
Despite all that it has become a true cult classic for its writing, dialogue and characters, its humour, impeccable atmosphere and fantastic sound track. It’s been cited as one of the design inspirations for Cyberpunk 2077, among others.
These are the things the sequel will struggle living up to. The entire thing that got people excited about it was bringing back the original writer/lead designer and composer.
Tell that to the IOC who refused to feature any shooters at the Esports Olympics because they’re “too violent” - they even forced Fortnite to make a target shooting mode for its entry!
The dev has a storied past^[1] of sexism and misogyny, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The COVID stuff is amusing but unsurprising considering it’s a Chinese studio.