I am seeing more and more of these “review bomb” takes lately, too. Dragon Age Veilguard getting review bombed because their game is too woke. Moon Studios saying they might have to close because trolls are review bombing their new game. Monster Hunter Wilds being review bombed on Steam because entitled PC gamers expect their games to be stable, I guess.
Too many people out there are deflecting legitimate criticism in favor of what are basically conspiracy theories—that there must be a concerted effort to specifically punish these developers in particular for the crime of releasing a misunderstood masterpiece. No one wants to accept the possibility that they just put out a bad game.
Sources from Build a Rocket Boy, developer of MindsEye, say the studio has begun layoffs amid a disastrous launch.
This might hurt every English teacher I ever had, but maybe title format should stop applying to article titles. Unnecessary capitalization hurts legibility.
Not that it would necessarily solve the wording issue, though, as I’m sure the data people for news publishers have some stats showing they get more engagement when the title is front loaded with more keywords, or something to that effect.
I remember during the initial console reveal, basically the only thing they had to say was that the sticks are larger and smoother (in motion, not the caps themselves).
I don’t know if they mentioned much else later, but they were very tacit about their durability/longevity. I don’t have much hope that things will be better, at any rate. I still bought a Switch 2, because I know it will still bring me joy to play, but as much as I enjoyed the comfort of playing with a Joycon in each hand, I’ve learned from the original Switch to avoid using the Joycons where possible and opt for a separate controller when playing docked (I’m just using the Pro Controllers I have left over from my original Switch).
I don’t think the Xbox One was a disappointment due to a boycott, I think it was just a product people didn’t feel the need to buy.
Sure, there was early controversy about the always-online DRM approach they planned to take, but it didn’t launch with that in the end. What killed its hype was just being US$100 more expensive than the PS4 and having no killer exclusives lined up.
One factor might be just that Mass Effect came out first and was also Bioware’s last game before EA bought them.
The rest is just my opinion, but I do believe that Mass Effect simply told a better story (multicolored endings aside) and had a better cast of characters. Not to mention the fact that it was a single narrative across the three installments helped keep engagement up. And shooters were incredibly popular at that time.
Yeah, ultimately it’s a matter of personal discretion.
Mainly I think we’re at the point where new consoles, now including the Switch, are more like upgrading your PC. Get the newer model to run existing games better.
Games are going to be releasing for both Switch and Switch 2 for a while, so there’s not much incentive to upgrade unless the very small list of Switch 2 exclusives is enticing right now. But if someone’s priority is playing through older games in higher quality now that it is possible to do so without pirating, there are a lot of reasons to upgrade.
It took several years for PS5 to get to the point where it was probably worth it for exclusives alone (and may still not even be there yet for many), but it was worth getting day 1 if there were PS4 games someone wanted to play at higher resolutions and/or framerates, and they didn’t mind the price.
Actually on the topic of price, also worth acknowledging that the market is a bit fucked, and existing consoles have only gone up in price since release, in complete disregard for earlier trends where they usually drop in price over time, so that could be a other reason for someone to want to get in on it early.
With that in mind, though, since the Switch 2 runs Switch 1 games with better performance (even ones that don’t have paid upgrades), I’d wonder if it might not still be better to finish out the Switch catalog on Switch 2 anyways just so you can have consistent framerates on some games.
I know there was a lot of controversy around the first game due to the developer’s connections with Russian state owned organizations. Is that still the case?
I thought it was actually going to be a novel take on arena shooter formats, with a moving game map that would bring in new parts of a stage over time as others disappear. But the more I learned about it, the less interested I became.
So if anyone is looking to make a Rubik’s cube arena shooter, the market is still open.