For me and many others, it was a very divisive one, so I’m not so surprised by that. I guess Eurogamer is staffed by a lot of the game’s detractors, which is possible. Hell, if it was me making the list, #1 with a bullet would be Skullgirls, but that’s not here either.
If I have to tell every single unit where to go, who to shoot and when to hide, I’m not playing a shooter, I’m playing a strategy game in first person.
Yeah, that’s what I’m here for. Another way to look at it is this: remember how much “All Ghillied Up” wowed people when they showed it off at E3, and then again when people got to play it? I wanted to be the guy telling the player what to do, not just following a series of instructions. You’re right that when a game like Wildlands has to resort to wallhacks, there’s a lot of satisfaction that evaporates with it, and that’s why there might be a market for a game made the old-school way.
Its trajectory was that it was going to continue to burn money. Sega didn’t even launch Hyenas because they realized they’d only lose money by letting it rock. A lot of these games chasing the live service trend are spending so much money that they need to hit hard in order to turn that profit, like Avengers, Suicide Squad, Concord, the forthcoming Marathon and Fairgame$, etc. The Finals was huge at launch, lost most of its playerbase in the next couple of months (which, btw, happens for nearly every video game ever, live service or otherwise), and because it was so expensive, it’s not looking long for this world. Compared to something like Path of Exile or Warframe or The Hunt: Showdown, that launched a leaner game at the start and scaled up responsibly, they didn’t need to be the biggest thing in the world in order for it to make financial sense.
To be clear, I hate all of this shit, even when it’s a sound business strategy, but the risk involved in a project like Concord is visible from space, and the chances of it making up that cost are so clearly small when they’re not the first one of these to market.
They’re all the same format, but The Dark Pictures is an anthology of games that are about half the size of Until Dawn. There are 5 or 6 of them at this point.
Supermassive games like Until Dawn, The Quarry, and the Dark Pictures are great for this, especially since later iterations have built-in “pass the controller” modes that are great for sharing a game with your spouse.