Just ignore the "triple A" industry and games are usually great. Lots of small passionate studios still pumping out quality stuff.
Seriously. I've been playing Ready or Not, Palworld, and Helldivers 2 lately, and I'm having a great time with gaming.
I've just got helldivers 2. I thought. Ob I'm going to check out the microtransactions. I only saw the super credit things for real money. But even that's not bad.
He'll, you don't even have to pay to earn them. You can just get them. The super citizen pass as well? Yeah. Yku can buy this with the super credits that you can unlock for just playing the game. The dlc is literally just cosmetics, and maybe of the pass if you haven't already bought it.
It genuinely shocked me when is away it. Because. Whilst I rarely play different games anymore, out of all my most recently bought games. I haven't seen that. And I have so much respect for it. And if I'm being fully honest. That, to me, makes me feel like I wouldn't mind spending a little bit extra on those things.
Oh, and it's not rammed down your throat.
While "AAA" has lost all meaning: even in that space we have some real bangers already
Yakuza/Like a Dragon 8 is already in the running as one of the all time great JRPGs (and probably a top 50 GOAT in terms of games period). FF7R2 is going to have to REALLY screw up for fans to not feel strongly about it. And Dragon's Dogma 2 is, somehow, showing all signs of actually being faithful to the incredibly weird original. We also might be seeing Elden Ring DLC sooner than later. Tekken 8 seems to be incredibly well received... accessibility aside. That gets us to the end of March (ER has a mysterious youtube entry but it has for weeks so who knows)? Even if nothing else happens this year, that already is a stacked as hell line-up.
Two months in and, gaming wise, 2024 is shaping up really well. Like most years, people see what they want to see. If you want to say things are a flop, there are flops. If you want to say things are awesome, there are some truly amazing games.
I'm so excited for 7 rebirth. And one I've finished that I'll be getting persona 3 reload to replay one of my favourite games. With those two alone and me catching up on some of last year's games, this year is going to be a good one for me.
I played the demo for Mouthwashing and it was excellent. Nice little horror game without jump scares that really evokes dread.
The Deep Rock Survivors game is pretty cool too. Lots of neat stuff coming out these days.
Ubisoft also published the best game of the year, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Best metroidvania game I've played in a long time.
Yea I've mainly been focusing on smaller games recently. Last AAA game I bought was Cyberpunk 77, which I enjoyed but was a whole thing. There's so many good indy games coming and going its definitely worth it to look into some of them
Pirating this pirate game would be funny. But it's a Ubisoft game, so even free is too expensive.
The next Ubisoft game I play will be sponsored by Ubisoft, so likely never. They stopped making good games before I left high school.
Not really, because pirating means removing the DRM which is the main reason of why "even free is too expensive".
Even if it doesn't cost money, it costs time to download and play it. Time you could have spent doing/playing something better.
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Hey now, teamforetress 2 got a 64 bit beta that improved the game performance by a solid 20-30%
Valve might finally make the Heavy update
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Fun meme, but honestly I think the only folks it's gonna be a bad year for are AAA game devs, who I already sympathize with.
I think indies are gonna keep rocking some outstanding content. Content made with and for love will always beat content made for money IMO :)
I'm cautiously hopeful about Nightingale. The game trailers and $30 tag caught my interest. I've played a LOT of survival games and only played a few extensively, like Valheim. But survival games are a huge time sink, so I can't give most of them the time they deserve. But the multiplayer and community aspect for Nightingale makes it seem worth the time.
Just gotta wait a bit after release for the reviews.
Yeah foss games are just way better because if you like the game then you can expand it
Yeah the flow of great indie games isn't going to dry up any time soon. So many developers willing to actually take risks with their games and not just churn out another copy of a copy of a copy. Art needs passion to be good.
Curious question: when was the last time a large scale "Triple A" title released and actually met expectations?
The key word here might be "large-scale" which to me sounds like the production-line games like CoD.
I see that as a failure of the term AAA, but I might just be underestimating the size of Larian's team. I've always understood AAA to mean funded by a publisher.
Larian has a massive team and tons of money for BG3. It's insulting to indies and to BG3 to pretend BG3 is anything other than the product of hundreds of hardworking team members.
I enjoy many indies more than I've enjoyed BG3 so far, but that speaks more to the fact that production scale and enjoyment do not scale linearly. BG3 remains a behemoth of a project, however.
Yeah, I have already been corrected. I think the reason I assumed it had a smaller team was because the team clearly loved the game and you don't see that often in gaming outside of small-team projects.
Fuck yes it does. That game set a new gold standard for me on video game production quality. Phenomenal game, and is even well optimized.
^Still ^gonna ^get ^it ^if ^comes ^to ^steam ^though.
If not, I'll just watch a YouTube playthrough.
Forgot about Elden Ring.
I Always forget that Nintendo games are Triple A, I always get that indie dev vibe in spite of being as far from indie as one can get. Not in community engagement, rather in the notable detail and unique art style each game has, like you can tell the developers care about what they're working on. You can definitely tell when Nintendo themselves develop a game vs. when they publish a game. (cough Game Freak cough)
There were countless developers that folded during the transition to HD, 3D graphics in the PS360 era, and I feel like Gamefreak would have easily been one of them if Pokemon hadn’t taken off the way it did.
Nintendo have always been kinda unique though. Triple N games might be more accurate.
You have to wonder if they ever played Cyberpunk 2077 (incl. Phantom Liberty) before they came up with that line. The only AAAA game. Maybe not the best game ever, but it definitely felt like the most expensive game ever.
I played base Cyberpunk and I'd like to refund the 60h I played. Thankfully I pirated it, I would not have payed a dime. However I hear comments like: "Phantom Liberty is what the game should be" I watched no spoilers, is it worth playing for me if I despised the base game?
If you've played a game you despise for 60h then I think your opinion on that game is invalid and your opinion on games in general is suspect.
I don't know how much I played down to the minute, but that's a good estimation. The reason is because I really would love to love this game. Everything is just a bit off from being good, after that shitass ending and copy-pasted sidecontent, I got so mad at the little things that the whole domino stack fell.
It's one of the newest RPGs yet it playes like (or worse tbh) than Skyrim. It rivals for best graphics, yet there is no life anywhere. The story urges you to play thur fast, yet the game wants you to discover every corner, making a huge disconnect between narrative and gameplay. The skill tree is so bad, I don't even want to talk about it, let's just act it doesn't exist. The drip in the game is rarer that in Elden Ring. Weapon modding is discouraged as all mods (at least shat I got) are bad and unremovable. Gun play isn't that bad, I give you that much. However, the guns that you choose to shoot (mostly the how you choose it) is bad, if higher fps than let's switch. All cybernetic augments are either skill tree replacements or fucking expensive good for nothings. The "hacking" in the game took everything that was bad from Watch Dogs and watered it down to a soulless version. The NPC's AI are super fucking dumb. Stealt is literally not an option because of this, it's a flagship openworld rpg, what you mean I can't stealth. The origin selection is a scam. They did nothing with braindance, yet it has a whole storyline. They did nothing with Johnny yet it's the whole fucking game somehow.
I could explain all of these points in a paragraph, however I don't have the time. I won't even proof-read, it might have a bunch of errors, it is what it is.
Well, some people are just stubborn. Same reason LOL has so many players that hate the game but still play it daily.
I think they just say that. If they truly hated it they'd stop playing, unless they get paid to play. What they have are gripes with the game.
Probably not. There are some games that I really enjoy with some mods loaded that I would never play un-modded, so that may be worth checking.
I'm surprised that they even thought that they would come even close to outperforming the AAAA battery and even dared to put themselves on the same level as it.
Oh, AAAAARRR! Because it's a pirate game! Duh.
I don't see than in the article though.
Might have been a comment on the post here. shrugs I'm sick, and tired, so that's the best I can do.
I know a lot of people really enjoyed this game, but I couldn’t play more than a few hours despite loving Doom 2016. Restricted ammo quantity really killed the enjoyment for me. Adding Denuvo only after it was reviewed was a really shitty move and the soundtrack isn’t as good either now that I think of it.
I bought the Doom collection like a year and a half ago but all I've played is like half of Doom Classic. I need to get around to Doom/Doom Eternal.
“Might not be a good year for games.” Idk, we’ve already had the surprise with palworld, which, while it didn’t really grab me, was a breath of fresh air for people. Helldivers slaps. I think the key is not to buy into hype, and play actually good games. People like to say 23 was a bad year too, but, I’d argue that stinkers like gollum just got more coverage and were on top of people’s minds. Not to excuse it at all, but, I played a lot of really good games last year.
How would a year with Zelda, Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Street Fighter 6 and Like a Dragon Gaiden be bad? It was a great year.
I think it was because there were a few high profile let-downs, like Kerbal Space Program 2, Cities Skylines 2, Starfield etc. Even Zelda, which was eagerly anticipated, was only OK and interest fizzled out quite quickly.
Oh, you struck a nerve with KSP :( I still check weekly to see if they’re even to where they should have launched from, answer: no. I suppose, I did have my fair share of heartbreaks. There have just been years, like ‘14, where it was hard to even find the diamonds in the rough I suppose.
Forspoken came out at the start of last year and we also got Redfall. 2023 was a stacked year for games.
Maybe the more bad games that come out mean we're also getting good ones to balance things.
We have also had, Tekken 8, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Granblue Fantasy Relink, Persona 3r and Helldivers 2.
A couple bad/mediocre games is to be expected when we are only in Feb and this year is such a fucking banger for games already.
I meant Forspoken and Redfall were examples of bad games we got last year. The spectrum of fully mid to fully awful.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth came out this year. There's literally nothing to complain about. Best game
This - I hate when gamers have too much attention on which games are bad, and none on the good games.
I have a page of Steam reviews where I give a thumbs up to a bunch of indie darlings, then a negative review to a live service game, and only the negative review has votes on it.
Yeah games are too much now. Luckily this has over 100 hours of gameplay so I'm okay with it. Put 110 hours in the last one and loved every second
There’s a bunch of videos on YouTube now separately comparing Batman Arkham Knight to Gotham Knights/Suicide Squad, and AC4: Black Flag to Skull and Bones.
There is absolutely a trend of brain drain in game development that no amount of contractors can fill now.
With the awareness that some people might call me names for saying that... AC4: black flag wasn't even that good of a game in my opinion
It was my favourite Assassin's Creed game since AC2, because it contained the least amount of Assassin's Creed.
To be fair That usually comes from the shareholders that have never played a video game in their life
Games are looking great this year! Earthblade by the creators of Celeste, Hades 2, Silk song (I Believe) If you ignore AAA, it's going great!
It's ok, this game is AAAA so AAA will be ok. /s
Trails through daybreak, dragons dogma 2, avowed, Indiana Jones are all games I'm looking forward to off the top of my head. Trails through daybreak is actually the game I'm most excited about.
I never saw Avowed that way before.
I have pretty high hopes for Obsidian on their next flagship game. Even the worst game of theirs is still pretty good! Alpha Protocol is a janky mess but it's very fun to play with.
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tbh the game this seems to be about "Skull and Bones" isn't even that bad... The character models (especially faces) look pretty bad and I haven't tried intentional multiplayer, but that's all I've really noticed (played it for about 6-7 hours, including open beta)
I think that in a vacuum the game isn't that bad, but given the context of how much it costs, how long it's been in development, being hailed as the first "AAAA game", and the fact that they literally made a better version of this game 11 years ago and the game is only mediocre I totally understand why this game has gotten the reaction it has.
The CEO also called it "the first AAAA" game, hence the jokes being made about how shit it is.
No, that's being a bad game that does that.
But hey, you're allowed to like bad games.
Suddenly a recent experience makes so much sense.
I was watching something on YouTube and the guy did a sponsorship for Skull and Bones.
One of the comments was, "Only (whoever the guy was) could make a sponsor pitch for Skull and Bones interesting."
Since I am completely not a game person, and had no idea what the hell Skull and Bones is outside of some weird Yale fraternity that spawns bad presidents, and I naturally skipped past the whole script in the video, the comment didn't make much sense to me.
Game is sitting on a 6/10 on opencritic, that's still an okay game for me 😅
I don't know why opencritic labels it as weak. For me its always 6=okay, 7=good, 8=very good, 9=awesome, 10=Masterpiece...
It cracks me up how a scale of one to ten is always actually a scale of six to ten. Or maybe five to ten of they really hate the thing.
Plenty of people like meth does that mean its a good product?
How do you think the world would look today if no one had bought that fuckdamn horse armor?
Palworld (i mean, it’s NOT polished, but it was fun), Enshrouded, and Persona 3 Reloaded have kicked off my year with a bang. And there’s a lot more good stuff coming on the horizon.
I don't know guys. It seems Unisoft have lost it. I don't buy games from them anymore. I don't know what happened to me, but after I made the decision, I found myself buying Far Cry 6 even though I hated Far Cry 5 with passion (I think it was Gustavo Fring). I am 2 hours in and I am not feeling it. The prologue was nice but then it turned into random missions. Go do this, do that. Should I just drop the game?
I'm have the exact opposite reaction right now. I stopped buying Ubi games years ago, but through give aways I got Assassins Creed Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla for free. I never touched them until recently when a friend started playing through Odyssey and was talking about how much fun he was having. I installed Origins and played though it (because I can't skip games in a series) and I kinda enjoyed it. Then I played Odyssey and it blew me away with how much fun I had. I'm on to the second DLC of it, and when I'm done I'll start up Valhalla.
As far as Far Cry games go, though, I haven't enjoyed one since 3.
I've played Odyssey and it was fairly fun to play, but Valhalla to me seemed a bit, idk, empty? Not much parkouring around in large towns like an assassin when the buildings are pretty sparse and small.
Thats what worries me the most. I heard that Valhalla was pretty much just an action hack and slash, and that isn't what I want. I'm going to give it a go, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
FC6 was the first ubi game I really disliked. same as you a few hours in and I just couldn't get into the vibe of it. I really liked FC5 (possibly in my top 10 of all time) but 6 felt like such a miss
Why not pirate it first if you didn;t enjoy the last one? I disliked 5, pirated 6 and found out very early that it wasn't gonna be good.