What games are you playing?

[TRF_Olyy]

Giving themselves two extra months of dev time, but making sure the game was released pre-christmas to cash in on the holiday sales.
Admitting it is broken on console, and releasing anyway.

They've handled this terribly, but - realistically - nothing will come of it. Most people won't care to refund it, because it will likely be fixed in a few months, and they already did mad numbers on day one before everyone knew it was broken.
The development cycle of a game is so long that when they release their next product it'll be long enough the people will have forgotten the outrage, or at least excuse it by saying they'll have learned from it.

Money printer go brrrrrrrr

 

[ncurd]

Giving themselves two extra months of dev time, but making sure the game was released pre-christmas to cash in on the holiday sales.
Admitting it is broken on console, and releasing anyway.

They've handled this terribly, but - realistically - nothing will come of it. Most people won't care to refund it, because it will likely be fixed in a few months, and they already did mad numbers on day one before everyone knew it was broken.
The development cycle of a game is so long that when they release their next product it'll be long enough the people will have forgotten the outrage, or at least excuse it by saying they'll have learned from it.

Money printer go brrrrrrrr

Yeah it's definitely an issue I think this is the first time I've been 'burned' like this. Mainly because I don't buy many open world explorers on release.

However I look at the big games I did buy this year, Ghost of Tsushima, FF7R and TLOU2 and all worked absoutely fine (I think FF7R has had like two patches, a day one patch and one month's afterwards it was that stable).


I'll certainly give the next CDPR release a wide berth before I see what it's like a bit like I do with Bethesda.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

However I look at the big games I did buy this year, Ghost of Tsushima, FF7R and TLOU2 and all worked absoutely fine (I think FF7R has had like two patches, a day one patch and one month's afterwards it was that stable).

RDR2, while obviously more sparse than a city, was great from day one - and that came out over 2 years ago.
They don't even have the excuse of "Oh when we were developing for console we were focusing on next gen and then had to strip things back for PS4/XBONE" because the original release date was meant to be 6months before next gen even got released

 

[ncurd]

Should say I like the game a fair bit but its definitely not my favorite game of the year and the bugs aren't my main issue but the sheer amount of chaff side missions which don't sit well with my play style where I feel a compulsive need to clear up maps of all the mission icons. My list this year is probably something like,

1) Persona 5 Royal
2) Final Fantasy 7 Remake
3) Ghost of Tsushima
4) The Last of Us Part II
5) Cyberpunk 2077

 

[TRF_Olyy]

I don't think I can even make a list of my top games of the year - I think that THPS1+2 was the only 2020 release I bought, everything else was catching up on my back catalogue during lockdown


Oh, and Fall Guys/COD: Warzone

 

[ncurd]

RDR2, while obviously more sparse than a city, was great from day one - and that came out over 2 years ago.
They don't even have the excuse of "Oh when we were developing for console we were focusing on next gen and then had to strip things back for PS4/XBONE" because the original release date was meant to be 6months before next gen even got released

RDR2 I got about a year after release (I was pleasantly surprised I generally don't like Rockstars games that much) but I remember people weren't really complaining about it. But I can't comment on how well it ran.

God of War was excellent on release as well as was Spider-Man.

I appreciate this was ambitious game but it feels like they developed it for PC and then didn't plan enough time for the port to consoles (which was probably the cause of the delays).

 

[ncurd]

I don't think I can even make a list of my top games of the year - I think that THPS1+2 was the only 2020 release I bought, everything else was catching up on my back catalogue during lockdown


Oh, and Fall Guys/COD: Warzone

I've bought way too many games this year, as well as finished a whole bunch they've been a complete crutch to get through all this. Especially as TV decreased massively what was on and I haven't been going to the cinema.

 

[Which Tyler]

What I find a bit of a waste is how successful Skyrim was and how long we will wait for the next game. They could have easily made another game in the mean time but they focussed on stupid online games.

In my head I like to think of gaming companies as having passion for their gaming genres but the trash that companies focus on these days is really disappointing. I think it's a sign I'm not one of the cash cow online gamers that like to waste their money on microtransations.

We spent the weekend playing Baldur's Gate - the revamped one from about 5-6 years ago.
Sure, it's heavily dated, but my wife and I can play in the same team, and we absolutely loved it.

Whilst downloading that, I discovered that Baldur's Gate 3 was released a couple of months ago - which seemed germane to this. of course, I've no idea yet if it's actually any good, or if you can import characters from the older games (and IWD).

Also downloaded Morrowind, and have got my hands on a bunch of mods that should help make it playable - fingers crossed.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Just bought RE2 2nd hand copy on PS4. Loved the original on PS1, so really looking forward to playing this again.

 

[Don't Skip Leg Day]

I'm a third of the way through the LOU2 and I love it. Gameplay is brutal and immersive. No idea what people were complaining about. Story is believable so far.

Overall a great game.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

I'm a third of the way through the LOU2 and I love it. Gameplay is brutal and immersive. No idea what people were complaining about. Story is believable so far.

Overall a great game.

Have you played the first one?

 

[Don't Skip Leg Day]

Have you played the first one?

Yeah loved it, one of my top 5 games of all time.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

I'm a third of the way through the LOU2 and I love it. Gameplay is brutal and immersive. No idea what people were complaining about. Story is believable so far.

Overall a great game.

For me the first one is a 10/10. Number 2 is 8/10; still very good but not as great or I wasn't emotionally blown away as the 2nd. And I played the 2nd twice through before selling it as I knew I wasn't going to play it again; whereas I must have played the 1st one 4-5 times through.


The reason for me being the split in the story line in two between the two main characters.

And I just didn't enjoy playing Ellie's story arc as much as the first game. I think that's where the main criticism of the 2nd game and the contrast between the first game with Joel protecting Ellie til the end and the story arc of this one, if you've reached the end. Also more satisfying IMO to kill clickers dead than Humans in this game, which the second one is more GI Jane compared to 1st one where there was more sneaking around as IRC.

 

[ncurd]

How broken is CP2077 PS4 I here you ask? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55359568

Should note from what I'm hearing is crashes get more frequent the further you play it. It could be just perception but I think they were occurring every 2 hours to begin with now its just over an hour each time. I've seen reports in the endgame people were getting them every 20-30mins.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

How broken is CP2077 PS4 I here you ask? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55359568

CDP:Red have gone from the darlings of gaming right into the toilet in just a few short months.

From crunching their employees after admonishing others for doing the same,
Releasing a broken game and admitting they knew it was broken,
Hiding how broken it was/making reviewers hide how broken it was (in terms of footage, not the reviews themselves)
Lying to Microsoft and Playstation saying everything would be fixed by launch,
Lying about Microsoft and Playstation by saying people could request refunds....without first asking Microsoft and Playstation if that was OK


There'll be academic papers written about how bad this launch was.

 

[ncurd]

CDP:Red have gone from the darlings of gaming right into the toilet in just a few short months.

From crunching their employees after admonishing others for doing the same,
Releasing a broken game and admitting they knew it was broken,
Hiding how broken it was/making reviewers hide how broken it was (in terms of footage, not the reviews themselves)
Lying to Microsoft and Playstation saying everything would be fixed by launch,
Lying about Microsoft and Playstation by saying people could request refunds....without first asking Microsoft and Playstation if that was OK


There'll be academic papers written about how bad this launch was.

Actually they did hide it from reviews in that only PC copies were sent out. Those sites which specialises in consoles weren't given review copies.

There are also accusations of transphobia, slightly overblown in some areas but tying voice type to pronouns was a blunder but one someone makes by not understanding the issue whilst trying to cater to that audience.
There was the epilepsy thing, I saw the light sequences before it got patched out, it wasn't deliberate but it also not smart caring more with how it looked but again that mainly got blown out proportion with person reporting on it getting sent videos designed to cause them seizure whilst other joined the CDPR is deliberately trying to cause seizures.
Also accusations of racism......which is just stuff taken completely out of context in that some of the gangs are aligned with ethnicity, completely unlike actual real gangs....


But yeah its been a burning trashfire,


About 30 hours in I'm still enjoying the game and enough to put the bugs and crashes as an annoyance rather than game breaking. I also don't think it descended from heaven and would be a masterpiece once they are fixed. Loads of stuff I really like but there's so much chaff and little annoyance in how they've gone about implementing it its just disappointing in a few too many areas.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

There was the epilepsy thing, I saw the light sequences before it got patched out, it wasn't deliberate but it also not smart caring more with how it looked but again that mainly got blown out proportion with person reporting on it getting sent videos designed to cause them seizure whilst other joined the CDPR is deliberately trying to cause seizures.

Ah yeah, I saw that - I very much doubt it was deliberately malicious, but it was blindly blindly ignorant from the devs/testing team.
Whoever designed it obviously googled to see what that sort of thing should look like (as it was identical) - found that light sequence - and then didn't both to look at what it was used for.....and then it turns out that that light sequence is used to induce seizures.

 

[ncurd]

Ah yeah, I saw that - I very much doubt it was deliberately malicious, but it was blindly blindly ignorant from the devs/testing team.
Whoever designed it obviously googled to see what that sort of thing should look like (as it was identical) - found that light sequence - and then didn't both to look at what it was used for.....and then it turns out that that light sequence is used to induce seizures.

I don't think it was even that deliberate, I did a tiny bit of research on it and Brainddance headsets are a thing in the TTRPG way back from 1989, I have no idea if they were ever drawn but its likely (so that person 30 years ago might have taken inspiration from those devices). Even then your asking someone to design a headset device that projects lights and sensory perception into someone. Unless you want to make it look like a VR headset (you probably don't) its very easy to get to the same design point.

I think the light sequence was definitely a coincidence its 4-5 blueish/white leds and one red dot to the side.

I don't know how in made it past QA without someone flagging it. Probably in a JIRA ticket somewhere but due to the size of thier backlog didn't get close to being looked at. It was patched pretty quickly though most people have probably not seen the original sequence.


I've tried finding an actual image of the visual units doctors used as noted in the original article but can't see them. But I do think it was a stretch to say it could only be copied (the only bit of the article I think was unfair an the rest was spot on) its one of those things once you start from a similar design end goal its not hard to accidentally design the same thing.

 

[Kiwiwomble]

i'll just leave this here

 

[Don't Skip Leg Day]

i'll just leave this here

As it's Bethesda, it will probably be released in 2030. Maybe even be an MMO looking at their last load of poor choice games.

(rant over, please just finish elder scrolls soon).