It seems to me that such deadlines to push out annual titles is the worst thing a company could do, regardless of the genre. I see Madden, Guitar Hero, the 2K games, and Call of Duty...all of which are on the road to colossal failure (or in the case of Guitar Hero, already has failed), because the quality is only marginally improving, and yet the companies insist on setting the prices at the same level as other AAA titles of far superior quality. When I drop $60 on Mass Effect 3, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, or L.A. Noire (the only 2 games I intend on getting through the rest of 2011), I know I can expect continuations in the storylines and vast improvements in what the medium is capable of. But these other games - whose companies insist on sacrificing the quality to make a quick buck every single year - have nothing significantly new to offer year-to-year, and have the audacity to charge the same jaw-dropping price. NBA Elite was just the beginning. It reminds me of a friend of mine in high school said: it might as well be called Roster Update 2012, because that's all you're really getting. Aside from the long-needed switch to analog controls for things like pitching, hitting, and shooting (as I recently discovered in MLB 2K11 and NHL 10), there hasn't been any noteworthy changes to sports titles. Allowing fans to vote Peyton Hillis on to this year's cover might be the most productive thing EA has done to the Madden franchise since they implemented the hit stick. Seriously.
I bought Madden 10, played it for a few weeks, then forgot I had it. Sold it off about a month ago for twenty bucks to a buddy of mine who has some friends with it so they can play online. I still consider it the dumbest video game purchase I've ever made, and I own the PS3 Bionic Commando, a game that did so poorly it put its developers out of business, so what does THAT tell you. I do find it strange that they keep pumping out new games year after year with little to no improvement, then act shocked when sales start to fall by the time we reach the fifth version of the exact same thing we already own. Guitar Hero is a PERFECT example. They just kept throwing out new titles and new guitars, and who knew what guitars were compatible with what games. I mean, by the time it got to the PS3 and 360, and they added the mic, drums, and bass parts, what was the point of buying a new title? Guitar Hero and Rock Band were, essentially, the same thing. The only thing that changed was the music, which they could make downloadable tracks for. Of course they both went under and/or are going under. Releasing a new game for $60 when I can just download some new tracks for $3 is just stupid business. Genuine sequels are another story. I find it odd that Assassin's Creed is cranking out another game this year, but when I heard what it was, I understood: Ezio returns to Altair's old stomping grounds. In other words, they can reuse the maps and locales from the first Assassin's Creed, throw Ezio in there instead of Altair, and update the story, and bingo: new game. They'll make tweeks to the gameplay, and probably create a new or updated version of their online mode (and Assassins Creed Online is fucking excellent), but otherwise it won't be drastically different. I actually have a list of five games I want by year's end (inFamous 2, Dark Souls, Assassins Creed: Revelations, Uncharted 3, Batman: Arkham City) and only one of them is coming out before November, that being inFamous 2. Looking through, they're all sequels to previous games I own, but their previous games were so good that they make me look forward to their sequels. Plus, all of the sequels there, with the exception of Assassin's Creed, are at least two years in the making.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Look at games like Dragon Age where EA had an amazing new franchise and decided to dumb it down completely in hopes of broadening the market and increasing sales. Instead of going bigger and better, they went backwards and removed nearly everything that gave DA:O depth and replay value. That is not a good long-term plan.
Can you elaborate on this at all? I've never played DA:O, but I had some fun with the demo of DA2. It looked promising. What gives the first one replay value that the second one lacks?
I think the issue a lot of people had with DA2 was that there was less customization. You could really customize the shit out of the previous game's characters, and that meant all of them. With DA2, there are less options. The biggest and best example is the fact that your companions all have set armor throughout the game, and you can't customize it. You can find upgrades, but their armor is set. This means that 90% of the armor you find throughout the game is useless, as it all goes to the main character, and the rest gets sold. The game is also much faster and more action oriented, and involves a lot of mashing the attack button. I think this makes a lot of people think there is less strategy involved. In DA:O, I had to bring up the menu to pause things and take a breather, and then assign tasks to my party. I did that much less in DA2. The only other complaints I had about DA2 over DA:O is that 2 didn't feel epic enough. In DA:O, you're saving your country and the world. In DA2, you're just a dude who becomes a warrior. DA:O left them moving all over the country. DA2 never really leaves the city or the same five or six maps. I'm sure others have more elaborate complaints, but I really dug the game, so I'm not the one to expand on it much more, those were just the minor things that annoyed me.
Ugh more and more Im thinking Sony and Zipper dropped the fucking ball on Socom 4. My brother put it perfectly, there is a great game under some mind numbing flaws. Reading the beta post earlier in this thread and message board post on socom's website they did barely anything to change or implement any of the suggestions that were brought up. If it meant putting the game off until fall to get it right than god damn they should have worked the kinks out. Theyll lose a shit ton of people now that everyone will wait months for a proper update on shit that should have been fixed before a release. Not only do I miss the grenade arc of old but now you can basically throw a 200 yard bomb that any pro quarter back would blush at. Its a fucking nade fest...* All of the people Ive heard online all bitch about the random multiplayer set up and how the old one was far superior. Seriously switching to friends teams between rounds ONLY if other people move sides(if there is room to move at all)? I have to wonder what the fuck zipper was smoking. The servers also blow nuts. Ive gotten dropped from countless games, dropped between rounds, lost connection before even being able to find a game, etc. * Apparently this nade thing was taken care of in the first update? Nope. They also have more than 3 updates in the coming months to address all of these issues. This day and age releasing something this sloppy only to have to massively update it isn't going to win a lot of loyal fans respect. I know there will always be glitches and shit people will find and exploit but this is some basic level socom shit they should have had in the first place.
It's extremely repetitive. Encounters and environments. I'm surprised that people get through it once, let alone go in for a second playthrough. There's a lot less customization, as Mr. Kahn said. In DA:O, picking a different class changed the entire game quite a bit in terms of strategy, if you mostly used your main character (not to mention loads of different origin stories). In DA2 it feels a lot like all you need to do is headbutt the keyboard to win, no matter the character and turning the difficulty up only seems to give the enemies more HP. The whole thing just seemed to be designed in a way to try and get you through the "boring" bits, ie. planning and get you to a place where you push a button then pretty lights show up on the screen. The one thing I did like about the game was that they moved away from the extremely predictable formula of making epic storylines and instead focused on a more personal story.
I'm know for a fact, for the first time in 6 years I won't be buying the new Madden. I'll be surprised if I played more than 25 games. It's just not the same without college buddies around to keep getting games in. Trying to coordinate with friends in other states/timezones is a pain in the ass. Even worse when you get 2-3 disconnects for absolutely no reason 3 quarters in. The last one had the weirdest in-game shit that weren't exactly glitches, but terrible players dominating you out of nowhere. Or the opponent always getting 5 more yard than they should and having at least one 60 yrd + play. Absolutely ridiculous. I haven't cared for a NFS game since Underground 2. That shit was fun as hell. As stupid as it was drifting an Escalade and Navigator, it was fun as shit.
Did anyone else catch this article this morning? 'Call of Duty' Sets Sights on a Fee Apparently it won't detract from the online gameplay, but add more features for players. I don't really know how I feel about this.
Yup. Apparently it's like a mix between the Gamebattles site and the World of Warcraft armory.. Or at least that's how I saw it. This will only exacerbate the BO problem which is statistics tracking, which will in turn cause more camping, which will ruin MW3. The BF3 marketing team must be having a great time. They can watch as BF3 sells itself whilst Call of Duty (and Activision too, I hope) burns to the ground. If anything, this has turned me away from MW3. Great job, I guess. It's so.. I don't know how to describe it. It's like a 30 year old man trying to talk to 14-15year olds as if he were still their age, memes and everything. Here, I'll show you: *You guys know what I mean by effing, right?* Ugh, pathetic. See what I mean? Boycot this shit. /rant
It's the same model Microsoft used back in the late 90s: develop software, disable certain features for the standard version, then charge to have those features re-activated in a "Professional" edition. Only worked for Microsoft in the short term and opened the door for Google and Apple to eclipse them in the long run. I predict Activision gets hammered over this.
I agree. If there's one thing I wish COD (and all FPS games, really) would eliminate, it's statistics. Apparently, Brink has done exactly that (relevant part starts around the 2-minute mark), and doesn't even show how many kills and deaths you got at the end of a match. I turn to Ice-T, to explain why stats in these games are total bullshit: I've already decided I'm not getting MW3; as it is, I'm on the fence about BF3, if only because of my mediocre experience with Bad Company 2. The guns and mechanics felt too awkward, and I made it through maybe 2 or 3 missions before I got bored and shelved the game. As amazing as BF3 looks, I'm going to hold out for reviews before dropping such a wild amount of money on it.
As much as the K/D thing does take focus off of team play and all that the stats functions seem interesting. Not something Id pay for and good god were they fucking trying waaaaay to fucking hard on that video or what?
So the Playstation Network restoration has gone from the end of May to the end of the week. Being strung along nicely here.
Missions as in single player missions? If you based your opinion solely on them then I'd recommend you give it another go. I got to the middle of the second one and never touched the single player mode again. Online is a completely different experience, though I guess awkward mechanics would still be a factor for you.
The real question is how much of a cluster fuck will it be when it is back up? I'm betting a lot of people are going to log into the store to download their free shit, only to have it move slow as fuck, if at all. Plus, some of those games (infamous and Little Big Planet) are, no doubt, very large downloads. I'm expecting to start downloading Little Big Planet Sunday and have it finish some time around Wednesday.
Yet another example of accountants running the big gaming companies. Fuck I hate that. Sure, they are a bit of a necessary evil, but they just do NOT get the concept that if you just concentrate on making kick-ass games, the rest will follow. If, instead, you concentrate on squeezing every fucking penny out of your biggest fans, you're going to piss them off, and they'll leave. Sure, you might get a bit of extra profit that will appease the all mighty share holders in the next quarter, but next year? You're fucked. Exactly the issues at EA right now. Back when the guys making the games, who loved to play games, were running the show, things prospered. Now that you have an MBA figuring out the way to release the 14th iteration of a tired franchise to eek the least little bit of profit out of it with the least bit of investment into the development, it's fucked. Maximum ROI is the death-knell of video game companies.
Seeing as that is only a few days away Im surprised they were that close. But honestly I never used the online outside of playing except the time it took to download the MW2 map pack. Ill download my two games and thatll be that. Honestly who has been shit out of luck because the store hasn't been up?
Remember back in the day, when video games cost only slightly more than movies ($20-25)? I liked that. Granted, inflation took hold, but it shouldn't have gone up THIS much. $60 is way, way too much for a video game. And most of these companies seem to think it's standard price they can demand, regardless of their games' replayability. $60 for Portal 2? Go fuck yourself.