@2headedninja: devs need to stop launching broken games and promise to fix them. They shouldn't get a break.
I played the game for 20/30 hours and it's not broken. It might not be what people WANTED, but it's a perfectly fine, playable game. I encountered maybe one or two minor glitches.
Any game that doesn't just crash to the PS4 home screen, but crashes so hard it reboots the PS4 in an unsafe way is 1000% super broken.
So we're now counting a game having too much content as a negative. Why not just take a break?
...
It's like they are viewing the game completely differently than "ordinary people" who are just playing the game in their own time.
Or maybe I'm the outlier? I don't need to finish every game I start, I'm perfectly fine with putting them down and moving on to something else for a while and then pick it up whenever I want to continue.
I can't speak for anyone else, but a game having too much content can be a negative for me, too, as I find it can often mean:
The quality of the content suffers, in favor of the sheer quantity of it. This is inevitable; man hours are a finite resource, and a game has to ship eventually. I'd rather see those hours spent on increasing the quality of the content, rather than just making more of it.
The game grows repetitive long before I have a chance to finish it. But, unlike you, I definitely like to finish games when I sit down with them, not revisit them in 3 or 6 or 9 months once the repetition has worn off. Games should fight to keep my attention. Though, if you're fine revisiting a game months after you've set it down, I can see why having more content is a positive for you.
I've found recently that Sony's first-party exclusives are the perfect length for me - Spider-Man, Horizon Zero Dawn, and God of War all felt suitably epic to me, without sacrificing quality or wearing out their welcome.
Here is the reveal of Far Cry 5. This is the only time they ever made it seem like there might be an important, meaningful message in the game. However, that comes directly before a bunch of footage expressing that "nah, this is just the same Far Cry you know but in America." The same message that continued to flow out of the marketing since then. The presenter went out and marketed the game strongly in a few minutes to get your attention, only to walk it back almost immediately, with the company continually walking it back so you understood what you were getting into. I think Ubisoft was actually trying to keep you from having incorrect expectations.
And yet here we are... with the game getting poorly reviewed specifically based on expectations. Did Ubisoft want to stay inoffensive? Maybe the game was done being written 3 years ago? Maybe they saw what Wolfenstein did and said "if you want that experience, go play that game" because they knew they couldn't compete. I don't know but it's not like I was ever playing Far Cry for any deep message.
It really makes me wonder how folks would feel if this game came out and the militia incident of 2014 hadn't occurred or if all this current-day neo-nazi bullshit wasn't happening.
Mind you, I'm not trying to defend the game or Ubisoft. I just think expectations were too high when it was revealed and even despite Ubisoft trying to walk them back, people were too stubborn to notice and now we have a 3-star game instead of a 4-star game.
This review doesn't read to me like an issue of expectations - it sounds like the story, settings, and characters are just unforgivably bland, expectations or no.
Giving Cuphead "best looking" and Persona 5 "best style" seemed like the most logical/balanced approach to these two categories. Genuinely sad it didn't go this way; Persona 5 deserves at least some recognition in these awards and, as several folks pointed out, Persona 5's style is unique in a way that Cuphead's is not. Alas!
@ohnonono: same. I've been loving my time with it, but also understand a 3-star review. It's not for everyone, but if it IS for you, MAN does it sink it's teeth in. I haven't been able to stop playing, which is sad, because I REALLY want to finish Horizon.
I've been meaning to subscribe to Giant Bomb for months, because I want to put my money where my mouth is with regards to the people and the content that keep me happy and sane, especially in times like this. This finally gave me the motivation I needed to go through with it.
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