bigsocrates

I beat it but it's very forgettable.

#GuessTheGame #757

🎮 🟥 🟩 ⬜ ⬜ ⬜ ⬜

#MasterGamer

https://GuessThe.Game/p/757

@av_gamer: I have some of that same grumpy old(ish) man impulse myself, though I try to fight it.

Honestly I think it's hard to say whether the shows of the past were better than they are now, or we just got the better ones brought over so the quality seemed better (even if you were into fansubs there weren't many of the worst shows that got those), or they just better fit with my particular preferences because I was more in touch with the zeitgeist then, or it was just that anime was newer so it seemed more exciting.

I honestly don't know.

I'm pretty sure Cowboy Bebop was, in fact, a stone cold classic, but was old Trigun better than new Trigun? I like old Trigun better (though I think new Trigun is...okay) but I was exposed to it at a totally different point in my life and it had a tone that matched my sensibilities because it's from that time.

I think it's really hard to compare.

That's why I just focus on finding whatever new stuff I do like, and I think there's a fair amount of genuinely good stuff still being produced, even if I agree with you that the video game shows are mostly not to my taste. I did enjoy Darwin's Game, but that was a slightly different thing. I also liked High-Rise Invasion. Not sure if you checked that one out. Both were short and didn't have a ton of filler.

Anyway Gainax hadn't made anything in a long time and its properties are being dealt off to studios who do still make anime so even if you have nostalgia for its old peak its hard to be too broken up about this.

@av_gamer: Gainax hadn't made any anime in like 10 years and lost all its big creators. This is not really about the state of companies that make anime (though of course there are issues with the industry), it's about one company that had coasted for many years off past successes and was being mismanaged and in some cases even stolen from by executives.

I also don't agree that all anime has gotten stale. You can set whatever golden age you want, and yeah I'd agree that the 80s, 90s, and 2000s had more variety and fewer copycat shows, but I think there's still quite a lot of good stuff coming out. The Netflix co-productions like Blue Eyed Samurai, Dorohedoro and Pluto have a lot in common with 90s stuff, and are short and to the point. I think Delicious in Dungeon is a fantastic and very different show as well. And those are just some very recent shows.

You can prefer whatever era you want and whatever shows you want, but not everything is a bland Isekai, and the 90s had their trends too, like the absolute glut of harem shows.

@av_gamer: Astro does seem like the new Mascot, and while the games are good...I think the character is very bland and hard to care about. It has cute animations and sounds and all but it completely lacks personality beyond "corporate mascot that makes cute noises and dances."

I would unironically welcome Knack 3. Though Knack is an even worse mascot. But I miss Knack and everything he represented. He was from a time when Sony was still interested in mid-sized games that weren't live service.

I do feel sorry for the people who worked on Concord as artists or programmers or whatever, but not for the creative leads who, unless they were dictated to completely by executives, totally failed to read the room. It's possible it's good enough to eat Overwatch's remaining lunch, but this feels like showing up for a gold rush years after everything has been picked clean. Lawbreakers and Battleborn were 7 and 8 years ago. I can't believe they're actually charging $40 for it. It should at least be free on PlayStation Plus, like Destruction All-Stars, which I played at launch for free and still want my money back for.

If this were a Guardians of the Galaxy style single or co-op game I'd be intrigued. But $40 for a hero shooter? It would need to be getting at least high 80s on Metacritic for me to even consider it.

@chamurai: I mean the game is bad and I definitely don't think you should play it. I think the title of my post makes my position on that pretty clear. No need to defend that take!

I don't think this will ever get fixed. I also played No Man's Sky at launch and that game was much more interesting and in some ways better (though I played it for less time.) Also Hello Games had a much smaller team and a much more modular game design so they could afford to pour all their resources into it for awhile and also changes were easier to make (they didn't need to hand build every area, for example, because the universe is created by algorithms so introducing new stuff in the right way would autopopulate it.)

Ubisoft doesn't have a great record of fixing its bad games and the changes they've made so far have not been very well received. The people still playing seem to like the season 2 content to some degree, but apparently manufactory stuff used to be much less of a pain and they've introduced some bugs. I don't know, diving into the depths of this player base just depresses me.

I also don't think the game is well designed for whaling. It only sells cosmetics not repeatable currencies, and that requires a bigger player base. Plus they won't be able to bring new whales in unless it goes FTP.

It seems to have a reasonably engaged community so maybe it is making enough to stay profitable and will keep getting development for a long time, but a half price cut and a free week this soon after launch reads to me as a game that's in trouble where they're trying everything they can to boost player count and get a critical mass going and some word of mouth out.

My post qualifies as word of mouth so I'm not sure how that's going to work out for them.

@chamurai: Full live service multiplayer. That's the feature. Better graphics (in some ways) too. The Battlepass and cosmetics ARE the feature. This is related to a conversation I had in the other thread I made about the game. The stuff we tolerate as the price of gaming in 2024 is stuff they expect us to really really like.

There are other features they'd probably point to like factions fighting one another, a much more complex loot and crafting system, sea monsters (even though they're not fun and pointless to fight), many more side quests etc... A lot of the live service trappings in this game are not in Black Flag. And it doesn't really feel like Black Flag mostly because Black Flag DID have so much more to do and was so much more directed. You didn't just sail around kind of aimlessly harvesting coconuts to feed your stamina meter. If it weren't for the combat and the fact that I know the game's history I wouldn't even necessarily connect the two beyond being pirate games.

I mean for me the quintessential Black Flag experiences were jumping off the ship to swim to an island and explore it, or boarding an enemy ship during a fight and battling on the deck. Neither of those things are in this game.

I feel sorry for those who lost their jobs, though considering they weren't actually producing anime for the last decade I'm not sure what those jobs were (janitors and accountants maybe? Are those functions contracted out in Japan like they often are in the US?) But I'm sure some people's lives were disrupted, and that sucks, and it all seems to be the fault of some absolutely terrible management, which seems pretty common in Japanese media.

But there doesn't seem to be much cultural loss here. The licenses of the important stuff will be sold off elsewhere and there wasn't new stuff coming out anyway. The big creators had all moved on and hopefully as many of the less famous artists had as well (or will now, to a place that will actually put their art out into the world.)

And the toxic executives will hopefully retire and never be heard from again. There seems to be a lot of really bad behavior by Gainax's leaders over the years.

Uhhh...Astrobot is a must buy for me and Monster Hunter looks cool, though I have a long history of being interested in and sometimes buying but never playing Monster Hunter games.

Otherwise it's mostly remakes, smaller projects, or multiplayer stuff I'm super tired of. Just not a lot for me here. Path of Exile will probably be good. Dynasty Warriors COULD be good but given what they did with 9 they deserve absolutely no trust whatsoever here. Where Winds Meet certainly looks cool, but I hear "hundreds of players on the same server" and I think "formless slop without story or balance."

There are just so many slop games these days. Games without direction or curation that are just like "here's a world, go make your own fun" and yeah that works when it's something like Minecraft with complicated physics interactions and tons of stuff to do, but when it's just a game with a few things you can do in it I'd much rather have a curated experience that explores mechanics and narrative.

But enough about Skull and Bones!

I think it was a mediocre but not disastrous showing, and Astro has a good shot of being my GOTY so...meh. Putting a stupid meme game as your "and out NOW" game was certainly a choice though.

@manburger: Thanks for reading the results of my poor decision making.

I expect everyone to cast aspersions on my dedication because really, looking back, it wasn't worth it in the least just to learn exactly HOW a bad game was, in fact, bad. Curiosity always bites me in the butt.

I have the same feeling you do about all that wasted time and effort. A lot of work clearly did go into this game in certain areas, but there was no cohesive vision for the through line of the game. It's just a bunch of jumbled stuff all shoved together, some of it pretty good and some of it downright awful (I can't get over how you just reach into the earth to pull treasure chests out; that's something I'd expect in a 6-person indie game. 10 years and a 9 figure budget and you couldn't have someone animate digging, or just a clever camera cut?)

I guess it's good that the game works for those who bought it and some people seem to enjoy it. Personally I'm sorry I bothered playing it. It fails in mostly boring ways.

No idea how I pulled this name from my brain

#GuessTheGame #756

🎮 🟥 🟥 🟥 🟩 ⬜ ⬜

#MasterGamer

https://GuessThe.Game/p/756