MFTWrecks

I legitimately need a new controller... but I'm sure the markup on these will be unreasonable.

I want this game to succeed AND be fun. I'm no Bungie apologist. It doesn't come from that.

I just think the extraction shooter genre is one that could take off on consoles in a way no game really has. And I think it's a smart differentiator in the market, something Concord definitely lacked.

I also just love the aesthetic. I think we deserve visually interesting games and this could be one of them. I adored the teaser and hope that look carries through to release.

As someone who never played a DA game, I thought DAI was bloated and boring.

I played a rogue/archer expecting TPS controls because of their pedigree with ME's shooting mechanics. The fact you don't actually control your shooting, as an archer, made me switch to playing a melee ally at the beginning just so felt like I had control.

Annoyed me to no end and I regret spending the time on it.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare As someone who absolutely adores HZD, I rushed through HFW last year and then just finished Burning Shores (because I bought it and figured I may as well see where the story goes/went), I cannot fathom for the life of me what people see in HFW that makes it better than HZD. The downgrades are numerous.

I still hold HZD up as the second best "Ubisoft-style" open world game behind only Ghost of Tsushima. It was clear, lean (by open world game design standards) and fun af.

HFW took all that and threw it out the window and padded the playtime with aimless busywork, horrendously boring loot grinding, and absolutely atrociously aggravating combat. Not to mention, it has some of the jankiest controls in all of modern gaming. Aloy turns like a tank and gets caught on countless pieces of environment constantly AND the climbing is so awfully designed I almost stopped playing it before I got to the "full" world. Anyone who says otherwise is kidding themselves.

I'm glad I played it. At least I have an informed opinion on the title, and now I can wait to see how H3 stacks up. If it leans more towards 2's design, I'll just skip it and pour one out for one of the most promising, but poorly implemented evolutions of an IP I've ever personally witnessed.

The more people that play this so Guerilla designs the next one more like Zero Dawn and far less like Forbidden West, the better. HFW was a gotdamm slog. The fact this series went from one of the most streamlined, satisfying open world action games to one of the most boring and bloated messes in only one iteration is a travesty of game design.

@knowles2 That's not at all what they did with Firewalk. Dumping $100-300mm into an unproven dev is not at all what I am suggesting.

The part of my comment about wanting to instantly go from zero to a massve hit the market may not even want is explicitly referring to their expectations/strategy for Concord.

Whether you like Bungie/Destiny or not, I always come back to, "And how much could Sony have spent on other studios INSTEAD of Bungie, and thus controlled far more IP and had a far broader range of talent and expertise under its umbrella?"

You can't tell me Bungie is an outright better, more creative, more capable development house than the likes of numerous other shuttered or acquired studios combined (Crustal Dynamics, Japan Studio, the list goes on).

If Sony wants a live service hit, the best bet is to let smaller teams cook and create unique experiences that can grow into hits, the same way PUBG and Fortnite and R6 Siege and Rocket League did. None of those games set out to set the world on fire. But over their lifespans, they catered to players, built strong fundamentals, and built large followings. Sony (and many other companies) seem to want to go from nothing to massive smash hit immediately and don't realize that's the hardest, most expensive way to become a hit. You can't run a business by way of playing the lottery.

What they need to learn from Helldivers 2 (despite its tumultuous reputation since release) is that a small team with great ideas can result in outsized performance much more easily than putting an entire single player-focused studio on a multiplayer game just because of an IP (see: Naughty Dog). Go after those HD2-like hits. Get a bigger ROI and build your broader experience in delivering said hits over time. Nurture creativity and original thinking. Let them evolve into a bigger live service game WHEN THE MARKET TELLS YOU THEY WANT IT. But don't go spending hundreds of millions out the gate on something that isn't proven (Concord) or that misaligns with the given talent (again, ND).

This actually could probably translate to a big budget flick pretty easily. Make it like a modern Enemy of the State. Make it about someone being pulled into the underground world of government surveillance and morally gray activist hackers. Could definitely see it as that sorta mid-late 90s/early 2000s action thriller sorta vibe.

Don't tie it directly to the game stories at all. The franchise isn't big enough anymore for that. Just make it independently set within that world and it could probably find a decent audience.

@Fishnpeas Kids, dude. And people that like feeling like kids. Not every game hasta be for everyone.

My daughter is going to LOVE this.

***** the story. Who tf pays attention to the story? Or the poorly written characters? I play AC games to be a murder machine. Everything else in these games is dime store novel trash.

All I needa know is which previous AC this most resembles (because it'll resemble at least 2-3 of them - that's the Ubisoft game design way, after all) so that I can decide if I'mma pay $20 for the complete version in 2 years or not.

@crossbit Yeah, that also would have been a great way to do it.

Think, even if they only supported a portion of 2's content at launch to push people to newer stuff, they could have simply dedicated time to bring free DLC to 3 in the form of 2's old missions (updated for 3's mechanics) over time, and then all-new content could have been packaged however they thought it made most sense (either as free expansions or paid DLC). But over time, 3 would have been brought up to the same content level as 2 AND it would have introduced all new stuff.

And they could have done so while only having to support one "platform" over time (assuming they eventually stopped supporting 2 altogether to push people to 3's "platform" approach). But either way, it would have more appropriately incentivized players to adopt 3 as a whole.

And had they gone F2P, they could have made the platform (generally) F2P, maybe with a rotating set of heists available to play at any given time (the way MOBAs often have a rotating cast of free characters). Then if new 3 players wanted to unlock permanent access to certain heists from 2, they could pay outright. Meanwhile, 2's players would unlock all 2's content for free at release once it was in 3. But maybe everyone pays for all-new 3 heists? Or something? I dunno. It just could have been handled better, for sure.

@Jaz007 Good to hear. I always heard that 2 failed to get the sort of support it deserved on consoles.

@crossbit I'm always surprised that Starbreeze didn't try and take the R6 Siege (or in some ways, Fortnite) approach and try and continue to expand on the existing title by re-baking the core gameplay, while retaining all of 2's content and features.

I'm not a player of 2, but I've kept my eye on it. it seems 3 tried to overhaul core systems and introduce new ones. I feel it would have been in Starbreeze AND the consumers' interests to simply redo the core engine, update the gameplay systems, but make the game into more of a platform for the content. Not a distinct release.

Hell, they could have made it F2P with all the DLC and add-ons they've pumped into from what I understand. If they made it "the place to go to play this sort of experience" and let 2's player base retain everything they've dedicated time to, they likely would have been better off. Even if that would have been difficult. Then again, developing an all new title and having to support both is ALSO risky and difficult. Seems they just didn't make the right call.

Isn't Starbreeze notoriously bad at supporting console versions of their titles? The IDEA of playing a heist-focused game intrigues me, but they're basically the only real big developer catering to that fantasy and from everything I hear, they're pretty terrible developers.

Not really all that surprised at any of this after the debacle that was the Payday 3 release.

PSVR2 support failed me and my interests. I got a Quest 3 and am quite pleased with it.

That being said, a Quest 3 versus a wireless PSVR2 would have been a MUCH different choice for me to make.

@Westernwolf4 PCGamer had at least one preview of this a week or 2 ago that discussed the combat and the swapping mechanic in more detail. I don't know if they are doing a full review of it, though.

I wanted to like Void Bastards, but the slow pace and sim elements didn't gel with me. A more straightforward combat-focused approach may be more my thing right now.

But I'll wait for a sale so as not to waste as much time and money like I did before.

(Personally, I think I like spiritual successors nowadays over direct sequels. Maybe that's impacting my impressions of this, as well.)

Plucky Squire looks utterly charming. And Chernobylite has recently caught my eye while checking out previews for Stalker 2, so I've wanted to try something in that vein.

Solid enough month for my tastes!

@The_Wailing_Doom And literally no one thinks Microsoft selling that Xbox at that price makes sense. It's unfair to use "bad business decision" as the basis to justify a bad business decision.

If the current (disc) system would have dropped to $400 and then this was $600, I think it would be a far different reaction.

I don't have a single gaming friend who is willing to shell out for this (all adults with good jobs, in our 30s). 3-4 of us (out of about 8) upgraded to a PS4 Pro last gen.

So... yeah.

When you continue to design the same old ***** and refuse to do anything original or innovative in any of your titles for well over a generation, people are going to catch on.

And I say this as someone who has played and adored A LOT of Ubisoft titles.

Actions speak louder than words.

They've killed numerous teams that made smaller, more unique games. And they've killed numerous smaller projects before letting them see the light of day.

I am legitimately beginning to lose faith in Sony decision makers.

They let this stuff release and then struggle to understand why sales numbers and reception aren't what they expected.

Instant fail stealth in a 2024 action game? Years after Ubisoft releases have moved away from the mechanic? These companies are led by morons.

@MrPeanutbutterz It's as much of a badge of honor as any trophy. FOR TROPHY HUNTERS it'll be a unique tchotchke to have in your collection. (I'm not a trophy hunter, to be clear.)

They find loopholes and easy games to grind trophies/achievements all the time. It's not always about HOW it was acquired it's having it at all.

That's all I'm saying.

Take the assets and craft a game in a style that players would play. Make a co-op campaign where you travel the galaxy. Let your crew pull off heists and do some backstabbing and adventuring and whatever else. Craft an ACTUAL IP worth giving a damn about. (CoD/Halo/Overwatch in space, with a fat campaign, would be an actual differentiator!)

Then throw this multiplayer suite into the package. And add a mode or two that truly differentiates itself from the barest minimum of the market. (Extraction mode? Heist mode? SOMETHING unique?!)

And for the love of all that is holy, assess the dreadful visual design of the majority of the cast of characters.

It could be salvaged. But it has to be something it isn't yet for that to happen. Simply making it a F2P suite of the same gameplay/modes, after this disaster, will not move the needle. That may be the easier route, but it's not one that will truly change market perception. Recreating the base premise of the package is certainly harder, but it's the only way to save it from itself.

This will likely go down in history as the rarest platinum in PS history. Like, what could possibly be harder to get?

Kind of a wild badge of honor to have.

"Wait. What's 'server capacity'???"

• Concord, probably

Gamers feel this is ridiculous because of the game division's insistence on scoring a live service hit above just making games.

If they reset expectations and fostered good, solid titles using their dormant IP, they could reinvigorate them, make a bit of money, and build a war chest. Then they can safely wait to come across a big smash GaaS naturally while they sip profits off the top of 3rd party GaaS titles on their platform as they have been doing.

Companies want Fortnite money but want to jump from "doesn't exist" to "global phenomenon" forgetting that Fortnite didn't set out to become what it is. It rolled out at a small scale and grew naturally by word of mouth. Epic never saw that coming. They didn't TRY to make it what it is initially. It surprised everyone. It was never the goal.

If Sony would just focus on great games, they'd eventually hit upon something that exceeded expectations (say, maybe, like Helldivers?) that they could then invest in and support to create a bigger hit (something they have NOT been doing behind the scenes with Helldivers, it seems, as that game and its tech is still a ***** show as its small dev still struggles under the weight of the success).

I'm beginning to lose faith in Sony knowing what the heck they have in front of them and what to do with it. They wouldn't know a potential hit if it literally landed in their lap. They've proven that earlier this year!

There's no way in hell that whatever Factions or Twisted Metal were would have faired worse than Concord. No way in hell. Just BEING a new entry in a storied IP would have been enough to exceed the player numbers. Easily. Concord was that catastrophically bad.

But instead, Sony kills games before they have an iota of a chance to prove themselves, thinking that they know better than the market. If Concord proved anything, it's that Sony has no f'ing clue what the market wants and they're not listening to them when they say what they want.

Fitting, seeing as the game looks like the sort of generic videogame you'd see in a Hollywood production.

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is going to be free on the Epic store in a few days, for anyone not able to grab it and play it on PS before it gets removed.

Ah, yes. Because we can well and truly trust internal chatter at Sony to result in great games in light of recent events.

@AdamNovice And maybe that's part of the problem. If developers like Naughty Dog and Insomniac can't possibly be bothered with building new titles in their collections of IP, then Sony as the Ip holder needs to find someone who is competent to make them.

Or they can keep coming up with market-defining titles like Destruction AllStars and Concord.

Do you honestly believe letting IP rot on the shelf is better than handing the titles off to passionate developers who can bring new entries to market?

Look at how Nintendo partners closely with a myriad of studios to bring its classics to market. Why is Sony not doing the same thing?

@AdamNovice Support and fund titles that players have been asking for, perhaps? If I were them, I'd start there.

There are a myriad of issues at play here and there need to be SEVERAL heads rolling for this. Seriously.

First off, what build did Hulst play that got him excited? Because Perfect Dark on N64 had a more robust multiplayer suite than Concord does.

What mechanic or gimmick was so innovative that it was worth buying the entire studio for? There's nothing in the game that separates it from the blandest of shooters. It was an also ran at launch.

Much has been said about the character designs, but it cannot be looked past just how fundamentally poor they are from a core design perspective. The entire art department or those approving the designs seem to have never once designed characters for a shooter of this nature. Beyond the use of "woke" terms, they just fail at fundamental levels much deeper than character pronouns.

The business side of things also failed miserably by thinking this was ever going to find a place in the market as a $40 title when its biggest contemporaries are free.

Plus, who decided they were going to keep everything under wraps until a mere 4-6 weeks prior to launch? Games of all types these days launch in some alpha or beta form and then take YEARS of community play, feedback, and data to perfect their systems and mechanics. Meanwhile, Firewalk and those approving their tactics decided this was SO GOOD that it needed nothing of the sort. It's mind boggling how ANYONE saw that as a good idea given everything else.

It is a catastrophic failure at MULTIPLE levels of the organization, both within Firewalk and Sony itself.

All this while TLOU Factions gets canned, Twisted Metal never sees the light of day, and who knows whatever else didn't get funded or supported (such as ACTUAL potential multiplayer titles players actually ask for like Killzone, Resistance, Wipeout...) so that the market could be witness to THIS, of all launches.

Helldivers 2 was an absolute anomaly (and is itself quite a huge mess if you pay attention to it). Nothing else from this Live Service era has done anything of note. Sony needs to do some clearing of house, not just searching of souls.

Got. Damm.

This is absurd levels of failure.

Factions and Twisted Metal died for this.

@J2theEzzo I enjoyed having played the whole base game solo. I don't think an online community is really needed to appreciate what they did with that game. Fwiw

@J2theEzzo You may be thinking of Outriders. I played that as part of PS+ (whatever tier 2 is called) and it wasn't half bad (as an enjoyer of Borderlands, Division, Diablo, et al). Sadly, the "true" endgame was behind a DLC buy-in and I refused to make that purchase.

That game was okay fun. Like a "Gears of War with loot" sorta vibe. Definitely understand why it didn't light the world on fire, though. Would actually be very into seeing what People Can Fly would do with another crack at it, as it set a solid foundation but just wasn't really the best it could have been by any measure.

@J2theEzzo The Remnant games don't really have an endgame, either, as good as they are. But their WAY of letting you replay stuff is still preferable to Borderlands' "replay the whole story from beginning to end."

Returnal isn't an ARPG, it's a rogue-like. The entire point is to replay it from beginning to end over and over. Not quite the same thing.

The fact Gearbox hasn't managed to craft a true endgame for Borderlands is wild to me. Re-running the story and bosses is NOT endgame content. It's boring af.

If a company came out with a looter shooter that had a true, honest to goodness endgame loop akin to ARPGs like Diablo, it'd be amazing. No one seems to put it together, though. Division 2 probably came closest and even that wore out its welcome too quickly.

@commentlife Ubisoft hasn't innovated in over decade. Everything they have done has been a copy and paste of something someone else did first or better (see: Immortals Fenyx Rising, Xdefiant). Or worse, they copy and paste their own ideas until they're watered down and the market is numb to their banality (see: Farcry, Avatar, AC).

@atoqir Its wild that that's ALL they had going for them. Not one unique mode. Not one unique mechanic. Just "like CoD used to be." Clearly that's not a good enough selling point.

Similar to how all Concord offers is "at least we're not F2P" as the only true selling point.

It's wild that these companies spend all this money to build these games and fail to realize they need a GAMEPLAY differentiator more than anything.

I think Exoborne looks pretty damn generic overall. But it basically has super powers AND wild game-changing weather. THAT is at least cool. THAT will earn it some real play time from me.

These other games just copy paste other ideas and forget to change it up and offer their own ideas. Then they wonder why they fail so hard.

I wanted to like it. I played for a week or two at launch, but the hit registration and embrace of what I see as toxic design elements (mainly bunny hopping and the grind to unlock anything meaningful) ruined it for me. I don't have time for games that have such underlying faults. Especially when they don't make up for it with anything nearly as positive or unique to compensate.

@bossuche9 Which is also part of the problem. The fact they held their cards so close to their chest for so long is part of the problem. (I bet good money that is purely Sony's arrogance.)

They should have been having a MINIMUM of a year of alphas and betas of various degrees of openness to collect feedback and make changes.

They thought their ***** didn't stink and they were delivering the next big multiplayer hit. Had they actually engaged with the market more than a month or so before launch, they could have pivoted. But alas...

The fact they didn't Rocket League release this thing is bonkers to me. You'd think after the horrendous beta tests they would have seen the writing on the wall.

Shame this stuff is going to cost low level employees their jobs, more than likely, while the people who made the decisions will skate by with barely a mark on their resume.

No game is at its best at release. Anyone paying full price nowadays has to be able to admit that. The issue is they won't care... for certain titles.

I have bought 2 full price titles in the past 5+ years. Everything else is worth waiting for. I'm okay with having made those purchases, but otherwise, I always wait for a solid sale.

If you don't like rising prices, learn some patience and don't get caught up in marketing hype. You'll save yourself a boat load of money AND end up paying for a less bug-ridden, more fully featured release (sometimes with the DLC included) for less than you pay at launch.

Like anything on the market, the true price is what YOU value it to be. So stick to your guns and get the best deal possible YOU think something is worth.

@DETfaninATL Perfect Dark had bots out of the box on N64. No need to cite a "modern" release.

@kentuckyfr1ed I'm completely relaxed. I use caps for emphasis since commenting here doesn't have formatting options.

I played the beta both weekends. That was all I needed to see to know the game wasn't going to find an audience.

The fact it took 8 years and reportedly $100mm to make a multiplayer suite that's lacking in features N64 games had out the box is mind boggling. It's "this must be a money laundering scheme" territory.

Stuff like this used to be the extra mode in full single player titles. Forget the gameplay, the features and modes are nothing special. Nothing it "adds" to the genre is as exhilarating or innovative as we were led to believe prior to launch.

Forget all the window dressing design choices (as those are subjective) for a second. The ACTUAL GAMEPLAY does nothing new. There's not a SINGLE gameplay feature I saw and thought, "That's cool. I wish other games had that." Not one. THAT'S one of its largest problems. It's stale.

The other is that Sony COMPLETELY botched the unveiling and marketing. All they've pushed is how this is some sort of cinematic experience with deep lore and amazing characters... all relegated to weekly cutscene drops. WHAT IS THAT?! That is absolutely meaningless.

The one arena I can recall was some sort of space port. It'd be amazing to play through that in multiplayer if I had A SINGLE IOTA of context. Think of how AWESOME it is to jump into Star Wars Battlefront and play in places YOU HAVE EMOTION ATTACHED TO. Concord completely and utterly lacks any such attachment because we were robbed of that context.

Meanwhile, it brings up the another problem: this is a hero shooter where LITERALLY EVERYONE is on the same side. AND YET... they are fighting mirror image copies of one another. Why? What's the explanation? Why are my friends fighting themselves? It makes no gotdamm sense. Is this explained in a cutscene I wasn't privy to?

This should have been a squad-based co-op shooter with a big storyline. Let each mission be you picking a squad of teammates (either AI or your actual friends) and planning your approach and pulling off heists and causing chaos across the galaxy. GIVE US STAKES. GIVE US PURPOSE. Then, within missions, have characters be able to take special routes or activate synergies with allies so that a) replayability increases naturally and b) make the crew matter. Make it like a co-op Halo campaign (or Mass Effect mission) where your crew choices dictate story elements or mission outcomes OR SOMETHING.

You take that sorta game as the base and you can copy and paste what is being sold today as the add-on multiplayer suite. Like TLOU Factions or Goldeneye or Halo (or any countless number of games before it), you'd give yourself a chance to capture more hearts and minds by casting a broader net. (Or at the very least make it a genre of shooter that is underserved on consoles like an extraction shooter.)

As it stands, it's friends shooting their doppelgängers to make numbers tick up in bland and uninspired spaces. These characters are thieves and scoundrels yet spend their time doing no thieving or conniving or anything.

As designed, it was never going to succeed. And I stand by that.

As for the business side, they should NOT have designed it as a paid multiplayer suite. They should have been F2P and had a "single payment gets you everything forever" option the way Smite has done for literal years.

They copied gameplay ideas but did not pay any attention to business models that ACTUALLY work in today's market.

It is, top to bottom, an abysmal mismanagement of resources and talent.

@GamingFan4Lyf Seriously. These are just as bad as cinematic cutscenes that show stuff that can never happen in-game.

No COD match has ever remotely resembled its hype trailer. Ever.

This all looks okay until you play for real and get murdered by Snoop Dogg or Shredder or Homelander in a puff of marijuana smoke and obnoxious visual effects.

Also, why TF would I want to play a game where people can seemingly swim like dolphins and dive out of the air like gotdamm Flipper?!

"Omni-movement" lol. They are scraping the bottom of the barrel. My goodness.

It's nice to see they have 16 new maps. But the map pool will be immediately diluted/ruined when DLC maps rehash yet more "classic" maps that have been in every game for over a decade.