MFTWrecks

Avatarcry. Not what I think fans wanted. At all.

So I guess we're very liberally using "mind-blowing" nowadays, huh?

$5 for a 3 week battle pass? And people get mad that other games charge $10 for 3 MONTHS. Wild.

@twinspectre90 No. Spidey just looks like more Spidey. But I know that won't launch with a thousand glitches. So there's that, at least.

@Triumph741 Which does me no good on PS5. Thanks, though.

I know these games are all about the feel, but maaaaan does that not look remotely current-gen to me. Like not one single bit. It took them 10ish years to throw THAT together??

A game with decent climbing? Guerilla should take notes.

@Triumph741 But again, nothing truly new. We've seen Starfield gameplay before. Less of it, sure. But it's not like it looks like anything besides a Bethesda RPG. Maybe that's "game of the generation" to some people, but it literally does nothing for me.

Every single one of their games comes out and is an overhyped, glitch-ridden mess. They have never delivered anything that didn't need a thousand updates.

Nothing Bethesda does will ever impress me until I see how it performs out in the wild. Their track record is one of great ambition and horrendous attention to detail in regards to their systems and gameplay.

If Sony or Nintendo put out a big release with half as many problems as Bethesda RPGs do, they'd be the laughing stock of gaming. But for some reason, Bethesda always gets a pass. And it's bonkers to me.

So no, sorry. But Starfield doesn't move the needle for me the tiniest bit.

Two new first party announcements (one merely publishing at that), a few known quantities, and a few CG trailers with no real gameplay. And y'all walked away that impressed??? I don't understand people.

When I see stuff like this I instantly wonder how much more expensive it could TRULY be to add a couple more variations. I have to guess those dialog options will remain static. So every time you get the same matchup, it'll be the same dialog/animation combo. (Liu Kang seems to always throw a fireball, knocking his opponent back, for instance.)

But how much better would it be if there even just, say, 3-4 variations of each matchup? So that you'd get slightly tweaked dialog, maybe a different attack animation transition... it'd go a long way to keeping it from getting stale. And would likely take minimal amounts of extra work since most of the animations would be in place.

It's like reload animations in FPS titles. I love when games throw in slightly different animations even on the same gun, because in the real world you won't be a robot performing the EXACT same move every single time in every situation. Just adds that little bit of extra detail.

Every single one of those is atrocious.

Low-key possible GOTY contender.

And people made fun of the PS showcase... yeesh.

Sure, I'm stoked for Remnant 2 (but only its release date was announced). And that zombie game from John Carpenter looks fun as heck, but... That's a B-tier co-op shooter.

Like... Where was the big crazy AAA sorta reveals? Weak as heeeeeeeeeeell.

This will be my first FF purchase ever, so something they did worked. I've never been REMOTELY interested in the series (I loathe non-real-time combat), so while I don't need to watch anything else (and I'm not doing so), making sure I was aware it was a real-time action game certainly got me to pay attention. They're probably not confident they got the word out to enough consumers like me.

MH Rise is $20 on Switch right now, too, for anyone looking to play it on the go.

They're launching in the wake of 2 huge entries in other storied franchises in Street Fighter and Diablo. What the hell did they expect? Consumers only have so much time and money.

Wonder if this has anything to do with the RPG Zack Snyder was said to be making for his one new movie.

Hopefully it's more arcadey and less physics-heavy. The first game was begging to be kid-friendly but it was so easy to botch a jump or turn and fly off the track, with the normal difficulty requiring absolute PERFECTION in a lot of races... it just wasn't kid-friendly at all.

Even I gave up in frustration cause it was just a slog to work through and fight the demands of what should have been a straightforward arcade racer.

@AdamNovice Seriously. Every damn article REMOTELY related to the showcase, they just shove their opinion that it sucked down our throats like it's pure facts now. No nuance. No other side.

Yet nearly every damn individual article they post about the games IN the showcase? Glowing and excited.

So bizarre.

I'm the key demo for this (dad looking to game on my couch while vegging out with the PS5 in the basement) but even I think this is a hard sell when you can get a solid controller to attach to your phone for under a hundred bucks easily. Dunno how they saw the rise of the Switch and Steam Deck and thought streaming only was the way to compete. They shoulda just gone full VIITA. Yeah I already branded it for em.

How bad do you ***** this up? No one asked for Factions to become some massive beast of a project. That was on ND.

All people wanted was a refined and expanded Factions 1 experience. That's it.

They easily shoulda been able to do that AND have done it when TLOU2 dropped. Their desire to make it into something it wasn't, and then not deliver? That's a failure. Plain and simple.

Will be interesting to see what they launch with all these reports swirling it's been scaled back and changed directions.

Like for me? Redo Factions 1 and release it as a F2P game and just expand upon it once it's back out in the world. How hard can that be?

Epic developed Fortnite into a friggin PLATFORM over its life (so far) because it was out there gathering feedback and data and garnering fans. Can't do that unless the game is in the wild. And we KNOW the core game was good. That's why it garnered the fanbase it had before.

Like come on, ND. You're smarter than this. Or should be.

@DETfaninATL Well, sure. Killzone and Resistance lean more scifi. They're more like direct competitors to Halo. SOCOM and MAG would be more direct military sim/pesudo sim that I'd say go more directly head to head with something like COD or even Rainbow Six.

@DETfaninATL "Create?" You mean... simply revive SOCOM? Or Killzone? Or Resistance? Or MAG?

They have LOADS of options. I don't think Sony thought this would ever get this far, to be honest. They saw it as a foregone conclusion it'd be blocked. Which was a mistake on their part. Likely more of that classic Sony hubris.

A few years ago people woulda said Microsoft would also never risk releasing a subpar Halo game, their prime IP, but look how they openly and willingly bungled Halo Infinite in multiple ways. There is no limit to their incompetence.

Say what you will about Sony's communication and future, we have no clue how the future IPs and service titles will do. But Microsoft has a proven track record of settling on releasing less than AAA-tier experiences over and over.

Microsoft is TOTALLY gonna screw over the vast majority of these ActiBlizzard IPs. If they have proven ANYTHING in recent years it's that their hits/successes are the outliers. They continually mismanage their studios/IPs and continually shoot themselves in the foot. It's they who turned themselves into the third place console maker, not anyone else.

I have a STRONG feeling they are aware of that fact and will do whatever it takes to bring their competition down with them, simply because they have the cash to burn. If it hurts Sony, it's a win for Microsoft. They don't have to improve their processes if they can just screw over their competition.

This is def a topic I see needing to be addressed. I'll hold out on the quality of the individual releases and their vibes (I personally think Foamstars or whatever looks far more "off" than Fairgames), but it's the lack of variety that's concerning.

If Foamstars was Sony 1st party and Fairgames was someone like Ubisoft? Different conversation. But Sony has LOADS of IP that could be developed into a fairly original offering (within the GaaS space). Like, we know full well Twisted Metal is likely going to be F2P GaaS, but where was that? It not being shown makes it likely it's not making a release to coincide with the show, like many assumed. So that's its own issue.

Twisted Metal, SOCOM, Jet Moto, Wipeout, Killzone, Motorstorm, Warhawk/Starhark... like it or not? All ripe for F2P GaaS. And likely able to bring something unique to the field. Then you of course have new offerings, but as stated, so far they're all just shooters.

But then also what about some left field options... what about a massive MMORPG version of Ape Escape? Get some of that Genshin Impact money with a fun-for-all-ages co-op romp collecting monkeys.

I'm concerned about the variety and breadth, not the model. And they haven't assuaged that fear for me.

I'm also going to say it, no matter what people here think: Sony-owned F2P GaaS titles should be like Destiny and be available on as many platforms as their technology can handle.

Didn't they say a while ago they wanted to use the tech foundation from Days Gone and build their next project with it? Obviously another zombie game would make sense. The crowd tech just works with hordes of zombies.

But if they're committed to that tech, how ELSE could that be used? What other enemy (or ally) would make sense?

@Americansamurai1 I literally thought we were getting No Man's Sky 2 and I was wondering why it changed developer.

It has extremely strong Watch Dogs energy, I'll give you that. But I'd also like to wait to at least see some gameplay before I decide if it's worth trying.

This is gonna be F2P/GaaS and shut down within a year no matter how well it plays, isn't it?

I love that this site can simultaneously post previews for every individual announcement ranging from "this looks like fun" to "this looks gorgeous" and "this looks great" and yet, collectively, all that fun, great, gorgeous stuff amounts to some sort of failure.

Y'all are so confounding some times. Always worried about what you didn't get, not what you did.

@OmegaStriver Please point me to the single hour of presentation coverage where every single one of those games was announced.

You woulda told me a few weeks ago we'd get a showcase with Helldivers 2, Dragon's Dogma 2, MGS Snake Eater, Marathon, AZ Sunshine 2, and a bunch of sneak peaks at what Sony's newly acquired studios are doing (alongside the standards like FF16, RE, and Spidey) and that people would be LET DOWN and I'd have laughed in your face.

Holy hell, people. What are y'all on 'cause it's good and I want some.

Sure, I'd have loved to have seen Factions, but I'm also currently of the mind that'll be so big that it'll get its own State of Play when it's ready.

If they expand their market share, by whatever means, it means they will value their IP more highly. They then increase spending on all fronts to back up an increased marketshare.

Stuff like making more people fans of their various products and divisions is good news for everyone. Rising tides raise all boats and what have you.

Everyone saying they only want Sony to invest in single player videogame experiences exclusive to PS consoles doesn't have a single clue how to run a global conglomerate.

@NotSoCryptic I politely disagree. I think Wildlands was the beginning/bones of a great game formula (open ended shooting and shenanigans which was fun af in co-op). It needed some polish and tweaks, surely, but the broad strokes were there.

Sadly, Ubisoft didn't iterate on the design in the areas it needed to most (enemy/ally AI, smoothness in controls) and instead decided to GAAS-ify its sequel to the benefit of no one.

I think if they recognized what made Wildlands fun and layered improvements onto it, with a nice Star Wars coat of paint over top? Game could be fun as all get out.

Ubisoft already has the best possible setup for a Star Wars game: Ghost Recon Wildlands by way of the Mandalorians and/or bounty hunters.

Craft a couple large open world areas representing planets, give players the chance to fully customize their Mandalorian warrior and their ship, and have drop-in/drop-out co-op. Have you and your squad of fellow bounty hunters jump around the planets hunting down scum bags.

Make travel between the planets include some interstellar battling in your ship and you've got a great way to spice up the flow of the game.

Really sad to hear how bad the microtransactions are in a kid-focused title. 2K and Lego deserve to get a lot of ***** for this. I, for one, won't be purchasing this for my daughter like I had planned to.

5 Bucks for a win when you need 10k for a car?? That's friggin' absurd.

I hate when solid/good games do this. They all fight for your time. Games don't want you to be a gamer. They don't want you to play videogames. They want you to play videogame. Theirs. And only theirs.

But paradoxically, they try and get you to stick around and drop money by aggravating you. By making it SOOO hard to earn things naturally that you just throw your hands up in frustration and submit to poorly priced items.

What they don't seem to get is people recognize that predation pretty damn quickly/easily. People would probably be WAY more likely to drop a little cash here or there on an item in a game they're truly really into. But they won't REACH that point if they don't feel a good, solid connection to it, because they've been driven away by the predatory practice too quick.

Say what you will about Fortnite, but they have never been beat when it comes to how they handle their purchasable items imo. I bought a single Battle Pass way back when the first one launched and I've been given enough currency ever since to buy the next BP AND have leftovers. It kept me hooked. In 5+ years, I've only ever bought an item outright with cash maybe 3 times. MAYBE. And only ever bought new Vbucks 1-2 times. And I don't feel bad. At all. Never have. Those purchases were WORTH it, because I knew, at the time, I was really really into the game.

Something like this? How do you even get into collecting stuff and having fun if you're so quickly low on funds and frustrated by being able to unlock things you want? The MOMENT you have to consider grabbing your wallet, that's when games lose fans. They may gain whales, but they lose fans. And if engagement and purchases drives long term success and growth, aren't the fans the ones you need to attract in the first place??

If I were a game company, I'd much rather have ten FANS dropping $5 a piece on something they like and being happy about it than have one fan who drops $50 without consideration, and then nine who stopped playing out of frustration. Because remember, if one of those ten fans is a whale, they'll still end up dropping $50. So you really ended up making $95 (or much more) instead of $50.

Vaulting a core squad size option to "make room" for something only used by the hardest of hardcore when their menu is littered with literally dozens of awful fan made options?

How bout they cull that crap instead?

They've said user content generates more than 50% of activity within Fortnite. Cutting a core squad size option in 2 modes will not "make room" the same way instituting some quality control across user content would.

Rez. Hands down.

There's no other game made with such care that is a singular game EXPERIENCE. (Nearly) Everything else could be told in a different medium. Rez is unique to games.

It literally needs to exist as a game. And is fantastic, to boot.

Fortnite has multiple Spidey skins. It's actually one of the better-represented IPs (even without considering the broader Marvel crossovers).

Tom Holland's iteration alone has a few. There's 1-2 comic iterations. And Spider-Gwen is in there, too (released back when this movie was originally due in theaters as it so happens). Venom has a movie and comic iteration. Green Goblin is in the game. 2 MJs. Prowler. Carnage.

If you're a Spidey fan (no matter what part of the property)... It's safe to say there's a skin for ya.

Having Miles was a longstanding inevitability. Glad to see him show up. But who I REALLY want is the new movie's rendition of Spidey 2099.

@Volsung_Fjorgynnson I have platinumed Elden Ring and Remnant... I've completed Demon's Souls, Surge 2, Ashen, Absolver... I don't mind hard Souls-like games.

LotF, though?? I bounced off it twice. Both at the very first boss. It just felt the tiniest bit off. I could NOT understand the timing or mechanics that were making it literally impossible for me to do damn near anything smoothly. Weirdest feel to such a game I've ever played.

I'm crossing my fingers and toes this is better. Cause it looks phenomenal. I want to explore the world and enjoy myself, but I can't do that if the base gameplay is as busted as the first game.

@Intr1n5ic The fact they're releasing a larger, full-fledged title this year instead of sticking to their original plan of taking a year off is not news. That's been known for weeks. Months even. (It was a thing back when I played MW2 and I quit on that during the beginning of S2.)

The news is simply that it will officially be MW3 and who's developing it.

Has nothing to do with the buyout whatsoever.

@NEStalgia Look up conversations about the combat (and also overall jank). There are plenty of people who do not believe the tweaks to the combat were for the better.

Long dodge/dive? Gone. Want to dodge a lot? Better pony up to upgrade a particular suit, otherwise you'll stumble after 3 leaps, leaving you vulnerable to attack. Going against enemies whose projectiles are homing rocks who can literally tweak direction mid-air to hit you as you land? Good luck facing more than one at a time.

Let me know how long it took you to climb something before you get stuck 6 inches from the peak and Alot just straight doesn't move upward to grab the ledge highlighted for her. I encountered it 3 times before I left the tutorial section. Or maybe when you get stuck perched somewhere because she decides she won't actually "leap" 2 feet forward off the ledge she's on to land on the literal only path forward.

I know I make it sound like this is the worst game ever. It's not. At all. It's just waaaaaaay more finicky than it gets called out for being. It's like everyone just stairs at the Decima Engine and doesn't give a ***** that a game that felt fluid and fresh now feels literal years behind its contemporaries.

It's like they changed a whole bunch of stuff that simply didn't need tweaking (climbing, dodging). Or changed stuff in ways that didn't positively effect the gameplay experience (dodging, melee vs ranged, monster design, encounter design). And then also introduced needless "upgrades" for the sake of it (the loot/upgrade system is just a chore; I feel the game would do well to scale back its upgrade mechanics and provide more meaningful upgrades a la a game like Metroid instead of chasing looter mechanics - this comes from someone who loves looters).

So as I stated, if this were the first entry in the series?? It doesn't become as revered as the IP is. It goes down as a cult favorite, maybe, but it does not spawn the sequels and expansions this is getting. Not by a long shot. I don't know when I last played a AAA game that felt truly this "off" in feel to me. (No, I have not played Redfall, lololol.)

@DeepSpace5D It IS down to aim, but it's ALSO about over-engineering the enemies. There are particular spots to aim for, but they are also commonly obscured by ridiculously tiny little bits and bobs absolutely everywhere. Can't tell you how many times I THINK I'm about to hit paydirt for at least a half decent chunk of damage (not talking about the core components, just the meaty bits of the monster) but lo! There's actually ANOTHER piece that needs to be broken off that just took all the damage, which means you don't actually do much.

They could have left the designs "lower quality" in terms of overall removable parts (but kept them visually stunning) and the gameplay would have been drastically improved. I personally don't need to chip half a dozen or more little worthless bits off (good aim or not) every encounter to feel like I'm doing something.

I want to hit the meaty bits and make ***** fall over. The first game let you do that. This one revels in watching sparks and pieces fly as though that's useful to the end goal of - you know - killing the damn monster.

A GTA-like game with heists. How original!

@NEStalgia I have never - and I mean never - fought so hard to "find the fun" in a big AAA release.

It is, on one hand, commendable that they went and offer so many usability and gameplay tweaks for players. But on the other hand, it's also truly damning that they couldn't just create something uniformly enjoyable.

Know what I tweaked in the first Horizon? Not a damn thing. Know what I tweaked in the GoW games? Resolution (and a single difficulty choice). Days Gone? Nothing.

Know what I tweaked in HFW (besides resolution)? Difficulty at like half a dozen or more different levels (down to enemy health, my health, how certain combat bits operate and behave), how looting works (a few choices), how hard my aim assist works, how and when climb holds are displayed, how certain animations play (or don't)... Sure, it's great that their exhaustive options. But having to use them to make the game feel as enjoyable as the first is - truly - exhausting.

They just went and changed waaaaay too much. And it's STILL not as fun in combat scenarios. They basically tweaked melee and ranged combat and in a LOT of scenarios, you're more or less punished for choosing the "wrong" type of combat. Wanna stagger or knockdown creatures with melee? Waaaaaaaay harder than the first game. You fight monsters with ranged combat. That's more or less what the game dictates. Fighting humans? Better close the gap and use melee, 'cause outside of headshots, ranged is far less useful against human enemies. They try and dictate the combat flow way more than in the first one and it's annoying. Let me play how I want to play! (And damn near every enemy has SO MANY bits and bobs of armor to knock off you have to chip away at their dozens of pieces before you can TRULY get a solid hit in and do some damage. You think you have a clear shot to a good meaty chunk of monster "flesh" and your arrow flies to target but NOPE. There was actually a tiny miniscule piece of removable armor there you couldn't see so all your damage actually got dealt to THAT, which is now gone. But good luck landing that now-open shot to TRULY hurt the monster.)

And in the end? IT'S still janky af. Climbing is a friggin' CHORE compared to, say, the recent AC games or Immortals or Zelda. I can't tell you how many times Aloy will simply not move 6 inches to climb to something THAT IS HIGHLIGHTED TO ALLOW HER TO CLIMB THERE. Or how many times she gets stuck on a surface and just... won't move 2 feet forward.

She moves like Niko from GTAIV. Just an absolute dump truck who gets held up on so so so many bits and pieces in the world. The game lacks a good, smooth feeling.

I literally have no clue how it scored as well as it did. It is a MASSIVE step backward, imo. (Is it gorgeous? Undoubtedly. But graphics alone can't carry a game. Especially not a sequel to such a classic.)

I'm brute forcing it because I bought it and I don't want to waste my money. But I am absolutely mainlining the platinum and not bothering with the massive amount of map bloat. Forget the dozens upon dozens of ?s pocking the map. I am moving mission to mission and only doing required side content to get the plat and GTFO.

They may very well have soured me on the entire IP. It is that disappointing to me.

Hot take: Forbidden West is one of the jankiest-feeling releases Sony has had for a generation or 2..

Had FW been the first in the series, the IP goes down like Days Gone, garnering a much smaller (but loyal) fanbase and spawns no sequels.

This game is just not as fun to play as the original. Over-thought systems aplenty, ineffective core systems, and so much lack of clarity/good design decision-making that the game has to have a million toggles and settings to let players make the game enjoyable for themselves (instead of just, you know, designing a good-feeling game).

Loved the first game. Platinumed it. Couldn't wait to get to FW. But 17-18 hours in and it's just a brute force struggle to work through. So far, this gen, I think it's the second weakest in their lineup, only to Destruction AllStars.

Shame. Concrete Genie was solid and looked like a sign of great things to come. Reminded me, in a way, of Puppeteer and Kena. Like they were one iteration away from an all out classic.

For anyone bout to complain: recognize Diablo 3 has had seasonal support for years and it is hugely popular.

The only new thing is tying it to a battle pass, providing more stuff to unlock and earn. And until they say anything, it's unknown how much, if anything, they will cost.

Seasons cost $0 in Diablo 3, but battle passes cost money in Immortal. We really, truly don't know how they'll implement it until they say so.

Helluva article title.

@thefourfoldroot1 Lolol