Looking at reviews, turns out that Anthem isn’t looking that good - most things I’m seeing are saying that while the world design is really cool, and it’s real pretty, for the most part it’s boring, not so well built, and they make a lot of weird choices. Does not live up to the hype. As Giantbomb put it - There’s a lot there, but what is there, is bad. Everything in the game ranges from bad to merely mediocre. Jeff also straight up described it as arguably disastrous, and not for reasons that can really be patched out.
Playing the demo felt like an Alpha. I honestly think it was kicked out the door 8-12 months early to meet some shareholder expectations. The controls are horrible, it runs like ass, buggy, unstable. As Pat of the (former) Super Best Friends likes to say, put it back in the oven, it’s not done yet.
I will give them credit, the alpha also felt like an alpha, but it’s meant to.
Oh I forgot about the part where it destroys SSDs because of constant unnecessary unloading and reloading gigabytes of assets.
Eh, Josue seems to have been determined to call Anthem a Destiny clone since before he played it. It’s really not, for any number of reasons - first and foremost being that Destiny, while it is what it is, is competently made, and doesn’t constantly leave you scratching your head at every other design decision. And you gotta make sure the loot doesn’t suck ass, which is kind of a crucial problem to solve in a loot shooter, and unlike Destiny, Anthem hasn’t. And the shooting in Destiny actually feels good, and tight, not like you’re drunkenly waving a plastic capgun around.
Josue does get some weird opinions, and I wonder if that’s just the US/Brazil divide, or if he’s just a weird dude.
I would be interested to see even an amatuer analysis of how gamer cultures around the world differ
It will be interesting to see gaming companies like EA internalize the lessons they’ve learned from the launches of Apex versus Anthem.
Apex - No prior information disclosed, and announced the day it was released = massive praise with no raised expectations to disappoint.
Anthem - Tons of prior information disclosed and super high expectations and hype. Mediocre to poor game that seems to be getting overly negative reviews.
Conclusion: Expect to see fewer games announced ahead of time and more “Skunk works” type games that are suddenly announced and released without anyone knowing about them.
You are correct in that this is the lesson the big game publishers will learn. Too bad it’s the wrong lesson. Good games do well whether you hyped them up or not. Bad games do poorly whether you hype them up or not.
The lesson they need to learn is to just make a good game.
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It’s still baffling to me that many companies, regardless of the product they make, don’t actually follow this logic
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Looking at the film, book, or comics industries, I’m unsurprised that it’s also an issue with games.
That’s kinda not fair though. Developers understand this (most do anyway) but we’re not talking about developers, we’re talking about publishers. Devs make games, publishers make spreadsheets.
Good game doesn’t make sense on a spreadsheet. Announcement dates and budgets and quarters and other bullshit does though. So that’s what they’ll learn.
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Hype that a game -might- be good, increases stock prices -now-. Not next quarter, not next year, now. But selling the hyped game ALSO makes money -now-. So best capitalist business practice is hype the game to hype potential customers to raise the stock price, then kick the game out the door prematurely and hope that the hype wave carries it to sales -now- before the customer realizes it’s either garbage or not actually done. As long as sales are enough the stock price goes up more.
And what if you hype up and release Fallout 76, what then?
I heard that wasn’t that bad in retrospect. I haven’t played it though.
You either take the hit and lose investors and possibly get sued for fraud because you promised something that wasn’t guaranteed, or you slash staff or sell the studio to get the cash to pay investors for the lies you told. Really all this crap boils down to boards lying to investors about how great the returns will be to get them to invest then panicking when they can’t deliver and throwing shit at the wall to cover their asses after the fact.
The recent firing at Activision/Blizzard is the perfect example of this. We didn’t sell enough games. We fired a bunch of people. Profit!
I remember around the time of the close alpha, he said something like “Anyone played Anthem in the Alpha? Everything I see makes me think it’s a destiny clone.” And I hit him up, and told him, nah, it’s more like The Division than anything, in feel and the style of loot shooter it is, and he just went “Nah I still think it’s Destiny.” Like, okay dude, then why even ask for input?
So I’m pretty terrible at multiplayer first person shooters. Usually by the time I see a target they’ve shot me about 5 times. However like most of the Bandwagon Apex Legends is a very solid game.
My own impression is if you wanted an FPS that doesn’t have… (for lack of a better term) “Overstuffed Bullshit” of Overwatch. I never played CS:GO, but I think people who like that will like this.