The "why does this game exist" question

I clicked this because I usually like the Rev3 games content, even though the game in question - Army of two part 3 or whatever is of no interest to me.

I figured, whatever, i'll give the game a fair shake, in the same way as giant bomb I will watch a quick look for a game i'm not really interested in.

Army of Two part 3 developer snoozefest demo

The guy giving the demo is so completely and utterly without preparation, emotion, enthusiasm, or charm - I shut it off after a few minutes. The host was obviously trying to extract some sort of reason for this product existing, some kind of idea or desire that spawned this multi-million dollar thing to be created, but there was none there.

The guy sounded like he was just doing a job the same way a waiter at a shitty restaurant might describe the specials. It was awful. Now i know this isn't EA's biggest game to come out this year or anything, but why does it even exist? Jeff made the same point in the Crysis 3 review - why does it exist? Now, I liked crysis 3 a lot, but I don't have a great answer to that either. It's pretty much just Crysis 2 with new environments and almost no new ideas or originality.

A lot of big budget games these days just have no purpose for existing. Why play Army of Two 3 when there are probably a dozen other better games that are very similar to it and cost less? Why are they spending all this money and effort and man-hours to put out such a boring product? I think after Spec Ops the Line, it's very hard to justify making "just another" third person shooter like this. We've already seen what can be done with it in Resident Evil 4, Gears of War, and Uncharted. What is Army of Two doing exactly, other than providing a paycheck, that a few hundred people are working on it? Are they just there to get a job done and make a product that someone that did some research thinks that enough people will buy to justify the expense? I don't know.

While Dead Space 3 might have been a fair-to-middling game, it does feel like Visceral had a story they wanted to wrap up and wanted to expand the dead space universe a little bit. But outside of that it suffers from the same thing - it feels very similar to dead space 2 and offers very little in the way of reasons for its creation.

Anyone else noticing this with a lot of games lately?

I think Jeff has said recently that because we are at the very end of the generation, developers don't want to debut a new franchise and will save those for the PS4 and next Xbox. But they still need products to sell so they play it safe and make games to fill in until the next generation.

Then again, the founder of Crytek called Crysis 3 their masterpiece.

Oh man, this guy sounds like he wants to die.

Also, why doesn't the female playing the game get a last name? Is she a wrestler?

The guy doesn't sound that bad. He isn't high energy, sure, but not everyone is like that. Some people are just more soft spoken and laid back rather than in your face. However I agree that you would probably want an exciting personality demo'ing your game. Alsooooo ... I totally forgot that this game was happening.

And so did most of the gaming world I think. I would be shocked if this did any good.

@morningstar: It's an Army of Two game so of course not.

Give that guy a break. Look what happened to the studio that made it.

Yay! Tara!

And yes, the producer ain't all that slick with the gift of the gab, which is fine, maybe he was put on the spot or having an off day? Who can say? All I can say is that talking about this video of that video game being played is of more interest to me than actually watching or playing the video game in question.

/say

This is true. I bet the game was thrown on them without a choice. It was probably not a great project to work on. I'd rather him be honest and mellow than fake enthusiasm. The games looks real by the numbers. Like the first hour of spec ops.

He has no soul

I agree, can't look at third person shooters the same way again. Game changer. Especially now with Tomb Raider having a ridiculous amount of narrative dissonance, more games need to adopt adaptive dialogue and behavior that are story-dependent. It's not just about making your character a psychopath to avoid the dissonance of killing hundreds of goons but also in pacing your character in-game through specific changes like changes to melee animations rather than exclusively divorcing them to just cutscenes which Remedy (Alan Wake) is good at.

I hate that question because the answer is always the same. I understand and agree with the point your making regarding why would a publisher choose to dump resources into a middling title, but I really don't like the phrase "this game doesn't have to exist".

Games like Army of Two 3, Crysis 3 and Dead Space 3 need to exist equally as much as games like Mario Brothers, Half Life and Metal Gear Solid do - zero percent.

why not?

hell, theres some guy out there where crysis 3 is gonna be his favorite game. like he'll love the SHIT out of crysis 3. who are you to say it shouldnt exist? or that its unnecessary to some guy, its his favorite game.

if you think its unnecessary and you dont want to play it, then dont play it and let that be that.

Many "why does this game exist" questions can be answered with money. EA has probably determined that making another Army of Two game rather than not making a game or making a risky new IP for the PS4 will make them the most smackaroos. After all, the new generation may commence this year, but PS3 sales will dominate over its successor's for a few years. If the game's not going to perform well, it's currently better to bomb on the PS3 than the PS4 since the PS3 will likely lead to more sales.

I usually question why a game even exist when the publisher makes no effort to make people aware of its existence. Seems like this game fits that category.

That a game is crap or is the 37th sequel or is assigned to a developer that couldn't care less about it doesn't really matter if there's some sort of marketing effort behind it but when a publisher acts as if the game did not exist is when you can ask the question.

Well, I played and really enjoyed the first two Army of Two games because of the focus on couch co-op. Besides, the games aren't as bad as the press make them out to be. My friend and I had more fun with the Army of Two games in co-op than we had with Gears of War.

I don't know what you're talking about. Seems fine. He's playing the game will doing the interview, so I don't know how much you can reasonable expect with his attention divided like that.

What's more disturbing is how they ripped the HUD right out of Battlefield. Can't imagine they put much effort into this game when they didn't even bother to develop their own assets for the UI.

This made me laugh really hard for some reason.

Wow he was pretty damn boring to listen to I was tempted to mute the volume. For some reason I liked the last two games probably because of the wide outdoor environments and the agro meter that determined who got the enemies attention while the other character flanks them. Judging by VGChartz the last game sold reasonably well for both systems so perhaps that's why this game was green lit but I doubt this game will even sell well especially being released in March where it's just gonna be swamped by AAA releases.

yes, these games do sell very well. Likely high sales numbers in wal-marts from people who could give a fuck that it's mindless action. Split Screen co-op is still a thing. That's why they're making another one, because the last two performed well despite critics reception.

ya he's talking fine, like drew, my kind of guy instead of a marketing type

frostbite engine (that & EA would be licensing fonts), reminds me of MoH 2009 really (i only did multiplayer for that, pc)

I actually really liked the second Army of Two. Especially the competitive multiplayer. And I'm not going to buy this game, but I'll play it at some point and it will probably be enjoyable.