Demruth, the developer of the amazing game Antichamber, last tweeted in January of 2017 but he was kind enough to reply to a DM of mine in October of 2017. I had asked him if he was working on any new projects and he kindly let me know that he is not developing anything at the moment as he is "focusing elsewhere in life." That's his choice to make and I wish him all the best so don't expect to see any more games from him!
Took the words out of my mouth. This game is getting an insane amount of coverage over at Kotaku but if the only positives are how it looks and the combat system, I don't understand how this RPG's grind, bland story, and price point are making people excited.
Here is the reveal of Far Cry 5. This is the only time they ever made it seem like there might be an important, meaningful message in the game. However, that comes directly before a bunch of footage expressing that "nah, this is just the same Far Cry you know but in America." The same message that continued to flow out of the marketing since then. The presenter went out and marketed the game strongly in a few minutes to get your attention, only to walk it back almost immediately, with the company continually walking it back so you understood what you were getting into. I think Ubisoft was actually trying to keep you from having incorrect expectations.
And yet here we are... with the game getting poorly reviewed specifically based on expectations. Did Ubisoft want to stay inoffensive? Maybe the game was done being written 3 years ago? Maybe they saw what Wolfenstein did and said "if you want that experience, go play that game" because they knew they couldn't compete. I don't know but it's not like I was ever playing Far Cry for any deep message.
It really makes me wonder how folks would feel if this game came out and the militia incident of 2014 hadn't occurred or if all this current-day neo-nazi bullshit wasn't happening.
Mind you, I'm not trying to defend the game or Ubisoft. I just think expectations were too high when it was revealed and even despite Ubisoft trying to walk them back, people were too stubborn to notice and now we have a 3-star game instead of a 4-star game.
I feel like I accidentally played this game exactly as the developers wanted people to play it. I died plenty of times due to judging my situation incorrectly, tried out and enjoyed the variety of different weaponry and defense systems, overcame obstacles through proper planning, and scraped by the two hardest missions by the skin of my teeth creating an ultimately exciting and enjoyable experience. The story was hilariously Kojima-esque schlock and, thanks to titles like Portable Ops and Ac!d, I went in with no expectations for this to be at main-title quality and instead got something that was pretty much at-par with said PSP titles.
A budget spin-off that just used the assets and gave me a survival experience of gathering, upgrading, and defending? It was. A numbered Metal Gear? It was never supposed to be.
There is plenty broken with the game, most of which are minor problems related to balancing the numbers, timings, base management, people management, mission management, and what microtransactions get used for but, at the end of the day, just playing the game is actually fun.
Humorously, despite the game being built to have this F2P aspect, you can feel like you completed the game before you even start the farming. I'm pretty much ready to put it away as "done" after 60 hours, something most survival titles refuse to allow as they typically keep their hooks in players through endless play. Nope. Just go look up what the high-end gear for Survive is and you'll feel like you're done after a few solid online missions that gain you the best equipment available. The highest-end stuff is just a reward for people who already enjoy playing the game for what it is rather than being a hook to turn the game into a job.
But we have to come back around to the issue at hand which is that if you perceived this game to be more than what it is, expected something larger than what it is, and play it without any real want to let yourself get lost in the mist and deal with surviving, then you flat out will not enjoy yourself. That laser-focused style means this just plain is not a game for most people. For me, though, it scratched a survival game itch that few other games have really hit quite right. I look forward to other developers seeing what this game's potential was (Some kind of Fortnite/State of Decay hybrid) and creating something that properly shows off what the genre can do.
Even with my positive outlook on the game, it only gets a 3/5.
@jeff The reason you kept jumping in Mario Kart on Rainbow Road is because they hide yellow ramps over the yellow blocks. Every time you jumped when you didn't mean to? That was you hitting a ramp. You can see them if you look closer. Your controller is fine... not to mention the manual jump in that game is lower than the kind of jump you get when you hit a ramp.
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