For me the comparisons of Cruelity Squad and Deus Ex just don't compute at all. There seems to be way more focus on combat than the hacking/stealth/social potential of Deus Ex. Seemingly no conversation trees or the like. It's like someone took all the things I personally like about that kinda immersive sim and said "Lets get rid of those, and make it more like a FPS"
There is certainly some of that emergent sim genre in there, and maybe the games got choices. But I'd compare it way more to something like an old school Quake/Doom era game without the stealth then I would Deus Ex. Maybe more like original System Shock in some ways? Dunno. But "Deus Ex like game, just with intentionally awful graphics" this game is not.
The major issue with Sony Re:indies, at least as described by the follow up article that got published the day after that first one did, is that Sony's store is just really really lousy compared to basically every other option.
How many steps does it take to get a list of all the new games released in the last week or 2 on all the other platforms compared to Sony? How easy is it to find all the games currently on sale? How easy is it to find out what a game is, ratings for it and so on? How's the refund policy? How's the wish-list policy? How easy is it to find a specific game without typing its exact title into a search-bar? How easy is it to figure out what games you own? How easy is it to sort DLC and add-on junk and still have a full list of new games?
There in lies the issue. The discoverability of games is not just bad on the PSN store, it is in many ways simply nonexistent in some ways. A lot of developers reached out once that initial article/tweet thread write up was first put out to essentially say "Yah, none of the stores are perfect but the PSN store is especially/egregiously bad.
I get Jeff's take in general, he would be right if Sony were not so massively behind every other storefront in terms of just basic consumer convenience. Sony needs to do more, and it's not some anti-Sony conspiracy to say so.
Without Brad's style of keeping things more on track/Jeff's style of Hosting in general I think usually leads to these longer podcasts. I don't think any of us are complaining about the length at all, but I knew I wasn't gonna listen to this all in one sitting. I found something to help me with that, so I mentioned it.
I know Jason Schrier got a lot of pushback and Sony Fanboys mad at him for that article, but I think in this case it was at least somewhat Justified. Especially when you look into the story and look at some of the people involved who have since come out and responded.
Not that I disagree with his messaging that big corporations should care more about their people than their profits then they typically do. But it sure feels like he was stretching to play into that narrative where the facts really didn't follow. Like the title of the article alone suggest there is something wrong with what Sony did, but as it was brought up in this podcast that is not a clear-cut fact, point in fact Sony might be totally in the right and not doing anything out of the ordinary.
While I don't think Jason is many of the things his critics wrongly call him out for, there is a bad look from this article in that I think he could have been a little bit more even-handed with how he chose to write it up. I don't think the backlash and heat from the Fanboy Community he got was deserved but at the same time you you can't fault everyone for calling him out somewhat on it either.
Late to the party but sure, I'll share my counter opinion Re:Superman.
To me, the viewpoints the GB guys expressed was based on like the dirt worst version of superman. To put it in a way people might understand, it would be like asking the opinion of someone about Batman, who had only ever seen the 60s show, and was very much not a fan of such. I can't really blame them, we have not got a good movie about superman in forever, and while I think it holds up and was quite good, the superman animated series that ran on tv back in the day was in the same time-frame the the original batman animated series, and was the worse of the two (so way less fondly remembered/recalled).
The thing is, everything they describe about why Superman is boring and bad and bland is true, but its also a symptom of bad writing/storytelling, not the inherent character. We have seen way WAY to many examples of great superman stories that would make for really interesting/good movies (or could, anyhow in the right hands) that practically no one who isn't reading those comics/following people who talk about them are aware of. We do, at least, have a few of those made into DC Animated movies.
Like, I encourage anyone go to watch the All Star Superman movie or Superman vs the Elite. Maybe you won't like Superman anymore then you do now afterwards, his character has been so pigeon holed into one specific bland version for so long that some people can never look past it. But I would also bet a lot of people could at least get a much better understanding of why some of us thing Superman is a great character, but lament at his terrible movie presentation.
To wit, its as if every major hollywood producer/exec/writer had only ever seen the 60s batman movie, and was absolutely convinced that was the only kind of batman story/character that could exist. Imagine a world where you know Batman can be way more interested/presented in an entirely different way that might be wildly popular if only people knew about it/competent people made the media using that version, but all of society and the people who get to make the creative decisions were all-in on "nope, its 60s era batman or nothing." Add on top of that the few people who -do- seem to know how to make a decent superman story, not also being able to make a decent action movie (Superman returns was way closer to what some of us know superman can be, but Superman vs a big rock is not a good movie plot). Or you know, see the original Superman, or compare the director's cut of superman 2 to the theatrical. That last one is by far the best example of "What Superman can be vs what most everyone is convinced is the only thing he can be."
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