I feel for you. Let me tell you about this game last night where I had a Lucio dead to right and decided I could hit this perfect jump to catch him and finish him off only to misjudge it and land in a pit... If I had a $1 for every Winston leap I miscalculated...
Great read! One note: yeah, High Noon is super hard to get kills with against experienced teams at this point thanks to that very blatant "IT'S HIGH NOON" telegraph followed by the charge time it takes to line up the shot plus hoping the other team isn't employing a Reinhardt that will make it all useless anyway. The best advice I saw on that is if you can take even one kill with it, be happy with it. Otherwise, use it to clear out an area for a couple of seconds.
"Go check out this 90 minute video on another site" - Not every Quick Look is meant to be a mammoth hour+ endeavor. This is especially true for an alpha In fact, the crew routinely gets criticized for their "Quick Looks" being a misnomer. For instance it would take 10-15 minutes to properly wade through the intro sequence some are complaining Dan didn't cover. That's a lot of time investment for something that can be easily checked out in other videos on the site or YouTube. I would rather see 10-15 more minutes covering the actual game.
Insert hyperbole here: This doesn't help. This is not the worst video ever released to the Internet. Not every Quick Look is going to be a slam dunk. Every content producer will tell you they've had some subpar videos.
Dan isn't the right guy to play this: Dan has been shown to be pretty open-minded about games. One of his favorite games this year is Stardew Valley of all things. Vinny might have added more depth, but maybe he wanted to grab other Quick Looks because it sounds like everyone on staff doesn't think much of this game from the alpha. On top of this, why do we need only opinions/videos on this game from fans of this genre? As someone not entirely interested in most of these types of games, I'd like to know from someone of a similar mindset if this does anything different than the numerous other Rust-clones out there.
Dan is being dismissive: There just generally seems to be a confirmation bias toward Dan being dismissive at this point. He clearly states these types of games have not tended to be his thing. It's not like he's hiding it. And the gist of the rest of the QL is the game doesn't do much to change that view. It's not like he went on a tirade toward fans of these types of games.
Not knowing the price: Totally fair criticism.
Dan could have explained himself better/more in depth: Again, totally fair criticism. I think when you cut through all the noise, this is the fair complaint here.
The problem with excusing how bad this looks like as an Alpha is it is being sold as a $29.99 product. When you ask for that kind of money for something, you quite fairly open yourself up to criticism as to whether the game is worth purchasing now. And from what I've seen of this game, it looks as janky and unrefined as many similar survival games that were rushed to Steam Early Access to cash in on the Rust phenomenon. I think it's fair to suggest this game drew a lot of mainstream attention because the look and feel of it seemed so cool, and is drawing criticism because the actual game reminds many of those players of the endless slew of unfinished "alpha" survival games infesting the Steam marketplace.
There are numerous videos that have shown the intro already. Most content producers out there don't extensively show the introduction when they do a quick snippet of a game, and a good chunk of GB QLs start in the middle of the game. That said, wanting a bit more of an extended look at the game is certainly fair feedback. I'm not "calling out" anyone here. But perhaps Dan not understanding some of the game's mechanics is the sign the game needs a better tutorial. Personally, I find many of those types of survival games fail to explain their mechanics and then fall back on the excuse of "but it's cool to just figure those things out." If you look at something like the Souls games, those games have tutorials and explain their mechanics fairly well. It's the other parts of the game they ask the player to figure out on their own. I admit I haven't played this game, but it looked like a lot to take in without a lot of explanation.
Thanks for this great article! Oxenfree was really good, and how good its dialogue system can't really be understated. And it was already being sold for 50% off during the Steam sale (and I believe the most recent XBox sale).It's definitely something adventure game fans should pick up, if for no other reason than to see this dialogue system in action. The Quick Look does a pretty good job showing how snappy it all feels as well.
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