All the best Vinny, Brad and Alex. I always appreciated your passion and humor. Thankyou for the hours of entertainment and look forward to hearing from you in the future.
@tds418: As a Wii-U owner I watched as third party completely abandoned that console then Nintendo themselves jumped ship. Switch had a strong first year in terms of software but that was largely due to BOTW which was a Wii-U game anyway. In the 18 months since then it seems like deja-vu all over again. I gave them a pass in 2018 but now with Metroid effectively canned what is there to look forward to in 2019? Woolly Yoshi?
@efesell: It's sold well and had a great first year but since then there has been very little in terms of software. Some re-released Wii-U games, Tennis a new Smash Bros. Aside from Travis Strikes Back third party content has dried up completely and most of the indie games are inferior ports or are better played on other systems. The paid online service is a joke and virtual console looks like it will never happen. Now pretty much the one remaining marquee title they had on the horizon will probably not launch this gen. Hardly a glowing report card for a system whose hardware promised so much.
From a critical and popular standpoint Jeff is an outlier, from memory he dislikes RDR, The Last of Us, Resident Evil 4, Dark Souls, Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3. In the eyes of the vast majority of fans and critics these are some of the greatest games of all time.
I wonder how many of those planning to boycott the game factor poor working conditions into all their consumer choices. At least these people were paid a decent wage and had the freedom to leave the job if they felt they were being exploited. The same could not be said for the people who most likely made the shoes on your feet, the shirt on your back and whatever you just ate for lunch. If you're going to get on your high horse at least be consistent with your argument.
I had pretty high hopes from this game considering the hype that Brad and others were giving it but came away from the experience very underwhelmed. I felt as if all the awesome moments that were spruiked ended up being pretty mundane. Outside of the audition scene I felt as if everything else was pretty run of the mill for a pulpy story such as this. My main issue however is with the message of the game which left a pretty nasty aftertaste to be honest. If you cut through the ridiculousness and bombast you have a game whose central message is really about nationalism and violence. The final address to camera is a little sickening as the characters spout patriotic slogans like; "you fucked with the wrong country" while stomping around in the viscera of the dead general. It's assumed that we, as the audience are all good with this because....well fuck Nazis.
Now, don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting a nuanced treatment of the subject matter but reducing Nazism to a caricature of evil malevolence does no justice to the past or service to the present. People seem to be latching on to this game as they see it as catharsis for the time we are living in. This outlook belies a fundamental misunderstanding of what Nazism was, how it developed and how it consolidated power. These sorts of simplistic and blinkered views are only aided and abetted by representations in pop culture such as this. Inglorious Basterds did something similar but was still light years beyond this game in terms of its treatment of the subject matter. I found that being directed to relish in the violence and patriotism of it all simply because it was "right" and "justified" to be deeply uncomfortable as a player. I have no doubt that Hitler saw his wholesale embrace of violence and patriotism to be "right" and "justified" also.
I've been critical of the soundtrack in other threads but thought I would ad another 2 cents here because it is a significant disappointment in my view.
Firstly the way in which the soundtrack represents black music is incredibly clichéd and ham-fisted. Many of the choices are so incredibly obvious; 'Respect', 'Soul Man', 'Sitting on the Dock of the Bay', 'Baby Love' etc. . Not to mention that many of these are connected with Motown yet the game is set in Louisiana. In fact the whole thing seems to go out of its way to ignore the musical history of New Orleans entirely. This is either ignorance on behalf of the developers or they assume their audience is not discerning enough to care. Either way smacks of lowest common denominator treatment. Comparisons with GTA are going to be inevitable with this sort of game. The soundtrack to Vice City included popular, undiscovered and underappreciated songs all the while paying tribute to the locale of the game and the time period.
Including multiple songs by the same artist is also a huge blight in my opinion. I am not just talking about two or three songs. There are five Creedence tracks on there. Four by the Rolling Stones. Again these are all well-worn 'classics' that are already intrinsically linked to other films and video games.
When I envisioned the soundtrack prior to release I was positively salivating at the prospect of cruising the swamps and bayous of a fictional New Orleans as the sounds of Jazz, Blues, Dixieland, Creole and soul drifted from the speakers. What I got instead was a greatest hits compilation that your grandmother would order from Time Life after watching a late night infomercial.
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