Sometimes I want the freebies you get with the pre-order, sometimes it’s about pre-loading.
before seeing actual reviews and not reviews against free/early access copies?
“Actual reviews”, because you can only have an opinion on something, if you paid for it.
I played a bit of FFVII rebirth at the start of the week […] I’m not sure if I wanna continue it tho
I’m also playing the game, it’s kinda disappointing, since I loved Remake, but I like the characters enough to continue.
I pre-order games. Steams refund policy makes it pretty much risk-free. Usually it’s shortly before launch, if I want to play the game immediately anyway. For big games, reviews pretty much always come out before launch or on the day of, so I can still always cancel, if it looks bad. I don’t remember regretting any of these purchases, even if I didn’t like all the games.
Mostly Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Feels like this game took half a step forward and two steps back, compared to the first part. It tries to do a lot of things and doesn’t do many well. There’s minigames-ish for so many things. The open-world stuff kinda tries to be Assassin’s Creed lite, but all zones are huge, but pretty empty, with the same two types of “events” in them (go somewhere or fight). Of course, the game has a shitty crafting system, so you can pick up material in the empty zones. Combat is a bit better than before, but then the devs managed to craft the perfect enemies to make some fights feel like hell, even worse than the worst fights in Remake, and I’m not even done with the game yet. I’ve played the game for 40 hours, but the story has barely moved. I think there’s supposed to be an alternate timeline, but I think I’ve seen like five minutes of it. It’s been pretty disappointing so far, but I still like the characters, so I’ll continue playing.
Then a bit Baldur’s Gate 3. Started another Honor Mode run, going with pretty much the same party build as my first run, where I almost made it. The full fighter playthrough has to wait for the next Patch.
Of course, I had to run it back in Baldur’s Gate 3, Honor Mode, after I failed right before the finish line. This time I went four Fighters, two melee, two ranged. My run ended in Act 2, not because of my party comp, but I let Isobel die in Last Light Inn. I forgot to block a door and the enemy crit three or four attacks on her. I did survive the fight with all the zombies afterward, got into another fight and ended it there. I’ll do another run like this, but probably after Patch 8, when Fighter gets a proper ranged sub-class. No idea, what my next run will be, but it will have to wait a bit.
Then, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth finally released on PC. I’ve been looking forward to this, and just recently re-played the first part. I’m at the beginning of Chapter 4 and it’s good. The big zones are kinda meh, pretty empty, and I don’t think the devs ever used a Chocobo to run around. Unless you only follow the roads, there are small ledges everywhere, and your Chocobo either slows down or stops completely, which is a pain. I still have fun, although the constant short breaks are kinda annoying. Like in the first game, you need to wait for certain animations to finish, before you can go into the menu, or when you completed a “World Intel” objective there’s a 10-second jingle and animation you have to wait for. Often you also get a call from a dude, who tells you he’s found another one, and you just have to stand there and listen. Like I said, I still have a good time, so it’s not a big deal.
This is much older than 2023. I remember Fallout 4, the console version was apparently almost unplayable at launch, so Giant Bomb actually lowered the score, compared to the PC version. And even that example isn’t when this started.
Similarly, what if the reviewers don’t get a specific version, that runs like shit? Like what happened with Cyberpunk, where nobody was able to play the XBONE or PS4 versions.
The thing is, as always, a review is subjective. If the game has problems, but the reviewer can look past them or doesn’t care, why should they change the score.
Someone mentioned it already, but review copies might also run outdated code, and reviewers are in contact with the publisher or devs, and they might say some problem is fixed on release. If the reviewer believes them, it probably won’t affect the score.
I played an unhealthy amount of Baldur’s Gate 3 and finished my run. Sadly, Ansur, the last boss before I went onto the finale, ended the Honor Mode part. I’m a bit salty about it, since it wasn’t the boss being too hard or something, but mainly bugs, that did me in.
My first try I got him to half HP, then the game just didn’t want to use any actions anymore. I couldn’t even save and quit, but had to go through Task Manager to kill it. Next try I get him to like 80hp, fresh turn with all of my characters, but the game just crashes. Third time, he’s at 80 or so again, but because of terrible animations I didn’t see that he was supposed to be flying in the air, charging his giga attack. Because of some debuff, he was just writhing on the floor, so I just couldn’t really tell. I had a dozen Globe of Invulnerability scrolls, so I could have survived easily.
Anyway, I’ll do another run next month, after Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and maybe the new Diablo 4 season, but dunno about that last one.
True and real
We pass the ps5 controller so we each get an npc during combat and do splitscreen for the world.
Is local coop different from online coop? I’m playing through the game with a friend right now, and we both have our own small party, and control two characters in a fight. Or maybe I just misunderstood what you meant.
I dropped Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire for the time being. It’s good, but I just don’t feel it right now. The ship travel does suck though.
Then more coop Baldur’s Gate 3. We are now in Act 3, about to go into the city.
BG3 is part of the reason I stopped playing Pillars 2, since I got a lot more into it than I thought. That’s why I started another solo run, trying to make it through Honor Mode. So far, I died twice in Act 1. First time was the three Intellect Devourers shortly after the tutorial. Second time was to the Gnolls that siege the two dudes in a cave. That one, I could have survived, but did some dumb misplays and paid the price. The current run is going pretty good, although I had some really close moments. The Spectator fight almost took out my party, same with the Robots in the Underdark Tower. If I die again, I’ll probably change to a custom difficulty, where I can save, just to learn the game and fights more, before I try again. I severely overestimated my game knowledge.
I also beat Windblown a few more times, and moved up to the final difficulty, but barely did any attempts since then.
While this is classic Valve non-communication, apparently the devs were hacking or reverse-engineering some closed source stuff, that Valve might not have agreed with.
https://x.com/csco_dev/status/1533103185543548929
Just so we are clear on how the mod works on our side, there is no leaked code involved. We’re using a build from 2020 that has security exploits and a hacked dedicated server to be able to even play online while working on it internally.
The mod cannot be released in this state
This is all just some third-party information, I have no idea about this and don’t really care about Counter-Strike.
I unlocked the final difficulty in Windblown. However, I’m gonna play the previous one a bit more, to get some more reps, since the stat increase for enemies seems just insane.
Then I played more Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire. While the game is good, it took me a while to get into it. I don’t like getting around with the ship, it’s just super tedious. When you don’t enable enemy scaling, the world is also full of enemies, that are far too strong for you (I did beat some fights, the game said are probably too difficult). Now, after 25h I’m level 10, can do more stuff, and it’s getting more interesting.
Finally, my friend and I continued our Baldur’s Gate 3 coop run, and we just made it to Act 3. Because this is a Dark Urge run, and we are pretty much killing everything, there was a bunch of stuff we couldn’t do in Act 2, so it felt a bit short (except for our month break or something), although we did spend a lot of time in combat.
I haven’t paid attention to a lot of lists, but Veilguard might be the outlier here. The game seems to be really divisive. Yesterday I was in a thread on how for someone Veilguard was the last straw, and they’re giving up on Bioware completely, and here the game is the fifth best of the year.
Sometimes a tree is just a tree, man.
Maybe Bioware just wasn’t happy with the game, it happens all the time. Bioware also cancelled two games in 2013, looks like they were just doing a lot. So, possibly they were just stretched too thin with all those different projects. The founders also left Bioware shortly after Mass Effect 3. Who knows if they were the driving force behind the game, and after they left it didn’t really go anywhere.
There are tons of different explanations, but of course it’s all EAs fault. From what I’ve read, working for EA is actually really great, and people seem to love it. That doesn’t really gel with the soul-sucking image you try to paint. In the early 2000s they were actually garbage, with the whole EA spouse thing, but they have apparently massively improved since then.
Also, while this isn’t really evidence for anything, we’ve had actual stories that some publishers forced some type of game on a developer, like Redfall or possibly Fallout 76. Personally, I just think stories like these can’t stay hidden forever and will eventually make it out into the open, like the Anthem flying stuff.
Finished Disco Elysium. I think I made pretty much the same choices as my first time years ago. I’m still not a huge fan of the ending, but now that knew what to expect, it wasn’t as jarring. When I do another playthrough in a couple of years, I might have to be a stealing racist or something, but I like Lieutenant Kim too much and probably won’t go through with that.
Then more Windblown. I beat the game on the first three difficulties (of five) now and unlocked almost everything for now. I’ll definitely try to get through everything, it doesn’t seem too hard.
Finally, I started Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. I’m still very early on, but I hope I’m finished by the time FF7 Rebirth is out. This game has proper turn-based combat, not just RTwP like the first game, which I like a lot more, even if it’s much slower.
You are pretty much just rambling, so I don’t really know what you want to say sometimes.
I never said EA was good, I only ever doubted how EA supposedly just kills their game studios. From all the evidence I’ve seen, they are pretty hands-off with studios like Bioware or DICE, so a lot falls on the devs themselves, if the games are subpar.
You mentioned Anthem, like if that was the game Bioware wanted. No it wasn’t, because apparently the most fun part of the game, the flying, was a suggestion from an EA exec.
Then for Mass Effect Andromeda, EA offered to delay the game again, before it’s release, but Bioware didn’t want to. Why? Must have been EAs big stick. That game also doesn’t have MTX
How is EA chasing money with Mirrors Edge, if they make a sequel, when it took years to barely make money? I’d say that’s the exact opposite. The game also has no MTX.
The point of the video I linked is that the people from Bioware actually say EA doesn’t dictate what kind of games they have to make. Bioware makes what they want. Even if this video is already 10 years old or if the people don’t work there anymore, why would this change? The only reason I could see this change, if the games just continue to underperform constantly, like what’s happening with Bungie at the moment.
Why do you think EA was the reason for cancelling Shadow Realms, pretty far into development? Do you know something others don’t? Don’t just say it’s obvious, because it’s EA.
You also mention how EA destroys or all the passion or creativity from their dev studios, but how are they doing that? You never explain that part, although you make it seem very obvious.
I think the reason why a bunch of these studios that were bought either go under or release sub-par games is much more simple, and it’s not directly EAs fault. After they are bought, management leaves, because they just got tons of money, or they might have a contract, which says they must stay for a few years, but after that they’ll leave anyway. Now there’s nobody left who made the original games, so the studio declines. It’s not like EA can do something against this, unless they make the devs sign some kind of slave contract, where they can never leave the game studio.
the absolute shitshow every Battlefield has been since they were purchased by EA
That would mean basically no good games for almost 20 years, which I can’t believe. Even Bad Company 2, BF3 and 4, apparently beloved games in the franchise, are terrible?
Look, I barely play EA games, I just think that they aren’t the sole or even major reason a bunch of their dev teams have turned to shit.
I guess if a game is bad, it’s EA’s fault, but if it’s good, it’s all because of the dev.
What about Mass Effect 1 and 2, EA had already bought Bioware at that point. What about other Battlefield games? People always rave about Bad Company 2 or maybe 3 and 4, but how come EA only chose to interfere after 20 years?
I’m definitely not as down on Rebirth as you, but I liked Remake more. The combat is still fun enough, even if some fights/enemies are terrible.
I’ve also been thinking of re-playing the original, when I’m done, just as I’ve done after Remake. Like you said, I remember the pace throwing me for a loop.