Later-series SvM was so disappointing. Level design; great, animations; beautiful, but one of the core elements that designers didn't understand that the challenge was about forced-first person perspective Mercs, who used tracking, surveillance and lethality as their M.O. were pitted against third-person perspective Spies, who used stealth, subterfuge, superior electronic countermeasures and non-lethal weaponry. The goal was to complete/defend objectives, and there was an intense cat & mouse where the hunter could become the hunted.
When I saw Ubisoft give Spies ranged lethal weapons, allowed 1 button kills from ANY angle against a Merc as well as pressing 1 button to auto-land and insta-kill Mercs, I knew that the heart and soul of the game was forever lost. Sure, the game looked gorgeous (kudos to the team responsible), but the core gameplay mechanics where over-simplified and the balance was lost.
I have little faith the team won't try to pander to the whims and wants of the newest generation rather than provide a throwback to the true Grandfather of the Stealth Action Multiplayer genre.
Might be better next time to not tell players a hardware specific button/trigger to press when you don't know what platform they're playing on. Maybe instead either say the name of the command the input performs, or (less preferably, especially since people can remap keys), the button for each supported platform.
I'm not saying every developer at Bethesda is responsible for that piece of garbage. Many were just doing their jobs. But there are select few, project leads and of course the big wig himself, Todd Coward, who knew that this game was barely an Alpha when they released it onto their community.
I don't care that it's a non-traditional direction for the game. That's fine; was really looking forward to an online FO. But from a technical standpoint, the game was trash and should have never been released in that state. Bethesda went, overnight, from a company known for great titles (though many having issues that were more beta-esque at release) to being a laughing stock.
The saddest part is to watch Bethesda eat up good developers like id and Arkane Studios. Now, these companies fly the banner of a company that treats their customers like garbage. After dealing with the game's crap for 2 weeks, I requested a refund and came across their stellar, customer-first business logic of "If you've downloaded the game, we cannot issue a refund."
I'm glad to see RDR2 is not on this list. The console-esque control scheme forced atop the PC archetype has been, easily, the cause for well over 95% of my deaths. The people responsible for this ported garbage need to have their fingers individually broken one at a time, and then the taste b*tchslapped out of their mouths.
Not sure on the order of operations, but I think that'd suffice.
Of the list, I was most pleasantly surprised with Outer Worlds. Game runs butter smooth and has been very entertaining, despite the fact that combat is a complete cakewalk. Been playing RE2, and it's not without its charms.
@cage_92: I budget $3500 for a new PC every 4-5 years. Assuming 4.5 years, that's about $2/day. But I guess it depends on what you need. PC does gaming AND everything that a PC does. If you just want to game, a console might be a more affordable route.
For me; the 1 thing that would have made me a console gamer was if they supported keyboard/mouse. And no, "support" is not that I can plug one in and it just works. It means that along with properly supporting gamepads like they already do, the games properly supported keyboard/mouse preferences. I simply don't like gamepads; that's just me.
Aside from the technical shortcomings and performances issues (which should NEVER be dismissed and always factor as a part of my score), the other aspect of this game, seemingly small as it is, but in reality, vastly important (and failed miserably by Rockstar), is the UI.
It's beyond horrendous.
Basically, a system that works well on consoles was almost 1:1 ported to PC and left as is. Menus are time-consuming to navigate, often don't register focus or change context with ease. Keymappings are unintuitive, requiring your hand to leave home row very often and pulling attention away from the game. If you try to remap keys, it hard binds 1 key to multiple actions (because it assumes we only have 14 buttons like a gamepad) and when you attempt to rebind 1 key, it wipes the binding for everywhere else it was used.
On top of that, there are next to no tutorials, and many of the ones they provide (like hand to hand combat) put you IN an active fight and then expect you to notice a series of tooltips that appear slowly which tell you about the controls while you're mainly focused on the fight occurring at center screen. This is all testament to the fact that Rockstar was, is and will always be a console developer, despite building these games ON a PC, they're never developed in a way where you feel like they fit the PC platform; LOTS of friction.
On the good side, there is an attention to detail that also makes it evident that next to CDPR, there's simply no other developer out there who does a realistic open-world game better. Voice strain that matches character actions in the audio, random events like people being thrown through saloon windows, etc. Immersion is something Rockstar does in spades.
Sadly, the aspects that are done poor have a significant detraction to that which is done well. I feel for those consummate professionals who know their craft well at Rockstar being shadowed by someone else's shortcomings and inadequacies.
I won't buy any Bethesda product until Todd Coward & Co. refund my Fallout 76 game or he lets me b*tchslap the taste out of his mouth. Til then, do whatever you want with TES.
With the blatant straight-face lying he and his cronies are capable of, we'll only have ourselves to blame when they release yet another buggy, broken, incomplete game that doesn't deliver on any of its promises. THAT, to me, is Bethesda's well-earned reputation.
Love the "worthless" preorder bonuses where developers offer free copies of popular, old games that I already own or online currency for a game that I don't plan on playing online. I'm sure it'll be of some value to others, but this is actually a step lower than useless pre-order in-game item cosmetics or weapons that are useful only for the first level.
Rockstar might have an exemplary reputation on console, but their rep for PC is that they _do_ release amazing games, however, they are usually not optimized well for the PC platform, and many times, the modding community has stepped in to fix and address issues rather than expecting an even lax update schedule post-release.
A lot of console gamers I know can't recommend the game any higher; so I'll probably get the game based on the reputation alone. I like the anti-Steam business move of releasing on a platform at a later date. If I was adamant about only getting the game for Steam, I would return a move like that by not buying the game on my platform of choice until the game price went down; because if you're going to wheel and deal with distributors and prove to those behind 1 platform that you value them less than others, I can do likewise with when I'm willing to part with in order to buy a game from a company that partakes in such a business practice.
Regardless, looking forward to seeing what all the hub-bub is about. HowLongToBeat boasts _impressive_ numbers for how much content the game has, but doesn't hint at whether a lot of it is redundant.
I'd like Zane's clone to be intelligent enough to see which mode the gun is at the time I created him (wanted the alt Fire, which I had selected, but he spawns each time with the default (Corrosive) mode.)
Also; they GOT to do something about Annointed characters. These things easily take 80-90% of my ammo. I feel like I'm playing Division 1 and we're back to bullet sponge enemies.
There's a lot of menu gank, and even UI issues. I once had Rhys talking, and hit said his name was 5,327. I've also had times where my ammo showed 40/-1.04, whatever that all means.
Aegis_Kleais' comments