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2022 VIDEO GAME CATCH ALL THREAD


RIPPA

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Windjammers 2 is possibly the best "I have 15 minutes to kill and I want to play a game" game I've played.

Windjammers 2 is also possibly the game most likely to ruin my mood in 15 minutes because I dive in the wrong direction and get scored on, causing me to lose that 13-0 lead I had built up.

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To the surprise of no one - Guardians of the Galaxy becomes the latest Square Enix game that Square thinks is a failure

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The Guardians of the Galaxy have a new foe: lofty publisher expectations. The interstellar misfit band’s latest outing, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, underperformed unstated sales targets, according to a recent financial filing from publisher Square Enix.

Developed by Eidos Montreal and released last October, Guardians of the Galaxy is a tightly paced linear third-person action game in an era in which such titles are increasingly rare. You play as Star-Lord (note: not Chris Pratt’s take on the character), accompanied by most of the team for most of the time, and can issue directions to them in combat. It’s good fun, and sports some seriously stunning environmental art to boot. But Guardians of the Galaxy’s secret sauce is its script. It is, by most accounts, a tremendously well-written game, even nabbing the “best narrative” trophy at the 2021 Game Awards.

Square Enix noted GotG’s wave of critical praise in the financial report, writing, “despite strong reviews, the game’s sales on launch undershot our initial expectations.” Square also said that it kicked off “sales initiatives” for Guardians of the Galaxy last November, with the intent of “work[ing] to continue to expand sales to make up for the game’s slow start.” (Indeed, Guardians is marked down from a bog-standard $60 to $30 at GameStop at the time of writing, and has seen similarly steep sales on places like the PlayStation Store.)

The filing does not detail how many copies Guardians of the Galaxy sold, nor how many it would’ve needed to sell to hit Square’s financial targets. Representatives for Square Enix did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

At this point, it’s starting to seem like Square Enix is impossible to please. Square Enix viewed the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider, the best-selling entry in one of gaming’s most iconic franchises, as a disappointment. In 2017, Square pulled out of IO Interactive’s Hitman series of stealth puzzlers; the latest game, Hitman 3, published independently, recouped its development costs in a week. In 2020, the lavishly expensive Marvel’s Avengers fell far short of sales targets. Last spring, the co-op shooter Outriders, despite wide reports of busted functionality, took the world by storm, rapidly hitting more than 3.5 million players, with Square even saying it’s “on track to become the company’s next major franchise.” But by August, its developer, People Can Fly, said it had yet to receive any royalties from Square Enix.

In a 2017 interview, Square Enix president Yosuka Matsuda admitted the company’s expectations for Tomb Raider were “extremely high.”

Also in 2017, sources told Kotaku that Square Enix quietly canceled a third entry in the Deus Ex reboot series—made by the same studio responsible for Guardians of the Galaxy—due to the most recent entry, 2016’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, not selling as much as the company expected. Which is possibly an infinite number.

 

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5 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

To the surprise of no one - Guardians of the Galaxy becomes the latest Square Enix game that Square thinks is a failure

 

It seems to always be North American produced games that Square disputes success. 

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52 minutes ago, Chaos said:

It seems to always be North American produced games that Square disputes success. 

They certainly do seem to have a different definition of success when it comes to NA games.  

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My daughter and I started playing Oni and the Will of the Wisps because Game Pass rules and man does this game ever rule. I only ever heard it talked about repeatedly on Giant Bomb and Nextlander, but I had no idea what to expect out of it. It's basically a Metroidvania and it's so freaking good. I'd rather play this over any Metroid or newer Castlevania game. And it's so beautiful to look at. My 6 month old sat on the couch with my daughter and me just transfixed by what was going on the screen. Much like Kena, it looks like you're playing a Pixar movie. 

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On 2/22/2022 at 12:23 PM, RIPPA said:

To the surprise of no one - Guardians of the Galaxy becomes the latest Square Enix game that Square thinks is a failure

What a bunch of idiots.  That game is fun as hell.  It is the game that Marvel's Avengers should've been.

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i feel like everyone forgets that square is the people what put out Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and so they have to frame anything that's not one of those as a failure so shareholders don't go "why isn't this making final fantasy money, you're fired." tomb raider was a "failure" and they funded two more sequels and then got the marvel license. Square clearly believes in Crystal Dynamics. I bet Guardians will get similar treatment with that belief and the explicit justification of the critical response, and in the case of a game like this where the trailers are all brain poison but the critical response is extremely high, that tends to lead to higher sales of a sequel like some kind of knock-on award.

or it wont and I'll be surprised.

Edited by Lamp, broken circa 1988
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3 hours ago, J.T. said:

What a bunch of idiots.  That game is fun as hell.  It is the game that Marvel's Avengers should've been.

I mean, yes. But minus the “only okay as one character” thing, because I rather play as Gamora than Star Lord.

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2 hours ago, Death From Above said:

I am still baffled how Sleeping Dogs sold over 5 million copies and was considered such a flop that it never got a sequel. Absolutely a lot of those sales were bundles and discounts, but come on.

I think that the reason they considered SD to be a commercial failure is exactly because it took bundles, discount, and other incentives to move units.  They also expected SD to do GTA5 level business which was completely absurd for a new IP.

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6 hours ago, Eivion said:

Is failure/success not determined by profit vs. money put in?

Sadly - in most cases... yes. At least from a perception thing within studios

I recently read Jason Schreier's Press Rest book and it was a constant theme where the smaller games wouldn't get green lit even if it was guaranteed they would make a profit because for the big companies who had share holders, it wasn't enough to be turning a profit, you had to make a bigger profit than the year before. (This obviously isn't unique to the video game industry).

I wish I could find the exact quote but it was something like "Why would I spend one million dollars to make ten million when I can risk ten million to make 100 million and if it doesn't, I get a tax write off"

 

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Game update!

HOLLOW KNIGHT [4]
Cleared The Radiance a few days ago, which is exactly as much true ending as I am hoping to achieve. I said my piece on the last two times I wrote about it but yeah. Best Game 2017, top 10 all time, great great great great. Bring on Silksong, I crave it.

GEARS 5 [3]
If wrestling has taught us anything, it's that a slow start to a great finish can save a match, and a hot start to a rushed finish can ruin it. Gears 5 is the latter. There's these two big open world sections with all these weird nuanced and cool encounters (again, I didn't drive in the open world at all) and that was all great. Then you hit the home stretch of this game and gosh, I've never seen a game run up against its deadlines in front of me like that. The pacing of end of the game is "OH NO THE BRIDGE IS OUT AND I CAN'T BRAKE", and it ends on some Finish The Fight shit. Like... cool? I guess? I feel like a lot of steps got skipped? Oh well. We're taking a break for a bit before we do Hivebusters and the Gears 1 remake, so here's the current rankings.

  1. Gears of War Judgment
  2. Gears of War 2
  3. Gears of War
  4. Gears of War 4
  5. Gears 5
  6. Gears of War 3

Entirely possible we finish every released Gears shooter before the next one comes out.

PLAYED LIKE AN HOUR OF INFERNAX
Yo you ever hear of Castlevania 2? Like, what if that but gory and edgy?! I know right?!?!?! Aint that so radical?!?!?! Pass me the [90S CHIP FLAVOR]s bro, we're gonna listen to Guns 'n' Roses all night and kill shit. \m/

STARTED ELDEN RING
it's a from game. the servers werent online for the xbox yet. i rolled bandit cuz I've never done a dex class. idk.

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I played through one episode of Spider-Man's DLC because the whole shebang was on sale for ten bucks. The improved PS5 load times are nice. Screwball challenges, Mary Jane stealth levels, Peter being a clueless idiot to an almost unbelievable degree even for your typical characterization of Peter, not so nice. 

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I'm finally into Chapter 17 of Xenoblade Chronicles. I've been playing it a couple of hours a weekend basically and hesitant to move forward with the plot unless when I felt I had to (or maxed out skill trees and couldn't get more yet). Expert Mode has been great and now it's paying off in End Game. It was a very satisfying weekend of endgame subquests, actually, where at first, I was hitting a wall against LV 80+ enemies, but where I was able to step up quest by quest until I can now take out a LV 90 one where i have to. Generally all of this without traditional grinding too, just increasingly working on quests that I can do. The big issue isn't staying alive but actually hitting enemies who are more than four or five levels above you. I know the final boss is right around LV 80 but I'll expert mode my way back down to do it when the time comes. I'm up to the mid-80s for Shulk now but I still think I might have to grind somewhat to fight those LV 98 endgame foes when I run out of other things I have to do.

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Normally I would have just posted this in the Destiny thread but I thought it was fascinating enough that folks might be interested in it even if you don't play the game.

Basically the motion capture artists explaining (and showing) how they had to adapt their work while working from home

 

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On 2/28/2022 at 11:59 AM, Matt D said:

I'm finally into Chapter 17 of Xenoblade Chronicles. I've been playing it a couple of hours a weekend basically and hesitant to move forward with the plot unless when I felt I had to (or maxed out skill trees and couldn't get more yet). Expert Mode has been great and now it's paying off in End Game. It was a very satisfying weekend of endgame subquests, actually, where at first, I was hitting a wall against LV 80+ enemies, but where I was able to step up quest by quest until I can now take out a LV 90 one where i have to. Generally all of this without traditional grinding too, just increasingly working on quests that I can do. The big issue isn't staying alive but actually hitting enemies who are more than four or five levels above you. I know the final boss is right around LV 80 but I'll expert mode my way back down to do it when the time comes. I'm up to the mid-80s for Shulk now but I still think I might have to grind somewhat to fight those LV 98 endgame foes when I run out of other things I have to do.

Yeah, really good late-game quests are a proud point of the series. You will probably wipe out the final boss, though. And those three or four LV 100+ bosses roaming around? You gotta craft really good Accuracy gems, like the ones that boost your accuracy at night or whatever. I did everything else in the game but never bothered with those.

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17 hours ago, Death From Above said:

Now that I've got a smartphone, anyone got some guilty pleasure dirty ole mobile games to recommend me? Looking more for single player focussed stuff than, like, PUBG Mobile (although the idea of playing PUBG on a phone is hilarious to me).

Konami Pixel Puzzle Collection, which is free and is both a great puzzle game and a lovely trip through Konami video game history.

Game Dev Story, which is a sim in which you run a video game company and which has one of the more vicious game play loops around. You will lose hours to it at some point.

Lara Croft Go is a fantastic puzzle strategy game. Hitman Go is good, too, but Lara Croft Go is great.

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On 3/4/2022 at 4:40 PM, Death From Above said:

Now that I've got a smartphone, anyone got some guilty pleasure dirty ole mobile games to recommend me? Looking more for single player focussed stuff than, like, PUBG Mobile (although the idea of playing PUBG on a phone is hilarious to me).

To make up for the fact that the only gaming update I'm going to have for the rest of the month (maybe longer) is "Elden Ring Good," here's every good phone game I've run into.

  • Retro Bowl is the best football game made in the last like 10 years. If you only get one thing I recommend, get this.
  • Runner up: the Monument Valley games are excellent puzzle platformers that suggest you play with a headset, and I totally agree.
  • The Room games are great spooky puzzle boxes. Very reminiscent of old flash escape room games.
  • Slice & Dice, a very simple but straightforward and fun dicerolling RPG. If you want a game about rolling some dice and doing some RPG battles with absolutely no story, this'll work!
  • Holedown is my personal favorite "watch balls bounce off things for points" because it's just a game with some of that and then no microtransactions.
  • Desert Golfing and its sequel Golf On Mars are great "I am in a waiting room and tired and need something to focus on."
  • Polytopia is the best Civ knockoff on phones, it's maybe a 20 turn game and that's enough time to get some really weird shit done.
  • 10000000 (Ten Million) and its sequel You Must Build A Boat are fantastic slide puzzle RPG games, also light on story but engaging enough to see to the end.
  • Baikoh and Petal Crash are good old-school puzzle games. Baikoh is a word puzzle game, where as Petal Crash is a more Junk Blocks Arcade Versus Puzzle Game kind of thing. If you end up liking Petal Crash a lot you can get it on Steam where it has good netcode.
  • Typeshift is a really good word puzzle game, with daily challenges that escalate as the week goes on and a HUGE amount of regular puzzles.
  • Million Onion Hotel is a puzzle game that will beat the living shit out of you and have a completely nonsensical story, so, uh, there's that.
  • Card Thief is a really strong run-based card game about stealing shit, if you like doing weird card games. Reigns also works here but the trade off is that it's more simplistic but brilliantly written.
  • Pocket City seems like a very good sim city, but I usually don't like sim cities, so I don't know if that means it's actually good or not.
  • Lastly, Kairosoft makes a billion different sim games of all kinds, and the one I'll stick my head out for is Home Run High. They have hundreds of other subjects so odds are good that if you have some thing you like (lets say F1) they have some sim game about it. For all your "numbers going up" needs, turn to Kairosoft
Edited by Lamp, broken circa 1988
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I will second Retro Bowl. It's Tecmo Super Bowl except that you don't play defense and you continually upgrade your players. It's a fun little thing and perfect for mobile.

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