I had to write this post now because I am just bloody furious right
now. I just downloaded and played through the demo of “Fracture” and it
was one of the most hateful experiences of my life. Being honest, I
didn’t like the game one bit, its not because I have something against
3rd person shooters or even that I hated the deformable aspects of the
environment; I loathed that the gimmick of changing the landscape had
taken such importance in the experience that the core mechanics of a 3rd
person had seemingly become pushed to one side and forgotten during the
making of the game.
We all know that the marketplace for games is now much more
crowded than it has ever been before, especially for action games of
both 1st and 3rd person aspects. due to this crowding, we get the
gimmick as developers fumble around to try and create something which
stands out rom the crowd. It’s not difficult of course, in a world
where any FPS released on the power consoles or PC will have the same
M.O as most others (you are a *insert elite military branch* fighting
your way through wave upon wave of *insert alien race* in a grey brown
landscape of the future earth or alien home world; all running in
glorious 720p 60fps with a 8/16 player online deathmatch mode) anything
other than this stands out as a gimmick. The problem is that in many of
this type of game, the gimmick becomes dominant as a sales technique
but in terms of gameplay it is either underused or annoyingly overused.
Maybe you are asking what I am talking about, what exactly qualifies as a gimmick? A few of my favourites are listed below;
- Haze (you take drugs)
- Timeshift (you control time)
- Fracture (you control the ground)
- The Darkness (you have big devil arm things)
- Mace Griffin bounty hunter (you fly a ship and walk off it without loading screens)
The gimmicks in all the games listed above have at one stage
accomplished their goal because we have all heard of them and no doubt
at some point have read an overexcited preview from some publication or
another crowning its gimmick as being revolutionary to the genre but
have ultimately been shown to be anything but. The problem is that all
these games above fail in 2 areas; firstly none of them manage to
present a solid and well formed core gameplay without the gimmick, none
of them have particularly fluid controls, good graphics, textures, AI
or level design. Second and most importantly, none of them manage to be
remotely fun, interesting or entertaining to play; in fact they are
more frustrating than fun.
Maybe the gimmick is not the problem but the implementation. Games
like Burnout, Motorstorm, Resistance and even GTA have a gimmick of
sorts but they manage to succeed on a different level because the
gimmick does not dominate the game (Burnout took a few sequels to get
the balance right) as the core mechanics of the gameplay are strong
enough to carry the game without the gimmick.
My personal thinking is that the games I have played most in the
past year or so (COD4, Uncharted, GT5:P) have all summarily eschewed
the gimmick and instead have been solid simple and thoroughly enjoyable
games because they did the basics well. I don’t think it is a
coincidence that those 3 games have been some of the highest sellers
in the past year while bunf like Haze and Timeshift bombed. The message
therefore must be that by all means bring a gimmick to the table, a 3rd
person shooter where the heroes absurd JRPG style hair is able to grow
and change colour at the players request and be used as a weapon is
more than welcome, but if the core of your game like the controls and
AI is not up to scratch without the gimmick then your game is destined
for a quick nosedive from the sales charts to the bargain bins and
deservedly so.
The Final Fantasy VII Rebirth combat director has expressed that he wants the final part in the trilogy to offer players "even more freedom".
I love the game so far but please don’t make the final part a mini game fest
Everytime I get to a new part in Rebirth it’s “mini game time”
Hope ya don't mind me asking since it seems like you've played it, did it feel like a decent step up from the last game or was it more like the best from the last but more polished?
It makes Remake feel like a demo.
9.5/10 imo. And I think the “mini games” did a great job of adding variety to the gameplay. Purely optional as well.
Here's my thoughts
I think it's a big step up from the first instalment, I'm enjoying it way more.
I thought keeping it just in Midgar was silly, it felt dragged out and it didn't have much variation in terms of the scenery.
However with Rebirth, as soon as you get out of Kalm you have a big world to explore and it's great to just wander round and explore.
Now that I'm half way in though, despite still liking what I'm playing, the gameplay loop is now starting to slow down on me. I've got to a new region and I'm like "Yaaay...need to go and find those towers again, oh look another special beast marker, is that a bird I see in the distance? Better follow it to another Mako Crystal"
It's like....you know how Peter Jackson was only supposed to have two Hobbit films then Warner Bros wanted a third film so he stretched the second film out as much as he could so he could keep stuff for the third film making a trilogy? Yeah it feels like that, so these mini games are a part of that overall gameplay loop to keep us going and stretch the game out overall so they have something for the third and final game.
I personally think you could have had the first instalment get you out of Midgar and through to Grasslands / Junon and the second game finishes things off.
I had a weird cycle of love/hate for all the mini games as I played through. At first I really hated the seeming need to check all these boxes while exploring the grasslands. I didn't enjoy the Gilgamesh quest initially, and thought Queen's blood was fine but didn't want to commit to it. The side quests didn't really grab me either.
Then for some reason everything in Junon region changed my mind and I did pretty much everything. I liked most of the side quests, I actually liked playing fort condor (didn't care for it in the intergrade dlc). And my interest for completing these quests stayed pretty much through to Cosmo Canyon.
Then they added that horrible Lifestream memory/battle mini game and I started getting so burnt out of it all. I just wanted to do the story. I didn't do any side quests in neibleheim and beyond except for the summon. I abandoned Gilgamesh.
So what I'm saying is I would like the third part to go back to the focused progression from remake. Keep the mini games to the gold saucer. Start the game snowboarding if you want, but from there keep the story rolling.
That's funny you say that because I did everything in the Grasslands but once in Junon I started to slow down a little until Corel where by the end I was burnt out. I'm still currently going but I'm just doing what I can while things keep getting thrown at me.
I would have preferred half of these mini game side fillers / collectibles for some really beefy side quests that really adds onto the world of FFVII.
Sounds like they hadn't really figured out what they wanted to do with Remake and this one is more of what they thought of doing which is probably why they're dragging it out to make a trilogy. Disappointed to hear it has towers cause man do i hate towers lol. It's been a while since I've played the first and it'll be a while longer to play the sequel, but it sounds like I'll enjoy it. 7 really impressed me especially after being disappointed with 15, felt like Square finally realized that FF was THEIR big franchise again.
How many hours are you into it at this point?
My friend got like 20-30 in and pretty much quit because of its mini game era. He loved and basically binged through Gran Blue compared to Rebirth
As long as it comes out on PS5 to have the entire series on one platform, do whatever you want
The combat is my favorite thing about Rebirth. Would be really cool if they can improve it even more.
I hope after FF7 Square will either give a new FF game the remake treatment. Or give some of their older titles a remake treatment like Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, even Xenogears.
Wccf tech writes: "Kingdom Come Deliverance 2's scope was impacted by the Xbox Series S hardware limitations, as developers could only make a game that was 25% bigger than its predecessor."
This is the issue with things like this
Xbox Series X is apparently to MS the worlds most powerful console
However the Series S is obviously a limitation because it’s underpowered and developers have to go for parity.
So what’s the point of the world’s most powerful console if you are holding third party developers back? They aren’t going to push themselves if they have to think about the weakest console.
The issue wouldn’t be as bad if it was just Xbox but you are also affecting the PS version aswell
I think developers need to start just taking advantage of a console and if one of them can’t do X Y and Z then f*** them…why should the others suffer. What’s MS going to do? The bigger the franchise the least chance MS are going to tell them to f*** off. Baulders Gate 3 seemed to have stood their ground and suddenly their “strict” parity rule didn’t really matter. We suddenly got super optimisation efforts for the Series S that got things sorted.
I agree, and the sad part is use normal folk saw it the second they announced their plans.
Agree 100% this is why I didn’t want the M$ Monopoly, now PS5 version will be held back too.
If PS5 Pro comes out and Series S is still a thing it’ll be interesting what differences and what devs choose to do. Really hoping Rockstar pushes the PS5 pro with GTA6 and we get the best version possible.
Good ole S indeed. Everyone knew this all along. S was holding games back...Now where the hell is Orchard i want a word with him.
More info from the author of the article, I think: https://www.reddit.com/r/ki...
Quote:
"1) I was told this info from the producer of the game Martin Klíma.
2) He specifically said the game will have only one mode.
3) And this mode is 4K 30 on PS5/XSX and 1440p 30 on XSS.
4) He said that the game is already running north of the 30 FPS cap so the performance should be stable on launch, much better than KCD1.
5) The limitation was XSS because of the 10GB memory. He said that's why they wanted to make the game 25% larger.
6) Speculation on my part: the output resolution is probably upscaled and the reason why there won't be a 60 FPS mode is because it'll most likely be very CPU heavy, like Dragon's Dogma 2 for example."
Doesn't seem like they're adding a 40fps mode on PS5/Series X for launch even if they can handle it.
I'd much rather have 1440p/60fps or even 45fps. Having just one, even with the Series S in mind, is disappointing.
Remember when xbots were adamant that the series s won’t hold back the gen?
Microsoft just needs to let go of the mandatory parity. Who cares if your grandma doesn’t understand that a game cannot be played on the S. It’s not like it she can buy you a physical game for it anyway. Before buying the game put up a notice that it only works on series X. If you’re buying for a friend-allow for a refund.
Bam. Everyone is happy. Most series s owners are for casuals that want Game Pass anyway and most likely don’t purchase most games.
If the developers want it to run on S, let them figure it out.
“During the event, the Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 producer also revealed that on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, the game will run at 4K resolution and 30 frames per second“
Another “creative decision” right? 🤦♂️
Since you're not an amateur and clearly know more than them, can you over there and help get the game running on the S without having to sacrifice their true vision. Us gamers would really appreciate you using your wisdom for good 🙏
Thousands of games run just fine on S.
But Kingdom Come is the game that can’t. Must be one hell of a game!
Thousands of games run on PS4 and on Switch. If developers want them to run on those systems. Fine. Those two platforms still get new games. Sony isn’t making studios also make a ps4 pro version, or Nintendo a wiiu version. Microsoft technically is.
If games like Alan Wake 2, GTA6, COD, hellblade all run on S, no excuse for this 100x smaller and 100x worse looking game to be held back.
"Thousands of games run just fine on S.
But Kingdom Come is the game that can’t. Must be one hell of a game!"
Kingdom come 2 runs just fine alright. Its the SCOPE that they want. They had to cut it because of the stupid S series. Hellblade2 ran just fine too..but im pretty confident if it was just the X in mind, the scope of the game would have been much bigger.
Custom Controller Company HexGaming launched a Kickstarter campaign for their latest pro controller, Hex Phantom. - IS
man devs aren't same
if you got an average game development studio and your exact level ,of cours you'll do gimmicks,cause maybe new gamers\kids will dive in
simple as that
good artical man
keep up more
The reason all games with 'gimicks' fail is that they are a way of masking the main issue the game is not up to quality.