It seems like hardly anything worth playing has come out since about 2016. The most memorable game of the last several years for me has been Subnautica, a low budget indie game. Where are all of the games? Are the developers waiting for next gen? Were they taking a wait and see on VR, and then had nothing to fall back on when it failed? 2016 was supposed to be the year of VR and it just totally fizzled. Even the PSVR didn't sell. Is everyone so busy playing multiplayer games like Fortnite that they don't care about anything else? It just seems very slow compared to last gen, where we had blockbuster after blockbuster. Where are all of the Skyrims and Oblivions and Mass Effects of this gen?
If you look at the games you listed out, you'll see the pattern. Fortnite is a multiplayer game with a ton of replayability with an endless amount of microtransactions. The devs barely have to do anything with the game since it's made for mass audience with probably shit hardware. It has literally been mobas and battle royale games the last few years. Low cost to maintain and pure profits from microtransactions. Hell, minecraft is going through a resurrection right now. jesus, i'm back on wow classic right now and it feels better than the retail version of the game. I don't think the industry can be saved.
That was what I was thinking. It's become all about these microtransaction heavy multiplayer games like Fortnite, PUBG, Apex Legends, DOTA2, CSGO, etc that require very little effort from the developers, run fine on weak hardware (launch consoles and old video cards run them fine), and just rake in money. It seems like the days of lots of big single player AAA blockbusters may be behind us unless there's some kind of big change. Even 2016 was kind of weak. 2015 was the last year we really saw a lot of AAA games (Witcher 3, Fallout 4, MGSV). Some of it could be generational too. I get the impression younger gamers are more into multiplayer games and don't care as much about single player stuff. Some of that could be how easy it is to just watch the story parts of a single player game on youtube. If you think about it Youtube was just first becoming a thing last gen, and it didn't even exist yet the gen before that.
I remember when there were at least 3 AAA games I wanted every year. Now it's about 1 every 2 years. I think it's about risk and returns. AAA SP games have a lot of risk. MP games can have the best returns. Indy games, which are mostly SP, are also taking a big chunk out of SP AAA games. It looks like about 30% of the top selling games on Steam are Indy. Microtransaction might eventually kill AAA games. I'm really hoping loot boxes become illegal. They're basically unregulated gambling that kids have access to.
I think that's it. I think developers see them as risky. Microtransaction heavy MP games probably cost a lot less to develop and they rake in money over a long period of time. Even some of the ones that aren't that well received initially may go on to make money if they build up a following. If a SP game flops, that's kind of it. Sometimes they might try to see if they can bring it to life with patches and DLC and stuff like that, but it's probably a lost cause. Also I just don't get the impression the younger crowd is that into SP games. I think they see them as old fashioned. When I go to the mall and see the kids playing on the PCs in the Microsoft store, they're all playing Minecraft or Fortnite.
I think people are moving towards indie games. I recently told a friend that I hadn't seen a good RTS in many years and he showed me a bunch of indie games that had great reviews. Take a look at any list of Best PC Games of 2018 and you'll see a lot of games that look like they belong on a CRT monitor.
Don't get me started on RTSs. AAA RTSs have basically been dead for a decade. I think they're a victim of so many games being multiplatform. There's no way to do them on consoles. You need a mouse and keyboard. They also tend to be really CPU intensive rather than GPU intensive (which is unusual compared to other games), and the consoles have weak CPUs.
Here are 3 RTS that came out recently. All 7/10. The first looks a little like the old WarCraft RTS. Also, Warcraft 3: Reforged should come out this year.
Those look pretty cool. I'll probably play the Warcraft 3 remaster just for the nostalgia. I guess the indie scene is picking up the slack in genres that AAA developers have basically abandoned. Indie developers can definitely produce some pretty amazing stuff. Subnautica was one of the best games I've ever played, and is definitely one of the best games of this gen if not the best.
AAA single player games are still alive on consoles. Stuff like Good of War, Ghost of Tsushima, the Last of Us part 2 as well as Death Stranding, whatever that turns out to be Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk
Death Stranding looks like a walking delivery simulator which will have a top story. Dont forget FF7 remake and also Cyberpunk next year plus a new COD, Shenmue 3 and new Pokemon this year. Single player games are still here to stay.
Death Stranding has some of the strangest previews I've ever seen. I'm really curious what the story is going to be about. I would think Death Stranding will get a PC release. Kojima likes putting his stuff out on Steam, and it's not a PS4 exclusive.
I'm looking forward to Death Stranding. It's going to be weird but interesting. It's nice to see an occasional big budget game that takes some risks and strays from the standard formulas. Kojima is using Sony's Decima game engine, the same engine used for Horizon: Zero Dawn. I'm not sure how portable that would be. I don't think they've ever ported a game using Decima to another platform. It tends to push the Playstation platforms to the absolute limit, though. I honestly think Horizon might still be the best looking currently available game on PS4 Pro around 2.5 years after it was released. God of War is a serious challenger, but it is not nearly as open as Horizon. The mountain you see in the background of God of War looks stunning, but it's background detail. In Horizon, you can probably go climb it.
The more previews I see of it, the more confused I become. I mean it looks like a Fedex/UPS delivery man simulator crossed with a baby protecting and shushing simulator. The story seems post apocalyptic, but with Kojima directing who knows. It could also all be inside of a computer simulation or something. It has Guillermo del Toro in it for some reason. I have absolutely no idea what's going on in what I'm seeing, but I'm intrigued.
The release trailer for The Last of Us II just came out a few days ago. The Pro footage looks really good. It looks like they're going very dark and brutal, which suits me just fine. It's really impressive they can squeeze this out of an old Jaguar CPU. I'm curious to know the resolution they're going to be using. ND usually just goes with native 1440p on Pro; I think they've had some RAM problems when they tried to go higher with checkerboard rendering due to using a lot of deferred rendering techniques. They had an early checkerboard Uncharted 4 build that didn't run well and was scrapped according to one of the guys at Digital Foundry. But the Pro footage I've seen of this game has looked sharper than their previous games to me. Maybe it's something else, like a more advanced AA or something. This is probably going to be a pretty strong game of the year candidate next year. I would be surprised if it didn't also show up on PS5 eventually in some form.
Metro 2023 Redux for free. It's a good 8/10 single player game. https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/metro-2033-redux/home Also Everything https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/everything/home
Looks like you were right. Kojima just said it's coming to PC in Summer 2020. It should be interesting to see how a Decima game runs on PC. It's without question one of the absolute best game engines Sony has. It was the proprietary engine developed by Guerrilla Games, which is owned by Sony. Killzone: Shadow Fall, Until Dawn, and Horizon were previous Decima games, all first party Playstation-only games and franchises. It's being published by 505 Games on PC.
If the base model PS4 can handle the engine I would think any half way decent video card made in the last 4 or 5 years should be able to handle it with ease. Death Stranding is the most original looking game I’ve seen in a long time so I will definitely be picking it up when it hits the PC next year.
I'm sure there would be no issue with raw power. I'm just curious to see what it will look like and how it will run on a different platform. It is quite possibly the best game engine Sony has currently. Guerrilla Games is kind of like the Sony equivalent in tech wizardry of what Crytek was in the 2000s but inverse in terms of efficiency extracting graphics that should not be possible out of meager hardware rather than making impossibly good graphics no hardware can run. I am eagerly anticipating what a Decima game will look like when it is constructed from the ground up with Ryzen tech in mind rather than an ancient Jaguar CPU. Kojima should also be able to do some awesome and probably very weird things with it in the meantime. It's great to see someone attempt something different and unique. His game is getting razzed a bit as being a supernatural UPS delivery sim, but I like the creativity.
I think we are reaching a point where AAA games cost too much to make, so wouldn't be surprised if the rate of AAA games will reduce. Sent from my ASUS_I001DC using Tapatalk