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[SonOfABeep]

It's amazing how much the bitterness and vitriol over DmC retroactively seeped into this game.

Absolutely shameful for those hating on this game for that reason.

let Enslaved stand or fail on it's own merits.

I think DMC looks questionable but I've never really loved that series either so maybe they can do something new with it.

 

[erpg]

Haven't played it, but all of my friends seemed to have enjoyed it. They're theater students and fans of Andy Serkis, so that would have swayed them, but I'm sure it can stand on its own.

I'm just not a fan of the overall style for some reason. I like colours and whimsy, but the rusty beautiful world throws me off. Basing this all off of screens, so I'll have to pick it up some day to form my own opinion.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

Oh man. The blatant strawmen being built in this thread are hilarious.

Oh :lol emoticon, how I miss you.

but the rusty beautiful world throws me off.

Uh, why?

 

[ezekial45]

It felt like a focus group game to me. Nothing felt special, unique, it looked and feeled like the result of a focus group decision in order to make some safe and overall appealing product. A cold game, no warm, nothing to make me interested into it. Nothing is majorly bad about it but nothing is great either. I also don't dig the art much, I don't see anything particular or of interest in the style of the game either. Again it looks like a mash of styles instead of being an inspired product.

I'm sorry, but i don't agree with this at all. Visually and artistically, it was a very unique take on the post-apocalyptic genre. It had vibrant colors, a diverse use of it's color palette, and just a had a very wide scope to it all. Also, it had great characters. The connection between Monkey and Trip was believable and carried a lot of weight to it. Made in part to the performances and voice work.

Do you mean the gameplay? I can get behind it being simple, but i thought it was pretty solid all around.

I am not usually one to say things like this, but Capcom should bail out now on DmC and cancel the entire thing. Ninja Theory is like a noose hanging around the neck of the DMC franchise.

I don't see how anyone rational can have faith that Ninja Theory has some sort of "untapped potential" great enough to make a DMC game that is both competitive with the series' past entries and with its peers in the genre, and competitive with the quality and features expected by a general audience in a AAA game today.

If people thought the revolt against Metroid Other M was bad, I suspect the general reaction to DmC releasing is going to be a meltdown of genuinely atomic proportions.

I certainly think they got a shot at making a great game. I loved Enslaved, but i'm also a massive fan of the DMC series. I was put off by the news at first, but after reading interviews and actually listening to them, i can get behind with what they're doing. It's certianly going to be different. Which is exactly what they need right now, especially after the disappointing DMC4. It seems like the majority of the fanbase is fine with having the same game over, and over again (OMG CAPCOM! JUST MAKE DMC3 HD!!!). But i'm not. They NEED to try something different.

Metroid Other M was different. The INITIAL reaction (the reveal at E3 09) to that game was extremely positive, but once we got closer and closer to release, it started sounding bad. Then, once we got the game, it got even worse. There was no coming back from that.

DmC from Ninja Theory is completely the opposite. The initial reaction from the fans was pretty negative, but around TGS (on the show floor after the reveal) it was pretty positive. What i'm trying to get at is that, they still can absolutely win over people on this game. It's still VERY early (they've had less than a year on this game so far), and Hideaki Itsuno is the Supervising Director on the game (director of DMC2/3/4 and a combat designer on the original game).

 

[jergrah]

Honestly, that's a larger number than I thought it did -- but still wish it was even higher. Great game in my opinion -- I went in expecting to not like it, because I really didnt care for Heavenly Sword at all. This thread reminds me I need to snag the DLC expansion and check it out.

 

[Rolf NB]

It was.

You win every melee encounter by alternating one wide attack (to break blocks and separate enemies) and one combo of basic attacks. It's mindless and boring.

It was.

No it wasn't. Not with all the "secret" shit on sides of buildings that are secret only because the camera wrestles against your control. Not with the complete lack of framing during boss encounters.

It was.

No it wasn't. They made the handholds rusty dark red. When they discovered that this was essentially invisible against their noisy-ass background designs, they made them shiny. When they saw that it was still not enough, they made them blink rhythmically. That is a complete failure of visual design. And there's more of that in Enslaved.

It was.

No it wasn't. Not when your camera position is essentially random (and keeps changing) when you restart a checkpoint. Not when reachable, obviously interactive objects refuse interaction without any feedback, and only start responding once you have crossed <script trigger>.

It did.

How about not taking control away from the player for no goddamn reason? How about not taking the player from one end of the layer to the other in a cutscene, with no way to return, with no forewarning as to how that cutscene might get triggered? How about binning trial&error designs with instadeath traps appearing right underneath the player?

 

[erpg]

Uh, why?

I'll have a 6 hour introspective session and get back to you.

 

[Peff]

DmC from Ninja Theory is completely the opposite. The initial reaction from the fans was pretty negative, but around TGS it was pretty positive.

What?

 

[theBishop]

I'm halfway through the game and it deserves to be played. It's not for people who are purists about mechanics, but the experience is something like Ico with Uncharteds presentation.

 

[ezekial45]

What?

I meant to say around the show floor. I've read from several journalists saying that the reaction from the show floor was that they were pretty receptive to it.

 

[V_Arnold]

I wish that I had the energy to fight with the haters in this thread. Enslaved is far from shitty, it was a solid, good and very unique game. With propertities that enrage some of the "no response lag and japanese depth-hack'n'slash or NOTHING" purists.

 

[Peff]

I meant to say around the show floor. I've read from several journalists saying that the reaction from the show floor was that they were pretty receptive to it.

Didn't they just show the same trailer we all saw? I don't remember anything about a demo or closed door previews or anything.

 

[EYEL1NER]

it only took the fifteen minutes i spent with it to earn my coveted WGOTY status.

a dark day for the autoplay for tards genre.

Hahahahaha, oh you....
Where's the lol face when you need it.


I picked the game up around Xmas week or sometime, don't remember when, but for $20 on Amazon and absolutely loved it. It's kind of disappointing it got so few sales, but then again, new IP right when all the big games started coming out for the year...can't be too surprised.

 

[FunnyBunny]

I have two feet firmly planted in the "quality, not quantity" camp. I will always enjoy a finely crafted 6 hour experience more than a good 10 hour one.

That said, the gaming industry desperately needs a tiered pricing structure. There is no doubt in my mind Enslaved would have sold many more copies if it released at $40.

Some games (Wet, Split/Second come to mind) would be better served to release at lower price points and become easier "impulse" buys. Otherwise, gamers just wait for a price drop and a new release loses all forward momentum.

 

[ezekial45]

Didn't they just show the same trailer we all saw? I don't remember anything about a demo or closed door previews or anything.

Yes, the same trailer we all saw. Nothing else. It was received fairly well around the show floor, just not with the actual fan base.

 

[Kai Dracon]

I should clarify by the way, that I am not saying Enslaved is crap; in point of fact, I liked it. I thought it was a solid B+ title in the 3rd person action adventure genre.

But it does reinforce to me that Ninja Theory can't do a game like DMC; I'm open to being surprised but do feel the odds are too stacked against them. It's not their fault in a sense; few developers (very, very few) can make a game like a Ninja Gaiden, DMC (even DMC4) and Bayonetta.

The problem is, I got the distinct impression that Ninja Theory getting the DMC franchise had nothing to do with belief they could make a game good by series standards and the standards of its peers in the field. Rather, it was Inafune's "final mistake" - NT got the contract in a very misguided attempt to make a "westernized" game.

What amazes me is that it happened after Dark Void and Bionic Commando.

 

[skyfinch]

Bought it almost day one, still have it. Some flaws, but overall, a great game.

 

[badcrumble]

Ninja theory's artists, mocap team, writers, modellers, and texture artists are perfectly good.

But their level design and combat design is severely lacking (not to mention their QA process - they haven't yet delivered a game with a solid framerate). For those of us who like a journey through an artistically attractive world with a basic sense of character progression, that's fine. For those of us who like fun videogames, Ninja Theory is completely unattractive.

And yes, I played all the way through Enslaved (picked it up at $20 on an Amazon sale and wouldn't pay a penny more for it), and enjoyed many things about it. But it wasn't actually fun (and, somehow, the graphics get worse the further you get into the game - the opening level with the crashing ship was pretty cool looking, whereas the

Spoiler

giant scorpion battle

took place on an embarrassingly flat and open repeating-texture terrain) and, ultimately, I was glad to be able to move on to the next item in my backlog when it was over.

Oh, and if it's not clear, I had a healthy disdain for Ninja Theory well before the DmC announcement, thank you very much.

 

[jluedtke]

I just finished Enslaved two nights ago. I think the comments being posted about it being "great" are just as off-base as the comments calling it "terrible". The game was simply "okay".

My biggest problem was that the story was far too ambitious compared to the gameplay it offered. An "Odyssey to the West"? More like a few neat-o set pieces to climb around in while batting off a half-dozen variations of enemies. I never once - during the epic 8-hour marathon - got the impression that I was on a journey across post-apocalyptic America. In order to convey that, they needed a lot more variety and probably double the game length. In addition, the climbing segments were mostly pointless as they rarely offered any challenge beyond "point at the glowing thing and jump". Only in the final two chapters did they add a couple meager attempts at obstacles while climbing.

But the big selling point was the believability of the characters, through V/O and MoCap. I wound up really liking Monkey by the end of the game and Tripp was a really believable companion, for the most part. In this way, it was a lot like Heavenly Sword. I thought the game was just okay, but really dug the character work.

Anyway, my point is Enslaved was an average game with nice production values that probably deserved the sales it got: not bad sales, but not great.

 

[sajj316]

Since Rolf NB went to town on this game .. nothing more to add to his comments outside of it being a complete screen-tear fest on the PS3 version. I prefer to play action/adventure titles on the PS3 but the demo left a crappy impression.

Who else changed their opinion of the game after playing the demo?

 

[pelicansurf]

Everything seems fair and right in the world now that Enslaved has officially tanked. Thank you, world. There's still hope for you left!

 

[badcrumble]

I'm just bemused at the fact that Ninja Theory gets the budgets they get while far more deserving studios are being shut down left and right these days.

 

[sajj316]

I just finished Enslaved two nights ago. I think the comments being posted about it being "great" are just as off-base as the comments calling it "terrible". The game was simply "okay".

My biggest problem was that the story was far too ambitious compared to the gameplay it offered. An "Odyssey to the West"? More like a few neat-o set pieces to climb around in while batting off a half-dozen variations of enemies. I never once - during the epic 8-hour marathon - got the impression that I was on a journey across post-apocalyptic America. In order to convey that, they needed a lot more variety and probably double the game length. In addition, the climbing segments were mostly pointless as they rarely offered any challenge beyond "point at the glowing thing and jump". Only in the final two chapters did they add a couple meager attempts at obstacles while climbing.

But the big selling point was the believability of the characters, through V/O and MoCap. I wound up really liking Monkey by the end of the game and Tripp was a really believable companion, for the most part. In this way, it was a lot like Heavenly Sword. I thought the game was just okay, but really dug the character work.

Anyway, my point is Enslaved was an average game with nice production values that probably deserved the sales it got: not bad sales, but not great.

This post sums it up! What kind of Odyssey/Journey is it when it shows you where to climb next. I get that its trying to be accessible but gamers aren't total idiots. I think of the game should be trial and error w/ exploration!

 

[Zabka]

It's amazing how much the bitterness and vitriol over DmC retroactively seeped into this game.

I think you have that backwards. The vitriol over DmC is due to the quality (or lack thereof) of Enslaved and Heavenly Sword.

If Enslaved had some kickass combat people would be excited for DmC.

 

[JaxJag]

I have two feet firmly planted in the "quality, not quantity" camp. I will always enjoy a finely crafted 6 hour experience more than a good 10 hour one.

That said, the gaming industry desperately needs a tiered pricing structure. There is no doubt in my mind Enslaved would have sold many more copies if it released at $40.

Some games (Wet, Split/Second come to mind) would be better served to release at lower price points and become easier "impulse" buys. Otherwise, gamers just wait for a price drop and a new release loses all forward momentum.

Wet didn't actually do too bad. Or I should say it did much better than Enslaved and is getting a sequel.

 

[FLEABttn]

You win every melee encounter by alternating one wide attack (to break blocks and separate enemies) and one combo of basic attacks. It's mindless and boring.
No it wasn't. Not with all the "secret" shit on sides of buildings that are secret only because the camera wrestles against your control. Not with the complete lack of framing during boss encounters.
No it wasn't. They made the handholds rusty dark red. When they discovered that this was essentially invisible against their noisy-ass background designs, they made them shiny. When they saw that it was still not enough, they made them blink rhythmically. That is a complete failure of visual design. And there's more of that in Enslaved.
No it wasn't. Not when your camera position is essentially random (and keeps changing) when you restart a checkpoint. Not when reachable, obviously interactive objects refuse interaction without any feedback, and only start responding once you have crossed <script trigger>.
How about not taking control away from the player for no goddamn reason? How about not taking the player from one end of the layer to the other in a cutscene, with no way to return, with no forewarning as to how that cutscene might get triggered? How about binning trial&error designs with instadeath traps appearing right underneath the player?

-Sounds like how I beat GoW1-3 and Dante's Inferno.
-I never fought the camera over secret areas. Secret areas generally were outside of the framing the camera gave you, similar to the titles above, and were found by moving the camera or moving to where the camera wasn't showing. Again, I never had a problem with the camera, it almost never did something I didn't want it to.
-I'm conflicted on this point. I don't find the backgrounds overly noisy, but the flashing grips are kind of hit you over the head obvious. Then again, you have the similar but reverse problem in the price of persia games where the backgrounds don't have anywhere near the same amount of detail but the grips are still hit you over the head obvious because they're the only bricks sticking out of the wall.
-Never had those camera problems.
-Didn't have those problems. Cutscene triggering never felt out of place or random. I never had trial and error problems with traps or what have you.

So, dunno.

 

[ezekial45]

I should clarify by the way, that I am not saying Enslaved is crap; in point of fact, I liked it. I thought it was a solid B+ title in the 3rd person action adventure genre.

But it does reinforce to me that Ninja Theory can't do a game like DMC; I'm open to being surprised but do feel the odds are too stacked against them. It's not their fault in a sense; few developers (very, very few) can make a game like a Ninja Gaiden, DMC (even DMC4) and Bayonetta.

The problem is, I got the distinct impression that Ninja Theory getting the DMC franchise had nothing to do with belief they could make a game good by series standards and the standards of its peers in the field. Rather, it was Inafune's "final mistake" - NT got the contract in a very misguided attempt to make a "westernized" game.

What amazes me is that it happened after Dark Void and Bionic Commando.

I would agree that. But they certainly can't cancel it now (i don't think they'd want to anyway). Dark Void and Bionic Commando may not have quite worked out (BC did give us Rearmed, that alone makes it a success), but that's not to say that getting western studios on their games is all bad.

Just look at Dead Rising 2. That game when it was first announced got a ton of flack for it being made by outsiders, but it turned out to be spectacular. They did a killer job with retaining the magic of the original and adding in their own western touches.

But the point is, it's still far too early to properly judge it. The game isn't going to be out till another year and a half, and i still think they got a solid chance at making a great title, on par with the rest of the series. I actually expect them to surprise most people. Especially given that they're going to expand the gameplay outside of the combat (which was always shallow).

It's better to look at the positive in all this. I'm certainly not going to be pissed off about it for the next two years or so. In my opinion anyway.

 

[Deadly Cyclone]

Just picked it up and love it so far. Hopefully the word of mouth gets around a bit and people buy it.

 

[stupei]

This kind of attitude is poisonous to our industry.

I feel like people should sit down with some truly awful games or play a few PS2 era titles where things like 3d controls and camera hadn't been hashed out yet before throwing around words like "horrible" for enslaved.

It's okay for there to be B-tier games, I hope it is.

This kind of hyperbole is laughable.

Poisonous to our industry to think an overhyped game is below average? Trip was adorable and all, but the game is by no means actually an 8/10. I can see giving the first half of the game that maybe for the way it works to combine stealth, action, and platforming, but after that it just becomes an awkward slog through tedious combat and mindless platforming. That game is certainly not 8/10.

You have a right to your opinion but obviously it isn't shared by the majority of gamers and that is by no means a reflection on the taste or intelligence of the unwashed masses.

And since it apparently matters so very much to some people in this thread: I don't care in the slightest about the DMC series and have only ever played some of the first title.

 

[Tylahedras]

Publishers need to stop trying to hit it out of the park the first time the come to bat with a new IP. If you want to build a new IP focus on differential gameplay and spend as little money on the game as possible. If the game succeeds you can assume you had something right with your idea, so spend more on the sequel to clean up the visuals. If that succeeds as well then maybe blow the doors off the spending if you're feeling risky.

The way they spend money is nonsense. Enslaved had no original ideas behind it other then perhaps the VO and story, and this is not a story driven industry.

I'll go back to it again, but publishers are convinced that their games have to be 60$ blockbusters to be successful and that's just not true. There's pleanty of room for 30$ or 40$ games. Hell there's room for 20$ games. But they need to have an appropriate budget first of all and they need to RELEASE at that price so that their marketing gets them sales.

Enslaved for example probably should have released at no more then 40$ (I'd say 30$ but hey that's me). If released at a lower price people sitting on the fence might have picked it up right away when it was gathering steam on websites. But by the time it hits the bargain bin there are used copys lying around at gamestop (futher undercutting sales) and no one is paying any attention anymore.

 

[Mithos]

I mean it took Dead Space 1, from release until August 2010 to sell around 2 million copies worldwide, and Dead Space 2 is already there a week after release.

They (Namco-Bandai) need to give us a Sequel/Prequel to Enslaved, and IF that game also fail to sell, its a failure.

 

[ezekial45]

I mean it took Dead Space 1, from release until August 2010 to sell around 2 million copies worldwide, and Dead Space 2 is already there a week after release.

They (Namco-Bandai) need to give us a Sequel/Prequel to Enslaved, and IF that game also fail to sell, its a failure.

They are still interested in doing a sequel:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=420096

 

[Carlisle]

I don't know why I never realized these were the same devs as Heavenly Sword. I liked the demo quite a bit. That's what I get for skimming over new IPs.

 

[Tiduz]

Devil will cry.

 

[Mithos]

They are still interested in doing a sequel:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=420096

Thats nice, hope it goes from "interested" to actually doing it also.

 

[dark10x]

But their level design and combat design is severely lacking (not to mention their QA process - they haven't yet delivered a game with a solid framerate). For those of us who like a journey through an artistically attractive world with a basic sense of character progression, that's fine. For those of us who like fun videogames, Ninja Theory is completely unattractive.

Actually, their first game was one the original XBOX and ran at 60 fps. :O

 

[badcrumble]

Actually, their first game was one the original XBOX and ran at 60 fps. :O

Apparently the solution to the problem is to only ever give Ninja Theory tiny budgets.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

I am not usually one to say things like this, but Capcom should bail out now on DmC and cancel the entire thing. Ninja Theory is like a noose hanging around the neck of the DMC franchise.

I don't see how anyone rational can have faith that Ninja Theory has some sort of "untapped potential" great enough to make a DMC game that is both competitive with the series' past entries and with its peers in the genre, and competitive with the quality and features expected by a general audience in a AAA game today.

If people thought the revolt against Metroid Other M was bad, I suspect the general reaction to DmC releasing is going to be a meltdown of genuinely atomic proportions.

It will be even funnier to see the back peddling if it turns out to be great. Selling stock in that game at this point is the wrong thing to do. Not that will be good but condemning it before you even try it shows the signs of how people think about DMC.

 

[Nemo]

Namco just can't catch a break these days

Thanks for Dark Souls tho

 

[Barkley's Justice]

put it on games for demand for $20 and i'll get it, for sure.

 

[Valkyr Junkie]

They are still interested in doing a sequel:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=420096

Well that makes sense considering this is Namco's Uncharted......

 

[badcrumble]

Well that makes sense considering this is Namco's Uncharted......

Maybe that's a mistranslation and they said that they didn't want the game to show up on monthly sales charts.

 

[Vlodril]

What the video game industry needs to do (and fast) is to break from the fixed price model more often and structure development budgets to the variable prices. In other words exactly what the digital distribution space has been doing for years now.

Agreed. The fixed pricing is hurting alot of games (and yes length IS important along with other factors).

I figured this game would drop fast , so i got it a month after release for 18 pounds.

The game was very pretty and had good VO. Thats about it. The story is forgettable , the characters are annoying at best and the game playing was mostly boring after a while.

Deserves the sales it got.

 

[fernoca]

Game was good, really enjoyed. The bittersweet ending made it even better.
Hope they fix many of the flaws from the first (more varied combat, more variety in missions, well just more variety in everything and more use of the cloud ).

 

[Neon_Icarus]

I was planning on getting it, but then I heard that the platforming sections are similar to that of Uncharted (just point vaguely in the right direction and keep tapping jump).

I prefer to have a bit of challenge in my games.

 

[levious]

You win every melee encounter by alternating one wide attack (to break blocks and separate enemies) and one combo of basic attacks. It's mindless and boring.

wide attack doesn't disable a shield though does it? Encounters with a mixture of enemies made things interesting.

 

[Pimpbaa]

This news pleases me. Terrible developers.

 

[Trick_GSF]

Wow. Some of the abuse this game is getting is so uncalled for. It is almost like people are bitter. At the developers. And want to see them fail. For some reason..

 

[Dreohboy]

If they'd have released it on PC they would have gotten one more sale. Oh well.

 

[Dresden]

Ninja Theory needs to make RPGs, not action games. Something with a greater focus on storytelling where their inadequacies, for whatever reason, regarding actual gameplay is less of a concern.

I don't like them making DMC, but I'd like them to try a Final Fantasy game if u kno wut i meen.