FF:Enhanced_Reality
Member
It's no secret, I am a pretty big PlayStation enthusiast. I love the work the first parties do, even if I don't enjoy the game, they all do great work. Uncharted: Golden Abyss was massively under-rated, most likely, due to the insane standards the console games had us all accustomed too, but when Zipper went, Lightbox went, Evolution and BigBig went, Cambridge Studio went etc... I genuinely thought Sony Bend were next. Their designed had commented on how the projects all ended up being badly timed and quite often, cancelled, as they stand in the shadow of the bigger first party studios. An ex-developer from Sony Bend actually confirmed that Sony canned four of their Vita projects, Uncharted was one of them, not to be over shadowed by Uncharted 4, that was cancelled and their InFamous title in progress was also cancelled so that Sony could focus on Second Son...
That being said, I was hugely excited from the first trailer for Days Gone. It looked gritty, but in a different way to The Last of Us. It looked quite interesting as a concept, though we've been spoilt for these kinds of games the past generation or so, so we have seen open world zombie games at their best and worst. Okay, I know they're freakers, but whatever we decide to call them, you follow my drift. It was a surprise enough seeing the Sony Bend logo on screen at E3 2016, never mind being a new IP. People immediately drew comparisons to TLoU, saying it's like The Walking Dead meets Sons of Anarchy. Call me out of the loop, but I stopped walking TWD after season 2 and I've never seen Sons of Anarchy but when they said post-apocalyptic biker gang survives in a dead world, it sounded pretty fucking good.
Except this whole media blow out, is very much having the opposite effect on me.
Marcus Beer once commented on an episode of Bonus Road on GameTrailers (R.I.P) about how publishers should advertise and promote their games, drip feeding content and not going all in. For a 2019 title, I think we're going in too deep right now.
Game Informer have the first hour of the game and tonnes of content, which is really cool but the game didn't look too solid to me. I think the first hour looked really bland and the vibes I were getting from the content we had seen so far, don't match how the game is developing.
First and foremost, why the hell do we earn XP? An RPG system seems totally unnecessary to me for a game like this. Not only that, but seeing the amount of XP earned per kill pop up with each enemy downed is really distracting. Especially where it comes up. The game seems too heavy on the UI from this alpha footage and if they really do implement a character progression system, which again, I really don't think this game needs, then I hope it's more stream lined and there in the background.
The world itself doesn't really feel as convincing as The Last of Us did. I know TLoU is set quite some time after the outbreak, whereas this isn't quite so long after, but I didn't really feel threatened. Like in the E3 demo where Deacon fought all the freakers in the wood yard, I mean that was intense. I really don't feel that way anymore.
The gritty story that I was expecting sounds like more of a brolationship as the Bend developers have described it, at least, that's how it came across to me between Deacon and Boozer. I was hoping for a little more depth on that front, but the writing and quality of acting seems too far out to me. The guy who plays Deacon is well acted, but the other characters don't seem to match the quality he offers the character which is why he stands out a little bit. I mean two perfect examples, you see the snippet from the E3 2016 trailer where Deacon is smashing something's head in with a shotgun. Turns out it's just a dead freaker and Boozer starts going off about how he shouldn't be angry for what happened too his wife.
The conversation seems completely out of place and I don't think it's very effective given that it does lead us to make assumptions but silly in a sense that we're less than an hour in, they're talking about something that's supposed to be quite deep and emotional to this character and it feels like a casual chat. Not to mention the conversation at the end of the demo where the head of the camp makes Deacon run some errands for killing one of his people just seems to fall flat. Something like that when Tess and Joel were arguing made me feel like a dude who was watching two people I'm really close with having a full blown argument and tensions being everywhere. This conversation didn't quite feel like that at all.
Don't even get me started on the decision making stuff, it seems like it was ripped straight out of InFamous and doesn't feel like it fits the game. Why not make the decision making more passive and less "Shoot the dude, or save the dude." Bearing in mind, we saw what happened if we saved him so our input doesn't seem to count very much.
The point I'm trying to get across is that the game they're showing now, feels very different to the original trailer and content at E3 2016 and again the demo at E3 2017. Which is disappointing, because I really liked the world and story they tried to depict there. It looks and feels like it's taking a lot of core elements from Sony titles and throwing them in together. You can see the influence from work done by Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Guerilla and Santa Monica Studio. I was constantly drawing comparisons to other titles like Uncharted, The Last of Us, Horizon, InFamous etc. To make it worse, this game isn't even out until 2019 and we have the first HOUR of the game available to see. The problem for me now as someone who loved the look of the game and really wanted to buy it is that I bought into this from the content we had. After the first hour of the game, I don't actually think I'd buy it right away. I'd probably wait for it to come down in price or be on offer.
IF and I know it's a very big IF... the title ends up being a similar picture to what the first hour painted.
I mean I'm playing God of War now and the first hour was intense. I watch this and I'm not really that fussed, which I'm really quite sad about.
What are GAF's impressions of the game so far? Do you like the direction they're taking and how it's shaping up? Where are you at with your hype factor? I got to say, I'm at like 4/10 right now....
That being said, I was hugely excited from the first trailer for Days Gone. It looked gritty, but in a different way to The Last of Us. It looked quite interesting as a concept, though we've been spoilt for these kinds of games the past generation or so, so we have seen open world zombie games at their best and worst. Okay, I know they're freakers, but whatever we decide to call them, you follow my drift. It was a surprise enough seeing the Sony Bend logo on screen at E3 2016, never mind being a new IP. People immediately drew comparisons to TLoU, saying it's like The Walking Dead meets Sons of Anarchy. Call me out of the loop, but I stopped walking TWD after season 2 and I've never seen Sons of Anarchy but when they said post-apocalyptic biker gang survives in a dead world, it sounded pretty fucking good.
Except this whole media blow out, is very much having the opposite effect on me.
Marcus Beer once commented on an episode of Bonus Road on GameTrailers (R.I.P) about how publishers should advertise and promote their games, drip feeding content and not going all in. For a 2019 title, I think we're going in too deep right now.
Game Informer have the first hour of the game and tonnes of content, which is really cool but the game didn't look too solid to me. I think the first hour looked really bland and the vibes I were getting from the content we had seen so far, don't match how the game is developing.
First and foremost, why the hell do we earn XP? An RPG system seems totally unnecessary to me for a game like this. Not only that, but seeing the amount of XP earned per kill pop up with each enemy downed is really distracting. Especially where it comes up. The game seems too heavy on the UI from this alpha footage and if they really do implement a character progression system, which again, I really don't think this game needs, then I hope it's more stream lined and there in the background.
The world itself doesn't really feel as convincing as The Last of Us did. I know TLoU is set quite some time after the outbreak, whereas this isn't quite so long after, but I didn't really feel threatened. Like in the E3 demo where Deacon fought all the freakers in the wood yard, I mean that was intense. I really don't feel that way anymore.
The gritty story that I was expecting sounds like more of a brolationship as the Bend developers have described it, at least, that's how it came across to me between Deacon and Boozer. I was hoping for a little more depth on that front, but the writing and quality of acting seems too far out to me. The guy who plays Deacon is well acted, but the other characters don't seem to match the quality he offers the character which is why he stands out a little bit. I mean two perfect examples, you see the snippet from the E3 2016 trailer where Deacon is smashing something's head in with a shotgun. Turns out it's just a dead freaker and Boozer starts going off about how he shouldn't be angry for what happened too his wife.
The conversation seems completely out of place and I don't think it's very effective given that it does lead us to make assumptions but silly in a sense that we're less than an hour in, they're talking about something that's supposed to be quite deep and emotional to this character and it feels like a casual chat. Not to mention the conversation at the end of the demo where the head of the camp makes Deacon run some errands for killing one of his people just seems to fall flat. Something like that when Tess and Joel were arguing made me feel like a dude who was watching two people I'm really close with having a full blown argument and tensions being everywhere. This conversation didn't quite feel like that at all.
Don't even get me started on the decision making stuff, it seems like it was ripped straight out of InFamous and doesn't feel like it fits the game. Why not make the decision making more passive and less "Shoot the dude, or save the dude." Bearing in mind, we saw what happened if we saved him so our input doesn't seem to count very much.
The point I'm trying to get across is that the game they're showing now, feels very different to the original trailer and content at E3 2016 and again the demo at E3 2017. Which is disappointing, because I really liked the world and story they tried to depict there. It looks and feels like it's taking a lot of core elements from Sony titles and throwing them in together. You can see the influence from work done by Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Guerilla and Santa Monica Studio. I was constantly drawing comparisons to other titles like Uncharted, The Last of Us, Horizon, InFamous etc. To make it worse, this game isn't even out until 2019 and we have the first HOUR of the game available to see. The problem for me now as someone who loved the look of the game and really wanted to buy it is that I bought into this from the content we had. After the first hour of the game, I don't actually think I'd buy it right away. I'd probably wait for it to come down in price or be on offer.
IF and I know it's a very big IF... the title ends up being a similar picture to what the first hour painted.
I mean I'm playing God of War now and the first hour was intense. I watch this and I'm not really that fussed, which I'm really quite sad about.
What are GAF's impressions of the game so far? Do you like the direction they're taking and how it's shaping up? Where are you at with your hype factor? I got to say, I'm at like 4/10 right now....
