Anticipated Games

Unit 13 is coming to ps+ in March. Hit me up for some multiplayer. My lack of skills in shit like Uncharted notwithstanding, I was actually top 10 on most maps. (Pro-tip: use c4)

top 10 in the world? if so, that seems highly impressive.

You can check regional or worldwide. Me and the guy I played with were #1 on all the regional boards for the maps we played. Worldwide we were #1 on 1 map and top 10 on the rest. I haven't played in a year or so, so no idea what the deal is now.

Well congrats. Like I said before, you're like Rambo/Commando.

He just puts the controller in his beard and waits for the magic to happen...

So how do we feel about a new Batman by Rocksteady. Looks like Arkham Knight will be revealed tomorrow via a GI cover story.

I'm pretty much Batman'd out already. I know everybody loves Batman, but everybody loved zombies at one point, too.

I'm with ajapam. I mean, if the gameplay videos come out and it looks amazing I will care, but on the merit of it being batman alone I'm not super excited. Not like if, say, a new Deus Ex was announced >_>

I'm with you guys. My heart was hoping that Rocksteady might work on something different, but my brain knew they'd just be doing another Batman.

I'm pretty disappointed too. I'll probably play it eventually, but it just doesn't excite me.

I didn't play Origins, not sure if I will... but I'm ok with giving them a go on the new consoles with Batman. I just hope this is the last hurrah for them, because not only do I want them working on someone else, I really don't want any more Batman games for a while.

Apparently it is going to end the series, so there's that. Adding the Batmobile sounds like the next logical step and maybe it will work, but I kind of feel they don't know how to expand on this format. They just made an awesome Batman game, never expecting to do a sequel and aren't sure how to handle them now.

The batmobile and the idea that it's the end of the series makes me interested enough. Then if they turn around and say there's going to be another one after this... meh

Although Dark Souls II is just around the corner, I'm surprisingly not anticipating it even due I played the first religiously.

The only game I'm interested in (and anticipating) is Drakengard 3.
It's a real shame that Square chose to fuck the PAL region up the arse dry when it came to Drakengard; I would have bought the collector's edition in a flash.

Surprised to see everyone so disappointed by the new Batman game. I didn't really like City but enjoyed Asylum quite a bit so I'm interested in seeing what they do to make improvements. Did anyone actually bother with Origins? I hate superhero stuff in general, Batman being no exception, but the combat system has always been solid enough to make slugging through everything else worth while.

Also Waggy is a friend of mine.

Also also I finally got around to preordering Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. Not sure why I had been waiting so long but whatever.

I think everyone just wants to see the game developers moving on to something new. Like you I preferred Asylum. Moving around City was just too much of a chore for me.

Downloading Dead Nation, excited to give it a whirl.

I just noticed Amazon had Ground Zeroes PS4 for $30. A quick Google search revealed it's universal. That's pretty cool but there aren't any pre-order bonuses so I think I'm still gonna wait until it hits $20 or less.

I'm going to go watch this new Batman reveal you guys speak of. If it's a bigger Arkham City with a Batmobile then a resounding hell yes I'm interested. Still haven't played Origins but the first two were a really great time.

OH, SH'T! I hope this doesn't affect the series in a negative way...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/05/uncharted-ps4-writer-amy-hennig-leaves-naughty-dog?utm_campaign=fbposts&utm_source=facebook

After interviews with her about Uncharted 3...I'm not SUPER bugged by it. However, I'm also someone who thinks Naughty Dog should move on from Uncharted to a new IP (yes, The Last of Us was very good, but I don't want a sequel to that either) but hey...what the hell do I know.

Was she the one who basically said games shouldn't have gameplay? Or was that the Bioware chick?

Amy is very talented and has a great resume (along with Uncharted she worked on the Legacy of Kain games before that). I would like to know the whole story on this as I don't know how to take the whole Bruce/Neil forced her out thing since IGN can be a little sensationalist at times.

Even looking at it from Twolf's perspective, this hurts the chance of a new IP happening soon too. If Bruce and Neil take over on Uncharted PS4, then it will be even longer until they work on another game and they seemed 50/50 on a TLOU sequel or new IP.

I'm with Krubix on this. I'm not bothered that much and I want ND as far away from Uncharted as possible, especially after 3 (I know it was missing half the dev team due to TLOU but it felt like that was their major chance to make the characters more than just Hollywood cliches)

@ajapam That was Jennifer Hepler, also known as Hamburger Helper, the Bioware chick. She said her least favourite part of video games was playing the game and they should contain the ability to skip straight to the story. She left a while ago but the fact she ever had a job in a games company is pretty horrifying. Maybe she should tag up with thechineseroom eh?

I bet even thechineseroom wouldn't want her. At least they don't want to turn games into movies. She's probably just a failed screenwriter who turned to games

Hopefully this doesn't affect Naughty Dog too much and Amy lands somewhere good. I can't see an Uncharted writer having trouble finding a job

Very disappointing news. Every single Uncharted game I love so obviously I want them to keep the series going. A lot of bad video games news as of late.

Not sure if anyone knows but there were layoffs from the company that put out Thief. It seems like bad reviews of games = layoffs. Kind of wish there wasn't reviews anymore and people just trusted their own instincts.

People trusting their own instincts would just lead them to sticking with what's safe more often.

BretBaber wrote:Very disappointing news.  Every single Uncharted game I love so obviously I want them to keep the series going.  A lot of bad video games news as of late.  

Not sure if anyone knows but there were layoffs from the company that put out Thief.  It seems like bad reviews of games = layoffs.  Kind of wish there wasn't reviews anymore and people just trusted their own instincts.  

Metacritic is a bleeding rectal cancer on the entire video game industry. Especially given the fact that game journalism has completely gone to shit these days. Any little podunk website in Hungary can post a bad review on Metacritic and trash a game's sales

I don't have an issue with Metacritic as something that exists. I like being able to look up a game and find opinions that are extraordinarily positive alongside ones more critical of the game, it gives me a better idea of what to expect. The real thing shutting down these developers and causing layoffs are the guys who have too much of a say on things that are not best for a game or developer because they're misinformed or it suits their self interest. Then when everything falls apart, they have the power to keep themselves from taking responsibility for that shit.

Amen, Greenman. Amen

volvocrusher wrote:I don't have an issue with Metacritic as something that exists. I like being able to look up a game and find opinions that are extraordinarily positive alongside ones more critical of the game, it gives me a better idea of what to expect. The real thing shutting down these developers and causing layoffs are the guys who have too much of a say on things that are not best for a game or developer because they're misinformed or it suits their self interest. Then when everything falls apart, they have the power to keep themselves from taking responsibility for that shit.

The problem with Metacritic is that most people don't read opinions, including the corporate bean-counters. While links to the reviews are available on the site, most people never get past the aggregate score the site posts. And Metacritic's system of scoring is part of why anything less than an 8 is seen as "bad" by the gaming community. Because of our days in public school, where anything less than a 70 out of 100 (a C -) is seen as a failure, and even a solid C isn't really acceptable to most parents - that little crappy Hungarian site gives a game they didn't like a 70 when it's been getting good, solid scores from everyone else, and it drags the whole game down and makes it look bad. Even publishers subscribe to Metacritic numbers, most famously with Obsidian losing a huge, critical bonus for Fallout: NV because their MC average was one point below what Bethesda wanted.

And speaking of letter grades, when a reviewer gives a game a "C", he's thinking a "C" is a respectable, but not fantastic score, a 75 out of 100, again drawing from his experiences in school. Metacritic weighs that same "C" as a 50 out of 100, which would mean you flunked you exam or essay pretty badly at school.

Those aren't really issues with Metacritic itself though, but how people use it. The C=50 thing is stupid, I'll give you that. But they kind of have to put the scores there even if people just read those. Really the emphasis should be on whether they get the average warrants a red, yellow, or green color. That's the main issue with review scores, we use too god damn many and it turns into this huge thing about the minor differences. There's no real reason to use more than five metrics to score a game.

And focusing on the numbers like Bethesda did is one of those stupid decisions I just mentioned. We should be criticizing the people at Bethesda for ordering that, not Metacritic for providing them a stupid way to do it. Because let's face it, without Metacritic they'd find another stupid, out of touch way to judge whether they'd give bonuses.