Game News 2.0

Varik

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117648940#Comment_117648940

They got to get those clicks somehow.

Jason Schreier usually got his SEO crunch whine fest very few months for whatever game is big.

Grumpypants

Eímear Noone’s ‘Electric Arcade’ is on tonight and free to view on line.

A concert all about fun and giving video game music fans something uniquely electrifying!

From HALO to BAFTA nominated HADES, Final Fantasy to Fortnite, Castlevania to Civilization and a Tetris rock opera (because…why not?!) this concert draws on big orchestral scores from video games, curated by Oscars conductor and award-winning composer Eímear Noone as a journey through video game history.

Bringing together rock and electronica with members of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, it features bespoke arrangements by Eímear Noone and Craig Stuart Garfinkle designed to provide a mix of nostalgic greats with current scores from Triple A mega titles to award-winning indie fan favourites.

https://orchestras.rte.ie/events/3590/rte-national-symphony-orchestra-live-eimear-noones-electric-arcade/?ticketID=1627066800

Sonics2k

Former Blizzard employee here (GM), even interviewed and was accepted for a somewhat senior position in the Anaheim campus way back in 2009. While I didn't accept the job and moved on from the company not much later I've obviously kept in contact with a lot of old friends who worked there and have moved on to different positions across the company and world, some now working for the Starcraft team and others in WoW and other roles.

I'll say this, a lot of people in the company are not shocked at all by these allegations, and by and large are being told to stay out of it on social media and let PR handle it.

Like many companies, Blizzard has devolved from the company it once was and the Core Values they once celebrated have very much become a 'One rule for them, another for us' type of company. We can blame Activision, but at the end of the day it's by and large the same people at the top within Blizzard as it has been since before the merger. Money and power are the biggest corrupters out there, and personally I'm not shocked about these allegations at all.

I've heard that a number of staff are sitting out and even quitting due to what's been going on. Of course it's unlike to solve the problem, but many people just don't want to be involved with a company like this.

Retr0gamer

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117649810#Comment_117649810

So why are you blaming the writers at the lowest tiers trying to do their best and labelling it as 'virtue signaling' when their jobs are at stake when this is obviously an upper management issue. Most of those writers on temporary contracts and very low wages can't afford to lose a job and black list themselves. It's the same energy as blaming game developers for a bad product that is obviously the fault of the upper management.

Dead Space remake is coming. I dunno how I feel about this. The original is probably my favourite game of all time and is still very much playable to this day. Graphics still hold up with the atmosphere still being top notch..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5WeBNfX-og&t=66s

Retr0gamer

Blizzard not having the best few days. Details emerge about how they fucked up Warcraft 3 Reforged so badly:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-07-23-new-report-details-shambolic-leadership-decisions-behind-blizzards-disastrous-warcraft-3-remake

I think we can safely say the Blizzard of old polishing a game and releasing it when its done are gone.

pixelburp

Bloomberg? Silly Retr0, don't you know you gotta put a Jason Schreier trigger warning for the journalistically sensitive around these parts?

Unsurprising news all the same; the plucky "when it's done" studio can't survive corporate pressure. Valve is very lucky to have basically become the corporate monolith in their case lol

Markitron

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117650158#Comment_117650158

They have been saying all the right things but I have two issues with it. I don't trust them not to **** it up and Dead Space really doesn't need a remake anyway. Like you say, it still holds up perfectly. I think I would have preferred a soft reboot in the spirit of the first game that sidesteps the madness of DS3 and more or less continues on from DS2.

Retr0gamer

I hope they really reinvent Dead Space. Plenty of room to do that. It's a 7/10 game with lots of issues, mostly due to being rushed and being repetitive so if they just kept the gameplay mostly the same and went to town with interesting set pieces like Resi 4 or Titanfall 2 they could have the really great game that Dead Space could have been.

pixelburp

My first speculation would be to take the bones of Alien Isolation and translate it to the Dead Space universe; depower the player (which given the reception toawrds DS3, would be the first item on the checklist), and add a more distinct sense of constant dread.

Maybe even work in the mechanics of the long-forgotten adaptation of The Thing, that tried to integrate the idea of "anyone can be a Thing" to mixed success. So characters could spontaneously transforms into 'de monsters, the AI paranoid when multiple NPCs are in a room etc...

Retr0gamer

I don't expect that kind of creativity from EA.

Also a reminder that preorders for the Playdate are live this day next week. Tried to find the original thread but boards.ie search function is utter scutter now.

Mr Crispy

The Callisto Protocol will be the one to watch I think.

I see Respawn are working on a brand new single player IP. I'd prefer a Titanfall sequel, but if it's an FPS at all, I'll be interested.

ERG89

Battlefield Portal looks interesting, it was the only thing worthwhile that EA showed. Might be something that will be done better elsewhere eventually.

I still think Dead Space is too recent for a full remake, it was part of the first wave of actual impressive looking HD games and unless you only have a PS4/5 you can play it now without much issue.

Retr0gamer

PC port is still fucked I believe.

Grumpypants

Reading an interview with the Dead Space producers. They mentioned it will have no microtransactions or loading screens.

Seems like they will also pull from the wider Dead Space universe in terms of story and features. So I'd expect it to be a remake of 1 but with gameplay from the others and maybe extend into prequel territory.

Zero-Cool

Crazy stuff, Girlfriend Reviews made a vid about TLOU 2, the TLOU2 subreddit goes crazy (i visited that place a few times, absolute toxic cesspit), a user there says he received death threats from GFR fans after they posted a tweet defending themselves from him. Press L2 for detective mode, the guy made up accounts and sent himself death threats but Reddit mods still backed him. Since this vid was put up, that community is now private.

https://youtu.be/OF9HLsPFfCw

Mr Crispy

I despise reddit. Well, except for r/rarepuppers.

wes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117657885#Comment_117657885

The fact that reddit let that crap go on, is crazy. At a certain point, when it becomes clear that a sub reddit has gone off the rails like that, it needs to be deleted and its mods banned.

Markitron

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117653570#Comment_117653570

I do not agree with pretty much anything you have been saying on this topic until you mentioned KF, now your viewpoint makes partial sense to me. KF is all the absolute worst aspects of gamer culture collected in one place.

pixelburp

Man, is there any social media outlet that hasn't turned into a cesspit? Obviously talking in generalisations but even tangential services like Twitch seem increasingly riddled with toxicity or weird controversies like the pool streams (that just makes me feel old).

Or maybe it's just the clickbait industry needs to generate the content, so excessively highlight The Bad, I dunno.

Zero-Cool

Oooohhh new Annapurna game from the devs of Virginia (have that installed but still haven't played it yet), 25 quid, this could be interesting. Anyone picking it up? Out on all platforms and i think it's on Gamepass.

https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1419353000380813318?s=19

johnny_ultimate

Ive played the first hour or so (PC GamePass). It’s pretty good - very much in the ‘interactive story’ category. It’s a bigger and more ambitious project than Virginia, but definitely building on that. While Virginia was very in your face with its jump and smash cuts, this feels put together more like an actual film - with more natural edits used to cut out the faff.

Too early to say a whole lot more - definitely some intriguing setups that’ll draw me back. Voice acting is a mixed bag - some excellent, some less so. Animations seem a bit wonky and awkward here and there, but the scale of the game is impressive for a small team.

Also worth noting that one of the two main lads behind the studio Variable State is Irish :)

BlitzKrieg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117657997#Comment_117657997

I actually had front row seats to a gaming reddit almost imploding due to 'drama' and you'd be surprised how far good intentions takes people to make horrible decisions in hindsight

It was rather dark situation where a youtuber associated with the game had committed suicide after posting his last video and one redditor basically found out even before the youtuber's own family and posted the news to the reddit hours before the family were able to confirm to the youtuber's friends he was dead. Those same friends denied the claim made earlier based on their interaction with him. So the person who broke the news got hate mail and then when he was shown to be right when the friends back tracked with an official statement it flipped and the friends got hate mail for the hate mail)

Sometimes people just need to shut up. We are far too eager to share our opinions on everything.

Zero-Cool

This vid doing the rounds, feel so bad for her asking a genuine question and getting booed and laughed at.

https://twitter.com/chrisbratt/status/1418629194683125761?s=19

pixelburp

Jesus Christ I cringed so bad I sank into the apartment below. You could see the woman's eyes after the response, dead inside as she laughed mirthlessly to those idiots onstage. Fair play for having the nerve to ask a totally reasonable question.

And of course when studios do desexualise their **** doll characters, the outrage explodes forth from Twitter. But but but men are sexualised too, comes the usual whine.

Penn

That's the thing; she loves the game enough not just to play it, but to actually spend time and money going to a Blizzcon event, waiting in line to ask a question because it means something to her, and that's the response they give.

Fair enough if after the first line as a joke they then answered her question seriously and said they're looking at new designs for female characters etc etc etc, but they just completely dismissed her comment outright.