[quote=“jpinard, post:421, topic:78708, full:true”]
Zenimax/Bethesda are way more concerned with filing lawsuits than promoting games from their smaller studios like Arkane. [/quote]
That really makes no sense. Do you think companies want their games to fail?
Sometimes they do.
His score isn’t really that out there. The Metacritic for the PC version is buffed by a number of no-name outlets, including Ragequit.gr, Game Over Online, Areajugones, The Games Machine, Merlin’in Kazanı, New Game Network, and Gaming Age.
Lots of sites gave the game mixed reviews.
http://www.hardcoregamer.com/2017/05/14/review-prey/257023/
Actually, if you look at the detail, all the scores on Metacritic are above 80 except for 2. While you have some no-name outlets boosting the score, you’ve ignored that what you also have is the overall score being dragged down by IGN which gave a rating of 40 due to bugs (which they have since revised to 80 but Metacrtic goes with the original)
You also mention “no name sites” in Metacritic but of the counter examples you give, I’m not aware the time.com, theguardian.com, metro.co.uk are really known for their gaming knowledge.
And of course, that still leaves the user scores on Metacritic (80) and Steam (93) which are pretty high.
[quote=“Grifman, post:422, topic:78708”]
I totally disagree. It’s interesting that he complains about many things that are found in System Shock 2:
IMO, this is never a good critique in and of itself. But this is a longer, separate discussion IMO. I would simply say that I think the layout and nature of the skill tree in Prey (broad, not deep, significant cost scaling) means that it’s difficult to wind up without useful skills. Also, I dislike the term “build” being tossed around so frivolously. I maxxed the shotgun, almost maxxed the Golden Gun, put significant upgrades in the stun gun, and was sort of working on the laser thingy at the end. So I’m a combat build clearly. . .
I had level 2 mind blast, level 2 “hurt and inhibit psychic powers” blast, and level 2 electro blast (this an attempt to make the end easier). I had resist shock level 1. I had all but the last Scope upgrade, I had all the suit upgrades, I had upgrades to health kit usage (several), psi stim usage, health pool, psi pool, some athletics stuff, repair II, Leverage II, a number of wrench upgrades (reduced stam, increased damage), and some stuff I am sure I am forgetting.
So it was a pretty broad build. It doesn’t work out the same as e.g. Combat focused vs PSi focused in SS2. And I don’t think people typically played all one or t’other there either.
[quote]
3) Both games have hacking (not sure about repair) but he seems to believe this is necessary. If you don’t have hacking you can’t get into everything but from what I’ve seen about half the doors you can find the code to by searching, and another proportion you can find alternate routes if you look[/quote]
Hacking 2 was never necessary but it was darn useful.
SS2 had maintenance and repair. The latter was for repairing guns and such. Remember how upset people were about the gun degradation when that game was released? Sure some didn’t mind but it was pretty widely loathed, because guns fell apart at absurd rates. Later they patched in a slider of some sort IIRC and you could disable it entirely. I seem to recall the repair skill was complete shit. The cost to self-repair things was exorbitant in terms of resources.
[quote]
4) For much of System Shock 2 there is no known “big bad” until a certain reveal and even then, for most of the game they are an “ally”[/quote]
This is, IMO, the silliest complaint. (end game spoilers). Assuming the simulated experience of Morgan’s memories is an approximation of what happened, you spend most of this game trying to fix your own mistake(s). I don’t know if Planescape: Torment is an influence for the devs but it’s something those games share. You’re sort of the big bad. We don’t need, you know, the borg queen or anything. The Typhon, and the “what in god’s name I was I doing” drive the narrative just fine. And thank god there was no boss fight.
[quote]
He is also wrong about weapons and damage. A fully upgraded shotgun will take out phantoms with between 2 and 4 rounds, easily with Combat Focus.[/quote]
I could two shot all phantoms, and one shot some of them after shooting mind bullets out of level 2 “power inhibition blast”. Volcanic seemed tougher, but regular, Volt, and Etheric all died quickly. Max shotgun is amazing at close enough range. The psi inhibition power was pretty great, since it allowed gap closing to “shotgun max damage” range quite easily.
[quote]
He’s entitled to his opinion, I just don’t agree with it. [/quote]
Yes, he is. But if this is him chasing criticism as art, well he’s never winning that race.
While I was specifically talking about the PC version (which barely has any reviews), the no-name boost holds true across PS4 and Xbox (The Daily Dot, IGN & Eurogamer Italia).
Speaking of which, with Metacritic, if the reviewer doesn’t cite a particular platform, does that mean their score is automatically applied to all the versions?
Does anyone find user reviews useful? Steam reviews, for the most part, seem to evaluate the quality of the port/PC version exclusively and Metacritic user scores typically alternate between 10’s & 0’s hyperbole.
I find Steam reviews very helpful when looking at a game I don’t know much about. The comments can help me get a better feel for the game. Bad scores and I won’t consider the game, mixed in a genre I’m interested in, I look into more.
Meanwhile, on a gaming database website I frequent (and know and trust the community there), so far there are 11 reviews posted with 93 average score, if this keeps up it will be second highest rated game after Witcher 3. Aaaand I have no problem with that.
Sometime perhaps, but jspinard has no evidence that this is true in this case.
That said, Defense Grid was not developed by MS but a third party, while Arkane is a Bethesda owned studio. I suspect the dynamics are more than a little different. I suspect very very few studios/publishers want their own internally developed games to fail.
Then don’t the no-name PS4 reviews in the mixed category, along with the unscored reviews, suggest that Jim Sterling’s review really isn’t completely “out there”?
Anyway, I can’t imagine that Arkane or Bethesda are happy with the games reception. Compared to the last two Arkane releases, Prey’s dropped nearly 10 points.
They really screwed up the PS4 release, and PS4 won this console cycle.
Also the game wasn’t marketed well. At first glance it looks like a Dead Space ripoff.
I suspect that they are satisfied with the scores but not with the sales, which from what I have read are likely to be disappointing.
Well, Metacritic tells me the Xbox One version is the 16th best reviewed game of 2017, while the PC and PS4 versions are sitting at 67 and 88, so even in May, it’s clear Prey isn’t going to be one of the year’s best reviewed games in the way the developer’s previous games were.
I can’t help but feel that all the attention Breath of the Wild received stole Arkane’s thunder. They usually rely on “hey, look at how our title supports this cool systemic, experimental gameplay” kinds of marketing stories to sell their games, but besides turning into a cup and making a ladder out of “gloo,” none of the press coverage really highlighted the games systems. There’s been some speed running stories but I’ve yet to see any write-ups promoting unique playstyles.
According to Daniel Ahmad, Prey (2017) actually sold worse in its UK debut week than Prey (2006) did, despite the latter only releasing on two platforms.
@Grifman - I AM their target market. System Shock 2 is still my favorite game of all time tied with Witcher 3. And every time I see the word “Prey” on a website I still don’t think of the game I’m playing. I think of the old Prey I played and if Bethesda wanted to wipe out that confusing memory of two games that couldn’t have less in common, they needed to market this properly starting a long time ago. So some exec who made the IP purchase needs to validate what he did and they come up with this. Yes, Executives sabotage games along with entire divisions within their company (hi EA!).
When I look up Prey wikia do I find one for Prey now? Nope http://prey.wikia.com/wiki/Prey
It was a ego decision to use the name Prey and I guarantee most of the people at Arkane didn’t want to use it. I just hope Pete Hines stands by his word that he would deal with the consequences and fallout. But honestly, what are the chances an executive in a public company will say, “Hey it wasn’t the gamers fault and confusion, it was my dumb decision”.
Also lets take a look at this very ironic quote from wikipedia:
According to a report from IGN, ZeniMax started purposefully failing Human Head’s project milestones so that they wouldn’t get paid, allowing ZeniMax to buy the company at a reduced rate. They were accused of doing the same thing with Arkane Studios, although in Arkane’s case the studio gave in and allowed themselves to be bought.[33] The failed hostile acquisition of Human Head Studios led to cancellation of Human Head’s Prey 2 according to the report.
Jpinard, that’s all great but none of that has anything to do with how good Prey is which is what we were discussing. I don’t know why some people are all hung up on the name of a game from 11 years ago. All I care about is whether the game is good, I don’t really care what it is called for the most part. And this game is good, as good a System Shock 2 clone there is. If you are not playing it because of the name, that’s your loss and no skin off my back.
It’s funny (and by funny I mean sad) that the game is called Prey because “Doing a new IP was not a possibility because it’s adding risk to the challenge of growth” and now with the sales being what they are, they might as well have made it a new IP and it easily could have sold better.
It still wouldn’t have sold under a different name if they weren’t willing to market it. Though it would certainly have been easier to market if they had chosen to.
I am playing Grif - I love it. And I’m upset Zenimax/Bethesda will blame us gamers and not fund another project like this because it won’t sell, when the reality is there is too much confusion and terrible marketing to get this game the attention it deserved.
I find it difficult to believe the name actually hurt sales. It’s just a generic name that doesn’t really signify anything of substance to most people. If they did love the previous game, the fact that this one is completely different really misses the mark… but that’s got to be a very small portion of the population.
Am I the only person who expects these Arkane titles to be lower sellers? The Dishonoreds have a distinct and funky setting that is awesome in my opinion, but not I’d imagine of appeal to a wide audience. I steered clear of marketing for Prey so can’t really judge.