The SMITE Gold bundle is up on GWG now. It’s got:
20 gods, 50+ skins, voice packs, and more
SMITE is a free-to-play MOBA by Hi-Rez for those out of the loop.
Is it any good? I don’t know anything about MOBAs.
I haven’t played it since it was in Beta, but I was clearly not the target market and I didn’t enjoy it.
It did successfully carve out its own niche though and rates as a success I would say. People do enjoy it.
Just spotted this video today from Ninja Theory about why they joined Microsoft.
I didn’t realise they had come that close to closing down a few years back. Considering how much I enjoyed Enslaved and Hellblade (never got to try their PlayStation exclusive output), that would have been a pretty big loss.
I hope MS gives them the leeway to create something that will resonate again with me as much as Hellblade did.
What surprised me is that Hellblade was developed by only ~20 of their ~100 people. I wonder if this means that Ninja Theory will be able to put out a bunch of “smaller” Hellblade-esque games in a shorter period of time, more quickly than some of the other studios might be able to release games?
I’ll say, selfishly I admit, that I hope this gets Hellblade onto Game Pass or maybe GwG in the near future. Looks interesting.
That game was very much worth the price of admission for me. I was glad to support the studio. I hope you get to play it if you haven’t yet.
Also, it has easy (story based) achievements. ;)
That’s how it works on paper - however, joining a big corporation and becoming part of their processes may ultimately harm any lean structures there are. Press Play or Twisted Pixel didn’t really seem to remain as productive as they were once acquired.
That said, for now, I’m happy for the Ninja Theory crew. I’m not surprised that they were on the brink of insolvency in the past. Independent studios of their size are a rare bunch these days given how many of them folded in the past decade.
You know, there was some of the usual backlash to Microsoft announcing these studio acquisitions at E3, with some people on Twitter thinking it was weird to clap for corporate money being spent on consolidation…which is right to an extent.
But yes, selfishly, what these acquisitions mean is that there will be a lot more first-party content heading to Game Pass. So that alone is a good reason for people to be excited for the announcements.
Ha, looks like I’m getting a reputation. Not unfairly though, I have to admit. But yes, I am interested, just haven’t reached that inflection point where I’m ready to put down money. And really part of that is that I didn’t like Enslaved all that much. But that might not be fair.
I enjoyed Enslaved when it was a nice simple linear story game. And then I was asked to go through a minefield, and I said, screw this, I’m out. It just seemed like a blatant attempt to stretch the play time.
Is that one backwards compatible yet? I should get through that minefield one of these days.
Ha, that’s exactly where I stopped playing, though it was more a question of having other games to play and never getting round to going back. If it’s BC I would definitely try to finish it.
It’s not, but I bet it will be soon, if it wasn’t planned already. And I won’t spoil it, but my distaste for the game is mainly because of its ending, and its weird Stockholm Syndrome thing it had going on. The whole thing just didn’t sit right with me.
When you do finally play it, do yourself a favour and play it with headphones. Even a surround sound set up does not come close to the experience with headphones. It really brings the protagonist’s world to life.
Blerg. I was all set to buy a 1X this week but I did a quick search and saw that there were a bunch of rumors and or “leaks” from a week ago stating that they were going to cut the price by $100 during E3. So now I’m waiting to see if that happens. Hurry it up, Phil.
E3 is over, man. Those rumors were wrong, it’s only discounted by fifty bucks.
Yeah, if even @stusser is capitulating on that one, you know $50 is all you’ll save.
Do you shop at Target? You can save an extra $20 via a gift card they’ll give you for buying one at $50 off. You can use that for some soap or something.
$20 soap? Who wants peasant soap? Might as well wash with lard.
Post E3 blues got you down? How about a return to the steady trickle of backward compatability releases?
edit: also on sale this week apparently, $14.99 on the Xbox store.
$14.99 seems like highway robbery to me for such an old game. I’m still tempted though, because I played their horde mode at launch when my nephew brought it with him to Thanksgiving. We all really enjoyed playing that mode during Thanksgiving weekend.