Not surprising. Square Enix has been releasing a lot of flops the past few years. A handful of good games, but a lot of bad ones, either as a dev or publisher.
Outriders was a fun game for me, but it didn't turn a profit for them at all.
Babylons Fall was just......wow was it just a terrible release.
Forspoken is pretty much "meh." The concept was awesome, execution was not.
Avengers.....'nuff said.
Valkyrie Elysium didn't do well at all.
The Quiet Man bombed hard.
NFT's. That is it. No explanation. NFTs.
Final Fantasy seems to be the only IP that is fairly reliable, as 14 is still doing great, and the FF7 remake has been popular thus far. The Tomb Raider games have also been quite successful. BUT unfortunately in the past 3-5 years, they have flopped about 3/4 of their "AAA" games they developed or published. Square used to be fairly synonymous with "good games," but they are going the way of Bioware, and they are becoming "hit and miss," with "miss" being more and more frequent as time goes on. It is unfortunate.
C'mon, I can't be the only one who chuckled with comparing it to the old game, with Luis saying to Ashley that she came "With ballistics, too." Along with "motorboat segments is that the prompt to ready spears exists" Innuendos!
In all reality though, the only thing that really stands out to me that is odd is how much they changed Ada. I know they toned down a lot of the "sexualization" in the game with Ashley and Ada getting changes, but I mean, c'mon, you can't take away the signature Red Dress. Not to mention her model has been completely reworked and doesn't really even look much like her anymore, AND her voice sounds SOOO different. Not even a subtle difference. It is like night and day difference how she talks and interacts with Leon in the trailer. She seems all serious and all business now. They took away her signature "deflecting everything through flirting" and "feigning ignorance" kind of personality that she was known for.
I actually like the changes to Ashley. She doesn't sound as irritating, and seems to act more like a grown up, rather than some coddled 5 year old who can't even be bothered to fight back and just cowers or hides in dumpsters.
Other than that, this game looks awesome and I am so excited it is only 3 weeks away!
@judaspete: I dunno. I guess that all depends on your definition of the severity of "significant." 1.1 points difference in a 10 point system is an 11% difference. Scientifically that is "significant," but in the gaming industry, I would chalk that up more to "mildly less positive reception than the previous title."
And yeah, lol. You are absolutely correct. I remember how badly people hated on 6 too. A lot still do. And we can be honest, it IS the worst one in the franchise. But a lot of the hate was from people who just "heard" it sucked, so they hated on it. Seems to be the trend with gamers the past decade. Much of the hate you hear on games are just from people who heard or read about how it sucked, and never actually played it.
Either way, I think the article should have addressed the past AND the present reception of all the games, seeing as how the article was addressing a current event based on a past game, and referenced both. As they stand now, they are all ranked higher by the player base than a "significant" amount of games nowadays. Critic reception is probably still terrible, but let us be real here, reviews by critics are generally heavily flawed by the fact that it is usually a single person reviewing a game, and their bias will influence the score "significantly." When you have tens of thousands of gamers who say the game isn't too shabby, and 1-10 critics who say it sucks, take your pick which to believe, but I tend to believe the gamers.
And goddamn, this turned into my own TED Talk. Thanks for listening!
@Barighm: Haha, that was kind of what made it so funny. GFWL didn't exist anymore, but the game wanted you to log into GFWL to play it. Of course there were 3rd party mods and patches for that, but I still found it a bit funny that it was asking for login to a service that hadn't even existed anymore for years.
Lol Resident Evil 6 "Universally Reviled" as it sits with an 80% approval rating.
And Resident Evil 5 was "significantly worse" than RE4? As it sits at an 88% approval rating, and as Gamespot ranks it as an 8.5/10.
C'mon guys, it is one thing to not check stuff on the internet so you can fact check your stories, but it's a whole new ballgame when you actually ignore your OWN WEBSITES PAST and ITS PAST ARTICLES AND RATINGS.
@Barighm: Yup, it is getting bombed pretty hard on Steam for the horrible optimization. Most players like the core gameplay itself, and the idea of the game, but are bombing it until they patch out the issues because the performance is garbage right now.
@jenovaschilld: It is weird, right? You also have others like Paul Walker, Nicholas Dingley, James Dean, Princess Diana, Ryan Dunn, etc.
I guess the same could be said about almost any cause of death if you look into it. But vehicle deaths and injuries seem to be the ones that really end up being extremely brutal.
Smashed by a 7 ton snow plow, and survives. That guy must have SOMETHING watching out for him. That is crazy!
Also, what was the "graphic details" warning about? Nothing about the rest of the article was anything even remotely graphic. All it implied was some broken bones, with a possible collapsed lung, or hemothorax due to the primary source of injury being blunt force trauma.
That guy is lucky he is alive, let alone that he didn't lose a limb or an organ from the whole ordeal. 7 ton snowplow. Damn, that is a lot of weight.
Strange, to be sure. Then again, there have been other games in the past that have been extremely suspicious and seemed like scams. I remember just months ago, people were calling out Atomic Heart for being purely a scam and being pissed at the "fake" game and the lying devs. But here it is, on Steam, ready to release in just a few weeks(Assuming it doesn't get delayed again, which nowadays is something I just chalk up to as ordinary way of game releases now.) Dead Island 2 has also been another one that has been assumed to be a scam, fake, or cancelled. But it seems to be coming out. I mean, sort of, since it keeps getting delays, so who knows about that one.
This probably is something more insidious than they are letting on, like serious issues within the company itself, and delaying a game for that long over a "trademark" issue seems very suspicious. A trademark issue can be settled out of court and be resolved in days or weeks, not 8-9 months later.
Unless they just don't want to settle and change the name. But my guess is they will lose more profits on the game for delaying it that long, rather than paying for the trademark. Unless whomever own the TM won't settle or sell, and demands it go to court in the hopes they get paid AND get to keep the TM.
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