The only 'pared-down' version of a Switch that I'd buy would be one that didn't have any of that handheld bullsh*t. In other words, a Switch that doesn't switch. Just a console. But, sadly, that's never going to happen.
I'm really glad she's okay. She's positively adorable; whenever I've seen her in interviews she's all smiles and laughter, silliness and sunshine. She seems to just radiate light and warmth. In a world that seems to be growing darker and colder every day, we need more people like her in it.
@Jinzo_111887: I get it. You don't like exclusives. Can't say I'm a fan of them either. (Hell, I'd argue that only fanboys get off on having games exclusive to their preferred platform.) I mean, I really wanted to play Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - actually, there have been a handful of Zelda games I wanted to play over the last decade or so - but Nintendo's systems just haven't really appealed to me, especially the Switch, and I couldn't justify spending a few hundred dollars to play, at best, a handful of games on each system. Doesn't mean I should throw a damn hissy fit and leave negative reviews for every Nintendo product that exists on any website/webstore that have allows consumer reviews simply because they aren't making their games available on a system I already own and prefer. Instead, I just don't play Nintendo's games. Because exclusives aren't going anywhere. People either need to just learn to accept it and move on with their lives, playing all the games that are available to them, or, if it really bothers them that much, they should just stop gaming altogether.
And it's worth noting that Metro Exodus is only exclusive to Epic's store temporarily, not in perpetuity. So, all this lashing out and review bombing isn't even about people not being able to play the game on Steam, it's about them whining that they can't play it on Steam right nooooooow, like the bunch of spoiled Veruca Salts that they are.
@xxpaaxx: I can understand why people were angry about feeling forced to use Epic's client if they wanted to play the game. Hell, I have plenty of issues with Epic's client, and won't be bullied into using it. But that's my choice. It's not a great choice - play our game on this service or don't play it - but it is still a choice. And there are games I just straight up haven't/don't play because I'd have to use an alternate service. I haven't played a Blizzard game (on PC) since Warcraft III because I won't use Battle.net - even though I loved Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo back in the day. I occasional wonder what I'm missing, but I don't feel the need to lash out like a child, review bombing all of Activision's games because Activision owns Blizzard and Blizzard won't let me play their games on Steam. It wouldn't change anything and would only serve to make me look like an irrational, insufferable d*ck.
Again, it's that sense of entitlement that people - mostly the younger crowd, but you see quite a few adult suffering from it too - have these days. The majority of people who pirate stuff - movies, music, games - are just common petty thieves. They aren't doing it to make a statement, they just feel they're entitled to have the stuff and shouldn't have to pay for it so they just steal it. The very small percentage that pirate games as an act of war against DRM...I can understand and, to some degree, I sympathize with that attitude - particularly when they pirate those games, strip out the DRM, and then redistribute them to the masses (though, sadly, its the masses of those first type of pirates) DRM-free. Because DRM isn't stopping piracy. It's only penalizing people who buy the game legitimately and are then forced them to jump through the hoops of that anti-piracy bullsh*t. It's exactly the sort of thing that pushes those honest consumers toward piracy, where they just want to play the game without the DRM, but since there's no option to buy a DRM-free version, why not just download the pirated version that's had it removed? Do that often enough and it might become hard to ever go back to paying for games, DRM or no. It's why I have nothing buy love for CD Projekt Red, who've just accepted that some percentage of dirtbags are just going to steal their sh*t and, rather than fight it with DRM, have decided that their only option is try and make damn good games that the majority of people are happy to purchase legitimately.
Looks a lot like that knockoff PS3 controller by EasySMX. But then, what did anyone expect? Of course it was going to resemble an Xbox/Dualshock/Pro controller.
I will say, it's disappointing that they didn't go with glossy, edge-colored face buttons like on the patent-based render that was going around. This looks bland and cheap.
Unless it's an entirely new cast, James Gunn writing/directing or not, I'm not even remotely interested. You can have the stink of that first movie anywhere near this thing.
@Jinzo_111887: So...if the game hadn't release for another year from now, they'd still deserve to be punished for not ensuring that people could 'finish the story' right now on their platform and service of choice? Again, that's just childish. This outrageous sense of entitlement that people have these days...
I wasn't thrilled that Deep Silver opted to go with Epic over Steam, but I understand that it's a business and they're doing what's best for them - not just now but, ideally, for the future. The reason they chose to go with the smaller market share on Epic over Steam wasn't just about a larger percentage of profits on this one game. Epic almost certainly paid them something to get that first year exclusivity but, more than that, companies are supporting Epic because they're trying to create a competitive market where they'll be able to negotiate fairer if not better deals in the future. (It's not unlike companies selling their consoles at a loss just so they can get more units into more homes, with the goal being to better establish their system and make it up on the back end through software and services.) If Epic starts buying exclusives for their service, Steam will inevitably have to start competing, whether through offering better terms or by fronting payments to get their own exclusives. So, whether they're receiving those payouts for timed exclusivity or they're getting a better percentage on profits, developers/publishers benefit from throwing their support behind Epic now, since Epic has the money - all that Fortnite money - that puts them in the best position to compete with Steam. It's no different than what you see on consoles - with the big exception being that Valve, unlike Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, no longer bothers to develop their own first-party titles. Valve has just been sponging off the profits of developers/publishers who do all the hard work, pay all the expenses for development and take all the risks of making games. And they've been able to get away with it because they've been the only game in town - unless companies want to start their own exclusive clients, which plenty of companies have and most people don't want to use for a variety of reasons.
While I'm no fan of exclusivity, I've accepted it as an unfortunate and necessary evil. Exclusivity is what gets consumers to choose your console or your service over the competition. If it's not exclusivity of software, it's exclusivity of services or features - until the other guy decides to follow suit and copy those services/features. Microsoft had achievements, people really seemed to like that, so Sony implemented trophies. Sony needed more people to subscribe to PS+ and decided to offer monthly free games to subscribers, a feature that Microsoft ultimately felt compelled to bring to their service in order to compete. We're just seeing that same thing play out now with Epic and Steam. It sucks, but that's just the way business works.
As for review bombing being better than pirating games...you're only talking by a matter of degrees. You're basically saying that lying about someone's product so that people won't buy it is better than just outright stealing it. Which, I mean, yeah, I guess. But both are pretty reprehensible behavior. End of the day, you're costing the company money. It's just a question of whether or not you're personally taking it for yourself.
@stevo302: I just find that I'd enjoy these games - The Division, Wildlands, The Division 2 - a lot more if I actually cared about anything I was doing or liked any of the NPCs with whom I was interacting. I'm not expecting writing on par with The Last of Us, but...maybe at least on par with, say, the Splinter Cell games.
But, sadly, you're not wrong that most people don't seem to care about story. Can't have the "talky bits" slowing down the pace. But I'd rather that developers put them in there for those of us who do want/need some actual story and just offer players who don't care about it the option to skip cutscenes and dialogue, distilling whatever they're supposed to do next down to a bulletpoint in the upper corner of the screen and a waypoint/icon on the map.
@Jinzo_111887: But how does not being able to buy Metro Exodus on Steam suddenly make Metro 2033 and/or Metro Last Light bad games? Because that's what happened. Those games went from having Positive/Mostly Positive ratings to Overwhelmingly Negative ratings shortly after Metro Exodus had to be pulled off Steam. People weren't rating down Metro Exodus, they were rating down those older games based on the fact that they suddenly couldn't buy the new game on Steam. As such, their ratings had nothing to do with the quality of those previous games, making those reviews completely irrelevant.
Those people were certainly entitled to their opinions and their outrage, but trashing the old games simply because the new one wasn't going to be available on their service of choice was inexcusable. They could've taken to Twitter or Facebook with their outrage. They could've started an online petition (for all the good those things do). They could have inundated Deep Silver's office with letters, emails, phone calls, texts. They could've at least tried to conduct themselves with some level of civility instead of acting like spoiled children throwing tantrums.
And it wasn't entirely clear who those people were even mad at. Epic, for stealing Metro Exodus away from Steam? Valve, for not fighting harder or offering Deep Silver a better deal to keep the game on Steam? Deep Silver, for being "greedy" and trying to get a better cut of profits from an alternate marketplace or taking whatever payout Epic offered them to make the game exclusive to their store? And what did they really hope to accomplish by review bombing those old games? Because, honestly, I'm surprised Deep Silver didn't pull 2033 and Last Light from Steam after that and make them exclusive to Epic's store, if for no other reason than to leave those unjustified negative reviews behind.
I feel like the lack of a strong plot and interesting/memorable characters should really drop that score down to a 6 (maybe 7 if you really want to stretch and be generous).
Why is it so friggin' hard for these games to have a compelling story? If there's nobody at Ubisoft who can write worth a damn, then bring in a ringer. Or, at the very least, have the common decency to finally take Tom Clancy's damn name off these games, because it's become somewhere between laughable and offensive, not to mention totally f***ing meaningless. Is Ubisoft even aware that Tom Clancy was a f***ing author? Like, wrote a dozen or so bestsellers? Poor dude must be spinning in his grave.
While there are plenty of reasons to hate EA, to their credit, they haven't (yet) released Madden's Stadium Builder, a game that contains no actual football, or Madden's Kitten Bowl, where you can't actually make the cats do anything - because they're cats - and you just watch them occasionally chase after balls, playfully attack each other, or fall asleep on the field, while a Vocaloid Madden makes forced, cringey banter with D-tier celebrities.
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