Game News 2.0

Back 4 Blood won't get any new content; studio is working on its next project

That would be about the time the season ends?

Was the original version of the game released on PC?

Rumbleverse shutting down on February 28th and Knockout City shutting down on June 6th.

PC players will be able to have Player Hosted games of Knockout City after that date.

In unsurprising news, the release date for Dead Island 2 has been brought forward ag..... wait.... brought forward?!

Ah I’m gutted to hear that. I was thoroughly enjoying myself as a gamer lately but I didn’t realise that I shouldn’t have been.

But the benchmark gaming authority of RTE have spoken. At least now I’ll have enough spare time to keep on top of the wealth of cutting edge comedy that RTE produce!

I don't entirely disagree with the article. It certainly raises a lot of fair points. However, when you consider that a game like Elden Ring has come forward and does feel like it's a proper step forward in gaming and runs counter to the argument of the article, yett the description of Elden Ring in the article is incredibly reductive and dismissal, it makes the article feel like it's coming from a place of someone who is simply jaded with modern games and only focusing on the AAA side of things. Whereas you do have some AAA games like Elden Ring, but also a wealth of new and exciting smaller games constantly coming forward. Not to mention that AAA games simply take longer to develop these days.

AAA studios will always chase lowest common denominator audiences, and sequels upon sequels upon spin-offs upon sequels to the spin-offs etc.

And it's hilarious as most of the PS exclusives people harp on about are basically just reskinned open world games. Even when they get a sequel to a tight enough game (god of war) they turn it into a collectathon full of horrendous padding.

The golden age of music, movies and gaming were all roughly when you were 15.

Still bummed out that EA cancelled that new Respawn shooter? Maybe these guys will make it all better some day. They're basically a new studio made up of Titanfall and Apex Legends veterans. They include Mohammad Alavi, former Titanfall 2 senior game designer and supposedly the lead of the cancelled Titanfall Legends. One to keep an eye on, although don't expect anything soon.

"His criticism of Elden Ring's combat mechanics highlighted this (I'm not a fan of Elden Ring) when he states "its mechanics feel like something from 2004: hit one button to dodge, the other to attack. It’s a common complaint: you’re either dodging or parrying then countering" - didn't fancy using any of spells, pal? Or the stealth?"

Not even just that, but the variety in ER's combat comes from build types, the number of different enemies and boss types, the spells, and an insane amount of different weapons and weapon arts, which makes it one of the most varied combat systems in games in years, and that's ignoring the various consumables and stuff you can use against enemies.

I mean, Christ on a bike, if he complained that Elden Ring isn't as well presented in terms of story, characters, motion capture kind of stuff, or that a lot of the games systems aren't well explained or something, fair enough. I'd disagree with some of that but could see why someone would say that or why it'd put them off if they value those kind of things (which given their praise of the likes of Horizon Zero Dawn, probably are things they value highly in games), but f*ck sake the one thing you can't really knock Elden Ring down on is the variety of the combat system.

A lot of games like Horizon, God of War etc make you such a tank and your enemies hit so softly that you only really die if you're just being a bit ignorant and trying to belt through everything with little care/focus. But that doesn't carry over to Elden Ring or other Souls games, where the entire combat system is built around risk v reward. Take the risk to time a parry right or to dodge an attack to try get a backstab, and you'll be rewarded for pulling it off. Trying to just stand in front of the enemy and tanking hits like you would in the big AAA games the author seems to like, and you're going to have a bad time.

I don't think he's just glossing over indies as I think the way he mentions them at the end of the article is his way of saying that the quality of indies as a whole hasn't really changed, but that the focus of the article is more about the decline of AAA games.

I never got into Civ V but really enjoyed VI a lot. I think Civ IV remains my all time favourite though. TBH it probably has less to do with the merits of each game and more to do with what was going on in my life and how much time I had to devote to learning and mastering them.

I generally trust Firaxis in whatever direction they choose to go, they've never made a bad mainline Civ game. Would have been more excited by an Alpha Centauri 2 announcement though.