I don’t know where else to put this, but…
Over the past few days I’ve been working my way through this 3-hour critique of every single gameplay system, game “feature”, and story plot point of the recent Kill the Justice League game – plus how it relates to the Arkham series as a whole. (I found this dude’s channel after seeing a neat teaser for an ambitious analysis of Alan Wake 2 he’s releasing soon)
It’s honestly a really good and informative watch, as he covers how the character’s archetypes reflect or go against their comic source material, how each character plays and the “skill” systems in it are, all the missions you have to go on, and how the Live-Service “play this forever” model affects every single part of this game from the gameplay systems and looter-shooter elements to characters being relegated to permanent “menu vendors” or plot points in the game not substantial enough because of the game’s refusal to nail a specific tone.
It’s also sad. Because we know this company could and should be able to do better, and it’s obvious what this game’s inevitable fate will be… Just how long it or if it’ll even get there…
Have only played the Arkham games, but I did read the plot of Gotham Knights, and while I don’t like the direction they took for the protagonists, the story they used of there basically being a war between Gotham’s two biggest secret societies - The League of Assassins and The Court of Owls - would actually make a really good story in a different medium.
The kicker with Suicide Squad is that the game was pretty much doomed from the start several years ago, as that was when everything for the game had been planned out and voice work was completed. Sefton Hill leaving means they had to work with the story he came up with, such as it is, and cobble something together from it without being able to make the changes that should’ve been made. This extends to their choices for the post launch characters as well.
There’s been so much misinformation spread regarding the game too. At the start it was “oh it disrespects Kevin Conroy” when it doesn’t and he wanted to do the role, and then it was “oh it’s not the old Rocksteady it’s a totally new team in a ship of Theseus situation” when the vast majority of the major devs who worked on Arkham Asylum had the same or promoted roles in this game, and now what’s being thrown around is that “The game lost $200 million” when it didn’t. WB made $200 million less in their games division than the previous year, but that says more about Hogwarts Legacy making so much than this game falling short. And WB being delusional enough to think that they would consistently make that level of money means that Suicide Squad would never live up to their expectations.
And it’s not like their aren’t a ton of negatives to the game: low mission variety, a short story, no offline, even worse communication than IO’s had with us, insanely overpriced cosmetics ($610.59 to buy them all right now!). However, people acting like it’s the most awful game on Earth when it’s mediocre at worst is just absurd. “It’s not worth $20, it’s not worth $10, it’s being given away for free with Prime Gaming (coming up July 16 and 17!) but I still won’t play it”. It’s the paradox of live service games, yeah the game will be better after all its content updates but if not enough people support it at its worst then it’ll never get all its updates.
And then there’s also many people who say they should just pull the plug now. If they do shut it down, it won’t be that “oh now they can work on a better game”, it will be a mass firing at Rocksteady the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since Pompeii. Honestly it’s a miracle that that hasn’t happened already.
Sorry for venting, but I had a lot to get off my chest
I’m anxious. I just asked to do an interview with Russell Crowe, who will be in my region on Friday for a concert. I strongly believe his staff will say me no, but I still keep hoping
I wanna go out to see a movie today, since therexs a good deal out. I only got time to see one this afternoon tho.
Should I go see Inside Out 2 or A Quiet Place Day One? edit: gonna go see Inside Out 2.
Honestly both of them I’m not too hyped up to see, but I’ve heard the former is actually pretty good, and the latter is also good.
I just have my misgivings about both seemingly being turned into franchises and not entirely needing each movie sequel/spinoff.
But the movies I’ve heard are good enough to break through that feeling!
We had our Summer in May, nice warm weather and lots of sun. Then June came and since then it’s been raining, cloudy and windy. I had been really looking forward to long summer days. Sitting on the porch drinking Rosé wine, enjoying the sun going setting just before midnight. But no.
I am at Brussels airport as my flight to Budapest is delayed maybe due to Microsoft outage. I came early at 4 pm to counter the long queue because of today’s outage and the flight is on time as just updated… thankfully.
Today at work I had issues with that blue screen on windows while restarting.
I get these annoying Microsoft updates every Friday at my work and personal laptop.
I am a victim of Microsoft outage
Today Apple, Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services are going to celebrate I guess
LOL
Just came to know it is a CrowdStrike outage from @schatenjager
It’s not a “Microsoft outage” - it’s a Crowdstrike outage. It happens to be limited to the Windows Crowdstrike clients so it’s only impacting Microsoft products, but Microsoft has nothing to do with it.
My trip from Copenhagen Airport to Gatwick London was only one hour delayed. It was alright.
Now I’ll just need to carry out my cleaning job at Beldingford Manor. Then return home to HQ. Might do a bit of plundering on the side, if I come across a church.
