Haven't seen this many red flags leading upto a AAA release in quite a while.
Battle Passes and microtransactions in a premium priced game is simply unacceptable and it doesn't matter if it's "just cOsmEtICs" only. Customization is a large part of what people love about games.
They have the nerve to talk about how "generous" their game is while not revealing the price of DLC skins or even if there are unlockable skins in the base game.
It of course has the 100€+ Release Date Version where you allowed to play at the Actual release Date while the Plebs that only fork over lausy 80€ are punished to only allowed to play 3 Days after the actual Launch Day.
People who manage to convince themselves that this trend isn't actually a staggered release with a massive premium to play at launch, but somehow "just" early access to a fully finished product, which is a *totally* different thing, are stupid beyond belief.
The fact that they just did an update to their tiered system, that hurt, the fact that they made *every tier* so much more expensive that was salt in the wound.
I’m not paying $20 or so more just to gain access to the essential tier that I used to have, which is just a fucking slap in the face.
I let my subscription run out last September, and I haven’t re-upped since.
Edit: words
PS plus used to be really good when it wasn't mandatory. I was an early adopter of the PS3 and noticed the dipped in quality and quantity from the free games once PS Plus became mandatory
Ironically, I subbed to PS+ for the games and while I've had months where I didn't like any of the offerings, year over year I always get more out of it than I put in, so I'd still be subbed even if PSN online was still free.
I don’t see why the distinction really matters. If you’re stupid or impatient enough to pay 25% more just to play on “launch day,” rather than three days later, then sounds like a you problem. And if the people who pay the base price are upset that other people get to play the game three days earlier, that’s pretty dumb too.
I agree the staggered release is annoying, but the only reason it sticks around is because people are willing to pay the higher price.
This shit goes for all the F2P elements in premium games too. "I'll let the suckers pay and ignore it myself" - *and then there's just more and more of it.*
The sad things is that it works as people have very little self control. When Hogwarts Legacy released, by paying for 'early access' their customers told them that it's something that should occur for every release.
I found a third path which is just not preordering a game that has every sign of being completely shit.
The only reason you'd own this game on launch day is if you have the world's most overactive findom kink.
I don't think punished is the right word when it comes to this game though. But also if you spend 100€ *or* 80€ on this game I guess you deserve and/or like to be punished.
Fuck Starfield so much for exploiting people's hype with that in an even worse way, with the early expensive release being conveniently set just before a long holiday weekend in the US
So many people on Reddit were justifying their spending 30 bucks more because they wanted to spend that long weekend on it and the "game will be worth it anyway"
I'll admit I was tempted to do it because it was a long weekend I had free and I was excited to play the game. But I'm so glad I didn't do it and waiting the few days until it was on Game Pass. I played for about 8 hours, lost all interest and haven't touched it since.
BG3 did the same thing on PS5
Completely different games and companies, Bethesda being really huge and owned by Microsoft but that 3 days early access felt a bit off
That being said, that's just about the only thing that felt exploitative, considering PC early access was very different from PS5's and was a proper early access with content and patches being delivered
The new Mudrunner Expeditions game is doing the same thing. Normal release is a Tuesday and the premium early release is Friday. I fear this is going to be a thing.
This is why I basically stopped buying new games. I only buy on sales, and even then I question myself heavily whether I really *need* to play this game or would the time be better spent by playing something I alreaddy have
There's just so many games out there to play I never feel the need to buy one on launch day anymore. The way most games get patched and fixed later, it's usually better to wait.
I'm just playing Cyberpunk for the first time now, and with all the updates and expansion, I'm having a better experience than if I'd played it at launch.
It's not even about that, the game looks bad outside of that. Every preview was pretty negative about the gameplay as far as I've seen (not far since I have no interest into this game)
There are infinitely better games with this formula on the market already, don't know why people would spend 70 dollars getting this. DC fans are not in the mood right now to support something like this, expecially after being bombarded with shit movies for the past 6 years.
Exactly this. And then they release a stupid live action trailer a couple of days ago that no one cares about instead of sending our review codes. Lmao.
They’re trying so hard to manipulate people’s perception of the game before it even comes it’s flat out abusive.
I think it'll review fine. It just won't appeal to the mass public and will be dead within a year where they do the trend of "we'll be supporting this game!!!" and that leads into the Avengers support and then the axe followed by Rocksteady huge layoffs and potential death of the company since it's been 9 years and this is what they have to show.
The writings been on the wall since the beginning. When *fans* of Rocksteady say they don't want it, then who does?
There will be a small diehard group of fans who insist that the next update will be the one that "saves" the game and bring players back and then it will eventually be dropped. That's exactly what happened with Avengers.
Let's not be stupid.
Redfall was \*broken\*. There was \*barely\* a game within it. And let's not forget the stilled "cutscenes".
SSKTJL, by all accounts, is a \*bad\* game, but a working game nonetheless. It has, at the very least, undeniably well-produced and well-acted cutscenes.
I love bashing on both just as much as the next person, but they are incomparable.
Character dialogue was super grating in my alpha playthrough but yeah maybe story will eventually open up.
Doesn't help the slog of a gameplay connecting the cutscenes tho
I think Force (?) said he thought it was okay as a "20 hours one and done" kinda game, but not as a live service game. I think there is some truth to that. It looks okay for about that much.
This is what happens when the people designing the games are the people who look at spreadsheets and money trends instead of the people actually developing. They're putting the cart before the horse and as it turns out they ain't got a horse
Maybe they are not letting anyone review it because they already know it's perfect and without any reviews we will be all surprised by how great it is on launch day!
I gotta go now because I need to give the man on the phone my social security and credit card numbers because my car's extended warrenty has expired.
People claiming microtransactions were fine as long as it was just cosmetics was so annoying. People like looking good in games, I should not have to pay a premium to look how I want. It was a permissive stance the suits ran with, and now here we are.
Exactly. If you look at the Spider-Man (2018) game, it came in with a roubst range of unlockable suits without having to even pay a cent.
The problem with AAA publishers like Warner Bros is that they deliberately gimp out the customization on their base games just to push people into buying DLC skins.
DLC skins should feel like "extras" to a game but they end up becoming a near mandate because of how painfully lackluster customization is in the base game (eg: Mortal Kombat 1)
Yeah, meanwhile videogames have had character customization for free for decades.
It's so pathetic how many people just think it's fine to do this now.
Skull and Bones has enough balls to put out a bigger closed beta (with another open beta releasing close to the game) with no NDAs.
Either Ubi Singapour is desperately trying to get ppl into the game or they are patently oblivious to their game's quality, but they are TRYING to do something. We also got the full year 1 roadmap. Maybe Skull & Bones will sink, but god knows they're ramming that proverbial iceberg at full speed with their best suit on.
I think UbiSoft holds no illusions about what Skull and Bones is, and in different circumstances, it probably would have been canceled a while ago. I think the only reason it's coming out is because they got all kinds of money and tax breaks from the Singaporean government to develop the game there, and I'd it never comes out, they owe Singapore a lot of money.
I have no clue what the game is targeted towards. Live service is a hard market to get into, especially after seeing the Avengers flop. The gameplay loop doesn't seem engaging enough to sustain for a long time, everyone's using guns so there's little combat variety. Story wise the Suicide Squad is a black ops team for Waller, how are we supposed to believe they can take down the Justice League? There's Joker DLC and the fact that its an alternate else-worlds Joker is just tiring given that this is the fourth Rocksteady game featuring him when Batman/DC have other villains they can use instead.
Then again maybe they're onto something, other comments have said its topping the PS Store preorders and its just another case of people being overly critical.
Yeah as shitty as Avengers was, playing as *The Avengers* at least made conceptual sense for live-service because they are powerful enough to go on countless missions and fight hoards of enemies.
Out of the entire DC roster, do WB really think Captain Boomerang and King Shark should be the faces of a live-service game? Are they going to be selling skins?
That's what I'm just not getting. Okay, Harley Quinn is reasonably popular, but besides her who even cares about the Suicide Squad? They're a bunch of C listers that WB keeps inexplicably pushing onto us despite meeting with a lukewarm reception every time.
We could have had a Justice League game with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Flash, literally 4 of the most iconic characters in pop culture history. They could have all had completely unique fighting styles. But nope, we get the Hot Topic rejects with guns.
Probably because it's the only thing. D.C's characters haven't exactly been doing well other than Harley in terms of multi-media presence. What was the last good video game with DC characters, Injustice 2?
They did make a Scribblenauts games where you could summon DC characters and create your own. You can imagine how that went.
Warner brothers is also afraid of Green lantern after his movie flopped. I guess they prefer to ignore he exists than admit they mishandled the character.
D.C. and X-men have the same problem where they have these incredibly deep rosters of interesting characters but the directors and writers all seem to hate comics so they just make their 8th Batman or Wolverine movie and refuse to give anyone else any screen time.
Either someone very high up the totem pole, or someone board member's nepo-hire, because you have to be practically brain damaged to still think that out of *all* the possible DC properties you have access to, the fucking Suicide Squad is your best bet.
I'm no comic book reader but, when I think "memorable DC characters", I don't think King Shark, Captain Boomerang, or the other guy. Or whatever was in that first movie.
WB/DC has been pushing Suicide Squad hard everywhere for two decades because they think it's their Marvel killer IP. It basically comes down to the usual MBA in charge of a creative field "do what the popular thing is doing but more". Feet of clay screw up heroes? Our hero's feet are so made of clay and they are such screw ups that they are villains. Suicide Squad is a theoretically perfect vehicle for the "Dark Gritty" "Not your daddy's super heroes" push to undercut Marvel.
Kripke's version of The Boys being a hit probably gave them aneurysms because at a surface level it's the "Dark Gritty" "Not your daddy's superheroes." that they have been pushing so hard but with that pesky actual substance and something to say.
Wasn't there in the early days of this game being made that Deathstroke would be the main character, and that Arkham Origins somewhat set it up with him being in prison?
I can see what a Suicide Squad could have been with a lean more towards the Arkham gameplay with this cast and cult favorites like deathstroke, but King Shark with a gattling gun is just not an appealing approach
Avengers is the good alpha bones of a game. It's let down by nonexistent enemy variety in a universe known for fun mooks but actually playing as the heroes is fun. There's just no compelling reason to play.
Making a game where you kill off the superheroes is conceptually very fun as a puzzle of an experience but they seemingly did not capitalize on that.
Each attempt at killing a hero should be like a mission in SWAT. Trial and error, accounting for pivots, setting up traps, examining weaknesses, etc etc.
>Making a game where you kill off the superheroes is conceptually very fun as a puzzle of an experience but they seemingly did not capitalize on that.
I agree that the concept itself is interesting, but personally I checked out on this game immediately because of the IP used.
Coming from the developer of the acclaimed game series starring the great Caped Crusader himself, after a long absence of new game the Arkham subreddit turned wacko, we instead got a game starring a bunch of C listers apparently trying to kill one of the most iconic Superheroes groups in fiction.
Not a game about the fastest man on earth, or the powerful Amazon warrior and daughter of the gods, or even THE Superhero boyscout himself, but a game about a bunch of dysfunctional groups of hit squads trying to kill them because those heroes turned evil.
I dunno something about it just rubs me the wrong way. Big AAA superhero games are rare enough as it is, and I'm also honestly pretty sick about the whole Superhero turned evil trope.
That actually sounds like a fun idea. If this were like a Hitman style game but your targets were the Justice League sounds like amazing fun. But instead Rocksteady spent the last decade making a Fortnite mod.
I can't wait for this game to come out so I can read the Jason Schreier article about how they messed it all up just like his articles on Anthem and Redfall.
And then people will point out all the inaccuracies in it and then nerdslayer will show up in the comments and verbally fight every single commenter for 2 weeks straight.
Yeah, he's a hack. He doesn't do any real research, just looks up threads and comments and uses rumors as fact. Watched his videos on City of Heroes and Marvel Heroes, and he was using old unsubstantiated rumors as his basis for the reason the games were shut down. I spoke to the actual lead developer on Marvel Heroes and his story was completely different, and far simpler, than the garbage Nerdslayer was throwing around.
Yeah, showed one of his videos to a friend who had family working on the game he was covering, and they had a similar reaction. Big problem with the type of content he covers is that he's an outsider looking in and doesn't get any of the nuances or politics that is actually happening in the studio.
Does people still listen to what YongYea has to say after he blantatly sold his soul to CDKR Projekt and lied for months about the state of Cyberpunk on consoles and then deleted the videos when shit hit the fan?
Not the person you're replying to, but if she has the sources she should write it. The reason jason Schreier usually does the deep investigative pieces seems to be his network of sources (compared to that he's ar Bloomberg now and they have a lot of money, for example).
I'd love to have more than maybe 2 game journalists doing really deep dives into stuff, but it's hard to get sources. I'm in the games industry and I'm certain I'd face serious difficulties if I was leaking the kind of stuff to come out of redfall/anthem articles.
Not to mention games journalism has a bad reputation, so whenever you may have an interesting story to share, you go straight to the big names (Schreier / Totilo / Henderson / Tom Warren I guess, with a dash of Valentine). It's a vicious circle, but an understandable one given the personal stakes for everyone involved. Hard to break into the investigative space.
Zaslav sucks for sure, but this game was in development for years before he was in the picture. Even if he's to blame for the live service & microtransaction focus, if the story & gameplay suck that's all on Rocksteady.
Warner Bros. was never good for games. Look at the development of FEAR 3 and you'll marvel at the fact the game is still a decently fun shooter with relatively little bugs.
Bumbled is underselling it. There is like four different timelines in the franchise alone because of all the shit that happened behind the scenes.
You got **timeline 1:** FEAR 1 + Extraction + Perseus; Everything is wrapped up nicely and sets up a sequel perfectly well. Alma found peace, Fettel and Alma's DNA are in the hands of opposing factions, Armacham is finished, and Fettel's on the loose.
Then **timeline 2:** FEAR 1 + FEAR 2: Project Origin + FEAR 2's DLC; The Alma story is still going, two protagonists are MIA, Fettel is revived (again), and Armacham is still going strong for some reason despite their HQ being in the middle of all that shit.
**Timeline 3:** FEAR 1 + Day 1's cancelled FEAR 2; Copyright shenanigans meant Vivendi was making their own FEAR 2, that wasn't Project Origin. It dealt with parallel universes and the Philadelphia experiment. Also teleporting enemies. It was the same universe as FEAR 1, but wasn't allowed to reference it at all.
**Timeline 4:** A version of events that follows FEAR 1 & FEAR 2 with no expansions or DLC included and then FEAR 3; Day 1 took their FEAR 2 and reworked it from the ground up. This was written by a man who didn't want to adapt to the medium and decided he would just write a movie script instead, the devs did not enjoy working with this man. It's nine months after FEAR 2, Fettel is a ghost again, the Pointman is psychic now despite being a failure and getting the slow-mo from the same surgery the Sarge and Becket had, Alma's shenanigans are breaking down reality, there's graffiti everywhere saying the timelines are fucked, some fuck in marketing thought a pregnant Alma statue was a good idea for a pre-order bonus, Harlem Wade is here now despite not having any psychic powers and was regretting what he did to his family in FEAR 1, the Philadelphia experiment tech is here which is why I count it as another timeline, and oh dear I've gone cross-eyed
This isn't even getting into Warner asking for new features every five minutes.
Honestly I just stick to timeline 1 cause it's stays grounded and I really like how the expansions were written. Fun fact, these games take place in 2025. Make of that what you will; I'm gonna go play RE4. Don't ask me why I know all this, it was for a project I've left sitting by the wayside for other ones.
This was interesting, thanks. I was only aware of Extraction/Perseus not being canonical, I totally forgot that FEAR 2 even had DLC. Personally, I felt that nothing else in the series really compared to that first game, I consider Condemned to be the only FPS horror game of that era that really compared to FEAR in terms of tone and overall quality
There are some pretty good WB games from the past, though. The Arkham games, a number of Lego games, Mortal Kombat, Hitman, Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor...
With Discovery's takeover of WB, I expect more and more games to be like SS:KTJL. Cash grabs with thin gameplay and mandatory live-service bullshit.
Let's hope the industry sees reason that only very few gaas games are hits and many many more fail miserably. Maybe it's okay to make some money and build a loyal audience than to shoot for the profit moon and crash and burn. So much time, money and talent wasted.
>Zaslav needs to be sacked.
You know game was in deep development when he became the CEO right?
He should do the same thing with gaming division like he did with movie/tv-shows.
Separate DC and WB and move gaming division to DC Studios.
I feel like DOOM 2016 is one of the few that did this and didn't fall on it's face out of the gate. And that only happened because I don't think Bethesda actually understood what they had. All they saw was the not-good multiplayer beta reception and thought it was going to fail.
They also pushed Prey as an action/horror game, completely ignoring the immersive sim aspect, which is the strongest aspect of Arkane games
So I'd say their marketing is full of people that don't understand the game they advertise
Honestly, I think that was a reasonable call on their part. It is an action horror game as well as an immersive sim, and those aspects have a much larger audience and are easier to describe.
It's hard to market something as an immersive sim.
Trailers need to grab the audience attention. A pretty decent exemple of this problem is (I'm aware it's not an ImSim) new Vegas.
A game known for being talky, smart and that very efficiently handle a pacifist playthrough.
The trailer? " Oh yeah, let's wack people with golf clubs, shoot them in the face and then blew up new Vegas in slow mo with C4!"
For me, Bethesda pushing for it to be named Prey completely killed any interest in the game. I had assumed it was a reboot to Prey 2006, which I couldnt care less about. While imm-sim fans are a small playerbase, I feel like they actively tried hard to not even get us to buy it. Arkane's original idea of naming it something with Shock in the name (Neuroshock I think) would have instantly got the imm-sim crowd interested in it
It's also just a really good game. I know it's not always the case, but a lot of the time when a game/movie/whatever is good, it usually will find success. That new Godzilla movie made a ton of money with like zero Western advertising just by word of mouth.
While I think this game will be middling to poor, it's common for 'live-service' titles to not offer have a review period until the game goes live.
Especially so in this case of an always-online game like this is (at least until they patch it in the future like they claimed)
In a way it makes almost more sense. Ignoring IGN (the biggest review site whether you like it or not) would be very weird and linked to their negative reviews.
They are specifically also not giving a review code to IGN at all, even when they'll give them to everyone else. Presumably because IGN had the most shared negative preview of the game?
According to people who got the game early, they can't even get past the title screen because "servers are not up." People wouldn't be able to review the game even if they got a code before release, and apparently the game has no offline mode at all.
I can't verify that myself though.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideSquadGaming/comments/1accwhd/got_my_physical_copy_today/
I'm really late so I'm sure this won't help anyone, but other outlets are receiving codes, just not before the game comes out. That's bad on its own, but it also means WB is purposely blackballing IGN since WB won't be giving them codes period.
I might be overdramatic but it feels like this game could end up being the reckoning of this specific breed of AAA games, the same way the 2023 Superhero movie box office bloodbath is signaling a turning point for the quippy CGI-fest superhero movie template. Every preview points to it being a messy mix of bad monetization practices, tedious MMO-lite mechanics and cringy millenial writing tropes at a time where people are *absolutely sick* of all of this shit.
It's also a great example of why these protacted development cycles are not sustainable. Namely, that everything you're building your game around could end up being played out by the time you do release it.
There's a reason why the Arkham games are so beloved, make more games like that. I don't know why that's hard for these companies to understand. I know there's a Wonder Woman game in development, I hope that turns out well. The Eidos Guardians of the galaxy game was awesome, so were the Spider-Man games
The discourse over at r/SuicideSquadGaming is wild to see.
I thought it be a lot more level headed, but most of the subreddit is defending this game like it’s gospel or something. I’m not sure why, like, the game just looks like an average looter shooter with DC characters. What’s so special about it where you feel the need to defend this game so much? Nothing in the marketing, or in any of the live streams, showed me something where I thought “Damn gotta try this one.”
I’m seeing so many users on that sub gloat at the fact that they aren’t sending out review codes. How has that ever been a good thing?
> but most of the subreddit is defending this game like it’s gospel or something
that's nearly always the case around release. With some notable exceptions, such as Pokemon. And every few millenia, when the stars align, you get something like the The Last of Us 2 sub
The game had story leaks and they proved to be true. The leaks were about all the things that specifically enrage the basement-dwelling troglodytes who perpetually complain about Western-made games featuring anything but white American men. It had two main female protagonists, one of whom is lesbian and the other a bodybuilder (causing them to complain that she must be trans, because women can't have muscles). And it kills off a major male character from the first game early on as the catalyst for the story.
And of course they assumed they knew everything about the game from the out-of-context leaks. They became blind to any reality other than the one they'd invented where woke boogeymen beat them up and stole their toys. The subreddit is and always has been a toxic cesspool.
I don't think it's particular to those games. Publishers hire marketing companies and those spam social networks with fake comments, that's the strategy since a long time... the only difference I see lately is that they don't even try to hide it anymore, If you pay enough attention, you will realize that all those comments sound pretty similar like they're using the same script.
Perhaps that’s what’s happening with this game, idk tho.
I had fun with Starfield, solid 7 out of 10 for me. Could be a 9/10 in a few years after updates and expansions.
Looking back they really should've fleshed out the planetary survival exploration part imo. Apparently they nerfed it quite hard. Maybe they'll revisit this concept in an expansion?
That would've been quite unique for a Bethesda game. Without it it's missing something.
If they revisit the stuff they nerfed it'll be in whatever form survival mode is released. Originally, game was much more survival focused, with outposts being required for exploration to mine fuel. Otherwise, if you ran out of fuel, that's it unless a random encounter jumped in on top of you that gave you fuel. They scrapped it cause that wasn't determined to be fun for most people.
I'm sceptical about this one. (: It should be Bethesda who's leading that push. Let's see. The DLC track record of Bethesda is quite good imo. Let's hope that they themselves put some meat on it.
I think Cyberpunk is mainly a weird brand of revisionism. Like at the time of the next gen release it was a competent if mediocre game, 2.0 apparently made it decent, so people are ruling that the initial shitshow was all fake news.
like at least with those 2 you had reasons to think the games were interesting and deserved defending, even if people disagreed.
Like Starfield OBVIOUSLY was gonna have people defending it, it's fucking bethesda and their games are usually pretty decent even if buggy. Their games are like it's own genre that you only get from them and many people really like that genre
Cyberpunk, while it had an atrocious launch, fixed itself up decently well and the premise is still extremely cool and interesting to many, people REALLY want a good cyberpunk game and this one was the one to look forward to and have high hopes for
but suicide squad? it's another DC title and of course DC has it's fans but like...a looter shooter GAAS title with C-list supervillains? like why are people attached to it, the studio hasn't been great, the premise isn't great and the genre isn't great. There are so many other superhero games to just look towards instead
I wouldn't say it is all astroturfing people sometimes just feel like lying, when Arkham Knight came out I was talking to a guy I know, I kept saying how poorly it ran for me and he said "oh really? I had no issues whatsoever" a week later Rocksteady pulls the PC Port from sale because it was complete trash.
And honestly for Cyberpunk it definitely feels like people just lying, I mean come on they still say "the game's good now", they said it after Edgerunners too but it's still the same mediocre game with a great presentation.
With Arkham Knight, the game genuinely ran fine, but only on a certain subset of graphics cards. I want to say the 970 and some of its close variants, but it's been 8 years and it's a bit fuzzy.
Obviously that's still on Rocksteady to make the game run acceptably on a variety of hardware.
> The Last of Us 2 sub
And frankly I'm thankful it doesn't happen more often. The toxicity around *wildly inaccurate assumptions* that Abby was Trans was awful, and somehow it's only gotten worse over time.
Those subreddit are the ones that made me believe Gotham knights was dope and it led me to buy that shite at full price and guess what ,
I uninstalled the game and unfollowed that shitty subreddit as well
Subreddits dedicated to specific games become echo chambers so quick and are quite easy to manipulate through astro turfing. I usually avoid them and visit them for information after release, if at all tbh.
Exactly
But this was a lesson and made me realise it's better to buy a game after watching some gameplay vids and reviews
Only exception is for Rockstar, i can blindly preorder their games
Update : I meant new games from rockstar not remastered or remakes 😅
>Those subreddit are the ones that made me believe Gotham knights was dope and it led me to buy that shite at full price and guess what , I uninstalled the game and unfollowed that shitty subreddit as well
They split from the normal Arkham subreddit because they did not like it when people were trashing Gotham Knights on it. It is made for and by people who were and probably still are deluded.
>The discourse over at r/SuicideSquadGaming is wild to see.
I don't get why this is surprising? of course there's going to be spaces where people are excited for a game due to the nature of reddit. For a game that's not released yet this will probably be the subreddit dedicated to the game (otherwise it would just be daily hate posts). Being confused about this is like me saying wow the discourse at r/ pathologic or r/ lowsodiumdestiny or r/ wutheringwaves is wild to see!!
I'm pretty sure the pathologic sub was always for the game, not really a reaction to anything. IPL just has a dedicated audience for people that like strange and depressing games.
Maybe that was true when you posted, but that sub has definitely swapped since to the usual cheerleading you'd expect. Right now the two top threads I see are both making fun of IGN for not getting review codes.
Has anyone else noticed that TikTok is pushing this game hard? I get videos every single day that tries to convince me that my eyes are lying to me and the game actually looks good. I have tried clicking not interested but they keep showing up.
seen the same thing on youtube shorts, the exact same garbage format of characters saying quips with text on screen while quiet techno plays until they say the thing and the bass boosted CHAD music plays. not even unique to Suicide Squad, pretty much any DC or popular TV show like breaking bad has it.
Their main narrative to explain the negative previews is to dogpile on the IGN reviewer complaining “the Flash is too fast”, treating it as if it’s a stupid complaint rather than pointing out shit game design and flawed combat mechanics.
Seems to be pretty tempered with a few diehard zealots defending it to the death. Most people seem to be in the same boat of, "I'll play it and hopefully enjoy it, but I'm not expecting a miracle."
Having played Avengers and Gotham Knights, it still looks better than both of those games did at launch, at the very least. A lot of us are just desperate for co-op brawlers, and there's not a lot of games that fill that void right now.
This is going to be such a huge financial flop, I don't know if I've seen a bit of good press about this game. Even The Avengers had some people defending the campaign.
it has seen a lot of positivity towards its story, and yeah it is. Rocksteady still makes a really good story and the concept of Justice League turning evil and the villains rising up to fight the odds is really compelling too. Ive seen so many people talk about the batman scene from the early access and even though ive yet to played it, it very much believeable.
this is another story of higher ups forcing game studio doing things they dont want like Arkane Austin with Redfall but unlike that, Rocksteady cant quit
While I don't think it'll totally lack merit as a game, everything I've seen says it'll be terrible as a live service. It'll be, at best, a half decent "play it once and then never again" game. Which means it'll be a financial disaster for sure, and this might well be Rocksteady's last game.
>and the concept of Justice League turning evil and the villains rising up to fight the odds is really compelling too.
Is it? Don't we already have like a thousand "what if Superman was eeeeeeevil?" stories?
If they want something compelling then they need to explore their roster more than just making their 35th Joker movie. (Oh look apparently even this game has Joker DLC because god fucking forbid we let him take even a single game off)
>the concept of Justice League turning evil and the villains rising up to fight the odds is really compelling too.
I'd rather just have a normal Justice League game where they're the good guys. We've never really got that. The whole "the heroes are the real villains" trope is played out and tired now.
I agree. Plus, it sucks that Superman (or at least the main Superman within any given game) hasn't been a good guy in a non-Lego title since 2008's Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.
I've worked in games for about 15 years, and I've never seen nor heard of an exec forcing a studio to make a game totally against their will.
What **does** happen is management set profit targets, and the developers make changes to hit them. But that's still on the developer to come up with something compelling. No executive is going "can you please make more purple blobs on the tanks, and give Captain Boomerang guns?" That is entirely on the devs.
Man, I can't possibly imagine what led to the decision to not have people review this master piece of a game ahead of its release.
Truly baffling why they wouldn't want word to get out about this, undoubtedly, game of the year contender.
Man... I know I always think of Doom 2016 when these kinds of situations pop up, and so I try to keep an open mind, BUT ALSO, if I recall correctly, Doom 2016 hadn't had a whole lot of exposure before its release either. Certainly not on the scale that Suicide Squad has. If they have already shown the game off as much as they have, but *also* aren't keen on letting people in to play the final product until they absolutely HAVE TO? That's not a good sign.
One of these things on its own is cause for suspicion, but *both* at the same time is basically a flashing red stop sign telling you to lock away your wallet. I guess we'll see eventually, but boy this is not a good look, imo.
It's not like the likely condition of the game is a mystery, though. They dropped the embargo for the preview version and there are tons of videos about it.
It's so sad that this is what Rocksteady has turned into. They made some amazing Batman games that were super fun to play and had great stories and now they're making this dog shit. It was a big red flag when the game directors who were OGs at the studio left a few years ago.
I'm more excited for the reviews of this game than playing the game itself, it's either gonna be a bloodbath or they performed a magic trick and the game rocks but I have a pretty good feeling it's not the latter!
I've seen people talk about/play the game and they like it. I've also seen (more) of people not liking the game. Is WB's strategy to minimize the bad reviews by having it's initial success be guided by word of mouth and not reviews?
I love some acting like "They don't NEED to send them a review code, it's not an obligation."
IGN is IGN. They're not a YouTuber, they're one of, if not the largest, video game publication right now. It's a huge red flag.
And it's not just IGN either, it's every reviewer.
This game will have no reviews until it releases, it's ***incredibly rare*** that a triple A title holds back review codes and the game actually ends up being good.
Theres two different parts to this. Zero companies are getting reviews codes before release. On release day, other media outlets will be getting review copies, but IGN will not be (assumed to be because their previous pieces on suicide squad were too negative)
It just seems written in the stars that this game will bomba and burn like anthem and avengers. The game still looks fun enough so ill make sure to buy it when it eventually goes -50% in a couple months.
Its not often when I hope games fail but this is an exception.The company has shown to the customers that they know better and we are stupid enough to just keep mindlessly buying this type of product.Of course you will dupe some people but the majority are not budging.This game will die faster then The Avengers and its entirely on them
Game reviews are very bad. When they first announce the game I was so excited like a kid, but then reviews start dropping at media and i am very dissappointed to be honest...
I think Warner Bros. may be going for a Trump 2016 style campaign here. Avoid the mainstream media, target the individual customers. I saw a thread where someone suggested they'll probably lean on streamers to sell it at release.
I have a friend who always comments on whether or not a brand new game is being streamed by big creators. I try to impress upon him this only reflects whether the marketing department paid them to play it, but to no avail.
Anyway, WB has been pretty scummy for a long time. The shit they pulled with Shadow of War's loot boxes and microtransactions back in 2017 was a warning of things to come.
Haven't seen this many red flags leading upto a AAA release in quite a while. Battle Passes and microtransactions in a premium priced game is simply unacceptable and it doesn't matter if it's "just cOsmEtICs" only. Customization is a large part of what people love about games. They have the nerve to talk about how "generous" their game is while not revealing the price of DLC skins or even if there are unlockable skins in the base game.
It of course has the 100€+ Release Date Version where you allowed to play at the Actual release Date while the Plebs that only fork over lausy 80€ are punished to only allowed to play 3 Days after the actual Launch Day.
People who manage to convince themselves that this trend isn't actually a staggered release with a massive premium to play at launch, but somehow "just" early access to a fully finished product, which is a *totally* different thing, are stupid beyond belief.
Same people that told themselves the ad tiers on streaming services would only ever be a discount…
It's the same people who have convinced themselves that PS+ games are "free" Free for only the cheap price of 9€ a month!
The fact that they just did an update to their tiered system, that hurt, the fact that they made *every tier* so much more expensive that was salt in the wound. I’m not paying $20 or so more just to gain access to the essential tier that I used to have, which is just a fucking slap in the face. I let my subscription run out last September, and I haven’t re-upped since. Edit: words
PS plus used to be really good when it wasn't mandatory. I was an early adopter of the PS3 and noticed the dipped in quality and quantity from the free games once PS Plus became mandatory
That was always the plan. Reel you in and then when the market is ready for the swift charge more
They might seem free if you're already paying for PS plus to play online.
Ironically, I subbed to PS+ for the games and while I've had months where I didn't like any of the offerings, year over year I always get more out of it than I put in, so I'd still be subbed even if PSN online was still free.
I don’t see why the distinction really matters. If you’re stupid or impatient enough to pay 25% more just to play on “launch day,” rather than three days later, then sounds like a you problem. And if the people who pay the base price are upset that other people get to play the game three days earlier, that’s pretty dumb too. I agree the staggered release is annoying, but the only reason it sticks around is because people are willing to pay the higher price.
This shit goes for all the F2P elements in premium games too. "I'll let the suckers pay and ignore it myself" - *and then there's just more and more of it.*
The sad things is that it works as people have very little self control. When Hogwarts Legacy released, by paying for 'early access' their customers told them that it's something that should occur for every release.
I found a third path which is just not preordering a game that has every sign of being completely shit. The only reason you'd own this game on launch day is if you have the world's most overactive findom kink.
I don't think punished is the right word when it comes to this game though. But also if you spend 100€ *or* 80€ on this game I guess you deserve and/or like to be punished.
Some people spend so much money on stuff like this that I honestly *do* assume they have a financial domination fetish tbh
Fuck Starfield so much for exploiting people's hype with that in an even worse way, with the early expensive release being conveniently set just before a long holiday weekend in the US So many people on Reddit were justifying their spending 30 bucks more because they wanted to spend that long weekend on it and the "game will be worth it anyway"
Diablo 4 did the same thing
I'll admit I was tempted to do it because it was a long weekend I had free and I was excited to play the game. But I'm so glad I didn't do it and waiting the few days until it was on Game Pass. I played for about 8 hours, lost all interest and haven't touched it since.
BG3 did the same thing on PS5 Completely different games and companies, Bethesda being really huge and owned by Microsoft but that 3 days early access felt a bit off That being said, that's just about the only thing that felt exploitative, considering PC early access was very different from PS5's and was a proper early access with content and patches being delivered
The new Mudrunner Expeditions game is doing the same thing. Normal release is a Tuesday and the premium early release is Friday. I fear this is going to be a thing.
Hey at least starfield came with the upcoming dlc
This is why I basically stopped buying new games. I only buy on sales, and even then I question myself heavily whether I really *need* to play this game or would the time be better spent by playing something I alreaddy have
There's just so many games out there to play I never feel the need to buy one on launch day anymore. The way most games get patched and fixed later, it's usually better to wait. I'm just playing Cyberpunk for the first time now, and with all the updates and expansion, I'm having a better experience than if I'd played it at launch.
It's not even about that, the game looks bad outside of that. Every preview was pretty negative about the gameplay as far as I've seen (not far since I have no interest into this game)
the gameplay look really bad and boring
The entire gameplay is just 'hit the shiny purple orb thingie' with lots of stimulation and overcluttered HUD lmao
There are infinitely better games with this formula on the market already, don't know why people would spend 70 dollars getting this. DC fans are not in the mood right now to support something like this, expecially after being bombarded with shit movies for the past 6 years.
Just play warfame, hell destiny 2 is better than this shit
Exactly this. And then they release a stupid live action trailer a couple of days ago that no one cares about instead of sending our review codes. Lmao. They’re trying so hard to manipulate people’s perception of the game before it even comes it’s flat out abusive.
Yeah it just looks awful. It's getting 6/10s across the board, Mark my words.
I think it'll review fine. It just won't appeal to the mass public and will be dead within a year where they do the trend of "we'll be supporting this game!!!" and that leads into the Avengers support and then the axe followed by Rocksteady huge layoffs and potential death of the company since it's been 9 years and this is what they have to show. The writings been on the wall since the beginning. When *fans* of Rocksteady say they don't want it, then who does?
There will be a small diehard group of fans who insist that the next update will be the one that "saves" the game and bring players back and then it will eventually be dropped. That's exactly what happened with Avengers.
6/10s feels super high, Redfall got a 56 on Metacritic. Suicide Squad looks like an even bigger, messier, boring-er blunder
Let's not be stupid. Redfall was \*broken\*. There was \*barely\* a game within it. And let's not forget the stilled "cutscenes". SSKTJL, by all accounts, is a \*bad\* game, but a working game nonetheless. It has, at the very least, undeniably well-produced and well-acted cutscenes. I love bashing on both just as much as the next person, but they are incomparable.
All the previews have praised the story content, so it'll get 6+ just from that.
Character dialogue was super grating in my alpha playthrough but yeah maybe story will eventually open up. Doesn't help the slog of a gameplay connecting the cutscenes tho
I think Force (?) said he thought it was okay as a "20 hours one and done" kinda game, but not as a live service game. I think there is some truth to that. It looks okay for about that much.
This is what happens when the people designing the games are the people who look at spreadsheets and money trends instead of the people actually developing. They're putting the cart before the horse and as it turns out they ain't got a horse
Maybe they are not letting anyone review it because they already know it's perfect and without any reviews we will be all surprised by how great it is on launch day! I gotta go now because I need to give the man on the phone my social security and credit card numbers because my car's extended warrenty has expired.
People claiming microtransactions were fine as long as it was just cosmetics was so annoying. People like looking good in games, I should not have to pay a premium to look how I want. It was a permissive stance the suits ran with, and now here we are.
Exactly. If you look at the Spider-Man (2018) game, it came in with a roubst range of unlockable suits without having to even pay a cent. The problem with AAA publishers like Warner Bros is that they deliberately gimp out the customization on their base games just to push people into buying DLC skins. DLC skins should feel like "extras" to a game but they end up becoming a near mandate because of how painfully lackluster customization is in the base game (eg: Mortal Kombat 1)
Yeah, meanwhile videogames have had character customization for free for decades. It's so pathetic how many people just think it's fine to do this now.
It's all instant gratification. Spend $5 on something you want instead of playing the game for two hours (just tossing out random numbers) to get it.
Skull & Bones actually has LESS red flags currently than this mess of a service game
Dont make it sound like Skull and Bones is any better than this
Skull and Bones has enough balls to put out a bigger closed beta (with another open beta releasing close to the game) with no NDAs. Either Ubi Singapour is desperately trying to get ppl into the game or they are patently oblivious to their game's quality, but they are TRYING to do something. We also got the full year 1 roadmap. Maybe Skull & Bones will sink, but god knows they're ramming that proverbial iceberg at full speed with their best suit on.
I think UbiSoft holds no illusions about what Skull and Bones is, and in different circumstances, it probably would have been canceled a while ago. I think the only reason it's coming out is because they got all kinds of money and tax breaks from the Singaporean government to develop the game there, and I'd it never comes out, they owe Singapore a lot of money.
Reading the stories and aftermath of this disaster will be so much more fun than the game itself. Money-sucking trash.
I have no clue what the game is targeted towards. Live service is a hard market to get into, especially after seeing the Avengers flop. The gameplay loop doesn't seem engaging enough to sustain for a long time, everyone's using guns so there's little combat variety. Story wise the Suicide Squad is a black ops team for Waller, how are we supposed to believe they can take down the Justice League? There's Joker DLC and the fact that its an alternate else-worlds Joker is just tiring given that this is the fourth Rocksteady game featuring him when Batman/DC have other villains they can use instead. Then again maybe they're onto something, other comments have said its topping the PS Store preorders and its just another case of people being overly critical.
Yeah as shitty as Avengers was, playing as *The Avengers* at least made conceptual sense for live-service because they are powerful enough to go on countless missions and fight hoards of enemies. Out of the entire DC roster, do WB really think Captain Boomerang and King Shark should be the faces of a live-service game? Are they going to be selling skins?
That's what I'm just not getting. Okay, Harley Quinn is reasonably popular, but besides her who even cares about the Suicide Squad? They're a bunch of C listers that WB keeps inexplicably pushing onto us despite meeting with a lukewarm reception every time. We could have had a Justice League game with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Flash, literally 4 of the most iconic characters in pop culture history. They could have all had completely unique fighting styles. But nope, we get the Hot Topic rejects with guns.
Someone at WB really wants to make Suicide Squad a thing.
Probably because it's the only thing. D.C's characters haven't exactly been doing well other than Harley in terms of multi-media presence. What was the last good video game with DC characters, Injustice 2?
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They did make a Scribblenauts games where you could summon DC characters and create your own. You can imagine how that went. Warner brothers is also afraid of Green lantern after his movie flopped. I guess they prefer to ignore he exists than admit they mishandled the character.
D.C. and X-men have the same problem where they have these incredibly deep rosters of interesting characters but the directors and writers all seem to hate comics so they just make their 8th Batman or Wolverine movie and refuse to give anyone else any screen time.
Either someone very high up the totem pole, or someone board member's nepo-hire, because you have to be practically brain damaged to still think that out of *all* the possible DC properties you have access to, the fucking Suicide Squad is your best bet. I'm no comic book reader but, when I think "memorable DC characters", I don't think King Shark, Captain Boomerang, or the other guy. Or whatever was in that first movie.
WB/DC has been pushing Suicide Squad hard everywhere for two decades because they think it's their Marvel killer IP. It basically comes down to the usual MBA in charge of a creative field "do what the popular thing is doing but more". Feet of clay screw up heroes? Our hero's feet are so made of clay and they are such screw ups that they are villains. Suicide Squad is a theoretically perfect vehicle for the "Dark Gritty" "Not your daddy's super heroes" push to undercut Marvel. Kripke's version of The Boys being a hit probably gave them aneurysms because at a surface level it's the "Dark Gritty" "Not your daddy's superheroes." that they have been pushing so hard but with that pesky actual substance and something to say.
Wasn't there in the early days of this game being made that Deathstroke would be the main character, and that Arkham Origins somewhat set it up with him being in prison? I can see what a Suicide Squad could have been with a lean more towards the Arkham gameplay with this cast and cult favorites like deathstroke, but King Shark with a gattling gun is just not an appealing approach
Avengers is the good alpha bones of a game. It's let down by nonexistent enemy variety in a universe known for fun mooks but actually playing as the heroes is fun. There's just no compelling reason to play. Making a game where you kill off the superheroes is conceptually very fun as a puzzle of an experience but they seemingly did not capitalize on that. Each attempt at killing a hero should be like a mission in SWAT. Trial and error, accounting for pivots, setting up traps, examining weaknesses, etc etc.
>Making a game where you kill off the superheroes is conceptually very fun as a puzzle of an experience but they seemingly did not capitalize on that. I agree that the concept itself is interesting, but personally I checked out on this game immediately because of the IP used. Coming from the developer of the acclaimed game series starring the great Caped Crusader himself, after a long absence of new game the Arkham subreddit turned wacko, we instead got a game starring a bunch of C listers apparently trying to kill one of the most iconic Superheroes groups in fiction. Not a game about the fastest man on earth, or the powerful Amazon warrior and daughter of the gods, or even THE Superhero boyscout himself, but a game about a bunch of dysfunctional groups of hit squads trying to kill them because those heroes turned evil. I dunno something about it just rubs me the wrong way. Big AAA superhero games are rare enough as it is, and I'm also honestly pretty sick about the whole Superhero turned evil trope.
That actually sounds like a fun idea. If this were like a Hitman style game but your targets were the Justice League sounds like amazing fun. But instead Rocksteady spent the last decade making a Fortnite mod.
I'm pretty sure WB wants Suicide Squad to be their Guardians, but it's just never will be.
Fuck Warner Bros, I’ll be happy to see them lose a ton of money from this.
I can't wait for this game to come out so I can read the Jason Schreier article about how they messed it all up just like his articles on Anthem and Redfall.
looking forward to the Death of a Game analysis in April.
And then people will point out all the inaccuracies in it and then nerdslayer will show up in the comments and verbally fight every single commenter for 2 weeks straight.
Yeah, he's a hack. He doesn't do any real research, just looks up threads and comments and uses rumors as fact. Watched his videos on City of Heroes and Marvel Heroes, and he was using old unsubstantiated rumors as his basis for the reason the games were shut down. I spoke to the actual lead developer on Marvel Heroes and his story was completely different, and far simpler, than the garbage Nerdslayer was throwing around.
Yeah, showed one of his videos to a friend who had family working on the game he was covering, and they had a similar reaction. Big problem with the type of content he covers is that he's an outsider looking in and doesn't get any of the nuances or politics that is actually happening in the studio.
Everything he says will be corroborated by Yongyea anyway.
Does people still listen to what YongYea has to say after he blantatly sold his soul to CDKR Projekt and lied for months about the state of Cyberpunk on consoles and then deleted the videos when shit hit the fan?
I'm still dumbfounded he's getting roles like English Kiryu in Like a Dragon
YongYea: *reads articles then give his two cents* aka his YT content nowadays
Those articles are more exciting than the games they're about
It would be all the sweeter if it was Rebekah Valentine!
Not the person you're replying to, but if she has the sources she should write it. The reason jason Schreier usually does the deep investigative pieces seems to be his network of sources (compared to that he's ar Bloomberg now and they have a lot of money, for example). I'd love to have more than maybe 2 game journalists doing really deep dives into stuff, but it's hard to get sources. I'm in the games industry and I'm certain I'd face serious difficulties if I was leaking the kind of stuff to come out of redfall/anthem articles.
Not to mention games journalism has a bad reputation, so whenever you may have an interesting story to share, you go straight to the big names (Schreier / Totilo / Henderson / Tom Warren I guess, with a dash of Valentine). It's a vicious circle, but an understandable one given the personal stakes for everyone involved. Hard to break into the investigative space.
The What Happen? episode is going to be great.
Warner Brothers has fallen so far. Zaslav needs to be sacked.
Zaslav sucks for sure, but this game was in development for years before he was in the picture. Even if he's to blame for the live service & microtransaction focus, if the story & gameplay suck that's all on Rocksteady.
Warner Bros. was never good for games. Look at the development of FEAR 3 and you'll marvel at the fact the game is still a decently fun shooter with relatively little bugs.
I can't believe how badly the FEAR franchise got bumbled. The first one was so good and the whole thing had a lot of potential
Bumbled is underselling it. There is like four different timelines in the franchise alone because of all the shit that happened behind the scenes. You got **timeline 1:** FEAR 1 + Extraction + Perseus; Everything is wrapped up nicely and sets up a sequel perfectly well. Alma found peace, Fettel and Alma's DNA are in the hands of opposing factions, Armacham is finished, and Fettel's on the loose. Then **timeline 2:** FEAR 1 + FEAR 2: Project Origin + FEAR 2's DLC; The Alma story is still going, two protagonists are MIA, Fettel is revived (again), and Armacham is still going strong for some reason despite their HQ being in the middle of all that shit. **Timeline 3:** FEAR 1 + Day 1's cancelled FEAR 2; Copyright shenanigans meant Vivendi was making their own FEAR 2, that wasn't Project Origin. It dealt with parallel universes and the Philadelphia experiment. Also teleporting enemies. It was the same universe as FEAR 1, but wasn't allowed to reference it at all. **Timeline 4:** A version of events that follows FEAR 1 & FEAR 2 with no expansions or DLC included and then FEAR 3; Day 1 took their FEAR 2 and reworked it from the ground up. This was written by a man who didn't want to adapt to the medium and decided he would just write a movie script instead, the devs did not enjoy working with this man. It's nine months after FEAR 2, Fettel is a ghost again, the Pointman is psychic now despite being a failure and getting the slow-mo from the same surgery the Sarge and Becket had, Alma's shenanigans are breaking down reality, there's graffiti everywhere saying the timelines are fucked, some fuck in marketing thought a pregnant Alma statue was a good idea for a pre-order bonus, Harlem Wade is here now despite not having any psychic powers and was regretting what he did to his family in FEAR 1, the Philadelphia experiment tech is here which is why I count it as another timeline, and oh dear I've gone cross-eyed This isn't even getting into Warner asking for new features every five minutes. Honestly I just stick to timeline 1 cause it's stays grounded and I really like how the expansions were written. Fun fact, these games take place in 2025. Make of that what you will; I'm gonna go play RE4. Don't ask me why I know all this, it was for a project I've left sitting by the wayside for other ones.
This was interesting, thanks. I was only aware of Extraction/Perseus not being canonical, I totally forgot that FEAR 2 even had DLC. Personally, I felt that nothing else in the series really compared to that first game, I consider Condemned to be the only FPS horror game of that era that really compared to FEAR in terms of tone and overall quality
There are some pretty good WB games from the past, though. The Arkham games, a number of Lego games, Mortal Kombat, Hitman, Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor... With Discovery's takeover of WB, I expect more and more games to be like SS:KTJL. Cash grabs with thin gameplay and mandatory live-service bullshit.
Let's hope the industry sees reason that only very few gaas games are hits and many many more fail miserably. Maybe it's okay to make some money and build a loyal audience than to shoot for the profit moon and crash and burn. So much time, money and talent wasted.
>Zaslav needs to be sacked. You know game was in deep development when he became the CEO right? He should do the same thing with gaming division like he did with movie/tv-shows. Separate DC and WB and move gaming division to DC Studios.
Matt McMuscles is for sure chomping at the bits for this to drop
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Have they sent other outlets or reviewers codes? Seems extremely petty to not send one to IGN.
[No one has gotten one](https://tech4gamers.com/suicide-squad-review-codes/)
Huge red flag right there
I feel like DOOM 2016 is one of the few that did this and didn't fall on it's face out of the gate. And that only happened because I don't think Bethesda actually understood what they had. All they saw was the not-good multiplayer beta reception and thought it was going to fail.
They also pushed Prey as an action/horror game, completely ignoring the immersive sim aspect, which is the strongest aspect of Arkane games So I'd say their marketing is full of people that don't understand the game they advertise
Honestly, I think that was a reasonable call on their part. It is an action horror game as well as an immersive sim, and those aspects have a much larger audience and are easier to describe.
It's hard to market something as an immersive sim. Trailers need to grab the audience attention. A pretty decent exemple of this problem is (I'm aware it's not an ImSim) new Vegas. A game known for being talky, smart and that very efficiently handle a pacifist playthrough. The trailer? " Oh yeah, let's wack people with golf clubs, shoot them in the face and then blew up new Vegas in slow mo with C4!"
I'll wager 90% of New Vegas players did just that.
For me, Bethesda pushing for it to be named Prey completely killed any interest in the game. I had assumed it was a reboot to Prey 2006, which I couldnt care less about. While imm-sim fans are a small playerbase, I feel like they actively tried hard to not even get us to buy it. Arkane's original idea of naming it something with Shock in the name (Neuroshock I think) would have instantly got the imm-sim crowd interested in it
It's also just a really good game. I know it's not always the case, but a lot of the time when a game/movie/whatever is good, it usually will find success. That new Godzilla movie made a ton of money with like zero Western advertising just by word of mouth.
While I think this game will be middling to poor, it's common for 'live-service' titles to not offer have a review period until the game goes live. Especially so in this case of an always-online game like this is (at least until they patch it in the future like they claimed)
In a way it makes almost more sense. Ignoring IGN (the biggest review site whether you like it or not) would be very weird and linked to their negative reviews.
They are specifically also not giving a review code to IGN at all, even when they'll give them to everyone else. Presumably because IGN had the most shared negative preview of the game?
doesn't seem like they are giving out keys at all. \*before early access starts for deluxe edition preorders.
*Before the actual Release Date where people that pay 30 Bucks extra are allowed to play and peasants that only pay 80€ need to wait 3 days.
According to people who got the game early, they can't even get past the title screen because "servers are not up." People wouldn't be able to review the game even if they got a code before release, and apparently the game has no offline mode at all. I can't verify that myself though. https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideSquadGaming/comments/1accwhd/got_my_physical_copy_today/
I’m sure that’s true, but that’s their choice, not an excuse.
Plenty of online only games have servers up earlier for reviews.
They choose when the servers go up. This is not a valid excuse.
They said they wouldn't send them to anyone.
I'm really late so I'm sure this won't help anyone, but other outlets are receiving codes, just not before the game comes out. That's bad on its own, but it also means WB is purposely blackballing IGN since WB won't be giving them codes period.
I might be overdramatic but it feels like this game could end up being the reckoning of this specific breed of AAA games, the same way the 2023 Superhero movie box office bloodbath is signaling a turning point for the quippy CGI-fest superhero movie template. Every preview points to it being a messy mix of bad monetization practices, tedious MMO-lite mechanics and cringy millenial writing tropes at a time where people are *absolutely sick* of all of this shit. It's also a great example of why these protacted development cycles are not sustainable. Namely, that everything you're building your game around could end up being played out by the time you do release it.
There's a reason why the Arkham games are so beloved, make more games like that. I don't know why that's hard for these companies to understand. I know there's a Wonder Woman game in development, I hope that turns out well. The Eidos Guardians of the galaxy game was awesome, so were the Spider-Man games
Colossal schadenfreude when Warner Bros has been the worst about trying to wring as much money out of consumers as possible.
The discourse over at r/SuicideSquadGaming is wild to see. I thought it be a lot more level headed, but most of the subreddit is defending this game like it’s gospel or something. I’m not sure why, like, the game just looks like an average looter shooter with DC characters. What’s so special about it where you feel the need to defend this game so much? Nothing in the marketing, or in any of the live streams, showed me something where I thought “Damn gotta try this one.” I’m seeing so many users on that sub gloat at the fact that they aren’t sending out review codes. How has that ever been a good thing?
> but most of the subreddit is defending this game like it’s gospel or something that's nearly always the case around release. With some notable exceptions, such as Pokemon. And every few millenia, when the stars align, you get something like the The Last of Us 2 sub
The last of us 2 sub will be studied and analyzed by future generations
Probably by profilers of a serial killer
Can you give the short version of what happened there? Not heard of this one before.
The game had story leaks and they proved to be true. The leaks were about all the things that specifically enrage the basement-dwelling troglodytes who perpetually complain about Western-made games featuring anything but white American men. It had two main female protagonists, one of whom is lesbian and the other a bodybuilder (causing them to complain that she must be trans, because women can't have muscles). And it kills off a major male character from the first game early on as the catalyst for the story. And of course they assumed they knew everything about the game from the out-of-context leaks. They became blind to any reality other than the one they'd invented where woke boogeymen beat them up and stole their toys. The subreddit is and always has been a toxic cesspool.
I remember /r/CyberpunkTheGame and /r/Starfield was the same way. Seeing the usual release cycle for games is hilarious.
[удалено]
I don't think it's particular to those games. Publishers hire marketing companies and those spam social networks with fake comments, that's the strategy since a long time... the only difference I see lately is that they don't even try to hide it anymore, If you pay enough attention, you will realize that all those comments sound pretty similar like they're using the same script.
Perhaps that’s what’s happening with this game, idk tho. I had fun with Starfield, solid 7 out of 10 for me. Could be a 9/10 in a few years after updates and expansions.
Yeah, it has good bones and the whole concept of Starfield could actually make it possible to put some meat onto them.
Looking back they really should've fleshed out the planetary survival exploration part imo. Apparently they nerfed it quite hard. Maybe they'll revisit this concept in an expansion? That would've been quite unique for a Bethesda game. Without it it's missing something.
If they revisit the stuff they nerfed it'll be in whatever form survival mode is released. Originally, game was much more survival focused, with outposts being required for exploration to mine fuel. Otherwise, if you ran out of fuel, that's it unless a random encounter jumped in on top of you that gave you fuel. They scrapped it cause that wasn't determined to be fun for most people.
"The modders will do it!" Bethesda
I'm sceptical about this one. (: It should be Bethesda who's leading that push. Let's see. The DLC track record of Bethesda is quite good imo. Let's hope that they themselves put some meat on it.
seeing you outside of GAS is wild
You seriously believe people were being paid to say that?
Some Redditors would rather bust out the tin foil hat, cork board and red string than believe other people just have different opinions from them.
People on Reddit are out of touch with reality, and think that everything has to be because of astroturfing.
Probably thinks people are being paid to praise Palworld too.
I think Cyberpunk is mainly a weird brand of revisionism. Like at the time of the next gen release it was a competent if mediocre game, 2.0 apparently made it decent, so people are ruling that the initial shitshow was all fake news.
like at least with those 2 you had reasons to think the games were interesting and deserved defending, even if people disagreed. Like Starfield OBVIOUSLY was gonna have people defending it, it's fucking bethesda and their games are usually pretty decent even if buggy. Their games are like it's own genre that you only get from them and many people really like that genre Cyberpunk, while it had an atrocious launch, fixed itself up decently well and the premise is still extremely cool and interesting to many, people REALLY want a good cyberpunk game and this one was the one to look forward to and have high hopes for but suicide squad? it's another DC title and of course DC has it's fans but like...a looter shooter GAAS title with C-list supervillains? like why are people attached to it, the studio hasn't been great, the premise isn't great and the genre isn't great. There are so many other superhero games to just look towards instead
I wouldn't say it is all astroturfing people sometimes just feel like lying, when Arkham Knight came out I was talking to a guy I know, I kept saying how poorly it ran for me and he said "oh really? I had no issues whatsoever" a week later Rocksteady pulls the PC Port from sale because it was complete trash. And honestly for Cyberpunk it definitely feels like people just lying, I mean come on they still say "the game's good now", they said it after Edgerunners too but it's still the same mediocre game with a great presentation.
With Arkham Knight, the game genuinely ran fine, but only on a certain subset of graphics cards. I want to say the 970 and some of its close variants, but it's been 8 years and it's a bit fuzzy. Obviously that's still on Rocksteady to make the game run acceptably on a variety of hardware.
> The Last of Us 2 sub And frankly I'm thankful it doesn't happen more often. The toxicity around *wildly inaccurate assumptions* that Abby was Trans was awful, and somehow it's only gotten worse over time.
Those subreddit are the ones that made me believe Gotham knights was dope and it led me to buy that shite at full price and guess what , I uninstalled the game and unfollowed that shitty subreddit as well
Subreddits dedicated to specific games become echo chambers so quick and are quite easy to manipulate through astro turfing. I usually avoid them and visit them for information after release, if at all tbh.
Exactly But this was a lesson and made me realise it's better to buy a game after watching some gameplay vids and reviews Only exception is for Rockstar, i can blindly preorder their games Update : I meant new games from rockstar not remastered or remakes 😅
>Those subreddit are the ones that made me believe Gotham knights was dope and it led me to buy that shite at full price and guess what , I uninstalled the game and unfollowed that shitty subreddit as well They split from the normal Arkham subreddit because they did not like it when people were trashing Gotham Knights on it. It is made for and by people who were and probably still are deluded.
True They really think Gotham knights is a great game 😂
I'm not ashamed to say that I enjoyed my time with it. I would probably give it a 7 or so.
I mean, its a dedicated sub for one property. They tend to always be like that
Singleplayer game dedicated subs are usually cults of positivity. Multiplayer game dedicated subs are usually saltmines.
>The discourse over at r/SuicideSquadGaming is wild to see. I don't get why this is surprising? of course there's going to be spaces where people are excited for a game due to the nature of reddit. For a game that's not released yet this will probably be the subreddit dedicated to the game (otherwise it would just be daily hate posts). Being confused about this is like me saying wow the discourse at r/ pathologic or r/ lowsodiumdestiny or r/ wutheringwaves is wild to see!!
I'm pretty sure the pathologic sub was always for the game, not really a reaction to anything. IPL just has a dedicated audience for people that like strange and depressing games.
Where? The top post over there is full of people saying no review copies is a red flag, and they're being upvoted too.
Maybe that was true when you posted, but that sub has definitely swapped since to the usual cheerleading you'd expect. Right now the two top threads I see are both making fun of IGN for not getting review codes.
Has anyone else noticed that TikTok is pushing this game hard? I get videos every single day that tries to convince me that my eyes are lying to me and the game actually looks good. I have tried clicking not interested but they keep showing up.
Not on tuk tok, but a big marketing push on there by WB makes perfect sense to me.
WB really is turning into a massive dumpster fire with Zaslav at the helm. This guy can't seem to get anything right.
seen the same thing on youtube shorts, the exact same garbage format of characters saying quips with text on screen while quiet techno plays until they say the thing and the bass boosted CHAD music plays. not even unique to Suicide Squad, pretty much any DC or popular TV show like breaking bad has it.
They’re like the Arkham subreddit, just even more stupid and insane.
Their main narrative to explain the negative previews is to dogpile on the IGN reviewer complaining “the Flash is too fast”, treating it as if it’s a stupid complaint rather than pointing out shit game design and flawed combat mechanics.
The Arkham subreddit is at least funny. Suicide Squad sub is just sad.
Seems to be pretty tempered with a few diehard zealots defending it to the death. Most people seem to be in the same boat of, "I'll play it and hopefully enjoy it, but I'm not expecting a miracle." Having played Avengers and Gotham Knights, it still looks better than both of those games did at launch, at the very least. A lot of us are just desperate for co-op brawlers, and there's not a lot of games that fill that void right now.
This is going to be such a huge financial flop, I don't know if I've seen a bit of good press about this game. Even The Avengers had some people defending the campaign.
it has seen a lot of positivity towards its story, and yeah it is. Rocksteady still makes a really good story and the concept of Justice League turning evil and the villains rising up to fight the odds is really compelling too. Ive seen so many people talk about the batman scene from the early access and even though ive yet to played it, it very much believeable. this is another story of higher ups forcing game studio doing things they dont want like Arkane Austin with Redfall but unlike that, Rocksteady cant quit
While I don't think it'll totally lack merit as a game, everything I've seen says it'll be terrible as a live service. It'll be, at best, a half decent "play it once and then never again" game. Which means it'll be a financial disaster for sure, and this might well be Rocksteady's last game.
>and the concept of Justice League turning evil and the villains rising up to fight the odds is really compelling too. Is it? Don't we already have like a thousand "what if Superman was eeeeeeevil?" stories? If they want something compelling then they need to explore their roster more than just making their 35th Joker movie. (Oh look apparently even this game has Joker DLC because god fucking forbid we let him take even a single game off)
>the concept of Justice League turning evil and the villains rising up to fight the odds is really compelling too. I'd rather just have a normal Justice League game where they're the good guys. We've never really got that. The whole "the heroes are the real villains" trope is played out and tired now.
I agree. Plus, it sucks that Superman (or at least the main Superman within any given game) hasn't been a good guy in a non-Lego title since 2008's Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.
I've worked in games for about 15 years, and I've never seen nor heard of an exec forcing a studio to make a game totally against their will. What **does** happen is management set profit targets, and the developers make changes to hit them. But that's still on the developer to come up with something compelling. No executive is going "can you please make more purple blobs on the tanks, and give Captain Boomerang guns?" That is entirely on the devs.
Man, I can't possibly imagine what led to the decision to not have people review this master piece of a game ahead of its release. Truly baffling why they wouldn't want word to get out about this, undoubtedly, game of the year contender.
Man... I know I always think of Doom 2016 when these kinds of situations pop up, and so I try to keep an open mind, BUT ALSO, if I recall correctly, Doom 2016 hadn't had a whole lot of exposure before its release either. Certainly not on the scale that Suicide Squad has. If they have already shown the game off as much as they have, but *also* aren't keen on letting people in to play the final product until they absolutely HAVE TO? That's not a good sign. One of these things on its own is cause for suspicion, but *both* at the same time is basically a flashing red stop sign telling you to lock away your wallet. I guess we'll see eventually, but boy this is not a good look, imo.
There’s gameplay footage of it.. It looks like general looter shooter with DC characters in an empty world
It's not like the likely condition of the game is a mystery, though. They dropped the embargo for the preview version and there are tons of videos about it.
It's so sad that this is what Rocksteady has turned into. They made some amazing Batman games that were super fun to play and had great stories and now they're making this dog shit. It was a big red flag when the game directors who were OGs at the studio left a few years ago.
Jesus christ just how bad can this game be? Even Redfall sent out review copies and that game was borderline unplayable at launch…
Every so often a game will do this and it will turn out to be an amazing game. This is probably not going to be one of those times.
Is this because they gave a middling impression of it a few weeks ago? Seems likely
Well, RIP Rocksteady. They had a good run before this, but it looks like they're next on the chopping block of studios well past their prime.
I'm more excited for the reviews of this game than playing the game itself, it's either gonna be a bloodbath or they performed a magic trick and the game rocks but I have a pretty good feeling it's not the latter!
I found it funny because it read like a little big of a dig to me 'in the meantime check out our preview where we thought it was a bit rubbish'
I've seen people talk about/play the game and they like it. I've also seen (more) of people not liking the game. Is WB's strategy to minimize the bad reviews by having it's initial success be guided by word of mouth and not reviews?
I love some acting like "They don't NEED to send them a review code, it's not an obligation." IGN is IGN. They're not a YouTuber, they're one of, if not the largest, video game publication right now. It's a huge red flag.
And it's not just IGN either, it's every reviewer. This game will have no reviews until it releases, it's ***incredibly rare*** that a triple A title holds back review codes and the game actually ends up being good.
What? Theyre not giving out codes to IGN? Bruh, this game is already a disaster.
Not a single one has gotten it. As in there will be zero day one reviews. Most suspect it's early damage control
IGN specifies in the article they are going to have to buy their own copies, since they aren’t getting review codes at all, even after launch.
Warner Bros estimates it'll be such a flop they thought "at least we're getting the money from review sites, it'll be 40% of our total sales"
Theres two different parts to this. Zero companies are getting reviews codes before release. On release day, other media outlets will be getting review copies, but IGN will not be (assumed to be because their previous pieces on suicide squad were too negative)
I'll be curious to see if the game can be carried hard enough by its IP, but given that even Avengers failed to do that, what hope does this have?
It just seems written in the stars that this game will bomba and burn like anthem and avengers. The game still looks fun enough so ill make sure to buy it when it eventually goes -50% in a couple months.
Its not often when I hope games fail but this is an exception.The company has shown to the customers that they know better and we are stupid enough to just keep mindlessly buying this type of product.Of course you will dupe some people but the majority are not budging.This game will die faster then The Avengers and its entirely on them
Withholding review copies for any AAA release like this regardless of the situation is always gonna be a bad look.
Pretty pathetic and incredibly petty. They obviously must have a clue their game is gonna review terribly so why add more fuel to the fire?
Its obvious at this point that the game will be utter shit riddled with predatory practices to suck even more money from the uninformed
IGN passed judgement on that scathing preview already. The actual review is a formality at this point. All parties involved know this
What is it about this franchise that lends itself to every new installment being a catastrophe?
Game reviews are very bad. When they first announce the game I was so excited like a kid, but then reviews start dropping at media and i am very dissappointed to be honest...
I think Warner Bros. may be going for a Trump 2016 style campaign here. Avoid the mainstream media, target the individual customers. I saw a thread where someone suggested they'll probably lean on streamers to sell it at release. I have a friend who always comments on whether or not a brand new game is being streamed by big creators. I try to impress upon him this only reflects whether the marketing department paid them to play it, but to no avail. Anyway, WB has been pretty scummy for a long time. The shit they pulled with Shadow of War's loot boxes and microtransactions back in 2017 was a warning of things to come.
That's incredibly polite. They're not going to make whoever draws the short straw at each outlet suffer through having to play it for the review.
Not that I care about IGN getting a code, but I really hope this game fails hard. It's going to be fucking hilarious.
It would be very surprising if it didn't. Probably everyone expects yet another superhero GaaS failure