The morning Inbox praises Call Of Duty’s new three year dev cycle, as one reader defends the genius of Sin & Punishment.
To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk
Dungeon Of Greed
Thank you for taking a strong anti-microtransation position. I’d argue your score of 0/10 for Dungeon Keeper was over the top, but the good thing is it made the point forcefully, so I am glad you did it.
I’ve played iOS Dungeon Keeper for four months now, as I was part of the soft launch. During that post-beta development period, EA repeatedly increased the price of in-game items (imps, rooms, etc.), and by huge amounts. It was very annoying to those playing, and most of us told them this repeatedly. I specifically berated EA for their greed on more than one occasion, when communicating with the developers. They did not listen. Nor did they listen regarding fixing the numerous reported bugs and interface issues before releasing it. All of these were known issues, but ignored by EA. It was never destined to be a classic, but it could easily have been a fairly good mobile game.
Surprisingly, the game started out as being reasonably playable, at the very least as much as the average freemium title. What was most interesting was EA were ‘caught’ by us during this test period, randomly increasing prices, but only for selected sample players. So, at times we gamers would see different prices to each other. EA obviously then used the comparative data they gathered and concluded that gamers would pay more! The price increases were huge, regular, and were always a surprise to players. They even had the cheek to try to deny they had increased prices, on at least one occasion!
I do have the advantage of having benefited from the original lower (in gems) prices during the early months, so I was able to develop my dungeon to an advanced level without spending a penny in real money. As such, I can say that there is reasonable gameplay to be found in it – if EA had not been so greedy.
Finally, there is no point whatsoever thinking of this game as any kind of sequel to Dungeon Keeper. I realised that the instant I started playing it last year, as Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2 is one of my top five ever games. It is of course a completely different game merely using the original game’s name and characters. They should have just named it Clash Of Dungeons… or EA’s Dungeon Of Greed.
By the way, it would be better if everyone did download the game, and then left a one-star review on their relevant app store, before deleting it.
Please do always clearly mention, and mark down, any full retail game that has microtransactions. It is unacceptable and Microsoft should be ashamed of what they did in Forza Motorsport 5 and I fear more of the same if gamers don’t make a stance. Sony need to be warned off making the same mistake too, and hopefully they will listen to their customers, as they did on the PlayStation 4 release.
KhalsaBlade (gamertag/NN ID)/Akali (PSN ID)/Blade (Steam ID)
PS: The one thing I hate about my PlayStation 4 is the always-on controller light. Please tell Sony to update the OS to allow a user option to disable it. It is intensely annoying in a fully darkened room and serves no purpose whatsoever.
Bound to disappoint
I know it must seem like an automatic reaction now to criticise Sega but the redesign of Sonic and his friends really is just hideous. I just don’t understand what the bandages are meant to represent? Even Amy has them around her waist. Are they implying that Sonic and Knuckles are boxing, and these are the wraps underneath? Or they’ve both been cooking and accidentally burnt their hands? Then Amy rushed in to help them but there was some kind of accident with a knife?
It just seems so random. I mean the scarf doesn’t make much sense (how is that going to stay on when he’s running that fast and wouldn’t the friction mean he’s always hot anyway?) but at least it doesn’t just make you sit there wondering if Sega has had too much to drink.
And as for turning it into Ratchet & Clank… well, okay. I guess. I mean it’s not something they’ve copied before, but why didn’t they get Insomniac to make it? It’s not like Fuse was a big hit for them and I imagine they could do with the work.
Kepler-22b
Not the worse
I feel a bit odd defending Call Of Duty but I have to say I don’t understand why it and Activision get so much hate from some gamers. I mean compare them to EA at the moment and they’re practically saints. Obviously it’s just because they’re successful but there was that Inbox guy the other day who was using Call Of Duty as an example of ‘copy and paste’ gaming, almost implying it was the very worst thing in gaming.
That doesn’t seem to be very fair to me. I mean sure they are all basically the same game but they’re sequels – what do you expect? Even something like Titanfall isn’t very much different and yet all of sudden that’s being hailed as the future of gaming.
I don’t have anything invested in this, I bought Black Ops II but not Ghosts, but all these recent EA stories make it obvious that some companies are much worse. And switching to a three year dev cycle is just plain great, and definitely more than FIFA, Battlefield, Assassin’s Creed or any of the other big games.
Bronson
E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk
Justified love
RE: Jonny C and why I love Sin & Punishment: Successor Of The Skies. Dude! Complaining about the non-entity characters?! Man, I had no clue what the nonsense story was about, but how do you not get enveloped by on-screen bullet hell mayhem like this game offers? I loved it. I accept if you state it just didn’t click for you. It more than clicked for me. I must have eyes are limited to 480p. I just don’t notice the visual limitations you master race guys do.
And as I always say, if you value, or indeed, respect yourself as a gamer, play that game on Hard. That final boss … Hnnnnnnnn! Moreover, try building high scores via combos. The misinformed ding dongs who always state games on Nintendo consoles are for children simply have not played or completed games like this on Hard. Just … no.
Anyone that has survived that game on Hard, I can admire. That game killed me way more times than Demon’s Souls ever attempted! When reviewers caution players they may need to revert to even the Easy setting, you know you’re playing a proper old school video game! That, Jonny, is why I love it.
TheRunawayTrain
PS: Jonny, I would have replied in the Underbox but I’m locked out in just me Yahoo jeans and a T-shirt. Chuck me down a hot water bottle! I’m cold and lonely out here!
GC: Successor Of The Skies is one of the best shooters of the outgoing gen. Complaining about the story and characters is missing the point on a biblical scale.
Something, something, sailors
In response to Plato and Shenmue. Shenmue formed my interest in Japan to the point I have been twice since its release in 2000, and am preparing for my third visit next month. The explorable world was something that intrigued me for countless hours, and I find that even though the mechanics have aged somewhat, the game world is still tangible and interesting enough to poke around.
I’ll be spending a lot of my time in Japan people watching, taking photographs and exploring – wholly inspired by my experience with Shenmue which allows for me to take the time and immerse myself in the world.
Joel Gutheil
Contributory factor
I know that the GC team think that the poor Wii U sales are down to a lack of games, but do you think that the poor sales of third party software could be slightly to do with a lack of Trophies/Achievements? Whilst personally, I am not an avid Trophy hunter, I do like collecting them as a little bonus.
Because of this, if a third party title is released on all platforms, I would tend to choose the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One version. I know a few pals at work who do too. What do you guys think?
Dark Anima X (gamertag/PSN ID/NNID)
PS: Thanks for all the help with muting the voices from fellow gamers.
Currently playing: Final Fantasy II on PS Vita.
GC: We think lack of multiplayer modes and downloadable content is a far bigger issue. Although not as a big as the fact there are hardly any third party software in the first place.
Do a Mass Effect
I’m effectively nobody, not associated with EA, Mystic, Nada. I want to like Dungeon Keeper. However, between the mascot that used to go crazy and wreck your everything now sleezing you into buying things and this ratings mess? Honestly hadn’t given a thought on the ratings screen. Told it to buzz off.
Also wrote a few reviews telling people to avoid, trying to keep the legion of issues up and going in the forums (So are other people! We want Mythic to do better than this.).
Trouble is the in game economy is broken so that you have to start a task just to hide resources then cancel so it doesn’t get taken… Except the Feb 5th patch introduced a penalty for halting jobs. There’s some argument over resource hiding, with me taking the position that people shouldn’t need to use a loophole in the system just to save up enough for gear, since casual raiding doesn’t get you enough at high levels.
Oh, and I’ve been encouraging people to flag the app for it’s attempts at hiding negative comments. Figure with as aggressive as YouTube’s auto remover is maybe we can trigger an app pull to force EA into actually pulling the muck and chains off the poor thing and we might get to see if there’s a game somewhere in there. I mean, in the past week I’ve been having fun, but that fun’s been held hostage and I only get to see fun for a few minutes at a time.
Here’s hoping they actually fix things. As of right now random users are getting in-app surveys, I got a live wallpaper, and the latest hotfixes roll back a lot of the cost increases. The gaming community forced change with Mass Effect. Maybe we can pull it off here too.
singletona
Catch up on every previous Games Inbox here
All forgotten
This is going to probably not make sense but has anyone been waiting for something to come with great expectation, but the wait is so slightly longer than expected that another thing grabs your attention that you actually forget you were waiting for anything at all. My point: The Wolf Among Us,.I have been looking forward continuing that story more than even owning my at the moment redundant PlayStation 4 (few games of FIFA and Lego but that’s it except Resogun to note) but then along came BioShock Infinite…
I literally had no desire to play it, not even to see what all the fuss was about, one of those times that not even good reviews could sway me (really not a first person shooter person) and for half the game I was smugly thinking I was right (why the hell do people have such a high opinion of this) then I don’t know what happened (actually, I do who would have thought picking up a guitar would do it) the last quarter is just…
Well, I haven’t played the other BioShocks. Are they anything like this one? I actually feel like I owe the publishers money, hopefully they get a decent percentage from PlayStation 4. Back to The Wolf Among Us I guess, I am now going to have to start from the start, just not right now.
Herbieone (PSN ID)
GC: All the BioShock games are fairly similar in terms of mechanics and the approach to storytelling, even the second one which wasn’t by Irrational. Some prefer the original, some Infinite – we tend towards the latter but they’re all good.
Inbox also-rans
After reading the enthusiastic comments regarding 1001 Video Games To Play Before You Die I decided to have a look in Waterstones and they had plenty of copies at the front of the store and it was half price – only £10! I’ve only flicked through it but it looks fantastic and well worth checking out.
Rob
With regards to EA making it impossible to leave less than a five-star review for Dungeon Keeper, I just tried to leave a review on the Play store page, and for some strange reason the ability to leave any review was blocked due to an unspecified error. Have they now switched off reviews entirely before the backlash begins?
S.
This week’s Hot Topic
With the furore about Dungeon Keeper still ongoing we want to know what you really think about microtransactions and in-app purchases.
For this weekend’s Inbox let us know whether you’ve ever paid for microtransactions and if so how much. What exactly did they do and did you feel it was money well spent afterwards? How do you feel about microtransactions in general and do you avoid games with them in or just ignore them?
What are the games that make the best and worst use of microtransactions, and how do you feel about home console titles such as Forza Motorsport 5 and Gran Turismo 6 using them? Do you think it’s inevitable that microtransactions will become more and more commonplace and what do your non-gaming or casual friends think of them?
E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk
The small print
New Inbox updates appear twice daily, every weekday morning and afternoon. Letters are used on merit and may be edited for length.
You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word 4Player viewer features at any time, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.
If you need quick access to the GameCentral channel page please use: www.metro.co.uk/games