No clues, just guess.
One might almost call it fate. Perhaps not quite a fate worse than death, but it's not honestly one of the best decisions I've ever made.
Now, before we go any further we should probably address the obvious. Yes, this is a movie tie in game. No, that's not generally a good sign. But in all honesty my expectations were not terribly high. I mean, I've played movie tie ins before. I know how much they normally suck. But this did seem like it might be a step in the right direction going by the demo.
One of the major problems of movie games is that they're always released as full price proper boxed games. Despite being rushed through development with a fraction of the time actually needed to create that sort of product in order to tie in with the release. The idea of putting out something as a lower priced downloadable title seems like such an obviously good idea I'm honestly surprised it's not the default setting for this kind of thing. Keeping the game smaller and more focused means that it's limited time and budget can be better spent, giving a chance for the core experience to receive a bit more polish than such projects commonly have. Not to mention not having to worry about allocating resources for manufacturing and distribution. On the consumer side of things we get a cheap, hopefully fun little diversion they we can grab after getting home from the cinema should the mood take us. Our expectations should be somewhat tempered by the format presented. And even if the game turns out to be a bit rubbish at least it only cost a few quid.
All sound in theory.
But in practice things prove to be a little more complicated.
Now, what I was expecting from the game was that it's be at best on okay brawler, only featuring all the cool mecha and kaiju designs from the film. And the demo seems to support this. You get one fight, the first training mission. And yeah, it's seems like an okay to mediocre brawler only with stuff from that film you just saw. But it isn't until you've actually bought the game that you get to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Because it's only then do you realize that you've just bought a one way ticket to DLC hell.
It's funny really. You always read about abusive DLC practices in the gaming industry, but it's not really been something I've ever run into myself. Where games I own have had DLC it's normally been in the form of either extras to be added (E.G. Skyrims Dawnguard) or extraneous fluff you can ignore (E.G. costume packs in basically everthing). With either you can take them or leave them depending on your own preference, but it's not like anythings MISSING.
Then I got Pacific Rim the videogame.
This is the dictionary definition of cut content. As in there are characters you can fight against in single player, but you have to pay extra for if you want to actually play as. Of course, when you look at the listing for the game there's nothing to indicate this. Go ahead, go look at the games page on the xbox site. Note how there is a distinct lack of ANY add-ons for the game. And yet, of the 5 Kaiju featured in the game 3 are locked behind the paywall.
And, just reiterate: You play AGAINST these characters multiple times as you try to endure the repetitive grind of the campaign mode. They're right there. IN THE GAME.
And then of course there's the Jaeger customization debacle.
See, one of the selling points of the game is that you can build your own Jaeger, customizing it's parts appearance and moves. But this isn't exactly what you get. Sure, you can unlock parts as you play or buy them with XP earned in game. And yeah, you can swap these parts around and alter the moves depending on what you've stitched together. But if you actually want to use the various options for changing the colors, patterns, decals, and all that other stuff? That costs extra. The options are all RIGHT THERE, in the game. You can see that, if only you could actually save any changes, the customization options look pretty good.
But no. Again, the existing content is locked off because fuck you, what did you think you were going to get in a game you paid for?
Let's break this down shall we?
Basic Game - 800
Scunner - 320
Otachi - 320
Slattern - 320
Character Customization - 240
So that's an extra 1200 points on top of the basic cost, just to have access to all the stuff that's already in it. Or 2000 points total. Why not just release the actual full game at that price?
I can only assume that there is actually a standard clause in the development contract for all movie tie-in games that they must by totally awful, and this one was looking like it might be okay.
Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Did you know, for example, that of the 4 main Jaegers featured in the film, only 3 are present in the game. Now why do you suppose that is? Indeed, if you care to peruse this page on the Pacific Rim wiki you'll notice that in fact FIVE more Jaegers listed as DLC, along with another FOUR Kaiju. Quick, what's 9 time 320?
Two Thousand Eight Hundred And Eighty.
I believe the only response one can give to that is simply, "Not even if the game was actually good".
Of course, this isn't even the worst part somehow. No, seriously, it actually gets WORSE. Because I haven't yet talked to you about the leveling system. That it's a flawed system is something of an understatement. That it's positively abusive when coupled with the DLC shop really makes me glad I don't have a gold membership for xbox live. I haven't seen anything this blatantly pay to win since real life.
So, as you play the game you earn XP. You can spend this XP to create a custom (ish) character and level the various statistics of it's various parts. Since there's a relatively limited number of characters in the game one of the ways they stretch it out is to increase the level of the foes you have to fight. So if you're using something that's underleveled you're probably going to die horribly. The best way I've found to progress through the campaigns is to just pick one character type you're alright with and just max the hell out of all it's stats.
Yes, I use Knifehead. OBVIOUSLY.
Now, your experience may different if you're a lot better at games than me (not a huge challenge) but I have to say that I found player skill to be a secondary consideration to character level. Now, baring that in mind consider the following 2 facts:
1 - The game has online multiplayer
2 - Of course you can buy XP. And Jaeger parts, boosts AND skills better than you can unlock in single player.
Do you see where this is going? I can only imagine what kind of nightmare the online play must be like, but I'm guessing it's something like a whole bunch of max level Slatterns and much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Everybody loves Slattern. That's what the name MEANS.
Of course I'm only guessing. Maybe it's max level Cherno Alphas since it has irritating stun moves. But the weird collision detection issues that result from Slatterns size do seem like they'd give him a distinct advantage. It's tricky to explain, but basically when fighting him half the time you're moves can't seem to connect as bit's of him are in the way. And yes, I know how weird that sounds.
Anyway the point is you first buy the game (800 points), then you pay half as much again for a character (320 for a Kaiju, 400 for a set of high level Jaeger parts), then you can pay anything up to 800 points again for a massive XP boost to level your character up. Never mind what it may do to multiplayer, you've just broken the single player completely. I mean, I've played through it a bunch for XP on my guy, and now 80% of it is incredibly easy. And I haven't even finished improving all his stats.
The weird thing is the game would okay were it not for this abusive attitude to DLC. It's not fantastic or groundbreaking, but it's more or less okay. Or at least would be if they ditched the leveling crap and actually just balanced the damn game. It does all rather seem to be there more to try and sell XP booster packs than actually improve gameplay. Although the leveling stuff is only really for the custom versions of characters. For the official versions there's a handicap system you can unlock levels of. Well, up to the point you can just BUY extra handicap anyway. Because OF COURSE you have to buy that. 400 points for level 4.
To put that in some perspective, I've unlocked the handicap to level 3. This will give Gypsy Danger an overall rating of up to just over 3000. And Slattern, when you get that far is rated somewhere just over 5000. And I can see that the handicap level goes a lot higher than just 4 levels. Anyone else remember a time when something as basic as the goddamn DIFFICULTY SETTING wasn't an optional extra?
Gods, I can't go for more than a paragraph without the specter of DLC abuse raising it's head.
The problem with this sort of behavior is in how it spoils otherwise decent games. As i said earlier, give some optional extras and I can take them or leave them depending on my own preference. But gating off content like this is a self defeating strategy. I'm not sat there thinking about how that was a fun game and maybe I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for some additional content. I'm just feeling dissapointed that the game I already paid for is missing big chunks of itself. Basic, integral elements that I should already have access to. I mean, I would totally be up for paying a few quid to add say, Mutavore as an extra character.
Mutavore rocks.
But not if he's already in the damn game. And even then I had better not be paying damn near half the price of the base game itself for the privilege.
I don't really get why this is so hard. All that really needs to be done is to create a solid core game, complete in and of itself. once this is in place you can then go about expanding it to your hearts content. But to be so flagrantly insulting about such matters? You're not exactly fostering goodwill and a positive attitude. I know that gamers can be whiny and self entitled lot, and you certainly can't please all of the people all of the time. But you'd think that not deliberately pissing off your core audience would be a bit of an idea.
Although, we do have to consider the fact the part of the reason developers keep pulling shit like this is simply because they CAN. Because for all everyone rants and rails against the injustice of it all, at the end of the day they're still going to buy the damn thing anyway.
So who's the real monster here? The developers who try this ridiculous shit? Or the consumers who keep on buying it?
Or maybe it's the giant city destroying beasts from another dimension?
No comments:
Post a Comment