Games Inbox: Marvel’s Avengers impressions, Cyberpunk 2077 vs. Final Fantasy VII, and Death Stranding

Marvel’s Avengers sounds okay but I do wonder whether it’s going to be as big a hit as they think. From the first rumours about it being Destiny with superheroes to this back-peddling to emphasise the single-player story it all seems a bit muddled now.

Also, and this really is a big issue, but the faces are terrible. GC is right in that it should either have looked exactly like the movies or not at all like them. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of other ways they couldn’t have gone with all the characters but it just all seems like knock-off brand Avengers instead of the real thing. Even the theme tune is a bit like the movie but not actually and not as good.

I’ll wait to see what the proper levels look like but showing off the tutorial twice in a row doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. It’s come up a few times recently but companies really need to get better at showing off their games and not just assuming people will be interested because of the name.
Royston

Does anyone else think it’s bizarre that Nintendo are currently by far the best at communicating with their fans? Nintendo Directs have been the standard now for years and now Sony and Google are copying straight off, except making it really dull and impersonal and unnecessarily long.

I gave up even watching the Inside Xbox thing on Monday it was so overlong and filled with nothing. So by the time I got round to the Google and Gamescom events my patience was running very thing. The Google one I probably could’ve done myself by just watching random old trailers and the Gamescom thing just seemed really random.

I don’t really understand who Geoff Keighley is but I know he’s friends with Hideo Kojima. But does that justify 30 minutes of incomprehensible footage and showing off the fact that his face is in a game? It seemed very self-indulgent and did not sell me on the game at all.
Korbie

I see Sony are not mucking about when it comes to buying Insomniac Games. I can’t help but feel it’s exactly the sort of big name purchase that Microsoft should have been making, instead of all these smaller studios with so-so reputations. Microsoft has even worked with Insomniac before so I’d imagine it’s pretty likely they had a conversation about it, which Microsoft really should’ve won as they’re a much richer company than Sony.

Even now Microsoft seems to be constantly outmanoeuvred by their competition and still making promises of big reveals ‘next time’ (they literally said that in their Gamescom Inside Xbox). Maybe it’ll happen or maybe it won’t but I long ago stopped taking them seriously and will need to see some major improvement before I back them again.

I do think they have a chance with streaming though as Google are doing even worse with Stadia. Much like Sony with the PlayStation 4 it may not be that Microsoft succeeds because they were really good but because their competitor was really bad.
Hammeriron

I’m sure that leaked image is just the PlayStation 5 devkit (or something else unrelated) because they’d never make the public version look like that. Also, I hate to think how much noise those fans must make given how noisy an ordinary PlayStation 4 is. Do developers have to wear ear mufflers while they work or something?

I’d love if the PlayStation 5 (or Project Scarlett) was anything other than a black, plastic box but let’s face it that’s what it’s going to be. Maybe, even they’re feeling daring, they might change the colour but that’s it. Nowadays I think people generally have more room under their TV, because less people use DVDs and so on so you could argue there’s a bit more scope for experimentation but then again why waste money making something unusual when you could put that into more important things.

It is just a box, after all.
Iceman

Seems like the predictions of Gamescom being a bit of a dud were right and apart from Marvel’s Avengers there wasn’t too much that was new. Not even Cyberpunk 2077 seemed to have much new to show, which is a bit disappointing. And Final Fantasy VII Remake didn’t seem to have anything new either.

I still think that Cyberpunk 2077 is going to be the biggest game of next spring. I know Final Fantasy got more online traffic or whatever at E3 but I think The Witcher and CD Projekt are just bigger now and that a lot of the appeal for Final Fantasy VII is just nostalgia.

Maybe I’m wrong but the characters with their weird hair and costumes just look silly to me, with the more realistic graphics making them look worse somehow. But we’ll see, I guess, and it’s good news for role-playing fans either way.
Clambake
PS: Did you get a go on The Witcher 3 on Switch? How was it?

GC: We did get a quick go and it seemed very impressive. Much lower resolution and a bit blurry but all the detail is still there and the frame rate and controls were very good.

So, it’ll be out in November and yet we still know so little about Death Stranding. And now Hideo Kojima has shown a video where Darryl from The Walking Dead can pee… on mushrooms.

So, what are we supposed to make of this? Die-hard Kojima acolytes have been hotly anticipating this since the beginning and maybe not even the final product can deflate them. But, am I supposed to be excited by this? It still looks amazing and surreal – it will always be worth a look.

But to use a major preview event to showcase such, how shall we say, left-field activities suggests that there is either not much worth showing or Kojima is resolute in his confidence and knows he has a masterpiece on his hands.

I hope for the latter while bracing myself for the former…
DMR

I think I’d have to play a beta or something before I said I was definitely interested in Disintegration but at least it’s something different. I have no idea who that ‘co-creator’ of Halo is though. If he’s so important why have we never heard of him before? Or is that just me?

It is weird how so few developers are famous even to people that should probably know who they are. I guess the superfans do, but that’s not really the same as being famous, is it?
Doshin

I found that Apex Legends developer going off on his fans pretty hilarious. The thing is everything he said was completely true. The kind of gamer he’s talking about is just as rude and entitled as he said and while it was unprofessional to go on a rant like that I can imagine how annoying it is to have whinny ‘fans’ that don’t pay a penny towards a game’s running to constantly being so demanding.

Complaining that they’re ‘shocked’ and offended by what he said when everything they come out with is 10 times worse is the worst though. And of course he had to apologise and pretend he was in the wrong. I mean, he was technically in the wrong from a business point of view but something needs to be done about the attitude of gamers online and forcing a developer to apologise for giving them just a small taste of their own medicine is only going to make things worse.

To be honest, the reason I don’t really play multiplayer games anymore is how terrible randos are nowadays. I’d definitely say it’s got worse in the last five years or so and do see how it’s ever going to get better.
Gizer

FEZ is free on Epic Store on PC from today. I highly recommend it as I completed it on Xbox 360 a few years ago. Also, American Fugitive is £9.99 on the PlayStation Store, usual price £17.99!
Andrew J.

What is the recent obsession with showing a camera view of someone looking at a camera? It looks ridiculous in those Stadia Connect events, like they’ve made some kind of mistake.
Goober

With Gamescom taking place at the beginning of this week the subject for this weekend’s Inbox seems obvious: what future game are you most looking forward to at the moment?

It doesn’t have to be at Gamescom, but what game are you currently anticipating the most? As long as it’s been officially announced you can nominate any title, no matter when it’s due out, but we want to know why you’re excited about it and what first got you interested.

How much attention do you generally pay to previews and early trailers and at what point in a game’s lifecycle do you usually start to get interested? Have you already pre-ordered any games and if so how are you feeling about them now?

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