Gaming companies put on unearned pedestals

[TrevHead]

It's ironic you say the next Platinum game is being made with the West in mind. I've been on these forums long enough and conversed with Casual Shinji enough to tell you he isn't someone you would call "mainstream west" at all when it comes to his interests. Note: Not speaking for you Casual Shinji, just thought the irony was funny. Frankly, the fact you emphasize this makes me feel like you're just using this excuse as an easy cop out because we're challenging your like of Platinum in a civil manner versus incivility you may have encountered before. That's not to say you can't like Platinum, but you went straight for the "You just don't get them" defense and that tends to indicate insecurity. I don't want to unfairly assume, but, like I said, that's not the best way to disagree.

I'm not insecure I was only trying to point out that Platinum deserves a place on A pedestal (the sub genre they excel at and who Kamiya their lead dev created when he made DMC1) even if they aren't the best at everything, OFC fans then to overhype it's what they do.

That said it was lazy to just state "don't get" so I'll clarify that now (Shinji's original post uses GET in it which I just reiterated)

As Pink Gregory states a big reason P* is praised so much is because they are practically the only remaining dev still actively putting out spectacle fighters of that type, that alone makes them special among fans of the genre, but the fandom for Platinum runs deeper than that as now SEGA nearly went bust after Binary Domain and only make Sonic and PC games now, Konami just make Metal Gear and Capcom and FROM are focusing on western themed games with Souls / Dragons Dogma, Platinum is seen as the last quality dev in the PS1/2 era Japanese action game as a whole not just spectacle fighters.

In many ways Platinum is the equivalent to Nintendo for much of the fandom, sure Nintendo is still very successful and makes many genres, but the Platinum fandom can be looked upon as the reminents of the SEGA/Arcade/Capcom fandom, the more edgy version to Nintendo's cute. You see this in Hideki Kamiya P*'s lead dev and ex Clover/Capcom, who as a personality is the equivalent to Nintendo's Miyamoto, the guy is an oldschool SEGA fan who collects and plays old arcade games as a hobby and his personality atleast his public one is the same over the top cheesy fun as the games they make. If you'd played some of the better games like Bayonetta you'd know what I'm talking about as that cheesy over the top style is a celebration of SEGA/Capcom of old and are full of in jokes and easter eggs for fans to enjoy. Just like the spandex wearing Spinal Tap or The Darkness is a celebration of Heavy Metal and is over the top in both a outlandishly cheesy and cool way, which one you see depends if the you like or "GET" Metal/spectacle fighters.

So if you see a P* fan saying X game would be cool if P* made it, what they are actually saying is SEGA/Capcom of 5-10 years ago.

oh dear

Didn't we once basically discuss that the game you want that isn't like that basically doesn't yet exist?

I think P*'s use of button mashing torture attacks to defeat bosses and normal enemies goes some way to address what jamail77 see's as a problem with DMC3's cutscenes, I was just looking through Bayonetta's to see how they faired and for the most part there was very little combat outside the opening scene, most cutscenes is talking, enemy intro, boss getting pulled to hell after a torture attack.

Bayo Cut scenes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9995iemL4FU

 

[Jandau]

Ummm... no love for Gearbox? They struck gold with Borderlands, which is a mostly shit game that happens to lend itself well to coop. And that's it. They've been remaking the first Borderlands game over and over again, with their other major projects being disasters (DNF and Colonial Marines). They haven't done anything legitimately good since the days of of Half Life 1 expansions.

Double Fine gets another vote from me. Schaffer can't develop a game for shit. Ideas aren't enough and unless he has a harsh soulless publisher to reign him in he is incapable of making an actual finished product worth a damn. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Double Fine exists, just so there is one place where ideas come first. But it's not a very good studio, at least for now.

Valve is next. Steam aside, all these people know how to do is make FPS games. Don't say DOTA2, since they took an existing game, put on a fresh coat of paint and brought in IceFrog to handle the actual mechanics and balancing. Also, they haven't really had a major project in a while. But I suppose once you get into selling TF2 hats, you kinda lose interest in anything else. And for the most part, they seem to be grabbing up existing mods/small projects and making them into games (TF2, DOTA2, Portal, L4D, etc.). I'd like to see them do something fresh for once...

Then Rockstar. GTA always seemed like garbage to me and I never could understand why people like those games. Also, shit PC ports and no port at all for the one game they did I actually find interesting, Red Dead Redemption. Fuck those guys.

HOWEVER, I do see a lot of Blizzard mentions in here. And I disagree. Sure, they had a long stretch where they did nothing but WoW expansions, but I can't really blame them. And Pandaria aside, WoW has been at the top of the MMO food chain by a massive margin for a reason - it's good. I get that MMOs might not be your cup of tea, but that doesn't change the fact that WoW was a damn fine product. And beyond that, Starcraft 2 is great, Diablo 3 is a good game that was held back by the business model, which has since been rectified, Hearthstone is a solid, fun game, Heroes of the Storm is shaping up fairly well, and Overwatch look very interesting. Note that they are doing a wide variety of game types (MMORPG, RTS, ARPG, CCG, MOBA, FPS), even throwing in a new IP (Overwatch). Calling them shit is IMO quite unjustified.

 

[Cryselle]

HOWEVER, I do see a lot of Blizzard mentions in here. And I disagree. Sure, they had a long stretch where they did nothing but WoW expansions, but I can't really blame them. And Pandaria aside, WoW has been at the top of the MMO food chain by a massive margin for a reason - it's good. I get that MMOs might not be your cup of tea, but that doesn't change the fact that WoW was a damn fine product. And beyond that, Starcraft 2 is great, Diablo 3 is a good game that was held back by the business model, which has since been rectified, Hearthstone is a solid, fun game, Heroes of the Storm is shaping up fairly well, and Overwatch look very interesting. Note that they are doing a wide variety of game types (MMORPG, RTS, ARPG, CCG, MOBA, FPS), even throwing in a new IP (Overwatch). Calling them shit is IMO quite unjustified.

To be fair, in Blizzard's case I think it's less that people really think that they're a bad dev team, and more that people feel that their dominance has a tendency to crowd out other fine games in their genres. To give an example, I play a lot of MMOs. Yes, that includes WoW. Anyhow, I've been in the Beta for many, many, MMOs over the past 10 years and much of the general discussion in these betas is "I love WoW!" "I hate WoW!" "This game will kill WoW!" "WoW will kill this game!". After a while, you just want to scream "Shut up about WoW already, talk about the game you're actually playing for a change." This isn't Blizzard's fault, but if you're a fan of one of the non-Blizzard offerings it can be hard to help but feel that it would be nice if your game got judged by it's own merits, not strictly by comparison all the time.

 

[Jandau]

HOWEVER, I do see a lot of Blizzard mentions in here. And I disagree. Sure, they had a long stretch where they did nothing but WoW expansions, but I can't really blame them. And Pandaria aside, WoW has been at the top of the MMO food chain by a massive margin for a reason - it's good. I get that MMOs might not be your cup of tea, but that doesn't change the fact that WoW was a damn fine product. And beyond that, Starcraft 2 is great, Diablo 3 is a good game that was held back by the business model, which has since been rectified, Hearthstone is a solid, fun game, Heroes of the Storm is shaping up fairly well, and Overwatch look very interesting. Note that they are doing a wide variety of game types (MMORPG, RTS, ARPG, CCG, MOBA, FPS), even throwing in a new IP (Overwatch). Calling them shit is IMO quite unjustified.

To be fair, in Blizzard's case I think it's less that people really think that they're a bad dev team, and more that people feel that their dominance has a tendency to crowd out other fine games in their genres. To give an example, I play a lot of MMOs. Yes, that includes WoW. Anyhow, I've been in the Beta for many, many, MMOs over the past 10 years and much of the general discussion in these betas is "I love WoW!" "I hate WoW!" "This game will kill WoW!" "WoW will kill this game!". After a while, you just want to scream "Shut up about WoW already, talk about the game you're actually playing for a change." This isn't Blizzard's fault, but if you're a fan of one of the non-Blizzard offerings it can be hard to help but feel that it would be nice if your game got judged by it's own merits, not strictly by comparison all the time.

Well, your game will always be compared to the biggest elephant in the room. Making a MOBA? How does it compare to LoL? Making an FPS? How does it compare to CoD? And so on, and so forth.

WoW comparisons are even more inevitable, since that game made the whole MMO market its ***** with its unanticipated and extreme growth. To this day, it is still one of the highest quality MMOs on the market, from a strictly gameplay standpoint, despite the fact that it's in its middle age (yes, middle age; WoW isn't old, at least by MMO standards). I played it during Vanilla, TBC and more recently in Pandaria. I've since moved on and am currently playing Final Fantasy 14 (damn fine game, btw), but I still acknowledge WoW for all its qualities, despite it not being the game I want to play at the moment.

 

[Roxas1359]

Probably a bad example. The company involved basically sputtered out and Rockstar pretty much had to take over.

When you're the one actually completing the game and putting it out the door, maybe you get to take credit.

The whole situation with L.A Noire in general was extremely messy, especially with the working conditions that the original developers had to work with when making the game. And while the game wouldn't have continued were it not for Rockstar, Rockstar allegedly did some pretty shifty shit to them as well. On the bright side, L.A Noire turned out to be a really fun game. Well at least in my opinion.

OT: Chalk another one up for Platinum here. I love some of Platinum's games, but they still get overly praised way too much for their own good at times. Second again goes to Double Fine because really I find that the most modern game that really helped them become popular was Psychonauts, and it only received cult classic standing later. While Brütal Legend was good, it was the most amazing thing ever and I actually got rather bored with it and never finished it.

 

[Hawki]

I guess Valve for me. It's not really dislike, just ambivilence. Most of the games I play are on console (ducks flying object), so from a modding/PC standpoint, I have no reason to hold them high on that front. That, and their games don't really interest me bar Half-Life and to a lesser extent, Portal. Also, almost all of said games are FPS (DotA 2 being an exception, but even then the mechanics had already been established in someone else's game), so while sticking to a genre isn't bad (e.g. BioWare is firmly an RPG developer), there are other groups I have higher regard for based on the variety of their output (e.g. Blizzard - RTS, ARTS, CCG, ARPG, MMORPG, and FPS in development, with a racer, puzzle platformer, and action platformer in the past - if that doesn't shout "variety," I don't know what does.)

Haven't seen it in the thread, but I think Nintendo gets too much flak also. While they clearly have some tentpole franchises (e.g. Mario and Zelda), the amount of IPs they've fostered is staggering (check their Wikipedia franchise template to see what I'm talking about

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Firaxis. Beyond Earth was... well, a bit rubbish and nowhere near as ambitious as the excellent Alpha Centauri. Continuous expansions of Civ V is nowhere near what such an established company should be achieving.

 

[Zipa]

My vote has to go to Gearbox, they have basically just resorted to putting out the same game every couple of years now, along with screwing up other peoples IPs once they have acquired them. I just hope they don't screw up the new versions of Homeworld.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Gotta agree with people saying this fits Atlus.

They're great developers who happen not to treat their fanbase like utter shit, but some of the stuff they get away with is atrocious.

 

[Zannah]

Valve, Rockstar and goddamn CD Projekt.

 

[EternalNoob412]

It does bother me how much people tend to "white knight" for a gaming company. I don't expect every game I buy to be a 10/10, but if it is the big release from a AAA developer/publisher that's been hyped for 2+ years, my expectation are pretty high. Some of my favorite excuses are:


"Graphics aren't important, game play is." Why can't we have both? I'm not expecting the smaller releases to have mind blowing visuals, but the big releases should look pretty damn good.

"This is the first release of a new IP, of course it's gonna have problems!" But it isn't the developers first video game. This excuse especially bothers me when the new game shares a lot of similarities to their last IP.

"This is the biggest game the developer has ever made!" Yeah, but other developers have released similar games with a lot more content.


Don't get me wrong, for every optimist there is also a pessimist. There is plenty of unjustified doom and gloom on the internet. I just wish some of those people who defend mediocre games would realize something. A lot of us are not criticizing a game based on some criteria we pulled out of thin air. We are basing it on other games that have shown us there is something better.

 

[stroopwafel]

Atlus is my pick, yes they make some great games but man do people seem to love to paint them as some sort of Messiah of the game industry. They are very guilty of things a lot of other companies get shit for,like for example reusing the same character designs since the 90's or copy pasting 3D models from Nocturne.

That's b/c Megami Tensei/Persona still has the same character designer, Kazuma Kaneko, who has been with the series I believe since its inception. Same as From Software I think Atlus is still very close to the company's original focus of making the kind of games they want to make, despite relegating themselves to essentially niche markets. I personally don't really enjoy their games much(except for Vanquish) but I also consider Platinum such a company. That's probably why they are so popular among hardcore action game fans.

Anyways I'd say there are way to many companies nowadays subsisting on old glory. Espescially Capcom and Squeenix. They were the shit back in the day producing one exciting game after another but I can't recall a single game they put out in the last 10 years or so that was actually worthwhile. Konami probably as well though they have the fortune of still having Kojima on the payroll who still produces a Metal Gear game every 6 years or so.

Bethesda games are always hyped but they always play like they didn't even made it through beta-phase. Bioware games are also always praised for their writing but I think its just cliche sci-fi/high fantasy with an awkward sex scene thrown in for good measure. Lastly Valve with people hoping for a Half Life 3 as if its the return of Jesus for what is essentially just a mildly enjoyable FPS with a mute protagonist to enhance the 'immersion'.

On the other hand a company like Ubisoft is almost universally shit on but I enjoy their games almost without exception.

 

[Muspelheim]

None, really. Some might achieve some height on climbing the pedestal, but they always get knocked down and thorougly spanked before long. And a good thing, too, because that is the best cure to complacency.

But honestly, I think it's alright to like things sometimes, too. Yes, it's an usual internet habit that unconditional love or hatred are exclusive, but it's perfectly alright to be displeased with the worse parts of a developer's work while not marching in to dethrone the filthy imposter.

Always be critical, don't believe all you hear but remember that you aren't the kid in The Emperor's New Clothes, either.

 

[Saelune]

Reading through people's answers, I don't think there really are a lot of companies Id considered overrated, not today anyways. Most companies that once may have been have been acknowledged to having faults now, so there is usually a decent group of nonfans to balance out the overrating fans. Rather I think its specific game series that are the focus of overrating.