Living Up to the Hype -

[*Asterisk*]

I was reading an article in Forbes about No Man's Sky possibly being the next Spore: off-schedule, overhyped, and underwhelming. I thought it'd be good to discuss with others wether or not they feel the game will meet expectations, underperform slightly, or flop to the point where Sean Murray can never show his hipster ass in public again.

But then I realized: "This is the video game industry! They're time and money black holes! This kind of shit happens all the time!". So rather than focus on any one game in particular and constantly have to create new threads, I decided to make this thread about any upcoming game bearing similar status of being a possible quagmire.

How 'bout it, Kiwis? What upcoming games are you interested in? And do you think they'll deliver?

 

[autisticdragonkin]

I am interested in Star Citizen and I think there is a 50% chance it willl deliver

 

[Derbydollar]

I think it's a bit unfair to compare No Man's Sky to Spore on the flimsy ground of, "Well.. The trailer doesn't show that much and it's been overexposed."
From what I've seen of No Man's Sky, it's exactly what has been promised. A space exploration game with a slight focus on combat.

I'm pretty hyped for Fallout 4. There are a few things that we know about already that I don't like, centerpiece among them being a voiced protagonist.
I'd say it'll probably deliver well enough on the hype. It'll probably be buggy, and fail to meet all of the promises (*Cough* Radiant AI *Cough*) but good enough to satisfy.

 

[MrTroll]

Maybe it's just my total lack of enthusiasm or even tolerance for "procedurally-generated" levels/content in games (it's just a half-assed, buzzword-y way to avoid having to actually design real game spaces in my book), but I don't get the hype for No Man's Sky at all. It's never interested me in the slightest.

 

[Johnny Bravo]

It'll probably be buggy....

The odds of a Bethesda game being buggy are always 100%.

 

[StallChaser]

Maybe it's just my total lack of enthusiasm or even tolerance for "procedurally-generated" levels/content in games (it's just a half-assed, buzzword-y way to avoid having to actually design real game spaces in my book), but I don't get the hype for No Man's Sky at all. It's never interested me in the slightest.

It depends on the game and how it's done. It works really well for survival/roguelike games. Basically, any type of game where you have to react on the fly to your surroundings, things can be radically different each time you play, and you have to adjust your strategy accordingly. What ends up getting overblown is when they announce the total number of monsters, planets, square mileage, etc. This is basically the number of every variation of each parameter multiplied by each other, which of course is going to be huge. But the real size of the game is how long before everything starts to feel the same. Which is usually not very long.

No Man's Sky looks like a 3D Starbound.

 

[Watcher]

I am interested in Star Citizen and I think there is a 50% chance it willl deliver

I'm predicting Freelancer 2 myself.

Which isn't that bad really imo. I really wish Chris Roberts stuck to one style of game and didn't try to overreach and promise the world. Like a big reason why I didn't back the kickstarter was because I didn't like the multiplayer focus. And I thought had they made it a singleplayer re-imagining of Wing Commander Privateer it'd be much better.

 

[*Asterisk*]

It depends on the game and how it's done. It works really well for survival/roguelike games. Basically, any type of game where you have to react on the fly to your surroundings, things can be radically different each time you play, and you have to adjust your strategy accordingly. What ends up getting overblown is when they announce the total number of monsters, planets, square mileage, etc. This is basically the number of every variation of each parameter multiplied by each other, which of course is going to be huge. But the real size of the game is how long before everything starts to feel the same. Which is usually not very long.

No Man's Sky looks like a 3D Starbound.

I like the idea of No Man's Sky, and even if the game bombs, I think there's a lot that can be learned by future designers in terms of generating really big and diverse worlds with a really small team. But this thing's three years behind schedule, hyped like Peter Molyneux's running the marketing team, and even basic concepts like, "What the hell is the actual gameplay about?" have yet to be answered.

None of this inspires confidence.

 

[GeorgeDaMoose]

I think the ideas behind No Man's Sky are reasonable and the developers have shown some impressive stuff. There's really no reason for me to believe it'll be like another Spore. From the start it was advertised as more of a space exploration game with some space and ground combat and that's what I've been seeing.

Star Citizen though...I have a lot of doubts there. The scale of that game is enormous and there's a lot of impressive thought put into the systems, but nobody has actually seen any sort of proof the Chris Roberts and his team can handle a project this large. From what I understand, there's been an independent FPS demo released, an independent racing/flight demo released, and some sort of exploration hangar thing. None of these connect with each other and there's no sign of that persistent universe that was promised awhile ago. I just have no idea what they're spending their time and money on. You'd figure that they would've had a basic demo of the FPS combat and flight awhile ago and the team would have moved onto maybe working on the planetary trading/social part of the game now or connecting those demos that have been released and making them work together.

 

[P.A]

I've gotten rather antsy when it comes to the big stuff. Been looking forward to play Xenoblade X and Mother 4 for a while now, but aside from that, it's merely stuff that I'm interested in checking out, like that coop shooter for the WiiU from the Tekken guy.

Doesn't help that Nintendo's communicating with the fanbase a lot less since Iwata passed away. I've seen a couple people be surprised that Triforce Heroes already got released.

 

[The Master Debater]

Dishonored 2 seems sort of ambiguous but for the most part Arkane seems to know what they're doing.

 

[LordDarkrai]

I been really looking for Xenoblade X next month. I preordered the limited edition so I can't wait. After that, my most hyped game for the next one or two years will be Nier Automata. A Yoko Taro game with the help of Platinum Games. That's like a marriage of a twisted story with the gameplay of Platinum that hopefully create something amazing.

 

[Too Many Crooks]

Dishonored 2 looks really cool. I loved the first game a lot more than I thought I would. I'm confident that the developers will improve upon it on the sequel.

Scalebound is seriously making me consider buying an Xbox One. I'm eager to see more about it.

...Silent Hills would have been amazing

 

[*Asterisk*]

I like Razorfist much better when he isn't blowing The Hairpiece.

 

[Pandas Galore]

No Man's Sky interested me for a long time but once it started getting a lot of press coverage without any working gameplay I felt very suspicious. I still do. I love the art style but that doesn't stop me from holding off on the game for now.

On a sidenote, a game that I think isn't hyped up at all (or at least I haven't heard anything about it from many people) is Horizon: Zero Dawn. That game looks amazing and they've been uploading Dev logs and gameplay stuff occasionally as well.

 

[RP 520]

The thing about No Man's Sky is that the devs have tried to keep a lot of the game and gameplay secret because they wanted to avoid runaway hype. Just as recently as this week they've started to release more information about the game such as how it won't be an MMO (as in you can play offline) and there will be intelligent alien NPCs you can interact with.

Only thing I'm disappointed with so far is that your methods of interacting with the game universe are really indirect. You can only pilot fighters, you can't officially join or create a faction and you can't construct structures or build your own home. You can help factions which will raise their opinion of you and give you advantages (which is kind of like joining them) and you can enter alien cities, structures, and steal things from alien houses.

So far the game is shaping out to be a combination of Spore's galactic stage exploration (the good parts of it anyways) and procedural generation, X3's space combat, faction relations and trading system, Space Engineer's mining mechanics, and Bethesda's world interaction. The suit, weapon upgrades, planetary exploration, plus ruins and caves remind me of Metroid games.

Back on topic though, I do have a feeling and expect No Man's Sky to play like a late-beta and probably have more features added in updates after it's released.

 

[NumberingYourState]

I don't like the episodic direction of the New Hitman, but since it isn't Absolution 2.0 I'm willing to settle. I just hope they don't drop the ball on the complete series.

As for Nintendo matters, they REALLY need a good buffer between here and the NX announcement. Their Nintendo Direct wasn't all that stand out from last years.

 

[Quijibo69]

No Man's Sky is the best vaporware game ever! 10 out of 10!

 

[Coldgrip]

Platinum is making a TMNT game.

Considering their pedigree, I have high hopes. Hell, it could be just a re-hash of their previous games and I'd be okay with that.

 

[I-chi]

Platinum is making a TMNT game.

Considering their pedigree, I have high hopes. Hell, it could be just a re-hash of their previous games and I'd be okay with that.

They chose the best comic interpretation to date to work off of, so I personally have high hopes. It's Platinum, it could be mindnumbingly stupid and still a shitload of fun.