DIGITISER
  • MAIN PAGE
  • Features
  • Videos
  • Game Reviews
  • FAQ

BAIT-AND-SWITCH - by superbadadvice

9/1/2017

10 Comments

 
Picture
Guest Article by SuperBadAdvice

​​In space, no one can hear you go "Oh, is that it? Really? Oh. OH!"
 
So the tree is back in the toilet cistern, you’ve unravelled your novelty jumper ready to re-knit it next year, and we’re all sick to the gills of leftovers from traditional festive favourites such as boiled pelican, parsnips in Lilt and croquembouche.

Yes, Christmas is over again, and it’s now down to the important business of selling all the stuff you didn’t want to fund buying the stuff you did want that your mum wrote down the wrong number for when she went to Argos (which is why you ended up with stuff you didn’t want in the first place).
​
One such thing I bought myself with my ill-gotten gains was a copy of EVE: Valkyrie for the PSVR. An offshoot of the EVE Online MMORPG (whatever that means), it’s a 3D space shooter. Except of course,  because it’s in VR, it’s a space shooter where you can spend an inordinately long time staring in wonder at your own simulated knees before falling off your chair from motion sickness.
 
Mr Biffo reviewed the game last year (observe here), so I won’t retread the same ground too much – suffice to say I felt much the same as he did: it looks lovely and occasionally stunning, but it’s far too short.

​Plus the pay-to-win microtransactions on top of a huge asking price for not very much is really pushing the cheeky boat far too far up everyone’s canal for comfort. In fact, had I not snagged a copy for well under half price in a sale I’d be fairly livid about the meagre offerings.
STING AND THORAX
What bothered me in particular though, and is the reason why I’m writing this nonsense, is how I felt reality, and what I was led to believe it would be, really didn’t match up on this occasion.

Y’see, PSVR owners get a small taste of the game as a demo level comes bundled on the disc you get with the headset. It’s certainly what lured me into buying the game in the first place, as from that little taster it seemed like the game would be deliciously pitched somewhere between Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars.

But note: if you see a bee on a jar’s label it’s important to check whether what you’re buying is sweet, sweet honey or merely a jar of crushed bees. And EVE: Valkyrie is sadly more towards the Sting & Thorax Paste end of things.
 
Sure, I’d read the reviews that said it was short (and yes, I probably should have read more of them before buying it). But this isn’t short and sweet as in something like SuperHot; it’s short and painfully disjointed like a broken toe.

​From the demo, you’d naturally assume that there’s some sort of overarching narrative going on that the full game would flesh out. However, playing the game proper reveals that you, as a clone of a dead pilot, are just replaying chunks of your own memories. Chunks that don’t really fit together in any way at all, but more exist to just give you a trial run in various ships and on various maps.
 
It’s essentially like ripping random chapters out of sci-fi books, gluing them together and trying to pass it off as a story all of its own – with a vague excuse about disjointed recall to cover for the fact none of it follows on from the last bit. Also: to add insult to injury there are pitifully few of these chapters.
Picture
BROKEN CAMELS
Of course, what’s really happening is that the campaign mode is prepping you for online multiplayer.

Which is fine, but I’d much rather have been told that up front and had it narrated as the training it so blatantly is. Had it been clear from the demo version that there was essentially no real single player mode, I’d probably not have bought the game at all given that’s what I was really looking forward to.
 
(As an aside, the bonus VR mission that comes with Star Wars: Battlefront shows that you can easily do a great, short, self-contained story in a wider universe. In fact, I’d argue that that single freebie mission is a better ‘game’ than EVE: Valkyrie’s campaign is).
 

EVE may have been the straw that ruined the camel’s posture, but suffice to say I’ve been getting really hacked off for a while by bait and switch titles that promise something – and quite often a very specific thing – and then utterly fail to deliver it.

Or, the ‘it’ in question is a much, much smaller it than you were led to believe. Especially when genuinely fabulous stuff like Titanfall 2 that has a brilliant single-player campaign and fantastically fun multiplayer underperforms, because, in part, it’s seen by many as ‘the same old thing’ rather than being an indie darling or offering some astounding new benchmark of size or quality.

​To name a handful, look what we’ve had recently: No Man’s Sky – framed as a literal universe of endless wonders and infinite worlds, but all the ‘wonders’ look the same and functionally the ‘game’ is barely more than a stupefyingly monotonous tat-collecting simulator.

The Division – a shooter all about prepping for PvP and PvE endgame content where the endgame content was, for a long period, clearly woefully underplanned and then utterly broken. Or Steep – sold as an exciting winter sports simulator, but the bit the developers chose to replicate most accurately is the long, slow trudge through the snow before a few seconds of zing.

Picture
CONTROL YO'SELF
​Of course it’s impossible to not be excited about new stuff – for example, my subconscious is trying to drive my left hand to preorder a Nintendo Switch as I type this with the other.

And being stupid habit monkeys we all also tend to take in and retain stuff, and lend more weight to information that supports what we already hope is the case.

But if 2016 has taught us anything apart from ‘don’t be a celebrity if you want to live’, it’s that not being as objective and informed as possible before deciding something is probably a really terrible idea.
 
Which all leads me to wonder whether it’s time we should all take up a new year’s resolution or three – no more preorders, no more going on review scores alone without properly reading a range of reviews first with an open mind, and no more booze.

​Or more accurately, no more ordering games when drunk. It might mean we don’t get to play games on day 1, but it might also mean we end up enjoying what we do play an awful lot more, and that we end up supporting the games that deserve it and not the ones that toot their (sometimes misleading) horns the loudest.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
10 NINTENDO WII KNOCK-OFFS THAT WERE BETTER THAN THE WII U
THINGS I'D FORGOTTEN THAT I OWNED: POCKETEERS
​
REVIEW: NINTENDO CLASSIC MINI


10 Comments
Clive Peppard
9/1/2017 12:17:35 pm

Here Here

I stopped pre ordering a while back and have saved an immense amount of money in the meantime.

Now i wait, and ask friends who are less patient/more rich than me for their opinions and possibly a lend before making a purchase.

Got TF2 for xmas as a result of this and loved it.

My best buy of 2016 was Elder Scrolls Online for £8!!! ive almost completed the daggerfall covenant missions and have barely scratched the content surface.

Many moons ago i poste my theory of value for money from games on here and this is teh title that proves that theory.

I broke my pre order rule for No Mans Sky and look how that left me.

If theres a beta I'll sign up for it and maybe purchase of the back of that if my fancy is suitably tickled - looking forward to Wildlands beta at the minute, although ubisofty just sent me an email of a cat for some reason, this is NOT a beta invite.

We should agree a minimum purchase date from release and then encourage everyone to join us, say review embargo plus 4 weeks?

all we need is hashtag:

#fuckreleasedaypurchasesandpreorderstheyarebullshit possibly?

Reply
Sean Buckingham
9/1/2017 12:34:46 pm

I too have also been burned by the pre-order/season pass up front slap to the gills. I too have also broken my own rules by pre-ordering the new South Park game on PS4. This was only because it gave you immediate access to a PS4 version of the previous game, Stick of Truth, which I enjoyed immensely and was looking to play it again but unable to since getting rid of the Xbox 360 I originally played it on. Even if the new game isn't as good, I'll be happy with my 'free' copy of Stick of Truth.

This (should) be my last pre-order. Particularly when they go on sale so frequently (and soon after release, in the case of TF2 and Last Guardian).

Reply
Hoople Head
9/1/2017 01:18:28 pm

My rule is that single player games with a short-ish campaign will always be on offer 3 weeks after release, then really cheap 5 weeks after. Look at Last Guardian and Dishonored 2.

If I really can't wait for a game, I buy it then sell it soon after, and it ends up costing about £10-12, which is fine imo

Reply
Voodoo76
9/1/2017 02:14:48 pm

I really don't understand the 'have to get this on day of release' attitude. I'm an adult and have a little self control. Don't believe the hype people.

Reply
Crime's a disease
9/1/2017 02:51:40 pm

I'm guessing you're 40, Voodoo76 - so am I:
HIGH FIVE!

But unlike you, I have no self-control. I've tried to walk on by, to be sensible and mature about things but.... I always relent; I'm a slave to my id. Don't judge, Voodoo, for we the impulsive grease the wheels of bargaindom for the proper grown-ups!

Very enjoyable review and the thought of parsnips bobbing about in Lilt will come in handy if I ever accidentally swallow a live cobra.
Please don't say the Lilt is flat and/or room temp, though. The poor snake would have already suffered enough.

Reply
Kelvin Green link
9/1/2017 08:45:24 pm

Pre-order the game to get it for £45-65, complete with a host of bugs and glitches, or buy it a year after release for £20-30, with the bugs patched and all the DLC included. It should be an easy choice.

Reply
FIFTY #@£$%*^ QUID!!!
9/1/2017 09:49:26 pm

I think all the hype, chatter, slick glossy advertising, and buzz is all part of the fun. Granted, it carries a premium but then trading in can shift a lot of that shame. Don't you enjoy talking with your mates about the latest game, playing online with them (not for me) and some other stuff I'll hopefully think of before I post this. *Drawn a blank*

Imagine if Mcdonalds gave out toys for last years Disney/Dreamworks relics - kids would literally squeeze hot apple pies down the shift managers hunched back.
Buying old games is like that... like cinnamon n' apple scented napalm running down your spine... no, that's not what I meant.

It is an easy choice.

Reply
Meatballs-me-branch-me-do
9/1/2017 09:36:17 pm

I doubt I'll preorder anything again after I preordered Fallout 4 AND the season pass, and got something that was barely a Fallout game and a whole season of add-on packs markedly inferior to what you can get free on Nexus Mods. And Fah Hahbah.

Reply
Picston Shottle
9/1/2017 11:47:37 pm

I just wait for them to turn up in Deals With Gold or, even better, as Games With Gold picks. The Xbox Store sales can be pretty good too. The last (and only) game I pre-ordered was Fallout 4, and that was only because the missus and my lil one were away for a week when it was released which gave me a week to sit and play it to death.

Reply
Gosunkugi
10/1/2017 01:07:08 pm

Whenever I see the term MMORPG I always pronounce it in my head as MORGPORG. It usually conjures up images of orcs and Shrek and other Tolkien things, which is apt for the usual multiplayer online time-wasters, as you immediately think about fantasy, sword and D20 shenanigans and all that, Conan wielding a hamhock and belching drunkenly that by the gods, he'll skewer your gizzard if you don't stop stroking his loincloth, or it used to be anyway,
These days it's just as likely to be about spacey things, and for that I blame Starcraft, I guess, I dunno, I've never played it, but I imagine it's like Warcraft but in space with something called Zergs, and thus probably not a good example.
Anywhizzle, I got myself a copy of No Man's Sky, and I'm a little torn, on the one hand, yes, it is a huge and crushing disappointment, a colossal waste of money, and a remarkably lazy and incomplete game (you can read that in any review so I won't bore you with that at least), but it's still quite realistic when you think about it.
I mean, as far as games go, it's probably not as action packed as it should be, but then, neither is space is it? In reality, Star Trek would be three years of Kirk sitting in a chair, doing nowt while staring out the window, interspersed with a visit to one of ten different types of nicely coloured planet. Occasionally, presumably with the budget saved for the big end of season moment, the crew would come across a weird looking alien animal with a pair of bollocks on its chin, and they'd all have a good laugh for a few minutes. I don't know about you, but that sounds like NMS to me.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    This section will not be visible in live published website. Below are your current settings:


    Current Number Of Columns are = 2

    Expand Posts Area =

    Gap/Space Between Posts = 12px

    Blog Post Style = card

    Use of custom card colors instead of default colors = 1

    Blog Post Card Background Color = current color

    Blog Post Card Shadow Color = current color

    Blog Post Card Border Color = current color

    Publish the website and visit your blog page to see the results

    Picture
    Support Me on Ko-fi
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    RSS Feed Widget
    Picture

    Picture
    Tweets by @mrbiffo
    Picture
    Follow us on The Facebook

    Picture

    Archives

    December 2022
    May 2022
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014


    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • MAIN PAGE
  • Features
  • Videos
  • Game Reviews
  • FAQ