Ubisoft “Bull-shots”
Watchdogs, upon announcement, actually seemed like a promising beautiful looking twist on the Grand Theft Auto games. An action-adventure title where you would find yourself in control of Aiden Pierce, wreaking some havoc with hacks upon the fine folk of a fictional version of Chicago, Illinois.
You could hack anything (within reason) and it really did seem that this would shape up to be a beautiful looking game, especially on the current hardware at the time in 2014 (PS4/Xbox One).
You’ve placed your pre-order, you are nothing short of hyped but, a few months pass and tidbits of information release here and there, along with a new trailer and the game that once looked visually very promising is a shell of its former self.
“Well, what’s the problem?” You might ask?
For the folks who are heavily invested into gaming like myself or even possibly you reading this, you will surely be keeping up to date through Twitter or official developer channels for the latest gaming news and development links, on what’s on the gaming horizon.
For the “general” gaming public, you’ve seen a trailer for a new game, you pre-order and upon release day, you’ve been given a product that in no way shape or form, matches up to the product you saw advertised on YouTube.
As someone who was hyped for Watchdogs, i was excited, the visuals blew me away at the time and I wasn’t as heavily invested in games, as I am now, so it represented something new and fresh for me personally. I was one of those consumers who fell for the trap and picked it up at launch only to be met with a sub-par quality product, most of the screenshots had been “spruced up” and gameplay footage was captured on high-end PCs at the time.
This is one of the problems with pre-ordering games, you are reliant on visual clues, and they don’t always translate to the finished product. I was sadly someone burnt by this ordeal, out of pocket and disappointed because of the way Ubisoft handled the marketing for Watchdogs. It’s not that the game was inherently bad, it’s just due to marketing of said game online, you come to expect certain things, only for them not to be delivered on or with some big ifs, and/or buts.
Don’t get me wrong, visuals/graphics are not everything, you don’t play PAC-MAN for the graphics, it’s a different story. However, when you’re being promised good graphics or some really nice visuals and the final product under delivers, you are left feeling deflated.
If you missed this game or you don’t even know what Watchdogs even is, and this story has peaked your interest, James Stephanie Sterling has a great video explaining it from their time over with The Escapist.
Randy Pitchford’s Colonial Marines
This one hurt a lot more than Watchdogs did or ever could. Taking one of my most beloved movie IPs and turning it into a video game?
It can’t be as bad as all the others, can it? Sigh.
Aliens Colonial Marines was yet another game that misled consumers running up to launch, posting amazing looking screenshots and some rather stunning looking in-game videos.
“When GearBox works in other peoples space it’s because we love that space” is an actual thing Randy Pitchford said about the development surrounding this game, which of course would turn out to be utter nonsense.
This, felt even more egregious than Watchdogs, at least Ubisoft did release some more realistic trailers further on towards launch. They even had some very misleading screenshots up on the Steam Store page for the game running up to launch and even after, as if they were just completely ignoring the fact these screenshots were not representative of the final product.
This isn’t even forgetting the fact the Alien AI was totally buggy and broken upon launch all because of a few “1’s and 0’s” being wrong in the games code, causing the AI Xenomorph to just wander around aimlessly, stare at a wall or getting stuck within the environment. This isn’t what you’d expect from a team that “cares about the IP.”
I never got around to playing Aliens: Colonial Marines (Alien: Isolation is the best adaption that’s ever been created, in my opinion) due to the fact of all the misleading marketing and videos/screenshots I saw before release. I wasn’t so lucky with Watchdogs, but I was lucky enough here to not fall into the trap, and see how the game was shaping up before it launched, thus managed to avoid getting burnt with this particular day one purchase.
Aliens Colonial Marines will go down in gaming history as a monumental disappointment, upsetting Alien fans and gamers alike.
Cyber-Bug 2077
From the team that brought you The Witcher 3, an action-rpg where you play as Geralt of Rivia, known as a “Witcher” or a “monster slayer for hire.”
Personally, The Witcher 3 for me sits high on my list of all time, most favourite games I’ve ever played. You will definitely find it in “top ten games of all time” articles and videos across the web, so you’d be right to expect excellent things from CD Projekt Red’s next game, Cyberpunk 2077? (another action-rpg but this time set in the cyberpunk universe)
Unexpectedly however, you could see the issues with this one straight away. Keanu Reeves coming out on stage at E3 2019 was absolutely brilliant and it’s one of those E3 moments I’ll likely always remember, unlike the hype and lead up to launch of Cyberpunk which is something I’d rather forget about.
Initially slated to launch on 16th April 2020, the game was subsequently delayed until 17th September, then the 19th November and finally the 10th December. Maybe not at the time but with hindsight, it’s easy to see the writing was on the wall.
What came finally with launch was a disappointing product, not living up to what we had seen in trailers and missing quite frankly key features. Launching only with the last gen (Xbox One/ PS4) versions and promising the current gen (Xbox Series X|S and PS5) versions later on certainly didn’t help with making the game feel alive.
The city looked quiet, lacked people and traffic, whilst being littered with bugs among other issues. After having current gen ports announced for 2021, later delayed and launched in 2022, the game seemed to come to life a bit more, but by this time you could argue it wouldn’t be enough to fix their bad image surrounding this game.
Whether you enjoyed this or not though, it still managed to sell 18 million copies (and rising) as of April this year.
I was originally planning to pick this game up day one, until I saw the delays and some of the reports coming out and in the end, decided to wait, especially when I heard there was no Xbox Series X|S version for a while. Eventually, earlier this year, I picked this game up for £25 for the Series X|S version and it’s still lacking some of the stuff that was supposed to be included at launch in 2020.
I can only imagine how disappointed gamers would have been grabbing this game day one due to all of the hype surrounding it.
Day One Hype
Yet another quick tidbit is the GTA “definitive edition” which I was only saved from thanks to Game Pass allowing me to see how shoddy of a pieced together remaster San Andreas actually was. I quickly cancelled my physical pre-order.
So, what prompted me to write this piece was falling into a late night rabbit-hole watching YouTube videos, when a video titled “why you should be concerned about The Day Before” turned up on my feed, curious, I decided to watch it.
Having seen the trailers for this game and being blown away, I have been patiently waiting for more trailers, screens, news, anything about The Day Before, but this video has put massive doubts in my mind and proves we have a problem with pre-orders and hype.
Without seeing this (and outside of doing some digging of my own) I wouldn’t have known about the issues surrounding this game, if you’re interested in why I’m concerned and want to know more? Then I’ll point you in the direction of Force Gaming, whose done a great job looking into the studio/development:
The Day Before looked incredible, until I watched that video detailing why you should be concerned, for which I’m glad I did. It surely could’ve ended up as yet anther title I’d have gone into being burnt, yet again.
Would you believe it was Steams most wishlisted game and they are not even paying their staff because they want “part-time volunteers”? (Video goes into detail). Its stuff like this that puts me off buying day one, because a game that’s portraying itself as a multiplayer survival MMO, yet looks to be on the same visual level as the Resident Evil 2 Remake? Something sounds off.
I’m not saying don’t get excited about the latest releases, we’ve got some seemingly great titles to look forward to this year like God of War Ragnarok, Saints Row and The Callisto Protocol which is possibly my most anticipated game of this year, with plenty to look forward to next year and hopefully from Xbox’s first party output, too.
It just feel’s like day one purchases for video games is just a wrong move lately, certainly to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to be there, day one for The Callisto Protocol later on in December of this year because it seems like a solid, well thought out and put together product (and I’m an absolute sucker for a horror game) but whose to say I won’t still get burned like countless other times. I can only hope that if The Callisto Protocol isn’t up to snuff, we’ll hear about it before launch. I have faith in the team leading this project, but you never know.
Now more than ever in the gaming industry it’s becoming harder and harder to commit to a “day one” purchase when more and more titles seem to approach development with a launch now, fix later mindset (insert Halo Infinite joke) or even seeing games being delayed multiple times and still launching in an unfit state.
All we can do as consumers is vote with our wallets and be cautiously optimistic about how and where we spend our money within the gaming industry.