The Walking Dead tie-in to the enormously successful indie Prison Breakout hit, The Escapists, works wonderfully with the mechanics of the original game. It seems every moment of The Escapists: The Walking Dead is like this: intricate layers of puzzles to solve which lead you to new areas, with new obstacles to overcome. For now, I’ll rest, save my progress and plan the next step. I will just have to try opening the air vent tomorrow to see if I can finally get in to the room that has had me barred for the past ten days. I’d better get back, because I don’t want that threat level to increase. A message flashes up: it’s the last head count of the day. I am making incremental progress: a new route discovered another shotgun with two ammo crates more crafting materials which will allow me to upgrade my flimsy tools another room cleared of walkers – but I just can’t seem to find the final piece of the puzzle so that my motley crew and I can escape from this particular hell-hole. I’ve been stuck for days (or, at least, in-game days). If the Xbox executive team isn’t pulling out all the stops to ensure improvement - to make great games an imperative - then its goal of being the Netflix of games is a bust, and we’ll all be the poorer for it.As I write this I am stuck on a puzzle. And sure, not everything needs to be a hit, but Xbox’s exclusives need a better strike rate. Games both big and small have come up short. That doubt is augmented by Redfall, State of Decay 2, As Dusk Falls, and more. However, for as much faith as I have in these teams, Spencer’s comments call that into doubt. ![]() The creative impulses that gave us Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Pentiment, and Forza Horizon should guarantee that Hellblade 2, Avowed, and Fable live up to the expectations set by their predecessors. The fact that these are passion projects rather than franchise products should be enough to counteract that. But just because upcoming internal and external projects like Compulsion’s Project Midnight or Oxide’s Ara: History Untold are smaller doesn’t mean Microsoft should treat them as chaff. Multiple games, including Tell Me Why and Battletoads, have felt like chaff to plug the schedule. Creators want to build games that can meet players on any screen. We have this unique vision because we see what creators want to do. It’s just not true that if we go off and build great games all of a sudden you’re going to see console share shift in some dramatic way. I see commentary that if you just build great games, everything would turn around. ![]() If Xbox can’t compete in the old way, then it has to compete in a new way - and that new way is not synonymous with building great games, as Spencer explained: Instead, I want to point out something that Spencer said in a recent interview with Kinda Funny.įirst, “There is no world where Starfield is an 11 out of 10 and people start selling their PS5s.” This implication of a zero-sum market is bleak, but it’s even more bleak in combination with the fatalism of the broader interview. I’m not interested in relitigating those issues. The list of mid games is as long as the list of good games, not to mention the widespread murmurings of troubled development at multiple studios. There’s social media sentiment that the executive team struggles with recognizing great games. It came about following Redfall becoming another Xbox exclusive to land with all the impact of a rotten fish. It’s not new, but Xbox CEO Phil Spencer recently reiterated it, in the process laying bare that it’s adopting the bad alongside the good of the business model. While those two focus on flagship products like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom to sell boxes, Xbox has increasingly set itself up as a service offering, primarily through Game Pass: It’s the “Netflix of video games” idea. We’ve known for a while that Microsoft doesn’t see itself as being in direct competition with Sony and Nintendo.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |