Jamaal Ryan writes: "From Assassins Creed Unity’s frequently jarring and occasionally hilarious glitches, to Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s near catastrophic matchmaking issues, to Far Cry 4 and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s online instability, to the continuous train wreck that is Driveclub ... the last few months have been fraught with unpolished releases, and have raised an unusual paranoia that particularly console gamers aren’t used to: “Will my game actually work at launch?”
In this day and age, it’s rare we experience a warm fuzzy feeling when we boot up X (formerly known as Twitter, of course).
But the past few days have been lovely: our feed is full of people talking about DriveClub again.
The discussion started when someone posted a clip of the game and its infamous rain effects. The caption reads: “Still can’t believe this is a 12 year old game.”
This was one I was hoping would have some kind of boost from the PS5. The devs locked that sucker so tight...
I play the PSVR one even though it doesn't look as good, because that one is 60fps.
I interviewed them twice back in my gaming journalist days... Once at E3 2006 and again on a podcast about a year later. Really nice folks.
The guy we interviewed both times' name was Simon, I can't remember his last name, it was 20 years ago, but he was a really nice guy, and was very passionate about his job. It broke my heart when I saw Sony shuttered Evolution. I do hope they bring some of those folks back, but I remember another studio ended up hiring most of them back in those days, and they've been releasing new games since under that studio... Codemasters, maybe? I forgot which....
But the amount of talent that Sony has shut down over the years, it's disturbing. Psygnosis, Evolution, Zipper... just those three studios produced some of the most innovative games that PlayStation has ever seen... and those games need to be brought back.
If they were to release that game on the PlayStation 5, there would be absolutely no need for a remaster or a remake. The whole appeal of the original game was that it consistently exceeded people's expectations.
Higher rendering res and textures, higher framerate, maybe toss in some global illumination/ray tracing, but other than that, they could keep every polygon the same and it would still look absolutely incredible as a current gen title.
Sony should reassemble the team and make Driveclub 2. Driveclub was so ahead of its time it’s crazy.
This is what I hate about gamers sometimes
There is a segment of gaming communities that always want an old game to come back. But when the game(s) were in their prime, nobody supported them or not enough people supported them. Driveclub, Killzone, Resistance, etc all fit that profile.
I want Driveclub, Killzone, Resistence, and etc all back too. But I say that as someone that bought into, played, and own those games.
Too many people like to talk but not put up the money to support when it's needed. I even lump two of my own personal friends into that. I remember how one of them constantly said "I always wanted to play the Resistance games", yet never made an effort to buy any of them. No way that's an isolated event.
There are certainly games that fit that description, but I'm not sure these are a good fit:
- Driveclub infamously launched in a truly terrible state. It had a central focus on online & social features, and those were broken for about 6+ months before people could reliably play it as intended. It was so bad that the PS Plus Edition was delayed, along with its companion app. It also released less than a year after the PS4 launch, so it had to deal with a smaller total of launch PS4 owners to sell to, and Driveclub's rough launch certainly did it no favors.
- Resistance got 3 main console entries, and one handheld title for the PSP and PS Vita. Killzone got 5 main console entries across 3 generations, and one handheld title for PSP and PS Vita. This was also the era of millions of shooters, especially of the First Person variety, & genre fatigue was getting heavier by the year. So I feel these did pretty good at 5 and 7 titles respectively, pointing to enough people showing up for at least a while.
I'm not saying people don't exist who fit that criteria for these games, but I also don't think they were the primary issue. I think after a solid break from the IPs, as well as a lessening of shooter oversaturation, these titles could find healthy audiences if they came out with new entries at this point.
Killzone on the PS4 had the graphics, but the gameplay was tragic, I only rated Killzone 3, although the first game on the PS2 was decent. The Getaway was another game Sony canned, the sequel was so bad. Plenty of games need a sequel, the likes of Ridge Racer, Wipeout, Project Gotham, Wave Race and F-Zero have been retired. The racing genre these days, I'm sick of Turismo and Forza due to the same tracks and any other clones.
I think the original Motorstorm was the game that convinced me to buy a ps3. Way ahead of its time.
Surprised Sony didn't release a collectio, but all they seem to do these days is release God of War and Uncharted collections. It kills me that I no longer have a PS3, so a collection would be awesome.
The best way to experience a unique chapter in AC franchise history.
Give me a proper PS5 port with trophy list, Syndicate too and I'd happily buy them both again
The French Revolution waits for no one.
But now it runs at 60 FPS on PlayStation and Xbox Series X.
Rediscover Assassin’s Creed Unity in breathtaking clarity.
Microsoft REALLY screwed up on an EPIC level with The master chief Collection. That blunder cost them millions of dollars and turned off would be Xbone adopters. It couldn't have come at a worse time either because after the holidays the Xbone will be in drought mode while Sony is releasing amazing exclusives for the PS4.
Yeah this is getting out of hand. Last gen you bought a game and generally it worked fine (with the exception of Bethesda games). Maybe some people found a few minor glitches and the game was maybe patched once to fix. Anyone without internet was mostly ok as the game usually still worked as the glitches were minor.
Now you buy a game and you immediately need to run to the internet for a multi GB day one patch to add the rest of the game that was incomplete on disc and fix it so it is playable.
The problem with patches is that they can't be backed up. So when you delete the game (HDD space/failure etc.)the patch goes with it. Want to play it again in the future? Well you need to go back and re-download the patch all over again. That is annoying but not as annoying as it will be when the patches are eventually taken down leaving you with a permanently broken and maybe unplayable game on disc.
I honestly feel for developers. Its not like these people who are passionate about their industry WANT to put out broken games.
They are stuck between a rock and a hard place with release dates. If they release late, then they miss out on advertising budget, prime release dates, and bring the anger of fans for delaying it.
It they release on time and hope for the best then they bring something broken and buggy, and hope they can work on big patches for Day 1.
Its easy to say they shouldn't release broken games, but I think we need more transparency and less PR talk from some of these companies about the issues
That's the reason i'm sticking with Sony,it's not like i didn't have issues with the PS4 so far but in the end i hope they'll deliver the same variety of exclusive games as they did with the PS3.
ENOUGH!