From USA Today: "Third-Party is a series of guest blogs where developers talk about specific games, mechanics, levels, and more. This week we have Andrew Haining, code lead at developer No Code, creator of Observation, chatting about pacing and influences in Ghostwire Tokyo.
I don’t consider myself an expert on Japanese culture or games, but I am a big fan of Shinji Mikami and Tango Gameworks. I’ve always considered the studio’s games critically and commercially underappreciated, so I was planning on playing Ghostwire Tokyo regardless of how well it was reviewed. My experience so far is that they have made a very good game and pushed new boundaries for the studio to hone their abilities. I expect whatever comes next to be even better still.
I have the impression that following the outstanding critical success and comparatively disappointing sales in 2016-17, Bethesda decided to pivot its games away, slightly, from genres and styles that garner critical praise and towards ideas that tend to sell better. This is speculation, of course – I’ve no idea what is going on inside these studios – but there’s a definite trend with Fallout 76, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Deathloop, and Redfall. Traditionally, the developers of these games made single-player experiences, but here they are experimenting with multiplayer. "
Halloween is here and the Epic Games Store has something special for this day.
All playable November 5.
i didn't even know there was a death Note game Looks like its a day one game coming on PS Plus.
Yeah, the game was just randomly announced today alongside the PS+ listings for next month.
Ghostwire Tokyo will be free on EPIC from this Thursday until November 5. No subscription is required, and you can keep the game permanently.
yes it will be available for free on the Epic Store this Thursday till November 5th
Ghotewire Tokyo is actually really underated. This is a great get for Plus and the Epic Store.
Ghostwire Tokyo has actually been free on EPIC before, I was actually contemplating playing it soon, great for people on PC who haven't picked it up yet though.
I would say This is a pretty good month 😃
Always wanted to try ghost wire.
Death note looks interesting
Don’t care for hot wheels though
Heck yeah, Ghost Wire is an awesome game - I really enjoyed it from beginning to end!
Hot Wheels for the win. The others I’ll add them to my library but not really interested.
The Evil Within, Ghostwire: Tokyo and Hi-Fi Rush studio has closed its doors.
Ninja theory. Others will follow as well. The smaller studios MS owns should all be worried. Maybe MS will try and release some of their games day and date on ps5 to save some of these studios.
I can see Ninja Theory. At least Tango made a game that was reviewed well. Ninja Theory spent a lot of years to release a tech demo that didn’t do well at all.
I get it that Hellblade 2 is a boring game, but I hope they are not the next to be closed.
@repssahj
Ninja Theory is likely on the chopping block too. They released Bleeding Edge which bombed, took 4 years to release Hellbalde 2 which doesn’t seem to be doing well, and still have Project Mara in limbo. They’re high on the chopping block.
MS was likely expecting their God of War / Uncharted quality game from NT based on Heavenly Sword, Enslaved, DmC, and to an extent Hellblade 1, but NT hasn’t delivered since Hellblade 1 which was 7 years ago.
3 trillion MS is worth, yet they do this, well Phil the shit bag did. No studio needed to be let go, when you are worth this much.
Sad, but I see characters and posters of either less than average or barely average games.
Have to disagree here duder, with respect. Evil Within was a good game and the sequel was fantastic, as was HiFi Rush. I'd concede Ghostwire was pretty average but regardless, shuttering a studio which just put out MS best game in donkeys years was complete shithousery on XBox' part.
Microsoft paid 8B to buy Zenimax then fired well over 1000 people from Zenimax between the time they closed the deal and they announced these shut downs.
People talk about the 1900 they fired most recently, but that was only one wave of three sets of layoffs from their gaming division so far this generation totalling around 5000 people this generation. Not counting the dozen plus studios they canned last gen including Lionhead the original Fable developers.
By every real metric HiFi was an average game. I don't see an Evil within poster in the thumb, which is a shame, because if they threw their weight behind that IP, they might have still been around.
I don't understand how you can say it was average in every metric when it garnered the reviews it did?
I enjoyed the game and completed it in full
This article is way too long and the author only addresses the headline in one small paragraph comparing the game to Assassin's Creed (of all possible games).
Right after the description here ends, they follow that up with: "To their credit, these were all far more successful than other companies’ hamfisted attempts to bolt multiplayer onto single-player games ten years prior".
What. Fallout 76 was slammed on release, Youngblood was the least well-received modern Wolfenstein, Deathloop is at-most 1 vs 1, and Redfall... well...
"With Ghostwire Tokyo, I feel Bethesda’s era of pop hit chasing has most likely come to an end. Redfall was clearly started in this era, but I expect Microsoft will pivot the studios away from this model back towards the prestige games they made their name with."
Again, what. All we've seen is a CGI trailer suggesting it's either a looter shooter or L4D-like, and a delay.
Save yourselves the click and don't bother. Here's the ONE sentence justifying the headline: "They have the potential to make something exceptional." Jeeze
I enjoyed it.
Just a shame that if there is a 2nd then it might not be on PS5
I dunno, i didn't enjoy the game that much. I mean, some side stories were fun (like the hoarder one), but there were too many fights and 99.99% of them felt the same and became boring very quickly. You acquire new "weapons" very slowly, so you have to use same options for very long and they become stale. Unless you first run through the story and do a clean-up run after completion and acquiring every weapon, i guess.
I do like that the map gradually opens up (this fixes the usual exploration issue in big open world games), but same-y side activities (it's always kill the group of enemies and get access to souls/shrine/collectible/new area) felt so boring after a while. Shiba digging felt so slow though (just follow and wait). Main storyline was meh with some good moments, but that's subjective.
I feel like they have to address a lot of issues, but without creative director that might be problematic. Not to mention that Ghostwire 2 will not be released on Playstation (dunno, feels like a middle finger to the fans).