Gaming Ramble Weekly

Welcome back to another week of Gaming Ramble Weekly, it’s been a busy busy week in the gaming space, which is great for me, because it means I have plenty to talk about!  After what happened last week, the main focus is going to be the disastrous launch of Rocksteady’s first game in seven years: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

If somehow, you haven’t heard the news, or you’re not really on top of the goings on of the gaming world, Suicide Squad has been critically panned across the board, a surprise to essentially nobody.  IGN gave the game a five out of ten and said “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a thoroughly frustrating game to play.”, while Screen Rant gave the game a six, saying “Boss battles against some of history’s most legendary characters feel like generic fights that mirror countless other games.”  On Steam, the game has peaked at just 13,500 players, which is 18,000 lower than the peak seen from Marvel’s Avengers, a game which has an eerily similar background to Suicide Squad.

But where did it all go wrong?  Rocksteady had become an iconic studio after their work on the Batman Arkham series, revered as the best superhero games available.  Their previous title: Arkham Knight scored an 87 on Metacritic, and was held in high esteem for its groundbreaking graphics, and thrilling conclusion to the Arkham series.  Fast forward to now, and there feels like a level of collective disappointment for where the studio has ended up. 

When it was first revealed, Suicide Squad already had alarm bells ringing in the heads of many.  Live service games are generally viewed in a negative light these days, especially in this instance, when a studio revered for super storytelling very quickly changes direction to what feels to many like a cash grab.  This negativity forced the hand of Rocksteady, when a trailer in early 2023 seemed to show a Battle Pass was part of the plans for the game, which received heavy backlash online.  The decision was taken to delay the game by another 9 months, to give the studio time to “take the time needed to work on the best quality experience”.

The court of public opinion had already judged this game, and despite a large amount of marketing, there never really felt like there was a lot of pre-release excitement, and when the game released for early access on 30th January, a bug was discovered that saw those who logged in being given all the achievements and their progress had been fast forwarded to after the story had finished.  Servers were switched off for 12 hours, and so those who had paid an extra $30 for early access lost nearly 20% of that time!

This game has been a total mess, and it really is sad to see such a giant as Rocksteady fall so far with this title.  I am yet to see a truly positive review of the game, and with February already being a stacked month, it seems that this game is destined to flop hard.  It’s my hope that this game will lead to studios really examining whether live service games have a place in the industry anymore.  Unless you manage to stumble upon a gem like Fortnite, it is unlikely that your game is going to be success.  I won’t be touching this game, unless it comes to PS+ and then I’ll probably try it out for myself.

PlayStation Outline 2024 Plans

I mentioned last week that I was looking forward to PlayStation’s State of Play Presentation, and I was really pleased with what they showed off.  I’m happy to admit I’m a bit of a PlayStation fanboy, and so my interest was certainly higher for this than it was for the Xbox Developer Direct.  It looks like 2024 is going to be a bit of a quieter year for PlayStation – their focus seems to be on Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin for the first half of the year, titles which would be seen to be more on the AA side rather than AAA.  

I have to say that I don’t have a lot of interest in either title, especially when 2024 is looking like a year for me to clear out the backlog.  Generally, I feel a bit surprised about how poor the graphics look for Rise of the Ronin, especially when four years ago we were spoiled with Ghost of Tsushima.  It remains to be seen just what experience will be delivered from Rise of the Ronin, but I just wonder if PlayStation slapping the “PlayStation Studios” on the marketing for this game could be a bit of a wrong move.

Generally, I feel a bit surprised about how poor the graphics look for Rise of the Ronin.

The best part of this presentation was without doubt, the nine minute trailer for Death Stranding 2, which I’ll link below.  For me, my amazement came from the quality of the graphics and facial animations, and highlights that we’re getting closer and closer to games reaching almost lifelike quality.  Regardless of your opinion of Kojima and his “style”, I think nearly everyone can agree that this was a visually impressive trailer.  I plan to go back to finish Death Stranding – I played about 3 hours of the title before, honestly, getting a bit bored by the general gameplay loop.  The way music was implemented into the game was something I really loved, so I think it’s a game I will definitely go back to.

Heading into Night City

One of the things I love about writing this blog is that it allows me to essentially journal my gaming habits over time.  I am someone who would happily admit that I very easily go through phases of interest, often influenced by what is “hot” at any particular moment.  For example, whenever Diablo IV released last year, there was a lot of coverage on YouTube and TikTok about the game, to the point where I found myself being interested to play a Diablo game, just to see what it was like.  I bought Diablo III on sale, played it, finished it, and since then I haven’t thought about a Diablo game.

After finishing Deathloop, I went trawling through the backlog to see what I would consider playing next, and after about 45 minutes of looking through all the games I owned on my PlayStation, I eventually came to the conclusion that I would go back to Cyberpunk 2077 and do a fresh playthrough on the 2.1 update.  At the end of 2022, I started the game, played for about 10 hours, and then got distracted by a little game called God of War: Ragnarok.  Once I had finished that, I went through a period of Burnout at the start of 2023 (are you seeing the pattern here?) and then never went back.

I booted the game up for about 30 minutes last week, and decided to start as a Nomad, but with work being so hectic last week, and the release of Grounded II (more on that later), I just haven’t had a chance to properly get stuck in.  I’m deliberately pushing myself to play more First Person Shooters, so as to not feel as uncomfortable with the genre in general, and I feel like this will open a whole heap of games I haven’t played that are on PS+.  I’ve never played a Far Cry game, for example, and I’ve just added Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands to my Library, another FPS.  And with fewer new games releasing this year that interest me, it gives me a chance to enjoy titles I just haven’t had time for previously.

I Recommend: Grounded II

Last week, Naughty Dog released a two hour documentary on the making of The Last of Us: Part II, and I watched it over the weekend.  If you haven’t yet had a chance to watch this, and you’ve played TLOU2, you absolutely need to watch this.  I have never been the biggest fan of the story told in TLOU2, at times I felt like they were trying too hard to manufacture these emotions that they wanted you to feel, but I can appreciate the visual quality of the character designs and the levels in general.  And while this documentary hasn’t done anything to change my mind on these things, I appreciated the viewpoints offered throughout the show.  

PlayStation have produced three pretty brilliant documentaries on the making of their games, at least, three that I’m aware of.  The two for TLOU, and Raising Kratos, which focused on the process behind God of War (2018).  If there are any other documentaries like these on YouTube, please do let me know by submitting a comment in the form below the bottom of this post!

Thanks for reading this week’s blog, it’s a longer one this week, but a lot has happened since I last posted!  As I’m writing this, news is leaking that Xbox may be bringing Starfield, and other exclusive titles to PlayStation, which may be a topic of conversation for next week.  Until then, have a great week, and if you’re playing Suicide Squad, I hope that you find value in it!