Astro Bot – a real contender (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
The Friday letters page struggles to understand the madness of Astro Bot vs. Concord, while one reader looks forward to Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed.
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Strange days
Just what is going on in gaming at the moment? Sony ditch their first big live service game after 11 days and it’s due to get shut down the same day that Astro Bot comes out? The game that is the exact opposite of Concord and everything that fans have been wishing Sony would go back to making.
And yet everyone is convinced – and I’m sure they’re right – that Sony will ignore the positive reviews and comments and just keep throwing out live service games until one’s a hit or… they go bust? Can Sony go bust? I’m not sure they’re that close to any trouble but it feels like they’re desperate to find out.
I just cannot fathom how anyone at Sony thinks they’re doing a good job at the moment… except the poor developers who despite it all are still churning out great games. Astro Bot is the best game of the year so far according to Metacritic (and not counting Shadow Of Erdtree) and so between that and the complete failure of Concord I feel that should make their future direction very clear.
But then again Bloodborne was game of the year when it came out and they completely ignored that too. Madness. And I haven’t even mentioned Xbox yet.
Cranston
Exploitable IP
Great to see that Astro Bot has had universal praise. I wasn’t especially interested in it before, or even necessarily now, but I do like see a positive ‘proper’ game with no microtransactions or other nonsense doing well. I assume there’s no multiplayer either?
The contrast with Concord is hilarious, especially as one is launching and the other is dying on the exact same day. I mean, what were the chances of that?
I’m not sure it gives me much more faith in PlayStation’s future plans though. The Sony boss made it clear he didn’t consider Astro Bot a major franchise and I’ve seen no marketing for the game at all. I wouldn’t even know it exists if not for places like GC. I’m not sure Sony cares how good it is, only whether it’s something they can exploit in the future.
Gadfly
GC: No, there’s no multiplayer of any kind.
Taking a chainsword to bloat
I still can’t believe Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 looks as good as it does. I was watching some videos and it looks absolutely top notch and yet it’s pretty obvious it’s not that high budget, I’m not even sure it counts as AAA. I imagine the linear levels and lack of exploration (i.e. no bloat) was a factor but I suspect it was mostly just the developer being lean and sensible, rather than having thousands of people working away at minor content people will never play.
I might wait for Black …read more
Source:: Metro
