I mean, I expect Demon's Souls to be among the best games ever made, it looks absolutely incredible and I'm a huge Souls fan. Some of the games you mentioned look like glorified tech demos or walking sims. Scorn has a cool Giger aesthetic but the gameplay doesn't look impressive. BMI just looks like a shinier Shadow Warrior. Okay, I looked up Exo-Mecha, this is my first time seeing it... that looks like my jam honestly... like fuck that looks good. Okay, you scored 1 point on me. I still think they're all going to sell less and get lower Meta scores than the PS5 equivalents, though that's more a general argument than personal preference.
I don't see how BMI or Exo-Mecha are walking sims? This sounds a bit like an exaggerated insult usually directed at some Sony exclusives and flip it onto some confirmed Series games. The closest to a walking sim out of any of the games mentioned would probably be The Medium, which is also coming to PS5. But I'm sure that game will have some action elements to it as well.
The only gameplay we have of Scorn is from a few years ago, not too much in terms of updates. I don't know what you're expecting a game that takes inspiration from Alien - a slow, methodical, slow-burn of a scifi-horror classic -to be like but something that's guns akimbo and bang bang bang! would obviously not be it. The game may not look engaging for you
personally but for people who love first-person adventure/puzzle-style games with some action in them (within healthy doses), it should be up their alley especially if they did the Giger-style aesthetic.
I don't agree that BMI is "just" a shinier Shadow Warrior, by that notion we can go back and call
any modern FPS a prettier version of DOS DOOM, or Castle Wolfenstien, or Quake etc. The foundational template for FPS games hasn't really changed all that much since the '90s and in some ways FPS games are
simpler than they used to be (less intricate level/map designs for example) in order to appeal to a wider demographic. What should matter is that a game looks
fun, and that's what BMI looked like to me at the May event. Seems it looked that way for a lot of other people, too. Same goes for Exo-Mecha which seems you actually dig, so it's cool to see more people look into some of these lesser-known games (hoping to hear more news on that one soon, myself).
Truth be told I would not be surprised if those games I mentioned get lower scores than Miles Morales or R&C, and I
definitely won't be surprised if they sell less (because they likely will sell less). But I don't think it's healthy to measure a game's value solely on Metacritic scores or unit sales, especially of late since we've seen some seemingly massive AAA games cause very strong divides between critics and gamers. Not every game needs to move multi-millions of copies to recoup costs and be profitable, for example.
We should also be aware that
sometimes games just get reviewers who are a bad fit for them; I'm reminded of the oodles of "game reviewers" who couldn't even get past the
easy parts of Cuphead, for example, which probably reflected the content of their reviews even if they probably gave it a high score just to "ride the wave" and not bring negative backlash to their reviews with a low score.
There's
just as much peer-pressure influence in review circles as anywhere else in society so I wouldn't be surprised if the tone of reviews by and large are dictated by high-up sources who put out the initial scores, places like your IGNs or whatever. And while this would probably take things into a whole other topic, I think we should also be realistic and know that there's a good deal of politics and money on the line with these mainstream reviews, too, especially for
certain AAA games. Reviewers don't want to lose their perks from platform holders and publishers, among other things.
Those are main reasons why I'd say regardless of how some of these games score, using MC- and
ONLY MC (or just raw sales numbers)-as a way to ding them
isn't for the best. It's like saying a movie like Tenet (which I recently saw and found fun/interesting...need to watch it again to piece things together tho lol) isn't as good as Captain Marvel because CM earned over $1 billion at the BO.
People also shouldn't have the ridiculous notion a game needs to be 90+ or else it's trash; I guess because of so many factors that skew modern reviews in ways dictated aside from the actual game quality this is why people hold on to this notion, but in a more honest industry we'd be seeing some of these massive AAA games cutting closer to mid-upper 70s to high 80s and just a
very minute few hitting into the '90s let alone above that.
I’m going to link to myself back in May, saw the writing in the wall back then.
It are mostly Indie games .. wtf. I thought almost all looked better than this generation. It always the same with a new gen .. did reporters get reset ? And start blank? Just curious ? I mean it’s been this way since snes, looks hardly better than NES. 🤣 The funny thing they were for the...
www.neogaf.com
And now watch every single "gaming tech site" that tore MS a new anus for cross-gen support, suddenly not mention it anymore, nor do the same to Sony for having a lot more (somewhat surprising IMHO, after their earlier messaging) cross-gen 1st-party than expected.
I won't even be surprised if they somehow start arguing in favor of cross-gen now that it seems Sony is going a lot with that strategy, and tear MS yet
another new anus for only having Halo Infinite as a cross-gen title now
.
Honestly, most "gaming" media sites suck complete ass. No professionalism whatsoever.
