I ran into a lot of “AAA disease” when playing through 007 First Light recently, where the game has a lot of walk-and-talk and doesn’t respect your intelligence, but it’s a criticism that doesn’t permeate the entire runtime of the game. I didn’t realize how much worse it could be, but Ralph makes his case quite clearly in this video.
Action game fans and critics have been complaining about this for like a decade and a half.
See TGBS talking about this 10 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmxQG6Cfyr4
Yeah, it’s not new, but it’s gotten more egregious, and everyone keeps pulling from the same bag of tricks regardless of how much sense it makes. Uncharted has a lot of climbing bits because it’s riffing on Indiana Jones, but why is James Bond doing the same climbing bits as Nathan Drake? And why are they so simple that my inputs hardly matter because the only path through the level is so telegraphed that it’s visible from space? Games need downtime between action sequences for pacing reasons, and while I could tolerate it in Gears of War because of their brevity, our answer to this problem needs to be more sophisticated than just holding up on the analog stick.
This game might as well not exist since it isn’t coming to PC
The best thing about this game is that it made e hold onto my PS5 until prices were at an all time high. Now that I don’t want this game, I can sell my PS5 for what I bought it for years ago.
The QTE finishing itself is just insulting.
Oof that does look very hand-holdy.
Definitely not a game for me.
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They thought they could just copy and paste whatever they did in Spiderman, an open world game, into a linear action game… and it’ll “just work”
I think this arrogance is born out of the misconceived belief that linear games are inherently inferior and easier to design than open world games. I’m glad it backfired; they earned it.
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As a long time X-men fan that lived through the Fox movies era, I am convinced that the franchise is cursed.
Now they are bringing X-men into the MCU when it’s on life support. I would say people are generally apathetic on the MCU with some outright hostile to it. Unlikely that X-men will change that.
Inside Games speculated this may be a result of Sony burning billions on failed live service starting to cut budgets on other projects. The Kojima news sort of correlates.
But basically all these annoying systems make sense in an open-world Spiderman game, where getting lost is even more annoying, but not here and so that possibly speaks to a scope change in the middle of development.
I was surprised that it wasn’t open world after they basically perfected it with the Spider-Man games.
I don’t think it needed to be open world, but just surprised Insomniac pivoted to liner and couldn’t pull it off.
I do wonder if there was a scope change mid-development and were just seeing that in the end result.
Fun fact about the point at the end of the video: The QTEs of all three Insomniac Spiderman games are also un-failable (except for a couple random exceptions)
Unfailable as in, you’ll succeed it no matter what? (faking your input or showing different animations but the same eventual outcome?), or failing gives you a black screen and prompts it again or something?
Spiderman+QTE makes me think of the meme worthy “I’m gonna die” one 😅
Edit: just saw that part of the video. Insulting 🙄. (looks like the same thing happens even if you press nothing)
Iirc they’ll fail, but you are given multiple chances and not just miss one you lose.
I hate the idea of qte so just turn on auto complete so I can watch what’s actually happening as a cutscene vs missing most of it looking for the specific button to press
It’s a little strange Insomniac would have this much trouble with a linear game when they made Ratchet and Clank.
Maybe that’s the problem? I’m thinking about it and R&C can be kind of hand holdy, those golden bolts shine like nobody’s business, and they had a lot of travel challenges. That worked for that game because cartoony and as built against different gadgets and geared toward younger audience but shoehorning that into wolverine doesn’t quite fit.
Just a thought.
Agreed. Ratchet & Clank were great games, loved them.
A marvel game just like a marvel movie: crap
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Wow, I did not expect that verdict (still need to watch the video). I respect Skill Up and think he is well articulating himself and his reasoning are often valid.
Surprising review, since expected it to be good after how much I enjoyed the Spiderman games.
I think a lot of people expected it to be good (pre-late marketing) since Insomniac generally makes pretty good games.
I think I am biased as I don’t have a ps5, and Sony is definitely on a crusade at the moment. But I really like Spiderman and Miles Morales, and enjoy Spiderman 2 albeit not as much.
However, Wolverine just never stood out from what I had seen briefly, then I saw the sentinel fight. That looked beyond shit, like gameplay had regressed 20 years or more.
I think that was the point I expected it to be bad, even if it is not completely terrible on the combat side.
I’ve been savoring playing the last Spider-Man game for a while now. The first two are so good.
2 definitely not as good
It’s sad but I think you’re right. I platnimued all three of them and the third was the best looking/but least memorable. Which is insane because it had playable Venom.
😩
Excellent video.
My friend was preaching for weeks now that he absolutely has to buy this game, but already knew it was going to be booty and hated that he was going to waste money on this. Guess he was right.
Called it. Insomniac aren’t qualified to make this. In fact, very few western developers are.
Most just suck at making linear action games.
Insomniac’s combat is fine in an open world game, but strip everything else and put all focus on it, and it becomes obvious it’s mid at best.
Flying Wild Hog could’ve killed it going the Evil West route.
In case anyone is unfamiliar with Evil West, here’s Skill Up’s review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cMczlbmBFw
We all do realize Insomniac made Ratchet and Clank for years before Spiderman, yeah?
Please go ahead and walk me through how making Ratchet and Clank qualifies Insomaniac to make a good linear action game… you know, like Ninja Gaiden II or Bayonetta. Blow my mind, please.
I didn’t think games generally were quite this handholdy but then realised I haven’t really played any AAA from the past 10 years. I wasn’t ever likely to buy a PS5 anyway but Wolverine is another exclusive on the “meh” pile for me.
