31st May 2017, 10:57 PM
Quote:As it turns out, when developers already getting massive backing from external parties also go for a Kickstarter, it isn't the best sign. Might Number 9 and Yooka Laylee didn't get the most glowing reviews. Personally, I thought Yooka was a decent game and better than Mighty Number 9 turned out to be, but neither one really lives up to the sheer cash put into those things.I pretty strongly disagree here, in the case of Yooka-Laylee specifically. On the case of Mighty No. 9, yes, the game is a disappointment, as the game is average and doesn't come close to being as great as the Mega Man classics, but the worst thing about that project by far is that Kickstarter backers who backed at physical tiers got stiffed and mostly got nothing for their money. I get that the game did not do as well as they wanted, but they should have been figuring in the cost of physical rewards all along, instead of doing what they seem to have done and decided to abandon their responsibility to their backers as soon as they saw the game wouldn't be a success. As for the game itself though, an average game at a budget that size seems hardly rare in this industry, yes? Games are expensive to make after all...
As for Yooka-Laylee, I still think the game is fantastic and one of the best 3d platformers in years (though yes, Mario 3D World is probably better), but most of the issues it does have come from the game clearly not having the kind of budget that a major Nintendo title would. The game may have made a lot for a Kickstarter, but you can't fun a AAA game on Kickstarter, not even close, and even a smaller project like Y-L shows in a bunch of ways how more budget would have helped, in the occasional camera issues, the mediocre minigames, the inability to easily restart challenges while doing them, etc. Had the game been funded by Nintendo, for example, I don't think it would have shipped with those problems. A "big" Kickstarter budget is what, lower mid-tier as far as game budgets go? Just big indie, maybe even? And this was an ambitious project.
Quote:The best of these sorts of projects turned out to be InXile's RPGs, which have received glowing reviews from lots of people (and some hate from a certain class of elitist nerd that just couldn't accept certain ultimately minor decisions).Yeah, RPGs like InXile's, Bioware's Pillars of Eternity, or Dinivity: Original Sin are probably the most successful to come out of Kickstarter. Some of those are pretty good games no question.
Quote:I'm having some doubts about this particular project now. It became clear with Mighty Number 9 (and Comcept's other ideas, like ReCore), that Inafune isn't quite the talent he considers himself to be. Considering the ego trip that Iga also goes through in his promotional video, it's worth worrying about this new project.Iga... he was in charge of Castlevania for some years, but I've always had mixed thoughts on him -- he didn't work on Castlevania early on; he did work on Symphony of the Night, but was only the assistant director, not director, so he was not in charge of the game; he didn't have anything to do with and later disparaged the N64 Castlevania games, which I quite like, and also had no part in the first GBA Castlevania, Circle of the Moon; and then when he got in charge of Castlevania after that, he wrote out those three games (the N64 games and CotM) plus Castlevania Legends from his version of the series chronology... while making some pretty bad 3d Castlevania games on the PS2. His other attempt at 3d Castlevania, in the mediocre Wii fighting game, is not great either, though it can be amusing. (As for ReCore, I've only played the demo but it did seem a bit disappointing, but he only is credited with "conceptualizing" the game, not actually developing it, so I wouldn't blame him too much for it. He doesn't deserve much praise either, for sure, though. At least it's probably better than those boring PS2/Xbox Castlevania games though?) His 2d games were a lot better of course, as he did produce five Metroidvania Castlevania games on the GBA and DS, and yes I do think that htye are pretty good games (especially Portrait of Ruin since that's the one I played most), two pretty good remakes in Chronicles and RoB PSP, and the good classic-style title Castlevania ReBirth for Wii, so it is a good sign that Bloodstained is 2.5d and not 3d, but most of his best work in the franchise is iterative. And of course, that's not getting into his history of sexist comments (and game plots) either, but it's definitely also a problem.
So anyway, will Bloodstained be any good? Who knows, we haven't seen enough to say. I did not end up backing its kickstarter, and don't regret that choice right now. If the game releases and is good I'll get it sometime, probably on sale, and it could well be fun, but right now I haven't seen enough of it to say much.
Quote:As for Shenmu 3, why was that ever crowdfunded at all? At least with the established developers, they were no longer with their original companies and were working with some startups, so it made a bit more sense, but Shenmu is being made by Sega, using Sony money, and they still wanted our's. The Shenmu 3 project is... sadly pretty fishy.It was crowdfunded because Sega didn't want to spend the money to fund the game, so instead he convinced them to let him pay to license the name for a sequel he would fund elsewhere. Given how much money the original two Shenmue games lost for Sega it isn't surprising they were not interested in making more of them. As for Sony, they probably said ' we will give you money, but only if you prove there is consumer demand for the game through success in something like Kickstarter', which kind of makes sense for that same reason. As I've never cared for Shenmue at all I haven't followed Shenmue 3 since its announcement though, so I don't know how it's going.