[Late to the Party]
In which we play multiplayer games that are more or less “dead” and see if they are worth playing now. We opened up a more recent game, Battleborn, which we really did find for just five dollars. Is it worth it?
Hey everyone, the new Need for Speed reboot just came out, and so far reviews are spectacular. What could be a better way to celebrate by talking about the last game and its competitor? I was recently able to obtain both Need for Speed Rivals: Complete Edition and The Crew: Non-Complete Edition for a pretty decent price. It’s been close to a year since Crew came out, and much much longer since NFS:R launched. Both of these games feature a sort of MMO-lite element similar to Destiny where you get to play on a map that’s occupied by other players you may or may not encounter, and may or may not bother interacting with. How do they hold up to newcomers? Is their multiplayer community still thriving? Let’s start off with the old one.
Need for Speed: Rivals is dogshit, first of all. I don’t know how or why the NFS franchise fell from grace so hard, but this game is an exemplar of all the bad design decisions of recent titles. The racing physics are sloppy and unfun to start with, and nothing really feels fast like it should be. The second problem is that it has the crash physics from the Burnout games, which works out fantastic… in the Burnout games. Having my car crash from tapping a nearby fence post and then facing the wrong direction when I respawn is not fun. Also on top of the not-fun list is the absurd difficulty curve.
So, looks like “Late to the Party” is a thing after all, as I recently got a chance to pick up Titanfall for a whopping six dollars. This is after they announced the season pass was free, so essentially I got a complete edition for less than $10. That’s really nice. But is the game nice? With a free season pass and a low asking cost, does this entirely multi-player-only first person shooter experience welcome new players? The short version is: yes, it really does.
As far as multi-player FPS’s go, I usually don’t jump in until I finish the campaign first, and even then, unless I’m playing with friends, my sessions are usually only a handful of games long. It’s not as if I get bored easily, it’s more like I’m just easy to satisfy. Coming from being a big Halo player, Titanfall frequently surprises me by giving the same sense of fulfillment I get from a good set of Halo matches. Given this new game’s pedigree of being from a few of the Call of Duty creative team, it pleases me to play the game and end up with something far more than just “more COD”. I don’t even dislike COD, I just don’t enjoy the multi-player. So onward with the experince:
In what I hope will become an ongoing series, I’d like to take some time to examine (hopefully various) multiplayer-oriented games, way after they hit their peak. Particularly, I aim to see if these games hold up to either their hype or lack thereof when it comes to playing far after everyone else is seemingly “done” with it. Destiny went on sale recently so, I thought I’d pick it up and see how friendly it is to new players. The short answer is: it isn’t. [ADDENDUM: The version of Destiny discussed in this editorial was the original vanilla edition. I currently have no plans on playing the Taken King version.]
I am not that interested in Destiny to begin with. Nothing of the promotional material really grabs me, even since the beginning. Asking people about the game doesn’t help either. To say that the opinions on the game are divisive would be trivial. I get statements like:
“It’s great if you like being bored.”
“OMG, it’s so much fun, you have to play.”
“It’s only good for a while but the end game is a real grind.”
“I fucking hate it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go play it some more.”
It’s even harder to get an idea of what the game is even supposed to BE, really. Is it a shooter? An MMO? An RPG? The people I ask couldn’t even agree on that either. Well, I DID play it and can safely say that Destiny is clearly a “Slightly Less-Than-Massive Online Multiplayer Experience-Oriented Shooter with Role Playing Game Elements” or a SLtMOMEOSwRPGE for short.
