Game Ranter Banter: Sequels, Black Ops 2, All-Stars Battle Royale and Game Delays
What a wild week it’s been, Max Payne 3 released this Tuesday for consoles (don’t worry PC owners, you’ll get your bullet time fix soon!), and that’s been keeping a couple of our writers occupied, while the rest battle through server problems for Diablo III. But even with such great games in our hands, we still find the time to write the Game Ranter Banter, for you. Except for the last two weeks, but let’s just ignore that, okay?
This week, our writers discuss big budget sequels, what Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 means for the franchise, All-Stars Battle Royale, game delays, and the inconvenience of download codes.
Let’s begin!
Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny (By CJ Smillie)
If PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale’s existence says anything, it’s that the fighting game genre’s most popular titles are typically crossovers. One only needs to point to Super Smash Bros. for evidence, but there’s also Marvel vs. Capcom and Street Fighter X Tekken, all of which are true moneymakers despite various fan complaints. Even games like Soul Calibur V and Mortal Kombat have included guest characters for that little extra bit of attention.
But the popularity of crossover fighting games leaves a couple of questions. The first of these being “what does the future hold for this sub-genre?” Obviously, there will be more of these at some point. People just love to argue over who can beat who in a fight, and developers know this. So there will inevitably be more company agreements allowing more characters from various mediums to appear in games, thereby driving more attention and garnering more sales. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll just have one big fighting game that crosses over everything we can think of that just updates every year. Though, the copyright issues for that would be a nightmare.
The other question that we must ask is “what does this mean for regular fighting games?” While there is still a market for these, clearly, it isn’t as big as the crossover, and if these become more and more popular, it will be that much harder for a regular fighter to get attention. To be completely fair, if you were just going by first glance and knew nothing about either title, which would you be more likely to buy? The latest Super Smash Bros? Or a game like Skullgirls? The future of the fighting game genre looks to be a rather bleak one unless there can be a way for regular fighters to co-exist along the big money-making crossovers.
Hate the Players, Not the Games (By Riley Little)
Every year we see the release big budget sequels, and generally they’re met with the most excitement — along with stupefying amounts of criticism. Gamers are a vocal breed, and if we don’t like something then you can be damn sure people are going to hear about it. I’m in full support of letting people voice their own opinions, and Game Rant is more than happy to give our readers the opportunities to do so, but some of the things we see said around the community are completely unjustified.
Pointing to Halo or Call of Duty and saying “it’s the same thing over and over again” is fine, but what specifically is the same about these games? Publicly hating on a series for continuing to give fans more of what they like is kind of idiotic.
If you can honestly point out a legitimate quarrel with a title that you’ve spent some time with, then you’ve successfully used logic to come to a conclusion. You need to know why you like or dislike a product; you can’t just know to dislike it.
Delay of Game (By Tyler Schirado)
Lately, it seems as if there has been a growing trend of delayed games. BioShock Infinite, Tomb Raider, and now South Park: The Stick of Truth have all been delayed until 2013 - missing their original 2012 holiday season release date. Although upsetting, there seems to be more understanding and acceptance of delays from gamers than there are from cinephiles.
When delaying a video game, many factors include hammering out glitches, polishing off graphics, and the tweaking of other gameplay aspects that make sense because you are delivering a product that will be played hours on end. Filmmaking just doesn’t have that luxury to go back and polish off a story once it’s been shot. You can’t go back and ask actors to go back and do re-shoot after re-shoot. The actors have lives and other schedules they have to adhere to, and the release date of the film means everything to most studios.
The sad part about films being delayed is that most of the time distributors/producers fear the potential of not making enough money due to the competition of what’s coming out that weekend. It’s different with video games. I believe there’s more at stake because the medium is newer and developer reputation is far more on the line. In my opinion, game developers are far more concerned if the game is faulty and holds glitches than how much money it makes. All of these games are missing tons of money in holiday spending; producers would never push back the date of let’s say The Dark Knight Rises from its summer release because that’s when it would make the most money. And this is why I believe we need to continue to embrace game delays with a positive attitude.
Back In Black (By Brian Sipple)
It didn’t take early May’s bevy of Black Ops II announcements for fans to realize that a change was in order. Leaks and rumors about the game’s title and futuristic setting had been streaming in for the better part of a month; the reveal trailer and early previews were merely icing on the cake (or in Frank Woods’ case, Splenda on the Jell-O) for the knowledge that the Cold War of yore was on its way out the door.
It’s one of the reasons I commend Treyarch. For the second time in a row, they managed to stifle the same old “same old Call of Duty” prejudices I have when seeing the series gear up for another year (although that’s not to say it’s never won me over in the end). The 2025 “Compromise of the Machines” premise, though feeling a bit “Law & Order” ripped-from-the-headlines, has more legs than those gaudy walking tanks from the first screenshots and, to me, is emblematic of a developer that’s not resting on prior success. There are so many directions Black Ops II can go that are titillating for anyone who got involved with the first game — and it’s that veil of uncertainty wrapping the illusion of familiarity yanking me back in.
Download Woes (By Anthony Molé)
I did quite a lot of video game shopping this past Boxing Day (for Americans, think of it as Black Friday but after Christmas), and one of the games I picked up was SOCOM 4. I already had an extensive backlog of games, so I didn’t bother opening up SOCOM 4 until a few weeks ago, when I decided it might be time to give it a spin. There was only one issue: the download code for SOCOM 4’s Pro Content had expired on April 19th, 2012. By the time I opened the game, it was already May.
SOCOM 4 released on April 19th, 2011 in North America, giving new users only one year to redeem the code. This makes absolutely no sense - the Pro Content is supposed to be an incentive for buying new, but Sony gave such a small window to actually redeem the code that late buyers will be missing out on their little bonus - unless they call to complain, but why should a new customer have to jump through so many hoops?
These download codes have been nothing but problematic, from online passes that expire to codes not even working, what’s the point in trying to push everyone to buy new if publishers keep messing up their incentives? If publishers want us to stop buying used, they need to make sure new buyers are actually rewarded - not stuck emailing customer service reps because their code(s) expired a year after release.
Conclusion
That’s all for this week’s Game Ranter Banter.
As always, let us know what you think of this week’s news in the comments, or on Twitter @GameRant and Facebook.com/GameRant and if you have specific topics you’d like any of the team to cover, don’t hesitate to ask!
