Avengers Down! Avengers Down!

Do believe I told you so!

I'll admit, it lasted much longer than I expected. Although even with that being said I am totally going to milk the fact that I told you so. I told everyone so. From the exact moment it became clear that Marvel's Avengers was going to be a Live Service I predicted it's colossal fall like clockwork and I was wrong and right. The prophecy was delayed, but it came true eventually. Which isn't to say the game didn't ever have anything resembling a fighting chance in it's inception; rather that, I think, lo and behold, the decision-makers totally undervalued the amount of effort it would take to first launch a Live Service and to break it into the top 3 services that rule the industry. Just like in the age of the MMO where everyone and their mother was launching a WOW clone and trying to just wing the 'post launch support' as they went; amateurish plans have led to amateurish embarrassments for the Live Service crowd time and time again. Which I do believe marks the last of every single one of Square Enix's many Live Service endeavours going the way of the Dodo. And good riddance!

If you've a perceptive mind on you, perhaps you can deduce what my self-righteous bragging is about. Just recently the Marvel's Avengers team announced they were hanging up the shield and killing support on the game from this point onwards. Or rather, they would be killing support after an upcoming update that will make all the cosmetics free for everyone to play around with, which is actually fairly nice of them. Although at this point they might as well make the game itself free as well before the servers shut down and the thing becomes unplayable outside of the singular core story missions. Marking the end of a game that was slated for death pretty much the second it revealed it's true nature to fans in a 'tail between the legs' demonstration presentation that is sure to live on in infamy. Topped perhaps only by the legendary moment when Valve announced Artifact, only to be met with a stadium full of boos when it was revealed to be another online card game. (Incidentally, Artifact is also no longer with us.)

Right from it's first mewling mumbles fresh from the hatchery, Avengers was the lightning rod for all the frustrations of a gaming public sick and tired with strong properties and solid games being irreparably warped in order to fit more 'monetarily promising' models. Titles like Anthem who's back was broken on the knee of corporate monetisation mandates, for a game that could have very well been promising as a single player or limited multiplayer title being forced into a environment it doesn't belong and won't thrive in, because Destiny made a lot of money with their Live Service once. That frustration did, admittedly, result in Avengers perhaps receiving a harder time than it deserved out of the box. The gameplay was decently fun and the visual presentation was somewhat pretty in it's environments and decent character models. And the boss fights, what few they were, proved engaging enough. But even the supremely jumped-up didn't have to poke far to come across genuine faults with the Avengers package that they could crucify the game for.

The lack of gameplay variety was a serious issue, and a major contributing factor for people getting very sick of the combat very fast. Every somewhat interesting unlockable outfit was locked behind purchasable cosmetics, which felt like a crime for a full priced title which just happened to also be a super hero game. Outside of the main quest the team didn't really know what to do with the end game to make it even remotely interesting to play with. The team tried to subtly make the EXP grind heavier in order to pad out player playtime and hopefully also retention. It was just scandal after scandal with this game. Even their good PR moments seemed to be muted or shortlived. Hawkeye was quickly overshadowed by the arrival Kate Bishop, who literally just felt like his 'shadow fighter' and whittled away at player's patience. Black Panther dropped with any big fanfare outside of this game's specific community. No matter what happened, Avengers just couldn't get a break.

And you know what? It never could have gotten that break. Not even conceptually. And do you know why they couldn't have? Because Live Services just can't function as an industry within gaming. Think of what a Live Service is and what it entails. A consistently maintained and played product providing constant grinding and reward incentives to players that demands excessive time commitments and encourages a little bit of 'on the side' spending to keep the lights on. Hook a couple of whales, milk them for the lionshare of profits; bob's your uncle, you've created an ecosystem exploiting the financially irresponsible for your own end, great! But what's the one heavily spent resource which is essential for all players in order to get the most out of these sorts of games? It isn't money, most every Live Service provides a free path. It's time. The ultimate resource.

Time, as I'm sure you're just so very fond of hearing, is limited. Increadibly so. And if every Live Service you play begs and pleads with you to spend two to three hours each and every day with no end because the game is updated so regularly, then how many such games can a single player feasibly maintain in their daily routine? Two at most? Consider also that there are large swathes of the gaming community who scoff at dedicating that much time and effort to a single game, and you've got a decently niche subsector of gamers being squeezed between dozens of games they cannot possibly juggle with any deftness. Unless you get in on the ground floor and score your lifelong fans back when the idea was novel and the overwhelming negatives of a potential forced addiction wee widely known, you'd have to compete for a table scraps worth of an player base, all the while praying that the small net you can afford to cast netted you a Whale or two. And Avengers was not a spry chicken to this game genre.

Live Services are largely cynical and bankrupt, in a manner that is so very obvious to the public by now. Pursuing such a model in this day and age is tantamount to slapping your audience around the face and telling them how you know that they know the trap your setting but you expect them to tie themselves to it anyway under the vain hope that the enjoyment of the game outweighs the crushing expectation to play incessantly. And it rarely does. Marvel's Avengers was just one of Square Enix's many attempts to secure a cash cow in this drained-dry market and it performed about as well as they deserved. Which is why I cannot but stand baffled at the fact that Square threw away all of it's western companies claiming they don't know how to work a profit out of them, considering they paid literally no attention to the flagging trends of the market and flopped each one of it's franchises on it's face in front of everyone repeatedly. (You reap what you sow, I guess.)

The Avengers game should have been a co-op multiplayer game that followed a single strong main storyline and maybe pursued a traditional DLC structure for some additional adventures; the brand was certainly big enough to score a great swathe of sales with that model and that was all Avengers had the framework to be in the first place. Not every game can become an Online megahit just by throwing some rogue strings of Netcode in the software; just look at Fallout 76- that game has struggled to do anything significant since the Wastelanders Update raised expectations apparently way too high nearly three years ago. There's something to be said for playing to your strengths and not wadding too far from your obvious specialities; and there was a perfect gap in the market for a team-based co-op title just waiting to be filled. Or at least a single-player team-based super hero game. But no, Avengers snoozed and Guardians of the Galaxy took the crown. Alas, poor Avengers... I knew them well, Matsuda-San.

Level 1

 First Impressions.

It's a commonly repeated refrain that you have to nail your first impression because it might just be your last impression. Wait- no, that's not how it goes. 'First Impressions last longest'? Less threatening, but that still doesn't sound right. How does it go... "You never get a second chance to make a first impression", that's it! (Hmm, that still sounds pretty threatening...) But the point stands strong. The very first time someone starts an experience, meets a new person, or does pretty much anything fresh to them, it will be that first moment which colours their proceeding experiences. Which is why when we bring that philosophy to gaming, a lot of games that are beloved to small subsets of people fail to land with larger audiences. You can tell me all day how amazingly interesting the Avenger's combat apparently becomes once you hit the level cap; but I don't have fifty hours to spend grinding and being bored so I can be mildly entertained by an anaemic game from that point onwards.

Which is why nailing that very first level which the player comes across is so important to establishing the interest in the audience that is going to make them stick around for the long haul. And sealing that interest can't be done in the same way that we do with movies or TV. That stinger scene hinting of the later events might work on some very fringe cases, but most of the time it just highlights how boring the proceeding beginning sections of the game are, or just reveals how unimpressive your most exciting section will be. Perhaps the worst example of this is the legendary 'Ride to Hell: Retribution' which begins with a playable smash cut to all the action set-pieces of the later game, neatly allowing the player to experience right early how unplayably bad all sectors of the gameplay were. Almost like a warning to stay away, which I guess makes Ride to Hell's intro the most conscientious of all other games.

I think this late realisation has been what has led to the slow decline of the 'tutorial', as most games operate with the 'standardised control scheme' anyway and thus most players don't want to sit around being told how to move and shoot for the fiftieth time. The trend has gone towards action-oriented and explosive intros that propel the story and let the player get into the action and narrative immediately, even when the game in question is not a full action title. Some people might have been very surprised when playing the Mass Effect Legendary edition to be reminded how that first game begins with a fairly tame introduction that has you walk around the Normandy talking to the people that will become your crew and learning about the world through simple conversation. Mass Effect 2 has a more traditionally orchestrated tutorial action scene which sets you in a workplace ambush that bears a striking resemblance to the opening of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. And Mass Effect 3 has an even more overblown set-piece that leans more towards interactive cinematic than an actual firefight with stakes and peril. And that is just 5 years of 'first level' development clichés being developed by one company.

First levels have become such an entity unto themselves that comedy themed games, such as Far Cry Blood Dragon, have precedent to make fun of them. Why they had to do so in a manner that is equally as tedious as the cliché they were mocking is beyond me, but the expectation of fourth-wall shattering meta comedy is established by the display. Which is, of course, another function of the 1st level. Setting expectation for the audience to come back seeking a pay-off for. It's especially important to do this in long-form media like games and books because neither are expected to be finished in a single sitting. As a designer or writer, you have to be making the case on why your audience needs to return from page 1. Which is why 'Ride to Hell's' cliché 'fast forward' intro was in the right head-space, if flawed in other departments.

Souls games are great examples of this for how they endeavour to always ensure their reputation as unforgiving and brutal experiences is reinforced from the word 'go'. Practically every Souls game has a moment where you end up face-to-face with either the first boss or a tough early-game foe, totally unprepared for that encounter. The original Dark Souls has the first fight against the Asylum Demon, which transpires before you even have your class weapons; Bloodborne has the close quarters brawl with the werewolf which is attached to an almost scripted death sequence. Sekiro pits you against the final boss, and scripts your defeat no matter how well you do. And Elden Ring has Margit; a wound still fresh enough in it's players hearts that I don't need to tell you how unprepared people were for it. The message is very simple; 'prepare to die' and the humbleness of being killed is the first lesson FromSoftware teaches every one of it's players

There are some game types, however, that have confidence enough in the genre within which they exist and the precedent of their peers that they don't need to slap you in the face for attention. Some take their sweet time to establish atmosphere, or world building, confident in the fact that you will stick around for the prolonged amount of time required for the real excitement to start. Hollow Knight is a masterpiece that begins with a particularly subdued thematically desolate introduction to the Hallownest. And Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy and Xenoblade usually avoid the big exciting events so they can allow the player to acclimatise first. This is because above all else, these games aspire to establish immersion, not just stimulation; and only when the player has sold themselves fully into the world do they come and supply the action and danger to the world they've built. 

I think there's one game I know, and love, which balances all the points I've picked out beautifully; and you won't be surprised in the least to see how that game is Yakuza 0. The prequel Yakuza game that revived this franchise to the Western world, Yakuza 0 had very big shoes to fill when it proposed to tackle the very beginning of Kiryu Kazama's journey ten years after his original outing. And they began with a shock, but not an explosion. Kiryu beating a man, in a cutscene, to a bloody pulp for protection money. What follows is actually a very subdued sequence of discovering the 80's Kamurocho, meeting the characters and beginning to get hooked into a plot that prioritizes intrigue. But by that same merit; Yakuza doesn't leave action fans waiting. The finale of the first chapter is perhaps one of the finest action set-pieces that the franchise has ever had. Built like the finale of a whole story with the focus on making the ultimate sacrifice by taking responsibility, the player is then thrown into a relentless no-punches-pulled onslaught of enemies in a perfectly paced gauntlet headed off with a climatic boss fight against one of the key villains of the game. It's over-the-top, awesome and supremely satisfying; that is how you start your game.

The beginning can often be the most challenging part of any work of art, and the amount of forethought and intention it demands will never cease to amaze me in the special instances where all works out with flawless delight. A great introduction will play in your head forever and make you want to dive back in the second after you finish; a bad introduction will kill your momentum and maybe even make you uninstall the game before it gets good. (I literally cannot replay Blood Dragon because I always automatically uninstall the moment the intro wraps up.) So think about the next game you start and whether or not the game you're playing touches on all the notes an intro should, and whether level 1 alone is enough to keep you hooked until the last level.

Just stop, Marvel's Avengers; it's getting embarrasing.

 Looks who's still breathing!

I don't know if it's me being mean or if this circumstance is just sad, actually I think it's a little bit of both. Because to this day, years after launch, Marvel's Avengers is still holding on to it's lukewarm success through thick and thin. Which doesn't sound like a terrible way for a small indie company to live, but the live service of a Square Enix backed mega franchise should probably be at least making enough bank to thrive. Yet every indication we get of Marvel's Avengers success seems to indicate we're at the level of 'keeping the lights on and that's going to do it for now'. Which is galling in a year that has seen the death of two failed Square Enix Live Service start-ups already. (We've still got most of December ahead of us afterall; plenty of time for another.) Through it all the Marvel lights have stayed open for business, fuelled, seemingly, by the cocksure bravado of a franchise that never learnt how to say 'now, just give up this has dragged on for too long'.

As Marvel has grown decidedly longtoothed, so has Marvel's Avengers truly run us all aground with a spiralling race to get nowhere. The game that launched managed to 'whelm' across the board and it's becoming increasingly apparent that the development team has no substantial 'plan' to rework or fiddle with that base experience to coax anything new out of it. The 'Live Service' aspect of Marvel's Avengers appears to simply just be keeping the game slightly dynamic with the odd switch-up event here and there, and rush to try and implement all the assets they've already started collecting for unreleased characters. We already know they've got the voice lines for She-Hulk in the early months of this year, that there's still somehow no hide nor hair of the green machine means that the team are either stretching out their planned content obscenely, or they got an early preview of the She-Hulk show and wisely decided they didn't want to bring out anything related to that brand which might accidentally make their game seem even partially related to that burning dumpster fire of a show.

But there's nothing wrong with being clever about content; that's what all the big ongoing games like to do, only to completely change their plans and pretend they never made the long-term promise to begin with. (Looking at you, Bungie) There have been some content drops that have been worth the extended wait for Avengers players. The Black Panther content was supposed to be pretty fun and then there was the... I think there was a good reception to the... no, I guess the Black Panther release really was the only content drop that was unanimously praised in the past 2 years of the Avenger's life, wasn't it? I guess that might be because everything else just felt a little piddling and 'not worth the wait.' Kate Bishop was criticized for playing too much like Hawkeye, Mighty Thor had the same reactions with Thor. Time and time again the public seem to be coming back with the feedback that they want characters who play differently, not just look different. Which might be why everyone was so excited for the Winter Soldier!

I mean, who wouldn't be? A character buried in the pages of comics until his superstar rise to fame in the MCU partially ridden on the strength of Sebastian Stan and his very photogenic appearance. The Winter Soldier rose from obscurity to culthood through the efforts of the movie franchise, and whatsmore he's so conceptually distinct from the other Avengers there's literally no reason he'd ever be a copy-paste job. He's a gun-toting mercenary assassin, afterall; who's only link to the Avengers is a close friendship with the good Captain; what possible character could he feasibly play like? I'm being facetious for a point, you know it, so I might as well come out with it. They made him a clone of Captain America. I hear there's a bit of Black Widow in there as well, alongside some of his own flair; but the base animations are a one-to-one for the Cap and it makes literally no sense. There's even one move where you can see Bucky clasp his hands together to drive forward a shield into his enemies that isn't there. My man is fighting with an invisible shield; he's gone crazy!

Which isto say nothing about the visual design of the Solider. Bucky looks like a 'Teaser Play' render for one of their soulless 'Unreal Engine 5' render trailers. Paul Tassi was the first to say it, but his aghast has good company. The character model looks, once again, just atrocious. Like literal 'we have Sebastian Stan at home' energy; it makes you legitimately wonder if the team even bothered to actually keep any visual character designers on board when the game moved to it's skeleton crew model. He joins an entire cast of off-brand avenger characters who look just eerie enough to draw an eye and just off-putting enough to make you go "Oh god! Nevermind..." No amount of movie accurate character outfits can distract from that; which is just another reason why the designers shouldn't have gone for a realistic visual style!

The Winter Soldier is the big content drop of the past few months, and for their time fans are also given an increased gear level cap; always a moment of squinted eyes and resigned sighs amidst the people who were just resting at the last cap, and a new high level raid-type event which is going to feature the endgame boss of... MODOK. Again. Apparently the man has somewhat different abilities than he had in the main campaign, but it's still another example of a game with too few villains recycling more of it's content to prolong an already anorexic offering. If there was a more plentiful base game and if there was any sign of a sensible content road map ahead of Avengers, small content reshuffles like this would be fine; but as it stands you can't help but see these are death throes from one persistent cadaver.

Marvel's Avengers was quite honestly doomed before it was ever made. From the moment they slapped on a game model that seems so inherently opposed to Super Hero games, they kneecapped this concept's potential and now are shackled to an ongoing 'sigh' fest which is constantly the butt of the public. Gotham Knights fell for the same trap too, only they seemed to have pulled the monetisation parts of the live service elements leaving only the ill-fitting gameplay ideas. (Which is better? Maybe?) That Square has stuck with it for so long, despite their proven record of scrapping ideas that don't bear fruit, proves that this has either grossed enough to warrant keeping around, (which seems unlikely) Square has a plan to reshape this game into something spectacular (seems even more unlikely) or Marvel is pressuring them not to shut down through some contracting deal because they know it would reflect badly on the brand. (I'm inclined to believe that last one, personally.)

I know there are people who still play Marvel's Avengers, and the fact that they can find enjoyment in an experience like that is a wonder worth celebrating, but for the rest of us the sheer missed potential makes these updates a ghoulish horror show of parading some ugly dead body for all the world to gawk at. Like Google Stadia, only with slightly better prospects. At this point I can see nothing sort of a full rework from the ground up achieving anything substantial with the game, and considering it feels like development has long reached 'skeleton crew' mode, that seems like a utter wild pipe dream. But on the plus side, if you want to feel like the only Avengers team in the world, you and your friends can enjoy a pretty uncrowded ecosystem from today until Marvel launch a better game and don't need to keep this one alive for appearances anymore. (allegedly!)

When developers make the wrong game

Whoops, I did it again!

Game development is never done in a vacuum. Unless you're Toby Fox, in which I case I can only assume you not only build games alone, but harvest your own home-grown food crops to stew in a naturally formed volcanic spring stove inside your hand built wooden log cabin home. There are numerous eyes, ears, voices and ideas that get sprinkled in the development dish in order to whip up that final finished product; ideas that will touch on everything from what sort of visual design standard fits best, how the implementation of this certain feature can be coded in a manner cohesive to systems around it and the ever-elusive; how can the cycle of fun in gameplay be extended over the length of our game? None of these are small questions, and all change the face of the product. Although the wrong fundamentals choice can actually be quite difficult to do when you've an entire team behind you for support. So if that's the case, how are entire AAA games being made so fundamentally wrong recently?

I ask because we've recently had the Superhero dud, Gotham Knights drop on our doorstep and, surprise surprise, the game isn't great. (Who could have possibly seen that coming?) And irrespective of that one technician complaining that the Xbox Series S was holding back the entire generation, this isn't a hardware problem as much as it's a conceptual one. (Unless the Series S grew sentience, crept into WB offices and personally recoded the game to be head-scracthingly badly conceived.) I think we all sort of knew this was going to be the case the very first moment we saw health bars above enemies and went "Uh oh; is this a live service?" Only for the team to turn around and promise it wasn't a live service, and then carry on talking about gear stats. Clearly a game that was born from the potent DNA of an incredible series that demonstrated exactly what a Batman-set superhero game needs to be wouldn't screw up the fundamentals; would it? 

But outside of story and dialogue, for which I heard wildly distinct perspectives, Gotham Knights focuses on everything it shouldn't and ends up being the wrong game it needed to be. Focus is put on the repetition of boring dynamic fights, (which are supposed to be the garnish on top of the world, not a gate to progression) the crafting system, (which lacks any ingenuity whatsoever) stats and level numbers (which clash with the superhero fantasy) and a horribly dumbed down fighting system. (Galling when fighting is literally the main way of interacting with the world.) Essentially they needed to make an action adventure game that expanded on the basics of what the Arkham series made and let several players enjoy that experience together; instead we got a live service skin stretched over an entirely single player game! All the downsides and concessions required to make it a live service, none of the benefits and positives. It's as if the team spent their years making the wrong game. 

And it's all very similar to how Marvel's Avengers turned out, only at least that game was designed to be a Live Service and actually was. But still, the resounding take away from the Avengers game was that it, too, was the wrong game. People of the time were hungry for a cinematic and linear high-quality narrative featuring the famous cast of the movies. Maybe the casting was a bit out-of-the-question, but the high-quality set-piece strewn exciting video game narrative could have been the slam dunk that the hopeful wanted. It would make sense. Popular Superhero games of the past, the Spiderman games, the Arkham games, Ultimate Alliance; all nailed that sense of overbloated comic-book scale narratives, empowering the user with small units they can crush with their flashy powers and impressive set-piece fights against huge roosters and familiar super villain faces to punctuate the excitement. The basic framework of a solid super hero game is actually fairly formulaic and straight forward.

Instead what we got was, yet again, a power levelling RPG system that made certain units annoying and unintuitive to fight against, strings of copy-paste cookie cutter 'smash the thing' missions that served only to pad out the run time as you grind for gear that is only good for taking on slightly harder variants of those same missions and, worst of all, a campaign which featured only three Super villains which the open world game recycled constantly. All that effort which could have gone into making the ultimate superhero team-up game instead went into calculating gear stat tables, designing grind EXP curves, setting up the players for endgame content that could be added onto, and basically doing all the things that don't improve the fantasy of being a superhero. And when you're making a superhero game, prioritizing the fantasy is a fundamental objective, any design decision that gets in the way of achieving that needs wrought-iron justification for it's existence and if you can't provide that; then maybe the game you're making isn't a superhero game!

And from a very different angle, we can look at another game which wasn't what it was supposed to be with the recent Saints Row Reboot. Now people who were fans of Saints Row would, in turn, be fans of the gangbanger fantasy, even as that vision got slowly watered down as the franchise went on. At the heart was always a focus on irreverent action and, arguably dated, scenes which attempt to depict the player character as the prototypical, cigar smoking gun-toting, embodiment of your pop culture 'badass'. Whether that image was pursued with straight-faced seriousness or ironically, that was pretty much the heart of Saints Row. 'The Playa' is a badass, and at times when they aren't being a badass they're not being true to themselves and need to go through a journey to remind themselves how to be a badass again. That is the moral peak that overrides all else; and within the fiction of the game world that alone makes them superior to the various colourful gangs and existential threats around them even if the Saints are just as murderous and destructive. The game doesn't even conceive of viewing the Saints performances as morally questionable, because the rule of cool is idolised by Saints Row.

Which is all to say that Saints Row Reboot isn't a Saints Row game. It might carry the name, emulate some of objectives and copy the gameplay, (badly) but it lacks that very important ingredient of Saint's Rows 'heart'. (Or any heart, by some critic's accounts.) For the Reboot, the Saints are driven by half-digested morals of anti-capitalism that are explored about as well as Star Wars dives into astrophysics, the protagonist's key principals are togetherness and loyalty to his friends, which is so empty-souled and basic you wonder if anyone was behind the keyboard writing this script at all, and that edge of the player's selfish desire being, even ironically, moralised above bare basic standards of decency is entirely, intentionally, absent. Just like with Ubisoft games, the protagonist has to be the good guy, even if that's in a strangled way, and that sanitation rubs off onto the wider open world itself in a plethora of bizarre and lazy 'censorships'. By trying to distance themselves from the abrasive past of Saints Row's presentation, the Reboot distanced itself from being a Saints Row game. Whatever lukewarm open world romp that Volition created, it wasn't Saints Row but something else entirely.

Making the wrong game is in some ways worse than making a bad or broken game. Because with a bad game at least one can recognise how you knew what was supposed to be created and simply failed on that execution, and a broken one can feasibly be fixed to one-day be great. But a 'wrong' game is symptomatic of a fundamental divide between what the concept of the game demands and the direction you sought to develop. The final product might work and function just fine, but the concept and gameplay will never slide together in that perfect synergy which forms a product that achieves it's vision. Essentially this blog is a treatise on exactly why effective and precise planning is, in many ways, the most important stage of video game development; because anything else that goes wrong can be rectified, but bad schematics underline everything. Always make sure you're making the right game, everybody.

Even Paul Tassi has forsaken Square's Avengers

 Et tu, Brute?

I, like many out there in the world today, don't sit down and play Marvel's Avengers. Or maybe that should be 'Square Enix's Avengers' in order to appropriately differentiate itself from the movie franchise because apparently some people need that for their context deficient brains to properly process information. This is a game that has one of the biggest brands in entertainment riding on it's shoulders and even together they couldn't manage to clear the bar to ride with the big leagues. From the year of our lord 2022, Marvel's Avengers has broken more than 1,000 players only once in the past 6 months, and tends to keep a holding average of around 500 or less. That is... shocking. This is an avengers game! A title that takes advantage of the most cycled movie franchise in the world! And sure, the Superhero movies are getting a little long toothed around about now, but there's an undeniable market! It feels like 'Marvel Ultimate Alliance' had more staying power than Square's Avengers, and that game still isn't even purchasable thanks to an annoying licence dispute that no one can be bothered to clear up. And no, when it's bleeding and beaten, it's last prominent spokesperson just can't be bothered to cover the game for it's next significant update. What has the world come too?

I have actually played the game in the past too, and it was actually kind of fun! At least it was until the entire thing crashed on me. That was the Xbox version of the game too, so god forbid what the computer port is like. But before that unceremonious booting I did see a game that has some mindless potential as a beat em' up with the world's fanciest cosplayers; and some people who actually stuck with the game seem adamant that there's a real end-game to explore in Marvel's Avengers with actual challenge and everything! Now I don't exactly believe those people, but they insist really hard so I can only assume they think there's a endgame worth the average joe's time at this title's twilight! (I think there's a mass hallucination in the video gaming community that has convinced the majority of the gaming world that the mere existence of stuff to do at max level means the game has fleshed-out and meaningful activities to devote oneself to, even if the majority of those events and rewards are perfunctory.)

Perhaps what I've waiting for is that single clarion bell of 'Everything is awesome, now is the time to play' before I take the Avenger's plunge for real, because despite every waring siren indicating the exact opposite; some part of me thinks that potential is within this game. Some argue that this game should have been single player and the very multiplayer nature is what cost it it's integrity, and whilst I believe there might be some water there I've recently come around on the multiplayer structure. I think there was real potential here for a multiplayer co-operative title with a real challenging edge to it, something that really pushed players to work in a team in order to survive and threw interesting and varied missions at them. Of course, that is my dream of what this game could have been. The reality is, typically, disappointing and boorish.

Which isn't to say that the team have just given up on the game! Or at least... not all of them. Some vague skeleton crew have been stuck to the Avengers project and dropping updates here and there to keep the faithful fed. They've mostly been character drops that don't quite offer enough new content to justify the extended hiatus of static service they are meant to fill up, but there was one big event wrapped up in there for the Wakanda event. Oh, and I guess the Future Imperfect event was supposed to be similarly big but I don't hear people talking about that one for some reason, so I guess it must have been underwhelming. Or there's not enough people left in the community to talk about it anymore. There has also been the much belayed drop of the Playstation exclusive character Spider Man, who has the worst web slinging of any Spiderman video game to late, (And I'm counting Ultimate Alliance in that summation) and we are soon to get the first piece of content that lines up with the films.

To be clear, I think this was not only the big pitch behind launching the game to begin with, but the potential heart and soul behind an Avengers game had it worked. The potential to synch up movie releases with video game content so that fans could dive into the movies, come back wanting more and fulfil that longing bashing heads in Square's Universe. Perhaps it was the thirst for this symbiotic relationship which overtook the project director and utterly blinded him to the anaemic state of the launch product. Without that basic body of a game to keep a healthy number of returning players, there was no way they could justify a dedicated and prepared development team to create stuff like a Moon Knight DLC character to coincide with the show, or a Doctor Strange Multiverse Crossover event. There was the Red Room event which I think might of happened around about the time of the Black Widow movie, but small scale events don't hit as hard as character content drops! Still, after the years of struggling, now we're finally going to see Mighty Thor release alongside the drop of 'Thor 4: Love and Thunder'; and Paul Tassi isn't going to cover it.

Paul? Really? During my extended and pointed ignoring of this game, Paul has been the canary in the mines for me and many other prospective players to dive in update after update to tell us if the Avenger's content cave is safe to pillage. Only this time, for the first time since the game released as far as I can remember, our hero is stepping away. This is the same Paul Tassi, by the way, who is an actual game's journalist with sources and great articles behind him, so I can understand him perhaps being preoccupied with other stories for the moment of launch, but from what the man himself has said, he just doesn't believe the coming hero is worth a look over even by him. Although to be fair to the man, this isn't some Nostradamus-style fortune telling on his part peering into the theoretical state of this game, he did about as much research as any one of us can expect to do; he watched the Avengers roundtable. Which is where we can see exactly why an intelligent fellow like him might be turned off of Mighty Thor.

You see, the Avenger's development Team aren't exactly at full force, which means any substantive content is going to take months of forethought and development to be realised and I guess someone on the planning team forgot to schedule those months into what might be their biggest opportunity for cross promotion in the game's entire history. (oops) Yep, Mighty Thor is basically a shadow fighter for regular Thor, in that she shares some of the moves and special attacks of her male counterpart and isn't going to be heralded into the team with any dedicated content. There'll be no Asgard-themed tile-set to the mission rotation, no 'Gorr the God Butcher' boss, (despite how badly this game needs new boss fights) and no real justification for Jane Foster's appearance beyond a meagre introductory cutscene akin to what Spiderman got. So as heartbroken as I am, I can't really blame Paul Tassi, there's no real content to even cover there.

So I guess we have to ask ourselves a vaguely philosophical question here. If a Marvel's Avengers character is released, and Paul Tassi doesn't cover it, was there ever a new character drop at all? In my world, and that of many others who have their Avengers content distilled and regurgitated into their mouths by Paul, that answer is no. Which pretty much means the only outside means of marketing this game ever had just decided he has better things to do with his time, leaving that community to fade ever further into obscurity. So how much longer before the game is left to fry? I'd say give it at least one more year for these 400 players to properly move on with their lives, and then for the She Hulk update to come out alongside that simply atrocious looking TV show. I think it would be truly fitting for that crossover to kill The Avengers. 

Why are Live services so often bad?

 So many swings and so few hits

Me and Bungie are no long lost lovers passing in the night sharing whispers of a once sweet sojourn. Maybe once I had something resembling an affection for that studio and their talents, but the greed sullied that right and good, cut me out of the picture deftly and left me cold to all affections. As such, I ain't much one for giving Destiny the time of the day, knowing the temperament of those who run it. Such experience I learned from my time playing Destiny 1, and the hundreds of hours (and money) I put into it and it's DLCs, only for the game to then release a DLC that was the price of a whole new game and tell that if I couldn't afford that blood price I would be no longer allowed to play the competitive online I had enjoyed endlessly for month before. This was a game I had sunk triple digits into, and that was the way they treated me as a customer. Needless to say I commended them for their savvy businessmanship and parted ways without looking back. But that doesn't mean I don't have ears to hear the ways they wander today.

Destiny 2 has been out for a while now, and despite doing the exact same rugpull I just described again, Bungie have mostly kept a much more positive relationship with their audience this time around, or at least they have ever since Bungie split from Activison for the good of the game. (And even then, it only lasted for a little while) But all of those that defended each avaricious turn of Destiny as the veiny slithery mandibles of Activision interference were in for a rude awakening when, lo and behold, we're still getting highly questionable and downright extortionate turns for this game bubbling out of the Arrakis sands every now and then. In fact it seems like every other day Destiny players are raising arms about some shader pricings here, some engram reward locking there or just a bizarre pricing system that's unnecessarily confusing for upcoming content. It at least marks the thrashing of a very living beast, because fans still care enough to let their voices be heard when something doesn't work out, but one has to wonder when will the conflicts stop and the game just be good?

Marvel's Avengers has also had a rough go of things, but considering they've never even had a decent fraction of Destiny 2's playerbase, their slip-ups tend to stand out a lot more. (At the very least Destiny 2 controversies are bumped down search results within a week when the next XUR appearance drops) It seems such a shame because the initial promise was so exciting, but everything just seemed to go down hill once the developers announced it was a Live service. (I'm not kidding, it's been almost exclusively bad news since then.) A buggy launch, questionable cosmetic pricings, lack of content, constant content delays, hugely suspicious 'fixes' and, recently, probably the biggest betrayal of trust that one can possibly do when it comes to marketing a game; they lied about their pricing structure which they said wouldn't ever be pay-to-win. For a month it was.

It's actually all rather incredible how foreseeable this anime betrayal was, from railroad tracks laid months in advance, and I'll try a quick summary for salient points. Basically, Avengers was patched to make the early game levelling slower because the team argued that early gameplay was confusing to new players who were levelling too quickly and getting too many skill points. People who had actually played the game called this out as stupid, because the early game is Avengers' weakest element, but the team held strong. That was, until a free weekend bought some attention to the game months later, after which the team decided to drop the ability to purchase power boosters that sped up levelling. (Selling the fix to the problem you artificially created? That's pretty scummy.) The team were, rightfully, called out for this and after a month of silence (they really did think they could just ride out the controversy) they relented and pulled back the ability to spend real money on it. (Although the boosters are still in the game, because they refuse to just patch the game back to normal.)

Those are just two live services I picked out, but they are good sample. One is perhaps the most successful Live service of all time, (baring Fortnite) progeny of the title that wrote the book on this sort of game, and the other is one of the most recent examples of a game that took everything this little sub genre had to other and callously smashed it together into a, and let's be charitable, abject mess. Destiny 2 is rather well regarded by it's fans, Avengers less so, but both are hitting a wall of distinct diminishing interest. Despite being live services, titles that should be the purest example of a 'forever game', both are burning up and out as people are growing sick after several long years of friction or just a few really bad ones. When asking why it is that Live services are so reviled, and now fading from popularity, I really don't think this comes down to growing bored, but a genuine disconnect this sort of game demands between the player, the developers and the game.

I say this because, in order to make a live service a live service, you need to keep it updated. That's like, the modus operandi of live services. They are games who are 'alive' for the frequency at which new content is added, old events are recycled out, and the ecosystem of the world always provides new experiences year in, year out. But constant development is not a cheap process, and keeping developers on the pay roll demands that these games offset costs consistently. That equation, right there, means that these games need to have some sort of revenue generation to them, whether directly or otherwise, which places it apart from conventional games that just need to attract a decent number of people for that one time purchase. (At least. Ubisoft tends to seek those recurrent revenue streams too) Whatsmore, whether through reasonable deduction or lack of subtlety, this off-kilter relationship is well known to the public, which creates an air of mistrust as we all know that these games are trying to milk us of our money to some degree and every subsequent action is painted by that expectation. 

Suspicion makes the rope that companies have to play with a lot shorter and allows the public to pull it a lot more taut when they feel aggrieved. Simple mistakes become twisted nefarious plots against the good of your playerbase, and I'm guilty of this heightened tension too. To this very day I find myself stopping to ask whether or not that early back-handed special event from Apex Legends was meant to funnel MTX sales like it was perfectly geared to, or if that was a genuine collision of poor ideas and witless decisions. (Whatever the case, I haven't played the game since) Thus I wouldn't say that live services are innately worse than other types of games, even taking into account the general rush-to-service feel that most of these games launch with, but instead that impression is solidified by the inherently rocky relationships these games foster by their very nature. 

But whether or not the general disdain towards live service titles is earned or not, at it's core we can't deny that these sorts of games butt into each other so much more than other sorts of games simply for the greedy way they try to eat up all free time to secure those all-important engagement hours. And that unsustainable shade alone marks a key reason why I, at least, can't bring myself around to supporting these sorts of games. Besides, that very relationship of customer/player balance is true too of MMO's, and for the most part those types of games manage a much better accord with the public. (Provided that the MMO in question is at least somewhat successful.) With any luck the very audible groans that every company hears whenever they announce their latest live outing will finally get the message across that these doomed outings aren't even popular. (Then who knows; maybe we'll start getting more genuinely great games again. Like that Deus Ex sequel I've needed forever now.)

XCOM Avengers? Yes please!

 When... I need it...

Let me clear something up real quick about myself. Though I may have criticked Square Enix's Avengers heavily, will continue to do so, and even shared my misgivings about the project before it was even launched, do not for a second believe that I am not a fan of Marvel or Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I mean I grew up reading and watching this stuff years before the MCU, so I've got Marvel deeply ingrained in my bones and even closer to me than DC, even if a lot of the times I prefer Detective Comic's approach to character driven storytelling. And I have, for a stupidly long time now, been wanting that perfect team-Marvel game to come out for so very long, which is why when it looked like that game would be Square's Avengers, I was super critical in ensuring it would be exactly what we needed. X-men got a stellar game in 'Legends' (and also 'Children of the Atom', but that's neither here nor there. Love that game though.) I just wanted the rest of universe to get the game they deserved. Marvel Ultimate Alliance is great, and I'm so happy that franchise came back, but I want something that can focus in on a single team and give us their strengths and weaknesses as closely to the source material as possible, without having to worry about 'larger balancing' or any of that administrative stuff.

These are the sorts of ideas I used to spend a lot of time dreaming about before the MCU started and it became clear that Marvel no longer considered pursing games of viable interest anymore. (With the few that were put out being unbelievable trash.) And yet in all the realms of my adolescent imagineering (which spawned a few ideas which, in hindsight, were just as fanciful and impossible to achieve as Dreamworld) never once did I stick together the concept of a game made both of the Marvel characters and the XCOM game type. (Probably because I hadn't played XCOM back then and didn't know what it was.) So what is my raw reaction to the concept? Why did I never consider this? This is a brilliant idea. Good lord. When does this come out? I need it in my soul, I NEED IT!

But where does this concept come from and why am I salivating over it like it's a turkey-leg in the middle of the apocalypse? Because of the age old world of video game leaks, where Dev teams go in order to beta test the reaction to their projects. (Allegedly.) Apparently some rando on Reddit rocked up with news that Firaxis, the superstar team behind the brilliant XCOM revival, were currently working on a 'Codename CODA', which unfortunately isn't a project to adapt the entirety of Battle Tendency into a rhythm action game to the tune of 'Bloody Stream' and other classics from that artist. (Maybe next time, eh?) This is said to be a turn based action game based on the world of Avengers and voiced by "famous actors", implying that the actual cast of Avengers will be involved this time around! (Unless they're using that to refer to famous voice actors again. Fool me once...)

 Now this would be just a rumor that I would pay barely any credence to, but then Jason Schreier turned around and confirmed it and that's a man who does his homework. In an industry full of folk who've never done anything more than toothless clickbait articles for their entire 'video game journalism' career, Schreier actually has a stellar record of meaningful reporting on issues of import, leaks and the occasional click-bait sprinkled in there too. What I'm trying to say is; he's a man with a reputation and the resources to justify that reputation, which instantly shot this concept up from idle backyard speculation to practically triple-confirmed fact. I'm just upset why the man himself wasn't the one initially talking about this. (I get reserving some info for the benefit of the project's anonymity, but he turned around and confirmed it in a second anyway. Maybe he had to do some digging, I dunno.)

The leaker also mentioned some other gaming tidbits in his Reddit leaking career, like some NBA news (As though those weirdos are actually capable of reading) and something about a new Spin-off Borderlands game featuring everyone's favourite joke-character grown-old Tiny Tina. So lukewarm teases basically, all around this little golden nugget of coolness that is XCOM Avengers. Is this the line-up perhaps heading for this upcoming E3, an event which will not only be online once again but is apparently going to be condensed into one concentrated show with an Award event at the end? (Yes, E3 is going to start hosting awards. For their game trailers. If I was Geoff Keighley I'd be pissed right now.) Some seem to think it's unlikely, with these games maybe just being teases for the far future, but in my heart of hearts I need a stellar Avengers game at least teased so that the Marvel gaming audience doesn't lose hope as Square Enix's game slowly chokes to death on it's own mediocrity.

So that means right now all we've got is solid word that this is happening with potentially no details until next year. That sucks. But even in such a lamentable state, we can still come together to laud what might be in rampant speculation based on what we know about both franchises. Firstly, we're probably looking at an XCOM Chimera Squad style game where each character has these distinct abilties that can be improved over the course of the game. This would allow for special team builds, of course, and throwing in a little bit of randomly generated special items would allow for the replayability to seep into the game. I'd imagine the game will be scenario based, with some sort of overarching home base like Avengers HQ or the Shield Helicarrier, from which an overview of the Earth will be monitored and several operations will launch. I hope we'll be dealing with several overarching threats at once, similar to Chimera Squad, so that tough decisions can pop up about who to deal with first and how that might effect the overall campaign. (Maybe lean a little into Crackdown 1's main story for inspiration there.) In fact, if we look at this with a discerning eye, Chimera Squad might very well have been a test run for an Avengers style game in this genre, so that'll definitely be the place to look for the curious.

I think that where Chimera Squad sort of stumbled up on was the similarity of encounters, which always followed the 'breach and clear' method that become pretty methodical once you figured out the ways to exploit it. An Avengers XCOM game might want to lean more into how XCOM 2 handled encounters, with an initial position of advantage from which the player can choose how the mission plays out. Team synergistic abilities will certainly have to be played up upon, MUA style, mistakes should be punishing with easy team knockouts, (I expect Marvel won't let us straight just kill the Avengers) and I personally would love it if a game like this could lean into a lot of the more dynamic mission elements like we saw from XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. Bosses in that would just turn up mid mission and completely evolve the circumstance until they were dealt with, it made the campaign feel alive and actively competitive.

I'm simply overdosing on all the possibilities of a game like this, and could sit here spouting 'maybes' and 'what-ifs' until the world freezes over. At the end of the day Firaxis have oodles of talent behind them and a world of burgeoning potential in Marvel, that's a combo that could dream up easily the best Avengers game ever made upon release. Of course, part of this does make me mourn when I hoped that 'XCOM 3: Time for the fishies' (working title) would be their next project, but in my eyes, the more they perfect their craft inbetween major XCOM entries the better it'll be for the series in the long run. What a brilliant combination I never would have seen coming, what mad genius concocted this collaboration from their laboratory and why aren't they in charge of all Marvel digital content at this point? Dang, I haven't been this excited for an upcoming game since... oh- I'm sad now...

Another Avenger bites the dust

 Speaking of departures

Didn't we just talk about this? Yes I'm pretty sure we just went over the tribulations and confusions that a studio has to put up with whenever a head of a project turns around and goes bye bye to his company, even if it isn't explicitly related to the game in question. Yet here we do have the absolute opposite of the spectrum, I have to admit. A situation where the game and it's performance are so out there, that one almost feels like they're failing to properly analyse the situation unless they factor in the video game in the middle here. You just have to look around at everything that's happening around you, put yourself in those shoes if you need to, and ask "Is this the choice that makes any sense under healthy circumstances, or does it perhaps serve a warning for something deeper?" And I'll just throw in my 2 cents by saying, it's probably the latter. if I had any financial stake in the world of Avengers I would not have just let that game's creative director up and leave with the state of the game right now.

Of course, in the world of creating live services, one must familiarise themselves with the idea that there are two stages of development; the traditional stage wherein the game is conceived, constructed and polished (Even though sometimes it feels that latter step is dodged entirely) and the next stage where the main team is pulled back so a side team can set into keeping the game's lights on for as long as possible. The Main team simply can't be wrapped up on something like that otherwise they'd be sacrificing their ability to work on other projects and make new games. Maybe Bungie can, and has to, make that sacrifice given that Destiny is a series they've happy sunk more than 1 billion into; but Crystal Dynamics has places to go, series' to maintain, they can't be wrapped up like that. So in that light, months after launch, a creative director saying his goodbyes and returning to his old company isn't exactly world changing. But, again, in the illogical world of 'optics' you have to admit that this looks bad.

Because love it or hate it, and I have seen people sit on just about every vertex of this fence, Square Enix's Avengers is not the mega hit that it should have been and arguably isn't even in a stable position right now. Now truthfully that is a very bold claim to make for someone who doesn't have access to any of Square's internal figures, but speaking as someone who has intently watched these sort of industries and communities ebb and flow everyday as my passtime; nothing I'm seeing represents this game is going anyway in the right direction. Player figures are currently the highest they've been in weeks right now, and that means they just broken the 4 figure mark, (that's on Steam chart tracker) which is simply fantastic numbers for a single player indie game, and decent figures for an indie multiplayer game; but the game we're talking about is neither. I have to wonder at this point how much of a return on investment this game even was if these are the numbers it's pulling in during the return of Marvel to the entertainment screen. (Small screen, but still) You just know that Marvel must have fleeced Square Enix on the licencing agreement, so those are some sales figures I'd really want to see leaked some day soon. (I only turn on my voyeur when we're talking corporate machinations)

For our Creative Director to up and leave right now, likely opening the slot for someone else, it just says one clear message to the community; we have no more creative ideas with this project. Okay I'm joking, but there is a real fear of leadership change during moments of creative crisis and I'd argue that Avengers has pretty much been in something of a crisis-state since launch. Getting a revolving door of executive is how a game enters development hell, or for a live service such as this one, it's how a game can find itself being overwhelmed and eventually abandoned; first by fans, next by the investors and finally by the developers. (Because lets be honest, all 15 Anthem fans out there, that game's fate was very much decided by the gaming public first.) Avengers needs to turn things around in a big and public manner if they want to become the market contender that you'd imagine an Avengers video game to be, and watching key team members dust in front of us isn't going to make that journey any more feasible.

But that doesn't mean everything is shaping up terrible for Avengers right now. There are still some slight good things going the game's way nowadays. For example, I just said how the user base is up, well that's because of the new Tachyon anomaly event which solves one of Avenger's biggest issues: the fact that you can only play when every player picks a different Hero. With this event, you can play multiples of whatever hero you want to because of Tachyons and timetravel or something, don't think about it too hard. Unfortunately this is only a limited event and so it going to get reversed imminently, but it still managed to bring a few people back and I bet this will be an event they come back to often. (it would be silly not to) Additionally, leaks and sly comments have painted the impression that the game is soon going to receive MCU based outfits; so now you can make your team of generic nobodies look like high quality cosplayers. (The new costumes do look good, I will say)

However I've just got to step back and look at the big picture to get the sense that something is off with this game, not just with what it currently is, but with what it hopes to be down the line. Because even looking at this in the long haul I'm not seeing that one dream for the fanbase to latch onto and defend to their dying breath. The usual way that these live services works out is that the launch is weak, (almost always) but then the dev team pulls some bull out of their closet about '2.0' or some magic fiction fix-all juice for the fans to slap each other on the back and say "Hey, it's not all bad." Avengers doesn't have that, the biggest upcoming event is Black Panther, and if the 'Future Imperfect' content is any indication of what to expect, that will last fans maybe a week of play before it gets boring at the most. (Even Fallout 76 Wastelanders at least lasted me a month and a bit) 

In fact, I'm not even sure what an Avengers 2.0 will look like, as it seems just the basic concept of this game is incompatible with the idea of substantial content drops without insane amounts of work going behind it. Could the team work on an amazing campaign to supplement the base game, complete with cleverly rendered side-mission locations that don't feel generic, new enemy archetypes that encourage new modes of play and a roster of team members that actually have to cooperate to win fights? I don't see why not, except for that they'd need a team the size of the development staff and about another 2 years to cook said-game. Both of which Avengers probably doesn't have to hand. So then what will become the moby dick of Avengers? I've honestly no idea,

In the perfect world, with the perfect amount of resource and time, Avengers would have made for a great dedicated action adventure video game, maybe with co-op, but definitely with a kick-ass and complete campaign. Instead it feels like the game has been roughly dragged and stuffed into an ill fitting formula that's doomed to slowly wither as everyone moves to the countless alternatives that make more sense. As much as I bemoan it, I can't rag on this Creative Director for going back to working for Naughty Dog, because they at least know how to execute a game that feels comfortable in it's own skin. But, as I always say, the Avengers name is strong; and if those guys can survive alien invasions, reality manipulations and, most impressively of all, franchise fatigue; who's to say they can't overcome this shoddy launch/support/future? Actually, when I put it like that I get even less confident; still, hope I'm wrong.

Does Avengers have a future?

Step up, Crystal Dynamics.

Woah, wait a second. There was a Square Enix event the other day? What- but I wasn't even prepared. This is all too sudden, how do I behave myself? I've waited so long for the day when Deus Ex came back to us and now, five years after the last entry, three after we were promised the series would return, we're finally going to get a- they didn't say a thing. Not a damn word. Once again Deus Ex gets discarded for favour of half-hearted brand starters and DLC. (You called an event to talk about DLC? Shame on you.) Square can't even talk about the Final Fantasy series in their own events because they've practically sold her out wholesale to Playstation. (At this point I'm genuinely starting to believe we're not going to see a PC port of FF7R.) God what a terrible time to be a Square fan... at least we have, what else did they talk about... Marvel's Avengers? Oh god, why is fate so cruel? You know what- Fine. If Avengers is the game we have to live with now that Deus Ex is retired, or petrified, or cryogenically frozen, then that's what I'm going to talk about. I'm going to talk about the future of Avengers and the ways in which this team are determined not to throw in the towel despite everything.

So... I guess that means I have to be positive? >Sigh<. (Be strong for Jensen. It's what Adam would want.) I guess Avengers is a game that's not utterly terrible. Those with the spare time and wherewithal to dedicate to it's elongated levelling grind have insisted that it's a half decent romp at the end of the road. For my part, I'll say that I did have a glimmer of excitement during one of the bigger battles when every Avenger was doing their part and our eyes locked with that indomitable glimmer of a group untie- and then the game crashed. (I kid you not, that's a true story.) But months of delays, an unfriendly opening 20 hours of grind, a lackluster story, plain bad character writing, uninspired enemy types, lazy monetisation strategies, separate levelling trees for each character, anaemic multiplayer lobby pools- (actually, I'm going to cut myself off) after everything; a lot of people have already given up on the game. Coffins are being picked out, tailors are crafting the funeral suits and everyone is ready to plot this game's spot in the cemetery right between Anthem and- Artifact. (I literally had to look up that game's name because it was so forgettable and it only died this month) It would even fit the pattern, all games that start with the letter 'A'. (Guess superstitious developers out there know what to avoid in the future.) But Crystal Dynamics, bless their Deus Ex smothering hearts, want everyone to know that's exactly what's not going to happen to them.

"We are committed to the future... for years to come" No, that's not the exact statement which Bioware made in regards to Anthem less than a year before they stopped supporting it, nor is it the words which I can only assume Valve appropriated in regards to Artifact. It's the 100% original promise made by the Avengers team to let everyone know that 'we mean business and this is a game that's going to be here for the long haul so please buy it we need the validation for our investors.' And, in the manner of all these live service disasters, the team want us to know they have a map to fix this game's longevity, showing us the road that development is poised to travel. A 'Roadmap', if you will. If this is starting to sound eerily like the death cries you've heard from so many other games so many times, well done, you have a rational mind in your noggin, but then no one ever accused Marvel's superheroes of acting too rationally before, now have they? 

No, Marvel Heroes are know for defying the odds, reality, even death at times, so why can't Crystal Dynamics do their same in the fight to save their game? It starts with a grand renewal, a gift granted to this game through merit of good timing; a fresh re-release on the new consoles. How novel. Were it only that we all got granted the opportunity of a second chance in a new skin, free of the warts of the old world, with decent frame rates and less critical crashes. Yes, it seems Avengers will be available to a brand new crowd of- except there's the fact that the new consoles are still prohibitive to the wider community... hmm, that's a problem Square can do literally nothing about... But perhaps it won't matter. Those who do get to have a console will surely be enough for decent player figures. But then there's also the bad press around certain decisions that are being implemented, specifically the XP reworking which sort of reveals how out-of-touch the development team is from the community. But if we erase the mountains in their way, then Avengers might, perhaps, conceivably, possibly, knock-on-wood, perchance, maybe, conditionally have a future.

And that would be a future written in new content, because that's what they'll need to weather this storm. The two Hawkeyes event took it's sweet time, but now that it's out we can finally begin looking forward to brand new horiz- oh wait, there's still the other pre-launch promises that the team promised. Yeah, they have yet to deliver on the promised Spiderman DLC that Square sold to Sony, so that's in the works. Then there's the Antman DLC which- huh? Wait, sorry my bad there is no Antman DLC, just supremely confusing marketing. So it's just Spiderman then. And when he finally makes it we can all breath a sigh of relief and start looking towards the future of for what Crystal has in store, and in fact they've already deigned to tease us during this event. See- they're not all talk, there's a tiny bit of bite too.

In a move that seems either honorary or ill-timed, Avengers is going to spend their next DLC slot in Wakanda reintroducing us all to Black Panther, making for a lot of emotions that I wasn't expecting to feel. On one hand I always liked Black Panther and find the idea of playing him pretty cool, (He was a favourite back in Marvel Ultimate Alliance) I even like his ingame outfit a lot, and on the other hand it kind of feels like stepping on the shoes of Chadwick Boseman. Now, I recognise that's an entirely personal gripe that you, ideally, do not share. Heck, I even feel weird about them going and making a Black Panther 2 movie, so obviously the video game version was going to rub me strangely. I shouldn't be affronted, Square's Avengers is hardly related to the MCU anyway. Besides, Wakanda certainly will make for a welcome and familiar visual to offset the tired skyline of 'nowhere' from the base game. (Between this DLC and the Hawkeye's 'Fallen Earth' environments, this game's almost in danger of looking varied!)

But that's just a stepping stone, a means to an end, because no amount of small time character piece is going to win fans over, make them sure that there's a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. You need something for them to hold onto, something they can share rumours and theories about, something that can whip their expectations up all into a frenzy so that ultimately you can disappoint them, but by then they'll be invested in your game and you can take that money to the bank. What you need, is an Endgame. (See what I did there?) And, would you believe it, but Square's Avengers actually has that. I mean, it's nothing as grand and secretive, and desperation has decreed that the team already shared it with us in hopes of sparking the imagination, but it's a plan nonetheless. It's the Kree invasion, and you know what? That's not too bad of a plan. It's a ballsy promise that is almost certainly going to crash and burn- but what if it doesn't? (And that is where the addiction lies.)

When this started I remember noting about how amazing it was for Square to squander the Marvel licence, and whilst that holds true, some part of me can't help but wonder if the Marvel name alone is powerful enough to sustain itself. Because to be honest, no one really saw a future in Anthem, Artifact died the day it was announced and booed off the stage, (that's still the most wild announcement I've ever seen) but Avengers has that name, and with that there's promise. I won't lie and tell you that Avengers is definitely going to blow up and become the game that shakes the world, but I can genuinely see a reality where it reaches a point of sustainability, albeit with a lot of changes from where it's at today. It all really just depends on how much lifeforce they want to suck out of the Deus Ex fanbase in order to support it, and seeing as how they just put my favourite Cyberpunk series on ice to sit out another year, I guess that gives at least another year of appropriated lifeforce. Who knows, if everything goes to plan they might not even need to go F2P. (Though I suspect that's a foregone conclusion at this point.) So does Avengers have a future? For Deus Ex's sake, it better.

Marvel's Avengers is spiralling

 It's 8:15; that's the time that it's always been.

Marvel really has been on something of a successful revival for it's brand lately, after their self-imposed hiatus following 'Endgame'. (Well, after 'Far From Home' to be fair, but we all pretend the cut-off was Endgame because that's just more neat) I remember noting it smart on their part to take such a break, before people grew too bored of the traditional Marvel formula, but coming back was always going to be an issue. How would they do it? Would it be a chance to edge their toes into new frontiers, put Marvel on new platforms? And then we got the Avengers video game, which lacked so much that the movies had in terms of continuity, charm, writing, and even actor's licenses that it might as well have been an rouge unlicensed title. And then Marvel just moved to try and conquer TV through Wandavision somewhat successfully, and I completely forgot that game ever happened. As did a lot of folk. So the Avengers game has no more draw to it as the 'grand return of Marvel'. (Quite liked Wandavision by-the-by. The last episode was pretty weak but the others were stellar) Yet I am forever interested in the gaming world, and so I do think back to that game with it's weak launch, weak content and weak playerbase in order to wonder; what's up with them?

Because as Todd Howard once famously said "Don't hate the player, baby, hate the ga-" wait a second... no, he actually said "It's not about how you launch it's about what you become." And what a concise and insightful thing ol' Todd uttered that fateful day, no really. I mean just look at Anthem. It launched as a premature mess with weak foundation propped on a decent, but ultimately lacking, combat system and just look where that game is now- dead because EA took the smart decision for once and absolutely refused to keep pursuing a pipe dream. But think of all the friends we made along the way! To be fair, Avengers might not be quite as precariously placed as Anthem right now, in fact some of the 12 active users are forever caught in a desperate loop of insisting to players that "it get's good eventually! Several hours after you've run out of content and grinded to max level, then the combat gets it's depth." Which, honestly, I've heard some informed sources actually back up, I just find it rather galling that a game literally needs to be beaten to death in order for it to become good. It makes me think: 'Or I could play another game that starts good'

Crystal Dynamics has taken this one victory of theirs, however, (in their supposedly anaemic yet solid endgame) and arguably gone to shoot themselves in the foot right before the conclusion of their first major new content update arc. For you see, the Two Hawkeye's event that feels like it has been going for the past 5 years is finally wrapping up with Clint Barton's return to the roster he should have started in. Avengers players will get this on the same day as it's next-gen release; signifying a brand new start for the game to really strut it's stuff now that it's hitting systems that might be able to actually play it at a consistent framerate. This is a genuine chance for Square Enix's Avengers to strike out at a new audience, softly reset the disaster drop-off from the launch, and maybe have a go at this 'maintaining a successful live service' thing that seems to be every single studio head's wet dream nowadays despite sounding like a total nightmare for even the top of the pack.

But they're determined, okay? They want that infinite stress with added pressure and are ready to change some fundamentals to achieve it; thus comes the reworking to the experience system which is coming to the game on that very same day. Now listen up and see if you can see why this changelog has come to be so vehemently reviled by the public, even a laymen like myself managed to spot the little oddity. So they're changing up the levelling system in order to 'fix' the amount of EXP it takes to level up. Before it was apparently a straight shot where every level required the same amount of experience in order to ding to the next level, which is usually offset by modifiers applied to enemies so that the experience they dole out is relative to your level, but I won't tell Crystal how to make their game. Instead, the team are looking to scale EXP requirements after a certain level so that it'll take longer to reach the top level. (Bare in mind, also, that in this game each character is levelled separately, including the new one which will be added by this update) Do you see the problem yet?

As they note in the blog, many RPGs have their levelling system set up in such a way that it elongates levels in late game, but this doesn't mean that they all have to subscribe to this. Square's Avengers, in particular, apparently hides most of it's impactful and playstyle defining levelling choices until the end of the road; so wouldn't it make sense to expedite that process in favour of elongating it? The general public seem to think so, and that might be why Avengers is currently getting roasted on it's own subreddit in their transparent attempt at trying to lock players into playing Hawkeye more so that they can turn around and tell their money-men about how successful their DLC has been. Folks have demanded explanations, retractions, subjugations; and through it all Biowa- I mean Activ- I mean Electroni- I mean Crystal Dynamic thought carefully and decided "Nah, you're all wrong. We're right."

In the typical way that these company's do, Avenger's team put out a note that essentially called the entire community morons for misunderstanding the simple premise they were explaining, and then proceeded to elaborate the exact same premise with easily refutable excuses. For one they did they 'Well other games have a curve' Argument which I already responded to. "Doesn't mean you have to have one". But the really funny excuse was where they claimed that people might sometimes level up twice during one mission, and all those extra level-up points might be overwhelming for their little tiny peabrains. So let's play devil's advocate and assume this is the case; some people might look at the level-up points and become overwhelmed as though they're playing 'Pillars of Eternity' or something. New players might be like that, I understand the assumption; but then why are you implementing this system which only comes into effect at later levels? That's right, an adaptive curve won't effect new players at all, which not only makes this excuse highly presumptive but just fundamentally wrong. Either the balancing team is so incompetent that they've conjured the wrong solution to the problem or they've lied and assume their audience to be so dense as to not see through it. Pick your poison.

Whatsmore, even if this does in some way benefit the newcomers to the game, it's at the cost of alienating those that have stuck out the game. The non-casual hardcore players already know where the value in the game lies, and may have gone through upto 5 consecutive levelling chains in order to scry what little enjoyment they can out of the combat. Now they're being told they've got to do that even more, for even longer, in order to play some of the new characters? It reminds me of Genshin Impact's world level issue, only that's something which MiHoYo have acknowledged as an issue and are brainstorming towards fixing. Crystal, on the otherhand, have dug their hooves into the ground and raised their horns; they wanna fight. I just cannot comprehend what for, why are these Devs so insistent on playing to their own game's weaknesses?

Of course, this is all coming from second hand accounts of those who play these games and those who make them; so maybe the general public is wrong and this game actually has a great early levelling experience and everyone's wrong. I want to try and see this from Crystal Dynamics angle, because I genuinely do love their games but here's the plain facts; we're currently in a year where two big games have been killed off for trying to launch bare-bones and fix everything later, that should be a wake-up call to this game that it needs to start thinking harder about it's decisions going forward. I actually do want Marvel's Avengers to become a good game at some point, and as unlikely as that seems; stranger things have happened. But those steps will only come if the player base and the development team can reach an accord on what these game needs to be in order to lure in new comers, otherwise it just leads to endless friction that prospective buyers see and go. "Ew, don't want none of that." Believe that, because right now I'm literally one of those bystanders scrunching his nose and turning away.

Merry Christmas; also, screw this whole year

Warning: No holiday cheer to be found here, just disappointment

Not really a fan of the season, but others are so I might as well come out and say 'Merry Christmas,' now can I just say that this has been the worst year ever. Yeah I know, not exactly a new take out of me, but I just really need an outlet and this is pretty much all I have available to me, so there it is. Now from the very first moment of this crappy year there has been every single possible kind of scare that it's feasible to have, oh and a pandemic thrown in there just to tap things off. General life has been difficult too, coming from a Caribbean family I understood exactly what it was like to be in the middle of a group of people who believe themselves patently too good not to still throw stupid parties in the middle of all this. The general public, who are already kinda standoffish over here anyway (being British) have become their true ornery selves in public. And the job market's a wasteland, but maybe I'm getting a bit too personal with that last one, there's just as much crap happening in the gaming world too. (And isn't that just the best? When my escapism needs an escapism!)

But where do you even start with the absolute mess that this year has been. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I mean the best gaming event that happened this year was probably the release of Demon Souls Remake. But that was PS5 so I can't really celebrate that one too hard. (There was also Ghost of Tsushima and FF7R but I don't have a PlayStation. Others can claim that victory.) I guess Doom Eternal was pretty tight, but from there things just seemed to go down hill. First there was the game that I highly anticipated for about an entire year, Resident Evil 3 Remake. Now I haven't really talked about this much because I wanted to enjoy as much of that game as there was to play, but there really wasn't all that much. The biggest problem with the original RE3 was the fact that it was essentially made from 80% recycled assets which really limited the scope of the game and resulted in a much smaller experience. The Remake didn't need to share that problem, and yet it did! The assets were new, some of the zombies were new, but the game was still unnecessarily truncated and sold for the same price as last year's Resident Evil 2! (The missed potential- It burns!)

Then there was the situation with Avengers the video game, and yeah- I pretty much saw straight through this game from the very get go- but gosh darn it I wanted to believe so bad! I've always been a huge fan of Marvel even before their recent spat of Movie success; I read the original Days of Future Past, I played the X-men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance games; I was a Marvel fan. (I am a Marvel fan, I should say. The game wasn't that bad.) But somewhere along the way this game which should have been a bonafide Marvel swansong fell to the wayside and floundered. (Meanwhile Sony's Spiderman shot webs around Avengers and gloated their superiority.) Even having played the game myself I don't think is was quite worth the murdering it received from the community, I mean it didn't deserve it's price either, but for the £20 it's typically seen for around now I'd say it would be worth it. It's a little bit of fun. (If anyone actually played it anymore, which they kinda don't. Also I guess it's not optimized well either...)

Warcraft 3 Reforged- wait a minute, that whole thing happened this year? Wow, that was back in January... feels like a whole different world, doesn't it? Now to be fair, I didn't have the personal link towards this game that would make it really hit home, but I do consider myself somewhat in tune with the community so I understand the hurt it caused. The Original Warcraft 3 pretty much laid the groundworks for the archetypal community supported game. (Or at least got the ball rolling for Half Life to set the world of modding into motion.) It was a classic game, nurtured such creativity that a whole genre spawned out of it and prepared the scene for the Blizzard juggernaut that was WOW to rule the MMO landscape for the next decade. Thus it was heinous what was done to this game under the guise of 'making an upgrade', especially when considered alongside the rampant marketing lies and anti-community policies which were put into place. Why, if this was the way the gaming year started, imagine how sucky it would be if the year ended with a dark mirror of this exact situation?

And there we come to the cap off for this year, the Anakin Skywalker on Mustafar moment of 2020. Cyberpunk 2077 was bought to us after 7 years of development to break the spell that this abysmal year held over us, and yet it was seduced by the allure of quick profits and lie-driven marketing. They were supposed to redeem the industry; not damn them! Bring balance to gaming, not leave it in ruins! Have you heard the tale of CDPR's fall? It's not a story the Jedi would tell you... But in all seriousness, I can't think of a worse possible blow to the gaming world than to have the literal paladins of the Industry, CD Projeckt, (As in the whole company, not just the 'Red' developers) turn out to be liars and oathbreakers. It's like having everyone you love slowly stick a knife in your gut and twist it, only for the final person to be the one you trusted the most, like a kindly parent or a kid who shot your girlfriend that one time. (Huh, that metaphor got stuck somewhere between Final Fantasy XV and Game of Thrones...) Point is, we were lied to and the betrayal is still very fresh for some of us. (Well it's been less than a month so I guess that makes sense.)

'Coming out: When it's ready'. Can you believe that was the first thing we saw regarding this game all the way at the end of that reveal trailer all those years back? What a total crock. 'When it's ready' was like the rallying cry of CD Projeckt fans over the years. Whenever a AAA game drove itself off a cliff because it rolled off the production line with faulty breaks, you'd hear the discordant chorus of "Should have come out when it was ready, that's what CDPR are doing!". I was never part of that crowd, to be honest, but I did share that feeling of safety that everyone of that ilk did when they considered Cyberpunk. CDPR would get it right, they understand how to treat gamers right. And somewhere I'd like to think that's still true, though that part is struggling with the realist who tells me I'm coping from the shock right now. Like finding out your older sibling sells ketamine for a living in order to pay for those lavish presents he always gets you for Christmas. (Okay, that one wasn't even a reference; my imagination is just running wild; no more Metaphors. That was a simile. No more of them either.)

And you want to know what the most messed up part is? The thing which makes this burn so much worse than the other gaming screw ups this year? I still want to play the game, it still looks good; only I don't have the hardware to run it. I would have been fine if CDPR had just cancelled the current gen versions, I mean it would have hurt being denied access after waiting so long, but it would have been better than handing off this deformed abomination and calling it an appropriate port! I was dragged along on the lie that Cyberpunk was within my grasp, and it's one that seems all the more incredulous when you account for both the absolute state of the game and the original release date. Remember how that was slated for April? Before the Series X or PS5 were even formally announced? (You know, the two consoles on which this game actually consistently runs like it should?) What in gods name did the game look like then and how did anyone think it was nearing completion as long as they did? At the time I remember remarking about how the delay was clearly long overdue as evidenced by the sheer length of it, but this is insane! The game should have been delayed by a year at least! (Maybe then it might actually be 'ready')

Sure, though we've seen their apologies and heard the crocodile tears of the bigwigs telling us how "We just weren't paying enough attention"; what a load. "We totally forgot about the console versions until they launched, our bad!" Really? Well that's funny considering that two trailers actually released dedicated to showing off those versions of the game, (albeit, rather pointedly not on the base last gen consoles but their suped-up cousins) and the footage was rather curiously free of all the bugs which the game launched with. Do they mean to tell us that this clearly curated footage just happened to be completely bug free and run fine, so they thought the game ran fine too? Is that the reason why they denied console review codes to reviewers before the release of the game too? It wasn't just done in the knowledge that the PC version was both more stable and came with the inbuilt excuse of "Well, the bugginess is because you're trying max settings without the hardware to back it up." (And yes, they did try that.)

So they purposefully obfuscated the shoddy performance and shipped the game on every platform, why exactly? This is the point that doesn't compute to me; why not just delay the consoles release? Is it because deepdown CDPR know that no amount of patching is going to solve the fact that previous gens just don't have the processing power to run Cyberpunk? (I certainly hope that's not the case, but I'm losing all trust in CDPR's abilities recently. I'd like to think rightly so.) But again, why did CDPR need to sell broken software to half it's customers? I mean what is the point? Bluepoint didn't need to sell a crappier version of Demon Souls in order to make that a success, so why did Cyberpunk need to release on everything? It smells like a classic case of corporate greed and the desire to make 'all the money' even when it's a desire that leads you off a cliff.

And this time it absolutely has, because as much as it pains me to say; it seems the industry is turning Cyberpunk into an example. Likely due to it's hype and the high-profile nature of this blunder, everyone is trying to make it known that regardless of the overall quality of the product (Which, again, seems decent) this was unacceptable and it won't be stood for. Memes have mocked CDPR relentlessly, stock drops have cost them a cool billion, (They made back Cyberpunk 2077 costs in pre-orders, don't cry for them just yet) and now, shock of all shocks, Playstation just removed Cyberpunk from it's digital store. A week before Christmas. Because apparently they built up enough heat for a level 3 action. (Yakuza reference, anybody?) Now these blogs are written a week before debut, so it's highly likely that something more has transpired which I don't know yet, but dems the breaks for now. And you know what? I'm still angry. (Admittedly, the Playsation store thing does take a lot of that anger off. There's a kick to the nuts I wish upon no game company) This should never have happened in the first place, and CDPR, more than anyone else, should have set the example that a rushed game is immediately bad whilst a delayed game is eventually good. (That's Shigeru Miyamoto, man; learn from the king himself!)