I was in the beta, while it didn't seem to suffer from the usual UBIsoft “bodge it and scarper” bug-riddenness of late, I found the game to be very underwhelming.
And no, I didn't spend 30-40 hours playing it…..and if i need to spend 30-40 hours before I can start enjoying it, the game is fundamentally flawed beyond belief.
What happened to the old UBI? The days of Zombi and Surf City…..
A while back I was keen to give this a go, especially given that it should have been an accumulation of learnings from TDU(/2).
But then I saw it was Ubisoft and then I saw how much Ubisoft prioritizes getting to market before Christmas in literally any state rather than making a good game.
I'll wait for it to be fixed and a sensible price before even looking at it.
If it has as many corners cut as I suspect it might, then maybe I'll miss it altogether.
shaithis
And no, I didn't spend 30-40 hours playing it…..and if i need to spend 30-40 hours before I can start enjoying it, the game is fundamentally flawed beyond belief.
This is exactly how I feel. I would be prepared to give a game 2 or maybe 3 separate 2-3 hour sessions to see if it suits me. Trying to get me to plunge that much time into a game is a proper joke, for that reason alone, I'm out.
Ubisoft desperately need to sack their PR department and get some new people in.
So they're saying it's not fun to play, but eventually you get used to that.
Well, gosh, I'll take two copies.
This is such a load of nonsense. Any professional reviewer who looks at this game is going to allow for the fact that certain key elements of the experience will be very different when the game world is full of thousands of players. You simply are not going to get reviews that say ‘it was rubbish because there weren’t enough players'.
What you will get is reviewers making a judgement on the gameplay mechanics, visuals, world design, UI etc. as to whether the game will be worth playing once it goes live and the servers start fill up with players.
By making this statement, Ubisoft are either being massively patronising to all professional reviewers, or are trying to fool people into ignoring reviewers' valid concerns about core gameplay elements by writing it off as something that will magically go away just because there are more players online.
I played the closed beta a fair bit. The map is huge in this game. I think it took me half an hour to drive accross less than half of it. I think having a big map like this could be really fun with a friend (unfortuneately I only played it solo). You could just have a laugh talking on the journey, maybe have a couple fun escapes from the police on the way.. But the handling is a bit too simplistic/arcadey. I don't usually find that a bad thing in a game like this. But those long drives can get really boring when you can pretty much master the driving mechanics within a matter of minutes. But you probably don't want super realistic driving mechanics when you're trying to drive really fast, weaving in and out of cars etc.. And driving is literally all you'll be doing in this game. So yeh - the driving mechanics need to be more indepth! As for bugs - I never experienced any to my knowledge. But it's not like the world of this game is anywhere as near as complex as AC, for example.
Anyway - it's open beta now, so you might as well give it a go :) I think I might pick this up if I end up having someone to play it with. I think it might be a bit boring solo, though..
Ubisoft are just readying up the excuses
as with most ubisoft titles from the last few years - I'll just wait until it's retail release and patches before reading/watching reviews and making an informed decision - it's Ubi… beware
I've actually become extremely wary of Ubisoft now. I'm really seeing a pattern in what they do - Review embargos that aren't lifted until many hours after the game's release, to ensure those preorders don't get cancelled. These terribly optimised games coming out with some pretty bad bugs that are very commonly seen, and should've been noticed in testing.. As Jim Sterling puts it - A publisher that has confidence in it's games just wouldn't do that! It absolutely does show a lack of confidence in what they're putting out when you think about it. Such a shame. It looks like EA are starting to win gamers back a bit, while Ubi didn't learn from EA's mistakes, and falling down the same slippery slope of greed..
kalniel
It's not universal though - they are still putting out some gems:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-04-28-child-of-light-review
Yes, Ubi still put out some great games. I've heard a lot of praise about Child Of Light. But I guess a little game like that isn't prone to as many problems.. In fact, I actually think the majority of their games are great! I always get excited to see new games from Ubisoft :) But, they're becoming well known for putting out unfinished and poorly optimised games. They're their own worst enemy. Shame they don't just take another year to develop and test games. They're clearly being rushed out. How the hell can something like Assassins creed become a yearly game without these issues.. These games clearly need more time to develop. Either that, or they get even more teams working on them in rotation. I reckon the latter is their goal. But they haven't quite nailed it yet.
I don't want to bad mouth Ubi. I want to see them put out awesome games that run well. But they're not looking too hot right now..
I just hope that this is the game that is worth the bundle going with the new Maxwell GPUs.
May play safe and wait for TB's thought on it, bloke's a nice one.