I felt like Ben wanted to like it way more than he did. He even said he was arguably in the mood for more Borderlands, and ended up damning it with faint praise, saying how the "gunning around" is basically the same/slightly better, but everything else is just anathema to having a good time. Oddly aged UI quirks and game design, bad dialogue that he had to mute so he could play while watching TV, etc.
Also I know at least 1 person who ran into the "Borderlands 3 tries to delete your save" thing.
It's the GB curse. Control (which the loved) apparently sold real bad vs BL3 (which they hate) has sold much more than its predecessor (BL2 not PSQ).
edit: TBH (and this is something I wish he worked on) Jason appears to love it but he was drowned out by Jeff's rant (tm). Even Ben was a bit more positive on it.
???
It didn't even chart in latest NPD chart vs Astral Chain (which going with the GB trend they hated Dan didn't like!) which was in the top 10.
Everything i've heard about Borderlands 3 makes it sound like I would loathe it.
Borderlands 2 but with even worse, less funny characters! Great!
That's even before the Gearbox and Randy stuff. So while I love Amara and want to play a game as a muscle wizard she's not enough to make up for the rest.
It's the GB curse. Control (which the loved) apparently sold real bad vs BL3 (which they hate) has sold much more than its predecessor (BL2 not PSQ).
edit: TBH (and this is something I wish he worked on) Jason appears to love it but he was drowned out by Jeff's rant (tm). Even Ben was a bit more positive on it.
???
It didn't even chart in latest NPD chart vs Astral Chain (which going with the GB trend they hated Dan didn't like!) which was in the top 10.
It's the GB curse. Control (which the loved) apparently sold real bad vs BL3 (which they hate) has sold much more than its predecessor (BL2 not PSQ).
edit: TBH (and this is something I wish he worked on) Jason appears to love it but he was drowned out by Jeff's rant (tm). Even Ben was a bit more positive on it.
???
It didn't even chart in latest NPD chart vs Astral Chain (which going with the GB trend they hated Dan didn't like!) which was in the top 10.
Do remedy games ever smash npd numbers? Feels like Alan wake has a decent cult following but if it barely made a top ten I wouldn't be surprised.
A lot of the reviewer buzz on control is also aimed at how good it looks with an RTX card which cuts out a huge chunk of the mass market
It's the GB curse. Control (which the loved) apparently sold real bad vs BL3 (which they hate) has sold much more than its predecessor (BL2 not PSQ).
edit: TBH (and this is something I wish he worked on) Jason appears to love it but he was drowned out by Jeff's rant (tm). Even Ben was a bit more positive on it.
???
It didn't even chart in latest NPD chart vs Astral Chain (which going with the GB trend they hated Dan didn't like!) which was in the top 10.
Do remedy games ever smash npd numbers? Feels like Alan wake has a decent cult following but if it barely made a top ten I wouldn't be surprised.
A lot of the reviewer buzz on control is also aimed at how good it looks with an RTX card which cuts out a huge chunk of the mass market
I believe Alan Wake infamously came out on the same day as a little game called Red Dead Redemption, so it unsurprisingly sold very poorly upon release.
edit: Also I don't think Remedy games have never been huge sellers (I recall a lot of handwringing over how Max Payne 2 didn't sell as good as Max Payne 1), but at least the company owns the rights to Alan Wake again and the studio seems healthy?
I felt like Ben wanted to like it way more than he did. He even said he was arguably in the mood for more Borderlands, and ended up damning it with faint praise, saying how the "gunning around" is basically the same/slightly better, but everything else is just anathema to having a good time. Oddly aged UI quirks and game design, bad dialogue that he had to mute so he could play while watching TV, etc.
Also I know at least 1 person who ran into the "Borderlands 3 tries to delete your save" thing.
Ben is always a bit of a sycophant when it comes to Jeff so I wasn't surprised to his initial enthusiasm drop dramatically once Jeff spoke up.
I felt like Ben wanted to like it way more than he did. He even said he was arguably in the mood for more Borderlands, and ended up damning it with faint praise, saying how the "gunning around" is basically the same/slightly better, but everything else is just anathema to having a good time. Oddly aged UI quirks and game design, bad dialogue that he had to mute so he could play while watching TV, etc.
Also I know at least 1 person who ran into the "Borderlands 3 tries to delete your save" thing.
Ben is always a bit of a sycophant when it comes to Jeff so I wasn't surprised to his initial enthusiasm drop dramatically once Jeff spoke up.
I think that's needlessly harsh. Ben has his own opinions and it's not like Jeff told him to turn the game audio down. Ben came to that conclusion himself when he realized the game's dialogue was awful.
I felt like Ben wanted to like it way more than he did. He even said he was arguably in the mood for more Borderlands, and ended up damning it with faint praise, saying how the "gunning around" is basically the same/slightly better, but everything else is just anathema to having a good time. Oddly aged UI quirks and game design, bad dialogue that he had to mute so he could play while watching TV, etc.
Also I know at least 1 person who ran into the "Borderlands 3 tries to delete your save" thing.
Ben is always a bit of a sycophant when it comes to Jeff so I wasn't surprised to his initial enthusiasm drop dramatically once Jeff spoke up.
I think that's needlessly harsh. Ben has his own opinions and it's not like Jeff told him to turn the game audio down. Ben came to that conclusion himself when he realized the game's dialogue was awful.
I mean, Ben is the Editor in Chief. He probably was just really impressed by the new intern that just showed up.
I don't know, it just feels like some of the complaints Jeff and others had about the game seemed...unwarranted? Or that their expectations of where the franchise could go were never something Gearbox intended on going. Like Jeff seems frustrated that BL3 zones are basically a series of hallways (which I think is a little reductive) instead of taking a more open world approach. I think Jeff just last week was criticizing Gears 5 from making more big open spaces and then not filling them with interesting content, so it looks like you can't win unless you do it exactly right. Complaining that the majority of guns you pick up suck is...I mean that's just kind of a loot game thing, right? Ben complained that buying ammo didn't automatically reload your guns, which I can't even think of a game I've played recently that does that? It just seems like they're dinging the game for not being more dramatically different just because of the amount of time that's passed, as well as only copying some of the current genre conventions but not all of them.
I don't think Borderlands 3 was ever going to be something other than trying to recapture the magic of BL2 with incremental improvements. Which are there, honestly. There's the sliding/mantling stuff, I think the classes are more different from each other in more interesting ways than they've ever been. Ability customization is really cool. They've added some fun new modifiers to guns, and the alt fire modes add another layer to evaluating guns/combat. The writing is just the right amount of dumb for me, apparently. It's more Borderlands ass Borderlands, and you're either down for that or you're not.
I don't know, it just feels like some of the complaints Jeff and others had about the game seemed...unwarranted? Or that their expectations of where the franchise could go were never something Gearbox intended on going. Like Jeff seems frustrated that BL3 zones are basically a series of hallways (which I think is a little reductive) instead of taking a more open world approach. I think Jeff just last week was criticizing Gears 5 from making more big open spaces and then not filling them with interesting content, so it looks like you can't win unless you do it exactly right. Complaining that the majority of guns you pick up suck is...I mean that's just kind of a loot game thing, right? Ben complained that buying ammo didn't automatically reload your guns, which I can't even think of a game I've played recently that does that? It just seems like they're dinging the game for not being more dramatically different just because of the amount of time that's passed, as well as only copying some of the current genre conventions but not all of them.
I don't think Borderlands 3 was ever going to be something other than trying to recapture the magic of BL2 with incremental improvements. Which are there, honestly. There's the sliding/mantling stuff, I think the classes are more different from each other in more interesting ways than they've ever been. Ability customization is really cool. They've added some fun new modifiers to guns, and the alt fire modes add another layer to evaluating guns/combat. The writing is just the right amount of dumb for me, apparently. It's more Borderlands ass Borderlands, and you're either down for that or you're not.
Lots of trash in a loot thing isn't necessarily something to be expected. You can do a loot game while still presenting the player with a steady stream of interesting, potentially worthwhile weapons.
Also, I think the open world criticism is warranted especially because that's what Borderlands had already done. And I don't think the gunplay in Borderlands is good enough to transition from an open world shooter to a corridor shooter.
And I think Gearbox giving the same old Borderlands with some minor QoL improvements like 5 years later (7 from 2) is absolutely worthy of criticism, when 2 wasn't even particularly good. And it's not even an improvement across the board, somehow the writing is even worse than it was in 2.
It's the GB curse. Control (which the loved) apparently sold real bad vs BL3 (which they hate) has sold much more than its predecessor (BL2 not PSQ).
edit: TBH (and this is something I wish he worked on) Jason appears to love it but he was drowned out by Jeff's rant (tm). Even Ben was a bit more positive on it.
Control is a game I look forward to getting on sale after it comes out on Steam.
Borderlands 3 is a game I look forward to never playing.
Yeah Im probably strawmanning the NPD bit. Apparently, for Control there's no EGS sales included. But I think it does include digital sales for the other storefronts. It still did bad vs Astral Chain because it's only on the Switch and it doesn't include Eshop sales.
It’s... okay? But I think the combat, while pretty, is probably my least favorite thing about it. The Service Weapon is neat until you actually have to use it, and it feels like you’re shooting peas. Replace the enemies with puzzles as I try to navigate this weird-ass government building, and it’d be a 13/10 for me.
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Yeah Im probably strawmanning the NPD bit. Apparently, for Control there's no EGS sales included. But I think it does include digital sales for the other storefronts. It still did bad vs Astral Chain because it's only on the Switch and it doesn't include Eshop sales.
I'm not 100% but I'm pretty sure that NO digital sales were in that number for Control.
I'm sure the tales of how garbage it runs on base consoles kept more than a few people away.
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
edited September 2019
NDP doesn't include digital sales at all and that's why it's so much more less reliable than a decade ago.
They, especially Jeff who really liked Borderlands 1, made the point that BL3 being just an incremental improvement (with some of the series' flaws being made worse and more noticeable) isn't good enough anymore. Games aren't developed in a vacuum. There are already games that do what BL3 does but better.
Also, Jeff seems bothered that they didn't really come through with the whole Borderworlds thing.
So from what I gather, the best Borderlands game is still Tales From The.
They, especially Jeff who really liked Borderlands 1, made the point that BL3 being just an incremental improvement (with some of the series' flaws being made worse and more noticeable) isn't good enough anymore.
Which is a weird thing to come from someone who plays a whole bunch of annual incremental games. Or damning, I suppose, though in my case "another one of those" after a decade is more interesting than "another one of those, but the progression is different" after a year.
I felt like Ben wanted to like it way more than he did. He even said he was arguably in the mood for more Borderlands, and ended up damning it with faint praise, saying how the "gunning around" is basically the same/slightly better, but everything else is just anathema to having a good time. Oddly aged UI quirks and game design, bad dialogue that he had to mute so he could play while watching TV, etc.
Also I know at least 1 person who ran into the "Borderlands 3 tries to delete your save" thing.
Ben is always a bit of a sycophant when it comes to Jeff so I wasn't surprised to his initial enthusiasm drop dramatically once Jeff spoke up.
I think that's needlessly harsh. Ben has his own opinions and it's not like Jeff told him to turn the game audio down. Ben came to that conclusion himself when he realized the game's dialogue was awful.
Not really trying to be harsh. Ben is young and is going toe to toe in conversation with Jeff Gertsman. It's completely understandable why he'd bend his opinions based on what Jeff is saying. I was guilty of that with my superiors at work at his age too.
It absolutely happens all the time. I bet I could literally pick it out happening in just about every bombcast that has both Jeff and Ben in it. He'll get more confident over time.
I still can't tell if they're doing those shitty Youtube thumbnails ironically or on purpose. Probably on purpose, considering their recent push to promote themselves more on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and any of the regular places people promote videos (although I'm pretty sure people found out that Facebook was lying to them about how many views FB videos actually get)
Borderlands 3 has been...fine? Like I'm enjoying it and thats what its for. I don't get the critiques about the writing, its the same kind/style thats been in every Borderlands game before. Its fine.
Game has flaws though. Its choppy, the enemies bring bullet sponge to a new level, and parts feel cheap (When I was shot out of my space ship onto a new planet they said "It'll be bumpy but you should make it!" cue them cutting to me on the planet...not even like a bit of tension from a cut scene showing my pod nearly getting destroyed or anything..). It has lots of little bugs. And while I like the changes they did make to things like the UI and stuff, I do agree that I wish this was more of a drastic change from 2.
There's yeah. Topic a bit Bop like a bit baps flowering baps that worry Bap flowery Batman tell me more about these flowery baps. They wanted some detail and fluffy. Yeah large enough to hold a narrow talker. Yeah, so, what's the story? All right. All right. Yeah, it's my first time making them just a brownie good job.
Man, Jeff's reactions to everything the entire time. He super does not seem down for anything in this game.
I don’t know, he seems to be thinking through the mechanics and talking out what that means from a gameplay perspective. He also seems really uncomfortable with everything regarding the Bridge Baby, not in a mechanical/gameplay way but in a “Oh god that poor kid, soothe the damn baby!” way and I know that feel.
I’m not going to say that having to tilt left and right constantly to maintain balance was what I expected, and it sucks that it looks like you interact with so few non-holograms during the game and can’t enter the city and stuff.
It looks like a very visually striking, very lonely experience.
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Also I know at least 1 person who ran into the "Borderlands 3 tries to delete your save" thing.
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It didn't even chart in latest NPD chart vs Astral Chain (which going with the GB trend they hated Dan didn't like!) which was in the top 10.
Borderlands 2 but with even worse, less funny characters! Great!
That's even before the Gearbox and Randy stuff. So while I love Amara and want to play a game as a muscle wizard she's not enough to make up for the rest.
:x
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Do remedy games ever smash npd numbers? Feels like Alan wake has a decent cult following but if it barely made a top ten I wouldn't be surprised.
A lot of the reviewer buzz on control is also aimed at how good it looks with an RTX card which cuts out a huge chunk of the mass market
He muted it so he could play while watching...anime.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
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I believe Alan Wake infamously came out on the same day as a little game called Red Dead Redemption, so it unsurprisingly sold very poorly upon release.
edit: Also I don't think Remedy games have never been huge sellers (I recall a lot of handwringing over how Max Payne 2 didn't sell as good as Max Payne 1), but at least the company owns the rights to Alan Wake again and the studio seems healthy?
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Ben is always a bit of a sycophant when it comes to Jeff so I wasn't surprised to his initial enthusiasm drop dramatically once Jeff spoke up.
I think that's needlessly harsh. Ben has his own opinions and it's not like Jeff told him to turn the game audio down. Ben came to that conclusion himself when he realized the game's dialogue was awful.
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I mean, Ben is the Editor in Chief. He probably was just really impressed by the new intern that just showed up.
I'm totally happy for people that are into it though.
I don't think Borderlands 3 was ever going to be something other than trying to recapture the magic of BL2 with incremental improvements. Which are there, honestly. There's the sliding/mantling stuff, I think the classes are more different from each other in more interesting ways than they've ever been. Ability customization is really cool. They've added some fun new modifiers to guns, and the alt fire modes add another layer to evaluating guns/combat. The writing is just the right amount of dumb for me, apparently. It's more Borderlands ass Borderlands, and you're either down for that or you're not.
Or has that changed since I heard it probably 5 years ago or more
Lots of trash in a loot thing isn't necessarily something to be expected. You can do a loot game while still presenting the player with a steady stream of interesting, potentially worthwhile weapons.
Also, I think the open world criticism is warranted especially because that's what Borderlands had already done. And I don't think the gunplay in Borderlands is good enough to transition from an open world shooter to a corridor shooter.
And I think Gearbox giving the same old Borderlands with some minor QoL improvements like 5 years later (7 from 2) is absolutely worthy of criticism, when 2 wasn't even particularly good. And it's not even an improvement across the board, somehow the writing is even worse than it was in 2.
cool, thanks for the input you super cool guy
It’s... okay? But I think the combat, while pretty, is probably my least favorite thing about it. The Service Weapon is neat until you actually have to use it, and it feels like you’re shooting peas. Replace the enemies with puzzles as I try to navigate this weird-ass government building, and it’d be a 13/10 for me.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Control is wonderful, I think I 100%'d it and I'm bummed out because I want a reason to play it more. Probably my favorite game of 2019.
I'm not 100% but I'm pretty sure that NO digital sales were in that number for Control.
I'm sure the tales of how garbage it runs on base consoles kept more than a few people away.
Translation courtesy of IGN.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
Also, Jeff seems bothered that they didn't really come through with the whole Borderworlds thing.
So from what I gather, the best Borderlands game is still Tales From The.
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Poor Ben's stuck on an original PS4.
that's the trick, preparing for brexit is like stocking up on canned foods in your shed for when the nukes drop on you
Not really trying to be harsh. Ben is young and is going toe to toe in conversation with Jeff Gertsman. It's completely understandable why he'd bend his opinions based on what Jeff is saying. I was guilty of that with my superiors at work at his age too.
It absolutely happens all the time. I bet I could literally pick it out happening in just about every bombcast that has both Jeff and Ben in it. He'll get more confident over time.
Man, Jeff's reactions to everything the entire time. He super does not seem down for anything in this game.
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Game has flaws though. Its choppy, the enemies bring bullet sponge to a new level, and parts feel cheap (When I was shot out of my space ship onto a new planet they said "It'll be bumpy but you should make it!" cue them cutting to me on the planet...not even like a bit of tension from a cut scene showing my pod nearly getting destroyed or anything..). It has lots of little bugs. And while I like the changes they did make to things like the UI and stuff, I do agree that I wish this was more of a drastic change from 2.
I don’t know, he seems to be thinking through the mechanics and talking out what that means from a gameplay perspective. He also seems really uncomfortable with everything regarding the Bridge Baby, not in a mechanical/gameplay way but in a “Oh god that poor kid, soothe the damn baby!” way and I know that feel.
I’m not going to say that having to tilt left and right constantly to maintain balance was what I expected, and it sucks that it looks like you interact with so few non-holograms during the game and can’t enter the city and stuff.
It looks like a very visually striking, very lonely experience.
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This is probably 200% intended.