Honest Game Trailers and Zero Punctuation Reviews go after Minecraft Dungeons

As I was playing and writing about Minecraft Dungeons, I decided to avert my eyes a bit from some of the other press it was getting, if only to not influence my view while it was still starting to gel.

It is Minecraft and Dungeons

Now that I think I have written about all I am going to for the time being, I thought I would bring out a couple of video reviews of the game.

The first up is Honest Game Trailers.

 

Honest Game Trailers generally has two modes.  They either give titles they look at light hearted jabs at their weak points or else they go for the jugular.  This one is the latter as they savage the game as a low effort Diablo clone.

And then there is Zero Punctuation.

 

Yahtzee’s modus operandi is generally to be grumpy and dissatisfied with any game he reviews, grudgingly offering respect or compliments once he has vented for the few titles he eventually warms to.  In that continuum, Minecraft Dungeons falls into a valley of mild complaints that it is not really anything to do with Minecraft while being a competent if very lightweight action RPG.

And Yahtzee unable to either damn or compliment a game is almost the worst outcome, as it reveals an underlying lack of passion generated by the game.

So it goes.

As I said in my own post, there isn’t anything really wrong with the game.  It seemed fun enough for a bit.  But I also stopped playing it after a week once I made it through the main story and found that all you got after that was the same level with more difficult mobs.

Zero Punctuation does Anthem

Not being a fan of the “loot shooter” sub-genre, when EA launched Anthem it was just “the other game” they released in February along with Apex Legends.  Of course I wasn’t going to play Apex Legends either, but at least it was an interesting diversion in the battle royale genre.

Also, if you Google “Anthem logo” you get a lot of different results.

Used without permission

So I would have ignored Anthem the way I have pretty much ignored Destiny, Borderlands, and The Division, save for the fact that the internet seemed quite obsessed with Anthem.  But it was hard to tell if the game was just bug ridden, something that can theoretically be fixed over time, or a genuinely bad design.  Reviews seemed to not like the design, but couldn’t stop fretting over bugs.  The PC Gamer review probably focused on design more than most, but a lot of the frustration was still about bugs.

Despite a reputation than leans on humor and quick pacing, I think Yahtzee Crowshaw might have the most design-centric review of Anthem, focused pretty much on game play design without a mention of the software problems.  Also, he makes fun of EA, something most of us can get on board with.

 

The upshot was Anthem is BioWare trying to make something that really isn’t in their wheelhouse.  And I would have left it there had there not been the giant How BioWare’s Anthem Went Wrong story over at Kotaku.

Holy moly.  I mean, I’ve lived some of that.  Ill defined goals, misidentified competition, and  corporate dictates about what platform or tools are allowed regardless of their fitness for the current development purpose are all daily occurrences in any larger organization.  I spent most of last summer dealing with the fact that our 2018 continuous integration dictate was not compatible with our  2015 platform dictate, both of which came from some senior exec who either used the same thing at their last company or saw a cool demo and decided to bet the company on it.

But the Anthem story… well, it just shows that when you have an entertainment property there are a lot more ways things can get completely screwed up.

And then there was the EA/BioWare non-response to the article, posted minutes after it was posted, meaning it was a pre-formulated deflection that feels a bit like it is refuting some other article about the game.

All of which I could have ignored, but it seems like a moment in gaming that might be a tipping point for change.  Not good change, of course.  More like EA laying off more BioWare staff or retiring their brand or something.  We shall see.