The Monday letters page thinks a new Modern Warfare is the last thing Call Of Duty needs, as a reader is upset at the time for Summer Game Fest.
Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk
Unexpected ending
I’m a little unclear whether Destiny 2 is being mothballed or whether it’s going to carry on. I admit I’m a lapsed player, and haven’t touched it in nearly a year, so I guess I’m part of the problem. But I got fed up of the way Bungie were handling it, with all the U-turns and vaulting content you’d paid for.
I’m clearly not the only one and now Bungie has paid the ultimate price, which will probably mean the developer being shut down or shrunk down to the point where they’ll never be able to make anything big again. A truly shocking end for the creators of Halo and for what was for a long while one of the biggest multiplayer games around.
I don’t know if they now regret leaving Activision, and before that Microsoft, but this is definitely not how I imagined their story ending. I think actually Activision kicked them out, so they must’ve thought they were saved when Sony bought them…
GC: The game is still live and will stay that way for the foreseeable future, but it’s not getting any more live service updates. So that’s probably it in terms of major new content.
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US only
I see the times for the summer showcases are just about as awkward as they possibly could be for Europe (or Japan). The PlayStation State of Play at 10pm on Tuesday is bad enough but Summer Game Fest is Friday. Is that really what I want to be doing on a Friday night? I’m not sure it is. The Xbox one is only 6pm but it’s Sunday evening and that’s not exactly great either.
It seems to me that years past there was a better attempt to pick a time for everyone but lately they just don’t seem to bother. Based on previous years I don’t think I’d lose anything by just having a normal night and reading about it all in the morning. I wish game companies would realise there’s a world outside the US.
Cranston
Losing patience
I do feel Nintendo is skating on thin ice at the moment when it comes to its price increases. We all know that the memory crisis is a real thing but to up the cost and to say you’re going to make as many consoles as they were anyway… that doesn’t exactly sound like a company that’s hurting.
It should be fine for a company to just make lots of profit in a difficult time, instead of massive amounts, but that’s not how business wants. It seems like Nintendo knows it’s pushing its luck, with the talk about having a better line-up of games, but if that doesn’t materialise soon people are going to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Black Pepper
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Horribly late
I tend to agree with the theory that Sega has left things too long to revive most of its older series. Crazy Taxi was incredibly shallow even when it came out and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to play it now. Or at leas not paying £50+ for it. But if they make it free-to-play or something they’ll have to fill it with microtransactions and other horrible stuff.
Maybe a compilation of revamped old school games but I can’t imagine that being cost effective. The new Shinobi game was pretty obviously a flop and I can’t see Crazy Taxi or anything similar being any different.
People talk about Jet Set Radio but as much as hardcore fans like it, it wasn’t popular at the time and the multiformat sequel was even worst. Good job trying to make that seem relevant 25 years later.
Neider
Minimum effort
Completely agree with GC’s article about the lost art of video game announcements. There’s such a lack of excitement around game reveals nowadays and it’s not just because most things leak out ahead of time.
If the reason they’re doing this is because it’s cheaper then I don’t see them ever turning back, but that’s a real shame to me. I would’ve surely thought that counted as good publicity though, having a splash out reveal that everyone’s talking about. But I guess it’s just cheaper to put out a tweet and call it a day.
Tony T.
Plan Z from out of Activision
I understand that you can’t make a game like Call Of Duty in a hurry (although they sure transformed Modern Warfare 3 from DLC to game pretty quick) but I think it’s going to be a disaster for Activision having the next game be a Modern Warfare game.
The whole reason fans started turning against the series is because it kept doing the same thing, with endless Black Ops and Modern Warfare games, and now their answer to two Black Ops games in a row is… another Modern Warfare.
If I were them, I would’ve just changed the name and the characters. Most Call Of Duty plots are pretty interchangeable so it doesn’t seem to me it would’ve been that difficult.
I don’t even know if next year’s game will have had enough time to do anything new either. Probably not, to be honest. So if this year’s does badly as well, and maybe next years, you’re looking at the end of Call Of Duty, not literally but maybe as one of the most popular games around.
It’s always going to be relatively easy for it to press the nostalgia button, but they’ve already had remasters and reboots of Modern Warfare 1 and 2, so two of the most obvious ones are already gone. Sure, they could do the original Black Ops or something but it doesn’t seem enough to me.
Activision had all the time in the world, while they were on top, to make plans B through to Z but it’s already obvious they haven’t prepared anything. Not if their big concept for turning things around is another Modern Warfare sequel.
Focus
Missing piece
I’m also pretty disappointed by Saros, which is a weird thing to say when I think the game is still really good. The Reader’s Feature is right though, in that everything except the combat was definitely worse the Returnal.
I really don’t know what they were thinking with the story, which barely exists for most of the game and is super obvious anyway. I didn’t know the Returnal director had left but that explains it completely. Will be interested to see what he does next.
Barney
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Jumpers for goalposts
The recent talk about arcade machines does make me remember how good those days were. I must have accumulated a lot of hours either watching ace gamers or participating myself, which speaks volumes at how mesmerising these machines were. As good as home computers and consoles were at the time, the arcade machines were still more powerful.
The arcade game I must have spent the most on at the time, was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game, of which just over five pounds was spent at twenty-odd pence a go at my local town’s cafe with a mini-arcade room at the back. I was determined to get past Krang and beat Shredder, but I couldn’t beat Shredder’s multiple clones in the end, but it was great fun either way.
I feel it was the PlayStation 2, N64, Dreamcast, and Xbox onwards that consoles and arcades were getting closer in power to each other’s performance. Then from PlayStation 4 and Xbox One onwards the arcades were seemingly in decline. There was a console called a Neo-Geo which replicated the arcade surprisingly well but was just too expensive and their games being ridiculously priced, though that’s ironic now, with GTA’s 6 expected price to be.
Another thing I liked about the arcade experience was the solid joystick and buttons. I mean, you had to be pretty aggressive to break them as they were solid and robust in nearly every way. But like funfairs the 20 or 30 pence turned to ÂŁ1 and that was a rather pricey affair. But so was having a powerful PC or console setup in your bedroom or gaming room.
Akihabara Electric Town and places like that is were you will still be able to experience the classic arcade setup. But now online multiplayer and Roblox is seemingly the dominating force. One thing’s for certain, the memories of hanging out with pals at these gaming shrines are still as strong as ever and those times will never be forgotten.
Alucard
GC: Arcades were in decline by the time of the PS1. For all intents and purposes, they were already dead by the PlayStation 4 era.
Inbox also-rans
Although I have my problems with Forza Horizon 6 (namely, the lack of proper crashes) I’m very glad to see it successful, as that may mean more big budget arcade racers in the future. Bring back Ridge Racer and OutRun!
Plesco
Has there ever been a Planet of the Apes game? Seems one of the few big sci-fi franchises that I don’t remember ever getting a tie-in.
Zeiss
GC: There’s been quite a few, actually, although none of them have been high profile or very good. There were a couple based on the 2001 reboot and the most recent was VR game Crisis On The Planet Of The Apes.
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