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Tbh that's a low bar to pass. The newest CoD flopped pretty bad and Rockstar has been too busy with GTA6. Almost every other notable release was either a flop or a smaller studio or indie title.
While that might be true, 2023 was an year filled with great games and yet Hogwarts Legacy is first, and Call of Duty is 2nd.
As for notable games of the year that weren't flop (in no particular order):
- Spider-Man 2
- Baldur's Gate 3
- Diablo IV
- FF 16
- Armored Core 6
- Street Fighter 6
- Alan Wake 2
Not to mention:
- Resident Evil 4 Remake
- Dead Space Remake
They may not be to your taste, but they all rated very highly. I haven't included any Nintendo games, cause they don't share digital data. Their numbers are based only on physical sales.
That's actually fair. I barely pay attention to AAA gaming to begin with, so most of these games just weren't on my radar. I just thought "oh, Starfield was the big hyped flop of the year, of course there wasn't much AAA competition"
No worries. Of all the games mentioned above Starfield was probably my most anticipated. But it let people down.
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Would have tried it out if the author wasn't a transphobic piece of shit. Might pirate it.
Might pirate it.
Wait till you learn about who cracked that game.
I did. it was alright. Worth it if you want to explore hogwarts and surroundings.
Also, the erstwhile lead designer was a far right agitator.
It's not worth it, and while the transphobia is absent, the antisemitism is still there
Been waiting to pick it up cheap second hand. Not interested in financially supporting it.
Just... pirate it... 🦜
Honestly, considered it even though I haven't pirated a game in like twenty years. But when I found out the the person who cracked the game is also a hateful bigot, I didn't even want to download their work. Nah, I'll buy it second hand.
Culture warriors would rather play a mid rpg at $80 than admit that JK Rowling is a bigot who is bad at world building.
She is a terrible bigot, and a loud one, and that sucks because she also produced a cultural phenomenon of my childhood, and while the canon of HP is only just barely pretty okay sometimes, it spiralled out from there and SO MUCH of the media and culture I've consumed and existed within since then has been informed by it.
So yeah. If there's any comfort, let it be that any money she gets from this comes from explicitly affirming a trans woman through the work, as well as implicitly affirming any trans players through the character creation options. Small comfort maybe, but she is far away.
That's how I justified it to myself.
That, and there was an entire team of people working on this game for years, trying to make it the best vision of theirs as well as making it fit within the pre established world.
A racist a transphobe and an antisemite walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says "aren't you that girl who wrote HP?"
JQ Lolling stares unflinchingly ahead and states "Your teacher, Professor Eleazar Fig, dies at the end of Hogwarts Legacy. This happens in all possible endings and can't be changed. Oh and Rookwood is the one who cursed Anne while the goblins were framed. Also, you're also required to quell a slave uprising and you have no choice in the matter."
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Is this game really that good? I’ve been holding out on buying it.
No.
It's extremely popular because it is a well polished Harry Potter game; something the world has been begging for for a long time. It does invoke that sense of magic that the films do so well, so if you're just looking to get a fresh hit of the Hogwarts world it's great. There are also a lot of really interesting and well designed characters. Most of all the world, particularly the castle, is beautifully and lovingly crafted.
The game buried beneath all that polish is a pretty basic-ass RPG. It is crammed with filler fetch/find quests. The dialogue system is just another exhaust all options non-system. The combat has some really cool ideas on paper but I personally ended up mostly mashing buttons against one of like 5 generic enemies most of the time. Also the only customization in this RPG is your appearance.
It's not a bad game by any means, but i wouldn't say it's great either.
As much as I enjoyed the game, I cant deny anything said here. Pretty much sums it up
I also agree with the above statements. The best way I could describe it is that while the gameplay wasn’t all that spectacular, experiencing the game world was definitely a treat, and made me smile like I did the first time I opened the first Harry Potter book or played the first games that game out on PS1!
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I got it on sale in December and think it’s worth it. I’m not a huge HP fan by any stretch but was impressed by the mechanics, they’re fun. Though as the game opens up you start to spot the tedious shit all open worlds tend to throw in to keep you busy. I just ignore that shit.
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My wife is a big Harry Potter fan but has mixed feelings about it. She described the game this morning as not great but not bad either, with great graphics, but also with an indecisiveness to it that suggests too many cooks in the kitchen.
With that said, that's just one opinion. The game seems outstandingly popular. She felt it's worth the money if you can get it on sale in her personal opinion.
My wife and I had the same opinion. Magical to run around the castle for a few hours and do the early classes, surprisingly good combat mechanics, but then... Nothing.
It is really hurt by the inclusion of brooms. They necessitate a huge world so you can't cross it in a minute, but then it's too spread out and empty. At least in Ghost Recon my world-design-crippling flying devices have rockets and gattling guns.
You may hit the nail on the head, once you get the broom you just breeze past everyhring. The forbidden forest may be the most dense content wise on foot, everything after that does feel more sparse as it was designed with the broom in mind. All in all I still enjoyed the game and got my moneys worth out of it, I did pick it up rather cheap on a sale
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It's a casual game that lets you run around the world of harry potter casting spells at people and things, solving puzzles, and wearing silly wizard clothes. If that sounds good to you then it's good.
It's a standard open world game. If that appeals to you and you love HP then perhaps.
If you aren't sure, wait for a big sale. I quite enjoyed the game, but other than being a massively-popular IP, I'm not sure why it's getting so much acclaim. It's big, it's Harry Potter (with all the attention to detail that usually gets), and it's an RPG. If it wasn't HP, it'd be another good indie game, and that's it.
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HogLeg's success is pretty crazy if you think about it. Ignoring the sales we've looking at today, take yourself back to the launch of HogLeg. It kept up pace with Fallout 4 in terms of active players and achievement completion rates. This is huge to me. They're both singleplayer RPGs, so they're both vying for the same type of audience.
But.
Fallout 4 was a hugely anticipated sequel to one of the most renowned series in all of gaming. Harry Potter had almost no presence in gaming beyond nostalgic shovel ware titles.
Fallout 4 was developed by gaming darlings, a company known for producing huge open worlds with strong volumes of content. HogLeg was developed by shovelware developers with no major releases in their history.
Fallout 4 is a first person looter shooter, one of the most ubiquitous and successful genres out there. HogLeg is an action roleplaying game, still admittedly a safe genre but doesn't have the genre conventions that makes it possible for anyone with FPS experience to pick up a Fallout.
And finally, Fallout 4 targeted gamers. It's a gamer's game, you know? It's for lore nerds and RPG fans and tacticool nuts and all the rest. HogLeg was for Harry Potter fans. It needed to drag fans across media types to secure a big enough audience.
I truly, truly did not expect HogLeg to find the success it has. And to be honest, it's quite a mid game! It's a visual accomplishment and adherence to the universe means that it's a treat for any Harry Potter nerds, but the rest of the game is as close as generic as it could get.
And finally, Fallout 4 targeted gamers. It's a gamer's game, you know? It's for lore nerds and RPG fans and tacticool nuts and all the rest. HogLeg was for Harry Potter fans. It needed to drag fans across media types to secure a big enough audience.
This is... perhaps, the very formula for its success. Perhaps the gaming crowd isn't that big. Perhaps, HL was not chained to a particular demographic and instead had the freedom to appeal to a wider audience.
I know of people who picked up a controller for the first time in their life because HL was a Harry Potter game... just saying.
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Number 5 in switch after just a few weeks is crazy
Might have to check this out!
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this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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