Same, if Ubisoft action adventure games with stealth elements are the assembly like of grey matter gloop of video games, Unreal Engine packs are the shiny green matter gloop of video. I want these games to have a colorblind mode just so I can turn that on and get rid of this visual nonsense.
I've made some things in Unreal Engine. So I know how the default locomotion feels. The game was kind of ruined for me the moment I got control of the character. The default UE player controller feels so clunky. I haven't tried their new parkour system in UE5, so maybe that'll feel better. But just walking around got me feeling like it was a game from over 10 years ago.
It's possible to make beautiful games in UE without using photorealistic graphics and it baffles me more developers haven't experimented with it. Deep Rock Galactic, for example, uses very low poly environments and assets with basic noisy textures in tandem with an incredibly robust lighting system that makes everything pop and bring the world to life. I love games that leverage the strengths of their engine of choice without trying to "do everything"
SPOILERS. In that cutscene, where main villain appears... Well, sphinx basically massacre whole squad and some guy shot explosive barrels, which blow up entire "gate", which was holding Gods back. So yeah, shot by a musket... into stack of barrels of TNT.
Camps in BG3 weren't interesting. Everyone was stuck in clown make-up trying to bang you regardless of repeated rejections. But you're probably a fan of the "horny glitch."
I really dislike this trend of indie/AA developers pushing for "photorealistic" graphics nowadays, undoubtedly perpetuated by UE5. The bar has been raised so high that even some AAA studios like Ubisoft can't keep up anymore. There are so many intricate aspects to photorealistic visuals, from fidelity to animations to particles to lighting to even acting, that quite obviously can't be properly supported by these smaller studios and end up looking extremely outdated, even though on paper they're still technically impressive. I don't want to trample on the creative vision of games like this one, nor on their drive to perhaps bite off more than they could chew, but if they'd stuck with a more scale-appropriate artstyle, not only would it eliminate these problems, it'd also help it stand out more amidst this space.
It's not a simple decision though, because Unreal comes with free access to MegaScan: a massive library of scanned assets and textures. That means you can choose between a realistic direction with a huge portion of your (boring) background and environment assets already made for you and you just have to focus on your hero assets, or go for a more stylized approach but you have to make everything in-house. Depending on the size of the game it could be much cheaper to go with the former, and AA studios tend to be very cost averse.
@@tartiflette6428the devs need to spend some time adding sandpaper to these textures. It’s way too “shiny” to the point I don’t know how you would contrast balance this. Photorealistic is fine for cutscenes, but I find it more terrible for gameplay as all of it is distracting and hard to follow. And that’s not even taking to account regular game mechanics stuff like hitboxes that don’t quite match the visuals, or materials like cloth that don’t have hitboxes but continue to just flap in the wind. I am okay with something like Fromsoft hitboxes because the game isn’t photorealistic, but when you try to convince me it’s photorealistic, I expect to be caught up by something like a canvas tent instead of just a slight collision when I run into it.
I totally agree, I'd say that art style is far more important than graphic fidelity. In fact, high resolution photorealistic game in essence lack any "art style" since they are photorealistic. The design of the armor or the setting can change, I'd argue that a game being photorealistic IS its art style. Just like in movies where a good costume and cosmetic makes it far more timeless than CGI, a photorealistic game starts to age and diminish in value far more rapidly than a game with amazing art style. Think about Lord of the ring, there's a reason why it still looks good to this day. Now that I'm older, I need to play games where I don't feel like I'm wasting time. I need it to be a new experience everytime for me to feel like it's worth my time. I've seen photorealistic game, give me something new or I won't bother, I'm an adult with responsibility, I don't have time for things I've already experienced.
One day we will look back on this hyper-colorful, splashes and particles everywhere, sassy, super quippy, wanna-be “irreverent” dialogue (“you’re a weird, talking fox…thing”) with the 2016 Suicide Squad character intros and the neon, cyberpunk-esque coating and pandering levels of “inclusivity” that ends up making things look more like a college pamphlet where everyone is just SO cool than actually reflecting what real life diversity looks like, like we look back on the 360/PS3-era, post-9/11 brown sludge.
@@noah2251 I’m not bothered by DEI itself, but I am bothered how blatant and lazy and corny it always is. The phrases “Woke” and “DEI” have been poisoned , in my opinion
These whole "We must kill the gods" thing is so tired at this point. I think they just wanted an excuse to have the player latch onto that, cause the gods are inherently evil and deserve to die right?
@@TheSergio1021 When you get down to it plot in almost every motivation in any story is "tired". Good stories patch the holes and make you forget you've seen a trope thousand times. The Last of Us is a fine example, as it's a generic story executed well.
@@Shizlgizl yeah that's not what I was referring to though. I'm saying that so many games just have "Hey you wanna kill the gods?!" as the sole motivating factor without giving us much of a reason. It's lazy and I cant even begin to count all the games on steam I've seen mention killing gods in their summary page.
Part of the issue that A44 has is that a lot of the lessons from Ashen weren't learned because Ashen didn't sell well and some of the people who made it were layed off. Another part of what happened here is that the Social Media/Community Manager at the time kinda had a "fuck the corporate man" mentality and gave 90% of the review copies to super small UA-camrs (including a channel I was helping with at the time). They did a fairly rough job getting the word out about the game. They were super nice, but definitely not focused on actually marketing the dang game. A month after release they were laid off-likely for obvious reasons. Essentially, A44 is a textbook story of brain drain and the importance of *everyone* at a small studio taking their job seriously.
I’d rather games use Fromsoft style assets than photorealistic ones. Just enough graphics to make it cool, but not a visual clutter when I’m just walking through the streets.
@@Ceece20 True, none of the games made by From have "good" (photorealistic) models for the human characters but are still stunning on out memories because of how they focus more on the world around you. I still remember how stunned I was the first time I saw Fountainhead Palace on Sekiro, or when you take a glimpse of Anor Londo in both DS1 and DS3 for the first time. Games becoming a clusterfuck of stuff on screen like Suicide Squad or dropping everything for the sake of graphics like Hellblade 2 are probably going to keep bleeding the industry and ruining the lifes of people working on them (not the assholes demanding this shit but the poor guys working tirelessly to please their stupid demands on the frontline of game development).
Give it a few more years pretty soon everyone will be trying to make their own videogames by giving commands to Ai and letting it do all the heavy work. That assembled kit feel you're referring to is about to get even worse in the AA and indie space.
8:50 the uniforms and guns are from the Napoleonic wars and they are fight melee undead. The WW1 trenches make no sense since it is meant to take cover from bullet storms cause by WW1 guns, which neither side has.
I feel like they were TRYING to go for that weird transitionary period of WW1 where “modern” tech and weapons were used alongside their “pre-modern” version. That’s why we had people mass-charging with fixed bayonets and clubs alongside MGS and dogfights, where bombing planes were literally just people chucking sticks of dynamite out the window. The issue is two-fold. One: as you said, the clash makes no sense. Trench combat wouldn’t be used against the undead- if anything, it would give them an advantage. Two: the developers decided that the “pre-modern” tech would be hundreds of years older, rather than simply decades. They went for medieval, when they should have gone for victorian or colonial at the oldest. The result is a clash of eras that feels clumsy instead of intentional.
Reminds me of Crimean War type setting, those scenes. That war in many aspects was just in the middle between these two periods. Obviously wasn't as melee-heavy as this game either, but trenches and fortifications were a big thing there - both cause of guns as well as artillery.
I really liked how well done the companion AI for enki was. I hope that at least influences future games or other games. He always did what he needed to do when he needed to do it and never felt like an obstacle like companions in other games
Well that's very complex isn't it? Isn't that the point of entertainment as a whole? To waste time? It's more nuanced of course but in essence that's what it is, we watch movies, play games, etc. All to waste time.
Honestly it actually alright. I think Austin is a little harsh with it. I've been having fun with my playthrough, and the game isn't without it's nice touches.
It’s been in development for a long time and a CEO was brought in and she changed quite a bit of-the direction of the game. The company also changed owners in that time, so this all speaks to development hell. The main problem is that it might not be a bad game, but nothing stands out. It’s aggressively average and although you’ll always find a loud minority defending it as with any game, most just haven’t liked it much.
I mean, if a number of the major bosses are gods whom you kill up to that point, pointing out that by the end of the game you've killed a bunch of gods, and so he'd expect that to be part of the ending narrative doesn't really feel like a spoiler? At least, not once "A number of bosses are gods you kill" is on the table, anyway.
One thing I really thought stood out is the cumulative bonus point system that you can "bank" anywhere and reset it, or risk taking one hit and losing it all later on... The one thing that stood out for me
fr, even when i played the demo around next fest I thought it was innovative and smart. but the combat was straight ass, enemies recovered way too quick and there was no stun to speak of so it felt like was being punished for trying to engage with the system
Finally someone who reviews taking account that time is the most precious thing we have. I feel too many lose sight that lots of people don't have hours to to waste on meh games or even within good games doing too much grinding.
From what I've seen from reviews, the most interesting thing they came up with the "push your luck" mechanic of the combat, incentivizing you to use a variety of moves to increase the amount of currency you earn.
Just completely ignoring Remember Me & Vampyr in Dontnod's back catalogue, as if they jumped straight from Life is Strange to Banishers with no history of third person action.
The thing that killed the game for me was the demo. You get to the end of the opening setup and the big "you are supposed to lose" bossfight happens when we are about to blow the gate. During this fight we are unable to trigger the explosives by shooting them in this suicide mission yet the cutscene that plays when we inevitably lose just has some other guy shoot the explosives. I also found the main protagonist thoroughly unlikeable. She has this whole vendetta but it is thoroughly unearned and hollow especially in her interaction with the ally wolf/fox god thing.
A story setting in ww1 where the "great powers" need to fight together against "death" while the gods are influencing/supporting different actors 'cause they don't want to lose their powers/existence sounds kinda cool. Many different groups, stuff like early modern technology vs faith (magic), maybe something like chosen heroes fighting with the power of gods etc. Maybe "death" is just a new god born out of sheer desperation of the people left behind while people in power and gods are changing the world like they want to. There is big potential here but looks like they went a different route with locations and settings besides the ww1 era.
I remember trying the demo during this year's Steam Next Fest and being amazed this was a game months away from being released. It really felt like it needed way more time in the oven.
On a scale of God of War and a Gilson B. Pontes game, this falls somewhere near Atlas Fallen. And I had completely forgotten that Atlas Fallen existed until this video.
Between this game and Concord was there some mandate that we must use clashing colors, dull outfits and generic designs? Feels like either you pick up a Genshin clone, or something like this that is so dull and lifeless
*takes a deep breath* A flintlock isn't even your main weapon in a game named "Flintlock" How did nobody in the dev team realize this? How did not a single person there realize that "hey, do people really wanna fight with an axe in a game about flintlocks?"
Correct me if i am wrong but Dontnod's first ever game was Remember Me and after I think Life is Strange 2 they created Vampyr a game with multiple similarities to Banishers. They were never just that LiS studio.
Something very wrong went during production of this game. I didn't play Ashen but saw a few walkthroughs, and the game was well made and had passion to it, when this was first announced i really thought it was going to be at least competent, but as time passed... lets put this way... i felt something wrong when they did one of those video with some devs were they explain what the game is and what the story will be and... i felt that the person in the video wanted to be literally in ANY other place than where he was at that moment. So, i think something went really awry during the process and whatever passion this project had... went 6 feet under.
as usual, DEI consultant kick in and other aspect of the game take a backseat to forcefully cater to some agenda. Easiest way to kill the passion and morale of the team that actually have the skill and creativity to create wonderful games and stories.
@@Stevexupen I dont like to enter on the DEI hate bandwagon, but... I have to admit... I watched a few things and there was the whole SBI-detected steam page and... this game was there. This game HAD passion to it, i could feel it, one of the first trailers had some really good music and gameplay and they even made a exclusive song for it, a good one... then... it vanished, all that love i felt at first gone. It is a shame, i don't think this would had reinvented the genre, but seeing something that had love in it die with a wimper like that... it is never a good feeling.
Loved Vampyr!! Such a shame the combat was slow to click in and many people never fully understood how it worked. A Vampyr 2 with more polished mechanics and combat it's my unrealistic dream game.
I think the best way to describe this game is Minimum Viable Product. It's like they had a committee filled with external advisors that wrote down all the successful traits of other games, removed all the "fluff", and gave a devteam full of people who didn't give a single fuck beyond their paychecks to produce a product that fills in all the check boxes.
Why not Ashen 2?! I remember playing through Ashen with my brother. The combat was a little shallow, but the game had some great exploration. If they expanded on Ashen and made a larger, more expansive world in a sequal then I'd be so ready! But here we are with Flintlock.
- dude we're gonna make a good looking game with a female protagonist. - sweet what's the story? - story? - well i suppose the world building will be cohesive enough to make up for minimal story. - cohesive? - oh god at least tell me the gameply is good. - gameplay? - fck... what was that you said about a female protagonist?
Demo giveth and demo taketh away. They really are a great way to get me interested in a game I would otherwise look past but on the flipside they allow me to know not to waste my time with games like this. At least flintlock is on gamepass but even then there's so many other great titles in the catalog to play instead.
i've really had it with the overblown positivity for titles that were at best insignificant niche products that hardly more than 5k people globally knew about and referring to "banishers" even as an acceptable product is honestly disgusting
Can't agree. Gameplay is great but Anthea is written like a total girl boss. One of the worst written characters I've experienced in a game for a long time. Had to stop playing the game because I couldn't take more of her bs.
Ashen was amazing. However I swear these games like Flintlock are made by an AI to be as sanitized and corporate as possible. Even when theyre meant to be "mature" games theyre a very safe, ad friendly, sanitized form of "mature". Mature in the same way that a character in a Marvel movie dropping an F bomb is "mature".
This feels like the equivalent of an indie filmmaker who made an acclaimed first film on a smaller scale out of necessity, only for their second more ambitious project that they wanted to make in the first place, not being quite as good.
Yeah... completely agree with Enki looking from an "enterly different pantheon", Magic slightly elongated fox with a greyish-tealish color scheme, and he even got the shiny red forehead gem. Hes DEFINITELY a Final Fantasy XV Carbuncle
One thing I noticed in your footage that's driving me nuts is how there's camera shake every time you hit an enemy... but not when you get hit. Coupled with the high amount of camera shake, it makes the combat feel really clunky.
I didn't mind this game, but it didn't do anything great. Forspoken at least had great combat and mostly good parkour (a lot of other huge problems though).
@@TurdFerguson-td9nx I finished it and really enjoyed the combat. Stupidly high skill ceiling, lot of fun moves. Definitely worth the ten dollars I paid for it. Other opinions are available.
Game not even that bad - story is meh but gameplay is fun, combat on high difficulty is interesting also equipment and skills are meaningful. Traversal is fun too - you just zooming trough the levels - super fun. I would say its 7 out of 10 game.
@@Tam4ik a very generous take. I give it a 5. It’s doesn’t do anything above ordinary, the story is meh, as you put it, and Austin outlines gameplay quite well. Perhaps if they spent more of their resources being innovative, or providing a high quality experience, rather than needless ESG/DEI points we’d have a better game
@@Chopzi11a 5/10 feels pretty appropriate. Anybody giving this game anything above that is delirious. The story is meh, as you said. It's a thing that exists, and that's about as nice as I can be about it. The gameplay is also 'meh'. It's not as tight as i'd like for a souls-lite and it's just a crappy rock-paper-scissors with extra steps. Armor and equipment is lacking variety, and I normally wouldn't fault this for indie games, but I felt very fatigued in this title from the visuals already and this was just the eyesore that stood out at the forefront. This is Dean Takahashi level souls-lite. Like, game's journalist level difficulty.
I have unfortunately heard that maybe A44 are having some troubles at the studio. With the state of the game what it is, I can believe that something is up.
@@KynessaForte Sure but my point is that this woke trash shouldn't be compared to any good game. It's funny to me that most UA-camrs including SkillUp don't mention the woke crap for obvious reasons, and have to dance around the subject, trying to find reasons why the game is bad. The game was always going to be mediocre at best, but the woke virus made sure it's extra bad.
@@Arkaner3 I played both games beginning to end. Both are mediocre games. Base on i guess wokeness Fallout New Vegas and wolfenstein games are more woke then flintlock. I even stay rdr2 have more wokeness.
I'm kind of glad to see games with art direction like this getting clowned on. I know that these studios aren't the biggest, but it always felt like corner cutting to me. There are so many talented artists that want to be in the industry, and art style and consistent setting is nearly as important as gameplay with a lot of these games.
This is nothing against this channel personally, but I couldn't even make it through this video because 5 minutes in and I was so bored... I feel like I've seen this exact game so many times now because it's just pulling every feature it has from another game that executed those features better, and it does nothing to expand or create those features into anything new or interesting; but it's also not "so bad it's good" to the point it could keep my interest out of morbid curiosity. Hard skip on this one...thanks for the review nonetheless.
I’m sorry but I can’t like these visuals. It’s way too much contrast and the lighting throws off any sort of immersion I could have. Developers, please stop adding shiny things for the sake of shiny visuals and don’t think that just making it “dark” will fix it. Put some sandpaper on the textures already.
There's one mechanic i really like, the EXP System where you store all the exp from every action and fight you beat without getting hit, and you can either claim it now and get a good reward, or save it for a later fight for a bigger multiplier. That's really good, in a better game it would be a risk reward system worth a damn, but....well....yeah.
Personally I had fun with it. Definitely flawed but has pretty engaging combat and really quite superb exploration. Would put it in as a solid AA game.
I didn’t even know this was ESG exclusive, but it definitely makes sense that it’s ESG exclusive. The vomit inducing visuals just scream “we made this in Unreal but didn’t bother with contrast balancing”.
Austin: Spends 20 min clearly and thoroughly articulating the game's flaws and missed potential. Half the comments: This is what you get when you make the protagonist non-white.
Enki might be a reference to the Sumerian god of the same name, but I dunno why he's a fox in this one. Probably just wanted to make him cute, since Enki is usually a bearded dude, apparently also associated with goats. Enki's depictions have him wearing a weird hat that has horn-like protrusions, which explains the fox's horns maybe. My guess is that this game is supposed to be set in a fantasy version of the Levant, which would explain the mix of cultures.
Two things: 1- No one is playing this right now, so if you say the game is bad, there is a close chance to zero you'll ever get targeted with hate. 2- "Certain" crowd? Just say minorities. You don't need to coat your racism to be condescending.
The weapons and warfare are more Napoleonic rather than WW1. I disagree about the visual cohesion, I think it crafts an interesting world at the surface level (I think it's more Mesopotamian mythology, not Egyptian). But yeah, the rest of your critiques were my experience as well.
Absolutely loved Banishers and I was hoping for something similar with this, but if the story just isn't there..... well I'll probably get it at like $20 or something. Thanks Austin!
Thank you Manscaped for sponsoring this video. Get 20% Off + Free Shipping, with the code SKILLUP at manscaped.com/skillup.
Mr. ShillUp, where is our Destiny 2: FInal Shape review you promised weeks ago!
These Unreal Engine looking games are starting to blend together in my head.
Same, if Ubisoft action adventure games with stealth elements are the assembly like of grey matter gloop of video games, Unreal Engine packs are the shiny green matter gloop of video.
I want these games to have a colorblind mode just so I can turn that on and get rid of this visual nonsense.
I've made some things in Unreal Engine. So I know how the default locomotion feels. The game was kind of ruined for me the moment I got control of the character. The default UE player controller feels so clunky. I haven't tried their new parkour system in UE5, so maybe that'll feel better. But just walking around got me feeling like it was a game from over 10 years ago.
It's possible to make beautiful games in UE without using photorealistic graphics and it baffles me more developers haven't experimented with it. Deep Rock Galactic, for example, uses very low poly environments and assets with basic noisy textures in tandem with an incredibly robust lighting system that makes everything pop and bring the world to life. I love games that leverage the strengths of their engine of choice without trying to "do everything"
Unreal engine games with melee combat
You could pour out these memories and make a soup out of it that would probably be more unique Than Some of these games
That little barrier shot by a musket caused all this 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Respect muh authoritTAH.....
- The "dinky" barrier 🤣
Actually it's not the real reason why the barrier is down, it's a "plottwist" later on
@@MoveTrueMove..._ obviously. Thanks for ruining that though.
SPOILERS. In that cutscene, where main villain appears... Well, sphinx basically massacre whole squad and some guy shot explosive barrels, which blow up entire "gate", which was holding Gods back.
So yeah, shot by a musket... into stack of barrels of TNT.
'Camps' only work when the npc's are interesting. Red Dead 2, Baldurs Gate 3. This aint those
dragon age origins camp is the best so far
Drakengard 3
Another game pass L
@@lobstrosity7163I was just about to comment this. Glad to see another recognize that game.
Camps in BG3 weren't interesting. Everyone was stuck in clown make-up trying to bang you regardless of repeated rejections. But you're probably a fan of the "horny glitch."
I really dislike this trend of indie/AA developers pushing for "photorealistic" graphics nowadays, undoubtedly perpetuated by UE5. The bar has been raised so high that even some AAA studios like Ubisoft can't keep up anymore. There are so many intricate aspects to photorealistic visuals, from fidelity to animations to particles to lighting to even acting, that quite obviously can't be properly supported by these smaller studios and end up looking extremely outdated, even though on paper they're still technically impressive.
I don't want to trample on the creative vision of games like this one, nor on their drive to perhaps bite off more than they could chew, but if they'd stuck with a more scale-appropriate artstyle, not only would it eliminate these problems, it'd also help it stand out more amidst this space.
One of the few times that I'll say, it might have been better in unity
The chase for photorealistic graphics means that less effort goes to the gameplay, given that effort and budget are limited.
It's not a simple decision though, because Unreal comes with free access to MegaScan: a massive library of scanned assets and textures. That means you can choose between a realistic direction with a huge portion of your (boring) background and environment assets already made for you and you just have to focus on your hero assets, or go for a more stylized approach but you have to make everything in-house. Depending on the size of the game it could be much cheaper to go with the former, and AA studios tend to be very cost averse.
@@tartiflette6428the devs need to spend some time adding sandpaper to these textures. It’s way too “shiny” to the point I don’t know how you would contrast balance this. Photorealistic is fine for cutscenes, but I find it more terrible for gameplay as all of it is distracting and hard to follow. And that’s not even taking to account regular game mechanics stuff like hitboxes that don’t quite match the visuals, or materials like cloth that don’t have hitboxes but continue to just flap in the wind.
I am okay with something like Fromsoft hitboxes because the game isn’t photorealistic, but when you try to convince me it’s photorealistic, I expect to be caught up by something like a canvas tent instead of just a slight collision when I run into it.
I totally agree, I'd say that art style is far more important than graphic fidelity. In fact, high resolution photorealistic game in essence lack any "art style" since they are photorealistic. The design of the armor or the setting can change, I'd argue that a game being photorealistic IS its art style.
Just like in movies where a good costume and cosmetic makes it far more timeless than CGI, a photorealistic game starts to age and diminish in value far more rapidly than a game with amazing art style.
Think about Lord of the ring, there's a reason why it still looks good to this day.
Now that I'm older, I need to play games where I don't feel like I'm wasting time. I need it to be a new experience everytime for me to feel like it's worth my time. I've seen photorealistic game, give me something new or I won't bother, I'm an adult with responsibility, I don't have time for things I've already experienced.
this purple UE fantasy slop is becoming its own genre
One day we will look back on this hyper-colorful, splashes and particles everywhere, sassy, super quippy, wanna-be “irreverent” dialogue (“you’re a weird, talking fox…thing”) with the 2016 Suicide Squad character intros and the neon, cyberpunk-esque coating and pandering levels of “inclusivity” that ends up making things look more like a college pamphlet where everyone is just SO cool than actually reflecting what real life diversity looks like, like we look back on the 360/PS3-era, post-9/11 brown sludge.
@@ManWhorse you hate it because you are a conservative loser. I hate it because I have standards. we are not the same.
@@ManWhorse nobody likes you
@@ManWhorse you can just say DEI game
@@noah2251 I’m not bothered by DEI itself, but I am bothered how blatant and lazy and corny it always is. The phrases “Woke” and “DEI” have been poisoned , in my opinion
WHAT? A TINY BARRIER IS LITERALLY WHAT UNLOCKS THE GODS LMAO
Not to mention that something that "locks" the gods are easily destroyed by a bullet
Those gods must have been really powerful. True menace to humanity and all life in our universe.
These whole "We must kill the gods" thing is so tired at this point. I think they just wanted an excuse to have the player latch onto that, cause the gods are inherently evil and deserve to die right?
@@TheSergio1021 When you get down to it plot in almost every motivation in any story is "tired". Good stories patch the holes and make you forget you've seen a trope thousand times.
The Last of Us is a fine example, as it's a generic story executed well.
@@Shizlgizl yeah that's not what I was referring to though. I'm saying that so many games just have "Hey you wanna kill the gods?!" as the sole motivating factor without giving us much of a reason. It's lazy and I cant even begin to count all the games on steam I've seen mention killing gods in their summary page.
Part of the issue that A44 has is that a lot of the lessons from Ashen weren't learned because Ashen didn't sell well and some of the people who made it were layed off.
Another part of what happened here is that the Social Media/Community Manager at the time kinda had a "fuck the corporate man" mentality and gave 90% of the review copies to super small UA-camrs (including a channel I was helping with at the time). They did a fairly rough job getting the word out about the game. They were super nice, but definitely not focused on actually marketing the dang game. A month after release they were laid off-likely for obvious reasons.
Essentially, A44 is a textbook story of brain drain and the importance of *everyone* at a small studio taking their job seriously.
This is insightful, I like it.
😅
@@auspicious6653 use your words buddy
The job of social media / community manager seems to be the real world equivalent to the discord/reddit mod position.
You People are incapable of having your own opinions. Quoting youtubers back and forth like truth.
There are just so many games these days that look like the are assembled with a kit.
The devs only make the human sized assets and nothing else.
Photorealistic graphics kill gameplay. Given that effort, budget and time are finite.
I’d rather games use Fromsoft style assets than photorealistic ones. Just enough graphics to make it cool, but not a visual clutter when I’m just walking through the streets.
@@Ceece20
True, none of the games made by From have "good" (photorealistic) models for the human characters but are still stunning on out memories because of how they focus more on the world around you.
I still remember how stunned I was the first time I saw Fountainhead Palace on Sekiro, or when you take a glimpse of Anor Londo in both DS1 and DS3 for the first time.
Games becoming a clusterfuck of stuff on screen like Suicide Squad or dropping everything for the sake of graphics like Hellblade 2 are probably going to keep bleeding the industry and ruining the lifes of people working on them (not the assholes demanding this shit but the poor guys working tirelessly to please their stupid demands on the frontline of game development).
Even the UI looks so similar in all these games. It’s just getting old. It feels like playing the same game all the time.
Give it a few more years pretty soon everyone will be trying to make their own videogames by giving commands to Ai and letting it do all the heavy work. That assembled kit feel you're referring to is about to get even worse in the AA and indie space.
8:50 the uniforms and guns are from the Napoleonic wars and they are fight melee undead. The WW1 trenches make no sense since it is meant to take cover from bullet storms cause by WW1 guns, which neither side has.
I feel like they were TRYING to go for that weird transitionary period of WW1 where “modern” tech and weapons were used alongside their “pre-modern” version. That’s why we had people mass-charging with fixed bayonets and clubs alongside MGS and dogfights, where bombing planes were literally just people chucking sticks of dynamite out the window.
The issue is two-fold. One: as you said, the clash makes no sense. Trench combat wouldn’t be used against the undead- if anything, it would give them an advantage. Two: the developers decided that the “pre-modern” tech would be hundreds of years older, rather than simply decades. They went for medieval, when they should have gone for victorian or colonial at the oldest. The result is a clash of eras that feels clumsy instead of intentional.
Reminds me of Crimean War type setting, those scenes. That war in many aspects was just in the middle between these two periods.
Obviously wasn't as melee-heavy as this game either, but trenches and fortifications were a big thing there - both cause of guns as well as artillery.
There are definitely enemies that use firearm style weapons.
Found the history nerd, you play Civ dont you?
Lol just joking, but yeah it doesnt make sense
Dissapointed Nor doesn't have a sibling called Nand.
I hate that I chuckled.
I dont get it.
Except nor is an actual word, a sibling named Neither would make more sense
@@scabby.knees99 so is nand!
@@casthedemon nor = not-or i.e. negative of 'or' logic, nand = not-and or the negative of 'and' logic. Boolean logic joke/pun.
"GPU Boxart" lol, I see it.
I really liked how well done the companion AI for enki was. I hope that at least influences future games or other games. He always did what he needed to do when he needed to do it and never felt like an obstacle like companions in other games
"all you got to loose is time" well time is more valuable than anything else... so even Gamepass is a no go for me.
Lose Lose Lose Lose Lose Lose Lose write it with me Lose Lose Lose Lose Lose
Please someone teach English speakers the word lose. LOSE.
@@eternal_napalm6442 Uhm, so what do I loose if I spell the word "lose" wrong?
Truth
Well that's very complex isn't it? Isn't that the point of entertainment as a whole? To waste time? It's more nuanced of course but in essence that's what it is, we watch movies, play games, etc. All to waste time.
This game has the smell of mediocrity at just a glance. I dont know why devs and publishers dont recognise it themselves.
Honestly it actually alright. I think Austin is a little harsh with it. I've been having fun with my playthrough, and the game isn't without it's nice touches.
It's actually good for the price it took me 19 hrs to get the platinum trophy
It’s been in development for a long time and a CEO was brought in and she changed quite a bit of-the direction of the game. The company also changed owners in that time, so this all speaks to development hell.
The main problem is that it might not be a bad game, but nothing stands out. It’s aggressively average and although you’ll always find a loud minority defending it as with any game, most just haven’t liked it much.
@@alexlyster3459no it’s trash (judging by the demo only, maybe the full game is better though)
It’s more than mediocre, it has potential but unfortunately doesn’t reach it.
Dawen sounds like the protagonist of the Djune series
I visited djune and had a chuna samwich
@@SpilcedJeanson a chewsday?
Django Djundjained.
@@Tyr808 nawr it was a satuhdai
Poor Dawen getting sieged.
That was terrible, well done lmao
„GPU Box Art Material“ is such a perfect description, I’ll have to borrow that one.
Never seen so much excitement for a typo. Must be a slow day for everyone
It's the most exciting thing about this game.
What typo?
'I won't spoil it of course'
*Spoils that the gods die* lmao
I mean, if a number of the major bosses are gods whom you kill up to that point, pointing out that by the end of the game you've killed a bunch of gods, and so he'd expect that to be part of the ending narrative doesn't really feel like a spoiler? At least, not once "A number of bosses are gods you kill" is on the table, anyway.
Flintlock Siege of Dawn sounds like an AI generated product title
Game would fit very snuggly under the "Meh" section of any dictionary 😅
Snugly. "Snuggly" means it's nice to snuggle with.
One thing I really thought stood out is the cumulative bonus point system that you can "bank" anywhere and reset it, or risk taking one hit and losing it all later on... The one thing that stood out for me
fr, even when i played the demo around next fest I thought it was innovative and smart. but the combat was straight ass, enemies recovered way too quick and there was no stun to speak of so it felt like was being punished for trying to engage with the system
Finally someone who reviews taking account that time is the most precious thing we have. I feel too many lose sight that lots of people don't have hours to to waste on meh games or even within good games doing too much grinding.
Have you heard the tragedy of Dawen? It's not a story the Musketeers would tell you
People forget that Dontnod STARTED in the AAA space with Remember Me in 2013.
i always tought that remember me was a AA title.
@@felixader I 'member it had a really cool custom make your own combo system. Still was a VEEEEEEEEEEEERY forgettable game.
@@Gonzalo_105 i thought it was AAA when I played it but I was also only 14 at the time so maybe not the best memory.
Ironic that a game called Remember Me was so easily forgotten.
@@StateBlaze1989 have we? I still remember that game, the only action game i finished.
From what I've seen from reviews, the most interesting thing they came up with the "push your luck" mechanic of the combat, incentivizing you to use a variety of moves to increase the amount of currency you earn.
Just completely ignoring Remember Me & Vampyr in Dontnod's back catalogue, as if they jumped straight from Life is Strange to Banishers with no history of third person action.
The thing that killed the game for me was the demo. You get to the end of the opening setup and the big "you are supposed to lose" bossfight happens when we are about to blow the gate. During this fight we are unable to trigger the explosives by shooting them in this suicide mission yet the cutscene that plays when we inevitably lose just has some other guy shoot the explosives.
I also found the main protagonist thoroughly unlikeable. She has this whole vendetta but it is thoroughly unearned and hollow especially in her interaction with the ally wolf/fox god thing.
A story setting in ww1 where the "great powers" need to fight together against "death" while the gods are influencing/supporting different actors 'cause they don't want to lose their powers/existence sounds kinda cool. Many different groups, stuff like early modern technology vs faith (magic), maybe something like chosen heroes fighting with the power of gods etc. Maybe "death" is just a new god born out of sheer desperation of the people left behind while people in power and gods are changing the world like they want to. There is big potential here but looks like they went a different route with locations and settings besides the ww1 era.
flintlocks was not used in ww1
I remember trying the demo during this year's Steam Next Fest and being amazed this was a game months away from being released. It really felt like it needed way more time in the oven.
On a scale of God of War and a Gilson B. Pontes game, this falls somewhere near Atlas Fallen. And I had completely forgotten that Atlas Fallen existed until this video.
Holy shit, Gilson B Pontes reference
Between this game and Concord was there some mandate that we must use clashing colors, dull outfits and generic designs? Feels like either you pick up a Genshin clone, or something like this that is so dull and lifeless
I genuinely like a lot of Concord's art. A couple of them would fit perfectly into Star Wars for me, and I love the art of that franchise.
I really hate how newer games are following this art style.
@@milkiestcookie8359true they would fit well into the crap that is starwars
*takes a deep breath*
A flintlock isn't even your main weapon in a game named "Flintlock"
How did nobody in the dev team realize this? How did not a single person there realize that "hey, do people really wanna fight with an axe in a game about flintlocks?"
8:20 let's call them forspoken-likes
Correct me if i am wrong but Dontnod's first ever game was Remember Me and after I think Life is Strange 2 they created Vampyr a game with multiple similarities to Banishers. They were never just that LiS studio.
Something very wrong went during production of this game.
I didn't play Ashen but saw a few walkthroughs, and the game was well made and had passion to it, when this was first announced i really thought it was going to be at least competent, but as time passed... lets put this way... i felt something wrong when they did one of those video with some devs were they explain what the game is and what the story will be and... i felt that the person in the video wanted to be literally in ANY other place than where he was at that moment.
So, i think something went really awry during the process and whatever passion this project had... went 6 feet under.
as usual, DEI consultant kick in and other aspect of the game take a backseat to forcefully cater to some agenda. Easiest way to kill the passion and morale of the team that actually have the skill and creativity to create wonderful games and stories.
@@Stevexupen I dont like to enter on the DEI hate bandwagon, but... I have to admit... I watched a few things and there was the whole SBI-detected steam page and... this game was there.
This game HAD passion to it, i could feel it, one of the first trailers had some really good music and gameplay and they even made a exclusive song for it, a good one... then... it vanished, all that love i felt at first gone.
It is a shame, i don't think this would had reinvented the genre, but seeing something that had love in it die with a wimper like that... it is never a good feeling.
The animation is very weirdly stiff, even for a AA game. Odd.
I noticed it too, they're janky as hell.
Dontnod did that transition long ago with Vampyr.
Loved Vampyr!! Such a shame the combat was slow to click in and many people never fully understood how it worked.
A Vampyr 2 with more polished mechanics and combat it's my unrealistic dream game.
Freaking love this game. Got it on Switch. Runs pretty good in my opinion. Wish it got a sequel.
Legit think Vampyr is an underrated gem. Just needed some more polish, especially combat
Do you remember remember me?
@@sealsharpno one does
"TELL, DON'T SHOW" THE GAME
"GPU BOX ART" That's exactly what those games are! Finally a word to categorize this style!
This game looks just incoherent to me, i has no sense of place or people
I think the best way to describe this game is Minimum Viable Product. It's like they had a committee filled with external advisors that wrote down all the successful traits of other games, removed all the "fluff", and gave a devteam full of people who didn't give a single fuck beyond their paychecks to produce a product that fills in all the check boxes.
Could've guessed this result with a glance
So this game doesn't make me feel like spider-man, what a shame
It lacks the self-confident swagger of a young black man.
You guys killed me XD
Advice to developers: If your soulslike game doesn't meet the quality level of "Lies of P" then scrap the project. The market is oversaturated.
Why not Ashen 2?! I remember playing through Ashen with my brother. The combat was a little shallow, but the game had some great exploration. If they expanded on Ashen and made a larger, more expansive world in a sequal then I'd be so ready! But here we are with Flintlock.
- dude we're gonna make a good looking game with a female protagonist.
- sweet what's the story?
- story?
- well i suppose the world building will be cohesive enough to make up for minimal story.
- cohesive?
- oh god at least tell me the gameply is good.
- gameplay?
- fck... what was that you said about a female protagonist?
The demo was enough of a non-recommendation for me.
Demo giveth and demo taketh away. They really are a great way to get me interested in a game I would otherwise look past but on the flipside they allow me to know not to waste my time with games like this. At least flintlock is on gamepass but even then there's so many other great titles in the catalog to play instead.
3:56 that "what have you done" xD
The dead don't need to invade, NPCs are already long dead.
i've really had it with the overblown positivity for titles that were at best insignificant niche products that hardly more than 5k people globally knew about and referring to "banishers" even as an acceptable product is honestly disgusting
Game doesn't even look like it's worth pirating
Yeah 9-10 hours is still a lot of time… that you don’t get back
True.
You gave this so much longer than I did. Everyone who wanted this to be good, should go play Banishers which was great.
Can't agree. Gameplay is great but Anthea is written like a total girl boss. One of the worst written characters I've experienced in a game for a long time. Had to stop playing the game because I couldn't take more of her bs.
This does not look good for the Forspoken-like genre
I was excited for this game, but after playing the demo, it just didn’t click for me.
Is anyone really surprised though?
Only those that ignore anything they don't want to hear.
I wasnt feeling the trailer so not really. But this game is a massive step down from Ashen, which can be surprising and also disappointing
Unfortunately no. I can smell a mediocre flop from a mile away and I am shocked more people can't
I worked as a Producer on Flintlocke in its early years, and then I was Community Manager on Icarus! New Zealand is trying 😂❤
Ashen was amazing. However I swear these games like Flintlock are made by an AI to be as sanitized and corporate as possible. Even when theyre meant to be "mature" games theyre a very safe, ad friendly, sanitized form of "mature". Mature in the same way that a character in a Marvel movie dropping an F bomb is "mature".
This feels like the equivalent of an indie filmmaker who made an acclaimed first film on a smaller scale out of necessity, only for their second more ambitious project that they wanted to make in the first place, not being quite as good.
Sounds like this game needed a better game director and budget manager
It is slightly refreshing to see a video game actually use a back sheathe rather than settle with floating back weapons
Another one bites the dust
Yeah... completely agree with Enki looking from an "enterly different pantheon", Magic slightly elongated fox with a greyish-tealish color scheme, and he even got the shiny red forehead gem.
Hes DEFINITELY a Final Fantasy XV Carbuncle
Im glad it was a gamepass game. Finished it this past weekend, and it was just very ok.
One thing I noticed in your footage that's driving me nuts is how there's camera shake every time you hit an enemy... but not when you get hit. Coupled with the high amount of camera shake, it makes the combat feel really clunky.
the second coming of forspoken
sweet baby detected.
I didn't mind this game, but it didn't do anything great. Forspoken at least had great combat and mostly good parkour (a lot of other huge problems though).
@@TurdFerguson-td9nx I finished it and really enjoyed the combat. Stupidly high skill ceiling, lot of fun moves. Definitely worth the ten dollars I paid for it.
Other opinions are available.
Gamers will see a black woman and automatically lump them all in together as the same. And they wonder why everyone says gaming has a racism problem.
Forspoken isn’t ff16, but it’s overrated, it’s fine
What I really wanted to know was whether the main character could move shit with her mind.
Wow, Austin finally gets a bad game to review
Game not even that bad - story is meh but gameplay is fun, combat on high difficulty is interesting also equipment and skills are meaningful. Traversal is fun too - you just zooming trough the levels - super fun. I would say its 7 out of 10 game.
@@Tam4ik a very generous take. I give it a 5. It’s doesn’t do anything above ordinary, the story is meh, as you put it, and Austin outlines gameplay quite well.
Perhaps if they spent more of their resources being innovative, or providing a high quality experience, rather than needless ESG/DEI points we’d have a better game
@@Chopzi11a 5/10 feels pretty appropriate. Anybody giving this game anything above that is delirious.
The story is meh, as you said. It's a thing that exists, and that's about as nice as I can be about it.
The gameplay is also 'meh'. It's not as tight as i'd like for a souls-lite and it's just a crappy rock-paper-scissors with extra steps.
Armor and equipment is lacking variety, and I normally wouldn't fault this for indie games, but I felt very fatigued in this title from the visuals already and this was just the eyesore that stood out at the forefront.
This is Dean Takahashi level souls-lite. Like, game's journalist level difficulty.
I have unfortunately heard that maybe A44 are having some troubles at the studio. With the state of the game what it is, I can believe that something is up.
Evil West is so so so so much better than this trash and doesn't need to be compared to it.
The evil west was ok. Remnant is better.
@@KynessaForte Sure but my point is that this woke trash shouldn't be compared to any good game. It's funny to me that most UA-camrs including SkillUp don't mention the woke crap for obvious reasons, and have to dance around the subject, trying to find reasons why the game is bad. The game was always going to be mediocre at best, but the woke virus made sure it's extra bad.
@@Arkaner3 I played both games beginning to end. Both are mediocre games. Base on i guess wokeness Fallout New Vegas and wolfenstein games are more woke then flintlock. I even stay rdr2 have more wokeness.
The drip of the characters is so good... the combat is so strange, stiff. The HUD and visuals are so "Unreal Engine"
here before the title correction LMAO
What was the title?
@@yayco123 Siege of Dawen
@clumsyaf6250 LMAOO mad over a simple comment LOOOL 🤣🤣🤣
lol y’all are funny 😂
I'm kind of glad to see games with art direction like this getting clowned on. I know that these studios aren't the biggest, but it always felt like corner cutting to me. There are so many talented artists that want to be in the industry, and art style and consistent setting is nearly as important as gameplay with a lot of these games.
This is nothing against this channel personally, but I couldn't even make it through this video because 5 minutes in and I was so bored...
I feel like I've seen this exact game so many times now because it's just pulling every feature it has from another game that executed those features better, and it does nothing to expand or create those features into anything new or interesting; but it's also not "so bad it's good" to the point it could keep my interest out of morbid curiosity. Hard skip on this one...thanks for the review nonetheless.
Trying to get into this game was the struggle of a lifetime
THIS is supposed to compete with Shadow of the Erdtree? 😅
It just looks like another double-A Soulslike. Which there are a billion of.
I’m sorry but I can’t like these visuals. It’s way too much contrast and the lighting throws off any sort of immersion I could have. Developers, please stop adding shiny things for the sake of shiny visuals and don’t think that just making it “dark” will fix it. Put some sandpaper on the textures already.
There's one mechanic i really like, the EXP System where you store all the exp from every action and fight you beat without getting hit, and you can either claim it now and get a good reward, or save it for a later fight for a bigger multiplier.
That's really good, in a better game it would be a risk reward system worth a damn, but....well....yeah.
Personally I had fun with it. Definitely flawed but has pretty engaging combat and really quite superb exploration. Would put it in as a solid AA game.
Muskets were largely obsolete in the 1900's . What you probably meant is early 19th century
I hope the ESG money was worth it.
One more SBI title bites the dust 🥳
It’s like most Epic exclusives, the game was gonna flop anyway so why not get free money from special interests to keep the lights on
Touch grass @@BA3YDADDY
DEI defenders incoming
I didn’t even know this was ESG exclusive, but it definitely makes sense that it’s ESG exclusive. The vomit inducing visuals just scream “we made this in Unreal but didn’t bother with contrast balancing”.
Not the greatest review but at least is something. Hopefully next game you review will be 10x better. Cheers guys!
Everything Sweet Baby Inc touches becomes poop
Im playing it now it’s fun
Old school feeling game without all the bloat
It’s way better then most of the aaa stuff I’ve been playing lately
Austin: Spends 20 min clearly and thoroughly articulating the game's flaws and missed potential.
Half the comments: This is what you get when you make the protagonist non-white.
Kinda disappointing, too many racists, like making the protag white would magically make the game better.
Ralph sneaking in "one of those... uhhhhHhHHH nudistbeaches" in the ad read, I laughed harder than I should have
This game is more proof that graphics in a video game are secondary to the gameplay, storytelling, and characters.
Yet still very important
Enki might be a reference to the Sumerian god of the same name, but I dunno why he's a fox in this one. Probably just wanted to make him cute, since Enki is usually a bearded dude, apparently also associated with goats. Enki's depictions have him wearing a weird hat that has horn-like protrusions, which explains the fox's horns maybe.
My guess is that this game is supposed to be set in a fantasy version of the Levant, which would explain the mix of cultures.
I'm disappointed. Not because the game is bad, but calling the game bad gets you insulted by a "certain" crowd 😔
Two things:
1- No one is playing this right now, so if you say the game is bad, there is a close chance to zero you'll ever get targeted with hate.
2- "Certain" crowd? Just say minorities. You don't need to coat your racism to be condescending.
People like you are trying so hard to turn this unanimously disliked game into an ‘us vs them’ narrative.
"We have God Of War: Fromsoft at home" - A44 Ft Temu-nreal Engine
very unfortunate that the guys who made ashen an amazing soulslike with a strong art direction pivoted to making AAA blockbuster slop
They also did Vampyr. Idk what happened here.....kinda looks like Sweet Baby inc. influence
@@e2rqeythey didn't do Vampyr, that was Don'tNod
Im having fun with it honestly, i dont really judge a game to harsh when it comes to gamepass
The weapons and warfare are more Napoleonic rather than WW1. I disagree about the visual cohesion, I think it crafts an interesting world at the surface level (I think it's more Mesopotamian mythology, not Egyptian). But yeah, the rest of your critiques were my experience as well.
2:52 Seems like the soundtrack is at least pretty good
This game has a weird clunkyness to it as well
I think that if they just made a compeling, cohesive universe and maybe even change the aesthetic to be more cartoony, it might have worked better.
Absolutely loved Banishers and I was hoping for something similar with this, but if the story just isn't there..... well I'll probably get it at like $20 or something. Thanks Austin!
The professor is in and class is in session. Take notes everyone, this one is for that massive modern audience.
Still using that dogwhistle?
@@TheEnecca toot toot
Lickzalot does not recommend: That thumbnail, It gives nightmares.