Games Reviews

Grinding Gear Games announced that it will launch a new game, POE 2. This is not only a continuation of the original game but also an attempt by the developer to change the ARPG mode in the game.

The Most Representative Change

POE 2 has made a very big change in the difficulty of the game. From the slower Souls-like campaign at the beginning to the very punitive Endgame now. This series of changes in game content has been hotly discussed by players in the community.

So now let’s talk about whether the current game content of POE 2 is too difficult? Is this difficulty really what POE 2 and this series of games need for future development?

Players who have played the campaign in POE 2 may have found that there are already some serious game atmospheres similar to the Souls-like campaign in the game. In this mode, although the game progress is slow, players will think more carefully in the game.

In the original Path of Exile, players prefer to move quickly to enter the battle faster and get the XP and currency dropped. In POE 2, the developers hope that players can slow down the game and fight after making more rigorous plans.

In the boss battle of POE 2, the boss is no longer just an enlarged version of the enemy with a special name. They are strengthened, and how much damage the player can cause will ultimately determine whether the battle can be won.

Therefore, players must understand the characteristics of the boss, find its weaknesses and defeat it, to have a higher chance of survival and obtain numerous Path Of Exile 2 Currency rewards. Otherwise, the player will be defeated and will not get any game rewards, which is very bad for players who want to get rewards quickly like before.

But because I like challenging games, I like this change very much. If you are also a player who likes fresh challenges, you can try POE 2 immediately.

In the campaign of Path of Exile 1, since players have no specific experience of participating in the battle, the story in the battle is difficult to be impressive. The community believes that this is a stepping stone for the game to develop to the Endgame as soon as possible.

I think this situation may not happen in POE 2, because the slower pace of the game allows players to think more systematically. Let the players understand what they are facing, what they want to get in the end, and how to do it. In this process, players will have a better understanding of the game and may also get a more memorable experience in the game.

The Endgame Map With Soaring Difficulty

When talking about the topic of POE 2’s map, many players may become very serious. Because in the map, clearing the enemy is only the most basic requirement. More importantly, the player cannot die. Once the player dies, he will lose the map, 10-15% of the XP and all the resources invested in the map in the early stage. But this is only unfriendly to newcomers. Some old players who have played the previous game are still familiar with this mechanism.

Another item related to the map is Waystones, which is closely related to the player’s progress in drawing the map. Because of this, they are relatively rare. Therefore, if the player cannot maintain a good winning streak, he cannot get a map that matches his strength. The final result is that the player needs to start over. I share the same opinion as some players. This mechanism is still too cruel.

In my opinion, increasing the difficulty of the map does help improve the playability of the game and make each victory of the player more meaningful. But the current punishment measures are still too harsh. If the loss of XP can be appropriately reduced, or Waystones can be obtained more easily, then while enhancing the playability, it will also allow players to have a better gaming experience.

An Innovation Worthy Of Recognition

The slow pace of the campaign and the difficulty of the map bring a heavy and dangerous color to POE 2 Endgame. Every action of the player on the Atlas Map must be carefully considered, in order to compete for their own Waystones rather than just basic XP.

Such a change will make a few players feel uncomfortable, but the developer can make adjustments and balances in the future. For players who like to use their brains to play games, this change is great for them! So, test how far you can go under these rules and immerse yourself in the game world!

There were many refreshing games in 2024, but there were no top games competing with each other. On the other hand, there were many poor games this year, which either did not make any waves among players or were very painful to play and left a deep impression.

It should be noted in advance that these poor games are more subjective, and some players may have played them or even liked them, which is normal. Everyone has different tastes, and these games may just hit your taste. But if you have not played these games, it is not recommended to try them with curiosity.

Boring

• Slitterhead
• Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance
• Millennia
• Sins of a Solar Empire II
• The First Descendant
• Until Dawn Remake
• The Casting of Frank Stone
• Bodycam
• Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
• Mario & Luigi: Brothership
• Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown
• Unknown 9: Awakening
• Kong: Survivor Instinct
• SpongeBob SquarePants
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed

It’s a bit surprising to see so many games at once. But these games are not all unpopular games. In fact, some of them are still played by some people. The main problem with them is that they are boring. They are the kind of games that are bland and have nothing new to say. You may play them one night and forget about them the next day. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun with them, but you have to work hard for it.

Slitterhead sounds interesting. You have to parasitize monsters in the human body in the city. However, this absurd horror action game is not scary to play, or even absurd. After the initial novelty, players will soon find that the monster design is monotonous and there is not much novelty. Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance is similar. The setting of fighting against Skynet makes people excited, but the actual play is very mediocre.

The First Descendant is a shooting game with amazing graphics, but that’s all. The rest of it can only be called mediocre at best. In short, it is only good in looks.

The Casting of Frank Stone is a derivative of Dead by Daylight. As a horror adventure game, its biggest problem is that it can’t make people feel scary.

The handheld camera in Bodycam trailer was once so real that it shocked players. However, the final game was not what it seemed.

Unknown 9: Awakening is a game that the creator did his best to make a mediocre game. Putting aside the controversy among the player community, its game content is enough to make people fall asleep. What’s more amazing than the game itself is how the creators were able to make such a formulaic action-adventure game.

There are a few games that I haven’t mentioned, but they all have various problems. Some remakes are not as good as the original games, some sequels do not inherit the core of the original games. Some games are simply annoying in terms of game design. In short, their own flaws make them not good enough.

Poor Quality

• Broken Roads
• Forever Blue Luminous
• Funko Fusion

Bad games are much more harsh than mediocre games. Because these games can actually cause players mental pain when playing.

Broken Roads is a turn-based RPG set in post-apocalyptic Australia. It tries to give players a serious RPG experience and adds a morality system that can determine whether the characters live or die. However, Broken Roads prepares a very detailed morality questionnaire for players to decide their various positions. Other than that, players will not feel that this morality system has any effect in the game.

Adding morality systems to games is fun, but only if you can use them. When you play Broken Roads, you will find that this game is just a bunch of inexplicable errands and disappointingly long dialogues, with few moral choices.

Forever Blue Luminous brings players a dream from the bottom of the sea, with light blue pictures and over 500 kinds of fish, allowing players to experience the fun of diving. However, players will soon find that this is actually an endlessly looping nightmare.

All the underwater scenery is randomly generated, and your last exploration will not bring any help to your next exploration. And the maps generated by the program are specious and similar. This game has no combat content, so you can only feel endless boredom.

Funko Fusion is a Lego adventure game, but it is not as good as the worst Lego game. In addition to the basically meaningless plot, the tasks are extremely repetitive, and there are fatal bugs that prevent players from continuing to advance the game.

The Worst

• Atomic Heart: Trapped in Limbo
• South Park Snow Day!
• Empire of the Ants

Trapped in Limbo is the second DLC for Atomic Heart, and it takes place after the main story ends. This DLC introduces two terrible mechanics. The first is that the player needs to slide and avoid obstacles for a long time, and sometimes jump. But jumping feels very uncomfortable and is not always very sensitive.

The other is that the player needs to perform first-person platform jumps. The problem is that the jumps are not very accurate, which quickly becomes a torture. The bad thing is that this torture will accompany you until the end of the game.

South Park Snow Day! is the third work of South Park. Its first two works are very good, but South Park Snow Day! made a big change. It went from an RPG to a 3D action game. The problem is that this transition does not seem to be very successful. Its operation feels very clumsy, and more importantly, it abandons the most important element of the previous game, humor. Players need to endure the bad operation to complete this unfunny game, which is undoubtedly a punishment.

Empire of the Ants has beautiful graphics, but its single-player story mode is terrible. Most of the combat missions are easy. The AI seems to have no idea how to use the important mechanics in the game, and the tough missions are annoying. Since you can’t save in the middle of a mission, you have to replay the entire mission after getting stuck, and you can’t skip the boring parts that are easy to play and only replay the challenging parts. The developers have almost never polished this story mode. Maybe they just thought they needed to make a story mode and rushed to make it.

These are the poor games of 2024. I wonder if you have the misfortune of playing one of them. Maybe you feel that the worst game you think is not mentioned above, you can also share your worst game played in 2024.

The Winter Of Premium Live-Service Games Is Coming

Premium live-service games are in the midst of a winter in the industry, where even though the industry consumes the time of millions of players, few new games are popular and server shutdowns are becoming more frequent. To keep players on their servers, series like Destiny and Overwatch have turned to free-to-play.

And premium live-service games, which are paid games with long-term profit projects, are gradually withdrawing from the market and are on the verge of extinction.

In 2024, developers and players are still fresh in their minds when they recall two major failures of premium live-service games. Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League cost WB Games nearly $200 million in investment. And another more expensive game, Concord, launched by Sony, couldn’t even get players interested in the game. In just a few weeks, the game disappeared.

Although Sony also has a popular game Helldivers 2, it is obvious that Helldivers 2 is not a game that the developer has worked hard to market, and the developer did not even consider it would be successful. And the final result also surprised the developers.

The Success Of Diablo 4 Is Because Of Its Game Type

Faced with such a difficult Premium live-service game, the developer of Diablo 4 rose to the challenge. Once launched in 2023, it won the love of many players and brought huge sales to the developer. Even in 2024, the game still has many fanatical fans, demonstrating a strong growth momentum.

So, how did Diablo 4 rise to the challenge and stand out from the decline of Premium live-service games?

For Rod Fergusson, the producer of famed Gears of War and now the general manager of the Diablo series, the most critical reason is that the developer did not consider the type of game when making the game. At the beginning of the game, the game studio only intended to make a game called Diablo.

But after the game was completed, the players in the game needed to continuously complete tasks, experience the game plot, kill enemies and get Diablo 4 Gold, which ultimately determined that it was an online service game rather than other types of games.

“An ARPG is inherently a live service. The question is what you do about it.” Rod Fergusson once said this to reporters in an interview. Rod Fergusson said that at the beginning of the production, the game production team had discussed whether Diablo 4 was a live service game, or whether the development team simply called it a live service game.

In the end, they found the right answer, recalling the expectations of millions of players in each season of Diablo 3. No matter how it is characterized, ARPG is essentially a live service game, and the most critical content is what efforts the developers have made for this.

For Fergusson, live service is an opportunity to constantly self-examine and self-update and repair the game, but the premise is to enable players to generate motivation to continue playing in the game. When players play Diablo 4 or a game similar to Diablo 4, they want to experience the entire game campaign. And after that, players hope to continue fighting, get Diablo 4 Items and other rewards dropped in the victorious battle, and reap the joy of winning the game and the rewards. In such an endless fantasy, players will return to the game again and again. This feedback will inspire game developers, allowing them to continuously provide new ideas for the game and generate new game content.

“That was one of the things that was great.” Fergusson believes that he believes they will not stop here, they will continue to improve the game and strive to create new game content for all players.

Game Developers Should Be Inspired By This

When making a game, game developers should not copy and paste, but consider the game content and choose the right game type. Just like when Suicide Squad promoted the experience content, players said after the experience that the content of the game was not suitable for online service games, and they could not be naturally integrated together.

Although the genre chosen by Concord is correct, it seems to be made by game developers to cater to the needs of live service games, which goes against the purpose of game production, players’ demand for Overwatch alternatives.

On the other hand, D4’s success is because players need a new game similar to the Diablo series. Players want new games that can be played for a long time, which also caters to the classic line of Field of Dreams “It’s not that if you build it, they will come, but because they will come, so we better build it.”

It can be seen that listening to the voice of players and choosing the correct game genre to match the game content is particularly important for the success of a game. Developers should be good at listening to players’ opinions, thinking, and constantly modifying games to achieve success.

In 2022, many people were impressed by the first season of Arcane. In 2024, Riot Games launched the second season of the series, which was still well received by the audience.

According to reports, the co-founder of Riot Games recently said that the production and marketing costs of making two seasons of Arcane totaled $250 million. Netflix and Riot Games’ parent company Tencent need to use $3 million to exchange its broadcast rights for each episode. However, this is still less than half of the cost of Riot Games to make Arcane.

Arcane

League of Legends is an old game that has been born for 15 years and still has a large player base. Each hero in LOL has his own unique background story and power. In the first few years, the background stories of some heroes were a bit confusing. Then Riot Games spent some time to sort out, rewrite and integrate the background stories, and gradually created an almost perfect League of Legends universe.

As Riot Games grew and grew, they gradually came up with the idea of ​​turning the background stories into formal series. Finally, they made a bold move. Riot decided to make its own series about the background story of League of Legends. They wanted to keep full control of the characters. In 2020, Riot hired Spenley, who had worked at Netflix Inc., to form a team, which then expanded to 25 people.

Riot hopes to use Arcane as a gift to players and attract more players to play their games. League of Legends has been operating for many years, and the number of players is decreasing. This is the dilemma that Riot Games is facing now.

Riot hopes to open another path with Arcane, or even become another Disney company.

However, the budget of the series exceeded their expectations. Riot originally planned to make a profit in the second season, but the situation does not seem to have changed much.

How Arcane Makes Money?

In fact, some employees within Riot do not support the development of Arcane. Nicolo Laurent, the former CEO of Riot, invested too much passion in Arcane, which squeezed out resources about the game of League of Legends itself. Laurent tried to develop more value for the game of LOL, not just the game itself.

But when Arcane’s first season was released, Riot did not give item designers enough time to design Arcane-related items, which is one of the reasons why players only saw four skins in the first season, and three of them were free. Arcane did attract a lot of players for Riot in the first season, but the player retention rate was very low and did not meet Riot’s expectations.

Although Arcane was not commercially successful, it won many awards, which excited the Arcane production team and Riot.

After that, they gave Arcane two years to make related items for Arcane, but the profit still did not seem to meet their expectations.

Riot’s Explanation

Although Arcane did not bring profits to Riot, a Riot spokesperson said that the show was successful, at least in November, it was Riot’s highest-income month. They hope that the show can bring more players to the game to increase player consumption.

With T1 winning this year’s world championship and the release of Arcane, Riot took advantage of the opportunity to launch expensive skins, even up to hundreds of dollars. Players complained on Reddit that Riot Games has forgotten its original intention and only releases these mass-produced skins to perfunctory players. Marc Merrill, co-founder of Riot Games, responded that they did not create such a wonderful work as Arcane to promote their own skins. On the contrary, they launched so many skins just to create wonderful music and animation like Arcane.

Adjustment Of Riot Games

However, from the perspective of Riot Games, it seems that it has suspended the idea of ​​continuing to enter the film and television industry. They laid off 11% of their employees at the beginning of this year and announced that they would focus their future work back on the game industry. They suspended the subsequent production of Arcane and also suspended the adaptation and development of other works. Shauna Spenley, president of Riot Games, resigned and reorganized the entertainment department.

Reasons For Failure

In fact, it is not the first time that a game has been adapted into a movie and faced such a failure. Nintendo had experienced a similar failure in 1993. Publishers are accustomed to licensing their characters to Hollywood film companies to transfer possible risks. Riot Games suffered a financial failure, and it is obvious that they did not consider how to make a profit from their works.

Adapting video games into animations or movies is a current trend, but it is clear that Riot Games still lacks a lot of experience in this regard.

On the other hand, the second season of Arcane did not satisfy gamers. Although the content of both series can be regarded as excellent productions, their content does not match the background stories that players know. The content of Arcane’s adaptation also changes the background settings of the game. It is difficult to say whether this large-scale adaptation method is a good thing or a bad thing.

Whatever, fans still hope that Riot Games can continue to promote the production of the series. Completely develop the entire game map. This is a very big challenge. Maybe Riot Games will not try this method in the short term, but they have not given up. Maybe Riot Games will not give up their project to continue developing the background story of League of Legends, but perhaps it would be more appropriate to tell the background stories by games.