Early Access Games That Aren’t Trash

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craftopia, early access, fps, hardspace shipbreaker, multiplayer, online gaming, online multiplayer, sandbox, steam early access, survival sandbox

With all of the itchy, uncomfortable, and downright exploitative ways game dev studios are trying to monetize their game, it’s easy to pass off anything other than “gold product” as nothing more than a scam. And for the most part, you’re right. Even I can admit that crowdfunding a game is a whole lot riskier and possibly more scam-adjacent than not, when previously I had foolishly hoped that it would open up a lot more doors and ideas.

One of the most recent and proliferous forms of “alternative” game monetization schemes is the early access launch, which asks folks to buy an incomplete game, provide feedback, and watch it evolve into a fully-launched product. It’s, at the brass tacks level (and grossly oversimplified), spending money to be a tester instead of letting professionals do that and get paid for it. However, as vile as that sounds, there are a few games that I’ve come across that actually are worth the buy-in cost in my opinion, and so I wanted to take a moment to highlight them with today’s post.

Send the Clowns Away

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aaa developers, anthem, anthem game, curse of osiris, destiny 2, developers, forsaken, game dev, game devs, looter shooter, MMO, multiplayer, online multiplayer, online shooter, shooter, the division, the division 2

Yesterday, I picked up The Division 2. Haven’t played it yet at the time of this writing, but I had some extra money to light up and I’ve been looking at it from the sidelines for a little while as something different to try out. Coincidentally, I had picked up Anthem just after it released and played that a fair bit, too, but also completely stopped.

What makes me think that The Division 2 will stay in my gaming rotation when Anthem fell away? There are a number of ideas, but chief among them is that even though I really do enjoy Anthem’s gameplay, I also really can’t bring myself to fire up a game when the developers are making clownshoe decisions. I have managed to be convinced to fall out of love with playing in a giant, pink, stompy robot suit, which isn’t a sentence I expected to type.

The Pink Cadillac, moments before it started collecting dust.

Singing the Anthem

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anthem, anthem mmo, anthemgame, bioware, demo, fps, looter shooter, MMO, multiplayer, online, online multiplayer, online shooter, shooter

Thanks to some extremely good fortune, I was granted access to the VIP demo (read: pre-order bonus) of Anthem, the upcoming looter shooter from the folks at BioWare. Unfortunately, I only was able to get my code on Sunday, which happened to be the last day of the demo. As such, this is less of a deep hands-on than an initial impressions piece. Not a complaint, though, because I really had fun.

Not least of which being the ability to wear a thick, bright pink robot suit.

A Pirate’s Life for Some

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beta test, closed beta test, MMO, multiplayer, online multiplayer, pve, pvp, pvpve, sandbox, sandbox gaming, sandbox mmo, sea of thieves, stress test, test

Over the past couple of weekends, Sea of Thieves has been running some stress tests. Granted, these are specifically meant to push the walls of their server capacity and are less about refining game systems or even adding new game systems entirely. With that said, my time in-game and in the forums has shown me that Rare Ltd. have a lot to do and a number of unanswered questions related to player griefing and its form of PvP.

Or what I’m referring to as “Ferry of the Damned Syndrome”.

Dauntless vs. Monster Hunter World (So Far)

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dauntless, dauntless sharpen your skills, face-off, MMO, monster hunter, monster hunter games, monster hunter world, multiplayer, online multiplayer, single player, versus

When I was writing my preview piece for the Dauntless Sharpen Your Skills update, I made a passing mention of how I can’t fully compare Dauntless and the upcoming Monster Hunter World because, technically, neither game is finished or fully released yet.

That doesn’t mean I can’t do it on my own personal blog, though!

Also, I really just like sharing screenshots from these games, honestly.