Now, 11 years later, it looks like the finish line for Squadron 42 may be in sight, although CIG stopped short of announcing a release window.
[Cue Laugh Track]
They might as well say they have an unreleasable buggy mess and don’t know how to fix it yet. Which for today’s standards is saying something.
Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if this sucks?
There’s no way a game announced 10 years ago, is still ‘up to date’ today. Games have changed. Gaming itself has changed and Squadron 42 will be judged by those modern standards. If it isn’t perfect (with the money and time spent on it, it better be at least free of major bugs and with a significant story element etc) then RSI is heading for probably the most embarrassing incident in gaming history.
The 24 minute video demo talks a little about this. A big benefit of having the Star Citizen alpha be playable is they’ve refined the gameplay a lot due to feedback. I think the changes they made these last few years to UX, flight model, combat design etc in S42 are really nice compared to what’s currently playable.
For better or worse, they appear to have restarted development on Squadron 42 more than once over the decade. It has absolutely suffered from scope creep, whether that gets us a better game than it would have been in 2016/17 remains to be seen. Though that doesn’t necessarily mean the gameplay design is “modern” - the game trades feel and usability for “immersion”. It plays clunkily like ARMA, you can see in the video how throwing a grenade requires equipping it first (the “throw grenade” button is more like a macro to equip then throw), for example. They’ve done a lot of improvements to animation transitions to make the game feel better, but they can’t seem to shake the core rigidness of gameplay.
Visually they’ve obviously done a fantastic job upgrading to modern technical standards combined with stunning art direction, Though again; scope creep, the old visuals would have been great for the time. Gameplay I reckon is still going to be fairly niche, they’re marrying a Space Combat game with ARMA style on-foot gameplay, I imagine the broader gaming audience may like one but not the other.
With the feedback they’ve gotten over the years, it should be a far less clunky experience than it would have been 6 or so years ago. But of course, the standards have changed and the game has only become more of a meme over time, so it’s got a lot to prove.
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I mean looking at it upon first glance, it looks fine?
I mean, what’s “10 years old” anyway? “Vampire Survivors” came out in 2023, has retro graphics and plays really well. Arkham City came out in 2011 and still holds up well graphically today, especially considering Gotham knights is a thing lmao.
I’m not too crazy about the look of the game, but it has to play well. Starfield feels like an old game to play because all those loading screens aren’t something I’m expecting in 2023. The cumbersome inventory management and poor decisions make it feel like it came out over 10 years ago.
A lot of scrutiny on this title. Any criticism will be well deserved, good or bad.
I’m interested to see how it turned out.
Me too. I look forward to finally experiencing the trailer of the demo in 4-18 years.
So they’ve finally stopped the feature creep and are ready to start finishing the game. I hope they finish it within 4 years and release it june 10 (in honor of duke nukem 4eva)
I wouldn’t count on that necessarily. They’re having a live event and saying it’s nearly done, but they’ve been saying that since about 2014. I’ll believe it when it’s downloading personally.
It’s amazing how little I trust announcements like this now. I have been burned so many times by empty promises from game developers that I can’t feel hyped anymore.
What I find interesting is that every generation of gamers has a different original hype disappointment moment. For some, it was E.T. next, maybe Daikatana. For me it was Spore.
Spore was a big let-down, but I think that Starbound was the last straw for me. I never bought an early-access game since then.
The ship has sailed
Yes, that is what ships do.
Well, some ships don’t have sails. In fact, most don’t these days.
Actually, fun fact, we’re seeing ships with sails make a comeback as part of reducing oil usage. That’s not relevant, I just think it’s neat.
That is fun.
We don’t need to sail the seas when we can walk across the wreckage.
That’s deep.
Not if we want to walk across them.
