Seems like Wanted: Dead has a 60 Metacritic on PS5. Now in any other medium 60 (or 6/10) suggests OK. But in gaming, it might as well give you poison. It's baffling.
I've heard polarising things about this game (reminds me of another game we're all familiar with...think it begins with "Shenmue 3"), but to be honest, I find that rather refreshing. I don't envy game reviewers; it must be so much harder than listening to an album or watching a film a few times; games aren't optimised, often given at the last minute etc; that said, I can count the number of reviewers I trust on one hand.
I've said it a number of times, but I echo the same sentiments here; I'm more than happy for Shenmue 4 to have the same feel and vibe of Shenmue 3 (60 FPS lock please); get rid of the stamina system, have a better menu UI (PLEASE) and progress the story forward and i'd be happy as Larry*. Will the critics care? Probably not, but time and time again, those that get Shenmue GET it. Those that don't can go to their meme-core Sailor shite and continue to live their life of abject misery.
*the only Larry I can think of is Larry Mullen Jr, go figure.
The best way that I could describe Wanted: Dead is like a sixth generation action game with all of the jank but none of the charm.
It’s a game that tries to play on people’s nostalgia but makes the critical mistake of forgetting that people loved nineties and early two-thousands action games in spite of the jank -
not because of it.
People who miss that bygone era of gaming aren’t craving games with shitty frame rates and terrible camera controls. They aren’t yearning for games with short, linear levels that are padded out by checkpoints that are few and far between and an artificial difficulty level that relies on bullet sponge enemies above all else.
People miss games that aren’t afraid to think outside the box and go against the grain, but as much as Wanted: Dead would like people to believe that it does these things, its core mechanics are all borrowed from elsewhere and are executed incredibly poorly, at that. It’s a bad game that tries to shield itself from criticism by telling people that that’s okay because it’s supposed to be bad, while at the same time forgetting that it’s also supposed to be fun.
As for whether 110 would make a good publisher for Shenmue, here are a few things of note that have happened over the past few days…
— 110 screwed up pre-orders, meaning that those playing on PlayStation or PC were unable to purchase the game digitally in advance. Given the poor reviews, this likely led to a lot of lost sales and the developer missing out on royalties.
— 110 lied to reviewers that a day one patch would be released on launch day and would fix all of the game’s technical issues (the “day one” patch is still nowhere to be seen, for those wondering).
— 110 set an embargo that was as much as 12 hours past release date in certain countries, effectively preventing those that were able to pre-order the game from reading reviews ahead of time and thus depriving them of their right to cancel.
— When a few sites broke embargo and published negative reviews early, 110 increased the price of the game on Steam in numerous territories.
— Physical copies of the game were incredibly limited and were unavailable in most countries. Some of those that did manage get a copy found that an issue with the PS5 version prevented the game from copying onto the system correctly (it got stuck at 18%, for some reason), making it completely unplayable. When people tried to reach out to them for help, 110 ignored them.
— 110 somehow added two versions of the game to Steam, one of which was a broken build that crashed in the tutorial. Even after realizing this, rather than taking the broken build straight down, they instead left a message halfway down the page telling people to buy the top/bottom one (I forget which). In some countries, these two versions cost drastically different amounts even though they were both listed as the base version of the game.
— Despite being promised a free next-gen upgrade (it literally says this on the game’s box), those who purchased the game on PS4 or Xbox One found that they would need to pay full price for the next-gen version. When confronted, 110 dismissed customers’ complaints, telling them to just play the last gen version on their next gen consoles.
— 110 publicly made fun of a critic’s appearance / demeanor after they told people not to buy the game.
I’m sure that there is much much more; that’s just what’s popped up on my Twitter feed and in the WD discord.
With all that in mind, does anybody really think that 110 would make a good publisher for Shenmue? I mean, Deep Silver was far from perfect, but at least they were competent and knew how to actually publish a game.
Most sites seem to have given 110 a pass on the above because, to put it bluntly, nobody cares about some shitty action game being shit and some unheard of publisher being incompetent. If this were Shenmue though, gaming sites would be all over this and it would likely be Yu getting all of the flack rather than the publisher.
Personally, I’d be terrified about the prospect of 110 working on a new Shenmue game were it not for the fact that they likely won’t be around for much longer. You can promise gamers the world and deliver a dumpster fire with very few consequences, but that shit just ain’t gonna fly with investors. These guys were projecting three million sales, yet chose to make a game in a niche genre and then somehow managed to make it even more niche than it already was.
