3 hours ago
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The Tuesday letters page is surprised to learn that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been a hit, as one reader worries about the negative effects of GTA 6.
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Minority opinion
With all this discussion of GTA 6 I really feel like the odd one out, because I’ve never really liked any of them. I recognised GTA 3 as an important breakthrough for open world games, and I liked the soundtrack of Vice City, but I soon got bored of their repetitive missions and terrible controls and action.
GTA 4 didn’t seem to be much better and by the time of GTA 5 I was not only bored of the concept, but I’d begun to find its smug worship of violence and cruelty to be really off-putting. Maybe that’s just me being a parent now but I certainly won’t want my kid playing the games.
I realise I’m in the minority on this, and I’m definitely not telling anyone else not to enjoy it, but to me GTA celebrates the worse in humanity in general and America specifically, and that’s not really the kind of kick I need right. Call me weird but I’d rather play something a bit more optimistic.
Penfold
There are dozens of us
I have tried on many occasions to play and enjoy GTA over the decades but failed every time. The games get great reviews but just leave me cold. I just don’t get it. I won’t be getting GTA 6 even if it gets scored 11 out of 10 when reviewed.
I suspect it continues to sell for years after initial release due to parents relenting when they feel their child is old enough to play it. However, I wonder if the game is played just superficially in most of these cases.
Ed
Multiplayer from From
I can’t tell you how disappointed I was to find out that The Duskbloods was a multiplayer game. I only found out a few days later, because they never said in the trailer, and it was such a downer. What worries me is that From’s next game, Elden Ring Nightreign, is also a multiplayer game.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence, and I think Nightreign is a much smaller and cheaper game, but that is going to make the gap between Elden Ring and whatever’s next even bigger. Elden Ring was over three years ago now and I am really beginning to miss a big chunky FromSoftware single-player game. But I don’t know when that will happen or what it will be.
Cuit
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The future is now
As bad as it is to hear about these Switch 2 Game-Key cards and Doom: The Dark Ages not having anything on the disc I do think it’s far too late to start complaining about these things now. If only 10% of people are buying physical now then the battle has already been lost, a long time ago.
I realise a lot of people reading this are probably in that 10% but it’s time for us to face facts and admit the war is lost. People want to buy digitally, even though that’s worse in about a dozen different ways, and publishers are very glad to encourage it, because it means more profit for them and no second-hand market.
This has been obvious for a long time, but it’s happened slowly enough that I think physical fans haven’t realised just how lopsided it’s got. But unfortunately this new generation is going to be the first where physical sales are almost irrelevant. You can quote the £75 price tag all you like but most people are going to be buying Mario Kart World for £67 on digital, not paying extra for the cartridge.
Personally, I think it’s madness that people preferred not having to get up to change discs above owning their games and being able to sell them on, but here we are. The genie is out of the bottle now and there’s no putting it back in.
Silvo
Oblivion on the regular
I definitely agree with the performance issues of the Oblivion remaster. After 40 hours of play I’m getting frequent crashes that shut the game down and go back to the Xbox home screen.
This wasn’t a problem before but it’s happening pretty regularly now. It hasn’t hurt things that much, it auto saves for me each and every time I go into a new area, but something is clearly wrong with it. It’s not going to stop me playing but they really need to fix it.
Nick The Greek
Old and improved
A remaster of GTA 4 as a stopgap for GTA 6 sounds like a pretty good idea but can we please manage something better than the terrible GTA Trilogy collection? That was the laziest, low quality thing I’ve ever seen Rockstar put their name to and it makes me worried about any other remaster they release.
One reader said that GTA 4 had the best story of any of the games and I’d say that’s probably true. It definitely was better than GTA 5, which had a lot of cool moments and characters but no real plot.
The problem with GTA 4 though is that the action was really bad. The fighting, the shooting, and the driving would not have been tolerated in other game, if it were not GTA. If there is a remaster then all three of these things need to be changed, but I’m not sure Rockstar would be willing to admit there was that much of a problem.
Recently, we’ve seen a lot of remasters and remakes that have really changed and improved the original games and GTA 4 needs to be one of them, because as it stands, I just don’t think it’s aged well.
On the other hand, I’m not sure I’d really change anything about Max Payne 3. That game was sorely underrated and all it needs is a light dusting, in terms of frame rate and resolution. Although I’ll never understand why they didn’t use the combat from Max Payne 3 in GTA 4. They were both Rockstar games.
Paulie
Success Expedition
I just want to say that in a world of delayed games, rushed games with bugs, and prices going through the roof, that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of the greatest games I’ve played in a very long time.
I hope it is successful in sales, although I doubt it will be.
Dazj1985 (PSN ID)
GC: Surprising as it might seem, the game has been an instant hit and sold 2 million copies in 12 days.
A high tide beaches all boats
I’m no industry expert but I’m not sure I understand these arguments about GTA 5 saving the games industry when it comes out. I get the high tide raising all boats argument but that’s just an old truism, and it isn’t always accurate.
I think it’s far more likely to have an overall negative effect. I’m sure the game will be great, and make billions for Take-Two, but everyone else is going to be scrabbling for peanuts in comparison. Everything coming out next spring is going to be horribly rushed and full of bugs, just to get it out of the door before GTA 6, and then when is anyone going to risk releasing something big? June? July? August? September?
The only positive is that not much is usually released in the summer months anyway, so this isn’t going to create a massive crater during Christmas, or is it? If the game is as good as people hope is there any reason to think it won’t still be selling by the end of the year too? Will people really stop playing GTA 6 to buy yet another Call Of Duty?
I wouldn’t bet on it, and even when things do slow down the new GTA Online will be taking a huge chunk out of everyone’s time and money. It’s not Rockstar’s fault, they’re not doing anything wrong from their point of view, but I think GTA 6 is only going to reinforce the massive gap between the half dozen live service games that people play constantly and everything else.
Cubby
Inbox also-rans
For fans of video game anniversaries it was the 20th anniversary of the reveal of the Xbox 360 on Monday. As I remember it was some kind of weird pre-recorded thing with Elijah Woods. Time flies, huh?
Focus
I’m surprised to hear talk of a Devil May Cry remake. I’m not against it but I thought Devil May Cry 5 did well? I don’t understand why we still haven’t heard about a new game.
Robin
GC: It sold 10 million copies, so it did very well for what it is. We imagine there’s problems behind the scenes, not least the fact that director Hideaki Itsuno left Capcom last year.
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