And I mean, that's maybe where the problems lie. This game is all jank and all generics, with no specific thing to present except "OMG LOOK AT OUR GRAPHICS!!!!". Which are also pretty unoptimized, so you end up with:

Only a tiny tiny fraction of players can even play it.
Then, the game is utterly generic. Despite how it might look to someone not knowing about it, DOOM 2016 and Eternal are quite unique games and have a very well-designed gameplay flow that even differs divisively between the two.
The writing is horrible and would make even an MCU movie/series writer question their decisions in life.
The magic is still just guns with replaced graphics. They didn't lean into the very premise of the game at all. And all they had to do is play Lichdom Battlemage from 2014 to get some ideas and that game already struggled with the concept. But at least it pulled it off.

Can't really say I'm surprised the game flopped hard. But unlike the dev I would call the underlying idea solid, just not anything about the execution.

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[–] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 239 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Big "no one understands my art" vibes coming off that dev. You made a mediocre game for an outrageous amount and released it in one of the heaviest gaming release years in recent memory. Sorry, this year a new IP with a 74% on metacritic doesn't cut it. They say EA dropped 40mil on the advertising for it, but this is litterally the first I've heard about it, and frankly I'm the target audience for this game. I bet this shit was shoved down the throats of Fortnight and Valorant players via tiktok.

[–] Jaysyn@kbin.social 80 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I had never heard of it either until this post.

[–] snooggums@kbin.social 38 points 9 months ago

This is the first time for me as well, and it sounds likely to be the last.

[–] tomi000@lemmy.world 56 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Same. Those 40mil probably went into someones pocket, not surprising noone is playing the game

[–] M137@lemmy.world -4 points 9 months ago

No one is playing it because it's very "meh", but it has absolutely been widely advertised and also talked about a lot (for being not so good).

I really doubt any of you who replied here saying you haven't heard about it ever interact with gaming journalism and community. It has been just as visible as most other AAA games.

[–] loobkoob@kbin.social 12 points 9 months ago

I heard about it when Skill Up, whose YouTube channel I have notifications turned on for, posted his review of it. Before that, I'd seen absolutely nothing about it, and I heard very little about it after that, too. I was shocked to find out it was an EA game - partly because it didn't look (visually) polished enough to be an EA game, and partly because of the complete lack of marketing I'd seen for a major publisher game.

Finding out it was an expensive flop and not just a smaller AA game they decided to put out on the side is a surprise, too.

[–] M137@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I'm not really the target audience and I've come across it what must be hundreds of times. It has been talked about a lot on anything gaming. Most of the big gaming journalism (good and bad) websites, youtube channels etc have made articles and videos about it.