Another live-service shooter? Really?
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00:00Video game fans are, in general, a pretty loyal bunch. We voluntarily engage in a hobby that is,
00:06well, let's face it, pretty darn expensive. We keep video game franchises alive for decades on
00:11end, and we follow our favourite video game creators as they go from developer to publisher.
00:16That is probably why we get grumpier than the average media consumer when we feel wronged.
00:21There are a variety of ways game developers and publishers can lose favour with their fanbase,
00:25but a few surefire examples include wild reimaginings of franchise narratives and
00:31gameplay mechanics, a willful ignorance of fan wishes, all of that old chestnut,
00:36insidious microtransactions. The entries on this list contain a selection of the above,
00:40and then some, but what ties them all together is taking a group of fans who were very much on board
00:46and delivering them one defining moment where the majority of them noped out, some never to return.
00:52I'm Jess from World Culture, and here are exact moments video game fans tapped out.
00:56Number 10. Not the Metal Gear game we were looking for. Metal Gear Survive.
01:01For video game fans to really tap out, we should talk about a franchise that's wildly beloved,
01:06and they don't get much bigger in that category than Metal Gear. Well, that is until Metal Gear
01:11Survive. While 2015's Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain had elements and story beats that
01:16weren't everybody's cup of tea, not to mention its lack of finish due to the relationship breakdown
01:21between creator Hideo Kojima and Konami, fans didn't understand how good they had it until the
01:26arrival of Metal Gear Survive. While loyal followers of the series tried to be optimistic,
01:32nothing was right about 2018's Metal Gear Survive. The game felt like a generic zombie survival
01:37actioner with some mild Metal Gear flavor that lost all of what made its parent franchise special.
01:43The game was critically panned as a repetitive, frustrating, and microtransaction-riddled cash
01:49grab. Not to mention fans had already mostly tapped out when news broke that Kojima would not
01:53be involved with Metal Gear Survive, but the few who did decide to stick around were pretty much
01:58done after the first few minutes of this game. Number 9. $75 for skins. Marvel's Avengers.
02:04It's fair to say that fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe put up with a lot, and generally,
02:09they're a forgiving bunch. That goes doubly for fans of Square Enix's Marvel's Avengers video
02:14game, which has already gone through the ringer for its broken matchmaking, uninspired endgame,
02:20and repetitive mechanics. All that said, there was a dedicated bunch who stuck with it anyway,
02:25insisting the game was a diamond in the rough and absolutely not that bad.
02:29Then they went and tried to get those people to spend $75 on skins, and that patience wore out.
02:34Keep in mind, these are the people who defended the game through all its early microtransactions,
02:39including its XP boost that could only be purchased with real-world money.
02:43A boost that was implemented after Crystal Dynamics altered the progression system
02:48to make it slower to level up, which is pretty darn shady.
02:51Though this boost was dropped after only a month due to fan backlash,
02:54the same consumer-unfriendly tactics were pulled just a couple of months ago
02:58when the MCU outfit pack dropped, and it was revealed the 10 outfits would run players $75.
03:06In some regions, that's even more than the game itself costs.
03:09I feel like I probably don't need to explain why a bunch of people just shrugged their
03:12shoulders and walked off at that point.
03:14Number 8. No NPCs in this post-apocalypse. Fallout 76.
03:19Potentially controversial opinion here, but I'd argue that Fallout didn't necessarily
03:23lose its player base when it was announced the game would focus on multiplayer.
03:27Was the focus on multiplayer what die-hard single-player fans of the
03:30classic Fallout games were keen for? Not necessarily.
03:33But even for super multiplayer-averse gamers like me, there was a curiosity
03:37about what it would be like to share one of Bethesda's big open worlds with your friends.
03:42Instead, the bigger fumble for dedicated Fallout buffs was
03:45probably the announcement that the game would have no NPCs.
03:49After all, there are plenty of MMOs and multiplayer games that manage to have engaging stories,
03:54and engaging stories are what the Fallout series is built on,
03:57but it's tricky to do that when your only non-playable characters are robots.
04:01While some did enjoy the eerie, empty post-apocalypse,
04:05the soul of Fallout games is so often delivered through the NPCs,
04:09your relationships with them, and their troubling stories,
04:12that something very important was lost when they were omitted.
04:15Of course, NPCs are now back in Fallout 76, and they're unlikely to leave ever again,
04:20but the decision to nix them from the outset certainly alienated a lot of fans.
04:26Do you guys not have phones? Diablo Immortal.
04:28There are a few things guaranteed to go down like a lead balloon when it comes to
04:32a highly-anticipated announcement, and those things can be summed up into three phrases.
04:37Free-to-play, mobile game, and microtransactions.
04:41And what do you know, when a bunch of hopeful BlizzCon 2018 attendees
04:45bent their ear hoping for news of Diablo 4,
04:48what they got instead was the announcement of Diablo Immortal,
04:51and with it, the trifecta of all those things.
04:54You have to feel a little bad for game director Wyatt Cheng,
04:57as by all accounts, Diablo Immortal is a fully-fledged Diablo experience.
05:01It just happens to be on mobiles where nobody really wanted it to be.
05:05Especially when a PC and console-based Diablo game hadn't been released for six years at this point.
05:10What gamers in the room and around the world got was a mobile game ad
05:14when their expectations had been way up.
05:16While the game has now come to PC with some rampant microtransactions,
05:21at the time, there were no plans to bring it to any platform other than mobile,
05:25at which point Cheng responded to booing with the infamous phrase,
05:29Do you guys not have phones?
05:31It's easy to point to the release of Diablo 4 now and see that fans are clearly tapping back in,
05:36but boy was it a dark five years in the middle there.
05:39Number six, Dante, DMC Devil May Cry.
05:42Character redesigns aren't always a bad thing,
05:45but plenty of DMC fans were left with a bad taste in their mouth
05:49after spending time with the new and not-so-improved Dante of DMC Devil May Cry.
05:54With a new look and a new attitude designed to appeal to a younger generation,
05:58this Dante got plenty of fans upside before the game even came out.
06:02Although combat proved to be just as satisfying as ever,
06:04and there were a few people who were a fan of the redesign,
06:08most people decided it was just not for them.
06:10Plenty of players felt the redesign instructed by Capcom
06:13left Dante seeming like he was trying way too hard to be cool and serious,
06:18and ultimately, it all fell flat.
06:20Given that DMC is an origin story,
06:23there is some amount of leeway in what they could get away with as far as the redesign,
06:27but it left most fans feeling like they lost their favorite gothic and sarcastic protagonist
06:31in place of a wannabe facsimile.
06:34If DMC wasn't a Devil May Cry game,
06:36this might not have gathered so much ire,
06:38but it was so Dante was born.
06:41Number five, It Was All A Dream, 12 Minutes.
06:44Spoiler warning here, as we will need to talk about the full plot of 2021's 12 Minutes
06:49in order to dig into just how bad this one screwed over fans who stuck with it to the end.
06:54If you don't want to know what happens, come meet us at number four,
06:57but to be honest, this game probably isn't worth playing.
07:00There are two major moments where fans who were truly dedicated
07:03to the time loop puzzle game would have tapped out,
07:05and it's really tough to pick a favorite.
07:07Well, we obviously mean a least favorite.
07:09I mean, one of these things is incest and the other one is it all being a dream,
07:13so some real doozies.
07:15While 12 Minutes' heavy narrative focus and time loop mechanic weren't for everyone,
07:20it was exactly what certain players were looking for.
07:23And so a collection of fans were enraptured, trying to sort out the puzzle elements of
07:27the singular apartment location, discover more pieces of the mystery,
07:31and ultimately unravel the narrative.
07:33What a disappointment, then, when it turns out that, among other reveals,
07:36you and your wife are half-siblings about to have a baby.
07:40Ew.
07:40While one ending lets you just continue on happily with your incest life,
07:45the other one has you basically understanding that you've just been under hypnosis the
07:49entire time and so none of what you've just played out has actually happened.
07:53I'll let you decide which is worse.
07:55Number four, no autosaving, Returnal.
07:58This one divided those who did and did not tap out based on their non-gaming life commitments.
08:03Those who were able to dedicate chunks of time to gaming didn't see it as a problem at all,
08:08and those who scrape out precious morsels of video game breaks in their day were so
08:11broken down by it that they had to give up on Returnal whether they wanted to or not.
08:16The drama was at launch that runs of 2021's Returnal had to be completed all in one go,
08:22otherwise you'd have to abandon it and lose your progress.
08:25Okay, so you could technically pause it,
08:27but if you turned off the game or suffered a power outage, you'd lose progress.
08:31This being a pretty brutal punishment in a game that's already very far from easy.
08:35In some cases, your runs could take up to an hour of precision shooting and platforming,
08:40so losing any ground to something that wasn't your fault
08:43felt like a loss you couldn't or didn't want to recover from.
08:46The game does now let you suspend your progress and safely turn off the console
08:50if you want or need to, but a lot of fans did tap out before that implementation.
08:54Number three, built on microtransactions, Star Wars Battlefront II.
08:58With every consumer-unfriendly business practice and ludicrously priced or positioned
09:03microtransaction scheme, publishers run the risk of burning a bridge between them and their players.
09:08While a lot of these real-world money mechanics and practices slide on by
09:12as just a little insidious, EA kicked off the mother-of-all video game controversies
09:17when they tried to wring fans dry with Star Wars Battlefront II's microtransactions.
09:22In essence, EA was all set to charge you for skins to weapon upgrades
09:26and pretty much everything in between,
09:28thus breaking the game down to those who wanted to pay to win and those who didn't.
09:31EA were forced to pull way back on their microtransaction plans in order to salvage
09:36a tiny amount of goodwill from their previously keen fanbase,
09:40but by that point they'd stirred up enough ire that plenty of fans decided
09:43to move on from the game entirely before it even properly launched.
09:47Number two, Princess Beach, Death Stranding.
09:50There's a certain amount of twisty, turny, yet inarguably compelling melodrama that you're
09:54signing up for when you agree to let Hideo Kojima take you down the rabbit
09:58hole of one of his video game narratives.
10:00Death Stranding is certainly up there with one of Kojima's more divisive and strange stories,
10:05and even as a Death Stranding apologist myself,
10:08the most accepting and understanding of gamers did hit a point with this story where we just
10:13had to say, well that's all getting a bit silly.
10:16Toward the pointy end of the already wildly convoluted narrative,
10:19peppered with characters that have names like Fragile and Die Hard Man,
10:22you find yourself on the foreshadowed beach that links the living and the dead.
10:26All of this is fine, except when you're speaking to your sister Amelie about
10:30linking herself to the chiral network.
10:32And Sam is for some reason compelled to say,
10:35so I'm Mario and you're Princess Peach.
10:38As if that wasn't cringy enough, she suggests you run home across the beach together,
10:43and I quote, like Mario and Princess Beach.
10:47Because they're on a beach, get it?
10:49Yeah, they also run in slow motion.
10:51It is a moment that's very hard to get on board with,
10:53no matter how much of the story you've happily swallowed so far.
10:56Number one, a live service looter shooter.
10:59Again, Suicide Squad, kill the Justice League.
11:02A rock steady superhero game is more than enough to get ears perked up
11:06and keen to find out what lies in store,
11:08especially after the awesome legacy of the Batman Arkham games.
11:12Imagine the disappointing blow then of fans of the not-yet-released
11:16Suicide Squad game they're making when we finally got gameplay,
11:19and it looks like it's just another looter shooter.
11:22Dreams of nuanced relationships between the Suicide Squad members
11:25and complex combat, traversal, and abilities that cover the breadth of
11:29all that the Arkham franchise accomplished,
11:31and then some, are all but dashed at this point.
11:34Despite starring a Suicide Squad made up of Harley Quinn,
11:37King Shark, Captain Boomerang, and Deadshot taking aim at a corrupt Justice League,
11:41the gameplay so far appears Fortnite-esque,
11:44with alien things, gear scores, and guns for every character at the forefront.
11:48Yes, even Captain Boomerang, which even if you knew nothing about him,
11:52you would assume probably preferences a boomerang.
11:54Well, not in this game.
11:56It's too early to be sure that this one is a bust,
11:58but players en masse are worried,
12:00and some formerly excited fans have already tapped out expecting the worst.
12:05That's the end of our script, but let me know down in that comment section
12:08when your moment was where you simply had to tap out of a video game.
12:12As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture.
12:14Thank you so much for hanging out with me.
12:16If you like it, come say hi to me on my Twitter account, where I'm at JessMcDonald,
12:20but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more gaming goodness.