Square-Enix Announces shutdown of Babylon's Fall - The Folly of Games-as-a-Service

 You can read about it on Steam's website, and enjoy the discussion groups (the ones not suspended) here. This one impacts me, surprisingly...I bought Babylon's Fall when it came out back in February of this year, along with a handful of other new games on Playstation 5, just happy to see some actual new content. Other games I nabbed included Final Fantasy Origins (another Square-Enix game) and Tokyo: Ghostwire (from Bethesda). 

Of the three, Babylon's Fall is the one I've played the most of so far, but not without reservations. First, it's important to understand that the game is reminiscent of a lot of older Playstation titles from long ago, especially the many weird JRPG dungeon crawlers which appeared on the PSP and PS2. It has an archaic quality to it that will appeal to the niche of a niche of gamers who liked those sorts of action RPGs with lots of fiddly management. Unfortunately it's welded--ham-fistdedly--to a games-as-a-service model of design which takes what should be a party-based single player game and turns it into an always-online experience with battle passes and a marketplace....all of which is now gone. You can't play this game without being online.

The game's appeal was also limited due to being released on the next gen consoles despite clearly being a last-gen title in design. It's use of a faux antique watercolor/oil painting effect for cutscenes and much of the in-game art design just doesn't look "right" to most people, and the further I got in to the game the more I found this approach annoying (initially I was forgiving; now after two-thirds of the way through I grew mostly just irritated). 

If this were a budget title single-player offline experience that could just be available in perpetuity no one would care, and it would languish with so many other forgettable games as something fun to play if you're into the very specific style of game it is (and make no mistake, the game's combat is fun....though like the art style, it starts to feel repetitive about 2/3rd of the way through). But nope, it's a GaaS and as a result it's getting shut down....the cost of maintaining a skeleton crew and servers to support the game is too costly for Square-Enix to even bother.

On the one hand, I am annoyed; I'd be interested in a refund if it were possible, though I made the mistake of buying it through Playstation's digital store, which famously have provided refunds for nothing save the mess that was Cyberpunk 2077 in similar situations where a publisher fail has imposed upon the consumer. Most likely I think Square-Enix figured they could do this because the game probably sold copies in the thousands, maybe a few tens of thousands at the most....so to them it looks like weathering a bit of negative publicity, but at least they're not screwing millions of purchasers over, right? Right???

On the plus side, this proves that their games-as-a-service experiment failed. Maybe, just maybe, Square-Enix will avoid doing this anytime in the near future, or if they do maybe they will divest more time, energy and effort to the studio tasked with making such an abomination.

I thought about just giving up on them as a personal statement....but so many good games that are also offline single player experiences do come from Square-Enix and its studios, and I own a nontrivial percentage of them already anyway. So maybe the better lesson to learn here is: if I see that the game is a GaaS model that still expects a retail purchase to play, maybe just turn the other way and run.

In the meantime, assuming I can't convince Sony's CSR goons to give me a refund, I guess I better finish that last 1/3 of the game I have left to complete so I can add this to the list of other games that failed and evaporated from existence in similar fashion.....

RIP Tabula Rasa, Evolve, City of Heroes, Wildstar, and now Babylon's Fall. 

First Impressions: The Wave of Next Gen Titles on PS5 (Elden Ring, Horizon: Foridden West, Babylon's Fall and Final Fantasy Origins Stranger of Paradise)

 This is purely for fun. I haven't played any of these titles for more than 4-5 hours as of yet, but within the last month or so a wave of new next-gen games (technically?) have arrived. The only one not on the list that I have is Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, which is a different bag of cats I am saving for a rainy day. The rest, in no particular order, are all quite similar to one another to certain degrees: each deals with exotic fantasy or science-fantasy settings, you control a protagonist, there's an emphasis on melee combat, and to various degrees you do exploration, either in a directed dungeon delve style or open-world (or both). So....now that we're finally getting some new next gen games on PS5, how do they hold up on the first few hours' playthrough?

Horizon: Forbidden West

I'll get the easiest one out of the way first. If you played and finished (and enjoyed) the original Horizon: Zero Dawn this is a no-brainer, as its a direct sequel to the first game, picking up with Aloy's story a few months after the battle at Meridian. It's proving to be more of the same so far, with a few new refinements and quirks, and I am quite liking it. Horizon has usurped the Fallout and Metro franchises as my favorite post-apocalyptic setting. The game has difficulty scaling, and while I play it on the default normal settings, it's nice that it lets people seek a harder (or easier, story focused) challenge, since a nontrivial portion of H:FW is centered on story and discovery anyway.

About the only negative I can suggest is that the new game has big shoes to fill, and since the first game focused on a story that tied into revealing how the post-apocalyptic world came to be, this one is now more focused on how Aloy can try to fix things, with a fairly clever take on why things need fixing. 

Either way, this is the title I will be playing the most in coming weeks/months.

Elden Ring

Despite discovering this From Software title is part of the Dark Souls line, enough reviewers convinced me that this was a bit more transcendent with its focus on open world exploration that I decided to give it a try. So far I am not disappointed; the key reason being the major irritations I had with the Dark Souls style have lots of little, sometimes very subtle but very important quality of life fixes, and the game managed to do the Souls thing while also being more accessible as a result. Still....don't take my word for it, try a copy from a friend or see if there's a demo somewhere before assuming anything, especially if you hated the Dark Souls games (which I most definitely do, for so many reasons). Elden Ring is not making me want to smash the TV at all, and despite there being plenty of horrid boss monsters wandering around, all thanks to some clever changes in core design mixed with a fluid open world experience filled with interesting things to discover.

Babylon's Fall

One of two Square-Enix games released recently, this title reminds me most of the old PSP era dungeon crawlers with a focus on party and gear management, but now with way too much games as a service content, including an entirely unnecessary season pass and storefront model. In playing so far after several hours I noticed the following, to contrast with reviewers who have trashed the titled for various reasons:

The graphics are not exemplary of next-gen consoles. The "artistic painting style" some people mention exists and is interesting, but is not the reason people are annoyed with the graphical look; I find it fine, but I am perplexed as to why the developers thought this style would go over well with a crowd looking for a next-gen appearance. 

The play mechanics are solid, but you need to get a bit in to the game to realize this. Once you start leveling, swapping up for better gear, the dungeons (well, cooridor/crosswalk crawls) start getting a lot more interesting. But this game has done something I haven't seen in a long time: at one point I realized I was pushing down five buttons on the controller almost all at once, I needed essentially my entire hand engaged with the button scheme to get it to work right. I pulled it off, but let me tell ya', if I leave this one alone for a few weeks before picking it up again I'll probably forget all the nuanced commands and their relationships again. BF would be better suited to have a simpler control scheme.

Finally, while I'm enjoying the story (what story there is), it's a weird mish-mash of medieval, Roman and victorian era thematics, smashed together and stuck in front of a cypher for the legendary Tower of Babel. Or something. Um, don't play this for the story, is what I am saying. 

I like playing it, but I suggest for everyone else to wait for it to go on sale if a weird dungeon crawler style experience with tacked on games as service elements sounds intriguing to you.

Final Fantasy Origins: Strangers of Paradise 

Okay, I've only spent two hours with this one, but it's definitely got a Final Fantasy vibe with it. The game is pure ARPG action and combat, with story moments jammed in via CGI, at least so far. This is also, curiously, a dungeon crawler so two for two with Square-Enix here. Unlike Babylon's Fall, this one has you working as a team in the single player mode (rather than solo), and maybe you can do multiplayer, I haven't tested that out yet.

The dudes on your team at the start grunt a lot. There's a story but they are just here to chew gum and kick chaos's ass, and they will trade up for the silliest looking loot as long as they get better gear stats to do it. The play mechanic feels solid, and has some of its own nuance, in a manner which I felt was both less predictable (so more frustrating) but also a bit more fun than the way Babylon's Fall does it.

Beyond that....jury is still out, here. But I definitely want to keep playing and see where it all goes, but honestly I haven't got as good a feel for this as Babylon's Fall yet. I do wonder why Square-Enix chose to release two games in the same genre/style so close to one another. It forces comparisons, and neither game seems to come out looking as good as if Square-Enix had consolidated resources and made a single, better example of this genre instead. 

So, if its not obvious, I am suggesting Horizon: Forbidden West is the best new release on PS5, and well worth it so long as you finished the first one (and if you haven't go do that first then pick this one up). Elden Ring is fascinating, and I wonder how long I can play it before the souls elements get to me. Both FF Origins and Babylon's Fall are weird ducks and you should get into them if you like weird, experimental Japanese dungeon crawl games, but if you had to pick one....um....check back later, I am still undecided on which one I actually think is more satisfying (or less irritating).