Rareware / Rare / Playtonic

[Daxdiv]

GameXplain said the technical issues on the XBone version are atrocious.

How it was allowed to be released in this state is beyond me. I'm not the biggest fan of JonTron's removal, but this janky quality is just incompetent.

I hope we don't have another Mighty No. 9 here.

The only positives I've been hearing is that the PC version is running decently. Kinda makes me glad I decided to use my pledge to get the PC version of the game after the Wii U version was canceled. The bigger kick in the teeth was that I heard that they tried to make the Wii U version the best one around and even went with the Unity engine so the Wii U version wouldn't suffer. Oops!

[Foggle]

I don't think this is comparable to Mighty No. 9 at all. The Xbox version does look bad, but the footage I've seen from the PS4 version seems just fine and the PC version is confirmed to run at 60 FPS. The game itself looks exactly like Banjo-Tooie, which I know may not appeal to a lot of people who aren't me, but MN9's design was outright bad even compared to, say, Mega Man 8. Not to mention that Jim's review is a major outlier, with a fair amount of critics saying that anyone who loved these kinds of game as a kid will also love this one; the majority of the negative/middling reviews are unhappy that it feels too much like a N64 game and not enough like a modern game. The Kickstarter backers are genuinely getting what they paid for here... unless they bought the game because of JonTron, but it absolutely makes sense why they removed him since they're trying to uphold the image of a family-friendly classic-style games-oriented company.

Basically, the middling reviews make sense and aren't an indicator of the game being bad - this is literally Banjo-Threeie, designed as if it was released a couple years after Tooie. Some people may think that kind of thing doesn't work in 2017, or they might not like the more excessive nature of B-T, and I think those are respectable opinions. On the other hand, people like me who have been waiting for exactly this since they were 8 years old, will probably be satisfied if not overjoyed.

The way that post from Playtonic about the controversy made it obvious they were infested with SJWs and nine times out of ten they don't make anything worthwhile.

Most artists can be considered SJWs - insofar as it refers to left-wingers who don't like being associated with people who make statements similar to JonTron's - so this statement isn't really true. Off the top of my head, Nier Automata, Luke Cage, and Get Out are all critically acclaimed and commercially successful pieces of modern art where the creators would have reacted exactly the same way Playtonic did.

Anyway, a lot of my favorite games are sitting somewhere between 60 and 70 on Metacritic (e.g. almost anything by Grasshopper or Yoko Taro), so I don't think a 67 MC score is particularly bad at all.

The bigger kick in the teeth was that I heard that they tried to make the Wii U version the best one around and even went with the Unity engine so the Wii U version wouldn't suffer. Oops!

Yeah, they would have gone with UE4 if they hadn't been planning on making a Wii U version. Unity sucks so hard for getting good framerates, especially on consoles.

Why the fuck not, after his racist rant?

Yeah, I think pretty much any company would have done the same, even 10 or 20 years ago. JonTron may not actually be a racist, and I think there's a good chance he actually has no idea why what he said was horrible, but no family-oriented company releasing their first game would ever want to be associated with those kind of statements.

[Spark Of Spirit]

PlayTonic can do whatever they want. It's their game.

My worry has nothing to do with the base game. It has to do with optimization. Watching that gameplay footage was really worrying. There's no reason this game should chug along like that and have performance issues. I backed it, so I guess I'll be playing it regardless, but I won't be happy if they don't address and fix these problems. That they thought it was okay to put it out in that sort of state is a bit insulting to console owners. Especially considering people backed them on Kickstarter for it.

[Foggle]

Well, hopefully the PS4 version will run okay. Obviously they shouldn't release the game in a state like that, but after playing a few other 3D Unity games on console, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the absolute best they can do. I've played the Toybox on both PC and PS4 - the PC version ran beautifully and the PS4 version ran like, well, an N64 game. It was perfectly playable and fun for me despite some definite issues, and I'll be getting it on PS4 since Unity causes my PC to make horrifying sounds. If it's unplayable and frustrating then I'm sure you'll see me in here complaining next week, but keep in mind that I had no issue enjoying The Evil Within on PS3 so maybe that kind of thing just doesn't bother me much.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

It honestly saddens me that even with the power of current-gen hardware, there are relatively few games (not including remasters) that can manage to run at a consistent 60 FPS. I feel like that should have pretty much been the mandatory bare minimum by last gen.

[Foggle]

It honestly saddens me that even with the power of current-gen hardware, there are relatively few games (not including remasters) that can manage to run at a consistent 60 FPS. I feel like that should have pretty much been the mandatory bare minimum by last gen.

It's pretty disappointing, yeah. I'm not trying to shift the blame off Playtonic, but honestly, the Unity engine is just not very good for performance at all. I understand why people use it - it's extremely easy to make games with, supposedly - but you need REALLY good hardware to make it run above 30 FPS. Like I was playing the PS4 version of Grow Home and that game chugs on the fucking main menu. Even much more basic games like Yandere Simulator can have major trouble running well on a good system. It's just not a great engine from what I can tell, so I hope Tooka-Laylee or whatever else Playtonic makes next will use UE4 or something. I can cut them some slack with the consoles ports of Y-L, but if they ever become completely unplayable and/or the team doesn't learn from this for their next game, then there's definitely going to be problems.

[Foggle]

Looks like the day one patch will be including various performance and camera fixes! http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-04-05-yooka-laylee-xbox-one-ps4-and-pc-patch-targets-camera-issues-and-performance

It's a start, and already way more than the MN9 devs ever did. Still, it's pretty sad that 80% of games these days almost require a day one patch to be fully playable and fun.

[VLordGTZ]

Random question: Did the MN9 devs ever even release the 3DS and Vita versions that they promised?

It's good to hear that Playtonic seems to be addressing the technical issues.  I avoid backing Kickstarter games out of caution, but I was planning to pick up this game once my college semester ended.  Hopefully the issues with the game will be resolved by then.

[Daxdiv]

Random question: Did the MN9 devs ever even release the 3DS and Vita versions that they promised?

Nope. That that I'm aware of. That was the reason that THEY choose an old engine, just to get it running on the 3DS. Wew lads. That's not even going into all the other stuff that Kickstarter backers didn't get for MN9. At least Yooka-Laylee team is on top of stuff with their Kickstarter, so that's a plus.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, I think pretty much any company would have done the same, even 10 or 20 years ago. JonTron may not actually be a racist, and I think there's a good chance he actually has no idea why what he said was horrible, but no family-oriented company releasing their first game would ever want to be associated with those kind of statements.

Jontron's political opinions were always like a pinball for a while. I remember he said he supported Bernie before he ended up losing the primaries. But I think his recent views could be due to some past incidents, like people harassing him for saying "retard" in a video and increasing disillusionment with leftists. Which at first was understandable, most people who just want to have fun on the internet have been growing very discontent at political opinions from both sides, but then he went on... those streams where he ranted about how Le Pen will save France or why black people are corrupting the gene pool. I want to think Jontron was just reading off some misinformed graphs other people gave him instead of stating his own opinions, or maybe he was taking the piss like when people such as me yell out horrible things in jest, but that was just a difficult situation. And I think Playtonic made the most reasonable action.

[Daxdiv]

I felt like that Playtonic was screwed no matter what they thought to do to JonTron. People would have been pissed either way with retaining or removing him from the game. A perfect example of can't pleasing everyone. But yeah, that attitude that you mentioned does kinda hold true to other content creators as well. I notice that there is a backlash towards both extremes of the political spectrum. Though most of what I've seen, they don't end up like Jon, who felt like he took /pol/ seriously.

[Foggle]

According to Digital Foundry, Yooka-Laylee has no performance issues on the PS4 and the patch fixed most of the Xbox's problems! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4FPodGR82U

[Daxdiv]

People were able to find JonTron's cameo in the game files before a major patch hit the game.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Well, Dunkey hates it.

[Spark Of Spirit]

GameXplain had a pretty good discussion on it.

This looks like it's going to be a highly divisive game. Since I backed it on Switch I won't get to play it for a while, but I'll be keeping my expectations tempered. Keep in mind, I'm not a fan of Tooie, and hearing people say this doesn't live up to even that isn't encouraging.