We Un-Happy Few

[DigDog]

Have you had a chance to watch the Jim Sterling review on the full release?

Back when, i tried the game, but it was still very much a work in progress; food meter going crazy, no storyline. Then later i watched some walkthroughs and the whole story is like, 20 minutes long.

Now the game is in full release, and get this, it retails for SIXTY american dollah.

Not $20 for an indie title, no, a full $60 as any AAA title.

Ok now watch the video. (NSFW obviously)

 

[ImpulsE69]

I love the art direction, but I don't think I would like the game and certainly not $60 worth.

 

[BSim500]

Have you had a chance to watch the Jim Sterling review on the full release?

I've not only seen that vid, I did actually test the game myself on a friend's. Only for about 60mins but that was long enough to tell me to avoid. It really is a total mess.

Optimisation is utterly abysmal. CPU (i5-7600) is maxed out 100% on all cores and still slows down to 30-40fps in areas but there's simply no reason or nothing to show for it. No clever AI, just primitive (and very buggy) linear triggers. It literally looks no better but plays a lot worse than +10 year old Unreal Engine 2 games (eg, Bioshock 1-2, Unreal 2, etc) but despite that somehow manages to run about 10x slower on same modern hardware for no reason. Even the "Bioshocky" art style didn't look / feel that good in-game vs promo shots. It was nothing like the "Oh, hell yes!" atmosphere / ambience when exploring Rapture for the first time. The plot is nonsensical and boring. Humor is weak. Crafting exists for the sake of existing and feels completely out of place and obviously "tacked on". Massively, massively buggy. Even after just 1 hour, I had 2x corrupted save games and got stuck in the environment (clipping issues) multiple times. 90% of the open-world is completely empty, levels feel deliberately oversized for the content for the sake of cheap padding and building interior layouts regularly look odd (probably due to procedural levels).

So much wasted potential. If they'd have ditched the open-world, procedural generation, and crafting, and instead focussed on nailing down a Bioshock-style linear but superbly written plot with hand-crafted atmospheric levels and really optimised the game, then there could have been something really interesting, fresh and unique here. If they can't code on new engines, there's no reason why they couldn't have used older UE3 engine and literally lost nothing (they already used that for previous game Contrast which although short was actually a very good, extremely well optimised, atmospheric shadow puzzler made in UE3). Rumor is though after they partnered with Gearbox, "it was decided" by the publisher that "it must be a $60 AAA game" despite the fact the devs content / competence level / comfort zone really didn't fit that at all.

We Happy Few really is a perfect example of the dangers of overly-homogenized mega-publishers trying to force all modern game development into a false dilemma of "big budget AAA or cheap Indie" with no solid "A" game middleweight ground in between and why I miss many old-school games that correctly matched mid-sized devs (eg, Looking Glass Studios) with mid-sized publishers (eg, Eidos Interactive) both of whom completely "got" what it took to make quality mid-sized games and were consistently "on the same page" throughout development. You could literally "hear the thoughts" of the devs when playing WHF of how to pad out the original concept after they came out of meetings with Gearbox and were forced to try to make something AAA that they simply weren't ready for yet.

 

[Skel]

I was one of the idiots that put money into the Kickstarter. I didn't have anywhere near the issues the guy in the video had (full disclosure: I didn't watch the entire video as I've shit to do and don't want to waste 15 mins listening to some guy repeat himself over and over about glitches) but it was still lacking a lot. It really feels like there's a good game in there, but it's hidden under a pile of crap. If I was to guess, I'd say that the people doing the dev work weren't all seasoned vets. Most of the issues feel like it needed someone who had experience to come in a clean it up. The gameplay was a slapped together game of stuff from other games, which isn't always a bad thing. Sadly when you've people that don't have the skills to put it all together in a way that flows you get this game. I really wanted to like it. It's really really a shame they went for the full $60 for it. This (with more polishing) could have been a nice $20 Indy game.

 

[EXCellR8]

Sucks that Gearbox is tied to the release, and likely the $60 price tag.