We cover a lot of ground in this week’s episode of The Unearned Hype Podcast. Episode 16 was recorded 30 minutes after Bungie’s Destiny 2 gameplay reveal, which aired on Thursday morning, and features our reactions to the info dump that fans were treated to this week. We also spend some time discussing the Injustice 2 and The Surge reviews published earlier this week.
The show opens with my reactions to the growing divide between my own score for The Surge and those given by my peers at other publications. The opening segment also turns out to be a pretty great example of some of the things we talked about during our ninth episode -- an episode entirely dedicated to our thoughts on the review process -- including my tendency to think less of games that borrow more great ideas than they bring to the table. The game isn’t unredeemable, and is clearly finding an audience, but The Surge just wasn’t my cup of tea.
We also spend some time discussing Phil’s five star review of Injustice 2; the DC Comics-inspired brawler from NetherRealm Studios and WB Interactive. Our resident fighting game aficionado offers an inside look at what it’s like to review a game that doesn’t show up until launch day and some additional thoughts on why he was willing to give it our top score. Phil also has some good news for anyone worried the new Gear system would make an already unforgiving genre even harder for new players to pick up. And even better news for players intrigued by the cosmetic changes but uninterested in the stat boosts.
Last, but certainly not least, we spend a few minutes discussing the Destiny 2 gameplay reveal that has millions of gamers talking about Bungie’s next shooter. The studio outlined a plethora of quality-of-life improvements during its Thursday morning broadcast. But I’m still a bit worried that some of the biggest problems with the first game -- like the glacial pace at which Bungie would published new story content -- may continue to go unaddressed in the sequel. Obviously, there’s still plenty of time for Bungie to say more about Destiny 2. But I can’t muster much more than cautious optimism for the studio’s next shared-world shooter until we have better information about the amount of content we’ll see at launch.
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