Oh wow, I don't think I was aware that Andy Robinson left Playtonic? When did this happen? That's a surprise to me.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
After the success of the new Yooka Laylee, I really hope Playtonic can fill the space left by Rare.
- Thread starter Lant_War
- Start date
Oh wow, I don't think I was aware that Andy Robinson left Playtonic? When did this happen? That's a surprise to me.
As a backer of Yooka-Laylee, that first game really felt like a Monkey's Paw wish of a video game. "Oh, you want a new 3D platformer in the style of Rare's N64 output? Okay. Here's a platformer in exact the style of Rare's N64 output that has somehow learned zero lessons from the last 19 years of video game development." I still kind of liked it in a very guilty pleasure "this is a substandard version of what I want, but I'm not getting it elsewhere" sort of way, but the level design evokes the worst, most sprawling parts of Donkey Kong 64. It sounds like they eventually improved the controls and camera after I played it, but no amount of quality-of-life tweaks will ever fix how lost I felt navigating most of the worlds.
I'm hearing better things about Impossible Lair, so obviously they've improved, but I'm not sure if I yet buy the narrative people are peddling about them being the "true successors" to the Rare name. They're certainly emulating the same kinds of games Rare was making 20 years ago, but I wonder how much that deliberate throwback stuff appeals to people who aren't already nostalgic for it like I am. Modern day Rare, while obviously not the same company it once was, also seems to be doing fairly well for themselves with Sea of Thieves after a rough launch and a decade spent in the Kinect wilderness.
I'm hearing better things about Impossible Lair, so obviously they've improved, but I'm not sure if I yet buy the narrative people are peddling about them being the "true successors" to the Rare name. They're certainly emulating the same kinds of games Rare was making 20 years ago, but I wonder how much that deliberate throwback stuff appeals to people who aren't already nostalgic for it like I am. Modern day Rare, while obviously not the same company it once was, also seems to be doing fairly well for themselves with Sea of Thieves after a rough launch and a decade spent in the Kinect wilderness.
Yooka laylee was underwhelming and just showed Rare was/is right to move on from N64-era platformers, nostalgia is a hull of a drug, Viva Pinata and Sea of Thieves are Rare's best games imo.
More 2D games from them, I don't think they've got the budget/manpower to do a 3d platformer justice. Oh and they need a better art directior, I find the art direction in their games to be low quality... like something you'd find on the cover of some cheap dollar store notepad.
Maybe if they had made a third DKC game they could have started to work on being a successor to Rare. Instead they're off on some vaporware title that is nowhere near as interesting.
Earlier this year. He went back to games journalism and is currently part of the team behind Videogames Chronicle where he works as Editor-in-chief https://www.videogameschronicle.com/about-us/
OP
OP
They've done so much better with The Impossible Lair already, I'm sure their next projects won't look like the first YL.
I know it's what people used to like to say back when Retro used to release games, but they never really replaced Rare. Certainly not on the quantity front at least. Quality is more debatable, but even then, Retro needs to start releasing way more games than they have been to compare to Rare.
Hell, even Rare has released waaaaaaaay more games than Retro has since 2002 and modern day Rare is considered to be slower than old Rare. It's not even a fair comparison on that front.
If we go by the general consensus of the game, Yooka Laylee wasn't particularly done well. I'm not sure if that game is a great representation of how a modern 3D collectathon could be like.
If Rare were to ever make a Banjo Threeie, I imagine they won't go down the same route Playtonic tried to go down with YL. Knowing Rare, they wouldn't just directly emulate the gameplay of the old games to a T. That's not how Rare works, for better or worse.
Oh wow. Nice! It's cool that he gets to do games journalism again.
Games take longer to make now than they did in the snes and n64 days that's the only reason their quantity is less
If that was the only reason, then Rare would be just as slow these days as Retro is, but they're not. I think the fact that Retro is a smaller studio has a lot to do with it.
yeah Rare is putting out bangers pretty fast... oh wait they're not.
the one game they did release had basically zero content at launch lol.
Notice how I didn't say anything about "bangers". I was talking about general level of output regardless of quality. Since 2002, Retro has released 5 games. Since 2002, Rare has released 13 games and that's not including handheld games and stuff like Rare Replay.
Even looking at the last 5 years is pretty telling. In early 2014, Rare and Retro released Kinect Sports Rivals and DKC Tropical Freeze, respectively. Rare managed to release Sea of Thieves 4 years after that while it's been been nearly 6 years since Tropical Freeze and Retro has yet to release anything. This isn't even counting Rare Replay which came out in 2015.
Yes, Rare is slow as hell, but Retro is even slower. I'm not dogging on Retro or anything. That's just the reality of their pace of output.
sure but the difference is that retro canned their turds while rare put them out.