Microsoft Redfall (Xbox Series/PC) - Open World Co-Op Shooter from Arkane, update: Doritos/Mountain Dew/Rockstar Energy Drink cosmetic DLC now available!

[crispy4000]

 

 

Redfall on PC continues the run of unacceptably poor ports

WWW.EUROGAMER.NET

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It's with a depressing sense of inevitability that Redfall arrives on PC in a poor state. Like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor…

 

Quote

 

There's the sense that the game just isn't finished, that's it more like a beta, and that starts with the lack of tweakable options on the settings menu - which is essentially the barebones Unreal Engine 4 set-up. The user has few indicators of what the settings actually do as there are no meaingful descriptions, preview images or hints as to what the performance impact might be when changing a setting. The default UE4 settings are simply not good enough - and it's not just down to the lack of transparency with the user. The lack of utility is also a problem.

 

So, for example, one setting may actually change multiple aspects of the game. Post-processing can turn off various elements you may want to change individually, including motion blur, depth of field and ambient occlusion. The generic UE4 menu is a bad fit in other regards - the low volumetric setting, for example, completely ruins the effect. It's a far cry from the likes of Days Gone and Returnal, also running on UE4, but deliver real-time previews, great descriptions, frame-rate counters that dynamically adjust with settings adjustment and much more. Arkane really should have done better here.

 

[Best]

Wait a second here...I just played over an hour and a half of this and it definitely is not a 5/10 game. It's your typical Arkane game and it is well done from what I played. 

 

The visuals are not so hot but it runs at 60fps and the combat is very solid. You get to upgrade, loot, explore at your leisure and kill vampires to boot. Everything is very well organized and the atmosphere is cool as hell.

 

Playing this coop would be a blast imo. Unless I didn't play long enough this is more like a 7.5/10. It pleasantly surprised me by a lot. 

 

I will have to read reviews to fully grasp why this game is getting trashed. Imo, it's really fun and definitely worth your time since it's on gamepass. 

[ShreddieMercury]

1 hour ago, best3444 said:

Wait a second here...I just played over an hour and a half of this and it definitely is not a 5/10 game. It's your typical Arkane game and it is well done from what I played. 

 

The visuals are not so hot but it runs at 60fps and the combat is very solid. You get to upgrade, loot, explore at your leisure and kill vampires to boot. Everything is very well organized and the atmosphere is cool as hell.

 

Playing this coop would be a blast imo. Unless I didn't play long enough this is more like a 7.5/10. It pleasantly surprised me by a lot. 

 

I will have to read reviews to fully grasp why this game is getting trashed. Imo, it's really fun and definitely worth your time since it's on gamepass. 

 

It's become a console war flashpoint, so it likely won't ever be appropriately evaluated.  Your early takeaway seems pretty consistent with any of the remotely competent critical sources that have covered this game (generally those that don't give out numerical scores).

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

12 minutes ago, ShreddieMercury said:

It's become a console war flashpoint...

 

The PC reviewers would like to have a word about that

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, ShreddieMercury said:

 

It's become a console war flashpoint, so it likely won't ever be appropriately evaluated.  Your early takeaway seems pretty consistent with any of the remotely competent critical sources that have covered this game (generally those that don't give out numerical scores).

I’d trust someone here who has played through the game to give an honest take.  A lot of the negative reviews mention repetitive design.  So I just wonder if it’s more of a co-op makes it more tolerable kind of thing.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

4 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

I’d trust someone here who has played through the game to give an honest take.  A lot of the negative reviews mention repetitive design.  So I just wonder if it’s more of a co-op makes it more tolerable kind of thing.

 

The PC Gamer reviewer spent 40+ hours with the game so I'd say that least that person is making an informed assessment.

[johnny]

now just imagine if starfield is meh. id love to compare how xbox goes about running their studios compared to Sony. Sony puts out a lot more quality games than xbox. 

[TheLeon]

3 hours ago, best3444 said:

Wait a second here...I just played over an hour and a half of this and it definitely is not a 5/10 game. It's your typical Arkane game and it is well done from what I played. 

 

The visuals are not so hot but it runs at 60fps and the combat is very solid. You get to upgrade, loot, explore at your leisure and kill vampires to boot. Everything is very well organized and the atmosphere is cool as hell.

 

Playing this coop would be a blast imo. Unless I didn't play long enough this is more like a 7.5/10. It pleasantly surprised me by a lot. 

 

I will have to read reviews to fully grasp why this game is getting trashed. Imo, it's really fun and definitely worth your time since it's on gamepass. 

Hey, if you play more and that number holds, more power to you. Glad you enjoyed it.

 

 Maybe you should consider doing internal mock reviews for Microsoft. 

[JPDunks4]

Phil didnt have no time to play test Redfall, he was addicted to something else

 

233 hours worth

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

On 5/4/2023 at 4:57 PM, crispy4000 said:

I wouldn’t debate that Starfield was always considered bigger.  But this absolutely was NOT intended to be a “good enough” game to bide the time until the next release.

 

How can I say that?  Go back to how the game was announced.  Watch it again.

 

 

A 5 minute CG trailer and ‘E3’ showcase closer meant to sell us on the world and characters.  This was not supposed to be a State of Decay tier franchise.  It was meant to be marquee.  At least at some point in its development.

 

Priorities must have shifted along the way, but from what it was initially pitched to the public as.  Microsoft has themselves to blame for hyping it as a system seller prematurely.

 

It would have been better to spend none of the resources on producing that trailer, and instead pump those funds into making the game closer to the vision.

 

13 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

Where I don’t see eye to eye with you and @Commissar SFLUFAN is this idea that it was never meant to be that.  It sounds an awful lot like revisionist history, considering the way it was initially presented to the public.  It’s much easier to believe that the game never came together as intended, as an AAA title with the expectations they built.  Phil said so much himself, the vision wasn’t realized.

 

You'll get no argument from me at all that at the outset, Redfall was showcased as a significant (even if not necessarily a "tentpole") product for the Xbox ecosystem, especially within the specific goal of driving significant Game Pass subscriptions through its inherently cooperative play framework.  For my part, I just get the sense -- with no actual evidence to support it, mind you -- that subsequent to the May 2022 announcement of the postponement of its release from its original 2022 timeframe to the first half of 2023 that internally MS probably "downgraded" its overall expectations for Redfall from that of a potentially ecosystem-defining franchise to one that they hoped would be simply "good enough" to give a modestly decent boost to Game Pass subscriptions.  My basis for this assumption really is nothing more than the relative indifference and/or confusion with which the initial announcement was greeted by its presumed core audience and the overall lukewarm (at best) tenor of the rounds of previews the game received from the media.

[Keyser_Soze]

6 hours ago, best3444 said:

The visuals are not so hot but it runs at 60fps and the combat is very solid.

 

But it doesn't.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

12 hours ago, JPDunks4 said:

And as for the interview itself, I've seen a lot say his tone and some statements were made specifically for Regulators.  Highlighting they are in 3rd and can't compete with Nintendo or Sony. 

 

The EC Competition Committee and CMA (no one gives a rip what the FTC has to say) both dismissed any concerns regarding the competitive environment in the console space and focused their respective findings almost entirely on the cloud so those statements from Phil would really have little-to-no effect.

[XxEvil AshxX]

I played Redfall for several hours with a buddy tonight and I didn't see anything wrong with it, aside from your usual dumb A.I. and the fact that it was kinda easy. We actually enjoyed what we played. The 30 fps was a bummer for sure, but after a while I forgot I was supposed to be bothered by it.

 

We'll see how it holds up in the long run but so far it's not as bad as what I've been hearing about on the youtubes.

[Keyser_Soze]

6 minutes ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

so far it's not as bad as what I've been hearing about on the youtubes.

 

Maybe people are finally realizing Destiny is not a good game

 

[Best]

10 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

But it doesn't.

 

Interesting. It really felt like 60 to me so that's all that matters to me. I'm trying it out again today to see why it's getting so trashed. I'm baffled now but again, I only put 1 hour in so my opinion is not great. 

[crispy4000]

12 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

 

You'll get no argument from me at all that at the outset, Redfall was showcased as a significant (even if not necessarily a "tentpole") product for the Xbox ecosystem, especially within the specific goal of driving significant Game Pass subscriptions through its inherently cooperative play framework.  For my part, I just get the sense -- with no actual evidence to support it, mind you -- that subsequent to the May 2022 announcement of the postponement of its release from its original 2022 timeframe to the first half of 2023 that internally MS probably "downgraded" its overall expectations for Redfall from that of a potentially ecosystem-defining franchise to one that they hoped would be simply "good enough" to give a modestly decent boost to Game Pass subscriptions.  My basis for this assumption really is nothing more than the relative indifference and/or confusion with which the initial announcement was greeted by its presumed core audience and the overall lukewarm (at best) tenor of the rounds of previews the game received from the media.

 

Fair enough.  I’m not one to typically call out mismanagement of game development, since it’s a tricky and nuanced thing.  Phil’s absolutely right that sometimes games just don’t come together when it’s thought they would.

 

But it does beg the question of funding and support.  There was that article several years back about the cancelled Phantom Dust remake, where the team wasn’t given a realistic budget to finish the project.  ReCore is another example: it launched in a half finished state for much of the same reasons.

 

If the issue here is that Microsoft isn’t giving mid-sized studios the resources they need to deliver, all while giving marketing a blank check, that’s a huge imbalance that needs to be addressed.  Then again, Psyconauts 2 turned out just fine.  Like someone earlier in this thread said, a Schreier article would pull back the curtain here.

[JPDunks4]

Those previous games, like Recore and Phantom Dust, was prior to the bigger investment Microsoft gave to gaming.  It's clear in that 2014-2017 Microsoft seemed to have Xbox running on pennies. Late 2017 is when Phil got promoted within MS and started reporting directly to Satya Nadella.  

 

Xbox had only owned Arkane and Bethesda for about 3 months before they closed E3 with it.  I wonder if its a case where they asked Zenimax for some trailers and Pete Hines oversold Redfall a bit to them.  He seemed very high on it when it was announced.

 

I'm sure we will get some insight into what went wrong, but if it was due to funding being pulled or not having what they needed, wouldn't be a great look.

[crispy4000]

I wonder if trying to build this type of game in UE4 also had something to do with it.

[Best]

I'm playing more later tonight. I honestly enjoyed what I played. Coop would be dope.

[DPCyric]

16 minutes ago, best3444 said:

I'm playing more later tonight. I honestly enjoyed what I played. Coop would be dope.

 

Good to hear I was really looking forward to this. Hopefully I end up feeling the same way about it (and it gets some improvements by the time I get around to it).

[Best]

7 minutes ago, DPCyric said:

 

Good to hear I was really looking forward to this. Hopefully I end up feeling the same way about it (and it gets some improvements by the time I get around to it).

 

It's an arkane game so if you played their previous games you will know what you're getting into. It's good and definitely didn't deserve all the hate It's getting. 

[TheLeon]

Restocking your ammo seems to cost the same regardless of how much you need, and it goes up regularly (dependent on your level?). Don’t like that. 
 

Vampire lairs are kinda cool the first couple times you do them, but they get very repetitive. At least they feel pretty optional. 
 

During one of my last missions, I had to get into a building. If I had a lockpick, I could’ve used that to get through the front door. Instead, I walked around the building, looking for some hidden entrance, or a place to jump up to with my elevator ability… and then I just walked through the wide open ground level back door. What thrilling, “play your way” design! 

The single player experience is pretty bland. It’s barely a story. Your playable character isn’t really a character. It’s not a particularly interesting world. Missions are basically busywork to point you in a direction to shoot things to gain experience to level up to get better guns to shoots things better. That’s an age-old game design, so I can’t knock it too much. That kind of gameplay loop can be very satisfying in the right game, but after about 8 hours, I’m really losing steam with this one. Maybe if the bugs/performance/AI get cleaned up, I might come back, but probably not.

 

[Xbob42]

On 5/5/2023 at 4:34 PM, johnny said:

now just imagine if starfield is meh.

Hi, have you ever played a Bethesda game? They're all meh. They hang on by a thread thanks to generally having a ton of points of interest but it falls apart exponentially quickly the more you play, unless you're just kinda zoned out and don't really give a shit. But other open world games have come to eat Bethesda's breakfast so they need a lot more than "we have bad combat, animations and a shitty story but look at all these places you can go! You can stack the cheese!"

[Dodger]

10 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Fair enough.  I’m not one to typically call out mismanagement of game development, since it’s a tricky and nuanced thing.  Phil’s absolutely right that sometimes games just don’t come together when it’s thought they would.

 

But it does beg the question of funding and support.  There was that article several years back about the cancelled Phantom Dust remake, where the team wasn’t given a realistic budget to finish the project.  ReCore is another example: it launched in a half finished state for much of the same reasons.

 

If the issue here is that Microsoft isn’t giving mid-sized studios the resources they need to deliver, all while giving marketing a blank check, that’s a huge imbalance that needs to be addressed.  Then again, Psyconauts 2 turned out just fine.  Like someone earlier in this thread said, a Schreier article would pull back the curtain here.

 

Phil mentioned Starfield has been getting more internal support. I think what happened is that Starfield is a million times more important than RedFall and is getting all the attention because that has to be a hit. RedFall just isn’t as important to MS as Starfield. It’s the pool meme with Starfield getting all the attention while RedFall drowns.

[crispy4000]

11 hours ago, Dodger said:

 

Phil mentioned Starfield has been getting more internal support. I think what happened is that Starfield is a million times more important than RedFall and is getting all the attention because that has to be a hit. RedFall just isn’t as important to MS as Starfield. It’s the pool meme with Starfield getting all the attention while RedFall drowns.

 

I doubt it's a zero sum game, especially with all the variables that go into game development.  If it were as simple as propping up the expected hit, Halo Infinite would be in a much better place today.

 

This was still Bethesda's debut game under Microsoft's banner, and their first next-gen only game from an internal (or newly acquired) studio.  It's hard to believe it was ever their calculus for it to go down like this.  On the most recent Bombcast, Jeff Grubb made a salient point: If it was Microsoft's deliberate choice to let this game drown, that's a bad look for what Games Pass could mean for 1st party games going forward.

 

 

Not that I think Starfield will be bad, or that Redfall was as important.  But it dials up the pressure on that game, perhaps to an unrealistic degree.  Last thing I want to see is people throwing a fit or concern trolling if it ends up an 8/10 or something.

[johnny]

2 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

Hi, have you ever played a Bethesda game? They're all meh. They hang on by a thread thanks to generally having a ton of points of interest but it falls apart exponentially quickly the more you play, unless you're just kinda zoned out and don't really give a shit. But other open world games have come to eat Bethesda's breakfast so they need a lot more than "we have bad combat, animations and a shitty story but look at all these places you can go! You can stack the cheese!"

brother you are preaching to the choir. i don’t fuck with bethesda games at all lmao. people seem to love them though which i don’t fully understand. 

[Xbob42]

1 hour ago, johnny said:

brother you are preaching to the choir. i don’t fuck with bethesda games at all lmao. people seem to love them though which i don’t fully understand. 

It's like an all you can eat buffet, I guess. It doesn't matter if it's tasteless mush, it goes on forever!

 

Wis. Man Pickets Restaurant After Denied All-You-Can-Eat Fish

WWW.CBSNEWS.COM

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A 6-foot-6, 350 pound man from Wisconsin is protesting after being cut off from a local restaurant's all-you-can-eat fish fry, according to WTMJ-TV.

 

 

Unless you're that guy.

[Keyser_Soze]

 

12 hours ago, TheLeon said:

During one of my last missions, I had to get into a building. If I had a lockpick, I could’ve used that to get through the front door. Instead, I walked around the building, looking for some hidden entrance, or a place to jump up to with my elevator ability… and then I just walked through the wide open ground level back door. What thrilling, “play your way” design! 

 

 

Is that the radio station mission? There was something odd with the progress of that one for me. You are supposed to go to the radio station and the shipyard but I went to the radio station first because it was closer. The front door was open but you had to pick a lock to get in the back door. I went through the back and cleared the place out but couldn't find the key and decided to go to the shipyard. After I cleared the shipyard thinking the key would be there I came back to the radio station, but everyone was back and there were booby traps on the doors and windows this time. Very weird they weren't there the first time.

[TheLeon]

2 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Is that the radio station mission? There was something odd with the progress of that one for me. You are supposed to go to the radio station and the shipyard but I went to the radio station first because it was closer. The front door was open but you had to pick a lock to get in the back door. I went through the back and cleared the place out but couldn't find the key and decided to go to the shipyard. After I cleared the shipyard thinking the key would be there I came back to the radio station, but everyone was back and there were booby traps on the doors and windows this time. Very weird they weren't there the first time.

No, this was a ship and a lighthouse. On that mission, I went to the radio station first and cleared it. Didn’t go back there until a safe house mission sent me there like 15 minutes later, and that’s when it was heavily defended/booby trapped. 

[crispy4000]

 

[HardAct]

On 5/5/2023 at 1:06 PM, best3444 said:

Wait a second here...I just played over an hour and a half of this and it definitely is not a 5/10 game. It's your typical Arkane game and it is well done from what I played. 

 

The visuals are not so hot but it runs at 60fps and the combat is very solid. You get to upgrade, loot, explore at your leisure and kill vampires to boot. Everything is very well organized and the atmosphere is cool as hell.

 

Playing this coop would be a blast imo. Unless I didn't play long enough this is more like a 7.5/10. It pleasantly surprised me by a lot. 

 

I will have to read reviews to fully grasp why this game is getting trashed. Imo, it's really fun and definitely worth your time since it's on gamepass. 

An hour and a Half? 7.5? LOL

   Man just give it another 1.5 hours you'll see. It's really really bad. I was excited to play this game and eagerly installed and spent 4 hours with it and it's a total let down. It's so bad it leaves you/ me {sorry} scratching my head. Gameplay it unexciting, controls are mediocre at best and exploration though cool at first {within an hour or so} but then you'll see why EVERYONE is down on this game. The combat is so breakable is laughable and missions are painfully repetitive and the sheer lack of action in between everywhere is the worst part, AI is some of the worse I have seen in over a decade. Maybe this game checks all your boxes but it's just NOT a good game at all! ......and i LOVE LOVE ARCANE I will never put a score on a game after 4 hours, but I can tell weather or not it's worth continuing. It's uninstalled and I will never revisit this game.

 

  PLZ know this is not an attack, though I do feel you just need more time to see what it staring you in the face. That said if you play this game and enjoy it that is awesome and I really hope it has staying power with you sir, ENJOY!

[Best]

34 minutes ago, HardAct said:

An hour and a Half? 7.5? LOL

   Man just give it another 1.5 hours you'll see. It's really really bad. I was excited to play this game and eagerly installed and spent 4 hours with it and it's a total let down. It's so bad it leaves you/ me {sorry} scratching my head. Gameplay it unexciting, controls are mediocre at best and exploration though cool at first {within an hour or so} but then you'll see why EVERYONE is down on this game. The combat is so breakable is laughable and missions are painfully repetitive and the sheer lack of action in between everywhere is the worst part, AI is some of the worse I have seen in over a decade. Maybe this game checks all your boxes but it's just NOT a good game at all! ......and i LOVE LOVE ARCANE I will never put a score on a game after 4 hours, but I can tell weather or not it's worth continuing. It's uninstalled and I will never revisit this game.

 

  PLZ know this is not an attack, though I do feel you just need more time to see what it staring you in the face. That said if you play this game and enjoy it that is awesome and I really hope it has staying power with you sir, ENJOY!

 

Haha. I'm not taking it as an attack. I only played an hour and after reading and watching more reviews I will not touch it again. It must be utter trash which is shocking to me. I have no idea wtf happened in development but yikes. 

 

After I watched the easy allies review I had a chuckle and deleted it off my hardrive. 

 

It had a lot of potential and it has a cool setting but yea, it's a complete failure. Nothing lost since it was on gamepass. 

[Keyser_Soze]

Just fought the boss at the lighthouse. It would have been a moderately challenging fight except it bugged out during the fight and just stood there so I just melee'd the boss to death. Feels good man.

 

[BloodyHell]

On 5/6/2023 at 3:40 PM, best3444 said:

 

It's an arkane game so if you played their previous games you will know what you're getting into. It's good and definitely didn't deserve all the hate It's getting. 

Yes, if does deserve it, and no, it’s nothing like other Arkane games. I played it on xbox last weekend, and PCcthis week in my hotel to give it a chance. It’s awful. This is the exact opposite of dishonored and Prey. 
 

On 5/5/2023 at 5:06 PM, best3444 said:

Wait a second here...I just played over an hour and a half of this and it definitely is not a 5/10 game. It's your typical Arkane game and it is well done from what I played. 

 

The visuals are not so hot but it runs at 60fps and the combat is very solid. You get to upgrade, loot, explore at your leisure and kill vampires to boot. Everything is very well organized and the atmosphere is cool as hell.

 

Playing this coop would be a blast imo. Unless I didn't play long enough this is more like a 7.5/10. It pleasantly surprised me by a lot. 

 

I will have to read reviews to fully grasp why this game is getting trashed. Imo, it's really fun and definitely worth your time since it's on gamepass. 

what are you talking about? It doesn’t run at 60 on xbox, and a lot of the time it struggles to get 30. ILP were getting as low as 17fps when they tried it.

 

then theres the world design… ugh…

 

its ugly, it plays badly, repetitive, and there is no fun to be had.

[BloodyHell]

On 5/7/2023 at 3:12 PM, best3444 said:

 

Haha. I'm not taking it as an attack. I only played an hour and after reading and watching more reviews I will not touch it again. It must be utter trash which is shocking to me. I have no idea wtf happened in development but yikes. 

 

After I watched the easy allies review I had a chuckle and deleted it off my hardrive. 

 

It had a lot of potential and it has a cool setting but yea, it's a complete failure. Nothing lost since it was on gamepass. 

Soo you love the game but deleted it because EZA didn’t? Are you listening to yourself?

yeah, most of us hate it, but if you’re having fun, enjoy it till you aren’t.