Rare Rebranded

[Jimbob]

Rare quite officially suck nowadays.

Even Microsoft are fed up with their stupid crap. I mean, come on! It took them FIVE fucking years to make Perfect Dark Zero.

In fact MS are so fed up with them, they're now forcing them to make strictly casual games. Because Viva Pinata is the best game they've released for a DECADE!

 

I used to love Rare. When I was a kid, that logo was in itself a seal of quality. I was devastated when Nintendo sold Rare.

 

The fact that Rare used to be one of the best games developers back in the 90's and that now they are nothing special is quite saddening. The best era was the N64 for Rare, they had the time from Ninty to make games great because Ninty were patient enough with them. We had games like Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark and Jet Set Gemini.

 

And now, we have Rare being a company that attempted to be great again. With games like Kameo, Viva Pinata and PD Zero. Unfortunetly, even with a revival of Banjo Kazooie, it wasn't meant to be. And now, we have Rare being a game maker who have to do what MS say and making games for Kinect. It's sad, i know.

[Wesley]

I'm confused... Kameo, Viva Pinata and PD:Z were good games at the time, and they also sold well...

 

PD:Z is now 5 years old... and at the time it got an average of around 80% and sold well.

 

How is it a bad game?

[Jimbob]

I wasn't saying they are bad games, they lacked in many ways the magic that once made them great. They didn't seem to have the same passion put into the games as they once did. And not because the staff of old left either.

[darkjak]

I'm confused... Kameo, Viva Pinata and PD:Z were good games at the time, and they also sold well...

 

PD:Z is now 5 years old... and at the time it got an average of around 80% and sold well.

 

How is it a bad game?

 

I remember how all the game mags used to give PDZ quite low marks. Plus I've played it and... well it was nowhere near the old game. I've downloaded PD for XBLA, and it's much better in nearly every way (PDZ has drop in multiplayer, which PD doesen't).

The old game had 20 levels, PDZ had like 10. The old PD had more multiplayer settings (FIVE multiplayer skins and FIVE friggin maps? Is that the best you can muster after five years of development?). And beyond that, the singleplayer level design was stupidly flawed. In fact so stupidly flawed that Rare had to add visible lines on the floor to show people where they're supposed to go.

The controls were sluggish, the guns weren't fun and the graphics were SO DARK!

In essence, they took all the bad stuff from PD1 and kept it (even the framerate issues), then they removed all the good stuff (for example, while PD and even Goldeneye had random heads on the NPC's, PDZ had a clone army). And to stay with the times they added a stupid toony character design and a useless cover system.

Sure, PDZ sold well, but interest vanished quite quickly. Just go to Game and have a look. I got my copy of what's equal to about 5 euros a bit more than a year ago, and I still want my money back. Now the game's not even worth that much used. In my city Game have like 5 copies so now I believe they sold the games for 2 Euros (the cheapest game they have beyond antiques like Fifa 97 for the PC). They've gone that low because they can't get rid of them, and they're not willing to pay anything for getting more.

 

I can't say that Viva is a bad game, but I don't find it very amusing either. Haven't played Kameo either.

 

And how is it illogical that they moved a bad studio to making low budget games? If a company's not making enough money from premium products, they try to make cheaper to develop games and try to sell them to a more easilly pleased audience.

[Wesley]

Well... as for the low marks it supposedly got, I don't remember the magazine scores that you may have read.

 

I do see that it got 81% on GameRankings, Metacritic, an A from 1UP, 7/10 from Edge, Eurogamer, Game Informer, 9/10 from GameSpot.

 

They're pretty good scores.

 

But what Microsoft really care about, and what I was saying is that they did make money from the products they've produced.

 

And you're idea that they've been put onto "low-budget" games because they supposedly can't pull their weight is bull.

 

It's like saying that Nintendo think that certain in-house units are shit, so they give them Wii Sports.

 

Trying to compare casual orientated games with the more traditional games they used to make is just stupid; especially just using terms of development costs (which, by the way, you don't even know what are).

 

Again, my point that they've been responsible for producing the leading titles and testing for Kinect - a device that is now completely changing Microsoft's game plan - shows that they've got the support of Microsoft.